Wings of a Sparrow

Truth?

Thick, white foam pounded the sand and washed back. Cora, with Jack's arm around her shoulder, dragged the two of them onto the white powder and out of reach of the rushing waves. They both flopped onto their backs, panting heavily. Jack raised his head off the sand and gazed out to the sea. The Black Pearl, under full sail, but listing badly to one side, moved away. Cora looked over to him and muttered, "Gods... I'm so sorry, Jack."

Jack hung his head and rasped, "That's the second time I've had to watch that man sail away with my ship."

{~~~}

Cora walked along the surf line, leaving a set of footprints behind her. She made her way across the beach... and met up with her own footprints going away.

"It's really not all that big, is it?"

She jumped and turned up towards the treeline. Jack sat, reclined under a palm tree. His pistol was in parts drying on his scarf as he finished re-wrapping his wounds. He started to reassemble his pistol when Cora scoffed. " If you're going to shoot me, please do so without delay. I'd rather be shot than starve."

Jack slipped on his shirt and looked up at her. "Is there a problem between us, Miss Swann?" 

"You were going to tell Barbossa about Will in exchange for a ship!"

"We could use a ship, now couldn't we?" Jack snarled. He stumbled to his feet and gasped in pain, leaning with his back against the tree and a hand on his rib cage. "The fact is, I was going to NOT tell Barbossa about bloody Will in exchange for a ship, because as long as he didn't know about bloody Will, I had something to bargain with – which now no one has, thanks to stupid bloody Will!" He bellowed.

Cora gulped and looked down at her feet. "Oh."

Jack scoffed. "Oh." Pistol reassembled, Jack limped inland, Cora following behind. "His life was still risked to save ours-"

"Ha! Unwillingly, thanks to bloody, stupid you!"

"-so we have to do something to rescue him!" 

Jack whipped around and waved his hands at her. "Off you go then! Let me know how that turns out." He turned his back on her and headed toward a clump of trees.

Cora scowled and followed him again. "But you were marooned on this island before, weren't you? So we can escape in the same way you did then!"

Jack whirled around to face her, standing almost nose to nose. "To what point and purpose, young missy?" He shouted. "The Black Pearl is gone. And unless you have a rudder and a lot of sails hidden in that bodice..." He studied her up and down, making her take a step back. "Possibly... young Mr. Turner will be dead long before you can reach him." Jack turned, knocked on a tree (it made a strange hollow sound) and began taking large steps across the dirt. 

"But you're Captain Jack Sparrow!" Cora stepped in front of him, stopping his steps. "You vanished from under the eyes of seven agents of the East India Company! You sacked Nassau port without even firing a shot! Are you the pirate I've read about or not?"

Jack walked around her and stopped at a sandy spot in the ground. He jumped up and down a couple of times, satisfied he was at the right spot.

"Jack..." Cora looked down at the ground. "Please. I can't just sit here and wait for him to die." She walked back to his front and locked on him eye to eye. "How did you escape last time?"

He sighed and muttered, "Last time... I was here a grand total of three days, all right? Last time..." Jack bent down and heaved a hidden trap door up and over, revealing a pit. Inside were barrels and bottles of rum... all covered with dust and cobwebs, long abandoned. "...the rum runners who used this island as a cache came by, and I was able to barter passage off." He jumped into the pit and started rummaging through the stash. "From the looks of things, they've long been out of business. Probably have your bloody friend Norrington to thank for that." He climbed out of the pit with a bottle in each hand and limped past Cora towards the beach.