The cool wind blew up from the sea, smelling of fish and tasting of salt, and into his face. It was not something that he would ever have thought to be subjected to so much that he became accustomed to the feeling; nor to see the sun setting upon the open blue water, or to watch it rise in a sky free from the black smoke of coal fires. Never did he ever believe that he would come to captain a ship alongside his father, ferrying the souls of the dead, be they pirate, navy man, or traveler.

He hadn't been on a ship since the day he had nearly drowned when he was eight, and instead stuck rigidly to land; content training as an apprentice blacksmith rather than follow what he believed was his father's craft and become a merchant.

Will stood now on the mast of the Flying Dutchman and gazed out over the sea, thankful that the morning would not begin with finding drowned souls in the waters of the world. He had only been captain for a little while, just less than a year, and found it quite surprising how frequently ships were destroyed or overturned and people lost or killed, but still what he found most surprising was his new job relating to such events.

As he had grown up, Will had been instructed against the 'sins of piracy,' and had been taught that his father had been a humble merchant lost at sea, and that he had never engaged in any act of piracy. Will, of course, never recognized the medallion he was given as belonging to a pirate.

To find out from the infamous Jack Sparrow that his own father, his own modest father, would ever have been aboard a pirate ship, had served a pirate as his captain, to plunder villages and steal precious belongings it was…it was blasphemous to even think such a thing! He had been so unable to accept it, to believe that the same evil ran in his blood; and yet…it was true.

He simply could not allow himself to believe that he could become what he was taught to hate. Will wanted to be a good man, to lead an honorable life; he was blinded by the prejudice of stereotype, thinking that he couldn't be who he was meant to be, and still be a good person.

Even as time progressed and he was forced to revert to rather unorthodox methods to save Elizabeth, such as making a deal with a pirate, commandeering a ship, and finding a crew (all made of pirates,) among so many other of his actions, a little part of him long denied that he was slowly changing, becoming that which society so rejected, and that was what he listened too.

Stories of pirates, of sea-thieves, that were told to him as a child were never kind to the people given such labels. He was warned against the disgraced title, and reassured that he would never be allowed to go astray, and yet even as he resisted the truth of his blood so many years later, eventually he could no longer deny himself.

To say that he liked what he had done would be to lie, for Will was doing what he felt that he had to do at the time. He was a man with a strong sense of duty, and if it meant breaking a few rules here and there, it had to be done. For a long time, Will didn't realize that was the attitude a pirate harbored, and as he began to realize this, he understood that this was the pirate in his blood coming forth unbidden.

He didn't see it at first, but finally he knew as he fought Davy Jones, the metallic clash of their swords meeting lost in the roar of the sea and explosions of cannon-fire, as he found himself in the middle of pirate affairs, one of the main coordinators, he understood.

As a child he was taught the old saying, 'speak no evil, hear no evil, see no evil.' He did just that, for even as he spoke as a pirate, and when he heard the dealings of pirates they were not the dealings of evil men, but of decent men in their chosen profession, albeit a slightly misled profession.

The one that he broke was that he saw evil. He saw evil whenever he came across a pirate on his adventure, looking at them as though they were beneath him, not realizing he was becoming a pirate himself. It was simply something he did not want to see, even though everyone told him what he was becoming.

Will pretended not to see the evil that he was becoming, he couldn't accept it, wouldn't believe what was in his blood, until finally he was forced to see. As the captain of the Flying Dutchman, with his pirate of a father working aboard the ship with him, he was forced to face the reality that he had become the evil he so despised.

Or so he thought, for at that moment as he reflected that, the wind picked up and Will caught sight of the Black Pearl just on the horizon, and recalled what Jack had told him, and there, standing on the mast of the Dutchman, Will realized that Jack had been right: that though he was a pirate, though it was in his blood, he was still a good man.

He couldn't pretend or run away from it any longer. Will could see clearly what a child in his position could not: that he was what he was meant to be, and a fine person still, despite what society whispered, and he was almost proud to have a pirate for a father, and to he himself be a pirate, because no longer was his pirate blood unwelcome, now he bid it to come forth stronger, so that he could complete his job well and prove that though a pirate, he was a good man.

*~A/N~*
Disclaimer? Well, I don't happen to own POTC!
Explanation? Look, I know, I know, this has already been done by like a thousand other ficcers, but sssh, I wanted to try my hand at this subject. I mean, do you know how many post-DH fics there are about Fred and George that go over the EXACT same event? So like, I said, I just wanted to try out something in the POTC fandom.
Thought of the Day: I am a ninja for stealing gum from my brother...BWAHAHAHA. HA. Ha. ha...