Title: "For the Wicked"
Author: monimala
Fandom: POTC: DMC
Rating/Classification: SAC for some mild adult content, futurefic, AU, Elizabeth/?
Disclaimer: All hail the House of Mouse. Arrr!
Summary: 450 words. A loose sequel to Burning for a Cause. They meet but once in a while.
They meet but once in a while, past the blue moon and beyond the confines of hours and days. The location is inked hurriedly on parchment or passed mouth-to-mouth in backwater taverns where their countenances are feared but their names are of no consequence.
They each so seldom make port, by choice and circumstance alike. Her legs barely know dry land anymore and she cannot sleep for long without the swell of the seas beneath her. "But you do sleep," he notes, with a wryness from years gone by, as she tugs him to bed.
"Aye," she whispers, pulling his clothes from his bones. "Aye, there is small peace for the wicked."
They match new scars, compare old war wounds, soak each barely-healed cut in sweat as they move together in the darkness. He always douses the candle first, every time, swallowing the merry flame between his thumbs.
Their terms are simple, simpler than their plundered lives. No promises made, no promises kept. No light. No demon rum. So he trickles whiskey down her belly instead, chasing the wicked line of a smuggler's blade that gave her the blessing of a childless womb. He crawls back up her body, cleans the errant traces of liquor in his path, and moves to nudge her eyepatch aside with his all-too gentle fingers.
"No," she murmurs, turning her head, but he holds her still, gives no quarter, and she cries out as he caresses the hideous cavern of tissue and long-dried tears. Her ugliness does not disgust him. Sometimes, she believes it moves him more than her beauty ever did.
He seduces her with charity, kindness, but finishes her with force. Her blunt nails tear into his back. His teeth worry her throat, like some beast from a dusty novel she left behind on a shelf in London two lifetimes ago.
She wonders, idly, if he read the same novels. If he ever saw such monsters in himself...in that man who wore pressed coats and tailored breeches and shined his boots to blinding. If he ever thought he'd see such monsters in her.
"Elizabeth," he groans, guttural, against her breast. "Elizabeth, Elizabeth, Elizabeth."
She does not call him "James," or "Norrington," or anything at all. She does not make a sound.
She simply traces the 'P' branded into his wrist -- forever the wrong wrist-- with her lips. She fists her hands in his hair, curling around phantom trinkets and far ghostlier memories.
He is gone by sunrise. She follows shortly thereafter, driving the taste of him from her with a hastily lit cheroot and a glass of bitters. And they each know the other was never there to begin with.
--end--
July 25, 2006.