At World's End Alternate Universe: Davy Jones never stabbed Will, so Will never stabbed the heart… Jack did. A three-shot.

The world was falling apart. In a thousand little ways, in every shattering breath, the world was ripping itself to shreds. The rain didn't matter. The maelstrom of contempt and despair swirling with Calypso's unbound fury, it was nothing. It was nothing. Everything was coming apart to its tiniest, most insignificant self. Every fleck of gold and every drop of water in the ocean became suddenly naked and small, at the uttermost end of recognition.

Jack screamed.

Without knowing, he screamed the word "Elizabeth!" Not Lizzie. Not darling. Certainly not love. Just Elizabeth. His heart was outside of him now, and in that moment when his soul fluttered between body and heart, itself a naked, twisted, incomprehensible thing, it only knew the word Elizabeth. What did the word mean? Cursed, cursed, he would be cursed for screaming the name of another man's wife. Wife. She was wife. He was cursed. "Elizabeth!"

The world was falling apart. Was it sacred death or cruel immortality threading its way into his skin and bones, his eyes and his tongue and his worn down fingers? His heart was gone. There was a hole in his chest where it should have been.

Oh god, oh god, he had not known what this moment would be! If he had known, he would have cast the knife far away into Calypso's embrace and let Davy Jones live. Let Davy Jones kill them all. Watch as the monster's groping limbs one by one parted them each with their dreams and their sins.

No. No that was not right. Jack knew it. Even if he could have guessed the pain (and by all the heavens, it was wrenching and unfathomable) he would still have stabbed the heart, so that his own could be cut out, set free, buried down in the sand on an old diseased island where sea creatures walked and foolish men flashed swords in the sunlight. For after all, how could one bear to live with such pain? To live with the pain of screaming out her name, for one fragmented moment knowing beyond all other knowing that she was not just woman (to tease and flatter, to make excuses to, to escape) but Elizabeth (to fight for, to live for, to come back for).

Knowing was a strange and merciful thing. Knowing wasn't so bad, after all. He had not meant to admit, to acknowledge, that the drenched girl in the ragged black silk had become his reckoning. Ironic, it was. A bit laughable, if he weren't on the verge of his ruin, to confess she wasn't another conquest, another Tortuga lass with whom a man could pass a pleasant night. What set her apart? What did she have that others didn't have? Beauty was plentiful across the wide seas. Willpower and strength of mind—Jack had seen heaps of that. Innocence and true-hearted loyalty… yes, even that could be found elsewhere.

No answer, it seemed. No explanation. Just the word, again and again, the pulsing crescendo of love-making or the drums of a heathen goddess, the word he screamed when they took his heart out. Elizabeth.

The world was falling apart. Elizabeth's sword fell onto the deck and she wrenched her hand free from Will's. The rusted old knife, that forgotten remnant of another life, sliced down into Davy Jones's heart with careless grace. The heart was stabbed. The knife had gone in. Too late to stop it, too late to look away.

One instant Davy Jones had fought his way toward her, readied his sword for the fatal blow to her heart, and the next instant the voice of Jack Sparrow broke out, mocking and irreverent, calling something like "fish face," to the monster. And then Jack stabbed it. He just did it, as though it required no thought and no decision, as easy as slicing through bread. He gave up the world so easy! Why, oh why had he given up the world so easy?

Elizabeth swallowed her scream, but it burned her lungs. She swallowed the next scream, but it fought its way back up her throat. The third scream escaped, and she could not stop screaming. She could not stop screaming. Jack had planned to stab the heart—he had told her he would do it. But she hadn't believed him. He told the truth quite a lot, yet people were always surprised. Elizabeth found she was still screaming. Had one minute passed, or many?

The world was falling apart. The shuddering, writhing body of Davy Jones fell forgotten into Calypso's embrace, irrelevant now, unimportant. The storm pitched itself upon them all like a fevered lover, unable to slow itself, unable to stop itself from reaching the peak. Elizabeth could not move, she was busy screaming. There were no words in her mouth, they were gone, fallen into the crushing black oblivion of the now un-cursed locker with the body of a monster.

Will had thrown his arms around her to smother her—no, that was not right. Not to smother her. To protect her from a sudden immense wave that washed over the deck of the Dutchman. The ship was going down. Jack was going with it.

"Elizabeth!" Will screamed. She heard the word—her name—echo around the ship. She felt Will's heart pounding furiously in his chest, and she remembered that he was her husband. They had been married for three and a half minutes. Finally, after so many obstacles, she had spoken the words, "I do." And so had he. They were married now, man and wife, sir and lady, he and she. About to drown on an un-cursed ship. Aye, let them drown. Three and half minutes had been enough.

Will had a rope in one hand, and he gathered Elizabeth against his body and swung. Elizabeth abruptly realized he meant to escape the Dutchman and land in safety on the Pearl, just yards away. The whole ocean had suddenly gulped itself down and come up for the Dutchman, to swallow it whole. But Elizabeth did not see the ocean. All she could see was Jack.

He lay on the deck of the other ship, the water eager to feast upon him. Elizabeth could see his eyes (so horribly, beautifully black) fixed upon her. They seemed to caress her from a distance, envelop her. He wasn't provoking her now, he wasn't lying to her, he wasn't falling victim to her flirtations. Oh no, she was the victim this time. For with his eyes, Jack undid all her marriage vows. If there had been a ring on her finger, it would have melted off. If she had worn a white gown, it would have stained itself black to match his eyes, those eyes that flickered shut as crewmen surrounded him.

They were going to take out his heart. They were going to cut him, take all that bleeding life within and lock it in a box of wood. Pirate, coward, captain, more acquaintance than friend, good man, they were going to take all of it (the rum too) and put it in a box of wood. Elizabeth had stopped screaming midair, at the opportune moment midway between the Dutchman and the Pearl.

Her arms were twined around Will, her fingers dug into his skin as their feet found the wood of the Pearl and they steadied themselves on her rail. Into his neck she moaned one word, "Jack."

"Elizabeth?" Will whispered, following the train of her vision back to the Dutchman, where amidst the thunder of Calypso's overpowering tempest, the crewmen of the Flying Dutchman were carrying out a ritual as old as the sea, or older. The uneven brown skin of Jack's chest was pierced and he struggled, cried out. Screamed a word that Will could not quite hear. But Elizabeth heard it.

The world was knitting itself back together. The little beads of water stuck to each other and reformed the ocean. The fragments of wood that the kraken had swallowed came rushing back, built themselves into a ship, an unfamiliar ship, his ship. The Dutchman. All would be unfamiliar now. He would be unfamiliar to himself—immortal, heartless, cursed, or perhaps not cursed. What was it about a curse? He seemed to remember something… something about a wife. Did he have a wife? No, surely not! He was Captain Jack Sparrow!

He was lying on the deck of his ship. There were crewmen around him. The ticking of a clock… no, not a clock. A heart. The beating of a heart. In a chest. On the floor. "My heart," he muttered, sitting up. There was no more pain now, just a thrilling tinge that caused him to wriggle and gasp, as the skin of his chest grew back together, grew over the hole within. It stitched itself closed all in a moment, as Jack looked down. Two old gunshot wounds, a couple of cutlass scars, the flick of a knife or two… those were familiar. But the new mark on his skin was foreign.

He thought there had been a word inside his chest that was gone now, torn clean out of him, wiped from his mind. There was silence where there should have been a word. What was the word?

The world was knitting itself back together. They had come up from the depths of the sea and the darkest circles of hell, into impossible sunshine. As though the storm had never been. As though his heart were still glued together with the veins and the muscles and the ribs inside. "My heart," he choked, and one of the crewmen held out a skin-covered hand to him. He grasped it and was pulled to his feet.

The ship was different than he remembered, brighter somehow. The clinging relics of the treacherous sea were falling off of everyone, falling off the mast and the sails, until the ship and its crew almost looked human. Jack thought, I am the inhuman one now.

"Captain," the crewman said, and Jack realized it was old Bootstrap Bill Turner. So he was in the same world, after all. "Welcome aboard the Flying Dutchman. Let us hope its terror will lessen and its task be completed with honor once more."

Honor? Terror? These words seemed related to the word Jack had lost. He sniffed at the air, he looked to the sky, he put his hand on his chest where a thick scar marred the skin. He blinked twice. No luck.

"To ferry the souls of the dead to their rest is a noble undertaking. The curse is lifted, now that their souls won't be betrayed by a heartless monster intent on controlling the seas."

Noble. Betrayed. Heartless. Jack stuck his hands into his coat pockets, which were still wet. His hat was gone, his braids dripping. He bounced up and down on his feet, and the water in his boots made a strange noise.

"You're Captain now, Jack Sparrow," Bootstrap said, his voice very clear and his skin unmarked by any sea life.

"Aye," Jack finally managed to say. "I'm Captain." And then, leaning in so only Bootstrap could hear him, he whispered, "Am I cursed, Bill?"

Bootstrap leaned back, steadying Jack with two firm hands on his shoulders. "No. The devil who Captained this ship for too long was cursed by Calypso for his malice. He was cursed by his broken heart. You've got nothing to draw a curse over you, no love to lose to this task."

"I think I'm cursed, Bill," Jack whispered.

"Why? You can step foot on land once every ten years, and since there's no lady to break your heart in those hours, why shouldn't you sail the seas and be happy in your task?"

Because… because… Jack shut his eyes. He couldn't remember the word, but the word was the answer. The word was the answer and the curse.