Fic - Transatlanticism
Title: Transatlanticism
Fandom: Pirates of the Caribbean
Pairing/Characters: Will/Elizabeth, implied Jack/Elizabeth
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I only borrow from the true greats
Summary: my Pirates!muse was banished to purgatory for some time (so I could write non-nautical things like essays) but she has returned, with this little snippet heavily inspired by the Death Cab for Cutie song of the same name. Vexed!Elizabeth, on the way to the end of the world and contemplating the world that's already ended.
"It's still a long way to go, Elizabeth." Will's voice had sounded thin in the cool of the evening.
"If we're going anywhere at all."
There had been no reply to that, only the rhythm of his footsteps moving away along the deck. She leaned her head back against the rail and sighed. Somewhere beyond where scattered stars fell into the blurred horizon was the coast of Brazil, bright creatures in dark forests and the tangle of a tongue she did not understand.
How far from the Caribbean now? Her hands still wobbled trying to measure distance with the callipers; all too often Barbossa would grunt in annoyance and shoo her from the cabin, but every league seemed to be a little learned. She knew all the sails now, though the setting of them for certain winds escaped her. Sometimes when aloft and stowing canvas she still felt she might be swept away.
And how far to journey's end? There was no mark on any of their stolen maps to show where they were going; neither their irritable captain nor the continually mysterious Tia Dalma would say if the place were even chartable. It seemed oceans were being born in front of her, stretching out past the edges of the faded paper world to some unimaginable distance, and that was a sharper pain than her rope-burned palm.
Jack was there, beyond them, some unreachable shore amongst islands and islands, like looking for her own reflection in the shards of a shattered mirror. There was a crack in her life that tasted of salt-chapped lips and cold iron, and everything before it seemed a storybook haze. Once upon a time, love meant a ring and a promise; the sacrifices she would make for her husband were material, and they would not croon to her out of black dreams and in the tremors of her skin even after they were gone. Once upon a time, love was a sturdy thing not to tilt like a compass needle after a lodestone.
And her own particular lodestone had gone, but somehow north seemed a tainted prospect now, and perhaps that was why she was here on the whispering sea and not in the safe confines of her bridal bed. That crack had let the salt water in.
They would be months at sea, likely. Wherever Jack was, it was far away and fathoms down, and she'd spend the whole way breaking along the hairline fractures that crawled out before her, every jagged future she'd wrought herself, tearing as the needle still swung. He needed to be so much closer.
Fandom: Pirates of the Caribbean
Pairing/Characters: Will/Elizabeth, implied Jack/Elizabeth
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I only borrow from the true greats
Summary: my Pirates!muse was banished to purgatory for some time (so I could write non-nautical things like essays) but she has returned, with this little snippet heavily inspired by the Death Cab for Cutie song of the same name. Vexed!Elizabeth, on the way to the end of the world and contemplating the world that's already ended.
"It's still a long way to go, Elizabeth." Will's voice had sounded thin in the cool of the evening.
"If we're going anywhere at all."
There had been no reply to that, only the rhythm of his footsteps moving away along the deck. She leaned her head back against the rail and sighed. Somewhere beyond where scattered stars fell into the blurred horizon was the coast of Brazil, bright creatures in dark forests and the tangle of a tongue she did not understand.
How far from the Caribbean now? Her hands still wobbled trying to measure distance with the callipers; all too often Barbossa would grunt in annoyance and shoo her from the cabin, but every league seemed to be a little learned. She knew all the sails now, though the setting of them for certain winds escaped her. Sometimes when aloft and stowing canvas she still felt she might be swept away.
And how far to journey's end? There was no mark on any of their stolen maps to show where they were going; neither their irritable captain nor the continually mysterious Tia Dalma would say if the place were even chartable. It seemed oceans were being born in front of her, stretching out past the edges of the faded paper world to some unimaginable distance, and that was a sharper pain than her rope-burned palm.
Jack was there, beyond them, some unreachable shore amongst islands and islands, like looking for her own reflection in the shards of a shattered mirror. There was a crack in her life that tasted of salt-chapped lips and cold iron, and everything before it seemed a storybook haze. Once upon a time, love meant a ring and a promise; the sacrifices she would make for her husband were material, and they would not croon to her out of black dreams and in the tremors of her skin even after they were gone. Once upon a time, love was a sturdy thing not to tilt like a compass needle after a lodestone.
And her own particular lodestone had gone, but somehow north seemed a tainted prospect now, and perhaps that was why she was here on the whispering sea and not in the safe confines of her bridal bed. That crack had let the salt water in.
They would be months at sea, likely. Wherever Jack was, it was far away and fathoms down, and she'd spend the whole way breaking along the hairline fractures that crawled out before her, every jagged future she'd wrought herself, tearing as the needle still swung. He needed to be so much closer.