fic - it's baaaaack....

[the_dala]

'Keeping Faith,' I mean. Here we have a journey to the underworld, lots of talking as usual, with a reunion or two. I swear to GOD I have the next part three-quartes written already, I'm going back to it as soon as I format this post; it was just that I have a natural break here and this part would have gotten too long otherwise. And then the conclusion. See, I have it broken down into seven distinct parts now, not 5/? !

Notes: the gate to the underworld is stolen borrowed without permission an homage to 'Labyrinth. Jack quotes the Duke of York in Shakespeare's Henry VI Part 3.

In case this is new to you, there are backward links after the cut. This is my post-AWE, semi-epic Elizabeth/Jack/Will + Billy Turner...thing.


back to part IV
Keeping Faith (Part V)

Billy turns eight on the voyage to what they finally determine to be the terrestrial gate to the waters of the dead. The boy is a great overgrown pet to the crew, less noisy and more interesting since he’s grown from the baby they remember. Gibbs builds him a perfectly detailed model of the Pearl, which idea he stole directly from his captain’s inner musings. Jack has to admit it’s a better job than he’d have done, though - Gibbs has a far more patient hand, even with his eyesight slowly fading.

Elizabeth spies Jack haggling with a swordsmith in port the night before they set sail. She refuses to let him buy the boy a proper blade, but he is somewhat mollified to learn that her own gift to Billy is a finely wrought dagger in a plain leather sheath.

Finally he settles on a bold tricorn, the very picture of his own. Billy loves it even though it slips over his brow somewhat. He seems surprised at the pile of gifts and Ragetti’s lopsided rum cake. Rather than ask a thin-lipped Elizabeth about previous birthdays, Jack clips the pair of tiny wooden dice from his hair and presses them into the boy’s hand. Billy wears them pinned to his waistcoat pocket and asks Jack if he might have an earring for his next birthday. This promise is made gladly - and safely out of his mother’s earshot.

A few days later, Jack guides the Pearl into a sheltered little bay off the relevant island on the chart. Leaving Gibbs aboard, the shore party makes its painstaking way inland, Elizabeth carrying the instructions they paid dearly to have translated. She holds the battered parchment nearly to her nose, admonishing Billy without looking up whenever he ranges too far ahead. Which he does, every five minutes or so.

“Fifty paces up the north beach,” she mutters, neatly sidestepping an enormous conch. Billy bends down to poke at it.

She also has Jack’s compass for insurance, but she snaps it shut with a frown after checking its bearings. Jack’s eyes rocket to the sand before she can catch him looking. It’s a rare soul wouldn’t find itself conflicted on a journey such as this. He gave the thing up for that very reason.

“’S a big hill,” Ragetti remarks, shading his eyes as he gazes up at the cone-shaped formation at the island’s heart. Jack fervently hopes it’s as dead as the volcano that formed Shipwreck Cove.

Elizabeth suddenly stops in her tracks, causing Ragetti to bump into her. She doesn’t seem to notice.

“I don’t understand,” she says, pursing her lips. “The map takes us forward another two hundred strides.”

“Well, that don’t make any sense.” Pintel rubs his balding head. “We’ll hit rock in half th’ distance.”

Jack peers into the thick foliage ahead. It’s too steep for them to climb. Perhaps they’re meant to go under - tunnel like moles into the underworld. It would certainly be fitting. But the earth is rocky, and turning it would take far more effort than they could muster with a few paltry shovels. Or have they gotten the translation wrong entirely? Maybe the Viennese monks who wrote the thing had exceptionally tiny feet.

Billy is still dragging the pink and white shell along, raising it to his ear to hear the sounds of the sea. Jack wonders what it whispers to him. And then an idea strikes him with a jolt, as all his best ideas have done.

He plucks the compass from Elizabeth’s belt - she’s too busy burning holes in the parchment with her eyes to notice - and beckons Billy over. The boy takes the compass eagerly, no doubt recalling that this was what put Jack in Chevalle’s stinking brig.

“Why don’t you take a reading for us, eh?” For his part, Jack takes a quick step backwards. Even from a distance he can see that the arrow points straight and true.

“Forward,” says Billy with confidence. “Just as we’ve been going.”

“How do you -” Elizabeth glances up from her perusal, sees that Billy’s got the compass that has caused her no end of trouble in her life. She cuts her eyes at Jack, curious and accusatory all in one.

Jack puts his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Wants are simpler when we’re young.”

Elizabeth’s face softens into hope once more. She takes a breath and says to Billy, “Onward we go, then.” He nods smartly and takes the lead, to the obvious amusement of all and sundry.

Just as Pintel predicted, they’ve soon hit an outcropping of gray rock higher than a man is tall. Beyond it the altitude begins to rise too steeply for a mountain goat to find its way, much less a band of sailors.

“Dead end,” Marty says flatly. Elizabeth, her face as stony as the barrier, shoots him a look and he quickly adds, “No pun intended.”

Billy shakes his head, the compass still hanging from his wrist. “But it isn't. Don’t you see it?”

“See what?” Her voice is tired. She reaches out to touch the crude wall of rock. “There’s nothing here but solid stone.”

The longer Jack stares - the more he lets his eyes relax - the closer he gets to seeing…something. There it is if he doesn’t look at it too hard: a fissure in the face. And yet too narrow to possibly -

Billy darts forward, slightly to the right, and disappears from sight.

Elizabeth shouts in alarm, pressing against the wall. The crack Jack almost saw is gone now.

“Wait,” he says sharply, pulling her back. She hauls off to slap him, but Jack ducks under her arm. Eyes firmly shut, he steps forward. For just an instant he hears the howl of a fierce storm in his ears, feels an intolerable pressure as if the weight of the whole earth is pressing upon him from all sides - and then he is through.

“I told you.” Billy is grinning at him when he opens his eyes, standing in a narrow lane in the rock. The light is much harsher on this side of the stones, obscuring whatever sort of landscape there is behind him. In fact it puts Jack in mind of the white, dry heat of the locker. “I’m all right, Mother, really.”

Some wayward spirit runs its chill fingers down Jack’s spine.

When he turns back he can see her clear enough, short nails scrabbling at the wall. But her voice sounds muffled, swallowed up by the stone. He reaches out to pull her through, stumbles at the renewed wail of wind. Abruptly he’s on the other side, staring into Elizabeth’s wide brown eyes.

“You…” Ragetti raises a shaking finger, pointing at him. “Y’ popped out o’ the rock, Cap’n! Like a genie!”

“Genies come outta lamps, not mountainsides,” Pintel tells him in a withering tone.

Elizabeth grabs his wrist, squeezing until the bones creak. “Where is Billy?”

“Right behind me,” says Jack, gesturing over his shoulder. On cue, Billy waves. Jack can understand Elizabeth’s gasp; from this angle it certainly looks like his disembodied hand is sticking straight out of the rock. “Go on - all’s you have to do is step forward and don’t think on it.”

She tries again and again, finally kicking the wall in frustration. Jack winces as her soft leather boot connects, though she fails to react to the pain. “I can’t get through!”

The same is true for the others. Billy can slip in and out of the rocks with ease. Jack is decidedly uneasy doing it, but the fact remains that he can.

Elizabeth sits cross-legged before the stubborn wall, glaring at it. “How does it work? Why can you two alone pass through the rock?”

Jack shrugs, keeping his distance. He doesn’t much like the sensation of going through the fissure in the rock - loses track of himself for that one instant, brief though it may be. Even now he feels somewhat disoriented.

Ragetti suddenly stops rubbing at his glass eye. It settles back into place, shining dully in the filtered sunlight. “Well, but ‘e’s got Turner blood in ‘is veins, hasn’t he? ‘F the captain of th’ Dutchman can get around the dark underworld freely -”

“Then perhaps the same applies to his offspring,” Jack finishes slowly. Elizabeth’s eyebrows shoot heavenwards. And she'd thought Billy got Will's nose.

Billy lifts his chin and puffs out his skinny chest, proud as a lion cub. Then he cocks his head quizzically at Jack. “What about you, then, Captain?”

“He’s been dead before,” says Elizabeth quietly. Billy starts. It would seem she left out that bit of the tale. Jack somehow fails to thank her for reminding him of this wonderful chapter in his life - or afterlife, as it were. But it would make a macabre kind of sense. Certainly explains the shiver in his bones at standing so near the gate.

She sighs as she hauls herself to her feet, the set of her shoulders weary and defeated. “I suppose it was a fool’s hope after all. We had better -”

“No!” Billy leaps up, clutching Jack’s compass. His feet are planted firmly in the dirt. “I want to find my father.”

Elizabeth pushes her hair over her shoulder. “This is exactly why I wanted to leave him on the ship,” she hisses to Jack before turning to her son. “You can’t very well go alone, love.” With a kind, rueful smile designed to hide her own disappointment, she holds out her hand to him.

Small face flushed with defiance, the boy hurls himself into the breach.

Billy has always been a good boy. Mother is all he has, and the older he gets the more he starts to see what a difficult time she’s had in caring for him. If he paused to think about it, he would be awed that someone could love him so fiercely, give so much of herself for his sake. He’s met too many children who were not so lucky in their parentage.

But just now, he cannot obey her no matter how much he would like to.

He bites his lip and wriggles his toes when she calls him back to her, orders him, reasons with him, pleads with him. He wants to say he’s sorry, but he doesn’t want them to hear his voice tremble. And so he stays.

Mother begins ranting about dragging the Pearl’s cannons up the beach to blast a hole in the wall. It’s then that Captain Jack steps through the rocks, one corner of his mustache twitching. Billy hops back while Jack pauses for a vigorous toss of his unkempt mane, like a dog shaking off water.

“I won’t come back,” Billy announces before Jack can say anything. He jams his hat down on his head and brings his fists in close to his body.

Jack scowls at him. “You’ll come back if I have t’ drag you back.”

“Try it,” Billy shoots back, tensing. He may not know what lies behind him, but he is willing to take his chances if it means finally meeting the man for whom he was named. “I’ll run. I have the compass. Then I will be out of reach, and you will be lost.”

To his surprise, Jack’s face crinkles up with mirth. Leaning back against the wall, he calls out, “Now I know he’s your whelp, Lizzie - he’s threatening to make a run for it.”

“William James Weatherby Br - Turner!” Mother’s exceptionally rare use of ‘Weatherby’ amongst his names makes Billy cringe even while he tries to fight it. She’s not so old as Jack and she might have a better chance of catching him - but she still can’t get through. “I will flay the skin off your arse if you don’t get out here right now.”

“My, that is a tempting offer.” His mouth still set in half a smile, the captain regards Billy thoughtfully. “But I can’t say ‘m not sympathetic to your cause, lad. Give me a moment with your mother.” He shoulders his way back through the divide.

Still poised for flight, Billy edges closer. He can’t quite see them, but now he can hear their words.

“-if I can.”

“He’s too young, Jack!”

“Old enough t’ have a right to see his father, if it can be done. I’ll be with him all the way.”

“That’s not all I…what will you tell him?”

“The truth.”

Billy frowns. They’ve already told him the truth, haven’t they? He sidles closer to hear whatever secrets may be left.

“I wanted to explain - and if you can’t find the way…” Their heads are bent close together, Jack’s dark locks nearly brushing Mother’s bright hair.

Jack takes her hand. “I know. But save a bit of your faith for old Jack, eh?”

Billy can’t see his face, but Mother’s eyes are warm. She kisses him swiftly. Billy backs away, fearful they might hear the thumping of his heart.

“Here, Captain,” Marty is saying, “best take some water.”

“Aye, ye can’t eat nor drink on t’ other side,” Pintel pipes up. “’Else ye might get stuck there like whatserface - the Greek wench.”

“Persephone,” Ragetti adds knowingly. Billy fancies he can hear Mother rolling her eyes.

After a moment Jack returns, adjusting his baldric and flashing his charm. Billy doesn’t smile back.

“We’re all squared. But I’d suggest saying goodbye to your mother first.”

He doesn’t want her to fret. But he’s also unaccountably shy after seeing what went on between Jack and Mother. He feels sick at the thought that Jack has become someone untrustworthy, particularly as they’re about to set off on an adventure together.

So he merely puts his head out, enjoying another round of spooked reaction, and hollers, “G’bye, Mother! We’ll be back soon.” He retreats before she can either grab him or kiss him.

“Well then, Mr. Turner,” says Jack grandly, sweeping his hand at the bright light beyond the stone. “Shall we be on our way?”

Billy nods, looking down at the compass in his hand. He leads the way down the narrow lane, shrugging off the hand Jack lays on his shoulder. They walk a few steps before they emerge, blinking, into a vast gray land.

The wall extends on either side of them, stretching as far as the eye can see; its small break has become almost invisible from scarcely two yards away. Before them stretches the dullest landscape Billy has ever seen. Its uneven surface is something like clay, cracked and dusty in the high places but with small puddles in the low. Billy thinks the blinding sun would make any kind of rain impossible, but then he realizes that it gives off very little heat for how bright it is. The only sight to break the monotony is a bit of depressing shrubbery here and there, gnarled and close to the ground.

Despite his new reservations Billy glances up at Jack for reassurance. The captain’s mouth is set in a grim line, his eyes narrowed against the glare and something more.

“The sands are number’d that make up my life,” he murmurs.

Wordlessly, Billy begins to follow the point of the needle.

They walk in silence for some time. If Jack considers Billy’s behavior strange, he is polite enough not to mention it. He hums an aimless tune while Billy turns their time on the Pearl over in his mind.

Captain Jack Sparrow is a dashing pirate, and a cheating rogue, and Billy likes him very much. He’s never had such fine days as those he has spent aboard the great black ship. Mother seems lighter there, quicker to smile and to laugh. She has cast off her skirts and taken up a sword. Billy is long past thinking about how strange this is, and now he only thinks that she is happy. Jack is part of what makes her happy, that much is clear.

And yet she has always loved Billy’s distant father, always spoken of him with longing in her eyes - when she can bear to speak of him at all. They’re meant to be together when Father returns, a true family. No one will call Billy bastard then.

He wonders, now, if it’s all a story she has spun him, like Gibbs’ tales of sunken treasure and sea creatures. But some of those are true, aren’t they? For Mother swore she saw a kraken with her own two eyes, and pirates who turned to bone under moonlight.

Billy adores those stories, but he wants his father back more than he’ll ever want to meet a pretty mermaid.

“Do you love my mother?” he bursts out when he can think of it no more. It seems the simplest question in what must be a tangled mess of grown-up things he neither understands nor cares to.

Jack gives him a sidewise glance, looking disarmed. Billy doesn’t care. He just wants an answer. Whatever else he may be, Jack hasn’t lied to him yet.

The captain cracks the knuckles on one hand, tugs his sash straight. Billy’s throat is burning, but he can wait if it’s the truth. After he is done being uncomfortable Jack speaks, his voice echoing weirdly in the empty space.

“Billy, I love all my old friends. Except Hector Barbossa,” he amends, making a lemon-sucking face. “Have I never told you ‘bout how Barbossa took -”

“Took the Pearl and the treasure and left you marooned on a godforsaken spit of land,” Billy parrots back, stymieing Jack’s poor attempt at changing the subject. He should take lessons in it from Mother. “Is my father one of your old friends, too?”

Giving him that look again, like he’s adding Billy up and coming to a different sum, Jack replies - serious for once, as far as Billy can tell - “Aye, he is at that.”

Billy takes a deep breath and nods, making his hat bobble dangerously. “Good.” He still doesn’t understand it all, but he hopes that if Jack cares for his mother and his father both, he won’t do anything to hurt either one. Jack reaches over to set the hat right, and Billy smiles at him for the first time since they left the gate.

They continue on for a bit, adjusting their course according to the compass’s guidance. Billy’s just about to admit he’d like to hear how Mother, Father and Jack wrested the Pearl back from Barbossa again when Jack says casually, “I’m quicker’n I look, you know. I would have caught you.”

“Maybe,” says Billy, twisting around to walk backwards and stick out his tongue. “Maybe not.”

Jack chuckles and tweaks his nose. “You’re a right piece o’ your father, William.”

Billy, who was expecting to hear ‘mother,’ looks down at the steady compass needle to hide his grin.

Day wanes and night creeps ever forward, and Jack grows warier as their path winds on. Stars begin to twinkle in the sky, far too close to the ground. Billy is not yet too grown up to hold on when Jack takes his hand. He drops the compass once, and when Jack leans down to pick it up the needle swings back around in the direction from whence they came.

“Still have such a low opinion of an honest pirate?” he inquires of it before holding it out. Billy stretches his fingers toward it, then hesitates. Watching his eyes, Jack says in an even voice, “Shall we continue, d’you think?”

It’s a struggle, but in the end the needle returns to its former heading. Jack looks at once proud at his bravery and displeased at the notion of carrying on into the dark. Billy snaps the compass shut and decides not to look at it for awhile.

Not long after, he begins to hear a strange, distant rushing sound. Jack grips his elbow and hurries onward, glancing back over his shoulder. But the noise is coming from all around them, not simply from behind, and it’s growing louder. The air takes on a faintly green scent that makes his stomach turn over.

“Jack…”

“Water,” Jack says tersely, his boots making a squelching sound as the ground starts to soften. “Tide’s rising.”

Fear makes Billy stumble in the muck. Jack pulls him upright and keeps an arm around his shoulders. He knows what he would see if he dared to look at the compass now.

Jack stops abruptly, taking in a sharp gust of breath. Billy peers into the starlit gloom. There are shapes, moving sluggishly about - people looking down as the water trickles in around their feet…

“The souls,” Jack murmurs as they reach the edge of the crowd. Out of the corner of an eye Billy sees his hand raise in a quick, convulsive moment, as if he would make the sign of the cross but has forgotten how.

“Hello,” says a white-haired man in a nightshirt. “You’ve got here just in time.”

“Just in time?” Billy cries, splashing in the water that is now up past his ankles. “But we’ll drown!”

“Oh,” the man replies politely, peering at him through half-moon spectacles. “Have you not drowned already, then?”

Jack mutters an extraordinarily filthy and complex curse under his breath, eyes darting about. There is nothing that might be used as a flotation device, not even the dead - the man’s nightshirt brushes through Billy’s arm as he drifts away. Billy shivers and presses close to Jack.

“Ship ahoy!” cries a soul with a tarred sailor’s queue. His voice is pitifully thin, but they all look to see that he hails a large, imposing vessel in the process of reefing its sails.

Jack’s head comes up like a hunting dog’s. He struggles through the water, pulling Billy with him, and cups his hands around his mouth.

“William Turner!” he bellows toward the ship. “Senior! Junior! Whichever! Captain Turner!”

Billy scrambles in his pocket for the bosun’s whistle Marty gave him for his birthday. Jack gives him an almost savage grin when he starts to blow on it.

Heads poke up over the rails. The water has risen above Billy’s knees by the time a man splashes down from a hastily knotted rope. He’s indistinct in the poor light, at least to Billy’s eyes, but Jack whoops and starts forward. The souls scatter in his wake, not unlike startled hens.

Billy’s heart leaps into his mouth as the man draws closer. He is tall and strong, dark hair kept back by a pale kerchief. His eyes are dark too - brown, Billy thinks, the same shade as Mother’s - and his chin has a determined set to it. But those are all details to be filed away for later, because Billy knows him.

“Papa?

Will Turner stares down at him. His eyes go wide with horror and he drops to his knees in the water.

“No - no - oh God, please,” he breathes, then shouts hoarsely, “Go back! You cannot be here!” He draws his sword an inch out of its sheath.

An involuntary sob rises in Billy’s throat.

Jack leans down, clasping Father’s shoulders so hard it turns his knuckles white. “We haven’t come on business for the Dutchman - only to see you.”

Father shakes his head wildly, staring from Jack to Billy, uncomprehending. For a moment Billy thinks Jack will slap him.

“I swear it, Will,” Jack says, low and urgent, giving him a shake. “I swear your son lives. Look at him - look at me.”

He raises a trembling hand, touches Jack’s face, breathes out harshly - then grips the back of his neck and pulls him into a tight embrace. Jack falls down beside him in the water with an undignified “Oof.” He pounds his fist on Father’s back and they both begin to laugh.

“My wife is expecting me,” the old man confides to Billy as he wanders toward the boat.

“Congratulations,” says Billy uncertainly. When he turns back, both men have regained their footing. Jack rearranges his soaked clothing while Billy’s father looks at him as if he is just now being born.

They each take an awkward step forward. Billy wants nothing more than to run to him, but it’s not easy to shake off that initial reaction. For his part, Father is clearly still in shock to see him at all. Jack cocks an eyebrow and gives him a nudge. This causes what seems like a week’s worth of speech to burst out of his mouth in one breath.

“Hello William - Billy, I’m told? Your eyes are just like hers - but you’ve gotten so big. Of course you were just a baby when Cotton told me about you, the time has gone so quickly -”

“Oi! Mr. Cotton!” Jack shouts up to a man on the deck, grinning like a madhouse patient all the while. The man waves down at them.

“This is my ship,” says Father. He immediately wrinkles his nose, hearing how absurd it sounds.

Billy can’t help himself. He giggles. At this, a smile stretches across his father’s handsome face. It warms Billy even more than making Mother smile when she has been melancholy.

Father bends down to embrace him, tears in his eyes, arms tightening. Billy puts his face against his neck and pretends water has gotten splashed on his cheeks. He’s old enough for that bit of pride, at least, if not too old to have his father hoist him into the air and hold him close.

on to Part VI