Yes, Niko, there is a reason behind Jack's sudden dismal all those years ago. Laughs The reason is really quite simply if you think about it, but I'm not about to reveal what it is to all of you because... well… It just ruins the point and my fun. Keeping you guys guessing is one of the best parts of writing a story. I love being an author. cruel smirk And on another quick note, please keep in mind that all the "port cities" you read about (other than Tortuga and Port Royal) are names I picked at random. They aren't real ports of that time period.
Secrets of the CaribbeanWritten By: Riley Barton
[Chapter Twenty-Nine]
"His last stop was in Tortuga, correct? And Ione before that?" Scarlett looked at Jack, who nodded. "Meaning he's stopping at every other port." She looked back to the map of seaports and ran her finger along the outer coastline. "So his next stop would be…" Her finger came to a stop. "In Morgane." She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. "His last stop before reaching home," she whispered.
Jack looked at her. "Home? This damned scallawag actually has his own berth?" He smiled wryly.
Scarlett didn't respond to his comment. "Port Venetia is where his ship makes berth, but his house is further inland. He'll probably take Carver there." She briefly closed her eyes and reached up to rub them. "I just can't figure out why he would take Carver. What purpose is there other than spite? My past history with him, maybe?" she murmured aloud.
Jack gave her a quizzical look. "You mean our past history with him."
"Hm?" Scarlett looked up at him absently. "Oh! Yeah, sorry." She looked back down to the map.
Jack's eyes narrowed. There was something she wasn't telling him…
The cabin door swung open and Will strode inside. "Oi, Jack, Gibbs needs your opinion on-" He stopped short and his eyebrows rose in surprise. "The two of you are working together? Without arguing?"
Scarlett rolled her eyes and Jack smirked. "Don't wet your britches in shock, boy," he said. "Even the Commodore gave me some time to escape quite a few months ago, and that was somethin' no one would 'ave ever expected."
Will shrugged. "Point taken," he muttered.
"Now what was it Gibbs needed me about?" Jack asked.
Scarlett ignored the two men conversing and tried to concentrate on the task at hand. There was so much that just didn't make sense. If anyone had wanted to emotionally harm her taking Carver was definitely the way to do that, and the time the kidnapping took place showed that hurting Jack may have also been part of Ansgar's plan. Jack and Carver had gotten somewhat chummy. She frowned and licked her lips absently. Could this possibly be an act out of revenge for the gem she and Jack had stolen from him? The gem isn't worth this much trouble, she thought in reply to her own theory. So if that's not it then it must be the past history between him and I. Mother and Father had offended him somehow… Scarlett was so absorbed in her thoughts she never noticed when Jack and Will left the cabin.
Jack flexed his grip on the rounded wooden pegs of the helm and briefly looked up to the wooden landing high above that served as the crow's nest. He watched the still figure sitting up there with her hair blowing in the wind. Scarlett had been up there since the sun had set hours ago, not paying any heed to anyone. Anamaria had climbed up to talk with her, but had returned to the deck ten minutes after. It seemed his childhood friend was too involved in her own mind to talk with anyone.
"The kidnapping of her son must be hitting her pretty hard," Will Turner said, walking over to where Jack stood at the helm. His eyes were staring up at the lone figure, as well. He returned his gaze to Jack. "You've been watching her for some time, Jack. Go up and talk to her."
"If she didn't want Anamaria's company, then she won't be wanting mine," Jack replied, looking away from Scarlett.
"I thought the two of you were getting along."
"We are, supposedly, but not much has changed." He shrugged. "But that was part of the agreement, wasn't it? We'd be friends but not like we had been before."
Will hesitated. "Why, if I may ask, did you leave her behind in Port Royal?"
Jack looked at Will from the corner of his eyes. "What's it to you?"
Will shrugged. "Curious."
Jack rolled his eyes and drummed his long fingers on the smooth wood beneath his hands. "I'm not entirely sure."
Will snorted. "That's a good reason."
"It's none of your damn business, boy," Jack growled, glaring at the younger version of Bootstrap Bill. "I've got my reasons, and I'll give you more than enough reasons why ye should leave it alone."
Will blinked in mild surprise before his eyebrows came together in a straight line. Without another word he turned and walked away with an angry stride in his step.
Jack watched him leave and go below deck. He growled under his breath and yanked a compass from one of his coat pockets. He stared at the compass and adjusted the helm so the Pearl would be going in the right direction. Unlike his other compass, this one pointed north, as a compass normally should. His other one that pointed south was tucked away in a locked drawer hidden from view in his cabin. He slipped the compass back into his pocket and glared at the ocean in the distance. Subconsciously his eyes went up to Scarlett again. She's more trouble than she's worth, he thought.
Scarlett leaned back and stared all around her with the ocean stretching as far as she could see. Not a single strip of land was in sight and the dolphins frolicking in the water below gave the evening a tranquil feel. She hadn't realized how much she had missed the gentle rocking of the ocean beneath her feet. The life of a pirate wasn't an easy one, she knew, but being a sailor of the Fleet or an ordinary fisherman was not appealing. So, she figured with resignation, the life of a pirate was all that was left. As if she could do anything else, anyway. The brand she had received from the East India Company banned her from doing anything but.
"Want some company?"
Scarlett nearly jumped out of her skin when Fredrick spoke and stuck his head over the side of the crow's nest. She closed her eyes and placed a hand over her heart as if to still it, smiling softly. She opened her eyes and motioned for him to take a seat. "Can't guarantee that I'll be good company," she apologized, "but you're welcome to stay."
Fredrick dropped down beside her and looked around. "It is beautiful, isn't it?" he murmured. He smiled at Scarlett. "I see why you love it so much. Did you grow up by it?"
Scarlett slowly nodded. "I was close enough to smell the salt of the ocean and sometimes hear the waves." She moved her index fingers in circles on her raised knee. "Jack and I used to play on the beach all the time when we were younger."
Fredrick stilled with only the occasional blink. "How long have the two of you been friends?" he asked quietly after a couple minutes of silence.
Scarlett shrugged. "Since I was about six or seven, I suppose." She noted the fact that Fredrick was waiting for her to continue. She sighed resignedly. "My life isn't a pretty story, Fredrick," she warned.
Fredrick took her hand and squeezed it, surprising Scarlett to the core. "I'll still like you whether you have scars or not."
Scarlett refused to let the heart-felt comment get to her. Fredrick hadn't been the first one to say something like that to her. No matter the fact Fredrick was honest. Jack was an honest man, too, but something about her had obviously rubbed him the wrong way. She glanced down at their interlocked hands, trying to resist the feeling of discomfort rumbling around inside her. In an effort not to be obvious, she removed her hand and used it to tuck her hair behind her ears. "My parents loved each other," she started out. "I was their pride and joy, always receiving their love and attention at all hours of the day. My father would take me in his arms and spin me around, and my mother would let me help her make cookies to take to the people less fortunate than us. My father's brother came over a lot, too, and he would always bring me little trinkets he would find on his many adventures on the ocean. A sailor, he was." She sighed. "Then all of a sudden, things changed. It was a couple months after my fifth birthday when my father started leaving every night, returning late, drunk. My uncle came to visit two weeks after my father started drinking, and there was a big argument." She shuddered in the wind, remembering the sound of their shouts and curses. "I couldn't understand what they were saying, but I could hear my father and his brother shouting at one another; my mother was crying. I fell asleep listening to their shouting. After that nothing was the same." She ran a hand through her hair.
"My father started beating my mother," she continued. "Punching, kicking, sometimes cutting her with a knife he would secretly keep somewhere on his body. He never hurt me until a year after his brother left. I was six by then. I was glad to leave the house every chance I could get. No one dared help us for fear of my father coming after them." Her eyes darkened. "Damn bastards. They knew what was going on in that house, they could hear my father shouting, but no one did anything. Until I met Jack." The last sentence was whispered. "It had been on a Thursday afternoon. My mother had left for the market and my father was at the nearest pub. I had left the house and headed for the beach, wanting to be alone. A group of six boys, three of which being the sons of aristocrats, came up behind me when I was sitting on the sand. They bullied me for a short time, taunting me and calling me the daughter of a whore and a drunk. One of the boys managed to punch me in the stomach before he got shoved from behind." She couldn't help smiling at the memory. "A boy with dark hair and brown eyes punched and kicked him until the boy beneath him was shouting for mercy. The boy with dark hair was Jack. He had known the boy who had thrown a punch at me. Both of them were sons of aristocrats and their families often visited one another. Jack taunted the other boys, daring them to attack him or me. The other boys only had to take one glance at their bruised friend lying on the sand to know it would be only a fool who would take Jack Anderton on."
"You know, of the two of you I would have seen you as the aristocrat before him. You don't talk as a pirate would like Jack does, and yet he's the one with the socialite background."
Scarlett looked up at the moon above in the sky. "Not only did Jack save me from those boys on the beach, but numerous times he saved me from my father's wrath. He would always whisk me away to the beach or his own home on the cliff; you know the house I speak of." Fredrick nodded. "Jack's mother," Scarlett went on, "took me under her wing, so to speak, and treated me as her own daughter. Jack had always resisted the aristocratic life, running in the streets and fighting with wooden swords. I, on the other hand, wanted that life. His mother Aubrianna noticed this and taught me everything. Etiquette, how to speak, and even a couple hobbies of hers, like painting. Jack hated the idea of me becoming a 'hoity-toity girl', I think was what he called it. He would always try to pull me with him out to the beach where we would sword fight with these wooden swords he had carved from driftwood."
Fredrick couldn't help noting the smile on her face. "So there are really two sides of you. The aristocrat and the pirate."
Scarlett nodded. "I guess so, though I'm more pirate than aristocrat. Only my speech is somewhat that of a socialite."
Fredrick looked down to the helm where a lone figure stood. He sighed and looked away. He was a grown man and yet he was acting like a teenager. "So," he said, clearing his throat, "how did you and Jack become pirates?"
Scarlett folded her arms across her chest and leaned back, staring up into the night sky. "We ran away when we were sixteen. I tried to convince him to leave when I was fifteen, but he decided to get smart on me and said we needed time to plan out everything. Anyway, we bought passage on a ship going to Tortuga. A rough place it was, especially for a girl of sixteen and a boy just over the age of seventeen. Jack managed to find us a small inn that wasn't as rough as the others where we could stay for the next couple of months. I worked at the bar downstairs while Jack worked at the wharf. We left Tortuga almost five months after arriving and sailed for Port Royal. Stayed there for an additional six months, but in a high-tone port like that there isn't much work for two kids. So, we stowawayed on a ship called the Marigold. We were caught two weeks out to sea when I was caught pilfering food from the galley. The captain put us to work, and eventually, I think, became fond of us because he started to give us coins for our work.
"By the time Jack was nearing nineteen he had become fond of the pirate life. Being an ordinary merchant didn't sound fun enough for him, so he dragged me away and found us a place with a pirate fleet. We stayed with them for two years, saving up our own money. We grew tired of them and left, found another pirate fleet, and so on and so forth. Basically, we eventually got enough of our own money to make us as wealthy as some of the highest aristocrats, if you would believe that. Jack, however, became fond of rum and spent some of it on that. He would have spent it all if I hadn't kept him at bay and had been keeping some hidden."
Fredrick nodded, not sure why he had even asked in the first place. Knowing all this wasn't going to ease anything, so where was the point? Besides, all she had told him had brought everything to one conclusion in his mind, and he didn't like it.
Scarlett looked at Fredrick out of the corner of her eye. He looked as if he was fighting with something, and she knew it was over her. Her life story was scaring him away, as she thought it might. No one wanted to be around a pirate if they had always loathed them to begin with, and Fredrick's dislike toward Jack had been more than evident.
"You love him, don't you?"
Scarlett's heart skipped a beat and her head snapped in Fredrick's direction. "What?"
Fredrick looked at her. "Jack. You love him?"
Scarlett stared at him. What was he trying to get at with that question? She wanted to laugh, but merely shook her head. She looked out to sea ahead of them. She opened her mouth to tell him no, but something caught her eye. She jumped to her feet and leaned away from the crow's nest, keeping a tight hold on the mast. Her eyes slowly widened. "Shit." She grabbed a nearby rope and swung down, shouting to get Jack's attention at the helm. He paused and looked at her with confusion. A sudden wind had picked up and he couldn't hear what she was saying. Frustrated, Scarlett sprinted up the steps and ran to his side. "A reef, straight ahead," she gasped out. "The Pearl is heading straight for it!"
Authors Note: Happy New Year, everyone! Hope you enjoyed yourselves immensely! Well, another year and another chapter, hope you guys enjoyed it. I decided to give a bit more of Jack and Scarlett's background, so please excuse me if it was somewhat boring. But, since the chapter seemed to have gone in that direction, I thought some action and a cliffhanger was needed. grin Don't forget to review, mates! Cheers!