A/N: Thank you for the loveliness in response to the prologue! If you choose to review, I'll reply with a little preview of the following chapter (usually anywhere between 100-200 words) as a way of saying thank you - mostly because it gives me something worthwhile to respond with rather than just trying to find different ways of phrasing 'thanks' :)
Oh, and in this universe only the first three movies exist.
Ever since Theodora Byrne was a child, she had recurring dreams of the ocean. Well, they weren't quite dreams - not the kind typical of a young girl who had seen The Little Mermaid one too many times - they were more hallucinations-slash-sleep paralysis, really. She'd be curled up, dozing off, and the moment she reached that no man's land between sleep and wakefulness, her bed would cease to feel like a bed and become...well, a boat. One that was bobbing up and down atop some imaginary stretch of water.
It was the strangest thing, and no matter how often it happened, it had her instinctively jerking up in a panic every time. Starting from such a young age that she couldn't even really pinpoint when it began, it then continued on and on through her childhood (during which she was dragged to any and every doctor who would see her when she mentioned it to her parents and discovered that no, it was not a normal thing that was just part of sleep), and then into her teenage years (during which she was dragged to any and every psychologist and therapist that might give her the time of day), and had followed her to where she was now, in her early twenties...which marked the point that she just threw her hands up and accepted it.
As long as it was manageable and wasn't exactly causing any harm, she didn't see the point in making a big thing of it. Yes, it could be embarrassing on the occasions that she spent the night elsewhere, and it was a pain in the ass when she was exhausted and just wanted an uncomplicated sleep with no hurdles, but it wasn't like she'd ever known anything else, so she didn't really know what she was missing. Usually a stiff drink, a sleeping pill, or even a cheeky joint every now and then, was enough to send her on her way if she was in no mood to wait until she was too exhausted to be perturbed into avoiding her bedtime 'routine'.
It was because of all of this that, on the morning of her twenty-fourth birthday, when she awoke from a shallow doze to feel that familiar sensation of being at sea, she just closed her eyes all the tighter and did her best to nestle into the covers. But there were no covers to nestle into. More details trickled in from there. The ache in her neck, from the angle her head was forced into thanks to the lack of a pillow beneath it. The constant breeze that made her hair tickle her face.
Grunting, she reached out blindly for her blankets, the small part of her mind that was conscious patiently waiting for all of this to make sense. But when her outstretched fingertips skimmed across rough, splintered wood before eventually reaching the end and dipping into freezing water, patience was replaced with panic. Using her arms to force her upper body upwards, her eyes flew open and then immediately shut again, squinting against the light much brighter than that of her bedroom. The jerking motions threatened to capsize the large piece of wood she'd been lying on, water sloshing across it and soaking whatever parts of her body touched the wood beneath her.
Ocean. All she could see was ocean, stretching out in every direction all around her, dark and opaque in the dim dawn light. Or was it dusk? It was impossible to tell, not without knowing which way was north. A high pitched whimper of fright sounded in the back of her throat, as if she was a goddamn dog, as she was stuck somewhere between trying to comprehend her surroundings, and trying to keep her movements as minimal as possible so that she wouldn't be sent straight into the water. That would be the only way that she could make this situation worse.
There was no logical explanation for this. The last thing she remembered, she'd been hiking in a landlocked county of Ireland, and the next she was…here. Any set of circumstances that her addled mind dreamt up to try to explain this just felt like an utter reach. It wasn't like anybody would bother kidnapping her, just to drive her two hours to the coast and set her adrift at sea. Not unless doing so was some sort of very specific fetish that she'd yet to hear of. It couldn't have even been a prank gone wrong, she'd been alone - she'd been exploring a trail she'd never seen before, and then she'd…
"No, no, no," she voiced it the moment her thoughts led her to their destination "No! Fuck, no!"
Unfortunately, her insistence didn't prove effective against the conclusion. The fairy fort. She'd found a fairy fort. And rather than turn around and walking in the exact opposite direction, she'd…well, she'd behaved like an idiot. Like a bloody tourist. Like somebody who didn't know better.
This, though, was something far beyond even the wise knew. The fairies were known to put curses on those who disrespected them and their ground, but she'd shown no disrespect - and even then, such curses were much more…well, feasible. Had she somehow managed to piss them off, she could expect a broken ankle on her journey home, or perhaps even a serious illness in the near future. Things idiots would explain as union of sheer misfortune, and confirmation bias. Even those who were thoroughly committed to their scepticism and cold, hard science would be hard-pressed to explain this.
A voice pushed through the din of terror in her mind, one that sounded awfully like her father, gripping her and giving her no choice but to listen. Don't panic. When you panic, you don't think. When you don't think, you get stupid. Don't panic. Her fingers scrambled for purchase against the grooves of the wood beneath her, but all it got her was a splinter or two. Breathe - she had to breathe. That would help.
It took a good few minutes of enforced deep breathing, breaths that didn't feel like they were actually doing anything, before she could even grasp at the very edges of her wits. One thing at a time. One problem at a time, rather than turning the amount of problems into a problem itself. The sun, she'd start with the sun. There wasn't much she could actually do about that, truth be told, but time would tell whether it was rising or setting, and then she could deal with that information after the fact.
Please don't let it be night. Please don't make me float here in the dark all night. She forced the fear back once again before it could manage to get another word in. There was no point in fretting about it. If night was coming, she would just have to deal with it. Sharks hunt at dawn, and at dusk. That was a fact, not fear, but it didn't help matters. She'd never been a fan of the open water at the best of times - when she was on it in a bloody boat - and if she dwelled on what might be below her, she'd soon start panicking. Sharks can sense distressed heartbeats, too. But could they do so if she wasn't directly in the water? She hoped not, but she didn't dare assume not. If the weather turned foul, it wouldn't matter anyway - she'd be in the water before long, and being in the water cut her chances of survival down to-…No. No.
Once more, she turned her focus to breathing. In for seven, then out for eleven - over and over. The counting helped more than the breathing, truth be told, and only once she was certain that she had strayed from the borderline of hysteria did she stop. And then she could focus on what she could do.
Getting her hands beneath her so that she could balance precariously on the wood she found herself afloat on, she carefully turned this way and that, scrutinising the horizon in every direction for even the faintest speck - a speck that might indicate land, or a boat. Any sign of life that wasn't of the marine variety. Nothing. Only call for help if you can see the help you're calling for. Otherwise you'll just waste energy and attract unwanted attention. The voice belonged to her father once more, rather than her own blind panic. She took that as a good sign.
…but it was just about the only good sign that there was. The most crucial advice he gave her, the advice he always hammered home, was to do with preparation. Taking stock of a situation before venturing into it. That wasn't a luxury that she'd been afforded here; shit, she didn't even have a life-raft. A clumsy, one-handed pat down told her that all she had on her was her wallet - her backpack had not followed her here, forgotten at the base of whichever tree she'd dropped it by. Brilliant. Whoever discovered her body, should there be anything left to discover, could use it to pay for her funeral.
Dawn. She'd awoken at dawn. The purple and pink cast sky had gradually given way to a brilliant blue - a blue so vivid that it was only matched by that of the water she ceaselessly bobbed up and down upon. It would've been a sight to marvel at, had she a strawberry daiquiri hand and some hope that she might live to see the next day. And while she could've cried with relief that she wouldn't be out here in the pitch black, unable to see anything that might choose to take a curious bite or two, the daylight brought its own set of problems. This was not an Irish sun that she was under. Not even in the dead of summer had she experienced a heat like this at home. Scorching didn't even begin to do it justice, and it was not yet midday. If whatever supernatural forces had conspired to send her here were capable of such a thing, it also stood to reason that they could send her further afield from home than she'd originally thought.
It was funny - the way that panic disappeared in the absence of anything to actually do. Oh, the first couple of hours were sheer hell. She'd waited to see if it was getting darker or lighter, turning around and around all the while like some sort of demented spinning tea-cup in hopes of spotting land…and in fear of spotting fins. But there was nothing, and only nothing. And the longer that nothing stretched on, the more she resigned herself to sitting and waiting - like some sort of caged animal.
The sun, though, was her primary concern. It took some fumbling and careful manoeuvring, but she eventually managed to remove her flannel shirt and draped it across her legs, exposed to the sun by her shorts. If it came to it, she could soak it in the water before draping it across herself for some reprieve from the heat, but it wasn't something she particularly wanted to do. There were no clouds, meaning at night all of the heat would dissipate and it would become freezing. Her shirt wouldn't provide much warmth if the salt water had dried it all out to the point of discomfort. It was a choice between suffering now, and suffering later.
It was that debate that she bandied back and forth in her mind to stave off the boredom as she lay back on her piece of driftwood, and tried desperately not to think of the fact that from below, to a hungry shark, she may have looked very much like a seal if she didn't manage to keep her limbs curled up and out of view.
Water had won out against the sun in terms of her biggest concern - but only because of the sun, so it was six-and-two-threes in terms of who the biggest bastard here was. She'd once heard it said that the oceans were really the biggest deserts in the world - after all, for all of the water they held, none of it was drinkable. But lord, was it tempting.
The most she allowed herself to move was in order to give some new patch of skin a break from the sun until whatever was newly uncovered could no longer stand it once again, and the process would repeat. Her chest and shoulders were faring the worst, left entirely uncovered by her tank top, but her legs were a solid runner up. Any patch of skin left exposed to the sun now felt like it was aflame, like her entire body was being slowly carpet-burned. It was sod's law that she fell prey to two stereotypes about the Irish - her red hair, and the fact that she burned instead of tanned. In fact, her skin probably matched her hair now. But there was nothing to be done. Without shade, heat-stroke was a surety. The prospect of dying of starvation or dehydration now seemed laughably delusional - she'd fry before that happened.
At one point she'd tried to turn onto her front to shield the burnt skin there and allow her back to take some of the brunt of it all, but that move had sent her directly into the water. She hadn't tried it again after that - because she didn't want to deal with whatever her splashing might attract, and because she wasn't sure how many more times she'd be able to pull herself back out of the water again with the way the sun was scorching her. But the coolness of the water had been a major relief - right up until the saltwater was baked into her jean shorts by the unrelenting heat…but moving to take them off seemed like an impossible prospect. Not with the haziness steadily working its way through her.
The sun might have been easing up as the afternoon stretched on. She couldn't tell - it had already done its damage. The wood beneath her bucked and bobbed beneath her like the world's most hellish rollercoaster, she had to keep her eyes shut in a futile attempt at staving off the nausea. Was this what happened to missing people who were never found? They pissed off the fairies and found themselves dropped into the middle of nowhere until they succumbed to the elements? It seemed almost ironic, all of the 'training' her father had drummed into her, all for it to come to nothing. Were she more lucid, she might've felt guilt at how she'd let him down.
Instead, she felt almost high. Delirious. Whereas before she did not move because she feared capsizing, now she did not move because she knew if she did, she'd lose control of herself and begin drinking the sea water…well, that and she wasn't sure she could if she tried. The worst part of it all wasn't even the suffering, but the familiarity of the sensation of being at sea. Every so often her addled mind would trick her into thinking that it was just another one of her strange little episodes, and that she would open her eyes and find herself safe at home. She'd believe it whole-heartedly too, her heart soaring with relief…until she slowly managed to peel her eyes open and see nothing but bright blue sky above. And then she really would cry.
It was a pathetic sort of crying - a tear or two furiously wrung out before it was more dry sobs than anything, her chest aching with horror and sorrow combined. And then she'd give way to the haze again, soon forgetting what she was even crying over in the first place.
Then, when she was on the verge of some sort of oblivion - be it sleep, unconsciousness, or something more permanent - she heard something. Voices? She didn't open her eyes to check. Not this time. It was another trick, another hallucination. Another spate of fucking futility. But then it came again, and again. Shouting. Followed by a bell. When she tried to open her eyes, though, they did little more than flutter, and her head was too heavy to lift. So she let it be, and waved a hand grumpily at the voice in her head furiously screaming at her to do something - anything. There was nothing to be done, she'd established that…and she was so very tired.
What small part of her held any lucidity felt smug when the voices stopped. Another trick. One that she hadn't fallen for this time. Yeah - fuck you, brain. That smugness lasted just up until she bumped up against something.
Adrenaline shot through her and this time she did move - only because she wasn't consciously trying to do so, it was just instinct. Her eyes shot open, expecting to see a shark that made the bastard from Jaws look like a baby (she didn't dare hope for land), but her panic and disorientation sent her straight into the water.
Her cry was swallowed by ocean water half way through - and then the ocean water was promptly swallowed by her a moment after, but before she could even begin to think about kicking towards the surface, before her head was little more than a foot below, something wrapped around her arm. Opening her eyes, she immediately shut them again as the saltwater stung them much in the same way it burned her lungs, and for one horrifying moment she waited to feel teeth dig into her skin. Waited for the end to come. The only thought in her mind then was not a pleasant one, either. They say drowning is the most painful way to go…hopefully whatever this is finishes the job, so it doesn't come to that.
And then she was being pulled - upwards, not downwards. She could do little more than give into it, the limpness of her limbs in sharp contrast to how her heart hammered away at her chest like it was trying to break free. When the movement stopped - when she was released - she was no longer in the water at all. Eyes screwed shut, she felt beneath her blindly, her fingertips met with smooth wooden panels. A boat?
Coughing and spluttering furiously, she forced her eyes open and was met with the sight of a small group of men…but she must have still been hallucinating, for they were in costume. Wigs, elaborate eighteenth century soldier garb and all. Like something out of an episode of Black Sails, or Outlander. There were around six all in all - four of whom faced her, steering the small wooden rowboat they were in towards a great hulking mass of a ship that loomed in the middle distance behind them. But it was unlike any ship she'd ever seen - outside of movies and old historical paintings, at least.
Jesus, she really was losing it.
"Well, she's alive at least," the man closest to her, who was not rowing, spoke as he tried his best to coax some form of sustained eye-contact from her "Miss? How did you come to be here?"
It was difficult to give him the eye-contact he sought with the way the world was spinning, but when he reached out towards her she grabbed onto his embroidered coat sleeve and clung to it for dear life, although her hands didn't seem capable of matching the strength she was attempting to have. It was the only confirmation she had that this was real, and she was in no state to gauge how comfortable (or uncomfortable) he was with it.
He faltered for a moment, and seemed like he might pull away, but then he gently clasped her forearms as best he could with the way she clung to him like a limpet - although it seemed more to steady her than to offer comfort. Or perhaps he feared she was going to try to climb into his lap. Then he spoke to her in slow but firm tones.
"You are safe, Miss. I am Captain Norrington of the HMS Interceptor. What is your name?"
She stared at him, stilling entirely but for the involuntary coughs and shivers that continued to wrack her. Now that she could afford to panic, it appeared that her body was determined to let it all out in one wave. Or maybe it was just the heat stroke. The result was the same though, culminating in shudders that wracked her entire body. But she had bigger problems - for Theodora knew then that her ordeal had finally driven her mad, because she was eye-to-eye with a fictional character.
A/N: There will be a more detailed account of how Theo came to find herself in her current predicament in future chapters! I'm not just being vague out of laziness, I promise.