Archive of Our Own

I have to, Elizabeth. It’s my duty.

The words have rung in her head for months now, bells on a doomed church, and Lord Jesus, she is tired of them. Of that word, specifically, duty. Her whole life has been centered on duty—duty to be proper, duty to be a lady, duty to be quiet and obedient and follow her father’s wishes for her. Duty to marry Norrington…

Elizabeth slams down the rolling pin and rips off her apron. Her fist is tight around the soft fabric as she tries to ground herself again. She can’t breathe, can’t do this, can’t think anymore.

She has tried to make the cottage a home, to tell herself she is happy here, but it feels like a bloody prison. Most days she can convince herself it’s because Will isn’t there, but on the darkest nights, when she lies in bed alone and listens to the Caribbean winds howl outside her window, she knows that is not the truth.

The truth is she doesn’t miss Will as much as she thought she would. The truth is something broke in her when he refused to take her with him, and she has tried very hard not to face some hard facts about the two of them. The truth is that what she misses is the roll of a ship under her feet, the thrill of riding out a storm, the caw of gulls. Seeing nothing but water in every direction. Freedom.

She chucks the apron on the floor, and the door slams behind her as she stalks away from the cottage and up the cliff. Only when she reaches the top can she take a true breath, filling her lungs with sea air as the scent of salt and kelp envelop her.

The ocean shimmers in the evening sun, glittery diamonds on a thousand shades of blue, beautiful and inviting, and Elizabeth forces back the sob that threatens to escape her.

She thought she broke free of the shackles. She chose, damnit. A pirate’s life for me and all that. She fought her way out of the expectations, escaped Norrington’s marriage proposal. She risked everything, sacrificed blood, sweat, and goddamn tears so she wouldn’t be trapped in a suffocating small life as a decorative little wifey to some man who is doing brave things while she keeps their home pretty and waits patiently for him to return.

The irony of her current situation doesn’t escape her. She bakes, she cleans, she visits with neighbors. She waits.

She is bored out of her mind.

Stay on land. You need to be safe. How can I do my duty to the souls I’m ferrying if I am worrying about your safety on this ship of death?

It’s a ridiculous argument. She can take care of herself. She has taken care of herself over and over again, with and without Will. But he had been immovable.

And he’d done it with such earnestness, brown eyes wide, an innocent expression on his face. Despite everything they’ve been through, he still retains that sweetness, the gentleness that made her fall in love with him in the first place.

Oh, you mean the gentleness that isn’t what you want anymore, the warm wind whispers as it ruffles her hair. An image of someone else flashes across her mind, someone decidedly not gentle, who doesn’t put her on a pedestal, but accepts her wild side.

She brushes aside the whisper and the image of the man whose gaze isn’t tender, but a wild autumn storm on the sea. Since Will boarded the Flying Dutchman and disappeared over the horizon while she watched from this very spot, she’s been ignoring whispers and errant visions. Of course, she ignores them. Because what kind of woman finally gets the man she wants and then decides she doesn’t actually want him? What kind of harridan rejects a man who is loyal and duty-bound and gentle?

A woman who is older now. One who wants more than this life in a small cottage, waiting a decade for Will to return for one day. One. Every decade. Who longs for a life of her own.

Thank all the gods in every religion that she didn’t get pregnant as Will hoped in the one day they had together before he left.

The wind whips her skirt around, tugging on her, and Elizabeth steps a little closer to the edge of the cliff. Her gaze is drawn to the glittering ocean far below, calling to her. She leans into the wind, relishing the feeling of danger dancing in her veins as her boots send pebbles tumbling over the edge and down to the water far below.

A pirate’s life for me, the wind breathes in her ear. Will knows this is what you want, and yet here you are on land, trapped in a life you don’t want once more.

She blinks away furious tears because the wind is a bitch who has too many opinions. And yes, Will knows. And he still left her behind.

He even refused to marry you, the wind offers, unhelpfully. Or maybe it’s the ghosts that speak to her and make her question things. Did Will refuse to marry her because he truly wanted her to have the freedom to choose someone else if the opportunity should arise? Or was it because he didn’t want it himself?

“Enough,” Elizabeth wipes away her tears and looks out at the ocean again. She blinks once, then twice, staring at the horizon where sails have appeared. She wonders if she’s imagining them, so she closes her eyes tightly. When she opens them again, they’re still there, coming swiftly closer.

A wild thought that it’s Will, that he has returned, makes her throat tight, and she doesn’t think it’s with happiness.

“Blinking bilge rats.”

The Black Pearl. It’s the Pearl, sailing into the bay below her cliff. And this time, there’s no doubt what she’s feeling as happiness and relief and excitement flood her entire body. She’s running down the hill before she has time to think.

Jack hops out of the small dingy onto the beach and tips his hat to her, and Elizabeth runs faster across the sand until she throws herself into his arms.

“Umpf!” he gasps, but he still lifts her off the ground, returning her hug. “Hello love, this is unexpectedly enthusiastic.”

She doesn’t respond, just hugs him tighter, breathing in the scent of him, salt like the ocean and that special spiciness that’s uniquely him.

“Elizabeth, darling, while I am enjoying this greeting—quite a lot, actually—my tremendous intuitive sense of the female creature informs me that you are troubled. Would you care to elaborate or—oooof—will you merely choke me to death with those upsettingly strong arms of yours?”

Reluctantly she lets go and steps back. “What are you doing here?” She blinks faster, refusing to cry again.

“What am I doing here? And don’t think I am not noticing you neatly sidestepping my question, by the by. Darling, a better question might be, what are you doing here? Last I saw you, you and your almost-husband were taking over the Dutchman. I assumed that after all your trials and tribulations to be together, you would both be off sailing the seven seas, doing all the ferrying and whatnot. Imagine my surprise when rumor reached me that Captain Turner left you behind on land.”

Elizabeth has long since stopped bothering to ask Jack how he knows things, so she merely scoffs. Waving Jack along towards her cottage, she tells him, “That is what I assumed too. Except Will was not sold on that plan.”

“So he left?” Jack confirms, and she nods. “Well, at least he’s safe, and you get to see him, I’m sure.”

When Elizabeth doesn’t respond, Jack stops her with a hand on her arm. “Elizabeth?”

“One day every ten years. The curse—”

“Pox take the curse, even Jones found a way to be on land when needed!” Jack’s shock rips open every wound she has meticulously stitched up.

“I know,” she hisses. “A bucket. Jones used a damn bucket. You know what else might have been an option? The shallow water at the beach. Treading water in the ocean. A bathtub of seawater. A row boat just off the coast. An estuary every so often. Plenty of ways around the bloody curse, and yet Will Turner refuted them all with claims about the spirit of the law. And no—” She holds up a hand, “I don’t need to hear any excuses for him; I have heard them all from his mouth.”

“I wasn’t going to—”

“I don’t need you to malign Will either. He is doing what he believes is right, and I can be patient and wait here.” Even as she says it, she hears how hollow that sounds.

“Sure, love. You will wait. However, do you remember what we discussed so long ago on the Pearl?” Jack steps into her home and shakes his head at her offer of tea. “Do you have any—”

“I don’t have any rum, if that is what you’re about to ask. And no, I don’t know what you’re talking about; we had many discussions aboard the Pearl.”

“Why is the rum always gone?” Jack bemoans. “Tragic, truly.”

She rolls her eyes at him, and he continues, “I have but one word for you, darling. Curiosity.”

The conversation comes flooding back to Elizabeth: the burning sunshine, the taste of rum on her tongue tangling with the ever-present taste of salt in the air. The unsettling but not entirely unpleasant feeling of having Jack very close.

One word, love. Curiosity, he’d said. You long for freedom. You long to do what you want to do because you want it. To act on selfish impulse. You want to see what it’s like. One day you won’t be able to resist.

She is once again reminded that this crazy pirate knows her better than the man who claims to love her.

“I see you do remember. You have tasted freedom now, Elizabeth. You are trying to resist its siren song. How long will that last? And how much of yourself are you losing in the process?”

Outside the cottage, the ocean calls to her, an unrelenting hum that thrums through her veins with every beat of her heart.

“Elizabeth,” Jack says, his voice gentler than she’s heard it before. It’s going to make her cry again, damn it, so she stands and walks over to the window, fixing unseeing eyes on the horizon.

“You’re not cut out for life on land, love. This—” He waves his hand at the small home they’re in. “This isn’t you, keeping house, waiting for a man to appear for one day every ten bloody years. You belong out there.”

She merely shrugs and doesn’t turn around, acutely aware of his burning eyes on her back.

“Will says it’s too dangerous.”

At this, Jack laughs loudly.

“Dangerous? Firstly,” he says when he finally gets himself under control, “what kind of nonsensical misogyny is this? You have been through dangers. Many of them, even, probably more than the young Master Turner. What’s wrong with that dolt? You have sailed to the ends of the world and back. You fought Davy Jones. You were the bloody Pirate King, for a while. Dangerous.” He shakes his head. “And second, is life on land in the Caribbean so very safe? That’s a ridiculous notion. And I’m not even talking about random pirates coming to your door and wondering why you have no rum.”

She’s turned around by now, and a small smile finally makes it to the edges of her mouth, which she suspects was his goal.

“I made all those arguments to Will. He remained unmoved.”

“He is a principled man, that one.”

“Yes,” Elizabeth agrees. Then, with a big breath, she blurts out the thought that she has been trying to suppress since the Flying Dutchman disappeared over the horizon. “I don’t know, Jack. It feels like a flimsy excuse, and part of me, a part that I’ve been trying very hard to ignore, but which is clamoring louder and louder each day, thinks that he simply did not want me there but lacked the courage to say so. Oh, he’ll come back because he keeps his promises. But I don’t think he wants to.”

“That is entirely possible.”

“Aren’t you supposed to make me feel better?”

“I don’t think so,” Jack says. “That is not, in fact, why I am here.”

“Splendid. Why are you here, then?”

“Well, you see, Elizabeth Swann, it so happens that Gibbs has found love in the autumn of his life and has decided to settle on land with his lady. And thus—” Jack pauses and twirls his hand in the air.

“And thus?” Elizabeth asks, confused at where he is going with this.

“And thus, obviously, the Pearl is in dire need of a first mate.”

“Alright…?”

“Blimey, woman, you are lucky I came when I did; life on land has made you slow already. Imagine what another year would do. I am offering you the position of first mate.”

“On the Black Pearl?” Elizabeth’s thoughts are caught in a quagmire of confusion. “Your ship? To sail with you?”

As she speaks, hope blooms in her chest for the first time since Will told her he wouldn’t take her with him on the Dutchman. It’s fragile and tender, but it glows brighter as Jack nods.

“Now you’re catching on. There’s hope for you yet.”

She looks around the cottage and sees nothing she will miss. Except perhaps the idea of who she and Will could have been if things had been different. If he had loved you for who you are and not for his idea of you, her thumping heart supplies.

She looks at Jack, leaning back in a chair, his booted feet on her table, his dark eyes twinkling mischievously. Jack, whom she risked her life to save. Jack, whom she followed to the end of the world, and over that edge.

He smirks at her and stands, stepping closer until they’re toe to toe and Elizabeth is suddenly struggling to breathe or think. Gently, he tugs a lock of her hair behind her ear, the soft stroke of his finger leaving a trail of heat on her cheek.

For one moment she thinks he might kiss her. And she realizes in that same moment that she wants him to. She has denied it for a very long time, clung to an idea of her and Will that has long sunk to the bottom of the sea, and perhaps it’s finally time to let go and move on.

But Jack doesn’t kiss her. He takes off his hat and places it on her head, hesitating only a little before his hands drop and the moment passes. She lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding and steps back, touching the brim of his hat.

“Your hat, Jack? I didn’t think you would ever part with that.”

“Just until you get your own. Don’t worry, I’ll keep my eye on it while it’s with you.” Something dark and dangerous and utterly enticing passes behind his eyes, making her stomach swoop with anticipation. He does want it. Them. Her.

You long to do what you want to do because you want it. To act on selfish impulse.

This is what she longs for. Freedom. Adventure. Danger.

Jack.

“Alright, Captain.” She pauses, checks her gut and knows it’s right. “I accept.”

“Excellent, excellent.” Jack’s crooked smile warms her very bones. “Now… bring me that horizon.”