called_lioness | (no subject)

(no subject)

The thing about a compass is if it points two ways, it's utter rubbish.

Or so Lucy's inclined to think, and she'd be the first to admit that she's glaring at the silver object in her hands as she sits in the sand.

(The sand is rougher here, she thinks, distantly, without wanting to, and not so fine under her feet.)

Lucy is generally inclined to watch her language, but she's muttering curses off and on that would make the knights she once rode with and the sailors on the Dawn Treader and the schoolmates of her brothers good and proud.

It's cathartic.

At least, it's keeping her from throwing the stupid thing in the lake.

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"Who knows? If only I'd met you before he proposed," she says with a reasonable deadpan and the only thing keeping her from laughing is every lesson she ever had on diplomacy.

"A shame it wasn't meant to be," he drawls, gesturing grandly out over the water.

"We'd have sailed off to..."

A thoughtful beat, and he's looking absently out across the lake now, and not at her.

"... somewhere..."

He's a pirate, and she's a queen, and you might think there's not a lot of common ground there.

And maybe you'd be right and maybe you wouldn't, but there's something sad in Lucy's eyes when she looks out at the lake.

She grew up at least once with salt water outside her door, and there's something about fresh that never will suffice.

"Oh, to Barbados and Japan and China, I'm certain," she says vaguely. "Perhaps if we sailed far enough we'd have reached Galma and the Seven Isles and maybe even the end of the world again."

"Absolutely," Jack says, and now he tips his head back to look up at the mast instead of out at the water, where the shore's all too visible.

"Only need a heading, then it's go where you will."

"Only the trick is," and there's something different in her tone as her hand reaches into her pocket and clenches around the metal circle, "first you have to know where that is."

"There's ways to figure that out, luv," he drawls, looking speculatively at her.

She laughs, a little, and pulls the compass out.

She's only had it for a week or so, but her fingers dance over it in a way that says she's done this a lot, that it's familiar to feel the ridges and smooth surface under her fingertips.

"Some of them aren't very good."

He cocks his head sideways, looking at the bright steel compass with sudden interest.

Jack glances up at her.

"Something wrong with it?"

"You might say that," she says and runs her thumbnail along the edge til she finds the catch.

The needle twirls, sometimes in a full circle, often just back and forth between the only two letters it stops on, N and E, and she shrugs a little and looks over at him.

"It's broken."

It's not, and she knows it, and her eyes says she knows she's lying.

Lucy rarely bothers to lie very well, though her voice and the rest of her face are schooled enough.

He looks sharply at her, then offers an oddly commiserating wry smile.

With one deft movement, Jack's lifted the compass that dangles from a cord at his belt and snapped it open, turning it so she can see it easily.

The needle spins around, one way and then the other, never stopping, while Jack says quietly,

"Same's been said about mine, luv."

It's funny the way an expression can change.

It's funny the way a face can change, but it's also subtle, as she looks at the compass and silently holds out a few fingers to brush again it, before looking back at her own.

"Was it a lie when it was said about yours too?"

There's very little readable in her voice except faint amusement.

"Might be more better to call it a misapprehension what goes uncorrected when it's convenient."

He's watching her now, not the instruments in their respective hands.

"New bit of shiny, is it?"

She laughs, and it's a different sort of laugh as she looks at the lake, careful and controlled.

"Captain Sparrow, I do believe you'd have fit in well at court Cair Paravel, if you'd chosen to. And aye." It's a little softer as she looks down at it, and her smile's a little crooked.

"A guide, to show me the way home, I'm told."

"Not much of one for formality and courts," he says with a shrug, and then looks at her compass again.

"Ah." A beat. "And where does it point for you, then."

It's not exactly a question.

"I wasn't either," she says and it's a little bit distant and a little bit far away.

"You learn to be, because you have to. And the benefit of being queen is that you have the ability to make it all tolerable. And none can fault you for long for pulling a prank or two."

She looks down at the compass after a moment and her smile's still careful.

"Home. The problem is that I can't decide where that is, mayhap. North and east are the easier answers."

"And so it points to both, never making up its mind."

He raises a finger, stabbing it at the air in emphasis, as he says,

"The problem is, luv, that you want too much."

There's silence for a moment as she looks at the

(ocean, Chiara's in the ocean)

lake, and then she looks back at him.

Her smile is very faint, and her eyes are a little tired, and so much older than nineteen.

They're always older, though, really.

"You know, I told my husband that very thing. I don't think he realizes how much I mean it."

There's something intent in her gaze as her head tilts a little.

"And so do you, don't you?"

He snaps his compass shut, letting it fall back to the end of its cord once more, and shrugs elaborately.

"I've come to terms with it."

She's still smiling as she looks back at the water.

"If you had, you wouldn't keep that compass so close at hand, Captain Sparrow." It's said softly, as she looks at her own and closes it gently, like something precious.

"And where does yours point?"

"Not that simple, lass," he says. "Not so easy as all that."

Jack shrugs, then lifts it up once more and opens it so that she can see clearly, as he focuses all his attention on the slender needle.

The compass spins, points toward the bar, and then resumes circling, back and forth, without ceasing.

"If I thought it were something simple, my own wouldn't circle near as much as it does," she points out, tone still soft as she looks at his.

"Home isn't where the heart is, but what it wants, I'm learning."

"Now you're catching on," he tells her, but there's nothing of humor in his darkly sardonic grin.

"How it works is simple enough, savvy? This compass points to the thing what you want most in the world."

He snaps it shut again, then lets it fall once more.

"Works as simple as that. It's the want that's the trick to it."

"I've had a few years to learn a few things," she grins back.

Her own is held against her chest, for a moment, as she looks back at the bar.

"I don't know that mine's so very different. I was told I was in need of a guide to know where home was. It points to two things, though, and Lion help me, I don't know which I want more."

It's a short laugh, and a tired one. "Bloody trick, really."

He's quiet for a moment, watching her, and the look on Jack Sparrow's face is one of understanding.

"Come a time when it doesn't," he says, "when it points one way and stays -- you'll want to heed it, lass."

Jack leans against the rail and absently winds a hanging piece of rope around his left hand as he talks.

"For you'll never find anything else more important than that, savvy? And come the time when it does -- the opportune moment -- you've got to take what you want, and hold on to it with all that you have, or you'll regret it like nothing else in the world."

"Would you listen, Captain Sparrow, if I told you a story?" she asks, finally, and it's the water she's looking at as she traces the edge of the compass again.