Chapter 2: Time Passes

Author's note: Okay, so chappy numero 2. I know it's kinda short, but heck, what can ya do? Thanks to johnnysgirl108, I love her name too! O.o... Wish I was named that... oh well, Tara'll do. Your encouragement has really helped me, I value your opinion. Please other readers, REVIEW! I makes me feel special... . Anyhoodle, on with the show...

Disclaimer: I own zip, and it sucks.

Time passed agonizingly slowly, years dragging on like centuries, nothing to look forward to, no sneaking out while mother was in the washroom to go goof off with Jack, no throwing rocks at those people who tease me, no splashing each other with ocean water and running home soaking wet to father's giggles and mother's yells, telling me what was deemed "proper" for a duke's daughter.

No more nothing.

No more Jack.

I was fourteen when I heard of the first attack. "It came wifout warning or mercy." A survivor said, "The ship was enormous, it seemed to burst out of the very fog, crept up on us like a cat on a mouse... 'orrible, brave men slaughtered... like animals. An they warned us, they did, told us to surrender or we'd die... and we did..... God help us, we did...." The man looked as if he might cry, but he managed to finish: " 'Is name was... was ... Sparrow, Jack Sparrow... that name'll 'aunt my dreams forever...."

Jack Sparrow. Just the name Jack made something inside of my chest feel light and heavy and cold and blazingly hot at the same time. Could it be? Could it be Jack Canning? It could be, he might have changed his name so no one knew who he was. Could this evil man, this... this... this pirate really be the sweet, gentil, kind boy I had grown up with? The boy I had loved?

No.

We mourned Jack like one dead, and that's what he was in our eyes, dead. Lost at sea. Anyway, no one saw him after me, after that night. He was nothing but a wonderful memory, and a ring on a chain.

More years passed, nearly every night after I turned fifteen my mother had another friend and her son who just happened to be in the neighborhood. I realized the scheme to get me a husband after the third suitor.

It made me sick. And what did they want me anyway? Sure, so I was a duke's daughter, but father and mother weren't that rich, I wasn't really all that pretty, I was short, chubby, had a problem with acne and not exactly what you would call good natured. Probably just for show, mother wouldn't want me to pass thirty without a marriage, but I was fifteen for God's sake.

They where all a bit older than me, I think the oldest man thrown at me was twenty-something, handsome, and some of the most boring people I had ever met. Once or twice, a man would come along who I liked, they where funny, kind and sweet. But then mother would find something about him that made him that made him ineligible, he was secretly seeing someone else, or his father wasn't really his father. None of the men given to me where what I wanted, anyway.

Buy what did I want? Well, I wanted someone handsome, but not perfect. Nice, but not sappy. Funny, but not obnoxious. Someone who could be my friend... someone like... like...

Jack.

I had fantasized once or twice about his mother finding an unmarried duke after she ran away from her abusive husband (a few days after Jack went missing), Jack miraculously showing up, and both of them coming here. Jack and I would sneak away like we always did and run, laughing, down to the beach, where we'd splash each other like I was ten again. He'd build a fire, I'd sing some song and we'd laugh together under the stars. Then... when my eyelids grew heavy from the hour of night, we'd just sit and look at the moon, so big and low over the sea. Out of the blue, I'd turn to him, to find him looking at me, and he'd kiss me, sweetly, beautifully, with the kind of love reserved for fairy tales and love songs, not real life. But it would happen anyway, and we'd get married, and we'd live happily ever after.

But no. That would never happen.