Authors Note: This was inspired by A Restless Parallel, a vignette I wrote earlier. I don't want to call it a companion, because I would prefer that fanfic to stand alone – but you can relate the two if you want to. This is a more humorous take on the situation of Norrington hunting Sparrow. It's a mix of humor and drama, though the first chapter is rather silly. I hope you enjoy it, it's going to be an interesting ride (huhuh – okay, corny and vague reference there) for these two. I have a habit of torturing characters.

Disclaimer: I own naught but the clothes on my friggin' back. Thank you.

--- --- ---

The Kingston Suspects

A fanfiction by Zeech

Commodore Norrington did not clearly remember the last time he ever looked out of a jail cell from the inside of it, nor the last time his head had pounded quite so hard. In fact, everything he would normally never engage in had become so commonplace as of late that for some reason he didn't find any of his current situation surprising.

In twenty-four hours he would stand trial for the murder of a Captain alongside the side of the infamous Jack Sparrow, and if all luck completely fell through they would both be swinging from the gallows before the following Monday. The commodore felt an urge to smirk despite himself, but his cheek being pressed hard into the stonewall made a wry expression impossible to write itself across his face. He was vaguely aware of the straw beneath the bare part of his legs, his shins, and a draft of cool sea air floating in from the bars just over his head.

The heavy iron cell door squealed as loud as nails on a blackboard, and the nerve-shredding sound caught his groggy attention. Norrington gingerly turned his head with as little effort as possible, but the pounding started up again anyway. With a muttered a curse and a half-cough, he regarded the new visitor as respectfully as possible - jaw slack with his bloodshot eyes raw, dry and hardly focused.

"You there," The marine said sharply, as if there were someone else in the cell he was talking to. Norrington surveyed his surroundings briefly, and pointed at himself for confirmation. The marine ignored him. "Someone wants to see you."

"Who?" His voice was a rough variation of itself, and Norrington's dark brows furrowed in a suspicious puzzlement too deep than he really should have been able to manage at this point.

"Admiral Hawk," The young man answered as if his voice was coming up from a constricted pipe in his throat, and he stood completely erect and sure to make no eye contact with the commodore. The red of his uniform blazed far too bright for Norrington at the moment, but he still came slowly to his feet, if only out of sheer politeness. The ground felt unsteady beneath the heavy souls of his boots, and he rather than walking he could only stumble on to the door. The marine nodded, awkwardly. "Right then. Come on." A strong fingered hand fit over his elbow and with a jolt began to guide him along.

Part of Norrington was distantly ashamed of his current appearance: a tattered, wind-stained white shirt that was far too large for his lean frame and hung about him like skin on a starving man's bones. Gray trousers torn at the knees and splotched with browning blood, and a pair of coarse leather boots that were strapped loosely around his ankles. He had lost his hat sometime the night before he awakened in a Port Antonio jail.

And there had been absolutely no sign of Jack since they had been separated two nights ago.

Norrington attempted to correct his posture, aware more so than before of how much easier it would be to convince them of his identity if he wore his usual demeanor, and tried his best to shrug off the effects of alcohol and a night of sleeping on a straw covered stone floor.

"Um, marine," he began, clearing his throat to free his voice. The marine did not look at him still, but nodded in acknowledgment. "Where - where exactly are we?"

"This here is Fort George." The young man replied simply, offering nothing else in explanation, not even a sidelong glance. For some reason it made the commodore feel very out of place, and even more like how he looked: like a scallywag just getting over a hangover. He frowned, and before he was able to respond with at least proper thanks for not being ignored, the marine came to a halt at one of the doors. White, polished, with the strong smell of hardly dry paint and sawdust thick in the air. The marine looked at him. "Now you stand right there. You try to bolt, and those lads'll shoot you dead in less than the time it takes to reach the end of the hall."

"Understood," Norrington said patiently, giving the marines at either end of the long hallway a quick glance. He blinked hard; shaking his head hard, once, to clear the cobwebs and smoke that still lingered around his judgment. The marine disappeared into the room, and after a few moments of low murmurs, reappeared.

"Admiral Hawk'll see you now," he said, holding the door open wide enough for Norrington to step past him and into the wide room. This was much like his office back in Port Royal, comfortable and luxurious with a splendid view of the harbor.

There was a heavyset man by the window, back turned to Norrington with beefy arms folded behind his back - almost mirroring the commodore's stance save for the minor differences in clothing. He turned upon hearing Norrington enter, and only had a frown to offer both Norrington and the marine. His pudgy face was pale and blended far too well with the white powered wig atop his head, making the creases in his brow appear deeper than they should have been.

"Yes, thank you. Leave us."

"Aye, sir." The marine gave a quick salute, which was waved away dismissively by the admiral, and shut the door on his way out. The old admiral took a moment to brush a glance over Norrington, and the expression on his face made the younger man suddenly very aware of his posture again. Finally, he gestured to the chair placed across from his own seat.

"Are you aware of why you're in the prison of Fort George, sir?" Hawk asked, out of the blue, and Norrington frowned at him as he lowered himself carefully into the pulled chair. Hawk mirrored his bewildered expression, almost mockingly, and began again, "Do not tell me you're still drunk - "

"No, sir – Admiral Hawk, sir," Norrington stammered, and sought for his diplomatic voice. Instead, what he was given was the tone often used giving orders to his young lieutenants – while lacking the true respect an admiral deserved, it still held a respect to any other decent sort of man. Save pirates. "There has been a terrible mistake, you see, I – "

"Yes, you're set to hang for the murder of a Spanish Captain," Admiral Hawk interrupted. His stare was disapproving, and fairly condescending. "That's the terrible mistake, no?"

"Well, one of them, sir," Norrington replied testily, silently reminding himself to keep his temper in check. He kept his chin up, and his stern blue eyes level with the admiral's. "My name is James Norrington, Commodore James Norrington of His Majesty's Royal Navy, and I believe your hanging me tomorrow will be a grave mistake."

Admiral Hawk was silent for a moment longer, still staring at him a bit distantly. Then he snorted a quiet laugh. "Oh? Commodore Norrington, is it? Well, I suppose even if I did believe that you were a commodore – though you do look a bit young. How old are you?"

"Thirty four years, sir," Norrington answered automatically. It had become a habit to tell the truth about his age, despite the astonished looks it always earned him. In a way he was proud of it for having accomplished so much in such a short time, but there was always the distrusting set of looks that came with it. The ones that questioned his ability to do the job. The admiral was giving him a look of complete disbelief, and his arms were crossed over his chest in possibly the most skeptical manner Norrington had ever seen a man take into form.

"Thirty four years and a commodore already. Well. Even if I believed you, there is still the matter of a dead Spanish Captain and almost one hundred witnesses declaring you the killer." Both of the bushy gray brows rose high on the other man's forehead, and Norrington found his own face faulting once again in the childish fascination of how many wrinkles Admiral Hawk could make just on his forehead. He snapped himself out of it, shut his mouth with a click of his teeth, and straightened again.

"Well, yes, I killed him. I cannot deny what several others have witnessed-"

"'Commodore', we're not speaking of 'several others', I said almost a hundred and I meant it," the admiral's voice had gone beyond 'no nonsense'. It was grave, and dangerous. Hawk came to his seat with a continuing, almost pitying stare at the young man. "That is enough to have you swing this very hour, but it is I that have decided to keep you alive. I wish to hear your version of the facts."

That caught him by surprised. Until now the admiral seemed to have been playing a mental game with him, but now there was nothing dishonest in the eyes of the old man. Norrington still shifted uneasily. "And if you believe me?"

"Don't jump too far ahead of yourself, 'Commodore', you have yet to explain why you've been in the company of a pirate these past days," The admiral caught that tone again, and waited a moment for a reaction. He was beginning to sound more like an old uncle scolding an erring child, rather than a superior officer. Norrington blanched, and Admiral Hawk laughed loudly. "Oh! You haven't forgotten everything!"

"You've seen Sparrow?"

"Seen him? Several times I've tried to get some answers out of him, but I can't tell if the man is mad, drunk, or just plain stupid," Hawk admitted bluntly. He rolled his eyes and exhaled hard, leaning back into his chair and massaging the bridge of his nose. Norrington might have laughed at that anywhere else – Jack Sparrow seemed to have the same effect on everyone. "Might I get some answers from you?"

Norrington nodded curtly, if not too eagerly. "Of course, Admiral."

"Good. Let's hear it."

"I…well, I had been pursuing the trail of the Black Pearl, a notorious pirate threat, for a near two weeks," He began, with his arms still twisted behind his back, Norrington did his best to get comfortable in the little wooden chair. He knew it would be a long while before he would be able to really move again. "They lead us on a wild goose chase, and by the time they thought we'd lost them, my men spotted them in Kingston's harbor."

Admiral Hawk smirked, and folded his legs over one another as he set his feet on his desk. He lounged in his chair leisurely, though the suspicion in his eyes was not so easy going. "Really?"

"Yes, sir. We thought to have had it all planned so perfectly," Norrington recalled, lifting his chin a bit to improve his own image. His voice went on in the same tone of propriety. "There was only one problem."

-----

~Three weeks earlier~

-----

"The Black Pearl has replaced her signature sails, sir," Gillette's voice was mild as always, masked with an ill-fitting ease that really only those who knew him could see through. He stood by the commodore with his slightly smaller shoulders back, and an uncomfortable look on his face as he scanned the harbor. He narrowed his pale eyes against the sun. "She doesn't stand out anymore. We could have passed her up and not even known it, sir."

Norrington grunted in acknowledgment, informally bent over the railing of the Dauntless and peering through a spyglass; a smirk tugged at his otherwise flat line of a mouth. "Lt. Gillette, you have no faith. Jack Sparrow is incapable of hiding. Even in a crowd of his own kind he sticks out like a sore thumb." The commodore took a moment to glance over at the other man. "Just keep your eyes open for anything out of the ordinary, any blunder in the natural procedure of things in Kingston's harbor."

"Aye, sir." Gillette frowned, and once again he turned his face up to the blaring sun overhead, bringing a scooped hand to shade his eyes against its wrath. Gulls cried as they glided over the deck of the Dauntless, and the distant sound of collective chattering filled the gaping silence between them.

The problem was that everything in the harbor seemed one hundred percent of the ordinary, and not even traffic was disagreeable in the slow moving peace of the afternoon. As pleasing at the scene should have been for a young lieutenant, Gillette found it rather unsatisfying. He curled his lip in a snarl, but said nothing to his superior.

Norrington was a bit too preoccupied in his search to pick up the oddly placed racket coming from the starboard side, but a familiar stench whiffed thickly past Gillette's face. He grimaced immediately, and upon turning to identify the source, instantly spotted it.

"Commodore, sir,"

"Lieutenant."

"Sails billowing with smoke and flame...do you consider that a blunder in the natural procedures of Kingston's harbor, or are more cunning forces at work here?" Gillette arched both brows innocently, with sincere curiosity, when Norrington began to comment on how sarcasm was not appreciated. "Do you think Sparrow spotted us, sir?"

Norrington compacted the spyglass and thrust it into his second lieutenant's middle, passing quickly to the starboard side of the Dauntless and making it just in time to see the entire mast of the Black Pearl burst completely into raging flame. The heat of it almost reached his face, but the sea breeze swept in to ward it off.

With a wry smile, the commodore breathed in the familiar scent of smoke and burning wood, adding a distinct flavor to his mood as he watched people struggle to contain the fire. The Black Pearl would not be sailing today, and if her mast and sails were replaced anytime in the next month it would be a sheer act of the Holier powers.

But better yet, her crew was stranded in the humble port of Kingston, Jamaica, with no way out.

~~~

"Wait, wait," The admiral interrupted Norrington with a wave of his hand, and gestured to the open diary spread upon his cluttered desk. "Mr. Sparrow claims it was not the Black Pearl herself, but another merchant ship he 'later found out to be called the Notorious Okabojee, a blackguard scallywag the commodore should have been searching for all along rather than wasting manpower on the likes of myself'."

Hawk recounted Jack's words casually (though it sounded as if he were repressing a smile), and then regarded Norrington coolly through a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. "...And according to him, you only found the Pearl because of all the ruckus and confusion caused by the Okabojee's spontaneous combustion."

Norrington remained unmoved, though an irritated note found its way into his tone. "According to the account of Jack Sparrow, sir?"

Hawk tapped the parchment with barely legible scribbles, and held a finger up decisively. "Captain Jack Sparrow, he insists. You may read it for yourself, if you like."

Norrington politely declined with a shake of his dark head. "I see. And did he tell you about how he single handedly put the fire out himself while also managing to save nine children single-handedly?"

Admiral Hawk frowned, and bent back over the diary, tracing his finger along one of the scribbled lines. Hawk looked back up to Norrington, his brows raised in unfeigned amusement. "And one puppy."

The commodore smiled a humorless, nasty smile.

--- --- ---

Roughly an hour later, the fire that crippled the infamous Black Pearl had been quenched, having the crew of the Dauntless to thank for their sharp intervention, and of course the one mad captain that refused to leave his ship behind and watch it burn.

She still smoked, and hissed in patches where the heat still fevered the salvageable wood. The ragged Black Pearl stank of soot, and the smoke rose in long tendrils of thick cloud, hovering about the scorched deck and weaving itself into the otherwise clear blue sky.

"Repairs for this will cost you an arm and a leg, Sparrow," Norrington mused with mild interest as he grazed the scene, setting his arms respectfully behind his back. He craned his neck to squint up at the black mast, tattered with bits of burnt sail. His glance moved over to where two marines were holding Jack Sparrow, and a smarmy bit of a smile escaped his control. "We're almost doing you a favor, here."

"You'll have to forgive me for not thanking you, mate," Jack drawled huskily, and his voice was grainy from the battle with the smoke. "But I'd rather stay here and give me arm and me leg for the Pearl's repairs."

"Is that right?"

"I've got a terrible fear of hangin', is right," Jack put in, not bothering to hide the bleakness of his situation even to one he knew stole far too much pleasure from a pirate's misfortune. He was so sullen it was almost childlike, and his dark hair hung heavily around his tanned face in drenched pieces that still dripped of seawater. The liner bled black below the lower lashes of his bleary eyes.

In one last attempt to escape the commodore's men, Jack had actually leapt overboard and attempted to swim away. The noble effort failed, however, when he'd been seized by a local fisherman's net, reeled in, and dumped like a trout on the deck of the Dauntless. His crew was nowhere to be found.

"I thought you might," Norrington remarked dryly, giving the other man a thoughtless sidelong glance before running a bare fingertip along the soot and ash sprinkled railing. He turned his finger over and with an absent frown examined the black powder he'd collected. From the corner of his eyes he saw Jack flash a quick, golden grin.

"You know me too well, Commodore."

"Too well for my liking," Norrington murmured, earning a laugh from Jack. While a month ago they had been paired together by fortune alone to complete the daunting task of saving the lives of both Elizabeth Swann and Will Turner – as well as stopping a damned crew from wiping out all life on the Dauntless, (and Jack Sparrow had proved to have a speck of loyalty in his blood after all) Norrington's opinion of him had not changed enough to let him ride the untamed seas and plunder to his heart's contentment.

A begrudging (and barely standing) respect was the only thing he held for Jack Sparrow now. With a little roll of his dark blue eyes, Norrington tried to remind himself why he even held that much.

The commodore cleared his throat, and turned neatly on the heel of his boot to face Jack, his expression bearing his smug triumph a little too heavily. The pirate, however, regarded him solemnly from behind shineless dark brown eyes that spoke of nothing. Unreadable. Norrington could be just as unreadable, only he was the one who could afford the bit of a smile.

"Now then," he started, briskly. "If you'll kindly accompany my men and I to the Dauntless, you'll be read whatever rights you just might have left, and then set up in the luxurious living quarters we've come to call the brig."

"You, sir, need to learn to clip your sentences a bit shorter," Jack advised with one of his brows bent in a manner one might hold while questioning the right of another being to exist on the same plane as he. He held a finger up and vaguely pointed in the general direction of Norrington's chest. "Lemme guess...commodore. I've got myself a date with the gallows and you'd hate for me to be late?" When Norrington only tilted his head and didn't alter his expressionless features, Jack shook his head. "Terrible clichés mate."

Norrington, deadpanned, waited another moment of regarding Jack Sparrow with polite disinterest. Then, "Are you quite finished?"

"Ah – yes." He held both hands out, together, so a marine could clamp irons onto his wrists, and took several steps closer to Norrington – Jack had a bad habit of getting too close to others. "Now, may I see my luxurious living quarters?"

With an irritated groan, Norrington maneuvered away from the violating position of the pirate and signaled to the marines to slap the irons on. Without another word he made for the boats.

---

"You know, he does – Mr. Sparrow does have a point...throughout this entire telling he has you constantly resorting to clichés," Hawk said, and skimmed the thick pages of the diary, his old face contorted in an expression crossing a puzzled frown and amused twist. Norrington exhaled hard through his nose, impatient, yet he managed to occupy himself with biting the inside of his cheek, so as not to let anything nasty or sarcastic slip out. This admiral seemed to have a Jack Sparrow quality himself – while he was all for facts, and details, he rather enjoyed getting a rise out of the younger man.

Not wanting to even consider exactly what Jack had told Admiral Hawk about the last week, Norrington tried to steer his thoughts away from it, but some part of him knew that with a proper amount of laudanum and rum, Sparrow would have gone on for hours about anything.

Admiral Hawk had stopped talking, and the silence brought Norrington back to the skeptical pale eyes of the other man. He cleared his throat, and found he had to straighten himself in the chair again – his arms were still twisted behind his back, and they were beginning to lose all of their feeling. They felt heavy, almost detached as a piece of baggage hanging from his shoulders.

"Admiral Hawk, may I inquire something of you?"

With a shallow laugh that made Norrington feel even more ridiculous than when he had been roused in his cell that morning, the admiral waved carelessly at him. "Oh, why not."

"Do you believe even a word I'm saying?"

"You?" The admiral gave a considering glance to the diary before him, and shrugged one of the smartly decorated blue shoulders. "Well I certainly find it more probable than...most of everything that came out of Mr. Sparrow's mouth, if that is any comfort, 'Commodore'." Hawk finished, and leaned his chin lazily on his palm, and when he caught the expression on Norrington's face he almost looked pitying. "Relax, man, you're far too tense. That vein in your forehead is just begging to burst."

Norrington's eyes shot to their tops, as if for a moment he tried to actually see his forehead, but then just let his shoulders slump and regarded Hawk incredulously. "With all due respect, sir," he finally bit out. "You've given me no hint as to what exactly Mr. Sparrow put in that testimony and it could mean my neck. Yes, I am very tense."

"Well..." Admiral Hawk scratched his head thoughtfully, and he once again made to flip through the account of Jack Sparrow. Norrington was tempted to snatch it up and read it himself, if only to just quench his itching curiosity (and worry). "To be perfectly honest, I would encourage the man to turn this account into a gentleman's publication if he weren't set to hang. Everything in it is so fantastic it drags the reader right in, and at the same time...grotesquely mutilates the mere concept of rational thought and reason."

"Forgive my blatant plea," Norrington quickly interjected, and the admiral politely closed the diary to listen. He had never felt so ridiculous for begging in his life. Nor so desperate. "But while considering whether or not to terminate the two of us would you at least attempt to purge every memory of Mr. Sparrow's testimony from your mind?"

That made Admiral Hawk laugh, hard. "Why do you think I dragged you in here, to show you a view of the harbor? If I relied on Mr. Sparrow's account I'd have you both locked up in an attic for contagious madness!"

Norrington opened his mouth to respond, and but was lost for any kind of words to improve even the slightest detail of his current situation. He was annoyed, dreading, worrisome, and humiliated all at once – the combination of all four sensations was enough to make him physically ill. The younger man drew in a quick breath, and looked to the side, only raising more laughter from Admiral Hawk. He seemed to be the center of this man's entertainment, and quite frankly it was getting irritating.

"Very well, then, continue," Hawk wheezed between chuckles, and to the marine in the back of the wide office he motioned to approach. "Remove the prisoner's clamps, will you?"

"Thank you, sir," Norrington bit out, jaws set so tight his backset of teeth began to ache in his skull. The admiral nodded, and gestured for him to continue.

"So you brought the pirate back to the Dauntless?"

"That's right."

"And then?"

"Well," Norrington began again, turning his head briefly to watch the marine remove the clamps from his chaffed, sore wrists. "I...suppose Mr. Sparrow didn't think I meant what I said about those 'living quarters'."

"How do you mean?"

"He honestly thought we were going to leave him aboard the Pearl and carry on with our business," he said, distractedly. Norrington furrowed his brows at the new sensation of being able to pull his arms back to his front, and he crossed them over his chest protectively. The admiral repressed another laugh, and urged his genuine interest,

"I assume he resisted arrest?"

"You might say that," Something in Norrington's smooth tone took a nosedive into uncertainty. He straightened again, and lifted his chin. "In my own defense, trying to get one pirate off of a ship he loves probably more than his mother is...in no way as easy as one would think."

--- --- ---

"No! I'm not going, so you gents can just put away your little guns and little spears and just row away!" Jack had attached himself to the railing of the Black Pearl after a successful near-escape, and had literally re-clamped himself around it. "Because there's no bloody chance in the pit of Hades I'm leavin' me ship!" He snarled at the marines around him, who were torn between amusement and bewilderment. They were hesitant to touch him.

Several bolder souls finally seized him bodily, and were heaving backwards with all their strength to remove him from the railing with little success. Ten or so more minutes of this and Norrington actually had to re-board the ship to reason with Jack himself.

When he approached the marines immediately dropped Jack, and his knees hit the hard wood deck with a loud crack. After spouting a curse, Jack's determined eyes fell upon the commodore, and he pulled closer to the railing.

Norrington folded his hands at the small of his back, and tilted his head at the pirate; unimpressed.

"Mr. Sparrow," he snapped suddenly, and Jack jumped. "If you do not remove yourself from this ship my men will have to take you one piece at a time. Do I make myself clear?"

Jack narrowed his eyes at the commodore, and once again sprang a bony soot-smudged finger from his clenched fist, shaking it fiercely at the other man. "You are all talk, mate, and if you think anywhere in the bounds of your pointy little hat that –"

"Marines!"

When several bayonets thrust out to be within a mere inch of Jack's halfway exposed ribcage he immediately stopped talking, and seemed to fall back into a more reasonable mood. Jack made a vain attempt to inch away from them, and the end result told him it was impossible.

Five minutes later he was seated in the center of a lifeboat, shoulders slumped and gaze set forward as if a schoolmaster had rapped his knuckles. He gave a melodramatic sigh, and twisted to give the Black Pearl one last look.

---

"I suppose I should disregard the part in Mr. Sparrow's account where he single-handedly battled each of your men with their own weapons and ended up surrendering only because you offered him rum, and a balcony seat at the next opera you attended?"

Norrington arched a brow. "I beg your pardon?"