Disclaimer: POTC belongs to the people in the Caribbean, aye?

Kelly turned her head to the doorway, knowing somehow that something was wrong. Her brother was coming, and something was wrong. Jack saw the hesitation in her face and her step, and quietly pulled her aside, out of the dance. "What is it?"

Johnny was never one for dramatic entrances. He left them to his sister and his father. But when Kelly saw her older brother burst into the door of the tavern, wild-eyed and bleeding, she knew she would never be able to outdo him ever again.

"They've taken her!"

To their credit, Kelly and Jack needed no further explanation. Leaving drunkards and shipmates behind, they picked up their swords and pushed through the crowd, leaving the noise of the tavern for the dark uncertainty of a Tortugan night.

"Where?" Jack asked, his face contorted with rage. Johnny said nothing, but turned and ran. He never spoke much - he let his actions speak for him. Kelly kept easy pace with her brother, but their father pushed them forward, faster, his eyes dark and pitiless.

Johnny passed Kelly their mother's sword as they ran. The blood on the blade was still warm. Squirrel herself could not be far. A glance passed between the siblings, a mute understanding. They ran faster, and their father ran with them. Kelly tucked the short blade into the scabbard at her belt. She would return it to her mother; she swore she would.

The three of them reached the spot where the ambush had occurred. Here, Johnny could only point the way - he did not know where Squirrel had been taken, only the direction they had taken her. It was Kelly who saw the bloodstains on the wall; a bloody handprint and a spattered spray; drops of blood which marked the trail more telling than any breadcrumbs. Squirrel had fought with her blade, and now she fought tooth and nail. She was leaving a trail of blood for her rescuers - or someone, anyone - to follow.

"Hurry!" Kelly led the way, her sharp eyes picking up Squirrel's none-too-subtle clues as their path wound through alleyways and houses.

Around a bend, Johnny saw three men. Three faces he recognised. He leapt at them without a word, gutting two of them where they stood and pinning the third to the ground in a movement so quick it made lightning look slow. Jack caught up with his son and levelled his sword at the fallen man's face.

"Where is she?" He snarled, something akin to animal rage in his movement and voice.

The man on the ground garbled something in a foreign tongue. Jack kicked the man in the head and left him. "Bastard frog!"

Kelly looked around quickly, seeking something, anything, that would lead her to her mother. She saw a doorway with another handprint on it, guarded by three men. The handprint was smeared - Squirrel had tried to grab the door, the doorframe, to stop from behind carried inside. She'd fought… and lost. But was she living yet?

Kelly pointed. "Dad!"

Jack and Johnny left the unconscious Frenchman and leapt up the stairs. Kelly put her sword between her teeth and clambered up the ivy-choked wall. While her brother and her father fought on the stairs, she clambered up the roof and leapt down on the men, catching them unawares, screeching and stabbing mercilessly. They were all dead within minutes. There was no time for either the children or their father to catch their breath. No time at all.

"Quick!"

The door was locked, but there was no doubt Squirrel was inside. The siblings kicked at the doorframe, again and again, until the door buckled and collapsed. Jack rushed in, sword held high, ready to save his wife and the mother of his children.

Instead, he found himself staring down the barrel of a gun.

She was covered in blood, but she wasn't dead. Her breathing was laboured, and she shook with fear and pain. She was alive - but her eyes were unseeing, hollow.

There was so much blood.

There must have been at least three men in here, maybe four. If Jack had not been so horrified, he may have been faltered that his wife should merit so much attention. But there were no such things in his thoughts. All he saw was the gun… and his wife's empty, broken eyes.

He didn't dare speak. He didn't even dare move.

Johnny and Kelly, waiting in the doorway, felt their guts sink. If their father was not opening fire or speaking, it could only mean one thing. But their 'one thing' was not what Jack was seeing. There was death, alright. Blood was pasted the walls like a fresh coat of paint. But Squirrel was alive.

Squirrel had a fire poker in one hand and a gun in the other. And she had the gun pointed at her husband's head.

A/N: This story was actually a result of a picture drawn on a whiteboard of a pissed-off Squirrel with a firepoker and a gun. The picture came first, and the story just evolved...