When I looked around I was instantly filled with a cold sense of dread. I knew exactly where I was and my whereabouts made me very uneasy. I was standing in the doorway of a very familiar house. The paint on the door and the walls were fresh and new. They were bare. I knew that if I had been viewing the same scene just a few weeks prior to this, things would be very different. There would be fine art hanging on the walls and the smell of paint would not be thick in the air. It would have been a lot less empty too, there were no coat stands or tables or chairs. There were people there. They were carrying brand new furniture from one room to the room on my left. I watched them work for a moment, eyeing up the unfamiliar furniture in the overly familiar house. I knew most of the people who were carrying things too, but they looked a lot more serious than I was used to seeing them. I turned around in the doorway and looked out at the garden. This was exactly the way it had always been. I turned back to the inside of the house, but did not cross the threshold. I was too worried about who it was that I was here to meet. There was a huge part of me that wanted to run away from this one.

This was Elizabeth's childhood house.

Did this mean that she was dead too?

My throat felt suddenly dry and I had to clench my fists in an effort to stop my hands from shaking. What had happened to her since Will left? How had she ended up here? Had she been dead longer than I had? How was I going to tell Will this? This would destroy him. What if he ended up going rogue like Jones? What if-

"Isabelle!" I jumped at the sound of my name and then deep relief soothed me as I saw who was walking towards me across the entrance hall. The person I was here to see wasn't Elizabeth at all. It was her father.

"Governor Swann!" I greeted him, so relieved and happy to see him that I could have thrown my arms around him and hugged him. I didn't, because I thought that would alarm him. He looked a lot happier and healthier than he had the last time that we had seen him, when he had been on his way to the Land of the Dead. I thought he looked younger, but that could just have been because all of his sadness and stress was gone was gone from his face.

"You look surprised to see me," he chuckled in his usual, fatherly way. I nodded.

"Yeah," I admitted. "I am."

"You look well," he commented. I smiled.

"Thank you, so do you," I replied honestly. He beamed at me in a way that showed that he agreed. I tried my best not to laugh at how pleased he looked with himself. Then his eyes widened and he smiled, looking at something behind me.

"Ah, look," he said. "Here you come now."

I frowned and turned around to see two figures walking hand in hand towards the house. I then heard a rush of feet behind us and a cry of, "Izzy!" as a young Elizabeth ran into the hall and out of the door.

"Elizabeth!" a younger version of her father called after, looking characteristically flustered by his daughter's behaviour. "Elizabeth! You mustn't run. It's not becoming of a young lady! Elizabeth!" He stopped trying and resulted to merely sighing in frustration as his daughter continued to ignore him. In stark contrast, the Governor Swann who stood beside me merely chuckled at the antics of the past. We watched as the smaller of the two figures walking towards the house started to run too.

"Elizabeth!" I heard myself shout. This was so odd. This was really odd. I didn't think it could get any stranger than seeing myself as a baby, but seeing my twelve year old self doing something that I remembered doing was even more bizarre. I watched Elizabeth and I hug, as my brother sped up to join us. Governor Swann stepped out to meet James. Elizabeth and I immediately launched into a hushed and urgent conversation about something so trivial that I couldn't remember what it was. It looked so important to us that it made me smile at how little whatever we were stressing over at the age of twelve had actually mattered. I saw James and Governor Swann exchange a look that I hadn't noticed at the time. Whatever it was they were worried about seemed serious. Elizabeth and I hurried into the house to continue whatever important discussion we were having. It was only when we had vanished into the house that James and Governor Swann began to talk.

"Thank you for coming, James," the Governor said seriously.

"That's fine. I heard that you've been appointed Governor of Port Royale. Congratulations," James replied in his usual, respectful manner. Governor Swann smiled in return.

"Thank you, James," he said again. "Now, this of course means that Elizabeth and I will be moving to Jamaica very soon."

"Of course," James nodded. "You'll both be missed. By Izzy especially, I know that she'll be devastated about losing Elizabeth. And you have been a huge support to both of us since… well…" There was an unspoken agreement never to mention the fire that had killed our parents and Mrs Swann two years prior to the conversation I was watching now. It had taken this long for Governor Swann to finish rebuilding, re-furnishing and repainting it. It was only now that I realised that he hadn't done that because he had moved on in anyway, but because he had to sell the house. Hearing this conversation completely baffled me. There had never been a time in my memory when I had thought that Elizabeth would be moving away without me. Clearly, it was yet another thing that been hidden from me.

"As have you to Elizabeth and I. I'm not sure how I would have gotten her through this without you both," Governor Swann said sincerely. I glanced quickly at the older version of Governor Swann. Was this a lesson in how to bring up children when one parent was gone? Was this because God, or Fate or whoever was in charge of what was happening to me had already decided that I wasn't going to make it back? I panicked, but Governor Swann did not look at me and I didn't have the courage to ask him a question that I didn't want to know the answer to, so I looked back to the conversation at hand. "Which is why," Governor Swann continued. "I would like to offer you a place to come with us, as my Lieutenant."

I saw my brother's draw drop and his eyes widened. For a moment I thought that he actually might start to cry. "Governor Swann," he said. "I don't… I don't know what to say."

"Say yes, please James," Governor Swann chuckled. I hadn't really noticed how young James looked until this moment. At the time, he had obviously seemed so old to me, but looking at him now, he was just a boy with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

"Oh yes!" James said hastily. "Yes of course we will!"

"Good, lad," Governor Swann beamed at James in his usual, fatherly way. I saw some of the weight James was carrying with him lift when he returned the smile. "We should go and tell the girls."

He put a hand on James's back and together they walked off to where I knew that they would find Elizabeth and I, call us in for tea, sit us down and tell us that we were both moving far away together. The older Governor Swann put his hand on my back in much the same way that he had treated James. I couldn't help but smile. I let him lead me away from the house and further into the garden. "This day was supposed to be the start of something new. A change of scenery to help us forget about everything that had happened, get away from it all," he explained. I nodded. Even though I had never explicitly been told this, it hadn't been difficult to guess.

As we turned away our surroundings turned in opposition to us until confusion blurred everything for a moment. They stopped when we did, or maybe we stopped when they did. It was difficult to be sure. I was suddenly plunged into music and dancing. I saw Emile and Lawrence Norrington spin past me and I smiled because they were smiling. They were still young, probably only just married and both of them did look quite content. Even my mother, who'd had to turn her back on her first love, looked happy here. Perhaps it wasn't so bad. Perhaps you really could be happy with the wrong person. That thought, the moment it entered my brain, didn't sit well with me at all. It didn't feel like it was mine.

I looked to my right where the only person not dancing stood, observing the rest of the room. He had dark hair and familiar eyes. I didn't know where I knew him from, but it was his eyes that gave away that I did. I knew them. I knew him. I think. Then I realised. "Is this you?" I asked Governor Swann.

"Yes," he laughed and those same eyes twinkled. They were slightly different than the Governor Swann that I knew now, not in colour or size or shape, but in what was held inside them. It wasn't that I didn't know the younger Swann's eyes. I just didn't know them yet. "Is that really so difficult to believe?"

"No," I lied and he laughed again. In truth they were almost unrecognisable. The lines on his face were smoothed out, giving it an almost completely different shape. The Governor Swann I knew was far stockier than this one, who hadn't quite filled out yet. He stood stock still and stared intently around the room. The door opened and another group of people entered. I recognised her immediately. She looked so much like Elizabeth, only shorter and with fairer hair. I'd forgotten how alike they were.

"Mrs Swann," I whispered without meaning to. Governor Swann chuckled.

"Not yet," he corrected me with a twinkle in his eye. I watched as the younger Weatherby Swann became suddenly flustered. The future Mrs Swann saw him across the room and lit up, but pretended not to. Weatherby cleared his throat and shifted on his feet as if he were going to move, but never quite did. After a few painfully uncomfortable minutes Lawrence Norrington walked over to him.

"Weatherby," he greeted. "Come on!"

"I… I… I'm just waiting for- er," Weatherby began to stammer.

"For what?" my father laughed. "For us all to grow old? You'll be too late then. Come on."

My father put his hand on Weatherby Swann's back in much the same way that I had seen Governor Swann do to my brother countless times and guided him across the dance floor towards Elizabeth's mother. I followed them both. They were a few paces ahead of us, Lawrence's head bent close to Weatherby's. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but Weatherby was nodding vigorously. They stopped closed to the future Mrs Swann. "Good luck," Lawrence said with a smile. Weatherby's smile was weak in return. He walked over to Elizabeth's mother, who was waiting for him but pretending not to be.

"Agatha Collins," he said and I saw him redden a little. He bowed and extended a hand. "May I have the pleasure of your company?"

She took his hand and smiled. "Yes, Weatherby Swann, you may."

He looked so pleased that I thought he might actually burst. He glanced at Lawrence who shot him a wicked grin. Governor Swann looked at me, a hint of his old embarrassed awkwardness still there. "My parent's wanted the match of course. They were the ones who arranged it," he explained. "I was just lucky because I loved her immediately."

"That's good," I smiled. It made a nice change.

"Your father was always braver than I was," he chuckled as he watched himself dancing. "I'm not sure I could have done it without him."

The people around us began to dance faster and faster, until it was unnaturally fast and everything became a blur again. When the world stopped spinning we were back in the Swann's garden. It was vastly different to the way I had known it. It was the trees that gave away the direction in time in which we had moved since the last time I had stood there. Backwards. Either the tall trees I had known had grown downwards, or we were still in Governor Swann's past. The garden was empty, it was almost dark and the air was heavy and sticky. Midsummer, I guessed. One of those rare English days where the sun came in bursts for a few sweltering days before the clouds came back for the rest of the year. I heard a sigh and looked to the gate. Weatherby Swann stood there so quietly that I hadn't noticed him before, and if it hadn't been for his sigh I never would have. "What are you doing?" I asked in a whisper. I knew he couldn't hear me, but it felt wrong to disturb Weatherby's peace. The air prickled.

"Waiting," Governor Swann replied.

I walked over to him and waited too.

A figure appeared at the top of the hill that James and I would walk down about twenty years later and the younger Governor Swann stopped fidgeting immediately. I watched his eyes widen. I expected to see Agatha, but to my surprise the figure that emerged from the gloom was Lawrence Norrington. "Lawrence," the young Swann called into the night. I watched my father raise a hand in greeting and speed up down the hill towards his friend. "What news is there?"

"Good news," was my father's reply and Weatherby's face broke into a huge smile. "You can see her, but you have to be quick."

Weatherby had opened the gate before Lawrence had even finished speaking. I heard my father laugh in an affectionate way. He glanced cautiously behind him at his own house as he shut the gate gently so that it didn't make a noise. It took me a moment to realise what was happening. "Governor Swann…" I glanced sideways at him. "Are you and my father… sneaking out?"

For a moment he looked a little bit pleased with himself, but he covered it up, "Er… no... I wouldn't say, er…"

I laughed and began to follow Weatherby and Lawrence as they turned left out of Weatherby's front gate. "Elizabeth and I would never have gotten away with this," I threw the flippant remark over my shoulder.

"Well, I should think not!" Governor Swann replied sternly, puffing himself out indignantly. I supressed another laugh as he fell into step beside me. We followed his younger self down the street. There was a spring in his step, which my father noticed and I caught him smiling. Lawrence Norrington looked much like James did at that age.

We followed them down darkened streets at a hurried pace, always taking the quietest and most secluded route, which confirmed more than anything else had that this was not something that the two boys were supposed to be doing. We stopped outside a house I did not recognise and the boys cautiously made their way around the side of it. There was a moment of silence and then a girl appeared from the shadows. Her sudden appearance in the silence made me jump.

"Weatherby," she smiled as she neared the fence. "I don't have long."

"Agatha," he said so happily that I was sure he'd have stayed and waited at her garden for days just to glimpse the future Mrs Swann for even a minute. Their hands entwined through the fence. "Where have you been?"

"With my grandmother," she replied. The gleam in her eyes matched that of Governor Swann's. "I'm on my way home. What about you? How was your day?"

Their conversation was mundane and ordinary, but it was the look in their eyes that made it special. To anyone listening, it would have seemed to be full of nothing, but to them it was everything because they were in love. My father moved away and stared at the ground, pretending not to be listening. The conversation was quiet and uninterrupted for a few moments. My father began to pick at his nails. What was the point in this? What was I supposed to be learning now? I glanced at Governor Swann. He wasn't watching his own conversation, but rather a dark cluster of shadows to our left. He didn't move, he didn't blink, and his breathing was shallow and quiet. He looked afraid. Suddenly, I was riveted, hooked on whatever he was looking at. I couldn't see anything, but I could tell by his expression that there was something to see. Or, at least, there would be soon. I waited in the quiet and every noise seemed heightened.

I heard a crack, like a twig snapping underfoot. It went unnoticed by Weatherby, Agatha and Lawrence, but the way that the older Governor Swann tensed when he heard it put me on edge. There was a long moment of silence and then another scuffle. This time, Lawrence heard it and stood up, looking at the cluster of shadows just behind Weatherby's head. Neither Weatherby nor Agatha noticed what was happening, they were far too wrapped up in each other. I saw Lawrence step forward, his eyes narrowed, peering at the dark gap in a hedge.

His hand rested on the hilt of his sword.

I heard a sword being unsheathed, but it wasn't my father's. Weatherby heard it and turned to see a blade come flying out of the darkness and straight towards his head. Agatha screamed.

Thanks for reading!

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