drown the urge for permanence and certainty; crouch down and scrawl my name with yours in wet cement

[herotypical]

Who: lists_to_port & slaying
What: carpentry; catharsis; cutting a deal
When: october 17th; noon onwards
Where: house seven
Summary: buffy wants to build something for jilly's return. buffy also wants to borrow a boat.
Rating: clean enough to start but it's these two so don't be surprised if the rating climbs a couple hundred tags in.

Today looked just a little bit brighter. Not by much, granted. But enough to make a difference and enough to sweeten the sense of industry that was unfolding her backyard. The heat helped; the day was warmed than the ones before it and strangely warm for a late October afternoon. Buffy had quickly given in to summer's last hurrah and was hoarding her last chance to wear shorts before autumn established its firmer grip on the month and on the village. Misery and grief were very, very slowly opening up to allow silver linings and miniature blessings. And one such something was working just a few feet away from her. Not quite so silver, though, and she suspected his lip would curl if she referred to him as miniature anything. Buffy worked the plane across her chosen soon-to-be-planks of wood and she watched Jack Sparrow from the corner of her eye. Perhaps a tarnished, coated kind of silver that resisted polish like two too similar poles on a magnet. Blessing was a harder one to pin down. The word seemed as though it should be anathema to a rough-reptuationed pirate. But then again? In a number of ways, Buffy knew that Jack was less rough than she was.

The afternoon's project was a simple porch swing and it was a little bit of home improvement to impress Jilly with once she returned. And it was a way to keep busy while they waited for her while they waited out their grief. Keeping busy, she found, helped her focus. The work tricked her now and then into smiling when she hadn't intended to. Silly little mistakes would take place -- fumbling with a tool or trying very hard (without much success) to remember carpentry terms once taught to her by Xander Harris -- and somehow these mistakes weren't discouraging. They were comedic. They were okay. And Buffy knew that none of it would be possible had she been left at the house alone, this week.

So she worked diligently at Sparrow's side and took moments now and then to appreciate his work ethic before it inspired her to press forward with her own. And she soon had another plank smoothed and sanded. Buffy pushed it aside and sat back with her palms crushing into the grass that was just a little too long. It wasn't as though the place was crawling with lawn-mowers, after all.

"What colour, Jack?" She asked as she blew a fine stream of breath up and across her brow. Fluttering bangs and clearing her vision. "We should paint it. It should be painted. What colour?"

Comments

[herotypical]

"Why else do you think they ended up being invented, huh?" She hated to question whether their worlds were the same or not because it was painfully easy to assume that they weren't; however, there were enough similarities that she could still look at his present as her own past. Technological advancements was just such a corner that fostered these thoughts.

"Three seconds? There's a thin, scary line between timing and recklessness." One she assumed Jack Sparrow walked on a regular basis -- and as such that might be the sole reason why she mentioned it. "But colour me glad. Happy, in point of fact. You wouldn't look half as good with a bullet hole in you."

....why did I switch tenses up there?

[all7seas]

Jack would remain silent unless prodded into conversation until they reached the library door. Norrington's words both stung and goaded him. They couldn't be a possibility, though. Could they?

gavin's fault.

[herotypical]

Silence tended to make Buffy Summers uneasy -- and she was uneasy enough to begin with. So there had been this or that botched attempt at talking. A comment on where she would have to get the pumpkins for the pie, perhaps. Or an observation voiced over some strange new sight seen around town. As soon as she realized that they were nearly all going no where, she stopped trying.

When they reached their destination, Buffy broke free of Jack's arm and took the steps two at a time.

[all7seas]

He followed more slowly; as he entered the library, Jack wrinkled his nose at the overwhelming smell of books and leather and paper.

"Annie?"

[herotypical]

Similarly to what had happened the last time they had entered this building together, Buffy found herself relaxing. Warming up to the library with a suddenness and a sincerity that never managed to surprise her because she never managed to notice it. For as rarely as she stepped into the place where the books lived here in Luceti, a library nearly always set her at ease. Something about how the place filled the senses and how perfectly at home she felt amongst walls and walls of books. This wasn't only because of Sunnydale High's library but also because of Giles's apartment. It wasn't the books that she loved but the atmosphere.

She turned around to face the pirate. "Yeah, Jack?"

[all7seas]

I have never known you to give up, Sparrow. Despair does not become you.

"How would you like comin' home with me? Staying in my time? With me? Together? If we could find a way?"

The words spilled out in a rush.

1/2

[herotypical]

"If we could find a way...?"

done.

[herotypical]

Cloud. Cloud sprung to mind. Cloud and Zack and Aerith. Them and their long-term plan to find somewhere else to live. But two of them were dead. It made sense.

Her answer was out of her mouth within the next heartbeat: "...Dawnie."

Re: done.

[all7seas]

"........Your Dawn. Aye."

It was as he had tried to explain to James Norrington: sometimes there simply wasn't a place for someone in another place. Sometimes two destinies had to yank free of each other and run their separate courses.

[herotypical]

"...Don't get me wrong. I've been -- well, considering to maybe start possibly thinking about the potential for retiring. Back home. But not until whatever takes Giles away is dealt with. But to leave behind Dawn? I don't think I could. Willow or Xander, too."

She backed up against a shelf and fingered a leather-bound volume. "What about...I mean -- you probably wouldn't. You'd have your reasons, too."

Reasons for not jumping ship over to her time.

[all7seas]

"....You'd have me?"

It wasn't a yes, and it wasn't a no.

[herotypical]

"...What do you think all this is?" She gestured vaguely between the two of them. "All this having? It's only a 'what happens in Luceti stays in Luceti' kinda deal by design, not by choice. If I could choose..."

Her hand dropped. She shrugged. "I wouldn't be against it."

[all7seas]

"...Right. Not against."

[herotypical]

"For, even. Not against but for -- if you wanted. I mean...I get it. You've got the Pearl and Gibbs and piratey mischief and I know we're a little over-mapped for your taste what with the atlases and the globes and the GPS and maybe our caffeinated beverages are all a little too sugary and..."

She could go on at length. Damn and blast all that nervous verbal energy.

[all7seas]

Jack reached out to grab hold of her. It was a speech that wanted some interrupting, simply because it raised too many doubts and dangers.

"For," he repeated. There was a rather large difference between "for" and "not against." It was a difference he had needed to hear.

[herotypical]

"Very for. Is it even possible to have degrees of for?" She bumped into the shelf she had been hovering near and her right wing tweaked awkwardly against the row of books. She hardly felt it; she was too worked up. It was a stupid thing to be worked up over -- how much of this was even possible? How much were they simply hanging on conjecture and half-baked ideals? But maybe that was all they had. For now, at least.

She dragged him closer by his hands.

[all7seas]

"If I go to your Scotland I'll have to leave my Pearl behind." It was the largest stumbling block as far as Jack Sparrow was concerned. And it was a formidable one.

[herotypical]

"And if I go to your Pearl? I've gotta leave behind Dawn." Formidable all around, then. "Maybe it's enough to know that if it wasn't for the things we love, we'd...I mean -- it's not you. It's me. And vice versa."

[all7seas]

There was a silence as Jack mulled this over. He'd seen her Sunnydale before, of course--in the Battle Dome, and afterward during the shift meltdown. The thought of never seeing his Pearl again was devastating. The thought of losing Buffy? Also devastating.

Finally, in a very strained voice: "That's not enough.

...I'd never ask you nor expect you to leave Dawn." A deep, pained breath. The words wouldn't come: I'd go with you. Just four words, but they wouldn't come.

[herotypical]

"I-I know. You'd never ask. And I love--" Buffy's hands tightened on his arms. "And I love that you'd never ask because if you asked I don't think I could...we couldn't--"

Buffy wouldn't hold his own reticence against him. She could be hypocritical by times but never glaringly so. "She's not just my sister. She's part of me. I couldn't ever leave her."

A beat. Thoughts hop-skipped-and-jumped from one corner to the next. There were ideas that she needed to suppress. "B-besides," she joked, "I wouldn't fit in."

[all7seas]

"I want to see you through," he tried to explain, haltingly--wishing the were not in the library. The treehouse. He needed the treehouse for this. "Certain persons suggested I...I was giving you up. But I'd never, I'd never, I'd never. And perhaps we should...not discuss this just now?"

[herotypical]

"Who?" Her question was harshly whispered and not at all at a library-appropriate volume. She felt so at home in libraries that she often forgot that they had rules. "Who said that?"

MY TYPO. What is WRONG with me tonight?!

[all7seas]

"Annie...please. That's not important, love." He released one of her hands so he could stroke his fingers across her cheek. Trying to explain any of this with straight talk was beyond difficult for the pirate.

"Point is, this person made me think on you and on possibilities. Made me think about what I can live with and what I can't live without." He took a breath. Could he live without his Pearl? He'd died for her once, and nearly died for her before that, only escaping the burning and drowning by making a bargain with Jones. And what about Joyce? The little girl plagued him like an itch he couldn't reach, no matter how many times he told her to go away. But how could he put anything before her?

She doesn't exist, Jacky.

SHUT IT, DAD.

But above all, what about Buffy? He'd lived without her for two years, unknowingly. He'd returned to be hit with the loss of those two years and it had been terrifying, maddening. What if he lost her for the rest of forever? Even if they did come from the same world...

Jack pressed his palm against his side. What if he could hope for more than this? But there was always a price to be paid. Always.

i've infected you.

[herotypical]

Buffy lifted her released palm to his chin -- positioning her thumb plum between the two dangling beard tales and spreading her fingers across his neck. "N-no. I wanna know who's been putting these things in your head. Because..." And now her voice dropped into a semi-reverent hiss. "Because if -- no, not if -- when I get the power to? I'm gonna knock these walls down and here or there won't matter. This place...what it's done to us? We deserve the choice. Everyone does. But that choice shouldn't be..."

The optimist and the pragmatist duked it out over the Slayer's face. One moment she looked ready and radiant at the prospect of a utopian, connected mass of worlds. The next, she could hear her own hollow hope and feared disappointment.

"It shouldn't be dreaded."

[all7seas]

"Like I said, love." Jack cleared his throat. "Like I said: I can't tell you who, and I don't dread choosing. And I don't want you selling your life for that choice."