When Elizabeth was returned to Will, a man at the stairs and an iron wrought gate between them, she had no luck in schooling the excitement from her face after hours of feeling a proper sailor. Her hands were rope-burned and rough from the rigging and her every muscle ached with a fire she'd never known from the effort of keeping herself aloft, but her eyes were bright as they landed at long last on Will's confined form.
"Will!" Her voice was nearly breathless, smile easy as she knelt beside the bars parting them and Will, despite the treachery she'd given him so happily, couldn't help but smile wearily to see her again. Sun-scorched, shining with sweat across her brow, and with hair messily braided, there was a wildness to the girl he'd so easily devoted his life to that he'd never seen before, but she remained the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. It would have been easy if he recoiled to see her again, but the Bible had been clear that the Devil was an angel before the fall and Elizabeth still seemed the angel to him. "You're okay?"
The words coaxed a rough laugh from him, because how was he to be anything other than merely okay. He was free from the dangers of choice within the security of his prison, while she was interacting with all manner of pirates and cutthroats. Assessing her hands as she reached for him through the bars, it was easy for Will to see how they so closely resembled what his own seemed before callouses had covered the flesh at the start of his apprenticeship.
"Are you?" he asked in lieu of answering, his fingers gingerly tracing the rope burns against her palms. "Your hands will be like my own, once this heals."
Elizabeth fell silent then, her sharp and bright eyes now devoted to the study of his hands as he held hers. Her deft fingers, diligently trained to pluck at harp strings and embroider delicate silks, now traced the shape and feel of the hardened skin that protected his hands from further harm at the forge. Her fingers carried on in their wicked path, shifting further up his arms to trace at the scars from half-forgotten burns and cuts earned in any number of embarrassing or educational ways. It ached fiercely to see her study his skin with such fascination, because it wasn't him she so craved to explore but the future of her own hands. He craved with a wretchedness that her eyes would suddenly see him there, see the heart he had perhaps foolishly sworn to her so long ago despite her eyes always, endlessly being drawn away.
"The commodore is still searching," Will found himself saying. It was refreshing to realize that the words lacked the bitterness he might have expected even just hours ago. Do not make the mistake, the commodore had told him scathingly, of thinking you are the only man here who cares for Elizabeth. It might have been better for his health to have listened to James Norrington, but there was a strange sort of irony to the commodore's regard. Will was not the only man to care for Elizabeth, and it was a balm to his pride that he wasn't the only man who had failed to secure her heart.
"We cannot rely on the commodore for rescue," Elizabeth said, her voice quiet but almost stern with reprimand. "James's only answer to piracy is the sword, and the men aboard this ship would be less than moved by such persuasion."
"The curse?" Will asked, brow furrowing as he considered the words she had murmured to him before she had been pulled abovedeck hours prior. "It's real?"
"I wouldn't have believed it had I not seen it," Elizabeth confessed with a wry smile. "Even Jack—the capuchin—is not immune to it. Captain Barbossa told me the sorry tale, expecting to scare me into compliance."
"And with his sorry tale he secured your sympathy, rather than your fear, I suppose," Will finished with a similarly droll smile. His eyes had been attentive to her since the day he was rescued from the waves, and, while he didn't have so close a view of her as her father or even the commodore, he still felt he understood her heart. Elizabeth had struck him as generous—too generous, perhaps—and it had been her earnest endeavors towards charity and comfort for those less fortunate that had drawn him to her. Though, he reflected with vision made clearer by her betrayal, that perhaps she had been driven to the sickbeds of injured sailors at the port not because she could offer them comfort but because they could offer her adventure. "It is far too easy to underestimate you."
The words weren't meant as an accusation, but Elizabeth flinched away from them anyway, unable to meet Will's eyes. The man at the stairs shifted in his posture, and Will could almost see the moment that the pirate's eyes calculated the distance between their bodies and the movement Elizabeth had taken from him.
"I love you." The words were thoughtless and brash as they leapt from Will's lips, a confession he'd never before had the courage or the strength to give voice. The words were startling to hear the stillness of the brig, their meaning dulled and thin as they carried through the bars of the cage that held him captive, but Will's love was always going to end with one of them trapped, wouldn't it?
Will might have been a fool in love, but the world and all its truths had been asserting themselves since the morning Elizabeth had fallen from the ramparts. He loved her as a boy, and he'd never outgrown that. He'd watched her grow from afar, dedicating himself to the sword because their positions were so wildly different that he could do nothing more than dream. He'd slowly become blind to her, unseeing how Port Royal strove to sand and polish away all of her beautiful facets. Years passed as Elizabeth became more unattainable to the likes of him, more breathtaking every moment, and all his years at working with metal never let him remember that to polish a surface is to remove the first layers of the material.
Now he was staring at her, with her sun-scorched face and rough hands, and found himself unable to look away. Port Royal had tried to take all that she was and shove it away into a glass construct, but there was too much of her to whittle away into one of those delicate shapes. Elizabeth was like the sea, wild and dangerous and beautiful.
And she smiled sadly at his admission, giving Will all the rejection he needed to feel that love batter against the edges of his soul, threatening ruin. Her hand reached through the bars of the cage, moving to gently touch his cheek, and Will couldn't help but feel that it was a goodbye, even as she remained seated before him.
Having gone to catch some sleep in his quarters while the young Mrs. Turner was visiting her husband, and with Isla de Muerta sure to appear on the horizon soon enough, it was with equal amounts of anger and bitterness that Barbossa found his rest interrupted by a grim-faced Koehler. When hearing the report that Koehler had to offer, the bitterness fell back as an unexpected surge of rage and—damn it all—concern rose up, fierce and strong in his dead heart.
No ship was entirely silent, even a ship at port. There was always the clamor of men talking or shouting at each other, giving or acknowledging orders. Failing that, there was the snap of sails above and the relentless roll of waves below. Still, the deck seemed supernaturally silent as Barbossa abandoned his quarters to face his crew, face set in a dark scowl. The men were gathered before he spoke a single word, the air heavy and thick with tension as the man who set Bootstrap Bill to the depths appeared before them.
"Bosun." Barbossa's voice was low, dangerously courteous as he called his first mate forward. The man stepped up at once—his usual scowl deeper than even his normal standard and that was a relief of sorts to the captain. Bosun disagreeing with the coming edict would be a disaster waiting to happen, and it was one that Barbossa wasn't sure he'd survive for long. "Would you care to speak? I find meself running quite low on kindly words, and I think the wretch we've gathered for might enjoy even an opportunity to speak, unearned though it may be."
"Yes, sir." Bosun turned to address the men gathered before him, eyes sharp as they surveyed the crowd. "The captain's orders were made clear. The girl was to be untouched and unbothered by every man in the crew. Mrs. Turner?"
The crowd shifted slowly then, slowly parting to expose the waif just as they had parted to betray Pintel and Ragetti not days ago. Despite the report that Koehler had given him, it stirred something fierce in Barbossa to see that reckless girl standing, shoulders curled downward but face lifted petulantly towards him, her left cheek's sunburned skin swollen, scratched and all manner of blue and purple.
"And the offender of this edict, Bosun?" Barbossa asked slowly, letting his eyes slowly drift over the injury done to his charge. It wasn't as bad as it could have been, that he knew intellectually. The knowledge that the hurt had been done, however, against his orders and against the girl that was best suited to keep the Turner lad behaving rankled fiercely.
"Was Kipling, sir." It was with something akin to fondness that Barbossa heard the voice of Pintel ringing out before Bosun could answer the question. The man in question was forced forward by Pintel and Ragetti at his sides and Barbossa noticed with some pleasure that Kipling was already not entirely unharmed. Even Ragetti, coward that he was, was standing with his back straight as he held Kipling still with Pintel's help. Those two, fools though they may be, were more loyal than anything. The man between them—a man of tanned skin and medium build who Barbossa vaguely recalled was a bounty-hunter of sorts before joining the crew of the Black Pearl—was nursing a split lip that hadn't quite scabbed over and bright red scratches across his face and neck.
"Sir, you can't—" Kipling's voice was loud and sharp as he began to protest, but his voice died as Barbossa turned his gaze onto him. Barbossa, forcing a smirk to his face with effort, raised a hand and gestured towards the man who'd had the poor idea to lay a hand against the young Mrs. Turner.
"Tell me, Kipling, if it be a false claim, which of my men laid a hand to you? It seems an easy mistake to correct if what you say be true. Unless it wasn't a man who made you pretty."
"She attacked me," he insisted, but oh wasn't that the weakest defense he could have offered. Barbossa opened his mouth to retort with something biting and witty, but found that his words died on his lips when Elizabeth tossed her hair and barked a laugh, fierce and bitter.
"A fine pirate, you are, sir. Hopeless against a girl half your size," she all but snarled, eyes sharp against the man held secure by Pintel and Ragetti. Her shoulders squared and mouth set in a hard line, Elizabeth turned her attention to the captain with an annoyed huff. "Mr. Kipling made a comment of an inappropriate nature and did not kindly react when I did not encourage him. When he persisted, I struck him. Misters Pintel and Ragetti were near enough that he only had time to strike me once." Her fierce visage relaxed then, eyes softening as she gifted her unlikely rescuers with an appreciative smile, but it was there only a moment before she resumed glaring at her attacker.
"Bosun, be this an accurate timeline of events to your eyes?" Barbossa called upon the man again, eyes not shifting away from the offender. Bosun seemed to survey the crew for a long moment, eyeing the others for signs of wrongdoing or deception, but he eventually nodded.
"It is, captain. The girl struck first, but only when Kipling did not stand down."
"So be it." Barbossa took a moment to look again towards Elizabeth, to commit the shape of her bruised face to his memory. Captaining a bunch of cutthroats was sure to end with him bloodied and broken on some forgotten spit or in the bottom of the sea, but it wouldn't end that way today. He'd keep to his edict, and it might keep them alive to see the week's end. It might be enough to keep them alive till the end of the curse. "Masters Pintel and Ragetti, kindly escort Mr. Kipling to the capstan."
Kipling began roaring his protests, but he was powerless to fight as Bosun calmly ordered Weatherby and Hawksmoor to assist them. Kipling was in short order lashed to the capstan, a band of cloth tied tightly above his wrist to act as tourniquet even before the blade was produced.
Injuries weren't uncommon to the crew, but they typically staged their assaults to take place under cover of night, where the curse would more easily erase any toll a physical blow might have. In the light of day, the men would bleed just as any other, and, while they may faint and fall cold due to bloodloss, they'd linger on the cusp of death till the moon rose and the curse reasserted itself. Limbs severed could be reattached in those gruesome hours, and that was Kipling's only hope to regain his hand.
Bosun was the one to hold the blade—a heavy machete borrowed from the armory—and Barbossa allowed his feet to bring him closer to Elizabeth. To his surprise, and unease, the girl was steadfast in keeping her eyes sharp on the man who'd struck her as Bosun ran a drystone against the machete as the crew awaited Kipling's punishment.
"You need not witness this, Mrs. Turner." He wasn't sure of what he hoped for when he spoke to her, but a frown broke over him nonetheless when Elizabeth remained still.
"When it's done, what will be done with him?" was her only response, low and subdued, and Barbossa frowned as he considered.
"Barring use of a hand makes him less valuable as a crewman. He'll be belowdecks till moonrise, and if that time hasn't quieted him, there be two cells in the brig."
"And then it will be Will to listen to his filth. I'm rather not seeing any comfort in any of this."
"Comfort is a luxury rarely afforded to those at sea." Bosun deemed his blade readied and the crew—excepting Kipling himself—quieted as the large man strode towards the man who'd broken their captain's edict.
The young lady had stabbed Barbossa, plunged a knife deep into his chest, but there was still surprise in her eyes as ruby bloomed across the blackened capstan when Bosun brought the blade down. Kipling roared in pain and anger, the sound doubling when another rag was shoved against the stump of his wrist, but the lass's focus was on the red as it dripped slowly to the deck.
Barbossa was at a loss, then, not sure how to interrupt the young woman's strange fascination with the gruesome sight but knowing that something needed to be done to distract her from such a thing. He couldn't force her away, not when Kipling's injury was justice for his assault on her, but it was bitter on his tongue to see how her eyes drifted from the man, to his hand, and then back to the red spreading slowly onto the deck. It was with a surge of gratitude that he realized that two of the men—the very men who had apprehended the scourge—were swiftly approaching.
"This way, Mrs. Turner. Still aplenty of work to be done." Pintel was the first to speak, as was usual, but Ragetti was the faithful shadow, echoing Pintel's words and offering a shy sort of smile that looked more like a grimace with his ruined teeth. Still, Elizabeth's eyes finally moved from the capstan to look at the men who'd approached her and she nodded before allowing herself to be swept away by the two.
Posted 13:41, 9.27.22