Chapter Text
The red on his knuckles is bright. A sharp colour, thick and brutal,
Blood.
His own blood, another’s blood.
“Well, Turner?”
“I’m sorry, Sir.” Will looks up, tearing his eyes away from his hands.
Mr. Norrington sighs. “It just won’t do. I cannot have my workers brawling on the factory floor. You know this, Turner.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Would you like to inform me of what you and Jenkins’ were exchanging blows over?”
Will returns his gaze to his hands, looking down and away from Mr. Norrington’s disappointed face.
“No, I thought not. Just like you wouldn’t answer when I asked you about your fight with Cabell. Two fight’s, Turner, two within the last month.”
Will silently adds three more to that figure but doesn’t reply.
Mr. Norrington rubs a hand across his forehead. “Will,” his voice is softer. Slightly. “You aren’t a fool. You know what the alternative to working here is. I cannot keep you on if you are going to break rules and scuffle on the floor with the other workers.” He steps closer to Will, and for a moment his hand hovers as if he is going to touch Will, gently, on the face. “I would not wish the workhouse on my worst enemy, let alone a boy I know to have a honest heart and his mother. Do you wish to go there?”
“No.” Will shakes his head. “Of course I don’t. Of course not.” His bruises are starting to throb, and he knows blood is slowly dripping from his hand onto the carpet.
“Then you must see that this behaviour must end.” Mr Norrington steps back around to his side of the desk. “I’m not blind, Turner, I know the other men provoke you. And I know that my refusal to dismiss you has not gained you any friends. But you shall have to rise above all their taunts, and not let your temper lead you into any more frays.”
“Yes, Mr. Norrington. I know.” Will moves towards the door.
“This is your last warning, Will. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes.” He pauses, one hand on the doorknob. “I know.”
~*~
His pay will be docked. Again. Recompense for the disruption he’s caused. And he can’t complain, not really. He should have been booted out of job and home, not just had a few pounds deducted from his wages.
But it stings.
And telling his mum is not something he’s looking forward to.
But the walk back to the house in the thin afternoon sunlight after so many months of seeing nothing but the dark of the night is something to savour.
The late winter sun barely penetrates the thick smoke and soot of the city, and the shadows are already growing long, but, still, it is light and he can imagine the snowdrops, delicate beneath barren trees, in bloom back home, his old real home.
It’s almost enough to make him smile.
~*~
His mum is neither amused nor surprised. She barely says anything, and Will wonders if her anger will come later. Or perhaps her tears.
There is no money for their creditors this week.
Not unless another miraculous bounty comes their way.
The fire is slowly dying out, and his stomach is near empty and he can still hear his mum pacing back and forth upstairs, and Will lies there, wrapped in a threadbare blanket before the hearth, one hand squeezing a small scrap of red fabric tight.
A handkerchief. A vivid crimson red handkerchief.
The morning after Jack’s arrival he’d woken cold and alone, the blanket all twisted up and his belly growling with hunger. There was no lingering warmth from where Jack had lain beside him, tangled up with him.
Nothing to say he’d been there at all.
Nothing but a small pile of bright guineas on top of Jack’s red, red handkerchief.
Will yawns, curls up tighter with just the tiniest shiver, and closes his bruised fist harder around the square of red.