"Captain Sparrow, I have played along with this lunacy long enough!" Norrington made an intense effort to lower his voice. "I have gone far beyond upholding my end of our bargain, and I therefore insist that you be so good as to fulfill yours immediately."
Jack was at his most insufferable. "Oh, you insist, do you?" he asked sarcastically. "Well in that case we'll see what we can do. Hmm, how about…nothing."
"Jack, I am serious!" Seeing that Jack was about to continue with something even ruder, Norrington got desperate and did something that would generally strike him as unwise: he told Jack the plain and unvarnished truth. "Life on this ship is a lot different than I thought it would be," he admitted softly. "And you're right, I've been happy here. But I still need to go home." Jack looked thoughtful but didn't answer, so Norrington persisted, "It's time."
"How can you do it, mate?" Jack asked after a moment. He, too, had grown serious.
"Do what?"
"Leave this – the open ocean, the ship…" he snorted and added "…Tortuga…"
Norrington shrugged. "Don't laugh. I'm sure it will strike you, too, one day. Eventually you'll want to settle down to a normal life, maybe a family. It's possible to have fun without living in complete lawlessness, you know."
"Is it?" Jack feigned surprise. "Well, that's news. All right," he said, rising from his chair as though he'd reached a decision. "I'll take you home, after one more ship. One last fight to remember your old mate Jack Sparrow by. Do we have an accord?" He held out his hand.
"I can't believe I'm making another deal for my safe return," Norrington grumbled. "You'd better keep to this one, I'm warning you. Yes, Sparrow, we have a damned accord," he added, since Jack hadn't moved his hand. He slapped a quick and bad-tempered handshake and stomped away.
Stomping was amazingly painful, though, and he decided that the lovely vision-inducing medication was finally wearing off. On his way to raid the medicine chest again, he ran right into Ana Maria, who took one look at him and threw an arm around his waist.
"I'll help you," she said roughly. "Walking like that it's a wonder you haven't knocked over everything on deck." She glanced down at his injury as they staggered on, and made a face. "What've you done to it, Bloody? It's opened up again."
The bandage was indeed soaked through. "Damn it!" Norrington stamped his foot without thinking, in a habitual gesture of frustration, then gasped and grabbed at his leg with both hands. "Oh, God!"
He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to calm his breathing, which had become harsh and raspy with the sudden horrible pain. When he was finally capable of standing up straight and opening his eyes again, the first thing he did was growl at Ana Maria, "Are you still here? What do you want?"
Thankfully, she understood his mood for what it was – humiliation, pure and simple – and didn't snap at him. "Come on – let's get your medicine and then I'll bind it up again. You really can't walk on it if this is going to happen. You can't let it get infected."
"I know. I've only just stopped being careful of that cut on my arm, and now…"
They got him his medicine and soon the deck began revolving gently. He felt compelled to sit down. "I really hate this," he mumbled. "I think that chair is going to fall over and crush me."
The chair he was worried about was a good ten feet away, but Ana Maria just nodded. "Yes, I'll…I'll keep it from you." She seemed oddly uncertain as she sat and began peeling the bandage off his stab wound, a task which was only possible after she had sliced off one of the legs of his pants. "Does it still h-"
"One always says pants in the plural," he remarked, fingering his pants' ruined remains. "But now these have only got one leg. See?" he added when she didn't comment. "The other is behind you."
"Yes, that's where I put it when I cut it off," Ana Maria agreed absently, not taking her eyes from her work. She had produced a small bottle from somewhere and was pouring its stinging contents onto him. "Shh," she soothed when he began to whimper. "You need this or you can't get better, do you understand?"
Her manner amused him, and in his drugged, foggy state, he decided it would be a good idea to tease her about it. "You sound like you're my wife. Or my mother," he remarked, both ideas so funny he began to laugh hysterically.
She glared at him sharply, and though it was clear that he had meant nothing by the comments, her tenderness vanished. "Did your mother beat you, then? Because I'm about to."
"No, she didn't." Norrington was so far gone now that he didn't notice how un-gentle she was being as she wrapped his wound tightly and dragged him to his feet. "But I don't think she would like to hear that I'm a pirate now. You won't tell her, will you? You mustn't."
Ana Maria looked thoroughly exasperated. "No, I won't tell her. Now get in bed, you bloody fool, I want nothing more to do with you and I don't want to see you standing again until that has closed up somehow. Do you understand?"
"Ha, ha! Yes!" He was giddy enough not to mind that he'd been left to find his way back to his bed all alone, bumping into things and people and comets on the way.
**********
The next time he awoke, the Devil was hovering over him. "What? That's not fair!" he exclaimed instantly. "I haven't had my last rites but it's not my fault, you can't just-"
"Wha'd ye say, Bloody?" Satan lurched to his feet and wiped his dirty face.
"You've come to drag me to Hell, haven't you?" Norrington hung onto his covers, teeth chattering. "Where am I?"
He watched in terror as the Devil opened a door and shouted out into the darkness, "Jack! Your bloody friend has lost his bloody mind!" He actually disappeared for a moment, and Norrington recognized the sound of a door closing. Aha. Satan had left the room. Immensely relieved, he fell back asleep.
A little while later, he awoke for long enough to be fed. This time Norrington drank what they handed him without protest, but found he'd forgotten what he wanted to ask. Eventually, frustrated and unable to speak coherently, he'd drifted off again…
…only to awaken, lucid and alone, wondering what the hell he was sick with and why nobody had told him whether he was dying or not. He could probably blame it all on either infection, or an adverse reaction to some of the medication he'd downed. Whatever the sickness was, judging by the clammy quality of his bed it had probably involved a horrible fever which had only just broken.
Or perhaps he'd pissed himself. He was forced to admit that that might be a possibility…only that couldn't account for his soaked pillow, too, could it? "God help me, I'm a raving lunatic," he said aloud, then spent a few minutes marveling at the gravelly quality of his voice. Well, hoarse or not, he could still shout for help.
A few seconds of yelling brought a whole crowd to his door. They burst in and crowded around, and he picked out the apologetic voice of Gibbs…or Satan…saying "It only seemed to make things worse when people stayed with ye, and ye wasn't awakenin', and so we thought it best to-"
"I understand perfectly," he murmured, and it seemed to silence everybody.
Jack spoke up from the doorway. "I told you he wasn't dying." The other pirates cleared a space for him so that he could approach the bed. "And you're just in time, mate. We've put to sea, and we're going to take you home, but first, we expect to run into the Hellfire within two or three days. What a fight…"
"Oh, excellent," Norrington said sarcastically, letting his eyes drift closed. "Just get me a sword, Captain, and I'll lead the charge."
"I knew we could count on you, mate." Jack pat him on the shoulder and headed for the door. "Now let's get a keg and celebrate!"
The rest of the crew followed him immediately.
*******************************
TBC.
Okey dokey. You know the drill – review. And I'll hurry. I promise.