Chapter 2! This one is a short explanation the events preceding Chapter 1. Read and review!

Swimming through dull stretches of time...five minutes, five seconds, a day, she could hardly tell anymore, forgetting herself, feeling every layer of memory and the memory of every smile leak away.

The ship swayed her back and forth, rubbing her back against the wood of the wall behind her...left then right, then left again...the thickness in her chest stayed in place, a solid mass of disease and poison festering, making her throat dry, her lips cracked...she didn't even know if she was alive anymore.

She didn't know if she wanted to be alive anymore.

Wanted the cold wind, the cold icy water below the ship to take her, draw her down into its depths and never let her go...imprisoned there under the crushing weight of the ocean and her own soul. Wanted the life clinging on inside of her to fade, to fizzle out…

...just let me go, she had pleaded, over and over...but something was keeping her around.

It was cruel, and she deserved it.

Everything was so gray, so colorless, the blue of the water was dead, the pallid of her skin...an almost translucent sick looking shade...maybe she had already drowned, and just didn't…

Before, when she still remembered how to feel, it had been...hell. Her heart...she had betrayed it, and it spent every waking moment trying to splinter, trying to escape the vessel that was killing it. Her bones were cracking, turning to brittle lumps in her body...but it was the burning, the firestorm of self-hatred eating her brain that made her want to die.

Self-hatred at engineering a sprawling expanse of time...without him.

Ruby-red blood, full of life, drained from the slice on her hand, mixing with the moisture on the ground. It was shocking, seeing part of her slither away.

Her body jerked with nerves. A breath suspended itself in her lungs.

She stared into the endless expanse of darkness until her eyes forgot they were meant to be seeing something.

Work. Please work.

Then, the vile place answered her call...her sacrifice, and a cell grew out of the ground with a great groan, iron bars reaching to the low ceiling, a strange light without a source shining on the lone figure in the corner.

Immediately, painful tears flooded her eyes, and she squeezed them shut, trying in vain to turn back time.

He wasn't supposed to look like that.

Broken, slumped against the bars...like a man that had given up.

His face was dirty, patches of soot and grime covering up the beauty of his cheekbones...the kohl had smeared into harsh lines streaking away from his eyes...his lips were dry and cracked…

With a sound that would ring in her ears until she emerged from his prison, the cell door unlocked and swung open just enough for her to slip in.

But she stayed frozen, unable to will her legs to move.

The tension in her body was starting to burn by the time the most heartbreaking sound she would ever hear floated out of the cell.

"...That door 'snt going to stay open f'rever…"

At first she didn't even realize it came from him...the voice was so quiet and small…a hoarse whisper.

And as soon as fresh tears chased away the old ones, the door started to creak shut, and energy shot into her unresponsive limbs. She raced forward and wrapped her entire body around the door.

It stopped.

Once she was satisfied that it was going to stay put, she turned and forced herself to look at him, closer now, and that much harder to believe. She was kneeling next to him before she even realized she had moved, brushing some of the stray hair from his face.

He halfheartedly flinched away from her, and a painful clenching invaded her chest.

"...Jack…"

Hesitantly, she reached down and threaded her fingers through his. "Jack, we have to go."

He didn't say anything for a long moment...then his shoulders jerked up in a dismissive shrug.

"Why?" he asked, still not opening his eyes.

How in the hell was she supposed to even begin answering that?

All at once the notion occurred to her that after all of the pain, the suffering, the longing...now that she was here, she was still going to leave without him.

No.

Wrapping her hand around his tightly, she leaned forward to touch his face with her forehead.

"Jack...hate me, fine, but please don't ask me to leave without you."

A small cough made his throat convulse, and she squeezed his hand tighter.

"Why?" he said again. "You put me here."

This time her throat convulsed with a sudden lurching sound of protest. "I know."

He didn't say anything.

Her other hand came up to cup the right side of his face, and in a fleeting moment of hope, she pressed her lips to his cheek. "I'm sorry."

Silence...but then, a small returned squeeze of her hand.

"Please come with me," she pleaded again. "I need you," tumbled out of her mouth, a quiet declaration.

Relief flooded her when he nodded once, and started to rise, her rising with him.

Yes.

Once they were both standing, she hesitantly stepped forward and slid her arms around him, just wanting to be close to him.

"I am sorry," she whispered into his dirty shirt.

After a moment, she felt his fingers in her hair, gently threading through it.

"I know."

Then he pushed her away, the moment gone like it had never been there...and his eyes…

Jack was barely there, a thin thread hanging on under layers of death and pain.

It was terrifying.

She sat in her bed with her legs drawn up to her chest, idly fingering the scar on her palm, remembering the stinging pain, and knowing that it was nothing compared to the pain she felt now.

The longing, it burned her skin...she longed for him...his voice, his smile, his sparkling eyes...his presence…

...but he hadn't really spoken to her in three days. Gave her orders like any other crew member, but...

She wasn't sure what she had expected...but it was more than that.

Give him space, she had told herself...was still telling herself, but a nagging voice inside her head was telling her that he was done.

Done with her before he even started.

That kiss was all she had, just before she had driven a giant wedge between anything that could have been between them.

And if she didn't have more, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that she would waste away, turning into a shell of Elizabeth Swann.

She needed him like she needed air to breathe, like she needed a beating heart…

Slowly, she crept out of her cabin.

Rain was pounding onto the ship, onto the deck, sheets of it sent down from the black sky.

It soaked through her hair, making it stick to her face, soaked through her clothes until they were a second skin, but she didn't notice any of it.

She only noticed the dark figure standing at the railing, clad in his full uniform, sans the hat. His gaze seemed locked on the churning waves of the sea.

Until he noticed her.

The moment his eyes locked with hers, she stopped breathing.

Her mouth formed his name, but no sound came out.

Every beat of her heart pounded in her ears. He looked alive.

And he looked hungry.