General Disclaimer: I do not own Pirates of the Caribbean or anything affiliated with it.

Soaring Scarlet

"Now...bring me that horizon." Captain Jack Sparrow said, humming to himself as he steered his beloved ship, the Black Pearl. His humming turned into quiet singing as he ran his hands along the weathered wood that he had come to know and love so many years before. "And really bad eggs. Drink up me 'earties yo ho!"

Six months later...

Well, he had certainly found his horizon, as stormy as it seemed at the moment. To onlookers (not that there were many, so close to midnight), the scene was strange. An odd-looking pirate had just been forcibly removed from a bar, flung into the street by a six-foot-four apparently angry man.

"You keep your bloody drunken hands offa m'wife!" The man roared, shaking a meaty fist at the pirate's prone body.

The accused was lying spread-eagle in the street, facedown in a puddle. The water vibrated slightly as the bartender slammed the door as hard as he could. The few people that were in the street watched; thinking that the pirate would roll over at any second now, and they could go along their ways, knowing that he wasn't going to die such a pathetic death, drowning in a puddle.

He didn't so much as twitch in the muddy water, the moonlight glinting and reflecting the nighttime scene. A dark-haired female that had happened by bustled into the street with a heavy sigh, her light skirts swirling silently about her feet. She knelt beside the pirate and with some difficulty and a small grunt of exertion, rolled him over out of the puddle. She put her hands on his chest to assure that he was indeed still breathing, and therefore not a lost cause.

"You don't hafta save 'em all, Bretta." A blonde prostitute called to the woman, sympathetically.

"But without them I'd get lonely." Bretta retorted sarcastically, tucking her wavy brown hair behind her ears, fingers brushing against the small silver hoops through the lobes. She stood, hooking her arms under the pirates, dragging him with difficulty over the cobblestones and down the street.

"Dammit." She cursed under her breath as she moved laboriously. "Damn heavy bastard." She wondered how lady-like she looked like at the moment, cursing and panting, dragging this enormous oaf of a man along the street.

When Bretta finally reached her destination, exhausted, she dropped the man. Just dropped him, plain and simple, his head hitting the stone with an audible thud that sounded an axe hitting rotten wood. She winced with regret, but pushed the solid wooden door open anyway. She turned, surveying the empty moonlit street from it. Other than the unconscious pirate lying motionless at her feet, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Bretta wondered if she had seen a shadow move across the street. She attempted to reassure herself that it had not, not feeling very reassured.

Looping her arms under the pirate's again, she dragged him backwards into the rustic stone building. Why am I doing this again? Bretta asked herself silently as she pulled the damp pirate onto her small bed, and covered him with the thin blanket, the only blanket she had. She had been taking in drunk pirates for many years, ever since her mother died, letting them sleep off their drunkenness. Most were grateful; many gave her coins or trinkets. The others were somewhat hostile, and she let them go about their way without so much as a word. This could very well be the one that kills me.

As if on cue, the ragged pirate's eyes snapped open wide, and he sat bolt upright. In one swift movement, so quick in fact that Bretta had no time to react, he was up from the bed, pinning her against the wall with his body.

"Ah love, you've gotten yourself into a bit of a pickle now, haven't you?" The pirate said, one hand flat against the wall by her head, the other at her throat, but not yet pushing hard enough to cut her air supply off. His body was flat against hers, although he stood at least a foot taller than her and she could feel his heat emanating through both their clothes.

"P-p-p…" Bretta stuttered, her eyes still wide with shock. He'd been impossibly quick, and it seemed more than a coincidence that he'd awoken the moment she'd thought about him harming her. He was uncomfortably close to her, his nose brushing hers, and for a moment she wondered if he would try to kiss her. Her fingers swept across the stone of the wall as she clenched her hands in an attempt to soothe her panic.

"Oh goodie, I love this game." The man said, flashing her a happy grin, the gold on his teeth glinting cheerily in the candlelight. "Let's see…could it be park?"

Bretta shook her head, temporarily struck dumb by this unorthodox pirate. What kind of pirate likes to play word games? She wondered as she looked into his dark eyes, and one hand moved automatically to his side; perhaps an attempt to push him away.

"Hmmm…" He thought out loud, a mischievous look on his face, and she know that he already knew what she was trying to say, but she was too shocked to say what she needed to. "Parsley? Parsnips?" He guessed again, watching her carefully with mischievously narrowed eyes.

"Par…par…" Bretta took a deep breath to calm her beating heart, for it was beating so loud she could hardly hear the man in front of her. Probably it was fear, but it might have also been the proximity of the man in front of her. "Parley."

"There you go, love." The pirate said, giving her another playful grin. He stroked his fingertips along the skin on the side of her throat as he removed his hand. He angled his body away from hers, releasing her in order to examine her. She brought her hand to her throat, even though he had not hurt her, and touched the skin that his fingers had brushed against so softly. "That wasn't so difficult, now was it?"

Bretta didn't answer him, still pressed up against the wall, decidedly apprehensive. She took this momentary chance to study the pirate. He had strings of beads throughout his thick black hair that was mostly swept back with a dirty scarlet bandana, and two small braids that swung carelessly under his chin. His dark eyes were rimmed with what was presumably black kohl, making them the most predominant feature when he wasn't smiling. However, when he did smile, his teeth sparkled with the afore-noticed gold. His clothes were that which one expect to find on a pirate; black pants and boots, a dirty white shirt, a blue vest, and a red-and-white sash. All in all, he was very attractive, which Bretta found alarming. She found very few men attractive after the murder of her mother, least of all pirates. Regardless, there was something about the man that she recognized, although she'd never seen him before. Instead, she felt as if his appearance was something that she'd heard about, but she couldn't quite remember who he was.

"Love?" He asked, his eyebrows drawing together a bit over his unique eyes in impatience. "You have any notion of answerin' me?"

"It wasn't my intention, no, sir." Bretta said, choosing her words carefully, having recovered enough to say that much, at least. She had decided as she examined him and scrutinized his eccentric behaviour and appearance that he was most likely harmless, although it wouldn't hurt to be cautious anyway.

She neatly sidestepped him to pick up the discarded blanket, folding it and returning it to the bed. His face turned downward in a slightly more sober look. "Why did you bring me here?" He asked, sounded truly curious. Bretta supposed that it was a peculiar thing, a woman alone, bringing an unconscious pirate to her home.

Bretta looked at the pirate straight on and told him without missing a beat. "I brought you here because if I hadn't, you would've died." That was the truth, and that's all he was going to get, the scoundrel. He wasn't to know that she had saved dozens of men from certain (or at least probable) death simply because it eased the pain and guilt she felt of her mother's premature death.

"Not many would do that, but all right. It's your own life, I guess. A mite dangerous though, I think you'd agree." The pirate said amiably, seeming to have no great concern for the answer. He scratched the top of his head for a moment in a perplexed manner. "Now back to the subject on hand. Parley's an interestin' word, ain't it love? Means I'm s'pposed to take ye to my captain, don't it?"

Bretta remained silent, turning to face him again, well aware of the danger posed by getting aboard a pirate ship, even with the parley as a safety precaution. Pirates were not well-known for fighting fair, metaphorically. More than a few people had been pressed into service under the unfair twisting of words during a parley, and she didn't know if she could keep her wits about her well enough to avoid such a fate.

He ignored her lack of response, and showed her his gold teeth again, bouncing on the balls of his feet in hilarity. "That's funny. D'you want t'know why?"

Bretta noticed that he was a very animated speaker, moving his hands about a lot as he talked, in addition to changing his stance, leaning forward and then back, and tilting his head every which way. It served, she presumed, to confuse people. They would watch his hands and his body more than they would listen to what he was saying, and therefore, they were more likely to absently agree with whatever he did happen to say. She also vaguely recognized this trait, and she knew that the name and story of this pirate resided somewhere in the deep recesses of her mind.

"It's funny because I am th'captain, love." He grinned widely, obviously amused, having finally gotten to the punch line of his own personal joke.

"Good." Bretta said hopefully, suddenly spurred into motion towards the door. "Excellent. That means that we can wrap up here quickly, and you can leave a bit sooner. You know, now that you're up and about." There was something about this man that intrigued Bretta; something that she had never before seen in a man… However, she knew that she didn't want him to stick around so she could find out what it was. That would simply be too dangerous for her own good. Before she could get to the door though, the pirate reached out as swift as a cat and snagged her wrist, pulling her back towards him. Locking one muscular arm about her waist to keep her against him, he tilted his head down to talk to her.

"I don't think so. In fact, I don't think I'm leavin' anytime soon." The pirate captain said softly, his lips brushing unintentionally against her ear. She could feel his breath on the side her neck and she wanted to shiver, partly from the tendril of fear making its way up her spine and partly from the unknowing caress, but she refrained. Instead she stared fixedly at an imaginary spot on the wall, in an attempt to save whatever dignity she still possessed.

"Now that th'captain of th'Black Pearl's got you," the pirate said, still speaking as softly as was possible without it becoming a whisper. "You might as well start negotiatin'."

Bretta gasped involuntarily in sudden recognition, and wrenched away from him with all her strength. He yielded reluctantly, and released her from his grasp.

"You're Captain Jack Sparrow!" Bretta said breathlessly, having finally truly recognized the man in front of her.