meme sheep-ery

[elspethdixon]

The first TEN people to comment in this post get to request a drabble or a sketch of any pairing/character (from one of my usual fandoms). Original fic is also allowed--you can toss names, photos, descriptions of personalities at me--with the provision that none of the characters be from any works in progress. In return, those ten people have to post this in their journals, regardless of their ability level.

meme taken from ani_bester
(crossed out the orig fic one because I can't do drabbles for characters I don't know).

Usual fandoms= Avengers, Daredevil, PotC, Three Musketeers, Mag7, bookverse!Bond, DCU toonverse, Tombstone, Watchmen, Lonesome Dove: TOY, and anything else you can think of that I've written or that you know I've read.

Comments

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

Port Royal held many women who were raising children on their own while their husbands were away at sea. Most of those women, however, were odinray sailors wives, not the former governor's daughter.

Money was not an issue, not with the tribute the Pirate King was paid, and not with the funds her father had left her, and ready cash and a good line of credit went a long way towards giving Will Turner's wife and child a veneer of respectability.

It didn't go far, though, and Elizabeth was cold and lonely at night. She was a woman grown and married, a mother, and yet the only time she'd ever known a man's touch was that one glorious hour on the beach with Will (Jack's lips under hers, his body against hers as she snapped the manacles around his wrists didn't count, though she had to remind herself of that often).

James was nine, nearly ten, before he ever saw his father, and Elizabeth was nearly thirty, lines forming at the corners of her eyes and around her mouth, before she saw Will again.

He hadn't aged a single day in ten years. Even the scar over his heart was still red and livid, as if it had barely finished healing.

Will went back to his ship, and Elizabeth went back to Port Royal, back to pretending to be respectable for her son's sake while pirate gold paid for their clothes, the servents' wages, and the horses and carriage.

When Jack showed up at the next new moon, sneaking into Port Royal in a tiny and bedraggled little sloop in the dead of night, also not a day older than he'd been ten years ago -- if anything, he seemed younger, the faint lines around his eyes that the khol had always only mostly hidden gone now -- and presented her with a glass vial of water and a bargain, she didn't hesitate.

The Pirate King would step out of retirement and arrange for Jack to get the Black Pearl back from Barbossa (again; that ship seemed to change hands more often than some of the smaller Windward Isles, which had been French, Spanish, Enlish, and Dutch in turn) and Captain Jack Sparrow would lend her the use of his compass and the only ship in the world that could outrun the Flying Dutchmen.

Will couldn't set foot on land but once every ten years. No one, Jack pointed out, had ever said anything about the Captain of the Dutchmen's lady wife setting foot aboard his ship.

The water he insisted they drink to seal the bargain was the clearest and purest Elizabeth had ever tasted, and made her skin tingle from the inside out. When Jack waggled his eyebrows and suggested that there were also other, more intimate ways to seal bargains, she answered yes to that, too, and shrugged away any guilt.

Will had given her his heart in a box, and she would keep it safe until she died, but he was also as married to his ship and his duty as he was to her. And ten years alone is a long time.

It wasn't until she looked in the mirror the next morning, and saw the face of a woman who hadn't existed in a decade staring back at her that Elizabeth realized what Jack's water had done to her.

James took to the sea with an ease that would have made both his grandfather and his namesake proud, and Will welcomed Elizabeth and Jack both with a stunned laugh and open arms, but it was still a very long time before she completely forgave Jack for what he had done to her.

No woman should have to watch her son grow old and die while she remains young.

She understood, though; the Flying Dutchmen crossed paths with the Pearl at least once a year, and every year, there were fewer of the Pearl's old crew left, until eventually, the only men and woman left alive who'd seen skeletons walk in the moonlight and fought the Kracken were Will, Elizabeth, and Jack. And Barbossa, wherever he was. It never did well to leave him out of one's reckoning.

Jack might only see them every few months, but when the three of slept in a tangle in the Pearl or the Dutchman's captain's quarters, there was always a satisfied and completely peaceful smile on his face, and o Will's.

No one likes the idea of spending eternity alone.

[geekmama.livejournal.com]

This was a wonderful look at their lives post-AWE! Thank you so much for writing it for me. Jack slipping Elizabeth the FoY water without telling her first: a sort of revenge and a very clear profit, all in one. Very piratical!

And Barbossa, wherever he was. It never did well to leave him out of one's reckoning.

True that!

Fabulous piece, thank you again!!

[ceria-taliesin.livejournal.com]

Wow. This is beautiful. I adore this threesome to death and you write them so, so well.

I love the trick Jack played on Elizabeth.