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Becalmed

by Virgo79
November 28, 2005

The hand Will held between his own had long gone cold as the green and silver ring upon it when Gibbs came quietly into the room. Will's bowed head swiveled in the older man's direction, and he stared, waiting.

Words fled the old storyteller's grasp for a moment or two. Will gave no coaxing, no hint of impatience. He only sat, and stared, and waited.

When Gibbs spoke, it was hushed. What he feared waking he couldn't say, but this was a room for whispers.

"It's ready."

No pain, no apprehension, no gratitude rippled the surface of Will's dark eyes. "Bring it."

Gibbs nodded, and backed quickly into the corridor. It was hard to breathe in that room. There were too many ghosts. Ghosts of what was gone, and of what was coming; things unformed, without shape or nature.

They made the air thick.

Will didn't move as the coffin was brought in. It was, against all sense, a beautiful thing. But then, what else would it have been?

Gibbs had protested the harvesting of the black wood adamantly, but he'd been thrice overruled, by Will, by Elizabeth, and by Bill Turner.

There had been something that felt vaguely obscene about it, like grave robbing, like they were stripping a corpse of its clothing, but in the end that troublesome sensation had been quelled by a greater sense of rightness about the act.

Jack would lie in the arms of the Black Pearl. She'd carried him to his death, and she would carry him back from it.

"Will," Elizabeth's voice came, gentle as her touch on his shoulder. "You have to let him go now."

Unspoken between them was the rest of her thought: just for now.

Will laid the cold hand back down, sitting up, moving back, refusing to curl in on the ache in his chest.

Why did people say the dead looked peaceful? This wasn't peace. It was emptiness.

~"What has been spilled out can be filled up again,"~ the mambo had told them, ~"if you know how to carry the water."~

Elizabeth moved back, her eyes glittering but her face composed, as Will and his father took their positions at head and foot.

How strange, that this should be the first thing they did together, restored to one another. Will wondered if Jack was able to appreciate the attention.

Dead weight, people spoke of, as well, but the burden they lifted between them seemed lighter than it should have been. How had he never managed to notice how slight Jack was? Had so much of him been movement and voice and quicksilver expression? How could the solid become so diminished, bereft of the ephemeral?

Was this why a ship becalmed, deprived of wind and waves, pitch and yaw, was called dead? Was it the same theft of spirit?

Will's breath caught as he and Bill carefully moved the body.

Would they be able to catch the current again?

The mambo, Tia Dalma, had given them many words, but no promises.

~"I can't do what you ask, fire-bringer. He can't be called home with salt and feathers. You want him back, you go an' fine him an' bring him your own self."~

~"I don't know how,"~ he'd protested. ~"I have no magic."~

She had scoffed at that, waving her secret-stained hands. ~"All what lives has magic. You got the blood in your veins, doncha? You got your woman at your side, an' the two of you fair reek of your love an' your lust! You got the wounds you earned fightin' a'side him, eh? You got the tears you cried over his dyin'. An' you got names,
fire-bringer. His, and them what slain him, an' your own!"~ She had stepped into him again, pressing herself lover-close. ~"Names got power, cher. Yours got more than most. I saw that first time you stepped over my threshold."~ She had pushed the hair from his eyes, as if to better read their depths. ~"Will Turner. Turn the world.
Turn the wheel. Turn the tide. Turn a grave to a garden. You are a pirate, yes?"~ Her eyes had burned, and Will felt a thrill of terror in wondering what she saw. ~"Then take what you can."~

Resolve set like cooling steel inside him as they stooped towards the coffin.

"Oh, wait!" Elizabeth suddenly burst out, and she yanked off her coat, folding it hastily, but so neatly, and laying it down for a pillow inside the long, dark box. Bill gave her an adoring smile that wrung tears from his eyes. She could barely manage a smile of her own, and she hovered close as they lowered the shell that had been Jack into the casket of sea-weathered wood, her hand drifting out to grasp an arm, sliding along a sleeve.

Elizabeth knelt then, and folded Jack's hands on his chest, and tidied his dark hair around his shoulders, her fingers lingering on a string of beads. When she moved back, pressing her face to Will's shoulder, Bill laid his hand over Jack's, and reached down to stroke one still cheek with his thumb, over, and over, and over again.

When Bill had withdrawn, Will went to his knees at the head of the coffin and leaned close, close enough that absent breath would have otherwise warmed his face. He laid one hand lightly on the chest that did not rise.

~I will take what I can. And I'll give what I must.~

"I don't know if you can hear me," Will whispered against Jack's ear, "but we're coming."

And with that promise added to the small space that, impossibly, already held a friend, a brother, and a son, Will straightened, and helped Bill and Elizabeth lift and align a piece of black wood adorned with wings over water.

~.~

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