Disclaimer: I don't own it. But PotC2 just kicked butt with the biggest opening for a movie in history! Very exciting, but it still means I get none of that cash...

Also, Spoiler warning for DMC! As if you were reading this without first seeing the movie...that would be silly. Plus, you would be out of the loop so bad...it would be lamentable, really.

"William, William
it was really nothing
It was your life... "
- The Smiths

He was in shock.

It had to be shock.

He had good reason. After all, he had not five minutes previously been suspended upside-down by his bootstrap and simultaneously threatened death by exploding rum, Kraken tentacles, getting shot at, getting eaten, and breaking his neck. Most people would understand if he was a little shaky.

His heart should have been racing. Anyone else would have been scared out of his mind.

But he was not. He had never been frightened by physical danger. He was always steady, fearless in the midst of maelstrom. Life was a game, and he had no fear of losing.

(Elizabeth made him brave.)

He was not in shock from the Kraken's mast-thick arms or from the black ship shuddering under him, or the nagging suspicion that twice surviving the Kraken's assault was a bit more luck than he had...

No -- the shock was later on. After the fight was given up. A single moment shattered him. Caught in a split second. The sight of the pirate he repeatedly risked his life for, Jack bloody Sparrow kissing his fiancé. Cold buckets of ice water rushed through him like he was a ghost, the picture instantly and carefully branded into his memory. Elizabeth, kissing Jack; the pirate seemed to let her, careful against her ardent mouth, hands lowered, allowing, contemplative.

In the moments that followed, William felt his first taste of absolute, shattering shock in his life. He barely heard Gibbs urging them to hurry, although he was staring right at him. His mind worked and he was brain-dead. His hand steadied the ladder as the blood rushed quick through his fingers. He was furious and broken and perfectly still, waiting for Elizabeth to come down the ladder in her boy-clothes and tanned face and explain to him that he was having a horrible nightmare about infidelity and sea-monsters and the only remedy was to kiss him thoroughly until he woke up.

The first part of his held-breath hopes came true - Elizabeth (after so many lifetime-seconds that William felt he must have turned eighty) came down the ladder and into the small dingy. She turned her face to the rest of them, and his fist involuntarily clenched at her eyes and locked expression.

"Where's Jack?" he heard himself ask, something cold and terrible in his voice.

She stared right at him, as if daring him to contradict her. "He elected to stay behind, to give us a chance."

No one could think of anything to say.

Jack was going down with the ship.

Jack was going down with the ship?

The "She's just a ship" ship?

Some part of his mind quietly said: Elizabeth had always inspired you to your most honorable actions. How much more would she affect the man she truly loved?

But it was too sudden, to terrible, and the rest of him shied away from the thought of his fiancé's great love transforming even Jack Sparrow into something respectable, someone who would die for a position...

"Go!" Elizabeth shouted. William flinched at the terrible undertones, trying to make sense of everything.

In mental vacuum, William watched the Kraken murder the lovely Pearl and her Jack. Elizabeth shuddered beside him as if every splinter of the destruction went through her soul.

Halfway to shore, Elizabeth began to wipe helplessly at her eyes, looking lost. Dazed, too shocked to feel anything properly, and never being able to bear the sight of her tears, he dumbly pulled her to him and cradled her with both arms.

The only thought he had until they reached the shore was a shaken prayer:

Oh, God in Heaven, don't let me die like this.

He was in a rage.

It had to be a rage.

Silent, smoldering, black. William barely trusted himself to speak to anyone.

William threw the knife into the table, and saw flicks of wood chip off satisfyingly. He hoped that he was being a nuisance to somebody, that the thunk, thunk was driving someone besides himself insane.

The particulars kept playing themselves inside his mind, over and over, giving him new reasons to hate.

He constructed the events how he imagined they happened. He tried to make sense of it. He told himself stories. The first version made it easy to hate Jack Sparrow:

"Jack, please. Stop it..." she muttered weakly.

"Stop what, darling? What's wrong with a little...persuasion?" Jack leered, pulling Elizabeth to him.

Startled, she blushed and turned her face away. "I'm not interested in that kind of persuasion."

Jack considered that for a moment, tracing his top lip. Then, as if he thought of something, he smiled devilishly. "Look there. This little place by your cheek tells me different." And then Jack kissed her quickly, by the corner of her mouth.

Poor Elizabeth looked transfixed, her lip curving upward. "Jack..." she laughed.

"And this nose, and these...eyeballs..." he gestured hazily at her eyes. "Or any number of places, really. All say that this particular English lady is open for...persuasion." He ended very close to her mouth, black kohl-eyes mesmerizing.

As her mouth opened to protest, he kissed her.

He had stolen his fiancé's heart. Jack Sparrow was a worse person than William had given him credit for. And a worse friend -- William had never thought that Jack would something like that. Well, sure, other things. But not that.

Conflicting, old quarter-suspicions fluttered. "It would have never worked between us, darling."

But wasn't he being facetious, back then?

He had misled William onto the Flying Dutchman to get him out of the way. He had taken advantage of Elizabeth and tricked them into fighting his battles for him. And numberless other indiscretions almost ended in their capture and deaths.

But... Jack Sparrow was dead.

And Jack Sparrow was who he had always claimed to be. It had always been William who had insisted that Jack was a good man, and Jack who had always insisted that they were all pirates.

It was William's fault for trusting a pirate with no morals and fewer scruples...

And Elizabeth was not the type to be bullied by anyone. William had first-hand knowledge of how hard it was to seduce her if she did not want to be seduced.

That led to a painful alterations to the story. His heart clenched.

Eventually, he allowed himself to consider that Elizabeth may have...

Elizabeth cackled madly, falling against Jack and whispering in his ear, something devilish. Jack smirked softly and cupped her waist, threading with heavily-ringed fingers.

"I never loved him, of course. You knew that! He's such a silly...stupid boy." Elizabeth's expression was foreign and predatory.

One of the pirate's eyebrows lifted slightly. "Why, Elizabeth, I would have never expected such...duplicity..." Then he tsk-tsked like a mother hen. A mother hen who proceeded to kiss her madly.

"I've been waiting for you to come back and get me, Jack," she said breathlessly, touching his chest like a whore. "It's been terrible here without you."

The insufferable smirk deepened. "Well, love, pirates never do fancy leaving treasure behind..."

William felt much, much worse at picturing this, but at the same time he was vaguely mollified. He glared at the wall, pausing with his knife for a few seconds, picturing their kiss once again. And then he sighed, relinquishing the thought that they did it out of spite. That it was some elaborate plot just to hurt him. It was silly. It was admittedly not in character, for either of them.

Well, maybe Jack...the damn bugger...

William sighed, and threw the knife clunking into the table. A new thought made him pause.

It is not about me.

He sighed again. He knew it all along. It hurt worse in a different way, if it was not about him. It also meant that it was complicated. Too complicated to put a sword through it. Too complicated for a survivable amputation.

The third version was as close to the truth as he could let himself come.

"You came back," Elizabeth smiled at him, proud. white teeth flashing. The ship was so strange and empty, dying slowly from enormous puncture wounds, but slowly enough to leave time for goodbyes. "I knew you were a good man."

"Elizabeth..." Jack, for once, struggled for something to say. Silence for a moment, then he touched her elbow, turning her to him, then touched her cheek gently. He kissed her once, chastely on the lips, and then words caught up to him.

"If I were you...I would get off this ship now." He stopped her with a finger when she tried to interrupt. "No. I..." he swallowed, heavily. "I s'pose...that I can't leave her, after all." He gestured in his haphazard way to the Pearl, never looking away from Elizabeth. "I'm captain."

Her eyes went wide. "You can't be serious..." They widened more, wildly. "No! Not now! Jack! You can pick some other time to start being stupid and honorable! Please, Jack!" She shook him by both arms.

The ship shuddered, and they heard the tell-tale liquid sucking noises slithering from the hull.

Jack smiled grimly. "No time, Lizzie. Go to William."

Another shudder, and horrible squelching sounds. "Jack, no." Then she kissed him, and he let her, and for a moment they became perfect in contrast, her fire and loss against his calm resignation and tenderness.

He was the one to break the kiss, and pushed her gently away. "I'm sorry."

She did not move until another shudder passed through the ship. Then she jerked and moved to the ladder, clasping it and said it to him last time, voice breaking:

"I love you, Jack."

With a hint of a gentle, swarthy smile. "I know you do, love."

And he turned away, back to his Pearl, for the last time.

This fit. It fit like a hand in a torture press.

It hurt.

He threw his father's knife, and heard it stick. It was unbearable.

As Tia Dalma offered Elizabeth a drink, William saw the look on Elizabeth's face, all sorrow and horror. He froze again, all over, felt frostbite in the warm Caribbean night. She glanced over the rim of her cup, and wiped her right eye impatiently.

They drank a toast to him. Raised it up high, and drank. It was bitter-tasting, but he was not the type to have a grudge against a dead man.

"He was a good man," Elizabeth said, insisted.

William noticed she did not drink. Two streaks of tears lined her dirty face, and she blinked rapidly.

And that moment, he moved past his own anger and grief to realize how very much he still loved her.

He was in love.

It must be love.

It was hopeless. It was unbearable.

And then he knew that if he was to keep going, he needed Elizabeth, he needed to love her. She was the only reason why he kept going, through adventures that would kill lesser men. Men that weren't in love.

If he did not love her, then he would turn black and rot.

Or bitter and crumpled and ruined like Norrington became after she broke off his engagement.

"Elizabeth," he choked out. It was a grasping towards what he could not find again without her, "if there were any way to bring him back..." He did not really know what he was saying, just that the lost expression on her face was more painful to him than her disloyalty.

Tia Dalma leapt on his words. "Would ja? How far? Would ju be willing ta go ta da ends of de eart and beyond?" She smiled weirdly and seemed to single William out, black teeth and thin shoulders framed by coarse hair, demanding an answer.

"Aye," came Gibbs.

The crew agreed.

"Yes," Elizabeth said, softly.

"Aye," William said, feeling a wind easing new purpose into his soul. He would bring Jack back for Elizabeth. She was obviously broken without him. She needed him.

If he could make her happy, even without being happy himself...that was also heroic. That would be enough to keep him going.

If he loved her enough to die for her, and he did, then he could do this small thing for her.

Besides, it sounded like a long journey. William could try some persuasion of his own. His heart told him, a blossom of hope:

There is no better time to win back her heart than when her other lover is missing in action!

And this time, Will would not fight by the rules of engagement.

A.N. There have been a lot of stories from Lizzie's POV, but the only ones I could find about poor Will were short. Please, tell me what you think! This was my first PotC fic!