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Characters and situations from Pirates of the Caribbean © Disney. Penny Mellow is not associated with Disney in any way and does not stand to profit from this work. No copyright infringement is intended by its publication.

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In my time with Captain Jack Sparrow, I have grown knowledgeable. I am a thinking woman, far less content to follow orders than a governor's daughter should ever dream to be, yet I care not a wit; better a woman of common sense than a woman rotting in the belly of a sea monster. Still, I find it increasingly difficult to shirk the sensation of guilt that haunts me.

I killed him. I lured him towards death with a silky tongue in his mouth and the caress of cold steel on his wrist. I kissed him and left him there to go down with his beloved Pearl, the black-sailed beauty, as any real man would. I extended him the courtesy of an explanation and he smiled a secret, devious smile.

"Pirate," he said, as though he'd won. I suppose he had. It was more than common sense that had led me to chain him to the Pearl's deck. I had, after a fashion, betrayed a man I had had every intention of saving; a selfish act that, although unfailingly intelligent, rendered previous cohorts with Jack somewhat redundant. But by sacrificing one, I had saved many, and it was no consequence that both Will Turner and I were among those numbers. In my time with Captain Jack Sparrow, I have grown savvy.

Savvy. It's his word and I am sick of it. I fear that it will forever remind me of the stroke of his course fingers, the rotten taste of his mouth. I fear that there will be no respite from the self-satisfied smirk that graced those lips and seem to say "I knew you'd come about".

Still, I am ashamed to admit even to myself that it is not Jack's death alone that has left me bruised by the experience. It is not that that accursed arrow had pointed right at him, nor that he roused such a desire for wickedness in me, nor that I had abandoned him after he had returned to us and shown us--me--such goodness.

It is that--

(can I dare voice such a terrible memory? Already I feel the deep-bellied sickness that accompanies remorse)

--after I had chained him and left him for dead I may have, if only for a moment, moved towards him one last time and almost…

Almost