Jack washed up in Tortuga half a dozen times at least. Almost as often, he'd swaggered in off the Pearl's gangplank, fresh from one victory and scheming for the next. Tortuga is kinder to them that bring business. All those pleasant interludes blur together, from the passage of time and all the rum. Except the last, because no amount of rum can erase the memory of buggering a commodore of the Royal Navy in a dockside hotel. At least, Jack hopes it can't.
"There, now. That trick hasn't made it 'round the Navy, has it?"
A quick exhalation that might have served James Norrington for a laugh. "Do you ever stop talking?"
"No, mate, never." He'd almost not started, at the tavern, before he'd put it together about the Commodore in uniform, and the remarkable calm for the number of uniforms that come with that much braid, and about the ship he hadn't noticed at anchor.
Jack could hardly stop talking; he wanted to know things like what happened and what the devil was James Norrington doing marooned on Tortuga, losing ground, playing about with rum and a gun. It's fascinating, disturbing. Because he'd been there himself, with no ship and no crew. But he always had a direction from the compass, where Norrington seemed set on diving straight to the bottom.
But then, James moaning into the pillow, shuddering under him, proving - he hadn't been drinking as long as that.
He only balked when Jack called him 'Commodore,' again. "I'm not - you understand me?" "I understand, friend," Jack lied, smiling. "Not friends. You're not my friend." "I'm the best you've got, James," he said, baiting him, and Norrington shuddered
Norrington finally sank out of Jack's reach, done in by the combination of drink and sex. Sprawled naked and helpless in a pirate's bed. His own bed really, but he'd have slept in a gutter if Jack hadn't come along. It would have served him right to be shanghaied.
Except Jack thinks if he'd brought Commodore Norrington aboard his ship, he'd have deserved the mutiny. He'd have led the mutiny. He only stayed until James stirred, in the morning, left him with only a few words of encouragement and his own pistol.
It's something pleasant to think about in these less friendly times, with these simple, charmingly underdressed people who eat their gods. Which is not the worst thing people do for religion, but not the best, either. From his perspective.
Jack can close his eyes and still see well enough for his faithful subjects. So he tries to remember every alley in Tortuga, the smell of sour wine and human filth. They're too clean here, nothing to help him imagine it's a tavern and a pig roasting on the fire.
And these people haven't a blessed idea who Captain Jack Sparrow is. How he regained his ship by killing his cursed, immortal first mate. Escaped gallows, Turkish prisons, treachery, hurricanes, navies. The things that make him - just possibly - worthy of a bit of worship.
He wonders a little - because there's nothing else to do - whether Norrington is hunting him down now, all his gold braid tarnished, and the likelihood of him getting there before Davy Jones has his day on dry land. The Pearl grounded is a miserable sight, but almost Jack wishes she were up here with him, being fed to the fire with her captain and crew.