Disclaimer: All recognizable characters belong to Disney.
A/N: Apologies for the long wait between updates, but it's the most wonderful season of all: midterms. I've been working on this chapter for a few weeks, but between school and some problems with the chapter itself, it was a bit of a struggle to get it out. Hope you enjoy it anyways! Thanks as always to those who reviewed!
Summary: As Jack ferries Elizabeth Turner between her island and her husband, their relationship grows into something no one could have ever foreseen.
Between Dark and Light: A Decade of Love
By: Sinnamon Spider
Year Five
This year, Jack did not come.
Elizabeth and William waited patiently for three days; William with infinitely more calm than his mother, who by the second day had taken to pacing the length of the small cottage.
By the fourth day, she was frantic. Bundling her son in a sweater – it had been a wet, cold summer, and it looked like it was over even now – she hurried with him down to the Able's store, to see if there was news.
Miriam was gone, off playing midwife to one of the village women who was giving birth, and she had brought Lacey with her. But Christopher and Jeremiah were both there, father making a leather belt, son sweeping the floor.
When he saw her, Christopher laid down his needle and thread and came over. "Mrs Turner, what are you doing still here?" he asked. "Shouldn't you be gone to see your husband by now?"
She let William, struggling to be free, down to the ground. He scampered over to Jeremiah, who knelt on the floor and spoke to the young boy. Elizabeth loved how patient and caring eleven-year-old Jeremiah was with her son, but today she had no smiles for the odd pair.
She looked back at Christopher. "Yes, I am supposed to be gone. But Captain Sparrow never came to get me." She looked around the store and Christopher could feel her anxiety. "Has Captain Willand come by with a message of any sorts?"
Sad to disappoint this worried young woman, Christopher shook his head. "No'm. I haven't seen Willand in over a month. There've been quite a few storms this summer and I think the sailors are having trouble. That would explain Sparrow's absence."
She nodded, subdued. This had been her last desperate hope, and now it was crushed. She tried a smile for Christopher and it came out shaky and insincere. "Thank you, Christopher. Please tell Miriam I stopped by, and I was sorry to miss her." He nodded in reply, concern and pity in his blue eyes.
She crossed the store to the corner, and Jeremiah rose to his feet as she approached, tugging his forelock. "Sorry to hear you're not to see your husband this year," he said, his voice cracking and making William laugh.
Elizabeth's smile for the young boy – no, man – came out a bit more successfully. "Thank you, Jeremiah," she said, laying a light hand on his shoulder. He flushed crimson and she felt her smile widen. "Come along, William, we're going back home."
Her son raised his head, setting his jaw obstinately, and she sighed, readying for a fight. William was stubborn as hell, a trait that had not helped define his parentage any further; she herself was pig-headed, as were Jack and Will. "I wanna stay and play with Jer'miah," he said, not quite whining, but close enough for Elizabeth to grit her teeth. "He's not playing, he's working, and you're getting in the way," she replied, scooping him up. Jeremiah offered her a grin, and said, "C'mon, William, listen to your mama."
William squirming in her arms, she nodded again to Christopher, who had returned to his leatherworking, and he nodded in farewell.
Once outside, she set William down, firmly grasping his hand. He had crossed his arms over his chest, his expression sour, and he twisted his hand in hers, trying to break away. She scowled down at him. "Really, what has gotten into you?" she said sharply.
The boy scowled back, and she knew whose face that was – hers. "Where's Jack?" he demanded mulishly. "Isn't he going to take us to see Da?"
Her irritation melted away, replaced with fear and worry and dismay. She tugged lightly on her son's hand, pulling him towards the ridge. "I don't know where he is," she said. "I'm hoping he's just running late and will be here very soon." She let go of his hand. "Maybe he's waiting for us at home. You run ahead and find out."
Happy to be given a task, William set off towards the house, his mother following closely. She doubted that Jack would be there, but it had given her son something to do, and with him occupied, she could focus on her ever-growing fear.
When she reached the house, William was sitting on the front step, a disapproving expression on his little face. "He's not here," he said, frowning up at her. "I'm tired of waiting."
He fought a little, as he always did now, when Elizabeth picked him up and crushed him to her chest. But he could feel her anxiety and quieted. Elizabeth stroked his dark curls. "So am I, sweetie," she said quietly. "So am I."
Fall was nearly over, and winter setting in. There was no snow, of course, this deep in the tropics, but there was no need for snow when violent storms and fearsome hurricanes ripped their way through the islands almost daily.
Elizabeth and her son stayed cooped up for days, and William was feeling the effects. He had never before been so difficult, and when Elizabeth could stop and remember that this meant he was becoming more independent and growing up, it made her smile, but sadly. Unfortunately, she could not bring herself to think so optimistically very often, and mother and son butted heads all through the season.
One wet, dark morning that looked to Elizabeth like all the rest, someone knocked on her door.
She had been expecting a few men from the village to come help her board up her windows, but that had been days ago and when they hadn't arrived, she had done it herself. She opened the door and was shocked by the sight before her.
Gibbs stood on her doorstep, supporting a man who was sickly thin, a hat pulled low over his face. Gibbs himself looked little better, leaner than she had ever seen him, and older too.
She stepped back and motioned them inside, closing the door against the lash of wind and rain that hurled itself at the house.
"Thanks, 'Liz'beth," Gibbs panted, pulling out a damp handkerchief and wiping his streaming face. The man beside him reached up slowly to remove his waterlogged hat, and when the firelight caught his face, Elizabeth couldn't suppress her scream.
It was Jack; emaciated, his face hollowed and eyes sunken, his movements brittle and careful. He offered her a weak smile that she couldn't return. "Look so bad, do I?" he said, and his voice was hoarse and frail.
Elizabeth pressed her hands to her mouth, horror-struck. This scarecrow of a man, grey-faced and with trembling hands, looked nothing like his robust, quick-moving self. "What happened?" she demanded, hand still at her mouth, warding off another shriek.
Jack lowered himself painfully into a chair, saying nothing, and Gibbs spoke instead, voice and face grim. "He got sick. Pneumonia. The fool is just getting past it, and he insisted on coming here, even when I told him it'd kill him." The glare he levelled at his captain held none of his usual bemusement.
Eyes still wide with shock and terror, Elizabeth grabbed Jack's hand, cringing at the skeletal feel, and pulled him to his feet. He winced and coughed, a dry tearing sound, and raised a hand to his chest. "Gently, love," he said, and she could hear a faint trace of his usual voice beneath the gravelly words.
She propelled him to her rocking chair, in front of the fire, and snatched her blanket off her bed, wrapping it tightly around him and easing him into the chair. He stopped her frantic movements, catching her by the wrist and she looked at him. He frowned at the look on her face. "I'm not dead, love, not by far," he said.
Gibbs snorted and Elizabeth nodded in agreement. "You could be, soon," she snapped and his face darkened, emphasizing the hollows in his cheeks and the circles under his eyes. "What were you thinking, coming out here in this weather?" she continued, her fear giving way to anger. "No, never mind that; you weren't thinking, clearly." She pulled her arm from his grasp, recoiling at how little effort it took to break his hold, and rounded on Gibbs.
"You should have chained him to his bed," she snapped at the other man, who had sat in the seat Jack had vacated. She ignored the weak chuckle that came from the rocking chair.
"We tried!" Gibbs protested. "He's the captain! We can't disobey him!"
"I'm sure he'd forgive your insubordination out of gratefulness for being alive!"
She was at the stove now, reheating the soup she and William had not finished at supper the night before. When it was hot, she ladled it into two bowls, thrusting one at Gibbs, who took it without comment, and pressing the other into Jack's trembling hands. She stood above them, arms crossed firmly, watching them eat with a thunderous expression.
From the corner, William waved at Gibbs. He had been watching the whole exchange with wide eyes, but he knew enough of his mother's temper not to try her, and even now she shot him a glance and he dropped his hand, giving her an innocent smile.
When his bowl was empty, Gibbs stood hesitantly. He crossed to the door, opening it a crack and peering out. "It's stopped raining," he reported.
"Good," Elizabeth bit out. She was still supervising Jack, who was silently eating, eyes downcast and a hint of a smile playing around his thin lips.
"I'll just run back down to the Pearl, then," the other man continued, opening the door wider. Elizabeth made an impatient motion, not listening. Grateful for her preoccupation, Gibbs slipped away with a wink at William, who beamed back.
Jack held out the empty bowl to Elizabeth, upside down to prove that it was empty. She glowered at him, but he simply sighed and closed his eyes. As she took his bowl away, his hand caught hers again, and she paused this time, looking down at him. He looked only slightly better, with the heat from the fire and the warm food bringing a faint blush of colour to his pallid face, but his expression was peaceful and serene.
"If you'd nurse me back to health wivout killing me, Lizzie, I'd be very thankful." His voice was slightly stronger, his dry throat soothed, and his words were familiarly teasing. She softened under his spell, as always, and let her hand play across his sunken face, his usually defined cheekbones sharpened to knife-points. "Fool," she chastised, but gentler now, and his cracked lips quirked in a smile.
Within seconds he was asleep, and she moved quietly around the cottage, keeping William entertained and silent, while the pirate slept before her fire.
He was in better shape the next day, having slept through the rest of the afternoon and night. His eyes were brighter, his voice ever stronger, and he winked at her as she fussed over him.
Satisfied that he would not be told off for speaking, William issued a greeting to Jack. "When are we seeing Da?" he asked, looking up hopefully at the pirate, who smiled sadly. "I don't rightly know, boy. Old Jack's not feeling like hisself at the moment, and your Da was expectin' us months ago."
"How long were you ill?" Elizabeth asked from across the room, where she stood at the table, kneading dough.
"About eight weeks," Jack replied. "We were on the way to get you, and we got caught in a storm. I got a cold that turned worse, and I couldn't get out of bed. We pulled in at Tortuga and Gibbs had a doctor come and look at me. Took one glance, told me I had pneumonia, and ran off the ship with his hand over his mouth. It's been hard this year, I 'magine, what with all the rain and storms."
He scratched his head, taking off his bandanna and wringing it out over the hearth, where the water hissed and sizzled. Elizabeth watched him wring out his dreadlocks. He continued speaking. "We stayed in Tortuga for a month and a bit, until I could stand again, and then I made Gibbs set sail for here. Didn't want to leave you without any news of us at all."
She rolled her eyes, pounding the dough with more force than necessary. "You could have sent a message with someone, you idiot. You didn't have to risk your life to come and tell me you were dying."
He shrugged, tying the bandanna around his hair again. "Figured it wouldn't make a difference, if I was already dyin'."
She glared at him. He said nothing, but her heart warmed to see his familiar wicked grin.
They didn't leave the island that year. Elizabeth refused to let Jack back on the open water, despite his ranting and complaining, and while it pained her to leave Will wondering where she was, she would not risk Jack's life, even if he would.
The pirate recovered slowly, even though he was usually in good health and didn't get sick often. A relapse two weeks after he had come to Elizabeth's island had left him weak and shaking again, and had given Elizabeth enough fear and dread to last a lifetime.
When he was well again, Jack set about fixing up Elizabeth's small cottage. He ripped up the entire floor and laid it again, but not before he and Elizabeth moved the Dead Man's Chest to a new location, leaving an empty trunk in the hole where it had been. He scoffed at her attempts to board up her windows and replaced the planks. At her request, he made her a bigger table, and spent long hours polishing the surface to a dark shine before carving a simple but pretty design around the edges.
Elizabeth loved watching him work. She had had no idea that he was skilled with anything like woodworking, but he was precise and quick and capable. He also tended to strip down to his bare chest, for reasons unknown, and without his shirt, she could happily see that he was gaining back the weight he had lost during his illness.
His work also fascinated William, who was soon demanding to help. Jack patiently guided him through the steps of whatever project was at hand, watchful of the boy around the tools, and enthusiastic in his praise of the completed work. This kept William thoroughly entertained through the long, wet, cold winter, for which Elizabeth was profoundly grateful.
Jack had been with them for nearly five months, by her count, when she stirred one morning and rose from her bed to glance outside.
It was impossible to see the sky though the boarded windows, but there was a single pane of glass in the door, and she twitched aside the curtain to look outside. The sun was shining weakly, for the first time in days, and the air was already warmer. Delighted at the prospect of letting William outside for once, Elizabeth crept back to the bed, curling against Jack. The pirate sighed, pulling her close and burying his face in her neck.
She had taken him into her bed without a second thought. When he was sick, she had forced him there while she slept in her chair in front of the fire, but that had stopped once he was strong enough to insist against it.
Now, even when he was hale and whole, they still shared her bed, revelling in each other's constant presence without fear of discovery. William was still too young to ask any questions, and so they were safe to spend the nights together.
She heard footsteps from William's corner of the room, drawing closer until they stopped. She opened her eyes to find her son staring down at her. "What is it, sweetheart?" she asked quietly. Beside her, Jack groaned. She slapped his hand as it snaked around her waist.
"I'm bored," William replied, eyeing Jack, who was now awake and glaring balefully at Elizabeth. "Jack, are we gonna do more work today?"
"You just woke up," Elizabeth cut over Jack's reply, struggling free of his embrace. "How can you already be bored?" William shrugged, looking past his mother at Jack, who returned the shrug. "Don't know, lad. I think we've run out of things to work on."
Elizabeth, who saw William's lip thrust out in a classic pout, quickly stood and hurried to the door. Thankfully, the sun had stayed out. "It looks much warmer outside, William, maybe you and Jack can play out there."
The clouds on her son's face cleared at the mention of outside. "Is winter over?" he demanded. Elizabeth shrugged. "I'm not sure, but it's warm out today, so you should get in all the playing outside that you can."
"Okay!" William hurried to get dressed. Elizabeth smiled at his excitement, watching him dress with careful but still clumsy movements. She made to return to her bed and Jack, but the pirate extracted himself from the sheets and stood, stretching like a cat and drawing on his boots.
Irritated that she would have to go back to an empty bed, Elizabeth pulled on her dressing gown, putting the kettle on and making herself a mug of tea. William, now fully clothes, waited impatiently for Jack, and the two left the cottage quiet and empty. Elizabeth sighed. Having two boys in the house had made for a noisy winter, and the silence was odd in her ears. Rising to her feet, she dressed herself, tying on an apron, and headed out to see what damage the winter winds had wreaked on her garden.
The sun was still out and beaming down with warm heat. The air was moist and a light, but warm breeze rustled through the dead grass and bare trees. Elizabeth shaded her eyes as she glanced out over the ocean, jewel-bright and calm; a far cry from the storm-tossed, violent grey waves of just a few days ago.
William was darting from bush to rock to sand, his delight at being freed from the house palpable. Jack had disappeared, worrying Elizabeth until she saw him stride back into view, a light but long sapling in his hand. He winked at her as he settled on a wide, flat rock, and began to strip the sapling, peeling the bark away until the wood was smooth, soft, and white. He then took out his carving knife – Elizabeth had never realized how many knives he had, secreted away in various places among his clothing – and began to whittle something from the clean sapling.
Clearing away the bracken and debris from the garden was time-consuming, and after the soil was bare and free of rubble, Elizabeth stood and stretched her sore back, looking around. William was sitting beside Jack, working on a sapling of his own. He pulled the bark away with his small fingers, his face tight with concentration as he cleaned the wood. Jack was finishing his whittling, smoothing the splinters from the wood with long sweeps of his knife, periodically examining the work William offered him.
Seeing the two of them side by side, both hard at work, Elizabeth was struck with their similarities and suddenly it hit her.
Suddenly there was no question as to who was William's father.
She stared harder at the pair, wondering how she could have missed it all. William had Jack's high cheekbones, although they were round with childhood. He had Jack's dark eyes and the same way of widening them in mock innocence or narrowing them in annoyance. He had the same fleeting facial expressions. His chin was identical to the pirate captain's. His slanting forehead was similar.
She pressed a hand to her throat, overwhelmed. Her eyes teared with a dozen different emotions: fear, love, regret, adoration, pride, shame. She remembered her earlier thought; Jack could never acknowledge William as his son, so long as Will lived.
Jack happened to look up just then and his ever-changing face darkened with concern. He laid aside his knife and wood, climbing to his feet and walking towards her. Catching her arms, he looked down at her as she stared up with wide, tear-filled eyes.
"What, love?" he murmured, but she couldn't reply, could only stare at him and bite her lip to keep the tears from spilling over.
She shook her head violently. "Nothing. I just…my back hurts," she finished lamely. He frowned at her, knowing full well that she was lying, but not pressing the matter. His hands moved from her arms to her lower back, gently but firmly kneading the flesh through her dress. "Better?" he asked, something intangible in his voice, and she forced herself to nod. "What are you carving?"
He arched an eyebrow, as if to tell her she was not off the hook, but he left her to retrieve his piece of wood. She followed him back to her son – their son – who held his piece out to Jack.
Pulling a thin leather strip from somewhere amongst his pockets, Jack tied William's smaller length of wood perpendicular to one end of his own sapling, leaving a few inches extending past the horizontal piece. He picked up his knife and cut the extra ends of leather, then handed the whole thing to William.
The pieces of wood looked foreign to Elizabeth until they were in her son's hands, and when Jack corrected the boy's grip, she was certain.
"A sword?" she exclaimed, incredulous. "Jack, for God's sake – he's four years old!"
The pirate shrugged easily. "Never too early to start learning. I was only a tyke when I started."
She rolled her eyes. "That is an entirely different circumstance, Jack. You were a…" She trailed off helplessly. She had been about to say "You were a pirate's son", but the words died as she realized their uselessness.
William was a pirate's son, regardless of his parentage, and as he moved across the sand making inelegant but enthusiastic slashes with his wooden weapon, she could not deny that even at such a tender age, her boy looked at home with sword in hand.
Jack was still looking at her, face coloured with curiosity, and she scrambled to speak. "And now what, will you teach him to start banging away at every opportunity instead of reasoning with intelligence?"
He shrugged again. "It's worked for me, at least so far."
She snorted, but motioned him away and stood watching with her arms crossed as he grabbed another long piece of wood and began to instruct her son in the manly art of swordplay.
It turned out that winter was indeed over, and as the weather got even warmer, Elizabeth could feel Jack's impatience growing. He was fully recovered from his illness and as much as he enjoyed spending time with her and William, he belonged on the open ocean and not bound to land.
One day the Pearl rounded the bend in the cove, and Jack turned to her with impish but sad eyes. He kissed her, long and wistful, and pressed his forehead to hers when they broke for air. "I'll search out Will and tell him what happened," he said quietly. "Hopefully he won't kill me."
She smiled, but weakly, stroking his cheek with a lingering hand before he pulled away. He knelt in front of William, gravely instructing the boy to continue with his sword practice.
"How'm I gonna do that when you're gone?" William asked, wooden sword cradled in his hands. He rarely put it down.
Jack winked at him, and then looked at Elizabeth. "Ask yer Mum. She's a right devil with a sword or two."
"Jack!" Elizabeth shouted, aghast. She fended off her son, who looked at her with wide eyes and tugged on her sleeve, already pestering her about lessons and fights. Jack laughed, threw her that wicked grin, and disappeared over the sandy ridge.