Fic: Vector
Title: Vector
Author: djarum99
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: J/E
Disclaimer: Disney owns
A/N: Short standalone, as usual in the Fiat Lux and A Priori ‘verse (only one I know it seems); imagined events during AWE. Angsty hurt/comfort, unbeta’d again as
erinya is sick and this is short; concrit and feedback appreciated.
Kalé stands guard at the cabin door, an impassive Cerberus for her own particular hell. Elizabeth thinks she reads judgment in his eyes, but he moves aside and allows her entrance. She steps from the moonlit deck into a darkness that already carries his scent. It has been an eternity measured only in hours since she summoned him back. Her eyes adjust, but her heart does not. She feels the cold, steady pain there intensify until she is frozen, unable to move, purpose and direction lost.
His silent form on the bed pulls her. Elizabeth steals the distance between them, a thief intent on a prize she cannot name. She lowers herself carefully beside him, fearful that he will wake, knowing she will stay until he does. Kalé has undressed him, pulled the bed cover to his chest although the night air still holds the kiss of the sun. His face framed by the wilderness of his hair, he looks both older and younger than she has ever seen him. The planes of his face are angled and sharp, more finely drawn, but there is a new softness around his eyes in sleep.
Elizabeth shrinks, recoils from the memory of what she saw when she first held him in that forsaken empty place. She thinks that the evidence of her betrayal, blood and torn flesh, will lie forever beneath his living image for her. It is a specter that whispers her betrayal. His breath moves gently now, body unscathed by death’s hand and bearing only the script his life has written.
She wonders again what brought her here. She should be answering Will’s hurt and confusion, not her own, not Jack’s. Should be at the side of her future husband, but her place there is more uncertain than ever. Will has turned towards another promise, perhaps another love, and she finds she sees the truth of that. Sees it but cannot yet accept. She is filled with a desolation so deep, so vast she fears she will wander in it forever. When she lifts her eyes to Jack’s face he is watching her, eyes glittering in the dim light with something more akin to fever than the predator’s fire she remembers.
“’Lizbeth. Not real, I know it; a dream, another sin to pay for.” His voice is a hoarse whisper born of a place that does not bear imagining. Elizabeth reaches for him then, cups his face and smoothes his hair; he is warm, too warm, his skin heated parchment beneath her fingertips. She finds a wash bowl and cloth at his bedside. Kalé must have thought to wash him clean of any traces left by the merciless void in which she found him. She bathes his face, his chest, hoping both to cool his flesh and erase her guilt. His eyes close and he breathes in deep, seems to seek the reality of this. When he opens them again they hold her face with wonder, with something she thinks might be love; terrible things that pierce her soul in a way his hatred never could.
“Not a torment, you are here, I’m here, what did you do, Lizzie, tell me how, what did you do?” His voice is stronger but still raw, still not his. She hears the fear it holds for what his return may have cost her; feels herself shatter again at the sound.
She strokes his face with a gentleness she did not know she possessed, finds it hiding somewhere between shame and forgiveness. She is not certain whether that forgiveness is his, or her own, but thinks it may be meant for both of them. “Sleep now; sleep.”
He raises a shaking hand and covers hers, echoes her words. “Stay, love. Stay. I might have stayed, but you came, you took me....”
His eyes hold something warm, for her, but her heart splinters. She does not know if he speaks of her treachery or her rescue. Neither choice can make her whole again. She waits until his eyes close, his breathing slows. Kneels beside his bed, and rests her head on arms that have nothing left to hold. She dreams of the wind, strong and sure, filling the sails of a ship that moves unerring on its course; dreams her feet upon its boards, her eyes on that horizon.
vector: the compass direction in which a ship moves