Gibbs was behind the helm. The wind didn't seem to exist today, and they were barely making any progress. The arrival in Tortuga was delayed by at least a day, and nobody liked that.

He looked across the deck. The sun was blazing down, and even that was more unbearable without a gentle breeze. Mr. Cotton stretched his back and brushed the sweat from his forehead. Pintel and Ragetti were making mischief with the ropes, which Gibbs preferred not to look at closely.

The sea, the wind, the sails, the wood, the men – everything was silent. It was dead quiet on the Pearl.

Gibbs sighed and just decided to release the men to the crew deck because they had to wait for the wind. Getting the men to the oars was almost an impossibility, and he would give the wind a little time.

Then the silence was interrupted by a voice coming from below the main deck. Gibbs guessed more accurately that it came from his cabin, which he had to make available to Ms. Swann. Mr. Cotton looked at Gibbs tellingly – he was good at that.

Jack Sparrow and Ms. Swann were once again letting the sparks fly. As usual, Gibbs could not understand what they were saying and it was none of his business, but … he shook his head.

His serious expression brightened when he heard a familiar sound above him, in addition to the woman's voice. Wind that filled and stretched the sails.

"A cold-hearted creep you are!"

Rachel aimlessly took a step in one direction and then another. She didn't have much room in the first mate's quarters, and Jack watched with a grin as she now shook her head, raising and moving a hand as if searching for her next words.

"Come on … you want to hit me like you mean it, you'll have to try harder," Jack teased.

Her hand cut through the air and was pressed against her waist as Rachel stopped abruptly and glared angrily at him.

"Bloody rogue!"

Jack continued to beam and leaned against the small chest of drawers that stood on the short side of the chamber. He crossed his arms in front of his chest.

"That's really not good, dear. How long have you been travelling around with pirates, which are swearing all the time? Or have you infected the lads with your decency?"

"Wretched liar!"

"A suggestion for finding words: look for something I haven't already said to myself …," Jack helped out, interrupting himself with a surprised grimace, "what others haven't said to me a hundred times. And then try to describe that a little meaner."

Rachel was fortunately too busy to keep her anger reasonably under control. She didn't notice his slip.

"I hate you!"

That did nothing to dispel Jack's amusement either, and that in turn caused Rachel to lose her composure for a heartbeat. She stared at him.

It wasn't that Jack could not take her seriously – he just didn't want to.

If he did, he would lose his vantage point of serenity and become angry. She would shout at him – he would shout back and it would go on forever.

Was the current situation new to him? Not at all.

Piece by piece, he'd approached Rachel over the period of time that their journey spanned. The pattern had always been the same. Often armed with a bottle of rum, he would have approached her when she'd been up on deck and find out how talkative she was.

If she had been quiet and restrained, he had gone to his cabin. If she had been comfortable and not averse, he had told her about his adventures. Looking back, he could recount much of it with a twinkle in his eye, and thus had broken the ice almost every time.

Then, when Rachel had let her guard down and had been reservedly pleased by his presence, Jack cautiously had asked her opinion on all manner of subjects.

Slowly, an overall picture of her had crystallised. Rachel was a dreamer. An innocent idealist who had no idea of the nastiness of the world. That had been Jack's preliminary conclusion, straightforwardly broken down to the essentials.

Everything had been going easily and pleasantly until he once had let himself be carried away by a guileless remark that had questioned her view.

Jack didn't even remember exactly what it had been about. Rachel had told of a Greek myth – Dionysus and Ariadne? – and her view had been ridiculously glorified and romanticised.

Nothing had prepared him for being confronted with a fire that was raging wildly to protect her challenged beliefs, world view and morals.

Jack had allowed her to have made him a head shorter verbally without complaint. He'd been far too distracted by her emotionally charged outburst.

Until then, he'd seen her as a calm, well-adjusted – even meek woman. Her emotional depth was undeniable, but she kept it locked up.

During the argument, he'd decided to keep his mouth shut, to let her rage, since anything he could have said would have fuelled her anger. Then he'd left, not without confusion.

Confusion was a condition Jack didn't exactly like. Confusion was nothing more than annoying evidence of not understanding something. He'd done what he always did when he didn't understand something: he'd dug deeper and no longer just wanted to know Rachel – but to understand her.

On the next occasion, he had no longer just threw in a guileless remark, but a sarcastic comment at her feet, which was supposed to make her think when she picked it up. Rachel, however, obviously didn't want to think, but had reacted just as strongly as the first time.

She made her judgements based on her feelings. And often she was quick to judge because she had an extensive value system within her. It amused Jack a little, who always based his decisions on what made sense.

He'd created these situations with Rachel more often, although at some point there had always come a moment when his amusement had disappeared because he simply could not understand how someone could have such stupid and unfounded beliefs.

What had he taken her apart for on topics like morality and such squishiness?

It had been too much for Jack to listen to her when she'd held on so vehemently to her views and had defended them without ever being able to back them up with facts.

How – damn it – could she hold on more strongly to something without reasoning it than he did to everything he could logically explain? How was her belief more decisive for her than his evidence? How the hell could she take such a defined stand?

Jack never let himself be pinned down to anything, was always flexible and loitered between transitions.

He hadn't been able to hold back any longer, and his logic had torn apart everything she said.

She'd got angry – he'd got angry, they had argued. He'd got angry because she wouldn't accept any of his arguments. She'd got angry because he could not accept her views.

She was wrong – he could accept them … acceptance was often nothing more than the nice paraphrase for not liking something. Acceptance hadn't been enough for him in this case, he wanted to understand Rachel … and he could not, so like a boy he had kept asking and asking.

Sometimes so desperate that he'd found himself in the last resort he had never wanted to enter: he'd become emotional and thus irrational. Then she'd won the argument because she had been more stubborn than he could have borne his irrationality, and he'd escaped the situation.

Today, however … today Jack hadn't intended to let her get away with not a single consequential reason. Today it escalated.

Jack took a deep breath, but Rachel cut him off.

"Be quiet! Your voice gives me a headache."

Jack's features slipped, but his permanent grin saved itself and remained.

"That would be the most hurtful thing you've ever come up with if it wasn't nonsense. You like my voice. Dear, I'm asking you … from a very objective point of view …"

"No, objectivity is not always the solution. Objectively speaking, you are a pirate. You have renounced all jurisdiction and are committing crimes. That makes you a bad person."

Jack sighed and deliberately stood on the thin ice that wouldn't carry him. But he would take her with, and he had the longer breath.

"Rachel, the man was a pirate, just like me. According to your non-existent logic, you should be pleased that pirates are doing away with each other. Because all pirates are outlaws who deserve to die. That's all you say, no matter how hard you try to describe it nicely. And that's your subjectivity. Objectively, there are differences in …"

"You didn't even try to resolve the situation any other way," she said in a much softer voice.

"On the contrary. I tried to solve it differently. But that wasn't what he wanted."

"Maybe he had a son or a daughter somewhere."

"For sure – several. Who's counting?"

She gritted her teeth and Jack raised a hand in explanation.

"Don't look at the person behind it. Look at the task he had. Sometimes that is a … permissible stylistic device, to look at it that way. He was supposed to capture you. Foolish of me to check on you. Poor lad couldn't help but do away with me if he wanted to do his task," Jack said, groaning in annoyance because she wouldn't understand and was already shaking her head.
"Well, your point of view, then. According to your perception, there are no exceptions and no gradation. All who have ever killed are bad. All who have ever stolen are bad. All who have ever cheated – however – are bad. That cannot be the same …?"

"Of course not. And I understand you had no choice."

Jack smiled and shook his head. Now he was able to break her circle of thoughts.

"Of course I had the choice and I chose me – I always would. Now you are judging subjectively again. Giving me the right to do what I did. Am I better because you know me and the other one was … unknown? But subjectively, you can justify everything in one way or another."

"You are arguing against what you said just a few minutes ago. I understand why you did it …"

Rachel closed her eyes, stroked the arch of her eyebrow with her fingers and when she looked at Jack, there was the anger in her eyes again.

"Er, then why do you bring up the incident again?"

"I can't believe how cold you are!" scolded Rachel incoherently.

Jack knew that when she reacted like this, something of what he said seeped through to her mind. He smirked.

"If I believed you, I would have to think that honesty and decency are not worthwhile because there will be someone everywhere who will take advantage of it. No wonder there are hardly any of the righteous left – no men of honour," she said.

"That is not for you to judge. Morality – of which there is a bad one, by the way – and honour cannot be measured. We could argue about the mere definition and there is no truth in it to approach. Can you at least accept that?"

She shook her head and sat down on the only chair in the room.

"Can you at least admit that you feel guilty about killing the man?" asked Rachel.

"Why? Does it make me less bad if I lie to you about it now and say that? Dear, you have completely exaggerated ideas of morality. Show me a human being and I'll show you a criminal – by your standards – not mine."

Her eyes shone and her voice broke. "You didn't know my father."

"No, but he too will have achieved something in his life that would disappoint you. You have too high expectations. It is best to remove all expectations, and you will be surprised much more often in the pleasant way."

Jack grinned and took a step further.

"And you, too, are doing dubious things. Right now, you're dragging me into court for a crime I didn't commit. When your father was murdered … I may have only been …"

He interrupted himself to calculate.

"Too young, in any case," he concluded, dissatisfied with himself, but how was he to know how long her father had been in the ground?

Maybe questions had been running through her mind for years that she wanted to ask his murderer. And Jack was the closest thing to her father's slayer – a pirate who had killed in front of her eyes.

"Heartless bastard," Rachel said as her eyes brilliantly searching the walls, unblinking and as if she wanted to be somewhere else.

Jack laughed softly until he noticed the tears running down her face.

He had never been of the opinion that tears were a woman's weapons.

If tears were to be used as a weapon, in the worst case they were a manipulation, and Jack recognised blindfolded manipulations and against the wind. In the less bad case, tears to be used as a weapon were water with salt and nothing more.

What was different were the ones that flowed without intention. The tears that no one was supposed to see. Real tears that entailed the consequence of revealing all the vulnerability from which they had sprung.

Those tears were a silent plea to end something. An expression of acknowledged helplessness … and for Jack too often the hint of a weakness he could exploit. He reined himself.

"What?" asked Jack.

Rachel slowly turned her expressionless face towards him. She was crying silently, but otherwise there was nothing. No pressed lips or narrowed eyes. Her attempt to stop the tears had failed, and she just accepted it.

"Never again dare you speak a word about my father. That is a line you will not cross a second time," she said surprisingly heatedly.

Jack bent towards her and in one swift movement wiped away the shiny trail across her cheek.

He refrained with effort from pointing out to her that her dear and also useful, but too rigid, boundaries were what caused her such problems. At least today, he wouldn't broach it …

"Love, I advise you not to take what I say – rarely – personally," Jack said very quietly, almost like an apology.

Rachel didn't avoid his gaze or his hand on her face. Jack turned on his heel and fled from the cabin.