Um…hi, everybody! My name's Angela (samuraistar) and I freaking love GaMM! I saw all the episodes on YouTube, as uploaded by NoMudinJoyville (if you're reading this, please accept my thanks). So I thought I'd tiptoe into Gull Cottage with you guys and submit my humble and very short work. If you ever see my other stuff, this is MUCH shorter than I usually do.

It's been a while (maybe over a year) since I've uploaded anything. I've still got some other stories I'm stuck on that hopefully my inner muse will meet me halfway on. Anyway, I've been watching GaMM on and off lately and after reading a couple of fanfics, I kind of got smacked in the face with inspiration. I hope my regulars will stick with me for this one and I hope all you "gammies," I think you're called, will enjoy this.

Please read and review and please regard me kindly!

"Expectation is the root of all heartache."- William Shakespeare

Chapter 1: Silver Blood
The dark sea danced in a mad rage, spurred on by the furiously howling wind. No mortal of this earth would be caught dead in such dangerous weather tonight, not if he didn't want to get knocked off his feet and rolled into the ocean. Daniel Gregg, however, was not mortal; with his usual sharp vigilance, he paced the Widow's Walk like a night watchman, completely immovable before the wild nightwind. He enjoyed that fact almost as much as he enjoyed watching the sea; it reminded him of sailing through hurricanes with his men rushing about their duties while he kept a steel grip on the helm. For a moment it sounded like the mournful cry of a forlorn lover.

Unbeknownst to him, that's exactly what it was.

Weighed down by the despair of a hopeless love, a young man staggered to his knees in the cemetery. He had no idea where he was, some hick town in the New England region. What did he care? He was miles away from…her, and that was all that mattered.

He opened his eyes and allowed his hot tears to fall on the grave he'd tripped over. The moonlight turned them to mercury on his hands and he held them up to look at them.

Such beautiful tears, he thought. Normal tears would not be worth shedding over the girl he loved; liquid silver was much more precious. Would she receive them if he sent them to her? Or would she laugh in his face, scorning his true feelings as she had so many times to so many like him?

It didn't matter now, he decided as his dagger slid out of its sheath. Its straight line of shining whitish silver was literally a sharp contrast to his moon tears. Silver was a second prize in the world his lady came from; nothing less than pure gold would earn so much as a second glance. She was gold…and he was only silver.

The knife glared at him as if in anger that it was just like him. The idea that a beautiful weapon like itself should do away with the likes of him—to be the same as him—was surely an insult to it. "How dare you be the same as me!" it seemed to say. The man smiled up at it as he held it up.

"Don't worry," he said to it, "You'll be rid of me soon." He held his right wrist next to the blade. "We'll only be the same a little longer," he continued, "since my blood will be on both of us…but it'll be all right." The knife edged closer. "I won't be like you after this. I won't be here to remind you of what you are not." He pressed the point to his wrist where it met his hand and braced himself with a wretched expression. He spoke one word in a hoarse whisper.

"Gold!"

According to medical science, blood is clear when it's inside us and only turns red when spilled. When it fell from this young man, he thought it looked black and silver…again.

"Always silver," he sighed as he sank to his side, "never gold." He switched to his other hand and the blood from this one spurted from the artery and splashed onto an old tombstone while the grave soaked it up from his first hand. The name was easier to read now that it was highlighted in blood and moonlight.

Captain Daniel Edward Gregg

The young man smiled to himself; he had often heard of ghosts haunting the seas, searching for their bones, their graves, their eternal rest. He wondered if any of them had died in love like he was about to. How many had died thinking of the girls that were waiting for them? Or did any of them flee to the sailor's life feeling flung from the cruelty of the land and the fleeting fancies of its female inhabitants? Perhaps this Captain Gregg was a ghost; perhaps he was flitting about on the waves or haunting one of the beach houses. Perhaps he had died for love, too.

"Captain," whispered the dying lover, "or whatever spirit haunts this town for want of love, hear my final prayer: I offer my life in place of yours. A ghost will wander for hundreds of years and I am sure you have. Mortality has brought me nothing but pain, but you…your suffering has surely been worse. I would gladly wander your waters, rather than carry this fatal love a moment longer. Ghost of the sea, I have taken my life. Now you can take yours back. Find the love that was snatched from me; find the happiness that was denied me. Trade with me, spirit. I will be the ghost and you can be the man."

His grip loosened on the knife and his vision began to blur.

"I could only be silver," were his final words, "but you…surely…will be someone's gold."

Captain Gregg stopped where he was and looked out to sea. Something was different. It wasn't the beach or the wind. It wasn't the cottage; everyone was sleeping soundly.

No, it was him. He was different. He felt different.

"Different from what?" he whispered to himself. Then he gasped; it wasn't that he felt different. It was that he felt at all.

"Rubbish!" he said, "You're a ghost, old man. You can't feel."

For the most part, he wasn't; it was very faint, like someone just waking up, but still…it disturbed him. He'd been dead for a hundred years and had almost forgotten a lot of feelings.

"Aah!" His hands flew to his head and he doubled over. He remembered that feeling. His head was pounding! But how? There were so many things required for a headache that he'd lived without for a century!

Now he was reeling and had to catch himself on the railing! And he was heavy!

"How is this happening?!" he exclaimed hoarsely, his voice lost on the wind, "What is happening?!"

Then, to put the cherry on the cake, something else happened that truly frightened him.

Captain Gregg lost consciousness.

An hour later he came back to find himself sprawled out on his stomach. As he collected himself, he wondered again what was happening to him. This was not normal behavior for a ghost! He just hoped no one inside had heard him through the noise of the storm. He wouldn't dream of troubling them with worries he didn't even understand himself.

Maybe if he could get down to the beach, he wouldn't disturb the family with all the thumping around. With way more effort than it should've taken him, the captain willed himself to the shore and sat back on the slope so he could think.

He had an idea of what was going on, but he dared not say it to himself. It was too impossible, to inexplicable…too much for him to hope for.

But the moon would not let him hide so easily from himself; it took advantage of its fullness and shone on him for all it was worth. It made him see his shadow on the sand and its light on his hands.

"Impossible," he whispered, "It can't be!"

"Oh, yes it can," the moon seemed to say, "and it is." The moon had seen too much this night; the anguish of the hopeless lover was not to be wasted just because this ghost-in-denial didn't know about him.

Still staring at his hands, Captain Gregg slowly got to his feet and walked down to the main part of the beach.

And there he stood, staring in dumbfounded silence at his bright, warm, solid hands.

Author's Review:
Happy Valentine's Day! It gets better, I promise! I'll try to upload the next one as soon as I possibly can (like you've never heard that one before, LOL).

This is the first live-action show I've ever done a fic for, so this is kind of a milestone for me as a writer! Yay! I hope you guys enjoy this and look forward to more!

Please review!