Chapter XII : Nightmares and Nemeses
* * * * * *
Part I : Old Enemy Fear
[ colloquial title : waiting in the dreamscape ]
Captain Jack Sparrow was not a man to give himself over to fear without a fight. He preferred anger, if he had to choose, or the useful brand of controlled panic that had saved his skin more times than he could count. He preferred to think first and feel later, if at all possible. It was thinking, not feeling, that made or broke opportunities; and although Jack's manic thought process would have certainly baffled anyone who did not happen to be Jack, it was by his wits that he made it from day to day without falling victim to the countless and potentially fatal hazards of his lifestyle. Fear had no place in his rational; it was something that he did not entirely understand, and for this alone he might have loathed it. But fear was also the quickest path to an early grave for a pirate -- it sucked up strength, slowed the senses, and at times buckled the will. Fear made a man weak. And weakness was not a trait easily tolerated by Captain Jack Sparrow - especially not in himself.
He had thought his way through the rape, not felt it. The fear had come -- oh, it had come -- and the pain as well, but he could swallow these things down as long as he was thinking. If he was thinking, he was still alive. His body would heal, but if he'd let them inside his head, it might have been all over -- and so he'd barricaded them out with a constant, one sided discourse to himself. His mind had worked as ceaselessly as their hands upon his skin - It's not them that you're afraid of, damn you, and it's not the pain either. You've nothing to fear but fear itself. Logic. Use your logic. You can't move because there's too many of them, and if you struggle you won't win. But if you don't choose to move, they're not really holding you still, are they? You're holding yourself still. You're choosing not to struggle. You still have choices. Just choose wisely, and hold still...
He'd done well, by his own count. He hadn't let them hear him so much as moan, let alone scream. He hadn't given them the satisfaction of struggling, or pleading, or even trying to evade their hands. He'd shoved the fear back to the darkest recesses of his mind and let hatred roll to the surface when he'd met Spencer's eyes, and he hadn't curled in upon himself in agony when at last they released him. He'd taken it all with as much courage and dignity as he could possibly retain under the circumstances. He hadn't let them see him break.
He'd even hidden the horror of it as best he could from Will - Will, who'd called him perfect in his moment of greatest shame; Will, who had touched him, afterwards, without the slightest hint of distaste. He'd closed his eyes and hidden his face against his lovers shirt through the bars, swallowing the nausea back again and again, refusing to be sick to keep Will from worrying even more. Never really sleeping and yet far from fully conscious, he'd breathed and bled and thought the nightmares away; struggling to cling to the warmth of the familiar chest beneath his cheek when the raw and nearly tangible memories threatened to overwhelm him.
It had been solace, indeed, to speak of Grace; the woman who's memory he'd swallowed like fear after leaving Killybegs ablaze in his wake. Grace had made him feel too much of everything -- cost him a thousand tears and a little piece of his sanity. Only in Will's arms had he found the heart to remember her again, for in Will's arms everything seemed safe to say, and safe to remember. Love was not his enemy has he'd once thought. He'd come back in time, this time around, without even trying to; and Will had been there, just as he'd remembered him -- only better, because he was real. Grace could be a memory without pain, now; a beautiful memory, as she'd always been meant to be. To tell the tale of her had been an escape from the Horror, for an hour or two.
And Will had been so protective, after -- vowing his vengeance against Spencer on pain of death, and so possessive had been his embrace that not even the memories had been able to slip past it. Jack had closed his eyes and let Will's voice drown out the world around him; cradled in a small and comforting universe that belonged only to them, he had forgotten all about the Horror for a while.
It was bound to catch up with him sometime.
Everything that he'd felt and fought off for so many hours lay waiting for him in the dreamscape; humiliation, pain, and Old Enemy Fear. There was no thinking his way out of nightmares; no way to escape the horror, this time, as the crude and careless hands stripped him down ... as they touched him roughly in the most tender places without the slightest thought as to how it must feel... He couldn't drown out the things they whispered to him, this time; the cruel and dirty things that only made him angry when he was thinking, but wounded him now in ways he had not thought possible. There was no swallowing the fear that overwhelmed him as they threw him to the floor; drew his hips up with cruel, biting fingers and forced his legs apart...
This time, he felt the helplessness to his very bones. This time he struggled as he never had before, fought the hands that pinned him down with every ounce of strength he could muster. This time he screamed until his lungs burned, begged them to stop it, just stop it -- please, it hurts, just stop...
It was his own scream that woke him, echoing off the dungeon walls.
* * *
Part II : Enemies on His Skin
[ colloquial title : on the nature of scars ]
He shifts again in my arms -- not the peaceful shift of slumber, but a restless and uneasy movement. He's been asleep for nearly two hours, from what I can guess -- and guess is all that I can do -- but he hasn't relaxed at all. His body is a coiled spring against me, wrought with waves of tension over tension that send shudders through his very bones. There is no peace to his slumber; the distress pulses through him as surely as his own heartbeat.
They're hurting him. I can feel it.
I smooth his hair back and kiss him gently, but it's no good. He can't feel me. He's in their hands again, and those hands are hurting him. I would give anything to climb inside his head and kill these monsters for him, but I can't. I can only try to rouse him with a gentle shake and a call of his name, and I do so, now.
It's the wrong thing to do.
His response is both immediate and violent. One second he's clinging to me for dear life, and the next he's struggling to get away. The fear is plastered across his features, clear as day; his face is stricken, anguished, and were his eyes open I do not think that I could bear to see them. His slender hands release my shirt, press flat against my chest in a feeble attempt to push me away. I don't know who's hands he feels, right now, but they aren't mine. He jerks back from me convulsively, as though the nightmare is trying to wrench him from my very arms, but he has no true strength in this haunted slumber. It's easy to keep him in my from getting away. I do not let go.
His struggles crescendo in the next moment, then cease utterly. He falls still in my arms, limp not in relief but in terror, and a breath of a whimper forms on his lips. He's shivering from head to toe, now. I can smell the fear on him, sickly sweet and rotten. I can't be sick. I can't let go of him. I can't bear to see him curl up in the filth of the dungeon floor, cringing from unseen torments. He's gasping for breath, chest heaving against me, heart pounding so hard against his ribcage that I can feel it in my own bones. He tries to pull away, again -- a small and hopeless contraction of muscles, nothing more. I hold him closer, and I talk to him, even though I know he cannot hear me.
"I'm not letting go of you, damn you. You're not going through this alone again - I won't allow it, I refuse to allow it, they're not going to take you back from me darling..."
His back arches, and he whips his face away from an unseen blow with a gasp and a strangled moan. He is not asleep anymore, but he is far from conscious, either. He's trapped somewhere inside his own head, where I cannot reach him, and there might as well be bars between us again. They are touching him when I cannot. There are tears streaming down his face, now, and I wipe them away with trembling fingers. He hadn't cried when they'd hurt him. He hadn't cried until after, and even then he'd barely cried at all. But he's crying, now; sobbing, really, but I am afraid to try and wake him again. I am terrified. His helplessness is terrifying, because Jack is never helpless when he's conscious. Whatever they are doing to him -- and I know, all to well, what they must be doing to him - I cannot stop it, and neither can he. I cannot save him, no matter how close I hold him. They are raping him again right here in my arms.
"No ... please..."
The words are only half formed on his lips, a desperate plea whimpered on the barest breath of air, but they drive like iron into my guts. I have never heard his voice like this, before. It doesn't sound like Jack. It doesn't feel like Jack. Every muscle in his body is drawn, tense; I can feel his abdomen spasm, his toes curl. My God, let go of him. Leave him alone. I can almost see their dirty fingers on his skin, again. I can almost hear them call him a whore. I am torn between rage and sheer panic - I want to hurt them like they're hurting him, but there's no one here to hurt. All that I can do is hold on to him, talk to him, pray that he wakes.
Quite suddenly, his entire body locks like a vice in my arms; the scream does not make it past the back of his throat, but it's there, and the sound of it turns my stomach nearly to sickness. I want to scream with him. I want to scream his name until he wakes up, I want to shake him until he comes back to me. I would do anything, anything at all, to make this stop for him - I would bear it myself were it possible, if only ease his suffering just a little. Anything, anything -- just stop it. Stop it, stop it--
"STOP!"
I don't know if it's my voice or his, echoing off the dungeon walls.
Jack freezes in my arms as though he's been shot. I can feel his eyes shoot open in the dark, though my own eyes are shut tight. The scream dies in his throat, and he goes eerily still against me, save for his hoarse and labored breathing. He's not crying, anymore. Neither am I. I hadn't realized that I'd been crying in the first place, but my face is soaked with tears. Neither of us move. Neither of us speak. We just hold on to one another, anchor eachother as our hearts find their rhythm, and we remember how to breathe again. I am aware of how small we are in this moment, and how fragile; two delicate microcosms of breath and blood and bone, clinging to eachother as we spin through space and time -- hopelessly powerless to steer ourselves, hideously unarmed against the fates.
And then something changes in the cell. Something shifts -- not in us, but around us. A brightness presses against my eyelids. Jack shifts against me with a deep, shuddering breath. I take a deep breath as well. I open my eyes. The clouds have shifted, and there's moonlight flooding through the spare, high-set window of the prison. One single, pure, slanted patch of silver-blue moonlight -- and we're sitting right in the middle of it. We're bathed in it. We're breathing it. We're soaked and dripping with good, clean moonlight -- and finally, I can see him.
The scars on his back stand out silver white -- old scars, familiar scars, scars that I have touched a thousand times. Lash marks. They're healed, now. They're healed like the burns on his arms, and the bullet wounds that go straight through his chest and out the back of his shoulder. We are old friends, these scars and I. We know eachother through and through. I know each and every one of them by touch alone, know the feeling of them against my skin as surely as his hands. We are intimate, his scars and I, and I love them; love them because they are part of him, love them because they are old, and benign, now, and because they cause him no pain. They don't belong to the cruel hands that dealt them, anymore. They belong to me, because I'm the one that knows them best. Because I'm the one who loves them.
But there are enemies on his skin, now. There are cuts here, open scrapes on his shoulders and his back. There are bruises peppered across his hips and stomach. There is dried blood on his wrists where the shackles rubbed him raw, and between his thighs. The bruises look like shadows in the moonlight. The blood looks like dried ink.
I don't know these marks. They are foreign. They are obscene. They are wounds, not scars -- too raw and invasive to be beautiful. They are made of pain, these marks, and I hate them. They disrupt the peace of his body. I want his old scars to rally against them and make them leave, because they don't belong there. They don't belong at all. But his old scars have accepted them already. Scars are not territorial. They're happy to be piled on top of one another, and they don't mind the new company. They see themselves at birth in these new horrors, and they remember what it was like to be young, and they let these new wounds move right in on their turf. I can't blame them. It's just their way.
I don't want to look at them anymore. I want to look in his eyes, but I can't see them. His arms are wound 'round my neck, and he's got his face buried behind one of them. He's barely breathing against me. I want to whisper to him, but before I can, he whispers to me.
"I thought they were going to kill me. I thought they were going to kill me and that I'd never, ever have you again. They had their hands in my hair, and the knife to my throat, and I kept trying to turn my head because I wanted to see you, Will. I wanted to see you at least one more time..."
I press him closer to me. I wind my arms around him as tightly as I dare to, and I bury my face in his hair. I'm crying again. I'm rocking him in my arms, and I'm crying and kissing his hair, and he's whispering;
"...and then they let go, and they threw me down, and I thought 'this is it. They'll do it now -- they'll kill me, and that's okay. I'll be able to look at him. He'll be the last thing that I see.'"
His breath catches in his throat, and he swallows hard.
"I can still feel their hands, Will..."
"Then feel mine," I whisper desperately. "Feel mine... They can't touch you now, Jack. Only me. Feel that?" - I grazed my knuckles over his cheekbone in a feather-soft caress. "That's me, Jack. My hands won't hurt you. They don't know how." Gently, oh-so-gently, I guided my fingers beneath his jaw and coaxed his face up to me. "Look at me, darling. I'm right here..."
His eyes were liquid in the moonlight, dark and fathomless and shining on the surface. I wanted to touch them, touch his very eyes, touch his soul through them. Instead I trace my thumb just beneath one, brush his eyelashes with the touch. He doesn't flinch from me. He lets me lean in to kiss the shadows beneath his eyes. He lets me look at him, and he looks back at me with fragile yet earnest trust. And then he raises one trembling hand, and places it against my cheek.
"Kiss me...?" It is not a demand, it is a plea.
And so I do.
I kiss him as gently as it is possible to kiss. I brush softly against his bruised lips, then press even softer. I cup his jaw in my fingers, guide his mouth open with my own just enough to taste the very tip of his tongue with the very tip of mine. It's Jack who deepens the kiss -- who finally opens to me, sighs into me, melts against me. Our lips part, meet again, and it's sweeter the second time. He's kissing like Jack, now, smooth and slow. He's savoring it. He's yielding to me without fear, and our tongues are dancing, and it's Heaven where our mouths meet. They didn't kiss him, not even once. Kissing is still pure for him, still pristine. Kissing is still just for us.
I want to draw back and look at him, but I can't. I can't stop tasting him. I can't stop dropping tiny kisses to the torn corners of his mouth, or feasting on his lower lip, or curling my tongue in smooth, slow strokes against his, again and again. I want this to last forever. I want to kiss him until his wounds fade into scars that I can learn to love. I want to tumble with him out of space and time and kiss him until the stars burn out. I don't want to breathe. Breathing means pausing. But pausing leaves time for hushed words, whispered against one another's lips -- and those are almost as beautiful as kisses, in the end.
"Don't stop..."
"...Never..."
"...Thought I'd lost you..."
" ... right here, darling..."
"... don't tell, please..."
"... no one. No one..."
"... couldn't face them..."
"... they won't find out..."
"... only you know ... just you..."
"... just me."
"Good..." Jack whispered, and smiled softly as I kissed his forehead. "Good ... because they're coming."
And then the sound cannon fire rolled in from the bay.
* * * * * *
A/N : ...I didn't expect the chapter to end there? But there it ended. Get ready for much dramatic rescuing in the chapters to come.
* * * * * *
Part I : Old Enemy Fear
[ colloquial title : waiting in the dreamscape ]
Captain Jack Sparrow was not a man to give himself over to fear without a fight. He preferred anger, if he had to choose, or the useful brand of controlled panic that had saved his skin more times than he could count. He preferred to think first and feel later, if at all possible. It was thinking, not feeling, that made or broke opportunities; and although Jack's manic thought process would have certainly baffled anyone who did not happen to be Jack, it was by his wits that he made it from day to day without falling victim to the countless and potentially fatal hazards of his lifestyle. Fear had no place in his rational; it was something that he did not entirely understand, and for this alone he might have loathed it. But fear was also the quickest path to an early grave for a pirate -- it sucked up strength, slowed the senses, and at times buckled the will. Fear made a man weak. And weakness was not a trait easily tolerated by Captain Jack Sparrow - especially not in himself.
He had thought his way through the rape, not felt it. The fear had come -- oh, it had come -- and the pain as well, but he could swallow these things down as long as he was thinking. If he was thinking, he was still alive. His body would heal, but if he'd let them inside his head, it might have been all over -- and so he'd barricaded them out with a constant, one sided discourse to himself. His mind had worked as ceaselessly as their hands upon his skin - It's not them that you're afraid of, damn you, and it's not the pain either. You've nothing to fear but fear itself. Logic. Use your logic. You can't move because there's too many of them, and if you struggle you won't win. But if you don't choose to move, they're not really holding you still, are they? You're holding yourself still. You're choosing not to struggle. You still have choices. Just choose wisely, and hold still...
He'd done well, by his own count. He hadn't let them hear him so much as moan, let alone scream. He hadn't given them the satisfaction of struggling, or pleading, or even trying to evade their hands. He'd shoved the fear back to the darkest recesses of his mind and let hatred roll to the surface when he'd met Spencer's eyes, and he hadn't curled in upon himself in agony when at last they released him. He'd taken it all with as much courage and dignity as he could possibly retain under the circumstances. He hadn't let them see him break.
He'd even hidden the horror of it as best he could from Will - Will, who'd called him perfect in his moment of greatest shame; Will, who had touched him, afterwards, without the slightest hint of distaste. He'd closed his eyes and hidden his face against his lovers shirt through the bars, swallowing the nausea back again and again, refusing to be sick to keep Will from worrying even more. Never really sleeping and yet far from fully conscious, he'd breathed and bled and thought the nightmares away; struggling to cling to the warmth of the familiar chest beneath his cheek when the raw and nearly tangible memories threatened to overwhelm him.
It had been solace, indeed, to speak of Grace; the woman who's memory he'd swallowed like fear after leaving Killybegs ablaze in his wake. Grace had made him feel too much of everything -- cost him a thousand tears and a little piece of his sanity. Only in Will's arms had he found the heart to remember her again, for in Will's arms everything seemed safe to say, and safe to remember. Love was not his enemy has he'd once thought. He'd come back in time, this time around, without even trying to; and Will had been there, just as he'd remembered him -- only better, because he was real. Grace could be a memory without pain, now; a beautiful memory, as she'd always been meant to be. To tell the tale of her had been an escape from the Horror, for an hour or two.
And Will had been so protective, after -- vowing his vengeance against Spencer on pain of death, and so possessive had been his embrace that not even the memories had been able to slip past it. Jack had closed his eyes and let Will's voice drown out the world around him; cradled in a small and comforting universe that belonged only to them, he had forgotten all about the Horror for a while.
It was bound to catch up with him sometime.
Everything that he'd felt and fought off for so many hours lay waiting for him in the dreamscape; humiliation, pain, and Old Enemy Fear. There was no thinking his way out of nightmares; no way to escape the horror, this time, as the crude and careless hands stripped him down ... as they touched him roughly in the most tender places without the slightest thought as to how it must feel... He couldn't drown out the things they whispered to him, this time; the cruel and dirty things that only made him angry when he was thinking, but wounded him now in ways he had not thought possible. There was no swallowing the fear that overwhelmed him as they threw him to the floor; drew his hips up with cruel, biting fingers and forced his legs apart...
This time, he felt the helplessness to his very bones. This time he struggled as he never had before, fought the hands that pinned him down with every ounce of strength he could muster. This time he screamed until his lungs burned, begged them to stop it, just stop it -- please, it hurts, just stop...
It was his own scream that woke him, echoing off the dungeon walls.
* * *
Part II : Enemies on His Skin
[ colloquial title : on the nature of scars ]
He shifts again in my arms -- not the peaceful shift of slumber, but a restless and uneasy movement. He's been asleep for nearly two hours, from what I can guess -- and guess is all that I can do -- but he hasn't relaxed at all. His body is a coiled spring against me, wrought with waves of tension over tension that send shudders through his very bones. There is no peace to his slumber; the distress pulses through him as surely as his own heartbeat.
They're hurting him. I can feel it.
I smooth his hair back and kiss him gently, but it's no good. He can't feel me. He's in their hands again, and those hands are hurting him. I would give anything to climb inside his head and kill these monsters for him, but I can't. I can only try to rouse him with a gentle shake and a call of his name, and I do so, now.
It's the wrong thing to do.
His response is both immediate and violent. One second he's clinging to me for dear life, and the next he's struggling to get away. The fear is plastered across his features, clear as day; his face is stricken, anguished, and were his eyes open I do not think that I could bear to see them. His slender hands release my shirt, press flat against my chest in a feeble attempt to push me away. I don't know who's hands he feels, right now, but they aren't mine. He jerks back from me convulsively, as though the nightmare is trying to wrench him from my very arms, but he has no true strength in this haunted slumber. It's easy to keep him in my from getting away. I do not let go.
His struggles crescendo in the next moment, then cease utterly. He falls still in my arms, limp not in relief but in terror, and a breath of a whimper forms on his lips. He's shivering from head to toe, now. I can smell the fear on him, sickly sweet and rotten. I can't be sick. I can't let go of him. I can't bear to see him curl up in the filth of the dungeon floor, cringing from unseen torments. He's gasping for breath, chest heaving against me, heart pounding so hard against his ribcage that I can feel it in my own bones. He tries to pull away, again -- a small and hopeless contraction of muscles, nothing more. I hold him closer, and I talk to him, even though I know he cannot hear me.
"I'm not letting go of you, damn you. You're not going through this alone again - I won't allow it, I refuse to allow it, they're not going to take you back from me darling..."
His back arches, and he whips his face away from an unseen blow with a gasp and a strangled moan. He is not asleep anymore, but he is far from conscious, either. He's trapped somewhere inside his own head, where I cannot reach him, and there might as well be bars between us again. They are touching him when I cannot. There are tears streaming down his face, now, and I wipe them away with trembling fingers. He hadn't cried when they'd hurt him. He hadn't cried until after, and even then he'd barely cried at all. But he's crying, now; sobbing, really, but I am afraid to try and wake him again. I am terrified. His helplessness is terrifying, because Jack is never helpless when he's conscious. Whatever they are doing to him -- and I know, all to well, what they must be doing to him - I cannot stop it, and neither can he. I cannot save him, no matter how close I hold him. They are raping him again right here in my arms.
"No ... please..."
The words are only half formed on his lips, a desperate plea whimpered on the barest breath of air, but they drive like iron into my guts. I have never heard his voice like this, before. It doesn't sound like Jack. It doesn't feel like Jack. Every muscle in his body is drawn, tense; I can feel his abdomen spasm, his toes curl. My God, let go of him. Leave him alone. I can almost see their dirty fingers on his skin, again. I can almost hear them call him a whore. I am torn between rage and sheer panic - I want to hurt them like they're hurting him, but there's no one here to hurt. All that I can do is hold on to him, talk to him, pray that he wakes.
Quite suddenly, his entire body locks like a vice in my arms; the scream does not make it past the back of his throat, but it's there, and the sound of it turns my stomach nearly to sickness. I want to scream with him. I want to scream his name until he wakes up, I want to shake him until he comes back to me. I would do anything, anything at all, to make this stop for him - I would bear it myself were it possible, if only ease his suffering just a little. Anything, anything -- just stop it. Stop it, stop it--
"STOP!"
I don't know if it's my voice or his, echoing off the dungeon walls.
Jack freezes in my arms as though he's been shot. I can feel his eyes shoot open in the dark, though my own eyes are shut tight. The scream dies in his throat, and he goes eerily still against me, save for his hoarse and labored breathing. He's not crying, anymore. Neither am I. I hadn't realized that I'd been crying in the first place, but my face is soaked with tears. Neither of us move. Neither of us speak. We just hold on to one another, anchor eachother as our hearts find their rhythm, and we remember how to breathe again. I am aware of how small we are in this moment, and how fragile; two delicate microcosms of breath and blood and bone, clinging to eachother as we spin through space and time -- hopelessly powerless to steer ourselves, hideously unarmed against the fates.
And then something changes in the cell. Something shifts -- not in us, but around us. A brightness presses against my eyelids. Jack shifts against me with a deep, shuddering breath. I take a deep breath as well. I open my eyes. The clouds have shifted, and there's moonlight flooding through the spare, high-set window of the prison. One single, pure, slanted patch of silver-blue moonlight -- and we're sitting right in the middle of it. We're bathed in it. We're breathing it. We're soaked and dripping with good, clean moonlight -- and finally, I can see him.
The scars on his back stand out silver white -- old scars, familiar scars, scars that I have touched a thousand times. Lash marks. They're healed, now. They're healed like the burns on his arms, and the bullet wounds that go straight through his chest and out the back of his shoulder. We are old friends, these scars and I. We know eachother through and through. I know each and every one of them by touch alone, know the feeling of them against my skin as surely as his hands. We are intimate, his scars and I, and I love them; love them because they are part of him, love them because they are old, and benign, now, and because they cause him no pain. They don't belong to the cruel hands that dealt them, anymore. They belong to me, because I'm the one that knows them best. Because I'm the one who loves them.
But there are enemies on his skin, now. There are cuts here, open scrapes on his shoulders and his back. There are bruises peppered across his hips and stomach. There is dried blood on his wrists where the shackles rubbed him raw, and between his thighs. The bruises look like shadows in the moonlight. The blood looks like dried ink.
I don't know these marks. They are foreign. They are obscene. They are wounds, not scars -- too raw and invasive to be beautiful. They are made of pain, these marks, and I hate them. They disrupt the peace of his body. I want his old scars to rally against them and make them leave, because they don't belong there. They don't belong at all. But his old scars have accepted them already. Scars are not territorial. They're happy to be piled on top of one another, and they don't mind the new company. They see themselves at birth in these new horrors, and they remember what it was like to be young, and they let these new wounds move right in on their turf. I can't blame them. It's just their way.
I don't want to look at them anymore. I want to look in his eyes, but I can't see them. His arms are wound 'round my neck, and he's got his face buried behind one of them. He's barely breathing against me. I want to whisper to him, but before I can, he whispers to me.
"I thought they were going to kill me. I thought they were going to kill me and that I'd never, ever have you again. They had their hands in my hair, and the knife to my throat, and I kept trying to turn my head because I wanted to see you, Will. I wanted to see you at least one more time..."
I press him closer to me. I wind my arms around him as tightly as I dare to, and I bury my face in his hair. I'm crying again. I'm rocking him in my arms, and I'm crying and kissing his hair, and he's whispering;
"...and then they let go, and they threw me down, and I thought 'this is it. They'll do it now -- they'll kill me, and that's okay. I'll be able to look at him. He'll be the last thing that I see.'"
His breath catches in his throat, and he swallows hard.
"I can still feel their hands, Will..."
"Then feel mine," I whisper desperately. "Feel mine... They can't touch you now, Jack. Only me. Feel that?" - I grazed my knuckles over his cheekbone in a feather-soft caress. "That's me, Jack. My hands won't hurt you. They don't know how." Gently, oh-so-gently, I guided my fingers beneath his jaw and coaxed his face up to me. "Look at me, darling. I'm right here..."
His eyes were liquid in the moonlight, dark and fathomless and shining on the surface. I wanted to touch them, touch his very eyes, touch his soul through them. Instead I trace my thumb just beneath one, brush his eyelashes with the touch. He doesn't flinch from me. He lets me lean in to kiss the shadows beneath his eyes. He lets me look at him, and he looks back at me with fragile yet earnest trust. And then he raises one trembling hand, and places it against my cheek.
"Kiss me...?" It is not a demand, it is a plea.
And so I do.
I kiss him as gently as it is possible to kiss. I brush softly against his bruised lips, then press even softer. I cup his jaw in my fingers, guide his mouth open with my own just enough to taste the very tip of his tongue with the very tip of mine. It's Jack who deepens the kiss -- who finally opens to me, sighs into me, melts against me. Our lips part, meet again, and it's sweeter the second time. He's kissing like Jack, now, smooth and slow. He's savoring it. He's yielding to me without fear, and our tongues are dancing, and it's Heaven where our mouths meet. They didn't kiss him, not even once. Kissing is still pure for him, still pristine. Kissing is still just for us.
I want to draw back and look at him, but I can't. I can't stop tasting him. I can't stop dropping tiny kisses to the torn corners of his mouth, or feasting on his lower lip, or curling my tongue in smooth, slow strokes against his, again and again. I want this to last forever. I want to kiss him until his wounds fade into scars that I can learn to love. I want to tumble with him out of space and time and kiss him until the stars burn out. I don't want to breathe. Breathing means pausing. But pausing leaves time for hushed words, whispered against one another's lips -- and those are almost as beautiful as kisses, in the end.
"Don't stop..."
"...Never..."
"...Thought I'd lost you..."
" ... right here, darling..."
"... don't tell, please..."
"... no one. No one..."
"... couldn't face them..."
"... they won't find out..."
"... only you know ... just you..."
"... just me."
"Good..." Jack whispered, and smiled softly as I kissed his forehead. "Good ... because they're coming."
And then the sound cannon fire rolled in from the bay.
* * * * * *
A/N : ...I didn't expect the chapter to end there? But there it ended. Get ready for much dramatic rescuing in the chapters to come.