Rags of Time
Part 15
by
Full headers in Chapter 1
Disclaimer: Not mine, none of it. Claim no ownership and make no money. I just like to play with them. Sorry!
Disclaimer: Not mine, none of it. Claim no ownership and make no money. I just like to play with them. Sorry!
Jack had lasted three weeks.
Three weeks of silently cursing that stubborn bastard for his pride and his refusal to actually tell Jack what was going on in Port Royal. Three weeks of telling himself that he was actually going to sail to Singapore and not come back for months. For a year. To hell with James bloody Norrington—make it two years. Two years in Singapore and he wouldn't even remember what he looked like—how his eyes seemed to grow a shade of dark moss green when he smiled at Jack. No, he wouldn't even remember that at all.
Three weeks of feeling not right in the world or in his own head and not really knowing why. Three weeks of telling himself he was just making the final preparations before heading off across the ocean. That he just had to collect a few more supplies. That he would tell the crew where they were heading tomorrow.
Three weeks of snapping and sniping at the crew, of storming around the ship till not one of them would come within six feet of him without a pained expression on his face. Mr. Gibbs had realised they were all of them in trouble when even his best rum (kept for just such occasions) could not lift the captain's evil mood; served only to get him drunker than usual and made him uncharacteristically silent.
But Mr. Gibbs knew the captain of old, and at times like these he was not as much of a mystery as he might like to think. Mr. Gibbs was a superstitious man; it did not bode well for the crew to have a love-sick captain, especially when said love-sick captain was Captain Jack Sparrow, and not exactly known for being rational at the best of times.
So after three weeks of instructing the crew to creep on eggshells around their now even more unpredictable captain, and letting Sparrow's narrowed icy glare and thunderous face keep them as quiet as mice, Mr. Gibbs took it upon himself to sort the situation out.
The captain stood now at the bow of the ship, arms crossed stiffly upon his chest while he stared, glowering out to sea as though in the middle of some silent battle of wills with her, or whoever it was providing the opposing argument in his head.
"Captain," Mr. Gibbs said, all matter of fact as way of greeting before taking up a similar stance beside him.
"Gibbs," Jack replied with some hesitation, frowning and with lips pursed questioningly as he looked at the man, wondering where Mr. Gibbs's sudden apparent death wish had come from.
"So," said Gibbs, after a pause. "What's this filly 'o yours done to put you in such a foul temper?" The man visibly stiffened against the onslaught he expected that question to elicit.
Jack only turned slowly, his face a picture of blank surprise.
"Wot?" was all he said, far too quietly for Mr. Gibbs's liking.
"What's she done to vex you so, Captain?" The man actually started to inch away from him, warily glancing out of the corner of his eye to gauge Jack's reaction.
"And what makes you think, Mr. Gibbs, that it is matters of the heart that are troubling me?" Jack asked with a dangerously sarcastic politeness.
"Not much else that gets to you, Captain," Gibbs replied, still inching away as Jack slowly moved closer.
"Oh, really? And how pray tell, do you presume to know so much about it?"
"Come now, Captain. Yours ain't the first nor the last heart that's been battered by some beguiling lass."
The captain made some kind of self-deprecating snort of a laugh before leaning back against the rail. His expression seemed to soften slightly as he looked at Gibbs, who himself relaxed a bit, seeing that any immediate threat to his life had apparently abated.
"Beguilin' lass indeed. Well, maybe so. Has the bloody eyes for it."
One thing Mr. Gibbs had learnt in his acquaintance with the man was that though many things Jack said seemed to make little sense, there were certain things that should not be questioned further.
"You're a man 'o the world, Captain. You know as well as I that there's only one of two things to be done about complaints of the heart."
"Enlighten me, Mr Gibbs," Jack said with a flourish of a hand, which the man took as encouragement as it was the most characteristic gesture the captain had produced in weeks.
"You either drink y'self stupid till you find another to fill the gap with..."
"Aye, I know that one."
"Or you get your grumpy arse back to Port Royal and sort it out with the girl, else this ship'll start mourning the loss of her favourite captain."
Jack held the man's gaze for a long time. His lips pursed again, he turned to look back out to sea, watched the white-capped splashes kiss the bow.
"You're right Mr. Gibbs. I knew I kept you around for a reason. Other than the rum, o'course." He patted the man hard on the shoulder as he began to walk off, and Mr. Gibbs smiled to himself as he saw the old swagger swing its way back into the captain's steps.
"Right, you mangy scurvy 'orrible lot. Get it on about you and turn this bloody ship around!"
James had not been at home. He had not been at the fishing hut. And he was not at the fort.
Well. Not unless he was sitting in his office in the dark, anyway. And there was an uneasy feeling in the air and in the eyes of the guard Jack spotted by the main gates; the man was too nervous. Jack stood in the shadows, waiting for the change of guard. In his experience the Navy boys tended to be as gossipy as old women; when the relief arrived he could just about make out their conversation.
"No word then?"
"None at all."
"What do you think? Kidnapping?"
"With no ransom? And nothing broken or stolen?"
"Well, what else then? A man doesn't just vanish."
"But he had been acting mighty odd of late, had he not? All confused and blank looking half the time. Not himself at all."
"A commodore does not just do a runner."
"Well, where is he then?"
Despite his legendary reputation, there were still a number of older taverns and inns in Port Royal that Captain Jack Sparrow could venture into without having to worry about the militia turning up to arrest him. It was to one of these less highbrow establishments he went, and by paying twice too much for his rum found out that Commodore James Norrington had apparently vanished from the face of the Earth five days previously.
According to the barman, whose winding vernacular rivaled Jack's own, he'd last been seen leaving the fort on that night heading home. And according to the beau of the sister of his housemaid's daughter he had only remained at home an hour before leaving again, out of uniform. And according to the girl who kept a room for 'entertaining gents' upstairs, her sister, who was a doxy by the harbour, propositioned a man who looked a lot like him as he boarded a little boat all on his own and sailed out on the night's tide.
"How the hell would a doxy know what the commodore looked like?" Jack had asked.
Only to be told that apparently, according to her sister who kept a room upstairs, said doxy was a favourite of one of the officers, being a classier sort of doxy than most who worked the harbour, and said officer for whom she was a favourite was very adept at doing a perfect impression of the commodore, and it was upon this that she based her assumption about that man in the boat.
Jack left the inn with his head spinning, and a rather uncomfortable feeling like his insides had been ripped out.
He found the classier-sort-of-doxy by the harbour, and for a coin she told him the direction the boat had headed in. In exchange for the nearly full bottle of rum he had she also told him how she knew it was the commodore. Apparently James had caught her and the officer, for whom she was a favourite, in a rather compromising position some months previously. Her lips twisted as she laughed around the rim of the bottle, rum trickling past the stain colouring her mouth.
"Knew it were 'im, luv. 'E turned the same pretty shade of red when he seen us as when I asked him ha'penny for a suck the other night."
Jack left her cackling into the bottle.
He walked to a quieter part of the harbour and sat on the steps there. The water lit up with the reflections of the town behind him. There was laughter somewhere there, and then glass smashed on the road. The gulls squabbled on the headland, fighting for position and screaming at each other. A dog barked, someone shouted a drunken slur, the water lapped at the harbour.
And all these things swirled in Jack's mind as he tried to determine where the hell James had gone. The man could only have left for one of three reasons. Either he wanted to find Jack, wanted to get away from Jack, or wanted to get away from something else.
Had he not wanted to see Jack, he would have done better to improve the security of his back door and windows. Had he wanted to find Jack, there were few places he would know to look—and fewer that he'd know Jack would go to in preparation for a trip to Singapore. Had James wanted to get away from something else—well. There was one place any man would go to get away from anything, and it was also one of the few places James would know to look for him. Tortuga.
Thinking two out of three was better than nothing at all, and that if he were not to find James there at least he would be able to get himself as drunk as his current mood seemed to be demanding, Jack went about acquiring quick passage to Tortuga.
Tortuga. A place many a man of Jack's persuasion might dream of. Music and song and pretty girls, grog and rum and ale, bed and board in a room or a cupboard or a pigpen.
The streets burned with life and stank of shit and lost faces. In the third tavern, Jack saw a crusty old sailor had won some pretty coins on a good hand. He was in the process of being relieved of them by some even prettier ladies. They pressed their heavy breasts against him, a girl sat on each knee, laughing as they dribbled rum into his mouth from the bottle while taking drinks themselves. Their dresses, as patched and dirty as everything else here, hid their quick-handed movements as they nipped at the contents of his pockets.
A fight erupted beside Jack, and he parried like a dancer to get out of the way of fists and heads. He circled their table, relieved them of their bottle of rum, seeing as they wouldn't want to be sharing it anymore, what with the fisticuffs.
"Much obliged, boys," he said quietly, raising the bottle in their direction as one got the other in a headlock. He drank deeply from it and walked through the pub towards the bar. He leant against it, sipping at the rum until the barmaid slid him a cloudy glass with a wink. He smiled back at her, and it didn't take much more than a few well placed compliments to get her talking about the oddly-serious-posh-looking man she'd seen a few days ago, loitering around the docks like he was waiting for a ship to come in.
Jack left the inn and left the barmaid with the rum and made his way in the direction she said she'd last seen the out-of-place man. Tortuga at this time of night was wild, a scene out of one of Dante's silly circles—though most involved in it didn't seem to think it hellish.
Jack walked through it all as though he were a part of it, at ease with dodging the mess and spills of people and weapons as though he belonged here. He did, really, he thought as he rounded a corner into an alleyway; he had belonged here many times before. But this was not the place Jack had expected to find James.
Yet there he was, suddenly. Sitting in a heap against a wall in the alleyway. Hunched over, parted knees raised against his chest, cradling a bottle of rum. His hair hung limp around his face, clumped in tangles and wet from the rain and filth of the street. He stared with shark's eyes—dead, unseeing. Just breathing, reacting on instinct. The filth clung to his face, caught in the stubble and bristles. His breeches were wet, dirty with mud and shit from the gutter, his shirt torn under his dark overcoat.
Jack sighed. Stared for longer, knowing James hadn't seen him yet. Thought of the last time he'd seen him—proud and arrogant, dismissive in his anger. Not like this. Jack's face was blank, passive, with dark eyes filled with sadness as the wind lifted his hair, blinked slowly against this vision he had not expected.
James took another drink from the bottle, choked slightly on it and coughed till he spat beside himself, dry retching above a puddle. As he leant to his side to spit again he slipped, elbow smashing into the puddle, splashing muck on him as he tried to regain his balance, one leg flailing out beside him.
Jack felt his legs move before he'd told them to, saw his hands reach out to help James upright as though Jack's own body made the decision to be near the man before his mind had consented. He pulled James up, pressed him back against the wall and held tighter as James tried to shake him off, swearing nonsense as he thrust his head forward and back, until it smacked against the brickwork behind him. The jolt made him still, look with unfocussed eyes, but he still recognised Jack.
Jack was crouched down in front of him, one hand on his shoulder and the other cupping his face, keeping him still.
"Jamie, what in hell's name are you doin' here?"
"I am sitting in a gutter," James stuttered, words slurring and unsteady. "Drinking rum."
"Yes, I can see that, love," Jack said, pushing hair away from James's face. James tugged his head away from the touch, as though that gentle gesture had just made him realise Jack's hands were actually on him.
"Don't touch me! Get away."
"I'm the only thing keeping you upright at the moment, James."
"Don't need you! Get away." James's head lolled back, rolled against the wall. They sat in silence for a moment. Jack couldn't quite comprehend what he was seeing, couldn't quite work out why James had gotten himself into such a state. Why he hadn't realised it might happen this way. There were not a great many things that happened in the world that Captain Jack Sparrow was not able to predict. Though it appeared this current state of affairs was one of those.
"Don't want to see you. Not here, not now. You're meant to be in Singapore."
"If you didn't want to find me, luv, you wouldn't have come to Tortuga, now would you? Stupid fool that you are, if anyone had recognised you you'd be dead already. 'Cept maybe this spectacular performance of a fall from grace you're puttin' on at the moment might have spared you a while so's your would-be murderer could just sit back and watch."
Jack was talking too fast for James to understand his words, they only swirled around him as the ground seemed to swirl as well. He felt his head spin, felt his gut lurch and pushed his face past Jack's hand to lean over, vomiting beside him on the street.
Jack wrinkled his nose, his top lip creasing in slight distaste. There was a part of his mind that cursed the man for wasting so much rum. He held James's head steady, pulled his dirty hair away from his face. When the retching subsided James's body collapsed back against the wall and he closed his eyes, mumbling something under his breath. He lifted the bottle up to take another drink.
"I don't think so, matey," Jack said, tugging the bottle out of his hand. James grunted and swung his arm out to try and reclaim it, but it only bashed into Jack's chest as he lifted the rum out of reach. But that was good; he could hit Jack in the chest. That would feel good. He tried to repeat the motion with more force, but the air seemed too thick, his arm too heavy, and it just wouldn't work.
"You, luv, are about as pissed as it is humanly possible to be. The last thing you need is more rum. And it takes a situation of great magnitude for me to ever say those words." He shifted so he held James against the wall with one hand on his chest as James's arms sank back to his sides. Jack took a swig out of the bottle and put it in a pocket. "'Sides, it'd only be a waste. You'd only bring it back up again."
"I am their epitaph," James announced suddenly, attempting more clarity than his mouth was capable of.
"Wot? You are a maudlin drunk, luv," Jack said absently as he tried to position James's limp body so that he could lift him from the ground. "God, you ain't half a dead weight."
"I am their epitaph!" James said again, shaking Jack's hands from him with eyes closed in drunken sincerity.
"What the hell are you wittering on about, James?" Jack snapped, annoyance beginning to build in his tone as he tried to still James's jerking arms.
"I—the book you gave me... you drew a crow standing on a skull next to it. 'For I am every dead thing.'"
"Oh shut up, Jamie."
He tugged James's weight up from the ground with some effort and draped an arm over his shoulder. He lugged him through the backstreets of Tortuga, slipping and sliding in the puddles and mud in lanes that weren't likely to be populated at this time of night.
"Keep your head down, luv, can't have someone recognising you here."
James made some kind of wet grunt in response, his face leant heavily on Jack's shoulder.
By the time Jack had stumbled and tripped and cursed their way to a suitably discreet inn he was about ready to drop James where he stood. He settled for dropping him on a bench in a dark corner while he made arrangements with the barman.
Although two buckets, a large basin of water, root ginger, rum, and bed and board for two in a room for one was not that unusual a request for an establishment of this nature, the barman still managed to give Jack a look of contempt as he handed over the keys.
He hauled James up the narrow staircase, and had to pause halfway up, pressing James's heavy limp body against the wall to catch his breath.
"Christ, James," he growled, grappling with his flopping arms. "I'd bloody smack you one if it wouldn't make it even harder to get you up the bloody stairs."
Getting him into the room involved similar struggles, until he lowered James down onto the bed with more care than he thought he deserved.
James was practically unconscious already, so Jack lay him on his side and pulled the room's only chair closer to the bed. Once the maid had brought in the things he'd asked for he locked the door and turned, leaning back against it with a heavy sigh as he felt the weight of his body tug at him. He walked slowly to the bed and stood before it, watching James breathing slowly. He sat down beside him, brushed a dirty lock of hair from his face and pushed it gently behind his ear.
"Jamie-luv, what are you playin' at," he said quietly.
He shook him by the shoulder, then gently pushed open an eyelid. James was out cold.
With another sigh he pressed his hands to his face, rubbing at his temples. Jack tugged off James's sodden shoes and breeches, but didn't attempt to remove his shirt. He didn't have enough strength for the battle that would prove to be. He made do with covering James with the blankets and his own coat on top.
He put one of the buckets on the floor beneath James and twisted his limbs to make sure he couldn't roll over. Jack sat back on the bed with his legs outstretched, hooking them over James's knee as he leant against the wall. Blowing out the candles, he wondered how James would react to the worst hangover of his life.
"God, just leave me alone to die in peace, Jack."
"Take another drink, luv. It'll make you feel better."
"Will it hell... it'll just make me throw up again."
Jack laughed despite his own headache. He took the boiling pan from the fire and poured water into another mug of crushed mint and ginger.
"Well really, luv, what did you expect?" Jack asked with a mocking authority. He sat back down beside the bed, holding the mug out to him. James lay on his side. The image still caught Jack off guard; it was very definitely not Commodore James Norrington. His hair clung in clumps around his head and face, his face wore the beginnings of a beard that may have complimented his sharp features were it not for the muck and dirt caked in it. His filthy hands gripped at his head, as though they were the only things stopping it from falling apart. He covered his eyes against the dim rays of the rising sun, groaning as the smell of ginger reached him.
"You're meant to be in Singapore," James said hoarsely.
"Well, just as well for you I ain't or else you'd be in an even worse state, 'ey. You know, you really should leave that level of irresponsible drinking to the those of us that are better equipped at dealin' with it. Or to those who have no reason to sober up, so's they can just keep on drinking. Either way, neither of those is you."
James only groaned in response. He opened one eye and peered out between his fingers. Saw Jack the wrong way round, smelt the overpowering scent of the ginger, and felt the world swirl around him. His following groan sounded pained.
"What the hell were you doing, Jamie?"
And now Jack sounded serious, his voice full and thick with something James did not want to think about because it made him feel stupid for thinking it was there and idiotic for wanting it to be there so much.
He rolled onto his back to try and avoid having to look at Jack. Except that made the world lurch in a very unpleasant way, and his hearing seemed to fade as though he were underwater as he felt his stomach erupt some horrid nausea at him. He hadn't realised Jack was still talking as he leapt up, falling to the bed again as though his arms were made of string as he retched violently.
Jack rolled his eyes as he held the bucket accordingly. James spat and coughed and choked his way through regurgitating what little water he'd drank since waking. Jack rubbed his back in what was meant to be a comforting way, but the sticky roar James made in protest sent his hand dancing back to his side.
"Better now, luv?" Jack asked as the worst of it subsided and James's body fell limply to the mattress.
"No..." James groaned. He slowly crept his way back up the bed to rest his face against the pillow, lying on his side again.
"Oh look, luv, there's some green in here," Jack chimed as he went about disposing of the bucket's contents, smiling wickedly as he heard James groan behind him. "And some—black as well. Your humors must be well out of kilter. Well, least this might end your latest melancholic phase, luv, not that I'm much of one for Humoralism, but still..."
"Piss off, Jack," James said quietly as he let himself fall into the relief of sleep again.
Jack sat back down again softly so as not to wake him. He stroked James's hair back; he hadn't noticed it had grown so long. He wondered what else he hadn't noticed about James of late, and why. The why, more; there was very little that went on amongst and around those in Jack's acquaintance that he did not take note of, generally things that no one else was aware of. So how had this turn of events taken him by surprise?
The Governor's report had said James had not been himself of late, but Jack had read it and only seen it as words written by rivals to discredit him. Jack wondered now if there was some truth to it, and if there were, then why he had not noticed it.
There had been those times of late, few but increasingly regular, when he'd met with James to find him in a dark mood, darker than was justified by the reason he gave. He had seemed to cheer up pretty quickly upon Jack's arrival, so he had not thought too much about it. And then there were all those strange outbursts of anger and unusual words and the strain James wore in his eyes sometimes. But he hadn't thought too much about that either—which was funny, really, seeing as he thought about most things a number of times at least—all the better to get around or over something if you knew every side of it.
Strange that. Strange that he wouldn't have thought all that through already. But thinking on it now, it was almost as though he'd blindsided it on purpose without realising, like he hadn't thought of it because—
Oh. Bugger.
He hadn't really thought about it because that would mean thinking about the precariousness of this accord between them, of all the reasons it should end, and the speed with which it seemed to be inevitably sliding its way to falling apart, as James himself apparently was also. It was far easier to wander in and out of Port Royal, bounce in and out of James's life like the legend Captain Jack Sparrow was, knowing that James would be there when he came back.
Except it seemed he took a bit of the man with him each time he left; he'd refused to notice, seeing as it was restored, however temporarily, upon his return.
But then, what had been happening to his own state of mind during the previous weeks, since he had gone about his business stubbornly insisting to himself that he would not return to see James for a very long time? It was meant to be a very long time. Except he'd only last three weeks, seeing as he'd felt the whole time like there was something or some part of him that wasn't there because—
Bollocks.
This changed the boundaries somewhat.
This required much thought, Jack told himself. And rum. Lots of rum.
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