Disclaimer: I don't own Pirates or any characters therein. I am just using them as a creative outlet. This is a small drabble that I came up with after seeing the film At World's End last night. DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT. MAJOR SPOILER ALERT.
The problem with living forever, is that you cannot die. This was the greatest tragedy of all for William Turner. For while he sailed the seven seas, ushering souls to the land of the dead in the service of the goddess Callypso, life went on without him. Once every ten years he would return to the Island, and his beautiful bride would meet him at the shore with their son, and then their grandchildren, each time another ten years older, another ten years more sorrowful.
Then one day he came back and she did not meet him, with her mercurial eyes and sweet smile, and he wept on the sands though he had no heart to break. Three generations of his estranged family stood round to comfort him. "Do not cry Father," his son was saying, grey bearded and sad, looking at least forty years older than the man who had fathered him. He held in his arms his youngest grandchild, a bright, laughing child of four with silky brown curls. She looked at this man and was sorry for him in her tiny heart.
"I will not come back again," said Will, raw and angry. His heart locked away in an enchantment bound chest, and still he felt the pain of her loss.
"Please do not say so," said his son, setting down the child in his arms. She walked to the stranger and touched his face, which was stiff with salt from the sea and his tears. He looked at her with dull, empty eyes, his great-granddaughter, with her cherry cheeks. "Mother made us promise, that we will always be here for you, when you return."
"You look like my Elizabeth," he said to the child, stroking her hair with his large calloused hand, seeming to ignore his son.
"I am Elizabeth," she stated sweetly, and his eyes welled anew.
"I will not return," he said, standing to look toward the sea that claimed his life.
"We will still come," his son said sadly, "We swore it."
"Guard the chest close," Will said instead, softly, as he backed into the sea. He did not say goodbye. He did not look back.
"With our dying breath," promised his son, "It is our legacy." And he watched his father walk into the sea for the last time. He died the next year.
The decendents of Will Turner kept their vow and returned to that place every decade. Will kept his promise as well, and did not return ten years later, nor the decade after that. They passed, the decades, until the only one left who remembered his face was little Elizabeth, now eldest of the family. The younger one's did not believe the stories, but she made them swear the vows regardless.
At age eighty-four, she led her large clan to the shores of the Island, and that year William Turner returned. He strode onto the shore, as young and strong as the day he had given his heart to the sea 150 years before.
He walked up to his great-granddaughter, picking her easily out of the crowd. "Are you my Elizabeth?" he asked softly of her. She smiled, and her cheeks were still cherry red beneath the papery skin.
"I am," she said, "And you are William Turner, my Great-grandfather."
He nodded and asked "Do you still have the chest?"
"We swore to keep it safe," she said, "and we have. Will you stay?"
He looked at the assembled family, all who looked back with wondering eyes, and something softened within him.
"Yes," he said, "until sunset tomorrow."
"Will you come again?" asked the elderly Elizabeth.
"Yes," he replied. And he joined them at their revelries. And every decade thereafter he did return as he promised.