A/N: Exciting news! I got an email on Friday from my homeless officer letting me know that all of my applications have been reviewed and accepted, and now I can actually start looking at places and bidding on them - which I've been doing this weekend! So I'm in the final stage of actually finding somewhere to live and now we just have to hope that I get one of the places I like! It's not quite all over yet, but the end is absolutely on the horizon, and it's so nice to finally be able to share some *good* news on this topic with you guys because you've all been so lovely and supportive that it's played a huge role in keeping my spirits up over the last few months.

They soon carved out a surprisingly comfortable routine in Tortuga - one that even bore a slight resemblance to something that was endearingly domestic considering where they were and what they would soon face. In the mornings they would wake up, often speaking in murmurs about whatever came to mind, before picking at breakfast and getting ready for the day…albeit shyly, facing opposite corners from one another. From there they would part ways, usually with a hand-squeeze (although once James dipped his head and placed a kiss on her cheek that left her, to her absolute disgust, blushing and smiling for the rest of the day like she was a teen with a crush), and Theo would see to her readings and her book of names. She'd long since hit the hundred mark, and then continued to rack them up from there - partially out of practicality, and also because there was't really a whole lot else to do. Keeping on kept her on track, and it kept her sane.

James, meanwhile, continued his investigations. With there being no doubt in their minds now that it was Beckett who had sent a man after her, James had turned his attention to keeping an eye out for more such men so that if more came, they would not be taken by surprise again. So he (to use his words) slunk around the dens of depravity the island boasted, and he watched, and he listened, trying to stay abreast not only of what Beckett's plans were regarding Theo, but what they involved at all. After all, it stood to reason that thanks to her existence at all, there would now be aspects that she didn't inherently know about - or ones that she thought she did, but had changed. For the most part he came up short, but that didn't seem to dissuade him. Then again, this was a man who had spent much of his life chasing pirates across the seas, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. From what Theo had seen, he was stubborn enough to disallow anything other than catastrophic failure to put him off his goals once he'd set his mind on them.

The evenings were the best - when their work for the day was done and they reunited not only for dinner, but so that they might continue the arduous task (on both their parts, really) of getting her sword skills up to scratch as quickly and efficiently as possible.

To say that James' teaching method was a fair bit harsher than Will's would be an understatement. In fact, Theo was starting to wonder if it wouldn't just be some strange sort of irony if she wound up killing him herself before she even had a chance to try and save his life in the first place. At first, once they'd decided that she needed to make sure her swordsmanship was up to scratch before it all began, he'd been almost tentative about teaching her. That was something she understood - the practical side of him that knew this was necessary was warring with the very proper side that didn't much want to swing a sword at a woman. She supposed she might've been disturbed if he'd taken to it with some great amount of zeal.

But eventually - when he didn't lop her arm off with an errant swing, and when she didn't burst into tears at being disarmed or knocked onto her arse - he lost his reservations and fell smoothly into the role of mentor. It was one that was familiar to him, after all.

They always ended their training sessions in the same way, too. He'd stand before her with his sword and order her to swing at him while he deflected easily until her arm simply couldn't take it anymore. It was a surprisingly modern technique - known to her from boxing as burnouts - aimed at increasing stamina as quickly and efficiently as possible. It was working, too, for as the days crawled by she found herself managing more and more swings before the fire in her arm burned too fiercely for her to keep going.

"That was the most you've ever managed," he complimented when she fell on her ass into the sand, breathing heavily as she tried to massage the pain out of her sword arm "I loathe to admit it, but Turner established a good foundation. There were no ill habits for me to undo."

"You loathe to admit it?" She echoed, amused.

A flush threatened to creep up his neck as he looked out to the horizon.

"I…knew that the two of you were spending time with one another in Port Royal, although I knew not why. The mind does tend to come to its own conclusions."

"James Norrington, don't tell me you were jealous," she snorted.

"I had very little right to be," he conceded "And, were it true, it would have been a rather…tidy solution to all that had occurred. Or so I endeavoured to tell myself at the time."

"At the time?"

He gave her a rueful look "I'm exceedingly glad to have found myself mistaken."

"Words not often heard from James Norrington," she gave a laugh, shaking her head as she nudged his leg with her knee "But yeah, you were pretty mistaken. We got on better towards the end than we did in the beginning, but there was never even an inkling of anything like that. The man lives and breathes for Elizabeth, and he's too…too nice."

"I'm doing my utmost not to see the insult in that," he snorted.

"It's not an insult," she laughed "If anything it's a compliment. He just…he's like a puppy. You're not. Will? I'd eat him alive."

"It warms me to hear you have no such intentions where I'm concerned."

"I'll do my best to keep the cannibalism to a minimum," she replied.

The words brought forth memories of her captain, and how very unhappy he'd be with her in that exact moment. But then James was speaking again, and that in itself provided a welcome distraction.

He bowed his head as though to express his thanks "I do have another request, however…"

"Wow, you're starting to ask quite a lot."

One side of his mouth twisted upwards into a wry smirk "I haven't been able to put the battle against those…creatures aboard The Dauntless out of my mind. Your method of fighting them was unique - at first I tried to brush it off as improvisation, but given what I know now, I suspect that was not the case."

When he looked to her with his eyebrows raised slightly for confirmation regarding that fact, Theo shrugged.

"My dad always made sure I knew how to scrap. He called it high-risk problem solving," she snorted "It was usually without a weapon, but when there was one involved it was always something small. Concealable. Swords, er, have fallen out of fashion a bit."

James' lips pursed just slightly, but she had the feeling that was more to do with the idea of a world where men found necessity in teaching their daughters how to fight rather than because the art of swordsmanship was waning. Theo snorted slightly, shaking her head. Thanks to what she'd told him, he probably envisaged her world as one that was much more unrecognisable to this one than it really was - full of orgies and brawls. Okay, maybe not one too dissimilar from Tortuga, but definitely Port Royal and anywhere else that he deemed civilised. It was a mental image she'd have to work to undo. She herself had been surprised to find that the worlds weren't too crazily different. Not when it came to the people, at least. Life was more difficult here, sure, and she still sorely missed her MP3 player, but it wasn't like she'd been dumped on an alien planet. Still, if she rushed to correct him of whatever notions he had now she knew it would sound like empty justification…and she didn't want to derail the conversation.

"I'm decent with a pocket knife thanks to that, but it's no good in the types of battles you all have here," she sighed "My tactic back during, well, everything was to get in as close as possible as quickly as possible so they couldn't use their swords, but it's not a great game plan to rely on."

"Nor one I wish to see you replicate," he replied "But I have every confidence that you'll be well prepared for the next battle when it should come."

Theo wasn't ignorant to the hidden question in that phrase. But she pretended that she was.

"Anyway, my dad had all the proper formal training - mixed martial arts, boxing, wrestling, then whatever he learned on the go. I didn't have that, he just taught me a mix of it all. I know what I'm doing, I just don't know all of the theory side. I could play you a chord, but I couldn't tell you the name of it, y'know?"

He nodded slowly "Happily, it's not the theoretical side I'm interested in."

Theo smiled "You want me to teach you?"

"If I'm able to pick up a trick or two, I fail to see why I should not," he replied

"I'll be happy to do so," she said "When do you want to start?"

She was tempted to tease him, but she pushed that down. It would take a lot for any man of this time to ask for a woman's advice when it came to fighting, even one with surprisingly modern ideals as James had. She wouldn't mock him for it.

"Not now - tomorrow, perhaps. You need to rest, and I…" he grimaced, rolling his left shoulder slightly.

"What's wrong?" She sat up and turned towards him.

"A mild complaint in my shoulder, nothing more."

"Did I do it?" Theo frowned.

"No - just…ever since the hurricane," he made a face "Don't trouble yourself over it, Theodora. It's not my sword arm, at least."

She watched on with a frown, unease seeping into her as he rubbed at the shoulder before noticing her worry and dropping his hand back down into the sand. That wasn't mentioned in the movies. Sure, neither was Hattie and a multitude of other details likely classed as too mundane for the trilogy to overly concern itself with, but…was this different? Had her presence aboard the Pearl urged him into acting differently? Brought on something as simple as his being jostled by a wave that he should have cleared entirely in the absence of her presence?

When the frown did not leave her face, he took it upon himself to hurl a distraction her way.

"So, Turner is a pup," he said slowly "Sparrow is a…?"

"Menace, usually," she replied drily, relaxing just a little as she leaned back on her elbows in the sand once more.

The smirk he gave in response to that was probably a tad more pleased than he really intended "And I?"

"You?" She blinked in surprise at the question.

"A dolphin?" He hazarded a guess, barely able to keep the amused smile from his face as he teased her in an effort to lighten the mood "A seal, perhaps? I'll confess, if you name me an ape I'll take it as an affront."

Thinking on it for a surprisingly short amount of time than she thought it would take, Theo knew her answer when she found it.

"A man."

"A man?" He echoed doubtfully, like he wasn't sure whether to trust her answer.

"Mm. Not a boy, not a guy, not a bloke, certainly not a lad. A man. A good one, too."

If she was being honest, she'd always rolled her eyes when people she'd known back home would hit out with that line - I don't have time for boys, I need a man - but in this case it was true. It wasn't a descriptor she'd often been able to use back home, for all of the lads she'd ever known had been just that - lads. And maybe it was a sign of the times, for she could also easily describe Groves, Will, and even Jack as men when she wasn't endeavouring to take the piss out of them…which, given her chronic inability to take much seriously, was admittedly seldom. But with James the title seemed to ring true head and shoulders above all the rest. Then again, she was just slightly biased.

In response to her explanation, the corners of his lips twitched upwards into a soft smile as he bowed his head just slightly, apparently genuinely pleased by the compliments as he did his best not to blush under them. Then he pressed his lips together and raised his chin again, doing his utmost to straighten his face. Theo watched the whole production fondly, mentally adding 'adorable' to her descriptors. That one, however, she did not voice.

His hand found hers in the sand, brushing against it just slightly with his knuckles before he finally took the plunge and entwined his fingers with her own. Theo blushed. Because apparently that was what hand holding did to her these days.

"Yes, well…" he trailed off softly and then coughed "Come, we should eat. A good meal after training is imperative to ensuring that the hard work bears fruit."

Keeping hold of her hand, he pulled her up once he stood - and she was relieved to see it didn't seem to bother that shoulder of his, even if she still intended to press that matter further later on - and she slid the hand out of habit into the crook of his arm. She was sure it looked ridiculous, especially considering that she looked more like a pirate rather than anything resembling a lady these days, but she didn't really care.

What she did care about was what she caught sight of at the docks when they passed them to head further in town. Halting where she stood, she stared at it with something that felt a whole lot like dismay. Having been jolted back by her screeching to a halt, James paused and then frowned, looking at her before following her line of sight. And then he stilled, too. The Black Pearl swayed just slightly where it was docked in the dim light of the evening, more or less quiet but for the figures of a few crewmen left to guard the ship.

"Shit," she sighed.

Apparently it was a sentiment he shared, for rather than give even the slightest grimace in disapproval when it came to her language, he sighed heavily.

"We…knew this day would come."

"We did," she agreed quietly "It's just…it's been nice."

And now it would no longer be so. It was less what the Pearl was - although she did continue to stare at it like if she glared at it hard enough it would morph into another ship entirely and they'd have another few weeks away from it all - and more what it signified. The end of the strange little bit of peace they'd hewn out for themselves here. The arrival of Jones, and of Beckett, and of danger and death. The fact that she'd have to stare it all in the face before the end. It was much like the last little bit of peace she'd managed to steal for herself, back in Port Royal. It hadn't been so much James' promotion that she'd dreaded, but everything that it heralded the beginning of. She'd felt just as nauseous then as she did now, too.

There was, however, one glaring difference. Last time she'd been quite alone in it all. Now, as the man to her right place his hand gently over hers where it rested in the crook of his arm, she was not. There were things he didn't know, sure, things she couldn't tell him. But she wasn't alone. Leaning into him slightly, they stood there in silence and watched the ship for a few more long moments.

It occurred to her, vaguely in the back of her mind, that not being alone could be very dangerous. Even more dangerous than things had been so far. Back then, there'd been no ability to weaken - nor to falter, nor to hesitate. She only had herself to rely on, so being unreliable even for a split second simply wasn't an option. Allowing herself to pretend it was an option now simply wasn't feasible. There was just as much on the line now - if not more. It was just harder to resist comfort when comfort was right there, rubbing his thumb over her knuckles while she made her peace with the fact that it was all starting again.

"Do you fear him?" He asked quietly, an edge of danger to his tone.

Ah. So he'd mistaken the source of her dread.

"Jack? No," she gave a tired laugh "No, not at all. Not beyond what a good pirate should when it comes to their captain."

A breeze blew around them - one she would've usually found refreshing after training, but now had her shivering and her shoulders curling in on themselves.

"You're not a pirate, Theodora," he said flatly.

"The law would beg to differ," she replied "Unless they call me a witch. Or a pirate witch, I suppose. Can you be both? I s'pose we'll find out soon enough. Will it be a scaffold or a pire? Who knows?"

Her joking didn't lift her own spirits, and judging by the frown that etched itself into his brow, it certainly didn't lift his, either. Thankfully, he knew her more than well enough by now to take the shite she chatted when she was nervous too seriously.

"We'll face him - and it, all of it - together," he said finally.

"Are you sure you know what you're getting into?" She asked.

"No - but that in itself is even more reason not to let you face it alone."

He said it with such candour that she could have cried. Instead, she kept her composure and exhaled shakily instead, losing any pretense that she wasn't leaning against him. James didn't seem to mind, though, lifting the hand that had been atop hers and bringing it up to her shoulder instead, holding her to him.

They stood there for a few moments, making the most of their last shred of peace. And then, when it could be put off no more, she sighed heavily and stepped back just slightly.

"Come on. No use cryin' about it, we should get it over with. He's not gonna be happy."

"I care not a whit for Sparrow's happiness," he replied, catching her by the hand and stopping her as she made to begin walking into town.

Pausing, she turned and tried to keep her dread from her face. Judging from the brow-furrowing sympathy she was met with in return, along with the softness in his eyes, she suspected she failed. His eyes flickered downward to her lips, and then he ducked his head and pressed his to them. It was soft, and it was chaste, and it made her feel marginally better - which was no small feat. Sighing, she pressed her forehead to his, staying close when they parted and revelling in the skim of his thumb across the side of her jaw.

"It will be fine," he said firmly.

"I thought you hated that word," she laughed.

"Only when it is not true."

Well. She hoped he was right.

A/N: This chapter was going to be combined with the next, but it would've just ended up running on too long. Apologies! But Jack is back, even if we haven't seen him yet! The next one shouldn't be far off though. And speaking of the housing situation, depending on what happens with that updates might be delayed while I move and get internet sorted in my new place - it all depends on how things shake out in the end, but I'll keep you guys posted as much as I can, and if I don't get a chance to do so on here, I absolutely will on:

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