bringmethatnpc | (no subject)

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You don't venture into the captain's cabin, on board the Dutchman. Especially not when there's any sort of music coming out. When it's the music-box it's especially deadly to interrupt him ... but it's almost as bad when it's the organ.

Tentacles clutch and hammer at the stepped keyboards like the hands of a madman, and the organ groans and bellows and thunders like the storm outside.

-----

Lightning flashes, wind tears at the sails; rain slams down, making the deck slippery and treacherous. The crew of the Dutchman works through the storm, hauling a cannon into its new place.

Over the noise of the thunder, the bo'sun bawls "Secure the mast tackle, Mr. Turner! Step to it!"

On the rain-lashed deck below, two Mr. Turners look up and move to obey.

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Keep you head down. That's been Will's mantra since coming on the ship. Head down, do the work, stay unnoticed and unobtrusive, and fit in until he works out a way to find that key.

But his attempts at staying unmarked arent' being helped when this other crewman - just as hideous to look at and touch as any of the crew - tries to prevent him from doing his job.

"Step aside!"

There was a time when Bootstrap Bill tried to befriend the newcomers to the Dutchman's crew, tried to help them keep from getting into too much trouble right off.

He's often thought he should have been quicker to learn that kindness is not repaid in kind, among the damned. It's not as though he hadn't been shown that before.

And now here's one of them getting in his way, and he tries not to look too closely at the sight of a living human face, even as their hands struggle for the rope.

"Make way, you filth --"

This is stupid. Will's just been given a direct order, and this man is deliberately causing trouble for him. He gives the rops a heavy yank towards himself.

"Hey!"

"Let go, boy!"

He tugs back as a flash of lightning overhead illuminates the deck, the sails, the ropes --

-- the face staring back at him through the rain.

"No."

The wet rope slides from his suddenly nerveless fingers.

And the cannon comes crashing down, scattering pirates left and right, knocking Will and Bootstrap off their feet, and smashing a hole in the deck itself.

The bosun storms over, glaring to see who's responsible.

"Haul that weevil to his feet!"

Will is, indeed, hauled to his feet by the scrabbling pirates, dragged up and tied to the rigging. The rampant unfairness of it all burns him - he wasn't the one who started this - but mostly it's the thought that his plan to fit in is failing.

He's failing.

He's failing Elizabeth.

Take it, Will. Keep strong and take whatever it is they do to you. She has faith in you.

The bosun sneers, approaching the rigging.

"Five lashes'll remind you to stay on it!"

He raises his whip to strike.

And the whip is caught just before the downswing.

Bootstrap's face is livid white in the lightning flashes.

"No!"

"Impeding me in my duties!" the bosun snarls. "You'll share the punishment."

Will strains his head back to try and see what's going on. Why is this man interfering now?

"I'll take it all," Bootstrap says hoarsely.

"Will you, now?"

At the sound of their captain's voice, the crew instinctively parts to either side, admitting Davy Jones to the center of the circle. Rain runs in thick rivulets between the barnacles on his hat as he approaches Bootstrap.

"And what would prompt such an act of charity?"

Bootstrap's voice falls into the sudden silence like a small stone into water; a splash, sinking, gone.

"...my son."

He turns slowly to look at Will, comprehension and pain and terrible fear all mingled in his eyes.

"He's my son."

He's his what?

All Will can do is stare, ignoring his predicament and the pirates. This man? His father? "Bootstrap" Bill Turner?

He's found him.

Davy Jones looks from Bootstrap to Will and back again, expression unreadable right up until the instant he bursts out laughing.

"What fortuitous circumstances be this!" he crows, snatching the bo'sun's weapon away from him; the pirate steps back with haste to leave a clear path. "Five lashes be owed, I believe it is."

Yet when Jones raises the whip, it isn't to use it.

It's to thrust the handle at Bootstrap's face, his tentacled finger wrapped around it and squirming for purchase in the rain.

Bootstrap stares at the whip handle in momentary confusion, which breaks and scales upward into horror.

"No," he husks. "No, I won't!"

"The cat's out of the bag, Mr. Turner."

The siphons flex, drawing in breath, and the next flash of lightning sets off an openly pleased spark in Davy Jones' eyes.

"Your issue will feel its sting -- " and still the tentacle grasps and re-grasps the handle -- "be it by the bo'sun's hand or your own."

His trapped gaze darts back and forth between Will, held fast by the other crewmen, and Jones, holding out the whip.

"No."

Jones raises his voice without taking his attention off of Bootstrap.

"Bo'sun!"

Anguished: "No!"

He clutches at the whip, beating the bo'sun's grab for it, and turns to face Will with his jaw clenched against any further cry.

Five. It's not so b...

Each lash cuts into Will's skin, sending shooting pains across his spine. Each snap makes him grunt with pain. Even after the first he can feel blood seeping over his back, to which the salt spray adds extra sting.

But it doesn't take long, at least.

It doesn't take long.

One.

Rain and sea spray sting his eyes, blur his vision -- but not enough to block out the sight of the blood.

Two.

Or of Davy Jones's satisfied, lipless smile.

Three.

And the roar of the sea and the storm isn't anything like loud enough to drown out the crack of the whip against bare flesh, or the stifled cry of pain at each blow.

Four.

The water trickling down his face isn't from the rain.

Five.

When the beating's done, two of the pirates untie Will from the rigging -- then take him by the arms and hurl him down the short ladder to the lower deck. "You had it easy, boy!" jeers one, and coarse laughter goes up from the rest of the crew.

But the fun's over now, and the crowd slowly breaks up as the crewmen return to their duties.

Will stumbles as he falls onto the lower deck, but sends a hand out to steady himself against the side of the ship. His back burns, but he will admit he's hand worse.

Doesn't mean that this doesn't hurt now, though.

Bootstrap's hurrying over, jostling past other crewmen.

"Will--"

"I don't need your help."

He's too proud to accept it from anyone, least of all this pirate... his father. Will staggers away, keeping his hand against the hull.

Fighting to keep the despair out of his voice, Bootstrap grates out: "The bosun prides himself on cleaving flesh from bone with every swing."

He tosses a fresh shirt to Will.

Trying to apply reason while your son is in full sulk mode is never an endearing move by any father. But Will catches the shirt in one hand, staring at him stolidly.

"So I‘m to understand what you did was an act of compassion?" He asks with a faint hint of bitterness.

He meets Will's eyes steadily.

"Yes."

Will stares at the pir.. the man... at his father in silence for a few seconds, then eases the fresh shirt over his arms

He can't actually argue that it couldn't have been worse.

Later: belowdecks, and the two are walking slowly along.

"...one hundred years before the mast," Bootstrap is saying, low and contemplative. "You lose who you were, bit by bit. You end up -- end up like poor Wyvern."

He gestures at the wall, where there appears to be a carving of a --

No. It's not a carving; it's a man sprouting growths of coral, melded into the ship. And, apparently, mercifully unconscious.

"Once you've sworn an oath to the Dutchman there’s no leaving it," Bootstrap continues. "Not 'til your debt is paid."

Will just stares dumbly at the poor face. He can't believe it. His father is doomed to that fate?

"I’ve sworn no oath." he says.

There are times when that fate seems almost ... restful, to him.

But not for his son.

"Then you must get away," he says, almost sharply.

He can't. Will pulls out the scrap that Jack gave him, and hands it over.

"Not until I find this," he says firmly. "The key."

The frozen man's eyes pop open.

Slowly, parts of him shifting in ways unpleasant to look at too closely, Wyvern pulls himself from the wall and stares at both Turners.

A creaking whisper: "Th' dead man's chest."

Will turns suddenly towards the poor soul in the hull.

"What do you know of this?"

Wyvern's eyes widen further; he seems taken aback to be asked. To be spoken to at all.

"Open the chest with the key, and stab the heart..." His voice quavers, with uncertainty or with the unfamiliarity of long disuse. "The Dutchman needs a living heart, or there'll be no captain. And ... if there's no captain, there's ... no one to have the key."

"So the captain has the key?" Will asks earnestly, ignoring his father for now.

No reply. The man's eyes shift nervously.

"Where is the key?" Will insists, waving the scrap in the strangely disembodied face.

The mouth trembles uncertainly. "Hidden."

"Where is the chest?" Will tries again, impatience and frustration in every word.

"Hidden." With finality, the man pulls back into the hull, and closes his eyes.

A moment later it's as though he never moved in the first place.

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