...& please, be understanding, as it is: 1)my first prompt ever, 2)my first one-shot ever, 3)my first not JE story ever lol
Beta: arraya (Thank you so much!!:):):)
Disclaimer: I don't own POTC.
One Thousand and One Snowflakes
He stood in front of the mirror, trying to decide which coat he should wear.
He did not want to go to that ball, not because he did not like balls, for one might even argue that he found great pleasure in attending such gatherings; but on that particular evening he just did not feel like going anywhere.
London looked dark, and grim, and uninviting, and even though it was December, it was not snowing, and for some reason it added to his gloomy mood. The streets in winter seemed empty without snow, and the thought of driving through those bare paths in order to get into a crowded, intolerably bright room in somebody's exaggeratedly decorated house made him feel even more tired than he already was.
And yet, he did not really have a reason to feel tired. He was two and twenty, and his responsibilities were rather limited, and definitely not tiresome. Or perhaps it was precisely the lack of possibilities that caused him to feel tired-
Possibilities?... Responsibilities were what he meant, of course.
Of course.
Staring absently at his reflection in the mirror, for a moment he lost the sense of reality, drifting away in his thoughts.
He remembered the dreams he had had only few years ago... He had so many ideas, which somehow dispersed in London mist, leaving him with a bitter taste of defeat in his mouth, and his heart...
He could not even remember the names of the places he had wanted to visit anymore... He forgot where he had wanted to live, what he had wanted to do...
What was left, was the exhaustion, and disappointment, and the feeling that he would just follow his father's steps, doing exactly what his father was doing, living in the society in which his family had always been living...
Being a person whom he did not want to be, because he did not know anything about that person, he did not know anything about himself...
He walked over to the window, opened it, and leaned over the sill, looking out at the evening streets.
Who he was, exactly? What did he want? What did he dream of?
The answers swirled around in the cold air, invisible, and out of reach, because of their invisibility... Or rather... invisible, because they were out of reach... because he thought them to be out of reach...
He looked at his hands, and sighed. He knew what he would like to change, but he did not know how. Furthermore, he knew that even if he knew how, he would not do that...
"Weatherby, my dear, are you ready?"
His mother's voice floated to him from the other side of the door.
He closed the window, and reached for a coat.
The ballroom was spacial, and bright as he had predicted. He had never been in this house before, nor did he even remember the name of the ball's host.
He strolled around the room, once in a while feeling obliged to ask one of the ladies to dance, engaging himself in brief conversations which evoked a strange, numb feeling, but he fought that feeling with all his might. It was wrong to feel like that. It was dangerous. It led to inimical thoughts about far away lands, wild landscapes, and people speaking unknown languages.
Unknown to him...
Unknown. And yet, he did not really want to know, he did not really want to travel... He liked England, and London, and... his life. Yes, he liked his life too. But from time to time he just had a sense of abstract longing, from time to time he just wanted to escape, and go somewhere where nobody knew him, and-
And... And? He had no idea, and that was probably the entire problem. And that was why he did not struggle against his designed future. Because he could not come up with his own design. His dreams were always amorphous, and hazy... Besides... they were only dreams.
He bowed, and excused himself, finishing another dance. He glanced around the room, quickly spotting his parents, his father talking vigorously, and his mother looking at her husband admiringly.
Sometimes he wondered whether she was sincerely so fond of his father, or was she rather trying to convince herself that she was...
Fortunately unnoticed by anybody, Weatherby Swann fled from the ballroom, and into an empty corridor. Perhaps he should have gone outside for a moment, but it was cold, too cold to aimlessly (and coatlessly) wander around.
Taking an assessing look at his surroundings, he walked down the corridor, admiring the furniture, and the paintings, although none of the them caught his attention in particular. From what he knew about art, the paintings here had little to do with it. He smiled to himself wryly, and walked on, but stopped by a door that stood ajar, a faint light coming from the inside of the room.
Without giving it a second thought, he pushed the door open, and was unexpectedly greeted by a shrill sound of a surprised scream.
A girl with a long, light brown her leaped to her feet from the chair dropping a book to the floor. She stared at him wide-eyed, and for a moment he had a strange impression that the world had just stopped, because it was suddenly so very quiet that he could hear his own heart's steady beating. Or not so steady, but still...
"I'm sorry," he said at last, giving the girl an apologetic smile, and recovering from his brief reverie. He nervously glanced around the room, scanning absently several tall bookshelves. "I didn't mean to-"
"Scare me," the girl finished for him, pressing a hand to her chest.
A word 'cleavage' flashed through his mind, and it confused him greatly, for he was fairly certain that it was the first time he had ever even thoughtthat word.
"But you did," said the girl with a sigh, smiling faintly.
"No, let me!" He said with absurd panic in his voice, when she bent down to pick up her book.
He took a few quick steps toward her, and lifted the book, almost tearing it out of her hands, only to... give it back to her with a small smile, and subconsciously noticing that her eyes had a peculiar shade of blue, light blue, very light blue.
Like frozen ocean, he thought abstractedly.
"Thank you," the girl brushed the dust off the book, and pressed it against herself.
"I'm sorry for my intrusion," he said, considering walking out of the room. Considering... He probably should walk out of the room, as he had not been invited here in the first place, but somehow he found himself searching for a reason to stay, and soon he found one. "My name's Weatherby Swann," he said with a smile. The introduction seemed more than appropriate.
"Christelle Grant," she curtsied, and smiled uncertainly, and he wondered whether she would rather have him leave her alone.
"What was what you have been reading, Miss Grant?" He asked, listening to his voice as if it was not his own. He really had no intention of bothering her with further questions, but somehow the question asked itself.
...And he could tell that she did not like that question.
"A book," was all that she said, looking slightly uncomfortable.
...And she looked even more uncomfortable, when he, for some unimaginable reason asked: "It does look like a book, indeed. Is it a romance?"
She blinked, and blushed, and he immediately regretted every single question that he had ever asked, even though he had asked her only two questions so far. He should not have asked her that, neither should he have made it sound, as if he regarded romances as something inferior, because he had surely made it sound like he did-
But her answer dragged him away from his thoughts, surprising him.
"No," she said rather stiffly. "As astonishing as you may find it, Sir, women do not only read romances."
He had no immediate reply to that, and therefore he just stood there staring at her, and actually finding it increasingly fascinating that the longer he looked in her eyes, the more blue they were becoming...
...or perhaps he was just too tired to see clearly... or think clearly...
...'Christelle', what a beautiful name... he should have rather told her that she had a beautiful name, instead of inquiring as to what she had been reading...
Christelle looked at him intently, annoyed by his comment, but then she realized that looking at him intently was actually causing her annoyance to fade away rather, than to strengthen...
"I did not mean that they do," said Weatherby, finally finding his voice again. "I'm sorry."
To his bafflement, she smiled at him brightly. "I think that was your third apology within our three-minute long acquaintance," she said, clearly amused.
Weatherby smiled cautiously. "I believe you're right. I'm so-," he trailed off with a sigh, and Christelle laughed, and he had just enough time to tell himself that she looked beautiful when she was laughing, when her laughter ceased.
But then everything happened so fast, that it was only after what had happened next, that he could enumerate all the stages of that incredulous occurrence:
She had stopped laughing, and her facial expression had become serious, and he had noticed that she was looking at something that was apparently behind him, and he had wanted to turn around to see what she was looking at, but then all of a sudden he had felt something strange on his neck, and he was not sure what he had noticed first: her arms around his neck, or... her lips on his.
She kissed him!... The sentence was illuminating in his mind, as if it was written in glittering letters made of fireworks – which was the strangest metaphor that he had ever come up with...
He stood quite still for quite a while, trying to decide, somewhere in the back of his mind whether he should – as a gentleman – break the kiss, or rather return it? What would be more polite? What would be more appropriate?
But in the midst of making his decision he noticed, that he was, in fact, kissing her back already. Unfortunately just when he finally decided to pull her closer, she pulled back abruptly, gave him an aghast look, glanced over his shoulder, and then ran out of the room, dropping the book in the process.
He turned around, and stared after her in bewilderment, blinking, and trying to understand what had just happened, why it had happened, and how it could have possibly happened, but most of all trying not to lose the memory of that feeling, of that incredibly sweet feeling that had overwhelmed him, and, truth to be told, was still overwhelming him when he took a few hesitant steps toward the door, and bent down to pick up the book that had fallen out of her hands.
He looked at the cover, and read in a whisper: "One Thousand and One Nights."
Even the title itself made more than merely inappropriate reading for a young lady...
He wanted to just put the book away, but curiosity took the better of him, and reluctantly he opened the book.
When he had finally torn himself away the book, and after half an hour of reading emerged from the library to return to the ballroom, he was not sure what to think.
The book was strange, nothing that he had expected her to read, and yet... there was something in those words, in those odd, exotic tales, in those dream-like stories that did relate to her... Maybe it was because of that unprecedented kiss, her lips crashing upon his as if out of nowhere... unexpectedly... and that feeling, the taste of her lips, wild and... magical, and it really had made him feel as if he was flying on the magic carpet somewhere above the deserts... (of London, he smiled wryly), now, that he thought about it...
So she liked strange tales. It crossed his mind that he could draw some illustrations to that book for her... as a form of apology...
He smiled to himself at the thought that he would apologize again, but then he thought that she might have been gone by now.
He looked around the room with trepidation, trying not to panic (panic?...) After all, he knew her name, and he could find out where she lived, and pay her a visit, so it was not like he was not going to see her ever again, although of course, due to some vicious circumstances he might not find anybody who would tell him where she lived, not to mention that there was also quite improbable, but present nonetheless, a possibility that she had not given him her real name, for some reason, and then-
But his immaturely feverish train of thought was fortuitously interrupted, when he suddenly spotted her. She was standing in a group of people, and she was looking gloomy, unlike before.
Although she still looked beautiful...
He hesitated for a moment, his first idea being to just join the people around her, introduce himself if necessary, and... But perhaps she would not like him to come... After all, she had run away. After kissing him, that was true, but still she had wordlessly left the room, giving him no indication that she had expected him to follow her.
So why had she kissed him in the first place? From what he had figured so far (and what seemed as plausible as it was, in fact, ridiculous), it seemed that she had noticed somebody in the corridor, and she kissed him for that person to see the kiss. For what reason, he could not imagine. His first guess was that she had wanted to make that other person jealous... which meant that he should probably expect being challenged to a duel, should that man recognize him. Unless...
He blinked noticing, not without a funny half-warm, half-cold feeling that washed over him, that she caught him looking at her, and... was she smiling?
She was, but only faintly, it was only a ghost of a smile that flitted across her face, and then she averted her eyes, but that look was enough for him to decide that he should join the gathering.
More hastily than it was perhaps necessary he approached the small group, and bowed his head, causing several pairs of eyes focus on him. Luckily, among those pairs of eyes were at least two that knew him, and soon he was introduced, and welcomed to the conversation, but after a couple of minutes he also acknowledged a pair of eyes glaring at him pointedly. He gave the man who was at least twice his age a blank look, as if he saw him for the first time in his life which he did, however... he had his suspicions.
Sweeping his eyes over the man, he smiled at Christelle (who had not uttered a word yet), and at the two people who turned out to be her parents, and at the other people, although he could not really concentrate on them, because he was too engrossed by the fact that in the bright lights of the ballroom he could see Christelle even clearer than before, and suddenly he realized that her eyes were not light blue, like he had thought, but rather... silvery blue-
"We were just discussing our daughter's engagement."
Weatherby blinked, and turned to Mrs. Grant with a habitual smile...
"We were just discussing our daughter's engagement."
...which slowly faded.
"Mr. Beckett thought about announcing it today," chirped Mrs. Grant, looking over at the man who kept glaring daggers at Weatherby, although he still managed to smile at Mrs. Grant as she spoke.
Weatherby glanced at Christelle, who was staring at the floor. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, waiting for her to look up, or say something, or both, or anything, and yet she stood almost motionlessly, wordlessly staring at the dark floor.
And perhaps he really was tired, or perhaps he was still partly in that imaginary world of strange tales that she had been reading of, or perhaps it was just that irritating, yet mute intensity with which Mr. Beckett was looking at him that made him say what he said, although if somebody asked him, he would have had a hard time explaining what had made him say:
"It is very fortunate, then, that the announcement has not taken place yet, for it allows me, without causing any unnecessary commotion, to use this opportunity to ask you now for the permission to marry your daughter."
The silence fell, and if looks could kill he would certainly be struck dead with Mr. Beckett's glare, and in that case he could have probably found his only consolation in the fact that Christelle finally did look up.
For some reason, he was afraid to look at her the most, even though her parents must have looked much more aghast than her at the moment. But after what he had said not looking at her would seem rather suspicious, so he forced himself to shift his eyes to her, and his hesitant gaze met with her silvery blue, and round like two silver moons eyes staring at him in complete astonishment.
With a wry, inward smile he told himself that at least once in his life he managed to render everybody around him speechless.
"I am not sure we understood you correctly, Mr. Swann," said Mr. Grant cautiously, finally breaking the uncomfortable silence. "We did not even know that you and our daughter know each other...," he added, looking between Weatherby, and Christelle questioningly.
"We've met last year in Brighton," said Christelle all of a sudden, causing Weatherby to inwardly sigh with relief.
Although he was not entirely sure why he should feel relieved...
"How could it be that we did not know about it?" Asked Mrs. Grant with a strained smile, looking at Weatherby intently.
Weatherby exchanged glances with Christelle, none of them having a reply to that question, apparently. But the question had to be answered.
"I am sure we will have the time to discuss it later", said Weatherby calmly. "May I have a dance?" He asked, turning to Christelle, who glanced anxiously at her deeply perplexed parents. "I know that Christelle is very fond of that particular piece of music," he said with a small smile, not finding any better way of a justified evasion of the conversation at the moment. Christelle shot him a half-amused, half-terrified look. "Mr. Grant, Mrs. Grant," Weatherby bowed his head. "After the dance I would be delighted if you would allow me to acquaint you with my parents."
"That would be most desirable course of action, indeed," observed Mr. Grant dryly, his eyes fixed on the young man before him, and on his daughter who took a step toward the man, and let him lead her to the dancing floor.
As soon as Christelle, and Weatherby escaped the hearing range of the group that they had just left, they both sighed with relief. Christelle smiled.
"I do hope that you are in possession of some plausible justification for your actions, Mr. Swann," said Christelle in a low voice, taking her place across from him. She curtsied, and he bowed lightly.
"I am afraid that at the moment I am hardly in possession of any justification, Miss Grant," he admitted with a timid smile, reaching for her hand.
She bit her lower lip, and smiled, and would probably have even laughed, if it was not for their hands that suddenly touched. Somehow her smile faded slightly, and it alerted him before he noticed that she did not frown, but blushed instead, and he was not too certain that he did not blush himself as well.
"You did look...," he started under his breath, his voice hardly louder than the violins. She narrowed her eyes interestedly. "Miserable," he concluded quietly, not too happy about his choice of words.
Christelle raised her eyebrows, and turning around along with other dancers, let go of his hand for a moment.
She smiled slightly when he took her hand in his again. "Shall I assume, then, that whenever you see a woman that does not look happy, you propose to her simply to cheer her up?"
"No," he almost exclaimed, not noticing the hint of amusement in her voice. "That is not what I meant-"
"I am sorry," she interrupted him with a warm smile. "I suppose that your actions are no less inexplicable than mine."
They locked eyes for a moment, and then averted their eyes from each other, dancing in silence, until all of a sudden Weatherby felt that she squeezed his hand if only slightly, and before he had the time to acknowledge what was happening, Christelle pulled him with her out of the ballroom, and onto the veranda.
"I think we have to talk it over," she said in response to his questioning look.
"I think we have to go back inside if we don't want to catch a cold," he said cautiously, glancing over his shoulder to see if somebody had noticed their hasty departure.
"I don't think that this should be our main concern at the moment," said Christelle looking toward the ballroom, and then pulling him by his sleeve down the stairs leading form the veranda to the garden.
"I don't-," he started, but trailed off, not sure how he should protest without being impolite; not sure if he wanted to protest.
"What are we going to do?" Asked Christelle when they reached the garden, the light coming out from the row of tall ballroom windows casting faint brightness on the dark ground of the garden.
The air was still, and it was very cold, the coldness filling his body with every breath he took.
"I really do think that we should go back inside," he stated once again, receiving a small pout on from Christelle in return.
"And?" She asked crossing her arms over her chest, and he noticed that she shivered slightly.
He shook his head in resignation, and quickly took off his suit jacket. Christelle stared at him in bewilderment, but he did not say anything, and only wordlessly flung the suit jacket over her shoulders.
If he was cold before, now he was freezing.
"I really do not see the problem, Miss Grant. We will go back inside, your parents and my parents meet, we will tell them that we are sorry for placing them in such an unexpected situation, and tell them that perhaps we should wait with announcing our engagement until they approve of our acquaintance, and-", he stopped his impressively smooth speech when Christelle began to laugh.
He blinked slightly taken aback by her reaction, or maybe it was just because he had never seen anybody laughing so clearly, so openly, so... beautifully.
"You have the most stunning imagination, Mr. Swann," said Christelle, her laughter subsiding.
"Me?" Weatherby's eyes widened in sincere astonishment.
"Yes, I believe that I am talking about you," she answered with an amused smile.
"I dare say that your imagination must be much more vivid than mine, Miss Grant," he said after a pause, finding himself transfixed by that strange light in her eyes which reminded him of the moonlight, and the stars, and the night sky in some far away countries which he had never seen...
"What do you mean?" She asked, pulling his suit tighter around herself, and he suddenly remembered that he had felt cold himself. Had felt... Strangely, he did not feel cold anymore.
"That book you've been reading...," he started, and her eyes widened, and she opened her mouth as if she wanted to protest, but he continued. "It was quite captivating."
"Captivating?" She arched an eyebrow, the look in her eyes changing slightly, and she looked at him with sudden attentiveness.
"I read... several pages of it after you had left. It is a strange book, but there is something unique about it," he finished the sentence, and swallowed, embarrassed by his inability to say something more concrete, to phrase better what he had wanted to say, but somehow he could not find the right words when she was looking at him like that, in such a serious, and intent manner, and he was not sure what she was thinking, especially since she just looked at him in silence. "I...," he started at last, exclusively for the sake of breaking the silence.
"I have never met anybody who has read it, and did not proclaim it worthless, or at least nonsensical," she said quietly.
"Not everything that is nonsensical has to be worthless," he said cautiously after a pause.
She smiled, a different, thoughtful smile. "I wish I could have a magic carpet, just for one day, so I could fly around the world, and see all the places from above. Then I could go back, and live on as before, but I would always have those memories, those images in my head..." She trailed off, and stared pensively into the distance with a faint, dreamy smile on her face.
He looked at her trying to decide which one of her smiles he liked the most, but it was a difficult choice, since she had so many different smiles, and all of them ignited a different emotion in his heart.
She sighed, and looked back at him with an almost apologetic smile. He smiled at her too, and somehow, for the first time did not feel the necessity to say anything in order to continue the conversation...
Involuntarily, his mind drifted away to that kiss in the library, and he felt a tingling sensation on his lips, only after a moment realizing that the sensation was not the figment of his imagination, but-
"It's snowing!"
Christelle's voice shook him out of his reverie. He blinked, and looked around. It was snowing indeed.
He was about to suggest, once again, that they should go back inside, but the words remained unspoken as he looked in amazement at the girl who swirled around, the snowflakes falling onto her hair, and staying there for a moment, looking like little diamonds before thawing, and disappearing. He smiled, and she looked at him, her facial expression turning serious.
"I don't like snow. It vanishes before you have the time to really see how beautiful it is," she said in a low voice, outstretching her open palm, and letting the snowflakes fall and melt in her hand. "They die too quickly," she closed her hand, suddenly feeling how cold it was.
"May I?" He took a step forward, and took her hand in his. She looked up at him, questioningly, but said nothing.
He closed her hand in his hands. "Snowflakes can't die."
"I know that snowflakes don't die," she said with a small pout, staring at his hands.
"I didn't say that they don't die," he smiled, without looking at her. "I said that they can't die."
Christelle wrinkled her nose. "Is there a difference?" She asked doubtfully, the coldness in her hand slowly ebbing.
"There always will be snow, and people will always remember about the snow, and as long as they will remember about it, it will never really die," he replied under his breath, afraid to look at her, because suddenly everything that he had said seemed silly.
But she did not laugh, so after a moment he gathered his courage, and looked up. She was looking at him intently.
"Would you remember me if I died?" She asked, and there was a glimpse of amusement in her eyes along with a glimpse of something else.
He blinked, and wrinkled his forehead, and was about to tell her that it was hardly a reasonable question, but for some reason, not really knowing why he said: "Of course."
She smiled with a wary expression on her face, slipped her hand out of his, and turned around.
"If you know so much about snow, perhaps you also know how many snowflakes are there?" She said looking up, and closing her eyes, the snowflakes falling onto her eyelids.
To her surprise, he answered in a firm voice: "Yes."
She swirled around, and looked at him incredulously. He smiled, looked around, as if checking whether his answer would be correct, and said simply, shifting his eyes back to her: "One thousand and one." Christelle laughed. "Here is one thousand," he said indicating their surroundings, and she looked around interestedly.
"And-," she started, but did not have the chance to finish her question, because suddenly his lips were on hers, and he kissed her softly, briefly, before pulling away.
"And here is one," he whispered, looking into her eyes intensely, and somewhat fearfully.
She stared at him with unreadable expression on her face. "I think you're right, we should get back inside," she said with a small smile, blushing slightly, and walking past him.
"Miss Grant..." he called after her, and she stopped, and turned around. "Are you..." he trailed off, and smiled faintly. "Are you going to break off our engagement?"
Christelle narrowed her eyes, and then smiled brightly. "And how is this going to work?" She asked, her eyes sparkling with amusement.
"We could... get to know each other... and then break it off, if..." He stopped, grateful that it was fairly dark, and she probably could not see the embarrassment on his face.
She kept smiling, and looking at him, as if trying to make sure that he was being serious, and then when he thought that she would at last tell him off, she bit her lower lip, and nodded: "Alright."
He blinked, not quite certain if he had heard correctly. "Alright?" He echoed, and his heart skipped a bit.
Christelle shrugged. "I would rather be engaged to you, than to him, since I don't think he would be willing to break the engagement equally easily," she said with a sly smile.
Weatherby smiled, beginning to get used to her half-serious way of speaking, and offered her his arm, and she laced her hand through it smiling back at him.
They walked up the stairs, and back into the brightness of the ballroom, and he smiled to himself suddenly struck by the half-conscious, abstract impression, that she was entirely wrong, and if there was somebody who would break off his engagement to her, it certainly was not him.
And hopefully not her as well.
The End