#also yes he's comin home and jerking it to u almost every night

[tatooine92]

Homeward, ch. 1 (POTC OC)

Synopsis: Eleven years ago, Adonia Barbossa was abandoned as a child by her father for no discernible reason. Now a pirate captain in her own right, she seeks him to finally demand answers.

Rating: T for language and any various and sundry innuendoes.

[Adonia portrait by xandrassketchbook.]

A/N: Oh geez u guise. I can’t believe I’m actually posting an in-progress fic for a character I have had in my head for years and years. Shoutouts to @soulventure91 and @and-will-nice-hat for cheerleading my plunge into the deep end. *blows kisses*

The sharp rap on the door of her cabin startled Adonia from a rest she hadn't realized she had taken. She jerked upright with a mumble, her auburn braid flipping over her shoulder as she tossed her head, and she pressed both palms into the table before her to steady herself as she regained consciousness. It took her a moment to remember she was aboard the Dainty Lass, exactly where she was supposed to be, in her cabin. A lamp, almost out of oil, flickered across the table. Adonia shook the buzzing sleepiness out of the arm that had cradled her head and ran her hands across the maps and notes spread out before her. Before her lay charts of all the ports she had previously called home. Each one had been marked out with progressively angrier scribbles. Damn the East India Trading Company, interfering with a woman's perfectly respectable business ventures. Adonia rubbed her hands over her face and groaned. How was she supposed to keep her crew fed and ship afloat if she was running out of ports to sell in?

The knock on her door repeated, more urgently. Adonia grumbled "coming, coming" as she swung out of her chair, snatching her compass off the table and her hat off the luxurious sleeping accommodations known as "a cot in a corner." Tugging the wide brim of her hat down over her brow, she flung open the doors to her cabin. Before her was her first mate, a slender but well-muscled seaman called Jim who was as steady as a ship in dry dock and had no intentions of ever wearing any name but Jim (he liked the simplicity). Jim's dark skin bore a sheen of sweat and was flecked with salt from the sea spray.

"Comin' up on Tortuga, mon capitaine," he said in his Haitian accent when Adonia appeared.

Adonia sighed as she exited her cabin with Jim. "One of these days I'll be needin' an explanation from the East India Trading Company—" She spat the name. "—as to why they took over every port except the one I can't abide."

"They did it just to make you mad in particular," Jim noted, so smoothly sarcastic you'd almost think he was serious.

Adonia smirked at her first mate as she headed for the wheel of the Lass, her shoulders squared and boots thudding across the deck with the rhythm of a woman on a mission. As had always been her pirating custom, she raided merchant ships, leaving them disabled and relieved of their wealth but otherwise unharmed. The result, of course, was her holds filled to bursting with sugar, rum, silk—name it, and she probably had it. In the past, she had styled herself as a legitimate businesswoman, masquerading as a merchant vessel and sailing into various ports, particularly English settlements, to sell her fine luxuries at a rather considerable profit. These days, with every port closing as the EITC closed its fist around the seas, the facade of legitimacy fell aside, and she was forced to sell what goods she had left almost at a loss to pirates as desperate as she feared her crew might become.  

Besides, she just didn't like Tortuga. The air reeked of bad rum, vomit, and piss, and a few other bodily substances she'd rather not ponder. It always seemed to be in a state of constant rioting and upheaval (more or less literal, considering the vomit). She was a pirate, aye, but she'd always considered herself a lady pirate. "Princess of the seas," she'd been called as a child. Like as not to be a queen someday.

Currently, though, it looked more like "not." She stepped back from the wheel, and Jim set his hand to it as she turned toward the deck rail, withdrawing her compass from the pocket of her dark blue justacorps. Both compass and sundial, it was as big as her palm and set in gold engraved with leaves and little birds. It was a fine piece—expensive. Whoever had owned it before her father had stolen it and called it his must have lived a life that Adonia could only dream of, with a fine house and plentiful food and all the comforts of being a person of quality.

She sighed as she flipped the compass in her palms and rubbed her thumbs over the H.B. engraved on the back in letters almost as wide as the compass itself. When she was inclined to unveil her personal life, she'd say her father only ever gave her two things: her life and a stolen compass. Some father. What kind of man raised her on his ship for six years and then tossed her off at port for no reason with naught but the clothes on her back and that compass? What cruelty could possibly... possibly...

Adonia's throat choked, and she shoved the compass back into her pocket. It'd been eleven years since he'd dumped her off. Here she was now, a woman grown at seventeen, captain of her own ship, still alive and all. Princess of the seas of my own making, no thanks to you, Papa. Yet the bitter tang of her thoughts sat ill with her. There had to be a reason. Papa always had a reason. Though maybe cruelty was reason enough.

Jim called to her, and she turned back, straightening her shoulders and blinking back the tears that had burned her eyes. The Dainty Lass sailed smoothly into port, her crew rushing to bring in sails and lower anchors. Adonia smiled to herself with a surge of pride. They were good men, each one. It'd been a rocky start, inheriting the Lass from her now-retired captain and trying to convince the crew to sail under a woman, but she'd tried and succeeded. Maybe that was a third thing her father had given her: tooth-and-nail tenacity and a spiteful streak to boot.

"We need to offload this haul," she told Jim as the Lass came to rest at anchor. "We sell the loot, then the men can have the night to themselves. We daren't to stay, though, not with the likes of Beckett haunting the tides."

She saw Jim shudder at the mention of Cutler Beckett. In truth, there was not a pirate alive who didn't feel a chill in his bones at the thought of that unreasonably influential and impossibly cruel man. It was a terrible amount of vileness packed into such a short figure.

"We may be safer here then, capitaine," Jim told her. "He is not like to come here."

"Yet." Adonia sharply closed the word with a hard T.  

Jim frowned, but she knew him well enough to know he both believed her and agreed. Safe quarters were few and far between these days. Adonia elected not to think on it, though, as she descended from the wheel. Jim followed her, barking orders to the crew to haul up their cargo for sale. Adonia checked through her inventory manifests—perhaps too detailed for a pirate, but she believed in being honest in her dishonesty—as the men carried the goods ashore. Not near enough to survive much longer, she knew. Even the stores of coin she'd set aside in years of plenty were beginning to diminish. Something had to give—Beckett and his Company, or her.

She left the trading and bartering to Jim and Thom, the Lass's boatswain, as she headed farther into port to pick up news, gossip, and any assorted mail that had found its way to Tortuga for her. The port was somewhat quieter than usual, but there were still hours left to sundown, when all sundry debaucheries emerged in full, uh, glory. Adonia headed to her favorite tavern, a side-alley establishment called the Cat and Crow, where rum was plentiful for her men and wine was plentiful for her. This particular tavern was less seedy than the rest of Tortuga—a rare find indeed—though it still offered all the usual vices and temptations, though none for her. It also served as the closest thing she had to a permanent address, as the proprietor was her former captain's nephew's son-in-law or some such. Never mind. It meant he liked the crew of the Dainty Lass, and it was enough for Adonia.

The Cat and Crow was quiet enough when Adonia entered. Pirates getting an early start on their drinking were clustered throughout, but the noise was only low, mumbled conversation peppered with the occasional guffaw or clank of tankards smashing in a toast. Far to the back, near the stairs, a man and woman were enjoying themselves a little too publicly; even though the woman's skirts covered everything, it was not hard to divine their activities. Adonia rolled her eyes as she crossed to the bar, where the owner was pouring water into one of the rum bottles.

"Ye'd best have a good strong red for me today, Avery," Adonia called as she approached.

Avery, a stocky man with a scraggly beard and an impish grin, grabbed a bottle from under the counter as he turned.

"If it isn't me favorite Cap'n Barbossa," he said, setting the wine bottle and a tankard on the bar. Adonia leaned against it to pop the cork and pour herself a drink, all a-smirk.

"I'm the only one you've met," she said.

"Aye, but ye hear stories. Hence why you're me favorite."

"Oh, and what stories d'ye have for me today?" Adonia took a swig from her wine. Better to get to the gossip than ponder her father, much as something deep in her stung and wanted to ask please, please, have you heard anything from him, I heard a rumor he was dead.

Avery clicked his tongue and leaned conspiratorially toward her. Adonia raised a brow under her hat.

"I heard," he said, "that those louts with the Ee-Eye-Tee-See have gone and unleashed an unholy terror on the seas. It's an enemy that crawled up from the depths and fears nothin' and leaves nary a survivor in its wake. You don't see it comin'. You just turn 'round and there's its guns, sendin' you to meet your maker."

Adonia looked at Avery over the edge of her mug as if he'd lost his grip on every last sense. She was more than familiar with sailors' horror stories, but she fancied herself too worldly-wise for them.

"Avery," she said, voice low, "ye best not be havin' me on."

"Hand to Baby Jaysus, I am not."

"Does anybody know what or who this enemy is, then?"

"They say it's th' Flying Dutchman. Davy Jones an' all."

Adonia's wine burned more than usual in the back of her throat at the sound of the name. She set down her mug and stared at Avery, eyes wide in the shadow of her hat brim. She knew the stories. You didn't live your whole life on ships without the distinct pleasure of one seaman's legend after another. So of course she knew the spine-freezing legends of Davy Jones. This fit, too, with hearing that the Flying Dutchman had been seen more and more frequently in recent days. Oh, God. If the Company had somehow managed to press Jones into its service, no pirate left at sea stood a chance.

But Captain Adonia Barbossa was not one to stay at home with her knitting when there was a fight to be had.

She knocked back another swig of wine, her mind racing. The most obvious answer was to run. Abruptly give up pirating, get to Shipwreck, and stay there, never to see the sea again. Well, that sat ill with her. "Ye were born with a line in your hand," her father used to tell her; she had permanent sea legs and saltwater for blood. Abandoning the sea was not an option. Neither was dying upon it. That left either fighting—one brig against the whole Company armada, unlikely!—or surviving to fight another day. Adonia knew herself. If she was anything, she was a scrapper and a strategist—a survivor. She had not come this far to be cowed by stories of ghost ships. Her blood was salt and steel and fury, and she did not fear death.

"Cap'n!" Avery called to her when she clearly drifted into her own thoughts. Adonia's sharp blue eyes snapped to him.

"Aye." She got to her feet and plunked down enough silver to cover her drink. "Thanks for the news. Anything else?"

"Aye, a bit." Avery glanced about and cleared his throat before lowering his voice. "The elder Cap'n Barbossa's been spotted up in Cuba. Wouldn't surprise me at all if he were like to come here next."

Adonia's stomach dropped as if she'd just misstepped off a cliff. She sagged back down against the bar, perched on a stool this time. Papa's alive. Papa's alive, and he's close.

"How do you know this?" she whispered. Her heart pounded so loudly in her ears that she almost couldn't hear Avery's reply.

"Not exactly as if his ship's subtle," Avery said with a snort. "Nor's it as if he's not a feared name in these waters."

"Feared?"

Avery shrugged. "Eh, feared, respected, same difference."

No, it's really not, Adonia thought. She swallowed hard. "Is that all you know?"

"Aye, but I'll keep ears out for more."

"Do," Adonia said, and she got up.

As she headed for the door, she felt maybe she shouldn't have gotten up in the first place. Her heartbeat echoed in her head, and she suddenly felt like she was trapped between two walls rapidly closing together. Papa's alive. Once again, she was a terrified six-year-old girl standing alone on a dock, watching the black sails of her father's ship be swallowed up by the horizon's flickering line. She dragged her compass out of her pocket and clutched it tight, her fist shaking as it wrapped around the piece.  

How could you leave me, Papa? You said I was your sea princess, you said... you said...

Quick as she could, Adonia rushed back toward the docks and the Lass. She dodged a man puking into a gutter, though just barely, as her eyes blurred with sudden tears. She raced out to the shore and, for a split second of wild fury and pain, nearly hurled the compass to the depths. But she couldn't open her fist to cast it out, and Adonia crumpled onto the damp sand, pulling her knees into her chest, as the tide rolled out, and in, and out, and kissed the toes of her boots each time it came back in.

She couldn't decide if this was good news or horrible news. Would her father even know her if he saw her again? Would he even care to see her? The man who raised his daughter on his ship from infancy only to dump her, alone and destitute, surely couldn't be bothered to know her or want her now. But a deep, aching part of Adonia hungered for that reunion. She wanted to run to him and fling her arms around him, pressing herself into his side in a full-body embrace, the way she used to. She wanted to be greeted warmly with his staccato laugh and sea-strong arms hefting her up and holding her close. Suddenly she missed the smell of sea salt and apple peels that clung to him like perfume, and she missed the tickle of his beard against her forehead as he kissed her hair. Adonia clutched the compass to her chest and buried her face against her knees, sobbing softly. Papa.