Happy birthday to me. And Chuck Norris :)

Staying quiet for a week is no easy feat. It had only been three days and already Alyssa thought she would go crazy.

As if the feat in itself wasn't hard enough, Marie was mad at her too. She had tried asking her a question about some knot that Mr. Gibbs had taught them and Alyssa hadn't answered. Marie had asked over and over, and in the end had just stormed off.

Later she had asked her about it, which only succeeded in making things worse.

Marie had gone and told someone, and now everyone knew that she was being 'ignored' by her sister. The crew gave her strange looks and a few had made an attempt to get her to talk. Now most of them just thought she was sick.

Plus she had gotten a very painful splinter.

And these were the things Jack wasn't involved in. Among his list of misdeeds against her were encouraging people to talk to her, accidentally knocking her over, assigning her to harder work and making her clean the deck repeatedly.

She had the blisters to prove it.

But besides all that, being silent was kind of fun. She found that she noticed things more. There were people she didn't even know were on the ship that had tried talking to her. She knew their names simply by hearing people call them.

People ignored her when she was quiet, so she had lots of time to think. Which was both good and bad, considering the places that her thoughts drifted to. Much to her astonishment she often thought of Jack.

She knew he was watching her, ready to pounce as soon as she slipped up. Every time she looked up, there he was, smirking when someone asked her a question and giving her an admonishing look whenever she was about to explode.

Unbeknownst to him, that was her greatest reason to keep going. She refused to give him the satisfaction of letting him win.

Jack didn't like this situation. She was actually doing pretty well with the whole being silent thing. At this rate it they would be off the ship in no time. But at the moment he had bigger things to take care of.

He had heard from an acquaintance of an old friend that there was something valuable being kept in the city of Santiago, and he was intent on taking it. He had told Mr. Gibbs, who had told the crew, and they were headed there now.

It would take about two days to get there, meaning that Alyssa would still be quiet when they arrived. He could pass the time by annoying the living hell out of her.

There was nothing else to do, so he figured he should start now.

"Mr. Gibbs, take the wheel." The first mate did as he was told and Jack headed down to where she was sitting. Her brow was furrowed in concentration as she spliced a rope, and then tied it back together.

He stood behind her and watched for her work. She held the rope up to check it over when he grabbed it. She gasped and tried to reach it, but ended up falling backwards off the crate she was sitting on.

For awhile she just lay sprawled on the ground, her hat covering her face and her chest heaving. Jack cocked his head to the side in confusion. Eventually he bent down and lifted the hat off of her face.

He had never seen such a look in his life. Her face was bright red, her teeth were clenched and her eyes stared up at him with so much loathing that he thought it might knock him down dead.

But she didn't say a word.

Instead she sat up and grabbed her hat from his hand, hitting him with it before putting it on. She stood and glared at him for a minute. He looked back at her with a mixture of amusement and disappointment. He thought for sure that would make her crack.

She sat back down on the crate and picked up a new rope. When she realized that he hadn't left, she turned around. She crossed her arms over her chest and made a face that said 'Well?'

Jack wasn't quite sure what to do. Her reaction was very different from what he thought it would be.

"Here." He tossed the rope he had taken back to her and stalked off to the helm, grumbling all the way.

Alyssa was quite proud of herself. She had managed to thwart Jack's plan. She couldn't help but smile.

Marie came up and sat across from her, picking up her own rope.

"I know you're not talking to me or whatever, and I don't know why, but I saw that, and I know that you didn't keep quiet for no reason."

Alyssa bit her lip and looked down at the deck. It would be so much easier if she could just tell her.

"What did he do to you?" Marie looked at her in concern. Her sister shook her head with a look of disgust. "Nothing? Good, cause if he did, there would be trouble." Alyssa smiled.

Sisters stuck together, no matter what.

I hope that y'all find this chapter better than the last one. I might go back later and change it, time permitting.

Off to go eat some birthday cake, leave a nice review!

Chicaga