I'm so sorry this is two days late, I really hadn't meant for that to happen, but this chapter refused to flow for me, and I wanted to make sure I did it justice. I really hope it won't happen again, and please review? I've been trying really hard, and I really want to know how you feel about the way I'm going. Thank you.

-Han

Anne Bonny watched her daughter lower the pistol in a daze, a barrage of emotion flitting across her eyes, vying to take center stage, though not one held steadfast in her body. The war of thought seemed to overpower the young woman, until her gaze was swimming and her lips were parted. The girl had her eyes, even the same hollow whisper through the blue, like the pieces of the sea that swam there were lonely, cut off from the rest of their home. Other than that she was a melting pot of her parents, no feature truly distinguishable, her face was her own and Anne would not have wished it different.

She was beautiful.

Her brown hair curled around her face as if constantly snarled in the wind, and the dirt and grime that clung to her sea-stained clothing made her seem rough, like she tumbled down from a high pedestal to stand before them. The man at her side was striking in a way Calico had never been, angular cheekbones and eyes that swam in shadow and never ended, and that gaze flicked between Anna and Bonny with a mistrust that had been bread of years at sea. His hand twitched, inching through the stale air towards Anna's callused fingers as if to snatch her up and whisk her away.

But Anna's eyes were rapt on the whispers of smoke, the undefined woman in front of her that would forever mix in her memory as awe inspiring. Bonny's name was only spoken by the bold in dark and dusty bar rooms in Port Royal, weathered sailors curled around their chipped mugs and speaking into the amber with hushed voices. It was as if their words were sacred and evil all at once, and they spoke of a mist that inhaled vengeance and killed for sport, they spoke of meetings in the cover of shadow with a woman whose hair breathed fires that matched the gates of Hell itself.

And when Anna would leave the smithy for the day, yellow gauze taping down still-fresh wounds, she would enter the smoke filled bar and listen with her legs curled beneath her. Will never spoke of the stories she attended, but when she returned with a glow in her eyes his would grow far and away, as if he already knew that he would lose her to piracy. Fate had a cruel way of turning to tides on them, she thought. She lost him instead, and that would never really leave her.

She could remember coming back to the oppressively hot smithy with her head swimming with myths, legends of the sea and the pirates that rode it without fear. Anne Bonny's name was whispered on her lips in the soft darkness of summer midnights and Will listened if only to appease her, she tried to be thankful, but she was a thousand leagues away. The world of piracy had taken her, and when she spoke she seemed insubstantial, as if Will's touch would pass through her.

Jack understood better, and when they docked in Tortuga or visited a bar and her gaze went too far for him to follow, he waited it out. He brushed his fingers across her hand, her arm, her throat, and let her be lost in the spoken history of man. When she reappeared, hours later, he would walk with her on the dark beaches and let her play in the shallow waves and laughed with her and kissed her beneath the moon.

She was gone now, and he couldn't remove her unwavering attentions, those near adoring eyes only he could decipher trained on someone that was, distinctly, not him. He could remember the first moment she looked at him that way, on the deck of the Interceptor in Port Royal, when his hands moved and his eyes shimmered and he charmed a pair of idiots into putting down their weapons. That look made his chest swell, a smile rise to the edges of his lips and it was real, so real all his other smiles felt like glass. But it wasn't trained on him and suddenly he felt as far away as she was, unable to pin down the stirrings in his chest.

"I'd hate to be breakin' up this meeting of heroes and such, but if we could please proceed with that which we are here for?" Barbossa cut through the tension with his powdery accent, flowered and caked with the restrictions his position pressed upon him.

Bonny watched Anna come back to herself in a snap of unchecked fire she was afraid would consume the young woman. A sneer colored her lips before she checked herself, the grip on her pistol tightening and falling slack again as if with her breathing.

"Will you stop us?" she asked, facing the pirate of myth. Bonny had lost everything years ago, Blackbeard had been unable to take Calico's ship so he had betrayed their position to the British Navy. Calico Jack Rackham had died by the noose only days later, Mary Reed succumbing to fever months after that, but Bonny had disappeared from the record, lost on waves of blood lust and a need for revenge. Blackbeard had wronged her in a way she could not forget, it burned in her like nothing else ever would.

"Not unless you get in my way," Bonny hissed, that haze of red falling back over her eyes before she could stop it. Her daughter, all mirrored eyes and willowy limbs and soft smile, disappeared, as she often had in the past, behind the need to move forward. Her mission was drawing to a close, every long year and wasted moment, every second she could have been with Calico, could have been with her daughter, could have been free, it was mounting high behind her and she had nowhere to run. Twenty three years was all leading up to the next few hours, she would rather die than leave all that unfinished, unpaid for.

"A fair deal if I've ever heard one," Jack said brightly, the corners of his mouth taut, as if he was stretched too thin. "Now, all pleasantries aside, I think it would be good of us to examine and therefore uncover the treasures hidden within that dusty box thing that has so appreciatively slid to its current and highly coincidental position." He spoke with a distance that lacked his usual charm, the kind that infected Anna's skin and made her smile without fail. She turned to him, question swimming in her blue grey eyes until every other piece of the room and their lives and the shadows that built them faded.

"A fine idea, in theory, but ye dare not move or ye upset the precarious balance set upon this vessel," Barbossa countered, struggling to stand as he favored his bad leg. His grim eyes cast across the decaying wood until they rested upon a dusty leather chest, the small box seemed to center the room, bringing all the attentions of treasure, darkness, and pirates towards it without moving them.

"One step at a time," Bonny said softly, rolling her strong soldiers, lean muscle rippling beneath her dirty blouse. Her boots felt forward slowly, mud-caked and old, the leather pressed lightly against the wood and Anna watched with bated breath, the woman of myth taking the first step.

The ship lurched, pitching as if in a storm and Anna stumbled, her hands reaching out on instinct and her left clutched Jack's shoulder even as he stumbled. The Captain spun nimbly, a grace in his movements she could never have, and caught her as if in mid dance, her body pressed flat against his. Jack tried to read her eyes, to bring her back from the edges of her memory, where she fell into drunken history and the hope that she would be able to make it. She didn't seem to realize that she was, her blue eyes finding their way back to Bonny, like the older woman could teach her things about their way of life that not even Jack understood. His arms dropped, the protective cage of his embrace slipped from her without resistance. Jack wondered if she knew he was there.

Barbossa cursed, his wig tipping awkwardly across his face until the white tendrils fell into his eyes and the glare he turned on Bonny seemed to singe the white hair. No one moved, their breath was slow and even and Anna seemed to blink more than Jack thought she should, as if she was battling back some haze over her vision that would distract her. He hoped she'd stop looking at Bonny, stop staring at the older pirate like she wanted to follow her. Not him.

Bonny sighed, her weathered hands shifting on the wall behind her to give her more leverage. The little box on the floor held an importance she didn't understand, but one that left a bad taste in her mouth. She needed to reach it, but every nerve in her body told her not to, the hollow eyes of Ponce De Leon watched her back straighten with a coldness that seeped into her skin.

"No," Jack warned, his bright eyes dulled to that of dying embers, more smoke than fire as he stared at the woman who had attracted the attentions of the one next to him. Anna looked to him, her gaze carrying an openness he knew her to wear after slipping into fantasy and dream, when everything felt new to her again and the real world wasn't as bad as she had thought. "Together."

His voice left no room for compromise, the near harshness of it stilling Anne Bonny in her tracks. She'd heard of Captain Jack Sparrow, the man who had robbed her home in Nassu without firing a single shot, the man who had been to Hell and back, the man who killed Jones through the hand of another. The man who brought Anna to piracy.

So she stopped, nodding slowly to the ethereal looking man. He reminded her of the fey, men who looked to be carved by light-fingered gods and who were given wings on which they flew with freedom. And they danced in time to music only they could hear, their eyes cat-like and honey sweet.

All four stood in the soft darkness and stepped forward, arms out as if to embrace the air and keep their balance. Anna's eyes were on the ground, watching the rotten wood for signs of breakage and the tips of her fingers whispered against Jack's shirtsleeve. He tried to smile, watching her brow furrow in concentration as she moved in time with everyone else. Barbossa's peg leg struck out a hollow thump that seemed to bait the ship into moving, they stopped as one, muscles tense and barely breathing. It remained still.

Another step and it gave way to movement, four pirates scrambling to find a hold. Anna's fingers struggled numbly to grip the edge of a chest, but she wasn't holding, her legs losing ground completely as she struggling to pull herself higher. She swallowed a scream and resigned herself to emptiness, to darkness wrapping around her body until the world cemented again as she collided with the opposite wall, pinned down by mountains of shifting treasure, when Jack grabbed her hand. She smiled at him, as if realizing for the first time that he was there. Things seemed to slip away, the existence of the Chalices, Blackbeard, the hero of stories standing just near her, and Barbossa struggling to stand as he slid with boxes of treasure and glittering coins across the floor.

"Up is Down," he reminded, a flash of gold shining in the blue as their minds returned to the end of the world and the way they ran across the deck with a crew following their movements. They remembered a shifting ship and the way the sunset seemed to taunt them, the way the Pearl moved in time with them. She grinned, a smile that lit up her face in a sea of sparks he could decipher in only a moment, a strong nod, and they were riding the waves of weakening vines and the grip of the cliff side.

The ran across the deck, Anna jumping high enough to clear a gaping hole through the floor, one that lead to the dark abyss of air below them, and landed lightly enough to rival even Jack's graceful movements. As the ship lurched and rolled, so did they, even as Bonny and Barbossa struggled to stand and copy them.

"Like old times," Anna said breathlessly as the pitching's of the ship slowed and they slid the remaining few feet towards the box. She turned, half expecting Jack to be the only one there, like all the light would be centered on his face and she would see him like she had never seen him before. Bonny crouched down, her loose shirt billowing around her narrow waist as her fingers brushed against the lip of the chest. Barbossa leaned awkwardly beside her, his wooden leg stuck out to the side.

"Oi, why do you get to look first?" Jack demanded, eyes narrowed on the red-haired pirate with the sharpness of a sword, biting and steel. She rolled her eyes, a mirrored blue that Jack thought looked too much like Anna's, too much like the sea split itself and flowed into her heart. But Bonny had a wear on her that Anna didn't have, blankness in her gaze that made Jack think of Davy Jones, and the sick way he had allowed himself to be taken by revenge that consumed him. Bonny was close, a half-crazed look swimming just beneath the blue, just beneath her heartbeats.

"Fine, together," Bonny mocked, a sneer coloring her lips. Anna nearly growled, a protectiveness rising in her before she could quell it and hero or no hero, Jack came first. Jack would always come first. Bonny blinked, taken aback by the glare her daughter sent her way.

The harshness, the cold brutality in her daughter's gaze had been unnerving, like she'd stepped into an ambush without a weapon, like the sea had turned on her. Days of dreaming of the little bundle in her arms had passed, and she couldn't pretend the truth wasn't real anymore, that she had forgotten.

It was like Anna was confronting her, that heated glare from her mirrored eyes struck a chord so deep within her body it seemed like God was pushing every sin she'd ever committed back into her chest until the reality was all she could face. Sometime between London and now, Anne Bonny had let thoughts of her child be washed away, she stopped thinking about the little girl who grabbed her finger in tiny hands, stopped wishing to be with her, stopped loving her.

"Tread lightly, Bonny," Barbossa said softly, his tired eyes sliding from the pair of pirates he had grudgingly begun to respect. "She's got a streak as mean as Jones himself when it comes to young Sparra'."

Jack smirked, a wan stretch of lips as his hands reached out slowly, sliding across the chest almost reverently. He glanced up at Bonny, and thought her not as beautiful as Annie, not as off-kilter and bright. "It is mutualistic in nature," he said shortly, while Anna continued to glare with the ferociousness of an animal, barely restrained and all traces of admiration singed away.

Jack liked that about her, that she didn't allow her notions, her childish awe, restrain her from what she wanted, what she needed. And even though she wanted the memories of childhood, the legend of Bonny weaved through the smoke in a bar, even though she wanted what the older woman could give her, she needed Jack. More than air, sometimes.

And he knew it.

"As is our need to be onward," Anna whispered, wishing suddenly that she was far away, on the deck of the Pearl with the wind against her skin and her troubles behind her. This time, things seemed to be too much. She had a Cabin Boy and a Pirate Boy she felt compelled to protect, a Spanish tart after Jack's smoldering gaze, a flash to the past they'd left behind in Barbossa's awkward gait, and now the object of a thousand dreams in childhood. And a Fountain that could promise you years, but not enough to stretch the time eternally. Ponce De Leon was enough proof of that, drinking his way to youth for short of two hundred years, until something had gone wrong and now he lay withered, an empty shell of the Captain he used to be.

But she had a duty, something she hadn't felt pressed upon her shoulders since she walked the halls of her father's estate, pushed down by politics and a sense of service. She had to go through the motions of a pirate driven by their lust for eternal sunsets, never ending horizons, and years that melted by like minutes until she and Jack could end things. Truly end things.

So she lifted the lid, her fingers feeling numb as, as one body, the four pried open the old box.

"Rocks."

Jack made the observation, confused eyes narrowing on the two heavy looking stones nestled inside of a velvet nest, and the deep red seemed like liquid to Jack, like the blood of the world was swirled around the place where the Chalices would have been resting, waiting for another man afraid of dying.

"The Spanish," Barbossa realized, his eyes narrowing in something close to hate and Anna wondered if his position was tainting him, removing the heart of a pirate and replacing it with politics and inbred hatred.

"Their ahead of us," Anna said softly, brushing her fingers over the perfectly weighted stones. She knew little about the intricacies of the Spanish army or what their king would want with the Fountain of Youth, she'd been told the newly crowned man was young, hundreds of horizons before his eyes and beautiful in the way she considered Jack to be beautiful, delicate features carved by Gods to make women's hearts flutter. He shouldn't need it, but he was sending his armies to race across the globe and battle pirates and the English and time to get to it.

"Perhaps a look at that map," Bonny whispered, taking her dead looking eyes from the center of the box towards the bed. She couldn't rid herself of the oppressive truth, the one she'd been hiding from in a dark corner in her mind, letting shadows drape across her scarred heart. She stood, a hand reaching out to steady herself against the bedpost, taking slow, even steps in time with every other person, not caring if the ship fell from the side of the cliff and crashed in to the beach below.

Anne Bonny never thought she'd have to face her, never thought she would meet those identical eyes again. She could bury her intentions behind flowered words of keeping her safe, keeping her with Jack, trying not to taint her with the bloodthirsty anger that had long taken Anne's heart, but the truth was worse. So much worse.

Jack reached the map first, the soft bed dipping beneath his knees. His quick eyes flitted over the detailed sketches as his dirty fingers pulled at the edge, letting it slide from the loose grip of skeletal fingers. The ancient parchment felt well-worn and pliant, like hands had been running it smooth for a hundred years, keeping the edges from getting too stiff. Anna crawled onto the bed beside him as the map pulled completely from Leon's grip, and she had to fight back a yawn. The night was warm, the bed soft.

"Wonder why they left it behind," Anna whispered her eyes moving to Jack's face, and something in her felt sorry, like she had wronged him somehow, without meaning to. He seemed concentrated, his eyes careful on the ancient parchment, but his shoulders were stiff and his skin felt cold when her fingers slipped across his wrist.

She stiffened a moment later, almost as a response to Jack, whose eyes had shifted and frozen on a slowly turning skeleton. Ponce De Leon's decaying head twisted, hollow eyes boring into his very soul and that grin slicing through his defenses. He was nearly shaking, his breath iced-over in his chest.

Don't touch the map, Barbossa mouthed from across the bed, where Bonny crowded close to see over his shoulder. Jack's mouth formed an 'oh' a vacant look clouding over his eyes in an attempt to push back the pulse-pounding fear.

Anna took the map, tugging slightly to get Jack to release it, and laid it back inside of the dead man's grip, watching bones close back around the pages in a lax grasp. Bonny watched the way the girl drew her fingers over Jack's hands, pulling him up from the soft sheets with touches that spoke of long practice. Pulling Will away from the window at night, Jack away from his charts, prying a sword from the first and a bottle from the second.

"I'm sorry," Anna whispered into his neck as he moved to stand, so low only he could hear her. She didn't know why she was apologizing, only felt the need to let the words pass her lips, and the smile Jack gave her was enough to be proud of the choice.

Anne Bonny watched the girl grin up at Jack in response, seeming to forget the world for a split second, one long enough to make her heart ache and her hands clench. She wasn't good at lying to herself, never had been.

"They know the path. But I can also see where they'll most likely make camp," Barbossa was saying, leaning over the corpse until the tips of his wig brushed against the caved-in chest cavity. Bonny wasn't listening. Gone, like her daughter's gaze had been after she had let loose her name, like Calico and Reed were.

She wouldn't tell Anna, wouldn't let the girl know that the hero she nearly worshiped in childhood was the mother she never knew. Not to keep her safe. Not so that the young woman wouldn't feel pressured into leaving Jack to connect with her mother, but so that Bonny didn't have to face the questions, that devastated gaze. Her eyes accusing her.

Anne wouldn't say anything, and her heart would go on heavy and her soul writhing in shame. Because she had forgotten.

Because she was a coward.