Sparrington fic

[doyle]

Y'know… I automatically assumed I'd write my 12 ficlets in Buffy/Angel fandom. Maybe a little foray into Firefly to see if I could manage it. And then circe_tigana took over my brain, and next thing I know I'm googling for information on eighteenth-century naval history.

Besides, I wanted to yoink a Hemingway title.

Title: The Old Man and the Sea
Author: Doyle
Fandom: Pirates of the Caribbean
Pairing: Sparrow/Norrington
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Day 7 of the 12 Days of Ficlets Challenge. Remembrance.


He suspects he's becoming quite cantankerous in his old age. His dearly departed wife would add stiff-necked and proud, but he was that long before time seized his joints and slowed his movements. Not so duty-bound as he once was, though; the benefits of living for a very long time, and seeing very many admirals pass like -

Always back to ships, isn't it? Even in metaphor. His smile is bitter, and all but invisible except to those who know to look for it. There are not terribly many people on that list, now. His wife, of course. Elizabeth, perhaps, once upon a time. Jack Sparrow.

Of late, his thoughts have often turned to Jack.

Norrington has grown old, and failed to die, and that is his great failure and his great success. He's glad, certainly, for the time with his children and their children, but he regrets finding himself unable to walk three steady steps on solid ground, when he never stumbled on the Interceptor's decks. He regrets that when his wife died he was at sea, and that when his own time comes, he will not be.

Snatched, forbidden nights on the Pearl, in Tortuga, in other places - those he does not regret, except that they were few, and tended to end less than amicably.

The days are longer now than he remembers in his youth, the sun less bright. The sea, though, the sea at Port Royal is the same, and much of his time is spent here in his garden, overlooking the bay where the Victory is docked. A fine ship, his flagship for several years, but at his shoulder Jack says not a ship could match the Pearl, nor never will be.

Jack, he thinks, with more fondness than he allowed himself those years ago, the Pearl has been gone for a long time.

So've I, love, the voice in his memory protests, and he can see the insouciance in the slouch and the wicked sparkle in the outlined eyes clearer than he can see the roses around him that his granddaughter so lovingly tends. Don't see you claiming there's any as could replace me.

"No," he sighs aloud, as if there is anyone to hear him, but Jack is long gone, far more than a day's head-start away, and he fears he will never catch up to him now.

Comments

[doyle_sb4.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you! Didn't spot that, will fix it.