Pirates of the Caribbean fic

[icarus_chained]

Because Norrington is on my brain of late.

Title: Of Using and Being Used
Rating:  R
Continuity:  Goes AU from the start of Dead Man's Chest
Characters/Pairings:  James Norrington, Anamaria, James/Anamaria
Summary:  She's taken him, and she doesn't mean to let him go. Anamaria finds James in Tortuga.
Wordcount:  1368
Warnings:  non-con, though off-camera
Disclaimer:  Not mine

Of Using and Being Used

He's a mess when Anamaria finds him, battered and drunk and dirty in a Tortuga alley. He's a mess, but she recognises him, recognises the proud man he used to be, the man who once upon a time would have stood in judgement over her for crimes men like him had driven her to in the first place.

She takes him to her ship. He doesn't want to come, fights as best he can, but she doesn't care. Dunks him in the sea on way over, too. She wants him clean, for this. She takes him to her ship, to her cabin, to her bed, and when she ties him down and kisses him, brutally, it's other men's faces she sees as well as his, white faces and hard hands, hands that put the shackles around her wrists, the noose around her neck. It's those men that she sees, all bound up in the hollow title of 'Commodore', right up until he opens his mouth.

"Am I being used?" he asks, softly, and she thinks of scoffing, because there's not many as would miss the fact, tied to someone's bed, but he's looking at her like he can see something deeper, like he can see those white faces behind her eyes, and there's something he looks for when he asks that she can't understand. So she answers.

"Yes," she says, cold and blunt and honest, because she's never much believed in lying, not after living in the gaps of so many of the world's pretty lies. "Yes," she says, and he smiles, old and tired and familiar, the kind of smile that makes the shackle-scars on her wrist ache.

"Thank you," he says, and when she looks incredulous explains: "It's good to know it, this time." Softer, turning his face away, eyes drowning. "It's good to at least know it."

And suddenly, she understands. Just a little. There's more than one kind of slave in the world, more than one kind of chain, more than one kind of noose. This man knows it. Intimately. This man has all save died for it.

She leans in, gentle now, soft while he stares at her in confusion, and when she kisses him this time it's gentle. It's real, and he doesn't understand, but he doesn't protest either, because whatever happened to him, he's resigned himself to being used long since. He'll give her what she asks, let her take it gently or cruelly as she pleases. And for him, for the man and not the title, it pleases her to be gentle.

She unties him when they're done, unties him and sits back warily, hand on pistol, but all he does is rub his wrists, blinking at her dazedly. He doesn't know what to do with her, having expected brutality and received ... something else. It's not quite kindness, what she's done. There was kindness in it, in the telling and the act, but still she took what was not hers to take. But he doesn't seem to care.

"Where will you go?" she asks him, gently. He shakes, turning his head away, and doesn't answer. Shipwrecked on her shores, then, lost as a man can be. "What do you want?" He stays quiet for a minute, head bowed, and she lets him, lets the answer come if it can. Then he looks up at her, eyes heavy and tired, and when he speaks she knows it's as much of the truth as he knows.

"I want ... to be asked for something I know how to give, something I'm strong enough to give. I want ... to stop people taking what isn't theirs. I want ..." His voice cracks a bit. "I want to not be used." Quieter, then. "Or at least to know why."

She nods, then, takes his hand gently. "Then if I ask you to come with me?" His head jerks up in shock, and she smiles, a sad smile, but he understands that, she thinks. She holds up her other hand in answer, showing the scars on her wrist. "There are people who take more than gold, more than treasure," she tells him softly, feeling the old rage burning in her gut. "People who take freedoms, lives. People your laws protect." And there is hate there, hate for what he used to be, for what he stood for. He pales, but meets her eyes.

"I hunted who I could within the law," he says, soberly, painfully, knowing how little it is to offer. "No matter what I wanted. No matter what I thought. I could never stop ... I was never allowed to stop ... Not enough. It was never enough. I ... For what it is worth, I am sorry." She stares at him, wondering distantly what it was that had been taken from him, and who took it, and if he'd been allowed to try and stop them. Somehow, she doesn't think so. And that, too, is something she understands all too well.

"Then help me," she says, quietly. "Come with me, and hunt the ones you were never allowed to hunt, and help those you were never allowed to help. Come with me."

He shakes his head, hollow-eyed and pale. "I'm not a pirate," he says, the way she would maybe say 'I'm not a slaver', and for a second she wants to be angry at him, and for another she wants to let him go, to accept that. But Anamaria's never been a woman to give up, to surrender what she's taken, what she's managed to wrest from life's clutches, and now she's taken him. And she doesn't mean to give him up.

"You ain't a Commodore either," she tells him bluntly, wincing a little at his stricken look, but hardening her heart enough to do what needs doing. "And you ain't got much of a choice." He blinks, as if he'd forgotten, forgotten that he'd been taken, in more ways than one, forgotten that she still has him in her power. He blinks, and then closes his eyes with a small, wry smile.

"So it would seem," he says, ruefully, and there's a glimmer there, of something more than a broken man resigned to being broken, something of what he must have been, something of what's yet inside him, ready to be again. She likes that glimmer, and smiles, taking his hand again.

"I promise," she said, softly, gently. "To tell you why. To not ask for what you can't give. I promise you that. Can you accept that, and come with me?" She smiles a little ruefully herself. "Because yer a dangerous man, Commodore, I do know that. I want you to come. I want you to help. I don't want to have to force ye to it. I can give you what you want, if you'll only come with me." And she means that, too. What he asked for, in clumsy, tired words ... she knows how to give, and she'll give it gladly, if he'll come.

He's silent for a moment, eyes resting intently on hers, measuring, weighing, judging. She holds still, hating it a little, but letting him, knowing he needs it. Whether he knows it or not, he'd been a slave, and now he isn't. And he needs to make his first decision as a free man all by his lonesome. So for a minute he stares, and she lets him, and then he smiles.

"Under the circumstances," he says, with a laugh running just beneath it as he looks down to the bed they're sitting on, "I think you should probably call me James. And I ... should call you Captain?"

And she laughs, and takes his head between her hands to plant a bruising kiss on his lips, and then a gentler one, sweeter, promising. "You can call me Anamaria," she purrs, grinning, and pushes him back down on the bed, laughing while he stares at her. "But only when we're in private, James."

"Aye sir," he whispers dazedly, and surrenders once more. But this time, she thinks, maybe not just in resignation to being used. This time, maybe, just a little bit in hope.

A hope she has every intention of fulfilling.

Comments

[order_of_chaos]

"Thank you," he says, and when she looks incredulous explains: "It's good to know it, this time." Softer, turning his face away, eyes drowning. "It's good to at least know it.

Lovely James-angst.

I like this - I think they could be good for each other.

[icarus_chained]

James angsts so very well, though. Heh. And they would be good for each other, provided the first meeting didn't kill them.

Thank you!