Author's note: Oh my, this is a lovely sad chapter *sniff* thanks to all of
you guys who have reviewed and kept on reading despite my horrendous
delays. This was sooo hard to write! (actually it was kind of fun) I just,
it's just... oh you just go and read it!
Elizabeth closed the door to her apartment and stepped inside wearily. The ride home had been torture, Will wanted to know what was going on and Elizabeth was trying her hardest to avoid the subject so that he wouldn't find out. How could she tell him, after what happened on the dance floor? 'Sorry Will I love you, but not enough to give up my life and live in a squalor's shack in Kentucky' How could she tell him she was giving up on him?
"Is something bothering you Elizabeth?" Will asked breaking Elizabeth's trance.
Looking at Will's concerned eyes staring at her with the utmost care crushed Elizabeth more than anything else. But she had resolved to keep Will in the dark about his chance at an existence in her reality, and so stood firm.
"Just you're leaving," she said with a sad smile. "Hen confirmed it, you're going to be sent back on Friday night, everything here will go back to the way it was. The study of the computer confirmed the need to send you back as quickly as possible. So that's what we need to focus on now." She turned away from his sad eyes and moved to the fridge trying to occupy her thoughts with anything but Will.
She rifled in the fridge shuffling and re-shuffling the contents of it, not feeling the need for anything (any food that is) but not wanting to make her trip there seem purposeless, she finally settled on a jug of orange- passion fruit Tropicana and shut the fridge door with a slam. She walked slowly over to the counter and got a glass from the cupboard focusing her mind on the menial tasks before her. Open cupboard, remove glass, remove juice lid, pour juice, recap juice lid, walk back to fridge, open fridge, replace juice, close fridge, walk back to glass, pick up glass, hold glass millimeters away from lips, drop glass suddenly. Drop glass suddenly?
What Elizabeth had failed to realize during her complete concentration on the menial tasks before her was that Will had snuck up on her unintentionally, perturbed by her queer behavior. When she had turned and prepared to drink menially from her glass, Will's face (and more specifically his lips) were just inches away. So she had spooked and dropped the glass, which had covered her whole chest in bright orange- passion fruit Tropicana and left a large puddle of juice and glass shards on the floor.
"Will!" Elizabeth half-shrieked.
Will was instantly penitent. "Oh Elizabeth, I'm such a fool," he sighed rushed his hands through his hair in a far too attractive way.
Elizabeth was happy to turn her attention away from the too attractive Will, in order to take care of the treacherous shards of glass littering her kitchen floor.
"Oh it's my fault, I'm just a spaz by nature," Elizabeth said as she began to pick up the shards and place them gingerly in her hand. She frowned as she looked down at her brand new soaking burgundy top and cream colored pants, at least they had been cream colored now two-thirds of it was a kind of pale peach.
"Dang!" she exclaimed as Will stooped down to join her, in her fragile effort. "I finally find an outfit I like, and I'm doomed to ruin it on its first use," she huffed indignantly.
Balancing the shards carefully on her hand she moved to take the last piece, but was jarred when Will moved to do the same. There hands touched briefly and like so many of the Harlequin romance novels of the past an almost electric jolt flowed from where they touched. Elizabeth could feel herself blushing furiously and she scolded herself inwardly for holding onto this fantasy when every rational thought in her mind was screaming at her to push him away, let him go and forget about him. She decided to stare intently at the juice puddle for a while.
"I can't recall if I ever told you how speechless I was when I first saw you as I stepped out of the changing room, how you knocked the breath out of me because you were so stunning, and how I still think you are absolutely beautiful," Elizabeth didn't have to look up to know there was that playful smile pasted on his face, but against her better judgment she did anyway.
"I think you tried to once," Elizabeth shocked herself by saying. She knew where this was headed but some part of her just wasn't ready to care. "But you didn't want to because, to me all it means is you're trying to kiss me again," Elizabeth couldn't believe what she was doing, it was as if her heart kept sputtering words involuntarily out of her mouth. Like Will had cast some sort of spell over her that she had neither the power nor desire to break. Elizabeth breathed deeply as she saw Will inching closer.
"Well then," Will said with a smirk. "Let me tell you now how speechless I was when I first saw you as I stepped out of the changing room, how you knocked the breath out of me because you were so stunning, and how I still think you are absolutely..." the final words were lost as there lips met.
Any further thoughts of fallen glass shards or puddles of Tropicana were tossed aside literally as Elizabeth let her hand fall, re-spilling the glass and letting it rest on the floor while she lost herself in Will's kiss.
It was the hardest thing, and probably the dumbest thing she'd ever done, giving in to Will once again. The kisses, which had previously sent her straight to cloud nine, now filled her with bittersweet remorse and guilt. She didn't have any right to enjoy this, not Will moving closer to her and drawing his hand slowly and softly across her cheek, nor the feel of his strong arms as they moved to encircle her, pulling her in perilously closer, and not the feel of his heartbeat against her palm as she pressed her hand against his chest. It was all wrong, and she hated herself for it. So much so that when Will finally broke the string of passionate kisses, he looked down at Elizabeth with love in his eyes only to find tears in hers.
"Elizabeth?" Will questioned, though he already knew the cause of her troubles.
"I can't do it," she said as she collapsed against him and lay her head against his chest trying to hold back the sobs. "I can't sit here and kiss you when I know I have to give you up. You may be strong enough to deal with that kind of pain, but I can't," She sniffed slightly shaking her head against his chest as if trying to find the courage to pull away.
In the end it was Will who did the pulling away, a look of confusion and frustration in his eyes as he stood up and towered over her, his frustration giving him and air of defiance and power not to be trifled with.
"Who demands that I leave?" He demanded harshly. "Why, if you wish that I could stay so much, if it hurts you so badly to part with me, must we part? Who is it that holds such power over so that all that you want and desire you cannot have!?" The passion in his eyes burned brightly as he spoke, and Elizabeth couldn't decide whether she found it stirring, or frightening.
But she couldn't blame Will; his questions were valid, she was just afraid to tell him the answers, and his fierceness wasn't doing anything to comfort her.
"Not who Will," Elizabeth said weakly from her crumpled position on the floor. "What, and the what is no small thing to be forgotten. The entire world wants us apart." Elizabeth felt ruined and crushed, faced not only with losing Will, but with explaining it point blank to his face as well. The only thing that gave her strength was a well of anger bubbling inside her; anger at Will for making her pain worse, at the world for causing her pain and at herself for giving into it.
Slowly she rose until she was standing firm and facing Will with the same frustration that he had displayed. Each statement was punctuated with pain and regret, and they grew louder until Elizabeth feared her voice would give out.
"We don't fit Will, don't mesh, our fates don't coincide, we were never meant to be, say it however you want but they all mean the same thing, the whole world wants us apart!" She would have been crying her eyes out, but she was too filled with anger to take notice of anything else. "Maybe where you come from, where the sky's are always blue unless there's danger near, or where Our Fine Hero always gets his One True Love things are different, but this is the real world and I for one am not strong enough to hold it back!!!!" She'd screwed up her eyes and yelled at the top of her lungs for that last exclamation and so was unable to see the change come over Will's face.
Almost as if he'd been slapped physically, the anger and frustration was drained from his face and replaced with hurt and surrender.
"Fine," he said softly. The change in his voice was so great that Elizabeth was instantly culled and attentive. "If you are unwilling to challenge this world on my behalf, I will stop resisting it on yours, though I would have gladly fought to my dying breath if it would have given us a chance."
Elizabeth was surprised she didn't give in right then, that she wasn't instilled with such passion that she grabbed Will and ran away to some tropical hideaway never to be seen again, but to live out the rest of her life in blissful and never-ending happiness. But her own strength surprised her and she was able to remain strong in the face of the storm.
"Don't think I wouldn't do the same Will, don't think that if there was anything I could do to ensure that you and I could just forget all this and go on living, that I wouldn't do it. But the fact remains that us being together just isn't right," She replied with an edge of ice in her voice.
Will still wasn't convinced. "Right?" he sputtered incredulously. "I've spent my whole life doing what's right, for the soul purpose of it being right! But does this feel right to you Elizabeth? Does hurting so bad that you want to throw yourself upon a sword just to make it stop seem RIGHT to you?" She'd expected him to start shouting again, and at this point would have welcomed it to the emotional guilt trip he was sending her on.
"No," she said quietly, her tears starting to return to her. "But jeopardizing this world and those we love in it, can't be right either."
"The only person that I love in this world is standing right in front of me, is the one your forcing me to leave," Will said, not batting an eyelash.
That tore at Elizabeth more than anything else, but it also gave her something she could use. "But you have a world of your own, and someone there waiting for you," she said through invisible tears.
There was a momentary glimmer in Will's eye and Elizabeth could tell that she had struck a resounding chord that time, that she had finally given him a reason to go back. But Will wasn't giving up a fight.
"No," he said resolutely. "She doesn't want me, her choice has been made."
Elizabeth had never felt for him more than at that moment, his honor still held steadfast and strong, despite his world of hurt. "She loves you Will Turner," Elizabeth said formally in an attempt to separate them emotionally. "And she would have you if you told her of your feelings for her."
Now it was Will who was faltering, and though it killed Elizabeth to see it she was glad he was beginning to accept their fate. "I... I can't... I don't want to... Elizabeth would never," he said through invisible tears of his own.
"Are you willing to throw away all the years that you've loved her Will Turner? Every moment you stood and watched her, hallowed her name and fought to protect her?" Elizabeth could feel her love of the film and her love of its story carrying her through. "She is your One True Love, it is her heart that hold's you and it is to her you must return," Elizabeth, strangely enough, was starting to feel better herself, knowing of the happiness destined for Will gave her a small feeling of peace, like a tiny candle growing ever stronger as the seconds past which lessened the dark ache of her slowly breaking heart.
"If it was any other way," she concluded. "All that I know of love would be false."
The length of time they stood there was immeasurable by both parties, either seconds or eons passed, neither could tell but when that moment ended Will had thrown his arms around Elizabeth in a crushing embrace, damping her shoulder slightly with the few tears that even Our Fine Hero was unable to hold back. Elizabeth prepared to weep too, knowing now that no more slips would occur, that there was no second chances for her and Will and never again would her lips have the privilege of brushing against his.
"I swear Elizabeth," Will whispered softly into her ear. "One day, if I cannot find someway to be there myself, I will find you happiness."
But the time for the fulfilling of promises was not now. For at that moment a loud stern knocking could be heard at the door. And the deep voice of General Harold Grippa came booming through the door.
"Elizabeth Cartwright, this is the United Stated Government, open this door!" Came the loud and urgent call.
Elizabeth closed the door to her apartment and stepped inside wearily. The ride home had been torture, Will wanted to know what was going on and Elizabeth was trying her hardest to avoid the subject so that he wouldn't find out. How could she tell him, after what happened on the dance floor? 'Sorry Will I love you, but not enough to give up my life and live in a squalor's shack in Kentucky' How could she tell him she was giving up on him?
"Is something bothering you Elizabeth?" Will asked breaking Elizabeth's trance.
Looking at Will's concerned eyes staring at her with the utmost care crushed Elizabeth more than anything else. But she had resolved to keep Will in the dark about his chance at an existence in her reality, and so stood firm.
"Just you're leaving," she said with a sad smile. "Hen confirmed it, you're going to be sent back on Friday night, everything here will go back to the way it was. The study of the computer confirmed the need to send you back as quickly as possible. So that's what we need to focus on now." She turned away from his sad eyes and moved to the fridge trying to occupy her thoughts with anything but Will.
She rifled in the fridge shuffling and re-shuffling the contents of it, not feeling the need for anything (any food that is) but not wanting to make her trip there seem purposeless, she finally settled on a jug of orange- passion fruit Tropicana and shut the fridge door with a slam. She walked slowly over to the counter and got a glass from the cupboard focusing her mind on the menial tasks before her. Open cupboard, remove glass, remove juice lid, pour juice, recap juice lid, walk back to fridge, open fridge, replace juice, close fridge, walk back to glass, pick up glass, hold glass millimeters away from lips, drop glass suddenly. Drop glass suddenly?
What Elizabeth had failed to realize during her complete concentration on the menial tasks before her was that Will had snuck up on her unintentionally, perturbed by her queer behavior. When she had turned and prepared to drink menially from her glass, Will's face (and more specifically his lips) were just inches away. So she had spooked and dropped the glass, which had covered her whole chest in bright orange- passion fruit Tropicana and left a large puddle of juice and glass shards on the floor.
"Will!" Elizabeth half-shrieked.
Will was instantly penitent. "Oh Elizabeth, I'm such a fool," he sighed rushed his hands through his hair in a far too attractive way.
Elizabeth was happy to turn her attention away from the too attractive Will, in order to take care of the treacherous shards of glass littering her kitchen floor.
"Oh it's my fault, I'm just a spaz by nature," Elizabeth said as she began to pick up the shards and place them gingerly in her hand. She frowned as she looked down at her brand new soaking burgundy top and cream colored pants, at least they had been cream colored now two-thirds of it was a kind of pale peach.
"Dang!" she exclaimed as Will stooped down to join her, in her fragile effort. "I finally find an outfit I like, and I'm doomed to ruin it on its first use," she huffed indignantly.
Balancing the shards carefully on her hand she moved to take the last piece, but was jarred when Will moved to do the same. There hands touched briefly and like so many of the Harlequin romance novels of the past an almost electric jolt flowed from where they touched. Elizabeth could feel herself blushing furiously and she scolded herself inwardly for holding onto this fantasy when every rational thought in her mind was screaming at her to push him away, let him go and forget about him. She decided to stare intently at the juice puddle for a while.
"I can't recall if I ever told you how speechless I was when I first saw you as I stepped out of the changing room, how you knocked the breath out of me because you were so stunning, and how I still think you are absolutely beautiful," Elizabeth didn't have to look up to know there was that playful smile pasted on his face, but against her better judgment she did anyway.
"I think you tried to once," Elizabeth shocked herself by saying. She knew where this was headed but some part of her just wasn't ready to care. "But you didn't want to because, to me all it means is you're trying to kiss me again," Elizabeth couldn't believe what she was doing, it was as if her heart kept sputtering words involuntarily out of her mouth. Like Will had cast some sort of spell over her that she had neither the power nor desire to break. Elizabeth breathed deeply as she saw Will inching closer.
"Well then," Will said with a smirk. "Let me tell you now how speechless I was when I first saw you as I stepped out of the changing room, how you knocked the breath out of me because you were so stunning, and how I still think you are absolutely..." the final words were lost as there lips met.
Any further thoughts of fallen glass shards or puddles of Tropicana were tossed aside literally as Elizabeth let her hand fall, re-spilling the glass and letting it rest on the floor while she lost herself in Will's kiss.
It was the hardest thing, and probably the dumbest thing she'd ever done, giving in to Will once again. The kisses, which had previously sent her straight to cloud nine, now filled her with bittersweet remorse and guilt. She didn't have any right to enjoy this, not Will moving closer to her and drawing his hand slowly and softly across her cheek, nor the feel of his strong arms as they moved to encircle her, pulling her in perilously closer, and not the feel of his heartbeat against her palm as she pressed her hand against his chest. It was all wrong, and she hated herself for it. So much so that when Will finally broke the string of passionate kisses, he looked down at Elizabeth with love in his eyes only to find tears in hers.
"Elizabeth?" Will questioned, though he already knew the cause of her troubles.
"I can't do it," she said as she collapsed against him and lay her head against his chest trying to hold back the sobs. "I can't sit here and kiss you when I know I have to give you up. You may be strong enough to deal with that kind of pain, but I can't," She sniffed slightly shaking her head against his chest as if trying to find the courage to pull away.
In the end it was Will who did the pulling away, a look of confusion and frustration in his eyes as he stood up and towered over her, his frustration giving him and air of defiance and power not to be trifled with.
"Who demands that I leave?" He demanded harshly. "Why, if you wish that I could stay so much, if it hurts you so badly to part with me, must we part? Who is it that holds such power over so that all that you want and desire you cannot have!?" The passion in his eyes burned brightly as he spoke, and Elizabeth couldn't decide whether she found it stirring, or frightening.
But she couldn't blame Will; his questions were valid, she was just afraid to tell him the answers, and his fierceness wasn't doing anything to comfort her.
"Not who Will," Elizabeth said weakly from her crumpled position on the floor. "What, and the what is no small thing to be forgotten. The entire world wants us apart." Elizabeth felt ruined and crushed, faced not only with losing Will, but with explaining it point blank to his face as well. The only thing that gave her strength was a well of anger bubbling inside her; anger at Will for making her pain worse, at the world for causing her pain and at herself for giving into it.
Slowly she rose until she was standing firm and facing Will with the same frustration that he had displayed. Each statement was punctuated with pain and regret, and they grew louder until Elizabeth feared her voice would give out.
"We don't fit Will, don't mesh, our fates don't coincide, we were never meant to be, say it however you want but they all mean the same thing, the whole world wants us apart!" She would have been crying her eyes out, but she was too filled with anger to take notice of anything else. "Maybe where you come from, where the sky's are always blue unless there's danger near, or where Our Fine Hero always gets his One True Love things are different, but this is the real world and I for one am not strong enough to hold it back!!!!" She'd screwed up her eyes and yelled at the top of her lungs for that last exclamation and so was unable to see the change come over Will's face.
Almost as if he'd been slapped physically, the anger and frustration was drained from his face and replaced with hurt and surrender.
"Fine," he said softly. The change in his voice was so great that Elizabeth was instantly culled and attentive. "If you are unwilling to challenge this world on my behalf, I will stop resisting it on yours, though I would have gladly fought to my dying breath if it would have given us a chance."
Elizabeth was surprised she didn't give in right then, that she wasn't instilled with such passion that she grabbed Will and ran away to some tropical hideaway never to be seen again, but to live out the rest of her life in blissful and never-ending happiness. But her own strength surprised her and she was able to remain strong in the face of the storm.
"Don't think I wouldn't do the same Will, don't think that if there was anything I could do to ensure that you and I could just forget all this and go on living, that I wouldn't do it. But the fact remains that us being together just isn't right," She replied with an edge of ice in her voice.
Will still wasn't convinced. "Right?" he sputtered incredulously. "I've spent my whole life doing what's right, for the soul purpose of it being right! But does this feel right to you Elizabeth? Does hurting so bad that you want to throw yourself upon a sword just to make it stop seem RIGHT to you?" She'd expected him to start shouting again, and at this point would have welcomed it to the emotional guilt trip he was sending her on.
"No," she said quietly, her tears starting to return to her. "But jeopardizing this world and those we love in it, can't be right either."
"The only person that I love in this world is standing right in front of me, is the one your forcing me to leave," Will said, not batting an eyelash.
That tore at Elizabeth more than anything else, but it also gave her something she could use. "But you have a world of your own, and someone there waiting for you," she said through invisible tears.
There was a momentary glimmer in Will's eye and Elizabeth could tell that she had struck a resounding chord that time, that she had finally given him a reason to go back. But Will wasn't giving up a fight.
"No," he said resolutely. "She doesn't want me, her choice has been made."
Elizabeth had never felt for him more than at that moment, his honor still held steadfast and strong, despite his world of hurt. "She loves you Will Turner," Elizabeth said formally in an attempt to separate them emotionally. "And she would have you if you told her of your feelings for her."
Now it was Will who was faltering, and though it killed Elizabeth to see it she was glad he was beginning to accept their fate. "I... I can't... I don't want to... Elizabeth would never," he said through invisible tears of his own.
"Are you willing to throw away all the years that you've loved her Will Turner? Every moment you stood and watched her, hallowed her name and fought to protect her?" Elizabeth could feel her love of the film and her love of its story carrying her through. "She is your One True Love, it is her heart that hold's you and it is to her you must return," Elizabeth, strangely enough, was starting to feel better herself, knowing of the happiness destined for Will gave her a small feeling of peace, like a tiny candle growing ever stronger as the seconds past which lessened the dark ache of her slowly breaking heart.
"If it was any other way," she concluded. "All that I know of love would be false."
The length of time they stood there was immeasurable by both parties, either seconds or eons passed, neither could tell but when that moment ended Will had thrown his arms around Elizabeth in a crushing embrace, damping her shoulder slightly with the few tears that even Our Fine Hero was unable to hold back. Elizabeth prepared to weep too, knowing now that no more slips would occur, that there was no second chances for her and Will and never again would her lips have the privilege of brushing against his.
"I swear Elizabeth," Will whispered softly into her ear. "One day, if I cannot find someway to be there myself, I will find you happiness."
But the time for the fulfilling of promises was not now. For at that moment a loud stern knocking could be heard at the door. And the deep voice of General Harold Grippa came booming through the door.
"Elizabeth Cartwright, this is the United Stated Government, open this door!" Came the loud and urgent call.