the Dalaverse

I wrote a bit of things-turn-out-all-right-in-the-end fic, for linaelyn who is sad. PG, short, Will introspection with hints at Jack/Will/Elizabeth (mostly post-AWE, no known spoilers). Originally it was all supposed to be structured like the first bit, but Will doesn't think so linear-like anymore, at least not in my head.



Never Have I Ever


For some time after Isla de Cruces and the kraken, Will thought he would never look at Elizabeth the same way again. Though he did look at her, especially when they were dealing with the captain and he felt compelled by the past to keep her in his sight. He preferred to look at her in brief glances, so as to keep the anger and accusation from simmering to the surface and to avoid the foundering in her eyes.

One afternoon when the temperature had cooled and the sun was performing its graceful fall through a coral-colored sky, he watched her lean over the rail for a better look at the pod of dolphins skimming the waves alongside their hull. The rest of the men, accustomed to dolphins as they were, merely took note of the good luck and ignored them. Elizabeth gazed upon them with tangible delight, holding on tightly as the ship rocked over swells, her lips curved in a smile from another lifetime. As the nimble gray shapes began to drift away her eagerness faded, her eyes dimming to a bleakness Will would normally turn from. And he felt as though he had never looked at her in his whole life.

They sailed to the world’s end, and they found Jack Sparrow and brought him back, though not without a struggle. Will was glad of it, glad to have played his part and glad to have the Pearl and her rightful captain back on the seas. But he was quite sure he would never trust Jack again. He had been foolish to believe Jack had anyone’s interests but his own at heart, even with a history of mutual rescue behind the three of them, and it would be equally foolish to believe a brief spin of death would change a man’s nature.

Jack forgave Elizabeth. He did it behind closed doors, so Will didn’t hear any conditions or compromises that may have been uttered. Gibbs came looking for him not long after the two had sequestered themselves in the captain’s cabin, relaying a request that Will join them, but he politely declined. If they could both live with what they’d done, to themselves, to each other, and to anyone else, so much the better for them. Will had other things to worry about, namely the French privateer bearing down on them. He resisted giving up command to Jack, arguing that he had been too long away and ought to ease back into things. Jack flatly said it would be the brig or the cat, then, and Will stormed away from the helm with his sword in hand.

Perhaps he had been right after all, because they were boarded even as Elizabeth climbed to the mizzentop and aimed her rifle at the enemy captain. He thought he could swing his blade with only half his attention, the remainder being fixed on her small form crouched above the sails, until a man sneaked under his guard with a palm-sized dirk. Jack darted in from nowhere and took the slice up the ribs that had been aiming for Will’s heart. It wasn’t fatal, but it cost him blood when he didn’t have much to lose and he let them bully his exhausted body into bed. Elizabeth sat on one side, Will on the other, and as he laid his hand over Jack’s sleep-twitching fingers it occurred to him that what Jack had really cost him was trust in his own judgement – and also that it might not have been such a terrible shake, in the end.


The peace he had promised his father came in death. Will knew it was preferable to an eternity before the mast, but the guilt still made him lash out at Elizabeth when she made a fumbling attempt at comfort. He stood alone at the Pearl’s stern, heedless of the chilly spray, thinking of everything he had never gotten to ask Bill Turner, never gotten to tell him, and now never would. Trying to imagine his father’s side of the conversation failed utterly, for he hadn’t a good enough grasp of the man to even mimic his patterns of speech.

He could feel Jack’s eyes on him, throughout that day and the next, but the captain did not speak of what was lost until he had managed to talk Will into practicing intricacies of footwork on an unsteady deck rather than the solid ground on which Will had first learned the sword. When Will disarmed him, he didn’t scowl or pout or cry foul; he laughed and said that was just how Bill would’ve done it.

Elizabeth shouldered Jack out of the way and requested a turn, claiming her stance felt off and she couldn’t remember how to correct it. He raised an eyebrow at Jack, who knew as well as Will did that she often rose early to practice on her own, returning with a sore arm and satisfied set of her chin to steal another hour or two of sleep.

But Jack shrugged, winking in the completely unsubtle way that usually resulted in people asking if he had fleas. Will sighed and fit his hands to Elizabeth’s hips, feeling her muscles shift as she moved. Jack sat down against the mast to watch and called for a bottle of rum, promising to share once they got tired of the dance.

With a certainty that came from God knew where, Will knew he never would.