A/N: If you were expecting something witty from me, sorry to disappoint you. I can not say anything witty prior to this. I am generally the kind of person that gets really mad at sad stories, and here I am , with one of my own... Well, I sincerely hope that this is as touching to you as it is to me... btw, me no own Pirates of the Caribbean.

~Amanda

~~~

Jack Smiled into the wind. Right in front of him played a memory. Dancing blue eyes and a smile that looked as if it were about to burst into laughter at any minute. Curly blonde hair swirled around a flawless face with rosy cheeks. Something about this girl must be special, since Jack was actually planning on apologizing. The last time he had seen Adella, he accidentally called her Giselle... He was rewarded with a slap on the face that didn't sting as much as his ego did. Since then, he'd stayed away from Tortuga until he'd gotten up the courage to speak to her again. He didn't know why she had effected him like that, no one else had before. Maybe he was going soft... Nah.

Jack's thoughts were interrupted by a shout from the crow's nest, "LAND HO!" cried the lookout before he shimmied down a rope and helped prepare the ship to dock.

~~~

The door to The Savage burst open, and Jack and his crew ambled in, shouting and yelling. It was their first stop in Tortuga in over seven months, and they were excited.

"Ah, me home away from home!" announced Jack, plopping himself onto a barstool.

The barmaid set an ale in front of him and asked, "Well, then where's the home you're away from?"

"The Pearl." he stated before draining the mug.

"Cap'n Sparrow?" asked a timid voice from behind him.

He whirled to find a young lady of about 16, standing there nervously, uncomfortable in the mix of crude roughhousing.

"Aye, that's me, but who're you, love?"

Blushing at the term of endearment, she looked at her shoes, and told him, "Miss Adella needs to see you, she says it's urgent."

With a cocky half grin, he instructed to her, "Lead on then, love."

She silently walked out of the place, and started down the street.

"So how is my dear Adella?" Jack asked her as they walked.

"Not so very well, I'm afraid, I best let her explain it to you, here we are." She said, leading him up the steps of a house, and through the front door.

"Ma ma, I found him!" she called out into the house.

"Thank goodness" cried a woman as she popped her head out of a doorway down the hall. "She's in here, come on, sir."

Nervously doing what he was told, Jack nodded to the woman, then turned the corner and stopped in the doorway, and it felt like his heart dropped to his boots.

Adella lay on the bed, with her head propped up on pillows. Her stomach was swollen, and she was in labor. Her blonde hair was hastily pulled back from her forehead, covered in a cold sweat. Her breathing was shallow, and she had an intense look of concentration on her sallow face. The blanket that laid over her legs was streaked with blood. She looked up, and her eyes brightened.

"Jack!" She said weakly.

He rushed to her bedside and dropped to his knees, taking her hand in both of his own. "I'm sorry." he whispered to her as he felt his eyes fill with tears. Blast, he never cried, what was wrong with him today? "I really didn't forget your name."

"Oh, that... I think I would have slapped you for anything, I was too nervous to tell you what I wanted to tell you." she started.

"What?" he asked her, puzzled.

She patted her stomach with the hand she was not holding, and told him, "It's yours."

"What? Are you sure?" he asked, unbelieving.

"Positive... The thing is, I stopped ...seeing other men about a year ago."

Confused, he asked, "Well, why would you do that?"

"Because I realized that I loved someone. I love you, Jack Sparrow." She said before she cringed in pain.

"You're doing fine, Adella." encouraged the midwife. "One more push should do it."

Before Jack realized what had happened, the midwife pulled a baby out from under the blanket. "It's a girl, and she looks nothing like her momma. She's definitely yours, sir." She sad as she cleaned the crying baby off enough to hand her to the new mother, and walked out of the room.

Adella looked into the dark eyes of her beautiful baby, and the tiny girl stopped crying, and looked at her in wonderment. "You look just like your daddy, Layla Pearl Sparrow."

"Layla? That's beautiful, I've never heard of that before." Jack said, his eyes filling with tears again.

"It means 'dark beauty'. I picked it out months ago." Adella smiled weakly.

"How did you know she would look like that? What if she had taken after her mother?" Jack asked. "What if she was a he?"

"I just knew..." she said, weakly, trying to get a breath. "You will take care of her, won't you Jack?"

"But you can't leave me when I've only just realized that I love you!" he quietly demanded.

Tears streamed down her face at his announcement, and she smiled. "I thought so..."

"Kiss me once more?" Adella asked.

He couldn't have denied her his life if she asked him to. After he kissed her, she smiled, and closed her eyes, never to open them again. As if she was sensing something terrible, Layla started screaming.

Jack's heart broke for the little girl, for his little girl, and he gently picked her up, having to untangle her tiny fists from around a fold in her mother's shirt. Not knowing what to do, he tried to hold her and comfort her best he could, but her tears still streamed from her eyes, dampening her blanket. Every tear broke his heart a little more, and soon his tears were mingling with hers on the blanket.

~~~

A/N: Please review, even if you just want to get mad at me for it being so sad. I thrive off of reviews!