It was a crying shame it hadn't happened earlier, in Jack's opinion. The wig and uniform added age and authority; stopped you looking at the man underneath, and maybe that was the point of them. Didn't seem likely anyone ever wore them for comfort, after all. But by all the powers it was odd to peel that away and find a person, passing strange to see that Norrington was at least a decade younger than he was, and as fragile as any other human being.
At that age, Jack had been naive enough to think all pirates were as dishonestly honest as himself. Or at least, as honestly dishonest. Too blithe to notice Barbossa filling up his crew with thugs, insinuating himself into Jack's secrets like the worm in the apple. From the hardening of the Commodore's face as Jack shut the door, ducked past the hanging lantern, he doubted that a similar excessive trust was one of Norrington's failings. Well... good for him. It was a lesson Jack had paid dearly for over the last ten years.
"Brought you some soup," he said, rotating the bowl into view with a small flourish, aware that soup-carrying was probably the last thing expected of him. "And, y'men got their water after all, so I'm taking it as agreed you're not going to try an clap me in irons if'n I hand it to you."
"Agreed," said Norrington, with a small ironic smile, as though he knew he was being humoured, was too polite to point it out, but not quite polite enough to let it go by unmarked. He took the bowl, having to concentrate hard not to drop it. His face was still as white as his shirt, and all his movements laboured and deliberate, painful to watch.
"So," Jack took a hank of bread out of his hat brim, and a silver spoon from up his sleeve, passed them over, "is it proved to your satisfaction yet? Hand on heart, 'young William was right about you after all, Captain Sparrow, I'm ashamed I didn't see it earlier?'"
"A large concession for a bowl of soup." Norrington cleaned the spoon pointedly before eating a few mouthfuls. Exhausted even by that effort, he closed his eyes and leaned his head against the bulkhead briefly, before rallying to say "You had done better to let me die."
"One good turn deserves another, eh? You didn't kill me when you had the chance, now I've returned the favour. We're square."
That little smug smile. The snarkiness went right down to the core of him, then - didn't disappear when he was afraid. If he was afraid. "I help you regain your ship. You steal two of mine. I let you go free. You take me prisoner. You'll forgive me if I do not consider the tally quite even." Putting the bowl down, Norrington frowned again, his voice going from bitter to disappointed, like a tutor exchanging sarcasm for weary scorn. "You were supposed to go away, Sparrow. Leave British waters and become an annoyance for someone else. What is the point of sparing you if you're just going to turn around and run your neck back into the noose?"
"What is the point of sparing you if you're just going to turn around and run my neck back into the noose?"
"Indeed."
Jack considered the soup - it was easier to think about than the measured dance of death he found himself engaged in with this man. The bowl looked precarious where it was, and the steam had stopped rising. There was fresh meat in it, and greens, good enough to stop your teeth from aching. Shame to waste it.
"Then why let me go in the first place?" he said, and thought back to the moment on the fort wall where Norrington's resolve to see him hang had faltered. The mess of obligation he now found himself in began there, with unexpected, unasked for, though not unwelcome mercy. "No - don't tell me; I know this one - you let me go cos you couldn't bear to disappoint Miss Lizzie, who'd taken quite a liking to me. But Lizzie herself... "
Miss Elizabeth had swung into that encounter like a man-o-war, like a hundred cannon ship of the line, invulnerable and with all the ammunition. Jack wasn't sure she'd even noticed the devastation her broadside had caused; too focussed on winning the battle to care about the casualties. But he'd seen. He'd noticed. "She was your Pearl, mate," he said, surprised a second time by sympathy. "She was y'Pearl, and you had her. Why let her go? Seems mighty out of character for a man who can't bear the sight of me unless it's in irons."
Norrington grimaced and his gaze cooled, "I don't expect a pirate to understand the meaning and responsibilities of freedom."
"That's one of them moronic things, ent it?" Startled, Jack slipped into mockery. "Aunty... elderly..."
"Oxymoronic. No, it is not."
"See," Jack picked up the soup, stirred it to break up the skin that had started to form, "freedom is you and the ship and the next horizon; taking what you want and being beholden to no one. Responsibilities... that's just another word for chains." Why was he talking about this? With Elizabeth he'd been drunk - drunk enough to forget about the legend and let her see, for a moment, the reality on which it was based. But he was not drunk now, so why venture into these perilous waters with Norrington? Except... except that he was getting paid coin for coin with the Navy man's own honesty - getting to see something beyond the defensive irony and chill. It was fascinating, and risky, like mapping a new world.
"Your 'freedom' is..." Norrington stopped, looked out of the window, breathed in, and tried again. "Have you ever been in a town after it's been sacked by pirates?" He sneered, managing a passable imitation of his usual hauteur. "No, of course you have not. You sail in, take what you want, and leave. I..." Clasping his hands together in front of him, he forced down some gesture of distress. "I am the one who walks the street and counts the corpses. I see the broken lives and orphaned children, the widowed women and the babes born nine months later to be quietly smothered in revenge. Freedom - has to be paid for, and that is the cost of yours."
Alarmed, Jack swayed back, lifted the silver spoon like a charm against such ill omened words, and Norrington silenced his open mouth with an angry movement that became a flinch of agony. "No, you asked, now hear me out. I..." the pain made its way into his eyes. Or perhaps it had been already been there, muted by discipline and resolve.
"I am not good with sympathy. I cannot heal. But I can and will protect them. I can give them the freedom to live their lives as they will. I stand against the threat that everything they have - everything they work for, sweat over, everything they love - will be stolen by some whoreson bastard who cares nothing for any freedom but his own. That is why I let Elizabeth go, Sparrow. Because her liberty and her happiness are more precious to me than my own. Because I would not take what did not belong to me. Because I am not a pirate."
There was a silence, Norrington closed his eyes again and wilted against the Pearl's hull, spent by this outburst. Jack pondered his half formed plan of letting the Navy go on thinking its Commodore was dead, and luring him instead into a life among the Brethren. Frankly, it wasn't looking hopeful. But it was a good plan, and worth at least dangling into the water, to see whether anything at all rose to the bait.
"And there ye are, left all alone with naught but a pretty sword and your duty to comfort ye at night. It's a fine ideal mate, but what's in it for you?"
Surprisingly, this made James smile - and he was a 'James' when he smiled, for all Gibbs' talk of 'Sir'. "Other than self-respect? Prestige? As much adventure as a man needs? The loyalty and comradeship of my men? The gratitude of Governor and people? A squadron of ships at my command? Oh, and a more than adequate salary? Nothing. I am the most unfortunate of men."
Bloody Norrington! Jack ate the soup and tried not to feel sorry for himself. Remembering Payton, consumed with fury when his commander was shot, shouting death threats at armed pirates in complete disregard of his personal safety, he couldn't help but remember that the greatest aim of his own crew was to do right by themselves. "Not interested in a career in piracy then?"
"Certainly not."
More silence. Jack felt a pressing need for rum and rummaged in the sea chest beneath the cot to bring out a half empty bottle. The wind through the open porthole smelled of rain - heavy rain, due in an hour or two. He took a long drink, then poured a slug into the flagon by his bed and filled it up with water. When he turned back to pass it over, it was to find Norrington watching him, with an open, thoughtful look on his normally closed face.
"It is a troubling thing to spare a man's life," he said, softly. "You become responsible for him. Whatever he does next is as much your deed as his."
And of course he'd know. But it was a relief all the same to have it said. Jack put down the lid of the chest and slumped on it ruefully. "Aye, that's it. Thought ye'd understand. You and me mate - unless we can find some way out of this - we're bound together now..." actually when he put it that way it didn't sound so bad. He grinned. "'Til death do us part."
xxx
Norrington wished the pirate would stop doing that. Every so often he would forget he was dealing with a depraved maniac; he would bring himself to overlook the clothes, and the hair, the painted face and mincing walk, and deal only with the wit and intelligence that lay so incongruously housed amid the frippery. Every so often he would think of Jack as someone deserving - at least - the respect accorded to a dangerous foe. And then Sparrow would turn around and drag the conversation back into the mire, flirting clumsily, without any apparent realization of how ridiculous it made him look. Even had he been a woman, such behaviour would have been appallingly unattractive. In a man it was ghastly. "That could be arranged," he said, quellingly.
The pirate actually pouted, leading him to wonder what difference it would have made if Sparrow had been a woman. If the interest had been genuine, instead of a ruse designed to discomfort him. There was no denying he would have made a beautiful woman, with those dark Spanish looks. A fascinating one too. Lively, valiant, incorrigible - like Elizabeth. The thought gave him a wrench of sorrow. But Sparrow had none of Elizabeth's loyalty, nor her uprightness, nor her honour. What a wife she would have made! Sparrow, had he been female, would only be the sort of mistress who spent a man's money, ruined his reputation, slept with his servants and moved on, leaving him beggared and broken hearted. Had he been a marine, Norrington would not have trusted him with a loaded musket.
He closed his eyes, dog tired, and sipped the watered rum. Yet Sparrow had honour enough to return a kindness. That was more than he'd expected. Troubling, even.
"Y'know, there's pirates in Tortuga that spend their whole lives looking for revenge on the Navy," said Jack, his tone both petulant and accusing. "Lads that couldn't square with being rodgered by the officers and then lashed for it - lads that survived one keelhauling and weren't about to go back for more. Lads who their Captains let starve, while they ate off silver plates. Kids stolen from their homes who wouldn't stand to be flogged no more."
"We do not keelhaul in the British Navy," James kept his eyes shut, ashamed that he could not deny the rest. Not on his watch, not under his command, but it still happened, and he knew it.
"Aye, well, you don't expect those that do to admit to it now, do you?"
"Your point?"
"See, I'm not blaming ye for that. I'm just sayin. Not all Navy men are alike, and likewise y'do us wrong to think all pirates are the same." The mattress bowed a little as Jack sat on it, and his skin prickled at the closeness, protesting. Pride demanded he open his eyes. The effort was considerable, and the reward - seeing Jack leaning in toward him, black eyes intense and one splayed hand almost touching his throat - should have given him more alarm. Frankly, he was too tired to care.
"Take Gibbs, fr'example. 'Good man,' says you, 'aye' says I, yet he's a pirate - didn't 'ave much choice in the matter did 'e? Or Anamaria. Beautiful black slave girl that she was - y'know what she'd have been used for in your fine society. You saying she should prefer that to being free, and Captain of her own ship?"
The worst thing about Sparrow was that he was too clever, and sometimes - just sometimes - he had a point. Some part of a point, anyway. Enough of a point for it to hurt when he drove it home. But not the whole. "Captain of my ship, actually. And therein lies my difficulty." It seemed inadequate to say that he regretted the misfortunes that drove decent men into this life - he did - but the fact remained that their freedom was built on the suffering of others. He'd seen too many merchants ruined, too many families thrown out on the streets because they invested in a cargo that was subsequently 'commandeered' by pirates. The rich complained bitterly, and accepted their insurance monies with an ill grace. But the poor starved in silence. It would not do.
It was heavy going, discussing moral philosophy with a half mad thief, especially as movement still hammered a boarding spike through his chest whenever he forgot himself and tried to really breathe. But he could smell thunder on the air, and his soul yearned after the downpour - the promise of cool water reminding him of his dreams, and of England. Strange how you could miss the rain so badly, and the softness of pearl grey skies.
"And even supposing there is a difference," he said, half asleep despite his pride, "between good pirate and bad, how am I to tell, when there is but a moment to act and I must seize it?"
"In my case ye might have noticed my first deed was to save your lady, though there weren't no profit in it and it turned out badly enough for me."
Norrington laughed; the hoarse chuckle that was all he could manage at the moment. "Your first deed was to trespass on the Interceptor and boast of your intention to steal her. Having been apprehended by my marines it was to your advantage to curry favour by appearing selfless and noble - unconvincing though the performance was."
"Bloody Hell," Jack sounded almost admiring. He swayed back and his hands fluttered like heavy butterflies, "you're a suspicious bastard, Norrington."
"You're a suspicious character, Sparrow."
His eyes drifted shut of their own accord - so heavy. Reefing the lids up with sheer willpower, he surprised a look of stillness and intent on Sparrow's face; the whirlwind of taunts and lies still for just one instant, and perhaps a glimpse of something real behind the mask.
"But y'wouldn't hang me now you know me," Jack said quietly. "Admit it, you do like me a little bit."
"I like you a little bit," it was easier to acknowledge, after that second of intimacy. Easier to stop fearing humiliation and mockery, and just to tell the truth. "But I'd still hang you. What kind of justice would it be, after all, if I only executed the criminals I didn't like?'