AUTHOR'S NOTE: Once again I don't own POTC, I hope you're still enjoying my story. Please leave a review if you do. Thank you -B

CHAPTER THREE: THE PROPOSAL

Throughout the night Annabelle had woken up shivering, after the third awakening she gave up on the idea of sleep and started pacing the cell. There had to be some way to get out of the cell, she had hours to spare thinking up a plan to escape. She figured it couldn't even be dawn yet and that only a few hours had passed. Walking from one end to another of the cell she darted her eyes around the room barely making out anything visible in the dim candlelight burning near the door. Another reason why she had figured not much time had passed, it wasn't fully burned out and only about a fourth of it had been melted.

"Come on Annabelle, think this through. It shouldn't be that hard. This ship is rather old and the bars should be rather weak. What did Will do when you and that bastard where stuck in the cells before? Great I'm talking to myself." Annabelle said shaking her head, she remembered Will using a bench to pry apart the bar from the hinges but there was no bench in the cell with her. There was only pissed on hay and broken glass lying around the small damp and cold cell.

Out of frustration she began to kick at the bars and screamed out profanities. So far her life had been nothing but bad luck after bad luck. The daughter and father relationship she had with a man who had not been her father was one; if it wasn't for him she wouldn't have been a pirate. She could have been a common housewife by now, or a nun, anything besides a pirate caged in the cells of her own ship. Then there was the all the ships she had helped her Pirate father pilfer from. It had been a rather nice time until she was betrayed by him and his blood daughter. Thrown to the sharks so they could run off with the gold and jewels they had ransacked from a West India Trading Company ship. And what had Annabelle done? Killed the captain of that ship, stole a life boat and got the hell out of there. It was her life or his, and she wasn't going to die so easily. Especially with the vengeance she needed to complete with the phony pirate father.

On her escapade to find that pirate she had hidden on a trading boat as a boy until she made dock at an English city. That hadn't been a pleasant journey, even posing as a boy nearly got her raped by a disgusting looking man. She shuddered at the memory of it; it was something she didn't care to remember much. The man had been so close to exposing her secret but was thankfully caught by the captain himself while he was trying to rip of her pants. Luckily for Evelyn the captain was so sickened by the man that he threw him overboard.

When she made dock on the boat she had almost in a few moments ran into Jack quite literally. He even mistook her for a boy and was quite annoyed with her bumping into him. That was until her hat fell of her head and her long hair fell out of it. As soon as he realized she was a girl he quickly also realized that she was a wanted pirate. With the threat of being exposed she had followed him, he had given her two options then she remembered. Either he exposes her as a wanted pirate or she helps him hijack a boat and sail it. The stupid idiot had gotten them both arrested within hours all because he couldn't keep his hands off of the Governor's daughter. Then she got pulled into a journey with a love sick man to save his one true love with Jack. Her bad luck only seemed to go up from there.

Jack had been quite charming and had pursued her after a few weeks of sailing together. There were countless reasons why she was an idiot for falling for him so quickly. Annabelle had never known the loving of a man, she was young and he was very handsome. When they finally rescued Elizabeth her beauty was quite extraordinary compared to that of Evelyn's and she could see the lust in Jack's eyes.

She kicked at the bars again feeling anger flush through her body; it just wasn't fair for her. Never could she seem to gain any chance of being even remotely happy for a while. As soon as she felt like things could change and everything could only go right, she'd get shoved back into shit and pissed on. Wrapping her hands around the bars she began to shake them as she sobbed angrily staring into the wooden floor.

"Hello poppet." A voice drawled across from her, she recognized the voice but she couldn't find the name to match it.

"What do you want?" she barked looking up at the short man who was standing beside the door as another walked into the room. While the other was short, the other man was rather lengthy and thin. As the light from the candlestick touched their faces she recognized who they were right away. They had been the crew members for Barbosa and her recently new acquired crew members as well when she came upon them in the ocean yelling at each other in a rowboat. No loyalty at all these days.

It was quite comical to Annabelle as she looked at the two. IT was like they were opposites of each other. One was short and tubby while the other was tall and skinny. The short one lacked some hair at the top of his head and the other sported a short cropped cut that fell in a line along his ears. They were here to try and get a show from her, she figured. But when the short plump up held up a ring of keys, Annabelle's heart raced, looks like they wanted more than just a show.

"I think you know what we want…"the short one laughed as he walked towards her with a large grin on his face.

"Yeah, you know what we want." The other giggled as he followed behind the fat one.

Annabelle fought herself from smirking as the two stood directly in front of her with the only thing separating the three was the metal bars. These two had to be idiots; she wondered how though they managed to swipe the keys from Gibbs.

"Oh no please! I'm just a poor defenseless virgin! No! Please!" Annabelle cried in her best attempt at acting afraid. She scurried backwards away from them for added affect and sank to the ground. Her hands moved behind her back as she began to search for a large piece of glass.

"Come on love, we'll be gentle." The fat one laughed as he took a key and tried to use it for the lock.

"Yeah, we'll be gentle." The lengthy one giggled.

As they both continued to laugh Annabelle managed to find a good size of a glass shard. She'd have to be quick and use her fists as well. Her body was already bruised from Jack earlier and no doubt she'd be in a worse shape after this. But the two seemed quite stupid and getting past them would no doubt be quite easy for her.

"Aren't you gonna unlock the door?" the lengthy one asked as the short one continued to fiddle around with the keys in his hands.

"That's what I'm trying to do!" the fat one snapped back.

"Maybe you should try the black one." The other one said as he pointed towards it.

The short fat one glared at the other man and said, "I already tried that now didn't I?" he yelled back at the lengthy one.

Rolling her eyes Annabelle responded back, "You have to jiggle the black key in the lock you morons."

"Why thank you poppet." The shorter man grinned thinking he had gotten the better of Annabelle. The lengthy man was practically rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

The fat one managed to get the lock to open and swung the door open and begun to advance upon Annabelle but was knocked aside by the lengthy one.

"I'm going first!" The fat one snapped at the lengthy one and pulled him behind him.

"That's not fair." The other one said and pushed the fat one aside.

"Whoever said I like being fair?" the other one grunted as he pushed the other away from Annabelle.

This really was ridiculous. Annabelle didn't need the glass shard after all for the two began to tussle around on the ground and the keys to the cell lay on the ground a foot to the side of them as they fought in her cell. She got up without them paying her any attention and grabbed the keys. They continued punching and kicking each other on the ground with weak attempts to harm the other. So Annabelle slipped out of the cell closed the bar door and locked it with the black key. The sound of the lock clicking into place snapped both the heads up of the two idiots who had their hands to the others' throats.

"Now if you'll excuse me gentleman, I really must be off now. I enjoyed your visit and please do tell Jack I send my love!" Annabelle giggled as she watched the two trying to shove each other off themselves and scramble up.

"Get back here and unlock this door!" the fat one yelled at her as he ran towards the bars and tried to reach out to her through the bars. He was just a short distance away and the lengthy one stood back behind the short one quietly fuming.

These two were definitely not to bright. To annoy them some more, Annabelle danced a bit to mock their idiocy. And with their shouts of fury she bowed and left the room. She placed the key chain around the burning candle just so they could see the keys but not reach them. As Annabelle crept silently up to the deck she had to stop herself from humming aloud. Creeping past Gibbs sleeping in a hammock with the rest of the crew she almost stopped to dance quietly next to him but realized how foolish she was acting. Limited time was granted to her to pull the lifeboat from below and place it on the sea. The stars would map her way to land which couldn't be more than a two days away.

The only problem was that Jack would know where she would be going. He would always know because of his need to seek revenge on her. His damn compass would probably point her out. Tortuga wasn't that big of a place to try and hide herself. Nonetheless she would try to escape from Jack. Annabelle passed by another sleeping crew and stole his blanket that had fallen to the dirty floor. It would be extremely cold during the night as she traveled and her coat wouldn't be enough for her. During the day the sun would more than likely leave her sweltering hot but she would just lose some article of clothing to cool herself down.

The soft sound of waves hitting against the boat was the only sound that she could hear when she reached the deck. It was a quiet night on the seas and would be especially tricky to keep quiet when getting the lifeboat off of the deck without too much sound. The Captain's quarters were directly in front of the only lifeboat she could pull.

"Shite." Annabelle groaned as she walked slowly trying to keep her steps quiet as she approached the lifeboat. Her luck had run out that night for certain when she noticed that the only ropes attached to the lifeboat had been cut.

"Going somewhere love?" Jack said as he stepped out from behind a stack of barrels next to the lifeboat. All of this had been too easy; Annabelle should have known with her luck that her escape from her cell had been too good to be true.

"It would appear that I'm not." Annabelle sighed dropping the blanket to her side. She angrily yelled at herself for not grabbing a pistol or a blade from one of the sleeping crew. Or even the damn glass she had dropped on the floor when she left the brig.

Jack walked up to her until he was only a foot away from her, if she wished to she could reach out and touch him. The moonlight illuminated his features casting dark shadows around his nose and below his neck and Annabelle couldn't help but notice.

"What say you?" Jack asked her smirking as he shifted his weight so he was leaning on his left foot.

"What?" Annabelle asked confused, did he want her to explain herself for trying to escape while everyone was supposed to be asleep.

"About the offer I was so kind to give you." Jack grinned. He bent over to pick up the blanket lying on the ground next to her. It was a dark blue holey looking thing that looked in need of being burned. He observed the blanket in his hands and glanced giving her a questioning look.

"It was to keep warm," Annabelle said defensively as she flicked her hair out of her face, "And about your offer, I'd rather die."

"I thought you might say that." Jack smirked.

Before Annabelle could even process the idea of fighting back, Jack had dropped the blanket and threw her over his shoulder as he headed towards the rail of the ship.