Warning: Ye be off the edge o' the map mate, Tharr be Spoilers here! Go now and watch the movie already!
Summary: Based within and before one particular scene in Dead Man's Chest in which we discover what fate befell everyone's favourite Commodore. Spoilers are minor in plot, but major in the shaping of the character of our Commodore. As of now, a one-shot, perhaps further exploring the events that led up to this in the future once I have a far more sufficient grasp of the story-line of DMC than a meager two viewings in two consecutive days can offer.
Rating: Slightly grittier, dirtier and groggier than one would usually associate with the dear Commodore.
The Dark Side of Ambition
The liquid was a murky shade of ambivalent brown that, when tilted to the dusky burn of shuttered lanterns, clouded with dregs of what could have been sand or something decidedly more sinister. It clung, sticky and glutinous, to the skin. Escaping down his chin in the throws of spluttering coughs to congeal in an unkempt beard and trail, salacious and slick, down his collarbone.
The bottle was grimy. Made sticky with the slosh of overflow that accompanied the increasingly tempestuous sway of his hands, dark and murky and working deep into the calluses and creases of his hands with dirt and filth.
It was, he'd decided, pondering the liquid with shrewd disdain, a putrid concoction with all the allure of bilge-water.
When swallowed the taste-buds revolted, the eyes burned and the throat gagged violently in efforts to repel the saccharine-and-ooze that fought mercilessly toward the stomach. He held no delusions that once it reached the stomach it's purpose was done, he already fancied he could feel the vile concoction eating with acidic ferocity through his intestines.
Around here they called it grog.
James, who considered his intelligence (amongst other things) vastly superior to the company he kept (or rather pointedly, didn't keep), called it Poison - and the bar-keep with the lascivious, smeared smile and hungry eyes had near-purred the very same.
"Pick your poison,"she'd said - and that had been two or three (or four?) filthy, reeking bottles ago.
That had been before the tavern had begun to spin, before the hazy lanterns and the roaring laughter and bawdy songs had reached a trumpeting crescendo and encroached upon his oppressive and morosely silent self-loathing and blame.
Now, with two or three (perhaps it had been four..) bottles of his poison of choice between the brooding, surly, filthy man he had walked in as and the man pointedly averting his eyes from the grinding, panting shadows and corners and, by Christ, unoccupied tables too, he found his own slovenly company thoroughly un-inviting.
His third (probably fourth) bottle inclined sharply towards his lips, the ungainly swoop of his hand sending the muddy liquid within gurgling over the side, soaking and staining through the cuffs of what was the tattered and stained remnants of his once-fine Commodore coat. The combined repugnant burn of saccharine and salt-water bubbled upon his tongue and cut a fine path down his chin, dribbling from the matted result of a month's forgotten shaving.
"Tortuga," he sneered, sharp thankless eyes roving his company - grinding and drinking and singing and brawling alike. There had been a time where his footfalls in this cesspit would have been the gallows for any man or woman to draw his eye - a time when his name had been synonymous with the dreaded whispers of The Scourge.
Now, to them, he was little more than another Navy crimp - one treated with the breadth of caution that came with a warm pistol and cock-sure aim.
And, he noted with a dry snarl as grog burned viciously down his throat once again, they were almost entirely right.
His life's ambition, planning and determination had been dashed to pieces in the throws of a Hurricane and one Captain Jack Sparrow ("Savvy?") - the final back-breaking straw that had demanded his dignity, his ship, his crew and his commission.
Him, probably the youngest man to rank Commodore in His Royal Majesty's Naval history! The man who had stretched more necks at the Gallows than any man flying British colours! The man whose mere name had caused hardened, blood-soaked Pirates to quake in their ridiculously embellished leather boots!
Discarded, disbanded, disgraced.
Sure, the signs had been there, the letters, bearing the naval seal and his name at every Port in the Seven Seas. Letters upon letters that met their accidental fate in the fey lady Ocean's crushing depths or the burn of unattended candle-fire. Whispers at each naval stronghold ("'E's gone mad they say..") and his crews never-failing loyalty, ("We'll get him this time Commodore.")
But always that one day's head-start, have to catch up - mustn't let the Sparrow win.
But then he had.
For the Hurricane - the Hurricane - that too was surely Sparrow's doing. To be so close and to have that hellish tempest called down upon him and his damned crew; To suffer that one last strike from the Heathen Gods that proved, once and for all, that the Sparrow would never be caged and that he was finished.
His commission had been revoked, Groves and Gillette and the vast-expanse of his crew lost to the crushing blue and he had fled, another Navy crimp, (not the Commodore, never again the Commodore) to this godforsaken pit.
Now, drowning in the sickening swill that smelled as the Sparrow had and poisoned, honey-sweet and ambivalent, as the Sparrow did, he knew what his troubles were and he knew their source and he wondered, however briefly, if there was not something more to this vile liquid than he had first thought.
Before Captain Jack Sparrow he had lived in a world that made sense; a world where His Majesty's Navy were the good-guys, where Governor's daughters did not fall in love with blacksmiths and where Pirates were not Good Men. Before Captain Jack Sparrow he had been a hero, not a villain - a servant of the Crown, not a fugitive. Before Captain Jack Sparrow he had had a life.
"Right," he decided sternly, grappling with the rocking table with both hands and hauling himself out of his chair with a woozy sway of limbs.
And without another thought to the matter, his third (fourth?) bottle was emptied into his throat, spilling and gurgling wildly over his skin with wild abandon before being discarded angrily aside, rolling across the wobbling table to land with a crash of glass upon the floor.
Vision reeling and legs far longer and far more awkward than he remembered, he took a woozy step towards the bar, swaying and reminded fondly of his ships on high seas when he had still been Commodore James Norrington and nobody had dared stare at him like these wastrels did.. And the bar-keep was watching him, eyes hungry even for a dishevelled waste like him.
"Sumvin' else I can get fer ya, luv?"
But she wasn't Elizabeth and she wasn't pretty and he wondered, if she had been, would she have found a Turner to dote upon instead?
"Grog," he deliberated firmly, concisely, and was pleased to see that even if he was no longer Commodore James Norrington that the Sparrow couldn't take away the command of his tongue.
He leaned woozily into the bar-top, surreptitiously sliding the pile of grimy payment from an oblivious neighbour towards the bar-keep as she thrust another bottle of the bilge-water at him with a flounce of visible annoyance and cocking his head back to his former table he found it occupied by another faceless pairing of unabashed debauchery.
Lips carving his disdain he uncorked his new bottle and took in a mouthful. It was darker, richer and grainier than the previous. More sand, he mused, less water.
Back pressed to the bar-top in an attempt to hold onto his grasp of the vertical world, he scowled, turbid green-eyes squinting in the dusky lantern-light in hopes of a new refuge from the burning eyes upon the back of his dishevelled head.
And then, there he was.
Lounged luxuriously in a corner with all the airs of a King holding court, twinkling and gleaming in the muted light as nobody had a right to. Unaffected by his surroundings, the world or any circumstance that crossed his path save to weave them into his own legend and, perhaps, the proceedings being held by - was that Gibbs?
His fourth (fifth?) bottle of grog was abandoned to the bar-top as he squinted through the dusky light, taking a stumbling step toward this new direction. A new goal that was so much the same as that old one. Catch the Sparrow.
The prospect slurred pleasantly in his thoughts and another swaying step was taken, eyes driven and always watching as, one by one, decrepit and maimed figures of men marked their allegiance to the Sparrow.
A new crew, he wondered, watching a one-armed and limping man gain admittance with a burning rise of fury.
These men were the choice of the Sparrow? Old, maimed, bitter and inexperienced? These were the men that he had wasted his life and his dignity and his commission and his crew and ship and..
An over-compensated sway had him grappling wildly with a wooden support beam to remain upright and he suddenly wished for the putrid swill of over-sweet and over-salted grog to burn all thoughts and feelings from his mind and heart.
Shakespeare had scorned ambition, burning repercussions of that blind pursuit of power into the minds of his readers through the fates of his Cassius'and his Macbeths.. But James had never thought himself blind in his pursuits, he had known what he had wanted and he had gotten it, more or less, before the Sparrow and Elizabeth and Turner.
Had he been blind in his unrelenting pursuit of Sparrow?
Elbow crooked around his thick wooden support to anchor himself upwards he watched, anger loitering beneath the burn of rum and sea-water, tongue and teeth burdened with grit, and he listened carefully. Watching the pleased departure of another determined but worthless new member of the Sparrow's crew with a suspicious stare.
A dead weight, the Commodore-voice within him declared snidely and James was pleased to discover it hadn't abandoned him as well, about as useful as Sparrow's blasted compass.
".. That makes four."
Gibbs seemed about as pleased as the Commodore-voice within him and James wondered if it was the Navy in the man showing it's colours. He savoured that idea, and when the next came to him, it was sobering and sudden.
He stiffened, spine jerking straight and rigid, as if he was once again Commodore James Norrington and not just James Norrington, and green eyes widened with surprise. Dare he do it - dare he face that blasted Sparrow and stare him in the eye - align himself with the crew that he had sought to send to the darkest depths of the ocean and then.. And then.
He took a stumbling step forward, releasing his lock upon the wooden beam and shouldering his ungainly way passed a table-full of leering, drinking sea-men with an awakening whisper of a new kind of ambition, a darker whisper that told him he could take back what the Sparrow had stolen from him.
Did he dare? Did he..
"What's your story, sailor?"
"- My stories the same as yours.. Just a few chapters behind.-"
..Dare?
AN: The final two lines are hazarded guesses from memory of that scene in DMC so they may not be perfectly accurate, if you remember them otherwise let me know. The title, too, you might recognise from a certain line of dialogue - though if anyone would be darling enough to remember the former-Commodore's response to said line I would love them forever. This may, in time, mutate into a chaptered story focusing on the events that led from that One Day's Head Start to our rum-soaked Norrington's entrance in DMC or just remain as it is. I, for one, was rather impressed with his character in DMC and was quite thoroughly pleased with the movie in general.
Feedback is much appreciated.