(standard disclaimer applies)
Warning: character death
Elizabeth disappears the moment it is prudent. Will politely extricates himself from the rest of the mourners, who are understanding although they have not yet noticed her absence. He checks their house first, then the smithy, before correctly guessing where his wife is most likely to be right now.
The large buttonwood tree sits on the edge of the mansion's property, overlooking its rose gardens. The two of them spent long hours cradled by its branches when they were children. It has been schools, desert palaces, underground tunnels, prisons, jungle heartwood, towers, haunted moors, and ships – ships most often, in fact. A rope still hangs from a branch midway up, though the wooden plank at the end has long since gone missing. Chopped for firewood, perhaps, or simply rotted away.
Will gives himself a mental shake. It's difficult to push the memories away when Elizabeth is perched on her favorite seat, the curved branch with the smaller one to loop her arms over while she looks out to sea.
Shading his eyes, he peers up at her. "Elizabeth?"
"I'm here," she says quietly. He waits a moment, shuffling his feet before speaking again.
"Are you coming down?"
Now he can see her face, pale among so much green and the russet-brown of her dress, as she looks down. "Not just yet."
In that case...Pursing his lips, Will regards the climbing knots with trepidation. He hasn't done this in quite some time. He grips the base of what Elizabeth always called the grab-branch – still above his head, though not so high as it used to be – and steps onto the lowest knot. It's been worn smooth over the years, but it still holds his weight. The rest of the climb is surprisingly easy. His body remembers each and every past ascent, although they tend to blur together in his mind.
When he reaches the branch just below Elizabeth's, he stops. It juts out an angle so that he is sitting behind and to her right. He leans forward to see her properly. She is staring out at the setting sun, eyes slightly narrowed against the glare. Dying light gilds her tangled hair. He opens his mouth to speak, but gets caught up in an internal debate: worse to say the wrong thing, or to say nothing at all?
"It's beautiful, isn't it," Elizabeth murmurs.
"Yes," says Will, automatically.
She still hasn't taken her eyes from the sky. Her fingers curl and uncurl against rough bark. "The colors – all the reds and golds and oranges and blues, and the purple over there, and look, there's a touch of green – the way the clouds part, and the shimmer off the water..."
"Very beautiful indeed." His backside is cramping from the uncomfortable position – how he managed to last up here as a boy, he'll never know – but he doesn't dare move.
A smile touches the corners of Elizabeth's lips, her eyes following a wisp of cloud and the rays bursting through it. "Are we still talking about the sunset?"
"One of us is, I'm almost certain," he replies. Elizabeth leans forward to prop her chin on her folded arms.
"I'm glad we buried him here instead of England. It's...it's cold there, and bleak, and he did grow to love the islands." Will's throat closes at the ache in her soft voice. Carefully he crouches, steadies himself, and swings his legs over the pet branch. There is just enough room for him to fit against the trunk, most comfortably if he puts his arms around her.
At his hesitation, Elizabeth finally turns to look at him, her face drawn but calm. "I'm not going to break, Will." A bitter smile twists her mouth. "I have done this before, you know."
He reaches for her and she stiffens, then relaxes against him. Tucking under his arm, she turns her face to his chest. Will drops his head and breathes her in, feels her shudder.
"I'm sorry." The words are clumsy, unmalleable things in his mouth. He kisses the top of her head in an attempt to make up for the force of meaning they fail to convey.
Elizabeth tightens her arms around his middle. "I know."
The tree is warm and solid at his back. Elizabeth shifts in his embrace, turning back so that she can continue to watch the day wane. Her hand goes to the smaller branch, fidgeting for all that the rest of her is perfectly still. She rubs her thumb over a sprouting twig.
"Father once forbade me from naming a son after him," she says after a long, silent moment. "He said the name quite suited him, but it would be a disastrous fit for any child of mine." Her laugh is weak, barely stirring her shoulders, but free of any harsh sting. "Well, he didn't properly forbid it, because he knew I'd go right around and do it just to be contrary. Father learned the value of...suggestion quite early on."
"I can imagine you were not the easiest child to raise –" Elizabeth snorts in agreement. He continues in a quieter voice, "He loved you very much."
Will remembers the day they were married, the look on his father-in-law's face. Joy for their happiness, pride in her choices, and a shadow of pain at losing his only child. The man had always been kind, even when Will was young, but on that day he knows Weatherby wished his daughter had chosen someone who was wealthier, or older, or the commodore. Yet he'd stepped aside when any man had the right to step in, let her follow her heart. Will wanted to prove himself good enough in his eyes as well as Elizabeth's, for few people had trusted him the way Weatherby did, and never with so precious a thing as the woman he had taken to wife.
Elizabeth is weeping now, with little sound or fuss. He strokes her hair and watches the colors change again.
After a time, she clears her throat and brushes at her cheeks. "Middle name, then. Though if it's a girl, I suppose we'll have to wait."
Will's hand freezes at her temple. "Elizabeth – "
"Yes," she says plainly, before he has the chance to ask. Her eyes are shining with more than grief when she tilts her head to meet his mouth, which is hanging conveniently open. He will forever associate the taste of salt tears with an elation so powerful it stops his heart for a beat. To begin the day with a funeral, and end it with this...it has reshaped him the way the horizon shapes the sinking sun. Will is no theology scholar, but he hopes that somehow, Weatherby knows.
He insists on helping her down, though she rolls her eyes and climbs more nimbly than he can ever hope to. When they reach the ground, Elizabeth tugs on the fraying rope. "We'll have to replace this when the baby gets big enough to make use of it. The new governor will simply have to find his own home, because this one..." She leans back against the tree, looking over his shoulder to the stately house she has inherited. "This one belonged to my father, and we are going to make it ours. If you don't mind moving, that is," she adds, raising her eyebrows in question.
"Not in the least." Will fits his hands to her waist, bends down to kiss her cheek. "Home is where you are."