Captain Elizabeth Turner (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
try_corsets) wrote2016-06-10 07:14 pm
try_corsets) wrote2016-06-10 07:14 pm
Ten years later...
Ten years. One hundred and twenty months. Three thousand six hundred and fifty days.
The first time Elizabeth counted, it seemed an insurmountable number no matter how she measured the time. Now, with only a few hours left of the thousands she and little Will had waited, time seemed to speed up and then slow down to a snail's pace by turns.
As they had so often over the years, months, hours, minutes, her eyes drift to the chest holding Will's heart and she feels her own skip a beat. How will he look, back in this world? Happy, whole, alive?
"Will we have to put it back in?" her son asks, his small arm snaking around her neck so he too can stare at the chest, an evening time indulgence they each had frequently allowed the other. Elizabeth slants a look at him, a smile in her eyes, and he gives her his sweet lopsided grin.
An uncharitable voice in the back of her head wonders if they will still have this time when the reason for it is gone. Whether or not her son will transfer all his time and affection to Will once he's home, the way he'd quickly forgotten her existence whenever the Dutchman dropped anchor in the Milliways lake. She knows that won't be the case -- Will would never let it be -- but a different part of Elizabeth thinks it would be all right even if it did. Both of them deserved it, after all. And she knows they'll always come back to her in the end.
"Mom?"
Elizabeth refocuses on Will Jr., smiling at the light in his eyes. Oh, how excited he is. How excited they both are. She pulls him up beside her and looks again at the chest, pretending to think about this irreverent, almost funny question he has asked so many times before.
"And if we do?" she asks, lowering her voice and widening her eyes. "Will you raise the lid... scoop up his heart... feel it beating, beating, beating in your hands... and..."
"No, no! Mother! Stop!" Will protests, starting to squirm with mock disgust. "Nooooooooo!" He pauses. "You do it."
She smiles. "If I must. For that, my very dear boy, is how much I love your father."
"You must," he exhales, starting to laugh. "You really, really must."
They both quiet down and listen to the waves beating against the shore. Not long now. Only a handful of hours.
Elizabeth leans against Will Jr and starts to tell him the tale of how she spotted a boy drifting in the middle of the ocean and all that followed.
It is their favorite story, and soon it will have a new chapter.
The first time Elizabeth counted, it seemed an insurmountable number no matter how she measured the time. Now, with only a few hours left of the thousands she and little Will had waited, time seemed to speed up and then slow down to a snail's pace by turns.
As they had so often over the years, months, hours, minutes, her eyes drift to the chest holding Will's heart and she feels her own skip a beat. How will he look, back in this world? Happy, whole, alive?
"Will we have to put it back in?" her son asks, his small arm snaking around her neck so he too can stare at the chest, an evening time indulgence they each had frequently allowed the other. Elizabeth slants a look at him, a smile in her eyes, and he gives her his sweet lopsided grin.
An uncharitable voice in the back of her head wonders if they will still have this time when the reason for it is gone. Whether or not her son will transfer all his time and affection to Will once he's home, the way he'd quickly forgotten her existence whenever the Dutchman dropped anchor in the Milliways lake. She knows that won't be the case -- Will would never let it be -- but a different part of Elizabeth thinks it would be all right even if it did. Both of them deserved it, after all. And she knows they'll always come back to her in the end.
"Mom?"
Elizabeth refocuses on Will Jr., smiling at the light in his eyes. Oh, how excited he is. How excited they both are. She pulls him up beside her and looks again at the chest, pretending to think about this irreverent, almost funny question he has asked so many times before.
"And if we do?" she asks, lowering her voice and widening her eyes. "Will you raise the lid... scoop up his heart... feel it beating, beating, beating in your hands... and..."
"No, no! Mother! Stop!" Will protests, starting to squirm with mock disgust. "Nooooooooo!" He pauses. "You do it."
She smiles. "If I must. For that, my very dear boy, is how much I love your father."
"You must," he exhales, starting to laugh. "You really, really must."
They both quiet down and listen to the waves beating against the shore. Not long now. Only a handful of hours.
Elizabeth leans against Will Jr and starts to tell him the tale of how she spotted a boy drifting in the middle of the ocean and all that followed.
It is their favorite story, and soon it will have a new chapter.
no subject
It's hard to count years when you don't feel the cold. Hard to count months when you sail on the moonless waters of the world Between. Days are irrelevant when you see the sun so rarely, and even seconds are meaningless when you don't have a heartbeat against which to measure them.
For Will, even with a crew and a duty and the bar to escape to, it has been an infinite, immeasurable eternity.
Nevertheless, with that same creaking yearning of the sea that rolls around the ship and tells him where and wherever there are souls to take on board, so he feels the call to this port. He feels it like he has felt nothing for ten years. Not the gentle, kind pushing towards a soul that needs him, but a deep, urgent hunger that refuses to be ignored.
The ocean surrounds the Dutchman from all directions and thrusts ship and captain with the unrelenting momentum of the angriest rolling wave. For the first time in ten years, Will feels pain - a physical ache from his left breast, contracting and spasming over an empty hole that drags him up. Pull from within, push from without. Still, he smiles, speaking softly from the helm in the knowledge She'll hear him despite the roaring water.
"I'll miss you too."
(But Norrington will be a truer, more dedicated Captain. James will fulfill his Duty with an obedience a pirate never really could, and would put his dead heart into it, rather than leaving it with another woman.)
For the last time under Captain Turner, the Dutchman breaks surface into the rising Caribbean Sun, and Will turns his face East to bathe in its still cool light. He turns about with barely a thought; no need for magic compasses here: he knows exactly where he's to go.
In a wooden chest, in a cabin on land, a heart stops beating.
no subject
Yo ho
As all days eventually do, this last day of waiting begins the slow fade into night. The sun slips toward the horizon, shadows deepen, and Elizabeth follows her son's sweet, warm voice through the tall grass as he sings.
"Yo ho,
Yo ho,
A pirate's life for me..."
She watches the small be-hatted head bounce as he scampers toward the top of the bluff, the spot they'd mutually decided upon when their eagerness became ungovernable and it finally felt safe to begin planning for this particular sunset. And what a sunset it is, the air near golden with the last light of day.
"Yo ho,
Yo ho..."
Elizabeth bites the inside of her cheek to keep a sharp laugh in check. The song is sung, Will, she thinks. Yo ho, haul together, hoist the colors high.
Will Jr. looks back and flashes her a quick, happy grin. What wouldn't she give (or take) to keep that light in his eyes forever?
The seas be ours and by the powers,
where we will, we'll roam.
Somewhere, somehow, Calypso must be watching. Listening to a boy's hopeful voice raised in song. Awaiting the flash of green that means a soul has returned to the land of the living.
A call to all, pay heed the squall,
and turn your sails to home.
Pushing through the last of the willowy, knee high grass, Elizabeth joins her son high atop the cliff, her gaze stuck fast to the vast ocean turned almost gray as the horizon glows bright with orange fire. She pulls young Will closer to her side, grounding herself lest her heart becomes so light she up and floats away. Breath caught, she watches the sun slip lower... lower...
(The last glimpse of sunlight... )
...until it's gone. Immediately a flash of green shoots up into the sky, eerily lighting the ocean and the hope in their eyes. Elizabeth exhales quickly and is helpless to resist sneaking a look at young Will. He's looking back, grinning, and she is caught up in his (her) joy until he looks out to sea, straining to catch sight of the Flying Dutchman with wind in her sails and his father at the helm.
She feels her heart beat faster and faster, her pulse in her ears reminding her of the thump, thump of the chest she's watched over all these years, and it's then she sees the Dutchman at last.
Sails turned to home.
no subject
His mouth feels dry, and he grabs a flask of rum just for the wetness, marveling at the taste as if brand new to him.
His crew are watching him closely, and he grins at them. "Have you never seen a man come back to life before?"
Maybe the rum is going to his head, but maybe that's just the blood pumping through his body. Pumping with a beat.
Maybe it's the thought of seeing his wife and son - of holding them and breathing them in, and being alive around them both.
When land appears on the horizon, he can already hear the song. They're too far away for a voice to carry, he knows. Nevertheless, he hears it, the voice of a young child looking out over the sea, searching for him.
Elizabeth Swann, as was.
The first words he ever heard from her.
Yo ho,
Yo ho
"Your gig is ready, Captain."
Will shakes his head, not looking at the Boatswain who readied the boat for him. "That's Norrington's gig now, Boatswain."
He didn't plan a formal goodbye. He's not sure anyone is expecting one. But as he stands by the side of the deck, pulling his boots off, he scans the faces of the men before him.
"I'll never sail with a better crew."
"Three cheers for Captain Turner!"
On the third "Huzzah!" Will dives off the side of the Dutchman into the ocean, and swims towards his family.
A pirate's life...