For a few short days in his life, James Norrington tasted absolute freedom. It was humbling, frightening, and all too disorienting, adrift on the sea on a black pirate ship with no anchor nor call, free to do whatever he wished, hang from the rigging, jump into the sea, sleep in the crow's nest, give in to every need or want that crossed his mind.

When he destroyed it, he didn't think he would look back.


--


Absolute freedom changes a man. Once one has experienced it—the rigidity of any other life fast springs into perception, societal shackles begin to chafe, and obligations begin to suffocate. James contemplated responsibility, debt, interest rates, marriage, paperwork, and wondered why he had never realized how cravats seemed to choke, how the wig seemed to itch, how the double coats were so damned hot.

He didn't think, however, that he could run away again.


--


In a forgettable tavern in Kingston, James Norrington drinks solemnly to the New Year, the Post Captain with the pretty daughter of marriageable age who had invited him to the town, and the fact that he has just managed to slip away from the New Year's party up at Suffolk Mansion and find a nice, quiet, not very dirty tavern with which to drink and greet another year. He looses his cravat and dumps it on the bench beside him, and pulls off his maroon frock coat, then the brown vest, then the wig. It takes two popped buttons on the crisp white shirt for him to begin to feel human again.

All in all, he isn't really surprised, after half a bottle of semi-decent brandy, to see Jack Sparrow plop his tattered arse down on the bench opposite him, pluck the bottle from his hands and upend it on the ground. And then order rum, despite growled and somewhat incoherent protests. "Happy New Year, Commodore!"

"You're too cheerful," James informs him, sulkily contemplating the lack of semi-decent brandy, and shakes his head when offered rum. He signals the dopey waitress to bring him another bottle of brandy, and watches as Sparrow knocks back a large gulp of rum with practiced ease. The pirate had somehow reacquired his cracked brown leather coat and his beloved tricorn hat (though it seemed suspiciously eroded, in one corner, as though exposed to acid).

"I'm alive, an' yer alive, an' the Turners be alive, an' I have me Pearl, s'all good," Sparrow says, cheerfully, though he pulls a face when James acquires another bottle of the (all right, it's dreadful) brandy and drinks.

"Congratulations," James says, and grimaces when he realizes that he sounds bitter. "Now go away."

"No," Sparrow informs him, with a sidelong grin, and drinks again.

"Where are the Turners?" James asks, hoping to guilt Sparrow into the direction of his young friends, wherever they may be.

"Over at the party," Sparrow replies, absently waving his hand, "To surprise their da'."

"Good for them."

"Shouldn't ye be at the party, mate?"

"I got bored," James lies, though he's glad that he wouldn't be there to run into his ex-fiancé. He doesn't think he can handle her presence, at the moment—she always reminds him of a man he once was, who, when recently promoted, attempted, stammering, to propose to the most beautiful woman he knew.

"T'aint it all good, though?" Sparrow asks, though he doesn't smile. "Everythin's back t'how it should be. Me, wi' me Pearl, you, wi' yer fancy Commodore hat."

Put that way, Sparrow managed to make the arrangement sound far emptier than it already was. James smiled tightly. "Yes. How it should be."

Sparrow tilted his head, watching him as he drank, and didn't comment, up until James finished a quarter of his bottle. "Want t'run away, again?"

"What? No!" James says, too vehemently, too telling. Sparrow laughs, mockingly, reaching out and patting a hand clenched painfully tight over a grimy terrible-brandy bottle. "Go away, Sparrow, before I have to muster the effort to arrest you."

"Can't. Privateer," Sparrow admonishes him, winking. "An' I'll be far away before ye can rouse any o' the lads over at the fort—they be havin' their own party."

"Did you have to choose this tavern?" James asks, irritable now.

"Sure, since I was lookin' for ye."

"Why?"

"T'make ye an offer, Commodore," Sparrow smiles, catlike. "I'm wi'out a first mate."

"You're asking me to help you crew a pirate ship?" James blinks, incredulous at this latest bit of audacity, insane even for Sparrow. "What the hell makes you think I'll even contemplate it, let alone agree?"

"Well... here, ye've got a debt from the Devil, ye have t'face up t'two whelps wot trusted ye an' that ye betrayed, people wot will be lookin' at ye askance, thinkin' yer flighty, an' ye'll never be promoted, wi' the black mark on yer record. Piracy, even wi' the pardon." Sparrow elaborates, with an fluid roll of his shoulders.

"And what can you offer? Death, maybe even at my own gallows?"

"I'll show you one hundred ways, t'fall in love wi' a freeman's life," Sparrow says, leaning forward, his eyes half-lidding, "And at the end, if ye do, ye'll belong t'me Pearl. She likes ye, ye know." He leans back. "Don't have t'decide now, Commodore, I'll be in port for a couple o' days."

"And you decided that you could come here, and offer me something so ludicrous, and I'll agree?" James asks, disbelievingly.

Sparrow grumbles under his breath, for a moment. "That's what I told her, but she was hell bent on me askin' ye, an' that was the only thing I could come up wi' as an offer on short notice, mate. I only have t'ask ye, savvy? Then mebbe I'll be getting some peace from bein' badgered by me own ship. If it helps, I'm not too happy 'bout havin' the Pirate Hunter aboard, either, ever since ye double-crossed me the last time, eh? But women... bloody women, always have t'have their own bloody way."

James snorts, deciding not to argue pointlessly with whether or not the Black Pearl was, in fact, sentient, or merely a product of Sparrow's rum-sodden imagination. "Given your first choice of..."

"Barbossa? Aye, I chose that one," Sparrow admits easily enough. "See where it got me. But Anamaria was me Pearl's choice. An' now ye. Like I said, ye don't have t'agree, obviously. Just want ye t'think it over."

"One hundred ways to fall in love with a freeman's life," James repeats, in a sarcastic drawl.

Sparrow is absolutely serious, as he nods. "Aye. One hundred."

James thinks of chokingly hot uniforms, and debts he doesn't want to pay, and dips his head, exhaling, imagining a marriage of convenience, children, a stifled status and an increasingly cool wife, retiring at exactly the rank he was now, if he was lucky, having no further influence than he could. Or a life of an outlaw, short and brutal, with a savage end, dancing the hemp tango.

Absolute freedom had changed him, and all the brocade, all the fancy swords and uniformed parades, the Naval crested notepaper, the beautifully outfitted warships, couldn't buy back the man he was. When he smiles, lopsided, around his bottle, Sparrow laughs, and they drink to the Pearl.

-fin-