Author's Note: Thanks to all who read and reviewed! It's very much appreciated, and I hope you're enjoying the story. This chapter definitely earns an M rating for language, so be advised, and, because I forgot to stick this into my author's note last chapter: I do not own Pirates of the Caribbean or James Norrington; if I did, you can be sure he would have had a happier fate ;) It all belongs to Disney; I'm just playing in the sandbox.
The Laughing Wench was infamous throughout the Caribbean for having the strongest rotgut and the most wanton whores of any sailor's tavern at any port of call; consequently, it tended to attract a certain calibre of clientele for whom commonplace spirits and wenches would no longer suffice. James himself had been to the place only once, for once had been enough; he was not likely to ever forget the misery of the morning after, which he'd spent depositing the contents of his stomach into a chamber pot. Nor was he apt to forget the shocking debauchery of the lass he'd hired for company that night, memories which still had the power to bring a shame-filled flush to his cheeks. He might be a battered wreck of a man, living a life of sin and iniquity in the wretched pisshole that was Tortuga, but he took comfort in knowing that he hadn't hit rock bottom – not as long as he managed to avoid the lure of the Laughing Wench.
Brawlin' Bill Hardy, however, was another story entirely. Already he had a whore in his lap and a mug in his hand, and James could hear his boisterous bellow rising above the general raucous din of the tavern. He and his minions sat at a table near the bar, and James kept to the shadows near the back of the pub as he casually moved closer, waiting for Hardy to finish up his mug and demand another.
"Another round!" Hardy roared, slamming his mug onto the table with emphatic force. His now-free hand dove into the woman's skirts, and she squealed as he pinched her under her petticoats. "A round for all me men! Ain't every day ye get to celebrate a bounty such as this!"
Well, now – it sounded like Brawlin' Bill had amassed quite the haul of treasure on his latest misadventures, if he was inclined to be so generous as to buy a round for his men (even if it was, all things considered, a round of the Laughing Wench's rotgut). A shame he hadn't thought to settle his debts before celebrating his good fortune. Such a pity, James mused as he moved out of the shadows and towards Hardy's table.
"How about a round for me, Hardy?" he said, sliding smoothly into a chair beside Brawlin' Bill, careful to keep all of Hardy's cronies within his sight.
Hardy spluttered out of mouthful of rum and turned to stare balefully at the interloper who'd insinuated himself into the middle of his merrymaking, his eyes narrowing in suspicion as recognition set in.
"Norrington," he growled, and James felt the tension in the air thicken as Hardy's thugs shifted nervously, hands discreetly but perceptibly moving towards their weapons. James was not concerned – he already had his hand resting comfortably against the hilt of his dagger, tucked away covertly in a pocket of his coat.
"Hardy," he replied. "Quite the festivities you have going on over here. What's the occasion?"
Brawlin' Bill had never been the brightest or most perceptive of men, but even he could tell when he was being baited. "Ain't none of yer goddamn business, ye Navy lapdog. Go buy yer own grog."
"It seems to me that you have more than enough to go around," James noted, gesturing at the table full of empty bottles and mugs. "Why, you must be positively flush with gold."
"And what business is it o' yers? We ain't mates and I don't owe ye nothin'! Now be gone with ye." Hardy turned with an exaggerated flair back to the lady astride his lap, who by now regarded him with wary unease.
"Well, that's not exactly true, is it, Hardy? As a matter of fact, you do owe me something," James said. There was steel in his voice, now, and his eyes met the whore's with stern purpose. Understanding that the situation at the table was about to become less than pleasant, she quickly lifted her skirts and slipped out of Hardy's grasp and off his lap, earning a bark of protest from the pirate.
"Where are ye going, ye faithless slag?" he bellowed after the woman, who'd disappeared back into the general hubbub of the tavern. He whirled back to James, eyes blazing in rage. "Ye be scarin' off my company, Navy dog. I don't be appreciatin' that much."
"You owe me twenty pounds sterling," James said without further prelude, any traces of levity or banter in his voice utterly gone. "I intend to collect that debt from you. Now."
His glare was fixed squarely on Hardy, but James sensed the other men tensing out of the corner of his eye, readying for action. He was not worried about them, not as long as he could see them. They were lackeys, tagalongs of the most spineless and mewling sort, and they would do nothing without Brawlin' Bill's say-so. The trick, then, was to remove Hardy as a threat before things got ugly.
The din in the tavern seemed to quiet a little, as the other men littered nearby paused in their revelries to watch the brewing confrontation. James knew how he chose to deal with Hardy now would either gain or lose him a great deal of respect from the rogue's gallery of pirates, thieves, and villains who populated the Laughing Wench, and who would no doubt gossip about any sort of bar fight over mugs of grog back on their ships. It wasn't that he gave a tinker's damn for their esteem, but being respected – and feared – had its advantages in a place like Tortuga.
"Do ye, now." Hardy's voice was low and dangerous. "Well, there's just a slight problem, mate. I – "
But whatever Hardy was going to say was lost to a wailing scream of agony as James, abruptly and without preamble, drew his dagger from within his coat and drove it forcefully through Hardy's prone hand and into the table beneath.
Pandemonium erupted. Hardy's men, dumbfounded and slack-jawed, goggled about in stupefaction; Hardy roared with pain and rage and, staring at his impaled hand for a long, horrified moment, eventually gathered enough of his wits to reach with his other hand for the blade hanging at his side –
But he'd taken too long and did not get very far, his momentum stopped abruptly by the sharp tip of a blade poking into his throat. James had drawn his cutlass with his right hand as soon as he'd delivered the dagger with the other, and he now held Hardy quite helplessly at swordpoint, scraping the blade softly with idle menace against the bearded hollow of the other man's throat.
"There's no problem, mate," James said, pressing the blade ever-so-lightly against Hardy's Adam's apple, just enough to draw forth a small bead of blood. "That is, unless you don't settle your debts with me, and settle them now. In that event, I concede you might well be in a spot of trouble. Mate."
The tavern had gone quiet. All eyes were riveted on the unfolding drama, at the scene of Brawlin' Bill Hardy pinned between a dagger in his hand and a sword at his throat, his usual cronies unsure or unwilling to help. As the seconds ticked by, James increased the pressure on the blade by increments, until the blood droplets beading at Hardy's neck had become a small trickle, and then a steadier ooze. Hardy swallowed thickly, an involuntary reflex borne of nerves, and winced in pain as the movement caused the blade to bite deeper and open the cut wider. Blood dribbled down his throat in a steady stream.
"Come on, Bill, what'll it be? Lose your coin or lose your head? It seems a rather simple choice," James taunted.
He had Hardy dead to rights and he knew it – and Hardy knew it, too.
"All right, all right!" Hardy gasped. "Just promise ye won't cut off me head while I'm reachin' for me coin purse." And so James waited, blade still at the ready and jabbing into Hardy's throat, while the pirate reached his hand down to his waist and, at last, with an incoherent snarl of rage, tossed the purse on the table.
"There's yer god-damned coin, ye back-bitin' rat!" he bellowed. "Now take yer blade off me throat and take yer leave!"
James reached down to the coin purse with his free hand – leaving his sword-hand, and the blade, in place at Hardy's neck – and opened it up and poured the contents on the table. Fourteen coins.
"Hardy, you absolute dullard," he said wearily, pressing the blade tighter and drawing yet more blood. "I always knew you were a liar and a fool, but I never thought you'd be stupid enough to try and cheat a man holding a blade to your throat."
"That's all I got on me, I swear!" Hardy exclaimed. "The rest is – " He abruptly silenced himself, apparently aware that he was about to reveal where he stashed his booty to every blackguard in the tavern.
James, for his part, only raised his brows in amused exasperation. "Of course," he said smoothly. "Well then, I am left with no choice but to collect the remainder from your friends here." One of Hardy's men, a dull-eyed, slack-jawed simpleton everyone knew, fittingly, as Simple Pete, gawped in surprise and dismay.
"Aw, now – that ain't fair!" Pete sputtered. "I don't owe you no money!"
"No, but your captain does," James replied. "And I'm sure he'll be happy to pay you recompense if you save him from getting his throat slit."
Pete continued to gawp like a fish, his flat eyes darting back and forth between James and Hardy, when the latter man, quite tired now of having a cutlass at his neck, snapped, "For God's sake, ye idiot, just give him yer coin!"
And so Simple Pete, after much fumbling, tossed a pile of coins onto the table. Eight more. Hardy, though not a bright man, was brighter than Simple Pete, and he knew that eight and fourteen was more than the twenty originally demanded.
"Hey, that's two more than you asked for!" he protested as James gathered up the coins and stashed them back into Hardy's abandoned purse, which he then slipped into his own coat.
"Consider it a fee for my trouble," James said smoothly. Backing away slowly, he removed the cutlass at last, and Hardy's hand instantly shot up to stanch the flow of blood that streamed steadily down his neck.
"Thank you, gents," James said as he wiped the blood from the tip of his blade on the sleeve of his coat. "Now we are quits. I trust our paths won't cross again." And so he began to back towards the door of the Laughing Wench (for, after all, one did not turn one's back on four angry pirates from whom one has just extorted money), regretting the loss of his dagger, but judging the loss worth the additional time he'd bought in accounting for Hardy to remove it himself. James bowed deeply in mock courtesy, according the men one final insult before pushing open the door to the tavern and exiting to the streets of Tortuga.
Once safely out of the Laughing Wench, he hastened his pace and made for another tavern down the road. He knew, of course, that he hadn't seen the last of Hardy and his men. No man on Tortuga, and no pirate worth his salt, could abide such insult, such public humiliation. And so he knew that they would come for him, tonight, hoping to find him dead drunk and buried deep in a tavern whore – all the easier to slip a blade between his ribs and take back the coin he'd just wrung from them.
He was determined not to make it so simple for them. Not that he would not fight them – he would, he had to, or else he'd always wonder where they were, and when the blade would find him – but he would do so on his own terms. And he knew just the place to do it.
But first, he mused as he jingled the coin that now filled his pockets, he needed a drink.
James reclined against the back wall of the alley, doing his level best to ignore the stench of stale piss and liquor that permeated the narrow passageway. He took a long swig of his bottle and reminded himself that, although the alley was ferociously rank and ordinarily not the sort of place he'd prefer to tarry, it was necessary for his immediate purposes - between the two ramshackle wooden buildings hemming him in on either side and the stone wall at his back, the only means of approach was the entrance at the street, ensuring that he could not be surrounded or ambushed. If - no, when – Bill Hardy and his motley crew came for him, they'd have to come at him head on.
Despite his nickname, "Brawlin' Bill" wasn't much of a fighter - James had seen him in action before (hell, he'd traded blows with him before), and he knew that his primary strength was his ever-present but puzzlingly loyal band of henchmen, who made sure that every fight Brawlin' Bill started was an unfair one. But the man's fighting form itself was poor - his punches were all strength and no finesse, and his skills with a blade were middling at best. James was a fair tavern brawler; he was brawny enough to hold his own, and three hard years in Tortuga had only improved his skills.
But blades - that was another matter. He was an impeccable swordsman and always had been, even from his midshipman days. The only reason he hadn't challenged Bill Hardy to a duel before was the certainty of a cowardly blade in the back courtesy of one of Hardy's lackeys. But he'd eliminated that advantage tonight, with the alleyway protecting his back and flanks. He'd finally get his fair fight with Brawlin' Bill after all.
Unless, of course, the shitheel coward had decided to cut his losses and turn tail. Having stewed now in the piss-soaked alley for at least two hours, James downed the last of the rum and tossed the bottle with a curse. And it didn't help matters that his own need to piss had grown rather urgent, no doubt a combination of the rum and the long idling wait. He fought the urge as long as he could, certain that as soon as he'd unbuttoned his trousers, Hardy and his cronies would round the corner and charge into the alley, catching him with his cock in his hand and his cutlass in its sheath. But eventually, he could hold out no longer, and, with a growl of annoyance, he swiftly unbuttoned his pants and relieved himself against the wall with a contented sigh.
And, of course, that was the moment when four dark silhouettes appeared at the entrance of the alleyway, with knives and cutlasses drawn. The sheer absurdity of the coincidence drew a bark of laughter from James, and as the first silhouette stepped closer, out of the shadows, he could see Bill Hardy's ugly, pockmarked face.
"Don't suppose you mind letting me finish, lads?" James said, still perversely amused. Fate really did have a deliciously cruel sense of humour.
"Supposin' ye think it's funny to be facing four armed men with naught but yer prick, Commodore?" Bill drawled, imagining that he'd struck a nerve with his reference to James' old naval rank. But his earlier morning musings had already desensitized him to that line of attack, and so James paid him no heed as he tucked himself back into his trousers and buttoned them up.
"Aw, gee, boss, no wonder all the whores likes him best! You get a look at that?" Simple Pete, as daft and tactless as ever, apparently hadn't realized that implying that his captain was a lesser man was perhaps not the wisest thing he could've said. Hardy whipped around to glower furiously at Pete, and the simpleton drew back in fear – if looks could kill, Simple Pete surely would've dropped over dead.
"Shut yer mouth, ye gormless ponce! What do ye know about what the whores like?" Hardy roared. "Besides, I didn't see nothing that impressive."
James felt his eyebrows quirk in amusement as the beginnings of a plan came together. Perhaps it had been for the best that Hardy and his crew had caught him with his pants down, after all.
"Now now, Bill, jealousy doesn't become you. I think Simple Pete might be onto something," he said. "I've heard that some of the ladies have taken to calling you Half-Mast Hardy. It must be quite humiliating."
It wasn't (as far as James knew) true, but that was beside the point, as Brawlin' Bill Hardy's face flushed red as a tomato. "No they don't!" he squawked. Then his eyes narrowed in suspicion. "What would ye know about it anyway? Ye been asking around about me cock, have ye? Fancy a buggering, do ye?"
"There was no need to ask," James said smoothly, every bit the spider who was slowly but surely enticing the fly into his web. "Tortuga is a small island, Hardy. I'm sure we have shared many of the same lasses. The only thing looser than a whore's cunt is her wagging tongue. So trust me, I've heard all about your... inadequacies."
He felt the smallest, briefest pang of guilt for so crudely and dishonestly impugning the discretion of the working women of Tortuga, but that pang was quickly swallowed by a heady satisfaction as he watched the barb hit home. Brawlin' Bill's face contorted into a florid purple mask of rage and bloodlust.
"You bastard son of a whore, I'll have your head!" he bellowed, charging down the alley, cutlass raised high over his head. Seeming momentarily thrown by their boss's wild fury, the three henchmen hesitated for a moment before charging after Bill with raucous battle cries.
The alley he'd chosen was too narrow to admit more than one man at a time, and in their ill-formed and unplanned rage, the four pirates swept right into the trap James had laid. Brawlin' Bill was first, and he lunged gracelessly forward with his blade. James effortlessly parried the blow, knocking Hardy's sword out of hand and using the momentum to skewer the first henchman, who'd rushed past his captain and right into James's oncoming cutlass. He jerked the blade from the man's guts and cut down the third man, who had also come rushing headlong into the death trap.
It was Simple Pete, strangely enough, the dimmest of them all, who had finally realized that to continue his forward charge was suicide; accordingly, he scrabbled to a halt before the bodies of his comrades, and stood there, gaping and frozen in panic, until James took pity on him and smacked him hard in the head with the flat broadside of his sword. Pete crumpled to the ground, and all that was left was Brawlin' Bill, who'd picked up his sword from where it had fallen senseless from his hands.
"Just us now, Norrington," Hardy grated, readying his cutlass for another lunge. "I'll run ye through, and when yer dead I'll cut off yer balls and use 'em to make me a new coinpurse!"
"No," James said coolly, parrying again Hardy's wild thrust, and, bringing his own blade up and around, he cleaved the man from thigh to shoulder. "You won't." Hardy fell heavily to the ground, his face a mask of shock and horror as he looked to the ruinous, fatal wound that nearly hewed him in two.
James leaned down before the dying man, using the tail of Hardy's coat to wipe the blood from his blade and noting the extent of the wound and its trajectory across Hardy's body.
"Well, it looks like you're Half-Mast Hardy now, after all," he said, and the fading light in Hardy's eyes ignited in one final murderous glare before extinguishing forever.
Kneeling down before the carnage, James surveyed his handiwork. These weren't the first men he'd killed on Tortuga, and he very much doubted they'd be the last, but it had been nothing, to cut down these pirates, and he wondered when he'd stopped feeling the grim gravity that had always – should have always – accompanied taking another man's life.
Shaking away the melancholy, he brought himself back to the present, and realized that, in death, Brawlin' Bill and his minions might be much more generous than they'd been inclined to be in life. Rifling through Hardy's pockets, James grinned in triumph as he found Hardy's spare coin purse, the one he'd claimed he didn't have on him, tucked away in a secret pouch on his belt. An investigation of the other two corpses revealed two similar purses each, and James was more than happy to relieve them of their burden. What use had dead men for coin?
He hesitated a moment longer before Simple Pete. Poor, stupid, gawping Simple Pete, whose only real crime had been to fall in with a captain who'd crossed James Norrington, a crime for which James hadn't felt compelled to take his life. And yet, he felt no such compunctions about taking Pete's coin, and so he did – after all, Pete had just attacked him in an alley (sort of). Besides, if he didn't take it now, some vagrant would be along shortly to relieve Simple Pete of any remaining valuables. Better it fall into his hands now. Pete would be penniless when he awoke, but at least he'd awaken. That was enough mercy for one day on Tortuga.
And so now it was James celebrating his good fortunes in a Tortuga tavern with a bottle in one hand and a wench in the other, and he reflected on the vagaries of fate, that ficklest bitch of them all. Only this morning he'd been penniless, a wretch, pleading for a favour from an ill-tempered whore; and now he sat with a bottle of fine spirits and surely one of the loveliest lasses on the whole island readily snuggling into the crook of his arm. And only this morning Bill Hardy had swaggered into the Laughing Wench, flush with gold and eager to spend it, and now he lay dead in an alley, a feast for the rats. Such was the ebb and flow of life, and now that the tide had come back in, James was determined to enjoy it to the lees.
"Handsome thing, aren't you," the lass cooed, tangling a hand through his dishevelled hair while the other began to caress him across the chest and shoulders. He'd been smitten by such flatteries long ago, when he was new to Tortuga, until he'd realized that the compliments weren't special or unique to him. Even so, he could tell that the women considered him finer looking than the other men to whom they sold their wares (which, admittedly, wasn't saying much on Tortuga), and so he was usually able to catch the eye of the prettiest girl in the establishment. Tonight had been no exception.
"I'm afraid I pale in comparison to the beauty in my arms," he said. The banter was old and routine by now; the recycled bromides of affection and attraction, the pretence of flirtation and romance quickly segueing into more bawdy and lewd rejoinders as the night went on and the liquor set in, before the parties retired to the task that they'd agreed upon before any words had been exchanged at all. It was an old familiar dance whose steps he knew by heart. And so he felt no hesitation or shame when he reached for the laces of her bodice and began, gently but insistently, to pull them down.
"Aren't you the eager one, handsome?" she gasped in faux offence for her long-gone chastity as his hand slid under the laces. Another move, another step in the age-old dance, and he barely registered her words as he took another pull on the bottle before leaning in to press his lips against the soft skin, his mouth moving lower as his fingers and hands pulled down ever more of her bodice –
"James Norrington? Oh my God, James? Is that you?"
A voice from another world – another life, that man's life – came crashing through his senses, and all thoughts of the lass and her creamy décolletage were wiped away in an instant. He pulled back and searched for the ghost, the damnable accursed ghost whose voice had spoken to him, who had somehow, after all these years, found him here, in his own private hell.
And there she was, just as beautiful as ever, God damn her to hell. The whore in his lap was entirely forgotten.
"Elizabeth Swann? What the hell are you doing here?"