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.)
