A/N: I originally wanted to post this on Saturday but life got in the way even though I specifically said I didn't want one of those. Thank you to everyone who reviewed, favorited, followed, etc. It's great to know I'm not writing into a void. I also just put up a new Norrington and Weatherby one-shot, "All the King's Men", if anyone wants to check that out. Otherwise, on with the story.


Twenty ships? For what, I wonder. Norrington watched from the shore as the vessels departed, flying the Union Jack and the gray and white EITC flag. What sort of treasure did he hope to find? The fleet had been gathered in urgency and though Norrington had no measure of love toward Beckett, he was slightly disappointed he hadn't been chosen to join the fleet.

Now, standing in the aftermath of Beckett's voyage, Norrington had trouble making sense of it. The voyage had been successful. Why, then, had there been no evidence of it? The Sword of El Patron, other cursed weapons Norrington knew nothing about. Yet none of it had mattered in the end. Beckett had fallen just the same.

"So this was a waste of time," Gibbs said in a huff.

"Aye. You almost got us killed, bringin' us here," Marty said, looking up at Jack accusingly.

"Honest enough mistake," Jack said. "Though not entirely a waste. After all, before we came, we had no way of knowing that Beckett had taken the Sword. But now we do. So all we have to do is retrieve it."

"Oh, aye," Gibbs said. "We just turn around and march into the heart of Beckett's domain, avoid the bloody navy, and hope no one too unsavory inherited a sword you know full well Beckett would have guarded closely. And in the meantime, we've got Jolly Roger out for our hides 'cause you didn't know when to quit."

"I resent that," Jack said. "He asked for it."

"Jack."

"He's right, though, lord help me to admit it," Norrington said, interrupting them before their argument could become more heated. "We know where the Sword is most likely to be, at least."

"Most likely." Gibbs snorted. "Most likely to be hanged should we set foot there."

"We're not going to Port Royal," Jack said. "Beckett would never let the Sword out of his sight."

"You don't mean…"

"It went down with the Endeavour," Norrington said. "We're going back to Shipwreck Cove."

They fell silent and even Gibbs had nothing to say to that, at least not now. As for Norrington, the site of the battle where the Endeavour had gone down was not a place he wished to visit.

"Be careful, Jack," Mara said. "One can only encounter so many curses before one goes mad with them."

"I rather think I've hit my limit," Jack said. "One more won't hurt."

Mara smirked. "Aye. You've already got the madness down. But all the same, you would do well to stay clear of the Sword of El Patron. The Sword has the power to undo Jolly's curse, but wield it too long and, well... El Patron's soul is restless and the rumors say that he and the Sword are bound to one another."

"And just who started those rumors?" Jack said in a tone of voice implying he already knew.

Mara's grin grew into something quite knowing that was neither pleasant nor unpleasant considering the expression was made from shadows in mist.

"If this Sword can undo Jolly's curse and by extension, my own, then we must go after it immediately." And the sooner this business was finished, the better as far as Norrington was concerned. Despite his current ill feelings towards the EITC and the navy, pirates were worse.

Jack shot a glance at him but said nothing.

"If you must," Mara said with a ghostly breeze that could only be a sigh. "Leave us be, Jack Sparrow. It is nothing we are not accustomed to."

If she had shouted at him, the insult could not have been plainer.

"It's nice when the undead are understanding," Jack said. "Much better than the stabbing and cursing and…" He made vague gestures that might have been to represent the malice of approaching undead hordes but might just have been a poor imitation of Ragetti's thousandth time losing his eye.

"Unnerving lot," Gibbs said as they walked back to shore, in the closest thing he could come to agreement. He was right though. The red ghosts still floated throughout the town and watched them as they departed, not moving, weapons hanging loosely at their sides, dark hole eyes fixed on them.

Norrington forced himself to look away. There was a strange sort of tingling just beneath his skin and he rubbed at his wrist which chaffed enough to be distracting. He was running out of time. He hadn't shown it to Jack or to anyone yet what he had only noticed on the voyage north during his time in the brig. A patch of skin just beneath the cuff of his jacket, red-rimmed and blackened where the flesh had already begun to rot away.


The sea was abnormally calm wherever the Harkaway passed and unlike ships of the living, no sharks swam in her wake. Yet she carried with her a mysterious fog and aboard her deck, it always felt just on the verge of raining but it never did.

Jolly Roger clutched a spoke of the wheel in his hand, gazing out over the ocean, seeing through the mist. It had been many years since he'd sailed these waters and they still left a foul taste in his mouth and made him want to kill something.

"So we're…not going after that officer anymore?" a crewman named Bo said, a cap pulled low over his skull.

"We don't need to go after anyone," Jolly said, a low growl emanating from his ragged vocal chords. "He'll come to us."

"'E doesn't seem very important to warrant such interest."

"Bo, shut it," another crewman, Rafe, hissed. "He didn't mean nothin', Captain," he added deferentially.

Jolly grunted. In any other circumstance, he wouldn't have given a second thought to tossing the hapless Bo overboard. But he was preoccupied. Ever since his encounter with James Norrington in Essequibo, his thoughts had strayed to that moment he'd finally caught up to Jack Sparrow after so long only to have the wily pirate slip out from between his fingers. He'd vowed revenge. He'd failed. And in his anger, he had lashed out, had cursed the moonlight green for a single night. And Norrington, it seemed, had been caught by his rage.

The officer both fascinated him and repulsed him. A bitter reminder of how close he'd come to sending Jack Sparrow to a watery grave.

"Land ho!" a skeleton shouted from the crow's nest, in a voice that scraped and wheezed yet somehow carried down to the weather deck.

"Good. Reef all and drop anchor. And don't get too close. The Brethren aren't our quarry today." Though it was certainly on the list. He would deal with them after he got rid of Sparrow.

"You think that cursed fellow'll be coming this way?" Rafe asked.

"Aye. The winds are blowing in our favor. James Norrington is heading this way and he's not alone." Jolly rested his right arm heavily on the rail overlooking the main deck, the mishmash of weaponry that had replaced most of the limb. His eyes glowed and he could almost, but not quite, see through Norrington's eyes. "He sails with Jack Sparrow."

A ripple of excitement passed over the crew. Norrington was a curiosity to be sure, but Sparrow…he would not use his magic for this one. No, he looked forward to stabbing the cheating cur right through the heart.


Norrington could imagine Beckett's armada filling these waters and the pirates who had come out to meet them. He couldn't help but wonder what it might have been like had he not died. He would still have been in command of the Flying Dutchman. But beyond that, after what he'd been through, he couldn't honestly say what actions he might have taken. There was really no use in dwelling on the matter. The battle was over. The pirates had won. Davy Jones and Lord Beckett were dead. Norrington turned away from the rail in time to see Gibbs scurrying after Jack to the starboard rail.

"There is still one problem though, which I feel needs to be addressed," Gibbs was saying.

Jack pulled out a spyglass and peered through it. "I assure you, I have missed nothing."

"If you're right –"

"I am right."

Gibbs gave an annoyed huff. "If you're right about the location of the Sword, it's still with the Endeavour."

"Precisely."

"On the bottom of the bloody ocean."

Jack snapped the glass shut. "You possess an acute sense of observation, Mr. Gibbs. When we get back to Tortuga, I shall give you a medal."

"Oh, for all that I must simply have missed the diving bell in the hold. Is that why the Pearl be riding so low?" His voice dripped with sarcasm. The Pearl was not riding low.

"A great big gold one."

"Mr. Sparrow, I suspect you're going somewhere with this?" Norrington butted in, sincerely hoping that was the case. Though he highly suspected that Jack's buffoonery was merely a façade that hid the calculating mind underneath. He'd learned it never did well to underestimate him.

"We're coming upon the wreck." Jack had spent much time in his cabin as of late, charting their course and like a responsible captain, he'd marked the location of the wreck in his log not long after it had attained that state.

"So let me guess," Gibbs said, not quite done. "You're going to hold your breath and swim down to the wreck, find the Sword, and bring it back afore you're drowned or devoured by sharks. Excellent plan."

"I won't be going," Jack said and Gibbs opened his mouth to say something more but he plowed on. "That unfortunate task falls to our favorite admiral," he drawled and Gibbs turned to look at Norrington who wasn't sure he'd heard right.

"I beg your pardon?"

"It's simple, really. You go into the water." Jack moved his fingers in vague motions that might have resembled someone diving over the side. "Locate the wreck; it shouldn't be hard to spot. Find the Sword which will most likely be in Beckett's cabin. Then you swim back." His fingers didn't stop until he'd finished with a weird sort of wrist flourish.

Even after Jack's careful explanation, Norrington couldn't believe it. "I must protest this plan of action."

"Duly noted. Now off you go."

"This is complete and utter madness."

"When has anything I've ever done not been?"

"No man can survive that."

"Ah." Jack held up a hand. "But you are not, in fact, a man."

Norrington forgot the next thing he was going to say and the most confused expression contorted Gibbs' features.

"You are one of the undead. Therefore, the thing no man can survive is the thing you can survive as you haven't got a life to give meaning to the word in the first place."

"Not quite undead yet."

"Close enough. The point being, you can hold your breath forever. So…off you go," he said again.

Norrington hated that Jack's odd logic made sense. After his last experience in the middle of the sea, he wasn't very keen on going back in.

"Surely you have a better option."

It was no use. "Sadly not," Jack said. He leaned in close, causing Norrington to grimace against the stench of rum on his breath. "But seeing as the only reason we're on this little voyage is so that you can save your sorry soul from Jolly's undead clutches, I would think you'd be more than happy to do anything to retrieve the only item which can free you from what binds you to him."

Damn it but he was right. When this was all over, Norrington was going to shoot him in the head.

It was made even worse by the fact that the entire crew had come over to watch as Norrington removed his coat, boots, and sword and never had he been so humiliated in his life.

"I can't believe he's actually going to do it," Jack muttered which made Norrington's face burn even more.

"I expect sincere gratitude from you, Sparrow, when my actions save your skin." With that, he dove overboard.

The water hit him in a rush and he instinctively held his breath as he worked his arms and legs and powered downward. And the deeper he went, the more his chest tightened, the more he remembered finding the blood, waking up in the sea with the sting of the salt in his lungs and a cold ache in his limbs. He realized eventually that the pain now was real, his air-starved lungs proving that Jack was wrong but there was no time now to swim back to the surface, no time now to avoid a second death at sea.

Grimacing, he closed his eyes and let out the stale air through his teeth. It shouldn't have come as a surprise at this point, but he didn't die. The ache never quite went away though. He did his best to ignore it, plunging ever deeper, and though the water was clear, he could see nothing in detail, just the blurry-edged shadows of things. Reefs, rocks, fish which darted away in his presence.

The debris of a ship.

The sight renewed his vigor and he ignored his mounting tiredness, homing in on the vague silhouette. With each day that had gone by, with every hour, he'd felt Jolly's hold on him strengthen, the curse spreading. So far he'd managed to keep it hidden but he wasn't sure for how much longer he'd be able to keep it up. As much as he despised Jack Sparrow and his insufferable games, he needed that Sword.

The wreck of the Endeavour slowly came into focus as he descended, or what was left of her. It seemed she had been all but obliterated in the battle. He came across her fo'c'sle, bowsprit and jibboom still intact but stays ripped away. Norrington gripped the rail and made his way to where the timber had been torn, ragged edges barely beginning to wear from the water. The wood felt slimy and he remembered when he'd first laid eyes on the Endeavour. She had been a truly marvelous ship.

Now, he pulled himself along and peered over the edge into what would have been the lower decks but now seemed nothing more than silt and broken reefs. Fish scattered as he lowered himself to the seabed. Searching for the Sword was a tedious task and involved careful examination of almost unrecognizable remains and every time he stirred up the silt, he had to wait for the clouds to settle back down before he could continue. However long he was down there, he had not the faintest idea.

Covered in silt, almost hidden among debris, there were bodies. If they could even be called that. They were no more than skeletons now, picked clean by scavenging fish. He forced himself to look away from them, though in morbid curiosity he wondered if any of them or any of the severed limbs and bits of bone had once been Lord Beckett.

The dim waters were beginning to feel claustrophobic and cold and Norrington severely hoped he could end the search soon. Making his way to the cabin in the stern, he found few recognizable things. A desk, mostly intact though whatever had been on it was gone. A window with all the glass missing. It was in this very office that Norrington had been given his sword along with his new commission. All in exchange for the complete rule of the sea.

Hours of searching and the Sword was nowhere to be found.

This is completely useless, Norrington thought, scowling. He could barely see, blinking constantly from the sting of salt and sand. Even a cursory examination of the corpses revealed nothing and none of them he'd been able to identify as Beckett. This was a waste of time. Like going to Raven's Cove had been a waste?

Kicking hard against the debris-laden seabed, Norrington swam upward, squinting against the silt clouds and an urgency verging on desperation driving his movements. His lungs ached despite not needing air. His arms and legs were tired and the buoyancy of the sea was making him feel ill.

The shadow of the Pearl's hull loomed above him and he forced himself to swim harder, finally breaking the surface and experiencing the strangest sensation of gasping for air he didn't truly need but which alleviated the ache in his chest.

Everything, every sense, was muffled from being in the water so long and he could barely see anything. Beyond the fog in his brain was the ringing of a bell. Shouts. Something splashing into the water. Wiping at his eyes and squinting, he thought he saw something dark moving along the water coming straight for him. And on his other side, the Pearl was running out her guns.

Norrington turned and forced his tired limbs to close the distance between him and the Pearl and despite his trembling, he was able to grab onto the ladder after several tries and hoist himself up the side.

Nobody seemed to notice him as he staggered onto the deck in a puddle of seawater. They scurried across the deck, working at the cannons. Younger sailors rushed powder kegs onto the deck and Gibbs was shouting at the gun crew what was either encouragement or threat.

"Make haste, ye poxy bilge rats or it'll be the Locker for us all. Only this time there ain't any escape."

The Harkaway fired her bow chaser and came dangerously close to hitting.

"Wait till we're in range and we fire afore they have a chance to bear their broadside."

The skies had been clear when Norrington had gone overboard. Now, storm clouds were gathering.

"Those not on the guns stand by the braces," Jack said and then he found Norrington on the deck and their eyes locked. "Stand by to loose all canvas."

The order confused Norrington for a moment until he was able to fully take in their situation. The Harkaway was coming at them against the wind. As a fore-and-aft rig, she could sail closer to the wind than the Pearl could with her square sails. And as such, the Pearl couldn't simply run away, something Jolly Roger had taken into account. No, Jack was going to engage her and once the Harkaway turned to fire a broadside, the Pearl could maneuver to catch the favorable wind, essentially sailing straight past the Harkaway.

They couldn't afford a real engagement until they found that Sword.

The Harkaway was getting even closer. Another shot and splinters flew from the starboard rail. The Harkaway began to turn.

"Fire!"

The cannons on the Pearl's deck barked out a staggered volley and bucked, smoke filling the air. Norrington stayed at the starboard main brace and as the smoke cleared, he couldn't tell what damage had been done. The tattered Harkaway was riddled with holes and yet still floated. Seconds later, she fired her own broadside.

Norrington ducked as cannon fire careened into the Pearl and the ear-shattering shriek of splintering wood filled the air and the force of the hit caused him to stagger away from the rail. His right arm stung and bits of debris pricked at his side and back. When he finally lifted his head, he heard muffled screams from below where the damage had been undoubtedly worse.

The damage had barely been done when Jack shouted, "Slack port braces and haul starboard!"

Men were still screaming but Norrington's training took over and he grabbed for the main brace and began to haul with the help of several others, slowly bringing the yard around to better catch the wind as they turned. For now, getting away was their first priority. Someone else would see to the injured and assess the damage.

The Harkaway was now so close that he could see the skeletons on her blackened deck. They raised their weapons and several aimed pistols and muskets. One fell back from a shot from the Pearl's foretop.

And there he was, Jolly Roger himself. His mismatched feet gave him a lopsided gait as he strode across the deck, shoving crewmen out of his way.

"Jack Sparrow!" he shouted.

Norrington's hand itched and he forced himself to ignore it, tying the line to secure it.

"Ya finally done runnin' from yer fate?" Jolly continued. "Realized ya couldn't run forever."

"But see that's where you're wrong, mate," Jack called back over the water that separated the two ships. "You can always run forever."

"Your intent that may be, yet here ya are. Returned to the battlefield and here I be. Would sure be a shame to waste such an opportunity."

"Life's full of disappointments."

The ships were gliding past each other. The storm yielded no rain and yet there was lightning and a single peal of thunder which Norrington took to mean that Jolly was angry.

"Aye, because life's a game, ain't it? Ya win a hand, ya lose two, ya keep trying. Until you've run out cards and things to bet. You've run out of time, Sparrow and now it's time to pay up."

Norrington glanced from Jolly Roger to Jack and back again. He saw no purpose in this exchange. They were so close. Why didn't Jolly order a boarding party to take the Pearl by force?

"You're forgetting something though, you cow-hearted, mutinous, bone-faced mongrel."

Jolly stiffened and his crew looked to him to see what he would do.

"I cheat."

While the two had been exchanging words, the crew had had plenty of time to reload the cannons.

"Fire."

The broadside rocked the ship. Norrington reeled, instinctively covering his face as smoke choked him and debris from the Harkaway flew across the deck. At this range, a broadside from the heavily armed Black Pearl would be devastating. Bone shards rained down onto the deck. There were screams. But with a feeling of dread, Norrington realized that the ghost ship would not sink. That possibly she couldn't sink, at least not until they retrieved that Sword and broke the curse. It was a desperate thing to be sure, a distraction at most. Perhaps it would give them time to put some distance between the ships, perhaps not.

Unfortunately, the Pearl's crew was not the only one that had kept busy while their captains had had their unproductive parley.

As the Pearl was pulling away, the Harkaway fired. Jolly must have realized what Jack was planning and now sailed at an angle to the Pearl. The broadside tore into the aft starboard hull and the stern.

This time, Norrington was thrown to the deck. The breath went out of him in a rush and he gasped when something grazed his cheek and a hail of splinters pelted the deck. Part of the starboard rail on the poop deck and quarterdeck was torn away and smoke quickly obscured everything, making Norrington cough as he scrambled to his feet, keeping low in case more debris came his way.

His first thought, bizarrely enough, was of Jack Sparrow and he fully expected to find the pirate dead at the wheel. But when he fought his way through the smoke up to the quarterdeck, Jack was nowhere to be seen and some hapless sailor, a man whose name Norrington had never learned, was lying in Jack's stead in a pool of blood.

He couldn't dwell on it. Stepping over the corpse, Norrington grabbed the wheel and kept the Pearl steady, running before the wind. His left hand shook and he gripped the spoke tighter, using his other hand to pull the cuff down over the patch of necrotic flesh. It seemed to be growing.

Damn you, Norrington thought, not at anyone in particular, not at Jack, not at Beckett, not even at Davy Jones, just at the situation itself. At this strange fate which seemed intent on swallowing him whole. Damn you.

A hand fell on his arm and Norrington's head snapped up.

"I'll take her from here," Gibbs said.

Norrington nodded and pried stiff fingers away from the wheel. With the smoke clearing, he saw that the Harkaway was falling behind.

Jack ascended the steps onto the quarterdeck with barely a glance at the dead man.

Norrington wanted nothing but to go below, dry himself, and sleep. Instead, he caught Jack's eye.

"Your Sword's not there, Sparrow. If it ever was, it's gone. That's assuming it was ever there at all." Without waiting for a response, Norrington descended the steps and went below deck, welcoming the darkness he found there.