the Dalaverse

I'm just going to post this, because why not? It is actually the very last scene, because if you write the last part you might as well write the rest of it.

I was looking through my Will/Elizabeth/James fics recently and realized that several of them, namely World Falls, Where the Ocean Meets the Sky, and Likenes, could all take place in the same timeline. I also theorized that Elizabeth is pregnant in "Where the Ocean Meets the Sky," even though I hadn't intentionally written it in (and she doesn't know it yet).

And that's when I opened up a Google doc titled "Will/Elizabeth/James epic that I am not writing," which is currently 9 pages of notes plus this scene. It's taken three days just to write these few words, but...I wrote, and it felt good. Feel free to share thoughts or encouragements.

Backstory: James has been gone for a long time due to reasons outside of his control, and he's just come home. I cut a line because it was a spoiler (and Will happens to be offscreen here).



James opened his eyes to unfamiliar surroundings, hearing neither the creak of wind and rigging nor the groans of dying men but only silence. An ache in his head and his bones alarmed him in the liminal haze between sleep and awake. For a moment he gave himself over to panic - his breathing quickened, his eyes darted about the room, and he started at the touch of a hand on his arm.

“James.”

He knew that voice, had heard it in his dreams so often that he thought perhaps he was still asleep after all. But surely -

“You’re home, my love,” Elizabeth whispered, her palm spread over his racing heart. “Remember?”

She leaned over him, her face indistinct in the bare thread of light from the edges of the curtains. He remembered that - she always insisted on sleeping in complete darkness, hated being woken by the sun before she was ready to face the day. Will had complained of it frequently even though he rose at the same hour like clockwork, sunshine or no sunshine.

It might still be a dream, he reasoned; he had made use of such details before.

He touched her cheek, the skin as soft as he remembered, and ran his fingers through the hair that fell just past her shoulders. It was then he realized - remembered - that he was back in Jamaica, in the wide iron bed Will had fashioned so long ago.

“Elizabeth,” he said, two years of regret and longing coarsening his voice. An expression almost like pain crossed her face as she kissed him swiftly.

She rose then, plucking a shirt from the floor to tug over her head on her way to the window. As she drew the curtains back he saw that it was early still, the light opalescent and faint; and he saw that it was his own shirt she had put on.

“The wee monsters won’t be up for awhile yet,” she said, returning to bed and tucking herself back against his side, one long leg hooking over his knee.

They both glanced over at the empty left side. “On his rounds,” Elizabeth remarked, settling her head on his shoulder.

“He still does that?” It had begun at Queen Street after John was born. Any one of the three of them might fetch him during the night, but it was always Will if he woke around daybreak. He’d walk the baby down the stairs and around the small house before bringing him to the bedroom to nurse.

“Not as much once we moved,” said Elizabeth.

“More ground to cover, I imagine.” James traced the dips of her spine with his fingertips.

“Yes. But last year, when…” The lines of her body went taut for a moment as she rephrased what she had been about to say. “When I stopped writing, it became something of a compulsion. He’d check on the children and me two or three times while he circled the house, then go out to the barn and the dock. It would take an hour or more. I watched him from the window sometimes.”

“Why, do you think?”

One freckled shoulder lifted in a shrug.

“It was what he needed to do. I cropped my hair, Will walked his boundary lines.”

He remembered his apprehension over that bond between them when this all started, the unspoken understanding at the core of their marriage, and his doubts over how he would fit into it. Now he found he could only be grateful they’d had each other in the hard times since.

“Elizabeth,” he said, his throat tight, “I am so sorry I wasn’t there.”

She raised her face to his, and there was a touch of sadness in her eyes but no bitterness. “You’re here now.”

James gathered the ends of her bright hair in his hand. “I wonder why he’s gone out again today.”

“Don’t you know?” Elizabeth quirked an eyebrow. “He’s making sure his family is safe.”

“Oh,” James said softly.

She traced his lips with her fingertips. “How I’ve missed that smile,” she said, kissing his brow and then his mouth. It went on for a time, steady and unhurried, until the sound of footfalls up the stairs turned their heads toward the door.