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

[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.