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Author: Guede Mazaka
Rating: PG-13.
Pairing: Elizabeth/Will/James
Feedback: Whatever struck you.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Notes: For the_larch as part of the polyficathon. AU where Elizabeth kept her promise to Norrington and Will went over the side with Jack.
Summary: No one is satisfied with their ending.
***
Considering James' reputation, the Caribbean still has a surprising number of pirates left. Why, all he has to do to find one is open the window.
Will Turner has changed. He still wears the garb of the townsfolk, but the hardness in his eyes matches the cold steel at James' throat, and the wavering moonlight falls over a man. Not a boy. James closes his eyes and prays that his wife doesn't walk in. He knows he cannot avoid this, but he also hopes that enough of the old Will still lies within the man to do that much for Elizabeth.
"Hello." Turner balances as easily on the sill as a bird on a wire. His sword tickles down the middle of James' Adam's apple.
"William." He's grown so much that James can only recognize the form, and nothing in the eyes. Blooming health-the sea clearly has been good for the man.
And then there's a knock at the door. "James. I'm going to bed now," calls Elizabeth, voice distant. Even if an inch of wood wasn't in the way, she would still sound the same. She had gone to the alter untouched by James except in the most chaste of ways, and she remains untouched by her own choice. He despises men who force women, and after that one agonizing moment of looking into his bride's eyes, he hadn't had the heart to woo her after the rings were exchanged.
There's a word for his situation.
"Funny." Will shifts like a cat, moving from window to floor in one smooth motion. It strikes James as odd, and then he realizes why: that isn't Sparrow. That's how he himself had taught the boy to move. Only when he had known Will before, it had never showed outside of the fencing ring. Now, Will glides like he was born with a river in his veins. "Why don't you stay up a little longer, Elizabeth?"
She gasps, and then rushes in to greet Will with more enthusiasm than James ever remembers seeing. And then she sees the sword, and she stops. "Will…what are you doing?"
"I've some questions to ask." He tilts his head, smile silver sharp and that is Jack's, right there. But the determination in his eyes is all his own. James has a fleeting memory of a gangly teenager tripping over his own feet with exhaustion, but still lifting his sword to parry. "Not many. Just one each."
"Will, they'll hang you for this. You've got to leave. Now." Elizabeth has gone pale as milk, pale as the memory of her wedding day, when James had desperately chalked it up to nerves. He knows better now.
He raises a hand, and blood bites out of the underside of his chin. "I…merely wished to say that I won't raise the alarm."
Both of them stare at him then, and he shrugs, long since resigned to this. He's seen this scene a thousand times in his nightmares, so often that the reality comes as a relief more than anything. He knows just how much he erred, that day on the ramparts.
"Really. That's a change." Will's face doesn't soften. "You said you were going to hang me for helping Jack."
"I know." And James regrets that more than he regrets his order to send Jack Sparrow to the scaffold. As flamboyant as the pirate was, he and James had had only a few days' acquaintance. Whereas James has watched Will grow from child to youth to man, and he's taken the boy's teaching in hand, and once he counted Turner as…some kind of friend. Society hadn't permitted much, but he had enjoyed what he had gotten.
Turner's eyes flicker. "I hope you aren't about to apologize."
"Will-" Elizabeth sways between them, but finally turns away from James.
"I loved you. I love you. Did you ever feel the same?" Will demands, glancing at her. "I thought you were the model from which everything else was cast."
She takes one step, and then another until she's reached Will's side. "Since the day we met. I know I…but I thought it would help you. The coin, the promise…everything."
His mouth quirks up, sardonic and bitter. "And I suppose you were waiting for me to speak first? Because I didn't dare. Not without a sign that the castle wasn't about come crashing down on the poor peasant."
"Will!" Elizabeth rears back, hurt stinging her face, and James reflexively tries to move forward. The sword forces him to abort that.
"And you." Those dark eyes pin James down and hammer nails of regret through his flesh. "You would have had me killed that easily. Never mind the last nine years-a few weeks was enough to wipe out everything that had come before. You broke my heart, you know."
She gasps, looking wildly from Will to James, who is just as confused as Elizabeth. He'd never thought. At all. And even now, adrenaline whipping his memories through his mind, he can't see where it would have happened.
Will lowers his sword and steps back into the shadows. "I was young. I thought you were the bravest, strongest, wisest-the best man in the world. And then you showed how far that went."
"I'm…I fail, like anyone else. And I was young, too." James is stumbling over his words, struggling to take the whirling emotion in his mind and shape it into something good, something truthful and wise. Something that will explain why he acted as he did. "Those pirates, in the moonlight…"
"My God, don't tell me you ordered that because you were still scared." The laugh is disbelieving and mocking, and heading for the window. James rushes over and arrives just in time to slam the window shut in Will's face. It earns him a punch and, when he sits up on the floor, the sword-tip returned to his throat.
He ignores it. "I was. Do you have any idea how many preconceptions that shattered? And then-I was angry, because I didn't understand. Damn it, Will, I didn't understand."
"Neither did I." Elizabeth staggers forward and drops to her knees by James, concern in her face. She lays delicate fingers against his shocked face, then looks up at Will. "None of us knew what we were doing, except perhaps Jack and Barbossa. And we didn't know where our choices would bring us."
At that, Will grows restless and angry, though his blade doesn't waver. He chews on his lip until James sees the blood start from it, black in the night. "Damn you. Damn you both."
With a thief's quickness, he whips away his sword and drops to one knee in front of them. His face is crushed to Elizabeth before she finishes her breath, and James can see every little shift as Will takes her, as she leans into him and draws her own deep draft of him. It hurts, but it's more like the twinging of an old scar than a fresh wound. Months of a cold, dry marriage have taught him where Elizabeth's real heart lies, and where his does.
He starts to move away, partly to spare them and partly to spare himself, but a hand yanks him back by the hair. And then Will is kissing him, and James suddenly sees entire vistas of gold and blue and silver that he'd somehow missed. He clutches at shoulders, tries to hold onto the unexpected gift of warm, pulsing life, but the more he strives to cling, the farther away Will pulls.
Turner's silhouette is a white streak against the dark. "This is not what I meant to do by coming here," he rasps.
"Then come back," Elizabeth whispers. "And see if we can get it right."
He hesitates, eyes flashing, and then he's gone, with only the window clattering open to show his wake. And James feels as if he's swallowed a great chasm.
Hands fold around his own and chafe the warmth back into them. Slowly, James pulls Elizabeth to him and holds onto her while she quietly soaks his shoulder. "I think he nodded," he says.
"I hope he did. And if not…" Her voice firms, though her body remains soft. More yielding than it's been in months. "…I'm going after him, and asking him my own questions."
The words are in James' mouth before he can think, and he tells them to her honeysuckle hair. "You'll need a ship, and a willing captain. If I could…"
She quietly laughs then, and her hands come around his back. "Take me to bed, James. My room has too many drafts. And tomorrow, we'll talk."
***
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