James Norrington sat in the chair at his desk staring out of the window,
completely motionless save the calm beating of his own heart. He had
returned from the court martial trial some three hours ago, but he barely
registered the passing of time except solely as the movement of the sun as
it sunk over Port Royal toward the horizon.
He felt oddly light, as though his body and soul were slightly out of synch and he was hovering slightly rather than truly sitting. He couldn't ever remember just sitting and watching the sun move across the heavens, not even as a child. He'd never really paid any more attention to nature than was necessary to note the weather, predict storms, and navigate at sea. James was not an idle man, nor was he predisposed to contemplation. He was a man of action, always working away at something. There was something to be done in the daily defense of Port Royal.
As the sky darkened, he wondered why he'd never really noticed how the colors bleed into one another and change as the sun sinks below the edge of the world, painting the sky with reds, oranges, and purples before disappearing, and then one by one the stars would appear. It was startlingly beautiful and frightening at the same time. He briefly felt as though the sun would never return and ached for the loss of it though he knew in the logical part of his mind that it would return in the morning as it had since the birth of time.
He also knew that being relieved of duty and dismissed from the Navy was not the end of life on Earth but he still felt like he was on the other side of Armageddon. He also knew that the full reality of it had not hit him yet, and the next few days were probably not going to be pleasant ones. There were things that would have to be dealt with, but he couldn't think about them right now. He certainly wasn't going to ponder how he'd spend the rest of his life now. He wasn't a poor man by any means, but he was still young and certainly couldn't live the rest of his life on the savings and few meager investments he currently had, never mind that the Navy had been his life since he was thirteen years old. But that could wait, at least until tomorrow.
He wondered what Elizabeth and her young husband were doing at this moment. Probably settling down to a simple but warm meal prepared by Elizabeth herself. They had a young girl who came to their home twice a week to do the cleaning, but James knew that Will Turner most certainly could not afford a cook as well, even if he did make a respectable living from his fine swords and other goods. He'd heard from one of his own servants that Elizabeth may be expecting a child. He was happy for her, for both of them, really (or so he told himself), but he still couldn't help but wonder how his life would be now had he married Elizabeth. Sweet, fair Elizabeth. She had such spirit. Perhaps she belonged with the Turner boy. They were alike in many ways. He knew in his heart that she never would have been happy as the wife of a military man, but, as he had before proposing to her, he now still occasionally indulged in the fantasy that they would somehow have been the perfect husband and wife and lived happily ever after. If only those blasted pirates hadn't interfered...
Pirates. Isn't that what started all of this? A small crew of petty pirates killed his father at sea and less than a year later, James was employed as cabin boy under a captain of the Royal Navy. It was odd how the unexpected turns in his life could be linked back to pirates. He wondered where Sparrow was right now, what was the old bastard doing? Was he still alive, roaming the seas on that precious Black Pearl of his with his scabbarous crew behind him? It had been scarcely six months since James made the foolish decision to let the man go free, but now it felt to him like it had been in another lifetime. Oh how he hated Sparrow.
And if he were honest with himself, oh how he envied him. To have such freedom was something James Norrington could not even begin to fathom. His life had been sewn into a set of strict rules for all of his life: first his father's and then the navy's. Every day had been planned out carefully with schedules to follow and clear rules and well-defined responsibilities. What would it be like to live with no schedules? No responsibility to anyone save oneself? No rules save the unwritten, mysterious, and bendable rules of the pirate's world? He could never understand how those ships full of anarchists managed to get anything done. After all, the heathens didn't even have a real captain. The "captain" could be voted in or out like the leader of a boys' gang. They really were like children, after all. It was not a life that any self-respecting adult man would ever desire. No, not at all...
-------
Norrington woke suddenly, bolting upright. He scrubbed at the pain behind his eyes and blinked several times, wondering why his head was pounding so and why his shoulders were so stiff. He blinked and squinted at the light streaming in through the window which seemed unusually high for over a minute before he realized that he wasn't in his bed, but rather on the floor near his desk. Why was he sleeping on the floor?
As he stretched out his legs, his foot struck something hard and sent it skittering across the floor to bounce against the wall. A large glass liquor bottle. An empty bottle that he remembered being nearly half-full of fairly expensive brandy at one point. Where had it gone to? He thought back to the night before. The last thing he recalled was watching the stars coming out through the window. He didn't remember getting drunk, but if the headache had anything to say about the matter, he apparently had.
He bent over and closed his eyes tightly shut. He couldn't remember the last time he'd gotten drunk enough to develop a hangover the next day. Not since his late teens at least. He wasn't a lush by any stretch of the imagination. Indeed, he rarely drank at all and was often ribbed by the other officers for it.
But then, he wasn't in the Navy anymore. There was no point in denying that fact. He was now very much an unemployed man, and that left a lot of unanswered questions. What could he possibly do for the rest of his life? The navy had been his reality for much of his childhood and all of his adult life. Did he know how to be anything else?
He stood up and stretched before stripping down to his skin. He usually folded up his clothes and put them away immediately, but he just couldn't be bothered this morning. He flung them over the back of a chair and dragged his sluggish feet over to the chest to pull out something to wear for the day. He had no use for a uniform anymore. He reached to the very back of the bottom drawer and pulled out a plain, slightly yellowed shirt and a pair of britches and pulled them on, not bothering to button the shirt. He walked over to the water basin and plunged his face into the tepid water, considering for half a moment whether or not to come back up for air.
---
Norrington walked slowly along the beachfront. For the first time since he was a young child, he had nothing to do that day. No duties, no appointments, no tasks to attend to. He couldn't quite shake the nagging feeling that he was neglecting something, that he'd forgotten about something he needed to do that day. But then he reminded himself that no, he didn't really. He supposed that he ought to see about procuring new employment as soon as possible, but he honestly couldn't fathom himself being anything but an officer, and that road was closed to him forever. He came upon docks and stood watching the merchant sailors loading and unloading goods from the ships. He had worked for years to protect men like these from the threat of piracy. How many of the men standing there on the docks and ships right now would be dead if it weren't for him? But all it took to strip him of his life was a lost ship and a lost pirate. He knew that had he pursued Sparrow immediately and hanged both him and Turner the court martial would have had mercy on him in regards to the loss of the Interceptor but he knew that even if he could return to the past with his present knowledge, he wouldn't act differently. It was exceedingly rare for the law and his conscience to conflict, but when it did, he found it rather disconcerting. Did England care nothing for honor?
He turned away from the docks and walked back up the road towards the town. There was a small quiet pub at the northwestern end of the town that he had been to on a few occasions in the past with governor Swann. Norrington wasn't a drinker himself, but the governor liked to go there to discuss matters of importance. Right now, he wanted someplace dark and quiet to sit, but he didn't want to go back home.
As he stepped through the door, he instantly regretted it. Seated at a corner table was the governor himself. He was reading over various papers with a mug in one hand. The last thing he wanted now was to speak to anyone familiar. Norrington began walking to the opposite side of the room, hoping that he would remain unnoticed, but apparently his recent foul luck was not quite ready yet to give him peace. Governor Swann looked up as he passed by and stretched a hand out to touch the former Commodore's arm, beseeching him to sit down. Sighing inwardly and hesitating a heartbeat longer than was proper, Norrington turned and sat down in the seat opposite governor Swann.
"Hello James... Listen, I'm awfully sorry about how things have turned out, and I wish I could have prevented it somehow, but I suppose what's done is done. At any rate, I wish to speak to you about something. I have a cousin in parliament. I could write to him about getting you a job in the government-" Norrington found himself getting more and more annoyed by the governor's speech as every second passed. He rarely ever lost his temper, but he was desperately tempted to just punch the old man in the teeth. Had he truly fallen so low? Was he to be simply an object of pity for all of his old associates? So he was unemployed. So the daughter of the man who sat before him had played him for a fool and used his heart until she no longer had use for it, only to discard him like something foul once he had saved her lover and spared his life. He still had some shred of dignity left. So instead of punching governor Swann, he simply stood up and cut him off mid- sentence.
"No thank you governor Swann. I am perfectly capable of finding employment on my own. Good day to you sir."
He turned and marched out of the pub, walking swiftly away from the governor's pity and trying to control the boiling anger which threatened to overtake him.
After a few blocks, he began to calm down slightly, though he still wasn't sure whether he wanted to shoot something or just cry. As he stopped to lean against the side of a building, he saw beside him a sheet of paper crookedly tacked to the wall advertising that one of the ships currently in the harbor was looking for a few more men.
James Norrington, a petty merchant sailor? It was unthinkable. His parents would do flips in their graves, and if his elder brother ever got wind of it, he'd laugh until he couldn't breath. But what else could he do? He was a sailor. He'd always been a sailor. What other skills did he really have? He knew his way around a ship and he knew the sea. The navy didn't want him any more, and what else could you do on the ocean? He ripped the flyer off the wall and headed back toward the docks. He scanned the names on the sides of the merchant vessels until he came to the one that was also printed on the flyer. The Grey Lady sat like tired old woman in the harbor. Norrington watched as men came with crates filled with bags of sugar, up and down the gangplank in an even stream. He looked up and spied the captain of the vessel standing near the railing overseeing his men's labor. Norrington walked up the gangplank in between the next two crates, and walked over to the captain to enquire about joining his crew. After a very brief discussion, Norrington was officially a member of the Grey Lady's crew, though under the name Geoffrey Smith. He wouldn't risk anyone recognizing him if he could help it.
He felt oddly light, as though his body and soul were slightly out of synch and he was hovering slightly rather than truly sitting. He couldn't ever remember just sitting and watching the sun move across the heavens, not even as a child. He'd never really paid any more attention to nature than was necessary to note the weather, predict storms, and navigate at sea. James was not an idle man, nor was he predisposed to contemplation. He was a man of action, always working away at something. There was something to be done in the daily defense of Port Royal.
As the sky darkened, he wondered why he'd never really noticed how the colors bleed into one another and change as the sun sinks below the edge of the world, painting the sky with reds, oranges, and purples before disappearing, and then one by one the stars would appear. It was startlingly beautiful and frightening at the same time. He briefly felt as though the sun would never return and ached for the loss of it though he knew in the logical part of his mind that it would return in the morning as it had since the birth of time.
He also knew that being relieved of duty and dismissed from the Navy was not the end of life on Earth but he still felt like he was on the other side of Armageddon. He also knew that the full reality of it had not hit him yet, and the next few days were probably not going to be pleasant ones. There were things that would have to be dealt with, but he couldn't think about them right now. He certainly wasn't going to ponder how he'd spend the rest of his life now. He wasn't a poor man by any means, but he was still young and certainly couldn't live the rest of his life on the savings and few meager investments he currently had, never mind that the Navy had been his life since he was thirteen years old. But that could wait, at least until tomorrow.
He wondered what Elizabeth and her young husband were doing at this moment. Probably settling down to a simple but warm meal prepared by Elizabeth herself. They had a young girl who came to their home twice a week to do the cleaning, but James knew that Will Turner most certainly could not afford a cook as well, even if he did make a respectable living from his fine swords and other goods. He'd heard from one of his own servants that Elizabeth may be expecting a child. He was happy for her, for both of them, really (or so he told himself), but he still couldn't help but wonder how his life would be now had he married Elizabeth. Sweet, fair Elizabeth. She had such spirit. Perhaps she belonged with the Turner boy. They were alike in many ways. He knew in his heart that she never would have been happy as the wife of a military man, but, as he had before proposing to her, he now still occasionally indulged in the fantasy that they would somehow have been the perfect husband and wife and lived happily ever after. If only those blasted pirates hadn't interfered...
Pirates. Isn't that what started all of this? A small crew of petty pirates killed his father at sea and less than a year later, James was employed as cabin boy under a captain of the Royal Navy. It was odd how the unexpected turns in his life could be linked back to pirates. He wondered where Sparrow was right now, what was the old bastard doing? Was he still alive, roaming the seas on that precious Black Pearl of his with his scabbarous crew behind him? It had been scarcely six months since James made the foolish decision to let the man go free, but now it felt to him like it had been in another lifetime. Oh how he hated Sparrow.
And if he were honest with himself, oh how he envied him. To have such freedom was something James Norrington could not even begin to fathom. His life had been sewn into a set of strict rules for all of his life: first his father's and then the navy's. Every day had been planned out carefully with schedules to follow and clear rules and well-defined responsibilities. What would it be like to live with no schedules? No responsibility to anyone save oneself? No rules save the unwritten, mysterious, and bendable rules of the pirate's world? He could never understand how those ships full of anarchists managed to get anything done. After all, the heathens didn't even have a real captain. The "captain" could be voted in or out like the leader of a boys' gang. They really were like children, after all. It was not a life that any self-respecting adult man would ever desire. No, not at all...
-------
Norrington woke suddenly, bolting upright. He scrubbed at the pain behind his eyes and blinked several times, wondering why his head was pounding so and why his shoulders were so stiff. He blinked and squinted at the light streaming in through the window which seemed unusually high for over a minute before he realized that he wasn't in his bed, but rather on the floor near his desk. Why was he sleeping on the floor?
As he stretched out his legs, his foot struck something hard and sent it skittering across the floor to bounce against the wall. A large glass liquor bottle. An empty bottle that he remembered being nearly half-full of fairly expensive brandy at one point. Where had it gone to? He thought back to the night before. The last thing he recalled was watching the stars coming out through the window. He didn't remember getting drunk, but if the headache had anything to say about the matter, he apparently had.
He bent over and closed his eyes tightly shut. He couldn't remember the last time he'd gotten drunk enough to develop a hangover the next day. Not since his late teens at least. He wasn't a lush by any stretch of the imagination. Indeed, he rarely drank at all and was often ribbed by the other officers for it.
But then, he wasn't in the Navy anymore. There was no point in denying that fact. He was now very much an unemployed man, and that left a lot of unanswered questions. What could he possibly do for the rest of his life? The navy had been his reality for much of his childhood and all of his adult life. Did he know how to be anything else?
He stood up and stretched before stripping down to his skin. He usually folded up his clothes and put them away immediately, but he just couldn't be bothered this morning. He flung them over the back of a chair and dragged his sluggish feet over to the chest to pull out something to wear for the day. He had no use for a uniform anymore. He reached to the very back of the bottom drawer and pulled out a plain, slightly yellowed shirt and a pair of britches and pulled them on, not bothering to button the shirt. He walked over to the water basin and plunged his face into the tepid water, considering for half a moment whether or not to come back up for air.
---
Norrington walked slowly along the beachfront. For the first time since he was a young child, he had nothing to do that day. No duties, no appointments, no tasks to attend to. He couldn't quite shake the nagging feeling that he was neglecting something, that he'd forgotten about something he needed to do that day. But then he reminded himself that no, he didn't really. He supposed that he ought to see about procuring new employment as soon as possible, but he honestly couldn't fathom himself being anything but an officer, and that road was closed to him forever. He came upon docks and stood watching the merchant sailors loading and unloading goods from the ships. He had worked for years to protect men like these from the threat of piracy. How many of the men standing there on the docks and ships right now would be dead if it weren't for him? But all it took to strip him of his life was a lost ship and a lost pirate. He knew that had he pursued Sparrow immediately and hanged both him and Turner the court martial would have had mercy on him in regards to the loss of the Interceptor but he knew that even if he could return to the past with his present knowledge, he wouldn't act differently. It was exceedingly rare for the law and his conscience to conflict, but when it did, he found it rather disconcerting. Did England care nothing for honor?
He turned away from the docks and walked back up the road towards the town. There was a small quiet pub at the northwestern end of the town that he had been to on a few occasions in the past with governor Swann. Norrington wasn't a drinker himself, but the governor liked to go there to discuss matters of importance. Right now, he wanted someplace dark and quiet to sit, but he didn't want to go back home.
As he stepped through the door, he instantly regretted it. Seated at a corner table was the governor himself. He was reading over various papers with a mug in one hand. The last thing he wanted now was to speak to anyone familiar. Norrington began walking to the opposite side of the room, hoping that he would remain unnoticed, but apparently his recent foul luck was not quite ready yet to give him peace. Governor Swann looked up as he passed by and stretched a hand out to touch the former Commodore's arm, beseeching him to sit down. Sighing inwardly and hesitating a heartbeat longer than was proper, Norrington turned and sat down in the seat opposite governor Swann.
"Hello James... Listen, I'm awfully sorry about how things have turned out, and I wish I could have prevented it somehow, but I suppose what's done is done. At any rate, I wish to speak to you about something. I have a cousin in parliament. I could write to him about getting you a job in the government-" Norrington found himself getting more and more annoyed by the governor's speech as every second passed. He rarely ever lost his temper, but he was desperately tempted to just punch the old man in the teeth. Had he truly fallen so low? Was he to be simply an object of pity for all of his old associates? So he was unemployed. So the daughter of the man who sat before him had played him for a fool and used his heart until she no longer had use for it, only to discard him like something foul once he had saved her lover and spared his life. He still had some shred of dignity left. So instead of punching governor Swann, he simply stood up and cut him off mid- sentence.
"No thank you governor Swann. I am perfectly capable of finding employment on my own. Good day to you sir."
He turned and marched out of the pub, walking swiftly away from the governor's pity and trying to control the boiling anger which threatened to overtake him.
After a few blocks, he began to calm down slightly, though he still wasn't sure whether he wanted to shoot something or just cry. As he stopped to lean against the side of a building, he saw beside him a sheet of paper crookedly tacked to the wall advertising that one of the ships currently in the harbor was looking for a few more men.
James Norrington, a petty merchant sailor? It was unthinkable. His parents would do flips in their graves, and if his elder brother ever got wind of it, he'd laugh until he couldn't breath. But what else could he do? He was a sailor. He'd always been a sailor. What other skills did he really have? He knew his way around a ship and he knew the sea. The navy didn't want him any more, and what else could you do on the ocean? He ripped the flyer off the wall and headed back toward the docks. He scanned the names on the sides of the merchant vessels until he came to the one that was also printed on the flyer. The Grey Lady sat like tired old woman in the harbor. Norrington watched as men came with crates filled with bags of sugar, up and down the gangplank in an even stream. He looked up and spied the captain of the vessel standing near the railing overseeing his men's labor. Norrington walked up the gangplank in between the next two crates, and walked over to the captain to enquire about joining his crew. After a very brief discussion, Norrington was officially a member of the Grey Lady's crew, though under the name Geoffrey Smith. He wouldn't risk anyone recognizing him if he could help it.