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The Darkness of Immortality

by WCSPegasus
February 11, 2004

Mist hung low against the moon-silvered water. The soft splash of waves echoed off the hull. Rigging creaked gently as soft evening breezes moved it.

He lay on the deck in a patch of moonlight, slowly turning over his hand before his face, studying the play of light across the skin. A mental image of that same hand, decaying and skeletal, superimposed itself across the read ling and a shiver crept slowly down his spine.

For months he'd seen disturbing images like that; a skeletal hand where a whole one should be, a well honed blade slipping effortlessly between ribs, or silver moonlight shining off ivory bone. Of all the adventures he'd been on and all the narrow escapes he'd made, none of them stuck with him like that fight in the caves.

For in those caves, the seductive promise of immortality had warred against the truth of the horror Barbossa's crew, at one time his crew, had suffered. For a moment he had held a treasure that few knew existed and been horrified by it at the same time. He had experienced a darkness that few were ever even tempted by. It had threatened to consume him and change him. But he had resisted and turned from that power, back to the warmth and light of life.

The finding of that treasure should have marked the pinnacle of his career as a pirate, stealing the power that death held over humanity. Instead, it marked one of the lowest points of his life and haunted him in ways he had never dreamed it could. From the moment he'd procured the compass his life had been fraught with misfortune and trials he had only barely escaped from.

It had been a long road to those caverns that housed the Aztec treasure. But for some it had been an even longer, and sometimes lethal, road. He wasn't the only one who had paid during the hunt for that power either. Bootstrap now lay somewhere at the bottom of the ocean, Will and Elizabeth had nearly trade their lives as well in the quest to return the treasure to the island, and the entirety of the cursed crew had been hung by Norrington upon the lifting of the curse.

A ten-year adventure, which left a trail of death and destruction in its path, had culminated in those caves. It had ended in a battle between himself and Barbossa, a battle that had been brewing for the better part of those ten years. And at the climax of it all, he had seen a darkness that no one should ever have to see.

For it was then that he had tasted immortality. And it tasted remarkably like death.

~.~

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