Jack knew if he tossed Beckett the compass, there was the slight, but ever so plausible possibility that Mercer may just kill Gibbs anyway. He swallowed, thinking of anything he could say to stall for time.

With a heightening growl, Gibbs slammed into Mercer, driving him to the ground. The remainder of the henchmen sprinted off into the night. Primitive screams emitted from both men, tussling on the dirt. Jack whipped out his pistol once more and sprang on Beckett, holding his arms while he positioned the pistol at his head. A yelp would have been most pleasurable, he thought, but only a brief flare in Beckett's eyes reacted to the sudden twist of events. Jack pressed the pistol harder into his head.

"Are you going to just stand there silently, Jack, or do you have demands?" Beckett asked, his back bending at the awkward hold Jack had him in, tensing.

"Demands. Of course I have demands, ye clamorous little titmouse. Mr. Gibbs! What are our demands?"

"Demands?" Gibbs repeated, straddling Mercer and pushing down on his throat. "Uh, well, I think a ship might be a good idea, plus a full pardon for yourself."

"Ooh, I like that. Do you hear that, Beckett? A full pardon for myself."

Before Beckett could respond, Mercer bucked underneath Gibbs, punching him right in the gut. Gasping for breath, Gibbs picked up the feed pail with both hands and rammed it into the side of Mercer's head. Jack kicked Beckett away and tapped Gibbs' shoulder as he ran past him.

"There'll be another time for demands, mate. Run!"

They bolted into the Tortuga streets, still full with drunks, whores, and the occasional opium dealer.

"We're too far inland to get to a ship!" Jack cried out.

"At this point, I'd take a carriage!" Gibbs called back, glancing behind him to see Beckett and Mercer chasing them down. Exactly at the same time, they spotted two horses lapping up water from a trough across from their coach, saddled and waiting for their masters who probably could not recite the alphabet after exploring Tortuga for so long. Jack and Gibbs leapt on top of them and rode down the street, the horses' clopping matching their excited heartbeats. Gunshots rang past them.

Jack took seconds to twist his body to the side to fire behind them. It was probably not advisable for someone whose mind baked in the sun for a couple of days to ride a horse down narrow streets at this pace, he thought to himself, but closed one eye and fired at the carriage barreling its way to them. The front left wheel hit, it hobbled and veered until it collided into one of the thatched pubs.

"Where to?" he asked Gibbs, turning back and pulling hard on the reigns to slow the gallop.

"Anywhere what's got grog," Gibbs said, shaking. "I know! Come on. I know a place to lay low, provided they still live there."

"Well, do ye think 'they' still live there?" Jack asked, concealing his pistol into his coat.

"By guess and by God."

XXX

"Keep a weather eye," Gibbs warned, the two of them approaching a small shack on the outskirts of town. "Gabriel and Anamaria are good folk, but look suspicious or try to take their hodgepodge and they'll take the cat out of the bag, make no mistake."

"No skylarking. Ye have me word." Jack nodded.

Gibbs took hold of the knocker and tapped the door with it. A glimmer of candlelight shone through the jamb when the lock turned and a lean, dark man with arched eyebrows met them.

"Gibbs?"

"Gabriel!" Gibbs spread out his arms and wrapped them around the skinny foal of a man. "We're in a bit of a spot, me captain and me. T'was hopin' ye could put us up for the night."

"Who's after you?" Gabriel asked, his voice soft. He gestured them inside and ladled soup from the cauldron on the fire. Placing the two bowls on the table, he sat down, waiting for them to follow suit. "Who's after you, Gibbs?"

"Cutler Beckett."

"Mother and Child, Gibbs! That's not some local law enforcement. That's the East India Trading Company." His head turned towards Jack. "What did you do?"

"Me? Why not ask him?" Jack scoffed. "Did it ever occur to ye that maybe your friend here is in a spot?" It was a trifling thing to be angry over, and it was true that Jack was the one they were after, but for a stranger to assume so just felt like a blow. Suppose Dobbs had never been in Tortuga? Suppose Beckett invented the rumor and saw that it spread throughout the little cove, knowing it would reach someone who would tell Jack?

"You're the one that looks like trouble," a voice said from behind them. A tall woman that shared the same build as her brother stomped down the stairs, her black hair smooth and down to her shoulder blades. "You match the description of Jack Sparrow. Beckett has a lot of money offered for your capture. You're lucky Gabe and I put our own interests ahead of anything else." She pulled a chair out from the table and sat backwards on it. "Been holding up, Gibbs?"

"Well, I've been better, lass, but can't complain." He sipped his soup and sighed. "If we could stay here for a night and then maybe take a ship…"

Take a ship? Jack cocked his head at Gibbs. These two, these two at this table, owned a shipyard? He took a spoonful of his soup, letting it warm him from the inside out.

"You must be Captain Sparrow," Anamaria said. "Your father bought a ship from us not one year ago. He said you might have to show up here." Her long legs took her to a small secretary off by itself in the corner. She came back with a captain's log and flipped through the pages, each page more like a leaf, like pages in a Bible. They were so thin Jack could see the writing bled through to the other side. "Yep. Captain John Teague, purchased one ship ten months ago. Paid us in gold. It was just a small schooner, Captain Sparrow. Can we expect the same from you?"

At a loss, Jack cleared his throat.

"I like to see what I buy," he said. "It would be best if I explored your inventory and settled on something. After all, it's not as if it's going to replace my ship."

"Since when do you have a ship?" Gabriel spoke up, clearing the table. His long lashed eyes set on Jack, probing him.

"I have always had a ship. It's just not with me at the moment."

"Ye might as well let it go, sir. If a pirate loses his ship to another pirate, it's usually renamed, repainted, new colors hoisted above it. You'd never recognize it." He took his sister's bowl and commenced scrubbing the inside of it. "Not to mention all the ships tend to look alike after a bit anyway."

"I'd know the Pearl anywhere. Besides, there's no way Barbossa would make her look any different than she was when I had her. He's got it bad for her himself, he does. And why change what's already perfect?" Jack leaned back in his chair and rest his hands behind his head. These two had a lot to learn if they were ship owners that catered to pirates and all manner of villainy. "I risked a lot to have the Pearl, I did. Made a deal with Davy Jones himself for it."

"Davy Jones?" Anamaria gasped, scooting her chair closer to him. "You made a deal with Davy Jones? Sir, you are as daft as they say you are. How long did he give you?"

"Thirteen years."

"Jack was on his way to Isla de Muerta, on his way to immortality, when Barbossa decided to take captaincy of the Pearl," Gibbs said. "Had one golden year captaining that fine ship before she and he parted ways."

"Isla de Muerta?" Gabriel waved his hand, dismissing the name. "Why bother with that? It's the key you'll be wanting."

"Key?"

"Some pirate you are, Captain Sparrow," Anamaria mocked. "Have you not heard the story about Davy Jones and his chest?" She smirked when he shook his head, making a face at Gibbs. Wasn't one of the reasons he'd hired Gibbs in the first place was to fill him in on these things? "Legend has it that Davy Jones was once a man, a man that can visit land every hundred years seeking the company of a woman."

"It's ten years, Anamaria. Get it right."

"I'm telling the story how I've heard it! His ghost ship the Flying Dutchman wasn't always a ghost ship, either. But during one of these visits ashore to see his lady, she wasn't there. Davy Jones vowed his ship would never have a home and began keeping those lost at sea for himself."

"See, Anamaria, you're tellin' it all wrong," Gibbs said. "I'll set you straight, Captain."

"About time you did."

"Er, yes," Gibbs gulped. "Well, like all men, Davy Jones loved the sea, but not so much like all men, he actually fell in love with the sea. From that time on, he said he'd never leave the sea, save for visitin' the land once every ten years. Ten years, Anamaria. But perhaps the most mysterious part of his story is his chest, the dead man's chest."

"What is that?"

"That's what you'll want to be goin' after," Gabriel interrupted. "Forget goin' after some ship and listen to me. Whatever the reason for Davy Jones deciding to stay at sea for all time, he hid a chest in a secret location, buried in the ground the very thing he felt was the source of all his troubles and pain. He cut out his own heart and tossed it into the chest as if it were a crumb and set sail without it. They say that he felt so much pain in his life that if one were to find his heart, they could wield it so they could make him do anything, anything, including releasing certain people from their bonds and debts. That's the part that interests you."

"I have a feeling I could find this chest if I really wanted to," Jack said with a smug expression, fingering his compass dangling from his belt. He could put off the Pearl for a few days, track down this chest, break the locks, and hold a slimy heart in the palm of his hand. "You mentioned a key. This key unlocks the chest? Where is that?"

"Ah, there's the rub," Gabriel said, shaking his head. "No one knows."

"Someone knows." Anamaria rolled her eyes. "There's a picture of it. Captain Sparrow, many years ago, a sailor tried to find the chest. He spotted the key and memorized every detail of it, because he could never actually get it. So he drew it on a scrap of hide and curled it up into an empty bottle. He chucked it out into the sea, hoping one day that if he couldn't unlock the chest, someone else could."

"That's a bedtime story," Gibbs said. "Ain't no proof of that ever happening."

"Name's Captain Falkenburg and he's got the hide," she argued. "Our mother told us all about him and I'll slit you good, Gibbs, if you call our mother a liar. He's on the other side of the world somewhere, holding onto that hide, too old to go out and get it himself. He's waiting for someone to come and ask him about it, so he can give it to them himself. There you have it. You get the hide, you know what the key looks like. You know what the key looks like, you can go about getting it. You get the key, you unlock the chest, and then the sea is at your fingertips. Not a bad bedtime story."

XXX

Unable to sleep, Jack sat in the same chair he did when the household was awake, imagining what such a key would look like, wanting to see it more than anything. It was high time he started thinking about living longer than just the few more years Davy Jones allotted him. Opening his compass, he closed his eyes and pictured the key, trying to push the Pearl out of his mind. Trying to push out of his mind what steering his ship felt like, pushing out of his mind the intimidated faces when his ship sailed by, pushing out of his mind the majesty of his colors flying atop the mast, he pictured the key.

The compass spun and rested at the seven o'clock position, only to whirl all the way around to the five o'clock position.

Snapping the compass shut, he rolled his eyes at his own mind. Surely the will to survive, to be free, meant more to him than some ship. It's not just some ship, he told himself, and then rolled his eyes again. It should be pathetic to love a ship so, but love is never pathetic to the lover. What if he could get Gibbs to want that key more than anything else? It might be worth a try, letting someone else hold onto the compass for a time.

"Jack?"

"Mr. Gibbs." Gibbs came down the stairs, still dressed for the day and a concerned look over his face.

"Not able to sleep?"

"Just thinking." Jack placed the compass into a coat pocket.

"I was thinkin' too. Why does Beckett want your compass? I know it don't point north, but where does it point? That Mercer fella had me so tight, I couldn't hear a word."

"It was just words, Mr. Gibbs," Jack said. "He'll do and say anything to capture me." His ears grew hot at telling such a lie to Gibbs. He should trust the man by now, never taken a wrong step as long as he'd had Gibbs by his side. He failed to mention all that Davy Jones business, but that wasn't betrayal, more like absentmindedness. Still, why give the man an opportunity to betray him at all? Do you really want to know what Gibbs would want more than anything? No, no one but Captain Jack Sparrow should hold Captain Jack Sparrow's compass, he told himself.

"Ah. Well, I been checkin' around. All that word on Dobbs was codswallup. I'm thinkin' it might be a good idea to start lookin' for that key."

"To find the key we need a ship," Jack said, shaking his head. "And I'm short on funds, savvy?"

"Who needs funds?" Gibbs said with a grin and led Jack outside. Gabriel and Anamaria's shack opened up to a vast field where all the music and shouting matches in the pub district feared to tread. Past a few rows of trees, Jack spotted the faint outline of a road. Zigzagging down the little hill, they made their way to the street, hands on their pistols in case Beckett deduced they were still in Tortuga and had not made an even further run for it. Their pace slowed, however, at the sound of footsteps in the distance.

"Beckett?" Gibbs asked.

Jack looked over his shoulder. Anamaria ran by in the distance, pulling one of the horses' reins. She hoisted herself on top of it and rode over to the road without seeing them, the horse trotting along without care.

"Follow her," Gibbs urged, pushing on Jack's back.

"Why?"

"She might be goin' down to their shipyard. We can take one of their ships, ye see?"

Jack grinned at the plot and quickened his pace to keep up with a trotting horse. They stayed a distance away from Anamaria, partly due to the impracticality of following a horse and partly due to attempting inconspicuousness. The smell of the sea tapped on their nostrils when at last they reached about half a dozen rows of rickety wood trying to make up a harbor, a few ships docked at each one.

"Afraid it's not very big." Gibbs shrugged.

"All we need is one," Jack said, patting Gibbs' shoulder. "Stay here. I want to see which one our fine hostess is seeing to."

Anamaria tied off the horse and snuck aboard one of the ships, a small brown yawl with yellowed sails. It wasn't worth commandeering, but this spitfire and her brother, for all their assurances they were a legitimate business, had "pirate" written all over their faces and if Jack knew anything about pirates who had been in the business longer than he had, they always had something worth taking. He waited for her to descend into the cabin of the small boat. A little sharp-featured, her lean muscles and tight curves alone made her worth watching. Maybe if she didn't find his eavesdropping on her all that humorous, she might like to be taken on in a different matter.

XXX

Gibbs eyed a felucca before settling for a much simpler sloop, which made up the most of Gabriel and Anamaria's inventory. Maybe one wouldn't be missed, he thought with a guarded optimism. He climbed aboard and inspected the lines. This one would surely do, and Jack had failed to specify any preferences.

"Gibbs! Cast off!"

Gibbs peered out into the rest of the harbor. Jack came running with all the stealth of a drunken lizard, screaming "cast off" with a severe hoarseness. Gibbs scrambled down to untie it.

"Come back here, you tardy-gaited miscreant!" Anamaria ran after him, shooting her pistol at him, fuming.

"Cast off, Gibbs! Cast off!" Jack slammed into the side of the boat and slithered up onto the deck, dodging bullet after bullet.

"Dankish knave!" she shrieked, picking up a rock and hurling it at him. She shuffled around for another, larger one and flung it, missing Jack's head by inches. By now, the yawl was making its way out to sea, Gibbs at the helm and Jack finally meeting up with him. She threw another rock with so much force it looked like her toned shoulder would pop out of its socket. "Come back here! That's our ship, ye wicked scoundrels! Come back here!"

"What happened?" Gibbs asked.

"Can't tell ye, mate."

"Oh, come now. Ye were runnin' out of there somethin' fierce! What'd ye see?"

"Nothing."

A/N: I know it's short, but more wil come.