Months passed, and the initial heartbreak and loss of purpose passed with them. The first few days had been challenging, but she had made it through them.
She had never before been grateful that she had only been moderately attractive before the her adventures on the sea. However, now that she was alone in Tortuga and spending her nights in brothels, she found it to be helpful.
Cass barely remembered what she had looked like before. Sometimes, when she tried to remember, she could picture flashes of sun-darkened skin and dark hair. She imagined she looked something like what the rest of the women she saw looked like: hair piled in a mass that mocked the intricacy of the hairstyle of noblewomen and figures that spoke of little physical labor.
Now she was riddled with scars, and had grown thinner and more muscular as a result of her time aboard the Dutchman. Her hair had grown longer while she was on land, and, as she had not had an immediate need to cut it back, she had not done so.
She kept to the backs of the pubs she visited, watching the crowds and nursing a bottle of rum. For the first few days she had kept herself drunk enough that she couldn't think (or remember) if she tried. Everything was a blur, and that was the way she needed it to be.
As the weeks passed, she slowly reduced her intake until she was sober most of the day.
Life had been challenging for Cass. For so long her sole purpose had been to get to Jones, to free Jones. Now that Jones no longer needed freeing, and she had no wish to be around him any longer, she had to figure out what it was that she wanted to do.
Her experiences on the Pearl and the Dutchman had turned her into a creature of a single mind, bred to fight and win and never surrender. She no longer had that, and she was so terribly lost.
She had realized one day that she hardly knew who she was. The madness had been all-encompassing, leaving no room for anything else.
Cass had spent her third month re-learning what it meant to be Cass. It had worked, to an extent. She visited old friends whose names she had nearly forgotten. She listened as sailors told stories about the fall of the East India T raiding Company. She learned that her favorite color was blue, and that sitting on a cliff edge a good distance from the town offered a nice view of the sea and was occasionally better than rum.
She loved the sea, though never went near it out of worry she would be found.
Eventually Cass decided she ought to learn to read, and attempted to find someone who could teach her.
It had not gone well, and she eventually decided it was not worth the trouble. She had become a terrible introvert.
One night she had seen a man who looked entirely too familiar, and had fled the brothel. It was not that she was afraid of Jones; the fearlessness, in fact, had stuck with her. It was simply that she did not want to be pulled back to a dependence on him for purpose in life.
When she had reached the dock, however, she did not see the ship she had left him on. It must not have been him, she decided. Why would he come ashore now that he had his goddess back? She truly needed to remember reason once again.
She walked among the ships a while longer, remembering what it had been like all those years ago, walking along the same dock and looking at ships that were not so different from these. It was sad, in a way, how that memory hurt so much less than others that she kept burred in her mind.
Cass turned around and strode back to the brothel and bottle she had left, not noticing the ship pulling into the dock not far from where she had just been.
/
Barbossa stepped onto the dock at long last. He had hoped that while he had been playing Privateer, his crew would have at least gained some intellect.
It had not happened.
It was good to be back, though. He enjoyed not having to answer to anyone any longer. The amount of ass-kissing he had to do in order to even get a ship had been painful, and had worn down his pride.
As the crew squabbled among themselves over who would stay and watch the ship, he walked to his preferred brothel and procured a bottle of rum. The sounds of drunken fighting and laughing were welcome to his ears. As a privateer, he had been able to dock at most ports. Tortuga was not included for obvious reasons.
When he had first set out for Tortuga after the ordeal with the Fountain, he had no idea what he planned to do. Not that the crew needed to know that. He would not have another Bootstrap Bill incident.
However, being the captain of the Revenge did have benefits. He could hang any of them with a swing of his sword. The ship obeyed his command. He wondered to what extent he could sail without a crew. While that would remove the problem of having those of low intelligence surrounding him, he would not have a fighting force when he needed it. Given that Sparrow was still alive, and they were on uncertain terms, he had no doubt he would need one.
Especially if his suspicions as to what Cassandra was doing were true.
While he did not care for the wench at all, he had to admire her loyalty and her surprising ability to continue living. She was nearly as bad as Sparrow.
Barbossa found a nice spot in the back of the brothel and sat back to watch the madness.
He watched as a man stumbled drunkenly into another, who promptly bashed him over the head with the butt of his pistol. This caused the first man to stumble into a wench attempting to seduce yet another drunk man so she fell on top of her target in a way that was clearly not intentional. Barbossa snorted as the fight unfolded into a brawl as more and more people were drawn in.
It was all enjoyable to watch until someone who could hold their own got angry. Which apparently happened, because the next minute bullets were flying and someone was flying about the room fighting seemingly everyone at once.
Whoever they were, they made short work of anyone that dared face them.
But as soon as the fight had started, it stopped, and everyone who was not laying wounded on the ground got back to their drinks. Barbossa decided that he ought to speak to whoever had been fighting so impressively and persuade them to join his crew.
He found them sitting in the back amongst the shadows with a bottle, much the same as he had been not moments before.
"Ye fight as if ye were taught by Davy Jones himself," he said.
The man (and he assumed it was a man, because no woman could fight like that) did not even look at him.
"Oi, ye!" he yelled, trying and failing to get the man's attention. "Are ye deaf?"
"Of course I can," he said quietly. And suddenly there was a sword at his throat. "Ye were yellin'"
Barbossa felt he ought to know that voice, cold and raspy as it was. He couldn't place where he knew it from, and the man still would not face him. "Who are ye," he asked.
"I had hoped ye would not see me here, Captain Barbossa," he said, drawing out his name in a way that was not pleasant at all. "But hopes are not something to put money on, are they?"
"And yet again, I ask who are ye?" He was becoming a bit irritated. "Ye obviously know who I be, so kindly return the favor."
The man chuckled. "I'm not the one with a blade to my throat, am I?" But the sword was removed a second later. "Sit. Sit if you must."
Barbossa had no idea what this strange man was playing at, but sat across from him anyway.
It was then that the man looked at him in the face for the first time, and he knew where he knew the voice from.
"Ye said I fight like Jones taught me. Tha's close enough, I suppose," said Cassandra.
"Ye," said Barbossa. "Yer supposed to be off doing what ye shouldn't."
"I'm also supposed to be dead, and in some cases, part of the sea itself. Depends on who ye listen to. But good to see you still have your vision, even if you don't have your leg."
"Time has not improved ye any, Cassandra."
"Did you expect it to?" She was most certainly laughing at him, behind that calm facade. Cassandra was never calm.
"Nay." He looked closer at her face, and saw that it had become more sunken and her eyes underlined with dark circles. Time had not treated her well at all. "Did Jones toss ye the moment yeh brough' 'im back?"
She sighed and took a long drink from her bottle. "Maybe."
Barbossa tried not to laugh. She was clearly still dangerous, and would likely try to kill him if he did. "And ye just let 'im? Doesn't sound like ye, Cass."
"Didn' have much of a choice, did I?" She took another drink. "Besides, time has passed. No idea how much. Doesn' matter now, does it?"
Maybe he could recruit her after all. "Ye miss the sea, don't ye?"
Her long sigh was all the answer he needed. "Join me crew, sail the seas once again. Under my command, of course."
"Calypso is still out there. She'll sink your ship." It did not go unnoticed that her answer had not been no. She must be desperate.
"The Revenge is not a normal ship, lass. And Calypso can be bound. Again."
He could hear her scowl and condemnation in her next words. "Which would not have to be done if she had not been released in the first place." Was she still mad enough not to see the necessity of Calypso's release? Perhaps she had not assisted them directly, but the maelstrom had allowed them to take the Dutchman. And they most certainly would not have won if they did not have the Dutchman.
"What's done is done," he replied. "And the Brethren Court will not convene unless she becomes too much of a nuisance. Which I am sure you can make her become."
"My very existence does that, it seems. Very well, I will join your crew."
Barbossa smiled wickedly. "Welcome back, Cassandra."
Cass just downed the rest of her rum. "I am going to need a lot more of that," she said tiredly. "And a hat. I want a hat."
/
Davy Jones had tried to sail the ship he had been left on, but try as he might, the sea would not bend to his will. That was most likely because the goddess of the sea would not allow him to leave. He found this irritating to no end, and had no problem letting said sea goddess know.
Some days she would appear to him and attempt to gain his favor. It never worked, and only ever ended in him bellowing his anger to the wind.
She had threated to return him to his previous fishy self, had threatened to sink his ship and claim him once again. She had done neither, and he wondered often why she held back. Perhaps she wanted him to choose her once again.
But he would not, not after what had been done to Cass. His Cass. But she wasn't his Cass any longer, was she? Calypso had seen to that.
He found himself cursing her name aloud again, the ever present howling winds muffling his yells.
Jones eventually lost track of how long he had been afloat on this miserable ship. He lost track of how many times he had tossed his locket over the railing only for it to appear in front of him moments later. He had since stopped trying to rid himself of the infernal thing.
Oftentimes he found himself wondering what Cass would be doing at this moment in time. He assumed that Calypso would brag if she had managed to kill the lass, and since she had not done so, he thought she must be on land. Safe.
But also out of reach. And this time, she was not coming to save him. He would have to find her this time, and try as he might, he could not make the insipid ship move.
Then, one day, Calypso appeared again, a grin upon her face that he did not like at all.
"What is it this time," he growled, hoping against all hope she would just leave him once again.
"The wench of yours is back in my grasp. Wouldn't you like to hear?"
Of course the only thing that would cause her to smile in such a way would be this. "Did ye kill her?"
"Not yet." Wasn't that a surprise.
"Whyever not," he asked, his tone rich with false interest.
"You," she said, pointing at him. "Are boring. All you do is mope about. Little Cassandra, on the other hand..." She circled him, trailing a delicate hand over his shoulder and up to cup his face. "She knows I am coming. She knows and will try to protect herself. But she cannot, and neither can the pirates she travels with."
What did she think she was doing, returning to the sea? Did she not know the danger she faced?
Or had she simply gotten tired of land, and hoped Calypso had tired of her?
What would she do, now that the goddess chased her once more?
"Don't you want to know his name?"
"Whose name?" He wondered if she had moved on that fast. Or was Calypso just taunting him again?
"The one she travels with now. She did stay on land a while. It must have taken some convincing," and the way she said 'convincing' was so lascivious he had to fight not to go for her throat. "..To get her to return to the sea. But everyone and everything returns to me eventually, don't they? You would know better than most."
His jaw clenched. He tried to remind himself that Cass wouldn't do anything like that, but he could not. Images of scantily clad Cassandras and pirates without faces paraded about his mind, and he knew Calypso must know this.
She grinned all the more brightly at his expression. "She left you behind long ago."
And Jones was now confronted with a choice. He could believe Calypso, or he could remember Cassandra the way she deserved. And he could try and bring her back.
A plan formed in his mind, and he grinned back at the sea goddess. "She has a habit of coming back."