A/N: Just saw AWE. You're off the edge of the map, mate. Here there be spoilers.
Away
It's funny. He's gotten his life back.
He's an Admiral now, the youngest one there ever was and ever will be, or that's what they say down at the docks. He has the respect and command over many a soldier, has the respect and command over many a colony. He can have, will have anything he desires, because that is what one is given when they are loyal and true, when they hoist the colors of the East India Trading Company.
It's funny. He should be so happy.
It's funny. He isn't.
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Lately his dreams have been all about her, the swan-girl.
Elizabeth.
Beautiful, graceful, everything-he-ever-hoped-for Elizabeth.
The one he almost had, but never really captured. She didn't want to be kept, a pretty thing in a cage, didn't want to be kept safe and protected and locked away from the world.
She wanted freedom and she found it with another man, didn't just watch the ships that went sailing. And she sailed along with them, far far away, farther than he could ever reach.
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And he knew, knew all along he could never catch up with her, that the sky couldn't be taken from her.
And he kissed her goodbye because he had known all along, and he watched her fall away from him, fall away into the sea.
The fearful captain, the one he doubted, just smirked and asked are you afraid of death?
There was no need to be afraid of death, and he knew this.
Not when his reason for living fell away, not when the bird was flown and the sky was dark and the world was a fearful place indeed.
Better to be afraid of a life with no purpose.
He was not afraid.
He did not say one word.
And then the world went dark.
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