31_days | The Clever Son

Title: Into the Locker
Day/Theme: February 24: the clever son
Series: Pirates of the Caribbean
Character/Pairing: Bootstrap Bill
Rating: G

Bill watched the boy go through the door and scratched at a rough patch on the back of his hand. He could feel the chitins beginning to form along his knuckles. He wondered how long it would take the hand to become whatever it was becoming. He wondered what would be left of the rest of him by then.

He didn‘t bother to even look at it. His wet eyes were on the door. He had never expected to see his son again. Now for the first time in years, he had a face and voice to go with the knowledge that he had a son. The boy took after his mother, same eyes, same long eyelashes, same set to the mouth.

Small mercies, he thought, forcing his fingers away from the itchy patch again. He was avoiding anything reflective these days. He knew exactly what he was going to look like. There was no escaping it.

The boy could still escape though. He wasn’t really a boy, Bill reminded himself. The boy was left 20 years in the past. Will was a man now, able to look at the Captain without flinching, able to take lashes across his back, no longer anything like the child Bill dimly remembered. He didn’t know his son, and he found himself praying it would stay that way.

Let him come back out, Bill begged silently. Let him go. Don’t let him be trapped here with us. As much as Bill knew about coping with the excruciating passage of time, it still seemed like ages before the door slid open again. Will met his father’s eyes and there was a blaze of triumph in the younger man’s stare. He had the key.

It was more than the shock of recognition, the unexpected possessiveness he had felt at the sight of his son, the memories evoked by familiar brown eyes. Even if there had been none of that, Bootstrap Bill would’ve stared.

It had been so long since he had seen hope.