A/N: I've started having dreams about this fic, that's how deep I'm in with this shit at this point lolol.

On the housing front, I still don't have much to share. I'm just constantly applying for places and waiting to see what happens. Honestly, at this point I'm just trying to stay uninvested (as much as that's possible) because it's a stressful time and if I get super invested in and excited about every place I see, only to then not get the place and go through the whole disappointment and upset of that, it's going to make the whole thing even more impossible than it already feels. It is what it is, I'll just have to wait and see how it shakes out. Remember when my hopeful ass thought I was nearly at the end of the whole process a month ago? Buuuut, whining aside, it's okay. I have our Jim here to keep me sane. I also have a new Sirius Black/OC fic that I've just started called She's Electric, if that strikes your fancy.

James glowered at the horizon, going through the motions of the rehabilitation exercises for his shoulder. He'd already known them long before Theodora showed him them - any man who swung a sword for a living did. While he'd wondered at the time if he should say so - if he should interrupt her efforts to let her know that she was showing him something he already knew…even if, admittedly, he hadn't bothered using them much. But he'd kept his mouth shut. In part because his mind had fallen blank like he was a lad of fifteen the moment her hand snaked beneath his coat to press over his shoulder, although he'd never admit that part, but mostly because he knew why she was doing it. She needed to feel like she was helping. James would not deny her that - he didn't have the heart. Not least because he'd been in a foul mood at the time, and didn't want her to take it as a rejection if he did shrug her off.

Was she keeping herself out of trouble on the Dutchman? He snorted at the thought almost as soon as it formed in his mind. Of course she wouldn't be. She never did. That was what made this new set of circumstances so intolerable - it hadn't even been Theodora getting herself into it. It would've been only marginally better if she had, but at least then he might kid himself that she knew what she was getting into. But she didn't - she hadn't. She'd been scared. He wasn't sure he'd seen her scared with the exception of their very first meeting. Wary, yes, anxious, certainly, but scared? Even after the attack on Port Royal, she'd been shaken, yes, shell-shocked even - but not terrified. She'd never begged him to help her. While it struck something within him that he was now someone she would turn to for help, it only made the fact that he'd been unable to at the time taste all the more bitter.

"What do you think Jones meant? About Will no longer being on the ship?"

He turned his head to see Elizabeth had joined him where he stood against the ship's rail, her brow furrowed.

"I should think the statement self-explanatory," James muttered, and then guilt struck him and he sighed "Had he…dispatched with Mr Turner, he would have said so - and taken great joy in sharing the news. Judging by Jones' vague wording, I can only guess that he escaped."

She bowed her head and sighed before finally nodding.

"If he hadn't, perhaps he and Theo could have worked together to find a way out."

"If he can escape, Theodora certainly can," James countered flatly "Perhaps Sparrow may trade a third one of us to him in the coming days and we might form a team."

Although he didn't dare hope for such an eventuality. In fact, it was highly likely that Jones would be on high alert and doing his utmost to prevent a second escape, thus thwarting any attempt Theodora might make.

"A third?" Elizabeth echoed doubtfully "But…Surely you're not suggesting that…?"

Sighing heavily, James gave her a rueful look as he pointed out "Theodora is arguably much more useful to him than Mr Turner, and he turned on her without any hesitation. Don't tell me you never wondered how he ended up on the Flying Dutchman in the first place."

Pushing away from the rail, he gave her a pointed look as he took his leave. While there was no way of escaping thinking about the situation, there wouldn't be until Theodora was safe by his side once more, he wasn't in much of a mood to sit and discuss it, too. Doing so only brought forth repetitions of Theodora's begging in his mind - her begging Sparrow and going ignored, and worse, her begging him and his being utterly powerless to help her. A reminder of how far he'd fallen, perhaps. It was not a position he intended to put her in again. His mind was already made up. Slipping his hand into his pocket, he ran the pad of his thumb over the pendant for what felt like the hundredth time that day, further strengthening his resolve.

Sparrow stood up by the helm, frowning down at the palm of his hand with a troubled expression. James should've hanged him when he had the chance. Then none of this would have happened. No Jones, no Beckett. Perhaps he'd have finally been able to convince Elizabeth to end the engagement, and they'd all be back in Port Royal now, planning their separate weddings. He wouldn't have lost it all - not his career, not his station, not his home, not Theodora. Life would be simple, but it would be good. The worst thing to separate them would be his being stationed at sea, and he was sure he'd loathe the separation, but the reunions would be all the sweeter for it each and every time.

And Theodora? She'd be safe in Port Royal. Perhaps annoyed by the idea of the role of a conventional wife, but he wouldn't hold her to it. He wouldn't expect her to devise dinner parties or spend her days dithering over fabric for curtains. She could do as she liked - she could swim, and she could dabble in swordsmanship, and she could…she could worry over how she might tell the truth without his thinking that he'd just married a madwoman.

No, the more he considered the picture the more he knew it was a fantasy. The way things had unfolded seemed the only way they could have unfolded, really. He would not say it had been for the best - no, he wouldn't say that until they were both safe and well and together. But the fact remained that nothing about their meeting had been conventional, nor anything that followed for that matter. He had a feeling the rest of their lives would not be either, even if they got through everything they were soon to face. Convention he could sideline - something he never thought he'd find himself saying, but for Theodora he would do so. To see her reduced to spending her days consumed with embroidery or china patterns or the latest gossip would be…wrong. It wasn't something he wished to see. It wouldn't be the woman he'd fallen for. Theodora herself? Theodora, he could not sideline. He would see her safe, and he would see Sparrow pay for what he had done. It suited him well that his taking the heart out from under him would see both aims fulfilled.

Theodora was feeling decidedly bleak. Not only because it had been well over a full day since she'd eaten, not because the gash on her head where she'd been struck was itching terribly, and not even because the constant lurching of the ship was doing nothing to quell just how entirely dodgy she felt. But because of the implications.

She'd tried to change things, and she'd failed. Sure she'd given it her best effort, but they'd now doubtlessly reverted to the original plan. Jack would never get those hundred men back to Tortuga just to replace them with another hundred, and he might've been a bloody traitor but he wasn't daft. He wouldn't try. No, he'd go after the heart. Her efforts were for nothing, everybody was doing what they ordinarily would have been had she not been here at all. Was this how it was always going to be? Her desperately trying to change things, only for none of it to matter in the end?

No. No - she seized upon the self pity as she felt it rising and shoved it away. She had changed things. Hattie was alive, James had pointed that out to her himself. And she'd rounded up the very dregs of human society onto the Pearl for Jones - how many people had gone unrobbed, unassaulted, or otherwise just generally unbothered thanks to that? And then there was James himself. The movie version - the fictional version - of what he could have become after his resignation had haunted her ever since they started becoming close back in Port Royal. But it wasn't what he was now. No, now he was clean, healthy, even relatively happy…when not in the presence of Jack. If she could do that, surely she could do more? No, she couldn't let this initial failure get to her. She had to keep her nerve. There was too much at stake if she didn't. She could sit here and bemoan the fact that she needed a sign all she liked, but surely the progress she had made was sign enough. Right? It had to be. She was just cold and tired and hangry. It would be fine. It had to be fine.

Turning her head, she forced her eyes open (if only because when they shut her treacherous brain conjured images of James' death upon this very ship) and that was when something on the horizon caught her eye. A fleck. No, not a fleck - a ship. Well, shit. Any delusions she might have had about what ship it was were gone the moment reverberations rumbled through the ship, and a swell rose in the ocean not a moment later, starting from beneath the Dutchman before pelting towards the other ship at some speed. Theo's boots skidded against the wood beneath them as she tried her push herself back even further into the shadows. The men above had long given up their search for her, thank god, but she didn't want that thing to somehow sense her, as irrational as she knew the fear to be right away.

It felt distinctly more rational as they gained on the ship just in time to see the monstrous tentacles slowly begin slithering their way up the ship. Theo had known that the kraken was big. Well, she thought she'd known. But it was the difference between seeing whales in a documentary before swimming alongside them - or, she imagined, seeing a globe in a classroom before going to the moon and seeing it from space. There was knowing, and then there was understanding, and there could be no understanding without seeing it for real. She missed the time a few minutes prior when she did not understand.

For the first time - and likely the last - Theo found herself feeling grateful for Cutler Beckett, as there would be no winning if Jones had this beast on his side. Each tentacle was taller than any house she'd ever lived in, and they ripped and crumpled the wood of the ship like it was mere paper. It was almost impressive in a vague and terrible sort of way that this was what it would take in the end to do away with Jack Sparrow.

She hadn't intended to watch. Yes, morbid curiosity meant she wanted at least one glimpse of the kraken - she argued so that she might be able to prepare herself for what was to come, but one glance was all it took to know that there wasn't any preparing for this - this absolute, terrible force of nature. After that? After that she couldn't look away. She watched, utterly rapt and entirely sick, as it broke the ship down into nothing in a time that felt far, far shorter than the movie had portrayed it to be. The ship was there, and a couple of minutes later it simply was not. Even the cries of those aboard didn't reach them from where they stood witness, leaving the whole scene appearing eerily efficient. Soon nothing remained but odd pieces of wreckage, the tentacles writhing around thin air as though loathing to leave anything at all undestroyed, and then they finally slipped below the surface and the water went still. Fear of the ocean was never something she'd particularly understood, but had she seen this in person before finding herself adrift back in the beginning? She'd have lost her mind with fear that first day. The water even felt too close now, suspended as she was up here above it.

Occasional low, growling bouts of laughter reached her ears from the deck of the ship. They felt wrong - blasphemous to the silence. Jesus, she hoped Bootstrap believed her. She hoped she was right. She kept her eyes fixed furiously to the surface, but with all of the debris floating about and the way the sun was reflected up into her eyes it was difficult - and if Will was swimming towards them, he was keeping below the surface. When she heard the first heavy breaths and grunts of exertion, she thought maybe she'd imagined it - they were difficult to hear over the waves constantly lapping at the side of the ship, and it very well could have been what she wanted to hear. But then a hand - a distinctly human, non-scaled hand - wrapped around one of the spikes to her right and she breathed a sigh of relief.

Will hauled himself into view, and when he spotted her face his grip almost faltered, gasping in shock and his eyes widening comically before he registered that he was looking at her, and not at some member of Jones' crew lying in wait. The shock didn't leave his face, though, as he stared at her. Inching forward, she offered a hand and he took it falteringly, eyes still fixed on her face as though he expected her to vanish at a moment's notice.

"Theodora?"

"Fancy meeting you here," she offered a tired smile.

"What are you doing here?"

He seemed to quickly remember that being spotted would not be ideal, accepting her help to pull him out of sight. It risked being cramped with the two of them squashed inside, but they weren't exactly on top of each other.

"You gave me the idea," she admitted, pushing her hair back and away from her face "So, uh, thanks for that."

"Not two minutes into a conversation and you're already being confusing - it truly is you, then," he sighed, shaking his head - but the words had no bite to them "But I was referring to the Dutchman, not…here, specifically."

"Same way you ended up here," she said grimly.

"Jack?"

"Jack. Fucking. Sparrow," she confirmed "Elizabeth is aboard the Pearl with him now. James, too. They're going after the heart - or so I'd assume. You have the key, right?"

His brow furrowed as he took a moment to make sense of the information - for that, she didn't blame him, and instead she waited patiently. She had the time, and she'd just dumped rather a lot of information on him all at once when her very presence here alone was surprise enough.

"I…yes. Yes, I have the key."

Theo nodded.

"Good. Do me a favour, then, Will - when…if it comes down to it, if it all goes tits up and the kraken won't be fended off of the Pearl…lock Jack in his quarters when you abandon ship. Barricade him in, if that's what it takes."

She'd tell the same to Elizabeth, too, if given a chance. If she could save her a bit of guilt and the couple both some heartache, it was the least she could do. She wouldn't be there to see it done herself. No, if she knew James then he would be going after the heart now. For himself, for the both of them. There'd be no convincing him that Jack was good anymore. And Theo? Well, Theo would stick with James wherever possible. Wherever impossible, too, if she had her way, she didn't care. She dared any fucker to try and split them up after this. This was the third time they'd been pulled apart from one another, and although she'd instigated the last two, she still didn't view herself as having had much of a choice in any of it. And the third time was absolutely not the charm.

"You'd betray Jack?" Will frowned.

What, was she supposed to be his loyal puppy?

"He betrayed me first," she murmured "And it has to happen. This? This just…makes me feel less shite about it. It's the only way, Will. It wants him. It wants the one who bears the black spot. It doesn't care about anybody else. Do you think he wouldn't do the same if it was the other way round?"

Will's brow remained furrowed.

"Don't tell me you're fighting Jack's corner now?" She gave a tired laugh.

"No," Will said frankly "But I expected that you might. You were the one always insisting that he was good. Yes, he betrayed you, and none understand your grievance with him over that better than I, but I doubt he would have if he thought it would end with your death. He must expect to see you again."

"Who says we wouldn't see him again? You think something like death would stop Jack Sparrow? You'd get him back - with help."

"Help?"

"Tia Dalma," she said "And…others."

"Others?"

"Others."

He sighed, leaning against one of the great spikes to the side "It's good to see you, Miss Byrne, but I forgot how irksome you could be."

Theo huffed a laugh - a genuine one - and shook her head with a smile "I'm glad to be able to remind you."

A/N: Reunion in the next chapter!

Tumblr - esta-elavaris

Insta - miotasach

Ko-fi - eriathiel