Disclaimer: I do not own Pirates of the Caribbean, the characters in this story from said movie, or have anything to do with Disney. If I did, I'd be as rich as Jerry Bruckheimer.

"Come in, come in." the voice called, and a young soldier stepped into the cabin, and placed a cup of tea on the desk of his commanding officer. The commanding officer smiled pulled the cup of tea towards his paperwork. "Thank you, Tobias. How are you finding your first week of duty?"

"Fine. Just… fine." Tobias said, as if he sounded troubled. Tobias was a good-looking man, with short, brown curly hair and brown eyes, with the slightest growth of stubble on his chin. He wore the standard East India Trading Company uniform, a red buttoned jacket and cream colored pants with a black hat and boots. "I prepared the tea just to your liking, Commander Wolfe."

"Oh please, relax Toby. There's no officers here. Call me father." The man said, taking the cup of tea from it's saucer. Tobias's father was a rotund man, with curly black hair and brown eyes, but didn't look similar to his son in any other feature. As the commanding officer of the ship, he wore the formal uniform that addressed him of his rank.

Tobias didn't say anything at first, but before his father brought the cup to his lips, Tobias spoke up. "Father," he said the word hesitantly, and suddenly asked, "Where were you the night mother was killed by the intruder?"

"Your mother?" his father asked incredulously, pausing as he held his tea. "Why I already told you, I was off duty with the lads, drinking beer at the local pub. Why do you…"

"What was the music playing that night?" Tobias asked, interrupting.

"I suppose it was some sort of dance music, like with fiddles or something." his father said.

"I asked the innkeeper at the bar." Tobias said, leaning on the table. "The band didn't play, they were chucked out the night before because of a drunken brawl they started. They couldn't find anyone to replace them. There was no music that night, father."

"Oh, well… I was rather drunk…" his father started saying defensively.

Tobias pressed on. "That ring you are wearing, the one with the East India Trade Company logo on it? The one they only give out to commanding offers showing great honor and duty for their long service?" he said with some sarcasm in his words.

"Yes…" his father said, wondering what his son was getting to.

"The imprint of that ring was found on the back of her neck, around the area of her neck where you strangled her to death. Yes, it was you. You must have been wearing your ring on upside down, no-one else in our port has that ring." Tobias accused finally. "Face it, father, you killed her, and I only found out because of your careless, sloppy work."

"I wasn't being careless!" Commander Wolfe spat, realizing he had just confessed.

"So you admit it." Tobias said. "I can't believe you would do such a thing. She was such a kind soul. I put up with you drinking and abusing her over the years, and punishing and hitting me. I even was going to simply walk away after I saw on my first few days the horrible truth behind this very East India Trading Company, transporting slaves on ships and killing innocent and defenseless people, the very company you have defended all these years. Everything that I believed in has been a lie. But why, why did you kill her? Why!?" he demanded furiously.

"For the greater good." His father finally said coldly, dropping his humble and friendly demeanor. "That's what you learn here, boy. Sacrifice for the sake of the greater good." he said, finally taking a sip of his tea.

"Good. I'm glad you said that." Tobias said. "Because that tea you just drank? It was poisoned."

Commander Wolfe's face froze. "You what!?" he barked, dropping the cup and saucer he was holding that shattered the moment they hit the floor. The color drained from his face as he suddenly felt the poison react to his body.

"That's right. After all these years of your cruelty and your lies, it's all going to end here. You shouldn't have killed mother, father. She was the only kindness I ever had in this world. That was the last mistake you will ever make."

"She was… a worthless… whore…" his father said weakly as he knelt to the floor.

Tobias suddenly snapped. It wasn't part of his plan, but he didn't care anymore. He grabbed his father by the neck and squeezed. "Now I'm going to kill you the same way you killed your wife. How does it feel that someone you've been close to all your life turns on you? You coward. You won't hurt anyone anymore." He kept choking his father until he wheezed out his last breath, then dropped him face-down on the desk. He looked at him with some regret for a moment, then reached into his father's jacket pocket until he found what he was looking for.

He took the copper key and walked across the room, unlocking the chest that was there. He fished around madly as he searched for the item his father had stolen away, not finding it. Then at last he came across it, the one important thing he treasured, and put the object safely away in his pants pocket.

Suddenly the door burst open, and a soldier stepped in. "Commander, we…" he saw Commander Wolfe slumped over the table, and his son not helping him, standing over an open chest. "What are you doing?" the soldier said loudly. More soldiers came in. Tobias tried to handle the situation like he planned. "My father, I found him like this. I was trying to find his medication…" he tried to impovise.

"What's that in your pocket? Let me see that!" the soldier ordered suspiciously. "Arrest him!" he ordered the other soldiers behind him without warning. Tobias couldn't move quickly enough in time as the soldiers grabbed and searched him against his will, the soldier pulling the item out of his pocket. "Only the commander is supposed to have this. Let's bring him out to the deck!" he said, putting it into his own pocket. The soldiers took him out of the cabin, pulling off his Eastern India Trading Company jacket and hat.

A short while later after an investigation was made, the soldiers delivered a formal sentence to Tobias.

"Tobias Wolfe, you are charged with conspiracy on one account, murder on one account, and piracy on one account. You are hereby stripped of your rank from the East India Trading Company and therefore your service to the British empire. You will be branded as a pirate and be put under arrest until we return to port, where you will be futher sentenced in a court of law." A solider read out from a parchment, he and several other soldiers stood around a young man being restrained by officers.

The young man gritted his teeth as one of the soldiers approached him with a branding iron, which he had just stoked out of hot coals, and pressed it against the skin on his wrist. Tobias fought the pain as the branding iron burned his skin for what seemed like forever, until the soldier pulled it away, revealing a burn left behind in the shape of the letter P.

"Take him to the brig." someone said, and Tobias resisted as the men pulled him away.

Before he was taken below on the ship, he heard a snippet of conversation going on between two soliders.

"Sir, there's a ship headed this way."

"One of ours?"

"No sir. And it isn't flying any colors."

The rest of the conversation faded out as he was taken below deck. The officers brought him towards a jail cell… there was no way he was going in there. Suddenly he resisted and head butted the officer to his left, and before the soldier to his right could react, he brought up his free left hand and punched him. The other solider that he head butted was leaning over in pain, so Tobias took the moment to grab his sword, and in one swift movement knocked out the soldier with the handle of the sword. He turned around to threaten the other one, but when he did, he was already waiting and cocked the trigger of his pistol. Tobias was about to talk is way out of being shot, long enough to get close with his sword, but suddenly the wall next to them exploded in the sound of cannon fire.

When the dust cleared, Tobias could see the officer with the pistol had fallen to the ground unconscious. He looked out of the hole to see the ship that had attacked his captors; they were flying a flag with a jolly rodger on it. They must have been pirates, that's what the ship the soldiers must had been talking about earlier was. He saw more cannons being fired, and decided to take his chances with the sea, abandoning the ship by diving out of the hole the cannon had made. Feeling the cold of the ocean waves, he swam to the surface and headed for the nearby shore.

More cannons could be heard as the two ships fought, but Tobias didn't turn around as he concentrated on swimming. Eventually he heard a huge explosion, and he looked behind him, seeing the ship of the East India Trading Company being ripped apart by the pirate's cannons and sinking beneath the ocean. The pirates on their ship cheered and started pulling survivors on board. He turned back around and kept swimming.

As far as anyone knew, nothing on the ship had happened, but Tobias still had his brand proving he was marked as a pirate. And the item he had tried to take back from his father was now in the pirate's possession or at the bottom of the ocean. Back in the water where the ship used to be, his clothes that he once wore as a soldier in the East India Trading Company sank slowly beneath the ocean waves.