Yay, Chapter 11 is up! This chapter is called Fate Revealed. Hope you enjoy, even though this one is a mite shorter than the last couple. Chapter 12 will make up for it I swear.
Previously in Chapter 9 -
All color drained from Will's face. He took several steps back but did not seem to be aware that he was doing so.
"...Dead? That was the price she had to pay? Suicide? And she did it...she took her life willingly."
Tia nodded once curtly.
"I will tell you as I told her. The only way to arrive at the Locker is to be betrayed by the one you love most and to take your own life accepting the guilt you feel. I imagine you can guess which path your dear Elizabeth took."
He took several more steps back and numbly sat down in a chair by the wall.
Tia shook her head. "You wanted to know where she was, and you also want to see her. Come, Will, I will show you."
He rose again, and followed her to the room, pulled along by something that he was not in control of.
At the sight of her slumped body, he turned and held his stomach, slapping a hand over his mouth. Blood covered the floor, some dark brown, and some still bright red.
"I assure you, Will, she will return. She will return with the Captain, and then you will have the opportunity to save your father. According to you, that is all you care about now. So I am confused about your reaction to this," she said, waving her hand in the direction of the body.
Bracing himself against the wall, Will sneered at the witch. "I nearly married this woman. Seeing her covered in her own blood, slumped over on the floor of a river witch is slightly disconcerting. Sorry."
A dark chuckle escaped her lips. "If you say so, Will Turner. Remember, you need not try to convince me of anything. I know enough already."
It was a strange this seeing her own dead body...
She was standing in the room, staring at her corpse. Her hair, which was spread out on the wood floor where her head rested, was matted and caked with fresh and dried blood. Her skin had lost all of its color, and her eyes were soulless.
The knife lay sparkling in the candlelight next to her pale hand.
Did she qualify as a ghost?
The air around her did not envelope her skin with a sticky residue as it had when she was alive. The colors of the room seemed void of life, as though they had also killed themselves when she had.
There had been a smell to the room when she had stepped through, like a musty sweetness, almost what one would expect old honey to smell like. Now, there was no smell.
Then, with a start, she realized that she had not taken a breath since she had opened her eyes to find herself staring at the corpse in front of her.
That wasn't her anymore. That thing was just a sack of skin and bones, hollow without her soul.
She was dead.
Had she been alive, she would have rushed over to the window, thrown it open violently, and wretched the contents of her stomach into the murky yellow waters of Tia Dalma's moat.
But she was dead.
The door to the room was pushed open just then, and two figures stepped through.
Will...
His shoulder-length hair was plastered to his skin with sweat, and she detected a hint of exhaustion behind his eyes.
When they landed on the dead corpse, he slapped his hand over his mouth and clutched at his stomach.
Oh, Will...She never meant for him to see this. She never meant for any of this to hurt him. She was careless, and he didn't deserve a moment of it...
Tia Dalma, who had entered the room with Will, watched him speculatively.
"I assure you, Will, she will return. She will return with the Captain, and then you will have the opportunity to save your father. According to you, that is all you care about now. So I am confused about your reaction to this," Tia questioned, suspicion lacing her voice, waving her hand through the air in the direction of the body.
Why was Tia so confident that she was going to successfully rescue Jack? Why does she seem so confident that Jack even wants to be rescued?
She watched Will lean against the wall, now freely staring at her body. After a moment he shot a nasty look at Tia. "I nearly married this woman. Seeing her covered in her own blood, slumped over on the floor of a river-witch is slightly disconcerting. Sorry."
Tia's eyes narrowed, and a sound came out of her mouth that was halfway between a chuckle and a grunt.
"If you say so, Will Turner. Remember, you need not convince me of anything. I know enough already."
What did she know?
She watched them turn to walk out together, and had half a mind to reach out to Will, then thought better of it.
He couldn't even see her...
The door closed behind them, and she let her eyes fall shut.
"Miss Swann, it is a pleasure to meet you at last. The circumstances are less than desirable, but there is nothing for it."
She spun around, searching for the origin of the ethereal voice, and found a tall thin woman standing by the window, looking out into the swamp. She had long black hair, and wore a simple white dress.
"Who are you?"
The woman turned and looked at her with a wistful smile.
"I am the one that you wished to speak to, dear. Surely you haven't already forgotten?"
'You will have to speak to Fate about the true understanding of what you have done, and then you must take this knife to your wrists.'
"Oh my God…"
The woman shook her head playfully, strands of black hair falling on her face.
"Yes, Elizabeth, some call me Fate, some call me Destiny, and some don't believe in me at all. But you do, because you are here, and your corpse is over there, and you want to rescue Jack Sparrow. Is that about the right of it?"
She opened and closed her mouth for a moment before collecting herself.
"Yes."
Fate nodded, surveying the young woman.
"I must warn you, Jack is in a right state at the moment. I have no doubt that he wants revenge, as baseless as that need is, on you. He has had some…outside influence that I don't approve of, but unfortunately there is nothing I can do about that."
"Outside influence?" she questioned.
A long sigh floated through the air.
"I cannot tell you. I just know that based on the little I have spoken to Jack-"
"You spoke to Jack?"
The woman turned to fully face her.
"Yes, I did, briefly, although I was disguised as you at the time. I appeared to Jack as a visage of you on the brink of death due to suicide in hopes to make him realize that electing to withhold his forgiveness from you is a grave mistake. I cannot say that I convinced him, but I am cautiously optimistic."
She watched the woman from where she stood and chose her next question carefully.
"Tia Dalma said that the price for this mission was part of my soul, yet she neglected to explain the consequences of that. Perhaps you could enlighten me?"
Fate arched an eyebrow. "It is not as black and white as you are hoping, Miss Swann. Losing a soul fragment does not take away all of your humanity, it only bends it. The changes in you will be quite subtle in fact, and you will not notice them until you are forced to make decisions that you would not otherwise make."
"What about Jack's soul? What state is it in?"
Another long sigh.
"He is very broken, and it will take nothing short of a miracle to bring him back, which is why Jack cannot kill you. His current companion, damn him, has been attempting to convince him that you shackled him to his ship only for a desire to save yourself, and nothing else. Jack was already incredibly conflicted about the course of action for you, due to events in his past, and his…regard for your person. I fear that his companion may have tipped his mind too far down the wrong path already."
"I did not condemn him to save myself from death-"
"I know, Elizabeth, I know. You killed Jack Sparrow because you felt something for him that consumed you, terrified you, and viciously tore at your seams until there were none left. You have always yearned for control, and that control was swept away on the waves of the sea every time you looked at him."
She reared back and stared at the woman in shock. Her black hair was rippling from an invisible wind, like an inky waterfall.
"I now see that it was never losing control that scared me. It was tasting freedom, and it excited me."
Fate looked at her directly, her eyes suddenly turning hard.
"Are you in love with him?"
She waited for a moment, processing the question, and then nodded her head once resolutely.
"Yes."
"Then there may be time to save him yet. I will take you to the Locker, but you must find your way to him from there. I must warn you, you may face trials and challenges in that dastardly place that you are not prepared for. Just keep focused on your goal. It will do no one any good for you to become defeated."
Fate held out a pale hand. "Come, take it. Your mission will begin now."
She intertwined her fingers with Fate's, and the room around her disappeared.