We Invented the Remix...Redux V

Title: Dancing at the End of the World (Proper Pirates Extended Dance Remix I)
Author: erinya
Summary: At the end of everything she knew about the world and her place in it, she takes comfort in the ways these two men stay the same; and finds her place anew, between them.
Fandom: Pirates of the Caribbean
Pairing: James Norrington/Jack Sparrow/Elizabeth Swann
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: The characters belong to Disney; the story and most of the really good lines belong to penknife.
Original story: Proper Pirates by penknife
Notes: Thanks to my two wonderful betas, geek_mama_2 and djarum99 for great feedback and also holding my hand and telling me this didn't suck. All errors and anachronism are neither theirs nor penknife's, but purely my own.

Dancing at the End of the World: Part Two



Dancing at the End of the World
(Proper Pirates Extended Dance Remix I)

"How could you, James?" she said quietly, and the man at the window jerked and whirled. He was shaven and impeccable again as she used to know him, wig perfectly coiffed, not a single thread of braid out of place on his new blue coat, not a button unpolished.

"Elizabeth?" He stared at her as if she might be a ghost of uncertain temperament and motive. "How--?"

"No, I'm not dead," she snapped, but he was right to think that if she were she would be here for vengeance. As it was, she had other aims in mind. "No thanks to you."

"I heard the Black Pearl was lost. As was her Captain." He had controlled his initial surprise at her appearance; she watched him carefully, but saw no hint of the wrecked man she'd pulled out of pig shit in the back of that Tortuga dive, except perhaps in his eyes, where despair and fury had cooled and hardened, like steel. She'd almost have preferred him broken still, raw anger and vicious sarcasm; he'd lost something, she thought, in putting himself back together.

"And you were glad to hear it, weren't you." She didn't bother to hide her own anger. I had to kill Jack Sparrow because of you. And I called him a coward. "You left us all to face Jones and his monster without the heart. Where was yours?"

"I owed loyalty to none of you," he said, defensive now. Did that mean he had some conscience yet? "Sparrow met the end he so richly deserved. And you and your fiancé chose your fate when you threw in your lot with him."

"Yes," she said, meeting his accusatory look squarely. She wanted to tell him that his own vengeance hadn't stuck, that she'd spent her blood and tears and sweat to bring the man he despised so back into the world, that Jack was in fact quite close by and probably getting into his best brandy as they spoke. But it wasn't the opportune moment. She said, "I don't regret what I did. Do you?"

Expressionless, he said, "You shouldn't be here."

"Neither should you."

"I mean it, Elizabeth," he said. "Beckett won't let you escape a second time."

"Beckett's a madman," she said. "But I'll leave. As soon as I find the heart. You know where it is, don't you?"

"I'm afraid I can't tell you that."

"No," she said, and moved the hand she'd kept hidden behind her back; the sound of the cocked pistol echoed loudly through the office. "You can't not tell me."

"You're the one who's mad." Nevertheless, he took a step back, though between the window and the wide mahogany writing desk behind which he stood, he had nowhere to go. "Look at you, Elizabeth. What have you become?"

"Honest," she said, and nearly laughed. "This is what I've always been. You just never saw it before."

"You wouldn't shoot me," he said, his gaze fixed on the pistol.

"Not so certain, are you?" She wasn't, either, but she couldn't let that show. "The heart, James. Where is it?"

"How should I know?" he said, and for the first time there was real emotion in his voice: bitterness, a hint of self-mockery. "Beckett keeps it locked away. No one else sees or touches it."

She considered him over the barrel of her gun. "You're telling the truth."

"Of course," James said. "I don't lie."

It was a palpable hit, but she ignored it, distracted by a sudden insight. "Poor James," she said softly. "That coat is just for show, isn't it? You haven't any real power here. Is this how you thought it would be, making Admiral?"

She'd hit a nerve; she knew it by the way he went all over angles and rigid lines. "It's more than I had," he said. "I have my life back. I have my dignity. But perhaps you wouldn't understand just what that means…Miss Swann."

"Perhaps not," she said. "But I wouldn't want your kind of dignity, Admiral." She stepped forward so that only the desk separated them, satisfied to see the swift flash of fear in his eyes. "Tell me something," she said. "Did you see him do it, James?" Her own voice had gone cold; she barely recognized it. "Were you there when Beckett had my father murdered? Or did you only laugh about it afterwards?"

His face changed and stilled; in that silence she could hear all the way to the end of the world. She groped for the edge of the desk, and for the first time she felt the hand holding the pistol tremble. Why wouldn't he answer her? Why was he looking at her like that, like they were both the people they once were and he was searching for words, the way he used to when they sat together at balls or dinner parties? Even if he had been the same man, she'd left the last of that girl behind somewhere in that other world, in the mists beyond its edge, with her father's shade and her own grief.

"James," she whispered, but a commotion had erupted suddenly in the corridor outside, a scuffle and a sharp command ("'ere, 'old still, you slippery blighter, that's enough of that") before the door crashed open to reveal a disheveled Captain Jack Sparrow in the grip of two harassed-looking redcoats. Several more crowded in behind them, using their bayonets to spur the prisoner forward.

Elizabeth's breath shuddered out of her; she let the gun drop. "Damn it, Jack."

"Sorry, love," he said, and the dark gaze meeting hers said that he meant it, and that they had both failed. "I tried."

Elizabeth, stomach sinking, looked helplessly to James, who was staring at Jack with undisguised shock and hatred. "What," said James, "is the meaning of this?"

"Hello, former Commodore," Jack said in overly cheerful tones, bowing as best as he could and giving his captors dirty looks when they impaired his sweeping movement. "I see your fortunes have improved since we last met. Quite distinctly, I might add," taking in, as Elizabeth had, the new accoutrements of office. "So crime does pay after all, eh?"

"And you, Sparrow," Norrington said, all ice and vitriol again. "Don't you know when to stay dead?"

"Not one of my many talents, it appears," Jack said. "Tell me, mate, was it worth it? Your soul for a place as Beckett's pet Navy man?"

"Oh, it was hardly that costly," said James, though he would not look at Elizabeth. "I believe you're the one who would know about selling your soul."

"Then take it from me," Jack said, abruptly serious. "It's a debt that'll catch up to you, and the interest is hell. Literally."

"I suppose it's a good thing, then, that my conscience is clear," said James, with a sharp gesture to his men. "Bring them," he ordered. "Her too."

Two soldiers grasped Elizabeth by the arms; she struggled, kicking out at them, and one of them struck her hard with the flat of his palm, whipping her head to the side. She subsided, stunned, eyes tearing with the force of the blow—still, it could have been worse, she realized; he could have used the rifle butt--and found James' impassive gaze on her.

"You used to be a good man," she said, throwing the words at him. She didn't have anything else with which to hurt him.

He stalked close to her, then, glared down at her. She could smell the faint fumes of alcohol; maybe he hadn't put himself together as well as she'd thought. "Do you think that I like doing this?" he demanded. "That I like seeing you this way? Maybe I used to be a better man once, Elizabeth, but I remember when you were a good woman."

She thought about spitting in his face, but instead she stared him down. "I didn't do this to you," she said, wishing she could believe it. "What's been done to you, you've done to yourself."

His smile was brief, bitter-sharp as the brandy on his breath. "Don't think I don't know it," he said, and turned away.

* * *

"Miss Elizabeth Swann. What an unexpected pleasure," and indeed, Beckett might almost have been purring with glee. "Conspiring with Jack Sparrow yet again, I see."

"If I am," Elizabeth answered, head held high, aware of Jack ("Captain,") tense and furious at her right side, the guard's pike at her back, James at stony attention a half-step behind his new lord and master, "it is because our alliance is one brought about by the recognition of a common enemy...Mister Beckett."

"Is that so," Beckett said, his gaze flicking from her to Jack. "Because I would have guessed there was rather more to it; judging from the way he looks at you, and the way you so carefully avoid looking at him."

Did her sin show so plainly, then, like a scarlet badge pinned to her breast? Or, she thought grimly, was it only the stain of murder that this detestable creature saw between them, like recognizing its ugly like in her?

"You dare—" she spat out before gathering herself; took a breath and went on, primly as she knew how, "I don't know what you are implying. I am still betrothed to William Turner, and Jack would never compromise my honor."

"Much more the other way round," murmured Jack, prompting her to tread rather viciously if surreptitiously on his instep. "…Ow."

"You sound very sure of that, Miss Swann," Beckett said. "Perhaps you do not know Sparrow quite as well as do I. I fear he would not hold your honor in such high regard as you seem to hold his life and person."

Jack made an odd choking noise beside her. She thought he might be trying not to laugh; when she glared at him, he leered back at her horribly. She looked away, frowning at Beckett. "I fail to see your point, sir, nor why you concern yourself so much with my reputation."

"Pardon me. I was only satisfying my curiosity," Beckett said, with his tight, bland smile. "But since you seem to favor Sparrow so, Miss Swann, it pleases me exceedingly to grant you the opportunity to spend your last night in his company. Ah," at her manifest dismay. "So you are not so ready to trust your virtue--or what is left of it--to the man for whom you have risked and lost so much?"

Elizabeth, watching James out of the corner of her eye, found a modicum of hope in the tell-tale twitch of his set jaw, the sudden blaze of his eyes as he parsed Beckett's full meaning.

"No," she said, allowing a little of what she felt into her voice: fear, exhaustion, hatred, sorrow. One used what one had on hand. "No. You wouldn't."

"I believe you'll find I would," said Becket. "And many other things as well. Never fear; I'll see you both hanged properly on the morrow. Take them away;" and as the soldiers laid rough hands on the two captives, Elizabeth once more caught a glimpse of Norrington's face, still as granite; only his gaze finally sought hers out, and she thought he almost stepped forward. But after all he held firm.

One of the guards shoved her hard and she stumbled; Jack's hand closed on her wrist, steadying her, and when she looked back, the door to the courtyard was shut.

* * *

She leaned her forehead on the dirty iron of the cell door, curling her fingers around the bars. The gesture and the setting were both all too familiar. Back to the beginning again, and what had she to show for it?

...Oh.

"Please, Bre'r Fox, whatever you do, don't throw me into the briar patch," said Jack in a wheedling voice, close to her ear. Then, lower, "If he only knew which of us was the more danger to the other, eh?"

"Shut up, Jack." But he was warm and solid and alive at her back, and for just a moment she allowed herself to sag against him. "You're not going to let me forget that easily, are you."

"Seems only fair," and he moved away from her, leaving her standing alone and wishing he hadn't. "Seeing as I won't be forgetting it any time soon. And since I suspect it's healthier that I remember than not while in your presence, I intend to continue to remind myself. Out loud. As often as possible."

She ran through a series of now-standard rejoinders in her mind, starting with "you deserved it," and ending with "but I brought you back," but none of them were enough to convince herself just now, much less him. Well, at least she knew she could kill a man if it came to that, and could resolve to murder Cutler Beckett in cold blood at the next opportunity without any worries about losing her nerve. "What are you doing?" she demanded instead, turning to see him lounging in the straw, hands behind his head, his face in shadow.

"What does it look like I'm doing? I'm enjoying a bit of hard-earned rest while I have the chance. There's some advantage to being thrown in gaol; nice and quiet. Or it would be," he said, pointedly.

She paid this last no mind. "Jack, Beckett means to hang us in the morning."

"Aye, he was remarkably adamant on that point. Couldn't have missed it if I tried."

"He could have just as easily had us killed immediately." She paced the length of the cell; it wasn't all that big, really, and she had to pace back again after only a few steps. "Why didn't he, I wonder?"

"Ol' Silver Steak Knives fancies himself a man of the law," said Jack in thoughtful tones, "however much he might twist and torture it to his own ends. And he always did love the theatre. No better show than a hanging, love."

"Damn and blast! You're supposed to tell me he has some reason to keep us alive." Jack didn't answer; she turned to find that his eyes had drifted shut. "Unbelievable," she fumed. "How can you just go to sleep? At a time like this?"

"What's the matter, Lizzie?" He opened his eyes, squinted up at her in the dim light. "Disappointed I'm not going to ravish you as promised? Afraid you're going to die a virgin, after all?"

"I am not—Jack! Stop changing the subject."

"'T’would be a great pity," he continued, solemnly. "Tragic, even. For a fine, passionate woman such as yourself to remain an undiscovered country, never to know any of the varied and multitudinous pleasures that your lovely flesh is heir to..."

"I'm fairly certain you've got that line dreadfully wrong," she said, steeling herself against the warmth in his voice, which--even more than the suggestive words that she thought must be no more than reflex to him--seemed likely to seep under her skin to knot, smoldering, low in her belly, where all the chill of dead seas had settled of late and left her hollow and starved for heat.

He waved her objection away, a trifle. "We may have nothing to eat or drink—" and he grinned, teeth flashing white in the gloom— "except what we might find to sup from one another, that is--so we may as well be merry, for tomorrow…and so on."

"Must you be so vulgar?"

"I'm afraid so. Does me good. Makes me feel a bit more like myself, you see."

"I still don't understand how you can be so calm about this," she said. "Unless you have a plan you're not telling me about. Have you?" she added, with sudden hope.

"A plan? Not as such, no."

"And it doesn't bother you that we might die."

"Been there, done that. If you recall." He sounded weary, almost resigned; it frightened her more than the thought of execution. Had those shadows crowded in his eyes like restless haunts before he'd died? Before she'd killed him, she amended brutally. That darkness was her doing; she had given him to it. Her task now to keep taking him back.

"So, what? You're giving up? But you can't." Her voice rose, shrill desperation she couldn't suppress. "Jack, it's you. Captain Jack Sparrow doesn't just give up!"

"I'm not giving up," he said. "But as I've no way of getting us out of this situation at the moment, I intend to enjoy what I do have to the fullest."

"And what's that, then?"

"Time," he said. "Myself. You. This marvelously comfortable floor." He patted the straw beside him. "Come here, love. I'm happy to share."

She stared at him for a moment, arms folded; then she laughed, only a little shakily. "You never do give up, do you."

"As you said. I'm Captain Jack Sparrow. I'm like a shark, see. If I stop swimming…Well."

"And to think I defended your intentions to Beckett."

"Can't think why you did," he said, amiably. "Talk like that could ruin my reputation."

"I think your reputation is quite safe," she retorted. "Unlike mine."

"Elizabeth, my dear, we both know you stopped caring for your reputation as a proper lady a good long time ago, and are well on your way to making a rather admirable one as a proper pirate. What," he went on, when she said nothing, "did you think you could go back when this is all over? Pick up your old life where you left it, at the holy altar of matrimony with your darling William? You can't, you know. And what's more," he added, "you don't want to."

"You don't know what I want," she said, and realized she was arguing almost automatically. She found herself startlingly and profoundly grateful to Jack, merely for being Jack. Her world might be falling to ruins around her, her father dead, James a stranger, Will an accusatory question-mark splintering her thoughts; she might face the gibbet in the morning (the Governor's voice: "Do not ask me to bear the sight of my daughter walking to the gallows," and maybe it was better that he was gone, a blessing, but she would not think about that just now; could not)--but this familiar dance of words and wits, strike and parry, turn and feint, however dangerous, had somehow become a constant, a lifeline.

"Don't I?" Jack said. "Or should I ask, do you?"

She and Jack, dancing at the end of the world. She shook her head in bemusement and crossed the scant meter of floor to sink down next to him, back propped against the wall. "I thought I did." Then she buried her face in her hands. "Oh, Jack," she said through her fingers, with what she could almost convince herself was half a laugh. "Nothing has turned out as I'd planned, and I don't know...how...to fix...any of it. Even if I could get us out of this bloody gaol, to start with."

"Poor Bess," Jack said softly; she heard him stir, sit up, and then his arm went about her. "Not so easy, is it, finding out you're not what you thought you were."

He always had that way of answering what she hadn't voiced. "James is right, you know," she said. "I'm not a good woman."

"No, love," he agreed. "You're ever so much more than that."

No denial, no condemnation. She turned her head sharply to look at him. He was very close; she could have leaned forward a mere inch and tasted the salt-tang of the sweat that glistened in the hollow of his cheek. "What am I, then?"

He smiled at her, slow, gold-gleaming. "You know what."

Pirate. Of course. Whatever that meant to him, and had begun to mean for her. She leaned her head on his shoulder, too weary suddenly to protest or fight his embrace, and hardly wanting to. "Jack," she said, thinking of dawn. "Is it really so bad? Being dead?"

A suppressed tremor ran through his body, or perhaps he had only taken a breath, but he said, "Not so bad."

"Liar."

"Sometimes." He propped his chin on the top of her head. "Living, however, is infinitely more preferable than…the alternative, I assure you."

"Even now?"

She felt rather than heard his chuckle. "I've spent far worse nights in rougher company, Lizzie darling."

"I'm sure you have," she said. He made another amused humming sound deep in his throat, and his hand played in her hair. When it stilled, she nearly murmured a protest before she noticed that his heartbeat had slowed under her ear, his breathing lengthening. He was asleep.

It occurred to her then that she couldn't remember when she had seen him retreat to his cabin for anything more restful than navigation over these last few days. Had he slept at all since his strange resurrection? She rather thought he hadn't. She laid a palm over his chest where his shirt lay open to reveal bronzed skin, feeling oddly protective of that steady pulse beneath it, and of the scars she knew lay hidden there as well.

When, after a little while, he began to keen and tremble, dreaming, she fought off her own imaginings of the horrors he might face in his mind's eye, and caressed him back to calm. And when she touched her lips to the hollow of his throat, to the curve of his clavicle, she told herself it was to mark her claim on him against the shadows she had wrought; that they, being also hers, would keep it secret.

* * *

She hadn't meant to sleep, herself, and hadn't thought she could; but she must have, for the next thing she knew Jack was stirring beneath her, abruptly tense. A moment later, she registered with rising dread the flicker of light in the stairwell, the sound of booted steps descending the stairs into their prison. Was it time already? Jack, still only half-awake, was muttering curses, something about his missing effects and his kingdom for a rock. A rock? Well, a rock was better than nothing, she supposed, but irrelevant all the same, since they hadn't got one, nor a kingdom to trade for it.

The light of the hand-held lantern washed over them as they were still sorting out whose limbs were whose; they seemed to have become considerably more entangled while they slept. "I might have known," said a familiar voice, in tones of deep disgust.

Elizabeth said, bewildered, "James?"

"Do you mind?" said Jack, who was apparently full of insouciant crankiness now that he knew with whom he was dealing. They had managed to sit up, but he tucked an arm around Elizabeth's waist, as if making a point. "Some of us are trying to get our beauty sleep here. One likes to look one's best at one's hanging, you know."

"So sorry," James said, acid undiluted. "I do hate to intrude on such a touching scene."

"I didn't think you'd come," Elizabeth said, ignoring their glaring match; which, for a wonder, Jack interrupted long enough to goggle at her.

"You were expecting him?"

"I just said I wasn't," she said. "But I'd hoped—" Then, as an awful thought struck her, "Why have you come, James?" Was Beckett that cruel, as to send James Norrington to lead them both to the gallows?

A foolish question if there ever was one. Of course he was.

"Why do you think?" James said brusquely. He had set aside the lantern. Elizabeth saw the keys in his hand and leapt to her feet, ignoring the sharp bite of a cramp in her calf.

"James, please," she said. "You don't have to do this." She wondered if it would do for her to fall to her knees. Once, she would have been sure of such a desperate act's effect on James Norrington; but then, she would never have considered it. Now, it could hardly bring her lower than she'd brought herself already, and her life, and Jack's, were worth whatever she had left of her dignity if it might finally do them both some good at last. She was not about to let anyone put a noose around Jack's neck without a fight, not after all the trouble she had just been through to get him back.

"I don't, do I?" James agreed. He held open the door for her, and she almost laughed. It seemed old habits died hard indeed, even when escorting old friends to their death. "Are you coming or not?" he said. "I'm afraid we haven't much time before they raise the alarm. Or until I come to my senses."

She stared at him; her knees almost gave way anyway, from relief, and she caught the side of the door to steady herself. "You do mean to free us, then."

"So it would seem," he said. She realized belatedly that he wasn't wearing his wig; his dark hair was mussed, his face drawn with some hidden strain. A very different James than she had met in his office; still not her James, but perhaps not so much a stranger as she'd supposed. "Although I can't entirely think why. You're neither one of you any better than you should be."

"And neither are you, it appears," said Jack nastily, over Elizabeth's shoulder.

"Better than I could be, anyway," James said. "I could just rescue her."

"Point," said Jack. "But if you did, I'd be hanged, and you know you'd miss me…James."

"If I did, I expect the lady would refuse to go without you, and all my pains would be for naught."

Jack snorted. "Then you must not know the lady in question as well as I do."

"Will you two stop it," Elizabeth snapped, and they both looked at her as if they'd forgotten she was standing right there between them. A strong urge seized her to slap them both; she clenched her hands into fists at her sides. "We haven't got time for this."

"Lizzie's right," Jack said, and she knew he was using the nickname purposely to make James twitch. It had ceased to rankle her; she rather thought they were past the point of proper address with one another, all things considered. "What's the plan, mate? No thrilling heroics, I hope. It's far too late. Early. Whichever."

"Please tell me you have a plan," Elizabeth said, when James looked pinched.

"This is the plan," James said. "I rescue you. We escape."

"Brilliant," said Jack. "The Navy's finest strategic principles in action."

"Shut up," James said, brutally, over Elizabeth's own "Shut up, Jack," and she realized the Navy man's rigidly maintained calm was beginning to crack. Another realization followed close on the heels of the first. "We escape?" she said, puzzled.

"A very good question," said Jack. "I thought you were Beckett's rat. Erm, man."

"I was," James said, making a creditable show of disregarding Jack entirely and speaking directly to Elizabeth. "There recently arose what one might call a…difference of opinion between myself and my estimable employer."

"And about how recently did this little disagreement come to flower, as it were?" Jack inquired, shoving Elizabeth not-quite-gently towards the stairs when she would have stopped to really look at James for a glimpse of what she had heard just now in his voice; she frowned over her shoulder at Jack instead, but he was also watching James, his gaze curiously intent.

James laughed, a short, harsh, mirthless sound. "Very recently."

"Hr'm," said Jack. "So you're shortly to become very unpopular in these parts. Or very popular, put another way."

"Your grasp of the situation astounds me, Sparrow." He took hold of Elizabeth's elbow, none too gently himself. "Here are the stairs," he said, as if they represented a welcome change of subject.

She twisted out of his grasp, irritation flaring suddenly at the rough possessiveness with which they both touched and moved her in one another's presence: as if the one left holding her when the music stopped would be the winner of some mysterious male game. "I'm not in petticoats, if you've noticed," she said. "I hope I can walk upstairs on my own," and blessed her boy's trousers as she trotted up the steps, leaving the two men to follow as they would, in her wake.

* * *

Outside, the courtyard lay shadowed and still in the moonlight. Too open, and far too still, too many windows staring down at it expectantly, too much distance between the door and the gate.

And much too empty. "I don't like this," she whispered. "Why are there no guards?"

"Gift horse," hissed Jack, from behind her. "Mouth."

"…What?"

"He means go," said James. She didn't even have to look at him to know he was rolling his eyes, although she didn't know at whom. At both of them, probably. She took a few steps forward, foreboding prickling the back of her neck; and immediately heard the soft sound of a door opening somewhere to her left.

Panic propelled her headlong towards the gate and halfway up it before she thought to look around for the others. But James was beside her, climbing with a slow clumsiness that surprised her; he dropped down on the other side a moment later and reached up a hand to her, then winced when she leaned only lightly on his shoulder.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," he said stiffly, just as Jack hissed a curse from above them and landed hard in the packed dirt of the street, spread-eagled. If there was one thing that could be said for Jack, it was that he never did things by halves; even when his typical preternatural grace abandoned him, it did so in spectacular fashion. He seemed inclined to just lie there until Elizabeth dragged him upwards.

"Aren't you going to ask after my health, then?" he said, sounding peeved, but he had the look about him, under all the dust, of a cat who has failed to land on its feet: more surprise and bruised pride than anything else. She wondered if he might have engineered a pratfall on purpose to garner sympathy.

"Pish," she said, brushing him off. "You bounce like a child of two. I've seen you."

"Come on," said James, impatient as if they were both children; and they ran.

Dancing at the End of the World: Part Two