I came up with the entire conversation that was the basis for this story about three weeks ago, but I never did anything with it because I was so busy. Then I got sick for three days, and this is what happened. Maybe I should do that more often.

Disclaimer: I not own Pirates of the Caribbean or anything affiliated with it in any way, shape, or form. Oh, how I wish I did...

Look Up

He was staring into the ocean again, leaning on the rail looking straight down. Always looking down.

"Bootstrap" Bill Turner had spent every night of the past two years watching his son stare into the sea. Will did the same thing every night because in his role as captain of the Flying Dutchman, he simply did not need to sleep. This was a well-known fact to the entire crew, and most especially to Bootstrap himself, who was his son's first mate.

The only mystery was why Will never looked up.

There were two things that could be said for this world-between-worlds through which the Dutchman sailed.

One was that the skies were always clear. There were no storms, no weather of any kind really, so therefore, no clouds.

The other was that the stars were beautiful. Not that you were likely to find any sailor on the Flying Dutchman spouting poetic things about the stars, Bootstrap mused. But still, he thought, glancing up at the sky, they were beautiful. He had never seen so many stars, so many galaxies visible to the naked eye anywhere in the living world. Which brought the question back to mind: Why didn't Will look up?

This night was no different from any other, except in one respect: Bill Turner was tired of wondering. Leaning against the rail, Will's hunched posture made him look… depressed? No, not depressed. Defeated.It made him look defeated, as though he'd been beaten, conquered somehow. It was as if his nearly indomitable spirit, the fighting spirit that Bill so admired and loved in his son, had simply vanished. It was as if one night there was suddenly nothing left but the sadness and the pain. As Will's father, it was extremely painful for Bill to see. He refused to let his only child spend one more night cold and empty, at least not without knowing the reason why. If Will wanted to be left alone after that, then Bill would leave him alone. But until then… not a chance.

Bill approached his son slowly, not wanting to disturb him, even though he was sure Will knew he was there. It was a kind of sixth sense that the kid seemed to have developed. He always knew when someone was nearby waiting – or afraid – to approach him. So Bill was not surprised when Will, without turning around, acknowledged his presence.

"Something I can help you with, Mr. Turner?"

Bill chuckled at the use of his formal title. "The crew are all belowdecks, kid. I'm your father now, not your first mate."

The corner of Will's mouth twitched upward in a slight smile. "Even when you are my first mate, it doesn't stop you from calling me 'kid.'"

Bill laughed again. "Because you are a kid. To me, anyway."

Will shook his head. "What do you need, Dad?"

Bill took a brief moment to savor being called 'Dad' before answering. "Me? I don't need anything. It's you I want to talk about, lad."

"I see." Will's tone was one of practiced neutrality, neither affirmative or negative, neither encouraging nor discouraging.

Bootstrap rolled his eyes. The kid was a tough nut to crack. You'd think three and a half years on the same boat together would have enabled Bill Turner to figure out his son. But no. William Turner was still a puzzle. So rather than beat around the bush, Bill simply jumped right in.

"You never look at the stars anymore."

Will turned to face him for the first time, his surprise obvious. "What?"

Bill amended his earlier description. The kid was a puzzle with no poker face. He shrugged. "Early on, when you first took this job, you used to spent every night out here, staring up at the stars. Now… now you never even look up."

Will looked away again, his eyes moving back down to look at the water below. "So?"

Bill examined his son's face, noticing the sadness now more than ever. Finally, he asked softly, "Why'd you stop looking up, Will?"

Will said something so quiet Bill couldn't hear it.

"What was that?"

"'Took this job,'" Will muttered again. "You say that as if I chose it. But I didn't get to choose anything." With his elbows on the rail, he rested his forehead against the palms of both hands and closed his eyes.

Silence reigned for one minute, then two, then three, but Bill refused to break it, not wanting to push the already stressed and exhausted young captain any more than he had to.

Finally, Will spoke. "Why did I stop looking up? I don't know." He was frowning. "Maybe when I started, I was looking for answers, and I thought, for some reason, that I'd find them up there, somewhere in the heavens. And maybe now I know there's nothing there at all." He sounded bitter. "There are no answers."

"Maybe not," Bill answered, glancing up at the sky. If there were any answers up there, they weren't showing themselves to him. Unable to help himself, he moved closer to his son and put an arm around his shoulders. Will didn't seem to mind, so Bill left it there.

After a long pause, Will looked up at his father again. There were tears in his eyes. "Why did this happen to me?" he asked painfully, his voice no more than a whisper.

Seeing the tears that were threatening to fall, Bill pulled his son closer and let him rest his head on Bill's shoulder.

"I don't know, kid."

Once again, silence reigned for a short while, until Will mumbled, "I can hear your heartbeat." He pulled away enough to look his father in the eye. "I'm not used to that sound anymore. All I'm used to is… silence." He unconsciously rubbed his scarred chest where his heart had once been, where he was fatally wounded by Davy Jones, his eyes again drifting toward the dark waves.

"She has my heart," he said, his voice dropping to a whisper again. "In more ways than one."

Bill wondered if his son was still talking to him, or just thinking out loud. Probably a little of both, he decided.

"Maybe there was another reason I started staring at the ocean," Will murmured contemplatively. He definitely sounded like he was thinking out loud. "Since I left Elizabeth back on that island – and I know she's still there, I can feel it – maybe I just thought that this ocean that we're sailing on every day is the same one that surrounds her island, the same one she looks at. But it's not, is it?" His words were suddenly directed at his father again. "This isn't the same ocean that she sees."

Bill shook his head. "No… no it's not."

"I guess I already knew that," Will sighed quietly. "I just wanted to think it was."

Bill could almost see the depression settling in behind Will's clouded eyes. He gripped his shoulder bracingly, once again looking up while his son looked down. In that moment, he was startled to notice something that he had never realized was there before. He turned back to Will.

"You know, even though this ocean isn't the same, there might be something else that is."

"Yeah?" Will didn't sound impressed. "What's that?"

Bill smiled. "Why don't you look up and see for yourself?" He squeezed Will's shoulder one more time and walked away.

Will sighed quietly, and then froze as, for a second, he swore he heard the voice of the woman he loved whisper in his ear:

"Look up, Will."

He did. Shining brightly in the sky above him was Polaris, the North Star.

And then he knew: even if Elizabeth didn't see as many stars as he did when she looked up, she still saw the same stars.

They were looking up at the same sky.

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