Author's Note: sorry this one took a bit of time.  Actually, I can't remember if it took awhile or not.  My memory is not so good at the moment.  I've been housesitting again and lacking on sleep for the past week or so.  And I was woken up at 7am by a friend telling me to keep the worship team from dispersing after church because we were going to have practice, and he'd try to get there as soon as he could . . . Sunday is my ONLY day to sleep in during the week and I cherish it.

Sorry.  On with the story.  A bit of background and explanation going on here.

VOCAB WORD OF THE DAY: 'crip'ler' – two cannon balls connected by a thick chain that is used to cut through the mast of a ship.  Or that's what I decided.  They used something like that on PotC, which is how Will ended up trapped on the Interceptor right before it exploded.

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Last Time:

"Capt'n?"  Jack looked up from his thoughts to see Gibbs at his elbow.

   "What is it Gibbs?"  The man had a troubled look on his face.  Whatever news he had, Jack knew he wasn't going to like it.

   "Well Capt'n.  I think that you might want and go see to our visitor."

   Jack turned back to surveying the sea in front of him.  "And why would I like to do that?  To reassure myself that he is riding in the lap of luxury, that no difficulty has befallen him?  Let the man wait.  Let him rot down there until I feel like talking to him, and then he'll wish that I had forgotten about him."

   "That may be difficult, Jack." 

   Sparrow turned to his first mate, his lips pursed and his brow wrinkled in comical and sarcastic inquiry.  "Why's that?"

   "He's dead."

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Jack hated to be caught off guard.  True, surprise came with the title of 'pirate,' but normally, Jack was wary enough to be able to tell when something bad was coming.  Under other circumstances, he would have left the area for a awhile until things cooled down, but these weren't normal circumstances.  Nothing concerning his wife was ever normal.

   He had indeed gone down to the brig to inspect his prisoner, and as Gibbs had reported, the man was indeed very dead.  He had felt his veins swell with anger at the sight, felt robbed of his prey.  He had been looking forward to prying answers from the man who had threatened his wife, and who seemed to represent a bigger threat than they knew how to prepare for.

  Squatting down by the dead mercenary, Jack visually examined him for the cause of death.  No stab wounds, no bullet wounds, no blood at all.  He hadn't hung himself.  That pretty much left poison as the only option left.  Jack leaned down and smelled the man's lips.  There was a faint trace of almonds, residual left from cyanide. 

   Standing up, he stared down impassively into the face of this man who represented an unknown enemy.  "Search him for anything out of the ordinary, any information of who might have sent him or what his task was.  When you're done, throw the body overboard.  Make sure he's bleeding when he goes in.  I want the sharks to take care of him before he ever even gets close to Davy Jones' locker."

   He left before he could see the reactions of his crew.  At the moment all he required was obedience and the assurance that his wife was still safely asleep in their cabin.  He had some thinking to do and some decisions to make, and somehow he knew that it wasn't going to make Winn very happy.

Winn tossed her head on her pillow, lost in the depths of a reoccurring dream.  In it she was onboard the Tide's Raptor, the proud captain of a pirate ship, and fire tore and scrabbled at her belly, the pain lasting for days, weeks.  In sleep it chased her, during the day it controlled her mind.  On and on, never ceasing, never decreasing.  Lately it had been that every time she had this dream she had woken up with terrible muscle cramps, like those that plagued some women during their time of month.  And fear.  Fear was always her companion after this dream.  Fear of losing something she didn't know she had.

   This time when she awoke, it was to a quiet and creaking cabin.  Her hands clutched at her belly before she had time to remember the wound to her arm.  It flared with pain, but her belly was fine.  Not cramps.  The fear was still there, but unfounded, hovering.  Waiting.  But she could ignore it until it decided to pounce.

   Winn relaxed until her arm no longer scolded her for such thoughtless and sudden movement.  She lay with her eyes closed, listening to the muffled sounds of life aboard ship.  She hadn't ever thought that she had missed this in her time on land, but she had.  Another need that Jack had managed to meet and fill without realizing.

   Jack.  At the thought of her husband's name a sudden need sprung up inside her.  It wasn't new or unusual this desire to find herself held tightly against her lover's body, to feel his love, his pride in her, his joy in her body even as he felt it.  But it was unusually strong after today's fight as it often was whenever one of them was injured.  The need to reaffirm that they were both well and alive was always overpowering. Where is he?

   Opening her eyes, she looked around the cabin and found the object of her thoughts.  He was sitting at the table, a half empty bottle of rum grasped loosely in his hand, eyes pointed her way but unfocused, a brooding expression on his face.  Seeing that he was currently oblivious to the world and to her, she took this opportunity to examine him.  For a pirate pushing forty, time and fate had been kind to him.  His face was lined by nothing more than the sun and wind, his hair still as dark as it had ever been, his eyes as clear, his hands as steady, his body as slim. 

   She sighed in contentment.  Truly, she had been blessed beyond her wildest imaginings when whatever deity that controlled her fate had given her the chance to belong to him and he to her.  The only thing that displeased her at the moment was the fact that he was brooding.  He should be over by her side assaulting her even as she spoke . . . thought.  He had already brooded as Leech had cleaned and dressed her arm, had most likely brooded the entire time he had been on deck and she had been asleep, and was still brooding.  Surely he had brooded enough.  He had to stop.  She was fine – a little shaken perhaps, but basically unharmed.  She had to snap him out of this, and there was only one way that she could be sure would refocus his attention.

   "Jack?"

Jack walked into his cabin quietly, not wanting to disturb his wife.  She was indeed asleep, her shoulder length hair splayed out around her head in a dark corona, her breathing deep and even.  She looked so peaceful, so harmless, that it was hard to believe that she was the same woman who had stood on the deck of a besieged ship this morning, bloody sword in hand, eyes alight with adrenaline and battle.  If it was in his power, he'd keep her that way forever.  But then I'd miss moments like this.

   Not wanting to sidetrack himself with how desirable his wife was, Jack walked over to the low cabinet that held his liquor.  He opened it and removed a bottle that was half full of rum.  If he wanted to do serious thinking, then he needed a serious drink.  Bringing his find over to the table that had a spot of prominence in the center of the room, he set it down, then shed his boots and belts, throwing coat and vest over the back of one chair as he took a seat in another.  Quickly, he took a drink of his rum thinking that the sooner he was mildly drunk, the sooner he'd have the courage to think about what he must.

   Five hearty swallows later, he was mired deeply in his sobering thoughts.  Which is why I'm doing m'best to get drunk.  He had come so close to loosing her today, had begun to doubt if he should be keeping her on the Pearl at all.  Life on the sea was harsh and violent, and often short. Perhaps he should send her to her grandfather to keep her safe.  At least until the mystery that had been handed them had been solved.  Until she was out of danger.

   He could come by every now and then to ensure that she was still safe, and then leave her.  The thought of having to leave her made his insides cramp with pain, but wasn't it better to ensure her safety than to ensure his lust was always satisfied?  What good would it do him to keep her by his side if they could be blindly sailing deeper and deeper into danger?

   "Jack?"  His thoughts were disturbed by the woman on the bed.  He hadn't thought she was awake.

   He took another swig of rum before asking, "What is it, love?"  Even to him, his voice sounded tired and defeated.

   "Come to bed, Jack.  Come hold me.  Come take my mind off of everything but us."  He heard the raw longing her voice, heard it tremble with need.  It reminded him of the times that he had felt her tremble because of him.

   "Winn . . . ."

   "Please, Jack.  Come to bed.  I need you."  She watched, feeling a hand grip her heart when the blank look in his eyes didn't even waver at her request.  He wasn't going to let go of whatever was bothering him.  Wasn't going to come to her.  She had a sudden and terrible image of him leaving her and going off alone to find what and who had come calling to collect on her.  She couldn't let that happen.  What had happened today had mainly concerned her, not him.  She had been the target, not her husband.  There was no way he was going to leave her to find the answers to this puzzle.  If anyone should be leaving, it should be her to protect him, not the other way around.  She had to take his mind off this before he decided to do something stupid that she wouldn't be able to talk him out of.

   One last try.  "Please.  I had a nightmare, and I want you to make me forget it."  Putting all her longing and desire in a single syllable, she breathed a single request to the silent man sitting across the room from her.  Please . . . ."

   It was if a dam broke inside Jack.  In the next second, Winn found herself crushed in his arms, her lips being attacked with barely restrained desperation, and her heart throwing itself at Jack's yet again.  Once more into the breech . . . .

Later that afternoon, the couple took the opportunity to talk.  Neither wanted to be the one to breech on subject that was utmost on their minds, so Jack chose a relatively safe one.  Relatively safe because it would leave the topic of conversation up to Winn and then she could bring up the threat against her life, and he could tell her what he was thinking.

   "That must have been some nightmare.  It took quite a bit to get it off your mind."

   Winn sighed.  She should have known he would have opted for this conversational gambit.  Well, she didn't want to bring up the other one any more than he did, and telling a story from her past didn't seem too high a price to pay to avoid doing so.

   "It was more a bad memory than a nightmare.  But I keep having it, and each time it seems so real, so recent.  It scares me."

   "Maybe if you talked about it, it wouldn't scare you so much anymore."

   "Maybe it you just held me for the rest of my life, I wouldn't have it anymore because you make me feel safe."  Winn still lay in her husband's arms, her back pressed against his chest, her hands crossed over the arms he had crossed over her waist.  She felt his breath on her skin as he exhaled in bemused frustration.

   "Come now, love.  Tell me a story like you do your nieces and nephews."

   "You want a story?"  She felt him nod against the back of her head.  "Fine.  'Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess, and –"

   "You know that's not what I meant, Winnie."

   She smiled gently.  "Yes, I know."  Taking a deep breath, she started to explain the events of the day that had been haunting her sleep off and on for the past three years or so.

She had only been eighteen years old at the time, and a young eighteen, but both Grandfather and Grandmother had thought it would be a good idea for her to go out and prove she had the skills necessary to survive in this part of the world, in a family notorious for privateering and pirating alike.

   She was in her blond wig, a pair of spectacles fixed to her head with a piece of twine.  Breeches, a tattered shirt, and several wide and battered leather belts completed her disguise.  She would have looked like an underfed cabin boy, were it not for the coil of blond hair the wig had come with.  A woman's wig.  If she were going to do this, she at least wanted to do it as a woman, not as someone completely alien to herself.

   "It'd be best to rake them on their starboard side, and fire a 'crip'ler' at 'em, Capt'n."  She had turned to her first mate, a man used to sea and her ways, used to the mysteries of naval warfare, and used to training the next generation of Morgans in taking their rightful place in the sea's food chain.  This man had taken her father aboard as a cabin boy, had trained Ry and to some extent Marcus.  And now her.  If he had ever balked at the idea of teaching a woman, he had never said anything to her or acted resentful.

   Nodding, she had said, "That sounds appropriate."

   "Can you tell me why 'that sounds appropriate'?"  As she had explained her thinking, the crew had followed out their instructions.  A single blast from their cannon had crippled the other ship, belonging to a minor Italian merchant family by the insignia, by felling their mainmast.  Her crew was skilled, a quality ensured by her newly found grandfather.

   So skilled were they, that the Italian ship was boarded and her crew set to surrender before any trouble came up.  Apparently the owner of the merchant line had sent his son along with the shipment to ensure that the family's coffers were filled as much as possible.  Unfortunately, the boy had read too many novels about pirates and their blood-thirsty ways.  Even more unfortunately, he turned out to be quite the persuasive speaker.  Winn's crew had faced an all out rebellion by the captured men who were all the while yelling things like, "Proud Italy," and "Italy never surrenders."  Winn, who was being deferred to by her crew as captain, had been the first to come under attack.

   It had been a brief but bloody battle.  Both crews skilled, one having the upper hand.  Winn had dispatched one man with her cutlass (more by luck than actual ability) before her crew came to her defense.  It was unlikely that she would have survived that battle of they had not.  But the men were either loyal to her or to her grandfather, so defend her they did.

   Within twenty minutes the Italians were once more subdued; the man who had incited them cut off from the rest and gagged so he could cause no more trouble.  Though she didn't relish the duty, Winn had to deal with the man, explain to him how foolhardy it was to attack pirates after surrendering.  And she had. 

   She had explained how she might come to think that they didn't like pirates if they fought, and that hurt her feelings.  And when her feelings got hurt, then someone had to pay, and it was never her.  So all the young man had gained for his pains was an empty hold and some depleted rations.  But he was lucky she was leaving them all alive instead of sending them down for a closer look at the inhabitants of the ocean floor.  So really, he should be thankful that Captain Morgan, whom she happened to be, was taking pity on him.

   The man ("man" - he couldn't have been more than seventeen or eighteen) had listened throughout her entire speech, glowering and glaring.  Then, before she or her men could react, he had managed to free an arm and fire a pistol at point blank range directly at her abdomen.

  What came next had been an accident, truly.  With the abrupt pain of the bullet tearing through muscle and flesh, Winn's hand had contracted around the pistol she had been idly gesturing with.  It had gone off, firing its single round directly into the man's heart.  His death had been instantaneous.  Hers had hovered for weeks before deciding it wasn't yet her time.

   But in the back of her mind she had never forgotten what that hovering had felt like.

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Author's Thanks: Rose, savvy sparrowhawk, BeBe, LaDyGoMe409, Bright Eyes, Lieke, KawaiiRyu, SuzzieQue, PeleAmelika, captainsparrowsfeistylass, jackfan2, bobo3, eva, jigglykat, mooney, lilitaliandragon

Sorry if I missed anyone.  I forgot to keep track.  Love you all. But you know that already.  : )