Warnings: Death by curse (times a lot); beetles in ears; service to crazy captain, mutineer captain, squid-headed captain, etc; excessive piracy-related angst; semicolons; another Ragetti's-eyeball joke.
Notes: Another random bunch of snippets done for a LiveJournal challenge called "1 Character," in which you have to write one sentence on each of 50 themes, all centered on whichever character you claim. Harder than it sounds. I'm also doing Davy Jones, so look for that in a couple weeks.
It's hard to keep a timeline straight for a choppy thing like this, so don't try too hard to put these in chronological order. Think of each sentence as a different possibility of something that could have happened to Bill. Most of them fit together, though. Some constants made up by me: he started out sailing on a ship in the royal navy, married a surgeon's assistant named Anna who died when Will was maybe three, went to the Caribbean with legitimate intentions, felt/still feels an intense liking and loyalty to Jack (whom I imagine as being a more decent and leaderlike, though still strange, fellow before the mutiny experience), does not hate easily, and is very good at finding simple comforts in the worst of places. Assuming a 1790s setting for PotC, we have King George III on the throne and the existence of a small southern coastal English town called Newhaven (Library of Congress' online selection of old maps, oh yeah baby) in which I placed Bill's home life.
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Bootstrap's Bootstraps
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Package
His hands shook as he pulled out a sheet of brown paper
and started wrapping -- the courier downstairs waited as patiently as
ever, but Bill feared this would be the last birthday present he
would ever send his son.
Obscure
There was probably a
law somewhere what said you had to sign a contract in blood or some
such, but no law ever quite seemed to apply to Davy Jones, and Bill
found the selling of his soul to be frighteningly bloodless.
Skeleton
Once or twice, on those rare occasions the Dutchman took
port, Bill caught a glimpse of a familiar face -- some crewman or
other of the Pearl, looking downcast and strangely unchanged after so
many years.
Nurse
It was meeting Will's mother
what started it all -- the beautiful assistant of some sawbones in
Newhaven, who fixed up his heart as tight as the splint that held his
leg.
Domino
The tales lied... no plan ever truly fell
into place.
Thaw
There was no blacker terror than the
crushing silence of the deep, and though he sold his soul to escape
it, the chill never truly left him.
Waves
Little Will
would draw bright pictures of his father's ship in sunny
harbors where the waves were harmless squiggles and the water was
always calm; during the worst storms, waves higher than twice the
mast, rope slick under his death grip, Bill would close his eyes and
remember.
Burglar
Hector Barbossa stole his life, Davy
Jones his soul; but his blood was still his own, and the heart that
pumped it, and the passion for existance that could still set it
aflame.
Frame
"I shall frame my question more
clearly, sir," said Barbossa, a dangerous edge to his quiet
voice; "Repentance of your words and plunder, or a cold and
watery grave?" -- but Bill still said nothing.
Carpet
The captains' quarters on those ships of His
Majesty's fleet on which Bill had served had all been lush
with color and texture, every inch carpeted; but Jack Sparrow
worshipped the bones of things, and could not rest without the
creaking, singing planks of the Pearl herself beneath his boots.
Insect
The memory of the first person to run screaming from the
sight of a rove beetle crawling out of his ear would be forever
burned into Bill's memory, an uncompromising reminder of his
cursed life.
Mentor
Bill never learned half as much
about life as it ought to be lived from seven years in the royal navy
as he did from three months' service under Cap'n
Sparrow.
Spirit
One thing you learned on the Dutchman
quick as a damp-eared cabin boy was that there was no such thing as a
soulless man; the very breath of a thing gave it spirit, gave it
beauty, and the most beautiful monster of them all was the Sea
herself.
Wax
Anna flinched but held her tongue as Bill
gently picked the drip of melted wax from her fast-blistering hand,
while little Will looked on with the unfathomable wonder of a
toddler, maybe taking in his mother's silent strength.
Trash
There never was a single moment as could define his decline
into piracy, but it was some time after he had gotten used to being
called trash that Bill realized what a wreck he'd become.
Womb
Bill thought sometimes he must have been born not of woman,
but of sea, from the womb of a ship maybe; he loved every vessel he
served on, no matter the circumstance (though he wouldn't ever
admit as much to Captain Jones).
Burn
Bill held his
scaly hand over a candle flame and laughed until he wept, until his
hand was marred with Davy's own Black Spot -- just to feel it
burn.
Flash
The first time Bill helped man a cannon,
the discharge flash-blinded him for three days.
Anima
The
first beat of his newly-reawakened heart sent him reeling and gasping
into Maccus' razor-scaled side, a taut rope slipping
dangerously through his suddenly lax fingers.
Gamble
Regret was a luxury Bill didn't often afford
himself, but if anything he could not stop himself regretting the
quiet family life heíd gambled away in this risky Caribbean
venture.
Statue
His days of saluting the British flag
or statues of the king before duty seemed like a distant dream... now
he owed allegiance to nothing and no one, yet felt less free than he
ever had at home.
Perfume
The cloying stench of
perfume-masked decay was overwhelming after the briny deck of the
Dutchman; it didn't take long for Bill to fall into the same
aversion of shore leave shared by the rest of the crew.
Wine
Bill never could develop a real taste for rum, but it wasn't
until he'd served three miserable years on the Flying Dutchman
that he learned its captain shared his secret affinity for a good red
wine.
Reflection
His hatred of mirrors started after
Anna died -- long before he was touched by any curse.
Take
"Go on, mate, take it," hissed Ragetti, as
Bill's shaking hands hovered indecisively over the dead man's
purse; "take it, he don't need it no more."
Magic
If there were a curse Bill feared, it weren't the
Aztecs' -- it were Capín Sparrow's, cast in full
by his silent stare from the end of the plank.
Fragment
Bill's fist tightened around the scrap of Anna's
wedding veil as he steeled himself to walk out of their old home...
to go down to the docks and never look back.
Cats and
Dogs
The rain poured buckets, so thick you couldn't barely
see your hand what was in front of your face, but Bill -- even all
the way back on the deck of the Dutchman as he was -- couldn't
mistake Jack Sparrow's gait through the gloom, nor the
painfully familiar young face next to him.
Hum
Only
once, and only during the darkest pitch hours of a moonless night,
did Bill ever glimpse Cap'n Jones walking the deck alone,
stroking the rail like a lover's arm and recalling the saddest
of tunes to himself in his soft baritone.
Flinch
What
price Bill wouldn't pay -- his soul, his life, and so much
more -- just to keep his own son from flinching at his barnacled
touch.
Rush
Bill rushed out in the morning on some
errand without saying goodbye, and came home to find Anna lying
lifeless in the parlour; that was the day William Earl Turner died,
though Bootstrap Bill was not quite ready to be born.
Jester
Bill waited and watched from inside the creaking hull,
marking Jack's every movement; this would be the first time
they'd spoken since before the mutiny and though Jack's
manner had always been more than a little eccentric, Bill could tell
the years had changed him for the worse.
Haven
One
thing Bill could say for the Flying Dutchman: all its insane
disfigurement created various holes and niches not found on normal
ships of any build, and she was, if anything, over-manned, so that if
one wanted a moment of quiet, it was easy to hide and not be
missed.
Dusk
It was in that ethereal blur of
nowhere-light just after sunset that Barbossa tied the last knots and
the crew, drunk on riches and rum and mutiny, hoisted the cannon with
Bill strapped to it over the rail; the Bo'sun, his face
nothing but a deeper shadow in the dusk, cried the final order -- and
Bill closed his eyes tight as the cold hit like a
sledgehammer...
Chord
Captain Jones rarely spoke to his
crew after their first fateful bargain had been struck, but after a
day of miserable adjustment to the work, Bill heard the deep
reverberations of the organ below deck for the first time -- and he
realized that Jones was always speaking to them, through every chord
and every glance and every strand of seaweed that grew in their
hair.
Indulgence
Landlubbers didn't understand
how much they took food for granted; Bill associated a decent meal
with Anna and home, and hadn't had one since she died.
Freezer
Wyvern once assured him he'd get used to the cold
and the damp and the sudden dives into the deep, and Bill was so
grateful for the kindness that he hadn't had the heart to tell
Wyvern that he hadn't been able to feel cold for almost a
year.
Passage
When his Caribbean venture went under, it
was all Bill could manage to barter passage back to Europe on a
Spanish trader; when she was raided and sunk by the Black Pearl only
a week out to sea, it was all he could manage to barter for his
life.
Coast
Anna loved the sea in a way Bill could
never understand -- not as a thing of cold, infinite majesty and
constant danger, but as something calming and serene, something to
wade and play with Will in.
Keepsake
Bill held onto
fewer and fewer souvenirs of his past as time went on, until with
Anna's death he stopped trying to remember at all.
Morbid
"Most of this crew has experienced true death, lad,"
Bill explained to a much-sobered Will after his son's first
day of servitude on the Dutchman; "Cap'n Jones offers
the deal to the dead only -- you and I got in on
technicalities."
Shipwreck
It was during a
routine recruitment on an English merchant's ship off the
Jamaican coast that Bill learned the alarming news -- that the ship
Jones had chosen to salvage souls from had been sunk by the Black
Pearl, and that there had been only one paying passenger aboard: a
young boy with a strange gold pendant.
Socks
When his
shoes stopped squishing at every step, Bill was fairly certain it was
because his socks had grown into his feet.
Sand
"Oh,
give me that," Bill snapped to a fussing Ragetti, before
snatching the bloody false eye out of the other pirate's hands
and scrubbing the offending sand off it.
Coin
Bill
ascended the mound to the stone chest last of all of them, affected
despite his fear of the curse by the others' whooping delight
at counting their new wealth -- but as he looked into that damnable
treasure that had cost a good man like Jack Sparrow his ship, his
dignity and maybe his life, Bill made up his mind, and picked up only
a single coin.
Guile
Bill sat curled up in a corner of
the Dutchman's hold, seaweed-hair writhing snakelike around
his face as the ship dived deeper and deeper, fantasizing about
hunting Barbossa down, haunting him like a specter, and when their
eyes finally met, simply smiling at the bastard through his new-grown
mask of horrors...
Eyelash
Bill woke early -- a
sailor's habit -- but never got up before Anna; he loved to
watch her sleep, to count her eyelashes, her freckles, her steady
breaths.
Drive
He'd never hated Davy Jones --
not like he hated Barbossa; not like he hated himself -- until the
moment Jones gave the fateful order to destroy the Pearl and the
bone-shaking echo of the summons drove the icy blade of fear into
Billís heart.
Net
Bill's foot once
snagged in a net just as it was being deployed; if not for Captain
Sparrow's lightning reflexes he most likely would have died,
and ever after that he felt the loyalty to Sparrow that would
eventually become another of his many curses.
Destination
There had been a time when William Turner had watched
the horizon with the eyes of a navigator and the heart of a young man
in love with adventure -- but Bootstrap Bill had eyes only for his
work, and thought only for each passing moment.