His Game
By Dream Descends
James hated to think he had something in common with Will Turner. His insides griped at the idea, coiled in unashamed terror and disgust. To think he might find it in himself to pity the man who had essentially ruined the better part of his mindset, self-confidence, and career, was horrifying.
It was unthinkable, James maintained in private, though he also maintained in private that his wig was not entirely a lost cause.
It was a harsh recognition—more so than any he could recall, off hand—that he had been beaten by Jack Sparrow. It did not have the grace, even, to be considered a proper recognition; it was a cold awareness, not something easily forgotten or forgiven, but an enduring sting. He had thought perhaps one day he might put it all behind him, as good, compassionate men were known to do. He could brush it off as merely a professional disagreement, that Sparrow was one thing and he another. That men had died and ships been lost in such a conflict was a matter of business, nothing either of them personally had a hand in.
He believed he could, even when James felt its claws dig further, into the foreign territory of delicate matters, of personal affairs. When that damned compass found its way into the hands of a young lady and helped Jack snake his way into her thoughts—as the pirate did with every man, woman, child, or, as the case seemed to be, ship, to know his person. Even then, James had faith in his better side, the understanding side—the tolerant side.
It wasn't until he realized that he was nothing to Jack Sparrow that Jack Sparrow became everything to him. It wasn't until that mildly interested, faintly startled, and slightly amused gaze passed easily over the unbridled wrath James flung in the pirate's direction that James came to fully appreciate the value of hate.
Captain Jack Sparrow was everything James should hate, in any case. He was a thief, and a swindler, and a double-dealing bastard. He was a whore's son, a whore's lover, and in all likelihood a whore's father. He slept with one eye open and lied without blinking, and he would sell the skin off your bones if he thought you were drunk enough not to notice. He played God as though he had been born to do it, with subtlety and deftness not to be known.
And James flung himself into it, willingly and with no small amount of relief, hating the man. He let it fester with age and time and incompletion. He saw the flicker of a supercilious grin as the man spread his hands on Elizabeth Swann, steal her when he thought no one was looking, and keep her like a coin he could whip out and polish. James saw the man send loyalty and friendship to its death for his own wellbeing, and scramble to keep his good name that, for the former Commodore, had worn thin long ago. James saw as Jack Sparrow made him and Will Turner one and the same, two men united, to always be inescapably joined by association and heartbreak whether James liked it or not.
It was a long and miserable existence to hate Jack Sparrow, one without satisfaction; one that James felt instinctively would end without ever knowing success. It was an existence where gradually he came to understand, above all things, that he did not have something in common with Will Turner alone—Jack Sparrow had beaten him, along with the rest of the world, at Jack Sparrow's game. Captain Jack Sparrow had won life, and won death, and then cheated them both backwards 'till he was on another plane of being altogether.
So, naturally, James came to hate many things, in fact most things, until he died, a quick and bloody affair that he hoped might turn Jack Sparrow's head, even for a moment, before he went back to playing.
FIN
Author's Note: This was one of those fics where the plot takes hold half way through and goes in its own direction, and the author is left wtf-ing herself silly 'till the end. There's some clear and unclear Jack/Liz, Will/Liz, and actually a surprising amout of unholy-rage Sparrington going on here, that I did not expect at all. Ah, well, hope you all enjoy yourselves.