Sleeping With Ghosts

Disclaimer: The characters are the legal property of Disney and other rich people. I make no claim to the characters used, and do not profit from this in any way.

Something didn't feel right, and Elizabeth had been fighting sleep for what seemed like hours. She wasn't sure if she was fighting to sleep, or to stay awake.
A storm was blowing outside the window, battering the panes with sheets of rain, the wind howling around the house like a ghost in torment, unable to find it's way home with no light to guide it.

Storms of this kind were rare in Port Royal but she had seen many come and blow away in the 25 years she had been living there. Beside her, Will slept like the dead, apparently unaware of any disturbance. Hours a day spent hammering metal over a furnace meant he always slept soundly.

She closed her eyes again, apathetically flinching as the hundredth bolt of lightning lit up the room. The thunder gave an answering yell overhead, rattling the windows, and Will snored and rolled onto his belly.

She sighed, and listened to the noises of the house. There seemed to be no movement from servants, or the children, who had apparently inherited their father's ability to sleep through almost anything. She had been waiting for some time for baby Emily to start squealing. Jack, now at seven years of age, probably thought himself to old to be scared by thunderstorms but Elizabeth knew with the heart of a mother that he was sleeping soundly. If she'd thought he'd be trembling beneath his blankets she would have gone to him. Part of her almost hoped that either her son or daughter would wake so she would have cause to get out of bed.

Another thunderbolt rattled the humid air, whipping rain like nine-tails against the window and the force shook the glass so hard she feared it may fall out. A creak and a sigh carried on the air, like a great ship being thrown against the rocks. She shuddered to think how many shipwrecks there had been this night. News of that would come with the dawn, with wood and metal swept against the dock, skeletons of masts reaching above the water, hazy in the distance, like great arms reaching up for salvation. It made her shiver to think how many sailors were fighting to keep the sails up this night. How many were calling to the sea and sky to show her mercy, crying for lovers and children. She was suddenly glad her own husband had not pursued piracy. Perhaps a somewhat dull life of being a blacksmith's wife wasn't so bad after all. At least she knew he was safe. At least he would return to her bed each night, with only rough hands as a tale of his toils.

Sometimes those rough hands were never enough, though years ago she had asked for them not to stop touching her.

Holding her hand up to the dying lamplight, she traced the faint white line of the scar down her left palm. A line down the hand that bound three people together, tying them with fate that could not be undone.

She smiled, thinking of the pirate who had saved her life, stripped her half naked before her father and then-prospective suitor and half the sailors in the Port, causing her to run along the dock in naught but her clinging wet scanties to beg them not to shoot him. Yes, propriety had certainly gone out of the window the day Captain Jack Sparrow had walked into her life.

She closed her eyes to better remember the swaggering fool of a pirate. It had been so many years since he had sailed out of their lives and into his horizon. She remembered a bedraggled mess of man, coated with far too many trinkets and far too much dirt and topped with the most bloody ludicrous hat she had ever seen. She remembered a face that seemed to hold neither youth or age, cheekbones that should be illegal for a man to possess, and eyes that were as dark and fathomless as the deepest parts of the sea, ringed in some substance that wouldn't have looked unfitting on a brothel whore.

Will's eyes were dark, but there had been something about Jack's eyes that always did more to her, and even now she had to swallow to try to stop the way her stomach lurched at the memory of his gaze, shadowed and flickering in the light of a crude fire on a beach, sight blurred by alcohol and fatigue. To Freedom, they had toasted in that moment.

She blinked her eyes open again and glanced above the scar on her palm to the gold band on her wedding finger. To freedom, indeed...
She knew she had made the right choice all those years ago, but sometimes the right decision if made for the wrong reasons...

No, she had done right.

Or had she just done what seemed like the right thing to do? She hadn't wanted the gentleman who had wanted to woo her; she couldn't have the pirate who had advanced on her with inappropriate words and gestures. So she had chosen the gentleman pirate's son. It had seemed like the right choice then, and it had given her a good life, a good place in society, two beautiful children.
But sometimes her heart dreamed of an open sea and too much rum and a gold-tinted smile leering at her in the dark hours of the night.

She glanced across to Will's sleeping form and ran her fingers through his hair. That flame had never been there, not like she had felt it while slumped against Jack's shoulder on the island. However intimately Will touched her, and he had always been shy, it had never managed to heat her like Jack's hand upon the back of her neck had done that night.

It made her feel a bit sick to be thinking of such things while lying beside her husband in their marriage bed. But it wouldn't be the first time she had been kept awake with inappropriate fantasies of Jack Sparrow while Will slept against her back.
Sometimes... sometimes she wished - she imagined - his hands were Jack's, handling her more roughly than Will would ever dream or dare to. Sometimes she would only find completion in their lovemaking long after Will had spent and she would close her eyes and picture the pirate in her mind, she would imagine her hands tangled in the matted mess of dreadlocks rather than in soft chestnut curls, she would imagine the clink and tinkle of beads as the body rocked on top of her, the smell of rum and dirt and sweat, the taste of seawater upon the skin, and only then would she reach the end, and sometimes she would have to bite into her lip so stop herself calling out the wrong name.

If only ... if only she *had* drunk quite enough rum to allow that sort of talk... She wished there had been more of that sort of talk, she wished she had pulled the bottle out of Jack's hand and jumped on him. But she had been trying to be a lady, and he had been trying to be a gentleman.

She could remember the night so vividly, even now. The sand in her petticoat, the heat from the fire, the fluttering deep in her gut as she looked at Jack sprawled beside her in just an ill-fitting shirt and breeches, showing far more tanned skin than what should be shown to a lady. She gave a small laugh to think how she had pictured him coated with bronze in the firelight, his eyes darker than coal as he spoke to her of freedom.

She could still smell the lingering rum on the air, if she closed her eyes and concentrated hard enough....

She flinched with a start as the window shook violently in its frame, flinging open in the wind and the lamp blew out. It took all of her adult will to stop her diving beneath the covers; instead she just closed her eyes tightly, hoping that Will would now finally wake.

She lay panting in the frozen seconds, praying for some sign of movement from her husband but none came. She didn't know why she was trembling so hard, or why her heart was hammering so terribly, or why such a cold sweat crept across her skin.

And then she was drawn back to her earlier thoughts by a hint of stale rum tickling her nose... No... Ridiculous... perhaps just a hint on the air... No, it was definitely there. Rum, and seawater and sweat... A smell that was undeniably Jack.

Her heart did a turnaround in her chest as her hands loosened their grip on the blankets and she forced herself to open her eyes. It was just a fleeting glimpse in the shadows, but there was Jack, dripping wet as the afternoon he'd pulled her from the water.

"Will..." she whispered.

Then lips she could scarcely feel pressed against hers, silencing her with a small squeak.

"I've seen to him." A light cold hand caressed her side. "Have you not had quite enough rum, Mrs Turner? Or do you still ache for a night that never ended?"

She didn't dare to open her eyes as she felt a body settled above hers, weight barely pressing against her yet rendering her immobile.

"Time is short, Elizabeth."

She gave a small whimper that was indiscernible as fear or desire as those faint fingers slipped beneath her nightdress lifting it around her waist, slipping beneath it with a touch that made her shiver, reaching up to cup her breast.

"Jack," she whispered. "We can't... not here..."

"It's the only way, love," she felt a voice near her ear and the faintest cold rush of breath.

"Oh god, I am dreaming," she whispered, clenching her eyes shut as the presence slid down her body to curl a tongue around her aroused nipple, as hands spread her legs to touch places only Will had been.

The fingers that pressed into her were definitely not a dream and she felt herself blush as she spread her thighs to accommodate them. Perhaps it was a dream, it didn't feel whole enough to be a dream, but if it was then she didn't ever want to wake up.

Oh, that was the touch she had been craving for so many years! That was the angry possessing kiss she had longed to feel her mouth plundered by. She wanted to touch him, but the same something that stopped her opening her eyes kept her hands rooted at her side, resuming their death grip on the covers.

"Elizabeth," his voice made her shudder as he moved down her body. "You should have chosen freedom."

"I chose well," she whispered feebly as tears prickled behind her eyelids.

"It's too late now..."

She gasped as she felt the tickle of a beard touch her inner thigh and a tongue probed into her body. Will would never do *that*. Somewhere in the darkest parts of her imagination she had always known that Jack would.

Barely a touch and she was hurtling towards her release, trying to keeps her gasping breaths shallow in case it disturbed Will. It was unthinkable... Jack Sparrow sneaking into her room and into her bed, doing the most obscene things with his mouth right beside her sleeping husband. It almost made her laugh.

"This is a dream," she whispered breathlessly as Jack withdrew his administrations and moved to lie atop her again.

"You just keep telling yourself that, darling."

She tensed as she felt him begin to enter her body... she wasn't ready... it should have hurt... Perhaps it was a dream. Perhaps that was why she couldn't move; she couldn't lift her legs to wrap them around the body that pounded so fervently into hers. It should have made the bed shake; he was fucking her so hard. Oh, yes, he was *fucking* her. This was no tender drawn out copulation that she would have got from Will, though she knew she would find her peak within the next few seconds. A sense of nervous urgency was in the air.

Arms slipped beneath her body, clasping her tightly, a mouth nuzzling her neck. Every touch made her skin crawl with icy goosebumps even as it heated a fire deep within her body. She could feel no heat from Jack's body, though it was doubtless that his passion was raging as high as hers. He didn't seem to be worried about making a noise as he groaned, forcing another kiss into her willing mouth.

It couldn't possibly be real... no sound left her lips as she reached climax, she wanted to cry out but she couldn't, like trying to scream in a dream. No shudders racked her body, though she felt an inferno sweep through her soul, pooling in fire between her legs. And no wetness but that from her own body marred her thighs as Jack spent inside her, biting into her shoulder with a growl. It was like she was frozen somewhere between sleep and consciousness, somewhere between reality and fantasy, locked in a bitter battle between her body and her mind. But her body was certainly winning, feeling release that it had never so much as hoped for, leaving her crashing back against the mattress, trembling.

She shivered and felt tears leak down her cheeks as she was suddenly able to open her eyes. The holding presence moved from over her and she could have moved again, but found herself unwilling to.

Jack was smiling down at her, though she could hardly make out his form in the darkness. Just his eyes, shining with the reflection of an unseen fire, an unseen breeze wafting his hair. Then he was gone.

Drawing in a shuddering breath, Elizabeth pulled the blanket back over herself, mapping her own body with her hands in the wake of Jack's touch. Her hand stopped on her thigh, scared to travel higher up her leg. She could still feel the tingle of her orgasm though no trace of his.

It was a dream. It had to be a dream... She felt a sob choke in her throat, and licked her lips to find a flavour of rum still there. She was sure she could still hear him, though no longer feel him.

"....devils, we're black sheep, we're really bad eggs...."

Memories. Just memories and fantasies of a night that never ended.

So why didn't that stop her replying, "Drink up me hearties, yo ho."

"Elizabeth?"

She gasped back a cry as she realised Will was awake, and it was in fact morning. Sure proof that it had all been a dream, wasn't it?

"Elizabeth? Are you all right?" Will reached out to touch her cheek, pulling her into his arms. "What's the matter? Were you dreaming?"

Yes.... "Yes, I was dreaming.... about.... about Jack." She still felt overheated and she could hardly bear to meet her husband's eyes but noticed he did not attempt to meet hers either.

"Funny you should say that..." He gave that sweet little half-smile he always gave when bothered.

Pulling out of his arms, Elizabeth slid out of the bed to find herself shaky on her feet. "I'm going to check on the children," she said, forcing a smile as she found her dressing gown. "Make sure they weren't bothered by the storm last night." She turned towards the window to point out it's broken hinge, but found it shut. She must have dreamed that too.

"I'll be with you in a moment," Will said quietly, as if his mind was too elsewhere. She hoped she hadn't given her dream away while she had been sleeping. Even now, she could feel Jack's hands all over her, and it made her blush to feel that she still tingled at the memory.

"Mother!"

She started as the child named for the object of her disturbed dreams collided with her legs.

"Jack." She stooped to kiss him. "Did you sleep well?"

He nodded. "Get dressed! Grandfather says we can go to the dock to see the shipwrecks."

Elizabeth sighed. "Very well. You go with your Grandfather. I'll... I'll come along later."

She wasn't sure where her little boy had got such a bloodthirsty fascination for shipwrecks. She supposed it wasn't any worse than her love of pirates... She now knew how her father had felt when she was a little girl.

"Oh, and Mother," Jack pulled at her hand. "Uncle James is here to see you. He's in the drawing room."

"Oh," Elizabeth tied her dressing gown tightly and glanced into a mirror to check she was decent. He was the last person she needed to see first thing in the morning after such an uneasy night. But he only ever called on urgent business. "Lead on then." She followed her son down the stairs to see that the Commodore was waiting not in the drawing room but at the bottom of the stairs with a rather grave expression etched on his face.

"Mrs Turner," he nodded to hre.

"Good morning James," she greeted him. "Pardon my state of dress, I have only just awoken."

"So I see," he gave a smile that bit back distant hurt. She *had* made the right decision. "Jack, run along, your grandfather is waiting outside. I need to speak to your mother alone."

Without a request to be excused, Jack grinned and trotted outside.
"He wants to see the shipwrecks," Elizabeth said with a shake of the head, glancing down to the floor as Will came down the stairs to stand at her side. She felt awful to think that she couldn't even looked the man she loved in the face after a dirty dream.

"Good morning, Commodore," he said. "May I ask why you are here at this hour?"

James glanced out of the window to the view of the sea. "I have news," he said quietly, "that I felt you should both be informed of immediately."

"James... Commodore, what is it?" Elizabeth stopped herself laying a hand on his arm, he looked so anxious. Not in front of Will.

James cleared his throat and turned to the window. "The storm last night," he said, straightening his back and regaining his composure. "The Black Pearl was wrecked."

"The Pearl?" Will followed the Commodore's gaze out to sea and gripped the window ledge with white hands and Elizabeth dropped to sit at the bottom stair. "Jack..."

"There were no survivors, Mr Turner," James continued in his stern tone. "She was swept against the rocks and crushed like paper. I saw it happen..."

Elizabeth raised a hand to her mouth, wishing that she could feel that she was still dreaming. It couldn't be real, this couldn't be real, not Jack, not Captain Jack Sparrow, not the man the sea would never claim. Not until she had...

Not after last night... but that had just been a dream. It could only have been a dream...