Still Me

Disclaimer: Not mine, I just borrowed them.

Author's Note: This is what happens when I have a title and no story to go with it. Maybe now I can finally concentrate on being a graduate student again...

Feedback, as always, is good. Flames, as always, will be used to roast marshmallows.

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He never stops moving. He paces up and down, he talks with his hands, he drums his fingers on tables. Even when he sleeps, he twitches and shudders and occasionally whimpers. I do not know what kind of demons hunt him in his sleep, but I would not want them. Are these the same demons that drive him to action, or motion, every waking minute?

I never stop moving. I leap and swerve under his hands, I dance to the beat of the ocean, I rock him to sleep. I know him, and I know from his lightest touch what he wants of me. I was almost old before he was born, but I was not truly alive before he came to me. I have been young and foolish, I have been old, I have been given back a measure of my prime, but now I am tired, and I can hear the ghosts and demons call with the voices of storms.

I know about demons. I know about pain, and fear, and despair. I know about freedom and joy and adventures. I know everything there is to know about Jack Sparrow, except what goes on in his head. Of that, I only know what he tells me deep in the night, when he and I are the only ones awake. He knows that I never sleep, and that I will never pass on anything he tells me.

He listens to what I tell him. Drunk, dead asleep or wounded, he can hear a whisper from me and respond to it if need be. When I was young, I spoke with many voices. My voice had changed before I met him, and I had come into my own. He learned to hear me when I became his, as I learned to respond to him when he became mine.

When we were separated, I changed again. I became a shell of what I had been. I could feel him trying to come back to me. And I wanted him back, because he knows me. He knew I was suffering for his absence. And I knew he would come back for me, and we would know freedom together again. With all we have been through, I am still me.

I was wounded for him, and my pain tore at his soul. He was nearly hanged for me, and I mourned for him and for my powerlessness to help him when I thought he would never return. I would have mourned for the rest of my days if he had died that day. There is something between us that runs deeper than the ocean I dance to.

I will not outlive him. I know this. Already I am tired, and I can feel myself dying slowly. I think he knows it too, although he does not admit it yet. I no longer respond to him as readily as I would wish; my body betrays me. I wonder where my soul will go when my body can go no further?

I would pray, if I had anything to pray to, that my end will be quick, and that I will be allowed to return to him again. It will hurt him badly to lose me again. I would not be surprised if he refuses to leave me, in the end, when I can no longer move at all.