the Dalaverse

Okay, so I didn't quite finish my story for potcfest, but I did finish the first part out of three. The prompt was AU, Teague and Weatherby Swann, and it is most definitely AU. Hoo baby, it's technically AU from twenty-five years before the first film, but the action begins with the prologue of CoBP. BUT - characters and plots from all three movies are worked in. ALSO - I have fudged Will and Elizabeth's ages just a bit. It hink that's about it.

To put the premise simply, Weatherby and Teague are acquainted. PG for this part, with implied pairings only.

This universe has been eating my brain for over a month. This first part might seem a little heavy on backstory, but trust me, that's not even half of what I've got worked out in notes.



Blood Ties


"Father," said Elizabeth, in what Weatherby considered an unreasonably calm manner for a thirteen-year-old, "are they going to kill us?"

"Of course not," he replied with a certainty he didn't feel. Standing nearby with a blade at his throat, the captain glanced at them and grimaced. Weatherby hoped no harm would come to him, particularly as it was his brother who had managed to secure this passage. The man looked as though he would be sick, though his young lieutenant was eyeing the pirates keeping them at bay with a great deal more rage than apprehension. They were none of them cowardly men, so far as Weatherby could tell; but then it hadn’t been a proper battle. With this damned fog and half the sailors and a handful of officers in the boats, rooting for any survivors of the attack they seemed to have just missed, it was no wonder they had been unable to fend off this fresh one.

The boy they had rescued shrank against him as his daughter did not, ruffled brown head bowed. The sailors kept casting fearful looks at him. Superstitious louts though they were, Weatherby privately agreed that the lad had the worst sort of luck imaginable, but it was hardly his fault. Elizabeth, naturally, had refused to turn loose his hand.

"I think the captain's coming aboard," she whispered, tugging his coat as the pirates shuffled their feet expectantly. The boy William took a deep breath and squared his thin shoulders. Weatherby supposed he was responsible for two children rather than one now, and so he must proceed carefully for their sake. Backlit by the pale fog, a man with dark, unkempt hair climbed over the railing, rather aged for a pirate yet quite nimble despite it.

Even in the dim light, even before he had turned to fully face his captives, Weatherby knew him. He was leaner, harder, with a landscape of scars and lines masking the face Weatherby remembered so well; but his was not a face easily forgotten.

Before Weatherby could do more than gasp at the appearance of this most unexpected ghost, Elizabeth had thrown off his arm and darted forward. He shouted in alarm and made to go after her, but the pirates held him back where they'd let the child pass. The captain looked down at her, and Weatherby felt a sharp, bitter stab of pleasure as his eyes widened in a form of recognition. Elizabeth was her mother’s daughter in her coloring, but that was all. He hoped that small, fierce face caused the other man as much pain as he deserved.

"Captain," she said, chin held high, "I offer a parlay."

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Weatherby muttered under his breath. This was what came of governess after governess resigning her post – or perhaps it was actually the reason.

Teague recovered from his shock quickly, letting his mouth ease into a smile. He had lost little of his charm in twenty-five years. "You're a bold little miss, ain't you?"

Weatherby shivered at the sound of that voice, remembering the destruction it had wrought upon his own life and upon those he had loved.

"Elizabeth, get back here," he hissed, wondering what on earth she had up her sleeve. He glared at the dark-skinned man blocking his path with a wicked cutlass, to no avail.

"Here, sir," said his daughter imperiously, pulling something shiny from around her neck and offering it to him. "Payment for my father's safety, and my own." Weatherby squinted at the bright flash of gold. They were comfortable enough, but he would never give her such a bauble, especially not after buying the plantation.

"That's mine!" the boy exclaimed, pointing in indignation.

She glanced back at them, a bit of a guilty flush to her face. "And for Will. And the crew - the crew are not to be harmed," she added quickly, finally betraying appropriate fear by tucking her hands behind her back.

Teague bowed gravely to Elizabeth, though Weatherby had not missed the way his eyes flicked to the boy. When he took the proffered necklace and gazed at the large coin dangling from it, his eyes glinted in reflection. “Well now, and what sort of man could fail to honor such an fair proposal?”

“Honor?” Weatherby knew it would go better for all of them if he held his tongue, but he couldn’t help himself. “What would you know of honor, John Teague? I must say, the rags of a pirate suit you better than a lieutenant’s uniform ever did.”

The pirate guarding him started, and the former ship’s captain furrowed his brow. Teague looked at Weatherby for the first time, impact lessened after the blow that was Elizabeth’s face.

“Weatherby Swann,” he said with a grin that showed a few new gold teeth. “Fancy meetin’ you again, and in such a place as this.”



“If you allow one hair on my daughter’s head to be harmed –”

“Easy, man,” said Teague, gesturing to a dusty chair before his chart-covered table. “Sit.” He sprawled behind the table himself, moving a sextant to weigh down the corner of a faded map.

“I will not,” Weatherby snapped, clenching his fists. “I swear to you, Teague, I will kill you myself!”

Teague’s heavy dark brows drew down like a storm cloud. “D’you really think I’d allow Lydia Foster’s child t’ be harmed aboard my own ship?”

Hearing his dead wife’s name spoken aloud for the first time in years, Weatherby did sit – abruptly and without conscious intent. “So you know,” he said, trying to maintain control, trying to suppress the picture of a young woman, a girl and a lovestruck boy in a garden, eyes closed as they listened to the whisper of strings.

“Aye,” Teague replied, fingering the gold coin Elizabeth had given him. He did not seem inclined to meet Weatherby’s gaze. Was it actually possible that he could feel guilt after all these years? The man with the guitar had been far too rakish and callow for such base emotion. “Jack told me the tale.”

“The boy.” Your boy, he added to himself, anger constricting his lungs. He was surprised at the coldness in his own voice. The boy Teague had fathered with nary a care – leaving Anne an unwed mother, the elder Fosters social pariahs, and Lydia with no marriage prospects better than the lowly son of a tailor. In that at least he might have owed Teague his gratitude; but those debts were canceled a thousand times over by the ruin poor Anne’s life had become.

Yet he was glad to hear that Jack was alive; he’d been a sweet, clever boy, even after his mother’s bright fire turned to resentment and madness. Anne had been clever too, and sharp, but never sweet nor maternal no matter how she tried. Those traits were left to her sister, and in the end they had done her no more good.

“He came to me when he was sixteen,” Teague continued. He was staring at nowhere in particular on the map, gripping the coin tightly enough to turn his knuckles white. “Talked of you and Lydie, and of Anne’s death.”

For the first time he looked old, and it was not due to the years since that country summer of brief romance and bitter heartbreak.

Pity stirred in Weatherby despite his very real grievances. Teague had been older, and so Weatherby had always thought he should have known better; but perhaps there was more to the story than what he and Lydia had gleaned by listening at closed doors. From the moment Teague left her, Anne had spoken of him only to her son.

“Death was a boon to her by then,” he said softly, closing his eyes. Upon his wife’s death, the Earl had found himself unable to care for his elder daughter. She had not lasted six weeks in Bethlehem. Weatherby’s disgust for Charles Foster was tempered only by shame at his own role in tragedy. He had wanted to free Lydia from the pressure her parents put on her as their last hope; then they had been caught up in the self-absorption of the newly married. They did what they could for young Jack, but Lydia’s first miscarriage fell just after Anne’s turn for the worse. And so Weatherby had abandoned the woman he had once loved – desperately and without hope of requite – for the sister he married when their family could reject his suit no longer.

He had never known if Teague, in the midst of arrogant swaggering and seduction, had spotted the feelings of a shy boy of twenty. Most likely Teague wouldn’t have cared.

Meeting the older man’s eyes across the table, Weatherby was certain that he knew now, and equally certain that their grief was shared.

“How is Jack?” he asked, after clearing the ache of memory from his throat. “Lydia and I searched for him for some years after he disappeared.”

Teague’s mustache twitched. “Alive, and well enough,” he grunted, a shadow passing over his face. “Goes by th’ name Sparrow. I – was not so kindly t’wards him, when first we met. Seeing Anne in his eyes…” He pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers, back to studying the islands scattered like pebbles over the painted sea. “I asked her to come with me, y’know. Before I left the navy.”

“I didn’t know,” said Weatherby. It was the missing piece of the puzzle, and nothing unexpected given Anne’s tempestuous nature at eighteen. If all of them were equally guilty, all were equally innocent; how could they have known it would end in violent spells, stiff black mourning suits, motherless children?

“I was angry, too angry to tell it from my grief” Teague admitted with a heavy sigh, leaning back in his chair and steepling his fingers in his lap. “So I sent the boy away when he asked for my help, and now that he’s got himself into trouble he won’t accept his old da’s hand, late though it may be.”

The pride he inherited from Anne, just as Elizabeth did; Weatherby was not so blinded by the past that he could not admit this. The Foster legacy had somehow skipped only his kind, amiable Lydie.

“I’d like to see him again, trouble or not,” said Weatherby, pushing aside thoughts of how he would explain all this to Elizabeth. She had only known her grandfather for a few short years, and those against Weatherby’s protests. Not a trace of Anne remained in that airless house once she was gone. Lydia had always planned to tell Elizabeth about her aunt in some manner, but she was not here now that their daughter was at a better age to understand.

Teague bent forward over the desk, new light in his eyes – dark brown like those of his son, where Anne’s had been a pale blue made more startling by her black hair.

“As a matter o’ fact, Weatherby, we’re headed his way just now. If you’ve any love for him, and for Anne, you might be able to help me get him out of that trouble.”

Weatherby hesitated. He had land waiting for him in Jamaica, not much but already proven ripe for sugar production. It had been a difficult decision even with Elizabeth’s enthusiasm. She loved new sights, new scents, new experiences – in that again she resembled her aunt more than her mother, who loved their cottage in Hampshire and would never have wanted to move across a vast ocean. Perhaps the ghost of Anne, who had never gotten her chance at adventure, had watched him sign the deed.

Yet to be of some assistance to her son, an innocent in his birth no matter what sort of man he’d become, who should have been under Weatherby’s protection…

“What do you need from me?”

Teague flipped the coin. It landed face-up, with a skull leering at Weatherby across the table. “It has to do with the lad you rescued.”



Elizabeth and Will huddled on deck, out of the way as best they could manage. Teague’s quartermaster, a tall, somewhat grizzled man who carried a parrot on his shoulder, watched over them without saying a word. His parrot was quite talkative, however; after warning the children to watch their purses with ne’er-do-wells afoot, it turned its attention back to the sailors, frequently calling out instruction or abuse. Elizabeth was now determined to have a parrot of her own so that she might teach it to say rude things to governesses and tutors, and maybe clerics.

“When do you think your father is coming back?” Will whispered, eyes darting all over the ship. Elizabeth didn’t think she’d ever seen such a nervous boy. She certainly wouldn’t be so nervous if she were a boy – she wasn’t even nervous as a girl.

“Don’t you think meeting pirates is exciting?” she countered, delightedly pointing to a squat brown-skinned man with both peg leg and eyepatch.

Will glanced sideways at her, frowning. “No.”

Elizabeth sucked on her teeth in frustration, thinking she had better take a different track of conversation. They could work their way up to pirates, and just exactly how he had gotten that coin. “How old are you?”

“Fourteen,” he replied, pushing his unruly hair behind his ears. “I’ll be fifteen in March.” When Elizabeth raised her eyebrows – they were of a height, and she was just thirteen-and-a-half – he flushed a dull red. “I’m small for my age.”

“No, you’re just fine,” she said with studied cheer, patting his knee. It was the sort of thing her father said when she voiced a sense of inadequacy, and it seemed to help Will. “Where did you come from, Will?”

“Bristol. My mum –” He stopped, folding his hands in his lap and looking quickly out to sea, but not before Elizabeth saw the glint of tears in his eyes.

She touched his wrist. His skin was warmer than when they had pulled him out of the water. “My mother died, too.”

“Did she?” Will made his voice deeper on purpose, swiping at his face with the back of his hand. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” said Elizabeth, strangely glad that they had this in common at least. “I was seven. I don’t remember her very well now, but my father tells me stories all the time.” She paused, sensing this might be an unwelcome target, but Will latched onto it with obvious relief.

“I’m looking for my father, that’s why I’ve come to the Caribbean. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?” he asked, brown eyes wide and hopeful. “Bill Turner?”

Elizabeth shook her head, feeling bad about her earlier contempt. She couldn’t imagine not having her father to talk to, to dine with, to pluck her roses from the garden. “No, I’m sorry. But when we get to Jamaica, we can ask. Father will meet loads of people – he always does.”

Will smiled at her, a sweet and slightly sad smile, and Elizabeth was puzzled to feel her cheeks grow warm. But just then a sailor shouted, “Make way fer th’ Cap’n!” Weatherby and Captain Teague were striding toward them.

“Master William,” said Teague, holding out the gold pirate coin. “I believe this belongs to you.”

Will snatched it back, then looked ashamed of himself. “Thank you, sir. It – it was a gift from my father.”

For some reason, Teague’s jaw tightened. He put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Let’s see if we can’t dig up some supper.” Will’s face brightened. Elizabeth, who had spent the last twenty minutes listening to his stomach rumble, was glad enough for him though she wasn’t hungry herself. Weatherby only nodded, distracted, when she told him so.

“Elizabeth, you and I have been given the captain’s cabin.”

Elizabeth took his hand, but turned to dip awkwardly in Teague’s direction. “Thank you, Captain Teague.” The maidens in the stories were never polite to the captain, always busy screaming their idiot heads off.

He inclined his head, one corner of his mouth twitching into a crooked grin. “You’re most welcome, Miss Swann.”

“Father! Did you hear him call me ‘Miss Swann’ just like a proper lady?” She burst into the captain’s cabin, somewhat disappointed to find it less than richly decorated. It didn’t look so different from the one on the other ship, all things considered.

Weatherby cocked an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me my little hellion is actually entertaining thoughts of becoming a proper lady?”

She shrugged, pushing through to the sleeping cabin and hoisting herself up on the bunk. At least the mattress was soft. “When I must.”

His smile faded somewhat and he came to sit beside her, reaching for her hand. “Elizabeth, there are certain…aspects of your mother’s life, of her family, which we have never discussed.”

She went quiet immediately. This must be important, because he didn’t like to talk about her mother at all. Even now there was sorrow in his face, and his fingers were tight around hers.

Weatherby opened his mouth, closed it, wrinkled his nose, and finally let out a great sigh. “I suppose there’s no delicate way of leading up to it. Your mother had a sister who –”

“A sister? I have an aunt I’ve never heard of?” Eager though she was to hear these unsolicited details, she could not quite keep a note of indignation out of her voice.

“Yes.” Weatherby winced as if he had a headache. “Her name was Anne. Your mother loved her very much, but in her later years –” He swallowed, tugging at his cravat. “She was unwell. She died not long after your mother and I were married, a few years before you were born.”

Elizabeth gathered her skirts so she could tuck her legs up, pondering this. It seemed very unfair to have lived all her life with an aunt, even a dead aunt, and not known about it. “Why didn’t you tell me?” This time she didn’t bother to moderate her tone.

He shook his head, gazing unseeing at the far bulkhead. “It was difficult for – for your mother to speak of her. Perhaps we should have told you about Anne, and about your cousin Jack.”

“I have a cousin too?” She sat bolt upright, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring at her father. This nearly doubled her count of family. “Why –”

“We didn’t tell you about Jack,” he said heavily, “because he ran away after Anne died. Neither your mother nor I saw him after, not for fifteen years. But we’re going to see him very soon.”

She wanted to hold onto her anger, but it slipped away from her in the overwhelming tide of curiosity. “Really? Where is he? Why are we seeing him now? Does he live on Jamaica, or –”

Weatherby held up a hand, and for once she obeyed; he looked so tired. “Captain Teague is taking us to a place called Shipwreck Cove, because he is your cousin Jack’s father.”

“Oh!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “Then that makes him my uncle!” It was quite a day, to be not only abducted by pirates but to learn they were among one’s relations…

Weatherby cleared his throat loudly, looking down at his shoes in obvious discomfort. Elizabeth was astonished at this, for there was almost nothing they didn’t talk about.

“Well, you see, Elizabeth,” he said in an overly loud voice, “your aunt Anne and Captain Teague were – Jack is –”

“Oh,” she repeated in an entirely different kind of voice, “they weren’t married, were they?” That was a reason not to tell her that made far more sense than the one she’d been given.

Weatherby blinked at her quick comprehension and Elizabeth ducked her head. Certain books she smuggled out of his library were among the very few things they didn’t talk about. To keep it that way, she asked quickly, “Is Will coming with us?”

“Yes,” said Weatherby, pursing his lips. If Elizabeth didn’t know better, she might have said he looked guilty. “Yes, he is.”



It had been a long time since Teague had beheld Shipwreck Cove with new eyes. Weatherby stood beside him at the helm as the Minstrel glided out of the passage into the Cove proper, casting an anxious eye at yet another set of lookouts. They waved Teague onward.

The children leaned forward to get a better view of the town – the boy despite his nature, the girl according to hers. With hair darkened by shadow and face alight with excitement, she looked so like the Anne he remembered. In fact Elizabeth seemed more like her than Anne’s own son; for Jack carried her darkness too, the moods and tempers to which Teague had been privy only in inkling.

But he could see Lydia too, in her smile – the lass had been just this age when Teague had known her. There was more than a hint of Weatherby in her self-possession, the seriousness with which she asked him questions about sailing. She seemed, in short, to be quite an extraordinary child. Weatherby said Jack had been much the same before Anne grew so ill. Teague would not begrudge the edge of accusation; he was actually surprised to find Weatherby so quick to forgive. But after all, there were few bonds greater than shared grief – or shared guilt.

Elizabeth was bouncing on her heels as she gazed at the twisting contours of Shipwreck Town. “Oh, it’s beautiful!”

“It’s something,” said Teague, with a wry twist of his mouth and a thread of pride. “The sea coughed up the crater long years ago, but the trappings’re all ours. Built on the bones of ships as it was built on the sweat of sailors – some more honest than others.”

The girl nodded with dignity, clearly considering herself a part of that world already. It was bound to suit her better than tea parties and planters’ dull sons. Teague hoped Weatherby would let her have her head for at least a little while. Young Will Turner, on the other hand, regarded every sight his eyes met in calculated degrees of suspicion.

“It doesn’t look structurally sound,” Weatherby commented with a frown as Cotton’s steady hand guided the Minstrel in. “What sort of people inhabit this place, anyhow?”

“Don't worry, mate,” said Teague, clapping Weatherby’s shoulder as they walked down the gangplank, Elizabeth jumping ahead on her gangly colt’s legs. It was a wonder she didn’t trip over her skirts. “You’re safe enough with me.”

Even so, he took them down the main road rather than the back lanes, though the walk was longer. It was early morning yet, particularly for this part of town. A few carousers snored on doorsteps; some stealthy chickens picked in the dirt for worms; here and there a woman stepped out to hang wet laundry on her porch. His charges observed it all in silence, until Weatherby gave a shout as a wooden hoop rolled right in front of his path. Its owner darted across the street to chase it down, and Teague saw that it was eldest van Doorn.

“Bit early for a game, Isaac!” he called after the boy, who tossed a reply about the widow Underhill’s cakes over his shoulder. Teague chuckled, then realized that Weatherby was staring after Isaac, befuddled.

“There are children living here?”

Teague shrugged, turning back down the street. “’Course there are children. Shipwreck may have its ceremonial duties, as it were, but it’s first a refuge for sailors, and it’s their women who run things.”

“Do you have a wife, Uncle Teague?” Elizabeth asked, as if the idea hadn’t occurred to her before now.

A muscle in Weatherby’s jaw twitched, but he said nothing as Teague replied, “No, I haven’t.” Though he wasn’t without responsibilities, he thought darkly as he led them up the steps of the Crown.

“John Teague!” exclaimed the plump woman who emerged from the kitchen, brushing flour from her cheek. “Why, we haven’t seen you for months!”

“Morning, Belle,” said Teague with a smile and a nod. To the curious hangers-on, he added, “Mistress van Doorn serves the best ale in Shipwreck.” Probably best not to mention the warmth of her bed when Jan was at sea. “If we ask nice, I’m sure she’ll open a cask despite the hour.”

Weatherby’s lips thinned and he put a restraining hand on Elizabeth’s shoulder. “Thank you, but we’ll take your word for it.” His daughter pouted, which expression Teague was sure she had been working on for many years now.

“As you like,” said Belle cheerfully, coming up to beam at Elizabeth and Will. The boy’s face had lost some of its wariness at the scent of bread and frying bacon drifting from beyond the door. “We’ve a few early risers in today, so they’ll be up in – oh, a few hours’ time. Breakfast is all yours, lovelies.” Weatherby looked extremely disconcerted at her wink.

This was as good a time as any to start looking for Jack, and one of the better places; many of the prettier girls preferred the Crown. “Belle, you got any idea where my son might’ve got to?”

“Well, he ain’t an early riser as such, but he’s here nonetheless,” she replied, pointing at the ceiling.

“Not quite where I left him, then,” said Teague, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. “A whole storey heavenwards.”

Weatherby started to open his mouth, then glanced swiftly at Will, who took no notice. Elizabeth began to drift toward the stairwell. Teague did not intend to begin this interlude with an audience.

“Why don’t you all have a bit to eat whilst I drag Jacky out of bed?” he suggested, gesturing at several empty tables. Weatherby sighed with relief, reining Elizabeth back in; Will needed no such directing. Teague left them in Belle’s capable hands and trudged up the stairs.

He didn’t need to ask which room; Jack always took the western-facing one in the middle. Sure enough, when Teague swung the door open, he was sprawled across the low bed with a naked blonde sprawled in turn across him.

She raised her head at the noise, yawning, and moved enough to rouse Jack. Not too hung over, then, or he’d never have wakened. He twisted, craning his neck around to blink one eye at Teague.

“Oh, bugger,” he muttered, sinking his face back into the flat pillow.

“Hello, John.” Emmy – Teague might have known – smiled at him as she reached for her clothing, in no particular hurry. She was a bit on the skinny side for Teague’s tastes, but Jack was one of her regulars. He covered his head with the pillow and kicked out as she got off the bed.

Teague held the door open for her, then crossed the room and snatched Jack’s pillow away.

“Oi,” Jack protested weakly, squinching up his bloodshot eyes. “’M tryin’ sleep here.”

“Oh, charming,” Teague snapped. “Still drunk. In that sense, you’re exactly where I left you. Get up.” When Jack failed to comply, Teague doused him with the basin of water beside the bed.

Now he shot up, gasping and jerky. “What the hell was ‘at for? How many times’ve I got to tell you to leave me alone?” he spat, looking murderous.

“That was the last time,” said Teague tersely. “I’ve found the Turner boy, and the last of the gold. If you don’t want your bloody Pearl back, then by all means go back to sleep.”


part 2