the Dalaverse

J/W/E ficlet, set in that hazy shadowland after AWE -- enough time for it all to have settled down (and spoiler-free, if you need to ask). There's...not much to this one, really, just a moment that popped into my head while I was trying to sleep last night. Title from Jeff Buckley.



Nightmares by the Sea


There were days when Jack talked at absurd length and speed, even for him; when his attention wandered at the drop of a hat and his hands and eyes darted about just a bit too quickly. All of it reminiscent of darker days, all of it nearly imperceptible because he’d finally gotten better at holding this secret. But Elizabeth had learned to read him in turn, and she always knew when the clouds were gathering. Will knew it as well as she. He said not a word when she neglected him in order to press against Jack like a cat, only fit himself into their embrace with the patience and fierce concentration that still surprised her after all this time. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t, and not one of them could rise the next morning. Sometimes it was she and not Jack who woke gasping from dreams of fetid waters, eerie shores, green light, sharp fangs – what little she remembered and what she had picked up secondhand, and other fears that had no names.

On a night like this she woke with a violent start, the shadowy fingers tearing her throat out dissolving into the sound of her own voice echoing in the cabin. Jack lay beside her, silent and separate, as she stared at the beams above their heads and fought her racing heart down to a normal rate. Only when she could inhale without a hitch did he touch her, rubbing his hand up and down her arm in time with her breathing. She took comfort in his steady observation of her face, though she didn’t meet his eyes. The sweat cooled on her skin, particularly on the empty side of the bed, and she shivered.

With impeccable time, Will swung into the cabin. He was clad in his old breeches with the patches in the seat, which Jack had sewn out of a vivid red calico in some fit of pique. Elizabeth had thought Will would be angry – he could be territorial about the things he owned – but he had laughed and worn the breeches to bed on many occasions since. She supposed he had stepped out to the head, or for a moment with the watch; he often sought solace in Mr. Cotton’s companionable silence.

A line of tension eased in her neck when he slipped into bed on her other side. He brought a whiff of sea air with him, fresher than the close atmosphere of the cabin. Jack squeezed her wrist lightly, as if to say All right now, aye? She turned to him with a complicit sigh while Will stretched out against her back, draping his arm over her waist, kissing her bare shoulder.

“Go back to sleep,” he murmured to them both, in a faintly put-out, ever-so-slightly schoolmarmish tone. Jack’s mustache twitched and one dark brow quirked, but he closed his eyes obediently, stretching his arm across her to spread his palm over Will’s hip and complete the circle.

Always the circle, she thought vaguely as she drifted off. At times a serpent swallowing its own tail, perhaps, and it had taken quite a lot to get it to bite – but unbroken nonetheless.