Fic: Birds of Prey
Title: Birds of Prey
Author: djarum99
Rating: N17
Pairing: J/E, J/W/E implied
Disclaimer: Disney owns the world of pirates, and I make no profit
A/N: Future ficlet (in part by virtue of the need for post-18th century plumbing) written for challenge prompt five at hseas_challenge - J/E four hundred years after finding the Fountain of Youth. Love in the time of global warming, and a scene inspired by the maddening temptation of that bathtub snippet from PE, a reading of The Rum Diary, and a conversation with fried_flamingo. Feedback and comments are most welcome, as always :-)
Four centuries of human greed have made Jack an honest man, all things being relative, and so many things being under water. Among them, the ports of six continents, deep beneath oceans fierce with vanquished ice and the vengeance of an angry sun. The Pearl glides swift above a toxic Atlantis that never again shall rise, plying her trade in makeshift harbours and cities wary of the sea. Business is good, sanctioned by what law remains - in a liquid world, the ancient mariner is king.
She’s not Jack’s first darling, this black ship they now call home. There is joy in breakneck mornings, in defeating time and waves, but Elizabeth misses the scent of tar, the song of salt-charmed wood. Jack mourns canvas, his abandoned mistress wind. Still, there is enchantment in mute engines, her adamantine hull, in power’s hum beneath their boots when thunder bruises the sky.
“Can outrace the Furies, this one, and there’s always wisdom in running, love, always some devil in our wake.”
“And you’d have it otherwise?”
“No. And no use lying to you - the year is 2263, and you know me far too well.”
He’s wrong, of course, still a consummate liar, but the decades have polished their truth. Too bright, at times; once, before the Floods, she had lingered a year in London, and Jack had sailed southwest alone. Neither of them remembers the reason, but they both remember running. Chafing, restless, she’d sought some forfeit piece of freedom, discovered it in the mirror of empty nights, the loss of lean bronze heat, the absence of stubborn fire and his kindred patchwork soul. She had made her choice, again, at last, had flown across the globe to tell him.
The day she arrived in Sao Paolo, Jack had landed at Heathrow.
Two oceans and three continents later, on a Valparaiso beach, they had collided mid-flight and never looked back. Jack buried himself inside her under stars that saw Mycenae’s fall, considered the virtues of loneliness, of fighting to run away, lay listening to the tide of her sleeping breath and bound his fate in her bones. They run together now, he in the Pearl and Elizabeth in her ivory twin, a brace of disenfranchised dragons, sans pays and forever sans mort.
Although, the latter isn’t always true, in a matter of speaking and in matters of the flesh - the Dutchman’s captain joins them when he can, and death is unquestionably his domain. Will Turner is a busy man in these uncertain days; they’ve not seen him since Calypso took the Azores. She’s angry, hell-bent on revenge, though Will does his best to soothe her. The seas have swallowed human poison and are dying by degrees; the whales are gone, the saline balance - even a goddess has limitations. Calypso mourns her children, sheds futile tears in retribution and feeds the great deluge. When last they saw Will Turner, his hair bore threads of silver and the Dutchman bore a thousand souls.
“It’s part of a cycle, one that will end. Wait.”
“As opposed to what, mate?” Jack had grinned, sloe-eyed and lazy, rolling to his side amidst their sweat damp tangle to nip at Elizabeth’s thigh. “Drowning?”
“She’s not the only god, you know. It will come full circle. Wait.”
“That we can do. May not have world enough, but we’ve certainly got time. They’ve stopped waging wars - too busy surviving, I suppose, and a common enemy makes uncommon friends. I imagine you’ve noticed.”
“I had.” Will hasn’t lost the art of irony, or that of hope; it had flickered then in his eyes, and Elizabeth had answered, pulled them both back down to the sheets.
Time, and all they have seen, all that Will has lost. Sometimes she wonders if love’s pilfered moments and a goddess’s favour can ever be comfort enough. Sometimes she wonders if she can bear it, how Jack does, but that’s a question she won’t ask. He’s companion and lover, amanuensis and thief, but secrets are precious amongst the immortals, treasures neither are willing to steal.
Jack wonders when “they” became “them,” the rest of the human race, the fated others. Perhaps it began in the water’s crucible, though he suspects, for him, that it came with the brand. Each year it grows harder to shed revelations as part of some moonstruck dream, but he believes, because he must, that he can live with that - irony being Jack’s favourite art, and he being irony’s master. The Fountain is lost, too, to time and the blue Caribbean; they can offer its blessing, and its curse, to no one else. Aztec gold or eternity’s wine, and sometimes Jack isn’t sure of the difference.
At New Carson City, on Nevada’s torn coast, Elizabeth ventures ashore to walk the salt flats beneath the city’s towering levee. The sun has dried their surface like some monstrous beast’s stretched hide, chiselled a labyrinth of cobweb cracks; it is in one of these she finds the statue. Jack finds her an hour later, mud smeared and weeping, cradling a stone-carved child. A garden ornament, nothing more, but he returns it gently to the grave, wipes the dirt from her face with his shirtsleeve, and carries her back to the Pearl.
He ignores the stares of his crew, bears her stumbling and graceless to his quarters. Jack has an eye for beauty and a cosmic appetite for acquisition, for things that glitter, for knowledge that burns. She blinks, dazzled as always by his magpie’s hoard of riches - tapestries, sculpture, weapons, the silent machines of this century’s magic. A whirlwind vision of books, the ones he’s managed to save, their gilt-edged leather a blur lining the stateroom walls, and then he’s propped her in the shower beneath a stinging blessed rain.
“You look like a Whitechapel street urchin, Bess, or a mud wrestler - remember that club in old New Orleans? Laissez les bon temps rouler, and roll we did... Hush, love, shhh...”
There’s barely room for two but he strips them both, holds her tight against his chest until the swirl at their feet runs clear.
“Do you ever wish we could see it, Jack? The place that Will takes them, the shores of the dead. Do you ever want to just let go?”
“Yes, love, and no. Not of this. I won’t let go.”
He’s sleek gold and ivory in the rising mist, hard insistence at her belly, his skin bearing scars that have never faded and his eyes a light that has never died. Jack cradles her face, whispers words she cannot hear, lowers his head to her breast and draws her into familiar heat, silk-tongued flame. Slick warm metal against her back, his hands lifting her upward, one satin glide and she’s clinging to his shoulders, legs wrapping his hips, meeting him thrust for thrust. She plaits her fingers in the river of his hair, pulls his head back to take his mouth, his throat. His body responds, desperate, awkward - he slips, falls to his knees, keeps her with him at the cost of an elbow. There’s blood, just a little, and she tastes his copper, his salt, until he moans and pulls her beneath him, finishes them both in a sweet water haze.
A little death...don’t let go.
After, in his emperor’s bed, he speaks of visiting their offspring, the descendants of too many descendants to count - anonymously, of course. Even in an age of prophesies rendered, the world is too young for that truth. In the skylight above, the night dons ancient diamonds, and Elizabeth knows that she can live with deception, with a quicksilver pirate bewitched by the sea.
“They’re building ships, Bess, to plunder the heavens. Give them another century to work out the kinks, then we’ll commandeer the finest and ad astra a bene placito.”
“You would go?” He’s set the panels to mimic candlelight, soft and tawny on their bodies and amber in his eyes. She’s born his children, his fury, his laughter and his grief, can’t imagine the world without him, can’t imagine him alone.
“Probably...not. Already been where no man has gone before, twice, thrice and back again. I like this planet, for all its flaws and repetitions.” Jack leans down to kiss her, and she believes that he’s telling the truth - as he often does, all things being relative, and so many things being lost to the water.
“You told me once that once was quite enough.”
“I lied.” Another truth, an old one, but the tale’s still new for all that.
“Don’t stop, Jack. Lying. You tell such pretty stories - I promise to believe them all.”
She’s almost asleep, the only dance they’ll share with the Reaper, and Jack settles in to join her in that fine and private place.
“Once upon a time, in the finest age of sail, I met a pirate...”
ad astra a bene placito ~ to the stars at one’s pleasure
A/A/N - The title and the reference to a “fine and private place” are from Andrew Marvell’s "To His Coy Mistress" - a very persuasive and very Jack-like ode to living in the moment. I started writing this a few weeks ago, and thought it was going to be about J/E waltzing blithely through the 19th century, and maybe the 20th for good measure. It took a left turn the moment I typed the first sentence, and became something entirely different. That seems to happen quite a lot, at least to me :-)
Author: djarum99
Rating: N17
Pairing: J/E, J/W/E implied
Disclaimer: Disney owns the world of pirates, and I make no profit
A/N: Future ficlet (in part by virtue of the need for post-18th century plumbing) written for challenge prompt five at hseas_challenge - J/E four hundred years after finding the Fountain of Youth. Love in the time of global warming, and a scene inspired by the maddening temptation of that bathtub snippet from PE, a reading of The Rum Diary, and a conversation with fried_flamingo. Feedback and comments are most welcome, as always :-)
Four centuries of human greed have made Jack an honest man, all things being relative, and so many things being under water. Among them, the ports of six continents, deep beneath oceans fierce with vanquished ice and the vengeance of an angry sun. The Pearl glides swift above a toxic Atlantis that never again shall rise, plying her trade in makeshift harbours and cities wary of the sea. Business is good, sanctioned by what law remains - in a liquid world, the ancient mariner is king.
She’s not Jack’s first darling, this black ship they now call home. There is joy in breakneck mornings, in defeating time and waves, but Elizabeth misses the scent of tar, the song of salt-charmed wood. Jack mourns canvas, his abandoned mistress wind. Still, there is enchantment in mute engines, her adamantine hull, in power’s hum beneath their boots when thunder bruises the sky.
“Can outrace the Furies, this one, and there’s always wisdom in running, love, always some devil in our wake.”
“And you’d have it otherwise?”
“No. And no use lying to you - the year is 2263, and you know me far too well.”
He’s wrong, of course, still a consummate liar, but the decades have polished their truth. Too bright, at times; once, before the Floods, she had lingered a year in London, and Jack had sailed southwest alone. Neither of them remembers the reason, but they both remember running. Chafing, restless, she’d sought some forfeit piece of freedom, discovered it in the mirror of empty nights, the loss of lean bronze heat, the absence of stubborn fire and his kindred patchwork soul. She had made her choice, again, at last, had flown across the globe to tell him.
The day she arrived in Sao Paolo, Jack had landed at Heathrow.
Two oceans and three continents later, on a Valparaiso beach, they had collided mid-flight and never looked back. Jack buried himself inside her under stars that saw Mycenae’s fall, considered the virtues of loneliness, of fighting to run away, lay listening to the tide of her sleeping breath and bound his fate in her bones. They run together now, he in the Pearl and Elizabeth in her ivory twin, a brace of disenfranchised dragons, sans pays and forever sans mort.
Although, the latter isn’t always true, in a matter of speaking and in matters of the flesh - the Dutchman’s captain joins them when he can, and death is unquestionably his domain. Will Turner is a busy man in these uncertain days; they’ve not seen him since Calypso took the Azores. She’s angry, hell-bent on revenge, though Will does his best to soothe her. The seas have swallowed human poison and are dying by degrees; the whales are gone, the saline balance - even a goddess has limitations. Calypso mourns her children, sheds futile tears in retribution and feeds the great deluge. When last they saw Will Turner, his hair bore threads of silver and the Dutchman bore a thousand souls.
“It’s part of a cycle, one that will end. Wait.”
“As opposed to what, mate?” Jack had grinned, sloe-eyed and lazy, rolling to his side amidst their sweat damp tangle to nip at Elizabeth’s thigh. “Drowning?”
“She’s not the only god, you know. It will come full circle. Wait.”
“That we can do. May not have world enough, but we’ve certainly got time. They’ve stopped waging wars - too busy surviving, I suppose, and a common enemy makes uncommon friends. I imagine you’ve noticed.”
“I had.” Will hasn’t lost the art of irony, or that of hope; it had flickered then in his eyes, and Elizabeth had answered, pulled them both back down to the sheets.
Time, and all they have seen, all that Will has lost. Sometimes she wonders if love’s pilfered moments and a goddess’s favour can ever be comfort enough. Sometimes she wonders if she can bear it, how Jack does, but that’s a question she won’t ask. He’s companion and lover, amanuensis and thief, but secrets are precious amongst the immortals, treasures neither are willing to steal.
Jack wonders when “they” became “them,” the rest of the human race, the fated others. Perhaps it began in the water’s crucible, though he suspects, for him, that it came with the brand. Each year it grows harder to shed revelations as part of some moonstruck dream, but he believes, because he must, that he can live with that - irony being Jack’s favourite art, and he being irony’s master. The Fountain is lost, too, to time and the blue Caribbean; they can offer its blessing, and its curse, to no one else. Aztec gold or eternity’s wine, and sometimes Jack isn’t sure of the difference.
At New Carson City, on Nevada’s torn coast, Elizabeth ventures ashore to walk the salt flats beneath the city’s towering levee. The sun has dried their surface like some monstrous beast’s stretched hide, chiselled a labyrinth of cobweb cracks; it is in one of these she finds the statue. Jack finds her an hour later, mud smeared and weeping, cradling a stone-carved child. A garden ornament, nothing more, but he returns it gently to the grave, wipes the dirt from her face with his shirtsleeve, and carries her back to the Pearl.
He ignores the stares of his crew, bears her stumbling and graceless to his quarters. Jack has an eye for beauty and a cosmic appetite for acquisition, for things that glitter, for knowledge that burns. She blinks, dazzled as always by his magpie’s hoard of riches - tapestries, sculpture, weapons, the silent machines of this century’s magic. A whirlwind vision of books, the ones he’s managed to save, their gilt-edged leather a blur lining the stateroom walls, and then he’s propped her in the shower beneath a stinging blessed rain.
“You look like a Whitechapel street urchin, Bess, or a mud wrestler - remember that club in old New Orleans? Laissez les bon temps rouler, and roll we did... Hush, love, shhh...”
There’s barely room for two but he strips them both, holds her tight against his chest until the swirl at their feet runs clear.
“Do you ever wish we could see it, Jack? The place that Will takes them, the shores of the dead. Do you ever want to just let go?”
“Yes, love, and no. Not of this. I won’t let go.”
He’s sleek gold and ivory in the rising mist, hard insistence at her belly, his skin bearing scars that have never faded and his eyes a light that has never died. Jack cradles her face, whispers words she cannot hear, lowers his head to her breast and draws her into familiar heat, silk-tongued flame. Slick warm metal against her back, his hands lifting her upward, one satin glide and she’s clinging to his shoulders, legs wrapping his hips, meeting him thrust for thrust. She plaits her fingers in the river of his hair, pulls his head back to take his mouth, his throat. His body responds, desperate, awkward - he slips, falls to his knees, keeps her with him at the cost of an elbow. There’s blood, just a little, and she tastes his copper, his salt, until he moans and pulls her beneath him, finishes them both in a sweet water haze.
A little death...don’t let go.
After, in his emperor’s bed, he speaks of visiting their offspring, the descendants of too many descendants to count - anonymously, of course. Even in an age of prophesies rendered, the world is too young for that truth. In the skylight above, the night dons ancient diamonds, and Elizabeth knows that she can live with deception, with a quicksilver pirate bewitched by the sea.
“They’re building ships, Bess, to plunder the heavens. Give them another century to work out the kinks, then we’ll commandeer the finest and ad astra a bene placito.”
“You would go?” He’s set the panels to mimic candlelight, soft and tawny on their bodies and amber in his eyes. She’s born his children, his fury, his laughter and his grief, can’t imagine the world without him, can’t imagine him alone.
“Probably...not. Already been where no man has gone before, twice, thrice and back again. I like this planet, for all its flaws and repetitions.” Jack leans down to kiss her, and she believes that he’s telling the truth - as he often does, all things being relative, and so many things being lost to the water.
“You told me once that once was quite enough.”
“I lied.” Another truth, an old one, but the tale’s still new for all that.
“Don’t stop, Jack. Lying. You tell such pretty stories - I promise to believe them all.”
She’s almost asleep, the only dance they’ll share with the Reaper, and Jack settles in to join her in that fine and private place.
“Once upon a time, in the finest age of sail, I met a pirate...”
ad astra a bene placito ~ to the stars at one’s pleasure
A/A/N - The title and the reference to a “fine and private place” are from Andrew Marvell’s "To His Coy Mistress" - a very persuasive and very Jack-like ode to living in the moment. I started writing this a few weeks ago, and thought it was going to be about J/E waltzing blithely through the 19th century, and maybe the 20th for good measure. It took a left turn the moment I typed the first sentence, and became something entirely different. That seems to happen quite a lot, at least to me :-)