POTC fic

[icarus_chained]

For the comment_fic prompt 'crossing the map'.

Title: For Bounded Worlds
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Pirates of the Caribbean (AWE)
Characters/Pairings: James Norrington, mention of Jack and Beckett
Summary: Set during AWE. James muses on maps, and rules, on cages and on freedom
Wordcount: 638
Warnings/Notes: Been awhile since I've seen the movie
Disclaimer: Not mine

For Bounded Worlds

He'd had that conversation with Sparrow, once. And had thought the man ... somewhere between foolishly romantic and dangerously chaotic because of it (neither of them new thoughts, when it came to Sparrow).

Sparrow had mourned the mapping of the world. Had thought it made it ... unbearably small, a cage, to winnow away the mysteries of the world.

James ... did not agree.

He was an orderly man. He knew that. The Royal Navy made you so, or drove you out, or beat you down. That was the truth. But he had been orderly beforehand, too. He had always found ... excitement, in the thought of a map, an hour, the bounds of the day, the sea, the man. Not to be proprietary, though that was admittedly part of it. These were his lines, the bounds of his territory, his people, and there was peril for those who crossed them, while he was bound to defend them. But ... more than that.

The mapping of the world made it real, in ways he couldn't properly explain. Made it navigable, made it traversable. Sail for four days with nary a chart, and you sailed aimlessly, uselessly, in seas that would cheerfully eat you for your folly. Even Sparrow knew that. But the grander things, the greater maps ...

It wasn't ownership. Not like Beckett. It was that ... To place your finger on a map, to rest your finger over reality, to draw the line of your journey across it ... It was knowledge, and comfort, and power. To cross the map was to cross the known world. To sail beyond the map was to sail beyond human knowledge. But even then, even in that extremity, the map still existed. The map expanded, or if that was impossible, waited for your return within its bounds. The map was real, and those who rested within its bounds as safe as knowledge and courage could make them.

A world without bounds was well and good for the likes of Sparrow, the pirates, the men of chaos. Even, perhaps, for him, though if these last months had shown him anything, it was that he was ... not himself, unbounded. He was ... lessened, without the honour, the rules that had denoted the limits of his world. But even still. He could see, admire, even emulate the courage and madness it took to live in a world unbounded, beyond the edges of the map.

But there were so many who couldn't. So many who would be crushed, broken, killed, by the mysteries that lurked past the bounds of human knowledge. Even Sparrow had perished to them, once or twice. Even the bravest of them could fall afoul of the folly of sailing uncharted.

For them, there was safety, in the lines of a map that denoted their path. For them, there was protection, in the edges of the map that bounded their world, and the men, the people, who sailed to protect it. For them, the map was their world, a world made real, beyond the reaches of so many nightmares. For them ... For them.

Sparrow was right, perhaps. That the maps were a cage, and the rules the shackles that bound a man. But he was wrong, too. As much as they caged, those rules could also be the saving of a man, the freedom that lifted him out of fear. As much as they bounded, made less the mysteries of the world, those maps could also lay the bounds of its protection, and make it real.

James ... had fought, for that. Had bled, and fought, and bent, and walked beyond the edges of the map. For that. For them. Though he had lost it, though he had let himself fall from it, he remembered what it had meant, then. He remembered why. Not to own, not Beckett's cause. But to protect, all those lives who lived within the bounds of the map, all those who would be lost without it.

And for that, for them ... perhaps, now, he should fight again.