 |
|
|
|
|
Author: Guede Mazaka
Rating: PG
Pairing: Will/Barbossa
Feedback: Anything that hit a nerve with you.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Notes: Done for rainjewel in the name of the Will fic-a-thon. She wanted PG-13 or less Will/Barbossa, during the brig scene and Barbossa noting that Will had feelings for Jack.
Summary: Echoes of the past disturb Barbossa into paying a visit.
***
She knew. She had to, what with the low vicious hiss of timber moving against timber, the menacing rumble every time a swell lifted up her bottom.
Barbossa had never, ever taken the Pearl for granted once he had ripped her free of Jack's clenched fists. He had not put up with her moaning and wailing, but instead had driven her near into the grave from the moment he took up residence in the captain's cabin. He knew that she could handle the load, ragged and thin though she might grow, and so he kept her always moving, too busy to reflect too long on her loss. And then Bootstrap had stepped back from the chest, had refused the gold and slapped down Barbossa's hand.
She had been even angrier then, having to watch her second-best beloved be given to the sea, and for weeks after, they had been threatened with snapping lines and violent lunges of the yards. Immortality had beaten her efforts, and under Barbossa's command, she had gradually sunk into a mourning stupor.
But now, the blood in the son had called her back to life, and Barbossa could not stop hearing her. Sleep and rest were shriveled memories, but he had still had silence.
Not now. Cursing her from bow to stern, he stomped into his boots and headed into the bowels of the ship. The rest of Jack's newest mongrel collection stirred into boos at his approach, but he quieted them, sure enough. He had never needed moonlight to terrify any man-or woman. That dark one flinched from him and trembled, but she held her chin firm and met his gaze.
So did the boy, and he didn't shake. At all. His father hadn't, either-not even when the chains were on and the cannon being shouldered to by a full handful of eager men. Barbossa began to remember how it felt to feel the eeriness instead of being responsible for it; annoyed, he weaved his way down the alley of bars and leant in to scrutinize his prize. "We had your father down here."
"I don't think so." William the Second retreated to the back of the tiny cell, shadowing his face but not lowering his eyes.
"Really? And why not?" Barbossa pushed his hands inside the brig, then dangled them over a crossbar. Just a little reminder of who could walk free, and who was trapped.
"Your men told me all about it." Turner rolled his shoulders as he looked aside, dismissive as only the young and foolish could be. "I can believe that you killed him. That you strapped him to a cannon and murdered him that way."
Barbossa nodded, ignoring the murmuring behind him. And the murmuring beneath his feet. The casually-involved and the inanimate had no place in a conversation about dying men, life concentrated within them even as it fled. "You'd best do. I have to say this about your father, boy: he knew how to go. Not one scream. Not even when they ran over his foot with the wheel."
She'd clung onto that stain, to those crushed splinters. It had taken almost seven of the nine years to finally work them free, whereupon Barbossa had thrown them onto the next wastepile he passed. Why fear the dead when he suffered worse than they ever did?
"You're a bastard." Will hunched back, his eyes glaring out shards as sharp as his father's teeth, when Barbossa had punched him on Isle de Muerte. "A monster."
"And I kept your father down here, like the rat he was," Barbossa hissed, grinning when the boy lost his temper and surged up. He batted away the hands reaching for his neck-always, always the dupe-and took advantage of the moment to pull Turner into the bars. Yanked the blacksmith's hands through and wrenched them up to hook the arms in place. "He couldn't face up to his deeds like a man, so he got soft. Lost his backbone and lost his guts. Pirates can't abide weakness, lad, so of course we killed him."
Teeth gritted, bobbing in and out as if Will wanted to rip out Barbossa's throat, but didn't quite dare. "You didn't kill Jack."
"Aye, he's soft as well. Lucky as the devil, but that'll pass. Everything passes, boy. Even Jack." The name struck something in Turner, sounding out fascinating ripples that flashed and refracted over his face. Barbossa wondered, then: Bootstrap had never had inclination that way, but then again, they'd never made acquaintance with the mother's side. And Turner was almost-but not quite-the image of his father. "Pretty little thing, he is."
Harsh, harsh breath. In the other cell, the woman choked out something that might have been sarcasm, and might have been hysterical laughter. Will narrowed his eyes and his mouth, struggling against Barbossa's hold. So the pirate pulled them closer. Closer until he could nudge at the boy with a knee, until he could smell the anger on the other's exhales. "Should've taken your chance, Turner. You'll not have another, I assure you of that."
"Elizabeth-"
"You love the girl." Barbossa let out a heavy sigh and reflexively looked up. "I've heard the tale, and seen the truth. What does it matter what a man loves-it's what he wants that dictates his life."
"Yes, it did. For you." Will slumped forward and grazed noses with Barbossa, then tore himself away with an unexpectedly strong effort. He crashed into the far wall, bloodying his nose. Blood was black in the dimness, blocking out parts of his mouth as he spoke. "What a man loves matters, because that dictates his salvation."
Bile swirled in Barbossa's head, throwing red over his eyes-but he couldn't kill the boy. Not yet.
"You know nothing of life, or death," he snapped over his shoulder on his way out. And Turner didn't, with his fairytale chivalry and hypocritical treatment of Jack.
But the woman laughed, loud and unashamed, as he left, and the creaking of the Pearl echoed her long after the night had passed and dawn had come.
***