Title: Two Hearts at Sea
Chapter Name: Loneliness
Authors: Dodge-This, ThereIsNoSp00n, inspiration by PookaSeraph
*~*~*~*~*~*
Disclaimer: Since this is the first chapter I'll actually write a real disclaimer. Disney owns all that it owns, Pirates of The Caribbean, Jack, Will, etc. Any original characters introduced don't belong to you. Now on with the story!
*~*~*~*~*~*
Will stood with his back to Jack, facing off with an unknown enemy. He stood in defiance "My place is here, between you and Jack."
The dark, confused smoke around him swirled, settled and disappeared, making the battlement visible before his eyes.
All enemies evaporated, Will faced Jack. Their eyes met.
Jack turned and started to walk away when he stopped abruptly and doubled back to address Will.
"Nice hat," he said, giving a playful flick to the feather perched on top. Will smiled, looking up at it. Jack finishes his walk to the edge of battlement.
Will's eyes follow Jack until he was almost over the edge. Locking eyes with Will, Jack removed his hat and gave a mock bow, he stepped back, tumbling over into the water.
Down, down, down....the dark fog clouded his vision again as Will's soul plummeted and he rushed over to the edge. Jack's dark figure was falling, becoming smaller and smaller. It finally broke water with a splash--
Will jolted awake gasping. He looked around and saw Elizabeth still sleeping undisturbed beside him. He sighed and got out of bed. Will walked out onto the balcony over the front door of the Governor's Mansion. His eyes traveled along the road and out to the ocean.
Turning to caress Will, Elizabeth woke when her hand met only air. She looked around until she spotted Will out on the balcony. "This is the third time this week I have woken to find a bed devoid of my fiancé, as he sits and yearns to be at sea."
Will's eyes did not leave the horizon as he answered, "I'm sorry Liz, I want only what is best for the both of us, you know."
Elizabeth raised a hand to his shoulder, "But I fear what is best for me is not what is best for you."
Will sighed, "I yearn to be out there riding towards the horizon." There was a moment of thoughtful silence. A bright blue and yellow parrot flew rapidly past the window.
"Then go."
His gaze finally left the horizon. "Excuse me?"
"I said go. Two months we have been engaged, Will. I have not seen genuine excitement for life in you since our adventure on the ocean ended. Since the last time we saw Jack, remember?"
"How could I forget?" He hugged her. "You see me better than I can see myself." he murmured, quickly turning to embrace the woman he had been willing to die for but a few short months before.
She smiled, "Go, Will."
Will kissed her and strode over to the opposite side of the room. He pulled a bag out of a closet and started loading it with clothes out of the dresser in the corner.
"I do not know when I will return," he said anxiously.
"Send word when you get a crew, we will figure it out then. Go, have an adventure." She then went out the door to have servants start an early breakfast. "Once a pirate, always a pirate," she stated, more to herself than to Will. "I guess I always knew you couldn't stay away from sailing for long, darling," she called back to him.
He stopped on his way out of the door and gave her a sad smile. "She thinks it's being away from a ship that bothers me," he says quietly, "but why do I feel like it's really being away from Jack that I can't stand?"
*~*~*~*~*~*
Will stood at the side rail of an anonymous ship. The creaky old ship had probably had a name at one point, but it had been commandeered back and forth by so many pirates during its years at sea that the space on the hull usually reserved for the name had been scratched and worn away. He leaned over the rail and breathed in the salt air as a strong breeze whipped his face.
"Back to work, Smith!" The captain yelled from the wheel.
"Aye," Will called back. He had to root through the seedier parts of Port Royal before finding a ship headed to Tortuga. The captain wasn't exactly what one would call trustworthy, but he was the only man to take manual labor as payment for passage. He hadn't given his real name, of course. "Mister Smith," Will laughed to himself. It was a name Jack might have given.
Thinking back, Will couldn't exactly put a finger on why he had chosen Tortuga as his destination, but looking for Jack seemed like a good idea. If so, then Tortuga was the perfect destination to accomplish this. It seemed it was the only port he visited with some regularity.
Luckily, they had fair weather and favorable wind the whole trip, so Will didn't have to spend too much time working with the ill-tempered and scraggly crew. One of the mangiest of the bunch—who might not even have had flesh underneath all that dirt, Will thought—kept eyeing his left hand suspiciously. Will was confused at first, but upon looking down he discovered he was still wearing his solid gold engagement ring. Sneaking back to his cabin, he slipped the ring off and put it in the pouch he kept under his shirt, close to his breast, for safekeeping. He wiggled his fingers a bit and looked at them. He had expected to feel bare and lonely without his symbolic link to Elizabeth, but instead he found it very…. liberating.
Finally he settled into his moth eaten bed to catch a few winks of sleep. He was liberated now, on the open sea, free. It was strange how clearly he could hear Jack's voice as the rolling of the ocean lulled him to sleep. "Because that's what a ship really is, you know….freedom."
He awoke early to the captain shouting and banging on the deck directly above his cabin. "Oy! Smith, we're 'ere. Ye'd best be getting' yer filthy skin up 'ere or I'll wring yer bloody neck! We're shovin' of in nigh an hour!"
Will scuttled around his meager cabin and collected his things before scrambling up on deck. "Thank you, sir," he nodded to the captain. All he got in response was a sort of grunt.
Will stepped of the gangplank and immediately started taking in the raucous town of Tortuga. He followed his feet down a path he remembered from his previous trip here with Jack. Along his way Will ran into a few drunken pirates who tried to start something, but Will either knocked them out or they passed out. He also ran into the woman from the bar from his first visit. She walked up to him putting one hand on her hip, using the other to smack him--hard--across the cheek.
"I don't think I deserved that," he muttered sullenly to himself as he rubbed the red mark on his cheek and returned to the half remembered path.
After a few wrong turns and a few dead ends Will finally ended up where he was looking for. Will wandered over to a trough and filled a bucket with the filthy water inhabiting it, after second thoughts he filled another, for old time's sake. Smiling he waltzed over to an *almost* empty stall.
*~*~*~*~*~*
Authoresses Notes: Ok, this is the first collaboration. Don't hurt us too badly. The main writers so far are Dodge-This and ThereIsNoSp00n, the inspiration comes from my sisters lack of JackWill fics that go how she wants them to. Everyone go to her stuff (PookaSeraph) and tell her that her writing is good and she needs to write more.
Story Notes: What do you guys think so far? Opinions on the dream sequence at the beginning, was funny to write, cause you know dreams like the ones Lizzy has in the beginning never happen, you don't remember them, and if you do its not in that much detail.
General: Hope my normal readers don't protest the Jack and Will match, I love you guys and your honest opinions.