Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Pirates of the Caribbean, but oh that I could lick, bite, and otherwise engage in good times with Will Turner.

This was written in response to the challenge posted at the Pirates 500 Improv Community on Livejournal.

A Son's Longing By: StoryDivaGirl

There were only two things I ever wanted for in my life - to freely and openly love Elizabeth Swann and to know my father. I thought that by obtaining the one-might I take a moment to say that I am the luckiest man on earth to have a woman so voracious and magnificent love me-it would make the desire for the other obsolete.

It has yet to happen quite that way.

It starts out easy enough. A small distraction, the urge to sneeze in a cloud of dust. Something that can be avoided with activity. So I throw myself into my creations. Swords are an art to me, a form of expression. Every inch inspired by something as simple as her smile.

But then it becomes an itch. The type that no matter how much you scratch it or ignore it or try to work around it, nothing is accomplished. The only thing on your mind is that itch and remedying the pain it causes.

My father is an itch to me. I cannot let go of the unknown. I cannot come to terms with information I've never been privy to except for that which I managed to pry from Jack Sparrow and then, of course, the tidbits those loathsome pirates shared while I was locked up. I am the son of a pirate, a man called Bootstrap Bill, who held honor above his own life and lived for the smell of open air and water, a person who existed in my mind as a legend of sorts, one of Zeus-like power, but was defeated with the blast of a cannon for doing the right thing.

And that is all I know. No one else speaks of it. There is no one to make sense of it with, so I'm alone in this abandon, and try as I might, I cannot ignore the longing I have to know him, to understand what drove him as a man-was my mother his Elizabeth? If so, I could never imagine him wanting to leave her if only for a day, to go without the feel of her skin beneath his fingertips and the smell of home she provides.

I wonder if my mother knew that he was a pirate, a man whose life revolved around chaos and an indiscernible code (mere "guidelines", my boy), when she got involved with him. Was it his charm? His laugh? His insatiably desire for more out of life? The fact that he was a more spectacular presence than any navy or political man could ever be?

Soon the itch becomes a pain. It's always there. I want it not to be. I want to focus on my life and my future, but all I can think about is him. I worry that I will act rash and I will find history repeating itself. Me becoming my father, leaving Elizabeth in my mother's role and some innocent child, my child, as me, so incapable of properly conveying anything and always at odds with himself.

I cannot allow Will Turner, the man, to obsess the way that Will Turner, the boy did for a father he never knew.