A/N: And the fandom jumping's come full circle and I'm back to my first love, Pirates. Oh, how I've missed it. But while I'd usually be posting something about Jack or Will, I've taken my eyes off the charismatic leads for Kaellana's sake and written something about James, pre-Scruffy Era. Because he's awesome and full of yay no matter what. Constructive criticism is fun (this is my first James fic, zomg); Disney owns it; and have a very merry Christmas, Kae.

Cloudchaser

He had told them that there would be a position for him in the Caribbean, that there were savages and pirates to tame, but his mother only went pale and his father only laughed.

"James, James m'lad," he had said, and suddenly James didn't feel tall and twenty, but small and six. "There's nothing anyone can do to tame that sea. We'll be sending men over there just to get shot by poison darts or whatever the bloody hell it is that those savages have."

James blanched at the coarse language for the sake of his mother, who couldn't go any paler.

"You'd do best to stay here, the Queen could knight you—our James, a knight, can't you see that, Mary?—and then your name could be respected. That's what I'd do if I were you. There's no telling what's on the other side of the horizon. Don't be a cloudchaser, James. They always end up being so unhappy because they never get there. Stay home, stay here."

But he didn't stay—he wouldn't stay even if the Queen had told him at the harbor that she'd knight him after all. He left them behind because a Governor had told him that if he worked hard and wiped piracy from the eastern Caribbean, he could be a Captain at twenty-five, a Commodore by thirty, an Admiral by thirty-five.

James could hardly imagine such a thing, but he could be a self-made man, respected and admired. He threw himself into his work, adjusting to every new title he received, aiming higher and higher because he couldn't imagine falling down when he'd come all this way.

He knows now that his body left England, but his heart never did. So he goes through life comfortably numb. He doesn't live life in pain and pleasure but in setbacks and enhancements. He spends his life chasing distant ships, chasing and condemning pirates on the horizon. It's what he needs to do to get further, to prove to his dead family that their James isn't a cloudchaser, that he's made something of himself after all.

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