At long last, the first scene involving Anamaria from CotBP. Please read and review! Disclaimer: All rights belong to Disney.

8. Compensation

Whenever I decided I needed a change of crew, I went back to Tortuga. There was always some captain looking to pick up more hands, and I was not terribly particular, so long as the rations were fair, the men kept their hands to themselves, and the heading was set for somewhere interesting. So it was purely by chance that I happened to be back on land when I heard that Jack Sparrow was on the island and looking for a crew.

I had just left a crew after a long and violent argument with the captain – he had wanted me for a lover, and I said no and jumped ship as soon as we reached Tortuga. I was sitting in a tavern, drinking rum to quell the towering rage that was still simmering within me, when I heard a gruff voice behind me say, 'That's right, then, we need all the hands on deck that we can get.'

Abandoning my rum, I tucked my hair under my hat and pulled the brim low over my face before making my way over to the small table where a dirty-faced man with greying sideburns was sitting, talking to a very short man whose head barely could be seen over the table. I got into line behind the small man, and moved up to the table when he had signed his name on a register and left.

'Hello there, lad,' said the man, glancing up at me.

'Where are you sailing to?' I asked, deepening my voice as much as I could (from experience, I found it was usually best to pretend that I was a boy until I was on board the ship).

'Ah, you'll have to ask the captain that,' said the man mysteriously, 'but I assure you that if you join the crew, you'll be in for an adventure unlike any other. Care to sign?' He gestured towards the piece of paper before him.

'Never learned to write,' I answered truthfully, 'but I'll meet you at the docks tomorrow morning, on my honour.'

'Fair enough,' said the man jovially. 'Captain Sparrow will be glad to see you, I'm sure.'

I froze. 'Captain Sparrow, did you say?' I asked as casually as I could.

'Aye, that'd be the one,' said the man happily, 'and let me tell you, I sailed under his command a few years back, and a better man you won't find in any of the seven seas.'

I snorted, wondering briefly if we were even talking about the same person. 'Till tomorrow, then,' I said, turning and wandering out onto the rowdy streets of Tortuga.

I wasn't sure exactly how I felt at the idea of seeing Jack again. Certainly angry, as he had essentially marooned me the last time we'd met, but, as much as I tried to quash the feeling, I still felt my heart growing strangely weak at the thought of just being near him. I shook myself. If there was one thing I'd learned from my years as a pirate, it was that the self came first, and all others afterwards. Jack had left me to die, for all he knew, and I could not let myself forget that. And so it was with the full intention of giving him a piece of my mind that I stormed down to the docks the next morning.

A line of men had already assembled along the quay, and Jack was perusing the potential crew members before him, accompanied by the man I'd met at the tavern the night before, and another very handsome young man with large brown eyes and wavy brown hair tied back in a ponytail. I edged to the end of the line and stood with my head down and my hat all but obscuring my face. Jack was in the middle of interrogating a man with a blue-and-gold macaw on his shoulder.

'Mr Cotton!' he shouted. 'Answer me.'

'He's a mute,' the man with sideburns explained. 'Poor devil had his tongue cut out…' I watched as Jack made a horrified face at what I presumed was the living proof of this mutilation '… so he trained the parrot to talk for him. No one's yet figured how…'

Jack turned in my direction for a moment, and I felt my stomach flutter slightly at the sight of his face.

'Mr Cotton's parrot,' said Jack in a slightly aggravated voice, turning towards the parrot on the man's shoulder. 'Same question.'

The parrot ruffled its feather and squawked, 'Ready to sail! Ready to sail!'

'There, now,' said Jack cheerfully, turning to the young man behind him. 'Satisfied?'

'Well you've proven they're mad,' said the young man in a completely unconvinced voice.

I had to agree with him. The men around me made up the most motley crew I'd ever seen, and I still had no idea where Jack was planning on going, and for what purpose. 'And what's the benefit in it for us?' I called, forgetting to deepen my voice.

I watched out of the corner of my eye in satisfaction as Jack froze, fearful recognition etched on every feature of his face. He wove nervously down the line until finally he stood right in front of me so that all I could see were the tips of his boots. I looked up as he cautiously tipped the brim of my hat upward and finally pulled it off my head so that my hair fell down and over my shoulders.

'Anamaria,' said Jack resignedly. The memory of his betrayal welled up inside of me, and before I could even consider stopping myself, I slapped him across the face.

'I suppose you didn't deserve that one either?' said the young man cheekily.

'No, that one I did deserve,' admitted Jack as he turned to face me.

I nodded in righteous agreement. 'You stole my boat!' I snarled in a very slow and menacing fashion, daring him to contradict me. Which, to my shock, he did.

'Actually,' began Jack, but before he could get another word out, I slapped him again, amazed at how much better it made me feel. 'Borrowed,' insisted the pirate, wincing. 'Borrowed without permission, but with every intention of bringing it back.' He shot me a winning smile, which I pointedly ignored.

'But you didn't!' I reminded him, a bit more loudly than perhaps was necessary, but I was in no mood for daintiness.

'You'll get another one!' said Jack, failing to notice that I had not in the eight years since we had last seen each other.

'I will,' I hissed, pointing my finger threateningly at him so that he knew exactly where I expected to get said boat from.

'A better one!' the young man cut in, obviously trying to keep Jack from receiving any more blows.

'A better one!' repeated Jack, smiling broadly.

'That one!' added the young man, pointing to his left.

'What one?' said Jack, turning his head. The smile dropped off his face as the whole crew turned and stared at the handsome British naval ship that was moored at the end of the jetty. I smirked – it was certainly a much nicer ship than the one Jack had stolen from me. Jack obviously had realised it too.

'That one?!' he muttered in surprise. The entire crew turned to see if he would say yes – my smirk widened as he fidgeted uncomfortably, torn between greed and his image.

'Aye, that one,' said Jack after a long moment, looking quite hurt. 'What say you?' He looked at me hopefully.

I glowered at him, marvelling at his nerve. 'Aye!' I shouted, and gave him a shove as the rest of the crew shouted and began to board the ship. As I walked towards the ship – sorry, my ship – feeling most pleased with the way things were going, I heard the man with the sideburns trying to convince Jack that it was bad luck to bring a woman on board a ship. I continued to walk forward, smiling to myself as I heard Jack mutter, 'It'd be far worse not to have her.' Right you are, Jack, I thought, marching up the gangplank and looking for the first time at the deck of my ship.

'So, where exactly are we going?' I asked the man with sideburns (whose name, I had learned, was Mr Gibbs) on our first afternoon at sea.

'Ah, what's the nature of this venture, you're asking,' said Mr Gibbs, clearing his throat importantly as if about to begin a long and dramatic story. 'We're on a mission to rescue a beautiful girl from the clutches of a vicious crew of pirates, and restore her to the arms of her true love.'

My heart sank. Had Jack finally fallen in love then? I was surprised at how bitter I felt at this news. 'And where does he expect to find her, then?' I asked bleakly.

'Well, young Will Turner there is trying to track down the Black Pearl, seeing as that's where Miss Elizabeth would logically be. See, the crew of the Pearl sacked the port town that Mr Turner is an inhabitant of and abducted the governor's daughter, Miss Elizabeth, whom by the looks of things Will is madly in love with – so, he sprung Jack from the jail and enlisted his help to find the Pearl and save her from almost certain death.' Mr Gibbs finished his story and sat back, letting this last pronouncement fade dramatically in the silence. I breathed a sigh of relief – it was not Jack who was in love with this Elizabeth, then, it was this Will Turner.

'The Black Pearl,' I mused, putting the pieces of the puzzle together. 'That would be Jack's old ship, right?'

'Aye, that'd be the one,' Mr Gibbs affirmed.

'Thank you, Mr Gibbs,' I said, rising to my feet and walking over to the helm, where Jack was gazing at hiss compass and twitching the wheel to the right or left whenever he felt he was going a bit off course.

'Is that how you escaped from jail last time, Mr Sparrow?' I asked, leaning against the railing next to the helm. 'By promising a lovesick young man you'd help him rescue his dearly beloved?'

Jack did not look at me, but his face seemed to tighten. 'No, that time I managed to convince the dog outside my cell to drop the keys into my hand,' he said. 'Good trick to know. Almost worked this time too – you'd think the Navy would have figured out that keeping the keys next to the prisoners does not make for very good security.' He finally looked at me. 'And you're lucky it did work that time – before you start screaming at me again, please do remember that I saved you from a very ugly situation.'

'And that gives you full right to maroon me on an island and steal my ship, does it?' I snapped. 'I'd have thought that you would have a bit of sympathy, seeing as you know how it feels.'

'Look,' said Jack, 'I left you on a well-charted and often-visited island with ample food and water on it, knowing that you would be able to get back to Tortuga if you needed to, not on some godforsaken spit of land with nothing but a few palm trees and a load of sand. And I really did mean to give you the ship back one day,' he said, frowning as I rolled my eyes. 'I would have, if, due to an unfortunate and entirely unforeseeable series of circumstances that have nothing whatsoever to do with me, it hadn't sunk first.'

I scoffed. 'Well, you've paid me back, fair enough. I guess I'll have to drop the grudge, won't I?'

'You're a gem, Anamaria,' said Jack, smiling with relief. 'And I promise you won't be losing this one because of me, savvy?'

I put out a hand, which he shook, and then turned and strode back down to the deck, shouting orders at my crew as I went – I could see that a storm was approaching.

That was fun. And sorry if I've gotten any of the dialogue wrong - I'll go back and rewatch the scene to make sure I got it right when I get the chance.