Pirates of the Caribbean 1. Chapter 1

**Deliverance**

Prologue

_Jack!_ She thought. _Jack!_

As the previously deceased Captain Barbossa descended the rickety staircase in Tia Dalma's shack, Elizabeth's reaction was the polar opposite to the ragged remains of the rest of Sparrow's crew. Will drew his sword and brandished it at the ghost: Pintel and Ragetti whimpered and backed towards the door, Ragetti mumbling rosaries and crossing himself frantically. Gibbs, Cotton and Marty shuffled forward with all the outward appearance of lending Will support, whilst still maintaining a healthy distance should a retreat become necessary.

But for Elizabeth, the only thing to register was that if this man - whose life blood had flowed finally and fatally out of his body right in front of her very own eyes - if this man could now be standing here before them, apparently made new and whole again - then maybe, just _maybe_ Tia Dalma was not cruelly playing with their emotions, and just maybe she _could _give their Captain back to h _- them._

'No, Will.' She said firmly reaching out a hand to lower his sword, and the remaining crew turned to look at her, momentarily distracted from their reactions to Barbossa's resurrection. Elizabeth had barely spoken, save to accept or decline offers of water, in the three days it had taken to reach the bayou from the scene of Jack's loss, her last words being her direction for them to abandon the _Black Pearl _and her Captain.

'Best you listen to Jack's little girlie,' Tia's voice interrupted, diffusing one volatile situation and creating another. Luckily, Will's '_What?'_ was lost as Barbossa pushed his way through the sailors clustered in front of him and made his way over to the door.

'You can either come with me, or you can stay here and be brooding,' he announced without turning to face the men, as he exited the hut. 'I sail on the morning tide.' The monkey Jack chattered into their stunned faces, baring his teeth at them from his position on Barbossa's shoulder, as the pirate disappeared down the steps to the river.

A moment of silence followed his departure, and then five voices clamored in protest and complaint, all directed at the witch. Elizabeth took the opportunity to retreat back to her stool and let them fight it out. Their arguing voices rose and fell on the periphery of her consciousness; since she had left Jack Sparrow chained to his ship, she seemed to be completely numb - even the brief spurt of hope which had overcome her at the thought that sh - _they_ might truly be able to rescue Jack, was quickly being overwhelmed by the vast empty chasm that had already consumed her internal organs, her emotions and her mind.

Elizabeth felt that there was nothing of herself left anymore; everything was lost, sunk to the bottom of the ocean floor along with the crippled ship and her Captain. She had left whatever it was that made her Elizabeth Swann on the deck of the _Black Pearl_, and this new person, this stranger to her - she was an empty vessel, as cold and inaccessible as their departed Captain, yet still breathing and dwelling amongst the living.

'Enough!' The crack of Tia Dalma's shout was sufficiently commanding to rouse even Elizabeth from the fugue she had fallen into. 'If you are wanting to see Jack Sparrow agin, dis is how you shall achieve it!' She announced. 'Fetching up de dead is not a game, dere is rules we must be obeyin' and procedures we must be following. De ocean will not be givin' up her prize just because you want it. You cannot be doin' this wit out Hector Barbossa. Only dem as betrayed a man can resurrect him from de depths…'

Tia's voice was once again drowned out by a round of protests and opinions on Barbossa's trustworthiness and reliability for such an undertaking, but Elizabeth had focused on the crucial words in Tia's speech. _It has to be him then, _she thought to herself, _Only those who betrayed him. Barbossa - and _me

Tia Dalma clapped her hands and there was a crack as if lightening had struck her rickety shack; jars and bottles with their sinister contents rattled on the hooks in the ceiling, and Ragetti swallowed uncomfortably as a jar containing pickled spiders swayed close to his face. 'Now listen well,' Tia said when she had their attention once more. 'You have all declared yourselves for this undertaking, and will I tell you now that you might as well sit here in me hut till you grow barnacles and your arses fuse to me chairs, for if you don't tek me word that Barbossa is your man, you will surely never see Jack agin!'

'We accept him,' Elizabeth said firmly, not allowing the others a further chance to begin squabbling amongst themselves. 'We are going after Jack and we will do whatever is necessary to get him back. Anything. Perhaps you had better tell us exactly what that is?'

Tia Dalma smiled widely at Elizabeth, her dye-stained teeth flashing in the dim yellow candlelight of the shack. She glided over and caught her chin, looking deeply into her eyes, and Elizabeth found herself unable to break the other woman's stare. 'Ah, good - good.' Tia breathed, finally releasing Elizabeth from her grip. 'Lizzie the pirate _does _know what she wants. Even if she intends never to claim it as her own! Yes, we must start. Dere is much preparing we mus' do, and little time. Dere are offerin's to be made, and charms to be cast. You, crewmen - follow de Captain out dere, and make de ship ready to sail.'

Grumbling, the crew began to file out of the shack, following Barbossa's direction. Tia Dalma's suddenly sharp voice did not encourage disobedience to her instructions. Will however, waited stubbornly behind and said Elizabeth's name softly in a questioning tone.

Tia moved over to him and brushed her fingers along his jaw. Elizabeth actually found herself to be surprised by the strange familiarity of the gesture. Will scowled at the witch and tilted his head away from her touch, but otherwise made no complaint. Tia laughed huskily, 'You will get your turn, William Turner,' she whispered to him, leaning up so that her lips were almost touching his cheek as she spoke, 'but Lizzie mus' be first.'

And with these words, she smoothly turned Will and pushed him towards the door, so that Elizabeth found herself suddenly alone with someone whose motives she mistrusted and whose undefined connection to Jack Sparrow she hated to admit she was envious of. The older woman seemed in possession of uncomfortable insights that Elizabeth would certainly prefer to exist only in her own memory, and she was guarded as she asked, 'What are we going to do?'

'Not'ing painful,' Tia replied. 'Dat will come later, when you are on de ocean, searching for your man. For now, we shall jus' be casting some protective charms, binding magic. All t'ings to aid your search, nothing more.' Tia paused and gave Elizabeth an uncomfortably knowing look. 'Did Jack have him compass when he go down wit' de _Pearl?_' She asked off-handedly, although Elizabeth suspected nothing about this woman was as guileless as it seemed.

Her eyes closed tightly against a new threat of tears - she could hardly bear to think about their last moments together; the heat of his rum-sweetened breath, the addictive taste of curiosity finally satisfied as his mouth yielded so fervently to her treacherous kiss, the opium of his tongue as it swept in to stroke her own - and the hideous, terrifying desolation of knowing that she would never, _ever_ be sucked into another one of his outlandish schemes; never again be able to touch him, argue with him, flirt with him or watch him stagger across the deck rum bottle in hand, humming the song she had taught him during their sojourn on the island, nor listen to one of his convoluted monologues - _never_ _kiss him_ again, because she was about to commit a betrayal from which there was no absolution, no reprieve. She was sending him to his death, although it felt more like she was condemning herself.

Yet here was Tia Dalma waiting expectantly for her to confront the memories and examine them for individual details. 'Yes,' she muttered reluctantly at last, her voice hoarse with repressed tears and misery. 'Yes, he must have. He took it back after we found the chest.'

Tia Dalma looked extremely interested at Elizabeth's casual admission. 'Jack let you have him compass, did he?' She asked with a speculative smile.

'For all the good it did,' muttered Elizabeth. 'It doesn't work anyway. It was just a sheer, typical Jack stroke of luck that we got to within a hundred miles of that rotten chest at all.'

'Dat compass, she work jus' fine,' Tia declared, smirking. 'Jack barter dat pretty from me, and I don' never send Jack Sparrow away wit a bad bargain. But after he take it, I don' have no control over how he use it, or if he believes the truths it tell him, _or _what it tells anyone else who use it. Won't work for just _anyone_, dat compass - and he know dat as well as I! How long did you hold Jack's compass, Lizzie?'

Elizabeth bit her lip and forced herself to revisit the frustration and denial she had experienced after they sailed out of Tortuga, whenever she opened the damned lid and saw the needle swing unerringly towards wherever on deck a certain Pirate happened to be standing. 'Four days - maybe five,' she muttered reluctantly.

Tia nodded thoughtfully, ''Dis helps. It is good Jack has it wit' him - and dat you have left your mark on it, too. I can use dis. Come - we have work to do.'


	2. Chapter 2

**Elizabeth**

The expanse of ocean which stretched out before the _Dragonfly_ appeared endless; the horizon extended for ever, and there was hardly a breath of air to fill the sails of the small craft.

They had been at sea for almost a month now, the last four days spent drifting excruciatingly slowly in these almost becalmed waters. The crew, which now included several native-speaking sailors who had previously sailed with their new ship, was hot and listless, discharging their duties with the minimum of physical effort required to successfully comply.

Barbossa alone seemed alert and engaged in his task as he stood behind the wheel, one hand lightly resting against the spokes although very little direction was needed with them floating so slowly East. His narrowed eyes scanned the distant horizon, looking for anything out of the ordinary. It seemed unlikely he would find it; they had not encountered any other living creature in a fortnight - even birds rarely flew this far from land. A porpoise playing in the waves had been their last sight of company, but that had been days ago and many leagues behind them.

It was perhaps inaccurate to say that only the Captain was alert today. Standing in the bow, glaring fiercely in the same direction as Barbossa, Elizabeth's body may have been still but her mind was racing. Tia Dalma had not indicated it would take this long to reach their destination, and Elizabeth was ready to blame the priestess for everything from the absence of wind to the lack of a port to restock their supplies, to the smell of Cotton's feet. The longer they sailed without getting anywhere, the more she worried that they would be too late, and she was barely able to hold on to the hope which had followed Tia's declaration that they could resurrect Jack.

And with that hope faltering, the despair and guilt of reality were leeching back into her grief-stricken heart. What were they thinking anyway? Everyone knew that the world was round, not flat. So how could you possibly come to World's End? You would just circumnavigate a giant circle and end up back where you started. Which was somewhat how Elizabeth felt most days; as if she was merely going around in circles, covering the same ground of guilt, loss and desolation - and always she ended up standing here, shying away from her fiancé and staring out to sea searching for something that was never there.

Barbossa seemed to have some uncharacteristic and old-fashioned ideas about women performing duties onboard a ship; he had first displayed these when kidnapping Elizabeth to lift the curse, at which time he insisted on outfitting her in a plundered gown. On this voyage, he did not have the authority to insist that she discard her boy's clothing and dress more appropriately, but he often twitched with disapproval as she moved around the deck with her sword belt, pistol and unbound hair, like any one of the men. However, he _could_ refuse her access to areas of the ship he deemed unsuitable, and she was therefore prohibited from night watch, any duty which took place more than five feet higher than deck level, and confined mainly to assisting Cotton in the galley, or swabbing the deck - which occupations Barbossa seemed to think suitable for the female sex.

Initially, Elizabeth had been the only one to accept that they had a need for Barbossa on this journey, and for the first week out to sea, it had been necessary to soothe a lot of incipient arguments between the Captain who had been thrust upon them and a crew which was by turns distrusting and afraid of him. By the time a wary accord was attained, Elizabeth had found herself maneuvered into her present duties and in favour of maintaining the fragile peace, she did not press to be treated more like one of the crew. Although in truth, her lighter obligations gave her far too much time to fret about how slowly things were progressing.

Jack had been lost to them for near two months now, and she feared that the longer it took them to reach their destination, the lower their chances would be for success. Tia Dalma had explained it thus: Jack was not actually _dead_ dead, but in a kind of limbo state, where those who had been taken before their time awaited a judgment by some higher Power as to whether their timeline should be adjusted to account for this early arrival in the afterlife.

Although she had not actually spoken the words, Elizabeth suspected Tia's inference was that people who been subject to betrayal by those close to them, made up a hefty portion of those stuck in this limbo state. This was entirely too painful for Elizabeth to contemplate for it said to her that Jack had actually been intended to survive the attack on the _Black Pearl_ all along, and that she had in fact rewritten his destiny. The longer they drifted out here in the watery wilderness, the more she worried that those all-powerful _Powers_ would come to a decision on Jack before they reached him, and dispatch him off into the next life and they would be too late.

In a rum-induced haze of self pity, she had expressed these thoughts to Barbossa several nights back, wandering out onto deck after a pitiful dinner of ship's biscuit and some very stale hardened cheese. She had expected the Captain to immediately send her back below deck in accordance with his declaration of her boundaries, but he had surprised her by welcoming her amicably enough as he stood behind the wheel watching as the sun descended to their backs, although he did spare a scowl for her breeches and loose cotton shirt, covered only by an unbuttoned waistcoat.

'What can I do for you, Miss Turner?' he asked, 'I cannot believe that it is a desire for my company that tears you away from your shipmates this evening.' Despite numerous complaints, Barbossa absolutely refused to call her by her proper name. Miss Turner she had been when she first boarded the _Black Pearl_ to negotiate for the fate of Port Royal, and in his eyes she would be Miss Turner for ever.

'It's Miss Swan,' she muttered again without much expectation of success, in much the same way she had used to urge Will to call her Elizabeth. 'I want to talk about our heading.'

'Ah, the crew has elected you spokes….woman, have they?' Barbossa asked thoughtfully. 'I must say I have been expecting a delegation these few days past.'

'No,' Elizabeth said, slurring her words slightly and swaying suddenly with the roll of the ship, 'they have not. I want to speak to you for my own peace of mind -'

'Really,' Barbossa interrupted thoughtfully. 'It seems from what I have observed recently, that peace of mind is an elusive commodity for yourself these days, Miss Turner. In fact, I would venture to say - unattainable in truth. You suffer the loss of Jack Sparrow far more deeply than any other on this ship, and I have to ask myself why that is. We all know what I did to wrong Jack; Pintel and Ragetti also - though under my command. The others just need someone to follow. Your Mister Turner wants the _Black Pearl _back far more than he cares to see Jack again. But as for you, lassie - what suffering have you endured which dulls the light in your soul, hmmm?'

'The world is round,' Elizabeth stated aggressively, interrupting Barbossa. She had come here explicitly to complain about this fact and she was not ready to be sidetracked. 'How can there be an end to it if it is a big sphere? How do I know you are taking us to the right place - how do I know we won't be too late if we get there?' She sniffed, the unusual amount of rum she had indulged in making her weepy. 'What if Jack's waiting and he thinks I'm not coming?' She finished with a catch in her voice.

'_Ah,' _Barbossa said with enlightenment, 'well, Miss Turner. I see no profit in you worrying about that yet. Indeed, according to dear Tia Dalma, compared to resurrecting my own good self, snatching Jack Sparrow back from the limbo area should be a child's play. Just as soon as we get there.'

'_Captain,'_ Elizabeth hissed, her inebriated tongue choosing this point to make an issue of. '_Captain_ Jack Sparrow. And you should remember that better than most, you - you _mutineer!_'

'Aye, that I am,' Barbossa agreed mildly. 'Or was. There'd be no point in denying it now, would there? But I do wonder then, Miss Turner, what credentials make _you_ Jack's deliverance…'

'Elizabeth?' Will's hesitant voice broke into their exchange, which may have been a good thing given the direction of the conversation. He nodded curtly to the older man, 'Barbossa,' he acknowledged briefly. He refused to name the other man Captain, being of the opinion either he or Gibbs should have taken that role, with the resurrected pirate acting as a navigator or guide or in some such ambiguous non-authority capacity.

'Are you all right, Elizabeth?' he asked, and unspoken in the query were the words; _you've been drinking rum again?_

'I'll be fine, Will,' Elizabeth answered impassively. It was her standard response these days to any inquiry about her health, her feelings or her lack of appetite. She turned from her study of the ocean ahead and tried to smile at her fiancé.

Will had never blatantly come out and asked what had happened on the deck of the _Black Pearl_ before she went down, but the sudden harshness which had entered into his voice and expression as they rowed away from the doomed ship, let Elizabeth know that he had either seen or suspected that something was amiss with Jack's sudden selfless sacrifice.

If Elizabeth had actually been allowing herself to think about - _it_, she would probably have preferred to believe that Will saw her kiss Jack, than that he knew she had deliberately and cold-bloodedly chained him up and left him behind to die. She rather suspected that there could be no recovering from the discovery that your beloved was, in fact, a murderer.

But as Elizabeth did _not_ allow herself to think about the reasons for Will's cooling attitude - for that way lay madness - she chose to respond to him in the same manner he approached her; with a distant fondness and formality that was reminiscent of how they treated each other before the advent of undead pirates, cursed Aztec gold and a certain _Captain _into their lives.

Will grimaced inside at Elizabeth's new repetition of that assurance he did not believe, and was coming to despise. His own feelings confused and annoyed him; his fear and unease over the enormous change in Elizabeth was not allayed in the slightest by her unconvincing platitudes.

He did not know Elizabeth any more; he had left behind a lady in the cells of Port Royal, and when they had been reunited at last he had found in her place a _sailor_ (he refused to entertain the notion that he had in fact found a _pirate_). Elizabeth had worn borrowed men's clothes when Norrington and the crew of the _Dauntless_ fought with Barbossa's accursed crew, but he had always supposed that was an unavoidable consequence of being marooned on a deserted island in only her undergarments. It had never occurred to him that she might come to prefer this manner of dress.

When they had practiced sword fighting (and that had been at Elizabeth's request too, come to think of it) she had also worn borrowed breeches and _still_ it did not occur to him that it was for any reason other than expediency.

When he had swum ashore on Isla Cruces, and come upon the most unlikely trio of conspirators he could ever have imagined, events had proceeded so fast that there was barely time to wonder how on earth Elizabeth and Jack and a _radically_ changed James Norrington could have ended up together, before Elizabeth had greeted and promptly forgotten all about him, and he was once again swept up in the whirlwind that was Captain Jack Sparrow.

Will had expected Elizabeth to be almost as excited as he was about the reunion with his father; he probably had not chosen the ideal moment to break the news to her, but he had nonetheless been quite surprised when she instantly turned out of his arms and marched over to Jack, berating him for once again distorting the truth to suit himself, yet unable to entirely hide the hurt and disappointment in her voice, whilst at the same time completely excluding Will from their oddly intimate argument.

He came to suppose later, during the endless hours he had spent alone with nothing but his thoughts for company on this crazed rescue voyage, that _this_ was probably the moment when he should have begun to notice that Elizabeth was no longer the same girl she had been when he left to do Beckett's bidding.

But Elizabeth was even more changed now, so much so that he hardly recognised her. On Isla Cruces, she still retained the sparkle and vivacity which had always drawn Will to her, even if it was wrapped up in a more unconventional package. The Elizabeth straining to smile at him today bore little resemblance to either of those other girls who had carried her name.

This Elizabeth was quiet and introspective; her eyes had lost their innocence and she wore her sorrow like a shroud around her. Yet it was not only in her temperament that she was altered; Tia Dalma had returned Elizabeth to the crew that night of Barbossa's reappearance a tarnished woman.

Elizabeth wouldn't speak of the spells and enchantments which Tia had cast upon her to aid in their search, but there were some things which were physical and could not be concealed. Will had been unable to prevent a moan of horror at the sight of his fiancée emerging from Tia Dalma's hut to join the rest of the crew as they hauled supplies aboard a small frigate named the _Dragonfly_ which was apparently to be their conveyance for the journey.

The witch had tattooed a rune on each of Elizabeth wrists, and on her forehead just at the hairline. Will sprang forward enraged, and ready to attack the older woman for disfiguring Elizabeth's glorious skin; there would be no way of ever hiding the marks, effectively ostracizing her from her previous standing in society. To top it all in Will's opinion, Tia Dalma had restyled Elizabeth's hair in a scandalous imitation of Jack's, weaving beads and shells and feathers into braids around her face.

Elizabeth had not reacted to Will's rage and it was left to Gibbs and Barbossa to restrain him from charging back into Tia's shack and demanding an explanation. By way of clarification, Elizabeth had offered only that according to Tia, the runes would buy them an audience with the guardians of Jack's prison, and that the decoration of her hair was another symbolic gesture of commitment to the rescue.

Elizabeth did not share that the meaning of the runes on her wrists represented binding, the one on her forehead - repentance. And she certainly did not mention that there had been a fourth tattoo inked directly over Elizabeth's heart, which Tia declared was the link through which she would have to call Jack back from the afterlife, and was the runic symbol for _love._ By the time Tia Dalma was finished with her, she had delved into every black secret preying on Elizabeth's soul, and engraved each one into her skin for eternity. She was to wear the evidence of her crimes for the world to see, and she was fiercely proud of the opportunity to do so, if it meant that Jack would no longer be gone.

Will's appearance that night had deflected Barbossa's questioning away from Elizabeth's crime, and she had been careful not to be alone with the resurrected Captain since. His questions made her uncomfortable, and called into doubt her ability to perform the colossal undertaking Tia Dalma had entrusted her with. Barbossa seemed so nonchalant towards their commission, in spite of his inglorious past, that Elizabeth became even more morose when faced with the enormity of what lay ahead of them. Because they could not fail. _She could not. _Failure meant never seeing Jack again, and that was not a future she could endure to live in.

'Miss Turner,' Barbossa's clipped voice interrupted her musings. 'Best come down from there and call up the rest of the crew. You'll all be wanting to see this - we're getting close now!'


	3. Chapter 3

'Will, Will,' the recently absent sound of his fiancé's _excited _voice calling from the main deck dragged Will, Gibbs and the rest of the crew above to see what had wrought this change in their lately disconsolate crewmate.

As soon as they emerged, Barbossa was yelling commands at them, which they obeyed for once without grumbling, so surprised were they to be informed by their unwelcome Captain that their destination approached; more than one amongst them had doubted this expedition would attain any true success. For most it had been regarded as some kind of pilgrimage to give them closure for the loss of their Captain, and there had really been little expectation to actually find said Captain again.

The horizon ahead did not look much different at first glance, and Will wondered if Barbossa had sensed the crew's disquiet and was creating a diversion, but when he concentrated he could see that a strange yellowish fog hovered on the line where sky met sea.

Their progress had been so slow up to this point, that Will somehow imagined it would take several more days to come upon the mist, but despite its apparent distance at first sight, the _Dragonfly_ suddenly seemed to be racing towards the strange phenomenon at a breakneck speed. Or maybe it was the mist hurtling towards them.

The closer they drew to the vaporous haze, the more unsettled he became, and looking quickly at his crewmates, Will noticed that it was not just he who was feeling uneasy. He caught Gibbs crossing himself furtively, and Ragetti was muttering rosaries under his breath. Pintel had his hand on his pistol, and even Cotton's parrot had no pithy comment to offer. The native sailors simply fled below decks at first sight of the strange fog.

Will looked back at Barbossa, their guide for this venture; if they were to take their lead from anyone he supposed it should be the man who had allegedly been here before. The Captain was staring intently ahead, seeming to search for something within the oddly swirling depths of the fog; he had let go of the wheel of the _Dragonfly_ and was apparently allowing the ship to drift forwards as though summoned by the miasma itself.

They bore down on the thickening yellow fog, and a rush of inexplicable cold swept over Will. Every nerve screamed at him to turn around and flee this place; he had to grip tightly onto the rail to prevent from running below decks himself to hide from the oppressive chill. The other men all seemed to be experiencing the same trepidation to some degree or another.

The bow of the _Dragonfly_ ultimately penetrated into the roiling fog no more than fifteen minutes after they had first sighted it, and the small vessel quickly became mired in the cold, dense air. Will shivered; he could hardly believe that less than an hour ago they had all been sweltering in the midday heat. There was something profoundly unnatural in this haze, and he wondered why such things constantly managed to surprise him. He had experienced undead pirates, cursed treasure, Davy Jones' semi-piscine crew and a still-beating severed heart. By now he should have accepted that there were more things in Heaven and earth than could be explained away by the new sciences, yet still he continued to disbelieve until he saw evidence.

Barbossa tied off the wheel and left the helm, ignoring the crew huddled by the side of the rail in varying stages of unease, and walked up behind Elizabeth. 'Miss Turner,' he said formally and despite his apprehension, Will felt the customary twinge of pleasure that always ran through him when Barbossa referred to Elizabeth by his name. It temporarily relieved the dreadful fear which preyed on him lately that she was lost to him forever. He quickly noticed however, that neither Elizabeth nor Barbossa seemed to be unnerved by the mist in the same way that he and the crew were.

'Is it time now?' Elizabeth asked Barbossa calmly, and Will had a sudden nasty feeling that Tia Dalma had disclosed several things to them which she had then omitted to tell the rest of the crew.

'Very soon,' Barbossa replied. 'We will be upon the Graveyard of Ships before long; I must prepare. See to it that I am not disturbed until I come back on deck.' He turned suddenly and graced the rest of the crew with a glare that Pintel, Ragetti and even Will remembered uncomfortably from their time serving under his command as Captain of the _Black Pearl_. 'The rest of you scurvy idiots, stay exactly where you are. _Do not_ interrupt me _no matter_ _what _you hear or see. You go overboard in this fog, you'll be lost for ever.'

Elizabeth nodded to him, and went back to staring out into the impenetrable fog. Will glanced around at the crew, but no one seemed the slightest bit inclined to disobey Barbossa's command. They were being forced to face the reality that this expedition was beginning to look a lot more risky than a long voyage on a calm ocean.

Will moved away from the others and approached Elizabeth. 'Do you know what he's going to do?' He asked as she turned impatiently to see who had disturbed her. She made an obvious effort to school her face into a neutral expression as she answered.

'Not exactly; he was Captain of the _Black Pearl_ for several years, their destinies have touched, become entwined - he is endeavoring to find her for us.'

'And if he finds her, then what?' Will asked with some trepidation; he did not like the direction his thoughts were taking him, but seemed unable to prevent their course.

'I really don't know,' Elizabeth replied, turning back to squint through the mire, and Will accepted that he would get no further with this line of questioning. 'We'll have to face that when we come to it,' she added less harshly, as if in apology for her curtness. Will leant his arms on the rail beside her; he was loath to leave her alone in spite of her obvious wish to be so. His head and heart were in a swirling confusion of uncertainty about his fiancée. She had been so distant from him - from all of them, really - since the sinking of the _Black Pearl_ and the loss of Jack, that he wasn't even sure she still regarded them as a couple any more.

During the long sweltering days aboard the _Dragonfly_, Will had found plenty of time to analyse and dissect the devastating last moment in which he had laid eyes on the pirate, and how the older man had been occupied. He had since considered and rejected a thousand different reasons for that brief and shocking glimpse he caught of his fiancée and Jack Sparrow before Gibbs had blocked his sight, shouting directions and chiding Will for delaying; none had been sufficient to understand what was actually happening, or why.

The single conclusion he found himself able to draw was that he would only know the truth if he asked her outright; something he had not yet dared to do because he didn't know if he was brave enough to hear the answer.

Elizabeth had descended into the longboat barely moments after they all settled themselves, and for a second Will could have almost thought his eyes had been playing tricks on him, except that her face was stony and resolute but desperately sad, and tears were tracking down her smoke-blackened cheeks even as she harshly ordered them to leave, whilst fabricating a colossal lie to conceal……._what?_

Will had invented many fantastic and opposing theories concerning the cause of Elizabeth's melancholy, but he could not differentiate the truth from wild conjecture. One thing he was sure of however, was that despite Jack's seeming self-absorption and narcissistic tendencies, unlike himself the older man rarely acted on impulse, even if his purpose was not immediately apparent - buried beneath layer upon layer of subterfuge and misdirection - although he was certainly capable of _re_acting in a second, should it prove necessary.

Captain Jack Sparrow was an opportunist of the greatest magnitude, but in spite of his lazy, dissolute manner and drunken behaviour, the pirate possessed probably the sharpest and most intelligent mind Will had ever encountered. Behind those deceptively sleepy dark eyes dwelt a genius that never stopped plotting, scheming and calculating - Jack Sparrow was constantly anticipating a multitude of different outcomes to any situation and preparing a response to each.

Will had watched him confuse and disorient his challengers with little more than the convolutions of his erratic speech; he had the ability to turn a man's words inside out, upside down and then back upon themselves so that his adversaries were left wondering what had happened. People invariably underestimated Jack, not bothering to look beyond his overt gaudiness and theatrical mannerisms - often to their later detriment; Will knew quite well that Jack cultivated this image, and reveled in his misdirections.

Although his vanity and arrogance were boundless, the self-mocking humour with which Jack proclaimed himself _Captain _Jack Sparrow, mate! made him seem more amiable than abhorrent. Apart of course, from that unfortunate _I've got a jar of dirt!_ ditty he had chanted at Davy Jones, Will amended silently. Even for Jack, that had been not been one of his shining moments.

And that was the crux of it; Will could simply not reconcile what he knew and grudgingly admired of Jack Sparrow - wily manipulator and cunning exploiter, with the sudden, inexplicable decision to deny his very nature and simply surrender. By all logic Jack should have been the first person on board the longboat, heckling them to row faster whilst windmilling frantically with his arms to demonstrate how.

What Will absolutely could not figure out was the part Elizabeth played in Jack's absence from the longboat, and why she had been unable to prevail upon him to abandon the _Black Pearl,_ whilst they had been……on deck together. Jack's decision to stay behind had certainly affected Elizabeth more severely than he could ever have expected it to.

Will had never really taken Jack's flirtatious words to Elizabeth seriously. Had he been pressed for an opinion, he would have judged Captain Sparrow as the kind of man who was inherently allergic to romantic entanglements of any kind, and therefore terminally unable to help flirting with every woman he encountered, just to be sure that none ever took him seriously. Oddly enough, despite his poor opinion of piracy in general, and Jack's elastic morals in particular, Will never once doubted that the other man had behaved as anything less than a perfect gentleman on those occasions when he had found himself alone with Elizabeth.

In fact, Will had been quite sure that Elizabeth was not especially impressed with the infamous Jack Sparrow, having found her childhood idol to have feet of clay - something which no doubt stemmed from being used as a hostage after she had generously interceded with the newly minted Commodore Norrington on his behalf. Certainly, she had spoken few kind words about him until shortly after the aborted hanging in Port Royal.

Whatever had passed between Jack and Elizabeth after she had fled Jamaica on the _Edinburgh Trader _disguised as a boy, and the moment Will reunited with her on Isla Cruces, in the previously inconceivable company of her now dissolute former fiancé and the man who had ultimately destroyed his career, Will would not ask; but it had obviously been redefining if it could compel Elizabeth into the pirate's arms with her _current_ fiancé only yards away, and condemn her to this forlorn state in the face of his passing.

Will steeled himself to ask The Question; it seemed that they were close to attaining their goal - maybe it would be sensible if he prepared himself for whatever exposition would come with the reappearance of Captain Jack Sparrow. He had just opened his mouth when the _Dragonfly _gave an enormous lurch sending Elizabeth toppling into him, and the other members of the crew tumbling to the deck. Elizabeth struggled to her feet not even waiting for his assistance, and leaned dangerously far out over the rail in an attempt to see if they had hit something.

Apparently, they had not; the lurch was followed by a booming noise which Will recognised as an explosion of gunpowder, and almost immediately thick black smoke began billowing up from the hatch. Gibbs and Cotton staggered towards the stairs, to be halted by Elizabeth's voice, raised to a commanding bellow.

'Don't even consider it!' She yelled. 'Stay exactly where you are and leave him to do what he has to.' Both men jerked to a halt, bemused by her ferocity, and then fell back to cling onto the rail again.

The _Dragonfly_ bucked a few more times, each one less violently than the last, until she settled to a steady rocking once again. Smoke was still roiling out of the hatch, but now it was joined by rising tendrils of bluish steam which seemed to be emanating from the gun ports along the starboard side of the ship. The two vapors met and coagulated a few feet away from the side of the ship, and a strange phenomenon began to occur; the resultant gasses from the explosion started to push the unnatural yellow fog apart, making a clear path forwards, almost like a tunnel through the haze.

Barbossa appeared from below at this moment, yelling at the crew to take their places, which they did speedily without pausing to make comment on how black the Captain's face looked, or how singed the feather in his hat was. A breeze had sprung up seemingly from nowhere, and it filled the _Dragonfly's _sails as she surged forward into the channel.

Gibbs was the first to see it. 'Mother of God, what is that?' He moaned, as he caught a glimpse of a hulking dark shadow materialize in the fog which was rapidly closing the passageway behind them as they passed. It's bulk was almost twice that of the _Dragonfly_ and it was catching up with them rapidly, creaking and groaning as it drew nearer.

'Don't look back!' Barbossa snapped, and Gibbs quickly took up the slack he had allowed on the rope, resolutely staring away from their pursuer. 'Just concentrate on getting us out the other side before the Essence dissipates. We must be through the fog and out of the Graveyard before it's done!'

It was another five of the most nerve-wracking, traumatic minutes that they had ever experienced before the fog seemed to start thinning ahead of them, giving just enough inducement to squeeze the last burst of speed from the small ship, and finally they could begin to see the horizon in front of them again, the rolling of small swells on the water's surface, the unrelenting blue of the sky above.

Will was the first to dare a quick glance backwards in the hope that their dark pursuer had fallen behind, but as soon as his gaze lit upon the object in question, the rope he was holding dropped from his hands and jerked Gibbs sideways with the sudden increased tension; the other man turned to berate him, and found himself mesmerized by the same sight that had rendered Will speechless.

The _Dragonfly_ ploughed on into the clear waters on the other side of the fog, as the phantom trailing in her wake began to emerge from the shrouding thickness of the distorting yellow fog.

'Further! Faster!,' Barbossa yelled, seeing that he had already lost the attention of two of his crew to the miracle following behind them. 'We must get _clear!'_

He was fighting a loosing battle against a foe who conquered with a single sight; bereft of any action by her crew, the _Dragonfly _began to slow until she was drifting languorously forwards whilst every man on board stared behind her at the ghost which had shadowed them out of the bleak fog.

'God in Heaven, it's really her,' Gibbs muttered finally, the first to find his tongue. 'What kind of voodoo has the power to raise a ship from the depths?' He crossed himself, and Ragetti quickly followed suit.

They continued to stare, unable to comprehend the enormity of what Barbossa had achieved, until Will managed to shake off the spell which was enslaving them all. He looked around for Elizabeth and found her hanging on to the banister rail up to the steering deck. She was a white as a sheet, and he had no doubt that whatever magic Tia Dalma and Barbossa had concocted to raise the _Black Pearl_ from the depths, she had not been privy to it.

The rest of the crew were finally finding their voices, and the hum of excited disbelief surged around them until Pintel's voice rose above the others as he exclaimed: 'Look - there ain't a mark on 'er! It's just like she weren't never even attacked by the Kraken!'

'_Oh!' _Will heard Elizabeth's indrawn gasp of breath as she realised the truth of Pintel's words, and he took an involuntary step towards her for she looked truly dreadful, as if she were about to pass out, but before he could reach her she clamped a hand over her mouth, staggered inelegantly to the rail and vomited wretchedly over the side.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Three**

There was sand. Lots of sand. Lots and lots of sand, and pretty much nothing else.

It seemed like an awful waste of sand, in Jack's considered opinion. A nice sweeping expanse of sand should end by the gently lapping shallows of a beckoning ocean, with a ship (preferably the _Black Pearl_) floating gently at anchor just offshore where the deeper waters started.

Oh, he had read about places like these, heard tales in the bars and _tavernas _of the Mediterranean ports, but he had never been tempted to see for himself. To Jack, any extended time spent on land soon became a chore and the ocean was always whispering in his ear, distracting him - calling for his return. So although he found the idea of sand without a shore intriguing and astonishing, he had never imagined he would experience it for himself.

Which was probably why he was here now. If a place would ever have been envisioned as his own personal Hell, then this was it, and whoever designed it had done a slap-up job of getting it right. All this sand; all these thousands of square miles of beach and no ocean in sight - surely this was meant to be Hell, even if it wasn't _quite_ succeeding.

Jack sat cross-legged in the vast arena of his sand-locked prison and waited. Time had no meaning here, and sensation was denied him. He was neither hot nor cold; he didn't feel hungry or thirsty, and although he remembered rum, he could not call to mind the flavour of it, which he found very sad as he also clearly recalled how much he had enjoyed drinking it when he was - _alive? _Well - somewhere that was not here, anyway.

There was absolutely nothing to do except think, and with all other pastimes denied to him, Jack had been doing plenty of that. He had no idea how long he had been here - the landscape was unchanging; day after day of relentless blue sky and fine golden sand were almost enough to drive a man insane, but Jack had a niggling feeling at the back of his mind that something was _wrong_ about this place, and it was enough to keep him from sinking into dementia.

If one wanted to stay in keeping with the omnipresent _motif_; it rubbed in the back of his mind like a grain of sand in an oyster shell, and he could only hope that eventually it would produce a pearl. A really big one, with black sails, might be nice.

Jack turned around and faced in the opposite direction; the view was exactly the same, but it made him feel like he was doing something. When he first awakened here, he had done a lot of yelling and threatening and demanding to be told what was happening. Since the sun never set, and oddly Jack never really felt the need to sleep, he couldn't tell how long he had shouted himself hoarse before he accepted that no one was going to answer.

Next, he tried to walk out of wherever _here_ was. After several more eternities of unending golden dunes stretched out as far as the eye could see in every direction, he stopped walking and sat down. Being stripped of everything but his own mind, he decided to find a reason for all this.

It had been a long time since he was a small boy being taken to church on Sundays by his _ayah_, but he was fairly sure the bible didn't talk of consigning Hell-bound sinners to solitary reflection in barren deserts as punishment; there was typically far more fire and brimstone involved. He was also pretty sure that only a few sand dwelling insects could possibly regard this place as Heaven, so he had to conclude that he had ended up someplace else entirely.

The question was where and why, and it was certainly good for a great deal of contemplation, and since Jack currently found he had a lot of spare time on his hands, he dedicated himself to this problem with alacrity.

He had emerged from his ordeal in the Kraken's belly into this bright sandy place, remarkably unscathed physically. Looking at himself now, he was cleaner and tidier than he could remember being for several years past. This was evidently a product of his environment, because he could recall quite clearly the rancid stench of the creature's digestive tract, and the feeling of his boots filling up with hot, sour stomach acid as he battled deeper down the Kraken's throat, determined to cause as much discomfort as possible before he expired from either the smell or the lack of oxygen.

It was quite the biblical experience, being swallowed whole - and whilst he had certainly not been expecting the experience to end in quite this manner, it did seem far less _final_ than he had anticipated when he leapt into the gaping maw of the beast.

Jack had no idea how he had made the transition from sea creature's belly to burning desert. Something had obviously intervened at some point between his last conscious memory of battling the Kraken, and his first experience of _here_, when he had woken to find himself face down with a mouth full of sand.

He supposed he had died of suffocation - either that or he had drowned in Kraken sewage. He certainly hadn't been torn limb from limb as he might have anticipated given the extraordinarily large quantity of long and sharply pointed teeth that the Kraken possessed. But in truth he didn't feel particularly _dead _either; he seemed to have a real physical presence, he was still solid and his feet left prints in the endless sand when he walked, so he appeared to be more substantial than some mere spirit or a shade of his former self.

He reflected frequently on how wretchedly disappointed Davy Jones would be, if he knew how little actual pain and suffering Jack had undergone as it transpired. Quite probably an eternity of sitting around this place with nothing but your thoughts for company might eventually drive one insane, but that still remained to be seen, and Jack rather thought that Davy Jones was the type that favored a more bloody and painful dismembering kind of termination for his enemies.

For the present moment however, Jack was restricted to a regime of wait and see; his years of surviving on the very edge of the law and the hangman's noose had honed his sense of self preservation to a fine art - and despite a major oversight in the shape of a tentacled sea-beast - had served him well thus far; and it was this highly cultivated sixth sense that kept insisting there was something which didn't fit here, and made him feel as if there was unfinished business still to be dealt with.

He lay back on the sand and rested one arm over his face to shade his eyes. The sun always seemed to be directly overhead in a perpetual midday, and even beneath his kohl-darkened lids, his eyes ached from the relentless glare.

When he had spent his requisite daily quota of time ruminating on the encounter with the Kraken, Jack's thoughts turned as usual to another sharp-toothed beastie, equally as deadly but much better smelling and the author of his current predicament; that undeniably self-serving pirate lass, Lizzie Swann. Even now, despite all the time he had been given to speculate on the matter, he was still unsure whether he would have gone down with the _Black Pearl_ if she had not forced the issue.

His one thought in taking the longboat in the first place had been to get after bloody ex- Commodore James bloody Norrington and retrieve Jones' damned heart from him, the sneaky, thieving double-crosser. He had been absolutely furious with himself; he couldn't believe he had underestimated the former naval officer so completely that he had not seen this coming! Halfway back to Isla Cruces, he paused to wonder if it wasn't a bit reckless to leap back into the fray against Norrington and Davy Jones' crew without any back up. Hadn't they just fled this party? Maybe he should have brought some of the crew with him; and guns - lots of those.

The sudden loss of his single-minded focus had opened his eyes to how badly the _Black Pearl_ and those on board were faring against the Kraken, and the realisation that he was going to lose everything that mattered to him. Something hard and painful knotted up inside him; it was a sensation previously unknown to him, and even before he was aware of thinking it, a voice in the back of his head was yelling at him _- You're going to lose her, and this time you'll _never _get her back. _

He stared for an endless moment at the injured _Black Pearl_ before snatching out his compass; for the first time in months the wretched instrument did not waver or spin, but was pointing remorselessly back the way he had come before he even had the lid fully open. He turned the boat around and frantically began rowing back to his ship muttering to himself as he pushed faster, _I'm coming, hold on - hold on - just wait for me, don't you sink on me before I get there, darlin'._

Despite all his teasing, insinuation and implication, he had been genuinely surprised by Elizabeth's embracing of her pirate side. Although he legitimately believed her to be truly suited to the buccaneer life, he had always suspected that the burden of her upbringing would eventually defeat her true inclinations. That his vindication should come at such an _inopportune _moment, when he had but minutes to enjoy it, was surely the greatest irony in his life.

However, he could not regret the memory of her silky hot tongue thrusting into his mouth and her small hands grasping his hair as they pressed closer and closer together, until her thumbs were massaging his cheek, and every thought had vanished from his head but for the reality of _her_ - them. There hadn't even been time to hold her to him; his arms hung uselessly by his sides as he had tried to comprehend what was happening between them.

Isolated from the desperate race to save their lives which was going on around them, he and Elizabeth were frozen in a moment stolen from time, as they finally gave in to the yearning which they had both been denying; she likely more so than him - probably from as far back as the very instant that he hauled her out of Port Royal bay, dripping wet and half naked, and they locked eyes for the first time. Jack knew that he had definitely woken hard and unsatisfied from more than one dream featuring a naked and willing Miss Swann in the starring role. And to find that the reality of her adventurous tongue curling around his, her slender body pressed against him, even fully dressed - so far _exceeded_ his imagination, was an unbearably cruel irony that he never failed to appreciate.

It wasn't until he had been in this barren place for some time that Jack had finally recognised where his head and heart had been fixed as he raced back towards the _Black Pearl_, and it had not been with the majestic ship at all, but that wretched, infuriating, bewitching slip of a she-pirate instead.

And he truly couldn't fault her for her actions; not when they so closely mirrored too many of his own past decisions. She had done what was necessary for herself and those she had a responsibility to. She had acted for the good of the many over the good of the one, even though Jack could see with the benefit of all this wonderful hindsight, that despite her harsh words, the decision had nearly broken her.

No, she wasn't sorry - she was absolutely devastated. Her actions had forced her to look inside herself and find that she was someone she didn't even recognise any more - much as he had been forced to examine his own motivations since he got to this place, and discover that he too had been fundamentally altered by the experience.

'Oh, bugger,' he muttered into his sleeve, 'I'm in love with her, aren't I?' He smacked himself on the forehead with his palm. 'You are an idiot, Jack Sparrow,' he muttered, then, 'bloody hell, I _really_ need to get out of this place.'

'Yes, I would imagine you do!' Said an irritated voice from his elbow, and Jack was not ashamed to admit that he yelped from the shock and nearly jumped out of his skin. 'Good thing they're ahead of schedule. Now we can get started. _At last_!'

Jack leapt to his feet, instinctively reaching for his sword and pistol - neither of which was there of course, nor had they been since he got to this barren place. After the countless days of solitude, the spontaneous appearance of another human being was almost enough to send him over the edge. Finding himself unarmed, Jack resorted to kicking sand in the face of the intruder, momentarily forgetting that since he had been alone for however long, the presence of another person to talk to might not necessarily be a bad thing.

Shaking his head to clear away the grains, Jack's visitor rose to his feet and glared at the pirate. 'Jonathan David Sparrow - that is no way to greet your father after fifteen years of separation.' He scolded, taking off his coat to shake the sand out of it.

'Bloody, buggering Hell,' Jack muttered, struck dumb as much by the older man's words, as by the vibrant, curling tattoo of a mermaid which wound up his arm from his open shirt cuff and confirmed that this was indeed, Sparrow senior.

'Hmm,' Jack's father continued when he was satisfied that he had removed all clinging traces of sand from his clothes. 'Just as I remember you - childish and unfocused. What on earth were you thinking to allow yourself to get stuck in a place like this? That any child of my loins should have sunk to such a state! Entering into a bargain with Davy Jones of all people! If it was up to me, I would let you rot here for Eternity after all! Did _nothing _I taught you about the value of back-up plans sink into that rum-sozzled brain of yours? Sadly, it is now no longer my decision to make any more. Seems like you have caught the attention of the Higher-Ups.' The tone which he employed made it clear that this was not necessarily a Good Thing at all.

'Didn't I warn you about getting mixed up with that voodoo woman? And did you listen? Back to that damned swamp time and again, bartering bits of shine for bits of magic. And now she's poking around - _here _- casting her spells and scribing her runes. You can't just ignore that kind of magic, m'boy. It calls to you, and you _will_ have to answer!'

Jack was finally regaining his balance at the sight of his long-lost, little lamented paternal figure, and ignoring practically all of the older man's diatribe, he asked disbelievingly, 'Is that _really_ you? Or am I having a hallucination - that's probably actually quite likely, given the heat and isolation.' He answered himself. 'But why did I have to hallucinate you - you're ugly and you _nag_!'

The next thing Jack was aware of was his head spinning sideways as his father delivered a cuff to his ear so reminiscent of his youth that he could no longer deny this was the genuine article. 'Bloody Hell! What did you do that for? Aren't I being punished enough?' He grumbled petulantly, massaging the sore area.

'Oh, stop whining and act like the Scourge of the Seven Seas you're so fond of telling people you are!' Sparrow Senior said unsympathetically. 'Now, where's that damned compass of yours?'

Jack puffed. 'It doesn't work,' he said flatly, 'and no, I'm not in denial, _or_ confused. It's just simply broken, must've got smashed when I was fighting the beastie. Needle is stuck in one spot and never moves no matter what direction I turn in.'

'Let me see it anyway,' his father demanded, and Jack passed the compass over. He clicked open the lid and screwed his face up unattractively as he examined the instrument. 'Did it ever just occur to you that there is only one way out of this place, and that's where it's pointing? Direction is subjective - leaving here isn't about North or South, it's not about where, it's about _how._'

'What's that supposed to mean?' Jack demanded. 'You're talking in riddles. You sound like me.'

'No time for that,' said his father. 'Your time here is almost up - But I'm afraid that means no more peaceful sandy dunes. If you're going back, it has to be as you left. I'm sorry my boy - but they're getting nearer now. You need to be ready.'

'What -' Jack got no further, for as suddenly as he had appeared his father was gone, and with him the desert, the sand, the sun and the endless blue sky. Jack collapsed to his knees, suddenly inundated by a myriad of aches and pains in his now bruised and bleeding body, and choking on the overwhelming stink that clung to his ripped and stained clothes. He appeared to have been transported to a small, dank tidal cave set in a jagged shoreline and was currently collapsed on a rough shingle beach.

However, his sword was now clutched in his hand and his pistol tucked in his belt, although Jack wasn't quite sure how much use they would be given how battered and exhausted his body was, and the very minor fact that one of the Kraken's uglier, bigger cousins seemed to be sunning itself in the mouth of the cave.

Thanks to everyone who has reviewed. I'm not keen on taking up a chapter to reply to comments; I hate thinking a story has been updated myself and then finding it's only an author note, so disappointing! If you need an answer on anything, nip over to my LJ and ask me there; I'm more than happy to gossip all day!


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

They climbed aboard the _Black Pearl_ with Will in the lead. No one spoke; it was as though they dared not disturb the funereal quiet of the newly risen ship. Although there had been talk of finding Jack aboard, both during the long weeks of their journey - and more excitedly since the _Black Pearl _had materialized behind them, Elizabeth had never really believed it would be that simple. The ship had been attacked, crippled and sunk, but Davy Jones had wanted Jack - the Kraken had no doubt separated him from the broken _Pearl_ long before she descended to her watery grave, bound for a fate far worse than simply drowning.

The moment Elizabeth set foot on the soaked deck of the salvaged _Pearl_ she knew Jack was not there, but she made no assertion to the crew as they scurried off in different directions to scour every inch of the ship under the direction of Mr Gibbs.

Will stared at her for a long moment as she stood frozen in the spot where she had ascended the ladder, her head down studying the toes of her boots, before he too moved below decks to conduct his own search.

Elizabeth found herself momentarily alone with her demons, until the nudge of Barbossa's shoulder as he climbed aboard behind her - the last man to cross over from the _Dragonfly_ - brought her out of her reverie.

'He's not here,' Barbossa said, giving voice to her thoughts. 'It wouldn't be this easy.'

Elizabeth merely inclined her head in acknowledgement, and Barbossa strode past her towards what had formerly been his cabin, where he'd once plied her with food and wine and told her ghost stories she hadn't believed.

Alone at last, Elizabeth turned to face the scene of her crime, and immediately her eyes fell upon Jack's last known location, she felt a fracture in the awful emptiness which had numbed her heart since the moment she had turned away from Jack Sparrow and fled from this very deck into the longboat. It took mere seconds for the crack to rupture, and hopeless, unrelenting pain rushed in to fill every corner and space in her heart.

She moved without conscious direction, her fingers trailing along the timbers in a subtle echo of Jack's own final farewell to the _Black Pearl_; her eyes sought out the shackles she had used upon him, still hanging exactly where she had found them. Everything was restored precisely as it had been before the Kraken's attack; it was as if she had stepped backwards in time, and none of the past two months had occurred. _Everything_ that is, except for Elizabeth herself, and if they didn't find Jack, she truly doubted she would ever be restored.

Unable to bear the accusing reality of cold metal, she leaned her forehead against the mast and her eyes fell shut, silent tears welling out of the corners and tracking through the dirt on her face. With her eyes closed the images were even worse; instead of the harsh reality of the undamaged ship, behind her eyelids, Jack was there - and instead of rope and timber, she was pressed against his warm, hard chest - doomed to re-enact her betrayal for all eternity.

Elizabeth wrapped her arms around the trunk of the mast as if she were embracing Jack himself and laid her cheek against the blackened timber. If only, she thought, there could have been another kiss for her to remember; another one - not borne of betrayal and deception - for him to remember, as she abandoned him to reap the consequences of her distraction.

There had been so many opportunities lost, she thought wretchedly. Even as far back as their time marooned by Barbossa on that Godforsaken spit of land, she was sure Jack would have been amenable had she given the slightest indication that she might welcome his attentions; but she had been so intent on the make-believe pirate she had created out of William Turner, that she had totally missed the real thing standing right in front of her. Fool girl.

Her father had given Will to her on the crossing from England, and she was determined to keep him, never mind the rush of excitement which had flowed through her body when she revived on the docks in Port Royal to find the most exotically beautiful man she had ever seen hovering over her, his dark eyes seeming to penetrate straight to the centre of her being.

Maybe that was why she had clung so fervently to her mirage of Will, and used Jack's subsequent seizing of her as a reason to disdain him; because she had known from the moment she locked eyes with him for the very first time, that he would be the one with the power to turn her inside out and make her face up to who she really was, what she wanted - and that it was never going to be Will.

She had spent the eight months leading up to her aborted marriage in a state of blithe denial. She _was _doing the right thing; there was no doubt of it in her mind. Yet after the fiasco of her wedding day, more and more people had cast hints that they were not surprised at its disintegration.

Determined to prove all the nay-Sayers wrong, she set off to follow Will on his naively honourable quest, and if the greatest part of her excitement in the new adventure stemmed from the knowledge that she would incidentally get to see Jack Sparrow again, she absolutely refused to acknowledge it.

She was thrown off balance when Jack immediately turned the full force of his suggestive words onto her after she tracked him down to the _Black Pearl's _berth in Tortuga, with a sotted James Norrington in tow. Previously he had only skated on the fringes of outright flirtation with her, and to hear him insinuate in that sultry, provocative voice of his that he wanted to see her _naked_, flustered and enticed her so much that he had been able to inveigle her into his latest mad scheme with barely any protest. Even James, drunk and disheveled as he was, had retained more natural misgiving than she.

By the time she had straightened her head out they were already at sea, and Jack was turning up the heat on his subtle seduction to a level that someone as relatively inexperienced as Elizabeth could hardly hope to resist. The damage had been done in those first moments of reunion, and once planted in her mind, the notion of wearing nothing in Jack's cabin soon grew to dominate her thoughts.

Elizabeth was sure it was this insidious, uninvited - but now irrevocably planted suggestion - which was responsible for her uncontrollable impulse to respond in kind when Jack next flirted with her. And even though immediately the coy words left her mouth, she had known she was in trouble - that this was a battle of wits she could never hope to win - she found herself unable to stop, incapable of heeding that warning voice which told her to run as fast as she possibly could in the opposite direction. Not even the triumphant gleam in Jack's eyes as he pranced off with those infernal Letters of Marque, which she had obtained at gunpoint and great personal risk, was sufficient to restore her senses.

And after that moment every encounter, every word, every heated glance and subtle brush of his arm against hers as he passed by a fraction closer than required - every time their eyes met and lingered for an instant longer than necessary before his slid teasingly down to trace the lines of her body which were exposed by her boy's garb - only served to inflame the roiling fires of awareness that had every nerve ending beneath her skin screaming with the anticipation of actual contact.

It had so nearly happened a few days later; after another unsettling consultation with the dread compass, she had been brooding on the stairs up to the wheel deck, and he appeared as if summoned by her subconscious desire, rolling towards her with his distinctive gait and settling himself a step below her, his chest pressed against her thigh causing the majority of her concentration to be focused on not leaning closer to him.

She accepted the proffered bottle of rum, hoping that the fiery spirit would distract her from the other heat burning in the pit of her stomach - and _lower _even, despite the minimal contact. The unmentionable parts of her body had _never_ reacted like this before - not even on those few occasions when she and Will managed to escape the chaperones Governor Swann had set upon them, to find momentary privacy and indulge in furtive caresses which always left Will flushed, short of breath and beaming with dazed happiness, and herself vaguely wondering what Estrella had been giggling about all this time.

She had not immediately absorbed Jack's words; the unfamiliar throbbing between her thighs was too intense and she was considering rubbing them together in an effort to relieve the ache when she realised he was talking about _marriage_ - in his own convoluted fashion. Elizabeth was ashamed to admit that her heart actually stopped beating for a moment, before racing away at twice the normal rate when it occurred to her that he might be proposing, until she filtered his words and realised he could hardly offer to perform the ceremony in his capacity as Captain, and also be one of the participants.

The abject disappointment that this realisation caused in her breast gave her the resolve to leap up and start her diatribe on how different they were from each other, even while she knew every word was a lie. But Jack was relentless, following her, taunting her, seeing inside her soul, and she had to deflect his attention from her weakness before he recognised it for what it was and pounced. She had tried to turn the tables on him - use his own words against him, but still he had disarmed her by making the admission she was too scared to make herself.

Stalking her, he had admitted that he _did _want to know, and he was far bolder than she as he trapped her between his hard body and one of the _Pearl's _canons, leaning ever closer and brushing the backs of his dirty fingers so tenderly over the curve of her jaw. At this juncture Elizabeth's common sense rolled over and waved a flag of surrender, as she began the journey to meet him half way. Even though her lips were still spouting words of denial, her eyes were half closed in expectation, her gaze fixed on that sinfully luscious mouth, quivering in anticipation of it's joining with her own.

_Oh God!_ Jack Sparrow was going to kiss her and she wasn't going to stop him! In fact she was not only going to _let_ him, but worse - she _wanted_ it with a desperation she would never have believed herself capable of. Her lips were already imagining the pressure of his, tingling from the rum-sweetened heat of his breath, and the feather-light brush of his braided hair against her bare neck was sending shivers of delight along every nerve in her body. Through desire-laden eyes she watched his mouth opening slightly as it approached, his tongue skimming his bottom lip ready to plunder hers.

And then - _nothing! _Jack was staring over her right shoulder, fists clenched, eyes wide with shock, and he was once again at a respectable distance from her mouth. She had been wound up so tight with expectation that she could hardly breathe. Her voice came out as little better than a strangled, breathless squeak when she tried to cover her acute frustration with some crock of nonsense about being proud of Jack for behaving like a gentleman.

Of course, as it turned out, that had been the last opportunity for either of them to capitulate to the inevitable. Fate, in the form of Davy Jones was catching up with Jack, and little though Elizabeth could have known it, the next time she was to be that close to him, her fiancé would have been restored to her, her supposed mission fulfilled, and she would be in the process of consigning Jack Sparrow to the Kraken, and herself to wretchedness for the safety of six other men.

With the benefit of hindsight, and the sure knowledge of how this world felt without Jack in it, she knew that instead of fleeing when someone - possibly Mr Gibbs - had sighted land, she should have grabbed onto Jack, pinned him against the rail and taken what she wanted, as he had been taunting her to do. Then he might have known that what she wanted wasn't to be a _pirate_ after all, but something more tangible, more real - just a man, in fact. If she had kissed him then, how differently might the events on Isla Cruces, and everything that followed after have ultimately played out?

Elizabeth slipped her hand down the mast until her fingers came in contact with the manacles she had used on Jack. She slipped her right wrist into the cold metal; her hand passed easily into the loop for she was fine-boned and lean from the weeks of melancholy. Jack's hand would not have slid so easily _out_ of its imprisonment. She had wanted to know what it felt like for him in his last moments - to be shackled and sent to your death this way, but she couldn't even share that with him.

Fat tears welled up in her eyes and escaped down her face. She barely noticed them, pressing herself closer to the mast as if she could recreate her last moments with Jack, the way the _Pearl _had restored itself.

'It was a lie - I'm sorry - I _am_ sorry. I am. You have to forgive me,' she whispered, hoping somehow that Jack could hear her through the separation of the afterlife. 'I am _so_ sorry. Please, _please _forgive me….'

'Don't cry, Elizabeth,' a voice said sadly from behind, and a hand descended on her shoulder. 'Of course I forgive you. I love you, you know I do.' Apparently he was under the misapprehension that she could be aware of something other than her own anguish, and had heard his approach.

Elizabeth tensed under his touch for a moment without turning to look at him. 'It's not your forgiveness I need, and that is not what I am sorry for,' she replied harshly. She hadn't the heart for artifice - not here, not in the place where she had carried out the ultimate betrayal, and if it exposed her true feelings to Will, then so be it.

'Elizabeth -?' Will muttered, reaching for her hand and steeling himself to finally broach the forbidden subject; it seemed a fitting time to do so, standing as they were in the shadow of the place where it had occurred. 'I saw you both. I know you ki -' he stopped suddenly as his fingers encountered the shackles around Elizabeth's wrist. He lifted her hand up as far as the chains would stretch from the hook in the mast, and gave her a baffled look. 'Elizabeth - what -?' he asked in confusion.

Elizabeth turned and glared at him before tugging her wrist away from him and closing her other hand protectively around the cold metal. A diplomatic man might have chosen this moment to retreat, but Will was ever reckless and impulsive. A shocking and surely incomprehensible idea was starting to take root in his head, which shed disturbing light on Elizabeth's erratic mood swings and unwarranted misery these past weeks.

Everything which he had found baffling about Jack's valiant sacrifice suddenly began to make a dreadful kind of sense in the wake of the horrific suspicions which were forming in Will's mind. Unfortunately, confirming his assessment of Jack's character in this instance brought with it the assassination of Elizabeth's own. If he shut his eyes, Will could even picture Jack tugging on the manacles and bouncing in frustration when he couldn't release himself, much as he had in Brown's smithy on the day they all first met, when Will barricaded the door to him with his sword through the latch.

Yet how could _Elizabeth_ have done such a thing to him? How could the woman Will loved and wanted to marry even be capable of the terrible things he was imagining?

Now, Jack was no stranger to them, not just some criminal on the run from the law - they _knew_ him, they had fought with him and _for _him - sailed on his ship, he had become a part of their lives however unintentionally. It was _Jack_ - spoiled, daft, drunken Jack with all his wild idiosyncrasies and skewed sense of morality, who had manipulated and hoodwinked and lied to them time and again, yet still saved their lives - not exactly a friend, but no longer simply the legendary pirate who had rescued a young girl from drowning and then used her as a hostage to preserve his own dissolute hide.

Will stared at his fiancée as if he had never seen her before.

'_Elizabeth! _No! Tell me you didn't do this!' he groaned, feeling sick. 'You never gave him the chance, did you? Never gave him the opportunity to choose whether to stay behind and face the Kraken or leave with us. No wonder you can't live with yourself any more.' Will felt as if the very foundation his world was built upon had crumbled beneath his feet. He closed his eyes and braced himself for what he was about to say next. 'I only hope he can give you the absolution you need if we find him again. If he does, he's a far better man than I ever gave him credit for. I don't know if I could.' He bowed his head and left her there, ostensibly tied to the mast and her last memory of Jack Sparrow.

Will's harsh words, bluntly confirming all her worst fears for Jack's return, seemed to release in Elizabeth something that had been locked down ever since they fled the decks of this ship months before. Indeed, even though she had shed many tears over Jack, all had been silent testimonies to her guilt and anguish. She had never broken down and simply cried, but she did so now. Sliding down the mast until she was crumpled in a ball at the bottom of it, her right hand still dangling through the shackles, she burst into tears; huge wrenching sobs tore through her until her whole body was shaking with the force of her weeping. She curled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her free arm around them, rocking back and forth, as the storm of grief coursed through her.

Disturbed by the sudden sobbing, Barbossa abandoned his search of the Captain's cabin and emerged on deck to chastise whoever was creating the God-awful noise, but he halted in his tracks at seeing the girl he had come to regard as a worthy sailor crumpled into a miserable ball at his feet. Like Will, it didn't take Barbossa long to perceive Elizabeth's hand caught in the shackle and put together the sequence of events which had brought her to this anguished state. Obviously returning to the scene of the crime, as it were, had been too much for her thinly stretched control.

Unlike Will however, Barbossa was pleased with the conclusions he had drawn. It meant that Tia Dalma had not been playing them a false line after all. His duty was done; he had taken the _Pearl _from Jack, and had brought it back. This slip of a girl had taken his life, and it would be up to her to restore it.

'So, Miss Turner, we _finally _discover your qualifications for the task ahead.' He said briskly with no trace of sympathy, moving to stand beside her. 'Get up and make yourself presentable. You have work to do; and no time to lose. I assume that the witch gave you instructions - just as she gave me mine.'

Many thanks to all reviewers. The next chapter of this story currently stands at 19,000 words, and will need a lot of editing into smaller segments before it gets posted. But - on the plus side, there _are_ 19,000 words written, so you know there will be more soon!

Thanks for your support. There are many more wonderful J/E stories (and discussion and art etc) on the Sparrabeth Live Journal site, where this story is also posted. If you have never discovered the joys of this site, I urge you to take a look.


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