Bah humbug and damnation. There might very well be another freakin' plot twist. They don't want it to end, I swear. They're conspiring against me actually finishing something.

Anyways.

Santa Domingo wasn't a large settlement. It had originally been a sugar plantation, pulling the sweet gold out of the rich earth with the blood and sweat of kidnapped Africans. Almost twenty years before, it had been attacked by a crew of pirates and sent into ruin. The owner had gone on to other pursuits, leaving the slaves to more or less run themselves. Now it was a haven for all of pirate-kind, a home away from home for all the misfits and outcasts of the world. It was a Tortuga in the making.

Will walked beside his captain, watching his dark eyes flicker over dirty whitewashed facades, occasional outbursts of jungle, constant drunken revelry. He had the same troubled, hesitant look he got whenever Will pushed a question just a little too far, strained the boundaries of the curse just a little too hard.

Any moment now, the boundaries were going to break, and he was going to remember, if only for a moment. And then it would all come crashing down, and he'd be even worse, although Will wasn't really sure how that could be possible. Will was severely tempted to just knock him out, drag him back onto the ship and keep him locked up until they'd left port and the danger was passed.

But there was something odd going on, something… destined. Something that was meant to be.

Will had learned firsthand not to mess with Destiny.

Jack walked the dirt streets with the ease of a man familiar with the road, the way. He stepped over old potholes, around rocks stuck in the dirt. His feet knew these roads, that much was certain. They dragged him along, shuffling with a strange resignation Will had never seen in him before. His strong shoulders drooped, his head hung low. Suddenly, Jack was no more a pirate captain than he was. He wasn't even a pirate. He looked more like a prisoner, a slave to some force far greater than he could ever aspire to be.

He was defeated.

After some time, they came upon the plantation proper, abandoned long ago in favour of the little shanty town that had cropped up around the port. The buildings had once been quite fine, built of old lumber and forced labour in the traditional British style. Now it was just a tumbledown ruin, slowly being absorbed back into the forest from whence it came. Between the young vandals and the old spirits, it would be gone in less than a decade.

Jack skirted the borders of the main house, following an overgrown path beaten into the soil by day after day of shuffling feet. Will followed him, waiting for the plate to drop, the mirror to smash.

Behind the house, there was a baked clay outbuilding, a barracks designed to keep the slaves apart from their masters. The heavy iron door hung off its hinges, the locks all broken and rusted by rain and time. Animals had been living in it, maybe even the occasional drunk. It smelled awful, of death and pain and suffering.

"I know this place."

The whisper startled him, making him stumble over a set of rusted shackles. Jack had wandered into a cell, cramped and tiny and lined with broken chains. One of the walls had been replaced, not recently, but new enough to be noticeable. It looked like something had blasted a hole in it.

Jack made his way to the window. It was tiny, barred, barely big enough to let the last dim gloom of twilight in. Standing on his toes, he looked out over the orange-tinted jungle, slender hands wrapping around the thick iron bars.

"This is where…" His hands tightened around the metal, his rings grinding against it with a thoroughly unpleasant sound. "This is where I lived."

Will tried to imagine Jack in chains, broken and lifeless the way he had seen slaves before, looking out at the world with dead, hopeless eyes. He tried to imagine Jack imprisoned, truly imprisoned, in his mind as well as his body.

The image wasn't too different from what he saw now.

"You were…" He swallowed, trying to ignore the sick feeling building in his stomach. "You were a… slave?"

"The master raped one of his women." Jack's voice was without emotion, his expression blank. It was like he wasn't really thinking about what he was saying, just saying it without actually understanding. "She tried to get rid of me, but she couldn't. She died when I was born."

He wanted to put his arms around his captain, drag him out of the horrible past. But it was out of his control, now. There was nothing he could do but let this, whatever it was, happen. Just stand back and watch as the pieces fell into place.

"The other slaves hated me. I wasn't one of them. They didn't trust me. And the pureblood whites hated me, too. They didn't want to think about the slaves as human, and that's what I made them do." Jack's forehead hit the clay, his eyes shut against the flood of memories and pain. "I was alone."

Will found himself moving forward, wrapping his arms around Jack's waist, pulling him tight and close and letting him feel his warmth, his heartbeat, the rhythm of his breathing.

"You're not alone anymore, Jack." He whispered, pressing a tender kiss against his captain's ear. "And you'll never be alone again. I'll never leave you. Never."

They stood like that for a long time, watching the light fade and turn into silvery moonlight light out the tiny window. The day faded away and night grew stronger, the moments passing by one by one in a headlong rush towards the future. The room might have been full of the painful past, but that didn't really matter, not any more. Yesterday was over.

Tomorrow was just beginning.