Author's Note: This will probably end up without about three or four vignette-type chapters, following the characters' lives over the ten years immediately following the latest film. Again, many lovely spoilers for AWE.
Decade
By Dream Descends
۞
I.
It's been more or less three years when the Pearl is blown off course to a small islet, just south of nowhere-in-particular. It's more a sandbar than a landmass, but the docks are crowded with curious inhabitants when they make port. Jack finds his way easily (as he always does) through the local market, nodding politely at the frantic flailing of live fish and raw sugar for sale. He's grinning enthusiastically at the rather clumsy hand that evidently took several hundred yards of yarn to task with a knitting needle, when she glances up from her stool.
Her squashed boy's cap, jammed awkwardly over a grubby head of flaxen hair, does little for the sharp angles of the face he well remembers. Her lips ruck slightly at the corners, but her eyes stay carefully flat as she rests her latest woolly venture in her lap.
"Not my size," he explains, returning the disfigured garment in his hand to its place on her cart.
"Not your price range, either, I expect," she quips, smiling openly.
He notices her knuckles are white, and his own fingers flex on impulse. "Decidedly not."
Quite abruptly she drops her knitting, a practise too preposterously simple for her mind in any case, and stands in her homely skirts to face him. "Jack," she exclaims, at least half pleased.
As he bows flourishingly, a shining head of brown curls appears at her side. "Yes, mama?"
۞
Her apartments are small; two rooms above the town's only tavern, with a rent that makes Jack wince. Young Jackie, a name the boy takes to immediately, spends the majority of his time in Jack's company eyeing the pirate nervously from across the room. Elizabeth puts him to bed just when it's getting interesting.
"'S a bit of a large name for a lad so small, innit?" Jack spies through the bedroom door as Elizabeth's son sleeps in the next room.
She follows Jack's gaze, eyes misting over as she wipes clean the insides of two mugs. "He'll grow into it."
"Jack James William Weatherby Turner? Often give birth to giants, love?" He sits down across from her at the rickety kitchen table, watching her movements under the pretense of staring out the clouded window. She's changed little, save the weariness that makes each gesture less graceful than he remembers. "How'd yours truly end up first, anyhow?"
She meets his evocative gaze squarely, which he enjoys. It's not often he has the pleasure of being seen through. Her reply comes after a brief pause. "The alphabet."
He picks up the offered drink but doesn't sample it. "I might've known."
She observes his hesitance. "It's juice, Jack."
He gives her a blank look.
۞
Sundown comes on quicker than they both expect. There are no words, but Elizabeth's breath catches just as the last dollop of light leaves the horizon. Jack feigns mental occupation, intentionally not seeing the weight disappointment has on her eyes and the breadth of her shoulders. He doesn't think about what another seven years might do.
Off shore, the Pearl is stowing canvas, settling in for the night, as her store of captains is in short supply.
"Come with me."
The proposition is rather more blunt than he had planned it to sound, but he imagines it gets the point across.
She tilts her head to the side, calling his bluff. "And Jackie?"
He smiles delightedly at the prospect. "For his own good."
A soft sleepy noise in the other room keeps the pirate's voice to a whisper. "Every king needs a queen." His eyes, inky black in the light of a few drooping candles, are fixed on the corner of her mouth, which always seems to reply before the rest of her.
It twitches. Her long arm reaches across the table and her fingers hover thoughtfully over the brand on his forearm. "You'll be my queen, Jack?" She asks teasingly, though she's not.
His gaze flickers from the place where her hand near meets his skin to the restored flush of her cheeks. He pulls out his compass and drops it into her expectant palm.