So, here's the last chapter. I hope you like it.

Chapter 21: Ten Years Later

I stepped onto the familiar shoreline of my childhood home. There was the boulder I had spent countless hours resting on, the one I had met and lost and met again the man I had called father. There was the trail that lead up to my mothers house.

Michael clasped my free hand as we walked up the cliff, past the ruins of my childhood home, past the garden where my parents' bodies were buried, past the farm Michael had grown up on.

Our final destination: my brothers' home.

I freed my hand from Michaels and knocked. It was almost noon on a weekend, Jack was sure to be home.

A little girl answered the door; she could have been no more than nine. Her brown eyes grew large, then she disappeared into the house.

She reappeared with my brother in tow.

Now aged forty, he looked well. The smallest amount of gray touched his temples.

"Calypso? Michael?" His face was one of complete disbelief as he stared at us.

I smiled. "Jack."

He crushed us in a hug that was both desperate and grateful. "I thought you were dead, Calypso! Where have you been for the past ten years!?"

"It is a long story. Suffice it to say, I would have come sooner, but the curse of the Flying Dutchman kept me from these shores," I responded wryly.

"Captain. You. Are. Captain?" Jack said slowly. "Come inside. You have a lot of explaining to do."

So explain we did. We traded stories and scars like we had traded chores so many years ago. Jack was particularly interested and disgusted by the scar on my chest that had left me literally heartless.

"And I assume this little one is yours, Michael?" Jack asked later, bouncing my year and a half old daughter, Calypso, on his knee.

"Of course." Michael glared at my brother as I laughed quietly.

"Jack. I cannot raise my daughter on a ship that ferries those that die at sea to the other side. She needs the company of people her own age, not crude sailors."

"You want me to raise her," Jack stated, thick black eyebrows raised.

"As much as it pains me, I could think of no better option. I would ask this of you only because I trust you. We trust you." I clasped Michael's hand in mine, pleading with my older brother in my green eyes.

"And you will come back, in ten years."

"Yes. But not to take her away. Only to see the woman she will become."

"Of course. Yes, I will take in Calypso, little sister. Odd, though. You named her after the goddess that is the cause of your curse," Jack remarked, smiling as she grabbed his long hair.

"We named her after the sea where she was born, after my greatest helper and friend," I clarified. "It matters not that the curse lives on, only that my daughter will live without it. I will find another to take this after me, if it is my time to die. One of the benefits to being cursed—immortality."

"Benefit or curse, I could never imagine living forever," Jack stated emphatically.

"And that is why it is I that is Captain, not you."

Jack laughed. "Of course."

Michael stood and went to the window. "Sunset. It will be here in two hours, and we have to walk back to the ship."

I nodded, smiling tiredly. "Do you have a pen and ink? I need to finish something."

And so I wrote my letter to my little Calypso on the first of many pages:

Dearest little one,

There will be a time where you will wonder where you got those green eyes of yours, where you got your unusual name, where you got your height, for I do believe you will be tall.

The people who raised you, they are not your parents. The man you called father all these years is, in fact, your uncle, my brother.

Your father, Michael, and myself, your mother, had to let you grow up with your uncle and aunt. It was not because we did not love you or did not want you, it was necessity.

You see, your father and I live on a ship. You've probably heard of it: The Flying Dutchman. I am her Captain; your father is her first mate.

All will be explained in all the pages that follow this letter. If you have any questions, ask your uncle, he knows the stories as well as I do.

We will come and visit you when you are halfway through your eleventh year. That is a promise.

Keep a weather eye on the horizon,

Captain Calypso, daughter of Elizabeth

First-Mate Michael, son of James

Jack had left as soon as I had started writing. I glanced at Michael as he held our daughter, smiling.

"Are you almost finished?" Michael asked.

"Almost. Do you think she will understand? Understand why we have to do this?"

"I hope so."

"The goddess once told me, long ago, that one day the Dutchman would have a daughter. I wasn't sure, until now."

"What do you mean, love?" Michael asked, raising his eyebrows.

"The Flying Dutchman has had a daughter. Not a daughter of wood and canvas, but a real daughter. One that stood for all that she believed in, one that endured the same way she did. Believed in doing what was right, believed in happiness and love. One that endured the trials and came through worse for wear, but still survived. "

"You."

"I hope so. Because if the true Daughter of the Dutchman is our little girl, I could not bear it. I do not want her to suffer as I did," I whispered, crying.

Michael smiled and wiped away my tears. "We have to go. It is almost sunset."

I held my daughter one last time before I handed her over to Jack. I also gave him a stack of papers, saying: "These are for her to read, when you deem her old enough. Before we come back, but when you deem her ready."

He agreed, and Michael and I both cried as we walked back to our ship.

My heart was filled with sorrow. I did not want to leave, I did not want to have to leave my daughter behind.

But I had been cursed.

I had been cursed to live an eternity at sea, ferrying the souls of the dead to the other side.

I had been cursed to become the Daughter of the Dutchman since birth, that much I knew.

There had been no other way.

Fate had played her hand.

Now it was my turn to play with what I had been dealt.

A/N: This is my first multichapter fanfic that I've ever completed. It would be awesome if you would review it, tell me what you liked and what you didn't like, what parts you were confused with, etc. I'll attempt to answer any questions you have about it.

Many thanks to those who have stuck with it since the beginning, almost a year ago. I couldn't have done it without you.

I'm thinking about doing a sequel to this one … perhaps. Tell me in a review or private message if you want to see more of Calypso, Michael, and others … a splash of Jack Sparrow, excuse me, Captain Jack Sparrow, perhaps?