After he sees about the damage done to the ship—minimal, for which he is grateful—he finds Will in his tiny cabin. The boy is sitting on his bed in the dark, facing the door. It doesn't look as though he has moved since Jack set him there hours before. He is staring down at his hands in his lap. He does not look up as Jack enters, shuts the door quietly, and hangs his lantern.

The blood on Will's hands, silvery in the moonlight, turns to a dark ruddy brown when the lantern shines on it. Jack kneels in front of him, setting the bucket he carries aside. Prying Will's clenched hands away from his knees, he takes a rag and rubs the soiled skin thoroughly. Before long the water in the bucket is tinged pink from his efforts, but Will's hands are clean and dry. He doesn't protest or even look up as Jack tugs the stained shirt out from his waist; at Jack's urging he lifts his arms to allow its removal. His dark breeches show no telltale patches so Jack lets them be, pulling his boots off and setting them carefully aside.

Jack waits for him to speak. When he does not, he takes both of Will's still hands in his own. His voice breaks the silence in the cabin for the first time.

"I remember how it feels, lad. Let the shock take over and it'll go easier."

Will's body starts to shiver as though with cold; his shoulders hunch and his chin drops down against his chest. He bites his lip resolutely as a tear slips past his closed eyelids.

Jack's hands flutter near his face, desperate to be of some use. They settle for brushing Will's hair back from his brow and resting on his shoulders.

"I killed a man, Jack," Will whispers.

"I know. It... happens. The first time is..." Jack pauses, feeling helpless and that his words will be wrong no matter what he says. He tries anyway. "I vomited over the side right after, worse than when I'd yet to find my sealegs. Saw his face for weeks in my dreams. This—today was supposed to be a standard raid, but you never can tell how they'll react, even if we reach an accord. He's dead, Will, and you're alive, and one is the reason for the other. Isn't right, perhaps, but that's how it is."

Will shakes his head, shrugging Jack's hands off of him. He still has not met Jack's eyes. "You don't understand." His voice is broken. Jack has never heard something that sounded like despair coming from those lips, but he is hearing it now. "You can't."

Jack touches his face again. The tears are falling steadily now, warm against his fingertips. "Then tell me."

He breathes in sharply, like he is trying to draw the air past something in his throat.

"It isn't the—the killing, or it isn't all that. It's... why. You didn't see. We were standing behind and he drew a knife on you."

Jack whistles softly. "Ah, so that's how it was. I owe you a debt, then."

"No," Will insists, the words tumbling out now in his need to make himself clear, "no, you don't understand—he started for you and I didn't think at all—no, that's not right, I didn't think later as it was happening but before, I knew he was going to kill you. I saw it, Jack, I saw your life ending as I watched and—" His breath hitches in a sob. "And I saw my life ending along with it."

Jack stares at him. He feels an ache in his chest and realizes that he has forgotten to breathe.

"Next thing I knew you were pulling me off," Will finishes, the strident passion leeching away from his voice until Jack can barely hear him, though he feels the stir of his breath.

"You—" Jack manages, entirely unsure of how he means to finish the sentence.

He remembers Gibbs saying in an undertone to Crabb, "Boy stabbed the bugger twelve times..."

Will suddenly pushes himself to his feet, his face set and angry. Jack turns and settles into his place at the foot of the bed, feeling as though he's been kicked in the gut by a heavy horse. It's a sensation that belongs to the land, not to this vast expanse of rolling tides.

"I'm not supposed to feel like this," Will says, holding his head in his hands. "It's too strong, it's all through me, in everything I do, and—and it's a sin. It is." Jack wonders which of the two of them he's trying harder to convince.

"So some say," he agrees faintly. He knew this conversation would come, has known it since the day Will stumbled onto his ship four months after Jack left him to Elizabeth, refusing to tell anyone what had happened. Still, he hasn't thought about it much beyond that, and he's vastly underprepared. He has made arguments before to young men who've been snared by the smile and the kohl and the dancing eyes, but they mean nothing now. Not with this one. He swallows, his throat raw.

"But I—I say that it can't be right to call any love a sin." He is as surprised by his words as Will, who turns sharply and fixes him with wide dark eyes.

"I didn't say anything about love."

A part of Jack tells him to take it back, to brush it off. It is a voice he has listened to many, many times in the past. He does not do so now. He merely sits and regards Will in calm silence, his hands motionless at his sides, waiting for a decision to be made.

Will blinks slowly, several times, before sitting down on the bed, the side of his thigh brushing against Jack's. He turns his head to the side, his eyes unsure, and leans forward to touch his lips to Jack's mouth.

It feels like yielding, a bitter taste. Jack deepens the kiss without touching Will, trying to tell him that that isn't what this is about. Will's hand drifts to Jack's neck of its own accord, and Jack knows that he understands. He tastes the traces of blood on Will's bottom lip, where Will has bitten it.

Will pulls back, blows out the light. Jack lies back on the bed. Will glides into focus above him, smiling shyly in the moonlight.