Fic: And Be Free
...Because I saw the movie earlier today and am still unable to articulate what I want to say. So I spend an hour writing fic instead. It's not very good, needs to be sharpened up, but it was something I really needed to write. ♥
NOTE: Spoilers for AWE.
Title: And Be Free
Fandom: Pirates of the Caribbean
Warnings: PG-13, angst, hints of N/E. AWE SPOILERS.
This is not how it is supposed to end.
James lies bleeding and pinned to the ship, surrounded by nightmarish creatures, whilst the woman he loves is tossed into the raging waters below, and there is only one thought racing through his mind.
This is not how it is supposed to end.
He breathes, and he feels the gurgle of blood rushing through his lungs instead of air. He coughs, and that same blood coats his teeth with a sticky varnish. He tries to speak - Elizabeth - but the blood is frothing and his eyes are drooping and the pain in his side it's so heavy and it hurts and where's his crew and where's his love and all he wants to do is close everything up and board the windows and...
No. Steady, man.
The pirates have left, swimming like rats through the water. The echoes of men that crew this ship have left to go back to their servitude, and the thick greyness of helm and hull which seeps day-by-day into their slime and scales. Jones has left with a laugh, and in the distance James can hear a light music, something that reminds him of a song he heard in England long ago. His mother...
He watches as everything leaves him for dead.
But he will not leave yet.
Eight years old, and already the youngest Norrington has a good idea of what he wants to be when he's grown up. His mother sews some intricate frippery as she sits next to him, and he smiles secretly to himself, staring at the picture of a ship that hangs on the parlour wall. His smile widens as he notices for the hundredth time the countless colours that have been flecked on top of each other, and how they still fail to create the perfect blue.
He doesn't want to be his father. He doesn't want to be his brother.
"That's what you'll do when you're big, Jamie," says his mother, and his heart skips a beat - she mustn't know, nobody can know. He bites his lip and clenches his fists, trying to press the shame inwards. He's heard people talk of tars.
But his mother only smiles. "I've known for years," she chuckles, toying with a stray lock of his brown hair, "it's quite obvious, Jamie. And your father wants it too."
"For me to sail the seas?" his voice is quick and insisting, and she's startled.
"Yes, of course. To join the Navy, and serve your country."
"And be free?" he hurries on in his questions. "And be free?" Does she understand what's important? Does anyone?
"You're free now, James." She's confused, and he watches her hand move to wring with the other in her lap, white skin against blue satin - and he knows she doesn't understand.
(His skin is white too, like it's been drained. What's happening to him?)
"But I'm not free," he protests, "not to do as I like! Not to go where I want whenever I want, just because I want to do it! I'm not free like a..." Jamie almost says 'like a pirate', but bites his lip again just in time.
(He must have bit it hard, because there's blood in his mouth. Too much blood. That's not supposed to be there. That's worrying.)
"That's a selfish freedom, James." She takes his head in both her hands and kisses his crown tenderly. "You're meant for nobler freedoms, and greater things."
(There's a sudden pang in his gut, and the hurt makes him feel so very small.)
Jamie is at first bemused, and then dismayed and then... he begins to understand a little more. It seems that his mother does understand after all, just in a different way - and he realises now he knows without doubt what he will be.
He will be free, but not with a pirate's freedom. He will roam the seas as they do, and find true love and adventure, but he will do his duty, and protect the innocent. He will not steal, but will be honest, he will not betray, but rescue his friends from mortal peril - he will wear the crisp uniform his mother longs for, and have a shining sword with the blessing of the King. And when the end comes he will die a free man aboard his own ship, without a care in his heart or a worry-line on his brow, surrounded by loving voices that will soothe his passing, and push him gently forward on the next great voyage. That is how it is going to end. He may only be eight, but Jamie is very certain. It's a fact - like something written in his schoolbooks.
The delightful clarity welling up in him makes him reach out and give his mother a fierce embrace.
James finds he can't lift his arms - he can't even feel them. But he has to lift them, he has to, so he can feel his mother and promise her that--
That...
James can't remember.
Though he does remember his mother isn't really here.
It's hard to recall anything now - the present is so overwhelming. Each second crashes down on him like a storm, and he tosses helpless as flotsam in the little time he has left. There's a sweat forming on his brow and he wonders why, because he's not afraid anymore. And it wasn't brought about by the fight either - a 'fight' that was neither long nor hard. One strike, that was all it took - he'd laugh if there wasn't a hole in his chest. One lunge from a man-who-wasn't-a-man, encrusted in barnacles and shuffling as though he was drunk on sea-salt... and the next thing he knew, James had found himself lying sprawled like a shot-down seagull, broken and bleeding, beruffled by the night wind. He was the greatest swordsman in the Caribbean Navy, and James hadn't been able to stop a single attacker. Even with his sword...
His sword.
Where's his sword.
Gone.
...No!
It's gone. It's gone - and he won't allow it, not after they took everything else from him. They left him to be forgotten by everyone, with the blood of all those that might have remembered him staining his own hands. They must leave him his sword. Only his sword - that's all he asks, all he fought for, all he dreamed of, and all he held on to when everything else came crashing down.
Jones must have taken it. James tries to get up, and his mind churns sluggishly to formulate a plan of how he can fight to win back his weapon when he doesn't have a weapon to start with. But that all stops when he realises that his legs are just as numb as his arms.
So this is how it really ends.
Sword-less and Swann-less and utterly alone.
He doesn't know how long he's been lying still before she appears. It wasn't as though one minute she was somewhere else and the next here. Instead she had shifted quietly into view, piece by piece in the corner of his eye, slowly blending out of the ship and into form. It reminds him of when he'd first seen her - just a little girl, but she'd grown and grown, until he found she'd grown in his heart too, making her nest there like a little bird. Unexpected and yet expected. Just like now. He'd always planned to die in her arms. But then the bird had flown away.
And in any case, this can't be real, because things aren't going to plan. Elizabeth was so perfect, and this is such a bloody mess. She can't be here, but somehow she is. Her skin is golden and her hair dances brightly, framing her face like an angel. Her slight figure is neat in her dress. And her eyes... they're smiling at him. And that's how he knows this can't be real.
And he says as much.
"You can't be real."
There's a flicker of something in her eyes, some shadow of the past (or was it the future?), but it dies and ebbs away, leaving only a soothing warmth. "How can you say that?" she questions, and her voice is just as he imagined it when he lay awake the night before he was made Commodore, just as kind and welcoming and full of spirit - but never angry. Not at him.
That's a lie. She should be angry. "You can't be-"
"Don't you love me?"
Her question throws him, and his heart begins to thump faster than any drum of war - or at least, that's what it should be doing. Suddenly his sweat is that of fear once more, and his fingers begin to tremble despite their loss of sensation. It takes him a long time to reply, he's still reeling and drowning in the wake of her being here at all, and finally all he can stutter out is a scrap of what he needs to express. "You know how I feel."
That's never been enough for Elizabeth. Words like that were not what she'd imagined in her most secret dreams. She'd longed for passion and danger, romance inexplicably tied up with adventure, love that conquered all. Not barriers, not etiquette, and certainly not fear of three simple words.
"Then you know why I'm here, don't you?" she says with a smile.
And if her last question threw him, this one tosses him, and suddenly James finds it very hard to breathe. He doesn't understand. Does Elizabeth... He refuses to let this slip away from him. He closes his green eyes with a ragged gasp and then opens them sharply, pleading at her with every molecule in his body, ever ounce of pain in his abdomen, every pound of flesh forced aside by a rough weapon. He needs her to clarify. "Elizabeth, why?"
"Because you love me."
James understands a little now. And he begins to believe.
But the doubt is still there - he has his own shadows in his eyes, and the heavy scent of the forbidden and the dead that this ship seems to wrap itself in still permeates his senses. "But you fell. I cut the rope, I saw-"
"No. I didn't."
"But I saw-"
"How," she interjects, "could anything like that be real?"
And at that, he doesn't know what to say.
"How could that be real, James?" she's still asking him the same question, and in his head he repeats it over and over to himself. How could it? "Nothing ends like that," she continues. She's the one pleading now, and that's more than strange, because Elizabeth doesn't beg, but...
But he knows she's right. Nothing can end like that. This is not how it is supposed to end. Dead men tell no tales of their own because they can only appear in the fables of others, spun into creation by old men with drowsy minds. So James cannot be haunted by them. Long-lost sailors do not crew ships, the sea does not fill their veins and carry them forward as they clutch cold swords, ready to plunge them into beating chests. So James cannot be killed by them. But the dream was so vivid and real. "I dreamt there was nothing..."
"Nothing ends like that. Not you." She doesn't hesitate - Elizabeth never hesitated. She reaches out to him, and places one hand on his, the other on his pale cheek. "Not you..."
His world seems to expand suddenly, and James remembers a little more of his dream. He remembers a kiss. He remembers her lips against his, and her breath ghosting his skin as she drew away. He remembers... Elizabeth. The only thing in his dream, or rather, his nightmare, that was real. "Elizabeth, do you feel..."
She laughs, and he looks up.
James stares into Elizabeth's eyes and knows that - yes - she loves him. Her hand is warm in his, but her smile is warmer and her voice...
"Come with us, James."
And he laughs.
"Come with us. This is real."
And he laughs again, and gets to his feet (why was it so hard before?), and brushes the salt and blood from his jacket like it was dust. The crude sword that was in his chest stays with the ship, and the too-blunt edges don't hurt him now. He squeezes her hand, and finds himself laughing once more, and in-between his joy he manages to cry out a single, rapturous word. "Elizabeth!"
"James."
At her own cry she laughs too, and pulls him up - up, and they're away. Away from the wooden boards of the deck, and away from dark dreams, and into the beautiful truth, truth so bright he can hardly see but through squinting eyes. There's his Interceptor, and there's his crew - Groves, Gillette, Murtogg and Mullroy - and there's his mother, and there's Elizabeth, and there's a fair wind blowing into the sails and ruffling his hair...
And they're together.
And it is together that they rise up into the black-blue ocean of the sky.
And finally, finally... James Norrington is free.
NOTE: Spoilers for AWE.
Title: And Be Free
Fandom: Pirates of the Caribbean
Warnings: PG-13, angst, hints of N/E. AWE SPOILERS.
This is not how it is supposed to end.
James lies bleeding and pinned to the ship, surrounded by nightmarish creatures, whilst the woman he loves is tossed into the raging waters below, and there is only one thought racing through his mind.
This is not how it is supposed to end.
He breathes, and he feels the gurgle of blood rushing through his lungs instead of air. He coughs, and that same blood coats his teeth with a sticky varnish. He tries to speak - Elizabeth - but the blood is frothing and his eyes are drooping and the pain in his side it's so heavy and it hurts and where's his crew and where's his love and all he wants to do is close everything up and board the windows and...
No. Steady, man.
The pirates have left, swimming like rats through the water. The echoes of men that crew this ship have left to go back to their servitude, and the thick greyness of helm and hull which seeps day-by-day into their slime and scales. Jones has left with a laugh, and in the distance James can hear a light music, something that reminds him of a song he heard in England long ago. His mother...
He watches as everything leaves him for dead.
But he will not leave yet.
Eight years old, and already the youngest Norrington has a good idea of what he wants to be when he's grown up. His mother sews some intricate frippery as she sits next to him, and he smiles secretly to himself, staring at the picture of a ship that hangs on the parlour wall. His smile widens as he notices for the hundredth time the countless colours that have been flecked on top of each other, and how they still fail to create the perfect blue.
He doesn't want to be his father. He doesn't want to be his brother.
"That's what you'll do when you're big, Jamie," says his mother, and his heart skips a beat - she mustn't know, nobody can know. He bites his lip and clenches his fists, trying to press the shame inwards. He's heard people talk of tars.
But his mother only smiles. "I've known for years," she chuckles, toying with a stray lock of his brown hair, "it's quite obvious, Jamie. And your father wants it too."
"For me to sail the seas?" his voice is quick and insisting, and she's startled.
"Yes, of course. To join the Navy, and serve your country."
"And be free?" he hurries on in his questions. "And be free?" Does she understand what's important? Does anyone?
"You're free now, James." She's confused, and he watches her hand move to wring with the other in her lap, white skin against blue satin - and he knows she doesn't understand.
(His skin is white too, like it's been drained. What's happening to him?)
"But I'm not free," he protests, "not to do as I like! Not to go where I want whenever I want, just because I want to do it! I'm not free like a..." Jamie almost says 'like a pirate', but bites his lip again just in time.
(He must have bit it hard, because there's blood in his mouth. Too much blood. That's not supposed to be there. That's worrying.)
"That's a selfish freedom, James." She takes his head in both her hands and kisses his crown tenderly. "You're meant for nobler freedoms, and greater things."
(There's a sudden pang in his gut, and the hurt makes him feel so very small.)
Jamie is at first bemused, and then dismayed and then... he begins to understand a little more. It seems that his mother does understand after all, just in a different way - and he realises now he knows without doubt what he will be.
He will be free, but not with a pirate's freedom. He will roam the seas as they do, and find true love and adventure, but he will do his duty, and protect the innocent. He will not steal, but will be honest, he will not betray, but rescue his friends from mortal peril - he will wear the crisp uniform his mother longs for, and have a shining sword with the blessing of the King. And when the end comes he will die a free man aboard his own ship, without a care in his heart or a worry-line on his brow, surrounded by loving voices that will soothe his passing, and push him gently forward on the next great voyage. That is how it is going to end. He may only be eight, but Jamie is very certain. It's a fact - like something written in his schoolbooks.
The delightful clarity welling up in him makes him reach out and give his mother a fierce embrace.
James finds he can't lift his arms - he can't even feel them. But he has to lift them, he has to, so he can feel his mother and promise her that--
That...
James can't remember.
Though he does remember his mother isn't really here.
It's hard to recall anything now - the present is so overwhelming. Each second crashes down on him like a storm, and he tosses helpless as flotsam in the little time he has left. There's a sweat forming on his brow and he wonders why, because he's not afraid anymore. And it wasn't brought about by the fight either - a 'fight' that was neither long nor hard. One strike, that was all it took - he'd laugh if there wasn't a hole in his chest. One lunge from a man-who-wasn't-a-man, encrusted in barnacles and shuffling as though he was drunk on sea-salt... and the next thing he knew, James had found himself lying sprawled like a shot-down seagull, broken and bleeding, beruffled by the night wind. He was the greatest swordsman in the Caribbean Navy, and James hadn't been able to stop a single attacker. Even with his sword...
His sword.
Where's his sword.
Gone.
...No!
It's gone. It's gone - and he won't allow it, not after they took everything else from him. They left him to be forgotten by everyone, with the blood of all those that might have remembered him staining his own hands. They must leave him his sword. Only his sword - that's all he asks, all he fought for, all he dreamed of, and all he held on to when everything else came crashing down.
Jones must have taken it. James tries to get up, and his mind churns sluggishly to formulate a plan of how he can fight to win back his weapon when he doesn't have a weapon to start with. But that all stops when he realises that his legs are just as numb as his arms.
So this is how it really ends.
Sword-less and Swann-less and utterly alone.
He doesn't know how long he's been lying still before she appears. It wasn't as though one minute she was somewhere else and the next here. Instead she had shifted quietly into view, piece by piece in the corner of his eye, slowly blending out of the ship and into form. It reminds him of when he'd first seen her - just a little girl, but she'd grown and grown, until he found she'd grown in his heart too, making her nest there like a little bird. Unexpected and yet expected. Just like now. He'd always planned to die in her arms. But then the bird had flown away.
And in any case, this can't be real, because things aren't going to plan. Elizabeth was so perfect, and this is such a bloody mess. She can't be here, but somehow she is. Her skin is golden and her hair dances brightly, framing her face like an angel. Her slight figure is neat in her dress. And her eyes... they're smiling at him. And that's how he knows this can't be real.
And he says as much.
"You can't be real."
There's a flicker of something in her eyes, some shadow of the past (or was it the future?), but it dies and ebbs away, leaving only a soothing warmth. "How can you say that?" she questions, and her voice is just as he imagined it when he lay awake the night before he was made Commodore, just as kind and welcoming and full of spirit - but never angry. Not at him.
That's a lie. She should be angry. "You can't be-"
"Don't you love me?"
Her question throws him, and his heart begins to thump faster than any drum of war - or at least, that's what it should be doing. Suddenly his sweat is that of fear once more, and his fingers begin to tremble despite their loss of sensation. It takes him a long time to reply, he's still reeling and drowning in the wake of her being here at all, and finally all he can stutter out is a scrap of what he needs to express. "You know how I feel."
That's never been enough for Elizabeth. Words like that were not what she'd imagined in her most secret dreams. She'd longed for passion and danger, romance inexplicably tied up with adventure, love that conquered all. Not barriers, not etiquette, and certainly not fear of three simple words.
"Then you know why I'm here, don't you?" she says with a smile.
And if her last question threw him, this one tosses him, and suddenly James finds it very hard to breathe. He doesn't understand. Does Elizabeth... He refuses to let this slip away from him. He closes his green eyes with a ragged gasp and then opens them sharply, pleading at her with every molecule in his body, ever ounce of pain in his abdomen, every pound of flesh forced aside by a rough weapon. He needs her to clarify. "Elizabeth, why?"
"Because you love me."
James understands a little now. And he begins to believe.
But the doubt is still there - he has his own shadows in his eyes, and the heavy scent of the forbidden and the dead that this ship seems to wrap itself in still permeates his senses. "But you fell. I cut the rope, I saw-"
"No. I didn't."
"But I saw-"
"How," she interjects, "could anything like that be real?"
And at that, he doesn't know what to say.
"How could that be real, James?" she's still asking him the same question, and in his head he repeats it over and over to himself. How could it? "Nothing ends like that," she continues. She's the one pleading now, and that's more than strange, because Elizabeth doesn't beg, but...
But he knows she's right. Nothing can end like that. This is not how it is supposed to end. Dead men tell no tales of their own because they can only appear in the fables of others, spun into creation by old men with drowsy minds. So James cannot be haunted by them. Long-lost sailors do not crew ships, the sea does not fill their veins and carry them forward as they clutch cold swords, ready to plunge them into beating chests. So James cannot be killed by them. But the dream was so vivid and real. "I dreamt there was nothing..."
"Nothing ends like that. Not you." She doesn't hesitate - Elizabeth never hesitated. She reaches out to him, and places one hand on his, the other on his pale cheek. "Not you..."
His world seems to expand suddenly, and James remembers a little more of his dream. He remembers a kiss. He remembers her lips against his, and her breath ghosting his skin as she drew away. He remembers... Elizabeth. The only thing in his dream, or rather, his nightmare, that was real. "Elizabeth, do you feel..."
She laughs, and he looks up.
James stares into Elizabeth's eyes and knows that - yes - she loves him. Her hand is warm in his, but her smile is warmer and her voice...
"Come with us, James."
And he laughs.
"Come with us. This is real."
And he laughs again, and gets to his feet (why was it so hard before?), and brushes the salt and blood from his jacket like it was dust. The crude sword that was in his chest stays with the ship, and the too-blunt edges don't hurt him now. He squeezes her hand, and finds himself laughing once more, and in-between his joy he manages to cry out a single, rapturous word. "Elizabeth!"
"James."
At her own cry she laughs too, and pulls him up - up, and they're away. Away from the wooden boards of the deck, and away from dark dreams, and into the beautiful truth, truth so bright he can hardly see but through squinting eyes. There's his Interceptor, and there's his crew - Groves, Gillette, Murtogg and Mullroy - and there's his mother, and there's Elizabeth, and there's a fair wind blowing into the sails and ruffling his hair...
And they're together.
And it is together that they rise up into the black-blue ocean of the sky.
And finally, finally... James Norrington is free.