Sleeping With Ghost Pirates, for the mistaken identity challenge
“Oh, James, what has the world done to you?”
This is surely a hallucination, but the best possible sort. He has hallucinated her many times before now and in many painful situations, but generally she is with Turner and she is taunting him, not soothing him. His dreams are never this vivid, this real, this forgiving. It is remarkable that she does not know. She truly seems not to. What has the world done to him? What has she done to him would be a better question. The answer, of course, would be nothing he wanted and everything he didn’t. What has he not done, for that matter, in pursuit of her, and all of it come to nothing. What has the world done to him?
“Nothing I didn’t deserve,” he tells the dream (strange dream, though, for her to be dressed as a pirate, when it’s a fate he’s always wanted her to avoid) and droops back into the muck.
It is only after he is aboard the Pearl and several buckets of water have been sloshed into his face and he has emptied the contents of his stomach overboard and Jack Sparrow has told him he smells funny that he is vaguely aware he is not dreaming, more’s the pity. He devoutly wishes he was still with the pigs. They were company he could understand.
James could not pinpoint, precisely, the moment at which this godforsaken voyage and ship and crew and all of it became, to a minuscule degree, better. He suspects it has something to do with the positioning of Elizabeth’s hammock in close proximity to his. So she isn’t sleeping with Sparrow yet, then. She stays with the crew, unperturbed by the fact that they were once ghost pirates who wanted her blood. She is almost friendly with them. Himself excepted, of course. They bicker and snarl at each other and exchange what could only be termed significant glances, but they are most certainly not friends. Small wonder, really, since he’s the only member of the crew she knows she can trust. She need not bother securing his friendship. She already has his painfully undying love, or what sharp black splinters are left of it after the gangrene that is piracy took hold of him.
James lies rigid in the stifling darkness, listening to the varying degrees of snoring done by the crew around him, and Elizabeth’s hammock gently swings toward his. In her sleep, her hand reaches out blindly, looking for something to hold onto for reassurance. It finds James’s arm and tugs it toward her. She clings to it, hugging it tightly against her chest. This leaves the rest of James at a rather odd angle- half out of his hammock and half into hers- but he wasn’t sleeping anyway, so really what’s the bother? This is the closest he will ever be to Elizabeth again. He may as well enjoy it as best he can. She sleeps like the dead, he discovers, when during the night the awkward angle prevails at last and he falls to the floor with a thump, bringing her and his other arm with him. Bits of him are tingling numbly, other bits are throbbing painfully. She stirs but does not wake. She merely curls herself into his body heat more solidly, sighs contentedly and sleeps on. James notes absently that Elizabeth also snores, but when she does it, it is soft and delicate like the rest of her is meant to be.
“Hrroooouungh whufflewhufflessnrgh”
Well, he amends, perhaps not so delicate.
In the morning she apologizes profusely, scrambling off and away from him as quickly as possible.
“I must have thought you were Will,” she says sheepishly, though they both know perfectly well that she has never slept with Turner. It is a high point of debate amongst the crew as to when the two of them will get married, if ever. James lets the lie pass, though he is heavily sick of deceit. He cannot bother himself to correct her on it.
“You snore,” he says instead, curtly, and leaves for breakfast amidst her spluttering protests that she most certainly does no such thing. There is a lady inside her still, indignant and not half-spoiled. The rest of the crew, he knows, will tease her mercilessly for a week or so, and then it will be forgotten and buried like so much treasure out at sea.
He is, again, mistaken about Elizabeth Swann. She says nothing the next night when she crawls into her hammock in its customary place beside his, but he notices she has tied them together so he will not crash to the ground, should she steal his arm again. She does, and she sleeps huddled up against his back for warmth and comfort every night for a solid week before he gives up the ghost and allows himself to hold her while she sleeps. So this is what it is like to share sleeping space with her, he thinks. She steals all the covers and takes up more than her share of the bed, not to mention her snoring, but he doesn’t mind somehow. They don’t talk about it after the first night. There are some secrets that are better left untouched. James understands, and sighs, and continues to swab the deck with the tears he refuses to shed for her, and never in front of her.
This is surely a hallucination, but the best possible sort. He has hallucinated her many times before now and in many painful situations, but generally she is with Turner and she is taunting him, not soothing him. His dreams are never this vivid, this real, this forgiving. It is remarkable that she does not know. She truly seems not to. What has the world done to him? What has she done to him would be a better question. The answer, of course, would be nothing he wanted and everything he didn’t. What has he not done, for that matter, in pursuit of her, and all of it come to nothing. What has the world done to him?
“Nothing I didn’t deserve,” he tells the dream (strange dream, though, for her to be dressed as a pirate, when it’s a fate he’s always wanted her to avoid) and droops back into the muck.
It is only after he is aboard the Pearl and several buckets of water have been sloshed into his face and he has emptied the contents of his stomach overboard and Jack Sparrow has told him he smells funny that he is vaguely aware he is not dreaming, more’s the pity. He devoutly wishes he was still with the pigs. They were company he could understand.
James could not pinpoint, precisely, the moment at which this godforsaken voyage and ship and crew and all of it became, to a minuscule degree, better. He suspects it has something to do with the positioning of Elizabeth’s hammock in close proximity to his. So she isn’t sleeping with Sparrow yet, then. She stays with the crew, unperturbed by the fact that they were once ghost pirates who wanted her blood. She is almost friendly with them. Himself excepted, of course. They bicker and snarl at each other and exchange what could only be termed significant glances, but they are most certainly not friends. Small wonder, really, since he’s the only member of the crew she knows she can trust. She need not bother securing his friendship. She already has his painfully undying love, or what sharp black splinters are left of it after the gangrene that is piracy took hold of him.
James lies rigid in the stifling darkness, listening to the varying degrees of snoring done by the crew around him, and Elizabeth’s hammock gently swings toward his. In her sleep, her hand reaches out blindly, looking for something to hold onto for reassurance. It finds James’s arm and tugs it toward her. She clings to it, hugging it tightly against her chest. This leaves the rest of James at a rather odd angle- half out of his hammock and half into hers- but he wasn’t sleeping anyway, so really what’s the bother? This is the closest he will ever be to Elizabeth again. He may as well enjoy it as best he can. She sleeps like the dead, he discovers, when during the night the awkward angle prevails at last and he falls to the floor with a thump, bringing her and his other arm with him. Bits of him are tingling numbly, other bits are throbbing painfully. She stirs but does not wake. She merely curls herself into his body heat more solidly, sighs contentedly and sleeps on. James notes absently that Elizabeth also snores, but when she does it, it is soft and delicate like the rest of her is meant to be.
“Hrroooouungh whufflewhufflessnrgh”
Well, he amends, perhaps not so delicate.
In the morning she apologizes profusely, scrambling off and away from him as quickly as possible.
“I must have thought you were Will,” she says sheepishly, though they both know perfectly well that she has never slept with Turner. It is a high point of debate amongst the crew as to when the two of them will get married, if ever. James lets the lie pass, though he is heavily sick of deceit. He cannot bother himself to correct her on it.
“You snore,” he says instead, curtly, and leaves for breakfast amidst her spluttering protests that she most certainly does no such thing. There is a lady inside her still, indignant and not half-spoiled. The rest of the crew, he knows, will tease her mercilessly for a week or so, and then it will be forgotten and buried like so much treasure out at sea.
He is, again, mistaken about Elizabeth Swann. She says nothing the next night when she crawls into her hammock in its customary place beside his, but he notices she has tied them together so he will not crash to the ground, should she steal his arm again. She does, and she sleeps huddled up against his back for warmth and comfort every night for a solid week before he gives up the ghost and allows himself to hold her while she sleeps. So this is what it is like to share sleeping space with her, he thinks. She steals all the covers and takes up more than her share of the bed, not to mention her snoring, but he doesn’t mind somehow. They don’t talk about it after the first night. There are some secrets that are better left untouched. James understands, and sighs, and continues to swab the deck with the tears he refuses to shed for her, and never in front of her.