Adrift

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Thank you, again, my most wonderful reviewers! Welcome, Lynne - I'm so glad you've enjoyed the story so far! And thank you again to Faeritales, CoffeeMuse and Elena for your continued support and comments. I'm having SUCH a good time torturing these two characters, and this chapter will be no different.

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Frustration wasn’t a word as could do justice to the edgy sense of impatience Hector experienced by the third day of his recovery. Only Elizabeth dared darken the doorway to his stateroom anymore and even she had grown wary in the shadow of his stormy mood.

Although still tender, the bullet hole on his leg had healed over and the ugly black and purple bruises were beginning to fade to yellow. He should have been pleased but instead everything seemed to set him off. Whether it was the fact that he’d regained his limp or that Elizabeth had taken to sleeping in the guest cabin with the excuse that he needed his rest, every real or perceived slight only served to add to his unease.

The fact was that during Hector’s idle time aboard his ship, he’d had entirely too many hours to think and some of what Marilyn had uttered that last fateful day had begun to prey upon his mind. As offended as he’d been at her intimations, what truly enraged him was that there was likely a sliver of truth in some of what she’d said.

Already he’d kept too much from Elizabeth, even though she’d shown her faith in him and hadn’t asked more than he claimed he was able to give her. He knew, though, that as powerful as the bond between them had grown, she’d be all the more devastated when she learned the veracity of things. Perhaps her suspicions had already been roused – her reluctance to share his bed since the shooting could be seen as a signal that she’d already begun to pull away.

Rarely had Hector lived in anything but the moment; being pirate had made any other way seem folly. Even after the visit to the fountain, the habit had remained unchanged – it had suited him, suited his purposes. But now that he had found Elizabeth and had for all but the sake of a few words made her his, the thought of living for the day alone no longer appealed. Unless she knew who he really was, though, and shared the truth of their history, what chance did he have for a future, long or short though it may be?

Centuries before, he’d not been concerned about maintaining a façade . That wasn’t to say he couldn’t lie with the best of them if the situation so called for it, but he’d prided himself on a pirate’s sense of honour and saw himself as a man of his word. He cared not for what the world thought of him, whether damned or saved, and he saw no point in pretending otherwise. But people of modern times lacked the capacity for suspending disbelief, and so he and his men had to take that naïveté about the supernatural into account in all their dealings. He had tired of the masquerade even as he knew it was unavoidable. He simply didn’t want to hide his true self from Elizabeth any longer.

Although the day was new, he’d woken into a state of ill humour over it all. He was wrapping fresh dressings around his leg – all part of the deception, which made him even more cross – when Elizabeth chose that unfortunate moment to bring in his morning meal. He scowled at her over his shoulder. “Didn’t ask fer food, did I?” he sneered crassly. “Take it away.”

The tray crashed against the wall to his right, the juice glass shattering and sending shards tinkling over both him and the wood flooring. Hector jerked his head up in shock and anger, ready to launch into a tirade about the mess when she came closer and drove her palms into his chest, causing him to stumble and fall back against the door to the head.

“I’ve had about all the crap I’m going to take from you, Hector Barbossa!” she shouted, her hands settling on her hips. “You take that tone of voice with me again and I swear to God, I’ll shoot you myself to end both your misery and mine!”

His dander rose further as he rubbed through his t-shirt at where she’d hit him. Damned if she hadn’t actually bruised him, tiny thing though she was! “Weary I’ve grown of being treated like some drooling codger!” he hollered back. “I’ll not tolerate it!”

She moved over to where he stood, her hands bunched tightly at her side and her countenance dark. “You’ll not tolerate it?! Do you have any idea what you’ve put me through over the last three days? You’ve done nothing but snap and snarl, and I’m sick of it! It’s time for you to quit this morose macho bullshit and admit to me why you’re acting this way!”

Her rebuke pushed his temper to the boiling point. Hector suddenly grabbed her by her shoulders and pulled her hard against him. “Ye best be rememberin’ who it is yer talkin’ to, missy!” he roared, glaring fiercely down at her.

Elizabeth forcefully slapped his arms away and in turn clutched fistfuls of his t-shirt in her hands, angry tears glistening unshed in her eyes. Just as the appalling nature of his behaviour began to dawn on him and his heart was struck with the first pangs of regret, she tugged him roughly towards her and kissed him hard.

His eyes widened briefly in surprise before the tension slowly drained from his shoulders and his arms came up around her. Groaning deeply, he lost himself in the velvety softness of her mouth and the honeyed caress of her tongue. Heat flared within him, but this time in ardour rather than anger as she sought to drive him mad with a needful touch and ready lips.

Her breath was short when she pulled back and her tongue flicked out to taste the traces of him on her lips. The wounded look in her eyes remained, though, and he knew then that while the kiss might have freed him from the fit of pique in which he’d been mired, the hurt caused by his callousness remained.

She dropped her gaze and tried to get away, but Hector gently tightened his embrace and drew her back to him, holding on until she finally settled her head against his chest. Whether she did so in resignation or out of a need for comfort he knew not, but it was enough for now to have her close enough to hear what he had to say.

“Fool I was to speak to ye so unkindly” he murmured against her soft hair. “I had no cause to treat ye in such a way. Bein’ caged has frayed me nerves.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “I wish I could believe it was just cabin fever. Whether you’re willing to say it or not, though, we both know there’s more to it than that.”

What she said wasn’t wrong but to have his apology called into question still rankled. “Have ye a theory of yer own or are ye callin’ me liar out of spite?”

She looked up at him sadly. “I believe you’re trying not to hurt me by keeping your real feelings to yourself. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought after these last few days, though, and...well, I think that on some level, you blame me for dragging you into this situation in the first place. And you’d be right to do so.”

He couldn’t have been more surprised had she sprouted wings and attempted flight. Hector held her out at arm’s length, ducking to look into her eyes so she could read the sincerity of his words on his face.

“Ne’er once did I think to point a finger at ye, ‘Lizabeth! There be forces movin’ against us that put that plot in motion. Ye can’t be takin’ that upon yerself.”

Elizabeth pulled away, shrugging off his hands as though she could no longer bear his touch. She sat down on the far edge of his bed, her lips set in a severe line and her eyes avoiding his. “Except for me, Marilyn would never have betrayed your crew. Except for me, she wouldn’t have tried to kill you and she certainly wouldn’t have killed herself...”

He watched her with stymied incredulity as she choked up, the words getting caught in her throat for a moment before she was able to go on. “It would have been better for everyone if you’d just dumped me at an emergency room after you’d saved me and left me to deal with this mess on my own. You can’t deny that…”

Her certainty brought a new flush of anger. Hector descended on her, grabbing her roughly by her arms and giving her a solid shake that caused her eyes to grow bigger in alarm.

“I’ll not have ye speak that way! If ye truly believe such things, ye render meaningless all that’s followed since that night.” He pushed her away forcibly, breathing harshly as he let loose his rage. “If ye regret what’s happened between us – if ye wish now that ye’d not made the choices ye did – then show the courage of yer heart and say it plain, and don’t seek to use yer simperin’ self-pity as an excuse to turn yer back upon me!”

Her shock at his fury lasted the time it took her to take to her feet and find her voice again. “Oh no, you don’t!” she hissed, advancing on him until she was glaring up into his face. “You have NO right to be angry with me! I never said I wanted out nor that I regretted a single thing I’ve done when it comes to you. But if this…this seething resentment you’ve been raining down on me isn’t about the curse that seems to be following me…”

He laughed unpleasantly. “Curse? Ye know nothing of such, girl. Don’t ye dare be brandishin’ a term ye can’t possibly understand.”

“Now you argue semantics? Enough already! Show that same courage you demand of me, Hector,” she said, her chin raised towards him with unrepressed insolence. “Why are you so upset? What have I done to deserve your contempt? If you care about what we have…” Elizabeth’s voice softened and she swallowed hard, “...if you really feel the way you claim you do, then please tell me why. I can’t go on waiting on tenterhooks for the next outburst.”

The heat of his temper faded with her plea. Hector let out a heavy sigh and closed his eyes for a moment’s respite before slumping down onto the bed. He owed her at least some of the truth – wanted, in fact, to give it to her – but where to begin? And once he’d let loose control of the same, where would it end? He’d let himself go too far now to turn back.

“Ye not be the one at fault here, lass,” he said wearily. “And I swear on me life, I’ve not the foggiest notion how best to explain conduct as unbecoming as mine. Wouldn’t fault ye fer walkin’ out now and in so doin’, save yerself the trouble of tryin’ to make sense of it all.”

She sat down beside him and took his hand, weaving her fingers through his. “I’m not going anywhere. Take your time. It’ll be okay, I promise. Whatever you have to say, I’ll listen.”

He tightened his grip, wanting to imprint the warm, tingly sensation of her touch into his mind forever just in case he botched it all in the telling.

Hector took in the expectancy upon her face and second thoughts fogged the clarity of his purpose. As much as he wanted to let go his pretence, it would be less taxing to go head to head against Davy Jones’ Kraken than to bare his soul to Elizabeth Swann. In fact, he found himself halfway wishing that some great beast would emerge roaring from the sea to disrupt the scene, but alas! Most such mythical creatures had long ceased to roam the oceans of the world, another casualty of the age of knowledge. Nay, there’d be no such dubious salvation for Hector Barbossa.

“Ye believe that ye bear some guilt o’er Marilyn’s attack,” he began. “Truth be, ‘Lizabeth, that ne’er did she intend to kill me when she fired that pistol. T’was purely by chance the shot nearly did me in.”

“She didn’t mean to hurt you?” Elizabeth asked, clearly puzzled.

He barked out a wry laugh. “Wouldn’t go far as to claim that. But no, murder was not her goal. She did what she did so’s you’d come to know somethin’ of me ye’d not known before. A secret, if ye like. And in so knowin’, I’d be forced to reveal some of me more...unusual...traits. T’was her hope that in so doin’, yer faith in me would be shaken and she’d succeed in drivin’ ye off.”

Her face cleared as understanding dawned. “Oh…the whole super-fast healing thing, you mean.”

“Ye knew?” he asked, stunned yet again, not just by her acuity but by how unfazed she seemed in her awareness. “How? I ne’er did let ye see...that is, I changed me own dressins’...”

“Your wound had already started to mend by the time Jen got here. That’s what she wanted to talk to me about when we left you alone for a time – she thought you were working some kind of con. Is that what this was all about? You were worried that I would find out and, what? Run screaming into the night because you were recovering more quickly than I could ever have hoped?”

“Ye don’t find it strange, woman, that an injury that would have killed any other only slowed me step fer a handful of days?” he pushed, not quite willing to believe she’d take his rapid improvement with such nonchalance. The look of relief on her face might even have given him some reassurance if there wasn’t so much more she didn’t know.

“Strange? Well, let’s see, where shall I begin? Over the last two weeks, I was attacked and nearly killed by some nefarious stranger who threatened me over a sunken wreck that appears to be of only archaeological value,” Elizabeth intoned, holding up a finger to begin her count of such incidents. “I’ve had a fearsome yet gallant biker lord appear to rescue me, summoned by some mysterious woman who was precognizant as to the danger I faced. Oh wait! And I was led to a pristine relic that shouldn’t exist by a bunch of ghost crabs that were, by all accounts, invisible to anyone but me. So the fact that you heal more quickly than most normal people...I’m afraid that hardly registers.”

She got to her feet and stood before him again, a frown creasing her pretty face. “What I’m really finding difficult to believe is that you tortured me for days over something that in the end is just good news all ‘round.”

“Ain’t just about me gettin’ better so quick’,” he insisted, determined to pull back the curtain on as much as he could while his nerve held. “There be more to the tale than ye know...”

Hector wanted to press on, to come clean on the facts insofar as he could, but Elizabeth had taken to staring out the porthole behind him and was standing stock still. “Shh!” she whispered with her finger to her lips. “Did you hear that?”

He stared back at her as he listened intently. There it was, the sound of something scraping up against the hull of his craft. Maybe just a bit of debris? The sound came again. There was no doubting it – from the thump above, he knew a line had been thrown from the port side. Someone had brains enough to use the Corazón to hide behind on approach to the island, and that same someone was now attempting to board. More trouble and timed to coincide with his infirmity on top of it. It didn’t bode well.

Secrets and quarrelling would have to wait. Wordlessly he got to his feet and retrieved his pistol from the bureau drawer, loading it and passing it over to Elizabeth. From the coldness in her eyes and the angry set of her lips, he had no cause to wonder if she was prepared to use it.

Reaching towards the back of his closet shelf, Hector pulled down his scabbard and quietly drew his cutlass, the blade worn but no less sharp for that. From the look on her face, he could tell that his choice of weapon puzzled Elizabeth – she likely recognized it for the antique it was – but he had neither the time nor the inclination to explain that he was far more adept with steel than with shot. Combining his sword with the firepower in her hand, they were ready as they could be for whatever the coming fight would bring.

As he reached the door to the hall and quietly turned the knob, it occurred to him briefly that he wasn’t exactly dressed to impress, what with only a t-shirt and his small clothes providing any cover at all. No point in worrying over fashion, though –killing didn’t exactly require fine garments.

It would have been a cagier strategy to send Elizabeth in another direction and present a dual front to the enemy, but he’d not yet seen her ability in present-day battle and was unwilling to trust her safety on the premise that it would come back to her when she needed it. He stepped out into the passageway and motioned for her to follow as he slipped as stealthily as his aching leg would allow through each room below deck.

Hector stopped near the stairs and listened again, waiting for the scrape of footsteps above his head. He couldn’t hear anything beyond the usual creak of his ship on the waves and when he turned and raised a questioning eyebrow at Elizabeth, she shrugged and shook her head.

Climbing the few steps to the deck was more of a problem than he would ever have admitted; his weapon hand and his wounded leg were both on the right side. Hector ground his teeth against the flare of pain and forged ahead, determined not to show weakness to either Elizabeth or his unknown foe.

The sun was high in the sky as he emerged from the cabin, the warm rays shining down into his face and for a moment, he was left squinting up into the light. He held up his hand to stay Elizabeth in her ascent and she nodded quickly to show her agreement, waiting in the shady doorway with her weapon at the ready. Stubborn she might prove at times, but he was glad she had sense enough to know when to obey an order.

He could see no one on the deck at all and he crept to the gunwale, glancing down over the side towards where they’d heard the bumps against the hull. Hector almost missed the gig, small and hidden in the shadows as it was. Beat up and ragged-looking, it contained nothing more than a few jugs of water, some hemp line and a pair of cracked oars.

Before he could cut the line and cast off the poor excuse for a boat, he heard the resounding thump of boots dropping to the deck behind him and felt the cool barrel of a gun against the back of his neck. Blinded by the sunlight as he’d been, Hector knew he must have missed the presence of an assailant hidden amongst the rigging and sails. A mistake no experienced pirate should have made, yet he’d gone and given over the advantage without so much as a second thought. He straightened and held his arms away from his side but did not relinquish his hold on his weapon. There might be opportunity yet to turn the tables and he’d not want to miss the chance.

“Honestly, Hector...I’m not sure eternity is long enough for me to forget the sight of you prancing about in your skivvies. Good lord, man, have you no decency at all? Might just have to gouge my eyes out to make sure I need never repeat the experience.”

Hector gut tightened in barely concealable fury at the sound of the all too familiar voice. A snarl tugged at his lip and his fist clenched the pommel of his sword more firmly. “Not enough water to keep ye occupied on yer own side of the country? Ye know ye be almost as welcome here as the French pox in a whorehouse.”

“Is that any way to greet an old friend and comrade in arms? Tsk tsk. Perhaps your testy attitude and lack of proper attire mean that I interrupted some kind of intimate activity. Buggering the cabin boy, maybe? Or do you still keep livestock aboard for that very purpose?”

“Actually,” came Elizabeth’s cool, calm reply at the very same moment that she cocked the hammer of her gun, “I asked him not to wear anything that could stain when we came out on deck. I thought I might save myself the effort of having to scrub your bloody brains out of his good clothes.”

The same moment Jack Sparrow’s pistol clattered to the deck, Hector turned and with a flourish, tucked the blade beneath the man’s still slack jaw. The ridiculous dreadlocks were gone, but long, dark hair still hung loose over Jack’s thin shoulders. Black sunglasses had replaced the kohl, but Jack’s eyes were so wide with surprise that Hector could see the whites even through the tinted lenses. Jack’s dandy-type moustache quivered and his gold teeth caught the sun as he began to stammer.

“Now, no need for threats, luv. Just came to do a piece of friendly business, is all. Hector, tell her how it is.”

Hector grinned. He never did tire of seeing Jack Sparrow on the pointy end of a sword. “Seems like she’s already got a good sense of who she’s dealin’ with, Jack. Bright girl, wouldn’t ye say?”

Jack dared a glance over his shoulder at Elizabeth and his eyes bulged out even further. “Bloody hell! Lizzie! What’s she doing here?”

Elizabeth looked at him askance, even as her gun hand began to drop. “Pardon me? Do I know you?”

“Not so well as I’m sure you hoped, darling,” Jack crooned as he flashed her a charming smile, one that faltered somewhat when Hector dug the tip of his sword just a bit deeper into the other man’s throat.

“State yer business, Sparrow, and then be gone!” growled Hector, not pleased at all with the burgeoning curiosity on Elizabeth’s face. Enthralled her already, Sparrow had...just as he had so long ago when she took flights of fancy based on romantic lies about the silly twit. He’d slit the beggar’s throat now if he didn’t know it would heal every bit as fast as the bullet wound in his own leg. Might feel good to do so regardless but in the end, he’d do nothing more than horrify the girl.

At Hector’s words, Jack finally tore his eyes from Elizabeth and straightened, sniffing indignantly while his hands remained up around his ears. “You owe me a ship, Barbossa, and I intend to collect.”

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Jack is baaaaaaaaack...ahoy, conflict ahead! Mwahahahahaha!