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The commandeering of the ship was actually a fairly easy process. Though the security was tight, Jack had the wits and the style to get them all onto the ship without much of a fuss. With four people, it enabled them to be in numerous places at once.

So it was late the next night that Jack found himself in a very awkward situation with Anamaria on the bow of the ship, talking of past adventures and things of that particular nature.

Anamaria sighed. "Jack, do you ever find yourself wondering what would have happened had you chosen a different path?"

"What, you mean apart from piracy?" He looked appalled.

"Yeah, I mean... What do you think things would be like if I had chosen to be a maid in some wealthy nobleman's household rather than to become a pirate?"

"Well..." Jack pondered this for a moment and then smiled a little. "I doubt the crew would ever be the same."

Anamaria grinned. "What about you? Do you think you ever could have done anything else with yourself?"

Jack sighed, thinking about it for the very first time. "You know... I think I could have been a rather good father..."

This struck Anamaria as being totally bizarre. "I meant as an occupation, Jack."

"Well, it almost is, Annie, you know. I mean, you have to spend time with the children, savvy? Otherwise, they would grow up to be like me... Wait... Scratch that..." Jack rubbed his forehead in deep thought and closed his eyes. "I need to lay off the rum, it ruins my train of thought." He waved his hands around, searching for words. "Annie, it's not so much that I like children just as... I don't know..." He finished lamely, thinking the better of what he was about to say as he turned away from her.

"No, come on, you've already dug yourself into this hole, now you have to talk your way out." She smiled a little. This was the first time she'd ever had a really deep conversation with the man that she loved.

Jack looked at the silvery-white full moon, hidden partially behind the gray clouds, sending rays of light shimmering in random areas on the surface of the glistening ocean. "I just feel that if I could have someone to protect, I could... Well, you know, protect them. I could do things for them that I wouldn't do for my acquaintances, or even for you and the rest of the crew. Something totally out of character for me... Something... Something..." Jack paused, trying to think of words to explain what he was thinking.

"Something that only love could trigger..." Anamaria was looking out over the ocean as well, her deep brown eyes penetrating the water and looking beneath it, where an unprecedented desire for serenity and peacefulness struck her like a gong.

"That what?" Jack asked, looking at her sharply.

She looked at him. "That only love can trigger. I doubt the world could turn on its own, without love. So, I figure if it could power something that great... Why couldn't it motivate us to do something good with ourselves? I think that's why we pirates end up the way that we do- fiendish and greedy. We give and receive no love and so we have nothing to motivate us to do good things. So I suppose we just... Take what we can, and give nothing back..." She laughed weakly, in an ironic, bittersweet sort of way.

He looked at her for a moment, thinking about the meaning of this... Thinking about the tattered sails of the Pearl and why they made him feel so overjoyed... Thinking about Jessi...

He stared down at the scintillating blue-green water. He turned his back to the ocean and looked up to the sky, the stars and the moon providing an abundance of light now that the dismal clouds had shifted to a different area of the pitch black sky.

"One more thing, Annie..." She looked at him as he heaved a deep sigh, then continued. "Love motivates us to do great things, aye?"
"Aye." she answered a bit confused.

"Aye..." He repeated, seemingly to himself. "Then I have another question." She waited anxiously. He proceeded. "Can we be motivated by love if we don't know how to recognize it?"

She merely looked at him for a moment, a blank expression filling her soft, beautiful features. "Jack... You know I can't answer that question for you..."

He looked at his feet. "Aye..." He laughed a little. "I know, lass..."

She looked at him, a kind of pain in her eyes.

He returned her gaze. "You've helped me, regardless of whether you think you did or not."

"Jack-"

"Sleep well, Annie..." He walked away to his quarters before she could say another word.

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The next morning, Jack woke up, but didn't go through his usual routine of sitting straight up and taking a large swig of rum. Instead, he laid in his bed, his head facing the ceiling, breathing in the moist air from the sea, and thinking about where he'd gone wrong in his life that he'd driven himself to a life of piracy.

He sighed and began to sing softly, in a rather melancholy voice, under his breath. "We're devils and black sheep and really bad eggs... Drink up me hearties, yo ho... Aye, that's all we are, us pirates... Drunken, murderous thieves..." He sat up and took a glance to his right. There sat his rum as it usually did. "Maybe Jessi was right about us. Maybe we are just black-hearted scoundrels who take joy in killing and stealing..."

He heaved a large sigh and decided that, regardless of whether he could change Jessi's mind about pirates, he was at least going to try to pry some information out of her.

He found her leaning on the starboard side of the ship, a map clutched in her hands, her eyes scanning it meticulously.

He put a hand on her shoulder to let her acknowledge that he was there and she jumped, crumpling the map up quickly in her hands. She turned to look at him as she did this and gave him a forced smile.

"What was that?" asked Jack, trying to take the map but failing when Jessi pulled it out of his reach.

"A map... I was just..." She paused. "I was looking for possible paths your crew might have taken."

He smiled at her. "Ah... Well, I appreciate the effort, but it really isn't necessary. You can leave the tracking to me. The Pearl travels in rightfully peculiar ways and, being its rightful captain, only I rightfully know its rightful path. Savvy?"

She nodded slightly, still trying to smile. "Um, Jack... I'm sorry about what I said in the bar a couple days ago. I know there's more to you than that, I really do."

He returned her forced smile and shrugged. "Aye, well... Well, yeah..." He cleared his throat and kept back what he really wanted to say, knowing it would lead only to further confrontation. "Um, I actually came to talk to you about what happened with you and Will." He let her continue from where he had begun.

She sighed and looked at him for a moment. "All right, so I knew Will for a couple years-"

"A couple?" asked Jack. "He said it was only one!"

"Do you want to hear this or not?" Jack silenced himself as she continued. "I knew him for about two years, Will doesn't remember well because he was only two years old. I, however, was twelve years old and happen to have quite a decent memory of what went on.

"Well, when my father died, I'll admit I had nowhere to go. So I stayed on the streets for a couple months. Meanwhile, Will had also been orphaned. His mother had just died, but she had been expected to not make it through the pneumonia that she had anyway. In advance, she told the orphanage of Bootstrap's brother, Sam, and his only child-me.

"Anyway, the orphanage tracked me down and found out that my father was dead. So they put us both in an orphanage. I was adopted, but Will stayed. I got to know him fairly well the two years I was there."

"I thought he was only two..." Jack prompted, confused.

"Two-year-olds have personalities!" Jessi defended her cousin. "Anyway, from what I heard, Will ran away when he was about nine and stowed away on a cargo boat to look for his father. And... Well, I suppose you know the rest of what happened from there..."

"That's it, then?" asked Jack.

"Well... Yes, I suppose that's it." Jessi nodded, smiling.

"Oh... Well, then... Please continue with... Well, with whatever you were doing... I thought you might have something important to say."

Jessi opened her mouth in protest.

"I didn't mean it that way, Jessi."

She smiled and laughed a little. "I know, Jack... You never do..."

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