Cast Your Heart to the Tides
Her son is three when he first comes to visit. For hours, he is nothing more than a black smudge on the edge of the horizon, a bird lingering at the end of the sea.
Elizabeth is in the small garden she has coaxed out of the rocky soil, gathering wild onions for a stew when Jaime comes flying toward her on sturdy toddler legs, excitement on his lips and in his eyes.
"Mama, Mama, look! Big boat!"
Hope unfurls in her chest at his words, rising on gossamer wings, fragile and delicate as she runs with him to the beach. 'Will, be Will, be Will,' she prays, offering up her desperation to any gods listening. 'Please, somebody, let it be Will.'
Heart pounding, she reaches the edge of the cliff with Jaime at her side, eyes raking the horizon for the Dutchman.
When she finds black sails, when she feels the weight of her heart as it crashes back into it's place behind her ribs, she learns what it is to hate.
XXX
The next morning, a familiar flag washes up on the beach, a grinning skull above crossed swords, with one addition; a red sparrow dipping in flight, high in the right-hand corner of the field.
There is no sign of the Pearl.
XXX
When Jaime asks after his father, she weaves him stories out of half-truths, vague tales that leave behind more questions than they answer. It surprises her, how easy it is to rewrite her life, spin a story from nothing but a patchwork of truth, stitch it together with the thinnest strand of lies. Elizabeth was no proper lady, too caught by the lure of the sea and the thought of Will's callused blacksmith hands on her pale skin to learn to sew. She has cast off the mantle of her old life, and yet somehow, what she weaves now far outstrips anything she could have made had she learned the needle.
Elizabeth is no proper lady, too caught by the lure of the sea and the remembrance of Will's callused pirate hands on her pale skin to pretend that nothing happened, but still she does not tell Jaime. No, no, she weaves him a fantasy without sparrows and pearls, without chained goddesses and monsters that once were men. She does not tell him that she once weighed the life of two men in her hands, and condemned one to death. She does not tell him what freedom feels like, and that she has only found it on the deck of a ship, slick with salt spray and sails taught with the rush of wind.
She tells him stories of blacksmiths and governors' daughters, of quiet affection and proper decorum.
She tells him these stories, and swallows down the guilt that threatens to overwhelm her, surging from her gut at the implicit trust in her little boy's eyes.
Her guilt tastes like ash, and she wonders how it is that she has not choked on her own deception.
XXX
They are starving, when he first meets Jack. The winter came early, killing the plants in her meager garden, freezing the wild game on the island. She is tired and scared and desperately hungry. Her heart seizes and stutters in her chest when Jaime looks at her, hunger in his eyes and his face sallow with the sunken cheeks of a child gone without food.
She is no Will, with his calm in the face of danger. She is no Jack, to pull miracles out of thin air, twisting and turning until the truth slides around him like water, lost in the current of his magic. She is Elizabeth, a woman alone, a child at her hip whimpering for food, and hunger a gnawing beast in her stomach.
They are starving, when black sails appear on the horizon.
XXX
Gibbs comes ashore in the longboat. He brings food, crates of salted meat, sacks of coarse-ground flour for bread. There are oranges, bright treasures in a burlap bag, "fresh," Gibbs assures her, though from where she does not know. She finds she does not care, as she sinks her teeth into the first orange she has had since she left Port Royal, four years ago. The juice runs sticky down her chin as she continues to look through the salvation Jack has brought her.
There are satchels of seeds, wrapped carefully in soft cotton cloth, for planting in the spring. There is a bottle of rum, a note attached. It is only one word, written in a wandering hand. Pirate.
Jack has saved her again, she thinks, after she has hugged Gibbs and watched him row back toward the Pearl, her sails tucked about her like dark wings. She has forgotten the score; she wonders if they are even, now, or if she is in his debt.
Watching from the cliff, Jaime sees his mother embrace the man on shore, but his attention is fixed on the ship anchored in the cove, black sails folded around her like the wings of some great dark bird.
He can see the figure of a man at the helm, standing tall, the wind flaring the tails of his coat. The man turns, then, away from the sight of the woman on the beach, and stares at the cliff. He tips his hat, and Jaime can feel the weight of his eyes even from this distance.
He turns away after a moment, and his fingers tap against the worn wood of the great wheel. As the ship turns toward open water, her name settles on Jaime's tongue like he has known her all his life.
The Black Pearl.
XXX
After, when the marks of hunger have faded from Jaime's face, she cannot help but tell him the truth, when he asks about the Black Pearl, and her captain.
She does not remember, in that moment, that she has never mentioned the Black Pearl to him.
XXX
It hits when Jaime is nine.
The tempest starts out innocently enough, with dark clouds and a sharp wind. Six hours later, with the wind reaching a scream and the clouds creating swollen mountains of darkness on the horizon, Elizabeth knows what has arrived: one of the storms of legend.
A hurricane.
Slow at first, and then more rapidly as night falls, her world becomes nothing more than howling winds and towering seas. Huddled in a stone cottage on a cliff overlooking the sea, Jaime clutching at her skirts and willing himself not to whimper or cry, Elizabeth finds herself thinking of Will.
She is terrified beyond anything she has ever felt before. This is worse than cursed pirates, facing the noose, than the incredible maelstrom in her final stand as Pirate King. This storm, this raging tempest is a thousand times worse. There is no Barbossa, cackling as he steers into the heart of the dark water, no Gibbs commanding the cannons in his graveled voice, no Jack, with his daring plans and studied madness. And there is no Will, to steady her as she slips on the familiar rain-soaked decks of the Pearl.
It is just she and her son, alone and helpless against the furious rage of the ocean, at the mercy of the winds, and she does not even know where her husband is.
Is he gliding underneath the massive waves in his spectral ship, plucking the souls of the dead out of the storm-tossed depths? Is he thinking of her? Does he remember her the same way she remembers him, the warm curve of his smile and the strong grasp of his hand around hers?
She does not know.
The distance between them pulls at her, sends pain skittering across her heart and makes her breath come sharp.
She does not know.
XXX
The gales rages on around them for an eternity, and while her thoughts are with the captain of the Flying Dutchman, Elizabeth discovers that her son's are elsewhere.
"Mama," he asks her over the keening of the wind, "will the Pearl be alright? Will she survive?"
"Jaime, child," she says hesitantly, unsure of how to answer. "We don't know if the Pearl is even in the storm."
"She could be," he insists. His small face is etched with lines of worry, a deep fear not quite hidden in his eyes. "She could be," he says again, and searches for truth in her answer.
The look on his face haunts her long after the wind has stopped crying.
XXX
The Black Pearl appears in their cove three days after the hurricane. Like always, Jaime spots the sails before she does, and is off and running before she can grab an arm to restrain him. A sigh rushes through her and she follows at a more sedate pace, reaching the beach just as a longboat touches the sand.
Jack alights and is immediately subjected to the assault of an overjoyed nine year-old. He gives Jaime a hug and hoists him into his arms, laughing at the barrage of questions Jaime fires his way.
With her son in his grasp, his tricorn knocked askew and a true smile on his lips, he looks more a man than she has ever seen him. She cannot reconcile the man before her with the feared captain of the most infamous ship in the Caribbean.
"You've got quite a man here, Elizabeth." His voice rumbles out over her Jaime's excited words, smooth and quiet.
She opens her mouth to ask of his voyage, ask of his crew, ask of Will, ask how to repay him, but she finds she has no words; he's stolen them all. Ah, there is the Jack she knows, a barb that isn't really a barb at all, leaving her twisted up in knots.
She has no words, so instead she turns, heading back towards her small cottage. He follows, Jaime still settled in his arms intently examining the trinkets in Jack's hair, and doesn't speak again. In the end, she has no choice but to let him in.
XXX
"How did the Pearl survive the hurricane?"
"Easy, lad. She outran it."
Jaime frowns, an echo of his worried face during the storm. "But a ship can't outrun the weather."
Jack's forehead creases at Jaime's words, and his eyes flash up to meet Elizabeth's. She can sense his disappointment, the flash of anger in his gaze, but before she can offer an explanation – a lie – he grins and the expression is gone. So too is the man, and the pirate smiles in his place.
"She's the Black Pearl, mate. She can outrun anything."
XXX
"Still runnin' against the wind, eh Lizzie?" His tone is wry, jaded, the banked fire of a burn that could rival the sun. Somewhere, beneath the cobwebs and dust of time, she can hear the snick of a lock ringing in the balmy Caribbean air.
In his kohl-rimmed eyes she can see the distant line of the horizon, can feel her salvation in the warmth of his hand on hers, but all she can do is sigh. Her fingers leave his and come up to hover above her heart, uncertain and skittish. He follows, his hand stoking a fire in her, warmth trailing across her skin until he stills, cupping her cheek in the palm of his hand. The world narrows to the sound of his breathing, to the play of shadows on his face; she's slipping between the past and the future, between chains and freedom.
The chest beneath the floorboards in her bedroom drums a warning, and she snaps back to the present. "Jack…"
But like the mist that brought the Pearl to her that morning, he is gone.
XXX
She dreams of birds that night, of wind caressing feathered wings, of starlight reflected in bright eyes. Ravens, jays, starlings, gulls, they soar through her dreams, escorting jet black swans over glassy lakes and turbulent rivers, all leading her to the sea.
Everywhere and nowhere at once, she can hear the trilling of a lone sparrow.
XXX
She waits. It's a skill she has honed over the past ten years, waiting. Waiting for Will, waiting for Jack, chafing for the sea and the swell of freedom in her heart.
She's not quite sure whom she's waiting for anymore, but she finds herself growing restless for the sight of black sails on the horizon.
She does not know if that makes her a traitor to who she once was, or if it marks her final acceptance of the mantle of pirate, the word fitting like truth stretched across her skin.
XXX
Will comes to her, his face calm and his eyes a world away. He is no longer a blacksmith or a pirate, and his hands do not feel the same on her pale skin. He is not hers anymore. Perhaps he never was.
His lips are cool against her cheek, the gentle touch of a being no longer of this world. The Will she knew is gone, and in his place stands the ferryman, Calypso's chosen captain. The decade that has marked her with it's passing has left him untouched, and his eyes are fathomless wells of darkness, the dark of the ocean, or perhaps of death.
He stands on the shore, his home but once every ten years, and places his hand on his son's shoulder.
"Take care of your mother," he says.
She cries, then, as she watches her son meet her husband's eyes, and nod in solemn promise.
He smiles, fleeting and tinged with regret, and then he is gone.
The Dutchman vanishes in a flare of green light, and she cries for what once was, for what could have been, for what now is lost.
Jaime hugs her, and together, they watch night steal over the ocean. He tells her that he wants to be a pirate. Her face splits into a tired grin, still streaked with tears, and she holds her son closer, the lure of the sea calling him as surely as it calls her.
XXX
Elizabeth waits. The heart locked away in the chest under her bed still beats, but it is slower, distant, no longer in sync with her own.
Three days later, and there is another ship in the cove, anchored against the pounding surf, dark sails furled around her like the wings of a great bird, waiting to fly to freedom.
Elizabeth is tired of waiting.
XXX
The pennants on the Pearl are snapping in the wind when he kisses her. His heart is a drumbeat beneath her splayed palm, loud and wild and in time with hers. Jack's lips are hot and rough on her mouth, her forehead, her neck. She can smell the sea on him, salty and sharp, and the smooth warmth of rum. Underneath it is a scent all his own, sun-gilded skin and the tang of sweat, shadowed gold and masculine heat and Jack.
Her arms move of their own accord, twining around his neck to clutch him close even as his palm stretches across her hip and pulls her against him. His kisses are hot and desperate, and she shakes when he whispers her name.
"Elizabeth," he says, "'ve been waitin', Lizzie." His voice is all breath on the last word, fanning out across her cheeks as he presses his forehead to hers, meets her eyes. "Pirate."
She shivers, caught, and does not deny it. "Say that again."
All breath. "Pirate."
"Good man."
Behind her, the Pearl is waiting.
Elizabeth is tired of waiting.
She has been many things, governor's daughter, captive, stowaway. Pirate King. Bride and widow, mother alone. All her life she has been waiting, waiting for freedom, waiting for Will, waiting for wind to catch her sails, that she may choose her own course.
Waiting, it has been ten years since she last tasted freedom, heady and sweet on her tongue.
Jaime laughs and makes a grab for Cotton's parrot, and the sound solidifies something in her heart. Jack's hand is warm in hers, the hands of a trickster and a thief. The hands of a pirate.
She trusts them.
And so she turns toward the ship with black sails that has haunted her these many years, and she does not look back.
On the deck of the Black Pearl, Elizabeth can feel her soul take flight as the sails unfurl, arcing like the wings of some great dark bird.
Drawn by the lure of the sea, she casts her eye to the horizon. The salt spray of breaking waves lashes at her skin, and the wind in her face feels like freedom.
Jack, she thinks that night, as she lies sated in the circle of his arms, carries the same taste as the wind.
Freedom.
Hear me ramble: This fic owes a debt to the singer/songwriters Jimmy Buffet and Bob Seger. Buffet comes through with the line "drawn by the lure of the sea," from his song "Banana Republics." Bob Seger's "Roll Me Away" actually gave me the idea for this fic in the first place; one of the first lines I wrote, "Elizabeth can feel her soul take flight" comes from a lyric in the song's final verse, "I saw a young hawk flying and my soul began to rise." Jack says "Still runnin' against the wind," a direct reference to another Seger song, "Running Against The Wind."
If anyone spots any typos, please point them out to me and I'll fix them immediately; I've read this so many times now I just can't see them anymore :)
Reviews and concrit are love!