A/N: Major violence warning for this chapter. I figure it's expected in this fandom and with the 'M' rating of this story in particular, but I just wanted to give you a heads-up, since there hasn't been much of it in this story yet.
The first rumble of cannon fire - followed by an almighty boom as it made contact with the town - acted as a timer in Theo's mind. A warning that she didn't have long before the havoc reached the house. There was no guarantee that it would, but from what she remembered of the movie, the pirates were keen to wreak complete and utter destruction on the entire island, and James' house had the unfortunate disadvantage of being along the way from the docks to Elizabeth's mansion. Preparing for the worst dictated that she couldn't rely on what she hoped might happen…and logic alone told her that the worst probably would happen.
Having already poised herself for action, she slid from the bed immediately and strode towards the door in her bare feet. The clothing had been a problem - if there was to be danger, she didn't want to be encumbered by a dress, even if it felt safer to have layers upon layers covering her body than just a length of linen. But no corset would provide safety against a blade - she wasn't a sodding Romanov, with undergarments lined with jewels - and if she could barely negotiate the stairs in one of her dresses, anything else was out of the question. So she'd donned her usual nightdress, and beneath that her shorts and tank top from home.
Hattie was in the hallway when Theo exited her room, her hair in disarray but her usual working dress still on. Apparently the cannon fire had caught her undressing.
"What was that?" She asked her with a confused frown.
Good. Confused was better than scared.
"Do you have a key to my bedroom door?"
James had always been the one to lock her in at night, of that much she was certain. His footsteps were easily distinguished from Hattie's. She now prayed that he wasn't the only one who knew where the key was.
"I-What? Yes, but why?"
"Go and fetch it, and then wait in my bedroom for me. If you hear anything before I get back, lock the door, and barricade it with the dresser."
"Hear what? Miss Theo-"
Theo turned and left the confused questions in her wake, hoping dearly that if she left, Hattie would have no chance but to abide by her words simply because there would be nobody to question. Hiking her nightdress up above her knees and gripping it tightly in one hand, she flew down the stairs. A brief stop at the front door made sure it was locked (it was, and she could have cried over that small fact alone, because she had no idea where to even begin looking for the key to that one), and then she was running through the lower levels of the house, down another, smaller and narrower set of stairs, and into the basement kitchen.
The cook was gone - with the size of their household, he wasn't needed full time the way he might be in a bigger or more prominent house, and would often dip in and out of several houses across the town to offer his services. It was a good and a bad thing, both. After all, he was a large and strong man who knew how to wield a knife. But sheer size did not win fights, and at least this way he was one less person she'd have to worry about in the house. The best news, however, was that his tools were provided by his employers…and therefore did not travel with him.
The stone flooring of the kitchen was freezing beneath her feet, and she was already pleading with the gods above that the knives she sought wouldn't be locked away in some sort of safe. But then she spotted a massive knife that was more machete than knife, clearly meant for butchering large cuts of meat, and gave heartfelt thanks to the eighteenth century idea of health and safety. Seizing it, she barely stopped before she was spinning on her heel and running for the stairs once again, moving so quickly her feet barely had time to touch the floor.
Try as she might to cling to her calm, there was no denying the fact that her heart thundered in her chest as she sprinted. With every set of stairs she leapt up two or three at a time, she kept waiting for undead pirates to materialise - dropping from the ceiling or rolling down the chimney and out through the fireplace like some sort of bizarre homage to Santa Claus. None did, but she didn't stop expecting it until she'd barrelled back into her bedroom. Hattie was at the window, her back to Theo, but her total stillness betrayed her horror.
"Key," Theo breathed her demand as she shoved the door closed behind her.
Hattie turned - in one hand was the key, as requested, and in the other sat what took her a moment to recognise as James' knife. The one she'd thieved from him upon arriving here, no less.
"I got it from Commodore Norrington's study when I fetched the key," she explained.
"Good - great," Theo nodded quickly "Here, give it to me. It'll be easier for you to use this."
She was more familiar with the sort of knife Hattie held - although she'd never quite used one in a fight. What mattered was that she was pretty sure she could. She'd only taken the bigger one from the kitchen because it was the first one she'd seen, and she suspected she didn't have time to go hunting for more before assembling a pro/con list for each one. Hattie would be better off with the bigger one for sure - she could slash it around from a greater distance, if it came to it.
Their problem was a more pressing one. Zombie pirates. The keyword being zombie. How the fuck was she supposed to stop them? Somehow, she doubted the usual method from shows like The Walking Dead would apply - get them in the head and they're done for. They weren't typical zombies, they were their own whole separate thing. More undead than mindless brain-eating monsters. The rule of thumb in situations such as these was simple. If you can't run, you hide, and if you can't hide, you fight. Well, there was nowhere to run to, she had to hope that hiding would work, and if it did not she'd have to work out some way to fight.
They couldn't die, but whether or not she wanted to kill anybody wasn't a big moral dilemma she was in much of a mood to get into anyway. Could they be knocked out? She doubted it. So that left disabling them in some way. But how? Was she to hack off limbs? Lock them in a wardrobe somewhere and leave them to gather dust? And that didn't even start on the issue of if more than one appeared - which was more than bloody likely. Fighting one would be a bitch. Fighting two, three, four, five? That would be a death sentence. Christ, wouldn't it be a bad joke if whatever force that conspired to send her here only did so for her to lose her head to some unnamed crew member of Barbossa's before the action even kicked off?
The silence stretched on at first. Theo tried to mentally plot the progress of the crew members up the island, speculating how long it would take all in all and where they might be now, but it was difficult to discern time in circumstances such as these. Seconds and minutes felt much the same, and the only real measurement of time that she had was going by her breathing, which she kept strictly regulated. In for seven counts, out for eleven. If she didn't breathe, she wouldn't be able to think, and if she couldn't think, she wouldn't be able to act. Then, from downstairs, a crash sounds and her eyes fluttered shut in resignation. Her heart sank to hear it, but it also felt hopelessly inevitable. When her eyes opened, Hattie was staring at her in horror.
"Get on the bed, and stay there - we don't want them seeing our shadows beneath the door," she said, keeping her voice at a low murmur.
Hattie obeyed wordlessly, all but scrambling back into the far corner of the bed, her grip on the massive knife sending her knuckles white. Testing the floorboards beneath the soles of her feet before putting her weight on them to make sure they wouldn't creak, Theo moved to the side of the door, her back pressed flat against the wall. After a moment's pause, she pulled off the nightdress and cast it aside, leaving her solely in her modern clothing from back home. The dress would just get in the way. She realised too late that she should've put her boots on.
The crash was soon followed by another, the sound of smashing glass ringing throughout the house. She tried her best to discern how many were inside, but it just sounded like a whole lot of senseless carnage - objects shattering or being overturned, drawers being yanked from cabinets, the works.. There was no talking - no shouts back and forth. Maybe that was a good sign, but it could have also meant that they just weren't talking.
"Perhaps they'll just take what they want and leave," Hattie breathed, voice barely even a whisper.
Theo said nothing. She didn't have much of a chance to, really, for almost as soon as the words left her lips, heavy footfalls sounded from the stairs. Hattie tried desperately to motion her over, but Theo shook her head and pressed a finger to her lips - although there wasn't any real need for that. From the deathly white shade Hattie's face had gone, she wouldn't be able to speak if she tried.
There was good news - though she hardly dared believe it. By her reckoning, only one pair of feet stomped up the stairs, and no more disruption floated up from the ground floor, which suggested whoever it was hadn't simply left his brethren behind downstairs to go exploring. One, then. Please, let there only be one. All too quickly, the intruder reached the top of the stairs. Then came the sound of the first door in the hallway - the one that led to the linen cupboard - being opened, and then quickly shut again. The room in which she and Hattie hid was next. Theo tested her grip on the knife, flexing her fingers around it.
The doorknob turned barely a millimetre before the lock stopped it. Either they would move on, or…they wouldn't. And she would just have to deal with whatever one happened. Theo clung to her calm as she waited to find out which would happen. Never before had a silence felt so utterly deafening. Then the door was tried again, and then the worst. A laugh. A low, sinister one that threatened to chill her far more than the sound of the cannon fire ever could.
Was it worth still trying to barricade the door anyway? No, it would only confirm that there was indeed somebody in here - perhaps renewing his efforts to get inside. The other handful of doors in the hallway were flung open in quick succession after that, and Hattie seemed to breathe a sigh of relief across the way. Theo, however, did not. She knew that he was just scoping out the rest of the house before he returned. Confirming her suspicions, when the footfalls returned they didn't continue back to the stairs, but stopped outside the door again.
And then the bastard started knocking. Before now, she'd never known that a mere knock could sound mocking, but this one did - three knocks in slow succession, as though he was visiting for afternoon tea. Theo waited. She didn't have to wait long, though. Instead of rattling the door anymore, it seemed whoever was outside was in no mood for games. Maybe Barbossa had given them a time limit on their carnage. A swift, heavy kick landed on the door - just below the lock. The wood splintered slightly, the panel bowing, but it held. It did not hold a second time.
Theo's last coherent thought before the door flew open was to wonder how in the hell she might fight a man with a sword. And then she was facing that problem head-on. The intruder was grimy and ragged, but everything in his posture as he stepped into the room made it clear he was poised for action, a sinister grin on his face.
"My, my, the good Commodore Norrington is a lucky man," he chuckled, eyeing Hattie.
He had not yet noticed Theo — and later, she would realise that his knowing James' name should have been her first hint that something was amiss. Her second should have been that he was unarmed, but she was too busy being grateful for that fact alone. Knowing she would only have the element of surprise for so long, she fell upon him, wielding the blade like a madwoman and slashing at whatever she could get…which didn't turn out to be much. He was much more agile than she'd expected - and adjusted to her presence much more quickly than she had hoped. The pirate grabbed at her wrist, but she shook him off easily, rolling it out at the weak point of his grip - the thumb - rather than wasting time trying to pry his fingers off of her. He seemed unperturbed.
"A lucky man, indeed," he teased, apparently entirely unfazed "I like 'em with a little fight."
Everything about him reeked, but his breath was the worst. Utterly rancid. Even being this close made her stomach turn. He grabbed her wrist again amid her errant slashing - this time with both hands, and yanked it to an angle that had her crying out while he busied himself with keeping her unsteady on her feet at the same time, pulling her this way and that on unsteady footing so a dozen things vied for her attention all at once. She had to gain control of this skirmish, and do it fast. But then his grip threatened to break her wrist, and the knife clattered to the floor.
Letting go of her with a smug laugh, the pirate was no doubt about to mock her again as she gripped her wrist, obviously thinking that she was nursing her wound, the fight quite gone from her. That was his mistake, for she grabbed her wrist with her other hand, held onto it, and used the force of both arms to swiftly spin and drive her elbow into his face. The pirate howled.
Scrambling away, all of Theo's focus was honed in on getting back to the knife. Her fingers barely brushed the hilt of it, though, when a fist wrapped itself up in her hair, anchoring itself at the base of her neck, and pulled. She would have been content to fight his grip, let him have the handful of hair he had in a vice grip, and live with the bald patch it would result in, but he practically had her by the scruff of her neck. Moving was impossible from the angle he grabbed her by, and her heart sank as she realised just how practised this move seemed.
Now having almost full control of her, the pirate yanked her back, and then he drove her forward again the moment she was off balance - driving her face into the sharp edge of the wooden door frame once, and then a second time for good measure. The first time the left side of her brow took the brunt of the impact, and the next time the grip he had on her hair forced her chin up, and her mouth took the brunt of the damage. Stars erupted before her eyes leaving her dazed and confused, and a warmth followed - dripping down her eyebrow and pooling over her lips. In her daze, it took her a moment to register as blood.
The pain hadn't kicked in yet, not other than a terrible hot pounding that made her brain feel like it was too big for her skull, and she didn't have time to allow it to do so. The pirate finally let go of her hair, curling his arms around her waist and hauling her up so that he might drag her elsewhere. Theo had no intention of finding out where. Reeling forward so she was doubled over, she didn't have the proper leverage to throw him over her hip or back, but she wasn't totally helpless. Reaching through her legs, she grabbed at one of his grimy ankles behind her with both hands, and yanked it up towards her chest.
The pirate sprawled to the floor with a shout and a curse, but his grip on her didn't falter and she landed atop him, her back against his chest, with a grunt. Reeling back, she tried to connect the back of her skull with his face or jam her elbows into his ribs, but he kept wriggling out of the way, and the angle of her head had all of the blood that had just been running down her face trickling up her nose instead, threatening to choke her. Coughing and spluttering, she clawed at his hands as her foggy mind tried to catch up and find a way out of this bind - and then Hattie appeared above her, yanking her from the grip of the pirate's arms…and pressing the massive butchering knife into her hands.
There was no time to hesitate, nor to stop and think. Not with her injuries and the jumble that her mind was in. She had to end it, and end it now. And so she struck. Whirling around just as the man began to rise, she sank the blade into the first weak spot she could find - hard. It wedged into the side of his neck, blood spraying everywhere when she pulled it back, ready to strike again. But then she stopped. The blood. It wasn't right. It wasn't the trickle she remembered from the movies when Elizabeth stabbed Barbossa. It gushed out while the pirate, or so she'd thought, grappled at his neck with one hand, staring at her with bewilderment while the other hand still reached out lamely as though he still hoped to win the fight. Then he fell back entirely with a heavy flood, gurgled wetly for a few moments - moments that stretched on into an unbearable lifetime, all the while Theo stared at him with wide, wild eyes long after he stopped moving.
Not a pirate. Not an undead one, at least. A man. A mortal man. One who…what? Had chosen to take advantage of the carnage? She couldn't make it make sense. Christ, in her state she couldn't make standing up straight make sense. Hattie came up behind her - something that had Theo flinching away on instinct, and then leaning into the touch when she saw who it was. Curling an arm around her shoulders, Hattie urged her silently towards the bed. She obeyed numbly on shaky legs.
And just like that, she was back in her body. Back to reality. Her left eyebrow stung something fierce, the blood pooling down towards her eye, while her lower lip felt like it was on fire. Split, no doubt. Blood streamed down her chin - fuck, she was covered in the stuff, and she had no idea how much of it was even her own. Her lungs fought to get a single gulp of air into her system, and when she took a staggering step backwards, she almost slipped on the blood covering the floor. The knife almost slipped from her hands, suddenly feeling impossibly heavy, but she caught it and clung to it. Between her own heavy breathing, the pounding of her head and the ringing of her ears, she had no idea if it had stopped yet - if the cannon fire had ceased. It might not be over yet.
They sat there in silence, clinging to one another and, straining to listen for the sound of another intruder above their own erratic breathing. Her muscles twitched constantly beneath her skin, even as she sat relatively still with the exception of the shaking. All the while, Theo was keenly aware of the corpse on the floor, even if she never let herself look. Instead, she used her tongue to take stock of her teeth and make sure she had them all left. She did, but all she could taste was copper.
"I think it might be over," Hattie whispered after a few minutes.
Theo welcomed the news that she wasn't simply in too much of a state to hear the cannon fire. Had they really rushed the island and seized Elizabeth so quickly? Somehow, the night felt like it had lasted years and mere minutes all at once. Theo let go of her grip on the blonde to lift a trembling hand to her lip, and then her eyebrow. Both still bled fiercely, but she couldn't find the will to do much about it. Her limbs felt like ice, and she finally grabbed the nightdress and pulled it carefully over her clothing again, almost shaking too badly to manage it - thankfully, she had help. They got it over her head, and it was more or less immediately saturated in crimson. The red only seemed all the more stark in the cold moonlight beaming through the window. As she stood to adjust the garment, however, noise erupted in the house once more.
The front door slammed open so fiercely that she'd be amazed if it still had hinges, and terror truly gripped her. It seemed she'd finally lost her grip on the calm. Maybe it was because the adrenaline had passed, leaving her exhausted, or maybe it was just because she was pretty certain she didn't have another fight in her. Not with her vision obstructed in one eye by the wound on her eyebrow, and the way every breath had her airways burning thanks to the blood she'd almost choked on during the fight.
But what choice did she have?
"Hide under the bed," she whispered to Hattie "Stay there, no matter what happens."
Even her words were clumsy, hindered by her swollen lip.
"No," Hattie insisted immediately "I can help."
Whoever it was that had entered the house was making quick progress, the sound of boots stamping on the hardwood flooring and crunching on shattered glass painfully foreboding. She decided not to argue with Hattie. It would do little good. Breathing in sharply - and almost sobbing on the inhale half way through - she staggered to her feet and walked shakily back to the spot she'd been in last time this had happened. Only this time she was standing beside the man. The man she'd just killed. There was no time to move him so that they could close the door - then again, from the state of the door there wouldn't be much closing it at all anymore. Should they run to a different room? Were they doomed to play this whole song and dance out over every room in the house until not a single door in the building shut properly anymore?
This time, her grip on the knife was so fierce it threatened to break something in her hand. She wouldn't drop it this time - she fucking refused to be that stupid again. The footfalls thudded up the stairs, and Hattie rushed to join her side, their arms touching in the biggest show of comfort they could offer one another in that moment.
The boots pounded through the hallway next, not stopping nor pausing like the last one had. She'd hoped the sight of the body on the floor might deter them, but if anything it made them speed up. The distinctive metallic sound of a sword being drawn reached her ears, and she was certain she could've vomited thanks to the fear alone. Or maybe that was because she was likely concussed, she wasn't sure.
Waiting as long as she dared, she held off until she could hear the very breathing of the newest intruder, raised the great butcher knife up high and ignored the sharp, aching protest of her wrist as she did so, and hurled herself around the corner with a shriek, sidestepping the corpse with a swiftness that surprised even herself. The new arrival, however, was a gifted swordsman, and had the knife forced from her grasp with little more than a twisting manoeuvre of his own blade.
A good thing, too, for once she registered who she was looking at, she could've cried with relief that the blow didn't land. Or maybe just relief in general. James Norrington stood in the middle of the hallway, his face ashen, and his eyes wide with shock and worry both. And then Theo really did begin to sob - but only because now she finally could. She was safe.
A/N: So sorry for not getting the previews out to reviewers last time! I wound up getting caught up and writing this one in one sitting, and I figured you guys would rather have a full chapter than 150-200 words. I'll be more diligent with sending them out next time. Skip this next bit if you've got no interest in me being sappy. I hope you enjoyed the chapter!
I have to say, the unbelievably kind reviews from you guys absolutely make my day, especially because while fanfic is what I write for fun/to stretch my legs, writing in general is basically what I do full time in an effort to make a career out of it, with the end-goal being getting real books on real shelves in real shops one day. I'm currently like 75% of the way through the first draft of a great hulking bastard of a fantasy novel that is consuming my soul. I love it, but when I need a break from that, I write fic — so when you guys are so lovely about my writing, it gives me a real boost in a way that stretches far beyond this specific story.
I wanted to say that here and then we need never dwell on mortifying things like emotions ever again xoxo - I'm massively grateful. Thank you!