The fighting had barely started when Norrington waved a white kerchief from the tip of his sword. "Stop it, wait! We SURRENDER!" He jumped up on a box and continued to carry on. "ALL my men, lay down your weapons NOW!"
Will was shocked beyond belief – he had offered Norrington quarter without the slightest hope that the man would take it. Norrington hated pirates, after all, and his last experience with surrender had not been a good one. But still, for whatever reason he surrendered, and Will decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth.
He immediately ordered the soldiers all collected off the crippled ship and brought over to the Pearl. He escorted Norrington over himself, jubilant because a bloodbath had been averted, trying to reassure the poor former Commodore, who seemed quite nervous. "Really – we're not going to hurt you. I mean it, really."
"Mmm."
"Honestly, I'm glad it all worked out."
"Yes."
"I'm sorry about that trick with the prisoners. Are they all all right?"
"Pardon? Oh. Yes, yes, fine, Mr. Turner, it's all fine."
They looted Norrington's ship and then sank her. Everybody stood on deck to watch. It was getting crowded, with all the pirates, soldiers, and civilian captives, but it didn't occur to Will to make use of the brig. He would later regret this oversight very deeply.
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Charlotte didn't like the way the soldiers were exchanging glances and muttering to each other. When one of them took her aside and whispered, "You ought to get below, mum," she didn't waste time. She gathered up Albert and nudged a few of the other captives and headed for one of the cabins. Governor Swann was already there, and he helped usher everyone indoors. They had barely barricaded themselves in before the first shots were fired.
Norrington had thought this plan up once his ship was ruined, and had wrestled with himself over it for all of two minutes. It seemed underhanded in a way he didn't like, but on the other hand these were pirates for Heaven's sake, and they had only won the battle by using trickery in the first place! So he ordered his men to surrender, and when they were brought to the decks of the Pearl they all had blades and pistols hidden safely out of sight under their coats. He had worried that Turner would try to lock them up, but expected him too be too much a bleeding heart to cram them all into the brig. There would be some people locked up, he reasoned, and the rest loose out on deck. There they would wait for the right moment to strike.
He was thrilled when Turner didn't even think to lock them up at all. When it seemed a good time he gave the signal and the mayhem started.
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The Dutchman arrived not a moment too soon. Jack was in the rigging, with a better view than Elizabeth and Barbossa, who stood on the deck below. He had intended to communicate the news down to them, but found it all much too confusing. It seemed that the Pearl had won; it was not even damaged and the other ship had been sunk. Yet there was still a raging hand-to-hand battle going on. "Oh dear."
"What?" Elizabeth shouted up to him. "Jack, what's going on?"
"Board, Davy!" Jack was shouting. "Now would be a very good time to board!"
Fish-people tossed grappling hooks and swarmed over. Will tried to explain things to the soldiers he was fighting: "The monsters are with us! Lay down your weapons or you will be slaughtered!" But the soldiers understandably were frightened by Jones's crew and not very eager to surrender to them. More than a few were eventually slaughtered before Will got the mess under control. When he had arranged the surviving soldiers on the ground and corralled the fish-people to one side so they wouldn't frighten anyone worse, he looked up to see Davy Jones standing just beside him. He yelped in surprise and banged his head against the mast.
"Sorry." Jones did not look sorry at all. "Your Mr. Gibbs asked me over. What's the problem here?"
"The problem?" Will winced. Now that the adrenaline was fading it hurt to talk. It was a stab wound. Not a bad one. "The problem is we gave quarter to these people and they turned on us. You should be ashamed of yourself," he hissed to Norrington, who was sitting under guard by himself by the mast.
"Oh, shut it," Norrington snapped back. "You're no stranger to dirty fighting yourself. Pirate."
"Actually-" Everyone turned to look at Jack, who had swung over daintily on someone else's grappling hook. "Actually, Will generally fights with honor, to the intense frustration of all the other pirates around him. I think I'd have to agree with him, Norrington: you should be ashamed of yourself."
Davy Jones looked very interested. "Norrington, is it?" There was a moment of silence.
Jack's eyes darted from Jones to Norrington and back again. "Ah, ah, now, that's not fair," he said. "Davy, you lost him fair and square. Fair and square, mate, come on."
Jones snorted in disgust and gestured to his crew. "Find me anyone who might wish to talk business with me," he barked. "Fetch me the girl from off my ship and leave her here. In fact… leave them both." He turned to Jack. "I suppose if you're going after my heart you'll do better to have Barbossa with you too. Sparrow, if anything goes wrong…"
"You're a diamond, mate." Jack patted him on the shoulder. "It'll be fine – trust me."
Will winced at his choice of words, but Jones – the fool – didn't seem suspicious.
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Davy Jones had recruited a few of the dying and herded his crew back to their ship. That left only a cabin full of civilian captives, the pirate crew of the Black Pearl, and a set of twice-defeated piratehunters led by a man who was in fact feeling very ashamed of himself and hence very defensive.
"Three of you have been recently referring to yourselves as Captain," Norrington said haughtily. "Might I ask with whom I'm going to be dealing?"
Jack and Barbossa exchanged glances. "Your call, mate. We could use him."
That eliminates me, thought Barbossa. But Norrington wouldn't trust Jack and didn't respect Will. Who did that leave? He nudged Elizabeth.
"Me?" she hissed at him.
He shrugged. "If you embarrass yourself we can always kill him for you, destroy the evidence. We could use those soldiers for what's coming. Let's see what you can do, miss."
She nodded and addressed Norrington with confidence. "You'll be dealing with me."
"Well thank God for that," Norrington muttered. "Someone civilized. Listen, there are innocent people on this ship and we have to get them back to Port Royal. If the pirates cooperate I can almost guarantee that we'll show them clem-"
She reached without looking for Will's knife. It slid free from his belt with a satisfying whissh and felt comfortably warm in her hand. "You surrendered to us, not the other way round, James," she said flatly, "And I'll thank you to treat me with a little respect from now on. I'll give you one more chance. I want to strike a deal with you for the temporary use of your soldiers. Are you ready to parlay in earnest?" She walked over to him and dug the point of the weapon into his throat.
He winced and tilted his head back, looking irritated but not very afraid. "Oh, for Heaven's sake, Elizabeth, that hurts. Stop it."
Elizabeth yanked his coat open with her other hand and without another word sliced a big cut through the delicate skin over his collarbone. She slapped her hand over the bleeding and then let him go. As he stumbled backwards, clutching his chest with almost comic surprise, Elizabeth wrote quickly on the inside of her own forearm with his blood.
"I seem to remember you judge people first and foremost by the brand they wear," she said coldly. "You're going to need to take me seriously. Does this help?" She held up her arm.
The sight of a P written on Elizabeth in blood - his blood, no less - rendered Norrington temporarily speechless. This was the person he had been about to marry? "Are we clear now?" she persisted.
He looked into her eyes and they were angry and cold in ways even Jack Sparrow's had never been. "I'm beginning to think so."
"That's good, James, because I used to like you and I would hate to have to do you real harm. But I will, if you don't cooperate. So?"
"All right - I'll cooperate," Norrington stuttered, still a bit shaken. "I'll cooperate but for God's sake Elizabeth, take that thing off your arm!"
"No, I think I quite like it. Perhaps I can get Beckett to give me one that'll last. Now, I can't say I trust you after what you just did. Rope!" Someone handed her a piece. She circled around to Norrington's back, pulled his arms behind him and tied his wrists together – quickly and professionally. When she was finished, she was glad to see that he struggled for a moment. That way, he would know what a good job she had done, and if it was possible for him to be any more afraid of her, he would be.
"Now, this way. Ladies first." She gestured for him to precede her. When they reached the ladder downstairs she made him start his descent so that she had a height advantage of at least three feet before speaking. "You're going below to prevent a repeat of your last trick, miss. As a courtesy I'll send Jack Sparrow to speak with you, as you seem less afraid of him than of the rest of us." She was channeling Barbossa so well that her voice had acquired a singsongy quality that made the words even more mocking. She gestured carelessly to Jack. "Go on, follow him down there and explain what we want. I'll go turn up a bottle of smelling salts somewhere – in case he faints."
It was difficult for Elizabeth to continue to look angry; she felt so elated she wanted to dance. She'd had this Navy man, a former Commodore no less, completely cowed within thirty seconds. The captain was right - blood plus confidence was a powerful combination. Lost in thought, Elizabeth licked her fingers.
Norrington was shocked by the gesture. Jack was amused. Will was mildly uncomfortable. Barbossa was very proud of her... and very sorry she was about to be married.
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Jack was impressed with how thoroughly Elizabeth had cut through the prisoner's pride, but they needed him to do more than gape like a fish out of water. They needed him to make a firm and deep commitment to helping out this voyage to the best of his abilities. How to do that? First, Jack had to find a way of putting him a little more at ease.
He clattered about on the floor til he found a knife. "Aha!"
"Not you, too," Norrington said wearily.
Jack laughed. "Oh, no, mate, I'm just doing you a favor here." He stepped behind Norrington, much closer and more invasively than Elizabeth had done, and started to saw at the rope. "Goodness, the girl knows how to tie a knot!"
Norrington turned around to face him as soon as the ropes had parted. "How do you know I won't just kill you here?"
Because your pistol is spent from the LAST traitorous trick you thought up. "Because unlike Elizabeth and Will, who tend to judge people a bit harshly, I think there's still a good man under there."
Norrington snorted. "Morality lessons? From a pirate?"
"To a man who used Will's sense of mercy to try and kill him?" Jack challenged right back. "Yes."
"I'm not proud of that," Norrington said quietly.
"First honest thing you've ever said to me."
"Honest? Oh, you should talk!" He sighed. "Sparrow, give it up. Just tell me what you want from my men and I'll see about agreeing to it."
For a moment Jack considered looking for a gentle way to say it, but then just plunged ahead. "There's not much you can do besides agree, is there? We're fed up with offering you quarter for nothing. Therefore you have to offer us something to make us offer you anything, and I know you need us to offer you something because I know you and you won't see your men slaughtered. Therefore, I know you're going to agree to what I ask before I even ask it…which leads me to wonder why I bother to ask at all."
Norrington could feel himself becoming stupider from listening to Sparrow's nonsense. He tried to think of any response which might be sensible following that ridiculous speech. "The point?" he snapped finally.
"The point is I didn't bring you hear to negotiate."
"No, Elizabeth sent us here to negotiate," Norrington argued, sounding childish even to himself. Jack waited him out, and eventually he gave up. "Very well, Sparrow: why did you bring me here?" he said through gritted teeth.
Jack looked thrilled that his wayward pupil had finally asked the right question. "The promise of redemption." Norrington sniffed at the idea but didn't start objecting very vocally, which Jack took as a good sign. "I mean it, mate. It's a second chance."
"There's no such thing."
Jack jerked his shirt up over his head. "Yes, there is."
Norrington stared. "What in God's name…"
Jack had intended to keep the discussion focused on the possibility of a second chance for Norrington, but apparently he had misjudged the progress he was making towards forgiveness. He could feel control slipping away. Mistake, Jack, mistake, shhh. "Your fault," he informed him, complete with accusing pointing gesture. "Yours."
"My fault? How do you mean?"
"The heart! Bloody imbecile!" Jack turned away from him, hating to be seen losing his temper. Breathe.
"The…"
"The heart, the Kraken, hasn't anybody told you?" Jack's voice broke. Stop it, stop it, calm down. "Do you have any idea what-"
"Elizabeth said you'd been killed," Norrington whispered, "But then I saw you, and obviously I knew she was lying."
Jack was standing in the shadows, facing the wall. "I took us out into open water because I thought I had the heart to bargain with," he recited tonelessly. "My ship was sunk and I lost most of my crew, to very horrible deaths… which I witnessed. A very few of them survived. I was not among them. My friends sailed to the bloody ends of the world to fetch me back from the dead."
"No…"
"Yes!" Jack turned around and struck a pose. "Where do you think these came from, then, eh? D'you think you can just… patch up this sort of thing? Sew people's arms back on once the Kraken's torn them off? Hmm?"
"I…" Norrington searched for a way not to believe him, but unfortunately all he could think of was "Turner's got scars now, too. Fatal injuries…"
"Yes, our dear friend William Turner has also been over to the other side," Jack said wearily. He tried to get back to business. "Just listen here, all right? The lot of us owe Davy Jones a debt. So long as Beckett has that blasted heart, we're not safe. That's why we need your cooperation, and you'd better deliver, or so help me I'll cheer Barbossa on when he disembowels you." He paused and put a hand to his chin as though thinking. "I've seen him do that, actually. It's really not very pret-"
Norrington silenced him. "Be as big a fool as you want, Sparrow, it's too late now." He watched Jack put his shirt back on. "Now go away, would you? I need to think."
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TBC.
Woohoo, I think I smell salvation in Norrington's future!
Thanks to everybody who's reviewed! Your comments give me ideas about what comes next, so this story is turning out just as suspenseful for me as for everybody else hehe.
JeanieBeanie33: Gibbs, loyal? Ha! He's always the first to advocate casting off the moment it looks like someone's fallen behind. I'd love to know whose idea it was at the end of CotBP to come back for Jack during the hanging; my money's on Ana Maria and she probably had to kick Gibbs's ass to get it to happen.