Chapter 1 - News
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Notes/Disclaimer: Pirates of the Caribbean does not belong to me. Although I do worship it as is its due. Bow. BOW TO THE PIRATE FILM I SAY! ::ahem:: Anyhoos.
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It had been getting more and more regular for the past three months.
Slightly over a week had passed since he had gotten his ship back when it first happened. They had put in to Tortuga to get supplies before going abroad again, and the owner of a tavern that Jack frequented had stopped him.
"Hey Jack," he had said, "someone was looking for you around here."'
Jack was immediately suspicious. "You didn't tell them where I was, did you?"
The other man shook his head. "Nah, I know how you work. He seemed rather distressed though. Said his name was Will."
"Will? Will Turner?" But that was impossible. They had just left Will and Elizabeth a week ago. Even if they could get into trouble so fast, there was no way they could have reached Tortuga before the Black Pearl. Jack shook his head slightly, confused.
"Did he say where he was headed?"
The man shook his head. "Northwest, I think he said. He didn't give an exact location."
Northwest? (1) But that was in the opposite direction of Will's home. Was he running from something?
Suddenly, Jack grinned. He hadn't had a destination in mind, and this sounded like a promising adventure.
So he'd set sail in the indicated direction. That was three months ago. It wasn't until two months ago that he had thought to start asking for a description of the man he was following.
That's when things had gotten interesting.
"Oh, he's about your age, I'd say."
Jack was startled. "My age? I'll have you know, I'm not as young as I look. Are we thinking of the same boy here? Will Turner? About... early twenty-somethings, slightly fey-looking lad?"
The man relaying the message had shaken his head. "Nah, this was an older man. Some odd cross between fey-looking and rugged. Like I said, looked to be about your age."
Jack's blood had run cold. He knew that description. He'd given that description before, talking about the man. William Turner. Not the William he had been traveling with a scant two months or so earlier, but William Turner the elder. The man everyone else knew as "Bootstrap Bill."
The chase had really begun in earnest then. And they were catching up with him now. At first news of him had been scant, but now it seemed that every port they put into had some message from "William Turner to Captain Jack Sparrow."
And yet for all that they hadn't learned much. He was traveling many different vessels, the message-holders said. Apparently he took one ship from a port to its destination, then stayed in that city until he found a different ship to travel with. Most were merchant vessels, but he traveled with anyone that needed a spare hand.
Three months they'd been chasing him, all around the Caribbean. He didn't seem to have any set destination; his direction changed each time they got word of him. Sometimes he left a destination with his messages, sometimes he didn't. There didn't seem to be any set pattern to the way he traveled.
On the first night of the third month, he had a dream. It was about the mutiny.
It had been a particularly windy night. He remembered sitting in his clothes (he always slept fully-clothed so that he would be ready if anything happened) listening to the wind howling outside of his cabin. His dream reproduced the sound magnificently. He could hear the wood creaking as the wind whipped against the side of the ship. He had given the bearings of the Isla de Muerte to Barbossa that afternoon, a decision which he would come to regret.
There was a tentative knock on his door.
"Enter," he said, wondering who would be coming to see him after he had turned in for the night.
William "Bootstrap Bill" Turner opened the door and shut it quickly behind him, closing out the cold wind.
Jack had come up with a good description of William, one which he very much liked: "The girliest tavern brawler you've ever seen." If you just looked at the man's body, you might think he was your average pirate: swarthy, skinny but muscular, with tanned, salt-hardened skin. But one look at his face belied that image.
He was pretty, in an almost feminine sort of way. Dark brown hair that came to his shoulders framed a face that was best described as lovely. Even the small beard and mustache didn't dispel this image.
William smiled, looking uncharacteristically nervous. "Jack?" he asked, "Can I have a moment?"
Jack grinned. He'd always had a soft spot in him for this man. He was also one of very few who knew the origins of his nickname, "Bootstrap," and probably the only one who didn't call him by it, save for his girl and their son.
"Yes Will, what is it?" he asked, sitting up in his bed. A real bed was one of the luxuries of being captain that he enjoyed most.
William looked at the ground and Jack was amazed to see the man blush. "Jack, that is, Captain, I came to... I wanted to tell you..." He paused, seeming unsure as to what exactly he wanted to say.
More and more curious by the second, Jack patted the edge of the bed. "Come on, sit down. There's no need to stand on ceremony. And if you don't stop calling me 'Captain,' then I'm going to have to start calling you 'Bootstrap.'"
William moved hesitantly to the bed and sat down gingerly. He had been avoiding eye contact with Jack ever since he came in, and he continued to do so now.
"Now then," Jack said once he was seated, "what did you come here to say?"
William took a deep breath. "Well, Jack, you know... you know that I have a son. You've even met his mother. But you know... I never planned to have a permanent relationship of that kind. If it hadn't been for the child, she would have been just another nameless woman at one of the many ports we put into."
He paused and Jack was silent, waiting for him to continue. After a moment he did.
"There-there's a reason I never wanted that sort of permanent relationship, Jack. It's because... because I was hoping for a more permanent sort of relationship with someone else."
William finally looked up and, for the first time that night, met Jack's gaze. And the Captain had seen something he'd never seen before in William's eyes. Something that made his own eyes widen in astonishment.
"Will, are you-"
And then the door to the cabin had slammed open, and the nightmare had begun. In his dream, Jack could feel the rough hands of his turncoat crewmen as they jerked him out of bed to meet his destiny.
Jack woke in a cold sweat, remembering the night. He hadn't thought about that in so long. Why now? He thought back to William. What had the man been about to confess? Was it what Jack suspected?
If it was, what would Jack say? Even now, he didn't know.
On the second day of the third month, they put into Port Royal.
(1) Note: I have NO idea about the geographical relationships here, so just play along.
Oh God, that was hideous. Take me back.
or
Oh God, that was hideous. Let me complain to the author.