The song belongs to Thrice (again) :0) It's called Don't Tell And We Won't Ask.
And y'all, face it- Elizabeth has to be in the story. As much as we don't like her- wOOt wOOt- she is one of the main characters. She has to be. Somebody has to get trampled, don't they? Mosh pit!!!
~*~
Chapter Six
A Wonderfully Romantic Story
~*~
Don't tell and we won't ask you howYou sleep at night when the lights go outYou're all aloneWith all the ghosts of lesser humansWhose lives you spilt to suit your ownSit and think of all the dollars and the centsAnd your blue bloodYou'll see it all makes perfect sense~*~
"Whar' he be takin' us?" muttered one of the men as Serenity lay with her back to them. No one had come for her yet, but Rosalia had disappeared. A tear ran down her cheek and landed on the burlap hammock that she lay upon as she thought of what was happening. Those poor girls, she thought, not thinking of how they were going through exactly the same thing that she had gone through. I had wanted to stay…pure…until I was married, cried an inner voice. I still am pure, said another voice. I chose nothing.
A weight pulled down the end of her hammock, and a hand rested next to her foot. Serenity opened her tear filled eyes and saw Daniel's silhouette at the end of her hammock. She sat up and pulled away from him at the same time, but he only scooted ever closer. She gave an inaudible sigh of defeat as Daniel ran a finger down her arm.
"Why do you do this, Daniel?" she asked softly.
"You mean, why do I do this with you and not with the other ones?" he asked.
"You're disgusting," said Serenity. "You have no respect for anyone."
"I have respect for myself," said Daniel.
"How do you sleep at night?" she asked. He leaned closer.
"I don't," he leered. His breath was hot on her face as he leaned in and pressed his lips against hers. She winced even as he kissed her, and tried to pull away. He grinned and leaned back, getting up off the hammock and leaving her shaking and sweating on her swinging bed.
~*~
"Tortuga, Tortuga," hummed Jack in some kind of nonsense tune as he danced with the wheel of his ship. The black sails billowed overhead. "We're so close," he said. "I can almost smell it!"
"I wasn't aware that Tortuga had a smell," said Will.
"Oh, it does mate," said Jack, "it does."
"Oh," said Will, raising his eyebrows as Jack went back to singing his Tortuga song.
~*~
Mrs. Williams sat on the sofa in her parlor at her inn, as she had done every evening for the past month. She wept the tears of a mother that had lost her child. She didn't notice her husband's absence. He had barricaded himself in his room again, as he had done every evening for the past month. Mrs. Williams sighed heavily and leaned her head on her hand, which was propped up on the arm of the sofa. The few tenants that had remained at the inn had recognized her need for privacy every evening, and they steered clear of the parlor.
"Serenity," she said, thinking of her beautiful daughter. "If only I knew what had happened to you…"
All that the poor woman knew was that her daughter had disappeared the same night as that man- Daniel- and the same night as Connor had been found dead on the beach lying next to an injured William Turner. William had left Port Royale also, to sail the high seas with the pirates, but that was all that Mrs. Williams knew or cared to know. Every connection that he had had with her daughter had seemed to be forgotten. Rumor had it that he was courting the governor's daughter, of all people. To the rest of the world, every day was the same as the day a month ago. They did not know that every dawn and every sunset brought terrible memories of her daughter's wedding day.
Mrs. Williams stood and shakily placed a hand on the banister of the stairs. She looked up them and at the upstairs hallway as if to make sure that no one was there, and then she placed her foot on the bottom step. Slowly she ascended the steps, clutching the banister the whole way up. When she had reached the top, she turned and headed down the hallway, past her daughter's room, past her son's room that was now empty also and rented to tenants, and to the end of the hallway. She stood in front of the door that led into the room that she had once shared with her husband. Now she only shared it with a ghost of a man, driven to a death inside.
She raised a hand and knocked on the door to her own bedroom. A minute passed, and then the doorknob turned and the heavy mahogany door swung open a few inches.
"Dear?" she asked hesitantly. The door opened the rest of the way and the sobbing woman collapsed into the arms of her sobbing husband.
She found that misery was much easier to bear with company.
~*~
Was this where it happened? Wondered Elizabeth as she walked across the beach. How about here? Here?
She had heard the story of Connor's untimely death and Serenity's disappearance many times, but the whole thing had some kind of fantastic quality to it. Elizabeth knew that Will had loved Serenity in some way, and she couldn't help wondering if he was out on the sea because it brought her closer to him. She was somewhere out there, and now so was her Will.
Was it here? No trace of blood remained on the sand. Workers had shoveled all of it away. But still, this beach was the scene of a horrible death, and it would always be that way. Those grains of sand were still floating out there, in that same ocean.
Many times she had passed the graveyard, with the new white stone that bore Connor and Serenity's names. Even though no body lay beneath it- Serenity was only presumed dead with no body, and Connor's corpse had been taken back to Ireland at his parent's request- it still bore the same mysticism and fanaticism of their story.
It was romantic in a way that Elizabeth didn't like to admit. She wished that things could have turned out different. She had wished death on either of them- Connor, she had grown a liking to, and although Serenity was competition, she also had a likable goodness about her.
If it weren't real, it would have made a wonderfully romantic story, thought Elizabeth, her interest turning away from the beach and back to the horizon, as usual. Where are you, Will? Come back to me, she thought.
Please come back to me.
~*~
There was only one man on the Vengeance that the captain trusted. That man was himself.
"Where we be goin'?" he asked himself, glaring at a map of the Spanish Main. He had a gnarled finger on their current position and was scouting out possible pit stops and the time it would take to get there. There were still many villages that were left un-raided. There were still many virgins left in the Caribbean. "We have to get me men some women!" he said. "They're tearin' the three of 'em apart…"
His eyes fell on the infamous town that had been revered by pirates for its rum and its pleasurable company alike. The captain grinned, revealing blackened and missing teeth.
"Look's like we be goin' to Tortuga," he said.