 |
|
|
|
|
Author: Guede Mazaka
Rating: PG-13ish.
Pairing: Will/Jack, implied Will/Elizabeth and Elizabeth/Norrington
Feedback: Would be delightful.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Notes: For rokeon, as it's her birthday.
Summary: The shadow is the one thing that no one can run from.
***
Once upon a time, there was a blacksmith. But he wasn't just any blacksmith-no, this one had come over water and through fire, on a journey of finding. And on the way, he gained a sight like no one else.
He saw gold. He saw death. He saw a girl and a pirate and a ship. But that was not all he saw.
Long days in the forge, stuck in an airless hovel between dark and darker. Will knows that he should be grateful for the position, should thank God every day that he's being put to a trade that is always in demand and never disrespected anywhere. Even if it's not respected as much as some others that aren't directly commerce-related.
He likes the work, too. When his hands are too burned to hold his spoon and his back too cramped to even stretch out in bed, he can look to the growing quality of his goods hanging on the wall and be proud. Norrington may be up-and-coming in the fleet, and Elizabeth the governor's daughter, but when cannons and bedwarmers need mending, it's neither of them that can do what Will does.
He ignores the point that they don't have to, and then he feels ashamed for even thinking of Elizabeth with hair knotted up like the town matrons and elegant hands sooty and hard like his own. She's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, that he continues to see, and he wouldn't put her in a den of fire and red-hot steel like this.
Sometimes, though, he wishes he could show her the way steel waves when it's folded and refolded just so. The way the flames flicker oranges and yellows on the walls, giving Will the sunrise and sunset any time of the day he wants, and the way diamond white can be found in the heart of cold lumpy iron.
But he never will. And that is part of the reason he works away all day and near all night.
He saw shadows in the dark.
They'd let Miss Elizabeth nurse him till he was on his feet, and then propriety had absolutely demanded that he be put down with the common sailors. He and she had still managed ways of meeting, but in the end, Will did spend most of his time with the rough, careless men that worked the canvas-wood-rope sinews of Britain. It was cramped down there, and filthy and hot and he'd still believed himself back on his own ship, dodging through that sinking hell. The first few times he'd cried out at night and shrunk from shadows, the men had only laughed and sneered and cuffed him to be silent.
After a while, even that grew stale. Eventually, one sailor starting on grizzled had taken him aside and asked what was the matter. And when Will had told him, he'd nodded and grunted while behind him, stretching up to the rafters, his shadow had caracoled and grinned at Will. Just like a pirate, ready to leap with blood-dulled sword forward.
Once the man had thumped the air back into Will, he'd spent a few free watches teaching Will the manner of fighting belowdecks, and hooked a thumb at then-Lieutenant Norrington when Will, bruised and breathless and braver, had asked about the sword.
Later, Elizabeth had thrown a splendid fit till her father had promised that Will would not be pressed into Navy or Marines, but would instead come ashore with them. She had smiled with bright eyes on Will, and someone had told him to show manners and thank her ladyship. Clumsily, Will did, and the awkwardness of it had knocked out all the tricks the kind sailor had taught him, leaving him with nothing but the desire to learn the gentleman's way.
He saw things that others did not. But he did not understand this, and so he pretended he was like everyone else.
When Will fences three hours a day, it is not with a teacher or even a good friend. After another bout of wheedling by Elizabeth, Norrington had obligingly taught him the basics, but the intermediate moves Will learned by casual observation from a discreet distance. When Elizabeth called it that, it sounded much better than spying.
The advance moves he worked out himself, sparring with the long dark shape that stretched out on the ground before him. Sometimes, when he is tired and sweat is dripping in his eyes, he almost thinks the shadow sways up from the dust and they go at it for real. But that can't be true, because then the shadow is not clean-cut and simple-garbed like himself, but fantastically fringed and ragged and befeathered. It is, quite honestly, the shadow of a pirate.
That no longer scares him, for day after day he meets it and vanquishes it. For a long moment directly afterward, the world seems to shiver and shade, turning all the colors of the rainbow. And he believes that he can do anything.
There came a day where his worst nightmare came true, and the blacksmith had to throw off his act and go on a great adventure.
It starts with the pirate.
Jack Sparrow is a daring and inventive fighter, and he cheats. Will suddenly realizes that there's a flaw with fighting your shadow-your opponent then is only as good, or as clever, as you yourself are.
This is the actual beginning of his discontent, though at first he traces it to the indignity of having to seek out help from the same pirate that he'd nearly beaten. Whom he had beaten, and several times in one duel because Sparrow obviously had never heard of the words honorable surrender. Possibly not surrender at all, Will thinks as he breathes the salt-soaked air trapped in the overturned boat they hold over themselves.
He tells himself not to be impressed. Nothing is impressive-in fact, nothing has color or emotion until Elizabeth is safely back at Port Royal. She's the love of his life, and while she is in danger he cannot be distracted by anything from her rescue.
In spite of himself, Will notices the way the shadows differ underwater. They spread and blur far more than on land; here, his shadow is distorted almost to look identical to Jack's.
And the blacksmith was desperately in love, and the pirate was just desperate. So they played games around each other, and played games around everyone else. The blacksmith grew confused after a while, and forgot the rules.
Elizabeth is safely returned to her father, and everyone still seems to think Will some kind of criminal. The common sailors are grudgingly admiring about it when the officers aren't near, Norrington seems downright disappointed-as if the lawful way would've been quick enough-and Jack…is unconcerned. According to him, Will is a rank amateur.
"Luck got you through in the end-well, that and a pretty piece of swordplay, I've got to admit-but honestly, Will. That oar hurt."
"Well, you weren't helping. I thought you were going to trade me for your ship, and leave Elizabeth in Barbossa's clutches." Will is leaning against the bars of the brig, watching how the moonlight stripes the other man. Till recently, he'd never realized how cold that light is in comparison to the fire of his forge.
Jack shifts like quicksilver, liquid and white, and it makes Will flinch. The other man looks puzzled for a moment, then raises his hand. "No bones, Turner."
His shadow in the dim light still has a cocky lurch to it, even with the roll of the ship subtracted from that. Will has to swallow against the sudden thickening in his throat. "They shouldn't hang you. You don't deserve it."
"Oh, I do wonder about that." It takes less than a moment for Jack to go from supine to standing, with his fingers hooked over Will's. "We'll see. Anyhow, at least Barbossa's not got my lady."
It's dark and everything is running together, not black or white but gray from pale to the color of shadow. "Jack? Are we friends?"
"After everything?" Jack pulls a mock-solemn face, then laughs and shakes Will by the hair. "Sentimental fool, just like your father. And I remember you saying that you wanted nothing to do with pirates except killing."
That irks Will, and so he draws back. "Maybe I should've let you keep the curse."
"Maybe. The…immortal…Jack…Sparrow," the other man theatrically sighs, spinning away from the bars with much waving of hands. He halts himself and goes still as death, eyes drilling through Will. "No. Nice ring to it, but I don't fancy looking down at the sands and seeing a skeleton's shadow."
When Will is finally made to leave, Jack calls to him. "Turner! It was good to see the family traditions carried on!"
At first, Will takes that as an assent to friendship. Later, he absently looks at his shadow as it appears in the blazing sun on clear ground, and then he looks again, wondering. But there's the new hat and the sword, he remembers, and he puts it down to that.
He changed and he did a good deed, but for all that, the blacksmith was still unsatisfied. You see, he could no longer pretend.
"I saw that shipwreck too!" Elizabeth protests. "How could I forget? We saved you."
"Out of a lot of others who died." Will executes a sharp turn from her confused, upset face and scuffs at the ground with his boot. He stares out at the horizon and tries very hard to ignore the ruffled, fraying, altogether disreputable shadow that capers about his feet with every breeze that shakes the grass. "Look, Jack was different. But the world he moves in isn't nice and pretty and fun, Elizabeth. It's more like Barbossa."
Just a little behind him, she holds herself tight and breathes quick and shallow, like she wants to burst in anger. "Barbossa, you remember, is dead."
"And there are plenty more like him. God, Elizabeth-you've seen what they can do. How can you still pretend that there was any romanticism in it?" That is not him reflected in darkness on the grass. It is not. He did what he had to do and now all of that was over. Debt repaid, Jack cavorting somewhere beyond the horizon where Will couldn't see, and the forge waiting below. The stifling, cramped forge that nevertheless had showed Will just enough beauty to keep him from going mad or withering inside.
She clears her throat, which by now Will knows is a sign that Elizabeth is going to say something they'll both regret. "I think you're afraid. Afraid to admit who you are. Well, I'm not, and I won't let even you make me into something that I'm-"
"I am who I want to be!" Will snaps. "Go and do what you want, but don't presume to tell me what I should do!'
Silence falls. The wind blows. On the grass, the shadow flips an elegantly ridiculous hat that Will isn't wearing and makes a bow of lurching grace. He's reaching for his sword hilt, ready to swing out his blade and take that liar to accounts when he realizes that he can no longer hear Elizabeth's breathing.
It hurt. It always does.
Tortuga was the last in a long, long string of ports. As had been said many times before, a blacksmith never was in want of work.
At first, it was only a temporary leave from a town that had turned cold for Will. Then it was him seeking darker and darker corners of the Caribbean as his damnable shadow swaggered and minced and dangled shades of ripped lace cuffs at him. He no longer could vanquish it in sparring, or by sheer determination that it should not exist, and so Will started to turn to drink.
Started was the right word because one day he pitched over sick in an alley and was nearly cut down by the participants in some transaction he'd interrupted. After that, he got hold of himself a little and merely made his hours in accord with the night instead of the day. But even then there was the moon and watch-lanterns and hearth-fires, and so he went back to the taverns when he wasn't working-not for drink, but for the chance to mingle in so many other shadows that his would be completely covered.
There he couldn't help listen to the stories, and the tellers being bawds and pimps and pirates, the stories naturally included much news of Jack and little of Elizabeth. It got so that Will knew better what priceless gourmet tidbit Jack had stolen for breakfast than he did the continued existence of Port Royal. This nagged at him at first, but the more time he spent hiding from the shadow that wasn't his, the less time he had to think on his past.
One day, he did hear that Elizabeth had gone venturing at sea, and then come home to wed Commodore Norrington. The story was much longer than that, but Will didn't wish to hear it and so he left that place for the quiet pitch-black of his forge.
The blacksmith didn't want to see, but he couldn't go back to what he had been. And he was a brave man, and an honest one, and he still had a thirst for life. He found ways.
Eventually, Will noticed that he was being deliberate about his wanderings. Where he had come from had older and more fanciful stories of Jack, while where he'd just arrived had fresher and more…plausible tales. He sat down and thought about this once during an overcast day, but the sun had abruptly peeked out and flashed him his malicious, gleeful nemesis literally at his heels.
His sleep was troubled and full of nightmares that night, and when he woke all his thoughts had jiggered into the notion that the shadow was remarkably like Jack.
Will remembered how to be angry then.
It might be better to say that they found him.
Anger carried Will into places that he wouldn't normally have dared and actions that he normally wouldn't have risked, at a speed that normally would have left him sick over the side. Because he was angry, he didn't notice any of these things.
Because he was angry, he didn't notice that he had started walking in daylight again, that he was growing tired and lonely and…less angry. Until one day he got out of his rickety bed, walked down to the docks, and realized that whatever had happened, it couldn't have been Jack's fault because it had started much earlier than their first meeting. That now when Will walked into taverns, a little hush would fall, and that now he could overhear snatches of his own doings told in the streets.
That now, he might match his shadow. Will closed his eyes, called himself all kinds of fool, and resignedly looked down.
"Jack?"
The multicolored lump by the pier post stirred to reveal dulled eyes. "Turner. What the hell are you doing here?"
And the blacksmith learned-or perhaps it should be that he remembered-that the shadow is closest of all things to a man, save dreams. He no longer knew whether he had been running from a shadow, or chasing a dream.
But now he knew the difference between the two when he came across one.
"Me and magic don't seem to be too fond of each other," Jack said later, after Will had hauled him about for a good half-hour, looking for the hidden Pearl. They were in the captain's cabin now, Jack shriveling up on the bed and Will sitting beside him, trying to keep him from dwindling away too fast. "I think I liked it better when women kept to just slapping me."
"Maybe it's you and women who don't get along," Will snorts, aiming for casual humor. He overshoots and he can see it in Jack's face, which is gaunt and wasted and nearly transparent with sickness.
The other man shrugs and twines his fingers around Will's hand. "Be it as it may, 'm happy to see you again. Gotten so that I can't go anywhere without hearing of you, and it does do good to know that you're carrying on things with a little style. Can point at Turner and say that there went one man who came off the better for knowing Captain Jack Sparrow."
For a few moments, Will can only bow his head because it'd been on the tip of his tongue to say different, to relate all the ways that that wasn't true. But that wasn't true, and even though he'd learned to tell some lies, he neither could nor wanted to exercise that skill on Jack.
"Was an old tale when I was a brat. Man has his shadow stolen, he's bound for the land of the dead within the week. And it's nearing the end of the seventh day." Jack huffs and pants till he can lean up against Will, then points to the mattress that is pristine of any shading in the shape of a man. "Of all things, I think that's the worst I've ever seen. Even worse than the Aztec curse. At least that wasn't so…quiet. Didn't really surprise you when you found out that there was something wrong with it."
Will lifts his own hand and watches the way the shadow-fingers twist when his lie still. He drops his fingers to Jack's again and makes up his mind.
"Listen-I still owe Anamaria a boat, but I want you to-"
And Jack, somehow, is surprised when Will kisses him. "You can have my shadow," Will tells him.
Then everything goes dark.
So after all, it comes back to the pirate. Or the shadow. Tales like these, they twist and run before the wind till you can hardly make out the true shape of them, or even whether they have one natural form.
Will wakes in Jack's bed with hot wetness dripping onto his shoulder, and a very alive, very warm and very active man shaking him. "Damn it, you stupid little whelp-"
"I'm taller than you!" Will protests. That's when he realizes that he's awake, and that's about when Jack ceases shaking and starts expressing himself in a manner that's no less conducive to lightheadedness, but is much, much more pleasant.
A few hours later, he's out on the deck, delightedly watching his own shadow do everything that he wills it to do while Jack presses against his back and continues to curse him for the greatest idiot in the world. He doesn't mind.
"Maybe my father entrusted something else to me besides the coin. Maybe it was a side-effect of the curse. Maybe it was from my mother's blood-I think she was part-Irish. Maybe I was so confused I divided myself. Maybe--"
Jack covers Will's mouth with his hand and presses his lips to the back of Will's neck. "Turner, maybe there's some things you shouldn't have picked up from me."
And Will laughs and shakes himself loose in the sun, enjoying the way it paints light and dark for the first time in a very, very long time.
"You're a man with your own life and your own legend, Will Turner," says Jack, more serious than Will's ever heard him. The other man comes forward till their shadows run together into a single large one that cannot, no matter how Will squints at it, be separated. "You don't need the place I'm offering."
"That's probably why I'm taking it," says Will. He smiles, and Jack grins back.
There. The wind is gone, and with it goes the story.
***