PotC - Spirits Lost
Title: Spirits Lost
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Disney's. I don't own it. No infringement is intended and no profit is made.
Summary: Shipwreck City has its ghosts. Written for The Twelve Days of Christmas over at blackpearlsails.
Author's note: Set at some point after AWE. Thanks as always to geekmama for beta reading.
Spirits Lost
by Hereswith
There were places in the depths of Shipwreck City where the wind could not reach. Where the wind did reach, against all reason and sanity, it keened through the cracks, and the boards, worn with age as well as years of use, strained and creaked the way they might have when they were whole instead of broken, part of some grand vessel with full-bellied sails.
“’Tis the ships’ spirits,” Jack told her when she asked him, no hint of teasing in his face, his hands taking a moment to still, as though motion was the more natural state. “Wrecks, love, that’s what they are. Trapped away from the sea, now, but they dream of her yet, fickle and splendiferous.” He leaned close, speaking low, but his voice stole her attention, even so, drowning out the sound of the Christmas revels. “If you take the wrong turn at the right time, they say, or mayhap it’s the right turn at the entirely wrong time, you’re good and lost.”
She eyed him, suspicious as ever, taking few of his statements for granted or truth. “Jack, surely that is no more than drunken flights of fancy?”
He shrugged. “Was this captain, Shaw by name, back when I was a lad. He went down one of those same narrow alleyways, his crew swore on’t, but he didn’t come out.” He slipped a hand onto her knee, under the table and out of sight. “Never did find his body.”
She shivered, but said, “You’re making that up.”
He grinned, then. “You asked.”
She tensed at the shift of his fingers, the slow slide of his palm. “And you thought to seduce me with tall tales?”
“Am I?” he said, his gaze wide and bright, but not innocent, never that. “Seducing you?”
She did not answer him in words, but in deed, long after the banquet had run its course. But when she rose to stand by the window, in the dead and dark of the night, aware that he was watching, she questioned him again, “Did you lie?”
“Only a little,” he said, padding up to her. “There are ghosts enough here, if you look. Teague knows the old stories better’n anyone.”
Staring at the spectral landscape of masts and odd, impossible structures, she could believe him. “He filled your head with them, I imagine?”
“Fit to bursting,” he agreed. “Scarred me for life, that did.” He paused dramatically. “Might need a woman’s touch.”
She raised her brows. “Any woman?”
He seemed pensive, as though he gave it serious consideration, finally allowing, “A queen would do, or a King. As it were.”
She swatted at him, but not too hard. The kiss that followed would bruise him more.
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Disney's. I don't own it. No infringement is intended and no profit is made.
Summary: Shipwreck City has its ghosts. Written for The Twelve Days of Christmas over at blackpearlsails.
Author's note: Set at some point after AWE. Thanks as always to geekmama for beta reading.
Spirits Lost
by Hereswith
There were places in the depths of Shipwreck City where the wind could not reach. Where the wind did reach, against all reason and sanity, it keened through the cracks, and the boards, worn with age as well as years of use, strained and creaked the way they might have when they were whole instead of broken, part of some grand vessel with full-bellied sails.
“’Tis the ships’ spirits,” Jack told her when she asked him, no hint of teasing in his face, his hands taking a moment to still, as though motion was the more natural state. “Wrecks, love, that’s what they are. Trapped away from the sea, now, but they dream of her yet, fickle and splendiferous.” He leaned close, speaking low, but his voice stole her attention, even so, drowning out the sound of the Christmas revels. “If you take the wrong turn at the right time, they say, or mayhap it’s the right turn at the entirely wrong time, you’re good and lost.”
She eyed him, suspicious as ever, taking few of his statements for granted or truth. “Jack, surely that is no more than drunken flights of fancy?”
He shrugged. “Was this captain, Shaw by name, back when I was a lad. He went down one of those same narrow alleyways, his crew swore on’t, but he didn’t come out.” He slipped a hand onto her knee, under the table and out of sight. “Never did find his body.”
She shivered, but said, “You’re making that up.”
He grinned, then. “You asked.”
She tensed at the shift of his fingers, the slow slide of his palm. “And you thought to seduce me with tall tales?”
“Am I?” he said, his gaze wide and bright, but not innocent, never that. “Seducing you?”
She did not answer him in words, but in deed, long after the banquet had run its course. But when she rose to stand by the window, in the dead and dark of the night, aware that he was watching, she questioned him again, “Did you lie?”
“Only a little,” he said, padding up to her. “There are ghosts enough here, if you look. Teague knows the old stories better’n anyone.”
Staring at the spectral landscape of masts and odd, impossible structures, she could believe him. “He filled your head with them, I imagine?”
“Fit to bursting,” he agreed. “Scarred me for life, that did.” He paused dramatically. “Might need a woman’s touch.”
She raised her brows. “Any woman?”
He seemed pensive, as though he gave it serious consideration, finally allowing, “A queen would do, or a King. As it were.”
She swatted at him, but not too hard. The kiss that followed would bruise him more.