PRINCIPLES OF COMPROMISE
I admit I have no real good excuse for not writing this lately other than my life is one chaotic ball of slaving labor. For a more personal reason, see my one-shot 'FanFiction Ruined My Life,' because after I got rejected from the college major of my dreams, I was really down and out towards fanfiction, folks. But I've left this unfisnished for so long. I stumbled on it while sorting through my USB the other night half-finished, begging for a continuance, so here it is. I may pick this up again. I know I've said ot before, but this is one story I intend on finishing if any. Thanks for all the support through and through. You're all the greatest. :) - Dis/Claimer – . Chapter Fifteen . “Here we are!” Estrella finished tying the laces in the back of Elizabeth’s new gown and ran around to the front excitedly. She admired the breathtaking beauty of the dress with a sigh as Elizabeth stood idle atop the stool. “Oh, it’s stunning, Miss,” Estrella said. However, as soon as she had stepped back, she was kneeling along the bottom of the dress again. “Oh, but that needs hemmed a bit… Just a few more minutes, Miss.” Elizabeth stared into the mirror as if it were a deep portal to her thoughts. The ivory, crimson, and gold facets of the dress made a lovely presentation with a bold understatement of which she thought her father would have disproved, but obviously not; he had chosen the dress after all. A pleasing display it would be as the Commodore escorted her around for the evening. She might have to find it insulting if Lord Beckett did not experience a bout of jealousy tomorrow night… Cruel man. She knew all of this was his fault, and indeed, all of it. The wedding, Will… She was willing to blame anyone for this, but she would eagerly pin it to Beckett. In a few hours when she was with Jack, she would know. She would know everything he wanted to keep secret from her. Everything. Hopefully. Jack had never said when or where to meet! x x x Hours had passed. Elizabeth leaned against her bedroom door silently, intently listening to her father ascend the staircase to retire for the night. The door was eased open enough just to let in a small sliver of dim light from the hall. As her father approached to pass, Elizabeth heard his footsteps cease and held her breath on the opposite side of the door. She bit her lip as he leaned into the light, peering into her room briefly. Her prayers that he would not come in were answered; Governor Swann simply closed the door the rest of the way and continued down the hall. Elizabeth shut her eyes in relief, slumping against the door. He was gone. After a moment of recollecting herself, Elizabeth left the door and ran on her tiptoes to the wardrobe quickly. She reached up to open it carefully, but the right door suddenly flew open, banging loudly off its own wooden body. Her eyes went wide in fear as Jack stumbled out of the wardrobe, bringing several of her gowns with him. “Shh!” “Whoa-“ “Shh! I told you I would come and get you!” she whispered urgently. Jack grasped the swinging door of the wardrobe to steady himself, shaking Elizabeth’s tangled dresses from his arms and legs. She gave an exasperated sigh, grabbed her dresses up viciously, and stuffed them into the wardrobe unceremoniously. “That’s the worst experience I’ve ever had with so many empty dresses in my life,” Jack said, straightening his vest. “To think I thought I might’ve enjoyed that a little more-“ Elizabeth shut the wardrobe, glaring him into silence. “Are you quite finished?” “If I have to be,” he replied vaguely. Elizabeth rolled her eyes and marched passed him towards the window. He lifted his eyebrow curiously as she threw her leg over the railing and began to climb down. x x x In the opaque night, the carriage came to halt before the entrance of the church. Lord Beckett stepped out of it, irritated by the blustery chill air that met his bare face. He grimaced his disproval at the aberrant wind, finding it legislatively unbalanced that he could not act on the injustice. The biting breeze quickened his step for the warmth of the church, the lantern in his hand swaying and creaking. He wanted to reprimand it like a child and tell it to be quiet. Careful to enter the church as he listened for any sound, Beckett saw a single candle lit on the altar at the front of the church. Half of Mercer’s body was distinguishable as the rest faded into the darkness, the man still as stone and ugly as ever. “You’re late,” he said, sending a deep, eerie echo through the empty sanctuary. Beckett arched his brow, taking care to lock the door behind him. “Why splitting hairs over a matter of minutes, Mr. Mercer? Have you somewhere to be?” “No intent to be disrespectful, sir,” the clerk said as his employer came down the aisle to him. “You’re generally of the punctual sort is all.” “Damn coachman hitched the horses wrong,” Beckett said, removing his gloves sinuously and changing the subject. “It is just the one that is missing?” Mercer tugged on the end of the sleeve of his coat, issuing to the set of cufflinks and the space void of such. “Yes, just the one. I’m not sure how it came off. Cheap labor even in London these days.” Beckett was not interested in his commenting of society’s work force. “I don’t care how it came off,” he told Mercer, “I care about what happened to it.” “After I spoke with you, I went back.” “I assume it was successfully recovered?” Mercer paused under Beckett’s sternness but spoke. “It was gone.” Lord Beckett shut his eyes calmly, exhaling silently in an effort to control his mounting frustration. Good Lord, this would happen… “Did you look everywhere?” “Everywhere conceivable and not,” Mercer pledged. “I followed my own footsteps several times over, but it could not be found, and by that, recovered.” This was not what he wanted to hear. Beckett sighed again, pinching the bridge of his nose whilst muttering to himself. Something told him the very person that shouldn’t have found it had, and this was perilous. Filling his lungs and holding the expanding stretch, Beckett looked up at Mercer with an inkling of disturbance in his eyes. “No matter,” he then said whimsically, his mind not allowing a moment’s worth of panic to hold him in fear. No, his mind kept him thinking, kept him from such womanly things as emotion. He absentmindedly caressed the aged binding of the Bible on the altar, staring at its cross in thought. “Destroy that coat,” he instructed with harsh spats. “Burn it.” Mercer glanced to the side. Burn it? “How, when, and where?” “With fire, as soon as possible,” Beckett said his voice an uncommonly bright mock. “And for God’s sake, not in the middle of town square.” He recognized that look Mercer was giving him, and before the clerk could respond, Beckett said, “I do not underestimate you, Mr. Mercer, just your capacity and ability to process unspoken conversations. Burn the coat. Make sure it is never seen or heard of again.” Mercer nodded stiffly. “Yes, m’lord.” Beckett was now leaning against the altar, tracing the thin lip of the communion cup. “Pity, though. Didn’t that just arrive from London?” “The day before last,” Mercer informed him with a forced grin. “Oh, well,” – Beckett overturned the communion cup for the off chance of a drop of wine slipping out – “you brought this upon yourself. You’ll exercise a bit more caution next time, I’d wager.” Mercer stared at him with his intense, pointed eyes as Beckett put the communion cup back down. Part of Mr. Mercer was actually ecstatic that his employer may move up in the ranks and leave for England to oversee the Court of Honor so that he would no longer be his employer. The next Lord High Admiral would hopefully be a better one. He watched Beckett still grazing the silver of the cup, a thought coming to him from nights previous when they had burned the black pearl. “And of the other two? How have your plans been turning for them?” Beckett paused but continued to stroke the smooth stem of the cup. “They are lower on my list of priorities at current but still near the top,” Beckett said. “I may have to take more immediate action in light of Sparrow being free to roam the port until the trial, however.” “Do you still mean to use the Heiress?” Beckett’s eyes reflected the glow of the candle, dark with reverie. “The Governor informed me earlier of their engagement ceremony tomorrow night,” he told Mercer as if beginning a children’s story. “I will be attending. Perhaps something can be done sooner rather than later.” “Have you an idea?” “Possibilities not etched in stone,” Beckett waved lowly. “I am concerned she will help him while he is loose, and the Commodore could very well become part of this as well as we saw. I was fool from the start to think Turner and Sparrow were the only two left, and here I’d overlooked the contrite lady and loyal seaman.” From the darkness, a short squeak came. Beckett and Mercer wheeled around alert, eyes probing the dim cavern for something in the nothingness. Beckett lingered as Mercer deadpanned, “Mouse.” “My Aunt Fanny,” Beckett murmured suspiciously. Just then, another squeak came, and a small brown mouse scurried past, its tiny claws scratching the wooden floor. Beckett watched it go begrudgingly, letting it take some of his paranoia with it. “The hour is late, Mr. Mercer,” he decided, feeling the long day finally nestling within him. “We will speak again in the morning, by then your coat being a pile of ashes scattered to the wind.” Mercer nodded as Beckett leaned off the altar. “Is there anything else you wish of me, sir?” Another squeak, deeper in sound, was heard. Again, Mercer and Beckett looked in its direction, opposite that which the small mouse had come from before. Beckett was narrowing his eyes now. This sound was no mouse. “That will be all, Mr. Mercer,” he said, gradually taking a flintlock from his coat. He loaded it, the echo ricocheting about ominously. “I am going to see to this… mouse infestation.” “Sir-“ “Have a good evening, Mr. Mercer.” The clerk’s face acquired more distasteful knots and wrinkles of offense, but Mercer decidedly had better things to do than go on a great mouse hunt with Lord Beckett. With an inward huff, Mercer’s heavy boots paraded up the aisle and out of the church. Lord Beckett picked up his lantern and stepped forward. His foot hit a creak in the floorboards, and he stopped moving. Listening. For anything. The rushes of wind through the high ceiling, the cold faint whistle from the pipes of the organ, the flame in his lantern whipping around, but a squeak? Where is this little eavesdropping mouse? he wondered. Beckett suddenly jumped to the other side of the altar, but there was nothing but darkness. The pulpit; empty. Still knowing somewhere in the back of his mind that something other than a mouse was in his presence (possibly a ghost if he believed such things), Beckett began to slowly walk up the aisle. He shined the lantern’s light at each pew’s length, bending a few times when he thought he saw something. At the back of the church, he scanned the entire thing again, the wind his only voiced entity after several minutes’ time. Then, the little scratching noise weaved around his boots, and Beckett regarded the small brown mouse with a frown as it nibbled something tiny. The sanctuary suffered one last glare from Lord Beckett, and he left without word. x x x Jack scrambled with Elizabeth out into the cold winds forcibly, keeping his hand clamped over her mouth tightly as it battled to leak its hysterical sobs. He drew her against his body and put further strain on her ability to breathe with his arm barred like a vice across her stomach. Seeing Lord Beckett’s silhouette, Jack pressed himself up to the side of the church to stay hidden in the shadows. The stone was freezing the side of his face as he watched from the alley the carriage roll away. A sigh was permitted to escape his frigid body. Elizabeth had not stopped thrashing. She beat on his strong arms for release, and her lungs burned with sharp, painful spasms. Jack fought to maintain his hold on her, trying to speak over her stifled screams. “Lizzie, stop it,” he said sternly. He squeezed tighter, infuriating her and intensifying her blows on him. “Hey! Elizabeth, stop that-“ Somehow, Elizabeth tore herself out of his overpowering strength with a shriek, stumbling backward blindly by way of her own outraged tears. “Leave me!” she screamed at him, chest heaving erratically. “Go!” Jack stood conveying no emotion, knowing it best not to. “Eli-“ “NO!” Her voice cracked at its peak. She blinked more tears from her swollen eyes, balling her gown into her fists and shaking them as she yelled. “He was never a pirate! HE WAS NEVER A PIRATE!” Jack’s silence deflected her denial and threw it right back at her sorrowful appearance. Enraged, Elizabeth marched up to Jack and hit him again, yelling profusely as she punctuated with sound hits to Jack, “This is all your fault! Will was not a pirate! He was a good, honest man and I loved him!” “Stop that! Lizzie!” “I LOVED HIM!” Jack paused. “I’m not doubting you-“ “Shut up!” Jack blacked out briefly from the force of her hand driving into his face. The sting mixed with the tingling numbness of the cold, rendering him dizzy and speechless. He looked down at Elizabeth slowly; she huffed and snarled and bared her teeth with unsurpassable fury. Jack swallowed, the look in her eye daring him to speak. He opted not to. A moment past, Elizabeth’s seething flooded out with more heartbroken tears. She hung her head and cried quietly in comparison to her shouts, unable to think, understand, comprehend… Jack watched her do this for a time, noting that this was the first time he had ever observed her so broken since Will’s death. It had not been the act, or the murderer, but the reason. A reason so misconstrued that Jack was trying to conceal a rare facial expression of hatred for the sake of the poor woman before him. She put her hand on his chest for support and wiped her eyes, making paths for fresh tears. He touched her shoulder solemnly, but she ripped herself away again. “Get off!” she spat with as much harshness as she could. The poison in her voice was palpable. “Don’t you ever touch me again,” she murmured dangerously. “This is not my fault.” Elizabeth’s eyes flared. “And whose is it? Will’s?!” “He did enlist my help.” She stared at him, abashed at his logic. Her face twisted further into an unrecognizable sneer when he held up a finger. “Oh! But he enlisted my help so as to rescue you,” Jack mused. “So perhaps this really all your fault.” Elizabeth held a deep breath angrily. “Barbossa kidnapped me. It’s his fault.” “And he was innocently looking to lift a curse.” “One they found because of a set of coordinates you had!” Jack opened his mouth to retort, but she was right, somehow still able to pin fault on him. His lips puckered in thought under her expectant glare. “He committed mutiny-“ “Jack,” – she stormed up to him again – “stop it. Because of you, James and I are both in danger of being put to death which, unlike you, is something we don’t associate with having over our heads as part of a daily routine! Will is dead! I am next!” she shouted. “Barbossa, your crew, all of us!” “And I am going to let this happen?” Jack asked of her. “If I had another mast I’d do it before you had a chance to let it happen,” she fumed. “Pirate.” Elizabeth’s face fell to realization under Jack’s grin. “By your own doing,” he said. ”Not mine.” She had nothing. Nothing to say, nothing to argue. She could not match wits like this under such stress, finally learning what she now wished she had never known. Sniffling a time or two, her anger came to forefront long enough to push Jack back into the stone wall, and she walked away. Jack touched the hurting spot on his chest and called out to her. “What now, Miss Swann? Off to slay your way to revenge?” She slowed to a stop, speaking fragilely over her shoulder. “I don’t care what you do, Jack. Run. Stay. Kill.” Pain gripped her heart again, and she had to keep walking. “Just don’t look to me.” “For what?” Her response was weak, but he heard it over the prevailing winds. “For anything.” . Please Review .
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