Cutler Beckett walked into his study late that evening, intending to clear up for the night. However, he paused just inside the doorway as his gaze landed on his desk; specifically, at the small chest that sat on the far corner of the desk.
The chest, which contained the pardon papers he was intending to offer to Jack Sparrow and which he'd shown Will Turner before the young man's departure, sat open when Beckett knew he'd kept it firmly shut. And the pardon letters were nowhere to be seen.
Beckett walked slowly into his study.
There were only two people who had seen the letters, and only five whom Beckett suspected of knowing of the letters' existence. One he trusted above even his own parents; the other he knew had already left Port Royal. That left three, but...
"No doubt you have discovered that loyalty is no longer the currency of the realm, as your father believes." Beckett said loudly without looking back.
He clicked the small chest shut once more while behind him, the Swann sisters stepped out of the dark shadows of the study.
"Then what is?" The elder sister asked, and Beckett turned to face the two ladies as he answered: "I'm afraid currency is the currency of the realm."
The twin sisters each walked with their hands clasped behind their backs, posture and expressions identical as they took slow, measured steps towards Beckett.
"I expect then that we can come to some sort of understanding." Elizabeth noted calmly. "We're here to negotiate."
Beckett raised a brow, a small almost condescending smile on his lips as he answered lazily: "I'm listening."
Annalise suddenly pulled one arm forward; and Beckett stopped walking instantly as the brunette woman cocked the pistol expertly aimed at his forehead.
"I'm listening intently." He corrected, and Annalise gave a mirthless smile.
"Good." She replied.
Beckett eyed her for a moment before returning his gaze to the blonde sister as Elizabeth held up the pardon papers she and her sister had pilfered.
"These Letters of Marque, they are signed by the King?" She checked, her tone almost cold it was so polite.
Again, Beckett lifted his brow just slightly as he answered: "Yes, and they're not valid until they bear my signature and my seal."
"Or else we would not still be here." Annalise noted just as calmly and Beckett's eyes narrowed.
Neither side backed down and Elizabeth met Beckett's eyes defiantly as she began in the same polite but distinctly cool voice: "You sent Will to get you the compass and buy Jack Sparrow; it will do you no good."
Beckett arched a brow again, but his tone was as cool as Elizabeth's as he prodded: "Do explain."
"My sister and I have been to the Isla de Muerta, we have seen the treasure." Elizabeth informed Beckett with a slight nod at Annalise, who kept her pistol aimed firmly at Beckett's forehead. "There is something you need to know."
"Ah, I see." Beckett realized as he looked from Elizabeth to Annalise. "You think the compass leads only to the Isla de Muerta and so you hope to save me from an evil fate."
Both sisters frowned just slightly while Beckett smirked slightly as he said with a hint of sarcasm: "But you mustn't worry."
The man turned away from the sisters, ignoring Annalise's gun, and he walked to the world map painted on the wall of his study.
"I care not for cursed Aztec gold; my desires are not so provincial." Beckett explained. "There's more than one chest of value in these waters."
He turned back to the sisters as he added with definite sarcasm in his voice: "So perhaps you may wish to enhance your offer."
Annalise simply pressed her gun right under Beckett's chin this time as she answered flatly: "Consider it in your calculations that you tried to take me your prisoner through marriage after you robbed my sister of her wedding night. "
Beckett's lip twitched just slightly at that. Elizabeth's eyes narrowed and she shoved the pardon papers into Beckett's chest with more force than necessary while her eyes held an unspoken warning to the man.
Beckett accepted the papers easily, and he looked from Annalise to Elizabeth and then back again as he murmured: "So I did."
Taking the papers, he unfolded them and began signing it on his desk under the sisters' careful vigilance. But it didn't stop him speaking as he mused: "A marriage interrupted."
Beckett picked up a stick of wax and held it over a candle flame, melting the end.
"Or fate intervenes."
He let one drop of wax fall onto the papers.
"And two other lovers are reunited."
Beckett stamped the melted wax with his signet ring, sealing the papers with his mark.
He then turned to the two sisters as he noted casually: "You're making great efforts to ensure your freedom."
"These are not for us." Elizabeth answered scathingly as she reached for the papers in his hand, but Beckett pulled them back slightly as he asked: "Oh, really?"
He looked between the sisters as he commented: "One is surely for Mr. Turner... but what of the other. There are two of you and only one pardon left. Or perhaps," he looked at Annalise, "you intend to accept my offer. After all... you are surely not naïve enough to choose a pirate like Jack Sparrow who couldn't commit himself to anything if his life depended on it."
He leant in towards her as he breathed: "It would be such a disappointment to your father."
Annalise's eyes narrowed, an angry flame burning in the blue depths, but Beckett just leant back with a satisfied expression in his cold eyes.
And as Elizabeth tried to take the papers from him again, he leant in closer to the sisters and warned: "I'll still want that compass. Consider that in your calculations."
Elizabeth's jaw locked and she wrenched the papers from the vile man, who simply leant back and watched the sisters with a satisfied smirk as the pair backed out of the room before taking off quickly into the darkness once more.
"Why couldn't I just shoot him again?" Annalise muttered under her breath as they ran, and Elizabeth's lip twitched into a faint smile before it disappeared again as the sisters made their way towards the docks.
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Somewhere far away, up river
Will sat with Gibbs in one of the Pearl's rowboats, his eyes fixed on Jack's back where the older pirate sat at the head of the boat.
"Why is Jack afraid of the open ocean?" Will asked Gibbs in a low voice, and the first mate glanced at Jack's back as well before looking to Will.
"Well," he explained in an equally low voice so Jack couldn't hear, "if you believe such things, there's a beast does the bidding of Davy Jones."
Will frowned but listened as Gibbs described: "A fearsome creature with giant tentacles that suction your face clean off and drag an entire ship down to the crushing darkness."
Here, the first mate paused, before he went on in an even more hushed tone: "The Kraken. They say the stench of its breath is... ooh."
The older man shuddered.
"Imagine, the last thing you know on God's green earth is the roar of the Kraken and the reeking odor of a thousand rotting corpses."
Behind them, Ragetti and Pintel cowered in fear while Will's frown deepened. Gibbs took a deep breath, before he added in a falsely light voice: "If you believe such things."
Will however was unmoved, too absorbed in another concern. "And the key will spare him that?"
"Now that's the very question Jack wants answered." Gibbs explained, nodding at Will. "Bad enough even to go visit... her."
Gibbs shuddered as he glanced up the river while Will raised a brow.
"Her?" He repeated, but Gibbs just nodded mysteriously.
"Aye."
He said no more, and Will looked up towards Jack once more as he wondered yet again what on Earth was going on with the strange pirate.
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Meanwhile
The Captain of the Edinburgh Trader shoved his way through his crew who were all crowded around some loud racket in the middle of the ship's deck.
"What's all this?" The Captain demanded loudly, silencing his men.
He stared hard at the two sailors who had been bickering in the centre of the crowd, both clutching one end of a golden and expensive-looking dress. The Captain raised a brow.
"If you both fancy the dress, you'll just have to share and wear it one after the other." He informed his men sarcastically, causing the rest of the crew to laugh.
But one of the two arguing men piped up quickly: "It's not like that, sir. This ship is haunted."
Both of the Captain's brows shot up this time, and he asked mockingly: "Is it now?"
He then turned to the other sailor of the arguing pair, and asked lazily: "You?"
"There is a female presence amongst us here, sir." The second sailor insisted, before nodding at his fellow crew. "All the men, they can feel it."
At that, the crew nodded and murmured amongst themselves.
"Belongs to a lady widowed before her marriage, I figure it. Searching for her husband lost the sea."
"Virgin, too, likely as not. And that bodes ill by all accounts."
The Captain was ready to roll his eyes at his crew's idiocy, when the first sailor spoke again as he wrenched the dress from his fellow crewmate's hands: "I say that we throw the dress overboard and we hope the spirit follows it."
"No!" The second sailor exclaimed in a panicked voice and he snatched the dress back.
He then turned to his Captain pleadingly as he explained fearfully: "That will just anger this spirit, sir. What we need to do is to find out what the spirit needs and then just get it back to her..."
Again, the pair started to argue and bicker over the dress, and the Captain finally shouted loudly: "Enough! Enough!"
His men fell silent once more, and the Captain scolded: "You're a pair of superstitious goats and it's got the best of ye."
He snatched the dress from the sheepish pair, and addressed his crew at large as he announced: "Now this appears to be as no more that we have a stowaway on board. A young woman, by the look of it. I want you to search the ship and find her."
The men began murmuring again and the Captain turned to go before he paused.
He turned back to his men as he added, partly as a warning and partly as an incentive for them to find the stowaway quickly: "Oh, and, eh, she's probably naked."
At that, his men perked up instantly and they began scrambling to find their mystery stowaway.
Elizabeth and Annalise – disguised under deckhand garb and with hats pushed down low on their heads to keep their faces mostly hidden – moved from their respective spots along the ship's railings to join in the chaos.
And amidst the excited chattering and rushing of the crew, Annalise managed to sneak close to her sister and she muttered under her breath so only Elizabeth could hear: "I told you, you should have thrown it overboard with mine."
"It's my wedding dress." Elizabeth protested just as quietly, and Annalise warned half playfully and half seriously: "If you stay so sentimental, we'll never be able to catch our pirates, Lizzy."
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Upriver
Jack and his crew (and Will) finally reached a small hut set up above the river edge, deep in the forest and inland from the sea. It was possibly the eeriest place Will had ever seen, which was saying quite a lot coming from someone who had been on a cannibal island and been to the Isla de Muerta.
It wasn't just how dark and gloomy the place was – that was about on par with the Isla de Muerta. No, what made the hair rise on the back of Will's neck about this place was something in the very air. He couldn't quite place it but it felt like something otherworldly that threatened at a danger worse than death itself.
Jack stepped up onto the landing outside the hut, leading the way.
Noting the way the crew seemed to hesitate in the rowboats, Jack reassured them: "No worries, mates. Tia Dalma and I go way back; thick as thieves. Nigh inseparable we are. Were. Have been... Before."
He trailed off, before hurriedly turning around and making his way into the hut. Not feeling reassured in the slightest but resigned to his fate, Will climbed up after Gibbs – who had been the first to follow Jack off the boat.
"Mind the boat." Gibbs told Will, who turned to the person behind him – Ragetti – and relayed: "Mind the boat."
Will then made his way into the hut after Gibbs, and his suspicions were only strengthened by the décor inside. It was as though he had stepped into a voodoo shop... and as soon as the thought entered his mind, Will paused midstep into the hut.
Before, he would have said there was no such thing as voodoo. But now, he definitely wouldn't put it passed Jack to bring him to some sorceress or something equally dubious.
There was a slight rustling from the curtains at the back of the main room, and then a dark-skinned, beautiful but creepy woman with several beaded necklaces hanging down over her chest stepped out.
"Jack Sparrow." The woman greeted, a small sly smile creeping its way onto her face as she spotted the pirate captain standing in the middle of her home.
"Tia Dalma." Jack greeted, spreading his arms wide and giving a slight bow in greeting – and almost knocking his head against a large jar full of eyeballs that was hanging from the ceiling.
"I always knowed the wind was going to blow you back to me one day." Tia Dalma purred, before her eyes fell on Will and her brow arched in surprise. "Or mayhaps not."
Ignoring Jack, the mysterious woman edged her way closer to Will and she pointed at the young man as she said suddenly: "You."
Will blinked as the woman said seriously: "You have a touch a' destiny about you. William Turner."
"You know me?" Will asked in surprise, and Tia Dalma smiled and she leaned in close as she purred again: "You want to know me."
Jack, clearly uncomfortable, quickly placed himself between Tia Dalma and Will as he said loudly: "There'll be no knowing here. We've come for help and we're not leaving without it."
Jack not so subtly led Tia Dalma away as he spoke and the woman glanced up at him with shrewd eyes as the pirate captain pushed her from behind.
"You have changed, Jack Sparrow." She commented suddenly, and Jack cringed internally at her ever-sharp perceptiveness.
Externally, however, he remained light as he answered a little flirtatiously: "And you're the same as you always were, dear Tia Dalma."
The mysterious woman's smirk only widened as she observed him, but Tia Dalma thankfully didn't say any more. Instead, she turned her attention back to the newest enigma before her, and she beckoned to Will: "Come."
"Come." Jack reiterated, motioning for Will to come closer as Tia Dalma settled herself at the table set up on the side of the room amidst the various oddities that cluttered the small hut.
Will sat down warily across from the strange woman, carefully avoiding the jar of what looked like preserved frogs set in the corner.
Tia Dalma watched him and as Will settled before her, she leant in and said while caressing his face lightly: "What service may I do ya?"
Before he could even reply, the woman's head snapped sharply over to Jack as she added sternly: "You know I demand payment."
"I brought payment." Jack answered brightly.
He whistled loudly, and Pintel and Marty handed over a covered cage that they had carried from the ship. Uncovering it, Jack revealed Jack the monkey inside and he said in the same bright tone as before while the monkey growled unhappily: "Look."
Jack drew his pistol and shot the monkey, causing Jack the monkey to screech unhappily. Not that Jack cared.
"An undead monkey." He announced to Tia gleefully. "Top that!"
He handed the cage over to Tia Dalma, who took it without much expression. She also opened the cage almost immediately, freeing the monkey, and Gibbs groaned.
"You've no idea how long it took us to catch that." He complained, Pintel and Ragetti sharing his gloom as they watched the monkey scamper off.
"The payment is fair."
All attention returned to Tia Dalma as she returned to Will's side, and the young man explained as he pulled out the drawing of the key: "We're looking for this. And what it goes to."
Tia Dalma only had to glance at the drawing for a second before her eyes turned back to Jack sharply.
"The compass you bartered from me, it cannot lead you to this?" She asked, and Will thought she sounded incredulous.
Jack shifted a little uncomfortably, heightening Will's curiousity, but he tried to keep his tone nonchalant as he answered Tia Dalma: "Maybe. Why?"
He fooled no-one, least of all Tia Dalma whose smirk returned as she stared at Jack.
"Ah." She purred gleefully. "Jack Sparrow does not know what he wants."
She cocked a brow and her eyes seemed to pierce Jack as she questioned, almost challenged: "Or do you know," Jack tensed, "but are loathe to claim it as your own?"
Jack fidgeted, and Tia Dalma grinned toothily before she turned her attention back to Will.
"Your key go to a chest." She explained, suddenly back to business. "And it is what lay inside the chest you seek. Don't it?"
"What is inside?" Gibbs interjected curiously, and Pintel piped up hopefully: "Gold? Jewels? Unclaimed properties of valuable nature?"
Ragetti meanwhile had caught side of another jar of preserved entrails, and he asked with a gulp of fear: "Nothing bad, I hope."
Tia Dalma looked over at the crew and she checked: "You know of Davy Jones, yes?"
When the men nodded, she explained: "A man of the sea. A great sailor. Until he run afoul of that which vex all men."
Tia grinned, and the men frowned. Will was the first to ask curiously: "What vexes all men?"
Tia merely smiled and she asked with a coy smile. "What indeed?"
Will shifted uncomfortably, while Gibbs drew Tia's attention back to him as he tried: "The sea?"
"Sums." Pintel added, and Ragetti chimed suddenly: "The dichotomy of good and evil."
The others stared at him and even Tia Dalma gave him an odd look at that.
"A woman." Jack quickly interjected before things could get any stranger, and the crew all opened their mouths slightly in understanding.
Tia Dalma smiled and she nodded as she agreed: "A woman. He fell in love."
Her eyes flickered over to Jack as she spoke, but the pirate captain studiously ignored her while Gibbs argued: "No no no no, I heard it was the sea he fell in love with."
Tia's attention returned to Gibbs and she dismissed: "Same story, different version and all are true."
Will lifted a brow in surprise as Tia Dalma explained: "See it was a woman as changing, and harsh, and untamable as the sea. Him never stopped loving her. But the pain it caused him was too much to live with. But not enough to cause him to die."
Will's stomach twisted, his gut telling him this was the key, no pun intended – the key to the story and to the reason Jack wanted to find this mysterious chest.
"What exactly did he put into the chest?" Will asked Tia Dalma quietly, and the woman looked at him with a small smile.
Placing a hand over her own chest, Tia Dalma whispered: "Him heart."
Will's eyes narrowed, while Ragetti asked slowly: "Literally or figuratively?"
"He couldn't live, putting his heart in a chest." Pintel snapped, before he paled a little. He turned to Tia as he added less certainly: "Could he?"
Tia Dalma smiled victoriously as she answered: "It was not worth feeling what small, fleeting joy life brings."
Her smile disappeared and her expression and tone darkened as she revealed: "And so, him carved out him heart, lock it down in a chest, and hide the chest from the world. The key he keep with him at all times."
Will instantly turned to Jack and he strode over to the pirate as he accused: "You knew this."
"I did not." Jack shot back without missing a beat.
At Will's skeptical look, Jack added: "I didn't know where the key was. But now we do. So, all that's left is to climb aboard the Flying Dutchman, grab the key, you go back to Port Royal and save your bonnie lass, aye?"
Jack grinned widely, but Will just looked at him unimpressed.
"And what about Annalise?" He demanded, and Jack's eyes instantly went just a little cold. Clearly, he didn't appreciate Will bringing Annalise up in front of Tia Dalma.
'Good.' Will thought as he stared Jack down. He was tired of playing to Jack's march; there was only so much Will could handle. And if Jack expected him to go running aboard Davy Jones's ship in search of this key, then Jack had better be ready to explain his motives.
"What about the lass?" Jack tried to play it off lightly, but Will pressed: "I think it's about time you told me why we're chasing this key instead of saving Elizabeth and Annalise."
Will's eyes sharpened as well as he added in a lower voice: "I know you care about her, Jack. And I can't understand why you're risking her life by not just giving me your compass, which apparently isn't even working for you anyway."
Will cocked his head as he appraised the older pirate again, and he finished with genuine confusion: "What could be more important?"
Jack's expression had gone rather flat by this point, and Will wondered if he'd even bother to reply.
But it turned out Jack didn't have to.
"Let me see your hand." Tia Dalma demanded suddenly.