Author's note: Ahoy again! Here is chapter two. Hope you enjoy it, please R&R! Oh, and you should all read this fic's companion piece -- Trust, by my dear friend CaptainMeds. And review that, too P
Oh, and another note -- I'm a little confused about the exact nature of the curse. Barbossa says he can feel nothing, but the pirates seem to be able to feel pain -- so I've decided they can.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Don't sue me. I don't even own the title of this chapter -- if you understand the reference, I'll love you forever. And yes, I'm aware it's trite. Shush, you.
To the Ends of the Earth: The Unbearable Lightness of Being
It's much harder to live life than to tell a story.
There are these tentacles.
Bootstrap thinks they are part of a story first, or a memory, because they seem disembodied by the dark -- green, twisting things which flow through the water effortlessly and do not make it move. But they touch him, and Bootstrap shudders even though he cannot feel it.
The layer of algae which has settled on his skin rains down as the tentacles wrap around his body, dwarfing him with their vastness, and his bonds snap as they tug him upward. The pressure is still too great, and he cannot move. The acceleration is too much, this violent upwards motion after months of motionlessness. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries not to believe in anything.
Bootstrap does not know if pirates believe in heaven. He knows they believe in hell, but there cannot be a worse place than where he was. He still believes this is true. Later, when the kraken comes for them again, he fears the water far more than Davy Jones, and he claims to be afraid that Hector will stay behind to go down with his ship, but he really is just afraid to be alone again.
It is not a smooth movement, his ascension, he realizes. They move in quick bursts, an undulation. And the tentacles are not disembodied. There are others, more tentacles, and they whip around him. Forward. Upward.
Bootstrap needs no oxygen, but he longs for it, to cough the saline water from his lungs and feel them empty. The salt will sting and dry him from the inside.
There is light suddenly. The sun, he realizes, and although it is filtered through many hundreds of feet of water, to him it is so bright that his eyes close reflexively with the force of it. Even his eyelids are not comfort enough, the moving shadows shining through, reddened by the blood he still possesses. If he were cut it would not spill out, but it would coat the blade. Hector.
Where are you now, my friend, as I am carried back into the light? Bootstrap has grown to hate the light.
Bootstrap has grown to hate the light.
"Who are you?" Hector. Are you? I love you.
Bootstrap's first motion is to raise a hand to shield his eyes, the movement jerky and shaking, and that is his first question. "Who are you?" Again. The tentacles spill him onto wood, slimy and wet, and there is no air to breathe, no comforting salt drying on his skin. "I miss you. I miss everything."
He doesn't believe in the words that answer, burbling from the figure before him, whose silhouette he can only just see through the gaps in his fingers, the slits of his eyes. They are still underwater, and it is far too bright. "Ye've been in the ocean too long, Bootstrap Bill Turner."
Tell me a story. "A story?"
There's something touching his chin, something too thick and long to be a finger, and it sticks to his skin. He shudders with the touch but cannot move to knock it away. Doesn't want to. Pain is something. Pain is everything when there is nothing else.
"A mere story?" Burbling laughter. "No, Mr. Turner. No. A legend."
He cannot think. There's too much noise, too much light. Laughter, he realizes finally. That is what the dull roar is. Laughter, high and inhuman.
"I... I want..."
The tentacle recoils, curling into a face before his eyes. Bootstrap would not have recognized his own face if he'd been able to see it now, but he is a pirate and there isn't a pirate in the world who doesn't know that face.
"What is it you want, Bootstrap? I'll happily have the kraken bring you back down, just say the word." Davy Jones smiles knowingly, wide, flat lips twisting into his beard of tentacles.
"No. Please -- no." There is no thinking. No consideration. There can't be. It isn't a choice.
"You know what you are promising, Mr. Turner? One hundred years aboard my ship, in exchange for freeing you."
Bootstrap nods. The wood is hard beneath him and he'd cry if he wasn't already swimming in tears. His eyes close, but he can hear the delight in Jones' voice. the murmur around him of what must be the crew, their excitement. Fresh meat. "Welcome aboard the Flying Dutchman, Bootstrap Bill."
Bootstrap is almost blind for the first few weeks of his servitude. He can barely move for the first few days, even the simplest muscles eaten away by disuse. He preforms simple duties, leaning painfully against the side of the boat as he scrubs the deck, wondering vaguely why they bother. The water leaves more than it washes away, the entire boat a mass of sediment and coral, and things more alive than any of its previously human occupants. The others leave him alone until he can move, but he is not thankful. He knows. There'd be no fun in it before then. He pretends to be weak for as long as he can, stumbling around in an exaggerated imitation of Jack, and peering close at everything through squinted eyes, but they soon catch on and punish him for lying. The wounds heal and they do not scar.
People are people everywhere, even if they aren't people. In the beginning he was different and now he is different. He waits to begin his transformation, to change from merely cursed to truly changed, blossoming spines, or fins, or gills. But he does not, and he is punished for that as well. He sleeps now, but does not dream, those naps shallow with fear. He wakes up to find the Captain standing over him more than once, prodding with tentacles as well as deformed hands, in desperate anger to know why his own magic will not work. Bootstrap explains as soon as he remembers, about the Aztec gold and the Aztec curse, and he is punished for that as well. He doesn't understand why he can feel pain when he can feel nothing else, but Gods do not understand humanity; do not know that pain is infinitely better than nothing, and although Bootstrap fears these beatings, fears the bite of the whip on his back and the shelled fists lacerating his skin, he still does not want to be back in the ocean alone.
But he misses the stories.
There is one he would not tell himself even in the worst moments, when he knew who he was and why he was at the bottom of the ocean with perfect, devastating clarity. When all he could see were Hector's eyes -- and god, those eyes -- watching him as he sunk, the impossible weight of the cannon pulling him downward. Away. A story he would not tell even when he was full of how much Hector needed him, how much he needed Hector, the boy he followed and the man he followed and the man he loved. But on the Dutchman he began to speak it, hesitantly, in words broken by pain and punctuated by screams. I love you. I love you. I love you.
There's this story where you rescue me. Where I see your eyes change from guilt and triumph to fear and need and you dive in after me, swimming faster than the gravity pulling me down. Where you reach me and grab me, and for seconds we sink together but you smile and cut through the ties, and we rise together while the cannon sinks and then you kiss me and you taste like sea water which tastes like tears and I can feel you.
Later, this is what Bootstrap is most ashamed of. Of believing even for those seconds, even to block out the pain, that Hector could love him too.
It changes when the curse is lifted. It is night, and they sail in shallow water, the moonlight penetrating the depths of the sea and changing him, this walking skeleton. These bones. He shudders mid-turn of the kraken's wheel, collapsing onto the deck with the force of it. This freedom. Flesh suddenly on his bones. They stop before he is trampled and Bootstrap is almost sorry because he can feel again. The grain of the wood, each knot and barnacle. He lies against it, immobilized by wonder before they yank him to his feet and he can feel that too.
Hector. Hector. You've... done it? Lifted it? "Hector?"
The last word is whispered aloud, and the two men dragging him share a knowing smirk. Bootstrap has been entertainment for a long time, and it isn't the first they've heard the name. "Hector," they taunt, shaking him, "Always Hector." Bootstrap can hear them but it doesn't matter because its gone. For a moment he is starving to death and drowning at once, and for a moment he thinks he might actually die. But it doesn't last. They drop him in a heap to the side where he will not be in the way, and Bootstrap's face itches as the starfish forms.
Davy Jones smiles when he sees it and says nothing, but Bootstrap is one of them then. They still shove him around, still awaken him by whispering the name at night, but Bootstrap is used to that and now he plays their games. He never wins and he never loses. One hundred years. Never a day less.
But the days go by. Endless days. Each one indecipherable from the one before it. They spend a few, rare moments above the water, and those are the only thing Bootstrap looks forward to. To breathing air and feeling the breeze on his skin. They are all quiet then, each reliving his own memory of the life he had before he had no life -- lovers and children and food and drink and life, swallowed with every breath of unnecessary air.
And with each ship they sink, each throat Bootstrap is forced to cut, he holds a secret, guilty hope that he will find Hector.
Because he lifted it, and that means that Bootstrap's son is dead. That means that Jack is dead, and Bootstrap is on the Dutchman for no reason. But it means Hector is really and truly alive again, and Bootstrap hates himself for being happy that Hector, at least, will not suffer the same fate.
That's another story, and even Bootstrap doesn't believe in it. Hector is bound and bloody before him, and Jones forces other men to sell their souls while Bootstrap kisses the blood from Hector's forehead and asks him why, and kills him before he can answer.
