Should have had rum

“Help me open her mouth,” James said, aware that Elizabeth would be no willing partner in his final sacrifice to ensure her happiness. He almost laughed through his shudders of nerve toxin coursing through is veins-- he had thought that releasing her from her promise to marry him had been the ultimate sacrifice. Gillette came to his love’s aid and forced Elizabeth’s mouth open, she shuddered with the poison’s effects but could not stop him, all because of the sweat of a little frog. James held her close to him to stop her shaking as Sparrow uncorked the sweet smelling milky potion and drained the vial half way into her lavender lipped mouth. “No, the whole dose, use the whole dose or it may do no good!” James’ grip on Elizabeth had become spastic, she was crushed to his chest, an embrace he could not now enjoy. The pirate met Gillette’s tearful gaze. “Gillette do this for me,” James pleaded.

“Do it Sparrow.” Gillette let go of Elizabeth and stroked James’s hair as soon as the rest of the vial had been poured by the once hunted pirate. Elizabeth almost immediately returned to a healthier peach color, the purple faded from her lips even as James’ turned blue and he began to writhe and gnash his teeth. She could have moved from his side, Jack Sparrow was being held there by no one, Gillette would not have left his side for the world itself. All three held watch, tried to sooth, and witnessed the death of Commodore James Norrington.

His death was not beautiful, there was nothing romantic about the way that his blood frothed upon his lips, but as Elizabeth felt the grip of the poison leave her she realized how much James had truly loved her, and even in her grief she could not be left untouched by some small measure of love and admiration for the man who had once sacrificed to save her happiness, and then sacrificed to save her life. After he died, Gillette and Elizabeth undertook the grim task of closing his eyes, smoothing the lines of pain from his face, replacing his coat to make him presentable in death as he was in life. Elizabeth said that she would not have his wig back on, not yet; she was moved by seeing him more human.

Jack Sparrow removed the bodies of the French rogues who had gotten his crew and the commodore into the situation in the first place; they were dumped unceremoniously into the sea. For his own crew, the marines were instructed by Gillette to sew them up in their hammocks with a bottle of rum each, and buried at sea. The French ship was set ablaze, as it was decided that it would be better to burn the ship than let there be a chance of the cargo falling into more hands or being distributed among the communities of the English colonies. The Pearl sailed away silent and sorrowful with Sparrow, Cotton, and a few Royal Navy sailors who had decided that being impressed on a HMS ship was less favorable then being a privateer under ones own free will.

As the Skirmish finally began sailing back to Port Royale Elizabeth felt the poison’s grip receding but she was wracked by sobs anew. She realized that she had lost both the man she loved in Will’s dying and in the death of James she had lost the chance to understand him until their very last moments of her experience with him. Gillette was moved and his heart softened when between commanding the harrowed sailors he saw Elizabeth still pale and bowed beneath the weight of the day sitting on the floor of the ward room between the two bodies. She had not thrown herself over William Turner like a blanket trying to smother the chill of death. Instead she sat between them clutching each of the men’s hands but resting her heads on James’ chest. She displayed the grief that Gillette had to carry, she felt it for him.

As Gillette shut the lead paned dark wood doors of the ward room to close the path of vision to their private grief he heard her ask James why he had never told her before. The lead and iron latch clicked softly shut as he wondered if such a soft weeping that echoed the pain of his heart could come from the villain he had thought she was.

Elizabeth, still weak from the poison’s effects, made what was to be her only public appearance that year at James’ funeral, processing with the other mourners to the hillside cemetery overlooking the port where Will had also been buried. The rest of the time she spent locked away in her father’s study, a quiet, contemplative and wan version of her former self. From time to time she did allow the new commodore a visit though, and there was talk among the townspeople that love would draw her out of her shell again.

Years later there was a rumor that the admiral’s wife had become unable to bear children after being poisoned by pirates and a handsome commodore a friend of the admiral had died saving her. Elizabeth knew the story in her new English seaside home but never bothered to correct the details. She was consummately quiet among company and only laughed and smiled with her husband. Their marriage was based not on love for one another, and her childlessness could be better accounted for if one knew her drug hazed tryst with James had been her only carnal knowledge. But Gillette and Elizabeth were the only ones who could make each other smile anymore with their recounting the same stories of their sweethearts and their loves. They were drawn together by James’ sacrifice and by their mutual losses. In Gillette, Elizabeth found a way to thank James; in Elizabeth, Gillette found a way to be closer to him.