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Pearl Tales
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a Sacrifice by
Erinya |
| aaa |
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Perhaps, she thinks, if she does this, if he is gone, she will be
able to go back to feeling and wanting what she should, to
exorcise the selfish demon of desire in her and save everyone else
as well as herself from drowning. Their sins are different, hers
and Jack's, but she'll see to it that their penance is the same.
But until she puts her mouth to his, she doesn't realize just how much she's wanted it, how long she's wanted him. Since that night on the island, or earlier perhaps, when he cut away the suffocating corset so that she could breathe, when she opened her eyes and was promptly lost in his. Lost, saved, it blurred together then, as it does now. The kiss is not what she thought it would be, exactly. He tastes a bit like rum, and that's right, but not quite sweet and not quite like the sea; but perhaps that bitterness on her tongue is only the knowledge of how this must end. And he doesn't devour her, doesn't claim her fiercely, but tastes her in return, almost hesitant, almost tender, sighing into her mouth, and there's the sweetness she was missing. He tastes like freedom, even at the last, even as she takes it from him. She winces as the shackle snaps shut around his wrist, the sharp sound carving its memory on her heart forever, red-hot like a brand to match the one Beckett gave him long ago; but he doesn't flinch, only opens his eyes and smiles down at her as if seeing her for the first time, so that when she tells him she's not sorry she doesn't mean it, can't mean it no matter how she tries. So that she almost kisses him again, just to be sure she doesn't forget what it tastes like. "Pirate," he calls her, and for one long moment she can't look away from the recognition and affection and absolution in his lidded gaze, can't hide the raw truth in her own. Why does she have to know this now, to finally understand what James bloody Norrington and that blasted compass and her unforgivable dreams and even Jack himself have been telling her all along? Why does he always, always have to be right about her? She turns away from the answers, stumbling, almost running, leaves them bound with him to the mast of the other thing he loves, a sacrifice to appease the monstrous gods of the sea and of the heart. But it is no use. She is still drowning. She still feels nothing of what she should, wants only a different ending to this story then the one upon which she and Fate have collaborated, for this is no curse like that of Aztec gold to be ended with blood and the relinquishment of what should never have been touched. We're not free yet, love, he'd said. And now, she thinks, neither one of them will ever be.
~.~
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