Pain.
That was the entirety of his existence now. There was no time, no space. No before and no after. Only Pain.
He had no idea how long he'd been there. It may have been a week or it may have been a year. His ship was no doubt back in harbour now. Tied up to the docks at Port Royale, announcing to the Governor and Elizabeth and the rest that the good Commodore Norrington was gone. Lost to a Pirate ship. Taken. Beyond hope.
The thought was bitter in his mouth and hollow in his chest, but the Pain soon drove even that small comfort away. He did not know the name of the pirate that had taken him, though he was impressed by the man's obvious daring and skill. He'd managed to board the Dauntless and kidnap the most valuable person in the Caribbean. That was not his own over-inflated self-worth as he had a very good understanding of the worth of James L. Norrington the man rather than the Commodore. It was merely a statement of fact. He was in charge of the entire Jamaican Squadron. The entire fleet of British ships throughout the Spanish Main. Therein lay his only worth.
Thoughts of worth and position quickly fled before another burst of Pain. White-hot. A brand, he realized vaguely. The Pirate had just branded him. He had a fuzzy sort of thought that that might be ironic, but he couldn't pin it down long enough to form.
He was well beyond screaming, having lost all possession of his voice long ago. All that he was able to accomplish was to breath, although that too was becoming difficult, and hang here from the shackles that chained him to the mast.
His back dripped thickly, blood and sweat swirling together in a viscous fluid to roll over his exposed buttocks and down the backs of his thighs. He'd begun this encounter almost fully clothed. He'd only been lacking his wig and boots. But as time and his…punishments…had passed, the clothing became a nuisance for The Pirate and so it was removed. The whip could not reach his skin through heavy brocade and fingernails and knives were more effective without his shirt. The breeches had been cut off, when blood had made them slippery and harder to grip.
Now, he hung nude from the chains, and no longer cared that this was no doubt supposed to be a humiliation. He would be dead long before anyone for whom he cared could see him. If indeed they ever saw him at all. More likely, his head would be cut off for display and his body thrown overboard.
At first, when they had finally stripped him completely, he'd worried about the sun on his skin. Now he welcomed its heat. It was soothing against the cuts and made the blood scab quicker. They fed him once in a while and gave him water regularly, keeping him alive, able to take the punishments they gave.
Punishment it was, he had decided after only a few hours abroad. For all that he'd failed to do, for every person who he had let die. He'd prayed for a little, that he'd die honorably or that a good commander would take his place protecting Port Royale and the Caribbean. But now there was only Pain and a few stray thoughts. He no longer knew how to pray and even if he had, God was clearly not listening.
He heard the soft hiss of the Cat as the Pirate picked it up and felt the soft caress of it across his thighs. The Pirate ran it lightly over his skin. His thighs and calves were the only place free of whip marks on his backside. Even the bottoms of his feet showed the oozing welts that told tales of the Cat. He held his breath at the sharp slice of it being drawn back, but…
"Sail, ho!"
And he sagged against the chains. He heard the Pirate curse. A pause.
"Captain! They be black sails!"
It was then that he decided that he was in Hell. Which explained why God no longer listened. Jack Sparrow was now coming to assist in his punishment. He choked on a dry sob before he cut himself off. The Pirate moved up close to his back and he flinched away. "Ye ken these black sails, Commodore?" the voice was heavy with an accent, though he was too far gone to try and figure out from where the Pirate hailed.
He held his breath as a hand trailed up his thigh. "Y-Yes." He managed to croak.
"Who be they, then?" The hand reached the cleft of his buttocks and stopped.
He struggled to keep his muscles relaxed or rather as relaxed as they'd been. "Pearl."
The hand shoved a finger into that cleft, burying itself deep into his anus. He gasped sharply and bowed his back, arching away.
"What Pearl?"
He could not get enough breath to push out the answer and the finger inside him was causing a blazing fire to rip through his bowels. He could feel the Pirate's nail and the ring he wore as they tore at him and he tried to swallow another dry sob. "The Black…Pearl... Jack…Sparrow's Ship."
Finally, his answer was enough and the finger withdrew. He sagged in relief, ignoring the new pain that flared up in his nearly numb arms. He'd been using his knees to keep some of the pressure off his shoulders, but relief made him careless. The Pirate drew back with another curse.
"Captain, a white flag. Truce."
He frowned. No, that wasn't right. A truce flag? The pain swallowed him again before he could figure out what was wrong with it. He hung limply, letting it wash over him and clinging desperately to consciousness, feeling the roll of warm slid a new trail and form another puddle on the deck between his legs.
The Pearl pulled up along side the Pirate's ship and a gangplank was run. He turned his head a little to see Jack Sparrow standing on the slab of wood between the ships. Sparrow looked to him, then, like some heathen god, toffee skin and flashing rum eyes and splashes of color. The trinkets in his hair clinked in the breeze.
"Captain, ye have somethin' I want. The way I'm seein' it, ye've got two options. One, ye give it me and I'll go on me merry way. Or, you do not. In which case I'll be takin' it anyway and leavin' 'ur ship in an much less whole condition then I found it."
He'd thought that Sparrow was insane before, but through the haze, he came to the conclusion that the man's insanity had risen to new heights if he thought he'd win against the Pirate.
"And, por favor, what might that be?"
Sparrow smiled. It was cold and hungry and absolutely terrifying. He shivered, making the chains scrap just a bit. Sparrow's gaze flicked to him then back to the Pirate. "Well, I'll tell ye, amigo. I want the Commodore."
He jerked and stared and finally the Pain receded. Jack Sparrow was rescuing him? What madness was this…
The Pirate laughed, full and deep. He cringed at the sound. "I do not think, Jack Sparrow, that ye do. He is very damaged and I was planning to finish 'im off today."
He tried to make himself smaller against the mast, which only served to strain the bonds. He heard the hiss of the Cat before the Pain came back up to greet him. His thighs would now match his back, feet, and buttocks. At least the Pirate had only taken the knife to his chest once. The man seemed to prefer the whip to all else.
Sparrow hissed loudly, baring his teeth. "Ye don't want to be doin' that, mate."
The swish of the Cat sounded again, this time catching him on the newly made brand on his shoulder. He blacked out.
When the Pain finally dragged him back from the soothing black oblivion, the first thing he realized was the he was no longer chained to the mast. He lay against the wood, his arms screaming at the unfamiliar position and his cheek relishing the coolness of the damp surface.
"Commodore."
He blinked slowly and turned his head to look up at Sparrow. "Pirate?"
The man frowned. "True enough, but…Oh! Ye mean the bastard what kidnapped ye? He be very dead, luv. Hangin' from his own yardarm at the moment."
He blinked again, not understanding. The Pirate could not die…could he? Had Jack Sparrow actually liberated him from his punishment? "Why…?"
Sparrow's frown did not smooth. "Lizzie and Will asked fer me help in findin' ye. Said ye got taken right off yer own ship. I couldn't very well leave me old friend the Commodore all by his onesies with pirates other then me own, could I?" Sparrow waited for a response, by he couldn't give one. So he remained silent and wondered how pathetic he must look and then realized that he did not care. "A'corse not. Now, let's get ye over on to the Pearl, aye mate?"
He had a brief moment to wonder how on earth the man proposed to do that when it was impossible for him to walk. It was this though that Jack Sparrow interrupted by reaching down and scooping him up. The Pain swallowed him down again and he released himself to the sweet darkness.
The next thing he felt was the light seeping in between his closed eye-lids. He had recollections of blurry swaths of color and of water and soft light, but when he dared to open his eyes, it was easily bright enough for midday. He slowly became aware of his limbs, taking stock of the damage done him. He groaned when the muscles in his shoulder shifted, the feeling of fire inside his skin was not by any means pleasant.
A beaded and elflocked head appeared in his field of vision. "Spar-row…" He managed to croak. His voice was hoarse and his throat burned.
The face offered a glittering smile. "Norrington! Ye're awake! Good. Good. Here."
Something smooth was pressed to his lips and water slithered delightfully down his throat. It was then that he realized that he was laying on his stomach in was felt like an actual bed. "What…Wh…"
He did not quite know how to go about asking any of the half-formed thought-questions that were ricocheting inside his brain and making it throb.
Sparrow seemed to understand. "Well, Norrie-me-lad. Like I said, Lizzie and Dear William asked me to take a look 'round for ye. As ye've been mightily missed. Gone three whole weeks without word. How ye managed to last three weeks with that sorry, festerin' excuse for breathin' matter, I do not know. And ye're still alive. You, Commodore, are a better man than almost any I think I have ever met."
He noticed that the last statement was made without Sparrow's usual ridiculous mangling of the English language. The soft and learned undertones that usually leant a musical quality to the man's speech were amplified and Sparrow sounded like the men that he remembered for his childhood, before the navy. The lords and parliamentarians and politicians that his Admiral father and his Lord uncle always seemed to have around. Their voices too had held that odd little something. Perhaps Sparrow was not the bumbling fool he'd assumed. The Captain had managed to rescue him after all.
"I…th-thank you…C-Captain." It was weak and whispery, but it was all the he could manage.
Sparrow just smiled broadly. "Yeah…well. Ye jus' make yerself comfor'ble and take a good long kip."
He did just that, allowing the darkness hovering at the edged of his vision swallow him. He did not know how long he slept or whether he slept at all because he was immediately submerged in liquid fire. He was Heat now, as he has been Pain before.
People swam in and out of his consciousness. Always scornful. Always filled with hate and venom. Eilzabeth, the Governor, Gillette and Groves came together, his Admiral Father tapping his stick against his palm, his weeping mother full of disappointment, and so it went for an unending time. Sometimes the figures were misty and unclear. Sometimes it was as though he could feel their breath upon his face. Once, Jack Sparrow turned up, laughing, just laughing, but not the quiet snort he'd heard before or the musical sound of pure pleasure he'd imagined. This was a shout of triumph, Sparrow's superior knowledge that he, James Norrington, was no longer what he had once been.
Into this hazy collection of broken images, he could occasionally feel the soothing touch of fingers across his brow or a sweet murmur against his ear. The voice was like honeyed rum, even if he could not understand the words being said.
So his life continued for infinitely or mere moments, he could not tell, but the honeyed-rum voice finally penetrated, making meaning known. "Norrie…James…Please, James, you have to hold on! Elizabeth will miss you, luv. James, you need to fight this fever. You need to pull through this. What would Ol' Jack do with himself without you, James? Who would try to hang me then? James…James, please."
There was a crack in that voice, a sharp hitch, that made him frown. He wanted to tell the person that they were wrong. That Elizabeth wouldn't care and that Jack Sparrow would be well rid of him. He managed to open his mouth to speak, but could not force his lips to form more then a gasped, "Elizabeth…"
He tried to force his eyes open. The world was a colorful blur. The voice spoke again, this time from right in front of him. "Aye! Elizabeth. She's misses ye. Jamesy-boy, ye need to get well again. I can't evade the law all by me onsies. I be needin' summat to chase me."
He frowned. No, that wasn't right. The voice didn't sound like that. The tones were the same, the sweetness, but the words were all wrong, the English all mangled. It sounded like… "S-Spar-row?"
He blinked several times and the world came into focus. Jack Sparrow was indeed leaning over him, elflocks and beads dangling around his face. He coughed harshly, causing Sparrow's face to disappear and the smooth surface – a mug of some sort – to reappear with water. He swallowed, twice. The mug vanished again. "Sparrow…Elizabeth…"
The pirate's face reappeared, grinning broadly. "Will be right happy to see that ye're alright. I tol' the lass I'd find ye, and I 'ave."
He frowned. "No…she…doesn't…care…Turner…"
Sparrow's grin dropped into a frown. "A'corse she cares, you dolt. Dear William seems a might upset too, though whether that's 'cause Elizabeth is nearly tarin' out her hair with worry, I don't know." Sparrow eyed him critically, making him feel incredibly uncomfortable. He shifted and nearly cried out at the blinding pain the movement sent through his back. "Here now," Sparrow continued. "Ye have very little sense of yer own worth, James-lad… I meant what I said at the fort. Will might be the son of my oldest friend, but I was rooting for you. You are the better man. How Elizabeth did not see that, I will never understand."
He frowned at the absurdity of that statement. Then it dawned on him. Of course. He must still be in the fever fits. Jack Sparrow would never say something like that to him. And especially not in that impossibly aristocratic tone. The man was a pirate and most likely illiterate and hated him to the core. He must be dreaming… However that begged a worse question. Why indeed would he dream about Jack Sparrow saying such things to him? It had no connection to the other images he'd seen, which did coincide more closely with reality. Maybe not exactly, much closer. He put the question from his mind, without realizing that he was thinking logically in controlling his own thought patterns again, which would tend to disprove the theory that he was dreaming.
"That, as they say, is neither here nor there. You, mate, are aboard the Black Pearl and as guest at that. Ye've been here for nigh on a week. A couple times there, I thought ye'd done yerself I, with all yer thrashing about. We be takin' ye back to Port Royale. En route now, s'matter of fact. Elizabeth will be eager to nurse ye back to health."
The words Sparrow said made little sense to him, or maybe he merely chose not to listen. To fixed was he on the tone of the pirate's voice. "Sparrow…why are…you…speaking…in such a…manner?" Stringing together whole questions was difficult in the extreme.
Sparrow leaned further into his line of sight, eyebrow raised. "What manner be that?"
He sighed, which caused fire to lick at the insides of his body. Gasping for short breaths, he said, "So horribly…Please…stop mangling…the King's English."
Sparrow stared at him for one shocked moment, before bursting into laughter. "Aye, Ye think I should talk like ye? And why be that? I'm naught but a humble pirate and can't even read a letter."
His eyes roved over the cabin, pulling an odd sort of memory to the fore. "That is…not true." The more he spoke the easier it became. "I saw your…books…I think. And I…know you are able to…speak perfect English…Captain Sparrow. I've…heard you." The pirate frowned down at him. "You speak like…an aristocrat…when you forget yourself…or you have…something terribly…important to say."