bringmethatnpc | Gentlemen's Tea Party

Gentlemen's Tea Party

They find him in the early hours of the morning, floating along with a corpse and a barrel to hold on to. Heaved aboard like any other piece of Jetsam, the prisoner is given time to dry off in the hold.

As the sun rises higher in the sky, Lord Beckett orders that the Dutchman be signalled and Jones summoned over to the Endeavour. In the meanwhile, that pirate they hauled inis to be similarly escorted to the cabin, there to be offered the finest tea of the Company.

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The sea roughens everything.

Lord Cutler Beckett therefore does his best to ensure that some semblance of civilization exists aboard the Endeavour.

In this case: a very fine tea set. What is it worth to master the world and bend the world to your will if you have no taste?

Therefore, it is with a delicate (and utterly incongruous, if one considers the deck above and the sea around) pair of silver tongs that Beckett doses Will Turner's cup of tea --

With sugar.

The unwanted salt is barging through the door.

"I canna be summoned like some mongrel pup!"

Most by now would have learned their place, but Jones never fails to disappoint. Beckett merely looks at him.

"Apparently you can."

With a precise flick of the tongs, he indicates his companion.

"I believe you know each other."

Will is, it has to be admitted, rather looking forward to his first proper cup of tea since leaving Milliways.

He's also determined to enjoy what he's willing to admit is probably the only time in his entire life he will have the upper hand in a situation. For once, he has information that people in the room want, and he's going to milk the whole experience for everything it's worth.

He turns around to Jones, and says nothing, merely giving a condescending nod before turning back to the table, and his tea.

The captain blinks, but then recovers with some grace. "Come to join my crew then, Mister Turner?"

Will turns back to Jones. "Not yours," he says, brightly and insolent. "His." This with a nod towards Beckett.

He lets this dimissal hang while raising his tea, then stops as if something has just occured to him.

"Jack Sparrow sends his regards," he says, choosing not to relate the circumstances under which those regards were sent.

Bewilderment ripples across the rubbery face. "Sparrow?"

Shouldn't he be secure in the dry hell that is the Locker?

Will was so close. So close to actually tasting proper India tea for the first time in far too long. He'd tipped the cup so he could smell the quality, feel the warmth on his upper lip, almost feel the liquid...

But he has to pause now, addressing Beckett. "You didn't tell him?"

"What haven't ye told me?" Jones demands, his beard rippling across his chest with the monstrous captain's frustration and rage.

Will turns back to Jones to savour the full impact of the following line:

"We rescued Jack from the Locker, along with the Black Pearl."

And now, that line delivered, he finally takes a drink. And it's as good as he'd hoped it would be.

Round on Beckett, Jones' rage is now obvious -- almost palpable. Beckett does himself credit by not allowing it to ruffle him. "What else have ye not told me!?"

Beckett dismisses this question as unimportant.

Or perhaps simply beneath him.

"There is another issue, far more troublesome."

He stands up and paces across the room, then turns and arches a brow at Jones.

"I believe you're familiar with a person called Calypso?"

Familiar; perhaps in the Biblical sense? The sudden fluster that takes the captain of the Dutchman is -- well, not unlike a man wronged.

"Not a person," he says bitterly. "A heathen god. One who delights in cursing men wi' their wildest dreams and 'en revealing them to be hollow and naught but ash. The world is well rid of her."

Will has been watching this exchange, combining enjoyment of his delicious tea with waiting for the perfect moment to drop the other line he's been storing up.

And this speech by Jones is perfect.

"Not quite so well, actually," he says. And then takes another sip of tea, letting them both know just how much he enjoys it by making an appreciative noise as he swallows.

"The Brethren Court intends to release her."

Jones' head swings up so fast one might fear that the tentacles will get whiplash. "No! They cannot! The first Court promised to imprison her forever! That was our agreement!"

He looks to Beckett, then to Will again. That cannot be! Someone tell him they're not serious!

Oh, now that's interesting.

"Your agreement?"

Only now does he realize he has given himself away. Back paddling is never graceful. "I showed them 'ow to bind her," he says, rolling the words out uneasily. "She could not be trusted."

All the same, one thing is paramount on his mind: "She gave me no choice. We must act before they release her."

Will was also interested in this agreement, and as Jones tried to backtrack, he looked up attentively, lowering his tea cup as the realisation hits him.

"You loved her," he says, unwillingly. "She's the one.

(A woman as changing, as harsh and as untamable as the sea.)

She was the sea.

And as the true implications hit home, his voice turns harsh. "And then you betrayed her."

One should not tell the Captain of the Dutchman who was betrayed. Not unless they have a fondness for angry calamari in their face.

Jones rounds on Will, rage obvious. "She pretended to love me. She betrayed me!" Doesn't he have any idea what it's like to have a woman betray him?

As it happens, Will does know what it's like to have a woman betray him, even though his experience in the matter was a misconception.

But either way, he reflects as he turns back to his tea and takes his time over another sip, he still stayed true to his own purpose. He stayed loyal to Elizabeth and he pursued his course.

All this, in Will's mind, makes him superior to Jones in a lot of ways.

Confident, he stands, bringing cup and saucer with him, and he faces the man who was once his Captain face to squid.

"And after which betrayal did you cut out your heart, I wonder?"

The claw whips out, sending the china out of Will's hand and ruining his tea.

"Do not test me!" he barks at the younger man.

He looks exceedingly pained as he watches the cup crash against the wooden flooring.

Like all of his most prized possessions -- it had been of unparalled quality.

Will is as pained as Beckett to see his cup go flying, spilling tea across the wood, where it quickly soaks in.

"I hadn't finished that," he says ruefully.

Will Turner won't be threatened, though. Not by Jones, who betrayed the woman she supposedly loved, bound her to confinement for enternity, who, for all other involvement, murdered Jack by sending the Kraken after him, and who holds his father cursed and also bound aboard the Flying Dutchman.

"You will free my father," he says, bitterly, and moves away from the Captain, towards a rather fine globe beside which Beckett still has tea.

"And you will guarantee Elizabeth's safety.

"Along with my own."

He learned from his dealings with Barbossa to add little details like that to his demands.

"Your terms are steep, Mr. Turner."

Not impossible; still, it's a warning.

The prize must be worth its payment, after all. It's just good business.

"We will expect fair value in return."

"There's only one price I will accept," Jones pronounces with a certain finality to the negotiations. "Calypso, murdered."

Will appears to give this a moment's thought. Then with a well practiced air of insolence, he remarks:

"Calypso's aboard the Black Pearl."

He looks back at Beckett. "Jack has sailed the Black Pearl to Shipwreck Cove."

And with that, he turns to inspect the complex navigational tools mounted on the globe.

It's a very expensive globe.

Beckett takes a half-step toward Will before he can stop himself, but then ignores his fiddling and focuses on the more important matter at hand.

"And with you no longer aboard her, how do you propose to lead us there?"

Don't worry, Will would say, I'm an experienced blacksmith.

Of course, then one of the arms catches wrong and there's a snap and it springs up to hit Will in the face, so it's lucky he didn't say anything out loud.

He looks from Beckett to Jones to Beckett again, hestitant at a question he hadn't quite worked out.

(Think like me. It'll come to you.)

With a jerk of his wrist, he flicks up and catches Jack's compass, dangling it by his face.

All things considered, this has gone just as he rehearsed it.

"What is it you want most?"

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Gentlemen's Tea Party

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