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Never Love Me

by Erinya
August 22, 2006

When Elizabeth Swann was seven years old, her father, always searching for new gifts to delight his darling girl, brought home to her a pet bird: a small green parrot with a scarlet face and bright black eyes. Elizabeth, duly delighted, insisted on taking full responsibility for feeding and caring for the little creature, and could often be seen at her lessons or at play in the garden or even at the supper table with the bird chirping companionably on her shoulder. She named it Kidd, after the famous pirate; it was a fearsome title for such a gentle spirit to bear, and had that gentleman of fortune known what sort of namesake he had acquired through his notoriety, he probably would not have been pleased, to say the least. But as he had recently been hanged at the Tower, he never had a chance to find out about it.

When Elizabeth was eight years old, her mother took gravely ill; and on the advice of the doctor, the family removed hastily to the country in the hope that fresh air would soothe Catherine's painful cough and bring the color back to her pale cheeks. Kidd was left behind at the house in the care of Rebecca, the housemaid. But days in the country turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months; Catherine improved a little at times, and worsened a little at others, but the bad days began to outnumber the good days more and more, and when the Swanns finally returned home it was with the heavy task of arranging a funeral.

Two funerals, in fact, for when Elizabeth came upstairs, subdued, to greet her pet at last, she found him lying silent and still in the straw on the floor of his cage. Becky explained tearfully that Kidd had seemed depressed in the absence of his mistress and had begun to refuse his food some days ago; she had done all she could, but he could not be persuaded to eat. Elizabeth had only been allowed to glimpse Catherine's still form briefly before she was led away, and it had seemed to her that the waxy-skinned thing on the bed was not her mother at all; but holding the bird's tiny body in her hands, she understood for the first time what death meant, and wept bitterly for both her losses. She buried Kidd in the garden, with Becky and Susan the cook as mourners. It had been a grey London day, and the cold of the coming winter had crept into her muddy fingers as she pushed earth over the small grave.

It was of that moment, oddly, that she thought now, standing at the starboard prow of the Black Pearl as she watched the crusted prow of the Flying Dutchman sink into the ocean, swallowed as if it had never been. Her fiancé was on that unearthly vessel; or rather, her former fiancé. For Will's heart belonged wholly to the Dutchman now, and in return she had made him ruler and judge and executioner of the seas. And made him of the sea in other ways, as well. He had grown a crest of fins along his spine already, bright with the orange and black markings that had begun to stripe his skin; webbing stretched between his fingers, and a curious protuberance of bone lined his chest like the knobs of a sea-horse. He was still beautiful as he'd always been, and his eyes were still the same eyes, but everything else was different, or changing: "into something rich and strange" and alien, something that was not her Will Turner anymore. Elizabeth shivered at the memory of his voice, chilly as the black depths of the ocean, as he told them that Jack and the Black Pearl would be safe for her sake, that and that alone.

"I'm sorry, love," Jack said softly, behind her. The words dropped like stones into her reverie, stirring her and the sinuous dark thoughts that swam beneath her surface.

"No," she said, gripping the rail. "No, Jack. Don't call me that. Don't love me. Never love me." She turned to him abruptly, pulling him closer by the lapels of his coat so she could search his face as she said, low and fierce, "Swear it! Swear that you won't."

His arms went around her, easily...too easily, like he planned to make a habit of it...and he frowned at her. "You're not making any sense."

"Yes, I am," she insisted. "Everything that loves me dies. James. My father. Will..."

"Everything dies, Elizabeth," he said, and she heard the weight of too much knowledge in his voice. "Beside, Will's not in the least bit dead. He'll outlive us both now that he has the Dutchman."

He said it grimly, though, and they both knew the truth of it, that the Dutchman had Will Turner and not the other way around, and what that meant. "He's not Will anymore," she said, forcing herself to hear that truth, to know and feel it. "And that's worse."

"Will made a choice," Jack said. "And it wasn't for your sake. It was for Bootstrap. He freed his father's soul knowing full well that he'd pay the price Bill owed." His gaze slipped past her, far out to sea, a flight of abstraction whose trajectory she couldn't quite calculate.

She said, "But if I hadn't...if I could have married him, could have loved him as he loved me...He had nothing left to lose."

Jack's focus snapped back to her. "Nonsense," he retorted. "For once Will Turner did something that had nothing to do with you, and I'm damn proud of him for it."

"But don't you see? It's not just him. I break people, Jack. I don't mean to but I do. And I don't want to break you too. I don't want you to die because of me. I won't let you," and she was dismayed to find herself blinking back tears.

He tilted his head at her, wry amusement sparking in his eyes. "I already have died because of you, dearie. Or have you already forgotten? I must say I certainly have not. But then, it wasn't you got eaten by a Kraken."

"I remember," she said, stung. "Of course I remember. You see, that's what I mean. After that, you'd be a fool to trust me, Jack." She stepped closer to him, beseeching him with her eyes, her body. "Promise me. Say it. Say you'll never love me."

He sighed. "Foolish girl, you know I don't keep promises. Pirate. But if you insist..." He pressed a kiss to her forehead. "I'll never love you." Then, against her lips, "Never love you." Tenderly, at her throat, "Sweet Bess. I'll never love you."

"Jack," she whispered, half-protest, half-prayer.

"Lizzie," he answered her, into her skin. Then he lifted his head and took her face between his hands, looking grave. "You've forgotten something else, you know," he said, smoothing her hair back, stroking his thumbs beneath her eyes to blur away the wetness there. "You saved me, lass. You may've sent me to the death I'd earned, but you sailed to World's End to bring me back. That ought to count for something in your reckoning, I think."

"I did what I had to do," she muttered.

"I know," he said. "I know you did. I always knew, even when you didn't."

"But...aren't you afraid I'll do the same again?"

He chuckled. "Given a good cause, I'm sure you would. Be well assured, I don't plan on giving you one." He paused, growing serious again, studying her as if the words he needed were written there in her eyes. "That day...I would've run, Elizabeth. Would've gone on running 'til Jones' beastie caught me all the same. You gave me a better end than the one I would've chosen for meself, better than I deserved."

"How can you say that?" she cried. "How can you be so--so--I chained you to the Pearl, Jack! I gave you no choice. I took away your freedom. The only thing that mattered, and I took that from you."

"There's no freedom in fear, Lizzie," he said quietly. "You made me stand, made me face it, like the good man you were bound and determined to believe I was. And when it came...aye, when it came, I was glad I didn't die running. Would you tell me that mattered not at all?"

"That's not what you would have told me, before," she said.

"Perhaps not," he agreed. "But I did die, after all, and that changes a man. Nothing like death to shed a bit of perspective on one's life, savvy?"

"Jack..."

"Shh, love. Listen, now. I have a proposition for you. No, not that sort...I'll get to that in a moment, never you fear. But this is important. Stop fidgeting and attend," he commanded, catching her chin and dragging it upwards until she met his eyes.

"You're right in a way, love. You are what you are, and you can't help that. Changeable. Perilous. Beautiful, like the sea," and that expression of his...intent, reverent...it was, she thought, the same expression with which he'd gazed on the treasure of Isle de Muerta, the same expression she'd glimpsed on his face when he'd first stepped aboard the Black Pearl again at World's End and placed his hand on her wheel; her own gaze faltered under it. "You destroy life and you give it, too, and anyone who tries to tame you, who believe he owns you or has sway over you, is bound to drown in you. And you could very well be my undoing." His voice dropped low, rough and rich as Shantung silk. "But if you are, if I break at your hands, I'm counting on you to put me right again. And in return, I'll do the same for you, so we'll be square."

"What if I can't," she protested. "Even if I was good at it...some things can't be fixed, Jack. The sea won't give you back to me twice. No one's that lucky...not even you."

"Then I'll do my best to survive you. I'm quite good at surviving, you know," he said lightly. "Or I'll pay the price that's coming to me. And I daresay it'll be worth it. Elizabeth..." his mouth had dropped to hers, so that his lips moved lightly over hers as he spoke, while his hands roved over her body, his accustomed restlessness of gesture translated as caress, drawing a knot of heat tight in her center. "The truth is, nothing comes free. Even for a pirate. Even freedom itself. Certainly not this."

"But if it doesn't last--"

"It won't," he said, while gathering her so close she almost believed it might. "It can't. One way or another. Everything ends. But you have to take what you can while you can, love, and don't give it up or give it back before its time. Don't give up before it's even begun."

He was pleading with her, she realized, obliquely but urgently. She was suddenly terrified. Despite all her warnings he was offering himself to her. She could break him right now just by walking away, by telling him no, by disembarking at the next port and never seeing him again.

She felt herself trembling, but his arms were around her, keeping her steady. Holding her together, as if he knew that she too was in danger of falling apart.

"Just let it be what it is, darling," he was saying, into her hair. "Nothing more, nothing less. We don't need it to mean more than that." Then he moved back a little, just far enough to look at her again. "What say you, love? Do we have an accord?"

"We have an accord," she said, swallowing away her doubts and the lump in her throat, kissing him long and deep and slow before burying her head in his shoulder to breathe him in; and for now what it was, was enough, and a beginning, like a bird's swift fragile heartbeat in the palm of her open hand.

~.~

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