A/N: Probably not the best time to be starting up another story, since I'm still working on multi-chapter fic Mutual Compromise, but the plot bunnies struck and this was the result!

I'm not yet sure where I'm gonna take this - it started off as a short one-shot set during the journey back from the Locker, but I'm tempted to turn it into a short (perhaps four or five chapters) story fleshing out the relationship between Jack, Elizabeth and Will after the infamous Judas Kiss (sort of like a missing/deleted scenes from AWE kind of thing), since I'm inclined to disagree (or disinclined to acquiesce) that Jack and Lizzie didn't speak at all. Surely Elizabeth, at least, would want to speak to Jack and confront him about what she did?

Well, I'll have a go at trying to do that here, and at the moment I'm going to try to keep it canon-compliant, though depending on how it goes the story may stray into AU territory as it goes on :)

It'll probably turn quite angsty as I also felt throughout most of AWE that Jack wasn't quite himself (and I mean who would be if a woman he was so clearly vexed by kissed him before tying him up to the mast of his own ship, feeding him to a horrifying beastie, and then waking up and spending an indeterminate amount of time in a sea-less desert with only the aspects of his own personality for company? Eeek, it'd be enough to unsettle anyone!).

I hope you enjoy it, and please let me know what you think and whether or not you'd like me to continue :)

Reminder that I do not own POTC or its characters

"Are we going to continue not talking?"

She lingered by the cabin door, concealing her guilt and fear in the shadows that hung upon the walls of the captain's quarters. Will had asked her the same question on their way to the Locker, and in her naiveté she had told him that everything would be fine once the captain had been returned from purgatory.

What a fool she had been, thinking that her words to him could be unsaid, her actions unperformed, her kiss unreturned. She had never imagined three simple words could invoke such pain, both to her and the man who had returned them with a word that had the opposite effect, encouraging and driving her behaviour ever since. She was a pirate now, a shadowy, immoral figure that might one day be romanticised in the stories of the future, and it was all thanks to the man she'd cruelly sold out to the devil.

Jack Sparrow stood by his desk, his face half obscured by darkness, his eyes distant. His being skirted the edges of reason, almost like a spectre, haunting and haunted in equal measure. A weathered, ringed hand reached out to his desk, treating it as an older man might a crutch. She knew he was watching her, but she refused to emerge from the shadows, grateful for any vestige of comfort or safety in the dangerous and uncertain situation she had found herself in.

"Everything needed to be said between us has already been said, has it not?" Gone was the spark of humour and cavalier attitude. His tone was stoic and aloof, distanced. There was more than the space of a cabin that separated them now.

She thought back to the endless nights she'd spent imagining the moment when she laid eyes on him again, reciting the words of apology she would say to him, envisioning his reaction, but now she knew that nothing could prepare her. She'd imagined bouts of rage, anger and fury, a clamour of red and pulsing tempers as she justified her reasons and he recounted a million other ways in which she could have saved the crew from the Kraken, himself included.

Instead she was faced with a different man to the one that had proudly rebuked her non-apology with a smirk on his face. This man was troubled by demons of her making, quivering on the fine rope that divided reason from madness. The horrors he must have faced in the Locker... haunted by his worst fears, every nightmare that had ever plagued him. She was aware that, no matter the act he may play to the world, his life had been less than charmed. He'd been branded and scarred, broken and beaten before, though she had seldom seen it reflected in those obsidian eyes of his, but now it was on open display, unconcealed.

She would never be able to appreciate the true evils he had encountered in that god-forsaken place.

"Everything needed to be said, but not everything wanted to be said." She saw him gently scoff from the other side of the room and took a step forward, out of the dark, closing the door behind her. "I hated myself for what I did to you. I still do."

Jack stalked around the desk until he was stood in front of it, but his walk lacked the characteristic gait that she had come to know and love about him. There was a long moment of silence, stretching dunes of sand in a hopeless, sea-less desert. "You didn't laugh?" There was an edge of uncertainty in his voice and in that moment he seemed younger, more vulnerable. "I imagined you laughing."

Her breath caught in her throat. "How could I?" She walked forward, closing the literal distance between them, even though there were still leagues of uncharted waters yet to be crossed. "I..." the words died on her tongue, "As soon as Tia Dalma gave us hope I dedicated everything to find you again. Will can tell you. I hardly slept, hardly ate. Nothing else mattered, save you."

"I'm flattered." There it was: a flicker of mockery in his voice. She knew he was trying to be insulting, but she held onto it, welcoming that brief sense of his familiar vanity. He reached up and straightened his hat. It looked so foreign now; she was used to seeing his red bandana from those days spent in a battle of wits on their way to Isla Cruces. With it on his barriers were up, there was a wall that separated them, protecting him from her.

"You should be." Elizabeth couldn't stand it anymore. There had been too much indulging in self-pity for her liking. She didn't regret the bite in her tone. "Are you aware of the lengths I-we went to in order to bring you back? And you've yet to thank us. Any of us. If it wasn't for us you'd still be on that beach, stuck in that wretched place for the rest of your days."

"I see." Her heart faltered as she perceived that same smirk on his face, full of a twisted mix of admiration and animosity. He took several purposeful steps forward, forcing her back. "You sent me to the Locker, you brought me back. You think us square."

Her back collided into the wall of his cabin but he still grew closer, until only a thin layer of air separated them. She saw fierceness and anger in his gaze but also pain and suffering, making it clear that she'd underestimated the effect his death had on his state of mind. How could anybody cope with that? Being killed, drowning, feeling your soul leave your body and then waking up as though it had never happened.

His eyes bored into her, trying to intimidate her, but she wouldn't back down. She stood up straighter, meeting his gaze but all she could manage in response was, "Yes."

Her head was spinning as he pressed closer to her, heat coursing through her body. "Then you're wrong, darlin'." He rested the palm of his hand on the wall beside her. She resisted the urge to cup his face in her hands, to feel him again, to assure herself that he was real, not a figment of her imagination. She noticed that his gaze lingered on her lips. "We're not yet square."

She caught his meaning immediately and tensed, but her eyes continued to stray to his lips, drowning in the sensation of the kiss they'd shared a moment before she'd doomed him to a fate worse than death. She thought her lust had been slaked, her guilt drowned. Didn't she understand? She loved Will. Jack didn't mean anything. She shuddered slightly as his free hand found her cheek, lightly caressing it with his calloused, tanned hands. "What do you want from me?"

"I want nothing that isn't freely given." His lips hovered close to hers, tormenting her, and she realised how much of a tease she must have been on the Pearl, drawing him over to her way of thinking, playing him at his own game. But it was just a game. It didn't mean anything to either of them... did it? He didn't care about her. He was a pirate. "But not wasted. Something meaningful. Lust met, but not drowned."

He was talking in riddles, words and phrases that made no clear sense, for she was lost in his eyes, submerged and fighting for air. She could hardly breathe, his hands roved over her slender frame, claiming her as his, and she didn't want to fight it. Shouldn't fight it. It felt right.

Her hands found his shoulders, tentatively at first, but she savoured the feeling of the lean muscles beneath his waistcoat and shirt. Her mind wandered, imagining his whole weight pressed against hers, but she quickly quashed it. She cupped his face, tracing along each cheekbone, his tanned and weathered skin surprisingly smooth to touch, before her fingers found his lips and brushed along them. Jack's eyes fluttered at the touch and a low groan escaped his mouth, his breathing erratic. She withdrew her hand, aware of the tumult of licentious desires whirling through her mind. "But Will..."

"Is not here." Jack seized her wrist with his hand and guided it to the sliver of bare chest unconcealed by his shirt or waistcoat. He pressed her palm into his skin, drawing a steady breath. "Not that it stopped you last time."

She frowned, unable to feel the steady beat of his heart beneath his chest. "I can't feel your heartbeat." She looked up to him and that haunted, pained look had returned. She saw the shadows in his orbs, the deep black circles under his eyes that weren't a result of the kohl.

"I died, Elizabeth. Technically speaking, I'm still dead." She felt tears prick at her eyes. This wasn't right. She was meant to save him. Once they found him everything would be alright. He couldn't still be dead. He was here. She could feel him, touch him, see him. She didn't understand.

He seemed to recognise her confusion, and he continued. "At least in a physical sense. My soul is what was sent to the Locker - all that was left of it." Jack's lip curled into what Elizabeth suspected was a smile but looked more like a grimace.

She removed her hand from his chest. "I don't understand. What will happen when we return to the living world?"

"If we return to the living world." A dark look passed over his features and he took a step back, the coldness and detachment returning. "You shouldn't have come, Elizabeth. Should have left me to my fate." With that, he turned and walked back over to his desk.

Elizabeth blinked the tears away from her eyes and left his cabin, shutting the door and hurrying across deck. Not sure where else to find solace, she took a seat on the steps that led to the deck below. She was only there a few moments before a familiar voice brought her out of her reverie.

"You left Jack to the Kraken."

Would she find no peace on this ship? She looked up and her stomach twisted itself into knots upon seeing the face of William, of her fiancé, his expression revealing a betrayal that she hadn't realised she'd inflicted.

She sighed, casting her gaze downward. "He's rescued now, it's done with." But it wasn't. She felt the tingling in her palm as it had rested against the skin of Jack's chest, the sensation of feeling his chest rise and fall but not hearing his heart beating in time with her own, the signal of a living human being, not the dead shell of a person she'd come face-to-face with only a few moments ago. This wasn't done with, not by a long shot.

She saw the pained look that passed over his face and stood up, taking a determined step towards him. "Will, I had no choice."

He didn't meet her eyes, his body turned away from her. "You chose not to tell me."

"I couldn't." Her voice was taking on a pleading tone. She didn't tell him because she wanted to protect him. Or perhaps she wanted to preserve his image of her as an innocent governor's daughter. Didn't want to alert him to the truth. "It wasn't your burden to bear."

Will turned to face her and she felt her heart fracturing, thumping in her chest, but all she could think about was Jack and what it must feel like to not have your heart beating inside, to not feel alive, to be dead and still walking the Earth. "But I did bear it didn't I? I just didn't know what it was." She opened her mouth to speak but he was faster. "I thought..."

"You thought I loved him."

Did she love him? Her feelings were a confused and tangled mess. She thought finding Jack would solve all of her problems, but they had only made them worse. She'd put his emotions and feelings towards her down to lust, and vice versa. But they had been alone in his cabin. If he'd wanted to, he could have made his move. But he didn't. I want nothing that isn't freely given. He was still giving her a choice, even after she'd kissed him and left him chained up like a dog, served up as live bait to the Kraken.

She didn't trust herself to give Will a response, to give him the truth that he deserved. She should love him. She wanted to love him unconditionally, monogamously. But it was far more complicated than that.

She made to walk past him but he trapped her arms, pushing her against the bulkhead. She tensed at the look in his eyes. She'd never seen him like this. Jack hadn't been this firm or rough with her, and he had every reason to be. Guilt pierced her chest. She'd turned him into this. Where had the honest blacksmith gone?

But where had that innocent governor's daughter gone? Blown away by the wind, torn like a sail in a storm, twisted into a temptress and murderer. Because that's what she was.

"If you make your choices alone, how can I trust you?" Will had only come on this journey for her, because she wanted to rescue Jack to reason with her guilty conscience. And here she was throwing it back in his face.

Could he trust her? Of course not. Hadn't he learned by now that he could never trust a pirate? "You can't." She figured she should be honest about something, at least, and roughly brushed past him, heading back up on deck.

A/N: Thanks for reading, I really hope you enjoyed it! Please be warned that further updates to this story may be quite slow as my main priority is my other Sparrabeth multi-chapter fic, but I'll try to update as soon as I can :)

It would absolutely make my day if you could drop by a short review about what you liked and how my story can be improved, they really do spur me on to continue writing and updating :)