Disclaimer: I own them like I own the sun.
Strong hands pull him out of cold, empty black into warm, pearly grey. It takes Jack a precious few seconds before he realizes that the hands are familiar and the faces that swim out of the mist are his crew. He's not sure if he's being reborn or he's just becoming undead, but either way, it feels very, very good to breathe again. The crew is staring at him, forming a half circle around him as though he's a prophet ready to tell their future, but he can't tell them anything. He searches their faces, but doesn't see the one face he's hoped for.
"Lizzie?" he says. His voice sounds scratchy and hoarse to his ears. Dead men don't have much occasion to talk. There's not a lot of company in purgatory. Gibbs shakes his head at him and Jack looks accusingly at Will who won't meet his eyes.
"Lost..?" he coughs out. Damn his dried, atrophied throat. Gibbs shakes his head again and Jack's shoulders roll forward with relief. Will turns away from the scene even as Gibbs jerks his head towards the captain's cabin. Jack can't decide if he or Will is Judas, but one of them will betray the other tonight. Will heads to the bow as Jack makes his way to the aft through the crowd of believers.
The cabin door still creaks under his hands, just like it did before he died. There is no light within, however. Someone has patched curtains over the stern windows and the room is inky dark despite the impending dawn. For a moment, Jack wonders if he's hallucinated his rescue. It's her voice in the dark, though, that makes believe this might be real.
"I thought I asked not to be disturbed unless he..." her hushed voice trails off into the dark. Jack doesn't remember her voice sounding so exhausted and world weary before. She sounds older than him, older than Barbossa, older even than Tia Dalma. It stings him deep inside his chest, where his heart is still waking up. Regret is not the emotion he would have chosen to feel first. He doesn't speak to her, though. His tongue remains thick and frozen in his dry mouth.
He hears her move in the dark. Unless someone has rearranged his quarters, he realizes, she is sitting at his desk. He can hear her breathing in the dark and senses when the rhythmic inhalations hitch slightly.
"Jack..?" Her voice is now full of tears and pain and he knows that he should say something, anything, to let her know he's here, that it will be all right, that he's not dead anymore. He can't force a sound out, but his feet seems to shake off the last vestiges of rigor his tongue can't. He moves towards her, winding his way around the room.
"Oh Jack," The dam in her voice breaks and she sobs his name out. "Will you haunt me until I'm dead, too? It's fitting punishment for my sins, but God... I can't bear it. I can't bear your presence without you." He hears rustling and then her sobs are muted. She's laid her head down on her desk, he thinks. Before he can stop himself, he slides his arms over her thin shoulders, rubbing his cold hands over her arms, and stealing her warmth from her.
She cries out in surprise and he can't tell if it's because she thinks it's him or believes his ghost to be touching her.
"Oh God, oh God, oh God," she keens, rocking back towards him. Her body stiffens when she hits his chest and for a moment, time stands still. Jack breaks the moment first, tangling his stiff, aching fingers in her hair.
"Ssh, Lizzie." Finally, he finds his voice, even if it does creak like a ship in a hurricane. He imagines she won't care, since she hasn't heard it in the Devil knows how long. She turns, knocking his chair out of the way in her haste to get to him, and throws herself against him, splintering like driftwood at his touch. Her tears streak his chest like sea spray, but they're warm and real, and he doesn't care because it means he's truly here. Her tears never touched him when he was dead and she was just a phantom herself. He buries his nose into the top of her head and when her hair grows damp, he realizes that he's also crying. Jack Sparrow doesn't cry, but Jack Sparrow has also never risen from the dead before.
Whether it's minutes or hours, they finally pull apart. More rustling leads him to believe she's sat down on his desk, waiting for his next step. He's tired of not seeing her, he realizes suddenly. There were no angels in his death, nor daemons, and he hasn't seen a woman since she left him to die. His hand brushes her thigh, causing her to exhale, as he looks for his tinderbox. He finds it, lighting the candle that sat on the edge of the desk. The candlelight softens angles he doesn't remember in her face. Has it been that long since he last laid eyes on her?
In the flickering light, she leans closer to him. The wax from the candle drips on his fingers and he is unusually glad for the pain. Pain means he has nerves that work and that all points to being alive, alive and with her.
"I came back for you. Only you." He'd say more to her, maybe how he wants to strangle her for killing him, maybe how he loves her for still being here, waiting, when he came back, maybe how he's sorry for making her suffer or maybe that he's glad for it since she certainly hurt him, but he can't because her lips are on his and she's sucking the breath out of his lungs, stealing the words off his tongue, and making things a jumble in his mind. He plants his hand in the centre of her chest and pushes her back from him so he can catch his breath.
"It's dark as the grave in here, Lizzie, and I've had enough of that for a lifetime." She nods, her eyes glimmering in the candlelight, and slides back from him. He has only a moment to mourn the loss of her warmth before his eyes are dazzled when she tears the curtains off the windows. All he can see is her, framed against the glowing brilliance of the sunrise against the sea. He sucks a breath in. She moves to return to his side, but he moves faster, faster than he thought he could having just so recently been dead, to intercept her and press her back against the windows. His hands clutch at her arms and this time, he is kissing her. He lets go, pouring his anger, his sadness, his longing, and his love for her into it, stealing her breath, returning her earlier favour. The dawn is breaking on a new day for a resurrected man.
"Marry me," he mumbles against her salty neck. He's the Judas, he thinks, betraying Will like this, but he doesn't care. He once said all treasure was not silver and gold and he meant it. He would not have betrayed Bootstrap's boy for 30 pieces of silver, for any amount of treasure, but for this woman, he thinks, he might have sold his own crew, his Pearl. If death taught him anything, it was how badly he needed her.
"I will." Her words catch him off guard, like an errant wave in an otherwise calm sea.
"You will? But what about..?" He can't say the boy's name. Speaking it would make the betrayal too real, too harsh. Instead, he tries to reach for the ring she wore, but his fingers brush only bare skin.
"It ended before we found you. I can't love him the way he needs. I can't be his father."
"Oh." That will be one less obstacle, at least. He can't shake the feeling of betrayal, though. "Marry me now then, before you change your mind. Women are notoriously fickle, you know, and you're the worst." It's a poor attempt at humour, but she laughs and he is struck by how it also sounds hoarse, much like his own voice. He wonders if she had laughed since he died. She nods, though, and the thought passes. He's not going to waste this moment. He's already lost too many.
"Dearly beloved..." he clears his throats. "Sorry, luv, not much a call for this on a ship of all men. Can't remember all the words. Will you take me as I am?" Her face glows in the light of the rising sun and she is the most beautiful thing Jack's ever seen.
"I will. And you'll have me?"
"S'pose." There, a glimmer of the old Jack. "And now, I pronounce us pirate and wife..." He doesn't finish the sentence, but bends to kiss her. There's no need to speak more now. He is alive and has all he ever didn't know he wanted in his arms. Sometimes it takes death and resurrection to really set things in perspective. Jack knows, right now, without a doubt, he would die all over again as long as he could relive this moment.
In the silence of the dawn, while the crew waits for Jack to emerge from his cabin with Elizabeth, Will Turner lowers a longboat to the water. He will not stay to see Jack emerge again because if he does, he won't be able to do what he must. It already hurts enough that he's lost Elizabeth to this cause. He won't lose his father, too.
The taste of betrayal is bitter in his mouth, but he rows on. It's not pieces of silver that he's become Judas over, he tells himself, it's the life of a man, someone Jack once called brother. He wonders if Jack will be benevolent when he finds Will gone and not chase him down. It doesn't matter, in the end, however. What's done cannot be undone, like his broken engagement, his father's damnation, his turn to piracy, seemingly everything but Jack's own death. He steals one last look at the Pearl, knowing he'll never return to it or any of the trappings of his old life. Will plans to fulfill his destiny to whatever means necessary and if being with his father means being damned himself, he'll accept that.
Author's Notes: Originally written as a challenge piece for jechallenge on LiveJournal.