send ♡ + word for a headcanon : accepting : @shadowstakeme
Family and Hector is one of those weird topics that he'll claim one way, and that his actions will kind of point another. It's also highly, highly verse dependent, to be honest. So, let me kind of break it down that way.
CANON: He knows what family is, but I don't imagine he has very much contact with his own actual blood relations. He left home very young - like I've stated before a few times, he was 13 when he ran away to join a merchant crew - and turned pirate very young, as well, and so that's been practically his whole life. But while he may not have much contact with his blood relations, Hector Barbossa does have a family. His family is Elizabeth Swann. Will Turner. Jack Sparrow. Pintel and Ragetti. Gibbs. Marty. Cotton. They're chosen family, though he'd never look at it that way. I refuse to believe after the end of AWE he never speaks to Elizabeth again. He and Jack are always going to bump into each other. Will is going to be the one to finally collect him when he dies. And the rest are crew, and crew is as good as family, in a lot of cases. So while he wouldn't look at it remotely like that, he's surrounded himself with people that definitely fill the roles.
MODERN: The joke @pearlsparable and I have is that Hector, an assassin for hire and part time modern pirate, comes from a completely normal family, with which he has a completely normal relationship with. His mother, his sisters, they're all so normal, and when they see each other, there's never even the slightest hint that they have any idea what they do for a living (they do). But as far as it's concerned, he's normally close to them, and them with him, and when they see each other they do normal family things, but he doesn't talk about them at all.
IMMORTAL: This one. Depends on which one, but on the whole, it's either everyone who's still alive - and at this point he'll call them family. Because they are. They're the last of their kind left in the world and they've bonded together closer than they ever could have during the Golden Age. But the other? Where it's simply him and Jack left? Jack is his family, though he'd never say so. They're all they really have left, and so they've...Stuck together and it is what it is for them.
ELDER SCROLLS: Nah, not important. The Brotherhood kind of fills that role for him, since they are supposed to kind of be a literal family, in as such as he's actually interested. To a certain degree, there are those in the Thieves Guild that do the same. But it's hard to be close to someone you know slits throats for money. And his own family are mostly gone one way or another.