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The Scythe's Song	By : hallowedmaiden Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (All) > Het - Male/Female > Jack/Elizabeth Views: 2815 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own POTC or the characters and I do not make any money from this story.

Chapter List
- 17
- 18
- 19
The perfect time of day was right in the morning when the sun is just starting to breach the horizon, when the air is still crisp, when the birds are starting to sing, and when the rest of the world is quiet.
She hadn't moved since she had woken up with a startled inhale, not for any particular reason. There might have been a dream that she had left, but she couldn't remember. And it wasn't that she didn't want to move, because she wanted to shift just to the left very much.
Currently, she had the love of her life cradled against her, and she didn't have the heart to wake him yet. His head was resting on her chest, and his arm was draped across her ribs. A few strands of black raven hair were tickling her nose every time she exhaled, but she still couldn't bring herself to even wiggle a little bit. Her right arm was trapped between them, but that was fine because his skin was warm against hers.
The first time that they had slept together in the same bed, Jack had come very close to embedding the small dagger he kept under his pillow into her skin but gotten himself under control just in time. It had taken him a few minutes to even talk to her because he had felt so ashamed of himself, but once she convinced him that he had nothing to be ashamed of, she had correctly guessed that she was the first person to sleep with him in the same bed. Trust wasn't something that came easily, and in his experience, someone even being near his bed while he was sleeping meant that they wanted to harm him.
An indescribable warmth was being exuded from her, but she couldn't tell if it was actual heat coming from her skin or just the physical manifestation of the happiness that she currently felt, so much so that just thinking about what had happened the night before sent overwhelming emotion coursing through her body.
After so much waiting, so many obstacles, she had finally made love to Jack, which seemed too simple of language to describe it, describe the heights he had taken her to, the complete abandon he had brought her just by being inside of her.
Inhaling deeply, she tried to clear her mind, tried to focus on the sight in front of her rather than just re-living how his body had felt atop her, how perfectly they had fit together, and the litany of words he had breathed onto her skin as he took her.
The sight in front of her being her pirate captain fast asleep, the blanket only covering the lower half of his tanned form, and it was barely covering him there, riding a little lower with every breath he took. She had never thought she would get the opportunity to touch more than she already had before yesterday, nevermind being able to watch him as he slept, leisurely examining every perfect feature of his body, completely bare for her gaze.
It wasn't quite accurate to call him hers, she knew, with their complicated relationship still creating quite the divide between now and that far off step in their dynamic, but she would be damned if she didn't wish him to be hers with every fiber of her being.
Before she realized what she was doing, she had scooted forwards a little to sit right next to him, trailing her fingers over the skin right next to the blanket edge, dipping her fingers into the v of his hip that was just peeking out from under the cloth, before running them up his side. God, he was beautiful, and she was fairly confident that he was the only man she had ever seen that deserved being called beautiful, with his bronzed skin, his raven black hair, his lean muscle from years of sailing, his hands that could bring her so much pleasure, whether they were dancing across her heated flesh or just massaging her skin as he pulled her against him.
The tattoos and scars only deepened the complexity of him, only made her fascination with him increase tenfold, because there was a story behind each one, and even besides that, she found all of them beautiful too.
And his face. She couldn't find enough worthy words in the English language to describe his face. She knew that it didn't belong on a clever pirate, she knew that for sure, but the fact that it adorned a clever pirate such as Jack, combined with everything else that was laid out in front of her eyes, made her feel so damn lucky that she was sitting where she was sitting in that moment.
Leaning upwards, she gingerly touched her mouth to his chest just above the two bullet wounds, kissing him softly there in random places, winding her other arm around him. She felt him shift but didn't think much of it, figured he was still sleeping, and continued exploring his skin with her lips.
When he suddenly tensed, going taut as a bowstring, she only had a second to prepare for it before he was shoving her off of him, then rolling on top of her with something cold pressing into her neck. Adrenaline made it difficult to think past the sudden trembling her body was doing, but she managed to squeak out a strangled 'Jack', fear gripping her heart despite it being him.
His weight disappeared as quickly as it had covered her, and her hand flew up to rub at the skin of her neck while she tried to control her heaving chest, tried to calm her breathing down. After she thought she had returned enough to her senses to suss out what exactly had just taken place, she turned to find him sitting like a statue at the edge of the bed, his long black hair hanging down his back. A small dagger was balanced on the sheets to his right.
Reaching for him even before she moved closer, her hand came to rest on his shoulder as the rest of her caught up. "Jack?"
She wasn't sure if she expected a response or not, but when his head jerked back and forth, her heart broke a little bit. "Jack, please turn around and look at me."
It took her gently kneading his shoulder, her other hand settling on his hip, and her repeating 'please come back to me' for him to finally obey her, and he turned as though he was meeting a great resistance, coming to sit against the wall, regarding her with an uncertainty that she wanted to chase away.
Taking his hand in hers, playing with his fingers, she began her plan of convincing him that he could trust her. "You've never...slept with anyone else before, have you? In the same bed, I mean."
He only shook his head, still refusing to relax."Jack, I'm not angry, not even close to being angry with you-"
"I could have killed you, love. Do you understand that? Had I not realized...had I not realized it was you as quickly as I did, I could have killed you."
She hadn't expected him to talk so soon, but the fact that he did, and that he had said what he said made her understand exactly how bothered he was by it. Scooting forwards to climb into his lap, straddling him, she cupped his cheek, stroking her thumb over the skin there. "Stop blaming yourself right now. First of all, that reaction was completely out of your control. Second, you retreated almost faster than you reacted, which leads me to believe that you had more control over yourself than you give yourself credit for. Third, we were clearly far too gone last night to actually think about the consequences that…"
Pausing to consider her words, thinking about how to actually put it, she continued tentatively. "That reaction to me is only natural for you. The only unfortunate bit is that it was me and not an enemy. If you really want to assign blame, then it's both of our faults, but I still say we had no faculties to think about the fact that you slept with a knife under your pillow and that you might not appreciate being touched while you slept. This was just an unfortunate circumstance."
Her tone was final, and she hoped that he would understand that she really meant what she was saying, that she didn't blame him in the slightest, that she wasn't angry. Before he could say anything in response, she leaned forward and met his mouth with hers, kissing him tenderly, hoping to relax him where words had failed. It was working, she realized, as his body lost its tension, his hands bunching in her hair to pull her closer to him, kissing her back.
"How…" he started when he gently thrust his face forward, breaking the kiss. "How are we going to get around this? I'm not going to suddenly stop being cautious of people looking to kill me in my sleep…"
That made her really think because she desperately wanted to continue sleeping next to him, but she didn't want to cause him any more stress over pulling knives on her. "Maybe...put the knife somewhere else? Or...leave it in your breeches. Just bundle it up in them and put them next to the bed on the floor. That way they are close enough, but not close enough for...that."
He was nodding slowly as he considered her solution, before finally allowing a slow smile to spread across his mouth. "Alright, love," and then she turned to put the knife on the floor for him, before following him back under the blanket, snuggling against him, falling back asleep before she could even be reminded of how tired she actually was.
So, having him using her as a pillow was not something that she took lightly, and it warmed her heart that he trusted her so completely now. She just hoped that the conversation that she planned on having with him didn't upset...didn't warp their relationship. It might have been the thing that had woken her up, even. The constant buzzing of questions and unresolved issues, abandoned after they had fights, the abandoning that they did to each other...it needed to be talked about, and it was scaring her.
Her heart had been alternating between a normal rhythm during the few moments that she had convinced herself that it would go fine, that they could get through it all without revisiting old arguments, or that they could avoid getting offended by the other, and an almost tachycardic rhythm when her mind made up worst-case scenarios about the whole thing.
She managed to free her arm from between them without waking him using careful precision, and snuck her hand into his hair, enjoying the thick texture of it, stroking her thumb across his hairline for a moment.
Now that the job was hopefully over, they needed to make sense of their separation, otherwise, it was going to turn into a black hole of potential fights.
Sighing, she sat up, causing Jack to roll back over to his pillow, making an adorable little noise of protest, which she squashed when she leaned over him to kiss his forehead, his face transforming from a disgruntled expression to content, a sleepy smile making the corners of his mouth curve up. She continued kissing him, down the side of his face, around his mouth, across his jaw, down his neck and then resigned herself to waking him up fully. If they were going to talk about this, it needed to be before anyone else was awake so they wouldn't be disturbed.
"Love," she whispered against his cheek, reaching down to dance her fingers across his ribs and onto the side of his stomach. He made another noise of protest, twitching his head in what she supposed was no. "Time to get up."
He said something that sounded like 'it's bloody not even daylight yet, shut up', but it was a bit jumbled, slurred with half-sleep. "Jack, please wake up," she tried, smiling softly when his eyes opened just a fraction. Leaning down to give him a soft kiss, he responded, his arms coming up around her to pull her closer.
"Hey, sleepy," she said when she broke away to find him almost fully awake now, staring at her curiously. "Lizzie, it's," he paused to lean over to look at the clock, "five in the morning."
"I'm aware of what time it is. I can tell time, you know."
His hand came up to brush some hair away from her face. "Why are you awake?"
Briefly, she considered forgoing the entire conversation, because perhaps it would be easier to live in ignorance, but then reminded herself that ignoring it would only lead to worse things.
"We need to talk."
A quirk of his eyebrow and another glance at the clock told her that he was just a little bit confused.
"At five in the morning?"
He must have seen the doubt cross her face, the immediate retreat, because he sighed and sat up, rubbing his face in defeat, while she scooted back a little bit to sit cross-legged next to him.. "What...what did you want to talk about?"
It took her a moment to summon the right thing to say, then she found that she didn't know the right thing to say, so she reverted to trying to explain herself, trying to smooth the way.
"I'm sorry for bringing-"
His hands immediately grabbed hers, squeezing them as he made eye contact with her. "No apologizing. Just say whatever you want to say."
"You're not going to like-"
He cut her off again with a sharp jerk of his head. "I don't give a shit about whether I'm going to like it or not. It won't do any good to keep it inside of your head, love."
Searching his face for any reason to doubt what he said, she finally nodded, taking a deep breath. "Now that we are free from this job, I wanted to talk about the...our separation. It's just too big of a thing to try and ignore it."
He sighed, playing with her fingers. "I thought that might be it. You're right though, we do need to talk about it. I've been trying to avoid it, hoped you had forgotten most of it, even though I hadn't, but obviously that was a lost cause."
She had thought about how, how they might approach the subject, and she had decided that it would be easiest if they each talked through it from their own perspective, one at a time.
"I thought it would be easiest if we...both told our versions separately, one at a time, answering any questions, obviously."
They were both aware, she knew, that this could turn into an argument, that they really had no idea what this conversation was going to do, but the fact that he was willing to have it anyway, that she was willing to have it anyway, told her that there was no turning back now.
"...Alright, love," he sighed. "Do you want to go first, or do you want me to go first?"
"I...I can. Don't be afraid to cut in with questions if you have any."
The blanket was sending little shudders through her every time her nail grazed it as she picked at it.
"Why are you so beautiful?"
Her head snapped up in confusion. "What?"
"You said to ask you questions. I asked one."
Lightening the mood, chasing away her nervousness, reminding her that he wasn't going anywhere regardless of what happened, they were all things that could describe what that question was trying to do.
"I don't know. My atoms aligned in such a way that I ended up looking like this, along with my genes. It's just science, really."
A warm chuckle bubbled out of him, and she realized he was trying to erase some of the tension from himself too.
"Well, thank fuck for science then. And...actually, I'll go first. I've done the least amount of talking about it, so..."
It was true. All three times that it had been brought up, she had been the one to initiate the conversation.
He cleared his throat, focusing on something else in the room for a moment, and she let him gather himself, let him work through whatever it was that was going on in his head, while she memorized the lines on his dragon tattoo, dreading what she knew he was going to bring up first, because it was the same thing that she had been trying so goddamn hard not to think about since Mumbai. It was the same thing that she had spent the last four decades of her life trying not to think about, failing spectacularly most of the time. It had haunted her and had threaded its claws through every other thought she had, every memory, and every theory or explanation or anything that she had involving Jack.
Thoughts about it had flashed through, during her ruminating just before she had questioned Jack about the prison sentence, even before then, in the hotel in Mumbai, on the airplane ride, but she had fiercely shoved the memory back down where it belonged then, unwilling to think about it, content to bask in the suddenness of having him back, in the complete ignorance of the manner of their separation.
'Fights between her and Jack flitted around, disagreements that they had never resolved…'
Fights. For the longest time, any fight they had was always about something that wasn't personal. They fought about Brethren decisions, ship issues, where one of them was going to go, where one of them wasn't going to go, job issues, anything that didn't get personal.
Until that week.
A terrible mixture of a lack of sleep from the week before, maybe a total of seven hours, stress from the current job, the fact that she hadn't told Jack why she was really there, and the injury Jack had at the time turned what would have been a normal argument into something that tore at her heart, even now.
They had both said things, such awful things…
Even the day before that bout of ruminating…
'Had she really hurt him that much by turning him in? Or was it something else she had done? Was she really that expendable to him? How much did she know about him really? Was she just assuming that he truly cared for her? Was it just a facade that he put on?'
Of course, she had hurt him that bad, but not because of the police, not because of that, but she hadn't been able to bring herself to think about the week before...the thought banished immediately as soon as it had come.
'Why the fuck had it been that long? Nothing fueled the fire of her rumination quite like the man she loved vanishing from her orbit for almost half a century.'
The thought that she had banished immediately again after that had been that maybe if she had just told him...maybe if she had just...if they hadn't said the things they said, if they had...a hundred 'ifs'...a hundred times that that argument had inserted itself into her rumination that day, but she had tried her damnedest to ignore it, to focus on something else...the fact that Jack had kept his prison time from her had made a convenient clutch to avoid talking about the real reason that had led to her making one of the most ridiculous and impulsive decisions of her life.
They had been in London for two weeks. It had been a standard theft job, a standard bank heist to be more specific, but that wasn't the reason she was there. She was there to steal a car, and to this day she couldn't fathom why she hadn't just told Jack that she wanted to steal a car.
That wasn't even the thing she regretted not telling him sooner. Not even close to the massive secret she had kept from him for that week in hell. Really a secret that she had been keeping from herself for all of those years, despite her knowing, knowing the truth. She had just been too scared to get confirmation, to have concrete proof of it.
In her endless denial, she figured that they had just kept getting lucky. Careless is what they really were, most of the time, but something in her brain just wouldn't let her believe the truth.
Until that week.
Until she had enough of the wondering, enough of the constant worry in the back of her mind, enough of the entire problem.
Without telling Jack, which was her first mistake, and the mistake that cost her for 44 years, she had made a clinic appointment for that Monday, early in the morning. Jack had been passed out on the motel bed on pain medication, quaaludes, which was a rare occurrence. Generally, he had always refused to take painkillers. He had a high pain tolerance, at least, that is what he had always told her. It was from the car accident in '72. The accident had happened in mid-December, and his arm had bothered him all the way to mid-January of '73. Getting a large chunk of glass nearly coming out the other side of your arm will fuck with you for awhile.
So, without waking him up, she had slipped out of bed, dressed, and headed to the clinic. The appointment had involved a lot more than she had been prepared for. The physician had practically interrogated her about her sex life, her eating habits, her exercise habits, her menstrual cycle, medical history, lifestyle, and then they had conducted a very thorough physical exam of her.
She knew, knew the truth before she had even stepped foot in the building, but when the doctor had finished all of his tests, exams, questions, and anything else he could think of to bother her with, he had come into the room with a solemn look on his face and had explained to her that it was incredibly likely that she was unable to have children.
Infertile.
The bloody fountain had given her eternal life by taking away her ability to make life.
That awful word had stuck itself into her brain for the entire day, torturing her, and it had merged with all of her anxiety about Jack, about their relationship, or lack of one, and something in her had decided that she couldn't tell him, that she couldn't handle his reaction if he was indifferent, or not understanding, or whatever other negative reaction he may have had.
The plan of secrecy would have worked if she hadn't been so fucking tired. If she hadn't left the motel room for a second with the stupid hospital bracelet sitting on the nightstand.
When she had walked back in, Jack was sitting on the bed, still groggy from the medication, holding it up to her like it was the final piece of evidence needed to tie her to a horrific crime.
Her feet were stuck to the gross stained carpet of the motel room, and the only movement she was making was the rising and falling of her chest from her panicked breaths, and the dizzy swaying she was trying to ignore.
"You went to the...to the...hospital?"
Why didn't she remember to grab it when she left? Why had she left it on the nightstand? Stupid, stupid, stupid…
Dragging a hand across her forehead, she tightened her mouth, looking anywhere in the room but at him.
"Yes."
He watched her, as though he expected her to say more, but her insides twisted up into a mess when the thought even crossed her mind. Her next words were said with a little more irritation than she intended.
"Just don't worry about it. It's nothing." He recoiled as though she had slapped him, and she might have felt bad if she wasn't so goddamn tired.
"Don't worry about it?" he repeated, confusion rapidly transitioning into mild frustration on his face. "This is...a hospital wristband, Lizzie. How could I not worry about it?"
Food, she desperately wanted something to eat. She wanted sleep, about a century of it, she wanted to just close her eyes and forget, forget that she had to keep this secret from him, forget the guilt she felt over thinking she couldn't tell him, forget the reasons her brain used to justify not telling him.
"'Cuz that's what I said to do. Didn't you listen?"
Finally she was able to unstick her feet, and she made a beeline for the bathroom, curling her hands around the yellow stained white counter of the sink, trying to control her breathing, which was a difficult thing to do when she heard him getting up from the bed, heard him walking to the bathroom.
"Lizzie," he began as his hand curled around her arm gently, but she yanked it away from him completely out of impulse, out of panic.
"Just drop it, Jack," but she knew that he wasn't going to, knew him too well to expect him to just let her wallow in it. A frustrated sigh escaped him when he leaned against the door frame. "Can you please just tell me?"
No, she couldn't just tell him. Because telling him that she couldn't have children, that she was barren, that the stupid fountain had robbed her of one of her dreams, opened her to rejection, to a final confirmation that he didn't want her that way.
"Please drop it."
Chancing a glance at his face, her hands gripped the counter until they hurt when she saw the beginnings of anger starting to simmer in his eyes, in the way his brows were drawn together, in the way he worked his jaw.
He stopped watching her to stare at the floor. "Since when do you not tell me things?"
Oh god, the barely hidden hurt in his voice nearly had her confessing, nearly...but he just wouldn't understand...and she couldn't expect him to truly care about that anyway.
"Don't make this about you. I just...I just can't."
"Make this about me? You're the one being secretive."
She inched away from him, further into the bathroom, suddenly feeling afraid of him for the first time in her life, but god help her, she didn't understand why.
"It has nothing to do with you-"
"Well, apparently it does. You tell me everything, love. So…" He went quiet for a moment. A dizzy spell from the drugs, she figured. "So what the hell?"
"Please, this is personal, Jack. I really don't feel comfortable-"
But she had told him personal things before, plenty of times.
"Don't feel comfortable? Damn, I thought I was the only one you did feel comfortable around...guess I was wrong…"
She spun around with wide eyes, feeling the anxiety thrumming through her like an electric current, and she couldn't control it, couldn't stop it from making the words spout of her mouth like water out of a smashed fire hydrant. He was looking at her like he didn't know her.
"Why are you being so bloody selfish?"
His fingers slid against the door frame when her words hit him, when his entire body recoiled again.
"Selfish? What are you fucking talking about? I feel like I'm about to fall over from these bloody stupid pills and I climbed out of the only damn place that I want to be right now," he paused to twist around to point at the bed, "to ask you what's wrong, because I bloody hate seeing you in any kind of pain. And you're fucking calling me selfish?"
"No, what you're doing is pushing the issue, when I told you that I couldn't tell you, and then you make it about you, about how I can't tell you because of you, when it is just because I really want to keep it to myself, not because I want to make you feel like I don't trust you!"
And how she couldn't bloody tell him because then he would know that she loved him so fucking much she would die if she lost him, and then he could tell her that he wasn't interested in commitment, that he didn't want that...
"But you never keep anything to yourself with me-"
"Just drop it. Just go back to sleep and leave me alone."
"...leave you alone?"
No, no no no, she hated this, hated seeing the hurt in his eyes, the rejection, and she desperately wanted to chase it away, but if she was wrong, if she brought it up and he told her that it didn't matter to him that much because they weren't together anyway, and that he didn't want a relationship, and that it should have been obvious to her because he had never brought it up...it would kill her.
"Leave you alone," he repeated again, shaking his head. "Nice to know that I'm not trusted anymore," and then he turned away, his shoulders dropping in defeat, as though a ton of bricks had been poured on them, and walked back to the bed, closing the bathroom door behind him a little harder than necessary.
She stood there and stared at it for...she didn't even know how long, five minutes maybe, and was able to count the steps her body took to the tears as they happened. The change in breath, the pain in her chest, the immediate overwhelming regret.
As she slid down the bathroom door, catching the light switch on her way down, she tried to keep quiet, tried not to make any noise, but it was so hard.
All she wanted to do was curl up against him, feel his arms around her, feel his hands stroking her hair, telling her it would be okay…
The only movement she could hear on the other side of the door was the creaking of the bed. She wasn't sure if she had expected him to come back in the bathroom, but his detachment from her still stabbed at her, until she remembered that it was her that had told him to leave her alone when all she wanted now was to have him back.
"...Lizzie?"
His voice made her snap back to reality, for the moment anyway, and she found that he had his hand curled around hers again.
"Sorry, just thinking…"
A slow blink made his eyelids lower, then rise, and he tilted his head back. "…that was a fucked week wasn't it?"
He knew. He knew that she had been thinking about it, she wasn't sure if he knew that she had been thinking about it the entire week, or if he thought it had just come back to her, but he knew it was on her mind. He must have been thinking about it too.
A 'fucked week' didn't even begin to cover it. "If that's what you want to call it…"
What else was she supposed to say? She didn't even know where to begin talking about it…
"Looking back, I think I was silly not to tell-"
"No," was his adamant reply. "I was in the wrong. I shouldn't have pushed you, shouldn't have gotten so pissed about it. I just...I just loved you so fucking much that when you suddenly wanted to keep something from me, after all those years of being so open, it was like something...broke between us."
God, hearing him say it like that, thinking back to the way he had acted, knowing how much it would have hurt for him to be in love with her and have her act like she didn't trust him, it felt like a spear in her gut.
"I didn't mean to act like I felt like I was entitled to all of your secrets if that was how I came across. It was just...confusing for you to come to me with everything, only me, and then suddenly have something you couldn't tell me. That plus the drugs I was on because of my arm, the lack of good sleep, the lack of food, and the complications from that stupid ass bank job, just...it all just fucked with me."
She started to try and explain, started to try and give him reasons for everything, but the second she opened her mouth, he shook his head. "I have thought about that week for...well, too much probably, so let me tell you my theory, and we can see if it's right. I have modified it in light of recent events," he stopped to wag his finger at them. "The moment when you told me that you didn't think I was in love with you, that you were afraid I wasn't, a lot of things suddenly made sense.
"You didn't tell me about the hospital because you were afraid that...that if I found out, I wouldn't have the right reaction. You were afraid that I wouldn't...care that way, or...it would have been like a rejection to you, I think. Before this week, I thought that you didn't want to tell me because that was the first personal thing between us that only a couple really talks about, and you didn't want to be with me, so you didn't want to breach that line."
It was all said without him looking at her, with him looking somewhere behind them, but the impact his words had on her was so strong, so immediate, that she couldn't help but wrap both of her hands around his, squeezing it. She wanted to tell him that of course she wanted to be with him, but he knew that now, so she chose instead to try and explain what she had been feeling that first night.
"You're right. I...felt afraid of you, afraid that I could chase away the dream I had of being with you by telling you. It was obviously ridiculous and silly looking back on it, but back then, I was so petrified by the idea...and things only got worse from there…"
It had been an hour since they had woken up, and they hadn't said a word to each other. Jack was sitting on the bed, leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette, and she was sitting at the little table next to the bathroom door, sneaking glances at him every few minutes, listening to the cold rain drizzling outside.
The night before, she had slipped in bed, being careful not to touch him, and had tried to stay as far away from his as possible. She knew he had been awake, had seen his head shake against his pillow even in the darkness.
The distance had hurt so much, was still hurting. She missed being wrapped up in his arms as she fell asleep, and hadn't realized how much she cherished it until it was gone.
But that's the way everything is, isn't it?
Finally, when she couldn't stand the silence between them anymore, she tried saying something.
"How's your-"
"Don't talk to me."
The rest of her sentence, how's your arm, was shoved back down her throat at his words, but she couldn't stay silent for very long, even despite feeling like he had just punched her in the stomach.
"...why?"
"Because I don't want you to talk to me right now."
It echoed around in her head, reverberated through every piece of her body. His face was tight, stony, his eyes hard as he stared straight ahead at nothing.
"I was just going to ask about-"
"I don't really care."
She snapped her mouth shut and sat there, staring at him for as long as she felt comfortable, then looked away, feeling the panic creep up, carrying the beginnings of her own anger with it.
"So just because I keep one secret from you, now you suddenly hate me?"
A whispered 'fuck' came out of him as he dragged his hand through his hair. "I don't hate you, Christ, how can you even accuse me of that…"
"What else am I supposed to think if you refuse to talk to me? Because of something so simple?"
His head dropped into his hands and stayed there, shaking back and forth. "I don't have the energy to fight with you right now. If you really want to think that, fine, go ahead. Just do it silently."
God, why was she doing this? Why couldn't she just tell him? It was like she was watching a car accident happen in slow motion in front of her.
"No. You're not going to treat me like that just because I keep a little-"
"...A hospital visit isn't 'little'. Do you know how many times either of us has sought medical help in the past twenty years? So when you go to the hospital, it must be something that I might want to know about."
She stood, almost knocking over the chair in the process. "You're not entitled to know everything about me!"
"Goddammit, I told you I don't want to fight r-"
"I don't care. You have to get past this, you have to-"
Then he was getting up, and she saw his clenched fist push against the mattress when he rose, and somewhere in her panicked irrational state, she thought he might hit her.
His body froze when he saw the recoil, when he saw her arm jerk upward in a defensive motion. Several seconds passed that she desperately wished she could rewind, as she saw the shock cross his face, followed by the hurt.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" he whispered, staring alternately at her face and her arm.
Her head was shaking even as he started talking again. "Are you seriously telling me that you thought I was going to…" he couldn't get the rest out, and his hand flew up to cover his mouth.
"...I don't...I don't know... "
"Fucking perfect," he kept going once he found his voice again. "First you stop trusting me and now you're afraid of me. Do you not get that I just want to help you with whatever the hell is going on?"
"But you can't help-"
The cigarette pack made a scraping sound as he snatched it off of the table, extracting one and then lighting it.
"Yeah, I'm beginning to see that now. Christ Lizzie, the last fucking thing I would ever do on this planet is hurt you. I don't know what I did...it's like you stopped knowing me when you walked in and saw me holding that bracelet."
"I told you that it has nothing to do with you-"
"Then why are you suddenly treating me like a problem?"
His voice had risen, into a cross between a shout and an angry whisper, and then some wire crossed in her head, and she wished she could take the words back the second they left her mouth.
"Maybe you are a problem."
It was awful, the way she could feel the shift in the room as they crossed the line from incredibly close friends to enemies, even as her face crumpled, even as she tried to tell him that she didn't mean it, that she hadn't meant to say it, but she couldn't get the words out, just barely managing to breathe at all.
Even when his dark eyes lost some of their anger, mixing with a wounded look, she still couldn't speak, still couldn't navigate the turmoil of her head. Even when he turned away from her to drop himself back down onto the foot of the bed, burying his head in his hands, she still couldn't move.
In that moment she decided that nothing had been as terrible as this moment for a long time, nothing had stolen her faculties for...anything quite so succinctly for a long time.
The rain was the only thing they could hear as it fell on the sidewalk outside and she desperately wanted to reach out, wanted to gather him in her arms and tell him that she loved him so fucking much, tell him about the doctor visit, tell him that she was ridiculous and stupid and that she hated herself for what she had said, tell him that he wasn't a problem to her, tell him that he was so fucking far away from being a problem that it wasn't even funny.
Tears burned a hot trail down her cheeks as she watched him sit there, guilt swimming through her head like poison.
"..I...I didn't mean…"
She lurched forward, just barely touching her fingers to his hand when he jerked it away, refusing to look at her. "I didn't mean to call you that-"
"It doesn't fucking matter, you still said it," he snapped, the words rushing out in one breath as he suddenly stood, brushing past her. Out of pure impulse, her hand shot out to grab his, trying to pull him back. "...I'm sorry, please…"
He yanked it away again, spinning around to face her, and the pain in his eyes, mixed with a renewed anger, burning like coals after a bonfire had been extinguished, caused tears to flood out, making her vision get blurry, the skin of her face growing hot with shame and panic.
"I don't know if I believe you," came his biting words, sinking into her like a knife. He turned away from her again, bracing his hand against the door.
"We ...we can fix this-" she cried, her voice a desperate whisper, but he cut her off, snatching the keys off of the dresser next to him.
"I'm leaving for the night. Probably be back tomorrow, I don't know-"
"You're leaving? Jack, I'm sorry…"
She surged ahead without thinking to slam the door shut as soon as he opened it, placing her just behind him so that she could feel the heaving breaths he was taking. It earned her a frustrated snarl, but he didn't otherwise move.
"Don't be ridiculous. You can't drive anyway. The drugs-"
"I don't really give a fuck. I've driven under worse circumstances."
Her hand came up to curl around his shoulder fully expecting him to throw her off again, but the only reaction she got was his muscles tensing under her fingers. "I don't want you to go…"
He made a noise of disbelief that broke her heart. "...No? If I'm such a fucking problem, what's it matter to you?"
Inhaling when he turned to look at her again, she felt a terrible hope blooming in her chest, then it died when he shook his head, pushing an angry sigh through his nose, and a shriek of protest spilled out of her as he ripped his jacket off of the wall. When he yanked the door open she made one last attempt to grab at him and then recoiled as if burned when he sent a "don't fucking touch me" over his shoulder. The last image she saw was his outline standing in the pouring rain before the door slammed shut.
The shitty carpet was rough against her knees when she sank down, the moment of shock transitioning quickly into awful tears, tears that made her head hurt, tears that turned her cries into screams of anger at herself, tears that made her chest constrict with a throbbing pain.
It was all her fault, everything was her fault.
Her face crumpled at the memories before she could stop it, before she could prevent the unbelievable guilt she had felt from flooding back as though it had happened yesterday, and she immediately felt the bed shift, and glanced up for just a second to see Jack crawling towards her before hiding her face in her hand. A concerned 'hey' floated through the air, and then she was being tugged into his lap, her head coming to rest against his shoulder while he spread soft kisses across her hairline, her ear, her cheek, whispering 'shhh' as she cried quietly against him.
Once she thought she had enough control over her voice, she apologized again for the thing that she had already apologized for more times than she could count. "I never meant to call you a problem...you have no idea how much that tortured me...it was so far from the truth…"
"I know, I know. I think I knew it then too, but I was so fucking afraid that it really meant that you didn't want me if you could say that...you know how fear warps shit."
She continued clinging to him, nodding in acknowledgment as he scooted them back against the headboard. "That night was so fucking hard for me, wondering whether you were going to even come back. I barely slept, spent most of it crying…"
His fingers stroked through her hair all the way to the ends, running onto her back to rub small circles there, staying quiet for a moment. "...I wanted to come back the second the door shut, but I felt so wretched that I just couldn't, so I kept going...I just felt like the fight that had always been coming, that one fight that was going to send us in different directions had finally arrived…"
It had been the longest night of her life as she had laid there in the bed, tossing and turning in a cold sweat and the pool of her own tears on the pillow, catching glimpses of the digital clock on the nightstand as it crawled from one minute to the next, the red light burning into her retinas in the darkness of the room.
The time now read 6:45, and she was ready to give up trying to sleep, the headache pounding in her skull enough of a deciding factor, but just then, the doorknob rattled, the sound of keys jingling on the other side, and Jack stepped through quietly, crossing to the table immediately to throw his jacket and car keys down.
She bunched the blanket around herself as much as possible even as a spike of relief shot through her, a hot blush of nervousness covering her face as she tried to ignore the accelerating of her heartbeat at the same time.
Her breath was held in her chest as he stepped over to the bed as though he was going to crawl in with her, then it was released in a soft whoosh when he shook his head and turned to go into the bathroom instead, the door shutting with a dull click. The shower started just after, and more tears leaked from her eyes, though she couldn't fathom where they were coming from. She didn't think she had any left.
The desperate urge to get up and ask him if she could join him filled her, since there was nothing more she wanted in that moment than to stand in his arms as the warm water cascaded around them, but she knew the shut door was a message to leave him alone, and she hated herself for it.
It took him twenty minutes to finish, and only a couple of minutes to emerge with a towel around his waist. She didn't even bother trying to pretend that she was asleep. There was no way she could fool him.
Sitting up, wiping the sleep from her eyes, she watched him as slipped the towel off and sat on the edge of the bed, drying his hair.
"Did you find anything else out about the-" she tried, hoping that talking about something normal could steer them in a better direction, but he interrupted her.
"We're not doing the bank job."
"...what? Why?"
"Because we're not."
A thousand things that she wanted to say bubbled to the surface, simmering there, but she couldn't find the motivation to speak as he rose, crossing the room to the duffel bag next to the closet door, pulling out a pair of boxers, black jeans, and a white tank top.
"That's all? We're just not?"
He finished pulling the clothes on and finally turned to face her, giving her a full look at how exhausted he was as he dragged his hand through his hair.
"Complications...look, it doesn't matter. We're just not doing it."
Understanding that she wasn't going to get any more information out of him, she lowered her eyes to the mattress. "Where did you sleep?"
"Car."
Her shoulders sagged as more guilt flooded her.
"Jack, stop this, stop acting like-"
"Like what? Like you hate me?"
Fucking Christ if that didn't tear her heart open, she didn't know what would.
"I don't hate you-"
"You certainly don't fucking trust me anymore, so you might as well."
Just fucking tell him. Just fucking tell him. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He was suddenly smoking another cigarette as though he had just summoned it from thin air, but really, her focus was just slipping, holes and cracks were forming that she couldn't stop.
"I never said I didn't trust you."
"You just suddenly draw a line in the sand, where things I am allowed to know are on one side and secrets are on the other."
God dammit she hated the world, hated everything in it, hated the stupid motel room, the stupid carpet, the bed, the rain that was still drizzling outside, herself, fucking everything.
But she could never hate him.
"You wouldn't understand-"
His head snapped around in her direction, his eyes suddenly blazing. "I am starting to think that I don't understand anything about you. How much other shit have you hidden from me over the years?"
Terrible anger clawed at her chest before she could suppress it at even the suggestion that she hid things from him on a regular basis. "Other shit? Are you mad? I never hide anything from you!"
"Right, like I should trust you now. You never would've said a word about it had you not left that bracelet in here."
She opened her mouth to argue, but couldn't find anything to say. A bitter laugh fell out of his mouth as he shook his head at her. "That's what I thought."
"You're right, you can't trust me, you should hate me. I fucking...I'm not worth anything else…"
It came out of her, the culmination of everything that she had been feeling. She wasn't good enough to have children, wasn't good enough to just tell him that she loved him, wasn't good enough for him, wasn't good enough to stop fighting with him. What the fuck was the point of anything anymore...
His head was shaking before she even finished the last sentence, and then he was reaching for her, and she was stumbling back away from him. He stopped, his hands rubbing hard over his face, another whispered "fuck" making it through his fingers.
She couldn't stay in this fucking hotel room anymore. She didn't know where she was going to go, but she couldn't fucking stay here. The room spun around her as she barely managed to make it to her duffel bag behind the table, ripping some clothes out to replace her PJ's.
"What are you doing?"
"What the fuck does it look like?"
Turning, she found him glaring at her again, his eyes like chips of onyx in the shitty lighting of the hotel room. "You're really going to leave huh?"
"You did it to me, what the fuck's the difference?" she snapped, dragging a pair of jeans and a t-shirt on.
"I left because I was angry. You're just abandoning me."
Once she was dressed, she circled around to fully face him, breathing hard through her nose.
"Because you wouldn't fucking listen!"
She watched in frozen horror, hidden behind her anger, as his temper switched from defensive to offensive.
"I wouldn't listen? I always listen to you. Every time you have a problem, I drop what I'm doing and I listen. But now suddenly there is a wall around you, now there is a limit to how much you trust me.
Her mouth opened to throw some kind of retort back, but he kept going.
"Maybe I should have been an asshole to you all these years because I'm really questioning why I wasn't. Maybe you aren't worth being trusted. Maybe you're not fucking worth my time."
The rain outside fell harder as his fists clenched against his jeans. All she could do is stand there and watch him blow up, watch him unravel.
"Next time you have a problem, don't bother coming to me. If you don't trust me then I don't care about helping you."
"It was one fucking secret, Jack, for fuck's sake!"
"Then you called me a problem, treated me like I was a bother to you, and barely acted like you did anything wrong."
"I said I was sorry…"
"And you meant it, right?"
"Yes, of course I did-"
"I don't believe you, I'm probably not going to believe anything you say again, actually. And to think that I not so long ago killed about thirty people for you. You, I did that for you. I'm starting to think that you might not have deserved it."
She stopped breathing, she felt like she was being strangled, and an acute pain throbbed in her head making her feel dizzy. "...You don't mean that…"
"No, I do. I should have just fucking left you in Russia. Should have never rescued you."
When she didn't say anything, because she felt like fucking dying and couldn't make her brain even formulate a coherent thought, he shook his head again, a bitter laugh somehow making its way out of his clenched jaw as he crossed the room again to gather his jacket and the keys.
"Nothing to say? No, because you know I'm right, about everything. You can stay here. I'll go, don't want to be around you anyway. Don't bother trying to contact me, I won't answer-"
It might have been a move of desperation, or panic, she wasn't sure which. It just came out of her like vomit.
"You want to know what I went to the doctor for?" she said, her voice approaching hysterics, and he stopped just in front of the door without turning around. "Not that you're going to care anyway, but I found out that I'm...infertile. Because of the fountain. That's what I went there for. To finally...I've been afraid of it for so long…"
His head was shaking again, and he turned to her without looking at her, digging in his wallet instead to pull out some money. "Here, pay for the room when you leave," he snapped, tossing some cash at her. She watched it float through the air to the carpet. "Good luck. Maybe you'll find a different fuck buddy that's willing to put up with your bullshit."
The door made a sickening slamming noise when left, mirroring the pounding that her heart was doing.
As her world fell apart around her, one thought was clear as it burned into her skull. He didn't care, didn't care that one of her worst fears had been realized, had treated it like it was nothing, didn't even tell her that he was sorry for her. He didn't want her, had never wanted her, thought she was a problem, couldn't stand being around her, and now he had left her for good as though she was expendable. A fuck buddy was all she was to him.
And in that moment, she hated him for it, even as the emotion sent alarm bells ringing in her head.
He held her in his arms tightly as the next round of memories renewed her tears, the churning in her stomach that she had felt coming back. Once she was calm enough again, he nudged her head from his shoulder and made eye contact with her, using his thumb to clean her cheeks up, then pulled her in for a soft kiss.
"I...I wish you would've told me right away, but I understand why you didn't," he said in a muted voice. "Regardless of whether I was in love with you or not, I would've done everything I could to make you feel better.
"I spent...far too much time thinking about it, about that whole week. As you can imagine prison didn't leave me with a whole lot else to do. But I think the thing that hurt the most, and it all nearly killed me, was when you cowered in front of me. That shit...fuck, you have no idea…
"There is nothing, nothing on this planet more repulsive to me than the thought of hurting you, and then to have you act like I wanted to do it anyways-"
When she tensed up, he stopped. "It was an impulse...I didn't actually think you were going to hit me, it was just the panic, and your clenched fist...my reaction was out of my control...but I'm sorry for it anyway. I'm so sorry for everything that happened-"
"Hey," he cut in. "I'm not mad about it. I realize that you didn't mean it, I'm just...talking."
She nodded, swallowing. "I hated knowing that everything had stemmed from the fact that I couldn't tell you, that it turned into you thinking I didn't want you, into me thinking you didn't want me, into us shouting at each other. Every fight we had ever had was about something impersonal, so-"
"-it made it a lot worse because of the shock, yeah. I figured that out too. The entire week was just a bunch of bullshit that should have never happened, and it cost us for far too long. But you know, in the moment, you can't foresee consequences very well."
His hands threaded through her hair, playing with it for a moment.
"Just...just know that I didn't...that I am so fucking sorry for the way I acted towards you. I hated being angry with you, absolutely fucking hated it. What I said about Russia, that was asinine, and I will always be here for you no matter what your problem is.
"And, we'll talk later about it too, but the second it registered with me what you had actually said as I was walking out, I felt so terrible for leaving you in there, so disgusted with myself, but there wasn't anything in my head that told me you wanted me back in there."
The anguish she could see in his eyes from the memory left her no doubt that he was telling the truth.
"I know," she replied quietly, fidgeting with a spot on his neck. "Could we maybe-"
"-take a break? You read my mind, darling. Let's go back to sleep for awhile. We can pick up where we left off later tonight. You know, talk about the thing that we actually wanted to talk about to begin with."
A gurgly little laugh burst out of her as she laid down, snuggling against him, draping her arm across his chest, making small circles with her finger, glancing up at him to find him looking relaxed. "You were snuggled against me when I woke up. I love it when you do that."
"Oh yeah? I can't help that these," he paused to reach down to trail a finger over the breast that was smushed against him, "make nice pillows. And you're always really warm. Never going to need to worry about being cold when I have my own personal heater."
She laughed into his skin, feeling her eyes get heavy. "I...um, I'm glad we were able to talk through that, as much as we could anyway."
"Me too," he said, sounding like he was starting to fall asleep already, but she had something else she wanted to say to him still. "Jack?"
It was accompanied with a nudge that had him jerking a little against her. "Hmm?"
Her hip slid against the sheets as she leaned up to kiss his cheek. "Never again, fighting like that. I can't do that again. It'd kill me. I just got you back, and I intend on never letting you go."
Even in the darkness of the room, she could tell that he was affected by her words, his arm pulling her even closer to him evidence enough. "Never again, love."
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The Scythe's Song