A/N:

Hi, and welcome to the third and as of now last installment of my Maid's Logbook series! We're finally, fricking FINALLY here, thank heavens. I am so sorry for making you wait so long, but I've been having much trouble with my creativity even long before starting to write this fic, and on top of that after maanging to write the majority of the story started at a new job, which pretty much took most of my time and energy. So I hope there still to be some of you who are interested to see how Miranda's journey will end.

This fic contains rather lot original writing that is not canon, so it will omit a notable amount of the movie's actual plot or only reference it, and as this is also based on the longest movie of the first trilogy, it might turn out to be the longest of all the three fics regardless due to the original content…Which isn't necessarily a bad thing if the story is entertaining, right? Well, we shall see about that part later on once you've formed your opinion.

Since AWE to me seems like the most serious installment of the three so far movies, taken that the events along wit the characters have grown and changed tremendously since the first movie, also this story shall touch upon some more mature subjects, but not in a way that it would make this a rated "M" fic. No, that's not what I'm trying to say here, but as the characters have developed as people, so does the fic try to evolve along with them. Focus on the more serious content matter that is troubling them in one way or another…Or at least that's what I tried to do here. Also as some of you may already know, I'm a sucker for happy endings, so no matter what kind of a turn things might take in this defining installment, remember that I absolutely refuse to write complete tragedies…There's always some form of a silver lining laying in wait somewhere…

But, if I would fail at any of these goals I recalled to present you with in this AN, feel encouraged to write me a comment! I only wish to offer you good stories in compensation to your views, follows and favorites, so hope to see you reviewing how I succeeded (or didn't ;P) in finsihing up this series.

Please enjoy, and thanks to all who have found their way here!

~lindam2254

Prologue

Stoic faced Peter observed the rows and rows of townspeople of Port Royal to stream within the center square of Fort Charles in a slow paced line. Walking between armed soldiers who kept the prisoners, traitorous and hence convicted lords and commoners alike, from escaping the enforced verdict that awaited them at the end of their journey from the dungeons to the execution stage with their held out banoyets. The manackles around the outlaws' ankles and wrists jingling in constant rhythm once the cruddy, unkept men and women of all ages chained together took a step closer to their upcoming doom every now and then. Another group of felons taking their turn and ascended up to the stage, only to be dropped to their deaths as the ruthless ropes eliminated them with a single jerk, one of the Lieutenants acting as the transitory Cryer reading aloud the decree that had authorized this mass arrest and accounted for the crimes these people were accussed of…

Peter straightened his posture when his eyes abruptly spotted a familiar, gaunt form amongst the advancing prisoners. His now attentive turned irises shifting back from the East India flag fluttering in unison with the colors of the British Empire in the strong wind high above the Fort walls to follow the progressing hangings. Slight expectant smile visiting his lips once he noticed the boy to be fingering something in his pocket as his turn to walk over to the stage neared, whatever his crime was specifically. About that Peter hadn't been informed with much detail…But even a blood relation, relevantly close or not, to someone found guilty of piracy was enough to condemn him as much as the rest of the unfortunate ilk lined behind the child with similar charges. The situation after all was dire, and extensive action was needed to be conducted to overcome it. In understanding of that Peter letting out a sigh as he glanced at the stacked bodies of the already executed townspeople. The lad brushing off some embers from his new uniform that the breeze had carried his way from the flames of a pyre that had been set up to the other side of the execution stage. From the corner of his eye Peter following a few officers tasked with a command of gathering the corpses into a large cart to remove the deceased's shoes which ended up in the fire to be destroyed along with the other excessive items found in their person, the foul smelling smoke reaching towards the greyish sky and blocking the little sunlight they'd been granted that morning. The Cryer's voice enchoing from the surrounding parapets in the prevailing silence as the Lieutenant read through the declaration again and again, broken by but the low wails of the prisoners and the clink of the metal restraining them.

"In order to effect a timely halt to deteriorating conditions, and to ensure the common good, a state of emergency is declared for these territories, by decree of Lord Cutler Beckett, duly appointed representative of His Majesty the King..."

Peter watched as another set of seven people stopped under the nooses and were immediately approached by the executioner, one by one receieving the ropes around their necks. Peter shaking his head at their unwarranted attempts to pray help from the lord almighty to save them upon seeing some of their fingers to curl together, thinking that should they have given their god enough reason to answer to their pleads they wouldn't even be standing there, accused of breaking his trust as much as the laws of the British realm. While regarding this rubble as nothing but crooks who deserved to pay the highest price for the perpetual loss of their way beyond salvation, the young man not even much as blinking as he behold those seven individuals to fall through the opened hatches and were left swining lifeless for a few seconds. Peter looking down at the soldiers detaching the bodies from the ropes and picking up one of the deceased, who wasn't dead in fact. His neck to have not broken during the drop, still slightly alive while hoisted up to the cart, Peter beckoning to one of the marines and pointing at the man before he returned his attention back to the prisoners now walking forward. From the corner of his eye Peter spying the not so lucky survivor to be terminated in one swift move, significant sound of a bone breaking signifying his death with the rest of them. "God" was busy, it seemed…so it was left for the men he created as his image to punish those who'd done wrong. If there were a single man left in this line of life who was enough piuos to believe that.

"By decree, according to martial law, the following statutes are temporarily amended; right to assembly, suspended…"

Swoop... Seven felons charged and condemned, falling, dangling and removed to give room to seven more. Peter looking over the gallows and behind it to see the boy to be standing by the stairs, peeking up to the swinging corpses with startled eyes, fidgeting. Calming down only when he happened to find Peter from the other side of the stage, seeing him nod at him.

"…Right to Habeous Corpus, suspended."

Clink, creek... Executioner pulled the lever and seven pair of feet dropped throught the floor, reaching nothing. Drooping limp with the bodies they were attached to, all prayers ceasing.

"…Right to legal counsel, suspended."

Clank, twinge…Seven nooses coiling around seven necks, the lever sending another set of outlaws plunging down to oblivion, not salvation. Not god any more than the men holding their fates under legal constraints and sealing them indeed hearing them, Peter the least as he'd briefly locked gazes with a woman who'd stood directly in front of him, when the almighty father had been proven wrong horse to bet on her seeking help from the young Commodore. Not receiving it, earning but a stern, narrowed stare back before the fateful drop.

"…Right to verdict by a jury of peers, suspended. All persons convicted of piracy, or aiding a person convicted of piracy, or acossiating with a person convicted of piracy, shall be sentenced to hang by the neck…until dead."

Peter looked over to Lieutenant Wells with a slight quirk of his eyebrows. His eyes but grim after detecting that edge of dissent and ambivalence from the man's voice at the end of the proclamation that told his newly appointed superior him not to completely see eye to eye with Beckett's execution of the martial law that was exceedingly punitive, yes. But necessary to show the yet free abusers of justice that East India Trading Company was not to be trifled with any longer, to remind the grudging Lieutenant of this fact Peter lifting his jaw with a remakable nod. The man immediately straightening his posture and turning composed at the face of Peter's intolerant gaze, remembering his place and the rule he'd sworn to serve upon joining the army. Such task at times meaning dirtying one's hands, or if not directly, watching it unfold in front of one's eyes for the sake of order and public good. And this day was no exception.

Peter hardly could hold back an amused smile upon witnessing the Liuetenant's curt reluctance to abate his inner opposition according to Peter's will. Ever since his uncle had arranged for Peter to take over the position as the Commodore and replace Gilette as the commanding officer, the rest of the assigned Fort's marines of both higher and lower status had had some difficulties to accept the abrupt change. Not that they would've dared to defy Peter as their new Commodore due to his well known acossiation to the head of the East India Trading Company, nor were the marines missing the former commander in chief (Peter taking great pleasure upon finding the tables to have utterly turned by having Gilette practically grovel at his feet), but taken that Peter was much younger than many of the officers who'd served in the Navy several years longer than him, such decision didn't completely sit well with all of the men. Such demonstrated, and perhaps obvious, nepotism while choosing the successor to the position of the Commodore even enraging some of the longest serves of Fort Charles. But Peter cared little for the resentment of his men, as long as they would follow his commands as well as the Company's dutifully without complaint.

Peter looked back towards the gallows, watching yet another batch of prisoners to trudge up the flight of stairs and all the way to the ropes swaying in the wind that had left the fortress' walls to blow past the square, the lad's eyes however remaining focused on the boy who finally took his place in middle of the group. Like the woman of the previous condemned seven facing Peter, the little boy not older than ten gazing down to him shortly before turning his head upward to peer at the noose hanging above his head ominously. When the executionr commenced his usual task of attaching the felons to the ropes Peter exchanging a signifanct stare with the boy, nodding at him again with a quelling look in his eyes. The boy gazing down and taking out the object he'd been nervously fumbling since receiving it from the young man the moment he'd been brought out of the cells with the rest of the inprisoned men and women. Peter watching the executioner to hoist a small barrel over to the child before lifted him to stand upon it, to reach the rope. Heartened the boy not bolting when the noose tightened around his neck, him simply staring down at the coin in his fingers, after a few seconds of befallen silence his voice erupting from his lips in a form of quiet, timid melody. Peter lifting his jaw again in satisfaction as he overheard the words the boy started to sing, first to himself until he looked up to the Commodore. His voice turning from quavering to stronger, braver.

"The king and his men, stole a queen from her bed. And bound her in her bones. The seas be ours, and by the powers, where we will, we'll roam."

Silence continued interrupted as the boy's singing came to an end, Peter's now somewhat unsettled eyes glancing at the people lined up alongside the boy and the ones spilling inside through the entryway. His brows knitting together in tardily manifesting chagrin when the carefully outlined layout he'd been informed about this morning back at his uncle's office seemed to have been unsuccessful, no one saying a word in a few seconds. But as his eyes subtly roamed about the faces of the prisoners he'd believed to be visibly affected by the boy's singing, the black man standing at the gallows next to him lifted his head. All trace of doubt about the transpiring plan of his uncle's vanishing as Peter got what he was waiting for, the exact anticipated reaction as the strung up malefactor started to sing in the child's place. His defeated bearing gaining a long since discarded look of defiance as his voice as well grew intense by each word, new smile close to forming on Peter's lips as not long after the rest of the men and women at the gallows and within the square joined their own voices to the pirate anthem. Facing their fear of dying and the officers surrounding them with courage that the song brough out in them, the prisoners commencing to stomp their feet and clattering their irons in the rhythm of the harmoniously performed melody as it rang in the air loud and clear. Agitating the observing marines who stepped away from the prisoners in bafflement upon locking gazes with them, glancing from one another to their superiors who were equally confused by the unseen development, all save for Peter and his uncle standing farther away under a certain canopy. Just listening.

"Lord Beckett! They've…started to sing, sir."

Peter made a half smirk this time as heard the sound of Lieutenant Groves to address his uncle, his eyes moving from the singing pirates to the two men standing beside a desk by which Beckett had spend the majority of the morning's executions without much budging in hopes of witnessing his unfolding development. For this reason similar kind of delighted smile forming on his lips as Peter watched him to lean against the table with an equally victorious expression, releasing a sigh. The last and the most mightyfully sung chorus of the anthem commencing and resonating from the surrounding walls so loud that the voices of the convicted felt like shaking the very foundations of the sturdy Fort as Lord Beckett replied. Indeed the least surprised.

"Finally."

"Yo ho, all together, hoist the colors high! Heave ho, thieves and beggars, never shall we die!"

Peter missed to witness the latest group of felons to fall to their deaths when after allowing the prisoners to sing long enough he'd seen his uncle to nod to Groves who instead had given the signal for the executioner to release the lever for the umpteenth time. The young Commodore breaking free from his thoughts only by the sudden low chink of metal that followed the creaking of the wooden trap doors and the expected crunch of the tensed ropes. Peter shifting his head to the right to gaze back towards the gallows apathetically, after glancing upward at the languid bodies of the hanged his irises noticing the coin that naturally had slipped from the boy's grip during the moment of death and was now rolling towards him after bouncing off from the structures of the stage. The silvery piece stopping at Peter's feet after making a swirl and eventually wobbling to a halt, with a wondering frown him picking it up and turning the coin around in his palm a couple of times as the boy's corpse was tossed on top of the other bodies. Mysterious chime ringing in his ears the lad eyeing at the silvery piece's peculiar carvings that reminded him of the markings he'd seen on the coin Jack Sparrow had carried around in his person. Except that this particular Spanish dollar seemed to be the real deal…

It hadn't been until Peter's return back to Port Royal a few weeks ago with Norrington that he'd learned the quintessential reason behind the prepared and since declared martial law. Now when for about a month with the asset such as the Flying Dutchman at the Company's disposal they'd been hunting down pirates all over the Caribbean, Beckett had concentrated all their efforts in achieving prominent results at the face of the Dutchman's upbeat ability to reach them out at the far sea. Therefore the temporary law (actualized with the authority of Governor Swann whom Beckett had managed to coerce to cooperate during Peter's absence) that denied all the accused any legal rights that could've saved them from the realisation of the endeavor, giving the Company an opportinuty to smoke out the rest of the allies of the pirate scum hiding in plain sight. Especially the most notorious ones called the members of the Brethren Court Peter had informed him about after stumbling upon the pirate Codex in Sparrow's cabin, the significance behind the acossiation of the just heard pirate anthem with this clandestine Order as well as the Pieces of Eight however cleared to them mainly due to the information Beckett had succeeded to squeeze out from a certain pirate Captain some time before his arrival to Port Royal (and from whom the coin had been taken upon capture). Interrogated about the secrets behind the Court, this presumed Pirate Lord remaining under custody for awhile, before Jack Sparrow had invaded the prison he'd been kept in in an attempt to save him. Unfortunately succeeding.

But although the buccaneer had been saved from hanging, at least Beckett hadn't been left with nothing. His returned nephew's news only strengthening his long harbored beliefs about the famed Court and the importance of the pieces of silver the Lords seemed to carry as a token of their station, for this reason the purpose of handing the acquired coin to Peter and ordering him to manipulate the prisoners to betray the confidentiality of this well guarded secret by chanting the song of the Brethren (that apparently worked as an encrypted signal for the Pirate Lords to assemble) during the execution at the promise of freedom making sense to the young man. Peter lifting his eyebrows at his uncle's forethough and optimism that at least one of the people he'd approached with this proposition would've complied, and after all it had happened. Peter thanking his luck he'd found the boy from one of the cells, it having not proven all that difficult to convince the child to agree to do his uncle's bidding. Where the rest of the townspeople had outright chosen death rather than broken the oath of secresy surrounding the Court until the boy had made the call and the rest of them had followed his suite as a final means to flout their captors, after the boy had accepted the coin from him and done exactly as he'd been told. And it had worked, and should Beckett's main plan succeed, the events of that day would evoke the Brethren to act and they would soon enough reveal themselves in an attempt to stand against the Company, only to be destroyed by it with one strike. And once the Court would fall, so would the rest of their kind curl up and die along with every ship that would be taken down in the already commenced war over the dominance of the Caribbean Sea.

"Commodore, your uncle has summoned for you, sir."

After a slight throw Peter slipped the coin into his pocket as made a nod, walking past Lieutenant Groves and marched to the other side of the square. Climbing the few steps up to the pentice where Beckett had remained for the past hours, looking over maps and listening to his subordinates reports about the progress of their current proceedings concerning the success rate of overpowering pirate vessels and hence obtaining much needed prisoners.

"Well done, Peter. I was confident you would be successful in the small task I gave you, althought the challenging nature of the problem it presented made it rather difficult feat to achieve", Lord Beckett mused to his arrived nephew gratified, Peter tipping his head at him instead indifferently as glanced over to the once more quieted square. Watching a few more people to relinquish their lives to the noose before exchanged a thoughtful stare with his uncle.

"It may have not as well worked…There were no quarantees that anyone amongst these people knew something truly tenable about the Brethren, yet alone about the secret anthem of the Court, or the purpose of it once divulged openly."

"True, but worth all the gamble as we were just validated by what happened… How did you decide on the child to be the one to count on in coming forth with the call?"

"I simply heard his father to have had close ties with the Court through his older brother who allegedly is a member of the Order...So with almost nothing to go on I reckoned to be more safe than sorry to try whether the boy had been told anything…and I was right."

"Had, you say?"

"The man died two turns after the boy. He agreed to do as bidded if both he and his father would walk free."

"Well, did he have any true acossiations with the Pirate Lords or not, it is a mere moot point... Because the evidenced verity is that the Caribbean Sea is not vast enough to hide in for anyone bearing or even linked to the designation of a pirate, and not a single one is suffered to elude liability that comes with it. And this day will be sure to demonstrate that to the rest of the malefactors not yet standing in that deathrow with this cohort of their ill-fated brethren."

Upon casting his eyes down in agreement Peter turned his back to his uncle, once more facing the scene displayed in front of them, crossing his arms behind his back as watched more and more prisoners to be driven to the execution stage with an impatient jabs of the sharp bayonets that proved superior to the fear of the cowering townspeople stopping at the feet of the staircase in dread. No shed tears or entreaties made to the officers saving anyone from taking the defining steps that led the convicted to their deaths were they wrongfully accused or not, remaining but utter thralls of the statutes, powerless to fight against the legal system that repressed them to accept their unjust fate solely for the sake of the Company's interest to intimidate its enemies by this killing of hundreds. The Governor of this widely feared corporation indeed slowly getting closer to his main goal one neck at a time, Peter not thinking much of the actions he'd been forced to take along with the rest of the men serving alongside him, were they wrong or not. As the only truth he anymore recognized after witnessing the hangings of dozens that day from the cruel vicinity, that someone needed to be the necessary evil and take the blame by carrying the sins of the world on their shoulders to make a difference…And it was them who hold that power and the means to go through with it, regardless of the at times questionable nature of the required deeds. But examples had to be made to crush any trace of willingness to defy their grown rule once the Company would manage to drive the pirates into a corner they couldn't escape from except by perishing, the young boy not being any different. By making his final decision in life rightful becoming the first steppingstone in their attempt of annihilating the Brethren.

"You do know what needs to be done now when the final phase of our venture has been set in motion?"

Peter nodded at his uncle's remark, lifting his eyes back to the Company flag, sun starting to peek through the amassed clouds and blinded him momentarily with its direct rays. "Yes. Not only do we need to locate the Pirate Lords, but should Sparrow be left unmonitored it might place us on quite thin ice in time…As even if the Black Pearl was lost to the battle against Jones' monster, I do not believe his crew to have been taken down with her. And its not either certain whether it managed to claim her Captain."

"Mercer's spies haven't aquired any valid information whether some of them survived or not, but like you said, Peter, I wouldn't wish to take any chances based on mere beliefs over cold hard facts that make the foundations of our plans. And as the probability of your sister still being with them along with the two other certain fugitives of the law is more than high, that alone urges me to take action... Should they have escaped, which according to Jones is an impossibility. But what a man wouldn't do for their family?"

Peter thought about his uncle's response for a moment, making a tardy frown as eventually turned back towards Beckett. Examining him and his remarkable countenance in interest. "Speaking of…what is it you're asking me to do, uncle?"