Disclaimer: Amongst the many other things in this tale that do not belong to me, a few lines of verse belong to others. Those will be appropriately credited at the conclusion of the chapter.

N.B. The first part of this chapter isn't in strict chronology. Scenes with Jack can be considered "real time." Scenes with Gwen are necessarily back in time a bit. Just a heads-up so the switching doesn't confuse someone.

Chapter 21: I Shall Never Look Upon Thee More

Jack struggled to decipher the words, sketch their meanings into something his hazy mind could understand.

It's Gwen…

Had the night not done its worst? Had it claimed another?

Not her.

It's Gwen…

He was vaguely aware of questioning voices, John's concerned tones and Jacobs' querulous slurs, calling after him. But they were far behind now. The galley fell behind him as well, the corridors whizzed past, the steep stairs disappeared below him, and the night reached out to envelop him in its cool, dark embrace as he barreled onto the main deck.

The moon was absent, lost behind clouds, and the Black Pearl itself was besieged by an empty blackness. The dark was oppressive, held back from completely devouring the ship only by a couple of lanterns.

"Cap'n-" came a voice as one of the lanterns approached him.

"Where is she?"

The lantern paused. There appeared to be a hand and arm from which the light swung in the air, and a callous face behind, but to Jack's dazed perception, it seemed that the light itself were speaking to him. In his surreal state of mind, this didn't even seem all too bizarre.

"Gone," the light said without inflection. "By the time we realized what were happening, she's gone."

Gwen slipped away from the group as Jack led them into a mid-sized room not far from the galley. Thankfully, no one seemed to notice her leaving as they carried in the body of their deceased fellow crewman.

Numbed, she made her way slowly upward, not entirely sure where she was going. Except away from the death. She wasn't surprised to find herself ascending automatically to the main deck of the Pearl.

As she stood on deck staring out at the blackness of the stygian sea, she tried to keep her mind blank, but thoughts of her dead parents crept in despite her attempts to block them. Her mother's death had left her to grow up mostly alone and dependent largely upon herself for all but simple material concerns while under the stoic, detached care of her father and his appointed governess. His death had ultimately left her to make her own way in the world, including even the meals, clothing, and shelter she had previously taken for granted.

She thought she had provided those for herself, in one way or another, here on board the Black Pearl. The dresses she'd gotten from Elizabeth, the extras other than the one she was currently wearing, were folded neatly and were unobtrusively stacked in one of the unused chairs pushed up against the work-table in the cabin. In Jack's cabin, that is. She'd moved them there this afternoon from her small store-room quarters below decks, without asking Jack.

Food was allotted to her as readily and equally as to any other aboard. And as to lodging… she was quite sure Jack wouldn't argue with her decision to move in to his quarters.

Above and beyond those, her social life had flourished far past even the happy childhood associations with her mother and a few playmates to share dolls with. Now she had found close friendship with Elizabeth, with whom she spoke and spent time almost daily. She had found companionship in the crew, and even a form of… fond mutual alliance, as she idly considered it to be, with Jack.

Gwen exhaled heavily, trying to banish the existential thoughts of her own life that the crewman's death inspired in her. She tried to concentrate only on what her senses told her. 'Twas better to focus on the external world when the one inside her own mind became so dreary.

She could smell and hear the sea beneath the ship, even if she couldn't see it as anything more than a collective darkness. She could feel the gentle rolling of the water as she automatically swayed in time with it to maintain her footing on the deck. Gwen imagined she could even taste the salt.

The main deck itself was lit by a single lantern hung carefully in a metal frame outside the map room. Two other lanterns were consulting with each other up on the poop deck. Or rather, the crewmen on watch, from whose hands the lights swung, were discussing something in low tones.

Gwen silently crossed the deck to the captain's quarters.

"Why is she gone?" Jack demanded. Then, somewhat surprised at the vehemence of his own voice, he altered his question. "Where is she?"

The crewman-lantern didn't seem to notice his captain's attempts to change his line of interrogation. "Don't know why, Cap'n, don't make no sense 't all. We couldn't figure it till it was too late to keep 'er from it. John went after ye soon's we figured what were happenin'. We, er…"

The lantern swayed a bit as the crewman glanced about apprehensively. Then the man continued, in a somewhat diminished tone of voice, "We knows ye've been fond on the lass, Cap'n. Figured you'd not be too happy once John tol' ye. Figured you'd want to go 'long yourself after 'er first thing to find out o' what account she went on like that. "

Jack's face went blank as he tried to fathom the man's words, both the accusation of his warmth toward the girl, and… was he suggesting that Jack would want take his own life in response to it?

Gwen stood with her back to the closed door, staring dully around the familiar room. The barely-touched evening meal still sat on the table, as did Jack's compass, lying just where she had absently set it down when Gibbs had interrupted with his dread news. Jack's quarter-full tankard of rum was waiting patiently on his desk for his return. Beside it was his hat, which he'd forgotten in his haste to investigate his crewman's death. Likewise his coat was slung across his desk-chair.

Gwen distractedly realized then that her hand was clenched tightly into a fist around her returned locket and her jeweled hair-combs, which were biting into her skin. Mutely, she went and set her hair-combs down beside the compass, considering the compass thoughtfully as she looped her locket around her neck and slid it protectively down the front of her dress.

Gwen stared at the compass on the table, lost in thought on where it had led her and the Pearl. Had the compass led her here? Or had she led the others here with the assistance of the compass? Either way, there was a man dead now, and she was the one responsible for their being here at all, wasn't she?

This thought gave her pause. Was it her fault that the compass had brought them here? No. It was the compass that was to blame, and she wasn't going to let her thoughts go that route...

Was it that the treasure was cursed, and that its curse could claim lives? She thought that that had been the tale. But they hadn't touched any of it, had they? Perhaps it was just the place. But Jacobs was still alive. Perhaps Tom's death was only coincidental. In any case Gwen just knew she wanted to leave, and quickly. This was suddenly no longer quite the adventure she had had in mind. And she knew Jack wouldn't leave until they'd found treasure, or at least irrefutable proof that no such hoard existed.

She bit her lower lip and glanced around the cabin again, taking in the trunk on the floor, and Jack's hat and coat…

"Cut the ropes to all the other boats, too. Sly things, women are," the crewman spat out in a mix of grudging respect and hurt pride. "Don't know how she sneaked past us all doin' that. Saw 'er low'rin' her own boat int' the water, though, but didn't think on it till Tunnel sees how pale she is. Thought it were yer ghost, for a minute, we did, what with how… Well. Noticed she were too short then and figured it out, sent the lad after ye."

Jack's brow furrowed as he assimilated this new information, which John probably would have told him if he had stuck around long enough to hear it. They thought he would be upset to learn that Gwen may have treachery in her intentions, to be stealing a boat and leaving while everyone was still occupied with thoughts of a crewman's death. His frown changed little as he rapidly shifted from concern (at the very least he could call it that) at another death to suspicion of betrayal by one he had unwisely assumed he could trust.

"How did she get all the way off the ship before ye knew it was her?" he asked accusingly, trying to hide his misunderstanding lest the crewman read too much into his distress.

"John didn't tell ye all, aye?" came the response. "Had your coat 'n' hat. With them plaits she's sportin', 's'hard to tell any difference at just a glance. Didn't even think on it. Figured, Cap'n, you'd've asked for help only if you needed it, so's we let 'er get her boat without both'rin' 'er or even payin' too much mind and let 'er start rowing off t'ward the shore 'fore Tunnel figured she looked like your ghost by the light of 'er lantern."

"She cut the ropes?"

"Abe's got another'n rigged to go by now, I'd wager. Oy, Abe!" The crewman nodded curtly at the captain, his way of taking leave of him, and went to go assist the other man in repairing another shore-boat to be lowered into the water for the captain's sake.

Jack swallowed and wrinkled his nose in displeasure at the sudden turn in circumstances, then turned and moved toward his cabin. It was darker than it should be on that portion of the ship, it seemed, and he realized as he opened his door that she must have taken the lantern that usually lit the main deck there.

Inside his cabin, where his coat should have been draped across a chair, her dress was laid out. His hat was missing, and his trunk was still open. It was obvious she had rifled through the few articles of clothing he had stashed in it. Grumbling, he reached into his trunk, digging toward a bottom-back corner for his pistols. He scowled when he came up with only one. He had had two. As he gave the pistol in his hand a cursory inspection, he realized that she must have taken Barbossa's gun, which he still kept and had grown rather attached to after carrying it for over a decade now. Grumbling all the more, he shoved the other pistol down into his belt and went for his sword under his bed. That, at least, was where it should be, untouched.

Still muttering under his breath, he left his cabin, slinging his baldric over his shoulder and securing his sword at his left hip as he walked.

"Send for Jacobs. He's in the galley," he ordered at large, not bothering to specifically deliver the command to any sailor in particular. The sound of boots scurrying off toward the hatch to go below decks satisfied him, and he joined the first lantern-bearing crewman and Abe where they stood readying a shore-boat for their captain to go ashore after his wayward female consort.

Jack's mind was spinning with misplaced suspicions. Going from trusting Gwen without thought to doubting her to reaffirming her sincerity to becoming suspicious yet again of what her motives could possibly be in stealing away in the middle of the night (through deception, at that), shortly after an unexpected death on-board, especially where lost treasure was at hand somewhere, whether underwater or underground. And his faith in Jacobs' integrity wavered across all ends of the spectrum with every new shred of information he took in.

Jacobs was fetched, hiccuping and chirruping, and helped ditheringly into the boat. Jack set off, with the old man as his dubious guide, after Gwen into the dark, all-but-blindly rowing toward the hulking black shape of the island, which was only with great difficulty separated from the rest of the tenebrous seascape.

After beaching his boat, Jack took his lantern in one hand and a handful of Jacobs' shabby white apparel in the other and began with a closer scrutiny of the beach. About fifty yards from where he himself had run ashore, he found a second boat, pulled up just barely above the water-line, surrounding by many deep marks from where Gwen had apparently scrabbled about in the sand, heaving the cumbersome vehicle out of the water.

Setting his face into a grim scowl, he turned in what he thought was the general direction of Jacobs' cabin, which was his first chance, in his mind, of finding Gwen. Jacobs was no help. He followed along willingly enough, not even bothering to protest the undignified way Jack dragged him along in his wake. The old man was thoroughly sauced.

However, he seemed to realize he was back on his island again, even in the aphotic gloom that pressed close around them. A change came over him. He spoke of stranger things than any of his previous benign ramblings that Jack had heard.

"They took me away, my dear… dear," he sing-songed, slurring his words together until they were only just distinguishable from each other. "Took me away… my beautiful lovely. Aye, and the Pearl… and the Pearl, she waits there… the lovely. The lovelies."

Jack eventually turned loose of the old man, and Jacobs followed along unquestioningly, though he didn't acknowledge Jack's presence at all. He merely followed, though weaving unsteadily on his feet and catching himself against trees frequently, speaking or muttering to himself in stilted sentences the whole way up the slope, eventually lapsing into quoting verses apparently ground deep enough in his memory to be retrieved with little thought.

"Death be not proud… 'nd soon'st our best… men with 'ee do go. Slave to fate, chance… desperate men… I shall never look up'n thee more…"

Jack swallowed, an unexplainable uneasy feeling coming over him as he realized the lines that flowed unguardedly from Jacobs' tongue. Something gripped the pit of his stomach as they finally neared the top of the hill, and Jack saw light peeping through the crack of door in the little cabin. Gwen was there, then, he presumed.

"Never have relish in th'… power of… love," Jacobs intoned with the same colorless expression he'd been muttering in for the past half-hour or more.

Something gave way in Jack, thoughts unsummoned linking together and bonding, making connections and severing others as his mind sorted through a veritable swamp of suspicion and clues, dragging out a hazy image of truth.

"On the shore of the wide world I stand alone," Jack said to himself, barely above a whisper, as he approached the door, "and think till love and fame to nothingness do sink."