Everything that he thought had meant something to him is gone now, wrenched away by his own hand, the agony of decision replaced now with the bitterness of despair. He shoves the bottle aside and watches as it falls to its side and rolls slowly through the puddles on the tabletop. He calls for another before it drops to the filthy straw. He considers the murky brew for a long moment before setting the open neck against his teeth and tipping his head back for another swallow. He doesn't notice the burn as it goes down. Finally, he thinks he understands the sort of freedom that Jack Sparrow holds. Sparrow. The name turns his lips down in a tight line. He escapes into another long, amber mouthful and looks up. He blinks, rubs his eyes. No. It can't be. The irony mocks him with the cheerful jangle of trinkets beneath a red bandana.

He makes a decision and gives his sour, empty freedom to Jack Sparrow himself, the man who so thoroughly taught him its meaning. Jack doesn't want it. Of course. He forces the issue at the point of a pistol that he knows he'll never fire at Jack. No one else does, they don't understand freedom any more than he did until the tentacles pulled tight against his ship and he felt her keel shatter under his feet. Hurricane. What kind of fools did Sparrow sail with that they didn't know what kind of monster was chasing him? Chasing Sparrow and swallowing everything and everyone that got in its way. Fools for freedom. Fools with nothing left but the barren hope that Captain Jack Sparrow could make them feel again.

The rum takes over and he doesn't remember much of the fight that follows, only that it's like a hundred others that he's had since finding the illusion of numbness that rum gives him. It is only when he sees the pity mixed with disgust in Elizabeth's eyes as she looks down on him in the mud that he thinks he might still have something to lose after all. He's been breaking so hard for so long that he is shocked to discover there is still something there worth culturing. A tiny pearl of himself that is not repugnant and despicable and unworthy even of a clean death, it is barely noticeable beneath all the ugly and twisted scars on his soul and on his heart. He hopes that it will be enough, this tiny thing. Enough to buy back freedom.