Elizabeth watched as the rowdy crowd cheerfully tossed an unconscious James Norrington into the mud with the pigs, and for an instant she almost regretted smashing the bottle over his head. But her goal had been to prevent something much worse from happening, and she supposed she had at least succeeded in doing that. She had seen James fight before, and the only man she knew to be better with a sword was her own William Turner. Had the brawlers of the Twelve Daggers continued to provoke him, they most likely would have ended up dead, and she had no desire to see her old friend branded a murderer in the lawless streets of Tortuga.
As the drunken patrons shuffled past her to reenter the tavern, she looked down at the man left alone, sprawled on the ground, and some part of her was suddenly filled with nearly unbearable sadness. She remembered him so clearly from a year ago, the last day she had seen him. He had smiled sorrowfully at her as she stood beside Will atop the fort in Port Royal, and, in his own way, had told the blacksmith to care for her. He had wished them both the best of luck before turning and walking away. James had always been like that, a quiet, stern, but kind gentleman, even in defeat.
The next day he had boarded the Dauntless and set sail in pursuit of Jack Sparrow. News had eventually come that the ship had been lost in a storm off Tripoli, but the only word she had received of James himself was a letter in his own hand sent from the British colony on Minorca. It had arrived over four months ago, stating that he had resigned his commission, and that had been all. Her father had thought it a shame, given James's rather brilliant naval career, but the news had been pushed aside and nearly forgotten in the excitement of planning the wedding. In truth, Elizabeth had thought very little about James Norrington until Lord Cutler Beckett had arrived with a warrant for his arrest. But even then, she had been much more concerned about the other two warrants.
Tortuga was quite possibly the last place she had expected to find him. In her mind he was still in the Mediterranean, because it seemed almost impossible that he would return to the Caribbean without first visiting Port Royal, and he had never once visited Port Royal. It made seeing him in the Twelve Daggers all the more shocking, especially given his condition. The man she remembered, who had considered it his duty to serve as an avatar of justice and to set an example for others, had never been one to indulge in drink or petty violence. Yet here he was, passed out in the dirt and living the life of a vagrant sot who possessed a notably less-than-sterling personality. She didn't know what troubles had befallen him in the months since he had penned that letter, but she did know that she couldn't simply leave him here. She had known him since she was a girl, and he had always shown her nothing but courtesy and respect. It was the least she could do to repay his kindness. And perhaps, buried somewhere within her, she knew that she had played no small role in the chain of events that had led to his presumably disastrous voyage. Maybe this was fate giving her a chance to atone for that.
As he began to stir, she slowly approached him before dropping to one knee beside him. She gently took hold of his shoulder and grabbed the fabric of his ragged uniform, struggling to lift him out of the puddle in which he was lying, face down, before he drowned.
"James Norrington," she said softly, sadness in her voice as she managed to roll him over onto his side. He blinked blankly up at her, and she sighed. "What has the world done to you?"
When he opened his eyes again, his head was throbbing to a staccato of pain and his mouth was half-filled with a watery mixture of sludge and filth. Instinctively he tried to spit, attempting to push himself up only to find that his limbs were made of lead. Instead he only managed to feebly squelch in mud. He gave up, opting to stay where he was in relative oblivion until his strength returned. His senses were still benumbed, and he could vaguely tell that he was somewhere wet, quiet, and dimly lit. It all seemed very familiar, and he thought he might have been here before.
The sudden hand on his shoulder felt like it was gripping him through layers and layers of cloth, the sensation dull and distant, but as his consciousness slowly returned the touch became more tangible. He was trying to move again when something roughly took hold of his coat and began to pull. Somewhere, very far away, a voice said his name.
The thing holding his coat lifted him halfway off the ground and he scrambled to prop himself up with an arm before he looked up. And all he could do was gape, because what he saw was Elizabeth. And something tore at him inside, because he immediately knew that it wasn't real. It was just another dream he had found at the bottom of a bottle.
"What has the world done to you?" she asked, and her voice sounded just as devastatingly sweet as he remembered it. Suddenly she was looking at him in the most heartbreaking way possible, and awareness struck him like a lightning bolt.
"Elizabeth?" he whispered in disbelief, finding his strength and rolling onto his back. She smiled sadly at him and stood up, offering him a hand that he took to haul himself to his feet. "Good God, what on earth are you doing here?" The words had hardly left his lips when another wave of pain crashed through his head and he swayed, stumbling to the nearest wall and leaning heavily against it, nearly doubling over. Elizabeth practically ran after him as though she expected him to drop dead at any moment, concern plainly written on her face. The sensation passed quickly enough and he straightened up, spitting some of the dirt grit from his mouth, but he could still feel the bile threatening to rise in his throat.
"I could very well ask you the same thing!" she exclaimed, obviously no longer finding him to be in danger of keeling over.
He struggled for a moment with the question before frowning at her. "Didn't you receive my letter?"
She stared back. "James, I hardly think that a letter telling me nothing save that you had left the Navy is much of an explanation for finding you here," she snapped.
Only then did it occur to him that she had no concept of why he had resigned his post. He hadn't included the details when he had written to her, unable to bear putting the loss of his ship and crew into words, assuming that news of his failure and disgrace would quickly find its way to Port Royal. Apparently he had been wrong.
As he dragged the tattered sleeve of his uniform across his face, he felt a wry smile tug at his lips.
"I trust you're aware of what became of the Dauntless?" he asked, pushing himself away from the wall to look down at her. She nodded, but her expression betrayed that she didn't understand the connection.
"We heard that it was caught in a storm and lost. Father and I could scarcely believe it. We were worried that you had-" She bit her lip, glancing at the ground before going on, "We were so relieved when you wrote to us. At least then we knew you were alive." She looked at him earnestly, reaching forward to gently touch his arm, "Thank God you survived it, James."
But James was fairly certain that God had had nothing to do with it. If there was any mercy or justice in this life, he would have died that day. Instead he had ended up here to pay his dues.
It had been over half a year since he had spoken to anyone about his resignation or the motivation behind it, not on the hellish four-month voyage from Minorca, and certainly not here. But now he felt compelled to tell Elizabeth everything. Perhaps then she would have some inkling of what she had put him through.
Because it was, at least to some degree, her fault. He knew very well that every decision had been his to make, but behind every decision had been her manipulation. In his heart he had always known their relationship to be a lie, even when she had begged him to go after Turner, invoking the phrase "as a wedding gift." Of course she had used him, and he had known it, but he had so desperately wanted her to love him. In the end she had chosen the blacksmith, and he had still made sacrifices for her. Because of her and Turner's camaraderie with Sparrow, he had delayed pursuit of the Pearl for a day, and now his ship was at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea along with over half of his crew. Had he only set sail the instant the Pearl had headed for open water, the pirates would have never made it to Tripoli. They would have never even left the Caribbean.
And even after all of the failure and suffering at her expense, he still was in love with Elizabeth Swann.
Perhaps that was his greatest sin of all.
The familiar, volatile mixture of self-loathing and rage began to stir within him. Now that the initial shock of encountering his former fiancé in the streets of Tortuga had worn off, he had come to realize that if he was here, speaking with her, then Jack Sparrow was elsewhere and very much alive. He thought back to the moment he had pointed his pistol, finger on the trigger, ready to fire... and he had seen her. He had thought it a hallucination, but now he knew otherwise. This knowledge, combined with the liquor, the pain, and the flood of emotion that Elizabeth had brought with her, did nothing to improve his spirits.
Was she to ruin everything he set his mind to?
Thank God you survived it, James.
The words echoed in his aching mind as he pulled away from her touch and took a few unsteady steps back, a savage scowl crossing his face. "Oh yes," he mockingly started, knowing that once he ventured down this path of conversation there was no going back. He dramatically threw out his arms to the omnipresent filth that was Tortuga, wheeling around to address the empty alley. "Thank God that I lived to see my ship destroyed, my crew dead, and my commission lost, so that I could come to live on this wonderful island!" When he turned back to face Elizabeth again, she said nothing, but her eyes whispered pity.
In an instant he closed the distance between them and she very nearly backed away when he stopped only inches away from her. He saw the pity usurped by a flicker of fear, and a sensation of bitter triumph resounded somewhere within him. Maybe now she understood that he was not the man she had once known.
"You wanted to know why I'm here?" he asked quietly, contempt in his voice, "Because I am singlehandedly responsible for the sinking of one of the premiere warships of His Majesty's Royal Navy."
To Elizabeth's credit, she looked genuinely confused, and he almost laughed.
"What, did you think it was just bad luck that the Dauntless ended up at the bottom of the ocean?" he scoffed. The words were coming faster and harder, and he could feel his pitch start to rise as it had when he had spoken with Gibbs. "We were hardly a day behind the Pearl when that bloody hurricane hit. Sparrow would have already come and gone by the time we made Tripoli if we waited it out. So do you know what I did? I gave the order to sail into it." He paused for effect. "I sent the most renowned ship in the Caribbean into a hurricane. I even ignored the advice of three of my officers, because who could possibly know better than the youngest commodore in the fleet?" The words dripped with sarcasm, and his scowl deepened. "There were seven hundred and thirty four men aboard the Dauntless. Do you know how many they pulled from the water?" he prodded, eyes burning with sorrow, "Two hundred and eight."
Never, as long as he lived, would he forget those figures. They were forever branded in his memory, along with their difference.
"By the time I was well enough to face the Admiralty, I already knew I was finished. The only reason I chose to resign my commission was so that they wouldn't have the satisfaction of stripping it from me."
He turned as though to stumble off down the street, but stopped after a few yards to turn back towards her.
"So, have I answered your question thoroughly enough, Miss Swann," he drawled, and he saw her flinch at the use of her proper name, "Or shall I tell you how I hear the dying screams of my crew at night, unless I am so staggeringly drunk that I simply lose consciousness?"
The blood in his head was pounding now, exacerbating the pain and the nausea, and he started out of the alley again, this time with every intention of leaving.
"I've come after Will," blurted Elizabeth suddenly, and he rounded on her.
"What, has he run off?" he shot back. Hot indignance flushed her face at the implication, but she swallowed whatever insult she had been about to hurl as she walked up beside him.
"He came here to look for Jack," she explained, sounding almost desperate, "Cutler Beckett of the East India Trading Company wants Jack's compass and he's sent Will to find it."
"His broken compass?" he interjected, but she ignored him.
"Beckett was going to arrest us both for helping Jack escape. He's offered us a full pardon if Will brings back the compass."
"And you're here because you didn't trust your dearly beloved to rescue you?"
He had never thought himself a cruel person, but watching her anger flare with every remark was giving him an undeniable level of pleasure.
"I'm here because I wasn't about to sit by and do nothing while the man I love-" (she stressed the words) "- risked his life for me!" She met his eyes, jaw set. "I won't let him return to Port Royal without that compass," she finished, her voice hard and cold with determination.
"And how do you intend to persuade the good Captain Sparrow to cooperate?" he asked sarcastically, swaying as the sick feeling grew in the pit of his stomach. He lurched to the wall and leaned his back against it, slowly allowing himself to slide down until he was sitting in the muddy street. Somehow it felt much better here.
Elizabeth frowned at him for a moment before resignedly lowering herself beside him and crossing her legs.
"Beckett's offering Jack Letters of Marque signed by the King. Unchallenged pardon and commission as a privateer for the East India Trading Company."
He turned his head to stare at her with furrowed brows. Why was the Company prepared to employ one of the Caribbean's most notorious pirates in exchange for a compass that didn't point north? He intended to find out.
Perhaps Sparrow was worth more to him alive after all.
"I doubt he'll consider that to be much of an improvement over a prison cell," he replied, and a wry smirk crossed his face, "Though certainly more agreeable than the hangman's noose."
Elizabeth smiled at him weakly before lowering her head to stare at her knees, fidgeting with the hem of her shirt. The commodore she had left behind a year ago would have shown concern at this and asked politely what the matter was, but the man sitting beside her now simply closed his eyes and rested his head against the cool stone of the wall, trying to will away the pain in his temple while ruminating on ways to rebuild his life. If the compass was truly all that Beckett cared about, he imagined it would make little difference who handed it over, whether it was Turner or a disgraced former officer of the Royal Navy.
"James," she started quietly, her voice cutting dreamlike through the haze of his thoughts, "Beckett's issued a warrant for you as well."
This time he did snort in laughter, because the situation was so wonderfully absurd. Despite the ship he had sunk, the crew he had drowned, and the men he had probably killed in this Tortugan hell, he faced execution for giving Jack Sparrow one day's head start. It seemed he would be paying for that mistake until the end of time.
"Come with me."
Of all the things he had imagined her to say next, that had not been one of them. His eyes flew open and he turned to stare, only to find her already watching him, silently pleading.
"James, come with us back to Port Royal when we take the compass to Beckett. We can bargain with him to have the charges against you dropped," she explained, and the way she was looking at him made his heart ache for something he could never have, "If you stay here and they find you you'll be hanged."
He might have told her that death would be a welcome change, that he deserved it, that he had even, in his darkest of hours, contemplated ending his own life. But instead he said nothing, because if he hadn't already decided to join the crew of the Pearl, her words would have convinced him.
And so the two of them, a former lady and a former gentlemen, each shaped by the deeds of Jack Sparrow into the person they were now, sat beside one another in silence, staring out into the smoky, torchlit night and listening to the drifting notes of a sea shanty amidst the shouts of another fight.
When he finally felt her move next to him and she stood up, offering him a hand, he took it without thinking twice.