Hiya! Sorry for the wait, it's been a bit stressful over here, I'm in a play at the local theatre and we've been having rehearsals like every day. Anyhoo, enjoy and review please!

I scream and drop both the book and candle, which extinguishes immediately, but I do not care. My father! I cannot believe that my father is alive and well, and that we are on his ship, and heading to find him! I am going to meet my father, and perhaps my mother as well!

I have to sit down on the bed so I can think things through. My father… well, my father is a pirate, which is an obvious drawback, but I can live with it. My father stole Aztec gold from a pirate chest… ah. This means my father is a cursed pirate, but the curse has been lifted before, it can be lifted again. My father… my father thinks Elizabeth is me, which probably also means he thinks I am dead. Well, as soon as I turn up, we can clear that up…

Oh no. I cannot possibly meet my father without at the same time alerting Will to the fact that Elizabeth is dead, and it is not as if Will and Sparrow would let me visit a crew of pirates alone. I decide that some careful planning will have to be done on my part if I want to meet my father at last.

However, the sun is rising, and daylight is beginning to stream through the huge windows behind me. I cannot stay in here for too long, as Will and Sparrow would find it suspicious, and I decide not to show them the book and alert them to some potentially dangerous facts as yet. In due time, perhaps.

I rise from the bed and leave the room, being very careful to lock the door behind me. As I emerge from the hatch onto the deck, where I have to squint with the sudden light, Sparrow is striding towards me, looking concerned.

"You're up, then," he calls. I don't answer; there is no point in verifying the obvious. Sparrow comes over and stands next to me, doing that annoying trick of his where he talks to you but faces and looks in a completely different direction. "In that case, you can help the whelp and I. That commodore of yours is giving chase."

Norrington! I think, forgetting to remind Sparrow that Norrington is neither a commodore, nor mine. There is no way Norrington can follow us to find my father. He'd be sliced from head to toe before you could say 'you're under arrest for piracy on the high seas'.

I catch myself, wondering why I am so protective of Norrington suddenly. What does it matter to me if they chop him up? It doesn't, I remind myself. He lied to me. He lied for sixteen years. Let them carve him up and fry him for all I care.

I am interrupted from my thoughts by Sparrow prodding me and saying, "Are you going to stand there and dream all day?"

I glare at him and snatch a rope from the side of the ship, beginning to untie the main sail. I see Will over the other side of deck, hastily loosening the other sail ties. He sees me looking and smiles. I untie the last knot and the sail billows overhead, filling the sky. I don't realise what's wrong until I see Will staring up at the sail in horror. I look in the same direction and see the huge black sail flapping in the wind, an ivory-white skull-and-crossbones motif grinning down on us. Oh God. We've stolen a pirate ship.

Wait… something is badly wrong. The sails were definitely white when we stole the ship from Port Royale. Cursed treasure, old pirate books, changing sails… something very strange is going on around here.

Sparrow seems neither to notice nor care. From the helm he yells orders down to Will, who grabs me and runs beneath deck. He bashes the door to the gunpowder hold open and heaves two huge barrels of it up the stairs to the cannons. I grab another barrel and almost collapse under its weight. I just make it to the cannons when the ship gives a huge jolt and I am thrown back down the stairs, barrel crashing after me. I roll out of the way just in time to avoid becoming a crater in the floor and rush up to join Will, who is heaping handfuls of gunpowder into the cannons. He motions for me to help load the other cannons.

I open a cannon and throw a handful of the dirty powder into the cannon, telling myself I do not care if the cannonball hits Norrington's ship and causes him to sink. This is the man who made my life a misery for sixteen years. This is not the time to start becoming sentimental.

Will lights a cannon and it explodes with such force I am thrown backwards across deck. I pick myself up and set a match to another cannon. The cannonball soars into space in the opposite direction to Norrington's ship and lands harmlessly with a splash in the water around fifty metres away.

"Aim next time!" Sparrow roars from the helm. Another cannon booms, but I am prepared this time and I have seized the rail for support. Will's cannonball lands very close to the other ship.

I can see, indistinctly, Norrington prancing up and down on his ship, yelling and pointing over at us. I narrow my eyes and summon up all the hate I've ever felt for him, stuff some gunpowder in the cannon and light the fuse.

Will and Sparrow both cheer heartily as my cannonball hits Norrington's ship square in the side and creates a hole of considerable size. I smile quietly to myself as I hear Norrington screaming himself hoarse and blaming everyone else. Sparrow claps me on the back forcefully, and I am knocked forwards several feet. I force a laugh and retreat to the large bedchamber.

The book is lying on the bed where I left it. I open it, curious as to what other secrets it may hold, but my hands have barely touched the pages when there is a knock on the door. I jump and drop the book, hastily kicking it under the bed as the door opens.

I grin sheepishly as Will enters and gives me one of his heart-stopping smiles. "Well done," he says. "You knocked them right out of the water."

I smile and say, "Thank you," and he stands on the dais and looks out to sea. "Well done" was obviously not all he came in to say. He stays motionless for several minutes, then turns around, and says, unable to meet my eye, "Catherine, when… when the pirates took Elizabeth, did they… did you see them… well, you know, was she… was she alright?"

I flinch at the question, but I cannot tell him the truth. There is absolutely no way on this earth I can stand here and tell him his girlfriend is dead, or, worse, that I killed her. Just imagining the crushed, devastated look on his face is too painful... I have to lie, yet every word I say hurts more than if I were stabbing myself in the chest over and over.

"I… well, I didn't see that well, but I saw her… she was… she was alive; she was kicking and screaming as they carried her off… she was alright," I say quietly, expecting to see his face light up with that flicker of hope that news should bring him, but when he looks at me straight, he is fighting tears back as he chokes out, "But why didn't… why didn't you go after them? Why didn't you try and get her back?"

If he had ripped out my heart and kicked it across the floor, it could not possibly have hurt more than those two sentences. I struggle to speak; I look up at his face and I come so close to telling him… but I can't do it, I absolutely can't cause him any more pain than he is already feeling, so as the tears come rolling down my cheeks, I whisper to the floor, "I don't know. I'm sorry," but he has already begun to walk away and he leaves the room and slams the door.

I throw myself onto the bed and cry for minutes before I can sit up and attempt to think straight again. I hate myself; I utterly despise and detest every particle of my being for this. And to think that the morning they found me, I sat there and looked into his eyes and I thought everything would be alright; I actually thought that even after Will discovered the truth, he would find it in his heart to forgive me; and I really believed, right then, I really believed there was a possibility he would turn around and say, "I love you," even after he found out! Why was I so stupid? Oh, why, why, why?

"You foolish, foolish girl," I scold myself, still crying hard and hiccoughing with tears. "How could you ever think everything would be alright? How could you ever think Will could love you? For God's sake, you're so stupid! Why would he ever love you? You killed his girlfriend!" A fresh wave of tears bursts out as I say that, but I continue. I deserve this. "That's right! And no matter how much you avoid it and run away from it, it's still true, god damn it, Catherine! You killed Elizabeth!"

I hear a noise behind me and I stand up, feeling utterly sick. No. No. There is no way anyone can hear what I just said. But someone has, and I turn to see Sparrow standing in the doorway, looking completely and totally stunned.

Oh dear. Review or you will never find out what happens....