Thirty-Eight Bells: [Written/Action]

[simplestgift]

Elizabeth Swann has gone home.

[That's pretty much all he can manage. People needed to know. He won't answer any messages until very late tonight. In the meantime, he is pretty much going to wall himself up in his house. Not in his room, though. His room still smells like her.

He found her wedding ring. It was lying on her night stand yesterday morning when he first woke to find her gone.

All things considered...he's not doing as badly as he might be. At least, he's convincing himself of that. Trying to. They always knew this was a probability, after all.

But that didn't make much of a difference in the end, did it?]

Comments

[herotypical]

Buffy touched the words hours after they'd appeared in her journal. Her feelings are conflicted. Complex. But not half as complex as she knew Archie's must be. And for these twin reasons, it took her longer to fetch her coat than it should have done.

And she took the long way through the village. There was snow. Soft, festive heaps of the stuff. Snowmen. Decorations. That morning, a little elf had shouted at her to do some sort of deed and Buffy had ignored it. She wasn't in the mood.

Upon reaching the house, she rapped sharply on the door. And if the door wasn't answered? Well -- she just might very well break in. Buffy would offer her support in one way or another, but she had to get to the grieving man first.

[simplestgift]

Great. A visitor. He doesn't want to talk to anyone today. But he's also hard-wired to answer the door like anyone else is hard-wired to answer the phone, so he pushes off the couch and opens the door.

He looks...tired, mostly. Red-eyed. Drained. A bit hollow.

[herotypical]

She said nothing. What was there to say? And for a long moment, she didn't even move. Simply stood. Perhaps the loss of Liz didn't weigh all that heavily upon her. Perhaps a tiny sliver of her -- the one who knew the whole story -- was glad to see the back of her. Murderess and another man's wife. It had been painfully difficult for her to divorce those concepts from the pirate king.

It did not mean that she was without her sympathies. So now -- still silent -- she tried to slip by Archie and gain entrance to the house. In a moment, she would remember to soften and be anything other than a steel-cored, awkward presence.

[simplestgift]

He lets her through, shutting the door with a sigh. This is going to be a trial, isn't it? Another fierce hug, buck up soldier, cry it out all you want speech. He's cried for two days, so he's pretty sure he can say he's got the last one covered.

Avoidance starts up. He goes into the kitchen to start making tea.

[herotypical]

He retreated. Her mouth opened. No sound came forth. And so she stood alone for a moment -- raking her thoughts across a dozen coal-beds. Then she remembered a promise she'd once made to a pirate, fresh in the wake of her own loss.

Buffy followed into the kitchen -- eyeing up his current process. "Forget the hot drinks. You? You're coming with me."

And she held out a hand. It took remarkable self-control not to simply grab Archie and drag him.

[simplestgift]

He hesitates for a second before taking her hand. Fierce hug time? Doesn't look like it. What's this about?

[herotypical]

Buffy closed her fingers around his. A tight squeeze -- the surrogate fierce hug, if you will -- and then she was coaxing him back towards the door. In all the painful tension, she'd neglected to remove her own boots and now she urged him to put on his own.

"Wrap up warm. You'll need it."

No other hints. No other clues. Very likely, the Slayer was making it up as she went.

[simplestgift]

He obeys, slipping on boots, coat, and gloves. "Are we going far?"

[herotypical]

"Far-ish. But not too far. Tell me -- do you know what a polar bear plunge is?"

In a blink, Buffy had her journal out and was scribbling a note with some ferocious speed. Making an arrangement. Clearing out a space. Calling in a favour. When it was done, she finally glanced up and purposefully met Archie's eyes.

Her heart cracked.

[simplestgift]

He shakes his head. "I can take a few guesses."

Is she going to make him...do something? He doesn't feel like doing anything.

[herotypical]

"Try not to do that. Take a few guesses, I mean. It's worse if you think about it."

Buffy reached for the doorknob, pausing only to wonder whether she should arrange for a change of clothing. A thermos of something. Such arrangements would be responsible. Grown-up. Useful. But being those things required time. And right now, she knew, time only meant more agony for her dear friend.

So the door was opened. "After you?"

[simplestgift]

Sure. Through he goes, looking dreadfully unconvinced, but glancing back at her to make sure she follows.

[herotypical]

And follow she did -- after shutting the door -- with her hands stuck deep in her pockets. Her chin in the air. Something was still obviously afoot, for the snow somehow remained so perfectly fluffy and thick. Wonderlandish. Buffy knew that other houses saw the arrival of elves, but she didn't ask Archie about his. It seemed a laughable sort of question. A conversation for another time or not at all.

Much like any other conversation, really. So they walked to the barracks-based teleporter in silence, unless at any point Archie saw fit to speak up.

[simplestgift]

As they walk, Archie's face becomes gloomier, blue eyes drifting to one side. He says nothing, only surrenders to the white noise in his head drowning out the crunch of footsteps in snow.

[herotypical]

The silence wasn't comfortable. How could it ever be that? But it was, at least, somewhat companionable -- in that Archie was not the sort of person that Buffy could be silent alongside. It took a great deal of trust for her to be able to resist spewing banality into the vacuum created by a walking silence. It took a lot of care. And that care was not difficult to drum up for Archie's sake.

She did, however, resume conversation come the other side of teleportation. As she ducked her way out of the ruined fort: "This won't make you feel better. But...it'll make you feel something else. If you're really lucky, it'll last a whole split second.

Do you trust me?"

[simplestgift]

"Of course."

He doesn't look very trusting.

[herotypical]

"You're going to...

One -- grab my hand.

Two -- run like the dickens across the snow-strewn sand all the way to the end of the pier.

Three -- pause ever so briefly to remove your boots and jacket at the very least, all else is up to your own discretion and how many of Jack's drier castaways you want to borrow from Cullen House.

Aaaand four -- jump. Don't think. Just jump. Plunge. With me. Don't even say anything. Just...nod if you understand. And I'll count to three..."

[simplestgift]

Wow. Maybe she shouldn't have warned him. But he takes a long, deep breath and nods.

1/3

[herotypical]

"One," she said in a voice that had dropped suddenly to a whisper. Certainly, the option to march the man right off the dock had occurred to her on their silent promenade; however, Buffy had to draw a line in the snow. Somewhere. And that somewhere came with a heavy consideration for consent. Power. Permission. Collaboration.

2/3

[herotypical]

And choice.

"Two!"

She blew air past her lips and only now realized that this side of the mountains felt...chillier, somehow. Perhaps it was the ocean. God. She knew this was going to be a terrible freeze. And she was glad she'd warned him, now, because it meant she couldn't chicken out.

Buffy stomped her feet. She slid a glance sideways at her lonely, left-behind friend.

3/3

[herotypical]

"Three!"

The countdown had built into a shout. She grabbed his wrist with a firm grip and kicked off the sand. It gave such poor traction; she practically stumbled on her first step.

Her momentum pulled him along. Her insistence egged him forward. This was a no-man's land and she was inviting him to cross it alongside her. It brought them nowhere near closure, nor within sight of healing. But it brought them somewhere.

[simplestgift]

One.

We're not going to jump.

Two.

And that's my final word!

And three!

I CAAAAAHN'T SWIIIIIM!

His legs were pumping beneath him. Nowhere close to the freezing shores of the Luceti enclosure, but now in the Caribbean blues and greens of Samana Bay. Probably the very last happy moment of his life.

Because he was dead. It was something he forgot often now, especially with the new false memories. But he was dead, and at any moment could be so again. This rush, this sudden fear as cold as the water up ahead, was something to live for.

At the end of the pier, he pauses to yank off his coat and gloves and shoes before reaching to grab Buffy, making sure that if they were going in, they were going in together.

guh sorry didn't notice a typo until this morning

[herotypical]

She tore at her jacket. A button popped free and rolled into the eerily still waters not three feet from where she stood. The coat, along with her boots and her scarf and even the sweater she'd been wearing over a plain tshirt, ended up in a pile on the boards.

What she hadn't -- and wouldn't -- tell Archie Kennedy was that the last time she'd recklessly jumped into off-season waters was the day she and Jack had learned Elizabeth Swann had blown into town. Although that simple truth connected the two moments, she'd not brought him out here for that reason. Instead, it was the recklessness that was important. She and he had spoken once about how they might've once treated their lives -- perhaps with too little value. Perhaps with too much expendability. This was not one of those moments, but it took a wide step to the left of the same concept. A mad dash. A sudden absence from responsibility.

Surrender. Of a sort.

She felt his arms tangle with his and -- in spite of herself -- let out a surprised holler as they fell. Buffy braced for impact and soon, frigid water was all around her. It squeezed at her lungs and sliced to the bone.

It overwhelmed her and wiped her clean.