Written for khohen1’s tertiary character ficathon; for penm who wanted something Groves-centric.

***

He’s old now, and hasn’t been to sea for many a long year. He misses it still.

Sometimes he will order the carriage, and have it driven an hour to the coast, where he can see the grey waves crash on to the shore. He always returns from these outings at once invigorated and yet nostalgic, longing for those times gone when he was young and the sky was blue and warm.

And he misses the people, too. Surly, sarcastic Gillette, with his thin smile. The eager midshipmen, learning to use a sextant. Even the marines. He misses them all.

But most of all, he misses Norrington. Captain, when he’d first met him. Young – scarce five years older than Groves himself – but brilliant. A master navigator, and a man that men would follow whatever the weather, wherever the battle.

James Norrington. He’d done well for himself – the son of a merchant, without the advantages of belonging to the minor aristocracy. Worked his way through the ranks, relying on intelligence and leadership, and sea-faring skills Groves has rarely seen surpassed. There had been that pirate, perhaps, but nobody else.

Groves had been a second lieutenant when he was posted to the Caribbean. Had arrived sweating, hating the heat, longing for white cliffs and green hills and rain. Port Royal was the wrong sort of damp.

But Norrington had been a breath of home, all his demeanour English, all the fort exactly like Portsmouth. And the social evenings, they too had been entirely English, dull and prescribed and … well, dull. They had been bearable only when Norrington could be persuaded to tell a pirate-hunting story, much to the pleasure of not only Groves and his fellow-lieutenants, but also Elizabeth Swann.

Groves had seen early on how much his captain admired the Governor’s lovely daughter. She was, unlike many of the girls in Port Royal, lively and intelligent and daring, and lovely with it. He enjoyed watching her himself, though his heart was always given to his own Grace, back in England. It was common knowledge that Captain Norrington loved Miss Swann, but amongst the lower-ranked officers, it was also common knowledge that Miss Swann fancied the blacksmith’s apprentice.

Two years into his posting, the captain had been promoted. They’d celebrated with an extra rum ration in the fort, and then there had been that tedious ceremony interrupted, deliciously, by Elizabeth Swann falling from the walls and being rescued by a pirate.

Sometimes Groves thinks about the pirate. Jack Sparrow. If ever a man was designed to stick in one’s mind, he was it. Gaudy, outspoken, rude – everything a pirate ought to be. Yet Groves had found himself rather impressed by the man, carrying out two escapes on successive days with aplomb and coolness.

Nevertheless, Commodore Norrington had done the right thing, both when he ordered Sparrow hung and when he failed to give immediate chase after the pirate escaped, again. Gillette had wondered what Norrington was doing, but Groves thought he recognised in the commodore the same grudging and reluctant admiration for Jack Sparrow as he himself felt. And he admired Norrington all the more for it.

It seemed to Groves, sometimes in the years after that odd week when Norrington was rejected by Miss Swann and they fought a battle with skeletal pirates, that he could do no better than follow his commodore faithfully and try to emulate him.

But fate was unkind. Even as Norrington was triumphing over the pirates in the Caribbean, Groves received the letter calling him home, calling him to weary duty as his father ailed and finally died. And he married, married well to lovely Clara.

Now at the end of his days, with grandchildren running around the gardens of his house, Groves finds himself thinking back more and more to those years. Once he’d left the Caribbean, he did not see Norrington again. There was no doubt that the commodore would have received a further promotion, to rear-admiral and later admiral – but news came to Groves that a cutlass wielded by a pirate ended Norrington’s days, and the commodore’s body had been consigned to the deep ocean.

Groves stands, wearily, leaning on a stick, and looks out of the window at rolling green hills. Somewhere beyond are the endless waves. He thinks that he will ask his children to take him there when he dies – soon – and let him go.

It is long since he has been to sea, but it won’t be many more weeks before he never leaves it again.

© Joanne Harris 2004