melt your silver down / kiss your lover's face / the sirens start to sound

[herotypical]

Who: [Bad username or site: lists_to_port title= @ livejournal.com] & [Bad username or site: slaying title= @ livejournal.com]
What: a battle dome date
When: july 9th
Where: the battle dome
Summary: one part training exercise, two parts tourism
Rating: r -- for violence. and then who knows what. better to be safe than sorry idek?

Buffy Summers asked Jack Sparrow to meet her at the battle dome. It was a plan that had been discussed before the pirate had disappeared and now that he was back? Well -- she cared very little for dawdling. They had dawdled before but now was the time for seizing. She had yet to overcome the horror of waking up alone for yet another morning when she had expected to be the furthest thing from it.

People change. And Buffy mused quietly upon the changes to be found in Jack as she waited just outside the dome's entrance. She had a bag-o-weapons at her feet and a plastic bottle filled with some sort of over-sugared juice in her hand.

Comments

[all7seas]

The library was cool, dark, and deserted at this hour. A stray firefly was trapped and blinking at the window and Jack raised the pane, freeing it, before beginning his search through the stacks.

He wanted charts of the world, and he wanted them to be Modern. Modern, from Buffy's time. His future? Was it?

Perhaps there'd be time later to search for references to Robin Whitby. Maybe.

[herotypical]

Buffy seized the chance to look over the console controls -- alone. Had something glitched? Had there been perhaps a power short or had it genuinely be in her mind? The Slayer idly picked up the flowers and held them to her chest as she flicked buttons and twisted dials and knelt down to peer at the wires behind a little door. It was all tech to her; she was clueless.

And so left and walked to the library with a slow, lost-in-thought kind of pace. It had been Joyce's voice -- and she hadn't heard it in years. Buffy allowed herself a few tears and some trembling but she had herself marvelously under control upon her arrival.

She stepped inside and tucked her scythe by the entrance. She kept the flowers in hand.

[all7seas]

She would find the pirate seated at the large reading table, several charts rolled up beside him and one large one unfurled before him. It was a map of the world circa 1950. A look of naked sadness sat on the pirate's face, which was quickly replaced by a more neutral and then glad expression as she joined him.

"You're quick, Buffy Summers. I'll give you that."

[herotypical]

"Didn't have a car, remember? Had to be quick to get around all of Sunnydale and still win the day. Or -- night."

She approached and peered over his shoulder. "Found one, huh?" Though she eyed the date.

[all7seas]

He drummed his fingers against the chart, his other hand closed in a fist, resting there beside it on the table. "Found one."

[herotypical]

Buffy tapped the USSR. "Not my world -- or, yes. My world. But my world before me. Sorta. It's..."

She sifted through the charts and maps. Eventually, she tugged free a map from 2002. "This is closer. Though -- I guess it doesn't look so different."

[all7seas]

"Not so different. Still all filled in, isn't it." Jack let his fingers drift across the Caribbean Sea, then down over Venezuela, then up to Cuba and southern Florida. "All charted, nice as you please."

[herotypical]

"The way you say it doesn't make it sound so nice."

[all7seas]

"There's some things in the world what need hiding places, Buffy. That's all. And now? Now they're all revealed."

He rolled up the chart and collected all of them in his arms, standing. "I'll just put these back, shall I?"

[herotypical]

"...You can still hide things. They're just coloured in shapes on paper. Hidden things still stay hidden."

/brain damage

[all7seas]

"Nothing wild and free was ever helped by a map, Annie!" Jack was practically snapping at her. "What are charts for, after all? These sorts of charts? They set out knowledge. They proclaim a real reading of the world according to a certain ideology. They fence in and lay boundaries and take charge and put law and order in place in ways that would please Beckett and aye, even our Norrington to no end."

[herotypical]

And she took such near-snapping in stride. There was a benefit, then, in having a relationship forged at least in part by a lengthy animosity. The harder tones hardly hurt.

"Boundaries and fences and laws? Sure. They're there. But those maps? They aren't the world. They're a picture of the world -- but where on that map does it say that there's a teeming supernatural underbelly to most cities? And where on that map does it say you have to cross those coloured shapes in just one way? Maps are maps and wild, free things are wild, free things. One doesn't cancel out the other."

[all7seas]

"Kennedy has already told me, love; the pirate lords are gone by his time." He turned away from her and began stuffing the maps away on a random shelf. "There's random criminals still out there, I expect, but the best of them are gone. I'd perhaps better walk you home, now. Sorry."

[herotypical]

"...If his time's even your future. You can't know that -- we can't make any solid guesses about that, anymore."

She stood in one place, still holding onto the flowers. Not willing to start off home until this strange moment was put to bed.

[all7seas]

"Port Royal was destroyed in an earthquake, you know. He told me that as well."

Jack ignored what she had said, unable to look at her. He didn't want to think about that. Not at all. Not at all at all.

[herotypical]

...Hmm. There are choice words she could offer on the subject of destroyed locations. After all, hadn't they just come from a mock-up of somewhere that could never, ever be seen again? Forget the future -- it wasn't even there in Buffy's present.

"A guy like you, Jack...? Sounds a little strange that you're so hung up on change. That doesn't sound very wild or free at all."

[all7seas]

"So much change for the worse, is all. It was more than a way of life, Annie--it was what made life worth living, really. Nevermind it. I've given up on living forever, and I'm glad of it. Come on------home. I'll see you there."

[herotypical]

"There are other things, you know...that make life worth living. People still find things worth living for in a world with maps and GPS."

She moved, then. And breezed past him to reclaim her weapon.

[all7seas]

It wasn't maps themselves that Jack had a problem with, per se. It was THIS sort of map. All filled in. No edges left. He wondered what had become of World's End.

"Of course people do. They do what they must, eh?"

[herotypical]

"They do."

It was the kind of agreement that didn't sound like agreement at all.

[all7seas]

"....What?"

[herotypical]

"I've never known a back-home that didn't have precise, all-completed maps, you know. And it never stopped me from getting into adventure after adventure after adventure. I had so much adventure I was giving it away -- or wishing I could give it away. And then you start saying things like that and it's all pretty lofty sounding but the hard truth of it is that there isn't really much different. There can't be. Look at us."

She stood in the library doorway.

[all7seas]

"Right. You're simply tripping over pirates in your day, aren't you. I need a drink."

He stood a hair's breadth away from her, trying his best to loom. Jack wanted out. He wanted out of libraries and away from books and charts and whatnot. It all reminded him too much of his father and of the fact that Beckett would, essentially, win. And there was nothing he could do about it.

[herotypical]

"...So what if we're not? The world changed. Sometimes it has to change."

She stared straight into his looming and squared her shoulders and did. not. move.

[all7seas]

"Perished and gone, then," he growled. There was so much anger at her words---though not at the girl herself. Not really. As much as Jack had tried to deny it, the world was changing even in his time. Blackbeard's death---as much as it benefited him---was a sure sign of it. "And you're left with...with puffy shirts! Tight leather trousers! Movies." He tried to shove past her, reaching near panic level to get out of this room. This Codex-less room. A bottle of rum was going to go down easy tonight.