Disclaimer is in the first chapter so if you're that bothered, please go and read it there. 
Sorry for the format of the last chapter, no matter what I did made no difference. 
Hopefully this chapter will be alright. * crosses fingers *. 24 reviews? That's 
probably the most I've ever gotten for a fic, Thankies everyone!

 

Chapter three: Fragments of a shattered mind.

Will opened his eyes and sat up. He felt a sharp pain through his head and groaned softly. His entire body felt like it was on fire, and his limbs felt heavy and numb. Glancing around the room, he noticed where he was. In Jack's room. Alone. The window showed that there was quite a storm outside. The rain was falling like hailstones, and it made his head ache. His eyes fell on a small round mirror on the bedside table. He smiled bemusedly. Jack had mirrors everywhere, and Will was sure that the captain carried one on him. There was one in every room. Strange, for a pirate who claimed he wasn't in the slightest bit vain. Even stranger, when said pirate didn't even bother with his appearance, apart from smudging a fresh outline of black kohl around his eyes every morning. He picked the mirror up and peered into it.

His face stared back at him, pale and frowning. His eyes darted to the side of his head, where a bandage was wrapped around. Putting the mirror on his lap, he started to undo the bandage, unwrapping it until it was nothing more than a long stream of cloth on the bed in front of him. Retrieving the mirror from its bloodied grave, he looked once more at his wound. He hissed softly as he ran his finger over the gaping hole. A trickle of blood ran down his face, and if possible, his brown eyes widened even more than they had done originally.

A violent shudder rocked through his body, and his chest heaved with a sudden burst of flaming pain that spread like fire through his body. Unconsciously he leaned forward and leaned his head on his raised knees. He wrapped his arms around his chest and his mind reeled. Images flickered through his mind, one after the other, faster, faster, until all he could see was a blur of pictures behind his eyes. There was a flash of light. His head was spinning and all he could see was brown. Wood, he realised, and a familiar voice talking underneath him.

"An' it's a good job an' all!"

A sound like stretched rope, a few seconds silence, then a bout of muttered cursing and a thud, like someone stumbling onto a wooden platform. Irregular, loud footsteps towards him. Thudding headache, throbbing so hard that his head felt like it was about to burst. He shouted something, but it came out as more of a plea than a command. Hands fumbling to turn him onto his back. Hurts so much. Only now did he realise that he had been on his side in the first place. Bright sunshine scorched his eyes and he was forced to close them.

Opening them again, he saw dark eyes scanning his face, a mouth moving almost silently. A shocked and astounded face was barely inches away. What Will wouldn't give to be held safely in Jack's arms. A vague memory jolted him into action, and he wriggled away despite of himself. Scared to be so close to another person. He started to scream for Jack to help him. Why wasn't Jack there? Where had he gone? Pain erupted through his body, and darkness overtook him.

In the next room, the pirate captain was woken from his fitful slumber by screaming. Leaping up, and dashing out of the lad's room (forgetting his coat) Jack tried to open the door to his cabin. The door was locked. Growling in frustration, and wiping the rain out of his eyes, he slammed against the door, in a hope to smash it open. Will was still yelling. A particularly hard shove opened the door and Jack was flung unceremoniously onto the floor. Scrambling up, he launched himself at the bed, and dragged his lover up into a sitting position. The boy had quietened slightly, but was writhing in his arms. His eyes were wide and his pupils were dilated. Gasps of shock were emerging from his mouth and he was jerking wildly.

Not knowing what to do, Jack started to panic. He raised his arms to Will's shoulders and shook him, gently at first, but grew wilder and more desperate as the boy didn't respond. Will let out a violent  kick, and Jack was flung onto the floor, where he lay, shocked that he couldn't do anything to stop Will from crying out. His screams started to subside, and after a few minutes of muffling silence, the captain snapped out of his stupor. He crept towards the bed and enveloped his Will in his arms. He was still shaking, but was calmer now, and his eyes had regained their former state.

Will sniffed and buried his head in Jack's shoulder. The captain pulled the younger pirate towards him and kissed the top of his dark curls. Will looked up, hesitantly, and took in the image of his partner. The elder pirate was a state. His face was pale and his eyes were half closed, as though he were tired. The kohl around his eyes was smudged, marking his face rather like a bandit. He was only half dressed, his coat was missing, as well as his effects. And his hat. And to top it all off, he was half soaked and shivering from experiencing the raging storm outside. But his dark lined eyes were expressing a varying amount of emotions.

Love was there, Will could see. Worry was also there, and so was desperation. Desperate to help Will, and to keep him safe. That protection was there as well, the protection that Jack always had for him, ever since Will had joined him on the Pearl after leaving poor Elizabeth, his dear childhood friend, to her fate of her wedding with Norrington. But above all was the love. Jack would always be there for him, how could he ever have doubted it? Seeing the gentleness in his lover's eyes made Will want to bury himself into a hole and never come out. He felt ashamed of himself for being so dependant and weak, and annoyed that he knew that Jack would help him without questioning or thinking about it. Why should he soil Jack's presence by existing? He was nothing more than a disgrace to everyone.

He had been quiet as a child. He heard what the neighbours used to say about him. 'that Turner boy is going to be trouble.' 'To damn quiet for my liking' 'Son of a pirate, he is.' Of course, his mother had kept her head held high and a smile on her face, convinced that her husband would come back. Because of that, Will believed her. Because she would never lie to him. She had always told him how life was going to be when his da' came home. She had believed it up until her death. On her death bed she had given him their life savings (which, Will remembered, had seemed like such a lot at the time, but had dissolved into nothing after a few weeks). He had spent most of the money on her funeral, made her look as beautiful as he could with the money he had, in the hopes that his father would come and see her.

He remembered the day she was buried. He had watched as she was delivered into the ground, and the people had thrown the soil on top of her. He had seen her face, still defiant even in death, yet as beautiful as the fairest princess disappear. There had been a lot of people there that day. They had all been sympathetic towards him. 'The poor little Turner orphan who had tragically lost both parents' became almost a legend in his area. He got things for free, food from the bakers (who had always been friendly towards he and his mother) and clothes made by the eccentric lady who lived over the corner shop. Which, he reminded himself, were always too big for him. He had been taken away from his mother's house, the only place he had ever known, and put in an orphanage. He visited his mother's grave every day, often taking flowers or stones to decorate around it.

Sitting down, the small, ragged boy turned out his pockets onto the grass. It was a dismal day, sleeting, with a strong chilly breeze. It was a typical November morning. He had stolen away from his bed at the orphanage to come here, as he had done every morning. He often stayed there, until mid afternoon, and people started to look for him. They hadn't bothered to lately. They knew where he was, and that he would be back by tea time, so they didn't care. Wasn't in their job description, to go around chasing after lunatic children who spent every day at his mother's gravestone.

He wiped the wetness on his face away, not sure if it was the rain or his own tears that ran down his cheeks. With the flowers and stones he had collected the afternoon before, he started to arrange a simple pattern. A heart shape with a flower in the middle. Sometimes daisies, or buttercups, but this day was different. He had saved up his money that people had given him, and had bought a single white flower. A lily.

They had been her favourite. For occasionally they had woken to discover a bunch of the expensive flowers laying on the table, complete with a note that his mother would always whisk out of his sight. Later on he would always find his mother curled up on the sofa or the bed, crying tears of relief. She would spot him hiding by the door and call him over to her, cuddling him and telling him what a wonderful man his father was.

Caught up in this memory, he felt a hand on his shoulder. Spinning around, he looked up at the stranger. He stood tall, towering above the child. He was young, in his mid twenties at the most. He had light hair. The stranger placed his hands on his cheeks, and forced him to look up at his face, studying him. His eyes were blue, but serious, and sceptical. 

"So much like yer old da'." he murmured and finally hauled Will up by his arms, and took hold of his hand. Delving into one of his many pockets of his long black coat, he retrieved something. The man placed the gift into his outstretched hand, and in doing so, revealed his right forearm. Will's eyes widened.

"You're a pirate." He whispered accusingly. The elder man looked thoughtful and nodded.

"Aye, and I knew yer father, lad. He was a good man. A good sailor. If yer grow up to be even half the man 'e was, then yer gonna turn out alrigh'. He told me ter give yer this." With this said, he turned, and walked off, whistling to himself. Will looked down into his hand, made dirty by the mud he had been sitting on, and opened it. Gold glinted back at him. It was a medallion. Looking at the design on it, he realised that he should give it up to the authorities. It was, after all, given to him by a pirate. But if he was right, and it had been passed onto him by his father, then he must know where his was.

Looking up, the pirate had gone. He started to run, in the direction that the man had gone in, but he was nowhere to be seen. Where would a pirate have gone to, he wondered. Then it hit him. The docks. A pirate would want to leave a place like this, where pirates were sought after as criminals, and sail away onto the horizon, never to be seen again. Should he follow this man, and try to find his father? Or should he stay here, and look after his mother's grave. After all, she was the only thing that had kept him going all these long months.

Closing his eyes, he made his choice. Clipping the medallion around his neck, he made towards the port. Running down the street he had grown up in, only stopping to collect his things quickly from the orphanage, he raced passed the corner shop, past his old home, past the bakers, the butchers, running through the town centre, jumping over carts and dodging people twice his height. He reached the port, and looked around. Wildly, he tried to spot the pirate he had seen earlier. He felt another hand on his shoulder.

"You alright there young man?" he asked. It was the man, now dressed in shabby old silken clothes, that would have been once considered regal.

"Please, sir, I would like to sail with you, to find my father?" he whispered anxiously. The pirate smiled.

"This ship in front of you, m'boy, is one of the finest. And I am her captain." He said, and extended his hand out to the small boy. Will grinned, and held out his free hand to the pirate captain.

"Any child o' Bill is welcome on the Opium Star, m'boy. I'd be glad t'have you on board. Come, let's get you acquainted with the crew." He said, and pulled Will along with him, up the ramp and onto the ship. Whistling sharply, an assortment of men stood in front of him.

"Men, we have a new cabin boy on board, little William. Make sure you keep your eyes on him so that he don't get into any trouble. Any man not treating him with the proper respect will face the cat o' nine tails. Understand?"

The crew took to Will immediately. They gave him a space in the corner of the crew's cabins, and taught him all they knew about sailing, and pirating. Months later, the captain, who Will referred to as 'uncle Marty', took him under his wing and became almost as close to Will as his mother had been. He even had one of  the same coins that Will's father had given him. It had been given to Marty by a strange man named Bill, 'a fine man, and a good pirate by all who knew him'. Every day Will had asked uncle Marty to tell him about his father, and where he was, but each time, the pirate had responded with the same uneasy answer.

"Soon, lad. I'll tell you when you're ready."

Late one afternoon, a shout had gone up from the watchman in the crow's nest. It was that day, that Will caught his first sight of the Black Pearl, and the last sight of his dear 'uncle' Marty. The Black Pearl, it had attacked them, killed his uncle, stole his treasured coin and blown up the boat. Will himself would have been killed if one of the crew hadn't thrown him off the ship before the fighting started. The fall from the back of the ship had knocked him unconscious, since he did not fall into the water at all, but upon one of the doors from the captain's room, that had been thrown off the ship by one of the opposing pirates.

Jack smiled. The lad had fallen asleep, not into a fitful sleep, but a proper, deep sleep and would not wake up until the next day. He himself yawned and snuggled closer to his lover. He could not get the boy's face out of his head. How he had looked almost exactly like his father when he was thinking deeply about something or other. He frowned, wrapped the blankets around them snugly, closed his eyes, and drifted off into the best sleep he had had in days.

From the door, Gibbs chuckled, and pulled the door to a close, leaving the captain and his young love to their privacy and sleep. Ana stood next to him, trying to shield her eyes from the torrent of rain that insisted on trying to drown them.

"They be alright now Ana. I don't think we could shift the cap'n even if we wanted ter." He said, and nodded to the woman, who looked strangely concerned. Gibbs shook his head and looked at her again. Her face was now devoid of any emotion, as it normally was. The elderly pirate sighed. He was getting old. Together they trudged back towards their posts, both retaining a small piece of information for future purposes.