Jack came to in pain that felt familiar—sharp behind the eyes, dull at the back of the skull—like someone had used his head as a tavern bell.
He blinked once, twice, expecting sun. Expecting sand. Expecting the ridiculous glare of Alubarna's streets.
Instead, there was stone.
A ceiling so low and rough he could see the seams where blocks met. Moisture darkened the corners. The air smelled like old iron, stale sweat, and torch smoke, just like the Black Pearl.
Jack lifted his head and immediately regretted it.
He groaned, pushed himself up on an elbow, and the cold snapped through his palm into his bones. The floor wasn't merely cold. It was offended at the idea of warmth.
His first instinct was to check his chest.
No coat.
His second instinct was to check his hip.
No sword.
His third instinct was to reach for the brim that was supposed to make any situation at least look manageable.
No hat.
"Well," he muttered hoarsely. "That's discourteous."
He forced himself upright and crawled the last foot to the bars. The iron was thick, old, and pitted, like someone had built the bars as a grudge. He wrapped his fingers around it anyway, leaning forward to peer out.
A long corridor stretched both ways, but mostly one, because the darkness swallowed everything beyond the nearest torches. Two flames flickered in sconces at intervals, the light trembling and throwing shadows that moved like nervous men. The hallway was empty.
No laughter. No prisoners shouting. No rats. Which rotten prison didn't have rats?
Just the slow drip of water somewhere in the distance and the faint crackle of torchwood.
Jack cleared his throat and raised his voice. "Hello? Guards? King? Concerned citizen with a misunderstanding? Anyone at all?"
His words bounced and died.
Then, far down the corridor, a faint shift—boots scuffing stone.
A guard's silhouette slid into the edge of torchlight, paused, and turned his head as if confirming something.
Jack lifted his hand in what he hoped was a friendly gesture and not a confession. "Ah. Lovely. Good morning. I'd like to file a complaint—"
The guard stared at him, expression unreadable from this distance, then abruptly broke into a run the other way.
Jack watched him vanish.
A slow, tired breath escaped Jack's mouth.
He let his forehead touch the bar, feeling the chill press into his skin. "Fine," he told the empty dungeon. "Run away. That's… that's very mature."
He shuffled back, sat down, then lay flat on his back on the stone as if daring the floor to get any colder. His head rang. His throat was parched. And his arm—his right arm—ached in that particular way it had been aching ever since Chinjao.
Jack stared at the ceiling. Time stretched.
In his mind, a melodramatic narrative began to form—the Caribbean Pirates sailing off without him, Pintel cheering about being captain now, Ragetti agreeing because it was easier than thinking, Gibbs sighing and drinking himself into an early grave.
Jack closed his eyes.
"Pintel," he murmured. "If you've left me in a dungeon, I will come back as a ghost and haunt your cooking."
In reality, it had been only minutes.
The sound of footsteps returned—this time several pairs, measured and confident. Torches flared as the corridor brightened with their approach. Jack sat up immediately, spine straightening.
Two guards stopped outside his cell. The iron keys clinked. The door groaned open.
They stepped in with spears angled toward his chest.
Jack raised both hands slowly. "Peace. Courtesy. Civil discussion. I am unarmed, unhatted, and frankly offended."
One guard spat a curse in the local dialect, the tone unmistakable even if Jack didn't catch every word. The other sneered, eyes scanning Jack as if he were a piece of trash that had drifted in on the tide.
Jack smiled, polite to the point of provocation. "Now that's not how one welcomes a guest."
The guard answered by jabbing the spear tip forward, close enough that Jack felt the cold kiss of iron against his skin.
Jack's smile faded a fraction. "Right. We're doing this sort of conversation."
A third figure entered—shorter than he expected, dressed in official colours, posture upright with the stiff discipline of a man who had spent his life giving orders.
Igaram of Alabasta.
Seventeen years earlier than the man history would later remember, he was still broad in the shoulders, face unsoftened by age. His hair was thick, dark, and kept back from his brow in a controlled style that suggested he could not tolerate disorder. His eyes were sharp and constantly moving—counting threats, exits, angles.
Behind him came an older man in royal attire.
King Cobra.
Even now, he had the unmistakable bearing of a monarch—tall, proud in posture—but stress had carved itself into him. Deep lines framed his mouth. His eyes looked like they had stopped sleeping days ago and simply forgot how to start again. His robe hung perfectly, but the perfection felt like armour rather than comfort. He moved like someone carrying the weight of a kingdom and finding it heavier by the hour.
Cobra's gaze landed on Jack and did not soften.
Jack stood slowly, careful not to make the spears twitch. "Your Majesty," he said, bowing just enough to be recognisable as respect while preserving his dignity. "I apologise for any… misunderstanding. I'm certain this is all a matter of—"
"Name," Igaram cut in, voice clipped.
Jack blinked. "Captain."
One spear pressed closer.
Jack sighed. "Captain Jack Sparrow."
Cobra's eyes narrowed further at the name, as if it confirmed something he already hated.
Igaram stepped closer, studying Jack's face with an evaluator's calm. "Where are the rest of you?"
Jack pointed at himself, palms up in confusion. "Rest of me? I'm all here, mate. Unless you mean—" He looked down at his missing coat. "—well, some of me appears to have been confiscated."
The spear tips pricked his skin again, harder. Jack stopped talking.
Igaram's expression did not change. "You came into Alubarna. Past the gate. Past guards. Past patrols. Alone? Who was the woman with you?"
Jack shrugged as best as one could with spears at one's ribs. "The woman was supposed to be with me....briefly. There were barrels involved. It was… not my proudest strategy."
Cobra's jaw tightened.
Igaram's eyes sharpened, as if Jack had just confirmed an infiltration route. "And your men. Your fleet. Where are they positioned?"
Jack frowned. "Fleet?"
The guards' hostility sharpened. Cobra's stare burned hotter.
Jack spoke carefully now. "I have… a ship. One ship. And I don't know where it is at the moment. My crew is… occasionally unreliable. One of them is probably asleep somewhere. Another is likely reading. Another is—"
"Enough," Cobra snapped. He stepped forward abruptly and seized Jack by the collar with one hand, hauling him up so his toes barely kept contact with the floor.
Jack's breath caught. The spear tips tightened around him like a cage.
Cobra's voice dropped, rough with restrained fury. "Why did you target my kingdom?"
Jack stared into Cobra's eyes and, for the first time since waking, understood something essential.
They weren't interrogating him for trespassing.
They thought he was part of the invasion.
Jack's mind raced. Alubarna guards. Panic. The chase. The city on edge. Something big had happened while he'd been in the sand.
He chose the truth that made sense to him. "I didn't target your kingdom," Jack said, strained but honest. "I was—" He paused, then decided not to mention compass, fate, or women who turned into sand. "—looking for a way to get stronger."
Cobra's face twisted as if Jack had just confessed to poisoning wells.
"Stronger," Cobra repeated, a bitter sound.
Jack tried to salvage the moment. "As a swordsman. There's a… medical issue. My arm—"
Cobra threw him down. Jack hit the stone hard, breath exploding from his lungs. Pain flared through his already aching arm and he bit back a yelp that would have pleased the wrong people.
He rolled onto his side, coughing. "Hospitable," he rasped. "Very hospitable."
Cobra leaned down, eyes cold. "You will speak later. After you learn what it feels like to bring war to my people."
He straightened and turned away. "Make him feel pain," Cobra ordered.
Igaram hesitated a fraction. "Your Highness—"
Cobra did not look back. "If he is what I think he is, he will not break easily. Begin anyway."
They left—Cobra first, robes whispering across stone, Igaram following with the posture of a man who wanted to argue but could not afford to. The torchlight shifted as they passed, and then the corridor dimmed again.
The two guards remained.
They looked at Jack like boys who had been given permission.
Jack pushed himself up onto an elbow, breathing carefully. His tongue was dry. His mouth tasted like blood and dust. He offered them a weak smile, trying civility like a last coin in a poor man's pocket.
"Gentlemen," he said. "Perhaps we can—"
One guard stepped closer, grin sharp. "My brother was sent to fight the Carragher pirates," he said.
Jack blinked. Carragher? That name meant nothing to him, which was immediately a problem.
Jack chose a safe response. "Then you must feel proud," he said cautiously.
The guard's grin vanished. "He was killed."
Jack's throat tightened. The air in the cell turned heavier.
He lowered his gaze. "Then… I'm sorry."
The guard stared at him as if sorry was an insult.
----
Marineford.
The Den Den Mushi on the Fleet Admiral's desk crackled with the impatient voice of the highest power.
Sengoku listened, expression taut. When the message ended, he stayed still for a moment, fingers pressing to his forehead.
Arabasta.
A kingdom aligned with the World Government.
And a pirate fleet bold enough to try to take it.
He exhaled slowly through his nose. "That damn Jamie Carragher," he muttered.
The name had been on briefings. A pirate who had pushed too far into the New World, clashed with something that should have killed him, and still crawled away. Anyone who survived Kaido's wrath and then chose to make trouble in Paradise was either a genius or a lunatic. Sengoku assumed the worst: both.
He rose, cloak settling around him like a burden.
They could not allow Arabasta to fall. Not politically, symbolically, and especially not while the world was balancing on the edge of the Great Pirate Era.
He walked to a map table, eyes narrowing as he traced the sea routes.
"They need aid," he said to the officers waiting in the room. "Fast."
One of them asked, "Who should we send, sir?"
Sengoku's gaze fixed on a name he did not say aloud yet. The only one who could arrive in time.
His jaw tightened.
"Prepare the order," he said simply. "And....call him."
Back in the dungeon, Jack swallowed against a dry throat and watched the guards' grins return—wider now, uglier.
He tried to stand, shoulders squaring even as his arm throbbed.
"Right," Jack murmured. "So it's going to be one of those days."