It didn't help, having a plan. It didn't help seeing Barbossa of all people taking his sweet time down the steps, an apple in hand, of course. In fact, the only thing that helped was her vivid imagination speculating on what might have happened had he spilled all her blood over that Aztec chest. First droplets, then gushes would splatter over the shimmering medallions. Her body would have started convulsing, her vision blurring. The rest—well, the rest only Barbossa would know…and Jack.

"Ye'll be catchin' your death of cold before we ever depart, missy, stayin' out here on that boat."

The longboat they'd arrived in rocked back and forth, tied to the shack of that strange woman, Tia Dalma. Although the shack was cramped from floor to ceiling, with people now in addition to trinkets, it smelled of shrimp, sautéed and rolled in various spices and her fireplace was warm enough to dry her tears right off her cheeks. In short, it was not a place someone like her deserved to be.

"Maybe I'm just saving you some trouble. Instead of killing me discreetly on our journey you can do it now." She rested her arms on either side of the boat and crossed her ankles. It wasn't the person who had every right to kill her, but she was sure Captain Jack Sparrow wouldn't be remiss of the irony when someone told him the story.

"Aye, t'would be no trouble at all." He placed his foot on the boat, shaking up its lulling rhythm. "Never did learn your real name, Miss Turner."

"Swann."

"And what brings ye out here, Miss Swann? Obviously not trying to get the last bit of good rest ye'll get before we go."

"Why do you even care?" She turned over onto her side, surprised by her own fearlessness. Liberating, really, she sneered at herself, to have no sense of self-preservation at all.

"You're a member of me crew, Miss Swann, and as such, we have a bargain." He stopped rocking the boat, and instead set his hands, one over the other, on top of his knee. "As a member of me crew, ye do what I tell ye. Ye get the mission done for me, and as Captain, I look out for ye, keep ye alive, give ye yer fair share of the booty. Course there won't be any this time around, just a sorry lad what got what was coming to him."

Her head perked up. It was the first she had really heard Barbossa speak of Jack.

"A well-deserved fate, it is, but an ill-timed one." He laughed, his eyes far away, concentrating on some moment Elizabeth could not pinpoint. "Like his mutiny."

"That you orchestrated," she reminded him.

"Aye," he said, leering at her. "Aye the holds was bustin' with whispers, how we would do it, when we would do it. He was just a lad then, even younger a pirate, would have never seen it coming."

"He saw it coming. He just didn't know what it was."

"What'd ye say?"

"The last time we were together," she made sure to say with some bite. "I found his old log. He knew you were up to something. He just didn't know what it was."

"Well, we didn't suspect he'd see it coming at any rate. One harebrained scheme after the other, always wheeling and dealing. Trusting, aye. Not much, but a thousand times more than he was when he shot me." His breath hitched. His hand flew to his chest, as if checking for blood. She tried to catch a glimpse of a scar or hole, but the fireflies hovering around them proved a poor substitute for candlelight.

"So I goes up to him, in his cabin. Sloppy lad, charts everywhere, quills all over the place. 'I been pirate longer,' I says. 'What do ye suppose the men think of ye locking yourself away in here charting a course without the rest of us knowin' naught but what the stars tell us?' It don't take much to convince him to show me the bearings. Isla de Muerta. I was the one who told him about it! He had a debt to pay to Jones, the debt he's payin' now, methinks, and so he was desperate…at the time. Guess I switched his priorities on him, heh heh."

"You haven't come to the part when you betrayed him," she breathed, huddling into herself. She wrapped her arms around her propped up legs, holding them.

"That was the easy part. I had the bearings. We waited till night, full moon. I remember the shine just right on Jack's face, illuminatin' the whites of his eyes." He flinched. "I've positioned the men, each one armed to the teeth with cutlass and pistol…even old Bootstrap. Took a pretty time 'fore I let him in on the scuttlebutt. Twisted that noble mind of his into thinkin' it was for the good of the crew. He went along with that, all right. They're all on the deck, like a pretty beaded necklace of men. 'Jack.' I took me knuckles and rapped on his door. 'Somethin' we need to be discussing, Jack.'

"Something else, that lad. Eyes hard, he keeps his hand at his pistol the whole time, knowin' it won't do no good against a whole crew. He doesn't make a fuss when we disarm him, nor when we lead him to the edge. That figurehead on the Black Pearl, that gorgeous little vixen sending that bird off in flight? We pushed him right up to her, we did. They parted like the Red Sea for him, knowin' we was sendin' him to hell instead of the Promised Land.

"'Ye don't know much 'bout a mutiny,' I says, 'but we'll talk ye through it. Ye get a pistol with one shot.' Oh, how I dangled that pistol out in front of him, his eyes longin' to take it and fire it right between me eyes. But he's got a number of pistols pointed straight at him, so it's all he can do not to plead for his life. But Jack's not the pleadin' type. He just…stood there…" He exhaled with a short laugh. "T'was like his mouth was smiling but his eyes was plannin' it all out, how I would die, just how he would do it. He just stood there.

"I had expected him to talk. He could talk anyone into anything. I've seen it. He could talk a man right up to the gallows and tell him he was in for an exhileratin' ride and be gone before the sot would even realize he had a noose around his neck. But he didn't say nothing, just stood there, like I said. They was just about to push him over the edge. T'was like frosting on a cake knowin' just how cold the water would be. 'Goodbye, Jack,' I says. 'Can't right say I'm sorry.'"

Elizabeth wiped the swelling tears that lingered in her eyes, waiting for the right cue to fall. A trembling hand tucked itself under her knee.

"What…did, did he…I mean, did he say anything when you said that?" She clamped her mouth shut, fearing her voice would crack if she said more.

"Yer shivering, lass. I told ye it t'would be cold out here. He said, 'I can.' 'Can't right say I'm sorry.' 'I can.' They gave him one swift kick and he toppled off. Quite the splash, that. We chucked his pistol right after and then made sail post-haste. The Pearl's a fast one, she is, 'tho I don't think it ever sat well with her what we did."

"Now she's suffering along with him." At least he wasn't alone. What was she saying? The Black Pearl was a ship and nothing more! She had been spending too much time with him, that had to be where she'd gotten it in her head that the ship could feel.

"Aye. It'll do me good to see her again me-self." He gathered himself and clapped his hands together. Scampering out the door, his little monkey climbed up his back and onto his shoulder. "Ye comin' in, Miss Swann?"

"I…I will in a moment. I just want to be alone a little while longer."

"Won't do ye no good. Whether you're alone or not, the faces of those ye kill stay with ye, and it don't matter if they meant anything to ye or not."

Her jaw dropped, eyes widening in shame and shock. Her chest heaved so rapidly she gasped for air. Running her hands up into her hair, her forehead dropped to her knees.

"The others don't seem to know," Barbossa said.

She could only shake her head and swallow, the tears she didn't know she had left streamed down her dirty face.

"Stop. Stop, damn it!" Rolling his eyes, he climbed into the longboat and wrapped his arms around her. Too weak to wriggle free from him, she sobbed into his coat. Prying her off of him, he held her by the shoulders, his yellow, scabrous face bored into hers. "Now this is what's going to happen. I'll not see ye waste anymore tears on Jack Sparrow of all people! Ye can cry all ye like, but do it when I'm not around. When you're with me, and there's goin' to be a lot of that, missy, you'll show yourself to be naught but the little spitfire who threatened to drop me medallion into the unforgiving sea. Understand? You're me crew now, Miss Swann, and I'll not have ye blubberin' away when there's work to be done. Here." She jumped back when he produced a handkerchief and let her take it from his hand. Blotting her eyes with it, he continued. "Your secret's safe with me."

"Why?" She rumpled the handkerchief up and set it in his hand, only for him to grab hers and hold it there, a forced handshake.

"'Cuz ye did what I wasn't able to do." He grinned jagged teeth at her and climbed back out of the boat. "Out of the boat, Miss Swann. That's an order. Take a good long sleep, if ye can. It'll be the last one ye get." He watched her climb out and head back into the shack. "That's it now. There be no need to cry yourself into purgatory. I'll make ye work off yer sins!"

A/N: Just something that came to me that wasn't enough to turn into a story. Please leave a review! Do not own, remember. I do not own.