He knows a girl back home. The baker's daughter. Anne with her light brown hair and hazel eyes. He is careful to guard the shy glances they've exchanged, keen to avoid any pointed questions Liam would undoubtedly ask just as the entire crew sat down in the mess. They'd shared a few tentative words here or there when the Jewel had made port and he'd been hurrying about town running errands to replenish stock before their next journey. She would blush whenever the handsome, young sailor would come in to order a new ration of ship biscuit and once, when she was feeling particularly bold, she placed a warm, fruit-studded bun on top of the checked inventory list she had laid on the counter for him to fastidiously check and glanced up at his silly smile through her lashes. The sweet, yeasty smell of the steam rising from his first nibble is a memory that would remain sharp through the centuries.
His officership is a new thing and the responsibility still hangs awkwardly around his shoulders, but suddenly he has a future more stable and secure than he ever possibly imagined as an angry, too-thin boy coated with sweat and gunpowder, muscles aching as he ran back and forth across the ship; struggling on knowing he was literally working for his supper. And while Liam seemed to be content with the sea as his mistress, he dreams fiercely of coming home to the seaside cottage that his mother died in.
He gathers fortitude to approach her on a chilly spring morning two days before the trip his brother is being maddeningly secretive about; it would be a few weeks journey, and with all of the uncertainty of the raging war, he wants her to be certain of his intentions, at least. He brings her a necklace, a delicate silver chain with a tiny pearl pendant (Not a ring. Not until he could properly ask for her hand.) and she holds his hand, places a warm kiss on his cheek and nods with bright eyes full of joyful understanding. And then he is gone and the world falls apart.
And after everything, after watching Liam's shroud swallowed by the sea, after his anger swells over into treason, after poring over maps and planning far into the night how they could sneak into port one last time to offer safe berth to those men for whom a pirate's life could never be; men who would whisper up to their wives' beds in the dead of night and smuggle their families out of the town before anyone could connect their names and faces to the undoubtedly destined-for-infamy Jewel - after all of this when he collapses heartsick and exhausted into bed (his bed. He's not ready to walk back into the Captain's quarters as anything other than a war room for now) he drifts into an agitated semblance of rest until his eyes snap open and he jolts upright with Anne's name on his lips.
And suddenly he's creeping into town the next morning, what's left of his uniform exchanged for unassuming civilian garb as he fades into the morning market crowd, the cobblestones already thrumming with the fierce heat of the sun. He has to see her. The thought of her coming with him never even crosses his mind. She deserves a life of warm rooms, cozy fires, pretty kitchen gardens and sea breezes pulling across her hair: safety and family and he has - in the first rash decision of his life (even before Liam begged his recruiting captain to permit his brother on board, his deepest transgressions were marked with the cautious premeditation necessary to nick just enough from the mess to go unnoticed) - ensured that he could never offer that to anyone. But he needs to see her, speak with her. Apologize. Deeply. To not face her would be cowardly and the poorest of form. He sidles up to the bakery window peering through the racks of crusty loaves and stops for a moment to watch her smiling with a customer. When she steps out from behind the counter to help Old Lady Harper with a heavy loaf of brown bread she glances up and catches his eyes. She blanches. He gapes at what he sees and runs.
He's trying to catch his breath in a filthy alley but the air won't come. He's so focused on not drowning because no, it's not possible, how could it be possible, that he doesn't even react to the rustle of fabric making its way towards him. He vaguely registers his name being carefully spoken and finally he catches the movement of her skirts from the corner of his eye and drags his eyes up her figure, never making it further than the heavy swell of her belly. He is (was) the younger brother and has lived his life around men on a ship, but even he can tell that she's too far along to be standing behind a counter and how how how? He knows the question rings in hard line of his shoulders as they bunch tenser at her quiet voice.
"Killian" she breathes "we thought - after so long - and with the war, father wanted me settled and - I'm so sorry, Killian".
And suddenly things he'd glossed over in the haze of anguish over Liam begin to register. He'd always been the darker of the two, taking after his father's side. Much to his eternal chagrin, he'd have to trim his beard every other day, every few if he were lucky, to maintain any semblance of respectability. He knows from laying in bed and cataloguing the many moments in which he should have realized the king's treachery sooner - between circling the island, researching the briefing and scouting for a safe place to make berth - that they'd been in that god-forsaken hell hole for six and a half days. The first day might have been chalked up to luck, but he hadn't even so much as glanced in a mirror during the flurry of the mission and yet - he tugs his hand across his mouth and jaw - it had barely grown at all. Banks, ever the scholar, had stored a few plant samples, as he always did on their foreign voyages, in the window of the captain's quarters; had they even watered them at all during the trip? The boy's voice worms its way through his frantic thoughts - "it's what keeps this land and all on it so...young." - no. No. His eyes snap up to meet hers, glassy with tears. She's been lingering, hands wringing together as his breathing had become more panicked with the tide of each unbidden memory rushing forward in earnest. The sun winks off of the pearl strung on a thin black ribbon resting just above her heavy breasts. He gathers whatever wits he has from their scattered corners and musters up a shaky bow before stumbling away like a man half drowned in his cups. She makes no move to follow him - he's a ghost after all.
So years later when mocking words pierce through the curtain of heartache he'd never thought he'd feel again and the haze of searing pain shooting up his arm to match - "Well, good luck living long enough." - he knows exactly where return to ensure that he does.