The Flying Dutchman has a task to fill. One that it neglected for countless years under the Captaincy of Davy Jones. But now, with Will Turner as captain, the legendary ghost ship is working through the task of ferrying souls that should have been escorted to the afterlife years ago. Men, women and children adrift in an endless sea, sometimes floating below the surface, sometimes in boats.

And sometimes, like this one, most of the entire crew of a ship, crowded together in two or three dinghies.

After encountering Destiny in his cabin, Will emerges onto the deck with a thoughtful expression, his fingers playing with the locket that rests against his scarred chest.

It's worth a try.

"Prepare to go under," he announces top the crew as he strides up to the helm and takes the wheel.

He's done this countless times before, so have his crew. They know what it's about. Only this time, as the ship pitches forward to sink under, Will grips his charm with Elizabeth's hair tightly, and offers a quick prayer. To Calypso, to Destiny, to Elizabeth herself.

Take me to where the dead and the living can co-exist. To where we can be together.

He looks to catch Norrington's eye when they sink in, and is only partly surprised when most of the crew seem to disappear as they re-emerge in an inlet in a very familiar lake.

Will surprises himself with how easily he takes to the job.

His first act as Captain is to release everyone of their obligation to Jones, and many of his crew are quick to take it. Jones was a cruel Captain and they'd committed to a hundred years under him without really meaning it: choosing servitude out of a fear of death. When Will offers them release from this bond, they take it readily, and as the Dutchman sails away from Elizabeth, the sky lights up with a green flash as the souls enslaved to the ship are paid for their service with a second chance at life.

It's the men who choose to stay, like his father, that surprise Will and fill him with a sense of satisfied gratitude. He'd be the first to admit that his dedication to his duty was very much trying to keep him occupied so he didn't have to think too hard on the woman he left behind. The importance of what he is charged with goes some way to waylaying the despair of not being able to see her, and the gentle surge of the sea against the ship of his soul is a nearly adequate replacement for the hole where his heart should be beating.

The Dutchman is his mistress now, but she's a poor replacement for his wife.

The first thing Will is aware of is a steady throb that's both silent and deafening. At first he has no idea what it might be, then he thinks it must be his own heart beat, because it starts in his chest and seems to fill his every vein with life.

But when his fingers reach up to the hole in his shirt, her remembers that his heart shouldn't be beating at all. Further exploration yields a fresh, red welt where he dimly remembers a knife cutting into his chest, after the sword had been removed.

Then Will realises. That sound that isn't a sound, it's not really a heartbeat at all. It's more the rhythmic waves of a lively ocean. And he notices that the body he feels it pulsing through doesn't end at his fingers and toes. As Will carefully draws the first breath since what was meant to be his last, he realises he's feeling the entire ship as it rocks in the swell.

Cautiously, he opens his eyes.

A crew is standing watching him, apparently apprehensive, and Will recognises his father near the front, a familiar knife in his hand. The man standing near might be Jimmylegs, the boatswain who takes a cruel pride in cleaving to the bone when he has to flog a crew member, but like the men surrounding him, he no longer looks like a hideous piscine monstrosity, but like an awed, hopeful, human man. In his hands he carries a chest Will recognises instantly, even before he hears the faint beat of his own heart within it, audible only in the silence of the watching crew

No one on the deck in this still, stagnant underworld says a word as Will stands, and not even his father offers a hand when he proves a little unsteady. They're all watching him, to see what he will do.

Will takes the chest off the boatswain before he says a word of his own.

"To stations," he says flatly, uncertain of his own authority, and they disperse. Only his father lags behind, but Will can't face him now. He continues across the deck, towards Davy Jones'... towards his cabin.

"Then what shall we die for?"

It's unfair to call William Turner stupid - even if it's a favourite accusation of Jack's - but he'd be one of the first to admit that he's simple. Since he left his mother's funeral ten years ago he's been following a trail, first his father's, then for the greater stretch working to earn the woman he loves, and it's only become difficult for him when the two paths seemed to contradict each other.

So he understands Elizabeth's need to avenge her father; he'd do the same. What Will could never do, however, is persuade people to follow his path. He learned piracy from Jack, who taught him to think about manipulation and to work underhand whenever the simple fact of the path wasn't enough for people. But that wouldn't work here: he wouldn't have the slightest idea how to persuade a fleet of ships to follow his course.

But Elizabeth...

"You will listen to me."

Elizabeth learned from the overly dramatic Barbossa, and before that from the books in her father's library. And from something she feels, instinctively. She's storming through the crowded deck of the Pearl, somehow by the very way she holds herself drawing the attention from every member of the crew.

"LISTEN!"

The fog is thickening, and the wind rising fast behind them as she takes two steps to climb onto the railing, steadying herself on the rigging. Will has no idea where that strange outfit came from - is it Chinese? - but she looks glorious, and every face is turned to her.

"The Brethren will still be looking here, to us..."

She looks glorious, and her words are glorious. She has a lady's bearing and a woman's romantic soul, but every single man on the ship knows that she fights like a man and lives like a pirate. And now they're learning that she can lead like a King. She talks of fear, and every man on deck knows how shameful hiding would be. And Will sees how Sao Feng might have been fooled into thinking that she, not Tia Dalma, was the spirit of the sea. She talks of freedom, and as chins around him lift, Will feels his heart soar.

They're going to fight. He can see that now. They're going to fight - spurred on not by greed or tricks or deals with angry gods, but by words spoken well by someone who means them. And oh, she means them. Elizabeth Swann, King of all the pirates, is standing on the side of the flagship of an entire fleet of pirate ships, and speaking of freedom.

(How many times do I have to ask you to call me Elizabeth?)

She's driven by so much more than simple vengeance. She's driven by the need to be free, to live her own way, to escape society's restrictions and expectations of her. 'You like pain?' he once heard her say, to someone who could never have known the bonds Elizabeth shook off to stand here in front of them. And Will, whose entire life has been reactionary, restricted by what was right, or best, he looks up at her, and he understands. Finally. He hears her speak of freedom, and he's aware of the knowledge he's always had - that she could never be the wife of a blacksmith, and it strikes him suddenly that the knowledge no longer hurts.

"...and they will know what we can do!"

He doesn't need to follow his path. He doesn't need to listen to Calypso, or even the tall hooded figure in the garden. he doesn't need to be restrained by his training, by his vows, by Destiny. William Turner can make up his own mind. Or in this case...

"...and the courage of our hearts..."

He can make up his heart.

And more than anything, he knows that he wants that woman standing there, golden hair whipping around her face as she yells into the wind. His love for her has only grown with every day he's known her, and knowing her better as only shown him why he loves her. Will makes a decision standing there. He lets go of one path because every throb of blood in his veins is telling him to follow his heart. Somehow, his father can be freed in another way.

Elizabeth Swann could never be the wife of a blacksmith, but Will Turner can damn well be the husband of the Pirate King.

Silence has fallen, and she's looking at him.

Will nods, and his voice rings out in the expectant quiet as he addresses the nearest crew.

"Hoist the colours."

It didn't take long to break out of the brig. If Will was in his right mind, he might question the stupidity of locking him up in a brig like that when his ability to break out of cells is pretty much what got them all into this mess in the first place, nearly two years ago. But Will isn't in his right mind.

His plan was destroyed. Elizabeth is lost. To Sao Feng, that pirate Lord who tortured Will with near drowning, and who looked at the woman he loves with such animalistic lust. Will's only hope to save his father, by gaining control of the Black Pearl, has failed, and the fastest ship known to sail is now in control of the most selfish excuse for a pirate ever to return from Davy Jones' Locker.

Will's last hope is to complete his betrayal, and lead Becket and Jones to Shipwreck Cove itself, there for one final barter for the lives of Elizabeth and his father. And right now, he has no care at all for how he does it.

Most of the men crewing the Black Pearl now were never loyal to Jack. They were Sao Feng's men, given over to Will as part of the plot to gain the Black Pearl. Will's surprised Barbossa and Jack allowed them to stay - but then, they still needed some men to crew the ship. Nevertheless, for a while Will considered them his men, and he feels no remorse at all as he sneaks up each one he finds alone, kills him cleanly with his father's knife before lashing the body to an empty keg. Haulling it overboard, Will trusts the scavenging sea birds will be enough to lead Beckett on their trail.

Everything Will has ever done in his dreams with Elizabeth, to Sao Feng is doing forcibly, at knife and gun point in his every waking thought. Will almost takes pleasure in killing that man's crew.

At first Will was frustrated with the way Barbossa kept things from him. Now, he's growing angry.

The charts he stole from Sao Feng consist of concentric rings that slide alongside each other to change view and bring up strange writings.

"Over the edge over again."

When Will comments on how they can't be as accurate as modern charts, all he's given in return from Tai Huang is that they 'lead to more places'. He hopes it was worth losing Mal for. Will can't believe that the Captain is dead, and chooses to accept it  when he's told he escaped. This voyage has yet to prove worth killing a friend for.

"Sunrise sets flash of green"

When challenged with this riddle, Barbossa gives Will one of his smug superior looks and has Gibbs explain some folklore about a green light flashing across the sky at sunset, signalling the return of a soul from the dead. It's helpful, Will reflects bitterly, that people shared with him something so pertinent to their mission. Barbossa, Gibbs, and for some reason Pintel all seem to revel in the dramatic telling of the situation, and Will finds himself missing the relative straightforwardness of sailing with Jack. That in itself is a depressing thought.

They sail up into the Arctic, so cold that one sailors breaks off his toe in his fingers. Will is so focused on the prize he hardly notices the cold, but it's to this that he ascribes Elizabeth's miserable huddling in a snow covered blanket, alongside Tonks. She doesn't talk to him at all, even when the weather becomes milder, focused as she is on rescuing Jack. Will attempts once for a conversation, but she just says she wants Jack back, so he acquiesces.

"Over the edge over again"

No one talks to Will at all in the long voyage, and he doesn't feel the need to talk to anyone. It's just Tia Dalma who approaches him, talking about the cost of what we want most. And just once he catches a glimpse of a locket she wears. One hauntingly familiar, from his time on another ship, when what he had to do seemed so much simpler.

It's in the dead of night, when Will is staring into the sea ahead, that he suddenly notices there's a lot less horizon than there had been before. Looking again, he sees that they're rapidly running out of sea, and all Barbossa can do is cackle insanely, babbling about being lost in order to find a place that can't be found.

"Sunrise sets"

When the current catches, Will takes charge of the crew, barking out orders to bring them around. It doesn't even occur to him that his orders won't be followed, even when Barbossa belays his commands, it's only the original Pearl crew which obey, racing to the side to look out ahead, from where is coming the most tremendous roar.

"Flash of green"

The rapidly approaching horizon is now mere yards away, and with the consuming current and deafening roar, it's obvious what it is: a gigantic oceanfall, stretching as far as anyone can see in all directions. Barbossa has led them, literally to the end of the world.

Now Elizabeth sees the urgency and joins Will and (his) Tai Huang's men in their attempts to turn around and save them, but it's too late, and the ship hits the edge side-on. It teeters precariously for a pregnant moment, in which Will looks around wildly to hold on to Elizabeth, but before he can reach her, the ship lurches over, tumbling into the cascade and shattering as the falling water batters it. Will loses her in the fall.

"Over the Edge"

[After this]

And they don't even ask him any questions.

After discussion with the current PotC muns about schedules and interest, we've come up with the following cast list.

Please be aware that casting here is not the same as either reserving the character or apping the character for playing in </a></b></a>milliways_bar. This is an NPC role, not an "official" in-bar application. Although you are more than welcome to apply for a PotC character in the bar this week or in September, this plot is not part of that process.

( Cast List )