Disclaimer/Notes: I do not own The Hero and the Crown, Torchwood, Doctor Who, or Pirates of the Caribbean and no money is being made from this fanwork. I also do not own Lewis Carroll's "The Walrus and the Carpenter."
(Possible spoilers for: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
and Torchwood season 2 finale, and I suppose the ending of The Hero
and the Crown.)
Third in the "Conversations" "series" of mostly unconnected character driven crossover stories. Will Turner, Jack Harkness, and Arien-sol discuss the ups and downs of living longer than one planned.
"Laughing with your pretty mouth
Laughing with your broken eyes
Laughing with your lover's tongue
In a lullaby."
--The Corrs
Somewhere, just at the edge of the universe, there is a place. It is a place separate from the worries and cares and the rules of the usual, everyday life. It is a place where time... ceases to exist. For some beings time is not a factor in their existence, except in what it takes from them.
She approaches the table where the two men are sitting. She sets her glass on the wooden surface and flicks fiery red hair back over her shoulder as she sits. "Gentlemen," she says in acknowledgement.
They nod in return. "Lady Arien," the first says, raising his own glass to salute her.
"Arien-sol," the second rises, taking her hand and bowing over it. "Milady."
"Captain." She smiles. "I've missed you both."
The captain smiles, ebullient. "And we miss you as one misses the sun when its rays depart the earth."
She raises an eyebrow, smirking. "That's catchy Captain Turner. Careful, you might catch yourself more than you can handle with a mouth like that."
"That caught me," the first man confesses, smiling as well, albeit reluctantly, "and Will can tell you I'm not in the mood to be caught right now."
She focuses on him. "Jack, what is it?"
He stares at his glass, deeply contemplating the roll of alcohol over ice. "Time was always a fluid thing to me," he says, his voice elsewhere. "Something I could... manipulate. Move through, access and change as I willed." He is silent, they are all silent, for a long moment. "I just... it still hits me. Hard. Losing people I care about. God, I've lost so many of them you'd think it would get easier. But..."
"It never does." Arien's hand covers his, gently taking it in her own. There is silence around the table.
"It's harder," Will says finally. "Harder... when you are alone." Attention turns to him and he smiles disarmingly. "I know it is not the same, but... losing people, losing those you thought such a deep part of yourself they could never be lost, seems that it is easier to bear with someone else to lean on." His eyes are empty, distant, for a moment- distant not in geography, but in time. Jack's face softens to look at him.
"True enough, as far as it goes." Arien lifts her glass, peering thoughtful as a mystic at the amber contents. "Each soul is different. Each loss is felt." She puts the glass down and touches each of their hands. "But companionship softens all blows."
"Ah, that it does." Jack grins at her, his manner suggestive of a particular brand of companionship.
"I speak of the meeting of true minds," she reminds him coolly, but she squeezes his hand because what he speaks of is good as well.
He takes her hand and kisses it. "My mind was true when it met you," he murmurs around the curve of her fingers and she thinks that if it were not for blond hair over milk pale skin that waited for her in her own bed she would be sorely tempted.
"Do you think of nothing else Jack?" Will interrupts, indignant, and she can tell that he is still young, despite his centuries- he does not see the use of masks.
"Aye, he does," she answers for her companion. "But this is easier to speak of. Come, we will talk of other things."
"Of shoes and ships perhaps," Jack offers, hiding behind his drink suddenly. "And sealing wax?" She cannot tell if he hides his sudden humor or the sorrow that eats him still.
She nods in all seriousness. "And of cabbages and kings."
Will turns away in exasperation. "You're both mad."
She laughs, the peal of it echoing through the dim room where they sit and causing heads to turn. "'Tis true enough," she allows.
"But it takes one to know one," Jack shoots back. He bangs his empty glass on the table and the sound echoes through them. "How about it, Will? Will you be Mad Captain Turner?"
Will rolls his eyes at them but cannot help smiling. "If I will or not seems to be a question without purpose. The pair of you will drag me down with you."
"Aye," Arien says in all seriousness, but she smiles, unable to help herself. "But it should be a pleasant enough journey in such company."
She approaches the table where the two men are sitting. She sets her glass on the wooden surface and flicks fiery red hair back over her shoulder as she sits. "Gentlemen," she says in acknowledgement.
The first one nods to her, offering no other greeting. She can see he is primarily concerned with the man who sits beside him, and she turns her own attention there. "Who is this?"
The second man turns to look at her, his eyes wide and brown, and full of sorrow. "I just got her back and now I can't see her for another seven years."
Fiery hair settles over her shoulders, falling forward around her face as well. "Who?"
The first man motions her to leave it. "He can't set foot on land but once every seven years, keep up will you Arien?"
She makes a noise of derision. "And a good day to you Captain Harkness! Mind you introducing your young friend?"
He stands, bowing as he says smoothly, "Arien, Captain William Turner; Will, the Lady Arien-sol, until recently Queen of Damar."
Will stands as well, bowing. "Majesty."
She waves him to his seat and frowns at Jack. "Must you always say that? 'Recently' has become far too epic a descriptor."
"Recent-cy is relative," he replies with the the air of one who is quite certain he knows of what he speaks. "Only recently I was rescuing girls from barrage balloons over London; only recently I saw the end of the universe."
Captain Turner observes his glass with wry confusion. "Is he always like this?"
Arien observes him with ageless eyes. "Occasionally. Sometimes he is worse. Sometimes..." She meets Jack's eyes and a purely carnal smile pulls at her lips. "Sometimes he is much, much worse."
Jack covers his heart with a hand as if wounded there, but she laughs. "Worse? I'll tell you about worse," he decries, turning to their new companion. "She is a goddamned tease." She affects an expression of innocent disinterest as he continues to list her faults.
"Still," Turner says when Jack has finished. "Still I think I understand her more than I understand you."
She shrugs, as if there is no reason to understand Jack and she had come to accept that. But she drinks, then meets the new Captain's eyes with sudden insight. "You and I are from places that are... similar. We began our lives similarly as well. Before- it seems not that long ago- we would never have thought to see this... to live beyond our days, to travel beyond our simple selves." He nods. She continues, her eyes on Jack. "Captain Harkness is from a time, a place, so distant that to think of it still gives me pause. He knew the truth of time even from his childhood. He knew long before we did than it is the most mutable of things."
"Mutable," Will muses.
"Aye, but only for those who will see it," she warns, because she can see in him still the desire to go back- to touch those who are still bound in time. "There are those who cannot see it, even should you wish it. Even should they wish it." He nods; she thinks he has not truly heard her but that is his own affair now. "So now, Captain. Tell me of your travels."
They while away hours with stories, with remembrances of things past and things yet to come, and they chase away shadows with laughter.
She approaches the table where the two men are sitting. She sets her glass on the wooden surface and flicks fiery red hair back over her shoulder as she sits. "Gentlemen," she says in acknowledgement.
They nod to her. "It seems," says the second man, "that we have done this before."
She frowns, staring into her glass. "It does seem familiar."
The first man laughs. "That's the point of it, isn't it? The point of this place. That we can," he searches for words, "exist outside of... time. Outside of the reality that is bound by a time we no longer acknowledge."
She ponders this, and she is beautiful as she purses her lips in thought; both of them stare. "I wonder when exactly it came to such," she says. "I remember, it seems not that long ago, being a girl... a somewhat disappointingly less than average girl, and I knew the path my life would take. Did it start when I took that path in my own hands and tore it away, or was it later? Later that I came to this, this acceptance of being 'not quite mortal'?"
"Mortal." The first man tastes the word on his tongue. "I wonder if I remember what that feels like." His eyes roam back over millennia the others can only pretend to imagine and when she speaks she calls him back from a past that is far, far distant in the future.
"Jack," she calls, her voice soft but insistent.
"Aye Jack, stay with us," says the other man. He looks down into his glass and his own voice is faraway when he speaks again. "I knew another man once by the name of Captain Jack." Will's lip curls in amusement at the memory. "He wanted nothing more than to be immortal." He meets Jack's eyes across the table.
Jack holds Will's eyes and thinks of several naughty things he would like to do with that curled lip. "They say it is only human to want what you cannot have."
Will cocks an eyebrow. "So, we are still human then?"
"Are we?" Arien leans back in her chair and regards both of the men. "Do we long for a return to the simplicity of a life we knew before all of this?" Her fingers tighten their seemingly eased grip on her glass. "Would you forsake everything you have gained to become that which you were?" They look at her as she raises smoky eyes to them. "I would not."
"Ahh, my lady, you assume that is the only thing one can want that he cannot have." Jack takes her hand, her fingers warm between his, and kisses their tips tenderly.
Will rolls his eyes and turns to his drink, but Arien meets Jack's eyes. "Forgive me," she replies. "That is true." She pulls her hand from his grasp.
"Though," Jack continues thoughtfully, "I must cede your own premise. I can wish for an end to the constant pain of dying that haunts me through the ages of time, but still all I really think about is how amazing I know the future can be."
Will shakes his head. "There is loss and there is change, and we cannot go back. It's pointless to debate."
Jack grins in sudden humor. "Pointless? We've got all night. And all day tomorrow too. Unless there's somewhere you need to be?"
Will smiles at that one, and Arien fills their glasses from the bottle. "Nowhere that can't wait."