Fic: Crossroads (POTC)
Title: Crossroads
Fandom: POTC2 (movie spoilers)
Rating: PG13-ish.
Summary: One-shot. Tia Dalma, Will Turner. Not so much a touch of destiny as a chance encounter.
A/N: This my first story in this fandom. It's a little strange, and pretty far outside my normal scope, but my interest in vodou and New Orleans history caused the story to write itself.
***
She walks the spaces in between; between light and dark, land and sea, god and man. The Old World and the New.
Like Papa Legba she stands astride the crossroads, watches the thresholds. They come to her, the others; wanting potions, hexes, cures. She draws the vévés, calls on the lwa, makes her bargains. She takes her payment in favors; or in gold, in rum, in spices and rare oils, fish and dried fruit and much stranger things.
And knowledge. The knowing of things is the key to all the rest, her raison d'être; her true stock-in-trade and the payment she accepts most eagerly. And always, always her customers leave behind far more of it than they take away.
The knowing of people--so easy when you've known enough of them, and Tia Dalma has known many of all colors. The spirits are trickier, but they've spoken to her all her life and she knows the rhythm and cadence of their little games almost as well as she knows people. And she has the larger knowing: she sees the patterns in the fates of men and women. The repeating stories of history, the past described to her by her ancestors, and the glimpses of her own future she's seen in her trances: a daughter yet to come, one who will bear others, and thus carry her blood into the future.
She'd foreseen Jack Sparrow's coming. No need for chicken bones or tea-leaves, she'd heard it in the tides of the sea. Appetites to rival any of the lwa, even Ghede himself, Sparrow is one of her favorite visitors, for he is the most unpredictable man she has known. And men can be so very predictable.
This time, though, he arrives marked by darkness. She is afraid for him, for she knows that he will not be able to lie or cheat or seduce his way out of the fate written on his palm. But she hides her fear, for it is of no use. And when they come later to tell her of his passing, she is not surprised; for she'd walked the night before with the spirits, and watched as Jack Sparrow crossed over to the place the white men of the ocean called the World's End. And she does not grieve, for she knows the story is not done; and she plays her part, bringing Sparrow's people together with the man called Barbossa.
That night, after the talking and the planning, the others leave to spend the night in the village; or, like Barbossa, to return to the water's edge and spend the night closer to the sea.
But Tia Dalma is not alone; one has stayed behind. The young William Turner.
She is surprised to find him there in her front room, leaning one shoulder against the wall. And then she is not surprised, for she remembers that earlier, amidst his grief for Sparrow and his father, he couldn't keep his eyes off the woman-girl named Elizabeth. But the look on his face was not of passion or longing, but of confusion--the confusion of a man who has realized that the woman he loves is a stranger to him.
Sorry, sweet child, she thinks, but you're hardly the first to lose one to Jack Sparrow--or to the world, as may be.
She smiles and walks to him, thinking to offer him a drink of something that will send him to sleep; but the look in his eyes makes her pause. In the time since she met him, he's had the last scrap of boy burned out of him, had his first true taste of the bitterness of the world. But he bears it in silence. And watches her.
A touch of destiny. The words had come to her easily, the kind of thing you said to the uninitiated to keep them guessing--for who didn't want to believe they'd been touched by destiny? But in truth, she cannot see his path at all.
The expression on his face, though--that's no mystery.
She reaches out a hand to him. "Come," she says softly, grinning. "We find sometin' to put on those marks on your back."
***
Not a boy, no, but he's got experience yet to collect; still, his instincts are true, and his touch is steady and sure. His pale skin, sticky and salty from the sea, has been burned brown by the sun and glows gold-brown in the firelight. He's beautiful in his way, like a young god of the New World. And as he enters her, even as she groans with pleasure, she feels a strange, deeper awareness between them, a connection she didn't foresee.
It isn't love. Or even the faint stirrings of love. She's long past such fancies; and his heart, for now, may as well be carved of stone. But something passes between them, unspoken, spelled out only in flesh and the rhythm of their movements. She opens herself to him, and he pours out his bitterness, allows her to draw it out of him. She takes it from him, willingly.
And she takes something else from him, too.
Later, he sleeps on her low bed of cushions and furs, sprawled on his stomach to spare the angry crossroads of whip-marks across his shoulder blades. Tia Dalma casts a last look at him; she rises, retreats to a small back room, to a small table and a leather pouch.
The pattern of shells and bones only confirms what she already knows. One hand low on her belly, she looks to the future.
***
Epilogue; A Year Later
She names the girl Marie; Mary for the Virgin, Mary for bitterness. Their time together is short, for she knows in her bones that the path of motherhood is not hers to walk.
The merchanter's name is Laveau, out of Saint-Domingue, and she knows him to be a good man. She knows that he and his wife are childless. He promises to take the baby to Nouvelle-Orléans, there to be raised on his plantation as his own child.
She doesn't watch as he leaves with Marie in his arms. She spends the rest of the night in prayer and service to Erzulie Dantor, bartering protection for the child.
The next day, she rises, and locks away that piece of her heart, her history. She looks instead to the future.
And she never sees Will Turner again.
***
END
Afterword: I have successfully squicked myself out by writing...erg...babyfic. But dammit, I haven't had a decent muse appearance in months, and when mine informed me that it would be rad if Tia Dalma and Will Turner were the ancestors of Marie Laveau, there wasn't much fight I could put up.
Also: I know that the historical and geographical bits of POTC can be hard to pin down, but due to the overall Jamaican leaning of things, I'm guessing Tia Dalma's specific hoodoo would have been one of the more obscure Jamaican flavors (Obeah?) and less with the Haiti-centric Vodou gods I used. Tough noogies.
Fandom: POTC2 (movie spoilers)
Rating: PG13-ish.
Summary: One-shot. Tia Dalma, Will Turner. Not so much a touch of destiny as a chance encounter.
A/N: This my first story in this fandom. It's a little strange, and pretty far outside my normal scope, but my interest in vodou and New Orleans history caused the story to write itself.
***
She walks the spaces in between; between light and dark, land and sea, god and man. The Old World and the New.
Like Papa Legba she stands astride the crossroads, watches the thresholds. They come to her, the others; wanting potions, hexes, cures. She draws the vévés, calls on the lwa, makes her bargains. She takes her payment in favors; or in gold, in rum, in spices and rare oils, fish and dried fruit and much stranger things.
And knowledge. The knowing of things is the key to all the rest, her raison d'être; her true stock-in-trade and the payment she accepts most eagerly. And always, always her customers leave behind far more of it than they take away.
The knowing of people--so easy when you've known enough of them, and Tia Dalma has known many of all colors. The spirits are trickier, but they've spoken to her all her life and she knows the rhythm and cadence of their little games almost as well as she knows people. And she has the larger knowing: she sees the patterns in the fates of men and women. The repeating stories of history, the past described to her by her ancestors, and the glimpses of her own future she's seen in her trances: a daughter yet to come, one who will bear others, and thus carry her blood into the future.
She'd foreseen Jack Sparrow's coming. No need for chicken bones or tea-leaves, she'd heard it in the tides of the sea. Appetites to rival any of the lwa, even Ghede himself, Sparrow is one of her favorite visitors, for he is the most unpredictable man she has known. And men can be so very predictable.
This time, though, he arrives marked by darkness. She is afraid for him, for she knows that he will not be able to lie or cheat or seduce his way out of the fate written on his palm. But she hides her fear, for it is of no use. And when they come later to tell her of his passing, she is not surprised; for she'd walked the night before with the spirits, and watched as Jack Sparrow crossed over to the place the white men of the ocean called the World's End. And she does not grieve, for she knows the story is not done; and she plays her part, bringing Sparrow's people together with the man called Barbossa.
That night, after the talking and the planning, the others leave to spend the night in the village; or, like Barbossa, to return to the water's edge and spend the night closer to the sea.
But Tia Dalma is not alone; one has stayed behind. The young William Turner.
She is surprised to find him there in her front room, leaning one shoulder against the wall. And then she is not surprised, for she remembers that earlier, amidst his grief for Sparrow and his father, he couldn't keep his eyes off the woman-girl named Elizabeth. But the look on his face was not of passion or longing, but of confusion--the confusion of a man who has realized that the woman he loves is a stranger to him.
Sorry, sweet child, she thinks, but you're hardly the first to lose one to Jack Sparrow--or to the world, as may be.
She smiles and walks to him, thinking to offer him a drink of something that will send him to sleep; but the look in his eyes makes her pause. In the time since she met him, he's had the last scrap of boy burned out of him, had his first true taste of the bitterness of the world. But he bears it in silence. And watches her.
A touch of destiny. The words had come to her easily, the kind of thing you said to the uninitiated to keep them guessing--for who didn't want to believe they'd been touched by destiny? But in truth, she cannot see his path at all.
The expression on his face, though--that's no mystery.
She reaches out a hand to him. "Come," she says softly, grinning. "We find sometin' to put on those marks on your back."
***
Not a boy, no, but he's got experience yet to collect; still, his instincts are true, and his touch is steady and sure. His pale skin, sticky and salty from the sea, has been burned brown by the sun and glows gold-brown in the firelight. He's beautiful in his way, like a young god of the New World. And as he enters her, even as she groans with pleasure, she feels a strange, deeper awareness between them, a connection she didn't foresee.
It isn't love. Or even the faint stirrings of love. She's long past such fancies; and his heart, for now, may as well be carved of stone. But something passes between them, unspoken, spelled out only in flesh and the rhythm of their movements. She opens herself to him, and he pours out his bitterness, allows her to draw it out of him. She takes it from him, willingly.
And she takes something else from him, too.
Later, he sleeps on her low bed of cushions and furs, sprawled on his stomach to spare the angry crossroads of whip-marks across his shoulder blades. Tia Dalma casts a last look at him; she rises, retreats to a small back room, to a small table and a leather pouch.
The pattern of shells and bones only confirms what she already knows. One hand low on her belly, she looks to the future.
***
Epilogue; A Year Later
She names the girl Marie; Mary for the Virgin, Mary for bitterness. Their time together is short, for she knows in her bones that the path of motherhood is not hers to walk.
The merchanter's name is Laveau, out of Saint-Domingue, and she knows him to be a good man. She knows that he and his wife are childless. He promises to take the baby to Nouvelle-Orléans, there to be raised on his plantation as his own child.
She doesn't watch as he leaves with Marie in his arms. She spends the rest of the night in prayer and service to Erzulie Dantor, bartering protection for the child.
The next day, she rises, and locks away that piece of her heart, her history. She looks instead to the future.
And she never sees Will Turner again.
***
END
Afterword: I have successfully squicked myself out by writing...erg...babyfic. But dammit, I haven't had a decent muse appearance in months, and when mine informed me that it would be rad if Tia Dalma and Will Turner were the ancestors of Marie Laveau, there wasn't much fight I could put up.
Also: I know that the historical and geographical bits of POTC can be hard to pin down, but due to the overall Jamaican leaning of things, I'm guessing Tia Dalma's specific hoodoo would have been one of the more obscure Jamaican flavors (Obeah?) and less with the Haiti-centric Vodou gods I used. Tough noogies.