(Author's Notes: Thank you, thank you, thank you to my reviewers, as always!
This chapter is giving me a lot of trouble, particularly the middle and again at the very end. Feedback, suggestions, anything appreciated! I feel like I'm writing Norrington too darkly … what do you think?)
Drink provokes strange dreams, as I have the unfortunate burden of knowledge. This dream was one which had always haunted my thoughts, but it had quite gotten worse of late. Perhaps it was the brandy.
That night, I found myself back aboard the Susan, twenty years ago, on the crossing from Port Royal to England. A vacation, my father called it, a trip to see my relatives living in London. At the time, we were all overjoyed with the idea – Father wanting a change of scenery, Mother wanting to see her sisters again, Ophelia and Charity never having seen England, and I had not seen my home for over ten years. How much time we spent packing, and running about, telling our friends goodbye! I remember Charity threw a fit when Mother wouldn't let her take her music box, saying it was too fragile, too rare, and she didn't want it broken. Charity wound it up one last time before we left, letting the gentle waltz float through the empty mansion.
It was the last thing my home would hear from the entire Norrington clan for over ten years.
Back on the Susan, I saw myself. My perspective was like that of a bird hovering in the air – I could not move, nor make a sound to warn them. But I tried, as I had tried every night for the last score of years. I saw Mother usher Ophelia and Charity below with the other women and children, the men – and her, I had to remind myself – including Father and my 13-year-old self, take a pistol and cutlass apiece as the brig with the Devil at its bows swooped down on us and tore the ship apart. I saw the blood on the decks, the fierce fight raging as the Susan's defenders came up against an insurmountable enemy.
Normally, at this point in my dream, my perspective ended when he, teenage James, was knocked out cold with a wicked blow to the head – after all, I could not know what occurred next, though I had a fair guess at it.
Now, my perspective lowered, as I found myself free to wander about the decks through the remaining battle. Nothing I could do could possibly change the events of that day, though I swung hard and shouted to wake the dead. Hah … wake the dead. Gallows humor. I really had hit the worst. My eyes, even accustomed to the carnage and the fate of my family, clouded as a pirate, a lowdown, filthy, heartless pirate ran Father through; I choked back a raw scream when they caught her, fighting to the very end. The bell stopped clanging as they slunk below, pillaging and killing and raping – I heard my mother's cries until they died out, and the sobs of my sisters, abruptly cut off. And then, nothing.
I woke up, bent over the desk, hand still on the decanter, indecently early the next morning, head splintering with what I believe is commonly termed a hangover. Whatever it was, it hurt. Like hell.
Glancing at the dark outside, and figuring I'd been asleep only four hours or so, I relit the lamp and poured myself another brandy.
Well, tried. The decanter was pretty near empty.
"Why's the brandy gone!"
This was definitely more to myself than to anyone else – who could be up? And did I truly want someone, even a servant, to stumble over the drunken wreck that only looked like Admiral Norrington?
Well, they may as well.
He's gone for good.
Candle in hand, I made a very wobbly line for the door, but as soon as I stumbled over the threshold, I had a thought. A very morbid thought. I fumbled with the ring of keys from my study and wandered – yes, that is the proper word to describe my means of locomotion – none too directed through the silent halls and up another flight of stairs, to the third floor. The deserted third floor. I don't know why, only that I was under the influence of a massive amount of drink. To this day, though, I believe that I went to check on Ophelia and Charity, though I knew they were long dead in the bosom of the sea.
Oddly enough, for being drunk, I did not scratch at the lock for long, finding my entry into the long abandoned rooms with ease. Though I had not trod this floor in twenty years, I still knew where everything was – where the lamps were, the desks, the bed, and the vanity. In the dark I lit the tiny golden lamp over said vanity, looking down at its small size and remembering how small they had been.
"Ophelia! Charity!"
There was no response in the dusty bedroom.
As I had so many times before, with or without Charity's permission, I took the music box from the hidden compartment with trembling hands, placing it precisely in the center of the dusty surface. Fumbling fingers found the key and carefully wound up the mechanism, as wondering eyes watched the now tarnished gold wink in the lamplight. Finally, with an unintentional glance behind me, to make sure my long-dead little sister was not going to reprimand her living, drunk and out-of-his-wits older brother, I lifted the lid.
And that's where they found me the next morning, paralyzed by tones of a music box which would not play. I felt as one punished, the veriest sinner brought to his knees in repentance, starving for forgiveness in front of the stony angel. Now I knew how the pirate Barbossa felt – alive but not living, dead but not at peace. In vain I supplicated the angel for mercy, only to be worshipping at a statue that had lost its spark.
For so long as I thought only I knew how far I had fallen, what terrible crimes I had committed – enough not only for me to hang myself for breaking every law I had ever sought to uphold and every decency I had sought to spread, but enough to keep me in the lowest circles of Hell for all eternity – now I came to realize the most terrible truth of all.
Charity knew.
She knew that I had sent even more decent men than the Helen I worshipped still to their deaths. She knew that through I travesty of justice I survived. She knew that I had tried to kill myself almost every day since then, and knew I was too much of a coward to go through with it. She knew I had sold my honor, my decency and my duty to survive. She knew about the pirate brand. She knew how red my cutlass had run on those ships. She knew how many screams I had caused, how many dreams and lives I ruined. She knew about the women and the whores. She knew how much I drank. She knew my drunken rampages. She knew that I served under the man I swore to kill. She knew I swore to kill a man in revenge. She knew I swore to kill in cold blood. She knew I would not let the blame for my ruin rest on the guilty party's shoulders – my own. She knew of my jealousies and betrayals. She knew I was now a pawn under the most filthy, self-serving scum that the world had ever seen. She knew I hadn't done a thing about it. She knew what I had stolen to sacrifice for the façade of who I was, remaining the blackheart underneath.
My God, she knew.
Charity knew.
Charity knew.
Charity knew.
Looking to the cross on the wall, above the reflection in the mirror I knew not and did not want to know, I prayed. I prayed to God, to Christ in heaven. I prayed to Charity. I prayed for Mercy, and when that did not come, I prayed for release from the mortal coil. I prayed that I would not have to serve Beckett; I prayed that what was right would prevail. When silence still prevailed, still I persisted. I prayed for guidance, and I heard only my conscience's sadly derisive laugh floating through the halls from the gallery.
"Charity! Please, Charity, hear me!"
"Sir?"
A worried footman leaned through the open door, watching his disheveled master plead with an invisible entity. He caught the whiff of brandy on me, or perhaps the miasma of my other sins, and left.
My gaze again found the mirror, looking straight into my own eyes. Or were they my own eyes? Did my sight deceive me or did the green fade to a deeper, kinder brown, my features soften and shrink, and my hair lengthen?
"Charity!"
It was neither a question nor a declaration, but a raw cry from the depths of my bleeding heart.
You're on the wrong side, James.
Charity knew.