Tia-Davy during the Brethren Court

[bringmethatnpc]

Jailed, again.

She sits in murky light, in a cell that smells of mold and rats and old seawater, and runs her fingertip around and around the details of her locket. There's a click when she slips a nail into the opening, and a slight whirring, and then her cell is filled with the plaintive plucking of a lullaby--an old song with no words but many memories.

She lets the little melody play, on and on, lilting delicately through her jail, while her eyes follow the track of the cogs and wheels inside.

It's company, of a sort.

Comments

[doyoufeardeath.livejournal.com]

It has an echo -- sweet, sad, but an echo all the same. The shadows give way to the beast of the deep's form, Davy Jones melding through them as he has been wont to do. Land he may never touch, but leaping from ship to ship? That has never been a problem.

He says nothing, only looks at the woman beyond the bars with grave solemnity. This is not, it seems, a pleasure visit for the woman bound within the Pearl.

[touch-destiny.livejournal.com]

There's a slight noise--probably rats--and she shuts the locket only to look up all the same, startled, as the melody continues, and stands, searching the shadows for the dear form she knows must be there.

It isn't until the quiet thunk of a crab leg and the swishing of heavy, sea-drenched fabric has resolved itself into the scowling figure of Davy Jones.

Few could look on his appearance with relief, and she holds herself back and reserved still, her hand still clenches the locket tightly enough to whiten knuckles, but her eyes and voice are full of hope and longing.

"My sweet...ye've come for me."

[doyoufeardeath.livejournal.com]

"...ye were expecting me?"

He is not certain this is pleasing. Is he so predictable? Still on the leash?

[touch-destiny.livejournal.com]

The last time they spoke (the first time in an eternity), she'd been wild with both anger and delight, and there had been no words of endearment or explanation. Now, she reaches forward to grasp the bars of her cell, and she speaks quickly, wanting to explain, wanting him to know.

"It has been torture, trapped in this single form." Happiness at seeing him dissolves into spite, and she looks down at the arms she has, the body, with utter derision. "Cut off from the sea, from all that I love."

He's silent, waiting, judging, and her heart beats for the both of them. "From you."

[doyoufeardeath.livejournal.com]

Torture? She speaks of -- toture? As if she truly knew what pain was?

"Ten years," he begins lowly, "I devoted to the duty you charged to me. Ten years I looked after those 'at died at sea. And finally-- when we could be together again, ye weren't there."

The locket clicks shut with ominous finality, and he finally asks a question that has demanded answer for centuries: "Why weren't ye there?"

[touch-destiny.livejournal.com]

While he advances on her, she looks down, but does not draw away. She won't apologize, not to him who ought to know better. "It is my nature," she says, finally, and glances up to search his face.

It's changed so much. Enough that he hardly looks human at all.

He knows. It was the same fickle wildness that drew him so long ago. "Would you love me, if I was anything but what I am?"

[doyoufeardeath.livejournal.com]

He chews on that a moment before he spits out the most hurtful thing -- what wounded him the most -- he can think of: "I do not love ye."

[touch-destiny.livejournal.com]

It wasn't fair of the Pirate Lords to give her such a human heart, and the pain that goes with it.

She takes a moment to hold the words to herself, and then turns her head to watch as he paces away before following, herself, until she is once again beside him. "Many things you were, Davy Jones, but never cruel."

She trusted him. She loved him, and left him, but she would have returned. His betrayal still seems as fresh all these years later as it was when first she learned of it; seeing his monstrous form angers her even as she gazes on him with sorrow.

"You have corrupted your purpose, and so yourself. And you did hide away what should always have been mine." A hand had been lifting through the bars between them; now it lands firmly on his chest, but not to push him away.

[doyoufeardeath.livejournal.com]

The sea is fickle, but Calypso's power is strong, still, even in that woman's frame. Strong enough -- either the memory of love at her touch, or the strength of the sea at reminding one who they truly are, reveals Jones for what he once was-- a man, who had a heart that beat for this woman.

He has not been a man in so long that the feeling of weathered, dry skin and the rough tangle of beard surprises him as much as her touch does. All the same, his lips part and a gasp, small and low, is her prize, as she caresses his face.

He reaches back -- unable to stop himself, to feel her under his hand. She is sleek and beautiful and yes, still dangerous... and for this moment he remembers the joy of the back and forth, the tamed and the tamer, the struggle to own the sea.

"Calypso..." His hand traces down her neck, remembering once, when it was a lover's caress and not a desperate grasp at a memory.

[touch-destiny.livejournal.com]

When she speaks, it's a promise that could be a spell, it comes from her mouth with such conviction.

"I will be free. And when I am, I will give you my heart, and we will be together always."

She curves her hand against his cheek, loving the rough skin beneath her fingers, the faded blue of his eyes, and presses her own face into his touch for the briefest of seconds; hardly anything at all, unless it is held up against years without this touch.

It isn't enough. It can't be, and so she is sorrowful even as she pulls her hand gently away. Within her frame is all the mourning of an ocean torn asunder, but for now none of her turmoil may show.

"If only you had a heart to give."

[doyoufeardeath.livejournal.com]

The man is gone with the loss of her touch, and Jones finds himself trapped with the great claw beyond the bars. For a moment, he gives into rage, closing it about her throat--

--but then it eases, and there is no danger. He will not give her that release.

No. She is damned.

And so is he.

[touch-destiny.livejournal.com]

The crab claw is razor-sharp against her skin, and for the first time she feels fear instead of selfish sorrow. Davy Jones is a danger to be dealt with, a corruption of his duty, but she still needs to know:

"Why have you come?"

The claw slackens, lets go, and she holds still, waiting with fierce curiosity now.

[doyoufeardeath.livejournal.com]

He tries to draw his claw through the bars; it encounters resistance, and no amount of twisting it will get it free. Finally, he cuts to the chase -- passing through the wood forward; not only because it frees him, but because it brings him close to her.

"An' what fate have ye planned for yuir captors?" he asks, avoiding her question entirely.

[touch-destiny.livejournal.com]

"The Brethren Court."

Hatred of them is the only thing that could draw her away from him at this moment, and she stalks to the edge of her cage, wrapping long fingers around her bars. Her teeth bare in something that is nowhere near a smile.

"The last thing they will know in this life is how cruel I can be."

But she isn't alone, and she isn't free--yet--and when she hears him begin to move, she half turns, one hand still clutching the metal that bars her in.

"And what of your fate? Davy Jones?"

[doyoufeardeath.livejournal.com]

Doesn't she know? Is she still so cruel, as to make him speak it?

"My heart will always belong to you," he replies mournfully. But that is all he has to say, now -- there is a shadow that beckons, taking him to the solace and comfort of his own ship...

Where he does not have to look upon what he lost.