try_corsets | (no subject)

(no subject)

Deep down, Elizabeth has known her time was very near. She isn't entirely certain how she has known, but she has. The thought has been drifting through her mind like a lazily meandering piece of driftwood, buoyant but easily pushed aside time and again, left there until she has the desire and fortitude to reel it back and firmly acknowledge the truth in it. For days Elizabeth has existed in a state of semi-awareness, barking orders and making plans, absently noting changes, all at the same time.

Because she's Captain Elizabeth Turner, Pirate King, and she has a position she is determined to maintain.

Somehow.

When the first pain hits, she thinks, Yes, there it is, and stares at her face in her small, cracked looking glass; so different now than the face she'd seen reflected back at her in Port Royal. Better, she thinks. Lived in. The corner of her mouth curves up, and the full lips in the mirror do the same. The scarlet sash today, she decides with a decisive nod, gingerly getting dressed as she had the day before, and the day before that.

Tai Huang eyes her half an hour later, as he is giving a report. Elizabeth slowly, carefully unclenches her fingers from the starboard rail. "The wind is shifting. Starboard tack." As she moves away she does her best to walk straight and tall, not waddle.

Everyone on board knows where to find the Captain at sunrise (keep a weather eye on the horizon), though she's rarely bothered these days. Still, when she gasps aloud and unbends her stiff shoulders to curl in, to try and stop it, two of the men Tai Huang and Gibbs like to keep in their sights guffaw from the main deck. Straightening takes no small effort of will, but she does it; and as she does, she sets her mouth in a thin line and decides, finally, that it's time to find Gibbs. Ready or not, the baby has had enough of waiting.

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She throws a lumpy pillow at his head.

"Tell him it is entirely unfair that I should be trapped here while he is free to stride the length and breadth of his ship, waiting in comfort."

Beat.

"No. I've reconsidered. Do not tell him that at all. Say I am well. The child is also well."

A pain hits her hard.

"Wait! Do NOT leave, James. Send someone else."

Edited 2011-02-06 01:19 (UTC)

He had turned to leave - twice - before he finally returns to his place by the door.

"As you wish, Elizabeth. Anyone in particular?"

Elizabeth glances at Demeter, then Guppy.

"Someone we knoooooooooooOW," she gets out through clenched teeth, waving a hand at the door to the main bar.

Mr. Gibbs might still be lurking about.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the door...

"Devils and black sheep and really bad eggs," he sings, under his breath, following it up with a swallow of rum.

Evidently Jack's pondering a complicated problem.

"Ah, Captain Sparrow", comes a familiar voice from the infirmary doorway. "Are you terribly busy, or could I prevail on you to carry a message?"

Jack rolls his eyes, and concludes by slanting a bright glance at Norrington.

"If it isn't old Jim. Hello, mate."

A beat.

"Now just what sort of message is it that's got you thinking I'd be one to go at your beck, hm?"

"Well, it seems we are soon to have a new Turner in the world", Norrington tells him. "The lady would like the late Captain Turner to be kept informed. I would go myself, but for some reason she seems quite determined that I stay."

He sits bolt upright, swaying, and stares at him in alarm.

"You're not serious."

"Entirely", Norrington informs him. "Now, will you go, or should I find someone else?"

Jack eyes him for a few seconds longer, then gives a sudden bright, winning smile.

"S'pose I could at that."

Norrington eyes him dubiously, not entirely sure what to make of that smile, but nods.

"All right, then."

He nods back, beads rattling.

"... and the message?" he prompts, innocently. "That is, if the lad's to be found out in the lake." A beat. "Because I've no intention of taking the other route."

"He's there", Norrington confirms. "Or I wouldn't be here. The message is that all is going as it should, at present."

"Fair enough," Jack opines.

He gets to his feet and touches two fingers to his hat as he gives Norrington a small, swaying bow.

"I'll be on me way, then."

He turns and starts to saunter to the door, calling over his shoulder,

"Tell Lizzie good luck for me, won't you, Jim?"

"Consider it done", Norrington calls back, then turns and ducks back into the infirmary.

Meanwhile, out on the lake:

The dead Captain Turner is leaning on the railing, looking out towards the bar, waiting for news.

And then he's pacing the deck on legs that haven't been this restless in all the time he's been confined to the Flying Dutchman.

And then he's back at the prow, arms straight enough to lift his feet off the deck.

Come on.

Jack strolls through the lake door and straight toward the beach of the Caribbean inlet, more-or-less in a straight line.

"Ahoy the ship!" he calls, once he's in range, and then shakes his head mournfully as he gets a look at her captain.

"William. You look like a man what could use a drink."

"Jack!" Will calls, sudden, urgently, all his frustration finding a way out through that one single syllable.

He's had a lot of practice saying that syllable in frustrated, impatient ways. He's really quite good at it now.

"Do you have news? Is it here yet? How is she? How are they?"

He gesticulates wildly with both hands, as if trying to shush the other man.

"Patience, son. These things take time, savvy?"

Jack sways with the force of his handwaving, nearly overbalances, then collects himself and recalls his errand.

"Now. Happens as I've a message for you, by way of Jim. Says I'm to say the lady sends her regards, and all's well at present."

Will was still leaning against the ship's railings like a small boy with a stuffed bear racing sticks under the bridge. Now, he relaxes his arms enough to lower his feet to the deck.

"That's not news, Jack!" he calls, in defiance of it being exactly what he needed to hear. "Tell her I'm here. Tell her - them her I love her - them. Both of them!"

Beat.

"Tell someone else to tell her that."

He doesn't want Jack in a room with his wife while she's in that situation.

He rolls his eyes.

"He's as bad as Adam was."

Jack flashes Will a bright grin, showing all his teeth, and gives him a sardonic bow.

"Anything else, Captain Turner?"

He doesn't wait for an answer.

"No? Then I'll be on my way."

Jack spins on his heel and begins his sashaying way back towards the bar, tossing over his shoulder as he goes,

"I'll bring you a spot of rum with the next bit of news, William. Never fear."

Jack relays the message to Norrington, who carries it to Elizabeth, who has a hard time concentrating on the words at that precise moment. Then,

"He is toasting this happy event, and loves it, even if it had failed to put in an appearance at the time of my greetings and salutations, as it were?"

It's possible the sentiment of Will's message got lost in translation.

Time passes. Time full of yelling and demanding and pain, for Elizabeth. She knows instinctively it won't be long, however. Or possibly she has decided to attempt commanding their son into the world and refuses to accept dissent from her crew, as it were.

"Tell him," she gasps, eyes bloodshot and fierce, hair plastered to her forehead. "Tell him I'd kill him if it would do ANY good.

"NO! No, don't say that. Tell him it won't be long." She grabs the nearest person and says through clenched teeth, "It had BETTER not be LONG."

He'd been listening to the shouts and screamed commands from safely outside the room, as despite William's request there's no way in heaven, hell, or in between that Jack Sparrow has any intention of allowing himself to be dragged into that sort of madness.

When the next message for relay is passed out to him, he mutters under his breath and heads straight for Bar.

"It's for the lad, William Turner," he explains, gingerly patting the wood. "Not for me this time, luv. His wife's after having their little one -- you'll remember how that goes -- "

Jack glances toward a particular wooden globe, and grins a little as the bottle of rum appears.

It's a particularly large one.

"Ah. I'll tell him you've wished them well, aye?"

When Jack returns to the shoreline, he's carrying a gallon jug of rum crooked in his arm as other men in another time and place might carry moonshine, and whistling tunelessly.

"Seems your patience won't be tried much longer!" he calls out, cheerfully. "Lizzie sends her regards -- or something of the sort -- and says it won't be long."

He brought rum.

He stopped to get rum.

"Jack! Is she still healthy? Are they both still healthy? Is it supposed to be this quick? Why did you bring rum?"

Will leans over the prow of the boat again, tilting himself towards Jack like it will make the process in the bar quicker or safer. The leaning is so great that at one point his hands slip and he tumbles forward, grabbing flailing wildly in his attempt to stay board.

Jack stares at him in surprise.

"Brought the rum 'cause I said I would," he points out. "Bar wishes you both well, by the by."

He raises the jug up over his head and shakes it enticingly at William.

"Throw me a line, and I'll tie on and send it over to you, aye?"

Almost as an afterthought, he adds,

"Don't worry about dear Lizzie. No one who yells that loud's anything but healthy."