Hey, sorry this is late and a bit short, but I wanted to cut it here, so I could make the next chapter really long and awesome. I love you guys, and please review. Five and I'll upload tomorrow. By the way, HAPPY HOLIDAYS! school is officially out for me so the holidays have begun!

-Han

Anna stood back in the line, her eyes on Will. He thought they looked grey, like the fog that still consumed the British armada, like the sea after a storm. He wondered what she had been talking about, when her eyes had misted over and she had quickly wrapped her arms around Jack, the action so fast he almost missed it, but he was sure Beckett hadn't. The short man's face had become impossibly harder, glaring in their direction as they broke apart quickly and anyone but Jack could see the love in her eyes.

But now they stood a foot apart, Barbossa on Anna's other side, all three staring in front of them like they had never moved. Will thought she looked beautiful, an edge about her that made her seem more alive than he'd ever seen. More free. He was proud to be her brother, and ashamed he'd betrayed her. Proud and impossibly happy she had decided to support him. He couldn't ask for any more than that and he knew it.

"I propose an exchange," Anna voiced, drawing Will from his thoughts and his face crumpled into confusion. "Will leaves with us, and you can have Jack," she said calmly, her voice so unaffected Will didn't believe her.

"What?" he questioned, shock coloring his warm brown eyes as they met hers. Her expression screamed for him to trust her and he nodded slowly. "Done," he said slowly, as if wondering how the words would taste in his mouth.

He was even more surprised when Jack nodded. "Done," he agreed, his eyes shifting trustingly to Anna. Will didn't think he could be any more surprised, his world was changing too quickly for him to keep up and Jack wasn't supposed to trust anyone.

"Done," Beckett agreed, a coy smile on his lips and it didn't seem to matter that Anna and Jack were planning something. As far as he was concerned, he'd won. Things were playing out the way he wanted and he could see victory in his sights.

"Jack is one of the nine pirate lords, you have no right-" Barbossa started, but she cut him off, her head tipping to the side.

"King," she reminded, that same smile on her lips Will remembered she would wear when she was about to beat him in one of their sparring sessions. The way she would move catlike around him and smile like he was a piece of meat and he would have to remind himself to keep his hand steady on his blade. The way she would move for hours afterwards, like everything was a duel.

"And I can only humbly serve," Jack said with a low bow, taking off his hat in respect. Barbossa took the opportunity to move faster than Anna thought he could with more grace than she'd ever seen. The move was fluid, like the sea on a calm day swirling around rocks in the harbor at Port Royal. He drew his sword and spun slicing it through the air and Anna thought it made a sound like it was singing.

Jack's piece of eight was cut cleanly from the front of his bandanna, falling into the sand with a clink and Anna wondered how he'd never tried to sell the little coin off. Jack the monkey rushed over, picking the beads up in his small hands and rushing back to Barbossa, climbing up to his shoulder and attempting to chew on the strand.

"If you be sayin' something, I might be sayin' something as well," Barbossa said, as if he and Jack had already started a conversation, and with the way they were looking at each other, maybe they had. It took a moment for Anna to remember that Barbossa was his first mate, once upon a time.

They seemed to carry on the conversation with only eye contact for a moment, and then Jack smiled grimly. "First to the finish then?" he asked his former enemy, a faraway look in his eyes and a slow smile.

The other Captain only nodded, a ghost of a grin around the edges of his mouth as Jack slowly and carefully traded places with Will, each step like a dance around each other and Anna thought it was programmed in the Captain to move like he was fighting. Like he was engaged in that archaic dance that was swordplay.

And then, finally he stood next to Jones, a mask of fear in place and only Anna could tell it was mostly fake, the currents of panic beneath real and the whole of calculating and trust in her overpowering that. But Beckett had to think he was winning, and the pompous tilt of his head said he did.

Will stood beside her, so close she could feel his body heat and maybe it was his way of holding her hand like they would when she took him through Port Royal when he was still a boy. And he would cling to her like she was the mother he had lost and she would return the pressure like she could read his mind, and something he wondered if she could. But now they were grown and neither could lean on the other, so he got as close as he could, until she could smell home in Will's scent beside her.

Jack looked across the empty space as if it were the span of oceans and wished he could say something to her. Say something important and real and maybe something forbidden and it would drip from his tongue like a song and maybe she would sing it on her way back to his ship. But he only gazed at her with sad eyes and wondered if caring for her meant he was tied down. He didn't think so, he thought he was still free like he was born to be and like she was born to be and they were both pirates. And he could be alone and he could care for her at once.

"Do you fear death?" Jones asked him lowly, hissing into his ear and Jack didn't really hear the question. The last word was something different, something too deep to consider and it was too big for him to take on. Too big for him to face. The last word was something huge and different and he didn't want to be weak. He didn't want to consider the possibility that he could feel for someone at all, much less the depth of the word Jack was considering. He refused to think it, and he would never say it. Speaking it would be making it real, even if it wasn't and he couldn't bring himself to admit he had a heart. Had a piece of him that could feel beyond lust and love of the sea.

"You have no idea," he whispered, admitting softly the reserves of a soul too marred for him to claim as his own and the world could believe he didn't have one.

Beckett stared down Anna with no remorse in his eyes, having apparently decided that she wasn't worth the inevitable hit to his career, and he would rather claw his way to the top than put up with her. She stared back at her with a fire he found deplorable in women, and he couldn't help the condescending smirk that rose to his face.

"Advise your brethren, you can fight and all of you will die, or you can not fight in which case only most of you will die," he said with disdain, looking down on her and she knew it. She only smiled in response.

"And I wonder what my father will say," she said with contempt, watching as Beckett's eyes darkened and he looked like he might step forward. Might strike her across the face like he had dreamed of doing ever since he'd gotten word she'd gone back on their deal. Ever since his opportunity had closed in on itself.

"You have chosen your fate," he hissed, preparing the lie he would tell her grandfather, who cared for her enough to merit a lie. Her father would get the truth and he would probably rejoice in it, in knowing that his bastard child was no longer a problem. That any links to her mother were dead and gone and burned and no one would ever know. Would never know that their future king could be hung for his crimes.

"And so you have chosen yours. We will fight, and you will die," she promised, her eyes dark on the man before her. She turned, casting only a side glance at Jack and moving back with assured steps to the dingy, her shoulders tense as she felt the three stares boring into her back.

"King?" Will asked, once they were out of earshot and he was looking at her steadily, with trust.

"Pirate King of the Brethren Court. Thanks to Jack," she said with a soft sort of smile as they walked beneath the beating sun, bathing them in heat until she wished she could run into the waves to cool off.

"Maybe he does know what he's doing," Will said with a boyish grin and she knew he meant more than that. He meant his thanks and his appreciation for sticking by him when he wasn't even sure it would work. He was telling her everything he couldn't say with Barbossa next to them and a war ahead.

He was surprised when Anna grew softer beside him, as if reflecting on some deep reserve of her soul and he was getting the chance to see it. "I think this time he does," she whispered. Admitting something to Will she'd barely admitted to herself, something she wished she never had to consider. That Jack might betray her. Might be in it for his own ends and she only hoped that when the time came, she could work with what he gave her, and she could live on free and be close to him. "And that's what worries me."