A/N: I maaaay be wrong but I don't think I've had a Jack POV yet? There was one scene towards the end of the last movie where I showed the kraken attacking the Pearl but it was more third person omniscient than from any one character's perspective? Mad. (Although mad is why I've avoided it 'til now, because Jack's head is a mystery to all those who walk the planet).
Oh, and because I know some people do – don't read the A/N at the end until you've finished this chapter, because major spoilers. I kept a few small bits from the original battle, but uhh…I changed a lot of shit.
Now that I'm close enough to the end, I was able to map out each chapter in detail between here and the end. All in all there will be bang on 100 chapters (101 technically, with the prologue counted) - but chapter 96 will be the last proper chapter, and after that it's a series of epilogues that I've structured to play out over that number of chapters. Trust me, it'll make sense when you read it.
Boarding the Dutchman was no difficult feat for Jack - the air between the Dutchman and the Pearl was a tangle of ropes as pirates, soldiers, and half-man half-monsters swung from ship to ship. He didn't know whether it was due to what they'd gleaned from Dora, or if they'd have done so anyway, but the Dutchman was throwing everything it had at the Pearl all at once, men and cannon fire combined. Thanks to that, most were too embroiled in their own progressing fights to pay much mind to him. Ordinarily he might've been insulted by that, but now it suited his goals. Getting to the heart without Jones' notice would take more luck still - and skill, where luck would not cover his hide - and he was only thankful that there was hardly a person living who Jones did not have some shade of quarrel with, and so there was plenty of distraction.
Admittedly, Jack could very well take the cake insofar as Jones' naughty list was concerned, but if it came down to it, he could always direct him to Dora, for he almost hated her as much. That thought, even though it was only a joke, almost had him looking over his shoulder when his boots landed harshly upon the deck of the Dutchman - just to make sure Jim Norrington wasn't on his way to hand his backside to him for such a jest.
Ducking his head down, he wove his way through the deck, dodging soldier, creature, and pirate alike, and made for Jones' quarters, where he slunk inside and found the chest guarded by two British soldiers manning cannons. They looked oddly familiar - the soldiers, not the cannons.
"Halt there, or we'll shoot!" the stouter of the two ordered, all but wiggling the cannon in his direction.
"Good one," Jack offered a cheerful smile, taking a few steps closer before regarding them with his hands on his hips.
They did not, in fact, shoot. All they really did was stand there and gape, like a pair of - ah. He knew where he knew them from. Port Royal. It appeared it was their duty to guard things poorly. All the better for him.
"Admirable though it may be, why are you here when you could be elsewhere?" he asked.
"Someone has to stay and guard the chest," the one on the left answered.
The one on the right whirled on him, his cannon moving with him until it was pointed at Jones' chest rather than Jack's.
"There's no question, there has been a breakdown in military discipline aboard this vessel."
"I blame the fish people," the other answered "If they're enough to make Admiral Norrington forget his duty, what hope does that leave for the rest of us?"
"Oh, so fish people - by dint of being fish people - automatically disciplined as non-fish people?"
"Seems contributory, is all I'm suggesting!"
Jack was very, very relieved to find that the events in the world as of late had not brought about a bit of sense in the men before him. They were so preoccupied by their philosophically fishy discussion that they didn't even notice him slipping forward, taking up the chest in his arms, their argument pressing on even as he took his leave. God bless the British Navy.
In sharp contrast to the din of swords clashing and cannon fire outside, the scraps of shelter that did not boast guns to man (admittedly few in number on this ship) were almost eerily quiet, providing ample opportunity for him to kneel before the chest and remove the heart from it, slipping it into his coat. After a moment's hesitation, he locked it again and when he re-joined the battle, he brought the chest with him, toting it as it dangled from one hand. A bit of misdirection never went amiss, and if push came to shove he could always bludgeon someone with it.
He quickly realised the opportunity to do so might come sooner rather than later when he stepped out onto the deck, and walked almost smack bang into Jones himself. It appeared whatever mad pagan god looked out for Theodora and her beaux was not doing the same for him. After all the time he'd spent with Tia Dalma, most of it even wistfully pleasant, he'd have thought maybe she'd do him a solid or two here. Maybe she preferred Jones. There was no accounting for taste, was there? Jones roared his displeasure, and Jack drew his sword just in time for it to meet a great grey-green claw twice the size of his head.
The chest dangled in his left hand as he batted off Jones' attack, and he knew he had the chance here for a diversion - one that had worked in the past, no less. It was just difficult to say whether that fact meant that it would work again now, or if Jones would be savvy to it. He just had to piss him off enough so that he was not. Luckily for Jack, that sort of thing was very much his forte.
"Fancy meeting you here, mate," he called above the thunder and the lightning with a grin that he hoped was charming, considering it welcomed a good deal of saltwater into his mouth "Still doing Beckett's bidding, I see!"
"I do no bidding but my own - and I'll be taking the chest from you before I claim your soul," Jones sneered "Before I take the boy's, and that of his father's too."
The senior and junior of the Turners were both aboard the ship, too, on the other side of the deck, doing battle back-to-back with Jones' crew and British officers alike.
"What would your boss have to say on that matter, I wonder?" Jack countered.
"They've not the chest, and soon they'll lack the key, with it," Jones snarled.
The betentacled hand, still had not drawn its sword, instead favouring an attempt to snatch the chest. Jack flinched back from the attempt, and then swung the chest down hard atop it before it had a chance to withdraw. Jones cried out his fury, but recovered more quickly than Jack had expected, the tentacle curling around the handhold on the other side of the chest and wrenching it from his grasp. Jack clung onto it for the first wrench, despite how it jerked him forwards towards Jones' claw, but then on the second yank - the one that threatened to pull him into the beheading that the claw was poised and promised to bestow - he finally allowed his grasp to waver and stumbled back.
Was it convincing enough? Would he have to make a show of at least pretending he wanted the chest back before he fled? Or would Jones buy it if he turned tail and ran here and now? The hesitation he showed here would only help his case, anyway, the overgrown squid hopefully thinking he was weighing up whether it was worth trying to make another play for the heart at all.
But then Jones did something he'd dreaded the very possibility of. Jack took a few stumbling steps back as he lifted the chest to his ear (or, rather, where his ear should have been, and listened. Letting loose a nervous breath, he faltered again where he stood. Surely he didn't expect to hear it above all of this. Jones appeared to come to the same conclusion that he did then, but he wasn't out of tactics. Tightening the grip of his tentacle around the chest, he shook it harshly, feeling for the heavy thumping rattle of the chest inside. There was nothing - because the heart wasn't bloody well inside. Jones' eyes widened in outrage, and then he glared back up at him again.
Jack laughed nervously, and then he fled, doing his best to pay little mind to the enraged roar that followed him. Disregarding the fact that neither of the Turners were likely to thank him for what he was about to do, Jack ran full-tilt in their direction. Three on one was always better than one on one - especially when the latter of the ones was half-man half-squid half-crab. Really that made it one on one-and-a-half, by that logic, so he was just evening things out by tagging another two into the fight. Simple mathematics.
William was the first to notice him, eyes snapping to him over the shoulder of the man he was fighting, before he levelled Jack with a thoroughly unamused look. He hadn't done the same maths Jack had, it seemed, but that was fine - he'd iron it out with him later. All that mattered was that, despite the black look, the younger of the two Turners fell seamlessly into the fight, and they found themselves batting off Jones much more successfully than Jack had managed to go on his own. Though he'd never admit it out loud.
"Do you have the heart?" Will asked.
He had to shout to be audible above all that raged on around them - and if Jack could hear him, Jones could - so he bit back a response of 'well he's not chasing me down because of my good looks'.
"Might do. Might not," he called back.
"Well why haven't you stabbed it?!" he batted back Jones' claw, and lopped off one of the tentacles at his beard as he did so "Don't tell me you're having second thoughts - what happened to sailing the seas for eternity? I've never heard anything more befitting you in all my life."
Jones shouted his displeasure…and another tentacle grew back, immediately taking the place of the old one. The grin Jack gave in response to Will's compliment (for he did take it as a compliment) was half-hearted at best.
"Way I reckon is if I stab the heart, I have to do all that eternal sailing on this heap of barnacles. Not sure I could leave the Pearl in the 'ands of Barbossa like that."
Bootstrap had managed to batten back his former crewmates - their old association proving useful in that he seemed to know their weak and squishy bits - and joined them, catching Jack's response.
"What is it you suggest, then?" he called raggedly as he covered their backs "An auction, perhaps? Names from a hat? Drawing straws? I'm not sure we've the time for any of that."
His years spent on the sea floor hadn't done much for his attitude.
"We pull back to the Pearl," Jack ordered "Brings him into our territory - and the Dutchman'll stop firing on 'er if Jones and the heart are both aboard. Too risky. I've left her in the hands of Barbossa for too long, as it is."
"And how is it ye propose to get aboard?" Jones spat at him, demonstrating that he very much had been listening.
Jack grinned. And then he twirled his sword in his grasp and stabbed it down, through Jones' boot. It would buy them seconds - likely less than ten, for that matter - but it was all Jack needed, and he used it to swing across while the two Turners covered his escape. The heart in his coat beat out of time against the one in his chest as he rolled back down onto the deck of the Pearl. William was next, all but ordered to go ahead as his father covered his escape, but it didn't look like Bootstrap would be joining them anytime soon. He was holding his own surprisingly well against his assailants, but that hardly left much room for turning and running - or, er, swinging.
Will turned to witness what was going on at the same time Jack did, but before Jack could call out anything to discourage him, he was holding fast to the rope he'd just used and waiting for the best angle with which to swing back over, the ships lurching with each passing wave between being dangerously close to one another, and being so far that any attempt at a crossing was a gamble. If Jack called out, he suspected Will wouldn't even hear him. As if anything could discourage that one the second he got a hare-brained idea in his mind to begin with. Some might say they were rather alike in that way, but those people didn't appreciate the ingenuity behind Jack's decision-making.
What Jack did notice, though, in the midst of one of those dangerously close lurches, was that while his sword still stood, stabbed vertically into the deck of the Dutchman and threatening to cut the breeches of those who staggered too unwittingly close, it was no longer skewering Jones.
"Bugger."
What a terrible time to be swordless. Taking a few steps backwards, he began to formulate a plan. That plan was terribly needed when Jones morphed aboard the Pearl with what appeared to be as little effort as taking a step. Drawing his dagger from his belt, Jack turned on his heel and made for the rigging that led up to the masts, all but flying up it the moment he gained a foothold, not allowing himself to panic at the uneven thumping behind him that signalled Jones' pursuit. This was his realm, on his ship no less, and it was how he'd gotten his name. It was time to see if Jones could keep up.
Had the fight gone on for this long in the movies? Theo couldn't tell. Experience gained since arriving here had taught her that they felt weird when living through them - both far longer, and jarringly short all at once, usually the former when in the midst of it and then the latter the second it was done - but the pain she was in had a way of turning seconds into hours, and the panic acted as a catalyst for it all. They needed this to be done, and in their favour at that. But what did that look like now? She had none of her previous markers, no way of telling whether it was going well or badly other than who was dead and who was not (although if she was to judge it that way, it was going very well indeed so far, but she hardly dared think that lest she jinx it), and - as James has said - she was now stuck with the rest of them, just clinging to hope and taking things a half a second at a time.
James continued to defend her doorway, and Theo clung to her faculties just enough to dart a hand out, stabbing and slashing at whatever she could to cover James' back. Her strength was waning badly, though, her stabs missing just as much as they hit, and then more so, and she worried that it was only a matter of time before James' strength began to falter, too. How long could they keep this up? How long before one of theirs was picked off? Then another? It was a fear she batted back in favour of slashing at the hamstring of a soldier who'd decided to test his mettle by making to sucker punch (or sucker stab, rather) his former Admiral. The man went down with a pained cry.
She tried not to feel too guilty - he'd done sod all when she'd been screaming aboard the Dutchman, too. The man was dispatched by a bullet from Barbossa as he manned the helm, saving either of them the trouble. Theo nodded her thanks in the split second he met her eye and then there were another two running at them.
A blur of blonde ran through Theo's line of sight and then Elizabeth was shoving her way into the doorway beside James, helping him bat back the soldiers. Theo couldn't be sure, and maybe it was just that the battle had naturally brought her here, but she suspected that if there was anything deliberate about Elizabeth's presence, it was her attempt at making amends for last night.
One soldier was dispatched by her blade quickly, she had none of the shred of reluctance James had about being rid of those, but then one of Jones' crew took his place - this one must've been a fairly new addition, for he still looked somewhat human, but with seaweed for hair and mussels clinging to his face. He wielded two lengths of chain-shot, Theo quickly discovered, when he bashed a whole into the wall of the cabin. Much more of that, and he'd be giving James an even larger area to try and guard. She knew James realised it, too, his head whipping towards the fresh opening created for a split second before he was beating the man back as best he could. She wished to god she wasn't such a bloody imposition.
"Is that Jack with Jones up on the mast?" Elizabeth shouted in disbelief.
"I can't exactly look to check," James spat in return.
Another hole joined the second in the cabin wall as he was forced to duck out of the lethal swing of the cannonballs. Theo flinched back out of instinct upon the impact, but steeled herself and tightened her grip on the dirk in her hand, ready to chop off fingers and hands that came through.
The man readied for another swing, but it afforded James an opening to jab his sword into the length of chain connecting the chain-shot in his left hand. An artful twist of his sword tangled the chain in his opponent's grasp until it pinched and clamped at skin, and then it was finally torn away from his grasp. One of them, anyway. The cannonballs slammed down to the deck, and rolled away, lost to the ocean on the next lurch of the ship. But he still had one length left, and he could wield it with more precision two-handed.
"We're at a stalemate," James cried out "It won't be over until something breaks it."
"Jack must have the heart. Jones wouldn't be on him like that if he didn't, he'd be coming after you. Theo - who stabs it?" Elizabeth called, deflecting a blow from the soldier she'd been doing battle with.
"It doesn't matter now," Theo shouted back.
"Who?" Elizabeth insisted.
"Will," she said.
The look of disbelief Elizabeth gave her with those wide, dark eyes was cut short when she was forced to duck away from a cannonball wielded by the man James fended off, flying through the air where her skull had just been.
"To free his father," Theo added "But it's all changed now."
"We're…we're holding our own," Elizabeth called out "And the Dutchman is no longer firing on us. The heart must be aboard. Jack will stab it."
"We must hope so," James ground out "We might be fine against the soldiers, whoever trained them did it poorly, but our strength will wane long before the crew of the Dutchman. We're injured more easily. Die more easily. If we don't turn the tide soon…"
He didn't get a chance to finish his statement, Jones' crewman gearing up for another swing, but the gist of the sentiment was obvious. Painfully obvious. Rather than swinging at James or Elizabeth, the man swung the cannonballs at the end of the chain back into the clapboard walks of the cabin, creating an opening that was growing dangerously each and every time. James slashed at his arm as he did so, but if he even felt it he didn't let on. Theo knew she had to do something - spurred on by how her shelter was slowly being pulled apart, by how James was risking his life while she could do little other than cower and grit her teeth through the pain, as well as the sentiment he'd just expressed.
When the crewman went to pull the chain-shot free so that he might swing it again, she pushed herself forward, dropping the dirk down onto the bed - quite literally having to use the wall nearest and bodily shove herself away from it so that she might use momentum where she had not strength, and then she wrapped the fingers of both hands tightly around the section securing the cannonballs to the chain, and she held fast. The fingers of her right hand did not like it at all, and the crewman on the other side of the wall liked it even less. He jerked it once, slamming her hand into the wall as she refused to let go despite the wounds in her fingertips reopening, blood trickling down her hand.
The man loosened his hold for a moment, just to give the chain enough give, and then he yanked it bodily again - this time the rest of her slammed into the wall, too, her head smacking against the length of wood connecting the doorframe to the wall. It was a moment of unwelcome nostalgia from her first ever fight here. But, unlike that time, James was not absent. While sheer willpower kept her clinging to the cannonballs, preventing their wielder from pulling them free, James drew his sword back and drove it directly through the man's eye. Theo saw it go in through the gap he'd smashed through the wall, but even if she had not, she heard his yelp - like a kicked dog - and then the chain-shot was dropped, just missing her toes as the chains slid through her fingers and they slammed down into the floor below, cracking the floorboard they landed on.
Elizabeth was rid of the soldier when the display distracted him from her blade for too long. Theo stumbled back, landing haphazardly on the bed, bruising her backside in the protest as she tried to regain her breathing and wriggle the feeling back into her fingers. Thank fuck Mercer hadn't gotten around to the second hand. She allowed herself two, perhaps three breaths, and then took up the dirk and returned to the spot near the door. The crewman was staggering across the deck. While the blow apparently could not kill him, he still had a brain, and he was moving jerkily and clumsily as it tried to function with a great big whole stabbed through it. How long before he healed?
Whoever was up there - Calypso, Achtland, some combination of the two working in tandem - took pity on them then, for there was a lull as all around them were too embroiled in their own ongoing fights to seek one out in them. When Theo glanced up to the heavens, on a whim or instinct, who could say - she saw that Jones had Jack cornered up on the mast, and Jack was facing claw and sword with little other than a dagger. Fuck.
Her sentiment was echoed by her former Captain himself, as the next blow sent him sprawling, landing awkwardly on the mast in such a way that it might've broken his back if he'd been just a little more unlucky, hanging over the beam like a ragdoll that had been hung up to dry. And at just the right angle to send the heart dropping out of his coat, down, down, down towards the deck.
The others spotted it a moment after she did, fighting against the rain constantly barraging their eyes, but when they did Elizabeth darted forwards, kicking it backwards and out of the grasping reach of no less than three crewmen who all turned their attention their way. The heart smacked wetly against the wooden panel just below the door. Working out of sheer alarm, terrified that another would grab it before she could - or worse, that it would go hurtling down into the ocean entirely unreachable - Theo dove for it and picked it up, her stomach churning at how it beat in her hand.
Elizabeth was fighting off no less than three foes now, James only one, but with another two headed his way as all those who had spotted the heart converged on them. It wouldn't be long before Jones joined them, too. Theo stared at the heart in her left hand, the dirk in her right. Before her brain could even coherently string together the thought - the one that whispered that one little stab could save everybody she cared about - James was snarling at her over his shoulder.
"Don't you bloody dare, Theodora!"
He beheaded the eel-like creature he fought, and then threw the head, still snapping, at the other, using the distraction to seize the heart from her grasp and shove it towards Elizabeth.
"I cannot leave my post, you're smaller and faster - go. Get the blasted thing to Sparrow. Anybody."
Ever the helpful one, he even afforded her the opening she needed to do so, attacking her assailants with a second wave of fury that must've been spurred on by the prospect of his wife contemplating a future of supernatural servitude.
Jack, for his part, was already flying down the rigging having recovered from his nasty fall - and he was free to do so unhindered, because Jones was nowhere in sight. That was even worse than facing the bastard.
Elizabeth moved to obey, but that was when Jones did appear, oozing out of the woodwork in that unsettling manner of his, and seizing her by the throat. The tentacle of his hand curled around her throat and she choked as it tightened, staring ahead with wide, panicked eyes. Theo saw what happened next as though it did in slow motion. Elizabeth, in her horror, used what strength she had while there was still oxygen in her system to hurtle the heart at the first person she made eye contact with. The one manning the helm across the deck. Barbossa.
He had to let go in order to catch it and the ship lurched dangerously as it did, the deck tilting until it was almost entirely vertical. James' hands grabbed fast onto the doorframe, although the already splintered wood groaned dangerously under his weight, and boots all about them skidded wetly on the deck. A handful of people hailing from each side went hurtling overboard with cries of panic, but none Theo recognised.
Elizabeth's fighting against Jones' grip was already beginning to weaken, and the moment Jack had climbed down from the rigging, he was accosted by the Dutchman's shark-like first mate. The moment the ship righted itself and James regained his footing, he was on the men who tried to turn their attention to Barbossa. Bootstrap and Will were nowhere in sight - still on the Dutchman - and they were fading fast. If this went on much longer, they were all dead.
Barbossa seemed to come to this conclusion at the same time she did, looking around the deck with wide eyes as though begging anybody to come and take the damned thing away from him. But there was no time. They couldn't have another close call - the second Jones reached it, the second it went overboard, this was over. Maybe it was because one of the men finally broke away from James' engagement and was beginning to stride in Barbossa's direction - maybe it was self-preservation. Maybe it was an all-encompassing ardent love for the pirate cause. Or maybe it was because in another second, they'd all die one by one.
Letting out a roar, Barbossa moved quickly - she suspected because if he did not, he wouldn't move at all - he snatched the dagger from his belt, and plunged it into the heart.
Everything stopped. Even the storm, it felt, went deathly quiet. The first change was Elizabeth thudding down onto the deck, gasping for breath and clawing at her throat. Jones went down next, crumpling down to the floor beside her, barely a second before Barbossa dropped the heart down to the deck. Then the water - the great big walls of sea water all around them - came crashing down upon them. James reacted first, pushing Theo inside and then joining her, backing her up into the far corner of the tiny little they wouldn't get swept away. And then they were submerged.
Screwing her eyes tightly shut, she took in a quick gasp before the water was all about them, clinging onto James as he did her, mostly just to assure herself he was there. It went on and on, the water crashing about them, until she feared it would never stop - that they'd been sunk - but then all at once it swept out just as it had swept in, the pressure in her ears signalling the Pearl had flown to the surface like a cork. The both of them gasped for breath, James shifting first so she had room to breathe, Theo sprawling out onto the floor half beside him, half on top of him thanks to the cramped quarters.
Out on deck, Barbossa and Jones were nowhere to be seen, claimed by the sea.
A/N: Okay, okay, hear me out.
The friend that I bounce ideas off of for this fic wanted me to either make James or Theo the next Captain of the Dutchman (with whoever from the pair didn't stab the heart electing to become a crew member in order to stay close), which would've made for a very dramatic twist, but I couldn't do that to them after everything and honestly it just didn't feel right, either. Elizabeth was another contender, but ehh that just didn't feel right either, it felt like too much of a cop out, and it was never going to be Will in this story - not once Beckett brought Bootstrap into negotiations, anyway.
Then I hit upon Barbossa, and he was the one that felt "correct" here. I knew it was the sort of thing where his hand would have to be forced because he doesn't show much enthusiasm for the idea of the role in the movies, but since a big part of his problem with the curse in movie one was the life without living (no food, no drink, no sex, nothing enjoyable about life), and that isn't something that carries over with the Dutchman's own unique curse, it's not quite the same? Hence his little discussion with Will over the matter a few chapters ago.
The big thing behind that decision, though, was when I stopped to consider where the characters are at the very end of the original trilogy. Barbossa and Jack's constant fighting over who does or does not get the Pearl is funny in the movies and it serves a purpose in the movies, but one thing I never liked about the very end of the third movie (the final movie, as far as I'm concerned), was the fact that it continues and Barbossa disappears off with the Pearl again. It's a good gag, but I just don't like it, it's tiring. Funny, sure, and fitting, and it does make sense, but I just wanted to see Jack captaining the Pearl at the very end.
So, the idea of Jack and Barbossa being the two respective Captains of the most formidable ships to sail the seas is something I personally like the idea of more. It maintains their rivalry, no doubt they'll continue taking shots at each other and trying to outdo one another, quibbling over who is more powerful, but it eliminates the constant "no the Pearl is mine", "no it's mine" at the end, because I feel like by then it's run its course. I'm actually very nervous about this specific plot point because I know it'll be a bit hit or miss with how people feel about it, but that's my reasoning.
Beyond the one where Theo got stabbed, I've been most nervous about this chapter. I'll get more into what Barbossa as the Dutchman's captain looks like in the next chapter or two, aaand I still have more changes up my sleeve (not related to the Dutchman, this bit isn't a fakeout lolol), I'm excited!