Disclaimer: Tell me, do you really think I'd being hanging with posters of Johnny Depp, if I owned Pirates of the Caribbean and could therefore settle for the real thing?
Summary: Elizabeth came to find that you could never journey somewhere and come back the same, because a part of you changed along the way each time. Willabeth, with some squinty Barbossabeth.
She had nothing to fall back on; not maleness, not whiteness, not ladyhood, not anything. And out of the profound desolation of her reality she may well have invented herself.-Toni Morrison
Fumbling towards Ecstasy
It was so hard after Will left. Especially once she realized the full weight of what she and Jack had done. Will was doomed for eternity to sail the seas as Captain of the Flying Dutchman, forever, only allowed to come upon land once every ten years to see his lady love until she, too, faded into the sea, as so many brides of sailors had done before. The only time he would at least be at peace was if someone stabbed the heart – and who would wish for Will's fate? Even Jack Sparrow wouldn't do that, because a price had to be paid in the end.
A price that everyone paid.
Like a broken heart. Like ten years of loneliness. Like ten years of running the Brethren Court knowing you were an orphan and the little boy at your side was half an orphan. Like ten years of bring up a child cursed with having no father.
So Elizabeth thought…sometimes. Other times she would believe that her little Billy was not cursed, but blessed, for how many boys have more than one father? How many boys are taught to swordfight by a man who sailed with Morgan, and told stories by a man who had sacked Nassau Port without firing a shot? How many boys were taught to cook by an old ex-navy sailor that told about heroic sea turtles, how to splice a line by a man who had set freed Calypso? How many boys could claim a monkey as their best friend, and a dwarf as their other? How many boys sailed to the ends of the earth on board a ship with black sails? How many boys were brought into this world by the Keeper of the Code? How many boys were called 'the little prince' by a balding, bad-tempered but soft-hearted brigand? How many boys not only were told stories about piracy, but lived them?
She didn't know what she would do without the friends she'd made at sea. Her father was gone, James Norrington was gone, Will Turner was gone –everyone gone, or so she thought. Then the Black Pearl had come back, a couple years after she had last seen Will, and the two captains – whose adventure finding the Fountain of Youth had brought on a grudging sort of partnership – were surprised, but not really, to see a little boy in her arms.
Elizabeth had introduced them to the boy as his uncles Jack and Hector, but they might as well have been fathers. Even Barbossa couldn't resist the boy's charms, despite the boy being a Turner.
So the Pirate King returned to the sea, not aboard the Empress, but the Black Pearl. She became so attached she named Tai Huang captain of the former, on the condition he did not name himself Lord of the South China Sea and that he reported to her the comings and goings of the area. 'And only her,' Barbossa growled, his hypnotizing blue orbs gleaming yellow like they tended to do in candlelight. Tai Huang had agreed, with enough readiness to keep Barbossa and Elizabeth satisfied and Jack at ease enough to pop open a bottle of rum (but then Jack was always at ease enough to do that).
Following that bargain, and also preceding it, were adventures, a life willed with excitement and freedom – just what Elizabeth had always wanted, and which she reaped the benefits of. She loved the exhilaration of knowing the first cannon was about to be let loose, that scintilla of time where her heart was pounding in her chest and blotted out everything else except what she could sense: the smell of the sea that filled her nostrils, the breeze that was cool and fresh against her face and made her hair seem to caress her face, the ship rocking beneath her feet – so unstable and yet so secure. Then the moment was over and the scent of gun powder stained her hair and clothes and her lungs were filled with a mixture of it, sea, and sunshine, and she was whooping for joy, laughing from the feeling of sheer ecstasy spreading from limb to limb, swinging her sword and kicking and punching and shooting, back-to-back with Barbossa, back-to-back with Jack, fighting with Gibbs and Marty by her side, rescuing Pintel from a pistol shot, being rescued by Ragetti from a slice that would tear her gullet out.
And in those moments, she felt whole, more full and complete than she had for a long while, because it reminded her of herself and Will, fighting off soldiers and monstrous sea creatures, getting married by Barbossa, kissing in the soaking rain, making it last as long as they could because they knew they were in more danger than ever before….
It was only fitting that after the first ten years, it was raining when Will came to shore. Not at first, but as he stepped on land, and he looked into the eyes of his son for the first time – eyes that defied all genetics and were blue like the first William Turner's – and they explored the island Will had originally left his wife on, that the first sprinklings of rain began to fall. Billy had been disappointed, especially when his father had said they had to go home, into the little cottage that had been built ten years ago and cleaned out during the three days before his father's arrival, and although he was disinclined to acquiesce to his father's request (and told him so), he followed his father and mother into the little cottage.
Later, when Billy had finally fallen asleep after being told countless stories about his father's adventures during the ten years (more like exchange, since Billy and Elizabeth also had stories to share), Will and Elizabeth crept out into the newly wet world. It was still only sprinkling, and it was there that they spent their night together, eventually going back inside so Will could waken his son – the first time he would ever do so, and perhaps the last.
So it was ten years after that, and another ten years, but things always changed. Elizabeth came to find that she could never journey somewhere and come back the same, because a part of her changed along the way each time.
Elizabeth changed: her hair became more brittle, her fingers harder to flex, her skin not quite so smooth and youthful. It was only natural that they made a little trip to the Fountain of Youth again, the second time after Will had come back, and Elizabeth drank a little bit, and Billy did so too, to keep things on a sort of even keel. A tipsy even keel, as Jack put it.
The crew changed. Cotton died an old man in his hammock. Gibbs died in a tavern in Tortuga, snug as a bug, and drunk. His last words were something about sea turtles. Marty fell overboard. Barbossa, blessed with long life, eventually summoned Will to take him aboard the Dutchman halfway there to Will's third stay on land, saying "best I don't stay – it would be sailing into dangerous waters," and he did not reveal to anyone, especially Elizabeth, what he meant, but Jack knew. Billy was eventually shot, right in the heart, and died in the arms of his mother and his beautiful wife – the daughter of Cutler Beckett, three years her husband's senior – surrounded by his son and daughter. Elizabeth eventually refused to take a drink from the Fountain of Youth, and soon after Jack stopped as well, seeing no point now that Barbossa was gone, the closest to a son he'd ever had was gone, and Elizabeth would be soon after.
Jack was perhaps the hardest for Will to let go, especially since he knew Jack would never stay on a ship that wasn't his own. He was the last one, because Elizabeth had not feared death for a very long time, and Barbossa was still serving, and it had been over ten years since Billy's death. Even if Billy's children still came to the island, and Isabella Beckett-Turner (or Izzy), once every ten years, to keep Will company.
Elizabeth did not complain, because all along the waves and the adventures and the ships and dreams and journeys, love and freedom and longing weaved through it – and that was the best thing that could be offered. She had been decked in silks and pearls, slathered in dirt and rags, soaked with blood and rain, overcome with pain and pleasure, felt love and hate and loss and everything in between. At times she hated her life, regretted it, loved it, but most of all, she lived it, and why should she complain about that?
Why, when through it all, she had been fumbling towards ecstasy?