Fic: Here, There, Or Elsewhere
Title: Here, There, Or Elsewhere
Author: breathless_dawn
Characters: W/E, J/E implied (will be J/E later on)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: For fun, not profit.
A/N: Drabble series set in an AU post-CotBP universe. Many thanks to the ever wonderful djarum99 for the beta :)
I
Jack is not surprised when she doesn’t return to the Pearl with the rest of the crew. She’d threatened to leave one too many times, and he thinks she had reached the final straw long ago. He can’t exactly place why she stayed so long, but he has an inkling, and if he is correct (as he usually is), he is almost glad of her leaving.
Almost.
He knows better than to go after her. Even if he did find her, she wouldn’t be swayed (she always was too stubborn for her own good) and he can only hope she finds a proper vessel and can go on her way to finding what he could not give her. As the Pearl leaves the harbour with the tides, he doffs his hat.
“Until we meet again, Ana.”
Ahead of them the horizon beckons. He doesn’t look back.
II
Elizabeth’s eyes are red with angry tears and her voice reduced to a splintering whisper after the argument is over. He knows he has lost, but he thinks he would have let her win in the end, anyway.
Their misadventure with the pirates has gone to her head, he thinks, (a certain Captain Jack Sparrow comes to mind) when she tells him she can’t stay here any longer. After arguing fruitlessly with her for nearly an hour he has accepted that there is no way around it. Will insists upon going on this journey of hers, knowing she will eventually tire of it and they will return home.
When she brings herself to look at him again he asks wearily, “Where?” and knows, whatever it may be, he will not like the answer.
III
Tortuga.
Sparrow had told her stories of the island in slurred words, on that little spit of land Barbossa had so graciously stranded them on, with his tongue loosened -- just a little-- by the influence of rum.
“Home to every sort of person you could imagine,” he had said, gesturing wildly, a rum bottle dangling from his fingertips. “Thieves’ and pirate’s paradise, Miss Swann. I don’t expect there’s another place quite like it.”
Will grimaces when she requests to go there and she is sure he will try to talk her out of it. But, he poses no other question other than to determine how they will get there.
“We can barter a passage,” she says, and Will looks at her with such an expression of surprise it makes her think Jack Sparrow would be proud.
IV
“Surprised to see me, Captain?”
He is, of course; he’d done a double take when he first passed her in the crowded street. It wouldn’t be the first time his mind had played tricks on him, inebriated or no. But this is no trick. Elizabeth Swann stands before him, chin raised and just as proud as ever by the look of her.
When he doesn’t answer she says, “I was hoping to find you here.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Were you? And why would a lady such as yourself venture all the way to Tortuga to seek out a scallywag like me?”
“I have a proposition for you,” she says formally, but the look in her eyes is all too familiar.
After considering her for a moment, he says, “And what would your dearly beloved think about this?”
She doesn’t answer, and he notices she won’t look him directly in the eye.
“Ah, you’ve not told him you’re here, then?” He grins and can’t help but think she would make a good pirate.
V
It is not long before Will realises that no matter how much Jack insists he looks like his father, that must be where the similarities end. Clearly, he is not cut out to be a sailor.
By the end of their second day his hands are sore and blistered, and by the end of the third they are bloodied and bandaged. Already, he is growing tired of the taste of hardtack and port and he had nearly jumped out of his skin when he tripped over the ship’s cat in the hold.
Elizabeth, on the second day, had completely given up on dresses and taken to wearing one of his shirts, at least two sizes too large for her slender figure, and a pair of breeches Jack had found. To top off her boyish appearance she had tied her hair back with a length of cord and jammed a hat awkwardly onto her head. And, though she looks a bit ridiculous with such mismatched clothes, he thinks she looks positively like a pirate.
She begins to taste faintly of salt and he tries not to think too longingly of home.
VI
They leave Africa with a hold filled to the brim with port, rum, and salt pork, even a net of melons Jack managed to steal just as another ship’s men unloaded them. She leaves with a new pair of boots, and an ivory handled dagger Jack handed to her after bartering with a man in a tongue she had never heard before.
As she steps on deck, she notices Will watching the country dissipate into endless blue behind them. She feels a pang of guilt.
He has become quieter in their month on the Pearl and his rare and fleeting smiles seem to make their appearances more often on land than sea. When they are alone in the small cabin they share, his mouth is desperate, and his hands work too quickly with the fastenings of her boy clothes.
She yields willingly to his touch but remembers the first time Jack’s lips had captured hers, seeming to promise the sea itself, anywhere the Pearl could take them. She remembers the spokes of the wheel pressed against her back, the heat that pooled wherever he touched. Will slept soundly just one deck down.
She wants to walk over to him, tell him - tell him something - but she finds she can’t make her feet move. Instead, she remains immobile, the sun dazzling her as it glints off the tips of the swells, thinking of apologies she would never offer him.
The title is from T.S. Eliot's East Coker