Chapter 2:
What is the worst thing that can happen to a person who hates pirates? Being trapped with a whole crew of pirates on a ship in the Caribbean seas. Valentina was in a foul mood today. Who wouldn't be after what she had been through? For the duration of their trip to Tortuga, that was were they were headed, she was informed briefly, Captain Jack Sparrow had come up with some nice tasks to keep her busy. Currently she was swabbing the deck. Not that it made an awful lot of sense as people were constantly running back and forth, busy with working on deck, soiling the once clean floor again with their boots. With every move of her scrubber she mouthed the words: "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you", staring at the crew with eyes sparkling warningly. The men didn't seem impressed by her death glare, they barely paid any notice to her.
She had seen the fat pirate again and it had taken all her will power not to try and choke him with her bare hands. Gibbs had stopped next to her with a smirk on his face, while her fingers clutched the scrubber in a death grip. "So we meet again, lass. Thanks fer the nice little treats ya gave me, eh? I especially liked the ring."
Her knuckles turned white as her fingers tightened even closer around the brush. "Should have slit your throat that night, you bastard. This is all your fault!" Valentina hissed between clenched teeth.
"Oh, but I didn't force ya to come after me, lass. Ya should have paid a little more attention, then I wouldn't have been able to take yer loot. So in the end ya only have yerrself t' blame," he grinned down at her and then turned on his heels to return to his duties on ship. The young woman let out an angry growl and her eyes burned into Gibbs's bulgy retreating back. If she only had her daggers back, she thought darkly.
Somewhere on deck a single voice intoned a song. She stopped working for a second, curious to hear the words. Valentina shouldn't have bothered, because she was not going to like what she would hear. The melody sounded quite nice, though. Soon the whole crew joined the chorus, including Captain Sparrow who sang the loudest of them all. "Yo ho, yo ho a pirate's life for me," they bawled. Enough is enough! She rolled her eyes and put her hands to her ears, trying to block out the loud choir of voices.
"God, why didn't he kill me the other night? He would have spared me this torture," the young woman thought to herself. She let out an angry huff and brushed the hair out of her face.
"So, love, are we making any progress?" Jack asked. He had approached her again unbeknownst to her. How somebody who could barely walk straight because he seemed to drink rum like other people drank water had already managed to sneak up on her twice, was beyond her.
"Yes, when it comes to driving me crazy *we* are just about this close," she made a gesture with her hand. She threw the scrubber in her water filled bucket so that thousands of drops splashed over its edge.
"Believe me, love, the feeling's mutual," Jack said dryly, brushing the spilled water from his coat with his hand.
"So what have you planned out for me, Jack?" she asked with resignation swinging in her voice, her arms crossed over her chest.
"Especially for ya it's Captain Jack Sparrow, savvy? I planned to leave ya at Tortuga after all the Pearl's not some sort of passenger ship."
"Fine by me," she said coolly, though she was thinking with discomfort about how she was going to survive at Tortuga, a place where the scum of the Caribbean gathered, without her weapons to defend herself
"And? What do we say?" he looked at her with raised eyebrows while he leaned casually against the railing. If she shoved him now he would surely go overboard and if she was lucky there were some hungry sharks who hadn't had lunch yet, she thought evilly.
"I hope we will be there soon, because I hate every second I have to spend on this bloody ship?" Valentina answered sarcastically.
"You can always swim if ya think it's faster, love," Jack chuckled and motioned with his hand at the water behind him.
The young woman let out a scream in frustration. "Do you never take anything serious?!"
"Life's too short to be serious about it," and surprisingly what he said made sense. "Besides ya should be thankful - and might I stress the word thankful - I didn't even take it serious when ya tried to take me plunder. After all ya are still standing here and talking, breathing, in general being yer annoying self."
"Well, don't you have places to be, Jack?", she purposely avoided calling him 'Captain Jack Sparrow' as he had pointed out before, "After all you are the Captain of the 'wonderful' ship and I'd *hate* to keep you from your duties."
"Oh, I think they can wait just a little while longer. Actually I came to check if ya were doing the work I have given ya correctly. So, please, by all means, proceed!" he grinned broadly and stroke his goatee contently.
~
It was a small miracle that she had even reached the shelter of this tavern. The weathered sign over the door announced that this was the 'Queen of the Caribbean'. It also portrayed a barely clothed woman, probably to attract male customers. She let out a disgusted snort. On her way from the port to the tavern, she had barely left the Black Pearl, a nasty looking fellow attempted to drag her into a dark alley, perhaps to rob her or worse, but she escaped by kneeling him heartily in the groin and punching his younger companion in the face. Valentina rubbed her fist, flinching briefly when her fingers brushed across her bruised and already swollen knuckles. Tortuga apparently was the place where all the scum of the Caribbean gathered. No wonder those Pirates from the Pearl wanted to go there, perhaps they were drawn there magnetically.
She shoved the doors open aggressively, realising some of her bottled up anger that had built up inside her from a couple of bad days in a row. Jack had done everything to turn her life into hell on earth. The young thief had blisters on her hands from scrubbing the deck.
Her entrance earned her the attention of almost 40 men who stared at her hungrily. She wasn't that bad to look at now that she had cleaned up, it hadn't been her idea. Valentina had been forced to do so kicking and screaming, but never mind. Her skin was now slightly bronzed from working under the burning sun all day long, her black hair hung loosely and in waves around her shoulders and her sparkling brown eyes revealed a fiery temper.
Valentina walked straight up to the bar, shards of broken glass cracked under her boots when she passed the whole length of the tavern with huge an energetic strides. "Rum, quick!" she ordered smashing some doubloons on the table, courtesy of the man who had attacked her previously. "Sure tis' s all ya want, darling," the bartender leered at her with a suggestive smirk on his face . "I would also want a knife to stab it in your ugly back, but I guess you can't hand me one of those.," she answered in a sweet voice, cocking her head innocently.
The man laughed loudly, throwing back his head in amusement. "Quite the spitfire are we? Finally a heartily lass to me liking. What ya say? Drink's on the house." A rusty mug full of rum was placed in front of her. She smiled briefly as a thanks and raised her glass in his honour.
Valentina walked through the tavern letting her eyes roam here and there, careful to keep away from the dangerous crowd, the ones who where too drunken or not drunken enough. Now all she had to do was get some money and weapons..She positioned herself in a corner near the window that was dimly light and therefore the perfect hideout. She could overlook the whole place perfectly, which allowed her to calmly search the tavern for her next potential victim.
She was looking for the not to shabby looking type with a bit of money on him, but those kind of guys were hard to find in a town like this, where dangerous drunks and ugly wenches were just about everywhere. Soon an obnoxiously loud voice reached her ears. The young woman flinched. She knew this voice, to her it was as if somebody was scratching very slowly with his fingernails over a chalkboard.
Valentina turned her head in the direction of the source of the voice and saw Jack Sparrow sitting at a table surrounded by an eager audience. In one hand he held a mug of rum, while the other was busy with playing with a lock of hair of a wench sitting on his knee.
"And then I said..'if ya like ya can always swim'. Should have seen the little strumpets face. She was abso.absolutely dumbfound ," he slurred and grinned content with himself as his listeners laughed. She had never seen him this drunk and she had seen him drunk quite often recently, as she had inspired him quiet successfully to drinking by getting on his nerves all the time during the few days they had spent together on board of his ship.
"Tell us about how you got the Pearl back, Jack," somebody exclaimed. This sentence sure turned a few heads. The ship was a legend throughout the whole Caribbean.
While Jack was busy with telling his story, gesturing and grimacing excessively, a couple of nasty looking fellows approached the table unnoticed by everyone else but Valentina. They had an outlandish look about them, not that this was something particularly suspicious in a place like Tortuga, but somehow they didn't fit in at all. Those fellows looked a little bit too tidied up, as if they had never touched a single drop of alcohol in their lives and woke up every morning with every single sleek black hair in place. Dressed all in black they approached Jack's table like shadows, creeping up from different directions and closing in on him slowly but steadily. The young woman gulped nervously, even from where she was sitting the situation looked......uncomfortable. Someone was deeply in trouble and that particular someone, being Jack Sparrow, didn't even take notice that those dangerous looking men were already surrounding him, not until one of them set down across from him.
"Well, if that isn't Jack Sparrow," the man said with a slightly accented dark, velvety voice. One of his companions positioned himself behind the drunken pirate and Valentina could have sworn she briefly saw the metallic glitter of a blade in his hand. She shrugged her shoulder dismissively. After all she didn't even like Jack -actually she despised him from the deepest depths of her heart - so why should she care if he was in trouble or not. She had spent the entire last week fantasizing about a million different ways she could get rid of him (including feeding him to the sharks, choking him with her bare hands, stabbing him in the back, making him drink the water with which she had swabbed the deck all day long etc.), so those things considered she should actually give her heartfelt thanks to those strangers in case they actually decided to kill him.
Valentina turned her back and tried to act non-challently, letting her eyes roam here and there, taking a sip from her mug from time to time. Her finger tapped nervously on the sticky table, as a uncomfortable inquietude seized her. "He is a grown man, he can handle himself", she tried to convince herself.
Her thoughts returned to the present situation. She needed gold and weapons. Ah, interesting! There at the entrance stood a guy who looked like he had a few doubloons on him. Maybe she should walk over and say hello, but just as she wanted to saunter over her guilty conscience called to her - something it didn't do very often. It was nagging at her, telling her that she owed Jack a favour for not killing her that night he had surprised her as she tried to escape from his ship her bags full of his gold. Every other captain would have slit her throat right away, but he didn't.
"Damn you, Sparrow!" she cursed under her breath. She threw a quick look over her shoulder. The situation at Jack's table hadn't changed much, except he now seemed to be extremely busy with talking his way out of something, gesturing like a maniac, babbling on and on without even stopping to come up for air. She recognized a desperate escape attempt when she saw one. With a frustrated sigh she walked over to him. Damned pirates! They always manage to get you in trouble.
"Darling!", she exclaimed. Valentina tried to sound as annoyingly girlish as possible and made a point out of being obnoxiously loud," I thought we agreed that you wouldn't be drinking again. I leave you one second out of sight and what do you do? One day you shall be the death of me, Jack Sparrow! If I only didn't love you this much!" Her entrance sure attracted a lot of attention, as all eyes were curiously fixed on the pair in a matter of seconds. Jack Sparrow, under the woman's thumb, that was almost as spectacular as him reclaiming the infamous Black Pearl.
Valentina walked up to the drunken pirate who looked at her with a confused expression on his face. She bowed down and dramatically threw her arms around his neck - which she did very reluctantly - whispering in his ear, "You'll owe me big time for this, Sparrow. Don't you forget this! Now let's get out of here!"
A mischievous sparkle appeared in the pirates brown eyes. "Aye, me love," he answered. "Well, gents," he stood up from his chair swaying from side to side. He finally gave up his hopless fight against gravity and leaned on Valentina for support, "me darling here," Jack grinned widely, "just informed me that me services are needed elsewhere, so I'll be on me merry way," the crowd whistled and cheered. The wench stood by with a confused look on her face, obviously she was not the brightest one of the bunch.
"That's the part were you'd be looking for a new costumer, hun'," Valentina informed her dryly.
"Don't you think you will get away this easily, Signor Sparrow! There will always be a next time. We will not rest until your debt to us is repaid in full, " the dark clothed man who had threatened him before, announced menacingly. His chair fell clattering to the floor behind him as he sprang to his feet angrily.
One of his greasy lackeys approached Valentina looking at her with lustful eyes, "Se non avresti un gusto così cattivo nel scegliere i tuoi ragazzi, mi potresti piacere molitissimo, principessa. /If you didn't have such a bad taste in picking out your boyfriends, I'd find you quite appealing, princess./"
"I didn't understand what ya just said, but keep yerr filthy paws off me woman!" Jack hissed at him threateningly, still playing out his role as her boyfriend, after all they weren't out of the tavern yet.
"Beh', almeno la mia scelta è stato meglio che prendere te, /Well, in any case my choice was better than picking you/," she replied slipping easily into her mother tongue.
"Well, obviously she *does* understand ya," Jack looked at the young woman on his side with a baffled expression on his face, wondering whether the rum was to blame for him not understanding their exchange or not.
"Let's go," she told him and half dragged him out of the 'Queen of the Caribbean' eager to leave as soon as possible.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hey, there! Hope You've liked the story so far, 'cause I'll keep them chappies coming. Please, don't forget to drop me a line or two, okay? See ya around!
What is the worst thing that can happen to a person who hates pirates? Being trapped with a whole crew of pirates on a ship in the Caribbean seas. Valentina was in a foul mood today. Who wouldn't be after what she had been through? For the duration of their trip to Tortuga, that was were they were headed, she was informed briefly, Captain Jack Sparrow had come up with some nice tasks to keep her busy. Currently she was swabbing the deck. Not that it made an awful lot of sense as people were constantly running back and forth, busy with working on deck, soiling the once clean floor again with their boots. With every move of her scrubber she mouthed the words: "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you", staring at the crew with eyes sparkling warningly. The men didn't seem impressed by her death glare, they barely paid any notice to her.
She had seen the fat pirate again and it had taken all her will power not to try and choke him with her bare hands. Gibbs had stopped next to her with a smirk on his face, while her fingers clutched the scrubber in a death grip. "So we meet again, lass. Thanks fer the nice little treats ya gave me, eh? I especially liked the ring."
Her knuckles turned white as her fingers tightened even closer around the brush. "Should have slit your throat that night, you bastard. This is all your fault!" Valentina hissed between clenched teeth.
"Oh, but I didn't force ya to come after me, lass. Ya should have paid a little more attention, then I wouldn't have been able to take yer loot. So in the end ya only have yerrself t' blame," he grinned down at her and then turned on his heels to return to his duties on ship. The young woman let out an angry growl and her eyes burned into Gibbs's bulgy retreating back. If she only had her daggers back, she thought darkly.
Somewhere on deck a single voice intoned a song. She stopped working for a second, curious to hear the words. Valentina shouldn't have bothered, because she was not going to like what she would hear. The melody sounded quite nice, though. Soon the whole crew joined the chorus, including Captain Sparrow who sang the loudest of them all. "Yo ho, yo ho a pirate's life for me," they bawled. Enough is enough! She rolled her eyes and put her hands to her ears, trying to block out the loud choir of voices.
"God, why didn't he kill me the other night? He would have spared me this torture," the young woman thought to herself. She let out an angry huff and brushed the hair out of her face.
"So, love, are we making any progress?" Jack asked. He had approached her again unbeknownst to her. How somebody who could barely walk straight because he seemed to drink rum like other people drank water had already managed to sneak up on her twice, was beyond her.
"Yes, when it comes to driving me crazy *we* are just about this close," she made a gesture with her hand. She threw the scrubber in her water filled bucket so that thousands of drops splashed over its edge.
"Believe me, love, the feeling's mutual," Jack said dryly, brushing the spilled water from his coat with his hand.
"So what have you planned out for me, Jack?" she asked with resignation swinging in her voice, her arms crossed over her chest.
"Especially for ya it's Captain Jack Sparrow, savvy? I planned to leave ya at Tortuga after all the Pearl's not some sort of passenger ship."
"Fine by me," she said coolly, though she was thinking with discomfort about how she was going to survive at Tortuga, a place where the scum of the Caribbean gathered, without her weapons to defend herself
"And? What do we say?" he looked at her with raised eyebrows while he leaned casually against the railing. If she shoved him now he would surely go overboard and if she was lucky there were some hungry sharks who hadn't had lunch yet, she thought evilly.
"I hope we will be there soon, because I hate every second I have to spend on this bloody ship?" Valentina answered sarcastically.
"You can always swim if ya think it's faster, love," Jack chuckled and motioned with his hand at the water behind him.
The young woman let out a scream in frustration. "Do you never take anything serious?!"
"Life's too short to be serious about it," and surprisingly what he said made sense. "Besides ya should be thankful - and might I stress the word thankful - I didn't even take it serious when ya tried to take me plunder. After all ya are still standing here and talking, breathing, in general being yer annoying self."
"Well, don't you have places to be, Jack?", she purposely avoided calling him 'Captain Jack Sparrow' as he had pointed out before, "After all you are the Captain of the 'wonderful' ship and I'd *hate* to keep you from your duties."
"Oh, I think they can wait just a little while longer. Actually I came to check if ya were doing the work I have given ya correctly. So, please, by all means, proceed!" he grinned broadly and stroke his goatee contently.
~
It was a small miracle that she had even reached the shelter of this tavern. The weathered sign over the door announced that this was the 'Queen of the Caribbean'. It also portrayed a barely clothed woman, probably to attract male customers. She let out a disgusted snort. On her way from the port to the tavern, she had barely left the Black Pearl, a nasty looking fellow attempted to drag her into a dark alley, perhaps to rob her or worse, but she escaped by kneeling him heartily in the groin and punching his younger companion in the face. Valentina rubbed her fist, flinching briefly when her fingers brushed across her bruised and already swollen knuckles. Tortuga apparently was the place where all the scum of the Caribbean gathered. No wonder those Pirates from the Pearl wanted to go there, perhaps they were drawn there magnetically.
She shoved the doors open aggressively, realising some of her bottled up anger that had built up inside her from a couple of bad days in a row. Jack had done everything to turn her life into hell on earth. The young thief had blisters on her hands from scrubbing the deck.
Her entrance earned her the attention of almost 40 men who stared at her hungrily. She wasn't that bad to look at now that she had cleaned up, it hadn't been her idea. Valentina had been forced to do so kicking and screaming, but never mind. Her skin was now slightly bronzed from working under the burning sun all day long, her black hair hung loosely and in waves around her shoulders and her sparkling brown eyes revealed a fiery temper.
Valentina walked straight up to the bar, shards of broken glass cracked under her boots when she passed the whole length of the tavern with huge an energetic strides. "Rum, quick!" she ordered smashing some doubloons on the table, courtesy of the man who had attacked her previously. "Sure tis' s all ya want, darling," the bartender leered at her with a suggestive smirk on his face . "I would also want a knife to stab it in your ugly back, but I guess you can't hand me one of those.," she answered in a sweet voice, cocking her head innocently.
The man laughed loudly, throwing back his head in amusement. "Quite the spitfire are we? Finally a heartily lass to me liking. What ya say? Drink's on the house." A rusty mug full of rum was placed in front of her. She smiled briefly as a thanks and raised her glass in his honour.
Valentina walked through the tavern letting her eyes roam here and there, careful to keep away from the dangerous crowd, the ones who where too drunken or not drunken enough. Now all she had to do was get some money and weapons..She positioned herself in a corner near the window that was dimly light and therefore the perfect hideout. She could overlook the whole place perfectly, which allowed her to calmly search the tavern for her next potential victim.
She was looking for the not to shabby looking type with a bit of money on him, but those kind of guys were hard to find in a town like this, where dangerous drunks and ugly wenches were just about everywhere. Soon an obnoxiously loud voice reached her ears. The young woman flinched. She knew this voice, to her it was as if somebody was scratching very slowly with his fingernails over a chalkboard.
Valentina turned her head in the direction of the source of the voice and saw Jack Sparrow sitting at a table surrounded by an eager audience. In one hand he held a mug of rum, while the other was busy with playing with a lock of hair of a wench sitting on his knee.
"And then I said..'if ya like ya can always swim'. Should have seen the little strumpets face. She was abso.absolutely dumbfound ," he slurred and grinned content with himself as his listeners laughed. She had never seen him this drunk and she had seen him drunk quite often recently, as she had inspired him quiet successfully to drinking by getting on his nerves all the time during the few days they had spent together on board of his ship.
"Tell us about how you got the Pearl back, Jack," somebody exclaimed. This sentence sure turned a few heads. The ship was a legend throughout the whole Caribbean.
While Jack was busy with telling his story, gesturing and grimacing excessively, a couple of nasty looking fellows approached the table unnoticed by everyone else but Valentina. They had an outlandish look about them, not that this was something particularly suspicious in a place like Tortuga, but somehow they didn't fit in at all. Those fellows looked a little bit too tidied up, as if they had never touched a single drop of alcohol in their lives and woke up every morning with every single sleek black hair in place. Dressed all in black they approached Jack's table like shadows, creeping up from different directions and closing in on him slowly but steadily. The young woman gulped nervously, even from where she was sitting the situation looked......uncomfortable. Someone was deeply in trouble and that particular someone, being Jack Sparrow, didn't even take notice that those dangerous looking men were already surrounding him, not until one of them set down across from him.
"Well, if that isn't Jack Sparrow," the man said with a slightly accented dark, velvety voice. One of his companions positioned himself behind the drunken pirate and Valentina could have sworn she briefly saw the metallic glitter of a blade in his hand. She shrugged her shoulder dismissively. After all she didn't even like Jack -actually she despised him from the deepest depths of her heart - so why should she care if he was in trouble or not. She had spent the entire last week fantasizing about a million different ways she could get rid of him (including feeding him to the sharks, choking him with her bare hands, stabbing him in the back, making him drink the water with which she had swabbed the deck all day long etc.), so those things considered she should actually give her heartfelt thanks to those strangers in case they actually decided to kill him.
Valentina turned her back and tried to act non-challently, letting her eyes roam here and there, taking a sip from her mug from time to time. Her finger tapped nervously on the sticky table, as a uncomfortable inquietude seized her. "He is a grown man, he can handle himself", she tried to convince herself.
Her thoughts returned to the present situation. She needed gold and weapons. Ah, interesting! There at the entrance stood a guy who looked like he had a few doubloons on him. Maybe she should walk over and say hello, but just as she wanted to saunter over her guilty conscience called to her - something it didn't do very often. It was nagging at her, telling her that she owed Jack a favour for not killing her that night he had surprised her as she tried to escape from his ship her bags full of his gold. Every other captain would have slit her throat right away, but he didn't.
"Damn you, Sparrow!" she cursed under her breath. She threw a quick look over her shoulder. The situation at Jack's table hadn't changed much, except he now seemed to be extremely busy with talking his way out of something, gesturing like a maniac, babbling on and on without even stopping to come up for air. She recognized a desperate escape attempt when she saw one. With a frustrated sigh she walked over to him. Damned pirates! They always manage to get you in trouble.
"Darling!", she exclaimed. Valentina tried to sound as annoyingly girlish as possible and made a point out of being obnoxiously loud," I thought we agreed that you wouldn't be drinking again. I leave you one second out of sight and what do you do? One day you shall be the death of me, Jack Sparrow! If I only didn't love you this much!" Her entrance sure attracted a lot of attention, as all eyes were curiously fixed on the pair in a matter of seconds. Jack Sparrow, under the woman's thumb, that was almost as spectacular as him reclaiming the infamous Black Pearl.
Valentina walked up to the drunken pirate who looked at her with a confused expression on his face. She bowed down and dramatically threw her arms around his neck - which she did very reluctantly - whispering in his ear, "You'll owe me big time for this, Sparrow. Don't you forget this! Now let's get out of here!"
A mischievous sparkle appeared in the pirates brown eyes. "Aye, me love," he answered. "Well, gents," he stood up from his chair swaying from side to side. He finally gave up his hopless fight against gravity and leaned on Valentina for support, "me darling here," Jack grinned widely, "just informed me that me services are needed elsewhere, so I'll be on me merry way," the crowd whistled and cheered. The wench stood by with a confused look on her face, obviously she was not the brightest one of the bunch.
"That's the part were you'd be looking for a new costumer, hun'," Valentina informed her dryly.
"Don't you think you will get away this easily, Signor Sparrow! There will always be a next time. We will not rest until your debt to us is repaid in full, " the dark clothed man who had threatened him before, announced menacingly. His chair fell clattering to the floor behind him as he sprang to his feet angrily.
One of his greasy lackeys approached Valentina looking at her with lustful eyes, "Se non avresti un gusto così cattivo nel scegliere i tuoi ragazzi, mi potresti piacere molitissimo, principessa. /If you didn't have such a bad taste in picking out your boyfriends, I'd find you quite appealing, princess./"
"I didn't understand what ya just said, but keep yerr filthy paws off me woman!" Jack hissed at him threateningly, still playing out his role as her boyfriend, after all they weren't out of the tavern yet.
"Beh', almeno la mia scelta è stato meglio che prendere te, /Well, in any case my choice was better than picking you/," she replied slipping easily into her mother tongue.
"Well, obviously she *does* understand ya," Jack looked at the young woman on his side with a baffled expression on his face, wondering whether the rum was to blame for him not understanding their exchange or not.
"Let's go," she told him and half dragged him out of the 'Queen of the Caribbean' eager to leave as soon as possible.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hey, there! Hope You've liked the story so far, 'cause I'll keep them chappies coming. Please, don't forget to drop me a line or two, okay? See ya around!