the Dalaverse

Next batch of drabble-ficlets.


Lifetime in Moments [Jack/ship, angsty (character death), requested by unen2gemismasin]


The sun was sinking low in the sky when they sailed away the first time. Jack stood on the beach, heedless of the tide rising around his ankles, his feet sinking into the sand, the last of the day’s heat beating down on his unprotected head. And he watched as his ship shrank to a speck on the horizon and finally disappeared.

It was deep night the next time he saw her, moon high and full above the fort’s battlements. Peering out the prison window, he could make out the sea from the sky by its sparkle, and he could only see the Pearl by virtue of the fact that she did not. With every dull thud from her gun deck, his chest grew tight and his throat dry, and he thought, Now.

The second time she left him, it was bright afternoon and the island shimmered in the sun, gold and green and blue, prettier than any jewel, prettier even than his companion. Jack cared not. The sand burned, the waves taunted, the girl shouted. He checked the shot in his pistol and sought the numbing veil of the rum buried in the hated earth.

When he stood at her helm for the first time in ten years, he let his clothes dry on his back. He didn’t move for the next eighteen hours. Only when he was directing the ship off course by sagging against the wheel was Gibbs able to persuade him to collapse in a hammock. In his dreams she sang to him, a song like stretched canvas and creaking wood and the deep, lonely cry of whales.

He watched her go down from the deck of an English man-of-war. The captain ordered the other prisoners below, but he gripped Jack’s hair and made him look. He wouldn’t have turned his head even if he could. He owed her that much. As she burned and broke apart, he could hear her screaming defiance, until her last bones fell beneath the waves.

The commodore will be pleased, the captain growled into his ear. Jack didn’t bother to contradict him. Within an hour of his arrival in Kingston, Norrington came to see him, his green eyes shadowed like a spot of dark, dangerous current. He asked if there was anything, anything Jack could tell him, anything that might be of use.

Yes, said Jack. I was faithful. But it didn’t save her and it won’t save me.

It hadn’t, and after the briefest of trials, it didn’t.

But Jack could see the ocean from the gallows, and so he smiled, because no one could take that from them. And now no one would get the chance to try.


First Light [Norrington gen, requested by dzurlady]


James was six years old the first time he set foot aboard a proper ship, and he never forgot it. He had been permitted to accompany his father to Spain in order to take care of some property that had belonged to his mother's family. It was the first time since his mother's death a year before that his father had offered to take him anywhere.

He stood proudly on deck, chin lifted, watching the sailors laboring to bring the heavy anchor up. The retort of a pistol from somewhere on the docks below startled him so that he reached for his father's hand.

Peter Norrington glanced down at his son, a look on his face as if he'd forgotten the boy was there. James' cheeks colored with shame, but his father merely cupped his small fingers in a broad palm.

"Are you frightened of the journey, James?"

James shook his head emphatically, his heart speeding up with the need to express what it felt -- exhiliration, awe, relief that he was surrounded by men rather than nurses and aunts and tutors and the powedery scent of his baby sister's things. He loved the thick tang of the salt air, the improbable order amongst the hard-looking crew, the kindness of the blue-eyed captain. He was so elated to be standing beside his father, the greatest man he knew, that he feared his feet would leave the deck.

In the end, he could find no way to explain all this, so he merely looked up and said, "No, Father, I'm not afraid."

Something in Peter's face changed. Later in his life, James would think back on it and realize that it had been the lingering sorrow and guilt, burning away like the fog off the English coast.

"I believe you, son," said Peter. He squeezed James' hand tightly before he let it go. James watched a few gulls chase each other through the rigging, and was quite sure he'd never be so happy again.


Sidhe [Gillette/Dauntless, requested by oneiriad]


Night after night, he dreamt of a red-haired woman.

She came upon him in his bed, but it was not really his bed, for everywhere around him he could see green. He was never quite sure if it was the green of moor and meadow or the green of the northern seas. It was definitely the green of her eyes, though.

Her hands were strong and capable on his body, and no matter how he thought to resist, could always coax him into response. He did hold firm when she offered him cold red wine and delicate sweets -- his mother's superstitions had taught him better.

When he woke in the morning, a chill washed over him despite the tropical heat; his hands grew clammy and his cheeks pale. The only way to soothe his upset stomach was to open his shutters and look down on the blue bay below, at the ships anchored there. And then he felt right as rain.

He was playing chess with Groves one night when the subject of vessel construction came up, English as opposed to French. Gillette had sailed on French ships as a child, and he used the Dauntless as his primary example of the superiority of English shipbuilding.

Groves gave him a quizzical look. "But the Dauntless isn't English."

"Of course she is," Gillette retorted. "She was new when Captain Norrington came down here."

Tilting his chair back on two legs in a way he knew Gillette hated, Groves shook his head. "She was, but she comes from an Irish shipyard. It was a whole Irish village built that ship ten years ago."

He supposed he must have blanched, because Groves let the chair fall and looked at him with concern. "Andrew? Are you all right?"

"I am fine," said Gillette, and he proceeded to lose three games in a row.