Written for a challenge a while back on potcdogwatch, over the lack of mothers shown in the movies. As always, I don't own any of the characters, no matter how much I wish I did...


"The King and his men, stole the Queen from her bed, and bound her in her bones…"

Elizabeth lay down on her bed, her babe held tight to her chest.

"Yo ho, haul together, hoist the colours high…"

It was a world away from the Pirate King who first hollered those words across the Caribbean Sea, so different indeed from the young woman who first sang the words of the song in Singapore.

She sang softly to the child, who stirred, yawned and grasped hold of a lock of her hair trailing down her chest.

She wished dearly his father could be here to see him. That her own father could see him, how tiny and beautiful he was. How he was a wonderful combination of his parents, with his father's dark serious eyes already and a mop of hair to match. And her spirit, so she was told.

"Heave ho, thieves and beggars, never shall we die."