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“They normally look all scrunched up like that, then?” Jack asks, peering warily at the still-somewhat pruny bundle in Elizabeth’s arms.
Elizabeth laughs, tired but delighted. “Yes, Jack. Don’t worry, our darling girl will smooth out and look just like you think a baby should.”
Jack blinks. “What’s this ‘our’ business, luv?”
Will coughs to cover a laugh.
“How long do you think a woman carries a child, Jack?” Elizabeth asks.
Jack opens his mouth, closes it, then waves his hands vaguely and shrugs.
“Nine months, Jack,” Elizabeth tells him.
Jack blinks.
Will smirks. “She hasn’t seen me in almost eleven months, Jack.”
Jack blinks again.
“She’s yours, Jack,” Elizabeth says, far less amused and more gentle - gentle in a way she only is with Will, Jack, and her children.
Jack freezes, flails, then flees.
“He’ll be back,” Will reassures, settling next to her and brushing a gentle hand over the babe’s dark hair.
Elizabeth leans into him. “I know. He’ll be very drunk.”
Will chuckles. “Most likely.” He brushes a finger down the babe’s cheek. “What are you going to call her?”
Elizabeth sighs. “I had hoped for Jack to have some input, but, what do you think of Marella? It’s Latin. Means ‘star of the sea’.”
Will smiles. “You are such a pirate I sometimes forget you were educated as a nobleman’s daughter.”
Elizabeth smirks.
“Marella… What about Marella Pearl?”
Elizabeth’s laugh rings through her cabin and she leans up to kiss his cheek. “Perfect.”
The door squeaks and Henry’s little head pokes in.
Elizabeth’s smile grows. “Come meet your sister, darling.”
Jack stumbles in several hours later, reeking of rum, and sprawls unceremoniously across the foot of Elizabeth’s bed.
Elizabeth kicks him none-too-gently.
Jack sits up with a grunt.
Will deftly snags the rum bottle from his hands as Elizabeth leans forward and deposits the sleeping baby into his arms.
Jack’s arms shake a bit, but he holds the girl steady.
Elizabeth leans into his side. “We named her Marella Pearl.”
“Marella Pearl Turner, I suppose,” Jack mumbles.
“Marella Pearl Sparrow,” Elizabeth corrects.
Jack looks up at her sharply.
Elizabeth shakes her head with a fond exasperation. “I am not ashamed of you, Jack Sparrow. And my daughter will know her father.”
“The whelp’s a far better option.”
Elizabeth rolls her eyes. “Marella is as much Will’s as yours. Just as Henry is as much yours as Will’s. Not a single one of us could do any of this without the other two, Jack.”
“Bloody mad you are,” Jack accuses.
Elizabeth shrugs unrepentantly.
Will winces.
Elizabeth smiles, a small, bittersweet thing. “You have to go.”
Will nods and steps away to brush a kiss across Henry’s curls, where the boy is curled up in his hammock at the end of Elizabeth’s bed before stepping back and gently kissing Marella’s cheek, then lifting his face to kiss Jack once, briefly, before finally kissing Elizabeth, gentle and lingering, before fading out of sight.
“Really not fair he jus’ gets to pop o-”
“Don’t finish that thought,” Elizabeth warns.
Jack shrugs, then kicks his boots off and carefully maneuvers himself up to settle against the pillows at the top of the bed with Marella tucked against his chest.
Elizabeth rolls into his side and kisses his neck. “You’re a natural.”
“You forced me to learn with the whelp’s whelp,” Jack counters.
“Mmm,” Elizabeth hums sleepily into his shoulder.
5 Years Later
“Do you enjoy being a scandal?” James asks, incredulously eyeing the sparrow and anvil tattoo visible over her heart, above a dangerously low neckline.
Elizabeth grins. “You really ought to know the answer to that by now, James.”
James tilts his gaze up toward Marella, fearlessly dangling off a rope hanging from the main mast of Elizabeth’s ship. “I do. Even after all these years, though, I still wonder why.”
Elizabeth’s expression turns thoughtful as she watches Henry scramble up the mast to chase his sister. “I always wanted to be more. More than a pretty face, more than the governor’s daughter, more than some officer’s wife, more than a womb… more than what society expected of me.”
James chuckles. “And now you’re the King of the Brethren Court.”
Elizabeth inclines her head with a small grin. “And now I’m King of the Brethren Court.”
“And you’re the wife of the immortal ferryman.”
Elizabeth hums happily.
“And the… actually I don’t know what to call your relationship with Sparrow other than disgusting.”
Elizabeth laughs brightly. “We call him our lover.”
James grimaces.
Elizabeth shakes her head. “I despair that you will never get along.”
“I’m afraid not, my dear.”
“Catch me, James!” Marella calls mere seconds before swinging low and letting go of the rope, soaring right into James’ waiting arms.
James rolls his eyes, but smiles fondly at the girl in his arms. “I can appreciate the good things he’s done, though.”
Elizabeth tilts her head. “Your objections are to him , though, not some sort of misplaced morality, right?”
James turns his fond smile on her and shakes his head. “I learned long ago that you will do what, and apparently who, pleases you.”
Elizabeth gasps. “Did you just-”
James shrugs, the hand not holding Marella securely to his side drifting over his shirt to brush against the scar on his chest. “Near death experiences tend to put things in perspective, I suppose. Spending life so uptight…”
Elizabeth leans gently against his side, resting her head on his shoulder. “I like this version of you.”
James pulls his hand away from his chest to wrap his arm around her shoulders. “Turner is a good man. I will never understand what either of you see in Jack Sparrow, but as long as you are happy…”
“We are.”
“Then I cannot object.”
“Do you know what would make me even happier?”
James sighs. “I’m already packed.”
Elizabeth pulls away from him, clapping and bouncing. “You’re really coming with me this time?”
James jostles Marella gently. “Someone has to teach your children not to be complete and utter heathens.”
Elizabeth gasps and clutches her chest dramatically. “Gods forbid!”
Ten Years Later
Will laughs delightedly as his sword goes clattering to the deck. “Wonderful! Your brother was three years older than you the first time he was able to disarm me.”
Marella spins her blade smugly. “James has been teaching me.”
“He always was a good swordsman,” Will smiles.
Marella frowns. “I still can’t beat Papa.”
Will snorts. “That’s because Jack is an unpredictable, incurable cheat.”
Marella shrugs. “I learn from that too.”
“All souls accounted for, Cap’n,” one of Will’s crew calls.
Will nods in acknowledgement, even as he pulls Marella into his arms. “Tell your mother to stop killing sailors just to see me?”
Marella squeezes him around the middle and laughs. “Tell her yourself.”
He brushes a kiss across her temple. “I love you.”
“Love you too, Dad.”
Marella swings back to her mother’s ship, smiling at James when he’s waiting to hand her down from the railing to the deck. “Did you see?”
James smiles back at her. “You did well.”
Marella bounces, adrenaline still thrumming. “Really?”
James nods. “Turner is a formidable swordsman. To unsword him at fifteen…”
Marella beams, then turns to watch her parents bid each other farewell. Despite the fact that the Dutchman needs to dive, Elizabeth, Jack, and Will are wrapped in a loose, unhurried embrace.
“Disgusting, aren’t they?” Henry asks, throwing an arm over her shoulders.
Marella elbows him none too gently. “I don’t know how they do it.”
“What do you mean?” Henry asks more gently.
Marella frowns. “If I loved someone the way they love each other… I would want them with me all the time.”
Four Years Later
Marella frowns at the crowded boardwalk along the docks of the coastal French town Chevalle has called home since his retirement.
“Most people like France, you know,” Jack tells her.
Marella scowls back. “Most people don’t have to babysit you while they’re in France.”
Jack clutches at his heart. “Oi! The disrespect. You see this?” He asks a passing crewman, waving in her direction. “Fruit of me loins and still no respect.”
The crewman keeps moving down the deck, shamelessly ignoring Jack.
“No respect from anyone,” Jack mutters.
Marella sighs. “Can we just get this over with?”
“‘Course the bloody git couldn’t have named a successor,” Jack grumbles, descending the gangplank.
Marella scoffs. “Pot, kettle, Papa.”
“What?”
“They had to go to the bloody Locker because you didn’t name a successor,” Marella reminds him. “You can survive France. Besides, a few minutes ago, you wanted to be in France.”
“Thought you’d like France.”
Marella rolls her eyes. “I would’ve rather gone to Singapore with James.”
Jack smirks. “Still have that little infatuation with the commodore, then?”
Marella shoves him off the dock.
One Year Later
For being raised a pirate, Marella was incredibly sheltered. Objectively, she knows people get older. Chevalle had been on his deathbed when Marella and Jack found him in France a year ago, and if her parents’ stories were anything to go by, he was still in fighting shape twenty years ago.
“We’re different, aren’t we?” Marella asks, sitting next to her grandfather, looking out over the Brethren Court.
“How’s that, little one?” Teague asks.
Marella nods. “The last Brethren Court was what, twenty five years ago, right?”
Teague nods.
“I know pirates don’t have particularly long lifespans anyway, but almost everyone here… none of them were here for the last meeting of the Brethren Court. They’re all successors. Everyone except Mama and Papa. And Mama and I could pass for sisters these days. Our crews, our families… we’re different.”
Teague smirks. “Aye, lass. We didn’t figure it out until ten or fifteen years ago, but King Lizzie there, and Jackie Boy, and everyone surrounding them - their crew and family - they ain’t aging. And they’re bloody hard to kill besides. We’ve all brushed elbows with enough of the inexplicable - the gods, the supernatural, whatever you want to call it - that we’re not sure which event or encounter caused it, but we seem to be in this game of life rather indefinitely.”
Marella tilts her head. “James too?”
Teague smirks - an expression Jack and Marella both inherited. “Aye, your commodore too. Jackie boy was right about your infatuation with him, then?”
Marella scowls. “It’s not an infatuation. And I’m pretty sure I should be put out over my father and grandfather talking about my unrequited love life without me.”
“Would you rather us talk about it with you, little one?”
“I’d rather not anyone talk about it with anyone,” Marella mutters petulantly.
Teague rolls his eyes. “Your family is a nosy bunch, little one. No such luck. And what makes you think it’s unrequited?”
Marella scowls. “He still thinks of me as a child.”
Teague’s smirk returns, but it’s gentler. “We’ve just established that none of us are going anywhere anytime soon. Give him another decade or so to realize he’s allowed to love you as something other than a child, little one.”
***
James nods across the room with a frown. “Who’s Marella talking to?”
Elizabeth glances up, then shrugs. “He’s a corsair. Ammand’s successor. I can’t remember his name.”
“He’s acting awfully familiar.”
Elizabeth rolls her eyes. “She’s not a child anymore, James. If his attention is unwelcome, she is more than capable of ridding herself of it.”
***
“You want to wage war on the East India Trading Company?” Madame Ching’s granddaughter asks incredulously.
Elizabeth shrugs. “I’ve done it before. And I won. I intend to again.”
“Why?” One of the corsairs asks.
“Because they threaten our way of life,” Elizabeth says. “We weakened them last time. And we should have struck then. They have regained too much power. They think the seas are theirs.”
“A ship is supposed to mean freedom,” Jack chimes in. “And there is no freedom in looking over our shoulders for the East India Trading Company for the rest of our days.”
***
James is intimately familiar with the functioning of the British Navy and the East India Trading Company, and Marella has read every book ever left within her reach. Between the two of them, they know every strategy either group might attempt. And - despite Cutler Beckett’s defeat - none of those strategies account for the notion of pirates banding together.
James and Marella spend long nights and longer days in Shipwreck Cover poring over maps, tide charts, and war strategies.
“This is insane,” James declares at one point.
“Utterly,” Marella agrees happily.
“You sound far too happy about that.”
Marella shrugs. “I was bound to have a few screws loose with my parents.”
James snorts. “Lucky it wasn’t more than a few.”
“Oi!”
James looks up at her and smiles. “I wouldn’t have you any other way, you know.”
Marella blushes.
James reaches across the table and squeezes her hand. “You’re a remarkable young woman.”
“I-”
“Oi!” Jack’s voice comes from the doorway.
James draws his hand away.
Marella glares at her father. “What?”
Jack drops a heavy book on the table in front of her. “Teague found it. Still think you’re bloody well mad for trying to strike a deal with Calypso.”
Marella opens the book. “It’s the only way this works.”
Jack waves noncommittal on his way back out the door.
“What if it doesn’t work?” James asks.
Marella’s eyes scan the summoning and binding spell she needs. “Then the seas won’t be long worth sailing.”
When all is said and done, Calypso accepts the deal - the collective Turners and Sparrows bind themselves to the sea goddess in exchange for her favor - and the East India Trading Company falls to the canons of the pirate armada. In the aftermath, James slips away quietly.
One Hundred Years Later
James is working a fishing vessel, the first time in decades he’s allowed himself to take to the sea, when the worst storm of the decade hits. Completely unexpectedly.
“We need to make landfall!” James calls to the captain.
The captain shakes his head. “Do you know what day it is, lad?”
Before James can shake his head, a green flash shoots through the sky over the storm.
The captain seizes the wheel. “We don’t interfere with the old gods, lad. And their island is the only landfall near.”
James closes his eyes. This storm won’t kill him. But he’s sailed with these people for almost ten years, and he likes them, despite himself. She’s waiting for you , Calypso’s laughing voice drifts through his mind. When he opens his eyes, he can sense a safe path through the waters with such clarity he might as well be seeing it.
James lays his hand over the captain’s on the wheel. “Do you trust me, Pierre?”
The captain looks at him for a long moment, then nods and relinquishes the wheel to James before he crouches against the railing and prays. James silently guides the vessel through the waves until it drifts, impossibly gently for the storm they’re sailing through, onto the sands of what locals have long referred to as the gods’ island. James drops the anchor into the sand at the bow, assuring the waves won’t pull the vessel back out into the storm, then hangs his head and closes his eyes. He can feel her gaze on him.
“They’re lookin’ at you, Jay,” Pierre says, fear clear in his voice.
James opens his eyes and tries to smile at the old fisherman, but it flits across his face as more of a grimace. “I’m certain they are.”
The drop from the railing to the sand is too far, but James leaps, landing in a crouch, brushing the sand off his pants as he stands. Finally, he raises his face.
Marella is less than twenty feet away, marching toward him with hell in her eyes, dark hair whipping in the wind behind her, held from eyes only by a threadbare bandana. She’s in knee-high boots over tight canvas breeches and a dark button up shirt, stuck to her skin in the rain.
When she reaches him, she holds a dagger to his throat.
Above him, he hears Pierre’s prayers increase in fervor.
“Choose your next words wisely, James, for they may be your last,” Marella warns.
James looks down into her eyes - dark, but flecked through with gold - and smiles. “Even in the heart of a storm, you’re still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Marella’s jaw - and dagger - drop.
James reaches out and cups her jaw, gently running his thumb over her lower lip. “I thought leaving would rid my heart of the love it had grown for you. But time and distance only made me fonder.”
Marella’s eyes flash - a barely there warning - before she drops her dagger into the sand and punches him square in the nose. “It took you a bloody century to figure that out?!” She grabs him by the front of the shirt before he can respond, and uses the grip to haul him against her, coming up on her toes to press his mouth to his.
James wraps one arm around her waist and tangles his free hand into her hair, instinctively meeting her fervor.
“I’ll find a way to kill you if you ever leave me like that again,” she vows against his lips when they draw apart for air.
“I would expect nothing less.”