A girl sat on a pile of rocks that led down to the water. Her light brown hair was neatly tucked up under her cap. Her feet were bare. Even though her plain blue dress was tattered, she still looked grand in it as it fluttered in the salty breeze.

She thought back to the day they had banished her. She knew she probably shouldn't have done what she did, but she refused to let herself regret it. If she did, she never would have been able to last this long, appreciating life here the way she had.

She pulled her knees up to her chest and started singing a little song she had made up about life here at Port Royale and life over there, where she had come from.

Something caught her eye. She looked over and saw a ship with black sails. Men, no doubt pirates, were running up a gangplank with jewels and other shiny bundles in their arms. The sun reflected off of their loot as they boarded the ship, making the girl squint and shade her eyes. The pirates were shouting in victory and brandishing swords. As soon as they were all on board, they brought the gangplank on deck and sailed away.

A well-dressed man in a naval uniform, who had been chasing the pirates onto their ship followed by a troupe of soldiers, stopped short at the edge of the dock, since he could go no further.

"You will always remember this as the day you almost caught Captain Jack Sparrow!" a man who was mostly hidden by the boat's sail called out to the man in uniform, his voice echoing off of the water.

"Confound it, Sparrow!" the well-dressed man shouted back. "You have got to be the worst pirate I've ever seen!"

"You say that so often it's lost all meaning, Commodore Norrington!" Sparrow shouted in response.

Commodore Norrington stormed off in a huff as the ship started sailing away from the dock. The boat sailed away amazingly fast for a ship so big.

The girl, who was quite interested in the situation by now, decided to get closer to the action. Besides, men were an intriguing gender.

She filled her large bust with as much air as her corset would allow and jumped into the water. She swam towards the pirate ship with black sails, trying to think of a lie to explain her appearance on this strange ship if she were to be let up on to the deck.

After quite a while, she had finally caught up with the pirate ship with the black sails. She looked around for a way to get on to the deck of the ship and found none. All she could do was to hope for someone to look down from the deck and find her.

"Jack!" she heard a woman's voice say. "Jack, there's a girl swimming in the water!"

A tan man with dreadlocks in his hair, black kohl around his eyes, and a big leather hat stuck his head over the side of the boat. "So there is," he said. Then he turned his back to her. "Lower the longboat!" he shouted. "Bring this girl up on deck!"

The girl could hear much scrambling and scraping on deck as she treaded water, trying to keep her head up. Soon, a longboat was lowered down to her with two pirates sitting in it. They helped her into the longboat and pulled her up onto the deck.

She stood a little shakily on the deck, slightly weak at the knees and dress heavy with water from swimming so long.

The tan man, Jack, approached her. She looked him up and down, taking in every inch of his body. He was quite handsome. His eyes looked catlike with the kohl around them. She could see the shape of his muscles under his shirt. She looked down at his pants to see if there was anything else to look at.

Hm... she thought. Not yet, apparently.

"How'd you get here?" Jack asked her, snapping her out of her trance with his common accent rolling off his tongue like oil.

She looked at him with wide, innocent eyes. "On your ship?" She talked with an accent of a higher class than Jack, but not of a class high enough to be of nobility.

"Yes."

"I - " she lowered her eyes. "I was running away from home. I stole a rowboat and was planning to row away as far as I could. The boat sprung a leak and I saw your ship so I figured to swim to it. I knew you were pirates, but I wasn't scared."

Jack leaned towards the girl. Her nose filled with the smell of sweaty flesh, a smell she found slightly arousing.

"Really?"

"Really."

"What's your name, girl?"

She looked straight into Jack's eyes. She noticed how dark and piercing they were, accentuated even more by the kohl.

"Virginia," she replied.

"Well, Virginia," Jack responded. "Welcome to the Black Pearl."

A/N: Well this is the beginning of my first PotC fic! I hope you all like it!