DISCLAIMER: DON'T OWN THEM AND NEVER WILL.
What-If AWE drabble. Think compass, no rum and a swamped dighy.
It's been ten years and William Turner is finally allowed to return to his wife and child, but was Elizabeth truly faithful to him in his long absence? PostAWE. Final scene on the hillside.
HER LOVE IN ABSENTIA
Elizabeth stood anxiously on the cliff watching the sunrise. The small boy at her side looked from her back to the light rising across the water with concern.
"My father is comin' from out there?" She heard the confusion in her son's voice despite her best efforts to explain to him the purpose of the Flying Dutchman.
"Yes, William. It's been ten years since he left. You do remember the story about his ship?"
William Junior nodded uncertainly, frowning. "A creepy heart in a box and lots of silly fishy-looking people. But, momma, It's not real, is it? You said he was at sea for a… really long time."
Elizabeth grimaced. "Creepy? William, that is hardly the story I told you." She sighed, glancing down at the top of the boy's gold-brown head. "I should have known better. That man promised me that he only gave you sailing lessons and I believed him, although I don't know why."
"But he tells funny stories, momma," William assured her, smiling brightly. "I want to be like him and sail a really big boat and shoot guns at other big boats," he whirled around in a dizzying circle, both arms out-flung, "ALL around the world when I'm older!"
Elizabeth took a step back and groaned. "Please, William, don't say anything to your father about guns and boats – ships. Or your… friend, all right?"
"Oh, okay, momma." He pursed his lips in vague consternation. "But why did he leave us? Was his belly all better?"
"Yes, he had to return to the sea."
"But why?"
"To find his ship." Elizabeth hesitated, releasing a slow breath of relief and unwelcome regret as a long-awaited green flash arced across the horizon and the Flying Dutchman rose out of the serene blue waters.
"But why? Doesn't Dad like him?"
"I think your father once did."
"Will he come back?"
"Oh, William, I'm sorry. I was afraid of this." At a hopeless loss to explain the emotional or physical intricacies of love in absentia to a child, Elizabeth snatched the small boy's hand and bent to one knee in front of him. "Please, you must listen. I know this will be hard for you to understand, but your father has come home and that's all that matters now - to us both." She paused, studying his petulant large eyes, his full lower lip beginning to tremble. "If your father should ask you how old you are, what will you say to him?"
The child looked momentarily thoughtful and a little unsure. "Eight. No, no, no, almost nine?"
"Yes, almost nine," Elizabeth agreed reluctantly, tightening her hold on the boy's hand as she rose and moved with slower, weightier steps through the high grass of the hillside.
"Momma?" William pulled his hand free of his mother's grip, following her wistful gaze out to the ocean. "I can sing the song he taught me, can't I?"
- Latin for 'in the absence of'
The End