Norrington's Darling

Beckett's Wrath

POV: James Norrington

Unable to hide it, I flinched as Beckett's hand slammed down on the desk. Rarely did he show his anger in a violent way, but he'd been trashing his office for the past twenty minutes, yelling and snarling at me.

It had taken a week for us to get back to Port Royal. We'd just barely scraped into Beckett's timeline, but when we arrived with the rigging in a mess, each of us without sleep, and Zuri gone...well, it hadn't been pleasant. He almost started a war right there on the pier until I convinced him to take the lecture back to the office.

"You lost her," Beckett snarled. "You lost your girlfriend."

Theodore cleared his throat. "Ah, they're engaged, now—"

Beckett whirled on me. "And you let them capture her?!"

I absentmindedly took a step back. "I didn't let them! I heard her scream but couldn't get out there fast enough to save her! They were already swinging across and by the time I woke the others to chase after them, they'd already put so much distance between us—"

"Why weren't you with her?!" Beckett snarled. "If you were engaged, if you loved her so much, why didn't you stay by her side at all times?"

"Wait, wait, wait, what do you mean 'loved', past tense?"  I demanded.

"Pirates stole her," Beckett snapped, as if it was obvious. "It's likely she's dead!"

And even though I knew it wasn't true, my gut lurched. Not my Zuri, I thought before I reminded myself there was a plan. Zuri hadn't been captured—she'd gone willingly, even after I'd proposed.

"They won't kill her," I said firmly, feeling more confident than I sounded. "Zuri is a bargaining chip. She worked with that sorceress, Tia Dalma. Dalma, according to Zuri, brought Barbossa back from the dead. It's possible they think Zuri can do the same for her brother."

"And can she?" Beckett asked.

I gestured helplessly, spreading my hands, palms upward. "I wouldn't know. But if she had such a gift, I think she would have used it already."

Beckett pursed his lips as the remnants of his anger dissipated. "We must look for her." He returned to his desk, picking up a paper and a quill. "Sweep all known pirate hideouts and pirate-infested cities. All of them, from Tortuga to Singapore and back again. Keep ships stationed in a perimeter throughout the area where they captured her." He put a hand on my slumped shoulders and I forced myself to meet that cold gaze. But to my surprise, I found something strangely similar to kindness, and perhaps even sympathy. "We will get her back soon, Admiral. I promise."

The next morning, I rose from a fitful night and took a deep breath. I prayed Zuri and the others had gotten enough time to get away and to Singapore. I would send Admiral Fletcher with Lieutenant Gillette to Singapore, with private orders to Andrew Gillette to make sure Fletcher didn't catch my Zuri.

I stared at myself in the glass of the window. I looked horrid. Two sleepless nights in a row had done me no good and my worry was getting to me. I could only hope that Beckett would mistake my worry for Zuri's capture, not the hope that they wouldn't find her.

A foolish part of me wished that they would so I could pull her into my arms and we could have that nice, quiet little wedding we—or at least I—wanted.

But when I donned my uniform a few minutes later, sighing about my disheveled appearance and added weight from the liquor that would not go away, I faced myself in the glass yet again.

Seeing myself reflected in the glass, pretending to believe and be something I was not, I was reminded painfully of how Zuri had fought for years to keep her pirate identity hidden.

And seeing the lie I was living, I could only sob.