Potc | Will Turner, Elizabeth Swann
Title: Forgotten
Characters: Will Turner, Elizabeth Swann, Calypso/Davy Jones referenced
Rating: Gen
Word Count: 755
Summary: Captain Will Turner meets an old friend.
originally posted here
Forgotten
Times have changed.
He can smell it on he wind - smoke chasing the waves instead of gentle green scents -, he can see it in the grey disfigured clouds rising up from new black ships, and he can feel it in the faithless surprise with which most accept his guiding hand.
By the time he died Davy Jones had turned from fact to much feared legend but Captain William Turner has long stopped being woven into the stories of old blind sailors over too much grog.
You don’t need them fear ta be powerful, Calypso whispers in his ears with every gush of wind but he knows her own immortal pride too has suffered more wounds than she can heal. It scares him how much she has come to need his worshipping kisses to remind her she was a goddess once. Sometimes he wishes he could remember too, remember a time when his name wasn’t only mumbled by the cold, blue lips of the dead.
“Will…”
He turns slowly in surprise, away from the too quickly changing look of the shores he once loved so much. No one has called him that in decades. Even Calypso only ever called him Captain - a memory and a chain.
The woman standing in front of him is wearing a fine, expensive dress of the latest fashion, as far as Will can tell, too fine for a voyage on sea. Her thin bony fingers are weighed down by heavy rings and golden bracelets cover her wrists as if she had been prepared to pay for the crossing long before the first storm clouds appeared on the horizon. She’s old. Old as the earth it seems - with a wrinkled tortoise face, long, snow white hair, and a small, fragile body that might have been the object of luscious dreams a lifetime ago but shrunk visibly as old age set in.
The slightly melancholic smile that tugs at her pale lips speaks of shared memories but Will doesn’t recognise her. He might have met her in her youth, when he was sill a man, or during those scarce days close to shore in the first decades of his death sentence - he stopped searching the closeness of the living when the craving for a life he’d never had the chance to live got too strong. She can’t have been more than thirty the last time Will saw a living, breathing, wanting woman.
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten me, Will Turner.”
She laughs. A loud, bright, sunny sound - unbecoming any elegant woman, not just one of her age. A sound he knows he heard often once upon a time. There’s a bright shine in her eyes that speaks of a young, free spirit trapped in an old woman’s fading body and Will can feel the sudden crazy speed of the ghost of a heart even across seven raging seas.
“Elizabeth…” His voice breaks around her name like waves on a rock. Some things never change it seems - love, fear, need, hearts, they always break as they clash on the hard determination of Elizabeth Swann to get her way.
Will remembers stories now. Stories of a young woman collecting men’s hearts and pride, leaving them dry and broken wherever she went. The legend of a new age. A sexual predator.
“I missed you,” she says with the gentle smile of someone who has seen it all. “You never came to visit.”
There’s hurt in her voice, somewhere deep down, and it fills Will with guilt. His only selfish deed. Keeping away from her after she had refused to safeguard his heart. I can’t. I would only break it. He knows now it was the right course for both of them, it never belonged to her, not really, but for years he felt the need to punish her for severing his last real tie to reality.
He doesn’t tell her that. She knows. She must know.
“Why are you here?” he asks instead.
She shrugs. The movement of a young girl rippling through a dried out body.
“I wanted it to be you.”
It’s enough. No more words are needed.
He will not hold her hand as she steps on white shores but he will be there. Watching as she sheds the years like snakeskin, breathing freely for the first time in decades as she breaks free of the chains surrounding her wild soul. She will smile at him one last time - loving, cheeky, beautiful.
And just for that one moment he will exist again.
Characters: Will Turner, Elizabeth Swann, Calypso/Davy Jones referenced
Rating: Gen
Word Count: 755
Summary: Captain Will Turner meets an old friend.
originally posted here
Forgotten
Times have changed.
He can smell it on he wind - smoke chasing the waves instead of gentle green scents -, he can see it in the grey disfigured clouds rising up from new black ships, and he can feel it in the faithless surprise with which most accept his guiding hand.
By the time he died Davy Jones had turned from fact to much feared legend but Captain William Turner has long stopped being woven into the stories of old blind sailors over too much grog.
You don’t need them fear ta be powerful, Calypso whispers in his ears with every gush of wind but he knows her own immortal pride too has suffered more wounds than she can heal. It scares him how much she has come to need his worshipping kisses to remind her she was a goddess once. Sometimes he wishes he could remember too, remember a time when his name wasn’t only mumbled by the cold, blue lips of the dead.
“Will…”
He turns slowly in surprise, away from the too quickly changing look of the shores he once loved so much. No one has called him that in decades. Even Calypso only ever called him Captain - a memory and a chain.
The woman standing in front of him is wearing a fine, expensive dress of the latest fashion, as far as Will can tell, too fine for a voyage on sea. Her thin bony fingers are weighed down by heavy rings and golden bracelets cover her wrists as if she had been prepared to pay for the crossing long before the first storm clouds appeared on the horizon. She’s old. Old as the earth it seems - with a wrinkled tortoise face, long, snow white hair, and a small, fragile body that might have been the object of luscious dreams a lifetime ago but shrunk visibly as old age set in.
The slightly melancholic smile that tugs at her pale lips speaks of shared memories but Will doesn’t recognise her. He might have met her in her youth, when he was sill a man, or during those scarce days close to shore in the first decades of his death sentence - he stopped searching the closeness of the living when the craving for a life he’d never had the chance to live got too strong. She can’t have been more than thirty the last time Will saw a living, breathing, wanting woman.
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten me, Will Turner.”
She laughs. A loud, bright, sunny sound - unbecoming any elegant woman, not just one of her age. A sound he knows he heard often once upon a time. There’s a bright shine in her eyes that speaks of a young, free spirit trapped in an old woman’s fading body and Will can feel the sudden crazy speed of the ghost of a heart even across seven raging seas.
“Elizabeth…” His voice breaks around her name like waves on a rock. Some things never change it seems - love, fear, need, hearts, they always break as they clash on the hard determination of Elizabeth Swann to get her way.
Will remembers stories now. Stories of a young woman collecting men’s hearts and pride, leaving them dry and broken wherever she went. The legend of a new age. A sexual predator.
“I missed you,” she says with the gentle smile of someone who has seen it all. “You never came to visit.”
There’s hurt in her voice, somewhere deep down, and it fills Will with guilt. His only selfish deed. Keeping away from her after she had refused to safeguard his heart. I can’t. I would only break it. He knows now it was the right course for both of them, it never belonged to her, not really, but for years he felt the need to punish her for severing his last real tie to reality.
He doesn’t tell her that. She knows. She must know.
“Why are you here?” he asks instead.
She shrugs. The movement of a young girl rippling through a dried out body.
“I wanted it to be you.”
It’s enough. No more words are needed.
He will not hold her hand as she steps on white shores but he will be there. Watching as she sheds the years like snakeskin, breathing freely for the first time in decades as she breaks free of the chains surrounding her wild soul. She will smile at him one last time - loving, cheeky, beautiful.
And just for that one moment he will exist again.