North Riding

An Over-heard Conversation

Hello dear readers! I've been hoping to continue my other story but I seemed to need something different first to get back into the habit. This is a one-shot, so it's complete. I've missed you all and look forward to finishing "Legends" soon. Enjoy!

She leaned restless against the cool glass, knees drawn up to her chest, black eyes locked on the darkling moor, an ocean of purple and gray sweeping around the tavern at Mickle Fell, back and forth, back and forth. How silent the night was—silent as the womb, silent as the grave.

Two shadows stood flickering in the courtyard below the window, two shadows fraught with sparking heat, the distance between them grating. Nell could feel their words like a drought of old wine that brought fever to the head.

Cutting a sharp silhouette against the haunted night was her lover, the one she'd been waiting for impatiently since the sun set. She could make out the revolver on his belt, the tapered braids creeping from beneath his familiar hat. A pirate he was and a pirate he'd be; older than he looked and younger than he seemed. His skin was inked and scrabbled, so unlike the pale paper-blank skin of the village boys. Nell remembered the first day she'd seen him on the port dock of the North Riding. She'd felt a quiver inside then, a quiver of destiny or desire… either way she'd found him after nightfall and made the moor their bed. She didn't cry out when he took her, and afterward he laughed and called her a willful doxy and a sweet thing, and said he didn't know what she wanted with him. She replied she wasn't certain herself, but it was worth her maidenhead. So the weeks had passed and he always came, though Nell secretly dreaded the night he wouldn't. Perhaps this was that night.

For even as Nell watched, Jack moved closer to the other—it was a woman—and seized her hands with fervor. An old lover then, one of many. Was she beautiful? Was she a wanderer, a pirate like himself? Or a paid whore with whom he'd fathered a child? Nell pushed the frame of the window open an inch, another inch, not daring to breath. Their voices came into focus:

"Ship's loitering at Whitby, 'Lizbeth, until I sail again."

"I don't believe you've settled, Jack Sparrow. It's only a matter of time before you leave her… as you left me."

Jack twisted his head to one side, grim. He had been expecting that, steeling for that blow. "Be honest, Beth-o-mine, you fair ran me out."

Elizabeth's hand shot upward as if to slap his dark face, but at the last second she seemed to change her mind and her hand just stayed there in the space between them. Her voice was sharp with bitterness: "You've no right to call me yours, Jack. You left because you were afraid, because you're a selfish child of a man who couldn't stay…"

He laughed, but his humor was forced. "I was afraid, love… quite afraid."

"You're a coward." Her accusation fell flat now, and her hand impulsively drifted to his face, caressed his cheek with an agony of desire. He stepped closer, his eyes half-lidded. He moved into her touch. "Why couldn't you have stayed, Jack?" her voice had become very soft now. "I didn't ask much… I didn't hold you back, did I?"

"Oh, Beth-o-mine, you've no idea…" She was beautiful, unbearably beautiful as she always had been, full of restrained energy that stirred his imagination and drove his senses wild. Every tempestuous day and every intoxicating night he'd spent with her had been too perfect, too full of passion and thrill… he'd forgotten about the sea, left his ship in another's hands, and been driven forward instead by her, only her. Love was a gale no ship could overcome, a maelstrom to be lost in and drown in.

Her wide warm eyes flickered. "You never even said goodbye."

Oh, that shameful hour he had left her asleep in the moonlight… the hour he had crept away, inch by inch away, the image of her graceful body curled beneath the window encased in his memory as the impossible treasure he'd never find again.

"Why did you leave, Jack?"

He felt old all through. But he must be gentle now, soft. He had done enough damage to her for one lifetime. "I never pretended to be anything other than what I am, Beth."

"You weren't always a coward, Jack."

"But I always was a pirate." He wanted so much to kiss her, one kiss to break his own heart again even if it meant nothing to her. The moon strengthened and Jack could see her now—see her clear as day and bright as his dreams had ever been.

"Beth, Beth, don't cry," he said. The weight of guilt hung over his shoulders but Jack had never been a helpless man, never a pleading man. His soft words were a command somehow. "Tears like that'll break whatever heart I've got left."

"You could've told me you needed to return to the sea for a time," Elizabeth rejoined, unsure why that was cause to hate him. But hate like this was the worst kind—the kind that was cased exquisite, mad love. "I would have understood, Jack, with all my heart!"

Unable to stop himself, he burst out "Aye, aye, Beth! You would have… you'd have come and I'd have been glad of it, but the years would have gone along and then he would have come back to an empty beach, love… an empty beach." There was no need to say who he was, nor what doom the empty beach meant for him. That simple reality shaded all their desires, colored all their actions, haunted their dreams.

She seemed to diminish against him, the breath and the fight went out of her. Jack had never thought her one to weep but she must be, for the silent way her body shook.

"Speak true, Beth, you'd never have gone back."

"Why was that your decision to make?"

He was quiet a minute. The wind was colder now and it swept Elizabeth's loose hair around her face, ruffled Jack's cloak against him. Finally he said, "A man doesn't like to always be a thief in his own house, Beth. Never to be comfortable, never to really be sure of the thing he loves most… You'd never really have been mine, Beth! I knew I'd lose you, knew it'd be harder with every day to do it. I thought I would kill him if I had to, lock you up somewhere, not allow it…" He sighed, rubbed his forehead. "I did what I did. I'm sorry but it was for the best."

"Because you're a good man," she whispered. "Much too good, and I'd rather you were wicked through and through!"

He folded her into his arms, a sorrowful smile on his face. "So do I… You've no idea how much."

"Where did you go when you left?" She spoke into his shoulder, and the heat of her breath lit Jack's body. He pulled away.

"Well I thought I'd find someone like you," he explained. "Surely there'd be another lass with the salt, y' know, the metal." The soul to temper his. "But there's no one like you, Beth, no one. Not a woman on earth could stand next to you."

She nodded toward the tavern wearily. "Yet you took one for yourself?"

The iron-sheeting of his eyes pulled back a little, a canon ready to fire. "I'm a man. Never tried to make ye think otherwise. Don't tell me ye haven't had a run or two since I last saw you."

"Or three," Elizabeth muttered. Jack didn't say anything, but she went on. "Two I needed—I needed a place to live, and passage. It was the easiest way, it was…" she narrowed her gaze, uncompromising and unapologetic. "The third used me I suppose… and very ill."

"Some do," Jack said quietly. "I'll strangle him if ye want, Beth-love."

"Already done."

"You're a dangerous enemy, to be sure. Always were."

She shook her head, trying to ignore the glow that accompanied his words. "Ah Jack, what becomes of us now?"

Nell caught her breath and her candle flickered. She was close enough to hear the blood pounding in their veins—Jack and this woman, this Elizabeth—the rival she'd always imagined when Jack was despondent in the night or thoughtful at dawn. There was more than a remnant of old love between them, more even than obvious desire. This woman would take Jack away, Nell thought dully, she would take him into her world as she once must have. Compared to this woman Nell was a child, an impulsive waif with no past and little thought for the future. How could she possibly compete, how could she stand next to this person Jack had built up and idealized, loved for so long, given up with so much pain? Nell's black eyes darted away from the scene below and she stood, careful lest her shadow be seen below. Her hair she had perfumed, her bed straightened. On a table sat a few things… gifts from her lover, from Jack. A red ribbon for her hair, a thimble box, a necklace of frail silver. A broken compass.

The day had been long, waiting for him. And this night was long already, the half-moon high over the moor. Nell threw back her blanket and climbed into bed, fully clothed. She pushed her face against the pillow and hoped she would be free of their talk, hear no more of "Beth-o-mine" and "Beth-love", but their voices had grown loud again and she couldn't block them out, couldn't escape them.

"Jack, it isn't enough to do the right thing anymore! It isn't enough…"

"Never was," he replied, infuriatingly practical for a moment. "Why d'you think I ever started in this business?"

"The world's a small place… we'll find each other again, and then what? Every time shake hands and part?"

"Oh Beth, Beth," he wrapped himself around her again until they were nose to nose—she had always been tall, nearly as tall as him—and forehead to forehead, eyes locked but too close to really see much. "You know I never believed in wrong or right, much, love, or I'd have stayed my course and never come back to that beach."

The memories of that day, Elizabeth running through the surf in the twilight to greet him, their stilted conversation, the kiss that broke the silence and then everything that followed that kiss… those memories flashed quick in his mind. Neither had tried to stop it then, nor would they have been able to, it seemed. Months had followed, each more dangerously perfect than the last, what with their arguments and their languid conversations late into the night, their lovemaking and their wandering to the Cove for news. The simplest of things became precious: the shells she collected on the beach when the tide trickled out, the pillows he brought back for their bed, the tea cups (Chinese porcelain) on their makeshift table. It had healed whatever madness remained in him from the locker.

"So that's it, then."

"No," Jack said, unable to let her vanish from his life again so quickly, "You had something to tell me."

"Did I?"

"Isn't that why you found me, love?"

"I found you quite by accident, Jack. Or rather, I found your ship on purpose but when you weren't on it, I figured I'd have a drink."

"Or two," he smirked, referring to past days. "What did you find my ship for, then?"

"I…" she broke off, thinking. Jack knew all of her looks, still… the way she bit her lip when she was deciding something, the way she blinked three times fast when she was uncertain. "It doesn't seem important, anymore."

"Must have been, to bring you so far."

"I don't want to tell you now, Jack. It doesn't matter. It won't change anything."

"Won't it?" His curiosity was aroused, among other things.

"Maybe if we say goodbye now, we can remember the way things were back on the beach and it will be enough. There's no sense… no sense in making this harder, really." Her hands were twined together in front of her, her head slightly bowed.

"I don't want you to go," Jack said woodenly.

"Well, then we're even." Elizabeth hated the look on his face, the passion in his eyes against the resigned heaviness on his stature. "You've got someone waiting for you, Jack."

"Well let her wait," Jack hissed. "Let them all wait forever, if they must. Surely there must be a way for us to—"

"And yet there's not," she smiled a little. "Or you would have found it long before." She gave in to herself now, reached for his face and laid her mouth on his. He tasted exactly as she remembered. They kissed deeply, for a lingering slow moment, thinking perhaps enough magic would be borne of the kiss that circumstances would vanish and only they would remain on a forgotten beach somewhere. Every time Elizabeth pulled back, certain she must run away, he would seize her arm or her hand and draw her back to his mouth. They were against the stone gate now, about to drown. Another moment and it would be too late, they'd vanish into each other, never to be free again. A sudden movement came at just the right time—a candle was blown out somewhere above them. The lighting changed and they paused for a second, glancing up, aware of the world again. Their hands unclasped. Their pulses began to steady.

"I'm sorry, Beth."

"Don't be," she laughed shakily. "Don't ever be sorry for that, Jack. Perhaps that's all I came here for."

His face blazed with light again, blazed with that curious certainty only he seemed capable of, of all the people on earth. "I swear I'll love you till I die, Beth-o-mine. Never another but you."

"And you know I'll always, only, be yours. No matter what I did before, Jack, no matter what happens next… I'll be wishing I was with you."

They were whispering now. Jack thought surely life ought to stop here, for what could come to any good after this? He said, "Take the Pearl."

"I couldn't Jack, don't be absurd."

"Take her! She's yours, Beth. She's worth nothing without you anyway."

"How will you travel?"

He tilted his head thoughtfully at the waning moon. "Maybe I won't. Doesn't seem to matter much anymore."

"You won't be you if you aren't on the sea," she said matter-of-factly. They were the same. They needed the ocean to live.

"I'll manage," he said firmly. "Take her and Godspeed. And perhaps in a few years…"

"When the beach is empty again…?" Anticipation coursed through her voice.

He nodded, and life had meaning once more.

Upstairs, Nell remained perfectly motionless beneath her blanket. Stillness had fallen outside and even the moor seemed at peace. She heard the billowing cloak of someone running fast away and then, the gate unfastened, the tavern stairs broached. The hinges of her door whined as it swung open. She lowered the blanket an inch, another inch. Jack stood in the doorway, the leftover moonlight repelled by his shuttered face.

The wind on the North Riding picked up again. Clouds obscured the light. Jack came into the room, shutting the door behind him. Nell pushed back her blanket and stood. "What kept you so long?"

The End