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Disney owns all. I am as unimportant as a lowly worm(and just as worth suing, well maybe not even), owning and claiming nothing. I write fan fics because I just never get tired of writing the same disclaimer over and over and over and over and over.

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Black Hearts and Silence- by BlackJackSilver

Chapter One-

Three Coins and the Deep

At first, the curse bestowed not a curse, but a blessing upon most of the crew of the Black Pearl. How they had laughed at those heathen gods for making them all the more frightening and completely unable to die. Some bloody curse, that was. It was, come true, a pirate's dream!

It was not Bill Turner's dream, though. He had no wish to be any less an ordinary man, than his crimes of piracy already had made him. He could not bear to imagine his wife and son cowering at the sight of him in his skeletal form, still that image taunted him. From the night of their first moonlit transformation, and later at the revelation of their invincibility, Bill Turner awaited the rest of the curse, that hidden part he sensed from deep within his own soul. He waited and watched, hoped even, for signs of some malady befallen them all, some horrible affliction that they all so richly deserved to suffer. Bill did not have to wait long.

By the time he spoke with the old Teller, he knew the crew was starting to notice the sensory oddities with which he was now so familiar. He had only three coins of his share remaining. The rest, he had turned into more common currency, and had sent most of that home to his wife and child. Sending money home was an inefficient way to enrich his family, he knew. Every palm his earnings crossed took a share, a transport cost, a tithe for their trouble. A considerable percentage of what he sent, nearly always did find its way home, though. Since the curse, his wife and Will were the only sources of hope left to him. Since talking to the Teller, Bill knew he was lost to them. Somehow his wife would manage without the money he sent. Will would grow into adulthood. Bill felt this to be true, and knew he would not see it.

"You'd have to wash the coin in the substance most dear to you," the Teller had told him, "be that whore spit or yer ma's fish stew."

Would have been easy enough for Jack, Bill thought, always plenty of rum handy. Bill thought constantly of Jack. He missed him even more than he'd thought he might. Bill knew that Jack most particularly haunted his thoughts, because Bill had not been able to do right by Jack, not yet.

"Then you must send the coin to a man you love, a man ye'd die to save. Ya must tell him nothing about the reason for sending it. Fore ya ask- yes -has to be a man. Finding a woman ya love would be too easy. Curses are fickle, fussy and difficult things.

Once ya done all that- yer coin ul be beyond the reach of Barbossa or any who search it out. Two things will have to happen fore they'll ever find it. First, the coin would have to be stolen from the one ya sent it to, by one knowing nothing about the coin nor the curse. Then second, the coin would have to get washed by the same stuff ya wash it in the first time. If those two things happen, yer coin will call out to the cursed men jus' like all the rest of the coins will."

The coins must be stolen first! That part made Bill feel better about the idea of sending the coins. Thieves, not the recipients, would have to face Barbossa. He could live, die or exist somewhere between the two, with that on his conscience.

"When will the coins start calling?"

"Hard to say. I suspect it'll start either when the last of the coins are spent by them that took em out the chest, or likelier still, when every cursed man is sure the curse upon him is the reason for all his suffering."

Bill paid the Teller well, with some of his remaining silver, and warned him to expect Barbossa.

"Nothin Barbossa can do to me, lad, 'cept help me find my death. When yer old as I am- that just ain't scary no more."

"He could make your death unpleasant."

That made the old Teller laugh, like it was the best joke in the world, that Bill had just told him.

Bill washed the three coins in seawater, wishing he did love whore spit, his mother's stew, or any less common substance, more than he loved the sea. That would have been a lie, though. He could only count on the truth to help him in his chosen course of action. He gave the problem of whom to send the coins some thought. Eventually, he dropped the first of his three remaining coins into the sea. Knowing a thing or two about Captain Jack Sparrow, Bill knew he would have waded into the sea before he used Barbossa's shot. The teller never said anything about the recipient having to be a living man.

Bill watched as a shark following the Pearl immediately stole the coin from Jack. It was only a thought, of course, an easy empty gesture on his part. Bill knew those never counted in the end. It would have amused him, however, had he known how much chaos and groundless terror he would cause, once the coins started singing, and shark-hunting topped Barbossa's list of things for the crew to do.

Bill put a coin in a wooden box, wrapped that in coarse paper and tied it up with string. He sent the parcel to Will by the same route he usually sent money, half expecting, half hoping, it would not reach it's intended destination. He had gone to the trouble of having it made into a necklace. Will was still a lad, with the heart of a man, though not the height nor the might. If Will wore it, Bill reasoned, likely it would get stolen faster. All the better to put more distance between Will and Barbossa.

The third and final coin, Bill Turner sent to the only other man on earth he truly loved.

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(coming soon, Chapter Two)

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