He laid Elaine on the bed.
She'd been nothing to carry. Her arms fell with a whisper of the sheets, her hair spilling out from under her neck, bleeding across the pillow in feral waves. Her headband with its sickly fang-yellow flowers was discarded on the slow-rocking floor of the ship's cabin, but the wedding dress remained, encasing her ribs and burying her legs in a bone-white shell of fabric.
Guybrush smelled like death. He couldn't hide it, LeChuck's hellfire had been spat at him one too many times to count, and it would take a solid week of bathing to be rid of the dread-soaked stench of Monkey Island. But this was not the memory he would take from his wedding night. He would take Elaine's eyes and her smile on him, and the warmth of her neck when his cheek was pressed against it.
"Are you happy?" He asked, and she broke into a pathetic giggle at such an odd question and pulled him closer. "I'm serious," he insisted into her collarbone.
"I said yes!" She tilted her head, dragging streams of her hair into an arc on the pillowcase. "Well, er, I guess I didn't at the time…but I did say I do. What does that make you think?"
"Uhhhh…caught up in the moment?" he suggested sheepishly, pulling himself up.
"Well, ask me again and see if I'm caught up now."
"…Will you marry me?"
"In a heartbeat." She cupped his head and pulled him close again until his ear was pressed against her chest. "Like that one. Or that one. Or that one…"
He interrupted. "I know I'm not the best at rescuing you."
This time, she breathed deeply before responding, and he heard her lungs take the air like it was sweeter with him near. "Guybrush, I've never wanted someone rescuing me. You know that."
He groaned. "I know that, but..." Somehow, with him, it always came back to the incident with the monkeys and the wedding dress. Well, it hadn't looked nearly as flattering on them as it did on her now...
"I don't need that. I wouldn't marry anyone for that. But you came back from a cursed carnival to propose to me."
"You know, I don't think that was a real carnival at all," he mused. "I never saw anyone else leave."
"Guybrush, focus."
"Right, sweetie," he blinked, his eyes finding hers again. "You were saying?"
She shrugged. "It's enough that you come to find me at all. It's enough that I know you will."
He laid Elaine on the bed.
The ship and its old wooden floors sighed under Guybrush's feet as he gazed, unmoving. The sun was pure white through the grubby windows, casting her face in numb gray shadows. Elaine looked so peaceful, her eyelashes resting above the faded blush of her cheeks. Whenever she planned something, which had been about every two minutes, a wrinkle had taken to appearing between her eyebrows, betraying her secret calculations. He would tease her about it, poke at the spot until she broke concentration and laughed. There was no wrinkle there now.
Guybrush heard the calamitous thundering of boots across the deck outside, and when the cabin door broke open, he wasn't startled by it. He didn't want to look away from his wife, but when he did, his best-friend-slash-first-mate-slash-quartermaster hadn't yet moved. Winslow stayed by the door, one hand by his cheek to guard against the blinding white sun. Elaine's still, very still, form. Guybrush, his arms painted wine-red up to the elbows from carrying her.
The room smelled like death.
Exhaustion had drained Guybrush's face of emotion. Winslow was not so guarded. His throat burst out a sob. Guybrush swallowed and looked back at the body, at his wife's hands folded over her bloodstained blouse. He took a step closer, as though there was something he could do, but Winslow fell to his knees by the bedside, pulling off his tricorn hat and bowing his head as he cried. Guybrush felt his lips tighten against his face, but he swallowed again and bent to touch Elaine's hand.
A scrap of stained paper poked from behind her thumb. He tugged it away from her and unfolded it. Black ink carved intersecting lines, four wide-eyed skulls with gravestone teeth, and two primates grinning from opposite ends of the drawing. Briefly, Guybrush wondered where she'd gotten it, before realizing this was his own depiction, torn from deep within his journals. This clue was for him. She'd known. And that meant she had a plan.
He crumpled the Crossroads illustration in his red hand and nodded at his wife, leaning past Winslow, to the ear that she had adorned with her wedding ring. Where only she would hear.
"Wait for me. I'm coming to find you."