Author's Forward:

June 2015

Hi everybody! It's been a while since I've written for this fandom and I'm so happy to be back. ::Waves:: I want to start with a big thank you to everyone who read this story, and especially those of you who left a few reviews (Special shout out to Florencia7 and Alltheroads, you're the best!). Your numerous kind words have really made my day over the years. Thank you!

Everyone has their preferred method of escapism. Some choose drugs, alcohol, food, religion—I am hopelessly addicted to words. I love and hate the feeling a story seething inside my mind, demanding to get out onto paper. I know there will be no rest and I will be trapped in that fantasy world in my imagination until its done, and there's such mental release when that final paragraph is finished.

I first wrote this story on a backpacking trip in Asia. Wandering the beach in Gokarna, India, picking up shells, I remember looking at the sunset and longing for that fire of a brewing story to fill my veins.

I asked Jack to talk to me.

Strangely, he did.

This was daydreamed on buses from the Himalayas to New Delhi, from Hong Kong to the thousand island region of the Mekong river in Laos, penned in a 5 rupee notebook with Ganesha on the cover. I nearly lost the manuscript to a spilled glass of mango lassi, and what a shame that would have been!

8 years later, I have decided to revisit this fic. I was reading it for fun, and my imagination ignited again. It's been like writing a fanfiction of a fanfiction, truth be told, with the desire to make it better than it was before. I was also struck by a review that pointed out Jack and Elizabeth never said "I love you". I didn't actually do that on purpose, it was just the direction the original fic took, and I'm sad to say, my own mindset at the time. I like to think that in the past 8 years I myself have learned quite a bit about what it means to truly love, and I hope that is reflected here. This incarnation features a decidedly sweeter love story, though, certainly not a Disney fairytale.

I have added new dialogue, historical details, as well as completely new scenes and chapters.

To cut to the chase, if you've been here before, Chapter 4, 5, 6, 11, 12, 13, and the epilogue are filled with brand new material. If you read anything, read 5,6, and the epi.

If this is all new to you, read up me hearties, yo ho!

Prologue:

1580: Caracas

The sailor stood before Don Francisco de Vargas, seeming entirely out of place in the lavish settings of the grand study. The new world had treated de Vargas's fortunes well, there was plenty of gold and labor to be plundered from the native heathens, and the cacao crop seemed to improve with every year. The sailor seemed uneasy; the Don did not have the best reputation for compassion and understanding. A messenger bearing bad news could have much to fear within these walls.

The sailor was just that.

Jose Barranco's clothes were even more tattered than the usual maritime state of intense use; indeed it looked as though the sea had swallowed him up and spit him out, merely hours ago, and delivered him to the doorstep of Don de Vargas. "What is it?" asked the Don impatiently.

This salt stank to high heavens, and de Vargas didn't want the stench to linger in the room. His wife would arrive soon. A lady of breeding, she was sensitive to such details, and would make her discomfort immediately known to him, to the very last detail. She was a force of nature in her own right, and would tolerate close to nothing that disagreed with her.

But she tolerated him, more than tolerated him. He'd gone through what seemed like the seven labors of Hercules, winning her hand, and their married life had never been smooth, placid, uneventful. Always, it had been filled with fits and fights from hell, and sweet sojourns to the clouds of heaven. Very rarely was there anything in between for him. He assumed the same was true for her. What would time and distance have done to them? He would find out, soon. She was due to arrive aboard La Esperanza any month now. Soon they would be reunited. He could barely contain his excitement, his composure, among his servants and soldiers.

Dimly lit, shadows swallowed the corners of the room and swathed the sailor Jose in heavy shadow. Still, Don de Vargas could see something close to a grimace ply across his face. "I was a sailor aboard La Esperanza, Don de Vargas."

A cold feeling of premonition suddenly shot down through the trunk of Francisco's body, shattered in his stomach and fanned out to numb his fingers and toes with icy tingles. Dread gripped him, nearly strangling. "Si? And?"

"I am sorry, Don de Vargas. My Lord. But I am the only survivor. The ship went down in a storm, and the sea swallowed her whole."

Francisco blinked, unable to discern if she referred to La Esperanza, or solely, his wife. His beloved Isabella. If what this man claimed was true, then it didn't matter. Grief clenched his heart; for a moment Francisco felt as though he could not breathe, could not think. Could not live. Although the room was dim, he still turned towards the star-speckled windows, hiding his deeply pained expression. Could it really be true? His Isabella, his terrible and wonderful Dona, gone forever?

Absently, he felt his front top teeth with his tongue, nearly drawing blood. As of recent, he had found this world contained many unexplainable, fantastic and horrible phenomenon. Anything was possible in some way, it seemed. And so he vowed at that moment, if he ever found the chance to bring her back, he would not hesitate to do everything within his power to do so.

Don de Vargas had nearly forgotten the sailor stinking up his study, until Jose interrupted his long quiet contemplation. "I am sorry, Don de Vargas, truly."

Francisco's attention snapped to Jose, and the poor sailor's immediate reaction was to take a fearful step backwards in retreat. Had the Don's eyes truly just flashed like lightning? No, impossible, surely some trick of the light. Francisco felt his grief shift slightly within him, the dagger twisting a bit, shifting pain to a disdainful resentment. "And how is it you are the only survivor, my good man?" asked Don de Vargas, voice sharp as broken glass.

The salt flinched inwardly at the Don's question; he did not think God is merciful or even I'm a lucky man would satisfy the Don's bitter curiosity. "I..." He stopped to peer at the Don, who had taken another step closer. Were his eyes playing tricks on him? He could have sworn, that as the Don opened his mouth to speak he could glimpse two incisors, abnormally sharp, almost like an animal. He needed to go, he needed to collapse in a bed in a cheap dirty inn and not move for the next three days. Hunger, dehydration, scorching sun floating for days on end in the water must have all taken a nasty toll.

"Well?" prompted de Vargas. "Tell me your tale, sailor. It must be a miraculous one."

"I..."

Jose found he could not force more words than that past a lump in his throat, caught in the gaze of the Don. Eyes blue and dark as the ocean at dusk caught him, captivated him, blanketed his mind with haze even as cold fear caused his heart to pound. The Don's hands went to his jaw, turning his head aside to expose a stretch of thick sun-leathered neck. Francisco's nose wrinkled with the thought of placing his mouth against that filthy skin, but the blood that called from beneath would be sweet and heavy, strong, and probably taste of the sea.

He would know exactly what had happened to La Esperanza, every detail from the sailor's mind and memories, far better than anything the man could tell him. Francisco de Vargas preferred to take what he wanted, rather than asking for it, anyways.

Chapter 1: The Fall of Puerto Moreas

1690: Port Royal

"It's been abnormally quiet this morning, have you noticed?"

Norrington looked up from buttering his toast to see Elizabeth standing at the window, one arm resting casually upon the frame. So many years had passed since he asked her to be his wife, what seemed like a lifetime ago. Still, the sight of her took his breath away. The morning light highlighted her fine profile, and set her golden mane afire.

Though this was a normal scene for the former commodore, a stranger looking in may have been actually appalled by Lady Elizabeth's appearance.

Sweat matted her golden hair at the temples from their morning activity, and it spilled out in a near blinding riot of curls about her shoulders. Her loose lawn shirt lay open at the throat, revealing the layer of wrapping beneath that bound her breasts tight. No full skirt hid her lower half, but trousers and top boots framed her long legs to little imagination and absolute perfection. To a newcomer, the scene would be unusual indeed, but to Norrington it had become a routine, and a blessed one at that.

Every morning at seven o'clock, he practiced fencing with Elizabeth. Five years after their run in with Beckette and Davy Jones, he would admit to himself in private thoughts that she was now his equal with a blade. Every morning afterwards they breakfasted together. And every morning after pecking at her food, she stood at the window to look to the sea.

She was always looking to the sea.

Always.

It was a schedule that smacked of a relationship more intimate than they truly shared. No ring of his encircled Elizabeth's finger. Indeed she wore no ring at all; William had had none to give her before disappearing in a flash of green aboard the Flying Dutchman.

Events of five years past had liberated her from the usual confines of a woman's duty, but the prize was only bitter sweet. Beckette's wicked meddling had, in Elizabeth's blunt and bitter phrasing, "Freed her from the expectation of grandchildren."

Fatherless, her husband far at sea, and childless, Elizabeth was left to her own devices. Her once girlish laugh, high and glittering like chimes in the wind, now held the edge of a woman who had seen too much too young.

Despite it all, James suspected she enjoyed her freedom, more than she would ever tell him.

"I can't say I noticed," James confessed. "But I have yet to set foot out of doors."

Elizabeth nodded dismissively, eyes still transfixed on the window. "Come have a bit more to eat, you're getting too thin," Norrington urged casually.

Her lips curled slightly at his fussing. "You are neither my father nor my husband, James. I'll eat as I like."

Her smile for James was never quite as sweet as it had once been. She was a shadow of the innocent girl she once was. The wariness left behind by their misadventure showed in her eyes, and her smile.

"True, I am not," James acknowledged. "Though not for lack of trying." He teased openly, without self-conscience. Life had changed, the formalities had dropped away. Indeed, life had taken on a whole new flavor for James Norrington entirely. He'd been given another chance at life, spat from the very jaws of death itself and washed up ashore on the beach of Port Royal.

He could not remember any details of his salvation, all was gray in his normally precise military memory.

Elizabeth suspected, nigh nearly knew, it must have been Will granting a favor. A blessing. James had died to save her, after all. It was a feat she could understand the ferryman breaking the rules to reward. Not that she knew the rules, or even pretended to understand them. That would be an utter exercise in futility, she'd learned.

Though no longer a Commodore, James now served on an honorary position of the town council. He advised in matters of defense, but for the most part, lived a quiet life on a military pension.

James too had changed with time.

He no longer regarded life through the same rigid glasses he once wore. There were no squares in nature, only circles, curves, organic shapes and ragged edges. Where certain others only seemed to fear the coming of death more, after experiencing it once and coming back, James found it a freeing experience. He felt as though he knew something of what inevitably waited on the other side. It didn't seem unpleasant. No, it didn't seem like much of anything, really. Not something to look forward to, but nor was it something to fear.

"Even if I wasn't already technically married, James, you wouldn't want me for a wife. It would spoil things between us, I think. That would be a shame, because you know you're my last friend in Port Royal."

"Elizabeth, you exaggerate."

Elizabeth did not exaggerate.

Truly, he was the only one left in Port Royal now that she cared a fig about. She could still remember the joy welling in her breast, upon elbowing through the crowd ashore, gawking at something that had washed up on the beach five years ago. There lay James on the sand, soaked and disheveled, but miraculously alive and breathing. Her face was the first thing he saw, opening his eyes after being granted the gift of life once again. Tears in her own eyes, the sun had shone behind her, blinding as a halo. He'd never witnessed a more beautiful sight.

Never.

She laughed bitterly, her disdain for the vicious society of the town plainly evident in her voice. "You know what they whisper as I walk past. No one wants to associate with the likes of me."

They called her all kinds of names, ranging from rude to utterly incendiary.

That strange girl. That silly abolitionist chit. That pirate's harlot.

James conjectured she brought the vicious gossip upon herself though, by choosing to go about in her trousers and boots on a daily basis, that tricorn hat perched carelessly upon her head.

It smacked a bit of a certain pirate they both knew.

"If I was a pirate's whore," Elizabeth muttered under her breath, "Then I wouldn't be stuck here on land, would I?"

James pretended not to hear, but couldn't control a slight twitch of eyebrow. Despite what the townies were convinced of, he knew her to be no such thing. Though, her fascination with that pirate Sparrow...yes, it certainly remained. She could not hide it, though she tried, burying it deep inside her. The taste of adventure and freedom, battle on the high seas left her a branded woman.

Forever changed.

She had come a long way from being the pampered governor's daughter. Waited upon hand and foot, always a maid to clean up after her. After inheriting her late father's fortune she forsook the luxury of her former lifestyle, moving to a little cottage outside of town. It was built on the bluff, overlooking the endless sea. She washed her own clothes, cooked her own food, cleaned her own rooms. Lived by the power in her own two hands, and she very much preferred it that way. The size of her new house resembled the dimensions of a ship's cabin, and Norrington suspected it was no accident.

An unexpected knock came at the door. "Enter," called Norrington, and was surprised to find one of the soldiers escorting a priest. "Sir, forgive my intrusion sir, but there's a man here I think you should speak with."

Curiosity piqued, Norrington waved them both farther into the room. "Yes?"

A small dark man entered, dressed in a black cassock. His hair was dark and cut short to the skull, two surprised streaks of silver glinting out of his raven hair. "I am Padre Sanchez, from Puerto Moreas," said the priest, stepping forward. He seemed normal enough, until on second inspection, Norrington noticed dried blood on his white collar. "I have made the journey here rather painstakingly, but I bear important news, that I'm afraid will not bode well."

IIIIIIIIIII

"You must forgive me for instinctually feeling some doubt," said Norrington, as the father finished his ghastly tale. "You tell a horrific story, and so strange. Fanged demons with the strength of twenty men?"

"You are forgiven, of course," said the padre, stirring sugar into a cup of tea. "Anyone would and should have such a reaction to my story. But do not just take me for my word, I implore you investigate the damages yourself. You wouldn't even need a map to find it, I'm afraid. The vultures circling above Puerto Moreas blacken the sky; a beacon of death seen from miles around."

"Everyone in the town, massacred?" questioned Elizabeth with alarm. "You are truly the only survivor?" the tale seemed farfetched, and yet Elizabeth knew what supernatural horrors, and miracles, were possible across the seven seas.

"Verdad," confirmed the Padre. There was a tremble in his hand as he picked up his cup. With a sigh, he set down the teacup and waited for the tremor to pass, crossing himself and saying a short prayer under his breath. "It seemed these things could not enter my church, could not set foot upon consecrated ground. I can still hear the screams from outside," he explained. "There was such complete silence, before they came. And also, when they left. Will you come, Commodore? Perhaps you can find some evidence to follow these brigands; this tragedy could befall Port Royal as easily as it did Puerto Moreas."

"I fear it's former Commodore," said James with a wince so slight only Elizabeth noticed it. "Why did you come here, to an English port?" he asked, instinctually suspicious of a Spaniard. Old grudges ran long.

"Frankly," said the Padre, "I know that a missive to Cuba would bring help too late. They would have to send to Spain for advice and it will take months before any authority would even think of lifting a finger. Sadly, this is the way of my country. But you, James Norrington, have a reputation as a man of action. I beseech you to help. This is not a Spanish problem or an English problem or a French problem—it is a human problem."

Solemnly, Norrington nodded. "I will come with my men," he agreed. "If you care to wait at the dock, I would request you come with us."

"Of course," agreed the Padre, standing. "Gracias, Commodore." he said. "And God bless you."

As soon as the Padre and marine left the room, Norrington turned to Elizabeth. Before she could even open her mouth to speak, he anticipated her. "Absolutely not. You will stay here."

She took his ultimatum more willingly than he expected. Nay, it was almost unnerving, how easily she accepted.

"As you wish, James. Safe journey." He raised his eyebrows, suspicious. He would be double checking the cargo hold before leaving.

Reaching out, he brushed her cheek with the tips of his fingers. Perhaps he did not fear death for himself anymore, but the thought of Elizabeth coming to any harm terrified him. She smiled that sorrowful curl of lips. She knew that look in his eyes, she'd seen it before. She made to retreat from the room before his urge to kiss her overcame cool English sensibilities, and he made a fool of himself.

Author's Note (again, sorry):

Yes, my darlin's, this is a vampire story. Or as my beloved husband teased me, "Are you writing vampirates again?" But fear not! I absolutely loathe Twilight with every bone in my body. Vampires are supposed to be spooky, not sparkle! My inspiration here was decidedly more old school. Long live Dracula, and Edward Cullen can suck a big fatty D... :P