At World's Beginning

Change of Course

James exhaled in relief when Turner and Barbossa left the captain's quarters. It would be difficult enough to explain to Ona what had happened without an audience, especially an audience of that sort.

His next breath, however, caught in his throat when he looked down and found her staring straight up at him with her piercing blue gaze. James hadn't realized how much he had missed her intense presence until that moment. But she gave him an odd look, as if she was searching for something in his appearance, and then she reached upward, grabbed the neckline of his shirt, and proceeded to try and rip it open.

James nearly choked on his own shock.

"The curse! It's gone!" she exclaimed in wonderment, feeling along his collarbone and neck with her fingers. Fingers which had warmed considerably from their chilled state, and which now seemed to set his skin ablaze.

"Yes, yes it is," James responded hastily, feeling his cheeks flush. He carefully took her wrists in his hands so she would stop running her hands all over him. It was incredibly distracting. "The crewmen of the Dutchman apparently need not be monsters. They just became that way under Jones' captaincy. They needn't be held in servitude, either. Turner said only those who wish to serve may stay, and every man aboard is here because they wish to be."

Ona slowly lowered her hands and dropped them at her side, but she still looked up at him curiously.

"Then why are you still here?"

Her question, simple on the surface, left James mired in a bog of complexities.

"Well..." He cleared his throat and tried to find the correct words he wished to say. "Though Barbossa lacks any semblance of tact and decorum, he was right about what Jones had... had done to you. Do you remember?"

Ona looked down and ran her fingers across the stained tear in her dress. The gesture created an ache in his chest, directly where his heart was.

"I remember. And I remember how I failed to kill him," she said, her words sharp with bitterness. It hurt James to hear; he placed his hands back on her shoulders, delicately, as if he believed she would fall to pieces under their weight. It was amusing to think, considering how he had no doubt she was one of the strongest individuals he knew.

"You're here. You're alive. Jones isn't. I would say that's a victory, wouldn't you?"

She raised her head and met his eye, his expression searching and almost vulnerable.

"Tell me what happened after."

So James recounted the battle, how Sparrow saved Turner's life by using his hand, holding the knife, to stab the heart. He recalled how the Dutchman and the Pearl worked in tandem to decimate Beckett's flagship, and how the Royal Navy had fled afterwards after having decided facing the entire pirate fleet was not worth the effort.

How strange it was for James to see the nation he had given most of his life to as the villain in this story.

"And then Turner called upon Calypso to save you, and she did so, healing the wound Jones had inflicted upon you."

Ona's expression was quite different than he would have expected. It was grim rather than relieved or hopeful.

"What did she ask in return?"

James felt like a fish flopping on a sandy shore, unable to find his way back into safe waters.

"How do you know she did?" he asked, evasive.

"Gods do not grant boons for free," was all she would say on the matter. James gave a sigh and rubbed his forehead, hoping to relieve the tension there.