Voices in the Mist Ch. 1

Set during PotC II: DMC. Will is gone, Jones is furious. Someone's going to suffer. Hope can be a dangerous thing…

Rated T for later chapters.

Bootstrap watched as the longboat and Will fell astern of the Dutchman, as if by staring he could lend strength to the fragile craft and prevent it from being swamped by the heaving swell. Will's attention was focused on keeping her upright yet despite his assertions about not having led a life at sea he'd obviously picked up some skills fast during his time with Jack. Family trait perhaps, Bootstrap thought, even if he couldn't take credit for anything else in the man Will had become.

He strove to etch the image in his mind as the boat slid over the crest of a wave into the choppy darkness beyond the meager gleam of the Dutchman's lanterns. The light seemed almost solid as it caught the sheets of rain, a tangible barrier between the worlds of the living and the dead. Or worse than dead. It had represented the confines of a prison more nights than Bill could remember, yet perhaps tonight he was witness to the first escape ever.

It seemed an especially vicious play of fate that had brought them together for such a brief time, courtesy of Jack dragging those around him into risking themselves to help him cheat the devil's bargain he'd made. Always the pirate eh Jack? Nothing like a mutiny to make a man realized how much he cared for his own skin and keeping it intact. And nothing like someone you cared about being involved to change your view of a situation.

And yet…his son was alive, and a good man. It was too much to hope that his own bargain might be ended when Jack's current round of chaos was over. But for now it was enough to now that what had through the last ten long years been only a whisper of hope, voices in the mist, was now made real. Bootstrap returned to his hijacked position at the wheel and removed the ropes holding it in place to fine tune their heading, trying to snatch every scrap of extra speed. Time or Jones' own sense of his ship (down to the last longboat) would bring discovery of the theft, he couldn't prevent that. The further away they were when it came the better.

A/N: This was inspired by the fact that I wanted to see this confrontation between Bootstrap and Jones in the film, or the dvd deleted scenes. It'll probably never happen. And Bootstrap was stupid enough to make the comment "What more can the do to me?". Never say that.