pirate_jack | (no subject)

(no subject)

Jack's been on deck for some time. It's late, now, and everything's gone quiet and still.

If he leans back against the rail, Jack finds, and looks up past the wheel at the sail above him rather than at the sky itself, then he doesn't have to notice that even the stars are oddly changed here.

Everything's different, at the end of the world.

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"It is," she agrees with the silence from behind him.

Two hands reach out over his shoulders to cover his eyes, gently. For a few moments, anyway.

A very few.

It's surprising, how fast Jack whirls around, and the beads make a clear rattling noise

(stone on stone - bone on bone - hear the rolling dice)

as he spins.

Silence stretches again, as he stares at her, and then he smiles, slowly.

"Hello, luv."

"Hi."

She's smiling at him, a little bit more to one side than the other.

"'S good to see you."

He hasn't moved. Jack stands, feet spread wide and swaying slightly as though under sail.

"Thought you always saw me." His hair is very gently smoothed by slim, pale fingers that have red-blue-purple-green-yellow-blue-green-blue-green-silver tips that make faint clinking sounds against beads.

"Don't always see you," he corrects. "Always know you're there, somewhere. Not the same."

A beat, and a tense one.

"Saw your sister, instead. After."

"Tends to work that way."

She's waiting, a little, for something--maybe from Jack, and maybe from the lake, and maybe from the sky--as she watches him with the smile not leaving her face.

He's still, very still, watching her-- and remembering.

(don't ever leave me and I won't leave you)

Jack looks up at the black sails stretching (like wings) above him.

"I didn't mean to go."

"I know. I know. You see? Maybe? I don't know. There's going, and there's coming, and there's leaving, and sometimes we mean it and sometimes we don't, and sometimes the times we mean it and don't are the same time. I don't know. But. I know. This."

There's a pearl at her neck that never goes away, and then it's held between two fingers, delicately, nails silver against the black surface.

"Do you want it back?"

He just looks at her for a moment, and there's a flash of something a little like both surprise and an odd sort of hurt in the black eyes.

Jack hums a song under his breath and spreads his hands, indicating the ship around them both.

"I already have me Pearl, lass." A beat. "Thought we had an accord?"

She smiles more widely, but her expression is still serious.

"Tempus frangit, non autem memoria."

The pearl's still in her hand as she looks at him with two eyes the color of moonlight on the sea.

"Do you want it back, Captain?"

He takes one step toward her, then another.

"I remember, luv. I do. Did you think I'd forget?" He shakes his head. "Told you once that I'd rather be dead myself than live without you."

He's standing in front of her now, and as he speaks he takes her by the wrist and turns her hand over, palm-up, then takes the pearl.

"Now I may be dead, but it'd be worse still to lose you as well, savvy?"

Jack places the gleaming gem in her palm and folds her fingers over it.

"Keep it, luv."

He says it very quietly.

Keep me, he doesn't. There's no need to.

She laughs, lightly, and her fingers are tight around the gem as she stands on her tip-toes to kiss his forehead as gently as she can and it's like

(smelling flowers and champagne and feet twirling in a dance)

(tHe ScEnT oF oLD wInE aNd SwEaT aNd ThE DeCk RoCkINg ToO mUcH)

(waking up and knowing that nothing's the same and learning to let go)

(the smell of fresh grass and the sea and the sun on your face as the wind blows and you're exactly where you need to be)

she loves him. Because she does.

"Then we've yet an accord, Captain. And so you didn't leave. And I will never leave you. Savvy, oh captain, my captain?"

Jack grins exuberantly down at her and then with a single whirling motion, he's lifted her high in the air and spun her around and around with him in a dizzying circle before setting her on her feet once more.

"Savvy."

He's still grinning.

"It will be different."

It. She. I. You.

Pronouns, maybe, don't matter in this case.

But he's kissed by her, with something of a michievous grin, anyway, and the pearl is back at her neck.

And there it will stay, for a good long time.

Maybe not forever, but little is forever. Still--there's something quite close to it, if you're Endless.

"However you want. I'll be here." Beat. "Not six dimensional, though. Only not that. I don't like that. It leaves everything smelling of acid."

"Sounds messy."

Jack wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her close, breathing in the scent of her hair even as he closes his eyes to shut out the sight of the lake beyond.

"Just be here, luv. That's what's important."

"Yeah. It is. And I can do that."

Her arms are firm around him

(it's okay; I hurt too)

and the wind picks up and brings with it the smell of salt, even if the lake is freshwater.

"There are things," she says, after a few moments, against his hair and neck, "beyond Endless, Jack. Things beyond Death, past her, and things beyond Destiny and a Power that is greater than any of us seven. There are things not in the book, and there are wild roses, as well as tamed ones, and they grow just as strong. You have to search extra hard for them, and sometimes,"

(who knows what she sees with her mismatched eyes?)

"it's hard to look at them when you find them. But the thing is--you can find them. And there are ways, and there are paths. And do you know what I think?"

"What's that, then?"

He hasn't stirred; Jack's very still, even intent, as he listens.

"I think that Captain Jack Sparrow can't be bound to a lake forever, any more than the tide can be kept back."

Her hand is stroking his hair again, as gently as she would Derry's, and her arms won't let go.

"And I think I'll laugh with you in Singapore again."

The commodore had said much the same.

(bring me that horizon)

Jack sighs, then kisses the top of her head before pulling back enough to look down at her with a wicked grin.

"'Course you will, luv. As you say-- I'm Captain Jack Sparrow."

"Pirate," she says, smiling up at him.

"Through and through. Except maybe for your left ear."

Her grin says she knows she's a brat.

Jack deliberately puts on a vaguely offended look and raises one hand to his ear.

"Me ear's just fine."

"Looks like it might be a commodore's ear more than a pirate's."

Now he looks even more offended.

"I've got better style than that, luv."

A beat.

"And a better hat."

"How about a vicar's ear, then?"

Jack makes a face at her.

"Tried that. Didn't exactly work."

"Oh, fine," with irritation, "you can have a pirate's ear, then."

And she's giggling a moment later.

He grins wickedly and sweeps an elaborate, swaying bow, glancing up at her as he does.

"You're too kind, luv."

"I know."

She curtseys back, before moving towards him, nimbly, and wrapping arms around him again.

"I'll be here. As long as you are. Without leaving. Not even once."

His arms go around her in turn.

Jack holds tightly to Del, not unlike a drowning man clinging to a spar, and his words as he buries his face in her hair once more are muffled and yet somehow still easy to hear.

"Counting on it."

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