Part Two
Season of the Witch
"This one here means that your fortunes are on unsteady ground - it doesn't promise disaster, but it does mean you'll need to spend wisely. Perhaps invest in some new venture, just to be safe," Theo pointed at the wooden rune that lay face up on the table.
The grizzled old man sitting across from her peered down at it with a frown before regarding her distrustfully "Last week you told me that one meant I'd be in fine health for the foreseeable future."
Shit. Even if everybody in Tortuga didn't tend to merge together into one seamless, drunken, filthy blur, she'd seen and spoken to so many this week alone. There was no way she'd be able to keep track of all of her bogus rune readings. What she could do, and what she had to do living here, was think on her feet.
"Yes," she said smoothly, nodding with a frown "But last time the rune was upright. This time it's on its side, see? The meanings change, based on how they fall and your own actions between readings."
The man scowled down at the runes before a look of realisation smoothed his brow and he nodded along with her in quick agreement "Ah, of course, begging your pardon Miss, I didn't mean to be causing no offence."
Theo offered her best indulgent smile, like the teacher of a particularly unruly child "It's no trouble - it's forgotten."
Thank fuck for that. The man offered a sheepish nod, which was good, and then dropped a handful of coins to the grooved surface of the table, which was even better, tipped his hat to her, and took his leave. Theo scooped up the coins, leaned back in her chair, and drained the last of her cup. It was fairly early in the evening, the tavern in the heart of Tortuga not even half as bawdy as it would come before the night truly set in. And with that bawdiness would come more to her table, eager to know what great riches and glory their futures held in store.
It just so happened that she was good at telling them what they wanted to hear - and what she needed them to hear, to steer them in the appropriate direction.
She would need to start being more careful, though. It had been enough of a nightmare convincing Jack to let her come here, and her troubles had hardly vanished when it came to learning the ropes of living alone in Tortuga…although she found that easier than she did the dinner parties in Port Royal in the beginning. Most days, she could even take comfort in the routine and life she'd found here. Clothes that were her own, made to her measurements and bought with coin she'd earned herself. A room, modest but filled with what few comforts she might need. Even a friend or two - ones not bought with the knowledge she didn't actually have much of a right to, either. It was not a lavish life, but a lavish life never interested her much.
Still, she knew she was dancing on Jack's last shred of goodwill - even after hours and hours of talking and explaining and pleading her case when she'd justified that she could not stay with him for the next leg of his journey. It was possibly the most honest and frank conversation they'd ever had, and it had paid off - he'd agreed with her reasoning, that much was plain by the fact that he'd allowed her to separate herself from him and come here at all, but she knew she had to succeed now. The time had long since come and gone when she had to start making good on her promise to actually be of use to her captain.
She'd barely been aboard The Black Pearl a month when an errant detail from the second movie (which was already growing perilously blurry in her memory) snagged in her consciousness. Gibbs and Will, in the suspended cages on the island of cannibals and one line in particular. These cages weren't built until after we got here. She'd been playing with chance ever since her arrival here, but that just seemed too risky - to sit back and hope she would arbitrarily be sorted into the group that wasn't eaten and used like spare goddamn Ikea parts. And even then, there was no guarantee of safety - for she could have very easily ended up in the wrong cage, too. No, if at a rough guess half of the crew were killed and eaten, and then the remaining half were split again and divided into the two cages, she calculated her chances of survival to be at twenty-five percent. They weren't odds she particularly liked. So she'd come to Tortuga, to work on Jack's behalf.
She'd been here some months. Ample time, by her estimations, for Jack to have long since arrived in Turkey by now. He'd likely even have the drawing of Jones' key already, or at least be in hot pursuit of it. Ordinarily it would take him, what, another three months to return? Perhaps less, with the speed of the Pearl. Or then again, maybe more, considering their cannibalistic detour. She'd left the specifics of that unmentioned, instead saying that the risks of her survival on the next leg of his journey were much too low - knowing that if she clued him in too much on what those risks were, he would give the island a miss entirely, and then run the risk of not running into Will.
In recompense for her lack of warning in that regard, she worked all the harder to make sure he'd be happy with the results their separation had produced. She already had sixty names for him, she'd have far more than enough once he returned. The hundred that Jones demanded, and even an extra ten to twenty as insurance. It only seemed wise, given the nature of Tortuga. She doubted all hundred would still be living and on the island upon Jack's return - some could barely sign their names to her book when she'd seen them a month ago.
It felt skeevy. There was no denying that. She only went for the old drunkards and the real bastards, the ones who wouldn't be missed, the ones who didn't have families, the ones who didn't have much to offer anybody at all to begin with. But who was she to play god? It plagued her conscience on the nights she struggled to sleep, and even when she managed to put that foible out of her mind, she was then worried about whether it would even work to begin with. It was a condition that Jones set upon Jack only with the absolute certainty that he wouldn't be able to manage it. She didn't imagine he'd take kindly to being proven wrong.
What else could she do, though? In her selectiveness, once she had a few drinks in her, she could even kid herself that she was doing some good in the long-term. Saving the sorry bastards on her list from a slow end thanks to liver disease, scurvy, and underlying untreated injuries caused by one too many ill thought-out bar fights. On the nights when she believed that enough to wrestle a bit of sleep, however, it wasn't exactly restful. Because the dreams had returned.
A still and dreamless sleep was something she'd never really known before she'd come here, plagued by the sea as her nights were, but she'd gotten used to it when they vanished upon her arrival in this world. It was just an unhappy fact that now she was fully aware of what she was missing now that it had been taken away from her once again.
The dreams were different now, though. No longer was she rocked atop her mattress atop some sort of imaginary tide each night. That was a troubling fact in itself, however, because it only served to confirm her suspicion that those original dreams had been some form of omen, portending even since her childhood that she would one day find herself here. But then, that begged the question, what were these new dreams, for she refused to refer to them as visions even in her own mind, warning her of?
Only one thing offered her much comfort on that score, and that was that these ones were less inherently troubling. They were not filled with the sea, nor of fire, nor of tornadoes or quicksand. Only humming. The low, melodic humming of a woman and - on the nights when she fell deeper into sleep rather than jerking awake from the unease of it all - fingers combing gently through her hair. No doubt she would soon find out the meaning of it…but she didn't particularly want to. She'd rather just avoid sleep altogether. The one upside of heavy conscience was that it rather helped with that.
James had been in Tortuga a while before the whispers reached him. Or perhaps they'd been flowing freely around him before that, maybe even since his very arrival, but it took the time for him to acclimatise to what his life had become before he could even begin to take in newer information. Once it finally did reach him, however, it would not soon leave his mind. Jack Sparrow's witch had taken up residence in Tortuga, and now offered fortunes - of all things - for a pittance in the taverns come nightfall. Once upon a time he might've endeavoured to greet such news with an air of detached curiosity - eased out his questions with an affected brand of bored indifference, knowing the answers he sought may come much more easily if the one who held them thought that he didn't care about them a whit.
It was the sort of thing Commodore James Norrington would have done. But he was no longer Commodore James Norrington. And so, he'd all but interrogated the pirate who he'd first heard utter the information - demanding to know the woman's name, and then her nationality when he could not name her, and then finally her appearance when he drunkenly insisted that he could not place the accent, either. James had been ready to start throwing punches when his third question bore fruit. Red hair - fiery red hair. A fair lass, to be sure, but with a tongue that doesn't match the ladylike look of her face…and a pair of lips that make you wonder what she could do to your-
It was at that point when he did start throwing punches. Afterwards, James was banned from the tavern; for the night, not for life, for if every man who brawled in a tavern in Tortuga was banished from it for life, the island would be a wasteland and they would all be much better off. The man with whom he had brawled was not banned, but then he was not a former agent of the King's justice. James' record was entirely blackened in that regard, in the eyes of those whose company he was now forced to keep. Rising to his hands and knees in the mud where he'd landed harshly, he pushed himself into a kneeling position and ignored the complaint that shot through his shoulder at the movement. From there, he forced one foot beneath him, and then finally the other, but it was then that he stilled.
If he knew Theodora - a prospect that was growing steadily dubious in his mind, truth be told - she would be more inland. At the rowdier, busier bars towards the centre of this hellish hub. That was where he would find her. And was finding her not a thought that had consumed his every waking thought since she'd vanished? James blinked down at his filthy boots, and then lifted his hands and frowned blearily down at them. He was drunk. Not so drunk that he was in denial of the fact, nor not so drunk that he could ignore the fact that seeking her out now would be a bad idea.
When they'd last spoken, he'd been rather a different man, to put it laughably lightly. A man that a woman might, if not happily, then at least logically choose to depend upon by entering into marriage with. There was a reason that Governor Swann had once considered him the wise decision when it came to a match for his daughter. Much had changed since then. While he knew Theodora well enough to know that she mightn't be swayed by such a turn in fortune - in fact, she'd probably be offended by the notion that she would be - but it would still feel…dishonourable in some way to present himself to her now as though nothing had changed.
Oh, he would find her. That was a foregone conclusion. After all that he'd gone through in pursuit of that cursed ship, deciding that walking through a few streets, even though they were the streets of Tortuga, was too much of a hardship would be laughable. But…not tonight. Not inebriated. And not only because that wasn't the state he wished to be reunited with her in. For he had questions.
The one that Tortuga's charming residents had posed in his mind was not chief among them, but it did beg to be clarified, if not asked outright. Was she a witch? He still thought not. Perhaps that was foolish, but it was what his instinct told him. Jack Sparrow's witch. There was nothing about the moniker that the Theodora he knew would relish in adopting. Even were the witchcraft part true, which it was not, she'd never be foolish enough to describe herself as a witch - nor stoop to being Jack sodding Sparrow's witch, at that. But he was a firm believer in smoke not appearing in the absence of fire, and the men had to have based their beliefs on something. He wished to know what.
Of course, there were other things he wished to know, too. Whether he'd ask those first or build up to them, he was not sure - which was part of why he needed a clear head to make that decision. A strategy, if not a plan of attack. It was just unfortunate that the other questions would only grow increasingly more troubling, the more sober he became. It didn't provide much incentive to stay sober. By Christ, he was starting to think like Sparrow. Still, they demanded answers - the questions, that was. Did she know? That he would not marry Elizabeth? That he would give chase? That his giving chase would lose him everything?
Surely not. He thought not… he hoped not - he prayed not. She'd said so herself, just because she didn't get a feeling that something was going to happen did not mean it would not happen. Sometimes storms appeared quickly and without warning, nigh on impossible to predict. That did not mean those who didn't foresee them were to blame, just that the signs had simply not been there. For all of her anger, for all of her inability to understand the bind he had found himself in, surely she would not deem that he deserved such ill-fortune for it? No. He could not think that of her. She was not that spiteful, not that unfeeling. The prospect, though, even if he refused to believe it, weighed heavy and uneasy in his chest.
Lifting his head, he looked down the street (if it could even be called that) which led further into town - past the whores and the brigands and the very dregs of society. He also chose not to dwell on the fact that he blended in with them rather well at that moment. Indeed, he would've been indistinguishable from the rest were it not for the wig that lay in disarray atop his head. It had to be because of the drink, but he almost fancied he could sense her - some invisible pull coaxing him into the throng to seek her out.
But it was fanciful. Far too fanciful for his standards, in fact. And it was folly - for he'd had no such sense before he'd heard tell of her presence. So James turned in the opposite direction, and strode into the tavern next door to the one he'd just been kicked out of. Tomorrow. He would go to her tomorrow. And until then?…Until then, he would find another drink. If only so he had the willingness to face the morn in the first place.
A/N: A short one, just to set things up — and I'm updating far earlier than I expected, because my holiday visit to family got unexpectedly extended by a week and I had no novel work to occupy me during that time! Also worked out a way of updating without needing my laptop, which helps. Updates will still be slow til mid-January, but I write daily as a rule and I needed something to keep me occupied for the time being!