This is a little bit the first day drabble and a little bit the what have I done drabble (both from the Black Pearl Sails yahoo group), which I suppose excuses it for being slightly over the length of a double drabble. I extend my deep thanks to honorat for letting me steal some of her imagery from the first chapter of Worthy of His Steel (which I highly recommend. It can be found on her livejournal account or on the Black Pearls Sails group webpage). I only hope I have done it some justice.
Diclaimer: It all belongs to the Mouse. Except for the lava imagery, which is honorat's.
His mother had spent years teaching him to build a hardened layer of respectability and propriety. Then she had taught him when know when to slow down or stop so that cracks in that stony shell had time to reseal. He had learned his lessons well, and perfected them, he thought, in the years since her death.
But now, oh now the molten core that had he had so long contained was breaking free. No longer was he cooling lava, a tough hardened shell over cooling heat. He had not stopped to reseal the cracks since Elizabeth's capture, rather letting them expand until now he felt like a pool of molten rock with only a few harder fragments of that old shell floating on the surface. He had told himself it didn't matter, that he could rebuild everything once Elizabeth was safe. Yet here he was, back at Port Royal, and she was safe, and going back to what he was was the last thing on his mind.
If he turned around now a good man would die, and she would never know, but he would have his life as it was.
"Governor Swan."
If he did this the shell would be gone. He could never go back.
"Commodore."
Did he want to?
"Elizabeth."