Author's Note:

So, rather long chapter this time. But we do get some insight into the extent of James's level of responsibility for the sinking of the Dauntless.

It might be a while before I update again. College has intervened.

Favorites/follows are greatly appreciated, as well as reviews! Reviews keep me motivated to continue writing.

The wind was picking up in the rigging when he lifted the spyglass to the horizon and watched as black sails dipped below the waves.

"Damn," he hissed under his breath, not caring if swearing was the gentlemanly thing to do or not. Sparrow was making for Tripoli. Of course he was making for Tripoli. There was no better refuge for pirates in these waters, making this passage unpopular even with the Royal Navy. The Dauntless herself had narrowly avoided two Barbary corsairs in as many days.

He stepped away from the railing and collapsed the spyglass, looking up. Miles off of the starboard bow, to the south, dark clouds were massing and the air was graying with the promise of rain. Another gust of wind blew across the deck, nearly taking his hat with it, and he turned towards the strip of open, calm sky straight ahead in the east.

This was the closest they had been to the Pearl in weeks. Of course, she was a smaller and faster ship, but he, the youngest commodore the fleet had ever known, had not earned a reputation as the scourge of piracy in the Caribbean because he lacked intuition. He had anticipated the Pearl's movements across the length of the Atlantic and then through Gibraltar, always finding some tactical advantage to exploit when they fell behind, poring over every map and chart in his office to ensure that they profited from any obscure geographic anomaly. He had pushed his ship hard and his crew harder, ignoring the mounting whispers that he had exceeded his orders by continuing the pursuit this far east. But he was bound by the law, and by the law it was his duty to rid the seas of the most notorious pirate ship to sail the Spanish Main. And now he had a real chance at doing just that.

Over the past five months, he had come to know the mind of his adversary. The longer he played this game of cat and mouse with Sparrow, the easier it became to predict what the pirate would do, because, even as erratic as Sparrow was, he was not without patterns. Specifically, he never heedlessly risked the life of his beloved Pearl. He treated that ship like a blood relative, and wouldn't have agreed to put her in harm's way unless it were absolutely necessary.

For example, he wouldn't plunge headlong into a tropical storm off the coast of Tripoli.

Armed with this knowledge, Commodore James Norrington made a decision.

He turned around towards the ship's wheel and crossed the deck to where Lieutenant Theodore Groves stood beside Master Darby. "Mister Allam," he began, handing his lieutenant the spyglass as he addressed the helmsman, "Set a course southeast by east."

Allam, both hands on the wheel, looked back in confusion before glancing from side to side, as if waiting for an outcry of protest from the other officers. None came.

"Aye sir," he replied after an awkward pause, "Sou'east by east." He swung the wheel right.

Norrington clasped his hands behind his back and watched as the bowsprit aimed for the black sky, fully aware that Groves and Darby were staring at him as if he had gone mad.

"But, sir," ventured Groves finally, once it became obvious that his captain had no intention of rescinding the order, "The Pearl is continuing her easterly route..."

"You believe Sparrow intends to make port in Tripoli?" Darby asked, his deep, gruff voice cutting like a knife through the hesitant atmosphere.

"Indeed," replied Norrington dryly, "A ship the size of the Pearl will need to refit and resupply after so lengthy a time at sea."

This was the one inherent advantage that they possessed over their prey: as a first-rate ship of the line, the Dauntless was capable of carrying an enormous payload, allowing her to stay in open water for much longer periods of time without fear of expending provisions, a fact that had proved to be useful on more than one occasion.

"And you hope to intercept her before she can do so," concluded Darby.

"Assuming she stays her present course and circumvents the storm, her arrival at her destination will be delayed by at least a day. Our best opportunity in which to take her is to sail straight for the coast and situate ourselves in the waters surrounding Tripoli. There we can wait for Sparrow to make the southerly turn, bringing the Pearl directly to us."

There was a thoughtful silence.

"It is a risky plan, sir," Darby said uncertainly, his brows knitting.

Of course it is, thought Norrington to himself, Do you honestly believe I achieved my status without making calculated gambles? He wanted to yell this at the ship's master, but instead maintained his familiar stolid facade.

"Would it not be just as effective to follow the Pearl and then wait for her to leave Tripoli?" asked Groves, feeling his way through the words, choosing them carefully so as not to appear insubordinate, "We could then avoid the weather altogether and not risk weighing anchor in pirate-infested waters while we wait for the Sparrow to sail south."

"No, Lieutenant," droned Norrington with an impatient sigh, "Sparrow is not likely to delay once he makes port. He could easily be gone by the time we reach the coast." Groves seemed to ponder this. "After all, it is not our speed that has allowed us to maintain the pursuit for this long," added the commodore pointedly, looking at his two officers.

They said nothing.

He turned on his heel and walked down onto the quarterdeck before entering his office, shutting the door behind him. Though the thin glass paneling provided little soundproofing from the bustle of the rest of the ship, this place continued to be his one bastion of solitude. Despite the enormity of the Dauntless, he had yet to find a quieter location, unless he wished to sit beside the munitions and powder kegs in the hold. The thought was tempting.

In truth he had much preferred the Interceptor, with her clean lines, unholy speed, and sparse crew. She had been a lean ship, nothing of excess on her, with very little to come between a man and the sea. He had enjoyed that simplicity. His issue with the Dauntless, the great beast lumbering across the Mediterranean, was that there was simply quite a lot of her. She embowered more than six times as many men as had been aboard the Interceptor and spread them out over twice as many decks. Of course, he would be lying if he said that it wasn't exhilarating knowing that one hundred cannons and nearly eight hundred seamen were at his disposal, awaiting his orders. While he had never particularly lusted for power, that did not prevent him from appreciating it. But even so, the additional duties that accompanied his rank annoyed him. He performed them admirably, because it was in his character to excel at whatever one attempted, but he often wished that he could do away with them altogether. How nice it would be to concern himself only with the matters immediately pertaining to the sailing of his ship, cutting out the administrative details entirely...

It was at such times that he understood the allure of piracy.

He swept off his hat and wig, dropping them onto a chair as he made his way across the room, running a hand through his own unkept hair. He hadn't bothered to cut it in weeks, instead resorting to tying it back and tucking away the loose strands as best he could. He had much more pressing matters to worry about.

The decanter sat where it always sat, on the narrow wooden table against the wall with the pristine crystal snifters next to it, looking just as out of place as the rest of the office amidst the harshness of shipboard life. He picked it up and filled a glass before looking morosely at the small amount of brandy left in the bottle. His supply of liquor had been diminishing more rapidly as of late, but he didn't dare advertise the fact.

Taking a careful sip, enjoying the burn of the alcohol, he walked to his desk, folded himself into the chair behind it, and allowed the tension to ease from his muscles. The windows at the stern of the ship had been opened, allowing a breeze to stir the close air, and he watched the green waters of the Mediterranean swirl and froth in the wake of the Dauntless. It really was a beautiful sight, the waves glinting with the golden light of a sinking afternoon sun, but still he longed for the Caribbean. He could almost see it as he stared into the sea, the crystal clear bays and the lush palms, the strong walls of Fort Charles crowning Port Royal. He could also see Elizabeth Swann standing atop those walls, arm in arm with William Turner.

She still invaded his thoughts, no matter how hard he tried to rid himself of her. Despite his acceptance of her choice, despite the months that had passed, despite the pursuit that constantly occupied him, her memory continued to persist. Sometimes she appeared beside the blacksmith, but more often than not she was pressed into one of his fantasies of a future that might have been.

They could have built a life together.

They almost had. She had been his fiancé after all, even if only for the briefest of times. It could have worked, because he would have done anything for her. He thought she had understood that, but he had never openly expressed his true feelings and then realized too late that Elizabeth had mistaken his reserve for a lack of passion. Turner, on the other hand, wore his heart on his sleeve, and that had made all the difference.

The shadows in the room had lengthened and he was squinting at the brilliant fireball on the western horizon when the knock came, abruptly ending his reverie.

"Enter," he said, downing the last swallow of brandy in his glass and pushing himself out of the chair. Behind him he heard the familiar groan of the door on its hinge and when he turned around, his first lieutenant was standing inside his office.

"Gillette," said Norrington, smiling tiredly. He knew perfectly well why Thomas was here. "Have you come as an officer or as a friend?"

"Both, I'm afraid," replied the other as he walked the length of the room to the desk, distaste in his voice.

Norrington's smile grew wry and he emptied the contents of the decanter into both his glass and another, which he offered to his lieutenant. Gillette gratefully accepted.

"I suppose you're here to inform me of my shortcomings and failures as the commander of this vessel," Norrington said dryly, prompting an expression of embarrassment from Gillette, who glanced down at the carpeted floor.

"Lieutenant Groves did tell me of your orders," he admitted.

Norrington knew that this was the polite way to say that Groves had complained about their earlier conversation. He walked back to the windows and gazed out at the sun as it scorched the waves at the edge of the world. "And what is your opinion?"

The pause was just long enough for the commodore to know that Thomas agreed with Darby and Groves. He heard a sigh behind him, turning around to see the lieutenant staring fixedly at one of the charts spread across the desk, but not actually reading it. He was searching for words instead. When Gillette finally looked up, he met his senior officer's eyes with a frown.

"James, you know that I want as much as you to bring Sparrow to justice..." he finally said.

There was a tense silence.

"You believe we should follow the Pearl to Tripoli?" asked Norrington quietly.

"That is one course of action," Gillette replied, "I simply don't think it wise to charge blindly into a storm."

"And that's exactly the mentality that Sparrow expects of us," snapped Norrington, his eyes beginning to smolder with frustration. He had thought that at least Gillette might understand. "He will anticipate us to use caution, which is why he will double his efforts to lose us between now and the time he leaves port." Annoyed, he took a draft of brandy. "It's not as though we haven't weathered storms before."

Of course they had. They had crossed the bleeding Atlantic, for God's sake. The Dauntless was, by now, a proven ship.

"Master Darby and I believe it to have the look of a hurricane," insisted Gillette.

They had sailed through one of those as well, Norrington was sure, but on that occasion it had not been intentional.

For what felt like a long time he glared at his lieutenant, almost sneering. He wanted to make some sarcastic remark about how the man obviously didn't want this hellish voyage to end, how he didn't want to see the Caribbean– or his wife– ever again. But he couldn't bring himself to stoop so low as to insult an officer. Gillette would have probably taken the jibe swimmingly, but that wasn't the point. He was still a captain and commander, and he could no longer demand the respect of his subordinates if he resorted to petty digs at the first sign of a disagreement.

"Do you realize that this pursuit could end within the week?" he finally asked quietly.

"Yes, it could," Gillette answered, before adding, daringly: "But not because we achieved our goal."

Their eyes locked.

"What are you suggesting, Lieutenant?" Norrington pressed, his voice as cold and dangerous as black ice.

"What I am saying, Commodore," Gillette fired back, tossing away decorum, "Is that while the men would follow you to the ends of the earth, morale is hardly high. We have been at sea for weeks. We are long overdue for repairs. The simple fact is that we are not in peak condition and in no state to brave a hurricane!"

But, somewhere during the argument, Norrington had become unpersuadable. He had latched onto the thought of ending this dance with the Pearl and now his mind would not let it go. He wanted to see Jamaica again. He wanted to see Fort Charles again. He even wanted to see Elizabeth again. But most of all, he wanted to see Jack Sparrow standing on the gallows again. Slowly, he set down the brandy glass and placed his hands against the top of the desk. Any atmosphere of friendship between the two men had now been entirely eclipsed by their ranks.

"I want to see black sails in range of our guns within three days' time. Do I make myself clear, Lieutenant?" he questioned in a low, harsh tone.

Gillette stiffened, putting down his own drink and taking a step back. He came to attention and raised his hand to his forehead. "Sir," he said curtly, finishing the salute, before turning on his heel and briskly leaving. The door did not shut quietly after him.

When his subordinate had gone, Norrington hung his head with a sigh, staring down at the map of the African coast that was pressed beneath his palms. He could see the Pearl's route so clearly on the parchment, the way it horseshoed around towards Tripoli in an arc that he intended to cut straight through. He knew that by making for the port he was asking a great deal of his crew, but if they could only see that he was trying to put an end to this goose chase... It was the first opportunity they had been given since Gibraltar to decisively finish their mission, and Lord knew if they would be given another chance soon. So he had made the hard decision, even though that decision involved a very large risk, and the Dauntless and everyone aboard had become chips in his massive, calculated gamble.

If he lost, there would be hell to pay.

Later that night, when the sun had fallen into the sea, he walked alone on the deck of the ship. He stopped on the forecastle, squinting into the inky blackness ahead as the wind whipped at his hair, while the creak of canvas and rope was lost amidst the roar of the bow cutting into chop. Something hit him on the shoulder, and he looked up.

It started to rain.

When he awoke in unfamiliar surroundings, he nearly overturned the hammock, groping wildly in the dark for something solid to steady him until he finally realized that he was no longer curled up in a filthy Tortugan alleyway or sprawled on a cot in a derelict inn. He was aboard the Pearl. And he was now a member of her crew. That thought alone was enough to sicken any sane man, in his opinion, but hardly explained the soreness at the back of his skull or the splitting headache nesting just behind his eyes.

He concluded that he was suffering from a terrific hangover.

He didn't remember drinking quite that much, but then again, he never did. And each time when he regained consciousness and was miserable, he typically remedied the situation with another bottle of rum. However, he was fairly certain that any decent liquor on this vessel was in Sparrow's private supply and he was in no state to attempt a theft. This time, it seemed, he would have to remain miserable.

As he stared up at the nearly invisible ceiling, folded awkwardly in the hammock and sobering, he began to piece together the events that had led him here. He remembered the Twelve Daggers and his failed attempt to kill Sparrow; he remembered that this attempt had failed because of Elizabeth; and he remembered that someone had smashed a bottle over his head.

That explained the soreness, at least.

He also remembered speaking to Elizabeth in a deserted street before the speaking had turned nearly to shouting, and the thought stirred up a slurry of anger, remorse, and desire. In that one conversation he had managed to destroy every pleasant fantasy she might have had about him or his life, and he had enjoyed doing it. As he replayed the scene in his mind, he couldn't bring himself to wish that he hadn't said those things. He had wanted her to hear his story so that she could understand him, something that she had never been able to do in the past. Because in that past, that previous life where he was still Commodore Norrington and not simply James, he had bottled his emotions all too often, and in the end it had cost him. He had vowed not to make that mistake again.

Last night, he obviously hadn't. Now his regret was that he had not been gentler about it. Conversations from last night began emerge, bringing with them visions of Jack's compass, the heart of Davy Jones, and Letters of Marque officiated by the king. Fate had handed him this second chance to rebuild his life and regain what he had lost, but he feared that he had already destroyed any chance of regaining Elizabeth, as a friend or otherwise.

Good God, why did he even still care what she thought of him? He had destroyed himself once because of her. He had learned from it. Why then did he still feel the pull of that selfsame path? Was he to be forever drawn to her like a moth to the flame? He had always been in such control of his emotions, until the events a year ago had ended that other life and started his downward spiral. A fundamental change had happened then, when he had realized what he had lost because of that control. Now he knew he could never go back to having it. That trait had died with the good commodore, but Lord how he wished he had it now. Maybe then he wouldn't be so utterly affected by her presence. She was his opiate: addicting and intoxicating, but leading only to ruin.

The Pearl lurched, jostling the hammocks together, and he felt the nausea from the night before suddenly rise in his throat. He stared harder at the ceiling, sucking in a sharp breath and focusing on willing away the sick feeling, but the stifling heat, the stench of sweat, and the drone of snoring crew members were doing him no favors. When the ship rocked again he rolled over, landing with a thud on all fours before unsteadily pushing himself to his feet. Blood rushed to his head and black roiled at the corners of his vision, but he grabbed a beam overhead and started slowly for the end of the berth. The stairs leading to the upper decks were just visible in the yellow light of dim lanterns, and as he headed towards them it occurred to him that he had absolutely no memory of coming down here last night. It also occurred to him that he hadn't deemed it necessary to take off his boots, or any other article of clothing. In fact, the only things that seemed to be missing were his hat, with the wig fairly well encrusted into it, and his cutlass, which he hoped was somewhere close by, because he had a feeling that he was going to be needing it sooner rather than later.

He lurched up the first set of steps to the gun deck and then practically crawled up the second set until he emerged in the open air, and the sudden chill of a cool night breeze felt more welcome to him than a woman's touch. Very deliberately, he went to the side of the Pearl, curled over the railing, and retched into the sea.

It helped immediately.

He spit, breathing in the scent of the brine on the wind, and was just beginning to feel human again when the voice sounded behind him.

"Well, if it isn't the good former commodore!" it said derisively.

Muttering a curse, he turned around, knowing precisely who he would find.

It was Pintel, grinning savagely and accompanied by Ragetti, who was holding his wooden eye in one hand, scraping at it absently with a knife.

"He don't look so good," commented Ragetti, regarding James with a grimace.

"Yeh he does seem a bit peaked, don't he?" Pintel seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. "Looks to me like he can't hold his liquor."

James rolled his eyes. "Oh, please," he drawled, "If you tasted the quality of the swill I've been living on for the past two months you'd be heaving it up too."

Pintel, considering this, frowned. James scowled back.

"How on earth did you two blithering idiots manage to escape the noose? Certainly not as theatrically as our dear Captain Sparrow?"

Pintel opened his mouth to reply but Ragetti cut him off.

"It was me eye," he said proudly, a stupid grin crossing his face, "I got the dog ta play fetch with me eye. So when–"

"When he went ta pick it up, he dropped the keys, see?" interrupted Pintel as he bared his yellowed teeth again in amusement.

"Oi, I'm tellin' the story!" Ragetti exclaimed, looking genuinely offended before roughly elbowing the shorter man. Pintel growled back and it looked as though they were going to brawl until they were stopped by the sound of laughter.

It was really less of a laugh than it was a snort that dissolved into cynical chuckling, but it was unmistakably coming from James, and they both turned to stare. He was looking at them, eyebrows raised in amusement, as he leaned against the side of the ship, his back to the sea and his elbows propped on the rough wood. The chuckling finally faded into a smirk and he pushed himself away from the railing.

"And I thought that nothing could no longer surprise me," he remarked wryly. Pintel and Ragetti said nothing, and he didn't intend to give them the chance to. He couldn't handle dealing with the crewmen of the Pearl at this hour, and that included those on deck as well as the ones below. What he wanted was to be alone, and he knew of only one place on this God-forsaken ship where he could possibly accomplish that.

He grabbed hold of the ropes and swung onto the ratlines, the two pirates still staring, before beginning to scale them as though he had done this every day of his life. He actually hadn't been in the rigging in years, but muscle memory was a curious thing. For instance, he knew that no matter how long he went without holding a sword, the reflexes would return in an instant the next time he picked up a blade. His skills as a sailor were the same. It didn't matter that he had spent the majority of the past two months growing roots in Tortuga: he immediately felt at home with the waves somewhere beneath his feet.

He reached the underside of the top, muscles aching from disuse, before using the futtock shrouds to haul himself over the edge of the platform. It was spacious here, with enough room for a man to easily walk around, but he simply scooted across the wooden boards until he was sitting against the mast. There was a clear line of sight to the horizon, shining dimly in the moonlight. And it was quiet. Good Lord, it was quiet. The only sounds were the faint whisper of the sea against the hull and the thud of the sails. He knew, of course, that this would all change at dawn, but until then he could enjoy some small measure of solitude.

And then he would have to face the rest of the crew.

He had already steeled himself for the jeers and the insults. He was, after all, trapped aboard this floating prison with nearly a hundred criminals, all of whom he intimately hated, and all of whom felt exactly the same way about him. Who knew how long it would take before they tired of reminding him that he, James Norrington, the scourge of piracy, was now a deckhand on their ship.

For an instant he wondered why in God's name he had thought this a good idea, but then reminded himself what was at stake. Jack's compass, the so-called heart of Davy Jones... a fresh start. Because somewhere in Port Royal, perhaps sitting in his old office, were Letters of Marque offering status as a privateer. It wasn't the King's Navy, but it was better than this. All he had to do was bide his time until the opportune moment... Of course, his plan would require some significant betrayal of Jack Sparrow in the future, but that was hardly a problem. If the plan were altered to include killing Jack Sparrow, even better.

He had become a treacherous man in the past two months.

But was he heartless enough to forfeit Elizabeth to the East India Trading Company? If he claimed either the compass or the heart as a bargaining chip for the Letters, then he left Elizabeth and William nothing to trade for their lives. Their warrants would never be voided, and they would be arrested and hanged. He could try bartering with Beckett for their safety, but there were no guarantees. Beckett could just as easily have him killed as well before taking the prize for himself.

A small, unselfish part of him, one of the few fragments the commodore had left behind, began to churn. Immediately he tried to squelch it, but it continued to itch at the back of his mind. He focused on the future. He could captain his own ship again. Better yet, he would no longer be bound by the sometimes tedious regulations of the Royal Navy. This waking nightmare would end, and he would be a respectable man again. And all he had to do to achieve this was follow through with the plan he had set in motion by coming aboard. But still he could not shake the thought that while he would rise out of hell, Elizabeth would be cast into it.

He knew that somewhere below him, beneath the decks of the Pearl, she was sleeping. If he had wanted to, he could have gone and found her, even spoken with her. After all the months of imagining her and constructing fantasies, it didn't seem possible that she could be so terribly close. And now, after all of that time spent carefully guarding her memory, she was finally here in the flesh, and he was genuinely entertaining the idea of sending her to her execution.

Thunder rolled in the distance as a gust of wind raked the sails, and as he sat with his back to the mast, staring bleakly at the end of a charcoal world, he felt something hit his shoulder. He looked up, and it began to rain.

Note on definitions:

Here we take a detour into naval terminology...

The 'top' of a ship is a platform built about a third of the way up the mast, where the mainmast meets the topmast. The purpose of rigging (shrouds) was to support the mast, but if the ropes were attached directly to the mast the angle of attachment would be too great and no support would be given. The solution was to put two crossbeams on the mast at various intervals, to which the shrouds were attached. The first set of these crossbeams generally had planks laid across them, creating a platform, which was called the top.

To access the top, ships often utilized futtock shrouds, which were small sections of rigging extending from the edges of the top and attaching to the mast below. This was to stabilize the top and allow sailors to climb from the rigging over the edge of the top.