Nameless

by Hedge Labyrinth

Author's Note: One-shot, Elizabeth's thoughts on Jack.

It has no name. Jack and Elizabeth. It can not be defined.

Camaraderie?

She wonders at nights, sometimes she wonders as she twirls her hair between her fingers and hears the waves crashing against the hull like a lullaby.

Understanding?

He understands her. He takes her as she is without asking any more or any less of her. She is selfish, she is cruel, she is a cheat and a liar and he shakes his head because it has never mattered to him. Perhaps because they are similar. Two equals would not judge each other. Perhaps for some other reason. But Jack Sparrow takes her as she is.

For Will she wants to be someone better but Jack she knows she can be her own base self.

And it is very tempting, when she sometimes leans her head against his shoulder, to simply let go and be dragged by the tide.

He is a bad man. He is a bad influence. But she'll be damned if it is not very, very pleasant to feel the way she feels when she is with him.

This is not friendship.

This is not love.

She will not name, not exactly, what it is. It hovers in cracks and tiny spaces, some odd emotion that should not be named.

When she was a child she heard a story about magicians and about how, when you name something, you give it power.

But this is not friendship.

This is not love.

It is not even understanding.

She's known love and friendship and understanding and it is none of those so she should let it be.

She turns and bunches the covers around her legs and closes her eyes.

In the daylight there is no time to ask such silly questions. There is far too much to be done and with all eyes on them she can flirt, tease and pull away from Jack quiet effortlessly. He can attack her with his sharp banter and they can scowl and fight and make up with a pat on the shoulders.

Under the sun they are enemies and they are allies. Things become very simple in the daylight. Oblique shadows disappear and there is nothing but the glint of a smile, a careless word of affection, the play of lion cubs.

Dusk is more dangerous. Near dusk sometimes he will venture to her side and sit down and tell her stories. She grants him a song, even a poem she read in an old book.

But other times he sits like a dark statue at her side and stares at the sea and her hands itch, her mouth is filled with needles and she can not say a word, but she should because his silences tease more than any jokes. They also hurt.

She no longer feels jaunty and at ease in his silence. It is not a game, although he would like to make you believe life is nothing but a great carnival. The silences peel away at his layers and she does not really want to gaze at him, her web of fingers shielding herself from his eyes.

She might, in those silences, reveal herself too. The Elizabeth beneath Elizabeth.

Night brings the questions. Cryptic musings that do not make any sense.

This is not friendship.

This is not love.

Maybe it is lust. Oh, she's honest enough by now to admit she sometimes burns at nights and wishes for the pressure of Will's lips against her own, imaginary phantom hands running down her thighs.

She is sure he knows, with his talk of weddings and his sauntering around her, vile seducer and womanizer that he is.

And in the end, she is human and even if she loves Will, Jack is solid and real and here. Despicable, lurid, but very much real.

Maybe it is curiosity.

She does wonder what Jack might be like under the half-light of a candle and conjures a body crashing against her own; a map of tattoos and scars and stories for her to inspect.

She wants, she needs, a lover.

But in the end this is not friendship, nor love, nor lust, nor curiosity and it certainly is not the prelude to a lover.

There is one of those bits of silence between them the night before they are to arrive at Shipwreck Cove. She sits with him for a few minutes. Quickly it turns unpleasant. She can not take the bitter taste in the air and she rises.

His hand lifts and catches her wrist.

Nothing more.

Jack lets go just as quickly and raises a bottle, biding her goodnight with the gesture.

Elizabeth touches her wrist in the dark as though he has placed some invisible shackle around it.

The question comes back, as it always does, constant like the phases of the moon.

The thoughts suffocate her but she can not give an answer to herself and it must remain nameless. The pillow is hard and lumpy, the bed is narrow and when she shifts she wonders if he can hear her through the wall in his own quarters, tossing and turning.

When you name something you give it power. Somethings should not be named. Better to leave them in their box with the lid securely locked or suffer Pandora's fate.

She does not know, she does not recognize this and she can not name it. It is every given word and none at all. Nothing, something. There's an elephant in the drawing room; there's a ship of fools.

What are they?

She can not find the answer.

She closes her eyes, sleep overtaking her and suddenly there it is, traitorous little revelation.

"Jack," she says.

And she knows he is a part of her.

THE END