A/N: I have been equal parts excited and terrified to finish this chapter and get it done. It wasn't even supposed to be up until Friday, but then it all just came spilling out, I wound up writing over four and a half thousand of these words in one day, and I figured you guys would want it sooner rather than later. We've been building up to this for so long, I really hope you enjoy!

Somewhere between the door and the empty side street Theo scoped out for them to talk in, James lifted his hand to press atop the one she had nestled in the crook of his arm. Every so often he'd brush his thumb across the back of her hand, a move which she suspected was more to make sure she was still there than any great gesture of affection. Given everything, she supposed that was fair enough. Hell, if she was just a shred weaker she probably would've started running already - the weight of the wallet that she always kept on her sat heavy, wedged into the side of her sports bra beneath her left arm. Usually she didn't notice it at all. She'd grown used to it, and it was perfectly innocuous beneath her loose-fitting shirt. Tonight, though, it was almost all she could think of.

When they finally let go of one another and parted to stand facing each other, either one with their back against a different building, it was with great reluctance. Theo ended up hugging her arms to her, a movement made awkward by the bottles of rum she still held, arms pressing the wallet further into her ribs, while James clenched and unclenched his fists at his side. She'd half expected him to clasp them behind his back and stand to attention, but he'd lost a fair amount of his old understated grandeur…if there was such a thing - he certainly managed to make it possible.

"It's almost pathetic," James snorted finally, taking it upon himself to break the silence as he pinched the bridge of his nose "I confess, as of late I've thought of little other than this moment, however it might come about, and now that it has I find myself lost for words."

Fondness - sheer, warm fondness washed over Theo as he spoke. Given the way they were reintroduced to him in the movie, she'd expected him to be angrier (although that was probably in the post, she couldn't kid herself otherwise) or even slightly belligerent. Instead he was…James. A few drinks in, sure, she could tell from the slight heaviness of breath, but still James.

"I missed you," she said.

He looked her in the eye now, curiosity flitting through his eyes.

"Did you?"

The question wasn't asked skeptically - it wasn't a challenge. His head tilted slightly as he seemed to weigh up this new information.

"Of course I did," she replied quietly "Never doubt it."

Something flickered in his eyes then and he wavered…but then he snorted. She supposed she deserved that. But when he spoke next, she realised the laugh seemed to be directed more at himself than at her.

"A lot has changed since we were last together," he pointed out.

"It doesn't bother me," she replied straight away, and then winced "Well, it bothers me in that it bothers you. But it…it doesn't change my opinion of you."

"How could it not?"

"You've always been much more than your title to me, James. It's never altered how I thought of you, for good or for ill."

"Then you're a very strange woman."

"It has been argued," she allowed, and he smiled softly.

Before she could grow too comfortable, though, the smile was gone as quickly as it had come.

"You left," he pointed out.

"I had to."

"Because of…my betrothal?" He asked "Because it's done now. Over - I mean. Elizabeth called it off the day you left. Not that I suppose it matters now."

"It does. I told you, recent events don't change anything for me. I…That…The betrothal was part of it. But not as big a part as you'd probably think. It made it easier for me to leave, I suppose, but I still had to go. It's-"

"Complicated," he finished for her "And I suppose you can't tell me."

"No."

"I thought not."

"No - I mean, no I can't not tell you, I…I couldn't then. But I can now. And I will. I'm going to," towards the end she felt more like she was hyping herself up than reassuring him.

She'd never fancied herself as much as a wordsmith.

"The whole truth?" He asked "I don't know what it is about you, I thought perhaps it was a womanly thing, but I never did feel like I was getting all of the facts in their entirety from you."

"You weren't. But you will. The whole truth - and nothing but," she said…and almost cringed at how weak her voice sounded "Here."

She offered a bottle of rum to him, uncorking her own with her teeth. After a moment of eyeing it reluctantly, he shook his head.

"I'm fine."

Theo bit down on the inside of her cheek. Evidently he didn't want her to know of his drinking habits - and she had no desire to embarrass him further by making a thing of it.

"You're going to need it," she mumbled.

Now he did frown at her - and he slowly accepted the bottle, although he let it hang limply in his hand by his side rather than making any move to uncork it. Theo took a gulp of her own, and then another, and then she stopped. Mostly because her stomach was already turning.

"Theodora, tell me."

"I don't even know where to begin."

"Somewhere. Anywhere. It can't be as bad as I'm imagining."

"I'm not sure it's anything like what you could ever imagine," she replied sourly "I…Okay. But you need to let me tell you the story in full - all of it - without stopping me, without interrupting, without not believing me. Questions are fine, but don't…don't refuse to listen to me. And then I'll show you the proof I've got. Alright?"

"Very well, you have my word."

"I'm not a witch," she said quickly, wanting to make that quite clear "I know what the men here say about me, but that's not true either. It's just easier to let them think that. But I'm not. Everything that's happened…I haven't had a hand in it, not that I know of anyway, I've just been trying to keep my head above water throughout it all."

She half-expected James to respond, but he appeared to be taking his word very seriously as he said nothing. He did not, thankfully, look skeptical. But there was time enough for that.

"I…I didn't tell you the truth about how you came to find me - way back then. The first time. When we met. Mostly because I couldn't, I couldn't believe it was real, I couldn't risk telling anybody, I couldn't risk sounding mad or…or the consequences it would bring if you didn't believe me. Or if you did, really. I just couldn't."

"But now you can?"

"Now I can."

"And that scares you?"

"That terrifies me."

"Why?"

"Because…" taking in a deep breath, she closed her eyes.

This was the worst part. The part before it was said. The part where the words lodged themselves in her throat and she felt certain that she'd never be able to force them out. The longer she took, the longer the worst part dragged on. So she had to get it over with.

"Because I was born over two hundred years from now."

The most difficult part after saying it was opening her eyes. And when she did, James looked less than impressed. His lips were pursed and if anything, he looked insulted.

"James, I was born in the nineteen-nineties. Before we met, I was living in the year two-thousand-and-twenty. I woke up here, and I've been trying to get by in a world that isn't mine ever since. When we met - when you took me aboard The Interceptor - I wasn't belligerent, I wasn't spouting incoherencies, I was trying to make sense of what was going on because in my world, in my time, none of this exists anymore. None of this looks like…like this anymore. It's a whole universe away from what I live normally."

"Groves."

"What?"

"You knew Groves - or so you claimed. How would somebody two hundred years from now know him? Is he to be a great hero in the centuries to come?"

It caught her off guard - the fact that he remembered so well what she'd spoken of during their very first few moments together, especially considering how belligerent she'd been. She was tempted to point out that she'd never heard him speak so derisively of his best Lieutenant before, but this was not a time for jokes…and he had a good point. It also led her rather neatly to her own next revelation.

"…That's the ridiculous part."

"Oh, that's the ridiculous part, is it?" He uncorked his bottle and took a gulp "Go on, then, by all means."

"Back…back home…this isn't history. None of this is. Well, not really. It's rooted in history, but this is a story. Historical fiction. Historical fantasy, really. A made up story - a play. It's not real. We all know the story of Jack Sparrow-"

James scoffed, but she pushed on.

"And of Barbossa, and Elizabeth, and Will, and you, but it's not real. They're all…they're all supposed to be made up characters, played by actors for entertainment. It's a popular story, I'll grant you that, the whole world loves it more than they have any interest in the likes of Shakespeare or any playwrights you may know, but it's a made up one. That's how I know what's going to happen, and when it'll happen, because I've seen it - not in a vision, or in a dream, but on a scre— on a stage. The only difference is that in the story, I'm not here. That's how I knew Groves. The man who plays him back home - the actor - played another, er, role in another story that I loved."

It was easier to frame them as plays, considering she knew she'd lose him entirely if she went off on a tangent about films and video games and TV shows. But she might've lost him already, for he was no longer looking at her, showing greater interest in anything but her really - the cuffs of his shirt, the bottle in his hand, the mud caked on his boots - anything to emphasise how little stock he was putting in her story.

"When I arrived here, I made up my mind to get by as much as I could, and bide my time until I could find a way home. I thought Jack would be the key to that - he has a friend, a powerful witch, who could…well, that doesn't matter anymore. That was the plan. But then I met you and it all went to shit."

"You have my sincerest apologies," he said flatly, and she was rather strongly reminded of the beleaguered annoyance he often took on when he had no choice but to tolerate Jack's presence "Your proof?"

"What?"

"This great proof you purport to have - the thing that's supposed to make me believe all of this nonsense while you take me for a fool. What is it?"

Theo's lips thinned, but then she reached down the neckline of her shirt and began to slowly tease the wallet out from under her breastband.

"In my time," she began, if only to distract her from the ridiculous nature of her actions "We don't really have portraits. We call them photographs - it captures your image instantly, your true image as it is in that second, onto paper. I had some on me when I was brought here. They're a bit worse for wear after, well, everything…and they're a hazard to keep at all, really, considering what might happen if they fell into the wrong hands. But after a while, I knew this day would come. Knew I'd need them."

Most of her rambling was to put herself at ease more than anything else, but it didn't leave James entirely unaffected. It was the first time she'd seen a flicker of doubt on his face since she'd begun her tale. The first time she'd seen anything other than annoyance. She only thanked god, and William Turner, that her wallet had been saved, for she knew now that if it hadn't he wouldn't believe her at all. The question remained whether he would now or not.

Pulling out the photographs, she paused and tucked the one of her ex back into the wallet, and then handed them to him. James accepted them with no shortage of eye rolling and sighing…and then his eyes fell upon the first one, and he went dead still.

"Me and my dad," she said quietly "At the top of Ben Nevis - two, well, three years ago now - for me, anyway, for you it'll be, well…it was in twenty-eighteen…so a while from now, I suppose."

He finally tore his eyes from the photograph to eye her with something that was much too close to fear for her liking. Looking around, for he thankfully understood the inherent need to keep this as quiet as possible, he lifted the photograph up to the sparse amount of light the alleyway offered - mostly that beaming in from the windows of nearby taverns.

"I could never imagine such detail…nor such bizarre clothing," he said slowly - quietly.

"Believe it or not, the clothes you found me in weren't underwear, they were just clothes. The things you find here are ridiculous in comparison. Well, not to you - and not to me, either, I'm not judging, I just…well, it's all a bit more practical back home."

It was nervous babbling more than anything - and they were words that she regretted almost as soon as she'd said them, for she knew he'd take a dim view of the idea of anybody wearing a tank top and shorts out in public. Thankfully, he seemed too preoccupied with what was before him to start going on about the moral pitfalls of showing a bit of leg.

"This is your father?"

"Yeah."

"He has the bearing of a soldier," he murmured "If not the…expected appearance of one."

Theo made the decision not to pick a fight over the comment. It wasn't worth it - and she knew what he meant. Having lived here for some time, she understood that if anybody she knew in this world was to meet her father, they'd think him a pirate before they'd suspect her was a soldier.

While Jack had seemed eager to flick through the photos and soak up all that they might contain, James instead lingered, staring hard at the first as though he might find evidence of trickery. Or maybe he kept finding new details to interest him. It felt like an eternity before he flicked over to the next one.

"My nan - and my granda."

The photo had been taken on a hot summer day in their front garden, her nan gesturing to her flowers (she'd been swearing like a sailor, cursing the fact that they wouldn't grow as she'd desired) while her granda watched on fondly with a smile. It had the virtue of showing the front of their house, too - not much, given the size of the photograph. The front window, the path leading up to the front door, and said front door. But it showed that it was a far cry from what the front of a house would look like here - white vinyl and embossed glass rather than painted wood…as if their clothing didn't give it away. To her surprise, he didn't linger on this one for very long at all. Not in comparison to the one beforehand.

Then he got to the third, and his frown became more confused than troubled.

"These are…dogs."

"Why does everybody think it's so weird that I have pictures of my dogs?" She grumbled "Your lot here have them included in portraits, which takes much longer than a photo."

"Everybody?"

Ah, fuck. Theo's mouth snapped shut.

"Who else…Who else have you told about this?"

"James…" she winced.

"Sparrow?"

"James."

"Sparrow," he spat, shaking his head "Of course. Why wouldn't it be?"

"I tried to fob him off with a lie, but he wouldn't believe it and I needed his help."

He dropped the hand which held the photographs down to his side, shaking his head with a low, sardonic laugh. It was then that he turned to the bottle of rum she'd given him, taking a swig, and then another, before he spoke again.

"And so you told Sparrow. Of course you did - of course. Who here has helped you more than he?"

Another swig.

"You're taking it all wrong," she said "People view him as a drunk, a madman. What could he do with the information? Even if he told anybody, they'd laugh him off. He's fucking belligerent half of the time anyway, what difference would it make? 'Oh, Theo's from the future, is she? That's nice love', and on with their day they'd go."

"You wouldn't trust me not to tell anybody?"

"I trust you more than I trust anybody here. Jack doesn't matter, James. That's why I told him - not because I trust him, not because I'm close to him, because he doesn't matter."

"According to you, this is his story."

"He doesn't matter to me. His opinion of me doesn't matter to me. I could tell him and not care if he started looking at me like I was mad, or stupid, or a liar, or a bitch. The same absolutely cannot be said here. You are the person I've dreaded telling most, because you are the last person in this world, or the one I came from for that matter, who I could bear hating me!"

He opened his mouth to argue, and then he stopped before closing it again. Glancing down at the photographs again, he looked quickly away from them and lifted the bottle back to his lips as if as an afterthought. This time he took a few gulps in quick succession, still keeping his gaze focused solely on the entrance to the side street in which they stood. His eyes shone brightly though, with emotions ranging from dismay, to confusion, to something that bore a terrible resemblance to fear.

"Am I to take your anger over who knows and who doesn't as belief? You think I'm telling the truth?" She didn't want to press him too much, nor too quickly, but she had to know that much at least.

"I…" he faltered, returning his attention to the photographs again.

Every so often his hand would twitch towards her as if he was going to offer them back to her, but then he'd stop and inspect them again.

"I can think of no other explanation for these," he sounded exhausted as he said it "Reason dictates that it cannot be true, but…but reason is also what gives it a ring of truth. It explains your behaviour. It explains a lot - almost more than any nonsense about premonitions. But this…? How could this possibly be true, Theodora? Possibly be real?"

It was like he was pleading with her for an answer - his voice coming dangerously close to wavering. It shouldn't have surprised her, he was a man who favoured reason and logic above all else, and nothing about any of this was reasonable, nor logical. But it still made her chest clench up painfully tightly to hear.

"I don't know how to explain it to you, because I still don't know how it happened. I'm as baffled as anybody else by it, I just…I've just had longer to adjust to it."

And even still there were days when she woke up and wanted to vomit because it didn't seem like it could be real at all. But telling him that probably wouldn't be helpful. James sighed, and then he took a deep breath in.

"Tell me. All of it. How you came to be here - all of it. Slowly, and with detail."

A touch of Commodore Norrington returned to his voice as he spoke, doling it out like it was an order, and he handed her back two of the three photographs - keeping the one of herself and her father.

"Alright, I…Yeah. Fine," she nodded "I was…I was hiking. On my own, on the trails on the outskirts of my town - in Ireland."

And so, for the second time since arriving here, she told the whole sorry story in full. About how she'd said goodbye to her father, left home, walked out into the woods, and never returned. About how she'd pined for an adventure, for a purpose in life, for something different. About the stones, about the voice, and about her strange dreams of the sea turned into reality. She did not, however, tell him about her new dreams. The straws were building precariously high atop the camel's back, and while she didn't like keeping secrets as soon as the slate was wiped clean, she reasoned that she also had less than no intention of telling him about his sorry fate, nor her believed purpose when it came to sparing him from that fate. So it wasn't like the revelation of the new dreams were the only thing standing between total honesty and more falsehood.

The entire time she spoke, he didn't look at the photograph once - save only for when she described how she said her farewell to her dad, which was when her voice cracked. But she gathered herself quickly and pushed on, staring at the lip of the bottle in her hand rather than at him throughout her tale. When she finally reached its end, there was some overlap into the part he already knew - how she'd been adrift on the ocean, trying desperately to survive, and how she'd been convinced he was an actor by the name of Jack (he'd given a scornful laugh, utterly bereft of mirth at that) Davenport when they'd first met.

"…I didn't believe any of it was real until we reached Port Royal."

James' bottle was empty by the time she was done, and her own had only a few mouthfuls left.

"The voice," he murmured.

"What?"

"The voice you heard. Back…back in the future," he said slowly - quietly, like he didn't quite believe he was even saying it "Who was it? Have you found out?"

Theo bowed her head, lips pressed together in a strained, tight-lipped smile.

"In hindsight?" She hesitated, and then finally met his eye.

He was watching carefully - patiently, almost. Something about it helped her work up the nerve to give him the true answer.

"It sounded a whole lot like yours."

There was no laughter at that - derisive or otherwise - nor any cursing, and not even a scoff. So it was already going better than she'd expected. Until, that was, he gave a nod, then inhaled sharply, thrusting the photograph back into her hand.

"I'm going to be sick."

And then it followed through on his promise, falling into the mud on his hands and knees as the rum he'd ingested moments before made a dramatic return.

Theo sank into the mud beside the prone form of James Norrington, doing her best not to let any pity show on her face. He wouldn't appreciate it...on the off-chance that his vision was unfogged enough to see her face properly. She knew him well enough to know that. The mud seeped through her trousers quickly, plastering them to her backside as she waited for him to form whatever words were whirling around in his mind.

"Why didn't you tell me?" He spoke into the night air eventually.

She'd answered it before, but evidently he wanted more of an answer. One that was good enough to explain to him how she could possibly insist that he was the one she cared for most here, and yet he'd been the third (albeit second, to his knowledge - she would soon tell him that Will knew, too, but for now it would just be salt in the wound) to find out.

"Would you have believed me?" She countered carefully before continuing "You'd have branded me a madwoman."

"You don't know that."

She made a face "You were a commodore in the Royal Navy, James. You believed in two things - in your God, and in what was directly before you at any given time. Walking up to you within twenty-four hours of our first meeting and announcing 'I'm from three hundred years from now, and all of the events playing out now are little more than a children's story in my time...I don't suppose that you fancy helping me return to home?' didn't seem like the best way to stay safe."

He might have attempted a dry laugh in between heaving his guts out into the street. It was difficult to tell.

"You'd have had me committed to an asylum if I couldn't prove it...or burned me as a witch if I could," she sighed indifferently.

She was unsure whether she was speaking for his benefit or for her own. Maybe it was just nice to speak the truth to somebody - somebody who wasn't Jack Sparrow, who would likely believe her if she said she was a mermaid sent by Calypso herself on an important errand, so long as she had a pretty face and a bottle of rum in her hand.

Of course, she'd hoped to be gone before now. Before Davy Jones made his grand appearance, before they were faced with anything more 'trivial' than zombie pirates, before her chances of dying shifted from "probable" to "definite". Before she could start forming attachments. Before she could no longer laugh at the prospect of wanting to stay.

"You knew."

"Yes," she said.

Somewhere in the tavern nearby, a group burst into a round of obnoxious laughter. It felt mocking.

It didn't matter what James was talking about — which particular event, which unfortunate happenstance, which personal tragedy. She'd known it all. Maybe not the minutiae, not the day-to-day, but the overall picture. That, she knew full well.

"You knew what would become of me," he laughed humourlessly, ire building with each word "From the day I dragged you from the water and gave you a life, you knew I would end up here. Now."

"Yes."

"And you didn't warn me."

"I couldn't-"

"You didn't even try! I may not have listened, that much I'll concede, but you didn't suggest. Didn't even fucking hint. Not once! I lost everything, Theodora! Everything!"

Tilting her head backwards against the wall they leaned against, she sighed and debated on how clever the answer she intended to give might be. Or rather, how stupid it absolutely was. But it did not change it.

"And you'll get it all back, James."

"You might have—" he cut his tirade off, stopping dead to stare at her "...What?"

Theo returned his gaze evenly. She couldn't be smug - nor even proud, or relieved. Not when she knew the true extent of his fate; the parts she would not share with him.

"Theodora," he all but knelt before her, clasping her hands between his filthy ones entreatingly "Say it again. Please."

Under different circumstances, it might have been funny how much one sentence entirely changed his tune. But looking into his wide green eyes, all the more vivid in the meagre lamplight for the filth caked to his face, it was impossible to find any humour.

"You'll get...it all...back," she said slowly, eyes glued to his as she sounded out each syllable carefully and deliberately.

His expression went almost entirely blank at her assurance, but she could see the cogs turning behind his eyes. And then he smiled. A smile warm and brilliant enough to shine through the months of neglect in his appearance, the debauchery of Tortuga, and whatever impending hangover he was fighting. A smile that sorely mismatched the all-encompassing dread that had built within her chest ever since she'd woken up in this godforsaken story.

For she still didn't know if she'd be able to save him.

A/N: So we finally reached the prologue scene! They, obviously, have much MUCH more to discuss, James hasn't exactly come to grips with it all just yet and there'll be a lot more of that to come…and all in good time. I'm not sure who's more wary of the next few chapters - myself or James.