Ye olde disclaimer: Ain't mine, don't sue.

A/N: Okay, canon on the whole timeline between Black Pearl and DMC is an incredibly woolly thing. I've spent ages trying to iron it all out, only to discover that there's really no hard-and-fast truth (yet). So I'm going on the assumption that there were about two years in between. That's my interp, and if you think it's wrong... well, I guess you think it's wrong.

Anyway, in this chapter, my favourite character (except for maybe Tia Dalma) makes his appearance! Bring on the Norrington!

Now I'll stop talking. :D

Chapter 3: Stella Perditi

Life returned mostly to normal afterwards. It was almost as if nothing had happened at all. There were a few changes, though, that reminded Stella of what had come to pass.

Hector Barbossa never darkened her door again, for obvious reasons.

In his place, however, came Jack Sparrow. He was a guest at her house a little more frequently than before—now that Captain Sparrow had a ship to captain again, he had more of a need for favourable winds to push his Pearl along, especially since there was also the matter of the navy's dogged pursuit. Stella liked to think that the winds Jack purchased from her were the only reason he was so skilfully able to evade the fleet sent after him.

The last alteration was more of a personal choice than a result of circumstances: Stella began to frequent the port town near her home. Previously, she'd only gone to the port once a week—on Mondays, to buy those things she could not make herself and deal with the customers too cowardly to trek through the graveyard to her home. Now she went nearly every day, stretching her senses to the limit as she tried to find the lost man Tia Dalma predicted would come. The lost man who would take her away from Tortuga within three years.

And preferably not as a corpse.

It was a morbid, but definite, possibility—one that worried her more than she was willing to admit. Tia Dalma assured her she would get off Tortuga, but failed to mention in what condition. That lack of detail might make all the difference. After all, Stella could die and then leave Tortuga in a coffin. It was therefore technically a correct prediction (as if Tia Dalma made any other kind), but one that wouldn't do Stella a lick of good.

That fear drove her to swallow her disgust and spend more time in town. If she were to find the lost man, she needed to be around people. Soon enough she became a familiar sight in the port, and no one batted an eye at the sight of Black Stella meandering through the crowds with a tattered parasol shielding her from the sun.

There had been the odd hitch at first, of course. Men unfamiliar with her name and the tale of Ned Murphy attempted to proposition her as she strolled along the docks; women whispered behind their hands as she passed them in the streets. She'd cursed more people in the first six months than she had in the previous six years.

But that show of temper had served her well. No one jeered or catcalled now; instead, the people fell quiet whenever she passed. The brave ones called out courteous greetings, wishing her health.

Months passed, sinking slowly into the muck of the Tortugan streets. There was still no sight of the lost man. Stella continued watching and waiting. A year passed; suddenly it was hurricane season again.

The one-year anniversary of her conversation with Tia Dalma concerning Jack Sparrow found Stella standing at the end of a dock, staring across the water at the horizon. Another storm was passing by—not so close to Tortuga to be worrisome, but close enough to bring rain.

"Hurricane season," she murmured, wrapping her black cloak closer around her shoulders as the wind and rain lashed at her face. But even these feelings could not distract her from the tingling in her otherworldly senses.

It was getting worse. Well... worse, in the sense of very strong and very distracting. That sensation had been in the back of her mind since that evening a year ago when young William Turner brought his promise into her home. It had not waned. Whatever Jack Sparrow had done (or was doing) continued to echo, and the anticipation of something was so potent in the air that Stella could taste it.

Really, she could.

Tasted a bit like lemon, in fact.

Stella remained on the dock until the rain began to slow and the rumbling clouds made their way north. She was soaked to the skin, her black cloak waterlogged and her long hair plastered to her neck. These annoyances were hardly noted at all as she took deep breaths, inhaling the scent of salt and rain and fighting the urge to start laughing at nothing.

Her time was coming. She could feel it.

James Norrington, on the other hand, felt that his time was ending. Things had slipped so rapidly out of his control that he wasn't sure how to go about fixing them. It seemed like he would just blink, and everything around him would have changed.

Blink.

He had been promoted to commodore. He was preparing to propose to Elizabeth Swann, after waiting so long for her to grow up. Life was good.

Blink.

He was commodore. He had Jack Sparrow behind bars. He had proposed—albeit he didn't have an answer yet, but he was confident. Life was superb.

Blink.

Things started to go wrong. That ghastly ship attacked Port Royal. Elizabeth was kidnapped. Jack Sparrow escaped and ran off with the Interceptor and hot-headed Will Turner in tow. But Norrington knew he was still on top of things, oh yes. Life was complicated, but would improve shortly.

Blink.

Life improved. There he was, engaged to Elizabeth, with Jack Sparrow's neck in the noose and another 41 pirates waiting to hang.

Blink.

He still wasn't rightly sure what, exactly, had happened in that moment when his eyes were closed. All he knew was that at the end of it Jack Sparrow went free, he was no longer engaged, and Elizabeth was kissing the blacksmith.

Blink.

Now he was chasing Sparrow across the Caribbean, goaded by the knowledge that he might loose everything if he couldn't remedy that one mistake. The government was not amused by his explanations—he should've known they wouldn't understand undead pirates, or comprehend why it seemed that letting Sparrow go was the right thing to do. Most of the time he didn't understand it himself.

Blink.

That storm. That terrible, wretched storm took everything away. Sparrow was finally within reach of his fingers, after dodging him all over the Atlantic. Honestly, the pirate had the most devilish luck. Whenever he got close, the winds picked up and sent the Black Pearl dancing away.

He didn't know it was going to be as bad as it was. He didn't. If he'd any inkling of the fury that awaited them under the dark clouds, he never would have given orders to sail on through.

But he did. The hurricane was terrible. In the end, the ship floundered, and only eight men (including himself) had come out alive.

Blink.

And now he was back in Port Royal, sitting in his office with a sifter of brandy, trying vainly to figure out when, exactly, things had gone so very insane. He hadn't quite put his finger on it yet, but he had a feeling Jack Sparrow was sitting at the centre.

Norrington sighed heavily, and took another drink. He kept blinking, hoping that the situation would change into something a little more hospitable in the brief time his eyes were closed. Thus far, it hadn't happened.

Then again, he was only on his second glass.

A knock on the door jerked him out of his contemplation. "Enter," he commanded. The door swung open to reveal a man in the blue uniform and white wig of a naval officer. "Ah, Groves," Norrington sighed, beckoning him inside. "Brandy?"

"No, thank you, sir," the lieutenant demurred. "I hope I'm not intruding...?"

"No," Norrington said, shaking his head. "I was just writing the last of the letters."

He ignored the flash of pity in his subordinate's eyes and took another sip from his glass instead. Norrington had been writing a goodly amount of letters lately—missives to the families of those men who were lost in action under his command. He'd written a rash of them after the fiasco with those cursed pirates, and now he was composing another slough for the men lost when the Dauntless floundered. The whole procedure was discomforting, but it needed to be done. The families of the dead deserved to know that their sons had been lost because of his stupidity.

Of course, he never put it quite so bluntly in the letters.

"Does the admiralty know, sir?" Groves inquired after a moment.

"Yes," Norrington replied, suppressing a wince. "The vessel that rescued us encountered a courier ship on our way back to Port Royal. I should imagine the Crown is well aware of the circumstances by this point." He stifled a sigh, before changing the subject. "What do you need, Lieutenant Groves? I assume you did not come to watch me wallow in self-pity."

"Of course not, sir. The men and I were worried—you haven't left the office since this morning," Groves explained.

"I'm fine," Norrington assured him tiredly, rubbing his eyes.

"Have you eaten anything, sir?"

"I had tea."

"You should come down to the mess for supper, sir," Groves suggested.

Norrington grimaced. He didn't want to be around people right now. He didn't want to see the disappointment in their eyes, or deal with their pity. "When did it all go wrong?" he wondered aloud. Then he chastised himself as Groves looked at him curiously. It seemed the alcohol was loosening his tongue.

The compassion in Groves' eyes was painful—Norrington didn't want to need it, but it was a pleasant change from the bafflement and displeasure from everyone else. "Wrong, sir?"

"Never mind, Groves," he sighed.

There was a pause. "It's not your fault, sir. No one holds you responsible," Groves said quietly, breaking the silence.

"I never thought you were a man to lie, Theodore," Norrington remarked dryly, raising his eyebrows tiredly. "Of course they hold me responsible—I am."

"Well, no one blames you for the way it turned out, then," Groves replied lamely. "It'll all blow over in a few months."

"Dear God, I hope so," Norrington muttered, shuffling his papers into some form of order. He rubbed his eyes and squinted at the script, trying to make out the words in the candlelight.

After a moment, he realised Groves was still there. He looked quizzically up at the lieutenant.

"With all due respect, sir, you look terrible," the brunet announced, coming closer to the desk. "Perhaps you should retire, get some sleep? It will all look better in the morning. At the very least, you'll find it easier to concentrate."

Nodding, Norrington corked his inkwell and prepared to leave. He mechanically collected his things and allowed the lieutenant to accompany him to his quarters. As he laid his head on the pillow, clean and white and starched, he desperately hoped Groves was right.

After all, things couldn't get much worse, could they?

Blink.

Things got worse. Much worse.

A month later he received a letter from the admiralty strongly suggesting that he should resign his commission and save himself the indignity and the government the trouble of having him dishonourably discharged on account of gross incompetence.

Well.

There wasn't much to say to that. Desperate to save what remained of his tattered reputation and his very battered honour, Norrington did as advised. He resigned his commission, collected a few effects (including his uniform; the blue brocade, gold trim, and powdered wig were still intact, and secreted safely away in his trunk) and several bottles of whiskey, and left Port Royal. He couldn't stand to stay there as he was: a fallen man with no life or livelihood and the woman he loved engaged to someone else.

So he left. Got passage on a ship called The Morningstar, without knowing or caring about the destination, and departed, without bothering to bid anyone farewell.

Blink.

Norrington spent the next month or so hopping ships. Occasionally he'd lend a hand when crew was short; on others he bought passage. The calibre of the ships he boarded degraded steadily as time went on. What little money he'd brought with him was spent mostly on drink, but it soon dwindled to near-nothing. His clothing soon became more hole than cloth, and he was forced to don his uniform (now slightly wrinkled and musty, but still much nicer than the alternative) lest he walk about naked.

Eventually Norrington realised that he had to make permanent port somewhere, or at least get paying work. He decided that the next port The Antenora put into would be his final stop.

Blink.

Upon retrospect, Norrington probably should have asked at which port The Antenora was putting in. Because he found himself disembarking at Tortuga. Which meant he sailed with and was surrounded by pirates.

This was worse. He felt unclean.

Liquor, however, was liquor, no matter where it was acquired. And he needed some—his supply had long been exhausted. He wanted desperately to forget... everything. Forget that he was disgraced, surrounded by the scum of the Caribbean, that he'd lost two things he'd loved best, and that he'd spent the last month wandering from nowhere to nowhere with nothing to show for it.

So Norrington wandered into a tavern—he didn't bother to look for the name—and got himself a bottle of rum. If he was going to be surrounded by pirates, he might as well drink like one.

Had Norrington been thinking properly, he would have realised this was a very bad idea. However, he had spent the last two days in various states of inebriation, was deeply depressed, and was hence not thinking straight.

After all, it was a intensely stupid thing for any man wearing a British naval uniform to walk into a pub in a pirate port and sit down for a drink, let alone one known as "The Scourge of Piracy". It was even more foolish for said man to get completely and utterly intoxicated, because he then became unaware of his surroundings, and oblivious to the threat to his life.

The navy was not a popular institution in Tortuga, nor was Norrington was a popular man. A navy officer of obviously high rank was pretty much asking to be mugged, shot, or assaulted in a various manner of unpleasant ways—especially in The Faithful Bride.

There was no need for the men in the tavern to speak their intentions aloud. Everyone knew what was going to happen. Five men from a table in the opposite corner stood, and made their way slowly through the crowd towards where Norrington was seated.

The ex-commodore was unpleasantly surprised when his drink was interrupted. A meaty hand suddenly landed on his left shoulder and he was unceremoniously hauled to his feat. Norrington blinked blearily at the man holding him up—a burly blonde who was grinning at him in a decidedly unfriendly manner.

That was the last thing he noticed before he took a fist straight to the jaw. The pub exploded shortly thereafter.

In a normal bar-fighting situation, Norrington would've given just as good as he got (not that Norrington ever found himself in many bar-fights, of course). However, he was currently intoxicated, without a sword, and outnumbered. As such, he lost. Thoroughly.

Thus, James Norrington came within a hair's-breadth of being beaten to death on the floor of The Faithful Bride. But as he was preparing to sustain another kick to the kidneys, the door of the tavern blew violently open.

The momentum of the wind slammed the door into the wall with a loud bang, before it ripped through the crowd, knocking off hats and stinging eyes. All activity—including the brawl around Norrington—came to a halt as the wind whistled back to the doorway and faded into nothingness, the only sound the faint chiming of tiny bells.

By this point, every inhabitant of Tortuga knew exactly what that sound portended. So as a slight figure swathed in a black cloak stepped lightly into the pub, every man who wore a hat doffed it respectfully, and a soft murmur of polite salutation rippled through the room.

Black Stella smiled the same faint smile that had so disconcerted William Turner. "My goodness, it certainly appears that we have had some excitement here," she remarked pleasantly, stepping further into the room. The patrons parted like the Red Sea before her as she moved, always keeping an arm's length away. "May I inquire as to the occasion?"

An awkward silence descended, broken only by the shuffling of feet. No one seemed to be sure if Miss Bell was being sarcastic or in earnest. Her thin eyebrows soon answered that question; they rose in dark arches over her cold black eyes—an impatient gesture indicating that she did, indeed, want an answer.

"Naval gent came in 'ere," one brave soul finally muttered. "Lads wanted t'teach 'im a lesson."

"Really, a gentleman coming in here for a drink? How dare he? The sheer nerve! My God, he'll be wanting food next." The scorn in Black Stella's voice caused several men to flush and rub their necks uneasily.

Of course, not all the customers were thus cowed. "Mais il est de le marine, et un anglais aussi!" protested one of the men over by Norrington—the stringy one who'd been preparing to kick the man in the back, as a matter of fact.

The man—a gangly Frenchman with a ragged beard and a scar on his left cheek—was braver than most of the men in Tortuga: he actually stood his ground when Black Stella turned her gaze to him, features arranged in an expression that would've been polite curiosity were it not for the malicious glitter in her dark eyes. "Really?" the witch inquired mildly. "Perhaps I might see this naval officer who offended you all so heinously by entering the tavern for a drink?"

It wasn't really a request. As Stella approached, the men surrounding the battered ex-commodore reluctantly backed away. They weren't keen to leave the beating unfinished, but one did not deny Black Stella.

The Faithful Bride remained mired in uncomfortable silence as Miss Bell knelt next to the battered bundle of blue cloth, gold trim, and blood. She reached out a hand to the officer's face, and the rest of the tavern took a quick breath in. Was she going to curse the man?

"I know you."

This softly-spoken declaration was accompanied by a gentle touch on his face as a swathe of fabric wafted to rest on his hand.

Norrington raised his head at the contact, looking blearily up at the source. He grasped the cloth lying on his hand, clutching it in a desperate attempt to gain some balance. His overall impression was black: black clothing, black hair... black spots dancing across his vision. He was nevertheless fairly certain the person kneeling over him was a woman. The hand on his cheek was smooth and cool, and the sheer amount of cloth clenched in his fist surely portended the presence of skirts.

"I know you..." the strange woman repeated.

He rather wished he could say the same. Instead, he clung to the skirt, trying mightily to stay conscious.

Abruptly, the hand was removed and a fold of dark fabric brushed his nose as the woman quickly drew herself up and turned to face the room. "Leave him be," Norrington heard her command.

The babble of talk spread through the room, and the five men closest—the ones who'd been giving him the most thorough beating he'd received since his early days as a midshipman—began to shout.

"D'ye mean—"

"Ye don' mean—!"

"That's not—"

"¿Está loca usted?"

"Vous cannot do that!"

The sharp voice of the woman in black cut through the din. "I assure you, I can and I will. You'll not lay another hand on this man on pain of my severe displeasure."

Apparently this woman's displeasure was a fearsome thing to suffer, since the patrons of The Faithful Bride were all nodding fervently. The grimy Frenchman who had a tendency to deliver kicks to dishonourable locations, however, was not intimidated at all, and pulled out a dagger. He pointed it threateningly at the woman, ignoring the tugs on his arm and the urgent whispers to put it down.

"You trollop officieuse!" the man snarled. "Move, or I cut your pretty face to ribbons!"

Norrington tightened his grip on the lady's skirts, tensing his muscles in preparation to spring to her defence, if needed. That was the plan, anyway, until a foot clad in a leather slipper pressed down on his wrist. The message was obvious, and he loosened his grip.

Meanwhile, the owner of the foot had started laughing. "Really, how asinine," she chuckled. "You'd better put that away, before I loose my temper."

The blond who had thrown the first punch resumed the tugging on the Frenchman's arm. "Pierre, leave 'em be—that's Black Stella," he insisted.

Pierre jerked his arm violently away. "I don't care if elle est la Reine de France!" he snarled, before lunging at the woman still resting her foot on Norrington's wrist.

Norrington shook the foot off and tried to sit up while fumbling for his sword (forgetting, of course, that he hadn't one). He knew, deep down, he couldn't do anything but get stabbed himself, but he wouldn't have been James Norrington if he didn't at least try to protect her.

However, before Pierre's grimy hands could make purchase around the woman's neck, she spat out a word (or it could've been several words) in a language Norrington didn't know and gestured sharply. The man promptly collapsed, screaming, to the floor.

A deathly silence descended. The only sounds were the moans and cries of Pierre, lying at the feet of Black Stella. The entire tavern was looking at her expectantly.

Finally, she spoke. Her voice was cold and crisp. "This man is mine. He is under my protection from this moment on. I trust you all understand the ramifications of this claim, and the consequences if you should be found poaching?"

A murmur of agreement ran through the pub.

"Splendid. I'm sure we'll all get along well enough now that this unpleasant business," punctuated with a disdainful nudge at the man still whimpering at her feet, "is out of the way."

With that, the woman turned back to Norrington—who was still clinging to the woman's skirts and quietly indignant at being classified as property—and the pub returned mostly to normal. The men drifted back to their tables, the wenches resumed serving and laughing and dancing, and Pierre was dragged off somewhere, leaving behind only a few drops of blood.

"I suppose I should thank you, madam," Norrington announced sourly, speech slightly slurred, once the woman's attention was back on him.

She looked at him for a moment, before chuckling darkly. "Ah, I see I have wounded the delicate entity known as masculine pride. Do forgive me for interfering with your manly scrapping, but since I have a use for you I was disinclined to see you beaten to death, which surely would have occurred had I not stepped in," she drawled.

Norrington scowled. She was right, this woman who resembled nothing so much as a great black crow, with her black hair and garb and eyes and a voice harsh like the caws of those great black birds.

...He hadn't seen crows since he left England. About eleven years, perhaps. Maybe twelve. He couldn't really remember. Time seemed to slip and blur when one was constantly inebriated.

"You're going to swoon shortly," the crow-woman announced, breaking into his thoughts. "So I shall tell you now that I'm taking you to my home."

"I don't swoon," Norrington muttered.

"Really?" And then she reached a thin white hand out and pressed firmly on his ribs. The pain rose up like the waves that had swamped the Dauntless. Then the world went black.

Stella chuckled. "Men."

A/N part deux: Ah, Stella. You're such a snarky bitch.

Please Review? I'll love you forever. Or at least until next Tuesday.