Ways and Wiles

by Edoraslass

Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Pirates of the Caribbean is owned by Disney, etc. No infringement intended.
Originally Posted: 1/21/07
Note: Set between CotPB and DMC. Inspired by this photo by Alberich Matthews. NSFW due to boobs. Also check out that whole Flickr stream. It's utterly gorgeous.
Summary: As James clings to the wreckage of the Dauntless he discovers he is not alone.

Commodore James Norrington shakes himself from a daze, and looks up into wide, dark eyes.

"Hello, sir," she says in an oddly muted voice.

A woman—more a girl, really—with skin so white it is tinged blue, heavy auburn hair twisted around on itself like tangles of seaweed, and a gleeful smile. He blinks, but she remains. There were no women on board, he thinks blearily. Was there another ship caught in the storm?

Abruptly he realizes that her teeth are sharply pointed, and that she is completely bare from the waist up. The water is just clear enough that he can see from the waist down...

"This is ridiculous," he mutters.

"What is ridiculous?" she wants to know.

"That I am having hallucinations after only a few hours in the water," he replies, and immediately rebukes himself for answering. After all, she is just a creation of his addled mind, and talking to such a creation is surely less than sane.

"Hallucination," she repeats thoughtfully. "No, I don't think I'm one of those."

James says nothing—what would be the point? He rests his forehead against the wood to which he's clinging. The initials "RT" carved into it tell him this is a piece of the quarterdeck; he's seen those letters beneath his feet a thousand times. He's always wondered who RT was.

She swims closer, reaching out to touch his hair. Her fingers are webbed, and James thinks, They never have webbed fingers in the paintings as she slides those fingers over his nose and cheeks and ears. He regards her passively until she begins to prod at his chest.

"Now that is quite enough," he says, frowning. "I should like to think that I am not so far gone as to conjure up such improper delusions."

"You are very handsome, for a land-dweller," she says persuasively, tracing the line of his nose with a fingertip. James thinks that it almost sounds as if she is flirting with him. And how mad is that, to be flirted with by a figment of one's own imagination?

She trails her hand over his belly and grins in way that is not entirely pleasant when he flinches. "I only want to see how this shirt works." Her eyes are as black as a shark's, with no pupil, and only now does he notice that they are lidless. "I've never seen one up close before."

"I would very much appreciate it if you would stop petting me as if I were a dog," he says sternly.

She pouts at him, and moves rather too close, for her breasts brush against his arm and he tries to shift away from her, but there's nowhere for him to go, and at any rate, it's not as if she actually exists.

"Please may I see the shirt?" she cajoles, twining her tail lightly round his legs, and he can't repress a shudder. It feels so real; heavy and muscular, rather like a snake he once was allowed to touch at the London Zoo. He wonders what sort of sea-creature is actually swimming round him, and decides not to look into the water. If it's an octopus or serpent, he'd rather not know, and it wouldn't matter. He doesn't have the strength to fight off a goldfish.

"Oh!" she exclaims, as if she's just remembered something very important. "Oh, I must look at your legs!"

With a happy, high-pitched trill, she dives, and James heaves a sigh of relief. Hopefully that's the last of the madness.

His hands ache from gripping the wood so tightly; his shoulders feel as if they are being pulled from their sockets from holding the entire weight of his body. Salt water stings the scrapes on his palms, the cuts on his face and arms. He wonders if any of his men have survived; he hasn't heard a single voice shouting for help in quite some time.

He is startled when hands begin moving along his thighs, up then down, slowly exploring the entire length of his leg. It certainly feels like hands, so he must be delirious indeed, though he can't imagine what's happened to make him so. It can not have been an entire day since the Dauntless went down, and he's sure he suffered no blow to the head.

Can one go mad with guilt? he wonders wildly, then jerks when those imagined hands boldly caress his backside and linger between his legs. He kicks furiously, exclaiming, "Stop that at once!" before he realizes he's spoken. One of his flailing feet connects with something solid, and his mind whispers shark.

The ...woman (he refuses to even think that other word) surfaces, and he groans. He'd hoped she was gone. "That wasn't very nice," she scolds, rubbing her shoulder and frowning prettily at him. "I wasn't hurting you!"

He returns her glare. "You will cease... fondling me immediately," he ordered. "It is unspeakably rude."

She sulks, like a child who's had her favourite toy taken away. "I wasn't hurting you," she repeats petulantly. "I just wanted to see—"

"Shall I put my hands all over your tail?" he demands. "Would you not find it rude if I were to grope your fins and... and... backside... and..." he cannot keep his eyes from drifting to her breasts, which are just above the waterline, and suddenly he feels like the biggest fool in Christendom. "God help me, I'm arguing with a bloody hallucination."

She glides closer until she is only a hand's breadth away. "Would you like to touch my tail?" she says, and this time there's no mistaking her coquettishness. She rubs what would be her hip against his, lays one cold, smooth hand against his cheek and ducks her head in an eerie copy of maidenly shyness. If she had eyelashes, she'd been watching him through them, James is sure of it. "You would like it; it's a lovely tail indeed."

Though there is something distinctly predatory shining in her eyes, James surprises himself by giving a wry laugh. "So this is going mad, is it?" he muses. "I suppose I should take comfort in the fact that I'm not hallucinating that damned pirate." He draws his head back, for she is leaning forward and peering into his mouth. "Whatever are you doing?"

"Your teeth are not gold." She sounds deeply disappointed. "I thought all land-dwellers had golden teeth. That man on the black ship did."

James clenches his jaw. Is there no escape from Jack Sparrow, even when he's sliding towards insanity? "That man on the black ship is a thief and a criminal," he says, voice tight with anger, but unable to lash out even at a hallucinatory woman. "And it is his doing that I am here in these waters."

"Were you following him?"

"Yes, I was following him."

"But why did you sail into the storm?" she wants to know. "I did not think that even land-dwellers were so foolish as to—"

"Yes, thank you," James snaps. "You are quite a troublesome figment, aren't you? If you don't mind, I would quite like to get some sleep. You can certainly harass me to your heart's content later."

"How will you sleep holding to the wood?" She licks her lips, eyes widening as if she is eager to see how he will manage that, and James thinks he has never seen anything more inhuman in his life, even Barbossa and his skeletal crew.

"I do not know," he admits. "But I am going to try."

She swims lazily around him, eyeing the wood critically. "I think you will fall and sink," she declares at last. "It would be easier if you would climb up on that."

James' head is suddenly pounding; from the stress of encroaching madness or lack of water or sheer exhaustion, he does not know. In hopes of banishing this vision, he says in exasperation, "If you are so worried about my welfare, then you are certainly welcome to help me."

She claps her hands, rising up on her tail in excitement. "Shall I?" she gasps. "I believe I shall! I'll hold it still..."

She disappears beneath the waves, tail arching gracefully as she dives. James feels the wood shift and sway, then it steadies as much as it can while floating in the middle of the ocean. He hesitates, then decides there is nothing to gain by ignoring the momentary lull in the swelling of the water, and manages to climb atop the broken section of the Dauntless's deck. He carefully stretches out full-length, moving slowly so as not to overturn himself. It is something of a miracle that he found a piece of wreckage big enough to lie down on; only his feet still dangle in the water.

He closes his eyes, then hears a splash to port. Turning his head, he sees she's back, beaming proudly.

"See?" she says. "Isn't that better, sir?"

"I suppose it is," he answers, too weary and heartsick to care that he's talking to no-one. "You act as if this is quite an adventure."

She leans on the edge of the wood, making it tilt crazily for a moment. "It is," she says, very serious, as if her breasts are not practically in James' face. "I've never seen a man this close before. And now I've gotten to save your life!"

He gives a rough chuckle, wincing at how dry his throat is. "I'm not quite saved yet, I don't think," he says. "There's still the matter of water, and of course if the weather turns foul again..."

She goes perfectly still, face turned toward the sky, and James has the fanciful impression that she is listening to the water as it whispers around her tail, to the wind as it toys with her hair. "It will rain, but it will not be heavy, and it won't storm again for two days," she says at length, as matter-of-fact as if she has just ordered tea. "Though I don't know what you need more water for when you've the whole sea."

"I cannot drink sea-water," he mutters, not wanting to dwell on the very real possibility of being without water for more than a day. "I suppose we shall see how hardy I am."

She is silent for a moment, as if considering this, then cheerfully offers, "Shall I sing to you? I have a beautiful singing voice."

He glances at her. "I suppose it couldn't hurt," he says, chest constricting tightly. "I've already dashed my ship upon the rocks."

"I'm not one of them," she sniffs, offended. "And if you are going to be insulting, I won't come and see you again."

"I apologize, o my delusion," he murmurs, managing a twisted smile. He lays his arm across his eyes to protect them from the last light of day as she begins to sing.

She wasn't merely boasting; her singing voice is beautiful, hypnotic. There are no words to her song, it is made of dissonant melody, low and haunting. In it he can hear the tides and the currents, the ghosts of ships and sailors that have lain on the ocean floor for centuries. He wants to tell her to stop, horrifically sure that at any moment he will hear the voice of the Dauntless and his own men, but before he can speak, sleep drags him under.

~*~

James wakes to muscles wailing in agony. His head is still pounding, his back is so stiff and cramped that he cries out involuntarily when he tries to move.

"Are you all right, sir?" Her flat, strange voice is damnably jolly.

"Hardly," James replies through clenched teeth. He wonders if he should move; he doesn't want to dump himself back in the water, for he knows he could never pull himself back up onto this piece of wreckage. He squeezes his eyes shut tightly, focuses on breathing away the pain. "Why on earth are you calling me 'sir'?"

"Is that not your name?" she asks, puzzled. "I heard the other men calling you 'sir'."

James sits up so swiftly that the wood rocks alarmingly, and he swears, scrabbling to keep himself afloat even as his back and shoulders protest loudly. She glides forward to help him; within a few moments, he's on an even keel again. He takes a moment to catch his breath, then asks, "Other ones? You've seen other men?" He ignores the little piece of his mind which mocks him for talking to someone who isn't even there.

"Oh, yes," she replies, blithe and unconcerned. "There were lots of them, but they've all been taken now."

"Taken." He can't breathe. "All of them, are you certain?" He can't be the only one left alive.

She nods, swimming in restless circles. "Of course I'm certain—I saw the boats come and get them."

James gapes at her in astonishment. "The... boats came and got them?"

"Well, yes," she says, mimicking his expression. "The fishermen knew that your ship went down, didn't they?"

James is so weary and desperate that he's on the verge of believing that she is real—he's heard many a tale of men who claimed to have seen mermaids or been rescued by them, and in a world which is capable of producing living skeletons, mermaids should not be out of the question. He wants to believe she is real, for that would mean that at least some of his men are alive, than he is not responsible for dooming his entire crew to a watery grave.

"Oh, I found something! Let me show you!" she exclaims, and disappears with no further explanation.

Left alone, James looks out across the water. There is less wreckage visible today; he assumes some of it has been carried away by the current. Not too far away, he can see a water barrel bobbing along, and he wonders if he could paddle his makeshift raft that far.

He can see coastline off to the east. He thinks it is Tripoli, or perhaps Crete—he has no idea how far off course they'd been blown. But it does give him hope that perhaps his men were retrieved by locals, and if so, it follows that he himself may soon be rescued. He cannot decide if that possibility fills him with relief or dread.

The sun is beginning to beat down, and James knows that his thin shirt will not be much protection as the day progresses. He wishes that he hadn't been obliged to discard his coat when he was thrown into the sea. He could have draped it over his head for shade, perhaps torn out the lining and used it to bandage the long, nasty cut on his forearm. The wound has stopped bleeding, but he doesn't like looking at it. He has no idea how he received it.

She surfaces, splashing water all over him. "Here!" she says triumphantly, smiling so widely that he can see every one of her wickedly sharp teeth. "I found this on the bottom! Grandmother says you can drink this, sir."

She is holding a bottle, a bottle of heavy crystal from his own cabin. His steward always thought it odd that Commodore Norrington insisted on keeping his drinking water in a decanter rather than in a pitcher, but James had preferred to keep his water in a container that would not be so easily contaminated by dirt or other bits of debris. He reaches out and takes it from her, hand shaking. "Yes," he says thickly, dropping his gaze from hers until he can regain his composure. "Yes, I can drink that. Thank you."

He takes a long swallow, aware that the mermaid is watching him avidly. The water is almost painfully cool against his parched throat, and James has to remind himself that this small bottle may have to sustain him for many days. He replaces the stopper, sets it between his legs, and looks at the mermaid closely. "This bottle would not have floated," he says slowly. "It would have sunk directly to the ocean's floor."

She seems confused. "I said I found it on the bottom, didn't I?"

"Then I suppose I must admit that you are real," James goes on, "for there is no other way that this bottle could have been salvaged. I certainly could not have dived for it myself."

She laughs. "Of course you couldn't—you would drown before you got halfway there!"

All at once it dawns on James why her voice sounds so peculiar. When he was a boy, he would lie submerged in the bath, listening to his mother's voice, distant and somehow warped, yet perfectly understandable. That is how the mermaid sounds—as if he is hearing her from underwater.

"—kiss me?"

"What?" James comes back to himself; he hasn't heard whatever it was she's been saying.

"If I am real, does that mean that you would like to kiss me?" Her smile is coy, but again, there is that unsettling, measuring gleam in her eyes.

The idea fills James with revulsion—he can't help but think of those vicious teeth tearing his tongue from his head—and quickly he tries to recall everything he's ever heard about the ways and wiles of mermaid. He doesn't recall much about sea-nymphs, but he does remember enough of old sailors' tales to know that mortal men would be wise to keep from angering creatures of the sea.

"I am honoured that you would allow me to do so," he says, choosing his words with utmost diplomacy, "but I do not think that I am worthy."

Her eyes contract, her face darkens, and James is suddenly certain that she is going to drag him to the depths and leave his bones on the sea's floor to be stripped bare. Then she giggles and claps her hands. "You are right, you are not!" she crows. "Clever Man! Well, then, if I can have no sport of you, I suppose I should move you."

"Move me?"

"The fisherman will never find you out here," she says, as if this is perfectly obvious, "but I shall pull you closer to shore." She throws him a sly glance. "Unless you'd like to stay here with me. Grandmother's grandmother's grandmother kept a man, or so it is said."

James swears under his breath. "Pleasant as that sounds, I think that I would prefer to return to land, for I do not swim as well as you."

She preens, rises up on her tail again. "How could you, with those clumsy legs? You would be much handsomer with a tail, I think. It is too bad that magic is lost. Lie down!"

She dives, and James is still wondering what she meant by "that magic is lost" when the haphazard raft begins to move. He quickly lies flat, one hand holding to the edge of the wood, one clutching the decanter. He hoped she is not pushing him further out to sea. He now has no doubt that she is indeed real, but from what he has seen, she is also inconstant in her whims and might just as well decide to drown him as save him.

It begins to rain, and he closes his eyes, enjoying the feel of it on his face, steadfastly refusing to think of what awaits him once he reaches a port. If he reaches a port.

~*~

"Come on, lad, wake up and give us a hand, 'ere!"

James opens his eyes, sees the British colours flying high above him, and anxious faces peering at him over the side of a small boat. "Hello," he says, dazed.

"There ye are now. Grab that rope if you're able, and we'll pull ye in!"

James sits up, gritting his teeth against the dull pain of back and hands and legs and arms, and reaches toward the rope. Then he stops, wondering if he can hold on to it and the decanter at the same time. It may be all that has survived of the Dauntless. After a moment's consideration, he reluctantly sets the bottle on the section of the quarterdeck which saved his life, then lays his hand flat on the wood. "A good ship," he murmurs with a pang of sorrow, then takes hold of the rope

The fishermen reel him in. He's wrapped in a warm, blessedly dry blanket, and given tea which is stale and sickeningly sweet, but it's hot, and that's all he cares about at this moment.

He stands at the rail, scanning the waters, but sees nothing. He's already beginning to wonder if he imagined the whole thing.

"They don't like to be seen this close to shore."

Startled, James turns to see the bosun standing there. "Pardon?"

"Surprised she brought you this close, myself," the bosun continues. He's a short, lean man with white hair, what might be a Yorkshire accent, and a knowing smile. "She must have taken a liking to you. It's good luck, y'know, for a sailor to have the favour of a mermaid."

James falls silent, and hopes the bosun's right. He's going to need all the luck he can get once he returns to British soil.