In the dark corners of a person's mind lies twisted forgotten fragments; the guilt over every lie they have ever told, the shame over what they have turned into, the hatred of the people that made them that way, the fear of having a corrupted soul, and the glee of having finally gone too insane to care. The fire rages inside their mind, burning, and piercing, until it reaches their heart. Flame then turns to ice, ceasing the existence of emotion, rendering them into a shell, as hollow as every breath that passes their lips. It is at this point that they are ready to accept death as an old friend, willing it to envelop them with the last ounce of strength left.
Little do they know that a lifetime of misery awaits them when they make the final journey into what is supposed to be peace-filled bliss. Especially when that journey takes place in the mouth of a Kraken and the cause for being there is a betrayal from the person whom you trusted the most.
Every inch of her skin haunted his mind, every word she ever spoke echoed through the chasm that his mind had become, and the burning hatred for her filled his heart with a pain like no other, even though it no longer beat here.
"I'm not sorry."
A rock left his hand, and flew toward the wall, hitting it with a sharp crack. Leaning against the stone wall, wheezing from exhaustion, he tilted his head back and closed his eyes.
"It's after you, not the ship. Not us. It's the only way, don't you see?"
The inky darkness behind his eyelids matched the thick air around him. In every direction he looked was a never-ending passageway. He was almost sure that he had stumbled down every one countless times, but they all looked the same. Everything looked the same. Light did not exist here. Hope did not exist here. Life was never going to exist here.
This was his hell, the one that she had sent him to. He could live with his life being taken away. Death was not something he had been afraid of in all of the times that he had been so close to it, but this, this was torture.
She had taken it away twice. Once when she chained him to the mast, and now, as he sat on the stone floor, trapped in the endless maze of tunnels.
He had come back to stay with his ship. He had chosen to die for them, for her. He had wanted to do the right thing. Then she took that choice away from him in one fell swoop, and the unspoken words were so loud that she might as well have shouted them. She thought so little of him that she felt she had to force him into sacrifice, instead of trusting him to do it himself. She had taken away the one thing that he had always valued most, even over life itself. His freedom was gone, and he swore that he would make her hurt equally if he ever saw the light of day again.
Scoffing, he picked at the trinkets in his hair. Time didn't matter anymore. It could have been years since he had been in this place, and he wouldn't know the difference. He placed his other hand over his heart, feigning the shock he once felt the first couple of times. There was no longer a heartbeat. Nothing. No pulse in his veins, no breath in his lungs. No life in him at all. And he was never getting out of here.
He lifted himself up off the floor, swearing that he could hear his bones grinding together. Right about now, he would normally feel his headache for the sweet taste of rum, but he hadn't felt a craving for food nor drink in a long time. Perhaps this is what his mutinous first mate had felt when he had taken that last piece of Aztec gold. Even now, he didn't feel sorry for that worthless excuse for a man. He would still wish this and a thousand times worse for him.
"I'm proud of you, Jack."
Gritting his teeth, he took a couple steps forward, without aim or direction. His movement stopped when he heard a noise that was not coming from him. Cautiously turning around, he narrowed his eyes as the noise became more clear.
A dull thump, over and over again. Inching forward, a passage to the right suddenly brightened, and he had to shield his eyes from it. The sound became louder as he got closer. The light started to flicker.
Fire?
Rounding the corner, he blanched at the sight before him.
"You're not real." The figure that was rhythmically slamming a hammer down looked up at him without slowing his movements.
He turned around to avoid having to look at the person currently behind him. Was his mind so addled now that he was hallucinating?
The noise stopped. "Perhaps not, Jack, but that doesn't mean that I am not here."
He squeezed his eyes shut in frustration, slowly turning around again, hoping that facing him would make the man disappear. When this didn't pass, he clenched his fists and ground out the man's name.
"Turner."
William wore a look of disappointment on his face. "You stole her from me, Jack. You knew that she was mine, yet you still played with her like she was a conquest, and she followed you. You gave her the temptation, and she took it. Don't you feel guilty? Why else would she hide her true reason for kissing you on the mast other than her distrust in me? You poisoned her mind against me, and now she won't even look at me."
Glaring at him, he tried to decide if he wanted to expend the effort to respond to the twit or not.
"Mr. Turner, need I remind you that I am a pirate and that when I see something I want, I make an effort to take it, regardless of who laid claim to it before myself?"
That was a lie and he knew it. He hadn't seen that wretched girl as a conquest. He had respected her, had seen her as his equal, wanted to have her by his side until the end of his days. Peas in a pod, as he once told her. Now? She was lower than the grime underneath his boot.
"You will never deserve her, Jack. Despite what she did to you, she will always have more honor and worth than you ever did. She was only doing what she thought was right, which is something you still have yet to do."
He gave the man a look that he hoped would tear the hallucination in two.
"I no longer have any desire to be equal to her or you. You can have her, Turner. The less she is around me, the more chance she has of living."
The blacksmith's expression turned from disappointment to confusion, making him look pathetic.
"What reason do you have to hate her, Jack? She saved me, and the entire crew. You have cheated death far too often, and she saw that it was finally your time to meet your maker. If anyone deserved death, it was you."
His face darkened, and he backed away, shaking his head. "Why am I even talking to you? You're not real."
He turned around once again so that the maddening whelp was staring at his back. Then, the orange flickering on the stone wall vanished, leaving it as dark as death's final moments. He knew without looking that the hallucination was gone.
"She killed me", he said aloud. His voice sounded like he hadn't spoken in eons, scratchy and hoarse. He had every right to hate the witch.
But some small part of him wanted just as much to slant his mouth over hers and run his fingers over her silken skin until she screamed his name. Drive into her until she couldn't remember her own name.
Sinking back down to the ground, he closed his eyes and drifted off into a daze, uncaring about anything.
Small whimpering noises brought him back to conscious thoughts, and when he opened his eyes, his jaw fell open.
The black wooden walls loomed around him, swaying softly to the time of the waves, and the candle on the desk flickered back and forth. His bed, with black satin sheets and beautifully carved wooden posts, stood before him.
He was standing in his cabin. Or at least that is what his mind had chosen to conjure up for him this time, and that wasn't all.
Elizabeth Swann was splayed out on his sheets, naked as the day she was born, the soft candlelight glowing on her sunkissed skin. Her legs were spread, and her fingers were swirling delicately around her soft folds, causing intoxicating noises to leave her parted lips. Her eyes were darkened to a near chocolate color, and they were staring directly into his.
"This is what you can never have Jack, no matter how badly you want it. You will never be good enough for me."
His head spun, the floorboards beneath him threatening to swallow him whole. Seeing Turner was one thing, but this, this was too much. Blood rushed past his ears, and his heart, if it worked, would be thumping madly.
Her back arched, and her fingers rubbed faster. He could feel the air in the room clench with her muscles as her orgasm crashed over her. A flush covered her skin, and her chest heaved.
His mind warred between bringing her to another blissful release and sending her to her well-deserved death.
The center of the bed sunk in as she sat up and swung her legs around so that her delicate feet were touching the floor.
"You wretch", he ground out, glaring at her. She simply smiled.
"Wasn't it you that called me a pirate? You deserved what you got Jack. You know it and I know it. Perhaps if you were less of a coward I wouldn't have deemed it necessary. If you would have stayed with your ship by choice, I could have kissed you goodbye in thanks instead of in contempt. But I know you, and I knew that you would rather risk all of our lives, including mine, just to save your worthless hide. I was doing all of us a favor, as much as Gibbs denies it, by removing you from any future equations."
He seethed.
"If there is anything I am sure of, Jack, it's that if given the choice to go back and re-evaluate my actions, I would kill you again without a second's hesitation."
He was going to kill her. The second he laid eyes on her, the real her, she was going to die.
"It doesn't matter anymore, Miss Swann, because I am here, with nigh a heart nor breath, and I am never leaving. You aren't real, just like your fiance wasn't real."
She stepped forward until she was inches away from him, her hot breath ghosting across his face.
The room around him changed slowly until he could feel the cool breeze from the ocean, and the hardwood on his back. He was against the mast again, and the shackle was around his wrist.
And the charming murderess was standing before him, this time wearing a triumphant expression.
"Whether I am real or not makes no difference, because my words are true, Jack."
He leaned his head back against the mast.
"You ran away in your longboat because you were too afraid to accept your fate. You sent my Will to pay your debt for you because you were afraid to finally realize that it was only going to end if you died."
"I came back, Ms. Swann." Anger coursed through him, and if the shackle wasn't around his wrist, hallucination or not, he would strangle her.
She leaned closer to his lips.
"I don't care."
He regarded her for a moment. Her eyes held a different quality than the real Elizabeth. These eyes were dark, vicious.
"I came back for you, love. I came back because I couldn't stand leaving you there. Bugger everything else. But now? I would gladly be the one to pull the trigger when your time comes."
She just kept smiling.