week 12 | when Jack is deda

[baptizer]

I will simply put my faith in you once more.
One last time.

[ Fridays were rolling together far more quickly than she would have imagined. Two had passed and now, Elizabeth feels alone. She was in the dark, completely with what had happened. Loved ones on the ship as the final hours began ticking. Everything had shut off like little stars dimming themselves goodnight before the sun rises.

Elizabeth knew Rhys was gone and she feels a burden on her chest. She doesn't want anyone to worry about her - no one at all. Adelina, Hancock, hell - even Bull probably took a worry with her after her untimely death and she doesn't... want that. She wasn't a little girl, not anymore.

She sits on the springy, dry cot that situates itself in the corner of her cabin. It was lonely, but then again - was she ever really not lonely? Her whole life can be summed up to people leaving her or people living her alone.

Elizabeth hadn't the heart to venture out - to ask who joined them in the graveyard. One? Two? Who knew how many could be slaughtered as long as those creatures still roamed free. She had requested one thing - a notepad to draw lazily against. Her pencil drags in abstract shapes, blossoming flowers and flying birds daring to jolt off the page.

She was fine with this, she thinks. She served her purpose to help the others and she prays, oh, as her head lays down and she murmurs to herself - she prays for everyone aboard the Pygmalion. ]

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[baptizer]

[ She sits there, feeling the brick against her knees become a lot harder. Maybe that's why she opts to sit side-saddle like a lady. Now that she gazes back to him, she doesn't dare pull her attention from him. He has it completely. Nothing else - no one else - captures her the way Jack does in this moment.

Her eyes become darty, nervous when he begins to talk. There's bits and pieces she remembers from the execution - her execution - the river and the people drowning the alien that inhabited her. It strains her mind when she thinks too much of it, hot flashes of clarity despite not experiencing her own death. That creature had become part of her against her own command and she insists that's the last thing they will ever share - that memory, even as it flickers. His words remind her of that and she has to wonder - was that how he felt too?

Elizabeth grows still, deathly. He can see her hands clasped on her lap, her finger idly rolling the thimble against her pinky. He speaks reflective, his words more sorrowful than she had anticipated. Even if he covers it well, she picks up on it quickly. ]

Jack -

[ She starts, but he keeps going. Every word falls more of a surprise than the last. She doesn't feel good about hearing "You were right". It makes her heart sink and her breath leave in one fell swoop. It's a lot to weigh in - she never thought he'd read her words... hear her in ways that her voice ever could. But, he did. Somehow, even if it was under someone else, this humility hits him.

His last lines echo with her. Mainly because she wonders - would Comstock ever feel that way about h- no. She stops herself. This was Jack. This wasn't him. This wasn't Comstock and she has to repeatedly think that. Stop the train before it even leaves the station. Elizabeth sees him react in such a vulnerable way that it scares her. Hesitantly, her hand raise up and he feels the brush of cold steel but the warmth of her four other fingers. Just as he had showed her this moment weeks ago, she pushes away the tears on his face. ]

This is... this is your repentance, Jack.

[ Those words hold so much weight. She doesn't feel bad for him or hold pity. She lets him react, cleaning up after his mess like she always seemed to do now. She scoots closer, her grasp on his cheek and jaw growing a bit more tighter - not out of anger, but seriousness. ]

This is what I was telling you about. It wasn't some fear I hoped to instill in you... Come here.

[ Look, this is where she pulls him into a hug for once. Her hand shoots up to hold at the back of his neck, lifting her body a bit more in a maternal way, ironically enough. ]

Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.

[ She whispers to herself, reciting part of the Bible she was taught to fear - to follow devotedly. As she shows this gesture, she feels her breath quicken - a choked sob of her own as she shuts her eyes tightly. ]

You can't undo it, but you see... you finally see.

[refactor]

[ In truth, Elizabeth is probably the only person that will ever hear this confession.

It's not for any malicious reason, but it's not as if the truth of why is much better. It's the sort of painful humanity that makes Jack so complicated a person for people to deal with. There's so much madness and unforgivable evil in who he is, and truly, it's beyond anyone's ability to drag him out of that. But there are glimmers like this where the man he was shines through like a false hope that he could appear again. It would be easier if Jack didn't want to ever share this again because withholding that information was manipulative. Instead, it's simply genuinely agonizing for him to do so.

As soon as Elizabeth accepts his words in some way, that's almost like some kind of sign he almost seemed to be waiting for. Her hand comes up to his face, and Jack is quick to grab her wrist, but it's not quite to pull her hand away. There's a light tremor in his hand, shaky because of whatever he's still trying to hold back here, but he still closes his eyes under her touch all the same. He's vulnerable in a way that he lets very, very few people see, but for better or for worse—

He trusts Elizabeth with this. ]

Liz, I-

[ He starts to interrupt, because it's rare for him to not get a word in, but that seriousness inherent in her grip quiets him. His eyes stay shut for a few moments as she speaks, and his expression twists up into some reflection of whatever complicated, messy emotions he's feeling, but it doesn't last long. His eyes open again as she pulls him closer, but he hesitates briefly at how she holds him. It strikes him as strange, backwards, because he so badly wanted to be the one providing this sort of comfort. It always made him feel good when people relied on him so, but he never quite allowed the opposite for himself. In truth, no one could quite handle shouldering Jack's sins, since they were far too numerous and so, so many were beyond his view in the first place. But for this one?

He listens to her verse, and talk of wrath and anger are when he clings back. Maybe that's just a coincidence, or maybe he understands himself well enough to know that it was these two things that twisted him up so much worse than other emotions. His wrath would cover Pandora in fire for the slights of a few, and his anger would leave innocent people dead whose only crime was standing against him. And to those, he was still blind. Yet even so, Jack returns the embrace. His arms wrap around Elizabeth so tightly that it might almost make it hard to breathe, because he's strong, but he's clinging to her with a desperation as if she were some sort of anchor for what he was feeling.

And that was-- Still complicated to him. It's muddy and confusing in a way that's difficult for him to parse through, because even if he feels such guilt and pain over what he'd done, there's still that one part of him whispering about a dissonance. It wasn't truly him, so maybe he had no right to be upset about this in the first place, but that disconnect is something he hides from even more than most of his illusions about himself. So, it probably doesn't matter, he decides. The pain he feels is real enough, and while he doesn't express the sort of raw, open grief that he had when he had read her letter, it's still here in some capacity.

Jack holds her for a long time, probably as long as she'll let him without it being weird. He's quiet, not saying hardly anything at all, but there is at least one thing said just softly enough for her (or perhaps not her at all) to hear: ]

I'm so sorry.

[baptizer]

[ Elizabeth had never felt this kind of emotion. This... bitterness, this sadness, this guilt - it eats at her. She wishes her main problem in life was thinking of when Songbird would bring her a new series of books to read.

Things weren't simple anymore. This complexity and intricacy of her relationship with Jack pains her in ways that she can't explain. She was ready to drive a knife through his heart and feel his blood drip against her hands. She was ready to smother him in his sleep. She was ready to channel all of her pain and suffering into one moment where she accepts her morality - to allow temptation and sin to consume her.

Elizabeth abandoned that hope. She knows that's... not the way. She can't. As Jack plays his vulnerability truthfully, feeling his guilt consume him in the same way she wanted him too. She's satisfied. Selfishly, knowing that she'll never hear Comstock in this way. Jack wasn't Comstock (she knows this now), but it'll do. ]

Thank you.

[ Was all she says, allowing him to hold her as she held him. It's an intense, physical moment. More physical than she had ever experienced. It's raw, it's enigmatic, and it's intense. Emotions were dripping between them and all Elizabeth knew was that she wanted to feel this moment - feel him truly come to terms with his own pain as she accepted hers as well.

It had to be a good five minutes of her stroking at the back of his head and neck, beginning to cry on her own accord as well. As if this moment was so delicious and so prized it brought the tears to her eyes. Elizabeth was a good girl, she thought once upon a time, but now? It scares her. Her justification of seeing him express himself like this...

...Did she impact him this much or did the truth? ]

It'll be alright.