Beneath Your Eyes

A/N:

Occurs after DMC (so possible spoilers). James Norrington stands before the mirror in his bedroom, contemplating everything that has made his a colder, harder man, including the woman that he will now be forced to marry. One shot, possibly longer if people think it should be continued. This is my first shot at PotC, so here goes nothing...

James nodded, throwing the worn leather pouch upon the desk. Beckett's eyes widened. James's remained stoic.

"The heart," he said simply, "of Davy Jones."

The memory of that day still lingered in James's memory, pooling in the deep green of his eyes and threatening to suffocate him with an entire host of emotions. Two months, two months had gone by since then, since Beckett had left with the heart bound for God knows where, two months since he, James Norrington, the formerly disgraced James Norrington, had been given back a life.

Commodore. No, he was no commodore. His military days were far behind him. The letter of mark from Beckett had made him a privateer, a merchant captain. A civilian captain.

And a wealthy one at that.

James stared into the mirror that hung in his bedroom, brushing a lock of his long brown hair back behind his ear. No wig now. No officer's pomp. Just a black satin ribbon to hold his hair in a queue, brushed impeccably beneath the black tricorn cap.

Don't look into you eyes James.

If he did he might see regret. He might see a lie.

Two months. Two months since he had last seen Elizabeth Swann.

Don't look into your eyes James.

He glanced at the black cravat at his neck instead, adjusting it perfectly in the low candlelight of the late evening. His guest would be here soon.

Don't look into your eyes James.

Guest? Guest wasn't exactly the word that he should be using. He glanced at the large, canopied bed behind him. Soon his guest would be sharing it. Lady Evelyn Beckett, sister of his Lordship, Cutler Beckett.

James's fiancée.

Evelyn Beckett had been part of the deal for the pardon. Lord Beckett had wanted his troublesome younger sister married off, and had seen fit to dump the apparently unweddable spinster upon Norrington. James for his own part did not care. Wife or no wife, what did it matter now? First he had lost Elizabeth to Turner, and then he had been forced to watch the way she looked at Sparrow…it had been unbearable.

James crashed his arm into his dresser, spilling a glass of dark red wine, sending the liquid careening onto the floor, staining the Persian carpet that lay beneath his black Hessian boots. Was he so repulsive then! That the one woman in his life that he had ever truly loved had abandoned him first for a blacksmith, and then for a pirate! What good was loyalty, what good was honor when they brought nothing but pain and darkness?

Elizabeth had been his light.

He should have stayed with her after Isla Cruces—he should have. Two months with no word on Elizabeth, Turner, Sparrow, or the Black Pearl. God in Heaven, what had become of them?

Don't look into your eyes, James.

So instead, he looked at his hand, as the fleshy part beneath his thumb that was now dripping blood, torn by a piece of the broken wine glass. In the candlelight, the oozing liquid could almost be mistaken for black, black blood dripping from his black heart. And truly, black was what it was. All the goodness that James had lived off of, thrived off of for the first thirty five years of his life had been thrown back in his face. First by Elizabeth, then by the Royal navy—yes, he had done the right thing giving the heart to Beckett.

Don't look into your eyes, James.

The blood had reached the edge of his sleeve, crimson now against the crisp white linen of his shirt. It crossed James's mind that he should find something to bandage the wound, but he remained standing in place before his mirror, chained within the prison of his own thoughts, unable to move, barely able to breath.

He would have sailed to the ends of the earth for her, for his Elizabeth.

"You're a fool, Norrington." He whispered the words almost silently, bitterly, suffused with a hatred that hadn't existed until Jack Sparrow had come along.

The truth of it all cut him like a knife to the heart.

Jack Sparrow hadn't taught him to hate. Elizabeth Swann had.

He couldn't hate her, try as he might, he simply couldn't.

Not when it was so much easier to hate himself.

"Captain Norrington?"

He turned abruptly to find one of his many servants standing in the doorframe of his bedroom.

"What?" he answered annoyed.

"Forgive me Captain," the old butler replied, "but—." He was cut off and pushed out of the way by a woman.

"But I have been waiting in your damned parlor for nearly thirty minutes." Her voice filled the entire room. "If you find my presence so revolting Captain Norrington, then the least you could have done was informed me of your revulsion upon my arrival and then left me to my own devices."

Lady Evelyn Beckett's eye cut holes into him.

James's face was frozen, caught between outrage at her ridiculous impropriety and horror at the fact that he had become so engrossed once more in his thoughts of Elizabeth that he had not even known she had been downstairs this entire time.

"Leave," Norrington barked to the butler. With a bow, the man left, shutting the door behind him with a faint click.

James turned his sharp eyes upon his fiancée. "Sit."

Evelyn nodded, sitting regally upon the settee. She was a woman clearly raised within the confines of proper London society. Her posture was perfect, he body slim, and her skin white as porcelain. Her hands were delicate, crossed upon her lap, upon the dress of blue lace that she wore. Her hair was dark, spilling down her shoulders and held back with a golden clip in the shape of an insect. Soft lids blinked slowly over eyes the color of an overcast sky.

"How old are you?" He asked. In another lifetime, James Norrington would have received her properly in a parlor. In another lifetime, James Norrington would have offered her food and drink first, and inquired about her journey. In another lifetime, James Norrington would have been everything that he no longer was.

But that James Norrington was dead now.

"Twenty four," she replied in a steady voice.

"A spinster," James muttered.

"Thank you for stating the obvious," Evelyn replied quietly.

"Watch you tongue," he hissed, angry at her composure when he was so obviously off balance.

"Noted, Sir. I shall keep my eyes upon it at all times."

He stalked over towards this woman, a frail creature of her mid twenties who looked closer to seventeen. His tall body, larger now after those months drinking and brawling in Tortuga, loomed over her much smaller one.

"You dare mock me?"

"No Sir, forgive me," she answered too quickly. He noticed then that she was shaking.

James caught his reflection in the mirror once more. His mouth was set in a straight line, his neck was rigid with tension. The inane question of when he had last smiled entered his mind most unwelcome. He tried to remember—yes, it had been on the Dauntless, the day that Elizabeth had accepted his—

"Captain Norrington." Evelyn's voice dragged him back from the icy waters of his memory, dragging him up for air cruelly when he would have much rather drowned in the past

He listened to her, but he did not turn around. He couldn't, not when he could hear Elizabeth's voice in his head, promising that she would marry him. He could not face Evelyn Beckett, this imposter fiancée.

"Captain Norrington," she spoke, a slight quiver detectable on her lips, "I will not pretend that anything about this is easy. It's no grand adventure to be one half of a marriage so obviously unwanted."

James almost had the decency to deny her claim. Almost.

"But I am honor bound to marry you, at my brother's command. The least that you could do is allow me to accept that honor with a little pride."

Her words were like salt on a wound, and for the first time, James well and truly looked at the woman whom he would be marrying in two weeks time, and then after that taking to sea with him. Her words were admirable, the words of a woman with courage and spirit. A woman with honor.

There were a thousand things that he should have said. After all, she didn't want this marriage any more than he did. An honorable man would have comforted her, an honorable man would have kissed her forehead and spoke of the life that they could build, or the dreams they could share.

But dreams were a lie. James had learned that all too well. And after all, what good was honor? What good was anything?

Elizabeth had been missing for two months.

Don't look into your eyes, James.