Title: Fall from Honour
Author: Hildwyn
Rating: T (for religion, and because it's based off a PG-13 movie)
Summary: A series of Norrington vignettes that takes him from the end of the Curse of the Black Pearl to Dead Man's Chest and beyond.
Disclaimer: I do not own,will not, but a girl can dream.
Notes: I am not a fan of DMC, I think the majority of characters in it were OOC, especially Norrington. The purpose of this story was to provide a basis that made it believable enough, the transformation of Norrington from a decent honourable man, to a drunken man who takes orders from the like of Captain Sparrow.
This was not going to be posted until it was completed, but in light of spoilers coming out about AWE, this will in all probability be the last fanfiction I write for PotC, and I want to get it done before the movie saps all my muse from me.
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Fall from Honour
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(Port Royal, end of CotBP)
Men, all me--whether they acknowledge it or not--find it easy to delude themselves into believing what they want. That could be that they play an important part in the world when they do not, that they think they are more clever than they truly are, or that someone is and can love them when it is clear to everyone else in the world that it is not the case. James Norrington is, and was like any other man--and a sad realisation it is, when you have painstakingly convinced yourself of one thing, wishfully thinking it to be true, only to find that it isn't. To find that the woman you would do anything for--that you have done so much for...does not share your affections.
Standing in the fort, dressed in his finest, all the world in balance...and three simple words of agreement can shatter reality, as it did his.
"As is mine."
As in, meaning that one's place is not by the side of the one who deludedly believed that he was loved, but between him and another--beside the one man who did not do things painstakingly by the book, but broke all the rules and ended more pirate than law-abiding citizen. Why?
Why is it the rulebreakers end up the ones who win in the end? Why is it that those who cheat--the pirates--win?
Norrington stood then, dumbfounded and shocked. Elizabeth had given him her word--assuring him that she was sincere in her promise to him that it wasn't something done just to save her childhood friend...and Norrington realised what he had missed all along. His love for her and his wanting her to love him had blinded him to the simple truth--Elizabeth while considering him a good match and respecting him, perhaps even willing to call him 'friend,' had always loved Turner. She had always been too free a spirit--part of why he loved her so, but too free to ever truly love or be content with a man who was bound by his duty.
And then--bound by duty, society, tradition, he had to seem in control standing there, to save face in front of him men and not continue to stand there as he was.
Norrington knew that he was within his rights to hold Elizabeth to her word--but how could he really do that? She would not be happy with him and it would kill him to know that he was the source of her unhappiness, and he just could not hold her to it. He did the only thing that he thought right--step back and let her and Turner be together.
That night he felt like the only light in his universe had been snuffed out. He went to his office to do something, anything that might bring back what was--the certainty and comfort of habit and custom that had always satisfied him before. Something to help him forget the way that she looked at Turner, and would never look at him. But no paperwork or book could distract him from the scene that played out in his head--the one in which he had been participant in scant hours before.
In desperation to stop it, he removed a decanter of brandy and poured himself a drink. Slowly glass by glass, until the sun set and the gibbous moon was high in the sky--it provided enough light by which he could pour himself another glass. Finally when he realised his limbs were slow to respond to his commands, he stood, setting down his glass, his head fuzzy. He left his office, walking by the marine guard posted at the door, stumbling into the parade grounds, passing by officers and sentries smartly knuckling their foreheads as he continued by. He stopped, having ascended to the parapet--the same area where he had stood by while Elizabeth fell to be rescued by Sparrow, also where he had stood to let Elizabeth go with Turner. The location where so many things that had happened that he wished to forget.
Sparrow and Turner, both men, both pirates who had gotten what they wanted while Norrington stood by--losing what he had wanted because he played things by the book. Sparrow and Turner on the other hand were men who did what they wanted--Sparrow doing something because he wished to and such was accorded to him living the life of a libertine, and Turner doing as he did because he was moved by his heart and not his mind. By emotion, not cool rationality.
Was that why he lost her then? His fault? That he should do his duty no matter what his heart screamed at him to do--something that had been ingrained so deeply into him by all those who had ever been around him. It was that which all men should aspire to, should it not? Why had he been told that that would be what would gain him a wife, and honour, when Elizabeth shunned him for the opposite?
Norrington furrowed his brow, reaching out a hand to steady himself against the cool stone. That was what he was--cool, unfeeling--a stone. That is what they must have thought of him--a man unable to feel, not really caring whether or not he married Elizabeth. So that was the price he paid for playing the part of the Commodore, the leader. By not being James Norrington, the man, he had only now James Norrington, the Commodore. The loneliness inherent with command was his curse to carry all his life now it seemed. But a stone cannot weep for its fate, it must be as it is--unyielding and constant. It has no choice, as he now has no choice. His duty must be done, and with dawn and the the tide in the morn' he must prepare himself, his crew, and his ship for a chase. A day's head start will not become more than that, and loss, no matter how crushing, can not be allowed to interfere with one's duty.
