Treasure

Jack stood next to Elizabeth on the beach and watched the Pearl slowly recede into the distance. “That’s the second time I’ve had to watch that man sail away with my ship,” Jack said bitterly. He then added as an afterthought, “That’s also the second time I’ve had to watch that ship sail away with William Turner.”

“What?” Elizabeth asked in confusion.

“The last time they marooned me,” Jack explained, “I watched Barbossa sail away with me ship and Will’s father. Now, I’m watchin’ him sail away with me ship and Will.”

“But surely there’s some way we can escape this island and go after them?” Elizabeth asked hopefully.

“Well, unless ye’ve got a stern and some sails hidden away in that bodice, not likely by the way, we’re stuck here.” Jack turned abruptly and began striding across the beach. Elizabeth heaved a frustrated sigh and ran after him.

“But you’ve escaped from his island before,” she prodded. “Surely we can use the same method you used last time to escape now.”

“Unlikely,” Jack said, pausing and feeling the ground with his feet as though searching for something.

“But you’re Captain Jack Sparrow! You managed to complete several tasks in your lifetime that others have deemed impossible. Are you the pirate I’ve read about or not?”

Jack paused to look at her, and the miserable expression on his face startled her. She asked quietly, “How did you escape last time?”

Jack winced and admitted, “Last time, I was here for a total of three days, okay? Last time, the rum runners were using this island for storage purposes.”

As he spoke, Jack uncovered a wooden trapdoor hidden beneath the sand. Opening it, he peered inside a small man-made cave stocked with barrels, bottles, and smallish parcels.

“From the looks of things,” Jack said, eyeing the thick dust that covered everything, “they’ve been out of business for quite some time. We probably have yer bloody friend Norrington to thank for that.”

“So that’s it then?” Elizabeth said, trying to suppress her tears as Jack leapt down into the storage space and began handing bottles out to her. “That’s the secret of the famous Captain Jack Sparrow? He spent three days lying on a beach and drinking rum.”

Clambering out of the hole, Jack held out his rum bottles and tried to say cheerfully, “Welcome to the Caribbean, luv.”

Elizabeth stormed off without a word as her tears began to overflow. Sitting under the shade of a palm tree, she hugged her knees to her chest and sobbed.

She wasn’t quite sure how long she sat there, staring out bleakly at the water long after she had run out of tears. As the sun was beginning to dip below the horizon, Jack drew up beside her and placed a surprisingly gentle hand on her shoulder.

“Come on,” he said quietly. “I’ve made us a fire, and ye need to eat something.”

Silently, Elizabeth followed Jack to another part of the island where a large fire blazed. It wasn’t until she was seated next to it with a bottle of rum in her hands that she spoke.

“What about Will?”

“Young Mr. Turner will be dead long before we can reach him.” Jack’s voice sounded hollow and dead. He stretched out on the sand and heaved a sigh, staring up at the stars.

“Will’s father,” Elizabeth remarked, searching her mind for something to take her mind off their current predicament, “must have been very different from Will.”

“What makes ye say that?” Jack asked, tipping a bottle of rum up to his lips and downing half of it.

“Well, he was a pirate,” Elizabeth said with some exasperation, for she thought that much should have been obvious. “And you said he was on board the Black Pearl when Barbossa marooned you the first time. I can’t imagine Will letting anyone be marooned, no matter how much he disliked them.”

“Bill didn’t have much say in the matter,” Jack said dryly, tossing his already empty bottle aside. “He did what he could for me, but if he’d said much more, they’d have marooned him, too. He might’ve stayed with me if he hadn’t had a family to think about. He loved his family more than any treasure.”

“Now that sounds like Will,” Elizabeth agreed.

“Yes, it’s remarkable how much they’re alike,” Jack said, his speech beginning to slur as he was well into his second bottle by now. “Same looks…same voice…same passionate approach to life…only the eyes are different. Bill’s were green.”

“Jack,” Elizabeth said suddenly. “Just how well did you know Will’s father?”

“Not was well as I would have liked,” Jack said bitterly. He polished off his second bottle and hurled the empty glass toward the sea before continuing, his speech thick and slurred with the drink. “I was just a boy meself when I first met him, no more’n twenty. He was pretty enough to look at all right, but that’s not what attracted me to him. It was that passionate way of his…his zeal for living. The way he handled everything life threw at him.”

“Will has that, too,” Elizabeth observed.

“Yeah, Will has that, too,” Jack repeated. “I’ve always been against the concept of luv, ye know. The idea of bein’ tied down to one person for the rest of yer life, of havin’ no one else to turn to if that one person should ever betray ye…but when I listened to Bill talk about his wife…the passion in his voice…the unwavering loyalty. Even after all those years of marriage, he still would’ve gone to the ends of the earth for her. When I heard that, I thought to meself, ‘So luv does exist.’ Fool that I was, I let meself fall in luv with him. I was so stupid…I never should have told him how I felt-”

“But surely,” Elizabeth interjected, “surely you could have found someone equally devoted and not tied down? There are plenty of women or men out there who-”

“Ye haven’t had much experience of the world, have ye?” Jack asked quietly. “People like Bill are one in a million…the sort ye only meet once in a lifetime.”

“And yet you’ve met two,” Elizabeth pointed out. “There’s Will, after all.”

“Aye, there’s Will,” Jack said softly. He paused to gulp down more rum, slopping some of it down his front in the process. “Will’s different though. With Bill, I think I was more in luv with the security. Ye know, never havin’ to worry ‘bout yer lover seein’ other people or leavin’ ye all together. At that point in me life I’d never seen such loyalty as that, but oh, did I want it!”

Jack trailed off, his eyes glazed and his body wavering. He was clearly about to pass out into a drunken sleep, but Elizabeth still had a few things she wanted to know.

“How is Will different?” she prompted.

“What?” Jack started. “Oh, Will…He’s different because…that sense of loyalty isn’t the only reason I luv him…”

Elizabeth’s head snapped round to peer at the drunken pirate near her. “Jack,” she laid a hand on his arm. “Does Will know?”

“No, an’ there’s no point in tellin’ him either. Yer all he’ll ever think about.”

“Me?” Elizabeth sounded surprised.

“He luves ye. Why else d’ye think he came speeding to yer rescue?”

Elizabeth stared at the fire, digesting this new bit of information. “I do care for Will,” she said at last. “He’s my dearest friend, and I’m sure it would be quite easy for us to become more than that. However, I could just as easily fall in love with the Commodore, and I’m not sure Will would be happy being married to me anyway.”

She frowned, thinking back to the day that she had been rescued and trying to remember all the details. She thought long and hard of the way Will had leapt to Jack’s defense even when he had thought that Jack was going to betray him.”

“Jack,” she smiled up at him suddenly. “Are you so sure that it’s me that Will cares for?”

“Wha’s that?” Jack was trying (and failing) to guide yet another bottle to his lips. “Damn bottle won’t hold still,” he muttered.

“Nothing,” Elizabeth giggled at the sight. “Just a little idea of mine.”

She decided to wait until morning to tell him. After all, he was so drunk at the moment that he probably wouldn’t remember a single word she said to him.

“Say!” Jack sat up suddenly, slinging rum everywhere. “I just realized that yer not nearly as shocked as ye outta be.”

Elizabeth blushed. “I may be a governor’s daughter, but I have grown up around sailors. I’m certainly not new to the idea that love can exist between two men.”

“Oh,” was all Jack said before turning his attention back to his rum.

He soon began singing loudly and incoherently, but Elizabeth was no longer paying attention. She didn’t even notice when Jack passed out in a drunken heap next to her. She was staring at the barrels of rum, and she was getting an idea…

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A/N: Please, please, please review! I'm seriously beginning to wonder if anybody but four people are reading this...even if you don't like it, just drop me a line and tell me what's wrong!