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wr1t3w1tm3 · 9 months

Text

Descendent

PotC 5/Modern/Will out of Water AU.

Characters: Will Turner, Calypso, Original Female Character

SFW. Like, completely. Just some curses.

Authors note: I broke a couple rules I think, but I don't care, this is my AU.

Words: 4,737

As the centuries melt together, Captain William Turner of the Flying Dutchman finds himself further inland and farther downstream than he could’ve ever imagined. A multitude of maritime disasters fling him from one corner of the world to the other. The Dutchman serves through wars, accidents, and genocides. As the 18th century spills over, the load only increases. Of course, one would expect that as more men's souls were brought into the world, he would be required to guide an equal portion more from it. Except the sea and all her tributaries have never been truly tame. It seems just as men grow complacent with the waters; he is forced to compensate for their malignity.

The strain nearly ends him. While Elizabeth had been alive, it hadn't been pleasant. But back then, he had a rock, a lighthouse to guide him and remind him what might happen if he forsook such a sacred duty. Even when she passed - to sudden for her to make arrangements to join his crew - he’d had Henry, their son. Henry married a young astronomer named Carina, the daughter of the captain who wed the Captain and the King. Henry had waited, watching dutifully and bringing his children. Then once, he supposes around his 12th land fall, he arrives to find the lodgings of his relations ransacked and in a shoddy state of disrepair, unlived in for some time. There is nothing to indicate where they went. All that he can conjecture from the men he brings aboard and what he knows of recent history is perhaps, he prays perhaps, they faced an uprising and fled. Though whether that be the fledgling America, the southern colonies or bloody England he’s sure he’ll never know.

It almost breaks him, but the images of Jones, his cruelty and the cool steel of the sword that hangs from his hip is just enough to keep him on course.

It is then he begins finding himself in freshwater. Sometimes up river. It happens most often on the Thames in England, the Saint Lawrence in the northern colonies, the Amazon to the south and the American Mississippi. The 19th century bleeds into the 20th, and soon he has a new death chamber with which to contend: the aeroplane.

In that century alone he sails through wars, plane crashes, mass suicides in the East and submarines in the West. Mortal men seem to have contented themselves with finding every manner of deadly metal tube and loading themselves into it for travel. He has never seen the oceans so red with blood. Some nights, in the diming lights and the suns wavering rays, the sea seems to dye itself purple. The quantity nearly pushes him over once again, but all of a sudden, in what he thinks is the last decades of that century, the occurrences requiring his presence drop drastically, though the sheer number of souls he ferries from each local increases exponentially. Now he more often than naught finds himself sailing through a valley of broken stragglers, immigrants and refugees fleeing from the latest conflict at the hands of angry men.

Fewer and fewer sailors pass at sea. Fewer and fewer join his crew, and he is slowly beginning to lose his battle with his duties. It becomes a matter not of if, but rather when he will. Until one particular morning, on which he awakes in the Dutchman’s captain’s quarters, and all is quiet. It is his first clue as to something amiss, but he is grateful for the calm this once. It is hardly ever calm aboard the Dutchman.

He takes to the deck, finding the wheel to determine a heading. It seems already determined for him this day, as the Dutchman has surfaced up a river. In fact, he squints to make out the dots in the distance, he’s far up a river, near what seems to be an inhabited city.

That’s not something he sees everyday. It’s his third strike. He scans the deck, the bow, the crows nest. Theres nary a soul aboard except his own.

“William Turna’”. He near scowls, but turns to his guest. She is not near how he remembers her last. While her clothes are similar, a mix of tropical prints, naturally woven bits and a fur of some kind: and her countenance has not changed, her form most certainly has. It is not flesh and bone that stands before him, but rather water in the form of this woman from many lifetimes ago.

“Calypso,” he says, his voice gruff from disuse. An urge arises to bow, he ignores it. “What is the nature of this… visit?”

Her voice warbles with the waters flow. “T’ere’s been an unfo’seen development in ‘da ways of t’is wo’ld Captain Turna’.” She steps forward, and he slides back. The wheel is in his back. “Da te’ms of yous agreemen’ ‘board da Dutchman are changin’.”

Will’s stomach drops. “What has changed?”

He wants to beg, ask what he’s done. Surely, there hasn’t been anything? He’s faithfully fulfilled his duties over all these centuries. And had he not, the sea would’ve already claimed him.

A cool wind arises, pushing his hair across the nape of his neck. A spray is forced from Calypso’s countenance, only to disappear as soon as it’s caught his eye. “T’ings are changin’ in da wo’ld of da gods, William Turna’. You mo’tals was not built to bear no divine load.”

Anticipation rises in his chest. Had he a heart, he’s sure it would’ve begun to race. It must be racin’, in that blasted metal box he’s since lost track of. Calypso continues, enigmatic and cool “Fa now, the Dutchman’s ta’ remain docked ‘ere. Ya crew’s off ta fiddla’s green or da locka’, judgement dependin’. You, William Turna’, will be allowed ta shore from dawn’s fi’st ligh’ to dusks final gleam. Only in the da’k must ya remain ‘board dis vessel. Every moment da light touches is yours, not jus da one day.”

He’s… he’s stunned. And thrilled! Suddenly he’s been given the opportunity of his lifetime, to visit land more often than once a decade! Of course, the first blasted thing out of his mouth is “And what of the souls I’m supposed to lead? What should become of them?”

“Anoda’ ferry man’ll serve in ya stead.” Calypso’s voice is stern. Perhaps not angry but reaching that cusp none the less. They pause a moment, and he listens. To the birdsongs in the woods against the rivers shore, a faint sound of chugging that must be some new-fangled thing he’s heard of yet never seen. The water of the river rushes along, but the water makin’ up Calypso’s countenance only rustles, barely moving.

“But what should I do? I know no living souls…” what of my heart?

Calypso’s voice rises. She cuts him off.. “Yous not been brought ‘ere fur no reason, William Turna’! One of yur’ heirs is close, and to dem you might go! Tea conditions of yous ‘ternal life remain, you’ll not want for food nor drink nor sleep though they be available to ya’!”

The water of Calypso has grown cloudy, swirling as he’s no doubt raised her ire. Not a swell idea, lad he scolds himself. The form before him flows apart, seeming ‘bout to return to its source. “How will I know that this reprieve has ended?!”

Of course he had to ask. This time, she practically screams “Yous will know when ya know, Turna!” and with a sudden splash, she’s gone. Water slaps against it’s source below his deck, and when he turns to face his port there is a gang plank, extended to the shoreline.

Something in him jumps, though surely not his heart. Clad in warm weather wear, Will hastens to his cabin to change into something more suitable. His boots clump against the wooden beams as he finds a shirt and a coat, as it was rather cool that morning. He sets his sword at his hip, and with care to tie the knot of his bandana tightly, he looks himself over once in the mirror - maroon does look quite nice on him, as Elizabeth had pointed out so many centuries ago - and to the gang plank he’s off.

It’s an odd thing, really. The gang plank had mostly been for his men, to return to shore when the need arose. He’d only used it a few times, when the ropes would not suffice to board a doomed vessel or for the brief day he’d spent on some criminal island a few decades after loosing track of Henry. He’d rarely left the Dutchman since then. As such, he’d never seen anything such as he had now. He slunk down the gang plank, careful of a few raised bars, and set his boots upon dry land for the first time in at least a century.

Even with his more recent escapades into freshwater, Will has never had the luxury of observing the rivers surroundings with much scrutiny. Here, one shore lines the river with a dense forest. The trees are tall though scraggly, their leaves aflame in orange, red, and yellow. A green few are still visible, and the grass beneath his boots remains green as well. On the opposite shore - off his port - is a flat expanse near far as the eye can see, covered in drying fields of some crop he cannot identify. And just as the horizon fades, huge hills, near mountains, jut up from nowhere, dense with much the same foliage as on the shore he walks.

There are birds that he hears on occasion, but it seems his foot falls have scared most of the wildlife from ear shot. He thinks to himself that it’s not my fault there’s so many twigs to snap along this trail. He follows it up from the shore, up a steep hill and to a narrow, more traveled path that winds towards a clearing.

This clearing turns out to be some sort of graveyard, over which watches a large stone cross. Will stops at the edge of the clearing, a moment of silence for those who’re interned there. It’s an odd thing to see now, after so long at sea where there are no graveyards. And if he remembers correctly, there are rarely graveyards this close to the shore. However, as he glances behind and notices the drop off, both the grave yards placement and also the fence at the edge of the little cliff make much more sense.

A light gray path winds true past the small graveyard and towards the back of some grand building. Will follows the path, and finds his footsteps fall heavier, as the path feels not unlike the cobble roads they’d had in Port Royal all those centuries ago. Then again, they did not look much the same. And times have changed, he reminds himself. Surely most things have changed.

When he turns the sharp corner with the path, he takes pause under the yellowing branches of a weeping willow, in awe of the great church that stands tall on the bluff. It was assuredly much taller than the Dutchman’s tallest mast, not accounting for the several much taller spires that broached from its roof. He stands in awe for some unknown amount of time, before a sound he can only describe as crunching draws his attention further down the path, to where it winds between this grand church and some run down and weathered hut, its boards grayed with age. Between the two, though much farther back, rises a large building, it’s walls inset with windows four high, made of a red material Will thinks is brick, and some of the same yellowish stone that the church must also be made of. Beyond the path is a large pool of a black material, which is occupied by a few strange looking carriages, mostly of white and red. Cars, he reminds himself. He’d seen a few of them along the ocean floor in the last century.

There along this black mass is a small hill, which runs straight into a larger hill, on which there seems to be a trodden path. He can just make out around this hill and between what appears to be a fenced sports court is another, longer building. As he moves towards the path, he spots more buildings, most of them the same red brick and yellowed stone, connected by these same gray paths.

As he crests the first hill, he finds it to be some sort of dike, built perhaps when there was more water in the area. Atop the second hill he finds another gated complex, with a wall of red, silver, and gray seats overlooking a green, lined field surrounded by a red path. He goes further up the hill, towards another flat, black section lined with yellow. This one seems to be connected to a few gray paths that run to several of the other building’s he’s noticed, crisscrossing a green, leaf littered campus that appears rather vacant.

He steps into the black lot, where a few more cars have been left. Something like humming drifts towards him, coming closer until around the corner of the long building appears a sandy gold car.

Will is taken aback by how quiet it is. Even the Dutchman, in tip top shape, had creaked and groaned with the wind in her sails, and the floor often moaned when paced. This thing is much, much smaller, and as it grows closer it grows only a bit louder. It truly is a marvel what man has come up with in his absence.

The car begins to slow, then comes to a stop just a few feet before him. The driver - who he can now positively identify as a young woman - looks… bewildered. Spectacles frame her eyes, and her hair is a deep brown, nearly black. Something clinks and the car hums again, this time moving backwards as it’s captain twists to watch over her shoulder.

Will is dumbstruck. Her eyes… he swears they were Elizabeth’s, the very same. Perhaps… he doesn’t want to get his hopes high… but perhaps she is the descendent Calypso had spoken of.

He steps into the grass to his port, striding through the dew towards the girl and her car. It makes a sound like a horn as she leaves it. Will picks up his pace. The girl is halfway to the building, walking along another gray path when he calls to her.

“Miss! Wait!”

She looks to him, her face pale, and she pauses. Will begins to slow, noticing how her feet shift, and he tries to catch her eyes but they are half closed in fear. Her fist clenches around something purple and triangular, and she sprints down the path.

“Wait! Please!” He calls after her, and he's off in pursuit. His sword clatters against his thigh. Something on her jingles, and it grows a little louder as he gains ground.

Unfortunately for him, this girl knows the place. She sprints straight through an enclave in the building. Then across the green, past what appears to be two courts made of sand, spanned by a net about twice as tall as himself. He dodges around the edge as she did, but she isn’t looking back. She’s hurrying forward, breathing hard. He’s breathing hard. He hasn’t had to run for anything really since… it must’ve been at least a few decades. As they run, they cut across several more gray paths, and for a second the crunch of grass gives way to loud, dull foot falls before they fly over grass once more. Only once they’ve started down another smaller hill does he realize how far she’s brought him. He’s been running for at least a couple of minutes, and looming before them is a building, with five sets of windows running up its height, separated from them by some black road made of the same material as the lot he had started after her in.

He stomps across the hard surface, and jumps over the yellow raised edge onto another gray path. The girl has reached what appears to be a door, and holds something black with yellow spots against the wall next to it. It emits a sharp squeal and clicks, and the girl throws the door open.

She glances at him, her face seizes when she realizes he’s followed her all this way and isn’t stopping and she sprints inside.

“Wait!” Will is forced to slow and grab the door as it’s nearly closed. Once inside he hears someone thunder up a set of stairs across the room. He launches himself up, taking them two at a time. They’re solid wood and turn once, 180 degrees. He uses the handy railing to keep himself from slamming into the stone wall. At the top are two doors, one on his starboard which leads outside and one into a hallway at his port. He chooses the port one, forcing himself past a young blonde woman who barely reaches his shoulders.

The girl slips behind a sort of pillar, and he sprints towards it. There, however, he is greeted with a loud slam as a solid wood door is slammed in his face, nearly impacting it.

He gets his arms up in time to keep his face from taking any damage. The girl inside screams, and he suddenly realizes why she might’ve run. “I… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” He steps back, heaving in the musky, humid air.

“Leave right the fuck now or I’m calling the cops!”

He doesn’t know what the cops are, but that surely can’t be good. “No! Please! Just let me explain!”

“I’m calling them!” She practically sings her shout.

“Please! Wait!” He slams his fist into the door, and a muffled ‘Jesus’ slips under the door. He seethes, shouting: “My name is William Turner! I believe - though somewhat distantly - we are related!”

“Yeah right, bitch ass!” The door rattles a bit as she continues, “I’m lookin’ at’cha, and you ain’t look nothin’ like nun’a my relatives.”

“Please, I promise I can explain! Just… come out! Look me in the eye. You’ll see it, I know.”

“Fuck that, you’re packin’ heat man! Even I ain’t that stupid!”

She must be related, judging solely from her abilities to curse worse than even the saltiest sailors Will had known in all his centuries. He glances at the handle, which hangs limp over a keyhole. A lock. A lock he can pick.

From his hair, Will withdraws a thin, silver pin. The tension against his skull lessens when he does, and he inserts the pin into the lock, making quick work of it. The door swings into the room and he burst in. The girl screams. Will swings around, slams the door, then swings back to her. She’s frozen against a thin sliver of a wall separating two open doors, each of which leads into another room.

She starts towards the farther of the two, only to stop as Will’s sword slides from its scabbard. He practically has it in her back. Her hands are half raised, level about with her shoulders, which she hunches in.

Her voice wavers. “Don’t… don’t kill me, please.”

Will snorts, pulling the sword away from her back. “And why would I do such a thing?”

She doesn’t even pause, “Because you’re a maniac cosplaying as a pirate and running around with a sword and telling people you’re related to them when you aren’t.”

He stops, and for the first time since he’s lain eyes on her, Will takes a proper look at just what she’s been wearing. Trousers, gray trousers with miniscule vertical lines running the length of them. Her shoes are black and appear to be made of something between leather and cloth. They are laced with dirty white laces and set upon dirty white soles. Her top is a gray sweater, perhaps the only item of clothing he can recognize from memory. Comparing that to his own garb… and he begins to realize another reason she might have chosen to run from him when he first approached.

“I…” he swallows, sliding his sword back into its scabbard. “I wish to apologize for my… rashness.”

The girl doesn’t move, nor does she speak, so Will takes a step closer and continues. “However, if you would allow me merely a moment to explain our relation…”

She groans. “Dude! We are not related!”

He flails for something, anything. “But you have her eyes!”

“Whose eyes!?!”

“Elizabeth’s.” He says softly.

The girl turns to him, brows furrowed, and her lips pulled into a half frown. “Who the hell is Elizabeth?”

Will shuts his eyes, the memories flooding back. He’s plenty of them from their late childhood and adolescence, even their early adulthood, but from there they grow in increments of ten, and she is rarely the same in each successive image. But her eyes… the same brown that shifted hazel in the sun and near muddy in the dark. The girl has her eyes.

“My… my wife.”

The girl cocks a brow, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed over her chest. “Dude, you can’t be any older than I am. There’s no way we’re related, even if it’s through your wife or whoever.”

A thread of panic swims across the scar in his chest. The scar where his heart should be, that was carved out when he became the captain…

That’s it! “I… I haven’t a heart.”

The girl looks disgusted. “And that’s relevant to this conversation how?”

Will swallows. It’s a crazy, bull-headed plan, but it could work. “I… I have no heart.” He repeats, a smile beginning to creep across his lips. “If I had no heart, I wouldn’t be standing before you, correct?”

“Right…?” She shrugs. “I mean, you look a little young for a pacemaker, but okay.”

Will has no idea what she’s talking about, so he continues, “And what if I told you that it had been carved out when I stabbed the heart of the previous captain of my ship, which is anchored in the river just over this bluff? That bound by its curse I was immortal, and had been sailing the seas, guiding lost souls to the Locker and Fiddler’s Green since the eve of my wedding?” Her lips curl into a snarl, “And that same heart lies in another chest, which I have not been able to find in the two centuries since it’s loss.”

“I’d say you’re fuckin’ crazy, yur talkin’ crazy, an’ I’m callin’ the cops.” She straightens, backing towards the open door just behind her.

“Listen to my heart!” The girl stops, cowering. He’d allowed his desperation to overtake him, dammit, but he needed her to believe him. “And if you don’t find one within my breast, then you will know that I am telling the truth.” She cocks a brow again, and Will realizes he must concede something on the off-chance Calypso has returned his cursed heart to his chest (though thus far all evidence has pointed to the contrary). “And if you should find it’s beat, you may call these cops.”

“Fine,” she steps into the room and shuts the door. A burst of air pushes past him, rusting his hair. Will returns the pin he’d used to pick the lock to his bandana, and the girl emerges as he brings his hands to his side. She comes bearing a box, which she sets on a sort of tabletop Will had not noticed, nestled ‘tween two walls. It is blue and surrounds a water basin over which some sort of spout sits. The girl lifts the top from the box, and setting it aside, draws out a long cord, with two prongs on one end and a single, circular something on the other.

“What is that?” he asks. The girl sets it around her neck and steps towards him.

“A stethoscope. To listen to your heart.” Will now cocks a brow. “What, I'm prenursing, I'm gonna need it eventually.” She takes it from her neck, sticking the two prongs into her ears, and slides the wider of the two circular sides down her shirt. She frowns, pulls it out, turns it so that the shorter side faces her, and tries again. After a moment, her face unscrunches, and she steps towards Will. “Open your shirt.”

Will opens his coat, revealing his shirt, of which the ties are undone. His scar is partially visible, and the girl cocks her brow again. If all she’s going to do is a cock a brow at anything that even remotely piques her interest, she is going to be very hard to read. “You cool if I touch you?”

“Yes, of course,” Will mutters, taken aback. He glances around the room, then back to her. Carefully, she sets the smaller circular head against his chest, right along his scar, near the bottom of his sternum.

Her eyes go wide, and her mouth pops open a bit. She pulls the thing back and flips it once again. “Come on,” she sets it against his chest, but her eyes grow only wider. “No. That’s impossible.”

Will smirks, setting his hands on his hips. “There is no heartbeat, is there?”

“Mother fucker...” She taps the part of the thing she’d held against his chest, and instantly her face curls in pain. She pulls the prongs from her ear and sets it back on the counter. “You… you have to have a heartbeat; you’d be dead otherwise.”

“But I don’t, do I?” Will lets it sink in, and the girl’s eyebrows furrow. “Q.E.D, what I’ve just told you must be true.”

“Thats scientifically impossible.” She mutters.

Will groans through a smile. “You sound like Carina.”

“Who’s Carina?”

Will takes a breath. The simplest way to describe Carina? What would that be? “She is… my son’s wife. Another very distant relative of yours.”

“This makes even less sense,” she leans against the other wall, though she’s careful to keep her legs from touching what appears to be a white waste basket below her. “I must’ve crashed on the highway or some shit.”

“If you would allow me to explain, I believe I could begin to clear things up.” Will offers a hand to shake. “Do we have an accord?”

The girl starts to offer her hand, but stops, eyeing his hip. “Leave the sword here, and we talk in a public place. Then we have a deal.”

“Agreed.” Will shakes her hand, and as soon as it’s free begins removing his weapons belt. “Now, where should we continue this conversation, miss…”

“Mary Jones. There’s a coffee shop on campus that’s open today, and I’ve got dining dollars to burn.”

“Then I’ll follow you, Ms. Jones.”

“First, give me the sword,” she opens her hands rather expectantly. Will surrenders the scabbard, the girl grabs her stethoscope box, and enters the room she’d retrieved it from. “I can’t have a knife with a blade longer than three inches in here, so this is definitely gonna get me fined, and I’m too broke to afford it.” She sets the stethoscope box on a desk then climbs to the top of two bunk beds as she continues “Second, if my roommates find this, I’m fucked.”

She slides it beneath a mass of blankets and coats fit for the Queen of England, then crawling across the bed, drops to the window ledge on the outer wall, and jumps from that to the ground with a loud thump.

The bunk bed jimmies just a bit. Mary squeezes past Will, calling over her shoulder “Come on, you were the one who wanted to talk,” she stops in the doorway, hand resting on the knob “and loose the bandanna.”

“Well, I rather like it.”

“Loose it, or no talkie”.

Will concedes, untying the cloth which holds back his hair. It tumbles to his shoulders, and he slips the folded cloth and his silver hair pin into the breast pocket of his coat. “Better?”

“Yeees,” Mary opens the door. “After you.”

“No, after you.”

A slight smile piques her lips “Gallant. Don't see that much anymore.”

She still insists he exit before her, though she thanks him for the hospitality as they walk.