A/N: Ah, another chapter Please R&R!

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Don't sue me. I do happen to own this title, though it's a Tolstoy referece.

To the Ends of the Earth: Every Happy Family

He left without saying goodbye.

William's mother had always been a very social woman, caught up in the glory of high society parties and her own magnificent dress. That is what he remembers most about her; she sits before a mirror, huge, gilded and gold, peering close to insert an earring while his father yells in the background that he knows where she's going, knows what she does at those parties and why can't she just stay at home, for her son if nothing else? She sighs and doesn't answer and William learns to be quiet.

And learns to be loyal. Watches his father sit defeated in the dark and swears he'll never leave anyone.

His father is all waving and smiles while the sunlight glints off his copper buttons in the blue-skyed daylight of Port Royale, an Admiral though he teaches William not to duel, but to dance, and when Hector later teaches him to duel he discovers they are much the same thing. Pressed up against a mast with sword at his throat.

Nothing changes. At first it's the three of them but really only two, William and his father alone, and later it's the same. Because Jack insists on taking the Captain's cabin to himself, so the smaller one is left for Hector and William, and on their first night William brushes against him in sleep and Hector turns, and watches, and stays, and William doesn't understand what that means until much later.

I try not to give away too much of the future, but I find that that's difficult when one is delving so into the past.

This will happen: "I still don't know what it was that made me go with you..." Bootstrap whispers, his head rested against Hector's chest, that reassuring heartbeat under his ear. "From the ceremony, I mean, that first time... even then I knew I had to follow you..."

Jack's one of them, but he has first his quest for the Pearl and then the Pearl herself, so often comes down to just William and Hector, and William watches his friend steer their ship with complete trust that he knows where he's going.

I want to paint a picture for you of this man. I want to give him to you trisected. There's the man William sees and the man the world sees, and then there's the man Bootstrap sees when he's grown and lies bleeding in a tiny cell on the Dutchman, huddled against the bars and wondering bitterly what his own father would think of him now.

He doesn't try to hide what he's done, because it's obvious, and whatever Bill may think of Davy Jones, he knows he isn't a fool. He'd known it when he joined, and he knows it now, and though he tries he can't manage to regret the man, to pity the romanticism of what he is, this empty creature whose heart beats alone for love; because his own heart hasn't beat for some time now, and he's not sure he even remembers how it feels.

So there's blood, and there's pain, and it's bad this time but he's getting used to it. To crawling across the deck in those few moments between when the whip stops and when his legs remember how to work, to the faces smirking down at him. But they hadn't let him leave, this time, and that Bootstrap isn't used to. Is used to being alone, but not used to being trapped in any prison smaller than the Dutchman itself. The bars are cool against his forehead and he never regrets for a moment that he can feel.

But he's beginning to suspect he may be going insane.

It's a cell. It's a cell. There's a corpse on the floor, flesh picked away by the sea. and Bootstrap wonders what he'd look like now if someone cut him open; if he'd still be flesh and blood, or if he's just water. Almost wants to try it himself and see, except that he doesn't want to die and he gave away his knife.

Bootstrap thinks that perhaps his father killed himself. Wonders what it means that he knows he will never do the same. Wonders if it was his fault and if his father loved his mother as much as he loved Hector -- loves Hector -- or if Will loves Elizabeth like that, and pities them both because though he may not have Hector, no one else does either, and no one did even when he was alive, and wonders why it is that trying to kill him is so preferable to leaving him but only knows that it is.

Because he can make excuses. But he won't make excuses. Won't give Hector a reason because there isn't one which makes sense, but he'd forgive him if he could and he wonders if on the long shot that his son rescues him, for which he won't allow himself to hope, if he'll ever be able to stop thinking of him. Ever be able to stop loving him the way he does, where everything is him and there's nothing else, but there was never anything else after he met Hector. And that's almost a comforting thought.

I don't mean to imply that it went from being him to being you and that was all, because it wasn't that way. I loved my father, but I left him and I could never leave you. I never even wanted to, when I longed constantly to leave my father. To leave that life.

It's dark and William looks up at his father, eyes shining with admiration, as the man brushes back that groomed, untangled hair and wonders why he so wants a life for his son that he hates himself. Bootstrap imagines these thoughts, pulls them from his father's eyes as he feeds them into his head himself and for a moment he remembers and is glaringly aware that his own son is probably dead. But he's grown accustomed to using Hector to mask his pain.

"Do you think you could ever forget me?" Hector is asleep, but he pulls Bootstrap closer at the question, and though he longs to shake Hector awake and ask again, he forces himself to be content with that as the answer.

We're getting closer.

Bootstrap is beginning to have more and more trouble differentiating between what he dreams and what is real. What might be real. What's meant to be. He stands with Hector on the deck of a ship and though his back burns with the whip he'd never have expected to see Hector so glad to see him. Never expected to see him again, of course, except in dreams, and though this is a dream it somehow seems more to him, that the body near his beats and exudes heat, so he's careful and doesn't touch him as he might have in a true dream, but when Bootstrap wakes up he can't remember anything.

He hasn't seen his own reflection in anything of better quality that the undulating surface of the sea since he left Port Royale, but as he stares into it, picking at the few blurry details he can grasp -- the crusted growth of his cheek and the starfish, as well as the simple arch of his nose and the sharp line of his jaw, and tries to remember if he looks like his father. If his son looks like his father, and if his son looks like him, and if any Turner in this line will end up better, because the one time they returned to Port Royale, when Bootstrap was only just Bootstrap rather than William, or even Bill, there was a brand new admiral, and no one would speak of what had happened to his father.

"We'll be fine, Bootstrap." Hector holds him close and looks into his eyes, and even though their hands are cold, Bootstap entangles their fingers, and suddenly wants to kiss those jeweled hands, trace the unique lines of his palm and fingertips, those patterns that mean the man against him is Hector and could never be anyone else. "We'll ge' out o' this. We've been through worse, haven' we?" Hector smiles, and Bootstrap could never keep himself from smiling back. "An' then we'll ge' our own ship..."

Wonder -- what's real and what isn't. There's a power in telling a story that Bootstrap understands but never grasped, this slow leak of details. Later Bootstrap will wonder if perhaps Tia Dalma has been in their heads all along, in their dreams, guiding with light touches and simple words.

So be a dream or don't be a dream. But be something.

I think he reminded me of you, father, this son of mine. I saw my own devastating loyalty in him -- and while that's not inherently a bad thing, if the person you want so badly to protect doesn't want to protect you equally badly in return, then the loyalty can only be displaced. (See? I've learned. I've learned something. ) But I also saw your passion and your drive. Your ambition. I never had that. I ran away.

"The boy's not here. He must've been claimed by the sea."

"I am the sea."

Remnants of broken ships. Wood. Metal. Sail cloth. And bodies. Sailors are part of the ship, nothing more than that. You're a pirate, so be a pirate. Learn. You killed but you never learned to kill. No one to kill. There are no survivors. Those who kneel shaking on the deck are not alive if the captain says they are not alive. William is not there.

"He must've been claimed by the sea."

"I am the sea."

"You need time alone with your thoughts."

Bootstrap almost laughs, because his best friend is dead, and his father is dead, his son is probably dead, and if there's anything in the world he needs less it is time alone with his thoughts.

Hope. Hope. Hope.

"The boy's not here."

He could've gotten away. Leapt off the ship at the last moment. Found a rowboat, or even swum. Strong boy. He could have made it. Might have made it. Has to have.

Hope.

Bootstrap never once suspects that his son crouches in the bow of the ship, cradled between the teeth of it, the water speeding close and sending spray to chill the boy but not to kill him.

But there's hope. Hard not to be. Wouldn't have been, a few days ago, before the boy showed up on the ship and handed him a reason for it. To want to live. To want to leave. But that was hope too, and there's nothing harder to let go of.

So he'll miss Hector because that's nothing new, but now he'll wonder, too, if his father is proud of him, and he will not think of the body of his son slowly decomposing at the bottom of the sea. Will not blame himself for these deaths which are all his fault if they exist at all and he isn't altogether sure they do at times. Slipping. But we're getting closer.

How does a person become what he is? William watches his mother leave his father and leaves his father and leaves his son. But could never leave him.

Will is left by his father by choice and his mother by death and Bootstrap longs to know what he's learned, what truths he can find in that solitude. If he regrets the answers.

Did you know, father? Son? That I was happy? Does that even matter? I was supposed to be more. I know I was supposed to be more. But I can't have been, and I don't want to be. Cool metal against his forehead and rotting wood beneath.

I loved you, too. The best I could. Forgive me.