Title: Acquisition

Author: WickedRum

Disclaimer: I have no right to use these characters, Disney does. This is mainly for my own enjoyment.

Summary/Set: Anamaria visits Elizabeth. If I say more, I'd give it away. Post AWE one shot, variation on a theme. If you wanna see anything better read Lakritzwolf's Generations.

Rating: PG.

Pairing/Genre: Sparrabeth friendship

Elizabeth went round the house to bring her vegetables in and that was when she noticed it. The figure that was in the alleyway when she went out a few minutes earlier was still there, only a little closer. Nobody has ever bothered her since she moved to Curacao with her young son, nobody had suspected she was a pirate, not even with the large riches she so called inherited from her father. Yet she had to stay argus-eyed, any cloaky person around her back garden was worthy to be investigated in case it caused a threat to the son of the Captain of the Flying Dutchman, not to mention the chest buried around the carrots. She turned a little to the side so she could get her hands on the gun she always kept hidden on the porch for such occasions and watched as the figure started towards her.

The intruder stepped over the fence and she was just about to pull the gun out when the person took the hood off. Her brown hair spilled onto her shoulders and onto the head of a little girl she held in her hand, mixing with the curly locks of the child's hair, all the same color. She hadn't seen her for years, but it couldn't be anybody else, but the courageous, self conscious and beautiful woman pirate Jack once had in his crew, Anamaria. Could it be a coincidence, the two of them meeting, and that with Anamaria trespassing into her garden deliberately, "oh my!" Elizabeth exclaimed, "what are you doing here?"

"Having a word," Anamaria said confidently, giving her an appreciative smile at the gun under the creases of her skirt.

Elizabeth backed, letting her enter, "sit down. Would you like any milk for your baby?"

"I don't have much time," she apologized, not sitting down, "ship should be leaving before we get detected."

"Anything I can help you with?" Elizabeth offered, but Anamaria disregarded her and continued as if with the same sentence.

"And it's not my baby. It's a rather complicated story, but as you have decided yourself, a pirate ship is no place for a small child. To cut matters short Jack entrusted me with the life of his child to bring her here and leave her with you."

Jack's child? She looked at her conversation partner dumbfounded. It wasn't that Jack didn't even bother asking her, it wasn't that Jack would just leave his daughter, not caring if he saw her again, it wasn't that he hasn't come himself, it wasn't that he did find out somehow where she lived. The question escaped her, "if you're not the mother..."

Anamaria shrugged, "she'd dead, that's all I know," she shoved the child into her hands.

"But...but..." She tried to stop her leaving as the girl seemed to be starting to get unsettled in a stranger's hands, "will he...ever?"

Anamaria anticipated the question, "I don't think he would. It would be dangerous, for the child and you, for anybody to see him him here, to find out a connection between you. Her name's Pearl," she turned one last time to smile at the baby.

Elizabeth still rushed after her, then slowed her steps as she saw the soldiers going down the street. Anamaria was right, she had to hide Pearl, keep her safe.

The baby intertwined her finger with Elizabeth's hair, pulling strongly and making her yelp in pain. An image popped up in her mind, those long dreadlocks of Jack's in Pearl's fingers. Out of all the people on earth Jack had left her with her, no, Jack had trusted her with his only daughter, to her knowledge that is. Wouldn't that mean she didn't have to wake up night by night to the horror of having left Jack to the Kraken? She cuddled the child up, feeling her heart fill with devotion. Pearl, her savior.

The End.