He'd felt nothing, no change, until he felt nothing—until nothing went in, through, piercing and penetrating and transfixing him.

It wasn't the first time Barbossa had—

Couldn't decide if it hurt or not. Pain that wasn't painful. The idea made Jack laugh. He took two careful steps back into the moonlight and looked down, to where cold steel was stuck between his ribs and his breastbone, where his heart should have been. Turned out what the women said was true after all, and he had no heart any more. Melted away in sea water. Stolen away by a mermaid, the Devil, the Black Pearl. Heartless Jack Sparrow.

Couldn't be hurt, not any more.

"That's interesting," he said out loud. And it was, it really was, like the fascination of watching someone die. He turned his hand, admiring the play of cool blue moonlight on bare bone. Rings rattled, suddenly loose.

But Will was looking at him, and his eyes—

The boy had seen him palm the coin, he was sure of it, but he still looked shocked when he saw Jack's bright shiny bones. Nice. Maybe Will did care, a little. Maybe he was sorry for leaving him to Barbossa before: for not trusting Jack's word. Maybe he'd make a pirate yet, instead of shutting himself up in Port Royal.

Not that it mattered. Jack was only helping him because of his father, who'd died—all right, who hadn't died, but who'd been sunk far more than full fathom five—for loyalty to Jack.

"Couldn't kill him, now could I, Jack?" Barbossa had said. "But a captain must have a penalty for answerin' back. Sent 'im down to see how far it was, off San Juan."

Jack had shrugged and smiled and wondered how Bootstrap had felt, watching the light grow dim above him, trussed like a spare sail with heavy chains and weighted with one of the Black Pearl's long guns. Now, he thought that Bill might not have cared.

He flipped that cursed coin finger to finger—vaguely menacing clink of gold on bone—and grinned at Will. Skulls always grinned.

"Couldn't resist, mate," he said jovially. His voice sounded just the same, not even an echo of metal—steel or gold—in it.

Then Barbossa was leering at him, attacking again with Jack's good, heavy cutlass, and Jack had to wrench Barbossa's sword from between his own ribs to counter another strike. For the sheer play of it, now. Barbossa had height and reach on him, and there was more weight behind those punishing blows. Just to stay—well, not alive, but intact, perhaps—was a challenge: but Jack loved challenges, and there was time to buy and Bill's fate to be paid for.

He didn't feel any less alive than before. But the thrill of evading another cut, the gut-clenching fear when he didn't move fast enough, were only thoughts crossing his mind. Not even skin-deep. Not felt.

... Will had looked devastated.

Wondered how loyalty felt. Couldn't remember.

Jack's lip curled—would have curled, if he'd been out of the moonlight. He made himself watch Barbossa, looking for traces of the man he remembered. His First Mate had been in love with life, like Jack himself: had embraced whores and brawls and rum—rum, of course—and good food. Had embraced Jack, too, though only to catch him unawares afterwards. (The memory of that night with his First Mate, his last night aboard the Black Pearl, had rankled—had burnt—for years. Not now, though.)

Ah, but Barbossa's bitter envy, watching Jack eat that apple, had made Jack smile. Jack might have felt sorry for him then. Wouldn't bring Bill back, though, or make the last ten years less humiliating, less of a waste. And here—in the moonlight—it didn't seem to matter any more.

He leapt back from the scything sweep of Barbossa's sword, back into the gloom. Back into himself, thinking as clearly as he ever did—damned rum, sun, days and years, tides, storms ... the Pearl.

"So what now, Jack Sparrow?" said Barbossa from where Jack had flung him. Half bone, half flesh. He'd been a fine-looking man when Jack knew him first. "Will it be us two immortals, locked in epic battle until Judgement Day and the trumpets sound?"

Jack flashed him an empty smile. "Or you could surrender," he goaded.

Barbossa roared, and came after him again. A handful of gold coins sparkled in the moonlight, distracting Jack for a moment.

He fought as he'd never fought before; before, he'd always had death to fear, and his own sweet life too dear to him to lose. Even sparring with Will he'd kept his guard up, careful not to play with death. Careful not to get hurt. Now he could engage with a joyful—joyless—vigour, grinning liplessly when there was no flesh to meet Barbossa's blade, weaving in and out of moonlight to heal each savage slice.

Like chess.

Infernal Elizabeth, here again. He remembered how furious he'd been with her: the rum! The bloody Navy! But she was helping Will, and Will was playing hero: good enough. And while he fought Barbossa, up and down and all around, Will and that infernal, fiery, fearless Elizabeth could hold their own against the other damned pirates. Mutineers. They deserved her.

Was he damned? He didn't feel damned. "Damn you, Jack!" he'd heard often enough, and "To Hell with ye!" This might be Hell: he might be going nowhere at all ever again, except round in circles in this endless dance with his undead First Mate.

If he'd needed to breathe, he'd be short of breath by now.

There was a glint of gold in Will's hand, and then a glint of steel; Jack side-stepped the descent of Barbossa's sword and slid out of the moonlight, quick, to slit his own palm and let some precious blood onto the gold. Jack spun the coin on its way to Will, and with a flamboyant wave of his hand the wound was gone, washed away by moonlight as though the blood were someone else's. Elizabeth was coming towards them across the cavern; and Barbossa raised his pistol and pointed it at her heart.

Elizabeth stopped as though she'd run into a wall. She balanced, trembling, and Jack wondered how Will would feel if he let Barbossa shoot her. Wondered if he'd care, himself. Maybe later, when it was too late.

Strange, to feel nothing when the trigger slackened under his finger.

"Ten years you've been carrying that pistol, and now you waste your shot?" Barbossa looked at Jack with contempt, as though he'd never been a worthy adversary.

"He didn't waste it," called Will across the cavern. In the moonlight, the gold looked more like silver; but there was blood on both the coins in his hand, Jack's blood and Will's. They glittered as they fell back into the chest.

"I feel ... cold," said Barbossa slowly, as if coldness were a state of grace. Abruptly there was blood on him too, blooming on the fine white shirt that was in truth a tattered rag. Something changed, in his eyes: something coming back to him as the curse went away. He was not a monster, dying, but a man. Jack felt emotion settle over him like a blanket, like the ocean, like a curse. But he couldn't say, any more, whether it was pity or triumph, regret or only relief.

With the taste of ashes still in his mouth, Jack stood waiting for a feeling he could name.


-end-