I know something is wrong. His hands are twitching more than normal, and his eyes keep darting from side to side.

"Snaps," he slurs, moving closer to me. Small, sharp little steps.

"Yes, Cap'n?" I reply.

"My little Snapdragon," he says fondly. I raise an eyebrow and frown. Jack Sparrow never speaks fondly of me. Not anymore – I remembered when I'd first joined the Pearl, with my old dad, eight years back. He'd treated me with a sort of indulgent indifference. I was just Snaps, little cabin girl, running favours for the crew. You'll be just as bad as your daddy, luv, he used to tell me on the rare times I did something he noticed. Just as bad and twice as ugly. Then he'd ruffle my hair with those nimble fingers, and I'd pull away, grinning.

He used to be my hero.

First Gibbs jumped ship. Then it was Desrida's turn. Saxon, Pipp, Anamaria, Jenks – and in their place came Ollie. Ely, Hawk, pirates without names, pirates who didn't know the code, and Jack didn't seem to care – all he cared about was drinking and searching for his stupid island. He drank more and more, he lost more and more, then Barbossa came along and Jack had lost his shine.

Of the original crew only Bootstrap, my father – Jake - and I remained.

Still, Jack drank, and Barbossa watched, and I practised fighting with my father's sword. Truth is, I was scared. I'd been raised by pirates – cut my teeth on ship's biscuits, learnt to walk with the roll of the sea – but these men were the blackest scum Tortuga could offer.

He's drunk again, swaying slightly as he draws closer.

"Not so little now, hmmm?" In a sudden lurching movement Jack swats playfully at my hair. A stray matted curl becomes caught on his cuff, and I yelp.

"Ouch! Ow, ow, ow," I repeat, as I try to free myself.

"Sorry, luvvie, whoops-o-daisy, many apologies." As he speaks he untangles the hair and then gives me a little bow, hands together in mock prayer. Embarrassed that he touched my dirty hair, and that he was too close, I move back slightly. The sail I'd been stitching lies abandoned across my lap.

He sees me move, and for a moment he looks hurt. "So that's the way of it," he murmurs. "Little Snaps is scared of her captain."

I almost lose it. Gritting my teeth, I grab the sail and start stitching again. "I ain't scared of no-one."

That dancing, elusive smile plays on his lips as I sew furiously. Unbidden images worm their way into my mind, like maggots in the salted meat. Father turning away from me to cough, spitting up blood. Thinking I didn't see. Barbossa, talking in dark corners, Jack spending long hours in the crow's nest, locked in his own rum-soaked world. My world crumbling, my future turning blacker, as I turned sixteen. Unwanted leers, drunken fumbles, all the while wondering when my hero would save me. He didn't. He can't. It's all too late.

"No," he says, sounding very faraway. "You wouldn't say if you were now, would you? Show no fear, is that what Jakey taught you?"

"What's so wrong with that?" I ask, glaring at him. Wanting to scream. Jakey's dying, you disgusting drunken sod! Barbossa's turning your crew against you! Your crew of seascum.

"It makes you so hard, darling," he continues, sitting down next to me. "You don't want to be like that, sweetheart. You can be a lady, yes. You can go back to Tortuga-"

I snort. "Oh, yes, Cap'n, one of Tortuga's ladies. Is that what you've got in mind? I'd rather be a pirate than a common whore."

He stares at me for a long moment, then shakes his head. "Nah, no. I'm not asking you Snaps. I'm telling you, savvy?"

I feel my jaw drop, and a sharp pain in my finger. I've pricked it on the needle, and a small drop of red blood falls on to the sail.


"What?" I say faintly.

He holds my gaze, his own dark eyes half-shut. He leans a little closer and for a confusing giddy, stomach-turning, heart-thudding moment I think he'll kiss me. Instead I feel warm breath on my cheek, smell salt and unwashed man – Jack sways upright again and shakes his head sharply.

"You're going. You and Jakey. Giving you your marching orders, as t'were."

"Bu – but why?" I stutter, shaking more than Jack's damned hands. As I look at the hands in question, I register that for once they're completely still.

For all I hated the crew, for all I hated Jack Sparrow for being so bloody weak, I was a pirate. I knew no other life. The Pearl was my home – I loved every sail, every rough plank, the grain of the wood, the smooth way she cut through the waves, even the smell of rum that seeped from each cabin wall.

"Jakey's not as, shall we say, good as he used to be. And there's just no room for his girly on my ship."

With that, he stands abruptly, hands on the move once again, pulling at his hair, straightening his clothes. I don't feel like I can speak. Bile is hot at the back of my throat.

"I am not his girly! I am a-"

Jack swings round suddenly pressing his face to mine.

"You are a sixteen year old child, not a pirate, Snaps. I want you out, peaches. We dock at Tortuga tomorrow. No argument, unless you fancy your chances arguing with this."

Numbed by his proximity, I feel a cold blade pressing against my ribs. Never forget, my father once said, he may act daft as a brush, but Jack Sparrow is a dangerous man. I swallow hard.

"Good girl."

He is gone, shattering my life forever. Gone in a cloud of smoke and alcohol, swinging dreadlocks and long tattered coat, slurring voice and charcoal lined eyes – in that final walk away from me he stands straight, tall and I remember the Jack I watched when I was nine years old, wanting to be him.

Then as he walks down the stairs he stumbles, and slides to the bottom. Each thud is a reminder.

Thud. "I'm leaving, Snaps. The Pearl isn't what she used to be," says Anamaria, staring pointedly at Barbossa. "The captain isn't what he used to be."

Thud. "I don't take orders from no-one but Cap'n Sparrow!"

Thud. "I swear one of these days there'll be a mutiny on this ship," Gibbs says under his breath. "And he'll be too addled by drink to even see it coming."

Thud. "I'll be fine, darlin'. You get on with your chores, now. Leave me to –" Jake coughs, hacking, rib-snapping coughs. There is blood on the floor, and I hold him until he stops.

Thud. "You used to be such a little girl," Barbossa leers, pushing back my hair with his blackened fingers. "But now you're all grown up into such a pretty –"

Thud. "Good girl."

I don't see Jack again for another ten years. By then, I am a maid working for a rich family, and it is too late.