A/N: This was a strange sort of an idea I had – very, very strange – but I figured it was just strange enough to work. It's the most physically-descriptive thing I've written to date, although it shouldn't be too bad hopefully, & I do hope you like it.

This was intended to be during AWE while Jack's all loony. It'll definitely feel like it in some places.

Enjoy and please remember to review it, even if you hate it.

Ooh, and a million and five thank-you's to the lovely and amazing Florencia7 for beta-ing this for me!! She was so incredibly helpful (especially with the ending) that I can't even tell you; you owe her three bazillion cookies for her advice on making this story a little more coherent & a lot more eloquent. You're great, love!

Disclaimer: Not mine. Obviously.

"Jack, I am bloody tired of this!"

Her strangled shout is furious – utterly and completely furious – as she glares and half-wishes murder on the inflexible, pig-headed Captain giving her a coolly irate look from across his cabin.

This is one of the things that annoys her most about him; no matter how angry she gets, no matter how much she rages and storms and pouts and huffs at him, he has the remarkable capacity to simply throw her that look of his, sometimes coupled with a light observation, and still appear unruffled.

They both know perfectly well that he does it to drive her crazy, and it sure as hell works like a charm every damn time.

A smile begins to form at the corners of his mouth when she, not for the first time, starts shrieking at him, shaking, and he just leans casually against the wall behind him in immediate-response. His penetrating eyes rake down her body, which is in an obdurate combat-position, as he searches his mind for the most annoying, insolent remark he can possibly make.

Finally, after letting the silence spiral around them in the tiny, basically airless cabin for a moment, he finds one; he lets that smile become a smirk as he asks her, with an infuriatingly flippant waywardness, "What are you so bloody tired of, Miss Swann? Care to add some more detail?"

The anger surges in her again, and it takes all the self-control she possesses not to launch herself at him and murder him on the spot. But, somehow, she manages to keep her sanity, and she hisses at him, "That is what we've been trying to discuss for the past half an hour, Jack – I am bloody tired of your incapability to forgive me."

He gives her a noncommittal shrug of his shoulders and holds his head up a little higher, snorting quietly. "Love, pirates don't usually forgive lasses that take attempts at their lives," he tells her after a few seconds. "Or haven't you been paying attention to this beautiful mess of allegiances we're stuck in lately?"

She exhales slowly to appease herself, but it doesn't help much. His nonchalance is killing her, his remorseless commentary on the ways of pirates is eating away at her; everything about him, from the beads in his hair to the smell of his boots is maddening her. She's never been this aggravated before; it's almost frightening.

But, at the same time, she knows she has to find a way to control herself and say the right words to try and make him understand what she's feeling – she won't be at peace until she does. This disastrous apology, then, is more for her sake than it is for his, but something inexplicable inside of her tells her that somehow, she'll make it work.

So, with this in mind, she tries to make the hard exasperation in her eyes soften as she relaxes her stance and says with forced composure, "I have been paying attention, and I do know that pirates don't like to forgive people –"

"That take attempts at their lives," he interjects.

She ignores him and goes on, a bit louder, "But Jack, that does not make it right!"

"Since when have I cared to do what you consider is 'right?'" he instantly wants to know, almost indignant, as though the notion of following rules is too abhorrent for mention.

"It's not fair!" she continues, her volume increasing, throwing her arm out dramatically to make her point.

"Life isn't fair," he reminds her smartly.

"It's not moral," she continues to rant, "it's not honorable, it's not truthful, it's not anything that demonstrates the good in human kind, this inclination of yours for grudges. You can't possibly keep living like this!"

She's finally found her stride in this futile row that she started initiating quite a while back; despite his trivial utterances contradicting her statements, she continues to lecture wildly, letting some constrained steam from months past within her run rampant through her words. He finds this rather amusing, as he continues to inspect her small-scale tantrum, and he must fight to keep another snort from escaping his throat.

Oh, this woman…

She continues to add points to her rant of how his not forgiving her is depraved and corrupt, but he tunes her out. She's babbling, and they're both well aware of it; she's prone to babbling in situations that are too stressful for her delicate little brain to handle. But, seeing as she's so damn passionate about this speech of hers, he decides to throw her a bit of a bone – why not have a touch of fun with her before she stomps away?

Striding imperturbably forward, he puts his index finger to her protesting lips. They're warm to his somewhat icy skin, he notes, as he watches her quiet down immediately, her eyes clearly surprised. But, thankfully, the surprise he sees does not inspire any words to come out of those warm lips (which is a nice change after an hour of arguing). When he's satisfied with her silence, he removes his finger, and he smirks once more.

"That's better," he says, for the sake of being nasty. "Now…as for this 'forgiveness' aspect you're getting so worked-up about…"

She opens her mouth to say something yet again, but he is quick to put his finger back to her lips. "Ah, ah, ah," he says disapprovingly, his dark eyes flashing with mischief. "Not yet, Miss Swann. You might get a chance to disagree with me in a moment. But first, I feel I must explain to you why exactly I don't want to forgive you."

He puts delicate stress on the word 'you' as his sentence tapers off, and the implications in this choice of articulation are endless. To revel further in his own mysteriousness, it seems, he pauses to make sure she's not going to say anything – although her eyes are spelling out some very plain outrage, he doesn't think she will, so he takes his finger away from her again.

Thankfully, she keeps her mouth shut, and he is free to pace the room, his steps of varying sizes, as he plays briefly with everything he can get his hands on. He is prone to doing this in situations that are too stressful for his delicate little brain to handle.

Pulling on a couple of bizarre expressions on his tanned, well-crafted face, he begins by spinning neatly around to face her instead of the chimes he had been tampering with. "Forgiveness…clemency…mercy…whatever you want to call it, pirates aren't very good at it, darling," he explains, "partly because most of us don't know many people who...deserve it, who are worthy of it."

He nods his head impishly to her; she is dumbfounded by his outrageous bluntness, but she lets him.

"Forgiveness is a very funny thing, as you probably can see by now," he carries on, now moving to the desk, which he drums his long fingers on. "It's supposed to be a way to let someone know you don't want to bash their heads in anymore, but in my experience, it's always been something of a ploy – a ploy to get them feeling warm and safe before you go and bash their heads in when they're least expecting it."

He grimaces, and even shudders slightly, as he picks up a tiny trinket-box from his desk and temporarily amuses himself by playing with the lid.

"But," he says, scrutinizing in the inside of the box, "forgiveness seems to make everybody feel better even though they know it's usually a lie, which is why it's been drilled into heads of dolly belles such as yourself that it is a 'moral' thing to do."

He clears his throat as he looks over the box at her. "Let me enlighten you, dearie," he says, closing the box now with a loud 'snap.' "It's not."

"And why is it not?" she can't resist asking.

He throws her a look of displeasure, seeing as she has just violated his request for her to keep quiet and he's just answered this question for her, but he waves it aside as he says, "That's a good inquiry to make, I'm sure, if I've already addressed it. Suppose I'll have to rephrase it then…"

He saunters to the other side of the desk so that he is behind the wood that she can see, contemplating. Then he leans forward in her direction, his hands pressing down on the surface of the wood and asks himself as much as her, "Why is forgiveness not moral, you want to know? Why am I making you shut up for this modest life lesson? Why is crazy old Jack trying to convince you that everything you've ever known is completely wrong?" he asks, and there is something in his eyes that makes her doubt she is the only addressee to this question.

However, she doesn't have anything to say out-loud to this, so she continues to stand there, waiting for him to wait a few moments for her. When he's satisfied, he releases his hands from the desk and lets them flourish in a dramatic gesture outwards.

"Because it is, you ought to know, and again, it is," he finally tells her. "I guess the answer that you are looking to hear, instead of the right one I just gave, is that I don't want to forgive you, Miss Elizabeth Swann, because forgiveness is a trifling matter and worth chicken-scratch in a pirate's book, and…this is a more serious matter than what forgiveness calls for, savvy?"

"So what must someone – a pirate – do to atone for matters more serious than what forgiveness calls for?" she is swift to inquire, her eyes filled with an unusual mixture of curiosity and challenge.

He pulls on another face, and this time picks up a spare piece of paper, which he rolls up to make a fan for himself. Waving air into his face and making his dreadlocks sway accordingly, he considers her words seriously for the first time in a while, and paces a little bit more, to give himself more thinking time.

"Well…" he muses aloud, his eyes on everything in the room but her. "It would definitely take more than the words 'I'm sorry,' surely. Killing me is not going to come undone by something along those lines, is it, pet?"

"You're avoiding the question," she informs him coolly. "What exactly would need to be done?"

Now, he finally lets his gaze fall on her, and he can see the victory already brewing behind the masks of mahogany in her irises. This annoys him more than he can say – he does not want her to win. He does not want her to get an upper hand over himself. No, no, no, this cannot take place. Not even for a moment.

Placing his fan back on the mound of baubles on the desk, he starts to circle slowly around her, a plan forming in his mind. He positions himself directly in front of her, and her head lifts a little to be able to look into his face, with all its equivocation and carefully-concealed sentiments.

"I'd have to think about it," he says to her, his rum-scented breath tickling her nose and making it wrinkle. "After all, love, the things you've done to me are not easy to, as you say it, atone for."

Now it's her turn to be the annoyed one, as she takes a step back from him. "What do you mean by, 'the things I've done to you?'" she demands. "Except for the single deed on the Pearl, I have done absolutely nothing to you that requires atoning for."

A small flame begins to blaze in his misty, orb-like eyes as he takes this statement in – takes it in, absorbs it, ponders it, and then relinquishes it. She's startled to take notice of this change in him, but she holds her ground and her standpoint as she stares at him.

"Is that what you think?" he asks her, his tone astonishingly quiet.

"Well, yes," she blusters would-be-convincingly, faltering now for the first time.

"You're wrong," he whispers in her ear, leaning in closer to her.

She takes another step back, and tests him by asking, "Why am I wrong?"

"You want to know why you're wrong?" he repeats, taking another step forward as she takes two backwards.

"That might help," she says as he follows her forward and she backs up by the end of his bed. "What did I do?" Her eyebrows are raised in challenge, but there's a bit of uncertainty in the eyes that had been so confident a few moments back. This is good, he thinks; this is what he wants to see.

But, that's not the point anymore – now, he is aware that they are in the middle of a deadly match of words, and he currently has the upper hand, as he'd desired. Now he must take advantage of it.

So he does, by coming forward once more so that he is nearly nose-to-nose with her, and she can't protest because she's as far back as she can go without falling on her back on his bed. Surprisingly vulnerable in the eyes, though still quite like himself in manner, he strokes the line of her jaw with his rough fingers with gentleness she didn't expected to feel. She is startled to find that she likes it.

She closes her eyes to avoid his gaze and allows him to feel her face, and he takes this opportunity to say, "Well, it might help you to understand it if I state for you your whole list of felonies, shall we?"

She says nothing, which he takes as agreement. He is elated by this development, but he doesn't say it. Instead, he decides to express, "Your first crime, Elizabeth, would be to invade my personal space – you have no sense of boundary whatsoever when it comes to my ship, and it's quite…troublesome."

"Aren't you invading my personal space right now?" she asks, a little dazed, as her eyelids crack open the tiniest bit.

"Fair is fair, love," he defends himself lightly. "That's the point, savvy?"

"All right, invading personal space, then," she says, deciding to play along to this highly bizarre game. "My first offense – what's my next?"

He smirks. "I thought you'd never ask."

With a tiny, but sharp, blow into her ear that makes her spine tingle slightly, he takes the smallest of steps back, away from her. Her eyes open, and his face fills the span of her vision – she can't, for the life of her, figure out why it doesn't bother her. It should, and on many occasions it does, but not on this one. Her only question is 'why,' but it remains inarticulate, hidden in the back of her mind, as he delights in her silence.

"Your next offense," he begins, "would be how you…ingrain yourself into me."

"Ingrain?" She raises her eyebrow, skeptical. "That's interesting word choice, Jack."

"Of course it is," he says, his expression suddenly restricting, his lips curling in that strange way of his, like they do when he's nervous or thinking fast. "But it's true, love. You do…ingrain yourself into me."

With a quiet grunt, he now pushes her back so that she lands on his bed, with him on top of her. A nearly inaudible noise escapes her throat, and her eyes widen with evident alarm as she realizes what he is doing.

However, this doesn't bother him; he's more than happy to relax his weight onto her, pressing into her with no restraint to speak of, with his hands around her waist. The bed-frame creaks, but he ignores it as he whispers in her ear, "It works something like this."

"Does it." There's something about the approach she takes to this phrase and the small flash in those eyes of hers that catches his attention – is it anxiety that he sees?

"Yes," he answers her nonetheless, storing this tidbit of information in his memory for later use. "It does."

She exhales guardedly, slowly, but shifts so that she is next to him, with her head resting in the space between his cheek and his shoulder, beside his neck. Her leg saddles around his, the warm weight of it comforting, and then she asks him, "What's my next crime then, Jack?"

"Well, I'll tell you," he says, his hand now moving to cup her face and tilt her chin up an inch or two. "It's something we dirty, woeful pirates are quite good at – we get in trouble for it frequently, especially with people like dear, bloody Beckett."

"What's that?" Her face millimeters from his and her eyes seem to be boring into his, but he doesn't mind – in fact, he rather likes that she's cooperating with him, for once.

"Pillaging," is the single word he breathes to her before suddenly acquainting her rosy lips with his own with a vigor he's been saving up, just for her.

"Pillaging?" she questions into his mouth as her tongue explores his top lip.

"Aye, pillaging," he answers seriously, his teeth finding her lower lip and expressing a deep surge of a kiss with his exploratory tongue. "Or plundering."

"Ravaging," she suggests between kisses, feeling her being tingle and her enthusiasm for this wrong, sinful deed course.

"Ransacking," he proposes.

She smiles into his lips and kisses him once more, the taste of want, lust, perverse desire, and rum flavoring her mouth lusciously. "Looting."

"Depredating too." He pauses briefly just as she leans in for another kiss, but shies back.

"Yes," he says, almost musingly as he looks back at her. "Those things. You happen to be very good at them. Very good."

"Are you complimenting me?"

His expression falls into one of consideration. "Maybe," he says after a moment. "But we can think about that later – for now, you have more crimes against you that you ought to be educated about."

"Goodness, what all could I have possibly done to you?" she wants to know, partially joking, but partially genuine in her inquiry.

He chuckles darkly. "You'd be surprised, pet. But I do have another crime of yours I'd like to address at this very appropriate moment in time…"

With this, his hands purposefully fall to the bottom of her shirt once more, brushing them with a casual carefulness that only he can pull off properly.

"Care to explain?" she wants to know as he fiddles with the frayed ends of the garment.

"Well," he says as his hands begin to caress her flat, pale stomach. "I have a theory that you have a tendency to…" He thinks of the word as he rubs little circles on the place he's at on her hips, just beneath the line of her breeches, making her muscles relax but somehow constrict; when he finds it, the motions become a bit harder as he says, "You have a tendency to unravel me."

When she looks at him curiously, he smirks at her, and says, "With your charming notions of forgiveness…"

His hands find the curve of her waist.

"…your supposed dislike for rum, the noblest of pirate beverages…"

The shirt begins to lift, despite her noiseless, but half-hearted efforts to swat him away.

"…your theories on curiosity…"

He has now lifted the shirt completely over her head, and tosses it carelessly aside, along with the sheer lower layer that remained the last obstacle separating him from her skin, leaving her with her wide eyes and no cloth above her waist.

"…your compliments and criticisms on the ways pirates live their lives…"

She's squirming noticeably under his touch as he fluidly removes the loose, shapeless brown breeches she is (was) clad in, as well as her undergarments, but something in her is in awe of his daring, still waiting, watching, wondering what he's possibly got planned for her next.

This open interest in her is utterly out of the ordinary for him – and admittedly quite stimulating.

"…honestly, Miss Swann," he says, with his smirk still in place and his own breeches mysteriously gone as well, "you're a charming belle, and you take pleasure in the strange things you say."

His smirk has still not left his face, as he concludes by saying, "As I said; you unravel me."

She can barely breathe – any gulps of air she possibly has are catching in her throat like rabbits in a trap – but oddly enough, it's okay for right now. She stares at him in wonder, more comfortable than she should be in this raw, surreal state of wonder; carefully, she removes the shirt he didn't touch yet (for a reason, apparently), and looks him in the eye as she swallows thickly and asks, "What's my next crime?"

"Your next crime?" He titters darkly, his fingers fiddling with a lock of her hair as she awkwardly tries to kiss one of them. "Darling, I'm surprised you've let me get this far – give me a moment."

And she does, watching him, reveling under the clear admiration in his expression – she's seen glimpses of it before, but seeing it now, so exclusively, thrills her down to the deepest corners of her soul, thrills her more than she would ever dare to admit.

She is content here, in the haven of his well-developed arms, and she feels she can carry on for a little while longer if she has to when he finally says, "Your next crime…and I can't believe you're letting me say this…is your way of getting into places you don't belong –"

His mouth finds her neck, and he kisses it, turning her from her shoulders to get a better angle. When his lips find that spot on her throat, she groans ever so quietly. Pleased, he breathes in the perfume there, and continues, "– sneaking up on me when I don't want you to –"

His mouth makes a trail of small kisses down her neck, and down to her collarbone, the wide breadth of her chest, down to her breasts. "I shouldn't be here," he tells her, looking up at her as she shivers involuntarily, both enjoying and detesting the effect he's currently having on her, "and you shouldn't be here – yet here we both are."

He slides down, and blows into her stomach, his mouth in all the places his hands were before. "Here."

Now, he climbs back up towards her face, and positions himself so that his hips are grinding against hers, so that his legs are tangled within hers like strings of yarn, so that she can see him, feel him, touch him, hear him, immerse herself into him. Her hands begin to feel the expanse of his back – every mark, every scar, every inch of his bronze skin that she can reach – and she relaxes against the mattress as he comes down for another kiss on her mouth.

For her, this is bliss; bliss found in the depths and layers of sinning. She can't deny that she's thought a lot about this – considered it, dreamed of it. She can't deny that she wants it. He is inappropriate, he is unsuitable, he is utterly inadequate…but he has this inexplicable way of feeling so fitting to her at the same time.

She knows he feels the same; she doesn't think, guess, or speculate – she knows he feels the same. So why is he so comfortable with carrying this rendezvous into places she would have been otherwise too afraid to tread?

Her back arches as he now lowers to kiss the jaw he'd touched previously to soothe her. His nose grazes across it on its journey to her ear, and he rests there for a moment before coming back and keeping his face just above hers. He is again grinning.

"Your next crime, you'll be happy to know, ties in nicely with this one," he informs her. He brushes her hair away from her sweating, sticky red cheeks, and says, "As I've told you, you have this unfortunate habit of going places where you're not supposed to go; but that's not the worst of it."

"It's not?" She is dazed; she has barely spoken, but this question – uttered with a faint layer of apprehension – escapes her kissed lips nonetheless.

He smirks. "No, it's not, pet."

"Then what is the worst part?"

His smirk is still there, but he kisses her to placate her a bit, before saying, "Well…when you end up somewhere out-of-bounds, you don't leave. You push –"

And here is the inevitable – the enormous thrust into her, that makes her cry out shrilly into the otherwise-still air of the room. It feels different from what she thought it would though; he's not gentle with her, as he ought to be. Here is the first time he's letting her have it – unleashing himself onto and into her – and somehow, it still manages to make her blood rush in a way that warms her, intrigues her, entices her.

"– and you shove –"

Another thrust. She clings tightly to him, her legs hanging on desperately to his, but this time, she doesn't scream – she moans in a way she never thought she would. It's music to his ears.

"– and you basically drive me bloody crazy –"

A third thrust. Her eyes are squeezed shut, her systems are working far too hard to keep up with the enormous surges of blood through her too-small veins, while she both shrieks and grunts in both of their exertion; but somewhere inside of this raw, primitive, emotional state of climax, she knows instinctively that they've both tread as high as they can possibly go without something giving too much way, and all they can do at this point is come spinning gently back down to the ground.

She is both sorry and relieved by this jolt of a realization – he's the living incarnation of the phrase 'too much of a good thing.'

She looks at him again, and she can see an ecstasy in his face and eyes she's never seen before. It fills her up with warmth to know that she's caused it, and it energizes her a little; so, utilizing this new-found force to the best of her abilities, she reaches up and kisses him deeply. Her arms, which were lying limply at her sides for the past few minutes, now snake up to his neck – wrap around it, apply pressure to it, so that he relaxes against her once more.

It's her way of saying, 'I'm here,' and he trusts this right away; in a stunning, and rare, moment of vulnerability, he breaks their kiss and lies his cheek on her chest, his ragged breathing warm on her skin.

It is from here that he finishes his thought by saying, "And even though it would be better for us both if you stopped and fled like a normal woman, you don't." He lifts his head up and looks her straight in the eye – all the usual murkiness and teasing in his black eyes lifted for this singular moment in time. "And although I hate it, I suppose I'm glad you don't."

Her expression is tender as she twirls his dreadlocks between her fingers, and she simply says, "Okay."

Now, she is the vulnerable one, softened by these revelations – both advertent and inadvertent – and he can see it. With an air of almost-gratefulness, he shifts so that she is on top of him, and can now rest her cheek on his chest. And she does, gratified by the hard, yet comfortable muscles of his bare chest; she is as exhausted physically and emotionally as he is, and this is a welcome break.

A place where she can feel like she's landed somewhere safe.

And so they lie there together on his bed, drained, drowsy, and damp from their perspiring. She is nearly asleep where she is – comfortable in the unusual lack of secrets or distance – while he is in the process of shutting down, his eyelids flitting between open and closed constantly. There is no sound besides their slowly-regulating breaths, as they melt into one another – one rebellious soul being shared between two bodies.

She still knows that he is inappropriate, he is unsuitable, and he is utterly inadequate, and she will be sure to pretend adherence to this notion once she leaves this cabin, but for now, she doesn't have to. For now, she is not what her society expects her to be:

She is a lover, and she is a sinner, but she is a pirate first and foremost. She knows what she wants, even if it doesn't agree with what that world thinks she should want.

She knows he believes in her.

Despite what he says and what he does to her sometimes, she knows he does. And that's really all she needs; the firm conviction that there is at least one person in this eccentric, convoluted world that will never question the things she does or attempt to hold her back 'for her own good.'

She doesn't want this person to be Will or her father or Norrington or anybody else. She wants it to be him – Captain Jack Sparrow.

So after several minutes of musing and waiting and sinking and taking a break from reality, she decides to sleepily ask him, "Have I atoned, then?"

His hand, which had been resting on the small of her back, travels up to her hair, which he almost pets with his nearly-ridiculous caution, after all he's done. He pretends to consider her inquiry with a spark of mischievousness, but when he grins, it is wide enough for her to see the gold fillings in his teeth:

"Yes," he confirms for her, "I think you have..."

He looks at her closely for a moment, and then leans in, his smile a bit more thoughtful and serious. When his lips find hers, he kisses her differently than he had before – slowly, gently, reverently, savoringly. "I think you have..."

And then he says it into her lips – the word she thought she would never hear again, the word she loves to hear him say the most, the word that very well is forgiveness, "Lizzie."