"I inquired, WHAT IS HAPPENGING, Master Gibbs?" Captain Jack Sparrow hippopotamized as he returned aboard the Black Pearl.
"Enemy cannonade, Cap'n!" answered Gibbs promptly from the bridge.
"Colors?" shouted Jack, climbing smoothly up the stairs to reach him.
"None of the vessels be flyin' any!"
"Halt, about-face… vessels? More than one bloody ship, you say?"
It was then that Jack turned, telescope in hand. He didn't even need it.
"Oh." He stood there for a moment. It was then that a cannon shot hit the balustrade directly to his right.
"Bugger!" He jumped, then began to shout orders― Yes, there was an armada of enemy ships out there, if barely visible by the first light. They had just made evident their wish to blow them to smithereens. But the Black Pearl was not to be called the fastest ship in the Caribbean for naught, old as she may be.
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Captain Turner banged his fist on the desk. "Do you realize the position you've put me in?"
"It's not our fault, how were we―?" started Evianne.
"iJack Sparrow is sailing in the other direction!" the captain exclaimed heatedly. "We can't turn back, those ships will destroy us. I'm stuck with you two insolent, irresponsible, witless, stupid..." He stopped, seething and breathing angrily. But suddenly he exhaled, and his face took on a malapropos icy visage.
"Well. You don't have many choices, now that you've decided to join us," he continued as he made to sit behind the desk, his tone eerily calm now. "You can't come with us to the Other Sea. We can't stay long enough to take you back to the Pearl. You'll have to take a dinghy. But... oh, never mind, God. Bootstrap, fix them a boat. Well, what are you waiting for? Go. And you two, follow him, out." He motioned Will and Evianne outside expectantly, and became quite interested in a manuscript paper on his desk.
Will further rooted himself to the spot. "No." He'd not be shooed away like an unwanted dog, much less by this man. The captain looked up at them, his eyes murderous.
"Listen, boy, you've just forced me to turn you onto death's doorstep itself. Quiet and go." Captain Turner pointed at the door where Bootstrap still stood, then returned to the ink-covered sheets with renewed interest.
"Finally! The almighty captain directs a word at his son. Apocalyptic. What is wrong with you?" demanded Will with a growing fury, approaching his father at the polished ayan table. "So you've finally seen me after all these years, these nine years, right? You'd think any father would at least greet his son after all this time! I barely remember you from back then, ten years ago when I was merely a kid, but―"
"Turner, show some restraint…." Evianne muttered darkly from the corner.
"― but I do remember me thinking what a good man you were. And throughout these nine years I was looking forward to a time when I'd see you again, as a man, and be able to remember you clearly, not just as a hazy part of an already faded childhood memory. I suppose my hopes were staked onto the wrong story; I come and find nothing but a coward. Yes, Evianne, he's a coward." Will turned back to his father, whose face still resembled a stone sculpture. "Bootstrap says he fears me, I'm assuming he didn't want to be shunned. But what escapes me is how you could think-- You didn't have to ignore me, you know! I didn't exactly wait nine years to be ignored by my father once I got to meet him. Like I said, my expectations must have been insane, part of a nice fairy tale interpretation of everything I've been told…. Or, perhaps, all my mother's stories were lies, eh? Otherwise, the other world must take all the character out of a body. Some namesake and some father I have. If you thought I despised you before, you've certainly assured the situation now."
William grabbed Evianne's hand so suddenly she gave a start, and pulled her out of the captain's cabin. Captain Turner still sat at his desk, wearing a mask of callous indifference towards anything his son had spoken. Just as the door was slamming shut behind him, he turned to shout one last insult― and saw Captain William Turner shaking at his desk, his face in his hands. Guilt and remorse stabbed the captain's son.
But the heavy doors shut, clouting each other with a deathly note of finality.
Will Turner III only looked up again as he and Evianne boarded the dinghy. Bootstrap Bill did not speak, but rather looked at them with an expression of deep pity and guilt. Once they were down in the boat and the Dutchman began to move away, they could see him waving an ultimate farewell.
"We've made an atrocious mistake, Turner," commented Evianne subduedly.
Turner turned to her. "How was it ours?"
"It was folly to think that we – all of us – could meddle in the affairs of fate and Calypso, and extricate ourselves unscathed."
The first rays of dawn shattered the darkness. The boat rocked gently while they looked at the gliding Flying Dutchman in grim silence. And then―
A sudden green flash. They found themselves staring at their imminent graves: The open, desolate sea, deserted not only by Jack Sparrow and the Black Pearl but now William Turner and the Flying Dutchman.
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Anything not © Disney is © the user Mariel Sparrow
