Fic: Thieves and Beggars
Title: Thieves and Beggars
Author: djarum99
Rating: N17
Pairing: J/E
Warnings: Post AWE AU, contains spoilers
Disclaimer: Don’t own them, sadly, Disney does; but, please, they are pirates . I am making no profit, and the mouse is raking it in.
A/N: Had to do it - taking a break from AU-land, a very short vacation from writing A Priori. This is dark, angsty, unapologetic-smutty-ending-passion-fic. More author’s notes beneath the extra cut, as they are spoilery. I couldn’t write this from the perspective of AWE canon, partly because I’m not entirely sure what that is, and partly because, well, it just feels wrong, and not in a good way. We don’ need no stinkin’ resolution. OK - I kept the bloody parachute.
Jack carries her from that ship of death, and for a giddy moment she believes he has learned to fly. No soaring triumph, this, no heart-song victory; the gyre whirling beneath them has swallowed all that she won. She clings to him, rests her cheek against his skin, denies herself his warmth. The sea drifts up to claim her wayward captives, and she welcomes oblivion, the midnight embrace of peace, as his wings fail to hold the wind. She thinks he has soared too close to the sun, too close to her, and then all thought is gone.
When she wakes, it is to daylight and the embrace of coarse wool, the Pearl’s dark sails capturing wind above her. There is blood on the boards, dried rust-thick, and splintered oak beneath her back. She hears his approach and knows that she lies beside the wheel, that he has kept her within view.
“What am I, Jack? Enemy or treasure, that you keep me so near?”
“Think you’ve swallowed too much of the sea, Elizabeth. Makin’ no sense, even to me, a devout follower of all things nonsensical. Can you stand?” He does not wait for an answer to lift her to her feet. Swaying, she finds his gaze but refuses his hand.
“What am I, Jack? And what are we?”
In the days following his return, madness has draped him like a tattered moon-spun cloak, a sorry remnant of that place of sand and shadows. Now, she suspects that madness has become a disguise, another weapon he wields, like words, like smoke. Fey Jack, fairy-touched and glittering with his legend. Who better, to answer her question? It is unfair to ask it, cruel, she knows this, but cruelty has found its place in her heart, and in what lies between them.
His eyes dart from helm to mast, and when they finally meet hers, the sorrow of it takes her breath. “Enemy or treasure. To call you either would imply that you belong to me, Elizabeth. You don’t. We, us, you and me - a chimera, a fever-dream, a mere device of theatre. That play is over.”
“You saved Will. Guided his hand and lost immortality. He was...mine, and you saved him. I always knew you were a good man, Jack. I was always sorry.” The last are the cruellest words of all, but she will not withhold their truth, cannot spare him.
“And I've paid the price. Your ship awaits, Captain Swann.”
~
She follows him, relentless, her ship a gull to his dark falcon, trailing for weeks in the wake of the Pearl. The crew of the Empress raise no objections. Jack allows the chase, complicit in their joint pursuit of hapless merchants and exotic Asian spoils. She often wonders at his choice.
When they meet, it is to map a course, to haggle over the division of plunder, to share stolen wine in a silence both bittersweet and foreign. Often, she looks up from a chart or her cup to meet his gaze, sees wariness and something like hatred in his eyes. It is his right, an icy barrier that grants them both protection.
In daylight, he is the man she imagined him to be, once upon a time when the world held innocence. Sloe-eyed and grinning, the devil’s jester, in love with his fire-seared mistress. On an evening when she leaves him at the rail to return to her ship, she turns, catches him unaware. The stars sigh cold, their breath lifts his hair, and she can see him, stripped of artifice. She keens for him that night, for all that is lost, in a sea-salt rain of grief and tears.
Three months, winging free and ruthless, fleeing their horizon. He has become reckless, battle-wild as he never was before, abandoning himself to a bloodlust that is surely betrayal’s legacy. Her gift. On the deck of a Portuguese galleon she cuts a man down just as his sword reaches Jack’s throat, bared and defiant. Stooping to retrieve his blade, she feels a hand twist her collar and she is wrenched upward, pulled hard against him.
“Saving me again, Captain Swann? Why? Why are we doing this?”
“Because you will not forgive me. Because we will always do this.” His eyes flare with something she has feared, something she has longed for. Jack releases her, slowly, steps away and raises his hands in mock supplication.
“Ah. Forgiveness. Perhaps you should ask for it at a more opportune moment, one in which you aren't waving a sword in each hand, Elizabeth. Watch yourself.” He spins her then, to face the last of their opponents - they fight back to back until the galleon’s captain signals defeat.
She comes to him that night knowing it is inevitable, that there is only one way for this to end. Four steps inside his cabin door and they flow together like water, like river into sea. Jack’s mouth does not taste as she remembers it, and she finds relief in that, in the promise of this moment, raw and new. The kiss lasts until they both find safety in it, define the terms of their surrender. His body under her hands is a stranger’s, a familiar secret, and she searches beneath his shirt for skin she has never touched, for scars that speak of mystery.
They do not reach his bed, that first time. After, she will remember that his hands shook as he lowered her to the floor, trembled as he stripped her bare. She will remember his face, open to fear and want, his voice, whispering her name as if it holds both death and salvation. She opens to him and he does not hesitate, plunges into her. Cupping his face between her palms, she holds his eyes, offers her pain. She wants him to know that this is not penance, that what she gives owes nothing to their past.
Her body adjusts to the feel of him, creates a velvet friction that eases the ache and builds into flame until he spills inside her, too soon. Panting, he rolls her above him, strokes the bruises he has made, soothes her with his hands. Slender fingers cool with silver send her flying, spiralling ever higher until she breaks and falls.
He gives her more that night, shows her tenderness with his hands, his tongue, draws careful maps to places she has never imagined. She learns what it is to come undone around him, to feel him move sheathed within her until the universe collapses and there is only heat, and joy, and him. When their bodies can travel no further, she rests against his heartbeat, feels her own blood match his rhythm. His voice is a drowsy rumble, and she knows she wants to wake to this, wants the morning, and all their days to come.
“Never will be easy between us, Lizzie.”
“No. I promise never to kill you again. You needn’t worry about that.”
“Mmm. They'll all be following seas then, Bess, with that little storm behind us. Promise not to trade you to any Chinese pirate lords. ‘Fraid I can’t say the same should we encounter any Frenchmen. Notoriously hard to bargain with, the French.”
“Jack?”
“What, love?”
“Yes. Yes to everything, to every question we'll never ask. Yes.”
Author: djarum99
Rating: N17
Pairing: J/E
Warnings: Post AWE AU, contains spoilers
Disclaimer: Don’t own them, sadly, Disney does; but, please, they are pirates . I am making no profit, and the mouse is raking it in.
A/N: Had to do it - taking a break from AU-land, a very short vacation from writing A Priori. This is dark, angsty, unapologetic-smutty-ending-passion-fic. More author’s notes beneath the extra cut, as they are spoilery. I couldn’t write this from the perspective of AWE canon, partly because I’m not entirely sure what that is, and partly because, well, it just feels wrong, and not in a good way. We don’ need no stinkin’ resolution. OK - I kept the bloody parachute.
Jack carries her from that ship of death, and for a giddy moment she believes he has learned to fly. No soaring triumph, this, no heart-song victory; the gyre whirling beneath them has swallowed all that she won. She clings to him, rests her cheek against his skin, denies herself his warmth. The sea drifts up to claim her wayward captives, and she welcomes oblivion, the midnight embrace of peace, as his wings fail to hold the wind. She thinks he has soared too close to the sun, too close to her, and then all thought is gone.
When she wakes, it is to daylight and the embrace of coarse wool, the Pearl’s dark sails capturing wind above her. There is blood on the boards, dried rust-thick, and splintered oak beneath her back. She hears his approach and knows that she lies beside the wheel, that he has kept her within view.
“What am I, Jack? Enemy or treasure, that you keep me so near?”
“Think you’ve swallowed too much of the sea, Elizabeth. Makin’ no sense, even to me, a devout follower of all things nonsensical. Can you stand?” He does not wait for an answer to lift her to her feet. Swaying, she finds his gaze but refuses his hand.
“What am I, Jack? And what are we?”
In the days following his return, madness has draped him like a tattered moon-spun cloak, a sorry remnant of that place of sand and shadows. Now, she suspects that madness has become a disguise, another weapon he wields, like words, like smoke. Fey Jack, fairy-touched and glittering with his legend. Who better, to answer her question? It is unfair to ask it, cruel, she knows this, but cruelty has found its place in her heart, and in what lies between them.
His eyes dart from helm to mast, and when they finally meet hers, the sorrow of it takes her breath. “Enemy or treasure. To call you either would imply that you belong to me, Elizabeth. You don’t. We, us, you and me - a chimera, a fever-dream, a mere device of theatre. That play is over.”
“You saved Will. Guided his hand and lost immortality. He was...mine, and you saved him. I always knew you were a good man, Jack. I was always sorry.” The last are the cruellest words of all, but she will not withhold their truth, cannot spare him.
“And I've paid the price. Your ship awaits, Captain Swann.”
~
She follows him, relentless, her ship a gull to his dark falcon, trailing for weeks in the wake of the Pearl. The crew of the Empress raise no objections. Jack allows the chase, complicit in their joint pursuit of hapless merchants and exotic Asian spoils. She often wonders at his choice.
When they meet, it is to map a course, to haggle over the division of plunder, to share stolen wine in a silence both bittersweet and foreign. Often, she looks up from a chart or her cup to meet his gaze, sees wariness and something like hatred in his eyes. It is his right, an icy barrier that grants them both protection.
In daylight, he is the man she imagined him to be, once upon a time when the world held innocence. Sloe-eyed and grinning, the devil’s jester, in love with his fire-seared mistress. On an evening when she leaves him at the rail to return to her ship, she turns, catches him unaware. The stars sigh cold, their breath lifts his hair, and she can see him, stripped of artifice. She keens for him that night, for all that is lost, in a sea-salt rain of grief and tears.
Three months, winging free and ruthless, fleeing their horizon. He has become reckless, battle-wild as he never was before, abandoning himself to a bloodlust that is surely betrayal’s legacy. Her gift. On the deck of a Portuguese galleon she cuts a man down just as his sword reaches Jack’s throat, bared and defiant. Stooping to retrieve his blade, she feels a hand twist her collar and she is wrenched upward, pulled hard against him.
“Saving me again, Captain Swann? Why? Why are we doing this?”
“Because you will not forgive me. Because we will always do this.” His eyes flare with something she has feared, something she has longed for. Jack releases her, slowly, steps away and raises his hands in mock supplication.
“Ah. Forgiveness. Perhaps you should ask for it at a more opportune moment, one in which you aren't waving a sword in each hand, Elizabeth. Watch yourself.” He spins her then, to face the last of their opponents - they fight back to back until the galleon’s captain signals defeat.
She comes to him that night knowing it is inevitable, that there is only one way for this to end. Four steps inside his cabin door and they flow together like water, like river into sea. Jack’s mouth does not taste as she remembers it, and she finds relief in that, in the promise of this moment, raw and new. The kiss lasts until they both find safety in it, define the terms of their surrender. His body under her hands is a stranger’s, a familiar secret, and she searches beneath his shirt for skin she has never touched, for scars that speak of mystery.
They do not reach his bed, that first time. After, she will remember that his hands shook as he lowered her to the floor, trembled as he stripped her bare. She will remember his face, open to fear and want, his voice, whispering her name as if it holds both death and salvation. She opens to him and he does not hesitate, plunges into her. Cupping his face between her palms, she holds his eyes, offers her pain. She wants him to know that this is not penance, that what she gives owes nothing to their past.
Her body adjusts to the feel of him, creates a velvet friction that eases the ache and builds into flame until he spills inside her, too soon. Panting, he rolls her above him, strokes the bruises he has made, soothes her with his hands. Slender fingers cool with silver send her flying, spiralling ever higher until she breaks and falls.
He gives her more that night, shows her tenderness with his hands, his tongue, draws careful maps to places she has never imagined. She learns what it is to come undone around him, to feel him move sheathed within her until the universe collapses and there is only heat, and joy, and him. When their bodies can travel no further, she rests against his heartbeat, feels her own blood match his rhythm. His voice is a drowsy rumble, and she knows she wants to wake to this, wants the morning, and all their days to come.
“Never will be easy between us, Lizzie.”
“No. I promise never to kill you again. You needn’t worry about that.”
“Mmm. They'll all be following seas then, Bess, with that little storm behind us. Promise not to trade you to any Chinese pirate lords. ‘Fraid I can’t say the same should we encounter any Frenchmen. Notoriously hard to bargain with, the French.”
“Jack?”
“What, love?”
“Yes. Yes to everything, to every question we'll never ask. Yes.”