A/N: I've always liked fics about James and Elizabeth on the Black Pearl during Dead Man's Chest. Surely they talked a time or two, but with their history what did they talk about?
This is meant to be a bridge one-shot between "The Smuggler and the Scoundrel" and "Flying False Colours". While I'm sure it's enjoyable on its own, there are references to events in Smuggler/Scoundrel that will be much more fun if you read it as well.
I also wrote this to get some practice with Elizabeth and Jack, who will be making appearances in FFC.
Where the Compass Points
He was watching her.
They were two days out from Tortuga when she noticed it, the way his eyes flicked towards her and how he always seemed to be there, hovering just on the edge of her space. She found herself annoyed by it. Jack gazing longingly at her across the deck was one thing. He could hardly help it; to be absurdly lecherous was his nature and besides his fascination with her worked rather to her advantage. But James was another matter.
Elizabeth hadn't spared much more than a glance for her erstwhile suitable fiance since their brief conversation the day before. His words had rattled her. She had no feelings for Jack! No real feelings, at any rate. A girlish intrigue hardly counted on that score. Will still had a favorable eye for that buxom baker's girl in town, though he never would admit it, and what did it matter? Men and women would not cease to be beautiful just because she was wedded and bedded and she had no illusions about the inevitable wandering of the eye for either herself or Will. So long as hands didn't follow there was no sense in fussing. It wasn't her appreciation for Jack that bothered her, it was the fact that James had seen it. And what's more, he had teased her for it! James had never teased her before, not even when she was a girl. He was too fine and too honorable a man for that. Her thoughts skipped back to the night she'd found him, the impact of his fists shaking the wall behind her and his breath reeking of sickness and stale drink. "Do you never wonder if I grow tired of it?". That's what he'd said to her and a pinprick of shame nudged at her when she realized that no, she never had. To her, he had always been the untouchable giant in stiff blue and white, never so much as a toe out of line. It had never entered her imagination that the man beneath the uniform might be so, well...pirate-like. His manner now put her in mind of a sharper, more melancholy version of Jack and that was enough to shake anyone's sense of the world.
The subject of her ruminations was currently sitting on a crate with his back to the main, head bent over his work. The faded black sail was draped across his lap and his hands moved with a swiftness and surety in mending it that she herself never could have managed, even with all her years of needlework.
Elizabeth made her way towards him with slow, meandering steps, looking down at the compass cupped in her hands. The arrow hadn't wavered. It held their course a solid southwest. Keeping her head down, she stole a sideways look at James. She spotted a bottle of rum tucked behind his heel and her heart sank a little. A part of her had still been holding out hope that his drunkenness on Tortuga had been a ruse of some kind, an elaborate plan to catch Jack unawares perhaps, but the past days had disabused her of that notion. James Norrington too drunk to stand was not something she had ever thought she would see, and the screaming in his sleep! Jack hadn't been quite so hard on him after that, much to her surprise, and some of the crew had been downright kind. She had even seen Gibbs sharing his flask with him a time or two. Though they were old comrades from better days, she supposed.
Her thoughts had her so occupied that she didn't notice James had left off his sail repairs and was staring at her in turn.
"May I help you, Miss Swann?" he said and she jumped, snapping the compass shut. She gave her best polite ballroom smile.
"I was only checking our heading," she said.
James set the heavy sail aside and picked up his rum. "Were you indeed?" he said. "It hasn't altered since our chat, perhaps, has it?"
There he was, at it again, and smirking at her like a schoolboy as he drank his rum. She nearly stuck her tongue out at him.
"No, it has not," she said.
"Nor will it, I imagine," James said. "More's the pity for Sparrow."
"Not for you?" Elizabeth asked and he laughed. It was a hard-edged and bitter sound.
"Oh, my dear Elizabeth," he said. "I will forever be fond of you. You will always have a place in my heart. A bruised one, you made certain of that. But I have no remaining desire to possess you, whether in matrimony or...otherwise."
Elizabeth felt her cheeks flush. He had never alluded to sexual congress in her presence before and certainly not in reference to herself! She had heard far cruder things from various pirates and her education at least on the theories of intimacy had been thoroughly expanded over the last year. But from James it was just so incongruous, and the idea that he had had a very male and very physical liking for her was yet another possibility she had never considered. She had assumed it had been her station alone that had motivated his proposal.
"Well, if you have no more remaining desire for me, why have you been watching me with that guilty look?" she said and regretted it as a scowl fell over his face.
"It doesn't concern you," he said, turning his eyes from her to bore into the space ahead of him.
"It most certainly does!" Elizabeth said, charging toward him. "It is my allegedly undesired body you're admiring after all!"
"Arrogant chit," James muttered against the mouth of the bottle and he took a sloppy swig. "What makes you assume it's your body I've got my eye on?"
Elizabeth felt a very unexpected pang in her chest. James had always been polite to her. More than polite, he had been kind. The harshness of his insult was stinging.
"Since when do you dare speak to me in that way, James Norrington?" she said, surprised to feel tears clenching her throat. "I would never have expected—"
"Since you jilted me in public and humiliated me in front of your father, in front of my men!" James snapped, biting across her words. "Since you and your latest fiance forced my hand to letting our half-witted captain go, against my standing orders and my better judgement! Since I led four hundred and thirty four good men to their deaths and can never hope to atone for it!"
He surged to his feet and stalked away to the rail where he leaned against it with his head bowed. Tears were rolling silently down Elizabeth's cheeks. She remembered the day after she had seen James through the cracked door of her father's study. Her father had sat her down in the library and told her that James was alive, but there had been a serious complication in his mission and he had left the Navy for a time. Some men had died, her father had said, and that could take quite a toll on their commanding officer's soul. Some men, he had said. Not over four hundred.
She went and stood beside James at the rail, hugging her arms to herself. James' head was still bowed and his eyes were closed. His hand, she saw, was in a white-knuckled grip on the neck of the rum bottle.
"I am so, so sorry, James," she said. "I had no idea."
He said nothing for a while, but she could hear his breathing, labored, as though he were running. After a moment, he let out a long sigh.
"It's the compass," he said.
"What?" Elizabeth said. James opened his eyes but couldn't seem to look at her.
"It isn't you I've been looking at, Elizabeth," he said. "It's the compass. I wanted...ah!"
He shook his head and glared out at the horizon.
"What did you want?" Elizabeth asked.
"I wanted...I wanted to ask if I might hold it."
Unconsciously Elizabeth's hand moved to her belt where it hung. "To hold it?" she said. "What is it you're looking for?"
"That's what I'm hoping to find out," James said and then he smiled softly. "I've used it before, you know. Aboard the Dauntless after I rescued you from that island. I thought it only broken at first, but Sparrow had given me some nonsense about my heart's desire and well...at that time, it led me straight to you."
"And you want to see if it still does?" she said.
"Something rather like that, yes."
Elizabeth pursed her lips, thinking. Jack wouldn't like it, she knew, but she was the thing's keeper. Surely she had at least a little say in it's use. She pulled the compass from her belt and handed it to James. He held it in his hand for a moment, looking at it long and hard and then with a practiced flick of his wrist he flipped it open.
The needle wobbled, acclimating to its new bearer. It swung first a few degrees right, then a few left, and then it whipped around past Elizabeth and pointed out away aft to the horizon. James laughed a little, as if he'd been expecting it.
"I was afraid you'd say that," he murmured.
"What lies at that heading, James?" Elizabeth asked.
"Ah, the island of St. Kitt's, I suppose," he said.
Elizabeth frowned up at him. "What you want most in this world is on St. Kitt's?"
"So it would seem," James said. He snapped the compass shut and handed it back to her, his expression cloudy. He went back to his crate without acknowledging her and lifted the length of sail he was repairing back to his lap. Whatever it was on St. Kitt's that he knew he wanted had silenced him for the day it seemed.
Elizabeth looked back out to the heading the compass had pointed for him. All she saw was brilliant blue and a white-hot sky and she wondered, what was it James could want so much to make him look so terribly sad?
She got her answer later that night.
Elizabeth tossed and rolled in her hammock, her mind nagging at her. The cacophonous symphony of snoring and grunting crewmen was no help, either. Jack had offered her his cabin, of course, but on the condition that he was an included amenity at her service, and she had not been about to sleep in Jack Sparrow's bed; not even if she made him sleep on the floor of the wardroom. She had insisted Mr. Gibbs string up a hammock for her in the forecastle. She felt oddly safer there. They were pirates, it was true, but those that weren't terrified of her on principle were more terrified of being thrown overboard by the captain if they tried anything. Jack couldn't very well throw himself overboard and he would be apt to try something, however harmless it might be. Still, her bunking with the crew made Gibbs nervous and he'd gone to the trouble of hanging spare hammocks and cloth all around the corner where she slept, as much for her privacy as to keep the men from gawking. Unfortunately, it didn't muffle the sounds.
She swung herself out of the hammock and pulled on her boots. She didn't bother with the waistcoat, but she took her coat and wrapped it around her. Nights were chilly at sea and she slept mostly clothed as it was.
She meant to go up and walk the deck and gaze at the stars for a while until she felt more tired, but she saw the flicker of lamp light from the galley as she passed by and changed her mind. Even with only a few lamps burning the galley would be warm. She froze in the doorway.
James was sitting alone at the cook's table and he appeared to be deep in thought, staring down at something on the table. Elizabeth stepped back from the doorway and stood in the dark for a moment. Now guilt was beginning to nag her. She never had apologized to him for the whole proposal incident. There hadn't been time. She had written him a letter and begged that red-headed officer of his to see that he received it, but a letter was a feeble gesture and she had known that even then. She owed him a proper apology. And she owed him something else.
She didn't stop to consider it might not be the best idea. She scrambled up the ladder and across the deck, squaring her shoulders before she rapped soundly on the door to the captain's quarters. It took a moment and she had to knock again, but the door swung open and Jack peered out at her. He flashed his crooked, golden grin and she braced herself.
"Ah, Lizzie," he said. "I knew it was only a matter of time. Come."
He gestured her into his cabin and closed the door. He swept up her hand and led her to a chair in a manner that was almost gentlemanly.
"Now, Lizzie," he said. "As a man of unique wisdom and impressive physique, I swear to you I will employ the utmost gentleness in availing you of your loneliness in dear William's absence."
Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "Jack, that is not why I'm here," she said in her best impersonation of her governess. She had learned that Jack needed a firm hand in conversation if anything was going to get done. He pouted a bit at her.
"No?" he said and then bobbed his hands at her in that odd conciliatory gesture of his. "Apologies."
"Thank you," Elizabeth said, a little surprised at his aquiecense. He slunk closer and bent down, hovering over her shoulder.
"Are you certain?" he asked, his velvety voice right in her ear.
"Quite!"
"Hmm."
He straightened abruptly, bangles and beads jangling. "Why have you graced my cabin with your feminine presence, then?" he asked.
Elizabeth took a deep breath and raised her chin. "I would like a bottle of rum, please," she said.
Quick as a flash, Jack snatched the nearest bottle and clutched it to his chest.
"No," he said.
"Why not?" Elizabeth said.
"You can't be trusted," Jack said, glaring at her and actually stroking the bottle in his arms.
"Oh, for God's sake!" she said, standing up with her hands on her hips. "I'm only asking for one and I have no intention of setting fire to it! I only did that at all to make a signal!"
"I don't believe you," Jack said, adding another bottle to the growing nest in his arms. "That was only your second reason! First you said it was a vile drink. You insulted the rum, missy!"
Elizabeth sighed in exasperation. "If you must know," she said. "I have a debt to settle. I owe it to someone."
Jack paused in his frantic gathering of rum to safety and squinted at her. "You, Elizabeth Swann, incinerator of all good things, owe a man rum?"
"Yes, Jack, I do," she said, crossing her arms. "I understand this is a very serious debt."
"Aye, very serious. The most serious," he said.
"Would you really leave me unable to pay such a very serious debt?" she said.
Jack's eyes darted from her to the map-draped table to his armfulls of rum, and back to her. Very slowly and with great care he placed the rum down on the table. His fingers waggled over them and plucked one out of the multitude.
"Thank you, Jack," Elizabeth said when he handed it to her. It was not a small bottle and from what she could tell it looked to be finer quality than that swill she had only sampled and later burned on the island.
Jack waved a hand at her. "I'm feeling generous," he said. She doubted he would be so generous if he knew who it was she owed it to, but if he suspected he said nothing.
"Respecting a man's rum. That's an important step," he went on. "I'm gratified to be such a positive influence."
"You're an influence," she corrected him with a smile. He swaggered toward her and Elizabeth had the impression, as she often did with him, of being inspected by an oversized, tipsy magpie.
"Ah, Lizzie," he said. "I'll make a pirate of you yet. You'll see. It's inevitable."
Elizabeth shook her head, smiling. "Good night, Jack," she said and made her exit before he could start explaining to her all the ways in which he was a good and proper example to her.
This time she did not pause outside the galley door. She rushed in and plunked the heavy glass bottle down on the table. James jumped and threw an arm across whatever it was that had him so occupied.
"Come for target practice?" he asked, arching a sardonic brow.
"No, I...you said I owed it to you. Does this settle out debt?" she said. Now that she'd done it, she was beginning to feel rather foolish. Did he even remember the fuss he'd made over it? She wouldn't be at all surprised if he didn't.
James laughed, not quite as cruelly as before though it still lacked any real warmth, and twisted out the stopper. He took a long pull. That he could do it without cringing astounded and disturbed her. He examined the bottle with surprise, then gave her an odd look.
"Consider it settled," he said. Clearly she had been right about the quality. Perhaps Jack had known what she meant to do after all.
"Did it never occur to you that you ought not to encourage a drunk?" he said.
"Well, yes, it did but I..." Elizabeth began, tugging at the hem of her sleeves. She forced herself to stop the moment she noticed and sat down opposite him. "James, I don't know what to do about you."
"Oh?"
She took a deep breath and found that for all her resolve she couldn't meet his eye. "I know that I hurt you," she said, staring at her hands. "But I did not know how deeply."
"How could you not?" James spat and when she looked up at him his eyes were hot and angry. They were a clear and striking green, she noticed. She was sure she must have known that before now.
"Believe me, I had every intention of honoring my promise to you," she said, feeling that horrible tightness creeping up her throat. "But I thought you only wanted me for my station."
James scoffed. "Your station was incidental to my genuine affection," he said and for just a moment he sounded more like his old self. "Whatever you thought of my motive, it does not excuse the manner in which you cast me aside."
"No, it doesn't," Elizabeth said. "It was impulsive and unkind. My heart leads my head, you know. I often don't think a thing through to its end until I've begun it."
"That is readily apparent," James said, lifting the bottle to her before he drank.
"James, can you ever forgive me?" she said in a rush and cursed herself as her voice wavered. The last thing she wanted was for him to think her the sort to cry for sympathy. James ran a hand over his face and leaned forward on the table. He looked tired.
"Aye, Elizabeth, I forgive you," he said. "If I am honest, I forgave you some time ago. I appreciate your apology, but I can see in your face what you mean by it. Don't believe this alone will make me whole again. It's not only you that needs forgiving."
"Your men," she said softly and he stiffened, turning away from her. "I'm sorry. We needn't discuss it."
"Thank you," he said and fell silent.
It was then that Elizabeth spotted what looked like dirty scraps of linen on the table between his elbows.
"What are those?" she asked.
For a second it appeared he was going to cover them up again, but instead he gently picked them up and held them out to her.
"See for yourself," he said.
Elizabeth took them. They were indeed scraps, linen and sail cloth, but they weren't dirty; they were drawings, sketched in charcoal. The strokes were simple and had an unfinished quality, but each was skillfully done. There was a little dog with curly fur, a laughing young man brandishing a cutlass, perspectives of rigging and sails, a grizzled old man sporting a bandolier of pistols.
"These are incredible!" she exclaimed. "I never knew you were such an artist."
James chuckled. "You needn't sound so shocked," he said. "I did spend time off duty now and again, if not much. I have some very good ones of you, you know. I had planned to share them with you."
Elizabeth cringed a little at that, though she supposed she did deserve it. James was not at all the man she had assumed him to be. But had she married him and all of this never happened, how long would it have taken her to see it?
She set aside a sketch of a boy with a toy ship and the one beneath it was a shock. It showed a woman in men's clothing, hair flying free in the wind and her hands firm on the wheel of a ship. For a horrible jolting moment, Elizabeth thought it might be one of those of her he had mentioned but the woman in the drawing was stockier than she, and definitely taller. Her own chin barely cleared the wheel of most ships, and this woman well topped it. She turned to the next sketch. It was the same woman, this time jus a portrait. Her lips were pressed together in a half-smile and somehow even with such poor materials James had made her eyes glitter with laughter.
"She's beautiful," Elizabeth said. James said nothing. He had suddenly become very focused on downing as much rum as he could. She lifted the cloth to look at the last sketch and she gasped, heat flaring in her cheeks.
The images were intimate and very erotic, but despite that they weren't lewd. There was a tenderness to them that made it clear they had been drawn out of affection and longing. One showed the woman wearing what was obviously James' coat and nothing else. In the next she was asleep, her breasts exposed and hair tousled across the pillow. In the last, she was completely nude, her back arched. The sketch was unfinished, but she was clearly gripped in a state of pleasure. Elizabeth stared at James, wide-eyed and he groaned, leaning on the table with his head in his hands.
"James, who is this woman?" she asked. Much to her chagrin, her heart was racing a little.
"Oh, God, I never should have shown you," he said.
"No, I'm glad you did," she said. "I have to admit they were a shock. You were always so reserved. I thought—"
"You thought what?" James snapped, bringing a fist down on the table. The rum was nearly half gone now and his speech was noticeably slurred. "That I lacked all passion? That I'd never lain with a woman or looked on one with desire? That I was too proper for such base exploits? I assure you, that is the very opposite of the truth. Why do you think I needed to be so reserved?"
He turned away from her, drinking deeply. Something had happened to his voice. The tone had slipped lower and it caught her right in the chest. Elizabeth was at a loss for words. She may not have had all those thoughts exactly, but she was guilty. She had always thought him cold and prudish. In the days leading up to Jack's trial, that short time when she had been the Commodore's intended, she had often wondered what her wedding night with James would be like. The scenarios she had conjured had always been perfunctory and dutiful and nothing more. Looking at him now, looking at what he had drawn, she knew her unhappy speculations could not have been more wrong. It was more than a little alarming, knowing that just his voice could make her shiver like that when she didn't even love him.
"I never knew you at all, did I?" she said.
"No," James said. "Though it would be fair to say my expecations of you were less than realistic, given your nature."
He looked at her and she was surprised to see a hint of a genuine smile. "In hindsight, Elizabeth, we were poorly suited."
She smiled back at him and she felt a silent agreement had passed between them. The debacle of their mess of an engagement was at last behind the both of them. She gathered up his sailcloth sketches and gave them back to him.
"Whoever this woman is, it's obvious you care for her," she said. "Won't you at least tell me her name?"
James had placed the portrait sketch on top and was staring down at it, brows drawn and mouth tight. After a long moment and no few mouthfuls of rum, he sighed.
"Her name is Grace," he said. "She saved my life and I abandoned her."
His last words came out in a bitter growl that prompted another drink.
"Where is she now?" Elizabeth asked.
"When I left her course was to St. Kitt's," he said, giving her a pointed look. "I would imagine she's in port by now."
"Where the compass pointed you," she said and James gave a short, sad laugh. He loved this woman, Elizabeth realized. He loved her and for some unfathomable reason he wished that he didn't.
"Why not go after her?" she said. "When all this is through and Will is safe and Jack is free of his debt, you ought to find her. We'll even help you, I'll convince Jack somehow. Despite your differences he does actually like you in his own way. You should follow your heading. You deserve that, James."
He shook his head, never looking up from the drawing on the table.
"No," he said. "I don't."
The roughness in his voice could have been rage or tears, and Elizabeth thought it was likely the latter. He was falling into a morose sort of intoxication and she wasn't sure she could witness that again. She thought perhaps she should stay, but if she had learned anything over the past days about the man she had once promised to marry, it was that far from lacking feeling his emotions were almost violent in their strength and he preferred their expression go unseen.
She made her way back to the forecastle and curled up in her hammock, no more tired now than when she had left. She had made her apology, she had paid the "debt" she owed, but her conscience still wasn't satisfied. James needed help, on multiple fronts, starting with learning that he was just as worthy of following his own heading as anyone. No matter his objections, he did deserve to be with this Grace who he wanted more than anything in all the world. The more she considered it, the more convinced she became that if she could only bring the two of them together, that in time James could be made whole again. If he was with Grace, whoever she was, in time he would be able to grant himself the forgiveness he needed.
Elizabeth pulled the blanket up under her chin and closed her eyes. She was resolved. When Will was safe and this whole business behind them, she would talk to Jack and she would see to it that James Norrington followed where the compass pointed him. And with that resolution, she slept.