Song in Red & Gray Chapters 14 and 15
Title: Song in Red & Gray-Chapter 14: Alcohol and 15: Hate
Author: ophelivia
Rating: R-NC17
Word Count: 253 and 1779
Pairing: Beckett/OC, Gillington in this update if you stand on your head.
Characters: Strictly Norrington and Rose this time!
Summary: "Do just what I tell you and no one will get hurt." A series of vignettes spanning both films.
Status: In-Progress
Disclaimer: I don't own the Pirates characters. Rose is mine, but I should mention that she began in an RPG over on fanfiction.net. This story has nothing to do with the plot of that game. The prompts for each chapter are from 50_smutlets
Warnings: Power plays, S&M, emotional manipulation, prostitution and implied slash. The chapters will go in no real order. I'm picking the prompts at random. DMC canon here. WARNING: MORE NORRINGTON ANGST THAN YOU CAN SHAKE A PIMPSTICK AT
::sways on feet, falls over:: Okay, before we begin I need to say something. THIS WAS SO F***** HARD TO WRITE! First I didn't know how to begin, then once I figured that out my computer crashed. No sooner do we fix that I get hit with huge writer's block. And tonight while I was actually finishing this up, I realized that I'd somehow changed directions and needed another chapter to get back on track, and once I realized that I also realized that I could have posted chapter 14 for you days ago now that what happens here is going to be longer.
::hyperventalates::
Okay I'm done now. Just a warning about what's going to happen. Chapter 16 is going to be a direct continuation of Chapter 15. So we have like a little mini plot going. I was going to make it all one chapter but I was pushing four pages and after the sheer angst of this next bit, I felt like the next point I needed to make would have been a little random. An advance warning though: I am mega excited about the next bit so that should be up quickly enough. I worked my bum off on these chapters so I really hope they were worth the wait. There are a few references to two things that will be discussed next chapter. Let's see if you can figure out what. :)
Chapter 14 is for medium_density and chapter 15 for celticbard76 and the lovely biggles because they know of the great dark force keeping me from writing this fic. To the rest of you, thank you SO MUCH for waiting, I hope this was worth the wait
Earlier chapters here
2-10: Alcohol
Tap! Tap! A hard fist on the bar. James licked his lips, craving.
“’Nother.”
But the keep cut him off. And the jangle of glass against wood jars nerves. The sound of a fist in anger, a thud, his body fell. Slamming the door. It rained. Humidity filled nose and mouth. And deep within a throbbing, desperate sting penetrating his soul.
He couldn’t make the voices go away. Faces flooded his dreams. An endless hurricane sea in his mind. The color of Lord Beckett’s eyes.
Just thinking of him made James’ muscles clench. Sweat on his forehead and at his neck. His neck…
Everything spun. Everything hurt. A man, ginger hair hidden in powder, reached a hand across James’ memory. And try as he might he couldn’t take hold.
But there was a hand to reach now. Now that same burning hair and those eyes that sparkled so. But full of tears. He thought about her, lying on the floor screaming. Letting out all those things he’d held in. The grief, the rage, the hatred, all stuffed down under bone and brocade. Everything Rose saw in him was everything he was.
Nothing could tell him why he was running. He only knew he was running to her. He needed his apology heard, even in deaf ear. Needed Andrew’s eyes in that girl’s face, even if they narrowed and blazed with accusation.
He was bound same as she. Maybe she’d understand what was happening to him. Maybe she’d kill him. Either would be preferable.
2-1: Hate
Someone banging, screaming.
“Rose!” A desperate wail, like ghosts from the moors of her childhood. “Rose Gillette! Please!”
Rose gripped her knife, stalking to the door. Wrenched it open.
“Oh God,” she gasped.
The blade. All James’ wild emotions died away. Numb. Always numb.
“What the fuck do you want?”
No answer for this. The whore scowled.
“You better tell me what you’re doin’ or I’ll open your throat, by God.”
This said with a practiced air, only the faintest emotion. Norrington was chillingly reminded of Mr. Mercer.
But her eyes were wide, her hand shaking like his voice.
“I…wanted…to talk to you.”
His words slurred together. He had to stop, extract them slowly.
“I know…that in all probability you’ll turn me away. But-”
“Damn right,” she cut him off, starting to close the door. In a sudden panic he grabbed it.
“Please!” His eyes shone, begging shamelessly. “I’ll pay if you like. Without…anything.”
He colored, looked away.
“I only wish to speak. Please.”
She scrutinized him wordlessly. Eyes glazed, bloodshot. Hair, clothes soaked. Trembling. A far cry from Andrew’s beloved commodore.
Maybe that was what made her snap:
“Get in.”
But entering, all words left. In her cramped, shabby room. She sat fluidly upon the bed, eyes locked on him, posture rigid.
“So? Your tea party. Talk.”
Tea party…God…Eyes rolled, heart raced. Heart…
Words. Trickling water past the stones lodged in his throat and chest.
“I didn’t know.”
A copper eyebrow arched like a lit match.
“What?”
“A-a-about you,” he stammered clumsily. “He never told me he had…that you…”
Silence. Rose lifted her chin, but turned her eyes away. Something flickered there, sadness. ike winter light.
“He wouldn’t’ve.” Said almost to herself.
No longer upon him, her eyes made James feel sad. He sighed, daring a step forward.
“It was…my job to go to the officers’ families,” he said. “Andrew said his parents had passed. I didn’t think-”
“Good thing,” she said calmly. “If you had, you’d be dead now I think.”
He didn’t doubt that she meant it.
“You would have been within your rights,” he mumbled, then looked up, deep into her face that was so like her brother’s. Unbearably he wanted to get close to her.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered.
For a moment, silence. She got to her feet. He waited for her to lunge like she had in the office. To put that pretty dagger through his neck. He wanted that, and Rose was seriously contemplating.
But she did something else. She laughed at him.
Threw back her head. The lamplight made her hair catch fire. A terrible goddess. A burning witch. And then the screeching laughter. Laughing until James thought the walls of his mind would converge, until she doubled over gasping.
“You…you’re sorry?” Shouting now, mad with years of anger and a yearning never to be fulfilled. “You come to my home too drunk to see and tell me you’re sorry? Fuck you, Norrington. T’aint my life you ruined. You just took the last cause for it is all.”
He didn’t bother to speak. He needed abuse. Abuse was all he had now.
“It was you what took him from me. He went off on that damn ship with you fighting your battles and aping your ways. Forgetting who he was. And when he came home you meant more to him than I. That’s why he never told you, Commodore. Embarrassed to confess his twin nothing more than an Irish guttersnipe. Chose over his own blood he did. And what’d it get him? Washed away like flotsam for one man’s pride and broken heart.”
He flinched hard. So she knew it all. His great disgrace had reached the lowest slums. In a whore’s rooms he heard all his own thoughts echoed. All his nightmares playing out from lips he’d kissed so hungrily on a French velvet chair.
And she stared him down now, concocting and discarding ever more ways to hurt him, pushing away the disturbing thought that hurting him would not be enough to give her peace.
It had to be enough. Rose would make it enough.
Breaking. Fractured. And when he came forward and took her by the shoulders in that way Andrew used to do she couldn’t find the strength to push away.
“I’m sorry!” He repeated it again and again. “I’m sorry, Rose. I’m so sorry. Please I beg you.”
Hard as diamond, fever hot was her expression.
“I’m going to show you something,” she said, brushing past him into a corner. Getting down on her knees she jerked up a floorboard with sinewy arms. That was when James noticed. Her neck. The bruises. Her hair had been covering them. He said nothing, but the thing around his neck seemed to constrict, cut off the air. Choking.
Under the plank a small crevice between wall and floor. Treasure stolen from her dragon. Dignity parceled in bronze and silver coins. Rose looked down and shook her head almost disapprovingly. Then she reached back and removed a wooden box, overstuffed with all those things she at once loved and could not bear.
My whole life here in front of you, she thought, looking to him. And it fits in a cigar box. Pathetic.
She found it then. Creased so many times that she feared it might come apart in her hands.
“Be careful,” she snapped handing it to him. James sat on her bed without asking. Even from where he stood he had recognized Andrew’s minute, coiled scrawl, and the sight of it sent his heart hammering. James used to say he was the only man alive who could read his Lieutenant’s handwriting. As close to teasing as they got. Pity he’d been wrong. His eyes scanned the page almost desperately.
My dear wild Rose,
I have begun a thousand letters to you since we parted. Let’s hope this one makes it til the end, and that you don’t tear it up when you see it, little fire. This may be my last chance to make things right. I’ll never forgive myself for letting you leave that night, sister. The idiocy of my pride has tormented me, but I feared I would not be able to find you, or worse yet, that you would not accept my apology. You, my darling, are of course just as stubborn as I am.
But all fear must be gone from my heart now, Rose. A greater fear is taking hold. Not for me, but for that beloved person whom I have served and will continue to serve all my days, however long or short they may be.
My shipmates and I have followed the Commodore’s orders in his relentless pursuit of the pirate Jack Sparrow. But the scoundrel is crafty and wise to our chase. Just when it seems we finally have him he manages some fantastical feat or another and manages to elude us. And each time, I feel the Commodore’s nerves fray a little more. He works us to the bone, and sails on new and dangerous courses. I see a look in his eyes that frightens me; driven, obsessed. He calls it the pursuit of duty, bound to the law. But I cannot help but wonder if he blames Sparrow for his great misfortune. I will not disrespect him by writing it all down in detail for you. You probably know it nevertheless and if you don’t you need only go into a tavern to hear. What I will say is that I do not believe this would be happening to us if the lady the commodore loved had merely kept her promise. She has rejected him, and I hate her for this.
That is a thing to love in you, Rose. You forswore your promises entirely in order to keep from breaking them.
I know this letter, with all this talk of my superiors and troubles, is not nearly enough to undo all the time past between us. I know you may never forgive me. I know you think me weak and that I have become one of them. All this is most certainly true. I was never as bold, or as clever as you. But I would rather go to Hell itself than go one more day without telling you of my love. I wish you had had my life. You would have done better with it. The truth is, Rose, I have a terrible, terrible feeling.
We are approaching the coast of Tripoli and the sky is black. It pulsates, seemingly with a life of its own. And the sea undulates beneath our bow with a restlessness that cannot be denied. A storm is brewing, and for the first time I am afraid. In another time I could have spoken to Commodore Norrington on it, but of course that is impossible. I trust him with all my heart, but I cannot shake this feeling of ill fate.
And so I write to you with the steel of the Holy Spirit in my spine and the love of the Blessed Virgin in my heart forever. I don’t think I’ll live much longer. If I am correct in this, I leave you with the knowledge that I am sorry. I was wrong. I abandoned you. May God have mercy on me for it. And I go with one last irritating elder-brotherly order, (for I still precede you by five minutes) Do not allow anyone to demean you as I did in that alleyway. Follow the beating of your heart and the word of the Lord and look down to no other but Him. And do not weep if I should go. Remember, we are twins. Two halves of a whole. And that means we will never be apart. I do not fear death, Rose. For I know I will meet Ma and Da on the far side at the gates. We will wait for you there, little fire. I love you.
Your brother,
Andrew
That piece of paper floated down and toppled the stone wall inside James Norrington. There was no propriety, there was no honor, there was no goodness. It had all died with that boy. And so he just lay his head down in his arms and wept. Skin did nothing to muffle screams and snarls and sobs. He wanted to tear off his skin. He wanted to obliterate every trace of his existence.
Most of all he wanted Andrew.
He knew. He knew of his own death and yet he had followed James into that hurricane without as much as an upward glance. He had trusted him. And James had failed.