The Best-Laid Plans

by etsfanfics

Pre-DMC courtship of Elizabeth and Will. After Will and Elizabeth free Jack from the gallows, the couple battles with class differences, political intrigue and an entire smithy of swords, as they set out together to explore the expanding boundaries of their relationship and build their dreams for a shared future of new adventures.

17. A Weight to Carry

It was Tuesday.

Not just any Tuesday—a Tuesday following a Monday without work. A Tuesday after a Monday spent sparring with Elizabeth in the smithy, making a little fool of his younger self in front of her, and making a much bigger fool of his present self in front of her father. A Tuesday after his first hot bath, his first worn cravat, and his first guided chess match. A Tuesday after staying out far too late, and making impulsive plans to try and stay out even later. A Tuesday after his master had seemed to make similar plans of his own.

Tuesday.

By a small miracle, and the forethought of propped-open shutters, Will began to wake once the sun had just begun breaching in the east. He didn't need to see the horizon to know dawn was coming. Looking out his window, the sky was still deep and blue enough for stars to remain behind, clinging to the last breaths of night. The sun would be up faster than he ever cared for, and work would come with it.

Ready or not.

With a deep sigh, he rolled onto his side, then won a short battle against his bed's sagging posture to heave his legs over the edge of the frame. But rather than rise to his feet with his typical readiness, he let his head hang down, and let his gaze wander around the hazy silhouettes of the bare furnishings in this room and the next.

Save for the morning calls of crying gulls and chattering turnstones, mixed with the distant stirrings of the ocean, the world outside remained silent. And the house inside was filled by its emptiness, leaking into parts of Will's heart that had felt so full the night before…

Ah. There was Elizabeth's hat—sitting on the spare chair, tucked into the end of the dining table. No wonder they'd all forgotten about it. He'd have to remember today…

Today was meant to be a good day. He'd meant for today to be good.

First he'd planned to work hard and steady, pushing through his breaks to accomplish all his most important milestones in time for an early dinner, and closing up the shop. His list of orders would be a tight accomplishment, but he felt confident it was something he could manage without wearing himself down too much. Once freed from the day's labor, he'd pay a visit to the guild house, where he could finally meet members of the guild's court to discuss plans for his promotion—early, if he could help it. He wasn't certain whether those negotiations would be long or brief, arduous or easy. Either way, he'd have plenty of time to spare either for a long discussion, a much-needed practice session of swordplay, or possibly even a good and proper nap.

Then come nightfall, he'd stop by the tavern to prepare for his hike up the hill and a long, lovely evening with Elizabeth.

That was what he'd meant for today, as he'd ridden home from the governor's mansion last night. It was what he still meant even now—he was all but determined to stick to this plan.

But as he hauled himself out of bed, then began his morning wash up and dressing, he noted a subtle sickness beginning to twist in the spaces between his heart and stomach. It was an old sickness he'd grown familiar with—and in this instance he knew it could easily be alleviated, if he found a change from last night waiting in the neighboring rooms this morning.

But he did not.

When silence answered Will's knocks, emptiness was still found filling Mister Brown's bed. And though a small piece of him hoped that he was wrong, that some simply not-yet-uncovered-yet-reasonable thing had happened to justify his master's absence, the larger part of him knew that hope was wasted. It was all but guaranteed that the sorry sot had taken Will's longer leave for an opportunity to go out and have "just one drink."

But it never ended up just being one, of course. How many pints he could have drunk this time was a thought that…

Will's stomach outright twisted with dread.

He still hadn't received his first week's pay before the fool had gone out. What if it had all been spent? What if the old codger had taken a bed or a woman in some nunnery and was sleeping somewhere else, slipping more coins out of his pocket? What if he would never be paid after all, thanks to these loops in his master's vices?

What if he'd finally drunk himself so deep under, he had finally…?

Why, oh why hadn't Will asked for his salary when he had the chance?

With an anxiety-laced anger rising in his chest, Will burst from the house. He had to find Brown—if only to confirm that the man was still breathing, that he hadn't begun to steal from his and Elizabeth's future so soon. He had stormed down the steps and was halfway up the road to Queen's Street, before a tempering thought brought his feet to a slow halt.

'You told him you wouldn't go after him anymore,' a milder part of his mind reminded him. 'He has to keep himself standing on his own now, remember? He has to keep himself out of the bottle, not you.'

It seemed … right, to some degree. Like he'd told his master before, he couldn't afford to keep holding both their heads over the water anymore. He'd warned him. It was only fair.

'But what if he never comes back…?' another voice inside him asked. 'How many of them have never come back?'

His stomach wrenched again more painfully at the thought.

What would happen, then, if Mister Brown simply disappeared, whether by walking away or giving up the ghost? Would the smithy remain open? Under whom? Would his sons come back to claim it? Where would Will live or work, as an apprentice with no serving master? Would he be "sold" with the smithy, and his contract taken up by its next owner? Could he continue the pretenses he'd built over the last year, convincing people his master was still around for at least one more year? Would the guild find him another master to work under? Would his promotion be delayed?

Without answers, it felt like too much to risk. Will needed his master alive and well, working by his side, teaching him the last of what he knew, pulling his own weight in silver—not hanging off the smithy's edge like an anchor too cumbersome to haul in.

But what good would going after his master really, truly do? Chasing him down for the past few years had done nothing to stop the man's self destruction. All it had done was let him know he was safe in growing worse. No, Will had been right to put his foot down. And he couldn't afford to doubt himself after already debating all of this one hundred times before. Time was passing. Time was always passing.

Brown had to sink or swim on his own if Will didn't want to be sunk with him. It was time to let go. Whatever happened would happen.

So with that decided, Will turned on his heel, and returned to the smithy just as the last of the stars began to be overtaken by the rushing sunrise.

---

The firepot was cleaned and lit. The donkey was woken braying and nipping for a fresh watering and feeding. Once she'd been given her breakfast, and had gone through a hoof check and a brushing, she was led to her own job. However, it took some convincing to get her to move—and while Will was confident she wasn't injured, her attitude did not bode well for the day ahead.

Goddamn, if he could get a proper partner to help him keep the fire, it would make his and this quiet animal's life so much easier.

The shop's windows and doors were thrown open to capture as much of the dawning daylight as early as possible, helping him avoid having to light any candles or lamps for as long as he could manage. He brought his master's ledger to the open back door, to read through his notes in the silver morning light.

Three commissions Will had to begin today: the Brooke family was looking to have a manual turnspit installed over their courtyard fire pit, and wanted new hangers to come with it as well; a Mister Papiol had begun working his own land and was looking for a new shovel, rake, and hoe; finally, the Walkers' daughter was getting married soon, and Missus Walker wanted to present her with a fine assortment of kitchen knives as a bridal gift. That last one he was looking forward to, enough to begin restoring his mood to something more hopeful—he was absolutely ready for more chances to show off his specialty as a bladesmith.

Besides all that, of course, there were a few more routine things that needed to be done. The least-yet-still-unavoidable of which being that their stock of nails was getting low again, and he would need to pound several out throughout the day.

Fucking nails.

One day he'd be out of his apprenticeship, and would be able to take up some other young lad for his own apprentice—one who needed the practice badly enough to take over that boring necessity in his stead. What a dream that was…

In any case, altogether there was a large load of work that lay ahead. But it still added up to an amount that was perfectly realistic to manage—even with his goal for an early closure of the workshop today. If he kept a steady pace, avoided large mistakes, and managed his customer interactions efficiently, everything would work out just fine.

Mister Brown's load on the other hand… There was an order from one of their partner wainwrights in town, expecting three sets of new rims; and the clockmaker needed new pliers. That should have been all for now, and didn't seem much cause for concern on its own… yet. However, unless his master had forgotten to note something, it also appeared that last week's portion of the Dodson order had not yet been finished. Many of the door fixings were still piled together on the shop's benches, not yet delivered. And the property gate and kitchen's clockwork spit—the two largest projects within the commission—had yet to even be started.

Will grimaced to himself at this.

While every client was important, these were particularly influential clients—key partners of business in Port Royal. To disappoint them could risk damages to their smithy's reputation in ways disappointing other clients simply could not. It was tempting, so very tempting, to take up his master's work to finish in his stead—he'd had his eye on the Dodson order to begin with, anyway.

But with a deep breath, Will snapped the ledger shut and returned it to its drawer at the workbench.

He and Brown had made a bargain, and Will had pushed ahead accordingly. He had his own full workload now, and Brown had his. Most of the jobs on Brown's part weren't due until later in the week anyway. And if Brown's clients were forced to face a little tardiness, then that simply had to be the way of it. It was perfectly clear now that the drunkard would never change his ways if Will kept saving his face. They'd agreed to keep their work separated, and individually accountable. He had to honor that agreement.

He'd also agreed to an appointment with Elizabeth—and if he were honest with himself, that was a far more important commitment to keep than all the rest of these combined. Work was work. But time with Elizabeth was…

Will bolstered himself up with a determined nod.

His apron donned, he finally started with the rods that would eventually form the main stand of the Brooke's turnspit. The work began in starts and fits. There were a few moments where the donkey became stubborn about keeping the bellows run when it was needed, but Will was able to entice her with a treat in the form of a dogwood log to tear apart. After that, there were no other hiccups throughout the morning. And by the time he heard the markets and warehouses beginning to buzz, he was able to complete both halves of the spit's main stand, complete with a few elegant twists and graceful scroll details on the top forks.

He was just preparing to draw out the main turning rod, when his first client walked in the door.

His heart dropped when he saw who the figure was.

"Mister Dodson!" In person, himself, not represented by his regular footman, Mister Backhouse. Will tried not to let the airs of his dread infect his voice, as he set his tools aside to greet the man. "Good morning, sir! What a surprise to see you here!"

"I should think not," was Mister Dodson's surly reply. "I had hoped my men would receive the door fixings I ordered yesterday morning, but apparently they neither received anything nor heard a single word about them at all. Is your master ill?"

Will clenched his fists once while his sunken heart bobbed in a sea of humiliated aggravation. He wished his master were only ill—that his absence at the forge was something not of his choosing, or that Will could be free to admit where his master's ailments really came from without the consequences falling upon him just as heavily.

Instead, he offered Mister Dodson a smile which he knew was strained in its courtesy. "I'm afraid so, sir. I apologize for the lack of communication—if I had known about the lapse, I would have sent word sooner."

Unfortunately, he wasn't the only one losing patience with the situation.

"Nevermind that," Mister Dodson snapped back. "Where's my order, Mister Turner?"

Will took a deep breath to steady himself against the rising alarm he felt in response to the angry heat radiating from this client's manner—as well as the responding sparks of defensive indignation he felt starting to flare in his chest. With all the practiced pretenses his years of client-facing work had granted him, he kept his mask of service in place, walked to the far bench of the smithy, and gestured to Mister Brown's already completed work.

"I believe it's right here, sir," he offered, though his stomach tensed as he did so, for he knew full well the man would not be pleased with what he found. He mentally prepared himself for the next unhappy blow-back.

Mister Dodson huffed as he took the sideways-facing stairs down to the smithy's ground floor, shuffled past the donkey's hutch, and came to examine the work in question. As expected, the man's face transitioned from a temporary look of tenuous placation to one of deep displeasure.

"I have nine doors to hang, sir," he stated to Will in a tone that was somehow both even and icy all at once.

With his smile faltering, Will simply answered, "Yes, sir."

What else was there to say, besides the obvious?

Apparently, the obvious was exactly what Mister Dodson was after, saying, "This is enough for six."

'Fuck,' Will cursed inside, dreading more and more the direction this encounter was headed.

Outside, he nodded like an apathetic fool. "It would appear that is the case, yes."

The barely detected displeasure in Mister Dodson's face and voice transformed into an open, seething ire. "Why are there six?"

'A bloody good question!' he so would have liked to snap back.

This wasn't his fault! None of this had ever been his fault. And yet more and more often he was having to face these awkward situations of being unable to point anywhere near the source of actual blame. He was all but chained to this smithy, like a sailor press-ganged and bound to his ship—his master's name, his face was the figurehead smithy itself. If this "ship" went down, he was bound to go down with it.

He took a steadying breath, before attempting a hopefully diplomatic answer, "As noted, Mister Brown has fallen ill—"

"And why didn't you complete it in his place?" snapped Mister Dodson, not one single ounce of patience remaining in him. "Is that not your job as his apprentice?"

Will felt his stomach open its pits up to swallow his sunken heart whole with shame, even as the uncomfortable, steaming sensations of raw embarrassment began to fume from under his collar. While he could agree to turn his head and hands away from Mister Brown's roster of work, he could not turn away from all of the consequences his procrastinations created. Whether he liked it or not, as an apprentice he remained bound to his master's choices, a shadow of his very image. It didn't matter that Mister Brown's failings were not his fault—in the eyes of the smithy's clients, Will's unwillingness to make up for those failings was a glaring failing of his own.

He pressed his lips together and nodded reluctantly.

"It is," he accepted with no small measure of resentment, barely suppressed and adding to the fury which had begun to make his hands tremble at his sides. He had to work quickly to salvage this, had to save his own face now, not just his master's. With a humble bow, he began the attempt, saying, "I apologize, sir—in my master's downturn, it seems there was some miscommunication over what work was still needed. But if you take what's completed to the work site, and have your men begin hanging the doors you are able, I will make some adjustments to my schedule to ensure you have the hinges for the final three by the end of the day. And I can promise you the latches by tomorrow."

It wasn't what he needed or wanted. His intentions for the day had been good, carefully planned, perfectly balanced. He needed them to be exactly what he'd hoped for, wanted to have the extra time he'd scraped together and set aside for his one night of overdue freedom with the one person he actually wished to be bound to, the one person to whom he was happy to devote his time. By offering this, there was a risk he would have to give up his rest to remain available for Elizabeth. But if he continued to work swiftly, he could make it work. Barely. Hopefully.

But no. It wasn't good enough for Mister Dodson. The man glared with disgust and shook his head. "I want it all tonight. All remaining hinges and latches, before my men begin their work tomorrow, or I'm considering the contract void, and will go to the Hardaways."

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

If that happened, they couldn't even collect a payment for all that was already done without taking Mister Dodson to court—and if Mister Brown could hardly be counted on to show up for work, he could hardly be counted on to pursue a lawsuit. That money, and the cost of the materials used on the already-made fixings, would be good as gone. And they could not lose more money!

To make it even worse: Mister Hardaway was their guild master. If he knew that Will had displeased such an important client thoroughly enough to send him looking for his business instead, well… His hopes for an early promotion to journeyman could also be counted as thoroughly jeopardized as well.

Will swallowed and nodded earnestly. "Yes, sir. Of course. I'll see it done."

He had no other choice—not without consequences he very literally could not afford. His night with Elizabeth would have to wait, for the sake of his career, his finances—for the sake of their future wedding day.

While still obviously fouled in his mood, the temperature to Mister Dodson's outrage seemed to have cooled somewhat by this promise. The depths of his glower shallowed back into a merely unimpressed scowl.

But he nodded with some apparent satisfaction. "I'll send Backhouse to pick these up momentarily." He gestured to the already completed door fixings with his ringed hand. Then without so much as a wave, he spun on his heels and made his way back to the tucked-away steps of the front entrance. "Have a good day, Mister Turner."

"You as well, sir," Will replied quietly, feeling suddenly drained and a little weak in his limbs.

"And do something about this bleeding farce of an entrance! Somebody's bound to break their neck in here one day."

---

It was a noxious combination of relief, despair, and rage that made Will's hands shake through putting the Brooke's work aside and closing up the shop's doors to any other customers. He tried to calm himself with a moment's rest and a cup of watered down ale, but only ended up turning Brown's completed hinges and door handles in his examining hands while pacing around the smithy like a caged animal.

Eventually, Mister Backhouse arrived as promised, and swiftly claimed the completed pieces for the first three doors. Once they were gone, Will could only turn them about in his mind, thinking and thinking…

Hinges were always easy—made of two nearly-flat, fitted pieces and their connecting pintle. While their leaves had been divided into literal leaf-like segments and decorated with fleur-de-lis type tips, the techniques for shaping them wasn't complicated, only a little more time-consuming. He would simply punch diagonal slits into the hinge leaves, which he could then draw and bend into pleasing organic shapes fairly quickly. Curling the knuckles of the hinge was a slightly more tedious process, to ensure they would fit their pins exactly, and would not hang their doors on a lean. But he was well practiced at it, and could have it done quick enough.

The door latches, on the other hand, were made up of multiple separate components meant to fit together while looking pleasing to the eye. For people touched them, and therefore its ornamentation was much more easily noticed and appreciated—or derided. Made of a keeper, a catch, a lever, two handles, a spindle, and two backplates… What he'd counted as three door latches was in reality built from a minimum of twenty four different components. Twenty four components that had to fit together and turn smooth, quiet, and sturdy, presented in a style matching the same floral accents applied across all the other hardware of the house. Once again, the processes making each component were not difficult, and items he had plenty of practice making. But…

The longer Will thought about it, the more a low level of panic began to set in.

It was nearly nine o'clock in the morning already, and this time of year the sun set before six o'clock in the evening. That left him maybe nine hours of sunlight to complete six strap hinges and three decorative latches of the same ornamental quality Brown had produced. Nine items in nine hours. And an item an hour seemed easy enough at first. But if he broke the items down into their separate components, then it was much worse: forty two parts had to be made to fit together. That left not even a quarter hour for each piece, without more than one or two major errors or time for rest. For the most crude and functional hardware, that would hardly be a problem—he could knock off the pintles of the hinges and the spindles of the latches in quick batches, for one thing. The levers of the latches were also fairly simple. But for the rest…

These items weren't meant to be purely functional—this was a finer commission which also required artistry, a proper craftsman's touch.

It was completely unrealistic!

Not only would he have to postpone all the work he'd hoped to accomplish today, it was more likely than not he was going to have to work well after dark to make his delivery on time in the morning—if that were even possible. Augh, the cost of the amount of oil or candles he'd have to burn into the night…!

There'd be no early close, there'd be no visit to the guild house, there'd be no climb up the hill to meet Elizabeth…

A jolt shot up Will's spine, causing him to whip his head towards the smithy's entrance, and the road leading up the hill to the mansion.

Elizabeth!

Though it pained him inside to admit it, he could seen no way around it: he wouldn't be able to make it to her tonight. There was no predicting how deep after dusk this unexpected project was bound to plunge him. There would be no time left for sleep, let alone midnight trysts.

Ah, why did this have to happen like this?! This wasn't what he wanted at all! And oh, she would be so disappointed…

It pained him to admit it, but he needed to call the meeting off. The last thing he wanted was to leave her waiting for him under the tree, expecting him to arrive when he could not.

No, no matter what the night held for him, he could not leave her waiting!

Yet every minute spent fretting over what was to be done was a minute spent not doing what was needed. He could panic all he liked, but he needed to work at the same time—this wasn't the first time he'd been made to do so.

So he hustled to the workbench and withdrew all he needed to begin composing a letter to her. It was embarrassingly short, but his mind was too addled and his body too tense to manage more than a few short paragraphs riddled with coarse apologies and only the vaguest of explanations. He had to shake his arm out multiple times just to keep it steady enough to not alter his usual penmanship, cursing more and more profusely under his breath. The last thing he needed was to also worry her over something that would be over and done with, one way or another, in less than a day.

Hopefully.

He finished the letter practically in a rush, with each passing second falling upon him like individual grains of hourglass sands, growing a little larger and heavier with each strike upon his head and shoulders. So frantic he was, he nearly dumped all his powdered ponce all over the sheet. He blew and blew at the paper, and resisted the temptation to hold it too close to the forge's flames—a mistake he'd made in the past with unfortunate consequences.

Then remembering the sight of Elizabeth's hat upon the tucked-away chair upstairs, he let himself out the smithy's back door, where he hurried up to the house while waving the paper about like a one-winged bird trying to take off before being eaten alive. Once he'd retrieved Elizabeth's hat and returned to the smithy, he was satisfied his message had dried. he perched a sealing wafer on the tip of his tongue, folded his lock as simply and neatly as he could, and almost violently secured the wafer with a heavy press of the seal. Unwilling to waste a single extra moment, Will then grabbed Elizabeth's hat and wrenched the smithy door back open, determined to take off down the street at a breakneck charge and catch the afternoon delivery at The Three Crowns.

That is, he would have done so, if he hadn't nearly stampeded over the Hackley children and their friends.

Racing out the door before looking properly, he noticed the children playing at jackstones in the courtyard as he was nearly upon them. By leaping at the last second over all their heads like a giant brown tree frog, he narrowly avoided a collision.

"Will!" Ruthy laughed. "What are you doing?"

Rather than answer, he stumbled over his landing. The path of his action disturbed a clutch of pecking hens, sending up loud squawks and a few wayward feathers. And he barely avoided a collision with a merchant's parked cart by balancing himself on his toes, mere inches from impact.

Ruthy and two other children howled and cackled over his surprising, clumsy acrobatics. And they quickly lost interest in their game, springing to plead with Will, "Do it again!"

"Do that again, sir!"

"I want to try! I want to do it!"

"Jump, Will! Jump over us!"

And other clamorous requests they wanted of him for their entertainment.

But he couldn't indulge them with tricks and the like. Not today. He was halfway towards stammering out an excuse for taking off, when he caught sight of Denys' strangely judgemental scowl—potentially harboring a bit of bitterness from the results of their last conversation.

"Don't half of you have school…?" Will began to dismiss slowly.

The group of children chorused back variations of, "Not today!" and explanations that indicated their teacher had been forced to cancel class for some reason or other.

It was then he was struck by a timely, potentially time-saving idea.

"Denys! Denys, you perfect boy!" he gasped, and ran up to the neighbor lad with perhaps a little too much gusto—his feet clipped their play ring and scattered one or two of the jackstones. "Sorry! I have a job for you!"

This along with his interruption of their game lost the interest of two of the other children in the group, whom Will did not know the names of. Rather than waste their time on drudgery, they wandered to another part of the courtyard and began to use their chalk to draw out new little arenas for their play. Ruthy slowed their progress by trying to hop between the circles they were drawing.

But Denys didn't join them yet. Opposite his friends, upon hearing the word "job," the intensity of his judgments seemed to ease up for a moment, revealing he did in fact have an interest of his own in Will's offer.

"Is it a job at the forge?" he asked immediately, trying to appear less obviously hopeful than he sounded. "Do you need help with a new sword?"

It was like a magic word. The eyes of all the children still listening widened and turned in Will's direction, riveted for his response.

He barely resisted rolling his own eyes. Of course, a sword would be what Denys hoped for: it was the one thing that risked dragging them into a prolonged negotiation, right when he couldn't afford one. He'd have to cut to the chase or cut loose.

"No!" Will answered firmly. "But—"

"Oh," Denys immediately responded, all interest visibly evaporating. "Then I'm busy."

He began sweeping up the pebbles he and his friends had set out for their play, gathering them in his palm to join the others in their new corner of the courtyard.

"No, wait, Denys!" Will hissed with a hand laid over the boy's to still his progress. The amount of desperation in his voice sounded ridiculous to his own ears, but it wasn't altogether misplaced.

Neither was the relief he felt when Denys and his friends actually bothered to pause and look up at him, willing to listen to what Will had to say.

"Wait," he repeated more softly this time. "It's an easy job, and it's one I can pay you for—just you, not your mother."

"With a sword?"

"No, with coins."

For one moment, the boy pursed his lips thoughtfully, considering the offer.

But after that brief moment's pondering, Denys seemed to come to the conclusion that he still had no interest in this exchange—at least, not more interest than the interest he had in continuing his games with his friends. Slipping his little palms out from under Will's hand, jackstones and all, Denys rose to his feet and turned to walk away. The children had all turned in their own directions. Except for Ruthy. She had stolen a spare piece of chalk, returned, and had become engrossed in trying to redraw a wobbly version of their first play circle, all the way around Will's kneeling knees and feet.

He really ought to just race to the tavern, and let a proper messenger take the letter. He simply could not offer the lad a sword, and a little money seemed to be of no interest to him. What else could appeal to an eight-year-old boy like Denys, that Will actually had to offer for payment? There was nothing he could think of to convince someone so small to make the journey up the hill to the mansion…

Ah! Maybe that was it!

Will reached out and temporarily grabbed Denys by the collar to stall his escape a moment.

"Denys, listen: it'll be an adventure!" he tried to entice in a hush. This wouldn't work if a whole gaggle of children showed up at the governor's gate.

That earned a roll of the eyes from Denys. "That's what my mum says when she wants me to run a delivery for her."

"Alright, so it's a delivery," Will admitted. "But this one's different. If you do the job, you'll get a chance to see a mansion—you may even get to go inside! Wouldn't you like to see inside a mansion?"

This finally seemed to catch the boy's interest, with his eyebrows raising upward.

"Perhaps…" he answered slowly. "Which mansion?"

"The governor's mansion."

Denys made the same lip-pursing look of contemplation for another moment. But this time, once the moment had passed, rather than turn away, the boy raised his chin in heightened interest.

"What sort of delivery?"

With a grin slipping free, Will held the letter out for Denys to take.

Almost breathless with relief, he began to explain, "I need you to take this…" he paused, remembering he had Elizabeth's hat tucked under his arm, and withdrew that as well, "… these two things up to the mansion, and deliver them both to Miss Elizabeth Swann. Only Miss Swann, do you understand? It's very important that she receives them today. If you can do that and bring back proof from her that you've done it, I promise I'll pay you three pence."

Denys did not take the letter or the hat.

Will frowned, and held them both a little closer to the boy's reach. "Please?"

"Will you also give me a sword?" Denys asked.

Again with the sword! It'd be so much easier to just give in and give him one. But…

"…No," Will responded. Then when the boy began to turn away in rejection, he hastily added, "But I promise to talk to your mother about it!"

Lips scrunched up in one final, brief internal debate. Then the boy spat on his hand and extended it for Will's taking: they had a deal.

---

Nearly an hour had been eaten up by the letter's writing and hand-off. That left some eight hours of sunlight. Will could work the remaining hours in the dark if he needed, but through every one of those he would be forced to begin burning tallow and oil—more money. Suddenly everything was expensive in a way it hadn't been before. And unless Mister Brown returned, by some miracle ready and able to work, it was likely at least one door's hardware would have to be forged after dark—more likely two.

He could waste no more time.

So the shop was closed back up again to walk-in clients. Then with the reluctant help of the donkey and no one else, Will got to work invigorating the forge's flames. Once the heat was right, and the fire had infused itself deep enough within the first iron billet, he began Mister Dodson's door latches.

He chose to forge the components in batches, beginning with three matching latch bars and their accompanying backplates. The latches were kept simple: subtly tapered rectangles leading to a rounded, punched-out eye, very carefully centered. But the backplates took the shape of a rounded fleur-de-lis—the chosen motif of the Dodson house—and took far more precise manipulation of the radiating iron to create a shape suitable for elegant petals.

Minutes crept by slow enough to become hours—over two of them, in fact. And still he heated and hammered, drawing out, punching, brushing, shaping each piece, measure by measure, from flame to anvil and back again, over and over and over.

Orange and black, orange and black, orange and black.

It wasn't long at all before fire and metal had transfixed Will under spells cast between sparks and smoke. Soon the blacksmith's forge was not the only place where a fire was raging—there was a boiling pit in his guts. And iron was not alone in being twisted, turned, examined. As his body walked itself in circles, his mind was freed to wander. So it wandered back over the morning, pacing circular paths matching those his feet trod over and over and over through the fires inside him.

Everything about this day was so far from ideal, so far from what he'd wanted or hoped for. The straight-forward projects, the guild visit, the long-desired evening with the one he would call lover—all of it had to be pushed aside for a too-long yet too-short day of tedious labor.

And to think that this situation could have been avoided entirely, if one single man had bothered to keep a single one of his commitments on time. Just one single time! It wasn't as though it was an impossible thing to ask! He wasn't expected to sell his soul or find a magic island that couldn't be found. He just needed to come to work!

Why was it so hard to keep one fucking promise?

Will's hammers struck harder and harder at the thought, like the sands of the day's hourglass grown to the size of rocks and small boulders falling, falling, falling over him—

He showed up everyday to his job, didn't he? And it didn't even pay him! He kept his promises, made sure he was a man of his word! Was it really so hard?

—tap after tap—

What excuse was there, this time?

—beat—

Had the old man's vice taken him somewhere farther away?

—after beat—

Had it led him to desert islands or cursed ghost ships?

—after beat—

Had he been sent to the bottom of the ocean?

—after…

'You said you would come back…!'

With a snarl, Will scraped the latest flakes of hammerscale from his third backplate with an unrestrained viciousness. Then he thrust the piece, tongs and all, into the forge's depths, and threw his hammer unceremoniously onto the bench. He could feel a headache beginning to rise under his forehead and eyes, dull yet tight. And as he slumped to the ground, with his back leaning against the warm bricks of the forge's fireplace, he pressed the pad of one thumb and forefinger over his eyebrows, and massaged.

He couldn't do this.

The sunbeams cutting across the room signaled the swift approach of noontime. Six hours of sunlight left. It had taken two hours to do just the levers and all but one of the backplates—and he still had twelve other pieces to craft for just these latches alone! At this rate, it would take him four more hours at least to even begin the latches' handles. By the time he started on those, at five or six o'clock, the sun would definitely be down.

Will forced himself to take a deep breath, and migrated the pressures of his fingers from his forehead to his eyes.

He had to do this, actually.

It didn't matter how hard it was, he needed to make himself able to do it. But he needed to stop letting his distress get the better of him. If he could just cool down and step back to look at things rationally, could just take things down to smaller pieces, then he could do this. He had worked through challenging projects before.

He'd intentionally chosen to do the latches first, because the hinges would be easy. To complete six pairs of hinges, even in low light, that would take probably four more hours, in an ideal situation… six or seven in a less ideal situation.

Which meant there was still a chance he could get to bed several hours before dawn.

Working past midnight wasn't so bad, every once in a while. Hell, if he really needed to, he could just push through until morning. He'd done it before, and that would give him plenty of time to put things together the right way. Either way, he could hightail it over to the Dodson build site first thing in the morning, and satisfy Mister Dodson's demands.

A large, deep sigh built in his chest. Then as it leaked out, it took with it some of the pressure that had built up inside him.

He could do this… It would be alright.

But knowing that didn't help change the way that he was still growing so disappointed he could have choked on the bitterness of it.

It was hot and hazy as hell in this godforsaken shop, with the doors all closed up. Though he'd torn his collar wide open, sweat was sticking his shirt to his skin, beading on his brow and back until more than occasional droplets were running down his spine. Though he'd cycled through swigs of water and beer as often as he could, he could feel his head growing steadily lighter as the day progressed.

He didn't want to be here at midnight.

He wanted to be…

The sound of the front door cracking open jolted Will with surprise, and temporarily staunched the streams of bitterness flowing through his mind. Had he not marked the shop as closed for the afternoon? Or had someone simply refused to accept the shop's closure, and decided they would have their business seen to anyway?

He didn't need another Dodson type encounter. Not today.

Yet to his immense relief, when he looked up it wasn't an obstinate client he saw pushing past the smithy's closed doors. It was only Denys, returned from his quest with the accompaniment of one of the governor's younger household maids. They both seemed to have walked down the hill together. Denys' face was brightly flush with the invigoration of his "adventure." But his walking companion was huffing, puffing, and hefting another one of Elizabeth's now-trademark gift baskets, no doubt filled with even more treats from her father's kitchens or pantry.

Will sighed at this sight, and stifling the alarm bells that were ringing over the time now being wasted, he pushed himself back off the forge's brick to stand at a clearer form of attention. With a wave of his hand, he began signaling for Denys to come in. "Welcome back, Master Hackley. And Miss…?"

He turned back to the forge to draw the backplate out of the fire, intent on keeping the metal from burning while he was occupied by his visitors.

"Stevenson, Mister Turner," the young woman responded. When looked in her direction, she lifted Elizabeth's basket a little with visibly tired arms. "I'm to leave this in your care."

Miss Stevenson then held her burden out for Will to take from the smithy's upper landing. It appeared she felt little interest in entering the shop any farther than was absolutely necessary, though that was understandable. Mister Dodson may have been curt, but he was probably right that a ramp ought to be returned to the center of that landing.

So Will crossed the floor in a few steady strides, to take the basket down from where Miss Stevenson dangled it. Though not anything too abnormal, once the basket was dropped into the outstretched cradle of his ready hands, he was surprised by how heavy it felt . Either it had been packed particularly full this time, or there was a lot less bread than in the past gifts.

He gave it a little hoist of acknowledgement towards Miss Stevenson, matched with the grateful bob of his chin.

"Thank you," he said. Then he turned to walk back to his workbench, where he deposited the basket. As he did, he called over his shoulder at both persons, "You may enter, if you need it."

'Don't!' cried a voice in the back of his mind, reminding of how his heart had just been racing against the sun. 'You've no time for hospitality! Just see them off and get back to work!'

The greater part of him agreed. But it was too late now—the courtesy of his offer had already been extended. He could not take it back gracefully.

"I do not. Thank you, sir," Miss Stevenson answered promptly, to Will's relief. "I have some business I must see to, before I return to the mansion."

Less fortunately, however, Denys promptly chose to accept the invitation by hopping off the smithy's landing onto the lower floor without sign of restraint or ungainliness. The boy needed no further invitation—his feet had hardly landed on the dirt floor, before he turned his head towards the nearest post, by the edge of the donkey's pen. Of course, it was one of the posts surrounded by a rack of swords, and his eyes had fixed on them with an almost hungry air.

While Will tried to ignore the way the pits of his stomach sank a little over Denys, he turned his attention back to the lad's chaperone. "In that case, I bid you a good afternoon, Miss Stevenson, and thank you again for your delivery."

The maid dipped her chin in reciprocated acknowledgement of his farewell, then whirled about and let herself back out of the shop with no hesitations to spare.

Looking back to Denys, Will found the lad had advanced in his admiration to running his hands over the propped-up assortment of pommels, with an awe and obvious longing Will recognized and understood quite intimately. The prick of sympathy struck him somewhere close to his heart. And on a better day, he might have indulged the boy by playing the bit of a salesman, letting him hold a few blades and perhaps even allowing him to give a couple of trial swings here or there—not unlike Elizabeth had done the day before.

But today was not better. Today, if he waited too long, his six hours of sun would melt into five with no extra work to show for it... His distress pressed out his sympathy.

He cleared his throat—more to remind the lad that he was being watched than anything else.

Seeming to take Will's hint, Denys begrudgingly moved on from admiring the swords to admiring the donkey, fascinated fingers abandoning the smooth hilts for scratching the slightly bristly hair of the beast's chin. This was something she seemed to appreciate, as she made no effort to walk around the pen and hide in the back corner—something she'd become wont to do when unfamiliar people arrived.

A thoughtful frown crossed Will's brow, as he remembered he owed the boy a payment of three pence. He ought to count that sum out for him, and send him on his way home. His mother was likely wondering where he was by now, and Mister Brown's work was practically screaming for attention.

He bent below the work bench to pull out the strong box, which rattled very little and felt disturbingly light.

'For god's sake, please let us have at least three bloody pennies to offer…' Will bemoaned inside.

Externally, he remarked as lightly as he could, "I was beginning to worry what had happened to you."

Denys sighed back, then answered without embellishment or anything else more than a fleeting glance to spare for Will, "I was detained."

Will shot him a look meant to convey his doubts. Detained? That was a bit dramatic, wasn't it?

"It's true!" Denys responded to Will's dubious glance with some insistence. "Miss Elizabeth didn't want me walking back down on my own. She made me wait for that maid."

"Miss Stevenson," Will corrected him, reflexively.

"Aye, Miss Stevenson," Denys grumbled, and switched from scratching the donkey's chin to scratching her rump, when she walked round her pen enough to present it to the boy's willing fingers.

Meanwhile, Will unlocked and opened the strongbox.

And once he did, his heart sank. Things were much worse than he expected—Brown must have pocketed a good pouch of coin before he'd left for the night. While there still was a crown and a handful of shillings, only two pennies remained in the box. He'd promised the lad three…

Casting his eyes around the forge, his sights flitted over swords, farming tools, restraints, cooking supplies, the basket, and none of it seemed… Wait. The basket! Perhaps he could make up for the last penny with something from the governor's kitchen? Sometimes there were sweets among Elizabeth's offerings. And even if there weren't, everything else was always good.

Flipping open the basket's wicker covering to examine its contents as well, he unveiled a sight that forced him to suppress an aggravated sigh.

No wonder this basket was so heavy! It was almost completely packed with pies and cheese, to the point Will felt his heart sink under the weight of it all. What was Elizabeth thinking? Her gifts were kind and welcome, to be certain. He hated feeling ungrateful for them. But there was simply no way he and Brown would be able to eat through all of this. She was sending him enough food to feed a small party, not just two people—even if they were hungry men of work.

There must have been a reason for it—she never sent baskets quite like this. If she sent a letter, perhaps there'd be an explanation on what this was all about. But Denys didn't have one in hand…

"I take it you were invited inside, then?" Will ventured asking.

"Aye, she took me in herself!" Denys declared.

He turned away from the donkey, then swiped his hat from off his head with one hand, at the same time that his other hand was making an attempt to take off his makeshift satchel. All the while, his feet tried to walk towards Will in a stumbling line. When he lost balance and nearly ran headfirst into the bellows' vertical shaft, Will stepped out in a well-practiced lunge, and caught the lad by one shoulder of his little waistcoat.

After a moment helping him regain his footing, Will let Denys go.

"And? What'd you think?"

With a huff and a shuffle past Will towards the back of the shop, Denys dropped his accessories onto the workbench besides the basket. Then he hauled out the stool to climb onto. He didn't say another word as he moved. Instead, he seemed to obviously be thinking, even as he began to unwind the cloth that made his satchel across the workbench. Eventually, he paused and scooted a small rotation upon the stool, until he could turn and face Will again with that strangely judgemental expression of his, which, per usual, was far too stern to be taken truly seriously.

"Do you got my money?" he demanded.

Will cocked an eyebrow at his forwardness, and delayed answering with the return, "Do you 'got' your proof?"

It was a comeback that didn't make all that much sense, considering the boy had shown up with one of the governor's servants and a basket that was so obviously from Elizabeth, she may as well have come down and delivered it herself. There was hardly better proof than that.

Still, they'd had an agreement, and Denys seemed to remember it just fine. With his eyes still pinned on Will, he blindly slapped his hand to the desk a few times, until his hand met what he wanted it to meet: a letter of reply, which he held aloft like a fisherman's prize catch.

Proof.

At this, Will couldn't help but grin a little, forgetting the weight of the day at last. He was at the workbench in a blink, and had the letter snatched, sender confirmed, and seal ready for breaking, all in a breath.

"Thank you!"

"Heeeey!" Denys protested.

"Hold on a moment…" he muttered back for a temporary, weak reassurance.

Then he stepped away to devour Elizabeth's letter in a beam of sunlight coming in from under the rafters, with a heart beginning to stumble into a race. This would likely be the closest he would get to her all day. Would she resent their cancellation as much as he did—would she resent him for it, or would she understand him, despite the weak hastiness of his message?

He unfolded the letter to find out:

---

"Mine, with all my amusement and questions ~ "Thank you for your notice! I'm deeply sorry to hear of the increased demands you are facing. I hope this problem in question is not too serious and may be addressed swiftly. "However, I must confess I am rather relieved to hear you are in favor of rescheduling—I was about to send Estrella down to you this afternoon with a similar request. I am embarrassed to admit as much, but I am feeling rather indisposed following yesterday's outing—not unlike what you predicted. Although, I'm happy to report that I think I'm managing the stairs much more easily than you did in your story. There is no groveling today! All the same, I would prefer the chance for some time to recover before meeting you again. "Regardless, if there is any assistance I might be able to offer you, I hope you will not hesitate to request it. Please do not forget what I said to you before. I am here, standing right alongside you. Take my ears, my hands, my tongue, and put them to your advantage, if you need it. For if you are in need, then we both are—your needs and struggles are now mine. I would share in the solutions, whenever possible. "In the meantime, please take what remaining strength I have to offer—I've packed it tightly in this letter for you to take as you need, along with a pair of kisses for you to steal from beneath my name. I wish you the best in your labors, and keep a hope for the next chance we meet continually at the front of my heart. "I remain ready and willing with all my affections Your Elizabeth XX "P.S. I hope you'll forgive me for also writing briefly, as I do not wish to keep our little friend here waiting long. I've already paid Denys for his carriage of this letter both ways, as well as some food. Help yourself to it, but if you would: please make certain that there is sufficient amount for his family. P.P.S. I hope you are well. I've been thinking about you far more constantly than I ought to admit, but I do not care how ridiculous it sounds—it is the truth. I am counting the moments between the minutes without you. And as they pass, I hope your part is spent making something even half as handsomely-crafted as you yourself have come to be."

---

Will felt a surprising weight lift from off his shoulders. With another sigh he was able to raise his head upward, allowing the ghosts of his gratitude to waft along the sunbeams which slipped through the rafters.

There was one person in this world who was pleased with him today, at least.

With no fortune or status, all the world allowed him to be was not even the whole of a man—often he felt practically sawed down to his two laboring hands. Yet, lately it seemed like, even in that limited purpose, all he could manage to do was disappoint the entire world, while instead trying to come to some sort of peace with the thought that his best would always be a little short of most people's expectations, however big or small. He couldn't shoulder the entire smithy the way his master's customers wanted, couldn't shoulder his master the way he wanted, certainly couldn't provide Elizabeth the salary or pedigree her father wanted. Even young Denys, a simple neighbor child, sighed and scowled and rolled his eyes at him every time they crossed paths these days, unhappy with the way he couldn't provide him the sword he wanted.

To all these people, he was hardly more than a tool incapable of fulfilling its intended purpose of giving them their wants.

Days like today, when the number of his mistakes and drawbacks seemed to cascade over him all at once, he sometimes wondered whether it was worth trying to make a name for himself anymore. It wasn't even his own name to begin with—just a sorry inheritance of his that had also somehow come to be written into some tragic song of the sea. No, it seemed the best he could hope for with any of these people was that, at some point, he might work hard enough to finally prove himself reasonably serviceable to those who wanted his hands—or more specifically, what they could make and do. Serviceable. Because in the end he'd always be the bringer of their tools, and little else besides.

But Elizabeth saw more.

True, he hadn't expected the postponement of their meeting to be so convenient to her. And it troubled him to know that the convenience came at the cost of her discomfort. Still, she wrote about the matter with such high spirits, and the lightness of her attitude both surprised and heartened him. Even after he'd had to dash their hopes for their one deeply desired night out, she somehow seemed to remain satisfied with him.

No, better than that—she cared for him. He had proof of it in his hand: words like honey, wishes like wine.

And for a moment, gazing over the haze of his musings through dusty rays of light, he could only feel baffled anew at the thought. He hadn't written to her more than a few words about this increasingly messy, heavy state to his work. In fact, so rushed he'd been in his efforts to get a timely message to her, he could barely remember whether he'd truly said anything at all. He might not have. And yet… still… she not only seemed to understand some of the weight of his burdens, but offered more than mere sympathy for them.

She offered herself.

He felt his throat clench a little as he brushed a thumb over her signature: the elegant twists in her name; the deliberately scratched "Your" before it, paired with her bold and somewhat cheeky "Mine" she wrote for him; the two large x's marking the sites of her treasured kisses…

He suddenly missed her terribly. How few hours it had been since he last saw her didn't matter—being with her was so much more than simple bouts of good conversation, especially these days. It was a reminder that he had a place in this world that mattered a little. To him, she was all strength and reassurance, and somehow today he found himself craving both things more desperately than he had in ages. If she hadn't ended up as waylaid as she said she was, and if he actually had something for her she could reasonably do, he might have taken her up on her heartfelt offer for help…

But no. She already had her own duties to tend to today, and he knew the heaviness that burden was to her. He couldn't trouble her with his own on top of it all. Especially if she was in pain, however small. She deserved her evening of rest. The thought that she offered her strength was more than help enough. He felt bolstered, and far more ready and willing to resume the marathon of work before him.

Today was wasted, but tomorrow could be better. He would begin to make it all up to her tomorrow.

After giving the letter another skim-through, Will brushed the letter to his lips, taking one "kiss" from its special cache. Then folding it up the other kiss for his pocket, he cleared the knot in his throat and returned his attention to the workbench.

From the basket, he selected one wedge of cheese and two pies to keep for himself. Digging out his portion revealed a bottle of ale at the bottom of the basket, and he pulled this out as well to claim for himself. The rest he left for the Hackleys, intent on taking advantage of Elizabeth's gift. Looking back, he realized he'd sent Missus Hackley's son on an errand without considering her permission, and would likely need to ask for forgiveness. This would be a helpful form of redress as he offered his regret.

He was now very glad that there actually had been rhyme and reason to Elizabeth's heavy offerings.

But speaking of which and whom…

"She paid you, then?" Will asked Denys in as casual a voice he could muster.

Denys tipped his head back and made a strange gargling sound of disappointment over the question—or more likely, a groan over the question's revelation that Elizabeth had closed the door on his requesting a little extra pay.

"I suppose she did…" he muttered, half-heartedly.

Will cocked a challenging eyebrow at the boy. "So why are you asking for money, when she says she did."

"Aaaayyyyye, she did," came the groan of Denys' unwilling admission.

With a nod, Will chose to accept Elizabeth's other offered gift, and kept the promised pennies in the smithy's coffers. God, he had so long ago run out of ways he'd be able to make all her kindness up to her…

He flipped the lid of the basket shut. "The rest of this is for you and your family."

Denys' expression shifted from one of annoyance to surprised curiosity.

"It is?" he squeaked. Then he climbed from the stool onto the workbench, so he could flip the basket's lid back open and look at the remaining contents inside it with saucer-shaped eyes.

"Yes," Will responded with a sympathetic laugh, easily matching the wonderstruck patterns of hunger playing across the boy's face to similar sensations from a not-to-distant past. "Are you able to carry it with you? Or will you need help?"

Denys flipped the lid of the basket shut with one of his deep, world-weary sighs, clearly offended somewhat by Will's question.

"I can do it!" he insisted. "I'm not a baby."

Will held his hands up in apologetic surrender, before reaching for the ale and one of the pies he'd set aside for himself.

Though he now felt a little calmer after receiving Elizabeth's reply, her reassurances soothing his guilt for spurning her, he couldn't completely push aside his awareness of the time that was passing him by without his hammer in hand, working. Every extra minute spent idle was a minute robbed from his sleep that night. So he would just have to turn this unplanned break now, chatting with Denys, into something useful.

He figured he may as well make the most of it and get a meal in at the same time. Hopefully after some food and drink, he would be prepared to work longer and later before needing to take another break.

As he moved about, he noted the way Denys' eyes followed the bottle in his left hand. Ah! How remiss of him! He'd been so deep in his head that he'd forgotten to offer his little guest a drink, to ease his long walk in the afternoon sun.

Gingerly, Will set his food back down, then walked to the small barrel of drinking water to rectify this mistake. He ladled enough water to fill the drinking cup, then returned to the workbench with the wooden vessel in hand.

The lad accepted the drink readily, drawing the cup to his lips without hesitation to gulp it down in several hearty swallows. Will felt a little guilty for overlooking him as long as he had.

Eventually, Denys finished his drink with a hearty gasp, and held the cup back out for Will to take.

"More, please?"

Without a word, Will fulfilled the lad's request.

After a few more swallows, the topped up cup was brought to rest atop the boy's lap, in the cradle of his little hands. A thoughtful look crossed Denys face, as he began to swing his legs back and forth, looking down into the cup and musing over some hidden depths inside it.

Will wondered what the boy was thinking, though he didn't ask. Instead, he quietly picked up the parts of his simple meal, and gave the lad a wave of his arm to signal for some extra room on the bench.

The boy complied with Will's motioned request, scooting up against the basket and letting his legs continue to dangle over the front of the table. With enough space now made, Will was able to put his back to the workbench. Then he hopped up backwards to sit on it from its side. Together the two lingered for a few minutes, sitting not quite back-to-back not quite side-by-side in thoughtful silence.

While chewing his meaty pastry, Will let his mind slow down and fall into its own quiet pondering, idly wandering back and forth between vague, bundled up thoughts of Elizabeth and his smithing. Eventually, he was able to begin untangling his musings enough to start weaving plans about the next few tasks he would tackle.

He probably should have taken better care to eat some breakfast sooner.

Though he'd drifted in and out of daydreams, Will noticed Denys didn't seem to move much, except for the pendulum-like motion of his legs. He'd looked so thrilled over the basket's offerings before, Will would have thought the lad eager to sample something right away. Yet he hadn't bothered with so much as a nibble. Was he afraid Will would chastise him for spoiling his dinner…?

"Are you not hungry?" Will asked.

With his head cocked to the side, he caught in his purview the sight of Denys shaking his head negatively.

"Miss Elizabeth gave me some bread and cheese already."

"Ah…" Of course she had.

A prickling on the back of Will's neck began to taunt him. Even though the more rational part of him knew he needed this quiet moment, a part of his mind was not content to let him sit here and enjoy it. The seconds were combining into minutes, and those minutes were passing by. That part of him was beginning to badger his thoughts with worries over how he shouldn't be dallying about like this, letting time slip away—his mouth should be focused on eating and drinking, so he could get back to work and finish his master's failure of a job.

He took another hearty bite, chewed like it was work, then swallowed.

"How are you allowed to visit and send letters to a lady like her, Will?" Denys' voice broke past his thoughts before they could begin to resume their wandering. When Will glanced fully over his shoulder he caught sight of a young profile twisted with confusion. "Mother says we're not meant to knock elbows with folk like her. They don't like people like us."

"Rub elbows," Will corrected in a low voice, mostly to buy himself a little extra time to recover from his pressing stresses. Not to mention the sting of truth behind Denys' final words. "And your mother's right—we're not."

He took a good swig from his ale, and forced himself not to mentally jump back to Governor Swann's warnings from two nights ago. The last thing he needed right now was more weight upon his shoulders.

"Then how come you're getting rides in her carriage and all that?"

Will gave out a single, joyless laugh. "You noticed that, did you?"

Another bite, then he turned his head back to look over his shoulder once more. The incredulity Denys shot him could have pierced a warship's hull. Of course, he'd noticed.

Well, so much for Swann's men parking the carriage away from the smithy. That made two parts of his and Elizabeth's relationship which the Hackley children were privy to, if they counted Ruthy spotting their kisses at some point. And if the town's children knew, then the entire neighborhood likely did, and had only kept it hush-hush for the sake of gossip.

Not that they'd made the most stalwart effort of discretion anyway…

Though Denys' face remained serious, as the seconds passed without a real answer, it softened and shone with less accusation and more genuine curiosity.

Will sighed, shoved the last of his pie into his mouth, and turned his gaze back to the rest of the smithy.

The truth was that Missus Hackley was right: Elizabeth had never been meant for someone like himself. Will had known it from the very beginning—hell, if he'd met Elizabeth at Denys age, he still would have known it. The entire world seemed obsessed with telling everyone exactly where they belonged, no matter how old they were.

So he'd known it… But somehow he hadn't been able to fully accept it. Instead, he'd spent long, arduous hours at multiple foolish efforts to forge himself into someone who could offer enough to become something more.

Signs of that effort were strewn all over this room—signs of his own self-induced attempts at that illusive personal refinement. His eyes drifted over the dozens of swords he'd managed to make all on his own. Swords he'd forged through days and nights heated by his frustrations, then tempered by his fears. Swords drawn, honed, and sharpened by secret hopes which he'd held: that becoming the world's best regarded master swordsmith could possibly grant him a chance at getting just one hand upon an upper rung of Port Royal's social ladder, a little closer to her; that becoming the world's most adept swordmaster could get his foot one step higher; or that slaying a few pirates for himself could bring him one rung closer still to the man Governor Swann had his eyes fixed on, with so much approval…

Eyes that only ever turned towards him in reproach…

To the people Denys spoke of, to those people with the large houses and private carriages and finely bred horses to carry them everywhere, his carefully sharpened efforts were pointless. In their eyes, he knew the sparkling array of his hand-crafted arsenal likely blended into the dust. Hadn't Mister Dodson barely spared a glance for anything else, besides his half-finished order and the mess he perceived around it? They'd prefer to pile more weight on his back, to make the climb to the next rung even more difficult than before.

That was the truth.

There were times it cut to the bone to remember it, especially in the beginning. Thinking about it probably would have hurt more now, if it weren't for the fact that Will had hardly ever been given a chance to forget it to begin with.

He would wear himself down to nothing in his efforts to fight for it, against it—when he dared take up his sword on his own, the direction he'd pointed had never really mattered very much. Too many hated what he was and wasn't for him to let his guard down. Unless he pinned himself against the wall and refused to move, his back would always be exposed to unsheathed daggers and other cruelties. And for the longest time those had been his only two options: to fight and fall apart, or to retreat and remain trapped in one place forever.

But oh so fortunately for him, there was one spectacular exception who had opened up a better way.

And he could picture her now: stealing through the doorway with a perfect afternoon's radiance bursting through her smile at the sight of his work, at the sight of him. No one else had ever looked at him the way she did, so consistently, genuinely happy. And when she walked into his steel and iron orchard, looking around with such wonder at the fruits of his labor, hung about the shop like the splendid yields of his smithing trees, he felt so much less like a simple servant and more like a true artisan. No, better: he felt like a free and living soul.

It didn't start with his days of piracy either, or with the days of his smithing, or even with the days of serving her father's servants. It didn't start once she'd seen what he'd set his mind or hands to, what he could do for the world or for her. It started from the beginning—from the moment they'd met, she'd made him feel real and whole and human just from the way she looked at him and smiled.

But how had that begun? And why..?

"I got lucky—very lucky," he admitted to Denys with a voice tighter than he expected.

He cleared his throat to himself to loosen up, before taking another swig from his bottle. When there was no follow up question from Denys, he glanced back over his shoulder to determine just how aggravated the little salt lick was.

He found the boy furrowing his brow in perplexed dissatisfaction, obviously hoping for more to the answer than just good fortune.

Will couldn't fault the lad's disappointment, but he also couldn't elaborate.

The pull of yesterday's lovelier memories was much too strong, and he had already fallen back into reveling with the ghost of Elizabeth in her past elation, as she wandered the shop and sifted through his swords for her perfect match all over again. The world's callousness would never disappear. But what did it matter when the shape of her remained with him always? He had somehow earned the admiration of the only person who truly mattered.

And what a rare and perfect treasure her love was, a shining pearl too precious to ever take for granted.

She deserved a far better sword than the one she'd picked out. A glorious one made for her hand, with an artistry that would put the commodore's small sword to shame…

'You can think about that later,' that fretful part of his mind chided, and his jaw clenched with the reminder. 'The strongbox is far too empty to think of pearls or more sword gifts. You have other work that needs doing now.'

With a sigh, he admitted to himself that the chiding part of his mind was right. He'd eaten his fill, sated his thirst, and now sitting here could feel the beginning calls of sleep. He had to keep moving. But he couldn't work until Denys was home with his mother again. He probably ought to go with him, to offer a proper apology for stealing her son without permission.

So Will set down his drink, hopped off the workbench, and pointed at the cup still sitting on Denys' lap.

"Alright! Finish that up. It's time for me to take you home."

Denys made his sound of protest in the back of his throat, a whinging sort of scoff. "I'm not ready to go home yet."

"I can tell. But I am far too busy today to entertain anyone. Besides, your mother is likely wondering where you are, and I'll need to explain to her why you disappeared."

A surly frown, followed by the insistence, "I can do that by myself!"

Will answered the boy's protests with a raised eyebrow. "And I can carry you over my shoulder with hardly any trouble, if that is the way you prefer to go. Either you take yourself home, or I will."

"Alriiiight!" the boy groaned in unhappy resignation. After which he set his cup aside and eased himself from the bench to the stool, then to the floor. "You're really mean lately. I don't see why I can't stay—I wouldn't be a bother, I know how to stay out of the way."

"Maybe another time," Will answered evenly, choosing not to take the bait of Denys' childish accusations. He gestured with his head towards the door. "Let's go."

"I want to give my water to the donkey."

Will sighed to the ceiling. "Empty it into her trough on your way out, then."

"No, that's her normal water. I want to give her this water."

What the hell? Was this some weird attempt at delaying departure? Will shook his head. "You're not letting her drink out of that cup—I drink out of it."

"I can scoop the water in my hand!" Denys splayed his fingers and held his palm out to Will for emphasis.

"That won't work."

"Yes, it will!"

"No, your hands are too small. Even if you cup them together you wouldn't…"

He paused.

As Denys wrinkled his nose up in preparation for his next retort, it occurred to Will that he'd somehow fallen into a trap set for him by an eight-year-old. They now were sitting here arguing instead of making their way to the Hackley home, thereby doing exactly what the boy had wished: lingering in the smithy a little longer.

It was bad enough that Jack Sparrow and Hector Barbossa had managed to pull the wool over his eyes multiple times. Had he learned so little from his adventure, that children were capable of fooling him?

"No," Will stated firmly to himself and to Denys at once. "You may set the water aside, and I'll put it in this bottle once it's available. If you ask your mother nicely for permission, and she grants it, you may visit again to share the water with the donkey before she sleeps. But we are leaving now. And if you utter any other excuses for not walking out that door, I'll be hauling you away like a sack of flour before the end of your protest."

Though he hesitated for one second, Denys opened his mouth to argue back the next second.

Will cocked an eyebrow and lifted his hands to a ready position, signaling he was serious about snatching the boy up.

That seemed enough of a threat for Denys to clamp his mouth shut, though he did so with a scowl. At last he obeyed Will's orders, and set his cup upon the edge of the workbench, beside the half-finished bottle of ale.

Then the lad turned back for the basket, and Will watched him with hands hovering in indecision between hanging back and helping out.

When atop the workbench, the basket sat with its top at the level of Denys' eyes, a few inches deep upon the workbench—a seemingly far reach. But it didn't seem to concern him. Instead, the lad's face settled into an appearance of hard determination. Although he was forced to stretch his thin arms out to reach the handle, it quickly became clear he had a plan for what he was doing: rather than try to swing the basket down to carry by its handle, instead Denys scooted the basket to hang halfway over the edge of the workbench. Then, squatting low enough to bring his shoulder level with the bench, he scooted the basket onto his slim shoulder.

Clearly he'd done something like this before. And Will felt a little guilty for questioning the boy earlier. Of course he knew how to do these things. Hadn't he observed Denys working in his father's absence? Hadn't he seen him spending his share of time hauling his mother's water and batches of clients' garments? Hadn't Will himself discovered similar techniques for himself to work in a world that was much too big? And while he may have forgotten what it was like to be smaller than the world was built for, hadn't he remembered, for better or worse, what it felt like to be doubted by his appearance?

These were the thoughts running through him now, as Will watched Denys balanced the still-heavy-enough basket with a steadying arm, backing away carefully from the workbench. His young face was overwritten with a look of deep concentration, only broken once to shoot his hovering neighbor a self-satisfied glance of triumph.

Will shook his head a little, but congratulated Denys sincerely with a hearty, "Nice job! That was very clever."

Then considering the path to be taken out the front door, Will frowned. With the one awkward, meandering path to the stairs, around the donkey pen, or the one significantly larger step taken up the main landing, there weren't very many options convenient for a small person carrying a heavy burden.

'I really should lay a more proper ramp down…'

That would have to wait—they only had one cart, and the effort of moving it now would take more time than it was worth. For now…

"Let's take the back door this time."

Denys agreed with a nod, that same intense expression of focus held steady in his eyes. But he followed close behind, passing through the shop's private exit without one begrudging peep. And when Will needed to pause and lock the shop up, he was surprised to hear no complaints or any other sounds of resentment.

It would have been suspicious, if he hadn't just effectively demanded the boy keep his griping to himself. Had he been too harsh on him, threatening to drag him away like that? It wasn't as though he'd held a beating over his head—that's what the adults used to do to him when he was a child.

"Did she really pull you out of the ocean?" Denys prompted suddenly, picking up the threads of their prior conversation as though they'd never stopped talking about it.

Will frowned as he tested the door's lock and pocketed its key.

She…? Out of the ocean…?

Ah…!

One first meeting must have called to mind another for the boy's hostess. There was only one moment Will could think of which matched Denys' off-the-cuff question, and that was his own unconventional introduction to Elizabeth. She or the maid obviously had unveiled the story for Denys—and whichever had done so had very obviously made an impression on the boy.

And why not? Crossing paths with Elizabeth had altered the entire trajectory of Will's life. There was no way to know what it might have been shaped into if the Dauntless hadn't found him—whether his course would have been led along a different current to a different port with different folk who would have loved him better or worse. Would his life still have been driven by his career, or would it have continued to exist at all? He could have died or become a farmhand or employed by a tailor. Or he could have been left to fend for himself as a beggar child, conning people for coinage.

It could have been a life without Elizabeth.

But that life didn't exist. He had ended up here, a servant to a workshop where tints of hammerscale mingled with the scent of fire. The smoke itself embedded in the musky sweat that bathed his skin, hair, and clothes, so deep that it became a part of him which only a call of fate could have washed away, pulling him back out of the ocean.

And though he owed this life to the Swanns—for setting him on the path that led him to this very door, pocketing these heavy keys, answering this young child's probing questions—neither of them had been the ones to draw him out of the water.

If he were to tell the whole truth, he would admit he hadn't been awake for his actual rescue. He knew who pulled him out of the water because he had been told about it more than once. But seeing as his own jumbled memories of what had happened left him with no reason to contest it, he believed it enough to repeat.

"Some sailors did," Will corrected off-handedly, while he looked up and down the street for any speeding carts or carriages.

With no gallopers in sight, he planted himself with a broad stance in the street, then waved at the burdened boy to step out onto the road and walk ahead of him. With this arrangement, Will's eyes could watch for runaway carts barreling in from the front, while his taller back and shoulders could better signal their presence to drivers passing from behind.

"I already know that," Denys grunted back.

They began to walk together. But their talk seemed to make their feet inclined to drag. Worse than that, while Denys' stride was hearty, the basket's balancing act upon his shoulder slowed him down significantly as well. Will tried to ignore his awareness of this, of the clocks hidden in the nearby shops, and focus on stepping up into a quicker clip.

But Denys pressed on in their conversation, "I mean… is that where she really found you? Out on the se-EA?"

He gasped a little through the end of his words. A misguided attempt to look at Will over his shoulder sent him teetering off-balance, and stumbling sideways to regain it. With a hand shot out by reflex, Will managed to block Denys from tipping completely into the muck and traffic at the center of the street.

"Watch where you're going," he censured firmly, as he righted the boy for the second time today

Denys obeyed, turning his head back ahead and continuing their walk onward—as well as their conversation. "Did she really find you on the ocean, Will?"

An impatient urge began to rise up, tempting Will to snatch the boy's basket up and hasten him down the road, away from the distractions that continued to come over both their minds. But through the sights, smells, and sounds of their bustling surroundings, there called the quiet allure of falling back once more into the memories leaking past his lips.

"Elizabeth spotted me when I was adrift, yes. I might have floated past and never been saved, if she hadn't."

The clocks faded away, their ticking falling beyond Will's hearing or imagination. In their place, Will's feet settled into a steady pace, crunching into the dust a rhythm set by his thoughts.

"She also took care of me afterward, until I felt well again."

"She said that too," he heard Denys note with soft notes of bemusement. "She watched over you even though you were both little, like me."

'Like me…?'

Once again, memories were back in front of his eyes almost as clear as the days that made them. There were memories of crossing the spitting rapids of a stream so swollen it had practically become a river, balancing precariously on a slick, fallen log with his favorite fool, catching and being caught from a fall more than once. There were memories of clutching an equally slick taffrail, being made to laugh as the Dauntless pitched and rolled in the foaming waves on the edge of a storm, utterly incapable of standing or speaking straight. And of course there were memories of the girl with eyes more thrilling than the adventure stories she read to him and hands softer than he'd ever known possible before…

It was funny. Despite being such a profound and fond memory, he'd always had a vague sense that the first time he'd awoken to Elizabeth tending his bedside was actually their second or possibly even their third meeting.

"Was there a lot of people the Dauntless had to rescue?" Denys wondered, while giving into the temptation to turn his head just enough to glance behind. "Is that why Miss Elizabeth was with you?"

Will wasn't sure how to answer that, and used a moment sending Denys a signal with bobbed eyebrows to keep watching ahead for danger.

The most striking moments of that fateful day after were racing back before the eyes of Will's reflective mind, chasing back the serenity of his rescue. Certain details had been all but tattooed into his dreams, while others remained as nebulous and hazy as the fog that had hidden him from his would-be captors.

He wouldn't have wished to have seen the things he'd seen as young as he had, if he could help it. But Denys wasn't exactly inexperienced in similar horrors. And, like he'd declared earlier, he wasn't a baby…

Will peered through a parting between the street's buildings as they passed, seeking a glimpse of the open waters beyond Port Royal's harbor.

"There was a lot of damage to sort through—probably not too different from what you saw of the Pearl's attack here. Except out there the wreckage could float. Elizabeth's father had asked her to look after me, while the sailors were busy cleaning everything up. Afterward, she would come sit by my berth and read books to me, or share the things she'd heard from the other sailors. That's actually how I best remember meeting her: huddled in the surgeon's cabin with me, singing me a song while I recovered from my ship's wreck."

"So it's true?!" Denys' eyes were wide again with a brightly lit interest. He slowed his pace to walk by Will's side and look at him even more keenly. "The Black Pearl really came after your ship all the way back then? And it blew you to smithereens?!"

Will raised his eyebrows at Denys again. Smithereens? That had to be Elizabeth's word choice—it was one of those poetic exaggerations that came straight out of her old pamphlet collection.

It wasn't exactly wrong, though.

"Yes," he confirmed. "Although I myself made it out with my parts held together, mostly."

"How did you get away?"

Sharp, brown eyes…

Will smiled to himself. "The same thing I told you before: I got lucky."

A shout and a bell rant from behind them. Turning to see its cause revealed an ox-drawn cart carrying a wide load, making its way down the street from the docks. Spotting a small alcove a few steps ahead, Will silently led Denys towards stepping off the street. Together they observed from there, as the cart and its attendants approached their space.

"I don't like it when you say that," Denys groused piteously.

"I'm sorry." Will offered a sympathetic frown—he remembered how much he'd wanted straightforward answers as a child. Hell, he still wanted them now. "Unlucky for us now, it is the truth."

"But you don't have to tell it so… boring," Denys responded with certainty. He grunted and shifted the basket a little. "Especially because I know the whole truth, Will…"

"You do?"

"Aye…"

They were not moving for the moment, except for the little shifts Denys made, swaying side to side, shrugging his shoulder and bending his back just a little more this way or that. And for a moment, Will watched him thoughtfully. It was clear he was growing more weary from the weight of the basket, despite bending every bit of his effort towards refusing it.

What was the point of that: insisting on shouldering such a weight when there was help nearby and a steady ground to offload it onto for a moment? How was the world so harsh as to make someone as young as eight believe they needed to keep up an appearance of unyielding strength?

Will remembered what it was like…

And he reached over to lift the basket off the boy's shoulder, enabling Denys to take a hold of the burden well enough to lower it to sit above the ground, perched atop his buckled feet. No scowl or pout was given in answer. Instead, Denys simply eased himself into a crouch and wrapped a protective arm around the basket, to keep it in balance.

Then he looked up at Will with a smirk spread wide by smug satisfaction. "Miss Elizabeth told me how there was treasure and cursed magic and everything. It's alright to say it. I won't tell anyone."

Will almost barked out laughing at that little pretended reassurance, but kept his amusement tempered down with the cock of one eyebrow. "If you've heard it already, then why would you need to hear it from me again?"

The oxen were now passing them, drawing the cart behind slow and careful.

"Because…" Denys returned with his fingers fidgeting along the edge of the basket, eyes staring distractedly at the beasts and wagon wheels moving along before him. "Because…"

For once, it seemed his words were running out.

So Will took a chance to guess at what the lad meant but could not piece together well enough to utter: "You want to know how my good luck played out."

Denys nodded, eyes still pinned on the heavy wagon.

Will looked to it as well, watching the spokes on the wheels turn about steadily in their slow but determined circle. "I think you know the answer better than you realize—perhaps even better than I do."

Perplexed doubt snatched Denys' attention back away from the labor before his eyes.

"How?"

Will hesitated with his answer for a moment. But the truth of what he wished to say won out: "You've seen the same thing."

He didn't need to specify what he meant. When he looked at Denys' upturned eyes, he could see reflections of the shattered glass that had razed that ugly night. Now as though it were then and even earlier before, he saw the colors black, white, blue, broken up by raging gold and…

He moistened his mouth, gone dry. "The pirates' attack on my ship was hardly any different from what they'd done to us here. Whatever differences there were were small. Our town was only a boat. The fog before the ambush masked the noon sun instead of a midnight moon. And we had no earth to catch us when we fell, no roads or jungle to run and hide in—instead, the sea stretched forever beyond and below. So when the pirates boarded and set their fires, all we could do was sink."

Black, white, and blue.

"Because the ship exploded?" Denys' voice sounded smaller than usual.

Raging gold…

"Yes…"

… and ribbons of weeping crimson.

Away Will's memories took him from town and smithy to places where he still smelled burning fires—but those of a raging sort, mixed with the stronger, pepper-like sulfuric smokes of gunpowder and pitch. He remembered that the smells had been suffocating at first, an acrid coating inside his nose and throat…

As he'd sunk and emerged from the sea and drifted from the wreckage, the scents and tastes had eventually faded with the rest of his senses into blackness.

"That's not lucky, Will," the boy noted with a surprising frankness.

"It doesn't sound like it, does it?" Will answered, finally choosing to settle into his own crouch, joining Denys nearer to the ground, just as the oxen cart was making its way towards the end of the street. "But that explosion thrust me down and away from the ship's wreckage, deep out of the pirates' sights. I could have drowned—it seemed like the worst luck of all. But then a strange thing happened…"

Denys implored for more with his eyes alone, once again widened in wonder.

So Will continued, "I was so deep and far-flung that I could look up… And do you know what I could see?"

"What?" Denys whispered so quietly, Will mostly knew he said it from the shape of the word leaving his mouth. The cart passing before them was now entirely forgotten.

"Everything," Will whispered back, and waved his hand over their heads as though the scattered clouds in the blue sky had taken the shapes of his past scene. "Everything was scattered over my head like clouds. I could see my ship on fire, and all the bits of her that had been blown everywhere…"

His voice trailed away, as his recollections grew more vivid.

Wood had surrounded him, yes. And scattered pieces of cargo—apples, especially. But between the bits and pieces of ship, he'd also caught sight of sundered limbs and broken chunks of flesh, torn away from bodies already gone limp, or struggling with the tangles of their own cloth, their lifelines twisted into nets of death, as they all drifted down, down, down.

'Blown to smithereens…'

He blinked back the vision in his mind far enough to return a cautious look in Denys' direction, grateful that the boy was not privy to what that vision had been.

"I could see the shadow of the Pearl still circling about, searching for treasures. And drifting away from her, on the other side of the wreckage, I could see one large piece of the deck which looked like it might be big enough for me."

Denys' lips parted with voiceless questions bolstered by anticipation, his boredom left far behind Will's longer answer.

"But I was far away, and my heart was beating so hard it was hard to hold my breath. It took all my strength to swim fast enough just to make it to the surface, inside the wreck of my old ship. I had to hide, and try not to choke from the smoke of the fire. Then I had to do it again and again, chasing after that piece of wood without being able to see it. Every time I swam to the place I thought it ought to be, it wasn't there. I'd lost it. Things are hard to find when you're bobbing in the waves—the water rises so easily over your head and pushes you about. I couldn't find it! And I began to sink in the sea…"

The lad seemed to have stopped moving, waiting with breath quite literally bated.

Will's lips twitched upward again at last. "Until, by the blessings of good luck and nothing else, the winds died down, and the waves began to calm. A plane of wood struck me on the back of the head. It was hard enough to hurt, but not hard enough to stop me from grabbing hold. I was able to climb atop it… And once I'd fallen on my face and thought about what I had to do next, where I needed to swim, I realized: I had nowhere to go."

The enthrallment in Denys' face warped into distress.

"I'd kept myself from drowning, but the Pearl was still looming close. The only thing that protected me from her was the winds dying down, giving me a curtain to hide behind for the moment. I needed to get away… but I didn't even know which direction to go. Land could have been days or even weeks away. Plus, once I started swimming, the pirates would probably see me, and then they'd catch me for certain—I could never outswim an entire ship. Then they'd take my one treasure, and cut me down dead. Especially because my arms were starting to feel like they'd fall off if I tried to swim another inch. There was nothing I could do, but wait…"

He remembered feeling the sea had been like a cradle and a grave at once, holding him entirely at her mercy. The way he swayed so gently, he'd believed he was as good as dead.

"And then, you know, another one of the strangest things happened—more good luck, if you will."

"What?" Denys whispered, careful to not disrupt the flow of the story.

Will smiled again, softly. "I heard a small voice."

Young eyes widened once more. "The Holy Spirit…!"

"Perhaps I thought so, at first," Will chuckled, not willing to shatter the boy's beliefs. "Perhaps it was the first time. But then it faded, and I thought it was the wind. I laid my head down, disappointed. Until it came back a little stronger—there was a song I could barely catch with my ears. And I didn't know what it was anymore—it could have been sirens or selkies or something else that could make me drown. But it wasn't the pirates, and that was all I cared about.

"So I tried to paddle towards the sound, though it was hard to tell where it was coming from. But like before, I couldn't find the one who was singing. The fog was far too thick, and the song was so quiet that it came from everywhere and nowhere at once. Eventually, I became much too tired to paddle. I couldn't bear to swim or tarry any longer. My fate was, as they say, in the hands of the gods—whether ours or any other didn't matter. So I rolled onto my back, and gave myself up entirely to whichever being would carry me to my rescue..."

His tale tapered to a standstill, while memories surged back to the forefront of Will's concentration.

This was the part which remained cut into pieces adorned by haze and forgetfulness—after blasts of fire and fathomless depths of water, a creeping, foggy oblivion. He remembered dark and light had begun to pass over him in such quick phases, he'd lost sense of almost everything but scattered moments.

Amidst the misty bits and pieces which had taken him from sea to ship, there was one particularly brief instance when he recalled an unexpected touch jarring him awake. Though light, it had flooded his heart with fear, his unsealed eyes with sky, fog-white. He had been caught after all… but it was not by the pirates. Bewilderingly and to his great relief, instead he found a girl his size, with her ringlets and freckles hovering over him. It was such a hazy, fleeting moment—it felt more like a dream than anything. All he could recall for certain was the way her voice resembled the song he'd heard before. And it had matched her face with such kindness that he'd been infected by the belief that he was about to be admitted to the gates of heaven.

It had stoked his panic back up at first, realizing he'd be leaving his father behind without any word where he or mother had gone. The panic had overwhelmed him and sent him reeling backwards, away from the light. In his stumbling towards the brink of unconsciousness, confusion swept to the forefront of his listless thoughts:

Was death actually meant to come while looking into eyes so brown and warm?

'How strange…' he remembered thinking to himself. 'No one ever said that the angels guiding the paths of the dead could be so like me…'

That was all he remembered of that moment, so dreamlike.

After that, he could remember the sounds of men's voices, could eventually picture himself back below the stuffy, crowded decks of the Dauntless, with a military surgeon pressing him to remember where he was, what had happened.

And as the land of the living welcomed him back, as his mind settled and his body regained its strength, he would look to Elizabeth and dream of that time he'd first seen her again. It gave him more and more comfort, as those eyes he'd looked into became more familiar and yet more rare through the swift passage of moments and years. Whether or not it had been a dream didn't matter. It aligned with the tales he'd been told.

But even if it hadn't, it had been real to him…

Ah! It suddenly struck Will that the cart had passed, probably several moments before. They were not at sea, Denys and he, but crouched in an alleyway, away from the errands they both needed to fulfill.

He put his hands to his knees. "We should go. The street is clear now."

Then he lifted himself back up, and gave Denys a hand in repositioning the basket atop his narrow shoulders. Together, they continued down the street, each wandering only in their thoughts as they made their way to their final destination. This time, they walked side-by-side, with Will closer to the street.

"Were you hurt badly?" Denys inquired, openly curious and not quite yet done reveling in Will's experiences.

"Not badly, no," Will answered honestly. "Just a few bumps and bruises to account for. Part of how I was lucky back then, I suppose."

"Do you think Miss Elizabeth is your guardian angel?"

Will had to laugh at that. "I'd never thought of it that way. She's beautiful and brilliant, but I know her a bit too well to believe that. I think she's a little better than angels, to be honest."

A guardian he could consider her for certain. Even when they were young she had the heart of a lion, and never failed to come to his defense whenever he needed it—and sometimes even when he didn't. But she never did care all that much for sticking to the rules, and was bold enough to say it in times when his own heart faltered. He liked her better that way—someone like him, only bold enough to walk a few strides ahead, and strong enough to make him want to quicken his pace to match her, meet her, remain with her.

After all, no being that could be considered truly "higher" had ever taken proper interest in him before.

Denys seemed disappointed by that answer.

So Will pressed on with the former subject, "More than anything, I was worn out. Even before I'd seen my raft, I had to swim very hard to escape the ship once it was sinking. When the sea decides a ship is hers, and you are a part of it, she'll pull on you harder than you can ever believe."

The lad's natural skepticism returned to his face at last. "That's silly. The sea's not alive. It's just water sloshing around, my mum says."

"Perhaps, perhaps not," Will replied, and shoved his hands into his pockets. "But when you're out there in that sloshing water, it sure can feel like it's alive."

At least, it did to him. Sometimes he wondered about that day, and the lines of luck that had woven his escape together, so swift and secure. He'd swam like he'd never swam before, that day. Looking back,the distances he'd covered before his lungs had given up on him seemed almost unbelievable. Sometimes, when he dreamed about it over again, he could almost swear he felt the water moving along with him, pushing him up just a little more than it pulled him down…

Where was that luck for the bodies he'd watched floating about?

Perhaps Mister Gibbs was onto something, with his quibblings over which direction a man's luck could take him when crossing such vast and perilous waters. He certainly had enough stories to back his beliefs up one way or another. Which reminded Will…

"Did you know a lot of sailors never learn to swim?" he asked Denys, letting his thoughts loose almost carelessly.

"Yes," Denys answered in a quiet voice. "Father can't."

Will felt his heart twinge a little. He hadn't known that about Mister Hackley, but he wasn't surprised. It wasn't merely a lot of sailors who never learned to swim—most of them didn't.

"You know why?"

Denys shook his head.

Will remembered the warnings he and Elizabeth had heard as children, listening to the sailors' much-too-morbid tales aboard the Dauntless: "Some people believe that if a soul falls overboard, it's bad luck to save them."

He could hear Mister Gibbs' voice in particular, admonishing them all, 'There can only be rough waters where these two roam—mark my words! It's bad luck to have a woman on board, and it's even worse luck to have a man called to go overboard!'

"… Why?" Denys echoed the same question Will had asked before.

So he gave Denys the same answer Gibbs had given him: "It's like I said—when the sea wants something, she pulls on it harder than you can believe." A pause, while Will shifted to walk behind Denys once more, to make room for another passing cart. "Some sailors think if you save someone from drowning, you're stealing from the sea a soul that she's decided belongs to her. And you can't steal from the sea. She'll come after you one day. She never forgets, and she never lets go." The cart passed swiftly, and Will returned to keep pace at Denys' side. "That's what some sailors believe."

They were approaching Denys' home at last—just one house away.

"Who saved you?"

Will frowned thoughtfully. In general, he'd always dismissed Mister Gibbs' luck-obsessed ramblings as superstitious nonsense, and didn't consider them much after hearing them.

"Besides Elizabeth? Mm… " he mused. "Commodore Norrington, I suppose. And a few other sailors."

"Will the sea come after any of you?"

'I really hope not…' Will thought to himself, fighting to finally disentangle himself from thoughts of bodies drifting lifeless amongst the currents, from thoughts of becoming one of them with a cannon strapped tight to his ankles…

"Who can say?" he answered as breezily as he could. "The sea's not really alive anyway, is it?"

He offered Denys a reassuring smile as they walked up to his house's doorstep.

But Denys still didn't care for what Will thought time demanded.

He stopped a few feet before his door, and asked, "Why did you learn to swim?"

"My parents taught me," Will replied, and turned back towards the house's open door. "And I'm sure you have many more questions about how or why, but I'm afraid that will have to wait for another time. It's time to greet your mother."

And then, despite wishes otherwise, Will would find himself back in an overlong evening of work.

Perhaps the sea could take him back—just this once.

---

The meeting with Missus Hackley was swift and mostly to the point. She had wondered over her son's absence. But when Denys proudly dumped Elizabeth's peace offering and a handful of pennies on his mother's table, her initial crossness was stunned into a temporary silence. And when Will explained and apologized for the circumstances of Denys' hasty employment, their oversteps were largely forgiven.

Largely. Missus Hackley, experienced as she was in the shortsightedness of young boys, remained somewhat distressed about the amount Elizabeth had paid Denys for a message delivery. Adults liked to brag, and children were certainly not any better about it—especially not without exaggerations. But after Will assured Missus Hackley that the price was a fair balance for her unexpected inconvenience, and after he had convinced Denys his coins needed to be kept a secret like a pirate's treasure, and finally after swearing that Elizabeth wouldn't be handing out such large favors again, the money was also eventually accepted.

Within a few minutes, Will had excused himself and made his way back down the street at a sharp clip, anxious to return to his mountain of work.

As he'd dreaded, nearly an entire hour had passed, leaving only five to be lit by enough sunlight to use as best as he could. The thought remained daunting, but the flares of distress that had threatened to overtake him before had largely been calmed. And as Will shut up his shop, doffed his waistcoat, and donned his apron, he was able to reassess his situation with a clear and level head.

The backplates for the actual latches were nearly all finished. To complete the other pieces of the latches, he would need to make twelve more parts, which would take him until anywhere between seven to nine o'clock in the evening, if he could work consistently quickly and without any further interruptions. After that, he needed to make eighteen parts for the hinges. He could probably make all six pintles in an hour, which would take him to ten o'clock. Then came twelve leaves, which…

He was cutting it extremely close, if he wanted to make it to the Dodson worksite for an on time delivery. If he could make one hinge leaf every half-hour—which would be remarkable—that would take him until four a.m., giving him two hours of leeway for mistakes, assembly, and possibly a few quick coffee breaks.

He was definitely going to work until dawn.

With a little groan, his eyes fell upon the smithy's too empty strong-box, then drifted to his half-finished bottle of ale, the pies, the cheese. His mind drifted about the town, mentally searching once more for where his master must have gone to, debating if he shouldn't give in and search him out, to make him take up this project himself, even if his drunkenness left him unable to stand.

Then his thoughts returned to the treasure he'd tucked inside his pocket.

'… take what remaining strength… I've packed tightly in this letter for you…'

The words blew like bellows over the convictions burning in his heart, reigniting his limbs with the vigor to forge on. Will's hand touched his pocket on its way to his hammer. And when he lifted the iron tool, it felt lighter than it had felt in many weeks.

He had already disappointed Elizabeth once today—he would not do it again.