By Wind
Disclaimer: What, you thought I owned this?
Warnings: It's. . . Pro-Elizabeth. Angsty. Bad melodrama. Implied preslash (shounen-ai)
Rating: PG (to cover my bases)
Author's notes: I have no idea why I'm writing this, except to say that as I scanned through the fanfic for PotC, I saw very few favorable, or credible, depictions of Elizabeth in the slash realm. I figured there should at least be one slash outcome where she gets to be a strong-minded, sympathetic woman. Many apologies if the characterizations seem to come out off- I've only seen the movie once thus far.
Not only is this not my first fanfic, it's been spell-checked! And betaed, thanks to Nnie. Now there's sophistication.
Summary: What would drive a man from the sea, and what woman would keep him there? Love in all its complexities creates a dark dilemma for Elizabeth, with one unpleasant choice to make.
"Elizabeth!" His soft voice was filled with pleasure and happiness as she stepped into the forge. It was a grimy place, filled with obscure, almost arcane, instruments, and far more pointy objects than the navy needed. Elizabeth managed a bright smile back at her beloved fiancee, hiding with honeyed emotion the reason for her coming.
It was the first time she'd been to the forge. She'd seen it, of course, but she'd never dared set foot in the peasants' shop. There was some message for her there in that, and she felt its import trailing like icy fingers down her spine as she tried her best to seem nothing but the happy bride-to-be she was.
The bride-to-be she should be, had wanted to be since she was a little girl. Of course, then her dreams had been full of sweet, bright-eyed lords of the sea arriving to sweep her off into their bright ships. Before a scant month or two ago, she would never have seen this boy- young man- in them.
Things had changed, and were still changing. It was all she could do to keep up, and more than she could handle to understand them all. It was her fiancee, the simple smith, who was giving her the greatest challenge.
"What are you doing here?" He asked innocently, hastily rubbing a towel over his sweaty face. The forge was hot, unforgivably so, and Elizabeth was singularly glad to have forgone any corsets today. She would have wilted in a minute.
She managed a demure smile. "I came to see you, of course. My father and I agree that it's time we should consider plans for our wedding."
"So soon?" He looked surprised at first, almost disappointed, then nodded diligently. "Anything you'd like, Miss- Elizabeth."
She continued carefully. "Father would like it if you would respond to our invitations to dinner more often. He'd like very much to talk to you, I think. There's so much you could learn from each other." The phrasing was pat and neat, as it should be, since she'd worked on it all morning. It was difficult to find a way to say that her father wanted to instruct her future husband so that he wouldn't shame his family entirely once they were married.
Her beloved boy squirmed under her gaze, turning to shove the sword he had been working on into the coals to heat. "I would if only I had the time, Elizabeth. You know I'd rather be with you than at the forge all night. It's just-"
He stopped, clearly at a loss for how to express his too obvious emotions.
"You feel out of place." Elizabeth said gently. "It's all right, Will. Father can help you, so you don't have to work so long anymore."
If anything, Will looked more ill at ease. "I know, it's just that this is my job, Elizabeth. I can't be a smith and a. . . Student at the same time." He cast an almost desperate look at the great rack of finely-crafted swords he had accumulated. "I'm trying to provide for us."
"You won't need to. We could buy a boat, after we're married." She tried not to sound too coaxing, but in her heart it felt as if she was fighting the tide. All of Will's adoration had somehow dug in its heels against this transformation, doggedly determined to do her right.
He smiled, a flimsy, empty smile of endless love at her. "You're right. I'll see you at dinner later, then."
"I'll let you get back to work. Dinner," she reminded gently, before stepping back out the door into the relatively cooler sunshine of mid-afternoon.
The walk back to the governor's mansion was unfamiliar, and remembering her way kept her from thinking too deeply upon the matter at hand until she had stepped back into the comfort of her own home. Still, something worried at the back of her mind the whole way, and only appeared once she sat at ease in her parlor.
She hadn't been imagining it. The fire, the passion that had been in Will's eyes throughout their entire misadventure, was dying. She felt certain of it. There was adoration, infatuation aplenty, and she did not doubt that Will meant it when he said he would do anything for her, yet. . .
There was something the sea had that she did not.
Unbidden, Jack Sparrow's voice came to mind from a fair-horizoned memory: "That's more than a ship, that's freedom."
Marriage was, in any shape or form, a loss of freedom. While Will had never been one for whores or many women, Elizabeth knew the sea would be one freedom she could never replace. It might sound pleasant, to plan to buy or build a ship of their own once they were wed, but it was not the same as striking out without hold or responsibility.
What was piracy but a lack of responsibility?
She had told Will that he was a pirate, but could she truly marry one?
Elizabeth tried to imagine packing up her belongings, walking down the stairs, to the door- and standing at its edge. She tried to imagine walking away forever. She would leave her father, her maids, her fortune, her belongings, her home. A pirate could have no home in Port Royale. A pirate would be constantly on guard for the Navy, constantly out looking for a new victim to plunder. Constantly watching their backs, wondering if this would be the day they were betrayed, if this would be the day they went to Davy's Locker.
And she imagined seeing her beloved husband raping, murdering, pillaging- before falling lifeless to the sharks and unknown depths.
Suddenly she felt as if she had been cast in lead. A pirate's life for her, indeed.
Her beloved myths of the sea were as thin as the paper they were never written on. They could not sustain her, and she could not live them.
There must be another way-
She felt the realization sink into her stomach as she sank into her chair. Oh, there was another way. The way her father saw. If only they could educate the peasant pirate properly, induct him into society, and provide the wealthy wits with material for a lifetime's worth of ridicule.
This time her imagination provided images of endless balls, lessons on proper etiquette and behavior being instantly adapted. She saw her husband changed. White-haired, proper, a perfect gentleman, willing to serve her every whim. Will, the adoring puppy, was willing to learn for her sake. Learn to have dull, lifeless eyes, and live in luxurious boredom.
It wasn't fair.
It wasn't fair that she could remember when she last saw the fire in his eyes. When he admitted his love to her, only to display his outstanding devotion to one Captain Jack Sparrow. She had not belonged with them then, she had only pretended to. It was not fair that she should now make Will pretend, in order to belong with her. He had known then where his calling was, and to whom he owed his loyalty. She might have his adoration, but Sparrow had his love of the sea.
It was painful to know what she saw in Sparrow's eyes when he looked at her Will. To label an emotion neither she nor Will could claim.
Elizabeth felt she could barely breathe through the constricting weight of sorrow as she fought her way out of her chair to her desk. She deliberately cleared her mind as she searched for parchment and ink. This was not an easy thing she had to do, but the right one. And it was high time of it, too.
She had just finished the letter before it was time to freshen up for dinner, with her father and the man who could never be her husband.
It was after dinner, weeks later, when she went wearily to her room exhausted by the effort of maintaining her pretenses. She could see the strain of society was beginning to tell on Will, too, though he would hardly show it openly before her. He always tried his hardest at dinner.
It was hard. It was harder than hard; it was unfair. She had tried so hard, had grown so fond of the sweet boy that had been willing to sacrifice anything for her. It was hard not to love him, easy to bask in his adoration.
It was hard to look past the shining, honest adoration that flooded his face every time she stepped into the dirty, dusty smithy that was his home. It took more strength than she knew she had to look into his beautiful dark eyes and see not the helpless, happy infatuation, but the helplessness, the dull despondency that had settled not days after the Pearl had departed.
Which was why she felt both grief and relief when she had incontrovertible proof that it returned.
Lounging like some overfed cat in her bed, there was a man with ragged clothes and rugged good looks and a name that suited him.
"Jack Sparrow. My chambermaids are going to have a terrible time getting that smell out of the sheets." "Captain, thank you." He didn't bother responding to the barb, and instead waved lazily in her direction. In the candlelight she recognized dimly the folded and refolded shape of a letter. "You don't know how surprised I was to see this."
Somewhat nettled, Elizabeth frowned at him. He squinted blearily up at her from kohl-rimmed eyes and continued, "I was expecting a wedding invitation, savvy? You had better not have brought me here to elope. I told you already, it wouldn't work out between us."
"Of course not."
"And hate to tell you this, but pirates don't do honeymoons."
Even at this moment, Elizabeth snorted at the suggestion. "Don't be ridiculous."
"So, what did you ask me here for, then? Not a week before your long-expected wedding." Despite his airy manner, Sparrow's dark eyes watched her intensely.
The heiress steeled herself, took a deep breathe, then plunged in. "I want you to kidnap Will."
The pirate, though completely at rest, gave quite an impression of reeling drunkenly (which he may well be, she thought) in surprise. He smirked wickedly. "And you thought you had to ask politely first? You do have a pirate's sense of humor."
She glared angrily at his evident disregard for her raging emotions, and grew even more incensed when he burst out laughing. When he could speak again, she couldn't, feeling tight with painful fury.
"Yes, yes, you look very wicked. So why am I really here? If you invited all your guests by sending navy ships after their hides, you might well need me to kidnap them for you."
Reminding herself to breathe, Elizabeth stiffly restated her demand. "You must take Will. Tonight, as soon as possible, before it's too late."
He frowned, sitting up. "You mean it." He bobbed his head slightly, tilting like a gull to stare her down. "What happened?"
She said quietly, "Things wouldn't work out between us." She smiled, a small smile full grief and truth. "You see, he could make me an honest woman, but I couldn't make him an honest pirate."
Captain Jack Sparrow, as roguish a pirate as ever lived, caught on at once. He nodded slowly, coming to his feet. Elizabeth felt a distant sort of satisfaction. He had always known her Will, known him better in days than she could in years.
Still, she could not let him go at that. She seized his sleeve, staring up with determination. "You must take care of him, Jack. He. . . He won't understand, at first." She swallowed hard. "He would have done anything, become anything for me. I could have had Will Turner as my husband, but I wouldn't have Will. Not anymore. And I couldn't live with that-"
She knew she was babbling, knew she was crying, when the rough hand of the seafarer lifted her chin to stare straight into her eyes. There was no drunken madness in Jack Sparrow's eyes now, only a compassion and sorrow to match her own.
"I promise you this, Lady Elizabeth. I will take Will from here, tonight, and he will be the pirate he was meant to be. We won't be back. You have my word."
He gently let her go, let her collapse back onto her bed, and left into the night. He could hear the woman's gentle sobs behind him, but knew now they were not all of pain, but also of relief.
He had a smith- no, a misplaced pirate- to kidnap.