The man came to him out of a storm, out of some thundering, howling beastie off the Florida coast. Man, or ghost, or some other fey thing altogether, Jack wasn't sure. He's not sure, and he didn't like not being sure, when it came to things like that. It'd gotten him killed far too often in the past. But this time, this once, he wasn't altogether sure he cared.

The man appeared on the deck out of a flash of lightning, out of the luminous, actinic glare. Pale, pale as moonlight, moving with the ship as she rolled desperately at anchor, as sheltered as Jack could make her. White, and drenched, and drowned, while the thunder boomed across them, those icy green eyes meeting Jack's, the flash in them like lightning, the danger in them like a storm. Fey, wild. A spirit out of the sea herself. Jack breathed around the shock of it, the clenching in his heart like a punch to the chest, and watched the spirit come. Stood silent, and watched the spirit come. No man among his crew moved. No man among them dared.

The spirit didn't move like a spirit. Didn't move like a ghost, no eerie drifting, not substanceless, not hollow. He moved like a sailor, like a navy man, that old tiger's prowl, his hips rolling in time to the bucking of the ship, his feet neat and precise on the rain-drenched boards of her deck. Moved like a navy-man, and damnee looked it too. That old, proud tilt of that head. That deadly flash in sea-green eyes. No sword. No blade. No pretty coat. Only the man. Only the ghost, drowning in the rain, shining in the lightning, pale and thin and moving through Jack's world. Walking once again Jack's deck.

Jack didn't speak as the spirit came abreast. Didn't dare, his lips numb, his chest frozen. So many ghosts, he'd seen. So many ghoulies and beasties. His own, at times. Jack'd seen his own. But not this one. Not this man. Devil take him, not this man.

James smiled at him. That thin-lipped, narrow smile, that proud light in flashing eyes. Haunted, pale as the bones he ought to be, James smiled at Jack. Let Jack look at him. Let Jack see.

No coat, like Jack had thought. No uniform, no braid. No wig, no sword. No pretty tails to mark to whom he'd sold his soul and his loyalty, no weapon to raise against Jack. Dark hair soaked and snarled, tossed in furious winds, slicked in the pouring rain. A tangle of heavy linen, a shirt washed thin and translucent by the wet, and the narrow dark lines of those hips, still canted to the pitch of the ship. Barefoot. So pale. So small. Save the eyes. Save the lightning in those eyes, the pale green witch-light of the sea, and that thin, familiar smile.

Jack stood still, in the midst of his storm, in the crash of thunder and the sheet of lightning, and watched the ghost of James Norrington raise a hand towards him. Jack shuddered, a silent moan of fear and longing, the pins of the wheel hard beneath his white-knuckled hands, as James gently touched his face, a hard, thin touch of bone, a chill deeper than the sea. Jack closed his eyes, held tight to his wheel and his ship as if once more she'd save him from the maelstrom, while James gently drifted close, a soaked line of white against Jack's chest, and pressed cold lips to Jack's own. Pressed that thin, narrow smile to Jack's jaw, that faint curl of rueful amusement, and touched it gently to his mouth. Asking, a trembling line. Waiting, a hollow hope.

Jack knew he couldn't open his mouth. Knew, as sailors know, that to open his mouth to the ghosts of the sea was to drown in them, to invite them to pour their black waters inside you and drown you standing on dry deck. Jack knew, he knew, that this was a question he dared not answer, that this was a life he could not give. He knew.

But there was the lightning in Jamie's eyes, and there was the thunder in Jack's heart, and the soft question inside his chest: Who had ever said yes to James? Who had ever once said yes, when all the man dared was ask?

So Jack opened his mouth to the line of that questioning smile, parted his lips to the bone-chilled touch of the sea, and opened his eyes for one last grin as James Norrington stared at him in shock, as beneath the lightning in those sea-green eyes, some human thing trembled under Jack's mouth. Jack opened his eyes to the ghost of the storm, and smiled at the ghost-light in Jamie's eyes, and the proud, hollow gratitude of a drowned man. And lo, his mouth did not fill. The waters did not drown him, the ghost did not wrap its boney hands around his arms, and pull him to the sea. James Norrington, lost inside the lightning, did not strike him down.

"Mr Sparrow," the man nodded, a whisper on the wind, as close to gratitude as pride dared. And then a flicker through his smile, a touch of some more genuine humour, some warmer-than-ghostly thought. A smile, and the ghost of James Norrington bowed before ole Jack, and saluted him with a grin. "Captain."

And in the next flash of lightning, he was gone. A ghost of the sea, washed clean from their decks, and only the tingling in Jack's lips to remember he was there. The tingling, and unseen, the loosening of some hidden thing inside a pirate's heart.

"Fair sailin', Jamie," Jack whispered, into the roll of thunder, and smiled.