Fic: Daring Rescue, Daring Escape Ch. 4: Waking Up Not Dead

By Honorat Selonnet

Rating: K

Disclaimer: C'mon mousie! It's just you and me now. C'mere you filthy rich, lucky owners of POTC. No. No. No. I didn't mean it!

Summary: On the docks—three points of view. Elizabeth wakes up not dead. Jack has a pirate moment. And I try to imagine what James can have been going through to make him behave the way he does in that scene. Another movie novelization—Jack's first rescue of Elizabeth.

Elizabeth returned to consciousness with a jolt of terror. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't see. Her involuntary gasp for air sent her into a paroxysm of choking as she coughed up mouthfuls of foul-tasting seawater. As her body convulsed in an effort to rid itself of the deadly liquid, she grew aware that strong hands were supporting her. Someone was here with her in the dark. Relief washed over her. She was beginning to draw air into her tortured lungs. Faint faraway voices floated above her. Unfamiliar voices.

"I never would have thought of that!"

Thought of what? Her eyes fluttered open, the darkness clearing gradually from her sight. The speaker leaned towards her, his round, wide-eyed face looking like he'd had a fright. He seemed slightly familiar.

She couldn't tell who he was talking to, but a rough voice with an odd accent commented, "Clearly you've never been to Singapore."

Singapore? What had happened to her? Where was she? Elizabeth twisted and the hands holding her gently lowered her to her back. Her eyes widened. A strange man was bending over her—strange in every sense of the word. She had never seen him before in her life, and she had never seen anyone who looked remotely like him. Dark eyes, outlined oddly in some black substance, met hers. Water ran down his face, dripping off his nose and off two funny little beaded braids in his beard. His long knotted black hair, tied with a red scarf and filled with odd dangling objects, was drenched, and his shabby garments were soaked. He looked half drowned. Elizabeth was suddenly aware that she was also completely sopping wet.

Then it all rushed back over her—the proposal, not being able to breathe, darkness, the brief panicked return to consciousness as her shocked body struck water, and then darkness again. Shaken, she realized she had nearly died. And this stranger must be the man who had saved her life.

Jack looked down at the girl he had fished out of the sea. Her breathing was still laboured, but the colour was flushing back into her pale cheeks, the rose returning to her lips. She was a charming catch if he did say so himself. The bright brown eyes that stared up at him in bewilderment were quite the loveliest he had seen in some time. Too bad a lass of her sort wouldn't be rewarding a rescuer of his sort with a kiss or two. He remembered, with the facility of a connoisseur, the rich, heavy brocade of the gown that had tried to drag them both to the ocean floor. This was a lady of quality, alas.

And wasn't that a bit of gold hiding in her wet hair? The pirate in him was already lifting the trinket when his attention was riveted by a familiar pattern. Shock coursed through him. Impossible! But there it was—attached to a thin gold chain around the neck of an innocent, gently-born girl. The same stylized central skull. The obscure symbols marching around the edge. He could never mistake that design. Holding the medallion in a grimy hand, he frowned, meeting the girl's startled gaze.

"Now where did you get that?" he breathed.

The sight of that medallion must have addled his brains because he was unprepared for the singing of drawn steel and the glittering tip of the sword that appeared under his nose.

"On your feet!" snapped a voice of command.

James Norrington had known he would be too late. His only chance to save the girl he loved had been that moment when he had been shedding his coat on the battlements of Fort Charles—the moment before Andrew had reminded him that his life was not his own to spend. It had not been fear of the rocks that had turned him back. He had faced down certain death before in his life. Would indeed be more than willing to give his life for Elizabeth's. But his life had belonged body and blood to the British Empire since he had first chosen the path of naval service. Duty forbade him to waste that life for the sake of his own personal happiness.

He had thought that some measure of that happiness might be possible for him. That he might marry the woman he loved and still serve his country and his men as they demanded. But Fate had had other plans for him. Had ripped that possibility from him at the very moment he might have achieved it.

For nearly twenty years, he had known nothing but the discipline of the service. And so he fell back on that discipline again as he led his men in the race to the closest dock to where Elizabeth had disappeared from his life. And thus it was that only the Commodore arrived on the dock by the Interceptor. The man himself, James Norrington, had crept bruised and bleeding back into the shell in which Duty had imprisoned him for so long. Only the Commodore remained to see a ragged ruffian bending over the scantily clad body of his beloved, whom he had given up for dead, and holding the bit of jewelry she wore around her neck.

The man was obviously a thief at best, possibly even a pirate. Commodore Norrington drew his sword. This time, he could protect Elizabeth. His duty was plain.

TBC