Pirates of the Caribbean 2: the Spirit of the Dead

Disclaimer: Like I've been saying forever, I don't own anything related to POTC. I do, however, own Cimorene and this here plot.

A/N: Haha, am actually updating again! Happiness points for me. Hoping that you like this next chapter! Hey…the last four sentences all started with 'h'. Okay, moving on now.

Actually, I lied. The reason why I haven't been updating is because—surprise!—nobody had reviewed as of that time, so then I got all grumpy and didn't update and then I completely forgot to up until now. Enjoy!

Chapter 17: I slept with your aunt?

"Anamaria," Jack said, turning around to face her and look her in the eye. "I think it's time for you to tell me about your past."

WILL

"She could have been killed!" seethed Governor Swann, placing a protective arm around Elizabeth's shoulders. Normally, she would have responded with a roll of the eyes and defend Will, but she was still getting over the shock of what she'd just seen, especially with the small girl's father.

"It was just that—" Will started, sending Elizabeth a pleading look (A/N: Don't know how anyone could resist that…)

"I should have known the day that Elizabeth told me the truth! You are nothing but trouble, and she is much better off with the Commodore. Now, if you'll excuse us, I have some questions that need answers to and I would like to discuss them with Elizabeth." He eyed Will with penetrating stare. "Alone."

The door slammed shut, leaving Will outside and, quite literally, by himself.

CIMORENE

"Well," Anamaria said with a shaky laugh. "Where am I supposed to start?"

"For starters," Jack began, extremely relieved that she had chosen to answer his questions without starting up an argument. "Where were you born?"

Anamaria dipped her head down, her dark hair falling like a curtain in front of her face. She tucked it behind her ear and looked up at Jack, something causing her eyes to sparkle.

"I was born…"

"We were born in Tortuga," said Cimorene, saving Anamaria from answering Jack's question.

"Our mother was one of the prostitutes there. I believe you know that her sister took up the same profession," Cimorene plunged on, giving Anamaria a look.

"What?" Jack said, looking a bit embarrassed.

"Gisele," Anamaria supplied. "Gisele was her sister."

"So…" Jack said, eyes narrowing as he attempted to process this information. "Does that make Gisele your aunt?"

"I suppose so," Anamaria said. "Half-aunt, really. Or something along the lines of that."

A look of horror struck Jack's face.

"I slept with your aunt?" He said, looking a bit disturbed.

Cimorene coughed, smirking a little behind her hand.

"I certainly hope not," she said, eyeing Jack with a mischievous glint in her eye.

"She's a feisty one," Jack said, playing along.

"Could we move on to a more appropriate topic, please?" Anamaria said, looking very odd. Jack grinned.

"Oh, honestly, Ana," Cimorene said, rolling her eyes. "You know that Jack is completely and totally smitten with you."

Jack and Anamaria blushed and looked away from each other. They were both very red.

"But," Cimorene continued, ignoring both of them. "Back to the topic at hand: our past. After our mother had the two of us, she…er…"

"She abandoned us," Anamaria said softly, face turning back to its natural color.

"Right," Cimorene nodded, unable to say so. "Afterwards, we were left in an orphanage of Tortuga—the only one. It was a terrible place. So much drinking, fighting…just a bad place to be in general, and I was only five. Ana was almost three. You can imagine the kind of people there—both Anamaria and I were…er…taken advantage of quite a few times, but there was nobody there to stop them—" at this, Jack looked extremely angry—"and I was only ten—Ana was about eight—when someone forced the first taste of rum down our throats. Nobody was there to protect us—for the most part, we were alone, without a proper guardian."

Jack stared in wonder at the both of them, but mostly at Anamaria. Growing up in such a terrible place, how had she managed to turn out the way that she did? Why had her mother abandoned her? And had she tried to talk to her mother—

"We've contacted our mother since she left us," Anamaria said, looking down. "We had to talk to her, and it wasn't very pretty."

"That's an understatement," Cimorene injected.

"Tell me. I'll understand," Jack pressed.

"Oh no," said Ana. "You don't know the meaning of a messed up family until you've heard about ours."

"My family is pretty, um…unusual, shall we call it," Jack said.

FLASHBACK

"So," breathed a pale skinned, dark haired girl with silvery-blue eyes, looking up at the familiar house of towering walls of red bricks, each carefully placed to achieve the haunted mansion look. A black, spiky gate guarded the house, with a few Dobermans thrown in for good measure. (A/N: anyone remembering this house?)

The two girls were young—barely around the ages of seventeen and nineteen. They had come in search of the woman to whom the house belonged.

The other girl, with deep brown eyes and even darker skin fished two rusty old fashioned keys from her tattered coat pocket.

"Reckon these will still work?" she whispered, fingering the two keys delicately as if they would snap like celery if too much pressure was placed upon them.

"I'm sure of it," replied the pale girl of nineteen.

"All right then. Here it goes." The younger dark haired girl named Anamaria squeaked, inserting the larger and heavier key into the black lock that belonged to the gate. The huge black dogs growled, showing a mouthful of gleaming, sharp teeth and snarling. The older, Cimorene, threw a milky white dog-bone over the tall, prickly fence and the dogs quickly scampered over to it.

"That had better keep them occupied," she whispered, peering through the black bars of the gate. "We spent all of our savings on that stupid thing."

The key was swiveled around in the lock by Anamaria, and with a loud sproing, the gate swung open. Anamaria pocketed the key, the frayed pocket almost letting it fall through to the ground.

The two girls walked cautiously down the pebbled path leading to the great ominous door painted a deep cherry red. They stopped immediately in front of the door.

"Well," said Cimorene, raising her fist. "Here it goes." She knocked on the door five times as Anamaria pummeled the doorbell feverishly. They waited for a few minutes and tried again.

Over and over this happened, until they realized that nobody was going to answer the door. Anamaria and Cimorene looked at each other. They both knew that using their key, the only thing that their mother had left them, to get inside the house was the way that neither of them wanted to enter. And they both knew that their mother hated opening doors—usually the people ringing the doorbell were trying to sell her something. Cimorene and Anamaria were obviously not looking to sell things.

"No choice then," Cimorene sighed, nodding at Anamaria. "Go for it."

Anamaria nodded also and tried to insert the small silver key into the lock of the cherry red door. At first it seemed that the key would not fit, but then it slid in and Ana turned it cautiously, trying not to make any noises. Cimorene seized the doorknob and twisted. The door swung open a few feet, creaking a little as it did so. She placed one foot inside. Her worn out shoe made a tiny squooshing noise. Anamaria and Cimorene exchanged small, sad smiles. They were dirtying their mother's shiny, mirror-like wood floors, something that she had always forbidden.

Finally, both of them were inside and the door was closed and locked as it had been only minutes ago. Before them sat a black, spindly staircase, going around and around, growing taller with every iron step. Though there was almost no light in the house that the pair of them could see, save for a pitiful green candle far away in what they assumed was the dining area with a teensy flame. They remembered the layout of the house well and knew that the stairs were only a few feet in front of them.

"Where d'you reckon she is?" Cimorene asked quietly, holding her breath.

"Bedroom?" Anamaria suggested, and gestured toward the staircase.

"As good a guess as any," Cimorene answered.

Hand in hand, they walked carefully up the spidery staircase single file, slowly leaving the flickering light of the small candle behind and plunging into darkness. Both Cimorene and Anamaria stumbled a few times, having only their feet and free hand to guide them, as the rickety staircase had a handrail on only one side. The journey seemed to last forever, until Anamaria's foot met not stair but some sort of squashy rug.

Again on this landing there was barely any light—just another one of the small green candles.

The two girls felt their way across the rough, peeling wall-papered walls to reach another large and ominous door, this one painted a dark purple. They had reached their mother's bedroom. Anamaria stuck her ear to the door and listened. There was a faint muttering coming out, and she pressed closer, beckoning Cimorene to do so also.

"Foul, smelly little persons who try to sell me things, as if I've got the money to spare for stupid chocolate covered cherries, not worth it, no, it's not—" a voice came, sharp and unrelenting. They had found their mother, but then—

"Drink some of this, m'lady; it'll ease your pain." A sweet, compelling voice. A maid, perhaps?

"No! There is no point, it won't help at all—ease my pain, ha!—as if anything would, and as for those selling people they gave my dogs some sort of toy to chew on, what if they—" there was a choking sound. Apparently, the maid had forced some of the liquid down her throat.

Putting on a fearless face, Anamaria pushed open the door and stepped inside. There was a woman—dark haired and pale, like Cimorene—thrashing on a bed with squishy pillows, a goose feather-filled comforter and velvety sheets. Her eyes were rolling around in her head, spit was flying from her mouth as she spoke and her hair was a glossy sheen of knotted ropes. There was a film of sweat covering what they knew had once been a beautiful face. Now her eyes had lost their sparkle, her mouth had been twisted in an odd way, as if she had bitten down only moments ago on something sour. Her hair used to fall in wavy curtains of darkness down her back, but was now rumpled and bunched up under her head. They knew that yes, their mother had been pale, but this was a sickly kind of pale; it wasn't natural at all. It seemed that she hadn't moved from her bed in weeks, months even.

The maid, a pretty young girl with brilliant red hair that seemed to light up her face full of freckles paid no attention to Cimorene or Anamaria, assuming them to be more maids. She also seemed rather used to their mother's insane behavior, as if it was completely natural to act that way.

"Chantal, I need the—" the maid turned around, trying to balance some cups on a tray and restrain their mother at the same time. She turned around, spotted Anamaria and Cimorene, and promptly dropped the tray.

"Oh," she said faintly. "You…aren't Chantal."

This drew their mother's attention to them. Her eyes passed over Cimorene without any sign of recognition, but then her dull blue eyes settled on Anamaria, and they seemed to pop right out of her head.

"Yoou!" she howled, pointing an accusing finger at Anamaria, who was now cowering against Cimorene. "It's your fault! All yours! You wouldn't know that it's like to lose someone, no, you don't know what hardships I faced without him—you slimy little creature, on his way to the hospital to see your filth and you put some sort of spell on him—"

Anamaria looked frightened and confused. The maid suddenly had a lightbulb-above-the-head moment, grabbed both girls' arms, and steered them out of the room, slamming the door behind them.

"Look here, you two," the maid whispered, looking back into the room where more maids were rushing in. "Cimorene and Ana-Louise, right?"

"Anamaria," said Cimorene automatically.

"Whatever," the maid replied, brushing her hair off of her shoulders. "The point is, your mother—I knew her from school—thinks that Ana-Louise here"—Cimorene made a face—"killed your father. Certainly he died in an accident with some carriage or another, but in her mind she connected it with Ana-Louise's birth, since they were the same day. I've learned that she grew depressed, abandoned you in Tortuga, and became, in nicer words…er…mentally unstable. Some of her old friends and I came to visit her a few years ago, maybe catch up with her a little bit, but we just ended up staying here and tending to her. We all"—she gestured to her fellow maids—"have been here ever since, looking after both her and the house. She speaks of Ana-Louise often. But you, Cimorene, she's almost forgotten completely. When she's not screaming her lungs out, she's usually mourning her husband or cursing Ana-Louise."

"So…talking to her…" said Cimorene, looking uneasy. "Trying to calm her down…"

"Is useless," the maid finished firmly.

A/N: Look at me! The longest chapter yet, so I am going to celebrate today! If there are any typos (which happen to be one of my pet peeves) tell me please, because I was sort of watching Buffy while I was typing this…so I was distracted by a little something. (cough, cough, Spike, cough). Ahem, anyhow. Review please and tell me what you think!

As I will state on my other fanfiction, the Harry Potter one, I don't really have a set time for when I'm going to update because, as you all have probably realized, I haven't updated in forever, since school has been dumping a buttload of work on me. I will, however, try to update more frequently than I've been doing (which really isn't all that often anyway) and even more so since winter break is coming up. YES! I'm sleeping in.

Please review and make me happy!