I don't even know where this came from. It's been about three/four years since I posted anything on here and the idea for this little oneshot came to me from watching a couple of JE videos on YouTube. It's pretty dark, and there are themes that might offend/disturb some people, so don't say I didn't warn you.

Enjoy!

Not Long Enough

He didn't know how long it had been.

Everything around him was dark and inconsiderate; the harsh edges of silence crept in around him as he sat, deep in thought but thinking of nothing, in his hollow cabin. He'd lost something, and the longer he sat slumped in his chair, his hat lowered to cover his misty eyes, the harder it was to forget.

He clutched a half-empty bottle of rum in his left hand, occasionally swinging it up to his mouth to take a drink, each gulp stinging his dry, chapped lips. It numbed nothing anymore; every breath he took seemed to radiate pain and he was surprised he hadn't yet choked to death on it. Maybe it hadn't been long enough.

He'd lost all concept of time since it happened. He could have spent anything from a second to a year sitting in that room, drinking his blackened soul away and still he would have felt like no substantial amount of time had passed. It would never be long enough, not even when his body finally did give up would he feel freed from this torment.

Occasionally he thought he was dead. In the deadened moments between one agonizing thought and the next, he thought it entirely plausible that his heart had stopped beating, his lungs had stopped breathing, and he'd gone. Then the image burned into the sides of his mind would resurface and he would continue wishing in vain that he had died this time; that for once it had been real.

Her face had been so pale when he found her.

She'd warned him.

He didn't listen. He should have seen it coming.

The endless cycles of blame continued over and over until he began to wonder how he ever managed to think of anything other than this, even when life was still relatively normal. Surely it was not possible to think of something other than being entirely at fault. Not for him anyway.

His hand was halfway to his mouth, the last drops of rum swirling in the bottom, when he saw the boots. Even in the darkened room he managed to see them and for the briefest second he managed to wonder who they could possibly belong to before he remembered he couldn't possibly have normal thoughts again.

Clenching his eyes shut, he chugged the last remnants of rum before letting the bottle drop to the floor, where it splintered into a thousand tiny shards of glass. He didn't recall hearing the sound, or feeling the pain in his hand when a shard lodged itself into his palm. He only saw the blood. And it only reminded him more of what had happened.

He closed his hand into a fist, pushing the glass further into his flesh and still feeling no pain. He wanted to feel the pain; he wanted to suffer like he knew he deserved to. Still he embedded the shard further and further, wanting to scream but having no voice, wanting to hurt but sensing no feeling, and wanting to bleed and bleeding profusely.

The figure in front of him did nothing.

He didn't know how long it was before he gave up. Again, the concept of time managed to escape him until he finally wrenched the glass from his mutilated palm and threw it across the room, past where the figure remained, standing patiently.

For the first time in his life, Jack Sparrow cried. And Will Turner put a hand on his shoulder.

Jack's hands reached out and grabbed onto Will's arms until they left bruises, his body wracked with guilty sobs as the pain in his hands arrived.

"It wasn't your fault," Will said gently, knowing the self-blame had been the source of all of Jack's torment since he'd found Elizabeth. "You had no idea this would happen; you couldn't have stopped her."

"She told me," Jack replied in a harsh voice, low and gravelly as he hadn't spoken for a long time. "She told me about the things in her head, and I didn't fucking listen!"

Jack's grip tightened on Will's arms as his anger at himself escalated. "She told me she couldn't live with it anymore and I didn't fucking do anything about it!"

"What could you have done?" Will asked, astonishingly calm, which only served to aggravate Jack further; he stood suddenly and pushed Will away from him, his hands trembling violently.

"Anything would have been better than this!" he roared, his tanned cheeks stained with kohl running from his black eyes. "She's dead, Will. She's fucking dead."

Without giving Will the chance to respond, he slumped back down into his chair and buried his face in his hands. Will stood in the same place, his expression never faltering. Jack's shoulders shook harshly for what seemed like a long time before Will spoke again.

"There was nothing you could have done, Jack," he assured him. "Are you listening to me? Nothing."

"I could have convinced her not to do it," Jack replied softly. "She would have listened to me, I –"

"She wouldn't have listened to anyone, Jack," Will said, sounding angry for the first time. "She was never okay after her father died. And then the miscarriage… It was too much. She couldn't take it anymore."

Jack's eyes clenched shut even tighter. The times it was most painful to think about Elizabeth were when he thought about the child they'd lost as well, his and Elizabeth's child. He'd lost them both.

"Why are you here?" he asked quietly.

There was a long pause; Jack forced himself to look up to make sure Will hadn't silently left. When they made eye contact, Will replied, "I've come for you."

Jack nodded, feeling as though that was the answer he'd been expecting all along, like he'd known as soon as he saw the boots that Will had come for him, but had forgotten until that moment.

"How long has it been?"

"Does it matter? You haven't eaten or slept properly in a long time. I think that was your plan all along," Will said, narrowing his eyes.

"It matters," Jack answered slowly. "I want to know how long it took."

"You've been in this room for about six months," Will said matter-of-factly. "Your crew fed you enough while you were catatonic until about a week ago, then I told them to stop. I knew you'd given up."

Jack nodded. He wished he hadn't even lasted six months. It was too much to think he'd lived for half a year since finding Elizabeth below deck, two deep cuts across her wrists that screamed out at Jack that he'd failed her. Half a year since she gave up and took her own life.

Jack's eyes lowered, and then closed. "I'm so tired."

"Stop blaming yourself," Will repeated softly. "I know that –"

"What was she like, when you came for her? Was she happy?" Jack choked, his eyes swimming.

"I think she was relieved. She managed to escape, and she knew you wouldn't be long after her," Will smiled, bittersweet. "She's waiting for you."

Will reached out a hand for Jack to take. Their eyes met briefly before their hands clasped, and Will thought he saw part of the shadow in Jack's eyes fade at the thought of reuniting with Elizabeth.

Now, finally, it had been long enough.

Yeah, I know it was weird. I hope you liked it though, please review if you did!

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