Chapter Eleven - Ten Seconds
x Reads best with lots of dramatic music in the background, lol! x
Ten seconds is a long time and ten seconds of silence is even longer. In the space of ten seconds, a baby can take it's first breath, your lover could leave you forever with cold death in their eyes, enough blood could pump out of your body for you to die. Life defining moments happen in ten seconds. But the ten seconds before my world dropped away were like centuries.
I could have counted every single one of his eyelashes. They were so long that sometimes I wondered why they didn't tangle when he blinked. The tension was running up my arm, pulsing at my wrist, where his familiar hand was clenched. I didn't understand what was happening, but that wasn't to say I wanted him to stop looking at me like I was his world. Looking at me in that way that makes my breath catch in my throat and blush like a girl.
The world seemed to blur around us, blues fading into grey, sun fading into the palest indifference. I didn't breathe, I didn't move. For the last ten seconds with him I didn't do anything but wait.
The warm water pooling at my ankles began to rise, swelling unnaturally. I looked down but it was too late and I could feel the power of the current dragging me down. They say the power of the Ocean exceeds all other powers and this time I thought them all right. All those long lost Pirates and Sailors and Navalmen united in that strange combination of love and fear that they feel for the sea.
But then people also say that love conquers all.
How wrong could everyone have been?
I can shut my eyes in this watery prison of mine and see those black eyes watching me with that oddly tense look that I'd never seen before. Never seen before those ten seconds that I wish I could have again.
I look up from where I am pressed to the ocean floor by the weight of thousand of tonnes of water and imagine that the glimmer of light that I see in the swirling blackness above is surface. And at the surface is Jack.
Is this love?
If this ain't love then I don't know what is.
x
Elizabeth sat bolt upright, her chest heaving and tears trickling out of the corners of her eyes. Tears dripped slowly off the end of her nose as she established that she was still in the cabin with Will's warm presence still pressed against her side.
She could still feel the pressure of the sea weighing down her chest; she could still feel that unfulfilled want for the man who may have cared, she could still feel the hand on her wrist, the black gaze fixed on her own.
"Elizabeth?!" Will sat up beside her and grabbed her arm and turned her huge frightened eyes to face him. "What's wrong, what happened?"
She was sobbing so hard that she couldn't talk, her chest heaving as if she had run miles. The bittersweet ache of love found and lost was like a physical presence sitting on her heart and inhibiting her breathing.
Will pulled her closer, strong brown arms encircling her and holding on so she would fall apart.
When the dream had faded she looked up and apologised profusely for waking him.
"How's your back?" she asked, avoiding his inquisitive frown.
"er - I'm fine," he replied, obviously restraining himself from asking about her nightmare.
Elizabeth narrowed her eyes and poked his shoulder lightly. When he winced she raised an eyebrow questioningly and he laughed.
"Sore, a bit," he admitted and turned away to find his shirt and shoes. Elizabeth traced the scars with her finger, smiling a little as he shivered. But her mind was far away. Who had been the girl from the dream? There was a faint familiarity about her that was itching at the back of her mind. Shaking her head she decided to worry about later.
Leaning her head against Will's bare brown shoulder, she smiled against his scars mischievously.
"I love you," she whispered, enjoying the way his skin felt under her lips. He went very still for a moment and then got up and pulled his shirt over his head.
"Fine," Elizabeth rolled her eyes at her new fiancé and curled back under the covers. "Don't wake me up before midday."
Will thought Elizabeth looked very cute with only her morning shock of gold curls, cute little nose and dark eyes peeking out from the tangle of sheets. He grinned, ruffled her hair, ignoring her muffled protests and left the cabin.
It was bitterly cold outside and the crew was gathered in little groups across the deck, carrying hot mugs of spirits or huddling into their jackets. Will spotted Norrington and Barbossa standing at the helm and strode over, hunching his shoulders and stuffing his hands into his pockets against the cold.
Barbossa turned his grey-blue eyes up to the billowing dark clouds and felt the first flake of snow touch his cheek.
"Nearly there," he said, half to the world in general and half to the imbecilic ex-commodore.
"Nearly where?" Norrington asked warily, standing a little way away from the obviously mad pirate and hardly noticing at Turner come up beside him.
Barbossa gave the poor man an evil yellow smile and turned to Will. Neither Norrington nor Barbossa couldn't help but notice that 'I've-just-been-shagged-and-I-want-the-world-to-know-how-happy-I-am' look he had all over his face.
Tia's innocent little boy is no longer so innocent, Barbossa thought with some amusement. Norrington just sighed. Will ignored the altogether strange behaviour and turned to Barbossa.
"How long until it's time?"
Barbossa looked around at the bleak gray landscape and tasted the softly falling snow.
Then he turned his cold gaze to Will's brown one.
"Not long."
x
The Lord of the Dead flickered like a badly tuned TV and appeared on a long stretch of beach. The wind was whipping quickly around the bleak hills of sand and the Lord took that to mean that his sister, or rather his other half, was not happy.
He ran his hand once through his devastatingly good looking dark hair and spotted a figure through the lowering clouds of fog.
Within a second he was there.
A man, not his sister, was staring down at the water with a pained expression on his face. Lord Death wouldn't have lingered, except for the fact that something in his divinely powered mind told him that this wasn't a normal man.
"Sparrow."
"Captain Sparrow," Jack replied automatically, with none of his normal enthusiasm.
"Every man is equal in death." Lord Death replied with no trace of amusement in his eyes. Jack looked into his eyes and looked away very quickly. There was nothing in his eyes. Just a nauseating blank blackness that seemed to stretch forever into the caverns of this inhuman mind.
"Your point?" Jack asked, leaning away from the strange man-thing.
"Never mind, have you seen my sister?"
"Evil looking blonde wench?"
"That's the one," Lord Death agreed, liking this man quite a lot.
"She went that way," he pointed down into the unusually flat stretch of water that he had been gazing into before.
Lord Death flickered and with a faint ghost of a smile playing around his lips was gone as quickly as he had come.
x
Lady Death was fuming. If there was anything she despised more than humans in general, it was love. Love was powerful and any power that did not belong to Lady Death, Lady Death loathed.
The girl was still not talking, not screaming, not giving off any feeling except a numb sort of indifference. Lady Death would have almost preferred defiance. Her eyes, like bottomless pools of inky blackness, bored into Anamaria's. The rags of gold silk from the dress floated around her skeletal frame like a glowing aura, fuzzy in Anamaria's tired eyes.
Just as the fingernails of Death closed around her throat, another being appeared in Anamaria's prison.
"Let her go."
A tall man stood to the side in a bored fashion, not even looking at his sister and crossing his arms over his chest.
"No," the woman snarled, baring her teeth and leaning closer to Anamaria. Inhuman strength began to crush her neck and the world was getting fuzzy as the pain was almost unbearable…
"Now," the man demanded, still looking indifferent to Anamaria's fate. It was a pity death didn't prevent you from having pain. Pain was racing down her limbs, making her twitch and clench her muscles. The woman took a deep breath and just as Anamaria thought she was going to go mad or die again or something, the hand slithered away as quickly as it had come.
"What?" the woman said pulling the currents around her so they tweaked at her dusty coloured curls and billowed her dress impressively. "Why do you plague me?"
"You don't have the power to restrain the freedom of the dead," the man thundered, his eyes alight with fury as he took in his sister's defiant pose.
"Once dead, the humans are under my rule," the woman said idly, black lashes brushing in dark crescents across her eerily pale cheeks. "How dare you intrude into my territory, brother, this woman is mine."
"You may imprison a soul, but never punish," he snapped and smirked as her lowered brows confirmed that she knew he was right.
The currents began whipping around in fury, reflecting the sheer rage in the ageless creature's face. Then suddenly there was calm. Anamaria watched the suddenly still face, terror rising within her slender frame. With a slightly tentative expression, the man too seemed to have realised that the calm was far more scary than the open rage.
"But I have the power to grant life," the woman smiled and the man opened his mouth.
Anamaria saw no more.
The invisible chains around her bound form disappeared and Anamaria felt herself being dragged upwards, towards the sliver of light far up beyond the tunnel of blackness. Just before consciousness left her entirely, Anamaria heard a faint but chilling whisper follow her along the tunnel.
"And I may not be able to punish the dead, but I can certainly punish the living."
The laugher went on and on and she began to fall towards the surface.
"Do you want to come and play?" the woman's voice whispered in her ear and Anamaria screamed.
Anamaria screamed and the laughter just kept on laughing.
x
"I'm cold," Raggeti whined. "why do I have to be cold?
Pintel smacked him on the back of the head.
"Shuddup."
"But I'm still cold -" Raggeti cut off quickly as Pintel smacked him again.
"It's part of the master plan," Pintel said, tapping his nose. "Right, Mr Barbossa?"
"Right," Barbossa replied absentmindedly.
"See, me and Mr Captain here," Pintel nudged Raggeti, "we're like this," he crossed his fingers and waved them in Raggeti's face. "Just like this."
Barbossa looked up from the map and began paying attention.
"Shut up," he snapped and rolled his eyes, turning away from them.
"Yeah, shut up!" Pintel snapped suddenly, smacking Ragetti the side of the head and making his fake eye roll in utterly the wrong direction. "Stop being so rude."
x
The dark was coming and despite Barbossa's cool demeanour, he was rather worried.
It just didn't do to be in this place after dark.
It was after dark when Elizabeth woke up from her thankfully dreamless sleep. The silence hit her first, silence like she'd never heard before. Silence like even the world was holding its breath.
The cabin door creaked as she hesitantly pushed it open and she jumped at the little sound, her heart racing painfully. Grabbing the lantern from its hook, she put one hand on the sword and one hand on the lantern and emerged into the darkness.
Eyes peered at her. Elizabeth shuddered and tried to dismiss the gleaming dots in the dark to her overactive imagination. But they were all too real. Her footsteps echoed and her breathing sounded like thunder to her ears.
The lantern only hindered her night vision in this situation, but Elizabeth was too scared to move, let alone extinguish the lantern. The night was pitch black, strange because there was normally one or two lanterns left alight for this very reason. No one wants to be stranded in the dark.
Something skittered across the deck in front of her hesitant feet and Elizabeth bit her lip so hard it bled in her effort not to scream. Panicking slightly, Elizabeth span around feeling the eyes on her but not seeing the people. Her sword got stuck in her effort to get it out. The lantern fell out of her hand as she felt something wrap around her ankle. Flames exploded from the broken lantern. The faint light of the sudden fire dispelled the darkness for a single moment and Elizabeth saw enough to turn the bravest man into a gibbering ball on the floor.
She took a deep breath and screamed at the top of her voice.
Inside Tia's cabin, the crew huddled fearfully. Barbossa was standing in front of the door, one hand on Will's shoulder holding him back.
"You can't go out there, boy, better people than you have been driven mad by what lies behind this door."
Will leaned against the desk, his knuckles white on his sword and his mouth pressed in a tight line. A scream tore the night, a scream that seemed to go on and on. Will grabbed hold of Barbossa's jacket and all but flung him out of the way. The door was next, almost off it's hinges and onto the floor in Will's haste.
Even the unnatural inky darkness didn't deter the man as he grabbed a lantern and blundered out into the foggy blackness in search of Elizabeth.
"Bugger," Cerys swore, her eyes straining in the dark. She stood closest to the door, her hand stretched out to touch the dark as if it was physical thing. She took a deep breath and blazing light lit up the cabin. Barbossa blinked away his sudden blindness and realised that it was Cerys who was glowing like she was on fire.
"Come on," she drew her sword and followed closely by Tia, Cotton and Gibbs vanished into the dark.
Barbossa took one look at Pintel and Ragetti, who were huddled under the table and sighed.
It seemed that they were going to have to face the dark.
x