Title: Across the Universe - Chapter 4
Author: Gea / gealuv
Disclaimer: Ze mouse owns it, I swear. And ze beatles own any references to 'Across the Universe'.
Rating: PG - R as time goes on
Pairings: predominately J/E, canon W/E, even some slight B/E if I feel like it
Summary: Jack Sparrow returns to Shipwreck Cove to persuade Elizabeth Swann to help him in the hunt for the fountain of youth. Across the world they go in search of they mystic water in hopes of living forever, while Elizabeth struggles with her loyalties and her heart.
Beta: praises to savvysparrowluv!
Author's Notes: I know things seem slow right now but I promise they will pick up in the next chapter. We won't be landlocked for long…
Across the Universe - Chapter 4
'Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box …'
The wood was grainy, with a slight polish atop its surface from what Addison could tell, standing with her nose to the timber of the door. Beneath her palm, the brass doorknob remained still and unchanged. This was the last room. She'd investigated every other nook and cranny possible when Jack had departed and Elizabeth had settled into her bath. Hours spent rummaging through private belongings and peeking under furniture had still led to no trace of the chest or key in question. Now, all that remained was the unopened door which guarded the forbidden room before her.
She peered down to the shaft of sunlight that spilled beneath the slit at the base of the door, lighting the tips of her shoes. She found it rather strange that she had never set foot in this particular room even when it was being built. Her mistress nearly always spared a glance to the doorway whenever she passed through the hall. Perhaps out of respect, the young girl had refrained from entering though with her curiosity now at its peak, she simply couldn't resist.
Twisting the knob, Addison took a step forward, shielding her eyes from the sheet of light that washed over the room. It nearly empty inside save for the heavily upholstered chair wedged in the corner next to an aged, wooden drawer. Already a layer of dust had gathered on the table top while silk cobwebs stretched out in the corners of the window sill. Moreover, in the room lay what she had been searching for so diligently. There, placed on a stand beneath a streak of light, waited the mythical chest.
Approaching the table, Addison ran her fingers over the arch of the lid, meticulously studying the carved hearts and winding tentacles with her eyes before her thumb lightly brushed over a key hole. The key…
She stepped over to the drawer and pulled it open. Within it, creased sheets of paper covered with scribbled text lined the bottom of the bin. The young girl huffed impatiently, sifting through the parchment to find anything remotely akin to metal. In the heat of her frustration, she snatched up the letters in her hands and threw them onto the floor, collapsing in the chair a few moments afterward. There, Addison sat watching bits of dust gleam in the white light coming down through the window pane, following their descent to the floor. It was then that she spotted the scrawled words,
I had never expected to be spending my wedding day feeling as forgotten as the isle I stood on, watching as the flash of green stole you away.
She leaned forward, taking the parchment into her hands.
But this letter isn't meant to act as a cruel reminder of what fate has taken from us. Instead, I felt it would be best to record my sincerest feelings to you, my beloved husband, as Davy and Calypso before us. The revulsion I harbor for the accursed captain tamed by overwhelming compassion for the position you find yourself in. I only wish I would have been permitted to share the burden though I'm convinced being allowed with you aboard the Dutchman would have been too kind for fate's hand to tolerate.
Through the nights I am alone, I find myself constantly thinking back on our first, failed wedding day. I remember the iciness of the rain that had seeped through my dress and wrinkled the silks that father had spent so much time and wealth acquiring for me. I remember waiting for you to come and take me as your bride. You never did and I was angry and concerned all the same until I came to learn the part the EITC played. I think it's only fair I admit to you that I cared not for the porcelain dishware or the elegant costumes we wore but because you seemed so keen on it all, I kept silent. I've never cared for it, Will, and if I'm to be so bold as to say I believe the only reason you strived for such propriety was to please my father. You were trying to fit into a place you were never meant to be in. We were never destined for the high society of Port Royal or anyplace for that matter and I dread the thought of how our lives might have resulted if things had gone according to plan. The life of an aristocrat was not one that I wished for us, though in the same breath, I don't think you ever wished for the life of a pirate either.
Subsequent to these thoughts, I recall our second wedding that, showered with rainfall this time due to the maelstrom, was absent of the proper dress or fine china and replaced with filthy pirate garb and marriage vows hindered by sweeping swordplay. A ceremony that one could hardly believe to be a wedding though beautiful just the same. One brought on by the heat of passion and surrender. One I believed would never have come about had you not sacrificed your duty as a son to be with me. Which leads to my upsetting confession that I feel I must share with you…
Addison hastily flipped the sheet over but found it to be blank. Shuffling through the papers on the floor, she picked up another and began to read.
'He's in your charge now' my father had said to me about you more than ten years ago though I can still feel the warmth of his hand on my shoulder. We'd set sail for the Caribbean from Portsmouth but a few weeks prior when I'd spotted you atop the flotsam drifting in the water alongside the Dauntless. I'm afraid now, though, that you are out of my care. Slipping through my fingers like the surf in my hands whenever I try to hold it.
As a child, I read stories filled with the romanticism of the fearsome captain returning home from the sea to the wife awaiting him with open arms. But our story is unlike any other and I fear you will return naught but once every ten years and I will not be here waiting when you do. I was never like the woman in the stories, the one who tended to the babes and waited unwearyingly for the homecoming of another. I'm an impatient woman, Will, and a harsh one at times that it makes me wonder how or why you ever tolerated me.
Calypso told me once that the path I walked was one that had been traveled before though I paid no attention to what she'd meant until the day the world ended. I found myself standing on an island, alone with a chest. The chest that now belongs to you with the heart that you vowed had always been mine. I sometimes close my eyes and wish when I hear the beat of your heart within that it is the warmth of your chest I can feel against my cheek and not the cold tinge of metal. But you're not here and that seems to be something I cannot cope with. It frightens me that one day I might find the strength to move on and I will not be able to stay here and wait for you.
Sometimes I dream I fall into the sea and have the tide bring me to you. But he someone always seems to pull me out before I am able to take a breath of the brine.
Addison turned her gaze on the chest above her before she collected the rest of the papers into a pile that she stuffed into the bodice of her dress. Getting to her feet, she hurried from the room and to the kitchen where she retrieved a knife that had been left on the table. For a moment, she thought she'd heard shuffling in the other room but decided it had merely been Elizabeth shifting in her bath water. She rushed down the hall with as little noise as the floorboards would permit and returned to the sunlit room. Addison headed straight for the chest, the blade in hand.
A few minutes passed as the young girl struggled with lock, slipping the edge of the knife into the slot while jiggling it about to have it open. It was difficult considering there was more than one hole, as if two keys were needed but stubbornly, she persisted. She cursed herself when she spotted the white marks she'd made with the sharp edge around the top keyhole but continued on with little worry. She even tried pulling on the lid while the point scratched the inside, struggling to find release but was left with equal frustration through her endeavors.
"And with great haste, Pandora removed the golden shackles and pulled back the lid so as to satisfy the unbearable curiosity bubbling within her."
Addison stiffened at the voice from behind her, her fist that was closed around the handle of the knife slowly freeing it from its grip. She turned on her heel, facing the man leaned up against the doorway with arms crossed. His expression seemed impassive though she could tell by the glint in his eye that he was anything but pleased.
"I…" she began, devising some fantastical lie in her mind that never made it to her lips as he appeared before she could form another word. He leaned into her, his warm breath heavy against her neck causing a shudder to pass through her. As quick as it had came though, the heat from him was gone as he backed away from her to reveal the knife clasped neatly between his fingers. She steadied her footing as he dangled the blade between her eyes.
"Best not to sail in uncharted waters, wouldn't you say, love?" he said, his voice low and menacing. Addison swallowed thickly, watching as the steel briefly hid a kohl rimmed eye as it passed back and forth before her nose. She nodded a little and Jack removed the knife from her face. He glanced over to the opened drawer then back to the girl who blinked at him, dumbfounded.
He took a step back from her, casting a questioning look to her as he held out an opened palm. Quickly reaching into her bodice, she revealed the letters, refusing to look him in the eye as he sorted them between his hands.
"You're not going to tell Ms. Swann, are you?" she blurted suddenly, turning her gaze on him as he tore his eyes away from the writing in front of him. A smug grin tugged at his lips that contorted his expression in such a way that she actually felt as if he might have shot her right then and there.
"Truthfully, I don't think it be my place as I am simply a guest of Captain Swann's. Though if I were in your position, Miss Baker, I wouldn't allow myself in proximity of my mistress' private belongings ever again. Wouldn't want to risk the temptation, now would we?"
Again, Addison nodded, this time an invisible load weighing down onto her chest that made her eyes tear.
The man she'd met earlier had changed dramatically in the face of invasion of her mistress' privacy. There was no laughter on his lips or a strange wobble to his step. Instead, there was a stern glint in his eyes that she was afraid to look into and an odd aura about him that made her feel as if she'd shrunk to the size of a mouse. Why should he care so much for Elizabeth? From half the stories she'd heard, Captain Sparrow was selfish, egotistical and in all frankness, seemed heartless.
'You're spinning lies, wench. It be that madcap Sparrow who took out his heart and gave it to the king. Said something bout livin' forever without it, I think.'
And again, the cogs in the impressionable girl's mind began to work. Perhaps there was more than met the eye to Captain Sparrow. Perhaps there was something more to her Elizabeth's tragic tale of love, as well.
Addison suddenly turned her face away from his and headed for the door. "I should be going. My mother will be expecting me back," she muttered as she flew by him, wiping the tears on her sleeve.
When I get the Pearl back, I'm goin' to teach it to the whole crew, and we'll sing it all the time! Jack shouts, loud and barbaric, while waving his hands around in a flourished manner. His body rocks in time with the waves that scatter up onto the beach and she can't help but be entranced. It's as if he is the sea himself, ageless and free.
And you will be positively the most fearsome pirate in the Spanish Main! She replies with equal gusto that draws him closer to her face. Her vision of him slightly blurs at the edges. Had she really drank more than she'd intended?
Not just the Spanish Main, love, the entire ocean. The entire world! Elizabeth smiles at him, watching as he gazes off to the benighted horizon as if he has forgotten she's even there. In his eyes lay something of a longing.
Wherever we want to go, we go. That's what a ship is, ye know? It's not just a keel and a haul and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs, but what a ship is…what the Black Pearl really is…
Is freedom.
Elizabeth's eyelids fluttered open. She had escaped the recollection that visited her in the form of a dream to find herself partially submerged in grayish water. She peered over the lip of the tub at the hearth but a few paces away to where a fire burned low to the ground. Her shoulders sagged tiredly in the lukewarm water. How long had she been asleep for? It felt like ages since she'd last taken a proper bath and it seemed the soothing heat had taken her completely off her guard.
She cupped the water in her hand before stretching her fingers to release it back into the tub. Jack would be returning soon for dinner and she had nothing prepared. Let alone the cot in the room Addison had so generously offered for him to stay in was unturned. He would be residing in the bedroom nearest to the front of the house where the outstretched horizon was visible from the window. A series of prickles passed under her skin. A pirate known for his lecherous antics would be staying in the house of a woman – no, not simply a woman but the Pirate King - widowed but a month prior.
People would talk.
People will always talk, Lizzie. It's in their nature. I say why not give the poor sods a chance to add some thrill to those dreary lives of theirs? She could almost hear Jack say to her in her mind's eye before he would place an encouraging hand at her back. A gesture so blasé for his likes though it always seemed to catch her off her feet.
Elizabeth straightened up, the water pushing against its confines in small waves and spilling over the side. She stood and rung her hair out of the grime left in the water then seized the blanket placed at the side.
Clutching the cover across her sharp-angled shoulders, Elizabeth headed for the door. She cut across the hallway in a few quick steps to her bedroom which was dimly lit apart from the crackling blaze in the fireplace. It drew her forward where she dropped to her knees, leaning her head against the bench at the foot of the bed. She could feel her face glow against the heat, the chill that nipped her cheeks quickly fading to warmth. Elizabeth sighed and shifted positions so that her dripping feet were in front of the fire. The flames lapped at the air, flickering between shades of auburn and scarlet as it adjusted itself on the burning log. Haziness passed over her vision, causing her eyelids to droop.
Elizabeth, are you still sitting in front of that fire? You know you should be dressed by now.
"I'm almost ready, father. I'll be down in a moment," she replied to the phantom voice that followed the knock at her door. Rubbing her eyes, she hugged the blanket closer to her body and stood.
I'll be waiting in the carriage then. Honestly, dear, it is best to be prompt for these kinds of events.
Elizabeth scoffed, fumbling through her wardrobe while muttering, "Yes, since we don't wish to make an impression on Sir Ashburn II and his adoring consort who seems likely to jump off the second-story terrace than to hear anyone so much as breathe the word piracy."
"Lizzie?"
Elizabeth started with fright at the voice from behind her closed door. It sounded different, clearer even. She scuffled forward, carefully watching the tail of the blanket so as not to stumble. Pressing a hand lightly to the door she waited silently.
"Everything alright in there, love?" She took a breath, feeling an odd sort of relief.
"Jack…" she cooed, sliding her back against the door until she was crouched on her knees. The room suddenly felt empty of its inviting warmth. She cast a glance about the room. This wasn't Port Royal, her father hadn't been out in the hall, and a carriage wouldn't be waiting out front. You're going mad, the familiar voice in her mind prodded. How she loathed that voice. Say what you wish, she responded, I'll not listen to the likes of you anyhow.
"I could hear you muttering from all the way out in the hall. Had me wondering what uncouth gentlemen you'd invited back to your bedroom and why none of them included your darling Jack."
She gave a light laugh and said, "I'm appalled, Captain Sparrow, that you would think me so indecent."
From behind the door, she heard Jack settle to his feet to be at her level.
"Well then, pardon my impudence. I'd no idea your virtue was so well intact." And she could hear the smile in his words. An image of him slouched against her bedroom door with an elbow resting on his bent knee appeared through the obscurity of her mind.
Her fingertips lightly traced the barrier between them. She suddenly wanted to touch him, feel the rise and fall of his chest and listen to the beating of his heart within. Why, Elizabeth? You have Will's heart to listen to now. The taunting voice remarked.
"I just want to remember what it felt like," she murmured, pressing her cheek to her shoulder while she closed her eyes. The steady thump of his heart, the warmth of his hand against her cheek, the taste of salt on his lips.
"Like what felt like?"
She snapped to attention, the hard wood pressed against her temple. "Uh, nothing, it's nothing," she stammered as she fumbled with an appropriate answer, "The heat from the bath and the fire just seems to have thrown me into a bit of daze, is all. I'll be right out to start supper."
Elizabeth rushed to her feet and away from the door, leaving a rather befuddled Jack Sparrow out on his behind in the hall.
AN: I wasn't particularly fond of this chapter, but I hope my next will come out the way I'd like it too. My deepest thanks for those who are continuing to read and those who have just begun reading and have decided to stick around. Reviews are heaven! Please leave one!