The first thing Theo noticed as they emerged onto the deck was that the main mast of The Interceptor had collapsed, and had come to rest against the rail that lined the sides of the Pearl. They hadn't even been involved in so much as a skirmish yet, and they were already too late. If she was being honest, she didn't entirely remember how it was that Will came to be trapped below - just that he was searching for the medallion, and that the general carnage of the battle stopped him from resurfacing again. The mast, splintered and cracked, was an entirely unwelcome puzzle piece.

Still, she refused to be discouraged. Maybe the bag had been moved - maybe it was in the captain's quarters. She hadn't actually looked at the wallet since she'd shown it to Jack, so she still dared to hope she might've left it, or that in their "fallen behind" status, one of the crew had taken it upon themselves to move her things and take her cabin for themselves in the time that had passed since…even if it had only been mere hours. Pirates were nothing if not opportunists.

Moving swiftly, both to be less of a target when it came to errant bullets or cannon fire, and so that Barbossa's crew might not notice them, Jack led the way to the ship's railing and hopped up into it with ease, snatching the rope from a crew member who had just tried and failed to swing across. Glancing at the rope, and then at her, Theo answered the unasked question that showed on his face.

"No way - fuck that," she shook her head quickly, absolutely unwilling to play out some sort of Tarzan and Jane feat mid-battle "You take it, I'll run across the mast."

The glance Jack offered in response to that was doubtful at best, but any reservations he had about her plan obviously weren't strong enough to stay and argue the point. Instead, he chose to adjust his grip on the rope and prepared to swing across.

Not wasting time, Theo jumped down from the rail and wove through the crowd of bloodthirsty pirates - all of whom were too busy with the battle at hand to make more than an half-hearted attempt to grab at her as she passed, grips which she easily twisted out of as she continued on her way, keeping low and praying no bullet would hit its mark. When she reached the mast, she made the mistake of looking down and realised just how much of a drop it was from here to the ocean - and with plenty of firing cannons on the way down just to add an extra flair of danger.

Crawling would be safer if she didn't wish to fall, but it would also be slower - and she fancied her chances of surviving the fall more than she did being shot. Leaping up onto the rail, she places one foot onto the mast, then the other, and sprang across it as quickly and gracefully as her clunky boots would allow, not even allowing herself to stop when she swore she felt an errant bullet or two whizz just past her head. When she got to the other side, she all but fell onto the deck of The Interceptor, chest heaving and limbs abuzz from the adrenaline.

Pushing herself up from the ground after little more than a split second's rest, she began to dart through the fighting towards the door that led to the captain's quarters, bursting in and finding the room almost eerily quiet in comparison to the chaos not two feet away. Kicking the door closed behind her, she first strode to the desk and found nothing - not her satchel, not her wallet, none of it. The lack of surprise didn't dull her disappointment, and she continued to pull apart the room, clinging onto the very vainest of hopes. But it wasn't in the desk drawer, beneath the chair - nor was it beneath the bed, in the dresser, or hiding behind the curtains. Only when she'd need to start pulling up floorboards to continue her search did she finally give up, cursing as she raked a hand through her tangled hair.

There was no way she could get below deck. Nor could she run to Will and ask him to retrieve it for him - even if the debris had fallen in such a way that would allow it, he didn't exactly have a whole lot of time. The last thing she needed was for one of the heroes of this tale to get himself blown up

"Motherfucker!" She cried out, driving her boot through one of the wooden panels on the wall.

She wasn't going to cry over a handful of photographs - she refused to fucking cry over something so pathetic. And still, her throat tightened and her eyes stung as her grip on herself wavered for just the slightest moment. The photographs weren't an absolute need. It was fine. She'd see her family again - maybe not soon, but one day. Having her wallet (or not having her wallet, in this case) wouldn't change that. It changed nothing, not really. It was fine. It didn't matter.

And none of this very reasonable logic helped her feel any better about the loss.

"Jesus Christ," she breathed as she pulled her foot free of the splinters she'd just created.

She would've mentally sent some sort of telepathic apology to James for her actions, but considering the state the ship would soon be in, it didn't matter too much. What would he do? Drag the ship up from the ocean floor to do some sort of CSI analysis? Go all 'this wound was inflicted before death' on her? Nah.

Inhaling deeply, she shook her head. Mostly at herself. This wasn't the time to have a breakdown over something so stupid. She had to get off this ship - and preferably stay alive while doing so. Taking up her shortsword once again, she turned in the direction of the doors…only to find one of Barbossa's crew standing there. He was one of the many she didn't recognise - a nameless, lineless thug. And an ugly one, at that.

"Escaped did we, witch?" He asked lowly.

"I'll come quietly," she held her hands up - keeping the handle of the blade wedged between her thumb and her palm, not quite wanting to drop it before her peaceful surrender was accepted.

He chuckled "Nah. This ship's to go up in flames - a fitting end for a witch, is it not? That's what they do to them off ashore."

"You know what they do to pirates on land, right?"

The glare he gave in response to that told her all she needed to know about her well thought out argument. Already her mind raced with ways to get out of this. If he trapped her in here - tied her up somehow or locked her in, nobody would think to check. Nobody would have a chance to check, considering how they'd be dragged back to the Pearl. Could she turn heel and run for the windows on the other side of the room? She didn't fancy her chances of squeezing out of them before he caught up and dragged her back in.

So, a fight it was, then. Despite how she clung to it, she quickly accepted that the shortsword would do her no good. At most, it offered a false sense of security. She couldn't kill him - if she could, it was something she would've been willing to do if she absolutely had to, but not something she wanted to do. It would be her second murder, self defence or no, in little more than a week. Logic dictated that she'd have to get used to it sooner or later if she wanted to survive this world - that she must leave her modern 'real' world qualms (and morals) behind, and she knew it to be true. But she had no desire to join the likes of Jack the Ripper just yet. So what could be done? It just seemed a matter of finding out. Rather than let him call the shots on how this fight would go, she barrelled towards him, ducking at the last moment when he slashed through the air where her head had just been with his cutlass, tackling the pirate like they were playing rugby.

The cutlass was nothing to sniff at, but he couldn't do a whole lot of damage - not serious damage, at least - so long as she stayed close. At first she tried to stab at him a few times with her own blade, but it prompted no reaction at all no matter how deep the blade went in, and the cost of keeping it in her hand just made it more difficult for her to keep her grip on him. Praying she wasn't being stupid, she dropped the shortsword and made use of both her hands being free, hunkering down so she couldn't be thrown off balance, and clinging onto him, grappling as he tried to shove her back so he could get the blade between them. After a few unsuccessful tries, though, he gave up and instead took to slamming the hilt of the cutlass into her ribs and back, likely hoping that she would recoil. Gritting her teeth against the sharp pain, she kept her hands twisted tightly in his ragged coat, clinging on like a barnacle.

It wasn't the best long-term plan, though, and each blow made it worse and worse until she was scrambling for what she might do next. Their stumblings sent them bumping into the door frame, and she got an idea - courtesy of her last would-be attacker. Pushing harshly forward until the pirate's boots threatened to squeak against the floorboards beneath them as he pushed back, she then let up her pushing altogether, throwing him off balance and stumbling towards her. Taking advantage of his momentary lack of balance, Theo seized him and threw all of her strength into shoving his face into the door frame. What was the point in getting her own face bashed in if she didn't at least make a learning experience of it?

It didn't work quite as well as it had on her, unfortunately. There was no gruesome spray of blood, no doubling over…but it did help. Giving a cry of surprise, he appeared stunned for the briefest of moments as his cutlass clattered to the ground - probably from surprise more than pain - and she immediately let go and tried to run past so that she might get lost amid the battle. He recovered too quickly for that, though. Giving a choked cry as he caught her by the collar of her shirt, practically clotheslining her as he dragged her back towards him. Rather than struggle fruitlessly against the hold, she was more concerned about stopping him from taking up his weapon once again.

Whirling around, she tried to throw a fist at his face out of pure instinct, but he caught it and used it to twist her arm. She tried in earnest to pull her arm from his grip trying to push through the weaker point at his thumb, rather than where all of his fingers were wrapped around her wrist, but his grip was pure steel…and he used it to strong-arm her towards him, before wrapping his free arm around her neck in a chokehold. Shit. Flailing, she didn't have a chance to wedge her free hand between her throat and his forearm in time, and when he freed the one he'd been gripping, both of them came up in a vain attempt to try to claw at his grip. It garnered little more reaction than a laugh.

When her clawing did little, she sought a new target, already gasping to catch a breath as she could do little other than struggle as she watched the battle push on in front of them. Nobody glanced their way - not friend nor foe. No help was coming. If she could just get her feet on the floor, she could use her weight to throw him off balance. But the bastard was tall, and used his grip on her to haul her up, her own weight strangling her almost as much as his tight grip.

Reaching blindly backwards, she tried to jab and scratch at whatever she could - his hair was cropped close to his head, too short to yank, but there was still his eyes, nose, ears - and instead found herself crying out hoarsely when she felt his teeth bite down into the soft flesh at the base of her thumb. Pulling her hand back to her chest, she tried to drive her elbows back into the soft flesh of his stomach, but it was no good. Black spots danced in front of her eyes, and her ears were starting to ring.

And then the pressure was gone from her neck, and she was being dropped to the deck like a sack of potatoes. Pushing herself up and bracing for another attack, by the time her senses slowly began to return to her she realised the ringing wasn't from the chokehold - it was from the buckshot that Elizabeth had just fired into her attacker's face. Now that did prompt a reaction. Dragging her back and out of the way of the doorway, Elizabeth beat the pirate back into the captain's quarters as he pawed at his eyes and the skin around them, both badly singed. They wouldn't have long before he healed and his sight returned.

Scrambling for the cutlass he'd dropped, Theo used it to bar the double doors shut the moment Elizabeth had them shut. Then the blonde turned to her, gripping Theo's arms to speed up the process of her finding her footing.

"Will's trapped below deck - help me get him out," Elizabeth said urgently, staring her in the eye to make sure she comprehended what she was saying.

Admittedly, it took a moment. The air was thick with smoke and gunpowder, both acting like sandpaper on her already sensitive airways - but she worried that helping her would be a terrible idea. In no state to properly comb through the pros and cons and the potential ramifications (or how they might be solved) she deferred to her rule of thumb that changing things was generally bad. But Elizabeth had just saved her life. And what could the two of them really do that Elizabeth could not have done herself? They wouldn't shift the debris just the two of them, not even an inch. The thoughts felt like they were demanding to be heard through a fog as she allowed Elizabeth to lead her by the wrist so they couldn't be separated in the carnage, but in the end they didn't matter. The moment they reached their destination, they were being seized upon by more of Barbossa's crew.

"No! No - Will! Will!" Elizabeth was screaming, fighting the grips of the pirates who had seized one arm each.

Even had she thought there was any point to fighting, Theo wasn't sure she'd have been capable of shrugging off her own assailants, and it only took one of the Pearl's crew to shove her towards the starboard side of the deck where all the rest of the surviving 'good guys' had been herded to be kept prisoner. Head bowed, she focused entirely on breathing. She needed the foggy haze to lift, and she needed it to lift quickly, but every breath had her throat feeling raw and fiery. In the end, she collected herself just enough to hear Barbossa's cry of victory clearly.

"Gents! Our hope is restored!"

Elizabeth continued to cry out for Will - and the cries only became more frantic and ragged when his own, muffled as they had been, died out entirely. It stood as a sharp contrast to the cheers of Barbossa's crew.

What followed was almost comically business-like in its speed, calm, and efficiency. Theo, along with all of rhe prisoners, was transferred back to The Black Pearl - a process which she went along with almost subconsciously, still reeling from her all too close encounter with Barbossa's crewman. Said crewman had been helped out of the captain's quarters of The Interceptor in the aftermath, and had not lifted his steely glare from her ever since. Were it not for Barbossa's announcement that the carnage was over, she knew he'd have run her through long ago. Her hand was still bleeding from his attempt to fucking cannibalize it, but the sting was sharp and grounding - much preferable to the ache in her throat. She just hoped it didn't wind up infected, because she highly doubted the arsehole brushed his teeth.

By the time they'd all been forced to back up against the main mast of The Black Pearl, another two of the Pearl's crew crossed back over from The Interceptor with self-satisfied smirks on their faces, nodding to their captain in passing to confirm they'd carried out their orders to rig the ship to blow. None of the others put two and two together, but why would they? They were busy licking their wounds from their defeat. The mood hardly brightened as Barbossa gave the order for some distance to be put between them and the sorry remains of The Interceptor.

A pang of sadness struck Theo as she watched it - one that she hadn't anticipated in the slightest. She'd always thought the attachment men had to their ships in these days as being painfully similar to men who were overly proud of their cars in her own time, but she wasn't afraid to admit she'd been wrong. The ships…they definitely held an aura to them. A personality, if it wasn't too daft a phrase. And The Interceptor? That was all James. More than that, it was the first place she'd found safety upon arriving here - even if she hadn't known it for what it was at the time. Seeing it in the state it was in now, although not unexpected, felt…ominous somehow. Foreboding. The sails of the broken mast fluttered weakly in a stray breeze, and then went limp. She looked away. There were bigger problems to deal with - like her new best friend among Barbossa's crew striding up to her.

Bracing herself for a punch, a slap - hell, even a stab. How many tears would Barbossa really shed over her death? She clenched her jaw when instead he lifted a grimy finger to the necklace about her neck. Her only remaining link to home.

"I think I'll be keeping this," he announced smugly.

He gave it a tug, but the chain was far too thick for it to do any good, other than having her grunt in discomfort. Sneering his irritation, he tried to slip a hand about her neck to find the clasp, but Theo butted her head forward, connecting sharply with his nose.

"You little cu-" fist reeling back, he was being shoved aside by his captain before he had a chance to swing it at her face.

Barbossa's own eyes trailing down to the necklace, he gave an unimpressed sneer at his man "It's naught but silver, not even a jewel on it. Worthless to us. See to the other prisoners."

The man knew better than to argue with his captain, but Theo felt like she'd just traded an eel for a great white as the fearsome captain narrowed his yellow-tinged eyes at her.

"And what powers be it that you have that convinced Jack to keep ye, Miss Theodora?"

He was the first person she'd come across since arriving here that said her name properly. The way her family did - like there was no 'h' in it. T'eodora. It was such a small, daft thing, but it sent waves of homesickness through her, already adding to her pain and weariness.

"I s'pose I amused him," she answered back weakly.

"Aye, I can imagine so," he snickered "A shame, then, that it appears it didn't do him much good in the end."

She said nothing - and she appeared to bore him for it, for he then nodded to one of his men who shoved her back, tucked in tightly with the rest of the crew as they began to loop a long length of rope around them all. The distance between them and The Interceptor appeared to be satisfactory, for he gave the order for the ship to stop, and turned to eye the wreckage as he smoothed his thumb across the medallion he'd so desperately sought from them.

"If any of you so much as thinks the word parley, I'll have your guts for garters," Pintel threatened at a growl.

He'd barely moved past Elizabeth before she was ducking beneath the rope and rushing forwards…right in time to get a front row view of The Interceptor going up in flames so great that Theo swore she felt a rush of warmth from the explosion. The reaction was instantaneous - gasps of surprise from Jack's new crew, Elizabeth's cry of horror…and Jack, turning to Theo with utter dismay and disbelief plain on his face as he hissed.

"He dies?"

For all of his shtick about being a selfish opportunist, she knew damn well that his disapproval wasn't entirely rooted in self-interest. It seemed too genuine - like she'd genuinely disappointed him on a fundamental level. Like she was just as callous as his mutinous first mate. She opened her mouth to respond, but Elizabeth was already railing at Barbossa, clawing and slapping at him just barely before he seized both of her wrists.

"Welcome back, miss! You took advantage of our hospitality last time, it holds fair now you return the favour."

And then she was screaming again, shoved towards the pirates. This time Theo did react, taking a half-step forward before the rope stopped her. There was much she could bear, but this, brief as it was, had her stomach churning as the crew pawed at her friend.

"Barbossa!"

Everybody stopped dead, turning to the source - Will, sopping wet and standing on the rail at the other side of the ship. Theo's eyes fluttered shut in relief.

Jumping down, he cocked a pistol and aimed it straight at Barbossa's face "She goes free."

When she opened her eyes, she met Jack's dark gaze, who had taken it upon himself to wordlessly check that this was actually supposed to happen. Then, he nodded his contentment. Theo didn't return the nod, for she knew it wouldn't last long.

"What's in your head, boy?" Barbossa demanded.

"She goes free," Will reiterated.

At either side of Theo, the crew shifted as though anticipating a rematch. Considering they'd all been divested of their weapons, she doubted it would last long were that on the cards.

"You've only got one shot, and we can't die."

"Don't do anything stupid," Jack pleaded with Will at a stage-whisper.

And was promptly disobeyed. Theo figured her captain's approval at Will's survival must've lasted a good thirty seconds tops as Mr Turner used the rigging to pull himself back up onto the rail, and lodged the barrel of the pistol beneath his chin.

"You can't. I can."

Elizabeth struggled in vain.

"Like that," Jack sighed beneath his breath like Will was an unruly toddler.

She might've found it funny, had he not then levelled a particularly unimpressed look her way. All she could really do was look away. If he didn't like this, then he really wasn't going to like his soon-to-be holiday destination when he was marooned. The thought of listening to him rail his displeasure at her all night was almost enough to have her hoping that she wouldn't be there with him. The thought of James' inevitable fury at their reunion quadrupled that. But she'd already made a personal enemy on Barbossa's crew, and she didn't fancy her chances of surviving the night if confined to The Black Pearl.

By the time she'd pulled herself from her dread, Will was interrupting Jack's attempt at damage control to introduce himself.

"My name is Will Turner! My father was Bootstrap Bill Turner! His blood runs through my veins."

Any humour Jack had for the situation at hand was evaporating, his face turning grim as Will went on to threaten Barbossa. The Pearl's crew was too captivated by the turn of events to give much of a crap about what their prisoners were doing, and Jack sidled up towards her, a scowl on his face.

"You and I, love, are going to have a few very strong words if we survive this mess."

Yeah. She should've expected that. For all of her assurances that she couldn't change things yet and that everything would work out, she was asking for a lot of trust based on occurrences that a dedicated sceptic could write off as coincidence and delusion.

"Cheer up," she sighed in response "We might not survive at all."

The way he glowered at her in response killed off any more jokes she might have been tempted to give voice to. No, even Jack's sense of humour had its limits, and the withering nature of the look he levelled her way rivalled that of Barbossa's.

"Name your terms, Mr Turner," Barbossa said.

"Elizabeth goes free!"

"Yes," he rolled his eyes "We know that one. Anything else?"

Will's eyes darted to her "And Theodora with her."

She was almost embarrassed by how touched she was by that - although tempted to write it off as eighteenth century chivalry, or just a dedication to keeping his crush happy by trying to stop her friends from being murdered. Still, she knew that was nothing more than cynicism talking. He was a good man. Too good for the situation in which he now found himself…and utterly perfect for Elizabeth. Barbossa nodded.

"And the crew - the crew are not to be harmed," Will added, ignoring Jack's gestures that were so frantic it looked like he was trying to flag down a plane.

"Agreed," Barbossa said, and Jack groaned.

A/N: I originally planned for this chapter to have the night spent on the island in it too, but the length is pushing it as it is. But that's okay, because that just means we'll be seeing James in the next one! As well as Elizabeth finally having a real chance to react to Theo's presence, and Jack's…er, dissatisfaction at recent developments. Drama, drama, drama. I've been so excited to write the next few chapters. I also have the next two weeks off from my more tiring real life obligations, so I'm hoping to get updates out a wee bit quicker during that time!