Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

Thoughts on Soulmates in PotC

OKAY, so, I have an overwhelming need for soulmate AU’s of every-damn-thing and a love for Elizabeth Swann that burns like fucking Greek fire, so of course we were going to end up here eventually.  

• There are three people in the world who could be Elizabeth Swann’s soulmate.  Depending on your AU of choice, these are the three people who see color when they meet her or have her name or first words printed on their skin or what have you.  All of them are in love with her.
  
• Commodore James Norrington knew when he was a teenaged, freshly-minted Navy officer, meeting a nine-year-old girl with solemn eyes and a pretty, lilting voice, that he was going to love her.  When she was seventeen he was in love with the coiffed, well-heeled mask she wore, completely gone on her.  He was horror-stricken to find that he loved the steely, vicious creature of sea and storm underneath even more.  If he has a mark, it rings his wrists like cuffs, because for all that he might love her, James isn’t a pirate at heart, and being chained to one kills him as sure as a sword.
• Will Turner loves the flashes of gentleness through her fire-bright shell, the way she always sounds startled when she laughs, the way she holds his face in her hands–gentle, like he’s made of crystal, but hard and immovable as steel.  Will’s mark, if this is a universe with marks, lies like a necklace at his throat, close to the curve of his neck.  He thought of it as a necklace, before he met her, before he knew her well.  Now he thinks of it as a collar, a mark of ownership–he is Elizabeth’s, full stop, hers to keep, and he has come to love being kept by her.
• Captain Jack Sparrow loves the heart of her, as hungry and dangerous as a fire at sea, loves her for the glint of lust in her eye when she looks at a fine ship or a sharp sword or a gold ring, or Will or James or Jack–the glint of wanting, of greed, of that is mine and I shall have it.  When he looks back on it, remembering, he thinks that he fell in love with her when she burned the rum, and the flame in her eyes was brighter than the flame on the sand.  His mark, if such exists, stretches across his shoulders, like wings, like lash marks, like a weight that makes free.
• Elizabeth cares for them all, loves them all in a way, but none of them can be everything to her, the way a soulmate is supposed to be.  None of them is the world entire, none of them is the ocean from horizon to horizon, and nothing less will satisfy her.
• Elizabeth has no mark, if this is a world with marks.  Or perhaps she does–a skull and crossbones, a coiling ocean current, the brand of a pirate, the words ‘Gentlemen, hoist the colors’ in bold black letters across her fair skin.  
• If this is a world where your soulmate’s touch stains your skin with colors, the three men are splashed with cerulean, azure-emerald-silver, and Elizabeth’s skin is clear.  Until she faints over the edge of a cliff and plunges into the ocean below, and she is drawn out with her skin swirled with ocean-blue, coiling down her limbs and over her heart, arching over her cheeks and around her eyes.
• If this is a world where you see color when you meet your soulmate, she grows up with it, and the colors always flare brightest when she stands at the bow of a ship and looks toward the horizon, where the water and the sky kiss.
• (There is a fourth soulmate for Elizabeth Swann, a fourth body stamped with a simple name, no matter the universe.  This one, perhaps, is the truest soulmate.  Tia Dalma, Calypso, Oceana, the queen bound in her bones, wears the name on her mortal form, and whenever Elizabeth steps onto the deck of a ship, the woman-goddess smiles, slow and secret.)
  
• (Every queen must have a king, after all.  And Dalma-Calypso-Oceana is proud of her king, straight and proud and fierce as a sword of folded steel.  She loves her king like a hurricane loves a ship, like her king loves her lovers, hungry and desirous.  Her love is blessing and curse by turns–her king’s ship has sweet winds and raging storms, blazes into Navy flotillas and skates away by a finger’s length.  Her king stands in the winds and laughs and laughs, fierce and wild and free, and so, so in love.)

Announcement

I am watching Curse of the Black Pearl, and I am still super fucking committed to Elizabeth Swann, she of the wild eyes and voice like Damascus steel and hungry heart of a pirate.  

Anonymous asked: Honestly the thought alone of one day being able to read a fic about Elizabeth that's written by you is a blessing and will keep my heart warm

Oh my God you’re too nice.  Trust me, I too want to read a fic written by me about Elizabeth Swann, but I have no ideas that aren’t five pages of caps-lock-littered weeping about Elizabeth as the Pirate King, who keeps her bargain with the magic of the Dutchman by carrying the earth in a tiny glass vial around her neck, and who goes out and rages over the seas with her ships like a hurricane, and who raises her child on the waves as free and wild as a tern, and who crosses paths with Jack Sparrow and wreaks havoc and kisses him on the cheek and grins wickedly every time, and who catches men close when she kills them, slides a blade into their heart and a letter into their pocket and whispers in their ear “Take this message to my husband, dear sailor.”

I mean…that is what I would have to say.  Pretty much incoherent and plotless.  It would all be messages in dead-men-as-bottles, children raised to crawl the rigging of ships and charge wildly into trouble, and Elizabeth over it all, Pirate King and old friend of Calypso and wife of the Dutchman’s captain and comrade/sister/rival/unattainable love of Captain Jack Sparrow, she who is beloved of the sea.

If that appeals, hit me up with a prompt and I will deliver.

marzipanandminutiae:

hollowedskin:

nonlinear-nonsubjective:

Okay but consider this- Elizabeth Swann. She’s a pirate nerd from the beginning. She’s fascinated. And by the time the Black Pearl blasts Port Royal she knows enough to defend herself- first with the iron, then with the Code. That nerd studied pirate law enough to quote it.

And not just pirates. Presumably she’s been on a ship once- when she comes over from England. But nope no piracy wasn’t enough for this kid no she did some intense studying of sailing too because why not. So when they’re being chased down who’s coming up with all these nautical maneuvers? Elizabeth fucking Swann, sea nerd extraordinaire.

Fast forward and she’s not just a nerd anymore. And she isn’t a pirate, either. She’s the Pirate King, doing battle with Davy Jones and the entire British navy, with every Pirate Lord and their crews behind her. No more improvised weapons, no more parlay- she commands every black heart that ever set sail. And then her bae becomes ferryman for every soul lost at sea.

So then what? Everyone just goes back to what they were doing? And Elizabeth just goes home to make a quiet life for herself as a single mum? From studious sea nerd to Pirate King and now suddenly she’s happier at home, waiting for Will?

Give me an epilogue where Elizabeth has her father’s estate and enough gold to keep her comfortable for a lifetime, but instead travels the world, her son at her side. Adventuring and exploring, in and out of the law. Tell me she calls up Calypso for tea from time to time and they talk about uncharted lands and the price of sugar. Tell me in some ports she’s recognized as the daughter of Governor Swann and wined and dined. Tell me in some ports she’s recognized as the Pirate King and gets barrels rum on the house.

Tell me even honest sailors whisper stories of the mysterious and elusive Pirate King, who rarely strikes at all but then vanishes for years at a time.

Tell me Elizabeth spends time aboard the Flying Dutchman, so she can be with her husband, and her son can be with his father and grandfather. Imagine young William learns to sail on his father’s journeys to and from the land of the dead. And when he finally captains his own ship, he’s learned to be both a respectable gentleman and a good pirate.

Imagine Elizabeth spending her life on the sea, sometimes with Will and sometimes not, with a wind from Calypso always in her sails, adventuring enough for lifetimes as a part-time well bred lady, part-time Pirate King.

yes this

Does the epilogue ever imply that this doesn’t happen, though…?

All we know is she’s on a cliff with a kid. They never say she goes home and becomes a housewife.

(via allephant)