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Author: Guede Mazaka
Rating: PG-13.
Pairing: Will/Elizabeth, Will/Norrington, Elizabeth/Norrington
Feedback: Good lines, bad ones, and why you thought so.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Notes: Tezcatlipoca (“Smoking Mirror”) was a dual-natured Aztec god of creation and destruction. Generally associated with blood sacrifices, war, and sorcery, but capable of favorable acts as well. AU from the first scene of the movie. Supernatural stuff.
Summary: Will keeps the coin, with dire consequences.
***
He woke to small fingers fumbling about his chest. They touched the coin and Will’s eyes flew open; his hand snatched over his talisman and he tried to scoot away from the thief. But his head was still swimming from the hard blow it’d been dealt and so he could protest effectively only with his voice. “Leave that alone!”
Brown eyes framed by deep gold curls blinked shock at him. “I only wanted to—”
She was beautiful. She was an angel. She’d saved him, Will thought. But she couldn’t take his coin. “It’s mine. My father gave it to me and it’s all I have left of him. Please leave it alone.”
“All right,” she agreed, eyes shining. The girl glanced over her shoulder, then turned back and frantically shoved Will’s hand so the coin was hidden again. “But you can’t let them see it. They’ll think you’re a pirate, and they hunt pirates.”
“I’m not a pirate. I’m Will Turner and I hate them. They killed my father.” The vehemence in his voice seemed to frighten her, but only for a moment.
She stuck out her hand. “I am Elizabeth Swann. And this will be our secret.” Instead of shaking his hand, she gripped it in an odd way, as if she wanted to wrestle, and pulled it to her chest. “Swear on my heart.”
“And mine,” Will whispered.
“Elizabeth?” A man came over. He looked old, at least twenty, and he walked with a brisk, stiff stride that reminded Will of the creditors that had hounded his mother’s sickbed. But when Will shrank back, the man essayed a smile at him. It was still stiff, but it was not as hungry and greedy as the creditors’ ones had been. “I see you two have made friends. Good. Elizabeth, your father’s having you sent below. You can…see to the boy’s wounds.”
He almost bowed, but caught himself and made a very precise turn to go back to the rail. Elizabeth rolled her eyes and leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially at Will. “That is Lieutenant Norrington. He never likes for people to enjoy themselves. Come, you must be hungry.”
Will stood and only then realized he had still been gripping the coin. His hand was wet and sticky with something that he desperately refused to think on, and so when he let go, his fingers stuck to the coin. At least, that was what he told himself.
* * *
When Will turned twelve, Governor Swann led him out of the servants’ quarters at the mansion and down into town, where Will was given over to Mr. Brown the blacksmith as an apprentice. Back then, Mrs. Brown had not yet run off with a sailor from Madrid, and so Mr. Brown was still a good-natured, capable man, if a bit fond of ale after dinner.
He set Will to simple drudgery for the first few years, such as managing the donkey and cleaning out the forge’s ashes and hauling water. At fifteen, Will’s muscles had strengthened and swelled to the point that Mr. Brown put a hammer in his one hand, a chunk of iron in the other, and started teaching him the trade.
At sixteen, Will was heating what was to be a hoe-blade when he leaned too far over. He felt the coin, strung on a thong and always carefully tucked beneath his shirt, slip loose, and he thoughtlessly snatched for it. The flames leaped and scorched his skin and shirt and hand, sending him flailing backward for the waterbucket. Its coolness quickly put out his clothing and soothed his burned skin—all but for his hand, which was clutched around the coin.
The coin was throbbing. Will’s blood ran cold, colder than the half-remembered icy spray of the sea in England. He gasped and the air was hot, smoky, suffocating. Palpable. Squeezing and groaning and beating to the deep drums of the darkness…
…he woke up when Mr. Brown tripped over him. At first Will was fearful, for the man could have a scarifying tongue, but to his surprise, Mr. Brown didn’t even seem to notice. He groped his way over Will and stumbled on, mumbling curses on the heads of the Spanish.
Will blinked and for a second, he saw superimposed on the drunken stagger of his master the sensual sway of another couple. But then it was gone.
* * *
The silver tip came at Will and he panicked, flailing wildly with his sword only to feel something icy tap his chin. He flushed and calmed down, but didn’t dare glance up.
“William. Look at me.” Fingers tipped up his chin. Panting a bit, Norrington stood in shirtsleeves, his hair straggling out of his queue. When he saw that Will was watching, he stepped back and took up the stance they had been practicing. “You put your leg too far forward.” Demonstration. “Next time, move it this far and no more.”
“All right,” Will quavered. His arms ached and he was tired of being stupidly scared.
Norrington frowned as if he knew every thought Will was thinking. But to Will’s surprise, what Norrington did was not cuff him on the side like Mr. Brown would, but to take him by the shoulders and look him in the eye. “William, why did you ask me to teach you how to fight?”
“So…so I would never suffer pirates again. I’m sorry. I saw the tip coming and I was frightened—”
“Of course you were frightened. You thought I was going to hurt you. Which I would never do, but…if you’re to learn this properly, you’ll have to feel that fear. Only remember that you can always strike back at it.” The fingers on Will’s shoulders squeezed reassurance into him. Then Norrington straightened and lifted his sword. “Now, do you still want to learn?”
Will nodded and raised his blade.
* * *
“Is he gone?” Elizabeth hissed. Her hair was tumbling loose from the tail in which she’d bound it back and it counteracted the effect of her clothing: Will’s one spare set of everyday wear. She was a chimerical thing, too revealingly hugged in some places and too loose in others.
Will couldn’t take his eyes off of her. Somewhere inside, someone was laughing at his presumption, but he nevertheless couldn’t.
Eyes rolling, Elizabeth elbowed him hard. “Will?”
He came back to himself, and to the officers standing just a few yards beyond the wall over which he was peeking. “Shhh! They might hear you! Norrington’s already wanting to stop giving me lessons, and if he finds out I’ve been passing them on to you…quiet. Quiet. They’re coming this way.”
Elizabeth bit her lip and disappeared from view, but not from touch. She remained pressed against Will’s leg, one hand unconsciously squeezing his ankle. As the men’s footsteps neared, her grip grew so tight as to be painful, but he didn’t dare signal to her.
Norrington had advanced quickly since his arrival in Port Royal. Now his uniforms were bedecked in gold braid and his cuffs frothed with lace. He had taken to wearing the powdered wig, which often became disarrayed during their sparring matches and which completed the image of a man armored for success. Will hated the new clothes. They hid the man he’d met five years ago and replaced him with something doll-like. Rigid. If Will didn’t want the lessons in fighting so badly, he would have left Norrington to his high society and retreated to the forge, where his tools never changed and Mr. Brown never tried to tell Will what to do anymore.
I could teach you better.
The jerk Will made knocked a pebble from the top of the wall, which bounced to the street below. Elizabeth’s fingers snapped so hard around his ankle that he thought it would break.
In the street, the conversation between Norrington and his fellow officer—Gillette?—slowed and drifted from a discussion of careening. Gillette made some comment about pesky tropical rodents, to which Norrington hmm’ed while gazing at the top of the wall. His eyes suddenly met Will’s—they frowned, but much to Will’s relief, Norrington apparently dismissed it as nothing worth his notice. The two men continued on.
“What was that?” Elizabeth hissed, once Will had climbed down. “You almost gave us away!”
“Nothing. I had a cramp.” He brushed off her and retrieved the sticks they had been using, offering her the straighter one. “We’ve got to hurry if you want to learn this last stance today.”
What he would have liked to do was to sit down and talk with her, to stare at her hair, but Elizabeth came impatient to learn everything that she wasn’t allowed to and she would not have agreed to it. When she did talk, it was of wild pirate fancies that always drew up memories of fire and screams and death. So Will made do with what he had. If it made her smile, it was enough for him.
* * *
When Will was seventeen, Norrington came to the field where they practiced still in full uniform. He had his hands clasped behind his back and his face was encased in solemnity. “William, I think it would be best if we stopped having these lessons. My duties are taking up an increasing amount of time, and I can’t neglect them. I truly do regret this decision, but you’ve learned about all I have to teach, and I’m certain that you can do well on your own now.”
“I understand,” Will said. And he did. Perhaps his hand, which was curled so the nails dug into the coin-shaped scar, didn’t, but then, it was remembering the wrong man.
Norrington seemed surprised, and the shield over his eyes began to lower. He started to say something.
“I need to go. I have orders to fill.” Whatever Norrington had to say would have only made it worse, so Will excused himself before that could happen. It was the least he could do, he supposed. After all, Norrington had taught him a good deal in the first place, and for no compensation.
But nevertheless, Will’s hand ached far into the night.
* * *
Two days later, Will was high in the rafters of the forge patching the roof when his hand slipped and he fell. His neck snapped. He died.
* * *
When Will came back to life, his head was aching and dizzy but his limbs were leaden. He slowly turned his head and saw that the coin had slipped from beneath his shirt to lie beside his ear. It was too close for his eyes to see it properly so the shape of it blurred and distorted, but its heavy gleam was unmistakable.
His legs still worked, he was surprised to see. So did his hands, and they were curiously lacking in the shake he thought they ought to have. With his too-steady hands he almost poured himself a drop from Mr. Brown’s carelessly left-behind bottle, but at the last moment Will caught himself.
It’d been a bad fall, he told himself. He had knocked himself out, but he was clearly all right. No need to go to pieces just because of a fall.
After a moment of trepidation, he climbed back into the rafters. Will spent more time nervously checking his balance than he did paying attention to the roof planking, but eventually he finished and got his feet back on the solid ground. Then he went back to filling the day’s orders. Once in a while, he rubbed his scarred palm against his leg or the anvil; it itched from time to time, but he supposed he should be glad he hadn’t had his fingers crippled.
The coin warmed with the heat of his body and almost seemed to burn his chest as it had his hand.
* * *
Will dreamed often, and he was no stranger to nightmares. But his dream that night was black and brutal and old. He almost didn’t remember who he was when he woke, twisted in the sweat-sodden sheets and gasping. His feet were still kicking in a vain attempt to flee a phantom.
* * *
He dreamed again, and again, and again, and soon he was sleeping so little that he started to see his dreams in daylight. Then he started to hide. It was easier than he thought, as Mr. Brown was too busy seeing the world from the inside of a rum flask—that is, not seeing it at all—to notice his apprentice slaving red-eyed and half-mad over the forge, or practicing swordsmanship against the shadows that were all else Will let into the place. Somewhere in the back of Will’s mind was the idea that it was something he could fight. In his life it had always come down to being able to fight and not being able to, it seemed.
In his dreams was a voice, and where there was a voice, there had to be a body. Where there was a body, there was death as an end.
Elizabeth came several times, and with each visit she grew more impatient with Will’s excuses until finally she jabbed in her folded parasol before he could shut the door and forced her way. Her mouth opened to scold him and then she saw his face, so she gasped instead. “Will, what on earth have you been doing to yourself? You look half-dead.”
“I wish I were half-dead. Even that would be easier,” he muttered, turning away from her. She was too beautiful for his strained eyes to stand. “You should go.”
“No, I should stay and see that you take care of yourself.” As always, she recovered more quickly than he. Her brisk steps followed him as he stumbled towards the water-basin, suddenly conscious of the grime and filth. Every speck of dirt stood out all the brighter against the unearthly whiteness of her linen skirts. “When was the last time you ate? Slept? Will, I haven’t seen you in weeks. I know I missed our last two meetings, and I’ve been trying to explain to you ever since: for some reason, Father has finally noticed that I’ve grown up and insists that I act more womanly—”
The touch of water was soothing at first, clearing Will’s head of its daze. But then he tilted back his chin to let the trickles run down his neck and something impacted in his chest. It felt like a cannonball slamming into him and it doubled him over, dropped him to his knees to the backdrop of Elizabeth’s frightened exclamation. He clutched at himself—his fingers instinctively sought out the coin and even through his shirt he could feel it beating, as if it were a second heart he wore around his neck.
“Will! Will! Oh, God…Mr. Brown! Any—”
No. She couldn’t—Will grabbed Elizabeth’s wrist and jerked it hard to get her attention. “No. Don’t call anyone.”
“But you’re…” Her eyebrows drew together and her eyes narrowed in speculation. Before she sank down beside him, Will noted, she carefully brushed her skirts aside.
It was the first time he’d ever seen her act in a dignified way, and it hurt the same way seeing Norrington’s new coat after promotion to captain had. Will’s vision blurred and for a terrifying moment, he didn’t recognize anything.
“What’s wrong?” Elizabeth asked, tone just short of an order. But the squeeze of her hand around his own was warm and friendly and anchoring.
He clung it to while he tried to order his suspicions, hunches, thoughts. His lips were too dry the first time he tried to speak and so all he could do was croak. The second time, he produced words. “The coin. I think it’s the coin. Something’s wrong with it. I have dreams…about a great treasure hoard, and a dark cave, and a dark ship…”
“Pirates.” She mouthed the word with reverence. Her eyes were shining, and Will could already tell she was far, far away on a wooden deck.
But here he was, brought to his knees by the damned coin, and she had abandoned him for a daydream. Normally Will would have known that that was a little bit unfair, but now he was short on sleep and ravaged by visions of things that never should have been. “Yes, pirates. They’ve raided ships all around these seas, and once they’ve taken a ship, they put everyone to the sword. They kill the children first by cutting their throats in front of their mothers. Then they take the women and they have them in front of their husbands before they—”
“Stop! Stop!” A hand slapped over Will’s mouth, and over it a frightened, outraged Elizabeth stared at him as if she’d never met him before and wasn’t certain she wanted to again. “Why—why are you telling me such horrid things?”
He seized her wrist and pulled it away from him. His temper was fraying and his sight was unsteady, and so he was not quite in control of himself. “Because that’s what it is like outside of the books, Elizabeth. Pirates. Adventure. It’s death—it’s watching people kill those who have treated you well and watching them laugh and not being able to do anything about it.”
For a very long time, she only looked at him, only moving to stand with her hands unconsciously petting her skirts into position. In her eyes was hurt and a want to deny, but she couldn’t do that while she was gazing at him.
Finally she hardened. She drew herself up straight and tall, her chin raised, and she looked at him as if he knew nothing in the world. “You’re a cruel man, William Turner.”
The sound of her skirts whipping out the door hadn’t faded away before Will, remorse quenching his anger, took a step forward and collapsed.
* * *
It seemed he was standing in fire, and staring into the blade of a sword held longways over the flames so it slashed the smoke. Its shining length was marred by stretches of soot that grew and retreated with every breath, and the soot seemed to form a mouth that spoke to him.
‘Who are you?’ Will demanded. He meant to add ‘and what are you doing with me?’ but the roar of the hot air around him silenced his words.
The reply he received was not in the form of words, or even in sound, but in jagged pictures and searing impressions and thrumming bones. But if it had been in words, it might have been rendered thus:
‘I am one who ruled the First Sun, who helped slay the great monster Tlaltecuhtli and who lost a foot to her anger. I am the one who wields the smoking mirror, who blurs and who reveals. I am the wisdom of the flesh and the voice of the dead and the anger of the living, I am he who thirsts for blood and who revenges it. I am Tezcatlipoca.’
All at once, the air rushed up in a whirlwind around Will and he could barely stand. His arms lifted of their own accord and he struggled to push them down, but even though there was nothing beneath them, he could not do it. The wind came at his face and blasted it so hard that he thought his skin was peeling away. It blistered his eyes till they watered and then raked away the tears till the pain was blinding and he wanted to scream. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. Whoever this Tezcatlipoca was, Will wouldn’t scream for him.
The wind dropped as unexpectedly as it had risen and Will felt amusement wrapping around him.
‘If you had opened your mouth, I would have had you whole and I would have no respect for you. I would have laid my curse on you. But you did not, and so I only take your eyes.’
Everything shrieked black—
* * *
--Will woke up on the ground knowing who had died on its soil. He sat up and he looked out the window to see a train of transparent men, their deaths still apparent in one’s curiously elongated neck and another’s hacked chest, slowly trudge down the road. After he had forced his numb hand to push open the door, he saw that their destination was the church.
It was night, and the height of the moon said late. Then came the tolling of the hour and Will knew for certain it was midnight.
He thought he had gone mad, and that there was no saving him now.
* * *
He had not gone mad, and nor was he completely lost. In the morning he crawled to his bed and he had the first peaceful sleep in weeks, and when he woke there was a slightly-sober Mr. Brown waiting to lecture him on not paying the man’s tab at the local tavern on time. Before, Will had silently sighed and suffered through the scolding, but now he…found that he could open his mouth and tell Mr. Brown yes, it’d be seen to and if he’d excuse Will, there was water to be fetched and a donkey to be fed.
Somehow crossing Mr. Brown seemed trivial compared to getting away from the dark things moving in the shadows of the forge.
It was the first time Will had been outside in a long time and the sunlight hurt his eyes. He paused and blinked, trying to accustom himself to it, and the wind curled impish fingers through his hair.
‘You almost called them,’ shivered the shadow of a girl skipping down the road. ‘The water draws them near.’
A hummingbird buzzed past and the sound of its wings chuckled at Will. ‘I will show you and teach you things that you have never dreamed of. And I will make my price light, in honor of your courage and your former innocence.’
“Former?” Will muttered. A small part of him said that this was absurd, that no one sane talked to shadows and birds, or felt a pulse in a coin hanging against their chest, but that small part was quickly weakening. Because he undeniably was doing all of those things, and because it was day and he could see that the world he’d known before still existed. He could make sense of this, if he tried hard enough. He had to. He wasn’t about to give up now; if there was a way to fight this, he would find it.
‘You had never shed another’s blood before you died,’ hissed the passing of a gull’s shadow across Will. Against his breast, the coin vibrated. ‘But you will. You will.’
* * *
For a while, he listened to it. He told himself he was only learning so as to become better than the teacher and then to throw out the voice. Tezcatlipoca knew, and laughed at Will for it, but in that laugh was a strange fracture that gave Will hope.
In the day, he made kitchen utensils and fashioned swords from his dreams. He walked the docks and watched the sailors at work, careful to stay clear of the sea-spray. And he made an uneasy peace with Elizabeth, who was always a little wary of him now. Too, her father kept her close and busy with instruction on preparing for the marriage that loomed nearer and nearer.
Will would have felt angry and frustrated and sad, but for the fact that Tezcatlipoca thrived on it. Every time Will let himself think on Elizabeth, the shadows and the crackling of the fire would whisper bloody, outrageous, awful proposals that were too tempting. So he buried his feelings, and concentrated only on the clean shining gold of Elizabeth’s hair.
Once they met by chance near the old yard where once upon a time they had practiced swordplay. Elizabeth’s maid was near, but distracted with haggling over a bolt of silk off the most recent ship into port.
“Are you feeling better?” Elizabeth asked. Her hands stayed demurely folded about the handle of her parasol, but her eyes boldly met Will’s.
“I think so.” He couldn’t help but lower his eyes, but his fingers kept stretching of their own accord towards her. “How is your father? He commissioned a sword from me—from Mr. Brown—the other day.”
Her hands clenched. “He’s encouraging Captain Norrington. But he does ask after you, Will. Norrington came to dinner once and mentioned that you started a few times at nothing while you were mending some things aboard the Dauntless.”
“There’ve been men hung on that ship. Recently.” Though Will didn’t say pirate or deserter or mutineer, which were all the same in Elizabeth’s books, the words still hung between them. He watched her flinch and ached to apologize.
“I should go back before Estrella notices I’m gone.” Elizabeth made a short curtsey and hurried off.
As usual, the shadows of the grass rustled. ‘She envies you. She wants to see what you see—that is why she always leaves before you can see it in her. She never wanted to share your secrets. She only wants them.’
“Stay away from her,” Will snarled, turning on his heel. As he passed a store window, his reflection twisted into a laughing face.
* * *
“Your repairs were of excellent quality,” Norrington told Will, stiff in his starch and lace, soft and worried in his eyes. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, as if he’d forgotten he was not on deck but on dock, and over his shoulder Will could see a dead pirate cackling. “I wanted to thank you personally for that.”
“You’re welcome.” The pirate was mouthing something, but Will couldn’t quite make it out. It was important, he knew. By now he’d learned to feel the difference between a spirit who merely wanted to talk and one who had something to say.
The commodore was shuffling, showing his unease. He ducked his head and coughed, then looked at Will again. First he started to ask about Mr. Brown, but he stopped himself and changed the subject. “William, I realize it has been a long time, but I’ve never—I still hold concern for you. You seem to be doing well at your trade, but…I would like you to know that I will take complaints from anyone, whatever their station in life. Justice must be fair.”
‘Pirates. He speaks of my pirates,’ said the shifting half-shade Norrington’s hat threw over his face. ‘They range near. Tomorrow night they will pass this port and they will sack the next one.’
“Tomorrow you’re sailing,” Will blurted. He would have been embarrassed, but he was only half-listening.
Startled, Norrington blinked and resettled his shoulders. “Why, yes. After the ceremonies.”
The ceremonies. Norrington’s rise to commodore, and soon after, his proposal to Elizabeth, whereupon Will’s world would be forever changed.
‘Hate him.’ The dark veil rippling over Norrington’s face oozed with malice.
No, Will thought.
No, because Will could still remember kindness to a young boy, and because Elizabeth couldn’t seem to confide in him anymore. He couldn’t let go of the one and couldn’t claim the other, and so he wouldn’t presume. It wasn’t right.
He thought he still knew what that was.
* * *
When the pirate threatened Elizabeth, Will was in the church staring through the candlesmoke at the glass windows, and trying desperately to see some way to keep Norrington and pirates from meeting. To see some way to rid himself of the pall that had fallen between him and Elizabeth, to see some way to change everything to how it should have been.
He did see one. And so that was why he missed the pirate’s capture by, of all people, Mr. Brown, and why he was slowly lowering the coin—tightly clenched in his scarred hand—into the ocean when Norrington emerged from the jail.
The water rose to meet Will and sucked in his hand to the wrist so hard and so fast that he lost his balance. His face plunged beneath the water and it was flaming scarlet. As it shaded to black, he faintly felt hands seizing his shoulders.
* * *
“So we meet again,” Elizabeth greeted him. He was lying in a bed in the Governor’s mansion and she was seated beside him, well-worn book in hand. Her hand was just falling from her mouth, as if she had reverted to her girlish habit of chewing her nails. She looked deathly worried behind her half-hearted teasing. “Will, what were you doing? First I nearly drown—but that was because of the corset—and then you…Norrington said something about not believing his company was that unpleasant when he brought you here. And he never makes jokes.”
What Will had been doing was calling pirates. Was starting an adventure that should not, if he did everything right, end in his true death but that could very well do so if he put one foot wrong. Was risking everything for two people that might not even notice.
At least Tezcatlipoca was not speaking to him. It felt…Will was not entirely certain, but it felt as if he’d shocked the voice into silence.
“I saw a ghost,” Will finally said. He essayed a half-smile. “I should be used to that by now…wait, did you say you almost drowned?”
She told him the story, adding in embellishments that for a brief time, joined them together in the old conspiracy. But soon her father came to retrieve her and Will was sent on his way, with a manservant to see that he reached the forge.
He did, and he walked straight through, only stopping to take his best sword and to lead the donkey into the yard of a neighbor who had been friendly to him. He thought about leaving a message for Elizabeth, but the rising of the wind told him there was not time. So he hurried to the docks, where he surprised a fisherman coming back late. Will sidestepped as Norrington had once shown him to do and hit the man on the head, then carefully laid him on the ground. But for all Will’s care, he had still left a cut on the man’s temple.
‘You will spill the blood of others,” slithered the clouds across the moon. Hungrily.
Will got into the fisherman’s skiff and took it out into the harbor to meet the black ship he knew was coming. “Not for you. I won’t do it for you.”
When the ship reared into view, he reached for the coin to hold it up, and then he realized Elizabeth didn’t need a message after all. What nestled beneath his shirt was not the right coin.
‘She’ll call them, unless you…’
He cursed as he pricked his finger and smeared a drop of blood across the coin. He was still cursing as he held it up so its song would echo across the waters, but by the time the ship turned towards him, he was praying that they would not notice the difference in melody.
When they pulled up short and sent out the longboat, Will could see and recognize their faces, nightmares from childhood finally coming true. And he saw that they had not.
***