orange_crushed (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
orange_crushed) wrote2006-07-09 09:32 pm
orange_crushed) wrote2006-07-09 09:32 pm
Fair Night and Faraway
Oh, I broke and saw PotC-3 again today. Once again I was delighted. I may have thoughts later, more coherant thoughts, when I'm less tired, but for now- a drabbling drabble. I should warn for huge, immense, gaping spoilers. Spoilers. Elizabeth Swann at the edge of the world, and after. PG-13 for language.
It is a fair night, and faraway.
There are layers to a heart; this is how it's meant to be, how we survive to take a second breath, a third, up from underwater. The chambered nautilus that draws our blood through veins and pumps and bilges and boots it out again; has a manner of unfolding that which hides what should stay hidden, and lets the rest make tired rounds under the skin. There's your first kiss, circling your bicep; there's the last night you saw your father, pulsing along the finger the Romans put their rings on.
You have a ring there, too; but that's for punching stamps on insolent faces. Not that you do much, punching, that is. Your hands are too nice. Too delicate- that's what they say. Too delicate for this work.
Still, that's the blood that everybody has- mother's songs and someone's bruises and the good times and the bad times, and a meal when you were starving. Those are the stories that float around in red and blue, depending on the direction they're flowing. They go in and out in your many moods- like the tide, somebody might say, but that's bordering on the obvious.
There are other times, other tales that are deeper, in the red folds of flesh that keep you warm, make you move. In the heart of hearts. You have counted three, three for life, three to carry always. Three to live by.
They are:
the day you first saw the island; holding father's hand, waiting for your new life to feel new, watching green and blue spray across your eyelids until it was too bright to bear.
the day you were meant to be married.
his eyes, looking down the beach at scattered seabirds as he leaves you; as he tells you that it's ended, that it hadn't really ever begun.
There was another day like that, long before, only you did the leaving. One of many smaller skips and falls that left you not quite breathless; but bouncing on your heels, waiting for a second strike. Advancing the blows, as it were. They must come if you're to learn anything.
You tell yourself that day did not matter. Not like the second.
Jack, like your marriage and your father and your pardon, remains a memory.
You searched. Oh yes, you searched- and there was blood under the rocks you overturned. Will stayed long enough to see you to the ends of the earth and back again, and you're grateful. You might have given up if not for his silent strength. You thought at first he was unwilling to touch you for lack of vows, so you told him it no longer mattered. The world and its laws had failed already.
"Hang the vows," you said. But his eyes went further still, and his hands left you to sleep. You slipped your own hands below and shuddered sweetly, thinking of the day it would end, the day it would start. The day you'd be one.
One by one, your enemies sailed off the map and into the jaws of the tide and the dark. Davy Jones let his lady stroke his face and sing to him in a language half-remembered, and went to rest. Lord Beckett died on James's sword. The letters of marque forgotten, the sea swallowing their hungry pursuit. It seemed to be at an end.
And still. It was good, at least, that Jack had lovingly maintained his myth in life. Leaving one's legend in the hands of illiterates and drunks was rarely a clever path.
You would trade, yes. You would trade the myth for the man. Anyone could see. Will, of course, could see more plainly than anyone. And that is where the trouble began. Did you love him ? No. And yes. Which one ? Neither, and both.
"Did you love him ?" he asked you, and soon after was gone.
Your mother is dead. Your father is dead. You are certainly out of the habit of confessing your fears, your hopes, your dreams. There was a time you might have laid your hair against his hand in the firelight and listened to the tale of their courtship. They met in a churchyard, you know that much- the rest you imagine. Her hair, sprigged with ring-a-ling flowers.
How he wished for your happiness ! Everything was done for you. The island was another step, another lightening of your darkening world. You'd begun to cough, you see, in London. In the island air you bloomed.
You hang from the rigging and knot the sails down against a coming storm, and think about a childhood you can barely remember. Your arms are bare and brown now, and your hair bleached by the sun. If there's anyone on board born to sail, it's you- you can climb and cut and swear as fierce as any. Even Gibbs can't drink you down. You don't cry.
You're as strong as he always wished you to be, though the circumstances are somewhat slightly wrong.
You have his compass still. For years now, it's been spinning. When you sail along the reef and see a glint of metal on the beach, you call for the sight. The compass wheels and dips as you sight a skeleton, the largest you've ever seen, an echo of a whale or a monster, a dead city of the depths.
And then, like your heart, the needle stops.
"The longboats," you say. "You, you, and you- we go ashore." There's steel in your voice. Steel in your heart, the sinews of your arms. You've been tempered, altered, born. It's been leading to this moment.
You'll hold on this time, you're sure.
It is a fair night, and faraway.
There are layers to a heart; this is how it's meant to be, how we survive to take a second breath, a third, up from underwater. The chambered nautilus that draws our blood through veins and pumps and bilges and boots it out again; has a manner of unfolding that which hides what should stay hidden, and lets the rest make tired rounds under the skin. There's your first kiss, circling your bicep; there's the last night you saw your father, pulsing along the finger the Romans put their rings on.
You have a ring there, too; but that's for punching stamps on insolent faces. Not that you do much, punching, that is. Your hands are too nice. Too delicate- that's what they say. Too delicate for this work.
Still, that's the blood that everybody has- mother's songs and someone's bruises and the good times and the bad times, and a meal when you were starving. Those are the stories that float around in red and blue, depending on the direction they're flowing. They go in and out in your many moods- like the tide, somebody might say, but that's bordering on the obvious.
There are other times, other tales that are deeper, in the red folds of flesh that keep you warm, make you move. In the heart of hearts. You have counted three, three for life, three to carry always. Three to live by.
They are:
the day you first saw the island; holding father's hand, waiting for your new life to feel new, watching green and blue spray across your eyelids until it was too bright to bear.
the day you were meant to be married.
his eyes, looking down the beach at scattered seabirds as he leaves you; as he tells you that it's ended, that it hadn't really ever begun.
There was another day like that, long before, only you did the leaving. One of many smaller skips and falls that left you not quite breathless; but bouncing on your heels, waiting for a second strike. Advancing the blows, as it were. They must come if you're to learn anything.
You tell yourself that day did not matter. Not like the second.
Jack, like your marriage and your father and your pardon, remains a memory.
You searched. Oh yes, you searched- and there was blood under the rocks you overturned. Will stayed long enough to see you to the ends of the earth and back again, and you're grateful. You might have given up if not for his silent strength. You thought at first he was unwilling to touch you for lack of vows, so you told him it no longer mattered. The world and its laws had failed already.
"Hang the vows," you said. But his eyes went further still, and his hands left you to sleep. You slipped your own hands below and shuddered sweetly, thinking of the day it would end, the day it would start. The day you'd be one.
One by one, your enemies sailed off the map and into the jaws of the tide and the dark. Davy Jones let his lady stroke his face and sing to him in a language half-remembered, and went to rest. Lord Beckett died on James's sword. The letters of marque forgotten, the sea swallowing their hungry pursuit. It seemed to be at an end.
And still. It was good, at least, that Jack had lovingly maintained his myth in life. Leaving one's legend in the hands of illiterates and drunks was rarely a clever path.
You would trade, yes. You would trade the myth for the man. Anyone could see. Will, of course, could see more plainly than anyone. And that is where the trouble began. Did you love him ? No. And yes. Which one ? Neither, and both.
"Did you love him ?" he asked you, and soon after was gone.
Your mother is dead. Your father is dead. You are certainly out of the habit of confessing your fears, your hopes, your dreams. There was a time you might have laid your hair against his hand in the firelight and listened to the tale of their courtship. They met in a churchyard, you know that much- the rest you imagine. Her hair, sprigged with ring-a-ling flowers.
How he wished for your happiness ! Everything was done for you. The island was another step, another lightening of your darkening world. You'd begun to cough, you see, in London. In the island air you bloomed.
You hang from the rigging and knot the sails down against a coming storm, and think about a childhood you can barely remember. Your arms are bare and brown now, and your hair bleached by the sun. If there's anyone on board born to sail, it's you- you can climb and cut and swear as fierce as any. Even Gibbs can't drink you down. You don't cry.
You're as strong as he always wished you to be, though the circumstances are somewhat slightly wrong.
You have his compass still. For years now, it's been spinning. When you sail along the reef and see a glint of metal on the beach, you call for the sight. The compass wheels and dips as you sight a skeleton, the largest you've ever seen, an echo of a whale or a monster, a dead city of the depths.
And then, like your heart, the needle stops.
"The longboats," you say. "You, you, and you- we go ashore." There's steel in your voice. Steel in your heart, the sinews of your arms. You've been tempered, altered, born. It's been leading to this moment.
You'll hold on this time, you're sure.