A/N: So I'm pretty sure this title—and this story arc—has been used by someone on this site before, but hey, I'm completely ignorant of that fact, so I still plead originality!
I've always loved Barbossa guys, okay? Like, even in Curse of the Black Pearl, where he was the antagonist. So seeing this survival fanatic sacrifice himself for his daughter had made me cry all three times I've seen it. This is based on his point of view. Please review!
When Barbossa first held his little daughter, he experienced something he'd never truly felt before. He only known her for about 30 seconds, but he'd fallen so completely in love with her in that short amount of time that he knew there was nothing he wouldn't do for her. He didn't know it was possible to love anything that fully, or that quickly. He immediately began re-writing his future in his mind: he'd give up pirating, find a respectable way to make his living, and would give his daughter the world.
These ideals, of course, immediately crumbled to dust when her mother, Margaret, died approximately two minutes later. And then Barbossa remembered what kind of terrible man he truly was. A pirate, a once cursed pirate, a once dead pirate, who had betrayed friends and employers time and time and time again.
And the tiny human that he was clinging to so desperately—she was too pure, too perfect to be exposed to all of that. Barbossa had found that his past always had a way of coming back to haunt him, and there was no way he was going to let this precious child's life be affected through his mistakes. The least he could do was to cut himself off from her, and give her the best start in life that he could.
So he left her at an orphanage. He knew it was customary to simply leave a child in a basket with their name on a card, but he couldn't do that, and risk her never being found. Instead he sailed into a port he'd never been to before, where he prayed he wouldn't be recognized.
He carried her right up to the doors of the orphanage, and stopped, looking down at her sleeping face. She seemed to trust him already, this early in his life, and he couldn't help feeling like a knife was turning in his chest. He pressed his weathered lips to her forehead, squeezing his eyes shut as unwanted tears rolled down his cheeks. It had to be now. It had to be now, or he'd never go through with it. He marched right through the doors and planted her in the arms of the first woman he saw.
"You take care of her," he said. "You see that she wants for nothing, or I will burn your whole establishment to the ground." He laid a journal with a ruby set in its cover on the baby's chest. "That's for her start in life," he said, and then handed a small bag of gold to the woman. "And that's for ensuring she never finds out who I am." He turned sharply and began marching back out of the room.
"Wait!" the woman called, fearful though she was of this threats. "Does she have a name?"
Barbossa froze in his tracks, and hesitated before turning back around. Then he found himself giving a tiny hint of a smile. "Carina," he murmured. "Carina Smyth. Named for the brightest star in the North."