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The Scythe's Song	By : hallowedmaiden Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (All) > Het - Male/Female > Jack/Elizabeth Views: 2816 -:- 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
- 19
- 20
- 21
September gusts of chilly wind blew the cigarette smoke around his face as he sat gazing at the water of the pool, rippling like a mini ocean.
'I certainly didn't fall in love with her by accident.'
Being dead on his luck, running low on money, and owing money to far too many people, all he had wanted that day, almost three hundred years ago, was a ship that could actually make it across a substantial amount of water without the constant threat of sinking. The Interceptor had made for a fine target, and it being a Royal Navy ship had given him a little extra satisfaction.
An on-the-fly manipulation of the dockmaster with a few quick coins, a quick confrontation with a couple of hapless guards, and he had made his way onto the Dauntless to put his plan into motion.
Then, the world, or fate, or whatever it was, decided to make James Norrington embark on the unfortunate venture of proposing to Elizabeth Swann, resulting in her fainting and falling into the harbor right in front of him, miraculously missing all of the rocks.
The guards, Murtogg and Mullroy, had never learned to swim in all of their time on the earth, which left him to dive into the water after her. He was unaware of who she actually was, but he didn't think he would have hesitated anyways if he knew that saving her was likely going to get him arrested.
He was also unaware of how much his life was going to change when he hoisted her over the edge of the dock to the sight of red coats and bayonets, but when he saw her face, how her huge brown eyes stared up at him just after she finished coughing up about a gallon of seawater, how she looked at him not with fear or disgust, but with a fascination, a hidden kinship, he knew.
When he had reached down to find her wearing a piece of the Aztec gold around her neck, when he caught her looking at him even as he was being arrested as though her eyes had been glued to his body, when she charged in front of him in nothing but her shift to protest, and when she damned near seemed to like getting accosted with his handcuffs and held at gunpoint despite her calling him despicable as she took a little too long to re-arm him with his effects, he knew.
When she had chased him down through the jungle and demanded truths that he wasn't really willing to give, when she demanded to know even more, when he had shown her his bullet wounds, and the scar on his arm, his pirate brand, when they had danced around a campfire singing, and when she had burned his bloody rum, he had known.
And at first, he had hated it, hated that someone had insinuated themselves so far in his thoughts without his permission, hated that he seemed to care about her as much or more than his damn ship, hated that he suddenly had something besides his ship that meant something to him. It wasn't supposed to happen.
But he thought about her anyway, every night in his cabin, he thought about her, wondered if he would ever see her again, and then lectured himself that a pirate couldn't afford to think about her, because it was a waste of time, she was in love with the Turner boy, he was constantly on the run from the law, she most certainly didn't harbor any feelings for him anyway, was safely tucked away in Port Royal, and he had a far more pressing matter to attend to. Jones.
So imagine the surprise when she had marched up to him in Tortuga wearing men's clothing and demanding that he help her find Will Turner. He had hidden his befuddlement underneath a bit of manipulation and subterfuge, but the prospect of her sailing with him on his ship had been a tad distracting.
Which had been doubled when the moment they set sail, she had seemed to forget all about Turner. He hadn't been able to keep track of all the times he caught her staring at him, and not even necessarily at his face, just at him. Nevermind the times when she delightfully engaged him in verbal battles that held barely-hidden innuendo, and thank fuck for that, because it had been the perfect cover to hide behind, hide the actual terrifying depth of her in his heart, at least until she had made him break the one rule that he had made for himself upon becoming Captain of the newly christened Black Pearl.
Only care about yourself.
One look back at the damn ship being devoured by the Kraken, and he had stopped rowing, stopped trying to run away, faced with the damnable fact that he simply couldn't just leave her there, and he was so certain that she was going to know why, but then she shocked him beyond words, well beyond all words except one really, when she took it upon herself to chain him to the mast of his own ship.
'Pirate'.
Even as he was thrown into a maelstrom of emotion, even as he felt that hot knife of betrayal, the cool pride at her finally proving to be what he knew she was all along, the fear of dying, and a hundred other things, there was one cushion, one moment of satisfaction when he had spied the pain and regret, the horror, the loss. He had dug himself into the depths of her heart as well, but he hadn't known it was love at that point. He just knew it was something.
Proven when she had gone to the literal sea version of Hell to retrieve him, when she had once again forgotten about Turner who had been standing right behind her to run up to him, a smile of relieved joy on her face, when she had started once again staring at him at every opportunity, though it was now accompanied by tracing her lips subconsciously.
But even then, even when part of him had been so certain, the other more dominant part of him told him that he had as much of a chance of her actually being in love with him as he did with becoming the King of England, and that even if she was, it was a pointless thing to pursue because no one ever stuck around long enough to matter in his life.
He always drove them away, fucked it up somehow, and with her, he wanted to have what he had, instead of reaching for more and getting burned. So even when Turner left her behind for her to choose her path, even when she had chosen him to be her first, one of the purest moments of his life, dragging him up to the royal quarters, even when she had sloshed down the fountain water with him, he had never asked her, never inquired as to whether she wanted something more, because it fucking terrified him. The entire prospect terrified him.
Because what if she didn't? What if he had the wrong idea all along? What if she only liked him because he wasn't going to force her into corsets and tea parties? What if she only wanted a physical relationship? He had played a game of 'what if' in his head for, well, it was shameful to really think about how long he had let himself wallow in insecurities for a person that prided himself on being rather intelligent, but he had done it anyway.
It had been exhausting being around her, seeing her smile, her beautiful smile, and wondering if she was smiling because of him or something else, her golden hair whipping around in the wind, analyzing everything she said to him, trying to figure out if she was getting distant or if she was still putting up with him because she wanted to, listening to her laugh and then thinking about how she could be just pretending at that point, and then hating himself for being so preoccupied with it, for questioning her, for being so damn insecure, for being unable to just fucking ask.
But would he give up the last couple of centuries with her when he hadn't known that she was as in love with him as he was with her, afflicted with the same mental turmoil?
Not for fucking anything. Because he still had her, by his side, in his bed, and that was precious in and of itself.
Then, almost three centuries of wondering and thinking and questioning and analyzing had been lifted, banished, the second she had asked that one simple question.
'Are you in love with me?'
Spoken with a hesitant tone that held hope, the insecurity she had been harboring forever, fear, relief and a hundred other things. He had been so shocked that all he could tell her was that yes, of course he was, then he had just held her, wondering if he was in another one of his dreams.
It was only now just sinking in that she was in love with him, if it was ever going to actually sink it completely, that the beautiful creature that had stolen the heart of a notorious pirate returned the almost crazy amount of affection he held for her, that she planned to be by his side for as long as he wanted her, which was forever. It was mind-boggling to him that she wanted him, that she loved him, and he knew he was going to spend the rest of their relationship convinced that she was going to leave him any second, because that was just how he was built, and he hated that part of himself.
"Jack?"
Which would explain the gnawing fear that he was currently trying to fend off by going through an entire pack of cigarettes. He hated being in the spotlight, hated explaining feelings. He was awful at it, could never really articulate what it was that he felt, and his connection with Lizzie was so precious that he saw any possibility of severing that thread as terrifying. Certainly, talking about all of the fucked up things he had felt and thought and lived through without her around could...even though she had told him that nothing would make her leave him.
Hearing her and letting his mind believe that were two different things, separated by a chasm of self-doubt, insecurity, panic, and everything in-between. It was a wonder that he had gotten through talking about the hotel without trying to run, trying to change the subject, but he had owed her an explanation, still owed her explanations.
"...Jack."
He just hoped he could get through this leg of the conversation, especially since that damnable spotlight was going to be on him. It was fine when he was in control of the situation, when he had everyone on puppet strings, but talking to her wasn't like a game, wasn't something that he had to win, wasn't something that he could use Plan B on if he fucked up, or if something went wrong. Talking to her was like handling a precious stone that could disintegrate with even the slightest bit of pressure, at least to him. It was vulnerability at its finest with her, and what scared him the most was that sometimes being vulnerable around her didn't scare him.
"Hey, fucker."
When he finally noticed Chris standing there, the look he sent him would have made anyone else sprint away, but Chris just sent the look back with a raised eyebrow.
"...Lizzie said she'll be in the bedroom when you're ready, whatever the fuck that means."
He was never going to be ready, but he couldn't sit out here forever. Nodding at Chris, he stubbed the last of the cigarette out in the ashtray on the table and rose from the chair.
When he closed the bedroom door behind him quietly, he found her stretched out on his...their bed, flipping through one of his photo albums. "Hey," she said when she glanced up to see him standing there. "That was good ice cream, wasn't it? I wouldn't mind going back at some point."
"Yeah...it was good," he replied as he internally panicked and made a last-ditch effort to delay by heading into the closet to change into a shirt that didn't smell like smoke. He emerged to find the photo album abandoned on the bed and her staring at him in that 'I know something is wrong' way like she always did.
Dragging a hand through his hair, he took a deep breath. "Just nervous, that's all."
"...I thought you might be. Just remember-"
"-that I have nothing to...I know," he paused to consider something. "Come here."
She eyed him curiously before climbing off of the bed and walking over to him. It had been gnawing at him, bugging him ever since the memory had been brought up earlier, and he knew that she knew, but he also needed to tell her so that she knew...again. When she reached him, he took her hand and tugged her into his arms, just holding her for a moment, enjoying the warmth of her body and the way her curves fit perfectly against him. Eventually, she drew back on her own, and he kept his face angled towards the floor until she decided that he was definitely still delaying. "Love?" came her voice, soothing him for a moment.
Reaching out to run his hands through her hair, spreading it out on her shoulders, then let them rest on each side of her head, he finally made full eye contact with her.
"I realize that...you probably already know this, at least, I hope you do, but I wanted to make sure." He paused to make sure she was listening completely. "I don't care how angry you get, or what you say to me, or how angry I get. I will never lay a hand on you. I would kill myself before I ever did that."
Stopping to let the words sink in, he watched her face, watched her swallow, watched her mouth part slightly, watched her take a slow breath. "I know. I...I'm sorry that I made you think I didn't know that. I hated the look on your face when I raised my arms...I just-"
He cut her off by drawing her into his arms again, kissing the top of her forehead. "I was also wondering...if you wanted to talk about...it. The doctor visit. Since…"
Since he hadn't given her even a second before he had stormed out of the hotel room like an asshole, too angry in the moment to even hear what she had said.
She tugged him back to the bed, and he crawled on top of it to sit in front of her, keeping one of her hands in his own. "Well, I...desperately wanted to tell you," she started, making circles on his hand with her fingers. "I want you to know that. I wanted nothing more than to crawl into your arms and cry about it, but I was convinced that telling you could make me finally face the awful possible reality that you didn't want me that way, that you didn't understand why I wanted to tell you...I thought it would expose...I don't even know…
"I was...I knew I think a long time before I went to the doctor's but I was always afraid to get confirmation, to really know. There was always this hope in the back of my mind that I was wrong, since I was still getting my...that we were just getting lucky. But when he told me...when he...it was like I had never known, like I never had the suspicion...it was so shocking…
"And then when I drove back to the hotel, all I could think about was that I couldn't tell you, and that made it so much harder, keeping it to myself…"
It was all said to the comforter on the bed, as though she couldn't bear to look at him, but he was having none of that, lifting her face, then foregoing words to just pull her into his lap and kiss her until she couldn't remember what she was hurting about. "I would have done everything I could to make you feel better darling," he murmured when he pulled away. "I hated seeing you suffer about something that I couldn't help with. And-"
He broke eye contact with her for a moment, wondering if he could really explain why he got so angry.
"-the reason I got so angry was, and I'm not saying that it was justified because it wasn't and I started acting like an asshole, but the reason was...you were the one thing that I had expected to stay, where nothing else or no one else had ever stayed. I could always count on you to trust me, to be open with me, to not...and it wasn't that I expected you to tell me everything as though I had a right to know.
"I just...that was the way it had always been. We went to each other, we were each other's confidants. So when you suddenly had something that you wanted to keep from me, I panicked...about a lot of things. I thought that maybe...maybe I had just been kidding myself all of those years, I thought that maybe you had someone else, or others, basically my entire concept of our connection felt like it was falling apart in front of me, and I had no way to stop it.
"Then when you started packing, started to leave, all of the...I really...allowed myself to believe that you would never leave like everyone else did, and I just...snapped. But it was more anger at myself rather than you, anger about not being good enough to keep you around, anger at pushing you to leave. I did feel angry with you, but it wasn't really at you, just the fact that you were abandoning me. Somewhere in my fucked up head, I thought you knew I loved you and didn't care, were leaving anyway, so I did the only thing that I knew how to do. I attacked, lashed out..."
Suddenly he felt hands squeezing his shoulders, and he looked up to find her shaking her head, a signal for him to stop talking, not that he believed he could have continued anyway. "You never stopped being good enough, love. You are beyond good enough for me. When...I never imagined it would escalate to what it did...but the more we argued, the more anxious I got, and I couldn't think clearly anymore...look, it was just fucking stupid, it should have never happened, and we forgive each other for the motel. Okay?"
All he could do was nod, wondering what he had done to deserve this beautiful angel because he certainly didn't know. "Are you sure you want to talk more, love?" she asked, searching his face.
Did he? No, he didn't. He just wanted to lay her down and kiss her and make love to her and forget that anything bad had ever happened, but this was reality, and they had to talk, had to get it all out so it didn't fester in the dark places in their minds, just waiting to come out.
"We have to, darling."
She stroked his face with her thumb, before dropping her shoulders and sighing. "I suppose we do."
And what they had to talk about next was something that he...that stayed buried more than anything else, really. When he had left the first time from the hotel, he had been looking for something to distract himself with, something to work on, and he had found a beautiful charcoal black Ford GT just sitting in a parking lot. What he had been unaware of was that Lizzie had set her sights on the same car even before they had ever arrived at the motel. He had also been unaware of the fact that police were patrolling the area that day.
Cold hard rain pelted down around him, striking the skin of his face, soaking his hair, but he hardly noticed, barely noticed his own fucking thoughts as they screamed through his head like the wind that was whistling by, making the water on the ground shift and lurch in different directions. His boots slapped against the sidewalk with each angry step he took, as though he was trying to smash holes through the concrete. Maybe he was, maybe he didn't care about what he was doing, didn't care that the door of the motel was growing smaller and smaller behind him, didn't care that she was-
His heart raced beneath the leather jacket that felt like it weighed a thousand pounds, beneath the cloth band tee that he was wearing, beneath layers of skin and bone, and he wished that it would just stop, that it would just freeze in its frantic motion to beat out of his chest, wished that his stomach would stop turning and twisting, wished that he could shake the overwhelming urge to puke in the dead grass that was the same color as the crusty old carpet of the motel.
Her face, with its pleading glistening eyes, quivering mouth, it wouldn't fucking leave, like it was permanently plastered on the surface of his skull, on the surface of his eyelids too so that every time he squeezed his eyes shut her face swam in front of him, a disgusting reminder that even if it took two hundred years, everyone left him eventually.
A rock was launched forward with an explosion of water from a puddle as his boot connected, and then he ground to a halt, just standing there fuming in the steaming wet musty air, letting the rain collect on his jacket, not even bothering to wipe it away from his face, even as it pooled into his eyes, even as everything in front of him lost shape and definition, rendering him blind.
He wanted to crawl out of his own body, wanted to slide into the small river that was running along the side of the concrete, wanted to vanish, disappear into nothingness. He had never hated anything as much as he hated himself in that moment, had never been as angry, had never felt his fucking fingers go numb with rage, had never felt teeth grind together like this, had never wanted to self-destruct so fucking bad before.
Of course she couldn't trust him, who the fuck would trust him...she probably had someone else that she trusted now, someone that she ran to when she got bored with him, someone new, someone that...was better. How could he have been so stupid...so blind to the fact that he had been...losing her before this, that she had been pulling away, even as she had laid in his arms.
Everyone left, always left, nothing mattered anymore, not the rain, not her, not him, definitely not him, he was never going to be enough, was…
Or maybe she didn't deserve him, maybe she…
...Thoughts were swirling...why had he ever loved her in the first place...stupid stupid stupid...shouldn't have fallen in love with anyone...should have known she was going to leave...should have known he was going to fuck up…
The rain was coming down harder, masking the few angry tears that he didn't even admit to himself were falling, and he still didn't bother to wipe his face, didn't give a shit, about anything. His body was trembling from the cold that he hadn't even noticed yet, and then his feet started moving again before he even…
Where was he going? Did it matter where he was going? The only fucking place he wished he could still be was behind him, probably sitting behind the door wondering why she had ever given him the time of day…
But she...nothing had ever been real with her, what else had she hidden from him? How much did he know about her really? Was she even real? Had he hallucinated every smile she made at him, every laugh, did she hate him?
She should if she didn't, probably did now.
All registration of sounds, colors, sensations, the feeling of the ground underneath him, the air, the rain, himself, it was bleeding away as though he had really taken a knife to his chest and carved himself open, until the only thing he wanted to do was give up, just collapse onto the sidewalk and stop breathing, drown in his own pathetic existence.
Hated her, hated her for making him feel for so long, for making him believe that she cared, for making him let his guard down, for...never again…
Hated her stupid smile, her...the way she could always calm his world like the most soothing music, or the soft smell of a vanilla candle, hated the way she kissed him, and hated…
Was there a point in hating anything? Was he just wasting his time even pretending to care about anything?
Was there a point?
His chest constricted just then, as though his body had made the choice for him, had made breathing harder, had made him focus on inhaling the polluted air of London into his lungs, and exhaling it with angry puffs, each breath threatening to turn into a scream.
….
…..
Go back. Go back to her you fucking idiot. Stop this.
…..
Can't.
It was like a constant downpour of toxic sludge in his mind...covering everything, warping every thought that tried to steer him back to sanity. He couldn't go back there, couldn't look into her eyes again, couldn't look at the pain there again, couldn't open himself again. He was closed to the world, like a fucking dead portal. No one would make it through, not her, not anyone.
Eventually his thoughts lost all coherence, turning into a constant buzzing, like a radio station that was barely coming in, or the static on the TV that would warp into a picture every few seconds, and all he could think to do was keep moving away, keep walking, through the rain and the cold and the air, until he wasn't even sure how far he had gone, wasn't sure where he was going to end up, wasn't sure how long he had been walking, the only indication was that the daylight had disappeared.
Then everything went blank, his thoughts went clean like someone had erased the board, like he had been given a reset button, and he looked around to find himself in the fucking parking lot, the same parking lot where he had driven to last night. With the same ink black GT that he had found, and it became very clear in that moment that he needed that car, needed it like he had never...it became his very existence, because focusing on anything that even toed the line of deeper thought would kill him, would destroy him like a dam bursting under the pressure of too much water.
Maybe he had been walking to the car the entire time, on autopilot...he didn't know, didn't care. Swiveling his head to his right, then his left, scanning the area in front of him, and throwing a quick look over his shoulder, he saw no movement, nothing, and immediately knelt to break his way in, focusing on it like he had an audience of a million people all expecting him to perform at a level of perfection as yet unknown to humans.
Seconds dragged by as he twisted and wedged the door open, each noise blinking out of existence as the only sense that mattered was sight and the sharpness of his own mind, until finally, the interior of the car was visible through the door, and with one final push, it swung open.
The next sound he heard did make his heart freeze, just like he had wished, made his heart freeze and then accelerate to a speed that had his head swimming, had the world dipping and twisting like he was on board a carnival ride possessed by fucking Satan.
Red and blue flashing lights lit up his vision next, even as he was shaking his head, not even caring about being caught, just another fucking notch in the end of his life as he knew it. Rising from the asphalt, he glanced over his shoulder and immediately recoiled at the flashlight shining directly into his eyes, followed by an authoritative "put your hands against the vehicle and don't move".
Tired, he was so tired all of a sudden, barely having the strength to do as the cop asked, uncaring as the cop patted him down, uncaring as the cop drug the pistol out of the back of his jeans.
Then the white-hot spike of anger was injected again as he heard the clink of handcuffs, mixed with the "you do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence" line that…
His jaw clenched as his head was pushed against the GT, as the cold steel was locked around his wrists, and he didn't even hear the questions at first, not that he was going to answer them anyway. They didn't need his fucking name, didn't need to know whether he had been drinking, didn't need to know anything about him.
Fuck them.
As he was pulled back, as he was told to walk towards the cop car behind him in a straight line, he happened to glance at the sidewalk past the line of cars, and he saw a person standing there under the street light, right next to a phone booth that he hadn't even noticed. He followed the arm that was still holding the phone, clutching it against the side of the booth as though...followed the arm all the way to the shoulder, then…
No.
Fuck no.
'Are you fucking kidding me' came out of his mouth without even thinking, but he could only mouth it, because his voice was dead, and he wanted nothing more in that moment to scream, to shout at her, to…
His world was cracking open, and the only thing that kept him tethered to reality was the warning sound of the cop's voice.
…..
...This is what he had come to, defeated by trusting someone, again, fucking defeated, destroyed, conquered, annihilated, all by the woman he loved, the woman he would have gladly died for nine hours ago.
Now she was going to put him in jail, behind bars, like the problem that she had called him.
A million thoughts exploded in his head like a carpet bomb, but they all amalgamated into the only thing that he could force out, the only thing that his voice box could formulate, as though his vocabulary had been reduced to two words, and he was so goddamn angry that he didn't even focus on saying them loud enough for her to hear, as long as she could see the anger on his face, as long as she knew.
"Fuck you", like a bullet from his mouth, aimed at her, and he knew that this was the image he was going to have of her, this was what he was going to see every time he tried to think about her, the image of her standing there in the street light glaring at him with a fire in her eyes, a fire that she only reserved for people that she never wanted to see again.
A fire that he had prayed would never be directed at him.
And now it was, as he counted each drop of rain that hit her skin, glistening orange, as he glanced at her hands, her hands that...were still clutching the telephone like it was her only connection to life...at her golden hair that was clinging to her face in wet chunks, at her lips that were quivering…
Then like a recording had been triggered as the police lights took up more and more of his vision, every awful thing he had said to her in the motel came slamming back into him as though his brain had been keeping them in reserve for this moment, and he had never felt like he deserved something as much as he deserved for her to hate him enough to do this.
All because he had been too stupid to tell her that he loved her, to try harder to keep her, to stop her from fading away, to convince her that she didn't need to keep secrets from him. All because he had let her slip through his fingers.
Her message was heard loud and clear. She didn't want to see him again.
Words were suddenly something of a challenge to him, all of them seemed to fly away as soon as...but he had to try and explain anyway, couldn't back out now, even though Lizzie was staring at him with a look of trepidation.
"I think that was...well, as close to a mental breakdown as I have ever had, anyway. I got in the car for about thirty seconds, but I was too pissed to drive, so I started walking. I don't even think I knew where I was going, I just wanted to go, far away, as far away from the pain as possible.
"I was just so...angry, at you, at myself, at life, at...when I got to that parking lot, when I saw the car, it's like my survival instincts kicked in and made me go into self-preservation mode. I focused on the car, and nothing else. Turns out self-preservation when I'm in that fucked of a state doesn't help much. I barely looked at my surroundings, didn't bother to do a profile of the area beforehand, just wanted to get in the car and drive as far away as possible.
"But even through the entire walk, I didn't outright blame myself for anything. Again, that was my survival instincts kicking in. I didn't think about what I had said to you, didn't think about what you had said to me just before I left, didn't even think about the fact that I left at all. All that I could think about was how my entire life up until that point had been a lie and I was just riding a slipstream of anxiety and panic all the way to that car.
"It wasn't until I was being handcuffed that I realized how much I had fucked up...and it wasn't like a fog clearing or anything, it was like I had been standing in a dark room and suddenly had a spotlight shining on me in my head. All of the awful things I had said to you, I was seeing them as a spectator, and then I realized the gravity of what you had said to me, and in that moment it was like all strength just...left me. I didn't give a shit about anything that happened after that, because I had lost you, and nothing mattered in my life besides you.
Feeling like he had said everything without taking a breath, he stopped, and swallowed down the lump in his throat, watching her in glances, hesitant to hold eye contact with her. She grabbed one of his hands again and squeezed his finger.
"Jack, I know I've already said it multiple times, but I swear to god that when I picked up that phone, when I saw you kneeling next to the GT, it was never my intention to put you in jail. I just, and I will explain in more detail when it's my turn, but when I approached the lot and saw you, I thought you were...putting the final nail in the coffin between us.
"I thought you were...marking yourself as my enemy, and I got so angry that I just wanted to attack you, so I put in a call about an auto theft. Never in my wildest dreams did I actually believe you were going to go to prison. It was a complete petty knee-jerk reaction."
And prison is where he went. After nodding in acknowledgment of what she said, he stayed quiet for a good ten minutes, and she let him, while still alternatively squeezing and stroking his fingers, keeping him tethered to the present.
"...Lizzie," he finally said, hesitant like a doctor about to tell someone they have a month to live, " I...I'm going to tell you about...when I was locked up, but I don't want you to think that I am trying to make you feel guilty. I'm not, I just want everything to be out in the open, no secrets, no glossing over, anything. Alright?"
At first, she didn't seem alright, her eyes flickering around the room, her hands drifting away from his for just a moment, then she collected herself, squared her shoulders, and sighed. "Alright."
He took a deep breath himself. "I don't remember much of the ride to Pentonville, where they took me at first. I remember signing a confession to grand theft auto, and I was sentenced to three years-" at her sudden confusion, he held a hand up, "-I'll explain."
"The penalty in the U.K. is a felony for GTA, and a minimum sentence of two years. However, thanks to the pistol I was carrying, unregistered of course, I got another year for it. So that brings us to three years by the time I actually saw the inside of a jail cell-"
"But you said you were in for four-"
"I know. That's because I...actually got another five added on when I was transferred to Wakefield, which brings us to eight. I...assaulted a detective. He...well, we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's go back to the first night that I can recall at Pentonville. It was...early February, the 3rd or 4th, I think. The only reason I remember it was because they somehow forgot to feed me that night. I think they had a new guy on rotation, and he skipped my cell."
He marveled at how many details were really in simple things.
The small flecks and imperfections of the wall that he had been staring at for going on a week, the different patterns and colors of the linoleum floor, like blood splatter, the changing grime and dust around the corners of the window edge, high against the ceiling.
Even the temperature in the cell fluctuated. In the morning, it was cold, a harsh chill that had him drawing the thin blanket around himself like a cocoon, and closer to midday, it got musty, a neutral temperature between hot and cold that burned the inside of his nose.
Not that he actually slept much on the flimsy bunk, sure he laid there, but sleep was a rare commodity these days, and he was starting to feel it, feel the heaviness behind his eyes, the ache in his bones, the constant dull ache inside of his head, always changing places.
And the slowing of his thoughts, they started out as a constant attack of guilt, anger, or whatever word he wanted to assign to them, but now it was like he was surrounded by a mountain of paperwork detailing everything that had gone wrong, everything that was wrong with him, and he was methodically going through them one by one, not for any real purpose, because he didn't have a purpose anymore, but just because he couldn't just not think.
There were a few conclusions that he had come to in just a week. One, he didn't deserve to even be in the vicinity of Lizzie, nevermind talk to her again, and two, eventually, he was going to lose his mind in this place. Hiding in the hell of his own mind could only occupy him for so long before he needed out, needed to have fresh air again, needed to not be surrounded by a prison cell.
But right now, what he needed most was food. Unfortunately, the mousy little corrections officer who was in charge of distributing meals that week had skipped his cell. So, he was stuck sitting on his disgusting little bunk bed, wearing his disgusting bright orange outfit, and going over everything that had happened.
Everything that had happened. He hadn't felt this much weight on his shoulders since he had lost the Pearl.
Did she really have someone else on the side? Someone that she saw when he wasn't around? Had that person finally obtained enough of her trust so that she could stop telling him things? Had that person been told about her hospital visit before him?
More importantly, why the fuck hadn't he noticed? She was certainly good at pretending if it was true, and he was just in love with her enough to stop being paranoid like he was with everyone and everything else.
Why wasn't he enough for her? Had he not listened well enough, had...maybe she had been pretending the entire time, maybe she just wanted sex from him, and was pretending about everything else...
Maybe it had...their first time, maybe that was all she wanted even then…
And he had just been too blind to see at all of these years…
She had been so adamant about not telling him, so defensive, and she had been pulling away slowly the entire week before that, acting distant. He had told himself that it was just because she was tired and hungry, but…
He felt used, like she had been an addict and he was nothing more than a drug to her, but he had finally stopped giving her the fix she needed.
How far back did his being a problem extend? Had she wanted him gone before this, but just never told him?
He wanted to believe that she deserved everything he had said to her, wanted to...because if she could treat him like that, if she could throw him away like a used toy, then why should he…
...but she didn't deserve it. Didn't deserve any of it. He couldn't let himself believe that she did, because then she would be gone forever, and he fucking wanted her back so bad that it made him sick, both because he felt like he was a fool for it, and because some rational part of him believed that she had a reasonable excuse for not telling him about the hospital, and his entire reaction was just fucking stupid.
But now their entire relationship was laying in pieces like a shattered window, all scattered around a floor, and he was afraid to step there, afraid to cut himself again on the glass.
She had put him in jail, she had landed him in the one fucking place that he hated like no other, and it made it really goddamn hard to care about what she deserved, or what he deserved, or about her at all, or...
His brain felt like a slide projector, each slide carrying a different picture, and he was switching between them too fast to focus on one.
The only things that were real to him were the fucking cell, the presence of the outside world, and the absolute clusterfuck of him and Lizzie, everything else in between was a cesspool of shit, designed to destroy him.
He needed to get the fuck out of here.
When he had finished recounting everything that he could remember about that night, he took stock of her reaction, and she only looked pensive, like she was just thinking about it.
"It was like I was stuck in a void, removed from reality while I was there. I thought about a lot of shit, sitting there in that cell. Drove myself mad, almost. At first, I was fairly calm, as calm as I could get, considering, but then I started to get stir crazy, restless, after I had gone over every angle, every scenario, every facet of our relationship, of the fight, I really realized how much I hated being in there, and then I tried to get out, started trying to escape.
"The fourth failed attempt I had, they decided that I was too high risk to just leave in a cell. See, some of the prisoners were beginning to...rally to me. I'll get into that a different time, but eventually, they brought in a detective to question me. I guess they had a special interest in me or something."
So far removed from reality, sitting in the steel chair, staring at the wall in front of him, wondering why in the fuck there was a pack of cigarettes on the table next to him, a kind of bitter anger just slithering around inside of him, like the last bit of gas in a car trapped into fighting to make the car keep running.
The outside world seemed so far away now, she seemed so far away now, like a dream that he just couldn't recall no matter how hard he tried. Each breath he took was a chore, a struggle to force out, like there was something in his chest trying to drag each one back down.
He didn't know if it was because the pain had become too much, or if his mind was just too tired to keep thinking about it, or if something was playing a cruel trick on him and everything would come back, every thought, every memory, like a pack of locusts.
It didn't really matter, though, because he had shoved himself off a cliff when he had left that motel room, and he had unfortunately survived the fall, leaving a broken down version of himself that only wanted to escape, out of his own body, out of this horrible place, he wanted to keep running, off the fucking planet if possible.
But instead, he was sitting in an interrogation room, like he was a specimen for science, and just then the door opened. He followed the movement of the person without looking up, didn't care enough to look up, watching the shadows move on the wall as they rounded the room to sit on the other side of the table was good enough.
"Mr. Smith, I am Laurence Crenshaw. I am a detective employed by Her Majesty. I work at all of the prisons in London."
They had taken to calling him Mr. Smith since no one knew his actual name, and he wasn't about to fucking tell them.
"The cigarettes are for you, to calm you down, if necessary."
He kept staring straight ahead, his face pulled into a tight expression, a guard.
"...Right. I'm here to try and figure out why you are doing what you are doing, and to hopefully help you avoid incriminating yourself further."
The guy sounded like he had just the right type of self-righteous fuckery that pissed him off. The tone of his voice almost reminded him of James Norrington.
"I'll start by asking you why you tried to steal the car."
Because if he hadn't he would have shot himself, would have run in front of a car, would have literally spontaneously combusted. Stealing the fucking car was so much more than stealing the car, it was like sticking himself on life support.
"...it was something to do," he answered, turn his head just enough to the left to give the guy a dangerous side-eye. Short blonde hair, asshole-ish glasses, and a boring black suit.
"And I suppose jail is something to do also?"
"It's not so bad."
The man stayed quiet except for the scratching pen on his little notepad.
"Did...did you know the woman who called you in?"
That caught him by surprise, and he turned his head to look at the man with full eye contact, thoroughly intrigued, like his brain was waking up for the first time in days. "Why?"
"Small possibility of this being a domestic dispute-"
"No. I didn't know her. She must have lived in the area," he said with a tone of 'don't fucking argue with me', looking back to the wall in front of him.
He could feel Crenshaw studying him like he was one of those pictures where you had to find the missing objects.
"Ok. Why do you keep trying to escape?"
Crenshaw's jaw clenched at his answering expression, the expression of 'are you fucking stupid?'.
"...I'm in fucking jail. Would you like being in jail?"
"No, I suppose not. But being in jail is the direct result of committing a crime. You seem like a smart guy."
"And you don't. Criminals don't normally stamp 'criminal' on their fucking foreheads, do they? I didn't plan on being in jail."
More scratching on the notepad. He had an urge to snatch it off the desk and read what the man was writing, but he had enough of an idea already.
"...You have a tattoo on your right wrist. A bird. Because of the placement of the tattoo, there is a theory that it is some kind of identification marker."
The fucker was getting personal already.
"And you think I'm going to tell you?"
"I'm a detective. It's my job to learn about someone."
He laughed, more of a dark snort than a laugh, and leaned back in the chair, resting his head against the cement wall, staring into the ceiling light.
"Well, sorry to put a damper on your parade, but you're not going to learn shit about me. You're wasting your time."
"I think you're running from something. Or someone. And you want to leave here to keep running. Yet you are struggling with yourself to find the motivation to do anything."
His face stayed straight for a second before he allowed his lip to curl in a smirk, and then he turned in the chair, his entire body so that he was sitting looking at the man, satisfaction creeping into him as Crenshaw sat back in defense of his sudden intense gaze.
"You got all that from trying to steal a car and sitting in a room with me for five minutes? Sounds like you deserve a promotion."
"...Maybe. I think you're lying about the woman too."
"Why is that?" he asked, finally opening the pack of cigarettes and extracting one.
"The arresting officer said that you watched her for a good thirty seconds before you got in the back of his car, but didn't say anything, except "Fuck you"."
He blew the smoke from his first drag into the detective's face. "Did he? He has a good memory."
"And I have a theory. I think she was a woman that you pretended to care about, that you charmed into sleeping with you, for drugs or whatever she was going to give to you, then you packed up and ran because you're a criminal and you always run. Just this time, you didn't run far enough. She was pissed, stumbled upon you trying to steal a car, and called you in."
It was all he could do to not reach across the table and strangle the man with his own puke green tie. "And telling me this is going to help me avoid incriminating myself further, hm?" he growled with narrowed eyes.
Crenshaw looked intimidated but still held his ground. "I think I know why you want to get out so bad-"
"I just fucking told you why-"
"I think you want to hurt that woman, I think you want to hurt her because you blame her for being who you are, her and all of the other women that-"
He never got a chance to finish what he was going to say, probably something along the lines of it not being worth it, that he could be a better man, a better member of society, before he was being pulled across the table and slammed into the wall, his fist connecting with Crenshaw's face once, twice, before the man managed to reach out and slap the emergency button. His body crumpled to the ground when he was let go, gasping.
"...You're just like all of the other criminals...hardwired for destruction. Have fun in prison," he said, cradling his face, speaking with defeat, as though he hadn't ever thought he was going to win anyway.
The door slammed open and two armed security guards stormed in, while he just stood there breathing heavily, a frightening anger settling itself in his chest, and then they were sticking a needle in his neck before he could react, the world fading away almost a blessing compared to absolute hell that was seemingly never-ending.
"There it is, love. I was transferred to a high-security prison because I hit a detective that suggested that I wanted to hurt you."
As if it would have been anything else. Regardless of the storm that had been inside of his head, regardless of the fight they had, the words that had been flung around, the secret she had been keeping, the anger, the insecurities, and everything in between, he had still been in love with her, drowning so deeply in the mere thought of her that if she had asked he would have burned the damn prison down just to find his way back to her. But at the time they had felt broken, like a bridge that had finally collapsed under neglect and lack of maintenance.
"And you spent three more years there?"
Though he could tell that she really wanted to ask about his thoughts in that hellhole, wanted to know more, so that she could perhaps reach into the past and soothe them, understand them, make more sense of the fight.
"Yeah, three more years. They were the longest years of my life, at least I thought then that they were. The next forty years gave Wakefield a run for its money. I could sit here and tell you for hours about all of the fucked thoughts that I entertained, the circles that I went in, but that won't help anything. At one point I even tried to convince myself that I didn't love you. A last-ditch effort to save myself, I guess. Didn't work though. Think I have a better chance of convincing myself to douse my body in gasoline and take a match to it."
That got a giggle out of her, but it was a giggle that had been taken hostage by guilt and sadness before it escaped, and it still carried shards of those with it. "How did you manage to knock four years off of your sentence?"
"I...won't go into specifics, because it is a long story that requires many smaller stories, but I cut a deal with the custodial manager. He...needed something kept quiet, something that would incriminate him. Trust me, it was nothing that I should feel guilty about helping him with. He convinced them to let me out on good behavior in September of '77.
"While I was in Wakefield, I lost touch with reality a bit. I started getting holes in my memory, started filling them in with things, then sometimes I would play my past like a movie, thinking of you, and sometimes I would think of nothing that mattered, just thinking. But I was never really present, never alive in there, just drifting from day to day, so everything that I thought about, every decision I made, they were all worthless, because they meant nothing. It wasn't until I stepped out as a free man that everything suddenly meant something again."
It was the smells of the world that came back first, the cool stark crispness of the air, the smell of gasoline, the smell of rain right around the corner, the smell of life.
Then it was the solid flat plane of the ground underneath him, the wind that brushed against his face, the reminder that there was, in fact, a world outside, because he had started to wonder.
The green of the trees, flecked with orange and yellow, the gray of the sky, like a silver blanket, even the color of his skin was different outside.
Marveling at everything, at the fact that he was still alive, lasted for all of five minutes, before the other harsh reality stabbed him, straight in the heart.
Lizzie was still gone, never coming back, like a balloon that he had let go into the sky, all of the pain was still there, the pain that he had caused her, the pain that she had caused him, that they had caused each other, all of the unanswered questions were still there, writhing around in his head like half-dead snakes, and he had a half a mind to march back into the prison behind him and demand that they throw him back into his cell, because he had no business being out here.
What was the point, without her? He was certainly never going to find anyone else, didn't even want to try.
His next thought was the demanding urge to find her, to hunt her down and smother her in kisses, but then he remembered the look in her eyes as she stood there clutching the telephone, remembered everything he had said to her, and he realized that she didn't want him back, would just send him away again if he showed up.
She probably had found someone else by now, someone that made her happy like he couldn't. And he couldn't bear to see that, to see her with someone else. It would kill him.
So, even though it felt like he was suffocating on his own breath, he took breaths anyway, deep breaths, and walked forwards, every step cementing the decision to stay away from her, to keep himself away from her, for her sake.
If she was happy without him, if him not being there was what made her happy, then so be it.
He would try to stay alive without her, as hard as it may be.
"This is the bit where I am just going to talk, and you can stop me if you have questions, but I need to get all of this out now while I still have emotional energy.
"I honestly don't know how I found the energy to go anywhere that first day. I had forgotten how to breath fresh air, but even beyond that, I had-"
He stopped when he realized that she was crying again, but she had been trying to hide it by keeping her gaze down, by blinking a little too fast. "Lizzie," he said softly, enclosing her hand with his, squeezing it. "I told you that I wasn't trying-"
"I know, but that doesn't mean that I don't feel guilty anyway. All of the pain you felt, all of those years, in the prison, and after, didn't need to exist, never needed to exist, if only that week wouldn't have happened. If I had thought for one second that you wanted me still, that you wanted me to...I would have reached out, but I buried myself under so many reasons, so many...that just the thought of seeing you again, the thought of seeing the same anger in your eyes that you had in the motel, I couldn't see it again...:"
"Lizzie," he said again, softly.
She raised watery eyes to look at him. "It's my turn still," he whispered, reaching out to swipe a tear that had found its way onto her cheek. When she nodded, he continued.
"...I had an even harder time remembering how to live without you. Before, I always had the assurance that you would come back soon, but then, the future was...so bleak without that. The anger slowly returned, but it was because I couldn't have you back, and I started to get angry with you again, angry that you had put me in prison, angry at myself for making you do it. Everything came back so strongly, like...that I couldn't take it, couldn't handle it. I didn't want to feel anymore, so…"
It had been a crushing weight, stronger than anything he had felt before, as though everything had coalesced into something much larger, and it had ripped his control away, and he had wanted to run, but before, he had wanted to run away. At five in the morning three weeks after his release, when he had been laying in a motel bed, thinking about the last time him and Lizzie had made love in a hotel bed, three weeks before the fights, he wanted to run into nothing, wanted to feel nothing, because it didn't make sense to him otherwise, was a problem that he couldn't solve.
"...I started heroin. I found a dealer in the backwoods of London, paid him a little more to pretend like he had never seen me before, and he started supplying me with enough drugs to turn my feelings off for an entire year. I wish I could say that it was nice, not feeling, but it wasn't. I just felt numb after awhile.
"Eventually, I missed myself even, missed my own thoughts, missed how the world had felt without drugs, missed thinking about you, so after a year, I stopped taking it, told the dealer to fuck off, and got the fuck out of the UK.
"Mostly tried to stay out of the UK completely until I moved back, I guess I thought it would be easier to cope if I was away from the origin of the memories. I was half-right. You never left, were always in my head like...not that I minded much because at least I had you somewhere. But you were like a friend that I had left behind in a different country."
His throat was starting to get dry, and he wished that he would have thought to bring some water with. The feeling of exposure was starting to get to him too, he could feel it in the way his energy seemed to be fading slowly, like a diminishing battery. But he forged ahead anyway, knowing that she deserved to know, deserved to hear everything.
"...For a while, I just...had myself convinced that I didn't deserve to see you again, that I wasn't welcome, that...I was just setting myself up for more hurt if...or setting you up for more hurt, since...I was definitely convinced that you didn't love me, beyond a shadow of a doubt.
"Then, after a couple of years went by, once the guilt faded a little, I figured that you truly had found someone else, since I hadn't heard a word from you, not that I really expected to. I secretly hoped for it, hoped that you would reach out, but…
"I eventually made myself impossible to find even if you did want to reach out, because that was the only other alternative to drugs. To pretend like you didn't exist by distancing myself from you as much as possible. I was so convinced that I had nothing with you…
"And then all of the stuff I was doing, the less than morally right jobs I was doing, all of that shit turned into a black hole of things I would need to tell you that I couldn't tell you even if I did have something with you. Secrets I would have to keep, especially since...well, everything just became an excuse to avoid facing whatever reality I would face if I tried to find you.
"At the fifteen-year mark, I hadn't exactly forgotten about you, because that would have been impossible, but I had you locked away in my head behind a door that was so fortified, so impenetrable, that it would have taken a great force to blow it open.
'That isn't to say that it couldn't be picked at, slowly worn down, which is exactly what happened. When the memories finally faded into the background, when I could think about them without feeling like they had happened yesterday, I started to take small steps back to you, started to put my stuff in places, to see if you would chase it, and when you did, I allowed myself to feel hope again, just a little bit. But I still felt like I wasn't wanted, still felt like I had permanently ruined us, so it took me until your garage for me to get that close, to finally...throw caution to the wind.
"But I chickened out. I just left a message in your car, one that you might not even make the connection with me from, and left a bead with it."
She had made a motion like she wanted to say something, so he stopped, quirking his eyebrow.
"I just...I still wish that you would have broken in. Just knowing now that you were that close. We could have been together before Mumbai, in my house, instead of a random hotel."
"I wanted to. It took every ounce of control I had to walk away, to wait for a different opportunity. Then I found out about the compass, about who had it, and that you were looking for it. So, I went to Mumbai, and trust me, I don't think I have ever been as nervous as I was that day when I texted you. I may not have looked it, but I was terrified. I was riding on the back of 44 years of the shit in my own mind.
"So that would be why I was acting like...an acquaintance rather than a friend of two centuries at first. I wanted to...not overwhelm you, or assume that I was allowed to act differently. Then I started to test the waters, started to open up bit by bit, to see how you responded. When you didn't act angry with me, when you...I let myself enjoy it, the fact that you were...but I was also incredibly confused. I went back over every theory that I had, every...and still, nothing made sense, just for different reasons.
"Then after you found out about Wakefield, after you...that night, when you asked me if I was in love with you, you sounded so frightened, so...sure that I was going to say no. It felt like...like I had the answer in front of my eyes the entire time, the most obvious answer, but also the one answer that was literally impossible to me.
"In that moment, 44 years of shit almost vanished, or at least...I don't even know, maybe it made all that time worse to think about, but a lot of stuff suddenly made sense, so much shit made sense, why you were so against telling me about the hospital, and stuff before that even, why you had sudden bouts of frustration, why you were moody at random times, why you always hated when we argued a little too much, and I almost cried that night at the sheer enormity of that reveal, that you were in love with me…"
He couldn't even go on after that. He was all talked out, just like he had been all thought out over and over again for 44 years, and she had listened through all of it, through all of his rambling. He marveled at that, that she had that much patience. Having the sudden urge to hide, he dropped his head into his hands. It only lasted for a second, before she was climbing into his lap again, pulling his hands away, and kissing him like she was trying to communicate her thoughts about everything he had said without talking.
When she finally pulled away, it was a slow gradual retreat, and he knew that she was trying to take it all in, trying to process all of it, and he also knew that it was going to take more than this night for everything to heal, for all of the shit to fully heal.
"Thank you for telling me all of that. I...I know that wasn't easy for you, love."
Her eyes held a warmth, a gratitude that made everything feel like it was okay. She always made everything feel like it was going to be okay, made all of the darkness disappear from his mind. "I'll always tell you anything you want to know, regardless."
It was an impossible thing to imagine that she would want to talk now, after the...and he was about to tell her exactly that, tell her that if she wanted, they could lay down and live in the present again, the beautiful present where all of the insecurities were far away things.
"I um...I suppose it's my turn, huh?"
Pulling her in for one more kiss, he told her the only thing he could tell her. "Only if you want to, darling."
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The Scythe's Song