(Chapter Fifteen)
Blood and Seawater
"Mister Mercer?"
The foreboding figure of Cutler Beckett's clerk stepped into the headroom of the Endeavor. He had several papers in his hands, reports from EITC spies, and looked even more grim than usual.
"It amazes me Mercer, how such a simple thing as getting out of the bay seems to take longer to accomplish, than it took Magellan to circumnavigate the earth." Beckett was very calm, letting his voice take on only the semblance of a sharp edge, and leaving Mercer to guess how angry he really was.
"We have been delayed."
"That, I can see without spectacles." Beckett picked invisible lint from his lace cuffs. "Are you going to tell me what is delaying us, or stand there like a hat stand and wait for someone to walk by and hang a coat on you?"
"There are new reports from out scout ship near Tortuga."
Cutler held out his hands for the reports and scanned through them quickly, his expression becoming gradually more pinched. "This informs me that there are suddenly twice or more the number of ships in the Tortuga harbor than was originally thought. It also tells me that there seems to be a great deal of organization on the enemy's part. How can this be?" Lord Beckett remained almost congenial, like this was the sort of conversation you might have over a glass of brandy and Mercer was a stockbroker trifling about an ill cut jacket.
"I don't—"
"Of course you don't. Just like you didn't know that James Norrington has been sighted in the company of a certain Jack Sparrow…the same Sparrow that you assured me would be dead somewhere in the far east three months ago. Just like you did not know that Jack Sparrow could organize and mobilize the entire pirate fleet in three short days with the help of our own former commodore against the fleet you said could destroy them, and with more ships than you thought they had in the water. Is this an accurate assessment Mercer, or did I overstate the facts?"
"Completely accurate my lord." Mercer didn't frighten easily, but Cutler's calm appraisals made him nervous at the best of times, and he knew that his lord Beckett had no prohibition against shooting the messenger among the papers on his desk.
"Then there is an obvious question that must be asked."
The clerk waited patiently for Beckett to ask the question before he realized that Beckett was waiting for the answer. "What question?"
Beckett bit of each word as he spoke it, "Can we still destroy the fleet in these new circumstances?"
"Easily."
"Then why am I still here?" Beckett raised his voice for the first time, his usual almost inhuman patience worn down to its final threadbare tatters.
"We are waiting only for you order…and the Governor." Beckett dropped his head into his hands and massaged his temples. His pulse was pounding in his head like it wanted to escape. This was the eve of his final victory, and the idiotic, ridiculous man couldn't even ready his things and be down to the dock, when given two hours to prepare.
"I want him on the ship and comfortable before we make way. He needs to think that we are not going to be under any fire. Is that clear? He needs to think we are sailing out symbolically and retrieving his daughter. Then, when I give the signal, an accident will happen and our problems with that buffoon will be over. Also, have lackeys go through the ships and give the captains an precise description of Elizabeth Swann, I don't want her sailing away form this battle either."
Mercer nodded and made a note on a small notebook bound in red leather. He noticed he hadn't been dismissed yet, so there must have been something left to say. Beckett worked hard to develop fully a nervous tick in his left eye. His eyes lingered on the smooth wooden handle of his pistol, carved with running horses and inlayed with silver, and found himself wondering is such a pretty thing could really kill someone in cold blood.
"If there is an concern about your safety, I can assure you that extra precautions will be made."
"You will have enough men on board to keep me safe?"
"Yes, and an escape vessel should things go wrong." He added when he saw Beckett's look "Things will not go wrong."
Beckett was in a bad mood, and when in a bad mood he tended to preach to the little people around him, reinforcing the idea that he was the one in charge. "It is almost finished, Mercer. The final broken pieces of the pirate dilemma swept away at last. Then we will all get what we want. I will have the governorship here, and who knows, with out new found power maybe even more in time. The disorder to the sea will be controlled. And when we have been established then I will bury the last remnants of savagery in these islands and destroy the Heart of Davy Jones, and the last shreds of old order will be gone at last from the Caribbean." Beckett took in a deep breath, as if her could already smell his victory, and looked out the window to see his deadly fleet. "We WILL raise anchor soon?"
"As soon as humanly possible."
"Faster than that." Beckett snorted, and waved Mercer away.
The morning was dark, not just with the clouds that spit steady burst of wet onto the bustling pirate company, but also in the mood of the sailors. No one said it aloud, though sometimes one friend would whisper a grinning good luck and good bye to their companion, the one they had grown close too through the months and years of fighting and working side by side. The truth of the matter was that no one pirate had any hope of coming back alive, and each one was damned proud just to be a part of it.
Preparations were almost completed by the time the Pearl and the Brethren arrived. Under the direction of the former commodore the pirates of Tortuga had readied gunpowder, shot, and cannon. All that remained to be done was the distribution of the weapons and ammunition and the strategic positioning of each of the ships in fleet formation.
Will expected the crew to be angry and uncooperative with their new captain, but he was mistaken. His new crew was quiet but respectful. His instructions weren't questioned not matter how ridiculous they might have seemed. Even when he commanded them to hoist the larger part of the powder store in a net about the center of the ship, and ready oil and kindling for quick fires all along the railing.
The Sapphires glory was the proverbial picture of the phrase "shipshape". One of the finest ships his has seen in his piratical experience and also, hands down, the cleanest. Whatever these women pirates were, they were orderly.
Anamaria didn't resent her recent demotion. Jack always had a purpose for everything he did, and if they would be meeting up with a mythical sea monster, with an affinity for swallowing ships whole, she would take any advantage she could have.
William was taller than she remembered, if not physically at least in his presence. When she had known him before he had of course been brave and dashing, but over all he was just a land lover, and under it all she knew a part of him had been afraid. That fear, of the sea, of pirates, of himself, had gone. He was different in a way hard to describe, more…buccaneer? Maybe? Whatever it was, she rather liked it.
Her original crew was not all she had this time around. Norrington was with her too, for good or ill, to help direct the attack from the best position he could think of. He was sober at least, and that was something. If anything bothered him it wasn't the fight. He was disquieted, but for another reason. As a woman, and beautiful herself, Anamaria could guess what was troubling him, it was troubling Will too. Elizabeth's presence on the Black Pearl. Had Swann's girl not guessed what everyone else already knew? The Pearl was a funeral barge; it wasn't sailing home.
The Black Pearl had dropped anchor away from the rest of the ships. It was setting out first and it was going in a different direction. Pintel and Raggetti, not among the small crew the Pearl required to make way, rowed the long boat that carried the six, babbling back and forth between them and sometimes to Jack.
"You're still pulling too hard."
"I don't sees why it matters how fast I pull." Raggetti sniffed rubbing his wooden eye. "As long as you pull the same."
"What's your rush anyway? Afeared they might leave without you?" Pintel sneered. As far as the outside world was concerned the only words the ever passed between the two were various curses and bickering. Pintel and Raggetti were friends, practically tied together at the elbow for years now, so how could they help it if in the end they just sounded like and old married couple.
"I just don't want to miss nothin'"
Elizabeth really wasn't paying any attention to the trip, or even thinking about he destination. She hadn't thought it through thoroughly when she first volunteered to be the sixth crew member. It seemed natural, meant to be that she should be the sixth one. Now that she did think about it she realized she had had and even deeper purpose. She had a suspicion about Jack, more than just an inkling that he did care about her more than he would ever admit. Her reason for joining the crew wasn't that she thought she could do any real good, or that she might be able to help Jack in his plan. Those were factors of course, but the reason she knew, was really that if she was their Jack would have to stay alive to protect her. He would have to try to come back.
"Tis strange though…" Raggetti mused aloud.
"What isn't strange about this?"
"I mean about the life boat. Why 'ave we got to bring her back to the fleet?"
"That's simple you nit. We've got to bring 'er back cause the fleet'll need all of the escape boats she can get."
"That's just what I meant, why don't the Pearl need no life boats?" Jack stopped them before they could muse further.
"Would you two shut it? You're giving me a headache to rival that of any other in the world to date, savvy?"
Pulling along side the Pearl Gibbs and the four men who had come along climbed into the ship first, followed shortly after by Jack. Elizabeth didn't seem to notice they had arrived for several moments.
Jack reached watched her carefully from above. She was very beautiful. She shook herself out of reverie and began to climb.
"For you, Jack." Tia had told him. That was the reason she was about to die. There was no way around it; fates grim plan for her was set in stone. How long did she have left, he wondered.
Jack reached down over the side and offered her a hand up. "Thanks" She said, before she looked up at his too serious face, and stopped.
"I'm sorry Elizabeth." He said darkly, holding her wrist tightly, his grim a vice. "Nothing is set in stone."
Her eyes formed the question she didn't have time to speak, before the heavy but of Jack's pistol came down and struck her soundly along the side of her head. She dropped like a sack of loose rocks into the waiting arms of the surprised Raggetti.
"Take her back to Will. Tell him to keep special care of her, eh?"
Jack's guilt ridden expression made the drizzle that fell around them seem wetter. Gibbs, who had watched the scene, felt compelled to say something. Lamely, he said the only thing her could think of short of telling his captain he would have done the same thing. "I was in love with a girl once." He didn't mention what frightful bad luck she was.
"Was she pretty?"
"Prettier than you."
That made Jack smile. A sad little movement of the face that you might expect to find on the dead visage of a martyr, serene it was, but also very cold and futile.
"You don't have to come with me. I wouldn't hold it against you if you decided to forego this final voyage."
"Wouldn't feel right not to join you. You know me better than that."
"That I do. You have some rum on you by chance?"
Gibbs laughed, "You know me better than THAT." And handed Jack his flask.
"Did you ready the gunpowder?"
"Everything is prepared."
Silence has a taste, Tia decided while she watched the preparations. It was like dry wine, or possibly stale water. It filled the nose and throat with a stinging ache, and made the ears ring. Silence sounded across the bay as she made her final decision, the decision that was never hers to make really, but it was still her choice. She was going to join the Sapphire's crew, and let fate sew up the rest.
Recalling Jack's advice, entreaty, on one of those cold nights when they had locked themselves away from the rest of the crew and talked in hushed voices about her future, or lack there of.
"But you don't have to go there. A choice is a choice, nothing is written out for you."
"I must do what I must do; much like you will choose dat choice you like the less to do what you cannot undo." Jack grimaced through his smile.
"Don't talk in riddles. Never saying what you mean, or at least meaning what you say without letting anyone understand what that is. It's almost sinful."
Tia smiled proudly, in the best of spirits. Jack didn't understand it of course. But she was resolved, not just resigned to her end, and no matter what right and wrong might have to say about it in the end, she was content to flow with destiny yet again.
"Don't do it." He said again with more force in his voice.
"Would you give up everything we are fightin' for to 'ave me safely on anoder ship, Jack Sparrow?" She laughed at him. He was so much the same person, even now. She could still see that speck of selfishness left over that would have said yes to her. That wouldn't have cared about the fate of the Brethren if he still got what he wanted in the end.
But whether it was because he wouldn't say yes, or couldn't say yes, he said no in the end because that is what a good man would say. Jack was being strangely heroic in spite of himself, and he hated it intensely.
It was true that Tia loved Jack, she had always loved him, or something about. Even from the time when he stepped into her shack, not entirely a man yet, still the remaining coldness of grief in his eyes. That moment had quite literally changed her. It wasn't that Jack had come in and turned her life upside down, upending her careful routines and strange practices. Indeed his request had been a simple one. Her compass was all he wanted, and when at last they had come to an agreement over it he had disappeared for nearly two years without a trace. It was something in his air, way of walking, or the simple sense of purpose in his face and speech. Seeing him for the very first time was like being struck my lightening.
When he had returned, hoping for more help from her, Tia's sense of attachment, fascination, and the familiar touch of destiny she was used to was still there, possibly stronger. Fascination changed faces from partnership to friendship, romance infatuation to what she felt now. How was that? Did she love him like a brother or a son? Or was it a love like the amazement of an astronomer looking into the sky and seeing a shooting star brighter than anything else in the sky.
His concern still made her smile and redden a little with pleasure, a confirmation that even though there connection had changed forms it had never been broken.
If she was being honest with herself she had to say that what she was doing now was as much for him alone as it was for the whole of humanity. He was the center from which all the event that would soon culminate in one bloody conclusion had all come. Who had led William Turner to see his true pirate lineage? Who had saved Miss Swan from a cold wet end? Who had made that deal with Davy Jones and then tried to cheat him out of his bounty? Who had pushed the former commodore down this darkened path? Who had first challenged Lord Beckett's sinister dealings and indeed the whole East India Company? Who had walked into Tia Dalma's hut and changed the face of piracy forever without knowing it?
Captain Jack Sparrow had created this chain reaction. It would result death and destruction and blood coloring the sea crimson. What crime had he ever committed to be punished with bearing that responsibility? All he had ever done was fallen in love with a girl, 16, with auburn hair and blue eyes. All he had ever tried to do was fulfill the last promise he had made to her, to find that treasure that would change their lives. A good man despite all of his careful cultivation of bitterness and ruthlessness.
So it didn't cross her mind to be afraid of what happen next when she stepped onto the Sapphire's Pride, moments before anchor was raised. She bore William's quizzical stare with as smile, and stood at the bow looking out into the horizon, toward oblivion and immortality.
If it hadn't been raining earnest before, then it certainly was now. Tapping at the shoulders of the Pearls crew as if try to get their attention. While the fleet of pirate sailed to the west toward the battle, and the Pearls sailed slightly south west into the heart of the storm, the storm's center the rotated around the Flying Dutchmen.
Hours passed in quick succession, showing that the moment couldn't warded of by sheer will. Jack paced from the bow of the ship back to the helm, occasionally shouting orders for his small crew to look the disposition of the sails. It didn't change the tediousness of an anxious journey, not did it brighten the steady darkness that was falling deeper and thicker around them while the sky pelted them with warning drops of murky downpour.
"Awaken the Kraken-uh" The Dutchman's crew hurried to obey, fearing the whip and the unremorseful cruelty of their captain.
Sometimes senseless acts of brutality calmed Davy's nerves. Misery Loves Company was a phrase that gained new meaning for him. In the nights when his memories were closest and he could almost feel heartache coming back to him where there should have never been any feeling again, those were the nights he would take solace in letting the damned souls that crewed his vessel feel a bit of the pain so terrible he had cut out his own heart to be rid of it. It was one of the few comforts he allowed himself.
Today, his men knew, he was worse than usual. From time to time he stomped out of his cabin and would shout for them to work faster, ordering anyone that might slacken the pace ten lashes. The sights and sounds of their pain gave him no pleasure, and he would stomp back into his cabin and start up the frightful serenade that made even the heavens to weep.
He was not himself. Davy Jones, reputed to be the devil himself, had been bested and now his life, and way of life, was being challenged by a sniveling English lord. He found no rest for his pain, and no way to vent his hatred. The man, the one pirate to blame for his lost liberty was already dead.
Still Jones thought of dreadful revenge for Sparrow. Mayhap he would have a chance to use them on Beckett when his charge was over.
When the tragedy of his song again lost its bitter sweetness the Captain marched himself out on deck again to see if they were getting any closer, leaving deep impressions in the wood where his pegged leg struck it. Through the looking glass he saw it, a smile of spite curling his slimy lips. After near a day of sailing to the west he saw Lord Cutler Beckett's armada bearing down on the pirates to the east. Jones could see unnaturally farther than he should have been able, he sneered at Beckett's smug and nervous expression. "He betta not die afore I get my claw around his throat." He spat and panned over to the leader of the buccaneer fleet.
"What is this?" He whispered amazed. "Has fortune so repaid my wrongs? So the thieving charlatan sails into my clutches-uh." That was when he gave the order to raise the beast. If his revenges had been lost for Jack Sparrow, then at least he would finish off Boot-strap's brat and gain some satisfaction from that.
Before they made way after, but only just after, Pintel and Raggetti came running towards Will, a limp form carried between them.
"Mister Turner!" Pintel yelled to him looking at a loss for what was really going on, water rolling off his bald head and into his eyes, "Uh…Captain…Captain Turner, sir."
Will looked from one face to the other trying to figure out what they were doing here, before he looked down and realized who they were carrying.
The two held Elizabeth's unconscious form between me, Pintel cradling her head and shoulders , Raggetti uncomfortably supporting her legs. "What happened?" Will asked, calmly enough that he surprised himself.
The pair looked at each other and remained silent, wordlessly agreeing that Will wouldn't like the truth when he found out and they weren't going to be the ones to tell him.
Elizabeth looked fretful in her unwilling sleep. Will pushed her damp hair from her face and saw she was bleeding a littler from a shallow cut on her head.
"We have a message from Captain Sparrow…Captain." Pintel moved onto an easier subject.
Raggetti jumped in, he knew this one. "He says to take care of her." He nodded several times vigorously. They both seemed frightened at how Will might react.
When the new Captain of the Sapphire finally spoke it was to himself, "What is Jack thinking? She's in more danger here than she would be anywhere else." He sighed and drummed his fingers across his forehead to encourage thought.
"Take her below deck, find somewhere safe for her to rest, on the extra sail material or something…And for God's sake stop looking at me with your mouths hanging opened and ask the first mate for your orders!" The saluted heartily, almost dropping the poor girl, and stumbled off to obey their orders, as surprised at Will's forcefulness and leadership as he was himself.
Everything moved quickly as soon they were in open sea. After that there was less frenzied activity. Those who weren't occupied with a necessary task broke off into their own groups and began to chatter lightheartedly to ward of thought of the fight ahead. Tia stayed alone at the bow, serene and quiet, looking at a point on the horizon as if she watched a complicated drama unfolding on an invisible stage.
Will too stared into empty space arranging plans in his head he had already been told would fail. He felt a presence behind him and turned around.
"Ana." He said in surprise, "Maria...Anamaria." He amended embarrassed, feeling her title should be more formal. He didn't remember when their relationship had moved to a first name basis, but then he had never learned her last name.
"Ana is fine." She waved him off, apparently not a girl much interested by formality. "What are you thinking about?"
William bit his lip and considered, "Failure." He answered truthfully. She raised an eyebrow and laughed at him. He laughed too. Anamaria as he remembered her from before was a severe, dangerous, young woman who appeared willing and able to best anyone within her general vicinity who looked at her the wrong way. Not much had changed except now she didn't seem to hold him in such contempt, and seemed to have grown a sense of humor.
Her expression grew more serious, "I think we all have." They stood close beside each other and started to watch the invisible drama. "What is different?"
"Hm?"
"About you, something is different." They still looked off into the distance but Will became suddenly more aware of their proximity, when he heard her voice close to his ear.
"If you ever figure that out tell me first. I don't know what has happened, but…I don't think I am the same person I was two years ago." Will seemed to be considering this for the first time, but he wasn't. What had started it? He didn't know. The most radical turning point had to be the Kiss, the one he knew now to be Elizabeth's betrayal of Jack, that moment had shaken him to the point that he had begun to question his picture of the future, and the veracity of his past. It had started, though, much earlier than that, with his first encounter with Jack Sparrow.
Anamaria watched him carefully as his face changed with thought, with admiration. What was different? She wouldn't presume to guess, but whatever it was she liked it. This new gritty William Turner wasn't at all the one she had known.
He felt her gaze moving over his face, and changed the subject hurriedly. "You seem to be doing well for yourself, though." He cleared his throat nervously. He hadn't acted this way around any woman since…
"Well enough. Jack kept his word, surprisingly. He got me a better ship." She laughed.
"That is surprising." Will almost growled thinking about Jack, not matching her light tone.
"There's something wrong between you." She stated the fact.
The truth of the matter slipped from his lips before her could water down the sentiment, "I hate him."
Anamaria was plainly shocked. She didn't know about the events, all centering around Elizabeth Swann, that had driven the two to this point, but William was either the best liar she had ever seen or telling her the unadulterated truth.
"Why?" She asked, so utterly amazed that Will wished he had lied to her. "After everything that you did for one another? You saved him from the gallows! He helped you get back you woman! I was under the apparently greatly mistaken assumption that you and he were friends."
"I don't owe him anything. He has never done anything for me that he hasn't negated with another false action. I have never done him a kindness I didn't end up regretting. If it was in my power I would have stopped him from ever coming to Port Royal and ruining my life." He threw caution to the wind and let it tumble across the grass like a discarded paper in a gale. If he was going to tell her the truth there was no point in stopping at "I hate him." Let her know it all and make a judgment.
Anamaria was still amazed. "You would reverse everything he has done?"
"Yes!" Will said without reservation. Then he thought about it carefully again. "No…He once saved Elizabeth from drowning, I will always be thankful for that…Oh Damn! Elizabeth! I completely forgot her! I should have gone to check on her as soon as we made way." Anamaria was unhappy with this, though it pleased her that she had distracted him from his fiancé, even for such a short time. Her own feelings, what seemed to be quickly mounting into the makings of a girlish crush, embarrassed her.
"I need to go look to her." He excused himself and prepared to go. She reached out and grabbed him by the sleeve.
"No time for that." She pointed to the blur that spanned the whole horizon. The EITC armada.
Gibbs lowered the spy glass, "All I see's a lot of empty water, captain."
"He's out there. You don't know him like I do. He'll watch the carnage from far off, but he won't let us cross unchallenged, if he has any taste for revenge." Jack ran his hand over his mouth, thinking. "Keep us steady Master Gibbs, fly our colors."
If they looked north they could see the blur of the two fleets converging. The only sounds were the wind in the sails and the waves lapping against the haul. Everyone waited for the first sounds of cannon.
Jack continued to look off into empty patch of horizon, letting rain run over his hat and face. "He's out there." He said again and squinted to clear his vision. "Masts in the fog." He said, his voice barely a whisper and almost lost in storm sounds.
"You see 'im captain?" Gibbs followed Jack's line of sight and raised the spyglass to his eye again. "There's nothing out there!" He growled again, frustration adding to the wet discomfort and nervous anxiety.
"Jones is there Joshamee, and he's coming." Jack was sounding more like Tia Dalma every moment.
Despite the desperate nature of their circumstances Jack remained distracted. Not surprisingly, since there was nothing he really cared about in peril on this ship. If his plan worked his ship mates might survive, hopefully. Instead of worrying about them, their fates out of his control, he ran his rational for getting Elizabeth through his head over and over again, looking for holes in the logic.
What had possessed him to move her from his ship to a potentially more danger situation? What was the reasoning there? If she had to die "for" him didn't she have to be with him? Didn't she have to make a conscious choice to do so? If that was the way she had to die then no matter how dangerous her surroundings she could survive. But if the plan was to save her from that fate, having taken away the possibility for that fate, could she then die anther way and would it be his fault and would that qualify as dying "for" him?
He shook his head to try rid himself of this confusing circular logic. Whatever the case, if he died on the Dutchman, she couldn't die for his sake.
"Orders Captain?" A half-human coral encrusted mate asked again tremulous. Davy didn't really hear. His eye's were on the slight bulge in the water rushing toward the Sapphire with all speed and imagining the Krakens hunger, making it his own, anticipating the carnage. Out of the corner of his mind he realized he was being addressed.
"Hmph, Orders? What for, ye have my orders." Jones looked down what pass for his nose, at the crewman standing by him, murderous.
"The ship, sir, to starboard."
"What ship?" He grumbled, realizing he had probably just been told the situation and hadn't been listening.
Rather than answer and risk loosing a limb, he proffered a barnacled telescope to let the Captain see for himself. Jones scanned the horizon hungrily. "Ah!" He rasped, shaking his head, and making the tentacles that hung from his face writhe. "What fortuitous circumstance be this. Jack Sparrow, alive and broken! How did I not feel this before? Such profound agony, tis incredible!" He stopped and smiled grotesquely at the prospects. Everything he had planned in vain seemed to be within his reach again, not only that but the Locker, his Locker, had done it's job admirably.
In all his years Davy Jones had rarely felt so extreme a torment. Jack Sparrow was tearing himself apart. His pain was so terrible it reminded Jones of…his own.
He laughed a villainous cackle. Another punishment crossed his mind, but not for Jack. "Bring me Bill Turner."
Coral-head, surprised at his Captains sudden good spirits stumbled off to retrieve the prisoner, before the winds changed.
In the cold dark depths of the ship wet, grime and stagnation ruled. What was forced to live there hammered out a miserable existence bested only by those who lived above for desolation. Even in this hell of hells there was an even darker place, always bitingly cold furnished with nothing but the filth that sloshed around on the floor. Boot-strap Bill stared out the minute barred window of the Flying Dutchman's own brig, half awake with the inability to rest, half dead from exposure and starvation…and still he was unable to die.
The crewman who had long since forgotten his proper name hauled him to his feet hissing, "Captain wants to see you on deck."
"Find something else he can take from me, then?" Bill Turner spat bitterly.
His new companion didn't sympathize with him, just jabbed him in the back to move him along and said, "You'll have to ask him that, now push off."
Jones grinned unrestrainedly as Boot-strap emerged, twice soaked by the rain, and paler than a ghost's shadow.
"I thought you would like to see this." The Captain pointed his claw to the place where the Black Pearl crawled closer through the dense fog. "It seems that someone is trying to save you. Can you guess-uh? D'you have any idea who it might be? Our friend, Jack Sparrow. And look, to north, your son lives and breaths. Valiantly he'll fight to survive my noble beast yet again." Davy sighed as if the whole seen was overwhelming. "Who knew men could survive as many deaths as they've had. Like father like son."
Davy placed a companionable arm around Boot-strap's shoulder. His tentacle fingers wriggling around with minds of their own, making Turner's flesh crawl. "D'you remember, offhand, the promise ye made me when I found you crushed in the blackness? D'you recall the words you swore to?" The devils voice lost its velvet edges, he intoned, "To crew my ship four one-hundred years, for the prolonging of your years and the postponement of judgment day." He leaned closer to William Turner, his voice now stone against crushed glass, a growing fire in his eyes searing the mind of the seer, burning holes in his soul. "You haven't held up your part of the bargain-uh. You've betrayed my trust. My duty to keep you alive is no more."
No one saw him draw it, or where it had come from. In fact, until Bill stumbled aback, hands clutching the hilt, real mortal blood oozing from between his fingers, no one saw the knife at all.
When you lived as long as Davy Jones you learn the ins and outs of death and the means of torture. He had taught himself that trick in India. A medicine man had told him of it. One solid upward thrust, catching the victim between the ribs, could keep him alive and conscious for hours while the blood seeped slowly form the wound.
"Know this Bill Turner, before the sun sets today I will have killed your friend and son and everyone they care about. Know that you will never see them again, and that their ends will be as slow and painful as yours." Jones waved for Coral-face to take him away, "Back to the brig, let him die with those happy thoughts."
So many ways of killing Jack Sparrow filled his head that he didn't know which to choose. One thing only was clear; he had to speak to Sparrow before he died. He had to know what Jack loved…so he could take it away from him.
His heart couldn't help but beat gradually faster. Will had never been more invigorated or more frightened for his life. The silence of the sea and the crew had ended abruptly when the enemy came into sight. The water became choppy and turbulent and the rain beat down more heavily making the decks slick with moisture, and the sea give up a thickening spray.
Anamaria was good enough to loan Will her spyglass, through which he could almost make out the faces of the crew milling about aboard the Endeavor. The Heart was somewhere on that ship, in the possession of Lord Cutler Beckett.
"Battle Stations!" Will ordered, assuming that the crew would know what to do. Anamaria repeated the order, and the women and men alike scrambled to obey.
"You have a plan I hope?" Norrington was at his shoulder, looking at him suspiciously and then back to the Endeavor. All the ships of the EITC fleet were spread along and endless line moving towards them, the wind now with them. The Pirates had much fewer ships, but their forces were split into the agreed upon three arrow shaped formations.
"I hate to disappoint, but our plan is what it has always been. Board and search till we find the Heart of Davy Jones."
"I'm glad to hear you are so confident."
Will didn't mind admitting. "I'm not."
James laughed at him bitterly. "That is was sarcasm Mister Turner. Good luck." He wished him begrudgingly. Several years of bad blood between them hadn't been lessened by several days of partnership. Though Norrington wouldn't want to admit it, he had never really forgiven Will for being Elizabeth's choice over him, and Will knew it.
"Same to you Commodore."
Will descended into the ship, observing the cannons at their ports. Each face turned up to him for orders in a way that gave him a jolt of pride. "Prepare to fire but wait for my signal."
A chorus of voices answered, "Aye!"
If they could clear the decks for a boarding party the search could commence without impediment. That was more than Will hoped for, but anything would help. The Captain of the Sapphire emerged and looked around. The Endeavor was so close that Will imagined he could have smelled Beckett's wig powder.
The waves were beginning to beat against the Sapphire's Pride violently, rocking her alarmingly for side to side. The storm was getting worse for them; rain was so heavy it actually hurt bare skin. Out of nowhere lightning began to snake it's way out of the sky, striking the mast of a ship behind them, followed by a crack of thunder that made their ears ring. But that wasn't half of the storms strangeness, because if you had a good set of eyes and looked across the way to where the East India fleet moved gradually closer you could see that the waves suddenly smoothed beneath those ships, and the rain wasn't even falling on the decks.
No prizes for guessing whose handy work this unnatural storm was.
"Ready grapples! Prepare to board her on my command. Wait for the first round of fire!" Will felt his pulse pounding in his ears. What was this? With every order, and every moment, as the danger moved closer and his possible end seemed nearly palpable. Still he had never felt more alive as he did now, adrenaline making every sensation that much more acute. Was this the sort of freedom that men craved? Wasn't this feeling worth whatever danger or relative evil perpetrated? Or was his pirate blood catching up with him finally?
He could win against the world with the smallest effort. Without his knowledge his sword had jumped into his hand, and an irrepressible smile played about his lips. Had he lived before now?
Even as they drew along side the Endeavor and the yells the enemy reached his ears. Though salty water ran into his eyes, and the driving rain blurred his vision of the other ship, and the wind roared in his ears. And even as Will drew breath to shout, "Fire!" into the shrieking storm, something shook the whole ship out of the surreal moment out of an epic poem. The Sapphire shuddered and stopped, held in place like grabbed form beneath by a great hand, the board creaked and trembled from the jolt, like they had hit a reef.
"No!" Will gasped in shock. "This isn't happening again!"
Anamaria didn't understand what was happening, she could only guess that Will could tell her. "Orders?!" She yelled, but he couldn't hear her over the sound of the waves crashing around them.
"Not again." He gasped again, trying to remember what he was supposed to do. What had happened to the amazing resolve he had felt only a moment before.
The first tentacles became visible over the sides of the ship, slithering their way almost casually, preparing to pull the ship under. Anamaria blanched, understandably, facing a sea monster form only a few feet way, her hand still full with the grappling as she prepared with her boarding party. "CAPTAIN TURNER!"
"Everyone get away from the rails!" Will managed to yell at last. "GET AWAY FROM THE RAILING!" To his horror the crew stood stock still, frozen as if under a gorgons gaze.
In a terrible second, faster than the lightning that flashed all around them; one tentacle snapped out and pulled three sailors into the thrashing waves. In a frenzy of movement, the Kraken's deadly limbs streaked across the deck, with dizzying swiftness. Mast cracked and the sound of them was lost in the screams or the doomed being pulling into the ocean with sickening finality. Beneath the screaming, the roar of the wind and waves, the thunder and the splintering of wood, cannon began to boom steadily. The Endeavor, virtually untouched by all the chaos, was firing on them.
In the midst of the confusion William darted forward to grab Anamaria, who, lost in the shock, still stood by the rails. He caught hold of her around the waist, trying to pull her away. She stumbled and fell landing on top of Will, who scrambled to pull them to their feet and get to a safe place. There were no safe places.
He managed to push her away, to where she crumpled to the deck beneath the amazingly whole mainmast.
The Sapphire's pride began to rock wildly in the wake of the Kraken, attempting the shake the ship to pieces. William stumbled and slide down deck, now sloping this way, now that. In his ears amazingly he heard a voice, clear as a whisper in an empty room. A voice telling him, warning him, "William, gid away from da railing! Look behind you!"
Before he could obey the voice, Tia's, he was seized around the waist in a strangling grip. In the power of the Kraken, being dragged irresistibly to the edge, everything slowed down to the point of stopping. Will had plenty of time to consider this gruesome method of his imminent death.
Because she had floated in the horrible darkness for so long the light that suddenly surrounded her was painful. Everything was ethereal white, spreading off into nowhere. She squinted, and shivered with cold, and gripped onto the edge of consciousness.
Instead she gripped the edge of a rough wooden table. She was so cold.
Looking down at herself at last, she was more surprised to see herself there than she should have been. More surprised, though, because of what she was wearing. Her wedding dress, except infinitely more beautiful than she remembered it. The white lace was brighter, the golden threads glittered with a light of her own. Why was she shivering?
"Well?" she jumped and looked up, into the face of someone she had never seen before. His rough rasp, pained as if he found it heard to draw in the air, was in keeping with his appearance. His hair dripped and his skin was sickly blue, even more disturbingly his skin seemed to covered in creeping barnacles. So shocking was his sudden existence in her world of brilliant white, she quite forgot what it was one did when spoken to.
"Will you roll them or not?" She jumped again at the sound of his voice, which sounded so loud and coarse in the utter silence of the white. Feeling suddenly like a naughty school girl, being reprimanded by an old crotchety tutor, she looked down quickly.
Where her fingers had been wrapped around the edge of the table, she found her hands cradling some very ordinary looking dice. Two of them, slightly brown with age showing snake eyes, looking up at her expectantly.
"It goes on whether you roll or not." Whoever it was that sat across from Elizabeth at the table looked at her sadly. Sympathy?
"What does?" Was that her voice? Did she really sound like that? Time had made her so...desperate?
He raised and eyebrow as if she should know. "Fate." The word echoed around nothing in reverberate sighs.
She tried as hard as she could, but as it is sometimes in dreams, and usually in life, she lost control. Without her wanting them to, the dice seemed to actively wriggle from between her fingers, tumbling to the table and turning over and over.
To add to the surreal moment's eeriness the faces of the dice began to change. One remained a five, but the other looked back at her with an empty expression. It was Jack.
Her fingertips were growing numb, her lips as well, her body was trembling with unbearable cold. "A bad luck roll, that." The man nodded at the table. "I'm sorry for him."
Her hands were unsteady as Elizabeth reached for the die, but her partner snatched his hand out and took it before she could.
"No!" She cried with shuddering force. "Give it back! I want him!"
Acting as if he hadn't heard her he ask, "Where is my son?"
"What?"
"Where is William?" Elizabeth felt the horrified expression spread over her face, her bluish lips parted in astonishment.
"Who are you?"
There were random sounds starting somewhere behind her. Vague deep booming pounded in her head. The white nothing was darkening.
"You must get up." The man ordered her firmly. Could he be Will's father? She had never seen him before.
An invisible pressure was crushing her ribcage, a corset pulling tighter and tighter till it was impossible to breathe. She felt soaked form the inside out, like she was standing in a room slowly filling with ice water.
"Who…" She rasped, barely forcing the words to take shape, "Who…are…you?"
"Get up Elizabeth Swann. If you don't escape right now you'll kill them both."
Something shook her violently, the vivid white changed back to the swirling black. She screamed. She was falling backwards into the cold, black, endless torment. She would never escape, everyone she loved was either dead or dying and Jack wouldn't save her…why wouldn't he save?
Sinking deeper into the pool of salt tears and sea water she started to drown.
More startling than the sudden appearance from behind the thickening walls of falling water of an unnatural ghost ship was the fog swirling around the deck of the Pearl. The mist seemed semisolid, like a weight around the small crew's boots, and it gurgled and undulated like a living thing writhing in agony of death throws. Compared to that, the Flying Dutchman, illuminated occasionally by strikes of lightening in the thunder shaken sky, was relatively comforting because at least the Jack had told them it would be there.
Jack was having trouble remembering to breath. The weight on his shoulders that had been slowly growing incrementally as they neared the eye of his torment. He could hardly stand under the pressure of so much hatred concentrated in one place. Trapped inside the Locker he had had a private viewing into the mind of Davy Jones. His prison with no walls, only doors in to the corridors of his tormented memories, his tear chamber had been only a cell in a much darker purgatory. The Locker was nothing more or less than the twisted prison of Davy's imagination. A torture chamber full of the bitterness of a heartless inhuman force.
Jack had seen it, like no one else had done, and he lived, in a way, to tell the tale. But he had left something behind, and the closer the drifted through the driving rain, the more he realized just how strong Jones's hold was.
Gibbs was tiptoeing around the deck comically, crossing himself as he stood back to his captain and said, "Frightful devilry this, Jack. It bodes ill by all accounts."
Jack actually smiled, "He's stronger." Maybe it was the proximity to the Heart that made the difference in the Dutchman's powers, or maybe it was just the fact that Jones relished the chance to finish off Jack Sparrow ever so slowly. Jack didn't share either sentiment with Gibbs, who would surely be thrown into further hysterics. He instead concentrated on the shoot of light surrounding the Devil's Ship and the clouds spinning around it. And at the very heart of the eye of storm stood Davy Jones.
"Go down and wait form the signal…"
Gibbs nodded and made his captain once again silently overwhelmed by his loyalty. "And pray it never comes." He finished the order.
It still didn't make much sense to Jones that he could be staring at a boldfaced and smirking Jack Sparrow. It seemed, in fact, rather contrary to the way things were supposed to be.
Davy Jones, Captain of the Flying Dutchman and claimer of souls, was used to his effect on people. In truth he had cultivated it and honed it into a fine art form, much like the way his legend had grown through the years, his ability to live up to it, to scare the living daylights out of anyone that crossed his path, had as well. He was not unjustly proud of the fact. So Sparrow's calmness and blatant disregard for the natural order kept him off balance as the negotiations began.
"You have come to meet your own damnation, Jack Sparrow. I can assume only you want something."
"Your perception, as always amazes me. You have always been so insightful."
If Jones had had an eyebrow, he would have raised it. "Excuse me…are you trying to be…scathing?"
"Am I not?" Jack did raise his eyebrows, both of them, in an off-handed sort of way.
"This seems an inappropriate time."
"I understand. Straight to business, no small talk." Jack made a great show on nonchalance. In his mind a clock was ticking away furiously. Every second longer he waited someone was very likely dead not two leagues away. "I come to deliver a challenge.
Jones found this funny and laughed aloud.
"I challenge you…" Jack paused dramatically, "To single combat."
Jones shifted his weight form his peg leg to his real one like the ground had shifted in an unexpected direction. "Really?" He asked, intrigued as well as confused by the many possibilities this new proposition could create.
"Listen, I'll make it fair. I'll fight you with one half of my soul tied behind me back." An edge entered Jack's voice, and accusing one.
Jones let the words hang in the air for a long time and thought. "Why would you want to fight someone you can't kill?"
"Call it a grudge. Call it vengeance. Call it well earned insanity or the result of carrying ones unfinished business to the grave and back. If I have a death wish, and you can rightly accuse me of that, then I can only surmise that you do also. We share a singular desire."
Davy Jones stared, unrestrainedly at the creature he had created. This was no one he knew and hated. This Sparrow was another altogether.
"There is a condition." Jack interrupted his thought. "The storm must be suspended for the fight." To Jones this seemed almost a side issue. He had to think…what was the down side to this? What could Jack Sparrow hope to gain?
"Though it seems a moot point, I must ask…" He laughed at the absurdity of what was happening. What must the spectators think? "as a matter of formality, what are the stakes to our hypothetical contest."
"If you win you can have the rest of my soul."
"And…?"
"If I win, I want my life back. I want the sea back. I want the horizon and the waves and the sunset and the sea spray…"
"High stakes, mate." Jones made a wet sound with his lips. "What if I refuse?'
Jack smiled, his eyes glowed with a hateful internal life, and he was truly terrifying to behold. "Then I will give the signal to my ship mate and he will light the fuse of my powder heavy ship and we can finish this conversation in hell when I see you again."
Jones was shocked at Jack's candor. The words reached him across the space between the two ships, there wasn't much, precise like they had been practiced in the mirror. This bluff was carried out perfectly, but Jones had a suspicion that this was no bluff.
Jack would kill himself, kill his crew, kill the crew of the Flying Dutchman including his own friend Bootstrap…just for revenge? Was this ruthlessness or sacrifice? He wanted to change something and tip the balance in his favor…and he wanted the storm suspended…
"Ha!" The Devil laughed aloud, throwing a glance in the direction of the fleets colliding. He suddenly understood the delicious hopelessness. "Aren't you a clever actor?" So the Locker really had done what it was meant to do…it had cut Jack deeper that Jones had ever hoped for.
The Devil reached out with his mind and sensed the internal anguish of the soul, half his already, the one that he had ruined. "Is not love the cruelest thing of all?" He asked, watching Jacks fragile little mask of indifference crack.
"I agree." He said with pleasure, this was a better revenge than he could have devised on his own. Jack would destroy himself, those he loved and in the end do nothing to save his friends…yes indeed a job well done. "I agree to your terms."
Elizabeth shot forward spluttering and coughing. For a while she was blind, shivering, and terrified. All she could do was try to cough the water out of her lungs and listen to a deep booming somewhere far away. As she waited for her eyes to adjust she could only grasp at wild horrific guesses as to where she might be. Sitting still as stone in a creeping cold pool of water again and again he mind, fevered and driven by a provoked and guilty conscience told her that she was in the tear chamber, a punishment for the blood on her hands.
However, the forms around her began to take on definite shape and in the dim she realized she wasn't in Hades, she was even alive if her pulse could be trusted.
It was the unfamiliar belly of a ship that surrounded her. Unfamiliar in that she had never seen it before and also because it was filling with water at an alarming rate. Despite the panic that was welling up in her chest, she couldn't move. She was still trying to remember how she got here. Remembering as far back as she could…she could remember nothing but black. Endless black…and black sails…and the empty pools of black eyes…
"Oh, God." She remembered where she was supposed to be! Her hand shot to her head and she winced, pulling he fingers away all sticky with half coagulated blood. "Damn it!" Out of nowhere her head throbbed with pain of such intensity that is was accompanied with a fit of nausea. As much as she wanted to believe otherwise and take on the world, she wasn't in good shape. Though she could feel the water, cold and deadly, rising around her Elizabeth was unable to move for sometime, it was all she could do not to throw up and pass out again.
Someone had lain her carefully on a hammock, which had presumable not been half submerged at the time, with her jacked rolled up for a pillow beneath her head. She didn't bother to retrieve the garment, which was now fully soaked. All she could hear was the sound of running water and the thrumming of… thunder?
Experimentally, and always with the knowledge that the room she was in was filling rapidly with the intent to drown her, Elizabeth stood in the waist high water and tried to wade to a wall. The fire in her head was stealing down her back and through her joints until the one injury made even her fingers throb.
She ignored it, and tried to still her convulsive shivers. Everything hurt, but now she could feel the rough walls and concentrate on those. In her world there was nothing but the rough wood beneath her fingers and the water she could barely see. Blindly she stumbled along, inching her way along the wall she used also to keep herself upright. She couldn't tell whether she was shaking or the ship was around her, and still the water filled the room. Up to her elbows. Where was that door! The icy fingers closed around her throat, she panicked, gasped for air. Where was that door!
She sobbed with relief when she found it at last, the doorway and the stairs that would lead her on deck. She floated above the lentil, the exit was completely submerged now and the toes of her boots could no longer find the floor. Her heart beat so loudly it threatened to pound out the sound of the water, and she was afraid of dying. What could she do?
If she tried to swim she might black out again and drown, she didn't even know if her legs were sure enough to move her through the water. And what, again she had to wonder, was the booming, threatening sound? She might escape just to die another way. But there was no other choice, so she took what might be her last breath and kicked as hard as she could toward the surface.
Anamaria grabbed his right hand not a second before the creature would have pull will into the torrent of water and splintered wood. In her left hand she held tightly to a lifeline, keeping them tenuously anchored to the deck.
"Will!" She shouted at him, but he looked dazed like he no longer knew what was happening. "Will!" She yelled again, trying to wake him up.
William could hardly breathe in the Krakens grip. His daze was broken suddenly when his heels connected with the railing and he looked up at Ana. She was straining to keep them on the ship with inhuman effort, stalling them just long enough to…what? He left arm trapped at his side wriggled wildly to reach his belt, his fingers groping for the handle of his knife.
Anamaria blinked her watering eyes, the rope was pulled tight, her shoulder possibly dislocated already from the stress. Her palms were rope burned, and bleeding and her as much as she tried to hold on her fingers were slipping one by one.
Just as Will was sure his arm would be ripped from its socket his fingers closed around the handle of the blade, and he stabbed wildly upward over and over again.
The giant tentacle tensed, and the tightened around Will's torso in a grip surely meant to snap his spin in half. William was dizzy, he lost his hold on Anamaria's fingers and everything was just white searing pain forever. But then the Kraken loosed its grip, and dropped Will on the deck with a shriek.
They both momentarily stunned, but only for a moment, before Anamaria and Captain Turner jumped to their feet and began to run aft. The ship was tilting alarmingly. If they had looked behind them the could have seen the tentacles winding themselves around the railing and snaking along the deck to find a place to hold. Showing its impatience to eat the sea monster was trying to capsize the ship.
They ran along the graduating incline, adrenaline, exhilaration, and a near-death-experience making them light headed. In that moment timed slowed, so that Will could see every instant of what happened next clearly in his dreams.
Anamaria, running beside him turned her head and met his eye, and she smiled. As strange as it might seem, in the midst of chaos, she smiled at him. He felt his blood go a little warm. She was so pretty at that very instant, and in the melee of lightning, gunpowder and shot, she seemed happy in that eternal trice. She lived for this. She was untouchable.
So what happened next was all the more unspeakable.
An instantaneous silence opened, and in the interim Will heard a gun shot, clear as ringing crystal. Unremarkable yes, but in that same silence Anamaria cried out and fell. Will reach out and grabbed one hand but their momentum was broken and they started sliding down the decks slippery surface. Anamaria clutched her thigh with her free hand, tying to stem the bleeding. Will tried to back peddle, but slipped and lost hold of her.
She couldn't stand or get to her feet so Ana rolled onto her stomach and scrambled upward. One glance had told her that the railing of the Sapphire to starboard was fully under water and she was only a few feet away from where the deck was receding into the water.
Will got his footing again, and dropped to his belly to grab hold of her hand. She looked back up at him, looked at if she might smile again…
Anamaira opened her mouth to say something, possibly "Pull me up." Or some kind of thanks. But her face froze, and then contorted with horror. A slender tentacle wound its way around her ankle and yanked her backwards.
Will, holding her fingers, was pulled down after her. With a shout of shock he realized what was happening. He tried to pull her back up, save her as she had saved him. The water swallowed her legs…torso…shoulders…
She looked at him with eyes that tried to communicate a message. He couldn't know what it was. Those eyes, her face, disappeared beneath the water soundlessly. Will still held her fingers, concentrated on her strong but slender hand, willed himself the strength to save her.
He yelled something into the sea, he lost his grasp and she slipped through his fingers and was gone.