a/n: umm.. so i was reading someone else's angsty PotC fic from will's pov. and it was actually good. and because my muse is being nice recently, i sat down and wrote this while holding 4 AIM conversations and rp-ing. yes. i'm that good :rolleyes:

enjoy and um.. i don't own PoTC or ... anything like that. (c'mon. i write fan fiction... )

He sees it in the way she walks out of his cabin every morning.

There's pride in her walk, in her shoulders, in her eyes. And yet there is also shame. Shame at this pride, which she's been taught, is wrong to have.

And at the same time, there's fire in her step, a gleam in her smile. She's practically daring anyone to find fault with her for that pride.

Would that I was the cause of such pride.

But these days I sit and I whittle, for there are no blacksmiths at sea.

I whittle while she whiles away her time in the captain's cabin, the cabin that, on another ship, might be mine.

And in every single piece I carve, the grain of the wood turns into a woman's face, the swirl of a knot turning into the curls of her hair.

And every time I give my creation to the sea.

I give my declaration of what I love to the thing the one I love loves most… or second most.

I sit below deck, running my fingers over a beautiful chunk of pine, lantern light flickering, making the grain stand out, the swirls looking too much like the waves of the sea.

I hate and love the sea. It is, after all, the sea's fault that I lost her. Without the sea, there would be no captain for her to love. And she would still be mine.

But a man can not spend as much time on a ship as I have and not come to appreciate the sea's reckless beauty, which steals men's hearts even as it weakens their souls.

A bottle of rum hangs by my hammock and with it, I drown my love. I drown my love in effigy each and every morning and each and every night I carve it out again. It's a tireless cycle, which leaves me bleeding from my fingertips and shaking in my heart.

I carve my body next to hers. I carve her mouth. I cut myself, always by accident. But the rum and the shaking increase those accidents until a gash across my arm leaves me unable to help crew the ship. I let the wound bleed over my latest carving of her and ignore the pain she has once again caused me.

It's less than she has done to my soul.