Six Sparrow (Will Turner)

thirteen

Three months had passed since the Black Pearl had dropped Six off at Tortuga, two days after they had escaped the gallows with the help of Will. Six had decided to stay on land and live in Tortuga for a bit, she knew she would eventually return to sailing the sea but for a little while she wanted to stay on land and figure everything out.

Besides, she couldn't just get up and go back to the sea. She didn't have a crew or a ship and she knew that getting one would be difficult especially by herself. She didn't want to just join any ship and be a crew mate. She wanted to be the captain of her own ship or at the very least a first mate. Being a crew mate wasn't for her, she liked to take charge and lead and that wasn't the job of a crew mate.

Six loved Tortuga and knew that if she was going to live on land anywhere it was going to be in Tortuga, one of the only places on land that she had ever truly enjoyed being.

She had spent her first few days in Tortuga in different taverns and talking with different people, making sure to mention that she was looking for somewhere to stay to everyone she spoke with in hopes that they would be able to help her out. When the taverns would close for the night in the early hours of the morning Six would leave along with the drunk men who had been drinking at the counter for far too long and go find somewhere to sleep for the night.

Most nights she found a dark alleyway to sleep in outside. One night she had snuck in through a window into a run down hotel and stayed the night in one of their empty rooms, making sure she was back out the window first thing in the morning. Two times the owners of the Tavern she had been in that day offered her a spare room that hadnt been taken in their upstairs for the night free of charge.

It took about a week before she managed to strike an agreement with the owner of one of the taverns she had been frequently occupying. They would allow her to live in a small room that was basically a shed off the back of the tavern building and she would work for them without pay.

It wasn't the perfect deal and Six far preferred pirating then serving in the tavern but it got her a place to stay for a little while. She had worked in a tavern for a few months during her teen years when she had gotten herself stuck at a small port where she decided that she had to work to keep suspicion off of her. The first thing she had tried was to sneak onto one of the passenger ships leaving the port without paying but she had quickly been caught and only barely managed to talk her way out of it. It took months of work before she had finally made enough money to be able to properly pay for a ticket and leave the town.

A few times during her time in Tortuga Jack visited the town. Only once did the two exchange words and that was when Jack had entered the tavern Six was working at and she had been forced to take his order. Actually she didn't take his order, she had seen him enter and had prepared a mug of rum before he had even arrived in front of her asking for rum. As he had placed his order Six had handed him the mug and he looked at her in confusion before he finally recognized her.

The day she had arrived in Tortuga she had made the decision to cut her long hair into a short cut that made her look different than her usual self. She knew that the navy would be out searching for her and Jack after they had escaped the gallows and if they were going to start anywhere it would probably be the pirating town that she was living in. Her hair was just a small sacrifice she had to make to keep herself safe. Her hair would grow back and it quickly had gone from the short close to her head cut she had started with to her shoulders in the three months she had spent in Tortuga.

When Jack first saw her again, however, her hair hadn't grown out that much. He had laughed at her momentarily for the haircut and the fact she was working before stating that he would have to find a new tavern and walking away to join a few of his crewmates who were sitting by the corner of the room. A few minutes after Jack had rejoined his crewmates, Anamaria had walked away from the group and showed up at the counter to talk with Six.

After that it become routine for Six and Anamaria to have drinks and talk every time that the Pearl was at port in Tortuga. It seemed that Jack was taking his time finding Anamaria the ship he owed her but from what Six had gathered Anamaria wasn't making it an easy task.

"I liked me first ship" she explained to Six one night as they sat at the counter of the tavern "not going to just take any old ship. I want a good one"

"And you deserve a good one" Six added throwing her half drinken mug of rum in the air.

The day after Jack's crew and ship would be seen in port would be filled with people asking Six if she had seen her brother and people informing her that Jack had been in town. Most people knew who she was, she wasn't hiding it. She had thought about going by a different name while in Tortuga to keep herself hidden in case the navy men showed up asking about her but Six had quickly decided that she liked her name and didn't want to go by anything but it and she trusted the people in Tortuga to have her back and keep her identity safe from anyone out of the ordinary for the town asking about her.

Some days she found being away from the sea harder than others. A few times a month she would find herself sitting by the water watching it and thinking back to how much she loved being on the water and sailing in ships for weeks on end without touching land. On those days she often found that she would begin to make plans to steal a ship, or join the crew of a ship or just get on one in any way possible to feel the sway of the ship under her feet and feel the wind as they traveled through the water. She never did follow these urges however because she was happy in Tortuga and something deep inside of her always told her that it wasn't quite her time to return to sea.

Listening to gut feelings and the voices inside her head were something that Six had learned to be very important and useful throughout her life. Multiple times her life had been saved because she had listened to the voice inside her head and changed her plan based on what it was saying and on the occasions that she ignored it she almost always found herself in worse trouble than she had thought to be possible.

It had taken her years to accept and trust the voices in her head and the gut feeling she got before she began to always fully listen to them but they had never steered her wrong to that point so she continued to follow them and at that time they were telling her to stay in Tortuga.

A/N

Chapter word count: 1309

okay so I lied back in chapter 4(?) when I said no other chapters would be as short as that one. oops. Oh well.  Im not going to say no chapters will be this short again becuase I happen to know that the last chapter is fairly short.