Time & Tide - Original Wattpad Version

Chapter Eight: In Which Jessie Goes A Bit Mad

I don't know how he found me. Jesus, I don't even know how I'd gotten there, sitting in some half-frozen slush puddle out the back of some building blocks and blocks away that reeked of piss and garbage.

His hand on my shoulder, hot and wide and familiar, was the first thing I'd felt, the first real sensation my skin had registered in... hours? Days? Months, maybe, if I wanted to be honest.

"Miss Franklin," he said, and his voice was the soft soothing whisper used on startled horses and frightened children.

"C-Captain," I said, and the hitch in my voice made me realize that I was sobbing. The tears clung to my cheeks, frozen, burning against my skin, both hot and cold.

His hands tugged and pushed until I was upright. I leaned back against the filthy wall of the building behind me because my knees didn't seem to be able to support me. I covered my face with my gloved hands, ignoring the gritty grey wet that clung to them. Looking at him right now seemed like it would... I don't know, be the final nail in the glass, or crack in the coffin, or something like that.

"You're frozen through," he said. He leaned back and I felt him strip off his naval greatcoat and sling it over my shoulders.

"I'll get it dirty," I said, which was really a rather stupid thing to be concerned about. Hypothermia, that had to be it. My brain couldn't seem to process anything beyond the immediate.

"And the maid can clean it. Let's get you inside, by a fire, you silly, silly girl." His voice was angry and I flinched. "Oh, Miss Franklin. What am I to do with you and your strange fits?"

"But it's real," I said. "It really happened." As if that would explain everything to him; I, actually privy to my strange, hopping and disconnected trains of thought, barely understood it. "Don't you get it?"

"What happened?"

"I'm really in 1806."

There was another concerned sigh. "Of course you are," he said.

I looked up then, saw the strange mix of affection and pity on his face. I grabbed his lapels, leaned up into his space because I had to make him understand. "But I was born in 1996!"

His face closed down, like blinds being pulled, his eyes shuttering and becoming unreadable. "Do not speak nonsense," he said.

"I was born in 1996 and I was in a flying machine that crashed into the ocean and I fell backwards in time and you rescued me and now I'm in 1806! Please!"

His face flushed red instantly and his hands grabbed my shoulders in a grip so hard it actually hurt. "Do not say such mad things!" he snarled.

I couldn't help it – his anger made the last of my resolve to make him understand crumble. I felt my lips start to tremble, felt the wrenching, hacking sobs start again and I couldn't stop them.

"But it's true..." I whimpered and hated how broken, how small and scared I sounded. Now that I'd let the truth in, it hurt. Oh god, it hurt. "It has to be true."

"How can you possibly have me believe this?" he said. "You are filled with more strange fictions than my sister's little stories. I pull you from the sea and you spout fairy stories! What am I to do with you, you strange, weird little thing?" But his voice was filled with such affection that I couldn't help surging foreword and wrapping my arms around his waist, pressing myself hungrily against his chest, his arms, his strong and solid presence.

"Oh my God, it's such a bodice ripper cliché, but hold me!" I begged.

I needed something real, something that wasn't in my head, and I needed it now. I tucked myself into his chest, bent my head and closed my eyes and tried for a moment to just make the world – this world, not my world – go away. I couldn't stand the sight of the smoky buildings, the muddy roads, the people dressed all wrong.