Author's Note: thanks to all who reviewed the last chapter.  Please, let me know what you think of this one.

Partially based on the deleted scene right after Will breaks Jack out of jail.

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One shot.  One chance.  That's been my philosophy in life, ever since my mutinous crew stranded me on an island with a single pistol and bullet.  One shot.  Not that I applied that philosophy to most of my dealings.  With most of the people I encountered on a day to day basis, you started with one chance to get them to do as you wished, but through stupidity, incompetence, or any of the other multitude of sins that plagued the human race, they gave away more.  Once chance generally led to another with them.  No, my belief in a single chance to change things to my advantage now existed only for the pistol I carried at my side.  Once chance, one shot, one person.

   People - the people that lived in the same world I did - wondered why I didn't simply get myself another pistol to use.  I made it seem that I enjoyed relying only on my cutlass to keep myself safe within the degenerate society I inhabited.  Truth was, I refused to so much as touch another pistol unless absolutely necessary.  Every once in awhile that got me in trouble.  In fact, in the early days, trouble came fairly often, seeing as how I wasn't much of a genius with the blade yet, but that changed as I forced myself to grow in skill.  No, the first person I wanted to feel the bite of a shot fired by me was him.

   One year passed into another, one scheme was replaced by a different plan.  I existed, I rode ships – commandeering them when necessary – but none of them compared with her, with my Pearl.  My one ship, my one shot at happiness.  Replaced by a pistol at my hip.  Pitiful really.  But then, I must have been pitiful back then.  A man hardly out of adolescence, too young to be captain and too prideful to depend on the advice of friends.  One mistake.  That's all it had taken to sober me up to the realities of the world I had chosen as my own.

   And now I'm facing another young man that still has that lesson to learn.

   "Hurry – someone will have heard that."

   Briefly I wonder if what I'm about to do is wrong.  He is the son of a man I considered a friend and crewmate, but then I reason that I'm not going to leave the lad to die – I just need something he has in order to get something I want.  "Not without my effects."  I hurry over to the wall where the military men so carelessly and arrogantly left my things hanging plain sight.  Have I ever mentioned how much I love English arrogance?

   "Why bother with that?  You could have escaped by killing me before, but you weren't willing to use it."

   Why does the boy expect rationality from a pirate?  Why does he even expect an answer?  I remember when I expected those things along with others.  Time for the boy to learn a lesson I'd had to learn the hard way.  It might even help him in the long run.  "Are you advising that was a mistake?"  I raise my pistol, the one I threatened him with before and the very same that Barbossa gave to me years ago.  I can see the sudden uncertainty in his eyes and the realization that although we have an accord, I never promised to not harm him.  Irrationally I think to myself that Bill used to have that same kicked-puppy-dog look whenever he was thinking about his absent family.  That's of no importance.  That resemblance will get me in trouble if I'm not careful.  "When you've only got one shot, it's best not to wait for the opportune moment.  That wasn't it – nor is this."

   We leave.

   The fort is filled with men in red uniforms who are running hither and yon on important business.  It's not to difficult sneak past them, so the part of my mind not filled with plans for commandeering a ship concerns itself with the part of my lesson I'd forgotten.  Opportune moments sometimes are more than a split second in length.  I glance at the young man at my side and wonder what his father had done with his moment, and why I'd never sent the man home.

   Two moments wasted, I suppose.  Three if you count the boy.  He had a lifetime of wasted moments thanks to Bill, Bill had his son's lifetime of wasted moments thanks to me, and I had more moments wasted than I dared think about.

   But it wasn't the wasted moments that mattered at this point.  It was the one coming my way.