Title: No Rest For The Wicked
Word Count: 1,431
Rating: R for some very brief piratical cursing at the end.
Summary: The night following the end of DMC holds little rest for Barbossa.
Author's Note: Written for potcfest prompt #106; Barbossa following his resurrection dealing with the whole not being dead anymore thing. A very special mention must be given to M who beta'd the fic for me and without whom it would have never seen the light of day. As always M, you've my undying gratitude :)

Almost everyone else was asleep, or at least had found a place amongst Tia Dalma's strange effects to rest. But the night was too close and warm in the swamp to allow Elizabeth any rest. She slipped away from the others and found a breath of fresher air outside.

The creak of rotten floorboards to her right told her that she was not alone. When she spun to look all was hidden in shadow but for a hand. Reaching out to catch the moonlight, Barbossa's hand turned this way and that, whilst the man himself remained concealed in the darkness.

She must have caught her breath because the next thing she knew the hand had been snatched back and she could feel those too knowing eyes on her skin. Words escaped her. She stood dumb in the presence of the cursed pirate captain, killed at the height of his victory, and risen again from the dead by voodoo magic, now as a free man. It was the stuff of legend, a story she would have loved only months ago. Now faced with the reality with it, it made her skin crawl. She wondered if he could believe it himself.

"Should ye not be sleeping in the arms of ye beloved, missy?" he asked, and although his face was still concealed Elizabeth could envision the wolfish grin.

She moved forward deliberately, knowing that to do anything else would be a sign of weakness and weakness could be fatal in dealing with this man. She stood at the rail, bathed in moonlight, her back turned to him in the hopes that it might deflect some of his barbs. She should have known better. In the silence the hair on the back of her neck prickled from being so close to him. She wanted to run away, but knew that if she did, he would win.

"I suppose you're going to tell me that this is no place for a lady. That there are dangerous things in the dark," she said bolstering her courage. "And that you're one of them."

"Perhaps I am," Barbossa replied. He took a stride forward so that he was stood next to her, his hands gripping the rail tight enough to turn his knuckles translucent in the moonlight. His voice was softer out here, and just for a second Elizabeth thought that she caught the trace of another accent. Something long forgotten or set aside, lost behind the hard edges of his words and menacing drawl.

He stared out across the water as though waiting for something to emerge out of the darkness ahead of them. It set her on edge. She had not known the captain for long, but whenever she had his presence he had always commanded attention. He was not a tall man but he strode around like a giant, everyone else shrinking away in his company. And yet, in the disquieting nocturne of the swamp he seemed to diminish into himself. His next words did little to assuage her fear. "Perhaps I be the least of your worries."

"Shouldn't you be sleeping as well?" she asked abruptly, suddenly eager to change the subject.

"It lacks the appeal it once did," he answered gruffly. Elizabeth shuddered. He shifted beside her, a rolling of his shoulders that spoke of a man uncomfortable in his own skin. When Barbossa had first made his appearance he'd seemed the brash captain that she'd come to expect, revelling in the collective shock of his audience. Away from them, alone in the night with only herself and the shadows for company, he was something else again. She wondered what was waiting for him in the dark.

"What was it like?" Elizabeth found herself asking. The words were said and there was no pulling them back no matter how hard she tried. She shrunk away from Barbossa's sudden glare. For one tantalizing, terrifying, moment she thought he might strike her.

Then he shook his head grimly, and the sardonic expression she'd come to know slid across his face like a mask. "It's something you'll discover in your own good time."

What was worse was that Elizabeth genuinely thought she would. She stared at Barbossa for a long, lingering moment before she was forced to look away. She craved to understand and at the very same time she feared to even guess at what he'd seen. What he'd felt. What Jack was feeling right then.

Barbossa turned his back on her then and walked away, his bulk dissolving into the sticky shadows of Tia Dalma's abode. Elizabeth stood alone a moment longer on the porch, her eyes warily scanning what lay about. It didn't take long for her to decide that even the strange confines of indoors were better than being alone in the night.

-- --

Barbossa watched Elizabeth retreat back inside. He was both amused and impressed by her stubborn refusal to back away from him; it wasn't something that happened very often. But he was also mortally afraid that he'd given too much away. A bitter smile graced his lips at the irony of his thoughts, and he rolled the expression across his tongue softly in the darkness. Mortally afraid.

The words' venomous taste held little appeal for him. His heart constricted in his chest, an old remembered sensation become new and painful with circumstance. Everything was new. He was walking around like a newborn babe snatched from his mother's tit and too dumbstruck to even know he ought to be screaming. And they all expected him to carry on. To hit the ground both feet running even though Barbossa felt as though he could barely stand on his own. There was irony in that, too, if he could find it in himself to give a damn.

Again he held out his hand to catch the play of the moonlight across his skin, and felt an icy prickling run down his nerves. Ten long years since he'd seen such a thing. Ten long years of deprivation of the most simple things. A decade of his life. A decade of not living life. Untouched by all the world had to offer.

He turned Elizabeth's question over in his own mind again, wondering what had it been like. That was the source of it, the horror of it that lurked beneath the shallow façade of confidence. In the solitude of the shadows he could admit the truth of it if only to himself. He did not know. Death for him was a mystery, a void dark and terrible that sat like a weeping wound in his memory. The torment that preceded it, that he could recall. The sudden, sharp agony that followed his rebirth, that he remembered with a painful poignancy. But the void that lurked between, that was a mystery, one that beckoned him from the darkest corners of the night and waited behind the shutters of his eyes.

It wasn't death that scared Barbossa: it was life. How, after a decade of living like a ghost, was he expected to live like a man again? Had it been too long, had he forgotten how? There was a dangerous allure to darkness. The simplicity of it. The everything and nothing of it.

And yet... with the moonlight playing across his fingertips, and the warm flutter of the breeze against his face, he found it wasn't one he wished to taste again too soon. Hector Barbossa had had his fill of death in all its varied forms. He wanted to live. Life in all its reckless abandon and dangerous temptation. He wanted his fill. He deserved his fill.

The horizon was just beginning to pale with the first tentative light of dawn as he returned to the hut. Jack's motley crew of vagabonds were arrayed across the floor in various stages of sleep. He felt a pang of pity for them. Little did they know what events they'd become embroiled in. The world was changing around them and they slept on oblivious. He looked up from the door to find Tia Dalma, Calypso, sitting on the stairs, watching him with feline intensity. As he met her gaze he found himself smiling for the first time and the emotion finally reached his eyes. He swaggered into the room and cried out with new-found vigour, "Up with ye, ye scurvy laggard sons of bitches! We've dangerous deeds ahead!"

The pandemonium that followed was gratification enough, reason enough. Whatever else might follow, he was still Captain Hector Barbossa, and he had a ship to find.