A/N: First of all, I'd like to assure you that (despite contrary evidence lol) I can live without posting something once a week ^^ And secondly: this is just another story written for a challenge at LiveJournal, this time the challange was AWE-based, asking to provide a sense of closure to Jack & Elizabeth's relations in AWE :)
Summary: A missing Jack/Elizabeth scene from AWE.
Disclaimer: PotC belong to Disney.
C overtly
The silence was oppressive; it was haunting her thoughts as much as her thoughts were haunting her. It was meant to pass, she kept telling herself; no state of mind persisted forever. It would pass, that bitter sense of helplessness, vulnerability, that she did not even deserve to feel. It would pass, and she would feel better on the next day, because the next day – each next day - would be taking her further away from what had happened, from what was happening now... Memories did not hurt as much as the reality. It was only a matter of time: the reality would become unreal, would fall into the past, and she would leave it all behind – soon.
She bit her lip, stifling a low, bitter laugh, and covering her face with her hands.
She was good at that, wasn't she? At leaving.
Sliding her hands off her face Elizabeth hugged herself, staring into the darkness that encouraged defeat. She was no longer brave, proud. She was merely making her way across whatever river she encountered, for no waters had ever parted for her, as they seemed for others... It was always her action that let her overcome the obstacles, her will that enabled her to-
Will.
"You thought I loved him."
She should have asked it.
She did not exactly know why, but she felt she should have asked it rather than said it.
Slowly exhaling into the cold, thin mist that was draped around the ship she closed her eyes.
The Black Pearl seemed so lost in the darkness, the stars giving away neither light nor direction, and she knew they were sailing into the illusory horizon that could not be seen, that hardly existed. Jack was found, all hope was lost, and she was not the girl she once was anymore. That girl had escaped, had drown, had traveled till the ends of the world to rescue the man who had taken her conscience with him.
She squinted tiredly into the darkness, wondering whether she should go back downstairs. Will must still be there, as she had left him - with no answers and one threat. She was not even sure what she had wanted to achieve by telling him that he should not trust her... Make him forgive her? Pity her? Sympathize with her? Make him go... away-
No.
He was the only one left with conscience clear enough to make up for the lack of her own.
Elizabeth turned around too briskly to be certain what she was doing, but the conversation was not finished, and she had to finish at least that one, if the other-
He should have kissed her; should have saved her and erased that kiss, but he had not.
Although of course she could have kissed him as well. And she had not either.
"Will?" she stepped into the silence that seemed to be everywhere, as if the Locker was not a place, but just the absence of sounds that made even the melody of her own voice sound bizarre and unnatural in the semi-darkness below. Subconsciously, she acknowledged the scent of damp wood, and inhaled, distancing herself from the scentless air above, if only for a moment. She touched the wooden railing thinking back to the times when all stories had happy endings, and dreams carried no promise of an aftermath.
Will had gone; apparently. She glanced at the steps where she had been sitting before. There was no other place where she wished to be at the moment, she felt as if everyone looked at her with sense of dreadful wonder that would soon transform into hatred, for there were limits to treachery even among thieves, or at least she suspected so.
Or perhaps it was all only a figment of her imagination and nobody cared either way.
She sat down, covering her face with her hands and trying not to care herself. What was the point, there was nothing to undo, nothing to recover from among the shards of what might have been.
Shards... and quite literally too, for Jack did not seem to be much of himself either. She felt cold chills run up her spine at the memory of him turning away from her in the Locker with that shaded glimpse of bitter recognition, and even bitterer remembrance in his eyes.
"He didn't seem too pleased."
Elizabeth raised her head, strangely unsurprised.
The next words were said in a lower tone, not as hoarse as before, and she tried to guess how far away he was.
"Neither do you."
Hesitatingly, she rose to her feet, and turned around. "I guess I'm hardly in the position to accuse you of eavesdropping. Or of anything," she added quietly.
He stood just a step away from her, one hand on the railing, his eyes fixed on her, darker than her soul on the first dreamless night after.
"I wasn't eavesdropping," said Jack flatly with a fleeting, humorless smile, his fingers wandering along the railing, even though his hand remained motionless.
"But you heard-" she trailed off when he tilted his head to the side, a hint of coldness of his gaze erasing any words she could say off her mind, and she was not sure what she had wanted to say anymore.
Something was lost and she could see it. There was no curiosity in his eyes now. Only speculation. She wished she could make him see her again for whom she was before – somebody he could trick, and therefore trust...
It hurt, so strangely, that he did not want to trick her anymore.
"I should... apologize... to you," she said in a quiet voice after looking at him dully for a moment, confused by his patience, by his presence.
He raised his eyebrows, and she absurdly searched his face for traces of amusement, but he merely waited for her to continue.
She dropped her gaze to the stairs thinking suddenly that he must despise the fact that he had to tolerate her presence on his ship. "I should-"
"You should. Whatever for?"
His voice was so unexpectedly clear and sharp that she looked up at him in bafflement. She placed her hand on the railing to keep herself from losing balance. She felt too tired to try deciphering his intentions. "Jack, I-" she bit her lip, shaking her head, and glancing around, finding no more words around her than within her. "I don't know what to- how- what can I tell you?" she looked back at him, a nervous, pale half-smile flitting across her face. "What would you want to hear?" she whispered in a barely audible voice, looking at him for a moment, waiting for nothing, just watching his face for a reaction, an impression. But his eyes betrayed nothing.
She made an abrupt move, as if she wanted to walk past him, but then she just turned around, and walked down the stairs.
He must have followed her stealthily, immediately, because suddenly his fingers closed around her wrist, and he whirled her around, her back hitting the wall, his fingernails digging into her forearm, his other hand pressed against the wall next to her head.
"Maybe I already heard what I'd wanted to hear," he said under his breath, there was revenge in his voice, and exhaustion in his eyes.
She returned his gaze, noticing the shadows under his eyes, the remnants of kohl on his eyelids, a few shallow wrinkles, his skin darkened by the sun, roughened by the wind; noticing everything at once, trying to remember everything.
"My voice, no doubt," she blurted out, glancing at his lips in unconscious search of a missing memory. She seemed to remember the taste of his lips better than the way they looked-
He smiled at her, a sour smile reserved for foes.
"That might very well be correct. Not too many words worth listening I heard from your lips... as of late," he ended in an almost melodic voice, his hand clasping her elbow, his fingers drumming slowly on the wall next to her head, as if he was trying to deafen the silence, and she thought with broken relief that it meant that he must be hearing that silence too.
"Or ever?" All of a sudden she felt a pressing necessity to retort, finding strange shelter in arrogance; he was standing so patronizingly close.
That smile again. "Do you think I came here to insult you?"
She glanced at his hand that moved from the wall to her hair.
"No. To prove me wrong, probably?"
Her words stilled his hand that was already half-tangled in her hair, and she was too alarmed by the wary look that appeared on his face to even notice the absurdity of his gestures.
She blinked, the meaning that her words apparently held reaching her later than they had reached him. She opened her mouth to amend, but his crooked smile hushed her.
"You expect me to tell you why you shouldn't kill me?" He asked with flat amusement, glancing at his own hands, and withdrawing them abruptly, as if he just realized what he was doing.
"You're hardly dead," she replied, too quickly again, scolding herself inwardly for a hint of irritation in her voice.
"Am I?" He widened his eyes at her, slightly leaning forward, due to the movement of the ship or sincere astonishment, she was not sure.
"Jack-" she looked at him intently, suddenly struck by an idea that he might be drunk. That would explain-
"Miss Swann."
- That.
He had said it in such a tone, as if he was about to salute, but fortunately he did , his hand returned to her forearm.
"One, you were a guest on my ship," said Jack matter-of-factly, pointing his finger at her, and for a moment Elizabeth just stared at him, being at complete loss as to what he was talking about. Then it dawned at her that he was in fact enumerating reasons why she should not have killed him.
"Jack-"
He silenced her with a wave of his hand... that a moment later landed on her shoulder. "Two-"
"Are you alright?" she interrupted him, suddenly struck by an idea, and he narrowed his eyes at her.
"'Course I am," he said, tilting his head backwards, and looking at her suspiciously. "Why do you ask?"
"Why are you even talking to me?" She looked at him sadly, and he suddenly realized he had no good answer to her question.
"I can talk to whomever I want," he said stiffly. "Including myself, yourself, and... all other selves," he added with a twitch of his nose.
"I know. I just-"
He sifted a few strands of her hair through his fingers, and then took his hand away, running it across his forehead.
She watched him for a moment thinking of all those tales about the Locker that Gibbs had been telling her on their way here; about dunes made out of shadows, haunting nightmares, illusory voices, bewildering appearances, ghosts luring souls into exhaustion, into darkness that kept them on the edge of madness for timeless nights with no stars in sight.
"Jack, I'm sorry," she said, placing a hand on his shoulder, and smiling brokenly at the realization that she had said it, and that it was much simpler than she had imagined it to be.
A flicker of his lop-sided smile ghosted across his face, as if breaking through the shadows in his head, through the chaos of his thoughts, blurry memories of words lost. "I know," he said slowly, quietly.
She blinked, and was caught off guard by the tears that ran down her face. "Will you forgive me?" she smiled, not even trying to brush her tears away, and not only because he did it for her...
"Oh, you don't want me to forgive you, Lizzie. You really don't," he said levelly.
She shook her head, but when he leaned forward, and his forehead touched hers, she fell silent, and stood very still, looking wide-eyed at his closed eyelids.
"I do," she whispered, confused, and he opened his eyes, a glint of amusement shimmering in them for a moment, but fading rapidly.
"Maybe," he said thoughtfully, tilting his head backwards, glancing at her hand on his shoulder, and she followed his gaze wondering if he suspected her to do something perfidious again. But she did not remove her hand. "Maybe you think you do."
"I do," she repeated, wrinkling her forehead.
"Tell me, Lizzie," he caught a lock of her hair between his thumb and forefinger, and slid his hand downwards. "If I was to do... something courageous again, what would be my reward?" His tone was suddenly evasively lighter, and she frowned.
"You think that if I could turn back time I'd do it again," she said grimly. "That's what you think. That's why you don't want to-"
He waved his hand at her impatiently. "You didn't answer my question," he narrowed his eyes at her.
She looked at him trying to decipher his thoughts, assess the amount of truth in his words, the amount of anger in his faint smile.
"You shouldn't do anything courageous again," she said through clenched teeth. "Not for me," she added, absently digging her nails in his coat.
He looked at her for a moment as if considering something, his hand sliding up her arm, his fingers thumbing the air, and he took a step back, then a step forward, and then let go of her hand, turned around, walked a few steps away, paused, and whirled around fixing his gaze at her.
"And you shouldn't do this again either," he said at last in a low voice, and in one moment was back in front of her, his lips pressed to hers in an unexpected kiss.
She outstretched her palm, grasping his shoulder, holding onto him, falling into the light... kissing him back.
Why?
There were no thoughts, no other questions, only a sense of silent wonder and sincere perplexity that she felt with each passing second gone within his arms that held her tightly, his lips shivering against hers, fingers tangled into her hair, his rings pulling off single strands – and for a moment she felt that she was herself again, for a moment she thought she knew herself, and all that strange unpredictability that had frightened her was gone.
But then when she almost understood why he could not- should not forgive her, he broke the kiss, stepping out of her embrace, her hand sliding off his shoulder as he turned to walk away.
"I didn't know, Jack."
Her whisper stopped him in the middle of the stairs, and he looked at her over his shoulder with a shadow of his usual roguish smile flickering across his lips.
"That makes two of us, love," he said trying to catch his breath, and holding her gaze for a moment before turning around, and quickly disappearing up the stairs.
She rested her head against the wall and closed her eyes, waiting for her heartbeat to fade into the silence again.