Disclaimer: All characters, dialogue, and lyrics belong to Disney.

A/N: Quick drabble about the opening scenes of AWE.

Thieves and Beggars
By: Sinnamon Spider

The soldiers watched the lines moving, growing shorter and shorter as the bodies piled higher and higher. They were a ragtag bunch; men, women, children, dressed in rags and sullen expressions. None of them spoke, no begging for forgiveness, no pleas for mercy. They were resigned to their fate. They were guilty.

The next five walked up the steps to the scaffold, spreading out to form a line. The last figure was smaller, a boy of perhaps ten. He stared up at the noose that hung a good two feet above his head.

Fingering a silver piece of eight, the boy began to sing.

He had a sweet, clear voice, not yet changed. As he sang, the hangman set a barrel behind him, hoisting him up onto it and pulling the noose over his head.

To his left, a grizzled black man took up the abandoned song in a quiet, halting voice, as though recalling it from a long-unexplored place. The rest of the line joined in. The hangman paused, looking to the lieutenant for orders.

The soldiers were still watching the lines, as the rest of the pirates took up the song, a hundred voices joining as one. They stomped their feet in time with the melody, keeping a jangling beat. Their lowered heads lifted. Their sour faces cleared. Their surly demeanour hardened into something sharp, something powerful, something defiant.

They were guilty. And they were proud of it.

The soldiers watched the lines, but they stepped back, lowering their guns, searching for further confirmation from the officers. The captain hurried toward the table, where Cutler Beckett stood with his back to the massacre. "Lord Beckett. They've started to…sing, sir."

Beckett straightened slightly. "Finally," he declared, satisfied.

The captain signalled to the hangman. He pulled the lever.

The pirates continued to sing, the song shimmering off into the crisp morning air as the last line dropped through the trapdoors.

"Never shall we die."