A/N: This is the 'official' end, though there will of course be an epilogue. This was my favorite chapter, and I do hope everyone enjoys it and likes how things unfold. This is how it should be, it's more true to human nature. Anyway, I'll stop babbling. Thank you all for the nice reviews, they were very kind:] Do it again!

Chapter Seventeen: Unfinished Song

"Jack,"

She stopped him at the very top of the stairs, a little breathless from the running. He turned a little when she caught his coat in her fist, jerking him to a stop. He looked at her with mild surprise in his eyes and looked down at her hand with a quirked eyebrow. Slowly, Elizabeth let the material slide through her fingers and let go, flexing her fingers and stepping up past him onto the deck, walking towards the end of the ship, hugging herself, and glancing out into the sea before turning back. He stepped up onto the deck fully and gave her an un-interpretable look, leaning back against the railing.

"Lizzie," he responded neutrally, waiting.

She chewed on her lip and just looked at him, helplessly.

"You're a good man," she said, her voice trembling. "Jack, you're a good man."

He blinked at her, and tilted his head a little, a look on his face like he figured she might have finally lost her mind. She shook her head and squeezed her own arm, trying to push herself onward.

"An' why do you say that, Lizzie?" he asked, his eyebrow drifting higher, his voice a little gruff, sarcastic.

"Look what you've done. You became the one thing you hated in order to set free some strangers from a life of bondage. You spend your days trying to make up for one accident. You didn't give up on me. You saved Will."

"Trifles, Elizabeth."

She detected a dangerous edge to his voice, underlying a dismissal. She refused to be daunted by it. They were in too deep now. They knew the ins and outs and the light and dark of each other's character. Or…he knew most of the dark.

"Do you have any idea what kind of person I am?" she asked, her throat aching with the effort of speaking against tears. Her eyes moistened and she looked at her bare feet momentarily, then back up at him through wet eyelashes. "The things I've done?"

He snorted, mockingly, stepping a little closer.

"You've come to expunge your sins, Lizzie? Neither of us is perfect, love. You've been sinned against; is this your way of explaining it? Making yourself into some sort of criminal? You're no martyr, Miss Swann. Never were."

She shook her head; how to tell him? Blow the whole thing wide open.

"I'm not a martyr, Jack," she said quietly, her lips parted slightly as she met her eyes. "I'm the crucifier."

The captain looked at her questioningly; Elizabeth went on before her other self could stop her; she fought against the person she'd been for the past few years.

"I'm selfish, I'm spoiled. I'm an undeserving bitch and whore by choice; I'm not a victim, Jack."

"What the hell are you on about, girl?"

"You don't know the half of it,"

"You blame yourself for everything, Lizzie, when—"

"I sabotaged my marriage!"

Elizabeth snapped into his words, interrupting him, shutting him up instantly. He looked at her calculatingly, his eyes locked on hers, as he sized her up.

"Did you hear me, Captain? I, me, myself! I wasn't just an innocent bystander in the sordid affair. I was the fucking instigator!"

She verged on hysteria now as her words demanded he see her in the right light, as she grappled for her real absolution from the spinning vortex of confusion, guilt, wrong-doing and self-pity she'd lived in since Will left her in the rain that fateful night.

Jack leaned back a little from glaring at her, his forehead creasing slightly. He didn't say a word; he waited. She wanted him to ask questions, to demand answers, yet she should have known he'd never be that person. With a groan of frustration she shook her head and unfolded her arms, running a palm through her hair and turning to the side, blinking her eyes.

"Are you just going to stand there?"

Calmly, he responded.

"What are you talking about, Liz?"

She looked back at him, her hair falling messily around her face, her voice still harsh.

"I grew up in that ridiculously stifling hell they call the aristocracy, taking orders from my father, spending my damn life being groomed as the perfect nobleman's wife. All I wanted was to get out. No rules, no corsets, no bloody seen-and-not heard rules. I attached myself to Will because he was the most exciting thing that happened to me. He was like some…Romeo to my Juliet. Forbidden. And he's charming, he's sweet, he never would hurt a fly. He came after me…"

She heard her voice lose some of its edge and take on nostalgia, dreaminess even. She turned again and walked towards the stairs, shutting her eyes and turning her head.

"Isla de Muerta." She started again, her voice hard. "You." She added, throwing the word over her shoulder at Jack. "That was what I wanted. My mother was a Navy Admiral's daughter. She told me the sea was in our blood. I love it. And I hated the confines of society. That's what my attraction to Pirates and Privateers was all about. In Port Royal, Will was the closest thing I got to freedom. I painted an image of him in my girlish mind—swashbuckling, gun-toting, rescuer. I was a sixteen-year-old girl and I fell in love with him and what I wanted him to be. And he came after me, after I pulled that reckless stunt with Barbossa. We came back from Isla de Muerta…it wasn't the same. I wasn't the same,"

She paused, whirling back to look at him. He looked at her with a hard expression, his gaze cool, listening, but not judging. Just like she had been when he spoke of Carolina.

"Do you see it, Sparrow?" she asked, "are you beginning to realize what happened?" she laughed sarcastically and turned away again, using the rolling waves for strength. Oh, this felt so good.

"My father, Norrington, they all thought the ordeal would 'cure me of my ridiculous obsession with pirates', when all it did was fuel the damn fire. I looked at Anamaria and that's what I wanted. That girl owned her life, she could do what she willed and damn well when she willed it."

Elizabeth licked her lips, remembering that day on the battlements, when Norrington had relinquished her to Will, being the bold one, an old romantic at heart she had thought. She had tipped Will's hat off, called him a pirate. Ordered him to be one, was more like it.

"I married Will," her words were gentler, softer now, "because I loved him. And I thought I'd triumphed over all of them when I got my way and I got him. And he was content to settle down into our ordinary, every-day life. Have babies, make an honest living, and never again talk about the Black Pearl or have any kind of adventure. And I got bored with that real fast."

Elizabeth turned around and crossed her arms again resignedly, looking at Jack, and then far off, her head moving slightly. She paused a moment, her lips moving slightly, blinking her eyes.

"He and I…Will and me…we were never compatible. He only hated society because it prevented him from being with me, and I think, deep down, once we were together he was happy to keep quiet and not stir the fire. Life was easier when you didn't butt heads with the higher-ups, right?"

Elizabeth snorted and raised an eyebrow at Jack.

"I hated it. Bartering with the other tradesmen's wives, talking about babies and housekeeping. It was all just as bad as sitting in a pretty dress with needlework in my lap. It wasn't Will's fault that I hated his life, that I realized all too quickly that wasn't freedom. I don't even know why I fooled myself that long. I wasn't in love with Will, I was in love with the person I wanted him to be—the person he was, when it was necessary for him to save me. It was annoying, the way he pandered to his buyers, wanted to please them so badly. He did think my behavior was...inappropriate at times. It just contributed to the less flattering light I was seeing him in. I was stuck in remembering this ship and that island and those days…and he was trying to make a life for us. I just wouldn't cooperate. I got so sick of the monotony…I just took a bullet to the whole fucking thing."

Elizabeth shook her head again. She shifted her weight and looked up at Jack. He had leaned back against the railing again, and was looking at her from under the brim of his tri-corn hat, an impassive, unreadable look on his face. His knuckles were white where he gripped the wood.

"I purposely dwelt on what I didn't like about him. I acted out, so we fought about it, how his clients took it. He was worried about losing money; it wasn't that he disapproved of me technically. But I still hated him for it and I magnified that.

"He despised pirates and I chattered about them incessantly, and I didn't stop even though knew it bothered him. I used that strip of your bandanna in my hair because it reminded me of what I was missing, and he was jealous…he had reason to be.

"He accused me of being careless with those miscarriages. That, I was not. Those were…devastating. Losing a child is devastating, even if you initially did not desire it. But I had run him through the mill so much by then he was pretty much sure I was trying to ruin everything. We fought, and I fueled the fire. He accused me of regretting giving up the comforts of life, and that enraged me. I all but chased him into that other girl's arms…I hated her and his adultery because he needed someone who would love him and care for him like he deserved and I wore him thin; somewhere in there he threw in the gauntlet and he just knew.

"He repressed me, unwillingly. He cheated, and that betrayal I'll never forgive him for. But he was not flawed in character and he did not turn into some monster after we were married. I turned him into one; I destroyed him. When he shoved me that night…that fight during the storm…it was so much easier to let him leave than to leave and devastate him. I played the victim for years. "

She glared at Jack, anger boiling at herself in her veins. Her voice was hard, raw, as she came to the crux.

"I destroyed myself because of what I did to him. Because I blamed him and ruined all his dreams, I ruined my own first. I trapped myself in a relationship that was nothing but a figment of my imagination. There was teenage foolish love there, not real, passionate emotion. That died, I wanted a way out, and I damn well found a way to get it, simply because I'd always gotten my way before." She took a shuddering breath "I'm not saying he's an innocent character because he isn't!"

She paused, her voice starting to tremble again.

"He isn't. But he didn't deserve the medicine I gave him. Tortuga was never what I wanted, but after that it was what I deserved. I was my own keeper there, and I ruled that place. And then you came along. Dammit, Jack. You made me face it."

He stepped forward slowly as her words faded out, his glare hard and staring, his eyebrow just slightly raised. Lips pressed tightly together, he leaned his face down to hers slightly, his shadow falling over her, coolly letting her drown in his onyx glare for a moment.

"You could have had it all, Lizzie. Why'd you do it?"

She froze under his glare and his demanding words.

"I just told you, you arrogant bastard," she whispered hoarsely, her brows slanting, trembling lips forming a scowl. "Don't you get it?"

In one fell swoop, she jerked the compass out of Jack's belt and knocked it violently open. The needle immediately locked in front of her straight ahead, and she smirked at it triumphantly, contemplating giving it a good kiss. She looked up from the compass's steadfast needle to Jack's smoldering eyes.

"It's you," she said quietly, "It's always been you."

She waited for his reaction. He looked at the compass as if it had either betrayed him or revealed the secrets of life and death to him, she didn't know, his look was hard to fathom. Then, carefully and slowly, he plucked it from her palm, transferred it to his own, and let her watch the needle spin back to face her. She quirked an eyebrow, looked up at him. He snapped it shut and chucked it behind him.

"Interesting turn of events," she said shortly, barely getting the last word out before his hand slid up her neck and into her hair, tilting her head back. His eyes were hard and blazing when he kissed her, his other hand pressing against her waist, heavy on her skin through the material of her clothing.

Ice melted to puddles; colors exploded behind her shut eyelids. The sun seemed hotter as it touched her skin and the world seemed lighter on her shoulders. If she could tentatively start to consider sins absolved now…she could call everything right. She could move on.

His lips stayed close to hers when he pulled back slightly and allowed her to gasp for a much-needed breath. Her eyes widened, finding his so close to her, a smirking grin creeping over his lips, a glint of mischief back in his eyes.

"Ye could have saved young William a lot of trouble, darling," he started lightly, slightly admonishing, "if you'd just asked. I might've arranged us a kidnapping."

Elizabeth giggled, surprising herself. Jack touched his forehead to hers, his arm slipping around her back tightly. She braced one palm against his chest, leaning back to see his face, her fingers curling into the thin material of his dirty white cloth shirt, her head tilted to the side, eyelashes still thick with the remnants of tears.

"I blackened his character to you darker than charcoal. I tore his dreams. You look at me the same? You still see me as the pretty fragile flower, governor's daughter, innocent, ladylike?"

"Thou shalt not judge," Jack quoted in a simple voice, his shoulder lifting ever so slightly, "I am neither your condemner nor your confessor." His hand moved along her spine, fingers trailing the outline of her vertebrae. "And I never saw you as an innocent flower. Definitely not as ladylike," he added with a smirk.

She afforded him a light slap, her thoughts still jumbled, a little uncertain, and yet so clear and straight for the first time in years.

"Don't look back," he spoke, his lips so close they touched hers as they moved.

She looked over his shoulder as his lips moved to the bare space between her neck and shoulder, her hand traveling to the bead in his hair she'd seen him touch as he told his heart-wrenching story in the cabin.

She found the line where the sparkling sea met the far-off horizon and she glared at it hard. The sun would set tonight and rise on a new day.

A day she could, perhaps, make better than the ones it followed.

She had never wanted Will Turner to love her. She had never needed Jack Sparrow to rescue her.

She had needed both of them to show her who she was, and what she was. They had opened her eyes.

And the unforeseen view she was struck with…set her at peace.

Unfinished Song by Styx