Every day, an hour before sunset, Will Turner rinses the soot and grime from his hands and face, leaves his forge, and walks through Port Royale to the battlements that edge the cliffs closest to the water. There, he leans up against the weathered stone half-wall, closes his eyes, and breathes in the salty air. It is then, there, only at that very spot, that he can imagine being out on the water again.

It is a good feeling, one that he misses, because there was a freedom out on that water that he’d never felt before. Well, freedom in a manner of speaking, given that first he’d been racing to rescue Elizabeth—his Elizabeth—and then he’d been running to save his own skin, and then he’d had to spend the return journey watching Elizabeth and Commodore Norrington make wedding preparations, a worse torture than anything he’d suffered through before, as far as he was concerned.

It was as if he’d been set free, though, as if he’d felt truly alive for the very first time in his admittedly not so long life, although he’s lived a lot during it. Elizabeth tells him that it makes sense. He’s got saltwater running through his veins, she says. Can’t help it, given who his father was. Bootstrap Bill Turner. A pirate.

A good man.

He tells her that he’s just a blacksmith, really and that he’s happy being one—even if he did go out and get himself a cape and a really big hat—but he’s found that once she’s got her mind made up, it takes a stronger man than him to sway her.

It’s one of the things that he loves most about her.

She says that it’s his trips up to the battlements that let her know he’s lying about being happy. He tried to stay away, and actually managed to do so for all of three days, but at the end of the fourth he was so restless, pacing the house and breathing nervously, unevenly, that she pushed him out of their front door and marched him up to the top of the cliffs herself.

She said, "I don’t want to see you at home until the sun is below the horizon. You understand me, Will?"

That day, like he was doing now, he breathed in deeply, closed his eyes, and let the wind play with his hair. He’d actually been able to laugh that night when he’d gone back to their house, to twirl her around their living room to the beat of a song that only played inside of their heads.

It was a song that played just for the two of them. A song of happiness that belongs only to those who are truly in love.

That was the last day that he walked home from the cliffs by himself. The next day, Elizabeth joined him up there, arriving when the sun was halfway below the ocean line, and staying by his side until it was gone, Port Royale bathed in darkness again.

Will opens his eyes and stares out at the water. It’s blue, so blue, moving in gentle waves with tips the color of liquid fire. It’s beautiful, calming, and that’s the excuse he gives to people who ask why he’s up there every single day, watching, staring. He says that the air is too hot, too stifling in the forge. He says that he needs to clear his lungs before he goes home to his wife, eats the dinner that Maria, the servant that Governor Swann gifted them with at their wedding, prepares. He says that it cleanses him.

It does, but not in the way that most people think. It clears his brain, watching the water. It prepares him for another day in which he is just a blacksmith, married to the Governor’s daughter, happy with the life that he’s made for himself in Port Royale. It’s his compromise to the saltwater that Elizabeth says runs through his veins. He’ll stand out there for an hour a day, watching for the Black Pearl, maybe. Waiting for Capt. Jack Sparrow to sail into the bay, standing like a woman watching, waiting, for her husband to return to her.

"Do you know what you’d do yet, Mr. Turner?" Elizabeth asks him, and she’s standing at his left elbow, leaning against the half-wall, too. Imitating his stance. "If he actually showed up? What would you do if he came back here, swaggered up the dock, and said, ‘Will Turner, my boy. Come with me.’"

"I’d say that I’m very happy right here with Mrs. Turner, thank you, Cap’n," Will says. He leans over, and presses a kiss to the side of her head, then wraps one of her small, white hands in his callused one. "I’d say that I’m not a pirate."

"And we’d all know that you were lying," Elizabeth says. She straightens, and changes their grip so that she’s holding his hand. Then she moves him, so that his arm is draped over her shoulder, no mind for his still filthy clothes. "Do you know what I’d do if he came back?"

Will buries his nose in her hair and breathes in deeply, smelling a mixture of her scent and the salted air. "No," he murmurs. "What would you do?" They’ve been married two months; it’s only been three since Capt. Jack Sparrow left, and their conversation hasn’t gone this far yet.

"I’d pack our bags," she says. She’s still holding onto his hand, the one that’s now draped over her breast. She’s playing with his fingers, the ones that are still rough in places from handling the ropes on the Interceptor. "I’d sneak them on board the ship myself right before they were to set sail, and then I’d hide there until it was too late to turn back, at which time I’d reveal myself and then, I’d wait for you to come and get me. Which you would, of course, since you’re my very loving husband." She raises her head to kiss him on the lips.

"Of course," he says when she lowers her head again.

His pulse is fluttering slightly. He thinks that the salt in the air smells a little stronger than it did just a few moments before, but whether it’s from her words or her actions, he can’t say.

"And when you got there, Will, you’d come aboard, you’d see Jack, and between the two of us, we’d convince you to never leave."

"You’ve got this little fantasy all planned out, don’t you, love," he says, chuckling slightly, because there’s nothing else to do really. He looks down at her and sees that she’s smiling sadly, as if he’d broken her dream by laughing, as if she was watching it float away from her on the gentle waves below.

"You’re a pirate," Elizabeth says finally. "You may deny it now, but eventually you won’t be able to anymore. Eventually you’ll hop aboard some ship away from here. Maybe it won’t be a pirate ship, but eventually that’s where you’ll end up. As First Mate or Captain, I don’t know." She steps out of his grasp, and he turns to face her, reaching out, but she evades his touch. "I won’t be left behind, Will."

"Which is why I’d never—" he starts, then stops, because that’s the closest he’s ever come to admitting that he has thought of the life out on the open sea, that he has dreamed of it while he stands up here on the battlements.

"I’ve survived on ships before," Elizabeth says, and she steps closer to him again, taking his hand in her own and winding their fingers together. "I’ll survive again, because the day will come when standing out here every night won’t be enough for you anymore. And I just want you to know that I won’t be left behind. I will not spend my life watching the horizon, wondering if this will be the trip from which you never return. Do you understand me?"

He nods, because he has no choice.

"If that day ever comes, we’ll get our own ship," he says. He doesn’t mean it, though, because he’s resisted the call of the ocean so far, and he’s sure that he’ll be able to continue doing so. "Turner and Turner, terror of the high seas."

"We’ll have the best kept ship out there," Elizabeth says, and she’s in his arms again, in front of him, between him and the half-wall, him and the ocean. "The Pearl certainly could have used a woman’s touch."

Will smiles and leans over slightly, so his lips are just millimeters away from her ear. "That it could," he says softly, almost wistfully. "That it could’ve."