Title: Between Wind and Tide, Chapter 1

by Ruby Isabella

Disclaimer: The following is fanfiction based on a property owned by Disney.

Summary: Norrington returns to Port Royal after long absence

Notes: Sequel to "A Windward Tide." Also, you might worry at times that this is not slash, but it is. Really. Cross my heart. Finally, it takes place some years after PotC.

1.

"Amazing you survived," the physician mused as he bent to examine the worst of Norrington's scars. "Truly amazing."

Norrington, having no retort, simply wished the examination along. His eyes, lethargic from too few hours of sleep, turned down to stare at the back of the physician's gray wig. Norrington hadn't seen a less interesting thing in a long while.

"What happened here?" Dr. O'Brien's warm, chapped palm cupped the stump that capped off Norrington's thigh. The worst of his scars.

"Gangrene."

"Ah. Who took it off?"

"Cannibals."

"Not to eat, I hope?" O'Brien quipped with a wink.

Norrington suffered the doctor's humor with a frown.

Bending once again to peer at the wound, O'Brien said, "They did a good job. You were lucky."

_Luck._ "Where's Dr. March?" He tugged his shirt across the table to cover the stump. Dr. March could scarcely have been called spry the last time Norrington had set foot in Port Royal, but still. It had only been five years.

"I'm afraid Dr. March succumbed to the cholera."

"Cholera." The word fell lusterless from his lips. During his...adventure...he'd many times imagined Port Royal. Dreamed of it. Once or twice, in delirium, he'd actually believed he was back in it. But that, unlike this one, was a Port Royal unchanged.

He pictured Dr. March clearly, at his last visit to the man, two days before he and the crews of two of the British Royal Navy's best ships in the Caribbean set out on orders to--

It didn't matter. He smoothed the shirt over his good leg. The games grown men played with land and titles and the lives of other men left a bitter taste in his mouth. Even bitterer was the memory that he had once been a cog in the machine.

"Who else?" he asked.

"Oh, too many. Far too many. Terrible, terrible tragedy it was. But think-- it might have been you along with them had you not been.... Well, at least you're alive."

Norrington cleared his throat. "Governor Swann?"

He knew already Swann no longer held the post of governor--Governor Evans had sent him several missives already--but his assumption had been that Swann had returned to England; death hadn't entered his mind, perhaps because he had seen so much of it, or because he himself had survived so much. Surely those living in civilized surroundings.... A protective layer of fantasy peeled itself away from his world.

"I'm afraid he was no match for the cholera, either." O'Brien turned to his cabinet of powders and concoctions.

"And his daughter?"

"Mrs. Turner? She--"

A banging at the front door followed by clomping footfalls and the squeak of something--boot heels?--being dragged across polished wooden planks, drew the attention of both men to the examination room's door.

"Better go see who that is." The physician reached for the door's handle. With a look back, he said, "You can get dressed. Save for the leg there, you're healthy as can be. Might want to get a few good meals in you, though. If you have any questions, leave them with Mrs. Southby on your way out. Mrs. Southby, what's going on?" he called as he opened the door.

The door closed. Norrington lifted his crutch from where it lay against the examination table. His clothes, save for his shirt, lay spilled over the top of a chest of drawers along the side wall. The gulf of the room lay between him and them. After shrugging into the shirt and fastening its front, he braced the crutch under his armpit so that he could lean forward to pivot himself off the table.

Dressing, especially in the stuffy English clothing he'd lost practice at, took a painfully long time.

The knot in the bottom of his trouser leg banged against his other ankle as he turned to leave.

~ ~ ~

He ducked his head as he pushed out the physician's front door. Some responses were deep-grained, like the warding off of London's rain and chill when entering the streets. London...a place he hadn't been in longer than he could remember, but the weather in Port Royal--unaccountably frigid and damp for both of the two days he'd been back--raised long-dead memories of life on the other side of the Atlantic. It didn't, however, raise any desire to go back.

The sound of a carriage hurrying as best it could down the muddy main road brought his head up just as he was about to grab hold of the porch's railing. At scarcely half-past four, lamps burned in the windows of the shops and offices that lined the street--the gray sky had grown that overbearing. As the carriage that had caught his attention rolled past, it revealed another parked across the street. Norrington pulled his coat closer against his neck. His nose was already raw from the damp wind. He mused that the weather had been more temperate in the jungles of Brazil.

High and black, this second carriage more than anything reminded him of London. A London cab, or a stray carriage from a London funeral procession. What had happened to Bermuda in his absence, or was it only a trick of the weather and his mental state?

Two black horses waited, lifting and lowering their feet in place, at the front of the carriage. The carriage driver waited in stillness, reins at the ready. A movement just beyond the horses caught Norrington's eye--a swirl of black fabric, the curve of a pale cheek exposed for an instant beneath a dark veil. An eye, its gaze sweeping the street but not climbing the steps of the physician's office nor taking in the one-legged man poised at the top of those steps. And then the figure ducked, lifted its skirts, made ready to climb into the carriage.

"Elizabeth?"

The iron railing bit his hand with cold.

"Elizabeth!" The wind stole his voice.

He took his eyes from the carriage long enough to ensure that his crutch landed solidly on the stair below. While he hopped down after it, he lifted his head again.

"Miss Swann!"

The tip of his crutch nearly slipped from under him as he skidded down the next two steps. He came, finally, to an unsteady halt on the side of the street, his fingers rigid from his grip on the railing. The carriage door closed.

"Elizabeth!"

He started into the street, but already the carriage was pulling away.

"Miss Swann!" Leaning on his crutch in the middle of Port Royal's main thoroughfare, he stared at the carriage's curtained rear window, willing the curtains to part.

Damn the wet cold; it sunk deep into his bones. He wiped his nose on his sleeve.

"Mrs. Turner," he corrected himself as his faux pas dawned on him. "Mrs. Turner, damn it."

The clip-clop of hooves faded.

How could he be expected to remember? He'd left days before the wedding.

~tbc~