A/N: Merry Christmas u filthy animals xoxo
Part of the reason this chapter took so long (other than it being the holidays) is that I really wanted to get it right as far as history is concerned in terms of which parts of which towns would still be similar, what would be different etc. but that was a task that ended up being far more difficult than I expected. I still tried my best to shoot for accuracy where possible, and I figure people don't care too much anyway, but I am an anxiety-riddled soul and had to put this disclaimer beforehand for peace of mind. So yes, my apologies to any pedantic 18th century Irishfolk reading.
Six Weeks Later
The voyage from Port Royal to London took a month, give or take a few days. They paused in London so that James could plant the seeds of his business to be tended to when the time for honey-mooning was done - and, more pleasantly, so he could show Theodora some of the places that he recollected from his early youth. They were few in number, but he still enjoyed showing them to her as they both recovered from the lengthy voyage and began to make their faces known among circles that might either invest in their growing venture, or (better still) make use of it in the future.
Then, after a couple of weeks of that, they were bound for Ireland - although they were in no real rush. They meandered slowly northward up through England, until they reached a point from which they might sail across the short stretch of water that separated them from Theodora's homeland. His wife's excitement at that prospect was clear in the fact that she was entirely unable to sit still throughout the relatively short voyage to Dublin. Oh, she did her best to play it cool (to make use of her own oft-used phrasing) but she hardly succeeded - a bright grin overcoming her face that seemed to directly correlate with how many Irish accents surrounded them at any given time.
By the time Dublin Bay grew on the horizon, the grin threatened to split her face as she squeezed his hand and appeared half-tempted to quite literally jump for joy. James could hardly begrudge her such joy - if anything it was infectious, and he soon wore a matching smile on his face, although his was perhaps less likely to leave his face aching.
Dublin's population was second only to London itself, and it looked to James to be an exceedingly metropolitan city as they left the docks and headed in towards the town proper, the horse they'd purchased in England in tow. Great buildings of white stone - businesses, townhouses, churches, and inns, towered up over their heads with elaborate carvings worked into the stone itself. It was leagues away from the squalid and muddy potato farms men like Gillette had announced the whole country as consisting of. Although Gillette being wrong provided James with little disbelief. Ever.
As James looked about with curiosity, taking stock of his new surroundings as he led the horse to his right, Theodora stood to his left. He kept his hand at the small of her back just so he could be confident he would not lose her in the hustle and bustle, but when he looked to her face he knew that he might as well have been on the moon for all she was aware of him, or any other on the street for that matter.
There was the slightest furrow in her brow, but it was not a troubled sort, as she looked up around her, a vaguely sad and somewhat rueful half-smile on her face that suggested to him that whatever she was looking at had not changed too much since she was here last. Or since when she would be here. It gave him a headache to try and sort out in his mind - and he was hardly witless.
James made no attempt to rush her as they meandered through the streets, keeping quiet and merely doing what he could to steer her out of the way of any potential hazards. He ignored those who griped about their slow progress as much as she did.
She remained quiet as they found a tavern that could accommodate their horse outside, as well as when they found a table at which they might stop and have a breather, to use her terminology. It was only when their drinks and food were ordered that she finally turned away from the room proper and fixed her attention on him, a bashful smile on her face.
"Sorry, I've been miles away this whole time, haven't I?"
"Do not apologise," he shook his head.
Mostly he was just relieved that this hadn't induced a fit of tears or miserable homesickness. Although he didn't voice that, either, for he did not wish for her to fight back tears should they come.
"So," Theodora said "Way I see it, we've got two options."
"Oh? What are those, pray tell?"
"The first is that we find a room here, likely for an extortionate price, and spend the whole night being surrounded by people and noise and riotry, and then wake up painfully early tomorrow to make the whole journey in one very tiring day…"
"Your favourite of the two options, given how you present it to me," he said drily.
"The second is that we make a start today-"
"Today?" his eyebrows rose faintly "It's already long past midday, we wouldn't reach our destination until the middle of the night."
"We wouldn't reach it today at all. We travel 'til dusk, and then we make camp and rough it for the night."
"Rough it?" he echoed.
"Don't tell me you're scared of forgoing a featherbed."
"I would remind you that I was a soldier."
"Ah, but you're in wild country now, lad. Here there be monsters."
"If they're all as pretty as you, I'm sure I'll be fine."
"Now, now - you'll make me jealous."
He hadn't thought it possible for her to become more enthused with the days that lay ahead of them, and he'd always viewed her as one who laughed easily. On anybody else he would have called it excessively easy, but with her it only really irked him when she used it to try and cover up emotions that she wasn't so quick to show. As they rode out of the town, though, with Theodora seated before him on the horse, the grins and the laughter that frequently bubbled up out of her was anything but a mask.
The town - and all of its streets and cobblestones, its taverns and businesses and homes, eventually gave way to a far expanse of vivid emerald green, broken up only by the odd stream, patches of wildflowers, or great grey craggy rocks poking their way above the ground. The air smelled clean and crisp and fresh (or like home, as his wife gleefully insisted), and they rode westwards until the sky blazed amber and they reached the treeline of a small forest.
It was a bit late to start setting about making camp - and if they didn't move quickly they would have to do so in darkness - but their prolonged journey meant they could camp among the trees, which would shield them from the worst of the wind and keep them out of such perilously plain sight. James did not expect trouble, but it would be foolish not to prepare for it anyway, and he kept his sword close in the event that bandits should be foolish enough to mistake them for easy targets. Theodora did not go unarmed either, her fine new slender blade a belated wedding gift from the new Mr and Mrs Turner, resting at her hip. Folk here seemed less perturbed by the sight of a woman with a sword at her hip than those in England had been.
In any case, they were both well-versed in setting up camps, and the fast-encroaching twilight did not bother them as James unsaddled and tended to the horse (one of the few things that yet remained outside the realms of his wife's skillset) while she set about building a fire.
James had not forgotten the early days of his association with the woman who was now his wife. Even had he not fallen for her, were she anybody else, he would not have been able to forget such an encounter. When Mr Turner had led him into the foliage of Port Royal's wilderness, he'd have suspected the lad was playing a trick on him were it not for the fact that the lad would have well known that he was not the sort for practical jokes. Then, when they'd finally come upon her camp, he felt like the ground had been yanked clean out from beneath his feet.
It now still made him chuckle to himself whenever he recalled it, though he could hardly find much humour in it at the time. Theodora, looking like some wild feral creature covered in dirt and sunburns, staring at him with a look that could only say - in her words - oh, shit.
In the days that followed, his dread that he'd unwittingly brought home a madwoman soon faded into something that resembled begrudging admiration. How many ladies of Port Royal would have found themselves dead within a day of trying to live under such conditions? Through sheer idiocy if not misfortune? Most. Not all, but certainly an extreme majority.
He thought he'd seen a glimpse of her comfort in the wild back then, and during their stay in Tortuga where they often caught and cooked their own meals, but as he watched her now - in the environment in which she'd learned those skills - he knew he was witnessing his wife well and truly in her element. By God, she'd put some of his own men to shame, moving around the terrain with such ease and comfort that it might as well have been her own sitting room.
"So, dinner," she said "We have the beef and the potatoes from town, and I'm sure I can scrounge up mushrooms - steak, mushrooms, and chips?"
James blinked, and she added.
"Oh, chips are like these strips of fried potato, they're crispy on the outside but soft on the inside, they-"
"No, no, I was just trying to contend with the shock at your devising a meal that does not include cheese."
Theodora paused, and then frowned "Oh, cheese would've been so good on the chips. Or on the beef. Hell, on the mushrooms too...I should've thought to buy some back in town. Damn."
"And now I regret saying a word. What should I do? Forage the mushrooms?"
"No, no, you have to be careful in these parts."
"I am able to discern the poisonous from the edible," he pointed out "Although I may not be a wild man like you."
"I'm not a man at all, wild or nol."
"You know what I mean," he said with a fond roll of his eyes.
"I do, but I'll do it, or else you'll end up upsetting a fairy ring, and we'll ruin the nice peace we just managed to claw our way into."
She offered not even the barest hints of a teasing smile as she spoke, her brow furrowing in a troubled frown instead.
"You can't be serious."
"He says to his wife, who was born in the late nineteen-hundreds," she raised her eyebrows at him.
James halted, then straightened and breathed a laugh "Very well. I concede your point - your fairies shall go unbothered."
"Trust me, you'd've been the bothered one if you disturbed 'em."
There seemed little point in arguing with her. And it was hardly as though she lacked a valid point.
Dinner was prepared with the sort of unhurried efficiency that they'd fallen into long ago, communicating in a shorthand that they'd never consciously devised but understood all the same. By the time they were actually eating, the stars and the moon both were out in full force up above them. The forest in which they were currently housed was not so thick that it blocked out the sky by any means, and the stars above seemed almost conscious of that fact, determined to put on a show, glittering and gleaming in the sky more than any of the folk back in London could when they assembled together all in their finest jewels.
The weather was fine and the night was cool - although that meant it was positively Arctic compared to the baseline he'd grown used to in the Caribbean. Once they were finished eating, they ended up gravitating towards one another until they were curled up on the forest floor, James' boots directed towards the fire while Theodora's legs draped across his, her skirts acting as a blanket in addition to the one they'd brought with them.
"Did I remember to mention what a force you were in London?" He asked quietly.
Lifting her head from his shoulder, she looked at him with a frown caught somewhere between curiosity and amusement. Apparently he had not, indeed, mentioned it.
"I know you've little patience for dinner parties and the, well, the wifing as it is required where business is involved - which is a boon for me, for I've also little patience for them, and I should have difficulty were they the sort of thing you wished to throw or attend week in and week out," he said "But truly, you were…lovely. I don't believe there was a soul you did not win over."
"In contrast to the souls I usually disenchant and alienate?" She teased.
If she did that with her manner, he knew he likely did the same with his, stern and humourless as people often liked to paint him. The difference was, he supposed, that he was a man. Such a demeanour was permitted to him in the eyes of many, more than it would be a woman.
"That was not what I meant," he chuckled "But I know Port Royal was difficult for you, with many of the people there."
"Mm. It was different, though."
"You had to make your first impression with the newness of everything weighing on you, and your strange coming to us with it," he nodded.
"Not just that," she shook her head "The people in London were nicer to me."
"Were they?" He frowned.
How would that make sense? The folk in Port Royal were many of the folk who had once been in London. People there hardly varied that greatly - not in outlook. With the exception of a few outliers.
"I hadn't realised the way we found you had such an impact on your social standing," he murmured - the tale was not one they'd regaled those in London with, although few had doubtless already heard.
Their story was notable enough to make the rounds.
"It did, but not in the way you mean," she replied "When they met me, I was Theodora Byrne. I was beneath them - and then I stole away the island's most eligible bachelor with my grubby little paws."
James scoffed, threading his fingers through hers as he took her so called grubby little paws in his.
"It's true!" She insisted "They held a grudge - I wasn't good enough, in their eyes, to be around them, and certainly not to be living with you, much less married to you. They tolerated me by the end, but only because of their beloved etiquette. The people back in London, though? They only ever knew me as Mrs Norrington, and you as a married man. No need for resentment, because they didn't feel they'd been robbed of anything."
God, he did not miss Port Royal. He thought he would once he was gone, but too much had happened there - and too much of it bad - for him to look back wistfully. Had Theodora not survived it might've been differed, he might've still struggled to be there but for the warm and fond memories he shared with her that laced their house there. But she was here, and he was glad that they were no longer there.
"I will take first watch," he murmured, smoothing his free hand over her hair "You should sleep."
"Will you actually wake me in time for mine?"
"Yes."
"Are you being honest with me right now?"
"...Perhaps."
"James."
"You do make it very difficult to be chivalrous, you know."
"I think you just don't trust me to do a good job."
"How could I? You'll be occupied looking out for fairies."
Even if he conceded her point, he couldn't help but tease her a little.
"I won't thank you if I have to deal with you all grumpy and sleep deprived all day tomorrow, you know."
"Grumpy? Me?" He frowned deeply, although with little sincerity.
Theo looked at him ruefully.
"All right," he chuckled "But never with you."
"Hm," she said as though she doubted that very much.
"When? Go on, make your charge."
"Well, when you thought I'd masterminded the move to purposely swindle your ship away from you and run off with Jack. You weren't pleased then."
"No, you're right, what a monster I am," he deadpanned.
"It's all right, you're a very pretty one."
Now that they had come full circle with their talking nonsense, Theodora seemed to grow tired of it, sighing contentedly as she huddled close to him. It was a contentment that James shared - despite the cold trying to work steadily into his fingers. Noting his attempt to rub some warmth back into them, his wife caught them and took over. With her fingernails having not yet fully regrown, she seldom removed her gloves (a fact that he did not comment on, though it saddened him to see) and so she didn't seem to struggle with the chill as he did. Or perhaps she was just more accustomed to it.
"Do you stand by your assertions at how badly you missed the cold?" He asked.
"Absolutely," she said without hesitation "And this is hardly cold. That's one thing about travelling now, you know - you get more time to acclimatise to the different, well, climates as you go."
"I suppose I never considered it," he murmured.
His hands were quickly warming but he made no move to stop her - enjoying the fussing more than he would admit. They'd discussed the differences in travel on more than one occasion, and it took her some time to convince him she truly was speaking honestly when she described great metal birds that could fly humans across the world in a matter of hours. While he did believe her, though - as it certainly seemed feasible for a society that had put men on the moon - the little details that added credibility to her tales always caught him off guard despite the fact that he did not doubt her honesty. There was believing it, and then there was experiencing it, he supposed.
"Mm," she murmured "That was always a thing of travelling back home - if you were going far away, at least. You get on a plane in the freezing cold at home, and then the aeroplane door opens at the end of the flight and you're just hit with the hot air."
"I suppose it must have felt similar to that when you awoke here," he said, and then added "The very first time, I mean."
"It was my first hint that I wasn't in Ireland," she nodded "The heat. Then I was too busy being cooked alive to think about it much. But anyway, it was the home journey that people viewed as the drawback. Insisted it was depressing, getting home and stepping back into the cold and the rain after two weeks in the sun. We don't get many days as fair as this one. I always liked it, though. Felt like home. Smelled like home."
"And does it now? Feel like home, still?"
It felt like there was little need to ask, given the bright smile that was constantly set upon her lips every time he looked at her. It seemed she could help it as little as she could help breathing or blinking - and after so long of seeing her look tired or troubled, James shared in her joy. Few things had put such a smile on her lips back in the Caribbean, although he felt honoured to have been one of them.
"It's…it's weird," she looked around her as though she might find the words she was seeking hidden behind a nearby tree "It feels like home, yeah. And out here, in the countryside like this, it could be home. I could convince myself that tomorrow we'll wake up and ride right into Longford and my house will be standing there like it always had been 'til now. Port Royal was different - I'd never been there. I don't even know if it still exists. I couldn't compare it with anything that I'd seen back before, not really, so it didn't feel as weird. This…this makes it all real."
She paused for a moment and then she continued.
"I mean, it's not like I doubted that it was real beforehand - I made my peace with it before Jack even turned up, even if bits of it still caught me off guard, I haven't been sat here doubting it all this time, but this is all just…ugh, I'm making a right pig's ear of trying to explain this."
"No, I know what you mean," he said "Well, I cannot know. Not truly. But I understand what you're saying."
"It feels like home - when I close my eyes, or when we're out here. But it's not home. Home doesn't exist here. Well, not the home from before," she squeezed his hand as though worried he'd take her words the wrong way and he nodded his understanding before she continued "It's like…you know when somebody dies, and you have those moments where you forget? You go to call- er, write to them, or you think of them and make a mental note to tell them something next time you see them, and then there's that oh moment as you remember. This isn't so bad as that. It might've been, had I not seen my dad after everything, but it's still all just…bittersweet. Being back. It resurrects the homesickness, while reinforcing the fact that it's for a place that I can't go to."
"I know some of what you speak of," he said "It was like returning to Port Royal after Beckett sank his fangs into it. It looked the same, but it wasn't the place I'd known and come to care for. I suppose the lesson lies in accepting it with grace and finding a new home."
"I always thought home was just wherever I was," she admitted ruefully "But there's something about having the comfort of a concrete place pulled away."
"The home we build together will not be pulled away from us. Ever."
"You can't promise that," she said - but fondly.
"I can, and I shall," he vowed "In any case, for the time being home is wherever we are."
"I like the sound of that," she hummed.
Their conversation had also set James' mind at ease, for up until now he'd somewhat feared that her adamance not to live in Ireland - while undoubtedly rooted in her knowledge of its history-slash-future - had something to do with him. As though he might view it as a sacrifice to live in her homeland, or he might be uncomfortable being an Englishman outnumbered. Now, at least, he was content that she truly did not wish to settle down here.
"So, where shall we call home? Any thoughts yet?" he asked.
"Not London."
"Not London," he agreed heartily "Scotland? You've said yourself that the Scots and the Irish share a certain sort of attitude. Humour. Whatever it may be. Perhaps it would be similar enough at home to see you content without inducing melancholy."
"Not Scotland," she shook her head "They're about to have their own problems."
She did not offer an explanation as to what those problems would be, and he did not ask. If they were relevant, she would no doubt share them, and he shared in her fatigue in discussing the future as a concrete, set-in-stone thing rather than the happy hypotheticals they were floating about.
"Wales?" he suggested idly.
"I don't know much about Wales," she admitted "But…when we were moving up north through England so we could sail here, weren't there any places that stood out to you?"
James smiled, because he began to suspect they were of a similar mind "Keswick."
"Keswick," she echoed "The Lake District is gorgeous. I barely wanted to leave. If we weren't leaving to come here, I might have refused point blank."
Had he not been so curious to see Ireland with her, and had he not known how much it meant to her, he might have refused, too. That, James thought, seemed a very good omen indeed. The prospect was one that he continued to think of long after she fell silent and her breathing deepened, and one he found himself liking more and more with each passing minute. Keswick. Yes, they could make that work nicely indeed.
James did indeed wake Theo for her watch in the very early hours of the next morning, and as he sprawled out on the bed roll they'd brought with them, she tended the fire and allowed her mind to wander down the path that their conversation the previous night had set out before them.
She could be very happy in the Lake District, she thought. She had been happy there, before they'd left to travel westwards towards the stretch of sea that would bring them here. They could go hillwalking, they could own land, they could swim and fish and have dogs - and children. The last part had been a very tentative thought indeed, like she was being cheeky even thinking of it when they didn't know for sure. Like she was tempting fate to punish her entitlement if she started making plans for that, much in the same way she'd been reluctant to think of a future with James after everything before she'd managed to save him.
They wouldn't know until the time came, and thinking on it before then was just an exercise in masochism. She still had a fair few months left before they'd need to start thinking about cutting the implant out of her arm, anyway, and they were enjoying their honeymoon too much to start thinking of such matters. Resisting the urge to let a hand stray towards where the angry, shiny pink scar now sat below her navel, she instead busied herself by casting another log into the fire.
Time would tell - and they'd faced greater perils together.
As she continued to tend to the fire and keep an eye on their surroundings, she turned her mind to their destination for the day. Home. Less than a hundred miles almost directly west from Dublin, her hometown had been small back when she'd lived in it, so she couldn't help but wonder what it would be like now.
It was a tricky time period to find herself in. A century before and nothing would be recogniseable at all, a century after and things might look a fair bit more familiar. Instead she was left with things that looked vaguely familiar but not quite the same - like somebody who copied homework answers but threw in a few wrong answers to slip below the radar. She was left with the skeleton of the world she knew, but none of the fleshy bits. The bits she recognised were almost weirder than the bits she did not, because when she knew them they were old and crumbling relics, but now they were shiny and new and modern marvels. But it was still Ireland, and it still felt the same. The warm sort of relief that washed over her as she stepped off of the ship that had brought them over from England was the exact same as that which would hit her after disembarking from a plane or a ferry back in the day. That was more than enough.
Their unhurried pace pressing on westwards, after they ate breakfast and packed up their little camp, near enough doubled the time of their journey. Neither of them cared, though. There was no rush, and Theo couldn't help but smile every time she looked to James when they walked to give the horse a break, and found him admiring the beauty of the landscape. What was the point in hurrying along and missing out on the beauty of it all?
Pretty much all of the land here when she'd known it had been farmland. Some of it still was now, but most of it consisted of rolling hills of emerald green - and experiencing it from horseback was invigorating. More invigorating, however, was when buildings began to poke up out of the hills on the horizon a few hours after midday.
The town was small, but not so small as she'd imagined. Considering the fact that when she'd lived there, she could walk to anywhere else in town within an hour, she expected it to be little more than a church and a couple of houses now, but there was much more than that. Yes, there was a chapel, but there was also a smithy, an inn, and plenty of other buildings that couldn't just be viewed in a single glance.
Slipping off of the horse after James, she paused and looked around. A few people glanced their way, curious about the new faces, and she forced herself to smile in greeting at them, but her chest felt tight and funny.
"Are you well?" James asked quietly, telling her all she needed to know as to whether her emotions were showing on her face with a single hand resting at her elbow "If it's too overwhelming…"
"No, it's…" she paused, collected herself, and only continued when she was sure she could trust her voice "I don't recognise anything. Not a single thing."
He blinked, and then his lips thinned and he bowed his head, unsure as to what to say. And that was fine, because she didn't know what to say either.
As the horse was tied up and tended to outside the inn, she smoothed a hand over the plait her hair was bound into and continued to look around, searching for something - anything - which might have been the same as it was when she would eventually live here. She'd thought that at least the cathedral would have been built by now, it certainly looked old enough to her in her time, but she'd never paid much attention to details in architecture or anything like that back then, so it wasn't astounding that she was wrong. The clapboard chapel that stood across the muddy street from the inn now was worlds away from the stonework of St. Mel's though.
Maybe in the coming decades it would be torn down and rebuilt in the same spot, but she didn't know. She thought it would be like Dublin - that bits and pieces would look so eerily similar that she'd be able to maybe even puzzle her way through the fields and work out the spot where her house would eventually stand. That they'd be able to make camp there that night. Something. But there was no chance she'd be able to work it out based only on what there was now.
The only things, she suspected, that would still be here now were Achtland's stones, and she actively did not want to find those, lest she get sent back home again.
Even the feeling of home that Ireland in general brought over her felt dimmed now, lost to the horrible feeling of loss that threatened to overtake her again.
"I'm sorry," she said, shaking her head "I'm being silly."
Her hand found his at her opposite elbow, resting atop it.
"Don't apologise," he shook his head.
"No, I- you brought me all the way here, and I made such a big thing of it, and now we are here and…oh god, I'm being pathetic," she shook her head furiously.
"Shall we revisit the time in Tortuga wherein I vomited upon our reunion?"
"Yeah, well…you made it work for you," she mumbled, shaking her head fretfully.
It was then that she stopped toying with her hair, but only because her hands threatened to tremble.
"I expected this to be a difficult time for you," he said "I'd be a fool if I thought you'd spend the whole trip smiling. I…"
He paused, and then coughed and lowered his voice so that passersby interested in the newcomers wouldn't have a chance to bear witness to a good and proper Englishman displaying emotions.
"I am only glad that I can help you through it. Or else I hope you can."
"You're making it worse by being so bloody lovely," she grumbled, leaning against him and sighing.
"Shall I be cruel?" he mused.
"Yeah, it's worth a go."
"Right. Well…I cannot think of anything to say."
"That's even lovelier," she complained "Just pretend I'm one of your more incompetent men."
"...You wish for me to order you to swab the deck and redo a set of knots?"
"Fine, treat me like I'm Jack."
"You want me to shoot you?"
Theo breathed a laugh "Yes, with that very stern, very handsome glare you do."
"No need, you're smiling again."
Well. He had her there.
"Are you alright there, lass?" an old woman paused to question her, noting her emotion and James' proximity with apparent distrust.
"She's fine - she has not been in her home country for some time, she was overcome," James answered, offering a strained smile.
"Begging yer pardon, Mister, but I was speaking to the girl," the woman responded coolly, turning her gaze back to Theo "D'you know him? Are you well?"
"Yes - yes," Theo answered quickly "This is my husband. I'm just introducing him to Ireland, is all."
"Oh, well that's fine then," the woman brightened, offered her a smile and then carried on.
"No apology necessary," James remarked drily in her ear "I see the sentiment towards the English remains warm as ever."
"I wonder if she thought you'd kidnapped me or something," she snickered, shaking her head.
"After the comments you endured from my so-called side in Port Royal, I shall endure the distrust with as much grace as I can muster. Perhaps it's this beard you love so much - it makes me appear a brigand."
"Or maybe she heard you threaten to shoot me."
"It was not a threat, it was an offer," he clarified after a beat of silence - and even he struggled to keep the smirk from his face as he did.
"Some don't find that kind of thing chivalrous."
"What a strange country this is."
The joking, and the, ahem, concerned citizen had all been enough to drag her from her initial shock and upset, and when she looked up at James to apologise for her little moment, he gave her a look (albeit a tender one) that had her thinking better of it.
"Come on - let's see if they have cheese in there," she sighed, nodding at the door to the inn.
In response to that, James muttered something that sounded suspiciously like I cannot believe I married a mouse. Although considering what she really desired was something strong enough to strip paint from walls, she was saving him from having to contemplate whether he'd married an alcoholic. Cheese was the lesser of those two evils.
They ducked inside and, much as it had in Dublin, being surrounded by accents all the same as hers was a balm. Even more so here, really, considering the accents here were all as close to hers as she might find in this time - and, unlike in Dublin which was a hub for all sorts of business and travellers, more people here were chatting in Gaelic than in English.
By the time they'd bought themselves a room for the night, along with a round of drinks and lunch, they'd attracted enough attention from the locals (and hung around for long enough without causing trouble) for people to turn and begin talking to them. When the first one turned around - a lad who looked to be her age - and began speaking to her in Gaelic, it took her a moment to even find the words to respond.
She'd used it every so often since arriving in this time. Swearing, ordering foot, muttering to herself, but she hadn't held an actual conversation. For a second she had a vague, ridiculous fear that she'd forgotten how. But maybe that was just because she was struck with the sense that she could very well be conversing with one of her own ancestors - or some iteration of them. Some people were different, yeah, but there was still the same King, and plenty of the same historical figures. It stood to reason that the strange sort of logic governing that would govern this, too.
But it was like riding a bike - after she got the first sentence or two out, the words began rolling off her tongue and she no longer had to think so hard about what she was going to say before she said it.
James endured it all with admirable good humour, too, despite the fact that when she switched to English so he would not feel unincluded, those who struck up conversation with her did not return the favour. They also insisted on calling him Seumas rather than the Anglicised form of his name, perhaps to test whether he'd put up a fuss over it. He did not, and maybe that was what won him their goodwill in the end - and by the end of the night he could hardly have a drink, something to eat, or try a puff of a pipe, without having it insisted to him that he 'wouldn't find anything like this in England!'.
It was something Theo heard said in her own time near enough constantly to folk who visited from anywhere beyond their borders, and it had her smiling every time.
Night was closing well in when they broke away from their new group of acquaintances-slash-tentative-friends and stepped outside again, greeted by cool rain. It was a nice reprieve from the humidity, and it added to the feeling of home.
"It's nice, in a way," she said "Seeing what it was all like long before me."
"I thought after you saw it, you might grow tempted to remain," he admitted.
"No," she shrugged easily "I can't say either way if it had looked how I'd expected - even though I tried not to expect anything. But like this? I'm glad we did it, but there's nothing for me here. Although I wouldn't mind visiting the ol' home country every now and then."
"The Lake District is just across the sea. More or less. A fortuitous place, is it not?"
"I have a feeling we'll make it one," she smiled.
Six Months Later
"Are you sure you want to be the one to do it?"
"I hardly want to do it," James made a face, kneeling down on the floor by the bed.
"I can manage it myself, you know," she offered for the umpteenth time.
"Not properly - the angle is not ideal, you're likely to do more harm than good."
"In general, or in this instance specifically?"
"I'm not witless enough to answer that."
Theo breathed a laugh. And then the blade went in, and she was too busy gritting her teeth to laugh much more. Holding her arm still took a lot of will, James too occupied with the blade and the forceps to keep her steady, but she managed it as she winced and stared hard at the ceiling.
"Have you got it?" she grunted, listening as he set down the dagger.
"It's not slipping free as easily as you'd hoped," he said, a grimace in his voice.
"Here."
Turning her head, she took the tweezers from his grasp where they clung to the implant, which apparently didn't want to pull free from the flesh of her arm. Until she gave it a hard yank - harder than James was willing to, at least. She swore, but it pulled free, and she ignored the blood that spilled out after it.
Holding the tweezers up to the light of the candles that flickered on the bedside table, she inspected it to make sure the whole thing was there. The last thing she wanted was to go digging about inside her arm. But it was whole - and it was done.
Her celebrations were cut short when James sloshed rum over the cut, and then began to bind it with the bandages they'd readied earlier.
"What now?" he asked, casting a distrustful look towards the implant.
There were some modern marvels he apparently still had a hard time righting himself with. Although when she'd pointed out that he could hardly complain about all of the alone time and security it had afforded them this last year or so since they'd been married, he hadn't been able to argue with her.
"I'll bleed for a few days, I think," she said - wishing she could just google the whole damn thing rather than relying on memory and anecdotes from friends back home.
"A few days?" he frowned.
As he did so, he cast a look at the bandage on her arm and Theo smiled despite herself.
"Not from there."
"Then where- oh," he coughed, and then he flushed, but that was the most reaction he offered.
For that she was glad. She had little time for men whose interest in a woman's nether regions did a drastic u-turn the second anything to do with periods and such were involved, after which point they became as squeamish as teenage boys. James might've been bashful, but he wasn't appalled.
"Then I'm not sure," she said, sitting up "I'm assuming after a month or two I'll be back to normal and good to go? The…er, hurdle here notwithstanding."
Said hurdle was now a silvery white scar that gleamed on her abdomen every time she undressed.
"I doubt it will be a hurdle," he said "You healed quickly - Achtland's influence or no. It would not have been so were the damage greater."
"I'm not saying I think it will be, I'm just asking that you keep it in mind."
"I will."
"I just don't want you being disappointed."
"And you?"
"If it ends up impossible, I won't have any option but to live with it," she pointed out.
"And I will?" there was a dangerous edge to his voice.
"There aren't many bigger deal-breakers out there than this."
"In your time, perhaps. My deals are not so easily broken nor are my vows."
"I would hate to deprive you of children, James."
"You deprive me of nothing, and I'll hear no more of it."
"Is that an order, sir?" she teased.
"In this case, yes," he countered, setting down the dagger on the bedside table and then leaning down to kiss her, lingering close even when he pulled back again "Whatever comes, we will face it together. And we will be happy either way. Together."
"Another order?"
"A fact," he said "In my case. A hope of mine, in yours. Another vow, perhaps - that I should make it so."
"You already have, and then some."
"Ah, but you're not supposed to tell me that - or else I may grow complacent."
"I'm not sure you know the meaning of the word."
He smirked - because, she suspected, he knew as well as she did that she was right. James Norrington was many things, but complacent would never be one of them, not in any sense of the word.
"We should probably burn this," she said, holding up the bloodied implant between two fingers.
It was doubtful that anybody would notice it enough for it to even draw suspicion, much less realise what it was for, but it seemed silly to risk it.
"May I?" he held out a palm.
She dropped it into his hand, and watched with no small amount of amusement as he inspected the tiny little strip of white plastic.
"This truly works?" he peered down at it curiously.
"No, you caught me, I've been hiding the baby in the cupboard."
He gave her a look that screamed har-har, before continuing his inspection.
"I pictured it appearing more…sophisticated," he admitted mildly "To think of what it can achieve compared to how simple it looks."
"It's definitely been a life saver," she sighed.
Not just because if Beckett had been correct in thinking she was pregnant during everything, it would've added a whole other level of devastation onto what went down, but also because it stopped her from having any periods during the whole time she'd been here. The wonders of eighteenth century menstruation practises weren't a thrilling prospect - and she definitely would have murdered Jack at least fourteen times over if she'd had to deal with him while battling cramps. Beckett, too, but Jack had a penchant for annoyance that was genuinely impressive so long as it wasn't being aimed at her.
"Shall I do the honours, or would you like to?" he gestured to the great big hearth in their bedroom, holding up the implant.
Theo waved a hand, signalling he could if he liked. Sure, it was one of the few things she had left of home, but it was perhaps the least sentimental thing out of everything. The day her Docs finally gave up on her would be a sad one, but they were still going surprisingly strong considering all they'd been through - although they wouldn't be winning any beauty contests.
James discarded the implant into the flames, and then Theo watched with admiration that she was too tired to do much about as he changed into his nightshirt and got ready to join her in the bed.
They'd always been adamant that if they couldn't find a place that they absolutely loved already built, that they would simply buy land and build it themselves. "Simply". Thankfully, the third place they were shown by folk in the know around here was perfect, bar a few tweaks that they saw fit to make themselves, and they realised just how lucky they were in that fact when they were hit with just how bloody exhausting setting up a household was.
Every time they finished a day of setting up hothouses, vegetable patches, smokehouses, a chicken coop, or even just making repairs and building what furniture they could get away with not buying, they would stop and point out how much more tired they would be right now if they were having to build everything from the ground up.
It was hard work, but it was far from thankless work - as was setting up their new business. If anything, the business was actually easier. James' reputation, contacts, and knowledge all combined meant all they really had to do was speak to the right people, pay the right labourers, and oversee things. The work with the house, though, was more immediately rewarding. Sure, the business provided the promise of money that stretched beyond James' pension-slash-hush-money from the British, but with the house they could really see the progress. They could lie in the bed that they'd built the frame for themselves. They could see the great big farmhouse nestled in the mountains become their own, their future taking shape around them.
Well, by Theo's reckoning it was more of a sprawling country manor than a farmhouse, but saying so would only make her sound far too big for her boots, so she went by what everybody else called it.
"In the vein of not growing complacent," James said "I've a surprise for you."
"Oh?"
"For some time now, I've been seeking out any who might breed Rottweilers - like the ones you had before. I finally found one, the brother of one of our shipbuilders. I did not say anything at the time, but he has a bitch who just had a litter this past week. In three month's time, they shall be ready to leave their mother. I thought we might visit when we next go to the coast."
Maybe it was the tiredness. Or, more likely, it was because the suggestion brought her right back to when she'd been huddled bleeding and half-conscious following their reunion at Beckett's parlay - when James had promised her a veritable army of dogs so long as she stayed alive. A vow-keeper, indeed. Either way, she found herself mortifyingly emotional over the suggestion, blinking back tears and barely succeeding in doing so at all.
"I really, really love you - you know that?" she sniffed, shaking her head and wrapping her arms around him.
He chuckled, but returned the hold just as fiercely.
"If you're this emotional over a pup or two now, I should hate to see how your feelings run riot when you're with child."
"Should you?"
"No," he returned without hesitation "Not even slightly. In fact, I look forward to it."
Theo snickered "I'll remind you of that, if the time comes."
A/N: Do we see the pattern emerging with these time skips now? A note on the Gaelic version of James' name — Seumas is actually the Scottish Gaelic equivalent, so that's the one I'm more familiar with, but when I googled it to find if it was the same in Irish Gaelic, it said the Irish version is Séamas, but that is the modern version and the older form (which would have been used in this period) is the same as the Scots version. I'm sorry if this is wrong!
I'm letting myself take it easy over the holiday period so I'm not sure when the next update will be, but all in all with two chapters left to go after this one, we'll be wrapped up by the end of January. Thank you guys so much for joining me on this wild ride!