A/N: Thankyou to everyone who read and reviewed chapter one, and for all the follows and faves! On with chapter two!

Enjoy! x

Blood of a Pirate

Chapter Two

"Will ye come?" Jack asked, his hand on the door handle. His voice didn't betray his emotions, didn't let her know whether he actually wanted her there or not.

Elizabeth stared at him, thinking how strange it was that he was actually here, just talking to her… asking her to join him on one of the most important voyages of his life. She somehow doubted it was for the sake of curiosity, but then why? One hundred different reasons swirled through her mind as Jack waited patiently for her answer. He shouldn't even want to look at her, let alone be on the same ship, or in the same room, nor have his lips pressed harshly against hers… why had he kissed her like that? Her lips tingled at the memory, but now he seemed so far away from her. His eyes were distant, his face guarded. Something had been broken between them, it occurred to her suddenly. With a not insignificant pang of guilt, she realised that she was the one who'd broken it.

"How can we just put it all behind us?" Elizabeth whispered sadly, her eyes brimming with unshed tears. "The terrible things I've done to you, the things we've done to each other… how do we get past that?"

Jack watched her quietly, watched as she wrapped her arms around herself and stared at the floor. She really was beautiful, with her golden sun-streaked locks of hair framing her face and her eyes… those eyes which had haunted his every hour in that interminable time before she came to him in Tortuga. Those eyes that he dreamed of in the Locker, until he would wake up shaking, trying to block out the torturous melody of her voice reverberating in his head, telling him she wasn't sorry for what she had done. He would have followed those eyes into a pit of fire.

"Maybe we don't," Jack murmured faintly. Elizabeth looked at him in dismay, seeing his hand tighten around the handle of the door and feeling inexplicably panicked by the thought that he might be about to walk out of her life for good. He looked tired; she could see wrinkles at the corners of his eyes that hadn't been there the last time she saw him. Perhaps he was at last giving up on her.

"Jack," Elizabeth whispered anxiously, subconsciously wanting to reach out to him and stop him from leaving, from ever leaving her again, but the gesture would have seemed so awkward, so wrong…

"Maybe we shouldn't," he corrected himself, sensing her distress. "After all," he smiled, a sad smile that did not suit him. "What else do we have?"

Elizabeth swallowed slowly, considering her next words carefully. He was right really, what was there between them that was not in some way tainted by her betrayal, or his lies? Had they ever really spoken the truth to each other, whatever that happened to be?

"You still have your revenge to take," Elizabeth answered softly. She looked at him, her face brave; her eyes frightened. She had already told him that he should kill her, she did not need to say it again, nor did she wish to. She was not sure whether he would truly go through with it; she would have thought that he would not, but he had killed Barbossa twice now, and for a much less severe transgression… now she was not so sure what he would or would not do.

"It's not the opportune moment," Jack said darkly, opening the door. Elizabeth released a shaky breath as he stepped out into the corridor and closed the door behind him.

"Are ye just goin' to sit there all day starin' at me?" Barbossa demanded of Ragetti, annoyed.

"Them was Cap'n Sparrow's orders," Ragetti answered politely. Barbossa rolled his eyes, cursing Jack Sparrow to the lowest circle of hell. "'E said I was to wait here with ye until his business is finished in Sh- in where we are."

Barbossa raised an eyebrow, looking at Ragetti. He looked deeply annoyed with himself for perhaps saying too much. So they were in Shipwreck Cove, were they? Barbossa grinned. His letter had obviously made it, after all.

Now all he needed to do was wait for Sparrow to do something incredibly… stupid.

"I hear yer venturin' to the Fountain of Youth, Jackie," Teague grinned at Jack. "An' I also hear yer takin' Barbossa along with ye."

Jack shot a disdainful look at Gibbs, who smiled sheepishly and shrugged. He was deeply distrustful of Captain Teague and if he breathed a word of Barbossa's presence aboard the Black Pearl to Elizabeth, who was currently under the impression that he was dead… that was a conversation Jack would rather not face. Not yet, anyway. "Everything you said to me, every word was a lie…"

"If ye wouldn't mind keepin' that information to yerself I'd be grateful," Jack smiled falsely at Teague. There was a chance that Elizabeth would refuse to go with him if she caught wind of Barbossa's actual state of being. She hadn't exactly given him an answer yet, but Jack felt decidedly more hopeful of her agreeing to go if she still believed that he'd killed Barbossa again. Although he felt somewhat guilty for lying to her, fear could be an excellent motivator. As things stood, she believed he wanted revenge on her. "What else do we have?" "You still have your revenge to take."

"Will Elizabeth be joinin' ye, then?" Teague asked casually, catching Jack off guard and shaking him from his thoughts.

Jack regarded him with narrowed, suspicious eyes. "I've asked her, an' she's thinkin' about it," he answered slowly.

"That's interestin'," Teague said, smirking. Jack shot him an uneasy look, getting the distinct impression that Teague knew more than he should about the whole situation.

Jack was about to blow out the last remaining candles on his desk when there was a knock at the door. Confused, he went to open it. Expecting Gibbs, he was surprised to find a sheepish Elizabeth waiting out in the corridor. She had wound her way through the maze of Shipwreck Cove to the room he hadn't occupied since he was seventeen, gotten lost twice along the way, and now, as she gazed into Jack's piercing eyes, wished she had not bothered. He didn't offer so much as a greeting, but remained stoically silent as he waited for her to speak.

"I just came to tell you I'll join you on your journey," Elizabeth said boldly, unnerved by his silence. Jack raised one eyebrow questioningly. She hurried on, "I mean, it occurred to me that…"

When she trailed off for no apparent reason, Jack inclined his head, knitting his eyebrows. "Well I just thought that maybe…"

Her words faded into the air once more. She didn't know how to phrase what she wanted to say, didn't know whether she actually wanted to say it at all. Jack's eyes sparkled with dim amusement at her flustered attempts to explain herself.

"Ye seem to be havin' some trouble articulatin' these thoughts and occurrences, love," Jack observed dryly, a small smirk playing about his lips. He pushed the door open wider and moved to let her past. Elizabeth hesitated before stepping into the room. As she did, she looked around curiously. A large bookcase stood to the left of Jack's desk; intrigued, she went to inspect it. She was astonished to find volumes of Shakespeare, their cracked spines telling her that Jack Sparrow, of all people, had indeed read them. There were other books on the shelf that she did not recognise.

"I wouldn't have said you were a Shakespeare man, Jack," Elizabeth observed, turning to face him with an amused expression on her face.

"Appearances can be deceivin'," he grinned. "I wouldn't have said ye were Pirate King material."

She smirked, for once being able to recognise one of his lies the moment it left his lips. "Now why are ye here?" Jack asked, folding his arms. Elizabeth's smile faded and she looked at the floor.

"I thought that maybe if I went to sea…" Elizabeth mumbled, suddenly shy. Her hands fidgeted as she avoided making eye contact with him, "…maybe I could see Will."

There was a long, deeply uncomfortable pause. She did not want to see the expression on his face. Indeed, her words had surprised him to say the least. He regarded her curiously, wondering why she seemed to hang her head in such shame for wanting to see her husband.

"Perhaps I should just kill ye and be done with it," Jack mused.

Elizabeth's brow furrowed in confusion as she looked up at him. "I –"

But she was cut off by the sudden pressure of his lips on hers. They were there for only a moment before he moved his mouth to her neck, doing sinfully wicked things to her flesh with his tongue and teeth. His hands slid up underneath her shirt to hold her waist. Through the hazy mist of her mind, she realised that he was speaking to her between kisses.

"…if you prick us, do we not bleed?" Elizabeth moaned gently as he nipped at her skin. Her hands clung to his shoulders as if for dear life. "If you tickle us, do we not laugh?" His hands gripped her waist tightly, branding her skin with his touch. Her fingers found their way into his hair, grabbing, pulling. "If you poison us, do we not die?" Elizabeth's heart fluttered uncomfortably, his words beginning to cut through the fog in her mind with their harshness, completely at odds with the soft feel of his lips on her neck.

"And if you wrong us…" Jack murmured, his lips travelling from the bruised flesh of her neck to her earlobe. He caught it between his teeth and she whimpered. "…shall we not revenge?"

Elizabeth shivered, feeling conflicted. His words frightened her yet amazed her; that he had Shakespeare committed to memory made her knees so weak that if he had not been holding her so strongly she was quite sure she would have fallen to the floor. But at the same time, every second she remained in his arms was a second he could use to harm her. And yet, he wasn't. But, she realised, her eyes flying open, every second she was in his arms also had the potential to harm Will. Suddenly she was furious with him, the way he held her so arrogantly, as if she belonged to him… she ignored the heady rush it gave her and forced her head away from his so he would look her fully in the eye. She pushed his hands out from under her shirt, where his thumb had been tracing patterns on the smooth plane of her stomach. His face was surprisingly blank.

"So that's what it is between us, then? Kiss or kill?" Elizabeth asked angrily.

"Sometimes it's both," Jack retorted quickly, his jaw clenched. The way her face drained of all colour made his heart ache with guilt. Her eyes were not angry anymore but tremendously sad, a look he had seen on her face only a handful of times before. He should know better than to throw that in her face. She stared at him in disbelief a few moments longer before trying to push past him, but his strong grip on her arms stopped her from going anywhere.

"I don't think so, love," Jack said gruffly, pulling her back with some force.

"Well kill me then!" Elizabeth cried furiously, her eyes ablaze. "Or don't, just make up your mind! I can't keep playing this game with you, Jack."

"Tempt not a desperate man," he warned, his eyes flashing.

"I hardly think you desperate," Elizabeth said scornfully, growing tired of his insistence on hiding behind someone else's words which were older than they were. "And I am not afraid of you."

He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment. "But perhaps I am afraid of you."

A/N: Probably not my best work, but at least there was a lot of Sparrabethyness! That's totally a word. Please review!

WD,
xo.