A/N: Disclaimer: I do not own POTC, nor a LOT of other references that will be in these chapters.
"We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot/Drink up, me hearties, yo ho!/We kidnap and ravage and don't give a hoot…I wonder what ravage means," young Elizabeth Swann thought aloud, standing at the forecastle of a ship cutting through fog so thick she could scarcely make out the bowsprit. "Oh well. Where was I? Oh yes. Drink up, me hearties, yo ho! Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me/We extort, we pilfer, we filch, and sack/Drink up…"
"Quiet, missy!" She gasped at the sudden weight on her shoulder, jumping back to see Mr. Gibbs' paw plopped on her. "Ya 'bout scared me Donald Duck hat right off of me!"
"Mr. Gibbs, that will do!" Ah, yes, she thought. Once again, Lieutenant Norrington to the rescue. Didn't he know she was jailbait?
"She was singin' about pirates! Bad luck to be singing about pirates with us mired in this unnatural fog, mark my words."
"Consider them marked," Norrington said with tightened lips. "On your way." The two of them watched Gibbs buttle off, neither sure what it was he exactly did on this ship, only that it wouldn't surprise either of them if he spent his nights in a pig hovel. Oh jeez, Elizabeth rolled her eyes. He's staring at me again. Better come up with something to say.
"I think it'd be rather fascinating to meet a pirate."
Norrington snorted, his eyes gleaming as he looked out to sea…what little they could see of it, anyway.
"Think again, Miss Swann. Vile and dissolute creatures, the lot of them. I know my words won't seem important, oh, say, eight years from now, but I intend to see to it that any man who sails under a pirate flag or wears a pirate brand gets what he deserves—a short drop and a sudden stop."
Glancing over at Gibbs, mimicking a hanging, complete with choking noise, she shuddered.
"Lieutenant Norrington…"
"I wasn't looking at her chest!"
"What?" Governor Swann asked with a furrowed brow.
"Er, nothing. What was it you wanted?"
"I appreciate your fervor, sir, but I'm concerned about the effect this subject will have upon my daughter. Who knows? Today she's just a freckle-faced girl with a strange American accent who doesn't seem to have a gift for acting, but in a matter of minutes, she could be some creamy-skinned British bombshell!" Governor Swann patted her back, gathering her to him, his long coat and wig concealing her from what he considered the most vile and dissolute creatures…single men.
"My apologies, Governor Swann," Norrington said quickly, averting his eyes from Elizabeth. I'm not THAT short, she wanted to say, folding her arms over her budding chest. And they're not THAT big. As much as she loved the journey from England to Port Royal, she'd learned the basics of sailing by Day 10, how to fire a musket on Day 13, how to gut a sea turtle on Day 22, and had listened to every single song on her iPod on Day 27. She rested her elbows on the railing of the ship, imaging what it would be like if this day haunted her for the rest of her life. A parasol floated by, followed by a haggard piece of driftwood with a small figure slumped across it.
"Look! There's a boy! There's a boy in the water!" she cried. After some random commands that sounded a little too random, the men hauled the young boy aboard, still breathing, thank goodness.
"Mary, Mother of God!" Ahead, flames pushed their way through the fog, the remnants of a ship still burning on the water. Ah, this is what "ravage" means.
"Pirates," everyone breathed.
"Elizabeth, I want you to accompany the boy. He'll be in your charge. Now we don't know what circumstances brought him to us, so if he touches you, I want you to remember that place I said to hit men if they get fresh with you." Governor Swann peered over at the unconscious boy, drenched in ocean, sweat, and terror. "On second thought, he looks like a eunuch. Poke him in the eyes if he gets fresh with you."
Elizabeth nodded and bent over the boy, brushing a heavy, soaked strand of dark hair from his face. Suddenly, the boy wheezed and took hold of her wrist.
"Shh, it's okay. My name's Elizabeth Swann. I don't know why you would care about such a detail since you nearly drowned…I really don't know how to talk to boys…do you like pirates? I'm super-crazy about pirates and using anachronisms like the phrase, 'okay.' Oh goodness, I'm babbling. I told you I don't know how to talk to boys." She blushed, but the boy gave her a smile with no traces of malice or sarcasm in it.
"W-w-will Turner," he said, spitting out a bit of water.
"I'm watching over you, Will." With that, Will fainted again. I must not be doing too well a job of watching over him, she shook her head, wondering what else she could be doing to make sure he didn't die of exposure. But then something shiny caught her eye.
"You're a pirate!" she exclaimed, fingering a skeleton-designed medallion that dropped out of his hand. She picked it up without thinking, and if you were to ask the adult Elizabeth Swann when it first was that she started diving into situations without fully knowing what was going on, she would probably choose this day, although she'd been doing it ever since that strange day back in England when she took a piglet, a carrot, and an anthology of the works of Edmund Spenser and…but that's another story for another time.
"Has he said anything?" Norrington asked, closing in on her personal bubble.
"His name is Will Turner. That's all I found out," she lied. As the crew carried the boy below decks, a flash of black called her from the medallion, called her to the sea. The flash led up to a solid black ship with ebony sails billowing in the wind, an ebony flag flying at its mast.