-1AN: First, I would like to apologize for the extreme lateness in updating. I don't have any one great excuse, just writer's block. Second, I would like to apologize for using 'as' so many times in the last chapter. Like I said, I was pretty drugged. Apparently I write very well when I'm drugged. Lastly, I would like to apologize in advance. I don't usually write fluffy sappy sap nonsense, although I like to read it, but this gets pretty sappy in the end. I blame it on the Christmas spirit. Anyway, this doesn't have anything to do with anything, just felt like writing it.

What is bitter to endure may be sweet to remember - Anon

…

"Will Turner, I would like you to meet your son, William."

…

"Your father… insolent little whelp who can't take the simplest of orders." Jack took a sip of rum and stared at the wall for a few moments, lost in some unspoken memory, before he looked back at William, the dancing candle accenting the lines of his face. "I swear you look just like 'im."

…

"I remember when your father worked next door." Mrs. Potter rolled up a loaf of fresh bread and set it on the counter, glancing at William. "Could hear him pounding away for hours, one of the finest craftsmen on the island, he was, even when he was not much older than you. Always obsessed with detail. And always working except," she peeked over at Elizabeth, who was chatting with Mr. Potter a few feet away, and leaned over the counter to whisper conspiratorially, "except when your mother was down here, on errands." She began wrapping another roll of bread, her attention on the task at hand. "He was always very quiet and very polite, and very shy." She looked up for a moment, considering the boy standing in front of her listening intently. "Just like you." A sad smile crossed her face, if only for a moment. "…As I was saying, he never knew it, but all of the other girls adored your father. Absolutely adored him, always giggling when he walked by. But they might as well have not existed at all; he only had eyes for the governor's daughter, and," Mrs. Potter sighed, "though she pretended otherwise, your mother only had eyes for him." She wiped her hands on her apron and disappeared behind the counter. "Broke my heart when I heard that she was engaged to the Commodore, rest his soul." She reappeared with an oatmeal cookie and handed it to William, who took it reverently. "Glad it turned out, in the end. Here, darling, these were his favorite."

…

"Your dad is havin' a few drinks with us below decks," Pintel winked, "the kind Captain Jack's so fond of," Ragetti knocked the back of his head with his left hand, his glass eye popping out and landing expertly in his right. He pulled out a worn handkerchief, brown and holey and crusted with dirt, and started to rub his eye. Pintel looked over at him and rolled his eyes, "why do you still carry that thing around?"

Ragetti held the handkerchief up in the moonlight that poured in through the bedroom window, his fingers rubbing over the faded trim. "'S the mark of a gentleman, innit. Makes me feel proper like."

"Well you ain't a gentleman, are you? 'Sides, you're only making it dirtier, just go soak the-"

"Ahem."

Pintel and Ragetti both looked over to young William, tucked in his bed with the covers pulled to his chin. "Story."

Pintel nodded and scooted his chair closer, while Ragetti turned his head, cheeks rosey. "Right, well Turner comes up to me and Ragetti a few-"

Ragetti cleared his throat, "Ragetti and I."

Pintel rolled his eyes. "A few days after we set out for Singapore, bit tipsy from a few bottles of rum we'd the three of us been sharing, and says he wants everyone to know he's pirate, bit slurred like. Well, we don't have no-"

"Any. Do not have any." Ragetti spit on the eyeball.

Pintel glowerd, "As I was sayin', no ink, so can't give him a tattoo, but your pap's more stubborn than a mule when he's drunk, so we asks the captain Barbosa-"

Ragetti nudged Pintel with his elbow, "tell him what Barbosa does."

"I'm telling the story!" Pintel turns back to William and grins. "Barbosa takes Will's ear and before the whelp could pull away, BAM!" Pintel made a stabbing motion, "pokes 'im through with a needle size of your little finger, and old Turner's had a pierced ear ever since."

William rubbed his ear absentmindedly, unimpressed. "That story was too short, and you didn't describe anything, and what's the moral?"

"What?"

"Mother's stories always have a moral lesson at the end, like 'don't cheat,' or 'don't steal.' So, what's the moral?"

Pintel looked at Ragetti who looked right back before shrugging and popping his eye back in, letting it roll in the socket. "As your mum would say, rum 'turns even the most respectable men into complete scoundrels.'"

Pintel nodded, "Will Turner, scoundrel for a day."

…

"Aye, your father will see any promise he makes through to the very end. I'll give 'im that." Captain Barbosa bit into his apple. "Killed me for it, once." William's jaw dropped, and 'uncle Hector' chuckled. "Don't worry, I deserved it."

…

William ran along the worn wooden boards of the dock that led from the Empress into town, turning his head every few feet to make sure that Tai Huang was following. "You knew my father, right, Tai?"

Tai Huang did not pause in his steps or waver his gaze, and William ran back and fell in beside him, "briefly." They had had this discussion before, but Tai Huang never revealed much, and William could never hear enough.

"What was he like?"

They passed merchant kiosks that crowded the street; selling exotic jewelry and cloth, strange fruits, foreign tools, and more than a few unnamable things. "Loyal, brave, cunning and shrewd, clever-"

"You've said all of that before, Tai, but what was he like?" William stopped in the middle of the road, crossing his arms and glaring, and Tai Huang was immediately reminded of his captain.

He looked past William's shoulder at the docks in the distance, and the ocean beyond that. "I admit I did not care for Turner in the beginning," he paused in thought, "either of the Turners." He looked down at William, who waited expectantly, curiosity dancing in his eyes despite the glare on his face. "…It is only when the cold season comes that we know the pine and cypress to be evergreens. Your father is a noble man."

It was not much of an answer, but Tai Huang was not used to children, even with having watched this particular one grow up, and his English was still limited. William considered Tai's response for a moment before nodding and running down the street. He turned his head and Tai Huang began to follow again.

…

Mr. Gibbs rubbed his chin, "does the best impression of Jack."

…

"Will Turner, I would like you to meet your son, William." Elizabeth put a comforting hand on William's shoulder, urging him forward. Will looked down at his son for several drawn out moments, his face remaining relatively passive while his eyes danced with a deep internal struggle. William could only look back in awe. This was him; the man that he had heard so many endless stories about. He had lived on those stories for nine years, had known his father only through the words of others, and yet the man standing before him did not quite fit his imaginings.

He had never pictured his father with scars, but this man had many, and the father in his thoughts was always grinning or laughing, but this man's smile was in his eyes and in the corners of his mouth. This man was much leaner and somehow looked much more like a pirate than a captain, and when he kissed his wife for the first time in ten years it was not a dignified, romantic, hold her delicately while her foot pops off of the ground kiss, like William had expected, but a seemingly infinite series of short, frantic kisses that landed on her cheeks and nose and chin as much as her mouth while he clutched her as close to him as possible. And she was kissing and clutching him back, and William could not tell where one began and the other ended. He thought that it looked more painful than romantic. No, this man was not what he had imagined, but William had the feeling that that was alright.

Will could not stop staring at the boy in front of him, and it was taking all of his willpower to keep from dragging his son into his arms and lifting him off of the ground, never letting him go. But all Will did was flex his fingers once, twice, before finally offering his right hand in a gentleman's gesture.

William glanced at the offered hand with a glare that perfectly matched his mother's before batting it away and lunging at his father, wrapping his arms around his father's waist and tucking his head just beneath his ribs.

Will gently put the previously offered hand on his son's head, his head bowed, his eyes trying to memorize every inch of this new form pressed to him even as the last of the twilight began to fade. After a long moment, Will firmly pulled his son's arms loose from around his waist, not an easy task considering the close to death grip William was using, and stepped back to look his son in the eyes before dropping to his knees and pulling William back into his embrace, a laugh escaping his lips.

That laugh was a thousand times better than any that William had imagined, and his father's hug was perfect.