lucetilogs | That Sacred Arrangement....

Entry tags:

That Sacred Arrangement....

Who:

lists_to_port; We are leaving this log WIDE OPEN. So if you are family or friends, you are invited and may mingle or gossip or be all dressed up or get drunk or do the electric slide or WHAT HAVE YOU. Are there any Wedding Crashers in Luceti? Ha!
What: Wedding
When: Monday afternoon
Where: That spot with the lilacs by the river in that meadow west of the village. You know that spot---we know you know that spot.
Summary: Jack and Raine get married, and everyone ships it hard forever.
Rating: G I expect? It's so hard to tell sometimes.

On the morning of his wedding, Jack sat bolt upright in bed and then vomited onto the floor. Several minutes after that were spent dry-heaving and gasping for breath, and then another several minutes crawling to the bathroom to put his head under the shower. Cold water---it brought back reality and rationality, and erased dreams of being a pirate and dying in some war and having a best mate and a lover who had always been forbidden him---ever since Jack Horner's lesson and the two weeks following it.

Sparrow figured it was a case of wedding nerves. Strange dreams were a new thing for him, after all--normally he slept dreamlessly and woke up alert.

Later, as he stood in the quiet meadow he and Raine had chosen for their ceremony among the fragrant lilac trees, that morning dream was forgotten. Sparrow was calm. Happy. Clean-shaven and dressed in the attire Buffy had picked out for him and eagerly waiting for his beautiful bride.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

They weren't the sorts of words one wanted to accidentally end up saying on someone else's wedding day. It all seemed more than a little tawdry.

"Of course it's a Shift. That's...that's exactly the popular theory. And the simplest explanation is best, right?" Buffy wanted some kind of affirmation.

"....Sometimes. Sometimes it is best." Unless we're bein' shifted NOW, was what he wanted to say; but Jack left that part unspoken. It was one of the uncomfortable things about living in this place, really: to not know when things were normal or when they were skewed.

"I mean, the things in the dreams are impossible things. A whole other place a-and...people."

Buffy tapped her fingers against her opposite palm. Hoping to convince both him and herself.

"Thoroughly impossible. Completely." He got to his feet only to sit down heavily on the couch, drumming his fingers on the empty place beside him. "Could never happen."

"I mean -- why would I have ever...none of it makes sense."

A dead mother instead of a living one. A not-real sister that wasn't even strictly real within a not-real world. "Just another of the wait it out variety."

"Buffy? It's my wedding day." He drew a deep breath. "Whatever the dreams say, they're dreams, aren't they. I never was a pirate, and I never went to war, and I never sailed The Black Pearl, and we never---only dreams. We've always lived here, like this---this is the way it has always been."

That was Jack, trying to pin down reality.

"What's the Black Pearl?"

Because making him tell her about his dreams was better than reliving her own.

"The Black Pearl is a ship with black sails, and I saw her in my dreams this morning." It had been a rather exciting dream, really, as he had fought on her deck alongside two young people named Will and Elizabeth and he'd been chasing a monkey about, trying to take a gold piece back from it.

"Kind of a dreary name for a ship, isn't it?"

Soft criticism. She chewed on the side of her thumb and now it was her turn to pace.

"She was beautiful, not dreary." Jack heard the longing in his own voice and was surprised at it. He'd never been on a real ship--just the raft and the flatboat. Nothing that could be described as a pirate ship, certainly, and that is exactly what the Black Pearl was. "Beautiful, Annie."

"I dunno. Black sails? Very funeralesque. I think that makes it the definition of dreary."

Hearing that name again was almost as bad, now, as being reminded of her married name. "And you can stop calling me that any day now."

"Sorry! Sorry, I'm---it slipped out. I've no idea why. Strangest thing, that. Accident, Mrs. Horner."

An unhappy click of her tongue. She was so rarely just Buffy anymore. Only around the family, really. Though she understood the double-standard when she thought on how rarely he was Jack. But calling him Sparrow didn't sit right anymore either -- not after dreaming about that drawing. No one's names were right.

"They're just so specific..." she was back on the dreams, now. Leaning against a wall in his house and ignoring what she knew of it. She tried to be a stranger in his home. "I had a sister, in one. But she wasn't Jilly. Only all I can remember is finding out that my sister wasn't really my sister. The memories were all made up, but I didn't care."

Buffy now spoke so casually on a subject which, outside of these strange alternate circumstances, she quite probably never would have been eager so share.

"That IS a bit odd." At the mention of Jilly again he squirmed uncomfortably. "Sounds like a bit of the nerves, to me. What with----everything."

He meant her revelation to him about Horner and her future, but as stated it was rather wide open in its implications.

"...If it is, then it's the most widespread case of nerves I've ever had the extreme displeasure to be a part of."

Edited 2011-04-27 00:31 (UTC)

"Maybe it's something to do with the Great One. I've always been a bit...

Nevermind. I should dress, perhaps...got my cufflinks and all."

"Which is probably my cue to leave, right? Go away, Buffy, stop being the bearer of bad news on this happiest of happy days."

This amused Jack. "What? Bad dreams aren't bad news, Buffy. Unless there's something else you've forgotten to tell me...?"

"Nothing I've forgotten."

Plenty she simply chose to leave out. And she wanted to argue with him on the bad news classification of nightmares but that would involve dredging up how often her nightmares had come true, in the past. Premonitions of Shifts, mostly. But now other people were having the same dreams and that made her doubt the futureness of them. She curled a strand of hair behind her ear and looked in the direction of the door.

"Don't forget to tuck in your shirt, Sparrow."

She was looking out for him again, as she always had. But now? Now Raine could take care of those things. "Aye; I'll....thank you, Buffy." He had tried to think of a sarcastic, joking reply, but nothing came except the gratitude. Sparrow wondered if she knew that he meant it in a much more large-scale way: not just a thank you for the throwaway advice, but for everything she'd done for him over the years.

Buffy had a tough time discerning whether it was a wider thanks than it sounded. Maybe it meant very little and maybe he would simply be glad to be rid of her. The last week had felt so exceptionally strange in comparison to the rest of their lives -- like extra weight settled on their friendship and instinctive tension that she never remembered feeling before. Not like this. Not around him.

She didn't really want to say it but the sentiment and name came out a little too easily: "...Anytime, Jack."

"Perhaps you should go, now. Not certain Horner would want you at mine for so long on a social call." There was also the matter of all that gold hidden in the fireplace and Buffy not being a fool.

She took the implication rather heavily -- the dreams, of course, hadn't helped. And neither had all her talk of leaving her husband. Although it was a move she planned to make in a year or so, she took offense at how terribly Jack was suggesting this visit could be taken.

"This is me, leaving." Buffy shrugged as nonchalantly as she could and strode her way back to the door -- barreling right over that stain on the floor.

So he'd somehow offended her, which added to Jack's confusion. He would have thought Buffy would agree with him on that account. For some reason, though, he could only look at the stain she'd crossed over.

"Right. Goodbye, Mrs. Horner."

"Mmhm. Goodbye. Aye aye, cap--" Captain. She swallowed the word up and her shoulders shook a little with the effort. What was happening? It was as if stitches were coming undone and and all sorts of things were spilling out. Old habits that ever existed before and would never have a chance to exist again.

Buffy did not like this kind of confusion. She pulled the heavy wooden doors open and saw herself out without another word. Not even an attempt to correct herself. Not even a good-luck wish or anything sweet and kind and lovely like how she had somehow hoped to be. But this unsettling, possessive discomfort felt a whole lot more natural than that fake sweetness. And that confused her even more.

Edited 2011-04-27 12:51 (UTC)

(no subject)

all7seas - 2011-04-27 13:02 (UTC) - Expand

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only