veronica_rich | POTC Ficlet: "Up and Down As Tide"

Title: "Up and Down As Tide"
Rating: PG
Jack and Will or J/W - your choice
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters or turn a profit off their portrayal
Summary: How does an upright citizen like Captain Turner solve a problem like Captain Sparrow? Written for the "changing tides" prompt at

jackwill.
A/N: Unbetaed. Written on a feverish brain. Feedback welcomed.

Christ, how he’d hated this man! First, he’d lulled Will into a false trust, forcing him through his own conscience to offer up his own life to protect Jack’s against the commodore and the Crown; then he’d hurled that life against the sharp edges of Davy Jones’s self-hatred and immolation.

Finally, he’d turned against Will in the basest way he could: Trying to seduce away the one person who would willingly become the orphan's new family.

This wasn’t even dwelling overmuch on the dramatic pause that had given Jones the chance to kill him. And against his better judgment Will had tried to forget the glimpse he’d gotten of Jack’s face, the absolute horror, shock, and pain in his expression as the life dribbled out of Will into wet, algae-slicked planks the day he was born into captaincy for the Ship of Death.

But dying upon those same planks now was a drowned, battered shell of the pirate Will had been forced to recognize as a good man despite Jack’s constant streak of self-service. The kneeling captain slid large hands into the half-corpse’s matted black hair, cupping the sides of his head, and closed his eyes. Energy flowed from skin to skin as he tightened and flexed his fingers, willed from beneath the mingled admiration/repulsiveness he’d always harbored for Jack, until he felt the head lifting, moving on its own.

He opened his eyes and stood, offering his fellow captain a hand up. Jack eyed it, then took it, his dark eyes never leaving Will’s as he followed. There was no disappointment, no mocking this time – rather, Jack’s own brand of admiration and respect.

And perhaps something else … a thing that matched the shift in Will’s own perception of the maddening personality that had perplexed him since the night Jack had waved off his crew’s betrayal with a “They done what’s right by them.” Something that had kept him from taking off Jack’s head on a couple of occasions since, when he would’ve been quite justified in doing so.

Something that made him pull back Death’s hounds this very night and not force a decision between service and demise upon the strange, sparkling fellow. Something in the blood that now flowed and pooled under the guidance of tides and moon and sun rather than of a heart.

“Some rum, pirate?” he finally asked, letting the smile touch his overwise eyes.

After a few beats, Jack nodded almost imperceptibly. “Aye,” he assented, still gripping Will’s hand in a prolonged clasp. “That’ll work, blacksmith.”

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Do you really see it that way? I don't. I see it as one of those compromises that defines Jack's existence. The decent man who turns pirate. Someone who is constantly walking that tightrope. Which is why I thought DMC was made of collosal fail. He clearly had fallen OFF the tightrope in that movie, and part of the deliciousness of Jack Sparrow is how close he comes to falling off and yet doesn't. They fucked with that concept, which is why (in addition to many other issues but that was the primary one) I hated that movie. It jossed the one, seminal concept of CotBP: a pirate can be a good man. He had a choice to let Will actually die, or give Will a half existence and then SCHEME like bloody hell in the meantime to free him. I think they could make an entire movie out of him consorting with various shamans (and a starring role for Tia Dalma) to free Will. It could actually be sort of a twoson with Jack and Tia Dalma in a constant search to free Will. With appropriate cameos with Elizabeth (femme slash! threesomes!). I think it could be a fascinating film. Get Barbossa in there, bring back the entire crew. Do you think I should write the screenplay?

Hey, since you have the idea, you're now OBLIGATED to write it. (Unless that scares off your muse. In which case I'll say no! no! don't write THAT!)

It seems an obvious jumping off point for the next movie. Although I get the sense they want to pair up Johnny and Geoff because of the obvious chemistry between them. I imagine that whole hunt for the "Fountain of Youth" might be part of that saving of Will plot point. Christ, I can see it now. Jack is torn between giving a draught to Will and resurrecting him or drinking it himself. That's exactly the sort of dilemma that SHOULD exist in this franchise. In fact, Jack returning in the row boat to the Pearl to save them from the Kraken was the first time in DMC that Jack was actually reprising the sort of character traits that defined him in the first movie. Selfish action first, selfless action second upon further reflection. Best of both worlds when selfish action and selfless action actually meet! Which is how he got the Pearl back.

Hell, given how ridiculous Disney et al. are, I imagine that they'll resurrect James Norrington as well. It seems, well, a natural. However, I've assumed many things were naturals, say, beginning a movie with a wedding and assuming that the two people getting married are IN LOVE WITH EACH OTHER--apparent I was wrong--Oh, gee, it appears I was right!

I've assumed many things were naturals, say, beginning a movie with a wedding and assuming that the two people getting married are IN LOVE WITH EACH OTHER--apparent I was wrong

Well, of course you were wrong. That's Jack and Will, naturally. :-D

If slashers ruled the world, honey!

You know this brings up a very interesting point, and given that your sister is an SPN fan, I'd be curious about her take on the recent wank that the series took that seemingly to my untrained eye was a direct slap in the face to the wincest crowd. And it seems a lot of people in the fandom who write wincest see it that way too, but maybe I'm just reading the vocal minority.

But it says something profound about the proprietary nature of fandom. How we adopt these characters to fit our fantasy and spin tales about them so that the fanon seems more realistic at a certain point than the canon. If someone said to me, there is aboslutely no basis in fact for your stories with Will and Jack having any sort of sexual relationship, I'd have to agree with them! (and this goes back to my recent essay on what the fuck is canon anyway!). Just like I felt about the sparrabethers insistence that J/E existed and that pesky wedding was nothing more than Elizabeth being trapped into marriage by convention (yeah, to a blacksmith, THAT was conventional in the 18th century!). But they certain felt that their interpretation was correct and the fact it turned out to be woefully wrong is not only a comment on how freaking bizarre was their interpretation of the events of that movie, but in some touching way of how much they WANTED it to be that way.

Case in point: I've come into two fandoms ass backwards, reading the best of the fanfiction first and THEN watching the shows. due South was one and Stargate Atlantis is the second. And the thing about SGA is that the show is pretty cheesy and, well, lame, but the actors give it their best shot. Joe Flanigan has a ridiculous amount of charm and David Hewlett can actually act, so between the two of them, they make it work like gangbusters, or at least enough so that the stupid shit that the creators pull you can effectively ignore. Most of the time. And watching this show, with the background of some really EXCELLENT writers who taken over the storyline, it's like they've created an alternative universe where a simple act, John Sheppard throwing a nickel to decide if he's going to Atlantis or not becomes, an entire frigging jumping off point for the psychology of John Sheppard. It becomes fanon which then becomes canon! In the show it has something like a two second appearance and fandom has made this into something much, much more. And this is only one instance of where a simple act by a screenwriter becomes a psychological or physical manifestation of a character's psyche!

And I think we all do this to one extent of another. We adopt these characters and make them our own. And when the creators/writers/producers/directors have the nerve to either tell fandom STFU, we are outraged. It's as if we own them. Witness how much angst that stupid DMC elicited?

Fascinating stuff, fandom!

“the series took that seemingly to my untrained eye was a direct slap in the face to the wincest crowd.” Been there, done that. Hellooo, DMC. There are times when the inconsistency of the behavior of characters causes one to manipulate the hell out of canon.

After CotBP, it is clear that DMC Jack must be so mean because Will had spurned his advances. Works for me at any rate.

And DMC Elizabeth falling for Jack after CotBP Elizabeth thought him so gross and crude before? Umm, yeah, still working on that.

This may be why much of the J/E fic cleans up Jack and turns him into Johnny, The Family Man - because canon Elizabeth wouldn't put up with canon Jack for very long?

Ah, the Jack with nappies stories. *snerk* like that would ever happen.

I don't write fanfiction, so my critiques are pretty much based on did I like it and did I think the characters behaved in a canon fashion. It gets a little tricky for Elizabeth and Jack because in DMC, their characters behave in an aberrant fashion. AWE and CotBP are much better in sync that way.

So, even though J/E is not my cup of tea, if a writer sticks to post-DMC and ignores AWE, at least it's canon of some sort. However, even given that tolerant assessment, anyone who thinks that Jack would be pussy-whipped is nuts (which is how many write him). Anyone who thinks Jack would put a small child at the center of his universe is nuts. Anyone who thinks Elizabeth and Jack wouldn't try to kill each other is nuts. Cuttlefish, m'dear.

Strictly speaking, J/W, J/N and N/E aren't canon either, but it's much easier to write those relationships in which the characters behave in a canon fashion. W/N is trickier for me, because well, who would make the first move? Slash with Jack and his slippery moves, though, is easy to see in a canon fashion.

POTC Ficlet: "Up and Down As Tide"

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