So, I've started a twitter account, where I'll post the news about my various fanfictions: update, hints as I write about each story, and hopefully no news of cancellations
https_:_/_/_twitter_._com_/_EKernor ( without the _ obviously )
Chapter 11: Burglary expedition
Will left the smithy around three p.m. in the afternoon, and made his way to the mansion of the governor. He fully intended to try and snatch back the medallion this day, and while some thought it would be stupid to do that in broad daylight, it really wasn't the case.
Trying to rob the governor's house in the dead of the night, however, was sheer stupidity.
True, it would have been best, but only if the mansion had been empty at the time of the break-in. And it happened that in fact, the Swann mansion was never empty at night. Surprisingly enough, the people that lived here used it at night to sleep. Astounding, wasn't it? It was nonetheless true. Moreover, there were always at least four workers in the house, besides the Swanns, and there wasn't a moment of the night when absolutely no one was awake.
Conclusion, trying to rob the mansion at night was foolish.
During the day, on the contrary...
There might be one or two servants in the house, but that was all. The governor was busy in town, and Will knew for a fact that Elizabeth was not at her lessons, for she had been playing with his younger self when he had left the smithy. It was sunday afternoon, and the house was almost empty.
For now, Will the younger and the girl had been deemed young enough to be allowed near each other in spite of propriety. The governor had seen how caring his daughter was with the young orphan, and he wasn't willing to separate them yet. The blacksmith hoped his other self would make good use of the little time he had to spend with Elizabeth; this state of mind would not last.
Soon enough, the girl would have to sneak out to see her friend, and in less than two years, she wouldn't be able to at all, for she'd be considered to old for her to disappear without a warning. After that, it would be six long years during which the two children, teenagers by then, would only speak to each other a dozen of times, and get a sight of the other one from afar around once every two months, if things were to go the way they had for him.
The point was, the mansion of Governor Swann was almost empty at this time of the day, and it wasn't like Will had much to worry about being seen breaking in. He had a fair advantage, there, and he was going to use it. After all, what was the point of having supernatural powers if you couldn't use them to save the lives of countless innocents?
Or to get into someone's house without being seen, in that case. After all, Will had the right blood to end the curse on Barbossa's pirates, and if he could get his hand on the medallion, the pirate would just end up being killed, at some point, either by other mongrels, or by the Navy. If the Black Pearl ended up sinking in the process, too bad, but no matter how much the blacksmith liked the ship, she wasn't worth the lives of Barbossa's victims. So he was definitely not about to commit burglary on the mansion of his future / past / not-quite-father-in-law. He was doing this to save lives.
And it wasn't as if he intended to steal anything else than the medallion, that didn't even belong to Elizabeth in the first place.
Will sighed as he caught sight of the mansion, not far ahead. He wasn't sure why he was feeling so guilty about all this, it wasn't as if he had ill intents. Quite the contrary, in fact.
Speaking of ill intents, he hoped no servant would see him in there. He certainly wouldn't have problems escaping, but that didn't mean he wanted someone to know he had been in the governor's house at a suspicious hour and without anyone knowing about it. Though, considering no one would have allowed him in, the hour didn't matter much. Be it two in the morning or eight in the evening, his being there would have been suspicious no matter what.
Will stopped a few meters from the house, and leaned against a wall, as if thinking about trivial matters basking in the sun of the afternoon. From where he stood, he had a good view of the street. No one was out there. He took a deep breath, and stared at the hedge that stood between him and the mansion.
It was now or never. Someone could come in the street any time, and he definitely couldn't let anyone see what he was going to do.
Will looked around one last time. Still no one.
His eyes went back to the top of the hedge, and the next second, he wasn't in the street anymore.
The blacksmith almost lost his balance, as he felt the ground under him be substituted by the hollow mass of leaves and twigs. Before any kind of catastrophes could happen, he focused on what now appeared before his eyes, and teleported at this place, praying that no one had been behind the hedge when he had done that.
He could teleport himself only to places he could actually see, and so he had had to pass by the hedge first. Up there, he hadn't really had the time to check his surroundings, for he didn't want someone to see him standing on the hedge of the governor's mansion, nor did he want to cause a ruckus by falling all the way to the ground as he couldn't keep his balance on a bush.
Fortunately, no one had seen anything. Still, maybe actually passing through the hedge could have worked better. Sure, there was still the possibility that someone would have been on the other side, and someone could have seen him walk into the hedge as if it hadn't even existed, but well. Will wasn't a professional burglar, and he had no desire to become one. Moreover, the way he had acted had at least kept him from being seen anywhere near the mansion.
Will allowed himself a moment of respite, then he started to move.
Or, to teleport himself to the closest open window, to be accurate. Not that teleporting wasn't moving... Actually, he had no idea about that, and it certainly wasn't the moment to wonder about it.
It had taken the former captain of the Flying Dutchman more than a decade to get a grasp at teleporting. Davy Jones had made it look all easy, but the tentacular cursed man had had over two centuries to practice. Teleporting wasn't easy, no matter how it looked. The hardest thing being, adjusting to the instant change of surroundings before anything bad happened. Such as, losing your footing and falling into the sea. Or getting a sword in the eye that hadn't been directed at you at all. Both accidents had happened to Will, and he could testify that having an eye pierced wasn't pretty, even when it healed in a matter of seconds.
Anyway, Will was now ninety-one years old, even if he didn't look like it. He had had time to practice, and nothing else to do too many times. Advanced healing came on its own, as well as sensing haunted place and things, but teleporting and passing through things had to be done willingly. As for calling for the help of the dead and making a sea monster listen to his will, the blacksmith hadn't really had an opportunity or a reason to practice these abilities. It wasn't as if he wanted to have a pet kracken like Jones.
So the young man, for that was what he looked like, the young man had decided he'd rather teleport on this whole burglary expedition, just in case. If he ended up in the same room as someone he hadn't been able to see from where he had been before, he'd just teleport out before the person could register he hadn't actually been an hallucination.
He hoped it would work.
Truly.
He didn't want to be hanged for breaking in the governor's house, for an obvious reason, that was being killed, and for another reason that was a bit less obvious, the fact being he wouldn't actually die of it and many people would notice that and start yelling "Witchcraft!", and possibly, "Let's burn him!".
Will didn't like being burned alive, as he had discovered at thirty-seven, when the Dutchman had inexplicably caught fire in the middle of the night as he had gone back to the world of the living to collect some souls. And to top it all, it had taken him all the following day to magically restore the ghost ship to her former state... that wasn't so great to begin with. Strangely enough, Will had found a suspicious looking headscarf next to the place the fire had been started. The blacksmith really didn't want to know why Jack had been aboard and how he had ended up putting his ship on fire.
To go back to the first topic, he also didn't want to have to escape and never show his face again in Port Royal, for various reasons. He had lately discovered he actually enjoyed Norrington's friendship, and Will the younger and Elizabeth lived here. Moreover, in a few years, his other self's face would become like his own, and he certainly didn't want anyone to look at the younger William Turner more oddly than it was already bound to happen.
So, the best way to avoid all that was not to get caught.
He had to try two rooms before he found Elizabeth's, and once he almost ran into a maid, but other than that, the attempted burglary was going fine. Fine-ish. Fine enough. For now.
The problem, because there was a problem, obviously, became clear after thirty minutes of searching through Elizabeth's belongings, and not finding anything. Well, nothing that looked even remotely like his medallion.
William had no idea where the girl had hidden the cursed coin.
Of course, he thought as a feeling of dread invaded his heart, there was yet one place where he hadn't looked. He had looked under the bed, behind the writing desk, in the drawers, in the closet that held the girl's dresses, and he had looked for moving floorboards. Nothing.
There was only one place left, and the young man didn't want to look there. It was bad enough that he had had to check the dresses.
Will really didn't want to look at his-wife-who-wasn't-his-wife-and-was-currently-ten-years-old's undergarments.
But he had to find the medallion, sail away to the Isla de Muerta, get some blood on the bloody aztec coin, undo the curse, and maybe search for the pirates himself, so that he could get rid of them without casualties before coming back to Port Royal and his younger self.
God knew if the boy needed a parental figure, even if one as bad as himself. Will hadn't really had the opportunity to raise his children, but he'd do what he could.
Still, the blacksmith eyed the last closet that had yet to be opened warily. He would have discovered his determination was not to overcome his dread at the mere idea of looking there, if a servant hadn't interrupted his searching just then. Fortunately for Will, the young man had put everything into place right after he had moved each item and piece of furniture, knowing someone could come in any time and he couldn't leave any proof of his passage.
The blacksmith's dilemma having come to a rather drastic and unexpected ending, Will teleported into the garden he could see from the window just before the servant came in and deposited a stack of clean laundry in the dreaded closet.
From there, Will left the garden as unconspicuously as possible, feeling relieved that he hadn't had to search Elizabeth's undergarments as well asworried that it might have been the place where the medallion had been hidden.
As he walked back to the smithy, frowning, he wondered about what would happen if he couldn't get his hands on the aztec medallion. He had a pretty good idea about that, seeing as he had lived it, but in his timeline, there hadn't been an adult himself with supernatural powers to turn to. Now that there was one... him, that is, didn't that change the game quite a lot?
What if his being there changed things, but for the worst?
The blacksmith bit his lower lip, unwilling to dwell for too long on what could happen that hadn't happened the first time. What if his actions ended up killing someone that had lived? What if somehow, because of some weird and unfair twist of fate, his being here unleashed Jones on the ones he cared for, or gave to Cutler Beckett the opportunity to get even more powerful?
What if...?
Will's eyes fell on the familiar uniform of one particular lieutenant down the street, and his heart clenched.
The young man turned into another street, his mind filled with the fate of James Norrington, eleven years from now.
James had died saving Elizabeth. Even if the man had done unforgivable things before that, it didn't change the fact that James Norrington was dead.
Will hadn't been the man's friend at the time. More of a rival, really. Speaking of which, maybe he should try to get James' attention onto someone else than Elizabeth, this time around. It was bad enough that his younger self would have to deal with their differences in status. More so that Will fully intended to make it so that the kidnapping of Elizabeth wouldn't happen, meaning no heroic rescue either, and no almost-heart-to-heart on the Interceptor, no fight in the treasure cave, and no heroic rescue of Captain Jack Sparrow. Making the children's lives easier would, in a way, make it harder for them to find each other.
That is, if he succeeded in getting rid of Barbossa, if Jack didn't find a way into their lives anyway, and if William the younger and Elizabeth didn't end up into some kind of trouble of their own making.
Oddly enough, Will felt it wouldn't be so easy for him to make them live peaceful lives.
Getting back to Norrington. If the timeline didn't change completely, the man would die on the Flying Dutchman in eleven years, and it just happened that Will had befriended the man, and was even becoming quite fond of him. Thinking James could just die like that, and with him unable to do anything despite the fact that he had known beforehand, just didn't sit right with the blacksmith.
With who would it sit right?
More determined than ever to change the future for the better, Will arrived to the smithy. He had banished all thoughts of a dead James Norrington out of his mind, as well as any fear of something going askew at some point and an innocent having to pay up for the changes of fates. The worry would come back soon enough, and he would certainly feel guilty over his decision more than once in the future, but one had to make a move to matter to the world.
William had been given an unexpected chance to change things, and he would try to.
Andrew Brown greeted him as he walked into the forge. The man was still a bit unnerved with not being the owner of the place anymore, but he already seemed to breath more easily, as if a heavy weight had been pulled off his shoulders. If not having to worry as much about bankruptcy was getting him this happy, Will was fairly certain this particular decision wouldn't backfire. If they were to be lucky, both himself and his other self wouldn't have to deal with a drunk Mister Brown other than on the occasional day of feast.
"Have you seen the children?"
"William ran out as soon as the governor's daughter told him about the beach and sea shells. Since it's sunday, I didn't stop them."
Brown glanced at the darkening sky through the window.
"Maybe you should go and get them. It seems like it's going to rain heavily before long."
Will nodded, and went in search of cloaks.
"We'll be back for dinner, if not sooner."
The young man walked down the streets to the beach, knowing very well where Elizabeth's favorite's spot was. She had shown it to him one month after the Dauntless had sailed in the port of the city, and many times, when they had not been able to see each other anymore, his teenage self would come down and stare at the sea from there, hoping the girl from his dreams would happen to come here at the same time. It had never happened, of course. It wasn't proper for a young lady to wander on the beach alone.
A crash of thunder came to his ears, but it was still far away, out there, on the sea.
Will looked up and at the sky. He'd have to take Elizabeth back to her home. Dark clouds were gathering over Port Royal; Brown was right, it would rain heavily this night.
Maybe even before that.
His mind went back to the medallion, as his feet first touched the sand. Where had Elizabeth possibly hidden it? She had told him, so many years ago, that she had feared he was a pirate, and that it was the reason she had taken it. Surely because of the skull on the medallion, he mused, though it hadn't occurred to him at the time. Elizabeth wouldn't have let it in plain sight.
He shuddered, thinking about what the governor and Norrington could have concluded if they had seen the medallion before Elizabeth. Would they have even let him explain it was the only gift from his father he still had?
It wasn't that the skull on the medallion really was a pirate emblem. No, in fact, it was an aztec one, and Will was pretty sure they wouldn't have made the mistake. It wasn't as if pirates had their own currency, with skulls on it, just in case you weren't sure who you were dealing with.
The problem was that normal people didn't have gold coins, with or without a skull on it, hanging from their neck. And they surely didn't have ancient gold coins with a skull on it hanging from their neck. It was obvious the medallion came from an old treasure, and such treasure were generally in the hands of pirates.
Thanks God for Elizabeth taking the medallion.
Will finally found the children, playing on the beach, and then he knew why he hadn't found the medallion in the girl's room. He could sense it. She had it with her. There was no stealing it, then...
