A/N: I don't know how I lasted this long without writing this again, but somehow I did. I've been working like crazy, dealing with the usual drama, and babysitting two days a week. Then trying to actually have something that somewhat resembles a social life and deciding to teach Vacation Bible School a couple of weeks ago, my life has been pretty hectic. So, I'm finally doing something for myself and updating this one. If anyone is looking for something else to read, I recently wrote a W/E one shot based on the song I Hope You Dance in which Elizabeth writes a letter to their infant son. And this is probably the last thing I will get up before I leave on Friday. I'll be without a computer for a week, but I'm planning on writing on the beach. lol We'll see how far that gets me before I get back. I'm not so sure about this post yet, seeing as it didn't go the way I had originally planned it would. Hopefully, you guys like it more than I do. Please do review if you are taking the time to read this. Thanks.

The petite honey brunette gave a nervous laugh as she instinctively took a step back from the intrusive man in front of her, her arms crossing at her middle as if that small action may protect her unborn child from what now appeared to be imminent death. As Elizabeth's eyes darted around the crowded deck, looking for anyone whose face didn't display the same identical menacing glare, she couldn't remember for the life of her how she had found herself in this current predicament. The last thing she could bring to mind was her return to the Black Pearl with Will the night before, but now it had to be at least midday, Will was nowhere to be found, and… And how did she end up on the top deck, surrounded by a mob of angry pirates? Looking back to the man she had trusted so much over the past few months, she offered Hector Barbossa a meager smile as she tried to hide her fear. "Captain Barbossa, you cannot be sincere when you tell me to walk the plank. You promised me that you would do everything in your power to free Will from the confines of the Flying Dutchman. What has so suddenly changed?"

"What has changed, ye ask, Mrs. Turner?" A sly grin appeared on the older man's unshaven face as he took another step towards her, causing her to take another step back in fear. Her left foot ended on the plank and she felt the piece of wood bend and sway beneath her weight. One glance behind herself made her gulp quickly before the man in front of her fell to rest on her cheek, roughly jerking her head to the opposite side and forcing her to make eye contact. "I promised ye that I would help ye and yer husband achieve the lives you deserved. But you, my dear, never shared with me yer plans of mutiny." Confusion clouded Elizabeth's expression as she stared into the cold, emotionless eyes of Barbossa, trying to imagine what could have caused this change in his demeanor to occur so suddenly. A flurry of activity caught her attention as the crowd of pirates in front of her parted, making way for two men she did not recognize to force a third man who was bound and tied towards Barbossa himself. But she did not need them to close the distance between her and the person in front of her to know exactly who it was.

She felt like she was going to be sick again as she saw the fear in his eyes, caused not by his own troubling situation but by the one she herself had found herself in. His wrists were tied together behind his back , a gag placed in his mouth to keep him from calling out to her, but what disturbed her the most was the malicious way the two men pushing him forward and causing him to stumble were laughing. Elizabeth instinctively ran towards her husband only to feel her body jerk back as Captain Barbossa grabbed a fistful of her hair, causing her to cry out in pain and surprise and Will's expression to mirror the physical pain she was experiencing. The captain used her hair to pull her back, twisting the fine light brown strands and making her whimper softly once again. His breath smelt strongly of alcohol as he sneered back at her, his face inches away from hers, and he used his free hand to pull the pistol from his side into plain view. "Ye see, my sweet Lizzie, yer love has yet to learn his lesson. He still thinks he can take charge of me ship and control all me men, he just can't accept a helping hand can he?"

Elizabeth's eyes fell to rest on Will's for only a minute, her beautiful brown irises holding all the questions she wanted to ask him aloud in that moment. In response, his gaze dropped to his feet, and she realized with a sickening sense of certainty that the older man was indeed telling the truth. She cried out in pain as the man pulled her hair tighter, forcing her to make eye contact as he continued to speak. "I don't like conspirators, Mrs. Turner, ye should know that by now, and yer precious Will is about to find out." Another jerk of her hair caused her to bite down hard on her bottom lip and forced her to spin around to look at Will again as Barbossa finally announced the lovers' fate aloud. "Ye see, killing Will won't work, because any way you look at it, he's already dead. The only way to truly hurt him is to take away what dear William loves most: his wife and his unborn babe."

Her hazel-colored eyes snapped open in horror as she stared back at Will, seeing him now in a new light, knowing that he would now feel the pain of the situation she had found herself in so many years ago, and all she could think was that she didn't want him to endure that kind of pain. If Will was allowed to return to the Flying Dutchman and she was asked to serve on the vessel, they would be able to be back together, but their baby would be forever lost to the sea and she couldn't see the cruel man at her side ever letting her husband return to his own ship again. She held the strong desire to say something to Will in that moment, tell him everything that she had always wanted to but never could find just the right words to express her feelings, but Barbossa still had a strong hold on the back of her head and the distance was much too far for such a personal conversation.

Before Elizabeth could comprehend what was happening once again, Hector Barbossa had spun her back around, and was now pressing the butt of the gun forcefully into her lower back, pushing her forward towards the thin piece of wood that that hung so perilously above the depths of the sea. She felt his breath, warm on the side of her face as he whispered into her ear. "Farewell, Lizzie." Tears sprung to her eyes as she somehow found it in herself to take another small step forward before turning back around to let herself immerse herself in one last long glance at Will. It was in that moment that he decided to break free from the strong hold the two other men had on him and make his way towards Elizabeth from where she stood so daringly on the plank of the Black Pearl. But a shot rang out before he had taken even two steps, and as he collapsed to his knees, it took Elizabeth a minute to realize that the scream she heard was her own.

Something had gone horribly wrong, she realized as she ran towards Will's crumpled body on the deck, ignoring the commotion that her sudden actions caused on all sides. The hole in Will's chest, in the same hollowed place his heart had occupied prior to his death, did not dissolve and disappear from view as soon as the bullet had exited his body. Instead, it gave way to his crimson blood that stained the white of his shirt and contrasted the black residue the gunpowder had left behind. His mouth moved as he gasped for what little breath he could, but as she knelt beside him and rested his head in her lap, she could see the way the blood would ebb and flow from the wound in his chest with each tiny breath he took. She took a deep breath to try to swallow the panic that was quickly taking over her every action and she busied herself by pushing his soft brown hair off his clammy face, her voice soft as she tried to disguise her pain. "Stay here with me, Will, you'll be okay. You'll pull through this and we'll be together again. We'll be a family, Will. We'll have everything we've always wanted, you must stay with me."

A single tear burned its path into the side of her cheek before falling to the pure white shirt he wore and forever leaving its mark, a tiny spot that somehow seemed to connect her to him. His eyes were filled with a pain she did not know before now as he locked his gaze on hers, a pain that was both physical and emotional, a pain that she could feel resonating from her own heart. His lips moved in a soundless motion, but they were words she had heard from him a million times before. I love you. And then, he closed his deep brown eyes, eyes that had brought her happiness when nothing was going right, eyes that made her cloudy skies disappear and gave way to sunnier days, eyes she knew like the back of her hand, and in the depths of her heart, she knew he was gone.

The salty tears she had shed already left their mark on his lips as she gave him one last, long kiss, feeling the way he seemed to kiss her back even in these few moments after his death. The crowd around her seemed to part and go back to their everyday lives, something she would no longer experience, but she didn't look up. Instead, she rested her head on the deck beside him, laying next to him the same way she had for so many nights, and she let herself cry until her exhausted body gave way and she too went limp, giving way to a sleep that would not heal her in the ways she so badly needed to be healed.

Elizabeth woke up in a cold sweat and gasping for breath, her face already stained with the traces her crying had left behind, and as she sat up quickly, wanting to flee from the confines of the bed, the door to the tiny room swung open to reveal the only person she wanted to see. Worry was etched into the lines of his face as Will moved to the side of the bed, sitting down beside her and brushing strands of hair from her clammy face. She closed her eyes and winced, the action seeming to pain her, as it brought back details of the horrid nightmare she had just experienced, one that had seemed so real, she wasn't sure she wanted to even know what Will had planned for the rest of their journey. Her body still shook with fear as he pulled her into his lap, but the soothing words he whispered into her ear made her body grow weak with desire and all thoughts of mutiny flee from her mind.

She rested her still tired head on his shoulder as he finally spoke, his voice vibrating soothingly against her own chest. "I thought that you would sleep soundly now, with my being here aboard the Black Pearl with you. But now it does not seem so and I'm so very sorry that I cannot take this pain away from you." Elizabeth shook her head quickly as she met his gaze, feeling the final clutches of dread leave her stomach. She spoke softly as she kept his eyes even with hers by placing her hands on either side of his face, gently rubbing the pad of her thumb against his rough cheek.

"No, Will. You do make it better when you are with me. These dreams… They haven't gone away, but they have changed and I'm not sure what to think about them." She bit her bottom lip in a childlike manner as she broke eye contact first, pulling her hands away from his face and folding them in her lap. This conversation would be difficult no matter what way she went around it, but she couldn't find it in herself to start it, not here when she was so close to him physically. But moving to the vacant spot beside him on the bed or the far corner of the cramped quarters would not make the difficulty of her task weaken, she knew that. She decided against waiting to see if the nightmares continued, for that would not get her anywhere closer to feeling safe once again, and she dove headfirst into the conversation after taking a deep breath. "Did you tell anyone that we are expecting a child?"

Will seemed taken aback by her question at first and she feared that she had approached the discussion all wrong, but his flustered appearance gave way to a more shameful demeanor and she relaxed a little bit before her stomach clenched again as she realized his reaction to the question meant that he had indeed revealed their secret to someone. Her immediate reaction was to continue with her interrogation, ask who it was, why he had felt obliged to share something so personal, when it had happened. She wanted to weep into his shoulder and wrap her small hands around his neck until he was no longer breathing at the same time. And right then, strangling him was sounding better because this reality wasn't like her nightmare. He would feel the pain, the lack of oxygen, but he would not die. How could one die without a beating heart in their chest? Thankfully, his stammering stopped her train of thought before she could upset herself any further.

"I-I confided in Jack last night because he would not stop asking questions. He wanted to know why you decided to come find me and try to save me from my punishment. But I believe Jack when he tells me that he will not tell a soul. Jack's word is good, Elizabeth, even if he has not been a good man in the past. He has changed, as have you and myself. Our situation is not an easy one, and we have all felt its effects in different manners. My death may have made an honest man out of Jack Sparrow." She nodded hesitantly as she continued to nibble intently on her bottom lip, wringing her hands in her lap until he took them in his own much larger ones. He gave her a warm smile as he spoke, leaving a kiss on her temple. "A baby is a blessing, Elizabeth. It's an event to be celebrated and not coveted until it is no longer possible to hide the fact that we are starting a family. Are you worried about that now? Becoming a family? Becoming a mother?"

This time, Elizabeth shook her head quickly, her eyes widening as she found herself tightening her grip on his hands. "No, of course not. I have wanted this since I was a small girl myself. And while I doubt my abilities to care for an infant, I know that you will be here beside me."

"I'm happy to hear that, but that still doesn't explain what you are so worried about now. Or why you want to keep our unborn child a secret."

She sighed as she gazed back down to her hands, still firmly in his, and she reassured herself that he was with her, not only when it came to matters that concerned their child, but when it came to everything. Their wedding vows had made that a fact, and she wasn't about to go against her word to keep from embarrassing herself. "Will…" She bit her lip harder as she hesitated a minute, wishing she was better at reading his reaction. "You wouldn't try to take over the Black Pearl, would you?"

His brows furrowed in confusion as he looked back at her, making her want to cower in the corner of the room once again. "I'm not sure I understand what you mean."

She sighed again to herself as she finally met his deep brown eyes, finding the courage she had needed to continue. "You would try to take control from Barbossa, would you?"

Will laughed softly as he brushed another strand of hair behind her ear, shaking his head softly as he took in her still nervous appearance. "Of course not, Elizabeth. Barbossa and Jack are helping us, they're offering their services to me. I have no desire to ruin this arrangement by taking control of the Black Pearl. And I have never wanted to control a ship once in my days, it is my fate after all. I do not want to be captain of any ship ever again if I can help it at all."

Elizabeth seemed to relax again as she curled up in his lap, resting her head against her chest before she could remind herself that it as hollow, no sound filled her ears. And as his hands traveled downwards to rest on her middle, she felt uncomfortable again, wanting to keep the pregnancy as secretive as possible after her nightmare. The way she tensed in his arms did not go unnoticed by Will, and he left another kiss on the crown of her head before standing up and setting her back down on the bed. "You should try to rest some more, a fitful sleep will not do. I will be only a short distance away if you need me."

As he went to step away from the bed, she subconsciously wrapped her slender fingers around his wrist, stopping him from moving any further away from her side. His eyes locked on hers, and for a brief moment, he could see the flash of fear that filled her beautiful brown irises before it disappeared again from sight. Her voice was soft and unsure as she spoke, and it broke his heart to hear the sound reverberate in his ear. "Stay with me, Will. Please, I beg of you."

Solace she was offered as her husband obliged with a nod and laid down beside her, wrapping his strong arms protectively around her small body. She closed her eyes and tried to let sleep take her away, tried to convince herself that a nightmare would not come if she was in his arms. But the dream had been so real, the scent of the blood, the powdery texture of the residue of the gun, the way Will had gasped for air. Whenever she closed her eyes, she only saw images of his death, a memory she had tried so hard to forget in these past few months since she had decided to return to him. And she could only hope, as she pretended to sleep for his benefit, that their excursion would be successful in the end. If anything happened to Will again or they failed, she couldn't see herself being able to go on alone.