(no subject)
First and foremost, tyroantiheroine, this at least two thirds yours. You know where the other third has to fall, luv. ♥
TITLE: Untitled
PAIRING: Jack & Elizabeth
RATING: PG
SUMMARY: Jack imparts wisdom, while getting Elizabeth inebriated. C'mon people, you know how they do.
AN:Trying to get back into the swing of writing after a long fight with writer's block, and am working on a historical fiction project currently, as well as a sort of series of vignettes surrounding the aspect of the human spirit during the golden age of piracy. Sort of writing from the voice of the collective unconscious, the "we", the people who were ultimately effected, etc, and so on.... but, I've hit a brick wall on that for tonight, and so to keep myself in practice, and to work out some other issues altogether, I churned this out, to say, "hello PotC fandom, I have missed you!" ♥
Once, before the birth of repercussion, he'd told her, all firelight, and the occasional glint of sarcastic gold; a mock halo lighting him up like some perverse saint of masses; once, he'd learned froward, vision slanted to the left, with only the slightest hint of a blur, drunk off rice wine, and the absence of reprisal and said, punctuating all the appropriate words (and perhaps some inappropriate ones) with magnificent gestures that'd come to bear a certain sense of rare comfort, "there are more than seven deadly sins, you know,"
It was not the sort of thing she expected, but then, it was exactly the sort of thing she would expect from him, absurdity, potentially attached to profound statements about the nature of nothing at all. It was with this motive she continued to indulge, with a nod of haphazard curls, neck craning down, up, and back again, indicating that he should continue, as no, no, she was not aware of anymore than the usual seven.
"Oh, sure, the mealy clergymen will lock their beady little eyes right with yours, an' tell you the surest bloody deaths this side of hell, or the Locker, are things like, wossit'called, greed, and sloth, and, and gluttony,"
"---good friends of yours, all."
"and, yes, well, but, anyhow!" He pretends, maybe even tries to look annoyed at this juncture, the slightest increase in volume, or more specifically, pitch. After a most dramatic moment in which he regained his composure in a most dramatic fashion, he cocked his head to one side, and breathed deep, before launching further into explanation, or madness, or both. "But, my longstanding, extremely close friendship with those fine sins do not prevent me from seeing that they are not the only ones, and are certainly not the gravest."
"Hm," she chews her lip for a moment, but stops when she notices him looking, "well, then I suppose I'll take this as educational opportunity." She leans froward slightly, and cocks a curious brow, "What, pray, Jack Sparrow, do pirates deem sins?"
"Glad you asked, luv! I would enjoy nothing more in this life, or, at least in this brief few seconds, than to tell you," he sighs here again, sighing dramatically being a well established habit; she imagines, sometimes, that he may have missed a calling as an actor, "one, uno, un, und ein: one must never, ever, under any circumstances, 'lest the situation should happen to call for it which case, oh hell, all right, one: not remembering that every situation you could hope, or not hope, to run into, is, well, situational, and the stupidest bloody thing a person can do is set themselves so rigid that they forget how to flow with the present. Meaning, 'neath too many words (you really are allowed, dear girl, to shut me up at any moment), somethin' picked up from my travels eastward, the only things that matter are the things right in front of you."
He pauses, which could just as easily be to allow the idea to set in (and possibly take a insinuative shape), as it could be that he'd forgotten himself altogether. After a beat, she decides upon the former, as he takes another drink, and moves on yet again,
"Then of course there's even more terrible things like, the sin of taking one's self too seriously, and the very nearly unforgivable amount of thought the majority of the populace gives absolutely everything," he scratches his face, and then his head, as though trying to recall something that had very nearly been on the tip of his tongue, "Oh!, the worst of them all, can't forget that one, aye? Putting too much stock in any definition of reality past the one you deem fit."
This exchange of idea cast a look of confusion over her face, and he quickly scrambles to explain, having, lost in some sort of momentary haze, developed a passion for imparting his mad wisdom, "The entire world, 'Liz'beth, the whole rudding thing, from the uncharted regions of the Americas, to even lesser known, lesser... charted... mountains of, ah,"
"Darkest Africa!" Her tone pretends to be serious, academic, like a narrator telling a tale of adventure in jungles and deserts she would never see. He gives a glimmer of a grin, and an approving forefinger pointed in her direction.
"Yes, the most darkest of the darkest parts of darkest Africa, but we've moved off topic just now, dear,"
"I blame the sake," she says, but said blame does not keep her from taking another sip.
There's a fondness in his aggravation, or the chance that the entire thing could have been a faux round of appearances, "And I blame your incessant rabbit traits, your inability to hold your alcohol, and above all," his vision drops, painfully close to places not her face, "I blame the damnable fact that you are the most obnoxiously distracting woman I have ever known, which combined as they are, I still mostly blame the latter. Nonetheless this combination leads, with near inevitability, to the loss of my point."
"Which was?"
"Give a man a minute, for chrissake, lass." He holds the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, for the space of a breath, and meets her gaze again, "So, this whole world that you and I have just spent entirely too much time arguing semantics over, it's all, every last bit of it, nothing more than a, a, delusion with which we are are all, we here meaning you lot, your, ilk, lot--- as I am certainly not compliant with said practices, savvy?"
She thinks of arguing, only for a moment, but decides against it due to the fact that disagreeing would do absolutely no good, at all. To prompt further explanation, if for no other reason than to keep him talking, she makes a face that, again, reads "confused," nose wrinkled in a such a fashion that gives him visible pause before shushing her preemptively, and continuing on, finger waving like a sapling caught amid a hurricane of drunken musing,
"Don' forget that, highness, ever, elsewise you might as well resign, as any pirate will attest to the fact that we are, most decidedly, part of another world, altogether. These horrible contraptions, clocks, and calendars, and all manner of other things designed by men to regulate other men's days, and nights, until there are none left, they've swallowed up the other, smaller worlds, these monstrous ticking machines, swallowed up every bit of the imagination til all that's left is that sound."
She knows now it is that sound that he runs from. It is that ever creeping sound that keeps his sail turned toward endless horizon, with concrete consequence too far off to care for.
Yes, yes, she thinks, thinks so deep it feels as though it may burst, uninvited, from her chest; time, gold, power and constructs, gears in a machine she will never see, but that haunts her, breathes down her neck when she's not looking. The thing that always catches up, in the end. It quieted the fortress, and the clandestine stories of pirate coves. She had ever been accused of living in a fantasy world; a precocious child of seven should not ask such questions, and so it earned the contempt of her peers, and the concern of a doting father. But he, this fixture of chaotic stability that had ever been, from this vantage point, at least, he suggested validity. There are no fantasy worlds, then, only the real one, which is what ever she chose to make it.
She would have chosen, if only she'd known, more than memories; more than the arcane knowledge of Tortugan back alleys, the whispers of red-skirted women, with ripped stockings and fallen down hairpins; pennyroyal, tansy, stave off parasitic fate, just this once. She would have chosen more than the cold, empty alone of cold, empty houses.
She'd of chosen, or possibly only wished, to have been braver when the world swooped in and tore her stories away; took her heart, beating, begging, and calling the way back. Polite society does not take kindly to winged things, and she waits, ever gazing, only escaping in these fleeting moments with the criminal element; waits, even still, in the tower of tea parties, and docility.
TITLE: Untitled
PAIRING: Jack & Elizabeth
RATING: PG
SUMMARY: Jack imparts wisdom, while getting Elizabeth inebriated. C'mon people, you know how they do.
AN:Trying to get back into the swing of writing after a long fight with writer's block, and am working on a historical fiction project currently, as well as a sort of series of vignettes surrounding the aspect of the human spirit during the golden age of piracy. Sort of writing from the voice of the collective unconscious, the "we", the people who were ultimately effected, etc, and so on.... but, I've hit a brick wall on that for tonight, and so to keep myself in practice, and to work out some other issues altogether, I churned this out, to say, "hello PotC fandom, I have missed you!" ♥
Once, before the birth of repercussion, he'd told her, all firelight, and the occasional glint of sarcastic gold; a mock halo lighting him up like some perverse saint of masses; once, he'd learned froward, vision slanted to the left, with only the slightest hint of a blur, drunk off rice wine, and the absence of reprisal and said, punctuating all the appropriate words (and perhaps some inappropriate ones) with magnificent gestures that'd come to bear a certain sense of rare comfort, "there are more than seven deadly sins, you know,"
It was not the sort of thing she expected, but then, it was exactly the sort of thing she would expect from him, absurdity, potentially attached to profound statements about the nature of nothing at all. It was with this motive she continued to indulge, with a nod of haphazard curls, neck craning down, up, and back again, indicating that he should continue, as no, no, she was not aware of anymore than the usual seven.
"Oh, sure, the mealy clergymen will lock their beady little eyes right with yours, an' tell you the surest bloody deaths this side of hell, or the Locker, are things like, wossit'called, greed, and sloth, and, and gluttony,"
"---good friends of yours, all."
"and, yes, well, but, anyhow!" He pretends, maybe even tries to look annoyed at this juncture, the slightest increase in volume, or more specifically, pitch. After a most dramatic moment in which he regained his composure in a most dramatic fashion, he cocked his head to one side, and breathed deep, before launching further into explanation, or madness, or both. "But, my longstanding, extremely close friendship with those fine sins do not prevent me from seeing that they are not the only ones, and are certainly not the gravest."
"Hm," she chews her lip for a moment, but stops when she notices him looking, "well, then I suppose I'll take this as educational opportunity." She leans froward slightly, and cocks a curious brow, "What, pray, Jack Sparrow, do pirates deem sins?"
"Glad you asked, luv! I would enjoy nothing more in this life, or, at least in this brief few seconds, than to tell you," he sighs here again, sighing dramatically being a well established habit; she imagines, sometimes, that he may have missed a calling as an actor, "one, uno, un, und ein: one must never, ever, under any circumstances, 'lest the situation should happen to call for it which case, oh hell, all right, one: not remembering that every situation you could hope, or not hope, to run into, is, well, situational, and the stupidest bloody thing a person can do is set themselves so rigid that they forget how to flow with the present. Meaning, 'neath too many words (you really are allowed, dear girl, to shut me up at any moment), somethin' picked up from my travels eastward, the only things that matter are the things right in front of you."
He pauses, which could just as easily be to allow the idea to set in (and possibly take a insinuative shape), as it could be that he'd forgotten himself altogether. After a beat, she decides upon the former, as he takes another drink, and moves on yet again,
"Then of course there's even more terrible things like, the sin of taking one's self too seriously, and the very nearly unforgivable amount of thought the majority of the populace gives absolutely everything," he scratches his face, and then his head, as though trying to recall something that had very nearly been on the tip of his tongue, "Oh!, the worst of them all, can't forget that one, aye? Putting too much stock in any definition of reality past the one you deem fit."
This exchange of idea cast a look of confusion over her face, and he quickly scrambles to explain, having, lost in some sort of momentary haze, developed a passion for imparting his mad wisdom, "The entire world, 'Liz'beth, the whole rudding thing, from the uncharted regions of the Americas, to even lesser known, lesser... charted... mountains of, ah,"
"Darkest Africa!" Her tone pretends to be serious, academic, like a narrator telling a tale of adventure in jungles and deserts she would never see. He gives a glimmer of a grin, and an approving forefinger pointed in her direction.
"Yes, the most darkest of the darkest parts of darkest Africa, but we've moved off topic just now, dear,"
"I blame the sake," she says, but said blame does not keep her from taking another sip.
There's a fondness in his aggravation, or the chance that the entire thing could have been a faux round of appearances, "And I blame your incessant rabbit traits, your inability to hold your alcohol, and above all," his vision drops, painfully close to places not her face, "I blame the damnable fact that you are the most obnoxiously distracting woman I have ever known, which combined as they are, I still mostly blame the latter. Nonetheless this combination leads, with near inevitability, to the loss of my point."
"Which was?"
"Give a man a minute, for chrissake, lass." He holds the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, for the space of a breath, and meets her gaze again, "So, this whole world that you and I have just spent entirely too much time arguing semantics over, it's all, every last bit of it, nothing more than a, a, delusion with which we are are all, we here meaning you lot, your, ilk, lot--- as I am certainly not compliant with said practices, savvy?"
She thinks of arguing, only for a moment, but decides against it due to the fact that disagreeing would do absolutely no good, at all. To prompt further explanation, if for no other reason than to keep him talking, she makes a face that, again, reads "confused," nose wrinkled in a such a fashion that gives him visible pause before shushing her preemptively, and continuing on, finger waving like a sapling caught amid a hurricane of drunken musing,
"Don' forget that, highness, ever, elsewise you might as well resign, as any pirate will attest to the fact that we are, most decidedly, part of another world, altogether. These horrible contraptions, clocks, and calendars, and all manner of other things designed by men to regulate other men's days, and nights, until there are none left, they've swallowed up the other, smaller worlds, these monstrous ticking machines, swallowed up every bit of the imagination til all that's left is that sound."
She knows now it is that sound that he runs from. It is that ever creeping sound that keeps his sail turned toward endless horizon, with concrete consequence too far off to care for.
Yes, yes, she thinks, thinks so deep it feels as though it may burst, uninvited, from her chest; time, gold, power and constructs, gears in a machine she will never see, but that haunts her, breathes down her neck when she's not looking. The thing that always catches up, in the end. It quieted the fortress, and the clandestine stories of pirate coves. She had ever been accused of living in a fantasy world; a precocious child of seven should not ask such questions, and so it earned the contempt of her peers, and the concern of a doting father. But he, this fixture of chaotic stability that had ever been, from this vantage point, at least, he suggested validity. There are no fantasy worlds, then, only the real one, which is what ever she chose to make it.
She would have chosen, if only she'd known, more than memories; more than the arcane knowledge of Tortugan back alleys, the whispers of red-skirted women, with ripped stockings and fallen down hairpins; pennyroyal, tansy, stave off parasitic fate, just this once. She would have chosen more than the cold, empty alone of cold, empty houses.
She'd of chosen, or possibly only wished, to have been braver when the world swooped in and tore her stories away; took her heart, beating, begging, and calling the way back. Polite society does not take kindly to winged things, and she waits, ever gazing, only escaping in these fleeting moments with the criminal element; waits, even still, in the tower of tea parties, and docility.