In which Will change his name more or less successfully.

And yes, Will is completely huggable. Like, but why didn't I think of that before? Come, Willie, come! And after that you'll be mine for eternity! Mouahahaha! Eh, wait, to runaway, I mean you no harm...

But there is no victory for the one who claim ownership of what is not theirs! *thunder, drums* Run for your life, you scallywags!


Chapter 3: Wilhem Carter

That was simply not possible.

How could it be possible?

It clearly couldn't.

Yet it was.

Will stared at the young boy sitting on a barrel, a bit further away. He stared at him so long he didn't even register when the person from before asked him his name once again. It was only when another voice called him out that Will snapped out of it. He quickly searched for a name that could go with "Will" but wasn't "William Turner".

"Wilhem Carter, sir. My name is Wilhem Carter."

Not exactly the best he could have come up with, but the best he could come up with right now, right here. It surely sounded a bit too much like his name, like the boy's name, but well... He could have done better if he hadn't already told Norrington his name started with "Will".

Will gulped, shifted on his feet, and looked back at the lieutenant.

Norrington.

The man was younger than Will remembered, and he was wearing the uniform of a lieutenant of the Royal Navy, but it was Norrington. Those green eyes were unmistakable. Will mused that the man looked way younger without the wig he used to wear as captain and commodore, even if he had styled his brown hair. Of course, the lieutenant was as stiff as he had always been, or would likely be. All in all, there was no mistaking it.

Whatever had happened, Will had before him a lieutenant James Norrington, alive, and one around twenty-two years old at that.

And a living Norrington wasn't half of the bloody problem his brain had to deal with.

James arched an eyebrow as he looked over the man they had picked up from the cay of sand.

Wilhem Carter, as he had called himself, was a young man in his twenties. He looked too clean and proper to be a pirate, James had to give it to him, but he didn't exactly look like a merchant or even a sailor. The lieutenant really had no idea what to do with their new passenger, because he had no idea what exactly the man was. That was suspicious, no doubt.

"Wilhem Carter? And I hear you were on the same ship as young William Turner here?"

Will winced slightly as Norrington made a sign to the boy on the barrel to come over. There were too many Wills around here, surrely. Fortunately for him, the lieutenant was too busy eyeing the great blood stain on his shirt to notice what was going on on his face.

The boy came shyly, half-hidden behind a girl the same age as he was. Will couldn't help but to stare at him, for the boy was him, only, younger, more innocent, less destroyed than he was. William the younger had already lost their mother, and he had survived a pirate attack. Moreover, their life had never been easy even when they had lived in Glasgow. But Will the younger still was a child. He hadn't suffered half what his older counterpart had had to endure during the nine decades of his life.

And the girl...

The girl was Elizabeth.

Will gulped before tearing his eyes away from the wife he had just been sitting on the grave of, while now she was only a ten years old little girl.

He forced his eyes back on Norrington, because, between his past-self, the girl who had been his wife in another life, a drunken Gibbs next to where Will the younger had been sitting, and the lieutenant, Norrington was the one who made his heart hurt the least. Him, and all the sailors he had met as a boy, but of whom he didn't remember much. And since Norrington was the one interrogating him...

"The boy might not remember me, I spent a good part of the trip in the crow's nest, as the lookout fell ill and I, while being a blacksmith, am rather accustomed with sailing because of my father. But yes, I was on the Eleanor's Jewel with him. The pirates saw this sword, and thought I might have some valor as a ransom. When they understood they were wrong, they left me to die here... They were so angry they even forgot to keep the sword."

As he talked, Will handed the commodore's sword to said commodore, even if the man still was only a lieutenant, and damn, that was getting confusing... He only hoped Norrington wouldn't take a closer look and notice the initials on the handle of the weapon. Sure enough, the lieutenant wasn't the only man in the world whose initials were J. N., but still...

James took the sword carefully, admiring its beauty and perfect balance. He frowned at the gold filigree, for it looked quite a lot like a ceremonial sword's... but looked up before his eyes fell onto his own initials engraved in the golden hilt.

"Blacksmith... An order you were delivering, perhaps?"

"Unfortunately, the soon-to-be-promoted commodore was killed in battle a few days before his promotion. The order fell flat, and I found myself with an unpaid and ridiculously expensive sword. I thought I'd better keep it for now".

The lieutenant handed the sword back, gauging the plausibility of such a story being true. It was rather unfortunate, but it wasn't impossible. The man could very well be saying the truth.

Still, James thought as he looked at this stranger once again, this Wilhem Carter seemed more than a mere blacksmith. His work told he was a good swordsmith, an excellent one, even, and James desperately wanted a sword like this one if he ever made it to commodore, but there was something more. The man seemed... otherworldly, almost. There was something calm about him, and at the same time, powerful, dangerous, even. Alluring.

But not malevolent.

James motioned for the young William Turner to get out of Miss Swann's shadow. Personally, he thought the girl's devotion to her charge was admirable, and the boy's admiration for his savior adorable. The lieutenant hoped, though, that it wouldn't go on, and more than anything else, that it wouldn't go any further. Will Turner would be lucky if an artisan took him as an apprentice, and he certainly wouldn't be allowed anywhere near Miss Elizabeth Swann.

The boy came closer, once again, as the young miss pushed him with encouraging words.

"Your name's 'Will' too?"

Will nodded, ill-at-ease as he explained to no one else than his younger self that they hadn't exactly the same first name, but that, yes, his too was usually shortened to "Will". Of course, they really had the same names, but it would have been confusing, and highly suspicious, so he wasn't going to explain any time soon that he had lied about it.

James thought about leaving them alone to talk and get acquainted. Wilhem Carter had given the right name for the ship he had supposedly been sailing, a good enough excuse for his lack of acquaintance with William Turner, and his freezing as he had seen the boy for the first time wasn't difficult to explain. He certainly hadn't expected the young Will to be alive, and had recognized him on the spot because he had had a lot of time to observe the Eleanor's Jewel's passengers and crew from the crow's nest. There was no reason to be wary of him, and he certainly could delay a bit a more thorough interrogation.

But as soon as the thought entered his brain, the boy said something that startled the lieutenant, and curiosity won out over privacy.

"You look just like my father."

Will coughed at that. He certainly didn't remember remembering his father's face when he had been ten years old. Then again, it had been more than eighty years ago, and he had been very young at the time.

Damn his old man for looking just like him. Even if it was more like he was the one resembling his father than the other way around.

"Does he?"

Will forced himself to look at Elizabeth and put on a faked smile. It was the first time she really spoke since he had been onboard, and each word she said, each look she gave him was a painful reminder of what he had lost.

"Maybe I do. But if I'm sure of anything, it's that I'm too young to be your father, Will."

And he joked a bit about that, as his younger self explained how he was searching for his father, who was a honest sailor, now that his mother had died and he had no one else to look after him. If possible, hearing about it, hearing his past enthousiasm at being reunited with his father, hearing young Will's trust in the future was even more painful than looking at the child that had grown to become his wife and the Pirate King.

He knew the boy wouldn't find their father, who wasn't that honorable to begin with, because he was a bloody pirate. After all, the man was at the bottom of the ocean, or maybe already enslaved on the Flying Dutchman.

Because yes, Will was starting to slowly accept that he had been thrown back in time or something similar, and that meant everything could be changed. Even his fate. And that also explained, he guessed, why he could walk on land again, and why he wasn't growing tentacles, even if he wasn't doing his duty. Jones was still the captain of the vessel of the dead.

"Well, then, I'm sorry, but I can tell I haven't met him. If I had, I'd certainly have noticed such resemblance. Still, I rarely sailed far away from the old continent, so it's normal we havent met, I guess..."

While the man entertained the two children, James found himself smiling a bit. They'd certainly try to find something to do onboard for Carter, but the man deserved to have this day off, after all he had lived through during the last hours.

The lieutenant watched them, and as he did this, he couldn't help but notice how right the boy had been. Even if he didn't know Will Turner senior, and thus couldn't compare, James could see the features both Carter and the young Turner had. Same hair color, same eyes, same smile. Sure, Carter was a bit more tan than the boy, but he was also an adult with a work and who had spent days under the terrible sun of the ocean.

They really looked alike.

Finally the children grew tired of all this, and went back to Gibbs who immediately went back to telling stories to the kids, no doubt filling their heads with superstitions and legends of the sea.

James was about to ask the man to come with him, so that they could maybe manage to get a clue about the ship that had raided theirs, but Carter was quicker, and as soon as the children were out of hearing range, he asked if they could talk. He had a worried look on his face.

The lieutenant led him to the captain's quarters, who surely wanted to hear what the marooned man had to say for himself.

Will knew he might just be about to make his other self's life impossible, but he had to tell the captain. Ultimately it would be safer and better for everyone if they listened to him, instead of, say, clapping him in irons. He just had to hope Norrington and his captain were sensible enough not to blame a father's crimes on a child's head.

Norrington pushed open a door and they found themselves in the master cabin.

The captain was a man in his forties, grey eyes and blond untamed hair escaping from under a white wig, and the usual uniform of a captain. He sat at a large desk with a map spread on it.

"Sir, I brought you the man we picked up on the island. He says his name is Wilhem Carter."

The captain looked up from his map, his expression lightening as he did so. He liked it when they found castaways or survivors, not because it meant there had been a pirate attack and people had died, but because despite the odds, one person or more had been saved in extremis. He couldn't make evil disappear from this world, the captain had learned it the hard way, but he could help lessen it.

"Wilhem Carter, is it? I am the captain Charles Portwell of the British Royal Navy. Take a seat."

Will went warily to the offered chair, but he stayed standing next to it as he felt he wasn't really the kind of person who should sit with such people. That, and his clothes weren't exactly clean too.

The young man still remembered the captain from the first time he had been in this situation. Portwell had tried to get clues out of him, but he had been too busy hidding during the attack to notice much. All he had been able to tell the man was that the pirate ship had been dark and in dire need of repair, and some pirates had called out to their "captain Barbossa". This time around, his younger counterpart had certainly given the captain the exact same information. And as one who had been kept prisonner aboard the Pearl, "Wilhem Carter" could only have more information than the frightened boy.

"I appreciate your kindness, captain, but I'd rather stay standing."

Portwell seemed surprised at his refusal, but he said nothing about it.

Before the captain could even ask anything else, Will took a deep breath, as if searching for reassurance that he was doing the right thing. He started carressing the hilt of his sword by rote, not even aware that he was doing it.

Standing behind him, James frowned as he watched the gesture. It could have appeared menacing, if Carter hadn't been gently brushing his fingers over the golden handle instead of preparing to draw it any moment. No, it wasn't threatening, but it seemed that the blacksmith had had this sword at his hip for quite a long time, if he had such an habit and wasn't even conscious of it. Carter had not only kept the sword, but he had kept it with him often enough... But why? A blacksmith hardly needed such a weapon...

"They were searching for someone when they attacked the Eleanor's Jewel, sir."

Portwell straightened in his armchair, suddenly tense. Behind Will, Norrington gritted his teeth in anticipation. If they could get even a hint of what the pirates wanted, maybe they could outrace them next time such an opportunity to get it happened.

"Have you heard them talk about it?"

"They interrogated me. They wanted to know if he was on the ship, yes or no. They hadn't found him, despite their efforts, and they wondered wether he had drowned or if, maybe, he hadn't been there to begin with. They said he had something they wanted, something they needed. If he wasn't on the Eleanor's Jewel, then they still had a chance to get what they wanted."

The tension in the room was palpable. The two Navy men were wondering what exactly the pirates had wanted, and if it was just something their captain had taken a liking to or if it was actually something important. They certainly didn't want some intel to fall between the wrong hands, and there could actually have been some military or political man travelling unknown aboard the Jewel, or something like that.

"Do you know who or what exactly they were searching for?"

Will winced, and decided to use Pintel and Ragetti for his own benefit. After all, the men had surely been all too content to go after him, not even a day before.

"There were those two pirates, not very bright, one with a wooden eye, and they were pretty talkative. When the captain understood I was no good for ransom, they started blabbering about what would maybe be done with me. To tell you the truth, I was lucky to only be marrooned on a desert island. They had... interesting ideas. Anyway, they started by telling me how I was on the Black Pearl, that had been Jack Sparrow's ship until his crew mutinied under his first mate, Barbossa, apparently thinking their captain was too much of a pacifist, and how one of the sailor didn't agree with the mutiny and sent away something very important, to his son, something they absolutely needed, to punish them. They crudely threw him overboard, tied to a cannon to make sure he wouldn't make it out."

Portwell winced at that. Even if the man had been a pirate, that was cruel. Besides, the two soles kind-of-honorable pirates on this ship had been the ones to suffer. While the Navy captain still didn't like pirates, he knew there were different kind of pirates, and Barbossa and his crew definitely were the worst. If he had had to pick a side, he'd have taken Sparrow's and the unnamed crew member's.

James, on the other hand, wasn't very touched by the story, not that it had been told in a touching way. But he shivered as he pictured the mutinous crew doing exactly the same thing to the blacksmith, who had not asked to be taken away in the first place. Being marooned on a desert island wasn't so bad, considering...

"I guess the pirate's son was on the Eleanor's Jewel?"

Will turned to look at Norrington, having almost forgotten about his presence in the cabin.

"He was. And no, he didn't know about what his father actually did for a living or what was the item, maybe he even didn't have it with him. He should not be held accountable for his father's crimes, because it has nothing to do with him, and, for god's sake, he's only a child. I'm telling you only because it'd be preferable for him if he didn't sail ever again. You try to hang him or whatever because of his father, and I will come after you. Will Turner and his father are two different people."