A/N: Barbossa did not age during the Curse and his subsequent "first death," so the age gap between him and the innkeeper isn't nearly as great as it was at the beginning of RUINATION, when she was 14 and he was in his mid-30s. He's around 50 at the start of this story; 65 at the end. On Stranger Tides has been taken into account, but not in great detail.

When widow's walks were constructed around chimneys, bags of sand were often kept there, to be dumped down the chimney if a fire in the hearth got out of control.

~~ The Innkeeper ~~

The innkeeper is 39 now, a fine age to be reached in reasonable health, though she's seen by the townspeople to be dried-up and near dead for lack of a husband and children. Likewise Grantham House is only a shade of its former self, with just her bedroom, the kitchen and scullery, and her private parlor of any use. She kept the inn running as long as she could, but eventually closed its public rooms because she couldn't bear the intrusion of strangers upon her privacy anymore.

Still, this is how she wants it. Seven years ago, upon returning from his adventures, Barbossa made her a gift of a half-dozen pretty dresses, a black pearl ring for her finger, enough gold to keep her in tranquil ease for the rest of her life, and he bade her, should she wish it, to keep her bed warm for him whenever he should return to shore. "But know that the money ain't payment fer services rendered, darlin'," he murmured in his rumbling purr, taking her down on his lap to rub her back and offer further reassurance. "You always been a good girl, an' I'd ne'er treat you as anything less. 'Tis just that a man of my years wants his comforts and someone to talk to; someone to lo…" He kissed her cheek and raised an eyebrow, challenging her to understand the word he couldn't quite say. "Anyhow, I need a good woman in my life, for I be gettin' too old fer carousing an' such-like, see?"

As he promised, Barbossa returns regularly over the years, and each time he's ashore, they share not only the innkeeper's bed, but also the good food she cooks, drink and conversation and laughter, and she tries in all ways to be the companion and helpmeet he needs until the day he's obliged to go back to sea. "Nay, lass, stay abed," he whispers in her ear as he dresses himself. "I'd rather keep in me head the vision of ye lyin' there all soft an' rosy, not sobbin' yer eyes out at the docks."

"I'd never…"

"Ye would. You know ye would."

He never lets her make breakfast for him on those leaving days, but helps himself to a simple meal of ale and thick slices of buttered bread. "You have crumbs in your beard, my love," she always tells him when he comes upstairs for a last kiss farewell.

Though he might not say the words himself, the look in his eyes assures her of how pleased he is to hear them. "Until next time then, m' darlin'." It's what he always says.

Until the following year, and the year after that, when there isn't a next time, so she does as all left-behind sailors' women do: she begins to walk.

All of her life, the innkeeper has been petrified of Grantham's widow's walk, a lonely fenced circle of wood surrounding the central chimney. Her grandmother used to send her up there, hauling heavy bags of sand, and telling her that if she couldn't get them up the stairs, then it would be her fault if the house burned down. Fortunately, no fires occurred, but the feel of the rickety staircase beneath her feet never left her. Now, though, her fear wars with the need to keep watch for the man she loves, and there is no fear great enough to keep her from that.

For the first month, she stands and gazes out to sea, willing herself to see a ship's outline on the horizon. It will be him, it must be him. But through the next few weeks, she can no longer be still, and starts to pace. For hours and days and months she walks, never realizing that she's exhausted and growing thinner, unaware of the chill air until she begins to cough. But still, she can't bear to leave her watch lest Barbossa come home and she's not there to welcome him.

She doesn't know, in her terror that Barbossa might have died or forgotten her, that her dark hair has whitened. She can't even hear her own weeping.

This isn't the same as his going away when she was 18, leaving her with only her longings and imaginings about him, but no real knowledge. This time, it's the loss of a man she knows intimately well and whom she adores with all of her soul; so much, that she ignores the ugly talk about her by so-called respectable people. She knows what they've called her since the first time he came back: the pirate's whore.

She doesn't care. Better Barbossa's whore than any other man's wife… though she could never help secretly hoping for the one thing he wouldn't give: his name as her own. Still, all things considered, a name is of no importance when the man who owns it is lost.

Come home, Hector. Don't leave me; please come home.

The small figure pacing slowly atop Grantham House becomes a source of local novelty, with town children throwing rocks and vying to see if they can hit her. But the widow's walk is too high, so the brats have to be satisfied with breaking the inn's windows; something the innkeeper doesn't initially notice during the short occasions each day when she descends to the ground. Then it storms, and the water comes in to soak the curtains and warp the wooden floors, but she only looks at them sadly, because the damage doesn't matter. Her world has become the railed walkway; the only thing she sees, the ocean and other men's ships, but never the one she wants.

Come home, Hector, she begs, unable to keep back the tears. Don't leave me, my love; please, please come home.

Please…