Soli Deo gloria

DISCLAIMER: I do NOT own Pirates of the Caribbean.

So I saw DMTNT in theaters and it got me thinking about the long, lonely years Will and Elizabeth spent apart after the Curse. So, of course, this fic was born. :D

Also, I'm reading a book of old historical letters exchanged between John and Abigail Adams. They were both relatively well-educated, but even so, their spelling and punctuation weren't regularized—it's terrible, by today's standards. That's why I have Elizabeth write the way she does.

"Keep a weather-eye on the horizon."

Those were Will Turner's last words to his wife. They were words that thumped in her heart long after she watched his ship, The Flying Dutchman, disappear in a glory of blazing sun and pink skies at night, sailors' delight, and a flash unlike anything of the natural world—a flash born of the curse on the ship, on its crew, and on its captain.

"I will," she said softly, to herself and the wind.

What long years at Port Royal, though! She retired from piracy, for what heart could she have for roaming the seas if her heart was always stuck aboard a mysterious ship she'd never catch? Besides, one couldn't very well protect a steadily beating heart in a chest when pirates instinctively stole every chest they could get their grubby, grabby hands on. So she stuck her anchor at Port Royal, had her father's business as her inheritance, and watched the horizon. She promised herself she'd never leave that port. When Will came back in ten years she wouldn't want to have moved somewhere inland or across the island or do something else as completely ridiculous as that, and miss his one day.

She had no father, no husband as companion any longer; but, she wasn't alone. From the strange fluttering in her heart one day that resonated unlike the one in the chest she had, and the seasickness she had on land, she knew she wasn't alone. She had a constant reminder of Will with her, and it took shape as his flesh that wasn't that heart.

She gave up wearing corsets and took out a piece of parchment from her office's desk. She dipped her quill into a rum bottle empty of alcohol but full of ink, and wrote in a pretty, tutored scrawl, 'My dearst Will, my Love, I don't kno if this Message shall find you on those Vast Waters, but I have a Convection it shall. The Sea shall make sure You recieve my message, for it's Import shall change your Life, and the Sea can take so much from us, but it can appreciate this: you shall be a Father. I hope the child to be a Boy, to carrie on the Name of Turner, so that it is a Well known name, to be respected on both Land and Sea.'

She slipped the scroll of parchment, signed, 'Ever Yurs, Elizabeth Turner', into a clear bottle, also empty of rum. (She never drank the alcohol—she bought them from a warehouse near her business house. For what reason she'd have an affinity for empty rum bottles, no one else knew.) She walked out in the haze of wild sea grasses, alive and waving and thriving on the cliff above the sea. She walked down, eyes on the horizon. The day, drawing to a close in warring sides of bright soft yellow, white, clear paleness, and the dark. The dark, blue in tint, crept over the rest of the sky, silently and swiftly winning. She came to the shore, where familiar old waves lapped at the stones, smoothed from the years of tumbling about the ocean, now sat at home. She walked into the waves, calm, lapping things. The tide ebbed and she met it. Waist-deep in shore, she set her corked bottle, full of words and love and truth and affection and hope, asail. Perhaps she should've gone aboard one of her father's ships and gone out to sea and set it adrift there. But she didn't. This was more intimate. Nobody, save her, would know.

She sat on one of the smooth rocks and watched her bottle disappear as she'd watched her husband's ship disappeared. She only hoped that the bottle would arrive at the same place he was.

She spent months, even in her condition, roaming the harbor long after her day's work with her partners and employees was over. Elizabeth Turner found herself in familiar places, such as seaside bars full of pirates looking for a crew, ship ports, and long piers. Hoots and hollers she'd garner, but she had a subtle of shutting them up. Her dagger would nick against their Adam's apples, and the quiet, steady look on her face, paired with the flames blazing in her eyes, told the cat-caller that she would kill him without a second's hesitation, without a thought of conscience—so leave her be, savvy?

Elizabeth didn't hanker to go to sea—that wasn't why she spent her time around drunk scalawags and braggarts, wanted men and murderers. Really, she was quite tired of doing that. But her ears earnestly listened for tales of adventures and escapes on the sea—she listened for any whisper, any awed whisper, of a tale of Captain Will Turner and the feared crew aboard The Flying Dutchman. She would find the storyteller and pounce upon him with the zeal of a starved woman after a crumb. The affronted storyteller would look her over and say, finally meeting her eyes, "What's it mean to you?"

"Everything. Now," and she'd calmly bare her dagger and drag it along his scruff stubble, "tell me everything."

That neat little trick usually coaxed out a trembling tale for her. It was always exciting, always adventure-filled—full of storms, rocking ships, brave, mutinous crews, and Will. He carried on the honorable duty the captain and crew of The Flying Dutchman was originally commanded to do. They found souls aboard ships full of battle, against swords and ocean and great sea creatures and plague. They took the souls from drowned men drifting to the sea floor. "I saw him, I did," one man with only eleven teeth said. "Allan was all drowned and I was almost there myself. Just before I was pulled aboard our dinghy once more, I saw a man swimming to 'im. He had long hair and a dark mustache and a face too kind for a pirate's. He took poor Allan's soul, and I was pulled aboard."

That was her Will. He might sail a cursed myth, but he was brave and heroic, even in his piracy.

Elizabeth saw Will's kind eyes in the face of the red, screaming babe in her arms, months later. A wee lad, with a small patch of golden brown hair. She twisted it gently with her finger, into a curl. "And someday that curl shall be accompanied by others, and pulled back, and your head covered with a seaman's hat." She kissed the little lad and whispered against his forehead, "I want you to be just like your father, Henry William Turner." She wanted him to not be a pirate, yet she also wanted him to follow in his parents' footsteps. It was such a fine line to toe.

Once able to rise from her bed, she wrote another note and slipped it into a bottle. 'Our son's name is Henry William Turner. He looks Just like you and me. He owns such Spirit in his Eyes. I hop He will not heed the sea's Siren Call, but I cannt help the songs I sing to him. Old songs from months aboard ship, ones I have overheard Pintel and Rageti sing whilst at work. Songs about Sailors wishing after there Sweethearts, songs about never setting sail to Land but staying the Curse on sea. And, of curse, that of a Pirate's Life for me. I hope it doesn't put any Ideas in his Mind of going to Sea. I fear it shall, anyway. Maybe that's Why I keep singing it to him.'

Those lullabies and more were given to young Henry. From the cradle onward, Elizabeth told him everything. For quite a while he never talked back, but listened to every mind-boggling tale of pure danger and adventure she'd spin for him. The little laddie, for all his life, had memories of his mother telling him the stories, reciting them from a long-gone memory as she played with his wee fingers. Oftentimes, when she reached a dramatic plot twist, she'd shout it out and catch him up, squealing. He delighted in the laugh she'd often give over his wee surprise. She gave the characters in her stories funny voices, and key names she said remained long in his memory. "Barbossa," she'd say, with a look of disgust. "Captain Jack Sparrow," she'd say in an affected, important voice. "And Captain William Turner," she'd say softly, in a voice belonging to a reminiscent lover. She met Henry's eyes and said, "This last one is your father. He's a good man, and he's a pirate. He was a blacksmith originally, and he didn't want to be a pirate, because his father was one."

She didn't know if she wanted Henry to heed the call of sea. She knew if he felt the instinctive pull in his soul it would be in vain to withhold him. Still, she couldn't not tell him those stories burning up inside her. Those stories about his father, and the sea.

Elizabeth never received a reply back to any of her bottles, even as she sent one every birthday, anniversary, and every time her heart swelled to bursting with longing and sadness. She told him everything—of her business, their beautiful boy, and how much she missed and loved him.

"Do you think Daddy gets the bottles?" Henry asked one year, on their seventh wedding anniversary.

"Yes," Elizabeth said, confidently. Somehow, she knew he got them. Somehow, she knew in her soul that he wrote replies, but they never floated to the right fated shore. Somehow, though, her soul was satisfied, and she believed he got them all. Not a single one was lost at sea.

On the first one day of the first ten years, after their initial heartfelt, tearful reunion, Henry ran youthfully ahead towards their house, often looking over his shoulder at the mysterious man he knew was his father. Will, his arm around Elizabeth's waist, whispered against her ear, "I received them."

"Them? What, my bottles?" Elizabeth asked, astonished and delighted.

"Yes, every one of them. They made the years worth living through." He nodded ahead. "He's a wonderful boy."

"Just like his father," Elizabeth said modestly.

"Really? I was thinking just like his mother," Will said, with that clearness in his voice and eyes that made Elizabeth's heart surge and her smile broaden.

They discussed Henry's future, his education, his life, and would he go onto the seas?

"Don't let him. He'll encounter pirates one way or another, and once you're in with pirates, you can never escape from them," Will said bitterly.

"Oh, I know that first hand." Elizabeth held up her left hand. "I married one."

"So did I." He clasped her hand and kissed her ringed finger.

As Elizabeth and Henry watched him leave after many kisses and tears and embraces, as the sun wavered, Henry said, "I want to write him a lot of bottles, Mother. I want to write Father lots of bottles."

Elizabeth watched his ship disappear in an explosion of light. "We will write him them together, my darling." She held him close to her and wiped away tears from her eyes.

The next few years were busy. Elizabeth steered Henry in the way of business, with the warehouses and ships, but she wouldn't let him step on one, in case he got a hankering for its rough beams and ruddy sails. She couldn't help herself at bedtime, though. He wanted the old stories of childhood, ones of myths and legends. He wanted to hear of mermaids whose voices led men to their watery graves, of the Kraken who'd eat whole ships, of lost islands and cannibalistic natives and a north-pointing compass. "I want to meet Captain Jack Sparrow someday, Mother. He has an awful lot of adventures," he said. "He sounds so brave and daring!"

"Yes, he does sound like that, but he's quite a bumbling cowardly idiot in reality," Elizabeth said comfortably.

One day, with a keen look in his eyes trained on the sea, Henry said, "Someday, I'm going to bring Father back to you, Mother."

Elizabeth recognized the look in his eyes. He wanted to go to sea. She didn't like it; would the sea take him away from her, too? She snatched the hat he wore (a captain's hat; where'd he get it?), leaving his hair, pulled together in a ponytail, exposed to the bleaching sun.

His room betrayed his love for the sea and its mysteries. Elizabeth commanded the household staff not to touch his room; she'd walk its cluttered walls and look at all the pasted wanted posters, the pages torn from books of legends even she hadn't heard of, from the Fountain of Youth (hadn't Jack talked about that once? She wondered if he ever found it) to the Trident of Poseidon. She wanted to burn it all. She didn't touch it.

'I'm sorry, my Darling. I fear it's only a matter of Time before the Siren's call of the sea brings him nearer to You.' Another message in a bottle. Then, a week later, 'Our boy hass joined the Royal Navy. He means to track down the Trident of Poseidon. How he can do that Aboard a Royal Navy ship I know not. Perhaps you've heard of such a Treasure, this Tridet. I red his material about it. It is sed to be able to break any curse. Is it posible? I pray he be not on a ship that incounters Death, but alas, my Heart hopes that you and he shall Stumble acruss each other, out there on the seas.—He means to bring you home. I dare not hope it, but I Do.'

Every day Henry was gone Elizabeth walked the heather-covered cliff off Port Royal. She watched anxiously for a Royal Navy ship, but also for The Flying Dutchman. Part of her wished to the sea, Bring Henry back to me. Then, another part of her, one she dared not indulge but did anyway, was Henry, bring him back to me.

Once both of her men were in her arms' embrace again, she could hardly speak. The sea took lesser men but it let her have her men.

"Did you receive my last bottle message, of Henry's mission?" she asked of Will.

"I did. It gave me a hope I didn't dare trust." Will looked proudly at his sunburned son. "I'm glad it proved true."

"Did you receive the one I sent you?" Henry asked, looking earnestly at his mother's face.

Elizabeth looked puzzled. "No, I had no idea you sent me one."

"Is that what I saw bobbing on the shore?" Carina wondered. The three Turners stopped short and looked at her. She pointed back towards the cliff. "I saw something down there. Henry, come fetch it with me?"

Henry nodded, kissed his mother's cheek, and ran after Carina, catching her hand in his as they ran down the heather.

"Is that our little lad?" Will asked wonderingly.

"It would appear so," Elizabeth said in a light tone. Everything was light, and blissful, and lovely, now that Will was all hers once more.

Henry and Carina came laughing and yelling back to them—Henry laughing, his eyes alight, and Carina yelling, obviously in debate. They stopped at Will and Elizabeth's side.

"Open it, Mother," Henry said, bearing it to her hands.

Elizabeth, hands shaking, uncorked the bottle and unfurled its little message. In her son's handwriting was, 'We found the trident. Mother, he's free. Keep a weather-eye on the Horizon—our Ships are heded home.'

"Did you still watch the horizons for us, Mother?" Henry wondered.

Elizabeth met Will's eyes. She'd kept his promise. "I did," she said softly.

Then she held up the bottle. "This is an empty rum bottle. I hope you took it and it wasn't yours to begin with," she said, scolding.

"We may have had an encounter with Captain Jack Sparrow." Henry scratched the back of his neck. "It was one of his."

"I only hope none of your mother's were any of his." Will survived the slap of the bottle against his now breathing chest by his wife of twenty-one years impressively. Having one's life-long curse of damnation lifted did wonders to one's humor.

"Jack Sparrow?" She turned her attention back to Henry, ignoring Carina's hidden laughter. "Did he act just like in my old stories?"

"Yes, he did, and worse," Henry said.

"That's him. That's him," Elizabeth said. She put her arm about Will's shoulder and said, looking up into his eyes, though speaking to Henry, "I want to hear all about it."

"So you shall," he said.

They walked, those four sea-lovers, back to the dull monotony that only land holds. Elizabeth's heart beat in time with the lapping waves of the sea, but no longer in the way of yearning. In lots of old songs she'd sung as lullabies to baby Henry, there was often a sweetheart longing for her lover at sea. Her heart wanted to write a new song, or a proper ending, or an addition to all those songs. One of the sweetheart actually reuniting with her lover. Oh, what a sweet song it would be, and was!

Elizabeth put her head against Will's shoulder.

"Happy?" he asked softly.

"Perfectly," she said blissfully.

Thanks for reading! Review?