Disclaimer: I don't own Pirates of the Caribbean or any of the characters herein. Set between Dead Man's Chest and At World's End. Slightly AU since it got jossed as soon as AWE came out.
The first time they make love, he is surprised to find they do not fit. It is dark and damp in the hold of the ship and her face is wreathed in shadows. When he slides into her for the first time, hearing her slight cry of surprise and pain, the blackness is so complete that he cannot even see her. The rocking of their bodies is erratic, out of sync with the smooth rolling of the waves.
He had expected her skin to be smooth and rounded, the result of a lifetime of wealth and pampering. But her bony hips press bruises into his skin and he feels dirty – like he is taking something that isn't his to have. His fingers find her hair and twist the strands painfully tight. Her gasp is his penance and he loosens his grip, trying not to remember when her fair fell in soft gilded waves instead of dirty blonde tangles.
She arches to meet him when he touches her, her body lithe and sinewy beneath the slide of his fingertips, but he can feel her distraction. He thought he wouldn't care, that he wouldn't wonder if she was thinking of him alone when he kissed her. If she liked his kisses better or not at all, now that she had a point of comparison. He tries to make it good, to force her to come to him and for him. But the experience is new, for both of them, and he fails.
He wants to hold back, to not let his world shatter around him in painful pleasure, but he finds he cannot help himself. After all, she is Elizabeth and he is Will and he has been dreaming of this moment since he'd first learned what it would entail. His body shakes with release and he hates himself and her for her stillness.
"Elizabeth," he murmurs. There is no answering sigh.
When it is over, she doesn't look at him as she pulls on her breaches in unconscious imitation of his own actions. Her fingers are nimble on the buttons of her waistcoat and she is dressed long before he is. She stares at him with fathomless eyes before turning silently to leave, bathed in moonlight and drowning in darkness. He feels like a fool.
****
The second time they make love, it feels like forgiveness. Safe on the land, holed up in a tiny room in a tiny inn, they find each other in the softly glowing lamplight. Her hair shines and she laughs, her teeth flashing pearl white against the tanned roughness of his shoulder. It lasts all night and he feels free.
The mattress is lumpy and their bodies nestle together in the valleys of the bedclothes with no softness, only the slide of angular bodies and smooth bellies. He doesn't want to ask her, he really doesn't, but the words flow from him before he can stave off the impulse.
"Do you think about him?" Just speaking the words is painful. He has not told her what he saw, that he knows of the kiss she gave a dying man. Her breathing becomes shallow and her body tenses beside him.
"Every day," she answers softly, a warning edge to her voice. He doesn't heed it.
"Do you still want to find him?" Do you want to kiss him again? He wants to ask but doesn't. She is a long time answering, much longer than in Tia Dalma's shack, and he is almost afraid of the response she will give.
But again she surprises him. "No," she says in the quiet glow of the lanterns. "Sometimes I hope he really is dead and gone."
****
The third time they make love, it is tinged with desperation. His kisses are hard and her jagged fingernails leave angry red welts in their wake. They strain against each other with single-minded purpose, unseeing and unrelenting in the pursuit of feeling. He is no longer careful of her and she cannot decide if she is sad or not.
She had been so ready to be married, to make love, to have something to do. The man who now presses her roughly against the bars of the gaol is not the tender, giving lover she had spent months imagining. It was to have been perfect and beautiful and their lives would have been perfect and beautiful as well.
It is only now that she sees how it would have really been. Squalling babies and a distant, upright husband. Insipid discussions of stockings and fashions and household management with women who long for nothing else, who are content to sit in their homes like dolls propped up in creaking corsets. Marriage no longer holds much appeal for her.
Her thoughts wander to Jack and the kiss they'd shared. Laced though it had been with betrayal, the kiss had filled her with a sense of daring, of reckless pleasure, of freedom. It had made her feel alive even as she'd sentenced the roguish captain to death. In the quiet confines of her own bunk, she had imagined that kiss without the inevitable click of iron shackles. How it would have progressed to lovemaking and a permanent place in the man's heart, right next to the Pearl. How she would have kissed his scars and tattoos and how he would have kissed and touched until she'd died from it.
Will is surprised when she shatters in his arms, her naked back pressed against cold, damp iron. He loses himself in her as she clenches around him, bringing her legs up and around his waist to deepen the pleasure. When he finally opens his eyes, she is slumped against his shoulder, her legs and body slipping from his grasp. He sets her down gently, holding her as she regains her footing on the swaying boards of the ship. He is stunned by the wetness of her cheeks.
The deep thud of boots on the stairs warns of Gibbs's arrival before he speaks. "Jack is awake and asking for the two of ye."
She is not ready to face him.
****
The last time they make love, there is no love at all.
His hands are bandaged and the splint on his leg makes it impossible to move. He lies beneath her, watching her arch away from him as she takes her pleasure, giving nothing back. Bruises blossom across her belly and her hair has been cropped short around the angry gash behind her ear. She is scarred and it makes him sad.
He still thinks she's beautiful. He thinks he always will, even after he sails away from her in the morning, his father at his side. He hasn't asked if she is coming with him, but he already knows what will happen and he's accepted it. The knowledge surprises him.
He's seen them kiss and he's seen them argue, voices low and accusing in the moonlight. He wants to hate the man, resent him for the part he played in tearing Elizabeth from him, but Will has seen the way the captain's eyes follow her. Davey Jones tore out his own heart because of a woman, but he considers himself more practical than that. Truth be told, it does not seem as much of a sacrifice to forget her as it had once seemed.
Elizabeth stills her movements and looks down at him, her dark brown eyes apologetic. She runs her hands over his chest and bites her bottom lip, reminding him suddenly of the girl she had been. He will miss her.
She makes to speak but he stops her with a shake of his head. There is nothing she can say to erase what has happened and nothing that will make him regret her.
He wants this to be goodbye. And it is.
~fin~