Pirate, Extraordinaire // Sequel to Take Off Your Dress, Pick Up A Sword

a headache

Joanna and Will returned briefly to the blacksmith's to grab any possessions necessary for their mission. For Joanna, this meant changing into a less opulent dress. Regrettably, she hadn't brought with her any piratical clothes, believing it unwise to arrive in Port Royal decked out as an androgynous criminal.

In the name of practical adventuring, Joanna settled for shearing a foot off the skirt of her least-favorite dress -- there was a reason she had left the muddy brown thing with Will. She was struck by déjà vu as she snapped the scissors; to simplify the theft of the Interceptor, one year ago, she had done the very same.

As she entered the foyer of the smithy, securing her sword belt around her hips (she had brought her weapons in a fit of evidently justified paranoia), Joanna said to Will: "Jack won't give up the compass."

Will was hovering over a selection of fine swords, deliberating over which should accompany him. He turned sharply and replied stonily to her abrupt statement. "What?" Since taking his dramatic leave of Elizabeth, he had been rather mulish.

Joanna flinched; Will immediately softened. "He won't give you the compass," Joanna repeated, hesitantly crossing the room to join him. "It's -- it's very important to Jack. He won't give it up."

Will looked away, his jaw tight. "Then I'll make him," he said. In one, definitive motion, he chose a battered cutlass and slid it into the sheath at his hip. "It's Elizabeth's life or Jack's token. I know what's more important."

Joanna couldn't argue a life was worth more than a spinning, magical needle, but this was not her argument -- it was Jack's, and he wasn't here to have it. I miss him, she thought suddenly, fiercely. She pressed on in his absence. "Will, the compass, it's -- well, you know it doesn't point north."

Will eyed her suspiciously. "It points to Isla de Muerta."

Joanna hesitated. The truth of the compass was a secret Jack clutched close to his chest, a truth he had told her only in confidence -- and in an attempt to woo her, but that was beside the point. She'd held it in her own hands and watched the tricky needle swing, wavering toward Jack's anticipatory figure before settling, bafflingly, on herself. Aren't you solipsistic, Jack had teased, and the realization hit Joanna like musket fire.

Brushing away the memory, Joanna reminded herself: this is Will. She said: "It points to the thing you want most in this world."

Will's gaze was dubious. "Is that true?"

Joanna frowned, offended. "Every word."

Will sank into thought as Joanna spun in a circle, squinting critically at her obviously hastily-shortened skirt. It was not her best work. "What do you think Beckett wants with something like that?"

Joanna dropped her dress and favored Will with a humorless stare. "What do you think a rich lord wants with it? Money, power, etcetera. If it weren't such dour circumstances I'd shoot down the very thought of giving the compass to a man like that." Nevermind my own personal bias, she thought. Beckett wears his vile nature as if it's fine gold.

Will attempted a small smile. "And Jack is any better?"

Joanna awarded that disclosure what it deserved: a generous roll of the eyes.

...

Jack would rather die than do anything to help Cutler Beckett, Joanna knew. That grudge would bear the test of time and more. The compass in Beckett's hands would be the end of Caribbean piracy; Joanna was sure of that. After the Caribbean, the world. And the compass had been, for ten years, Jack's only connection to the Black Pearl. If Jack was ever to be separated from his lady again, he would need that compass like a lifeline.