"There's going to be a storm," Jack said as he came up behind a pensive looking Nova. Her long hair had been twisted up into a knot on the top of her head that seemed to be held there by two metal pins. Something Jack assumed she'd picked up in the Orient.

Nova sighed.

"Why not," she muttered, "everything else about this trip seemed doomed from the beginning."

Jack leaned against the railing of his ship and rubbed his face. It was getting to be a long voyage and he knew Nova wasn't particularly thrilled with the ocean.

"We're prepared," he added, "we shouldn't have any trouble."

Nova let out a very unladylike snort.

"When have you ever NOT been in trouble," Nova said skeptically as she turned to go below deck.

Jack simply shook his head as he watched her disappear beneath the deck.

Nova dropped down at a worn table and let her head fall in her hands. This voyage was too long and since she was little she had had an intense fear of water. She wasn't meant to be on a ship, she was just a liaison for questionable goods. Will was the only reason she had even agreed to go. Wielding a sword with any talent and braving the high seas were two very different things in Nova's book. Namely one she could do and the other she couldn't.

There was the scraping of a chair being pulled out and the sound of someone sitting down across from her.

"We getting to land any time soon?" a deep, surprisingly soft voice asked.

"Not before the storm comes," Nova said, looking up at the ice blue eyes across from her. There was no getting around the fact that she had started to find Drake attractive in his own way. She never expected anything to come of it, but it didn't hurt to look.

"Storm?" Drake questioned.

"You have no clue about sailing, do you?" Nova asked.

"Not much," Drake admitted, "my brother was the one who knew all about that. I normally kept to the family paper work."

Drake looked at Nova through his lashes.

"I don't really blame your friend," he said, "my brother was quite bent on following a path of destruction. My father could never see it though."

"Still doesn't mean that you didn't love him," Nova said.

"Yes, I did," Drake agreed, "but I couldn't stop him from getting into trouble and I couldn't keep him from destroying himself."

Nova stood up and put a hand on Drake's shoulder.

"It wasn't your job," she said, "you did what you could."

Drake himself rose from the table.

"I'd better do what I can to help for this storm, then," he said.

"It'd be better if we all just strap everything down," Nova muttered.

"I've never been through a big storm before," Drake said as he started to leave.

"I have," Nova said ominously.