Pairing: Young Will Turner, Mr. Brown
Word Count: 467
Prompt: Reflection
A/N: A different look at how young Will Turner finds his way to Mr. Brown after being picked up by Elizabeth and co. Also, I just wanted to thank everyone for their patience and support with my recent family emergency. I just felt like writing :)
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Origins
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Will licked his lips and wished he had something to drink. He was awfully thirsty, dry-as-dust thirsty, and all he could taste was salt on his skin. It was a faint dripping sound that decided for him. With nothing to choose by except his thirst, he started toward that steady plonk-plonk-plonk beyond the wooden doorway of a small shop just off the town square.
The late night shadows receded ahead of him, staying the same, and the dripping never came any closer. After a long time, he placed his ear against the cool wood, and door creaked open to his touch.
Striated with clouds of black, gray, reds and oranges, the room he entered was laden with a thick blanket of steamy air. Flames roared on the hearth like a forge-fire with the bellows pumping, but gave no heat. Strange oval stones made the fireplace. Well, they looked like stones, wet-slick despite the fire, when he looked straight at them, but when he glimpsed at them with the corner of his eye, they seemed to be faces instead - the faces of men and women writhing in anguish, screaming silently - remnants of his last memories aboard a dying vessel.
The low-backed chairs and the old table in the middle of the room were perfectly ordinary; he would have said no one was there, but there was. A snoozing man in the prime of his maturity, dressed in dark clothes, slouched forward before him, with bottle of unknown origin and substance hanging loosely between his fingers.
Plonk-plonk-plonk.
For a moment, he averted his eyes to a single sword that hung on the wall. When he looked at it he saw only a blur where his reflection should have been. Everything else in the room was shown true, but not him.
"A sword is a difficult thing to make."
Will jumped a little, but managed to keep from yelling. All the same, he stepped backwards all the way to the door, never taking his eyes off the man who had come to from his drunken slumber.
The man leaned forward intently, with one hand on the back of his chair, watching the nervous boy. "You seem tired, lad," the man said to Will's surprise, extending his bottle. "Have a drink."
The smell of spiced wine drove home to Will just how thirsty he was. It was as if he had nothing to drink for days.
Had he?
"I am, a little," Will replied, finally accepting the man's offer. With the wine halfway to his mouth, he stopped. "You made that sword?"
Whispers of smoke were rising from the forge, and those eyes watched him so sharply, flickering rapidly in and out of the flames.
"Aye, but every sword is the work of many men. I'm just one."
"Two, now." He had nowhere else to go.
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