Pirates of the Caribbean Oneshots

Two Gunshots

A single gunshot was all it took to rip her world apart.

Another one shattered it completely.

Two bodies, lying at her feet as she stared in horrified disbelief at the holes where the bullets had entered.

Even as she fell to her knees, she knew nothing could be done.

They were both already dead.

The two people she had loved most were both gone, taken cruelly away by the bullets of a single, jealous man.

Her eyes were burning as she laid her head onto a bloody shirt, the same place it rested every night to sleep, but now there was no heartbeat to comfort her.
Only silence as sobs racked her body, tears flowing to mingle with the blood soaking the shirt of the man she had loved for all this time.

She whispered their names, over and over, though she knew there was no point.

Neither of them could hear her.

Nothing mattered, not the people gathering around, nor what they were saying to each other in low voices.

Why was the sun still shining?

Her world was torn apart and broken, there should be no sun, not now, not ever.

Clutching both bodies, she cried until no more tears would come, begging for them to come back.

They didn't.

Two cooling bodies, a blossom of scarlet on both chests.
A bullet. Such a small, simple thing to destroy so much.

A hand touched her shoulder and she slapped it sharply away. Nobody was allowed to touch her.
But they did anyway, arms wrapping around her, holding her and refusing to let her go, while she refused to relinquish her hold on the bodies.

Her hair was wet. Whoever was holding her was crying too. They smelled like smoke and whiskey.

Her stomach clenched at the scent of whiskey and she wriggled free, sobs choking her.

Teary eyes conveyed a message.
'Leave me alone.'

Emerald eyes, also teary, returned a message.
'No. I loved them too.'

A partner in grief. She was allowed to stay.

A voice, too practical, too detached, asked about funeral arrangements.

Burning, traditional ceremony, the will, other arrangements, someone else speaking for her, as she couldn't find the words.

Words were meaningless when your heart had been torn from your chest.

When everything you loved had been taken from you.

The beach. Sand gritty under bare feet. Grey skies. Cold wind, the threat of rain. Two bodies, side by side atop a funeral pyre.

The ceremony, first in a language she didn't understand, then in one she did.

The torches, the flicker of wood catching flame, then the roaring inferno consuming the jagged shards of her shattered heart as it reduced those she had loved to fine, grey ash.

Ashes, scattered where the instructions had said.
Closure for some.

For her, the beginning of a new life, empty of the two things that had made her old one worth living.

As they had been taken from her.

Ripped away forever by two gunshots.