action & voice ✪ all the time in the world just ran out

[slaying]

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[abidinglaw]

[Who could be knocking on his door? No-one knocks on his door. The admiral is so unaccustomed to the noise that on the way towards the door he peers around the rest of the apartment in case it had come from elsewhere. An intruder? An apple falling off the counter by chance? But the delay is only minor. He has his fingers on the handle in under half a minute.

This will be the second time that Buffy has seen him out of his formal attire. It irks him for a moment, seeing her seeing him, but very very soon afterward he sees her too. He opens the door wider and steps back.]

Would you like to come inside?

[slaying]

I won't be long...

[ she steps in with her arms anxiously folded over her chest. a very protective, controlled sort of posture. ] I just -- there's a thing that's happened and I think you should know about it, first. Before I make the announcement.

[ because she will be making the announcement. no one else will take that duty from her. she doesn't want to hear it in anyone else's voice. ]

[abidinglaw]

Something happened to Jack.

[Because really, what else could this girl feel honour bound to tell him? With any luck his saying the words aloud will make it easier for her. He gently closes the door.]

[slaying]

[ this month has made her so very well-practiced at being sad. really -- her whole life has provided much of the same except...except luceti had usually been a brighter place than her life, back home. this month feels so much like being back home. ]

He's -- he's gone home. People do that, sometimes. No matter how long or how little they've been here. Poof. Disappeared. Gone.

[abidinglaw]

[Strange. As far as Norrington can tell this ought to be a moment for celebration. She should be happy for the pirate by all rights - shouldn't she? But then, he saw them together. He knows it's hard to be the one left behind. Perhaps the celebration will come later.]

Can I get you anything before you go? Tea?

[He assumes, of course, that she'll turn him down. That she'll leave now. Duty done.]

[slaying]

...Water.

[ she hadn't had a thing back at the house and all that crying. her head is throbbing. ]

[abidinglaw]

[The room is furnished much like any other in this building, but there are a cluster of candles on the tables and a few other strategic surfaces - an arrangement designed to cast the entire room in a dim glow by night. It's also pretty obvious that the admiral spends most of his time in this apartment - there is food along the counter-tops and plates and glasses and cutlery besides. He doesn't venture into the kitchen if he can help it. All those appliances.]

Certainly.

[It is no issue, then, for him to take a clean mug in hand and proceed to the washroom to fill it. The water from that tap is crystal clear - a miracle. For all of his strict adherence to codes of behavior it doesn't occur to him for a moment that there be anything peculiar about doing so.]

Sit down, please. Anywhere you choose.

[Regardless of whether she seats herself he hands her the mug and takes a seat at the table.]

[slaying]

[ she will -- almost reluctantly -- take a seat across from him. she holds the mug in her hands, palms wrapped around it. she doesn't drink. not yet. ]

There's...uhm, there's still the Joanna Joyce to look after. [ her voice breaks on the second part of the name and she looks exceptionally cross with herself for that breaking. ]

[abidinglaw]

[She looks so fragile, so unlike the Buffy that he has come to hold in such low regard. The trickster, the liar, the pirate. Somehow he hadn't imagined that she would be capable of this. Of this weakness. He hadn't believed, either, that she had cared enough for Jack that his leaving would warrant such sadness. He'd warned her, though. Hadn't he warned her? That Jack would hurt her in the end.]

If her crew approach me I will aid them in whatever way I might. It is quite an achievement, that boat. A beautiful thing, really.

[slaying]

[ a very small sip. testing the waters, so to speak. ]

I was on it. Just once. He...we were supposed to go sailing, after this month was over.

[abidinglaw]

[You would have liked it.

He doesn't say. Instead he asks, perhaps a little pathetically;]

How is it?

[slaying]

[ she misunderstands. it's a thing that she does. and so, thinking that there would be no reason that norrington would ask about the water, she answers about the joanna joyce. it does irk her (on jack's behalf) that he called the boat an 'it' and not a 'she'. ]

She's...boatish. Boat-like. And wooden. And very adorably named and...and he spent a long time on her. Put a lot of effort into her. Invested.

[ and now she might not be talking about a boat at all. ]

[abidinglaw]

[Not for the first time the admiral wonders whether perhaps there might not be some fault with the girl's mental faculties. With the way that she connects one thing with another. Still, Norrington can see the path she took to that particular mistake easily enough.]

A man must. She becomes more than just... He makes her his life.

[A boat, that is.]

[slaying]

The Joanna Joyce was just a...just an in-between kinda boat, though. He'll be after the Pearl again. That's gotta be a good thing. I know...I know he missed the Black Pearl.

[ and had been dreaming of her, recently. hah. buffy buries her realization in another long drink of water. ]

[abidinglaw]

[So she knows about the Pearl. Then again, who encounters Jack and doesn't ultimately hear about that ship? But it does beg the question. Just how much does she know about the man?]

He's nothing if not loyal.

Albeit he subscribes to his own particular brand of loyalty.

[It's said so off-handedly, but this is realization that the admiral has labored over for some time. That instinct to save the pirate on the bridge - that had done it. It took the impulse of his body to prove to Norrington what his mind would not believe.]

[slaying]

To a fault. [ she agrees. ] Beyond a fault, really. Always seemed a little funny, in a pirate...

[ she stares at the water. ]