Disclaimer: Neither the characters nor even the plotbunny is mine, just the writing.

Yet again, I am reminded that lack. Of. Computer. Access. Sucks.

On a slightly more relevant note, I have hit a mild dilemma. While I know what is supposed to happen in the remainder of this story, the plotbunnies are being distinctly uncooperative with details. So. Should I hold off on updating until (if?) they see fit to provide them, or should I just write and post what I have now and then put up a revised and expanded version laterif/when the plotbunnies decide to be more cooperative?

As per usual, anonymous reviews get answered in my profile.


Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me…

Norrington's hand came down just short of a slam on the pile of papers on his desk and he pinched the bridge of his nose to ward off the incipient headache. Paperwork was difficult enough under normal circumstances. He did not need this. Finally at his limit, the Commodore rose to his feet and stalked to the porthole the drunken singing drifted in through.

"If you don't mind," he very carefully did not quite snarl out into the night air, "some of us have work to do."

Raucous laughter answered him, but the merriment eventually softened somewhat, and mercifully the singing did not resume.

Norrington breathed an inaudible grateful sigh and turned back toward his desk. He stopped for a moment, eyeing his chair and desk narrowly, but returned and sat down.

"And here was me thinking that fine upstanding marines didn't believe in such things as ghosts," a familiar voice drawled from no obvious source.

"We've seen quite a few things," Norrington replied dryly, not even bothering to look up from the document in his hand, "many of which were your fault, by the way. Not to mention that three continuous hours of the same verse of the same song - completely off key, might I add - will make anyone acknowledge the existence of ghosts if it will only make them shut up."

"Hey, that's my favorite song yer complaining about!"

"I find myself entirely unsurprised."

He was answered by a chuckle, and the echo of the jangling of beads from the direction of his bunk. Norrington flipped the paper over and scrutinized the writing on the other side.

"So, why is it exactly that you, your ship and crew are all…" he made a vague motion toward the porthole, "still together?"

"Hah! Like I'd ever leave the Pearl! A captain's nothing without his ship. And you can't have a captain and ship without a crew, so we'd hardly leave them."

"And is there any particular reason you all chose to follow my ship rather than…moving on?"

"What, leave before seeing the bastards who sank my ship meet their ends? I should think not!"

"It seems to be sailing very well for a sunken ship."

"Details, details."

"Hm." Norrington scribbled a few lines on the paper and set it aside. "What exactly happened, anyway?"

"I just told you, they sank my ship." Indignation vibrated behind every word, as if the speaker still didn't believe it could have happened. "You saw what was left, a Navy man such as yourself should have been able to figure that much out."

"Yes, it sank, I know that much. You certainly managed to aggravate them quite thoroughly."

A snort sounded from behind him. "Not like it took much."

"Why did you do it, exactly?" Norrington leaned back in his chair, gaze somewhere around the ceiling.

A wry chuckle answered him. "They were slavers, Jamie. No one deserves that kind of fate. …well, alright, maybe a few people. But not children."

"I never pegged you as an altruist."

"Looks like you do have a brain under that wig after all. Children are always handy to have aboard ship, y'know. Smaller, more agile, can fit into places and learn things older crew can't, and they eat less. …well, not more than some of the other louts I've had to take as crew, anyway. Pirates tend to look out for a chance to get them onboard."

"So you were planning to 'rescue' them from the other pirates so you could have them yourself." Norrington's voice was flat.

"Now, now, Commodore." The ghostly voice was more serious now. "I was never as bad as all that. And none of my ships were ever slavers. I wouldn't have forced any of them to stay. They needed some way to get to shore, y'know, and if some of them happened to decide on the way there that they'd rather lead a life of adventure, well, so much the better. But if they'd wanted to leave, I wouldn't have kept them from going at the next port."

"Not that you ever made it there."

"Eh, it's the thought that counts."

Norrington let that pass. "How exactly did they manage it, anyway? We certainly never did," he added as an afterthought.

Another snort from the direction of the bunk. "I should think not. It'd be downright embarrassing for the Pearl to fall to you lot."

Norrington tactfully did not voice the first few responses that came to mind. "So how did they manage to catch a slippery rogue like you?"

"Hrmmph. They cheated, of course!"

"Isn't that what pirates do?"

"Well, yes, of course, but they did it unfairly!"

Norrington mentally translated this as 'we didn't win.' "And how did they do this, exactly?" he asked aloud.

A faint grumble, and the phantom rustling of someone shifting position. "We were pulling away from those first three ships, and nearly slipped 'em completely. Not like any of them could've caught the Pearl anyway."

"And then what?"

"And then three more ships slipped out from behind the island ahead of us!" Norrington could imagine the thunderous scowl to accompany the outburst. "None of them could match the Pearl for speed, either, normally, but they were in perfect position to cut us off."

"Part of the same fleet?" Norrington asked, intent gaze facing the wall in front of him.

"Hmph. They certainly worked together well enough to box us in. We headed out to sea, of course, away from both groups of 'em. Nearly made it, too – would've, maybe, if the wind had been more favorable, or that blasted one in the lead had been just a bit slower."

Silence stretched until Norrington asked, almost gently, "And what happened than?"

"What d'ye think happened? They sank my ship! Took all six of them to do it, though, and we took at least two of them with us," the voice added with fierce pride. "Left a mark on at least three more, too."

"What sort of mark?" While outwardly seeming unaffected by the conversation, the Commodore was tensely focused on the reply.

"Not much point in telling you about the two that sank, but of the ones left…one's got a few spars stuck into her hull, they can't pull them out 'cause she'll take on water if they do. Worse than she is already, anyway. There's cannon holes in the next one, of course, though they might have pulled the silverware out of the hull by now. Though I doubt they'll have been able to do much about the tar and molasses all over the mast. And the ropes. And a fair bit of the hull." Norrington could imagine the gold flashes in the grin that would have accompanied that pronouncement. "And the third…well, we managed to set part of it on fire, so I guess it all depends on how far it got before they managed to put it out. If they did." A dark chuckle. "Plus they might not have managed to clean off all the flour."

While a large part of Norrington wanted to ask for elaboration on how they had managed that, in the face of his almost certainly limited time he opted to ask about the more pressing concerns instead.

"That makes five. You said there were six in all."

"Mm. That last one is the one you'll have to look out for." The voice had gone deadly serious, charged with some strong emotion Norrington could not quite name. "That was the lead ship of the fleet, I'd bet on it. Sat well out of range of the fighting, cutting off our escape route and just watching. You'll recognize that one easy, the figurehead's bleached white as bone and carved in the shape of a skull." Norrington couldn't be absolutely sure, but some of the muttering the end of the sentence trailed off into sounded suspiciously like 'arrogant jackass.'

"Will we have to worry about the two ships you sank coming after us as well?"

"Nah." There was a thoughtful pause, but the sort where you could hear thoughts being arranged in the silence, not an empty one. "The Pearl had to sail some very strange seas to get back here, y'know," that familiar voice continued, quieter than Norrington had ever heard it before. "We'dve noticed if there was anyone else. I can't guess where they are now, but it's somewhere very, very far distant from here. Y'know," the voice turned cheerful in a way it rarely did unless it was to thoroughly annoy him, "it was awfully thoughtful of you to hang up my hat so we'd have something to home in on. It's pretty hard to navigate relative to the physical world if you don't have something to use as a guide."

It was only sheer force of willpower that kept Norrington from stalking up on deck and throwing the blasted thing overboard. "Quite," he said instead. "Now, I have quite a lot of paperwork to finish, so unless you would like to help, I would appreciate it if you would stay out of my quarters."

"Aww, now where would be the fun in that?" But there came no more interruptions that night after the faint chuckle faded away.

And when Norrington turned his head, he found himself alone in the empty cabin, his bunk as immaculate as he had left it, with not a single wrinkle to indicate that anyone had been sitting there.


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