FIC: Nigh Uncatchable (PotC, N/J, E/W)

Title: Nigh Uncatchable (1/1)
Author: cinzia
Rating: R
Pairing: Norrington/Jack; Elizabeth/Will
Summary: Norrington dreams; Elizabeth wonders; Jack sets things straight.
Disclaimer: The characters are Disney's. Therefore, not mine.
Archive: My website.
Feedback: Always appreciated.
Author Notes: For viva_gloria, as a (much) belated birthday present. Thanks to lamath, kandadze and phantomas for wonderful beta and constructive criticism.


Nigh Uncatchable
by Cinzia



Elizabeth had always been out of his reach.

And Norrington had always known this: since the day she had saved the boy's life, her heart had gone out to Will Turner.

He had been a fool to hope, to dream. He had been a fool to fall. She was now resolutely out of his grasp, and things were as they were meant to be. His dreams, though, were still his own; and if they failed to catch up with the current state of things... Eh, well: they were a fool's dreams.

When the sharp-edged hole of absence began to tug at his soul even in his dreams, and he could feel only cold and emptiness in the warm, sweet place where she had been, Norrington decided he would stop dreaming altogether. Then, when that failed--being as it was not really possible, or even sensible--he resolved he would keep one dream alone. Just the one.

He would be the best commodore the Spanish Main had ever seen.

He would bring an end to piracy.

He would catch Captain Jack Sparrow.

Of course this decision, as most decisions made by a broken heart are wont to do, began having interesting consequences not only on his waking hours--most of which he spent on board the Dauntless chasing after Sparrow--but on his sleeping habits as well.

He couldn't catch the damnable man when he was awake, so he would run into him in his dreams: he should have been shocked and surprised when, in those unpredictable waters, the Dauntless deck turned into his cabin's bunk; yet he was not, for he had often dreamt of Elizabeth coming to share this very bed, and now it seemed absurdly appropriate that a pirate would take her place in it, as well.

The pirate would climb onto Norrington's bed in the middle of some other forgettable flight of fancy, the baubles in his hair glinting faintly in the moonlight, clinking and jangling while the man settled over him: glint of gold when he smiled, wolfish and lustful and oh so irritating; glint of gold when he straddled Norrington's lap and his white shirt fell open to reveal the tanned skin of his chest, as smooth as any native's.

He would ride Norrington as a ship would an angered, swelling ocean; and he would reach out with his bound hands to touch him, his dark eyes wild and pleading... "I'm yours," he would whisper with a new smile, half cocky, half coy--and just like that, just when Norrington remembered he was never able to keep Elizabeth, not this way, but this man, this pirate, he was a different matter altogether and maybe--oh, Lord--maybe he could...

...just like that, Sparrow would vanish. Not like Elizabeth, sweet warmth fading in cold morning mists, no: more like the ever-receding horizon, endless, uncatchable. Always there, forever out of grasp.

His grasp.

Norrington was constantly ashamed to find himself in very uncomfortable, very sticky predicaments, awakening from those dreams. He was also almost positively certain he'd called out a most improper name just prior to awakening; luckily, though, usually no one was around to hear--except maybe the Marine standing watch not so far out of his door: but Norrington could easily pretend to ignore that.

At last--after a few weeks of this state of affairs--he acknowledged to himself he was growing too obsessed with this particular pirate, which was surely unhealthy, not to mention sanity-threatening; and when Lieutenant Gillette one morning brought him a report about the pirate Lacroix's ship being sighted just South of Port Royal, Norrington ordered the Dauntless to make sail. A little distraction would have been healthy for everyone involved, he decided.

And he stood on deck watching the eternally distant line of sea and sky stretch endlessly in front of him.



The celebrations for the capture of the pirate Lacroix were magnificent: all the high society of Port Royal assembled in Fort Charles to witness the hanging and, afterwards, take part in the parades and festivities in honour of their victorious commodore.

Elizabeth wandered away from her father and his entourage in the middle of a long speech, and went in search of a little quiet on the parapet where, not so long ago, Commodore Norrington had proposed to her; the parapet from where she had fallen, quite literally, into Jack Sparrows' arms; where she had at last chosen Will, and kissed him for the first time.

Will was not among the people gathering enthusiastically around the hero of the day: although he and Norrington were still on friendly terms, Elizabeth knew that both found a certain degree of awkwardness in each other's presence. It was because of her, of course, and though she regretted it dearly, there was nothing she could do about it.

Men were queer creatures.

She was not worried about Will: he still was more a blacksmith than a pirate, and in her heart, she knew it would always be like this. She wasn't disappointed, either: having now experienced what a true pirate's life was, she was satisfied to have the knowledge and the dream safe in her memory, and let life go on as it would.

For a little while.

Norrington, though...

She didn't feel guilty at having used his feelings towards her as a means to rescue Will: she had done what had needed to be done, and she could never regret that. In a way, though, she was aware that it would have been so very easy to accept Norrington's proposal and be happy with him. It would have--if her heart hadn't belonged to Will since they had been children.

So, out of what love she truly felt for the commodore, she worried about him, about that faraway look he got when he talked to her, and about the half-hidden glimpse of sea that she saw in his eyes sometimes.

Just then Lieutenant Gillette, who had been instructing two red-coated guards on the ramparts, spotted her. Elizabeth sighed, seeing him come her way: and as surely as she had known, he remarked how she shouldn't be in this place, for it was a treacherous spot--so high over the rocks and wind-swept--for a lady to be; and he would've thought she should remember that, having had the misfortune to fall from this very place not so long ago.

Elizabeth managed to take all this with good grace; she truly could not stand the young, pompous lieutenant, yet he was Norrington's left arm, and she was determined to act graciously with him.

"I see our commodore is making a name for himself," she cut in as soon as she could, and predictably enough, Gillette swelled with pride at the mention.

"Why, he is for sure," he commented. "He has been hell-bent--pardon my language, Miss Swann--on catching the scoundrels, of late. We have been chasing Sparrow's ship for many a long week now. It is just as well that we caught this other pirate, too. Sparrow will think twice about taunting us now, for sure."

"The commodore," Elizabeth said, folding and unfolding her fan in a pensive manner, "has been very keen on apprehending Captain Sparrow, is that so?"

"Very keen indeed, Miss," Gillette nodded. "So much so, that I oftentimes heard him call out in his sleep--my cabin is just next to Commodore Norrington's, you see--in fervor, with such a hoarse, passionate voice..."

"Call out?" Elizabeth asked, puzzlement colouring her voice.

"'Pirate', Miss," Gillette happily explained. "More than once I heard him, with these ears of mine. He is, as I said, very passionate about his work."

"Is he, now," Elizabeth mused aloud; and she was almost certain there could be no echo in that open space, so high up over the water, suspended in the brilliant sky: yet in the washing of the waves she thought she'd heard another voice--a very familiar voice--utter those same words, in a very similar, questioning tone.

Yet when she turned there was no one there but her and Gillette: only the cries of swooping seagulls and the distant sounds of the festivities in the Fort's courtyard, and the faint, ever-present scent and sound of the sea.



It is always a funny moment, when one awakes to find that one's dream has, in fact, bled into the waking world; and so it felt to Norrington, when he came awake the night of the celebrations for Lacroix's capture to find a pirate looking at him from the shadows at the side of his own bed.

"What do you think you're doing," were the pirate's first words, "going off chasing after other pirates?"

Norrington blinked several times. It hadn't escaped his notice, either, that his hands were now drawn over his head and bound with sturdy--he ascertained after some cursory testing--ropes to his own bedpost.

"What," he said, his voice somewhat hoarse; and then, "How," and then he trailed off again, since it really didn't bear to think about either of those questions; and anyway in his mind he could already hear the pirate answer, "Why, because I'm Captain Jack Sparrow, of course."

So Norrington didn't bother. He kept his silence, and glared.

Captain Jack Sparrow, sitting on the edge of Norrington's bed as calmly as though he belonged there--Norrington could feel the pirate's warmth seeping through the air into his own bared, vulnerable skin--shook his head, with a clink and clang and thump of beads and medallions and the Lord knew what else had found its way into his hair over the years, and he looked at the bound commodore with an expression of wounded reproach on his face.

"Really," Sparrow said. "I'm appreciative of your efforts in helping reduce the competition, but--" and here the pirate reached out to play with the edge of the sheet covering Norrington's hips, still vaguely tenting from the mad dream Norrington'd been having just prior to awakening in this mad reality-- "I'm a bit miffed that you went after that other ship."

Sparrow lifted the sheet then, and quite pointedly looked under it, then, in a similarly pointed fashion, looked back up into Norrington's eyes.

"I thought you wanted me, mate," he breathed.

And for a wild second, Norrington found himself on the verge of offering his apologies.

Madness.

"Ah, well," Jack mused. "I s'pose we just have to set this straight now."

Norrington had to bite back another "What" at that: it was useless, as much as considering why he wasn't even considering to scream for help, or to simply ask Sparrow to untie him and leave him the hell alone, on pain of death.

And after all, he had been dreaming of exactly this--or something surprisingly like this--for quite a while now.

In the moonlight Jack's skin--when he shed his clothing--looked more like tarnished silver than gold; his eyes were as dark as the night, and made darker by the kohl outlining them. His hair, quite heavy on Norrington's chest, and not at all smooth--not at all like Elizabeth's hair had used to feel in those other, older dreams--smelled of sea and salt, and there was a discordant cacophony of glass beads and bone baubles and... was that a golden doubloon?... that would've made Norrington grit his teeth, if this were in fact reality and not, as it were--as it must have been--only another, crueler, crazier dream.

The pirate slid like a sea snake over Norrington's chest, smelling of the dark secret depths of the ocean: in his kiss Norrington tasted salt and rum and gold--and his own blood, when Jack bit down--a real pirate's kiss, sharp as a cutlass, dangerous as sin.

When Jack smiled and licked his lips, reddened by his prisoner's blood, and ran at last his hands up over Norrington's arms, closing his fingers around the commodore's wrists, deftly loosening the knots of rope, Norrington thought, My sword; then he licked his own blood from the pirate's lips; he tasted the cold hard metal in Jack's mouth, and Jack's rough, warm tongue.

His arms, now free, closed around the pirate.

Caught you.

It was like riding out a storm in the open ocean. It was loud like thunder, blinding like lightning, and it hurt like the rain lashing out at you on the deck. When the last wave surged, drowning Norrington and spitting him out again on a distant, newly-discovered shore, all he could gasp with his last--first--breath was, "Pirate."

Jack's wild smile dazzled Norrington like sunlight breaking through the clouds.

"Your pirate," Jack whispered, when they found each other again on that unexplored shore, and had caught their breath. "And don't you go forgetting it again."

In that new world the pirate's kiss felt like the only true familiar thing: it tasted of salt, rum, blood--and endless horizons just in Norrington's reach.



The party for Elizabeth's birthday, a few days later, was the occasion which brought Will and Norrington face to face again.

Elizabeth watched both men closely-- though not in an overtly open fashion--and at last she thought she could see why Norrington had looked so different to her, of late: when the commodore looked at Will with no more bitterness at all; when he smiled at her with no more than a passing, flickering shadow of regret.

He looked better than she had ever seen him, and he gladly accepted her hand when she asked him to dance.

When he told her that the Dauntless was about to make sail again, Elizabeth smiled. "Another sighting of the Black Pearl, Commodore? Another day in which you'll 'almost' catch Captain Jack Sparrow?"

She waited for him to scowl and gently reproach her lightness; she was amazed, and a little worried, when he smiled back, and kept his silence, twirling her around the golden, crowded room. She noticed for the first time that his bottom lip was bruised at the corner, a faint red mark like a discordant, strangely upsetting note in the commodore's smooth appearance.

"You won't catch him, James," she said, furrowing her brow, aware that it sounded less a question than a command: she was serious, and suddenly afraid even though she couldn't quite put her finger on the reason. Surely, there could be no real danger: Jack was sly and cunning and as slick as an eel; and Norrington... Norrington knew that Jack was a good man, in his heart.

"I've no need of it," Norrington at last said, and Elizabeth finally saw: the sea in his eyes--it was endless and blue, sparkling under a clear sky.

"Then why," she began, confused. "What need do you have to..."

When Norrington looked down in her eyes, deep in her eyes, she could almost feel the roaring rush of the waves breaking against the hull, and the blowing wind in her hair.

"I'll just take what is mine to take," he simply said; and took her back to her father and Will, bowed, and was gone.

Elizabeth looked after him, as he walked proud and sure amidst the well dressed ladies and gentlemen of Port Royal--walked away from her.

And then, she knew.

"Why are you smiling, Elizabeth?" Will asked, taking her loosely into his arms, her name on his lips--after so many years--the sweetest endearment to both of them. She knew that if she were to crane her head back and look up into his dark, dark eyes, she'd see a calm sea, rich tilled earth and the heat of the forge, the warmth of the hearth; she would see their long years together, the past and those yet to come.

Norrington turned briefly, before leaving the room. She could see him smiling at them, at both of them equally, from here; then she smiled, too. When he was gone she looked up, looked at Will, and saw his heart in his eyes--she saw herself.

"Pirates," she murmured, contentedly.

When Will smiled and leaned down to kiss her brow, she remembered the Pearl's rolling deck, the spray of the waves and the rushing wind upon her face; and she felt the horizon opening endless all around.


End