A/N: I had intended to write only the bookend tales of RUINATION and WIDOW'S WALK, but so much more happened between them. This is what happens when you don't think or write in a linear fashion, so… this will probably not be the only "interim" story ;-)

The innkeeper remains purposefully unnamed.

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BROKEN EGG

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It was so hard to let Barbossa leave her life and return to his ship, not knowing when or if he'd return. And it's about to get even harder.

The innkeeper has felt ill for days now, and it shows no signs of letting up; after a week, she can no longer keep her breakfast down; in a month, her breasts get harder to cram into her bodice, and they ache in a way they never have before. Her mirror says her skin is soft and glowing, but that doesn't make up for the discomfort taking over the rest of her body.

It takes missing her courses for two months straight to make the cause unmistakably clear: after nearly a month of vigorous lovemaking night after night, she finally caught, and is carrying Barbossa's child.

She doesn't know whether to be thrilled or terrified, or if she's both. She's almost 34, which is very old to be having a baby — women of her age are often approaching grandmotherhood, given how young the girls tend to be married — and though she successfully hid it from Barbossa, the truth is that she's not in the best of health.

There's a midwife in the town she could consult, of course, but what's the point of going to a woman who will only call her 'pirate's whore,' same as the others? She'll just have to take care of herself the best she can.

Instead of the pretty dresses Barbossa gave her, the innkeeper goes back to wearing her old linen smocks when she begins to show, though she doesn't fool her maid Cora, who's as useless as ever and happy to let her mistress do the bulk of the arduous work, pregnant or no. "It's his, ain't it?" the girl snorts; and, not waiting for an answer, "Mum always told me, don't tie up with a sailor, 'less you wanna be left alone."

Shut up, the innkeeper thinks. Just shut up. It's the only thought she can let into her mind so she won't dwell on how much she misses her beloved Captain. "Thank you," she huffs. "Now go make yourself useful and see to the chamber pots."

Without Barbossa there to shield her, the town women redouble their sneering and name-calling, with tittering about the imposing, blue-eyed man who fathered her bastard child thrown into the mix. Still — and although Barbossa saw to it that she was financially set for life should she decide to give it up — there's the business of Grantham House to run, and that means constant errands and transactions in the marketplace.

She's aware of the laughter that follows her along the lanes and up the hill, and the hoots of derision when she begins to waddle. "Crikey, weren't too careful wi' that pirate of yers, darlin'!" a local drunkard calls from a tavern doorway. "Next time, get 'im t' fuckin' pull out afore 'e squirts!"

Tears form in the innkeeper's eyes; not because of the crude insult, but because "Darlin'" is something Barbossa often called her.

She runs a veritable gauntlet of insults every time she appears in public, some mild, some obscene, all hurtful and making her wish Barbossa was back at the inn, waiting to take her into his arms and murmur that it's all right; that he'll make sure no one speaks to her like that again even if he has to cut out their tongues.

It's a hard pregnancy, but even so, the innkeeper is proud — proud! — to be mother to Barbossa's son or daughter; and, oh, if she had twins, wouldn't that be something to crow about? Ye've an egg in the nest, she can just hear him saying, an' what a soft, sweet nest it is, my Dove.

Most of all, she misses that name; the way he'd whisper it to her in the dark or call it loudly throughout the house to catch her attention. He even called her that at table in front of the lodgers, to her blushing pleasure.

Barbossa's Dove, protecting her egg.

But all that care goes for naught when, at eight months, the innkeeper goes into premature labor, and has no choice but to send Cora running frantically for the midwife.

The woman dawdles on her way up the hill, and by the time she arrives, the innkeeper is a screaming, sweating mess and bleeding all over the bed.

"Hunh, looks like it ain't gonna make it," the midwife says with such unconcern that the innkeeper would sit up and slap her if she had the strength. "Not surprised when a babe's born that way, 'specially when you're old."

"Do something!" cries the innkeeper through gritted teeth.

"Can't. Can't do nothin' but wait for it to be over." Then, "Guess that pirate friend of yours ain't as respectable as he were makin' out to be since he didn't marry you," the midwife taunts, just to be mean.

There's nothing to be said to this, when all the innkeeper can do is sob for the stillborn child that's slowly inching and seeping its way out of her onto the bed on which it was created.

"It were a boy," the midwife tells her briskly when it's finally over. "I'll get rid of it."

"You'll not," says the innkeeper, her voice weak but determined. "You'll wrap him up in a sheet, and I'll bury him properly."

"Priest won't have it."

"Damn the priest! I love this child's father, and I'll say what's best!"

"Suit yourself."

The innkeeper is left with barely a day in the tropical heat to recover before she needs to call for the gravedigger. "Make it plenty deep; I don't want the dogs digging my baby up!"

The gravedigger would normally snarl that he knows perfectly well what he's doing, but something about the heartbroken look on the innkeeper's face stops him. "As ye like, Missus." And once he's done, he watches her cradle the little linen-wrapped body before he takes it from her and lays it carefully at the bottom of a grave dug, with an extra foot to its depth, in the back garden where it's well-drained; where Barbossa often whiled away whole afternoons swinging in a hammock, gnawing on sour green apples and smoking his pipe. "D'ye wanna say some words?" he asks once it's filled in.

"No," the innkeeper tells him. "No." Any words will be spoken in the depth of night, when she's loneliest and calling for Barbossa to come back to her.

"Ye don't want no marker?"

"No. And I'll thank you not to talk about this." Then she gives the gravedigger three times his normal fee, which more than pays for his silence, and he leaves her alone to confront the worst decision of her life.

What will she do when and if Barbossa comes back? How does she tell him she couldn't give him a living son? Does she tell him at all? If she does, how angry will he be? Will he leave her and instead seek his company among the fancy women? Could she stand that? Can she risk it?

In the end, she realizes it's not a decision she can make until he returns and she sees him face-to-face. The source of her uncertainty and anguish is not that he might be angry; it's that she knows he'd be so happy and proud to have sired her little one, and she can't bear the thought of seeing the pain on his face.

But she can decide now that the little grave will have no headstone, no tablet, nothing the townspeople or their children could knock over and deface. Instead, fresh green grass will grow over it, and the diminutive yellow and red flowers that run riot everywhere will serve for a marker, and only the innkeeper and the gravedigger — and perhaps in time, her child's father, Hector Barbossa — will know what lies beneath the earth.

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