Itinerary Title: Itinerary Author:penknife Pairing/characters: Will Turner Rating: PG Summary: As the captain of the Dutchman, Will is learning to find his way. Disclaimer: I don't own them; Disney, etc. do. Author's Note: Written for the prompt Will dealing with being Captain of the Dutchman (getting to know his dad a plus).
Itinerary
They begin, always, in sight of the shore, a fine green shore under a golden sun. It is somehow always afternoon when the last of the boats has grounded itself against the sand and the last of the men has made his way up the beach out of sight. They always seem to walk purposefully, as if they know where they are going.
Will watches from the rail. He doesn't really want to set foot on that shore, as beautiful as it is. He glances around at the crew, many of whom have spent the afternoon standing at the rail to watch. Twice he has watched one of his crewmen come to some silent decision and climb down into one of the waiting boats; no one tried to stop them, although he knows from the talk in the galley later that they are missed.
No one seems inclined to do so now. The water is still full of drifting empty boats, but Will knows it's time to go. "Make ready to set sail," he says to his father, who calls out orders to the men with a practiced skill Will still can't match. Will takes his place at the wheel, feeling it warm in his hands. Before they return to the world of the living, it will be cold.
The sun does not so much set as disappear behind them, and around them the stars come out, above and below the waves. They cut a steady course through the mirrored stars, and Will stays at the wheel, feeling it chill against his palms. He's not sure how it is that he knows when they have reached the point where they can return to normal waters, only that there is a point when he takes a deep breath and the stars change.
It's not the painful wrenching it was returning that first time from World's End, emerging gasping out of the ocean like babies being born. It's just a breath, the time it would take for a heart to beat, and then the wind is shifting as normal winds do, the sails creaking. The stars above are familiar patterns, the Plough wheeling steadily through the night sky.
Bill comes up to the quarterdeck beside him and spreads out a map for him. He doesn't ask how Bill knew which map to bring him, though he couldn't have told their position himself nearer than "somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere."
"Where are we headed?" Bill asks.
There is a storm off the Grand Banks. That's the first stop. "Here," Will says, pointing to the fishing grounds off Labrador. "There's a nor'easter coming in."
"All right," Bill says. "We were thinking there might be a chance to take on supplies before we got down to work ..." He trails off, not quite making it a complaint.
"There's not time right now," Will says. He looks at Bill sideways with a crooked smile. "It's not as if we'll starve."
"Well, no," Bill says. "But the men do like to eat."
That's not all the men are interested in doing in port, Will is sure, but he only says, "We've work to do first," and his father shrugs, accepting.
"We're nowhere near the Grand Banks," he points out.
"We're really not, are we," Will says, watching his father's coarse fingers trace sure lines across the map. The ship can find its own heading, but Will wants to learn the art of determining their course for himself. So far he still doesn't feel he's mastered navigation. "Well, let's take her down."
It's quiet on deck when they're under water. Will has long since gotten used to the feeling that he ought not be able to breathe. It doesn't feel like breathing water, or like moving through water, more like moving through cool shadows. Below decks, nothing seems out of the ordinary, although water drips from every deck and bulkhead and everything smells of salt.
The water grows colder as they head north, and it clouds as the surface grows troubled. Great schools of cod flash by, enveloping the Flying Dutchman like flocks of silver birds and then vanishing in her wake, occasionally pursued by the darker forms of seals. They break the water in the teeth of a raging storm, lightning cracking the sky and the rain pouring down.
Fishing boats are rocking wildly at anchor, and as they watch one rips free of its moorings and splinters into a huddle of smaller boats like a loose cannon crashing its way across a deck. There are men in the water, and men shouting, their voices faint echoes under the driving sound of the rain. Boats are going down, boats are ripping free of their moorings and being smashed rudderless into the waves; masts are splintering and waves are scouring low decks clean.
"It was a storm like this that did for us," Wyvern says, coming up beside Will at the rail. He sounds less distant than he usually does, staring out at the wreck the storm is making of the fishing fleet. "They all went down and left me clinging to a spar." He sounds almost conversational.
He is one of the few men who served under Davy Jones who remain aboard. In Wyvern's case, Will is fairly sure that's because the man is more or less mad. If anyone aboard knows what his original name was, he's never heard them mention it.
"That's all done with," Will says.
"The water's cold as the grave," Wyvern says. He lifts a heavy coil of rope with an effort, propping it on the rail. "There's no chance for the men in the water."
Will is not so sure -- where there's life there's hope -- but he helps Wyvern to heave the line overboard, and sure enough two men nearby cling to a rope they never could have touched were they still fighting the water's chill. They haul it up, other men coming over to help, and Will gives one of the soaking men a hand aboard. The man looks up at him with dark, frightened eyes.
"Davy Jones," he says, and the man next to him begins to shake.
"More or less," Will says, because he's learned there's no point in arguing. "But I'll do you no harm, man." He puts a hand on the man's shoulder. "You're dead," he says simply. "I'll take you where you need to go."
It's strange how often those words are enough to drive out fear. He watches the man take a deep, shuddering breath, and then turns away. There are more men in the water, some floating aimlessly, some swimming toward the side of the Dutchman, a few rowing small boats that are not hindered by the wind and the water.
"Lower the nets," Will says, and they drag in those who are too bewildered to move, and help those who can climb aboard. Will leaves the handling of the ship in Bill's hands and walks up and down through the crowd of men, saying what comforting things he can.
"My Mary," one of them is saying, "I has to get home to my Mary and my boy," and Will glances up at Bill, solemn and steady at the wheel. He wonders if Bill thought the same, sinking through the dark sea with a cannon tied to his feet, or if he had already stopped giving much thought to his Mary and his boy.
"They'll be all right," Will says. The man is not much more than a boy himself, his fair hair sodden and his palms laid open from trying to clutch the ropes. "You can't help them."
"Yer pardon," one of them says, an older man who looks less frightened than resigned. "My brother was on the boat with me, Caleb is his name, but nobody's seen him here."
Will looks out across the waves. The wind is calming, and the remaining ships at anchor seem safe for now. There are no more forms moving in the wreckage, and no more bloodied or drowned men climbing awkwardly up the side.
"We've picked up all the dead," Will says.
The man smiles just a little, looking like it nearly cracks his weathered face. "He always was a clever bastard, Caleb was. More than me, eh?"
"It's a hell of a storm," Will says. "You just weren't lucky."
The man snorts. "That's all the reason there is? You're not going to tell us it's God's plan, or some such?"
"No one tells me," Will says. "I just sail the ship."
"Ain't that always the way of it," the man says, and for a moment they are just two sailors shaking their heads together at the weight of the things they don't know and can't change.
Then Will nods to him and makes his way back to the wheel. "We've got a few more stops to make," he says, and Bill and Jacoby begin encouraging the men to go below, where there is a warm fire in the galley stove and where the men can settle comfortably against the bulkheads or in hammocks, though they will not eat or sleep. The rain is ending as they sink beneath the waves, and red sunlight glimmers through the water until they descend into darkness.
A dockworker in Madrid gets the worst of a knife fight and bleeds out his life in the harbor. He stands awkwardly on deck, looking at the water surrounding the ship in some dismay. They are skimming along the sea floor, and are currently being watched by a hopeful but overly ambitious shark. "I can't even swim," he says.
"That won't be a problem," Will says.
For a while whales follow them, great blue giants drifting above and below the Dutchman and watching Will with dark eyes the size of dinner plates. They look very old and very wise, and he wishes he knew what they were thinking. They sing to each other, a low, tuneless song that weaves its way around the ship, and though there are no words to the song, Will thinks it is something about finding your way through the dark.
A merchant ship founders in bad weather off the coast of China, and they surface long enough to help a handful of poor swimmers aboard, though most of the crew makes it safely to land, swimming or clinging to crates and bales. Three of them are women, and one of them is reaching back toward the water desperately toward a little girl of three or four.
Jacoby climbs down a rope to fish the girl out of the water, carrying her almost tenderly up to the deck and handing her to Will. He's been aboard since the first weeks after Will took command of the Dutchman, one of the first who decided to stay. When Will asked him about it, he said only "I've got no one waiting for me, not on land nor where I figure I'm going."
The girl stirs in Will's arms, as if waking from sleep. She is such a light weight in his arms, her hair curling on her forehead like dark strands of seaweed, and if Will's heart were in his chest, surely it would ache. He can feel the shadow of that distant grief, and for a moment he is glad that his heart is far away in someone else's keeping. He kisses the girl lightly on the forehead and hands her to her mother.
It's night off the coast of Madagascar, and Will goes below to steal a quiet hour in the cabin he is beginning to think of as his home. The great organ still stands against one wall, and he supposes that he might learn to play it eventually. He sits at the bench and turns the sword he made for James Norrington over in his hands instead.
It is the best thing he ever made. There should have been many better swords after it, hard work to make his name and to put food on the table for Elizabeth and their children. There were so many things he meant to do for Elizabeth, and it's strange now for his life now to have nothing to do with her. She would not understand why this work must be done, only that it takes him away from her, and maybe if his heart were in his chest he would feel the same, but it is safe in her keeping, and he is here.
A pirate ship and a British twenty-eight exchange fire off St. Kitts, and they take aboard a few of the pirates and a few of the British sailors, who cluster around a very young midshipman as if still waiting for his orders. Bill has his head together with the pirates, talking to them like old friends. Will can't tell if they really are, or if it's only that the world of pirates is still a closed circle with his father on the inside, one that he can never really penetrate.
The midshipman looks up at Will with all the indignation of not-quite-fifteen. "Are we your prisoners?"
"You're dead," Will repeats patiently. Sometimes this takes a while to get across. "You're not my prisoner."
"Then will you put us ashore?"
"When we reach land," Will says. His father laughs at some joke one of the pirates has made, clapping the man on the shoulder. Bill is a good pirate and a good sailor and not much good at anything else he's done in his life, though Will thinks in his own way he tried. He is a good first mate with a steady hand at the wheel and an easy way with his friends, and those are the things Will has the chance to learn from him now. Maybe they're all he could ever have taught.
The deck is crowded now, and below the dead sit quietly. It's time, Will thinks.
"Mr. Turner, make us ready," he says.
Bill looks up at him reluctantly. "We could still stop off in port -- "
Will raises an eyebrow.
His father sighs. "No, I guess not. All right, boys, look alive, or something close to it."
The sails fill with a steady wind, and around them night begins to fall, and the water is full of stars. When Will looks back, he can see the smaller boats following them, drawn in their wake, their lights glimmering on the water. Their own greater lamps light the way.
They end, as always, in sight of the shore, a fine green shore under a golden sun. The little boats pull away and ground themselves on the sand, and one by one, the men climb up the beach. Even the little girl is walking as if she is sure of where she is going, no longer holding her mother's hand.
The weathered man he still knows only as Caleb's brother hesitates, his hand on the rail. "I could stay," he says suddenly. "If you need another hand. I'm in no great hurry to be done with the sea."
Will starts to tell him to go on. The boat is waiting for him, and though Will doesn't know what's waiting for him past the beach, he doesn't imagine it's anything the man will dislike. But there's a bright light in the man's eyes that seems familiar, something like his father's face when he set Will on his knee and talked about the sea, or like Elizabeth's when she spun him wild stories about pirates.
"All right," Will says instead. "It's no easy life."
"What is?" the man asks, and doesn't seem to be expecting an answer. When he steps back from the rail another man takes his place in the boat, and he helps Jacoby lower it to the water.
"Where are we going next?" Bill asks, coming up beside Will.
"We'll try to make port," Will says. He'll watch the men go ashore with as much good grace as he can manage. "Tortuga? Bristol? Madras?"
"Wherever you like," Bill says, but Will suspects he has something in mind. "There were these ruins we saw once off the coast of Alexandria. A whole city under the sea. Thought you might like to see it."
There are plenty of vices to practice in Alexandria too, Will is sure, but he wouldn't mind seeing a sunken city. It's the sort of thing one ought to see while ferrying the souls of the dead. And he expects the people who lived there would have liked someone to see it, and to remember them.
"Then we go to Alexandria," he says, and shrugs.
"Thanks," his father says, and claps him on the arm. "The men appreciate a bit of time ashore, you know."
"I know," Will says, and looks out over the water at the beach under the golden sun. The shade of the green hills looks inviting. He wonders whether he could go ashore, here, and what would happen if he did.
It's not anywhere near time to find out, Will knows, and he doesn't really want to. He's not tired as he turns back to the wheel, and the wind is filling their sails, backing them slowly away from that shore. He begins calling out orders to the crew, hoping that he's not making any nautical blunders but expecting that his father will tell him if he is.