what_evil_lurks' Journal

None, I Think, Do There Embrace

Title: None, I Think, Do There Embrace
Author: what_evil_lurks
Characters: Norrington, Captain Jack Sparrow
Rating: PG for general creepiness
Warnings: horror, maybe angst. Slash? - metaphorically perhaps, but only if you're so inclined and squint really hard. Spoilers for DMC maybe?
Disclaimer: PotC belongs to Disney, Ted and Terry. if it belonged to me I'd be off on the Pearl. Or possibly a little sloop belonging to F-C James Norrington.

I come bearing fan fiction. I've been lurking for quite some time now, but have decided to come out of the shadows (heh) with the first piece of POTC fan fiction that I've managed to get finished. it's post-DMC. Cross-posted to

sparrington and

_norrington

Why yes, I am a feedback whore. Thank you so much for asking.

“None, I Think, Do There Embrace.”

It was cold. His bedroom was far colder than it should have been, given that after weeks of unrelenting rain Port Royal was now in the midst of a heat wave that steamed and stank, and left him waking with the sheets wet with his own sweat and his body sticky from the relentless humidity.

But now Norrington awoke, and was cold, and cautious for whatever it was that had awoken him in the small hours of the night. With attuned ears he listened for the out-of-place noises that might enlighten him as to the reason for his wakefulness. The cook and maid had long since gone to their homes, and his solitary manservant to the small attic room at the back of the terrace house. Occasionally from the street at the front of the residence would come the sounds of revelers making their way to their own homes, but all was quiet there now. Nor was there the soft familiar clang of a ship’s bell striking the hours of the watch out in the harbour.

Hearing nothing out of the ordinary, Norrington continued to feign sleep, his dark hair spread out across the pillow, smooth-shaven chin resting on his linen-clad shoulder. He took care to breathe steadily despite his heart thumping heavily, rhythmically, in his chest. There was something wrong, although he did not yet know what that something might be; only that his instincts, which had served him faithfully for many years, signaled some unidentified danger. The goose-bumps pricking his skin to alertness were not caused merely by the unseasonal cold. He allowed his eyelids to open by a sliver, so that he could carefully peer around the darkened room while still seeming to be asleep and unthreatening.

A chair. A chair where it did not belong, a simple wooden chair that was usually in a corner of the room near his bed. A chair on which he usually slung discarded clothes and sometimes his hat, but which was now set a few feet away from his bed, between him and the window. And on that chair lounged a person.

“You! But you’re dead!” Norrington sat up suddenly, abruptly, the sheet falling to his waist. He had no thought of reaching for the pistol he habitually kept concealed under a pillow, all his focus upon that insolent and intrusive figure. An impossible figure; a figure whose very presence caused the thudding in his chest to speed up, the sound gently billowing until it seemed almost to inhabit the room, a subdued yet softly resonating thump-thump.

“Aye, that I am, James,” a rueful, familiar voice confirmed.

“It’s Norrington to you, Sparrow.” Norrington answered swiftly, then cursed silently to himself at the petulance of his tone. He had been thrown completely off-beam, replying without thought.

The man’s response was not entirely unpredictable.

“It’s Captain Sparrow to you…Norrington,” Sparrow added pointedly, his tone turning distinctly unpleasant. He continued to lounge on the chair, casual yet unmoving, his gaze fixed upon Norrington, his customary vitality contracted into a taut steely core of intent. In the gloom, he seemed monochromatic. The colours of his clothes were dim and lifeless. Under his tricorne, even the familiar red of his bandanna was now a dull faded sepia. Only his eyes and teeth gleamed in the murk.

The goose bumps on Norrington’s body were suddenly accompanied by a clammy sweat that caused his nightshirt to cling uncomfortably to his flesh. It was simply impossible for this man to be here, alive, in his bedroom. He was dead! Everybody said so.

When first the rumours of Sparrow’s death had reached Port Royal, only days after Norrington himself had returned, Norrington had considered them then discounted them. This was a man who had cheated death more times than Norrington had had hot dinners. A man who laughed at death, and who had briefly joked with the marines escorting him to the gallows on the occasion of his inevitably forestalled hanging. A man who was so wily and inventive that in the Caribbean his name had become a by-word for audacious escapes. This was Captain Jack Sparrow.

And yet, the rumours were pervasive and enduring, and then one day they were no longer rumours. That day Norrington happened across a man, a swamp-dwelling mulatto who despite the rain had come in a small boat to the Port Royal market with produce to sell. He was a quiet man, who none-the-less claimed to have spoken with the very people who had seen Captain Jack Sparrow, and his ship, the legendary Pearl, disappear amongst crashing and broken timbers into the vast stinking maw of a relentless sea monster, legendary in its own horrific way.

Norrington had quizzed him mercilessly, asking question after inexorable question. It was made painfully clear to Norrington that the fellow truly had been briefly in contact with Turner and Elizabeth… Miss Swann, he reminded himself harshly. And from the simple but evocative descriptions given, the few remaining crewmembers of the Black Pearl. Yet it seemed from what the man said that his local conjure-woman had, through dubious arts, been aware of Sparrow’s death even before the sorry survivors had made their way upriver to her crib. Finally the man had lost patience with Norrington’s inquisition. “You say you know Cap’n Jack, how you not know he be dead? Even de sky weep for him,” he said decisively, pointing outwards from under the sheltering porch roof to the torrents of rain that had been falling on Port Royal for days.

Norrington had fallen silent, swallowing hard. His most elusive adversary, gone? That quicksilver, insouciant, irritating man, gone. And how much had his, Norrington’s, actions contributed to the circumstances in which Jack had found himself, unable to trick, cheat, bargain, cajole or charm his way out of an untimely and ultimately inescapable end?

And now, here he was, sitting darkly alarming in Norrington’s bedroom and somehow managing to loom despite being seated.

“What are you doing here? And how did you…. Everyone thinks you’re dead.”

Sparrow shook his head a little. One side of his mouth lifted, revealing gleaming gold and white teeth as he made a reproving “tch” noise in his cheek. “We did that one already. And as for what I’m doing here…” As he spoke Sparrow leaned forward towards Norrington, his concentration and gaze unwavering. “You owe me a heart.” His voice was husky and purposeful, his tone utterly uncompromising. As he shifted position a waft of chill emanated from him, drifting over Norrington. The oozing cold was not the refreshingly icy slap of a wave suddenly breaking, but instead a dank creeping underground coldness that seeped into one’s bones like a melancholy humour.

“It wasn’t yours to start with,” Norrington pointed out boldly. “And anyway, I don’t have it. I gave it to Beckett.” Take that, Captain Jack Sparrow, he thought defiantly, resisting the intense and panicky urge to press himself back against the wooden headboard of the bed, to get as far away from Sparrow as was physically possible. The thump-thump of his own heart intensified, resounding unnaturally from the walls of the chamber.

“Oh.” Sparrow said knowingly. He sounded grimly amused, indulgent. There was a pause, then, “Did you think it was the heart of Davy Jones I was here for?”

He smiled.

James Norrington had confronted many dangers and fears in his long naval career. He had served under a vicious 3rd lieutenant in his second posting, fought amongst bloody carnage in battles at sea, and been incarcerated in the filthy brig of a foreign slaver. He had faced undead zombie pirates, mariners half-mutated into sea-creatures, and the whores of Tortuga, but had never yet met with anything that terrified him as instantly and completely as that unholy smile from Sparrow. He quailed inwardly, and despite his best intentions found himself with the hard headboard pushing against his spine. He was wrapped in a dread as clinging and palpable as his damp nightshirt.

Sparrow rose ominously. Norrington knew it was time to bolt. He tried to fling off the bedcovers and dash away, but found to his horror that his now-heavy limbs would only move immensely slowly, as though he was wading through thick treacle. He struggled against the feeling, one previously encountered only in nightmares in which there was some unseen monster pursuing him, a dreadful yet familiar nemesis speedily bearing down upon him.

In moments, Sparrow sank gracefully down on the firm bed beside him, cold knee nudging his immobile thigh. And that cold knee was another thing that was wrong. Sparrow was a leaner, a draper, an invader of personal legroom, and on the several occasions he had propped himself against Norrington in the past, his body had always seemed a little warmer than most. And now he smelled….odd. More odd than usual.

“Jack…” Norrington breathed, unintentionally entreating him. Norrington absolutely loathed being so very fearful. He had been trained to use his fear as a tool, to turn it into action, and was accustomed to a rapid shift from apprehension into engagement, often swift, vigorous and bloody. But now, all he could do was lie immobile and helpless, while Sparrow encroached upon him.

Sparrow’s keen gaze briefly flickered up from Norrington’s chest to his rigid white face.

“Don’t you be ‘Jack’ing me now,” Sparrow rebuked him absently. “It’s too late for that.”

Sparrow leaned forward and took a firm two-handed hold of the fronts of Norrington’s nightshirt. Norrington closed his eyes and rested his head back against the bedstead. He still could not move his limbs. It seemed there was no escape. Somehow that lessened the fear, but only a little. In moments the nightshirt was ripped open to his waist.

“Ooh, pretty!” exclaimed Sparrow in sudden delight.

Norrington very much doubted it was his fine manly chest that Sparrow was admiring. He swallowed tightly, took a deep breath, then opened his eyes and followed Sparrow’s gaze downwards to see what had him so transfixed.

Well. That was something different. There, buried in the centre of his chest and glowing through his fine white English skin, was an irregular shape about the size of a large man’s fist. It was flushed a ruddy pink, a shade familiar to anyone who had looked up at the sun with their eyelids closed, or to a million small boys who had braved a candle’s flame to cup their sturdy fingers around the light, delighting in looking through their flesh now glowing pinkly red. As Norrington watched, the rosy shape swelled and contracted repeatedly, pulsating in time with the softly throbbing sound rebounding from the bedchamber’s solid walls. He knew, now, that Sparrow could hear that steady and rapid heartbeat filling the room, a sound that previously Norrington had attributed to his own imagination, or his pulse pounding in his ears.

“Alright then,” Sparrow murmured, gaze fixed on the pumping object, as he raised one arm and in studied preparation shook back a sleeve. The distinctive tattoo and pirate brand were prominent as he carefully reached forward and pressed his hand against Norrington’s chest.

His hand was cool, smoother than Norrington expected, and, surprisingly, more gentle. Norrington had never contemplated how one might remove a beating heart from a man’s chest, but if he had done so, would have expected an aggressor to reach in and roughly wrench it from the living flesh. Instead, Sparrow flattened his hand against Norrington’s resolute torso, then pushed the palm slowly and evenly into his warm skin.

Gradually under the subtle pressure the hand sunk further and further into Norrington’s flesh. The feeling of having another person’s body merged with his own was disconcerting, unnatural, but not painful. The hand formed a slim dark silhouette against the glow exuding from his heart. When it passed through the bone of his ribs there was an odd quiet crackling. And then…. Sparrow’s hand was upon the target, those insinuating fingers wrapping themselves carefully and firmly around his steadily beating heart.

A strong subtle twist, a set of brief sharp tearing pains, and Sparrow’s hand was rapidly re-tracing its path backwards through his chest. It emerged clutching a red, robust and throbbing organ. Norrington’s flesh and skin merged back together swiftly, leaving a cold and empty space deep within his pale chest.

Sparrow’s hand encompassed the heart firmly, his sepia fingers a little smeared with brighter blood, and Norrington could feel them gripping the still-beating heart that was no longer in its rightful place within him. Sparrow held up the heart to Norrington’s appalled gaze, nodding a little as if to confirm to them both that the circumstances were truly as perceived, impossible though that might be. Slithering backwards off the bed, Sparrow stood square, and steady for once, on the wooden floor. He held the heart out at shoulder height, and squeezed.

That hurt.

Norrington ground his teeth together tightly, keeping his lips pressed firmly closed. He refused to let any sound of pain escape them, his breath exhaling tightly through his nose.

In the dimness of the room he saw Sparrow cock his head to one side, contemplating. Sparrow shrugged a little, and squeezed harder.

Norrington’s jaws unclenched and he involuntarily gasped in pain.

Sparrow’s subsequent smile was nothing like his earlier obscenely terrifying grimace. Instead, it was almost rueful, a smile of sad success, twisted lips with no lurking gleam of gold. “Hurts, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it bloody hurts,” Norrington tossed back at him angrily, breathing hard as he tried not to squirm against the torturous squeezing.

“Aye,” replied Sparrow in sorrowful accord, lightening his grip on the heart.

He stepped backwards into the gloom, once, twice, and was gone.

As was the heart.

* * * * * * * *

“Jack! Captain! No…No!”

Norrington came awake suddenly, breath harsh in his lungs, a rapid pounding in his chest, and his skin damp with a sweat that was only partly due to the warm clinging humidity. In trepidation he swiftly pressed his fingers to his bare chest to confirm the presence of his heart within, then just as swiftly dragged his hand away to rest on the sheets, cursing to himself at his own foolish fears.

He tossed aside the sheet and rose to stride nakedly back and forth a few turns. The lingering emotions stirred by the horrible dream were unsettling and discommoding, refusing to simply subside once he was awake and fully conscious. As he paced, he forced himself to regulate his breathing until it was at a more measured rate.

Still uncomfortable, Norrington moved to the small sideboard and poured himself a large glass of brandy from the heavy decanter. Since his return to Port Royal and his association with Beckett, he had found it more difficult than he had anticipated to moderate his drinking. He could not maintain the bacchanalian quantities he had habitually consumed in Tortuga and still function well enough to achieve the actions and behaviour necessary for his re-entry into what passed for Society in the Jamaican capital. Despite persistent cravings, he had forced himself to stick to a strictly regimented program, allowing himself limited quantities of alcohol at specific times of the day, gradually reducing both the amounts and frequency of consumption. Social occasions were still a trial of self-discipline. As a small daily reward, he allowed himself a standard measure of excellent brandy before retiring.

He took a small reassuring sip from the glass he had just poured. Then, damning his carefully planned program, he flung caution to the winds and knocked back the rest of the brandy, tipping his head back to allow the spirits to course down his throat. It helped, but not as much as he had hoped. Defiantly he poured another, more moderate, glassful. His glance fell upon the wooden chair placed in the corner, the chair upon which the shade of That Bloody Pirate had made himself so comfortable. Norrington took the few steps necessary to reach the chair and with his free hand grasped the upper cross-bar and shook off the clothes lying draped on the seat. Carrying it to the window, he placed it with its back to the panes, and the seat closest to him.

He very deliberately turned his back upon the dimly lit room, defying the terrors he had encountered there, and just as deliberately sat astride the chair, resting his brandy upon the wide sill in front of him. The window lay open to catch any slight breeze that might arise. Norrington rested his chin on the back of his hands which lay flat on the sill, and he gazed down the street to the harbour. He had taken the small but comfortable house for the very reason that its façade overlooked the sea. His study and bedroom were on the upper floor, and at any daylight hour, simply looking out of the window, he could tell at a glance what ships were in port, or what the weather held for the day. He might no longer be a Commodore, but he was still a seaman, and certain habits died hard.

He sighed heavily. The dreams were getting worse, and, despite their content, more lifelike than ever. There had been an odd one involving Turner, the details of which he could not fully recall. More recently there had occurred a deliciously obscene reverie featuring Elizabeth Swann. In spite of the unlikelihood of Elizabeth eagerly participating in any of the carnal acts his unfettered imagination had conjured up, the fantasy had seemed completely real. At least, until Elizabeth had murmured, “I love you, James.” Then he knew beyond doubt that he was dreaming. It had not prevented him from enjoying the erotic exploits presented to him in the remainder of the dream, so much so that when he awoke the stickiness on his body had nothing to do with sweat.

There had been other dreams too, the details and storylines less clearly remembered, but that peculiar realism was common to all. He would not have minded so much, were it not that the subject matter was becoming increasingly unpleasant. This one with Sparrow had been the worst yet. And until he awoke, body and emotions strained, he had had no idea that it was a dream, and that Sparrow’s ghost was merely a phantasm of his own fevered brain. He, who had fought undead pirates, and stolen the ex-corporeal heart of the Davy Jones of legend, would no longer quibble at the possibility of a mere ghost. Especially if the ghost was that of one Captain Jack Sparrow, who had defied or ignored the rules for so long that there was no reason to suppose that they would apply to him any more in death than they had in life.

There had been small clues in the nightmare, of course, that might have tipped Norrington off to the fact that it was indeed a dream, had he not been so focused on the events unfolding within it. The long hair was nothing new, but he had kept the beard he’d grown since leaving the Navy. On returning to Port Royal, he had trimmed and tidied it, but he could definitely no longer be called clean shaven. Every hot morning he weighed the aggravating warmth of the beard against the nuisance of having to shave daily. So far, the beard had won out. Then there was the nightshirt, too – he had dispensed with that, as well as many, many other small proprieties that once he would have observed without thinking. Now he slept naked. It was cooler, and somehow liberating.

He sipped the brandy, and then, sighing, rested his forehead against his long slim fingers. He was all out of ideas on how to rid himself of these unwelcome night terrors. In daylight hours, all his focus was upon building himself a new life, which was also proving more difficult than he had thought. He had hoped his association with Beckett would prove to be his entrée back into decent society, but it seemed that decent society found not only him, but also Beckett, of dubious worth. Beckett was tolerated because of his title, his wealth, and his strangle-hold on trade, and was well-known as a man not to cross, but he was never afforded what might be called a warm welcome. In truth, Norrington had found him disturbingly avaricious, and not overly ethical as to his methods of achieving what he wanted, especially when he wanted something a great deal. Given Norrington’s actions prior to his return to Port Royal, he supposed he was in no position to criticize another, and yet there was something about Beckett which stuck in his craw. Norrington chose to take an ironical outlook on the fact that he was, effectively, using a man he despised to improve his own fortunes. And as for Beckett’s man, Mercer… now there was a man truly worth avoiding.

His thoughts returned to the dream. When he thought logically, he had no reason to feel guilty about Sparrow’s death. Sparrow had entered willingly into a deal with Davy Jones, and then tried to wriggle out of it when called upon to make good on the agreement. He did not own the heart that he was planning to use as leverage – Jones was the only one that had any real right to it. In Jones’s absence, Norrington had as much right to it as anyone, including Sparrow, albeit a less pressing need. And Norrington had taken a very real risk to his own life and wellbeing when he had snatched up the empty chest and used it to draw Jones’s monstrous crew members away from Elizabeth, Turner, Sparrow and his men. Despite all, he had still felt the pricking urge to protect Elizabeth from the immediate danger of those grotesque creatures.

It seemed, however, that despite his ordered and rational reasoning on the death of Sparrow, there was some part of his psyche that disagreed, and was sending him these debilitating and distressing dreams. When he had awoken suddenly from this one, his immediate thought had been to check for the presence of his heart. Having received a classical education, Norrington was not blind to the metaphors the dream represented. And when he reflected on the tales of Jones’s gruesomely altered appearance and nature – the waving tentacles where a beard once was, the massive crab claw for a leg, other horrible mutations, and the delight he took in cruelty and in perpetrating hideous atrocities upon the defenseless - it raised a question in Norrington’s mind.

How could a man go through life without a heart – and remain a man?

* * * * * * * * *

Author’s Note – the title is from the poem “To His Coy Mistress” by 17th C poet Andrew Marvell:

The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.

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