(disclaimer: pirates and their environs belong to Disney)
Written for the PotC Tertiary Character Ficathon, master list found here: livejournal. com/ users/ khohen1/ 132244. html
The first time Bill Turner met Jack Sparrow, he laughed in his face.
"That grand ship out there?" He waved his arm at the harbor and the dark beauty bobbing on the water. "Can't be yours. You're naught but a boy."
Jack's tanned face flushed with anger. He lifted his chin, glaring at Bill. "'M near twenty-four, I'll have you know. She's mine, true enough."
Bill clapped a hand on his shoulder, a bit unsteady for the ale he'd had this evening. Tortuga did have some fine swill, he'd give it that. "I meant no offense, mate. How's about we start again? I'm William Turner, though there's some as call me Bootstrap on account o' –"
"I," said the other man, lifting up on the balls of his feet to diminish the difference in their heights, "am Captain Jack Sparrow, and I've taken offense whether you meant it or no." With that declaration, he socked Bill full in the belly.
As first encounters went, Bill supposed it wasn't ideal. But they hadn't drawn weapons, nor did they do any real damage. It turned into a wrestling match more than a fistfight, although he landed a good blow that bloodied Jack's nose, debt for his swelling left eye. With his greater bulk, Bill quickly overcame even the sneakiest of Jack's moves. Pinning the wiry captain down as he squirmed like a cat, Bill panted and blinked stinging sweat from his eyes.
"I've no cause t' harm you, Jack Sparrow. Let's quit this nonsense. Accord?"
Jack had figured out that Bill was not an easy man to budge and gone still. He narrowed his dark eyes and pursed his lips before finally replying, "Aye. Lemme up, would you?" Bill obliged, extending a hand to help the other man to his feet. Jack pinched his nose and brushed at his dirty shirt, nodding to Bill. "Sorry 'bout your eye."
"'Twill heal," said Bill with a shrug. "That's a fine vessel you've got there."
Pride and a nearly swooning adoration lit in the man's eyes. "That's the Black Pearl, Mr. Turner, and you'd best remember her name because you'll be hearin' it again."
"How'd you get her?" Bill wanted to know.
Jack opened his mouth, then closed it. Rubbing his short beard, he grinned at Bill. "'S too long a tale for standing out 'ere. What say I buy you a drink an' tell you all about the lady?"
And that was how it began. Before the night was over, he'd secured himself a place on the Pearl, which was in need of a few more men. They set sail the following morning. For a few weeks, Bill kept his distance and worked the others out, especially Jack.
He was a good sailor, though too green in command to really make a good captain. His men liked him, but they weren't particularly loyal, and Bill suspected many of them would be seeking work elsewhere next time they set ashore. He loved his ship like no man Bill had ever seen. He was well-educated, albeit in a piecemeal fashion, and prone to chattering, except when he was having a quiet moment with the Pearl and didn't want to be disturbed. At times Bill found him irritating and too high-spirited, but on the whole he was quite fond of his new captain. And he found himself thinking about the slender, fine-featured young man in ways he didn't usually resort to unless he'd been at sea for months.
What with Bill being the quiet type, Jack didn't seem to notice this overmuch. They'd been gone two months before Bill thought to enlighten him. It was after a successful raid, when the whole of the crew was out on deck celebrating into the late hours of the night. Jack nipped off to his cabin to refresh himself from his private store of rum, and Bill trailed along behind him.
Slightly tipsy, Jack found a bottle in his trunk and brandished it grandly. "To gold!" he declared, taking a swig. He groped for Bill's arm to haul himself up, blinking in confusion when Bill didn't turn him loose. "Y' want some, mate? All's you had t' do is ask."
"No, Jack," said Bill, taking the bottle from him and letting it fall from his fingers to thunk on the floorboards. "I think we're both done for th' night." Before Jack's lips could form a proper pout, Bill caught them with his own. Jack didn't move for a moment, uttering a soft grunt of surprise. Then his mouth opened for Bill's probing tongue, very slowly. When Bill opened his eyes, he found Jack watching him, and he broke the kiss. He knew for damned sure he hadn't miscalculated about where Jack's interests lay, but there was uncertainty on his face all the same.
"Didn't think you were the type, Turner," said Jack quietly, his fingers flexing on Bill's forearms.
Bill grinned at him, hands going to his hips to tug him closer. "I like pretty things, and you, Jack, are a pretty thing – proud and flashin' bright."
The words, prompted by a bit more than he'd intended to drink, pleased Jack, although he still had that cagey look and he hadn't responded to the pressure between his legs.
"Aye? You don't think I'm..." Jack whispered, biting his lip, his eyes glittering in the low lantern light. Bill kissed him again before he had the chance to finish whatever he'd meant to say. This time Jack leapt at him, clutching at his shirt, twining a leg around his knees. He backed up to his swinging cot and laughed when Bill bore him down to it.
Speed was inevitable, but Bill had to pause when he remembered the dreamy haze that came over Jack's eyes sometimes. True, it was only directed at his ship, but it was still best to be cautious.
"You know I got a wife and a son," he murmured against Jack's neck. "So this ain't –"
Writhing impatiently beneath him, Jack snapped, "Clear on that account, Bill." Reassured that he wasn't getting himself into something stupid, Bill rocked up and pressed into him. After taking a moment to breathe and let the man adjust, he discovered that Jack was every bit as loquacious in bed as out of it. He lost his concentration several times, distracted by words he didn't recognize or fragments of languages he didn't speak. In the end, he grew to like Jack's enthusiasm, even as he feared for his own eardrums.
It never became a regular feature of their friendship. Bill still bunked with the crew most nights and sought out women when they were in port. But he had always enjoyed sharing a bed with someone, and it was nice to know that Jack's bed was always available to him when he got to missing Kate.
He told her about his new post, in the same carefully-word, painstakingly-scribbled letters which always left out more than they said. That autumn, he spent a long time convincing Jack to risk the Pearl on a trip to England. It had been two years since he'd been home; Will had just been learning to walk. Jack said he didn't want to hear a sob story, holding out for a couple of days before he relented. He complained about the falling temperature all the way there, often retreating to his cabin to swathe himself in a ridiculous array of bedclothes. When Bill offered him an invitation for Christmas dinner, he refused, saying he didn't intend to step foot off the Pearl's deck for one second. By the time Bill set off, he'd warmed enough to shove an intricately carved wooden ship and a velvet pouch in his hands. "For the whelp an' the missus," he muttered, scowling once before turning and stalking belowdecks.
Kate was well, and Will had grown so much that Bill hardly recognized him. It seemed the feeling was mutual; when Bill stretched out his arms, the little boy ducked his head and hid behind his mother's skirts.
"Go say hello to your day," Kate prompted, nudging him forward. Mouth worrying at his thumb, Will approached cautiously, brown eyes set wide in his chubby face. He gasped in fear when Bill lifted him high in the air. By the time his feet were back on the ground, he was grinning from ear to ear.
"That's m' boy," said Bill, ruffling his unruly curls. Will grabbed his hand and didn't seen inclined to let go.
Supper was a simple affair, a tough chicken that he knew was the best Kate could afford. He heaped compliments on her cooking, guilt eating at him for the patches in her dress. She laughed and blushed, as pretty as the day he'd first seen her despite the shadows under her eyes. And sweet too, because of the time he'd been away and the things he'd brought them. There'd be time later for bitterness.
After they'd finished dining, they sat before the fire and tore open the sacks Bill had lugged from the duck. Jack's contributions proved a success. Kate adored her new pearl earrings and Will's attention was immediately caught by the model.
"That's your father's ship, William," he told the boy, although it didn't look a thing like the Pearl. Will turned it over and over in his hands, inspecting it from every angle.
Fingering the bolt of cloth he'd brought her, Kate said, "Mind your manners, love."
"Thank you, Da," said Will obediently, still captivated by his present. He tucked the toy in beside himself when Bill put him to bed, patting its smooth hull.
"Beautiful, ain't she?"
Will nodded and yawned, showing a gap where a tooth had fallen out. "Night, Da."
"Sleep well, son," Bill murmured, brushing fingers against his soft cheek.
He stood, stretching tired muscles. Kate stood propped against the doorway to the other room.
"Bedtime for William Turner the First as well," she said, blue eyes twinkling.
He swept her up in his arms. "Yes, Mama." She muffled her giggles in his shoulder.
Later, she soaked his skin with her tears, telling him of the child lost a few months after his last visit. It was the sort of thing that didn't translate well to paper – needed to be whispered in the dark. He held her close, swallowing past the lump in his throat. She'd had a hard time with Will and it was unlikely they'd ever have another small Turner. He would never say so aloud, but secretly he was glad. For one thing, seeing those blood-stained sheets after the fact had terrified him; for another, it was struggle enough to feed two mouths.
He stayed a week, doing odd jobs around home, doting on his wife, and getting to know his son. Will turned out to be a bright, lively boy whom Bill was proud to call his own. He found himself looking forward to the coming years, eager to see what manner of man he would become.
On the eighth day, Jack sent word that a ship of His Royal Majesty's fleet was due in from Gibraltar, so the Pearl would be taking her leave of merry old England in the morning and Bill had better get his arse down there if he wanted to come along (the boy he'd paid to deliver the message got it down word for word). The news was both welcome and unwelcome. He loved his family as much, he felt, as a man could, had missed them while he was gone, but he was growing more restless by the hour. There was no place for him here, not the way there should have been. Kate knew it too, and though she turned as frosty as the windowsill, he reckoned a part of her would be relieved when he walked out the door.
It was young Will who posed the threat to his resolve. Explaining to the boy that he'd have to be leaving on the morrow, his heart broke at the panic rising in Will's eyes. He drew his son onto his lap and told him stories until he succumbed to sleep. Even then, Bill had to pry the small fingers from his shirt.
Kate snarled at him when he touched her hand, so he went to bed alone. He was half-asleep by the time she crept in beside him. They took their time making love, breathing promises neither would be able to keep. She didn't stir when he eased himself out of bed well before dawn.
Before he left, he knelt at Will's bedside to pull the blankets more securely over his shoulders. Will made soft, sleepy sounds as he rolled over, burrowing into the warmth.
"Don't hate me, lad," Bill said quietly to him. "The day'll come when you understand."
Jack was in a nasty temper, but Bill refused to be baited and ignored anything that wasn't a direct order. The captain's mood picked up considerably when they were a suitable distance from land. Bill continued to avoid him. He always needed a few days to recover from the shock of leaving. To his credit, Jack didn't press him, didn't make a single untoward move until Bill came to him the night they reached warm Caribbean waters. Then he clutched at Bill with a hungry, wild look in his eyes. Bill was unusually quiet that night, leaving the moment Jack fell asleep. Kate and Will needed him. He couldn't cope with Jack growing to need him as well. Pulled in one more direction, he feared he'd break.
But Jack seemed as fine as ever he was the next morning, jolly and rambling, and Bill's nerves were eased. On the whole, the next few years were good ones. He sailed with Jack and the ever-changing crew of the Black Pearl, making a small name for her among the pirates of the Caribbean. A few times he made half-cocked plans to return to England again, but something would come up, and then something else, and gradually he forgot the way the sun caught gold in Kate's hair, the feel of Will's hand dwarfed in his own.
They were in Tortuga one November morning, nearly four years after that last visit home, when Bill got the package of letters. There was one from Kate and three in a shaky, weak hand he didn't know. Nathan from the Faithful Bride said the first had arrived a week ago, the others one by one a few months earlier.
He took them and sequestered himself in the captain's cabin, the only spot onboard where he could be guaranteed a spot of privacy. He opened the first from the unknown author. His stomach dropped when he read the salutation: Dear Da.
Some portion of his mind was bursting with pride that Will could read and write, though his letters were of varying sizes and his spelling wasn't any better than Bill's own. Mostly he was focused on what those misshapen words were imparting.
Kate had been sick, so sick that Will had been sent to stay at a boarding house run by a lady friend of hers. As he explained, the woman had encouraged him to write to his father, something Kate had never advocated. Will wrote about his playmates and how much he disliked staying in such a noisy, crowded place, although he did enjoy what lessons Ms. Burke could find time to teach him. He missed his mother, wondered why he wasn't allowed to see her, and asked Bill when he would be coming home. He didn't remember him well, he admitted, but Mama said he'd last been by at Christmas, so the onset of cold weather was an event he always found exciting.
Bill held onto the last of these ink-spattered papers for a long time before he could make his fingers unclench. Then he opened Kate's letter. She said that all was fine now, that she was recovering quickly and he shouldn't worry. Will was lonesome and sad without her, and that was the only reason he'd asked for Bill. It was nothing to be concerned about.
He folded the letters carefully, stuck them in his waistcoat, and dove into Jack's rum.
The captain returned eventually, apt to choose his own bunk rather than lodge on land. He was none too sober himself, stumbling through the door and laughing breathlessly as he slammed it behind him. Bill stood, stirring from the cabin's only chair for the first time in hours.
"Waiting for me, eh?" Jack said, sidling up to Bill with his peculiar drunken grace. Nothing about him was out of the ordinary – not his scent of sea, rum and man, not his roving hands, not his golden smile. Yet tonight Bill's stomach churned at his proximity.
"Stop pawin' at me, Jack," he muttered, turning his face away. Jack made an agreeable noise but continued tugging at Bill's clothing, nuzzling his neck. Heat flooded Bill's face and he shoved the other man away.
Slight though he was, Jack had a wiry strength surprising to most who were fool enough to challenge it. Bill had been on the receiving end of it more than once, at that first meeting and afterwards in jest. He was more than capable of defending himself, and he didn't think twice about cheating if he was overpowered.
But tonight he was caught off-guard, and the force behind Bill's push was fueled by drink, and he had to wrench his body in the air to keep from falling.
Jack backed up immediately, fists clenched, nostrils flared, spine rigid. The look in his eyes was one Bill knew well. He woke from nightmares with that look sometimes. It made him funny about being touched, begging for rough treatment one moment, shying away completely in the next. It was one of the few stories he had never ventured to share, but Bill could guess well enough that someone had been cruel to him once.
Shame muddled the heavy red throb of anger in Bill's head. "Jack..." he began tenuously.
"No worries," said Jack in a tight, flat voice. "Had a bit too much drink meself, 'bout ready t' drop. If y' wouldn't mind?" He held the door open.
Checking his pockets to make sure the letters were secure, Bill nodded brusquely. He could feel tenseness emanating from Jack's body as he brushed past him.
It was the beginning of the end. Though they remained friendly, things weren't quite the same. For one, they never shared a bed again. Bill took care of his own needs. He assumed Jack did the same, but there were certainly other men willing if he didn't. Next port they docked in, he thought about staying behind. He'd do it, he decided, once Jack got a crew he could rely upon.
As it happened, they were short a few men. The ones that joined up made Bill so nervous that he couldn't bring himself to leave quite yet.
It was Barbossa, mostly. Though the man spoke well and seemed as fine a bloke as one was likely to find among pirates, he put Bill off immediately. He was a flatterer, and Bill didn't trust that type. Himself, he might not be the smartest or the strongest or the man anybody'd pick for leader, but he always told things like they were. Jack had appreciated that once.
These days, he bent to Barbossa's whispers, preened for his praises, sucked up his poisons like they were his precious rum. Jack had never officially declared a first mate, though it had always been understood that Bill occupied that place. Within days, Hector Barbossa had supplanted him and won the loyalty of many aboard. There were no outward signs that he was sleeping with Jack, but it was a possibility.
Bill didn't limit his honesty to plain speech; he knew very well he was jealous. Didn't mean, however, that Barbossa wasn't a lying bastard just waiting to show his fangs.
The only warning he gave Jack was a fragment of a sentence. In the mess one day, the captain asked him what he thought of Barbossa.
He's got coal for a heart. He watches you like an eagle sighting fish in the water. There's blood on his hands that'll never wash off.
"Don't like 'im o'ermuch," he said.
Jack tilted his head, considering, then shrugged. "Your prerogative, I s'ppose." And that was all there was to it.
He brought up his desire to leave the Pearl. Jack listened patiently and made his arguments in a tale about an uncharted island, its caves home to a chest of gold that would help him on his way back to the wife and child. Bill only half-believed it, but it was excuse enough to wait.
They were on their way to this island, through some means Jack gloated over and wouldn't tell. He popped in and out of his cabin to shout directions to the man at the helm. Bill was splicing rope near the helm. After an hour or so of this, Barbossa crossed the deck and disappeared past Jack's door. When he emerged, there was a light in his eyes that made Bill uneasy.
He'd never been party to a mutiny, but he knew the warning signs. The round robin had twenty-five names on it before it fell into his lap.
"No," he told Barbossa simply.
The man shrugged his shoulders, apparently indifferent. "Off t' shore ye'll go as well, then."
Bill crossed his arms over his chest, squashing a warning that seemed to speak with Kate's voice. "That's what you gotta do, 'cause I won't betray th' captain."
Barbossa stroked his scraggly chin, brows beetling. "Wait a moment, ain't ye that bloke wiv th' pretty young wife an' th' darlin' son?" He wrinkled his nose in thought. "Live just outside Cheapside, in London?"
Bill's guts froze at that oily tone. "You wouldn' dare, Barbossa."
"Aye?" Barbossa grinned, showing his rotted teeth. "An' how, pray tell, might you stop me, Bootstrap?" Isaac, rhe huge dark-skinned man with the pattern of raised dots across his face, chose that moment to crack his knuckles.
Bill closed his eyes. He stood on the deck of Jack's ship, feeling the sea flowing beneath her hull, and he saw Will's small, perfect face as he slept.
When he held Jack against the railing, Barbossa leant close and whispered in his ear. He shoved the bit of paper under his nose. Jack turned his face to the side, his hair falling to mask his face. He backed up along the plank, hands bound behind him, pistol tucked into his belt. Not once did his eyes waver from Bill's face, no matter how the others taunted him, and Bill would not do him the injury of looking away. Just before he stepped off, a corner of his mouth lifted in the ghost of a smile.
Bill saw that expression so many times in his dreams that when they began to feel the effects of the curse, he welcomed them. Better to feel nothing at all than to feel this every day for the rest of his life. Better to have an excuse not to return to his family burdened with the sin of having betrayed his captain and his friend, who perhaps had seen him as something more. He hoped the coin would delight Will as much as Jack's wooden boat once had. The boy was ten now – eleven? – just the age when he was bound to start worrying about his next meal, if he hadn't already.
The crew thought Barbossa's joke with the bootstraps was diabolically clever. It wasn't just leather, of course – he'd have been free much quicker if that were the case. For good or for bad, Barbossa was still a miserly fellow, and the chains he bought were already beginning to rust. It took the better part of three years, but eventually Bill popped up into the moonlight again, his bones shining white.
He made his living as a fighter, wandering from port to port, town to town. Once the locals had figured out he couldn't be beaten or seen his true form, he would move on. He saw Jack once, in Tortuga, appropriately enough. He looked the same as ever, young and bewitching and bright, but he wore mementos in his hair now, and his eyes had aged far beyond his years. Bill was relieved to slip into the shadows of the alley before Jack could spot him.
Time ran through his moldered fingers like water. He was in the middle of a fight in Ocho Rios when the curse was broken. He and his opponent were circling each other in the pigsty of a barn, which was hotter than Hell and smelled exactly like what it was. The other man, defeated, had seized a child-sized pitchfork. Bill smiled coldly as the three prongs came at his face. He had the escape routes worked out in his mind already.
The world suddenly shifted, and he felt the pain of his bruised knuckles and his swollen jaw. Before he could properly accept the sensation, white-hot agony overtook his mind, his body, and what was left of his soul.
They put him in the care of a hedgewitch just outside the village. He spent three weeks in her cottage, half his head bandaged. When the strips of linen came off, he blinked his remaining eye at his reflection in a still pond – at the empty socket and the deep, healing gouges. He didn't think he'd have to worry about hiding his face from Jack, if ever they met again.
Although his hair had gone completely white the night the curse broke, his body was still younger and stronger than his actual years. So he kept at what he was doing, earning himself more scars to make up for all ones he'd been cheated of in the past. It wasn't long before the ache of constant abuse set into his bones, so he quit. He had managed to save some money over time, hoarding it in different parts of the Caribbean, and he went around collecting this for awhile.There was news of Jack occasionally; up to his old tricks, they said, although there was a rumor he'd accepted an English letter of marque. Bill didn't put too much stock in this, but it was good to know that Jack had gotten the Pearl back after all.
Bill never knew just how the curse was broken, since he heard about twenty different version of it. He could only assume that Barbossa was dead, since his name never popped up again, except in households where mothers would invoke it to frighten their children into behaving. Probably he ought to have begun searching for his son the moment it was possible, but he thought of the explanations due to the boy – man now, if he still breathed – and the weight that thought was heavy on his heart.
Some months after the earthquake sent Port Royal tumbling into ruin, he made his way to Kingston, intrigued by its growing reputation. He had long since reverted to begging and picking pockets to keep his belly full. The first afternoon he arrived, he decided to take a leisurely stroll down the main street before worrying about taking a toll on the wealthy citizens. He picked his way through the busy crowd, not offended by the way most people shrank from him. Once or twice, he heard a baby start to cry at his approach.
He was ducking under an awning above a grocer's shop, seeking relief from the hot sun, when a little boy came barreling out the door and into his legs. The boy, who looked to be around four or five, tilted his chin up and stared with the curiosity of youth but no fear.
A tremor ran through him. In that one instant of recognition, he was taken back more than a quarter of a century. The thought occurred to him that a goodly portion of his life had all been an elaborate dream. Absurd, he knew, but how else to explain those eyes, that mouth, those curls, that chin – Kate's chin, the only feature the boy had really gotten from her – that face, gazing up at him like it knew deep down who he was...
"Thomas!" The boy turned to the man ducking through the low shop doorway. A frown marred his handsome face. "How many times have your mother and I told you not to run off when we're in town?" He took his son by the hand, smiling kindly at Bill. If he was shocked or disgusted by Bill's face, he didn't show it.
This time the realization came slowly, because after all he had never seen this face before. But he knew it, nonetheless.
"My apologies, sir," the man was saying. "Tom is very sorry for disturbing you as well."
"Sorry, sir," the child piped up when his father raised his eyebrows.
"S' no trouble," said Bill, aware that he was staring, unable to look away.
The man's smile didn't falter, but it took on a faintly puzzled cast. "Forgive me, but have we met before? You look familiar."
Bill shook his head, twisting his cap in his hands. "Can't think 'f an instance where a gen'leman such as yourself should have met an ol' seadog like me."
"Oh, I can, and how – I wager you'd be surprised," said the man with a short chuckle. Bill thought that if ever it were possible for a man to expire from surprise, he would've been doing it now. He might have been, in fact; his heart did feel constricted by a strange pressure.
"Will!" The man looked across the street to a woman standing outside another shop. She was beautiful and dressed as well as he, with a nurse toting a baby and a girl who must have been Thomas's old sister by her side. "Shall we head back for supper? The heat is beginning to make me feel faint." She gave him a roguish grin and swept a dramatic hand across her brow.
"A moment, Elizabeth," he said. Turning back, he added, "May I offer you an invitation to supper? It's the least we can –" He paused, stepped into the street, looked to either end of it. The old man had gone.
"Odd," he murmured. "I could have sworn..."
Will looked back at his son, who was standing on the path with his hand held out. Smiling at him to show he wasn't angry, Will took it and led him across to Elizabeth and the girls.
"Who was that man?" she wanted to know, depositing a hefty package in his arms. "He looked like a beggar."
"He may have been, for all I know," Will replied, letting Catherine dig in his coat pocket for the piece of hard candy he'd bought her. "Yet there was something –" He shrugged, the feeling of recollection dissipating under his wife's inquisitive gaze. "Nothing important. Let's go home."
From an alley a few blocks down, Bill waited and watched as the young family ambled by. Shoulders propped against the brick wall, he let himself slide to the ground, and he laughed freely for the first time since he'd left Jack's company.