The sun of the seven seas shines down on a lone ship. Its sails glisten like ivory against a turquoise sea, inlaid into a ship of ebony. It is made of wood, just like any other ship, but its planks have been painted black in deference to its profession. Oh, you say a ship can't have a personality? Then you're not seeing the way this one sails through the waves; pushing through the water with menacing purpose. All the sails have been let to allow for optimum speed, and a full crew scrambles like ants to keep her sailing true and straight.
Or maybe it is the lone figure at the wheel that gives it its drive and direction. He stands at the helm, legs splayed apart in deference to the unsteady nature of the meeting of wood and wave. He himself looks rooted to the spot, his two hands gripping the wheel at two and ten o'clock. Fitted boots and tight buckskin trousers meld to his ramrod straight body. The only softness in his stance, the whipping of his white lawn shirt and curly dark locks in the wind. His coat lays tossed aside on the nearest crate, as his gaze stays focused on the quarry ahead. His potent blue eyes focused and hard.
The tiniest etchings of a ship can be seen off in the distance, separated from the sea by only a few marks of the horizon. Derek doesn't have to see the shape of the sails or the tilt of the bow to know what ship it is, or even whose captaining it. He knows exactly who it is. He's been searching for just this ship, just this opportunity for five long years. For it wasn't just any ship. It was his ship. And the captain was his wife.
Epilogue 2
Derek climbs up the rope ladder of the other ship, his knife in his mouth and his pistols at the ready in their holsters. He doesn't think he'll need them, but you never know. It has been many years since he's been on this boat and a little less time than that since he's seen the current owner. Or he should say 'temporary' owner because it had pretty much been stolen right out from under him. He's been searching for it for a long time, but never really thought to see it again. After four and a half years he figured they were never coming back or had been lost at sea somewhere.
He jumps up over the edge of the ship to find that no one greets him. It is empty. It's still pretty early in the morning, but he expected there to be someone about. Not so. It is pretty eerie considering that it was five years to the day that he had found himself in this similar predicament. This time though the rest of the crew was anchored a little ways away and he had rowed over. He wanted the element of surprise for this meeting.
He takes the knife out of his mouth and puts it back in his boot. He likes pistols better. He holds one pistol out in one hand and crouches over to a very familiar cabin. Walking on this ship brings back many memories. A mystery woman in a golden dress with green eyes that had seared into his soul. Being woken up by her supposed 'father' that had turned out to be one of her Merry Crew and a whole lot more than even she knew about. His eyes shine as he remembers the exchanging of vows on this very deck, her in her virginal white night dress, and the fun he'd had taken it off of her afterwards.
Memories blur together as he inches the cabin door open. It is completely dark. No one confronts him. Hmmm…that's interesting. Just where is everyone? The room is definitely not the same one that he left. The staid English furniture has been replaced by a merging of many pieces from many different lands. The divan has been replaced by an arrangement of very large Indian-inspired pillows splayed around the fireplace. The reds and golds and oranges are complemented by a wooden screen set up to separate it from the dining area. But he can see that it is not the same table over there either. Instead, it is a small table, low to the ground, decorated with Oriental dragons. Hmm. His desk is still there though, and his liquor cabinet. He guesses that some things never change.
He silently creeps over the space as his eyes adjust to the darkness and presses his ear to the door to the inner cabin. Snoring? He snorts quietly. He should have known. He turns the door handle painstakingly slow and inches the door open with hardly a sound. He can barely make out a lone figure sleeping peacefully under a mound of blankets and furs. Those certainly aren't HIS sheets. Is that a silk Kimono on the night stand?
Without a sound, he approaches the side of the bed, withdraws his knife from his boot, slams it into the night stand, and shouts, "Mark! Just where the hell have you been?!"
Mark, bewildered and surprised, shoots up in bed. "Who? What? Where?" Mark says half asleep, sees who it is and rolls back over to go back to sleep while saying, "Oh, it's just you Shep. I'm trying to sleep here. What do you want?"
"What do I want?" He asks incredulously.
But as he talks, a woman comes through the door with two small children in tow. Two little girls in fact, that can't be more than two and three, respectively. The woman has on a simple styled gown in a light champagne color with her golden sun-kissed hair out and free around her shoulders. The little girl she holds hands with and walks beside her is her spitting image with long wavy blonde hair and cat-like green eyes. But the younger in her arms is just as downy but with the stunning blue eyes of her father.
"He wants to make his wife happy." She says good-naturedly as she deposits both girls on the bed and sits up next to them. "By getting her ship back."
Both girls immediately crawl over to look at the fascinating man in his bed-clothes with an oriental style braided goatee and an EARRING!
The oldest asks serenely, like she does this every day, "What are you doing in my mommy's bed?"
Mark looks over the little sprite and can't help the large grin that makes its way over his features. "And just who might your mommy be?" He asks teasingly.
The little girl's eyes widen at being addressed so, but Derek answers instead. "That's Emma." He says with a laugh. "The quiet one is Mina, short for Wilhemina. And you would know that if you had stuck around for even a little while and hadn't absconded with Meredith's ship."
He ignores Derek's last remark to introduce himself to the two lovely ladies in front of him. "It is nice to meet you two lovely ladies. Charmed." He says as he takes both of their hands in his and places a kiss atop each. They both giggle. Then he turns to Derek and says, "I was on my honeymoon. I just got back into town."
"A four year honeymoon?" Derek asks with disbelief.
"Well, it started out simply enough. We went down to the Americas for a little R&R. Then we decided it might be fun to try and find Christina's father." Mark explains with a yawn.
"You went to China?" Mer asks with disbelief.
"Yeah, but no luck there. We figured we were already on the other side of the world, so we came back the other way through India and the Mediterranean. But then Christina said she kind of missed you, Mer, so here we are!"
"Speaking of: Just where is Christina?" Meredith asks as her two girls come back to her and set up station against her.
"Oh, she left me." Mark says with faux lament and places a hand over his eyes.
"What'd you do now?" Derek asks with nary amount of sympathy.
Mark sighs and puts his hand down. "Apparently, I stared a little too long at a woman who had very daringly displayed her breasts in a fashion that I was compelled to look at, if just to see if they would fall out in the act of her walking anywhere."
"I bet she didn't believe that likely story either." Derek remarks in an amused voice.
"Nope." Mark says as he sits up. "Actually, she's probably on her way to visit you with our brood."
"You have kids?" Meredith asks with disbelief. She had never imagined Christina with children.
"Oh, like a dozen or so." He says with a wave of his hand, not even bothering to respond to the other two adults in the room's jaws dropping. "We just kept picking them up here or there."
Now that makes a little more sense to Derek. "So how many are actually yours?" He asks.
"Oh, just little Lo and Mimi." Mark answers like it is nothing at all to him. Then he turns to Emma with a little pat of her nose and says, "Actually, Lo is probably just about your age, pumpkin."
"Lo?" Emma answers with disbelief. She's never heard of such a thing!
Mark finally throws the sheet off of himself, stands up, and puts his slippers on. The little girls watch him in fascination as he is wearing something that they have never seen: black silk oriental pajamas with red dragons embroidered on the front. "It's short for Lotus. I've got a picture, want to see?" He asks the two little girls with a permissive look at Meredith.
She acquiesces with a smiling head-nod, so that when both girls copy her in the affirmative, he picks them both up in his arms and carries them out of the room. On the way out, both Meredith and Derek hear Emma ask him, "Do mommy and daddy want alone time?"
They both have to hold in their laughter as they hear Mark's fading voice ask, "Do they do that a lot?"
Derek can just imagine his little sprites heads both nodding up and down in the affirmative. But as soon as the door is closed, he turns to the main sprite in his life and lunges at her. Her body falls back on the bed as his covers hers in all the right places.
"You do realize that this bed is where it all began?" He asks with a suggestive wiggle of his eyebrows.
"What began?" She asks coyly.
"The day I fell in love with you. Exactly five years ago today." He answers with shining eyes and a silky voice.
"Well, that'd be a problem then, because I didn't fall in love with you until the next day when you married me just because I asked you to." Meredith answers with a hint of teasing laughter in her voice.
"You didn't fall in love with me when I put a gun to your head?" He says as he pushes his body into hers and gives her a warm and enveloping kiss on the mouth. "Or my powers of dinner conversation?"
"Nope. It was after I'd put a gun to your head, drugged you, and tricked you, and you still had a light in your eyes every time you looked at me." She says with utmost honesty.
He answers back just as honestly, "But that's what MADE me fall in love with you!"
They both laugh and continue on with their celebration.
FINI FINI
I hope you have enjoyed your trip into this little corner of my mind. I certainly have! I can't believe I have reached the end of this story. It seems like yesterday that Derek was a duped hero and Mer a lonely woman bent on revenge. And somewhere along the way, all of these other side stories developed: Mark and Christina, Alex and Izzie, and even a tiny portion of George and Callie. I think I started this story back in June and it is now almost 200 pages in word. If you have enjoyed it, please leave a comment for your comment-hungry author. Thank you!