Here's a lovely little fic that told from Will's point of view:
basically his life and feelings on Elizabeth, mostly. Please
enjoy, and please review!
Disclaimer: You know what? I own all of PoTC and Disney, and heck, I own the world! And if you did not believe that I was being sarcastic right there, I should think I own YOU.
I was born the twenty third of July, 1701, as William Jonathan Turner.
My mother, up until the day she died, always told me the story of my birth. She was about to lie with a man, completely unaware of the fact that she was pregnant. In fact, she only thought she was growing rather round for some odd reason or the other, and had continual stomach sickness due to her two months spent on a ship. As she was just getting into the man's bed, her water broke, and she started screaming for the Lord to save her and spare her sinned soul. The man she was with had to tell her that she was having a baby, and was forced to help her deliver it.
My mother knew not who the father was until she looked directly at my face and saw my nose. The nose reminded her of a man she'd met on the ship she'd sailed on, and right then she knew my father was William Turner. Hence, I was named after my father.
She was a quirky woman of sorts, my mother, and tried to raise me in the slums of England. I went to school until I was five or so, when I just stopped learning anything at all. I could read and write, as my mother had taught me, and I found no real reason to continue with my schooling. All the true education in the world came from my mother and her stories. She used to tell me about her adventures in a place called the Caribbean, a magical set of islands that were so far from my home in rainy England that the tales of their magical shores and pirates seemed like a fantasy world away. She told me those stories whenever she had a minute; stories about how she had seen a hanging there, stories of how the governer's balls would last until the sun began to peak over the sky, and stories of how she had met my father there.
My father, she told me, was a sailor she had met on the beach when she was still in the town of Tortuga in the Caribbean. She was actually looking to get to England, and managed to barter passage aboard his ship for a... price, she said, then laughed. She spent two months on that ship rather by accident, as they had to re-route or something to that effect, and was eventually forced to say goodbye to my father upon their landing in England. He had been a merchant sailor who could never stay more than five days in one place, she had told me, and did not choose to marry him for that reason and many others.
"I will spare your ears the complications," she'd say.
The people around town knew my mother fairly well, especially the men. Remember, we lived in the slums, where men slept in dung heaps and children played with pigs. Every few nights or so, she'd bring a man home, then the next day she'd give me a large sum of money to go buy the biggest loaf of bread I could find. Over the bread, she'd tell me that if I ever wanted to find my father, I should just go the Caribbean and he'd be there, on the isle of Tortuga.
Why didn't we go together and look for him, I asked her.
"I have no reason to find your father, Will," she said. "But if you're ever in a spot, I'm sure he'll be glad to help out his own son."
It was on my seventh birthday that I received two gifts, both that would change my life forever.
In the morning, my mother cooked meat (a rarity around the poorhouse in which we lived), and told me that for the first time, she had a very wonderful birthday present for me. She had put it in a box and everything, and used string as a makeshift ribbon. I opened it, expecting to find something like that of which the rich boys had like a pocketknife. Instead I found a large circular gold pendant that had a skull in the middle, with a chain attached. It was a necklace.
I remember quite clearly scowling at my mother and saying, "Mum, I'm not a girl. I don't wear necklaces."
"Shush, you stupid boy!" she said. "Do you know what this is?"
"It's a necklace."
"No, it's not," she said. "It's a very rare pendant, and your father gave it to me before he left England. He told me that whenever I wore it, I was to think of him. Real sensitive bloke, your father."
I looked at the alleged necklace with a new reverance. "It was my father's?"
"Yes," my mother replied, nodding. "I would have kept it for myself, but, well... Will, to put it quite simply, it causes me a lot of pain to remember your father by wearing that so much. I want you to have it. It was very precious to him, you know, he told me it was his most prized."
I held the pendant firmly in my hand. "Why don't you want to remember him?"
"That's a lot of tosh and nonsense for such a young boy," she said. "You're his spitting image, you know, look just like him. Every day I see you I see him."
"That doesn't tell me why you don't want to remember him."
"Quiet, Will, and another word on the matter will get you no supper. Now, off with you! I've got work to do, go find some boys and play with the pigs."
That was the last time I saw my mother alive. I remember that I came home that night, covered in mud, head to toe, and rather hungry. The pendant was placed firmly on my neck, underneath my shirt, and I returned to our building, greeting the usual mass of women (our neighbors) in revealing clothes. When I walked into the front room of the apartment (there were only two rooms, a bedroom and a front room), I could hear no noise or see any supper, so I called to my mother. She did not answer me. I called out the window, and checked in cupboards, under the rugs, anywhere (forgive me, I was only seven years of age). I finally walked into the bedroom where I could make out my mother's figure lying on the bed. Her candles were unlit, so I took one from the front room and brought it in with me to light the room and wake her. I was terribly hungry, I thought, as I walked in.
That's when I noticed the blood. Underneath my feet, blood was pooling together, all of it coming from the same spot. I gasped, looking all around me to see if there was a dead cat lying about. I pulled at my mother's dress, still not looking at her.
"Mum! Mum, I think there's a dead cat somewhere. There's blood all over the floor."
She didn't answer.
"Mum! Mum, are you awake? Wake up, Mum! Mum!"
I turned around to face her to see her body, bleeding and grotesquely mangled, her face strangely peaceful. I screamed, dropping the candlestick to the floor and letting it burn the wooden ground, running out of the flat, running anywhere, anywhere at all. I fled into the dung heap nearby, watching as crazed men and half dressed women went screaming out of the building, as the fire burned my mother's body. I sat in the dung heap, watching as the firemen came to put out the fire, and all that was left of my former apartment building was a pile of ashes and the sign that led to it, a sign that had a picture of a woman leaning over.
I spent days sitting in that dung heap, unable to come out. Where could I go? I daren't leave the slums, and no family around the area was willing enough to take in yet another mouth to feed. All I wanted right then was some food, perhaps a bath. But mainly food. I remembered that once there was a boy who I used to see on the street often, Reginald, whose mother told him to beg for food. Begging, I thought. It was such a nasty word that I preferred to consider it stingy giving upon overly curteous requests.
I did that for about a few weeks or so, and it got me something. There were days when there was no food at all, but ever few days or so some kind soul would relent to a seven year old orphan begging for a bite, and lend me a mouthful of bread or something. The trick, I taught myself, was to make them feel bad. Then they were certain to give a little bit.
I actually became quite the street rat during the first few months after my mother's death. I learned tricks to begging, never took a bath (my last bath had been on the morning of my seventh birthday), and often stole food from strangers. One day, I found a rather large cheese loaf in the basket of a man passing by, and I reached out behind him to take it when he slapped my hand from behind, grabbed me, and pulled me around to face him. He was very tall and thin, had very long white hair, and looked uncommonly young. He lifted me up to his height by my collar.
"Who are you, boy?" he asked me.
"William Turner," I replied, squinting, waiting for him to smack me.
"What makes you think you can steal my cheese?"
"I-I'm hungry, sir," I said, trying to make him feel guilty.
"Don't try to make me feel guilty, William," he said, surprising me by using my name.
My eyes widened. "Yes, sir."
"William, how long is it since you've had your last meal?"
"Two days, sir."
"Would you like my cheese, William?"
"Yes, sir, very much, but I wouldn't take it from you."
He stared at me long and hard for a few minutes before saying, "Good answer. Have it." He handed me the cheese, which I devoured hungrily. "Where are your parents?"
"Well," I said, through mouthfuls of my God-sent food, "my mum died when our house burned down, and I've never known my father."
"I see..." he mused. "So you're an orphan?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you live upon the streets, begging and stealing?"
"Yes sir."
"So you have no place in the world that you need to be going?"
A thought struck me, recalling some of my mother's last words to me: the Caribbean. "No, sir."
"Well, how about this, young William. You can come with me on my ship, join my crew as a deck scrubber, and you'll get your meals three times a day and clean water to bathe in. We're looking for someone young, anyhow."
"You mean leave England, sir?"
"Yes, William, that is precisely what I mean."
I thought on this for a few seconds, remembering that my mother's remains lay here. But the promise of food and shelter was far too enticing. "I'll come."
"There are a few conditions," he said. "No more stealing or begging, and you are to work hard and do exactly as we say. Understood?"
I nodded.
"Then come with me. I'll introduce you to the crew. We leave in the morning."
As we walked along towards the harbor, I said to him, "Please, sir. Call me Will."
He looked at me strangely. "All right, Will."
"What should I call you, sir?"
"Sir is just fine."
*************************************
Hope you liked it. Please review. I have some romance coming up by Chapter three, so please continue reading.
Disclaimer: You know what? I own all of PoTC and Disney, and heck, I own the world! And if you did not believe that I was being sarcastic right there, I should think I own YOU.
I was born the twenty third of July, 1701, as William Jonathan Turner.
My mother, up until the day she died, always told me the story of my birth. She was about to lie with a man, completely unaware of the fact that she was pregnant. In fact, she only thought she was growing rather round for some odd reason or the other, and had continual stomach sickness due to her two months spent on a ship. As she was just getting into the man's bed, her water broke, and she started screaming for the Lord to save her and spare her sinned soul. The man she was with had to tell her that she was having a baby, and was forced to help her deliver it.
My mother knew not who the father was until she looked directly at my face and saw my nose. The nose reminded her of a man she'd met on the ship she'd sailed on, and right then she knew my father was William Turner. Hence, I was named after my father.
She was a quirky woman of sorts, my mother, and tried to raise me in the slums of England. I went to school until I was five or so, when I just stopped learning anything at all. I could read and write, as my mother had taught me, and I found no real reason to continue with my schooling. All the true education in the world came from my mother and her stories. She used to tell me about her adventures in a place called the Caribbean, a magical set of islands that were so far from my home in rainy England that the tales of their magical shores and pirates seemed like a fantasy world away. She told me those stories whenever she had a minute; stories about how she had seen a hanging there, stories of how the governer's balls would last until the sun began to peak over the sky, and stories of how she had met my father there.
My father, she told me, was a sailor she had met on the beach when she was still in the town of Tortuga in the Caribbean. She was actually looking to get to England, and managed to barter passage aboard his ship for a... price, she said, then laughed. She spent two months on that ship rather by accident, as they had to re-route or something to that effect, and was eventually forced to say goodbye to my father upon their landing in England. He had been a merchant sailor who could never stay more than five days in one place, she had told me, and did not choose to marry him for that reason and many others.
"I will spare your ears the complications," she'd say.
The people around town knew my mother fairly well, especially the men. Remember, we lived in the slums, where men slept in dung heaps and children played with pigs. Every few nights or so, she'd bring a man home, then the next day she'd give me a large sum of money to go buy the biggest loaf of bread I could find. Over the bread, she'd tell me that if I ever wanted to find my father, I should just go the Caribbean and he'd be there, on the isle of Tortuga.
Why didn't we go together and look for him, I asked her.
"I have no reason to find your father, Will," she said. "But if you're ever in a spot, I'm sure he'll be glad to help out his own son."
It was on my seventh birthday that I received two gifts, both that would change my life forever.
In the morning, my mother cooked meat (a rarity around the poorhouse in which we lived), and told me that for the first time, she had a very wonderful birthday present for me. She had put it in a box and everything, and used string as a makeshift ribbon. I opened it, expecting to find something like that of which the rich boys had like a pocketknife. Instead I found a large circular gold pendant that had a skull in the middle, with a chain attached. It was a necklace.
I remember quite clearly scowling at my mother and saying, "Mum, I'm not a girl. I don't wear necklaces."
"Shush, you stupid boy!" she said. "Do you know what this is?"
"It's a necklace."
"No, it's not," she said. "It's a very rare pendant, and your father gave it to me before he left England. He told me that whenever I wore it, I was to think of him. Real sensitive bloke, your father."
I looked at the alleged necklace with a new reverance. "It was my father's?"
"Yes," my mother replied, nodding. "I would have kept it for myself, but, well... Will, to put it quite simply, it causes me a lot of pain to remember your father by wearing that so much. I want you to have it. It was very precious to him, you know, he told me it was his most prized."
I held the pendant firmly in my hand. "Why don't you want to remember him?"
"That's a lot of tosh and nonsense for such a young boy," she said. "You're his spitting image, you know, look just like him. Every day I see you I see him."
"That doesn't tell me why you don't want to remember him."
"Quiet, Will, and another word on the matter will get you no supper. Now, off with you! I've got work to do, go find some boys and play with the pigs."
That was the last time I saw my mother alive. I remember that I came home that night, covered in mud, head to toe, and rather hungry. The pendant was placed firmly on my neck, underneath my shirt, and I returned to our building, greeting the usual mass of women (our neighbors) in revealing clothes. When I walked into the front room of the apartment (there were only two rooms, a bedroom and a front room), I could hear no noise or see any supper, so I called to my mother. She did not answer me. I called out the window, and checked in cupboards, under the rugs, anywhere (forgive me, I was only seven years of age). I finally walked into the bedroom where I could make out my mother's figure lying on the bed. Her candles were unlit, so I took one from the front room and brought it in with me to light the room and wake her. I was terribly hungry, I thought, as I walked in.
That's when I noticed the blood. Underneath my feet, blood was pooling together, all of it coming from the same spot. I gasped, looking all around me to see if there was a dead cat lying about. I pulled at my mother's dress, still not looking at her.
"Mum! Mum, I think there's a dead cat somewhere. There's blood all over the floor."
She didn't answer.
"Mum! Mum, are you awake? Wake up, Mum! Mum!"
I turned around to face her to see her body, bleeding and grotesquely mangled, her face strangely peaceful. I screamed, dropping the candlestick to the floor and letting it burn the wooden ground, running out of the flat, running anywhere, anywhere at all. I fled into the dung heap nearby, watching as crazed men and half dressed women went screaming out of the building, as the fire burned my mother's body. I sat in the dung heap, watching as the firemen came to put out the fire, and all that was left of my former apartment building was a pile of ashes and the sign that led to it, a sign that had a picture of a woman leaning over.
I spent days sitting in that dung heap, unable to come out. Where could I go? I daren't leave the slums, and no family around the area was willing enough to take in yet another mouth to feed. All I wanted right then was some food, perhaps a bath. But mainly food. I remembered that once there was a boy who I used to see on the street often, Reginald, whose mother told him to beg for food. Begging, I thought. It was such a nasty word that I preferred to consider it stingy giving upon overly curteous requests.
I did that for about a few weeks or so, and it got me something. There were days when there was no food at all, but ever few days or so some kind soul would relent to a seven year old orphan begging for a bite, and lend me a mouthful of bread or something. The trick, I taught myself, was to make them feel bad. Then they were certain to give a little bit.
I actually became quite the street rat during the first few months after my mother's death. I learned tricks to begging, never took a bath (my last bath had been on the morning of my seventh birthday), and often stole food from strangers. One day, I found a rather large cheese loaf in the basket of a man passing by, and I reached out behind him to take it when he slapped my hand from behind, grabbed me, and pulled me around to face him. He was very tall and thin, had very long white hair, and looked uncommonly young. He lifted me up to his height by my collar.
"Who are you, boy?" he asked me.
"William Turner," I replied, squinting, waiting for him to smack me.
"What makes you think you can steal my cheese?"
"I-I'm hungry, sir," I said, trying to make him feel guilty.
"Don't try to make me feel guilty, William," he said, surprising me by using my name.
My eyes widened. "Yes, sir."
"William, how long is it since you've had your last meal?"
"Two days, sir."
"Would you like my cheese, William?"
"Yes, sir, very much, but I wouldn't take it from you."
He stared at me long and hard for a few minutes before saying, "Good answer. Have it." He handed me the cheese, which I devoured hungrily. "Where are your parents?"
"Well," I said, through mouthfuls of my God-sent food, "my mum died when our house burned down, and I've never known my father."
"I see..." he mused. "So you're an orphan?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you live upon the streets, begging and stealing?"
"Yes sir."
"So you have no place in the world that you need to be going?"
A thought struck me, recalling some of my mother's last words to me: the Caribbean. "No, sir."
"Well, how about this, young William. You can come with me on my ship, join my crew as a deck scrubber, and you'll get your meals three times a day and clean water to bathe in. We're looking for someone young, anyhow."
"You mean leave England, sir?"
"Yes, William, that is precisely what I mean."
I thought on this for a few seconds, remembering that my mother's remains lay here. But the promise of food and shelter was far too enticing. "I'll come."
"There are a few conditions," he said. "No more stealing or begging, and you are to work hard and do exactly as we say. Understood?"
I nodded.
"Then come with me. I'll introduce you to the crew. We leave in the morning."
As we walked along towards the harbor, I said to him, "Please, sir. Call me Will."
He looked at me strangely. "All right, Will."
"What should I call you, sir?"
"Sir is just fine."
*************************************
Hope you liked it. Please review. I have some romance coming up by Chapter three, so please continue reading.