She goes straight from the dock to the tavern where they agreed to meet, dressed in men's clothing with a dirty hat pulled down low over her face. Will is nowhere to be seen, but she thinks she spots a few members of Jack's crew in the crowded barroom. Yes—there, at the back, is Anamaria, whose dark hair and wary eyes are unmistakable in any crowd. She's sitting alone, her back to a corner, with a few glasses of rum before her.

Elizabeth ducks her head as she makes her way back to the other woman. Anamaria looks at her, raising an eyebrow. She doesn't recognize her until Elizabeth lifts the brim of the hat; then her full lips curve at one corner.

"So the bonny lass is back," she says in a voice thick with drink and amusement.

Nerves fluttering in her stomach, Elizabeth twists her hands at her waist. "I'm looking for Will. Have you seen him?"

Anamaria studies her silently for a moment before jerking her head to the left. "Out the back entrance, I b'lieve."

"Thank you," says Elizabeth, fighting a ridiculous urge to curtsy. She can feel the woman's eyes on her as she turns to the door hanging half-off its hinges. It's less hostile than the stares of Barbossa's lot, but every bit as uncomfortable.

In the back alley, she can make out two figures in the darkness. Bitterness rises in her throat before she realizes that it's not Will pressing somebody against the wall, but Jack—Jack's narrow hips, his dark mane, his roving hands. She turns to go, but a soft, choked moan catches her ear. Jack slides his mouth down his partner's neck to reveal Will's tanned face. His eyes are tightly closed, his lips swollen and drifting apart as he tangles both hands in Jack's hair.

Mine, she thinks, or starts to think, because the word is gone from her mind when Jack drops to his knees before Will. Will, who throws his head back against the rough stone wall. Will, whose face twists in a complicated pattern of want-need-have. Will, who pushes into Jack's mouth and whispers the pirate's name in a broken, pleading tone. Will, who was never truly hers because she's never made his body jerk like that, never held dominion over him the way Jack is holding court in this gritty side street.

She gets dizzy when she stumbles back into the tavern, having to clutch the rickety doorframe to keep from falling over. She wants to vomit and scream and weep and hit things, but by the time the room stops spinning, all these base urges have passed. Now she just feels hollow, empty, her skin stretched tight like a drum.

Her eyes circle the room twice before settling on Anamaria, who is watching her steadily, and continues to do so as Elizabeth makes her way over.

"Sorry," says the pirate woman. There is sympathy in her dark eyes, but also discomfort and the fear that Elizabeth will go into hysterics right there.

She takes a long breath, counting to eight before she lets it out. "As am I."

Anamaria nudges a chair with a booted foot, apparently assured of her sanity. "Care t' drown your sorrows?"

"Yes, that sounds like the right course of action," says Elizabeth, the coolness of her voice surprising to her own ears. She sits beside the other woman, reaching for one of the glasses on the table. The rum burns on her first sip, just as she remembers, but slips easily past her tongue after that. She drains the glass, takes another, catches Anamaria's grin over the rim. The sight of Will and Jack gets hazier and hazier the more she drinks. Anamaria warms up enough to distract her with stories, many of them about the tavern's patrons. Before she even has time to mourn the loss of the future she's planned, Elizabeth is bent over the table and giggling until she can't breathe.

"A tattoo there? Really?"

Anamaria nods gravely. "A heart shaped outta blue roses. Seen it m'self."

Elizabeth covers her hand with her mouth, coughing a little from the last swallow of rum. She manages to knock her nearly full glass on its end, but luckily Anamaria's reflexes are somewhat sharper at the moment and she catches it, leaning forward from where she's been sprawled against the wall. Her sleeve hitches up her wrist, where a black leather cord is wrapped several times around. Elizabeth tilts her head nearly level with the tabletop as she peers at the little white shell on the cord.

"What's this?" She pokes a finger at it, making it flip over. The top side was smooth and shiny, while the underside looks like somebody tried to split it in two.

"Cowrie shell," says Anamaria, lifting her hand to let Elizabeth have a better look. "Gift from an old... somebody." Elizabeth raises her eyebrows, but Anamaria merely smiles slowly in her refusal to elaborate, so she goes back to studying the cowrie shell.

She runs her thumb down the seam in the middle, feeling the little ridges bump and recede against her skin. "It's nice," she says, voice slightly doubtful. There are prettier things to make jewelry out of, brighter colors and more elaborate designs.

"It's cheap as hell," says Anamaria flatly. "The important thing's that it's shaped like a woman's body."

Elizabeth frowns at her. "Doesn't look very much like a woman to me."

Humor dances in Anamaria's eyes—humor, and something darker that Elizabeth can't decipher. Perhaps because she's drunk, perhaps because she's too high-born a lady, perhaps because Anamaria's hand is pressing against her belly, over her shirt.

"What—" she begins, but a sharp look shushes her. Her eyes widen as the hand dips into her waistband, under her thin cotton drawers. Fingers as callused as a man's but much smaller sift through the curls between her legs. Elizabeth has been sitting comfortable and loose, but now she brings her thighs together. The contraction of her own muscles is a sweet pressure that makes her gasp.

She realizes she is clutching the shell between thumb and forefinger, so tightly it's leaving tiny imprints. Anamaria catches her hand when she tries to release it. The curtain of her hair falls as she leans forward, obscuring her face and the way she licks her lips from anyone but Elizabeth.

"Don't you want me t' show you?" Anamaria's voice creeps into her ears, smooth like the back of the shell in her palm and rough-edged like the flat side.

Elizabeth looks out into the tavern, her cheeks going pink. It's one thing for Will to have his sordid little tryst in an alley, but—

"No one's payin' us any mind," Anamaria whispers. Her breath is hot against Elizabeth's neck, her fingertips splayed along the trembling muscles of Elizabeth's thighs. Staring down at the cowrie shell, she lets them slide apart.

"See... the cleft here..." One long stroke down, left of center, along a crease of soft flesh. Up the other side, and now it's soft moist flesh, and Elizabeth suddenly understands. She runs her thumb lightly over one serrated edge. Anamaria repeats the motion, this time separating her fingers so she can push the folds apart.

Heart hammering within her ribs, Elizabeth bites back a whimper. Her nails are too short to fit far into the hollow of the shell, but Anamaria seems to get the idea. With a short chuckle, she presses one finger up and in, spreading Elizabeth wide with the others.

Her head slumps onto the other woman's shoulder. The air in the room grows heavier, damper, harder to inhale. Anamaria pushes a second finger into her, sliding deep and then pulling both out again to rub wet circles.

"Turn it over." Her lips press against Elizabeth's brow and her fingers plunge back in, and this time Elizabeth can't quite keep from making a sound. It fades away into the din of drunken men and women. She can't make her body obey, so Anamaria turns the shell over for her. The other side isn't purely white, Elizabeth realizes; the shell is thinner here, so she can see the darker interior.

Anamaria slides one thumb over the pearly swell while her other thumb furrows up between Elizabeth's clenched thighs. It presses down, hard, where Elizabeth thinks there must be strings anchored to run outward in all directions, because her entire body goes into a spasm. The cowrie shell wobbles at Anamaria's wrist as she pulls that hand up to cup Elizabeth's breast, the heel of her hand rasping coarse linen over a peaked nipple.

She twists herself beneath the hands, beneath the body that is now mostly shielding her from view, and she buries her cries in Anamaria's neck.

"That's it, pretty little one," the other woman breathes as she moves her hand faster. "Come for me 'stead of your straying man. He don't know how t' care for you proper, anyway."

Elizabeth tries to recall how it hurt to see Will with another, but it seems like someone else's memory she only heard about. And then Anamaria is crooking her thumb, twisting her knobby fingers, and Elizabeth grips the edge of the table as she pushes down. Pleasure glows beneath her skin, rippling outward till she is bucking in Anamaria's grasp, biting down on salty-smoky flesh. She finds Anamaria's hand at her waist and grinds the cowrie shell into her wristbone.

When Will comes into the tavern through the back door, his walk has just the hint of a limp. Jack follows him like a shadow, one hand hovering at the small of his back. They stand and scour the room for Elizabeth. It is Jack who notices her first; he taps the boy on the shoulder and nods to the darkened corner where they left Anamaria.

His mouth drops as surely as the hand that had been self-consciously fingering the darkening marks at the edge of his collar, too shocked to even notice Jack's arm slipping possessively around him.

Elizabeth glances up from where she is tipping rum down Anamaria's throat. Her eyes are bright and none too clear.

"You gentlemen are dreadfully late," she manages to gasp out, through a fit of laughter as Anamaria murmurs ticklishly into her ear. She pulls the girl onto her lap. Elizabeth snuggles in her arms and waves the two men toward the empty chair, cowrie shell dangling from her wrist.