[RP] I'm not sorry there's nothing to save...

[choosingaside]

It's dark out, and, for once, James has managed to get away from Jack and his insistence on being helpful.

...It might be best not to ask how.

He's made his way from the captain's cabin to the deck of the Pearl, squinting in the too-blurry darkness and feeling his way with every step, and now he's standing at the starboard railing, breathing in the smell of the sea. Eventually, he intends to commit the entire ship to memory, just in case Jack's mad scheme to get his hands on the Philosopher's Stone comes to nothing, but for now, he's content to have made it this far.

He considered trying to find Elizabeth, as there are a few things that should likely be explained, but he has the feeling that, if she's available, she'll find him first.

Comments

[brethrenking.livejournal.com]

Lizzy has been keeping watch on the deck, allowing the men to get a good night's rest, if they so desire (though she thinks they're probably mostly drinking and gambling below decks at the moment, if the muffled sound of laughter and shouts is any indication). They're anchored not far off the coast, ready to pull in closer in the morning so she and Jack can go ashore and see to her personal affairs before they stock up for the trip to Portugal.

She sees James come out, and watches him quietly until he finds a spot against the railing that he likes, and only then does she approach - not too quietly, for fear of startling him.

"It's a bit chilly out tonight," she says, for lack of any other way to start the conversation.

[choosingaside]

"Elizabeth." James nods a greeting in the direction of the blur that's moved towards him. "It is, a bit," he says, "but somehow I doubt you came over here just to make small talk about the weather."

He's trying not to think about dying for her, about all the things that never happened between them. He's seen her hanged and he's married her, he's watched her run off with Turner, with Jack... And if his experiences with Jack are any indication, he knows far more about what she's like in intimate circumstances than is even remotely proper.

...He won't let himself think of that anymore.

"I feel I should apologise for anything you saw earlier that might've made you... uncomfortable." Part of him hopes she just didn't notice, but that would be insulting her intelligence and powers of observation. Mostly, he just hopes she's not horrified.

At least his inability to properly see her provides a good reason to avoid looking at her.

[brethrenking.livejournal.com]

Yes, Lizzy has been distinctly uncomfortable since the... incident this morning, but it's probably not the kind of "uncomfortable" that James is thinking of. Well, there is that, also, but the sad and overwhelming uncomfortable is not something Lizzy feels comfortable dealing with until she has her cabin to herself again.

"Oh, it's nothing!" she says, perhaps a little too light-heartedly. "I should've knocked - rude of me not to, really."

She wants to ask so many many questions, but... this is James Norrington. Veritable lord of propriety. She's not sure if she can bring herself to ask, or if she truly wants to know the answers.

Yay for added awkward of things that we hadn't RPed when we started this thread!

[choosingaside]

"Elizabeth, please. You did warn us you would be sending someone in with breakfast, and while I am rather selfishly grateful it was you and not a random member of your crew, you still should never have had to see... that. I wasn't thinking. Obviously. And I am sorry."

He's blushing faintly, but he continues. "And I would like to think, given how very forthright you were the last time we saw each other, that at the very least you would be honest with me now. There's no need to spare my feelings. Really, I was... planning on speaking with you anyway, given what you saw last night. This morning only seems to have... forced the issue."

Yay for picking up threads a good 3.5 years later! When I haven't watched the films in 3 years!

[brethrenking]

"James, truly, it was... surprising, but hardly anything to traumatize my delicate sensibilities." Mostly. Look, it's complicated, she's never really had to even THINK about that sort of thing before, and she knows what most people would have to say about it.

Or she thinks she does. Now that she gives pause to think, she wonders how many people would be inclined that way, or not be bothered by it so long as they're not forced to participate. High Society, of course, would be scandalized, but...

No matter, that's not the important thing right now.

"But if you feel like you have explanations or apologies to make, I won't stop you."

[choosingaside]

At times like this, being unable to see Elizabeth's expression is a blessing.

"I'm certain your upbringing would have shielded you from certain... sayings... about the Royal Navy. Piracy may or may not have proven more enlightening," he says, "but suffice it to say that certain... inclinations... are not unheard of, especially in a situation in which men are denied the pleasure of female company. And thus, for the sake of common decency," and his mouth twists around the words in a way that suggests old pain, "such things are punished rather strictly. And when I showed evidence of those inclinations as a boy, my father took it upon himself to administer the same punishment he'd have given any man under his command."

Never mind that James had been a boy of thirteen given a man's lashing, or that he still bears the scars. His father had been scrupulously fair in all things, and no son of his would be spared a punishment appropriate to his crime.

"And with that, the matter was settled, and I learned better than to... give in. Until the Locker. I saw all the ways I could have lived, or died... Mostly died." The expression on his face bears only the most superficial resemblance to a smile. "What my life would have been if I'd married you, for instance, and the many, many ways that could've gone wrong for the both of us."

He pauses, and adds, as an afterthought, "You never would have been happy with me, would you?" For a moment, his tone's vaguely wistful, but he moves on before Elizabeth can answer.

"In any event, the one bit of true happiness I was allowed was with Captain Sparrow. There was, of course, the inevitable horrible death -- that was something of a theme -- but in the meantime..." He shrugs. "I discovered my motivation for chasing him wasn't precisely what I thought it was. And as it turned out, when he came to find me in the Locker, I learned I wasn't the only one to have experienced things that never happened."

He frowns, clearly irritated, and runs a hand through the mess that is his hair at the moment. "I don't pretend to understand it. But then, I don't pretend to understand most things about Jack. And none of that excuses what you saw in your cabin this morning. Again, I'm very sorry."

See James. See James ramble. Ramble, James, ramble.