A/N: Well, I'm pumping these chapters out pretty quick. Actually, this splurge of updates was inspired by a dream I had about Stella et. all. I dreamed they were all in the old west and started a turf war with some cowboys. Eventually there was a big cowboy massacre. (This was all right, inasmuch as I had a dream the night before in which cowboys chopped off my feet with a guillotine, roasted them, and ate them in front of me, leaving me to bleed on the sand and protest indignantly that those were my feet.)

...Yeah. No real point to telling you that.

Um, so here's chapter 13. It'll be short. Really short. More dialogue before the poo hits the fan, so to speak.

Chapter 13: Stella Gratiae

If he hadn't known both the lady in question and her feelings towards more tender emotions, James would've thought Stella was in love with him.

Ever since her fated visitor a week or so ago, she was acting very strangely. She was secretive and evasive. She kept looking at him with her black eyes hooded and soft. She was as affectionate as she ever got—light touches on his shoulders and hands, as delicate as the breezes that hovered around her person. She cleaned his wig without complaint. She even stopped manipulating him into doing unpleasant chores by constantly bringing up his accidental upchucking onto her shoes.

"Stella, is something terrible going to happen to me?" he asked her one evening after she'd roasted a chicken for him.

"I don't know," she replied, clearly surprised.

"It's just... you're being... er, rather kind, especially for you."

"I can't be kind to you for no reason?"

James just looked flatly at her. "Then you want something from me."

"Not really, no."

"Stella."

She looked down. "You'll be leaving soon," she announced quietly.

All the colour washed from his face. "Leaving what? The land of the living?"

The scornful look in her black eyes calmed him only slightly. "Don't be stupid. Do you honestly think that if I'd foreseen your death I wouldn't fight the devil himself to keep you alive? Or, at the very least, warn you," she grumbled.

"But what if there was nothing you could do? If it was one of those... things related to an inescapable fate?" he fretted.

Stella rolled her eyes and grabbed his hand, turning it palm-up. "For one, James, you're not touched by fate, so that sort of situation doesn't apply. And for another... well, look." She traced a line down the centre of his hand. "This is your lifeline. Yours ends here." She tapped a point on the line near his thumb. "And, if I had to guess—and we both know how accurate my guesses are—you are right here." She tapped another point a little bit higher on the line. "You have a little more life, yet." She smiled weakly. "I think."

"Your confidence is overwhelming."

"Life is a dangerous thing, James. You could be caught by a stray bullet tomorrow."

"But you haven't foreseen my death."

"No."

"Oh. Well, then. That's good." James recalled what inspired his anxieties. "I'll be leaving soon, then? The island?"

"Yes."

She didn't seem as happy about this as he would've imagined. "But... that's good, isn't it? I'm taking you off the island... if I'm leaving—"

"I won't be going with you," Stella interrupted.

He looked at her, startled. "What? Why?"

"It isn't time yet."

"Stella, don't be absurd. You've wanted nothing more than to leave this place since you arrived. Here's your chance," he insisted.

"Don't be absurd yourself," she shot back. "If I left now, with whom you're leaving, I'd get killed."

"Do you know that for sure?"

"What have I told you about my propensity for knowing things for sure?"

"Then come with me!" James rose from the table to take her by the shoulders. "Starling, you told me once that I'd take you away from here. I'm offering to. If I have to leave, come with me. We can look for a life somewhere else."

"And what would that do to my already-tattered reputation? James, it's not time yet."

"Make your own time," he pressed, shaking her gently. "Don't be bound by these... these superstitions and mystical pointers. Grasp what you want with both hands."

Stella smiled sadly, and he was surprised to see her black eyes swim with tears. "How piratical of you," she accused him playfully.

"Hush, you," he returned, releasing her shoulders. They stood, less than three feet apart, facing each other in the middle of Stella's main room.

"Starling?" she eventually said, arching a brow.

James flushed—he hadn't meant for that to slip out, but since he'd been calling his friend that in the privacy of his thoughts for some time...

He shrugged. "It suits you. Just like a starling, you are birdlike and occasionally annoying," he quipped. He didn't feel like explaining his childhood pet at the moment.

Stella laughed lightly. "As nicknames go, it isn't bad. What shall I call you, then? Jim?" she teased.

"Try it and I'll shoot you."

Silence descended again, James' offer still hanging in the air between them. Both knew it would have to be addressed.

Stella was the first to break the quiet. "I appreciate the offer, James. I truly do. More than you can know. But I can't leave yet."

"Why?" he asked, feeling inexplicably disappointed.

"It isn't time."

"What does that even mean, Stella?" he demanded harshly.

"You wouldn't understand." She apparently noticed that he was about to loose his temper, so she stepped closer and laid the palm of her hand flat on his chest. "Trust me. Please? This is something you cannot understand, but trust me when I say that it is not yet time for me to depart."

"Does that mean you were wrong? That I won't bring you off Tortuga?" James asked, trying to understand despite her words.

"No, you will. My sense of that has never waned. Besides, Tia told me that, and she's never wrong," she added, smiling wryly. "And that's also how and why I can guarantee your life. You haven't yet taken me away, but since you will, ergo you must live to do it."

"It sounds... woolly," he demurred sceptically.

"Sometimes these things are."

He placed his hand over the one resting on his chest. "Then why do you depend on them?"

"Because they're what I know. They've never let me down before."

"Neither have I," he insisted.

She smirked, and he instantly knew what was coming. "No, but you did vomit on my shoes."

James rolled his eyes and turned away from her in exasperation. "Oh, for God's sake, Stella..."

She laughed her light, bell-like laugh that came and went as swift as the wind. He sensed her approach, and felt her place her hand on his arm. "I do want to leave this place. I do. But now is not the time—not if I want to make land anywhere else." She paused. "When the time comes... you will return for me, will you not?"

James turned to look down at her, and met her clear black eyes. "I will come back for you. I promise."

"You are a good friend," she told him, smiling.

"As are you, though I confess that you vex me terribly at times," he replied wryly. He paused. "This is why you are so... er..."

"Yes," Stella replied, rolling her eyes and thankfully saving him from finding a suitable adjective. Then she looked down, suddenly seeming very small and sad. "I will miss you when you leave."

He couldn't think of any reply to that which wouldn't make him sound like an ass, so he merely gathered her into his arms and held her.

Later—much later—after the house had gone to bed, Stella padded out into the main room where James slept. He had claimed the wall by the bookshelves; all his things (few though they were) were stored there, and she had made sure to string one of her sheets on a rope to make a curtain, of sorts, in order to give him at least the illusion of privacy.

It was towards that curtain that she silently moved; her feet were bare, so she made no noise. Once she pushed the muslin aside, her friend was revealed, sprawled on his makeshift bed and fast asleep. She knelt on the floor beside him, her white nightgown pooling around her as she reached out to place a gentle hand on James' unshaven cheek.

To be honest, Stella wasn't entirely sure what she was doing out here. She had James had an unspoken rule that, once they decided to retire, Stella would remain in the bedroom, and James would remain in the main room. It was one of their submissions to propriety—something she generally agreed with wholeheartedly. So what was she doing here now?

She wasn't sure if she wanted James to awaken, or remain asleep. She didn't know what she'd do if he did happen to wake. She didn't know why she was touching him. And she certainly didn't know why she was leaning closer, nearly touching their noses together. Perhaps she meant to kiss him... she wasn't entirely sure. All she knew was that she had an overwhelming desire to be near him.

But as Stella leaned closer, her loose black hair slid over her shoulder, and fell in a sheet around their heads. Several tresses landed on James' face, tickling his skin and making his features twitch. He shifted slightly in his sleep, and murmured something, his breath mingling with Stella's as she hovered over him.

But only because Stella was so very close did she hear what he murmured...

It was "Elizabeth."

She jerked away, snatching back her hand as if burnt. Before she quite knew what she was about (but after all, wasn't that the reason she was out there anyway, leaning over her best friend like a prince from a fairytale, lips a hair's-breadth apart, as though kissing him would change the world, make the sky melt and reform their lives into something like unto those silly fantasies they'd concocted one afternoon?) she was back in her bedroom, door shut, breathing coming quick after her dash across the room, and feeling inexplicably like she'd been hit in the chest.

"Fool," she whispered to herself (why not get back into the habit of talking to herself? After all, he will be leaving, and she'll be alone in this house again). "Fool. What were you expecting? He loves her. Loves Elizabeth Swann, the lovely, spirited lady."

What was left unspoken was the comparison. If Elizabeth Swann was the lovely, spirited lady, then Stella Bell was the unattractive, bitter witch, the foil to her perfection... and ever the second in James Norrington's heart.

For some reason, that hurt. It stung and ached and cut all at once, and Stella was surprised to find tears spilling from her eyes. She almost never cried—not unless she was in unbelievable pain. She could count on her two hands the amount of times she had shed tears in the last decade, and usually there was a death involved. Indeed, the last time she could recall weeping was the death of her mother.

But since the evening had already been full of strange and unsure actions, why not weep for no reason? she thought viciously, curling up under the bedclothes and allowing the tears to fall.

After all, Stella would never admit that she might possibly, maybe, perhaps be weeping over a man, and the fact that he loved another.

When in the morning, James was awakened by the sunlight shining through the wide-open curtains of his little partition, he was slightly confused; he always made sure to close them after retiring to sleep. But he merely shrugged and supposed that either the wind blew the curtains open (not an unlikely happening when inhabiting the same dwelling as Stella Bell) or that he had perhaps kicked them open in his sleep.

And if Stella was a bit colder in her manner, he simply attributed it to his coming departure. There was, after all, no reason to connect her to the open curtain.

A/N part deux: Wow, this actually turned out to be a little longer than I'd thought it would be. Cool. But this was a fun chapter to write, even if it was something of a hit-and-miss for any advancement in their relationship... ah well. They both have scads of baggage.

Please review! Let me know what you think! Even if it's just an "I liked it, good job on being productive". I like reviews. They remind me to keep going.