A/N: Set in part two of Catch the Wind, during their brief time on the Pearl together before the disastrous meeting with Jones.

Theo smiled softly. With Jack's mood towards her thoroughly blackened, and a meeting with Jones on the horizon, it was difficult to find much to smile about – but James' habit of slipping a hand into his coat pocket to pass a thumb over the silver pendant within never failed to tug at her heart. He was doing so then, leaning against the Pearl's rail as he gazed at nothing, lost in thought. She'd noticed it back in Tortuga, of course, but everything had been so new, so delicate, that she was too wary to comment upon it. Not least because she didn't want him to stop.

But here, out at sea with a fiery sunset casting them in a warm orange glow, she found herself emboldened.

"I'm glad it meant something to you," she said quietly, coming to stand alongside him.

Apparently it really was such a force of habit that he hadn't even realised he was doing it – for at first he blinked in confusion, before following the nod she offered to where his hand sat within the pocket.

"How could it not?" he asked, bemused. "It was all you had of home, it meant much to you, and you left it in my keeping. Along with those words…"

Words she'd borrowed from the bard, because she was hardly much of a poet herself.

"I…worried at times," she spoke slowly, trying to find the words. "That it'd just be adding insult to injury. Like you'd think that I thought it made it all okay. Sorry I'm running again, but here's a necklace – that makes us even, or something."

He offered a rueful chuckle. "Infuriating you may have been at times, but you are never so thoughtless. I always knew you grappled with something, and while I could never have guessed what, I at least knew you did not do what you did lightly."

If it was possible to fall for him all over again, Theo was certain she did so there and then. It must've shown on her face, for he huffed a laugh and regarded her with curiosity-tinged fondness.

"Does that surprise you so?"

"I'm just wondering how I got so lucky."

"Involved with a disgraced former Commodore who knows not where his next meal will come from? Yes, you're the envy of women everywhere."

"That's the last thing I see when I look at you."

"Then I am the lucky one."

Theo grinned, shaking her head. "God, we're sickening. I'm the lucky one, no I'm the lucky one! – If the others hear us, they'll make us walk the plank."

"Then we may bicker over who looks the finest while swimming," he said solemnly.

"I don't think I've ever seen you swim."

"Well, we must save some excitement for the future."

"I don't think a lack of excitement has ever been one of our hurdles," she teased.

He chuckled lowly in agreement, leaning towards her and lowering his tone, speaking softly then as if worried at being overheard.

"I was glad to have it. The necklace. It was…a talisman, if you like. In times of doubt."

"Of doubt?"

"For all I knew, you left because you believed I would soon be wed and had no wish to witness it. I did not doubt…" he paused at the word and smiled a little, "that I would find you. But, if you thought there was no hope and no use in waiting…I tried to be realistic as to what I might find. The necklace helped, where those worries reared their head."

Could she fault him those fears? With all of her displays of angst and hurt and upset throughout his betrothal to Elizabeth? No, she could not. Especially not in this time – where it was drummed into all that women had to marry in order to gain some semblance of security and safety.

"Realistic?" she snorted. "There was never going to be anybody. Not after you. I would've become an old maid, sighing at the mental image of your face night after night."

He scoffed. "I would not want that."

"Well. In the words of Mick Jagger, you can't always get what you want."

James smirked, thought for a moment, and then replied.

"I laugh in the face of your Master Jagger – for I have proven him quite incorrect these last few weeks."

Theo was too giddy at that to bother telling him how the rest of the lyrics went.