Fic: Crossing the Bar (15/?)
Jun. 28th, 2006 12:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
honoratAuthor: Honorat
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Norrington, Groves
Pairing: Jack/Anamaria if you squint, but not in this chapter
Disclaimer: The characters of PotC! She’s taken them! Get after her, you feckless pack of ingrates!
Summary: The chase continues. The Navy pursues. Philosophy happens. Groves tells Sparrow stories. Naval snark ensues. This one is a tad different. Every once in awhile, I have to write some raving sailing. Norrington has finally got the Black Pearl trapped. Jack is bound to do something crazy, but will it be the last thing he does?
Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
geek_mama_2 for the beta help.
1 Ambush
2 No Regrets
3 The Judgment of the Sea
4 The Sea Pays Homage
5 Risking All That Is Mortal and Unsure
6 Troubles Come Not Single Spies
7 To Dare Do All That May Become a Man
8 Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here
9 A Special Providence in the Fall
10 For Where We Are Is Hell
11 To Beat the Surges Under and Ride Upon Their Backs
12 One Equal Temper of Heroic Hearts
13 Though the Seas Threaten, They are Merciful
14 He Jests at Scars Who Never Felt a Wound
* * * * *
15 To Strive, To Seek, To Find, And Not To Yield
The sense of the utter futility of pursuing Jack Sparrow was becoming entirely too familiar to Commodore Norrington. The tighter the noose around that pirate’s unwashed neck, the more spectacular was his slither out of it. There had been no possible way for the sparrow to fly the net in which the Royal Navy had entrapped him, but there he was, aiming his wraith of a ship like an arrow at the horizon, a complete thumb of the nose at every law from the Decalogue to the precepts of Science, an irrational current flowing against the mighty river of logic, a garishly-coloured thread of chaos insinuating itself into the warp and weft of the decorous fabric of civilization.
It was fitting that there be no glorious sunset tonight, merely a dismal failing of the light and a gathering darkness of storm. Far off in the gloom of rain and falling night two shadow ships flew headlong before the tempest in the deadly game of hunter and hunted. The Dauntless, falling farther and farther behind, would lose them by nightfall. Nevertheless, Norrington would continue pursuit. Sparrow would have to lay up for repairs sooner rather than later. His ship was scarcely sea-worthy. Even with her vaunted speed, she was not leaving the Defender in her wake. Eventually, Walton, with his perfectly sound, fleet brig, would force a second engagement. But Walton’s crew would be far outnumbered by Sparrow’s should it come to boarding. The Dauntless would be able to reverse those odds if he could somehow track those two ships in these trackless seas.
The ship was in Gillette’s capable hands. He’d left his first lieutenant to set the fastest course between the current and wind, suspecting that Sparrow would be doing the same. Then, perhaps by dawn, the Dauntless might still be sharing the horizon with her sister brig and the crippled Black Pearl.
Since the need for any strategy or tactic other than pursuit had evaporated, the commodore had little to do. The heightened senses of battle still washed along his nerves and sinews but he had no task on which to expend that surging energy, so he paced the decks of his ship with sharp staccato steps. Finally his un-aimed feet led him to the surgery. He’d just check with Samuels. See how the boy was faring. What had he said his name was? Something simple. Pip? No, Jip. That was it.
He met the doctor coming out the door looking grim, but since Gilbert Samuels always looked grim, Norrington was not able to read anything into his expression.
“Were you able to set the bone, Gil?” he asked.
The answer did not really surprise him. He’d seen the splintered ruin of the boy’s leg. “Too much damage, James,” Samuels said, shaking his dark, silver-shot head. “Too many fragments. If he heals, he will be a cripple.”
The intensity of the regret Norrington felt surprised him. “That is a great pity,” he said softly. “He was a likely lad.”
“A very great pity.” Samuels’ voice had the gruffness in it that Norrington had come to know meant he was fighting off some non-professional emotion.
“How is he?”
“Not well, I’m afraid,” the doctor answered. “There are already signs of inflammation. I’d bleed him a little from above the wound, but truth to tell, he’s already lost a great deal of blood, so there can be no real efficacy in such a treatment and possibly much harm.”
“Will you be able to save the leg?” the commodore asked.
“Not likely,” Samuels said shortly. “But he’s young and healthy. He’s got a chance. So I’ll wait until tomorrow to decide. If the inflammation looks like it may be terminated either by dispersion or suppuration, I won’t amputate. However, if gangrene has started, I won’t have any choice if we are to save his life.”
Norrington had thought he might go in to see the boy, speak to him perhaps, but he found he didn’t have the heart to do so. His stomach felt as though a great weight had settled in it. Parting company with the doctor, he headed back for the weather decks of his ship, unwilling to betake his shivering self to the shelter of his cold, dark cabin, needing activity for the restlessness gnawing at him.
As he stood again by the break in the poop deck, unhappily still freed of immediate responsibilities, he felt, rather than saw, Lieutenant Groves come up behind him. His second lieutenant always carried his own personal fair day about with him, as though the rain did not dare be mournful in his vicinity but must perforce transmute into liquid sunlight, and all winds must alter from blustery to bracing. Everyone else on this entire ship was tired and discouraged and suitably foul-tempered enough to match their commodore, but Groves’ eternal optimism was for once more balm for the soul than the sand on raw flesh it sometimes seemed.
Norrington was off duty and in no need of a lieutenant. But he was most particularly in need of a friend. A level head would be nice as well, but he was so very low himself that interaction with Groves’ tendency to flight might balance the two of them out nicely.
“Theodore.” Norrington turned, welcoming, to the slender dark man and saw him relax as the informality of their encounter was established.
Groves’ white smile lit his thin face as he settled himself by the rail. “James,” he responded. “You look like you’ve just lost your best friend.”
“Then my face must certainly be lying, for I am quite sure that I have just found at least one of them,” the commodore said affectionately. He hadn’t thought it was possible, but Groves’ smile brightened further. “However,” Norrington turned to contemplate the leaden seas, beaten to a froth by the Dauntless’ passage, “I seem to have lost my best enemy, when it should have been impossible to do so, and that has, shall we say, discomposed me for the nonce.”
When Groves did not respond, the commodore looked back at him inquiringly. The lieutenant shrugged. “What would you have me say, James? You know my feelings on the subject, and I would not cause you further unpleasantness.”
Norrington quirked a wry smile at this uncharacteristic reticence. He must really look like hell. “Go ahead, Theodore. Tell me what a matchless pirate Jack Sparrow is. Perhaps that will make me feel less like a fool for allowing him to escape—again.”
“I do not think we allowed him to escape, this time.” Groves’ eyes were introspective, as though seeing again that incredible moment when that shattered ship had plunged ahead of the Dauntless and driven her way past the Defender. “I don’t think any force, human or inhuman could have held him.”
“I cannot accept that.” Norrington shook his head in denial. “I have a duty to eliminate all pirate threat in the Caribbean, among which brood of vipers Sparrow is foremost. And I will do it.”
Groves frowned at him quizzically. “Sometimes I do not think we are talking about the same man, James Norrington.”
“And sometimes I do not think we are talking about the same crime, Theodore Groves,” Norrington shot back. “These are pirates. You have seen what they do. The smoking devastation of port towns, the bodies in the streets, the victims of unspeakable cruelties, the faces of those who have lost family or their livelihoods or their possessions. The look in their eyes . . .” A shiver like the shift in the wind on the leech of a sail caught him for a moment in memory. “That . . . that is what I cannot endure. When I was brought to this place by the vicissitudes of the Admiralty, and for the first time found myself dealing with the aftermath of a pirate attack, I swore that I would eliminate this trade in human suffering.”
There were few things that moved the commodore to speak with passion, but this was one of them. Earnestly, Groves said, “And you have done so much towards accomplishing that goal. I share it, you know. That is why I am here, too.”
“I know, Theo,” Norrington sighed. “That is why I put up with your perverse fondness for pirates. Because I recognize, at heart, you, also, want the suffering to end.”
The two officers stood silently, moving instinctively with the ship as she rushed up one side of a wave and then tipped crazily down another, staring out across the endless mountains and valleys of the sea, each pursuing the course of his own thoughts.
Groves finally broke the silence. “Do you not wonder if perhaps, today, we have caused more suffering than we have halted?” His voice was pensive,
“I must uphold the law,” Norrington insisted. “Sparrow and his ilk are pirates, thieves, lawless men. They have to be held accountable to the law. They must not be allowed to prey on innocents.”
“And who are these innocents we have just avenged?” Groves asked, a flicker of impatience showing. “The passengers of the Rosalind for instance?”
“Sparrow plundered that ship when she was storm-damaged and unable to flee. Then he kidnapped those people and held them for ransom,” Norrington said decidedly.
“And two days later their ship went down.”
“That is certainly neither to his credit nor to his blame.”
“But he knew it would happen,” Groves insisted. “Captain McBride told me so. Sparrow had intentions of taking only one hostage—Mrs. Fitzbrace-Pennythump who’d had the bright idea to insult him and boast of her illustrious connections and wealth. Have you met that old battleaxe, James?”
“Far too frequently.” Norrington’s smile twisted wryly.
“I swear, I’d have dumped her over the side and said to hell with the ransom!” the gentle Groves snapped vehemently. “Anyway, he was all set to leave with his plunder and that harridan when his quartermaster called him down into the bilges to inspect some structural aspect of her keel. When they returned, Sparrow had changed his mind. Said he was taking the whole lot of passengers for whatever ransom he could wring out of their relations. Offered to take the crew as well. Told McBride there was a storm due in two days that would send the Rosalind to the bottom. McBride was furious with him—three of the hostages were his wife and children—and refused to abandon his ship. So Sparrow left him two of the Pearl’s boats (the Rosalind’s having already been lost in the previous storm), which he expected to have returned along with the ransom for McBride’s family, and hightailed it for Port Royal, entirely missing the storm that took down the Rosalind. You remember their arrival.”
“Yes, that did cause quite a stir.” Norrington spoke reminiscently. “It took some careful handling to prevent anyone opening fire on that ship while there were civilians aboard.”
“So after all the ransoms were sorted out, with the Black Pearl hovering like some great vulture in the harbour and making everybody nervous, Sparrow was off,” Groves continued. “Even delivered two little old missionaries right to their home port. Said it was to collect the ransom, but would you have done that for three dozen chickens?”
“Chickens,” Norrington said flatly. That had the vintage Sparrow ring to it.
“Yes,” Groves laughed delightedly. “Thirty-six of them. And a promise to pray for the souls of his crew. It was one of those really poor missions, the kind that give away money rather than collect it.”
“Are there such things?” Norrington asked incredulously. Then he waved his hand in an erasing motion. “Forget I said that,” he amended hastily. “I suppose the chickens would explain the complaints of the Allendale?”
“They would.”
“Only Sparrow would consider chickens ideal members of a boarding party,” the commodore groaned in exasperation.
Groves grinned. “You do realize that if we actually succeed in capturing and hanging that pirate, half the entertainment that brightens our careers here in these godforsaken colonies is going to be gone?”
“I’ll manage to live with that,” Norrington said repressively. “I suppose he made up for his charity to the missionaries, if you can call it that, by soaking old Fitzbrace-Pennythump. I’m sure it broke that skinflint’s hard little, pea-sized, penny-pinching heart to part with a single groat to get that clapperclawing shrew back into his possession.”
“Rubies,” Groves stated succinctly.
“What?”
“Sparrow asked for a ruby necklace. Said he’d promised Elizabeth Swann that he would prevent Mrs. FitzP from ever wearing rubies with puce again if he had the chance. Considered taking them off her hands another act of charity.” The laughter in his lieutenant’s voice bubbled beneath the surface. “Old Fitz wasn’t too upset about losing them. They belonged to her family to begin with, and he didn’t like them with puce either.”
“How do you know so much about this?” Norrington asked, curiousity aroused. He’d been generally aware of the ransom negotiations, but had paid no attention to the niggling details. The paperwork had been fierce enough as it was.
“I’ve talked with Mr. FitzP on a number of occasions,” Groves shrugged. “He’s not such a bad sort if you discount that leg-shackle he’s cursed with, and the fact that he still owns the first copper he ever earned. But it wasn’t just her he wanted back. Have you ever met the scion of the house of Fitzbrace-Pennythump?”
“Once, to my sorrow.” Norrington rolled his eyes.
“He was a hopeless little pill, spoilt entirely rotten, wasn’t he?” Groves smirked.
“That young limb of Satan?” Norrington snapped. “I would have drowned him like a pup if he’d been mine!”
“Such violence, James! I’m shocked.” Groves looked at him with wide-eyed amazement, spoiled only by the quivering of his dimples. “What did he do? Steal your wig?”
Commodore Norrington glared repressively at his chortling lieutenant.
“Ha! He did!” Groves whooped in triumph. “James, my lad, you do know that vanity is a sin?”
“Dignity is not!” Even Norrington had to admit that sounded insufferably stuffy.
“And it’s a good thing James, or you would indeed be going to hell.” Groves laughed.
“Theodore, you do realize your entire career, nay, your entire life is in my hands, do you not?” Norrington tried to sound severe.
“But I have it on the highest authority that you are a good man, James.” Groves spoke with blithe insouciance. “So I feel free of the fear of petty vengeance.”
”Leaving aside, for the moment, the fascinating topic of my venial character traits,” Norrington said haughtily, ignoring Groves snort. “I believe you were about to make some observation concerning the Fitzbrace-Pennythumps’ young and blighted olive branch.”
“The fact is, the boy was one of the passengers on the Rosalind. So he spent two weeks being forced to live, and what’s more work, like a pirate.” Groves explained with relish. “Apparently Sparrow put the fear of God into the lad. The old gentleman is tickled pink—says it was the making of his grandson—worth that blasted ruby necklace, in fact. The kid is serving on one of his grandfather’s ships now. Of course, Mrs. FitzP has heart palpitations and nervous spasms every time she thinks of it, and Mr. FitzP has dyspepsia every time she thinks of it, too, for she will not shut up about it—she is sure he is acquiring all manner of vices and low tastes and diseases and vermin.”
“Well, good!” Norrington said fervently. “Every boy needs a few of those.”
“I’ve met him once since his kidnapping. He’s turned out to be a likely lad—still a Fitzbrace-Pennythump, of course, but not unbearably so, now.”
“All right. I concede.” Norrington threw up his hands in surrender and let them fall with a wet slap to the ship’s rail. “Sparrow exhibited a virtue beyond that which I possess in that he did not immediately toss that insufferable whelp to the sharks. Are you satisfied?”
To his surprise, Groves did not answer him immediately, and when he did, his voice was sober. “I don’t know, James. Are you?”
So, the discussion had turned the full circle of the compass and they were back to Groves’ original question. Had the crimes Sparrow committed merited him the punishment Norrington had sought to deal him this day? Was the only adequate recompense blood and breath here on the water or later on the scaffold? According to the law, the answer was: absolutely.
Norrington watched the rain beading on his cold hands, forming rivulets, and running down onto the rail as he answered. “All humour aside and granting that Sparrow has committed one or two good deeds in his lifetime of wickedness and that he possesses a talent for the absurd that borders on genius, there are other things I cannot dismiss so easily.”
“Such as?” Groves challenged.
“What about the captain of the Madrigal?” Norrington replied gravely. “Shot down in cold blood after his ship had surrendered to the Black Pearl.”
“By his own men, James,” the lieutenant insisted in frustration. “You know that. And they’d wanted to tear him limb from limb, but Sparrow wouldn’t allow it. Insisted they make it clean.”
“A clean mutiny is nevertheless a mutiny. You’d think Sparrow, of all men, would be particularly clear on that.” Norrington was adamant.
“You were aware that Harkness was a viciously brutal captain, were you not?” Groves pointed out, tracing patterns in the rain on the rail and not looking at the commodore.
“Yes, I’d heard rumours,” Norrington admitted.
“Three men, already that year, had died under the lash on that vessel.”
“A very great shame that some captains abuse their power so, but discipline . . .”
Groves cut him off. “Discipline can go hang, James! Power does not give a man the right to commit murder in the name of discipline.”
Norrington met the familiar fire in his second lieutenant’s eyes. The old arguments were a tradition between the two of them, falling into lines worn and flexible with long use, like aged parchment. This, he knew, was the reason Groves was in the service—this passionate commitment to justice. Unfortunately, justice was an elusive creature, as likely to evade the Navy as anyone else, and there had always been something quixotic about Theodore—a secret wish to tilt at windmills, a dangerous desire to plot his own course. But if a man really wished to change the world, he would batter his heart bloody against stone unless he could work within the system.
“Then he should have been brought to trial and sentenced with due legal process,” Norrington insisted.
“You know as well as I, that if his officers would not testify against him, nothing the men before the mast could have said would have held water before a court. This law we have dedicated our lives to enforcing has almost as avaricious an attraction to gold as the pirates we hang.” The bitter disillusion in Groves’ voice was painful.
That was the problem with ideals. It was left to men, caught up in their own personal webs of lusts and manipulations and fears, to put those ideals into practice. Norrington was too tired and cold and seething with undischarged battle nerves to imagine a solution to that problem. No system was perfect. But this one was better than many others and within it the facts stood incontrovertible. An action that was a crime remained a crime regardless.
“The man who pulled the trigger is now a member of Sparrow’s crew,” Norrington said firmly. That was a fact. One more to add to the list of crimes requiring death that trailed after the Black Pearl.
Of course facts were never just facts for Theodore. “What did you expect?” he exclaimed. “That he would return to his loving civilization to be hanged for mutiny and murder?”
“Of which he is guilty,” Norrington insisted. Even Theodore could not controvert that fact.
Nor did he attempt to. “I suppose, technically, he is.”
“Yes,” the commodore said with some small satisfaction.
“The law is a funny creature, isn’t it?” Groves mused after a pause. “Men conceive it, but somehow it goes on to become greater than men. In a world of such terrible complexity and mutability, law attempts to resist nuance and change. If all we are is the law, James, do we become something less than human? Become our own creation rather than its creators?”
“Surely you, of all people, are not advocating anarchy?” Norrington said, not believing any such thing, but seeking to push the issue.
“Of course not,” the lieutenant responded, slicking the rain away from his face with both hands. “We need laws to protect us from our own wickedness. But should not a man wield the law as he does a sword—with skill and judgment and restraint, knowing when to strike home but also knowing when to give quarter—rather than be wielded by it?”
“I know there is much in what you say, Theo,” the commodore admitted. “But at what point in our attempt to bring good judgment to bear on the execution of the law do we make it vulnerable to bad judgment? At what point do we remove its steel and turn it into a wooden sword at which criminals may laugh with impunity?”
“There is nothing easy about what we do, if we are doing more than simply obeying orders, is there?” Groves reflected soberly.
“No, there is not.”
Silence descended again. The wind moaned in the Dauntless’s rigging, her storm canvas strained and her hull groaned against the force of the sea. Rain and salt spray stung their faces as the shadows of oncoming night threw more and more of the world into obscurity.
When Groves spoke again, the sound of his voice startled the commodore. “Speaking of nothing easy, how is our resident pirate?”
Hard truth indeed. “Not well,” Norrington sighed. “Samuels thinks he may have to amputate. He’ll know by tomorrow.”
“Then I leave you with this observation, James,” said Groves quietly. “There is not in the Caribbean this night, nor has there ever been to my knowledge, a child who is in danger of losing a leg because of some act of Jack Sparrow’s.”
“That is not a thought that is likely to lift my spirits, Theodore.”
Lieutenant Groves turned to face his commanding officer, and Norrington had never seen his normally cheerful countenance so bleak. “I have decided that men who have spent a day as we have done this one deserve whatever discomforts our consciences choose to send us. In fact we should embrace them. Otherwise we are in danger of becoming monsters worse than those we fight.”
* * * * *
TBC
16 A Kind of Alacrity in Sinking
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Norrington, Groves
Pairing: Jack/Anamaria if you squint, but not in this chapter
Disclaimer: The characters of PotC! She’s taken them! Get after her, you feckless pack of ingrates!
Summary: The chase continues. The Navy pursues. Philosophy happens. Groves tells Sparrow stories. Naval snark ensues. This one is a tad different. Every once in awhile, I have to write some raving sailing. Norrington has finally got the Black Pearl trapped. Jack is bound to do something crazy, but will it be the last thing he does?
Thanks to
geek_mama_2 for the beta help.1 Ambush
2 No Regrets
3 The Judgment of the Sea
4 The Sea Pays Homage
5 Risking All That Is Mortal and Unsure
6 Troubles Come Not Single Spies
7 To Dare Do All That May Become a Man
8 Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here
9 A Special Providence in the Fall
10 For Where We Are Is Hell
11 To Beat the Surges Under and Ride Upon Their Backs
12 One Equal Temper of Heroic Hearts
13 Though the Seas Threaten, They are Merciful
14 He Jests at Scars Who Never Felt a Wound
* * * * *
15 To Strive, To Seek, To Find, And Not To Yield
The sense of the utter futility of pursuing Jack Sparrow was becoming entirely too familiar to Commodore Norrington. The tighter the noose around that pirate’s unwashed neck, the more spectacular was his slither out of it. There had been no possible way for the sparrow to fly the net in which the Royal Navy had entrapped him, but there he was, aiming his wraith of a ship like an arrow at the horizon, a complete thumb of the nose at every law from the Decalogue to the precepts of Science, an irrational current flowing against the mighty river of logic, a garishly-coloured thread of chaos insinuating itself into the warp and weft of the decorous fabric of civilization.
It was fitting that there be no glorious sunset tonight, merely a dismal failing of the light and a gathering darkness of storm. Far off in the gloom of rain and falling night two shadow ships flew headlong before the tempest in the deadly game of hunter and hunted. The Dauntless, falling farther and farther behind, would lose them by nightfall. Nevertheless, Norrington would continue pursuit. Sparrow would have to lay up for repairs sooner rather than later. His ship was scarcely sea-worthy. Even with her vaunted speed, she was not leaving the Defender in her wake. Eventually, Walton, with his perfectly sound, fleet brig, would force a second engagement. But Walton’s crew would be far outnumbered by Sparrow’s should it come to boarding. The Dauntless would be able to reverse those odds if he could somehow track those two ships in these trackless seas.
The ship was in Gillette’s capable hands. He’d left his first lieutenant to set the fastest course between the current and wind, suspecting that Sparrow would be doing the same. Then, perhaps by dawn, the Dauntless might still be sharing the horizon with her sister brig and the crippled Black Pearl.
Since the need for any strategy or tactic other than pursuit had evaporated, the commodore had little to do. The heightened senses of battle still washed along his nerves and sinews but he had no task on which to expend that surging energy, so he paced the decks of his ship with sharp staccato steps. Finally his un-aimed feet led him to the surgery. He’d just check with Samuels. See how the boy was faring. What had he said his name was? Something simple. Pip? No, Jip. That was it.
He met the doctor coming out the door looking grim, but since Gilbert Samuels always looked grim, Norrington was not able to read anything into his expression.
“Were you able to set the bone, Gil?” he asked.
The answer did not really surprise him. He’d seen the splintered ruin of the boy’s leg. “Too much damage, James,” Samuels said, shaking his dark, silver-shot head. “Too many fragments. If he heals, he will be a cripple.”
The intensity of the regret Norrington felt surprised him. “That is a great pity,” he said softly. “He was a likely lad.”
“A very great pity.” Samuels’ voice had the gruffness in it that Norrington had come to know meant he was fighting off some non-professional emotion.
“How is he?”
“Not well, I’m afraid,” the doctor answered. “There are already signs of inflammation. I’d bleed him a little from above the wound, but truth to tell, he’s already lost a great deal of blood, so there can be no real efficacy in such a treatment and possibly much harm.”
“Will you be able to save the leg?” the commodore asked.
“Not likely,” Samuels said shortly. “But he’s young and healthy. He’s got a chance. So I’ll wait until tomorrow to decide. If the inflammation looks like it may be terminated either by dispersion or suppuration, I won’t amputate. However, if gangrene has started, I won’t have any choice if we are to save his life.”
Norrington had thought he might go in to see the boy, speak to him perhaps, but he found he didn’t have the heart to do so. His stomach felt as though a great weight had settled in it. Parting company with the doctor, he headed back for the weather decks of his ship, unwilling to betake his shivering self to the shelter of his cold, dark cabin, needing activity for the restlessness gnawing at him.
As he stood again by the break in the poop deck, unhappily still freed of immediate responsibilities, he felt, rather than saw, Lieutenant Groves come up behind him. His second lieutenant always carried his own personal fair day about with him, as though the rain did not dare be mournful in his vicinity but must perforce transmute into liquid sunlight, and all winds must alter from blustery to bracing. Everyone else on this entire ship was tired and discouraged and suitably foul-tempered enough to match their commodore, but Groves’ eternal optimism was for once more balm for the soul than the sand on raw flesh it sometimes seemed.
Norrington was off duty and in no need of a lieutenant. But he was most particularly in need of a friend. A level head would be nice as well, but he was so very low himself that interaction with Groves’ tendency to flight might balance the two of them out nicely.
“Theodore.” Norrington turned, welcoming, to the slender dark man and saw him relax as the informality of their encounter was established.
Groves’ white smile lit his thin face as he settled himself by the rail. “James,” he responded. “You look like you’ve just lost your best friend.”
“Then my face must certainly be lying, for I am quite sure that I have just found at least one of them,” the commodore said affectionately. He hadn’t thought it was possible, but Groves’ smile brightened further. “However,” Norrington turned to contemplate the leaden seas, beaten to a froth by the Dauntless’ passage, “I seem to have lost my best enemy, when it should have been impossible to do so, and that has, shall we say, discomposed me for the nonce.”
When Groves did not respond, the commodore looked back at him inquiringly. The lieutenant shrugged. “What would you have me say, James? You know my feelings on the subject, and I would not cause you further unpleasantness.”
Norrington quirked a wry smile at this uncharacteristic reticence. He must really look like hell. “Go ahead, Theodore. Tell me what a matchless pirate Jack Sparrow is. Perhaps that will make me feel less like a fool for allowing him to escape—again.”
“I do not think we allowed him to escape, this time.” Groves’ eyes were introspective, as though seeing again that incredible moment when that shattered ship had plunged ahead of the Dauntless and driven her way past the Defender. “I don’t think any force, human or inhuman could have held him.”
“I cannot accept that.” Norrington shook his head in denial. “I have a duty to eliminate all pirate threat in the Caribbean, among which brood of vipers Sparrow is foremost. And I will do it.”
Groves frowned at him quizzically. “Sometimes I do not think we are talking about the same man, James Norrington.”
“And sometimes I do not think we are talking about the same crime, Theodore Groves,” Norrington shot back. “These are pirates. You have seen what they do. The smoking devastation of port towns, the bodies in the streets, the victims of unspeakable cruelties, the faces of those who have lost family or their livelihoods or their possessions. The look in their eyes . . .” A shiver like the shift in the wind on the leech of a sail caught him for a moment in memory. “That . . . that is what I cannot endure. When I was brought to this place by the vicissitudes of the Admiralty, and for the first time found myself dealing with the aftermath of a pirate attack, I swore that I would eliminate this trade in human suffering.”
There were few things that moved the commodore to speak with passion, but this was one of them. Earnestly, Groves said, “And you have done so much towards accomplishing that goal. I share it, you know. That is why I am here, too.”
“I know, Theo,” Norrington sighed. “That is why I put up with your perverse fondness for pirates. Because I recognize, at heart, you, also, want the suffering to end.”
The two officers stood silently, moving instinctively with the ship as she rushed up one side of a wave and then tipped crazily down another, staring out across the endless mountains and valleys of the sea, each pursuing the course of his own thoughts.
Groves finally broke the silence. “Do you not wonder if perhaps, today, we have caused more suffering than we have halted?” His voice was pensive,
“I must uphold the law,” Norrington insisted. “Sparrow and his ilk are pirates, thieves, lawless men. They have to be held accountable to the law. They must not be allowed to prey on innocents.”
“And who are these innocents we have just avenged?” Groves asked, a flicker of impatience showing. “The passengers of the Rosalind for instance?”
“Sparrow plundered that ship when she was storm-damaged and unable to flee. Then he kidnapped those people and held them for ransom,” Norrington said decidedly.
“And two days later their ship went down.”
“That is certainly neither to his credit nor to his blame.”
“But he knew it would happen,” Groves insisted. “Captain McBride told me so. Sparrow had intentions of taking only one hostage—Mrs. Fitzbrace-Pennythump who’d had the bright idea to insult him and boast of her illustrious connections and wealth. Have you met that old battleaxe, James?”
“Far too frequently.” Norrington’s smile twisted wryly.
“I swear, I’d have dumped her over the side and said to hell with the ransom!” the gentle Groves snapped vehemently. “Anyway, he was all set to leave with his plunder and that harridan when his quartermaster called him down into the bilges to inspect some structural aspect of her keel. When they returned, Sparrow had changed his mind. Said he was taking the whole lot of passengers for whatever ransom he could wring out of their relations. Offered to take the crew as well. Told McBride there was a storm due in two days that would send the Rosalind to the bottom. McBride was furious with him—three of the hostages were his wife and children—and refused to abandon his ship. So Sparrow left him two of the Pearl’s boats (the Rosalind’s having already been lost in the previous storm), which he expected to have returned along with the ransom for McBride’s family, and hightailed it for Port Royal, entirely missing the storm that took down the Rosalind. You remember their arrival.”
“Yes, that did cause quite a stir.” Norrington spoke reminiscently. “It took some careful handling to prevent anyone opening fire on that ship while there were civilians aboard.”
“So after all the ransoms were sorted out, with the Black Pearl hovering like some great vulture in the harbour and making everybody nervous, Sparrow was off,” Groves continued. “Even delivered two little old missionaries right to their home port. Said it was to collect the ransom, but would you have done that for three dozen chickens?”
“Chickens,” Norrington said flatly. That had the vintage Sparrow ring to it.
“Yes,” Groves laughed delightedly. “Thirty-six of them. And a promise to pray for the souls of his crew. It was one of those really poor missions, the kind that give away money rather than collect it.”
“Are there such things?” Norrington asked incredulously. Then he waved his hand in an erasing motion. “Forget I said that,” he amended hastily. “I suppose the chickens would explain the complaints of the Allendale?”
“They would.”
“Only Sparrow would consider chickens ideal members of a boarding party,” the commodore groaned in exasperation.
Groves grinned. “You do realize that if we actually succeed in capturing and hanging that pirate, half the entertainment that brightens our careers here in these godforsaken colonies is going to be gone?”
“I’ll manage to live with that,” Norrington said repressively. “I suppose he made up for his charity to the missionaries, if you can call it that, by soaking old Fitzbrace-Pennythump. I’m sure it broke that skinflint’s hard little, pea-sized, penny-pinching heart to part with a single groat to get that clapperclawing shrew back into his possession.”
“Rubies,” Groves stated succinctly.
“What?”
“Sparrow asked for a ruby necklace. Said he’d promised Elizabeth Swann that he would prevent Mrs. FitzP from ever wearing rubies with puce again if he had the chance. Considered taking them off her hands another act of charity.” The laughter in his lieutenant’s voice bubbled beneath the surface. “Old Fitz wasn’t too upset about losing them. They belonged to her family to begin with, and he didn’t like them with puce either.”
“How do you know so much about this?” Norrington asked, curiousity aroused. He’d been generally aware of the ransom negotiations, but had paid no attention to the niggling details. The paperwork had been fierce enough as it was.
“I’ve talked with Mr. FitzP on a number of occasions,” Groves shrugged. “He’s not such a bad sort if you discount that leg-shackle he’s cursed with, and the fact that he still owns the first copper he ever earned. But it wasn’t just her he wanted back. Have you ever met the scion of the house of Fitzbrace-Pennythump?”
“Once, to my sorrow.” Norrington rolled his eyes.
“He was a hopeless little pill, spoilt entirely rotten, wasn’t he?” Groves smirked.
“That young limb of Satan?” Norrington snapped. “I would have drowned him like a pup if he’d been mine!”
“Such violence, James! I’m shocked.” Groves looked at him with wide-eyed amazement, spoiled only by the quivering of his dimples. “What did he do? Steal your wig?”
Commodore Norrington glared repressively at his chortling lieutenant.
“Ha! He did!” Groves whooped in triumph. “James, my lad, you do know that vanity is a sin?”
“Dignity is not!” Even Norrington had to admit that sounded insufferably stuffy.
“And it’s a good thing James, or you would indeed be going to hell.” Groves laughed.
“Theodore, you do realize your entire career, nay, your entire life is in my hands, do you not?” Norrington tried to sound severe.
“But I have it on the highest authority that you are a good man, James.” Groves spoke with blithe insouciance. “So I feel free of the fear of petty vengeance.”
”Leaving aside, for the moment, the fascinating topic of my venial character traits,” Norrington said haughtily, ignoring Groves snort. “I believe you were about to make some observation concerning the Fitzbrace-Pennythumps’ young and blighted olive branch.”
“The fact is, the boy was one of the passengers on the Rosalind. So he spent two weeks being forced to live, and what’s more work, like a pirate.” Groves explained with relish. “Apparently Sparrow put the fear of God into the lad. The old gentleman is tickled pink—says it was the making of his grandson—worth that blasted ruby necklace, in fact. The kid is serving on one of his grandfather’s ships now. Of course, Mrs. FitzP has heart palpitations and nervous spasms every time she thinks of it, and Mr. FitzP has dyspepsia every time she thinks of it, too, for she will not shut up about it—she is sure he is acquiring all manner of vices and low tastes and diseases and vermin.”
“Well, good!” Norrington said fervently. “Every boy needs a few of those.”
“I’ve met him once since his kidnapping. He’s turned out to be a likely lad—still a Fitzbrace-Pennythump, of course, but not unbearably so, now.”
“All right. I concede.” Norrington threw up his hands in surrender and let them fall with a wet slap to the ship’s rail. “Sparrow exhibited a virtue beyond that which I possess in that he did not immediately toss that insufferable whelp to the sharks. Are you satisfied?”
To his surprise, Groves did not answer him immediately, and when he did, his voice was sober. “I don’t know, James. Are you?”
So, the discussion had turned the full circle of the compass and they were back to Groves’ original question. Had the crimes Sparrow committed merited him the punishment Norrington had sought to deal him this day? Was the only adequate recompense blood and breath here on the water or later on the scaffold? According to the law, the answer was: absolutely.
Norrington watched the rain beading on his cold hands, forming rivulets, and running down onto the rail as he answered. “All humour aside and granting that Sparrow has committed one or two good deeds in his lifetime of wickedness and that he possesses a talent for the absurd that borders on genius, there are other things I cannot dismiss so easily.”
“Such as?” Groves challenged.
“What about the captain of the Madrigal?” Norrington replied gravely. “Shot down in cold blood after his ship had surrendered to the Black Pearl.”
“By his own men, James,” the lieutenant insisted in frustration. “You know that. And they’d wanted to tear him limb from limb, but Sparrow wouldn’t allow it. Insisted they make it clean.”
“A clean mutiny is nevertheless a mutiny. You’d think Sparrow, of all men, would be particularly clear on that.” Norrington was adamant.
“You were aware that Harkness was a viciously brutal captain, were you not?” Groves pointed out, tracing patterns in the rain on the rail and not looking at the commodore.
“Yes, I’d heard rumours,” Norrington admitted.
“Three men, already that year, had died under the lash on that vessel.”
“A very great shame that some captains abuse their power so, but discipline . . .”
Groves cut him off. “Discipline can go hang, James! Power does not give a man the right to commit murder in the name of discipline.”
Norrington met the familiar fire in his second lieutenant’s eyes. The old arguments were a tradition between the two of them, falling into lines worn and flexible with long use, like aged parchment. This, he knew, was the reason Groves was in the service—this passionate commitment to justice. Unfortunately, justice was an elusive creature, as likely to evade the Navy as anyone else, and there had always been something quixotic about Theodore—a secret wish to tilt at windmills, a dangerous desire to plot his own course. But if a man really wished to change the world, he would batter his heart bloody against stone unless he could work within the system.
“Then he should have been brought to trial and sentenced with due legal process,” Norrington insisted.
“You know as well as I, that if his officers would not testify against him, nothing the men before the mast could have said would have held water before a court. This law we have dedicated our lives to enforcing has almost as avaricious an attraction to gold as the pirates we hang.” The bitter disillusion in Groves’ voice was painful.
That was the problem with ideals. It was left to men, caught up in their own personal webs of lusts and manipulations and fears, to put those ideals into practice. Norrington was too tired and cold and seething with undischarged battle nerves to imagine a solution to that problem. No system was perfect. But this one was better than many others and within it the facts stood incontrovertible. An action that was a crime remained a crime regardless.
“The man who pulled the trigger is now a member of Sparrow’s crew,” Norrington said firmly. That was a fact. One more to add to the list of crimes requiring death that trailed after the Black Pearl.
Of course facts were never just facts for Theodore. “What did you expect?” he exclaimed. “That he would return to his loving civilization to be hanged for mutiny and murder?”
“Of which he is guilty,” Norrington insisted. Even Theodore could not controvert that fact.
Nor did he attempt to. “I suppose, technically, he is.”
“Yes,” the commodore said with some small satisfaction.
“The law is a funny creature, isn’t it?” Groves mused after a pause. “Men conceive it, but somehow it goes on to become greater than men. In a world of such terrible complexity and mutability, law attempts to resist nuance and change. If all we are is the law, James, do we become something less than human? Become our own creation rather than its creators?”
“Surely you, of all people, are not advocating anarchy?” Norrington said, not believing any such thing, but seeking to push the issue.
“Of course not,” the lieutenant responded, slicking the rain away from his face with both hands. “We need laws to protect us from our own wickedness. But should not a man wield the law as he does a sword—with skill and judgment and restraint, knowing when to strike home but also knowing when to give quarter—rather than be wielded by it?”
“I know there is much in what you say, Theo,” the commodore admitted. “But at what point in our attempt to bring good judgment to bear on the execution of the law do we make it vulnerable to bad judgment? At what point do we remove its steel and turn it into a wooden sword at which criminals may laugh with impunity?”
“There is nothing easy about what we do, if we are doing more than simply obeying orders, is there?” Groves reflected soberly.
“No, there is not.”
Silence descended again. The wind moaned in the Dauntless’s rigging, her storm canvas strained and her hull groaned against the force of the sea. Rain and salt spray stung their faces as the shadows of oncoming night threw more and more of the world into obscurity.
When Groves spoke again, the sound of his voice startled the commodore. “Speaking of nothing easy, how is our resident pirate?”
Hard truth indeed. “Not well,” Norrington sighed. “Samuels thinks he may have to amputate. He’ll know by tomorrow.”
“Then I leave you with this observation, James,” said Groves quietly. “There is not in the Caribbean this night, nor has there ever been to my knowledge, a child who is in danger of losing a leg because of some act of Jack Sparrow’s.”
“That is not a thought that is likely to lift my spirits, Theodore.”
Lieutenant Groves turned to face his commanding officer, and Norrington had never seen his normally cheerful countenance so bleak. “I have decided that men who have spent a day as we have done this one deserve whatever discomforts our consciences choose to send us. In fact we should embrace them. Otherwise we are in danger of becoming monsters worse than those we fight.”
* * * * *
TBC
16 A Kind of Alacrity in Sinking
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Date: 2006-06-28 07:22 am (UTC)Ah, in an ideal world. Love Groves playing devil's advocate in this. He does a great job of it.
And the hints of fic to come are so very tantalizing.
But poor Jip! We need a miracle for him. *worries*
So very involving, so very well-crafted, as always.
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Date: 2006-06-28 07:55 am (UTC)This was an interesting chapter to write because I could see both Groves' and Norrington's points so very clearly. They are each idealists in different ways, and both are good men. It's a tough issue, and thanks to the fact that this is fiction, I don't have to solve it--just stir it around to make myself and others think.
I am so slavering to get at "The Great Kidnap Caper"!
Yes, Jip is suffering at the hand of the muse, but at least I talked the sadistical monster out of drowning him!
Your encomiums warm the cockles of my heart! Thank you again.
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Date: 2006-06-28 03:42 pm (UTC)Liked the F-P's and filling in their story; the chickens and the missionaries too. Also the frustration of having a crippled ship escape a certain trap like this must be taxing on the Commodore no end. At least Groves gets a few more stories about his favourite pirate.
So...what's that hint you've tossed out so freely, hmm?
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Date: 2006-06-28 04:14 pm (UTC)I'm glad you enjoyed Groves' storytelling. The epic clash of Jack vs. Mrs. FitzP has been started, but I don't like to have too many unfinished stories juggling at the same time, so I haven't posted any yet.
Thank you so much for commenting.
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Date: 2006-06-28 07:58 am (UTC)Although I get the feeling that if he ends up with an amputated leg, then Jack will carve the peg himself.
The part about Mrs. Fitzbrace-Pennythump boasting about her connections, and the subsequent ransom made me giggle.
And I like Groves. I like that he is making Norrigton have to think, have to defend his position, rather than just obeying the law without thought.
Fantastic. And a great way to finish my day, thank you!
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Date: 2006-06-28 04:24 pm (UTC)Mrs. FitzP definitely was lacking in IQ when she informed a pirate that she was such a prize! I'm glad that made you laugh. That is a story I have been writing for some time, so this is a bit of a shameless plug for it.
Groves is one of my favourite characters, although I've not written a huge amount for him. He and Norrington cross blades so well in the philosophy department. But I like to portray them as respecting each other's differences.
Thank you so much for your comments. They were a great way to start my day!
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Date: 2006-06-28 02:17 pm (UTC)James & Theodore having a friends moment is wonderful, James isn't too proud to acquiesce a bit about Jack. This is a nice chapter to give some of the backstory and character development.
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Date: 2006-06-28 04:27 pm (UTC)I'm glad you liked this interaction between James and Theodore. They have a wonderful variation in perspective, while still sharing many of the same values. And I like to write them as friends in spite of their differences.
Thank you so much for commenting on this.
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Date: 2006-06-28 04:46 pm (UTC)I feel sorry for Norrington in this, caught between the spirit and the letter of the law.
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Date: 2006-06-28 05:12 pm (UTC)And I'm glad the Sparrow stories provided a laugh. I've now gotten away with two chapters almost entirely dialogue in an action story :D
It's always been an object with me to make Norrington's position sympathetic in this story where he does his best to take down Jack. It's good to know that comes through. We have lots of similar discussions to this in Academic Committee--when should exceptions to the rules be made? It's not always clear what is the right thing to do. And here the stakes are life and death.
I do appreciate your comments.
I love this
Date: 2006-06-30 09:33 am (UTC)hahahaha i loved that bit and the sparrow stories. i feel really bad for Jip in his predicament and i hope Jip reunites with the crew of the Pearl sooner rather than later. (but not due to a clash with the navy)
i hope you update this soon and hopefully Jack and the Pearl will disappear from the navy's peering eyes for a while. =D
Re: I love this
Date: 2006-07-02 11:51 am (UTC)I try to update about once a week. Thank you so much for your comments.
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Date: 2006-07-01 03:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-02 11:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-02 04:36 pm (UTC)Ancient perscription for hopefully saving Jip and Jip's leg.
Cover the wound with honey - (out of neosporin? This will do in a pinch, it's antibactrial and antifungle as well) Bandage wound and brace leg with some lengths of wood.
Give two to three gloves of garlic - raw - Jip must chew them. Garlic when mashed makes another antibiotic - known once as the poor man's penicillin. Raw onion too is another antibiotic - the things you learn on line - he, he...lol *softly*
Plenty of fluids, may have to wrap boy in wet sheet to bring down fever. Feed him cooked liver or hearts and liver from chicken's or what's fresh killed on board. Needs the iron and vitimain c found in the liver. Add bread and cheese. Cheese will give him calcium to build the bone back. Then get on your knees and pray. If he lives he'll have one beaut of a scar, and maybe a bad limp, buy hey - in that time there were worse things. So I offer our great and wonderful author some extra research, in hopes that it will save our dear Jip. I am waiting with baited breath for the next installment. And as always I'm saving these again. Did you know that there's this one time publication that mentions you as one of the best fan-fic writers of POTC on-line???? Congrats!!!!!!!! You deserve it. :)
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Date: 2006-07-02 10:28 pm (UTC)It'll be a couple more chapters before you'll find out what happens to Jip. I'm honoured that you save this story. I write these to amuse myself, and I'm always thrilled that others like them. Speaking of which, I did hear that there is a magazine that mentions myself,
Thank you so much for the review and congratulations.
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Date: 2006-07-02 11:58 pm (UTC)So...any other pairing beside Jack/Anamaria?
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Date: 2006-07-03 12:34 am (UTC)I'm afraid there is no other pairing in this story. There isn't even going to be any successful Jack/Anamaria. Just friendship and unresolved tension--which is what I like reading :D
Thank you so much for commenting.
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Date: 2006-07-06 07:57 pm (UTC)Norrington has to be a detail person, yet I love that he remembers Jip's name. Poor, dear Jip. Cannot imagine that
youSamuels can save the (lower) leg, but am sure that he will be able to manage quite well eventually.His second lieutenant always carried his own personal fair day about with him, as though the rain did not dare be mournful in his vicinity but must perforce transmute into liquid sunlight, and all winds must alter from blustery to bracing.
Nice touch of Groves love there. *g* (also, very pretty!)
"...that has, shall we say, discomposed me for the nonce."
How pitch-perfect Norrington that sounds!
"That . . . that is what I cannot endure. When I was brought to this place by the vicissitudes of the Admiralty, and for the first time found myself dealing with the aftermath of a pirate attack, I swore that I would eliminate this trade in human suffering."
Indeed, no villains. How can you do anything other than love the man who says things like that?
"... Sparrow had intentions of taking only one hostage-Mrs. Fitzbrace-Pennythump who'd had the bright idea to insult him and boast of her illustrious connections and wealth. Have you met that old battleaxe, James?"
"Far too frequently." Norrington"s smile twisted wryly.
Squeee! There she is! Cameo appearance suggests this tasty fic is simmering on some back burner?? *makes big kitty-eyes at author* And oh! There are those chickens!
"Dignity is not!" *sporfle*
there had always been something quixotic about Theodore-a secret wish to tilt at windmills
Yes, yes, yes! That's it exactly!
Lieutenant Groves turned to face his commanding officer, and Norrington had never seen his normally cheerful countenance so bleak. "I have decided that men who have spent a day as we have done this one deserve whatever discomforts our consciences choose to send us. In fact we should embrace them. Otherwise we are in danger of becoming monsters worse than those we fight."
*loves Groves even more than before*
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Date: 2006-07-07 02:01 pm (UTC)Norrington has to be a detail person, yet I love that he remembers Jip's name.
I'm so terrible with names myself that it does seem a great thing that in the heat of all that has happened he still has that bit of information stored where he can retrieve it.
Poor, dear Jip. Cannot imagine that you Samuels can save the (lower) leg, but am sure that he will be able to manage quite well eventually.
Jip is like a cork--no matter how far you push him under the surface, he'll always bob back to the top.
I'm delighted that you're liking my voices for these two officers. Norrington is so restrained--dignified :D and Theodore, the man who could watch his ship being commandeered and find the bright side of the situation--has always struck me as uncommonly cheerful.
And I'm so glad the lack of villainy is coming clear!
Squeee! There she is! Cameo appearance suggests this tasty fic is simmering on some back burner?? *makes big kitty-eyes at author* And oh! There are those chickens!
Yes, I have a few chapters started in the war between Jack and Mrs. FitzP. What a riot! Look for "The Great Kidnap Caper" to begin appearing at an LJ near you.
*loves Groves even more than before*
Whooohoo! *waves to fellow Groves fan* I've had such fun exploring his character more. I do love the Navy boys almost as much as I love the pirates!
Thank you so much for the lovely comment. This is a happy morning in spite of the fact that I don't get to see DMC today.
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Date: 2006-07-13 01:54 am (UTC)Have you seen that IMDB shows him in the cast list for POTC3? *bounce, bounce, squeee*
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Date: 2006-07-13 04:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-12 03:47 pm (UTC)It was fitting that there be no glorious sunset tonight, merely a dismal failing of the light and a gathering darkness of storm. I like this a lot!
His second lieutenant always carried his own personal fair day about with him, as though the rain did not dare be mournful in his vicinity but must perforce transmute into liquid sunlight, and all winds must alter from blustery to bracing. Lovely description of Groves :-) And I do enjoy your characterisation of him. He's the perfect person to question Norrington's thoughts and actions, of course, and provide a different perspective on the whole situation. And he certainly has an important point in this statement: “I have decided that men who have spent a day as we have done this one deserve whatever discomforts our consciences choose to send us. In fact we should embrace them. Otherwise we are in danger of becoming monsters worse than those we fight.”
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Date: 2006-08-27 11:45 am (UTC)Belated thanks for such a lovely comment. I'm glad you're enjoying the Norrington parts of this story. He's such an interesting character to explore, so very different in flavour to the pirate parts of the chapter. And I'm always happy to hear my little OC has a place in people's interests. Groves and Norrington conversation is a favourite of mine and it did give me an opportunity to play with Jack stories from other points of view. Thanks for letting me know the parts that stood out for you. I can never resist the Fitz-Ps :D They're just so annoyingly fun.
This whole philosophical exploration was inspired by discussion at BPS. I wanted to make clear the logic of both sides of the point, and that there were no easy answers, which is why Groves does his duty, but refuses to do it without soul-searching and trying for a better way. I do love Groves as a kind of third position, neither pirate nor unquestioning Navy. I'm happy you liked his part here.
Thank you, thank you so much for commenting on this. And again, I'm sorry it took me so long to respond!
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Date: 2006-08-26 05:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-27 11:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-16 07:48 am (UTC)And I just love how you worked in details of your novelization into this! Not only was this chapter wonderfully philosophical, but also very amusing, and I tremendously enjoyed the snippets of Jack Sparrow's career. I'd love to see Groves faced with an opportunity to crew on the Pearl - I'll bet it wouldn't be an easy decision for him.
I'm enjoying a respite from the heart-stopping tension of the first half of the story, and despite the exceeding brilliance of those chapters I'm not finding these lacking in any way.
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Date: 2008-08-05 09:39 pm (UTC)Thank you for your comments on this. I enjoy writing about difficult subjects, so this was a fun one. Jack's career really is a grey area. After all, piracy was neither pretty nor funny, and yet he manages to make it both. How does one categorize such a man?
I loved Groves little cameo. He really lit up those few moments. I don't think he'd ever become a pirate. But it would be fun to see him surviving as a navy officer on the Pearl.
I do appreciate your insights into the characters.
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Date: 2008-08-05 10:09 pm (UTC)BTW, just love your Warrior Elizabeth drawing. Actually, I just love Warrior Elizabeth, no matter what. :)
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Date: 2008-08-05 10:14 pm (UTC)I'm glad you've enjoyed the fic and the art. I join you in loving Warrior Elizabeth--and I WANT that costume. Of course it would look perfectly ridiculous on me.
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Date: 2008-08-05 10:27 pm (UTC)I admit to preoccupation with another fandom lately, but spent a lot of time with
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Date: 2008-08-05 10:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-05 10:54 pm (UTC)Well, I'm just pleased as punch. :D