PotC: Those Are Pearls That Were His Eyes
Title: Those Are Pearls That Were His Eyes
Author: rokeon
Rating: PG, Gen
Warning: Not deathfic, but there have been deaths in the past.
Feedback: Anything you particularly liked or hated?
Disclaimer: Poetry by Eliot, piracy by Disney.
Summary: Elizabeth's dreams, and reflections.



Elizabeth doesn't allow herself to think on it too deeply, but she remembers the dream she had before everything that happened... good Lord, practically a decade ago. Nine years since she married Will, six months after his formal proposal, three weeks after the very much less than formal breaking of her engagement to Commodore Norrington and the equally abrupt cancellation of the hanging of Captain Sparrow.

James has been dead for two years. A hurricane, though the season was wrong, or some other storm near as strong as one; the Dauntless was lost with all hands.

Of Jack there's been no word, nothing since he went over the wall of the fort. The rumors never cease, of course; there will always be legends about the Black Pearl's swiftness of sail and power of arms, just as there will always be tales of Jack Sparrow's swiftness of blade and power of personality. Even a particularly rowdy (and spectacularly randy) drinking song, one she imagines Jack would take as a great source of pride. But never anything that can be verified.

She has suspicions about the song, though, enough to make her believe that the Pearl saved her final disappearance for some time past that moment when she vanished into the horizon. No one can be persuaded to sing it in the presence of a lady, and even Will blushed beautifully scarlet and refused to quote beyond the second verse, but the melody of his off-key recitation was more than sufficient to recall the heat of fire on her face, the grit of sand in her toes, and the flavor of rum on her tongue.

Nearly ten years since the dream, almost twice as long since the actual events. It's still sharper in her mind than her wedding, her father's funeral, the births of her children. Sunlight skittering across a golden skull, the shine so bright it's as if the rays are trying to escape the metal's touch. Its mirror opposite, light and color and life absorbed into the mist surrounding dark planks and tattered sails that fade away as if they were never more substantial than the shadows around them.

She remembers the dream- doesn't pretend she'll ever forget it- but she doesn't let herself wonder. Doesn't let her curiosity off its tether, and certainly doesn't let words like 'omen' and 'premonition' cross her mind.

She doesn't let any of that happen because she's been having trouble sleeping recently, coming fully conscious in the middle of the night with one hand automatically stroking Will's shoulder to soothe him as he tries to wake at the disturbance. At first she thought it was the baby crying, but little Jamie sleeps like an angel and his nurse is as vigilant as one herself. It wasn't until the third week that she acknowledged what she already knew. She never remembers anything, her mind empty of everything but the weight on her chest: the weight of the water in her lungs that leaves her gasping for breath, the weight of the coin on its chain that her other hand reaches for but never finds.

She never remembers anything, but she wakes with the inescapable conviction that what she's not remembering are dreams.

IV. DEATH BY WATER

PHLEBAS the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.