A/N: A shorter one, sorry! Chapters are as long as the need to be and I don't like to pad them out for the sake of it, buuut the next one is going to be a doozy, so hopefully that will make up for it. Chapters should definitely be getting longer more regularly now that the action is kicking off. Can't wait to watch the movies 5000 times each month to make sure I'm getting things right - if I don't hate them by the end of this, I'll be amazed xoxo
Though Theo had long since abandoned her theory of having pissed off the fairies - instead choosing to quietly tease out a different theory when her mind needed something less immediately pressing to dwell on - she now couldn't help but feel like they were deliberately fucking with her. If not them in particular, then something. Some higher power that had it out for her for whatever unknown reason. She'd always classed herself as more or less agnostic - not having any trouble in believing that there was something lurking out there, just entirely unsure of what that thing was. Zombie pirates and half-squid men walked this world, so why not a deity, too? Hadn't it already been confirmed with Calypso? If she existed, it stood to reason that other gods did too. Well, whatever the case, recent events had conspired to have her dangerously close to deciding that if there was some higher being lurking up there in the great unknown, they were too much of a bastard to worship.
Countless times in the weeks prior, she'd idly wished that she might have something to occupy her mind on this day, if only so that the great final countdown didn't drive her mad with fear and dread both. Then the kiss happened, and the awkwardness and the regret were more than enough to have her wanting to think of nothing but Barbossa instead. Okay, maybe she couldn't shift all of the blame onto some spiritual entity. Maybe she had to take accountability for her own shitty choices and moments of weakness - but she'd be damned if blaming gods and spirits alike wasn't so much easier than spending the day resisting the urge to claw her own face off in sheer mortification. Her luck of the Irish, it seemed, had well and truly run out.
She still could not remember who had initiated the kiss. Yes, James had apologised for it, but wasn't that just the gentlemanly thing to do? Shouldering the blame and calling it a mistake was a far more smooth way of handling this than shoving her back and saying "what the hell are you playing at you daft cow?". It was the easiest thing to believe, if only because it was the worst thing to believe. Embarrassment was fun like that. Her rational mind insisted the truth could, and likely would, very well be somewhere in the middle - that they were both tipsy and sentimental and therefore stupid, acting upon a moment of temptation fostered by the easy camaraderie they'd built during her time here. Still, her mind was plagued with mental images of herself drunkenly accosting him while he tried to bat her away. It made for a painful morning.
By the time she was up and dressed, once again in the green dress she'd been given by Elizabeth, James had already left - very early, at that. Hattie passed on his apologies, explaining that there was a lot of protocol to go through and that he would send the carriage back up for her once he arrived at Fort Charles. It was a relief, in a way, knowing she wouldn't have to spend a carriage ride sitting directly opposite him while trying to look anywhere but at him, but something about it still gnawed at her. The best she dared to hope for before finally falling asleep the night before was that they'd go on as if nothing happened - it might be the elephant in the room, but only for less than twenty-four hours before chaos took over and blew their problems out of the water with cannon fire. It turned out that even that had been a bit naïve to hope for.
Part of her was sorely tempted to skip the ceremony entirely. Jack would be here soon. Any minute now, if he wasn't already swaggering through the town. It was a thought that excited her and worried her all in one. She supposed that she could always trawl the docks, seeking him out to make introductions if nothing else. If James was as intent on avoiding her as she suspected, he wouldn't question her absence. It was an idea she abandoned before she'd even totally considered it, though. The only chance she had at Jack actually listening to her rather than brushing her off was if he was locked in a prison cell, unable to go anywhere else, with nothing else to occupy his time. It didn't take any real gift of foresight to know that if she tried to corner him at the docks, he'd dismiss her with little more than a wink and a flirty comment before she could even finish telling him her name.
And so, by the time she was sitting in the carriage and making the journey to the fort, she had entirely resigned herself to putting on an expressionless mask (if unable to muster a truly brave one), and ride out the day. If there was only one bright side for her to look at, it was that after last night she'd no longer loathe the prospect of leaving the good Commodore's home. Christ, if tonight wasn't the night when everything was destined to go to shit, she might've moved back onto the beach just to avoid the awkwardness alone.
The sun blazed down on them with a fury even by Jamaica's standards. Elizabeth had pride of place at the ceremony in the row before her, and out of the corner of her eye Theo was keenly aware of the way she fanned herself in vain and discretely tried to make her clothing a bit more bearable. She was struggling herself, but Elizabeth couldn't seem to catch a breath at all, and Theo couldn't help but wonder if she'd been laced into the corset far too tightly. Then, though, at one point she bowed her head, causing the slightest hint of a gold chain to peek out from beneath the neckline of her dress, and any thoughts of fashion were gone from Theo's mind - for she knew what dangled at the end of that chain, and what it would soon bring raining down upon them.
She spent the rest of the ceremony with her eyes downcast. In part it really was because her mind was otherwise occupied - in a fog waiting for what nobody else could see - but the awkwardness was also too much to bear. That in itself was stupid, because James was fully engrossed in going through the whole elaborate procedure of the ceremony, and nobody else knew of what plagued her from the night before, but logic made no difference. Logic had no place in her life as of late. The only way the whole thing could be made worse would be if he glanced up, perhaps meaning to look to Elizabeth, and caught her eye instead, which was why she did not look. That, however, was luckily something she didn't really expect, either. There was so much going on in the fort today - such a sheer number of things to look at and focus on instead - that she struggled to believe anybody would pay her much mind at all.
The ceremony itself was the exact sort of thing she'd expect from the English - something they were still known for, even in her time. They knew how to put on a spectacle, in any sort of official capacity. However, in her time it was usually reserved for things to do with the royals specifically, so it wasn't like she was invited to events such as those. Nor, honestly, would she want to be. She'd always been much more of a "beer at a gig" kind of girl, and she doubted ol' Queen Liz was opening up mosh pits at the wedding banquets of her grandchildren.
All of that being said…she enjoyed it as much as she could, during the few occasions she looked up to catch some of the marching, sword-waving, and official rigmarole that she was either too modern, too Irish, or too common to really appreciate or understand. It did have her feeling like a bit of a crappy friend (for that was the word she was still clinging to - friend) that she couldn't really be happy for James today as she'd so often sworn to herself that she would be, but knowing how it would end didn't help matters. Hell, knowing how today alone would close did not help. It was like watching a friend get a fancy new car that they were destined to total in a crash the very next day.
The true relief came when the ceremony itself was over and the mingling could begin - something she never thought she'd be able to say as far as this lot were concerned. But most of the people gathered here had seen her elsewhere by now. Their faces, while not all-out familiar like the ones back home, at least weren't entirely foreign to her now. She knew who to ask about their children, who not to ask about their spouse, and who to avoid speaking to altogether. What she was most thankful for, on the final day she likely could be thankful for it, was that she had friends here.
Admittedly, she gave Elizabeth a wide berth - solely because she knew James would soon seek her out, and if he was going to avoid her then Theo resolved to be hopelessly immature and avoid him right back. It was a stroke of luck that she had the convenient excuse of not wanting to impact the events of the day even by slowing them down for a moment or two. Who knew what havoc that alone could wreak? Elizabeth could faint a moment sooner and crumple down to the floor rather than to the water. Groves, however, she had no problem talking to, and when he found her playing the wallflower at one of the party's more quiet corners, she offered him the best smile she could.
"Miss Theodora," he greeted, moving to stand beside her.
"Mister Theodore," she countered, inclining her head in greeting "Or Lieutenant, I suppose."
"How are you?"
Groves had grown to be a sorely underrated star in her time here. It was James she owed most of her thanks to, and Elizabeth had taken her under her wing with a steadfast determination that might've been condescending in anybody else a handful of years her junior. But Groves? Groves had been a good friend. She would miss him.
"I'm well - yourself?"
"Oh, fit as a butcher's dog, as always," she replied.
He smiled.
"An interesting turn of phrase. Irish, I'm guessing?"
"Yeah, well, you know me, I barely speak English."
Her response was distracted at best - for across the part of the fort dedicated to the celebrations, she noticed James approach Elizabeth and ask to pull her for a chat. Now that they were well and truly in the events of the movies, there was something eerie about watching them take place. It was difficult to properly see them through the crowd, even with James in his elaborate regalia.
"Are you well?"
"You just asked that," she pointed out with a strained smile, forcing her eyes away as the two made their way up the steps that lead to the battlements.
They were in full view for a moment or two when they finally reached the top of the stairs, and then they continued on through a stone archway before moving entirely out of sight. When she looked back to Groves, he had already followed her line of sight and was just returning his gaze to her, his eyes filled with knowing. For the entirely wrong reasons, she was stubborn enough to mentally insist, but it still left her feeling oddly caught.
"No, I meant…You seem out of sorts."
"Just tired," her smile felt less strained now, perhaps because she was telling the truth "It's been a long day. Long week."
"A long year, I imagine," he pointed out.
"Mmm. Certainly a memorable one so far," with every word she spoke, she waited for it to be interrupted by inevitable pandemonium breaking out "You were very good in the ceremony."
Groves gave an amused smile "I'm surprised to hear you say that, considering I wasn't in it. No lieutenant was."
"Oh fu-for God's sake. I'm sorry," she winced "I don't suppose you have a twin?"
"Three Theo's in Port Royal? They should be so lucky," he teased - and thankfully hadn't seemed to take offence.
Theo laughed - a real laugh, if not a tired one - and opened her mouth to respond when a horrified shout broke through any and all revelry.
"Elizabeth!"
…And there it was.
"Excuse me, Miss Theodora," Groves said quickly, snapping into soldier mode at breakneck speed before running towards the source of the shout with near enough every other military man in attendance.
Her first instinct was to leave. She could not follow it, though, no matter how much she wished to. How would that look, from one who was supposedly Elizabeth's friend? But that didn't change the fact that the shift in the atmosphere had her feeling much too out in the open to be safe now. The hot weather she'd been internally bemoaning not a moment ago had already completely abandoned them, turning grey and cold in the instant that Elizabeth must've plummeted into the water. It felt foreboding, it didn't just look it. Some instinct deep within her urged her to run now, and run far. She was certain that she'd have felt it even if she hadn't been quite so 'blessed' with her knowledge. That suspicion was confirmed when several of those in attendance turned their attention away from the calamity up to the heavens instead, frowning in a way that seemed far more spooked than inconvenienced.
Mere moments passed before the cavalry was cutting their way through the crowd, led by Commodore Norrington himself, sprinting for the fort's exit so that they might rush to the docks. The sheer and utter fear on his face sent a streak of empathetic pain through her. For all James knew, he had just lost the woman he loved. Rather than letting that freeze her in place, though, Theo rushed through the path they left behind them, cutting a straight line through the horrified onlookers, up the steps to where James and Elizabeth had stood just a few moments ago, and peered directly downwards. The newfound wind that howled about the port pulled at her as she did, threatening to send her down too if she wasn't careful. She was just in time to see the small shape of a bandana clad head breach the surface, Elizabeth's unconscious form in his arms.
Despite herself, she smiled. A grim, resigned sort of smile. Her first glimpse of Captain Jack Sparrow - the man who was a legend both here, and even in her own time. The one who was famed in these stories for his unreliability…the one she now had to rely on. Sod's law, wasn't it?
"Thank heavens - somebody has her!" Another who had joined her at the battlements called back to the crowd, who breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Theo didn't share in their relief, for while they thought the disaster had been averted she knew that it had only just begun. Come nightfall, Port Royal would be in flames.
A/N: Fun fact, while 'fit as a butcher's dog' is nowadays always taken to mean just somebody who's in very good shape or form, which is also how Theo meant it. However in the 1800s (which is when it originated) there were instances when it was also taken to mean somebody who is close to something that they want, but cannot have.