Ta-daaa! Happy Thanksgiving all! (Or at least to my fellow turkey-consuming folks. Everyone else, Happy…Thursday.) Don't go into palpitations on me, guys, but here we have it! An update. And today, I'm thankful for anyone who's stuck with me through the update drought and comes back for more of this out-of-control little tale.
Characters belong, as always, to Don Mickey and the Disney Family, and I intend no disrespect in borrowing them.
……………………………….
Jack offered James Norrington a small, dry smile as the naval officer leveled his weapon at the pirate. "Splendid party, don't you think, mate? Seems everyone called on our two turtledoves here." Jack's mouth curled up a bit more as Norrington's eyes grew frostier. "Terribly rude of me not to say hello, I know, but it wouldn't have been very gracious to desert our lovely hostess before she'd tired of my company. Must say, dear Elizabeth's a right terror in her dancing shoes. I was starting to fear she was going to wear me out."
A small sigh escaped Will. "Jack," he scolded quietly.
"It was quite the occasion," Norrington concurred, stepping fluidly down the stairs. "Yet it seems the evening's real excitement was taking place right here, where I find my men containing a riot, my lieutenant rendered unconscious in his office, an escaped pirate trespassing…" his eyes moved to Twigg's body, "and a prisoner murdered in his cell." He stopped at the foot of the flight, and his face promised that there was more thunder to come before the night was through. "I should like very much to be enlightened on how these events are connected. Immediately."
Jack tilted his head coyly. "Escaped, am I? According to Miss Swann here, you let me get away."
"Jack, must you?" Elizabeth demanded.
"If that were the case," Norrington replied, unruffled, "it would appear to have been a grievous mistake on my part."
Jack tsk'ed, shaking his head. "That wasn't an answer, Commodore."
"Make do with it, Captain." Norrington took a step closer, still sighting down his pistol at Jack. "Why is there a dead man in my prison?"
"Correct me if I'm mistaken, but he was on his way to dance for the hangman anyway, wasn't he?" He couldn't make it sound dismissive, but with a modicum of effort he achieved neutrality. Not that either was going to sway Norrington to an argument even Jack didn't buy, but maybe if he kept talking long enough, Bill would come to his senses and bolt.
What might have been mortification in someone who wasn't James Norrington breached the impenetrable green of the man's eyes, and, acutely curious about whatever image Norrington held of him that he'd just managed to fall short of, Jack filed the small slip away to be weighed and bitten and held up to the light later on.
"For all your flaws, Sparrow," and Norrington's tone made it clear there were plenty to go around, "I wouldn't have figured you the sort who would murder a caged man in cold blood."
"He isn't."
Jack slumped, and saw Elizabeth tighten her hold on Will.
The movement required to shift the pistol from Jack to the man who stepped up beside, and then very deliberately in front of, the pirate captain, was an almost invisible one, and Norrington made the adjustment while keeping nearly all signs of incredulousness at once again finding an obstructing body between him and Jack Sparrow from his face.
Bill moved forward, looking about as concerned over the gun pointing in his direction as he'd look over a bee flitting its way toward him. "Commodore, is it? I suppose you're the one I need to speak to, then." He held his bloodied arms out before him, offering his wrists to Norrington.
"Don't--" Will began, brokenly, before cutting himself off.
"My name is William Turner," Bill announced, in a tone far too composed to belong in the same room as a murder confession. "I'm the one who killed your prisoner."
It was supremely unfair, Jack decided, that circumstances were such that he wasn't even able to savor the look on James Norrington's face as the commodore joined the ranks of the painfully broadsided.
…………………………………
Wetherby Swann rose briskly from his seat and flung the carriage door open without waiting for the footman, stretching one long leg towards the ground.
That leg slid a bit as the rest of his body was jerked backwards, attached, as it was, to his head, atop which perched the swordfish mask. A lead off with the opposite leg proved no more successful in dislodging the insurrectional snout from the frame of the door, and Swann found himself twisting around until he was facing the carriage, mangling the menacing proboscis in the process, until his fumbling hand finally located the right strap and his head popped free, leaving the corkscrewed mask to dangle from the door, and sending him stumbling backwards into the footman, who prevented a spill to the mud-covered ground with quick hands at the governor's back. "Ah, thank you, Timothy," Swann said, patting the shorter man on the shoulder.
Then he tugged his wig straight and strode purposefully into the fort.
Whatever chaos had alighted on them this time, it appeared at least to not involve the horrific whistle-scream of cannon fire, or hoards of the undead swarming the streets. Weighed against that experience, whatever had disrupted Elizabeth and William's evening could hardly be that bad.
No sooner had the thought lodged itself between his ears than Swann rounded a corner and found himself face to face with Jack Sparrow.
"Oh, balls," Swann uttered, quite involuntarily.
"Lovely to see you as well, Governor."
"Keep quiet, Sparrow! Excuse me please, Governor," the redcoat who'd been hauling the shackled pirate down the corridor moved to bypass Swann, who stepped aside and stared, aghast, at the pirate's back.
Determined to track down Norrington and find out exactly what disaster had been averted – God almighty, let it have been averted – Swann spun on his heel, and received his second rude surprise of the night.
Streaked and splattered neck to ankle in mud, her already insubstantial gown made rather more so by rainwater and lord only knew what nature of ill treatment, Elizabeth approached with Will at her side, her arm through his. "Elizabeth! You're soaked! And filthy! And bleeding! And – and--"
"And my knees are showing."
"Yes!"
She nodded tiredly. "Fortunately for us, I've been wet and half-naked in front of most everyone here before, so there should be very little shock this time around."
"Elizabeth, I see nothing even remotely funny about…about…" he faltered in his tirade as his gaze drifted to Will, who, Swann was just realizing, looked pale in a way that had nothing to do with his painted face. In fact he looked a great deal worse off than the muddied and bloodied Elizabeth. "Goodness, William, are you quite all right?"
Will gave a start, his eyes snapping to Swann's as if he'd only just noticed him standing there. "I…I'll be fine, sir, thank you."
Swann frowned, exchanging a glance with his daughter, who brought her free hand up to cover Will's, which, all three of them noticed at once, was shaking almost imperceptibly on her arm.
Wetherby Swann moved forward, not to Elizabeth, but to flank Will opposite her, laying a cautious touch on the young man's back. "What's happened here?" he demanded quietly, looking from one to the other.
Elizabeth opened her mouth, and grasped for a place to begin. "There was…" her mind discarded the word "accident" before it made it to her mouth. The truth wasn't pliable enough to be twisted so. She looked up at her father, her face pained. "It was a mistake, Father. It was a horrible mistake. Nobody knew…"
Will drew in a ragged breath, and Elizabeth and her father both turned sharply to follow his gaze.
Norrington approached from the end of the hall, his gait unfaltering, despite the troubled set of his mouth. Beside him, manacled hand and foot, walked Bill Turner. A half-dozen marines trailed them in formation.
"All right," Swann uttered tightly, no more enlightened but a great deal more frustrated. "I want someone to tell me what's gone on here."
Norrington ushered his stoic captive past them, eyes carefully forward to avoid snagging his resolve on Will Turner's jagged anguish. "That's exactly what I mean to find out, sir," he replied.
…………………….
Fifteen minutes later, Norrington was gaining the clear picture he'd sought, and he liked it less with every brushstroke that emerged.
"What I still lack comprehension of, Lieutenant, is how one lone man was able to penetrate deep enough into Fort Charles to murder our prisoners at his leisure. This is a stronghold of the Royal Navy, not a tent in a traveling circus. People do not just walk into the prison and start stabbing." When he'd mastered his tone once more, Norrington continued. "As I already have a fair idea of how Mr. Turner knew where to find the cells, I suppose the crux of my puzzlement is how he got past the guards posted there. As you are, thus far, the only person to be found incapacitated, I presume he did not use force on them."
Lieutenant Gillette stood at attention before him, the upper left quarter of his face a spectacular shade of indigo, the rest of it slowly reddening.
"Have you any theories on how he accomplished this, Lieutenant?"
If possible, Gillette's lips pressed themselves thinner yet before parting in response. "Sir, there was trouble with the other prisoners. There was unrest stirring all night, and fights were breaking out. My first concern was with reestablishing order there, before things got too out of hand. The captives from the Black Pearl were subdued at the time, sir. I had no reason to suspect anything was amiss with them."
"No reason for suspicion outside of a man you did not know asking pressing questions about their state, you mean?" Someone else might have paced while they inquired. If James Norrington's agitations were currently manifesting themselves, they were being very discrete about it.
"Sir, he was distraught when I spoke to him earlier. Timid, even. Had the culprit given me any indication at the time that he was possessed of ill intentions, I would certainly have detained him."
"Relieved as I am to hear you would not have stood aside and wished him good day had he announced that he planned to come here collecting heads and hides, my interest does not lie with that conversation at the moment, Lieutenant." He knew he ought to have refrained from the sarcasm, but Gillette could draw it from him like a lancet drew blood. "Who was posted on the corridor Turner breached?"
Gillette's functioning eye flickered from Norrington's face when he answered. "Murtogg and Kelley."
"Murtogg and Kelley." Norrington's expression didn't change. "And yet both of them were among those who came up from the west corridor."
"Yes, sir," Gillette replied, an edge emerging in his voice. "Where the prisoners were becoming increasingly rowdy and violent, as I explained already."
Norrington's hands, clasped behind his back, itched to tighten on themselves. "Lieutenant Gillette, did you pull the guards off the corridor where the Black Pearl's crew is held?"
"Sir, I was attempting to gain control of a blatantly volatile situation--"
"I didn't ask for exposition, Lieutenant. I require nothing more from you than a yes, or a no." It brought Norrington a bare step closer, and silenced the other man. "On your orders, was the eastern corridor left unguarded tonight?"
Gillette's chin lifted, and it seemed he had to pry his teeth apart to answer. "Yes, sir."
James Norrington was not a man given to rages, or inappropriate bursts of temper, even in the worst of times. Those were simply reactions, and reactions without purpose accomplished nothing, no matter how agreeable they felt as they were pouring forth. Anger didn't solve problems or undo damage, and it was therefore a luxury his duty didn't allow for. And so his voice wasn't raised when he addressed Gillette again.
"I'm appalled at the lack of discretion you've exercised tonight, Lieutenant. Report to the infirmary and have your face tended to."
Gillette came as close to sneering as he could without being openly disrespectful. "There's no need, sir. I shall be quite all right."
It was a bloody good thing duty didn't allow for the luxury of anger. A bloody good thing indeed, or Norrington might have taken that bruising nose between his fingers and given it a good solid twist to see just how convinced Gillette was that the infirmary was unnecessary.
Duty. Dignity. God damn it, he needed a holiday.
"In that event, you will report to the west corridor and aid in the removal of the late Mr. Twigg's body, and assist in any clean-up required afterwards."
If it hadn't been swollen nearly shut, Gillette's left eye would have joined his right in nearly bulging out of his face. "But Commodore--"
"If you take issue with having to see the body disposed of, Gillette, perhaps you will think at some length as to your part in putting it there," Norrington said, and this time it was sharp. He'd had enough, and he wasn't even close to seeing the end of this night.
Indignant, Gillette forgot himself. "Commodore Norrington, I protest that! I had no way of knowing what that man was planning!"
"That isn't the point!" He barked it harshly, in spite of his best efforts to keep the oil from the fire. "Turner had the drive and desire to commit this act, but he required the opportunity. You gave him one. Your actions today made his possible." He cut himself off then, taking a deep breath. "You have your orders, Gillette. You may go."
For a moment he thought Gillette was going to argue further. But though he looked as if he had to physically choke back the words, Gillette was silent. Fuming, but silent, and he remained that way as he saluted and took himself from the room.
After he'd gone, Norrington made for the door opposite the one Gillette had taken. He paused with his hand on the knob to collect himself.
Next time he went to a party he was getting good and pissed straight off.
………………………………
Elizabeth looked up sharply as James emerged from his office into the adjacent room where she waited with Will and her father. Wetherby Swann was on his feet the instant the door opened, but Will didn't move from his chair, and he made no attempt to unlace his hands from Elizabeth's.
"What did he have to say?" Swann demanded.
Elizabeth could see wrath cracking James' ice from below, but he didn't waiver in his reply. "Gillette took the guards from their post on the pirates' cells and sent them to help quell the ruckus the other prisoners were raising." He looked askance at Will before continuing. "It presented Mr. Turner with a sufficient window of time to…gain access to the pirates." Though his shoulders remained squared, something in his air sagged. "There was no one to stop him."
Will's face pinched anew with grief, and Elizabeth pulled their joined hands beneath her chin.
"Gillette will face a disrating for this," James uttered, speaking to all of them, but singling out Will with his gaze. The younger man shook his head.
"This wasn't his doing," Will finally said.
"It was his negligence," James replied firmly. "That hall is not to be unguarded for any reason. Assuring that the prisoners cannot get out is only half the reason for that security, and if Gillette hadn't been so damned complacent--" he caught himself, and held a hand up, eyes closing in frustration. "I beg your pardon, Elizabeth."
One side of her mouth lifted weakly. "Curse away, James. I think we'll all take our comfort wherever we can find it today."
"Then I will take mine from the knowledge that my lieutenant will begin learning some much-needed humility tonight." James laughed mirthlessly then. "Though it seems he's not the only one who's been oblivious, as I was unknowingly dining and dancing in the company of Jack Sparrow tonight. This is hardly a banner evening for the navy, is it?"
"Yes, well, I wouldn't chastise myself too harshly, were I you, James," Wetherby Swann suggested, taking slow strides to the stand behind Elizabeth's chair. He laid his hands on her shoulders, and Elizabeth sucked her cheek between her teeth and scrutinized her bare, muddy toes very intently. "If there is one thing I am quite nearly certain of, in this entire horrid tangle of events, it is that Captain Sparrow did not single-handedly conceal his presence in Port Royal, and he didn't steal undetected and uninvited into the masque." His gaze dropped to the top of his daughter's head, and he squeezed her shoulders lightly – and deliberately. "Did he, duckling?"
Elizabeth shared a guilty look with her betrothed, who was not plunged so deeply into his own misery he couldn't squirm a bit along with her, then smiled hopefully up at her father. "You did stress the importance of including our peers in our wedding celebration, Father," she reminded him, beaming with the same sort of radiance Swann suspected Lucifer Morningstar had shone with right before he'd been relocated.
"Elizabeth--"
"If it weren't for Jack, Father, one or both of us would be a bit too dead to have an engagement party for him to sneak into!"
He was about to be shamed for protesting a wanted criminal's presence in his house. He saw it coming. Unfortunately, anticipation of this particular move on Elizabeth's part didn't come with a way to counter it, because she was, ultimately, correct.
Somewhere, his wife was laughing.
"And am I to believe that Sparrow had no part in what happened here tonight?" James asked, with surprisingly little scorn. "Whatever I think or would like to think of his character…" James spread his hands before him. "It's hard to conceive of such a coincidence."
"Jack had nothing to do with this!" There was steel in Will's assertion, and his despondency slid from him in the blink of an eye. "You have my word on this, Commodore, Governor. Jack has been with Elizabeth and I for days now. He didn't know himself that my father was alive until earlier this very day! He didn't have anything to do with what took place here – except to stop it from being even more of a bloodbath than it was!" Will stepped forward, breaking away from Elizabeth, shaking his head. "Don't punish Jack for what my…my father has done."
All three of them were taken back by the ferocity of Will's defense, and it was Swann who recovered first.
"It doesn't make much sense for Sparrow to risk his neck coming back here after he's been let go, all for the sake of murdering men who are already awaiting death," the governor conceded.
"No, but neither does it make much sense for a man to plan something as carefully as William Turner must have planned this attack, and then step up neat as you please and turn himself in without a struggle." Norrington replied.
Will's fire died back a bit, and he wrapped his arms around himself. "His reason for wanting them dead was gone," he said quietly. "That's why he stopped." He bowed his head, swallowing painfully. "It was because of me, and of Jack. He thought we were dead. He thought they killed us." Will looked up at them again, and saw pity, and doubt, in both men's eyes. He wasn't sure which emotion he hated more. "That's why he did it. All of it."
James pressed his lips together, green eyes hard, as they always looked when he was considering the wisest way to wage a battle. Governor Swann sighed.
"Well, I'll tell you all one thing," he said, resolved. "I won't be convinced of anything until I've spoken with William Turner."
……………………………
Jack leaned his shoulder against the wall, staring through the barred window at the storm clouds rolling away on the night wind, watching as a few of the stars came back, burning bright and bold through the last remnants of the tempest.
What did they care how hard it rained? They were too high to get wet.
"I know what you're thinking."
There was, somehow, nothing presumptuous in the voice that rolled deep and quiet out of the gloom behind him, but it made anger flutter its wings inside Jack all the same.
"How enlightened, given I don't know what I'm thinking."
He turned his back on the window, rolling to put the stone wall behind him, and looked to where Bill sat, arms shackled to the heavy wooden table in the center of the room the two of them had been locked in.
"You think this is a stupid thing for me to be doing."
Jack snorted, his own chains rattling where they hung against his thighs. "That isn't a thought. It's a fact."
"Hell bent as ever to have things go your way, aren't you?" Bill's face was too shadowed to let his expression be read, but his shoulders quaked once in dry mirth. "I suppose I should have known you'd survive what Barbossa did to you just to be contrary." He rubbed a finger along the grain of the wood beneath his hands. "How did he die?"
Jack took a moment to pretend he hadn't heard the eagerness in that question before answering it. "By the very same shot he was generous enough to give me as a parting gift when he escorted me off my ship."
"It was you?"
Sensing more than seeing the gaze on him, Jack nodded. "Yes."
"Was it quick?"
"Very."
"Pity. Did you at least have time to enjoy it?"
The silence nearly shook the mortar out from between the stones.
"I'm sorry," Bill breathed. "That was a disgusting thing to say."
"Maybe," Jack replied, grateful to be able to conceal his face in the murk of the room. "But then I'm not really comfortable takin' the moral high ground. Gives me nosebleeds." He scuffed the heel of his boot across the floor. "Besides, I expect you're entitled to a few uncharitable notions where Barbossa's concerned."
"Uncharitable," Bill echoed. "What a tidy word that is. I had enough 'uncharitable notions' in mind for him to put me ankle deep in his blood."
Jack twisted the length of chain connecting his hands, scowling at the ugly, ponderous links as they caught the meager lamplight. "Aye, well, I guess he'd have deserved them all."
Bill contemplated the younger man, and sounded awed when he spoke. "It humbles me, lad, that you can say that and still not mean it, after all the evil he did you."
"Don't do that," Jack snapped, brandishing a wicked glare. "Don't make it sound like I was some wronged, hapless innocent in the whole thing." He flexed his wrists, wincing at the chafe of the iron. "I brought him and his whole thrice-damned pack of dogs onto the Pearl." He slouched, letting his hair fall across his face. "I invited them in. Held the door. Put the bloody kettle on, even.""
"You were young," Bill said, without malice. "You made a mistake."
"I was Captain, and I made a choice!" Jack slid down to sit against the wall, staring up at Bill. "It was my doing, William. It was my fault." He shook his head. "It was me owed the piper all by me onesies, and I explicitly told you not to do anything stupid! How the bleedin' fuck that translated to 'open your gob and get yourself flung off the port side by the homicidal mutineer' I have no idea, and I speak twice as many bloody languages as you!" He was quivering by the time he finished, and Bill waited until he was sure Jack was going to exhale and not simply combust.
"It was actually the starboard side," he corrected, lips twitching. "And I wasn't so much flung as pushed."
"Oh, Jesus," Jack groaned, curling in on himself and turning away, pressing his forehead against the wall. His body jerked once, hard, and Bill wasn't sure if he was crying or trying not to be sick. Reflexively, Bill moved to rise, and his chains reminded him of their presence with a rattle and a jarring snap.
"Jack, are you all right?" he pressed.
The pirate's head swiveled back towards him, mouth agape, dark eyes glittering over-brightly with grief. "Are you fucking drugged, William?" An incredulous laugh slipped out, and it shook the tears loose. That Jack made no attempt to conceal them spoke volumes to Bill. He pushed himself to his feet and stalked towards the older man. "They're going to hang you! Six hours ago I was telling your son how his father wasn't so very dead after all, and he was wondering what the first thing he was going to say to you would be, and now they're going to haul you off and swing you from the scaffold like some kind of damned murderer--"
"I am a murderer, Jack."
"I don't care!" Jack choked, almost shouting, and brought his shackles down on the wooden table with a violent crack. "You're here, and you're alive, and I don't give a damn what else you are!"
Bill moistened his lips, and met Jack's fury with more calm. "I think my son might not share that view on things, Jack."
"Well we aren't goin' to have the chance to find out now, are we?" Jack was flinging his chains about so emphatically Bill was beginning to fear for his wrist bones. "Why couldn't you have given him the chance to forgive you? He might've surprised you, Bill. He has quite a gift for that. Not that you'll find that out, either."
"Jack--"
"God, I hate your honor," Jack breathed, voice breaking. "I hate that you can't ever shut up and keep your bloody head down. Why do you have to try to make everything right? You live and breathe by your goddamned honor, and never mind what the rest of us need. Never mind that we keep getting left behind…" It was one crack more than the dam could survive, and Jack doubled over, catching himself on the table and sinking to his knees.
Bill had enough freedom of movement to slide a hand beneath the slick cheek resting on the table, and he felt the flutter of wet lashes against his palm, the warmth of each shuddering breath on his fingers. The fingers of his other hand combed at what hair they could reach.
"I'm sorry," Jack gasped out, a fresh flood of tears soaking Bill's hand. "I'm so sorry I failed you, but you can't leave me again, Bill. You can't."
The hand cradling Jack's cheek convulsed, and Bill leaned his face low, his words murmured against the side of Jack's head. "You listen to me, Jack Sparrow. You have never failed me. Never You were a good captain, and damn that son of a bitch all over again if he ever made you doubt that. You didn't fail me. You didn't disappoint me. And if I hang tomorrow, I'll go with the peace of knowing both of my sons are alive and well." The weight Bill held nearly shook itself loose then, but the slightest curl of his fingers and press of his lips secured his hold, and he rode out the rocking as he would a rough sea.
Bill straightened expectantly when he heard voices outside the door, but although Jack's breath hitched at the click of the key in the lock, he didn't move. He did open aching eyes at the sound of Norrington's voice.
"On your feet, Sparrow." It may only have been the fading thrum of his own blood in his ears, but it seemed to Jack the command was not as brisk as it should have been. "Lieutenant Groves will accompany you out. Governor Swann wishes to speak with Mister Turner."
"Up you go, Captain," Bill said quietly as the younger man stood without argument, and raised his hands to wipe his face dry without shame. Groves waited until Jack had finished the motion to take him by the arm.
"This way please, Captain Sparrow," Groves said.
Jack stared brazenly at the governor and the commodore through the lingering glaze of his tears as Groves walked him past, and had the satisfaction of both of them looking away first. Just inside the door he hesitated, lifting his chin as he addressed the governor.
"You mustn't believe a word he says, guv. He's a pirate, after all." He threw a half-smile back in Bill's direction. "Bloody liars, the lot of us."
Swann looked affronted, and Norrington rolled his eyes. But behind him, Bill chuckled earnestly. The sound followed Jack out into the hall until the closing of the door cut it off.
TBC