"Bridget, don't be going down there alone. You ain't got no business in those parts."

" 'leen, you worry too much. I'm a grown woman, can do as I please." The younger of the twin's stormed out of the cabin, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the window's.

Watching her walk through the woods, Ileen stood there, the hair rising on the back of her neck.

Two day's passed, the older didn't return to the cabin. It seemed as though all they did was bicker the last month. It was unnerving as that was something the sister's had never done before.

What neither of them knew, was the cabin stayed empty as Bridget also didn't come home, opting to stay upstairs at the Rogue's Heart.

Winter was upon them, Yule was right around the corner. Ileen's engagement party already planned and the wedding date set. All seemed to be in order. Flicker.

Waking with a start, Ileen gasped loudly.

Sweaty and disoriented.

A hand assuring Jack was still asleep next to her, she then glanced over at him a moment and slid to the edge of the bed.

The portal window proving it was in fact morning, Ileen sat there and ran a shaking hand through her hair. She hadn't dreamt in so long, doing so now, positively unsettled her.

Rising on bare feet, touch met the pendant dangling from her neck. Brow's furrowing, her mind was so cloudy. She felt as if she was moving through a haze.

A clean pair of breeks in her grasp, she left the quarter's and went to take a bath. Perhaps a cold one to wake her fully.

"Dammit, don't start again...not now."

At times, Ileen was her own worst enemy. The last few months having left her emotionally vulnerable, it was not so much harbored and shut away as had been the normal for so very long. The matter of her twin reconciled, with the aid of Jack, it had not been an easy task and it was bound to creep up now and again.

Not so much the Jack Rabbit, flitting here and there, her mind had finally begun to slow and perhaps that was the reason it had started again. The wanderlust of yester, rarely ventured and embraced. Or had she replaced one lifelong addiction with another?

Knees pulled to her chest and in her own little world, Ileen nearly jumped from her skin at his sudden presence and a green eyed gaze darted up to the Captain.

"Aye. Just thinking too much, I guess..damned dreams." The roguish grin failing to appear, she looked away to the hot water she was sitting in.

When he spoke, Ileen looked back up to him and the tracings of her smile began to dawn. For a flicker flash of a moment, Ileen saw what Jack had looked like as small boy and the matter of the returning dreams, fluttered away.

It was a perverse understatement to say he had become her solid.

Captain Jack Morgan. The notorious Pirate. Scathing to a fault. Untouchable to an extreme. Viewed as the epitome of dishonesty and cruelty. A Pirate. Her Pirate. The one and only living entity she would crawl on her hands and knees through hell for. Public opinion mattering little, he was honest and honorable to a fault.

Who cared what was seen by sight alone. It simply proved ignorance was bred in each race, not just of the human kind. She often wondered if it was realized at anytime besides near death, all of the blind hatred that had stifled those that were so full of their own self preservation.

All of the humility.

Their own lack of honor by definition.

She seriously doubted it. What did it matter really? Not a thing.

Lest one was to consider the hidden pain and humiliation that was handed out without recourse.

He knew Ileen inside and out. He embraced every inch and every nuance of her, good and bad. Horrid and joyful. Her past. Her demons. Her guilt.

She knew him in the same regard. Everything for a reason. A positive outcome, even if that wasn't known until year's later.

Love.

Commitment.

Passion.

The Future.

They were bare to one another. The layers of them in broad display, to only each other's eyes.

So why, did she always think she was undeserving of him?

Bridget, if alive, would be ripping her from limb to limb. She would be screaming at Ileen, to bring her head out of her clouds and realize she was being given a second chance. A second chance she in death and Jack's parent's in death, revealed to them.

Notorious for the intentional sabotage of anything good that came into her life, Ileen was still staring at Jack as she rose from the bath-water and spiked him a grin.

"You couldn't leave me be, if you tried...after all, you are my knave, sot, blasphemous, fop, brightly feathered, taunting, love....are you not?" A clean towel wrapped around her, she scooted by him to get dressed.

Sabotage....never again.