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The Part You Throw Away
by Isagel
Pairing: J/N
Rating: PG-13ish
Disclaimer: Maybe if I kidnap Goofy, Disney will let me have Jack and James in exchange?
Archive: Certainly. Just let me know where.
Originally Posted: 11/14/04
Beta: wunderwesen
Note: My first attempt at Sparrington—Carnival—was, more or less, pure fun. This story came out of my curiosity about what would happen if I put these two marvellous characters together in a much more serious situation, one where everything is on the line. It also sprung from my fascination with the "closed room" scenario, one of my favourite dramatic genres and one I've always wanted to play with. I hope you'll enjoy the result.
Summary: Time is just memory mixed with desire
Three nights before the hanging, the commodore dreams.
He is walking the streets of a city. Not a new one like Port Royal, but an Old World metropolis with tall buildings and people on every corner. Perhaps it is London, but he hasn't set foot on English soil for nigh on twenty years, and he doesn't recognize it.
He is looking for the ocean. He can smell it on the wind, taste its salt on his tongue, and he quickens his steps, heart pounding with anticipation. But every street he chooses is a dead end, every turn he makes a wrong one. In his mind, the horizon stretches on forever, an endless connection between sea and sky, but here there is only brick and stone, walls all around him and scurrying strangers blocking his path. He pushes on, running now, through winding alleyways and crowded squares, knowing that he must not stop searching, that if he stops, all will be lost. But this is a maze without exits, and, as he turns another corner, he realizes that he can't remember what sound the waves make against the hull of a ship. And the taste of the sea is gone.
He wakes up sweating, hands fisted in the sheets, lungs fighting for breath. It is only when he registers the familiar crashing of the surf against the wall of the fort beneath his window that he manages to pull himself together. For a long time, he lies awake in the dark, listening to it.
At dawn, he sends for Captain Gillette, instructs him to take over command for a few days. He doesn't say where he is going and Gillette doesn't ask—he's been by Norrington's side since the beginning, understands that he needs to see this through to the end. If there is concern written on the captain's face, Norrington pretends not to see it.
~~~~~
At Fort St. James, Commander Shelby barely blinks when he makes his request, merely nods his head and smiles, as though he thinks he understands what this is about.
"Yes," he says, "I thought that was what you came for. Truth be told, sir, after all that I've heard, I would have been surprised if we hadn't at least seen you tomorrow. It will be a relief to finally be rid of him for good, I suppose?"
"Yes," Norrington says. "It will."
His face doesn't invite conversation any more than the tone of his voice. It rarely does these days.
Shelby's eyes flicker away, his fingers developing a sudden interest in the papers on his desk.
"Yes, well... You will have to leave your weapons here, of course."
"Of course."
He hasn't brought any pistols, and the dagger concealed up the sleeve of his coat never leaves his person. The sword he does unstrap from around his hips is still the one given to him all those years ago by Governor Swann, crafted with such skilful care by a man he could never bring himself to hate. Placing it on the desktop, his fingers linger for a moment on the hilt before letting go. There are so many memories in the whisper of that metal against the palm of his hand, all of them too sharp for comfort. If he could turn back without regret, he would do so in this moment.
"Shall we go?" he says.
~~~~~
Glimpses of a Caribbean sunset through narrow windows as they descend the stairs, a deep red sun falling fast into a bloodied ocean. He can remember evenings in England when day faded gently into dark, light draining from the sky as slowly as the sand from an hourglass. Not here, though. Not in the world he inhabits now.
Between one window and the next, nightfall is sudden as the stretching of a hangman's rope. They walk on by torchlight, into a corridor beneath the ground.
There is a guard posted at the entrance, a young marine who snaps to attention when they pass. The man's eyes grow wide with curiosity as he realizes who Norrington is, what he must be here for, and the commodore has no doubt that he's already counting the drinks the story will buy him at the nearest tavern. His own attention is elsewhere, however, before that last thought is fully formed. From somewhere down the corridor in front of him, the sound of singing reaches his ears.
It is low and oddly melodious, just out of key enough to make the tune resonate, the lyrics echo with an illusive meaning that isn't in the words. Norrington closes his eyes for a moment, takes a deep breath to steady his steps. He knows the voice of the singer as intimately as he knows the song.
"We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot
Drink up, me hearties, yo ho
We kidnap and ravage and don't give a hoot
Drink up, me hearties, yo ho..."
The door Shelby stops at, glancing through the barred opening in the solid oak, is the last one on the right. Through the rough wall that ends the corridor, Norrington imagines he can hear the ocean, a rhythmic whisper in time with the slow beat of the ditty from inside the cell. He clasps his hands behind his back against the impulse to reach out and feel the salt moisture that trickles down the stone.
"We kindle and char, inflame and ignite
Drink up, me hearties, yo ho
We burn down the city, we're really a fr..."
The rattle and click of the key turning in the lock brings the song to a halt and then Shelby pushes the door open. There are shadows in the room beyond, a candle on a small table making them flicker in the sudden draught.
"Get up, pirate," the commander says. "You have a visitor."
The prisoner is lying on his back in the centre of the rickety pallet that serves him for a bed, legs outstretched, ankles crossed, boot-heels resting against the wall halfway up to the vaulted ceiling. As he turns his head to look at them, his irises reflect the candle's flame, tiger's eye instead of onyx black.
"Commodore!" he says, rising slowly, hastily, in his own immeasurable time, unfurling without any trace of balance, so gracefully a cat could cry for envy. "An honour, to be sure."
His bow is flamboyant. The commodore answers it with a controlled inclination of his head.
"Sparrow."
"We didn't think it necessary to have him shackled in here, Commodore," Shelby puts in, a note of uncertainty in his voice, "but if you wish, I can have the guard..."
"I will call for the guard when I wish to leave, Commander. Until then, you may go."
Shelby makes a flustered noise, as if not quite knowing what is required of him. Norrington doesn't look at the man; he isn't sure he could tear his eyes away from Sparrow if he wanted to. The pirate appears to have no such reaction, though, giving Shelby a commiserating look.
"Got you rattled already, has he, mate? Don't worry, he does that to all the lads. Best just do as he says."
The conspiratorial tone is meant to disturb him, but the backhanded compliment is the more dangerous weapon. Tonight, though, Norrington doesn't let it confuse him. He isn't here to play games.
"I never had you rattled, though, did I, Jack?"
Sparrow's mouth curls up at the corner and his eyes, half-lidded and inscrutable, drift back to hold Norrington's own.
"Didn't you, now?"
The silken tone makes something sharp and aching uncoil in the pit of his stomach, a familiar heat that time has never diminished. The futility of it in this place is harder to bear than he'd expected.
"Commodore," Shelby says, "maybe I sh..."
There is the force of nature that is Captain Jack Sparrow in the room, and the heavy shadow of what will happen in the morning. He doesn't have the patience to deal with anything else.
"That will be all, Commander."
No man in His Majesty's Navy has ever failed to listen to that tone of his voice. Shelby is no exception, mumbling a "Yes, sir" as he makes himself scarce. It's a relief when the door closes behind him and the bolt of the lock settles into place once more.
Jack shakes his head, the trinkets in his hair catching the light, flecks of reflected fire bouncing off the walls.
"Commodore, Commodore, Commodore... And I who always imagined you to be gentle with the men under you."
"You of all people should know better than that, Jack."
"Aye," Sparrow says, suddenly serious, absently running his thumb along the scar that intersects the sharp line of his cheekbone. "Aye, that I should."
There are streaks of grey in his matted hair now, a few more wrinkles around the painted eyes, but twelve years after their first handshake on the dock in Port Royal, Jack Sparrow still looks younger than many men half his age, as though some remnant of that heathen curse yet lingered, protecting him from the flow of time. It's the scars that tell the story. A book of hours written on skin with needle and branding iron, bullet and blade. More than one chapter carries Norrington's signature.
As more than one mark on his own body was put there by Jack. In this, as in so many other things, they are even.
"But where are my manners?" Jack says, breaking the too-long silence. "Have a seat, Commodore." He makes a sweeping gesture, encompassing the table and the two chairs that flank it. "I'd offer you a drink of rum, but this place has a sadly inferior cellar."
Norrington picks the chair closest to the door and Sparrow sits down opposite him, elbows on the table. Like this, he is close enough to touch.
"How long have you been here?" Norrington says, removing his three-cornered hat and placing it before him. "Ten days? I must say I'm surprised you're already sober."
"Infernally dry, yes, but never sober. Not when life itself is the most intoxicating drink of all. But then I seem to be running a bit short on that as well, don't I, mate?"
The bitter edge to his voice shouldn't cut as deep as it does.
"Jack..."
He doesn't remember when he first started thinking of Sparrow by his Christian name, but he has always blamed it on the Turners and their incorrigible fondness for discussing the man. Jack never addresses him with anything other than his rank, though, as if to remind them both of who and what he is. Then again, the word "Commodore" never had as many shades of meaning as Jack Sparrow is able to give it. This time, it is pensive, sharp as Jack's thoughts.
"You know, Commodore, I wasn't sure you would turn up for this little affair."
Neither was I, he thinks, but his reply is cold with habitual sarcasm.
"The affair where the most notorious pirate in the Caribbean will finally be made to pay the just price for a lifetime of sin and dishonesty, you mean? How could I possibly stay away?"
Sparrow leans back in his chair, examines his fingernails with studied nonchalance.
"Oh, I don't know. It crossed my mind that perhaps you didn't have the constitution to see me hang."
"Whatever it is you are currently drunk on must be affecting your memory. Or did I just imagine the various occasions when I have stood by and watched the noose put around your neck?"
Jack smiles. The smug, glittering, gracious smile that means he's got you exactly where he wants you. And because it is impossible to determine for what insane reason of his own Jack Sparrow might want anyone anywhere at any given time, Norrington considers the automatic shiver down his spine a sensible reaction.
"Ah," Jack says, "but you've never actually seen that noose stretch my neck, have you? In fact, I do believe I remain the only prisoner to see the gallows in Port Royal and live to tell the tale. Or tales, as the case may be."
"If you're insinuating that I've deliberately let you get away, I can assure you..."
Sparrow's hands come up in a soothing gesture, quieting him.
"What would I want to be insinuating something like that for? No, I was merely sitting here wondering, as indeed I have wondered more than once over the course of our..." Another wave of his hand, picking the word he wants out of the humid air. "...pleasurable acquaintance, how it might be that I'm not dead yet. All those times we've crossed swords... And I do so admire your technique, mate—very efficient, very precise, always cutting right to the quick. And yet we always seem to be dancing around each other, never quite getting to the point. To the heart of the matter, as it were. I was just asking myself why that could be."
"If I've failed to make you see the point, Jack, I have no doubt it will be made inescapably clear to you tomorrow."
It's an evasion, and a cruel one, but Sparrow lets him get away with it, moves without apparent emotion to the one topic they can't avoid.
"Yes, I have to admit that a miraculous escape seems to be out of the question this time. No ship, no crew except the poor buggers who will have the dubitable honour of swinging with me... Don't suppose there's any chance of young Will being back from England, eh?"
"Last I heard, Turner was still helping Governor Swann settle into his new home. And if he were anywhere near the western hemisphere, I wouldn't be here tonight. I would be with him, making sure he didn't do anything stupid."
Sparrow tilts his head, eyes narrowing with interest.
"Didn't know you were that fond of the lad."
"It's different this time, Jack. Even if he managed to save your accursed neck without getting himself killed, he would be condemning himself to life as an outlaw. The new governor won't forgive him his trespasses like his father-in-law did, and outside of Port Royal I would be powerless to help him. I may have reason to resent him, but he is the only one the children have left."
He has had almost a year to learn how to say things like that with a collected face, without falling to pieces inside. But Jack has always been too observant, too good at seeing beneath the surface.
"They told me you mourned her like a wife," he says.
It is a question as much as a statement, and it would be easy to avoid answering it, to make some icy, cynical remark, slamming the door firmly shut. But there is no pity in the pirate's voice, no trace of judgement in the charcoal eyes. And the simple truth is the least he owes her.
"I could never have married anyone else," he says.
And that is what it comes down to: the singularity of her, the place she held that no one else could fill. Not while she was alive and another man's wife, not now that she has lost her life, giving birth to another man's child. This is simple fact—no more, no less—and there are no tears in his eyes, haven't been since the night she died. He doesn't realize his hands on the table are shaking until Sparrow reaches out and covers them with his own.
"Can't say I know any other woman who would have been equal to the task, mate."
There is a trace of teasing in his voice, a hint of a smile on his lips, but Sparrow's eyes are serious. Serious and so very gentle. It isn't until he feels a slow caress along the side of his thumb that Norrington registers the peculiar emphasis placed on the word "woman". Still, he doesn't move.
Rough, warm fingers map his hands, trace the surface of his skin. He opens his mouth to say something, but a brush of contact against the inside of his wrist, across the vein where his pulse is throbbing, turns the words into a sigh, a ragged exhalation too loud in the quiet room. The next sound doesn't leave his lips, catches on clenching teeth, but he can see Jack's chest heaving beneath his open shirt, knows that he could make the pirate moan if he wanted to. Moan and more than that. Knows that in this, too, they are even.
The thought is comforting, and painful as a wound that will not—cannot, now—ever stop bleeding. Carefully, he pulls his hand away.
It is almost soon enough.
He grasps what is happening the second he feels a bump of metal against his knuckle, but Jack is fast, uncannily so, and gifted with the hands of an illusionist. The knife that was safely concealed inside Norrington's sleeve is in the pirate's grip before he has time to do anything about it. And Jack Sparrow is very good with a blade.
The commodore lunges forward anyway, his chair crashing to the floor behind him as he grabs for the dagger. Sparrow is already on his feet, though, attacking, not retreating. There is a fraction of a second, no more, when the commodore is off balance, but that is all the opening the pirate needs to press his advantage. A strong hand grabs the lapel of his coat, uses his own momentum to shove him away from the table. He feels the blade against his throat in the same instant that his back connects with the wall. Jack's body follows, pressing close, trapping him. It frightens him that his heart is still pounding the way it did a minute ago.
"Sorry 'bout this, Commodore," Sparrow says, "but I couldn't resist. You're too much like me to go anywhere unarmed, and when the opportune moment presented itself... Well, I couldn't pass it up, now could I?"
His tone is conversational, casual as if they were playing for pennies, not life and death. The game is an old one, though, and Norrington has no trouble keeping pace.
"No need to apologize, Jack. The leopard never changes its spots, and all that. But I fail to see what you hope to gain by this, other than impressing me with your pick-pocketing skills."
Jack's gaze shifts to the dagger in his hand, his head tilting to one side in a theatrical display of thoughtful consideration.
"You know," he says, "I always did like this blade. One of Will's finest, I believe. Very strong, excellently balanced, remarkably...sharp." The needle-prick of pain when the point of the knife presses into his neck makes Norrington flinch, despite himself, but Sparrow doesn't break the skin. He doesn't have to, not when the dark undertones in his voice cut deeper than any weapon. "Perfect for slitting the throat of, oh, say, a very valuable hostage who has been kind enough to provide me with the leverage needed to get out of here."
Norrington swallows hard, forces his voice to stay steady.
"An excellent plan, Jack. I'm sure it would work perfectly if we didn't both know that you're not going to kill me."
Sweet caress of the dagger along the edge of his cravat, whisper of death like the breath of a lover against his skin.
"What makes you think I won't?"
"You may be a thief and a liar—perhaps other things that are worse—but you aren't a murderer. I've seen you kill, Jack, more than once, but never in cold blood. Not without personal reason."
With the light behind him now, Jack's eyes are a frosted black, a midnight sea reflecting no stars. When they turn to Norrington, he knows he's made the wrong move.
"What about Anamaria?" Jack says. "Was she personal enough?"
It wasn't his pistol that left the mortal wound, but the commodore remembers, through the chaos of battle, the sight of Jack falling to his knees, dropping his sword on the blood-spattered deck to take her body in his arms. He isn't going to deny responsibility.
"She might still be alive if I hadn't given the order to board you that day, you're right about that. But you are no fool, Jack. She chose the manner in which she lived her life. Can you honestly tell me that she would have wanted a different death?"
The sound Jack makes could be mistaken for a snort of laughter, but humour has nothing to do with it.
"By the same logic, Commodore, can you tell me that this isn't how you've pictured your own demise? My blade, your throat... Can you say you haven't seen this coming?"
Scars are not all that marks the passage of time. Deeper than the cuts on your body, there are the hollow places left by the people who are no longer there. If you look closely enough to see them, Sparrow doesn't look young at all, but far older than his years.
They both do.
"No, Jack, I can't. I've imagined it a thousand times, just like this. Eye to eye, so close that my final breath would graze your lips. It's seemed, at times, the only way. But it isn't going to happen, is it? We've passed that point long ago."
He can see hesitation in Sparrow's face, muscles tensing with something close to fear. And then, as suddenly as he attacked, the pirate releases him.
There is exasperation, desperation, in the harsh sound he makes as he discards the knife, throwing it to land with a clatter on the table. With automatic movements, Norrington straightens his cravat, his disarranged coat, waits for what will happen next.
There is stillness.
Jack stands with his back to him, hands gripping the edges of the table top, head bent low. He is a silhouette, nothing more, his outline a slim black shape against the yellow glow of the candlelight. The silence stretches until Norrington begins to doubt that there is anything left for him to do but leave. Then Jack speaks again, and he knows he cannot go. Not yet.
"She was born a slave, you know," Jack says. "Anamaria. On a Haitian sugar plantation. She ran a pitchfork through the foreman's chest the night she escaped. Sixteen years old and he a grown man twice her size. She told me once that as long as she died free, she would die happy. Elizabeth was the same way. No holding her back, no keeping her from what she wanted. Too much spirit in her to abide by anyone else's rules. The day I met Will, I tried to explain to him that the laws of men don't matter at all in this world, that the only thing a person's got to live by is what he can do, and what he can't do. As simple as that. He never really understood, though. Too set in his moral ways, more's the pity. But Elizabeth, she lived by that code every day of her life. The only compass she needed was her own heart."
"But she had a heart out of the ordinary, Jack. Her course was straight and true, even when she led us all into uncharted waters. You, as I recall, have always had a fondness for compasses that don't point north."
A low peel of laughter, rising to fade into the shadows beneath the vault above, and Jack turns to face him once more.
"North," he says, "isn't the only direction on the map, Commodore."
An old challenge there, a suggestion made so many times it needs no words to be understood. Beneath the surface of Jack's eyes something glitters—a glint of underwater treasure just out of reach. Where the pirate pressed against him, Norrington feels yearning rise like a silent scream within his body. It doesn't change anything; it never has.
"It is," he says. "When one has sworn to uphold the law, to adhere to the Articles of War, it is the only direction remaining."
Sparrow doesn't move his feet, but he sways closer. In the small cell, it is a gesture of intimacy.
"I know those are the bearings you sail by, mate. But if you've never doubted them, then why are you here?"
To see you hang. To make sure you will never haunt me again.
To see your face one last time so that I'll never forget.
He shakes his head, runs his hand over the lifeless hair of his wig.
"I don't know," he says. "I honestly don't know."
He sounds tired, like a man who's been fighting for too long. He didn't know his voice could sound like that.
The room is too small to grant him distance, but he can't keep looking into Jack's eyes. Turning away, he walks the few steps to the door, allows it to stop him. The iron bars in the opening are rough under his fingers when he raises his hand to touch them, worn with rust. All he sees through them is an empty stretch of corridor, faint torchlight reflected in the moist stone of the walls. In his chest, the space feels too narrow, his heart expanding like a heated cannonball that cracks the barrel.
When Jack speaks, it is oddly soothing, despite the melancholy within the words.
"This place is below sea level, did you know that? Sometimes at night, when all is quiet, I can hear the ocean through the wall, like music so distant you can't tell where it's coming from. Like as not, she will never hold old Jack in her arms again, and that's a hard thing for me to square with. But she's still there. She will still be there whatever happens tomorrow."
"She never changes, does she?"
"Never. And if you know her well enough to understand her treacherous ways, you can always trust her."
"I don't trust, Jack. Not anymore. Neither do you."
"Not the entire truth, though, is it? I trust the sea to carry me wherever I wish to go. I trust myself to know where that is. And I trust you to always turn up in my path. As you trust me."
Norrington can't help but glance back at that, the sheer absurdity of it quirking his lips.
"Jack, no sane person would trust you in the slightest."
"Ah, but you do."
As he trusts the wind to change, the storm to rage, the current to pull him under.
"Yes."
Jack nods, but makes no comment. The admission remains suspended in the air between them, exposed so that Norrington cannot look away from the truth of it. Perhaps he has averted his eyes for too long.
Again, it is the pirate who breaks the silence.
"When it's all over," he says, "the hanging and whatever else they've got planned for me, will you see to it that I'm buried at sea?"
It's the first time Sparrow's ever asked him for anything. Not a politely phrased demand or a devil's bargain, but a simple request. The sarcasm in his reply is reflexive; he doesn't know what he means it to hide.
"And I who thought a pious man like you would have his heart set on consecrated ground. What a disappointment."
"Eternity beneath the ground is for people who actually live on it. Not dust to dust for me, but a sea-change, if I get the choice."
"You're quite rich and strange enough as it is, Jack."
Sparrow touches his forehead in a gesture of acknowledgement.
"Ta, mate. Me, I find there's always room for improvement. Will you see that it's done properly?"
He's been a naval officer more than half his life, seen so many men wrapped in canvas and dropped into the waves below. Pronounced the words more times than he cares to remember. "We commit your body to the deep..." For Sparrow, it would be a wedding ceremony, his whole existence a life-long courtship culminating in that final union with the sea. The stab in Norrington's heart at that thought resembles jealousy.
"You have my word," he says. And then, because the cell has become too small to breathe in, he turns to the opening in the door again and calls out "Guard!"
His voice is that of a commander of ships, and he only has to give the order once. At the other end of the corridor, he hears the clatter of the soldier on watch starting toward them.
"So this is it, then?" Sparrow says. "Until tomorrow?"
"Until tomorrow," Norrington echoes, stepping over to the table to retrieve his belongings, taking care not to look at Jack as he picks his tricorn up and puts it on.
But when he reaches for the dagger, Jack's hand is there before him, closing around the weapon, offering it to him hilt first. As he takes it, a ringed finger brushes his, and he can't avoid Jack's gaze any longer. Neither of them lets the knife go.
"If I'd known you would acquiesce to my final request so readily," Jack says, "I might have asked for something different."
The treasure in those eyes is still there, innumerable pieces of gold scattered across the bottom of dark waters. If he dived in, he could gather them in his hands, one by one by one.
Outside in the corridor, heavy footsteps come to a halt. The key rattles in the lock. As the door swings open, Sparrow lowers his hand.
"Commodore," the guard says, "are you re...?"
He doesn't get any further.
There is no conscious decision, no moment when he makes up his mind. He doesn't know what he intends to do until he has already spun around, until he already feels the pain where his knuckles connect with the soldier's face. There is no time for the man to defend himself and Norrington's fist is still weighted with the handle of the dagger; two hundred pounds of lobster goes down like a sack of potatoes.
Norrington gets down on one knee beside the marine, relieved when he sees him still breathing, absurdly glad that he has lost consciousness. Moving as quickly as he can, he reaches to unbuckle the guard's belt, releasing the chain that keeps his heavy key-ring secured. He hears Sparrow step closer, is aware of him as he squats down on the other side of the prone body, but he doesn't look up from what he's doing. Not until Jack's hand cups his, stilling it.
"You sure you want to be doing this?" the pirate says. The concern in his voice is utterly unexpected.
Norrington lifts his gaze, looks Sparrow in the eye.
"There is what a man can do and what a man can't do," he says. "I cannot lose you, too."
The sound Jack makes is like a spoken heartbeat. With his free hand, he grips the back of the commodore's neck, pulls him forward until their lips meet across the body between them. There is jubilation in the kiss, and a passion too long restrained. They should be hurrying, but it feels to Norrington as though hours pass before they shift apart. As he rises, keys in hand, the taste of salt and sunlit water still fills his mouth.
He lets Jack lead the way out of the cell, but he doesn't need him to. The way to the ocean lies clear in his heart.
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