Gah! I am very, very sorry about this not displaying properly earlier. (twitches) I guess it serves me right for trying to update late at night from a dodgy internet connection and not getting the chance to check on the result...Thanks to Janey and whoever left the comment on my LJ for letting me know!
Disclaimer: I own neither the characters nor the plotbunny, only the execution.
Since pretty much the only response I got to my dilemma was something along the lines of "hope you update soon" or "write more please," I decided to go with putting up what I have rather than making you wait for quite possibly months. Should the plotbunnies ever decide to be more forthcoming, I will replace the chapters with any revised or expanded versions and announce it in the summary.
As per usual, anonymous reviews get answered in my profile.
"We haven't seen you much at all recently," Elizabeth Turner mentioned as she set out the tea things. "It seems you've been quite busy."
Norrington barely noticed how she had thoughtfully selected and arranged the setting so that he would be able to leave quickly without awkwardness should he be suddenly called away from even the few moments he had found to drop by; his attention was taken up by the sudden, dismaying realization that she almost certainly did not know of her favorite pirates' fate.
It did unfortunately make sense. When he thought back, they never had announced the sinking of the Black Pearl to the general public. He had been preoccupied with finding the raiders who had been responsible, and the sinking of the legendary ship no longer seemed as significant as it would have when Barbossa had captained it. Sparrow had been as sneaky as ever after regaining his captaincy, and he hadn't so much engaged in piracy as he had gleefully made a bloody nuisance of himself when he wasn't off on another of his wild treasure hunts. It was very difficult to work up enthusiasm to capture someone whose noble 'victims' were not only unharmed but had found him quite amusing and declared that the entertainment was well worth the rum the rogue had walked off with. They said he'd even asked quite politely; hadn't waited for an answer, true, but still. It had hardly seemed worth the effort to go after a pirate who hardly deserved the name, even if he did have a habit of floating cheekily past ships of the Fleet well out of range of pursuit. And there had seemed little worth proclaiming about the sinking, especially when they had not been the ones to do it.
As for what had happened to Sparrow and his crew afterward…well. The men were even less likely to talk about that to anyone. They would probably avoid the subject of the Pearl altogether, in fact, which might explain why even the sinking didn't seem to be common knowledge.
Come to think of it, even aboard the Dauntless they never had announced clearly what was going on. Though the men had to have figured it out by now; the ghostly incidents had only gotten more frequent and blatant once Norrington was aware of the situation, and it couldn't have been difficult to figure of the identity of their new otherworldly escort. While Norrington hadn't explained or even mentioned the antics of their unseen companions, he certainly hadn't made any effort to hide what he knew. Certainly his stern admonition to the air on deck one night that tripping soldiers of the Royal Navy while they were trying to clean the deck was not funny and that if a certain Captain didn't do something about it then he would take that hat down from the mast and give it to Barbossa's blasted monkey had to have been a dead giveaway. And any resulting doubts about his mental health must have evaporated when not only did the apparent fits of clumsiness suddenly disappear, but the next morning the entire deck practically sparkled. It was hardly the only such incident, either, and doubtless any of the men who hadn't been there and wouldn't have understood the references would have been filled in by those who had. Though there were far too men too new to know; the battle with Barbossa's crew had cost far too much before the pirates had lost their unholy invulnerability. No need for him to curse Barbossa, though, no doubt those far more capable than he had already seen to it…
"Commodore?" Elizabeth's voice finally pulled his attention back to the present, and he realized that he had been staring at his teacup for possibly a minute or more. He forced his attention back to his host and managed a polite nod that did not diminish the concern in her brown eyes. "Are you alright?"
"Ah, yes," he started, and then paused for a moment. How much should he tell her about the Pearl's fate? He couldn't continue to leave her in the dark; it wouldn't be right. And better she should hear it from him, someone who had been there…
She had to be told that Jack and the rest were…well, dead. There was no way around it. But the rest?
No. No, he could not tell her that they were not exactly gone. She of all people would certainly believe him if he told her they were now ghosts, but Elizabeth had nothing to do with the unfinished business that kept Sparrow in these seas nor with the hunt that would hopefully end it. Even if she demanded to be taken out to the Dauntless…how would the Pearl's crew react?
How could they?
It would be so horribly awkward for both sides – what would it be like, to know a friend was there but that you could not see them, could not touch them? Or for them to watch the pain of a friend from the next world, unable to comfort her and knowing that things could never be the same again? No, he would not tell her, not without at least consulting them first. Let her deal with one shock at a time.
He took a deep breath and finally faced her, carefully choosing his words. "First of all, I'm not entirely sure whether you were informed of an…incident," he began. He saw the beginnings of apprehension creeping across her features, and continued before she asked any questions, "We…Several weeks ago we were told that the Black Pearl had interfered with another raider's attack on a passenger vessel. When we arrived at the scene, we found the wreckage of the Pearl. There were no survivors," he added, as gently as he could.
Elizabeth had gone very, very still.
Norrington regarded her with silent sympathy. He remembered how it had affected him to find out about Sparrow's death, and he hadn't even been terribly fond of the man. For Elizabeth, who along with her husband had counted him as a close friend…
"I've been leading the investigation to apprehend those responsible. With the help of the description Sparrow gave us, it shouldn't be too much longer before we get a solid lead," he impulsively offered a bit more of the truth, hoping it might offer some small comfort. It seemed to hit the mark as she nodded slowly, and he rose to give her some privacy to come to terms with the news.
And then Elizabeth froze, looking up at him sharply.
"Wait…" She reached almost unconsciously toward his sleeve, the beginnings of suspicion already beginning to creep into unsettlingly perceptive eyes still clouded with shock. "What do you mean by that? I thought you said that the Pearl sank with all hands on board long before you arrived."
He did not meet her gaze as he rose and bowed. "The Black Pearl has been a ghost ship before," he murmured, and left her alone in the room with a bow and that last enigmatic reply.
- - - - -
No uncommandeered ship of the Royal Navy had ever been seen in Tortuga, and none was seen there now.
It was an unremarkable small boat that deposited a single passenger at the harbor. There seemed nothing remarkable about the man at first glance, either, save perhaps that he was rather cleaner than average, which was soon remedied as he wandered among the streets and alleys and taverns of Tortuga, neatly dodging drunks wobbling down the street and the contents of pots emptied out of windows. He listened to the ramblings of drunks and whispers from dark corners and conversations between sailors passing on the street. He slipped into taverns, sitting neither in the brightest areas nor in the darkest shadows, and drank and laughed and struck up conversations. No one gave him a second glance; he wasn't well-dressed or exuberant enough to have much money, and he wasn't drunk enough to be worth the bother to rob anyway. Besides, he had just shaken the last few coins out of a small, worn purse to pay before he left, his walk having developed a weave and a slight stumble.
No one followed him, so no one noticed that his performance was repeated in the next tavern, and another pub, and yet again throughout the port, or that his purse always had only a few small coins left, or that his drunken weave never worsened, or that he listened more than he spoke.
No one paid him enough attention to wonder why his vaguely familiar three-cornered leather hat was always held in one hand rather than covering his brown hair. And certainly no one noticed that as he wandered that he sometimes paused slightly before turning at some small street or entering a door, head tilted ever-so-slightly as though listening to something no one else could hear.
When the man finally returned to the waiting boat in the quiet before the sun rose, he had the name he had come for.
Calavera.
- - - - -
Norrington had to call in practically every favor he had in the Navy in order to keep the investigation alive with him in charge, but he found he didn't really mind. He had once vowed to make sure that all pirates got what they deserved, and with the only pirates he had ever shown mercy to dead, there was nothing to give him second thoughts about pursuing that goal wholeheartedly. There were rumors of a commendation in the works for the obvious and spectacular success he'd had with clearing smugglers, pirates, and other undesirables from his waters, but for his part Norrington was just as satisfied with the increased progress they had made in the investigation.
Though the investigation itself wasn't all just for Sparrow either, truth be told. A slaver ship in his waters alone was cause enough for concern; that there was a pirate fleet he hadn't known about was downright troubling. A pirate fleet six ships strong… for it to have escaped the notice of the Royal Navy, the operation had to have been incredibly fast, or incredibly well-hidden, or likely both. There had been stories of Barbossa's raids leaving no survivors, but the very lack of such stories about Calavera suggested that maybe there really hadn't been anyone left to tell them. Given the damage to the passenger ship, it might well have sunk had the raid been finished. The sea was vast, and any traces that might have been left would easily have gone unnoticed if no one had known where to look. If it hadn't been for Sparrow, they might never have known what happened to that ship, and there was no telling whether – or, more likely, how many – others had met that fate.
Something of that magnitude took brains, charisma, and downright ruthlessness to achieve. Never mind pirate captains or even commodores, that was the work of a man aiming to be a pirate admiral.
And if that wasn't a chilling thought, Norrington wasn't sure what could be.
He took quiet pride in the fact that his men were no less determined to capture Calavera and his men than he was. They all wanted to bring an end to piracy in their waters, of course, but there was a range of additional reasons that kept them firmly with him in the chase. Groves, for example, had always rather liked Sparrow and would no doubt take extra satisfaction in bringing down the pirates who had killed him. Gillette, on the other hand, had disliked Sparrow intensely and was anxious to bring those responsible for his death to justice so that the pirate and his ship would go away. Of the rest, some agreed with Groves or Gillete, a few understood like Norrington the seriousness of the threat, and some were simply pleased with the incredible success they had had with capturing other criminals in the process.
But the fact remained that in order to maintain his current official support, he had to meet certain obligations. And so he had to attend a formal dinner at the Governor's house no matter how much he would have preferred to be elsewhere. He had been truly been busy, so he hadn't had to go out of his way to avoid running into Elizabeth again after she had caught his slip that last time far too quickly for his piece of mind, but he would not have that protection here.
Fortunately, he was seated some distance away from her, and so would not have to worry about any possible confrontation until the end of the evening. He smiled, nodded, and made polite conversation with the…representatives of high society seated around him, and got through the evening mostly by mentally reviewing what his investigation had found out about Calavera.
Whenever the story of a ship with a white skull as a figurehead was raised, that was the name whispered with it. It didn't really matter if Calavera was the man's real name or not; many pirates sailed under names other than those they had been born with, and that was what the man called himself now, which was the only important thing when it came to finding his present wherebouts. And that was who they were looking for; the rumors about him spoke of atrocities even by pirate standards, and said that he would take any means he could to profit. He was certainly the would-be admiral; the whispers also confirmed that he had been accumulating ships and men and ruled them with an iron hand. He did not take no for an answer; if he wanted you in his crew, you went, and obeyed, or died. People did not volunteer to join; you might express an interest, and one of his captains might pay you a visit sometime afterward, but displaying too much interest or ambition was more likely than not to get your throat.
Other than more rumors, that was really all they knew. Calavera and his ships only came into Tortuga occasionally, usually for supplies, and they had done so soon after the sinking of the Pearl, long before Norrington had even known who he was looking for. No one in Tortuga knew where the fleet was based, or at least no one was willing to mention it in casual conversation, wary of crossing the pirate. Any further inquiries would have risked suspicion, and those on the ships they had captured had even less fresh information on the current status of the 'Skull's men.'
Norrington was pulled out of his thoughts by the ending of the dinner, and making his farewells he moved as quickly as he could through the departing crowd. But he was not fast enough to escape the call from behind just as he reached the darkened hall to a door open to the night outside.
"Commodore." He was stayed by Elizabeth's touch on his sleeve, and despite his wishes otherwise stopped and turned to face her, hoping fervently that she would not press him to say anything inadvisable in public. She seemed…not nervous, exactly, but tense, as though acutely aware of the importance of the next few moments.
"Tell them–" She took a deep breath, and meeting his eyes firmly, continued low enough to go unheard by the other guests trickling past them, "Tell them I'm glad I knew them. Even Jack." She managed a half-smile, which faded as her eyes went hard. "And put a few extra holes in the bastards that did it for me."
Norrington was silent for a moment, and then – "We may have to raid Tortuga."
He was not entirely certain why he told her. He had not voiced it aloud to his own crew, though he was sure many suspected and Sparrow almost certainly guessed. The efficacy of their current methods had been steadily dropping; if anyone knew what they sought, it would be in Tortuga, and if they would not speak voluntarily…well.
But there was no reason that he should be practically asking for Elizabeth's leave for an operation at the lawless island. It wasn't as though the place could matter much to her. If she had even ever been there, it had to have been years ago. And it was not her decision to make in any case.
And yet…
Norrington realized why, even as he waited for her answer. It wasn't something that was easy to put into words, but she and her husband were the only living associates he had who would have any sort of positive attachment to the island and to the memories of pirates that went with it. When Sparrow was gone…they would be the only link he had left to pirates as anything more than something to hunt down. And it somehow wouldn't have been quite right to destroy a tie they had had to the pirates that had meant so much to them without at least letting them know. While Elizabeth's husband might have known Tortuga better than she had, he never had gotten on with Turner very well…
Elizabeth was silent for a long, thoughtful moment. "The best pirate I ever knew is dead, and his crew with him," she said quietly. "Do what you must. They deserve no mercy." Her eyes were dark and serious, and in that moment she was unmistakably the same woman who had fought with pirates and escaped guard from his own flagship.
He nodded gravely, his own smile as grim as the look in her eyes. "Good night, Mrs. Turner."
"Good night. And good luck." She turned and vanished back down the hall with a faint rustle of fabric, and Norrington walked out into the night unimpeded.
He had one more consultation to make.
- - - - -
"They will say nothing more of their own accord, and the few ships we still find have only low-level brigands who don't know anything more. If we want that location, there is no other choice."
Silence answered him from the seas as he stood at the empty rail of the Dauntless, but Norrington had by now gotten quite good at distinguishing empty silences from thoughtful ones.
""I don't like it, but I can see your point," the reply finally came, a faint sound coming from beside him as though someone was sitting on the rail and drumming their fingers in thought. "It's not like we'd be going back there again afterwards, or like any of them came to help us then." A sniff. "Not like they knew, either, but they could at least have warned us about those ships beforehand."
"Would you have paid attention if they had?"
"That's not the point!" A harrumph, and then a phantom rustle and thud, as though the unseen speaker had turned around and pushed off the rail to land on the deck. "Alright, then. But on one condition. We visit Tortuga one last time beforehand."
"Agreed."
- - - - -
Norrington was not a superstitious man, but he was a practical one. When things happened around you that didn't fit in a rational, orderly world he dealt with them first and worried whether or not they were possible afterward.
And so as he walked again through the streets carrying a battered leather hat, the dense, unseasonable fog choking the town apparently more permeable to him than to the cursing sailors who groped their way forward and stuck near the walls, he found himself thinking of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. True, he allowed as he absently followed the directions the mist seemed to whisper to him, and stopped outside a doorway when told to wait, there were only trace similarities. Orpheus had gone down to the underworld to retrieve the shade of his wife deliberately, only to lose her forever when he tried to look at her before returning completely to the mortal world. Sparrow and his crew had found their own way back, and there had been no warning against looking at them, should anyone actually have wanted to.
Yet even during that first conversation he had had with Sparrow…he hadn't turned around as much as to avoid giving the pirate the satisfaction of a reaction as anything else, but the same instinct that had whispered that something else had been there had also warned him not to look. He had seen nothing there afterward, but he had somehow sensed that if he had turned around during the conversation he would have encountered the same result. And if he had, then…well. Maybe nothing, but it was hard to shake the feeling that if he ever tried to see Sparrow that the Captain would vanish for good, just like Eurydice. And while he certainly didn't want the Pearl and her crew haunting the Dauntless indefinitely, they were inarguably a great help to the investigation, and even if he'd known a sure-fire way to banish them it wouldn't have seemed right somehow for them to depart without getting to see the end.
He didn't know whether his men felt the same, either about keeping the Pearl around until they caught Calavera or about attempting to see Sparrow and the rest, but he did know that no one had managed to see them. They saw plenty of evidence of their presence, of course, and with practice some of them had gotten quite good at spotting the Pearl's phantom wake even without the phosphorescence, but none of them had ever managed to see the ship or the pirates themselves. Though that apparently was not the case for the pirates they battled against, if one pirate captain's terrified cry of "He's grinning – he's coming for me, he's coming for me! He's come back from the grave for revenge – surrender, we all surrender, just don't let him get me!" was any indication.
Then again, he reflected, the men on the opposite side did not want to ever see Sparrow again, which might account for it in an odd sort of way.
The mist whispered, and if he let his eyes unfocus he could almost believe a ghostly arm was pointing him onward. Or perhaps it was just the shifting mist. Either way, he continued on through the streets, half-imagining he could hear around him the beating of a parrot's wings, the clacking of beads, the slosh of a half-filled canteen, the footfalls of unseen specters, his mind's eye painting images for him of what should be there though he could not turn to look as he carried the three-cornered hat through the eddying fog to every door or corner or alley where he was signaled to wait.
None of the Pearl's crew that he was certain were following him had told him what the point of the journey was, but looking at the windows above him, he could venture a good guess. Before their deaths, they had obviously spent much time in Tortuga; it was reasonable to assume that they might have friends still here, people that they cared about. And if he had been in such a position…he would be warning them, if they could hear. Telling them to leave, as soon as they could, for good if possible. And cautioning them not to fly under a pirate flag, or do anything that might draw Navy attention, at least not in the Caribbean.
If that was indeed what was happening…well. It was the last thing the Pearl's crew could do for them. He would not begrudge them the chance to save whatever closest thing to decency remained on this island. They had even more incentive than he did to ensure that the warning did not reach any of those who knew the information they needed, after all.
And so he continued his slow walk through the city in the mist with his phantom escort around him.
- - - - -
Soon afterward, ships of the Royal Navy arrived in Tortuga.
There were five in all, the HMS Dauntless in the lead followed by the Interceptor's replacement and the ship that had been temporarily assigned to Port Royal for the duration of the investigation, as well as the two from neighboring forts that Norrington had requested to for this operation some time before. With pirate activity at a record low due to Norrington's activities, there had been little opposition to letting them temporarily accompany him.
Norrington watched the approaching island with no discernable expression. None of the island's denizens had ever thought to wonder what the brown-haired fellow who had come to the pub a few times would have looked like in a wig and immaculate Royal Navy uniform. Certainly none of them had ever recognized the infamous Commodore.
And none of them did afterward, either, as the soldiers surged through the streets following the orders they had been given. In the chaos, none of the island's occupants really noticed how the soldiers went straight to certain parts of the city, almost as if they knew where to go and who to look for. They asked a few short sharp questions and when they did not get satisfactory answers they dragged those they found back to the harbor, where the officers waited to question them and the Commodore circled like a hawk.
Fires were nothing new to Tortuga, but that evening the city burned. Any ship Calavera's allies might have used to warn him was destroyed.
And the ships of the Fleet sailed away with a rough, charcoal-scrawled map and the bearings to the island they needed.
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