Eheh... you're all probably ready to kill me... Let me say that I'm SO sorry for abandoning this fic for so long. I didn't mean to! Really! But first one thing happaned, then another, then I got writer's block for a while... before I even reach the bottem and the reviewer notes, let me say a big THANK YOU here and now. I love all of you, and it's thanks to your lovely reviews that I got off my butt and got this chapter out. I swear I'll never dump it for this long again! And now, without further ado, chapter ll!

(x)(x)(x)(x)(x)

Duo wandered down the main street of Tortuga, Heero following him warily. The braided pirate ignored all the activity around him, which included at least five different whores calling for customers, the sounds of three different brawls emanating from two different buildings, and various animals running wild. Heero, by contrast, was stiff with tension, with his eyes darting around constantly. They were ignored- every other living thing on the street was too busy with their own pursuits to take notice of two more small and rather scruffy looking pirates strolling down the street.

Duo, true to form, was chattering as he went. "Man, why'd Quat and Tro cut out so fast? I mean, Jack and Will I can understand, they needed to find a crew, but those two didn't really have any reason to get gone so quickly. They can't 've been looking for privacy- there's more of that on the ship, what with all of us gone. It's odd, it is."

He turned back to glance at Heero, laughing to himself as the tense smith twitched every time something moved in the corner of his eye. It almost looked like he was having muscle spasms, he was jerking around so much.

"Heero, relax," he drawled when his companion finally lost it and pulled his gun- on a drunken bum who had half walked, half fallen out of a tavern in front of them. "I bet that you're so tense you're vibrating. The one unbreakable rule of Tortuga is that no one attacks anyone on the streets- no one fights in the roads. The boats? Sure. The taverns? Hell, yeah- that's what makes them fun. But the streets are neutral territory."

Heero blinked at this information. "Why?"

Duo laughed out loud. "Are you kidding? If a fight ever reached the streets in this place, the entire city would be torn down. Nobody on this rock can resist a fight, let alone one that big. And nobody and nothing would be able to stop it."

"Has it ever happened before?"

The laughter was gone from Duo's eyes as suddenly as if it had never been there. "Once," he said, so quietly that Heero nearly missed it. The pirates voice had lost every trace of... joy that it had help previously. "Only once."

They walked on without a word after that.

(x)(x)(x)(x)(x)

Will and Jack, who had been rushed off the ship at Trowa's insistence, were making their own way through the crowded pirate town streets. Jack was a nonchalant as Duo about the activities around him, but Will was feeling the same unease that Heero was. This place was so different from the streets of Port Royal- take, for example, the current activities around him. Three different gambling runs, someone being dragged behind a wagon, two different animal fights, as well as gangs betting on their outcome... it was a lot.

"Poor of port is indeed the sad lot that has never breathed deep the sweet proliferous bouquet that is Tortuga, savvy?" Jack rang out as they strolled along. He quickly reached over and grabbed a collapsing man's cane as they passed, maneuvered out of his way, and slid the cane to his other hand all without breaking a stride. "What do you think?"

"Ah..." Will muttered staring at a man who trying to drink three tankards of beer at once, with the help of a light skirt sitting on a barrel above him- she was pouring still more beer down onto him while he tried to peek up her skirt. "It'll linger," he said finally.

"I tell you mate," Jack continued, ignoring Will's lack of enthusiasm, "If every town in the world was like this one, no man would ever feel unwanted." At this point, he eyes widened, and he darted forward toward an approaching woman. She was dressed in a bright purple, short-skirted, low-chested dress with a star and feather pinned to her hair, which was soft, reddish brown color and fell in curls to just above her shoulder. She was striding rather determinedly towards them. The experienced pirate seemed glad to see her, but Will was rather wary of the steely glint he could see in her eyes. Jack, it seemed, was oblivious. "Cathy!" he cried out happily when she stood in front of them.

His only response was a slap that raised echoes off the surrounding walls and caused a good part of the nearby crowds to glance over at them. A dagger that embedded itself into the wall directly between Jack's legs followed it.

"I didn't deserve that," Jack muttered, studying the dagger warily as Cathy turned and strode off without a word. Will raised an eyebrow.

Turning back to the crowed before him, Jack was confronted by a second woman. This one was dressed similarly to the first, except that her dress was green with a much longer skirt, and she had no hair ornaments. Instead, her blonde hair was tied into two twisting pigtails that fell over her shoulders. "Sally," Jack greeted this one.

Sally favored him with the sweetest, most poisonous smile that Will had ever seen. "Who was she?" Sally purred, nodding back towards the retreating figure of Cathy.

"What?" Jack muttered in befuddlement a moment before a second slap echoed through the streets.

"...I might have deserved that," was Jack's only comment.

Will raised the other eyebrow.

(x)(x)(x)(x)(x)

Quatre and Trowa, meanwhile, were wandering through the town on their own errands. They had found a decent weapon's shop without too much trouble (it was where the more sober pirates were all headed), and were now just walking, trying to get a feel for the place.

"It's certainly unique," was Quatre's only comment. Be it noted that he said it after having to dodge around what seemed to be a contest of walking in a strait line. The participants had to chug three glasses of beer, then try to walk across the street. No one in the street paid any attention to this, which on the whole made it rather difficult even for the sober.

Trowa didn't have a comment- he just walked and watched, as usual.

(x)(x)(x)(x)(x)

The thrown pail of water, while having little to no effect on the cleanliness of the occupants of the pigpen, did wonders for their state of wakefulness. "Curse ya for breathing, ya slack-jawed idiot!" Gibbs bellowed as the icy water drenched him. It took him a moment to wake up enough to recognize his tormentors. "Mother's love," he muttered. "Jack."

Gibbs, you see, had traveled a very long way from his days as a sailor in the British Navy. The journey where he had escorted Dorothy and her father to England had been his last under command. On shore leave in Port Royal, he had been... more then slightly drunk, and ended the evening by thoroughly insulting a passing officer. The resulting fall out had finished with Gibbs stowed away aboard the first ship he could reach. This had turned out to be a smuggler's ship, bound for Tortuga. Once on the island, Gibbs had decided that he liked it better then the navy- his exact words had been 'better then following the orders of all the snot-nosed brats who could buy their commission without ever setting foot on a ship.' He now knew everyone and just about everything on Tortuga- and had befriended Jack some years ago, when he had first appeared on the island. They had remained staunch allies ever since.

This didn't stop Gibbs from being annoyed at his wake-up call, however. "You should know better to wake a man when he's sleepin'," he muttered. "It's bad luck."

"Ah, fortunately I know how to counter it," Jack returned calmly. "The man who did the waking buys the man who was sleeping a drink, and the man who was sleeping drinks it while listening to a proposition from the man who did the waking."

Gibbs took a moment to work his way through that sentence, before grinning up at Jack. "Aye," he admitted, "that'll about do it." He quickly hauled himself to his feet- and was instantly drenched a second time, with the water from Will's bucket. "Blast, I'm already awake!" he roared, glaring at the smith.

"That was for the smell," Will informed him. Jack threw a glance at his unexpected partner, but Will only shrugged. Gibbs caught a whiff of the nearby air and admitted that the kid had a point.

(x)(x)(x)(x)(x)

Duo, having shaken off the gloomy mood that Heero's question had thrown him into, had started talking once again. "This area's the oldest part of the place- there's pits all over 'cause of the fifty different dead pirates who're supposed to have buried their treasures here. Only idiots believe those tales, though- anyone with half a brain will tell you that pirates never hoard their loot, they spend it. What good's the money do if it's way out of reach in a hole somewhere? And I mean, what pirate would be that good and get all that money, and then tell someone about it? Makes no sense."

The chatter went on, and Heero just let it go, not really paying that much attention to it. The surroundings were more interesting, and he could tell that Duo wasn't saying anything that was important. What was interesting him was the burn marks and signs of fighting that covered the bits of walls left standing in the area. It was mainly wreckage, wreckage that no one had ever bothered to clean up or build over. This must have been caught in that one fight that had torn down Tortuga, then.

Neither of the two were paying much attention to where they were going, beyond making sure that they weren't walking into anything. When Duo finally looked up and realized where they were, it all his effort to remain standing. They were in the oldest part of the oldest section. The place where the Maxwell Church had once stood.

Though he had long since stopped paying attention to the noise of the pirate's chatter, Heero was instantly aware when it ceased. He had been taught by the strictest of teachers to instantly notice changes in his surroundings. Questioningly, he turned to his 'guide' in this old town.

As haunted and forlorn as Duo had looked upon answering Heero's question earlier, it was nothing compared to how he looked now. It was like every trace of life was gone from him eyes and his body. He seemed to be as much a piece of stone as the torn down walls around him.

"Duo?" Heero said softly, looking around warily. Was there some sort of danger?

It took the braided youth a long moment to respond, long enough that Heero nearly repeated his query. "It's nothing, Heero, just... memories."

Heero sent his glance over the surrounding area again. He might not know what specific memories Duo was seeing now, but he knew what memories could do- and that wasn't nothing. But what had triggered them?

Heero didn't ask that question aloud, but Duo was aware of it all the same. It was a natural response to what he had said. But he wasn't going to answer it. Only Jack knew anything at all about his past and he intended to keep it that way. No matter how good looking he was, the smith would have to keep on wonde-

"Maxwell Church."

Duo's remaining color fled. Spinning around, he started at Heero, who in turn motioned to a small plaque that was resting on one of the broken stones. If you looked carefully, you could see that there were hinge marks on one side of the stone. Clearly, it had once part of a gatepost.

It was another long moment before Duo spoke again, staring at the tarnished plaque. "Yeah, this was where the Maxwell Church once was," he confirmed softly. He knew that Heero would have made the connection between the names- the blue-eyed smith came close to scaring Duo with how observant he was, at times. On the ship, he'd known exactly who snuck a variety of uncomfortable things into his bunk, based on his observance of who had been below and above decks at what times. There was no way he'd miss something so obvious as Duo's last name and the name of a church that had affected him so drastically. But with those few words, it felt like a plug had been pulled from Duo's mind- once the memories started to come out, nothing could stop them.

"The place was run by Father Maxwell and Sister Helen. Two of the best people I've ever known, stuck on this rock due to some pirate's idea to take them hostages. But instead of being bitter or angry, they began this church, giving sermons, looking after all the poor and wounded... and taking in orphans." Duo grinned humorlessly. "Most of whom eventually wound up on another pirate ship. The only way off this island is under a pirate captain. But they kept trying and kept caring." The smile on Duo's face shifted, turning gentler, truer. "They took me in when I was about 8. Well, better say they caught me when I was about 8; I wasn't all that keen on going into someplace that looked really hard to get out of. Sister Helen was the person who taught me to braid my hair," he continued, pulling the long length of braid over his shoulder. "Till then, the only reason it was long was because no one had ever cut it for me, or taught me it could be cut. And when I got here, it felt like everything else about my life was changing... I wasn't going to let them change my hair, too. So Sister Helen pulled it behind me in a braid to stop it from getting tangled. It wasn't really an easy life at the church, but it was better then most of the ones that I could have had. It lasted until I was... about 12, I guess."

There was a long pause. Heero nearly broke his own silence, but Duo's voice took up the thread before the smith's words got out. "I never quite gave up thieving. I didn't steal for myself anymore, but the church always needed more blankets, more food, more cloths, more money... I'd sneak into a closed shop, or raid a drunk's pockets, and make sure that what I took was brought to the church, somehow. I don't know if Sister Helen and Father Maxwell knew about it or not- if they did, they didn't say anything.

"One night, I had managed a good haul of coins from one of the taverns. But someone must have seen me, or heard the coins, or something, because they followed me out. I was three streets away from the church when two guys pulled me into a doorway and demanded the money. I... said 'no,' very forcefully." The smirk on Duo's mouth was as humorless as his first smile had been. "It's hard to mistake when a kid kicks you hard between the legs. The guy I got collapsed, but his mate lunged for me. I ducked- I was even shorter back then, so that was easy- and he went right over my head and into the street. He- he hit a guy who was passing, instead. I don't know if the guy who got hit had had one too many, or one too few drinks that night, but he pulled his guns and fired. Those shots flew into the crowd- and instantly the entire place was involved in the brawl that tore down the city.

"I don't know what happened after that- I think that a stone hit my head and knocked me out. But when I woke up, the entire place was in flames, or already burned out. It's probably a good thing that I was in that doorway- it protected me. I ran back to the church- but it was gone. I couldn't find anything alive.

"I've asked around, since- the place was one of the last to catch, because Father and Sister had made so much of it from stone. But that wouldn't have mattered- according to the people I talked to, Father and Sister had barricaded the children inside, then gone to try and reason with the mob, to try and stop it. They probably didn't get more then two words out before somebody pointed a pistol at them and fired."

Duo moved forward and pried the small piece of metal off of the stone. "Second time in my life I've been the only one left, the one Death passed over while he took everyone around me. I've earned my names, all of them. Duo Maxwell... Shinigami." The dark chuckle that followed told of the experience of more pain then most people were even aware existed.

Heero didn't move or speak. He would never have guessed that the smiling pirate had this in his past. The deaths of everyone he cared for, and nearly everything he knew- and to know that it was, if not his fault, at least in part due to his actions...! Heero didn't know what to do or say- he had often been described as 'antisocial' by those who knew him best. He'd never been in any situation like this before. At last, he remembered what it had felt like in his own past or when his own memories over took him, and remembered what he'd wanted so badly then. He reached out and put his hand on Duo's shoulder, telling him without words that he was here, that the braided pirate wasn't alone.

Duo sighed, long and slow, but didn't object to the touch. They stood like that for a long moment, neither willing to try and break the fragile bond that seemed to be growing between them.

At last, Duo slipped the small brass plaque into his pocket and turned around. "C'mon," he said softly to Heero, "we're gonna need to be back at the ship soon."

The pair moved off without another word, not even Duo's normal chattering. With so many masks down, they weren't needed.

(x)(x)(x)(x)(x)

A/N: :sniff: Sad... I'm sorry if this chapter seemed a little shorter then the others, but it really wouldn't have been right to put anything else after that. I just couldn't bear to break the mood. Now, I'm going to thank all my reivewers, then run off to study- mid-terms are next week, and my parents are on my case about studying.

M-python-girl:
I continued, I continued! Don't worry! I'm really sorry I left this hanging for so long, and I hope you managed to keep you fanatics on their leashes... I'm running out of Zealot-repellent (TM). Hope you liked it!

chibi luci:
Hmph. Too short? I do my longest chapters for this one! Grr... Heero's past will come when it comes. He's got to be triggered, similar to what Duo was with the sign. Don't worry, I don't get annoyed at your wondering- I sometimes do the same thing myself. It helps to nail down specifics of what's going to happan in my stories. Thank you for reviewing!

Katrina:
Jack and Will are going to help, but I don't think they'll realise what they're doing. You know, like leaving early from the ship. Quatre is going to have some fun with his friends. That innocent baby face can hide so much! Thanks for reviewing, and I hope you liked this chapter, as well.

p-chan:
Relena made an appreace as Dorothy's maid- turnabout is fair play, right? I don't know yet whether or not she'll show up later on, though. I agree, she's nearly as annoying as the nails-on-the-chalk-board sound. Thanks for the compliments about the fun scenes- I always love to get a laugh. I'm sorry I took so long to update, but I hope you liked it. Many thanks for the review.

Mystical-Maiden:
Many thanks! I kinda went into the mental side of the relationship here, but I'm really glad you like what I'm doing with them. I'm sorry I didn't update soon, but I hope you liked this chapter!

Saiph Taeveryn:
Thank you! That was what I was going for- letting the voices tell the story, and leaving the images up to you. I hope you liked what happaned between them in this chapter as well- now we know part of Duo's past! Many thanks for the review.

RoYale:
Yep, HP is a popular crossover- maybe because it's so universal. I agree- they're some of the most amusing things I've ever written. They're so simple, but you can pack the best story into them. Sorry I left you waiting so long the this chapter, but I hope you liked it!

J-chan8:
Thank you, thank you, thank you! You don't know how good that makes me feel. I'm really flatterd. It feels really great to know that I've suprised someone like that. I've seen two other Pirates/GW crossovers, so far- one moved the Pirates up to the GW time, and the other had the GW characters replacing everybody in the movie. I was trying to do exactly as you say, trying to fit the characters into the movie so that they belonged there. Hey, different styles. It's lovely to know that I am not the only one so afflicted... I hope you liked my other fics, and I hope you liked this chapter.

Silverblaise:
And now you have (part of) Duo's past, as well. Lesse, who's next? I'm glad you liked the dialouge bits- they were a lot of fun to write. I'd love to get a beta, but I'm afriad that it's not in my personality- not only am I highly independant, I'm really iregular. I'd either need the same beta for all my fics (which would swamp them, even assuming they knew all of the series that I've used for crossovers), or I'd need a different beta for each fic. :sigh: Ah, well. I'll keep an eye out for your fic, and many thanks for the review of one of my own!

Arrythmic Song:
:blush: Thank you! All in one go? :goggles: I'm flatterd. Sorry that I didn't update this sooner- but I hope you liked it. Many thanks for the review!

Shaeric Draconis:
Thank you, both for the compliments and the review! Hope you're better now- I can't wait for an update to The Unwanted. It's one of the best fics I've read. Sorry I didn't update sooner, but I hope you enjoyed the chapter!

WhyteRoze-28:
Duo does fit in very well. :snicker: Imagine what he'd tell Norington if he ever had the opportunity to! Many thanks for the 'so real' comment. That natural feel was exactly what I'm trying to get. Also, thanks for commenting on my little 'editorials.' Am I the only one who honestly wants to see something nasty happen to those snots...? Hope you liked this chapter!

Celesta Sunstar:
Thank you! Mr. Gibbs has returned in this chapter, and Wufei ought to be in soon, so don't worry. I acutally debated replaceing Mr.Gibbs with Wufei- my basis was the whole 'women are bad luck' thing. You know, you're probably right about the names- I must have missed them some where. Ah, well, too late to change them now. And it's eaiser to type Manny and Wood, anyway. Thank you for the review!

karrafear:
Thank you! I love the movie as it is, so my goal was to keep it as natural as possible. Many thanks for the compliment on Dorothy. I wanted a high-class female who wasn't afraid to fight back- and Dorothy seemed to fit the bill! You reviewed on a lucky day- you get the update fast!

Well fans, that's that. I apologise again for the lateness! Now wish me luck on exams, and be sure to hit that little review button down there!