 |
|
|
|
|
Author: Guede Mazaka
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Will/Elizabeth, Will/Jack/Elizabeth are the main ones, but a multitude of others implied.
Feedback: Good lines, bad ones, etc.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to Disney, their actors, etc., which doesn’t include me.
Notes: Influenced by viva_gloria’s ‘The Swordsmith and The Pirate: A Romance of the Spanish Main,’ by Elizabeth Turner.
Summary: Humor. Elizabeth’s secretly a writer. So, as it turns out, are quite a lot of other people.
***
I. The Great Novelist
Elizabeth noticed that once again she was chewing the end of her quill ragged and irritably spat it out. The resulting stir of air caused her candle to flicker and she sighed, waiting for it to settle down so she could…
…continue to stare blankly at her half-finished sentence. She’d avidly enjoyed romances for years, but only recently had dared put pen to paper and try her own. Nevertheless, once she’d picked up her quill, she had found herself determined to make her new endeavor a success no matter how much work it took. Will was always telling her that practice was a necessity, and she was willing to try that way this time. What he hadn’t mentioned, however, was how very, very frustrating it could be. Surely there had to be another word for ‘enticing’ besides the five synonyms she’d already employed in the previous paragraph.
She heard the step in the hall just in time to thrust her copybook into the dark recesses of the windowsill and snatch up her reading book instead. “Will?”
“Elizabeth? Your father was wondering if we’d ever be graced with your presence for dinner,” Will said, poking his head around the door. When he saw that they were alone, he quickly slid all the way inside and softly shut the door. “And I have to admit, I’m running out of polite conversation.”
“I was just catching up on my novel.” She got up from the windowseat and made to take him by the hands, but he was quicker and got hold of her book before she could stop him. She pretended to be offended.
Will made no attempt to hide his amusement at the title. “I would’ve thought you’d give these up, considering you can have your own buccaneer adventure any time Jack blows into town.”
“But they’re even more fun now! I can contrast them to what I know is the truth. For example, they never make the pirates drunk enough,” she pouted.
He caught the pout with his mouth, and Elizabeth happily let him have another. She’d come back to retrieve her copybook later, she thought. The servants had already cleaned the house, so no one would be in the room for the rest of the night.
No one that should have been in the house, that was. A little after Will and Elizabeth had left, the very window by which Elizabeth had been sitting silently swung open from the inside. Jack peeped in, tilted his head and heard just the echoes of a sparkling dinner. He made a face. “Better to catch them later when they’re well liquored, I suppose,” he muttered to himself.
He started to back out, but his hand grazed on something: a book. A book with Elizabeth’s name on it, and a lock on the side. Of course Jack had to take it with him; anything kept locked up naturally had to be freed.
* * *
II. The Editor Who’d Like To Be A Novelist
Back on the Pearl, Jack had the book undone in a mere second and found himself looking at pages and pages of pretty schoolgirl script. He flipped through the first few pages, but stopped when he caught sight of his own name. After reading a line, he grinned and retreated to his cabin to start from the very beginning.
However, he’d barely gotten a paragraph in before his chuckling had given way to frowning, and from frowning to downright scowling. Elizabeth was a lovely, lovely girl with a lovely, lovely free idea of what was fit to be shared, but she certainly hadn’t got all her facts straight. For one, he never would have drowned in anyone’s eyes, no matter how large and dark and pretty.
All right, Will’s set were almost capable of it, but honestly—Jack was a born sailor. And didn’t she remember where he’d saved her from drowning?
She’d also gotten his measurements wrong, and mixed up her sailor’s slang, but he supposed it was all forgivable. She was young and she’d just begun to learn. But still…
Jack rummaged around in his hair, then pulled out a crumpled but fairly serviceable feather. He started sharpening the tip while he read on. Come to think of it, her sense of drama could use work as well. She’d completely missed an opportunity in the beginning to introduce a long, tension-building chase sequence.
* * *
III. The Minimalist
While Gibbs was dragging Jack to the damn wheel to actually navigate them, Anamaria took a look at what had kept Jack so long from deck. Usually it was all they could do to keep him away from the wheel, making his finicky little adjustments and last-minute decisions to go haring off to who knew where.
Still, the nuisance had taken the time to learn her her letters, so she supposed she’d be easy on him.
After she’d spelled out the gist of the first page, Anamaria decided she might even offer to buy Jack some rum sometime. It figured, she supposed—man that could spin that good a tale just talking would be able to do the same in writing. But he still used a shipful of words when one or two would’ve done, and he was forever pulling out ones that she didn’t know the meaning of, which broke her concentration.
She glanced up and her eyes fortuitously alighted on his pen, which he’d even left in the inkwell for her.
* * *
IV. The Farce Lover
Gibbs was trying to tidy up a bit belowdecks when he bumped Anamaria’s hammock and knocked something out of it. He automatically picked it up, and when he saw it was a book, he had to open it. Blame Jack for introducing him to that particular bad habit.
About a paragraph in, Gibbs was grinning so hard the poor old muscles in his face were protesting. He settled in for a good, long read, and when he got to the sudden break-off, had himself a couple quiet laughs. It didn’t look like Anamaria or Jack had gotten that far yet, which suited Gibbs. He wasn’t about to challenge their alterations, but much as he’d enjoyed the tale, he thought it could do with a bit of intended humor. He went to borrow a feather from Cotton’s parrot.
* * *
V. The Editor with An Agenda
“He did drop this,” Groves panted, holding out a slightly dingy book. It appeared to be a simple copybook, such as grammar school students used, which was a peculiar thing for a pirate to carry.
Perhaps it was a secret logbook or rutter of Jack’s. James thoughtfully took it, thanked Groves, and completely forgot about it till late that night when he was working alone at his desk.
He laid it in front of him and frowned, squinting at the half-obscured engraving that he now could see on the cover. Then an idea occurred to him and he placed a sheet of paper on top, then took a rubbing with a bit of charcoal. “E…L…IZA…oh, dear.”
He sat back and considered this new development. It certainly explained several small details that had been troubling his mind lately, though frankly, he was rather annoyed. He’d been hoping that his observations would have a different cause.
James started to put the book away, intending to pass it on to Elizabeth when he was next in port with an appropriate scolding, but he stopped. Then he set it back in front of him and stared at it.
Curiosity eventually claimed the upper hand and he opened it. At least two different people had scribbled in the margins, which made deciphering the body of the text a bit difficult, but soon he had a good idea of what it was. He had to sit back and give the pages a good, long look again. He honestly wasn’t certain whether a laugh or a headache would be the most appropriate reaction.
“And I thought you’d come to have a bit of appreciation for the Royal Navy,” he sighed. She’d written in all the usual stereotypical nonsense so beloved of the people who lived too far inland for pirates to bother with, and then she’d gone and made the pirate ridiculously overblown.
Well, her editor, James corrected himself. Because that certainly wasn’t Elizabeth’s handwriting that put in all the absurd glorifying adjectives.
The pen was scratching over the paper before James quite realized what he was doing, but once he’d started, he found to his surprise that the words quite flowed out of him. Actually, this was rather fun, and when he ran out of corrections he slid so easily into writing a continuation to the last line that he decided he might as well not stop. He certainly was enjoying this more than working up his accounts.
* * *
VI. The Grammar Nazi
Gillette supposed the Commodore must have accidentally slipped the book into the pile of papers he wanted Gillette to review. He meant to set it aside to return later, but it’d slid out of his fingers and fallen open to a bold ‘Jack Sparrow’ written on the top line of the left page. He couldn’t help but read on from there.
A little bit after he started, he picked up his hat, cloak and the book, and went to a spot behind the supply warehouses that he knew was well-lit at this time of day, but quite isolated. He took a pen and inkwell, too.
Most of the story made him blush and clear his throat, and several parts had him wriggling uncomfortably, but he secretly had to admit he loved it—especially the second half where the Navy commodore was revealed to be an incredibly honorable and caring man, and the blacksmith was utterly confused as to his conflicted heart. But the dangling participles! Horrid.
He fixed every last one.
* * *
VII. The Devoted Reader
As soon as Will came back from the dock, he sat down and opened up the book Gillette had dropped. He’d tried to hand it back to the other man, but Gillette had denied even ever seeing it before so vigorously that Will had stopped so the other man wouldn’t do himself an injury. Besides, Will had thought the cover, ripped and stained as it was, looked vaguely familiar.
It took him the better part of the afternoon to make sense of the mass of corrections squeezed in and sometimes written right over the original text, and in the end he resorted to swiping an empty copybook from Elizabeth’s desk and carefully recopying the whole thing, notations and all. By the time he finished, he’d began to assign identities to the various margin-note writers. His mouth also ached, and he rather suspected that that was due to the wicked, Elizabeth-like grin on his face.
This would make the perfect birthday present for Elizabeth in two days. Well, this plus a stack of fresh copybooks for the sequels that he had a strong feeling would rapidly follow.
***