Should have had rum

The pirates were silent as the dead because, for the most part, they were. One clumsy marine carrying Miss Swan had made the error of not looking for Mr. Turner, and a keening cry of despair let James know that Elizabeth, though her delirious laughter, had seen the grim face of the dead Mr. Turner. Like the rest of the crew his face was screwed into a terrible death mask, a grimace with flexed hands clawing his eyes, blue covered in frothy pink foam. James saw it too, but his thoughts were a wish that Elizabeth could have been spared that sight, and he said as much aloud.

“Why?” Gillette asked as he supported more of his weight on the way across the Pearl’s deck.

“I love her,” he spoke candidly in his weakened state, “so much that I want more for her happiness than anything else in the world, even if it means that my own is not to be realized, I have loved her more every time her true self has been revealed to me.” He spoke so softly Gillette had to struggle to hear over the gurgling last breaths of one pirate who was taking longer to die than the others. Cotton ran to Jack Sparrow and with worried looks and hushed voices Cotton and his parrot stayed aboard the Pearl as Jack was escorted to the HMS Skirmish.

James began to sweat profusely by the time they laid him down in his cabin on the floor, Elizabeth was curled into a ball on the fainting couch, and her laughing turned to sobs and great gulps of air. James reached a hand up and she clutched it with the strength of someone trying to cling to life. Sparrow sat looking both very concerned and somewhat sorrowful. Gillette sent for the three French captives from the brig and for a case of wine; hand picking the marines he knew and trusted he sent the rest from the room.

The captives huddled in a cluster, Gillette uncorked a bottle of wine and let the contents splash out on the floor, the tiny frog hitting in the last glug. Elizabeth’s cries were the occasional whimper now, and James noticed that instead of the euphoric quasi hallucinations he had been having he just felt like he was on fire and tingling. Gillette continued to question them, at first softly, then screaming in French. James tore at his coat, sloughed it off and turned to see Elizabeth tearing at the front of her dress with both hands, red in the face. He struggled to his knees as Gillette smashed a bottle over one captives head and slit his throat with the broken bottle, he sat on the velvet fainting couch and more tenderly than the watching Jack Sparrow might have thought him capable of unlaced Elizabeth’s outer dress leaving her shrugging it off until she was down to her slip.

Ever the gentleman though , when in his right mind, he gently restrained her from taking that off as well. “James I feel like I am on fire!” she moaned. Sweat poured from her brow hitting her collarbone, sliding down, down, down normally James would have felt guilty for how intensely this held his interest. From far across the room Jack said something cryptically about it not mattering if Elizabeth were undressed in front of him or not.

Suddenly James was freezing, shaking so violently that he shook Elizabeth too as he was holding her wrists to prevent complete undress on her part. Gillette was still screaming- he dismembered another of the captives, James held Elizabeth’s head to his chest to prevent her from watching, his damp coffee colored hair was simply frigid, and Elizabeth began to shake too. “Oh my, so they aren’t all eunuchs, well he is now I suppose,” Jack’s voice seemed to come from far away.

Gillette seemed satisfied by the man’s screamed answers but his rage was not, he plunged his sword into the third without a word and turned to the huddling pair on the fainting couch. He glanced at the marines, “leave and guard the door, do not let anyone in!” He waited for them to leave and sank on the couch with the shivering pair. He placed his coat over James, who promptly wrapped Elizabeth with it.