Genre: Introspective.
Summary: The Susan Constant sailed off, life went on, Thomas remained.
Timeline: Takes place after the movie, and completely ignores the events of the sequel.
Thomas is used to the sight of the Indian princess standing on the ledge every morning. Most of the men are asleep at that hour of the day, save the overnight sentries, but Thomas' mother had trained him to be an early riser since his boyhood and some habits are just that hard to break.
So there she'd be, a proud silhouette against the orange-pink morning sky, as still as a statue greeting the dawn while Thomas washes his face at the communal well like an ordinary mortal. He decides today to crouch there for a few minutes after he is done, holding a hand up to shield his eyes from the streaks of gold that precede the sun, just so he can watch the princess stand and wonder why she does it. He wonders why she does a lot of other things, but this one he wonders on the most. There are no ships coming, no news from England, but she is there every morning without fail.
She used to come down to the settlement more often in the early days, arranging barter trades and settling land disputes between her people and the settkers. More often than not she brought along at least two extra emissaries slash bodyguards at her side, men that Thomas would not want to get on the wrong side of, not that they ever noticed him. Oh, she would nod at him whenever she saw him, and he always tipped his hat back politely, but that was the extent of their interaction.
The last time she came down to the settlement was when the ship arrived with the new Governor. When the tall majesty, scarcely bigger than the Susan Constant, had pulled as deep into the cove as possible, Thomas had rushed out with the rest of the men and hadn't been the least surprised to see that she was already there. Her face had been turned outward to the ship and one hand curled delicately around her necklace as her eyes were watchful of the men rowing to shore.
John Smith was not with them.
Still, her expression was polite as she greeted the new Governor, and then quickly shifted to confusion when the Governor's aid gave her a letter. She'd twirled in her hands, running a long finger across the wax seal and black scratched letters on the front.
Until now Thomas doesn't know why he did what he did. Pocahontas makes him uneasy; true, lots of things makes him uneasy, like the woods at night and storms at sea and the way Lon sings when he's drunk, but Pocahontas makes him uneasy in the way that his grandmother, God bless her soul, used to make him uneasy. There is wisdom in her eyes that, in Thomas' simple English lad mind, has no right being there. Chief Powhatan has the same look, but he has the wrinkles of years well-spent to go with it. Pocahontas… doesn't.
So, propelled by some unknown quantity in him, Thomas had carefully walked up to Pocahontas and said, "That's a letter."
Pocahontas had turned her eyes to him – no right, to look like that – and nodded in understanding. "I cannot read your words," she'd said.
"I could read it to you…?"
He'd let her lead him away from the settlement for he understood that its contents might not be something she'd want the others to hear. Not too far, though, but just far enough down the river that they could sit on the bank with no interruptions save a hummingbird that seemed to be following them.
The letter hadn't been from Smith, but from his doctor in a London hospital. Even if Pocahontas had been disappointed at this, Thomas wouldn't have been able to tell.
Smith was fine, the letter had read. The journey back to England had been short enough to make saving him not beyond the realm of possibility, but there was still significant damage and he had been unconscious when they'd brought him in. At the time of writing, Smith had fallen into a slight fever, but nothing too serious they hoped.
At the end of letter, Thomas had looked up and Pocahontas had that expression again, the one that suggested that she was seeing something that he couldn't. Then suddenly she was back, gentle eyes focusing on him and a grateful smile tugging her lips. She patted him once, affectionately, on the shoulder and thanked him with the well-worded politeness that seemed to be her only way of speaking.
She left him after taking the letter, back to her village Thomas presumed. She hadn't returned to settlement since. Instead, they had a new Indian emissary, a tall, curt fellow who'd learned halting English and seemed pleased to be able to tower over the new Governor.
Coming back to the present, and at the sight of the princess still standing on her morning post, Thomas thinks that it is strange that no one (at least, no one in Jamestown) seems to miss having the princess around beyond the occasional mention during dinnertime, or whenever the new Indian emissary rolls his eyes for the hundredth time at a new proposal of theirs.
Thomas wonders, though. He wonders, and if he could admit it to himself, he worries. He doesn't know why he feels the way he does, only that he has no right to because he doesn't know the princess and he barely knew John beyond the wide-eyed worship, and he never speaks up for them when the men laugh about their doomed love affair in their drunken moments.
No, he's not proud of that either.
Thomas knows he still has a lot of growing up to do, no matter the number of pats-on-the-back he's gotten since the Ratcliffe affair.
So there he is, sitting in a half-crouch by the communal well, in a ritual that is the only chance anyone from the settlement is able to see the princess at all nowadays.
He sits there, and watches until the glare is too bright to see her at all.
END
Note 1: I used "Indian" instead of "Native American" because the latter is the corrected term, not the old albeit misguided one they used the time.
Note 2: The fic title is a line from the song As the World Falls Down from David Bowie and featured in the movie Labyrinth.