Will could feel his heart breaking. It was impossible, he knew, but none the less, he felt it. As he cradled the strong but thin body against his literally empty chest, a single tear poured down his weathered cheek. No. His heart demanded from the chest where it lay, breaking. She cannot leave me! I will not stay on this earth and be bound by this bloody curse without her.
"Elizabeth..." he croaked, his voice breaking. As gentle as a feather on the breeze, Will stroked her now milky white forehead. "How could you leave me?" The tears were more frequent now, but the captain of the Flying Dutchman couldn't have cared less. His only thoughts were of his dearly beloved, the once young and spirited Pirate Lord. He thought of the good times they'd had, once every ten years. The laughs they'd had, the adventures they shared, the love they had each given and received.
If not for the curse that bound him to the sea, Will would have sat there and held the body of his dead wife forever. If not for the others in the room, Will would have disobeyed the curse that bound him to the sea.
"Father. It's almost sun down and...you must...I..."
As a young Will struggled for words, the witty Jack Sparrow stepped in the door of the small cottage housing the Turner family.
"What he's trying to say, chap, is the consequence of your not returning to the sea that calls to your very soul is almost as bad as the consequence you did not ever nor never should receive since your so bloody wonderful because you were a bloody good captain and always did the right thing. Savvy?" His heavily jeweled hands, always lifted in a drunken but pirate-y way, slapped together in front of his face as if in prayer. Will's tear-stained and slightly confused face encouraged him to continue his ranting.
"The point is, mate, you mustn't sit here like a sissy and cry your bloody heart out over-" He stopped for a minute and thought over what he'd just said, his face screwing up for a minute in thought. "Oh wait," he cringed. "You can't really do that anymore since your once greedy pirate father carved it out after that terrible monster of a man..." he shuddered at the thought "Ahem, Davy Jones, stabbed your chest just before I was going to stab his heart and take the position that is which you hold at this very moment." Will's eyes narrowed at the thought of the day from which he was made not really alive, but not really dead either. Jack saw the look and quickly shut his mouth after thinking better of it. "I really am sorry about that. Savvy? Really mate, I am. I always did mean to get my immortality and a ship from stabbing the Tentacle-y Man's heart. Ah, well." He opens his mouth to speak again, but it's apparent that he's forgotten what in the bloody hell he was talking about.
"Young Will!" He points a rum-stained finger at the young man. "Whatever was I talking about?"
"You were, ah, trying to get to the point Captain Sparrow." He addressed the pirate in a formal way, but there was nothing formal about their relationship. Over the years Jack had often visited Elizabeth and her son on the island where she made her life waiting for Will.
"Aye, right you are, my boy! The point. Right. The point. So..." he turned to the young man and looked at him, trying to get him to say what exactly he was trying to get to the point about. "The point. You mean, I was trying to tell you what you need to know about the thing I was talking about before I asked you what I was talking about? Savvy?"
Young Will smiled at the pirate and nodded his head. "Aye, sir! That'd be it." His answer made his father laugh, but it didn't ring with the happiness Young Will remembered from 10 years before.
"I'm going Jack. Don't worry. I just...I need to know something first. I need to if it's possible..." his voice drifted off as he gazed at Elizabeth's limp body in his arms. Slowly his eyes, as well as Jack's and Young Will's, drifted toward the door as they heard loud, clomping footsteps just outside. A familiar face appeared, along with a small fuzzy monkey and a large hat with an outrageously large plume.
Barbossa laid his head back and gave out a loud pirate-y cackle. "What ye be plannin' now, Captain Turner? You want to carry her to the water's edge, throw her in, and claim she was taken by the sea so you could see her as she passed through worlds? You want the chance to carry yer dearly beloved from one world to another...hmm? Carry her over the threshold like you weren't able to do on yer weddin' night, eh?" He said it as if his words outrageous, as though it would never happen. His smug face suddenly screwed up, thinking. "Actually, that'd probably work..." Jack the monkey screeched in merry agreement, scampering over to the open hands of Young Will. Oh, and a bit of bread that lay within them.
Unlike Jack, Will didn't seem to find Barbossa's attempt at humor a bit funny. His eyes serious and jaw clenched, Will carefully stood up and laid the body of his bride on the small bed in the corner of the cottage. Gently he arranged her hair and stroked her face, not really wanting to let go. He turned to the three men standing before him and looked each one of them in the eye. To his son his eyes softened with love and regret, for all the minutes and moments he'd missed. To Jack his eyes glistened with a loyalty that not even the sea could break. And to Barbossa his eyes asked a question. The question that had sat in the back of his mind for a long time. He collected his thoughts, all the many thoughts he'd had so much time to think over the past 20 years. Will opened his mouth to speak when-
"Just spit it out, lad. We've not got time to waste." Barbossa. Always the one to suck them back into their Caribbean reality.
"He's working on it, can't you see that you monkey-loving-yellow-bellied-blowfish!" Jack exclaimed, his voice just a little too high.
"Blaggard! He's taking his bloody time now isn't he you poxy-faced-lice-infested-addlepate!" Barbossa countered, his eyes daring Jack to come up with a better insult than that.
Jack, well up for the challenge, cried out, "You mutinous-lily-livered-landlubber!"
"Aye, mutinous! I've done it once Jack, and I'll do it again!"
"Now really, Hector. How exactly would you go about setting up a mutiny when yer one of the two captians who you might possibly in the future be plannin' the so-called mutiny you might be plannin' against!" On and on the co-captains of the Black Pearl went, slinging insults and threats so easily you might have thought they did it every day. Oh wait...
Anyways. As the pirates fought the captain of the Flying Ductman walked slowly, as if in a trance, over to the mantle on which there was a small chest placed. He placed his hand upon the chest and then looked down to find his own son's hand placed on top of it. Their eyes met and the moment between father and son was enough to make up for all the moments lost in years before. Young William understood what his father was about to ask. He understood the bond between his father and mother. It was a bond so great that not even a curse with the sea could keep them apart. Without a word Young Will was able to tell his father that it was all right. He was able to tell him that he loved him, for all of his flaws, and that yes. He would be all right.
"Is that right? Yer going to leave me here with nothin' but a bottle o' rum and me monkey? Jack, Jack, Jack. Ye couldn't sail without me you blubbering-grog-snarfing-rum-drinking-"
"Enough!" Both Williams stood before the quarrling pirates, each with a hand on the chest that held the heart of the captain of the Flying Dutchman. Young Will pulled a dagger from his boot and handed it to his father as Barbossa and Sparrow looked on in...well...you know...a pirate-y blank look sort of way. "It'd work, wouldn't it? Jack would be his immortal self that he always wanted, and with a ship. We'd be together. At last. Free. Free from earthly curses and promises. It's work, wouldn't it?" Will's eyes were strong and sure. There wasn't a doubt in his mind. It would work. Reluctantly Barbossa answered the lad.
"Aye, it would. But really, Turner. Leave the sea? Leave-"
"Leave the sea?! I've been bound for 20 years too long Barbossa! You know that won't be a problem." He turned to Jack. "You'll do it, won't you? Won't you, Jack?"
He couldn't resist. A ship? Immortality? His beloved sea? "Why the bloody hell not?" Will handed over the dagger and pulled a large key from inside his vest. He unlocked the chest, reveiling his very own beating heart. Thump, thump. Thump, thump.
"Stab it, Jack. Stab it and put me out of my misery! Stab the heart and belong to your beloved sea. Claim the Flying Dutchman as your own!"
Jack hesitated for only a moment, looking first at Young William, that at Barbossa, and then finally at the man he was about to kill.
"Oh, all right."