A/N: Thank you to everyone who has reviewed. This is the last chapter. I had several goals for this fic...making sure James wasn't dismissed as a dope, making Will actually sympathetic and interesting, giving Jack something to do even though he's wallowing in prison for most of the story, making sure Elizabeth isn't seen as a bitch even though she's at the center of this big love quadrangle that only expands into a web once Sao Feng gets involved... Anyways, please leave a review and tell me if I've accomplished these goals and I hope you have enjoyed my story. - Willo


Ten Months Later

"Enter," Beckett sighed, each knock, each business associate simply a distraction from locating that chest. He'd journeyed to Tortuga and rounded up the living squalor inhabiting it and after all excruciation, all the torment, he knew nothing he did not already know. The goddess Calypso deserted Davy Jones, thus spawning the true terror of the seven seas. The key and the chest were the only hope anyone had of usurping that power. The thought of it still made Bekett harden more than the most buxom whore or the most coquettish lady, or the most captivating individual he had ever…

"Cutler Beckett?"

"Sir Cutler Beckett, if you don't mind. What brings you here to see me personally?"

It was a woman, a dark one at that. She was either very brave or very foolish to come to him. He reminded himself if she said one thing he didn't like, he could have Mercer bind her and sell her to work with the sugar cane in one of the nearby islands for any price he liked.

"I been let down too many times by too many pirate lords," she said, her accent forcing him to lean forward so as not to miss a word. "I watch over 'em, ya see, and when one gets asked to do somethin' for me, nothin' I get. But you…ye lookin' for da most famous key of all time."

"Go on."

"Da key dat go into da Davy Jones chest?"

"You know where it is?"

"I do not." She paused, a snake-like smile spreading across her face, exposing high cheekbones and ravaged teeth. "But how ya can get it, I know."

"How?" The most insidious sugar cane field in the entire world if she was lying!

"You know dat smart man Jack got more lives dan a cat."

"How does he fit into all this?" There was only one Jack he knew of that she could mean.

"Let me tell ya somethin' interesting about clever Jack."


Elizabeth sat at the dining room table by herself in the glow of the candlelight. Plates needing cleaned, napkins needing to be folded, paper and boxes strewn—a veritable mess, she decided with a smile. It had been the first birthday James had missed, and she felt his absence. But after opening a box of paints and a shawl from Will, she forgot Father had invited the servants to join in the festivities when she jumped up into Will's arms and kissed him when he presented her with a book detailing the journeys of Marco Polo. It was the greatest gift he had given her since the sword he had fashioned just for her. Father apologized for her and Will hugged her to him…overall a more than satisfying birthday.

It didn't matter so much that James was gone, had been for months, chasing Jack from one end of the world to the other, the likes of which she had only her books to be able to imagine such a chase. It really was a satisfying birthday. Earlier, Will showed off the risk taker in him…she did bring it out of him, after all…and kissed her when they were alone on the back balcony before dinner, not caring who saw, just two more months until their wedding.

So why are you just sitting here watching the candles flicker, she asked herself, her fingers playing with her lip. Are you worried about James? Of course. She'd been worried about him ever since the day she broke off their engagement. He had not spoken to her since then. The day after, he bid goodbye to Father, declined the offer to come in and say goodbye to her, and left.

She worried about Jack. There were times she worried to the point she caught herself wringing the skin of her hands until they chafed. Did he escape the hanging just to land in deeper trouble? It seemed like him. She wouldn't be surprised if he'd need Will's help again, as well as her own. But it was foolish to think about him for too long. When one is just a footnote in the other one's life, the footnote can't hope to be even a chapter. Did he think about her at all? Why should she care if he did? Just because her lips still twitched at the memory of kissing his cheek, she should think she meant more to him than all the other women in the world he had been with, really been with, and yet managed not to destroy any of his rum? Just because no other person's eyes could make her forget herself so easily… Rising from the table, she walked through the foyer to make her way to her room. Safe in a large house, engaged to a wonderful man, the apple of her father's eye, her shoulders and arms still sore from her latest swordfight lesson—there was much for which to be grateful.

"Miss Elizabeth, these were at the door."

"What is it, Fisher?" she yawned, stretching her back by grabbing hold of the banister and leaning back as far as she could.

"These, miss." Fisher held a glass vase filled with orchids, each five-petaled wonder looking like it was dipped in a rainbow of reds and pinks and whites, entwined into a color seldom seen in nature except when flowers were concerned. She touched them, the vibrant smell filling the foyer. "Is there a card, miss?"

Elizabeth's hands shook, rearranging the orchids until she could see down into the vase. Tied to one of the stems was a plain scrap of parchment with only one word penned into it. Lizzie.

"I'll just take these upstairs. They'll get plenty of sun at my window, I should think." Cleaving the vase to her heaving chest, she let the petals tickle her chin up the stairs, remembering the last time he'd surprised her. It had been a night like this, catching him and listening to him tell her it was only to burglarize her father. She had come up these stairs, sword in hand, only to fight him and have to look into his eyes and tell him she could not go with him. The thin hairs on the back of her neck prickled, remembering his lips on them. Lord, why had he done that? She had not even told Estrella everything she felt that night. The way he had asked her to go with him, so dire.

Biting her lip, she raced into her room and closed the door, feeling the action of setting the vase at her window required absolute privacy. They complimented the room. No. The room complimented them.

Tucking herself in between her blankets, she blew out her candle and stared up at the ceiling in the darkness. Jack remembered her. It was so selfish, she thought. Better to have him forget me. But it couldn't be all that bad. It wasn't as if he lied awake night after night pining for her. But she giggled, flattered at the thought.

Turning on her side so she could watch the silhouettes of her orchids against the moonlight, Elizabeth nuzzled her face into her pillow to muffle her giggles. Oh, Jack, she sighed. If only there was something I could give you in return. A soft rain drizzled down her window, the splattering of each little raindrop relaxing her. She'd always loved the rain at night, and let the downpour lull her to sleep with a smile on her face.


Jack yawned, kicking off his boots, his shift at the helm over for the night. In what would feel like the longest weeks of his life, weather permitting, he would step onto Constantinople's shores and find the likeness of a certain key that would lock away the last ten years from memory, well, most of it. It hadn't been all bad. He rubbed his eyes, his bed whistling at him from the side, but not yet. No. A captain's work is never done. That's why the first captain that set sail for the very first time invented rum.

Pouring himself just a small glass, he limped back to his chair and shuffled through his charts. Ah, he thought, sifting through quill pens, a few coins, and a sextant until he found his timepiece. It would be just a few hours into nighttime in Port Royal, logic dictating Lizzie now had her flowers. Rubbing the bruises that ran from his knee all the way up to his thigh like a painful pearl necklace, he shook his head. She better enjoy them for all he went through to get them. Flowers are quite the novelty to one who is married to the sea…and whose time is ticking away day by day. The nightmares increased, filled with scaly tentacles that smelled of salt and fish so all-encompassing he could never tell if they were the beard of Davy Jones or the sucking, smothering limbs of the kraken. Just a few more weeks, he repeated to himself, sipping the rum with a shaking hand.

"Captain?"

Then there was the matter of finding the chest once he procured the key, and his compass had not been good to him lately.

"Captain?"

Blasted, bloody thing. Had he not taken special care of it all these years? Hadn't worked since she lodged it into his pocket. He would gladly go back to Tia Dalma and exchange it for something else, but he refused to go back there, not unless it was absolutely necessary. She was too much of a force to be reckoned with and time did not permit any forces to be reckoned with now. Didn't it owe him the most fundamental aspect of its nature, which was to just plain work?

"Jack?"

"What? Enter!"

"Just seein' if ye wanted the rest of me lobster," Gibbs said, pushing open the door, his other hand busy juggling his plate. "Right good stuff, but I'm apt to burst if I eat anymore."

"Sure. Let's send that thing my way, shall we?" Jack said, shoving a few of his charts onto the floor of the cabin. He kicked his bookshelf he made for the inside of his desk with his boot until the plate was set out in front of him. There was not to be any sleeping for a while anyway. If one thing didn't enter his mind, another one did, and he didn't much care for either.

"No more detours if I'm to be understandin' ye?" Gibbs asked, still standing and with both eyebrows raised.

"Aye. Time is short."

"Ye have what, a few more months?"

"If that."

"Well, once we get our hands on that key, things'll be looking our way for once. We'll be getting' that key, Jack. And then ye can do whatever you want to do."

He returned Gibbs' smile, savoring the lobster in his mouth. Not everything, but enough. A clap of thunder boomed above them, followed by a hard panging of raindrops on the sails and deck.

"Bit of storm comin' in from nowhere," Gibbs remarked, taking a bit of the lobster and shoving it in his mouth.

"I like that sound. Always have." Jack said, not sure why he cared to divulge that bit of information. He rubbed his eyes and held his breath for a second to listen to what he hoped would not turn out to be a squall.

"You was born in weather like this, wasn't ye?" Gibbs asked, frowning at a second rumble of thunder.

"Not nearly as calm as this, mate." Sighing, he peered over at his bed, the blankets still winding around each other from the nightmare-filled night before. But an optimistic note struck Jack at the sight of it, the rain telling him he would find that key, and then the chest, and then everything he could ever hope to want. But maybe it was just the realization sleep would come easier tonight. "Leave the plate, Mister Gibbs. I'll be wanting me alone time."

"Aye, Jack."

Jack waited for him to close the door on his way out before sitting on his bed with a heavy sigh. He looked forward to closing his eyes tonight, not wanting to fight what he imagined when he closed them anymore during that strange time between awake and asleep. Turning onto his stomach, he smiled at the image in his mind. You enjoy those orchids, love. Meanwhile I prepare to be some leviathan's lunch. No, he mouthed again. You'll find that key and chest and make things right. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves. Jack smiled, sleep beginning to come his way. These coming months would be the stuff of legend. After all, he was Captain Jack Sparrow.

The End...