Pulvis et Umbra Sumus

[likeahurricane7]

Title: Pulvis et Umbra Sumus

Fandom: Pirates of the Caribbean; Sparrington

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: I have no claim on POTC or the lovely characters who populate it, even if it seems that James Norrington has, somewhat disconcertingly, made himself quite at home in my head with no apparent plans to leave. Jack Sparrow has been dropping by at random for years, as well, which surely doesn’t help matters.

Summary: Title translates to, “we are dust and shadow.” Sequel to Mobilis in Mobili and Ordo ab Chao. Mistakes are made, and for a member of James’ adoptive family, some difficult truths are learned.

Beta: The Most Honorable Porridgebird

Warnings: None. Except maybe a smidge of violence since someone gets garroted.


On January 18th 2007, Amina received the news that her great-uncle James had died at sea. His sailboat, the impressive one that filled her childhood and early-adolescent memories of him, had been found wrecked on a reef in the Caribbean.

When it had first been brought in, for investigation of James’ disappearance, Amina had come to see it, once the law had gotten all of their evidence from it. Investigators showed her some of the evidence, including a grey trench coat that looked very familiar. There had been a passport in it. They asked if she knew the man whose picture was depicted therein.

“Yes. He was my uncle’s lover.” She got some minor, numb satisfaction out of the slightly embarrassed, nervous looks on their faces. Distantly, she knew that bitterness and grief were having the effect of making her a little more cruel than usual, but she did not try overly hard to reign it in. Better a few acts of minor cruelty than the indignity of bursting into tears in front of everyone.

They stated that Jack was missing, too, and that there was evidence they had both been knocked overboard, despite having ropes tied about their waists to anchor them to the mast.

Amina recalled, from when they had let her see the boat, two ropes tied to the mast, both with frayed ends. “The ship must have rolled on a wave,” she murmured. “And then scraped past a reef. The ropes...”

“Yes, that is what we believe happened.”

Amina swallowed, aware of tears running down her face, but her expression remained stony and masked. “Do you need anything else from me?”

They did not.

Later, using part of the unexpectedly impressive inheritance she had received from him, Amina had the boat repaired. It, too, was part of her inheritance, as she had taken to sailing more than her cousins.

That had been three years ago. She was doing a great deal of traveling, since then.

Now, Amina found herself in Singapore, hiding behind a car, frozen in terror as she heard another burst of gunfire from far too close by. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw someone moving along the line of cars toward her. At first glance, she thought he was tall by Singapore standards, and moved like a cop. Upon closer inspection, he was not a native, but in fact of more European ancestry, and his cop-like movements were a façade--he could not fully repress a slightly off-kilter quality in his stride. It was strangely familiar. As he came closer, Amina saw a badge around his neck. He had short-cropped hair and was clean-shaven. He wore practical black slacks, a nondescript white shirt, and a light grey trench coat.

Then the gunfire went off again, still closer, and Amina turned her head, peering tentatively through the car windows toward the sounds. When she next glanced in the stranger’s direction, she nearly yelled, because he had managed to silently sidle up next to her.

“How many?” he asked curtly.

To Amina, his curt speech and American accent were all-too-obviously an act, because she had just recognized his face. “Jack!” It was scarcely a whisper. Amina suddenly felt the blood draining from her face.

He looked her in the face for the first time and his dark eyes grew very wide. “Oh. Bugger.” Then shots rang out again, one of them causing a window of the car they huddled behind to shatter. Jack shouted something.

Amina’s world went dark.

When Amina and her cousins were a lot smaller, they had gone on sailing trips with Amina’s father and her great-uncle James. One memorable trip, when she had been only nine, took them to the Caribbean. James had proved an excellent historical tour guide, showing them reefs and ruins of the old world all around Jamaica. He had even come close to shore near a place he said had once been a thriving port town over two hundred years ago: Port Royal, the city that sank.

He was the only one Amina had ever met who could talk about history for hours and never be boring. Part of it was his tendency to tell them stories with familiar names in it: family names.

“Right over there,” he had said, pointing out a spot with his finger, “was a home that once belonged to a commodore of the Royal Navy. When he died, he left it to a woman named Amina.”

Amina, at nine years old, had squealed. “Really?”

“Yes. You’re related to both of them, you know. The Norrington side is where you got your eyes.” He smiled at her very warmly. “One of the commodore’s brothers had the same color eyes, and when he returned to England, one of his descendants married one of Amina’s, years and years later.”

“What’s a commodore?” one of her cousins had asked.

James slipped into a different sort of explanation. He started out talking about the meaning of the rank, but wound up telling them a story about Commodore Norrington. He even surprised all of them by retrieving a sheathed saber from below deck. He told them to step back, and then unsheathed it. The beautiful blade had shone in the bright Caribbean sun, and there was an oddly distant look on James’ face as he examined it, until Amina’s father reminded him of where he had left off in his story.

“When he was promoted, the governor gave this to him as a gift. It was made by an excellent blacksmith named William Turner.”

Later that evening, camped around a fire on a deserted shore, James had told them a number of pirate stories that had to do with Port Royal. At first they were simply fascinating and realistic, but then, as the night grew darker and Amina’s father fell asleep where he sat, James told them a far more fantastical story about a cursed treasure.

The children, Amina among them, stayed up far too late every night for the rest of that vacation, coaxing more stories about that one peculiar pirate captain: the one with a compass that didn’t point north. James told them, then, about the heart of Davy Jones, and the map to the Aqua de Vida.

Amina had half-forgotten the stories over the years. She, like the rest of her cousins, had perhaps wondered idly, once they were older, where James had gotten such tales, how he knew so much about such obscure bits of their family history, and why he chose to put only one of their distant relatives into his more fanciful stories--but never enough to question him about it.

After all, they were only campfire stories, told to them in the distant days of their childhood, viewed later through a haze of childhood beliefs and fears.

James was an excellent storyteller, they knew. There was no reason to think that there was anything more in it.

Although Amina had once asked him, on a whim inspired by having a few odd dreams after watching a documentary about pirates, how he had gotten the commodore’s sword.

James had shot her a surprised look and smiled. “I’m surprised that you remember those stories.”

“Of course I do. They’re the best pirate tales I think any of us have ever heard. To hell with Blackbeard. Commodore Norrington could have taken him down, no problem.”

James had seemed about to add something to that, with that odd gleam in his eye that said there was a story there, but he only shook his head. “I received it as a gift. I know the maker’s mark, and I’m familiar with the sword’s description. William Turner made many fine swords in his short time as an uncredited master of his art in Port Royal, but the one given to the commodore was a special piece, made when Turner was at his peak, before various distractions affected his work.”

The fact that no one in the family could remember anyone owning the sword other than James was one easily overlooked.

Amina woke up in a very dimly lit, dank room. Her head hurt terribly and her arms seemed to be tied behind her back. Also, she was tied to a chair. She turned her head and saw Jack beside her similarly restrained, a few small cuts on his face and some blood and dirt smeared on his white shirt.

“Jack?”

He turned his head, looking at her with a mixture of caution and concern. “Amina. I’m so sorry about this, love.”

He head throbbed. “Why? Was it you who hit my head?”

“No. And they didn’t hit your head. You fainted, but when you started to wake up, they used some chloroform.”

“Who did?”

Jack hesitated. “Well, as you might’ve noticed, we’re currently locked up in a storage room aboard a large, but slightly run-down, cargo ship.”

As the disorientation began to ebb, Amina shook her head to clear it. “You... you were dead. I saw the ropes tied to the mast. I saw what the side of the boat looked like.”

Jack’s eyes fell shut. “Aye. It wasn’t... well, it was probably necessary, but that storm brought it about sooner than we’d planned, and more painfully, I might add.”

“You’re not making much sense.”

“We get out of this, love, and we’ll tell you all, all right? In the mean time, you need to focus on where we are, and what they think they know about us. They think you’re my wife, and you weren’t supposed to be trying to find me in Singapore. If they come in with intent to torture information out of me, do you think you can stay in character?”

“You were pretending to be a cop.”

“Actually, pretending to be FBI, love. The badge they got off me says ‘Special Agent’ and they think if I get free, I’ll tell the Feds which one of their own has been neck-deep in business with slave-traders from Bangkok to Singapore to the Ivory Coast.”

Amina had never felt so utterly lost. “What... Why are you doing this?”

“It started as a way to prevent myself being bored, but after a while it gets into the blood--rather like piracy, actually. James has been at it for over a century, an’ I can see why.” Jack’s grin was heated.

“Doing what?” Amina was going to ignore the word ‘century’ for now, because she sensed that she was in over her head, and needed to focus on matters more immediately at hand.

“Killing the slave trade,” Jack said simply. “It’s the traders who’ve caught us, and in the chaos of that gunfight, a quarter of ‘em got arrested. The rest either made a run for it, or are hiding here on this ship.”

They both fell silent at the sound of approaching footsteps: heavy boots and heavier feet wearing them.

“That sounds like their thug. He’s supposed to kill any real dangerous witnesses.” He shot her a look. “That’s a bit where the plan falls apart, though. You’re not supposed to be here.” Jack rolled his shoulders. “Follow my lead.”

The steps stopped at the door, and Amina felt her hackles rise as she heard the sounds of a ring of keys being sorted through and then used to unlock the door. Shortly after the door opened partway and a bit of light leaked in, there was a soft sound like a muffled cough. The visible hand on the doorknob let go, and vanished. Shadows shifted across the shaft of light, and there were some faint rustling sounds, a couple of shuffling footsteps, then the sound of a large, unwieldy thing being lowered to the floor with an effort. A minute passed.

When the door swung open, there was a large body near the threshold and a tall, graceful man wiping blood off of his hands, and also what appeared to be a bit of piano wire, the latter of which he pocketed, along with the keyring.

Jack sighed deeply in relief as James approached them slowly, his eyes still adjusting to the dark. “James. You got the message, then.”

“Yes, but why on earth did you-” Then he saw Amina’s face and stopped dead in his tracks, his face a portrait of pure shock. “Oh,” he said, very quietly.

After allowing them a moment to stare at each other awkwardly, Jack shifted in his seat. “James. Escape. Now.”

James’ green eyes grew suddenly dark and sharp as he turned away from Amina. “Yes. Thank you.” He pulled a knife from his pocket and with a few quick, efficient cuts, freed Jack enough for the ex-pirate to expertly disentangle himself. James then knelt by Amina’s chair, taking a little more care. “Are you all right?” he asked softly.

“Yes. No. I don’t know. Get me out of here. After this, you owe me a hell of an explanation.” Her voice wavered, tears running down her face. “You complete asshole,” she added, halfheartedly.

James pulled her to her feet and wrapped his arms around her, letting her cling to him for a moment. Then he took a deep breath. “We have to go. Can you manage?”

She pulled away, her expression stubbornly stoic. “Yes. Yes. Let’s go.”

They took a winding, convoluted path. Amina hardly remembered any of it, focused as she was on not crying, and not panicking, even when shots rang out after them as they leapt off the ship into a small speedboat. Jack darted to the wheel and the motor roared to life and took off with such speed that only James’ iron grip around Amina’s waist kept her from flying backwards into the water. Within minutes, they had gotten nearly a mile away, and the first of the explosions started back on the ship.

At first Amina clung to him, crying silently into the collar of his coat as he held them both steady while the little boat seemed to leap from wave to wave. It was a long time before Jack slowed the boat down, and the motor got quiet enough for conversation, and Amina was able ask, “What just happened?”

“They had to clear their actual ‘cargo’ before making this little voyage, as none of them wished to be caught anywhere near them,” James explained. “I made sure that the transfer was intercepted by the real Federal Agents we tipped off. They now have their hands too full with an accidentally-destroyed crime ring and one of their own agents in custody for being a part of it.”

Amina lifted her head and stared at him, pulling away slightly. “Who... who are you?”

James held her gaze, then looked away, out over the water toward the next round of explosions. “My name is James Norrington. I was born in England in 1714. You are named after a woman who saved my life and adopted me into her family when I was a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, taken hostage and hidden in with the rest of the cargo on a slave ship.”

Amina raised a hand to the side of her head as though it hurt. “I don’t believe this. You cannot expect me to-” She stopped when he placed her hand on his chest and she felt something hot and sticky under her touch. Her eyes widened. “What-”

“I was shot. They thought me dead, and so threw me into a disused part of the ship. That was how I got to you. I thought this might be an effective way to show you that I am actually immortal.” He released her hand, letting her pull away. He found the bullet-hole in his shirt and tore, exposing the wound. He retrieved a small flashlight from his pocket and turned it on, pointing it at the wound. The bullet had clearly gone straight through his heart.

Amina covered her mouth with her less bloodied hand. “Oh my God.”

James turned off the flashlight. “My bones have already healed from where the bullet broke them, altering its path. However.” He moved to experimentally roll his shoulder and winced. “The bullet is just under my shoulder blade.”

“Let me see,” Amina said.

James shrugged out of his coat and pulled off his shirt with further wincing, then handed her the flashlight before turning himself around partway. She found the bullet easily. It was larger than a .38, and bulged out a little, just where his shoulder blade could catch on it if he shifted his arm about. Amina pushed her thumb against one side of it, to see if she could move it, but it was caught between two ribs. James made a low, pained sound.

Jack, unable to take it anymore, cut the motor, which caused James and Amina both to protest at the way the boat abruptly jerked, coasting along without being propelled, and thus wound up leaping about on its own wake.

“We’re in open water,” James cautioned.

“I hate it when you go and get yourself shot,” Jack muttered.

“So it’s my turn to be on this end of the stick, is it?”

Jack snorted, rummaging in a storage area in the floor of the boat before pulling out a small box that looked like a medical kit. Amina shifted aside as he knelt behind James. “Hold that light up for me, love.” He retrieved a small scalpel and a pair of what looked almost like pliers from the kit.

Amina tried not to watch and failed, as Jack made a neat incision to expose the bullet, and then yanked it out like a loose tooth. James yelled and cursed impressively. Jack put pressure on the wound with a bit of gauze and tossed the bullet overboard.

“Focus, man. You don’t need to bleed this much.”

James took a deep breath and closed his eyes, forcing himself to be quiet and focusing his energy on recovery for a moment.

Jack lifted the gauze away.

Amina watched as the wound closed itself just enough to require no stitches, and to cease bleeding; all within a few seconds.

James sighed, sounding tired, the effort having drained him a bit. “It’s not as though I enjoy getting shot, either,” he added, turning to face them both again and shooting Jack a look.

Jack merely ran an hand through James’ hair, to sooth himself as much as the other man.

“Jack?” Amina asked softly.

“Aye?”

“Are you...” She swallowed. “Did you know about this?”

“I knew it as soon as I ran into him again. In Greece.” Jack leaned on James’ shoulder. “I’m nine years older than him.”

Amina sat back, leaning against the seat Jack had formerly occupied whilst piloting the boat. “You...” She trailed off, clearly at a loss.

“Do you remember visiting the Caribbean?” James asked suddenly.

After only a slight hesitation, Amina nodded.

“I told all of you a story, when you were still small children, about pirates and cursed gold, about Davy Jones, and about the Aqua de Vida,” James said quietly. “Do you remember?”

Amina remained silent for a few long moments. Then her eyes suddenly widened. “You-you’re the commodore. Commodore Norrington.”

James nodded.

Then the rest of it hit her like a ton of bricks and she stared at Jack with sudden awe and disbelief. “You’re shitting me. You... You’re Captain Jack Sparrow?”

Jack turned his head and raised his eyebrows at James.

James met his look, smirked a little and shook his head. “They’re good stories. The children loved them.”

“But he... you... the commodore died,” Amina whispered.

“And so I did. However, death was not altogether permanent for either of us, as you can see. I had a tougher time bringing myself back, given that I was mostly on my own until I managed to get the attention of the captain of the Flying Dutchman, who felt that he owed me a few favors.”

Amina’s eyes squeezed shut. Her head hurt. “Aqua de Vida,” she said finally.

“Once I’d visited, and got my ship back again,” Jack explained, “I left the map with Will. Safest place for it, really.”

“Will Turner gave me a second chance, and the map, when I asked if I might use it. I also left it in his custody, once I had secured my immortality. The fountain has since vanished into the Florida swamp.” James refrained from revealing the truth of its current status. Perhaps another time.

Amina nodded slowly. “I remember. I just can’t believe...” She shook her head. “No. I can. You’ve had to fake your deaths a lot, haven’t you?” She ran a hand through her hair. “Have you got anything to drink on this boat?”

Jack dipped his fingers into the medical kit and pulled out a surprisingly large metal hip flask. “Rum?”

“I almost don’t care if it’s rubbing alcohol,” Amina muttered, and gratefully took the flask, unscrewing the cap and taking a swig. She coughed, half-choking on it. “Then again, maybe it is.”

“Nah. Too much sugar.” Jack paused to brush a light almost-apologetic kiss to James’ lips, then got to his feet and got the boat moving again.

James pulled his shirt back on and smiled with a sigh of relief as Amina sat next to him and curled against his side. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She offered him the flask of rum. He accepted it with thanks, and took a considerably more impressive swig before handing it back to her.

“Showoff.”

“No. Sailor. Showing off would have involved emptying it, and even then, it would have been showing off only if I proceeded to empty a few more,” James murmured.

Amina made a noncommittal sound and took a more tentative swig, braced for it this time. “Did he know?”

“Hm?”

“When you came back, did he know?” She took another swig, now starting to feel the warmth of it spreading out from her belly. She was tired and stressed and intoxication hit her quickly.

James hesitated. “No. He did not. Not until we ran into each other in Greece shortly before you first met him in Venice.”

Amina’s brow furrowed. “Really?”

“Yes.”

“I’d thought there was something odd about it. You two seemed... like you were still expecting to wake up from a sort of dream and find that you were closing your hand on empty air. I’d just thought it was a spat you two had gotten into before sailing to meet me.” She looked up at James as shrewdly as she could, given that the rum was having such a quick and immediate effect on her. “Not now, though.”

“No.” James looked at the back of Jack’s head and smiled faintly. “No, we’ve been reassured. It drives us both insane, but the work that I-we do, is dangerous enough to remind us who we are, and how much we value each other.”

Amina reached out and prodded James’ now-closed bullet wound on his chest. “I can tell.”

James took hold of her hand.

“Your heart was still beating.”

“The most lethally damaged tissues heal immediately. For whatever reason, less mortal injuries, such as skin abrasions, take more time to heal--most likely because they are not so high-priority. Mind you, by more time, I mean a day or two. In a week, I will not even have a scar there.”

Amina’s brow furrowed. “But you have scars.”

“From before I drank the Aqua de Vida. Those, I will never lose.”

“Oh.” Amina shifted against his side. She had emptied half the flask by this point, and struggled to put the cap back on until James helped her. Satisfied, she then fell asleep leaning on him.

Upon arriving safely ashore again, James carried her up to their hotel suite. Her body conveniently concealed the bloodstains on his shirt.

James settled her on the couch and covered her with a blanket before retreating to the bedroom with Jack, who immediately turned on a light and told him, in commanding tones, to strip.

Rolling his eyes, James obliged.

Jack began his examination, starting with the known wound, which he gave a cursory review before moving on. There were another two wounds: through-and-throughs, one just a few inches to the left of James’ navel, and the other just above James’ collarbone on the left, where his neck and shoulder met.

“You didn’t have to get yourself bloody shot,” Jack muttered.

“Neither do you, most of the time,” James murmured. “In this case, it was the quickest and most expedient way to reach the right section of the ship without hindrance.”

“You seem to’ve been shot three times, and one of those was straight through the heart. I’d say that’s a hindrance, James.”

“Jack...”

They held each other’s gazes for a long few moments. Without looking away, James began unbuttoning Jack’s shirt with methodical grace, working his way down, untucking it from his pants, then unbuckling his belt. James stepped in closer, so that their noses almost touched. He inhaled Jack’s scent slowly, savoring the moment. They had worked in tandem with each other on this latest project, but at a distance, never staying in the same place, making a point of looking like perfect strangers. It had been quite trying, actually.

Once Jack’s belt was out of the way, James unbuttoned Jack’s shirt-cuffs, and ran his hands along Jack’s shoulders, pushing the fabric back until it fell down the ex-pirate’s arms to the floor. James then rested a hand lightly over the swollen, jagged red mark on Jack’s mid-back. “Who stabbed you?”

“It was some stupid mugger, caught me on my way to the scene,” Jack muttered, his tone suggesting that he knew exactly what James was getting at, and that he’d still not cede the point.

“You’re lucky they failed to notice.”

“I made sure I didn’t bleed much.” Jack raised his eyebrows.

“I needed to look dead, and I needed to reserve my energy.”

“Aye,” Jack agreed reluctantly and leaned in closer, as James’ fingers ran through his now-short hair, scritching at his scalp gently.

“I’m still a little mystified to see you with so little hair,” James murmured.

“It’s just a costume, love. You’ve worn ‘em, too.” Jack smirked. “You looked particularly good in that high-roller getup at the start of this chase. Made me think maybe you really were James Bond, back in yer espionage days. Armani suits you.”

“And the sight of you in white tie the next night threatened to undermine my performance entirely.” James kissed the corner of Jack’s jaw. In a more solemn, but softer tone, he whispered, “You needn’t be upset, Jack. You cannot lose me that way. I am far too stubborn to be deterred by firearms.”

Jack wrapped his arms around James’ waist, his hands wandering slowly. “Prove it to me.” He bit at James’ throat, then ran his tongue along the edge of the wound just above his collarbone.

“Of course.” James unbuttoned and unzipped Jack’s pants, pushing them down until they fell to the floor and Jack stepped out of them. Soon after, they tumbled into the bed, and remained active there until Jack was more than assured that James was alive, and well, and still loved him.

Jack, unusually, was the first one awake that morning. Then again, James usually slept like the dead after he’d been significantly wounded. The ex-pirate reluctantly disentangled from James, performed his morning ablutions, put on a pair of sleeping pants, and headed out into the kitchenette.

Not long after he had made a quiet call down to room service, Amina joined him at the table, stealing a sip of his water and using it to swallow two aspirin she’d found in the medical kit, which Jack had brought up to the suite with them in case James had been concealing any further bullets in need of removal.

“Morning,” she said, her eyes barely open. She then folded her arms on the table and rested her head on them.

“Morning, love.” He stroked her hair for a few minutes in companionable silence.

By the time food arrived, the aspirin had helped the pain in Amina’s head enough that she could contemplate eating. She tucked into a helping of toast and jam, as well as a couple of sausage links while Jack indulged in an omelet full of various meats and vegetables.

“I’m not sure I understand anything anymore,” Amina muttered. “Not just the immortality bit, either. I thought I had a pretty good understanding of the two of you.”

Jack took a sip of coffee. “How so?”

“Well, how is it the two of you... I mean...” She gestured vaguely. “He tried to hang you. And there was the girl, what was her name--Elizabeth. That business. And he stole the heart from you. And he died. How exactly did that turn into this?”

Jack closed his eyes for a moment, thinking about it as he took another fortifying sip of coffee. “It’s all a bit more complicated than that, love. You forget: you got the children’s version of events. There was more to it.”

“Like what?”

“Like the fact that I’d wanted to ravish him from the first time I met him.”

Amina blinked a few times. “Okay.”

“And not just because he looked so damned good in that popinjay uniform, either. Have you seen him use a sword, love?”

“Er. Yes.” Amina recalled her brother taking fencing lessons, and James giving him pointers in the middle of the park, both of them using walking sticks. After a while, due to the summer heat, they had removed their shirts. She remembered the looks on the faces of women, and some men, who had passed them by whilst watching ever so intently. At least two of them had run into a signpost over the course of those few hours of practice.

“First sight of him I had was at sword-point. I didn’t get to cross blades with him until later, mind, but the way he carried himself left an impression. From his side, I think there was a certain fascination that started the first time I tricked him, and stole his ship.” Jack smirked: still smug about that one.

“Then there was the whole rescue situation, when I got bloody marooned with Lizzy on that island.” Jack looked very thoughtful. “You should’ve seen him that day, love. Lizzy pleading with him to go rescue Will Turner from certain death, and he looked miserable. I knew then the Governor had him by a noose around his neck--still don’t know quite what it was, because it was more than just his love for Lizzy keepin’ him quiet. I know because I tried to persuade him myself. I told him that the Pearl wasn’t likely to make good time, and I said, ‘Think about it: the Black Pearl: the last real pirate threat in the Caribbean, mate. How can you pass that up?’”

Jack seemed lost in memory for a moment, then looked at Amina again. “D’you know what he told me?”

Amina shook her head.

Jack did a fair imitation of James-the-Commodore, saying, “‘By remembering that I serve others, Mr. Sparrow, not only myself.’” Jack shook his head. “So bloody serious. He was the first officer I ever met who could say that sort of thing seriously, and mean it, given how corrupt the bastards I’d met had usually been. He was almost always sarcastic with me, but not about honor, and not about duty. It mystified me a bit. Then Elizabeth said her piece. I’ll bet you can recall that one.”

“She asked him to save the blacksmith as a wedding gift,” Amina murmured.

“The look on his face when she asked... He knew, I think, that she was in love with Will, but there was this hope in his look. It was broken, but it made his decision for him, or--at the very least--he knew that he’d been given an excuse that Governor would accept.”

Amina looked down at the table.

“One bit in that story he might not’ve told you... In fact, he didn’t, I’m sure of it. After we left the Isla de Muerta, he didn’t send me down to the brig at first, but kept me on deck while he organized everything: the prisoners taken below, the wounded stabilized, the dead arranged on the deck in preparation for burial at sea once they reached open waters. There were more than twenty of his own men dead.” Jack added a bit of rum to his coffee from the flask in the kit on the table, and then took another sip. “Once everything was together, he took me aside, still in sight of everyone on deck, but not close enough for us to be overheard. He was a sight, too...”

Jack was nervous, leaning against the rail next to Commodore Norrington in all of his moonlit glory. Norrington’s uniform still looked crisp and sharp in the moonlight, even with all of the bloodstains. And if Jack wasn’t mistaken, a sword-point had gotten under Norrington’s guard and caught him a small wound at his waist on the left side: probably due to having more than two or three opponents at the time.

At first, when he and the whelps had boarded, the sight of Norrington post-battle had chilled Jack to the bone: fierce and cold and covered in other people’s blood. Then the pirate had seen the momentary hurt on the navy-man’s face when Lizzy had shied away from him, and Jack had remembered that the blue and white tiger was, in fact, an honorable man somewhere underneath the finery and the fierceness. The trouble was, that had only made the good commodore seem so terribly beautiful that Jack was finding himself staring--quite a lot, in fact.

When the man had pulled Jack aside for this little chat, the pirate felt it necessary to remind himself that the apparition before him was a mere mortal.

“How’s the wound?” Jack asked quietly.

James, formerly staring contemplatively across the waves, shot him a sharp look. “As well as it can be. Do take care not to mention it,” he warned.

“Rest assured, Commodore, the rest haven’t noticed a thing. They’re too busy either worshipping you, avoiding lookin’ at you, or being scared out of their wits in general,” Jack murmured. “What is it you want of me? I’ll not give you the fear, and I’m not so good at worship when I’ve these heavy irons on, savvy?”

“Neither, Mr. Sparrow.”

“Captain.”

James arched an eyebrow.

Jack scowled at him.

James looked away out over the water again. “I want to thank you, for breaking the curse. I was able to understand enough of Mr. Turner’s babbling explanations and pleas to gather the impression you had as much to do with it, or more, than he did. I do not want to know how many more men I might have lost, if not for the distraction provided by the Black Pearl’s disappearance, and your breaking the curse shortly thereafter. You have my gratitude.”

Jack considered this. “Do I?”

“Yes. You also have my apologies for being unable to do more than thank you.”

Jack considered offering the man another means of showing gratitude, but his survival instincts took precedence. “You mean, of course, that you’ve still got to hang me. Even though we’ve got more than one good deed--in fact, we’ve several good deeds here, surely worth a bit of a reprieve from judgment on my lifetime of wickedness,” Jack said.

“Yes. And you do indeed deserve it,” James said, almost under his breath.

Jack’s eyes widened. “Wot?”

James held his gaze evenly. “I usually know a good man when I see one, Mr. Sparrow. In your case, it still takes a bit of squinting to even remotely make out something resembling a moral framework supporting some of your actions. That said, however, I am not personally of the opinion that you deserve to hang.”

For a long moment, Jack only stared. “Why do it, then?”

“Because it is not my decision. Not all of us who captain ships are independent and free. There’s a collar around my neck other than the one provided by this dress uniform,” James said, gesturing toward his cravat.

“And the good Gov has the leash, then?”

James nodded slowly. “In this matter, at least.” Something in his expression prevented Jack from prying further.

“You could always run with me,” Jack said.

At first, James’ brow furrowed as though he could not believe he had heard that correctly, then it smoothed into open surprise for a moment when he looked at Jack again, only to crease once more with the faintest hint of confusion.

“You’re good enough at hunting us, that you’d be a damned good pirate if you turned your eye on a merchant ship,” Jack explained helpfully.

James looked away with a hint of a smirk, trying very hard not to actually smile, even a little. Jack felt himself grinning in response, suddenly very pleased with himself.

Then James shook his head. “I could no more survive as a pirate than a fish can survive out of water, Sparrow. Without honor, I am not myself, and without a hold on my identity, I do not want to see what kind of degenerate monster I would become. I know too well what I am capable of, on the occasions that I forget to think rationally.” His expression was solemn again, but there remained a hint of lingering amusement about him. “I require purpose as much as I require breath.”

Jack nodded slowly. “That’s how they got that collar there, you know.”

“I know.” He glanced briefly at Jack. “You will doubtlessly make an escape attempt. Possibly, you will make several.”

“Aye. Wouldn’t you?”

“Of course.” James turned away from the sea to look over the deck of his ship. “I only request that you do not steal my remaining ship in the process; otherwise, however, I do hope that you succeed.”

Jack examined the commodore closely. “An’ I hope you get that cut looked at before you get a fever.”

“I have a strong constitution,” James said simply. He seemed thoughtful for a moment. “If I send you into the brig with the others, I think they shall kill you before morning. You are not exactly a popular man down there, tonight.”

Jack winced. “You’d be right.”

“Hm.”

After the dead had been buried at sea with due ceremony, instead of sending Jack down to the brig, the commodore had him brought into the main cabin with him, under close guard, of course. The commodore did not sleep. He instead wrote the records of the men he had lost, each by name, and then called in one of the ship’s doctors to find out if there had been any he did not yet know about.

The doctor entered, still wiping blood from his hands with a wet cloth, steaming from the boiling-hot water he’d dipped it in. He sat before the commodore as Norrington continued his restless movements: remaining unseated while writing, taking a look out of the stern windows now and then to check the stars and be sure they were on course, and then flipping through records he had just written to remind himself of where his train of thought had been going. The doctor was halfway through his explanation before he finally noticed that the commodore was hurt, and suddenly found the audacity to demand a look at the injury.

Commodore Norrington tried and failed to deter the man, but nonetheless shrugged out of his coat, revealing a large half-dried bloodstain along the side of his waistcoat and along the waistband of his breeches, where the blood from the wound had seeped down. The doctor tried to look at the wound, through the mess, then shook his head and made further demands.

Jack watched with intense and almost breathless interest. If the commodore noticed his staring, he was apparently determined to ignore it as he shed his waistcoat and shirt, crossing his arms over his chest as the doctor wiped at the dried blood on and around the wound with a clean corner of the now lukewarm towel. Jack found himself thinking about marble statues, until Norrington shifted slightly to accommodate the doctor’s examination, and several battle-scars caught the light of the lamp. Then Jack lost much of his capacity for coherent thought altogether.

Norrington hardly flinched, even as the doctor actively scrubbed at the wound and declared that it would require stitches. Before the doctor could run off to fetch medical supplies, Norrington stopped him, and fetched a suitable needle and thread from one of his desk drawers.
The doctor shot him an odd look.

“I normally take care of my own minor wounds,” James said simply. “I need you to help my men more urgently than myself on most occasions.”

As the doctor began the painful process of the stitching, Norrington searched the room for an adequate distraction, and his eyes landed on Jack Sparrow.

Jack tried to school his expression into something calm and mask-like, but there must have been a lingering hint of something more obviously readable, because Norrington looked away quickly, and Jack could have sworn that the man had blushed.

James sent one of Jack’s guards to fetch a clean shirt from his cabin.

“Waistcoat, too, sir?”

“No. If it bleeds any further, I would rather not lose another to the stains.”

The marine ran off.

Once the doctor’s worries were eased by the stitching, James calmly re-dressed while the man finished reporting on the other injured men. None further, it seemed, were in danger of losing their lives.

Commodore Norrington dismissed him, and determinedly ignored Jack Sparrow’s unseemly staring for the rest of the voyage.

“And as I understand it, he gave me a day’s head start out of Port Royal when I did escape.” Jack finished his omelet and pushed the plate aside. “I rather liked him after that, and not just in the purely lascivious sense.”

“What about after that? After the hurricane.”

“Well, he was right about himself, wasn’t he? About what he could become without a purpose to guide him. That was how he turned into the rogue I met in Tortuga. I’d thought him lost. I couldn’t trust him, because he couldn’t trust himself, at that point. He’d easily got it in his head to kill me a few times, and I’d not have entirely blamed him if he’d managed it. Not to say I wasn’t more than a bit livid when I found out he’d took the heart.”

“I wondered,” Amina said.

“But you see, love: I died. And that whole debacle was a bit distracting. I went mad in the locker for a considerable while. He was off being an admiral, I was where I was driving everyone else mad. Then, when it was all over, I tried to pull my brain back together. It was hard to work out where I was, and where everyone else bloody was, and Lizzy told me he was dead, and how he’d died.” Jack poured more coffee from the thermos that room service had brought in, and drank it.

“I was still more than a bit mad, so I couldn’t make heads or tails of it, really. Not until I’d found myself secure in the knowledge I’d never wind up in the locker again: immortal.” He gestured at himself proudly. “And I had my ship back, I’d killed that rat Barbossa again, and I had some grand horizon-chasing planned out. I started thinking about the trade routes and where to strike at ‘em, and how to avoid Norrington. That was about when it actually hit me, see. It was a long time later, but I’d finally gotten a grip on myself again, and it sunk in that ol’ Norrington was gone, and not coming back, so I thought.”

Jack set down his coffee mug and looked Amina in the eye very seriously. “I’m not a man who carries many regrets, love, but I carried the regret that I’d lost that man for a long bloody time, even when I thought I’d managed to leave the memories of those days far behind me. I’m a pirate. I don’t easily forget missed opportunities to catch a treasure as fine as him.”

Amina held his gaze for a moment longer, then glanced at something over his shoulder.

A moment later, Jack shivered as he felt a breath on the side of his neck, followed by a soft kiss as James’ hands caressed down his arms. He could feel the warmth of James’ body behind him as the ex-commodore quietly rumbled, “I love you, too, Jack.”

Amina was surprised to see Jack Sparrow faintly blush.

“I could almost think one or both of you’d planned this,” Jack growled, but continued to arch back in order to get a bit closer to James, who was leaning over the low back of his dining chair.

James smiled softly. His hair was still a mess from sleeping on it, and he too was dressed in only a pair of sleeping pants. His were navy blue, in contrast to the grey-and-black flannel ones Jack wore.

Amina sniggered. “God, you two are too adorable for words.”

Both of them shot her odd looks, which she ignored.

“Dare I ask how long you’ve been listening?” Jack asked, as James took a seat next to him and lifted the lid from a dish of fried eggs and toast.

“Long enough to learn that you got far more enjoyment from watching me doctored than I had ever expected.”

Jack smirked a little. “It was a fine show.”

“What of your version of events, Uncle?”

James stilled for a moment and met her gaze in a silent question.

Amina raised her eyebrows expectantly as if to say, Yes, I still plan to call you that. Now are you going to tell me your story or what?

James smiled, even as the tips of his ears reddened slightly. “At first meeting, of course, I thought him insane. Pleasing to look at, but clearly mad as a hatter.” He took a bite of egg and toast, ignoring Jack’s mock-scandalized look. “Then he stole my ship, and I reluctantly ceded that he might actually be almost half of what his legend depicted him to be. It was in my nature, at that point in my life, to value people based on the intelligence they displayed. Pirates in my past experiences had rarely shown any. When Jack showed his intellect and cunning with that theft, it changed my perception of him. On the one hand, he was a pirate and acted very much like a fool; on the other, he was oddly charming if one let one’s guard down, and clearly possessed a keen mind hidden under his heavily decorated hair.”

Jack was now frowning at him due to the over-playful language, compared to the solemnity he himself had just displayed.

James beamed up at him. “You were thus a fascinating sort of puzzle for me. It was difficult not to get distracted. I had to keep my guard up, or you might notice that I was actually almost fond of you, so long as your targets were other people. Whenever you spoke to Governor Swann, for instance, it was always entertaining to watch, if only because you positively tormented him. I could not, however, appear so easily swayed.”

Jack’s eyes lit up. “That’s what it was!”

Amina and James arched a brow at him in unison.

Jack stood up and leaned into James’ personal space in a manner most people might have found unnerving. James remained perfectly still. “That,” Jack said, pointing at him accusingly. “You stayed still. Every time. Everyone else leaned away, got a little offended. Not you, you unflappable, maddening bastard.”

James chuckled softly, still not moving. “If I were to move back, I would have been letting you toy with me, or lead me to let my guard down, as you had the others. If I remembered not to let you lead my actions, I could better prevent you from feeling that you had me figured out as neatly as you did everyone else.”

Jack bit his lip. “Aye.” Reluctantly, he took his seat again, smirking. “Do go on, James.”

“I think you captured it rather well in your own summary. There is not much for me to add. My life went down in a hurricane and I lost everything, including my sense of self, for a very long time. I was foolish enough to let shame and disgust with myself prevent me from going home to the people who might have helped me regain my sanity. Instead, my drunken antics found me joining Elizabeth and sailing on your ship. Unlike before, I was easily manipulated, with none of my characteristic control, but with most of my shrewdness still intact. Thus, I seized upon opportunity when I found it, and committed a betrayal that still makes me wince to recall. In fact, most of my actions from that time in my life cause me to wince when I recall them,” James murmured.

“Afterwards, the finery did not quite fit properly: not even once my mental faculties were in working order again--recovered as they were through regular exercise and a sense of purpose to guide them. Of course, the purpose began to feel hollow all too soon. Lord Beckett was a greedy, sly, and intelligent man, but he was also rather sadistic and cruel. That alone could be expected of any businessman, but there were some matters in which he had involved himself that I could not, even in my most desperate state, have allied myself with.”

Taking a deep breath, James explained, “The night that Elizabeth had been captured by the Dutchman, along with her ship and crew, I had just discovered records in the main cabin which suggested that Beckett had been paying off members of Parliament to secure funding and protection for the slave trade.”

Jack shot him a surprised look.

James nodded at him. “I had planned to begin work against Beckett and the East India Company from within, after helping Elizabeth escape. When I was, instead, killed, I decided even as the life left me that I could not abandon my newly-discovered purpose: for the first time, it had been a purpose which originated not in the ideology or the commands of others, but from myself. Of all the times for me to be struck down...” He shook his head. “Needless to say, I began struggling for a means of return, any means I could seize upon, as soon as I reached the other side. I still do not recall what happened to me along the way, but some months later, I found myself lying on the deck of the Flying Dutchman with William Turner looking at me in disbelief.”

“I’ve already explained my actions following that, and the achievement of immortality. Afterward, I kept expecting to cross paths with you again, Jack: perhaps somewhere along the way as I toiled towards my purpose. In truth, I wanted to see you again because I was no longer the man I had once been. I was curious to know what you might see when you looked at me. Years, then decades passed without a glimpse of you, and I began to call myself foolish for still wondering, and recalling you so often--not that it did any good at stopping such thoughts.”

“And then there was Greece,” Jack murmured.

James beamed at him. “Yes. And then there was Greece.”

Amina stared at them both for a long moment. “Wow.”

“How exactly did this conversation start, in any case?” James inquired.

“I was trying to reconcile the romance I thought I had understood, with the idea that you two are both characters from a campfire story. I understood Uncle James and Jack, and how they worked despite being pretty different from each other. I didn’t quite see how Commodore Norrington and Captain Jack Sparrow had become them.”

“Ah.” James was blushing again.

“But you see it now?”

“Yes. I think I do.”

They returned Amina to her own hotel room that afternoon, and James lingered at her door as she was berated over the phone relentlessly by her worry-stricken mother, who had thought her lost, or kidnapped, or dead.

Jack leaned against the wall beside him, still dressed in clothing more appropriate for a Fed than he was usually comfortable with, but he tended to stay in character more easily when he wasn’t tempted to don his more usual garb, so he tended not to pack any of it when they were on a job.

Once Amina had reassured her mother, and even promised to head home on the first available flight out, she turned and stared at them for a moment.

“I suppose it’s not likely I’ll ever see you two again.”

James looked at the floor. “Usually, it is safer for me to wait at least a generation before actively rejoining the family.” Then he approached her, plucking a small note from his pocket. “However, if you would like to keep in contact with us, and perhaps arrange to see us now and again... So long as you can keep what you know of us to yourself.” He offered her the note.

Tentatively, Amina took it. “Thank you.” She wrapped her arms around his neck loosely. “I’m glad. I’ve missed you so much.”

He returned the embrace, petting her hair. After a long few moments, they both let go. “I’ve missed you, too. Take care, Amina.”

Before he could leave, Amina also dragged Jack into a tight hug, and hissed in his ear, “You two are quite possibly the luckiest bastards on the planet.”

He chuckled, and whispered back, “Don’t I know it, love. We’ll take care of each other, don’t you worry.”

She pulled away and smiled at him again. “I know.” Then, addressing them both, she added, “I hope you know that I expect to hear from you as well. I don’t need top secret details, but the occasional postcard, if only to remind me that you’re alive and that the past couple of days haven’t been a hallucination.”

After they left, Amina watched from her window as the pair of them walked away down the street, into the crushing crowds. Singapore wasn’t exactly a place that they could safely and unobtrusively hold hands in public, but they didn’t seem to need to: walking close together, side by side, their shoulders or arms always touching.

Shaking her head, Amina smiled, strangely feeling both unnerved and reassured to find that there were, in fact, still some traces of old magic in the world.



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