Disclaimer: Any publicly recognisable dialogue, characters and settings etc is the property of The Pirates Of The Caribbean Franchise (books, movies and games inclusive), and its respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I feel like it's probably good and fair of me to advise that Capitán Salazar arrives in Chapter 5 - and there's a slow build up to his arrival that is necessary for what comes after... in any case, please enjoy!

Chapter 1: Aboard The Proserpine

They say that when you're dying, you know it.

You hear all the clichés.

You hear people say that of course you realise you're dying; and you see your life flashing before your eyes, the things you regret doing, the things you regret never doing, the light at the end of the tunnel…

Utter rubbish.

I had no idea I was dying.

I didn't find out I'd actually even died – though apparently only for a few minutes – until much, much later. I was lying on my back in a sparse room in a hospital, staring up at the cracked and yellowed ceiling. I seemed to be having a lot of trouble breathing. I didn't know where the nurses or doctors were. The room was completely empty: just me, lying on a gurney that I had no recollection of even being placed on, a machine making half-hearted noises in the silence next to me. They'd shoved a tube down my throat, in a dire attempt to do something – feed me oxygen I suppose, though my lungs were too iron-tight now to expand even for a little breath.

I wished I could close my eyes. I wished I could pull this tube out of my throat. But I couldn't move.

The room started to lurch.

The ceiling started to blur.

I suddenly started to feel very cold, cold everywhere, going into my nose, going into my mouth, entering my lungs. I tried to cough it out, and I started to panic when I realised I couldn't.

"Why isn't this patient in ER?" came a voice. "Who the hell left her here?"

"Get the Doctor!" snapped a second voice. "Now!"

But the voices were growing fainter by the second, and the yellowed ceiling was a mess of fragmenting streaks, and all around me was a rising white noise, like an old fashioned TV that had lost its signal.

And then the white noise began to go in and out, like the waves on a shore, and the room lurched up and down in time with the noise, and finally, finally I was able to close my eyes, and succumb thankfully to the drifting peace…

But the relief of being able to finally shut my eyes was short-lived.

My throat reminded me that living was still an unfortunate option by constricting tightly, and the cold sensation in my lungs doubled, making me nauseous.

A paroxysm of coughing took hold.

I coughed so hard I felt like I was going to vomit, as the cold shifted out of my lungs, painfully burning up through my throat and out of my mouth. My head fell back on something hard as the coughing subsided, and I groaned.

"Come on, that's it, keep coughin' it all up, that's the girl!"

I shivered, and tried to cough again, turning my head to the side as more salty cold came out of my nose and mouth.

Something rough wiped my face. "There yer are, yer all good now!"

"Where..." I tried to ask what I could only assume was the doctor, "Where were you?"

"'S alright now, m'Lady, we got t'yer right quick! Took a bad tumble off the side, didn't yer? But yer all safe and sound back on the Proserpine, m'Lady!"

My brain stuttered to a stop. What did he just say?

"Is she alive?" A curt British voice said from somewhere over me.

"She's swallowed a pint or two, sir," answered the first, "But she's breathin'."

Murmurs around me.

"What –" I choked out hoarsely, "What's happening –"

"Out of my way!" A commanding young French voice cut through the murmurs. "Bouges!"

French? I opened my eyes in the direction of the new voice.

I was no longer in the hospital.

I appeared to be out in the open, under an overcast sky; a blurry crowd of oddly dressed people staring down at me.

"My lady?"

The owner of the voice knelt down next to me, avoiding the puddle of seawater I'd just coughed up.

"My lady, can you sit?"

I tried to focus on the woman who continued to speak rapidly at me, but a fit of shivers overtook me.

"You must 'elp, s'il vous plait," the woman commanded someone.

Firm hands eased under my shoulders, and I was slowly lifted into a sitting position, an itchy and heavy blanket draped around me.

"My lady," the woman said again, before repeating slowly in French. "Que s'est-il passe?"

I could remember enough high school French to understand she was asking me what happened, but I didn't even know how to begin to answer her.

What happened…

What had happened?

How could I tell her what happened when I barely knew myself?

I stared down at my trembling hands… my hands…

These were not my hands.

My hands were strong hands, ugly hands. Hands with skin worn thin from constant gardening and fingers calloused from work – but these were small, delicate hands that had not apparently seen even the merest scrape in their life, white and dainty, with the most ridiculously chubby little fingers.

And what was I wearing?

I stared down, confused, at the expanse of near-flawless pale skin.

A square neckline that stopped bare millimetres above my nipples, framing a pushed-up pale cleavage with wet but never-the-less ostentatious ruffles…

What. The. F –

"My lady, we need to get you somewhere warm!"

The French woman at my side interrupted my incredulous self-examination, her insistent hands under my elbow, trying to pull me unsteadily to my feet – no, not my feet, someone else's. And what the hell kind of shoes did I have on?

"My lady!" the woman pulled again on my arm.

My vision started to clear more as I stood, and slowly began to register where I was.

A ship's deck tilting with the waves under my feet.

A stink of unwashed sailors around me, coupled with something like rancid cooking fat.

A rhythmic sound of tarred ropes whipping in the wind against wooden masts.

Canvas sails billowing out above me.

And all around, the continuous grey sea under a pale grey sky…

I nearly fell again, but the little French woman at my side stalwartly held me up.

"Lady Stanhope!"

A man stepped forward in front of us. He was dressed in a white and navy uniform, trimmed with gold embroidery, and had the air of one very used to giving orders.

"Lady Stanhope, I beg you would kindly explain," he addressed me with heavy sarcasm, "The circumstances of your being in the sea, at the inconvenience of every man aboard this ship!"

"Lieutenant Scarfield," the woman at my side purred with a saucy sort of elegance, as only the French can do, "No doubt, you 'ave a great many questions, but they must wait, sir. Can you not see, my lady is not 'erself?"

The man who'd been addressed as Lieutenant Scarfield stared down at me – wait. Stared down at me?

How short was I?

I glanced around at the other men surrounding us, and realised I was a good three inches shorter than I was used to being. I was tiny.

Lieutenant Scarfield relented in the face of the saucy smile the French woman at my side gave him, and my obviously bewildered disorientation.

"Very well, but when she is – feeling herself, Eleni, I would be most interested in her explanation."

With a dismissive puff of air, the French woman, Eleni, turned her chin away from Lieutenant Scarfield, and pulled me forward.

I followed, stumbling a little, as she led me out between the gawping sailors, down the deck of the ship.

"Keep walking," Eleni muttered out of the corner of her mouth to me. "Try to act like my lady."

I stiffened at her words, but she resolutely pulled me on, not stopping until she'd pulled me through a small cabin door at the other end of the ship, shutting and locking it firmly behind us.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: To make the ropes slide better through the ship's deadeyes etc, sailors would coat them with a mixture of pig fat and occasionally tar, as it helped protect the ropes from the elements and ensured they would work to manipulate the sails more effectively. The smell however, was often horrendous, especially towards the end of a voyage, when the lard was frequently rancid…

PERSONAL NOTE: I just want to do a shout out for BluKoffee's AMAZING time travel fic 'Out of Place, Out of Time', where we get to see Capitán Salazar and the Silent Mary crew as human – so if you haven't yet, go read it now!

I'd also like to credit Piratesangel on Tumblr as the constant and wonderful source of inspiration for everything I write (which may or may not be a good thing!), and my other precious friends Blackleatherjacketz and Thorns-and-rosewings who proofread this first chapter for me!