Hey guys! Only FOUR more reviews until an epilogue! This is the LAST CHAPTER! And same as last time, I will be taking a week long break to get further ahead with the next installment, which will be called Chasing Freedom. I will put up the epilogue when I get the last four reviews. All my love!

-Han

There was a vicious pounding in her mind that reminded her of a singular all-consuming heartbeat, slowly breaking from the pressure until pain fissured outward and pieces got caught in her soul. Her finger itched to weave into her hair to hold her head together, and let salty tears run freely down her cheeks. But she couldn't break down. Not when the remaining crew sat around her in silent mourning and her salty tears would remind her of the sea and of the man who embodied it. She wondered if you could die from heartache.

Elizabeth and Will were watching her with something like sympathy but her mask was firmly in place to those around her and she looked to be numb.

Inside her mind was swirling in so many circles she couldn't get a firm grip on the edge and she felt like her heart was bleeding. Could a heart bleed? It felt like it when there were vicious cuts being dragged across it and a Leviathan in her soul clawing away at the remainder of her mind.

The world around her was dark and barren and she could count her heartbeats, or were they just the pounding rhythms of her brain? She could feel the kind stares of the many dark skinned men and women holding candles and moving quietly through waist deep water and she wondered what Jack had done to help them.

Jack.

The name made a sob want to rip from her throat, but she held it back and swallowed heavily, her hands shaky as they dragged through her hair. Her mind flashed with images of sinking ships with black sails and sea-green tentacles rising from calm waters. She shut her eyes against them and tried to calm her frantically beating heart.

She knew it shouldn't hurt this much. But her body felt as though it were ripping at the seams and she would be left barren to a cruel and heartless world. She would be left like Jack, without the promise of salvation or even a love-laden goodbye.

Love.

She did love the man. The dead man. Her best friend. She loved him in the way she had only ever hoped to love someone. She loved him like sunsets and the shots of exotic color across the sky. She loved him like moons, the phases changing and bringing on new feeling and adventure but always returning to the whole. She loved him like night skies, where the feeling of smallness made you want to curl up against another's warmth. She loved him like oceans, where she could feel the freedom in her bones and it made her alive. She loved him like stars, together and shining and never alone. Pointing in right directions and telling stories in the sky.

The boats bumped gently into the docks and somewhere in between, Anna got out and walked into the hut. Tia greeted them with grim eyes and gentle smiles that made Anna want to crawl and hide away. She was seated on a barrel and instinctively curled in on herself, her body folding to support the hollow burning in her chest.

She didn't know empty things could burn.

A blanket was draped across her shoulders and she gave a nod to whoever had done it, her eyes fixed on nothing until she realized she was staring at the locket. Blindly, numbly, she picked it up and opened it, her eyes closing as the haunting tune played through the silent hut.

Gentle music swaying through her mind and heart and she could feel the pain from it ready to make her explode. Tia had stopped to watch her reaction, a mournful smile on her dark lips as the woman let a single tear fall from her eyes as the haunting melody flowed through her. Tia watched her lips move and felt a pang of sympathy for the pain in the name the woman whispered.

Red eyes stayed trained on the locket as the song ended, fading into a single sad note until Anna thought she would break just from the heartbreak of it all. Warm mocha-colored hands covered hers and gently pulled the heart-shaped metal away, sad eyes willing her to release it. It fell from numb fingers and was replaced by an old, cracked mug. Amber liquid swirled inside and Anna wondered if she could drink it with out choking up, without coughing around the taste of Jack.

She held it firmly, the drink a lifeline for the broken hearted and her savior in the dark. She looked up slowly, wondering how many had survived. She'd been too focused on the image of the Pearlbeing taken to count.

Not many had lived, but Cotton and Gibbs had survived. That was something at least. She flinched as she heard Will speak, his voice echoing and dark.

"It doesn't matter now. The Pearl's gone, along with its Captain."

Her body folded in on itself at the words and she could hear Jack's voice in her head, telling her he'd only be a moment. Telling her he'd come back.

"Aye, and already the world seems a bit less bright. He fooled us all right till the end, but I guess that honest streak finally won out," Gibbs said admiringly. Anna chocked back a sob, feeling the tears bubbling up as Gibbs raised his glass. "To Jack Sparrow!"

Her glass raised high, her eyes on the ceiling, her mouth quivering.

"Never another like Captain Jack," Ragetti said strongly, knowing that any other Captain would have killed them when they were found aboard the Pearl. Jack had given them a second chance.

"He was a gentlemen of fortune, he was," Pintel added, seeming to be fighting back emotion.

"He was a good man," Elizabeth said darkly before Anna could open her mouth. She looked at the woman, noticing the grief and possibly even the guilt in her posture. She looked out to the room of people, looking at her as if waiting for her to say something. She looked down, her cup clutched tightly in her hand.

"He was my best friend," she said quietly. "And I loved him."

The announcement was met with shocked and scared silence and Will looked at her as if seeing her for the first time, remembering the woman who'd gone on that first adventure with him. He felt his heart breaking further as it sunk in. How he'd treated her. Who she'd just lost.

Elizabeth looked to be in extreme stages of guilt, her body shaking with the force of it. Everyone else simply looked to be mourning Anna's personal loss. They hadn't known, hadn't realized, how much he meant to her. Though looking back, none of them could understand how they'd missed it.

"If there was anything I could do to bring him back…Anna," Will said softly, hoping to convey his truth.

"Would you do it? What would you, what would any of you be willing to do? Would you sail to the ends of the Earth and beyond to fetch back witty Jack and him precious Pearl?" Tia demanded, staring at Will with fierce brown eyes and a demanding tone. It was silent a moment, then.

"Aye," Gibbs said strongly, a look of hope creeping into his weathered face.

"Aye," Pintel added.

"Aye," Ragetti said forcefully, the look of gratitude to the lost Captain never fading.

"Aye!" Cotton's parrot screeched.

"Aye," Will added, his nod firm and his back straight.

"Yes," Elizabeth said quietly.

Everyone turned to Anna, question in their eyes. She smiled, weakly, tears leaking out of her stormy eyes. "Do you even have to ask?" she asked rhetorically. "I'd do anything for birdie."

Tie smiled, seeming pleased with her answer and tilted her head regally, a coy look in her eyes. "All right! But if you're going to brave the weird and haunted shores at World's End, then you will need a captain who knows those waters," she said with a grin. She turned her head to the stairs, still grinning, as boots descended them. Anna realized how familiar they looked just as the figure rounded the corner.

For a moment her grief was forgotten, as Barbossa rounded the corner with the monkey on his shoulder. His lined and weathered face just as real as it was when she watched him die. His beard just as scraggly and his teeth just as yellow and decayed.

"So tell me, what's become of my ship?" he asked with a grin, taking a huge bite into a green apple. Anna's thoughts were halted as she found herself happy that he'd finally gotten to taste one. Barbossa's maniacal laughter filled the hut as he emptied it into the room.

"We're coming for you, Jack," she whispered lowly, her hand gripping the charm around her neck as tightly as she could. Her eyes closed as she thought of deep, dark eyes staring back at her, a saucy grin with gold-capped teeth. She thought of his deep, rough voice and the sweet words he spoke to her. She knew she would do anything for him, her body feeling as though it would die simply from the separation. She would go anywhere for Jack, do anything.

He was Captain Jack Sparrow, and she loved him more than she ever thought possible.