Disclaimer: They don't belong to me. I try to treat them well.
Summary: An old woman sits in the sun, remembering a life that is the stuff of legends. For BPS challenge "Drift." Canon pairings.
Warning: Multiple character death mentioned. Nothing graphic.
Memory's Tide
She's drifting again; she knows she is. But with the warmth of the morning sun soaking into her bones, it's so easy to slip sideways on the current of time, to believe herself a girl again. Chafing at corsets, sassing her father, teasing James Norrington until his reserve breaks and he snorts with laughter. Falling for a blacksmith who dreamed of being her hero. Fighting supernatural pirates beside her one true love, her heart in her mouth, a fierce joy in her heart.
One day soon, she decides, she'll go just like this, let herself keep drifting. Her children are long grown, and her baby girl Lottie--a fine woman now, with babies of her own--won't accept her help around the house anymore, not realizing how much her mother hates being useless. James passed away a decade ago, a much-decorated admiral, a very dear friend for many years. Her Will already awaits her in their humble churchyard plot. And Jack, Captain Jack Sparrow--well, if the legends hold any truth at all, he died as he had lived: the sea took him and his beloved Pearl, together to the end. They say he laughed as he went down; Elizabeth believes them.
Of course, other legends say otherwise: they tell of the Immortal Captain Jack, who filched one coin from a forbidden hoard, cursed by choice to sail the ocean for all eternity. But she knows better; Jack would never renounce the sweet taste of life, so long as it tastes of rum. She is the last of them, the last secret-keeper of the island that can only be found by those who have been there before.
To her grandchildren, her truths are only stories. But to her, the present has become dim and slow and distant, blurring together like a dream, while the past glows with vivid detail in her mind's eye. Will's shy smile; small Jack's first words; a foolish ditty sung around a bonfire under a wide sky thick with stars.
She smiles a little, shifts stiffly in her rocking chair, and gives in to memory's tide.