"So," Adelaide asked, taking a sip of tea. Her and the Turner boy had just finished packing, and she decided to make tea with the beaker to celebrate. "Why are you here?"

"I thought you knew. Wasn't that what you and Jack were talking about?"

"Huh? Oh no. That was something completely different." She snorted a bit into her tea. "So what is your plan, young one?"

William leaned a little closer, growing enthusiastic. "Not long ago I was helping our," he glanced back. "friend Mr. Sparrow escape from the gallows-"

"not the most unusual occurence"

"-apparently. So my fiance and I were pardoned by her father, the governor-"

"-well that's convenient-"

"-most. However, less than a week ago, the new lord of Port Royal took back the pardons and arrested us on the charge of aiding and abetting-"

"Ugh. Of course."

"Exactly..." He looked off somewhere into the distance. "It was to be my wedding day."

"Goodness, that's even more heartless than I thought."

"He offered my freedom in exchange for the compass." Will felt a familiar welling of anger, and he took a quick sip of tea. The woman had enough problems without dealing with his own anger.

"Jack's compass?"

"Yes. He had Letters of Marque." Adelaide's eyebrow raised slightly.

"REALLY. Those are not that easy to come by, even for a governor."

"Yes, well, no doubt the great Lord Beckett received them through some ill means."

He looked at her, but her eyes were far away, her face turned to stone.

"Did you say Beckett, William?"

He nodded, surprised at her sudden change in demeanor.

"Yes. Lord Cu...Co..."

"Cutler. Lord Cutler Beckett."

"Yes." Will nodded vigorously.

"And Jack knows this."

"I assume he does."

"Are you sure?"

"Well, I told him- Miss... erm... wait, please. Adelaide!"

Will called after her, but the door had already violently clanged backwards, her hair whipping madly. Will rushed after her, but she would not stop for a moment, and he had to run to keep up with the pace of her stomp.

"JONATHAN!" A bellow quite unlike anything Will had ever heard from a woman burst forth- every head on the ship turned simultaneously.

Except, of course, for Jack's.

"JONATHAN SPARROW!" She stalked up to the helm, where Will could already see the Captain panicking, trying to find a way out. Will felt an odd satisfaction in the knowledge that there wasn't one.

In a moment, she was next to Jack, and he grimaced, attempting to smile at the furious woman towering over him.

"Adelaide, love, I thought you were going to go set up downstairs, I asked the whelp to help you, do you still need something?" Jack looked past Adelaide to stare accusingly at Will, but the younger man put his hands up. He had done nothing.

"Jack?"

"Hmmm?"

"Who was the person who created the need for this little adventure?"

"I don't understand what you're trying to get at, darlin'. Do you want-"

"Don't try and sweet talk me. Who was the one that imprisoned the boy?"

Will was mildly indignant at being called a boy, but the look of utter horror on the great Captain Jack Sparrow's face was more than worth it.

"Oh," Jack toyed with a dreadlock, his voice miniscule. "So I guess you talked to William then."

"OF COURSE I TALKED TO HIM, YOU MORON! SEE, NORMAL PEOPLE, TALK TO OTHER NORMAL PEOPLE, AND WHEN THEY TALK, THEY FIND OUT THINGS THAT GENERALLY ARE DEEMED IMPORTANT. HOW COULD YOU? CUTLER? OUT OF ALL THE PEOPLE, YOU DRAG ME OUT OF MY HOME AND AWAY FROM MY CHILD TO HELP HIM?"

"Well, love, helping him is about the farthest thing I would like to accomplish on this...bonny expedition-"

"BUT IT'LL HELP HIM, YOU KNOW THAT, IT ALWAYS HELPS HIM, AND...AND..." Adelaide was apparently too furious to speak any longer, and with a quick spit on the Captain's face, she stomped back down to her quarters- within moments the sounds of glass breaking and wood splintering were heard.

He looked around at the crew, most of them still reeling slightly from the maelstrom that was the tiny woman. He glared.

"What are you lot looking at! Don't you have jobs to do?" He turned on his heel. "Gibbs, take the wheel while I control the demon downstairs."Jack looked at Will pointedly, letting an irritable sigh escape him.

"Is it too much to ask that every once in a while, whelp, you keep your oversized mouth shut?"

By the time Jack went downstairs, it was deathly quiet...

It scared him more than anything.

"Adelaide... Addy?" The instant he'd opened the door, he wished he hadn't. Glass was strewn all over the place- her books were open, obviously thrown with some force at the wall.

Even worse, though, was the woman in question. Her hair was splayed across the pillows, unkempt, bedclothes pushed to the side.

She was deathly quiet.

"Addy, Addy, are you awake?" He went towards her with silent steps, but the sudden blast of utter hatred that he felt pouring off of her stopped him in his tracks.

He should have told her, perhaps, but she would not have come. Cutler Beckett was a ghost, a memory of both a better and more terrible time, and he had known that Adelaide would not have approved of them doing business.

"How could you." It was a statement, not a question.

"In my defense love, I feel terrible."

She pushed herself up from the bed, her hair a black curtain, and swiveled slowly to give him a glare that still, after all these years, made him shiver to his bones.

"He will win, you know that. He always does. He will push us into subservience, make us all a part of his little plan to dominate. We are nothing but pawns to him."

"As he is to us, Addy."

"The difference is that he will win."

"You keep saying that. Both Beckett and I can have an agreement that is mutually... beneficial. It's not a contest, Adelaide."

She leveled her eyes at him once more.

"Isn't it?"