"Ye don' want to be doin that, luv," she jumped at the sound coming from behind her, and she whirled around to locate the source of the voice.

Her eyes finally settled on the man standing behind her. It was dark, but she just could make out his strange clothes and appearance. He was wearing a long, navy blue coat and vest over a shirt that might have once been white, a worn tri-corner hat over dark brown dreadlocks which had miscellaneous beads and trinkets woven through it randomly. He had a dark goatee that was parted into two braids on his chin. He was handsome, no doubt. But she immediately pushed that thought out of her mind and scolded herself for thinking such thoughts when she was married. Unhappily, but married all the same.

He took a careful step foreword, and for a moment she wondered why he was being so cautious until she remembered the gun she still held pointed to her head. She immediately brought it to her side and he seemed slightly more relaxed. She flushed slightly in embarrassment at being caught in such a desperate manner.

"Who are you to know what I want?" she snapped.

"Well, not just what you want, luv. It sure would be a shame to see pretty young lass like ye go down like this. What would your family think?" he said, his hands waving around dramatically in the air to emphasize his words.

"Your concern is noted, but you have no idea why I am here or if I have any family at all to care."

"There's got to be someone, luv."

"You sound quite sure of yourself. But as a matter of fact I have no family left, nowhere to go…." she trailed off, feeling ridiculous for practically pouring out her life to a complete stranger so she added quickly, "And I don't know you, so go away. I need to think."

He grinned, flashing a few gold teeth, and said "Well your way of thinking does seem a bit drastic, doesn't it?"

Suddenly, Julianne heard shouting off in the distance, and her stomach dropped. She could hear James' voice screaming out her name, and he was getting closer. She could just make out his figure on the edge of the town, waving his sword around maniacally.

"I'll take a stab at this and say you're Julianne, then?" he said, noticing the stunned look on her face. He looked at the figure coming towards them and snorted, "Well the Commodore seems a bit worried 'bout ye. And drunk. I don't remember him being this irresponsible."

She couldn't move. He was coming to take her back with him, the one thing she didn't want, and she couldn't even get her eyes to move away from the approaching figure. She was very surprised and a tad grateful when she felt the stranger grab her arm and take her in the direction opposite of her town and her crazy husband.


He practically drug her towards a cove not very far from the cliff they had been standing before, and she could still hear the slurred threats coming from the direction of her husband. She saw the dark outline of a very large ship, and as she got closer, she noticed the tattered black sails and immediately recognized the ship as the infamous Black Pearl. Realizing that that was their exact destination, unless they planned on swimming away from Port Royal, she felt a shiver run down her spine.

"You're a pirate!" she asked, afraid of the answer. He just ignored her, however, and kept running forward.

They finally made it to the ship, and a rope ladder was thrown down. The pirate told her to climb up in front of him, and she hesitated before he repeated himself and she reluctantly did as she was told.

Once she was all the way up, she stole a glance at the men that surrounded her nervously before the pirate came up behind her, shouting commands at them that she could only guess were commands to get the ship ready to leave. This obviously meant that he was not only a pirate, but a pirate captain.

She felt her stomach drop. She would be leaving Port Royal, her house, her life- maybe never to return. She knew she didn't have any good reason to stay, but was she going to be any better off with maybe dozens of dirty pirates who had probably been deprived of the company of a decent woman in God knows how long? At least with James, she knew what she was going to be doing every night; cleaning until James got home from the docks and an after-work trip to the tavern, getting yelled at for helping the servants with the cleaning, chased around the house and perhaps roughed up a bit, then carried off to bed with a riled up Commodore. Most all of her days would be spent this way, but she had absolutely no idea what to expect from pirates except what she read about in books, which were generally not very pleasant things.

"It's not too late to go back, luv," she jerked her head around at the sound of the rough voice belonging to the strange pirate.

"Go back to what?" she whispered, mostly to convince herself that she didn't have anything or anyone left in Port Royal.

"Well, in that case, I should introduce meself. Captain Jack Sparrow's the name." He said it with a smug sort of pride, sticking his chin up slightly and waited for her reaction. She gathered he expected her to swoon at him and jump up and down in meeting the infamous Jack Sparrow, but she struggled not to laugh as she replied, "Julianne Norrington."

His egotistical stance faltered as she spoke her last name. He looked a mix between disbelief and sympathetic as he reached a finger to lightly brush the scratch on her cheek.

"He give that to ye?"

She nodded and muttered, "I've received worse."

"Don' worry, he'll get what's coming to him sooner or later," he cleared his throat andthe sympathetic air that surrounded him immediately returned to his unmistakable portentous aura. "Right then, ye'll be sleeping in my cabin."

She gasped, "Mr. Sparrow, I am no whore! I am a married, respectable woman and I absolutely refuse to share a bed with you!"

"Then sleep on the floor, I don' mind either way.Of course if ye feel that strongly about it, ye can sleep with me crew. But I warn ye, they haven't been in the company of such a lovely lass as yerself in ages." He winked at her and grinned devilishly as she sighed heavily in frustration. "I'll show ye to yer room, then."