AN: I wrote this story for a challenge I did with two of my friends. We all gave each other topics that the other person hadn't written before. As I hadn't written a Pirates of Caribbean fic yet that's what they gave me. And it had to be about Barbosa and a parasol. Hence came about Barbossa and the Parasol Romance. The other two written for our little 'challenge' were Curtain Call, a romance by the most unromantic person ever (blackmoon443556), and Soldier Side, a fic supporting Snape by a Snape hater (siriuslvr24). Hope you like them.

Disclaimer: I don't own any thing that was in the movies or any book. I think that some of my descriptions of hell come from some book but I have no idea which one. Could you give me a hint?

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Barbosa and the Parasol Romance

Barbosa sat on the shores of hell. Yes hell had shores. He had been amazed to discover that. He'd always pictured hell as a place of fires where you burned and burned and burned. But really hell was rather boring; it was a misty gray shore where the dead sat until everyone had forgiven them. Then a boat would come for them and they moved across the ocean (you couldn't swim across the ocean, you just couldn't). Presumably the boat was taking them to heaven which, presumably, would be much more interesting. People who had done little wrong moved on quickly but Barbosa had been sitting there a grand total of 30 years and had been dieing of boredom since his third month. The first three months had been spent in conversation with other dead. Which is actually harder to keep up then it sounds because dead in hell couldn't see or hear one another unless the boat came, so waiting for the boat so he could keep up conversations with other dead had occupied most of his time. Until he realized that it was just pointless. After he'd realized that he'd just sat there doing nothing and skipping rocks. The dead couldn't sleep so he didn't even have that for escape. No, he was just board, board, board. There was truly no hell like boredom.

He looked up at the ocean and noticed something coming towards him. It was white and was bobbing up and down in the waves. And it was coming towards him. Was it the boat? He looked around. No, he couldn't see any of the other dead appearing from the mist. Then what was it? He stared at it as it came nearer and nearer recognition dawning on his face. It bobbed against the shore. He reached down, grasped the handle, and pulled it out of the water. It was a white lacy parasol.

"No," he whispered, "no, no, no! Why are you doing this to me! Why?" He sank down on his knees sobbing, "Why?"

The parasol, being a parasol, gave no answer. The scent of roses seemed to waft from the parasol, choking him with memory, bitter and poisonous.

He remembered her, every bit of her. The pale cream of her skin, the narrow delicacy of her hands as she bent over a bright red rose, still glowed in his mind. Her light brown curls shone till they were almost gold where they escaped from under her hat. He could still see her bright blue eyes, the way her long back lashes curled against her cheeks as she inhaled the scent of the rose. Even her dress had caught his eyes, though he looked at it with criticism. It was pastel blue, high necked and long, not to his liking at all. On her hands she wore white gloves and a white parasol shielded her from the sun as she walked through a rose garden one summer day long ago. The sweet innocence of her smile that had enchanted him then now haunted him with its unforgiving goodness and purity.

Why? Why had he done it? He couldn't stop asking himself that. The first bite of pain in thirty years called his mind back to the lonely shore he was standing on. He looked down to see that his hand was bleeding, which was odd because he was dead and the dead shouldn't be able to bleed. Or maybe it was just that they never came in contact with anything sharp. Then he looked closer at his hand. Embedded in his palm was a lady's hair pin, sliver and ornate. It must have been hidden in the folds of the parasol.

He looked closer at it and saw that in the middle of the ornate curlicues were two initials, K. K. Katharine Kenisson. His hand closed in a fist, driving the pin further into his hand. Anger seeped into his grief and regret. Why did she have to remind him? Did she think he had forgotten her name? Though he had tried he had never succeeded.

"Damn you." He whispered to her, wherever she was. He couldn't help but think that he heard her reply 'No, dear, it is not I but you who are damned.' Damn self-righteous goodness. And again his memories had to sweep up on him, reminding him that she had every right to self righteousness and he, none.

A brisk wind was rising. He was standing behind a tree in the garden, watching her, the board, jaded pirate stalking the innocent girl. Quite a story book moment. He was angry, for no reason. Angry with her for being there, angry with the world of its strangeness, angry because well… because he was young and hotheaded. He stepped out from behind the tree just as the wind tore the parasol from her hands.

"No" he said, eyes lost in the gray mist, "don't do it."

She looked at him, shocked; as he caught the parasol she had began to run after. "This yours?" he asked, handing it back to her.

"Yes," she said looking down and smiling, all bashful embarrassment, "I… I didn't know anyone else was in the garden."

He laughed. "How churlish of me not to introduce myself. Fredrick Barbossa at your service. I quite apologize for frightening you. I frequent these gardens quiet often and I never suspected another person would be here and a day such as this." He replied, gesturing to the trees, whose branches had begun to wave violently in the wind.

"It is becoming quite dreadful, isn't it? And yet my carriage will not be here for another half-hour." She sighed.

"Is it quiet proper for a young lady to be a half hour alone in a public garden Miss…" he queried.

"Oh, my name is Katharine Kenisson," she hastily replied, looking embarrassed, "and I'm not here alone. My fiancé is but a minuet that way." She gestured to one side of the garden.

"He should be more attentive to you." He raised his eyebrows. "You never know what sort of people will be about."

"Stop!" he screamed to the fog but it didn't hear him. He threw the parasol away from him and ripped at the flesh in his hand, trying desperately to rip out the pin but it only seamed to dig deeper and deeper into his hand.

He sat down on a chair in the cabin he had bought in the pirate ship to which he had fled. For a small fortune he had gotten a chair, desk, closet, bed, and no questions about his cargo. He looked over at the bed. She was still unconscious. Her wrists were bound behind her with the ribbon from her hat and her hair lay in disarray about her.

She had fought him. What woman wouldn't? Her fiancé had heard her shouts and run up so what could he do but shoot the man? She fainted into his arms and he had somehow managed to make it here without being seen.

Memory raged and he sank to his knees as though if he bent down far enough the memory would fly over his head.

She stirred, her eyes fluttering then opening, reveling blue eyes, wide with fear. Her fear was too much for her to say anything. She simply cowered back to the furthest corner of the bed and stared at him mutely. He looked over at the door, then, once he had assured that it was locked, advanced on her.

"We are to be dining with the captain tonight and he has a dress he requests that you ware." He opened the closet and took out the dress. Now this was his idea of a dress. It was a black dress, wide cut around the neck and low cut with a white under-dress peaking out from under it and a dark purple overdress with wide puffed sleeves that went to the elbows on top of it. He held it out to her. "Put it on."

She didn't move, couldn't move by the looks of it. So he grabbed her and pulled her off the bed then untied her hands and shoved the dress into them. "Put it on," he whispered, "or I'll break your neck in half."

She flinched, and then began to mechanically unbutton her dress. He looked on carelessly, not bothering to turn away as she took of one dress and slipped into the other. He admired the dress on her. It made her look less innocent, more like the kind of girls who he'd know growing up, only grander. But her wide eyes spoke all the purity the dress tried in vain to remove. That damn purity.

It was the first time in years that tears had touched his face. They didn't seam to be his. Can a cursed pirate cry? Does he deserve to?

The purple dress lay in a corner of the room, torn down the back. He got up from the bed and pulled on his pants, not bothering to look at the girl. Then he walked out of the room. He came back later that day to find her in the same place that he had left her except now she was sitting up with the sheet tucked under her arms and examining her wrists, which were dark with bruises. He shut the door and locked it behind him then walked over to her and grabbed a fistful of her hair pulling her head back.

He shook his head violently; trying to clear it of reminiscence but one last memory forced its way into his head and demanded that it be heard.

They had been on the ship for nearly a month, he thought, staring out at the ocean. He turned to look back at the cabin where Katharine waited, albeit unwillingly, then he turned back to look out at the ocean a minuet longer. It will all be mine, he thought, gazing at the lapping waves, all these oceans will be mine. Suddenly he turned sharply and stalked over to the cabin, pausing on the threshold to unlock the door. He stepped inside and locked the door behind him before turning to look at Katharine. The purple dress had been mended and she was wearing it as per his instructions. She was kneeling in the farthest corner of the cabin, with her hair flowing in wavy curls down her back. Her hands were clasped before and in them she held a tiny gold cross and a thin chain. He could hear her whispering, "Lord, deliver me from this evil for I have done no wrong."

He slammed his fist against the door, senseless rage building up in him. She flinched, beginning to rise. He grabbed her wrist, twisting it back so that she cried out in pain, snatched the cross out of her hand and threw it against the wall. "What were you doing?" She didn't answer, just backed up until her back was pressed against the wall. He walked forward with her until he was right in her face. "What were you doing?" he yelled. Her bright blue eyes filled with tears.

Almost unconsciously he raised his hand, grabbed her by the throat, and pressed her neck against the wall as hard as he could. Her mouth opened, trying desperately to draw a breath of air. He watched as her bright eyes began to grow darker. She tried desperately to push his hand away, her hands struggling weakly against his. He laughed and pushed them away, careless of the way her wrist snapped. Her bright eyes at last turned dull-

"NO please, please live." His fists beat the sand.

-all their beauty leached from them in the agony of her last moments. She crumpled to the floor, dress billowing out around her. He stared at her body, and then shrugged. "Seams a shame to waste something so pretty," he said calmly, "so I suppose I'd best take that dress back."

He tossed the body into the ocean. The dress he placed in a chest with her other dresses. The last thing he put in the chest before he locked it was a lacy white parasol.

He knelt on the sand staring at the bloody hole in his hand. The pin was still there, stuck against the bone as if it had been melted on. The sliver winked at him through the blood. K. K. Katharine Kenisson. She wouldn't leave him alone. In his dreams he'd tried to kill her again and again but her bright eyes always eluded him. The waves lapped at his knees, teasing him, reminding him of what he had so arrogantly claimed. You are lost, you are damned, her bright eyes told him. His blood seeped into the sand as he sat and stared at the grey sea.

A lacy parasol on a crimson sea, a black heart and a white hand, a red rose and a feathered hat, all that remains of a pirate's dark heart strewn on a ever gray shore where the waves show no mercy and 'the price you must pay' is all they whisper again and again. 'You deserve this. Nay,' the dead spirits murmur 'no mercy, no mercy on a damned pirate's heart.'

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AN: Hope you liked it! Review even if you didn't. Have a nice day! And don't get abducted by pirates 'it always turns out bad'!