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Chapter Thirteen:
Limbo
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Several long minutes passed—though to Sarah they seemed like hours, or possibly the rest of the week. The dank, salty smell of the rock wall she was pressed against made her feel nauseous. The echoing trails of speech traveling from the main cave were impossible to decipher.
She waited—
And waited—
And waited.
No footsteps, no voices—nothing was coming down that passageway anytime soon. The pirates weren't leaving. Jack can handle himself, she reassured herself uneasily.
…But can he handle Barbossa?
Jack wasn't one to ask for help, but then again he wasn't one to need it either. Will would be there, after all—though, granted, he probably couldn't do much to help his friend while bound and gagged.
Sarah abruptly decided this much thinking wouldn't do her any good. Jack would find a way. He always, it rather irritatingly seemed, did.
The pounding of heavy footsteps sent Sarah's heart into overdrive, as the low growls and jeers that anticipated the Pearl's crew grew louder. Like a violent gust of wind, the pirates passed by her hidden nook. Shuffling, scraping, swearing, and stumbling, the noises washed over her and then passed as quickly as they had come. Behind her, near the entrance of the cave, came the sound of disturbed water as the men reached the sandbank. Then, slowly, the voices quieted, until Sarah could hear herself breathing.
Sarah waited a few tense seconds before peaking out of the alcove and glancing both directions down the passage. Empty. Tentatively, she stepped out into the open, taking a few steps forward and then looking over her shoulder again. Then, more confidently, she made her way down the tunnel, strangely aware of her borrowed pistol's absence.
As she came closer to the center of the caves, the sounds became more distinct. Above the jingle and clatter of shifting coins, Sarah could clearly hear Barbossa's gravelly drawl.
The entrance appeared ahead of her, glittering with gold and the water's reflections.
"I must admit Jack, I thought I had ye figured." Barbossa was leaning against a mound of treasure, two of his men flanking him as he observed Jack rummage through the copious swag. The seawater separated certain sections of the cave's floor, creating tiny islets piled high with doubloons, precious gems and other things of the like. Will stood on an islet across from Barbossa, very much alive, hands bound behind his back and assigned his own guard who was smirking obliviously.
"It turns out you're a hard man to predict."
How the hell did you manage this? Sarah wondered disbelievingly.
Jack looked up from his delving a mound over and shrugged. "Me, I'm dishonest," he said, rather honestly Sarah thought. "And you can always trust a dishonest man to be dishonest—honestly." He started towards the rest of his company, his finger raised in thought. "It's the honest ones you want to watch out for," he warned. "Because you can never predict…when they're going to do something…incredibly…" At this point he gave Will a piercing look, "…stupid."
The sharp screech of metal made Sarah jump as Jack seized a sword wedged into the treasure next to him and tossed it across the small stream to Will—at the same time unsheathing his own sword and preparing for the onslaught Barbossa was already bringing his way.
Will, to Sarah's astonishment, twisted around and caught the sword easily, somehow slicing the ropes binding his wrist in the doing. The bewildered trio of pirates left to watch him barely had time to pull out their own swords before he was attacking.
Sarah clenched and unclenched her fists in preparation. Jack had said he only needed her if Will was dead, and, well, Will wasn't—but that didn't mean she was going to stand around and watch. While Jack seemed to be managing his own fight well (he had just cut Barbossa's hat to shreds), Will had three immortal pirates to keep off.
Scanning her surroundings, Sarah snatched a sword with a ruby-encrusted hilt from the treasure-littered ground. It was heavier than she had expected and she stumbled forward attempting a few practice swings. Well, no time for lessons now.
Skipping clumsily down the rocky slope, she made her way over to Will's islet, smiling briefly as she saw him force an urn (gold, of course) onto one of his combatant's heads. The man stumbled blindly into the stream, and as Will turned he caught sight of Sarah trotting towards him.
"Sarah!" He exclaimed, smiling breathlessly. "How did you—?" He cut himself off mid-sentence, staring over her left shoulder in stunned silence. She followed his gaze and felt goosebumps rise on her flesh.
Jack and Barbossa's struggle had traveled from the cave floor up onto a raised platform of rock jutting out of the wall. Now they stood several feet apart—Jack with a sword plunged straight through his stomach.
He staggered backwards into the pool of moonlight shining through a gap in the ceiling, and suddenly his flesh melted away. His clothing turned to tatters and his face to rotted skin and bone. Gold teeth glittered freely, unimpeded by lips that shriveled into nothing.
Casually, he brought his hand up and examined it curiously. "That's interesting," she could hear him say, and wanted to strangle him for being so calm. Then the chink of metal flitted through his fingers and Sarah saw the tiny gleam of gold that explained everything.
"Christ," Sarah exclaimed rather loudly, and Jack turned to look down at her with a grin.
"Couldn't resist, love."
Barbossa spat in disgust and lunged at him, reminding Sarah there were still two fully capable pirates to fend off. Will turned on his heel and attacked with newly obtained vigor. "Mind your surroundings," Will panted, instructing her as she only just fended off a blow from the shorter of the two pirates, who was considerably stocky and had a thick beard hiding the lower half of his face.
"Watch how he shifts his weight, and his wrist."
Breathlessly, Sarah tried to comply. Her heart was pounding so hard that her entire body shook with it, as the fierce grinning face of her attacker loomed closer and closer. She awkwardly deflected his sword with her own, her grip drooping under the unexpected weight of her weapon and the forcefulness of his. Though the help Will managed to give probably saved her life, she couldn't win her first fight against an experienced murderer. She already felt sick at the stench of his exposed, rotting carcass. As his hideous grin grew, his raw white cheekbones jutted out from the brown mottled web of skin that made up his face. She was so transfixed by it she lost her footing, and his sword skated across her arm, hacking out a thick chunk of flesh. Sarah gasped as her knees buckled. A stinging pain, followed by a great pulse of blood followed, blood as bright as the rubies on her sword's hilt flowing out between the fingers of the hand she clapped over the gash.
"I'm going ta teach you the meaning of pain," He threatened gleefully, raising his sword over her. Sarah scrambled for hers, but it was at her feet, just out of reach.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
"You like pain?"
The voice was oddly familiar. Sarah opened her eyes.
Elizabeth smiled dryly at the pirate, then swung back the huge wooden staff she was holding and hit him full force in the face, breaking his neck and making his head snap backwards.
"Try wearing a corset."
She then offered the end of the staff to Sarah, who propped herself up and got to her feet with a weak smile. "Thank you," she managed, sucking in a breath as she peeled her hand off her wound. "Well said. How'd you get off the ship?"
"Here." Ignoring the question, Elizabeth deftly tore off the end of Sarah's shirtsleeve and wound it tightly around the injury. "That will stop the bleeding for now. Are you still with us?" She raised the staff questioningly and stepped towards Will, who was fighting off the one uninjured pirate, and had the other, who had finally managed to get the urn off his head, coming up behind him. The pirate whose neck had just been broken already was trying to fix his own head back on.
"Yeah," Sarah replied, if a little shakily, and took hold of the staff as well. Elizabeth grinned and started forward, then wheeled around and stared as the skeletal forms of Jack and Barbossa fought a ways away.
"Whose side is Jack on?" She demanded angrily.
"At the moment?" Will asked, coming up behind them, staring at Elizabeth quite unabashedly. She gave him an almost shy smile, which Sarah thought was utterly ridiculous coming from the girl who had just whacked a pirate's head off, but there was no time for debating.
Even with all three pirates now coming at them, Sarah felt strangely exhilarated. Somehow, mostly due to Will's skill and Elizabeth's energy (though Sarah thought she got in a kick somewhere), they managed to get all three pirates in a straight line, then impaled them all together on the staff.
"A pirate shish-kabob," Sarah said pleasantly, as Will shoved one of the bearded man's own bombs into his ribcage and then pushed the three pirates out of the moonlight.
"No fair," the man managed to whimper, before the bomb went off and the three men were blown, all clichés aside, to smithereens.
Without even a pause for victorious gloating, Will dashed towards the stone chest that held the Aztec gold, with Elizabeth and Sarah at his heels.
Jack was fighting just beside the chest's platform of gold and stone. He slashed Barbossa across the face and made a quick cut across his palm, pressing his own medallion to it and then throwing the cursed trinket up to Will, who by now was standing by the open chest.
Barbossa's gaze sliced through the air like a blade, and eyed his last resort. With the speed and neatness of a lifetime's practice, he withdrew his pistol, cocked it, and pointed it directly at Sarah as she made her way across the stream to Will.
Just when Sarah thought things were going too fast, they slowed to a near stop. Time came to a standstill, and though the silence was thunderous Sarah could hear every sound in the room. The dirt and cold metal grinding beneath impatient feet, the rattling breath of each startled bystander, the mocking rhythm of water against stone, and the edgy scrape of Barbossa's grimy nails against his pistol's trigger. The blood seeping from her arm slid like worms down her skin and dripped off the tips of her fingers. The air reeked of it—the coppery stench of scarlet patterns on metal, and the cold sweat that graced every person's brow.
Sarah was surprised to find herself reminiscing as, like every source had warned her, her life replayed itself behind her eyelids. Less surprisingly she felt nothing as she saw the forgotten birthdays, the green streamers, and the black funeral—the only image that stirred any emotion was that of her father on their sailboat, during one of their trips. His smile came easily, as it rarely did those days before he died. He stared at her with overpowering black-brown eyes and for a moment the barrel of the gun disappeared.
But that wasn't right. Her father's eyes were green.
The shot was the loudest noise she had ever heard, and for a second afterwards there was nothing at all. Then reality came rushing back to her and she breathed a huge—bulletless—sigh. Her heart contracted as she watched the smoke curl up from Jack's pistol, and as Barbossa dropped his own.
He glanced over at his nemesis in confusion, and then smiled comfortably. "Ten years you carry that pistol, and now you waste your shot."
Jack only stared.
"He didn't waste it," Will announced, and opened his clenched fist. Two coins fell and landed in the chest with a soft chink.
Barbossa stared in disbelief, then fumbled with the buttons of his coat. He tore open the fabric to reveal a plain white shirt with a black flower-shaped hole over his heart. A glossy crimson stain began to blossom around it, trailing down the wrinkled cotton.
"I feel…" Barbossa murmured, with a short witless smile, "…cold." And he fell with a solid thump onto the treasure beneath him, a bright green apple rolling leisurely out of his limp fingers. He was dead.
It was as though the entire cave heaved a sigh of relief. Some invisible weight lifted from Sarah's shoulders, as a man she barely knew left the living world.
With a loud splash, she leapt into the water and rushed towards Jack, who was staring at his slain enemy in blank contemplation. Vaguely she heard Elizabeth and Will talking, in what were of course strained, polite tones, but she didn't bother to turn and encourage them.
The corners of Jack's mouth were turned up almost undetectably. His eyes were wide and intense, focused like sunlight through a magnifying glass. He didn't react to Sarah's presence at all until she placed a hesitant hand on his arm. The forceful gaze was transferred to her and she squirmed inwardly.
There was really no outline for talking to someone just after they've killed their worst enemy.
"It's over, then," she finally said, not sure whether to sound cheerful or solemn.
A wicked grin abruptly spread across his face. "No it's not, love," he murmured, eyeing her roguishly. "The Pearl's waiting for us."
Sarah knew she was supposed to look pleased at the word 'us', but all of a sudden she couldn't stomach it. A choked sort of fear took hold of her vocal cords and smothered whatever sound might have come out of them.
Jack was correct far too often. It wasn't over.
This was the end of the curse of the Black Pearl—that had only been book one. There were other adventures to follow, most likely just as terrifying and life threatening, and as far as Sarah knew she would be stuck here during all of them.
But, as time went on, was 'stuck' really the right word for it? And if it wasn't—if some part of her mind perhaps wanted to experience all the terror and the danger and the seasickness—was it the it the part she should pay heed to, or ignore?
As usual, Jack interrupted her; though she couldn't blame him, really, since she had been staring at him anxiously for almost a full minute without saying anything.
"You look as if you're about to vomit," he observed bluntly.
Hastily she shook her head. "No, no, I was—"
"Good," he interrupted yet again. Gesturing expansively, he placed a hand on the small of her back and guided her towards one of the more lavish looking piles of treasure. "If you think you can hold it in a bit longer, we can take a look around."
"Knowing you, it's probably more of the taking than the looking."
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Author's Note: OMGNOTLASTCHAPTER! I fooled you all—including myself. I forgot how much I actually had left in the film, as my judgment is crap. Plus, thirteen chapters? Unlucky, me thinks.Next chapter will be at least nearing the last one, if I don't have a fit of crazy. Which is not at all unlikely.
Anyways, after announcing that there will be no sequel to One Wish, I started to think of ways to make it up to you all. Yes, I do look at my hits and I know there are more than six of you out there (still dare you to prove it!). Thanks to my lengthy pondering, I have come up with several ideas:
1. Instead of full-length stories, I could write a few oneshots over a longer period of time, updating you all on the characters' situations in accordance to the upcoming sequels.
2. Instead of ending where CotB ends, I could continue the story for a few more chapters and compact what I planned to reveal about Sarah's time-traveling abilities when the two sequel fics were still on the board. This would probably, almost definitely, very nearly certainly, require heavy editing of the first chapter, but if you're willing to go back and read a teensy bit…I rather like this idea. It gives you a longer story, probably at least one good JS scene, and helps the story make a helluva lot more sense.
3. I could do both 1 and 2 if you are all extremely nice and review this chapter, and the chapters to come, a lot. /charming smile/
4. I could perform the entire thing live on Broadway and get you all the best seats in the house.
5. Not.
6. Some random idea you guys come up with besides just writing the sequels.
So, as always, review with your opinion on the chapter and the way I continue the story. Pretty please?
Ta loves!