[POTC Holiday Fic] - Kingdoms of The Swan companion vignette - "Myrrh for the King" - 3/3 - rated R
A/N: Well, here it is - the final bit of holiday fic for ya’ll. My apologies for the tardiness of this post, but my dear husband had accidentally deleted the third chapter right as I was editing it, so I had to rewrite it from scratch. This chapter has grown so large that it is posted in two parts, linked below.
To recap a few essentials of plot:
Jack has a younger sister named Saraswati who goes by the name of ‘Sara’, and she runs a spice bazaar at Shipwreck Cove. They were both born in Cochin, India.
Thing the second: Sara has a 10 year old son named “Rajeev.”
Thing the third: Jack and Lizzie have been living together platonically for some months. The rest will become clear as KotS unfolds.
In terms of this story, I’ve based my inspiration for each chapter on the various gifts of the Magi and their metaphorical meanings. Therefore: gold symbolizes virtue, frankincense symbolizes prayer, and myrrh symbolizes suffering.
Series tie-in: A standalone vignette set in the Kingdoms of the Swan universe.
Installment: 3/3
Segment Title: “Myrrh for the King”
Timeframe: Post AWE
Pairing: J/E, shades of W/E
Rating: R for strong language and heavy sexual innuendo
Word Count: 8,712 (total)
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended. All rights belong to Disney, etc.
Summary: It’s the gift that keeps on giving: this chapter touches on “Myrrh” - a symbol of suffering. The Sparrow family gets a reunion; Lizzie gets a lecture, and the tidal force connecting Jack and Lizzie ebbs and flows.
Acknowledgements: Many, many thanks to
djarum99 for her skillful beta and for all of her continuing encouragement and support (and for icon goodness and fabulous prezzies)! She is really the best. J Any remaining errors are mine.
Feedback is fabulous!
This story is updated to my fic list.
KotS, Chapter One
KotS, Chapter Two
Holiday Vignette: “Gold for the King”, 1/3
Holiday Vignette: “Frankincense for the King”, 2/3
Myrrh for the King
Lizzie angled into him, yearning towards his mouth. Jack was limp-limbed, save for one particularly mutinous member, and he felt his windpipe closing, one rather bothersome clot of air lodging at the base of his throat in a small, angry nugget of pain. And then his lungs betrayed him, a shudder of breath searing past as Lizzie ran the soft pads of her fingers across his jaw, to the bow of his lip.
“So, this is how it happens, is it? Always were too bloody weak-kneed to resist the promise of her ripe little cunny,” sneered Jack-the-thirteenth, the cocky fellow wearing a longcoat and snickering from his perch atop the table.
“Nah, he’ll never see it through,” taunted Jack-the-sixth, a sly-mouthed ne’er-do-well what never saw fit to tuck in his bloody shirt.
“But sir,” countered small-voiced, bare-chested Jack-the-second. “Maybe it’ll be different this go-round, if you don’t mind my sayin’.”
“Oh shut it, you shirtless wonder.” The version of himself squatting on the table picked up a knife, examining the blade. “How’s about you go find yourself some clothes instead of chattering like whore at confession? Always knew you were one wick short of extinguished, you bloody milksop.”
The Jack that stood motionless and breathless beneath Lizzie’s ministrations - the man being explored in slow, agonizing strokes - just wished that they’d all bloody shut it.
However, after careful consideration of the possible methods of employment for his tongue, teeth and lips, he opted to remain mum.
He felt his eyes flutter shut, memories of their coupling returning to him with tidal force.
His mouth at her neck, his tongue swabbing the salt of sweat and seawater from her skin.
Her frantic-handed ripping of his shirt, and the drag of her nails on his biceps as she’d pushed the fabric away.
And God of gods, the tight sleeve of her quim as he’d entered her, his face buried in the hollow pocket of her collarbone.
Jack’s eyes flicked open, the moist warmth of Elizabeth’s mouth rousing him. Her lips were brutally close. His fingers twitched restlessly, and he could feel the plum roundness of her belly brushing his hip, his groin.
If he moved. If he just slipped a little.
“She don’t love you no way, now does she, so you ought to just get on with it. Can’t hurt any more than it already does, can it?” This Jack - the fourth or fifth, if his unbuttoned state of dress was any indicator - was quietly folded into a corner, his legs knotted into the lotus position. “You should treat yourself, sir.”
Shooting the fellow the most dangerous look he could muster, Jack returned his attention to Elizabeth with a shudder as her knuckle grazed his earlobe. Her eyes met his, and it was as though the room had darkened and narrowed, the world sharpened to a pinprick.
His own prick twitched anxiously.
“Lizzie,” his whispered - as much a benediction as a plea for mercy. Swallowing reflexively, he willed himself to stifle the urge to ask her if she could ever….
If she would ever, really….
His lips sealed shut, distracted by the path of his damnable, treacherous fingers. They’d found her throat, resting to feel the roar of blood racing beneath her skin. And then it was her breasts - and dear God, have pity on him, because they rose and fell so deliciously, each creamy swell begging for him to follow its round curve, to find the pink of her nipples hidden beneath the neckline of her shift.
He felt his fingers curling in and in and in - half moons of agony pressed into his palms - her body tensing as he leaned forward to close the breath between them, to find her lips once more even as he cursed himself.
Until suddenly the hang-mouthed audience of Jacks - all eight of them - snapped their heads towards the door.
It swung open on groaning hinges, pots scattering as Jack after Jack after Jack bolted out of its path.
Bloody hell, he thought, staggering away from Elizabeth with a groan. Happy sodding Christmas, then.
The Jacks stood slack-jawed, staring at the trio in the doorway, but when Teague cleared his throat, mumbling something about a lime tree, the lot of them crumbled away, winking and shuffling their feet and leering as they faded.
“Jackie? You hear me, boy?” came the old man’s gruff voice as he heaved a sack full of God-knows-what onto the table. “Help your sister.”
Jack’s eyes, previously roving from base-board to rafter in search of his crew of doppelgangers, skidded to a halt at the sight of his sister. Sara clutched a large potted tree, her shoulders and upper torso bowed back to support its weight. She winked at him, smiling that damned smile of hers, the one she reserved for occasions when she was especially pleased with herself.
Feeling dusty-headed, Jack shook himself vigorously, brushing off his shirt and vest before breezing past Elizabeth - red as a beet and rocking on her heels - to pry the damned tree from Sara’s arms before she dropped the bloody thing on her feet.
“Distracted?” she teased in Malayalam as he hefted the pot from her arms, branches and leaves rustling across his cheek with a mean sting. “We can leave, you know.”
“And why exactly are you here, hmmm?”
“Because the mother of your child asked us to come.”
“She’s not the mother of my child.”
“So you say.”
“This has nothing to do with what I say, Sister-dear. Cold, hard facts. The woman is married to a rather dull and unimaginative bloke that just so happened to steal my one chance at immortality, and who just so happened to plant his own seeds in his own field - a miraculous event facilitated by myself, nonetheless, so if you don’t mind, leave off with the damned mother-child nonsense, hmm?”
“And you’re one hundred percent positive that there’s no chance the child could be yours?”
“In life there are very few certainties -“
“Ah! Caught you.”
“You did nothing of the sort.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Sara, as your elder, I’m telling you that -“
She clucked her teeth, brows knotted in something between amusement and annoyance.
Switching to English, Sara’s mouth quirked into a slow, crooked grin, as arch and pleased as a mongoose in a den of snakes. It was a frustratingly familiar expression, actually. “Accha, no arguings today, hmm Raj-bhaiyya? You’ll do your family this one kindness, yes?”
Elizabeth cleared her throat, and it was then that Jack realized he’d been standing in the middle of the room, holding a potted tree, of all absurdities, while his father and his doom stood watching him speak an incomprehensible language to his all-too-pleased sister.
He cursed under his breath, lugging the tree across the room and depositing it in the corner.
“Right,” Jack said, straightening and trying his best to mimic the look of a man unphased by the various lumps of tension thickening the room’s atmosphere. “So you’re all here. Just splendid.”
“I thought it would be nice,” Elizabeth chimed in, her voice smaller and more constricted than usual, “to have your family come and celebrate with us. After all, I did rush you out of the city last night and spoiled all of our plans.”
“Gets that from the eunuch, she does. Always doing something foolish, those Turners,” whispered a familiar voice in his ear, one of the shrunken Jacks reclining in the crook of his neck. Jack shook his head, but mini-Jack merely pitched and bent with the motion.
Bloody sea legs.
“And so, I hope it’s alright, Jack,” finished Elizabeth with a nervous smile. If he hadn’t been sure he was already quite mad, he’d have sworn that Elizabeth actually shuffled her feet as she spoke. And at any rate, she did seem to be avoiding his eyes a good bit, focusing instead on his sister and his father, who had seated himself at the table and was tuning his infernal, ever-present guitar.
After several moments of dust-settling silence, it was his nephew that finally broke the tension. Still small enough to wrap himself in his mother’s sari-tail, he’d been hiding there since the trio had entered the room. Now, he burst forth, launching across the room and colliding with his uncle with a great thud, his arms clasped tight around Jack’s waist.
Only the best effort of Jack’s recently-cursed sea legs prevented them from toppling to the floor in a tangle.
“Raj-mama! Raj-mama!” Rajeev yelled, still clinging and bouncing. “We sailed on a boat, and Ayah drove the boat, and I saw a mermaid, but Ammah said it wasn’t a mermaid. I think you and Captain-Aunty have seen lots of mermaids, haven’t you? Do you believe I saw a mermaid, Raj-mama?”
Jack pried his nephew from his waist with some effort, and he couldn’t help but notice Elizabeth’s bloody smirk as he crouched down, ruffling the boy’s hair and holding him at arm’s length. “Now let’s see,” he conjured his most concerned voice, grasping the boy’s chin and tilting his head left and then right, “how old are you now?”
“Almost ten.”
“Ah, almost ten Almost…ten, you say?” He stroked the stubble of his beard, tapping his chin in puzzlement.
“Ten!”
“Ten, is it? Well, it all makes perfect bloody sense then! That’s just about the right age, I’d say.”
“Almost the right age for what?” asked the boy, his brows gathering.
Jack sprung to his feet, plucking the boy from the floor and giving him a good spin before settling his weight at his hip. Rajeev squealed, giggling and clapping. Nearly ten years old and the boy was still small - alarmingly small.
Jack made a note to have a talk with his sister about her coddling.
“Uncle, what am I the right age for?”
Making a show of testing the boy’s weight, Jack responded in a strangled voice, “Just about the right heft, too.”
Jack spun again, only to find himself face-to- face with Lizzie upon righting himself. He felt his damned, treacherous throat catch as he swallowed. She blinked those wretched fawn-eyes at him, brimming with tenderly muted approval, and so he pivoted away to address Teague, whose gnarled fingers were plucking out some tune that savored of Christmas in a rather vague sort of way.
“And your input, Keeper?”
“’Bout the right age,“ Teague replied. He did not look up, but the crags of his face shifted, the crooked line of a smile emerging.
“But Uncle! Uncle! What am I the right age for? What, what, what?” Jack grimaced as Rajeev gave his queue a good tug, but he ignored the boy, instead making a half-turn towards Elizabeth.
“And my liege?” He spoke more softly than he liked, regarding her over his shoulder and raising a brow. Studying the round bulb of her belly, he avoided that blasted look of hers. If he held his breath - just a little, for just a moment - then it was only because of the child’s weight at his side.
“Oh, I’d say he’s just the right age,” she replied, smiling that damned smile of hers that unfolded, like something bloody secret and steeped in memory and just for him.
He turned away, setting the boy on the floor and patting his head once again.
“But Uncle Jack,” the boy whined. Sara clucked from somewhere near the fire, and Rajeev shuffled his feet somewhat guiltily.
“You know I don’t like when you call your uncle that, Rajeev,” came the familiar chastisement in Malayalam. Jack had long ago given up trying to reason with his sister about his choice of name. She just plain didn’t like it - and she certainly wouldn’t utter it, rejecting it summarily as a moniker unsuitable for her children - well, child, actually - to speak.
Bloody, stubborn woman.
Any attempt at arguing with her about this particular topic being futile, Jack simply shrugged, giving the lad another wink-and-ruffle.
“Sorry, Raj-mama,” pouted Rajeev, and Jack could almost feel his sister nodding that her righteous nod of hers behind him. “Please, please tell me what I’m the right age for. Please.”
“Why, sighting mermaids of course.” Jack stroked his chin, his fingers startling, once again, at the unfortunate absence of braids. “Yes, must’ve been ‘bout ten years old myself when I encountered my first mermaid. Your mum -“
Sara coughed rather loudly.
“Right. I meant to say: your ammah was very young then, just a baby no bigger than me two hands and barely able to walk at that. Well, our mum had sent me down to the market to fetch some lentils and ghee, but of course I - being a might independent of spirit even then - went to the shore instead, as it was near some holiday or other and all the fisherman had decorated their boats with paint and flowers, and so of course I wanted to see all of it something fierce. Now, you wouldn’t want to follow old Jack’s example in this, of course - your mother’ll ring me bloody neck if you did, and you’d miss your Uncle Jack, now wouldn’t you? In any case, truth is I was an awful terror with a mind of me own, so I went where I pleased despite the boxing I knew I’d get when I returned home.”
“You weren’t scared?”
“’Course I was scared. But scared’s not a reason to miss out on all the fun, is it?” Jack scratched at his temple, the scorching heat of his sister’s disapproval blazing at him in waves.
“So what happened, Raj-mama?”
“Well, I went down to the shore and found me way down the docks, all the way to the very edge. Now, it was quite a walk from our home to the native’s docks, where all the small boats anchored, so you’d imagine my surprise when I felt a very small hand tugging on my britches.”
“Was it a mermaid?”
“Even more shocking, actually,” he arched a brow, squinting a bit and smiling with his full compliment of his gold. “It was your mother. Somehow, she’d followed me through town and down to the docks. Now, as you can imagine, I was quite shocked. In fact, I was so surprised that I staggered back and slipped a bit - bloody fish scales everywhere, slicking up the place - and your mum lost her grip on me leg and went toppling into the ocean.”
Rajeev gawked in wide-eyed terror in the general habit of all children hearing harrowing tales of their parents for the first time.
“Now, I was a spectacular swimmer even then - fish-like, you might even say - but your ammah was like a rock in those days, and she sunk straight to the bottom just like a boulder. Plunk, plunk, plunk.” Jack pantomimed a falling motion with his hands, his wrists flopping over each other like something tripping down imaginary stairs.
“See what troubles you were bringing me into even then,” his sister called from her perch near the stew.
“What happened next, Raj-mama?” Rajeev managed, gulping.
“Ah, well I was just about to leap into the water and heroically save your ammah from certain doom when suddenly the water started bubbling - and what should appear, popping to the surface, right-as-rain and wailing like a banshee?”
“A mermaid!”
“No, actually it was your mum again….
“Oh,” Rajeev sulked.
“But do you know what brought her to me?”
“Is it a mermaid this time?”
“Right you are.”
“Really?”
“On my honor as a pirate.”
“What did she look like?”
“Well, she had long brown hair and large, rum-colored eyes, and she was entirely naked-”
“Small ears, Raj,” came his sister’s voice. Frowning, she crossed her arms, her foot tapping.
“Right, right. Not quite old enough for that part yet. Neither was I, come to think of it. Well, I’ll tell you when you’re older, then. Point is, it was a mermaid what saved your mother, and she told me that I was ingratiated with the natives, as it were, and to look for her when I was old enough.”
“Did you find her when you grew up?”
“Oh please, Jack,” chimed Elizabeth, beaming down at him. “Do tell.”
Jack grinned, returning his attention to his nephew. “You could say I did, though I’ll have to save that story for later, hmmm?”
“Why?”
“Because your mum and your aunty will have my hide. Stew me for dinner, they will. Come back in five years and I’ll tell you all about it.”
“Promise?”
“Cross my black heart,” Jack replied, standing and sketching a quick ‘X’ above his heart. He strolled to the stew, nudging his sister out of the way to peer down at it. Distantly, he heard Rajeev questioning Elizabeth about mermaids, and as he bent to dip a spoon into the pot, he recognized the sound of Lizzie’s shuffle and the scraping of a chairs being dragged from the table.
He sipped at the broth, jumping back with a curse when the concoction proved scaldingly hot. He swallowed with a grimace, his tongue feeling a bit like burlap. “What do you think?” he ventured with a twitch of his brow, eyeing Sara as he panted to cool his tongue.
“Needs spicing,” she replied, fiddling with several pouches tied around her waist, pinching bits of powder and leaves from each.
“Still carrying those around with you, I see.” He made a fluttering motion, indicating the makeshift belts looped beneath the front wing of her sari.
“These are - what is it you say? My effects, isn’t it?” Shrugging, she gave the stew a taste. “Ah, much-much better.”
Sara dipped the spoon into the pot, blowing on the broth for good measure before extending it to him. Jack took a sip, immediately tasting chili and something warm, leafy and earthen and tingling a bit. Something that felt a good deal like sunlight spreading through his belly. He raised an eyebrow, waiting.
“What?” she shrugged, her Malayalam seeming to reach into his head - a head which suddenly felt rather golden-numb and cooperative - as she brushed imaginary dust from her hands. “A Spice Mistress does not stop her work for a holiday. Besides, you seemed tense. It’s just a little chili for truth and cumin to nurture feelings of love and family. Simple cooking and no unnecessary magic, yes?”
“Well, it tastes damn good, but all flavor aside - Sara, when will you bloody learn that we do not need your bloody doctoring,” he grimaced a bit, the corner of his lip twitching skyward, but his heart was not in it. “Should have known you’d be meddling with the damn-“
“So, brother-ji, what happened to your face, hmmm?”
“My face?”
“And your clothes.”
“Oh. Right. Well, I made a small change for Elizabeth. She was missing her husband, and I told her I’d just, “ he leaned back, his fingers flitting to and fro as though tallying some imaginary sum, “-well, I’d just sort of take his place for the day, savvy? Hence my rather unfortunate appearance of propriety and-” He gave his underarms a sniff, “- cleanliness. Next to Godliness, you know.”
She laid her hand on his arm, stilling him. “This is a dangerous game you’re playing, Raj.”
“Nonsense. Poppycock, even.”
“You should not toy with your heart, Raj. You will only end up clipping your own wings, yes?” Her brows furrowed, and she was looking at him with that particularly burdened look that his mother used to adopt whenever he’d done something daft.
“Bollocks, sis.” Giving his head a good shake, he swayed back towards the table, towards Teague and his guitar and Elizabeth and her bright, wide eyes, flickering in the candlelight as she regaled his nephew with some story or other.
And perhaps, if his hand found its place on Lizzie’s shoulder, he told himself it was only the spice clouding his good sense.
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Myrrh for the King: Part Two