occultation: an event that occurs when one object is hidden by another object that passes between it and the observer. typically when an object in the foreground covers up an object in the background.

There are two men Will Turner cares about in any sense, though he hesitates to call them friends. What they are, he suspects, is something more obscure, a near-friendship born of acquaintanceship through crisis which, despite several excellent reasons to the contrary, has formed a connection.

It is precisely Will's luck that these two men should be so utterly conflicting, the personification of Will's inner war. They are neither of them the sort of man one invites to dine, nor are they easily encountered in daily routine—when they meet in any variation, they find him. They are, each of them, some part of himself to an extreme and spending time with one makes him think of the other.

Flips of a coin, Jack Sparrow and James Norrington, and he wonders if they know it.

*

Keeping Jack happy isn't all that challenging. Rum and quiet, the appearance of freedom wrapped in the appearance of constrictions. Jack likes thinking Will's bound to his forge like a mast, like the act of marriage and employment necessitates that at some point, Will will go down with his straw-strewn shop. Jack can think as he likes, there's no correcting him anyway, but Will's got a life and a home and someone who cares, which is more than Jack's had in forever.

Will doesn't miss the flashes of envy he sees in Jack Sparrow's eyes when Elizabeth pops in with supper, he only pretends that he does.

Keeping James happy is somewhat sterner stuff.

*

Obviously, it is not his job to ensure the happiness—or intoxication, despite what Jack says—of either man, but Will takes it on because he enjoys the challenge. Compared to Jack's life, Will's is pleasantly calm, and compared to Norrington's, none of Will's choices look hard, and when he's at his absolute worst, he thinks about them both and does whatever they wouldn't.

His strategy works.

*

He wonders if they know how much they envy him his peace.

*

James broods like nobody's business. Long looks, verbal silences, James has those mastered long before he darkens Will's door, and Will learns that sometimes, seeing the Commodore doesn't mean speaking to James, sometimes it's just him in his smithy and a brooding man in the dark.

That's fine with Will, because he spends the whole of James's first visit post-pirates certain there's a duel in his future. The more he sees Elizabeth, spends time with her on his own, the less he believes the Commodore's civil withdrawal. No man is that magnanimous.

And yet.

When James stops by, he's there for Will, even when he says nothing at all. It takes Will a month to work up the words he needs, because Jack's proved him courageous, but no one's ever proved him verbose.

*

They talk about things Will's not expecting. They talk about Jack.

"The Dread Captain Sparrow?" Norrington asks with a snort and Will's certain he misreads the man's face, he has no reason to smirk.

Will doesn't want to ask outright what happened, how it was that Norrington's men had sailed out in search of him and come back with a hold full of others. He wants to think Jack's stepped lightly, pulled off another utterly Jack escape, but he remembers Norrington's intractability, the unlikelihood that such a man can be distracted by such sleights of hand. Jack's good, but he's not infallible.

Will asks without asking, asks with every look, but can't find the words he wants. His pardon hangs on the governor's favour, which he has in perpetuity, but the Commodore's had a stake in it, as well. The reason he remains unbothered on Port Royal's shores is, in part, of Norrington's doing, and Will's desperate not to give reason that should change.

Norrington cuts him a weather eye over rum one night in the smithy, says, "It's amazing, what a man can do with a day's head start."

*

Norrington tries calling him "Blacksmith Bill" upon drunken recitation of his given name, on the proviso that it's suitably pirate. For a non-pirate. Will watches from downturned face, eyes peering out through lashes, struggling not to laugh.

"Blacksmith Bill," Will says, "is terrible."

Norrington shrugs. "All epithets are terrible, Billiam, it's a rule." He points a lazy finger, looks drowsily smug.

"Billiam," Will murmurs, only just holding back chuckles. In a few hours, he'll have a commodore's contrition to deal with, well-worded apologies and the flushed-faced flee of a good man's hard-earned sobriety.

"Nonono," Norrington says with another bat of his hand. "You should call me James."

Then Norrington—James—tips face-first into the table.

*

Jack's visits stop the first time he stumbles through the door Will's left unbarred and announces his presence with a mad, manic rush, incensed beyond measure to find his seat taken by a wigless man half-gone on the rum. Will tries not to notice the way they stare at each other, how he's the only one not stunned in surprise, and says, "No bloodshed in my smithy," before either of them have said a word.

It's surprise that's kept them both from drawing their swords or cocking their pistols, he's certain of it, and he means to make peace before they can start.

Jack stays gone until Will can promise there'll be no repeat meeting. It takes some work, but it can be done.

*

When the Commodore wants a wife, he comes to Will. Charges him with the finding and securing of said creature, and when Will tries to point out the flaws in this request, Norrington stares unflinching as he makes his reply. After the affair with Elizabeth, who better, Norrington asks, and Will has no answer for that. Besides, Norrington says, it's not like he can ask Groves or Gillette.

*

"Wouldn't you rather choose one for yourself?" Will asks, because he can't imagine how anyone might engage in anything as permanent as marriage without wanting a say in who and how and why.

The Commodore twitches in humour. "I did."

Elizabeth hangs between them, the ghost in the room.

*

"Consider this your penance, if you'd like." The Commodore sounds cheerful, almost happy, which doesn't fit with a thing Will sees in this situation. "I've braved the blights of Port Royal's finest, Mr. Turner, with the awkward declarations and public pity to prove it. I'll not do it again."

*

"And what of love?" Will asks, careful as he does. James waves it away with a hand as though the word's malodorous. Will thinks maybe James drinks more than Jack now. Despite himself, Will laughs. "Shall I assume that doesn't matter?"

"Was there some reason that it should?"

*

Will draws the line at wooing. He is aware that Port Royal still anticipates a dawn appointment between them, the upstart blacksmith and the valiant commander, and he shudders to think what they'll make of his time spent with Norrington's inevitable bride.

*

Will's had enough trouble explaining his apparent friendship with Norrington to Elizabeth as it is; he has no means to explain this newest development.

*





transit: refers to cases where the nearer object appears smaller in apparent size than the more distant object

Will is not eligible; they are not after him. He presses himself back anyway, all false-smiled civility, repeats his reminders beneath his breath when the fear threatens.

It occurs to him that the society might be upstairs but the company, it's all downstairs, after all.

They are utterly terrifying, the society matrons, and what he's seen of their daughters has him scared of the so-called gentler sex. Elizabeth taps her knuckles, purses a pout he knows she doesn't mean, and when it pulls a ragged smile of relief that he doesn't have to do this, he has both the good fortune to exist outside society and to do so with the love of his life, Will takes her hand. Rubs one of his own over his mouth as though he can draw the evening's sourness from it.

"Are you tired of me already, Mr. Turner?" she asks, all mock-solemnity. "I suppose I'm to be grateful you'd replace me before the wedding?"

He means it, oh God how he means it, when he squeezes her palm, says, "Never," in a voice too true for company.

*

"He's right, you know," Elizabeth says when she'd pulled the tale from him. Not all of it, of course, his newfound respect for Norrington holds some things sacred, even from Elizabeth, but she has enough of it to satisfy that gossip-seeking streak in her. Nothing society hasn't parsed for themselves, he's sure. "The Commodore does need a wife."

Will can't help but wince. "Yes, but must it be one of those?"

*

He watches Elizabeth that night, tries to see her through the Commodore's eyes. He's stymied by her tongue and takes his leave with dull horror that won't quite fade.

The things James saw aren't the things Will sees, and the longer Will tries, the less he succeeds. He is quite possibly the worst person to assume this task, but now that he's promised, he can't think how to repeal it.

*

"He won't ever find what he's looking for," Jack says, sprawled loose and easy over the ground. Will may own the smithy, but this is Jack's corner in it, space all his.

Will lifts his rum-logged head. "He might," Will wants to say, but instead, Will says, "And what's that, I wonder?" something he's sure he learned from Jack.

"Someone to keep him at home."

*

That, Will thinks, is something he can do.

*

Jack heaves in soaked and spitting, mad as a hen. He's a fortnight early and Will's got no rum, James has had a bad week, but there's no sending Jack down the tavern, he'd never come back, and Will's too old now to chase after him on the gallows. Those sorts of things really only work once.

"You can stay if you promise—" Will says, but Jack cuts him off in a flurry of rings.

"I won't kill him, young William, I promise you that."

James watches the fire and doesn't speak.

*

"You're all right, then?" Will doesn't mean to look in on the Commodore before he toddles off to sleep, but he knows how it is, looking after drunks, and he can't quite equate James Norrington with John Brown.

James coils himself 'round a scrap of blanket, already lost to the world. Will wants to rub his forehead, lay him down like he might do a child, only James is too big and already sleeping, so it's just a twitch in Will's palm that must go unanswered.

James makes small, drowsy sounds that sound like, "Billiam", so Will smiles and allows himself a quick rub of James's hair. Then James says, "Have to take care of Jack," and Will freezes just as he is, because James, James sounds like he means it.

Will's blood runs cold.

*

It's this and only this that draws him out of bed that night, the miserable feeling he's left them both to die or worse on his watch. He doesn't tell Elizabeth, because by then, he's too used to keeping their secrets to do much else.

*

"Quiet, Billiam will hear."

"S'nothing to hear, mate."

That's so wrong, Will's sure he hears the dry, disdaining look.

"It's not safe, man, it's not—" and words cut off.

"Never is with men like us, is it?"

"You shouldn't have come."

"Had to pay m' respects and all. She was a fine, pretty ship you lost."

"They always are."

*

"You'll kill me, Commodore. Some day, you'll have me hang."

"Not if you have me, first."

And Will steps away from the smithy door as quiet as he can. Some things, he's not meant to know.

*

They're both gone in the morning. Will reassures himself there's no blood, then restocks the rum. He suspects he'll need it.

*

Norrington returns with a fresh hold full of pirates, who make their trips to the gallows without incident—of course they do, Jack is not among them.

Will wonders what Jack's done to the Commodore, because the man was sane when he left.

*

"I think you'll like Laurel," Jack says. "She's an interesting girl."

Will's not sure, but he meets her anyway.

*

"Is she employed?" Will asks, low and firm. He feels a certain obligation, having been charged with this task, to see it's done right, and while the matrons unsettle him in their own bright-eyed avarice, he's not willing to see the job half-done.

Jack pulls back like he tastes something sour. "She's not a whore, I'll not have you insulting her," Jack says with ferocious sincerity, then ruins it all with a sly quirk of lips. "At least, not until you've met her, aye?"

Will retains cautious optimism until he meets her. Then he plots out a decent excuse.

*

Laurel is everything Jack's promised, and more besides. She watches him with intelligent eyes, levels Jack with a saucy mouth, and manages to imply several bits of scandalous personal history, all in the space of minutes. What she doesn't do, Will notes, is actually convey a disregard for rules. He's not sure why he thinks that's important, but he undoubtedly does. Jack's no help at all.

She's no Elizabeth, but who ever could be?

*

"I think you'll like Laurel," Will says. "She's an interesting girl."

James doesn't look sure, but he meets her anyway.

*

James is unimpressed. Will thinks they'll have to start again, and he's already said as much to Jack, who shakes his hand and calls Will "whelp" every second phrase, a reminder of his youth.

"You'll see," Jack says as he flips through Will's newest blades with acquisitive fingers. "He'll like that she's practical."

Practical? Will's not seen that. Actually, now that Will thinks about it, it's utterly wrong.

"Look, he's not really like that," Will starts, and Jack leans back, fondles a hilt and raises a brow. "James. Norri—the Commodore. Norrington. You know who I mean. He's not... He's not wholly a practical man."

If there's one thing that bothers him now about Norrington—James—it's how much he's misunderstood. "There's much about him you don't know."

Jack's shoulders ease. "Goes both ways, that."

*

Mrs. Commodore Norrington meets the denizens of Port Royal weeks before her wedding. She claims the eye, a shining, sheltered thing, and Will marvels at how adept the misdirection. Faint response and silent gestures, subdued courtesy in each exquisite grace. She is precisely what society wants of him, a fair-haired angel with bright eyes and a soft smile, someone they can be sure won't scandalize them routinely as Elizabeth has.

Laurel, they are assured, will not run off after pirates, even if her husband does.

*

Jack comes to town for James's wedding, which is Jack all over. Elizabeth pokes a spindle finger in his chest, says, "You'll let him have his wedding in peace, Jack Sparrow, or you'll answer to me," with sweet menace that leaves Jack pleading spread-palmed peace.

"Just here for the party, luv," Jack says. "Can't miss that, m'Commodore making right." He says without saying that this time, he intends to see the man gets his bride as promised. Will's not surprised by the reminder, merely by the source.

*

Will thinks being married to an angel would be right misery, but what does he know? He can't imagine anything better than Elizabeth, who still makes him feel like a flushing schoolboy sometimes. He attends the wedding, and perhaps the society matrons believe him there on his wife's invitation, but he knows the truth.

He's there because they're friends, him and James, odd as that seems.

*

They agree there's something odd about the Commodore's wife, though Will finds himself far less willing to discuss the particulars. Elizabeth, unaware of the details, has no such compunction, so Will also finds himself on the wrong end of several intricate discourses on Laurel's unsuitability. Surely, Elizabeth reasons, James could do better.

Will assumes that proof of failure, a thing he can't tell his wife, and when he swallows a reminder that by society's mark, the only woman suitable bears his name, he knows that's tainted by guilt.

Elizabeth hears it anyway. "It's not yours to make him happy," she says. "James is a grown man."

*

"It's that he never asks for a thing," Jack tells the sky. Will frowns, less for the stars in all their pretty certainty than for Jack's answer, which may well prove honest. Jack, Will thinks, has been skirting with honesty of late, and trying desperately to hide it.

"Really? Is that all?" Doing for Norrington because no one else will, not even the man himself? Will wants to deny it but really, he can't.

"You wanted something more?" Jack asks, and the way that Jack asks it suggests Will's speaking some unknown code.

He thinks of what he's seen, the ways James has found to mind himself, and thinks there's some truth to Jack's wandering words, after all.

*





eclipse: generally refers to those instances in which one object moves into the shadow of another

Somehow, his smithy's turned secret alehouse, because he hears things there he'd rather live without. By the time Laurel finds him, Will's honestly not surprised by anything wretched in the Norrington nuptials anymore—that went when James let Jack stay.

*

"D'you know how I met him?" she asks, eyes slanted down, and Will shifts his grip on the tools in his hand.

"I have some idea," he says slowly. Carefully. She's a skittish thing here, too small and fragile and foreign to belong, and he worries about her in ways he does not worry about Elizabeth. His wife, he knows, can take care of herself.

"I mean Sparrow." He's not certain, but he thinks he sees her lips twitch.

"I can imagine." He can. Tries not to, of course, because there's little way their lives intersect without dispair, disaster, or disgrace in the offing, but for all else he's not thinking about, how she knows Jack is a small thing. He tries to press that point home without actual speech, a series of shuffles and shifts and tools he doesn't work.

"He saved my life." Will considers it victory that he doesn't snort. Jack is many things, but heroic? Never on purpose unless there's something in it for him. Another thing Will doesn't like to think about. What she doesn't say, what she doesn't have to say, is there in her eyes when she looks up, clear as bells and sure as steel. Repayment in kind, those eyes say, and her mouth doesn't move at all.

*

"What I can't understand is why you'd bother." Laurel meets his gaze head on, no coquette's sly glance. She is precisely as he remembers, subtle and smart and sharp, and she reminds him of nothing so much as a delicate blade.

Will says, "He's my friend."

Laurel looks at him like she's heard every word he hasn't said.

*

"You know his missus hates you."

Jack stops speaking, looks at Will all wordless and fish-jawed. Will wants to laugh. He really, really wants someone to call him Billiam.

"Well, she does," he says to Jack's surprise. "Must ..." he falters here, because there's much he can't say, but he soldiers on. If there's one thing he's learned these past months, it's how to be recklessly self-serving. "She must have been raised with the same love of piracy I was," he says, and wonders how Jack would know if he'd earned her disdain.

Jack says, "aye," in a breath and nods like he's moved on. "I imagine she really wants me dead, aye?"

"Well, I wouldn't drink the tea," Will advises.

"Never do," Jack mutters and won't say why.

*

When Will looks back, it comes down to his smithy, a thing he'll deny if ever he's asked. The night Jack stumbled in on rum-logged James, Will knows something happened, though he won't give himself leave to sort out just what. He'd watched them both, the hungry way Jack hadn't looked, the stark way James hadn't stared, and Will came to conclusions that night he honestly wants to forget.

It's easy enough while they hold their distance, two halves of his life that won't ever collide, and if sometimes he finds himself passing his smithy to whispered sounds of comfort, he tells himself that's just the wind.

He practices what he'll tell the court martial all the same.

The Commodore, colluding with pirates? He's not sure he'll ever have enough scorn.

*

"You misunderstand," Laurel says, soft and brittle. He's not sure such a thing's possible, but that he's heard it from Elizabeth. The sound of one woman breaking, maybe, and he wonders if they teach them that from birth. "I went to my wedding a maid and woke up a third."

*

Elizabeth falls pregnant by that first Spring and come Christmas, there's a new William with piracy in his veins. Years pass, a blur of smoke and steel and milk, nights of soft, smooth skin and parting lips to greet him in a slow flush of sweetness. There's a small Jack, a smaller James, and one night while Elizabeth nurses Mary by the fire, Will thinks of all the reasons he has to come home.

He wants to think James has found his own, but he can't be certain. He's not sure he's looking in the right places, anyway.

Laurel, for all she's loved in the village, does not manage any small Norringtons. The doyennes pin that squarely on ill-fortune and agree it's a shame.

Such a smart match.

*

each of these three events is the visible effect of a syzygy.

.f.

(concertigrossi's awesome prompts: future, syzygy, laurels.)