Summary: Jack suddenly finds himself in uncharted territories as he must fight to protect one that he loves.

Disclaimers: Quite silly that it has to be said but, I don't own any of the Pirates characters. The originals are mine, however.

quote for this ficlet: "What fun's life without a little corniness and fluffy happenstance?"

-----k-----

Sophie woke with a start.

It wasn't that she hadn't been enjoying her dream, far from it—it had been a curiously fascinating fantasy about life on a pirate ship complete with quirky crew and a rogue of a captain. But her subconscious mind told her she was no longer alone in her bedroom. Adrenaline shocking her awake, she sat up and squinted in the hazy twilight, groping for her bedside lamp trying to uproot the intruder hiding in the shadows.

The light switched on and devoured the darkness.

And she was alone.

"That's not good," she muttered to herself before an unsettling shiver shook her body. She wrapped her quilt tighter around her shoulders and shuddered. Something wasn't right. Reaching for her phone, she wanted to call someone but the crimson numbers of the bedside clock told her her voice wouldn't be welcomed by any of her friends.

Quivering again, she pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. The light was doing little to help her ever-growing nerves but it was going to stay on the rest of the night. Her eyes darting around the room, she leaned against the headboard and tried to get comfortable. For hours she sat like that, watching, listening, wondering—her mind never stopped working—until, finally, in the darkest part of night, the energy wore off and started making her feel sluggish. She wanted to push sleep from her mind but the loss of adrenaline was quickly making her crash.

She looked fuzzily around her room. It seemed the same but the uneasy feeling was gone from hours before, replaced with a comfortable warm one. Her eyes drifted over to the curtains that separated her bedroom from her studio and smiled as a man sauntered in.

"What are you doing here?" Surprise and wonder both colored her voice making her sound younger than she was.

He smiled and casually sat on the end of the bed, propping himself up on his elbows. "Now that is a question not easily answered, kitten."

She wrinkled up her nose.

"What? No to the nickname?"

Resting her chin on her knees she lifted a shoulder as a reply but amended, "It's what my Grampa used to call me is all."

"Ahh, I see." He took in the room and nodded slowly. "It's not the captain's quarters on a ship but it is quite nice."

"What's the name of your ship?"

His eyes lighted and he responded as a proud father would. "The Black Pearl."

"With black sails and black decks? I saw it earlier."

"Is that so?" he asked, pushing a few dreadlocks over his shoulder. "And how is that?"

"I was dreaming. As I am now."

Pulling the cork out of a frosted bottle—something she hadn't noticed earlier—he mumbled into the mouth, "A dream? It must be—there's rum," before taking a long drink.

"What's that?"

Pointing to the bottle he explained, "This is a vile drink that makes even respectable men turn into scoundrels. And no, you cannot have any."

"Then why drink it?"

"Because, luv, it's rum."

She rubbed at her forehead and frowned. "Dreams shouldn't make your brain hurt."

"That's why rum is good. Relaxes the muscles of the mind."

"Among other things," she mumbled, resting her cheek on her hand, studying him. "Are you why I woke earlier? A dream within a dream?"

"Come again?"

"Well, I was on your ship and then I thought there was someone in my room and I woke but there wasn't. So that must have been a dream, too."

"Sorry for the fright, kitten. I was here earlier--"

"Oh, good. I was worried."

"But I don't know if I was the one that frighten you."

Crash.

She jumped to her feet and grabbed the nearest thing she could find to turn into a weapon—a hairbrush—and stealthily crept to the curtain, flinging it to the side to add an element of surprise. Dread and panic quickly dissolved to relief when she saw it was just her stool on its side; the wind from the open window had knocked it over.

She sighed and wiped the palm of her hand against her forehead. "What a night."

---k---

The next day at lunch, she rubbed nervously at the back of her neck as she felt the unsettling feeling lingering over her again from the previous night. She tuned out what her friend was saying for the third time.

"Soph? Are you feeling alright?" Her companion gingerly grabbed the elbow of the arm she was using to massage her neck and stopped her movement.

The touch startled her attention back to the table and she inquired, "Dub, do you ever feel like someone's watching you?"

"What's going on? Is someone bothering you? Stalking you?"

"No, no, nothing like that. At least, I don't think so," she gazed out over her friend's shoulder and began to daydream again.

"Soph, you're scaring me."

She focused on his face and offered a soft smile. "I'm sorry. I think it's just a few paranoid moments."

"How many have you had?"

"Um, last night in bed. This morning at breakfast. And right now, I guess."

Her always-bronzed, brunette friend stood to his full six foot four and scanned their surroundings. The outdoor café offered little protection from anyone that could pose a threat to her and he didn't like it.

"Herby, sit down. You're bothering the other patrons."

"Sophie, if someone's watching you, I want to catch them before they can do anything to you."

Grabbing his wrist, she captured his attention and shot a heartfelt smile up to him. "You're overreacting to some heebie-jeebies. It's fine, I promise." But really it wasn't. The more they'd talked about the "someone" watching her, the worse the feelings grew that someone's eyes were trained on them. The cold, unsettling feeling seated itself in her stomach, turning her fingers to ice and causing her heart to race. "Can we just get out of here?"

He scanned the area again as he dropped a few bills on the table and, wrapping his arm around her shoulders, escorted her from the restaurant. It was his training, she supposed, as a police officer that made him react the way he had but, for some reason, it made her stomach ease and her fingers warm.

----k----

"Are you sure you don't want anything, Dub?" Sophie shouted from the kitchen. He could hear her rattling a pan on the stovetop as the popcorn popped nosily in the microwave. He replied negatively as he quietly opened her front closet door and then slipped a finger behind the blinds to stare out the window. Her bedroom was on the makeshift second floor of the large loft apartment which she'd sectioned off with immense sheets of fabric into a bedroom and studio and Dub didn't think he'd be able to make it up there and back before she came back from the kitchen. Then again—"I changed my mind. Could I get a soda?"

"Ice?"

"Of course."

The extra chore might be just enough to give him a chance to check things out upstairs. As quietly as he could, he traversed the raw wood steps three at a time, using the red brick wall was support, and flipped the first drape of blue cloth out of the way. The studio was the smaller of the two sections upstairs and was filled by a large drawing desk, cabinets, an easel and canvases propped together against any vertical surface. A bank of windows let in warm southern light and offered a perfect vantage point for anyone watching Sophie; the thought disturbed him as he looked at the massive oak outside the windows.

Moving on, he pushed away the peacock green curtain that hid her bedroom and smirked; the bed was made but unkempt and the quilt she slept under was in a heap to one side. Why she chose to sleep on top of the covers instead of under them was something that her girlfriends had mercilessly teased her about but he had never put thought behind it until that moment. Now seeing that that's exactly how she slept, he felt like an interloper on her private life. However, there was a more pressing issue at hand and he went to the west facing window next to her dresser and lifted the white curtains away from the window. Fortuitously, no large trees were outside that window and no one could watch her sleeping. At least from the outside.

Slowly, he began backing out of the room, studying every aspect of it that he could. Then, something caught his attention on her bedside table. He walked over to it and smiled. On the cluttered surface was a picture they had taken at his part-time job last summer; she was the only friend he'd trusted with his most embarrassing secret. If fellow cops found out about it, he'd never stop being tormented.

Next to it sat her grandfather's emerald ring on a chain. Her most prized possession in life, he once had to dive into a creek to rescue it from a bad rowboat experience. Tarnished with age and long wear, the ring was covered with designs, once intricate but now worn down by time. Equally as special but far less sentimental, a key sat nestled in the coiled chain of the necklace; a family heirloom, that he was sure had a story that he'd one day ask for.

Returning his attention to the task at hand, he double checked the room and then treated the studio the same. As far as he could tell, there weren't many areas anyone could hide: in the closet or the bureau maybe but it seemed pretty safe. The curtains offered the biggest cover for an intruder as really they weren't much different from walls and, he thought it was best not to say anything about them. Other than hanging something up at the studio windows, the upstairs seemed pretty safe.

Then the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.