The Challenge
Part 2
by
Disclaimer: I have no claim on POTC or the lovely characters who populate it, even if it seems that James Norrington has, somewhat disconcertingly, made himself quite at home in my head with no apparent plans to leave. Jack Sparrow has been dropping by at random for years, as well, which surely doesn't help matters.
Originally Posted: 11/18/09
Originally Posted: 11/18/09
"Are you not well, James? You have seemed so terribly distracted lately," the governor inquired.
James stared at the man, and through him at the same time. So much of his life, and so many of the people around him, seemed increasingly distant of late. Or, alternately, it may have been that they had always been this distant and it had only recently occurred to James to let it bother him. Pushing such thoughts aside, James replied, "I am fine, Governor Swann. I have simply found it difficult, of late, to stop thinking about a number of matters at the fort." He sipped his tea.
When the governor left, distracted by an unexpected call from a nearby plantation owner, Elizabeth scooted closer and gave James a shrewd, concerned look. "James, I have never in my life seen you quite so lost in your own thoughts as you are lately, and I know from reliable sources that you are just as cloudy-minded when you are actually at the fort. Whatever is the matter?"
"Your spy network of gossips never ceases to amaze me, Miss Swann," James countered.
"I could say the same for your droll humor, Commodore Norrington," she riposted, briefly imitating his drawl. "Indeed, it is no wonder that you terrify the younger officers newly under your command; not a one of them can tell when you are not serious. I, however, have learned a lot over the many years of our acquaintance. Now please, will you tell me what on earth has you so terribly distracted?"
James opened his mouth to speak, then hesitated. "It is no fault of yours, Elizabeth, you can be assured of that," he said gently.
Elizabeth relaxed some small fraction with a small sigh of relief, but the look that she shot him was still worried. "I had not truly thought that, not after the first weeks following... well, Jack Sparrow's escape." She noticed the slight return of some sharpness to his look at the mention of the pirate, but it only puzzled her further. "But then what is it, James? Over the past weeks you have seemed more distant. Even when you visit my father and I for breakfast like this, your mind, it seems, could not be further away."
Looking down at her earnest face, James felt less distanced from her again. If he could trust anyone with this matter, he supposed that she would be the one. He still, however, proceeded cautiously. "Tell me, Elizabeth, did you have any particularly interesting visitors over the last month or so? Such as: just over four weeks before now?" He raised his eyebrows mildly and again sipped his tea, still holding her gaze with patient curiosity.
Elizabeth grew very still. "Not that I can think of. Why do you ask?" Her tone was dulcet and innocent-sounding.
James' gaze was scolding. "You share much in common with a visitor I had at that time. For instance: the both of you very conspicuously become a still as statues and answer with too-idle-sounding tones, as well as outright dishonesty, when pinned with a too-pointed question."
The corner of Elizabeth's mouth twitched. "I..." Then her eyes lit up suddenly with understanding. "A visitor that you had?"
The faintest hint of a smirk tugged at James' lips as he finished his tea, and as he set cup and saucer aside he could not help but admire the flush of anger that suddenly reddened Elizabeth's face.
"That bloody, ridiculous, idiotic pirate," Elizabeth muttered under her breath with pure vehemence. "I am so terribly sorry, James; I had no idea—" She stopped when James held up a hand.
"We came to something of an understanding. Unfortunately, he seemed to feel it necessary to... make amends to me in a characteristically unique manner of his own devising." James frowned slightly, not feeling that he was doing the event the slightest amount of justice, but then, there are things that one simply does not discuss with one's former betrothed.
"Jack Sparrow... making amends?" Elizabeth's utter confusion and incredulity reached new heights. "Are we talking about the same pirate?"
"When I say 'make amends' I mean that he expressed his intent to steal something from the navy."
Elizabeth frowned. "I do not understand. How could he make amends for anything he has done to you by stealing something else from the navy? He must be more insane even than I had previously thought." She lifted her teacup to her lips, holding the saucer in her hand, and her dark eyes appeared very sharp as she thought about it for a moment. She started to set both cup and saucer aside. "What is it that he intends to steal?"
"Me."
James could not help but smirk at the resultant loud clatter as she dropped the cup and saucer onto the tray, very much without her usual grace, almost spilling her tea over the table.
"What?"
"He intends to offer me freedom, if I cannot find some way to achieve it on my own within the next three months."
"He is mad," Elizabeth muttered, angrily. "Utterly and totally mad! Does he just associate the navy with servitude? Is this some kind of—"
"Elizabeth," James interrupted, quietly, "I explained to him why it was that I could not, at the time of my past acquaintance with him, express my wishes not to see him hanged."
"Your—but James you said—" She stopped as the sound of her father's laughter reached them from below the balcony. Her lips thinned and a look of slightly stricken understanding shone in her eyes for a moment. "Oh." She looked down at her hands and took a deep breath. "I forget, at times, that my father... I forget that others do not persuade my father as easily as I do."
"You forget that he keeps leashes tied around the necks of nearly all of us except for you," James amended, looking away. "He could not leash you if he tried. I doubt that anyone could. It has always been that particularly wild quality, Elizabeth, that I have always most admired in you." He smiled sadly, but the sadness was not so deep or so pained as it had been a month before.
Elizabeth bowed her head slightly, then looked up at James with a mixture of scrutiny and apology. "I think I see, then, what it is that sits so heavily in your thoughts."
James looked out over the balcony, to the sea: away from her too-sharp eyes. "I am, as you have come to learn over the years I am sure, not so proper as I appear to be in my professional life, but I am very far from being anything resembling a pirate."
"Oh, I don't know," Elizabeth mused. "I recall that when you were still a lieutenant you told me a few tales of raids against the Spanish that could just as easily have been told by a particularly proper and honorable pirate. You were terribly proud of the prize money you had earned." She smiled with an ever-so-faint wicked edge.
Clearing his throat, James shook his head. "I was a far younger man, then, Elizabeth, and you had been pestering everyone aboard, during that journey, for the most exciting tales in their repertoires. By the time I gave in and told mine, I had to match or exceed the adventure-level of how many other men's stories in order to keep hold of your attention?" He was not, however, able to fully conceal his amusement.
"You are older, yes, but Jack Sparrow is very nearly forty, and his career is still one adventure after another. You have simply let yours grow less so, Commodore." She hesitated. "And if I may speak boldly, let me say that it does not suit you. Your health always seems at its peak when you are more at sea than on land."
James' eyebrows rose at that. The man certainly did not look forty. Then the rest of Elizabeth's words sunk in and the commodore repressed a wince as he realized how terribly right she was; looking at his own prospects for where his life would be by the time he turned forty (behind a desk at this rate, no doubt) if he could not seize control of it himself. James felt rather uneasy. "Never at any time in our acquaintance have I known you to speak in any way but boldly," he said quietly. "But how on earth do you know that scoundrel's age?"
"Before lighting the signal fire that allowed you to find us, I spent a considerable amount of time encouraging him to drink himself into unconsciousness. Shortly before his treatise on freedom, I managed to tease a number of interesting facts out of him, including his birth year." She looked demurely smug.
For all that in some ways he did love her still, James sometimes found Elizabeth Swann the slightest bit frightening. "I see."
"But do you believe the rest of what I said, James?" She shot him another look of concern.
Taking a deep breath, James adjusted the cuffs of his shirt nervously. "I do, Elizabeth; however uneasy it makes me to admit." Again his gaze wandered toward the sea, visible in the distance on the other side of Port Royal, but this time it was out of longing rather than avoidance. "When I was younger, it was not uncommon for me to envy privateers, for all that they are all naught but a sheet of paper away from piracy; however, I have instead taken on the mantle of responsibility, rather than pleasure-seeking, and it is not something that I can bring myself to shed. My men depend upon me to lead them to the best of my ability, and I cannot abandon them for selfish reasons, any more than I could bring myself to attack an innocent merchant vessel like a brigand, especially without any justification."
Elizabeth took in his expression and recalled Jack Sparrow's slurring voice, going on about freedom and the sea. Insane babble, she had thought it, but in retrospect it had been the pirate at his most utterly sincere. The love of sea and sail that she had heard in Jack's voice she could now see on James' face, mixed with feelings loss and hesitation. "James?" Her voice was soft, soothing.
He looked at her, his eyes as green as the waters of the Caribbean at dawn.
She smiled slowly. "You are a fine man, James." Then it widened into a smirk even as she looked away demurely. "However, I also think that you would have made an equally fine pirate, had you not chosen to direct your devotions toward responsibility and law."
James blinked a few times, taken aback and flattered all at once. "If I had not been thinking such strange thoughts these past weeks, I would have hardly considered that a compliment." He hesitated, then added, "But I do thank you."
Elizabeth's eyelids lowered, hiding her gaze beneath her eyelashes. "I do hope you will find some way to be free, while still pursuing justice as seems to be your passion."
He looked away as well, masking his expression as best he could, to hide the mixture of pain and pride he felt. "As do I, Elizabeth. Your pirate has succeeded in bringing the matter to the top of my current list of priorities. I have three months before he will attempt to steal me himself, which would, I fear, be unhealthy for all concerned."
"If you need my help, James, I am here for you. It is the least I can do, after you have done so much for Will and I." She met his gaze hesitantly.
James offered her a small, reassuring smile. "Thank you, Elizabeth."
She nodded. "You are more than welcome, James. And I am sorry, this time for my father as well as..." She trailed off, looking down again.
Then Governor Swann returned to the balcony, not noticing how the smiles that Elizabeth and the commodore offered him in greeting were just a little strained.
Looking back on it, James would realize that he had no idea when, exactly, Elizabeth had begun using his weekly breakfasts at the Governor's house for brief strategy meetings and lessons in how to manipulate her father.
"You really must stop thinking of him as though he is your father as much as mine, James."
"Difficult: he has been my patron for nearly ten years and reminds me of my grandfather," James opined. "It has, I believe, a powerful effect on my psyche."
"You know, James, he uses that to his advantage when dealing with younger men. He knows how to play the paternal figure and he uses that in the same way that other men use tactics of intimidation: for control. As I recall, however, from my time spent on the Dauntless, he was immediately cowed when you spoke to him whilst you were wearing your most 'battle-ready' airs." She raised her eyebrows at him. "He is not a military man, and when your voice sharpens and you look fierce, he is completely unwilling to argue with you. I have seen it before with other naval men. Your eldest brother, for instance, scares the daylights out of my father."
That seemed to strike a chord. Norrington's gaze became clearer, sharper and more intent. His mind was alight with connections, forming a strangely clear vision: a single idea that contained within it a whole new strategy. "Does he?"
Elizabeth was unnerved by the sudden keenness of James' inquiry, and the fact that the wicked look in his cool green eyes somehow reminded her of Jack Sparrow. "You did not notice?"
"I have never been in the same room with the both of them at once." James sipped his tea with a thoughtful hum. "Interesting."
"Are you considering emulating him?" Elizabeth inquired.
James snorted. "Hardly. I am not so naturally enthusiastic and full of restless, fast-moving energy as Lawrence; it is his pace, intelligence, and his focused but often overwhelming vivacity that tends to intimidate people."
Elizabeth snorted. "I see. Do you get along with him?"
"Yes, actually. Far more than I do with Benedict, who has no sense of humor."
"I've not met him."
"You would hate him, I assure you." James sounded amused.
"Hmm." She set her cup and saucer aside. "You are up to something, James Norrington. I can see it in your eyes. You are silently laughing at a joke and you selfishly will not share it."
"Perhaps, Elizabeth, I merely wish to retain the element of surprise."
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