A/N: The shaking sickness is malaria. The flux is dysentery.

~~ Barbossa ~~

Barbossa straightens his clothes and hat, that he may look his best for his lady, though he fears for the look on her face when she sees the wooden peg that serves where his strong right leg used to be. Will she still want him once she knows how frightful the stump is?

Bloody nonsense, his sensible side tells him. There's been more'n one time she's nursed you through an ugly bout of the shaking sickness, and ne'er once been put off. Barbossa tries not to think of the miserable occasion when he came off the ship in the gruesome throes of the flux, and how gently she cared for him without a single complaint.

He keeps going up the familiar path, thankful to be home again — for 'home' is what he's long considered it — but as he gets closer, things seem nowhere near as right as they should be. The building has fallen into disrepair, and the yard is dry and untended. Renting rooms or not, he knows she would no more let her inn fall down than he would allow his ship to crumble.

"What is this?" Barbossa demands, grabbing the nearest passerby. "What's happened here? Where be the lady of Grantham House?"

The man he's accosted is too frightened to fight back, and in his fear, he blurts out the truth. "Gone," he gasps.

"What d' ye mean, 'gone'? She lived here all of her life; she wouldn't leave!"

"She didn't leave, she…"

"What? What?"

"She died, sir; been dead these past four years! The doctor said 'twere some kind of consumption, but everyone else… we heard her crying on her widow's walk and knew 'twere a broken heart what killed her."

Barbossa's fingers go suddenly weak, allowing the man to pull away from him. "Where be her grave?" he asks softly. "Tell me, for I must know where the woman I love is laid to rest."

This is the first time he's said it, he realizes with a shock. Why couldn't he say the words the last time they were together? Though Barbossa's been preoccupied for eight long years with his plan to avenge the loss of his leg, why couldn't he at least have written a letter to let her know he was alive? He's spent all of his life convinced that he doesn't believe in regret, but that's only because he's never been faced with one of such terrible import before.

The other man doesn't know of Barbossa's inner torment as he leads him up a pathway, then points to the top of the hill. "There, sir. She didn't have family, so I heard the doctor saw to her burial."

Nay, 'tain't true! She had family; she had me! "Not in the churchyard?"

"Priest wouldn't have her. Said she were an ungodly strumpet and not worthy t' lie amongst decent folk…"

Barbossa's teeth are clenched, and he has to remind himself that this man is only giving him the information he asked for. As for the cleric, he'll be having words with him later, no doubt at the point of a sword. "On yer way, then," he says. "I'll be visitin' the lady alone, if ye don't mind."

The man needs no further excuse to get as far away as possible, and he heads down the hill.

Barbossa takes several deep breaths before stumping his way to the hilltop where a few sad-looking graves are scattered. When he gets there, he finds that most of the stones are old and have tumbled, but one plain wood slab is still straight and more-or-less new. Sophie Grantham, it says. Nothing else. No dates of birth or death, which do not matter to anyone, nor does it say that she was loved by parents, husband, children; not even the grandmother for whom she slaved so many years ago.

He will change that in short order.

First, though, he clumsily sits down beside Sophie's grave, taking a drink from the flask inside his false leg before he runs a scarred hand over the marker, delicately tracing her name with his fingertips. "Ye thought I deserted you, lassie," he says quietly, his voice trembling. "I see it now: eight years I don't come back and ye thought we were done, you and me. But you were wrong and we'll ne'er be done. I knew ye from a little girl to a maiden t' the kindest, most beautiful woman…" Barbossa chokes. "I should've told you what were in me heart, Sophie darlin'. All these years, and I should've told you…"

Barbossa's so shattered that he can neither cry nor form the words that he'll never again have a chance to tell his Sophie Grantham, but where his tongue refuses to function, his dagger will speak. So he patiently scrapes and carves away at the wooden marker, hour after hour, sleeping only when it's too dark to see anymore, resuming his task come dawn.

It takes Barbossa the rest of the day to finish the inscription to his satisfaction; and, once he takes a look around, he realizes that the churchyard is the last place Sophie would wish to lie. For this hill looks far out over the sea, just like her widow's walk, and though his heart is heavy with loss, he takes comfort in knowing she will always be here, waiting for him, able to see his ship when it comes in.

-oOo-

-oOo-

He should have retired, Barbossa muses as he idles over his charts. He should have retired fifteen years ago, but the lure of the sea was too great and he was forced to choose between the two great loves of his life.

He never understood until now that he could have had both; that the sea didn't have to claim him to the end of his days.

For the past five years, Sophie's Port, as Barbossa has come to think of it, is one into which he takes his ship often because it's a favorite with his crew and a wise captain knows when to humor the men he leads. But for himself, he doesn't immediately go with them to shore, but remains back, slowly pacing his quarterdeck and gazing up at a hilltop singular for its view of the sea.

In those private moments, the deck becomes his own widow's walk; and, if he looks hard enough, Barbossa will swear he can see Sophie Grantham, standing at her grave with her arms held out, beckoning him to come when he is ready. He senses it will not be long now — a lifetime of terrible wounds, rough living, and illness have taken a harsh toll on him — but after surviving far longer than a man in his position has any call to, he is prepared to lay down his earthly burdens and accept what must come, and never more so than when he remembers the words he carved on Sophie's marker above and below her name:

May the peace you gave me be yours

SOPHIE GRANTHAM

Beloved of Hector Barbossa.

When it be my time to join you, my darling,

I shall rejoice,

For then we shall spend Eternity together

Side by side, hand in hand

And ne'er shall tread the Widow's Walk again.