Author's Note: Please don't hate me.

Ash avoided Jack as much as she could that day. But she still had to bring him his meals, and when she did, he took his chance to talk to her.

"Look lad, if it makes you feel any better, I wasn't expecting that either," he told her, "I've never wanted to show that much affection to another man. Never expected to be that sort of person..."

"Please, captain, let's not talk about it," she replied tensely.

"We have to. I don't want to take advantage of you."

Ash halted what she was doing and stared at him. Seeing her look, he continued.

"Me being a very experienced man in the bedroom, you having no such experience. Me being a captain, you my crew."

Ash made a face.

"There's an easy solution to that. We just pretend it never happened. You're my captain, nothing more."

"I scared you, didn't I?"

Damn right. But not for the reasons he thought. She didn't answer him, didn't move, barely dared to breathe.

"Well, I'm not going to apologize for what I did, if that's what you want," he went on, "Because I liked it. I think you did too. Rose was right, you do feel soft."

Ash could feel her cheeks turn bright red, and she thought she would pass out from both terror and embarrassment.

"Stop," she said, then added, "Please."

He held up his hands.

"Alright. I will, for now. But this isn't over, lad."

Standing, he drew his sword, and she only looked at him. Once again, he seemed to know exactly what she was thinking without a word being spoken.

"I've neglected your lessons recently," he said, "My fault. I blamed you for that fire and I shouldn't have, I let my anger get the best of me. I'm going to make up for that now though, so come on."

Awkwardly, Ash stood and drew her own blade. But the lesson was good for her. She calmed down, and could focus only on what she was doing, not what she was feeling for him or him for her, or the fact that he thought he was attracted to a man when he wasn't, because she was lying to him. By the end of the lesson, she was sweaty and tired, but she felt better than she had in a long time. It was like a huge weight had been lifted off her chest. Humming to herself, she went to wash below decks, then sat on a crate on deck as she took care of her injuries. Jahir noticed her burned arm as she was re applying the burn cream to it and bandaging it up.

"Doesn't dat still hurt, captain my captain?"

"Oh aye, hurts like the fires of hell touched my skin," she replied, "But I try to ignore it as much as I can."

The big black man shook his bald head, stunned.

"I an' I seen men dat got burned cry," he told her.

"That's odd, I always thought I was a big baby when it came to pain," she said, "Strange to think I'm doing better than most grown men onboard."

She stood and went below deck to start on lunch. Throughout the day, she felt Jack's eyes on her, and did her best to ignore it. She wished he would stop staring at her though, what happened with John was bad enough. What if his constant staring brought more crewmen to think badly of her? She went to bed that night with an uneasy feeling, sure that Jack would want to continue their earlier talk. Ash had no way of knowing he had been waiting for her to fall asleep since the kiss that morning. She didn't know, didn't hear him sneak into her room that night, silent as a cat.

He looked around the room, finding almost nothing amiss. Except... was that a corset lying on the small table in the corner? Looking back over at the sleeping cook, he stepped slowly over to the hammock and brushed one hand light as a feather over the lad's chest area. But no lad had such an ample chest, and he noticed the nipple of the small mound he brushed grow harder at his light touch.

Ash muttered something in her sleep and shifted, and Jack ducked down to the deck fast. When nothing further occurred, he slowly raised himself up so that just his eyes showed above the sleeping body in front of him. His eyes narrowed as he felt betrayal flood his veins. His expression dark, he stood to his full height, now glaring down at the cook, then after a second, he turned and left the room. He would deal with this later.

When Ash woke, she felt unusually calm. She removed her shirt to put her corset on, flattening her chest, then put her shirt back on, pulled on her boots and weapons. Breakfast with the crew went as it usually did, and then she brought Jack's tray up to him. She felt his energy had shifted from the previous day. He was quiet, not hangover quiet, and not the stony silence she had felt for the last week. This was a different quiet that raised the small hairs on the back of her arms and neck. The stony silence from before made her insides squirm, but this, whatever it was, was ten times worse.

"Is everything alright, captain?" she asked nervously.

"Why do you ask?" he said calmly, starting to eat.

Ash didn't know what to say. Had he forgotten the incident with the mermaids? He had to know she was sensitive to strange vibes and could feel his emotions were off.

"I can tell something is wrong," she said slowly.

"How? What makes you so sure?"

Ash opened her mouth to say she knew him, but then closed it again, biting her lower lip. There was a bond between them, as much as she hated to admit it. She didn't feel the same connection with the rest of the crew, after all, but she wasn't exactly sure what it was between them. Was he angry that she wanted to pretend it didn't exist?

"Look, I – I just need some time," she said, feeling her palms start to sweat.

When all he did was nod in silence, Ash decided she had better leave and let him eat his breakfast. She spent the morning and all of lunch prep thinking over the situation. How could he change overnight like this? Yesterday he said he didn't want to take advantage of her, but now she felt an overwhelming pressure to accept his feelings, as if he was telling her without words that he would hold her refusal against her forever. But no, Jack wasn't that sort of man. There had to be something else. She served the crew lunch and scarfed down her own food before taking Jack his second tray of the day. Everything was pushed against the walls as usual, and she wandered the room while he ate, noticing at some point she didn't feel him watching her. She should have taken heed of the strange vibes she had been getting all day.

He was different during sword practice that day, hardly speaking a word, instead of instructing thoroughly as he usually did. Ash was about to ask him again what was wrong with him today, when he suddenly knocked her sword out of her hand and slashed the tip of his sword straight down the middle of her body. Ash was so startled by his sudden ferocious movement that she went stock still, which ensured she didn't get cut when he sliced at her. But something did. She heard her shirt rip, then felt a loosening around her body and belatedly realized her corset had been cut down the middle and fell away to land on the deck. Ash drew the halves of her shirt around her, but it was a second too late, her brain had gone blank with shock when he moved to cut at her. And now he had seen what she'd been hiding all this time. To her surprise, he didn't say anything, he didn't move. He just stood there looking at her in a sort of grim satisfaction mixed with bitterness. Slowly, she realized how deliberate he had been in the attack. It wasn't an accident. And he wasn't exclaiming in surprise now.

"How long have you known?" she asked, breaking the terrible silence that had built up over what seemed an eternity, but had likely been less then ten seconds.

Ash thought she had seen him angry before this. But all that paled in comparison to the fire raging in his eyes now, and in his voice, she could tell he was fighting for control of his rage.

"The better question is why haven't I known from the start?"

She licked suddenly dry lips, trying to formulate an appropriate response in her mind. She had a reason, but she struggled to find a way to present it to him. He had little patience to wait for a response, however.

"You lied to me!" he shouted, "I trusted you! And this whole time... blast it, I thought – I thought you were a man! I thought I..."

Damn it. He thought he had been attracted to a man. She had never meant for her disguise to go this far. He must have thought she had deliberately seduced him, to make a fool of him. But she couldn't find the words to tell him this wasn't the case at all, she barely understood how they had gotten so close to one another, and still didn't know what exactly it was between them.

"I'm sorry..." was all she could manage to get out.

Jack snorted, fury, betrayal, and bitterness in his eyes.

"Sorry?" he repeated, mockingly, "Well that isn't going to be enough this time."

Ash felt like she had been hit in the head with a frying pan, her mind was scrambled and felt light, like she was floating. She had never felt so dazed, stunned, confused in her life. It made it impossible to realize what he was doing now, impossible to stop him. Numbly, she slowly came to the revelation that he was taking her weapons from her. Her rifle, her hidden daggers, even her empty scabbard, until she was left with nothing but her pants, boots, and torn shirt. Then he grabbed her by the arm, hard enough that she was sure her pale soft skin would be bruised later, and the pain woke her up, brought her out of the under water feeling she had been immersed in until now. He began dragging her out of his quarters, and she dug her heels into the deck trying to stop him as protests spilled out of her mouth. But nothing she said or did could stop him, she couldn't match his strength in a thousand years.

"Jack, stop!" she shouted, struggling fruitlessly against his iron grip, "Please, wait!"

Her loud protests were drawing the attention of the crew, and they were slowly coming over to meet the two. Jack threw her to the closest two crewmen, who caught her with no small amount of surprise.

"Tie this one to the mast," he ordered, his voice cold as frost.

Ash was panicked before, but seeing the pity in the eyes of Carver and Gunnar made her blood turn to ice with a fear that she had never felt before.

"No," she protested, without fully comprehending what it was that was about to happen, "No, wait, please. Don't!"

"I'm sorry," Carver told her softly, working with Gunnar to tie her hands up and secure them to the mast so that her arms were stretched above her head.

Ash glanced over her shoulder at Jack as she heard a sound she'd never heard before. She then saw something she had never seen before, but she could guess what it was. He was going to whip her. Jahir came up behind everyone else, and when he saw what was going on, he started forward.

"Jahir, no!" she screamed at him.

She didn't want him to get hurt too. Jack pointed one finger at the big man.

"Restrain him," he commanded.

It took more than half of the crew to enforce his order, but soon Jahir was confined by the hands of more than six of the men they had lived and worked with for months on end. Ash realized she was trembling, and rested her forehead against the mast as she heard the whip being uncoiled behind her. At this point, she realized there was nothing she could say. Jack was determined that this time, she had made an offense that could not go unpunished. She would have to endure it the best she could. Closing her eyes, she waited.

The first strike caught her by surprise. She almost didn't feel it, but the pain hit her a few seconds later, as if coming from far away. The second strike ripped the back of her shirt open. She was breathless for the third and so she didn't make a sound, but the fourth one made her grunt dully with the pain. The fifth got her to whimper like a wounded animal, which she was, sort of. Ash lost count after that, lost track. She became senseless with the pain that was suddenly very up close and personal, and screamed until she had no voice left. Once she was hoarse from screaming her lungs out, she settled into a relentless sobbing that was so intense, it shook her entire body. The pain in her heart was now more than she could bear, it was worse than the fire across her back. She wanted Jack to whip her harder, to hurt her more, to distract her from the agony in her chest. It didn't even register with her when he stopped, she didn't hear him order for her to be untied and thrown in the brig, she didn't feel herself being taken below deck or Jahir's hollering as he was dragged down with her.

Ash felt her knees strike the hard boards of the deck beneath her as the crew threw her in one of the cells, and her torso fell onto a wooden bench. Folding her arms and putting her face into them, she continued crying. As much as she tried to stop, the tears kept flowing. There was nothing she could do to stop herself. She felt and heard Jahir sit on the deck next to her, but she couldn't lift her head or acknowledge him in any way. He didn't seem to expect her to do so or require her to, anyway. He simply sat next to her, silent and comforting, and let her cry until she passed out. When she woke, she was face down across his lap, her cheek against his thigh. Ash made a grumbling noise deep in her throat and started to move, but he stopped her.

"Don't move, captain my captain. You are injured."

Ash groaned and went still as she became aware of the way her back felt.

"Why are you shirtless?" she asked.

"Gunnar came by after you went out of it. He gave a bottle of rum, said not to let Sparrow see it. I an' I used it to clean your wounds, then I an' I used me own shirt to bandage you. Your shirt is useless now, by the way."

"Figures," she muttered, "How many times did he whip me?"

"I an' I was not counting."

"Well, I was. At first."

There was a long silence after that. Ash felt numb, like someone had scooped out her insides with a spoon. The only way she knew she had some sense of feeling now was the dull pain on her back. She slept again, and when she woke there was food nearby. Jahir tried to get her to eat, he even held the food to her lips with his own hand, but she wouldn't take it.

"I'm not hungry," she said, her voice sounding flat and emotionless even to her own ears.

And she wasn't. Her stomach wasn't growling, she had no desire to eat. She had no idea how much time passed, and she tried to sleep as much as possible, because when she was awake Jahir pestered her about eating. She was pretty sure he worked on her back as much as he could with limited supplies while she was unconscious, and she was aware of the irony of being the one being taken care of for once, but she never thanked him. Somewhere deep inside her, she didn't really want his help. For once, she wished he would just leave her alone, let her rot and die. But he didn't. He persisted with a stubbornness that convinced her they were related by blood in spite of their completely opposite skin colors.

"Please, captain my captain," he pleaded at last, "I an' I know you are hurting, but you must eat."

"Of course I'm hurting," she responded dully, "Anyone would be after being whipped bloody."

"Dat's not what I an' I mean, and you know it. I an' I never seen you cry before, not for any pain. Not of the body, anyway. He hurt your heart, captain my captain, not just your back."

"Shut up," she told him, without any force behind it.

But he did shut up none the less. She calculated she had gone for days without food, before she gave into her growling stomach and ate just enough to stop the feeling. Jahir sighed, exasperated at how little she consumed, but he didn't press her any further. After what seemed like years, she felt the ship stop moving. Well, it still swayed and rocked with the movement of the waves, but it felt like the ship was docked. After a while, Gunnar came to the brig and unlocked the cell.

"Can you walk?" he asked Ash gruffly.

She guessed he was feeling awkward over the recent turn of events. She had saved all their lives on more than one occasion, and his lover's specifically, yet he could not disobey the Captain's orders. But she was determined she would leave this place on her feet, under her own steam. They weren't going to drag her out, she'd have to be dead first. She gave a grunt meant to serve as an affirmative answer to his query. Slowly, painfully, she got to her feet, using the bulkhead to aid her, but refusing Jahir's help. At last she stood as tall as her very small height would allow her, her head held high, chin tilted upwards defiantly. She was wounded, Jahir's shirt still wrapped around her torso, but she was not going to let them see her weak. She hadn't used her legs in so long, and she was dizzy from not eating, but she walked slowly and stiffly up above decks, Jahir following behind her. The crew stood in a line on deck, covers in their hands. Jack was no where to be seen.

"Wait," a voice said.

Ash stopped and turned halfway, glancing over her shoulder. Gibbs was running up to them, a rifle in his hand. Once she saw it was him, Ash turned away again, having no interest in speaking to him, or anyone for that matter.

"I managed to get this," Gibbs said in a low voice.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Jahir take the weapon with a silent nod of thanks.

"And I'm sorry about this," Gibbs added, "Ye don't deserve what happened, Ash. And we need ye on this crew, he's mad for kickin' ye off."

It could have been worse, she reflected. He could have marooned her. Hell, he didn't even have to give her an island, he could have just tossed her overboard at sea, or keel hauled her. As things stood, she was getting off lightly. Still, she didn't speak, or give any sign she heard him. She merely continued on her way off the ship. Glancing around, she saw this was Tortuga, and nearly laughed. How things had changed since the last time she'd been here! But laughing would cost her too much energy, so she merely shook her head wearily and trudged up the hill into the town. It took more talking than she liked, but eventually she found a building, where there was an empty room available for rent. Ash paid for a month in advance, and she and Jahir entered their new abode. For a few minutes, she simply stood there, staring around at the place. It wasn't fancy, and it was smaller than their previous place in Shipwreck Island, but it was clean, and what little furniture was there seemed to be more sturdy and in better shape than the previous place. Suddenly, she felt exhausted, all the energy drained from her small body. She rubbed her eyes with one hand and moved to a small bed across the room. Without removing her boots, she fell upon it and was asleep in seconds.

When Ash woke, sunlight was streaming in through the windows, and there was something cooking nearby. Slowly, she realized her boots had been removed, and she had been covered with a blanket. Sleepily, she sat up, the blanket falling off of her, and then she noted there were actual bandages wrapped around her torso in place of the old shredded shirt Jahir gave.

He literally gave me the shirt off his back, she thought, smiling wryly.

She didn't bother to pull her boots on when she got to her feet, and padded over to where the big black man was fiddling with the stove. For a moment, she simply stared blearily at the food in pans on the stove top. Then she blinked, once, twice, and looked up at him.

"What are you doing?" she asked, her tone bemused.

He shot her an annoyed look, and it pulled a smirk out of her.

"Cooking," he said shortly, then added, "And you will eat, captain my captain, if I an' I have to force it down your throat."

Grinning widely now, she shook her head and stepped away. This would be an interesting meal. She had never seen him cook before, and it looked like he had no idea what he was doing. Finding a roughly Ash-sized shirt hanging over the post of the small bed she had recently vacated, she pulled it on, then began poking around in the bags on the table in the middle of the room. He had bought actual medicine for her back, as well as plenty of bandages, some food, and an oil lamp with it's various accompanying accessories. She guessed he was also responsible for her new shirt, but noticed he was still bare chested. Looking around, she noticed there was no other bed. She thought about bringing the subject up, then discarded it. The bed she had crashed on the previous night was far too small for his frame, half his body would hang off of it if he tried to sleep on it. Knowing him, he'd probably sleep on the floor and be perfectly content with the arrangement.

Ash sat on a chair by the table and put her feet up on said table, making a mental list of things they would need. A hammock and shirt for Jahir went to the top of that list, and she'd do it without telling him, so he couldn't object. Next they'd need more food, and various spices. And alcohol. Much alcohol. And hygiene items. Actually, she'd get those things before food. She didn't need to eat much and would leave most of it to Jahir. Then she rearranged the alcohol to go behind the hygiene items, but before the food. Priorities, you know. And then... then they'd see. The money they had wouldn't last forever. They had to earn more, but the immediate needs would be seen to, so they should be fine for the first month at least.

Jahir interrupted her train of thought by putting a plate with food on it in front of her. Looking down at it, she doubted she would eat even half of it. Her head cocked to one side and her lips pursed as she debated if she should say something, then decided to save her criticism until she at least tried it. He had obtained a fork, knife, and spoon for each of them, as well as a couple plates, bowls, and two cups, but that was it. Bare minimum eatery equipment. Once she took a bite of the food, she came up with something not too cutting to say.

"We will definitely need to get some herbs and spices," she said dryly.

Jahir's head lifted slowly to look at her. Then, very deliberately, he stuck his tongue out at her. Ash smirked and continued to eat, chewing slowly and taking her sweet time, so that she had eaten all she was willing to by the time Jahir cleaned his plate. When she put her utensils down, he eyed her plate pointedly, then looked at her.

"I'm full," she shrugged.

"Captain my captain – " he began, but Ash interrupted him.

"I ate, didn't I? You never specified how much I had to eat."

Jahir scowled.

"Besides, you're not my mother," she told him.

"No, but you are my friend. I an' I care about you."

Ash sighed.

"Jahir, I'm alive. For now, I think that's the best we can hope for."