Title: "A Wolf at the Door"
Author: Lila
Rating: PG-13
Pairing/Character: Will
Spoiler: "Dead Man's Chest"
Length:one-shot
Summary: Nothing hurts more than watching the person you love, love someone else.
Author's Note:Not exactly a sequel to "Say Hello to the Angels," but certainly in the same universe, taking place immediately after the Black Pearl sinks. I tackled Will's POV this time around, and if I feel so inspired, Jack will come next. Title and quote courtesy of my beloved Radiohead. Enjoy.
"Drag him out your window
Dragging out the dead
Singing I miss you
Snakes and ladders flip the lid"
You're too good a man to wish another dead but you can't deny the jolt of pleasure that thumps in your breast when the Pearl sinks into the sea for a final time, taking her captain down with her.
For a long time afterwards, as Gibbs and Cotton row what's left of the crew to safety and dry land, familiarity and home, your eyes remain trained on the vast expanse of ocean, waiting for the Pearl to peek through the too still water with Jack defiantly clinging to her mast, a devil may care grin parting his lips. Astonishment sets in when it doesn't happen, when the waves don't part and spew forth your fallen captain like a demon from hell, and the water remains still, calm, barely a ripple disturbing its glittering smoothness.
You can't believe that a moment ago a man and a ship and a living life stood where all that remains is an endless stretch of blank sea, Elizabeth beside you, staring into a dead emptiness that matches her eyes.
You take her hand in yours and squeeze once, twice, and it's on the third try that she squeezes back, her fingers wrapping around yours with a strength you don't recognize, the roughened skin of her palm scratching your hand. She doesn't look at you, won't look at you, so you turn to the sea, following her gaze to the hint of white foam boiling on the surface, all that's left of Jack Sparrow and his nine lives. You can't believe the lies you see with your own eyes, the velvety stillness of the water betraying the carnage beneath. Elizabeth lets go of your hand as the foam dissipates, and slips her fingers into her pockets where they reach for the compass that points nowhere for you, but somewhere for her.
You're too good a man to wish another dead, but you can't deny the jealousy that spears its way through your gut as she turns back to the traitorous sea to hide her tears.
You look the other way as Gibbs and Cotton take you home, unable to meet the stares of the curious crew, unable to match their grief in losing the man they all loved most. Your eyes flicker to Elizabeth staring mournfully towards the horizon, and the sea is silent before you, peaceful and unruffled like a Caribbean dawn, as deceptive as a woman's heart.
You're not surprised - you never have understood the sea.
You're a terrible sailor. Your knots are never tight enough, your steering never precise enough, and when you wake in the morning you spill out of your hammock like a newborn foal, hands grasping rough rope and splintering wood until you find your footing. The crew watches you pitifully as you take on shift upon shift without complaint, even as Elizabeth wordlessly reties your knots and steps behind you at the wheel with a soft smile playing over her lips, like a mother watching her son take his first steps. Her hands lock over yours, and they're still long and slender, but the nails are clipped short and a jeweled ring adorns the third finger of each hand, the fourth finger bare where her wedding ring should be. You miss her long nails scraping over your cheek as her mouth moved against yours and she slipped into your arms like they were where she always belonged.
Her body is getting leaner, stronger, and it doesn't match yours. When she presses against you it's like a square peg in a round hole, the way her chin rests awkwardly on your shoulder while the compass forever lodged in her pocket digs painfully into your back. You tell yourself it's all temporary, that you'll bring Jack back from hell and you'll marry Elizabeth and take her home to Port Royal and all will be right in your world. You know it's a lie. Her long hair whips around her face, wraps around your neck in a choking embrace, like the Kraken dragging the Pearl and her captain into the depths, and you're drowning too, chained to that compass which leads to a man who's not you.
She steadies the wheel and pats your hand, and you wonder if she'll give you extra dessert with your supper. She steps back and looks to the setting sun, legs locked and braced against the rapid motion of the sea, and watches the course you're setting, eyes locked on the compass, locked on her future.
You're at sea a month when Mr. Gibbs comes back from buying bananas with Anamaria in tow, a bitter smile lacing her pretty face. She hates Elizabeth with a passion you don't understand until you find her crying behind the masthead one starless night, and she asks you questions you don't want to answer. You tell her that you don't know if it hurt, but you hope he's not suffering. She tells you that she doesn't believe in god, but hopes he's in a better place. You tell her it doesn't matter, because you're going to rescue him. She wipes at her tears and smiles, but there's no joy in it.
"It's her, your girl," she says. "She was the one to set him to die."
You shake your head and correct her. "Elizabeth was there with him, yes, but he made his own choice." You don't understand it, but you know it's true. You have to believe it's true.
She just stares at you with that pitying look you're too accustomed to. "You're a good man, Will Turner," she says. "Too good."
She disappears into the night and you're left alone on deck. The water is dark and thick and dangerous, and you're half tempted to strip off your hat and your sword, like Jack that first morning, and plunge into the abyss. You wonder, what would make her love you more, if you brought him home or if you died trying? You wonder if it would hurt or if you would suffer. You wonder if your mother would be waiting for you. You wonder if anyone would care at all.
Two months into your journey and Anamaria has wrestled her way to first mate and Barbossa commanders the ship, but Elizabeth steers your ragtag crew into oblivion with only the compass as a guide. She stands primly at the bow, checking Anamaria's progress, her perfect posture and the long tangle of her hair the only concessions to her former life. She wears men's clothes - your clothes - tailored and altered with precise stitches to fit her slender frame, courtesy of years spent training to become a proper young lady. There's a gash on your shoulder from the final fight, an inch or so of skin sliced in half by a pirate's blade, and she's bound it together with those neat stitches, bits of England and Port Royal and decency woven into your skin while hers remains as smooth and clear as the open sea. Every night she checks the wound and runs her fingers over the raised map of stitches, like mountains peaking over dry land, and pulls her fingers away like she's been burned.
You can't help but watch her, because she's so beautiful and so strong, and you still love her so much. She lifts an arm to steel her hat against the unrelenting wind and your sleeve slips down her wrist, exposing the skin beneath. There's a mark there, a brand, a tiny black swan marring the otherwise unblemished length of her flesh. She picked it up in Jamaica, said it was to remind her of who she truly was. "Silly, Will," she'd scolded. "When we're married and I'm a Turner, I'd like a reminder of my life before." You know it's lie. You know it's another bird yearning to be free.
When you stop at the next port to pick up fresh supplies you follow her when she sneaks away and strips off her clothes - your clothes - and dives naked and free into the sea. Your eyes focus on the dark fall of her hair, the beads and feathers she's come to favor catching the light, and you can't take them off the easy way her brown limbs cut through the waves. The water is calm, too calm, like that day a month ago. That's what you call it - "that day" - and when a sailor makes a mistake and refers to it as anything else a silence falls over the crew and a tremor runs through them, betraying their aggrieved calm, not unlike the one you thought would signal Jack's resurrection, the pulse you waited for and never came.
She cuts towards the world's end with long, confident strokes, her arms extending and hands splayed open, reaching and reaching, as if she swims out far enough her fingers will close around Jack's and she'll bring him back to life. She stops abruptly, and from your vantage point all you can see is her long hair spreading through the clear water like a dark shadow, or a black sail catching the wind. She yelps slightly and her leg has cramped, a shooting pain creeping up her calve. You contemplate divesting yourself of boots and clothes and diving into the water after her and rescuing her from certain harm, just like the old days, but your feet remain rooted to the ground, eyes trained on the rocks below. You watch, helpless, as she massages her tired muscles, soothes the ache before bringing herself back to shore. She doesn't need you anymore. Maybe she never did.
When you finally kiss her it's Jack you taste. It's been so long since you've held her in your arms, and your body aches from the long nights you spend beside one another, hammocks six inches apart, an ocean of distance between you. You've taken a long boat to shore, just the two of you, and it rocks with the motion of your bodies, alternately gliding on the waves and catching on the sand. Her lips are soft and lush under yours, such a soft contrast to the hard length of her body, and they open immediately, her tongue sweeping inside your mouth with a skill you didn't know she possessed, a skill she certainly didn't learn from you.
There's a lingering presence of rum on her breath and spice on her tongue, and your fingers scrape roughly over the beads and metal rivets decorating her hair. Her hips press painfully into yours and you can barely feel her breasts through the tight linen banded around them, and when her elbow pokes your shoulder the healing wound bitterly protests with a shot of pain straight down your arm. You can't help but cry out and she pulls away, pushes up on her forearms to gaze down at you.
"I'm sorry," she whispers but her eyes are fixed on anything but you, trained on the infinite expanse of water fading into the distance. "I'm so sorry, Will, for all of it."
You pull her down to you, so her head rests where your neck meets your shoulder, and you wrap your bad arm around her, so her body is prone against your chest. It's an uneasy fit, but you don't complain. "Shhhh," you whisper into her hair, breathing in salt and sea and sun and nothing that reminds you of her. "We'll get him back. I promise."
"And you always keep your promises, right?" she asks and laces her hand through yours, holding tight.
"Always," you say and watch the waves break on the shore while she watches them drift out to sea.
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