I.
She finds herself oddly attracted to Captain Teague. He is sitting in the sand with her, drawing intricate designs in it with the end of a pipe that usually hangs from his belt, and they are quiet. The look of concentration on his face is vintage Jack Sparrow – though she realizes that, most likely, Jack's look is vintage Teague. The trinkets in his hair sway with the bob of his head, and his eyes are intent, fierce.
He looks up when one of his crew members yells for him, and he waves the man over. He is carrying a hefty load of wood planks over his shoulder.
Where do you want it, Captain?
She realizes what he means to do, and protests. She can build her own home, thank you very much!
His eyes alight on the small bump just beginning to show, and she glares at him.
Think of it as a coronation present.
There's no such thing. People don't vote for kings, anyway.
Pirates.
II.
She tells him she thought she would die. That she is almost certain Will didn't expect to live.
He doesn't speak for a long moment, watching Nathan warily as he climbs farther up into the tree (Let him be, Jack had said at her protest, ten feet earlier. Only way he'll learn what it feels like to fall. Far less dangerous than almost any other way. Much more betterer a way, this way.)
Technically, he finally replies, he did, in fact, die. Continues to be dead. Or have I been miscounting the years?
She glares at him. Then continues her sidelong study of him, as if she hasn't seen him in years.
He's been here for four months.
Sometimes she wonders why they married at all, beyond fearing they'd never have another chance.
Nonsense. He finds it somewhat disconcerting that she is not watching her son's ascent. He is quite far up there, now. Quite strong for his age. Love, you've been married to William since he floated into your life.
She doesn't deny it, but her eyes do not stray from her perusal of him.
Nathan reaches up or a branch, and slightly overcompensates, loses his balance, and Jack resists the urge to stand and run toward the tree. He is rewarded when, seconds later (though it seems a lifetime to him) Elizabeth's gaze follows his own and practically pins her son to the tree as Nathan grabs hold of something.
Did you do this? When you were young?
He chuckles. Aye. And when I was old.
Her gaze returns to him.
Last time I fell, it was all the way down, and with no one to catch me at the bottom.
He expects her to look away. Bow her head. Maybe even spout one of her I had to's.
She does none of these things. Instead, as they sit on the warm stone bench, a nice, spring sun settling over them, the fingers that have been lying tantalizingly close to his for nigh on an hour are suddenly twined in his. They both turn to watch as Nathan reaches the highest branch. He laughs loudly, his young voice carrying.
Jack spares a moment to think he might build Nathan a fort, up in those branches. He'd always wanted a fortress in the trees when he was a child. Instead he'd gotten a crow's nest.
Nathan waves at them, the smile on his face wide and exuberant.
How exactly are you plannin' to get down, lad? Jack shouts.
Nathan merely grins at him.
Jack feels a swell of something in his chest. He thinks it might be pride.
III.
Nathan is walking. Wobbly, unbalanced, but he is walking. She takes him down to the
beach, knowing it will hurt less when he falls.
She turns away from him for a moment, to look towards the tide, and sees it whirling upwards, a maelstrom turned inside out, and there, glittering in turquoise, sunlight streaming through her, is Calypso.
Tia Dalma! she says, even though her form is different, and she looks nothing like the voodoo witch.
She smiles, and Elizabeth feels a wave of jealousy wash through her, wondering what form she took with Jack, what form she might take with Will. The term watery tart comes to mind.
Elizabeth does not avert her eyes as Calypso nears, like she knows most men would do. Most men except, maybe, for Jack Sparrow.
Again, Tia smiles at her, and the hair framing her face glints red, then brown, and finally turns blonde as she stands before Elizabeth.
Elizabeth thinks suddenly of those books about King Arthur she'd snuck out of James' library when she was fifteen. She's always thought Tia was a bit like the Lady in the Lake.
Hello, child, she says, her voice different, a bit like what she's heard of Boston accents.
She spends a long time staring at Nathan, and Elizabeth feels more than a bit protective, even though she knows, someday, Tia will take her son as well. He is not yet hers, but he will be. Eventually.
For now, he is his mother's, and his mother's alone.
She nods in kind. Hello, Tia.
IV.
She does not age quite so well as she had hoped.
The wrinkles around her eyes and mouth are too deep, the scar above her left eye no longer gives character, but instead a sad droop that makes her face asymmetrical. Her skin is no longer as pliant, as soft as she might like it. She sometimes gets a hacking cough, memories of the time Jack reentered her life, that burrows deep down in her chest, that she can't get rid of. She feels pitiful when Jack pushes her down onto the bed and tells her to rest.
Sometimes Jack cradles her against him, her back to his chest, and he sings old songs softly, his voice deep and resonant.
You're beautiful, he'll says, and she'll turn. He doesn't release his hold, so she is forced to look straight up.
You don't have to lie to me.
Not lying, he informs her, taking her in with something she might define as passion, if she hadn't seen herself in the mirror just that morning. Looking at things another way, love.
She kisses him, and she swears the years melt away.
V.
Will watches them. They have all lowered their sails, and their ships stand in the waters, moving only with the slight rocking of stray waves.
Calypso smiles upon them. He has begun to feel her. Her presence, the mood she is in at any given time. She seems quite placated whenever he is around. Or Jack.
He supposes this weather is her delight at having her three favorite pirates all together. Elizabeth, William, and Jack.
So he watches. They are all on the Pearl, because somehow the ship has returned to Jack. The ever treacherous mistress, but one Jack can't help but love dearly.
He tries not to see anything at all ironic in this.
The crew is singing. It is a motley crew, full of new sailors, some young, some old, and seasoned sailors, the ones that seem attached to the ship, for no matter the change in captains, the devoted crew stay. The Pearl is a tempting mistress.
Jack and Elizabeth have situated themselves amidst a group of pirates waiting for a story, and Nathan is not far off, watching them with a small smile on his face. The look seems all too familiar, and so he glances again at Jack. Who is currently watching his wife with the exact same smile Nathan is sporting.
They look every bit the family he only now realizes they are.
…Oh aye, lad, Jack is saying. Goddesses and governors and swans. Even a king, and a devil, and a journey to the depths of hell and back.
The cabin boy of the Dutchmen looks up at him with wide eyes. Truly, sir?
Jack chuckles. Ask your captain, if you don't believe me.
The boy, Yuri, he thinks, shakes his head zealously. Of course he believes Jack.
Elizabeth lays a hand on Jack's shoulder, leans into him to whisper something in his ear.
Jack's eyes darken with something Will doesn't quite understand, and he watches with bated breath.
Their fingers twine, and Elizabeth smiles, leaning her head on his shoulder.
Will wonders if he ever loved her the way Jack does.
Certainly with all his heart. There is proof of that, buried twenty paces out from the hollow palm tree on an island he doesn't care to remember. But with all his body? All his soul?
He isn't quite sure. And that, perhaps, is the reason that jealousy does not stir in his belly when Jack's hand traces a pattern high up her thigh, when Elizabeth looks at him with dark, eyes, holds them in her heady gaze.
VI.
Where is she?
He shakes Nathan a little to make sure he understands the urgency of this. Gone! Nathan yells at him, grabbing Jack's wrists and thrusting them backward.
Jack's back hits the rail of Nathan's ship.
And it's your fault.
Jack rubs his back thoughtfully. Now why is that?
Because you left.
She told me to leave.
Nathan laughs, and there is a hard edge to it. They both know she didn't mean it.
She told me to!
Nathan's eyes change. He softens. Jack…
Do you know where…?
She went to find my father.
Jack tries to hide the way his face falls, and it doesn't work. Not a bit. Nathan reaches for the only man he's ever cared to have as a father. Grasps his shoulder.
To find you, Jack.
He looks up, holds Nathan's gaze, and nods. He reaches up, his hand over Nathan's, and Nathan looks up at the clear blue sky.
Calypso smiles upon them.
VII.
The door to her room swings open, and both she and Jack swing upward, reaching for swords and pistols.
Nathan looks at them, and for all his eleven years, he doesn't look half of them.
Nathan.
He makes a flying leap onto the bed, situating himself between the two, and reaches for his mother. She holds him close, stroking his hair, pressing a kiss or two onto his head.
He's not coming back, is he?
She feels her eyes mist for her son. Not yet. Not for a while.
He clings to his mother. I hate him.
Her gaze flits to Jack, and in his eyes she can see the same sentiment. In this moment, they all hate William Turner.
VIII.
She beats her hands on his chest. Struggles ineffectively to free herself from his grasp.
It was your fault! You chose it!
He'd have died, Jack says. You'd never have had him.
I don't have him!
You wouldn't have Nathan.
She slumps, stops struggling.
I hate you, she says, and he tugs her closer, presses his chin into her hair. Strokes anything his hands can reach as she begins to sob.
Love you, he replies, and her shoulders shake as she soaks his shirt in tears.
IX.
Will.
He stares at his father. Tries not to think of what it means that Elizabeth has died. That Jack is sitting before him, nearly at death's door himself. You must let them go.
He doesn't want to. Jack is all that is left.
Nathan died ten years ago, a stray bullet piercing his heart. Barbossa drowned, pulled under by a strong riptide. From what he's heard, Gibbs died of old age, snug as a bug in a tavern in Tortuga, his last words something like, No, lets not go there. 'tis a silly place.
Marty was shot, and then stabbed, and then trampled by the ships escaped goats.
Elizabeth died in the night, Jack tells him.
He looks up into the night sky, his eyes tracing curves of constellations, the sharp point of a sword or an upside-down chair.
I cried, he says. Haven't cried since I was ten. Will nods.
She's not gone, really.
Jack looks up at him, and seems to realize what he means. Knows that he'll see Lizzie again, but that Will, most likely, will never get the chance. Not until someone digs up the carefully hidden heart of William Turner, with a mind to become immortal. Bad idea. Stupid, really, to want it, Jack thinks. What would you want with immortality, really, when death was just another adventure?
X.
Elizabeth starts, jumping back from the boy – young man – she's just run into. Apologizes. Looks up at him, and her breath catches.
Oh, she says.
He grins down at her. Should watch yer step, young miss.
I'm thirteen, she says, her chin stretched upward, and he smiles at her.
I was thinking fourteen, he says, and she grins at him.
Johnny! yells a man off to their left, and he turns. We're shovin' off!
He stands straight, winks at Elizabeth, and turns away.
Who are you? she calls back.
He stops, turns to her. Jack, he says. Just call me Jack.
XI.
Jack, she says, stretching lithely, her cat like grace curling her around him.
Mmm, he replies, burrowing his face deeper into her shoulder.
Why did you stay?
Hmm? he asks, lips brushing across her neck.
Why did you stay?
His hand skates across her stomach, slides across her navel and up. He kisses a slow trail down to meet his hand just below her breast, and she nearly forgets she'd asked him a question. Until he answers it, his eyes catching hers as the hand slides back down. No reason to leave, Lizzie love.