Godspeed
by Luvvycat
Author's Note: WARNING: The following story is dark, and depressing, and involves a major character's death. Please do not read if you're sensitive to or disturbed by such subject matter. This tale was written on the third anniversary of the death of my father, and the tone reflects the maudlin mood I was in at the time I wrote it. Please read the Author's Notes at the end of this story for more detail (but not before you read the story, as the afternote includes spoilers for the story).
Apologies, in advance, for any tears or depression resulting from the reading of this story. If it's any consolation, I cried throughout the writing of it, too.
-- Cat
Given the difference in their ages—he being over twenty years her senior, and having lived the type of life he had led—full of thrilling adventures rife with danger and violence, blood and death, and the ever-present shadow of the hangman's noose—he had always assumed he would go before her. That was the natural order of things … that the old should go before the young, though his vast experience with the realities and cruelties of life should have informed him that that was not always the case.
But Fate had decreed otherwise.
She had tried to keep it from him and the crew, but Jack, ever sharp-eyed, had been the first to notice the difference in her, to recognise the subtle signs—the occasional pinched look on her face; the flicker of pain and, quickly on its heels, fear in her beautiful eyes; the sudden leaning of her weight on a rail or bulkhead or the ship's wheel when she thought no-one was looking; felt the thinning of her already-slender body under his hands when they made love.
Then, when they were together in bed, artless slumber had stripped away all pretence, and revealed the things she had been hiding in daytime wakefulness … the frown lines that marred her smooth sun-kissed brow, even in her sleep … the way she unconsciously curled in on herself in a foetal ball, her hands clutching at her belly … the little moans that rose from deep within her, not the ones of pleasure he was accustomed to hearing from her in the aftermath of their blissful unions, but of pain, carried on the gentle tide of her sleep-softened breath …
She was in physical pain, and had been doing her damnedest to conceal it.
The next ship they raided happened to have a doctor serving amongst its crew, and, against Lizzie's protests, Jack had pressed him into service (at the point of a sword), taken him onto the Black Pearl, into the privacy of the Captain's Cabin, and persuaded Elizabeth to avail herself of his medical expertise, and subject herself to a thorough examination.
He recalled the physician's grim expression as he delivered the bad news, news so horrifyingly unwelcome that Jack had nearly run the man through in the resulting welter of black emotion, before Lizzie had laid a restraining hand on his sword-arm and, with calm and calming words, persuaded him not to kill the messenger for imparting the stark truth of the matter. Some mysterious, unnamed "female affliction" (some sort of cancer of the female organs, Jack assumed) that the physicians couldn't cure, that had already spread too far to be effectively treated.
No hope. No hope whatsoever.
When he had discovered she was gravely ill … nay, was dying … he had, in increasing desperation, taken her from doctor to doctor, in every town where the Pearl made port (overtly or covertly), even sought the consultation of every Chinese herbalist, voudon practitioner, wizened midwife, and tribal witch doctor he knew of in the entire Caribbee, but, frustratingly, the answer was always the same. All they could do was to give her something to make her final months more comfortable—poppy tea, opium, or its derivative tincture, laudanum—but none could save her.
Of course, she had kept the truth from her son as well, refused to burden him with concerns for her health, or with the knowledge that his mother was soon to be leaving this mortal plane. How Jack had quarrelled with her over this point—argued that the boy deserved to know the facts, that she was doing him a great disservice by keeping him in the dark, and denying him the opportunity to spend these last, waning days with his mother. But she would have none of it, and though he chafed at her decision, he (unwillingly) kept her counsel when she made him swear to silence.
The Empress was long since gone … the Chinese junk was too distinctive, too notorious, too recognisable to ply the pirate trade in the Caribbean, no chance of hiding her purpose by running up another country's colours as camouflage. She had turned its command and possession over to Tai Huang soon after their adventure seeking the Fountain of Youth (which, ultimately, turned out to be naught but an empty legend), when Jack had reclaimed his own beloved ship.
And now, the Black Pearl that Jack had, over two decades ago, wrested back from Hector Barbossa—for the second time—was also gone … given up to a new Captain's care when Elizabeth's health began to fail beyond the point that she could believably hide it from the crew, and it became necessary to keep her on land, close to help and the never-ending stream of doctors that never, quite, could do enough to save her. Elizabeth's son now stood at the Pearl's helm, young and fairly unproven as he was—young as she had been when she first took command of Sao Feng's Empress. However, the lad had, literally, been raised at sea—by a pirate Lord and a Pirate King, no less!—indoctrinated in pirate lore and steeped in its traditions since before he had been out of nappies, had made the Pearl's decks his playground, scurried up her ratlines like a monkey, knew and loved the ship as well as Jack did himself. The Pearl could not have been entrusted to better hands, as far as Jack was concerned, and the crew, most of whom had helped raise the boy and, indeed, had dandled him on their knees as a child, accepted him without hesitation when Jack had put his name forth for consideration as their new Captain, and announced his own plans to retire from a life of piracy, and settle with Lizzie in Tortuga.
Though the boy bore the name Turner and had ever called him Uncle Jack, and Elizabeth herself maintained that no one but Will could possibly have sired him (as careful as she and Jack had been, from the very first time, to take preventive measures whenever the two of them made love), Jack still at times had cause to doubt … had sworn that he saw himself in the crooked cast of the lad's mischievous grin, in the hint of mad recklessness that flashed in the nearly-black eyes, in the eerily familiar lines of the compact, wiry frame that developed as he grew from callow stripling to strong young manhood.
When Elizabeth had discovered his plan to give up the Pearl, she had exhorted Jack to go, to return to his life on the sea, without her, but he refused to do so. He would not abandon her in her hour of need, and seek solace in his other loves. How could she have even thought that he would leave her to face the shadow of death, alone? She was more important to him than any ship, or the sea.
So young William Turner, III (called Billy, or Bill, after his grandfather, rather than Will, like his presumed father) had sailed off with the Pearl, and Jack and Elizabeth settled in a small seaside cottage on the quieter side of Tortuga, not far from the hidden cove where Jack used to careen the Pearl on his more clandestine visits to the island.
And he seethed with frustration. The great Captain Jack Sparrow, man of action, pirate extraordinaire, rendered impotent against this most deadly, formless enemy. This was a battle he could not win, a foe that could not be conquered with sword or pistol or knife, or outfoxed by any of his clever tricks.
He could do nothing for her but keep her company throughout her remaining days, warm her bed and hold her and love her through her dwindling nights, and watch helplessly as the disease slowly ate away at her, robbing her once-lush body of its supple flesh, stealing the blushing roses from her cheeks and, at the end, even taking the fire from her eyes.
* * * * *
Inevitably, the night came when it became clear to him that Death's hand was already fast upon her, and that she would not last out the night. Wrapping her frail frame in clothing and cape and blankets, to protect her from the chill of the sea breezes, he had taken her out in the dinghy, rowing them out past the shallows, into the deeper waters where her husband could, at last, come to claim her, and take her home for the last time.
As they sat and waited for the end to come, for the death-at-sea that would summon the Flying Dutchman and its forever-young captain, he enfolded her in his arms, pulling her into his lap, cradling her tenderly. He felt the feeble rise and fall of her thin chest against his, counted her breaths that were alternately shallow and laboured, buried his trembling fingers in the tangled golden locks that, young as she still was, had not yet started to turn grey, unlike his own raven tresses which had become threaded with pewter over the twenty-odd years they'd been together.
As another spasm of pain wracked her, she gasped and clutched at him with skeletal fingers, her beautiful eyes, huge in her gaunt face, ringed with dark shadows like smudged kohl. "Jack ..." her voice ghosted thinly in the star-dappled night, an almost insubstantial wraith of sound floating on the currents of the murmuring breeze.
"I'm here, luv," he whispered into her hair, holding her tighter, clasping her to him as if it would prevent her from going, keep the last bit of life in her from escaping the failing body. Death could not have her ... not now, not yet ...
"Remember the island … when I taught you that song …?"
He let his mind wander back, and crooked a bittersweet smile, seeing again in his mind's eye that young girl who had gambolled madly on a deserted beach around a blazing bonfire, firelight silhouetting her lithe young body through her thin shift, turning her hair to golden silken flame, and her eyes to molten amber pools dancing with merry, and slightly drunken, mischief. "Aye. And burnt up the rum." He tried to sound stern, as he had then, but his voice quavered as his throat unexpectedly tightened.
She smiled wanly, and the effort seemed to cost her as the grin turned into a wince of pain. "I think I loved you, Jack … even then," she whispered. "Though I was too young and foolish to know it at the time … or at least to admit it to myself."
He felt a burn behind his eyes, and he had to blink back the welling moisture. "Aye, luv. A headstrong little chit you were … still are." His voice was rough with unshed tears, smoky with remembered passion, as he pressed his cheek to hers and breathed in her ear, "And I wanted you, so badly, that night. Wanted to take you there, under the stars … take you to the stars … lay you bare and let the moon- and firelight have its way with you, let it kiss your naked skin until you fair glimmered with silver and gold, pearl and ivory and precious jewels, like some carved idol of a heathen goddess. Wanted to fall to my knees before you and worship you with hands and mouth and body … make you burn like that bloody bonfire, make you burn like I did deep inside … Wanted to take you as a man takes a woman, deep and slow, ravish you and deflower you and watch the wonder blossom on your beautiful face as I showed you what your own body could do, what it could feel … watch as a transformed woman rose from the ashes of a child's ignorance …"
She was weeping now, eyes tightly shut, sallow cheeks traced with delicate threads of quicksilver moonlight. "Oh, Jack …" she sighed, her waning voice soft and so low he had to strain to hear it. "It was just like that … when you did take me for the first time … that night on the Pearl … the eve before the battle … pure magic …"
He brushed his lips across her furrowed ashen brow. "I remember, luv." He closed his eyes against the memories: to him, she would always be that beautiful girl dancing around the bonfire in innocent abandon … that young woman tempting and teasing him and branding him with her traitor's kiss on the deck of the doomed Pearl … that ruthless warrior, the newly-minted Pirate King swinging her blade amid rain and blood aboard the Dutchman's slippery decks, then clinging to him as they rose into iron-grey skies in the heart of a maelstrom …
And he remembered all the nights since then, when they had shared a bed, and she learned from him everything he had wanted to teach her that night on the island, and she taught him what it was to love, and to be loved …
He bent his head to hers, whispered against her lips, "I love you, Lizzie," and kissed her, for the last time … took her mouth with the same passion, the same desire, the same love he had felt for her for the past two decades, and more.
He felt it when she passed … when her dying breath, warm and sweet, drifted over his tongue and curled inside his lungs as if seeking refuge there within the safe haven of his body. There was a stir in the air like cool lips brushing his weathered cheek, a chill like a dark shadow passing between him and the moon, the sense of a door shutting forever in his heart. He still held her in his arms, but it was an empty shell. Her soul, her life's essence, was gone.
He drew her body fiercely to his chest, crushed her to him, and let his tears flow at last. No need to be careful now. He could not hurt her anymore. She was beyond pain, beyond suffering …
"Godspeed, Lizzie …" he wept. "Godspeed, and fair winds …"
Even as his heart broke into a hundred razor-sharp shards, flaying him with agony, something broke the surface of the water nearby, the sea churning as it disgorged a massive grey hull, and a shower of silver droplets rained down upon him and the cooling body of his love, a cold rain mingling with his own hot tears, bedecking them both with glittering moonlit diamonds.
He sat, unheeding, still holding on to her for dear life, until a voice penetrated his oblivion, his grief.
"Let her go, Jack," Will Turner said, gently. "Give her to the sea … let it take her, claim her … so she can come aboard …"
He looked up into the warm, brown eyes of Death's Ferryman, staring down at him from the deck of the Flying Dutchman. Saw the sympathy standing there, the shared sorrow, the humanity which remained remarkably intact after almost a quarter-century of his grim duty of gathering the sea's dead and shuttling them to their final destination, his youthful face unchanged, unfurrowed, untouched by the deformities and disfigurements that had been the fate of the Dutchman's crew under Davy Jones' captaincy.
As he slackened his arms, let the limp form fall away from him, looked one last time upon her cherished face that would smile upon him no more, a flash of silver at her throat caught his eye, where the cape and blanket had fallen aside. He reached forth, hooked one finger under the silver chain, lifted it away from her still-warm skin. Fresh grief washed through him as he saw what she wore around her neck—
She had taken to wearing it on a chain again, as her fingers lost their flesh and shrunk too small for her to keep it from falling off—
He now released the clasp with shaking but still nimble fingers, drew the chain and what it held away from her neck and into the calloused cup of his hand, then opened his hand and let the silver chain slither through his grasp and fall unheeded to the bottom of the boat, leaving only that which it had held resting, glinting, in his open palm …
He slid the silver sparrow ring back onto his finger, where it had rested before that night, nearly twenty-five years ago, when he had left it for her, along with a note, on the floor of a cottage in Port Royal … the night he had awakened her to the pleasures of the flesh, gifted her with her first rapture, but left her innocence intact …
Had this been the Pearl, she would have received a sailor's burial at sea with full honours, her body sewn into a sailcloth shroud, and consigned to the sea amid the prayers and tributes of the entire crew, the Pearl's guns firing a farewell volley to mark her passing. But here, there was only him, and her husband, to see her on her way to eternity.
He gathered her tenderly up in his arms and, with one final kiss upon those cooling lips, lowered her over the edge of the boat, rested her upon the surface of the water as though tucking her in for the night, the sea both her bed and blanket now, a watery cradle for her body's eternal sleep.
The arms of the sea closed around her, drawing her down into its chill liquid embrace. Her features shimmered and blurred as the sea took her, her hair drifting on the current and framing her face like a luminous halo … a fallen angel, as much as he himself had been, his soulmate, his match, his equal … and he watched until he could see her no more, and even after …
Ironic that he had once saved her from the sea, and now it was the sea that would take her from him, forever.
"Jack …"
When he looked up, there were two figures standing on the deck of the Flying Dutchman: Will Turner, Calypso's Ferryman, and a slighter, lighter figure shimmering into existence beside him, looking whole and healthy and young as she had been when he had first seen her, that day he had clasped her in his arms as he rescued her from a watery death, her unlined face pale and lovely in the moonlight, a gentle smile curving her lips.
"Lizzie …" he breathed, and saw her smile widen, even as her right arm moved to encircle the waist of her husband.
"Jack, my love … thank you for being there for me … for loving me, though at times I truly didn't deserve it … for saving Will from Jones' cruel vengeance, when he might have been lost to me forever … for, at the end, making it possible for he and I to be reunited, by letting me die at sea …" She turned into Will's arms as he embraced her and pressed a kiss to her pale cheek, and Jack was ashamed to find that he was jealous, despite the fact that Will had only had her, to hold and to love, for a scant three days total since Barbossa had wed them on the deck of the Pearl, and Jack had had her nearly every day … and every night … for nigh on twenty-three years. "Even if it's only to be for the duration of this final journey …"
Jack swiped at his tears, regathered his composure as he said in a voice roughened by grief, "D'you mean to say, you'll not be servin' one hundred years before the mast …?"
She smiled, a bit sadly. "Not an option for me, I'm afraid …"
"You see, Jack," Will interjected, "Jones had perverted the rules, twisted them to his own purpose. In fact, that choice can only be given to those who have not yet passed over that threshold, who are yet in that twilight existence between life and death … clinging to one, yet doomed to the other …"
Jack's face fell. "I'm sorry, Lizzie … had I known …"
Elizabeth gave a light laugh, and cast him a smile that made his breath catch in his throat. "Don't be, Jack … this is how it should be. How I would have wanted it to be. I'll be reunited with Father … and the mother I lost when I was just a little girl." Her smiled widened, bright with love and affection. "And I'll be waiting for you, when it's time for you to make your final journey … and we can spend the Afterlife—eternity—at each other's side … together …"
For a moment, Jack had never felt so much like throwing himself into the sea, letting it take him, claim him, too, so he could join her in Eternity … right here … right now …
But even as his hand closed around the hilt of the dagger in his belt, it was as though she could read his thoughts, or perhaps she knew him well enough to guess where his thought processes would take him. "And don't you even consider killing yourself, just for the sake of accompanying me. Go back to your Pearl, Jack … go to my son, tell him what has happened, give him my fondest love, and continue to be an Uncle … nay, a Father … to him. I am depending on you to guide him, teach him, watch over him, keep him safe as you possibly can, given the path he has chosen for himself, until that day you are able to come to me … when my darling Will can carry you away on the Dutchman, and back to my waiting arms …"
"But, Lizzie …" he made to argue, wanted to tell her that there was no life, without her.
"Jack … shut it!" she snapped, as she used to in life when she grew exasperated with him, and it was such a familiar—such a typical Lizzie—reaction … that he had to grin. She shook her head, firmly. "You had a life before me, Jack … you and your magnificent Pearl … and you'll continue to have one, now that I'm gone. Trust me, Jack. The Pearl will make you whole again, help you in your grief, provide balm for your aching heart and soul, as she always has done. Go back to your first love, Jack … go back to the Pearl, and to the sea …"
She crooked a smile that would have done him justice. "After all, my love … you're Captain Jack Sparrow. You have further adventures ahead of you, more tales to tell, a legend to cement for future generations. Let the tales unfold, Jack. Weave them into your saga, work them into the tapestry of your incredible life … make them your legacy. Leave the world something to remember." The grin turned mischievous. "And while you're at it, make sure you cement my legend as well … make sure they remember the woman who loved you, with all her divided heart, with all her tainted soul … the Governor's daughter who grew up to be a Pirate King … the Swann who hitched her star, entrusted her future, gave her heart to a flighty Sparrow …"
Despite himself, Jack found himself smiling. "Aye. They'll remember you, love. I'll see that they do. My word 'pon it."
The sea around them seemed to vibrate like the tolling of a bell, and a fierce look came over Will's face. "Duty calls," he said, "and I must answer the summons." He drew Elizabeth against his side, but his warm eyes were fixed on Jack. "Thank you, Jack, for taking care of her for me … for being there for her, when I couldn't be … for loving her, in my stead … and for raising my son as though he were your own." He bowed his head and raised a hand to his brow in a brief salute. "Fair winds and following seas to you, Jack Sparrow. Until we have cause to meet again."
"I love you, Jack," Elizabeth called out, even as Will took the helm, and the Dutchman moved away. "Always remember that, my heart, my love … keep that thought with you, until we're together again …"
And then, the ghost ship reared up like a dolphin preparing to dive, arced and then plunged down, was swallowed by the sea, leaving nothing in its wake save a shower of sea-spray and the roiling waves …
And leaving Jack Sparrow, alone with his pain, under the crematory-ash light of the cold moon.
Jack sat in the dinghy, and watched and wept and waited until the waves abated and the seas calmed and the cool wind dried the tears on his face, then picked up his oars and started rowing back to shore. He had need to get back, to go into town, to haunt the taverns and inns and seek news of Captain Bill Turner and the Black Pearl.
And he had desperate need of rum. Massive quantities of rum, in fact … to numb an aching heart, to salve a grieving soul, to drown his sorrows, and to bring him sweet oblivion, if only for a little while … if only for tonight …
And to drink a farewell toast to his darling Lizzie, and to that part of his heart that had died today with her …
In the moonlit darkness, the night-birds seemed to taunt him in strident, mocking tones, echoing those parting words he had whispered against her dead lips …
"Godspeed, my love … Godspeed, and fair winds ..."
A/N: A note of explanation about this story. It was written not long ago, on the third anniversary of my father's death from incurable cancer. I spent that day in a blue funk, hair-trigger weepy the entire day, and lost in melancholia, and when I got home and fired up my computer, this was the story that poured out of me, along with a bucketful of tears.
I debated long and hard about whether or not to post this, not only because it is dark and depressing and involves a key character's death, but also because even though the specifics of the tale differ from that of my father's death, the emotions that went into it, that are interwoven into the tale, are accurate, and deeply personal. The impotent rage and grief that Jack feels at Lizzie's impending death is a mirror of my own, as is his horror at having to watch a loved one waste away and die of an incurable illness. And Lizzie's stoic and fatalistic acceptance of her fate, facing her own mortality with the knowledge that her remaining days are limited, and death is not very far away, and her desire for her loved ones to go on with their lives, even though hers is ending, are my father's.
But it is fanfic, and in the spirit of "misery loves company" I have decided to post it anyway. My apologies for any resulting tears or depression caused by this story ...
Also, for those who have been following my Sparrabeth story cycle, please be assured that this is not necessarily how I mean Jack and Lizzie's tale to end. It's merely a product of where my heart and mind were on that sad anniversary, one possible ending of many for these characters.
This story is dedicated to my late father, because even though it's not really his story, he did, in a way, inspire me to write it.
Love you, Dad. Godspeed, and fair winds …
— Cat