Crossing Paths
Title: Crossing Paths
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Disney's. I don't own it. No infringement is intended and no profit is made.
Summary: One version of a post-AWE encounter.
Author's note: Real life got in the way, but here's the fic I was originally going to write for geekmama's birthday. She requested Jack and Elizabeth meeting for the first time post-AWE and/or dreams vs. reality, and I tried to fit that in. Thank you goes again to jenthegypsy for beta reading.
Crossing Paths
by Hereswith
She should have known. Maybe she had, at the back of her mind, even as she walked away. That first occasion, on the battlements, had not meant goodbye, so why should the second be different? Fate has played games with her before-that it carries Jack Sparrow into her life again, on the whim of the wind, on a black-sailed ship, shouldn’t surprise her.
She has thought of him, this she will admit, but the existence she has carved from the wreck of what she loved has scarcely allowed her the pause to breathe, much less ponder, and she has thrown herself into the work with a will, proving to be her father’s daughter in ways Weatherby Swann could not have envisioned. But she believes, fiercely believes, that he would have been proud.
It isn’t Jack she spots, however, as she’s striding the maze of streets and winding alleys near the docks, it’s Gibbs, grey-grizzled Joshamee Gibbs, in animated conversation, and though she’s stunned, she catches the tail end of it, set adrift on the salt-heavy air.
“…the Fountain of Youth, aye, there’s a tale for ye, lad.”
But then he sees her, and mutters something to the boy, leaving him to approach her instead. “Miss-” He stumbles on it, and amends, “Captain.”
“Mr. Gibbs,” she responds, and smiles at him, genuinely glad. “Are you well? What brings you to the Cove?”
“Well as can be,” he replies. “Jack said he’d business here, and the crew weren’t complaining.” And she doesn’t ask, but he adds, his gaze shrewd but not unkind, “Likely he’s still on the Pearl.”
The urge to go, to seek him out, is tempered by sense and a curious hesitancy. She speaks a while to Gibbs, and when he departs, heading for a tavern, she tells herself, with firm conviction, that Jack Sparrow might wander Shipwreck City as he pleases, it has nothing to do with her.
But her feet, of their own accord, take her down to the sea.
*
She remembers searching the docks in Tortuga in a similar fashion, though it had been night, not day, the sun had not shone high above, round and bright as a penny. Her father had been alive then, and James, even James. And Will-she grits her teeth together. Though it’s no longer new, the pain of her losses, it lingers, close to the surface. The Black Pearl, its masts and dark hull, are unmistakable, and when she inquires for the captain, a pipe-smoking man she doesn’t recognise directs her to the Great Cabin.
She’s up the gangplank and halfway there when the cabin doors are flung open and Jack bursts out, with a barked, “Bugger! Where’s that bloody-”
He stops, stills at the sight of her, one hand on the door, a bottle dangling in the other, and her stomach clenches with an emotion she cannot name, it’s too tangled, it’s broadsheets and firelight, shackles and flight, clinging to him as they soared, when the taste in her mouth was ash and bitter tears.
He breaks the stare before she does, disengaging. “My liege,” he says, sketching a bow, and tension runs the length of those words, but not mockery. “To what do we owe the honour of such an illustrious visit?”
“I met Gibbs,” she replies, less explanation than stated fact, but wit seems to fail her. Her lips have gone parch dry, and she wets them. “You lost the Pearl? Again?”
“Ah.” He grins, but the mirth is fleeting, it doesn’t light his eyes. “Misplaced, actually. But I got her back.”
She casts a quick glance up, at the sails furled, glimpsing the blue-yellow flap of a parrot’s wings. “So I gather.”
There is yet another silence, not an easy one, and she regrets that, but cannot fathom how to change it. Some of the crew are about, voices swirl and eddy around them, and she hasn’t talked to him alone since, God, in so long, it was foolish-folly to come. What had she expected? That they would kiss in greeting, once was enough, shake hands or embrace like comrades? She has no inkling what they are to each other, or could be, anymore.
“Elizabeth.”
It startles her out of her musings enough to notice that the tightness around his jaw and that mobile mouth has eased, and she wonders what prompted it, what, apart from wariness, he can glean from her features.
“I’ve wine, if you’ll have it,” he says, then waves the bottle about. “Or there’s rum. A fine rum it is, too.”
“Of course.” She tucks back a wind-blown strand of hair, escaped from her braid, and decides. “Rum, I think.”
His lips twitch under the moustache, she’s almost sure of it, and he steps aside to let her pass.
*
He pours rum into a glass for her, then drapes himself casually on a chair next to her, placing the bottle on the chart-strewn table, within his reach. She sips, the liquor burning in her throat, but the strength of it steadies her as well, clearing her head, and she fiddles with the glass. “Did you just arrive?”
“Aye. This morning,” he says, and, in a wry tone, “I didn’t count on you appearing square on deck, as if by some conjurer’s trick.”
She studies him, considering. “But you counted on me being here?”
“Heard it rumoured, or things pointed to’t,” he replies, with a gesture of vague dismissal, and before she can question him further, “Teague’s kept you on your toes, has he?”
“You could call it that,” she says. It’s less than the sum of what has happened, but as much as she is willing, this instant, to share, and his brows flicker with interest, a curiosity he doesn’t voice. “Your father,” she comments, “can be formidable.”
He pulls a grimace. “No need telling me.”
“No, perhaps not,” she concedes, and downs a little more of the rum. “And you? If the Pearl is yours, what of Barbossa? Is he dead?”
He snorts. “Fit as a fiddle, rather. Or he was, when we parted company.”
Which is, she suspects, a description as wanting as hers. “Amicably?”
“’Tis a matter of definition. But,” he replies, a long finger raised for emphasis, “there was, in no form, shape or manner, marooning involved.”
“Good.” She can recall other days, when she would have, and had, prayed for Barbossa’s swift demise, but they are distant, and the news is welcome. “Gibbs said-you tried to find the Fountain of Youth?”
“Aqua de Vida.” His expression turns odd, unreadable. “The immortal Captain Jack Sparrow,” he continues, contemplatively, in deliberate echo of the past, then shrugs a shoulder. “I’m not, if that’s what you’re wondering. And I don’t have said miraculous elixir at hand for the drinking.”
She tenses under his narrowed regard, aware what he must think: she will age, as the years go by, but Will won’t. Youth regained, in the face of that, might seem a great temptation. But Gibbs has already informed her the quest was futile, and whatever had flared inside her at the mention has been doused.
“Oh, Jack.” It’s out before she can stifle and bury it, this remnant of her younger self, before the lies and the Kraken, and she blames the rum and his presence, familiar, when so much here has been anything but, and turbulent. “This isn’t what I-I never dreamed of this.”
“Pirating?” The glint of teeth is all edge, white and gold. “Didn’t you?”
She shoots him a glare, but doesn’t argue. “That isn’t what I meant.”
He grows serious, dropping pretence, lifts the bottle to his lips, and, after a swig, says, “She’s the sea, Calypso, and the sea’s a right harsh mistress. But you and the lad, you’ve had the worst of it.”
Will. She swallows, past the rise of a hollow, angry frustration. A wife, but not a wife, a widow, but not a widow, her husband undead. “I have his heart, Jack. His heart. In a chest. It’s madness.”
“I know, love.”
It’s quiet, gentler than she’s prepared for, and her eyes start to prickle, but she fights against it, striving to gather herself, to draw back from that treacherous brink. She will not dissolve into weeping in front of him, not like this. Unable to remain seated, she puts the nearly emptied glass aside and gets to her feet, pacing towards the stern, where the sunlight sifts through the windows. Beneath her, the ship rocks softly with the waves, the motion barely a comfort.
She sighs from her toes. “I miss him. So much. All of them. Even,” she adds, with a choked laugh, “my father’s scolding. But I have a life, I’m making a life, without them.” She looks over at him, by the table, watching her, and her chin comes up. “What I won might have been by circumstance, but what I hold, I’ve earned.”
He inclines his head, the beads and trinkets giving a sound. “I wasn’t doubting it. Though I’m hoping you’ve found yourself a nicer hat.”
She bristles, about to launch into protest, but the hint of teasing is evident in his face, and her annoyance fades. “It lacked elegance, perhaps,” she concedes, “but it served.” For a moment, she’s undecided, then ventures, feeling the truth of it as it’s uttered, “I missed you, too.”
“Did you now?” His lashes fan down, hiding his gaze, and when he returns it to her, it’s calm, revealing nothing. “And what reason would you have for wanting ol’ Jack around?”
She straightens her shoulders. “I could use a friend.”
He doesn’t answer. He sits leaned back, unmoving but for the fingertips absently tapping the neck of the bottle, and she cannot guess at the path of his thoughts, or where it might lead. There had been a time when his behaviour might have been less guarded, but he isn’t the same, nor is she, and what has been is not behind them. And though she shies from examining why his reply should matter, should be important, she cannot deny that it is.
At last, he shifts in the chair. “Aye.” A slight frown creases his forehead, then clears. “I won’t be staying at the Cove, mind. Places to be-”
“-horizons to chase,” she agrees. The fingers she has curled, white-knuckled against her palms, unfold and open, and something knotted hard and hurtful loosens within her. “I’m not certain that I shall be staying, either. The Empress might not be quite as fast as the Pearl, but she can fly.”
He nods, his glance sly of a sudden, and dark-fringed, a corner of his mouth quirking. “Well, then,” he says, simply, and indicates her abandoned glass. “Are you going to stand there, or join me?”
She takes a breath, a deep, long breath, and joins him.
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Disney's. I don't own it. No infringement is intended and no profit is made.
Summary: One version of a post-AWE encounter.
Author's note: Real life got in the way, but here's the fic I was originally going to write for geekmama's birthday. She requested Jack and Elizabeth meeting for the first time post-AWE and/or dreams vs. reality, and I tried to fit that in. Thank you goes again to jenthegypsy for beta reading.
Crossing Paths
by Hereswith
She should have known. Maybe she had, at the back of her mind, even as she walked away. That first occasion, on the battlements, had not meant goodbye, so why should the second be different? Fate has played games with her before-that it carries Jack Sparrow into her life again, on the whim of the wind, on a black-sailed ship, shouldn’t surprise her.
She has thought of him, this she will admit, but the existence she has carved from the wreck of what she loved has scarcely allowed her the pause to breathe, much less ponder, and she has thrown herself into the work with a will, proving to be her father’s daughter in ways Weatherby Swann could not have envisioned. But she believes, fiercely believes, that he would have been proud.
It isn’t Jack she spots, however, as she’s striding the maze of streets and winding alleys near the docks, it’s Gibbs, grey-grizzled Joshamee Gibbs, in animated conversation, and though she’s stunned, she catches the tail end of it, set adrift on the salt-heavy air.
“…the Fountain of Youth, aye, there’s a tale for ye, lad.”
But then he sees her, and mutters something to the boy, leaving him to approach her instead. “Miss-” He stumbles on it, and amends, “Captain.”
“Mr. Gibbs,” she responds, and smiles at him, genuinely glad. “Are you well? What brings you to the Cove?”
“Well as can be,” he replies. “Jack said he’d business here, and the crew weren’t complaining.” And she doesn’t ask, but he adds, his gaze shrewd but not unkind, “Likely he’s still on the Pearl.”
The urge to go, to seek him out, is tempered by sense and a curious hesitancy. She speaks a while to Gibbs, and when he departs, heading for a tavern, she tells herself, with firm conviction, that Jack Sparrow might wander Shipwreck City as he pleases, it has nothing to do with her.
But her feet, of their own accord, take her down to the sea.
*
She remembers searching the docks in Tortuga in a similar fashion, though it had been night, not day, the sun had not shone high above, round and bright as a penny. Her father had been alive then, and James, even James. And Will-she grits her teeth together. Though it’s no longer new, the pain of her losses, it lingers, close to the surface. The Black Pearl, its masts and dark hull, are unmistakable, and when she inquires for the captain, a pipe-smoking man she doesn’t recognise directs her to the Great Cabin.
She’s up the gangplank and halfway there when the cabin doors are flung open and Jack bursts out, with a barked, “Bugger! Where’s that bloody-”
He stops, stills at the sight of her, one hand on the door, a bottle dangling in the other, and her stomach clenches with an emotion she cannot name, it’s too tangled, it’s broadsheets and firelight, shackles and flight, clinging to him as they soared, when the taste in her mouth was ash and bitter tears.
He breaks the stare before she does, disengaging. “My liege,” he says, sketching a bow, and tension runs the length of those words, but not mockery. “To what do we owe the honour of such an illustrious visit?”
“I met Gibbs,” she replies, less explanation than stated fact, but wit seems to fail her. Her lips have gone parch dry, and she wets them. “You lost the Pearl? Again?”
“Ah.” He grins, but the mirth is fleeting, it doesn’t light his eyes. “Misplaced, actually. But I got her back.”
She casts a quick glance up, at the sails furled, glimpsing the blue-yellow flap of a parrot’s wings. “So I gather.”
There is yet another silence, not an easy one, and she regrets that, but cannot fathom how to change it. Some of the crew are about, voices swirl and eddy around them, and she hasn’t talked to him alone since, God, in so long, it was foolish-folly to come. What had she expected? That they would kiss in greeting, once was enough, shake hands or embrace like comrades? She has no inkling what they are to each other, or could be, anymore.
“Elizabeth.”
It startles her out of her musings enough to notice that the tightness around his jaw and that mobile mouth has eased, and she wonders what prompted it, what, apart from wariness, he can glean from her features.
“I’ve wine, if you’ll have it,” he says, then waves the bottle about. “Or there’s rum. A fine rum it is, too.”
“Of course.” She tucks back a wind-blown strand of hair, escaped from her braid, and decides. “Rum, I think.”
His lips twitch under the moustache, she’s almost sure of it, and he steps aside to let her pass.
*
He pours rum into a glass for her, then drapes himself casually on a chair next to her, placing the bottle on the chart-strewn table, within his reach. She sips, the liquor burning in her throat, but the strength of it steadies her as well, clearing her head, and she fiddles with the glass. “Did you just arrive?”
“Aye. This morning,” he says, and, in a wry tone, “I didn’t count on you appearing square on deck, as if by some conjurer’s trick.”
She studies him, considering. “But you counted on me being here?”
“Heard it rumoured, or things pointed to’t,” he replies, with a gesture of vague dismissal, and before she can question him further, “Teague’s kept you on your toes, has he?”
“You could call it that,” she says. It’s less than the sum of what has happened, but as much as she is willing, this instant, to share, and his brows flicker with interest, a curiosity he doesn’t voice. “Your father,” she comments, “can be formidable.”
He pulls a grimace. “No need telling me.”
“No, perhaps not,” she concedes, and downs a little more of the rum. “And you? If the Pearl is yours, what of Barbossa? Is he dead?”
He snorts. “Fit as a fiddle, rather. Or he was, when we parted company.”
Which is, she suspects, a description as wanting as hers. “Amicably?”
“’Tis a matter of definition. But,” he replies, a long finger raised for emphasis, “there was, in no form, shape or manner, marooning involved.”
“Good.” She can recall other days, when she would have, and had, prayed for Barbossa’s swift demise, but they are distant, and the news is welcome. “Gibbs said-you tried to find the Fountain of Youth?”
“Aqua de Vida.” His expression turns odd, unreadable. “The immortal Captain Jack Sparrow,” he continues, contemplatively, in deliberate echo of the past, then shrugs a shoulder. “I’m not, if that’s what you’re wondering. And I don’t have said miraculous elixir at hand for the drinking.”
She tenses under his narrowed regard, aware what he must think: she will age, as the years go by, but Will won’t. Youth regained, in the face of that, might seem a great temptation. But Gibbs has already informed her the quest was futile, and whatever had flared inside her at the mention has been doused.
“Oh, Jack.” It’s out before she can stifle and bury it, this remnant of her younger self, before the lies and the Kraken, and she blames the rum and his presence, familiar, when so much here has been anything but, and turbulent. “This isn’t what I-I never dreamed of this.”
“Pirating?” The glint of teeth is all edge, white and gold. “Didn’t you?”
She shoots him a glare, but doesn’t argue. “That isn’t what I meant.”
He grows serious, dropping pretence, lifts the bottle to his lips, and, after a swig, says, “She’s the sea, Calypso, and the sea’s a right harsh mistress. But you and the lad, you’ve had the worst of it.”
Will. She swallows, past the rise of a hollow, angry frustration. A wife, but not a wife, a widow, but not a widow, her husband undead. “I have his heart, Jack. His heart. In a chest. It’s madness.”
“I know, love.”
It’s quiet, gentler than she’s prepared for, and her eyes start to prickle, but she fights against it, striving to gather herself, to draw back from that treacherous brink. She will not dissolve into weeping in front of him, not like this. Unable to remain seated, she puts the nearly emptied glass aside and gets to her feet, pacing towards the stern, where the sunlight sifts through the windows. Beneath her, the ship rocks softly with the waves, the motion barely a comfort.
She sighs from her toes. “I miss him. So much. All of them. Even,” she adds, with a choked laugh, “my father’s scolding. But I have a life, I’m making a life, without them.” She looks over at him, by the table, watching her, and her chin comes up. “What I won might have been by circumstance, but what I hold, I’ve earned.”
He inclines his head, the beads and trinkets giving a sound. “I wasn’t doubting it. Though I’m hoping you’ve found yourself a nicer hat.”
She bristles, about to launch into protest, but the hint of teasing is evident in his face, and her annoyance fades. “It lacked elegance, perhaps,” she concedes, “but it served.” For a moment, she’s undecided, then ventures, feeling the truth of it as it’s uttered, “I missed you, too.”
“Did you now?” His lashes fan down, hiding his gaze, and when he returns it to her, it’s calm, revealing nothing. “And what reason would you have for wanting ol’ Jack around?”
She straightens her shoulders. “I could use a friend.”
He doesn’t answer. He sits leaned back, unmoving but for the fingertips absently tapping the neck of the bottle, and she cannot guess at the path of his thoughts, or where it might lead. There had been a time when his behaviour might have been less guarded, but he isn’t the same, nor is she, and what has been is not behind them. And though she shies from examining why his reply should matter, should be important, she cannot deny that it is.
At last, he shifts in the chair. “Aye.” A slight frown creases his forehead, then clears. “I won’t be staying at the Cove, mind. Places to be-”
“-horizons to chase,” she agrees. The fingers she has curled, white-knuckled against her palms, unfold and open, and something knotted hard and hurtful loosens within her. “I’m not certain that I shall be staying, either. The Empress might not be quite as fast as the Pearl, but she can fly.”
He nods, his glance sly of a sudden, and dark-fringed, a corner of his mouth quirking. “Well, then,” he says, simply, and indicates her abandoned glass. “Are you going to stand there, or join me?”
She takes a breath, a deep, long breath, and joins him.