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To the Ends of the Earth: Like so Many Scars
In time the dreams return, as they always do. Time passes. The world is still the world without Hector in it, and although Bootstrap resents its continuance, if there is any place in it to fit the mood of one who is lost, the Flying Dutchman is that place. They sail through air and they sail through sea and that doesn't change. Bootstrap dreams.
There's no one else in the world for us, he whispers into Hector's ear as he wraps his arms around him, bare chest against bare back. There's no one else in the world. This is it. You're it, for me. I love you.
And sometimes there's anger. Who else would love you? The voice is distant, and Bootstrap's mouth moves along with it although he wills it not to. The words are his own, somehow, though his heart aches with each. Who else, Hector Barbossa? With your closed and hardened heart, which not even my hands can coax open? How can you not love me? I'm all there is. Bootstrap kisses the back of his neck to chase the words away and wakes up alone and tasting dust.
They're fever dreams. He sleeps in the hold now, unable to stand to hear them, those inhuman moans at night while he lies in bed and tries to hear Hector breathing like he used to. Each of the others knows that he dreams too, of the life he once knew, of lovers who are now long dead. But Bill is still the most human, and while their grief shrinks and changes his grows deeper each day, that ever expanding pit in his stomach or heart. Even when awake -- you're all there is for me, he whispers to himself with each heave of every rope, each turn of the kraken's wheel, each late night-scrub of the deck. The work is no longer difficult, no longer matters at all. He doesn't care that he is trapped, does not long to be free. You're all there is for me. All there was. You're dead, Hector, and there's nothing else.
I let him kill you, he whispers too, when Jack's face appears in the dreams. I let him kill you, but I never would have let you kill him. It's good that I'm here. Jack smirks in his infuriating way, all glints of teeth and glints of gold, and when he's gone everything is Hector again.
Loved you, Hector. Loved you. That's all I ever did. Bootstrap wakes to the unasked question and wonders where it came from; that drifting, that nothingness.
Fever dreams. Fevered dreams. They stand on the deck of the Pearl and Hector turns to him because Hector is dead and it doesn't matter anymore what Bootstrap imagines. There is no longer the fear that someday he might have to look into Hector's eyes and pretend that he never wanted him. Never loved him. That there was never a time when even in his dreams he called him Hector freely, without fear, and touched him everywhere and cried into his tangled hair. Hector is dead and it doesn't matter. So tonight you'll touch my face and kiss me desperately and tomorrow you'll tell me you love me and you'll do it again the next night.
And in the mornings Bootstrap will remember and then he will be glad for the hard wood under his back, for the solitude, because for those few moments numbness eludes him and he won't be able to help but cry for the memories. Will not be able to smother them with dreams.
There's this time. There's this time.
I almost told you once. Twice. Did you know that? There's was this time when we were young, and I'd gotten hurt -- a deep cut across my back which seem fatal at the time. I'd never noticed how hard you tried to protect me until you couldn't, how you stopped to check for my breath before killing the man with the sword, and even through the gentle haze which comes with loss of blood and the acute fear that I might die, I watched you, face alive with emotion the way it only was when you were angry, that bitter fierceness and those gritted teeth, and I thought in that moment that you were beautiful without wondering what that meant and when it was over and you bandaged my back, rough fingers on tender skin, I turned and hugged you before I could think and almost told you. But the surprise in your eyes frightened me, and even though your arms came up to wrap around me as well, I couldn't.
You probably don't remember that. I'm sure you don't. Didn't.
Bootstrap doesn't know if pirates believe in heaven, but he knows that they believe in hell. He cannot forget Jack's last words on the day of the mutiny, damning them all. The deepest level of hell is reserved for betrayers and mutineers. Bootstrap would not argue in his case, would readily admit that this is the fate which he deserves. But Hector... the tears make simple patterns in the salty dust and he cannot help insisting to himself and any god who might be listening that Hector doesn't deserve to be in hell. That he had a good heart, even if he didn't show it. Even if he didn't know it himself. Bootstrap believes that. Fights to believe it. Loved him.
Then tell me why you did it.
He wants to slam him up against a wall, to threaten a kiss and see Hector's eyes darken with desire rather than distance and to pull back at the last moment. To feel the withheld whimper shiver through his friend's body and to ask him in a whisper.
Why did you do it? Teasingly and without desperation, as if the right answer were a key, some trinket he desired rather than the one thing he'd been longing to know for so many years.
So, Hector. Tell me why you did it? But Hector's dead and he'll never get an answer.
I would have killed you, Jack, if I'd been there. Without any sort of hesitation, no consideration of the fact that you used to be a friend. A brother, even, and a part of me. I would have killed you without a second thought and I think that makes me more dangerous than Hector, don't you see that? Because he couldn't kill you, and he couldn't kill me. He didn't even kill my son.
So why can't you have killed me instead? he asks Jack and the world itself. It should have been me. It should have been me, Jack. I loved him. I love him. I don't know how to live without him. He's all there is. All there ever was.
The days pass numbly and he does what he must. Kills, works. Works and kills. Grows more inhuman every day; darkened, mottled skin, and starfish threatening to grow over his eye. And those are his nights, the endless dreams. And mornings of memory.
The second time.
You were gone for days. Left on one of the boats. Told us not to bother about it, that you'd come back, but I didn't believe you. You'd been pulling away so much... leaving our room, not letting me touch you, not even letting me call you Hector any more, and I'd always been the one you let call you by your first name... Jack laughs at me for worrying so much, and says that either you'll come back or you won't, but that there'd be a time to come when I wouldn't have you to hide behind all the time.
"I don't hide behind him. Just because I have some sort of loyalty --"
"Loyalty!" Jack stands up, nearly knocking over his full glass of rum, and scrambling to right it. "What you have isn't loyalty, Bill," he says, looking at Bootstrap darkly, then shrugs. "Besides. I'm your captain, your loyalty should be all mine."
"He's just -- I just -- I care about him, that's all," Bootstrap mutters into his own drink, afraid. But you always knew, didn't you Jack? You always knew. I don't know how I never realized it. I was always afraid that you'd figure it out one day, with all your teasing comments, but you knew all along. "I just want him to come back." I still don't know where you went. I wish I could have asked you. I wish I could have -- oh, Hector, there are so many things we've missed...
The memories are fragmented by grief and for moments there are just tears, and Bootstrap leans to appreciate the time they spend underwater, because although he still fears them, still feels trapped by the sea seeping into his skull, on those days no one will comment on the redness of his eyes, will not taunt him by speaking Hector's name. He kills a man for it once, although of course the death is temporary, the dulled blade of his knife tearing through the man's stomach for whispering the name while he is sleeping, having snuck down to steal rum. The hundreds of hermit crabs which spill from inside him pinch and cling to William's skin but he cannot feel them and doesn't care and almost likes it when the captain orders him lashes, because physical pain is fleeting and in those few seconds while the whip is white-hot on his skin Bootstrap cannot miss him.
But that's so pathetic, isn't it Hector? You'd call me weak. You'd call me weak. Love's nothing, just making eyes at someone. Messes with your head. Makes you do stupid things. You'd call me weak.
The door slams open. Hector, wet from the rain. He's there, and Bootstrap wants to go to him, to hug him, but the time's long past when he was young enough to get away with it, and Hector is already changing. Jack winks.
"I'll leave you lovebirds to get reacquainted." He saunters past, and Barbossa growls and says nothing.
When they're alone -- the room is small and dimly lit, and Bill stares down at his empty mug as Hector sits across from him and still says nothing.
"Hector--"
"Barbossa," he interrupts sharply, and Bootstrap sighs, nodding tiredly.
"Barbossa. So you're back? Jack said --"
"Jack." Barbossa interrupts, catching on the name. "About Jack. Did ye ever thin' maybe we can' trust 'im?"
William looks at him, eyes full of surprise, because whatever he might have expected Hector to say this isn't it. "Of course we can trust Jack," he says slowly. "He's our friend."
"Is 'e? We promised, everythin' was to be an equal share. Tha' includes information, Bootstrap, and Jack's been keeping things from us."
"That... that doesn't mean..."
"I'm going teh take th' ship." And there's a flicker in his eyes that Bootstrap misses even in his memory. There's that flicker. It speaks of help and confusion and something that in another life might have been love. Of why he's been gone and why he's been going and why he won't let Bootstrap touch him anymore. Closeness.
In a future Hector will tell him he loves him. You should know that. Will tell him, and William won't believe it until Hector whispers to him of death and longing and he'll learn to understand.
This is what Bootstrap dreams the night before he meets his son:
He wakes up in Hector's bed, and fingers scrabble on the cold sheets, searching for the other man who is not there. He opens his eyes and slips from the room, above deck into the open air and finds him where he always used to find him. Hector gazes out across the sea and Bootstrap watches him. Comes up behind him, but doesn't touch.
"You told me you weren't going to do this anymore."
Barbossa shakes his head, turning to look at Bootstrap. "No I didn't. Tha' firs' night, I said I wouldn' leave. Made no promise teh anythin' else."
He's quiet for a time, turning away to look onto the horizon. "What is it you're looking for?" he asks quietly. And now Hector is watching him.
"Fer a long time... I think I was l looking for ye," he says finally. "Teh find wha' i' was ye meant. Why yeh followed me. Why I fel' the way I did when you touched me."
The words are a fantasy. Something Hector'd never say, and even in the dream they ring false and make him want to cry.
He reaches out to touch Hector's face, smiling sadly, and wakes up to the bitter knowledge that it was never him. It was never anyone else, but it was never him. He'd never had Hector, so he hadn't... really lost anything at all.
It's only for a second that he can make himself believe that, but its a start. The very first step, and then the rest of the memory.
"I'm going teh take th' ship."
He's standing now, circling the table to stand behind Bootstrap, placing a hand on his shoulder.
"Ye'll be with me, won't yeh, William?"
Bootstrap closes his eyes, and argues for a long time after that, but it's the first time Hector's touched him in what feels like forever, and the intimate way his lips curl around his real name make Bootstrap's heart shiver inside his chest, and he knows then without a shadow of a doubt that he will be with him. That Barbossa will make him choose, and he will be unable to even consider the question. It's you, Hector. Of course it's you. It's always been.
And he almost tells him then, because it might be a distraction, or a flicker of why this wasn't fair, why Hector couldn't possibly make him choose. Why it wasn't a choice. To make Barbossa understand that this is why he'll follow him, why he'll watch silently as Hector leaves Jack on that island to die and will not be able to speak until much later, when his guilt is stronger than even his love. And it might be the one thing that could make Hector stop for a moment and think and really look at him. But this isn't the Hector he knows, this person whose hand rests heavily on his shoulder, and the words catch in Bootstrap's throat.
