Okay, so, well. This is…an interesting thing. This is where all my plot culminates, not gonna lie. I've worked in the things I have for a reason, so, I hope you catch them all. Any guesses to the twist? Tell me what you think it is in a review! Which you should not forget to do. Seriously.
-Han
He felt like water.
All the pieces that made him up slipped away in that transcendent flurry of movement that spoke of tide and the sea in a storm, rocking through the swell and twisting with the wind. A weight at his back, Anna, moving in a mirror to him. Her hair splayed out in the air as she turned sharply, parried a sword easily and slicing deep into the meat of the man's arm, her blue eyes a hard fire, unrelenting diamond, a tinge of sadness coloring the corner of her mouth.
She didn't want to be enjoying this, this carnage, this bloodshed. But she was pirate in the blood and a fight never failed to make a heartbeat faster, to pull her to the edge of everything and threaten to shove her off with the rough insistence of blood pounding through her veins and excitement burning goose bumps and ecstasy across her skin.
He was the same. Didn't even care who they were fighting anymore, just that he finally felt alive, pushed out of the fog the jungle had cast on him and seeing everything real. In that startling clarity near-death always seemed to give him, where he could count the rays of sunlight that made it through the mystical hands of the oasis, where he stored away the last noises of dying men and delighted in the sick roll of his stomach at the thought.
They were still human, just caught up in the energy of it all.
It wasn't about the stalled heartbeats or the gaping-mouthed prayers, it was just moving in and out of the twist of bodies like they belonged there, forward, twist, step back, thrust. Jack was taken up from the inside and drawn out by the need to push forward, the weight of his sword making it all the more real as dying men gave him their last gaze, last pleas. He was dancing because he had to, because they had nowhere else to go with the Fountain looming ahead of them and three leaders clashing in the heart of the writhing mass of men. They made their way as quickly as they could, with Anna stepping around him as if she were the air itself, brushing against him but never enough to really touch. The wind.
And he loved it.
Loved every second of music and steel and dance and the feel of her smile bled between the two of them. He loved every moment of unrestrained freedom and weight being lifted from his chest, feeling at home in the pattern of his moves and the blood that stained the ground below them. He laughed, because he could, because they were growing closer to the cool waters of the Fountain and they were going to make it and nothing could stop them and the light that slipped between the cavernous cracks in their oasis warmed his skin. He was bubbling up from the inside and tasting relief.
They were going to make it, and it was beautiful.
He could catch the odd edge of scarred, tan skin in the corner of his eye, sleeves rolled up and the webbed fingers of fire carved across her like delicate relief sculpture, Rome in her body and Sparta in her mind. He could see the devilish smirk coloring her mouth, the one that send a warm build in the center of him, and made him think of sheets and the sounds she made with the beginnings of exertion.
She dodged one of Blackbeard's men as he parried one of Barbossa's, their swords clashing like an electric hum of lightning. Jack though that feeling, the one that picked him up from beneath and shoved him up until the air thinned out and he felt hazy with euphoria and heaven was at his back, could bring him to his knees before her. Could leave him helpless and vulnerable and so inexplicably in love with her.
It hadn't felt like this before.
Like every moment was a crystallized sensation shooting through his veins like white-fire, like he was alive in ways he'd never been before and the feeling made his heart pound faster and blood rush through his veins. He felt like every second of twisting, rolling battle was stored inside his chest with a sharpness that hadn't been there before, if only because he shared it with her. If only because she could keep up, because she moved with him, oriented her body around his movements like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like she was made to fit into the place beside him.
She was.
It was like a void being filled with the sharp clang of meeting swords and the bubbling laughter from deep within her, a throaty sound that cut through the agonized groans of the men she'd been unwilling to harm only moments before. They were caught inside the moment and mercy had no place there.
And she wouldn't think less of him for it, like he wouldn't think less of her.
There was still the last whispers of reluctance, there, on the very edges of her movements and the quick, clean endings she gave people when she didn't have a choice. They were only reacting, trying to avoid their end and reach their goal. The snuffed-out life in men's eyes wasn't their concern, couldn't be helped when they would have driven them through and lost them the battle.
Here, there were no heroes.
Only energy, existence heightened by the assurance of a quick death with a wrong move.
But he still could feel the shame in her, the disgust at herself for being bent and broken to the will of steel and sword and gunfire. There was no escape, no outskirt against the wall that could keep them hidden from sight. There was only the mob.
So she bent around him like wind to a flame, a dance that swept inside of their movements and drew eyes the way it always seemed to, and she hated that she loved it, loved that some moral part of her hated it.
They were controlled, sticking the edges and refusing to grant death wherever possible, as if the angel cloaked in black rested on their shoulders, on the tips of their swords, and would only strike when called upon. When they had no other choice.
The other side had no mercy, didn't know whether to find them friend or foe, though Barbossa's men avoided them widely. The crew they'd traveled with through hot, sticky nights and suffocating mornings no longer treated them with soft smiles and a sharing of rations. Their expressions were frozen in military order, fear in their bodies and they couldn't disobey. Not when Blackbeard thirsted so for blood, teeth bared and beard smoking.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Anna lock eyes with the Cabin Boy, his small body pressed up against the stone walls. She smiled, in an instant, where time slowed and Jack shifted to cover her more soundly, and it was one of the most beautiful thing's he'd ever seen.
They were close enough to speak, then, though Jack could barely hear her over the roar of angry men, dying men.
"Circle back around and untie Phillip. Tell him to run, to find Syrena. To do what he knows he must, and then you run, all the way to the beach, do you understand me? Run. And you don't look back!" She ordered, an edge of diamond in her voice that had Jack's heart beating all the faster. The boy nodded, a quick jerk of his head that seemed to speak the volumes he couldn't, seemed to spur him on with the memory of her sacrifice over thrashing whitewater with mermaid tails upsetting their small boat.
The boy ran, and the battle began again, picking up speed and fervor as the leaders grew desperate, strung out on their anger and fear and resentment. Injustice in a missing leg, hatred in a missing child. Jack could guess from the stern set of Bonny's mouth when she ordered Anna back, the set of her spine when she was too close to the woman.
Jack would bet his life on it.
"Jack, not growing tired, are we?" Anna asked suddenly, pulling him back to the present with a brush of her fingertips across his cheek, gathering sweat and dirt.
"Never," he answered brightly, pushing past her to join the fray again, careful to keep to the edges and minimalize his impact, the damage he could cause with a few elegant movements. She followed, because she would always follow.
He liked to think he never took that for granted, but when he moved, quick and sharp locking eyes with Angelica across the mass of writhing bodies, something in him snapped. Her stare was like a brand upon his skin, a sick claim of ownership he didn't want, a sickness curling in his stomach at the thought. His movements became less graceful, carrying a flavor of anger he'd suppressed, the cold way Angelica had stared at Anna, the dismissiveness of her gestures. The way she felt she belonged where Anna stood.
He got risky, broke away from the gentle circle of give and take and blood and push and pull. There was viciousness in the half-step he took away from her, intent in the way he locked eyes with the Spanish woman half-way across the oasis, frozen only twenty paces from the Fountain with Scrum hurrying to her side through the thick of the battle.
"Jack!"
There was panic in Anna's voice, and she was supposed to be right behind him and he didn't know how it his possessive rage had taken him so far, vengeance and anger twisting inside of him and urging him on halfway through the crowd. He had enough time to turn and watch a gun go off with the quick spark of fire.
Time slowed to nothing, sand catching on his fingers as it slipped in a trickle between his hands. He could see Angelica from the corner of his eye, smiling. A silence seemed to take up the crowd in a singular moment, guns rare in a close-packed crowd of swords and knives and fistfights. He could see Anna's hair curl around her face, so beautifully, catching dappled sunlight and nearing a red-gold.
He watched as her body twisted, caught up in wind and the chorus of agony within the crowd of men and violence, her hand outstretched. For him.
He wasn't close enough.
He could only watch as she came to the realization, a quick shift in the center of her being from desperation to acceptance as that dragged-on-endless time finally sped up again and—
It missed.
He breathed relief and the tang of rum he hadn't tasted yet, sweetness and wind and air and divinity all wrapped up inside his chest and it was beautiful.
He'd never been more proud of her, as she landed cat like on the blood-smeared stone, unharmed and breathing like she'd been running from Hell itself.
Anna looked up, caught Jack's panicked, desperate gaze, and grinned.
He'd never loved her more.
"Close one, that," she said brightly, bounding up again to join him with a cold-coiled tension lining her movements. She'd been afraid.
So had he.
"Love," he whispered, wishing he could cross the distance and prove how much he needed her, how much it cut into his soul to see the resignation and to know he wasn't there. Never close enough to stop the pain that invariably went her way, like she was a magnet to all the hits he'd never taken, all the bruises he should have collected, all the spilled blood that should have been his.
"It's alright, Jack, I'm alright."
And that was all the comfort they had time for, the chaos of the battle drawing closer to them, the violence starting up again with a new fervor, beating in the hearts of men. Jack could see the vicious way Bonny tore against Blackbeard, the foul twist of Groves' mouth as he raged through the crowd.
The young man through a concerned glance their way, to which Anna sent a smile.
It was laced with relief, and it drove a stake through Jack's heart.
"I'll be there next time. I promise," he whispered viciously.
He'd promised that before, he knew he had. Had meant it those times too.
Instead of pushing, instead of telling him he couldn't control things, instead of accepting something he couldn't hold true, she tugged on the hem of his sleeve, and pulled him back into the crowd.
They moved with purpose, their blows losing their reluctant edge and gaining desperation, a need to finish what they'd started. Jack could see Blackbeard, circled by Barbossa like he was prey, though the limp awkward, the stare was cruel. He saw no traces of the man who'd once been his first mate.
"Give it to me," Anna hissed, her voice a tumbled collection of shadows and Hell and every dark thing any one had ever dreamed of. She stared down Scrum with unrelenting eyes, a hand held out and a sneer curving her delicate mouth.
"Look, mate, neither of us is so much in the mood at the moment, it'd suit you best to hand over the bloody tear so we can all move on," Jack snarled, his charisma left far behind, where a bullet had buried itself into the cavernous wall just behind Anna.
Scrum sniveled, and tried to flatten himself against the craggy rock-scape, as if to diminish himself, and he was so clearly trying not to think about them. The way they'd helped, the way they moved together like a perfect unity held up above all others, about the stories he'd heard whispered in darkened taverns of their exploits.
"Scrum, the Chalices, and the tear. Follow!" Angelica barked, already scrambling towards the Fountain. She paused long enough to meet her crewman's eyes, an ugly look blanketing her face.
"I'm more afraid of them than I is o' you," he informed her, battling a strange, startled sort of grin, like he couldn't believe he'd said it at all.
Anna smiled, and it was like the sun had risen, like the world had concentrated on her as she snatched up a Chalice and the canister that held a single mermaid tear. Jack grabbed the other, delighting in the confirmed weight in his hand that seemed to make it all the more real.
"Unfortunate for you," Angelica spat, drawing her blade on the pair of them with a kind of grace that could only be taught by Jack.
And suddenly he hated the time he spent with her, beneath a Spanish sky with the sheets pushed down to their waists, wrapped around one another until their bodies seemed to have no end or beginning. He hated it.
He hated the shame that curled in the pit of his stomach when Anna caught his eye, a knowing look wrapped up inside her past, all the pain she'd ever suffered, and she was trying not to blame him. Trying so hard it hurt to watch.
Angelica fought like she seduced, all coiled tension and the sultry shift of her body as she manipulated her weapon, cutting through the spaces between them until they were forced to retaliate.
Anna reacted, her body shifting like it was made of fire, ever changing and unpredictable, always managing to surprise him, as she stepped cleanly over Scrum's crouched form and pushed Angelica back towards the Fountain with calculated movements. She looked alive, and Jack imagined he could hear her erratic heartbeat from where he stood.
He joined their fray, moved with Anna the same way he had when Angelica had first shown her face (granted she'd been wearing his face at the time), where they were a seamless fabric, flowing elegantly in a morning breeze without a pause. They were water, shifting over and around their surroundings with the uncaring nature of existence, where all they were, were themselves and nothing could stop them once they started.
And Jack felt like he was finally breathing, her next to him and their adversary strung out too thin, lost too much with too much on the line and she was growing unstable. Angelica lashed out with the cocked fist at Anna's face, dodged smoothly as she tucked the canister into her belt for safe keeping.
She smiled at Jack, and it felt like being forgiven.
Xx
Phillip fell beside the pool, his breathing harsh and strained to his own ears as his lungs threatened to give with the fierce burn inside of him. He'd been given another chance, the help of the small Cabin Boy, who'd cut through his bonds with the soft whisper She said to run, that seemed to transcend everything else and make him feel safe enough to try.
So he did.
He broke the ranks of chaos and death and ran, distantly realizing the Cabin Boy had followed him back through the embrace of trees and jungle until suddenly he wasn't. There had been a manic purpose in the young boys eyes, though, and the missionary knew the Princess had given him a task, charged him with the safe keeping of his own life in a way only she could.
He was safe, Phillip was sure, as he dropped next to the dirty water, tied wrists and the limp, pale body of Syrena.
He thought he finally understand how he could love her so quickly, so completely, with a fervor he'd only ever placed in God, in his Savior.
She was saving him.
He felt like the life had been breathed back into him, from the draining streets of London and the feeling of British soldiers holding him out in the streets to be fired at, the heavy weight he'd carried since. It had been washed away.
"My God. You will not take her back!" He screamed, ripping through her bonds with a desperation that ate at his soul. "Give her back! Give. Her. Back!" He brushed the pads of his fingers of her cheek, gentle though his body begged, though his veins screamed, though his heart was ripping down the center.
She was too still, her elegant body, porcelain beauty and elfish grace, was stiff and proud even in death.
"Give her back. Please, please, please!" His voice broke and he was falling, lost inside of his own mind as he pleaded, as his hand swept across her brow, fingers painting lines across her lips, cupping her neck like he could wake her with touch alone. Like he could reverse the irreversible.
Like he could fix this.
He thought about Anna, and the way her eyes had looked when she said she loved a man she couldn't save, like Jack was what made her world turn, the sun rise, like without him the world was shadow and pitiless greed and the hungry sound of men crushing other men beneath their lust for power. He hadn't wanted to believe what he saw there, the dependency and need that colored her so brilliantly. Hadn't want to see it in himself.
But it was like someone snapped all the strings that held him together, turned off the sun and pushed him down in to the center of a cold, empty embrace.
He was alone.
The thought drew a strangled cry from him, bent over Syrena's lifeless body with shaking shoulders and desperately clinging hands. He couldn't make this right, couldn't make the pain go away with a prayer and a reminder of God's presence.
He just couldn't.
Syrena breathed in violently, bucking sharply in his hold and opening her beautiful, sharp eyes to his gaze.
Her mouth moved, a silent attempt to form the right words, to say the right thing that could wipe the redness from his eyes and the confused, desperate hope in his chest. She smiled, because it was all she could do and it was all he needed.
Alive.
The word had never held so much weight, and he couldn't understand how Jack and Anna managed it, that aching fear.
He grinned, manic and afraid and warmed from the inside out, as she curled closer to him for a breath, a second, a moment treasured deep down in the center of himself, to be pulled out and marveled at later.
And then she moved, her smile turned apologetic, tinged with some arcane sense of purpose that pushed the boundaries of his understanding, latched onto duty and honor and the corpses of her sisters wasted away around her. They were going to use her tear.
It had better be for the right reasons.
Water embraced her, slipped across her skin like a promise, like it was home, and Phillip could do nothing but watch. Could do nothing but wait, as she fell below the surface with a last, slow, lingering look at the man who'd come to make her just as soundly as she made him, and swam away.
Phillip collapsed against a tree root, exhaustion in his legs and relief blanketing every inch of him, a prayer of thanks on held on his tongue that never passed his lips. This was more than God, this was love, something different all together in the tenor of their need, their frantic fear and anxiety. This was luck and time and the magic that rested deep inside of Syrena's bones. And it made him feel submerged, clinging to the last traces of his sanity and so completely alive.
Xx
A poisoned blade whistled through the air, the man behind it advancing with eyes like the dying cinders of a bonfire, smoldering and angry red around the ashen blackness of charred wood as they met the cold, impassive stare of his adversary. The woman next to him flowed, twisted in an arch defying in grace the roughness of her age, body like it was young, strong.
Barbossa moved with Bonny with the weight of the sun concentrated on his slick-steel blade, watched it catch the dappled sunlight in a moment of brilliance that made it look green or red or blue with the pressed skin of warning-color frogs. Poison darts spread across a sharp edge without mercy.
"I expected Fate to put up more of a fight!" Blackbeard growled, pushing back against the steady advance with a flourish of his heavy sword, the weight not seeming to effect the man. Barbossa wondered over the beating heart meant to be contained inside the man's chest, thought about Davy Jones and the empty chasm that used to house the last glimmers of humanity. Thought about the cruel glint in Blackbeard's eyes, the ruthlessness that seemed to transcend humanity and rest only in creatures from other planes, where he could control a ship and the sea itself with only a heavy cutlet. But Blackbeard was human.
And therefore breakable.
Bonny tripped, ankle twisting with a sharp cry of pain stuttered from between unwilling lips with shallow water pooling around her body. She snarled up at her enemy, beard smoking and her thoughts so clearly caught on prison cells and her love strung up and her child given up all because of him. All because of Blackbeard.
Just as soon as the expression blanketed her face, did it disappear with the first whispers of a smile that shook Barbossa to his blackened core. She was manic, desperate and caught on the edge of some invisible cliff, ready to hurtle herself off with the agonizing laughter of a woman possessed.
"I will not have a smile on your face when I cut you down!" Blackbeard hissed, thrusting his sword forward threateningly, the blade's intent to rest comfortably in the meat of her arm.
Barbossa parried, peg leg sliding precariously against wet stone, until they were only inches apart, framed by deadly steel on either side and close enough to smell the breath of the dead-sea in Blackbeard's breath. Death laced with salt.
Barbossa's restless eyes flicked behind the Captain, sweeping across the expanse of dead and dying and fighting bodies, the blood that ran soft pink rivers when it mixed with the clear water, and found the way they had come. He felt Bonny rise beside him, her smile so startlingly similar to her daughters, Barbossa had to swallow back the memories of the Black Pearl racing away from him and the manic, easy way she moved around Jack like he was Life itself. Not so much had changed, since then. But Bonny, she looked alive for the first time in a long time, the stretch of her lips taking a dangerous sharpness that cut through the air around them and made him feel underwater.
"Look, Edward Teach" she hissed, a command that riddled every inch and scar and wrinkle on her face, made her seem wise beyond the decades she had lived. Like she had seen everything, the very edge of existence itself.
"Take a gander," Barbossa prompted, when Teach's eyes stayed trained on them, a cold kind of impassiveness resting inside the blue-grey. And Barbossa wondered if death would really make so much of a difference.
Blackbeard turned slowly, his full weight resting in the elegant X their swords made to prevent Barbossa from moving, as he took in the scene before him with the analytical analysis of a tactician. The one-legged man thought he saw a whisper of apprehension, of a man unused to changes in plans.
The Spanish melted from the mist with the cool precision of fey creatures, elegance in the firm straightness of their spines and the draping of feathers across the right cheek of the Captain. He was beautiful, the same delicately carved features Jack carried with a kind of unhurried grace about him that made his movements deliberate and careful. His dark hair curled around his face as if caught up in a perfect wind, tousled just enough to be human and immaculate in his clothing, hands clean and calluses unseen.
Their arrival crushed silence down on the mob, dirty, disheveled pirates and privateers alike stilling in the midst of angry battle, throats cut and wounds bleeding, and enraptured by the stern, commanding attention that seemed to flow so freely from the man before them, and the company gathered at his heels.
He moved like Jack did, on the rare occasion he was sober enough to see the horizon hold still at the edge of his vision and move with the gentle rock of the ship. He moved like he walked on water and it was easy, like the rest of the world oriented itself around his steps.
Anna and Jack stepped out from the battle with Angelica, cradling a Chalice each and grinning as their steps echoed into complete silence. Anna watched the Spaniard survey them, catching on the rugged, dirty nature of their clothing and the dirt smeared over their skin, his head tipping back with barely withheld contempt.
Groves stood in front of the Fountain with the courage he shouldn't have, the loyalty that screamed and thrashed against the walls of his mind and begged for him to take a stand, the British flag weighing heavily in his hands with every debt he owed his country. He spread it wide, arms out like a martyr.
"I hereby claim-"
Anna pressed a hand down on his shoulder, halting his words before they could fully form with the calm serenity of a woman removed, floating above the rest of the world as she passed her Chalice to Jack and tugged the flag from Groves' hands.
"Don't waste your life for a country you don't love," she said softly, bringing the fabric end to end and folding it with practiced movements. Jack thought she must be aware of every eye on her, the critical way the Spanish Captain's eyes ran over her, as if expecting a knife to be thrown his way, a gun to fire off into the silence. Anything.
But no.
She turned slowly, placing the flag on the stone floor in some strange imitation of burial, and stood tall before the rest. Blackbeard seemed unable to move, watching with a curiosity that devolved into morbid interest as a smile of greeting spread across the young woman's face. A face that looked so like the enemy before him, still holding sword to his throat.
"I would offer you some kind of welcome, but I fear I'm not technically in a position of power at the moment," Anna began slowly, watching for another twitch of movement from the stoic man before her. She took another step forward, and the sound of it rebounded from the walls, echoed in a strange chorus. "My name is Annabelle Windsor."
"The Lost Princess," the man acknowledge, with a slight bow at the waist and an interested look hovering in his dark eyes. She laughed, lightly, the sound like bells to Jack's ears.
"'Lost' is a much more forgiving term than the one my father uses," she answered with a soft smile. "I understand what you are here to do."
"You will not deter us, your highness, only God can grant eternal life," he said firmly, his mouth twisting into a feral sneer, passion in the depth of his words, that seemed to carry like the words of angels across the gathered crowd.
"On the contrary, I want you to continue," Anna answered, bright and sharp in the shocked stillness her words provided, the disbelieving snort from Angelica in the background that seemed to highlight the strangeness. "I'd be much obliged if you neglected to shoot any of us, though," she added.
The bow he gave this time was deeper, a show of respect and mutual understanding that transcended country lines and borders and purpose. He smiled, the barest flicker of expression across his elfish face, and nodded.
"Men, destroy this profane temple!" the Captain ordered sharply, stepping carefully towards Anna with deliberate purpose, and suddenly Jack was there, hovering by his side like he belonged there. And the Captain thought he did, filling the space so perfectly it appeared they were a matching set, of bloody clothing and mud-streaked skin, of hardship and struggle and joy and freedom. He could understand that, could respect the gentle way the pirate's arm slid around the princess' waist, like he was the one not trusted. He supposed he was.
He held out a hand, greeting and question in one gesture that made a bright grin fall over the man's face, and the Captain found him charming, found him alive in ways no one else could possibly be. He handed over the Chalices with a calm acceptance that spoke of a prior plan of the same goal.
"Not a decent way to gain life anyway," he said with a startlingly smooth voice, accent posh and carefully crafted, wrapped around his tongue with precision. "It's not even eternal."
"Gracias," he said, because that was all he had to say, as his boot came down on the silver cups, crushing one side, denting the other, and kicked them into the embrace of deep, cold water.
They disappeared from sight, and a sound like thunder, like the very hand of God reaching down from the heavens to complete their divine work, sounded throughout the gentle oasis, shattering the calm, heavy feeling of the air around them. It felt like waking from a dream.
The columns crashed down to the embrace of water and a stone floor, the easy fall of cursed water slowing to nothing, the barest hint of a drip falling from the caved, embracing arches, slung over one another in a haphazard jumble of fallen rock.
"The Fountain!"
Cries of rage broke out from stitched corpses still moving by some other witchcraft, and a sickness rolled inside of the Captain. He watched them rush forward, slipping over their own feet with their awkward, stiff movements, more despairing than their Captain, who watched the proceedings with a cold, distant look resting in his eyes that seemed to carry him far and away.
The Spaniard nodded to the pair before him, who watched the arcane beauty of a pagan temple crumble to nothing with faces nothing short of relief, their eyes already searching out a home in one another, and walked towards Blackbeard, finally released by his two stone-faced adversaries. The man looked empty, his eyes reflecting nothing but hatred and contempt. The Captain returned it easily.
"You are a fool. You seek in this place what only faith can provide," he said strongly, pointing to the very center of Teach's chest, where whatever dark, dead piece of his soul resided, crippled and blackened by the force of his hate and the rejection of his faith.
Fate played no part in an Act of God.
What else could this be, this meeting of royalty and enemy and privateers? This collection of desperation and purpose that lined all of their bodies. He could see God's work in the way Windsor leaned into her pirate companion like he was the only thing keeping her upright, as they walked, elegant as angel wings, towards the craggy, one-legged man and infamous pirate beside him, Bonny watching the princess like she would tell her secrets. He could see it in the way Blackbeard glared, beaten and clinging to the pieces of his mask that made him fearful.
"Faith," Teach spat, his face twisting in a feral snarl of unbidden rage, and the Spaniard could see the power, there, the mysticism and the ability to tear into the very fabric of a person and rip out what was most important. "In faith there is light enough to see but darkness enough to blind."
The Spaniard watched Barbossa move, blade slicing through the still, shocked air around them, where privateer and pirate alike crowded together to avoid the harsh, condescending looks from the Spanish crew and they looked as if they'd been torn from sleep and shoved back into the real world. Where the sunlight made warm patterns on their skin and the Fountain was gone and the bodies of their friends were stacked against the far wall. The carnage and the smell of death set into their minds, too familiar in the flavor, the taste of it. He watched.
And he didn't stop him.
The cut was long, shallow but enough to cause an abrupt, sharp hiss of pain from between Blackbeard's teeth, as the blade drew across his inner wrist with the precision of a practiced man. Barbossa watched with victory in his eyes, Bonny just behind him with something so close to joy, euphoria.
Teach's sword clattered to the ground, the heavy cutlet splashing into shallow water, and his eyes grew afraid, not in the slow increments of realization, but all at once, with a force that left the others reeling.
Jack watched, enraptured, as a sudden, needy desperation clawed up the back of the man's throat and forced a strangled sound from his lips. "What devilry is this?" the older man whispered, stunned confusion making him turn to face his end.
Barbossa ran him through, no mercy in his eyes and a deep fire of satisfaction as Blackbeard slid to the ground, a circle of the closest gathering around him as he drew uneven, gurgling breaths.
"For your victims, for Bonny, for my leg," Barbossa hissed, a cruel twist to his mouth as he watched Teach labor for breath, hinge on the edge of death for slow moments that seemed to drag and speed by all at once.
"No! What have you done?!" Angelica screamed, pushing through them, knocking Jack and Anna ever closer to the dying man as she dropped to her knees and clutched at his shoulders. Blackbeard pushed her off with the dwindling remains of his strength, muscles twitched dangerously, threatening to give way into the harsh spasms of True Death, no hope once he started foaming at the mouth, eyes rolling up in his head and fingers clutching at nothing.
He visibly swallowed his fear, rage surfacing again like the swell of a tidal wave, swept across the Pacific with strength enough to take out whole villages, blocking the light from the sun with its intensity.
"I may not be long…for this world." He struggled around the words, spat them out with the tang of blood speckling his lips and thought this was his last moment, his last chance to draw a red smear across the pages of his history, written in the blood-ink of his victims. This last entry would not be recorded only in his own. His fingers wrapped around the hilt of Barbossa's sword, felt the blade shift inside the fleshy hold of his stomach, and pulled, gleaming and red and deadly with the barest of touches. "But I will not go alone!"
The blackness encroached on his vision, moving in with the cold hand of Death on the back of his neck as he gathered his strength. He lunged, movement like lightning, the sword flashing in the sunlight.
He died with the corners of his lips kicked up into a near-smile, glimmering with the rage that he could never be rid of, and haunted by Fate.
"No!"
