Written by: mamazano and danglingdingle

Title: Kaleidoscope

Rating: PG

Characters/Pairing: Jack/Will
Disclaimer: Disney owns them, we just like playing with them.
Summary: Sometime Janus has more than two faces...

Kaleidoscope

Jack was fond of books. No, Will corrected himself mentally. Jack was obsessed with books. One particular book, to be exact.

The dark leather covers of the tome revealed nothing of what it held inside. No names, no markings, except for those that spoke of frequent use, and the many travels on which it had accompanied Jack.

Will first learned of the book by pure happenstance. He'd gone below one stormy day to retrieve his coat, only to find Jack curled up in the bunk, so engrossed in what he was reading he'd barely noticed Will's presence in the room.

Having his inquiries met with an incoherent mumble, Will's interest was piqued. Tossing the coat onto a chair, he stepped next to the bunk, leaned to see the name, and stood up again, none the wiser.

"O Faustus, lay that damned book aside, and gaze not on it, lest it tempt thy soul?" Will pitched in a guess with a quirk of his brow, this time earning an amused glimpse from Jack, before he dove back into the writing.

"Not, quite. Try again."

Sitting on the side of the bunk, Will tried to peer even a glance at the lines, but was blocked by Jack pressing the book against his chest.

"Oi! That's not guessing!" Eyes wide in feigned horror, Jack stared at Will. "You tried to cheat! What's got into you?"

"Pirate?" Will said in his most innocent manner, only to have the excuse snorted aside by Jack. Sighing, Will could see he'd have to play the game if he wanted to find out.

"The Good Book?" he ventured as his first guess.

Jack grinned. "Oh, it is a very good book, aye."

"Shakespeare? Aristotle? Pennyfeather?"

This last name brought Jack's head up with an attentive frown.

"Pennyfeather?" Jack carefully marked his place with his finger and waited expectantly for Will to explain.

"Yes, you know," Will said casually. "The Right Reverend Humble Pennyfeather, author of all those enlightening treatises on Debauchery and the Devil's Works and Dens of Iniquity."

"Oh! Him." Jack waved the thought away and swamped back into his book without another word.

Without looking up, Jack smirked at his own afterthoughts, sharing but a fraction of them with Will. "No. But a close one."

A hasty knock to the door interrupted the charades, promptly followed by Gibbs' excited face peering in, "Cap'n, we're closing in." Shifting his eyes to Will, he continued with an affirming nod and a cunning wink, "You do what you do best," and disappeared again with Jack's acknowledgement.

Jack and Will exchanged surprised looks, and Jack put his book aside, "That was quicker than expected."

With no further explanations, Jack rose to his knees on the bunk and fleetingly kissed Will, on his way to his frock and baldric. Pulling on his boots, Jack confirmed the situation with a simple, "Give it a quarter, twenty minutes, and be ready to board. We'll be going below."

Before Jack made to leave the cabin, Will halted him by the arm and glanced at Jack's sword expectantly, and after making sure it was as deadly as can be, Will sheathed it again, with a sharp bite to the side of his neck, and a peck to his lips, locking eyes for a second. "Right beside you."

Will's words sent Jack up on deck smiling like a fiend.

Left to check his own equipment, Will pulled his bandana over one eye, gave a passing look over his sword, and turned his focus to the book left laying on the cot as if the reader would return to its treasures at any moment.

Carefully, respecting the obvious value of the binding, Will glanced at the point it was opened;

'For why should I presume to prefer my conceit and imagination, in affirming that a thing is thus or thus in its own nature, because it seemeth to me to be so, before the conceit of other living creatures, who may as well think it to be otherwise in its own nature, because it appeareth otherwise to them than it doth to me?'

Grinning at the words which sounded remarkably familiar to Will's mind, he read further, and laughed delightedly at the ancient wisdom that held all its weight and more, briefly giving a glimpse to the door, as if expecting to see the embodiment of the citing standing there, even when he'd just watched him leave;

'Aristotle mentioneth of Thratius who said that the image of a man went always before him.'

A fond thought curved Will's mouth to a small smile, and his eye caught another line;

'If then it be so, that there be such differences in men, this must be by reason of the diverse temperatures they have, and diverse dispositions of their conceit and imagination; for if one hate and another love the very same thing, it must be that their phantasies differ, else all would love it, or all would hate it. These men then may tell how these things seem to them good or bad; but what they are in their own nature they cannot tell.'

Suddenly Will found his heart racing, the sheer immensity of what the simple sentences withheld threw fractions of past conversations before his mind's eye, the understanding of where Jack's patience in matters of dire conflict siphoned from, striking Will with a force that nearly toppled him over.

Cursing under his breath that time was ticking away, and he couldn't stand here marveling at the convoluted logic that had ultimately aided greatly in Will's own struggles, leading him here, to this moment, where he feverishly wished the raid was over and done with, so he could drag Jack back to their cabin and demand - no - beg, plead, hope - for Jack to entwine and lace and loop Will into these - his - thoughts.

Eagerly, urgently flipping the pages further, Will came to a spot where a slip of parchment fell from the folds of the printed sheets.

Grabbing the piece, deliberately deaf to the scurry of an antheap of zealous pirates, Will frowned at Jack's lilting handwriting, the creases in the note a tell-tale of it having been opened and folded again, the smears making it difficult to read parts of it, yet the words were still decipherable.

It looked like a conversation, the way the verses were written next to each other. An absurd argument, words lined so that each clause belayed the other, each part pomp and grand in their certainty of impossible becoming possible, arranged so that the two responses formed a riddle…

Will read them once in silence, then recited a part of it in a choked whisper.

"The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love. "

The verse next to it appeared to have been written vigorously, the letters shouting out determination the way they'd been embellished, some of them underlined.

"But could youth last and love still breed,
Had joys no date nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love. "

Will sank on the edge of the bunk, the parchment gently on his palm, as he found himself holding the very testimonial of Jack's mercurial nature in his hands - the logical, cold Sceptic, and the ever optimistic Shepherd who will find a way for the bed of roses not to wither, even if it killed him.

Lowering the parchment on top of the leather cover of Jack's book, Will traced a finger along the simple cry of uncertainty scribbled underneath it all. A question mark. Faint, as if doubting if it should be there to begin with, yet unquestionably there.

The Captain's command and his oath damning some poor soul as a slimy, maggoty toad sounded through Will's clouded mind, crashing him back into the current place and time – time to go to fill his place, by Jack's side.

To answer his question.

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