Last Chapter:

Face to Face

It took two whole months for Elizabeth to recover fully from her ordeal at the hands of the former Admiral Norrington. She had to focus all her energies towards repairing the extensive damage done to her body and to her soul. Even with the accelerated healing that being Captain of the Black Pearl granted, the bruises and scars were still bad enough to warrant a whole two months' work.

She also spent a lot of time entering confrontations with her inner demons. Was it really moral to do what she was doing? She had killed more than sixty people, one indirectly, and was sailing forth to kill one more, all in the name of a lover that was dead.

Was it worth her soul?

More and more, it seemed to her that it would be so much more worth it to return to Okinawa and stay with Kira. She smiled softly through her gloom at her memories of her close friend. The closeness and care she offered had come at just the right time in her life, and she was intensely grateful for it.

She knew now that she did feel something that was at the very least a strong sisterly affection for Kira, after all. And as much as the idea should have disturbed her, it didn't. All that she needed were the memories of her smile, the fragile yet dangerous face, and of those warm, soft arms around her, and all doubts were driven away.

And even with all the hatred within her, with all the horrible things he'd done to her, even with the Hell she'd gone through because of him…could she still find it in herself, in that one defining moment, to murder Will?

From her bunk on the Pearl, she cast a glance towards the 'Kill List Five' on the wall with four names crossed off. The only one left, the last one of them all, the chief offender, still lived.

And, as each time before, when she looked at that name, she felt the painful touch of the cold steel dragging across her neck.

And because of that, she came out deciding to herself I am gonna Kill Will.

-KW-

In the end, they discovered that the reason they had had so much difficulty in locating where Will was hiding out now was simply because Will Turner no longer lived on land at all. He sailed around the Caribbean in a small yet comfortably built ship that was much larger than Ana's old Jolly Mon, yet smaller than the Interceptor of old; formidable, yet small enough for a single man to crew.

She had to admit, it did sound like Will. As the Pearl floated in the Tortuga harbour, the smaller ship just a few kilometres away, close enough to see it in the dense fog, she peered through her scope to examine the deck of the ship to familiarize herself with it before attempting boarding. She was grateful for whatever mystical deity, be it god or Neptune or whoever, that decided to bring him into port at the same tie as them.

"I don't like the look of it, Miss Elizabeth," Gibbs said. "This is far too easy."

"How so?" She asked without looking at him, still peering through the looking glass.

"On deck, y'see? There's no weapons, no food, no kegs of rum, no people, nothing at all," he elaborated. "It's not right. It's too easy. And," he added, "this unnatural fog is setting off my 'I-have-a-bad-feeling-about-this' sense." Rather than scoff at it, as many of his captains had, Elizabeth stocked a lot of faith in his feelings about things such as this. She still had yet to regret it.

"Well, no matter; I'm going aboard. Alone," she added as she snapped the scope closed.

"But, Miss Elizabeth…"

"Yes?" She looked at him.

He hesitated a moment longer, and then asked, "What if the worst should happen?"

She gazed back out to the ship, the home of her enemy, the only thing standing between her and the place she wanted to call 'home'. From somewhere within her, the words came: "Keep to the Code."

Gibbs merely nodded in understanding. "Aye, Captain Swann."

-KW-

There was no full moon tonight. The fog surrounding the place made visibility low. There were low clouds overhead, so no starlight came through.

Elizabeth could not have asked for more.

As she rowed her longboat towards the side of the ship—the Bootstrap, she could see from this close—she worried for not the first time about what she would see and do once aboard. Then the more steely side of her came out, and she took a hand, and patted the handle of her katana lovingly. She would do what must be done, nothing more.

At the side, she picked up her specially-made boarder's anchor; a horrifically spiked harpoon tied with a rope to the boat. With proper exertion, she rammed the harpoon straight into the side of the ship, and then pushed off the side.

The raft went nowhere.

Pleased with Kira's design, she climbed the small side of the Bootstrap up to its deck. In the back of her head, she noted that from here, it rather was built like a small boot; it was mostly flat, save for the last four metres or so, where the deck rose up to hold the Captain's Cabin and the rudder control above. There was no mast, she saw, and the reason for that was rather ingenious; with a few pulleys near the wheel, he could simply pull sails up in a shell-like fashion around the front of the ship, and move forward at a comfortable speed with an unimpeded view. She also noted the four cannon that were on each side of the ship, above and below decks; from what she surmised, the lower deck consisted of the other eight guns, the necessary supplies for such weaponry, and enough food and water—or rum, she supposed—to last for a while.

She kicked open the cabin door, and warily looked around.

No one.

She walked about the small cabin. As she did, she admired the collection of swords decorating the walls. They were all sabres and cutlasses, blades obviously of his design, yet with strange twists on them that made them unusual, probably difficult for anyone else to use.

Impressed, she turned, and sealed the doors again. Then she rapidly moved over to a chair that was positioned by the windows, yet not visible from anyone coming straight in the door.

So, she glanced over to his desk, and, seeing no papers on it, put her feet up.

And she waited.

-KW-

Will pushed and shoved, struggling with all his might. The damned creature was going to beat him, he was sure of it. Suddenly, a wave of determination overcame him, and he swore to himself that he could not and would not let the monster win against him. So he fought and shoved and kicked and yelled with all of his might, and finally, he won.

The stubborn cow was aboard.

It was much more effort than he had wanted to put into it, but it would be worth it when it was four weeks out at sea and he wanted fresh meat instead of salty, preserved meat, or too-old fruit.

He swiftly grabbed the end of his ponytail, now long enough to reach the middle of his back, and held it up while he shoved his head into the refreshingly cold Caribbean water. He smiled as he pulled himself out of the water, feeling more refreshed from that. He swung the long hair back over his shoulder, and entered his cosy cabin.

He took three steps before he heard from behind him a voice he'd hoped never to hear again.

"Hello, Will," said Elizabeth.

He wheeled around, pistol in his hand. He fired without hesitation, and with dead-on aim. The pistol smoked as the lead left it at speeds too fast for him to see, and embedded itself under her black cloak.

Yet she seemed unaffected. In fact, she was smiling as she rose from her position of rest in his chair—his chair!

Panicking, he moved to the desk, and quickly whipped out another pistol, and shot again, aiming for her torso. He heard the shot go off, saw the smoke, all the signs that it had fired correctly, so nothing was wrong with his guns.

The problem was that Elizabeth wasn't affected by them.

Real terror creeping into him now, he lunged towards the windowsill, pulling out the concealed double-barrel pistol there. He fired off both shots in quick succession. Neither succeeded where the others had failed.

What was happening to him?

-KW-

It was dramatic, she knew, but Elizabeth rather liked the effect her nonchalance with being shot repeatedly was having on poor Will. It was so simple, yet so utterly brilliant, she decided to see if she could tell him his mistake before he died.

She had very thoroughly inspected this room. She had found the first pistol, stashed in the bookshelf, all too easily. The same could be said for the one in the desk. The double-barrelled one had been tricky, though, to find; not only had Will crafted himself a fine weapon, he also hid it extremely well.

However, the lead rounds inside the pistols were not so easily hidden. They were, in fact, very easy to remove.

"Give up yet, Will?" She rose her hands, indicating she held nothing. "Can we talk, maybe?"

"About what?" He almost shrieked.

"Oh, I don't know," she said airily, "You pick a topic; old times, how you've been, how I've been, what we've done in the past two or so years, why you decided to kill me and my husband," saying the last with the same blasé approach as the others.

"Why talk, Elizabeth?" He stood, eyeing her suspiciously. "We both know that, inevitably, one of us is going to kill the other. Why talk?"

"Because even after all you did to me, you're still in some small corner of my heart, and I want to know why you did it." She tilted her head. "What was your motivation? Revenge? Jealousy? Anger?"

Sensing she wouldn't kill him—immediately, anyhow—he sat down. "None of those. Why I did what I did…" He sighed. "It was protection."

"Protection? From what?" She grew angered. "Protecting me from Jack? Is that what you think you—"

"Why does everything have to be about you, Elizabeth?" He asked bitterly. "I was protecting Jack from you."

"What?!" He didn't need to have known her for years before now to know that she was furious.

"It was protection, and I'll tell you why. First of all, you have a nasty habit of picking men up, and then breaking their hearts. Particularly for someone whom they consider something of a lesser being, even if an equal in other ways."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

He gestured. "Please, sit. It's obvious we're not going to kill each other right now, so we might as well be civilized." She did so. "First, you seemed to have a fancy for me. Then, you hurt me very deeply by going to James Norrington, who I considered a square and an ice block incapable of human emotion. Then, you broke his heart by going back to me, a blacksmith with no stature or anything of value to offer his dearly beloved. He eventually got over it, but the wound stayed on his heart. Then, after coming this close," he held up his forefinger and thumb very close together, "to marrying me, you threw yourself at Jack Sparrow, a man who was a pirate, and a pompous ass of a pirate at that, with no morals or any concern for you, merely for what pleasures you might be able to offer him. Then, as was inevitable with you, he actually began to feel something for you. And then he asked you to marry him. Your third fiancée, and he hadn't learned anything from the first two. I felt I owed Jack something, and I couldn't bear the idea of the heartbreak you put me and James through being thrown on Jack. So I saved him from his misery."

"By stabbing him through the heart?" Elizabeth said, incredulous.

"I also didn't especially like him for stealing my future wife away," Will added.

She shook her head. "We're done here."

"Yes, we are." Then he shoved off from the desk, and his chair shot back towards the rack of swords. He rose, pulling a sword from within his desk out to guard stance. She recognised the design; it was a very thin, yet versatile and durable piece of incredibly sharp steel, attached to a pommel that had silver hoops looping artfully around the wielder's hand in a much more intricate and artful guard than the usual cutlass had. It was a French rapier, the sword wielded by the King's Musketeers.

This would be interesting.

She rose from her chair gracefully, as if she were merely being dismissed from a dinner. Her hand went to her belt with equal casualness, grasping the handle of her katana, pulling it free slowly to allow her opponent to admire the sword's beauty and inherent danger. "You and I have unfinished business."

He levelled the rapier. "So we do."

Then they began.

He leapt over her blade to land on the desk, and quickly leapt from there out the door. She spun around and followed, katana at the ready. She swung up at his rapier, deciding to try and cut this fight short by cutting his sword short. Unfortunately, the French blade just bent with the blow. Her eyes broadened in surprise.

He smiled. "French steel; flexible, yet extremely strong." Then he rolled and attacked at her flank, driving her back. She back-pedalled rapidly, climbing up the ladder to the top of the Bootstrap, continuing to retreat as they moved to the wheel. Then she leapt over it in a spinning jump that looked very impressive to Will, and she leapt clean off the side onto the dock. Intent on victory, he followed.

The moment he landed, he was off balance. She took that advantage, and pressed it. She drove him up, off the docks, and onto the well-beaten paths littered with drunk and despondent characters that led the way into Tortuga. He stumbled backward and fell over a sleeping drunk, who sat up in confusion. Elizabeth gave him an irritated thwack on the head with the katana pommel. The drunk fell back over, asleep again. She leapt over the drunk and caught up to Will, who was no longer off balance.

He led her through a difficult ring of motions, parries, assaults, and feints that led them through the crowded, rowdy streets of Tortuga, and into the pub.

The brawl continued on around them, totally oblivious to the two people fighting each other to the death with strange swords. However, they were forced to be aware of the brawl, watching for spinning drunks that would impede their opponent's progress, or angry seamen that would attack their opponent should he misstep and interrupt their drinks.

Elizabeth ducked under a knife whipped across the room, and saw that it was meant to hit a man that was passionately snogging a girl's brains out in the small of the back…twelve feet away from Elizabeth. She shook her head, thinking that drunks shouldn't throw knives.

Then the drunk threw another knife, and it embedded itself in the side of Will's knee.

She decided that maybe she needed to reconsider her opinion on knife-wielding drunks.

Grimacing, Will ripped the knife out of his knee, and was just in time to use it to make a badly disproportionate 'x' guard against Elizabeth's katana, streaking down at him. Then, he shoved with the 'x', forcing her into the thick of the brawl. He then threw the knife, and this time, it did hit its intended target.

The womaniser fell over, groaning in pain.

The drunk waved to him in thanks as he moved in on the recently-single woman, and Elizabeth noticed. As she followed Will closely up the stairs, never once relenting in her attacks, she asked, "Still doing the good deeds, Will?"

He smiled down at her. Then, there was a loud scream, followed by a resounding clang.

They both looked to see the drunk, lying on the floor, and the woman holding a hot frying pan in her hand.

"Then again, maybe not," he muttered.

And then they were back into their duel of fates. She drove him backwards, remembering the layout of the building in the back of her head as she halted to allow a group of men pitch another man—who was, curiously, half-dressed—down into the brawl. She saw another brawler randomly swing and deliver a solid blow to Will's jaw, which sent him flying into the railing. Unhesitant, she swung with all her force into Will.

He barely rolled down the banister in time to have her slice through the wood instead of his skull.

As he rose to attack, he spared a glance down at the pit, and froze, staring in wonder. Deciding that he wasn't the type to cheat in a fight, Elizabeth looked, too. What they saw tied up most of the loose strings of the odd little drama they had been immersed in; the half-clothed man was kissing the woman below, who had dropped the frying pan and was kissing him back voraciously. The lack of pants was explained by the crying woman who was wearing the missing pants—and scarce else—behind them who ran at the railing, obviously intent on hitting it with dramatic poseur, and breaking up the happy reunion below. However, it seemed fate had smiled on the couple below; Elizabeth's blow had sliced clean through the area the woman tried to throw herself on. She fell straight down behind the bar, and vanished from sight. The former lovers on the balcony exchanged a look, and a mutual shrug of 'it's Tortuga'. Then they went on their merry way.

She forced him back out onto the upper story porch that overlooked the street. Smiling, she drove the unsuspecting Will back almost flush to it, and then, used the trick James had taught her, and kicked Will square in the stomach under their crossed blades.

He fell straight down, and after taking two steps backwards, she launched herself after him, landing in a roll. She sprang up to deflect his waiting blade. Apparently, he had expected the fall.

He fled the other way, straight into another building. She leapt ahead of him, atop the stairs, ignoring the family's protests. He began to duel her, driving her upwards. Then, deciding to play dirty, she kicked his other, uninjured knee. It snapped backwards with a rather nasty sounding 'crack'. He staggered, but kept moving forward.

He'd die if he didn't.

He drove her upwards, forcing her to go out on their little porch, too. Deciding to take this fight elsewhere, she demonstrated one of her more favourite tricks, and leapt onto his rapier's thin blade. It was a tricky landing, but she pulled it off. She even remembered the 'flexible, yet strong' line, and let her momentum force the blade down, inevitably forcing it to bend back up, propelling her onto the roof. Will scrambled to follow, hooking a hand onto the ledge above, and then crawling over the little wall encircling the roof.

Her front was parallel to the line of the roof, and he was standing with the back of his heels against the raised edge of the roof, the top of it impacting just below his knees. He was a few feet to her right as he swung and she blocked, the two of them staring at one another over their mismatched blades. Then, inspiration struck Elizabeth. It was risky, it was daring, but it just might work…

With inhuman speed, her let hand removed itself from the pommel of her katana and, while reaching over her right arm, gripped his wrists with a vicelike grip that he could not have escaped. She then swung her sword, free to move away from blocking Will's trapped sword, counter-clockwise in a grand arc at a high speed.

And she cut off both hands at the wrist.

As her grip forced the freed appendages into the air, he fell to his bruised and smashed knees in agony. The sword fell from his disembodied hands' grip, and landed neatly in her outreaching left.

Coldly staring down at her nemesis, she crossed katana and rapier at his neck, the ends of both blades resting on his shoulders. He was kneeling despite the pain, and staring into her hardened, cold, dead eyes, he saw his death.

"Pay attention, Will," she said acerbically. "This is how it is done." And with that, she let go of two years' hate, anger, rage, love, and sorrow, and swung both arms outward, hands flicking straight into alignment with her wrists, moving the blades like a pair of scissors.

Snip.

And William Turner's head fell to the street below as his shattered body fell, exhaling its last breath in a slow sigh as it went, leaving only Captain Elizabeth Swann, mismatched foreign blades held high in the air, bloodstained and battered, bruised and tired, exhausted…and finished.

She was finally free.

Author's Note: Please, please, PLEASE stick around for the Epilogue. It took me forever to word it right, and I really don't think that this 'Last Chapter' quite ends things right.