I have been rereading some of my old PotC stories lately, and one of my favorite "I don't know why I wrote this" stories was A Dislike of Circles from 2007, where a little girl comes up to Jack in Tortuga during the recruitment scene in DMC when he's grumbling at his compass, and she's intrigued by it. By popular demand, the one-shot turned into this little girl riding along for the rest of DMC and became Unprecedented Youth. I meant to continue it into AWE, but that didn't happen.
She's followed Jack (and, more so, his magic compass) everywhere! But the scene where she's mad at him is both sad and funny:
“Creda.”
The young girl sat stubbornly in the rowboat, arms folded over her chest with that angry scowl. She was the last in the rowboat, and Jack’s arm was getting tired from holding onto the ladder on the side of the ship.
“Creda, get out of the boat.”
“You left Norrington,” was all she would have to say to him.
Jack rolled his eyes. What? Did she actually like him or something?
“Creda, darling. Last chance.”
The girl suddenly stood on the seat, lifted her skirt, and held a foot over the water. She looked back at Jack, and his eyes got narrow.
“Don’t you do it,” he warned.
“You left Norrington!”
“I’ll leave you, too!”
An empty threat, but it was all he had left. Finally, after she raised her leg a little higher to drop into the water, Jack scowled himself and snatched her up around the waist.
“Hey!”
Creda broke out into screams, beating on his shoulder as he climbed the ladder with much difficulty and low tolerance. When they got on deck, Jack put her down, and her tantrum instantly stopped. He just looked at her sadly, almost apologetically. She was four. She didn’t know anything about the world yet, especially not a pirate’s world.
Still, Creda glared at him. Then, out of nowhere, she stomped on his foot unforgivingly and stormed off. Jack winced as Gibbs came up beside him. They exchanged looks, and then he handed the captain his jar of dirt.
“She’s a bit sore with you,” Gibbs said.
Jack made a face. “Imagine that.”
“What happened?”
“Commodore fell behind.”
