Title: Between Wind and Tide, Chapter 2

by Ruby Isabella

Disclaimer: The following is fanfiction based on a property owned by Disney.

Summary: Norrington returns to Port Royal after long absence

Notes: Sequel to "A Windward Tide." Also, you might worry at times that this is not slash, but it is. Really. Cross my heart. Finally, it takes place some years after PotC.

2.

"Give me the tallest glass of the hardest stuff you've got," he said to the barkeep. He leaned his crutch against the bar and then leaned himself against the bar as well, using his elbow as a brace.

"Comin' right up, Commodore."

"Mister."

"Right."

They'd gone through this exchange already, an hour after he'd had come ashore care of a privateer who'd been disappointed to learn that there was no reward for the return of a lost Commodore to the Royal Navy, especially one that didn't want to return to the Royal Navy.

"It's an honor, sir, and a miracle," the barkeep said--not for the first time--as he set the cup in front of Norrington. "Who ever would have thought to see you again?"

Norrington drank. He remembered the man not at all, but then he hadn't made a habit of visiting the local drinking establishments in his old life.

His good leg ached from holding him up, which was an irritation. Now that he was back in civilization--safe and with no concerns other than what he might do with his life--his body indulged in complaints all but constantly. The crutch chafed. The air was cold. Sleep was impossible.

_Suck it up_, he told himself, told his good leg. _Suck it up._ He'd allowed himself no complaints while clinging to that broken bit of boat, literally dying for water in an ocean full of the stuff, nor did he allow them while he alone had buried what remains of his men washed up on shore, using as a shovel that same plank of wood that had kept him afloat until he himself reached shore, nor when the Indians....

No. No complaints. Ever. Just practical thinking, that's what got him through, that's how he made it back to Port Royal: practical, rational thinking, and perhaps a few run-ins with insanity.

Almost the minute he'd stepped from the privateer's boat, however, his body had become bent with weariness. After three and a half years of nothing but surviving, he suddenly rather doubted his ability to survive the climb up the back stairs to his room above the tavern.

Using the side of his hand, he bumped his drink down the bar toward a stool, which he gratefully dropped his aching bones onto as soon as he had himself situated in front of it.

To celebrate, he drained his glass.

"So, how do ya find it?" the barkeep asked. He stood directly across the bar from Norrington, jamming a towel of dubious cleanliness deep into a stein.

"Find what?"

"Port Royal. Innit good to be home?"

Norrington glanced toward the door. Between him and it sat a few scattered patrons, their heads bent over their cups.

"I'm tired," he answered, turning his focus to the bar. He nudged his empty glass toward the barkeep.

"'Magine so. Been an exhausting few years, has it not? Tell me...." The barkeep crossed his forearms on the bar, accidentally nudging the empty glass back toward Norrington as he leaned in. "Is it true?"

"Is what true?"

"That that bloke Johnson, that he got eaten alive by a school of piranha while you two were wandering--"

Norrington frowned. He lifted his glass, turned it over, and set it soundly back onto the heavy slab of wood under the barkeep's thick elbows. "No, it's not."

"What happened to him, then?"

"Same as everyone else. He died on the rocks. Never made it to shore."

"You did."

Norrington's mouth tightened. He shoved the inverted glass across the bar. "That I did. And now I need to make it to my bed." He would have liked another drink--another entire bottle of drink, if not a cask. He grabbed for his crutch, nearly sent it falling over, caught it with two fingertips, then shoved it under his armpit. "Good night, sir."

"'Night, Commodore!"

~ ~ ~

Stuck in the jamb of his door was a crisp envelope with "Commodore James Norrington" penned across its front. Unimpressed by the scarlet wax seal on the back, Norrington prized open the flap. Inside he found an invitation to meet with Governor Evans in the morning.

Invitation, order: what it said depended on the tone in which one read it. He slipped the pages between his teeth so that he could open the door to his room. When he removed the envelope from his mouth, the taste of civilization remained on his lips.

He had been avoiding the governor since his return. Before long, Evans would tire of wasting his stationary and send a man or two round instead.

You couldn't ball those up and toss them out the window, let them float down the gutter the way you could a few slips of stiff paper.

~ ~ ~

He became aware first of the wind in the treetops, lifting and scraping heavy jungle leaves against each other. He turned his head on the hard ground and opened his eyes. The rough and crooked trunks of the trees swayed in front of his face.

As it became clear what had happened, disappointment grabbed a hold of his chest and pounced on it, crushing it. Air struggled through his throat in gasps.

A dream. It had all been a dream.

He reached at his side for the forked stick he'd fashioned into a crutch. Patted the ground in the dark. _Bloody hell._ Where was it?

He lifted onto an elbow, blinked into the darkness. For the first time he realized he was shivering. Damn it. A fever was all he needed. He shifted, then stiffened. Something had his foot--probably a vine. Maybe a snake.

Maybe something that would cause him to lose the only leg he had left.

A thin sound loosened itself at the back of his throat at the thought. He rolled sideways, feeling for his crutch and trying, at the same time, to shake his foot free.

_Thunk_.

He startled awake on the floor of his room at the inn with his sheet and thin blanket twisted around his foot. He sat up, hugging himself. The shivering, he realized, was from cold. With half-numb fingers, he tugged the blanket free so that he could wrap his arms in it. His crutch--a real one, not the stick with banana leaves wrapped around the base of its fork for padding--leaned against the wall, between the night table and the bed.

And the wind, the leaves--they were just the rain beating the side of the inn.

He dropped his cheek onto his bent knee, closed his eyes, smelled the jungle, woke himself with a gasp. With a grunt, he lifted himself back onto the narrow bed, then slumped against the wall, his knee bent over the edge of the bed. After a few minutes, the chill air convinced him to pull it under the blanket with the rest of him.

To fend off sleep, he thought about the black carriage he'd seen across the street from the doctor's office. Elizabeth. It had surely been. And Will-- where was Will?

~tbc~