Penance More Will Do
This has been written for ironic_joy, who wanted post-hurricane fic with internal conflict and either figurative or literal ghosts and didn’t want slash, character basing or Norrington as “Emo Angsty McWhinybitch” You’re all going to have to read it to see how successful I was with the prompts.
Title: Penance More Will Do
Author: Meddow
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Summary: In the wake of the hurricane, James Norrington finds himself drifting in a longboat someplace between life and death and with some unwanted company.
Author’s Notes: A big thanks to jadeddiva for the beta
Credit has to go to Samuel Taylor Coleridge whose Rime of the Ancient Mariner inspired this. It was from there I nicked the title.
Concrit is always welcome
~*~*~*~
For all the noise the waves made crashing against the side of the Dauntless, for all the roars of thunder and claps of lightning, for all the desperate screams and yells from the unfortunate men cast into the unforgiving sea, in the depth below the waves it was silent.
He could not struggle against the ropes that had wound themselves around his body and were now dragging him down with his ship. The blow his head had taken when he was forced by the final wave into the wheel had left him dazed and slow.
But even if he could make perfect sense of the water filling his lungs and know that these were his final few moments of life, would he choose to fight? It had been him that had stared at the clouds on the horizon and decided the Dauntless should brave the storm. That decision had been his and his alone and so if any life was to be claimed in the waves, it should be his own. He should be Jonah sacrificed to the sea in the hope that some survived.
In the peacefulness of the depth, some part of James Norrington accepted his fate.
It was then that the ropes eased their hold. Arms locked around his and forced him to float upwards.
The deafening sound of the storm once more filled his ears as he surfaced. The waves beat his body against something - a boat. He felt the hard edge of the wood scrape against his chest as he was pulled over the edge and on board.
In his hazy blindness he managed to open his eyes just once before unconsciousness claimed him. He saw his men; their silhouettes against the night sky with oars in hand, rowing calmly through the waves.
~*~*~*~
There was a crunch, a fluid crunch. It was a sound instantly recognisable to James - a person biting into an apple.
James opened his eyes to the red dawn sky and the slow gentle rocking of a longboat in a calm sea.
He pulled himself up to a sitting position and cast his eyes up on an unfamiliar man with an unkempt beard and sickly yellow-ringed eyes. James was certain he had never seen this man before in his life but he had come across enough pirates in his time to recognise one when one was sitting before him. They often dresses as the man did with once fine civilian clothes. He had once theorised this was in an attempt to make themselves look more respectable.
Turning his head he found that there were no others. They were alone aboard the longboat. The man took another bite of his apple and grinned at him. James put his hand to his hip and noticed the absence of his sword and pistol. Glancing at the pirate, he noticed he was similarly disarmed, though James knew he would still have to be weary.
“There’d be no use for weapons here, Commodore,” the man said, sounding out his James’ title with a hint of distain.
“Who are you?” James asked. “And what has happened to my crew?”
“I am just a simple sailor lost at sea. The same, it appears, as you.”
“I very much doubt that. Now where are my crew?”
“Your crew? They were never here,” the man replied.
James sighed as he reminded himself that he should know better than to try and get a straight answer out of a pirate.
He had another look around. Calm water surrounded them on all sides; there was no land in sight. Neither were there any provisions. No oars, no water, no canvas and no idea of how he had gone from a full longboat in a storm to stuck in still water in middle of nowhere with only a frustratingly cryptic pirate for company. Still, he had to try and get an answer.
“Who are you and how did I get here?” he repeated.
The man stared back at him with an amused expression on his weathered face. “Now it would be a very silly thing for me to do if I told you who I was and you know how you got here.”
James stood up in frustration. “I am an officer in his Majesty’s Navy. In the likely event that someone will find us, it would be in your best interests for me to say that you have been cooperative during this ordeal, so I suggest that you answer me!”
His warning and veiled threat did not seem to faze the pirate. “And answers you may get should you ask the right questions.”
A sudden rush of pain in his head put an end to the conversation.
~*~*~*~
He felt as if his head was being clamped down upon by some ungodly force, squeezing at his skull until it would surely crack and smash.
Prying his eyes open he found it was once again night and he was looking from the floor at the timbers of his longboat. Reaching to his hand to his head he found the source of his pain: dry coagulated blood at a patch just above his right ear. He remembered then that the last wave had sent his helpless body into a collision with the Dauntless’ wheel. With the shock of impact he had lost the grip had been maintaining on it and been swept away onto the lower decks and become entangled in the now abandoned and flailing rigging.
Trying to concentrate past his pain, he heard the soft swishes and plops of the oars as the boat moved through the water powered by his men.
He placed his hand on the wood and tried to push himself to see what was going on. A waive of nausea over took him and his whole body rocked as his empty stomach heaved sending him humiliatingly to the bottom of the longboat once more.
He rolled onto his back and, pained and exhausted, he once again slipped into unconsciousness.
~*~*~*~
The midday sun beat down upon him, burning his skin and forcing him to clamp his eyes closed tightly. In great pain and with his senses confused, James quickly left that place.
~*~*~*~
James suspected it was now dusk. Yet it still could be dawn. The sun never seemed to move, the light never changed, the sky always burned red. The pain had gone, and yet on inspection his wound on his head was sill there. As was the pirate who watched him.
It was not possible he was in two places at once: only one of the boats could be real. He suspected that this was some sort of dream, brought on by pain, exhaustion and the blow to his head. If he were to sit there long enough he suspected that he would wake up. However, this was not like any dream he had ever experienced.
“Where am I?” he asked finally when curiosity got the better of him.
“Adrift,” the man offered unhelpfully.
James sat back and waited for him to wake, but he seemed to be incapable of it. What seemed like hours passed only he had no way of telling, in this strange place there was no time. The pirate seemed to be passing time being entertained by James’ festering frustration, smiling almost knowingly at the slightest shift James made. Finally James decided to try and get answers.
“Tell me then, if I am not asking the correct questions, what questions should I be asking?”
The pirate grinned, exposing his rotting teeth. “It should not be what and it should not be where. I very much doubt how or when will do you any good either.”
James considered his next question for a second.
“Why are you here?”
“Finally,” he said with exasperation in his voice, “some progress. I am here, Commodore, to make you an offer.”
“Of what?” James asked. He noticed all of a sudden that he felt thirsty and his head had begun to ache one more, though only weakly.
“Of life,” the pirate said calmly as he was enveloped by darkness.
~*~*~*~
When he awoke this time he found himself looking up at the cloudless night sky and the familiar northern stars shining down upon him. His head still ached ferociously and it was now joined by the protests of his empty stomach and an inescapable thirst.
The longboat was still being propelled through the sea. He could still hear the soft splashes they made as they hit the water. Though he heard nothing of the men, not a grunt or a groan or any of the noises he was accustomed to hearing in a longboat filled with men; no rowdy chatter and no old shanties. Instead they rowed silently, the boat mournfully quiet.
James pulled himself up. Weakness was not something he was accustomed to and never something he wished for his men to see. Commanders were not to be weak. They were to lead there men into battle, blade in hand and death in sight. That is how one got the respect of the crew and their unwavering loyalty. How one could command without question, even when leading the ship into a storm on a hope and in an act of desperation. He had failed them then and through his weakness he was failing them still.
The rower’s backs were to him. In the dim light he had no hope to recognise who they were. Turning his head the opposite direction James saw a welcome sight. Gillette was sitting not far away, staring out onto the horizon.
“Gillette,” he managed to choke out.
Gillette turned to him slowly as if being awoken from a dream.
“Sir. You hit you head badly. You should not get up,” he said.
“Water?” he asked.
“There is none, sir. Land should not be far away. We just have to keep rowing until we get there.”
James nodded; sending a whole new level of pain through him. The world spun and he found himself falling into blackness once more.
~*~*~*~
He woke and the sun was high in the sky at noon. The bright light burnt and he shut his eyes quickly in response.
There was no sound. The boat seemed to not move, the water was calm. No wind, no rain and as he prized his eyes open he found there was no clouds. There was just the empty sky, the blue sea and the sun blazing down upon him.
And there was the thirst. How many days had it been? His lips were parched and cracked, his throat dry and his head, his head still ached. He desperately needed water.
Pulling himself to a kneeling position he found he was alone. No crew, no cryptic pirate, just himself. He scanned around the boat, again no provisions. No canvas, no oars and, most despairingly, no water.
James recognised he was in every sea-faring man’s nightmare, the ones the crew used to tell him about when he was a young Midshipman - helpless and hopeless, alone on a boat on a still sea with no water and no food to sustain him. If things did not change he would surely die here.
But was this real? Or was this another dream?
James reached down the side of the boat and placed his hand into the cool water. It felt real enough. He stared into the blue depths longingly. His thirst felt real enough.
Sitting back he pulled his jacket off, lying down and covering his face with it in order to provide some shade. It seemed that a death of drowning had been too good for him; his pain was to be much longer.
~*~*~*~
He had determined as far as he could that it was a dream, but could one really be sure in these matters? When he lost consciousness he would find himself here, stuck with this infernal pirate and no explanation. At least his pain, hunger and thirst went while he visited this strange place. They were only a memory.
“This is a dream, is it not?” Despite his decision he still felt he needed confirmation, an indication that he had not gone mad.
“I would call it that. However, I have an associate and she would describe it as a place between,” the pirate said not giving James any more information. He seemed to be taking great pleasure in torturing James with snippets of information and cryptic answers, forcing James to ask yet another question.
“Between what?” he finally asked making his displeasure of this game known in the intonation.
“For you, one of those boats is life and the other is death. This is between.”
James turned away. There was a time when he would have disregarded that as superstitious nonsense, but he had now seen the dead walk and he was not so sure of anything. But he would be damned if he would let the pirate glimpse how unsure he was. “You mean to make me believe that alone in that boat in the middle of nowhere is hell?”
“Each man’s hell is his own, Commodore,” the pirate said slowly and darkly before returning to his usual sarcasm laced speech. “Now how could I, a lowly pirate, even begin to contemplate what a fine upstanding military man like yourself’s conception of eternal damnation is? Though it seems you have decided which plane you will be visiting in the event of your death.”
James said nothing and they sat in silence once more.
There had been little doubt for many years as to his final destination. Spaniards and Frenchmen fell at his blade as a midshipman, pirates and smugglers were killed in battle or hung from a noose as a Lieutenant and a Captain and now it seemed, as a Commodore, he had become adept at killing his own men through his own foolishness and incompetence.
“Tell me Commodore, if you should get off this god-forsaken boat what are your plans? What does an officer of the Navy do when his ship sits at the bottom of the Mediterranean?”
James stayed quiet still. Should he ever find himself out of this situation he knew what his duty called for him to do.
“I believe you will find your way back to Portsmouth and then to London to face the consequences of your actions. Two ships lost. Last I heard, negligence was capital offence,” the pirate said leaning back in a satisfied manner against the side of the boat.
Gibraltar. He would head to Gibraltar and then on to Portsmouth. The pirate was right; he faced a Courts Marshall when he returned for the lost of not one ship but two, the Interceptor and the Dauntless. Not for all the captured pirate ships in the world nor his immaculate service record would he be found innocent of the later. Not when he lost it hunting a man he should never have let escape.
“And what do they do to the officers they convict? They shoot them on the deck of their own ship. But you don’t have a ship anymore. The Dauntless rests at the bottom of the ocean. That means it the gallows for you.” He let out a laugh. “Commodore James Norrington hung like a common pirate.”
He could not take this; a pirate tormenting him about his uncertain future like it was some trivial game. Those men flung into the sea, they were needless deaths, wasted lives. The Articles of War were incentive for officers to remember that with every decision they made lives hung in the balance.
James stood up, causing the boat to rock violently, but he now stood taller than the pirate bearing down on him. “You will be quiet.”
“Or what, Commodore?” the pirate asked. “Will you make the first move and strike me down with your bare hands. It is very unbecoming of a gentleman, is that. To think, the Commodore is human enough to stoop so as low as to loose his temper.”
James clenched his fists, but took a slight step back.
The pirate smiled and spoke again. “Explain to me why you should seek to go to your death.”
“It is a concept one like you would not understand,” James finally replied.
“You would return because it is your duty. For your duty you would return to your inevitable honourless death.”
“As I said, it is not a concept one like you would understand.”
“No. I see no point to spend a life in servitude to the great foreign King and corrupt Parliament for nothing in return except pain and suffering.”
James turned around and stared at the sea trying to find some calm from the still horizon. He could not make the man stop talking but if he ignored him maybe he would.
“And you have suffered, have you not. Lost the woman you loved because of your inability to deviate from the rules. Twenty years in faithfully serving his Majesty’s Navy, protecting his Majesty’s subjects, hunting down his enemies and risking your own life and how will they repay you? By giving you the same fate of the people you so despise.”
“And really, it wasn’t your fault was it?” the pirate continued. “If it were not for that Sparrow you would still have the Interceptor. You could tracked down the Black Pearl yourself, rescued you precious Elizabeth and maybe then she would have loved you instead.”
He had considered this. When he was alone and not busy he had considered how events could have been different and how much better things could have worked out. How could he not? But to hear a pirate discussing his private thought was more than he could bare.
He spun around and stared at his tormentor.
“What do you want from me?” James snapped.
“I want you to make a choice.”
“There is no choice in the matter,” James replied, his throat suddenly feeling dry and his head light.
“Oh, there is always choice.”
~*~*~*~
This time when he awoke he was sitting up and slightly cold. James had lost his jacket. He watched the backs of the man as they rowed, perfectly in time and all with strength James could not believe a man possessed, not with the amount of time that suspected had passed.
“How long have we been out here?” he asked of Gillette, his sole office on the boat was sitting not far away as he had been last time he had woken up.
Gillette turned to him, his expression miserable and dour. “It has just been one night sir.”
“Really?” His thirst and the calmness of the sea told him of days, not hours spent lost at sea.
He began to think of the others. The Dauntless had a crew of over seven hundred men. Counting himself, the boat held twenty two.
He placed the question to Gillette. “What of the others?”
“There were other boats. They were separated from us by the waves.”
Norrington nodded, causing a pain to shoot through his head once more. There were other boats. That meant there had been other survivors.
“Do we have a heading, Gillette?” he asked.
“We have no compass sir, though the stars should do.”
No bearing, no water, no food, no way of knowing how many others had survived and in no state to be giving commands. James stared at the back of the rowers heads and they moved in time. He tried to think of the death and destruction, of the magnitude of the mistake he had made of how much the remaining crew should be cursing the day they were assigned to sail under Commodore Norrington. But he could think of those matters then, not while he was surrounded crewmen and with Gillette nearby. He could not risk them overwhelming him and unsettling him in front of his men. He needed to be alone to consider such matters.
Right now he had twenty one men who all would need water and food and a hope that they will see land come morning. Those were the problems that needed to be fixed and that was what he alone could not achieve.
~*~*~*~
“You could always give up on your duty,” the Pirate said.
“I have a boat full of men and no water and yet you seek to constantly interrupt to discuss matters that have no relevance,” James snapped.
“It is your life, Commodore, it is certainly of relevance.”
“There are other people lives at stake.”
“That did not seem to concern you when you sailed into the storm.”
James glared at the man some more, grasping his hands into fists. He rarely was forced to fight unarmed, but he could and would do it.
“You made a mistake you would not have made it if you did not fear for your life. You have not been motivated by duty for some time, Commodore. Why did you chase Jack Sparrow all the way across the Atlantic? Not out of duty, but to protect yourself.”
James strode over to the pirate and pulled him up by the collar until his face was so close that James could smell the decay in the pirate’s breath. “That is not true,” he replied through gritted teeth.
The pirate did not seem threatened at all. On the contrary, he seemed rather amused by James’ display of aggression. “Deny it all you want. You know it to be.”
James stared into the man’s sickly eyes. He did not seem afraid of what Norrington would to him. James let go of his collar and pushed the pirate to the bottom of the boat and turned away from him and back to the comforting sight of the horizon.
“Listen to me Commodore, you gave up on your duty some months ago when you realised that you had lost as ship and forty three men and the man responsible for the mess. You realised that your career was over unless you had something to show for it and so you gave chase. You cited duty as your reason, but that was not it.”
“It was not like that,” James replied, staring at the immobile sun in the distance.
“But it was. It is not duty that motivated this chase, Commodore, it was your own need to save your honour. It was your own fear, Commodore.” The pirate continued to spit out James’ title with distain.
James hung his head, now staring at the water, trying to pretend that he was not listening to every word that pirate was staying.
“The sooner you realise that you are just like everybody else in this world, Commodore - motivated by your own fear and need, the better it will be for us all!”
“Damn you! Give me some peace!” James yelled as the turned and facing the pirate one more and as the world once again collapsed around him.
~*~*~*~
He was in the sun again, alone in the blazing sun. His exposed flesh burn from exposure, his lips cracked and bled, his throat was dry and clogged with mucus.
He placed his hand to his head and felt a scab where his wound had been. Despite the dire straits he was in, his body was trying to heal regardless.
James sat there for some time feeling his skin burn in the bright sun. He stared out into the water. There was nowhere else to look. The sea taunted him. It was a torture that old sailors knew well - water, the one thing they required for life was in abundance around them, but to drink it would bring about their death. Yet it looked so cool and perfect. He could not stop staring at it.
The thirst, it gnawed at him, he could not thing of anything else. It consumed him, filling his head with further pain.
White spots danced about his vision and he took his eyes of the sea and leaned back, the world spinning as he did so. All his strength had ebbed away. How many days had it been?
He was dying. Or worse, maybe he was not. Maybe the pirate was not lying and this was hell. An eternity spent alone adrift at sea consumed by hunger and thirst, left in the knowledge that he had damned himself, failed his crew and lost his ship.
A great commander was to be near infallible and James had tried so hard to be such a man. Once, months ago with his promotion in the near future, he had dared to think that he was a great commander. And now it had all slipped away from his grasp. One mistake followed another, one judgment call lead to another and each time things became worse for him and for his men. They were slaughtered by forces he had not known existed, dragged on this ill fated hunt and through a storm which turned to be a hurricane, its wrath destroying so many lives.
God, he had tried. He had tried to be a great leader and circumstances overcame him. He tried to live his life with honour and found himself losing it. He had tried to be loved only to have it thrown back at him and have his moment of weakness capitalised upon by Jack Sparrow. He had tried and now what did he have - he had this longboat and somewhere there was a boat waiting for him to wake with twenty one men. Men who had dragged him out from the sea and prevented his death - an act of mercy he doubted he deserved.
He had his duty. It was to return to London, to face a trial and lose and to return once more to this; the expanse of sea, the blazing sun, the thirst and the despair. An eternity of this was to be his fate. He did not want nor could he bare this pain and suffering. He did not want to die a failure. He wanted another chance.
He wanted to serve himself alone and spare himself more suffering. And here - stuck adrift hell with no witnesses - here he could if he was to give into temptation.
James looked up to the sky.
“I wish to deal.”
~*~*~*~
“Honour and duty are fine ideas to rich men of no occupation who sit in comfort all day and never have to face reality, are they not, Commodore?”
Defeated, James just stared at him.
The pirate continued, “Here out on the sea matters are different.”
James sat there his head in his hands, rubbing his forehead and s He could not see the pirate, but he knew he was standing in front on him. “Are you?…are you?” James tried to say the words to the question he never would have thought himself asked. Though there was no need; the pirate seemed anticipate the rest of the question.
“Trust me Commodore when I say that you will know the devil when you see him…And that if you wish to survive an audience with the devil you will need a far bigger ship.”
The pirate seemed to be very amused by himself, though James could not see any humour in the statement.
“What would you have me do?” James asked, looking up. “What is it that you want from me?”
“You make it sound like we are asking you to trade. I am merely pointing out that you have a choice. Choose to return to the Caribbean and your fate will be postponed.”
He could resign at Port Royal, to Governor Swann and disappear somewhere along the Spanish Main. It was not unusual for disgraced Navy men to go missing.
“Who is this ‘we’?” James questioned. “And what do you get out of any deal?”
“An interested party who wishes to remain nameless.”
James glared at him. “I am sick and tired of this, give me an answer.”
“An old friend. You do not know her but let’s say that she has an interest in destiny.”
“Mine?” James asked.
The pirate let out a laugh. “No not yours.”
That figured. James had the distinct feeling of powerlessness for some months - ever since the Black Pearl raided Port Royal. “Then I am just some pawn then in her game, then, to be manipulated and sacrificed at her will.”
“As am I. Now you are beginning to understand, Commodore. But it is not her game. I believe you already know the master of the board. I believe he showed up in Port Royal on the day of your promotion.”
Sparrow. It was all because of Sparrow. James let out a desperate, tired laugh.
The pirate got out of his seat and walked over to James. “Do we have a deal Commodore?”
He stuck out his hand which James just stared at.
“A life without honour, what sort of life is that?”
“Never forget that a man can regain his honour, Commodore. Redemption is an achievable thing.”
Despite his gut feeling of dread at turning his back upon everything he had known and bargaining with a pirate or a figment of his imagination, James placed his hand in the pirates. “I will regret this.”
~*~*~*~
This time it was not his head or his thirst that woke him. It was water running down his cheek. He looked up to find the stars no longer shone, replaced by a blanket of cloud that covered the sky, and that it was now raining.
Glorious, beautiful fresh water fell upon him and the boat heavily. It soaked into his clothes and hair, running down his skin. James tilted his head back and let it fall into his open mouth.
Life! This meant life for him and the rest of the survivors. What life awaited him he did not know, but for just this one moment he could put that aside and rejoice at just the simple promise of life.
He glanced at Gillette who was once again staring out into the distance as if nothing was happening. A dim glow on the horizon meant that morning was approaching.
James wondered why Gillette was not sharing in his ecstasy, he must be as thirsty.
“Gillette! Fresh water!”
Gillette turned to him, his expression as morbid as ever. He seemed to stare right through James. James then had the distinct feeling that something was wrong, all was not as it appeared.
He turned. The men had not stopped rowing and neither were they celebrating the down poor. They still made no noise, their oars still moving through the water at the same enduring pace. Something was very wrong.
James turned back to Gillette. “Lieutenant?” James asked, hoping for an answer to the question he could not quite formulate.
Then the first ray or morning light shone over the horizon and it did not stop at Gillette. It shone right through him, the Lieutenant was now translucent in the light.
“Gillette?”
James turned and stared at the rowers, the exact same thing occurred. The light shone through their bodies leaving the wooden decking of the boat visible through them, the rain not hitting them, instead shattering against the bottom of the boats. James could no longer hear the oars cutting through the water; they were disappearing with their rowers.
He turned back to Gillette who was fading quickly, the boat and horizon becoming clearer.
“Sir?” he asked with concern for James in his expression, as if noting was out of the ordinary.
“Lieutenant!” James screamed as he disappeared before his eyes.
James put his hand where Gillette had just sat. There was nothing to say the man had been there, nothing at all to say the crew of rowers had been there.
They had just gone, vanished into nothing before his eyes in the daylight and leaving him once more alone on a longboat lost at sea.
James sat back, leaning against the boat, feeling it rock in the now choppy water. The rain still fell, drenching him. He remembered the tales the crew would once tell him when he was a young midshipman about lost souls who died at sea endlessly sailing the ocean, trying to find the shore. He had been wrong once again. Dying alone on this boat at sea had not been his vision of damnation.
James sat there for a moment in numb shock. Every single one of those men had been dead. His men, who’s live had been in his hand were dead and doomed to row on, forever searching, unaware of their fate either unaware of what he had done or having forgiven him enough to show him mercy.
He just sat there, cold, wet and beaten, letting the rain fall upon him as he tried to cope with all that had happened. He lost his ship and crew, spent three days adrift on a boat with twenty one lost souls, one of which was the remnant of his second and had addressed him and in an attempt to save himself he had turned his back on everything.
James looked up at the sky and with all the strength he had cried at the heavens, an anguished inhuman wail that tore at his raw, burning throat. He screamed for the men he had lost and the one he had hoped to save. He screamed out for the life he had though he would once have with Elizabeth Swann and then cried out for what a great fool he had been to love and hope.
He cried out for the loss of the Interceptor, for the slaughter aboard the Dauntless. James Norrington cried out for the day Jack Sparrow wandered into Port Royal, the day everything had started to slip away from him.
He cried out because alone at sea it was the only thing he could do. He screamed until his throat seized and he could not make a sound anymore.
He felt himself shiver and spotted his jacket resting nearby and his sword lay next to it. He reached over to take them both and as he sat back with them in hand he saw a wisp of white in the distance, the appearance of a mast and sails on the horizon.
He pulled on his jacket and gripped the handle of his sword. The pirate’s side of the bargain had been fulfilled. From here James knew what he was to do.
Tired and weak, bitter and broken, James sat and waited for his promised deliverance.
~*~*~*~
“The man hath penance done,
And penance more will do.”
Title: Penance More Will Do
Author: Meddow
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Summary: In the wake of the hurricane, James Norrington finds himself drifting in a longboat someplace between life and death and with some unwanted company.
Author’s Notes: A big thanks to jadeddiva for the beta
Credit has to go to Samuel Taylor Coleridge whose Rime of the Ancient Mariner inspired this. It was from there I nicked the title.
Concrit is always welcome
~*~*~*~
For all the noise the waves made crashing against the side of the Dauntless, for all the roars of thunder and claps of lightning, for all the desperate screams and yells from the unfortunate men cast into the unforgiving sea, in the depth below the waves it was silent.
He could not struggle against the ropes that had wound themselves around his body and were now dragging him down with his ship. The blow his head had taken when he was forced by the final wave into the wheel had left him dazed and slow.
But even if he could make perfect sense of the water filling his lungs and know that these were his final few moments of life, would he choose to fight? It had been him that had stared at the clouds on the horizon and decided the Dauntless should brave the storm. That decision had been his and his alone and so if any life was to be claimed in the waves, it should be his own. He should be Jonah sacrificed to the sea in the hope that some survived.
In the peacefulness of the depth, some part of James Norrington accepted his fate.
It was then that the ropes eased their hold. Arms locked around his and forced him to float upwards.
The deafening sound of the storm once more filled his ears as he surfaced. The waves beat his body against something - a boat. He felt the hard edge of the wood scrape against his chest as he was pulled over the edge and on board.
In his hazy blindness he managed to open his eyes just once before unconsciousness claimed him. He saw his men; their silhouettes against the night sky with oars in hand, rowing calmly through the waves.
~*~*~*~
There was a crunch, a fluid crunch. It was a sound instantly recognisable to James - a person biting into an apple.
James opened his eyes to the red dawn sky and the slow gentle rocking of a longboat in a calm sea.
He pulled himself up to a sitting position and cast his eyes up on an unfamiliar man with an unkempt beard and sickly yellow-ringed eyes. James was certain he had never seen this man before in his life but he had come across enough pirates in his time to recognise one when one was sitting before him. They often dresses as the man did with once fine civilian clothes. He had once theorised this was in an attempt to make themselves look more respectable.
Turning his head he found that there were no others. They were alone aboard the longboat. The man took another bite of his apple and grinned at him. James put his hand to his hip and noticed the absence of his sword and pistol. Glancing at the pirate, he noticed he was similarly disarmed, though James knew he would still have to be weary.
“There’d be no use for weapons here, Commodore,” the man said, sounding out his James’ title with a hint of distain.
“Who are you?” James asked. “And what has happened to my crew?”
“I am just a simple sailor lost at sea. The same, it appears, as you.”
“I very much doubt that. Now where are my crew?”
“Your crew? They were never here,” the man replied.
James sighed as he reminded himself that he should know better than to try and get a straight answer out of a pirate.
He had another look around. Calm water surrounded them on all sides; there was no land in sight. Neither were there any provisions. No oars, no water, no canvas and no idea of how he had gone from a full longboat in a storm to stuck in still water in middle of nowhere with only a frustratingly cryptic pirate for company. Still, he had to try and get an answer.
“Who are you and how did I get here?” he repeated.
The man stared back at him with an amused expression on his weathered face. “Now it would be a very silly thing for me to do if I told you who I was and you know how you got here.”
James stood up in frustration. “I am an officer in his Majesty’s Navy. In the likely event that someone will find us, it would be in your best interests for me to say that you have been cooperative during this ordeal, so I suggest that you answer me!”
His warning and veiled threat did not seem to faze the pirate. “And answers you may get should you ask the right questions.”
A sudden rush of pain in his head put an end to the conversation.
~*~*~*~
He felt as if his head was being clamped down upon by some ungodly force, squeezing at his skull until it would surely crack and smash.
Prying his eyes open he found it was once again night and he was looking from the floor at the timbers of his longboat. Reaching to his hand to his head he found the source of his pain: dry coagulated blood at a patch just above his right ear. He remembered then that the last wave had sent his helpless body into a collision with the Dauntless’ wheel. With the shock of impact he had lost the grip had been maintaining on it and been swept away onto the lower decks and become entangled in the now abandoned and flailing rigging.
Trying to concentrate past his pain, he heard the soft swishes and plops of the oars as the boat moved through the water powered by his men.
He placed his hand on the wood and tried to push himself to see what was going on. A waive of nausea over took him and his whole body rocked as his empty stomach heaved sending him humiliatingly to the bottom of the longboat once more.
He rolled onto his back and, pained and exhausted, he once again slipped into unconsciousness.
~*~*~*~
The midday sun beat down upon him, burning his skin and forcing him to clamp his eyes closed tightly. In great pain and with his senses confused, James quickly left that place.
~*~*~*~
James suspected it was now dusk. Yet it still could be dawn. The sun never seemed to move, the light never changed, the sky always burned red. The pain had gone, and yet on inspection his wound on his head was sill there. As was the pirate who watched him.
It was not possible he was in two places at once: only one of the boats could be real. He suspected that this was some sort of dream, brought on by pain, exhaustion and the blow to his head. If he were to sit there long enough he suspected that he would wake up. However, this was not like any dream he had ever experienced.
“Where am I?” he asked finally when curiosity got the better of him.
“Adrift,” the man offered unhelpfully.
James sat back and waited for him to wake, but he seemed to be incapable of it. What seemed like hours passed only he had no way of telling, in this strange place there was no time. The pirate seemed to be passing time being entertained by James’ festering frustration, smiling almost knowingly at the slightest shift James made. Finally James decided to try and get answers.
“Tell me then, if I am not asking the correct questions, what questions should I be asking?”
The pirate grinned, exposing his rotting teeth. “It should not be what and it should not be where. I very much doubt how or when will do you any good either.”
James considered his next question for a second.
“Why are you here?”
“Finally,” he said with exasperation in his voice, “some progress. I am here, Commodore, to make you an offer.”
“Of what?” James asked. He noticed all of a sudden that he felt thirsty and his head had begun to ache one more, though only weakly.
“Of life,” the pirate said calmly as he was enveloped by darkness.
~*~*~*~
When he awoke this time he found himself looking up at the cloudless night sky and the familiar northern stars shining down upon him. His head still ached ferociously and it was now joined by the protests of his empty stomach and an inescapable thirst.
The longboat was still being propelled through the sea. He could still hear the soft splashes they made as they hit the water. Though he heard nothing of the men, not a grunt or a groan or any of the noises he was accustomed to hearing in a longboat filled with men; no rowdy chatter and no old shanties. Instead they rowed silently, the boat mournfully quiet.
James pulled himself up. Weakness was not something he was accustomed to and never something he wished for his men to see. Commanders were not to be weak. They were to lead there men into battle, blade in hand and death in sight. That is how one got the respect of the crew and their unwavering loyalty. How one could command without question, even when leading the ship into a storm on a hope and in an act of desperation. He had failed them then and through his weakness he was failing them still.
The rower’s backs were to him. In the dim light he had no hope to recognise who they were. Turning his head the opposite direction James saw a welcome sight. Gillette was sitting not far away, staring out onto the horizon.
“Gillette,” he managed to choke out.
Gillette turned to him slowly as if being awoken from a dream.
“Sir. You hit you head badly. You should not get up,” he said.
“Water?” he asked.
“There is none, sir. Land should not be far away. We just have to keep rowing until we get there.”
James nodded; sending a whole new level of pain through him. The world spun and he found himself falling into blackness once more.
~*~*~*~
He woke and the sun was high in the sky at noon. The bright light burnt and he shut his eyes quickly in response.
There was no sound. The boat seemed to not move, the water was calm. No wind, no rain and as he prized his eyes open he found there was no clouds. There was just the empty sky, the blue sea and the sun blazing down upon him.
And there was the thirst. How many days had it been? His lips were parched and cracked, his throat dry and his head, his head still ached. He desperately needed water.
Pulling himself to a kneeling position he found he was alone. No crew, no cryptic pirate, just himself. He scanned around the boat, again no provisions. No canvas, no oars and, most despairingly, no water.
James recognised he was in every sea-faring man’s nightmare, the ones the crew used to tell him about when he was a young Midshipman - helpless and hopeless, alone on a boat on a still sea with no water and no food to sustain him. If things did not change he would surely die here.
But was this real? Or was this another dream?
James reached down the side of the boat and placed his hand into the cool water. It felt real enough. He stared into the blue depths longingly. His thirst felt real enough.
Sitting back he pulled his jacket off, lying down and covering his face with it in order to provide some shade. It seemed that a death of drowning had been too good for him; his pain was to be much longer.
~*~*~*~
He had determined as far as he could that it was a dream, but could one really be sure in these matters? When he lost consciousness he would find himself here, stuck with this infernal pirate and no explanation. At least his pain, hunger and thirst went while he visited this strange place. They were only a memory.
“This is a dream, is it not?” Despite his decision he still felt he needed confirmation, an indication that he had not gone mad.
“I would call it that. However, I have an associate and she would describe it as a place between,” the pirate said not giving James any more information. He seemed to be taking great pleasure in torturing James with snippets of information and cryptic answers, forcing James to ask yet another question.
“Between what?” he finally asked making his displeasure of this game known in the intonation.
“For you, one of those boats is life and the other is death. This is between.”
James turned away. There was a time when he would have disregarded that as superstitious nonsense, but he had now seen the dead walk and he was not so sure of anything. But he would be damned if he would let the pirate glimpse how unsure he was. “You mean to make me believe that alone in that boat in the middle of nowhere is hell?”
“Each man’s hell is his own, Commodore,” the pirate said slowly and darkly before returning to his usual sarcasm laced speech. “Now how could I, a lowly pirate, even begin to contemplate what a fine upstanding military man like yourself’s conception of eternal damnation is? Though it seems you have decided which plane you will be visiting in the event of your death.”
James said nothing and they sat in silence once more.
There had been little doubt for many years as to his final destination. Spaniards and Frenchmen fell at his blade as a midshipman, pirates and smugglers were killed in battle or hung from a noose as a Lieutenant and a Captain and now it seemed, as a Commodore, he had become adept at killing his own men through his own foolishness and incompetence.
“Tell me Commodore, if you should get off this god-forsaken boat what are your plans? What does an officer of the Navy do when his ship sits at the bottom of the Mediterranean?”
James stayed quiet still. Should he ever find himself out of this situation he knew what his duty called for him to do.
“I believe you will find your way back to Portsmouth and then to London to face the consequences of your actions. Two ships lost. Last I heard, negligence was capital offence,” the pirate said leaning back in a satisfied manner against the side of the boat.
Gibraltar. He would head to Gibraltar and then on to Portsmouth. The pirate was right; he faced a Courts Marshall when he returned for the lost of not one ship but two, the Interceptor and the Dauntless. Not for all the captured pirate ships in the world nor his immaculate service record would he be found innocent of the later. Not when he lost it hunting a man he should never have let escape.
“And what do they do to the officers they convict? They shoot them on the deck of their own ship. But you don’t have a ship anymore. The Dauntless rests at the bottom of the ocean. That means it the gallows for you.” He let out a laugh. “Commodore James Norrington hung like a common pirate.”
He could not take this; a pirate tormenting him about his uncertain future like it was some trivial game. Those men flung into the sea, they were needless deaths, wasted lives. The Articles of War were incentive for officers to remember that with every decision they made lives hung in the balance.
James stood up, causing the boat to rock violently, but he now stood taller than the pirate bearing down on him. “You will be quiet.”
“Or what, Commodore?” the pirate asked. “Will you make the first move and strike me down with your bare hands. It is very unbecoming of a gentleman, is that. To think, the Commodore is human enough to stoop so as low as to loose his temper.”
James clenched his fists, but took a slight step back.
The pirate smiled and spoke again. “Explain to me why you should seek to go to your death.”
“It is a concept one like you would not understand,” James finally replied.
“You would return because it is your duty. For your duty you would return to your inevitable honourless death.”
“As I said, it is not a concept one like you would understand.”
“No. I see no point to spend a life in servitude to the great foreign King and corrupt Parliament for nothing in return except pain and suffering.”
James turned around and stared at the sea trying to find some calm from the still horizon. He could not make the man stop talking but if he ignored him maybe he would.
“And you have suffered, have you not. Lost the woman you loved because of your inability to deviate from the rules. Twenty years in faithfully serving his Majesty’s Navy, protecting his Majesty’s subjects, hunting down his enemies and risking your own life and how will they repay you? By giving you the same fate of the people you so despise.”
“And really, it wasn’t your fault was it?” the pirate continued. “If it were not for that Sparrow you would still have the Interceptor. You could tracked down the Black Pearl yourself, rescued you precious Elizabeth and maybe then she would have loved you instead.”
He had considered this. When he was alone and not busy he had considered how events could have been different and how much better things could have worked out. How could he not? But to hear a pirate discussing his private thought was more than he could bare.
He spun around and stared at his tormentor.
“What do you want from me?” James snapped.
“I want you to make a choice.”
“There is no choice in the matter,” James replied, his throat suddenly feeling dry and his head light.
“Oh, there is always choice.”
~*~*~*~
This time when he awoke he was sitting up and slightly cold. James had lost his jacket. He watched the backs of the man as they rowed, perfectly in time and all with strength James could not believe a man possessed, not with the amount of time that suspected had passed.
“How long have we been out here?” he asked of Gillette, his sole office on the boat was sitting not far away as he had been last time he had woken up.
Gillette turned to him, his expression miserable and dour. “It has just been one night sir.”
“Really?” His thirst and the calmness of the sea told him of days, not hours spent lost at sea.
He began to think of the others. The Dauntless had a crew of over seven hundred men. Counting himself, the boat held twenty two.
He placed the question to Gillette. “What of the others?”
“There were other boats. They were separated from us by the waves.”
Norrington nodded, causing a pain to shoot through his head once more. There were other boats. That meant there had been other survivors.
“Do we have a heading, Gillette?” he asked.
“We have no compass sir, though the stars should do.”
No bearing, no water, no food, no way of knowing how many others had survived and in no state to be giving commands. James stared at the back of the rowers heads and they moved in time. He tried to think of the death and destruction, of the magnitude of the mistake he had made of how much the remaining crew should be cursing the day they were assigned to sail under Commodore Norrington. But he could think of those matters then, not while he was surrounded crewmen and with Gillette nearby. He could not risk them overwhelming him and unsettling him in front of his men. He needed to be alone to consider such matters.
Right now he had twenty one men who all would need water and food and a hope that they will see land come morning. Those were the problems that needed to be fixed and that was what he alone could not achieve.
~*~*~*~
“You could always give up on your duty,” the Pirate said.
“I have a boat full of men and no water and yet you seek to constantly interrupt to discuss matters that have no relevance,” James snapped.
“It is your life, Commodore, it is certainly of relevance.”
“There are other people lives at stake.”
“That did not seem to concern you when you sailed into the storm.”
James glared at the man some more, grasping his hands into fists. He rarely was forced to fight unarmed, but he could and would do it.
“You made a mistake you would not have made it if you did not fear for your life. You have not been motivated by duty for some time, Commodore. Why did you chase Jack Sparrow all the way across the Atlantic? Not out of duty, but to protect yourself.”
James strode over to the pirate and pulled him up by the collar until his face was so close that James could smell the decay in the pirate’s breath. “That is not true,” he replied through gritted teeth.
The pirate did not seem threatened at all. On the contrary, he seemed rather amused by James’ display of aggression. “Deny it all you want. You know it to be.”
James stared into the man’s sickly eyes. He did not seem afraid of what Norrington would to him. James let go of his collar and pushed the pirate to the bottom of the boat and turned away from him and back to the comforting sight of the horizon.
“Listen to me Commodore, you gave up on your duty some months ago when you realised that you had lost as ship and forty three men and the man responsible for the mess. You realised that your career was over unless you had something to show for it and so you gave chase. You cited duty as your reason, but that was not it.”
“It was not like that,” James replied, staring at the immobile sun in the distance.
“But it was. It is not duty that motivated this chase, Commodore, it was your own need to save your honour. It was your own fear, Commodore.” The pirate continued to spit out James’ title with distain.
James hung his head, now staring at the water, trying to pretend that he was not listening to every word that pirate was staying.
“The sooner you realise that you are just like everybody else in this world, Commodore - motivated by your own fear and need, the better it will be for us all!”
“Damn you! Give me some peace!” James yelled as the turned and facing the pirate one more and as the world once again collapsed around him.
~*~*~*~
He was in the sun again, alone in the blazing sun. His exposed flesh burn from exposure, his lips cracked and bled, his throat was dry and clogged with mucus.
He placed his hand to his head and felt a scab where his wound had been. Despite the dire straits he was in, his body was trying to heal regardless.
James sat there for some time feeling his skin burn in the bright sun. He stared out into the water. There was nowhere else to look. The sea taunted him. It was a torture that old sailors knew well - water, the one thing they required for life was in abundance around them, but to drink it would bring about their death. Yet it looked so cool and perfect. He could not stop staring at it.
The thirst, it gnawed at him, he could not thing of anything else. It consumed him, filling his head with further pain.
White spots danced about his vision and he took his eyes of the sea and leaned back, the world spinning as he did so. All his strength had ebbed away. How many days had it been?
He was dying. Or worse, maybe he was not. Maybe the pirate was not lying and this was hell. An eternity spent alone adrift at sea consumed by hunger and thirst, left in the knowledge that he had damned himself, failed his crew and lost his ship.
A great commander was to be near infallible and James had tried so hard to be such a man. Once, months ago with his promotion in the near future, he had dared to think that he was a great commander. And now it had all slipped away from his grasp. One mistake followed another, one judgment call lead to another and each time things became worse for him and for his men. They were slaughtered by forces he had not known existed, dragged on this ill fated hunt and through a storm which turned to be a hurricane, its wrath destroying so many lives.
God, he had tried. He had tried to be a great leader and circumstances overcame him. He tried to live his life with honour and found himself losing it. He had tried to be loved only to have it thrown back at him and have his moment of weakness capitalised upon by Jack Sparrow. He had tried and now what did he have - he had this longboat and somewhere there was a boat waiting for him to wake with twenty one men. Men who had dragged him out from the sea and prevented his death - an act of mercy he doubted he deserved.
He had his duty. It was to return to London, to face a trial and lose and to return once more to this; the expanse of sea, the blazing sun, the thirst and the despair. An eternity of this was to be his fate. He did not want nor could he bare this pain and suffering. He did not want to die a failure. He wanted another chance.
He wanted to serve himself alone and spare himself more suffering. And here - stuck adrift hell with no witnesses - here he could if he was to give into temptation.
James looked up to the sky.
“I wish to deal.”
~*~*~*~
“Honour and duty are fine ideas to rich men of no occupation who sit in comfort all day and never have to face reality, are they not, Commodore?”
Defeated, James just stared at him.
The pirate continued, “Here out on the sea matters are different.”
James sat there his head in his hands, rubbing his forehead and s He could not see the pirate, but he knew he was standing in front on him. “Are you?…are you?” James tried to say the words to the question he never would have thought himself asked. Though there was no need; the pirate seemed anticipate the rest of the question.
“Trust me Commodore when I say that you will know the devil when you see him…And that if you wish to survive an audience with the devil you will need a far bigger ship.”
The pirate seemed to be very amused by himself, though James could not see any humour in the statement.
“What would you have me do?” James asked, looking up. “What is it that you want from me?”
“You make it sound like we are asking you to trade. I am merely pointing out that you have a choice. Choose to return to the Caribbean and your fate will be postponed.”
He could resign at Port Royal, to Governor Swann and disappear somewhere along the Spanish Main. It was not unusual for disgraced Navy men to go missing.
“Who is this ‘we’?” James questioned. “And what do you get out of any deal?”
“An interested party who wishes to remain nameless.”
James glared at him. “I am sick and tired of this, give me an answer.”
“An old friend. You do not know her but let’s say that she has an interest in destiny.”
“Mine?” James asked.
The pirate let out a laugh. “No not yours.”
That figured. James had the distinct feeling of powerlessness for some months - ever since the Black Pearl raided Port Royal. “Then I am just some pawn then in her game, then, to be manipulated and sacrificed at her will.”
“As am I. Now you are beginning to understand, Commodore. But it is not her game. I believe you already know the master of the board. I believe he showed up in Port Royal on the day of your promotion.”
Sparrow. It was all because of Sparrow. James let out a desperate, tired laugh.
The pirate got out of his seat and walked over to James. “Do we have a deal Commodore?”
He stuck out his hand which James just stared at.
“A life without honour, what sort of life is that?”
“Never forget that a man can regain his honour, Commodore. Redemption is an achievable thing.”
Despite his gut feeling of dread at turning his back upon everything he had known and bargaining with a pirate or a figment of his imagination, James placed his hand in the pirates. “I will regret this.”
~*~*~*~
This time it was not his head or his thirst that woke him. It was water running down his cheek. He looked up to find the stars no longer shone, replaced by a blanket of cloud that covered the sky, and that it was now raining.
Glorious, beautiful fresh water fell upon him and the boat heavily. It soaked into his clothes and hair, running down his skin. James tilted his head back and let it fall into his open mouth.
Life! This meant life for him and the rest of the survivors. What life awaited him he did not know, but for just this one moment he could put that aside and rejoice at just the simple promise of life.
He glanced at Gillette who was once again staring out into the distance as if nothing was happening. A dim glow on the horizon meant that morning was approaching.
James wondered why Gillette was not sharing in his ecstasy, he must be as thirsty.
“Gillette! Fresh water!”
Gillette turned to him, his expression as morbid as ever. He seemed to stare right through James. James then had the distinct feeling that something was wrong, all was not as it appeared.
He turned. The men had not stopped rowing and neither were they celebrating the down poor. They still made no noise, their oars still moving through the water at the same enduring pace. Something was very wrong.
James turned back to Gillette. “Lieutenant?” James asked, hoping for an answer to the question he could not quite formulate.
Then the first ray or morning light shone over the horizon and it did not stop at Gillette. It shone right through him, the Lieutenant was now translucent in the light.
“Gillette?”
James turned and stared at the rowers, the exact same thing occurred. The light shone through their bodies leaving the wooden decking of the boat visible through them, the rain not hitting them, instead shattering against the bottom of the boats. James could no longer hear the oars cutting through the water; they were disappearing with their rowers.
He turned back to Gillette who was fading quickly, the boat and horizon becoming clearer.
“Sir?” he asked with concern for James in his expression, as if noting was out of the ordinary.
“Lieutenant!” James screamed as he disappeared before his eyes.
James put his hand where Gillette had just sat. There was nothing to say the man had been there, nothing at all to say the crew of rowers had been there.
They had just gone, vanished into nothing before his eyes in the daylight and leaving him once more alone on a longboat lost at sea.
James sat back, leaning against the boat, feeling it rock in the now choppy water. The rain still fell, drenching him. He remembered the tales the crew would once tell him when he was a young midshipman about lost souls who died at sea endlessly sailing the ocean, trying to find the shore. He had been wrong once again. Dying alone on this boat at sea had not been his vision of damnation.
James sat there for a moment in numb shock. Every single one of those men had been dead. His men, who’s live had been in his hand were dead and doomed to row on, forever searching, unaware of their fate either unaware of what he had done or having forgiven him enough to show him mercy.
He just sat there, cold, wet and beaten, letting the rain fall upon him as he tried to cope with all that had happened. He lost his ship and crew, spent three days adrift on a boat with twenty one lost souls, one of which was the remnant of his second and had addressed him and in an attempt to save himself he had turned his back on everything.
James looked up at the sky and with all the strength he had cried at the heavens, an anguished inhuman wail that tore at his raw, burning throat. He screamed for the men he had lost and the one he had hoped to save. He screamed out for the life he had though he would once have with Elizabeth Swann and then cried out for what a great fool he had been to love and hope.
He cried out for the loss of the Interceptor, for the slaughter aboard the Dauntless. James Norrington cried out for the day Jack Sparrow wandered into Port Royal, the day everything had started to slip away from him.
He cried out because alone at sea it was the only thing he could do. He screamed until his throat seized and he could not make a sound anymore.
He felt himself shiver and spotted his jacket resting nearby and his sword lay next to it. He reached over to take them both and as he sat back with them in hand he saw a wisp of white in the distance, the appearance of a mast and sails on the horizon.
He pulled on his jacket and gripped the handle of his sword. The pirate’s side of the bargain had been fulfilled. From here James knew what he was to do.
Tired and weak, bitter and broken, James sat and waited for his promised deliverance.
~*~*~*~
“The man hath penance done,
And penance more will do.”