Jack woke up on the couch with a painful headache. His eyes shifted around the room. Orange light leaked through the porthole window and the clock next to it indicated it was seven in the morning. He heard footsteps come into the room and he closed his eyes.

"How's the boy?" Uncle Jack asked.

"He's passed out on the couch. I'll see if he's woken up yet," Teague responded.

Jack heard the footsteps come closer and they stopped right in front of him. After a moment, they walked away and went into the kitchen. Teague and Uncle Jack carried on with their conversation and Jack pretended to be asleep as he tried to listen. He wasn't able to make out what they were conversing about at first but he picked up a few sentences.

"So Teague. What're you going to do with Jacky-boy now that he's older?" Uncle Jack questioned.

"Same old, same old," Teague answered. "He's still not ready to fully sail out with me yet for you know...pirating things."

"Does he know yet?"

"Know what?"

"That he's your..." Uncle Jack looked around for a second before finishing. "...your son?"

Son? Jack perked up a little as discreetly as possible trying to listen. Jack heard Teague respond, but Teague lowered his voice so he wasn't able to hear it.

Jack had never thought about it as Teague never acknowledged him as his son. Teague had never even praised him or said anything nice to him until last night, although as he thought about it, Teague may have been possibly drunk saying that. Jack knew he was part of the family...sort of. Grandmama liked to inflict pain on Jack and Valerie constantly tormented him; they're pirates, so he guessed that was sort of normal, right? The rest of the family obviously looked down on him as well as he observed. He just co-existed alongside them under their roof as he was constantly being nearly killed every single day.

If Teague was intentionally trying to hide the fact that Jack was his child, he wasn't doing a very good job at it considering he was known to everybody in and outside of his family as "Teague's whelp" or "the protégé". Nobody could deny the similarities he and Teague had, down to the way they dressed, their flamboyance, and Jack had even picked up some of Teague's mannerisms. Though Teague always pushed him away, Jack had no doubt they were close. Teague was always there whenever Jack needed rescuing, although Jack didn't want to admit he ever needed it, and Teague still cared enough to celebrate his birthday just this one time. Jack thought and thought about it until he drifted off back to sleep.

Jack woke back up later on. This time, light fully engulfed the room. He got up, still a little wobbly and his head still hurt, but not as bad.

He slowly walked into the kitchen and went through the nearly empty cabinets until he found some bread. He took a couple of slices and sat down at the table where a glass of water was already placed. He looked around and sniffed the water before taking a sip of it. He started to eat when Valerie came into the room.

"Daw! Teague's whelp is having his very first hangover!" Valerie obnoxiously cooed.

"Leave me alone. Your loud annoying voice is making my head hurt," Jack grumbled as he put his chin on the table and his arms around his head, one of them holding a half eaten bread slice.

"Oh, you probably don't remember, but last night was great!" Valerie smirked.

"I do remember."

"You were jumping on the couch, you almost peed yerself, and you threw up on your—"

"No need to remind me!" Jack hissed through gritted teeth.

"You need to start drinking more because that was hilarious!" Valerie snickered.

"Oh, shut up!" Jack said. He then sat up and puffed his chest out. "And besides, even though my dignity may be gone—not that it's been there to begin with, but all that I can say is that I am officially a man now!"

"You? A man?" Valerie burst into laughter.

Jack frowned. "Hey! I am offended you don't think I can win a lass to bed."

"Oh, so that's what you mean by being a man? You're saying you slept with someone? Hahaha! Jackie Sparrow wouldn't be able to win anybody to bed with him, not even men!" Valerie cried laughing.

"Of course I did! With, in fact, FOUR lasses!"

"Pfft! If you did, then they were probably paid!"

"NO! We were at a brothel, but I don't think I saw any transaction happening. I just happen to attract the ladies," Jack said with smug as he leaned back on the chair and continued eating the last of the slice of bread.

"And?"

"Well, I don't remember it, but Teague told me all about it! He even said he was proud of me!" Jack went on with his mouth full.

"Let me get this straight. So you somehow magically attracted four women into bed with you and you don't remember it, but Teague told you?" Valerie questioned.

"Basically if you put it that way, then yes!" Jack grinned.

"Your perception of reality is so screwed up, Sparrow," Valerie said, shaking her head. She got up and went back upstairs leaving Jack to finish his second slice of bread alone in peace.

Jack sat wilted on the couch for what felt like hours, thinking about the conversation he had heard earlier between Teague and Uncle Jack. Grandmama had brought her rocking chair outside and no one else was in the room except when someone in the family would pop in and out every once in a while. This had all left Jack to be by himself.

Teague suddenly came into the house to get something from the kitchen, walking past Jack. He walked past Jack again on the way out.

Right when Teague was about to leave, Jack felt something come out of his mouth. "Dad?"

Teague stopped and slowly turned around facing Jack. "What did you just call me?"

"How long were you going to keep it from me?" Jack interrogated.

Teague didn't say anything.

"I heard you two here earlier."

"That meant nothing, boy. Leave it be," Teague said shaking his head.

"No. How many other lies about my life have you not bothered to tell me about, huh?" Jack asked in an angry tone, standing up and straightening his back.

"A lot. I'm not going to get into this," Teague responded. He turned away and went downstairs into the Great Chamber. Jack followed after down the stairs and ran past Teague, standing in between his supposed father and the door.

"I want to hear it. I want to hear it all RIGHT NOW!" Jack demanded.

"All right, I'll tell you one thing. Your name was originally Jack Christopher Teague," Teague quickly admitted.

Jack scrunched up his face. That name did not flow well to him at all.

"I'd like to tell you more, but I didn't want to overwhelm you. Leave me be now," Teague said, trying to get past Jack.

"You are a cruel man, Teague."

"I know..."

"I hate you," Jack finally then stormed up the flights of stairs, into his room, and slammed his door.

Jack spent the next day at one of his favorite inlets processing everything that had happened in the past couple days. It was a little cove made from shipwrecks near the top of Shipwreck Cove. From there, he could see all of Shipwreck City and the ships coming in and out of Devil's Throat. Jack made his way down the tower of ship hulks through the city. He felt something hard, and possibly sharp hit his head. He took a deep breath and turned around and saw the group of boys across the street. One of them had thrown a small rock at his head. Most of the group of boys were the same boys from his childhood.

"Well, well. It's Teague's whelp again," the one boy, possibly the leader, said while crossing his arms. The other boys snickered behind him.

"What do you want, Asher? Oh yes! To call me a whelp, say more insulting things, etcetera, etcetera," Jack rebuked. "I hope you come up with something new soon, mate. You always say the same things and it's getting really stale for me. So how about you leave me to my own until you have something else to say. Savvy?"

Jack turned and walked away. The boy was about to say something when the wind picked up and a stray sheet of linen from a clothesline hit him in the face. He fell over, cocooned in the sheet. Jack looked over his shoulder and smirked as he watched the other boys laughed at their fallen leader yelling and struggling to get up.

Jack continued walking down the streets, still looking over at the boys behind him. He then bumped into someone. He quickly turned and saw that he was face to face with the girl he saw earlier, the girl with the long brown hair. She had a light plum dress on this time and had a book in her hands. Now that he had a closer look at her face, he saw that she had brownish gray eyes and light freckles across her nose. She was just about as tall as him if not a little taller, not that he was very tall himself.

"Err, excuse me, lass. Sorry!" Jack blurted out.

"Oh no! It was my fault! I...well...had my nose stuck in a book," the girl giggled a little and walked away.

Jack froze as he watched her walk away. He shook himself out of trance and he continued down the city.

Jack walked down by the docks looking for anybody that he knew. He heard somebody call his name.

"Jackie!"

Jack looked around and found Teague at the end of one of the docks in a rowboat, waving over at him. Jack reluctantly went down the dock Teague called him over to.

"Come sit down," Teague gestured over to the seat across from him in the boat.

Jack stepped into the boat and sat down. He had his head turned away, refusing to speak to Teague.

"We need to talk, boy," Teague said.

"About what?" Jack asked, still keeping his gaze away.

"About earlier."

"I don't want to talk about it."

As Jack was about to get up and leave, Teague quickly got up and threw off the rope that kept the boat tied to the dock. He used his foot to push the boat away and he sat back down, grabbed the oars, and started rowing.

"HEY!" Jack yelled, looking at Teague angrily.

"No escaping now," Teague smiled as he rowed.

"You're an arse!" Jack grumbled and crossed his arms.

"LANGUAGE!"

"I know, I know."

They were quiet for a few minutes as the pirate lord kept rowing. Jack looked down, focusing on adjusting his bandana. He untied it, moved it down a little just above his eyes, and retying the bandana snuggly. Teague finally spoke. "Jackie, I—"

"I'm not doing this," Jack interrupted as he began to kick off his boots.

"What are you doing?" Teague asked.

"Going back to the island," Jack responded flatly.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, mate," Teague urged, shaking his head.

"I'm a good swimmer," Jack insisted as he shucked off his belt.

"You don't know what lurks in these waters around the Cove."

Jack stood up, turned around, and stepped to the back of the boat looking out to Shipwreck Cove. He was about to dive off when he saw something that mysteriously looked like a tail slither right next to the boat, just below the surface of the water. He gasped as he stumbled backwards and fell back into his seat facing away from Teague. They were quiet once again, feeling the awkward tension between them.

"I had to do it for your own safety," Teague began. Jack sat quietly with his back facing Teague, staring off towards the island.

"If anybody, especially the Royal Navy, would have known you were related to me, they would have used you, or done somebody really bad to you," Teague explained.

"Well, then something must have gone wrong with that since I'm known to everyone outside the family as your bloody whelp," Jack shrugged as he turned around, facing back at Teague.

"Not because they know you're my kid, but because they know we are close," Teague raised his eyebrows knowingly.

Jack looked down and frowned. He never thought about it that way, or any way really.

"When you were really young, the family used to always tease me about you being so much like me. While that being true, I would say you remind me of Mum a bit," Teague went on. Jack looked up, and although the rest of his face didn't show it, his eyes lit up at the mentioning of Mum.

"When you were born, the very first thing I noticed—aside from everybody thinking you were a girl for the first few minutes—is that you have the same birthmark on your butt as your mum," Teague teased.

"Oh god! I didn't need to know THAT!" Jack cried out in embarrassment. He put his elbows on his knees and hid his face in his hands. Teague laughed a little at Jack's response.

After a few moments, Jack uncovered his face and looked back up at Teague. "By the way, where is Mum now?"

Teague sifted through the numerous things tied onto his belt and pulled out a little shrunken head. Her grayish hair hung over the dark head, and two small wooden sticks were tied together in front of where her mouth was.

"Always by my side," Teague grinned, proudly holding the head up.

"Oh," Jack replied. Looking at the head almost made him feel sick.

Teague hid the head away back into his belt and turned to Jack, who was looking over back at Shipwreck Cove.

"Would you like to go back?" Teague asked.

"Please."