I'd fancy you return the way you said (but I grew old and forgot your name)

[captjacksparrow]

Everything has died. No -- scratch that word. Not died. Nothing to do with dead. Nothing and no one is dying if Jack has anything to say about it, and he will if they just could pick up a bloody breeze.

Sometime around late afternoon, the wind gave out. The sea rolled to a slow crawl of gentle waves and the Pearl, for all her might, guttered and

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[commodore_jln]

The doldrums. Oh, brilliant. Really bloody brilliant. The universe, it seemed, truly is conspiring against him; as if it wasn't enough being ruined and shamed, working as a poxy deckhand aboard the Black Pearl with the one man he would have been perfectly content to never again see in his life. Oh no. In addition to that, the winds had decided to drop off without even a breeze, and leave the Pearl sitting open and still, fair play for this marauding beast of Jones's, should it decide it's in the mood for a snack.

It's horrible.

James has always liked a task; movement, a goal, something to do, to aim for. And indeed, he's always had one, all his life. Now though, he's got nothing; he's quite as still as the Pearl, stuck in dead waters without a wind. The stillness and the scorching hot sun only make it worse, like the world is trying to- very unsubtley- press home what he already knows.

Clearly, the only option is drink. Jack's got an obscene amount of rum stashed away in the holds, and James figures he's more than entitled to a bottle or several now and again, if he so desires. There's plenty of reasons built up over the years why Jack owes him.

Drinking, he's found, with no clear goal other than the fact of drinking, goes somewhere between interminably slow and ridiculously fast. The taste of rum is nowhere near as entertaining with nothing else to distract from it, and James finds himself slipping into a familiar- but still uncomfortable- irritation with the world at large. The world at large, and Jack in particular. He snorts bitterly. He'd wanted James a pirate, those dozen or so years ago, and now would you look at that; he's got what he wanted. These are not unfamiliar paths his mind's going down, and he entertains them in exactly the same way he has done for the past few months.

He has no real conception of how long he sits belowdecks and drinks, but it's long enough that when he finally gets up, it's something of a struggle at first to keep his balance, and when he emerges onto the deck, he finds that night has fallen. The ship's as still as before, the crew listless and frustrated, some fallen asleep at their posts, other missing altogether. He sneers; no ship of his had ever been run so shoddily.

To find himself at Jack's cabin is no surprise, given where his mind's been wandering, and he pushes through the door with little ceremony. Maybe he happens to stumble a little- so what?

'Wouldn't be surprised to find one aboard this ship,' he shoots back acidly when Jack looks over at him, and collapses back into a chair, shoulders slumped and long legs sprawled out before him.

[captjacksparrow]

Over the past several weeks, Jack's grown accostumed to James playing to him in nothing but sharp and sour tones. It should be expected now, when James comes barreling in, that the only greeting he can muster is something along those lines. Jack still isn't quite ready for it, though, and belatedly bites out a polite smile to cover his pout.

She's a pretty ship. She always has been. He shouldn't need to defend her honour to James.

"Just trying to make you feel at home," Jack offers, and lifts the bottle for a drink. He watches James over the rim.

James looks like shit, to be blunt about. Drunk and disordered, and always wearing a sneer. He doesn't smell the best either. His uniform is so shoddy and covered in mud that it took Jack a while to realise James was wearing it. Jack almost wants to tell him to chuck it overboard and find some decent clothes if he plans on strutting around like that forever, but that's not Jack's business and James wouldn't listen to him anyway.

They don't really talk anymore. Ever. Not even when Jack stumbled upon James again in Port Royal all those months ago. They never quite found a way to have a conversation -- which suited Jack fine and dandy. The past, once there, should stay there. But it were easier then, James on his ship and Jack with his own, and their paths only crossing the few times to argue over semantics.

It's different now that James is here, everyday, and there's only Jack's cabin to seperate them usually. James still hasn't said why he's here. Slowly, Jack lowers the bottle and stretches his legs out away from the table. His maps can wait until later.

"Am I to take this visit to be in the nature of social or business?"

[commodore_jln]

He didn't really have any particular reason to go bursting into Jack's cabin, other than the fact that Jack seems to be the locus of all his thought these days. Now he's here, that's vaguely irritating. He ought to have a reason to be here, slumped in a chair and sneering.

But he doesn't. He feels no particular desire to talk to Jack- not that they ever really say anything, when they do talk- but even after so long, after everything Jack's done to him, somehow being in his presence is preferable than otherwise. James suspects he may have developed into something of a masochist.

He watches Jack over the top of his own bottle, finding the burn of the rum much preferable now. 'It's not as if I've anything else to do,' he grumbles sharply. 'Seeing as we're not going anywhere at the moment.' As if it's Jack's fault. It might as well be Jack's fault. Everything else is Jack's fault, no reason this shouldn't be.

[captjacksparrow]

Reading between the lines -- a trick Jack is very, very good at, despite the fact people seem to insist on the contrary -- it seems that James is here for no purpose other than a lack of purpose. It's a dangerous thing to tell a Captain you have nothing to do aboard his ship. Any sailor worth anything knows to find an occupying activity lest someone give him a less pleasing task.

Like scrubbing the decks. With a wig.

Jack doesn't much want to doll out that particular punishment at this moment. He's only done so the once (twice? few times?) when James was at his best for being unmanageable. James is still unmanageable now, but in a way Jack thinks he can navigate. Or at least is willing to make the attempt. There's little else to do and Jack's just not the sort to turn away company on the merits of whom it involves.

He likes to think it's part of his generous and curious nature. There are plenty of other places and other people for James to waste his time on, after all. Can't fault a man for turning to old habits in times of distress.

Jack chuckles into the bottle at James' words. "Thought you'd be used to standing still," he says, and takes a drink to splice the teasing into something softer than outright cruelty. "Legendary man of one great, wide port that you are."

[commodore_jln]

Those words only get a disdainful glance from James. Jack knows perfectly well how he feels about standing still. He's always been at his most comfortable when he's in motion; going somewhere, doing something, or if that isn't possible, to at least have a clearly discernible goal. Jack knows that better than... well, probably anybody. Which is a faintly disturbing thing, really, when he thinks about it.

'Commodore James Norrington was a legendary man,' he says, his voice coloured with drunken bitterness, and something maybe a little wistful. 'Me?' He snorts indelicately. 'I'm no-one.'

And it's true. With no movement to define him, no purpose or point or drive... James Norrington is nobody. Nobody at all.

[captjacksparrow]

That bitterness is a newly acquired trait. Or new to Jack, at least, because he reckons from how easily James slips into it that it has become old hat for him. That in itself borders on the disturbing. At best, that behaviour sits firmly in the capital of uncomfortable. The rum bottle seems a safer place to look than at the miserable figure James cuts, so Jack directs his eyes yonder, considering his words and whether another drink will clear his throat or not.

Little more rum never hurt anything, he concludes, and then pour a good quarter of the bottle down his throat. "No one's nobody," he tells to rum quietly, tone dropped low and serious and a little hesitant. His voice circle around the glass and echo back out to him.

Jack didn't mean nothing by his earlier words. No, wait. Not exactly true. He did mean, but only in a way to poke rather than injure. James chose Port Royal over seeing the world with Jack and limited himself in that way. It's an old game, that teasing, and one Jack assumed would be neutral ground between them. He hadn't expected for James to take him to heart, because anyone who knows Jack at all knows he's not worth listening to more than half the time.

Time changes things. Evidentally. Jack's still learning about that prank of fate. Still, though. There's self-deprecation and there's self-abuse and then there's just self-pity. James is swimming near the deep end and close to drowning. Jack can't just sit here and let him go under.

"Only way you get to be nobody is to keel over one day, not breathing." He lifts his eyebrows to look at James behind the protection of the rum. "And even then, some of those men manage to make quite a name for themselves. Not dead yet, mate. You're just serving dead time."

And that's really all Jack wants to say on the matter, because he's said the word "dead" about eight times too many in that last sentence and it's beginning to call up that bristly hair feeling on the back of his neck again.

Dead wind, he thinks fearfully, and the way the Pearl creaks against the lapping of waves doesn't go far in the way to reassure him.