Title: Silver Seas
Rating: PG-13 for implications
Pairing: Barbossa/OC (Okay, okay, a modified version of me, without being your typical Mary Sue tale.)
Disclaimer: Mickey Mouse and all of his friends, creators, owners, et cetera, are also the proud owners of PotC. Sigh.
Summary: True feeling, true sensation, is no longer a part of his reality. But sometimes, he obtains a fleeting grasp of what could be, of what once was. One-shot.

It didn't matter where he ordered them to take me. No matter how far away I managed to be from him, I was always conscious of his gaze. The sensation was never heated, however, never resembling anything that I would have described as "passion" or "love" in my foolish, naive childhood. It was cold, fleeting, and spectral.

It was, at times, a brief brush of chilled air flowing past me, or the subtle, everyday spray of seafoam that often flew upwards from the depths below the ship. And, late at night, when the foggy clouds fled from the searching glare of the moon in great puffs, that sudden gleam of silver that reached for me from above settled over the back of my neck in a cold, almost grim caress.

On the rare occasion, our paths have accidentally crossed while we both traversed the ship in our capacities; he, as its master, and I, as its prisoner. As his prisoner. Although neither of us were inclined to speak, the tension inevitably thickened each time his icy gaze ever-so-briefly found mine.

The evenings that we dined together were silent. No words were needed while I consumed the gallant feast laid before me, and he merely sat back and watched through slightly-lidded, gray eyes. Each bite, each swallow of wine or water elicited a sudden intensity in his gaze, a crispness that only ignited when fueled by a sparse glimpse of the object of his desire.

"I would request your company, lady." Each night, he spoke those words with the same voice, gruff and tired, devoid of all emotion but one: hope. And each night, I could do little save to acquiesce to his request.

He knew, as I did, that in the end, the act would be futile, never fully able to attain what he sought. But each night, what ignited within his eyes as a glimmer of hope always interred itself deeper within him. And each night, his mercurial gaze professed his desperate intent, and the anguish for his accursed cause, drawing me briefly into the depths of the bleakest, most silver of seas, until there was nothing left but hopeless darkness.