A/N I am in a very, very bad mood right now. I have to write this chapter so I can cool off, and I am typing very fast so I apologize for mistakes. I'm just going to warn you right now… If I get any bad reviews for this chapter, you'd better watch out, because I'm not a very forgiving person when I am mad.
Oh yeah, and I'm not in the mood to get sued either, so no, I don't own anything.
When Anamaria let go of the trigger, the strangest thing happened. The bullet veered slightly to the left and was lodged into Anne's side instead of where it was aimed.
But nobody really noticed, with the exception of maybe Anne. Jack was actually in a state of shock… Anamaria was not a very rash or stupid person. And he could not believe that she had just shot Anne.
Anamaria seemed also to be in a state of shock. She stared at Anne in horror and then dropped the gun on the deck. The clatter echoed across the silence which seemed to stretch on forever until finally Anamaria ran quickly off the deck, down into her separate cabin.
Anne took two steps back and put one hand on the rail of the ship. The other hand she put over her side, feeling it carefully. Jack was unsure what to do, so he was frozen in place, just staring at her.
She looked up at him, and he saw no distress or worries in her eyes.
"Jack." She said calmly, but he could see she was struggling to keep a twinge of panic out of her voice. She gasped slightly. "I'm going to need your help… please, I really need your- in the captain's cabin, I just…"
Well, Jack hadn't known what to do, but here she was telling him, so he set straight to work, helping her down into the captain's cabin and helping her sit down. He waited expectantly for her to continue to tell him what to do.
She lifted her shirt a little bit, and it was only then that Jack noticed that the shirt was blood soaked. He pulled out a new one for her from his drawers and helped her pin it up so they could look at the bullet wound.
To his surprise, she was not badly hurt at all. She laughed at the astonished look on his face.
"Alright, Jack, it seems I owe you an explanation." She sighed and crossed her legs as if everything was perfectly fine.
"I was actually expecting you to shoot me today. I was pretty sure it was going to happen… I have that effect on strangers. So I took caution and tried an experiment that a friend of mine… a close friend in North Carolina… said might work." She held up a piece of metal that she had managed to rig so it would stay against her side. "It's called a magnet." She wrinkled her nose. "I don't really get how it works… but supposedly compasses work the same way, or something, though I don't get the connection. Anyway, the bullet was attracted to this scrap of metal. I redirected the force, and since it was being moved, it barely punctured my skin at all."
"Yes miss fine education." Jack said irritably. He had been really worried about her, and now it was like she had played a trick on him.
"But… I need your help… I'm having trouble breathing. It's nowhere near as bad as it should be, but… oh, it really hurts."
Instantly Jack felt guilty for being irritable.
"Or, I could just do this myself while you get to work on the galley."
Guilt gone.
"Maybe if I thought you would be grateful, I might try to actually help!" Jack said furiously.
"For once…"
"What do you mean? I do plenty of stuff around here!"
"Like what? Take up space? Help us spend the treasure from raids?"
"No… well, yes, but… I… navigate, and I keep us on track, and give orders, and… I know what I'm doing!"
"Yes and 'what you're doing' are all things that other people can't do, isn't that right captain?"
Jack was silent.
"Whoa, wait a second; you're giving up that easily?" Anne asked him, grinning a little.
Jack did not grin.
"Anne… look, I'd really appreciate it if you'd stop giving me shit. I could just torture you into telling me the location of the treasure, but I'm not going to do that, because I trust you. So if you'd just let me captain my ship, I'd be thankful."
Now it was Anne's turn to be silent. Finally, she cracked another grin.
"You're still torturing me, Sparrow. I haven't had food in days!" Jack still did not smile, and Anne realized he was being totally serious.
"So… no food, or what?"
Jack groaned. "Do you want me to torture you?"
"Didn't we already get clear on the fact that I'm hungry and haven't eaten for days? But if you feed me, then torture away."
Jack was quite sure there was a sexual innuendo staring him in the face. He almost didn't believe it was coming out of her mouth.
"Is that an offer?" He asked, grinning cheekily.
"Of course it is. But I have to warn you, if you take me up on it, I will kick you." Anne replied smoothly. Jack cleared his throat uncomfortably in a way that said 'of course I wasn't going to do that!'
"If you wouldn't mind patching me up now." Anne said pointing to her side.
"Right, I almost forgot." Jack said, standing up to get the tools he would need.
"Yeah, so did I. It was real easy to ignore the burning pain in my side." Anne said sarcastically, throwing a pillow at him. He ducked and then came back a moment later with a bowl of water, a cloth, and some rum. Anne eyed the rum nervously, but said nothing.
Jack carefully cleaned the wound, trying to be gentle. But she didn't flinch or move at all, just waited patiently.
"Could you hurry it up?" She asked him finally, breaking the silence. Jack was still wiping at some dried blood.
"I'm trying not to hurt you, love." She flinched when he said the word love.
"Well, don't I don't care." She snapped at him.
"Something you don't like about the pet name love?" Jack asked her, slightly amused.
"Of course not. It just reminds me of Calico, that crazy bastard." But she didn't sound like she thought he was a crazy bastard.
"You still love him." Jack commented quietly. Anne said nothing.
"Did you ever… you know, knock boots with anyone?"
She laughed like that was the funniest thing she'd ever heard. "Do you think I'm a pansy, Jack? Bloody hell, yeah! I didn't elope with James Bonny because I loved him. Although it broke his heart to find out that wasn't true." She said without emotion betraying her. "I'm a pirate, what'd you think, I'm still protected by my dear ol' daddy? Oh, for Christ's sake Jack, don't drink that… no!"
While she was talking, Jack was unscrewing the cap from the bottle of rum. After he took a sip, she wrenched it away from him.
"God, please don't drink this, Jack. You scared me so bad…"
Jack was just noticing the effect that the rum had on Anne. Her face grew quiet and solemn, and for a moment, he thought she was going to cry. Then she focused back on him, and gestured to her side.
"Are you going to finish or what? If you're going to pour this bloody stuff on, do it quick!"
Jack did… he tipped the bottle very quickly and a small amount of rum fell on her wound. She jumped up very quickly and drew a quick, deep breath from between her teeth.
"Oh, Jesus… couldn't you have waited just a moment? God, I wasn't ready."
"You told me to do it quickly." Jack said, shrugging innocently. Anne scowled and threw another pillow at him.
"Hold still, love… we're not finished."
Anne groaned.
When the two of them managed to quit bickering for long enough to fix Anne, they went up on deck, only to find that a storm had been brewing for a while.
"Why didn't anyone tell me?" Jack said, clearly irritated.
"You… were busy!" A bewildered Gibbs said, trying to explain to his furious captain. Jack was about to say something else, when he noticed Anne standing a ways off, shouting orders to his crew randomly, but it really seemed that she knew exactly what she was saying.
Jack walked over to her, and she looked up at him, surprised.
"You're not at the wheel? Oh, no… get over there! You need to take the wheel before the wind blows the sails and then the rudder…" But she was cut off by a loud creaking sound as the sails blew into a different position by the strong wind. She cursed and ran to the wheel, grabbing it while it was spinning out of control.
"Take care of everything my ass!" She shouted to Jack angrily. "Why can't you just for once do your job?"
Jack was annoyed now, and in super mode. He walked briskly to the wheel and took it from her.
"Are all sails secured?" He asked her quietly.
"Firmly. Do you want to ride the wind, or buckle in and drop anchor, wait out the storm?"
Jack paused.
"Feeling wild?"
Anne grinned.
"Let's ride it."
About three hours later, and they were all exhausted. Every one of them, with the exception of maybe Gibbs, who was utterly useless in storms and was cooking the galley, and Anamaria, who hadn't come out of her cabin since she shot Anne. The storm had blown over and they dropped anchor, hardly able to wait for the moment when they would be able to fall into their beds and sleep. But Gibbs insisted that everyone come to the dinner that he had made.
Now, all in all, Gibbs is pretty terrible at cooking, so the food consisted mainly of lumpy gray stuff which was supposed to be oatmeal or something like it, and hardtack, and don't forget the rum.
Everyone was soaking wet from the rain, and in need of food and warmth, so they all huddled together in the galley, eating silently. But surprisingly enough, for the first time after it had rained, everyone was in a pretty good mood. So it wasn't like they were upset and couldn't have a conversation. It was like there was nothing to say. It was then that Jack realized that Anne was not at the table, so he went to go find her.
"Anne?" He called softly over the deck.
"I'm fine." She said a little too quickly. Jack found her leaning over the helm, staring at the sky, which was a dark mass of rolling gray clouds, gathering so that it would be beautiful in the morning.
"Would you like that food that I said you could have?" Jack asked her quietly, and she accompanied him to the galley, where all of the crew members were now drunkenly happy, singing to made up tunes and sloshing full mugs of rum around, laughing together.
The color drained from Anne's face before Jack's very eyes. He watched her turn quickly and run out of the room, back away from the chorusing laughter back under the stars.
Jack followed her out, but before he could say anything, he saw her right back at the helm, not looking at him, just staring at the weather-worn knobs all around the wheel.
"They were drunk, you know. We could've been fine, if they had just… done something, you know? But they just sat there, just sat there stupidly while Mary… While Mary and I fought off the entire damn navy alone. What a rotten thing to do. Mary could be alive. It was suicide, you know."
She finally met Jack's eyes. "I might still love him… but it did me some good to see him hanging by his neck by that rope. But he could be alive too. They could all be alive."
She looked away, but not before Jack saw the tear glisten on her cheeks.