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This is only based on some characters from POTC, it is not the real POTC,
never has been and never will be, nor will it ever turn a profit.
Rehabilitation
Excerpt from the personal log of Commodore Jackman Whitfield:
“Met with emissary from the Black Pearl. Negotiated terms of release for imprisoned British seamen and return of the Cassandra to British possession. Negotiated terms of amnesty for those who brought about the demise of the pirate known as Captain Nagaraj (true identity unknown). Have agreed to allow sailors of the Black Pearl their freedom, in exchange for a vow that they not engage in piracy in these waters. Have agreed to amnesty for the mutineer Jacob DeMaurier, in exchange for the delivery of the surviving pirates of the Serpent Fire. Have agreed to leave the Dauntless in the hands of DeMaurier, in exchange for the return of the Cassandra.
The emissary has informed me of the untimely demise of Mr. Norrington after his heroic rescue of his wife, who wishes to remain with these people until such time as her grief over the events of the last few weeks has subsided. Alas, we shall be deprived of Norrington’s court martial.
Negotiations lasted throughout the night. Am due to meet with Captain DeMaurier in several hours. In the meantime, I will continue with my engagement… discussions with the emissary.”
Matthew peered through the eyeglass at the two small boats bobbing on the ocean waves, and frowned. He did not like this one bit. He didn’t trust the navy, he didn’t entirely trust the emissary, and he did not like Alphonse DeMaurier being so far from his side. He passed the glass to Charles Dubois.
Charles took it gratefully and trained it on Jacob, who sat beside Alphonse, as Mr. Bertram rowed them out to the rendezvous point, between the Black Pearl and the somewhat disabled Cassandra. The Commodore’s ship, the Emgee, floated a little further off to the west. If Charles were to have trained the eyeglass in that direction, he would have seen the sailors swarming over the deck in preparation for any attack, frantic that their Commodore had decided to trust these pirates and was attending a dangerous rendezvous in between the ships. As it was, Charles kept the glass trained on his captain and Alphonse.
It never ceased to amaze him how much the brothers looked alike. Fine-featured and handsome, with identical rows of twisted hair and the prettiest eyes. Alphonse was darker in colouring, Jacob was of a heftier build, but they were undeniably brothers. They were talking to each other, and Charles could tell, even through the eyeglass, that they were finishing each other’s sentences. A conversation that would take half an hour for two ordinary men was sped through in a matter of minutes when conducted by the DeMaurier brothers.
They arrived at the rendezvous. Commodore Whitfield sat primly at the fore, his chiselled jaw dusted with a day’s growth of hair and wisps of light brown escaping willy-nilly from under his, it looked, hastily-donned wig. A sailor behind him holding the oars, and the emissary was seated in the rear, draped over the bench languorously.
“Bloody emissary,” Charles heard from over his shoulder. “No reason for it to take so bloody long…”
Captain Jack Sparrow squinted out at the boats, while listing dangerously to one side. Charles had been shocked to discover that the swaying and leaning was considered a sign of recovery. In fact, when Jack had first ventured forth from the cabin, he’d been walking fairly normally, erect and sturdy, and the crew had been abuzz. Everyone seemed reassured now that Jack was once more weaving like a cheap drunk.
“Is there any reason to talk with the enemy all bloody night long? I don’t appreciate my ship sitting in the water like a target for those navy…”
“Hush, Jack. They won’t attack while we have Governor Swann on board,” Will Turner reminded him.
Jack shrugged, not really caring about the navy, and lurched closer to Will. “Feeling a bit weak, luv…” he muttered, and crashed into the younger man.
Will smiled and put his arm around Jack’s shoulder. Jack had only been up and around for a few days. He was still a bit uncertain on his feet.
Jack was in a grouchy mood, with good reason. For the last week, he’d been in the cabin under constant surveillance. Every time he moved, there was someone watching, judging, gauging, telling him to stay away from Will. A tragedy. A tragedy because Will had given him the most perfect, most heavenly kiss imaginable, slow and steady, gentle little flickers of the tongue and then a languid exploration of his mouth, building and heating by degrees until Jack was positively dizzy.
And then Tessie had come into the cabin.
“None of that, lad, he’s not well enough for that sort of behaviour!” And she’d made it her objective to keep Will away from Jack. And Jack away from Will. It gave him horrible memories of the two days and two nights he and Will had had to stay apart for the sake of Charlotte having a baby. It gave him terrible memories of when Will was recovering from near-drowning, and Jack was kept on a short leash. It gave him an ache he could not get rid of, because there were always bloody people watching him, waiting for him to need something, waiting for him to act weak so they would feel superior.
“Don’t be so grumpy, Jack,” Will whispered in his ear as he guided him to a crate. “Sit down and relax.” He kept one arm around Jack’s shoulders, while the other hand stroked Jack’s thigh in a soothing manner. Actually, it was less soothing than… suggestive. “As soon as we get back to the island, we’ll have the Pearl to ourselves.”
Now, that was something to look forward to.
“Hands to yourself, dearie. Mustn’t get the patient excited.”
Bloody Tessie, always sticking her nose in it. Jack turned to her with all the dignity and hauteur he could muster. “The bloody patient is already excited, Madame. So would you kindly leave me alone and allow me some relief?”
But it was too late. Will had obediently withdrawn his hands and was standing beside Jack like a good boy. A good boy with an irresistible arse. Jack reached over and caressed the underside of it. Muscles tightened under his fingers.
Jack didn’t understand all these restrictions. He felt fine. He felt dandy. He felt as if he could conquer the world. Except for that nasty headache, and the dizziness that assaulted him at odd times, and the way his limbs went sort of limp when he got tired. Which was far too often.
“Incorrigible,” Tessie muttered, and handed him a cup. “Not taking enough fluids, either.”
Jack grumbled, but accepted the water she handed him. He was actually starting to get used to the taste of it. He would have traded a fair bit of swag for a decent cup of rum, but water no longer made him sputter. That worried him, when he bothered to think about it.
“What are they talking about?” Will asked.
“Terms,” Matthew said.
Darria slid between Mathew and Charles, and plucked the glass from Charles’ hand. “Give me that thing! Can you two not read lips? Let me see… they’re discussing a review of the prisoners.”
Everyone looked past the stern at the Cassandra, and the rows of nervous sailors lined up on the deck, dressed in naught but their underclothes, needing only a few ropes to hold them in place. Fear kept them well in line; they were utterly terrified of their captors, mostly because they had never seen their like and had no clue what to expect.
Marina sat on a chair in front of them, stuffed into a tight corset and brilliantly red, low-cut dress, with her hair piled up in its customary, elaborate arrangement, and a shiny rifle laid across her knee. The sailors eyed the rifle warily. She had already shot over their heads once, early that morning, when someone had dared to complain about their general state of undress. No one was complaining now.
The sailors were also keeping a sharp eye on Shimura, who was prowling the deck like a caged panther. He’d removed his shirt so all his tattoos were showing, a technique he’d always found useful in the cowing of the English. (They seemed frightened of colourful dragons – superstitious lot.) Elsie’s husband perched on the rail, toying with one of Nagaraj’s spare swords. The atmosphere of unpredictability was thick enough to taste.
The sailor on the very end of the front line, a young man who looked barely old enough to enlist, shifted the bandage on his arm. Marina got up and stalked over to him. “You need the healer to look at that, boy?”
He shook his head fearfully. Okonkwo scared him even more than Marina did. The healer had been rather curt with the injured prisoners. He had fixed their wounds, but apparently he hadn’t seen any need to be gentle about it.
Marina tugged at the sling and repositioned it on his shoulder. “Better? Good. I am sorry I shot you, lad. If I’d known you were so young I might not have. But you understand how things are…”
The lad held his breath as the Madame looked him over, up and down, stem to stern, as if sizing him up for dinner.
“Look, I am sorry. Let me make it up to you, dearie.” Marina reached into the frothy nest of her hair and retrieved a single hairpin, a twist of metal with a little, coloured flower at one end. “Take this, and when you’re feeling up to it, go to my house – you know the one, it’s the last on the street, with the wide veranda and the green door. Give this to whoever answers the door, and you’ll have a free go. Your choice.”
The lad took the pin nervously.
“Well, what sort of manners do you British have?”
“Thank you, ma’am. I… I’m… deeply indebted to you, madam. Ma’am,” he stammered.
She patted his head absently. “Good lad. I’d advise you to pick Ariel. She’s a lovely artistic girl, and she’ll give you a plenty of good loving, very creative with none of the rough stuff.”
He nodded, blushing from the tips of his ears to the waist of his underpants, and probably lower as well. “Thank you for the advice, ma’am.”
Marina nodded and moved away, rifle resting on her shoulder easily, as if it were a parasol. She halted and turned back toward the boy. “Stay away from Faith, though. She might be a bit… advanced for you.” She ignored the murmurs from the men and sat back down with a growl. She had proven she was fair, and a nice person, but she certainly wasn’t going to give free rides to every man she’d shot.
Shimura caught the rope Jacob threw from his boat and waited for the negotiators to climb on board. So, the Commodore himself had accompanied the emissary to the rendezvous. Shimura’d never met a Commodore before. He was grinning when he turned back to look at the captives, flashing gold teeth in the sunlight. The British all shrank back from him, not knowing what a smile from the pirate could possibly mean, but convinced it was a bad sign.
“Honestly,” Shimura muttered to himself. “What a load of gutless, cowardly babies!”
“Jacob.”
“What?”
“Aren’t you forgetting …?”
“What? We got everything we wanted, didn’t we?”
“Amnesty-wise, yes.”
“They got the Governor back…”
“We kept Elizabeth, though.”
“Because she wanted to stay. And they got their men and ship back…”
“How upset do you think Commodore Whitfield will be when he finds out how badly the Cassandra is damaged?”
“And that we stripped it of everything of value?”
“At least he’s completely convinced that Norrington died after killing Nagaraj…”
“… and saving Elizabeth’s life…”
“So what would I have possibly…?”
“The emissary, Jacob.”
“Oh. Right. The emissary.”
“We weren’t supposed to lose her.”
“We didn’t lose her. It was her choice to accompany the Commodore back to port.”
“Do you think that was wise?”
“The deal was ‘no DeMauriers in Port Royal’. Claire is not a DeMaurier, and has never been a DeMaurier. She just worked for a DeMaurier.”
“Marina will be upset.”
“I know. That was one of her best harlots.”
“Seemed happy, though, didn’t she?”
“Happy and healthy… except for the….”
“Yes, except for the bite marks.”
“Not that bite marks are necessarily unhealthy.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“So, Commodore Whitfield enjoys biting - that’s his business, I suppose.”
“And I wish he would keep it to himself.”
“Oh, and you never bite Matthew in the throes of passion?”
“Of course I do, but I don’t leave marks in such obvious places!”
“They weren’t that obvious.”
“They were all over her! You couldn’t miss them unless…”
“Maybe I don’t make a habit of looking at women’s breasts…”
“And I suppose you never bite Charles?”
“Not yet. Although I intend to at the first available opportunity…”
“He does look rather delicious…”
“He is, and he has the most amazing…”
“Gentlemen!” Mr. Bertram yelped suddenly, oars poised in mid air, look of supreme distaste on his face. “Some of us would rather not hear about the intimate activities of the DeMaurier brothers in quite such detail!”
Jacob sniffed. “Excuse us.”
Alphonse giggled. “Don’t mind Mr. Bertram, Jacob; he doesn’t like men that way…”
“So. What are we to do with him, then?” Bootstrap asked as he circled Norrington. Once they were out of visual range of the Emgee, they’d hauled Norrington up from the very bowels of the Black Pearl, where he’d been hidden so well Governor Swann hadn’t a clue that Norrington was still alive, even though he’d been on the Black Pearl for almost 24 hours.
“I say we kill him,” Anamaria suggested helpfully.
“Oh, no,” Elizabeth said. “He did save my life.”
“That was Will, dearie,” Marina said.
“Oh, right.”
“But he did kill Nagaraj,” Charles said, willing to defend anyone who had done harm to his former captain.
”Only after I tired him out!” Jack interjected.
“True, but he did kill him. So his fate then depends upon his motives,” Jacob said with a sinister edge to his voice. He crowded close to Norrington, who tried not to shrink away.
“How so?” Will asked.
Jacob tilted his head to one side and into Norrington’s eyes. “Well, why was it, ‘Commodore’? Did you kill him because he pushed Jack off the cliff? I thought not. Was it because he broke your deal? You were supposed to be the one to kill Jack, weren’t you? Or were you truly upset that he threw the knife at Elizabeth? Come on, Norrington, we haven’t got all day… “
Norrington kept his chin up, proudly, but did not answer. He couldn’t think of how to answer. Nothing would satisfy these pirates and mutineers. They wouldn’t understand the revelation of the moment, when Norrington realized that Nagaraj had thrown the knife at Elizabeth, and intended to kill Jack himself, and that Will was helping Elizabeth, and Nagaraj would have left her to die. That Norrington suddenly understood that what he was doing was… wrong. And that he had to do something right. Which, it seemed, may have been right but not smart.
“You gave our location to that snake, you commandeered a ship of the navy – and don’t pretend it was yours to command, we all know you were stripped of your captain’s rank You were demoted so far down you don’t have a hope in hell of ever wearing blue again. And now, we must decide your fate. Do we hang you? Shoot you? Slit your throat?”
“Or do we show forgiveness, and let him live?” Alphonse said in his best preacher’s voice, as he put a restraining hand on Jacob’s shoulder.
“Perhaps Jack should decide,” Charles said.
Jack stared at Norrington. He’d wanted to kill him for such a long time. Here was his chance. Norrington was unarmed. Alone. Helpless.
Yet, he had stopped Will from going over the edge of the cliff. And he had saved Elizabeth, which made Will happy, for some unfathomable reason.
But then, he had ordered Will tossed over the edge of the Interceptor II, so long ago. Even if he’d done something to redeem himself recently, he still had to pay for that act of attempted murder.
Wait a minute, wasn’t there something about one good act not being enough to redeem a life of… Jack couldn’t remember, and trying to remember made his head ache.
Jack scrunched up his face in concentration. He could sense Will at his elbow, tense with emotion, buzzing with energy, ready to jump or shout or do something when Jack spoke. He didn’t want to make a decision that would upset Will, who was so honourable and decent. The urge to kill Norrington was overwhelming, but not strong enough to warrant having Will angry with him. Not when Will had been giving him charming hints all day about what they might like to do once they were alone…
Norrington glared back at Jacob defiantly.
Mr. Gibbs stepped forward. “Let him go and he’ll do it all again. Mark my words.”
“Consider them marked,” Norrington growled.
“Hang on a minute,” Tessie said, and pushed her way past Gibbs to stand in front of Norrington. She stared at Norrington as if seeing him for the first time. “Say that again,” she commanded.
Norrington looked back at her, silent.
Tessie’s hand flew, slapped across Norrington’s face with a loud retort. “Say it again, whelp!”
Norrington gritted his teeth. “Consider them marked,” he grimaced.
Tessie reached up and touched Norrington’s reddened cheek. “Saint’s alive,” she muttered, “I thought you sounded familiar.
Jacob bounced on his heels. “Mother, please, we’re trying to conduct a tribunal…” he whispered.
“Hush, Jacob, I’m scrutinizing the prisoner,” Tessie replied. She pushed Norrington’s shoulder, turned him and studied his profile. “Spitting image of his father, he is…”
The crew of the Black Pearl, the DeMauriers and Will, Charles and Alex, everyone who had been waiting for Jack to make his decision, now waited as Tessie poked and prodded at Norrington as if he were a bull for sale.
“Saint’s alive!” she finally exclaimed. “You can’t kill him, Jacob. He’s your brother!”
The sound of a body hitting the deck made everyone turn to look at Jack, but Will had a firm arm around his waist and Jack was surprisingly clear-eyed. They all looked down to see Jacob DeMaurier prone, and Charles struggling to lift him up.
Jack blinked. “You are jesting about that, are you not, Tessie?”
“Heaven’s no, dearie. Jacob’s father told me he had several sons, all of whom he hoped would join the navy. He was a merchant seaman, you know. Left me to go back to his wife and boys, he did.”
“No, it can’t be,” Norrington said, looking as if he’d been given a death sentence instead of a reprieve. “I can’t be one of you.”
Tessie patted his arm. “Oh, yes, you can. Untie him, Alphonse.”
“He’s dangerous!” Anamaria protested.
“Nonsense,” Tessie said, “he’s just been missing his family. We’ll keep an eye on him for a while, make sure he doesn’t fall into any evil habits, and he’ll be fine. Once we get back to the island, we’ll give that nice Mr. Gillette the responsibility of watching over his commodore. He’s been missing him something awful – he told me so himself.”
Charles helped Jacob to his feet, and Jack looked at the half-brothers. He’d never noticed the resemblance before, but there it was. As much as Jacob looked like Alphonse, he also looked like Norrington. They even wore identical expressions of disbelief.
Well, Jack thought, it wouldn’t do to kill a member of the family. There was only one way to respond to a situation like this. He lurched forward and yelled. “All right, you scabrous dogs! Man the braces! Let down and haul to run free!”
“Jack?” Tessie turned to stare at him.
“Didn’t mean to include you in the scabrous dogs part, of course, Tess, I meant the pirates. It’s high time we got this ship back home.” Jack reeled around and stopped himself from falling by grabbing Will’s shoulders. “I’m feeling much better now, luv. And the sooner we get these people back home…”
Next: Chapter 98 Real (Better Than Heaven)
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