On the last chapter, I added on to the explanation of why Governor Weatherby Swann had done nothing for his poor cousin-mainly so that I could stay true to Governor Swann's good nature being supplanted by his ignorance, i.e. he never helped them because he didn't know anything was wrong, and why Lord Beckett is so angered by his softness/and angry with his own father. It works out, especially in how Governor Swann sees Natasha before he passes on as the motive for why he lost touch with them in the first place as he had never married Beckett's mother. (Note: I don't even know exactly what happened with Beckett's father, whether he was a scoundrel or just of a lower class, where they moved aboard to-could it have been India or Germany or what?-or whether or not Beckett's father was a soldier or so.)

Now, with this next chapter, I'm going to set-up the summary: in fact, the first chapter might be more of a prologue than anything else.

Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, so is that shady business?

2. Meetings and Motives

The man reborn of Kraken blood stood in a place beyond time and space, a desert distorted…his clothes were now dry and dusty with sand and grit as he took off his hat and fanned himself. He was still somber and indifferent to such a change as he glanced around, he was simply wondering what else was going to befall him. Suddenly, he squinted and slowed his fanning, placing his hat back on his head as he stepped forward, suddenly shadowed from the sunlight...shocked, yet now hopeful, he staggered, then walked, and then ran forward. Though slightly blurred by the heat, it was still there as he advanced closer...the facade of a ship, worn and pockmarked by barnacles on the hull, with the tattered sails fluttering on the masts, too immovable and yet too fragile in this desert environ.

The man slowed to a halt a few inches from the bow and reached out to touch the wood, rubbing and ignoring the splinters as he felt something stirring, deep within him...he murmured, "Black Pearl. My home."

He smiled to himself, to have remembered something, and he thought that this is probably what he needed...he started to walk along the perimeter of the hull, wondering if there was a way he could climb onboard, and suddenly there was a rope ahead, hanging down its length. He chuckled to himself and strolled over to the rope, but suddenly there is a tug...he sprinted and leapt toward it, but sprawled in the sand as the rope slipped through his fingers, burning him, someone has pulled up the rope.

He groaned and lifted his head, muttering, "Bugger."

He managed to stand and, realizing that someone must be up there, he staggered back until he could see someone gazing down at him...with the bright sunlight, he couldn't see this person clearly, but he could see that the fellow was twirling the bottom end of the rope now.

The man bereft of his memory now hoarsely yelled, "Hello! That's not your ship, that's my ship...uh, savvy? I...I am the captain, that's right! Drop the rope and let me board my Black Pearl, I need to!"

Now the other fellow exclaimed, "Ah, me boy Jack, I know it pains ye to be so helpless, but it's for your own good. You say ya need to board, but that's not what ya really need...you're just confusing your want with your need. I told ye, when you left for sea, that the need to sail would doom ya...and here you are, a pirate cursed, your ship stuck here, and ya don't know what you need to board. Well, I'll give ye some comfort...pull up the sleeve on your right arm and you'll know who ya are."

Jack blinks and pulls up his right sleeve, rubbing his tattoos as he stared at the seabird, before he grumbled, "Jack...Captain Jack Seagull? Is that my name...father?"

His father growled and bellowed, "You're an idiot, always has been! Sparrow! I named ya Jack Sparrow, as me father had named me Teague Sparrow! But you're not just satisfied with that, ye strut around and always insist on being called Captain now, an arrogant idiot! I mean, right now ye just confused your wants and your needs! You're a shame to me and your family name!"

Jack cleared his throat and lectured, "So...you're saying that I don't need the Pearl in that I've mistaken the want for a need, but you're confessing that my need to leave home was sound, probably because it was born of your own accursed need to drink due to your want of drowning grief for my mother Pearl, who did not see the need to leave our burning house in the want for saving her father's portrait, so in retrospect I am truly a Sparrow in confusing wants and needs, which I have followed closely by, years ago, needing to free those bound in chains and needing to sail still, even branded as a pirate for so-called crimes, which is why I wanted to name my resurrected ship the Black Pearl and which is why I...want to board, now, but you're telling me that I need something else more importantly than that."

Teague Sparrow grinned and muttered, "You're an idiot, but I'll admit that ya can learn, and maybe ye can still honor your family name if ye do good."

Jack growls and remarks, "Sure, whatever, I just have to figure out the right leverage needed to board in the first place...bugger it, I'll be stuck here until the opportune moment of enlightenment comes to me. And how long will that take?"

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The Chinese warship 'The Empress', a large, long ship embellished with curves, was anchored at a dock in the harbor of Tortuga this evening, bobbing in the water with ropes attached to the posts. Its gangplanks had also been lowered, toward the bow of the ship, while the stern is in shadow, and right now, its crew staggered up and down these planks, unloading heavy crates. Their labor was supervised by their captain, a man dressed in Manchu clothes yet his head was wrapped up in a bandana, his private protest at having to be forced by Chinese law to keep his head shaved with the exception of his quene. He yelled in Cantonese at some of his sailors, sliding his sword out of his sheath and gesturing with the blade toward the correct spot as several sailors shifted the crates. Suddenly, one sailor glanced behind his captain and cried out, pointing as the other sailors looked up, gasping as one of them dropped his crate. The captain growled, but he slowly turned around to see what had caught his attention...a man had just stepped onto their dock, the light of Tortuga behind him as he strode toward the Chinese ship and crew, the members of which muttered to each other. Their captain, however, said nothing and took a few steps toward the other man, who had now halted a few feet away from them, a skeleton monkey perched on his left shoulder.

Captain Barbossa nodded and remarked, "Tis a fine evening, my good Captain Sao Feng, a right night for shady business and for ghosts to wander."

The Chinese sailors said nothing, though a few glanced at their unmarked crates, but Captain Sao Feng hardly flinched as he commented, "Captain Barbossa...I have heard about what happened to you, shot down in the midst of an attack by Royal Marines against you. So you are a ghost?"

Barbossa sighed and replied, "Rightly enough, my former friend in life, I died upon a strange isle, though not exactly in the crossfire of British muskets...it was a bit more personal than that, and that's the real truth. It pains me even now, but I manage not to let the thought pester me...in death. Aye, I come here because I felt your presence in Tortuga, the place where I experienced the pleasures that pirating had to offer before I was cursed, and I wanted to parley a little, if you'll grant that pity to an old ghoul."

Meanwhile, with the Chinese sailors riveted upon this supernatural meeting and Sao Feng glancing away in discomfort, a small longboat bobbed alongside 'The Empress', crewed by the surviving members of Jack's crew: Joshamee Gibbs, Tia Dalma, Cotton (and his parrot), Marty, Pintel and Ragetti, and Will and Elizabeth. The pirates stared up at the ship while far in the distance behind them, ships sailed in and out of the harbor, of various shapes and models, likely going off for their own shady business this evening.

Gibbs squinted and muttered, "Right then, I hear Captain Barbossa talking...took him long enough to get to that dock, I wonder what was holding him up? Well, anyway, make sure your weapons are securely fastened when we start climbing the ropes, we don't want anything clanging, splashing, or discharging. This ship is heavily manned, our only luck will be to have the element of surprise."

Cotton's parrot squawked, "15 men on a dead man's chest."

Gibbs shuddered and muttered, "Right, that could happen, if this doesn't go well."

Elizabeth, sitting beside Will, realized that he had stopped rowing and she turned her head to see that he was staring at her...Elizabeth blinked and asked, "What's wrong?"

Will sighed and answered, "Well, it's just that...I want some peace of mind before we go through all of this. Elizabeth, when we were abandoning ship, I saw...I saw you kiss Jack."

The susurration of the oars sweeping the waves abruptly dissipated as the crew turned to gawk at Will and Elizabeth while she gasped and lowered her head as she whispered, "Will...this isn't exactly the right time."

Meanwhile, Captain Sao Feng turned his gaze back toward Barbossa now, steady as he arched his eyebrows and remarked, "Parley? That is an odd word to use, to speak for bargaining, especially when you are dead. To be dead, to be a ghost, there is supposed to be nothing more needed...no pleasure and no pain, no desire and no sustenance, you're supposed to fade to nothing more than a wisp from that. Yet here you are, standing in front of me...seeming to be almost as solid as you were in life. And what about your monkey, the one you named Jack soon after buying it from me with your cursed gold piece, how can he be sitting on your shoulder? How can you support his weight?"

Captain Barbossa cleared his throat and explained, "My poor monkey was killed alongside me, loyal to the end, he is as much a ghost as I am. As for my request to parley with you, just a slip of a tongue in truth, the Pirate Code remains true to my soul and I thought it would be appropriate, considering how our conversation is serious in nature, being between the living and the dead."

The Chinese crew muttered amongst themselves, especially when a cloud passed in front of the moon to change Jack the monkey back again, as Sao Feng scowled and commented, "What salvation have you found? You weren't always true to the Pirate Code in your own life, as I seem to recall, so why should it be so true to you now in death? You could bend the Pirate Code for your own needs and you are a strange man, touched by the unnatural, so evil that hell spat you back out as some say...did you even bend death to meet your desires?"

Meanwhile, in the longboat, Will rubbed his forehead and explained, "I did try to speak to you, before, but I couldn't say the words, not so soon after the kraken ate Jack. Yet now that we're risking our lives, that image is bothering me, I don't want to die with my mind nagging me, disturbing my peace forever. And if I do survive, I...I don't want to waste my life haunted by doubt."

Elizabeth sighed and murmured, "The kiss meant nothing, especially when Jack is dead."

Will scowled and queried, "Did the kiss mean something then, I want to know that."

Elizabeth groaned and screamed, "No! I only kissed him so that he wouldn't notice that I was tying him to the mast!"

The crew gasped and stared at her, aghast, while on the dock, the Chinese sailors started yelling in Cantonese, pulling out cutlasses and pistols as they raced toward their ship, toward the sound of the female yell. Meanwhile, Captain Barbossa cursed and unsheathed his sword, blocking the swing of Sao Feng's blade as the two men glared at each other, a moment before chaos.

My favorite phrases of this chapter: Barbossa: "Tis a fine evening, my good Captain Sao Feng, a right night for shady business and for ghosts to wander" and...'a moment before chaos.'