The Promise

a follow-up to Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest

by Setcheti

 

 

Disclaimer:  I don’t own POTC, I’m not trying to usurp rights from the Mouse of Doom, I didn’t get paid for this, etcetera, etcetera.  And yes, I’m well aware that this disclaimer doesn’t mean jack

 

Author’s Note:  It was the end of a miserable week last summer when some friends dropped by and hauled me out of the house, crutches and all, to go see this movie.  And when they brought me back home, I found myself actually writing for the first time in weeks.  I didn’t finish it – it didn’t have a beginning, or an ending – but inspiration trundled on from there.

 

Today Pirates 3 opened across the country, and before I go see it – sans crutches this time! – I thought I’d better get my idea of what could have happened to Will and Jack out of the way.  So here it is, definitely AU, possibly a little dark, but finished all the same.  Enjoy!

 

It had been a long few months, Will Turner reflected.  Fleeing the destruction of the Black Pearl, taking up with Barbosa to rescue Jack, falling back in with a twice-betrayed Norrington after Lord Beckett used the beating heart of Davy Jones to wage a war of terror on the high seas…realizing that Elizabeth was not the woman he’d thought she was.

 

She’d killed Jack, for starters.  She’d kissed him to do it – thrown herself at him, then used the distraction to chain him to the mast and lied to Will and the remaining crew about Jack staying behind to save them.  The pirate captain had actually come back to save them, but that apparently hadn’t been enough for Elizabeth.

 

It had been more than enough for Will, although it had taken him a while to get to that point – taken him their whole journey to World’s End, in fact, but the moment he’d seen Elizabeth see Jack…he wasn’t as naïve as Jack thought he was.  Elizabeth felt something for Jack, the same way she’d felt something for Norrington…the same way she felt something for Will.  It was what she felt that was the problem.  She’d used all three of them, and continued to try to play them off against each over their entire journey back home.

 

Except that it wasn’t Will’s home now.  Norrington was the same.  And Jack’s home, the Black Pearl, was once again at the bottom of the sea.  Their fight now was for survival, and between Davy Jones and his monstrous crew, the Kraken, and the soldiers who were doubtless even now working their way free from the trap Jack’s remaining crew had set for them, surviving wasn’t looking like something they could do.  Will couldn’t honestly think of anything they could do which would turn the tide in their favor.  Everyone was fighting with everyone else, and the prize they were fighting for control of rested smugly on the desk in its burlap wrappings, pulsing obscenely in time to the clash of swords and the yells of the participants, almost as though it was certain somehow that whatever the outcome no harm would befall it.

 

Will knew, in that  moment, what had to be done.  Breaking away from the others he raised his father’s knife high, and to the soft voice of Tia Dalma in his head that asked if he was sure, he answered, Yes, it has to be this way.  And then the knife descended and sank into the beating heart of Davy Jones.

 

Off the island’s coast, the grotesque monster Jones had become let out a deep cry of rage and pain, tentacles writhing wildly at nothing, and then collapsed to the beslimed rotting deck of the Dutchman.  The ship shuddered with him in his long-denied death throes, and his cursed crew stood petrified.  Far below them, the Kraken howled as it felt his control over it dissolving, longing for the freedom of the open ocean that had so long been denied it.  One sailor, locked deep inside the hold, hung his head at the sound.  “Oh, my son,” he whispered.

 

Will’s knife slid out of the weakly pulsing heart.  The other occupants of the room had frozen when the knife fell, but now Lord Beckett moved toward him, unsheathing his sword.  “You fool!  The Kraken will be free now!  I’ll…”

 

“No, you won’t.”  Jack’s pistol came to rest against the smaller man’s temple, effectively stopping him from moving.  The former captain of the Black Pearl nodded to the young blacksmith, dark eyes showing both respect and understanding.  “Do it now, Will.  You’ll do her proud.”

 

Will smiled at him.  “I’ll come for you,” he promised.  “We’ll sail together again someday, you have my word.”  Then he lifted the knife, still dripping with Jones’ inky blood.  “I claim command of The Flying Dutchman!” he yelled to the listening sea…and then the knife descended again.

 

Elizabeth screamed; Norrington barred her from rushing to her fallen former love with an iron arm.  “I misjudged him,” he said offhandedly, meeting Jack’s eyes over her head.  “Turner was the better man.  He won’t be forgotten.”

 

It was a promise, and Jack nodded.  “You’re still a member of my crew,” he reminded the former commodore.  “Although I won’t hold you to it, since I did take you on just so I could sell your soul to Davy Jones.”

 

Norrington shrugged.  “Nobody’s perfect,” was his reply.  “I’ll consider staying aboard – once you find another ship, that is.  Although I did see one in the harbor that might do us nicely.”  He gave Elizabeth a rough shove back into her father’s hold when she tried to get past him again.  “Harridan, leave it alone and let the man die in peace.”

 

“He’s not dead!” she shrieked, still struggling.  “He’s breathing, he’s not…”

 

“He’s dying,” Jack settled it.  “He stabbed himself in the heart, it’s not like you could save him even if he wanted to be saved.”  He softened just slightly, more for her shocked father’s sake than hers.  “Our brave and honorable William will cross over when Jones does, and take command of the Dutchman while Davy-boy tries to justify his sins to the Devil.”  The pirate didn’t quite smile.  “Will’s father’s serving on the Dutchman, you know, and the foolish boy swore an oath to kill Jones with his father’s knife, to release him.”  His pistol shifted a little, and then flipped in his hand and crashed against Beckett’s head; the lord went down in a heap.  “Me hand was getting tired,” he told Norrington, not quite grinning.  “And I owe the bloody bastard quite a bit more than a lump or two…oh look, there he goes!”

 

Will Turner had breathed his last.  His body shimmered slightly and then melted and seeped into nothingness through the cracks in the floor.  Bill Turner’s knife clattered against the bloodstained slate tiles, unable to follow, and Jack stepped over Lord Beckett to pick it up.  “We’ll just find a safe place to hide this,” he said, tucking it inside his vest.  “I can think of a few islands that would make it a good home – provided your harbored ship is up to getting us there.”

 

Norrington shook off his shock at seeing Will disappear and nodded.  “She’s one of the fastest things going, to hear him tell it,” he said with a contemptuous wave at the remaining still body of Beckett on the floor.  “We just have to get rid of her crew, and then we’ll see if he had it right, shall we…Captain Sparrow?”

 

“We shall,” Jack agreed with him.  He bowed elaborately to the wide-eyed man holding Elizabeth.  “Governor Swann, it has been a pleasure knowing you.  Not.  And before you try to marry that one off again,” he warned, with a nod toward the struggling young woman, “you might make sure the unlucky blighter knows what he’s getting.  Be sure he understands that she drove one man to drunken ruin, another to suicide, and tried to murder a third with her own sweet hands.  If he’ll still have her…well, then he’s likely as bad as she is.  This man on the floor here might do, at that.  Marry them without delay, preferably while he’s still unconscious.”

 

“I agree,” Norrington put in.  “Your pardon, Governor.”

 

Swann nodded to him, and then the pirates slipped out of the room.  No doubt intent on taking the fine fleet ship in the harbor, he assumed, and enjoyed the thought of them getting away with it.  Pirates or not, they were fine men.  He pushed his shocked but still struggling daughter down into the nearest chair and made her stay there.  “Stop it!” he ordered sharply, eyes narrowing.  “Now since I already know about the drunkenness and the suicide, why don’t you tell me about attempting to murder, Elizabeth?”

 

Elizabeth stopped struggling.

 

 

On the deck of the Dutchman, the dying heap of Davy Jones had quivered and then bled away like so much sea water, running down off the deck and into the sea.  In his place the new captain appeared, neat and trim in a blue coat with silver buttons, his curling dark hair pulled back at the nape of his neck with a black ribbon.  He did not look happy.  “All hands front and center!” he ordered, then stood with his hands clasped behind his back and watched them line up with critical dark eyes.  He walked the length of them when all were assembled, then climbed the short steps up to the foredeck and addressed them as a whole.  “You have a new captain now, and things are going to be different,” he said.  “Where are the seamen from the last two ships Captain Jones took?”

 

 Five shaking, ragged sailors stepped out of the ranks, hollow eyed and wary.  “Captain,” one of the men addressed him.  “W-we await your orders, s-sir.”

 

Will just barely smiled.  “As the most recently additions to the Dutchman’s crew, I have hopes that you have the best memory of what a clean ship looks like.  I want this one scrubbed from stem to stern, and you’re in charge of seeing that it’s done properly.  I want the slime gone from this deck by nightfall, understand?”

 

The man who had spoken before straightened and saluted.  “Yes, Captain.  We’ll see it done.”

 

“Good man,” the captain told him…and the sailor and his four companions found themselves dressed in clean working clothes such as any deckhand might wear, the blood and filth gone from their bodies.  “Get to it, you’ll have plenty of help soon.”

 

“It won’t be me,” the hammerhead helmsman growled, snapping his teeth at one of the passing sailors, who was quick to scuttle out of his way.  “We serve Captain Jones!”

 

A rough cheer went up from some of the more monstrous seamen at that, and Will waited until it had ended before speaking again.  “Well since I killed your Captain Jones, now you serve me,” he informed Hammerhead.  “If any of you don’t like that, I’m afraid you will have to face the consequences.”

 

“I don’t like it,” Hammerhead growled back.  “An’ I don’t see what you could…”

 

He never finished his sentence; he was flopping helplessly on the deck, his body now matched to his head.  “Push that off into the sea,” the new captain instructed.  “And as for the rest of you…”  More half-man half sea-creatures dropped, half-men no more, and some of the remaining crew quickly shoved them off the deck into the water; those who did straightened from their labors as whole men, clothed and clean.  “Go below and send up every man you find,” Will ordered them.  “Then start on the crew quarters, I won’t have men bunking in filth.  When you’re finished, come find me.”

 

Most of the men so addressed scurried to get below.  Two hesitated, and promptly collapsed into showers of seawater.  “I don’t tolerate insubordination,” Will informed those still remaining on deck.  “You serve on my ship at my pleasure, and you’d be wise not to forget it.”  He eyed one group of drooping, barnacled men.  “The hold for you.  Carry up what’s there, then scrub it out and see that you put nothing back into it which hasn’t been scrubbed as well.  Anything that can’t be salvaged, throw it into the sea.  And as for the rest of you,” he told those remaining.  “Make yourselves useful to those who are already working.  The man who finds himself with nothing to do will find himself off my ship.  Dismissed, men.”

 

Will waited until they had all dispersed, then wrapped his hands around the rail and thought.  From the moment he’d appeared on the Dutchman’s deck he’d felt her in his bones and in his blood; she was his ship, his commission bought with his heart’s blood, and aboard her his will was law.  So he shook barnacles off her sides and changed her toothed and gaping forward maw back to a solid prow of sturdy wood, complete with a serene-faced angel as its figurehead.  The angel’s likeness was not that of Elizabeth Swann, however, but a sweet remembrance of Tia Dalma, the witch-woman he had seen but twice.  And in ten years, when he could for one day walk upon dry land, Will promised himself that he would put to port and visit her to see if she approved.

 

 

When ‘Bootstrap Bill’ Turner emerged onto the deck of the Flying Dutchman, the first thing he noticed was white sails, billows of cloud and clean fog swelling amid the ephemeral rigging under the day’s sun.  The second thing he noticed…was his son, standing at the wheel, watching the men scrub the deck.  Bill straightened as much as he could and approached, pride and concern warring within him.  “Captain Turner.”

 

Dark eyes left their appraisal of the deck and appraised him instead, and then Will almost smiled.  “I must look like my mother.”

 

“Aye,” Bill answered, thinking fondly how true that was.  He raised a hand to brush back what remained of his own seaweed-entangled hair, which had at one time been thin and straight salt-bleached brown streaked with gray…and stopped when he encountered no seaweed.  His hair was pulled back into its normal braid – or what had at one time been its normal braid – and the hand he had lifted was age-gnarled and tanned instead of sagging bluish gray and marred by black barnacles.  “You changed everyone?” he asked.

 

“One way or the other,” Will told him, the half-smile disappearing.  “I won’t make a monster look like a man, or a man look a monster, either.”  His jaw set.  “And I won’t have my ship dripping with slime and encrusted with filth – if Jack can be half-mad and keep his ship presentable, I can certainly do as well in the state I’m in.”

 

“Whatever his other failings, Jack Sparrow was a good enough captain,” Bill said by way of agreement.  “Does he know…”

 

“He was there – he held that bastard lord of the trading company off so I could finish it, in fact.”  Bill almost wept when his son lifted his face to the sea breeze, so noble did he look as he gazed out over the waves.  “I told him I’d sail with him again someday.”

 

Bill had no doubt about that.  If there was ever a man destined to die at sea, it was Jack Sparrow.  If Jack ever died at all, that was; the man led a positively charmed life.  “So what now?” he asked his son – and his captain now, if not forever.

 

Will’s brown gaze turned back to him.  “Do you want to stay on?”  At his father’s nod, a certain tension seemed to leave the younger man.  “Would you be willing to be my first mate, Bill Turner?  I need a man I can trust by my side, and…and those I came to know who had served with you all said you were a good man.”

 

Bill met his son’s eyes – his mother’s brown eyes, they were – and read what was in the boy’s soul.  Not his heart, that was gone; no man with a heart could captain the Dutchman.  “I’ll do my best for you, Captain,” he said at last.  “And if I may say so, although she’d not be glad of the circumstances…your mother would be proud.”

 

The almost-smile again.  “I thank you for the thought, Mr. Turner.  And now I’d like you to see how the cleanup is getting on, and let the men know I’ll be down in an hour to see for myself.  Is Towney still in the wall in the crew quarters?”

 

“Nosir.”  A new voice, rough with age.  An old seaman had come up on the foredeck, stoop-shouldered and bent but with storm-gray eyes still sharp in his lined face.  “Your pardon, Cap’n, but I was that surprised to be movin’ again that it took me just a bit to recover mysel’.  Orders, sir?”

 

“Do we have a galley?” Will asked him.  He returned the old seaman’s nod with one of his own.  “See what state it’s in, then take a man or two and set it right.  When you’ve finished I wouldn’t say no to a cup of tea, if there is any.”

 

“Aye sir, if there is, I’ll be findin’ it.  Shall I be bringin’ it to the captain’s quarters?”

 

Will made a face.  “Bring it to me here, if you please.  I’ll have to decide what to do about my quarters later.  Dismissed, Mr. Towney.”

 

“Aye sir.”  Towney touched his cap and hobbled off, and after a nod to his son Bill left the deck as well to go check the men in the hold.  He smiled the smile his son couldn’t, however, when he heard Towney telling one of the working men that, “This new captain of ours, he’s a right one,” in his sea-roughened voice.  “Has us cleanin’ the whole ship, he does, but he’s leavin’ his quarters to the last.  Now that’s a right fine man, that is.”

 

Bill Turner couldn’t have agreed with him more.

 

  

Years slipped by, and decades fell one after the other like leaves off a tree.  But even as the world changed, even as ships became fleeter and wars turned ever more sailors into soldiers…the sea remained the same, a great unknown mystery.  The knowledge passed down by those who had ridden her waves in times past was pushed aside as ‘superstition’ by the captains of great trading vessels and commanders of proud fighting fleets…but not believing in the old tales did not make them immune to them, and sometimes on a rare night a living captain pacing his deck might see a ship with sails of fog slide out of the night, her prow riding high on silvered waves.  And if he was a man of nerve, and did not hide from the sight…he might see his own ghostly counterpart pacing the decks as well, or holding the ship’s wheel steady as she forged ahead.

 

The sea’s blessing was on men who saw the Dutchman pass and lived to tell the tale.  Although few did tell it, not wanting to be thought mad by the gold-blinded men who owned the ships and the fleets and scoffed at talk of ghosts.  There were other ears that listened, though, and often from the corner of a crowded, run-down tavern at portside a sailor brave enough or drunk enough to open his mouth would see a dark smile confirm his tale, and a tankard lifted in salute before its owner drained it dry with an oath of , “Good sailing, dear William.”  And no one ever understood what he meant, for it was common knowledge that the captain of the Flying Dutchman was a man called Davy Jones.

 

Will had given up correcting them before the end of his first decade on the Dutchman.  The men who served under him called him Captain Turner, and as for the rest of the world…he’d found he really didn’t much care what they knew him as, or how they thought of him.  All that mattered to him was that his promise to his father had been kept, and that his promise to Jack Sparrow someday would be as well.

 

If Jack ever bothered to actually die, that was.