Disclaimer: All recognizable characters belong to Disney.
A/N: Taking a respite from my Sparrabeth fics brings about this. I don't know what it is. Maybe you do?
Dead Certain
By Sinnamon Spider
There was something gritty on his face, and Jack was fairly certain that was what startled him into wakefulness. He struggled into a sitting position, then swiped his sleeve across his face, brushing the grit from his skin. It sprinkled into his lap, white and sandy-looking.
"Sand?" he muttered aloud, shading his eyes against the harsh glare of the sun and casting about for some clue as to where he was. When he had last been conscious, he had been toasting a lovely sunset with a particularly hefty and delicious bottle of rum in his little dinghy, in which there definitely no sand.
He clambered to his feet, dusting the offensive particles from his coat and breeches. With a sigh of relief, he caught sight of his dinghy lying some dozen yards away. It looked forlorn and accusing in its beleaguered state, haphazardly beached on its side, as though it had been run aground.
Jack squinted out at the water, trying to decide if the tide would come in and wash his only mode of transportation back into the ocean. He moved across the beach and tugged the dinghy a few feet further up the shore, taking no chances, then ambled off across the white sand.
"I wonder what happened to that delectable bottle of rum," he mused absently as he rounded a curve in the beach. The sight of a huge black shape lying on the sand firmly put the thought of rum into its little compartment in the back of his mind as he observed the massive form.
Suddenly the beach seemed very familiar, as did the black mass that lay upon it. Although he had approached from the opposite side of the island, he had certainly been here before.
The rotting corpse of the Kraken lay before him.
He sighed and moved closer. The great glassy orange eye that had regarded him so seriously when he and Barbossa had first come upon the body was turning black with decay. Shrieking birds swarmed around the rotting flesh, and there were deep indentations of teeth on the lower parts of the carcass.
Jack laid his hand on the corpse, ignoring the way the putrefying flesh gave way beneath his touch. True, this beast had been the cause of his demise, but now it was still and unconcerned in death and Jack found he felt similarly.
Turning his back on the Kraken, Jack returned to his dinghy. With a cry of delight, he located his discarded bottle of rum not far from the little boat. He uncorked it, look a long swig, and then set about returning his trusty craft back to the sea.
Jack recognized the island as the Black Pearl approached and winced, but the ship was in dire need of repair after the fight she had endured as he reclaimed her from Barbossa. He ordered her beached and as the crew set about the repairs, he looked down the beach to where he knew the corpse of the Kraken lay.
Some strange compulsion began to move him across the sand. He shrugged and went along with it, despite his confusion. What more meaning could the decaying corpse hold?
He rounded the curve of the beach again – and stopped dead in his tracks.
The great sea creature was gone. Nothing remained to mark its existence other than strange depressions in the sand that disappeared even as he watched, the wind shifting them out of shape. It was though it had never existed.
Soul-shrinking fear overtook Jack. With fumbling hands, he removed a tiny glass bottle from within his vest. He could barely undo the wax seal, but eventually wrestled it open.
Staring, horror-struck, at the spot where the Kraken had laid, the last of its kind, Jack Sparrow downed the bottle of Aqua de Vida.