A/N: This fic is written for a challenge over at the Broken Compass Forum. For the full list of the requirements I had to write to visit the 'Barbossa's Love life' thread and please check out the other stories in this competition written by ChaosandMayhem and JackySparrowsRum. I hope you enjoy it and don't forget to vote for which story you liked best!
On a side note, this story was partly inspired by the poem by Robert Browning, "My Last Duchess." I'm sure you could find it on the internet and if you have time to read that it's a pleasantly chilling piece.
Also big thanks to Nytd for betaing this. I don't know what I'd do without you..
As If She Were Alive
I hang inanimately on the wall looking almost like I am alive. Trapped in this frame with its encrusted jewels and gold filigree, I am able to do nothing but smile down on the empty room before me. I just sit here, my flawless beauty depicted perfectly in paint, the artist who captured me flaunting the exquisiteness of my bright eyes, the fullness of my red lips, and the mystery of my dark hair, while subtly hinting at the voluptuous figure beneath my expensive dress, and the spark of mischief in my sea green eyes. My passion and energy conserved for posterity with none of the bite and edge I had possessed in life.
He thinks it is better this way. Whenever he wants he can pull back the curtain and see me. This way I am his. I know he can still easily remember the days when my lovely eyes held nothing but contempt for him and my inviting lips gave him nothing but mockery. It is different now. Now I am nothing but a synopsis of his love. I smile at him with joy in my eyes, and, because, trapped as I am in this cruel paint, I will keep on doing so until long after he is gone.
Sometimes he even brings people to see me, business associates mostly, as he has no friends. He thinks to show me off like the trophy wife I almost was, and I can do nothing but smile down as they all pass under my frame, ambassadors and envoys from Kings and Lords and Dukes. Some, like Weatherby Swann, have been more than once and even paused to ask increasingly searching questions about the girl in the painting. None ever learn the truth though. He is much too good for that.
In my time I have met princes and paupers, privateers and pirates. The last pirate I was shown to, Eduardo Villanueva, even offered to buy me. The offer was politely declined of course; I am much more precious to my master than money. He says he loves me you see, he always said he loved me, but I didn't believe him; I still don't believe him. If he did love me he wouldn't leave me alone for days on end with nothing but this silly quince plant on the table beside me, and that sad little dog at my feet for company. I remember that sweet little dog passed on much the same time as I did. I often wonder about that, but as I said, he is much too good for me to ever discover the truth.
It's at times like this when I sit in my frame and wish he would return to me, that I realise he has won. I was never mad in life, but now I'm not so sure. Before he wanted me and I scorned him, and now it is the other way around. I know irony is cruel Fate's favourite servant.
Sometimes I wish I could simply do something other than smile. I want to shout and scream, to curse and cry or at least be like I was when I was alive, a beautiful petulant child with more pride than sense, but it is impossible. I am nothing but a painting now.
I often wonder what it would have been like if I hadn't been like that as a girl. I wonder what would have happened if I had loved Cutler Beckett instead of turning him away repeatedly. Then his desperate unrequited love wouldn't have given him cause to do the terrible thing he did. It's better this way though, I know because he told me it is. I just hope he comes to look at me again soon. It's lonely just hanging here.