A/N: Yeah…I was reading an interesting one-shot and I was inspired. Man, I don't know what's wrong with me. Am I actually beginning to like writing Sparrabeth now? I dare not say for sure, in case I jinx anything, but maybe I am.
This takes place post-AWE, while Elizabeth is traveling with Jack to destinations I won't name, simply because I don't want to. It's basically some Elizabeth-esque thinking-on-paper with a strong essence of me standing strong behind it.
So, I hope you enjoy this, and please remember to review, because that makes me happy. And slightly more inspired. :)
This isn't love.
Love doesn't hurt like this. It hurts, most certainly, but this isn't even pain anymore – it's hell on earth. Unarticulated words for unexplainable sensations pepper her mouth and catch her breath on its way up her throat. An ache rawer than anything she's ever felt before bubbles up in her stomach. Blistering emotion races through her veins with a fortitude that could put a hurricane to shame. None of it is normal – this simply cannot be love.
This isn't lust either.
Lust is almost like a heady, sweetly numbing perfume under her nose – overwhelming at times, faint at others, able to float away when it gets tired of lingering on her skin. This is a well-known fact in her mind by now, because she is guilty of lusting after other men previously in her lifetime. And never before has it hit her in this fashion; so she knows she does not harbor some deliciously mischievous lust for him.
This definitely isn't a game.
Games are winnable. Games have a clearly defined start, and a clearly defined ending. Games have rules that must be followed, and there are punishments for cheating. But whatever it is that she's got with him – whatever their briefly shared lives can be considered as – is anything but a game in the traditional sense. Here, there is no clearly defined start or end, nor is there even a single official rule on how they should handle their uniquely odd relationship. And cheating…well, in his case, cheating simply comes as an extra tag to his name. How can they be playing a game when the very backbones of the situation manage to defy her characterization?
This isn't love, this isn't lust, and this isn't a game.
So what is it?
She ponders the question as she sits alone in her cabin, curled up on her bed with her arms around her knees, her golden-brown locks in complete disarray. She knows everything about him is wrong. She knows he's a terrible influence, and will most likely lure her to her death, or something just as ghastly. She knows he's a cheater, a liar, a wench-lover, and a drunk. She knows he would quickly bore of her if she was ever to get in a relationship with her.
Yet, something feels so right about him at the same time.
When his fingers brush by her skin accidentally, the tiniest flutter goes off in her chest. When he smiles at her, something in her melts. Even when his eyes catch hers exclusively for but a moment, she feels as if she's the most important thing in the world for that single moment. She lives for these little signs of his, waiting impatiently for them and pouncing on the scraps he gives her, like a hungry cat lapping up drops of milk falling periodically on its head.
Maybe it's curiosity, she muses. Maybe the need to feel him, breathe him in, make him her own will pass the day she tries what she knows she dreams about. Maybe she only wants the experience – a gloriously passionate one night's stand before she lets herself become a quiet, domesticated part-time-pirate's wife in waiting for the rest of her life.
But somehow, she doesn't think so. She thinks that once she gets what she wants, she will crave more of him. She'll sin with him regardless of the later circumstances or responsibilities, because she knows he's the only one who can give her true pleasure – or take it away. She is clay in his hands, moldable for him to do whatever he wishes, and she knows it. She's just not sure if he does too.
Sometimes, when she lies back like this and lets her mind wander as it is now, she likes to think that he feels the same way about her. That he wants her similarly to how she wants him – in entirety, to hold and explore and goad as it comes to her. It's a pleasant thought, one that sends warmth circulating down her middle, and she entertains herself sometimes with visions of how it might look to the outsider's eye.
However, when she lets her head down from the clouds and allows it to take a few experimental steps on solid reality once more, she knows it's not going to happen that way. She knows that all she feels and all she wrestles with, deep inside of her, is not related at all to what he probably feels or wrestles with.
There are times when he feels like such a real possibility – when she's almost positive he loves her and needs her and wants her and yearns for her.
But there are other times when she feels foolish for thinking so – when she feels like he's distant, looking for things she could never give him while she watches him from behind glass thick enough to hold her back, but thin enough to show her, with great clarity, what she's missing.
When everything is a jumbled mess and a contradiction, she knows something's got to give. One extreme has to rule out the other. There's simply no room for both to stretch out and remain in harmony.
She's well aware that they lie at the most delicate of balances – the tiniest push in either direction could topple them over, force everything to go askew.
Every ray of light has a tunnel of darkness, every virtue has a touch of flaw, every song has a final note; all she wants to know is when her end, when the time to know who has the upper hand on what, will come for her and help her make sense out of this.
This can't be too much to ask for, so why does she feel like it is?
She throws her head back on her pillow with frustration, finally uncurling herself from the tight, controlled ball she had been in. Her limbs broaden their limits now, as her hair fans out around her head, and she stares at her ceiling.
All she wants is to know why she feels the way she does.
It's not love, it's not lust, and it's not a game. It might be curiosity, but that's only half of the story. The other half is still loitering about elusively, somewhere in and outside of her, just beyond the reach of her fingertips…almost solid enough to grasp…
"Come along, love. We're here." He stands in her doorway, smirking slightly at her. His eyes are particularly sharp today, but he looks exhausted – the black around his eyelids is slightly smeared, and a little grayer than usual. She wonders why, but the question remains unspoken in her throat.
Instead, she lays her deliberations down to rest temporarily, and says in a perfectly acceptable, even if hollow tone, "All right. I'm coming."
He leaves, not wasting his time at her door as she has come to expect, but she takes her time nonetheless. He knows she hates rushing herself for anything – she'll do it all, but in her own sweet time.
But, as he also knows, she does come to him eventually; because they are both acutely conscious of the fact that she can't keep herself away from him.
Not for more than two minutes; at which point she comes to her senses and ends up dashing madly back in his wake regardless of what her personal rules had been not even seconds ago.