The beginning of this is still about the past. Later on is the present story. Not to worry, you'll know the difference.

Thank you to my reviewers! Every word helps.

It had been ten years since the last incident. Ten years she had stayed alive and healthy in my arms, ten years of bliss was what we got. But by that time, things had changed something great.

The golden age of the pirates had ended. Of course piracy did not stop completely, but we had both seen and lived it at its best. From time to time she would bring up Jack in conversation, wondering out loud what he was doing nowadays. Her strong belief in his ways told her that he would still be out there, drunk and clever as ever, sailing the seas of the Caribbean. I had to agree. We never saw him though and her thoughts were never confirmed nor proved wrong.

It made me sad to look at her and see how much she missed the sea, missed the freedom it had brought. I could see it in her eyes as she looked out of the beach cottage window to the water, a stare full of accepting what she could never take again, a look full of longing and loss.

I wouldn't let her go back to sea. I wouldn't take her out on the water to feel that cold wind again, to take hold of that lethal weapon even just to swing it around once or twice. I felt bad for it, controlling even. But I knew that if she did go, I could easily lose her there. I never really had to tell her this, she just knew. The closest she ever got was the sand that surrounded us and stretched on for what seemed like the longest road, never changing.

I would watch her stand there for hours daydreaming, brooding, watching the waves with the wind blowing her hair back as the tide lapped gently at her feet. I never disturbed her, though I wondered what she thought about. The past? What was to come? What she wished had happened all those years ago? Or there was the one thought I hoped did not cross her mind. If given the choice, I wondered if she would have even chosen life. Did she want this eternity to end? I wondered if she would have wanted to die along the world she knew.

We did have happy times though. She liked visiting her old maid's daughter, Isobel. She was now twenty years of age and lived with her husband, a farmer by the name of Charles. They lived on a wide acreage and Elizabeth liked going there to visit them and their daughter of five, Helen.

The young girl had blond locks of curly hair, like her mother's. She loved to skip around the goats and sing songs to them, or when she got bored she would throw rocks at them instead. She loved Elizabeth and whenever we visited, she ran up to the tiny white picket fence around the house and stood on her tip toes, waiting for her hug that always came.

Elizabeth laughed for most of the time whenever we went there, a truly happy look on her face as we all talked and Helen coloured me pretty pictures. She never drew pictures for Elizabeth, but instead sat on her lap while she did them for me. I don't know why she did it, but I didn't question it.

She drew me pictures of cats and sheep, of goats and barns. I always liked the scratchy lines. But one day when she was older and closer to seven she handed me a different sort of picture. I looked at the pirate ship drawn onto the parchment with dark lines outlining the waves of the sea with surprise. The ship was scribbled in to be black and on the Jolly Roger there was a white flower. The flower looked sort of like a lily.

One day, the family moved away when Helen was fourteen and she drew handed me one last picture before hauling her bags out to the cart.

In dark charcoal, she had drawn Elizabeth on the window seat of their house, knees drawn up and staring out at the farm. The picture was a perfect representation of her. The girl had become a true artist. It pained me to see my wife drawn so serenely, fearing what was to become of her once this wonderful family left.

Elizabeth didn't take it as hard as I had expected though. She moped for about a day, then accepted that it would be better that they left than stuck around to give us yet another funeral to bring flowers to.

Elizabeth found the picture of the ship one day on my desk and when I walked into our sitting room, I found her studying it.

"When did she make this?" she asks, tracing the lines with her fingers, not looking up when I come in.

"A long time ago," I answer softly as I hang my coat over the back of a chair, studying the deep emotions running across her face that are reflected in her eyes.

Then she smiled and set it back in my pile of Helen's drawings. I kept the one of Elizabeth in a drawer.

"She always fancied pirates," she laughs and I sigh in relief.

Sometimes when she was in a good mood, she would make me parade her around the market so she could look at the ribbons and pretty dresses. Her smile was what made me think that I had done something right in saving her.

She would fancy the drawings set out on tables and touch the dried paints on canvas. There was one time when she had stopped and stared at a painting for a few minutes, unmoving until I came to stand at her side. She then reached out and touched the paint with two fingers. The vivid image depicted a black ship on dark water, a Jolly Roger flying high and proud on her mast bearing a white flower crossed with a sword. It was so detailed that the dents in the ship were visible. Though it was not the Pearl, it looked close enough to send Elizabeth into a daydream for the rest of the afternoon. Helen had become quite talented. I figured she would be nineteen by now and finally becoming the artist she had always wanted to be. It looked like she had kept her head down on earth by only drawing pirate ships instead of joining one.

Time passes

Now

The tall green grass is slick with rain as Elizabeth walks ahead of me, lifting her skirts up to her knees. I follow closely behind, feeling the water soak into my boots. I can hear the sea far below the cliff, crashing angrily into its rocky and unyielding walls.

Finding a good spot, she sits down, ignoring the damp. The tall grass bends around her and gives her something to lean into. I sit too with a tired sigh and look up at the darkening sky. There will be rain later.

Elizabeth reaches out and plucks a white flower from the ground. She holds it to her face and inhales, a small smile on her lips.

"What is it?" I ask her, glancing at the petals of the tiny perfection.

"It's a lily, my favourite kind of flower."

"Why the lily?" I ask curiously. Even through all these years, I still have things to learn about her.

"Some say it represents good luck."

"Well then, it makes a perfect favourite." I smile happily and look back up at the sky.

"Others say it represents death," she states blatantly and twirls the stem around with her fingers before tossing it to the ground.

I look back down to see her staring at the discarded beauty, serenity carved into her features. She accepts death. I can't.

The clouds crackle with white light as the rain begins to gently fall onto our faces. She doesn't move.

"Let's go," I say quietly.

She looks up from the flower, dazed.

"Why?"

"The storm looks bad." She looks up into the light drizzle.

"Yes it does."

I stand up, wet from the grass, and hold out my hand to her. She takes it and I pull her up on her feet, her damp white dress sticking to her legs until she pulls it away. We make our way hurriedly back through the path of trampled grass, heads ducked and hands entwined against the quickening rain fall.

We have to walk down a set of stair-like rocks to get back; there is no other way to get down or up. I hold her hand for safety as she moves down them. The rocks are slippery and she looks very fragile to me. Slowly but surely, we make it halfway down. I let go of her hand to lower myself down a bigger drop, leaving her above so that I can help her down from the lower level.

When I turn back around and reach up to her, she's looking off to the side with wide eyes. I follow her gaze slowly, afraid to see what she sees.

Coming in to make port is a tall and sturdy light coloured ship. The decks are gray and clean; the sails are not even stained. She looks very new. The thing most surprising about her though is the Jolly Roger flying high and proud on the wind.

The captain must be very brave to sail a pirate ship into port so openly known as a pirate's vessel. Then again, the navy would be less prepared for it with the dwindling number of piratical adventures around here lately. Still.

My heartbeat, though far away from me and beneath layers of hard-packed earth, speeds up when I take in the whole scene. Then it must have stopped completely.

Despair washes over me. She had become a pirate after all. That girl who had left us at fourteen with all her wild dreams and talents had given in to the harsh life of the endangered breed of pirates. The skull grinned wickedly at the town, sitting atop a white lily and a sword. I'm stunned for several moments in my misery when another ship rounds the corner of a rocky outcropping.

This one is more than familiar. I regard the Pearl with hope and a countering sadness. Elizabeth has missed him, as have I from time to time. Maybe she needs to see another old friend who won't pass on, who she knows will not die of old age. If the fountain really had done what he said and actually worked.

But maybe another sordid story of an unhappy eternity is what we would get instead. Surely though if someone was content with a never ending life someone else would call desolate, it would be Jack Sparrow.

I turn my attention back to Elizabeth, whose face is lit up with excitement. She doesn't seem to mind that her dear Helen has become a pirate. Her happiness at Jack's return must have eclipsed it. Or maybe she's proud of Helen and happy that she gets to live a free life. I won't ever know.

She looks down at me and smiles a true smile that has been missing for years. I start to help her down from her rocky perch.

The rocks are wet. The rain drums down in a rising crescendo. I reach for her with open arms. Her foot slides over gray stone. The rocks are wet. She gasps when she realizes this. Her balance is lost. I stretch up to her, but I can't grab her. It has been twenty nine years since the last time. The average is twelve. The rocks are wet.

"No," I gasp, panic in my voice. With a lunge, I go for her hand. But she's too far away.

She screams as she falls over the edge, arms flailing in the air. In shock I rush to look over, anxiety taking hold of me. By the time I reach that edge, she's hit the rock below. Agony builds up in my chest and tears prick my eyes. I hate this.

Her white clad body lies at the bottom of the cliff face, hair strewn like a halo around her head. I close my eyes and breathe in deeply. Loss clouds my thoughts for too long as I listen to the rain falling, falling like her. The thunder rages and a finger of lightning shoots down from above to hit a tall tree by where my broken love lies. I open my eyes at the sound. The tree breaks with a deafening crack and falls to the side, crushing some smaller trees in its path. Once it hits the ground, there is only the sound of the rain. The thunder subsides, the ships are silent. The rain insists on staying with me, the one thing that has never changed in all this time.

For a while I can't move. I don't want to go down there; I don't want to see her broken again. But I don't want to leave her all alone. I wonder while I make my way down to her what this time will bring me. I wonder how much I will have to lose in order to gain. I wonder how much she will change. How much will she cry when she finds out? How long will it take me to reach that point? I wonder how much more miserable this will make our lives. I wonder how much she's going to break me. I wonder how much longer this will go on. But in the end I always have to accept that the answer is forever.

Broken rocks tumble down the drop as I kick by them, rushing to get down to my life, my love. The same questions repeat in my head over and over, an unbreakable and monotonous voice in my head.

The two ships weigh anchor and the crews throw mooring lines down to the docks. The rain persists, hammering the earth with its song.

Finally I feel dirt under my boots and turn quickly around to the side of the cliff, fear clinging to me. A cold feeling spreads up from my lungs to my throat. There is a huge jagged rock directly in front of me and I know that she's behind it. The fallen tree is blackened and smoking. I slowly walk around the rock.

And there she is, as beautiful as ever. She doesn't look too twisted, though I know that she's probably broken every bone in her body. A red trail from her torso to the edge of the flat rock and into the grass stands out against the white of her dress.

The rain makes it lose its trained course and it spreads out in a spider web-like fashion, her being the pray that gets caught in it. I kneel down at her head, in her blood, and brush the hair from her face. Her eyes are closed and her lashes are beaded with crystal water droplets.

I kiss her forehead, letting my tears spill onto her skin. Then I kiss her lips and wonder why I was so cruel as to force this all on her. If I was her, I would have chosen death. But it wasn't her making who had made the decision. I had done it for her.

I missed those times when I had to fight to keep her because of Jack. I missed those times when I had had to try so hard to put us out of those stages where we didn't talk. I missed those days when I had to fight to keep her from straying from my side. I missed those days when jealousy was what I fought against. Now, I felt like I was fighting a battle that would never be completely settled.

The two crews make final preparations before they leave the two grand vessels. They unload onto the dock.

But the ship I'm on won't let me off. I was once captain of the Flying Dutchman, never this ship. My ship sits at the docks relieved of her one duty, her masts covered in gray spots, her decks sagging and her masts weak. She's another dying piece of this world. Her sad sails blow neglected in the empty wind, like a wave of farewell. I don't have the heart to save her from the bottom of the sea calling to her. No, my heart is too ripped up to wave back at her.

My heart is hoping that forever will end.