PotC Big Bang Fic: "Liberties" (2/7)
Title: "Liberties" (2/7)
Author: Luvvycat
Art: shytan
Characters/Pairings: Young Will Turner/Young Elizabeth Swann, Weatherby Swann; Elizabeth Swann Turner/Jack Sparrow (epilogue)
Rating: PG13/Soft R (at most!)
Warnings: Flashbacks to violent events in Prologue; minor sexual suggestiveness in Epilogue; everything else in-between is fairly mild.
Summary: After young Will Turner is rescued from the sea, Governor Swann (at Elizabeth’s suggestion) instals him as a servant in the Swann household. Despite their differences in station, the children find that they have much in common, and become fast friends. For two years the bond between Will and Elizabeth grows stronger, until an act of innocent impulse threatens to end that friendship and separate the pair forever. Based on my previously-posted drabbles "Skirmish", "Resurrected", and "The Gift". The J/E Epilogue is set six years after the conclusion of AWE.
A/N: Dedicated with my most profuse thanks and boundless admiration to my beta extraordinaire geekmama (whose invaluable input greatly improved this tale), and to pearlseed , whose comments to me regarding "Skirmish" inspired the Epilogue.
Previous chapters:
(Prologue)
Chapter 1
“Father … what is to become of Will?”
At his daughter’s gentle inquiry, Weatherby Swann looked up from his breakfast in their private cabin on the Dauntless-the best accommodations the ship had to offer, but cramped nonetheless, and decidedly lacking in the luxuries to which he had been accustomed back in England. “Hmm? What was that?” he asked, distractedly. They were only a couple of days out of Port Royal now, according to Lieutenant Norrington, and his mind was already teeming with lists of things he needed to tend to, once they made landfall.
Elizabeth’s brown eyes, unusually bright, were fixed on him, the food on her plate barely touched, though he could hardly blame her for that; the food being, as with the accommodations, barely tolerable. And the dinners they shared with the Captain in his cabin, at his invitation, were only nominally better.
“I only asked, what is to become of Will Turner, once we reach Jamaica?”
He waved a dismissive hand, eager to get back to his interrupted ruminating. “I expect, as he is presently in the care and custody of the Royal Navy, it will be up to the Royal Navy and the local authorities to determine his fate. It is no concern of ours.”
His daughter frowned as she seemed to consider this answer. Then her eyes sharpened. “But, Father … as you have been appointed Royal Governor by the king himself … does that not make you the local authority?”
He scowled, and was about to launch into an extended lecture regarding jurisdictional authority and maritime law and legal writ and such, but was arrested by the worried look on his daughter’s face. His impatience melted under the serious regard of her wide, dark eyes. “Why do you ask, my dear?” he said, more gently.
She dropped her gaze and gave a small, ladylike shrug. “It’s only …” Then her lower lip trembled slightly, and when her eyes rose again to meet his they were silvered with the promise of tears, her voice thick with them as well when she spoke. "Oh, Father … I cannot bear the thought of any ill befalling him! What if he's imprisoned? Or hanged!”
Swann gave an incredulous little laugh at his daughter’s distress. In addition to being possessed of a quite fertile imagination, the girl also was gifted with a flair for the dramatic. “For what offence should he be hanged, Elizabeth? To my knowledge, it is no crime to be the sole survivor of a pirate attack! And if he is guilty of any misdeeds other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, I am as yet unaware of it.”
Elizabeth opened her mouth, then snapped it shut again with a guilty look, her hand straying toward her dress pocket.
“I-I don’t know, Father. I’m only … greatly concerned for his future.”
Swann sighed. It was clear that Elizabeth had taken quite a shine to the boy during the course of their journey to Jamaica. He thought of how seriously she had devoted herself to her appointed role of young Turner’s caretaker these past few weeks; how, that first night, he had found her curled up, asleep, on the spare cot in the boy's cabin; how sweetly she had sat, demurely, night after night by the boy’s bedside-cabin door ajar, of course, at Weatherby's insistence, to prevent even the slightest perception of impropriety-reading to him or singing him to sleep.
Many an evening, after convivially partaking of conversation, after-dinner brandy and a pipe with the Dauntless' captain, Weatherby would find it necessary to fetch Elizabeth back to her own bed and rest, having discovered her dozing in the chair next to young Will's cot-her candle having long since sputtered out-book still held loosely in the hand that now lay curled limply in her lap. (Of course, Weatherby could have done without the ill-hidden smirks given him by the guard Lieutenant Norrington continued to post outside Will's door, the sight of a crown-appointed Governor carrying his sleeping daughter cradled in his arms like a particularly well-dressed sack of grain, apparently causing the man some inordinate measure of amusement).
Under Elizabeth’s watchful eye, the boy took his daily meals; with the support of her slender arm, he strolled and took the air on the deck; day after day, she assisted him dutifully as he gradually regained his strength.
And it wasn't only Will who benefited by the arrangement. Faced with this new responsibility, Elizabeth, too, seemed to flourish, and Weatherby Swann felt as though an entirely new side of his daughter was being revealed to him as, with each passing day, she seemed to become more mature, more caring and nurturing, selfless and giving.
With a twinge of melancholy centred somewhere in the vicinity of his heart, he realised his little daughter, his darling girl, the apple of his eye, was growing up ...
“I appreciate your concern for him, my dear, but I don’t know what you expect me to do.”
“Can’t he come home with us, Father? Truly, he has no one else in this world to care for him. His mother is … dead,” a flicker of pain trembled across her face, and he knew she must also be recalling her own dear mother’s passing, “And his father has been missing these past two years, and may be dead as well. He has no home, no family, no money, and everything he owned, save the clothes on his back, was lost when the Sally Mae was destroyed.”
“Elizabeth,” he chided, his voice edged with impatience, “the boy is not a stray pup, to be taken in as a pet!”
Now the tears that had been standing in her swimming gaze made good their tacit threat, and spilled from her beseeching eyes. “Please, Father … we can’t just leave him to his fate, cast him adrift in the world …” Again, that sense of drama! How like her mother she was, in that respect! “How horrid I should feel, if we did nothing to help him, and he came to harm …”
As the coup de grace, Elizabeth buried her face in her hands and began to sob.
Swann groaned, leaned his elbows on the little table, and cradled his head betwixt his hands at his daughter’s histrionic display. He never could bear to see her cry, and though he suspected he was being expertly manipulated, it was an extraordinarily effective tactic that never failed to win her own way in an argument, or earn her leniency when she was to be on the receiving end of punishment.
“Oh, very well!” he said, shortly, with a resigned sigh. “I suppose we can find some use for him. But, mind you …” he said, as his daughter lifted a tear-streaked face beaming with gratitude, “… he will not be treated as a pampered guest, but rather as a working member of the staff. The boy must earn his keep."
Elizabeth thanked him with a brief but enthusiastic hug round the neck and a kiss upon his cheek before skipping out the door to inform Will of his good fortune, but Weatherby's mind was already turning back to his ever-growing list of things to be done, adding yet one more task to it.
"Hmmm. Yes," he muttered absently, "I’m sure we'll be able to arrange sufficient tasks to occupy the boy …”
* * * * *
Once they reached Port Royal, Will Turner was installed in the Governor's household, provided a bed in the servants’ quarters, and turned over to the major-domo, who put him to work on various chores about the house and grounds. Before long, he was cheerfully helping to muck out the stables, tending to the weeding of the gardens, polishing the household silver, running errands and performing other odd jobs-whatever would keep idle young hands busy and make industrious use of the boy's time.
In fact, the Governor was pleased to discover that the lad turned out to have a quick and agile mind, an aptitude for working with his hands, and a gentle and respectful disposition that soon endeared him not only to the household staff in general, but also (despite his best efforts to resist the urchin's deferential charm) to Swann himself.
When Will's chores, and Elizabeth’s daily lessons, were concluded, Swann would occasionally permit the children time together. In observing their interactions on the Dauntless, it was clear that there was something about young Turner that touched Elizabeth, made the shadows that had dwelt in her eyes since his wife's passing fade... brought a smile to her face and a new lightness to her step. In short, thanks to Will Turner, Elizabeth was happier than he'd seen her in quite a long time.
One night, after dinner, he heard a strange sound coming from the library-one that he hadn't heard in nearly seven years.
It was the sound of Elizabeth-laughing!
The library door was slightly ajar, so he tiptoed silently toward it and peered through the narrow gap between door and jamb into the chamber beyond.
Will was standing in the centre of the room, lampblack smudged on his upper lip and chin in the sooty approximation of a moustache and beard, a rust-coloured velvet table-drape slung over one shoulder like a cape. A fireplace poker had been stuck into his belt like a sword, and he had somehow managed to affix a writing quill to his simple second-hand tricorne, and with his every motion the quill bobbed like the jaunty feather in a fine gentleman’s hat.
“I am Sir Walter Raleigh!” Will crowed, affecting what he clearly thought to be an upper-class accent, which sounded remarkably like Governor Swann himself, at his most pompous. “Here to pay my most humble tribute and respects to my liege, the Good Queen Bess …” He doffed his plumed hat with a flourish, and made a passable leg as he swept into a low, exaggerated bow.
Sitting-nay, practically bouncing-on the divan, a leather-bound book of history turned face-down on the cushion next to her, clapping her hands and laughing in delight at her playmate’s antics, was Elizabeth!
Tears filled Weatherby’s eyes as he spied upon the scene, and he realised that he had not heard his daughter laugh like that since before her mother had died. What sweet music it was, now, to his ears! How dearly he had missed those merry, carefree strains of childish mirth, so long absent from his home!
His heart swelled with affection, both for his beloved daughter, and for the remarkable young man who had worked such a miracle, set Elizabeth's poor motherless heart free from its chains of grief, resurrected her capacity for joy!
So when Elizabeth came to him, two days later, and asked if Will could be included in her daily lessons, how could he refuse?
"He's very clever, Father. His mother taught him his letters, so he can read and write, though of course not as well as I can. I've been trying to teach him more from the books in our library. But how much better, and much more quickly, he would learn, were he to join me in my lessons, from time to time."
"Hmmm," Weatherby had considered carefully, before capitulating. "I suppose t'would be a shame, to deny him the opportunity to learn, when he is so inclined to do so ..."
Happily, as it turned out, helping to school young Turner made his daughter apply herself to her own lessons with greater enthusiasm, and, according to her tutor, most excellent results. Pleased with the news, Weatherby pridefully preened, congratulating himself on his own ingenuity in allowing an arrangement that reaped benefits for all involved parties.
And when, a fortnight after that, Elizabeth asked if Will could accompany her and her new governess on their daily constitutionals to the seashore, or in the mansion's lush gardens, or to the town marketplace, he acquiesced with only a token show of reluctance, for appearance's sake. Couldn't have her thinking that he was entirely wrapped around her finger, after all, could he?
Besides, what harm could there be in allowing the children to spend even more time together? If their association had already done Elizabeth's disposition (and education) a world of good … and (perhaps most importantly) as long as it made her happy ... what could it be but beneficial to her?
Author: Luvvycat
Art: shytan
Characters/Pairings: Young Will Turner/Young Elizabeth Swann, Weatherby Swann; Elizabeth Swann Turner/Jack Sparrow (epilogue)
Rating: PG13/Soft R (at most!)
Warnings: Flashbacks to violent events in Prologue; minor sexual suggestiveness in Epilogue; everything else in-between is fairly mild.
Summary: After young Will Turner is rescued from the sea, Governor Swann (at Elizabeth’s suggestion) instals him as a servant in the Swann household. Despite their differences in station, the children find that they have much in common, and become fast friends. For two years the bond between Will and Elizabeth grows stronger, until an act of innocent impulse threatens to end that friendship and separate the pair forever. Based on my previously-posted drabbles "Skirmish", "Resurrected", and "The Gift". The J/E Epilogue is set six years after the conclusion of AWE.
A/N: Dedicated with my most profuse thanks and boundless admiration to my beta extraordinaire geekmama (whose invaluable input greatly improved this tale), and to pearlseed , whose comments to me regarding "Skirmish" inspired the Epilogue.
Previous chapters:
(Prologue)
Chapter 1
“Father … what is to become of Will?”
At his daughter’s gentle inquiry, Weatherby Swann looked up from his breakfast in their private cabin on the Dauntless-the best accommodations the ship had to offer, but cramped nonetheless, and decidedly lacking in the luxuries to which he had been accustomed back in England. “Hmm? What was that?” he asked, distractedly. They were only a couple of days out of Port Royal now, according to Lieutenant Norrington, and his mind was already teeming with lists of things he needed to tend to, once they made landfall.
Elizabeth’s brown eyes, unusually bright, were fixed on him, the food on her plate barely touched, though he could hardly blame her for that; the food being, as with the accommodations, barely tolerable. And the dinners they shared with the Captain in his cabin, at his invitation, were only nominally better.
“I only asked, what is to become of Will Turner, once we reach Jamaica?”
He waved a dismissive hand, eager to get back to his interrupted ruminating. “I expect, as he is presently in the care and custody of the Royal Navy, it will be up to the Royal Navy and the local authorities to determine his fate. It is no concern of ours.”
His daughter frowned as she seemed to consider this answer. Then her eyes sharpened. “But, Father … as you have been appointed Royal Governor by the king himself … does that not make you the local authority?”
He scowled, and was about to launch into an extended lecture regarding jurisdictional authority and maritime law and legal writ and such, but was arrested by the worried look on his daughter’s face. His impatience melted under the serious regard of her wide, dark eyes. “Why do you ask, my dear?” he said, more gently.
She dropped her gaze and gave a small, ladylike shrug. “It’s only …” Then her lower lip trembled slightly, and when her eyes rose again to meet his they were silvered with the promise of tears, her voice thick with them as well when she spoke. "Oh, Father … I cannot bear the thought of any ill befalling him! What if he's imprisoned? Or hanged!”
Swann gave an incredulous little laugh at his daughter’s distress. In addition to being possessed of a quite fertile imagination, the girl also was gifted with a flair for the dramatic. “For what offence should he be hanged, Elizabeth? To my knowledge, it is no crime to be the sole survivor of a pirate attack! And if he is guilty of any misdeeds other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, I am as yet unaware of it.”
Elizabeth opened her mouth, then snapped it shut again with a guilty look, her hand straying toward her dress pocket.
“I-I don’t know, Father. I’m only … greatly concerned for his future.”
Swann sighed. It was clear that Elizabeth had taken quite a shine to the boy during the course of their journey to Jamaica. He thought of how seriously she had devoted herself to her appointed role of young Turner’s caretaker these past few weeks; how, that first night, he had found her curled up, asleep, on the spare cot in the boy's cabin; how sweetly she had sat, demurely, night after night by the boy’s bedside-cabin door ajar, of course, at Weatherby's insistence, to prevent even the slightest perception of impropriety-reading to him or singing him to sleep.
Many an evening, after convivially partaking of conversation, after-dinner brandy and a pipe with the Dauntless' captain, Weatherby would find it necessary to fetch Elizabeth back to her own bed and rest, having discovered her dozing in the chair next to young Will's cot-her candle having long since sputtered out-book still held loosely in the hand that now lay curled limply in her lap. (Of course, Weatherby could have done without the ill-hidden smirks given him by the guard Lieutenant Norrington continued to post outside Will's door, the sight of a crown-appointed Governor carrying his sleeping daughter cradled in his arms like a particularly well-dressed sack of grain, apparently causing the man some inordinate measure of amusement).
Under Elizabeth’s watchful eye, the boy took his daily meals; with the support of her slender arm, he strolled and took the air on the deck; day after day, she assisted him dutifully as he gradually regained his strength.
And it wasn't only Will who benefited by the arrangement. Faced with this new responsibility, Elizabeth, too, seemed to flourish, and Weatherby Swann felt as though an entirely new side of his daughter was being revealed to him as, with each passing day, she seemed to become more mature, more caring and nurturing, selfless and giving.
With a twinge of melancholy centred somewhere in the vicinity of his heart, he realised his little daughter, his darling girl, the apple of his eye, was growing up ...
“I appreciate your concern for him, my dear, but I don’t know what you expect me to do.”
“Can’t he come home with us, Father? Truly, he has no one else in this world to care for him. His mother is … dead,” a flicker of pain trembled across her face, and he knew she must also be recalling her own dear mother’s passing, “And his father has been missing these past two years, and may be dead as well. He has no home, no family, no money, and everything he owned, save the clothes on his back, was lost when the Sally Mae was destroyed.”
“Elizabeth,” he chided, his voice edged with impatience, “the boy is not a stray pup, to be taken in as a pet!”
Now the tears that had been standing in her swimming gaze made good their tacit threat, and spilled from her beseeching eyes. “Please, Father … we can’t just leave him to his fate, cast him adrift in the world …” Again, that sense of drama! How like her mother she was, in that respect! “How horrid I should feel, if we did nothing to help him, and he came to harm …”
As the coup de grace, Elizabeth buried her face in her hands and began to sob.
Swann groaned, leaned his elbows on the little table, and cradled his head betwixt his hands at his daughter’s histrionic display. He never could bear to see her cry, and though he suspected he was being expertly manipulated, it was an extraordinarily effective tactic that never failed to win her own way in an argument, or earn her leniency when she was to be on the receiving end of punishment.
“Oh, very well!” he said, shortly, with a resigned sigh. “I suppose we can find some use for him. But, mind you …” he said, as his daughter lifted a tear-streaked face beaming with gratitude, “… he will not be treated as a pampered guest, but rather as a working member of the staff. The boy must earn his keep."
Elizabeth thanked him with a brief but enthusiastic hug round the neck and a kiss upon his cheek before skipping out the door to inform Will of his good fortune, but Weatherby's mind was already turning back to his ever-growing list of things to be done, adding yet one more task to it.
"Hmmm. Yes," he muttered absently, "I’m sure we'll be able to arrange sufficient tasks to occupy the boy …”
* * * * *
Once they reached Port Royal, Will Turner was installed in the Governor's household, provided a bed in the servants’ quarters, and turned over to the major-domo, who put him to work on various chores about the house and grounds. Before long, he was cheerfully helping to muck out the stables, tending to the weeding of the gardens, polishing the household silver, running errands and performing other odd jobs-whatever would keep idle young hands busy and make industrious use of the boy's time.
In fact, the Governor was pleased to discover that the lad turned out to have a quick and agile mind, an aptitude for working with his hands, and a gentle and respectful disposition that soon endeared him not only to the household staff in general, but also (despite his best efforts to resist the urchin's deferential charm) to Swann himself.
When Will's chores, and Elizabeth’s daily lessons, were concluded, Swann would occasionally permit the children time together. In observing their interactions on the Dauntless, it was clear that there was something about young Turner that touched Elizabeth, made the shadows that had dwelt in her eyes since his wife's passing fade... brought a smile to her face and a new lightness to her step. In short, thanks to Will Turner, Elizabeth was happier than he'd seen her in quite a long time.
One night, after dinner, he heard a strange sound coming from the library-one that he hadn't heard in nearly seven years.
It was the sound of Elizabeth-laughing!
The library door was slightly ajar, so he tiptoed silently toward it and peered through the narrow gap between door and jamb into the chamber beyond.
Will was standing in the centre of the room, lampblack smudged on his upper lip and chin in the sooty approximation of a moustache and beard, a rust-coloured velvet table-drape slung over one shoulder like a cape. A fireplace poker had been stuck into his belt like a sword, and he had somehow managed to affix a writing quill to his simple second-hand tricorne, and with his every motion the quill bobbed like the jaunty feather in a fine gentleman’s hat.
“I am Sir Walter Raleigh!” Will crowed, affecting what he clearly thought to be an upper-class accent, which sounded remarkably like Governor Swann himself, at his most pompous. “Here to pay my most humble tribute and respects to my liege, the Good Queen Bess …” He doffed his plumed hat with a flourish, and made a passable leg as he swept into a low, exaggerated bow.
Sitting-nay, practically bouncing-on the divan, a leather-bound book of history turned face-down on the cushion next to her, clapping her hands and laughing in delight at her playmate’s antics, was Elizabeth!
Tears filled Weatherby’s eyes as he spied upon the scene, and he realised that he had not heard his daughter laugh like that since before her mother had died. What sweet music it was, now, to his ears! How dearly he had missed those merry, carefree strains of childish mirth, so long absent from his home!
His heart swelled with affection, both for his beloved daughter, and for the remarkable young man who had worked such a miracle, set Elizabeth's poor motherless heart free from its chains of grief, resurrected her capacity for joy!
So when Elizabeth came to him, two days later, and asked if Will could be included in her daily lessons, how could he refuse?
"He's very clever, Father. His mother taught him his letters, so he can read and write, though of course not as well as I can. I've been trying to teach him more from the books in our library. But how much better, and much more quickly, he would learn, were he to join me in my lessons, from time to time."
"Hmmm," Weatherby had considered carefully, before capitulating. "I suppose t'would be a shame, to deny him the opportunity to learn, when he is so inclined to do so ..."
Happily, as it turned out, helping to school young Turner made his daughter apply herself to her own lessons with greater enthusiasm, and, according to her tutor, most excellent results. Pleased with the news, Weatherby pridefully preened, congratulating himself on his own ingenuity in allowing an arrangement that reaped benefits for all involved parties.
And when, a fortnight after that, Elizabeth asked if Will could accompany her and her new governess on their daily constitutionals to the seashore, or in the mansion's lush gardens, or to the town marketplace, he acquiesced with only a token show of reluctance, for appearance's sake. Couldn't have her thinking that he was entirely wrapped around her finger, after all, could he?
Besides, what harm could there be in allowing the children to spend even more time together? If their association had already done Elizabeth's disposition (and education) a world of good … and (perhaps most importantly) as long as it made her happy ... what could it be but beneficial to her?