At World’s End (

1730-1731, age 40 – 41 )

Jack is broken. In one of his threads in this particular timeline, he described himself as a compass that no longer pointed north – a compass, indeed, that did not point anywhere. His mind is cracked wide open – he is burdened by hallucinations, a lack of focus, and an inability to decide if he even wants to be alive anymore.

There is a yawning abyss of disinterest in him that the Locker has instilled – one that, in truth, had as much potential to see Jack abandon the cause and leave all to find their own miserable fates as it did to see him do what he did do – and try his damndest for everyone around him.

Jack – at this point – wants to escape his own mind. He wants to escape not death but theLocker in particular. He is unhinged by the place, and he fears above all else the fact offeeling unhinged. The fact he cannot find himself is the truest terror he faces in this storyline – and to confront, face to face, a man who molded his life so impressively as Cutler Beckett?

That was precisely the push Jack needed in order to find himself once again. To remember who he was – what he valued – through no intention of his own, Jack found it in seeing the man who pushed him onto a path of piracy he had been walking the tightrope on for over twenty-five years.

It is standing among the Brethren Court once more that Jack remembers why he stood on that damn tightrope for so fucking long – why he never wanted to be immersed in this life and why, admittedly, he hated it as much as a part of him was deeply fond of it. It is standing before Teague ( who he now knows, for certain, is his biological father ) that he realizes he never figured out what he really wanted in life, but that he had lived, in some manner or other, and he registered that if he was to keep living, then he needed to choose his side and quickly.

Yet for all his terror and uncertainty, for all the clamor in his own mind – when the moment came to save himself or to save another, to save one who he really shouldn’t – Jack remembered himself again, and did so. And in so doing, he sealed himself to a life of unsteadiness – or so it seemed. Losing Beckett lost Jack another anchor to this world – and it was that realization that ultimately lead him to find home, when the Pearl was taken.