A/N- The song is 'My All' by Mariah Carey. Musical diversity, eh?

I just started writing a Harry Potter DM/BZ fic, so production on this one might be a little slow for a while until I work things out between the two of these stories. Feel free to review on the HP one if you read those, though. Reviews are always appreciated, no matter what story they're on!

~*~

Chapter Eight

Wild City

~*~
I'm thinking of you
In my sleepless solitude tonight
If it's wrong to love you
Then my heart just won't let me be right
Cause I've drowned in you
And I won't pull through
Without you by my side
I'd give my all to have
Just one more night with you
I'd risk my life to feel
Your body next to mine
Cause I can't go on
Living in the memory of our song
I'd give my all for your love
Tonight
~*~
 
                   Tortuga was a city that seemed to beat with the rhythm of a thousand drums, and Serenity was caught up in the center of it. The mazelike narrow cobblestone streets were covered with a dusty, sticky haze that consisted of liquor and dirt and vomit, but the residents of the city ignored it. The people of Tortuga- that means turtle in Spanish- were like a separate race upon themselves. Pirates leered at the busty, cleavage-boasting prostitutes from the doorways of bars and brothels. Serenity looked around for a friendly face, but Rosalia and Graciela had disappeared into the wild throng as soon as they had stepped foot off the boat. The only familiar face, unfortunately, was Daniel's face. Instinct made Serenity's feet run but Daniel's large hand caught her arm rudely and grasped it in an iron fist. Serenity could feel her skin bruising under his touch as he pulled her roughly to him and proceeded to kiss her in the center of the street. Serenity pulled her arm away and placed both hands on his chest in an effort to push him away, but he only seized her wrists and made her twice the prisoner that she had been before. An alcohol-saturated Daniel may have dragged her into the nearest seedy boardinghouse, and a sober Daniel did the same. He threw two coins at the man sitting behind the sagging table that passed as a front desk and pulled Serenity up the stairs and into a small room.
 
                   A narrow bed that was covered in grimy, soiled sheets took up the right half of the room, and a spindly bedside table with a broken candelabra set atop it was placed crookedly next to it. Daniel threw Serenity onto the bed, which sagged under the velocity of her weight, and reached inside his jacket to produce a bottle of rum.
 
                   "Have to get nice and drunk before you rape me, do you?" Serenity spit at him, possessed with the spirit of being in a place so easy to disappear in. 
 
                   "As always," Daniel sneered as Serenity picked herself up off of the bed and kicked at the window midway up on the wall of the room with the heel of her boot. The glass cracked. She seized the candelabra on the bedside table and slammed it against the glass with more strength than she knew she possessed. The stubby candles fell out of their wire holdings as she desperately tried to break the window open. Daniel crossed the room, approaching her as she dropped the candelabra and kicked a large piece of glass out. Serenity hurled her body out of the window as he reached for her waist, her skirt and skin ripping on the shards of glass that remained around the perimeter of the window. She fell two stories and landed in a bloody heap of cotton and sweat on the stone street, almost crushing a dwarf prostitute underneath her weight. The angry, busty little woman glared at her before she brushed off her black lace skirts and red bustier and continued down the street. 
 
                   Serenity picked her buzzing head off of the ground and craned her neck upwards. The upper half of Daniel's body had followed her out the window, along with his liquor bottle, which had shattered in a million pieces next to her on the street and sprayed her body with rum. However, the pirate had not fallen and had already drawn himself back into the room when Serenity stood and began to run. She was sure that he would follow her, deranged stalker type that he was. Serenity picked up her skirts and sprinted down the road as best as she could, ducking into the first bar she came upon. The place, named the Seven Sprites, was filled floor to ceiling with a thick smoke. Through the smog Serenity spotted a window and made her way towards it. She was coughing heavily when she reached it and wiped a circle of dust off it with her sleeve. She dug into the windowpane with her fingernails as she watched the passerby on the street, looking for Daniel, letting him pass before she tried to make her escape. For a quarter of an hour she waited with baited breath by the window, not noticing the leering drunken men that had taken notice of her. They were ignored as she searched for Daniel's face, and after much frustration, she spotted it. Instinct told her to duck but this time Serenity ignored it and watched him. He looked around, searching on the streets, looking for her. He seemed to stand there for an hour as she watched him, but a few moments later he gave up and moved on. Serenity waited ten minutes before she exited the smoky Sprites and gasped for a fresh breath once she was back on the street.
 
                   Soon the desperation of her position hit her fully. She was a woman dressed in heavy skirts, for once, on the streets of a strange, wild city that she didn't know. As Serenity looked sadly down at her inappropriate attire, she decided first to conceal her identity as best as she could. It was disturbingly easy to locate an abandoned set of trousers in a wayward street corner, and hurriedly she flung her skirts in their place and slipped them on. The trousers were too long but they would have to do. She kept on the blouse that she had been wearing with the skirts and stole a hat off the head of a drunken young man. She tucked her locks under it and returned to the streets of Tortuga a man. 
 
                   She was relieved to find that men no longer leered at her in a sexual way, and confidence that she was escaping for good squared her shoulders. Soon it came to her that she would have to find Rosalia and Graciela and save them too, but they would most likely be with the pirates still. Only Graciela had enough guts to stand up to the pirates, but she had been broken so badly when she first came onto the ship and got a taste of what Vengeance life was like. Serenity held little but a dark hope that Rosalia would be, could be strong. She wanted to save these two women who so deserved to be saved, but she didn't want to risk the pirates recognizing her either. I would want them to save me.
 
                   Determinedly she set out towards the docks, the last place she had seen the two. Some pirates that she hadn't bothered to learn the names of took them in the opposite direction that Daniel had been taking her. When she reached the docks she found no sign of them, as she had expected. A grim resignation that she was searching for two needles in one hell of a haystack came upon her, and she sat down on a nearby wooden bench and buried her face in her hands. She watched the boots pass by for a little while as she thought of what to do. She had to find Graciela and Rosalia. She had to get back to Port Royale. She had to get out of here. She had to get her life back. 
 
                   There was so many things that she had to do.
 
                   Suddenly exhausted, she lifted herself off the bench and began to wander through the streets of Tortuga, not knowing or caring where she was going. She took the road less traveled, which only led her to another fork. Serenity watched the faces pass by but didn't let them register. They were strangers, strangers that didn't mean anything to her.
 
                   A blonde woman in a ridiculously low cut dress being pulled along by an eager black-haired pirate, who's old girlfriend went off sobbing into a brothel. 
 
                   A short man in a hat being seduced by two raven prostitutes.
 
                   A tall brown-haired man followed by a dark-skinned woman and a braided pirate. 
 
                   Two girls pulling one happy man into a boardinghouse. 
 
                   A tall brown-haired man followed by a dark-skinned woman and a braided pirate.
 
                   A tall brown-haired man followed by a dark-skinned woman and a braided pirate.
 
                   The brown-haired man looked at Serenity as she passed. She didn't realize who it was until he was already a hundred yards down the street, deep in the impossible crowd.
 
                   "Will!" she called, to the surprise of a woman's voice issuing from the body that seemingly belonged to a man. "Will!" she had lost sight of him but immediately began to run into the crowd, which was pushing in the opposite direction. She darted to the edge of the crowd and began to push her way rudely through the mass of people, driven by a desperation that she had never felt before. Serenity called his name again and again as she tried to make her way towards him, as she tried to make her way towards a ghost, but fate was not on her side in that particular moment. She ran smack into Daniel, who grabbed her elbows with his impossible strength.
                   
                   "Don't run," he told her.
 
                   She didn't.