does wordpress serve static files?

Usually: no.
When WordPress is running on apache with mod_rewrite enabled, it’ll use

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

To make sure that static files will NOT be served through WP.
A plugin might add its own rewrite rules to the .htaccess, but generally WP will not interfere with static files, those will be dealt with by apache directly.