Later that day they sat at their usual table for supper at the Faithful Bryde. The tavern had grown raucous, but they were used to the ballyhoo by now. Elizabeth curled at his side, sated after a large bowl of stew, content with his arm around her. For a Lady of the highest pedigree, she was certainly at home in the bawdy tavern, tapping her fingers to the rhythm of the frantic horn pipe and fiddle. They watched the crowd with amusement, this night feeling somehow separate from the melee. Hope loomed on the horizon, and the possibility of a future. It was a heady drug.
Later, they would go down to the Two Cranes for cards. They had learned it was best to change their venue every night, for James was simply too good at winning and the regulars became disgruntled if they lost badly two nights in a row. With a few days and a couple bottles of rum in between they seemed to forget the tall dark stranger and his prowess for winning all their money.
James noticed Elizabeth staring at something across the room, and when he followed her gaze his blood ran cold.
Will Turner spoke with a barmaid across the smoky room, having just seated himself at the far wall. The boy flirted with the buxom wench, and James watched as Elizabeth's jaw clenched. As though waking from a dream, she turned to James, her cheeks flushed. "I must have a word with him," she said, and James could see it all playing out before him. No matter what she'd said to him earlier that day, there was something in her eyes as she looked upon her first love. The boy for whom she'd proved she would sacrifice anything or anyone to save.
So this was the night he would lose Elizabeth Swann again?
Resigned, he made a waving gesture towards the whelp. "By your leave, my dear."
She sensed something tense in the air between them, but decided they could hash it out later.
He took a swig of rum as he watched her weave through the crowd, a much bigger one than he'd had in a while now. Surprisingly he felt nothing, but not nothing in the way of indifference. Nothing, in way one's heart would feel if dipped in ice.
Numb.
Utter and total numb.
It was the only way he would survive losing her again.
Then another figure caught James' attention across the room. Despite the throng, there was no mistaking that swaying swagger, that mane of dark ropey hair flashing with beads.
Jack Sparrow.
A dark rage filled him, black as the hurricane that had taken his ship and his men to the bottom of the ocean. James rose from the table, certain he no longer had anything left to lose.
XXX
Shouting and the sound of an overturned table drew Elizabeth's attention, and she looked up from her heated exchange with the blacksmith. Will rubbed the eye that she had just struck with such surprising force for a wisp of a woman.
"James," she hissed, panic in her voice. She recognized his dark head standing a good six inches above most of the crowd. Urgently she made her way across the tavern as quickly as she could, shoving people out of the way. But a brawl had started, and someone shoved her back. She narrowly escaped a thrown chair by quickly ducking.
By the time she reached James he had Jack cornered, pointing his pistol at the pirate captain. As he pulled upon the trigger Elizabeth acted without thought, striking his arm so that the shot went wild.
A moment later there was the awful sound of breaking glass, and James crumpled to her feet. Shocked, Elizabeth looked up to see Gibbs holding a broken rum bottle, looking rather horrified for having wasted the precious libation on knocking the former Commodore's lights out.
Someone across the way who had been privy to Jack and James' heated conversation shouted angrily, "That's James Norrington? He hung my best mate! Get 'im!"
The chaos only increased in the close room, and Jack sprang up from his chair. "Time to go, me thinks."
"Jack!" Elizabeth cried. "Please, you have to help me!"
The pirate paused, swaying on his feet. "Oi?"
"They'll kill him! Please, help me get him out of here!" Elizabeth tried to lift James with one arm around her neck, but he was dead weight and simply too big. "Please!" she begged, finding tears in her eyes.
"Of course, milady!" Jack snarled, annoyed that this girl's pleading moved him so. "He only tried to kill me! Again. Where to, your nibs?"
"The Pearl."
"Naturally! Jolly good idear!" Though Jack put on annoyance, she could see he was actually rather amused by this whole situation, a badly disguised smile tugging at his unsettlingly well-formed mouth.
Together they managed to drag James out a back door before the mob could eat them alive.
XXX
James woke with a splitting headache, leaning back against something hard that dug into his back. The world swayed, and instantly he knew he was at sea. And though he had not been seasick since he was a lad, he reckoned the knock on the head excused him from losing his dignity as he threw up in the corner.
So he was in a cell. A brig, to be specific. How lovely.
"James?"
He turned to find Elizabeth seated on a stool on the other side of the bars, her dark eyes wide with worry. The former Commodore wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and paid her a weary gaze.
"You were his agent all along."
"Who?"
"Sparrow." James laughed a little, though there was only sorrow in it. "What a fool I was. You weren't saving the Letters for the boy, he doesn't know the bow from the aft of a ship. You were saving them for Jack."
"James, you've had a nasty knock on the head, and you're a little confused. Let me get you some water."
"Please don't bother, Miss Swann."
She froze while standing up, clearly injured by the formality.
"He doesn't deserve to die, James," she finally said, clasping the bars in her hands. "I couldn't let you kill him."
"And what of all my men that now lay dead at the bottom of the ocean?" James snarled. "Did they deserve to die?"
"Killing Jack won't bring them back. It was a horrible accident but it wasn't your fault and it wasn't his fault."
James made a waving motion as one would dismiss a servant. "I've had it with your justifications, Elizabeth. All your pretty little lies. Spare me. You used me to survive on that wretched island, you made me think that you loved me, you chose your side, and now everything is quite clear. At least this engagement was a bit more pleasurable than the last one."
Elizabeth stiffened at his crude insinuation, tears welling in her eyes. So he had thought them engaged again.
"It's not like that," she insisted. "Jack has a special compass that Beckett wants. He needed me to use it to make a heading for something he needs. In exchange he will help us get a ship, James!"
"Indeed? Then why am I in here?"
"Because Jack thought you might be angry when you woke up. Forgive me, but he was right."
"Ha! That's the understatement of the century."
James scowled at her, and Elizabeth found an answering well of anger roiling up in her belly. "Do you know how Jack got that P branded on his arm that you were so ready to hang him for?"
"Does it matter?"
"I think it does. He was a respectable merchant captain once for the East India Trading Company. But he could not stomach commerce in human flesh, so he freed a ship full of men and women and children destined to be slaves on Barbados. And Lord Beckett paid him back by torturing him, burning his ship, and leaving him for dead. How is that justice for you?"
James was very quiet, suddenly unable to meet her eyes. Elizabeth crouched down to his level, reaching her hand through the bars. "You have to let go of this hatred, James. It will eat you alive. Please."
James only shook his head. "You don't seem to understand, Elizabeth. I am nothing but a dead man walking."
"Please don't say that. We could be happy, together. I believe that from the bottom of my heart. Please don't give up now."
When James looked up there was fire flashing in his green eyes. He was ridiculously handsome when he was angry, she found herself thinking, before he dealt the final blow. "There is no we. There is no us. There has only ever been you and Jack, and we both know it. So please. Go. Away."
Elizabeth backed away from the bars; she could not have been more shocked, more hurt, had James struck her. She shook her head, her throat impossibly tight. Somehow she choked out the words, "You are a bloody fool, James Norrington," before fleeing up the companionway.