Get My Life Back (1 & 2/?; Beckett/Norrington, PG-13)
The year was 1773, ten years after The Endeavor’s destruction due to a group of rag-tag, mislead pirates. Ten years since most of the crew had been declared dead. Ten years since Cutler Beckett had been declared dead.
What British society did not know was that Cutler Beckett was anything but dead.
But dead or alive, the story of the Endeavor against the Black Pearl and the Flying Dutchman was legendary. Young sailors would spend hours in pubs sharing the stories they had heard regarding the fate of the highest ranking man in the Caribbean Sea.
“I heard that he threw the battle. That it was all a set up.”
“That’s ridiculous. I highly doubt that Cutler Beckett would have thrown the greatest chance he had at ridding the Caribbean of pirates. But I did hear that they didn’t find him after the battle.”
“Oh really? I heard that they did. What was left of him anyway.”
“I heard he survived.”
“Are you daft? No one could have live through that. I heard they found his seal floating one a piece of drift wood.”
“What the hell does that prove? And why is everyone so concerned with this seal?”
“You idiot. Everyone working for the East India Trading Company has heard of Lord Beckett’s ring. It was his rise to power. It had been his father’s before him. How else do you think he gained such a high rank in such a short time?”
They were the rumors that sailors heard on a daily basis. But on one December’s -- night, the rumors became reality for one young lieutenant. He was an East India Trading Company agent who had just returned from a stint in the colonies-America, as they called themselves. Before he headed home, he went to a tavern on the wharf. The air was smoky as he opened the door, the room loud with the sounds of laughter and conversation. It was a welcomed relief to the sound of the sea sloshing against the sides of the ship and the shouted commands of the captain. The man, no older than 21 or 22, made his way through the labyrinth of tables and chairs to the bar to order rounds of beer. He leaned against the bar, letting his head droop slightly. It had been a long voyage and he was ready to get piss drunk. He took the stein placed before him and nodded his thanks to the bartender. He gulped down his first drink in over a month and set the stein back down with a sigh of relief. He glanced over at the man next to him. He seemed odd; he was staying well out of the light’s reach. He wasn’t a-- drinking a beer, like the rest of the sailors in the tavern. No, he was drinking brandy, but above that, top-shelf brandy. Something told this lieutenant that the man next to him was not a common place sailor. He took another drink then glanced back to continue his analysis of the man.
It was then that he noticed it.
The lieutenant straightened up, his mouth open slightly in disbelief. As the shadowy figure next to him took a sip from his Snifter, this young lieutenant could see the large ring he wore on his left ring finger. A seal. The letter “B,” highly decorated. He finally let the name slip out of his mouth in a hoarse whisper. “Cutler Beckett.”
The figure’s head snapped towards the lieutenant. He calmly set his Snifter back down on the bar and rose. “Outside,” he said in a voice flat and emotionless. When the man did not move immediately, he added. “Now.”
He blinked twice then walked out to the wharf, followed by Beckett. He shook his head vigorously. “No, you’re dead. Everyone knows that no one could have survived the explosion of the Endeavor.”
“Why do you look for the dead among the living then, for a ghost does not have flesh and bone as you see me have,” Beckett replied, letting his black hood fall against his back. The sparse light danced across his features, lighting up his steel blue eyes. Upon his skin were the tell-tale signs of his experience. A scar shaped like an ‘x’ just below his right ear; a wound below the corner of his mouth that had been stitched several times, but seemed that it would never heal; a ‘y’-shaped wound framed the corner of his eye; a still-red gash followed the curve of his eyebrow; another came from just below his tear duct to the middle of his cheekbone; an almost identical scar ran from the bridge of his nose to directly under the corner of his eye; Perhaps his most distinct wound was the scar that ran down his eye, reaching from just above his eyebrow, all the way down his cheek. He heard a soft, involuntary gasp come from his younger counterpart. “You are a member of the East India Trading Company, are you not?” he asked, ignoring the sound.
“Yes. I have just returned from America.”
“Then you have not been to report in then,” Beckett said, almost as a rhetorical question. He thought for a moment. “Tomorrow, when you go to headquarters to turn in your report, you will tell them what you have seen and heard here.” He smirked slightly. “Tell them the Lord Cutler Beckett has risen from the dead. Tell them that…” he paused and took a step closer. “And I get my life back. Do you understand?”
Silently, the lieutenant nodded. “Yes sir. But they will not believe me.”
Beckett raised his head slightly. “Oh, but they will. I believe they will. I intend to have a visit with the standing governor of the East India Trading Company tomorrow.” He looked back towards the door of the tavern. “Now go. And tell no one, except the standing governor.”
The man stood bewildered for a moment then returned to his drink on the bar. Beckett stood with a smirk on his face in the dim slight of the street for several moments. He then turned on his heel and raised his hood again, returning to his shadowy hiding place until he could return to the public eye.
Title: Get My Life Back
Chapter: Bring Me To Life
Author: Yours truly with major shout-outs to
greeneyespurple for all of her help
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: AU; Post-AWE
Summary: Beckett makes good on his word and pays a visit to the standing governor of the East India Trading Company.
Author's note: I have decided that Jason Isaac's character in The Patriot is my muse for this new, much crueler Beckett. Let's just say that being nearly destroyed really reshuffled your priorities and gives you a spine. This also contains what I like to call fictitious history. All of the events are real; only..they happened to the Honorable East India Company. Yeah. Minor detail. (And the head is not a real person. I couldn't find that information.)
The East India Trading Company was failing. With the fall of the Caribbean, and then the Townshend Acts in America, they were quickly running out of money. The Acts employed a duty on tea that the company brought from India, to England, then to the colonies. The colonists were protesting; refusing to buy tea. Storehouses in Boston and other port cities sat full. In the years since 1767, the company had gone from the power of the seas to barely able to leave port due to lack of funds. A year after the Act, a Company ship was seized in Boston Harbor. The men there then took the name The Sons of Liberty. Tensions had been and remained high. Then 1770 happened. Customs officers had requested military back up in Boston, which was under mob rule. They got what the wanted. During a skirmish in Boston, three colonists were shot, six more wounded, with two additional dying soon after from their wounds. The Company showed no qualms and instead shipped more agents to Boston.
The British government repealed the taxes, except the one on tea, insisting it was a matter of principal. The Company was still without funds, no thanks to the ignorance of the Parliament.
Lord North, the current leader of the English Parliament, had introduced a plan that had passed. Now, he would soon see the fruits of his labor.
Cutler Beckett had been living in the shadows, but not under a preverbal rock for the past ten years. His anger at how his Company was being run ran through his veins daily. He had watched in silence until he could no longer bear watching it all go to pot. He would take control and then… then everything would be as it should have been to begin with.
Beckett’s hands were curled into loose fists as he walked down the cobblestone streets on the way to the East India Trading Company Headquarters. His head hung slightly to keep the scars in shadow. When he entered, he did not stop for anyone. He very calmly stormed into the office of the governor. But it appears that he was expected.
“Cutler Beckett. I’ll be god damned. That lieutenant was telling the truth; you’re still alive,” a tall, rather skinny man said, reclining in a chair behind a large oaken desk.
“And you, Nathaniel Archer, are still an idiot,” Beckett retorted, lifting his head and uncurling his fists. “What have you done to my Company?”
Nathaniel Archer, the current head of the East India Company, leaned back in his chair.
“Ah, so you have heard of our current misfortune.”
“I have heard of your incompetence in letting a group of colonists run all over the greatest monopoly of the seas.”
Beckett remained relatively collected, insulting his former colleague in a smooth voice, free from any emotion.
“Your beloved Charles Townshend got us into this mess. How do you plan to get us out?”
Archer simply raised an eyebrow.
“I? Why not leave it up to Parliament. They, after all, make the laws and enforce Acts, not I.”
“And leave them to drown this Company? No. It is because of Parliament that storehouses full of tea sit idle. You will get this company out of this rut or I will do it for you.”
“You? As far anyone knows, and cares, you are still dead. Should several other members of the East India Trading Company catch a glimpse of you still walking around, they will take it upon themselves to shoot you themselves. You are a wanted man, Cutler Beckett. You allowed not only men to die on your watch, but that damned Jack Sparrow escaped again! How do you plan to rectify that problem?”
“Let the navy worry about Sparrow, and his dying breed of pirates. You have greater things to worry about. I am taking control of this company once more.”
Beckett calmly cocked a pistol at his side and raised it.
“I will have my life back.”
Archer did not budge.
“Oh. Are you? And if you do over throw me, which I highly doubt, what do you plan to do when you are assassinated by a fellow chairman? You cannot accomplish much if you are dead.”
“And you did not accomplish much while alive. So I dare say we’d be about even. Now, if you do not mind, you are currently occupying my seat. Yours is in a bar, getting too drunk to even move.”
Beckett sighed when Archer still did not budge. He aimed his pistol carefully then pulled the trigger. The molten ball grazed the top of Archer’s shoulder, causing him to grab it and double over in pain.
“It pains me that you think I jest. I assure you, I do not. I lost my life fighting to keep this Company in control of the seas. It only seems fit that I regain it by keeping it afloat.”
Archer raised his hand from his shoulder and looked at the blood that coated his fingers. The Cutler Beckett he had known would never actually have brought himself to shoot. He would have threatened him; that was for certain. No, the Cutler Beckett would have waited until he was on his way home and would have one of his slimy henchmen snipe him.
“I’m sure you will,” was the only thing he could think of to say as he stood up, still holding his shoulder.
He walked to Beckett’s side. He removed his hand from the wound on his shoulder then rubbed the blood onto the off-white shirt that Beckett wore.
Beckett allowed a soft smirk to cross his lips and looked down at the smeared blood. “I’ll keep that in mind, Nathaniel, while I clean up your mess.”
He replaced his pistol in its holster in his hip then moved to sit behind the desk. He glanced up to watch his rival leave the room, still clutching his shoulder. He smirked, taking what appeared to be the newest Act that was going to be introduced to Parliament, crumpling it up and throwing it into the nearby fireplace.
What British society did not know was that Cutler Beckett was anything but dead.
But dead or alive, the story of the Endeavor against the Black Pearl and the Flying Dutchman was legendary. Young sailors would spend hours in pubs sharing the stories they had heard regarding the fate of the highest ranking man in the Caribbean Sea.
“I heard that he threw the battle. That it was all a set up.”
“That’s ridiculous. I highly doubt that Cutler Beckett would have thrown the greatest chance he had at ridding the Caribbean of pirates. But I did hear that they didn’t find him after the battle.”
“Oh really? I heard that they did. What was left of him anyway.”
“I heard he survived.”
“Are you daft? No one could have live through that. I heard they found his seal floating one a piece of drift wood.”
“What the hell does that prove? And why is everyone so concerned with this seal?”
“You idiot. Everyone working for the East India Trading Company has heard of Lord Beckett’s ring. It was his rise to power. It had been his father’s before him. How else do you think he gained such a high rank in such a short time?”
They were the rumors that sailors heard on a daily basis. But on one December’s -- night, the rumors became reality for one young lieutenant. He was an East India Trading Company agent who had just returned from a stint in the colonies-America, as they called themselves. Before he headed home, he went to a tavern on the wharf. The air was smoky as he opened the door, the room loud with the sounds of laughter and conversation. It was a welcomed relief to the sound of the sea sloshing against the sides of the ship and the shouted commands of the captain. The man, no older than 21 or 22, made his way through the labyrinth of tables and chairs to the bar to order rounds of beer. He leaned against the bar, letting his head droop slightly. It had been a long voyage and he was ready to get piss drunk. He took the stein placed before him and nodded his thanks to the bartender. He gulped down his first drink in over a month and set the stein back down with a sigh of relief. He glanced over at the man next to him. He seemed odd; he was staying well out of the light’s reach. He wasn’t a-- drinking a beer, like the rest of the sailors in the tavern. No, he was drinking brandy, but above that, top-shelf brandy. Something told this lieutenant that the man next to him was not a common place sailor. He took another drink then glanced back to continue his analysis of the man.
It was then that he noticed it.
The lieutenant straightened up, his mouth open slightly in disbelief. As the shadowy figure next to him took a sip from his Snifter, this young lieutenant could see the large ring he wore on his left ring finger. A seal. The letter “B,” highly decorated. He finally let the name slip out of his mouth in a hoarse whisper. “Cutler Beckett.”
The figure’s head snapped towards the lieutenant. He calmly set his Snifter back down on the bar and rose. “Outside,” he said in a voice flat and emotionless. When the man did not move immediately, he added. “Now.”
He blinked twice then walked out to the wharf, followed by Beckett. He shook his head vigorously. “No, you’re dead. Everyone knows that no one could have survived the explosion of the Endeavor.”
“Why do you look for the dead among the living then, for a ghost does not have flesh and bone as you see me have,” Beckett replied, letting his black hood fall against his back. The sparse light danced across his features, lighting up his steel blue eyes. Upon his skin were the tell-tale signs of his experience. A scar shaped like an ‘x’ just below his right ear; a wound below the corner of his mouth that had been stitched several times, but seemed that it would never heal; a ‘y’-shaped wound framed the corner of his eye; a still-red gash followed the curve of his eyebrow; another came from just below his tear duct to the middle of his cheekbone; an almost identical scar ran from the bridge of his nose to directly under the corner of his eye; Perhaps his most distinct wound was the scar that ran down his eye, reaching from just above his eyebrow, all the way down his cheek. He heard a soft, involuntary gasp come from his younger counterpart. “You are a member of the East India Trading Company, are you not?” he asked, ignoring the sound.
“Yes. I have just returned from America.”
“Then you have not been to report in then,” Beckett said, almost as a rhetorical question. He thought for a moment. “Tomorrow, when you go to headquarters to turn in your report, you will tell them what you have seen and heard here.” He smirked slightly. “Tell them the Lord Cutler Beckett has risen from the dead. Tell them that…” he paused and took a step closer. “And I get my life back. Do you understand?”
Silently, the lieutenant nodded. “Yes sir. But they will not believe me.”
Beckett raised his head slightly. “Oh, but they will. I believe they will. I intend to have a visit with the standing governor of the East India Trading Company tomorrow.” He looked back towards the door of the tavern. “Now go. And tell no one, except the standing governor.”
The man stood bewildered for a moment then returned to his drink on the bar. Beckett stood with a smirk on his face in the dim slight of the street for several moments. He then turned on his heel and raised his hood again, returning to his shadowy hiding place until he could return to the public eye.
Title: Get My Life Back
Chapter: Bring Me To Life
Author: Yours truly with major shout-outs to
greeneyespurple for all of her help
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: AU; Post-AWE
Summary: Beckett makes good on his word and pays a visit to the standing governor of the East India Trading Company.
Author's note: I have decided that Jason Isaac's character in The Patriot is my muse for this new, much crueler Beckett. Let's just say that being nearly destroyed really reshuffled your priorities and gives you a spine. This also contains what I like to call fictitious history. All of the events are real; only..they happened to the Honorable East India Company. Yeah. Minor detail. (And the head is not a real person. I couldn't find that information.)
The East India Trading Company was failing. With the fall of the Caribbean, and then the Townshend Acts in America, they were quickly running out of money. The Acts employed a duty on tea that the company brought from India, to England, then to the colonies. The colonists were protesting; refusing to buy tea. Storehouses in Boston and other port cities sat full. In the years since 1767, the company had gone from the power of the seas to barely able to leave port due to lack of funds. A year after the Act, a Company ship was seized in Boston Harbor. The men there then took the name The Sons of Liberty. Tensions had been and remained high. Then 1770 happened. Customs officers had requested military back up in Boston, which was under mob rule. They got what the wanted. During a skirmish in Boston, three colonists were shot, six more wounded, with two additional dying soon after from their wounds. The Company showed no qualms and instead shipped more agents to Boston.
The British government repealed the taxes, except the one on tea, insisting it was a matter of principal. The Company was still without funds, no thanks to the ignorance of the Parliament.
Lord North, the current leader of the English Parliament, had introduced a plan that had passed. Now, he would soon see the fruits of his labor.
Cutler Beckett had been living in the shadows, but not under a preverbal rock for the past ten years. His anger at how his Company was being run ran through his veins daily. He had watched in silence until he could no longer bear watching it all go to pot. He would take control and then… then everything would be as it should have been to begin with.
Beckett’s hands were curled into loose fists as he walked down the cobblestone streets on the way to the East India Trading Company Headquarters. His head hung slightly to keep the scars in shadow. When he entered, he did not stop for anyone. He very calmly stormed into the office of the governor. But it appears that he was expected.
“Cutler Beckett. I’ll be god damned. That lieutenant was telling the truth; you’re still alive,” a tall, rather skinny man said, reclining in a chair behind a large oaken desk.
“And you, Nathaniel Archer, are still an idiot,” Beckett retorted, lifting his head and uncurling his fists. “What have you done to my Company?”
Nathaniel Archer, the current head of the East India Company, leaned back in his chair.
“Ah, so you have heard of our current misfortune.”
“I have heard of your incompetence in letting a group of colonists run all over the greatest monopoly of the seas.”
Beckett remained relatively collected, insulting his former colleague in a smooth voice, free from any emotion.
“Your beloved Charles Townshend got us into this mess. How do you plan to get us out?”
Archer simply raised an eyebrow.
“I? Why not leave it up to Parliament. They, after all, make the laws and enforce Acts, not I.”
“And leave them to drown this Company? No. It is because of Parliament that storehouses full of tea sit idle. You will get this company out of this rut or I will do it for you.”
“You? As far anyone knows, and cares, you are still dead. Should several other members of the East India Trading Company catch a glimpse of you still walking around, they will take it upon themselves to shoot you themselves. You are a wanted man, Cutler Beckett. You allowed not only men to die on your watch, but that damned Jack Sparrow escaped again! How do you plan to rectify that problem?”
“Let the navy worry about Sparrow, and his dying breed of pirates. You have greater things to worry about. I am taking control of this company once more.”
Beckett calmly cocked a pistol at his side and raised it.
“I will have my life back.”
Archer did not budge.
“Oh. Are you? And if you do over throw me, which I highly doubt, what do you plan to do when you are assassinated by a fellow chairman? You cannot accomplish much if you are dead.”
“And you did not accomplish much while alive. So I dare say we’d be about even. Now, if you do not mind, you are currently occupying my seat. Yours is in a bar, getting too drunk to even move.”
Beckett sighed when Archer still did not budge. He aimed his pistol carefully then pulled the trigger. The molten ball grazed the top of Archer’s shoulder, causing him to grab it and double over in pain.
“It pains me that you think I jest. I assure you, I do not. I lost my life fighting to keep this Company in control of the seas. It only seems fit that I regain it by keeping it afloat.”
Archer raised his hand from his shoulder and looked at the blood that coated his fingers. The Cutler Beckett he had known would never actually have brought himself to shoot. He would have threatened him; that was for certain. No, the Cutler Beckett would have waited until he was on his way home and would have one of his slimy henchmen snipe him.
“I’m sure you will,” was the only thing he could think of to say as he stood up, still holding his shoulder.
He walked to Beckett’s side. He removed his hand from the wound on his shoulder then rubbed the blood onto the off-white shirt that Beckett wore.
Beckett allowed a soft smirk to cross his lips and looked down at the smeared blood. “I’ll keep that in mind, Nathaniel, while I clean up your mess.”
He replaced his pistol in its holster in his hip then moved to sit behind the desk. He glanced up to watch his rival leave the room, still clutching his shoulder. He smirked, taking what appeared to be the newest Act that was going to be introduced to Parliament, crumpling it up and throwing it into the nearby fireplace.