Guys, I'd really appreciate it if you reviewed. I'm asking for five before I update again, and I honestly didn't think I would ask, since you guys asked for this installment, but I guess there's just been a lull in people's feedback. That's okay, I understand people are busy, so am I, but please? Also, there is an allusion to back story that I cannot wait to make good on, and Barbossa's human. Who knew?

-Han

"What's your play, Jack? Throwing your lot in with Barbossa an' Bonny?" Gibbs asked softly, keeping close to Jack as Jack kept close to Anna and they all strayed away from the approaching members of the HMS Providence, the crew Barbossa commanded, a former pirate leading the English on to fight his battles.

Jack grinned, wolfish and hungry in the darkness, the glow of soft fires reflecting in his eyes, the Spanish fort visible through the overlapping threads of the jungle, each piece slotting together in perfect, living cohesion, allowing the earth itself to breathe at a ruthless pace, uncaring for the men and women who walked the forest floor. Things moved fast, there, and didn't seem to move at all. But Jack thought that if you stood still enough, you might feel the ground swell and decompress, maybe even shift beneath your feet in the slow turn of the world into daylight.

"It should not surprise you that there is a girl. A female," he paused, his lips quirking up even further at the corners. "Of the opposite sex."

Anna frowned, chills crawling up her spine, Jack touching her shoulder but unable to feel the warmth his hand should instill in her. He wasn't looking at her, staring resolutely at Gibbs with the affections from only moments ago slipping off his skin like raindrops, on again off again. She couldn't keep up, tripping, falling. She didn't know where she would land, maybe in the shattered decay of her heart, the one she let be wrapped up and sweetened by the taste of Jack on her lips.

"When is there…not?" Gibbs asked hesitantly, flicking his eyes pointedly to Anna's carefully blank face, Jack's paramour, lover, friend, partner. She was always there, even when she wasn't, echoes of her smile trailing behind Jack on deck when she was below, whispers of Sparrow's drunken stumble wrapped up in her elegant movements as she climbed to the crow's nest to watch the sunrise alone. The echo of her was solidified, her body close to Jack's because he placed it there, they seemed to be feeding off of each other's warmth.

"Perhaps I should say…a damsel. One with a dire and completely relevant need?" Jack expanded, barely bothering to hush his voice as his eyes trailed from Gibbs to Barbossa and his crew, Bonny's stiff back as she inspected the far side of the camp. She still wasn't far enough away for his liking.

"You. Rescuing. A damsel?" Gibbs said it all slowly, sounding out each word as if they were foreign and tasted wrong on his tongue. Anna was stubbornly inspecting the brief glimpses of sky that could be seen through the canopy of jungle, trying to puzzle out the patterns in the stars. She thought of Angelica, and the desperate way she had looked at Jack, her Jack, the man she only claimed ownership to on the inside, where she could pretend she wasn't caging him. Where she could pretend that his moods didn't affect her and leave her bleeding and praying for another touch, another brush of skin because she was lost and he was supposed to be hers.

Jealousy was an emotion she was intimate with; years of wanting to keep Will by her side and watching him stumble after Elizabeth like she was the sun, years of wanting James to speak with her with informality and kind smiles and being denied it, months of following Jack and not understanding that she wanted so much more.

And so she did not deny the emotion curling in her stomach, wrapping its way around her veins and pulling tight, crawling up her skin until it was taught and uncomfortable, like she didn't fit inside of herself. She kept her eyes on the sky and didn't bother to pretend that Angelica and her deep eyes made her think of all the other times she was shoved to the side and wanted what she couldn't have.

"I take offense on the damsel's behalf. She has never needed rescuing," Jack replied promptly, gold caps and fondness. Gibbs laughed, from deep down in the center of his being and reminded himself that Jack was good, no matter what the black flag on the Pearl meant. That fondness only came for few, fewer still with the smile firmly in place and the warm look in his dark eyes.

Anna seemed to flinch from that laugh, the kind of full body shudder that brought Jack around, turning to face her fully for the first time in long, uncountable minutes, seconds slipping through his fingers like sand. His grin turned soft, and she thought of blue skies and the slow heat the sun could push into her skin by noon, making everything hazy and sweet.

"She just needs the expertise of one Captain Jack Sparrow to aid her in the destruction and or desecration of one sacred Fountain of Something or Other, I'm not quite sure, I haven't been paying attention."

She smiled, unwilling lips kicking up at the corners, her hand coming to brush over Jack's. "Had me frightened for a moment there," she tried to joke. It came out too real, raw vulnerability threading through her words. He rolled his eyes, pulling her closer until his lips pressed against her temple, not quite a kiss, only the whisper of a touch.

"Ye of little faith," he murmured against her skin, and that didn't sound joking either. It sounded sweet, gentle in ways Jack didn't like to be. She wondered where she had disappeared to, lost in the strange, broken pieces of her mind. Before the jungle, before Blackbeard and his stone-cold eyes, before Phillip and the mermaids and the Fountain, she would have played along with Jack, smiling and laughing and pushing him playfully. She would have known he was talking about her, before a Spanish woman's voice weaved its way into her thoughts and set her on edge. Anna would have known that Jack loved her, in his own way. She wouldn't have been desperate for his touch and his words and his smile, she wouldn't have been so afraid to lose him.

And that was what it was, striking her in the chest with the certainty of the thought. She wrapped an arm around him, suddenly needing the contact, needing the assurance that he was real and that this all hadn't been a twisted dream, a fantasy. The fear that gripped her soul was unnatural, bleeding into her movements and her thoughts until she was hesitant and meek, a chill creeping up the back of her neck, like the jungle was trying to tell her something.

"I feel as though I may lose you," she whispered softly, gratified that Gibbs had turned away from them, leaving them in the shadows of their hearts, and the certainty that the fight would drench their hands in blood. "I can't shake it."

He could have said anything, any number of equally warm words that would flow over her skin and almost console her, almost quiet the unrest beneath her skin, the fear that made her timid in the face of things she would have been bright in. Instead he said the only thing she needed, the truth that somehow managed to seep into her and make things easier to stomach. Because their lives were not stories told with set happy endings, no promise of tasting tomorrow, no watching gorgeous sunsets from the bow of the Pearl. Their lives were harsh, untamable as the sea, they had no certainty, no promises.

"I wouldn't leave you willingly."

"These days seem so much darker than the past," she whispered, trying again for a smile and finding it hard to reach, harder still to maintain. "I seem to have so much more to lose."

"Aye, I suppose we do," he agreed, a hand carding through her hair, pulling her face close to his until their foreheads touched, braced against each other and shuddering their way through the next few breaths. It was quiet, long enough for Anna to think Jack was done speaking. "I won't let you be lost, though." It sounded like a promise.

Her breath caught, stuck in her throat and uncomfortable, clawing its way back. She leaned forward, noses brushing, lips only a whisper away. She could smell the sea on his skin, could feel it as she trembled, trying to reign in the fear, the emotion, trying to turn herself back into the pirate Jack had fallen for.

"Stay close to me," she whispered, breathing the words against his lips and moving away again before she could close the distance, and walked towards Barbossa and Bonny. There was a pause, brief and encompassing, where Jack stood still, hands still raised to cup her neck. Over the hum of the ever-living jungle, she thought she might have heard him whisper Always.

It was spoken too softly for her to be sure.

Xx

"What do ye mean she's kin?" Barbossa hissed, fingers kneading the joining of flesh and wood, his eyes narrowed and harsh. The woman beside him glared, her face the perfect mask of a killer, one hardened by years spent consumed by revenge, the blood-boiling and heart-stuttering need to end a life. Anne Bonny was not unfamiliar to Barbossa, he himself had moved inside of the mist that enveloped her, had been part of a legend, a curse.

"You know exactly what I mean," Bonny spat, her lip curling in distaste. Her features used to be feminine, used to be beautiful. Barbossa could faintly recall a time when her eyes seemed to shine and her cupid's bow lips curled up at the corners and her skin reminded him of sunlight. Those days were gone.

The sickness of revenge had eaten away at her. Scars overlapping scars trailing their way across her body, marking her irrevocably in the name of the retribution she chased. The lines around her eyes were etched in like the deepest chasms at the bottom of the ocean. Her lips were drawn, tight and unyielding, and Barbossa wondered if she had forgotten how to smile, if her face no longer knew how to mimic the pull of muscles. But her eyes, they had changed the most.

They didn't look like the sea anymore.

"This does not bode well," he murmured, his free hand brushing against the sword kept at his side as if to anchor himself, the other massaging hypnotic circles into his skin. "The fates do not bring estranged mother and daughter together for naught. Especially beneath the shadow of our greatest enemy. No, this does not bode well at all." His voice was subdued, swimming with the foreboding truth witches and soothsayers spoke with.

"You can't tell her," Anne whispered, the softness in her voice making Barbossa's head snap up, eyes narrowed. Her face was earnest, more human than the man could ever recall seeing, since her lover and her friend had died with voices screaming for her help.

"Do you expect her to live forever without knowing?" He asked, trying to keep the judgment from his voice, but too many men who sailed the sea lived without even a whisper of love, a parents smile and a brotherly slap on the back. He had.

No one else should.

"I expect to keep her safe, to keep her happy with that Captain Sparrow," Anne answered quietly, her eyes flicking from the soft fires of the Spanish fort to the huddled crewmen behind them, where her daughter rested at the back of the crowd in almost total darkness. "If she would know, she would follow."

"What makes ye say that?" Barbossa asked, following her gaze. They didn't have much longer to talk, Jack and Anna already slowly making their way towards the front of the group, ready for the part they were to play.

"It's what I would do," Bonny replied, her eyes finding interest in the ground. A moment of silence between them seemed to breathe with a life of its own, swelling up between them until the tension made them feel ready to break, suddenly snap on the exhale and be left without enough air to draw into their lungs.

"You don't know her so well as you may think," he said finally, standing straighter in the darkness, not meeting the pirate Captain's eyes.

Anna reached him, her eyes shining with some strange new knowledge, a flush coloring her cheeks. She seemed happier than she had only moments before, as if a sea of doubt and sadness had been swept away. Jack was only a moment behind, a calm contentment in the way he moved, gracefully settling beside her as Groves and Gibbs joined their small group.

"Stealth over force," Jack whispered, dark, cunning eyes casting over the breadth of the camp, searching for weaknesses in the nearly impregnable defenses. "We'll take it from here on account of your condition. You don't have termites, do you?" He asked suddenly, staring blatantly at the peg leg.

"I appreciate your concern, Jack, but I'll be keepin' you company, all the same," Barbossa said flatly, and Jack thought he could almost see a flash of the pirate he used to know. He grinned, bowing gallantly as to allow Barbossa the first move. Bonny stared hollowly between the two, resolutely refusing to look at the young woman to the right of Jack.

"Will you be accompanying us as well, Captain Bonny?" Anna asked, drawing together blue gazes, the sea meeting a wall of desperation and barely-held together sanity. Jack shook his head before Bonny could open her mouth, cutting in with a smooth, practiced polish.

"One more person and we'll be lucky to take half a step without being caught," he said gently, his dark eyes indescribably indulgent as they landed on Anna. She nodded, casting a small wave in Bonny's direction before moving soundlessly after Jack.

"Hold here, Lieutenant Commander. Wait for my signal," Barbossa commanded Groves quietly before stalking off after the two pirates.

Bonny watched them go with a regret in her chest she didn't fully understand, her aging body felt tired, run down under the force of emotions she'd long thought she'd gotten rid of. She wondered, suddenly, what Anna had been like as a child, all bright and barely-withheld curiosity as she watched the flow of life in London from her bedroom window. She wondered if George had been cruel to her, if the dangerous smirk he had turned on her in the prison cells had been directed at their daughter over the years.

Anne wondered if her daughter had been loved.

"She is much happier now than she was," Groves said softly, his young face crumpled in thought as they watched the three disappear into the arms of darkness. "Ever since she met Jack."

"You knew her before?" Bonny asked, unable to stop herself, turning to face Grove's calm green eyes. He nodded, back straightening and gaze growing far away.

"I was stationed in Port Royal under James Norrington's command; they had been acquaintances, and I'd met her on several occasions," he paused, growing thoughtful. "She never seemed at home, gazing at the sea like she needed to be somewhere else, never really seeing the people around her. She's changed, battles and wars do that to any person, but it is something beyond that, I think.

I have had the misfortune to fight on the wrong side, Miss Bonny, but Annabelle is unyielding in that respect, she follows what is right. And that Jack Sparrow…together, they're the best pirates I've ever seen." He smiled, the first she'd seen the man wear, and he seemed so young, probably no more than Anna's age.

"Will you turn away from the Navy, then?" Bonny asked, brow raised, smirk on the edges of her lips. She'd seen many men with that look in their eyes, longing for the life another led, longing for true freedom, for the sea, unrestrained. Piracy was a call some men could only resist for so long.

His lips pursed, mind casting back to his years on the ocean, watching the ship cut through waves higher than himself, high enough to blend with the dark clouds above him, rocking him to his core and he could never stop smiling, breathing in the smell of salt and lightning. How he had wanted to jump over and the sea have power over his body, to take him and pull, twist, push, batter him until he couldn't remember which way was up. How he thought he would be okay, perfect even, because he trusted the will of the ocean above anything else, above even his God.

"If the currents take me there."

Xx

The Spanish fort was elegant in a way Anna had not expected, each tent carefully drawn and unique on the inside, decorated with the flicker of candles and worn leather, cherry wood with carefully carved stories winding their way across each piece of furniture. Flashes of steel in the firelight revealed a rack of swords near the back of the encampment, the craftsmanship almost tangible in the air surrounding the deadly weapons.

Dark-eyed men stalked the perimeter of the camp with cat-like gaits, feline strength embedded in their muscles, in their very bones as they flowed elegantly from one step to the next, heading towards the largest tent, where four men sat crouched over a detailed map, ringed hands running across the paper.

A moment passed, with the three of them breathing as quietly as they could with backs pressed against thick trees, and a tall, refined Spanish Officer exited the tent, his perfectly curled hair cascading down around his shoulders and his chin tipped up towards the sky. He was handsome, Anna thought belatedly, angular face and pouty lips set in a grim line.

"There, that one. That be the leader," Barbossa hissed, crawling closer to them, sword leading his way. "Make note of his tent, because that's where- by God. That must be them."

The Chalices, two remotely unimpressive silver cups, sat side by side on a long wooden table, their battered shells shown dully in the soft light as a man grasped one and began to polish it systematically, with slow and careful fingers. Barbossa watched them like they were the Cups of Christ himself, split and made smaller and submerged in the silver waters of the Fountain of Youth to stain what once was gold.

"Your sword smells…funny," Jack whispered, sniffing lightly at the line of gleaming steel held just in front of his face. Anna shot him a confused look, taking a delicate breath of her own, wrinkling her nose when she found him right. They turned to Barbossa with incredulous looks, identical in their raised brows and shining eyes.

"Aye. Poison. From the innards of poisonous toads. Just a scratch, and you're a dead man in minutes," Barbossa hissed with a twisted glee in his voice, happy, ecstatic even, to wield a weapon of such destruction. Anna scooted back slightly, mud dragging across her pants and dirtying her hands.

"Would you mind pointing that the other way?" Jack asked tightly, watching the sword as if it would turn and bite him, swallowing carefully. He told himself that his hands didn't shake with the sudden onslaught of ominous fear that washed through him, told himself that nothing could hurt him, he was okay. He was okay.

"I don't like toads," Anna whispered, her voice a breathy sigh in his ear that might have made him feel better, if the sound of it wasn't tinged with the same foreboding as his own.

Barbossa stood, shakily allowing the numb weight of his wooden leg take half of his weight as he scanned the camp with the quick eyes of a predator, shifting his sword to face away from them. He leaned heavily on the wooden crutch he'd been carrying with him since Blackbeard had stolen his right limb, and cursed its cumbersome maneuvering.

"What are you doing?" Jack asked, scrambling to stand beside him, trying to follow the older man's gaze with a barely with-held anxiety that Barbossa didn't seem to feel. But there was something about that sword that made him feel small and clumsily large at the same time, like he would take one step and impale himself on it and lay twitching in the dirt for the next two and a half minutes. Or worse, Anna would.

"Planning an escape route. Isn't that how you do it?" Barbossa asked suddenly, turning the face the man who was Captain first, then enemy, then ally. He didn't know where they stood now, a woman with eyes like the sea standing between them. Anna covered her mouth to suppress her chuckle, praying that it didn't carry in the darkness.

"If you knew how he did it, he would do it differently," she whispered, as if the answer was obvious, as if she had just looked up and plucked it from the fabric of stars over their head. Maybe she had.

"Sometimes I just…improvise," Jack added lightly, already running off in that odd way of his, strange elegance to his flailing limbs and straight back, and some part of Barbossa wished he could imitate that, if only to feel the brush of wet grass against his right leg, the indescribable feeling of standing balanced and even and sure that your legs could take the weight. So much had changed, but something about Jack always stayed the same.

Anna took up her position quietly, not bothering to respond to the look of astonishment on Barbossa's face as she dropped to her knees on the far side of the table without being told to do so. She'd spent enough time around Jack to learn when to just go with your instincts and pray he was thinking the same thing you were. When she heard the distinct whisper of metal over fabric and saw Jack twitch away from his position on the other side of the table, Chalice in hand, she made her move.

The man above her sat still, polishing rag in hand and staring at the place the second Chalice should have been, wide-eyed despair worming its way into his mind. Anna snatched the neglected second cup and scrambled back as silently as she could, wincing at every shuffle of fabric around her body.

The Spaniard turned around; nothing there, both Chalices gone. He stood up, chair falling back with a dull thump and his mouth open and ready to shout out an alarm that would rival the screaming voices of angels.

Barbossa promptly swung his crutch at the back of his head, sending the man sprawling on the floor of the tent, eyes rolled up in the back of his head and body limp and boneless. A grim smile spread across his lips, and for a moment he was thankful for the awkward support, the only thing that kept him walking steadily through the uneven ground of the jungle.

"Now what?" he asked quietly, watching Jack and Anna stand up slowly and move beside each other, staring at the Chalices in their hands as if examining the value of human life itself, running the weight and feeling the heavy promise of eternity.

"We stroll out, slow and steady," Jack said confidently, shoulders back and chest out in the mock impersonation of the soldier Jack could never be. Anna smiled, looping her Chalice in on the many half-charred pieces of rope and broken jewelry to keep it attached to her hip, and laid a casual hand on the hilt of her sword.

"Just like we belong," she added, already walking steadily towards the mouth of the tent, allowing the fires to wash her with a welcome dry warmth that was so different from the humidity of the jungle air. She suddenly wondered what month it was; time seeming to stretch on infinitely and not passing at all when she was at sea. How much time had passed?

Barbossa and Jack followed her with the same cautious military grace that had been drilled into the men surrounding them, trying to copy their mannerisms with only cursory glances. Anna suddenly remembered her father and the way she was forced to walk back and forth down long hallways until the sun went down with her back so straight it hurt.

Jack thought of the EITC, and the time between being his father's son and being a real pirate. He still hadn't told Anna about that, about the way he watched the Pearl (formerly the Wicked Wench) sink beneath the waves and Becket laughing, the only time he'd seen the man laugh. That was back when Jack knew how to walk like a military man. But he'd forgotten that amidst the waves and the call of the sea. And Anna didn't know any of that yet, hadn't even known why he'd sold his soul to Davy Jones, desperate and broken and needing his ship back so badly everything had hurt. He promised himself to tell her. To tell her everything.

Barbossa wasn't thinking of anything except the dead look in Blackbeard's eyes, the one he would drive home again and again as his sword passed through a ribcage and into the black void where a heart should exist. Revenge tasted sweet on his tongue, and he could see how Bonny would be lost in it, forgetting the little girl she'd left behind and the life she might have lived.

They made it exactly twenty six steps from the tent before Jack saluted a passing soldier and a sword was drawn. Anna had counted. Suddenly there was a clash of steel and Jack was dancing in his own way, bending with the wind and flowing like water and twisting his wrist in a flourish that left the Spanish man stumbling and trying to recover and pushing back as hard as he could.

Anna didn't have time to help, surrounded and fighting her own battles, trying to reach the calm she needed to make her movements effortless. A spark inside her chest ignited and she was seamless, back to back to back with Jack and Barbossa, cutting their way through to the other side of the camp, where the rest were waiting too far out of sight to see them.

Her heart pounded in her ears as she twisted, narrowly avoiding the swift and well-aimed slice to her abdomen. Another man was there to stop the movement fully, and she barely met his blade with her own, teeth gritted against the pressure as he pushed down against her. The heel of her boot dug into his foot, weakening him long enough to shove back, watch him tumble into three other men. More came where they left.

"Jack," Anna voiced thinly, starting to wear with each vicious jab towards her body. Her eyes strained to meet Jack's, taking a moment to cut upwards into a thick man's chest, scraping through his heavy shirt and drawing a straight red line from his sternum to the hollow of his throat. He might have screamed; she didn't really hear anything.

She finally met Jack's gaze, flicking a moment later to Barbossa and hoping he understood. He did. As one, the pirates sheathed their swords and ran, needing no confirmation, no other words. Dirt kicked up beneath their boots, stumbling and tripping over the rough ground and keeping hands on their weapons.

Surrounded. Again.

They didn't even have time to draw their weapons before men crowded in around them on all sides, a wall of flesh and steel that not even they could pass through. Anna looked at Jack, he at her. Their hands raised unwillingly, palms facing the stony-faced soldiers. She gave a shaky smile, one that ran off of adrenaline and the weight of the Chalice at her side.

"Parlay?"