Summary: A drabble about love, curiosity, and a compass. Don't be hasty, though, to assume you already know the pairing. 380 words.
Disclaimer: In my own world, I do own Pirates of the Caribbean. Also in my world, Paris Hilton doesn't exist, I have magical powers, I'm an only child, I can fly, it's okay to be crazy, Dr. Jonathon Crane is my psychologist, I live with Jack Sparrow and James Norrington on the coast of my pretty country in an equally pretty house, Tia Dalma is my best friend, and books are considered the most important of all things. As you can see, we don't live in my world. So I don't own PotC.
Compass
It had been one of her most useful creations. Or, rather, it wasn't a creation so much as it was a modification from what any other person would deem a broken and therefore worthless compass. But most people were often oblivious to the idea of taking something broken and making it better than it was. Most people didn't understand that sometimes new wasn't better.
He did, or rather, he had.
She'd given him the compass, in exchange for a night of passion. His idea, but she hadn't objected. He'd intrigued her the moment she'd seen him, when he was just twenty years old, although he'd spoken with an intelligence level much beyond that. He'd been brought in by a new friend of his, Hector Barbossa, just a few years before the mutiny, although Barbossa was at least ten years his senior. But age didn't matter; not when you had broken from the law.
He hadn't been afraid of her – perhaps a bit cautious at first, but not afraid. It was more curiosity than anything else.
Curiosity. That had been the downfall of many. But then, not being curious – suppressing curiosity – had been the downfall of others. Such as a young woman, who'd come to Tia Dalma long ago, with a silver, heart-shaped locket the only thing she had to barter with for what she'd needed most: information.
What she'd wanted most. Where the idea for the compass had come from. It was Tia, though, that had been the first to test it. It had worked, had told her what she wanted most. It had pointed to the silver locket. She knew what it stood for.
Love, true love. True love so extreme, it caused intense agony if it wasn't returned – enough intense agony to drive one man to cut out his own heart so he could escape the pain of his seemingly unrequited love, or to cause one woman to want to give up her only token of true love to escape the pain of being the cause of a man cutting out his own heart.
Or to cause Tia Dalma to accept that she would never experience true love, and to therefore give up on it.
Because when Jack Sparrow had held the compass, it hadn't pointed to her.