Disclaimer: Jack, Elizabeth, William Turners I, II and III and all other original PotC characters do NOT belong to me. All of their offspring and other original characters, as well as the storyline and plot, are (c) Lady Asvin - me.
She could see again.
Someone was laving her skin with a cool, damp cloth. Methodically, from her toes to her scalp, a thin oily substance eased her burning body. She opened her mouth to speak, but her throat proved too dry. A papery croak was all that rustled out. Hold still, said a quiet voice. It seemed the voice was speaking directly into her mind, an experience she found somewhat disconcerting. Drink this. A hot, tasteless liquid steamed through her cracked lips and trickled down into her throat. She swallowed dutifully, craning her neck a bit to take in her warden.
"Who- who are you?" she managed feebly. The boy shook a head full of shaggy brown hair and locked his too-green eyes squarely on hers.
I am Damien, he replied in his strange telepathic way. He seemed at once solid and insubstantial, fading from clarity to darkness and back to clarity even as she watched. His light skin was scored with holes and burns save for his face; his face carried only a single scar stretching from his right ear to the right corner of his thin mouth. Almost afraid to ask, she looked at him and then looked away.
"Where am I?" His face remained unperturbed even as he picked up a new cloth and dipped it in salve. It is better I do not tell you, he replied after a time. Then, if they question you, you cannot lie. Painfully, she sat up, and noticed that she was in a cave whose mouth, a good three hundred feet away, was barred by jagged icicles. Despite the apparent cold, she felt comfortable; she noticed, too, that the boy wore nothing but a brown tunic cinched by a rope belt. She tried again.
"Why am I here?" she asked, as the boy patiently rubbed down her legs with the cooling oil. He motioned for her to lie back down. I will explain what is safe, he replied firmly, continuing on to her stomach. Subdued, entranced, she watched as he completed his ministrations. He returned the cloth to a basket next to him, and moved to kneel by her head. I am Damien, he repeated. I am the son of Lucifer and Megara. On the Middle Plane, I lived a half-life; scorned by my peers because I would not speak, feared by my family because I could turn the harvest to rot and kill healthy livestock by walking through the field. The weather responded to my anger, and death followed wherever I chose to tread. Although his tone was not bitter, she could see a pained expression warring for dominance over his face. My mother killed me, he continued matter-of-factly. Her eyes widened and she opened her mouth, but he waved her quiet. I was fourteen then, and she was desperate; and when I woke, I was bring stripped of my skin in this… place. Only the mercy of my father allows me to inhabit this nightmare in relative peace. Where she had been spilling over with questions moments before, Madeleine suddenly found herself afraid to speak, afraid to consider even a fraction of the pain in the boy's intense eyes.
"How is it- how is it you came to find me?" she finally ventured, struggling again to sit up. He propped up her back without comment, pushing a pile of dirty leaves under her for support. You have been greatly wronged, he replied.
"Yes, that beast did say-"
My father will kill you if he finds you here, he interrupted matter-of-factly. Your father made a bargain during a storm, years ago. Should he be willing to give up his firstborn, your father would keep his ship – and my father would return his love to him. Madeleine's face twisted into an ugly mask of anger.
"My father is as capable of loving as my mother is of being faithful," she spat. The boy looked at her sadly. I have seen into your soul, Madeleine Pearl. You are destined for greater things. He straightened and squared his shoulders.
I am going to help you find your freedom.
Joaquín lay in his hammock helplessly, lost in his miserable thoughts. Madeleine's still body was imprinted in his mind; the harsh gesture from that thing, that – Goddess? Spirit? – that had rid her of her life so quickly; the howl her mother had emitted; and the captain's face.
The captain.
Because the storm had cleared, Jack left Gibbs in charge and gently scooped up his daughter to take her belowdecks. The look on his tanned face was worn, grim; never had Joaquín seen the captain look so serious, never had the mood aboard the Pearl been so somber. It was an impossible thing, what had just happened, and yet – for all its impossibility – it was more real than Joaquín cared to admit. So deep was his focus that he did not notice when Gibbs threw himself into the hammock next to his, with much more force than anyone would have thought possible from a man who'd already been getting on in years when Elizabeth was a girl.
"Cap'n will save her, no mistake," said Gibbs to Joaquín, startling the youth. "There's never yet been anything to best ol' Jack." His echoes of the captain's words did little to reassure Joaquín; he'd seen with his own eyes and held in his own arms the girl whose life escaped her body.
"I only knew her for a few hours," remarked the boy, "and already I felt as though I she had steel in her spine… I wanted to protect her." His last statement was directed at no one in particular, but Gibbs paused in his readjustment of the hammock.
"With parents like hers," he remarked, "protecting her will be an eternal task." Gibbs pictured Elizabeth: a prim and proper eight-year-old on the crossing to Jamaica; a betrothed and unhappy eighteen-year-old thrown into the underworld of pirating, thievery and skullduggery; a blossoming young woman defending her blacksmith-pirate; a steel-backed pirate king with conflicting desires; a broken woman destined for life on land with naught but the memory of freedom. In the same moment he thought of Jack; ageless and eternal; having cheated death time and time again; silver-tongued and black-eyed; a dishonest pirate and a scoundrel; a good man. A fallen man. Since his path had crossed that of the young Miss Swann, Gibbs had seen that neither hell nor high water would stop them from living out their hopelessly damned love story – for Captain Jack Sparrow had never before that met his match in a woman. Even Calypso had resigned to his being, that essence that was Jack. But Elizabeth had fought back. Even now, their broken-mirrored story was playing out with its cruel and ironic hyperbole.
Jack's daughter had been taken, Elizabeth's daughter had been taken.
Madeleine Pearl, indeed, thought Gibbs before drifting off. They were daft.
The visions danced before her eyes, disappearing before she could focus – some strange intertwining tale weaving her life in Port Royal with her brief time on the Pearl with her current state, all the while leaving her with only one constant: that shimmering, insubstantial tragic figure of a boy, barely touching her fingertips and guiding her through.
The web of dreams shows everything and nothing, he said into her mind. Do not let yourself be drawn in. The moment you become a dream, you will cease to exist. She focused on his fingertips touching hers and hunched her shoulders forward; as the dreams flitted more rapidly, they moved more slowly, fighting their way through tangible nonrealities that threatened to suck her in. Her senses were battered; the images tried to force their way in, and only her fingertips tied her to her destiny.
One good deed is not enough to redeem a man of a lifetime of wickedness.
Though it seems enough to condemn him.
The words flew at her, unbidden, and she hunched her shoulders to keep the vivid sound from distracting her.
Do you really intend to kill the man who saved my life?
Her mother's voice threw her; she lifted her head slightly and saw the fleeting image of her mother, much younger, soaked to the skin and defending pirate…
Jack – the letters – give them back!
Persuade me.
Her mother again, dressed in men's clothing, her hat askew and her face flushed, demanding her due from the pirate.
You came back! I always knew you were a good man.
We're not out of this yet, love.
Her mother's face, weather-worn, leaned in; taking a step, she tilted her chin up –
"Mum, no!" exploded Madeleine, losing Damien's grip as she jumped toward the scene. The couple grew closer and her mother's hands were reaching for him and the pirate, knowing full well that Elizabeth was Will's betrothed, lowered his dirty, salty face to hers and –
"KEEP AWAY FROM MY MOTHER!" yelled the girl, but as she shouted the illusion watered away and a deep blackness began to appear, an abyss that dragged her in, step by halting step, and she could not stop herself; tears running down her face, Madeleine watched her feet take her forward into the growing deepness of the black before her –
Something heavy hit her from the side and dragged her down; she screamed and screamed, but no one could hear her, the darkness was approaching but suddenly something hefted her up and, summoning a great calm, ran with her away from the growing abyss toward the stale yellow light fewer and fewer yards away.
Are you whole? Damien's voice reverberated in her brain as he dropped her. Did anything get sucked into the illusion? Not finding her voice, Madeleine nodded that she was whole and reached out a trembling arm to thank him; surprisingly, her hand went right through his arm, and a cold, clammy ache shot through her body. She looked up to see the boy's green eyes glittering mirthfully.
It takes a certain effort to solidify entirely, he admitted tiredly. I am weaker than a newly-born calf for long hours after, perhaps days. Madeleine looked at her feet; if he was weak, and she knew nothing of this strange place, this Hell – how did he propose to help her? Realizing that his weakness was her fault, she blushed fiercely and angrily.
"I'm… I'm sorry," she blurted abruptly. She did not know if he had seen the images she had seen, and was reluctant to talk about why she had stepped into the dangerous memory-illusion, so her apology was truncated.
He shows you the images so that you grow angry and regretful, explained Damien, dropping to his back on the hard, sparse little grass they had found beyond the cave's mouth. Although it seemed to Madeleine that they had traveled a great many hours, looking back showed her that they had made it barely out of the mouth of the cave where they had been. She supposed that the mouth of the cave had induced that nightmarish tunnel-vision; for although the jagged icicles closing it off seemed quite solid, she had felt no cold nor sharpness in crossing them.
Once you are angry enough, it is possible you will want revenge or vindication… my father, he continued distastefully, recruits his soul-eaters that way. Madeleine shuddered at the thought and did not press for explanation. Damien, on the other hand, put his shimmering hands behind his head in a posture of repose.
We will not be attacked here, he said finally, catching her gaze. His eyes were a strange mixture of heat and cold; although they were insubstantial chips of jade, they radiated wisdom and pain and warmth. At the thought of his eyes, another pair of eyes crossed her mind; black, quick orbs that absorbed everything and anything, missing nothing, dancing with laughter and smouldering with heat. Signing, Madeleine resigned herself to putting her hands under her head and laying flat as well.
"Will I ever see – my family – again?" she asked aloud, replacing her real question with an awkward generalized version. Damien's eyes bored into hers, seemingly reading the thoughts she harbored for the boy she had known only a few hours but had seen as someone she could easily trust with her life – and perhaps, if she ever escaped – her heart.
I am only here to help you in whatever way I can, he said finally, carefully. He turned his luminous orbs away from hers, and Madeleine could clearly see his pale, raised scar against his young skin. His tone was monitored and flat; she could not gauge whether or not he was hopeful or sorry about his mission. She reached a hand out and placed it atop his shoulder; although it wavered a little, the solidity of his shoulder held.
"I wish there was something I could do in return," she said, her voice small, for she had realized that although she might someday be safe and happy in the arms of her family and those who loved her, this boy – her guardian, Damien – had nothing to go back to but a nightmarish (indeed, Hellish) reality. His eyes met hers again, and she shuddered, for this time he had not obscured the intensity of his gaze. His pain, sorrow, shame, long-held and close, burned her face.
Rest, little one, he said, and sent his eyelids crashing down to relieve her.