When Elizabeth was fourteen, she was quite certain that she was entirely in love with Captain Norrington.

He'd been "Captain" for a year, and she could easily remember when the title was brand new and didn't fit so well. It had been the first time she'd called him "Captain" and he'd turned slightly pink that she'd decided to be in love with him. He'd ducked his head, which hid the blush from everyone but her, still a foot and a half shorter than he, and he said, "Madam," in response, which was quite silly addressed to a thirteen year old, and utterly delightful.

He danced with her twice, that night, at the ball to celebrate the new promotions, which was also quite silly, since there were a dozen and one young ladies eager to have his name on their cards, and Elizabeth was only thirteen and wouldn't even be out in society if this were England. But it wasn't, it was the Caribbean, and she was, and he danced with her, so dashing in his uniform and charming in his blush.

"When I am grown," she told her father, as he tucked her overtired and flushed into bed, "I shall marry Captain Norrington."

"Of course you will," Papa said, kissing her brow.

She snuggled into the bedclothes, eyelids drooping. "I expect he will be an admiral by then, of course."

"Most likely," Papa agreed, and blew out the light.

At her fourteenth birthday they held a party, not quite a ball, but there was dancing in any case. Captain Norrington had danced with her, and smiled his warm, friendly, beautiful smile at her, and told her she was quite the prettiest girl in the room in an amused tone that she didn't quite understand, but that made her feel very grown up in any case.

She'd been so very, very happy, that night.

Tonight there is no ball, no celebration, just a hush and a horror lingering in the air as Elizabeth hurries down to the fort. It is full dark, but the fort is lit up like a bonfire, too much to be done before the morrow. The sentries at the gate eye her sidelong, but do not challenge her as she alights from the carriage. In fact, nothing slows her until she arrives at his door.

She takes a deep breath. Smoothes her skirts. Knocks and is bid enter.

Commodore Norrington's office is a blaze of light, a slew of paperwork, a breeze from the window flickering the one and rustling the other. James is a bowed, wigged head behind the desk, his hat and coat on hooks by the door, which she closes quietly behind her. He glances up. "Ah," he says, laying aside his quill, "Elizabeth. Good evening." He stands up, and comes around his desk.

He's not smiling. Then again, neither is she.

"You should be at home resting," he says. "You've been through a great deal."

There's concern in his voice, and she flashes a smile. "Yes, I suppose I should."

She doesn't know how to say why she is here. The last time they spoke seriously, just the two of them, it was for only a few moments, on the way home from the Isle de Muerta. He'd been haggard, hardly himself. A third of his men dead on the deck of the Dauntless. There had still been blood under his fingernails.

He's perfectly composed this evening. Entirely himself.

"James," she says, "can't you—"

But he interrupts her. "Miss Swann. Do not ask me to compromise myself more than I already have." His voice is cold, but his face is not, and in his eyes...

She doesn't know what she sees there.

She doesn't understand him at all, Elizabeth realises. She has known this man for half her life, and has committed herself to know him for the rest of it, but she does not understand him at all.

She is sure she cannot sleep for worrying, but dawn comes too quickly. She remembers so vividly being fourteen and entirely in love with James Norrington. She does not remember when things changed so completely, but the day Jack Sparrow is due to hang, she knows that she no longer does, nor ever can.


*


When Will was fourteen, he was quite certain that he wanted to be Captain Norrington when he grew up.

The lieutenants, those shorebound or serving on ships currently in port, would fence every afternoon. It had started soon after they arrived in Port Royal, just Lieutenant Norrington running through guards, lunges, drills for an hour. Now and then he'd entice some fellow officer out to be an opponent, and sometimes those fellows would return, until there was a small cohort of them there every afternoon, doing mock battle and sweating through their shirts.

They were joined, of course, by a gawking fringe of the town's boys, Will among them on the day in three that Brown would close up early to go down the tavern with his brother and friends. Will would watch Norrington's blade flash and dance—faster than his opponent's, always—and think that he was brilliant. Daring, implacable, an officer of the King's Navy; everything a man should be.

Will watched as Norrington demonstrated—first guard, the lunge, recovery—and strained his ears to catch every word that the captain bestowed—not carelessly, never that—to the others. "You have to practice, every day," he'd said, and Will did, with a stick with the other boys, and then after they got bored, in his room above the smithy by himself. It wasn't nearly good enough, Will knew that, but it was all he had.

There was a lieutenant at the fort—young, gangly and shorebound; his name was Groves—who came once every few days, mostly to lean nonchalantly in the shadow of the gate and make mock. "But what's the point?" he said, when Norrington had corrected a blushing midshipman's stance. "It's not as though pirates will strike a guard and fight fair just because you're polite."

Will thought maybe he hated Groves.

But Norrington just gave him a glance, a lifted eyebrow. "Which is why we must be twice as skilled, to counter whatever is brought against us." (Will practiced twice as hard, that week.)

At the age of fifteen he tried drawing down a sword for the first time. It was completely rubbish, of course. The balance was non-existent and it wouldn't take an edge, but it was a start. Brown was livid with him for wasting good steel and solder, yelled fit to burst a vein, ordered Will to sweep the entire smithy and stormed off to the tavern. But the next day (late the next day) after they finished the Widow Johnston's wagon axle, he pumped the bellows and beckoned Will over, and started explaining fine taper, and balance, and grinding.

Will got better. And with a real sword in his hand, and a sense of how it worked—a sword was just another tool, after all, and he was good with using tools—he got better at fencing as well. He was busier in the smithy, these days, but when he could he still went down to watch Norrington's fencing session, and he'd practice in his room again, and again, and again, until he got it right.

Solo practice was no match for actual sparring, he knew that. But he could hardly join in. He wasn't one of them. He wasn't Norrington, no matter how desperately he wanted to be. Norrington was a Captain, and the terror of pirates from Eleuthera to Maracaibo. He believed in (Will knew, he'd heard him say it) the right of the innocent to live without being preyed upon. To live their lives.

Like Will's father could have lived, like his mother.

Norrington was a Captain of the Royal Navy, and Will was a blacksmith.

Is still a blacksmith, because somehow, amazingly, after everything that he's done in the past two weeks, Will Turner hasn't been clapped in irons and thrown into the cell next to Jack Sparrow's, but has been pardoned, thanked curtly for his part in the affair, and bid go freely.

"Was there something else?" Commodore Norrington had asked, as Will had tried not to gape.

"Nothing, sir," Will had replied. And left.

They'd come aboard the Dauntless, that night, in torchlight and moonlight upon a scene of slaughter. The marines had been jubilant, but Norrington, Will remember, had had a face like the apocalypse and blood smeared on the blade of the finest sword Will had ever made. He'd gasped Elizabeth's name, but let Governor Swann lead his daughter away, and Will knew he was a good man, the Commodore, the best of men, which was what she deserved. Surely.

Will has slept this night, somehow, in his room above the smithy. He watches the sun rise, and remembers being a boy who wanted nothing more than to be Captain Norrington.

The day Jack Sparrow is due to hang, he realises he never could be, nor still wanted to.


*


When James was fourteen, he was just barely an officer, and not Captain anything yet, but he knew he would be one day. He wanted to join the Royal Navy to do what was right and good.

He never imagined, at fourteen, that there would be a difference between the two.

It was a fact of the world, his first captain had told him, that there were men who would do as they pleased, to the detriment of others, unless there were also men who would deny them. James had never questioned which sort of man he was. He had two sisters, both younger. All he ever wanted was to keep them safe. A deck beneath his feet, the wind on his skin, and to keep them safe.

Both types of men, his first captain had told him, will get what is coming to them. To the righteous, the glories of heaven. To the wicked, a short drop and a sudden stop.

James hadn't wondered, at fourteen, why the fate of the bad was worldly, and that of the good other. He hadn't asked what happened to the wicked after death, and what to the righteous in this life.

Now, he thinks that perhaps his captain wouldn't have had an answer for that. For him, James thinks, it was always that simple.

For James, it has always been that simple.

Until Jack Sparrow. Until Will Turner. Until Elizabeth Swann.

James remembers Will becoming a man. He remembers one day there was a knobble-kneed boy watching him fence, and the next there was a lean-limbed young man following the flash of blades with narrowed eyes. He remembers when his queries to Brown about how his new 'prentice did stopped being met with, "He'll be a fair smith, one of these days" and began to be met with a curt, "Well enough."

James remembers Elizabeth becoming a woman. Between one ball and the next everything fell into place, the grace that she'd never quite managed before, the smile that was no less joyful but somehow more mature, the beauty that was too entrancing for him to name it. He'd danced the second double with her at every event for two years, but for the first time he was nervous.

He doesn't know when he became a man himself. He remembers his mother and sisters crying, over everything: his first commission; when he passed his officer's exams; when he was posted to the Caribbean. He doesn't know if it was any of those events singly. All of them together. Something he missed, caught up in more important matters at the time.

Eight years ago, at least. Eight years, he'd been out here. He'd missed Charlotte's wedding. He'd missed Marietta growing up; she'd be married herself soon, if she wasn't already. Letters took a long time coming out here, longer going back.

He'd never regretted it. He was doing something worthwhile. Wasn't he? Everyone had always told him he was. He received letters of thanks, handshakes from strangers, cheers from his men. Another body for the gibbet; more innocents protected.

They had brought Sparrow aboard the Dauntless, that night, into the midst of a chorus of approval from the redcoats. They'd chained him and led him off to relatively comfortable confinement in a small cabin whose previous occupants—marine officers—wouldn't be needing it any more. Before they did, though, James looked in his face and thought that here was a man standing in the lee of a nightmare. Here was a mirror.

They'd taken him away, and James had retired, if "retired" meant going to his cabin and having conversations he barely remembered with Swann, with his daughter, with Turner. Finally alone, he'd poured a glass of brandy and set to cleaning dead men's blood off his sword. He'd still been awake when false dawn silvered the sky. He'd heard the men, still celebrating, toasting him with raucous sincerity.

However much he is censured for the loss of men, ships, dignity to His Majesty's Navy, he knows he will be commended for the apprehension and dispatching of Jack Sparrow.

He is not a man accustomed to measuring himself in the regard of others.

The day Jack Sparrow is due to hang, James Norrington sits in his bedchamber, not wanting to do this, knowing he will anyway, letting everyone down.