Snippet #2080393

Alice heard a bang and the doors were flung open as the Captain stormed through them. They knocked Alice back and she hit the deck hard. Pain swum through her body as he began to shout at her.

"Your father?! You want to know what I did to your father?! I shot him! I shot him in the gut so he could bleed out painfully! I gave him a choice and he picked the wrong one! That's the code we live by, and that's the code he died by!" he shouted at her.

By the time he was finished, Alice could no longer help but cry. She was Alice Turner, she never cried. But her father was dead. Her Daddy. She'd loved him so much. Sometimes they'd laugh together about her mother's socially-climbing ways and perfectionism. He taught her how to add money together. He was one of the most important people to her ever. And he'd died painfully. Without her there to tell her she loved him and tell him that it was okay. Murdered by this man she thought she knew... But right now, he looked so unfamiliar. Maybe she'd been mistaken in thinking she knew him at all. Her face crumpled as pain cracked across it and all her anger and fight fell from her body as tear-drops from her eyes. She tried so hard not to cry, she hated how weak it made her look. But she couldn't stop it.

He turned his gun on her, cocking it. She cowered back in fear, all of her brave defiance gone and she cried harder.

"You want to know who I am!? YOU WANT TO KNOW WHO KILLED YOUR FATHER?!!? I'M CAPTAIN BUCKSHOT RODGERS, AND YOU BEST BE WELL GETTING USED TO THIS SHIP MISS TURNER, CAUSE THERE'S A CHANCE IT MAY BE THE LAST THING YOU SEE!" he shouted viciously at her. Alice looked up at him through tear-clouded eyes. She wasn't sure she'd ever seen a man so angry before. She cowered back, bracing herself, almost certain he was about to hit her.

But the blow never came. Instead, he holstered his gun. "Now you get her under control and keep her that way! If I wake up and don't see that sun, the ocean will have another body to consume!"

With that he turned away and slammed the door, leaving Alice on the floor. Very slowly, she brushed the tears from her cheeks and stood up, smoothing her dress. She walked slowly towards the door she had come from, passing Aaron on the way.

She looked him straight in the eye. “You were wrong,” she said softly, her voice catching in her throat. Then she looked at Maverick, holding his gaze wordlessly for a couple of seconds. With that, she walked past them and along the corridor until she found her bed. She climbed in, fully clothed, pulling the covers around her. She buried her head in the hard pillow and tried not to think of her father. It didn’t work.

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Alice found it hard to keep track of the days when she spent them being constantly forced to clean and tidy and used as a general slave. She had gained back a little of her confidence and was back to giving most of the pirates her usual sarcastic insults, but she hadn’t spoken to the Captain at all since that night.

Although she was losing track of the days, Alice thought she was sure it couldn’t have been more than two weeks when she was scrubbing the deck and heard the Captain shout for Jessie. She knelt up to see what he was looking at. And that’s when she saw it. Land.