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

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.”

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My darling, I asked for something new, and you delievered with your usual, spectacular flair. I love you.

Love,
Jules

Now that was very different. But very very beautiful. :-)

Oh, I love how you show Will's mixed feeling about Jack.

What a fantastic interpretation of the prompt. So very fitting for Will to be angry and annoyed with Jack but in the end shifting back to his forgiving self and offering him respite.

See, I don’t see things in the same light as others do. For starters, I don’t see Will going over to the Dutchman as a betrayal at all. Or, if you want to call it that, it is about as benign a betrayal as you're likely to find.

Will Turner does not die. Jack merely sends him on a dangerous mission. And everyone seems to forget the fact that Jack knows Bootstrap Bill is on that ship. Jack is reuniting Father and Son, exactly as it happens. Who is to know what Jack was planning? Will is a resourceful guy, going off onto a ship to pair up with his father, and find the key. And to top it off, WILL ACCEPTED THAT ASSIGNMENT.

Grant it, there is a strategy to not telling Will -- if Will knew what was going on all along, would Jones have taken him on the ship? The betrayal had to feel real to Jones in order to get Will on the ship at all.

Again, Will did not die. Jack plays all angles. If Will hadn't been able to escape and return, one could even imagine Jack making his way onto the Dutchman, and teaming up with Will to get the key.

Also, I don’t believe Jack was trying to seduce Elizabeth, more like playing a game of one-upmanship with her. Her betrayal of Jack was far worse, and yet she get the excuse of having done it because she did it for Will? No fair, says I.

All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.
All which thy child's mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home :
Rise, clasp My hand, and come !"
Halts by me that footfall :
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
"Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest me."

-The Hound of Heaven

Something in the blood that now flowed and pooled under the guidance of tides and moon and sun rather than of a heart.

I'm a great fan of that sentence :)

(but why is Jack calling Will a blacksmith? o_O)

I likes!

I just wanted to say I loved this. I think it perfectly sums up Will's feelings toward Jack.

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...

I'm so glad you mentioned Will seeing Jack's expression. I love that movie, despite its faults, and that image of Jack's face is one of the things that stays with me. It's completely unguarded and real, and I'm glad Will saw it (even if he tried to forget it).

And on an off-note, I have to say that your last line keeps reminding me of "That'll do, pig" from "Babe." :)

But really nice job.

Ah, one last typee before crawling off to bed.

So very fine!

You know, Jack actually betrays Will a total of twice in all three movies, both times in DM: when he sends him to the Dutchman then during the three-way duel Jack points out it's Will that Norrington should blame more Jack.

Jack MANIPULATES Will many more times for his own agendas but none of those instances work directly against Will's own interests or well-being.

In the game going on between Jack and Elizabeth, if she'd offered herself, he'd certainly have taken her up on it but the choice WAS hers and she didn't make it. Meanwhile, she was easily doing as much teasing as he was seducing, hardly the betrayal Will sees it, but he's quite humanly jealous when he witnesses the kiss--and it's initiated by Elizabeth for her OWN agenda.

But in Will's POV, he'd reasonably not take kindly to being maneuvered. That touches a man's pride in a very fundamental way. Will blames Jack even for his OWN decision to save Jack from the gallows, which is a stretch.

I also like that you confront Will's very feasible resentment of Jack's pausing to gloat, which gave Jones the time to stab Will. That too is damning him for lacking hindsight, but Will is stuck on the Dutchman and not inclined to make fine distinctions among his grievances.

What makes this story SO good, is not only that Will moves past that, he's not simply being "nobly forgiving".

There is such layering of emotion and understanding. No one-dimensional noble-Will here! After his years on the Dutchman, he's seen the complexity of the soul, the mixed shades of gray in every motive.

Beyond his grudges he can recognize the good in Jack alongside his self-serving schemes, his inherent trickster nature.

People tend to forget or shrug off the event that sets the whole adventure in motion; Jack saves a drowning woman he not only doesn't know but the rescue will draw unwanted attention and he is in fact captured and condemned out of hand!

>And against his better judgment Will had tried to forget the glimpse he’d gotten of Jack’s face< So Will's better judgment would be precisely to remember that he'd seen Jack at his most honest, all masks dropped.

There is in Jack a core of humanity that at the very last will do "the right thing" because it IS the right thing. There is in Will the greatness of soul to step past his grievances to respond to that generously.

That indefinable something in Jack that calls to him is a shared fundamental decency. They may not be "peas in a pod" but there is commonality at bottom. Will salutes it when he treats Jack as fellow captain and Jack sees and accepts Will's gesture for the fine thing it is.

*grin* Also like everyone else, I love the line:
> “Aye,” he assented, still gripping Will’s hand in a prolonged clasp. “That’ll work, blacksmith.”<

I, too flashed to Babe, then I also thought of Gibbs in the pig pen, dazedly figuring his way through Jack's convoluted words to a free drink, "Aye, that'll about do it."

But I have to mention one other line that gave me shivers it was so good:
>Something in the blood that now flowed and pooled under the guidance of tides and moon and sun rather than of a heart.<

I think you are the only one I've read so far that pauses to recognize that Will's whole being now moves to other rhythms, attuned to nature with a directness beyond human. What a strange, eerie beauty in the notion that, lacking a heart, it's the lunar tides that pull his blood in his veins. For an instant it makes him a magical creature, as strange and glittering in his own way.

Beautiful. I really loved it. .)

A very fine Will fic! Certainly there's more to the man, than that surface nobility (admirable though it is.)

No cause to blame Jack for your ending up captaining the Dutchman, Will. It was Destiny.

"Something in the blood that now flowed and pooled under the guidance of tides and moon and sun rather than of a heart."

Like others have mentioned, this sentence is very good. Will is the Sea.

"And perhaps something else … a thing that matched the shift in Will’s own perception of the maddening personality"

Yeah, that's sort of the same journey I've been on when it comes to Jack. Jack does some pretty shady things. On the other hand, he's got his reasons for playing things close to the vest and ignoring the promptings of his better nature. In the Locker, Captain Jack mercilessly kills Honest Jack, saying, "it was that sort of thinking that got us into this mess."

In the end, the Pearl and the Dutchman did fight together, so maybe Captain Jack was listening to Honest Jack again.

Ah, how lovely, that now they can truly view each other as equals. It would indeed take time and Will's own aptitude for forgiveness (and I do see it as something he strives to do, rather than it simply being an inherent character trait. It's just another thing that makes him interesting) for them to reach this stage.

Also, I have to admit that the image of Will's large hands sliding into Jack's hair (dying or not), gave me a tweak of a thrill ;)

*sigh* Something about finding new fic from you is almost like everything in the world is set right again. God, I love reading your stuff. There's so much complexity contained within such economical writing, and the imagery you've used is, as everyone has pointed out, simply gorgeous.

mingled admiration/repulsiveness

Hee, Jack does tend to inspire conflicting emotions!

the shift in Will’s own perception ... “They done what’s right by them.”

That was a glimpse beneath Jack's mask, wasn't it? I wonder how much that moment of vulnerability influenced Will's actions at the hanging? I thought the resignation in Jack's voice there indicated a more-than-passing experience with that type of disappointment in others, but it could also have been disappointment in himself. "Fool me once," and all. Hmm.

Your stuff inspires lots of thinky thoughts! :D

I personally liked this line: 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.

Another wonderful fic!

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