For Honour a Heart’s Demise
Finally, after over two months, some post-AWE fic (well not counting Harry Potter crossover crack fic) It may be late to the party but hopefully it makes up for it by being longer than the entire Admiral series. And I have to say, the person who invented the rule that all ship names should be in italics was a right bastard.
Title: For Honour a Heart’s Demise
Author: meddow
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Word Count: ~10 170
Pairings: Elizabeth/Norrington, Elizabeth/Will
Summary: James Norrington battles friends, foes, deities and destiny alike to atone for his sins and destroy Davy Jones. AU ending for AWE.
Author’s Notes: Thank you to artic_fox for the fantastic beta.
For the record I really enjoyed AWE. I though it was a great film. I just wanted to play around and change one event and see the ripple effects.
---
James Norrington. Defiant boy. Stubborn man. It is past your time.
Drowning for James Norrington had with it a strange familiarity.
All men were infants in her grasp. Once again he was eight and slipping away beneath the waves in the freezing Channel, all memories and pressing concerns lost within her suffocating embrace. At that moment she was all that existed to him.
He could hear her call, just as he did then; telling him it was time to rest, to stop the fight, to let himself be taken.
He had fought then, when he was a child, afraid of the unknown and wanting so badly to live, to return to his home and his family. He fought and he had won, returning to life with a respect for the waves. From that respect arose desire and not so many years later he joined the navy.
This time, decades on from that day, he felt no need to fight, for what did he have worth fighting for?
But there was someone - someone reached down, an arm locked around his. Someone weaker than the sea, not strong enough to pull him back, but just as determined. That someone was fighting as hard as she could, but his coat, his boots, his body: they were too much for her.
Elizabeth.
With the memory of her everything returned to James Norrington, every triumph and every failure. All the joy he once felt and the searing agony he found himself in, and he remembered why he was in pain and what he had unleashed upon the world.
Beckett, Jones and the murder of Weatherby Swann - the reasons why Elizabeth was fighting, they were all his doing. His sins. His death could not be now - not yet - for he still had work to do.
The sea could wait. Death could wait. There was still one thing he wished to achieve.
Once again, James fought.
---
“James!” Elizabeth screamed so loudly she nearly lost her grip.
She could not focus on the task at hand, not when the alarm had been raised, and Jones’ men were swarming around the ship.
Elizabeth watched helpless as with a thrust of his sword James prevented Bootstrap from running him through with a piece of wood. But others were fast approaching, including Jones who was pushing his way through with his sword drawn and ready. There were far too many of them.
She did not care what James wanted, she would not let him die for her; she could not bear the thought of losing him, particularly not after the death of her father. Elizabeth started moving back along the tether towards the Dutchman.
James turned quickly and caught her eyes, his expression at the same time terrified and sadly determined, and she knew then what he planned to do. He was going to cut the rope.
“James!” she screamed again. She watched him lean back against the railing and bring his sword up against the rope to sever it, in doing so leaving body exposed to attack. Just as she began to fall through the air, she saw Jones slice forward.
She fell through the air and hit the water. Elizabeth struggled against the sudden shock of the ice-cold ocean, screaming his name once more as she surfaced. But squinting, she could not see him fighting anymore, nor see his body aboard the Dutchman. Instead Jones’ men were staring into the water, but not at her. She realised he must have fallen.
Grabbing the rope with one hand she dived, heading as fast as she could for the Dutchman, feeling around with her free hand for his body. She found nothing. She tried once more, becoming more desperate as she realised the Empress was pulling her along and away from him. As her lungs began to burst her hand brushed against something: his back.
Wrapping her arm around him, she began to kick for the surface, but he was too heavy, with coat, boots and goodness knows what else were dragging him down to the depth. She could not manage. It was save him or save herself. She knew that and knew she would not last much longer. With a last bout of strength, she tried to kick for the surface once more. Elizabeth could see it just above her head, the lamps of both ships lighting her way.
She would not let go. She could not choose to let him die. But the moment that realisation struck her she felt him move. He was helping her.
The rope was pulling her faster now and they moved through the water panting. Her crew pulled them both on deck and as they did she felt the toll of her physical effort. But she could not rest yet.
As she pulled herself up she found those not working valiantly to get the Empress moving away from the Dutchman were standing around James, pistols and cutlasses drawn and pointed directly at him.
“Don’t!” Elizabeth cried as she hurried over.
“He’s one of them,” she heard one of them remark.
“And I am your Captain and I am telling you that you are not to harm him. He is under my protection,” she ordered as she pushed them aside to help him to his feet.
It was as Elizabeth glimpsed him under the Empress’s lamps that she noticed the oozing gash across his chest.
---
When he dreamt, he was back in the Mediterranean Sea, deep beneath the waves, the ropes and sails in the water swaying around him like the wailing spirits of the dead. He had heard her voice then too, calling his name, telling him his time on earth was long past due. He had chosen then to follow, for what life awaited him should he live? To be a survivor when so many perished because of a decision that he made was not a life he could lead.
James’ mind was made until he noticed the boy. Cook, the youngest of the midshipmen, barely twelve, was floundering nearby. His thrashes against the water were becoming more and more laboured. A lifetime without honour to save the life of one boy who did not need to drown - James decided it was a worthy exchange.
James had dragged the boy to the surface and he emerged that time not a boy dreaming of becoming a great sailor, but a man with so many deaths on his hands, dishonoured and clearly not fit to command to become just another Tortuga drunkard.
---
He woke to find himself staring at the ceiling of a cabin foreign to him. His first though was that it was not the Dauntless; of course it was not the Dauntless.
Then, moving into view came the face of Chinese sailor. Startled, James moved to sit, but was greeted with pain in his chest, the result of Davy Jones’ only somewhat unsuccessful attempt to disembowel him. That was what had caused him to fall into the ocean and from there Elizabeth had pulled him out and aboard the Empress.
The Chinese sailor yelled at James in his native tongue and pushed against his shoulders, giving James the impression he was not supposed to move. He moved anyway, he was not just going to lie there. The sailor protested and so James cast him a glare that he knew could be understood without words.
He scanned the room for his sword and his shirt. Seeing his shirt in tatters he remembered he had dropped his sword as he fell, a stupid thing to do. It now either lay on the deck of the Dutchman or below the waves. Either way, his prized possession was lost to him. Though it was fitting, he decided, since he was once again disgraced. What did he have now other than his mission?
He sat up and the sailor yelled at him some more, before turning and leaving the room, probably in disgust and his uncooperative patient, and leaving James alone with his thoughts.
He had made his decision. He had calculated the consequences of his actions, and had known that he may well fail, but this was something he had not factored in his plan. He was alive. Disgraced and injured, but he was alive. Not only that, he was alive, and with her.
Without imminent death in sight, the bravado that had come upon him and with which he kissed her had left. But he had kissed her, and she had kissed him back.
James shook his head, vowing not to become entangled in a fool’s hope. His plan may be in tatters but he still had a mission to complete. He must stab the heart. He must destroy Jones. He had unleashed that evil unaware of its nature, but that was no excuse. He had to atone for what he had done, and forgiveness was not enough. He would never again be an officer, but if he wished to die with honour, it was what he must do.
But first he would need to find a sword and a shirt.
---
Elizabeth walked into her cabin without knocking, to find James standing. He spun around with a look of shock, clearly mortified that she had walked in on him wearing just trousers and bandages.
“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” she said, handing him the clean shirt she had walked in with. It was quite a find on her part; a clean white shirt on a pirate ship was rarer than a dust storm at sea. “I have, after all, been to Singapore.”
“Thank you,” he said, hastily putting the shirt on and doing it up. He had his back to her, so she felt no shame in studying his movement and the large amount of dressing around his waist, as well as the few scars he had from spending years fighting at sea. He seemed pained, but merely pained was something of a miracle considering the state he had been in.
“I’m amazed you’re standing,” she said.
Having done up his buttons he turned to her, seeming to be a stranger from the man she had seen on the Dutchman. Gone was the wig and most of the uniform, but he still did not look like a pirate. A half-drowned officer the tide had dragged in perhaps, but she would never mistake him for a pirate.
“It looks much worse than it is. If anything, I think it is my pride that shall take the longest to heal.”
She nodded. “Where are you headed?” he asked.
“Shipwreck Cove,” she replied.
“It is a trap,” he replied, walking over to her.
“You would have me run from Beckett?”
“Yes, I would.”
“And what would you do? Would you spend your life being hunted, or would you make a stand and fight?”
He looked away and sighed, clearly acknowledging their impasse. She knew he would fight, and he knew she could tell when he lied.
“It is not a battle you should have to fight,” he said, sitting down and bowing his head.
“As a pirate lord, I would have to disagree.”
She swore she saw a hint of a smirk, before he looked up at her. “I gave the heart to Beckett. It was my mistake and I should have been the one to end it.”
She walked over, and placed a hand on his shoulder. He took it with his own and held on gently.
“That is why you chose to say on the Dutchman,” she said.
He did not say a word in response, just held onto her hand.
“Jones is a madman with a desire for slaughter and no respect for justice. And so is Beckett. Too many men had died at my command. Many more have died because of what I’ve done,” he said finally.
“I murdered a man,” she confessed.
He looked up to her with a puzzled expression.
“I killed Jack Sparrow…to save Will. I had to do it.” She was not sure why she was telling him. Maybe it was James confessing the burdens on his conscious to her, but it spilled out and along with it she began to softly cry. She wondered about what he would think, but she had to know. If James, who had known her for so long, would stop caring for her should he be told the truth.
She confessed the whole sorry tale of the trip to Singapore and Worlds End without him saying a word. As she stopped she could not help but notice the silence in the room, or the sad expression on his face.
“Elizabeth,” he said softly, standing up once more.
He pulled her into his arms; she had never before been so grateful for his embrace. She knew what he had done and she knew whom he had aided, but she also knew who he was. He was her James, the man who loved her so much she knew he would never willingly harm her. And now he knew what she had done and who she had become, he loved her still.
She pulled back, and stared at him, just inches from her. They had kissed, aboard the Dutchman when the rush of escape and fear was in the air.
There was something about him - something that arose from the years they had known each other: the trip from England when he taught her how to read charts, the conversations in ballrooms and over dinner tables. She knew she felt something for him and knew that she wanted him there in her life, his stoic presence never far away.
But she did not love him. Because there was someone for whom she felt no confusion about, whose presence made her life complete and whose distance made her heart ache. A man she had killed for. And in the mix of memories and feelings of whatever she and James had, nothing could distract her from the fact that she loved whole heartedly someone else.
“I love Will,” she whispered softly.
She knew it was not fair, to want James in her life so badly but to not love him, but he deserved the truth.
He frowned and pulled away. “Forgive me, Miss Swann. Salt water does strange things to a man,” he said, as he turned away, no longer looking her in the eyes.
He left her cabin quickly and she thought of his words on the Dutchman - two people entwined and never joined, chained both together and apart in torturous relationship of unrequited and poorly timed love. She wished so much better for him.
---
There was strange twisted humour in his situation, James decided. Standing aboard a pirate ship some months ago, he had made a decision. He had fought for and stolen the heart, escaped the island, sold his soul and then betrayed everything he had worked so hard to achieve, to once more be on a pirate ship contemplating the same thing that had lead his mind to that decision - the force of nature that was Elizabeth Swann.
To him she was a hurricane, appearing without warning, and with so little effort she destroyed all he had attempted to create for himself. Yet he loved her. No matter how hard he tried to deny it, every time she entered his life those feelings he had tried so hard to bury were unearthed, and the wound became as raw as the day it had been made.
He wondered if he loved her despite her nature. Or did he love her because of it? That spirit of hers - it has always been lurking under the surface of the woman he had known in Port Royal. He would see a flicker in her eyes when the topic of pirates and the sea emerged, but he had been afraid of it then. He had feared that the woman who talked of adventure and the freedom would never find him satisfactory. Only to have his suspicion so publicly confirmed.
And now that woman was no longer lived as a glint in her eyes. That woman now lived and breathed and commanded the Empress. Watching her give orders and lead, he realised she was at home, and to his greatest regret, he knew she still found him wanting.
He tried to shake off his thoughts of her and focus on the task at hand. Things had been so much simpler the night before. Free Elizabeth and then stab the heart. Now no longer aboard, he would need a fleet at his command to take the Dutchman, and that was never going to happen. Not now he had used up the second chance he never should have had.
But he needed to get aboard. The only fleet that would stand up to the Dutchman was a pirate fleet. The only Pirate Lord that would listen to him was her, and the only pirate he trusted was her.
He needed her.
James gave a bitter, defeated smile. There certainly was humour to his suffering. It always led back to her.
---
It was hard to avoid someone on a ship. It was even harder when one of them was the captain and the other the outcast they were protecting, but somehow she and James were managing it. She suspected he was attempting to avoid her just as much as she was attempting to avoid him. It was not until he had something to say that they managed conversation.
“You stand a fighting chance if you remove the Dutchman from the equation,” he announced walking up to her in a quiet moment on deck.
“You’re behind my decision to fight now then?”
“I know I’m not going to change your mind. And besides, should you run, I will be obliged to travel with you when I wish to fight as well.”
“You know the fleet - what do you think?” she asked, glad to have his knowledge available for her purpose.
“You’re outnumbered by far,” he replied.
“You don’t know how many ships we have.”
“No, but I do know how many Lord Beckett has under command.”
“If it’s that many, why do you think we have a chance?”
James put his hands behind his back and stared out to the horizon. “Because Lord Cutler Beckett is a businessman, and is under the impression that to be a great businessman is to be a great Captain.”
“Is it not?” she asked half-heartedly.
“Fear of discipline and bribes of wealth and titles will only get you so far in this world.” He looked to her. “To lead men into battle against overwhelming odds you must have their hearts. You must appeal to the old codes of honour. Of bravery, duty and loyalty, not merely to greed and self-interest. And to truly lead you must do so by example.”
She stared at him, noticing for the first time in so long the return of the young Captain of Port Royal. The man he was before Jack or Beckett or Jones. Or her.
“Where have I heard that speech before?”
He smiled. “Possibly around Port Royal at some point,” he remarked. “I’m glad to hear at least someone listened to it on the many occasions I’ve given it. Some advice passed down from old officer to young officer, and now to you.”
She smiled back, realising that this was his approval of her commanding a ship, but felt she could not let it stand.
“It’s a good speech James, and bravery, duty and loyalty are all fine when they are what you hold dear - but the men of this ship do not. They fight for freedom. As do I.”
He stared back out to the horizon. “As can you,” she added. “When it’s over, if we survive, I could help you find you a ship and a crew.”
“And become a pirate?” he asked, some of the bitterness of the wretch she had found in Tortuga entering in to his voice and the way he held himself.
“That honour you speak of, it no longer exists.”
“Maybe,” he lamented. “I fear that it died with your father.”
With the mention of her father their conversation died off. It was still far too painful.
James broke the silence. “I swore the moment I handed that heart to Beckett I would no longer be a drunk or a pirate and I intend to keep my word this time. I will follow you and fight beside you until such a time as I can be assured you are safe.”
She was about to protest that she did not need his protection, but he spoke before she could. “It is as a gift to your father. It is what he would have wanted. But that is all.”
“And then what shall you do?”
He paused for a moment, making it clear to her that he had no idea. “I suppose I shall find myself an island and build a house. There is always need for fishermen,” he said. She knew that look in his eyes; she had seen it aboard the Dutchman.
“No, you won’t.”
“Win their hearts and you shall have your fight,” he said, turning and walking away.
“James, you stubborn fool,” she muttered under her breath as she watched him leave.
---
“There are seven pirate Lords and goodness knows how many of their men in that room that would quite happily kill you on sight if they even for a moment suspected your true identity,” she protested.
“You do realise that your arguments are strengthening my point,” James replied. He stood before her wearing one of Sao Feng’s more simple silk jackets and a rather large Chinese hat which did successfully cover most of his face, but it would not fool her for a moment. Nor would it fool Jack. And he looked just a little ridiculous.
“Besides, I may be Admiral Norrington, but you are Elizabeth Swann, daughter of the Governor of Jamaica, hardly safe yourself.”
“Former Governor of Jamaica,” she retorted.
The usual silence that arose whenever her father’s death was mentioned resulted. James turned away. She knew he blamed himself, and she knew she had a large part in why he did so.
“I will not have you murdered in front of me,” she said, resuming their argument.
“I do not plan to be murdered and need I remind you that I survived in Tortuga of all places for months without yours or anyone else’s protection.”
“As your Captain, I am telling you to stay aboard this ship,” she said, hoping that authority would make him see reason.
He glared at her. “That freedom you were speaking of earlier? I think now may be a good time to exercise it. Thank goodness pirate vessels aren’t known for their discipline.”
“You are impossible!” she yelled.
“As are you,” he yelled right back.
They stood there. She missed the days when he attempted to keep the rough edges of his countenance hidden from her; he would have just let her win the argument then. “This is what our marriage would have been like, arguing all the time,” she said, wishing she had not said it as soon as it came out of her mouth.
“Well firstly, should we have gotten married I’m doubtful whether we would end up in such a situation as having to attend a meeting of the pirate brethren.” She decided he did have something of a point there.
“And secondly,” he said more softly, “I, for one, would enjoy it.”
“Fine, come,” she said, wondering how this was going to turn out. Hopefully not with James becoming a puncher-riddled corpse.
---
Jack’s reaction ended up being rather similar to how Elizabeth had envisioned it.
“You!” Jack yelped, moving quickly behind Barbossa. He then seemed to realise just who he was hiding behind and stepped forward again.
“You,” James replied in a lax manner.
Noticing the attention of the room on them all, Elizabeth moved quickly to Jack.
“He’s on our side and if you mention his name to a room full of pirates, then I swear, Jack Sparrow, you will regret it,” she whispered harshly in his ear.
Jack eyed her cautiously, and then moved over to James.
“Seems your back to being a pirate again, mate” she heard him say softly to James, who pulled back at Jack’s breath.
“It is merely a temporary means to an end,” James replied.
Barbossa, who had been watching all this with an expression that suggested he was not enjoying being left in the dark, finally spoke out. “Back to the matter at hand.”
---
She did not know where he had gotten too, but James somehow managed to arrive at the Black Pearl five minutes later than everyone else. On seeing her, he smirked.
“Out with it then,” she muttered.
“King Elizabeth.”
“You question the wisdom of the decision?”
He shook his head. “Just the wisdom of a entering into battle with people so easily fooled by a pair of trousers.”
“Must you treat everything with such sarcasm and disdain these days?” she asked. “You never used to be so bad.”
“I find it makes life just that little bit more bearable,” he replied.
“Where were you, anyway?” she asked.
“Looking for a sword of greater quality than the ones on the Empress,” he replied.
“Any luck?”
“Pirate workmanship,” he muttered.
She was just about to retort about his own beloved sword, created by Will, when Barbossa walked up behind Norrington. “Who’s your friend, Captain Swann?”
This was one introduction she wished she never had to give - the man who once nearly killed her to the man who at that point had run after her. It had to be done, she told herself. “Captain Barbossa, Admiral Norrington - Admiral Norrington, Captain Barbossa,” she said quickly watching the two men cautiously, hoping beyond anything else swords would not be drawn, though they had every reason in the world. Barbossa had slaughtered James’ crew; James had hung Barbossa’s.
They both glared at each other. “Aye, so you are it then, the ‘scourge of piracy’ that killed his own crew.”
The menacing glare that James had been regarding Barbossa with turned to one of outright viciousness and Elizabeth prepared herself to have to step in.
“It’s his bloody fault we’re in this mess,” Jack interrupted, emerging from behind her and distracting James and Barbossa from each other. “What is your end anyway? Sunk another ship?”
“Ah, Mr. Sparrow. Such a shame that for some death is escapable,” James retorted.
“I thought you would have warmed to me by now,” Jack replied. “Theft, betrayal and deceit, you’ve proven yourself to be quite the pirate.” He turned to Elizabeth. “Really, you two deserve each other.”
James took a stride towards Jack and Elizabeth quickly moved herself between them, placing a placating hand on James’ shoulder.
Jack stuck his head out from behind her and stared at James.
“If it wasn’t for him running off with the heart then I could have negotiated with Jones. He’d have the heart and Beckett would be just another the little tyrant of his own company and not the high seas.”
“You are assuming, Mr. Sparrow, that if I had no interest in the heart, I would have sided with you.”
“You would have given it to Will?” Jack asked.
Norrington just glared at him.
With Will’s name being dragged into the argument, Elizabeth had had enough. “That is it. If the three of you wish to run each other through, you have my complete permission. So long as you do if after we have defeated Jones and East India Trading Company. Can you wait that long or do I have to split you all up and put you on separate ships?”
The three men looked at her and then to each other. Quickly they all turned and headed their separate ways: Jack to the Captain’s cabin, James to the bow, and Barbossa below decks.
---
The uneasy truce lasted until morning.
“Go check on the prisoner, Mr. Norrington,” Barbossa said as he emerged from below decks and as the rest of the crew readied the Black Pearl to leave port.
James merely glared at Barbossa.
“You’re new around here, so maybe you misheard my name. It’s Captain Barbossa.”
“Oh, I know yours, but maybe you misheard mine, it’s Admiral Norrington.”
“Titles dished out by Beckett to keep his minions in his back pocket don’t count. And last thing I heard about a man named James Norrington, was that he had lost his true title because of gross incompetence in the face of a gust of wind, which would make you Mister Norrington.”
“The two of you stop it right now, or do I have to remind you both of my title,” Elizabeth interrupted, wondering how on earth they were ever going to get to battle. “I am in command of this ship.”
“So what are your orders, yer Majesty?” Barbossa replied, voice dripping with sarcasm. To prove his point, he did an over the top bow.
James just crossed his arms and rolled his eyes.
“Captain Barbossa, prepare the ship to set sail. Admiral Norrington, check on the prisoner.”
She watched James give her a brief look of disgust. “He knows the ship. He was Captain of it for eleven years, I need him at the helm,” she told him.
“And I’ve just scrubbed its floors,” he replied bitterly before heading off.
“This would happen to be a perfect example of the concept of too many cooks,” Jack said, appearing over her shoulder. “Please explain to me why you always bring that man along? As if you’re not a bad enough omen by yourself.”
“He’s not a pirate, Jack. It’s hard for him. He just needs time to adjust,” Elizabeth answered.
“I still don’t trust him.”
“I trust his devotion to destroy Jones as much I would your devotion to the Pearl,” she replied, turning to Jack.
“Completely different,” he muttered, walking away.
---
Deep in the hold of the ship, and alone at last, James finally felt free to stop and rest. Doubling over, he clutched at his chest. It felt as if it was on fire. He considered sliding down the wall, but unsure if he would get up again, decided against it. Instead he chose to lean heavily against the wall, closing his eyes and hoping desperately it would pass.
“It is you,” came a faint voice from the next door over. He knew that room; it was the brig. He also knew that voice. It was the woman; the one who called to him from beneath the waves. Righting himself, he wandered in.
She stood there against the bars, staring at him with cat-like eyes. “I know you,” he said.
“Aye, you do. So we finally meet. James Norrington, a man far out of his depth.”
“Why do call for me? When I’m under the waves, why do I hear your voice?”
“Because you are James Norrington, the boy who defies my will and my word of another’s destiny and lives when he should have died.”
“What do you mean?”
“You spend your life living by your law, but your life breaks my law, the only law that matter. And I shall tell you now, you shall not stab the heart.”
“It is my responsibility. It is my burden.”
“It is not your destiny.”
He let out a bitter laugh at her words. “And my destiny was go down with the Dauntless, I suppose, with no regard for what I want or how hard I’ve worked. I don’t believe in destiny, Miss…”
“Calypso,” she said rhythmically. “And that was not your destiny. You have no destiny. You were to drown as a boy.”
“But I didn’t.”
“No you did not,” she replied angrily. “And so I send Jack Sparrow, but you live. I send Barbossa with his crew of the damned, and you still live,” she said more quietly, forcing James to walk closer to the bars to hear her.
Quickly she snatched his hand and pulled him against the bars. Leaning in she began to whisper. “It was I who begged my sisters the wind and the rain. It was I who send the hurricane.”
He tried to stand back, but she would not let go.
Trapped, he stared into her eyes and though he told himself she must be lying, he found himself fearing her. She seemed inhuman and deep down within him he had an inkling of who she was and just what she was capable of. But she was caged and he was determined and enraged. “You did not destroy me then. You will not stop me now.”
She reached her spare hand into his shirt, and delicately ran her fingers against his bandage, causing him to recoil in pain.
“Really?” she whispered. “Because it was I who send Davy Jones and it is I who knows your secret. You feel death, James Norrington. It is upon you now, waiting in the shadows.”
She stood back from the light and grinned in the darkness. “So tell me, who has really won?”
---
Joshammee Gibbs surveyed the horizon. Ship after ship after ship awaited them. He did not bother to count - there was no doubt in anyone’s mind they were vastly outnumbered and outgunned.
“Where’s James?” Elizabeth asked.
“With any luck Tia Dalma’s disposed of him,” Barbossa replied.
“What do you want him for?” Jack asked. “I thought we were all happy because he’d finally gone and disappeared.”
“Information, Jack. This is his fleet,” Elizabeth countered.
Gibbs then noticed Jack giving him a look, meaning the duty of finding the arrogant son-of-a-bitch had fallen upon him. With a not-so-well hidden feeling of disgust he headed below deck.
He was not in the brig with the prisoner, neither was he on the gun decks. He eventually found himself wandering around the hold, but couldn’t find him there either, though he decided it was not that great a loss. He could fill up his flask with rum and save himself a trip in a few hours.
As he was doing so, he noticed a dim light from behind some barrels.
Pulling out his pistol, Joshammee moved towards where the light came from. It was there he found Norrington, alone and sitting half-undressed on a barrel with his back to Gibbs, fiddling with the bandaged around his chest.
Gibbs decided to leave him there and come back to “find” him later, but as he moved away he banged into a barrel.
Norrington turned, surprised at the intrusion and as he did, Joshammee realised what he was hiding. The wound on his chest was not healing. Instead parts of it were turning black and other parts yellow. In his lifetime at sea Joshammee had seen many wounds like it before and without amputation none the bearers had survived. It appeared that Admiral Norrington’s number was finally up.
Norrington’s look of surprise and shame quickly turned to the one he wore when he was dispensing discipline.
“Mr. Gibbs,” Norrington managed to say in his most authoritative of tones, taking Joshammee right back to his time serving aboard the Dauntless. “Stealing rum again, I see. Well, I should report this incident to your Captain immediately. However, I am willing to let it slide should you remain quiet about my own secret.”
“Aye, sir,” he said, only realising after he said it that Norrington no longer had any authority over him and Jack already knew he took more than his share of rum.
He turned and began to move away, but something deep within him could not let him walk away from a dying man in pain. He looked back to see Norrington struggling with fresh bandages.
“Would you be requiring some help there?” he asked, wishing he could have just left. It seemed Jack’s good streak was now contagious.
Norrington looked at him stony-faced for a moment. “Thank you,” he said finally.
Gibbs helped wrap him up, Norrington wincing most of the time and neither of them saying a word.
“For the pain,” he said offering over his flask. Norrington placed his shirt back on and a coat over the top which conveniently hid away most stains it had acquired from blood seeping through the bandages.
Norrington regarded the flask for a moment, and then took it.
They walked out onto the deck and Gibbs remembered then why he had been sent to fetch him in the first place. But Captains’ Sparrow, Barbossa and Swann were nowhere to be found on deck.
“Where’ve they gone?” he asked Marty.
Marty just pointed out to the middle of the water, where a small island lay and to which a small boat was headed.
“Captain Swann was looking for you, wanting to know your thoughts on the matter,” Gibbs said to Norrington, who was looking out at the fleet.
“He seems to have acquired more ships, but I would not put him at any greater advantage than he was two days ago,” he replied, seeming to be in thought.
“And why’s that?” Gibbs asked.
Norrington gave an arrogant smile. “Because Lord Beckett no longer has me.”
Remembering why he despised the man in the first place, Gibbs snatched back his rum.
---
“Norrington?” Will exclaimed as he stepped onto the deck of the Pearl to find his old rival glaring at him.
“Mr. Turner,” he said, before turning his back to him.
“What’s he doing here?” he asked Elizabeth. He was the last person he would have expected to find waiting for them to return. Then again, he reasoned, Norrington was the last person he would have expected to find with Elizabeth and Jack on Isla Cruces. A hidden talent of his appeared to be his ability to show up at strange moments.
“He’s here to fight, like you,” Elizabeth replied, apparently nonchalant about the events on the island. Will decided he was not so forgiving. He walked past Elizabeth, intending to confront the man who had stolen the heart from him.
“If you hadn’t taken the heart, I could have freed my father long ago and wouldn’t have had to have led the fleet here,” he said, causing Norrington to turn.
Will watched as Norrington walked towards him slowly with his arms crossed. He looked far more drawn and tired than the man he had been at Port Royal, but still seemed to be looking down his nose at Will none the less.
“You are assuming, Mr. Turner, that should I have not had my own interest in the heart, I would have ensured it went to you.”
“You would have given it to Jack?” Will asked. He was sure Norrington would have sided with him.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Norrington said as he rolled his eyes. “The pair of you…” he began until he looked around. “Where is Mr Sparrow?”
---
Elizabeth watched as they dragged Tia Dalma to the deck and noticed as she looked in Elizabeth’s general direction she had caught the eyes of someone behind her and grinned. Elizabeth turned to see who, only find it was James, leaning against the mast with deep concern written on his face.
“Elizabeth,” he whispered.
“What?” she asked impatiently. This was not the time for his scepticism.
“Do you really think this is wise?” he asked, and for the first time since they had arrived at Shipwreck Cove there was not a drip of scorn in his voice.
“No. But I also think we have no other option.”
“I would rather we take our risk with the fleet than with this…being,” he replied, seeming to be nearly incapable of labelling Tia Dalma.
She turned around and looked at him. “It was not long ago that you did not believe in any of the stories of pirates.”
He paused for a moment and then replied. “To continually deny the existence of things beyond comprehension in the face of overwhelming evidence is foolish indeed, but no more so than unleashing something such as her on the world without any idea of which side she will pick, or the destruction she could possibly reign.”
She realised then why he was on edge and questioning her. James was scared.
“What are you afraid of?”
“That she will have her way,” he responded cryptically.
Elizabeth contemplated his words for a moment, but it was too late. Barbossa was beginning the ritual.
---
The flags were raised, and Elizabeth surveyed all she had achieved. They may not live another day, but they would damn well go down united and with a fight. Beckett would see just whom he was up against and the day would never be forgotten.
As she walked to find Barbossa to put him at the wheel, her eyes fell upon James leaning against the mast still and regarding at the flags and the ship around them.
He then looked to her with something she could almost describe as pride.
“Their hearts, Admiral Norrington,” she said, remembering their conversation only two days earlier.
He gave her a thin smile and nodded. “Their hearts, Captain Swann.”
---
He knew the weather; he had felt it before. Except then it had been standing aboard the Dauntless, at that point in close pursuit of the Black Pearl. When he leaned against the rail and closed his eyes he found himself straight back there, surrounded by his officers - his friends and his men in blue and red coated uniforms going about their duties in a disciplined manner on a neat and organised deck. The last time he had truly commanded a ship. His ship.
Only when he opened them it was not that day, and the Dutchman was bearing down on them. He was not standing on the upper deck, but by the rigging instead, listening to Barbossa cackle away with perverse suicidal joy while dishevelled looking pirates rushed around doing their tasks on a ship, that despite the love of her captains had seen better days.
They went over the edge of the maelstrom and the world collapsed into one of crashing waves, canon fire and screams. James Norrington stood at the side with his cutlass drawn and his eyes on his fate, letting the rush of battle kill his pain.
He cut his way through those of Jones’ men that landed on the Pearl with little thought other than how, now injured, he was not the swordsman he used to be. But when in the heat of the battle he cut down a Trading Company Marine with a swift stab to the heart as the Marine faltered for a moment at the sigh of his former commander, James knew he could not delay - he have to leave the Pearl. He needed to end it as soon as possible.
He grabbed a rope and swung over, landing awkwardly and tearing at his chest. He half collapsed from the pain, but had to rise quickly as a man with coral for a head lunged at him. James moved just fast enough to send him falling over the edge. Biting his lip, he continued on down the deck. He knew the heart was in the Captain’s cabin; he just had to make it there, through the men and the monsters and the spray of the maelstrom.
As he reached mid-ship he saw his sword come plunging down through the air and land not far away, tip buried deeply in the wood. Glancing up he saw something in the mast, but for the life of him he could not make out who it was or what was going on, but as he looked further down he saw the Pearl and Will and Elizabeth on deck in a deep embrace with the battle raging on around them.
The sight struck at him like a bullet, just as it had done that day at Port Royal when she had announced her love for Will. Certain he was now experiencing every kind of pain imaginable, he headed for his sword. However, though the beating rain he noticed something else instead, a tentacle moving on the ground clutching the key to the chest.
Scooping it up the prized the key from Davy Jones’ beard, he stuffed it quickly in his pocket. With his arm around his chest, he stumbled towards his sword, where he could see a Company marine pick it up. He readied his cutlass for attack, only to see Davy Jones himself grab his sword and stab the marine through the heart.
Jones looked him in the eyes and gave James a grin.
“Back, I see. Come to finish what we started?”
Not wanting to waste one moment, James rushed Jones without a retort. Jones caught his thrust. James attacked again, frustrated at how slow he seemed to be and that Jones was far too quick for him. He found himself on the defensive, being pushed towards the stairway and up the stairs by Jones’ consistent spars. They turned around the wheel where Mercer’s body lay. It appeared a mutiny had occurred. Beckett had finally lost control of his monster.
“Did you really think you stood a chance against me?” Jones asked, as James reached the upper deck. “Are you really that arrogant?”
“It was pure luck you survived our first encounter, and now your luck has plain run out,” he continued as James found himself with his back against the rail, the sea raging behind him.
James thrust at him with every ounce of strength he had in reserve, aiming for Jones’ neck. But the captain blocked his spar with a stronger movement and James found his sword smashing in his hands.
Suddenly disarmed, he was defenceless as Davy Jones drove his sword into the flesh nearby his heart with such force the sword emerged from his back and embedded itself in the railing behind him, leaving James trapped in a half sitting position.
James screamed out in pain, wishing Jones’ had not missed and hit his heart instead.
Jones leaned in; his face just inches from James. “Tell me James Norrington, do you fear death?”
James just groaned in agony, his body in so much shock he struggled with the act of breathing.
Jones smiled sadistically and pulled out his claw. With a swift movement he dragged it across James’ already open and tender wound, causing James to scream out once again.
“Good,” Jones replied, before walking away to re-enter the battle.
James forced himself to stop screaming, breathing hard to try and control the pain he was in. With his right hand he pulled his pistol from his shirt and tried to aim it at Jones. But it was too late; he had disappeared down the stairs.
Noticing those fighting around him were not paying him any attention, James put the gun down and with his free hand attempted to pull the sword out. He was still capable of moving, he reasoned, and he had the key. All he needed to do was get free and find the chest, even if he had to crawl his way to the Captain’s cabin. He had not failed yet.
But the sword would not budge. It was sunk so deeply in the wood that he could not pull it out. He realised his only option was to attempt to push it out. Wrapping his free hand around the blade he pushed at the underside of the hit, blood from his hand running down the blade as he did so. Still it would not move.
He screamed out in frustration, tears gathered in his eyes from pain, though they quickly washed away by the salt spray of the ocean that was drenching the deck of the ship.
It was then that he saw Jack Sparrow walking towards him; his head moving around quickly, searching and keeping look out. In his arms was the chest.
James grabbed the pistol from off the ground and as he cocked it, Jack spied him and pulled out his own.
“The chest,” James demanded.
Jack titled his head.
“And what would you want with that?” he asked. “To destroy Jones or to protect Jones I wonder? Or maybe just to have the curse for yourself? You look as if you need it, mate.”
James let out a bitter laugh. It appeared his last moments of life were to be spent arguing with Jack Sparrow and being accused of being just like Jones. “The key,” he groaned. “I have the key. Let me destroy it. Let me undo my mistake and let me die with some honour. That is all I ask.”
“And give up immortality to you? I don’t think so.”
James realised he was struggling to breathe for reasons beyond the pain. He did not have much time left. “What?” he asked, not sure what on earth Jack was talking about.
With that question, Jack gave him a quixotic look. He put his gun down and gave James a satisfied grin. “Besides, the way I see it, all I’ve go to do is wait for nature to take its course and collect the key off your corpse meself,” he said.
“Or,” James retorted with a groan. “I could shoot you dead right now.”
“Then I’ll shoot you,” Jack said, quickly pointing his gun at James once more.
“What is the threat…of a bullet…to a dead man,” James replied.
“It appears we have a problem, Mr. Norrington.”
James could feel himself becoming colder as he sat there with his gun pointed at Jack Sparrow. His final moments were draining away as the two of them glared at each other, silently ready to strike at the other, unmoving as the battle waged on around them, the sea beat down upon them and Dutchman groaned beneath them.
Through the noise of the battle he heard two voices on the deck beneath him. One was Jones.
“That’s why I brought this!”
Elizabeth.
The realisation that Elizabeth was fighting Jones snapped James out of his stubborn determination to get the chest off Sparrow. The pair of them - they were fighting to achieve the same goal and all the while Elizabeth was in danger.
It was just as it had been on Isla Cruces. Again his own desire was overshadowing all other concerns. And look where that had led him.
James dropped his gun and reached into his coat pocket, pulled out the key and tossed it to Jack, who regarded him with a look of shocked disbelief.
“Destroy it,” James instructed.
He had failed, but no one else would die because of him. Elizabeth would be safe.
Jack tilted his head, uncertainly. “What about your honour?”
This was the final trial, James decided, before he died, having to explain himself to Sparrow. “There are some things…more important,” he replied, hoping that would tide the pirate over. That Jack would just stab it and quickly.
Sparrow stepped back and began to open the chest, his eyes still on James, looking almost sorry for him.
Attempting to ignore Sparrow, James closed his eyes, readying himself for the unknown. Through the battle and the waves he could still hear Sparrow quietly say, “bugger.”
---
She had to get up. If she did not get up, if she did not open here eyes, Davy Jones would strike. He was surely standing over her. But movement did not come easily. The blow to Elizabeth’s head had rendered her defenceless.
Finally Elizabeth opened her eyes and turned to see Will running up behind Jones, sword drawn and ready. With a strong thrust he pushed it through Jones’ back.
She watched Jones stare down at the blade emerging through his chest and for a moment it looked like he was about to grin. But suddenly he groaned deeply and staggered towards the rail. He looked to the sky and said one word so quietly Elizabeth could not make it out from the roar of the ocean and noise of the battle. With that Davy Jones fell overboard and into Calypso’s vortex.
Just like that, Davy Jones was dead. It seemed almost too easy considering the legends surrounding him.
Elizabeth looked at Will who was standing there with a puzzled expression.
“That shouldn’t have worked,” he said walking over to her with his hand outstretched, ready to pull her to her feet. “That really shouldn’t have worked.”
“It didn’t.”
Elizabeth looked up to see Jack standing on the upper deck, looking down at them.
“You did it?” she asked.
Jack looked at her sadly and shook his head.
“Elizabeth,” he said, and Elizabeth’s hopes fell as she realised who it must have been.
She ran up the stairs, Will following closely behind with his hands by her waist, and there she saw him. James, pale and surrounded by blood, with his sword through his shoulder and the punctured heart on the deck by his hand.
“Elizabeth,” James said quietly. She rushed down beside him and placed a hand on his face, noticing how cold it was. As she touched him, he smiled.
“We have to get going, love,” Jack said as he gave her arm a tug. She felt Will do the same on the other side of her.
“Just a moment,” she pleaded. She was not going to let him die alone, not like her father. She struggled then to think of something to say to him; to her James with whom she had such a history. She could not think of anything. All she could do was stare into his green eyes, while he looked back at her, so pleased. Peaceful.
“The ship’s going in!” Will yelled, pulling her to her feet. “We’ve got to leave!”
As the pair of them pulled her backwards, she kept in eye contact with James but the Dutchman’s crew were swarming around him, chanting.
“Part of the crew, part of the ship.”
---
Part of the crew, part of the ship
Deep beneath the waves, James listened as the ocean screamed. She screamed and she roared and she lashed waves and currents at the ship. Calypso’s fury threatened to destroy the Flying Dutchman.
But the Dutchman held, because Dutchman was a creation that even Calypso could not undo, and the curse upon her Captain held stronger than her promise of who it was to be Davy Jones’ successor. Calypso was a goddess scorned and humiliated, the ocean herself with all her power beaten by a destiny-less mortal.
But James did not fear her revenge, for she could have none. As a cold, clammy hand reached inside his chest and clamped down upon his heart, he understood. An immortal’s power came from their word, their word was the destiny of mortals, and he had just defied it. He had taken a position intended for William Turner - intended to separate two people in love.
James Norrington understood he had defied a god, and now in many ways, he had become one, though bound by a duty more important than any that had been placed upon him before.
But first, the Dutchman must be avenged. She was not to be leashed, that was Calypso’s law and fire must reign down upon those guilty of defying it. The Endeavour must be destroyed.
And then…Elizabeth
The Captain’s curse was to be separated from his love for immortality came at the greatest of prices. But it was a price James knew he paid in life.
---
“Brilliant move there, Jack - making James Norrington close to immortal,” Barbossa moaned.
They all stood on board; Will with his arms around Elizabeth giving her comfort, while watching as the Flying Dutchman sailed through the debris of the Endeavour. Elizabeth could see men aboard fishing survivors out of the water. But she could not see James aboard the Dutchman.
“Aye. As if it wasn’t bad enough when he was killable,” Pintel replied.
“He nearly drove us out of the Caribbean when he was mortal. Imagine what he could do now,” Ragetti added.
“He’s not going to hunt you down,” Elizabeth retorted quietly.
Jack smiled and pointed to her. “She agrees with me, and she knows him best.”
“How can you be sure? It seems to me he’s got motivation,” Ragetti asked.
“Vanity,” Jack replied. Elizabeth shot him a glance. “You can’t deny it once you’ve seen the uniform.”
“Really?” boomed James’ voice from behind her, the surprise causing her heart to skip a beat. “I would have thought, Mr Sparrow, it is because my duty is no longer to the living. It is to the dead.”
She turned and there he was, looking fit and strong and possessing that air of authority that suited him so well. Bootstrap stood a few feet behind him, now human again and carrying the all too familiar chest. She noticed the key hanging around James’ neck and his sword at his side. He still remained out of uniform, but she could not mistake him for a pirate, she never could. The true man he was shone through.
“But do remember, Captain Barbossa, we shall meet again.”
“I wouldn’t count on that,” Barbossa replied.
“James Norrington, Captain of the Flying Dutchman. It suits you,” Jack interrupted nervously.
“Mr. Sparrow. There is a matter of a debt you owed my predecessor.” Elizabeth watched as Jack winced.
“Ah, now, about that…” Jack began.
But James did not listen. “Except, unlike my predecessor, I cannot think of anything worse than one hundred years of you. So you can consider it paid.”
“And Mr. Turner,” he said, turning to Bootstrap Bill. Elizabeth felt Will squeeze her hand and move forward. “Attempted murder is not something I will not tolerate on my ship. You are relieved of your duty, effective immediately.”
Will turned to Elizabeth and to his father, and she herself looked to a confused and now apparently free Bootstrap. Then she looked to James, and beneath his serious expression there was a glimmer of something in his green eyes. He was having fun, she realised.
Jack grinned from ear to ear. “I was always rooting for you, mate.”
“Yes, and considering my run of luck since you began rooting for me, I would be grateful if you stopped immediately,” James replied dryly.
Will dropped her hand and walked over. “Thank you,” he said softly.
“You do not know how lucky you are, Mr Turner,” she heard James reply quietly.
He walked up to her, and as he did his military expression softened.
“Elizabeth.”
“James.”
He hung his head slightly as he spoke to her. “Davy Jones - he set off to sea with the belief that the woman he loved would be there when he returned. It was when she was not that he became the monster. I have no such belief. I have loved you all this time, but I know Mr Turner has me defeated. Heartbreak will not cause me to corrupt my duty. Not this time. Maybe some good did come out of us.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. It was the only thing she could think of saying.
He shook his head. “I gave you my heart some years ago.” He took the chest off a still stunned looking Bootstrap and handed it to her. “I suppose you can consider this delivery.”
“James…” she protested, unsure still of what to say.
“Though I do not wish to burden you with it, and so I wish for you to bury it,” he said. “Somewhere that no-one can find it. Let it be forgotten. Let me be forgotten.”
“I could never do that,” she said, tears welling up her eyes. He was leaving her life; she was losing him.
“Please,” he said turning away. “Let it end, finally.”
She thrust the chest into the hands of Will.
“James,” she said, placing her hand on his shoulder and causing him to turn. Not quite sure what she was doing, she kissed him. One final kiss, filled with passion, sorrow and remorse. She felt all eyes on deck upon her and she ended it quickly. She was after all, a married woman. They pulled apart and James gave her a sad smile.
“Goodbye Elizabeth.”
“Goodbye,” she replied.
Elizabeth turned to Will who was watching not with jealousy, but sympathy. She looked back to find James was gone and the Dutchman moving away.
“I chose you,” she whispered to Will. “I chose you, not just now or when I married you or when I betrayed Jack, but on the battlements of Port Royal a lifetime ago. I love you, and it has always been you.”
“I know,” he replied.
And while some of the crew went back to work, and others watched the Dutchman sail towards the horizon, she kissed the man to whom her heart belonged.
Title: For Honour a Heart’s Demise
Author: meddow
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Word Count: ~10 170
Pairings: Elizabeth/Norrington, Elizabeth/Will
Summary: James Norrington battles friends, foes, deities and destiny alike to atone for his sins and destroy Davy Jones. AU ending for AWE.
Author’s Notes: Thank you to artic_fox for the fantastic beta.
For the record I really enjoyed AWE. I though it was a great film. I just wanted to play around and change one event and see the ripple effects.
---
James Norrington. Defiant boy. Stubborn man. It is past your time.
Drowning for James Norrington had with it a strange familiarity.
All men were infants in her grasp. Once again he was eight and slipping away beneath the waves in the freezing Channel, all memories and pressing concerns lost within her suffocating embrace. At that moment she was all that existed to him.
He could hear her call, just as he did then; telling him it was time to rest, to stop the fight, to let himself be taken.
He had fought then, when he was a child, afraid of the unknown and wanting so badly to live, to return to his home and his family. He fought and he had won, returning to life with a respect for the waves. From that respect arose desire and not so many years later he joined the navy.
This time, decades on from that day, he felt no need to fight, for what did he have worth fighting for?
But there was someone - someone reached down, an arm locked around his. Someone weaker than the sea, not strong enough to pull him back, but just as determined. That someone was fighting as hard as she could, but his coat, his boots, his body: they were too much for her.
Elizabeth.
With the memory of her everything returned to James Norrington, every triumph and every failure. All the joy he once felt and the searing agony he found himself in, and he remembered why he was in pain and what he had unleashed upon the world.
Beckett, Jones and the murder of Weatherby Swann - the reasons why Elizabeth was fighting, they were all his doing. His sins. His death could not be now - not yet - for he still had work to do.
The sea could wait. Death could wait. There was still one thing he wished to achieve.
Once again, James fought.
---
“James!” Elizabeth screamed so loudly she nearly lost her grip.
She could not focus on the task at hand, not when the alarm had been raised, and Jones’ men were swarming around the ship.
Elizabeth watched helpless as with a thrust of his sword James prevented Bootstrap from running him through with a piece of wood. But others were fast approaching, including Jones who was pushing his way through with his sword drawn and ready. There were far too many of them.
She did not care what James wanted, she would not let him die for her; she could not bear the thought of losing him, particularly not after the death of her father. Elizabeth started moving back along the tether towards the Dutchman.
James turned quickly and caught her eyes, his expression at the same time terrified and sadly determined, and she knew then what he planned to do. He was going to cut the rope.
“James!” she screamed again. She watched him lean back against the railing and bring his sword up against the rope to sever it, in doing so leaving body exposed to attack. Just as she began to fall through the air, she saw Jones slice forward.
She fell through the air and hit the water. Elizabeth struggled against the sudden shock of the ice-cold ocean, screaming his name once more as she surfaced. But squinting, she could not see him fighting anymore, nor see his body aboard the Dutchman. Instead Jones’ men were staring into the water, but not at her. She realised he must have fallen.
Grabbing the rope with one hand she dived, heading as fast as she could for the Dutchman, feeling around with her free hand for his body. She found nothing. She tried once more, becoming more desperate as she realised the Empress was pulling her along and away from him. As her lungs began to burst her hand brushed against something: his back.
Wrapping her arm around him, she began to kick for the surface, but he was too heavy, with coat, boots and goodness knows what else were dragging him down to the depth. She could not manage. It was save him or save herself. She knew that and knew she would not last much longer. With a last bout of strength, she tried to kick for the surface once more. Elizabeth could see it just above her head, the lamps of both ships lighting her way.
She would not let go. She could not choose to let him die. But the moment that realisation struck her she felt him move. He was helping her.
The rope was pulling her faster now and they moved through the water panting. Her crew pulled them both on deck and as they did she felt the toll of her physical effort. But she could not rest yet.
As she pulled herself up she found those not working valiantly to get the Empress moving away from the Dutchman were standing around James, pistols and cutlasses drawn and pointed directly at him.
“Don’t!” Elizabeth cried as she hurried over.
“He’s one of them,” she heard one of them remark.
“And I am your Captain and I am telling you that you are not to harm him. He is under my protection,” she ordered as she pushed them aside to help him to his feet.
It was as Elizabeth glimpsed him under the Empress’s lamps that she noticed the oozing gash across his chest.
---
When he dreamt, he was back in the Mediterranean Sea, deep beneath the waves, the ropes and sails in the water swaying around him like the wailing spirits of the dead. He had heard her voice then too, calling his name, telling him his time on earth was long past due. He had chosen then to follow, for what life awaited him should he live? To be a survivor when so many perished because of a decision that he made was not a life he could lead.
James’ mind was made until he noticed the boy. Cook, the youngest of the midshipmen, barely twelve, was floundering nearby. His thrashes against the water were becoming more and more laboured. A lifetime without honour to save the life of one boy who did not need to drown - James decided it was a worthy exchange.
James had dragged the boy to the surface and he emerged that time not a boy dreaming of becoming a great sailor, but a man with so many deaths on his hands, dishonoured and clearly not fit to command to become just another Tortuga drunkard.
---
He woke to find himself staring at the ceiling of a cabin foreign to him. His first though was that it was not the Dauntless; of course it was not the Dauntless.
Then, moving into view came the face of Chinese sailor. Startled, James moved to sit, but was greeted with pain in his chest, the result of Davy Jones’ only somewhat unsuccessful attempt to disembowel him. That was what had caused him to fall into the ocean and from there Elizabeth had pulled him out and aboard the Empress.
The Chinese sailor yelled at James in his native tongue and pushed against his shoulders, giving James the impression he was not supposed to move. He moved anyway, he was not just going to lie there. The sailor protested and so James cast him a glare that he knew could be understood without words.
He scanned the room for his sword and his shirt. Seeing his shirt in tatters he remembered he had dropped his sword as he fell, a stupid thing to do. It now either lay on the deck of the Dutchman or below the waves. Either way, his prized possession was lost to him. Though it was fitting, he decided, since he was once again disgraced. What did he have now other than his mission?
He sat up and the sailor yelled at him some more, before turning and leaving the room, probably in disgust and his uncooperative patient, and leaving James alone with his thoughts.
He had made his decision. He had calculated the consequences of his actions, and had known that he may well fail, but this was something he had not factored in his plan. He was alive. Disgraced and injured, but he was alive. Not only that, he was alive, and with her.
Without imminent death in sight, the bravado that had come upon him and with which he kissed her had left. But he had kissed her, and she had kissed him back.
James shook his head, vowing not to become entangled in a fool’s hope. His plan may be in tatters but he still had a mission to complete. He must stab the heart. He must destroy Jones. He had unleashed that evil unaware of its nature, but that was no excuse. He had to atone for what he had done, and forgiveness was not enough. He would never again be an officer, but if he wished to die with honour, it was what he must do.
But first he would need to find a sword and a shirt.
---
Elizabeth walked into her cabin without knocking, to find James standing. He spun around with a look of shock, clearly mortified that she had walked in on him wearing just trousers and bandages.
“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” she said, handing him the clean shirt she had walked in with. It was quite a find on her part; a clean white shirt on a pirate ship was rarer than a dust storm at sea. “I have, after all, been to Singapore.”
“Thank you,” he said, hastily putting the shirt on and doing it up. He had his back to her, so she felt no shame in studying his movement and the large amount of dressing around his waist, as well as the few scars he had from spending years fighting at sea. He seemed pained, but merely pained was something of a miracle considering the state he had been in.
“I’m amazed you’re standing,” she said.
Having done up his buttons he turned to her, seeming to be a stranger from the man she had seen on the Dutchman. Gone was the wig and most of the uniform, but he still did not look like a pirate. A half-drowned officer the tide had dragged in perhaps, but she would never mistake him for a pirate.
“It looks much worse than it is. If anything, I think it is my pride that shall take the longest to heal.”
She nodded. “Where are you headed?” he asked.
“Shipwreck Cove,” she replied.
“It is a trap,” he replied, walking over to her.
“You would have me run from Beckett?”
“Yes, I would.”
“And what would you do? Would you spend your life being hunted, or would you make a stand and fight?”
He looked away and sighed, clearly acknowledging their impasse. She knew he would fight, and he knew she could tell when he lied.
“It is not a battle you should have to fight,” he said, sitting down and bowing his head.
“As a pirate lord, I would have to disagree.”
She swore she saw a hint of a smirk, before he looked up at her. “I gave the heart to Beckett. It was my mistake and I should have been the one to end it.”
She walked over, and placed a hand on his shoulder. He took it with his own and held on gently.
“That is why you chose to say on the Dutchman,” she said.
He did not say a word in response, just held onto her hand.
“Jones is a madman with a desire for slaughter and no respect for justice. And so is Beckett. Too many men had died at my command. Many more have died because of what I’ve done,” he said finally.
“I murdered a man,” she confessed.
He looked up to her with a puzzled expression.
“I killed Jack Sparrow…to save Will. I had to do it.” She was not sure why she was telling him. Maybe it was James confessing the burdens on his conscious to her, but it spilled out and along with it she began to softly cry. She wondered about what he would think, but she had to know. If James, who had known her for so long, would stop caring for her should he be told the truth.
She confessed the whole sorry tale of the trip to Singapore and Worlds End without him saying a word. As she stopped she could not help but notice the silence in the room, or the sad expression on his face.
“Elizabeth,” he said softly, standing up once more.
He pulled her into his arms; she had never before been so grateful for his embrace. She knew what he had done and she knew whom he had aided, but she also knew who he was. He was her James, the man who loved her so much she knew he would never willingly harm her. And now he knew what she had done and who she had become, he loved her still.
She pulled back, and stared at him, just inches from her. They had kissed, aboard the Dutchman when the rush of escape and fear was in the air.
There was something about him - something that arose from the years they had known each other: the trip from England when he taught her how to read charts, the conversations in ballrooms and over dinner tables. She knew she felt something for him and knew that she wanted him there in her life, his stoic presence never far away.
But she did not love him. Because there was someone for whom she felt no confusion about, whose presence made her life complete and whose distance made her heart ache. A man she had killed for. And in the mix of memories and feelings of whatever she and James had, nothing could distract her from the fact that she loved whole heartedly someone else.
“I love Will,” she whispered softly.
She knew it was not fair, to want James in her life so badly but to not love him, but he deserved the truth.
He frowned and pulled away. “Forgive me, Miss Swann. Salt water does strange things to a man,” he said, as he turned away, no longer looking her in the eyes.
He left her cabin quickly and she thought of his words on the Dutchman - two people entwined and never joined, chained both together and apart in torturous relationship of unrequited and poorly timed love. She wished so much better for him.
---
There was strange twisted humour in his situation, James decided. Standing aboard a pirate ship some months ago, he had made a decision. He had fought for and stolen the heart, escaped the island, sold his soul and then betrayed everything he had worked so hard to achieve, to once more be on a pirate ship contemplating the same thing that had lead his mind to that decision - the force of nature that was Elizabeth Swann.
To him she was a hurricane, appearing without warning, and with so little effort she destroyed all he had attempted to create for himself. Yet he loved her. No matter how hard he tried to deny it, every time she entered his life those feelings he had tried so hard to bury were unearthed, and the wound became as raw as the day it had been made.
He wondered if he loved her despite her nature. Or did he love her because of it? That spirit of hers - it has always been lurking under the surface of the woman he had known in Port Royal. He would see a flicker in her eyes when the topic of pirates and the sea emerged, but he had been afraid of it then. He had feared that the woman who talked of adventure and the freedom would never find him satisfactory. Only to have his suspicion so publicly confirmed.
And now that woman was no longer lived as a glint in her eyes. That woman now lived and breathed and commanded the Empress. Watching her give orders and lead, he realised she was at home, and to his greatest regret, he knew she still found him wanting.
He tried to shake off his thoughts of her and focus on the task at hand. Things had been so much simpler the night before. Free Elizabeth and then stab the heart. Now no longer aboard, he would need a fleet at his command to take the Dutchman, and that was never going to happen. Not now he had used up the second chance he never should have had.
But he needed to get aboard. The only fleet that would stand up to the Dutchman was a pirate fleet. The only Pirate Lord that would listen to him was her, and the only pirate he trusted was her.
He needed her.
James gave a bitter, defeated smile. There certainly was humour to his suffering. It always led back to her.
---
It was hard to avoid someone on a ship. It was even harder when one of them was the captain and the other the outcast they were protecting, but somehow she and James were managing it. She suspected he was attempting to avoid her just as much as she was attempting to avoid him. It was not until he had something to say that they managed conversation.
“You stand a fighting chance if you remove the Dutchman from the equation,” he announced walking up to her in a quiet moment on deck.
“You’re behind my decision to fight now then?”
“I know I’m not going to change your mind. And besides, should you run, I will be obliged to travel with you when I wish to fight as well.”
“You know the fleet - what do you think?” she asked, glad to have his knowledge available for her purpose.
“You’re outnumbered by far,” he replied.
“You don’t know how many ships we have.”
“No, but I do know how many Lord Beckett has under command.”
“If it’s that many, why do you think we have a chance?”
James put his hands behind his back and stared out to the horizon. “Because Lord Cutler Beckett is a businessman, and is under the impression that to be a great businessman is to be a great Captain.”
“Is it not?” she asked half-heartedly.
“Fear of discipline and bribes of wealth and titles will only get you so far in this world.” He looked to her. “To lead men into battle against overwhelming odds you must have their hearts. You must appeal to the old codes of honour. Of bravery, duty and loyalty, not merely to greed and self-interest. And to truly lead you must do so by example.”
She stared at him, noticing for the first time in so long the return of the young Captain of Port Royal. The man he was before Jack or Beckett or Jones. Or her.
“Where have I heard that speech before?”
He smiled. “Possibly around Port Royal at some point,” he remarked. “I’m glad to hear at least someone listened to it on the many occasions I’ve given it. Some advice passed down from old officer to young officer, and now to you.”
She smiled back, realising that this was his approval of her commanding a ship, but felt she could not let it stand.
“It’s a good speech James, and bravery, duty and loyalty are all fine when they are what you hold dear - but the men of this ship do not. They fight for freedom. As do I.”
He stared back out to the horizon. “As can you,” she added. “When it’s over, if we survive, I could help you find you a ship and a crew.”
“And become a pirate?” he asked, some of the bitterness of the wretch she had found in Tortuga entering in to his voice and the way he held himself.
“That honour you speak of, it no longer exists.”
“Maybe,” he lamented. “I fear that it died with your father.”
With the mention of her father their conversation died off. It was still far too painful.
James broke the silence. “I swore the moment I handed that heart to Beckett I would no longer be a drunk or a pirate and I intend to keep my word this time. I will follow you and fight beside you until such a time as I can be assured you are safe.”
She was about to protest that she did not need his protection, but he spoke before she could. “It is as a gift to your father. It is what he would have wanted. But that is all.”
“And then what shall you do?”
He paused for a moment, making it clear to her that he had no idea. “I suppose I shall find myself an island and build a house. There is always need for fishermen,” he said. She knew that look in his eyes; she had seen it aboard the Dutchman.
“No, you won’t.”
“Win their hearts and you shall have your fight,” he said, turning and walking away.
“James, you stubborn fool,” she muttered under her breath as she watched him leave.
---
“There are seven pirate Lords and goodness knows how many of their men in that room that would quite happily kill you on sight if they even for a moment suspected your true identity,” she protested.
“You do realise that your arguments are strengthening my point,” James replied. He stood before her wearing one of Sao Feng’s more simple silk jackets and a rather large Chinese hat which did successfully cover most of his face, but it would not fool her for a moment. Nor would it fool Jack. And he looked just a little ridiculous.
“Besides, I may be Admiral Norrington, but you are Elizabeth Swann, daughter of the Governor of Jamaica, hardly safe yourself.”
“Former Governor of Jamaica,” she retorted.
The usual silence that arose whenever her father’s death was mentioned resulted. James turned away. She knew he blamed himself, and she knew she had a large part in why he did so.
“I will not have you murdered in front of me,” she said, resuming their argument.
“I do not plan to be murdered and need I remind you that I survived in Tortuga of all places for months without yours or anyone else’s protection.”
“As your Captain, I am telling you to stay aboard this ship,” she said, hoping that authority would make him see reason.
He glared at her. “That freedom you were speaking of earlier? I think now may be a good time to exercise it. Thank goodness pirate vessels aren’t known for their discipline.”
“You are impossible!” she yelled.
“As are you,” he yelled right back.
They stood there. She missed the days when he attempted to keep the rough edges of his countenance hidden from her; he would have just let her win the argument then. “This is what our marriage would have been like, arguing all the time,” she said, wishing she had not said it as soon as it came out of her mouth.
“Well firstly, should we have gotten married I’m doubtful whether we would end up in such a situation as having to attend a meeting of the pirate brethren.” She decided he did have something of a point there.
“And secondly,” he said more softly, “I, for one, would enjoy it.”
“Fine, come,” she said, wondering how this was going to turn out. Hopefully not with James becoming a puncher-riddled corpse.
---
Jack’s reaction ended up being rather similar to how Elizabeth had envisioned it.
“You!” Jack yelped, moving quickly behind Barbossa. He then seemed to realise just who he was hiding behind and stepped forward again.
“You,” James replied in a lax manner.
Noticing the attention of the room on them all, Elizabeth moved quickly to Jack.
“He’s on our side and if you mention his name to a room full of pirates, then I swear, Jack Sparrow, you will regret it,” she whispered harshly in his ear.
Jack eyed her cautiously, and then moved over to James.
“Seems your back to being a pirate again, mate” she heard him say softly to James, who pulled back at Jack’s breath.
“It is merely a temporary means to an end,” James replied.
Barbossa, who had been watching all this with an expression that suggested he was not enjoying being left in the dark, finally spoke out. “Back to the matter at hand.”
---
She did not know where he had gotten too, but James somehow managed to arrive at the Black Pearl five minutes later than everyone else. On seeing her, he smirked.
“Out with it then,” she muttered.
“King Elizabeth.”
“You question the wisdom of the decision?”
He shook his head. “Just the wisdom of a entering into battle with people so easily fooled by a pair of trousers.”
“Must you treat everything with such sarcasm and disdain these days?” she asked. “You never used to be so bad.”
“I find it makes life just that little bit more bearable,” he replied.
“Where were you, anyway?” she asked.
“Looking for a sword of greater quality than the ones on the Empress,” he replied.
“Any luck?”
“Pirate workmanship,” he muttered.
She was just about to retort about his own beloved sword, created by Will, when Barbossa walked up behind Norrington. “Who’s your friend, Captain Swann?”
This was one introduction she wished she never had to give - the man who once nearly killed her to the man who at that point had run after her. It had to be done, she told herself. “Captain Barbossa, Admiral Norrington - Admiral Norrington, Captain Barbossa,” she said quickly watching the two men cautiously, hoping beyond anything else swords would not be drawn, though they had every reason in the world. Barbossa had slaughtered James’ crew; James had hung Barbossa’s.
They both glared at each other. “Aye, so you are it then, the ‘scourge of piracy’ that killed his own crew.”
The menacing glare that James had been regarding Barbossa with turned to one of outright viciousness and Elizabeth prepared herself to have to step in.
“It’s his bloody fault we’re in this mess,” Jack interrupted, emerging from behind her and distracting James and Barbossa from each other. “What is your end anyway? Sunk another ship?”
“Ah, Mr. Sparrow. Such a shame that for some death is escapable,” James retorted.
“I thought you would have warmed to me by now,” Jack replied. “Theft, betrayal and deceit, you’ve proven yourself to be quite the pirate.” He turned to Elizabeth. “Really, you two deserve each other.”
James took a stride towards Jack and Elizabeth quickly moved herself between them, placing a placating hand on James’ shoulder.
Jack stuck his head out from behind her and stared at James.
“If it wasn’t for him running off with the heart then I could have negotiated with Jones. He’d have the heart and Beckett would be just another the little tyrant of his own company and not the high seas.”
“You are assuming, Mr. Sparrow, that if I had no interest in the heart, I would have sided with you.”
“You would have given it to Will?” Jack asked.
Norrington just glared at him.
With Will’s name being dragged into the argument, Elizabeth had had enough. “That is it. If the three of you wish to run each other through, you have my complete permission. So long as you do if after we have defeated Jones and East India Trading Company. Can you wait that long or do I have to split you all up and put you on separate ships?”
The three men looked at her and then to each other. Quickly they all turned and headed their separate ways: Jack to the Captain’s cabin, James to the bow, and Barbossa below decks.
---
The uneasy truce lasted until morning.
“Go check on the prisoner, Mr. Norrington,” Barbossa said as he emerged from below decks and as the rest of the crew readied the Black Pearl to leave port.
James merely glared at Barbossa.
“You’re new around here, so maybe you misheard my name. It’s Captain Barbossa.”
“Oh, I know yours, but maybe you misheard mine, it’s Admiral Norrington.”
“Titles dished out by Beckett to keep his minions in his back pocket don’t count. And last thing I heard about a man named James Norrington, was that he had lost his true title because of gross incompetence in the face of a gust of wind, which would make you Mister Norrington.”
“The two of you stop it right now, or do I have to remind you both of my title,” Elizabeth interrupted, wondering how on earth they were ever going to get to battle. “I am in command of this ship.”
“So what are your orders, yer Majesty?” Barbossa replied, voice dripping with sarcasm. To prove his point, he did an over the top bow.
James just crossed his arms and rolled his eyes.
“Captain Barbossa, prepare the ship to set sail. Admiral Norrington, check on the prisoner.”
She watched James give her a brief look of disgust. “He knows the ship. He was Captain of it for eleven years, I need him at the helm,” she told him.
“And I’ve just scrubbed its floors,” he replied bitterly before heading off.
“This would happen to be a perfect example of the concept of too many cooks,” Jack said, appearing over her shoulder. “Please explain to me why you always bring that man along? As if you’re not a bad enough omen by yourself.”
“He’s not a pirate, Jack. It’s hard for him. He just needs time to adjust,” Elizabeth answered.
“I still don’t trust him.”
“I trust his devotion to destroy Jones as much I would your devotion to the Pearl,” she replied, turning to Jack.
“Completely different,” he muttered, walking away.
---
Deep in the hold of the ship, and alone at last, James finally felt free to stop and rest. Doubling over, he clutched at his chest. It felt as if it was on fire. He considered sliding down the wall, but unsure if he would get up again, decided against it. Instead he chose to lean heavily against the wall, closing his eyes and hoping desperately it would pass.
“It is you,” came a faint voice from the next door over. He knew that room; it was the brig. He also knew that voice. It was the woman; the one who called to him from beneath the waves. Righting himself, he wandered in.
She stood there against the bars, staring at him with cat-like eyes. “I know you,” he said.
“Aye, you do. So we finally meet. James Norrington, a man far out of his depth.”
“Why do call for me? When I’m under the waves, why do I hear your voice?”
“Because you are James Norrington, the boy who defies my will and my word of another’s destiny and lives when he should have died.”
“What do you mean?”
“You spend your life living by your law, but your life breaks my law, the only law that matter. And I shall tell you now, you shall not stab the heart.”
“It is my responsibility. It is my burden.”
“It is not your destiny.”
He let out a bitter laugh at her words. “And my destiny was go down with the Dauntless, I suppose, with no regard for what I want or how hard I’ve worked. I don’t believe in destiny, Miss…”
“Calypso,” she said rhythmically. “And that was not your destiny. You have no destiny. You were to drown as a boy.”
“But I didn’t.”
“No you did not,” she replied angrily. “And so I send Jack Sparrow, but you live. I send Barbossa with his crew of the damned, and you still live,” she said more quietly, forcing James to walk closer to the bars to hear her.
Quickly she snatched his hand and pulled him against the bars. Leaning in she began to whisper. “It was I who begged my sisters the wind and the rain. It was I who send the hurricane.”
He tried to stand back, but she would not let go.
Trapped, he stared into her eyes and though he told himself she must be lying, he found himself fearing her. She seemed inhuman and deep down within him he had an inkling of who she was and just what she was capable of. But she was caged and he was determined and enraged. “You did not destroy me then. You will not stop me now.”
She reached her spare hand into his shirt, and delicately ran her fingers against his bandage, causing him to recoil in pain.
“Really?” she whispered. “Because it was I who send Davy Jones and it is I who knows your secret. You feel death, James Norrington. It is upon you now, waiting in the shadows.”
She stood back from the light and grinned in the darkness. “So tell me, who has really won?”
---
Joshammee Gibbs surveyed the horizon. Ship after ship after ship awaited them. He did not bother to count - there was no doubt in anyone’s mind they were vastly outnumbered and outgunned.
“Where’s James?” Elizabeth asked.
“With any luck Tia Dalma’s disposed of him,” Barbossa replied.
“What do you want him for?” Jack asked. “I thought we were all happy because he’d finally gone and disappeared.”
“Information, Jack. This is his fleet,” Elizabeth countered.
Gibbs then noticed Jack giving him a look, meaning the duty of finding the arrogant son-of-a-bitch had fallen upon him. With a not-so-well hidden feeling of disgust he headed below deck.
He was not in the brig with the prisoner, neither was he on the gun decks. He eventually found himself wandering around the hold, but couldn’t find him there either, though he decided it was not that great a loss. He could fill up his flask with rum and save himself a trip in a few hours.
As he was doing so, he noticed a dim light from behind some barrels.
Pulling out his pistol, Joshammee moved towards where the light came from. It was there he found Norrington, alone and sitting half-undressed on a barrel with his back to Gibbs, fiddling with the bandaged around his chest.
Gibbs decided to leave him there and come back to “find” him later, but as he moved away he banged into a barrel.
Norrington turned, surprised at the intrusion and as he did, Joshammee realised what he was hiding. The wound on his chest was not healing. Instead parts of it were turning black and other parts yellow. In his lifetime at sea Joshammee had seen many wounds like it before and without amputation none the bearers had survived. It appeared that Admiral Norrington’s number was finally up.
Norrington’s look of surprise and shame quickly turned to the one he wore when he was dispensing discipline.
“Mr. Gibbs,” Norrington managed to say in his most authoritative of tones, taking Joshammee right back to his time serving aboard the Dauntless. “Stealing rum again, I see. Well, I should report this incident to your Captain immediately. However, I am willing to let it slide should you remain quiet about my own secret.”
“Aye, sir,” he said, only realising after he said it that Norrington no longer had any authority over him and Jack already knew he took more than his share of rum.
He turned and began to move away, but something deep within him could not let him walk away from a dying man in pain. He looked back to see Norrington struggling with fresh bandages.
“Would you be requiring some help there?” he asked, wishing he could have just left. It seemed Jack’s good streak was now contagious.
Norrington looked at him stony-faced for a moment. “Thank you,” he said finally.
Gibbs helped wrap him up, Norrington wincing most of the time and neither of them saying a word.
“For the pain,” he said offering over his flask. Norrington placed his shirt back on and a coat over the top which conveniently hid away most stains it had acquired from blood seeping through the bandages.
Norrington regarded the flask for a moment, and then took it.
They walked out onto the deck and Gibbs remembered then why he had been sent to fetch him in the first place. But Captains’ Sparrow, Barbossa and Swann were nowhere to be found on deck.
“Where’ve they gone?” he asked Marty.
Marty just pointed out to the middle of the water, where a small island lay and to which a small boat was headed.
“Captain Swann was looking for you, wanting to know your thoughts on the matter,” Gibbs said to Norrington, who was looking out at the fleet.
“He seems to have acquired more ships, but I would not put him at any greater advantage than he was two days ago,” he replied, seeming to be in thought.
“And why’s that?” Gibbs asked.
Norrington gave an arrogant smile. “Because Lord Beckett no longer has me.”
Remembering why he despised the man in the first place, Gibbs snatched back his rum.
---
“Norrington?” Will exclaimed as he stepped onto the deck of the Pearl to find his old rival glaring at him.
“Mr. Turner,” he said, before turning his back to him.
“What’s he doing here?” he asked Elizabeth. He was the last person he would have expected to find waiting for them to return. Then again, he reasoned, Norrington was the last person he would have expected to find with Elizabeth and Jack on Isla Cruces. A hidden talent of his appeared to be his ability to show up at strange moments.
“He’s here to fight, like you,” Elizabeth replied, apparently nonchalant about the events on the island. Will decided he was not so forgiving. He walked past Elizabeth, intending to confront the man who had stolen the heart from him.
“If you hadn’t taken the heart, I could have freed my father long ago and wouldn’t have had to have led the fleet here,” he said, causing Norrington to turn.
Will watched as Norrington walked towards him slowly with his arms crossed. He looked far more drawn and tired than the man he had been at Port Royal, but still seemed to be looking down his nose at Will none the less.
“You are assuming, Mr. Turner, that should I have not had my own interest in the heart, I would have ensured it went to you.”
“You would have given it to Jack?” Will asked. He was sure Norrington would have sided with him.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Norrington said as he rolled his eyes. “The pair of you…” he began until he looked around. “Where is Mr Sparrow?”
---
Elizabeth watched as they dragged Tia Dalma to the deck and noticed as she looked in Elizabeth’s general direction she had caught the eyes of someone behind her and grinned. Elizabeth turned to see who, only find it was James, leaning against the mast with deep concern written on his face.
“Elizabeth,” he whispered.
“What?” she asked impatiently. This was not the time for his scepticism.
“Do you really think this is wise?” he asked, and for the first time since they had arrived at Shipwreck Cove there was not a drip of scorn in his voice.
“No. But I also think we have no other option.”
“I would rather we take our risk with the fleet than with this…being,” he replied, seeming to be nearly incapable of labelling Tia Dalma.
She turned around and looked at him. “It was not long ago that you did not believe in any of the stories of pirates.”
He paused for a moment and then replied. “To continually deny the existence of things beyond comprehension in the face of overwhelming evidence is foolish indeed, but no more so than unleashing something such as her on the world without any idea of which side she will pick, or the destruction she could possibly reign.”
She realised then why he was on edge and questioning her. James was scared.
“What are you afraid of?”
“That she will have her way,” he responded cryptically.
Elizabeth contemplated his words for a moment, but it was too late. Barbossa was beginning the ritual.
---
The flags were raised, and Elizabeth surveyed all she had achieved. They may not live another day, but they would damn well go down united and with a fight. Beckett would see just whom he was up against and the day would never be forgotten.
As she walked to find Barbossa to put him at the wheel, her eyes fell upon James leaning against the mast still and regarding at the flags and the ship around them.
He then looked to her with something she could almost describe as pride.
“Their hearts, Admiral Norrington,” she said, remembering their conversation only two days earlier.
He gave her a thin smile and nodded. “Their hearts, Captain Swann.”
---
He knew the weather; he had felt it before. Except then it had been standing aboard the Dauntless, at that point in close pursuit of the Black Pearl. When he leaned against the rail and closed his eyes he found himself straight back there, surrounded by his officers - his friends and his men in blue and red coated uniforms going about their duties in a disciplined manner on a neat and organised deck. The last time he had truly commanded a ship. His ship.
Only when he opened them it was not that day, and the Dutchman was bearing down on them. He was not standing on the upper deck, but by the rigging instead, listening to Barbossa cackle away with perverse suicidal joy while dishevelled looking pirates rushed around doing their tasks on a ship, that despite the love of her captains had seen better days.
They went over the edge of the maelstrom and the world collapsed into one of crashing waves, canon fire and screams. James Norrington stood at the side with his cutlass drawn and his eyes on his fate, letting the rush of battle kill his pain.
He cut his way through those of Jones’ men that landed on the Pearl with little thought other than how, now injured, he was not the swordsman he used to be. But when in the heat of the battle he cut down a Trading Company Marine with a swift stab to the heart as the Marine faltered for a moment at the sigh of his former commander, James knew he could not delay - he have to leave the Pearl. He needed to end it as soon as possible.
He grabbed a rope and swung over, landing awkwardly and tearing at his chest. He half collapsed from the pain, but had to rise quickly as a man with coral for a head lunged at him. James moved just fast enough to send him falling over the edge. Biting his lip, he continued on down the deck. He knew the heart was in the Captain’s cabin; he just had to make it there, through the men and the monsters and the spray of the maelstrom.
As he reached mid-ship he saw his sword come plunging down through the air and land not far away, tip buried deeply in the wood. Glancing up he saw something in the mast, but for the life of him he could not make out who it was or what was going on, but as he looked further down he saw the Pearl and Will and Elizabeth on deck in a deep embrace with the battle raging on around them.
The sight struck at him like a bullet, just as it had done that day at Port Royal when she had announced her love for Will. Certain he was now experiencing every kind of pain imaginable, he headed for his sword. However, though the beating rain he noticed something else instead, a tentacle moving on the ground clutching the key to the chest.
Scooping it up the prized the key from Davy Jones’ beard, he stuffed it quickly in his pocket. With his arm around his chest, he stumbled towards his sword, where he could see a Company marine pick it up. He readied his cutlass for attack, only to see Davy Jones himself grab his sword and stab the marine through the heart.
Jones looked him in the eyes and gave James a grin.
“Back, I see. Come to finish what we started?”
Not wanting to waste one moment, James rushed Jones without a retort. Jones caught his thrust. James attacked again, frustrated at how slow he seemed to be and that Jones was far too quick for him. He found himself on the defensive, being pushed towards the stairway and up the stairs by Jones’ consistent spars. They turned around the wheel where Mercer’s body lay. It appeared a mutiny had occurred. Beckett had finally lost control of his monster.
“Did you really think you stood a chance against me?” Jones asked, as James reached the upper deck. “Are you really that arrogant?”
“It was pure luck you survived our first encounter, and now your luck has plain run out,” he continued as James found himself with his back against the rail, the sea raging behind him.
James thrust at him with every ounce of strength he had in reserve, aiming for Jones’ neck. But the captain blocked his spar with a stronger movement and James found his sword smashing in his hands.
Suddenly disarmed, he was defenceless as Davy Jones drove his sword into the flesh nearby his heart with such force the sword emerged from his back and embedded itself in the railing behind him, leaving James trapped in a half sitting position.
James screamed out in pain, wishing Jones’ had not missed and hit his heart instead.
Jones leaned in; his face just inches from James. “Tell me James Norrington, do you fear death?”
James just groaned in agony, his body in so much shock he struggled with the act of breathing.
Jones smiled sadistically and pulled out his claw. With a swift movement he dragged it across James’ already open and tender wound, causing James to scream out once again.
“Good,” Jones replied, before walking away to re-enter the battle.
James forced himself to stop screaming, breathing hard to try and control the pain he was in. With his right hand he pulled his pistol from his shirt and tried to aim it at Jones. But it was too late; he had disappeared down the stairs.
Noticing those fighting around him were not paying him any attention, James put the gun down and with his free hand attempted to pull the sword out. He was still capable of moving, he reasoned, and he had the key. All he needed to do was get free and find the chest, even if he had to crawl his way to the Captain’s cabin. He had not failed yet.
But the sword would not budge. It was sunk so deeply in the wood that he could not pull it out. He realised his only option was to attempt to push it out. Wrapping his free hand around the blade he pushed at the underside of the hit, blood from his hand running down the blade as he did so. Still it would not move.
He screamed out in frustration, tears gathered in his eyes from pain, though they quickly washed away by the salt spray of the ocean that was drenching the deck of the ship.
It was then that he saw Jack Sparrow walking towards him; his head moving around quickly, searching and keeping look out. In his arms was the chest.
James grabbed the pistol from off the ground and as he cocked it, Jack spied him and pulled out his own.
“The chest,” James demanded.
Jack titled his head.
“And what would you want with that?” he asked. “To destroy Jones or to protect Jones I wonder? Or maybe just to have the curse for yourself? You look as if you need it, mate.”
James let out a bitter laugh. It appeared his last moments of life were to be spent arguing with Jack Sparrow and being accused of being just like Jones. “The key,” he groaned. “I have the key. Let me destroy it. Let me undo my mistake and let me die with some honour. That is all I ask.”
“And give up immortality to you? I don’t think so.”
James realised he was struggling to breathe for reasons beyond the pain. He did not have much time left. “What?” he asked, not sure what on earth Jack was talking about.
With that question, Jack gave him a quixotic look. He put his gun down and gave James a satisfied grin. “Besides, the way I see it, all I’ve go to do is wait for nature to take its course and collect the key off your corpse meself,” he said.
“Or,” James retorted with a groan. “I could shoot you dead right now.”
“Then I’ll shoot you,” Jack said, quickly pointing his gun at James once more.
“What is the threat…of a bullet…to a dead man,” James replied.
“It appears we have a problem, Mr. Norrington.”
James could feel himself becoming colder as he sat there with his gun pointed at Jack Sparrow. His final moments were draining away as the two of them glared at each other, silently ready to strike at the other, unmoving as the battle waged on around them, the sea beat down upon them and Dutchman groaned beneath them.
Through the noise of the battle he heard two voices on the deck beneath him. One was Jones.
“That’s why I brought this!”
Elizabeth.
The realisation that Elizabeth was fighting Jones snapped James out of his stubborn determination to get the chest off Sparrow. The pair of them - they were fighting to achieve the same goal and all the while Elizabeth was in danger.
It was just as it had been on Isla Cruces. Again his own desire was overshadowing all other concerns. And look where that had led him.
James dropped his gun and reached into his coat pocket, pulled out the key and tossed it to Jack, who regarded him with a look of shocked disbelief.
“Destroy it,” James instructed.
He had failed, but no one else would die because of him. Elizabeth would be safe.
Jack tilted his head, uncertainly. “What about your honour?”
This was the final trial, James decided, before he died, having to explain himself to Sparrow. “There are some things…more important,” he replied, hoping that would tide the pirate over. That Jack would just stab it and quickly.
Sparrow stepped back and began to open the chest, his eyes still on James, looking almost sorry for him.
Attempting to ignore Sparrow, James closed his eyes, readying himself for the unknown. Through the battle and the waves he could still hear Sparrow quietly say, “bugger.”
---
She had to get up. If she did not get up, if she did not open here eyes, Davy Jones would strike. He was surely standing over her. But movement did not come easily. The blow to Elizabeth’s head had rendered her defenceless.
Finally Elizabeth opened her eyes and turned to see Will running up behind Jones, sword drawn and ready. With a strong thrust he pushed it through Jones’ back.
She watched Jones stare down at the blade emerging through his chest and for a moment it looked like he was about to grin. But suddenly he groaned deeply and staggered towards the rail. He looked to the sky and said one word so quietly Elizabeth could not make it out from the roar of the ocean and noise of the battle. With that Davy Jones fell overboard and into Calypso’s vortex.
Just like that, Davy Jones was dead. It seemed almost too easy considering the legends surrounding him.
Elizabeth looked at Will who was standing there with a puzzled expression.
“That shouldn’t have worked,” he said walking over to her with his hand outstretched, ready to pull her to her feet. “That really shouldn’t have worked.”
“It didn’t.”
Elizabeth looked up to see Jack standing on the upper deck, looking down at them.
“You did it?” she asked.
Jack looked at her sadly and shook his head.
“Elizabeth,” he said, and Elizabeth’s hopes fell as she realised who it must have been.
She ran up the stairs, Will following closely behind with his hands by her waist, and there she saw him. James, pale and surrounded by blood, with his sword through his shoulder and the punctured heart on the deck by his hand.
“Elizabeth,” James said quietly. She rushed down beside him and placed a hand on his face, noticing how cold it was. As she touched him, he smiled.
“We have to get going, love,” Jack said as he gave her arm a tug. She felt Will do the same on the other side of her.
“Just a moment,” she pleaded. She was not going to let him die alone, not like her father. She struggled then to think of something to say to him; to her James with whom she had such a history. She could not think of anything. All she could do was stare into his green eyes, while he looked back at her, so pleased. Peaceful.
“The ship’s going in!” Will yelled, pulling her to her feet. “We’ve got to leave!”
As the pair of them pulled her backwards, she kept in eye contact with James but the Dutchman’s crew were swarming around him, chanting.
“Part of the crew, part of the ship.”
---
Part of the crew, part of the ship
Deep beneath the waves, James listened as the ocean screamed. She screamed and she roared and she lashed waves and currents at the ship. Calypso’s fury threatened to destroy the Flying Dutchman.
But the Dutchman held, because Dutchman was a creation that even Calypso could not undo, and the curse upon her Captain held stronger than her promise of who it was to be Davy Jones’ successor. Calypso was a goddess scorned and humiliated, the ocean herself with all her power beaten by a destiny-less mortal.
But James did not fear her revenge, for she could have none. As a cold, clammy hand reached inside his chest and clamped down upon his heart, he understood. An immortal’s power came from their word, their word was the destiny of mortals, and he had just defied it. He had taken a position intended for William Turner - intended to separate two people in love.
James Norrington understood he had defied a god, and now in many ways, he had become one, though bound by a duty more important than any that had been placed upon him before.
But first, the Dutchman must be avenged. She was not to be leashed, that was Calypso’s law and fire must reign down upon those guilty of defying it. The Endeavour must be destroyed.
And then…Elizabeth
The Captain’s curse was to be separated from his love for immortality came at the greatest of prices. But it was a price James knew he paid in life.
---
“Brilliant move there, Jack - making James Norrington close to immortal,” Barbossa moaned.
They all stood on board; Will with his arms around Elizabeth giving her comfort, while watching as the Flying Dutchman sailed through the debris of the Endeavour. Elizabeth could see men aboard fishing survivors out of the water. But she could not see James aboard the Dutchman.
“Aye. As if it wasn’t bad enough when he was killable,” Pintel replied.
“He nearly drove us out of the Caribbean when he was mortal. Imagine what he could do now,” Ragetti added.
“He’s not going to hunt you down,” Elizabeth retorted quietly.
Jack smiled and pointed to her. “She agrees with me, and she knows him best.”
“How can you be sure? It seems to me he’s got motivation,” Ragetti asked.
“Vanity,” Jack replied. Elizabeth shot him a glance. “You can’t deny it once you’ve seen the uniform.”
“Really?” boomed James’ voice from behind her, the surprise causing her heart to skip a beat. “I would have thought, Mr Sparrow, it is because my duty is no longer to the living. It is to the dead.”
She turned and there he was, looking fit and strong and possessing that air of authority that suited him so well. Bootstrap stood a few feet behind him, now human again and carrying the all too familiar chest. She noticed the key hanging around James’ neck and his sword at his side. He still remained out of uniform, but she could not mistake him for a pirate, she never could. The true man he was shone through.
“But do remember, Captain Barbossa, we shall meet again.”
“I wouldn’t count on that,” Barbossa replied.
“James Norrington, Captain of the Flying Dutchman. It suits you,” Jack interrupted nervously.
“Mr. Sparrow. There is a matter of a debt you owed my predecessor.” Elizabeth watched as Jack winced.
“Ah, now, about that…” Jack began.
But James did not listen. “Except, unlike my predecessor, I cannot think of anything worse than one hundred years of you. So you can consider it paid.”
“And Mr. Turner,” he said, turning to Bootstrap Bill. Elizabeth felt Will squeeze her hand and move forward. “Attempted murder is not something I will not tolerate on my ship. You are relieved of your duty, effective immediately.”
Will turned to Elizabeth and to his father, and she herself looked to a confused and now apparently free Bootstrap. Then she looked to James, and beneath his serious expression there was a glimmer of something in his green eyes. He was having fun, she realised.
Jack grinned from ear to ear. “I was always rooting for you, mate.”
“Yes, and considering my run of luck since you began rooting for me, I would be grateful if you stopped immediately,” James replied dryly.
Will dropped her hand and walked over. “Thank you,” he said softly.
“You do not know how lucky you are, Mr Turner,” she heard James reply quietly.
He walked up to her, and as he did his military expression softened.
“Elizabeth.”
“James.”
He hung his head slightly as he spoke to her. “Davy Jones - he set off to sea with the belief that the woman he loved would be there when he returned. It was when she was not that he became the monster. I have no such belief. I have loved you all this time, but I know Mr Turner has me defeated. Heartbreak will not cause me to corrupt my duty. Not this time. Maybe some good did come out of us.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. It was the only thing she could think of saying.
He shook his head. “I gave you my heart some years ago.” He took the chest off a still stunned looking Bootstrap and handed it to her. “I suppose you can consider this delivery.”
“James…” she protested, unsure still of what to say.
“Though I do not wish to burden you with it, and so I wish for you to bury it,” he said. “Somewhere that no-one can find it. Let it be forgotten. Let me be forgotten.”
“I could never do that,” she said, tears welling up her eyes. He was leaving her life; she was losing him.
“Please,” he said turning away. “Let it end, finally.”
She thrust the chest into the hands of Will.
“James,” she said, placing her hand on his shoulder and causing him to turn. Not quite sure what she was doing, she kissed him. One final kiss, filled with passion, sorrow and remorse. She felt all eyes on deck upon her and she ended it quickly. She was after all, a married woman. They pulled apart and James gave her a sad smile.
“Goodbye Elizabeth.”
“Goodbye,” she replied.
Elizabeth turned to Will who was watching not with jealousy, but sympathy. She looked back to find James was gone and the Dutchman moving away.
“I chose you,” she whispered to Will. “I chose you, not just now or when I married you or when I betrayed Jack, but on the battlements of Port Royal a lifetime ago. I love you, and it has always been you.”
“I know,” he replied.
And while some of the crew went back to work, and others watched the Dutchman sail towards the horizon, she kissed the man to whom her heart belonged.