Author's note: I am aware that the relationship between Calypso and Davy Jones occurred nearly a full century before Teague was born, and approximately 60 years before the founding of the East India Trading Company. I do ask for some suspension of disbelief, simply because canon does it as well (no, modern Singapore did not exist in the 18th century).
Dies Irae
(The day of wrath)
It was a high price to pay, he felt, for love. The mournful wailing of the dead, the silent ghosts floating beneath the surface, the emptiness of the sky above him. But it was not the sky that he missed, nor the sounds that tormented him.
The waters here were cold and still, and his ship glided effortlessly. There was no wind, no air, no rain. Nothing moved and everything echoed. Time stopped as the souls of those who perished at sea were guided by a single light from the Flying Dutchman.
Her unpredictability was what drew her to him; the uncontrollable storm was a challenge, a force for him to tame. He would always chase her and laugh, his ship emerging unscathed from the pounding waves and the uncertain nature of the wind. Despite his victories, he had gambled for power against the sea and lost, for he had succumbed not to the very power he wanted to tame, but by the means of which forced him to be tamed: Love.
"I will not go willingly."
"And yet you must, Davy Jones. You have conquered what all sea-faring men fear most." Calypso lifted herself off the sand, gently running her finger over his bare chest. "It is befitting that you should hold the power of the afterlife, the means to which souls will be judged. The means to which men will not die forever."
He grabbed her wrist, and Calypso was jolted by this sudden display of anger. When he spoke, however, his voice was wistful and resigned.
"I do not want power."
"What do you want, Davy Jones?"
There was a brief pause.
"I want the sea."
"I am the sea."
His hand released its grip and moved to caress her fingers.
"Then I have not conquered what all men fear most."
Calypso smiled; his hands had moved along her back as he pulled her closer. She willingly leant forward, whispering in his ear as the baleful sound of a church bell rang in the distance, mixed with the peaceful sigh of the waves against the shoreline.
His leg began to hurt, where a splinter drove through his thigh. The injury was partly due to his rashness – although he would not admit it – for every hour spent battling the East India Trading Company was an hour lost with Calypso. He had launched a full frontal attack and boarded the ship too soon; men, he scoffed. Superstition drives them to do the rashest things. One would have assumed to flee in fear as soon as witnessing something as impossible as a ship rising from the ocean – at least, he mused, that was what he would have done. Instead, they chose to gasp in shock, hold their ground, and fight for their lives. At least their souls were no longer his cargo, he dryly humoured himself.
He numbed the pain and stood by the helm, charting the fastest course to Isla Cruces.
As he stepped on the island, he saw the ruins of the church, the overgrowth of vegetation. The place was abandoned, cursed when the foreigners stepped on their soil. It was not the Isla Cruces that he shared with his woman of ten years past. It was now a dull memory of its glory days, only remembered by him and the perished.
And...
He closed his eyes and listened, the blood running in rivulets down his leg. The toll of the bell was silent, but the sea still remained.
His blood had begun to stain the sand.
Yes, he reflected, he was once willing to die for the one he loved, at that time. He would have died on Isla Cruces, for he knew knowing he could not live with knowing her betrayal. It was his crew that forcibly brought him back to the ship, back to the land of the dead.
Back to the still, unmoving sea.
For a long time he forgot his purpose. He failed to command the Dutchman, and the ship stood on sterile waters, watching the souls pass by. He began to think of her betrayal, his confinement, his fate uncontrollable, all subject to a woman whose love changed on mere passing fancy. He was only a tool, he realized, just another weak and powerless man who was cruelly manipulated by the feelings of his heart.
A half-grown tentacle finger wrapped itself around the locket he had left open since he left Isla Cruces. He looked at it for a moment, silently listening to the melancholic song.
"Maccus. We have a heading."
"What would that be, captain?"
Davy Jones abruptly shut the locket. The music ceased.
"Up."
He will play the ferryman no longer.
For the next ten years, he controlled the barrier between life and death. He was no longer the means, but now the end. The Locker, originally founded as a simple deserted island with the limited amount of power that he had, grew into a magnificent realm of the supernatural as more shipwrecked sailors chose their own demise. Rougher seas and thunderstorms followed. Shipwrecks grew in number, and his ranks swelled.
"Two survivors, captain. The little 'un is drunk and cannot kneel without falling over."
Davy Jones looked at the boy in a mixture of amusement and surprise. He limped over, passing the other survivor with disinterest. Maccus signaled for the axe to fall.
Davy Jones addressed the child. "Do you fear death, little one?"
The boy looked up at him. His eyes wandered left and right, attempting to focus on the multiple images of the captain. "I'unno. Does the afterlife have rum?"
"... No."
Nine, ten, eleven... there were eleven images of this strange squid man now. "Well, you all should get some rum there. I ain't dying until I know there's rum and I'm bringing rum with me. Me and the eleven of you."
"What is your name?"
"Have you seen my sea turtles? I'm sure they stole some of my rum, because I can't find any. They're empty bottles all arou-"
"Your name, boy!"
"Teague, sir! Edward Teague."
The thunderstorms grew worse, and he thoroughly enjoyed it. This was what he always wanted – to dive headfirst into the eye of the storm and feel the rain on his face. The Locker, the choice between life and death were all the products of her betrayal, but this, the exhilarating knowledge that the sea cannot swallow you whole, and that the sea is powerless against you, was not.
All he wanted was the sea.
Not a woman.
"Ah, Charon himself has decided to grace us with his presence."
Davy Jones skewered the man through the chest as he walked past.
"I will not be compared to a mere ferryman."
Little Teague Sparrow happily stepped over the body as he followed his master.
Standing at the head of the table, Davy Jones addressed the remaining pirates. "You have invited me to this... meeting, this... Brethren Court, for the simple reason that you are afraid of the sea. I fail to see the necessity of this convention, since we are all... men of the sea."
"The storms have grown worse over the last ten years! We have lost all our wealth to the sea! We must find a way to appease the sea goddess!"
"Our ships have been ruined, and if we do not act, Shipwreck Cove will be twice the size it is now!"
"We cannot appease the sea goddess without sacrifice!"
"A court cannot convene without rum!"
"Blood sacrifice!"
"No, the goddess cannot be satisfied with lives of men! We have to kill her!"
"A goddess cannot be killed!"
"Are you calling me a liar?"
"WHERE'S THE RUM?"
A gunshot rang through the air, and madness simultaneously ensued, half fighting over the fate of a goddess, and the other half fighting over the last bottle of rum. A French pirate lord had pinned down a Chinese pirate, holding a gun to his head.
"The sea has taken away everything we have, and we do not have the power to defeat an immortal! A sacrifice of men is needed for Calypso to be tamed!"
Davy Jones burst out laughing, his bitterness echoing through the room. His laugh stopped the fighting abruptly, and Sparrow quickly snatched the bottle of rum from the bottom of the table.
"Gentlemen." Davy Jones addressed the eight. "Calypso cannot be tamed."
"Then we are doomed! The goddess will not rest until every one of us has been killed!"
Davy Jones knew the reason behind Calypso's Fury. It all started when he left his post, and the logical answer was to return to the world of the dead and continue the task he was given. He bitterly remembered the words Calypso spoke to him, of his duty, of the power he would hold. In that, he sacrificed his love for the darker waters of the sea. At first, he thought his duty was a means – as she had always told him – a means to which he would soon be reunited with his love. But as the years grew longer, the yearning harder, his duty held no purpose on that fateful day. He did not want to return to the abyss.
What do you want?
He came to realize that he had separated the sea from the woman. For forty years he had gone through the harshest weather and he had defeated it. He had grown to understand the nature of the waves, the meaning of overcast clouds. The sea was no longer unpredictable, and Davy Jones could wield power over it.
But he could not foresee the events on Isla Cruces twenty years ago.
He may have fallen in love with the sea, but it was a woman who betrayed him.
I have not conquered what all men fear most.
He repeated the whispers of twenty years past, on that night by the shoreline, as her body merged with his.
"There are only eight pirate lords here." He observed. "Where is the ninth?"
The Frenchman pointed to the only body lying on the floor. "You impaled him."
Davy Jones broke out laughing at this ironic turn of events. "What fortuity! The Court cannot bind a woman with only eight men!"
"Then you will be the ninth, Davy Jones!" Shouted the African pirate lord. "We do not have the luxury of time to find another pirate. The storms are waiting for us outside Shipwreck Cove as we speak."
Davy Jones rose to his feet. "You invited me to this meeting, with nine pirate lords. I have showed you how to bind her, and I will participate in this no further. I will not be a means to your ends."
"I'll be him." A younger voice piped up. A strangely sober Teague Sparrow had stolen the bicorne hat off the fallen man and had placed it on his head. "I'll be the pirate lord."
It was now the Court's turn to laugh. Davy Jones looked down, frustration setting into his face, his tentacles curling.
"Gentlemen," he continued quietly, his voice barely audible. "Your pieces of eight."
The laughter stopped as quickly as it came. Did Davy Jones actually agree with the boy to become a pirate lord?
"Your pieces of eight!" he repeated, his voice louder.
The sound of clothing and purses opening dominated the room as the pirate lords began to fumble in their purses for the acclaimed Spanish dollar. Out came a pair of old eyeglasses, a tuning fork, a playing card. More varied objects procured itself – a boar's tooth, a wooden chalice, a shrunken monkey's fist.
"This is all we have." the Chinese pirate lord drily noted.
"These things are not worthy to be called pieces of eight!" another pirate lord argued. "If we are to bind Calypso properly, we should have real treasure to warrant the name!"
"Then go and find more treasure, while Calypso kills your crewmen!" said the African. "We'll see if you make it back to witness her imprisonment!"
Sparrow had now downed the bottle of rum, and was about to offer the empty bottle up as his piece of eight. Davy Jones leaned forward and flung the bottle away, letting it crash to the floor, and the shards rolled over to the Spanish pirate's feet.
"Don't be silly, boy." Davy Jones said. He grabbed Sparrow's now-empty hand and from his tentacled beard procured a single silver coin. He dropped it into the boy's palm. Sparrow marveled at the coin for a moment – he had never seen real treasure before, and the glint was intoxicating.
"Captain."
Davy Jones did not look back. "What is it, boy?"
"The pirate lords have named you the Pirate King in gratitude for showing them how to bind Calypso. You may command us however you wish." Teague bowed down low, burdened with the sudden responsibility of power conferred unto him.
Davy Jones paused as he recalled the words uttered long past.
"I do not want power."
Teague watched as his former master leave Shipwreck Cove. He was now a pirate lord, and both he and Davy Jones knew he needed to command a ship of his own, not to serve as a cabin boy to another in power. The pirates had formed a full circle around the table, with their pieces of eight placed in a small wooden bowl. Sparrow stepped into the space where the fallen pirate lay. He looked at the body for a moment, and wondered out loud.
"Which pirate lord was he?"
There was a brief silence as each pirate mentally counted the ranks. Well, there was the French, the Chinese, the Malayan, the African-
"The pirate lord of Madagascar," responded the Indian.
Captain Teague, the Pirate Lord of Madagascar, the boy thought to himself. With enough repetitions, the name should stick fairly well.
He knew she wouldn't be there, but he went anyway, clasping the locket as he landed on Isla Cruces. Even after twenty years, he still hoped to reunite with the woman he loved.
He had left before the Court had bound Calypso. He saw the cruelty he inflicted on his woman; the loss of her wild and unpredictable nature, her harshness, her ever changing forms. She would become still and unmoving.
Just like the waters in the land of the dead.
He could not face her.
Calypso's howls began to pour through the thunder as he stood on the borderline between the darkness and the rain. He could not stand the voice of her anguish, and he felt the rain pierce his body. It was a stabbing, a great deep wound gaping wide open, and the bleeding for which he desperately could not stop.
Suddenly – perhaps it was a hallucination – he saw the gash in his thigh, the blood on the sand, and felt it, the coarse grain running through his fingers, then the smooth texture of her skin, her hand on his chest. He heard the toll of the church bell, the cry of the dead, the quick bang of the cannons. He heard Calypso's whispers, the yearning music of the locket, the sigh of the waves pressing against the shore, all cumulating into a cacophony of unintelligible sounds, his mind in a frenzy, begging the screams to stop.
He let out a cry and collapsed on the sand, clutching his breast.
And then, all at once, everything stopped, and he was once again faced with the waters of the afterlife – with Calypso, dead – and only the sounds of his heart remained. He looked up at the sky and saw incomprehension, love, hate, sorrow, anger, indifference.
Was it truly a woman who betrayed him? He listened for answers and heard nothing but the beating of his own heart.
Ah, that was the source of all his trouble.
He knew what had to be done.
Was it right to separate one from the other? He had loved a woman, and she had loved him. Perhaps that was the difference: reciprocation. He had been angered by the betrayal of Calypso, but the sea would not change. He could love the sea, and the sea would not poison his ear with her murmurs, unlike Calypso. The sea would not make promises to him, and would come to him with all unbiased force in the world. And he would face it willingly, as he always had done.
In the distance, a new song was sung.
The king and his men
Stole the queen from her bed
And bound her in her bones...
He had conquered all, and now all that was left was the hollowness within himself. The sea goddess has been bound, and a new master must take her place.
"Our course, captain?"
Davy Jones closed his eyes. He saw the Spanish fleet sailing, led by a man with an air of arrogance around him. He saw the damaged ships, the pool of bloated corpses trailing the ships as the man fearlessly sailed forward, plunging headlong against the fleet of the East India Trading Company. A large, ancient chest was stored in the captain's quarters, and was carelessly moved by the crew, for some coins had toppled from the chest and scattered itself along the floor, all bearing the imprint of a skull.
The seas be ours
And by the powers...
"Isla de Muerta. We shall see to it that Hernan Cortéz meets his fate."
Maccus looked at him curiously. "Captain, only the sea knows where Isla de Muerta is. The isle cannot be found by mere men."
His eyes opened. The song had ceased.
I am the sea.