Part I: July 1711 – May 1715

At first, he hadn't believed it. Didn't want to believe it. Refused to believe it.

But there it sat, an item of damnation too complete and terrible in its judgment to not exist. It marked the end.

Edward Norrington placed his hands next to the resignation letter. A hollow formed in the very center of his chest as if a maelstrom had sucked out his heart and breath. The details in what lay before him stood out with stark and sudden clarity.

He could see the lines in his hands, the scar across the back of the left one that curved up and disappeared into his sleeve from a rigging accident. Even after the many years since the event, the scar still shone white against the fading tan of his skin. He could see how the gold band on his ring finger glinted in the sunlight streaming in from the window. The folds in the letter were like canyons. A stain from some manner of liquid that only just colored the edge of one corner seemed to take up the whole sheet. The script of the letters was tight and small, black as tar. Even so, tremors in the writer's hand had nearly botched several of the words. There must be multiple destroyed drafts in a fireplace somewhere.

At least he had been able to sign his name. At least he summoned some manner of courage to see it through. The signature, the largest thing on the paper, seemed to burn there at the bottom of the letter, bright but like the final death throes of a man dying who didn't want to die. Reading the forceful and bold James M Norrington created the hollow in Edward Norrington's chest.

...

When his daughter came running up to greet him as he came in the door, he barely noticed until she had thrown her arms around his neck in the oblivious happiness of seeing her father home from work. Drawing away, though, Eliza quickly picked up on the fact that something was wrong.

His mind registered her question, but his body led him into the library to his favorite chair before the fireplace. Eliza followed at a distance, concern knitting her fair brow and saddening her brown eyes. She called for her mother. Katherine Norrington found her daughter hovering in the hallway, eyes on her father's elbow that always poked out from behind the great chair.

"Edward? Darling?"

When there was no answer, the two women exchanged looks and crept into the room.

Mr. Norrington stared fixedly at the empty fireplace, numb, it seemed, to the world. Katherine grew slightly alarmed. Her husband was a notorious stoic, but this was something different. She knelt before him, taking and pulling apart the fist that had formed on the chair's arm. "Edward, speak to me. What has happened?"

Mr. Norrington blinked, seemed to acknowledge finally that he wasn't alone. As his brown eyes met his wife's green ones, his expression softened considerably. His free hand reached into his jacket and pulled out the parchment. He held it out limply.

"He's resigned. James has resigned his commission."

Katherine's pretty brow knitted in perplexity as she took the sheet of paper. Eliza, eyes wide in shock, hovered over her mother's shoulder to read along with her. Katherine flinched, emitting a small gasp that she only missed smothering with one hand. That hand went to her throat as if to pull away the stifling puzzlement clutching at it. "But…why ever would he-?"

The question went unanswered. Mr. Norrington steepled his fingers and continued to stare into the sooty black of the cold fireplace. He knew why.

...

News of the sinking of the Dauntless appeared in the Gazette the day after its report ended up on his desk. At that point, word of it had long since circulated through the naval community. Everywhere he went, Admiral Norrington seemed to find people shooting furtive, pitying glances at him, whispering behind their hands.

How dreadful such news must be… Oh, yes. To even share the same name as the man who sunk the Dauntless… And he'd shown such promise…

The leather case holding the report included the ship's log. He scoured the documents for hours. He never could quite say what it was he searched for, but something told him he'd know it when he found it. There had to be something.

James wasn't a fool.

When he did find it, Norrington found it hard to believe he had missed it in the first place. It was on the second time through the logs he found something. The line came at the end of the entry. Added as if as an afterthought. Like he'd forgotten to put it in the beginning.

Delayed one day by preparations.

If it had been anyone else, Norrington would have dismissed the line. But this was his son, and the one child of four who had taken to the sea. The streak of ocean blue in the veins of the Norringtons ran through one son per generation. It was nigh legend at this point. Edward had been the one to get it among his brothers, and it now ran through James. Norrington knew inherently how his son's mind worked, just as his father before him knew how his worked.

The delay of one day would have been maddening. If anything, it should have been the first thing he mentioned, as it should have been on the forefront of his mind. Should have been.

As it turned out, that one day would have made all the difference. If they hadn't caught Sparrow before the hurricane, they would have at least made it through the hurricane before it hit its pinnacle.

A whole day of preparations. The case would be closed, but for the fact that Edward knew how James ran his fleet.

It never took him more than some meager hours to muster a ship.

...

James Norrington disappeared for some time after that. The family had enjoyed letters with at least some regularity prior to the incident. Now there was nothing.

Word filtered through occasionally of somebody having seen him for a brief moment. One had him sailing as a privateer for the Spanish, the only navy willing to take such a disastrous captain. Another said he was working in the governor's office. One sailor even said he saw him in a pub on Tortuga, drowning himself in rum.

Edward didn't know what to believe, and they despaired of ever hearing anything ever again.

In time, the gossip died down. Edward Villiers died. Cary's rebellion in the Carolinas took a couple headlines.

Still no solid word of or from James Norrington.

Thomas Newcomen built the first piston-operated steam engine. The Spanish Succession ended with the Treaty of Utrecht.

Then a letter came. And it was written in a familiar, steady and authoritarian hand. James apologized for the long period of time that had lapsed, but took no more than a few lines to say so. What came after was a brief explanation of what happened to him after resigning. Then he glossed over a large chunk of time with the vague phrase, "Following some other events I will leave out due to their most dubious and troublesome nature…" James' letters were only ever descriptive when being used to communicate ships or battles, so it wasn't anything particularly concerning.

However, Edward found himself sitting suddenly at the line saying James was now an admiral for the East India Trading Company.

The clerk at the Company office on James' Square confirmed it; the records, and signed by no other than Cutler Beckett himself, had only reached the office two days before James' letter found its way to Edward's hands.

He stepped inside that afternoon, coughing against the December cold threatening to suck the warmth from his very bones and shaking snow from his overcoat. Katherine materialized behind him to help with his coat.

She was quiet, but expectant, catching his hands with hers when he turned to go down the hallway. "Edward, is it true?"

Edward found her eyes locked with his, tilted downwards as they always were due to him being some inches shorter. In spite of the trepidation he felt at knowing so little about the situation, he caught himself smiling slightly as he replied. "It's true. It's all true."

Delight lifted the shadow from Katherine's eyes, and she threw her arms around him in an embrace. And then she was away to go tell Eliza. Edward was left smiling somewhat in the foyer. He allowed pride to fill his chest.

The niggling premonition in the back of his mind slumbered.

...

Life moved on.

A suitor found his way to Eliza's fickle and capricious little heart, and the youngest Norrington moved out of the house into the world in March. For Edward and Katherine, no other event of the first five months that year trumped the marriage of their youngest daughter.

The house grew unearthly quiet after that. There was no more piano or flute music playing at random times during the day; Eliza deigned to learn as many musical instruments as possible.

But it was home, and the Norringtons could sit back and be content knowing their brood of children were off in the world forging their way through life.

Eliza married.

The younger son Alexander in the army.

Margaret, the older daughter, married.

And James an admiral.

Sunlight poured into Edward's office, making the Spartan work place somewhat stuffy but comfortable. Dust motes drifted in and out of the light beams and settled on the desk or windowsill or bookshelf. Some papers sat in a neat stack on the corner of his desk next to the black feather quill and ivory inkwell.

All of this failed to register with the man sitting behind the desk.

A list of preparations for his retirement lay forgotten under his elbow. The paper in his hands was slowly being crushed from both sides by his hands forming sudden fists. The words on the paper were small and few, but had long since faded out of his vision. A looping indifferent signature finished off the trifling sentences, but he had no eyes for the identity of the writer. It was no one he knew.

The letter was one of condolence. It had East India Trading Company letterhead.

It marked the end.

It told him that his son was dead.