A/N: Thank you guys for the lovely reviews so far! I'm excited to get this story well and truly underway! Most chapters will be longer than this, I just didn't want to make this one longer than it really had to be.
The doctor did not speak to her. It might've been a relief, if it wasn't for the fact that he solely addressed Norrington instead. That was just infuriating. An infuriating relief, then, she supposed - if there was such a thing. The check-up wasn't particularly invasive, but Norrington stayed by the double doors at the side of the room and kept his gaze trained firmly on the opposite windows, never once allowing it to flicker in her direction. The physician wiped away a small patch of the paste from the skin on her left forearm - something that caused her to bite down on her lip to avoid reacting - to inspect the burns beneath, before reapplying it and humming his approval.
"It may be too early to say, Captain, but I see no cause for lasting damage. She'll experience discomfort for a good while, but nothing more serious so long as she's kept out of direct sunlight while she recovers, and receives plenty of liquids."
So, she was limited to this room - likely to the frustration of Norrington, as well as herself. She'd put him out of his room, after all, even if it was at his own insistence. But it didn't really matter. Where else could she go? Out onto the deck, where every man out there thought she was a rambling lunatic? Ironic, really, considering all of them very well could be rambling lunatics themselves. Or in the other direction? Out the window and back into the sea, this time with nothing to keep her afloat and out of the jaws of curious predators, all with the hope that somebody would find her again, and that said somebody would have a firmer grasp on the date, if not reality in general. Hell, with the way her luck was going at the moment, the next person to find her would be Barbossa - or maybe Davy Jones himself. She doubted she could pull off the whole part-crustacean look.
With a nod and a gesture of Captain Norrington's hand, the doctor took his leave. She noted that he made no mention of the tap dance her heart was doing its best to perform as he'd checked her pulse. Maybe he just ascribed it to her weak and hysterical female mind, but whatever had kept him silent, she was thankful for it. It gave her more of a chance to collect herself internally - and hope she'd already done a good enough job externally. The door was left ajar in the doctor's wake, and she could hear the hustle and bustle of the men going about their work outside, along with the waves lapping at the sides of the ship.
Taking up the chair from behind the desk. Norrington set it down beside her bed, not particularly closely, but not so far away that he'd have to raise his voice to be heard. Whether that was due to propriety, or because of the knife he knew she had on her, she wasn't sure. She didn't even know what was or wasn't proper by their reckoning, although that in itself wouldn't exactly constitute a glowing character reference in his eyes. Truth be told, she was itching to move the knife from her pocket to her sleeve. He knew she had it now, which sorely fucked over any chance she had at the element of surprise.
If he wanted to do anything, although she found herself doubted he would - albeit not enough to stake her life on it - it would be easy for him to stop her from getting her hands beneath the covers, beneath the loose, oversized shirt, and into the pocket of her jean shorts. A weapon that wasn't immediately to hand was always a bloody useless weapon. But she'd been worried about the doctor discovering it in his inspections, unsure of quite how thorough the inspection would be, and feared that such a move, if discovered, would be seen as some sort of instigation. She wasn't in any state to be instigating much.
"I find it hard to believe that you have no husband, Miss Byrne," Norrington cut straight to the point, regarding her frankly.
She bit back her snarky response of 'how flattering', or 'well, I've heard worse lines'. He didn't seem the humourful sort, and whatever her situation - whatever her time period - she knew that for now at least, her fortunes rested entirely upon Captain Norrington's good-will. She had no desire to test it due to something as petty as an inability to hold back a joke. There was too much on the line. And anyway, it was one of the few things she actually wasn't bloody well hiding.
"I see," she said "Well. I'm not."
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-four," some damn birthday she'd had, adrift at sea and trying to communicate with the gods to see if they'd either help her, or just kill her off faster.
"I can think of no women of your class who remain unmarried at such an age," he said bluntly.
"Of my class?" She echoed, unamused.
What, so because she was working class she was supposed to have been married at fifteen and popping out kids on the yearly ever since? What a snobby bastard.
"You give yourself away," he tilted his head "Perhaps if it was only for your ability to read, I might have thought you of the lower classes. A printer's daughter, 's becoming common for even women of the lower classes to learn how to read in hopes of bettering their prospects. But nobody of such standing could afford gold with which to paint their nails."
Looking at her fingernails, gleaming with her cheap gold nail polish, she couldn't help but laugh. The furrow of his brow told her he did not appreciate that response.
"It's fake. Er, cosmetic. It looks like gold, but it's not. Quite the fashion back home, actually. I'm sure it'll cross the ocean soon enough."
"Your boots," he continued swiftly, gesturing to her black Doc Martens where they sat beside the bed, sticking stubbornly to his line of questioning "They are…strange, but fine quality. Incredibly fine quality, I've never seen anything like them."
"I've no siblings - less mouths to feed means more funds for basic necessities," she shrugged.
"Do you have an answer for everything?" He quirked an eyebrow.
"You don't need an answer for everything when you're telling the truth," her tone had a bite to it, she couldn't help it.
While he had every right not to trust her - considering she very much was not telling him the entirety of her story - she was still annoyed. Whatever she was keeping from him, it wasn't harmful. Not to him. She had no ulterior motives, she wasn't playing a game, she wasn't some sort of criminal mastermind. And yet skepticism shone through every line that formed in his face as he frowned at her.
"I don't understand why I'm being interrogated," she had to reign in her annoyance as she spoke, doing the best to tone down her accent so he could understand her perfectly plainly "I'm not a stowaway, I didn't sail up to you and demand help, nothing in how I came to you was in my control, so what exactly do you suspect me of?"
People - guilty people - when interrogated would pretend they were unaware of the insinuations behind the questions, like being aware of it in the way that anybody with a brain would, would make them seem paranoid. Guilty. It was the not calling it out that smacked of guilt, in reality. He continued to frown, but something flickered in his eyes. Then he blinked slowly and sighed, finally looking away.
"…My bedside manner leaves something to be desired, you must forgive me," he said slowly, and with the greatest sense of begrudging "I am not accusing you of anything, Miss Byrne. Not even the most conniving brigand could feasibly execute a plan that would get them aboard my ship in such a way. But as things stand, you are in my care and I must discern how best to help you. Had you had a husband out there looking for you, things might've been easier."
She accepted his reasoning, as well as his apology, nodding slowly and relaxing back down into the bed, iron will the only thing not letting her hands fidget.
"So, no husband, no siblings. Might we be able to contact your father when we make port?"
Only if he was willing to wait three hundred years, give or take. While his questions might've been his best attempt at being helpful (even if she was certain she still detected at least the slightest ounce of suspicion there), all it was doing was reminding her just how fucked she was in the present moment. Or was it the past moment? It didn't matter. Whatever the case, she was alone. Hopelessly alone.
Theo liked to think that the exhaustion was what allowed the tears to well in her eyes. The terror over what she'd been through, what she was still going through, and what was yet to come. To save her ego the bruise, she furiously insisted to herself that if she was in a better state, there wouldn't be a single crack in her demeanour. It offered precious little comfort as she furiously blinked the tears away, swallowing against the lump in her throat while she shook her head in response to his question. She didn't quite trust herself to give a verbal response.
"Well," he coughed uncomfortably "Not to worry. There are other avenues. It may surprise you to learn that you're not the first castaway to fall into my care, Miss."
Ah. Will Turner. That had to be who he was referring to. Unless Port Royal was teeming with slews of unfortunates who'd been washed into the arms of James Norrington. If that was the case, she was pretty sure he'd have given up life in the Navy long ago…or he'd have brushed up on his bedside manner, at least.
The assurance would've been comforting, had she not known exactly to whom he was referring. Will was a man. He could waltz into town, learn a trade, and quite literally hammer out a life for himself. An earning. What could she do? Hang around and hope some random man would, by some miracle, dub her (apparently outright geriatric self) good marriage material? That was the best case scenario, and it wasn't something she could ever bring herself to hope for.
Lord, why was weighing anchor at a modern port very quickly beginning to feel like the less likely option? Like straight-up denial?
"I currently have my men going through the goods we've seized during this voyage - with any luck, they'll find some appropriate clothing for you to wear, and then you can take the air on deck when your strength has returned to you, although I would caution you to stay above deck."
Something must've flashed in her eyes at the suggestion such an instruction might make.
"You're perfectly safe," he added "But it would not be proper…whatever your background."
Was that why the door had been left open, then? The constant guard? She'd assumed it was all down to the display she'd put on when they'd dragged her out of the water. Or her kleptomania-tinged habits since. That it was a show of distrust, and not something done with her benefit in mind. Jesus, she never thought she'd live to see the day where a man looked out for her honour. Guilt welled within her, and it showed on her face in the form of downturned lips and an inability to look at the man sitting in the chair.
Clearly worried that she was about to burst into a fit of hysterics, Norrington rose to his feet.
"Some food will be brought to you shortly. Have you any other needs, speak to the man at the door - he'll inform either Groves, or myself."
"Thank you," she said softly, and then called after him just before he could reach the door "Captain Norrington?"
He turned slightly, apparently expecting another request.
"I'm sorry," she said - and felt no embarrassment in saying it "For the fuss."
That earned her the slightest fraction of a smile, although it was more tired than genuinely warm.
"We've spent these last few months chasing pirates about the seas, Miss Byrne. Believe me when I say that this is far less fuss."
And then she was left with her thoughts…and, eventually, with a piece of hard tack and a mug of goat's milk to slowly force down.
BREAK
The men did manage to procure a dress in the end - albeit none of the…infrastructure that was required to go beneath it. She sorely doubted her sports bra was what tailors of the time had in mind when they set about crafting a garment. Luckily, they'd also sent up a bolt of fabric that, with a bit of creativity, could do as a makeshift shawl. Should she find herself in any condition to wander around, she could use it to hide the fact that she had no bloody clue how to wear a dress that had more fabric than the floor length curtains in her living room back home.
Had she had more free time to think, she might've worried about the procurement of the dress. It was another strike against her hopes that she was simply aboard a ship full of delusional madmen. Being particularly dedicated, eerily familiar looking, LARPers was one thing, but having random historical accoutrements stashed below deck in case the need for them should arise? It didn't sound likely.
Thankfully, or not so thankfully, she was saved from her dread by her own shoddy condition. It seemed that her body, now content that it no longer had to run on pure adrenaline and self-preservation, was now happy to let the effects of her ordeal, as it was now known, well and truly catch up with her. Her lunch made a reappearance not an hour after she'd eaten it, and she was relegated to nothing but sips of boiled water thereafter.
The nausea was helped little by the motions of the ship, and the only thing that seemed to help much was throwing the windows of the room wide open and staring resolutely at the horizon. Closing her eyes wasn't much of an option, which really put a dampener on her newfound favourite hobby of curling up in a ball, while shivering and sweating at the same time. The only way for her to deal with the freezing sweats that wracked her, all while her skin felt too hot to the touch, even beneath the paste (which had begun to itch, probably thanks to the buckets she was sweating) was to awkwardly straddle the covers while lying on her side, one leg beneath the covers while the other was slung on top of them - modesty be damned.
Mostly, she slept, but only when she could drift off without fully intending to. It was difficult to tell how much time actually passed as she slept. It was broken up only by the doctor's visits to apply more of that damned paste - which was pleasant going on, but torturously uncomfortable within a few hours thereafter - and cups of water or milk being pressed to her lips by persons unknown.
Through it all, there were only three words that consistently and coherently ran through her head. Fucking fairies.