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Author: Guede Mazaka
Rating: PG
Pairing: Will/Jack/Elizabeth
Feedback: Fave lines, stupid mistakes—let me know about them all.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Will cannot find the words, so he resorts to a demonstration. For fabu, in order to cheer her up, and for the contrelamontre ‘earth’ challenge; done in 35 minutes.
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Jack and Elizabeth simply don’t understand, no matter how Will tries to explain things to them. He pulls out half-learned poems, random quotes, and his own stammering words. He waves his hands till his arms feel as if an anchor is hanging from every inch of them, and Jack begins to make his own teasing gestures. Of course, his are far more fluid and graceful, and unlike Will, he never runs short of breath. But then again, that’s just how the man is. Flowing.
Elizabeth’s the same, despite the show of happiness she puts on whenever they sail into port. Will thinks it is genuinely sincere—they’ve both spent the better part of their lives on land, after all, and it’s what they first remember. It’s of no consequence, however, when compared to the way her eyes gleam when they unfurl the sails and Jack staggers up to the wheel. She’s learnt to love the sea with a passion that has nearly blinded her to anything else.
That isn’t to say Will does not also feel the salt tide rippling through his blood, because he does, sleeping or waking. He loves it as well, in his own way. But, perhaps due to his first profession, he hasn’t forgotten what came before. The soft sink of rich soil as it pushes up between bare toes, the transparent stains it leaves about the ankle, like that spidery Japanese writing Jack once showed him painted on a fan. The muck of mud, gross and foul and yet, reassuring in its ubiquity. When they’re out at sea for more than a week, Will sometimes catches himself leaning in to Gibbs while the other man makes his reports, hoping for a whiff of pig slop.
And he remembers the beautiful things, too, for just as water can both rage and still, dirt too can sully and beautify. The tender green and brown of new plants unfurling from the black. Dimly-recalled fields of gold waving in autumn winds. Bright metal shoving itself into the ground, revealing the hidden parts of the world. Will always forgets to remind Elizabeth that he’s heard and read the pirate stories as often as she has. Only he always loved the ones about swordfights on beaches, treasure hunts winding their way across verdant islands.
He sees what she and Jack show him, and he takes it into him till he can always hear the sound of three beats and the ship’s bell wherever he is. He wishes he could do the same for them, share what he knows. But they can’t see.
He still tries.
And then one day they stumble across a cave—not Isle de Muerte, thank God, but another, smaller one. It’s as quiet and serene as the first was foreboding and haunting, and suddenly Will is seized by a notion.
It must surprise his companions as much as it does himself, for they hardly protest as he drags them further into the caverns, going until it is pitch-black. And then he notices Elizabeth is shrinking into him, and Jack has stopped jabbering. That’s when he realizes. “It’s different,” he says quietly, feeling the silence part around him. “I’m sorry I didn’t explain first, but—actually, I can’t. Just—please just trust me and listen.”
There’s a sharp intake of breath from Jack’s corner, but no objection follows. Elizabeth does not pull away.
“It sounds like the sea,” she tells him after a long, long moment. “Only—not quite.”
“Now do you understand?” Will asks, feeling something within him unbend and loop softly as it falls away. “You see?”
“It’s too dark in here, mate.” But the chuckle tells Will everything he needs to know, and a second later, the warm mouths and lingering hands tell him everything he wanted to know.
***