A/N: Erm. It's unforigvable. I have no excuse, except to plead writer's block and real life and hope you'll accept. I really am sorry, for neglecting this story so long! Ah, but now, dear Muse has returned to me, and I've got a better handle on the course of the story. It's not going to be too much longer, but there are still a good few chapters to go. I've known the sort of way I was going to go for a few chapters now, I just lost the drive for a bit. So please! Do read!
Chapter Twelve: Cherished Agony
Elizabeth forced open tired eyes, focusing on the dark side of Jack's cabin opposite the bed, then roving to the bedside table and jumble of junk on the floor next to it. Slowly, she relaxed her tense grip on the bedclothes that were tangled in her fingers and shifted her shoulders ever so slightly, pressing her lips together until the pressure of them against her teeth hurt. She continued to stare blankly into the dark, surprised she'd woken so peacefully—surprised she'd fallen asleep at all. For the first time in a long time, she struggled to recall memories of her nightmare; she floundered in sewing back the pieces of memory that haunted her sleep.
She shifted her head, her neck aching, and everything seemed to snap back into place in her mind; the flashes flooded her conscious and she closed her eyes against the overwhelming backlash of the dream she'd been foolish enough to think she'd forgotten.
"You bastard, Will! Who was she? Who is she?"
"Elizabeth—"
"I hate you. I hate you more than I've ever hated anyone…I…everything, I gave up everything…I HATE you Will Turner, and I'll kill you for this—"
"Eliz-Lizzie, wait, please—"
"DO NOT CALL ME THAT!"
Elizabeth sat up, drawing her knees to her chest and wiping her forehead, staring into the back of the cabin now, silencing her mind, adjusting to the dank light and hardening herself to the misery of the nightmare.
It was the one, the one where she ran and railed and screamed, and he screamed back with the same ferocity, and the storm crashed and banged outside, matching their equal fury and total heartache. The storm that had raged both inside and out and the great disaster it had precipitated.
And yet…this had been different. Yes. This time, while they raged at each other in the kitchen of their small cottage, while the shutters banged and they yelled their outrage into the thunder and winds, someone had been sitting calmly in a chair, in a corner behind Will, watching and smirking, a dusty and familiar bottle tipped in his hand. And this infuriating intruder of her dreams hadn't spoken a word until the pivotal moment when she'd slapped William, the instant before she'd bolted into the freezing rain. In that frozen second that seemed to last a millennia, when William stared at her in mute shock, rage, and hurt and she'd let loose a tidal wave of tears, the observer had raised his bottle to her with a satirical smirk, as if he knew her very soul, and spoken two words:
"To freedom,"
Words that rang bells in her head and sent her reeling back to a humid night on an island years ago. Before.
Scowling angrily into the blackness, hating him all over again, and loathing Jack all the more for mingling in her dreams, harassing her at night as well as during the day, Elizabeth reached up to her ear almost mechanically, grasping for an earring. She held back a shout of frustration when she remembered the gallant captain had taken her weapons of self-destruction, and she let her hand fall limply to the bed, holding her other arm in front of her and slowly sliding back the sleeve of her cotton chemise. She glared dully at the criss cross of ribbon like scars in the dark, hardly able to see them and yet oh so aware that they still showed, no matter how faint they had become now.
Elizabeth flexed her fingers, looking away from her arm to the right, where the door of the cabin was. She was alone. It was surprising; she had been in here alone for an hour before she'd somehow fallen asleep, after dinner, sitting at Jack's table, staring down his meticulously drawn maps and torturing herself with memoirs of her Tortuga days. Judging her every choice in life twice over. And she had been left alone. He had left her alone…why? He never left her alone.
And it irritated her now that she wondered why he had left her alone when she should be overjoyed that he'd finally backed off.
To freedom.
Elizabeth visibly grimaced, hearing the words again. She slowly unfurled her legs and dropped lightly off the bed, bare feet hitting the slowly rocking wood floor. Her night clothing brushed the back of her knees, and she grasped for the strings on the front, pulling the laces until her chest was appropriately covered and the material showed only a slight swell of her breasts. She slipped over to the table and lit Jack's light, looking around when the room flooded in a dull, eerie light. His coat was thrown over the chair, his boots thrown against a wall nearby. She looked at them curiously, her hair falling over one shoulder, curling at the ends from where sweat had matted it. She turned again and tilted her head towards the door; nothing. No sounds coming from deck. It must be deep hours of the morning, the only time when there was maybe one person awake. A watchman. Elizabeth swept her eyes over the room one more time and started to move towards the door when something caught her eye and drew her back to the bed.
Compass.
She took it in her hands, weighing the mass in her palm, remembering holding it this same way as she lay on the bed a few hours ago. Glaring at it. Willing it to spill its secrets and cursing Gibbs' ominous postulations about it. She closed her hand around it as best as was possible and noted the cool top of it against her palm. She pulled her arm in close to her and turned, reached for the door, and left the cabin. She didn't bother to pull the door closed behind her.
The starry sky was brilliant, clear; the air was deceptively warm with a chilly wind that teased her hair and whispered hauntingly in her ear. Gooseflesh rose on her skin as her night gown danced around her knees but she ignored the chill just like she ignored every other physical discomfort that plagued her. Immediately, she glanced to the high deck, the wheel, and raised her eyebrows slightly when she didn't find Jack there. She scanned her eyes in a cursory way over the rest of the ship and concluded he must be below deck. No doubt drinking. All the better for her.
Elizabeth sidled up to the side of the ship where she'd reclined earlier in the day, leaning against the starboard side and casting her gaze out over the endless blue-black water of the sea. She propped her arms on the side and held the compass in her palms, running an index finger over the rounded lid of it before she flipped it open, focusing interestedly on the needle inside. The needle seemed to jump; it swiveled uncontrollably around its axis, occasionally pausing for seconds or twitching indecisively in one direction. Elizabeth's brow creased as she followed it with her eyes waiting—futilely, it seemed—for the thing to still. It refused. It simply fluttered around, unable to choose a point to stop. Intrigued, slightly mesmerized by the movement, and no less irritated than before about the whole ridiculous compass mystery, Elizabeth shook it slightly and, upon receiving no result, snapped it shut and tucked it into the front of her dress—where she somehow found fabric and a few tight strings to hold it.
Standing against the edge of the ship in this dead of night, Elizabeth again pulled back the sleeves of her chemise and revealed her scars, letting the wind touch them, uncharacteristically baring them to the world. She let the heavens see them, and she didn't care. She looked down, the scars more visible in this light, and remembered the blood that had seeped from them, remembered the gone-too-fast alleviation of the pain it had provided. It sickened her now and yet she longed for it. She took one finger and traced the puzzle of scars, letting her eyes droop, conjuring up her vicious dream again and locking her lips against any exclamations.
What was he doing there? Why was Jack making mockery of her misery in her nightmares?
"You've made it clear you don't want me—"
"How, you bloody bastard? By having your meal on the table when you come home, later and later every night? By doing your dishes, your laundry?"
"No, Elizabeth, goddamnit! By every time you turn your face away when I put my arms around you, in every argument, in every look, in the way you withdraw—"
"Oh, I see. I'm the cold one, the heartless bitch, I've forced you to find solace in some pretty slut's arms—is that what you've been doing, banging away in your forge? Whispering to that harpy about how useless, how icy I am to you?"
Elizabeth's hands snaked slowly up to her ears and she covered them subconsciously, the arguments passed fading to a dull buzz.
To freedom.
She was coming dangerously close to unraveling everything. He, in her dreams. Both of them now, haunting, tormenting her. The dirty strip of bandanna. Let's call him Jack. The one lone bead Will had never found, that lay carelessly in the bottom corner of the jewelry box she'd left at their home. Wooden, painted red, and embossed with a Japanese character she could never decipher. Just a reminder. A secret. The compass felt heavy against her breast, suddenly, and her breath hitched slightly in her throat. She was acutely aware of the meaning of Jack's presence in her nightmare, and she again felt the sharp pain of it driven into her heart, the ice water that spilled out from that proverbial wound and threatened to consume her with guilt, anger, hate, everything. Looking up to the heavens with a strained expression on her face, her eyes dry and hurting, her mouth bent in turmoil, she pushed her vision as far as it would go over the dark waters, to the farthest horizon line, where she found what looked like a hint of daylight, a faint orange and pink, maybe yellow. Ah, the day. A time when the demons were at least courteous enough to sequester themselves away, to stop badgering her until night fell again. She looked back down to her wrists, the view sharpening, the angry red lines standing out accusingly to her.
She didn't react when the dark moved next to her, when a shadow—if that were possible—fell next to her. She was caught off guard, surprised, and yet grudgingly accepting to know he had found her again. She drew her bottom lip in, biting it hard and looked up, back out again, setting her jaw, her features. He didn't say a word, but she knew he was there, and she sensed he was oddly relaxed.
The silence couldn't have possibly been louder if someone had screamed their loudest into it.
"Any luck fixing me compass, love?" He spoke after a second, his voice deep and rich in the quiet. Elizabeth's teeth slipped against her lip and she tasted blood in her mouth. She flipped her wrists over and gripped the ship lightly, slanting her eyes to him ever so subtly.
"It's not broken, Jack," she replied slowly, a touch of tease and hardness in her voice, "it's gone mad." She finished, thinking of the wild spinning.
It suddenly struck her how appropriate and how chillingly close to herself the explanation was.
She almost felt Jack's sudden splitting smirk in the darkness. She heard the rustling of his dreadlocks and the quiet sounds of the trinkets in his hair brushing together as he shifted.
"It can be fixed yet, Elizabeth. Ye just have to know how," he stopped briefly; she heard him fiddling with something at his waist. "Ah, figure it for yourself, see." He said, in the same mystic sort of way Gibbs had initially used when speaking of the compass. Elizabeth's words slammed together in her head as she processed it. Tentatively, she inquired almost immediately:
"Then I'm to assume you know how?"
"I've a better idea, of late."
She turned her full attention to him after that, her eyes sweeping over his profile. He didn't react to her looking for a moment, and then turned his own face to her, his eyes just as mischievous and him as always. She felt vulnerable, penetrated. Again, like he was staring into her soul.
"Where were you watching me from?" she asked sharply, narrowing her eyes at him. As un-threatened as she felt right now, it irked her to realize she'd left herself unguarded long enough to have someone sneak up on her. Jack grunted and turned around, resting his back against the ship and propping his elbows on it at a crooked angle.
"Crow's nest," he replied shortly, adopting the same manner of speech as she. It seemed he'd decided to play her game, ride her moods, and adapt to them. Could be a challenge. Or, she could just let it go.
She didn't. She wasn't about to throw in the gauntlet yet.
"And why, if I may ask, where you so covertly spying on me in the night?"
Jack dipped his head down and came up smirking, the barest glint of a gold tooth showing up in the darkness.
"Well, Miss Swann, in order to avoid being accused of espionage in my own cabin when you inevitably awoke, I settled meself out here. Alas, you wandered out onto deck just as I'd gotten meself com'forble. Therefore, I think I may more appropriately ask: why were you so rudely sleeping in my cabin, or how dare you walk upon my ship at night when all respectable crew members are asleep?"
Elizabeth glared at him, and held her tongue. She faced back out over the water and tightened her shoulders, drawing herself up a little and crossing her arms over her chest, leaning to the side, tilting her head just a little. The pastel colored light so far beyond had started to spread just a little into the inky sky.
"Go sleep, Jack."
Elizabeth said quietly. She waited a moment to look at him again, but he wasn't looking at her anymore.
"Wha', and let you run amok about the ship, unsupervised? Unlikely." He responded, his eyes on something in the distance, towards the other direction. Elizabeth shrugged slightly and turned her head away, her hand reaching up to touch where the compass was inside her clothing. She felt the frustration, the fragility building, the dark thoughts of moments before flooding back, the need to lash out at him, shove him away, and the strange unfamiliar need to hear a rare soft word from him again.
"Are you going to stop this?" she asked in a low voice, blasting away any pretense of them being cordial. He raised an eyebrow in response, barely moving. She shifted a little so she was looking at him without really having to move her head that way, and took him in, her eyes hardening again. She noted his bare feet, his breeches buttoned at his knee, the wide open collar of his shirt that revealed a mosaic of intriguing tattoos. His face looked clean, and his eyes were a mirage of different things, deep chocolate surrounded by onyx black. She gave him a fiery glare.
"Stop, what, dearie?" he asked slowly, patronizingly, after a moment in the way one responds to a child when the child has just asked a rhetorical question, and waits impatiently for an answer.
"Watching me," she answered quietly, her voice brittle, she stepped a little closer, "analyzing me," her eyes got darker, if possible, "attempting to fix me."
Jack's eyes danced, a glint of something dangerous flaring deep in them, as if maybe hiding something more. Ah, so he had masks and walls to hide behind as well. Perhaps he took pleasure in the destruction of other's safe-holds?
"No," he answered petulantly, leaning close and smirking obnoxiously. Elizabeth stood her ground. She barely flinched. She was tired of, and at the same time used to, their game. He was still looking at her, still boring his eyes into hers, when he suddenly seemed to snap a little. He turned quickly and pinned her against the ship, spreading his arms out over hers, his legs even with hers, looking down on her solemnly and sharply, from his height. Elizabeth stoically remained cool.
"It's an impasse," he growled, jaw as set as hers, "I won't stop until you stop and you won't stop until you kill yourself."
"Then let me die," she snapped back, like a snake backed into a corner, with nothing left to do but spit venom in the eye of its opponent. His smile was stressed, sarcastic, and bore hardly any light to it. He seemed strained now, even upset. She held back a remark on it, granting him his turn to speak.
"I don't think you want to die," he responded in a low snarl that had an underlying gentleness.
Their eyes battled for the briefest eternity; neither moved. It was as if a million things were spoken and nothing was heard. He dipped closer, one of his hands loosening on her arm, traveling up, gently touching. His fingertips brushed against her neck, the bare skin of her collarbone, ran over the place where the compass was kept. Her angry breath caught; he lifted curls off of her neck and replaced them with a light hand.
"I am not going to hurt you, Lizzie," he spoke firmly, and even a bit angrily, "I am not the one who hurt you."
His lips grazed against hers before she could process and properly react; she wouldn't have been able to appropriately anyway. His lips were enticing, and she was trapped and no one was watching; Elizabeth wrapped the wrist he still had in his grip around his own and squeezed, drawing on his strength. Palpable understanding shifted in the air. The sky was lighter; the sun had begun its ascent quickly. She let herself feel that skin on skin contact in every place it seared the most, on her wrist, on her neck, and piercingly on her lips.
Years later, she glared at him, pale-faced, lips parted, her wrist still wrapped securely around his arm, her lips still stinging from the gratifying touch of his on them. He looked at her hard; she drew in her breath, it shook and she tried to hide it, he tightened a hand in her hair—how he had tangled his fingers in her tresses, she didn't remember. The blinding light of the sun burst over them and Elizabeth shrank back, protesting, pulling against him, tearing her eyes away and thrusting them out over the horizon, beyond his shoulder. Squinting, she found the holy grail of distractions and saviors. She moved her lips, couldn't find the sound of her voice.
"I've at least rendered you bloody speechless," he gloated, letting his smirk slowly ghost back over his face. Elizabeth dug a sharpened nail into the soft skin between his thumb and forefinger.
"Trouble," she managed, nodding her head over his shoulder. His brow came together for a moment; he turned, slipping his hand out of her hair, and made an angry noise in the back of his throat when he saw ship, sails billowing, poised for attack.
'Cherished Agony'---Android Lust
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