There comes a time in everyone's life when they must make a choice.

Most wise men and great philosophers of our age and those past discover this truth during their lives full of thought and meaning and lament on the depravity found in the light of the world. Rarely, however, does even the wisest wise man fully understand what choice they have made that is the Choice.

You knew. You had made your choice.

And now you are regretting that Choice, as is common among those who recognize the gravity of their situation.

Had you done the right thing? Had you made the right decision when you did what you did?

At the time, there was no other way.

You have lived sheltered and refined and beautiful for most of your life. "Most" because there were those times when you would commit tiny acts of defiance, a tiny dent in the bars of your cage. Breaking a vase, climbing a tree…stealing a golden medallion to save an innocent boy. Those infractions only served to feed the fire, consuming your hunger for freedom.

You thought you had dreamed of the day you would escape all the things that restricted you, clutching you in a killing embrace, but what happened next had exceeded all expectations.

You did it. You spread your wings and flew away from there, and the very first gust of wind, boosting you into your new existence, came in the form of a doomed proposal and a too-tight corset. That was when you met Captain Jack Sparrow, the first shaky flap of your feathers.

You had rarely been subject to the cold, hard eyes of Death. You had witnessed Her work in the face of your mother, your friends. You had seen Her in the face of your father, growing like a parasite in the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, the knobby knuckles of his hands. You had seen her in the bones of the cursed pirates, and you had seen Her once descending on Jack Sparrow in the form of a Hangman's loop.

You, yourself, were not intimately acquainted with sleek, icy Death, but you had seen it enough times to recognize it, and when you met Jack Sparrow, you thought, this is a man who knows Death. You knew that this was a man who danced with Death, dined with Death and slept in Death's bed.

But even this was not enough for you to know Death as you do now. You had seen Her only a few times, and that was what drove you to your Choice. But nothing would have prepared you for the look in their eyes…

There was pain there, immense, stifling pain when you told them. "He elected to stay behind…" You saw the shock, the fear, the devotion there. After all this man had and hadn't done for them, for you, they remained loyal. He schemed and he scammed and he played them like pawns in some grand chess game of his own making, and still, they cared about what happened to him.

What could promote such blind faith, such love, you asked yourself then.

But you think of how something inside stung and cried out at the sight of him rowing away from the ship in that longboat. Resigned, that part of you crawled into a corner to lick its wounds. And that same something wagged its tail and whimpered with joy upon his return, and that same something clawed and bit and howled with horror at what you had to do.

When you kissed him, that something pushed its way into the teeth and the tongues and poured itself in with one final attempt at changing your mind, and you had been sure that he would feel it, taste it, would recoil and accuse, but he did not.

Click, went the shackle to his wrist, and the bit of something shrieked in animal grief one last time…and died.

Now, the something is gone, and the vast emptiness in its place is suffocating you. You can't breathe under the weight of their sorrow, their denial, and you feel so stupid. Will stares at you in concern, and you choke on your guilt. Your guilt at your deception of him—your guilt that you wanted it—and your guilt at your Choice.

There had been no other way, and you know this, but Dear God, it hurts.

"If there was anything could be done to bring him back…Elizabeth—"

"Would you do it? What would you…Hm? What would any of you be willing to do, hm? Would you sail to the ends of the Earth and beyond to fetch back witty Jack and him precious Pearl?"

Tia Dalma stares at everyone with her curious eyes in that curious manner she has.

A chorus of ayes goes up around the room, and something else takes over the empty place in you. The instincts of a pawn in a chess game overtake you, order you to defend your king at all costs, to do everything you can to keep him from checkmate.

This is your one last shot at fixing what you have done. You have made your Choice and now you are doing the only thing you can: you are changing it.

All eyes rest on you.

"Yes."