Disclaimer: see first chapter.
"So was Dawn telling the truth?" Ana and Squirrel sit side-by-side. Ana is teaching Squirrel how to sew. "Do you really love Jack Sparrow?"
"E-ever s-since I s-s-saw him-m-m…" Squirrel looks up, apologetically. "S-Sorry, b-but when I t-talk about J-Jack, I s-stutter."
Ana raises an eyebrow, grinning. "I see."
The two women sit in silence for a moment, both working on repairing the tears and tattered edges of their clothes. Even though it's very late, none of the crew seems able to get back to sleep. Sewing, however, is a simple task, enough to occupy her mind, and it's very useful too. Squirrel wonders why she never taught herself to do this.
"I don't mean to pry." Ana says, conversationally, "But how old are you, anyway."
Squirrel mumbles something. Ana stabs herself with her needle in surprise.
"Really?" She says, sucking her bleeding finger. "But you don't look a day over sixteen!" Squirrel shrugs, pinking again with a smile. Ana's tone turns jealous. "What's your secret?"
Squirrel smiles sadly, shaking out her cloak and re-examining it. "Being picked on and beaten for my entire life, barely eating anything other than nuts, and hiding from any other human being."
Ana goes back to her sewing. "Sorry I asked."
Squirrel shrugs, then turns her attention to her old clothes. They are in dire need of repair. The door opens, and Jack bursts in.
"Skirrel!" He yells. "Gimme th' MAP!" Squirrel notices a bottle of rum in one of his hands.
"Oh, push off, Captain!" Ana shouts. "We're sewing!"
Jack stares at Ana, or at least, in Ana's general direction, then laughs, belches, and swaggers out of Squirrel's cabin. Ana rolls her eyes.
"Ana's sewing! Ana's sewing!" Jack's voice echoes across the deck, and there is laughter from some of the crew. Ana gets to her feet, scowling.
"Excuse me, Miss Grey." She goes outside. There's a slap, then the sound of someone hitting the deck with an 'Oomph!', and then Ana comes back into the cabin, triumph etched on her features.
"No offence or anything, Squirrel." Ana says, shutting the door quietly behind her, "But you have very strange taste."
Squirrel laughs. Ana smiles as she sits down next to Squirrel.
"You should do that more often, you know." Ana comments. Squirrel looks up, confused.
"Do what?"
"Smile." Ana says, keeping her eyes on her sewing. "Smile, laugh, or at least show your face. You're very pretty, you know. You shouldn't hide behind that cloak."
Squirrel stabs herself with her needle and yelps. As she sucks the wound, she says dryly, "You're not the first to say that, Ana. But I…" She falters.
Ana looks at Squirrel carefully for a moment. "But…?"
Squirrel stares down at her cloak. It's as good as new now. "I guess I'm not a people person. I've been mistreated by everyone I knew in my past, and had people I loved taken from me. My mother, and then my father…" Big fat tears plop onto the cloak like rain. Squirrel tries to wipe them away, first from the cloak, secondly from her eyes. "I-I-I'm s-sorry." She mumbles. "I d-don't know w-why I'm c-cryin' over this n-now."
"Do you want to talk about it?" Anamaria puts aside her sewing, and places her arm around Squirrel's shoulder. With a shuddering sigh, Squirrel tells her story. The story of her family. The story of the Lady Grey.
Daniel Grey was famous in Tortuga for being a weakling. He never lifted a sword against anyone, never fired a pistol when insulted, never stole, fought or swore. You get all types in Tortuga, it was said, and Daniel was proof enough of that. He married a lass named Rose, and there were rumours abounding that Mrs Grey was the daughter of a powerful nobleman in some Jamaican fort city, who had smuggled herself to Tortuga. However, though she became known as the Lady Grey, Daniel himself never took up the title of Lord Grey. He was always Daniel.
About a year later, Rose and Daniel rejoiced at the birth of their first child. A daughter. As the years went by, Daniel strove to provide a safe life for his daughter, making sure she was hidden from the men and woman of Tortuga, kept from the rabble and the evil of the streets. Rose doted on her only child, teaching her to read and write, and, after an incident when their daughter turned ten, she taught her how to hide, how to run, how to use a simple slingshot to fight if needs be, and how to blend into crowds and not be noticed.
Little did they know it, but their daughter was finding out about this evil world she lived in. Remembering her mother and father's advice, she slid from shadow to shadow, day after day, watching the world from the rooftops and riggings of homes and ships. She saw people dying, fighting, flaunting, drinking… and gambling. It was not long afterwards that the young Miss Grey discovered she had a talent for reading games, reading people's thoughts, being able to predict the rolls of dice, the plays of cards, the outcomes of a fight, or even the way the weather could change.
At the age of thirteen, Miss Grey revealed this power to her parents. Miss Grey sought out games in the streets, placed her own bets with the men and woman, and brought home money enough to keep her family alive. Daniel and Rose Grey, now worried about the future of their daughter in such a horrible place, were not comforted. Such a talent would be useful to many pirates in Tortuga, and their daughter was only a young girl with an impressionable mind. So Daniel went to the only person he thought he could trust.
His half-brother.
Rose hid with her daughter, fearing that Daniel might betray her daughter unintentionally. Night fell, dawn came, another night and day passed. Daniel Grey did not return. Rose, panicked that something might've happened to her husband, risked the streets of Tortuga and went to her half-brother-in-law's tavern.
Daniel was there, drunk. His half-brother had guessed Daniel's daughter was valuable, and was forcing the information out of Daniel, drink by drink. Rose ran to her husband, trying to wake him, trying to stop him from betraying his family. Daniel, twisted by the rum, drew his sword and stabbed his wife, not realising who it was. When the rum-haze cleared, he saw the blood on his sword, his wife dead on the floor, and his only daughter staring at him in horror, tears rolling down her face.
The sword turned, and Daniel impaled himself, dying alongside his wife, leaving Miss Grey abandoned and orphaned. Before anyone could catch her, the young Miss Grey leapt up into the rafters of the tavern and ran until she could run no more.
In the comfort of her own home, the young girl closed her mind, forcing herself to forget everything. Someone killed her parents, and she didn't know who. The slight stutter she was born with increased ten-fold with the shock she received. Surrounded by a loving family all her life, the girl sought out the only family she knew she had left, as if to get back what she had lost. She wanted family again, so she turned to the only family she knew.
Her uncle.
At first, Miss Grey's uncle refused to take care of her. Undaunted, and naively trusting what was left of her family, she revealed her talent in knowing the outcomes of games of chance. For about a year afterwards, Miss Grey's uncle took care of her, and in return, Miss Grey helped her uncle keep most of the gold spent by patrons on his tavern's gambling tables. Then Dawn appeared.
A bastard daughter by one of Tortuga's many prostitutes, Dawn made herself indispensable in the tavern, attracting customers and lovers both. Soon, Miss Grey's welcome was worn out. But she had nowhere else to go, so she stayed, thinking the fault hers that Dawn and her uncle beat her every day, thinking the fault hers that she was a slim, timid girl with a stutter like a squirrel's. And that became her name. Squirrel. Once a fond family nickname, it became a name of a girl that was useless, a girl to be picked on, a girl with no family, no friends, and no hope of survival.
When dreams are gone and hopes are dead, it takes a miracle before they can be rekindled. After ten years working in the dank hole of the tavern, after ten years of mental and physical torture, Miss Squirrel Grey found out what it was like to fall in love.
And she fell in love Captain Jack Sparrow, captain of the Black Pearl.
A/N: -.- like I said, this is a really old fanfic that I've just decided to post. Nitpics as well as well as kudos are welcomed.