Title: "Never Won Fair Lady"
Author: monimala
Fandom: PotC
Rating/Classification: SAC, J/E, J/N-ish.
Disclaimer: Nope. I don't own them.
Summary: Just some filler for the trip on the Dauntless to la Isla de Muerta (during and around the cut scene from the DVD).
She remembers reading the tales by candlelight, the cheap print smudging under her fingertips as she devoured words like "plunder" and "booty" and that damn-blasted "parlay" and...and "freedom."
There were sometimes sketches in the papers. Fearful rogues with thick beards and missing teeth and fire for eyes. To frighten faint-hearted
ladies and show young boys what they could grow up to be if they were not careful.
Now, as she leans against the rail of the Dauntless, a steady deck
beneath her feet, she wonders if her heart was ever faint. If the ink never quite faded from beneath her nails. If it seeped right through to the blood.
Reading by candlelight has not, in fact, held a candle to her own adventure.
Quoting the Code, chapter and verse, has not, in fact, compared to trying to live by it.
Barbossa and his crew of savages are far more fearsome than any
half-penny artist could ever dream. The flesh rotting on their bones...the gleam of hunger in their eyes. And Jack Sparrow...well...
There is hunger in hie eyes, too.
A yearning she recognizes...and not just from the deep well of too
much--or, perhaps, not enough--rum. He craves no mistress save the open
sea. No master save the stars. And every one of his adventures...save one... is true.
When she goes back to Port Royal...she knows her life will be the exact
opposite. She will save her sweet Will, marry the Commodore, and settle down and only one...only one...of her great tales will be based in truth. Perhaps the most fantastical ...nearly drowning, seeing skeletons naked under the moon, walking the plank and being marooned with a pirate... but still her only grand story. Something for her babies to read by lamplight.
The appropriate parts, of course.
Not the knife sliding, effortlessly, through her corset strings or the arm across her throat...the 'goods' leaping beneath her fingers as she fastened that same knife to a belt. Not the brush of Barbossa's fetid breath against her cheek as he whispered the word 'lust'. Not Will's callused hands ministering to hers in the Interceptor's galley. Not...not that stretch of white beach or the red-purple musket ball scars on that stretch of golden skin...
These are all the things she must forget.
But she'll yearn for them.
There will be hunger in her eyes...
For the crash of the water against the shore. The deep blue depths of the ocean swallowing her up. Damp cotton sliding up her thighs, the rough
scrape of beard and beads against her skin and liquor-thickened tongue demanding, "I've shown you mine, Luv...show me yours."
She wonders if that is what he is whispering to Norrington, now, in the
Commodore's cabin. "Show me...show me yours..." as they hunch over the
charts and the compass that doesn't point north. No... not 'Norrington', she remembers. 'James.' If she is to marry him, she must call him 'James.' 'James' is frighteningly close to 'Jack'...and leagues away from 'Will'.
The symmetry is not lost on her...and she moves along the deck, drawn to the doors like a moth... pressing her forehead against the glass. Their
shadows flicker within, dancing in the lamplight. Starched shoulders and
emphatically waving arms.
Words like "plunder" and "booty" and that damn-blasted "parlay" and...and "freedom."
Pencil sketches of La Isla de Muerta for cautionary purposes.
Hands that linger too long in improper places.
These are all the things she must forget.
But cannot.
Jack Sparrow traces phantom letters on the other side of the glass that
has been fogged by her breath. His eyes meet hers. "Peas in a pod," he mouths, reminding her.
And then he opens the doors...and ushers her in.
This will not be a tale read by candlelight.
Simply remembered.
The appropriate parts, of course.
--end--
December 4, 2003.