In everyone’s life, there comes a time when he or she must make a choice.

All the great wise men and philosophers of our time and those past have lamented and worried and done nothing about the fact that sometimes, there is no light in the depravity of our world. They’ve griped and they’ve groaned and they’ve seen it as futile to fight, but there’s always a choice.

Rarely do these wise men and philosophers ever make that Choice, or even see it as the Choice that will change their world.

Sometimes, it’s a good thing.

At least, that’s what you seem to think, and honestly, you’re done worrying about the opinions of others.

You made your Choice, and you really, really wish you hadn’t. It set in motion a chain of events that very well could have been prevented had you just minded your own business and forgot about Jack Bloody Sparrow.

There was just something about him that made your blood boil. From the first time he had laid hands on Elizabeth, you saw him and your vision clouded over with red. It was that bad. He was a worthy adversary, a filthy pirate for you to wipe off the face of the planet. He dirtied your mother ocean and he dirtied the ground he walked on.

He wasn’t like any ordinary pirate. He was cunning. He stole a ship right out from under your nose. It was because you underestimated him. It didn’t take you long to realize that that was his game. When you underestimated Jack Sparrow, you would lose your footing and plunge to your death.

That was the difference between him and you. He was filthy. He had lank, flyaway hair, tattered clothing, and a nauseatingly self-satisfied smirk. You were clean. With your crisp, starched uniform and your shiny brass buttons, you represented law and order and the word “clean.”

What was white, was white, and what was black, was black.

Or so you thought.

But then you made your Choice, and all of your clean-cut morals and your assumptions about the way things worked in the world were dashed to the rocks as quickly as your ship in that hurricane.

You decided that you weren’t going to go for the greater good anymore. What was there left for you in doing that sort of thing in your life anyway? Your title and rank were renounced, and your ship and crew were all gone. So you chose the only thing you thought was left for yourself—you stole the heart of Davy Jones and turned it over to the East India Trading Company.

There was a time when you thought you weren’t self-serving. There was a time when you thought you were clean, but then they tossed you in the metaphorical pigpen, and what did you do? You lived with the pigs.

Now, you aren’t quite so different from Jack Sparrow. Now, you know that there’s more to everything than black and white, but you don’t want to know that. You don’t want to have to think about being anything like him. There’s no possible way you can be like that filthy pirate.

You dust off your wig, and you clean off the dirt on your uniform, and you shine your brass buttons.

You feel like yourself again.

But looking clean doesn’t make you clean, you realize, and as you look in the mirror, you don’t see yourself. You see Jack Sparrow, standing with his head cocked and that filthy smirk plastered on his face. It’s sickening, and suddenly you don’t feel so clean anymore.

Clean-cut is starting to look a little blurry, and white and black are starting to look a little more gray, you think.

Some would call it the dark side of ambition, but you like to see it as the promise of redemption.

Besides, you like the sound of it when people call you “Commodore Norrington.” James Norrington doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.