This chapter depressed me for about two hours. And then Davy Jones showed up and I couldn't help myself. ^.^
By the time Will got himself dressed and up on deck, the battle had already begun. The crew didn't stand a chance, not against these immortal creatures of the deep dark depths. These beasts had had a hundred years to prefect the art of killing, and despite popular believe, pirates aren't really known for their incredible swordsmanship. They spent most of their time avoiding fights rather than actually fighting them.
Gibbs and Anamaria were back to back on the upper deck, toe to toe with a hammer-head shark and a man who appeared to be a conch. Marty had got himself up on in the rigging and was distracting the fish-folk with some well-aimed shots. He had no idea where Cotton was, but the parrot had flown to the safety of the crow's nest, right alongside Jack the Immortal Monkey. Jack occasionally threw random bits of junk at the oncoming invaders, with varying degrees of success.
Jack was nowhere to be found.
He was about to turn around and nab his sword when he found that very blade being pressed into his hands. He looked up to find Elizabeth, grim and bloody and as beautiful as she'd ever been.
For a moment, he thought about kissing her.
For a moment, he thought she might kiss him.
And then the moment was over. They didn't love each other anymore, not like that. He took his sword from her hands, and they emerged out into the fray, fighting side by side as they had in that cave of poisoned gold, so long ago.
They couldn't kill the creatures, that much was obvious. For the most part, they were already dead. But as they fought, it became increasingly clear that the creatures didn't really want to kill them. In fact, unless they were directly attacked, they left the crew alone.
Slowly, they pushed the crew back onto the aft deck, grouping them together along the railing and hemming them in with a wall of swords and claws and sharp shark teeth. The lop-sided battle was over, almost before it had begun. Most of the crew was ok, battered and bruised and angry as all hell, but fine none the less. Cotton was still missing, although there was blood on a near-by railing and what looked like fingernail scratches. Gibbs had been shot, but if his cursing and hollering were any indication, it was barely a flesh wound.
No-one talked about Jack.
The thump echoed through the floorboards like some sort of demonic heartbeat. It drew closer and closer, a steady thump-scratch, thump-scratch across the Pearl's bloody deck. The circle of snarling monsters drew aside, and the leader of them all stepped in to fill the gap.
Will had never seen Davy Jones before. He'd never really believed in him, not really. Not even with all the business with Jack. There couldn't really be an octopus man, he'd thought. It had to have been some sort of metaphor, some sort of euphemism for his ties with the sea and all its slimy inhabitants.
He was so, so, so sorry he was wrong.
Davy Jones surveyed the motley crew, rheumy blue eyes meeting theirs one by one. There was death in those eyes, cold and cruel and unfeeling. There was no compromising with those eyes, not really. There wasn't room.
"Which of ye be Turner?" The man bellowed, his slimy lips fluttering in distaste as he spoke Will's last name.
"What do you want with him?" Elizabeth shot the myth a glare worthy of Artemis herself, all venom and wrath. "Shouldn't you be after someone else? Captain Jack Sparrow, for instance?"
"Bah!" Jones turned and spat, his tentacles curling and jerking almost irritably. "Would it be that ah'd never laid eyes upon that insufferable little ape of a man! Now, tell me which one of ye be Turner, afore I unleash all holy hell upon ye!"
"Um…" Will blinked, stepping around Elizabeth and ignoring her hissed curses. "Do you mean to say that you've already got Jack?"
"… Yes. Yes, I do. Unfortunately." Jones grumbled, scrunching his face into a damp scowl. "That… Would be why we're here, actually."
It was odd. He seemed almost… Humbled. Abashed. It might have been comical, if it weren't for the rather disconcerting numbers of sharp instruments pointed in their general direction.
"Wait… Don't tell me you're here to give him back!" Elizabeth laughed, her hand to her mouth.
"He won't bloody well shut up!" Jones whirled on her, half angry beastie of the sea and half indignant child, and in an instant, Will knew that it was true.
"Wait, so you're actually going back on your deal?" He gapped at the, dare he say it, pouting fish- man, not entirely sure whether to be horrified or overjoyed. "You're going to give him back, just like that?"
"He tried ta hold a mutineh!" Davy threw up his hands, claw and tentacle alike snapping open and closed as if throttling an certain imaginary Captain. "He was only on the ship four bloody hours and he tried ta hold a mutineh! He thinks he's king o' the whole sodding ocean!"
"If ye were goin' ta return 'im to us, ye shoulda jus' said so!" Gibbs roared, throwing his hip flask in Jones's general direction, knocking the conch man's head off due to a fortunate mixture of blood loss and having previously emptied the flask of its contents. "Ye wouldn't a had ta shoot me! Or Cotton, God rest his poor mute soul."
"Well, ah had ta shoot something!" Davy's scowl deepened, and a well-placed kick at the conch man's crawling head with his peg leg sent it screaming overboard, down into the deep. "I couldn't very well shoot 'im, now could I? Asides, the crew was gettin' antsy. Things ain't what they used ta be out there, ye know. Folk don't b'lieve in our kind any longer. There's not a lot of action these days."
"So ye shot me?!" Gibbs stared at him incredulously.
"Only a little!" Jones grumbled, crossing his arms over his damp chest. "Now, will ye take him back or no?"
There wasn't a single soul on board who didn't shout "Yes!".
Except the parrot, of course. The parrot shouted "Wind in the Sails" instead. But of course, that meant the same thing, near as they could figure.