Rogers dreams and comes to a deeper understanding of himself, his wife Sarah and Eleanor, as well as his feelings for them through it. (Entirely Rogers POV)

(Graphic warning - the last part contains graphic descriptions of dead characters.)

Chapter 32 - The Forgiven

In the darkness he heard murmurs, whispers, the laughter of a woman, shrieking of children. Sarah and the children. He sat in a chair, one that Sarah had bought for their Bristol home on loan, in the back garden amidst hedges and rose bushes. Except, this one was a miniature chair, made for children. He tried to sit still, preventing it from breaking under his weight. Beside the chair, stood a miniature table. Sarah poured invisible tea into the miniature china opposite of him. She wore the black of mourning, a rich velvet, and her hair was tied tightly in a bun, hidden beneath a black cap. Her beauty had faded, not physically, but in the way it does as he learned who she was behind that pretty face. The black dress and tight hairstyle externalized the woman he believed her to be on the inside – a black widowed empress who kept people beneath her, not by bettering herself but keeping others down.

The scene shifted and Rogers was seated in a carriage with the wheels rattling on the cobblestones beneath him. A woman in a faded mourning dress and blonde hair tied tightly to the back of her head sat opposite of him. Months of prison stay had drained the color of her face. Her eyes glinted with defiance. She looked not so dissimilar as Sarah, but her jaw was more masculine, and instead of a fine straight nose, she had a nose reaching for the sky. Her eyes were blue like the sea, not brown. "Where the fuck are you taking me?" she bit at him suspiciously.

"My island," he said softly.

"Fucking splendid," she muttered, petulant as a child, and glanced away, but not without furrowing her brow first and have those blue pools linger hesitantly into his own for a moment. Despite her purposeful intent to look and act course, he saw a vulnerability in those eyes that intrigued him.

He gave her the saffron, calico shawl resting in his lap - golden like the sun. Without saying a word, she wrapped it around her shoulders and head, lowered her eyes and laid her hands demurely in her lap. There, that looks better, he thought. It brought out her beauty.

Sarah talked about their future life, how many children they would have, their names. And when she named each one, he saw his son William race by, holding a kite with ribbons to make it take air. Little Sarah combed the golden hair of her doll and adjusted her doll's dress. And finally Mary peeked from under the table where she hid, smiling at him and laying her finger on her lips to ask him to remain silent of her hide-out. He winked at her. "And if we have another boy, we'll call him after you," Sarah said as she handed him a cup filled with pretend tea.

Rogers stirred his spoon into the empty cup, put it to his lips, drank nothing and placed it back on the saucer in his hand. "No, his first month at school all the boys will call him Woody."

Sarah lifted her eyes and appraised him. "You are Captain Rogers or Mr. Rogers now. But if you wish he could be named Thomas."

The empty cup grew bigger and filled with tea. A bowl filled with raspberries to the rim and ripe for the picking stood on the table. He waited in his office, while he heard the pains and cries of a woman's labor behind the doors of his bedroom. The doors opened and Dr. Marcus beamed at him, when he took his hand and shook it in congratulations. "You have a daughter, my lord."

His bedroom looked out into a wild garden and smelled of roses and mango. The bed was a pirate's. This is her room. He was not entirely sure how he knew that. He had never been there. Her blonde waves shielded her face from him as she looked down onto the babe, pressing her lips against her forehead. He approached hesitantly, and finally sat down on the bedside, staring at the newborn. Her eyes were blue, blue like his own.

"Isn't she lovely?" she whispered. "Our child."

"She is." Rogers lifted his eyes to look at the mother, but the screen of blonde hair between prevented him from identifying her. "How do you propose to name her?"

She turned and he looked into eyes of sky-blue, while she stretched their child out to him. "Nassau."

Carefully, Rogers cradled the baby in his arms. "It would be my pleasure." He closed his eyes and whispered into the miniature ears, "No pirate will hurt you again, my little miracle. I will do all I can to protect you and your mother."

When he opened his eyes again, he sat in the Bristol garden again. Rogers frowned and set the little delicate china cup and the saucer on the table. "Sarah, what are you doing? Why are you pretending as if it all still has to happen? As if we are children who can start our lives all anew?"

"What do you mean?" she said flabbergasted.

"We will have a rich furnished house for a few years. William will grow up to be a strong lad, and Sarah and Emily into fine girls. But I will be at the other side of the world when Mary is born. My brother will die." He pointed at his left cheek. "I will get this, and you will come to abhor it. Little Thomas will perish too young, before his first year. The house will be sold, all the china, all the furniture, your jewelry, and you will live with my widowed mother." He waved his hands at the garden. "This is my mother's garden."

"You could not sail around the world this time," she said petulant. "Take the loss of your slave ships to the pirates of Madagascar, and continue the business in Bristol with the ships that remain and expand in time."

Rogers squinted at his wife. "I could have, but I would not. You wanted me to become a sailor, a captain to appease your father to the idea of marrying me. And I chose to for you. But something happened, Sarah."

Sarah bowed her head and looked at her feet. "What?"

"I liked it. I like going to a new world and make a difference. I'm an ambitious man. I want to be a great man, not trade in slaves. I want to change the world." He pointed to the treetops at the end of the garden, indicating what lay beyond. "I'm exactly what your father would have wished for a son-in-law, but not what you wanted for a husband."

Sarah flushed red with anger and rose, starting to pack the tea-things into the toy-box. "What are you saying?"

Yes, he wondered, what do I wish to say to her?

Defoe grabbed his hand. His long face had a knowing smile. "You will make history, my friend. Never doubt it."

Rogers lifted his eyebrows. "We will see. Some of those pirates may disagree with my plans, and send me back to London for debtor's prison."

"Perhaps." Defoe shrugged his shoulders. And then he grinned. "But then I know where to find you and you can tell me all about them, so I can make all of you famous."

He chuckled and retreated his hand and sighed. "There's always that."

"I have a gift for you." Defoe handed him a parcel of brown paper wrapping. Rogers frowned and tore of the paper. Butterflies flew up into the sky. "Nothing practical, really. But what would life be like without its self-indulgent pleasures once in a while, hey?" Defoe tapped a book's cover. "Don't forget this on your voyage." He receded into the darkness and Rogers sat down in his chair by the hearth's fire with a glass of brandy.

Rogers opened the book and began to read. And as he did, the text turned into images, forbidden and sinful ones. Well, imagery? He could not see a hand before his eyes actually. But he could feel them. Her lips pressed onto his own, his fingers trembling as he fumbled at laces of a corset, the silkiness of her naked skin as he stroked the dimples right below the small of her back, her sighs and moans in his ear as he thrust into her, the softness of her hair as he buried his face in them, her legs wrapped around him, her foot grazing his shin, the sheer delight of her pillowing embrace of his cock, … the absolute joy of making love to her and be loved in return, in the middle of a killer storm. Winds howled around them. The ship rolled and leaned into the waves. She sobbed in his arms, clinging to him, her tears wetting his chest. "Why are you crying, my love?" he murmured.

He lay alone, and her presence was nothing more than a weeping ghost's whisper. "I can never be the mother of your children."

Rogers sat up in the darkness, trying to see, to find her. "What has that to do with anything?" he croaked. But if she was still there, she did not reply.

Next time he woke, he begged for water, but shied away from the glass when he recognized Mrs. Hudson. "What are you doing here?" He looked about the room in alarm. This was a different room, and yet it was still his, bathing in candlelight. It was dark outside. Where the hell am I? "Where's Sarah?"

Mrs. Hudson frowned and shook her head. "Mrs. Rogers is not here, sir. Do you wish for me to fetch Miss Guthrie or the doctor?"

Eleanor. Is she here? He narrowed his eyes at her. "You're spying on me, for her." He could feel it, as her hard and cold judgmental eyes bore into his brain and gave him a headache. She wanted to see in his mind so she could tell it all to Sarah.

"Sir, you are not well. Lie down again. I'll go fetch the doctor for you." She walked to the door and then turned around for a moment, looking very sad. "I'm sorry, sir. I did it for my children. Spain did not actually demand Captain Rackham, but my contact said it would be seen as a gesture of good will. Maybe…" She swallowed. "Maybe none of this would be happening then."

She made no sense at all to him, and what she said sounded distorted. What is happening? He reached for the glass with a trembling hand, drank and dropped it on the floor beside the bed. The headache was swallowing him whole and he dropped back into oblivion.

Through the window of the rattling carriage he could see a wilderness and the sea. A man with dark hair, dark eyes and wispy thin sideburns smirked at him. "Do you have a wife?"

"Beg pardon?"

Rackham leaned towards him. "How do you imagine she would feel if she saw you suffer, and that the only way she could end it would be to betray your trust, knowing she likely would lose that trust forever?"

"Riders! Riders approaching!" Major Rollins shouted outside. "Defend the governor!"

Rackham grinned triumphantly at Rogers. "I told you that my wife would do everything and anything in her power to save me."

Standing to see what was the upset, Rogers looked daggers at Rackham. "Anne isn't your wife."

"Perhaps not in the eyes of society, but she is to me." Then Rackham lurched for him, from behind, his teeth locked in a deadly grin, his dark eyes alight with demonic delight. The pirate choked him with his chains. Rogers rammed his elbow into Rackham in self-defense, but the man was made of iron. Fraught for air, he stretched his hand before him, grasping. In the beam of sunlight that shot through the window danced a saffron colored butterfly. And then everything became black before his eyes.

The light blinded him, piercing his head like a blast. He groaned and moved, only to realize his wrists were tied to his bed. He was a prisoner. From the glaring haze of light emerged Sarah's face. She sat down at his bedside and placed her hand on his heart, smiling. "So, we will begin anew, my dear Mr. Rogers."

He glared at her, wondering whether she had lost her wits. "Why did you tie me up?"

Her dark eyes moved from the good side of his face to his wrists. "To remind you of your vows. The bonds blessed by God last until death. You are tied to our marriage bed, not that poor replacement you consort with."

Rogers turned his head away from her, squeezing his eyes tight against the blinding light. He gritted his teeth. "If I could do it all over again, Sarah, I would do everything the same, except… marrying you."

Somewhere in the house a box of china fell on the floor and the noise of the thousand breaking pieces boomed into his ears. And then his cheek stung as the flat of her palm impacted his face, his scarred side. He opened his eyes again and met hers. She did not say a word but her brow was dark and clouded like thunder. Her eyes were aflame with a fireship. "You vowed before God, Mr. Rogers."

"False vows," he sighed. "What we thought was love wasn't love at all. It was an idea, a fantasy, and it turned into a nightmare."

Sarah stood and towered above him, her face dark with wrath. "Are our children but an idea?"

"No, of course not. But children don't make a marriage."

"And who are you that you feel so above every other man?" she sniped at him. His eyes seemed to have adjusted to the strange light. Only then did he notice something odd about the view from his window. Where are the trees and the houses? He could only see sky and clouds that drifted by like mist. Where the hell am I? Sarah paced the room. "Plenty of marriages between people are nightmares, based on an idea, rather than love. They don't get to be released from their vows before God either."

"I can't speak for other people." He balled his fists. "But this," he indicated the tie. "God is not in this. And He never was. This is society's doing."

Sarah turned, smiled at him triumphantly. "Yes," she whispered. "Civilization, Mr. Rogers."

He was getting weary of struggling, and laid his head back. "I'm still civilized, Sarah. You are provided for, sheltered, as are our children." He heard the singing of a child in the neighboring room. Mary, he realized. He had barely known her, but he remembered how she liked to sing or hum.

Sarah folded her arms in front of her. "Then what is it exactly you wish to be freed from?"

"From this loneliness, from a life without love. I want some happiness." Rogers closed his eyes. He could smell her perfume in the room - a fragrance of roses, the sea air and, well, just her. Sometimes he could hear her voice, soft and clear like chiming bells. But whenever he did, it sounded sad. "I'm sorry, Sarah," he said in a lower, more soothing tone. "For all the pain I caused you, for not being the husband you wanted and deserved. But we both know why we came to despise each other. I felt like a prisoner in Bristol, insignificant, before my trip 'round the world, and after. While you wished a husband with name and fame who did nothing to earn it. Sometimes I wonder whether that was the reason you accrued so much debt, in revenge of me leaving you and to bind me to stay in Bristol forever once I returned."

Sarah looked away, into the distance. "Maybe I did."

An invisible hand caressed his burning scar, with her knuckles. "She is here, isn't she?" he said suddenly.

Sarah pursed her lips. "Perhaps."

"Let me go, Sarah," he said softly, pleading. "I have to go back. It is cruel to let her finish what I started all by herself."

"Your butterfly of the sun will make you happy, will she? She looks more like a moth of night to me. What makes you think that she's not just an idea, a fantasy that will turn into a nightmare? Or better yet, can she ever live up to the high and mighty standards of Mr. Rogers?"

Rogers sagged his head. "I have known her in these past two months better than I have ever known you."

"Yes, you have known her intimately. You lay with her," Sarah whispered menacingly. "A thief, a murderer, a pirate. She has wrapped herself around your finger well and good several times." She rasped, "She is a good fuck, isn't she?"

"She's no murderer." Rogers tugged at his silk chains again. "And what we do isn't just fucking. We make love in the wild garden, as God's angel decreed, something that you and I never did." He pleaded with her. "You always had everything given to you on a platter. You never wanted for anything. There was always someone to guide you, to love you." He sighed. "Even if it was not I."

"Not you," she agreed.

"Nobody ever loved her, Sarah, not truly. The only person who ever did was killed in a bloody massacre. How just and righteous can God be if he snatches any chance of redemption from her and condemns her to a living hell and an eternal one thereafter?"

Sarah seemed to deliberate his argument. "You think that if you forgive her, that God will too? Do you think you are God?"

"No!" he denied. "But you always said that God was more forgiving than I could ever be. So, if I can forgive her, ..." He did not finish his sentence.

Sarah smiled knowingly. "What if she were to betray your trust, did the one thing you do not want her to do, believing she's doing it for you. Would you forgive her?"

"She wouldn't," he gasped, somehow instantly realizing what Sarah meant. "He… He's gone, shipped to England."

Sarah laughed and got up from the bed. "It doesn't sound to me like you would forgive her." She waltzed back towards the doors. "I think we will meet again."

A butterfly tried to weather a storm black as the ashes of a volcano in a desolate landscape - dry, sandy, stony and black. What water there might have once been had evaporated. White bleached bones lay strewn across the black rocky desert. Ffishbones stuck out of the dry riverbeds. No animal could survive for long in such a dry wasteland, and yet somehow the butterfly did. It was the sole presence of color in that world of the dead, with wings as yellow as the scorching sun and blue eyes. Despite its delicate, fragile nature it endured the hardships. Sweet, little butterfly, he whispered to it, hang in there until you reach fields with green, moist grass and flowers to get your nectar.

But instead of green grass and daylight, the world became pitch black, and the butterfly flew into a fortress filled with ghosts. It was eerily silent, but for the strange noise of a rope swinging back and forth. His brother stood amongst the crowd rocking his blue turned namesake in his arms. Half his brother's head was gone where his brains were supposed to be. A wan older, broken man hung from a cross. The redcoats standing guard were deadly pale. Some had residue of vomit soiling their coats. Others missed a leg or arm, or showed cuts at the neck or slippery entrails spilling out. A young man with a smashed skull, wearing broken glasses nodded at him. Mr. Dufresne, Rogers thought.

Captain Hornigold nodded gravely at him. "My Lord governor." He had a gunshot wound near the heart and blood bubbled from his lips when he spoke.

A man, dark as ebony, said, "I was his quartermaster, once." He wore a crown of ivory. More than a score of his fellow Africans stood behind him.

Major Rollins saluted him. "You caught him, sir."

But the dead were not the only ones here. He recognized Rackham more to the front of the crowd, with his arm around the shoulder of a woman with a hat. That must be Anne Bonny. Max stood beside her, but with her back turned to Anne. Flint gnashed his teeth and had his sword drawn. Blackbeard towered beside him, all dressed in black, his beard curled around sparkling fireworks. Another man with a peg for a leg leaned on an African woman. All of them pirates with a following. And in front of them stood a chest. "The cache," he whispered to nobody in particular.

Anne Bonny lifted her hat and stared at him with cold eyes. "A dead man's chest, more like." She unlocked it and lifted the lid. "Ready to receive the first Pirate King."

The noise of chains dragging across the floor alerted him to turn around and Charles Vane was brought forward before the crowd. His leg was bandaged for the gunshot wound that Rogers had inflicted on him. His face was bruised with cuts.

"Kill him," one of the dead behind Rogers whispered. "Kill him," said another. More and more the dead picked up the chant, until even the living pirates took it up. "Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!" over and over. A blonde woman in a red dress stumbled into the courtyard and they all stepped aside for her, for she was their queen, whether they liked her or not. "Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!"

Rogers tried to move through the throng to reach her, but the harder he tried, the more these ghosts formed a barrier between them. They pushed her forward to Charles Vane. "I shouldn't!" she pleaded. "I can't! Why me?"

Max ran to her, pried Eleanor's fingers open and put a dagger in there. "Do not do it," she said in her French accent. "Only you cannot do it." Eleanor's fingers closed around the hilt. Her knuckles were blood red and scraped.

"It's a trap!" Rogers shouted. "Don't do it Eleanor. Don't listen."

But the ghosts, dozens of them, nay hundreds, drowned out his shout to her with their "Guilty! Guilty! Dead! Dead! Dead!"

Rattling his chains, Vane turned to face her and with a lover's voice, he rasped, "Are you coming to set me free, Eleanor?"

She stared at the dagger, at him and then at the crowd in the fortress. "If I do not, you will only come back to kill him."

The beast chuckled. "Yes, I would, kill him like I killed your father. Set me free, Eleanor." It sounded like a purr almost.

"They want someone to blame," she whispered. "They need someone to blame." The dead were silent, but watching, eagerly, lusting for blood. "Someone must be sacrificed, to make it alright again."

"Then kill me, Eleanor. In death I'll be free again. It's not right to keep me chained in here."

"Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!"

Eleanor turned to study each dead man's face. And then her eyes arrested as she finally saw him amongst the crowd. Her eyes leaked tears and for a moment the sun managed to break through the clouds black as night, and she gave him a small smile. "For you," she mouthed. "Only for you." She lifted the dagger.

One, two, three and Rogers was momentarily distracted from the sound of a snapping cord. Vane hung from a gallows amidst the crowd. The haunting sound of the swinging cord he had heard since he entered the fortress belonged to Vane's. I came too late. She already did it. Only then did he realize what the dagger was for. "Noooooooooooooooooo!" he bellowed.

No longer able to endure the separation, he used all his might and power to push everyone aside, and found he must have sprouted wings in order to succeed. Just as he reached his mate, Eleanor plunged the dagger into her, removed it and dropped it to the floor with a clangor. He caught her in his arms as she crumbled through her knees. "Eleanor what willful folly did you do?" He gathered her closer to him, and pressed a hand against her wound. "There was no need for this horrid act." He pressed his cheek against hers. "You're too proud for your own good."

She reached for his scar and traced its path all the way to his chin. "Your scar was the first thing I loved about you, Woodes." Only one person in his life ever called him that – she. She coughed up some blood.

Rogers shushed her. "Don't speak. It will heal, Eleanor. The doctor will patch you up." She smiled at him as if she thought, silly you. "You cannot die. We're partners remember?" But his hand was slick from her blood pumping out of her wound and the light started to fade in her eyes. "No! No, Eleanor! Stay with me."

"Can you forgive me?" she whispered, barely audible.

She became a blur through his tear-filled eyes. The last time he cried, he held his brother's head in his lap in the midst of flying debris and tried to put his brain back where it belonged. "I-I forgive you," he blurted.

"You do love me," she murmured, dying with a smile on her face.

"I do." He kissed her lips gently. The surrounding darkness lifted. He refused to let go of her. Hoping against hope that his kiss, his very own soul, could breathe life back into her and lift the fog from her eyes. He sat with her like that for what seemed an eternal time, both of them bathing in light.

He felt a hand being put on his head. "I forgive you too, father," said young Mary. He looked up, just in time to see young Mary walk into the light.

Rogers opened his eyes, and he knew where he was – Nassau, New Providence.

(S4 trailer, Cupid & Psyche: I always envisioned the end of S3 as a form of "marriage" status between Rogers and Eleanor. Cupid & Psyche's first half of the story is a sinful affair that both regard as a marriage, but not recognized as such by society or the gods. When Cupid forgives Psyche's mistake and saves her with a kiss, the gods end Venus's wrath and an actual marriage ceremony and feast is held. Their daughter is born and is called "Pleasure". The S4 trailer has Eleanor's dress befitting a wife. Eleanor wears no jewelry in S3, but she wears a necklace of baby pearls with a pendant that is a butterfly (yes!) and a golden ring on her ringfinger. So, I suspect she will be Rogers' second wife and his Psyche (soul and buttery), straying from history for artistic license. Befitting the Cupid & Pyshce adaptation, I have Eleanor birth a daughter, but she's a dream symbol for Nassau. This dream chapter was written to suggest that Rogers' own life hangs in the balance. He could move on and "return" to little Mary, who waits for him in the light (afterlife), or he can return to the living to try and save Eleanor from her enemies. This is why I strayed from history and have his second daughter Mary die recently, instead of 1712.

The dream sequences - since we are oblivious to the time passing between dreams, the many dreams become one large dream story for Rogers. There are allusions to events in his bedroom prior to this chapter while he sleeps, things he heoverhears, senses or smells and integrates back into the dream.

Daniel Defoe - While Rogers was historically in debtor's prison from 1722 on, he was visited by a ghostwriter who wrote and published the book "A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates" under the pseudonym Captain Charles Johnson. It was published in 1724, and not only is it the biggest contemporary source on the lives of pirates such as Charles Vane, Anne Bonny, Calico Jack, Mary Reid, Edward Teach, Benjamin Hornigold and so on, but also portrayed Rogers as a hero with the public once more, who felt he was unfairly treated by the crown and England when they undermined and abandoned him while he was in most need of help in Nassau. He returned to London to find out why no help came, only to learn another man was appointed governor and he was put into debtor's prison. The new king reinstated him as governor and awarded him pensions and pay even for the years he was put in debtor's prison, because of that book. It is believed by many that it was Daniel Dafoe who was the book's writer. So, in Dafoe's goodbye in Rogers' dreams I have Dafoe allude to such a scheme.)