A/N: I may be a writer, but I don't quite have the words to fully express how floored I was by the insanely kind response I got to the last chapter. Thank you guys so much! I'm so grateful. I never expected to get half of the response I've gotten to this story so far, knowing it was ambitious and it's a difficult trope to do well. I'm so glad I decided to challenge myself regardless of the nerves and that other people are enjoying it as much as I am!

Since the last chapter, we discovered on Friday that the friend that I'm staying with at the moment, along with her boyfriend, have both got the virus, so I'm currently having to isolate with them. I've tested negative so far and I feel mostly fine! It just makes me the only one in the house who doesn't have it, so hopefully things remain that way…but either way it means I have a lot of writing time on my hands — so early update! I'm not high risk or anything so I'm hoping it won't mean anything much for you guys and that I'll be fine either way, but if the next update is a wee bit late it means that it got me.

Despite how James professed that he felt marginally better after relieving himself of the contents of his stomach, he still wasn't particularly steady on his feet, and so when Theo led him back to the tavern that she called home it was with his arm slung across her shoulders and a good portion of his weight coming down on her. At least he didn't shy away from her touch.

"Where are we going?"

"To my room. You need to sit down for a bit - without eyes fixed on us. Unless you'd rather go to your room?"

"I don't have any," he mumbled.

Theo didn't allow any reaction to that to show on her face "Well, you do now."

They were greeted with hoots and hollers as they returned - which only increased in intensity as they began to make for the stairs.

"Ada," she called above it "Bread and cheese to my room, please - and a bath. Just add it to my room and board at the end of the month."

One of Ada's dark eyebrows arched slowly, her lips curling in amusement before she nodded "As you like. I'll have one of me girls sort it for you."

Getting up the stairs was a less painful process than she feared (and for that she thanked Christ, for if it had been difficult all of the eyes on them wouldn't have helped) - although she suspected that was the case because more thanks to James' prior training and physical fitness rather than because he was beginning to sober up. But the bread and cheese would soon help with that.

James waited until the door to her room was closed behind them before he spoke, and even then when he did it was in a quiet mumble.

"I always knew there was something strange about you. Something different."

"I wouldn't be too hard on yourself for not guessing," she replied, unlooping her arm from around him only when she was sure he could keep his feet beneath him.

It earned her a snort.

"I promise I'm not too strange," she continued "Well, not too different, anyway. Not from the women back home. Were any of them in my place, you'd have probably thought the same about them."

"I doubt that," he murmured.

She almost made a joke then - that Elizabeth was exceedingly modern for the time, so it wasn't like there was no precedent for his preferring modern women. No matter how surprising that taste would be to those who didn't know him particularly well - to the ones who knew Commodore Norrington, rather than James. But the joke would only make him feel awkward - and that was at best. At worst, he'd take it as some sort of dig. It would aggravate old wounds, and bring nothing good other than perhaps easing her own sense of awkwardness in the silence that followed. So she kept her mouth shut.

Theo eased his coat from his shoulders, sliding it down his arms. It was stiff with mud and sweat, and it didn't smell great, but it didn't bother her. A light jangle came from one of the pockets and she paused, reaching into it. If she left his coin purse in there rather than storing it away, it would soon disappear entirely around here. But when she reached in, her hand was met with metal, warmed by his body heat, rather than the smooth leather of a pouch. Blinking, she wrapped her fingers around it and pulled it out, and when she saw it she was almost certain that she was going to cry. Sitting in the palm of her hand was her necklace - the one she'd left for him in Port Royal.

When she glanced towards him, she expected to find him thoroughly distracted so that she could slip the necklace back into the pocket. It would be for the best. Everything was too new, too raw, for them to begin discussing their relationship (or even their lack thereof, if that was to be the way of things) now. They needed to let things lie. The last few months had been cruel enough to him without Theo pouncing on him with "by the way, everything you thought about time and space is wrong - I'm from the future. Anyway, now to what's really important, do you still fancy the pants off of me?".

Instead, though, she found his eyes on her, and a strange sort of tentativeness lurking there. He was watching for her reaction as much as she waited for his. Pressing her lips together, Theo bowed her head and returned the necklace to the pocket.

"Is that…" he coughed, and forced a bit more strength into his voice "Is that all you have from home?"

"That and the photographs - but the necklace is yours now, and I don't look at the photographs if I can help it. Does more harm than good."

He gave a laugh that sounded more like an exasperated sigh "You really are a soldier's daughter."

But he did not offer the necklace back, she noted…with great relief.

"My dad used to burn our letters rather than open them when he was overseas."

"I'd wager your mother loved that."

"No mother," she shrugged "My nan hated it, though. To be fair, he did warn her not to write, so…"

She was aware of his eyes on her as she folded the jacket carefully over her arm, taking such care that anybody might think it wasn't more mud than fabric at this point. Then she placed it carefully atop the wooden chest that lay at the foot of her bed. A knock at the door saved her from any questions, whether they would be asked aloud or not, and when she called out three of Ada's girls entered the room - one toting a tray of bread, cheese, and a jug. The other two wrestled with a copper tub between the two of them. James said nothing, sitting down on the one rickety wooden chair that the room boasted.

They didn't speak as the women bustled in and out of the room with buckets to fill the tub, Theo instead navigating the grate away from the modest fireplace so that she could set the bread atop it, and then the cheese atop the bread until she had something that vaguely resembled roasted cheese on the go. Only when the girls had been tipped and the door was shut firmly behind them did James speak.

"Would…you like me to step out while you wash?"

"The bath's for you," she snorted "Although I might hop in after."

Depending on just how black the water became. The mud on her trousers had dried in, cracking and flaking off with her every move.

"What? Absolutely not, I-"

"James. I have clean clothes - ones that I may or may not have taken from your wardrobe when I left Port Royal - but there doesn't seem to be much point in that until you're actually clean. You'll feel better for it. I'll clean the ones you're wearing now once you've changed. But first I need you to eat some of this so you don't accidentally drown in the bath."

"This is preposterous, I don't need any of-"

"I seem to remember a man dragging me from the ocean - and then the forest - and giving me a life. A bath, a meal, and a clean change of clothes seems like pathetic repayment of that, doesn't it? But it'll ease my conscience a bit anyway."

"It wouldn't be proper," his words held little conviction - he was saying it because he felt he had to.

"Neither would being Jack Sparrow's witch, and yet here we are."

As she spoke, she carefully slipped the bread and now-melted cheese onto a plate and handed it to him, taking one piece for herself. He inspected one for a few moments, expression plainly dubious, but then he took a bite and he regarded her with surprise.

"This is good," he said "You can cook?"

"When I need to. I wouldn't call that cooking, though. It's a decent bit of improvising," she shrugged.

"…Tell me of the future."

"You'll get your title back. And then some," she said hesitantly "I'll need to think about how much exactly I can tell you, but…what I can, I will."

He paused for a beat "Not that. Not my future. The future. Three centuries seems an awfully long time. Tell me of it."

Theo blinked slowly, taking a bite of her supper so she could have a bit more time to consider her answer. It was a very broad question - and the first things that sprang to mind weren't exactly good. World wars, industrialisation, global warming. No, she wouldn't tell him of that.

"We've walked on the moon."

He huffed a laugh "You're mocking me."

"I'm not. It was a few decades before I was born, but it happened. We're in and out of space all the time now. Astronauts, they're called."

"Star sailors," he murmured "A romantic notion. Have…have you been?"

"Me? Oh, no. It's a whole thing - years of training, lots of money, all of it. Few do. There's talk of making it more of a common thing…letting the rabble go up…but so far it's just talk. My time is more unrecognisable from the one a hundred years ago than yours is from the one three hundred years ago. We've never advanced more quickly. We have…we have buildings of glass and steel spanning hundreds of stories into the clouds, we have ships that fly through the air like birds, we have devices in our pockets that allow us to contact people across the world and speak to them like they were within arm's reach. We've never lived longer, we've never been healthier, we've never had more free time."

"And yet you don't sound pleased about any of it."

"It has its downsides. Every solution creates more problems, right?" She sighed with a shrug "I s'pose it's easier to feel lost if you don't have a clear, definable purpose. More free time to fill with no idea how to fill it. I get that it probably sounds like a stupid problem, but…"

"On the contrary, it's one that I know all too well as of late."

Theo's brows knitted together.

"There…There never was a husband, was there?" He asked quietly - knowingly.

"No," she replied, readily apologising "I'm sorry. I hated letting you believe it, but…well it was a very neat explanation that checked all of the boxes. Half of my work was already done - you wanted to believe it."

"I wanted to believe that you'd been married to a man who beat you?"

His tone threatened to darken - they were drifting into perilous waters.

"Of course not. Crap wording on my part - I'm sorry, I didn't mean…" she trailed off and sighed, shaking her head "It was a neat solution. At the time. And I was scared."

"I…" he sighed "I imagine it was frightening. And lonely. Finding yourself in such circumstances."

"It was. Until the man who dragged me out of the ocean and gave me a life treated me like a friend rather than an inconvenience," she gave a laugh that sounded too close to a sob by her own reckoning, so she quickly added with a shaky voice "He even went as far as to laugh at my utterly belligerent jokes, which was always nice."

His face softened and remained that way as he polished off the last of his food, wiping his hands on his filthy breeches. It was difficult to say whether it helped. But now that Theo could tell the truth, she was finding it difficult to stop.

"The long-term is…it's dizzying. Petrifying, if I dwell on it too much."

For reasons she couldn't trust her voice to express without cracking. Like whether she'd ever see anybody from back home again. Or whether she'd be able to save James at all. Or if she'd survive the next year. Instead of getting snagged on those issues, though, she pushed ahead.

"But the short term actually really isn't bad. I think I feel less lost here when it comes to that than I did back home," she huffed a laugh "I can understand if you no longer believe a word that I say, James, but I never lied to you more than I had to. About where I'd come from, sure, and about who I was in some ways…but it was real. The bits that mattered. The bits where I wasn't explaining things away. I swear, most nights when we sat and shared a drink I forgot most of it. I wasn't the woman out of time trying to stop anybody from suspecting something was amiss, I was just…me. With you."

"I believe you," he admitted quietly "There were times I recall where I would ask a question, or pass comment on something, and I would see the change in you. You would lock up like a vault. You're a decent actress, Theodora, I'll give you that, but not half so good as you'd like, I suspect."

She gave a tired smile "I don't like lying. I wear my heart on me sleeve, always have. I'm not made for this."

"And yet…" he hesitated "You suggested that returning home is no longer your immediate intention."

Oh, he worded it carefully but there was a veritable wealth of unasked questions lurking there. Are you going to stay? Why? If you do stay, will it be with me? And those questions would all be easier to answer if she knew how he felt about them. For there was still little confirmation from him that his feelings remained unchanged in the light of all that had come out tonight. Okay, he didn't seem furious at her. He seemed to understand. But there was understanding, and then there was loving. Forgetting, and forgiving - truly forgiving, so there might be a future. But she also knew that he wouldn't provide any answers to her questions until she answered his, and she understood that in turn. He'd already expressed his feelings for her once before, as futile as they'd been under those circumstances, only to have her turn tail and run. Considering everything that he now knew, it was very reasonable indeed for him to fear that she would soon do so again - for a third and final time.

"It was in the beginning. When I thought my coming here was an accident. When I wasn't attached. I thought I'd just be undoing a mistake. Now…now it doesn't feel that way anymore. I don't even know if it's possible for me to go home, anyway."

"But if you could?" His eyes were intent, inspecting hers for any shred of an answer before she could even verbally respond.

"I wouldn't. Not yet, anyway. The story-" she winced, disliking her own wording immediately "The events that I know of here. They're not even half over."

"And you believe you must remain for them? Why?"

Theo stilled.

"Ah," he replied "And so we return to the vault."

His words prompted her to answer "I believe…there's something that I can change. Something terrible - something that doesn't need to happen. So I'm going to stop it."

Surprise - earnest surprise, at that - crossed his features. Whether at her answer, or the fact that she'd actually given an answer at all.

"And you can't tell me?"

"If I could, I would. But I can't tell anybody much of anything for the time being. There are things I have to prevent, but there are also things that have to happen."

"Can you tell me about any of those?"

"Well, we need to make sure you're pardoned."

There was probably an easier way to break that news to him - in her effort to be honest she only considered that after she'd already spoken. To his credit, though, he took the news remarkably well. Maybe because it didn't involve time travel. Sighing heavily, his eyes fell shut.

"I…would like to wash. If you, er, wouldn't mind…"

It took her a moment to comprehend what he'd said, having expected a whole lot more of a reaction to what she'd just told him. Nodding, she retrieved the clean clothing she had for him from the trunk at the foot of her bed along with some sheets of linen that could act as towels. The girls who had filled the tub left a batch of toiletries on a tray on the table beside the food, which Theo sat her offerings down beside. Then she took the chair that James had vacated and positioned it so that its back was to the tub, before finally sitting down.

Once she was settled, she began to explain the warrant-wielding arrival of Beckett in Port Royal - of how that was why she gave him no warning at all as to what his future held, as she couldn't risk him being there when she couldn't be sure that Beckett wouldn't make an example of him. Hell, even in the best case scenario, he'd be used as a pawn in Beckett's twisted little games - his good business. Of how Will would set off to find Jack, and how Elizabeth would make moves of her own, never content to simply wait around for the men to fix things.

"That's who accosted you, then," James said thoughtfully.

"You heard about that?"

"I did. Tonight."

Something panged within her as she realised he must've sought her out more or less immediately after. Needing something to occupy her, she stood (keeping her back to the tub) and walked to the side of the room where she'd be out of sight so that she could change into breeches not caked in mud.

"Not Beckett himself, of course, but one of his men. A bounty hunter, perhaps. Your existence must have piqued his interest."

"The Irish foundling who became employed by Jack Sparrow," she sighed sourly "I can see why he might've thought me worth talking to."

It was a conclusion she'd already come to…but not one that she liked. Mostly because she hadn't considered it before now. She was so used to being aware of what was going to happen, but having the most important of the events - the big plot-points - not include her personally whatsoever. It had been perilously stupid for her not to realise that things couldn't remain that way for long. Not if she continued to meddle.

"These plays show much," James commented.

Beckett vanished from her thoughts, replaced by an all too clear image of Bootstrap Bill driving a knife into James' abdomen. Leaving the muddy breeches where she'd kicked them off, she returned to her chair, feeling only marginally better.

"They do," she replied.

"You knew I wouldn't marry Elizabeth."

She sighed, tempted not to respond at all, but she knew he wouldn't let her get away with that.

"I knew Elizabeth wouldn't marry you."

"You make it sound quite different to how it was, Theodora," he said sharply.

Not this argument again.

"It's not that I don't believe you as far as the feelings you have - had - for me went. I'm trying to understand. Marriage is different back home. Freer. Entirely optional, a lot of the time. I just…I make it sound like the events I know of from back home. In those, you never quite fall out of love with Elizabeth. That's your character. You're noble, you're good, and you love Elizabeth."

And he deserved so, so much better than what he got in the end. She was aware of a great deal of splashing behind her as he climbed out of the tub, but he dried and changed into fresh clothes with barely a sound, apparently sobering up rather quickly. The vomiting probably helped. At first she began to suspect he wouldn't respond at all, and so she simply stared at the warm flickering patterns that the hearth splayed across the grotty floor.

"Those events that are not the reality of the matter," oh, how she hoped not "They do not include you."

"Does my existence still change things? Knowing what you know now?"

"Does mine? As far as your intentions for the future?"

His existence was her intention for the future. His continued existence. His happy existence. That was not in question. Whether she was part of it? Well, a large part of that remained down to him…and even then, it posed a very large question.

"Your existence changes everything," she laughed tiredly - almost bitterly.

"So does yours," his voice was downright tender now, and she jumped in surprise when his hand fell down upon her shoulder, having not heard him approach.

"Still?" She turned to regard him almost suspiciously.

That suspicion, though, soon turned to something resembling relief. He already looked better - yes, his hair hung wetly around his face and he still had the short but scruffy beard, but he was free of muck and dressed in clothes that didn't look like they were are risk of sticking to his skin with every movement. The effect it had on him seemed to be the intended one, too, for his posture now adopted a greater deal of surety. Like he wasn't ashamed to be looked at.

"James, I wouldn't hold you to any of it. Not with everything you didn't know, it wouldn't be fai-"

"Still," he confirmed, interrupting while looking down at her intently as though he might drive home his words through sheer eye contact alone "Never doubt it."

A/N: Believe it or not, this night now spans three chapters and will continue in the next one. Theodora and James are struggling because they have so, so much to talk about and work through. I, the writer, have a migraine because I need to make them talk about it somewhat coherently…and, y'know, also because I'm potentially fighting off the virus at any given moment. But hey ho. Sorry if all of this talking is a lot! This is what happens when you have forty odd chapters of secret keeping. We'll get to more fun things soon.