Blackbeard pulled me through one of the doors to our right and I found myself back on his ship. He seemed surprised that I had stopped resisting him. I knew that he thought that showing me the desperate state of my physical body had broken me in some way, but it had actually done the opposite. The faster I could get through this, the faster I could get home. Which meant no resistance on my part, because that would slow everything down. I was happy to let him believe that he had broken my spirit. The best way to prove him wrong was to beat him in the end, even if it meant holding my tongue now.

It was dusk now and the ship around us was bustling with people. Blackbeard seemed to be fully healed and back in control. He stood at rail of his ship and leered over the side of it. I recognised where we were immediately. Out of the water rose the statue of the face of Neptune, which had been guarding the entrance to Atlantis. I could see that the giant stone mouth was closing. He was swallowing The Pearl. I squinted and saw her beautiful sails. I saw my home and remembered somehow, among all of the madness, that on that ship at this very moment Jack and I were feeling James kick for the first time. Or maybe it was Rebecca. I'd never know.

I smiled and Blackbeard didn't notice. There was no way that he could know the moment Jack and I had shared among the chaos. There was no way for him to take it away from me.

As Blackbeard's ship drew closer they began to fire. A few of Neptune's stone teeth cracked under the pressure. The firing stopped when the mouth started to open slowly again. When it did, The Pearl stood alone and quiet in the mouth of the sea-God. By now, Jack and I would have jumped down in to a pool of mermaids, safe from Blackbeard, but in an entirely new set of dangers. Blackbeard gave the order to fire on her as they sailed in to the jaws of the statue. A moment later, there was the sound of canon fire that wasn't their own and Blackbeard's crew were immediately alert. I looked with them for the source and saw that George's crew was also firing on The Pearl.

Pieces of her dark wood and tatters of her black sails flew up in to the air. Neither ship stopped firing until the Pearl was destroyed. It was difficult to watch. Blackbeard laughed at my pain. I supposed that this was the reason it was the Pearl I had been able to travel around the Land of the Dead in, so in some small way it was a blessing that she had been sunk here. I thought about where she might be now. Would my brother be looking for me to return to it? Were he and Rebecca safe?

When the canon fire ceased there was a moment of silence between the two ships. It was tense, but oddly neither ship fired first. I'd seen a lot of strange things since I had started my adventures, but what I saw now was one of the strangest. Blackbeard and George's ship did not fire at one another. Instead, they drew up quietly alongside each other, armed themselves and came face to face on the tongue of Neptune.

The silent tension in the statue as the mouth began to close again was so thick it seemed to harden the air around us.

"It seems," George said slowly and it surprised me that he didn't seem at all afraid of the infamous pirate standing before him. "We have a common enemy."

Blackbeard narrowed his eyes, "Aye, that it would. It's the only thing stopping me from killing you all now."

George didn't even flinch. "What do you have against Jack Sparrow?" he asked.

"Nothing," Blackbeard replied. "Except," he stepped forward, "that he's standing in the way of me and The Fountain of Youth. Are you also standing in my way, lad?"

He drew a gun and pointed it right between George's eyes. "I have no interest in that Fountain," George said calmly, not even blinking in the face of Blackbeard's gun. Blackbeard hesitated before he lowered it.

"You're not?" he asked.

George shook his head. "Sparrow took something of mine." He stepped towards Blackbeard. "And I've come to get it back."

"He took something from you?" Blackbeard repeated. George nodded. "So you chased him all the way to Atlantis?"

"I will not let a pirate have what is rightfully mine," George replied. It made me sick to think that it was me that George was talking about. He could have been talking about any material possession. "In much the same way, I am sure, as you will not let him take the Fountain from you." Blackbeard's eyebrow rose slowly and he tilted his head to one side. "We have a common enemy."

"It seems we do," Blackbeard agreed again, but he sounded a lot less hostile than he had before. "So, what do you propose?"

"I can help you get to that Fountain," George said. "If you can help me bring down Sparrow."

There was a pause as Blackbeard thought it over. "And what if I don't need your help?" he said.

George laughed. "Oh, but you will." He turned to his crew and beckoned to one of them. There was a sudden flurry of movement and then Barbossa was pulled forwards from the ranks of Redcoats. Blackbeard looked at him in surprise. So did I. I hadn't seen him since Jack and I had marooned him on the rum-runners island when we had regained the Pearl.

It was him.

It was Barbossa who had lead George to us and the Fountain of Youth.

"You're no Redcoat," he commented.

"No," Barbossa agreed. "I'm not."

"So why are you working with them?"

Barbossa glanced at the Pearl. "That," he said, "Is my ship."

Blackbeard nodded, "It was taken?"

"Aye."

"Seems we have a common enemy," he smiled. "But that doesn't answer my question. Why do I need any of you?"

"The Charts that Jack Sparrow is using to navigate these waters and the ones that follow are mine," Barbossa told him. "And before he took them and my ship I studied them closely- damn near memorised them and anything else about the Fountain that I could. I know what lies ahead. You need me to get to that Fountain. And you need as many men as you can to fight those that still live in Atlantis."

Blackbeard laughed. "Live?" he echoed. "Live? Atlantis has been sunk for decades. There is no way that anyone there can still be living."

Barbossa shook his head. "No," he said. "You're wrong. They have magic beyond anything you could ever imagine. Beyond anything you could even conjure yourself, Blackbeard. "

"Is that so?" Blackbeard looked disbelieving.

"Your magic is naught but simple card tricks compared to what they have buried down there," Barbossa replied.

"So," George began. "I think, in this instance, we can all agree that killing each other right now is not the most profitable course of action."

"You speak a lot of sense for someone who wears a red coat and takes his orders from a fat man who sits on a throne that is oceans away from here." Blackbeard mulled it over. "I don't like Redcoats."

"I don't like Pirates," George countered. "But I'm willing to make an exception, I won't have you hung from the sails of my ship until I can sail back with your dead corpse swinging for all the world to see, if you help me to get what I came for. If we help each other to get what we came for."

There was a long silence. George smiled in a way that showed that he knew that he would get what he wanted. "Agreed," Blackbeard said at last and both parties turned sharply away from each other. Blackbeard's crew came closer to him. "Once we've reached the Fountain," he said quietly, with his back to the Navy. "We kill them all."

On the other side of the statue's mouth, I thought I saw George say something very similar.

Each crew moved back to their ships to collect things they might need- weapons, food, extra gunpowder- in short, anything they could carry. And then I stood by and watched as they jumped down into what I knew would be a freezing cold pool full of angry mermaids. When the last few had disappeared we stood around the edge and peered down in to the darkness. Seconds later Blackbeard placed a hand on either one of my shoulders and pushed. I fell, tumbling, screaming and twisting into the darkness. I braced myself for whatever I remembered was to come. Would I have to face those mermaids again?

I spun in the air. There was a painful jolt that ran through me as I landed. I landed on my feet, not in a pool of cold water, but in a room that shook when it happened. I stumbled. Blackbeard landed beside me with ease.

It took me a while to recognise the room we were in because I hadn't seen it from this angle before. We were in a room in Atlantis and I could see Blackbeard rummaging around in various drawers, pulling out maps of the city. He scoured through them for the Fountain. We heard footsteps at the same time and Blackbeard moved quickly to hide in the shadows. I heard the footsteps run in to the room and then a man's voice that I recognised to be Isaacio's. "Nyssa, you know what to do."

Then I saw myself stumble further in to the room. Alive. Pregnant. I realised that we had jumped back to the day that I died. My death wasn't far away either, Nyssa and I were supposed to be hiding from the battle that was going on outside, but Blackbeard was already in here with us. There was something incredibly sinister about seeing myself and knowing that I was about half an hour away from being shot. I watched myself shut the open window as the room around us shook. My face filled with horror and Nyssa pulled me away. I felt the same sense of helplessness now as I did then. I had been watching a horrible battle that I could do nothing to help in and now I could do nothing to help the scene in front of me, although I knew it ended horribly.

I wanted to shout out to Nyssa and I to run, but I knew that it wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference. It was too late anyway; Nyssa had already sealed us in.

"What is this… Blackbeard?" Nyssa asked me.

The ghost of Blackbeard beside me started to laugh. I glanced at him. "That was such a well-timed question," he said, still looking pleased by it.

"He's… he's…" I heard myself reply.

"He's right here," the real Blackbeard stepped out and I saw myself hurriedly backing away from him, bumping in to Nyssa as I did so. "Ye know where the Fountain is?" he asked us.

"Yes." I watched myself sealing my own fate and wondered if the outcome would have been any different if I had lied and said no. Probably not. He probably would have just shot me sooner.

"Take me," he ordered me, drawing his gun. "Take me to it."

As the living Blackbeard grabbed on to the living me and held his gun up to my throat, I jumped as the ghost of Blackbeard did exactly the same. Could he shoot me in the Land of the Dead? What would happen to me if he did?

"What are you doing?" I asked him, shakily, feeling his gun dig in to my skin.

"Walk," was all he said. He sounded as if he was enjoying this. We followed the past versions of ourselves to the grand hall with the Fountain in it. I felt trapped- nothing but a ghostly echo of the past repeating what I already knew was a terrible experience.

I watched as we came in sight of the Fountain and Blackbeard prepared to shoot me. The ghost of Blackbeard also switched the safety catch of his gun off. What was he planning? "You see," he growled in my ear as Jack and Isaacio tried to free the living me from Blackbeard's grip. I wished that they could see me, but there was nothing they could do. Their priority was fighting the losing battle of not letting the past version of me die. "Your death was nothing. You were expendable to me. It was meaningless. Just like you. Just like everything else."

"You're wrong," I struggled against him, feeling braver because I was already dead. He couldn't kill me again, could he?

To my surprise and enormous relief he let go of me. I stumbled away from him. It took me a moment to realise that the living versions of myself and Blackbeard were gone. Everyone else around us looked strange and out of focus.

"RUN, ISABEL. RUN." I heard Jack's voice but couldn't see him. Blackbeard began to laugh.

"Yes," he said. "Please. Do run. I much prefer it when they run."

I raised his gun and pointed it straight between my eyes. I turned and ran. I ran as fast as I could in the direction that I knew Jack should have been. I couldn't' see him, but everything was a blur, I couldn't see much. I heard the loud crack of a gunshot, felt a familiar and searing pain through my back and crumpled to the ground.

Not again.

Why?

Why?

The pain was so strong that I couldn't see properly. I lay on the cold ground, listening to Barbossa's cruel laughter and wondering if this was some kind of punishment or torture. Was I doomed to spend the rest of eternity re-living the experience of dying?

I knew this couldn't kill me, but it felt as if I could. It felt just as real as it had the first time around.

A warm pair of arms wrapped around me and Blackbeard's laughter faded away.

Jack?

Was I back? Had this somehow pushed me back in to the real, living, world? Had I finally come home?

Being back in my physical body would explain why the pain felt so real. I moved to look up at Jack, but before I could he raised a cup of something to my lips. I started to drink and the pain lessened almost instantly. I felt myself getting stronger, but drowsier at the same time. I felt my limbs getting heavier until I couldn't feel them at all. I felt my mind slow down and my senses dull, clogged up by my sudden desire to sleep. I didn't mind. I was relieved, really. Blackbeard was gone and I felt safe. I was getting better.

I thought I was home.

As the last drop of liquid slid down my throat I looked up, craving Jack's warm eyes before sleep washed over me.

I tried to move, but it was far too late for that. I was fully paralyzed. The eyes looking down at me were green.

"Hello, Isabelle," George smiled down at me. "Did you miss me?"

(No. Nobody missed you, George.)

Thanks for reading, please review :)

LV

xx

Review Replies:

horsiepirate- Thank you very much :) I'm glad you like the story!

PiratesRock: I'm so, so, so sorry that these chapters are taking me so long :S Thanks for reviewing, though!