Light streamed in through the window of the Cabin. I opened my eyes slowly and looked at where Rebecca was still sleeping peacefully. I was amazed that she hadn't stirred all night. She hadn't made a sound and, as far as I was aware, had slept soundly beside me through the night. All in all, Rebecca was seemingly a ridiculously well behaved new-born. Should I be worried about that? Is it normal? I reasoned that it was maybe because she was dead that she didn't need anything. I watched her sleeping and wondered whether she could travel like I did and if she could then I wondered where she went. Was she there now? I wrapped my arms around her, but I did it gently, trying not to wake her up. I failed and she stirred immediately at my touch, but she didn't start crying. She seemed quite happy to see me and happy to be awake. I smiled back at her and held her close to me. She really was the best little girl in the whole word, perhaps unusually so, but nothing about the situation we were in could be deemed as 'usual'.

"When we get back," I said quietly to her with a smile on my face. "I'm sure you'll be just as loud and noisy and annoying as your father is." She grabbed my finger and squeezed it. My smile widened. She was perfect. She was truly perfect. And so was this moment. Well… almost. All it needed, and all I wanted, was for my family to be together in one place. Alive and well. I looked up at the door and the light that was shining through it. It looked slightly brighter than I thought it perhaps usually did, but I didn't dwell on it. It signalled that it was time to get up and get home. I picked up Rebecca and made my way to the door. I wondered where James had decided to sleep and if he was awake yet.

I opened the door and stepped out, but I didn't step out onto the deck of the Pearl. When the door opened there was another room behind it. It was one I recognised… sort of. It looked a lot like the drawing room in the house I had grown up in… although not quite. The chairs around the room were made from the same dark wood and red velvet, but they were in different positions than I remembered. The curtains looked to be cut from the same cloth, but they were open and tied back, so I couldn't really tell with complete certainty. The fireplace was exactly the same as it had always been, with the beautifully painted portrait of my great, great, great Grandfather in a golden frame hanging above it. I looked into his painted eyes. Eyes that were not dissimilar to mine. There's something about the way the painted, soulless eyes of a portrait follow everyone in the whole room that's always made me shudder. But not this time. This time when I saw that familiar image I welled up with a sense of family and familiarity. I hadn't seen that portrait in years. James and I had taken it to Port Royal with us, obviously, but we hadn't given it such a prominent place in our new household, choosing instead to favour the images of our mother and father and relatives we'd known. I'd obviously never met my great, great, great Grandfather, but it was nice to see that familiar stranger again. It brought back a sense of home that I hadn't felt for a long time in association with any place on land.

It almost made me miss it.

I blinked away tears.

What was wrong with me?

I turned to look behind me at the Cabin and the Pearl, my real home, but theyhad vanished without a trace, to be replaced by a wall with a door on the far right. The door was closed and I doubted very much that I could open it. I immediately panicked. "James!" I shouted for his help, because it was the only thing I could think to do in this situation. Was he still here? I called for him again, louder than before. "James!"

The door opened and a small figure ran through. My jaw dropped. It was James… a young, child version of my brother. He stopped in the middle of the room and looked around with a small frown on his face. His eyes landed fleetingly on the portrait of our great, great, great Grandfather. I smiled when I saw a shudder run through him and knew he also had the childish fear that painted eyes could somehow spy on non-painted people. His eyes seemed to scan the room as if looking for something. "Papa!" he shouted. "Papa!"

Within a few moments my father appeared in the doorway. His faced was flushed and sweaty with stress. James didn't seem to register this. "James," our father snapped and my brother realised his bad mood. He looked immediately fearful. "What are you doing in here?"

"Someone said 'James'," my brother replied. "Twice." When my father didn't respond he pointed to himself. "I'm James."

Father, even in his time of whatever stress he was under couldn't help but smile at his son. He bent down to his level. "I know. But there's nobody in here."

"I hearded it!" James insisted. Father glanced around the room before looking back at James. James's wasn't willing to admit defeat, no matter what the situation might look like (a trait that he had carried with him into adulthood).

"I never called for you, James," my father said. "And I wasn't in here. Maybe it was your imagination."

I doubted this. James had never been the most imaginative.

"No," James obviously agreed with me. "It wasn't my imadin… imagdin… madgnation…." His screwed up his small face in concentration. It was such a big word for a tiny boy.

"Imagination," father said helpfully.

"Yeah," James agreed. "It was a woman. Maybe Mamma?"

Father sighed and started looking stressed again. "James… you know it's not Mamma," he said seriously. "You know where Mamma is."

James nodded, "The doctor's helping Mamma pick a baby."

He didn't look too happy about it. Father sat down and pulled James onto his knee, hugging him close. "That's right," he said. "He is. And it's going to be a very special baby."

When he heard this, James started to look a little sulky, "I don't want it. Tell Mamma to take it back."

Father laughed and James tried to wriggle free of his embrace. "Do you know why it's going to be such a special baby?" Father asked James. James shook his head and father continued, "Because that baby upstairs is going to have you as his or her big brother."

James perked up at the sound of that. "What does that mean?" he asked, looking a little more interested than he had previously.

"It means," my father said. "That you have a big job ahead of you."

"I do?" James's tiny chest puffed up a bit with importance. My dad nodded.

"Oh yes, a very big and important one," he said seriously and James looked even more excited at the prospect. I saw my father smile at his son's imagined importance. He said nothing else, letting James's curiosity build and build and build until I thought that James might actually explode in anticipation.

"What is it?" James asked. "Dadda, what is it?"

Our father squeezed his sun closer to his chest. "There's going to be a tiny little person here and-"

"Smaller than me?" James butted in.

Our father nodded. "Yes," he said. "Much smaller than you are. And you're going to need to take very good care of them." James's smile faltered a little and he looked a bit less pleased about everything.

"Why?" he snapped.

"Because that's your job. And they'll be too young to take care of themselves," our father was fighting a losing battle, I could see the resentment in James's face over this mysterious other person that would soon be in his life.

"Well I don't want to," he huffed.

Our father soldiered on. "But you're their big brother and he or she will look up to you because you're the oldest." James said nothing for a very long time. Father looked apprehensive, but let him sit in silence for a moment before he bent his head to look directly at his son. "Okay?" he asked.

James sighed. "Yeah," he said, but there was still a small and perplexed frown on his little face. "Papa…" there was a slight pause. "Does that mean that I'll be in charge?" he asked. I laughed at how excited he was by that prospect. Being 'in charge' was clearly something that had always appealed to him. Even at this young age. Our father laughed too.

"Yes, yes you will be in charge."

James brightened almost immediately, but it wasn't long before it faltered again. "No, Papa. I still don't want the baby. Tell Mama not to get it." I could tell that my father was getting agitated with James's sudden change in mood after he'd thought he was winning. James, however, didn't notice this and was keen to move on from all this talk of a strange new baby. "Can we play a game now?"

Father sighed. "No, James," he said shortly.

"Why?" James whined. "You never play with me. Nobody does. It's not fair."

I saw father's eyes widen at the window of opportunity he'd spotted. "Do you know who will play with you?" he asked. James shook his head. "The baby."

James's eyes sparkled with excitement. "Really?" his voice squeaked. Father smiled and nodded.

"Yes, all the time," he said. "You can keep each other company."

James wriggled free of our father's grasp and jumped to his feet. "Can we go and get the baby now, Papa? Can we?" He started to tug on father's sleeve in an effort to pull him to his feet. Father laughed at James's sudden change in mood and looked relieved that he was now more enthusiastic about the arrival of another child. I, on the other hand, was far more apprehensive about it. James, as I could see him standing in front of my now looked to be no more than four years old, but James was eight years my senior. There was no sibling between us. So who, exactly was being born at that moment? My mind raced with possibilities built on the information I already know. I immediately thought of my mother's story and her doomed love for her childhood sweetheart, James. Had she had an affair with him? Was the child being born at that current moment his? Did I have a half-sibling I wasn't aware of? And if so, why wasn't I aware of him or her? Perhaps my father had found out the real parentage of the illegitimate child and cast the child out. I felt a sudden wave of empathy for the possible half-sibling that I had never known. Maybe when I got back I could try and track them down. Where are they now?

I watched with interest as the four year old version of my brother and our weary father hurriedly left the room to go in search of our mother and this mysterious new arrival. I went to follow them, not knowing what else to do or why I was here. I followed the sound of their footsteps to the upstairs floors. The house seemed a little bit too quiet for someone to be giving birth in it, but perhaps it was all over. Neither James nor my father registered the odd quietness or thought anything of it… but men are never that intuitive when it comes to these things. They stopped outside a door that I recognised, but had never actually been through. I had always been told that it was nothing more than a cupboard that contained some of my father's things that I wasn't allowed to look at or touch because they were dangerous. It had always been locked, but I had never thought anything of it. It was just one of those rules that as a child you obey out of habit. Then the screaming started from inside it.

I was startled as it broke the silence, but no sooner had it started than it stopped. It took me a moment to realise that it wasn't just the screaming that had stopped, but everything around me. James and my father had frozen in front of me, both staring in shock at the door. I could tell within a few seconds that it wasn't shock that had frozen them, but they were genuinely frozen in time. Why? I looked around me to see if anything else was moving.

"Isabelle," I heard my father's voice and I looked to him. He was still frozen, his face unmoving. "Isabelle." The voice said again and I realised that it wasn't coming from the younger version of my father, but would be coming from the dead version of him, wherever he may be. I turned around and saw him walking towards me with open arms. I ran into them and hugged him tightly. He hadn't hugged me like that since I had been a very, very young child. As much as my father loved us, he wasn't prone to showing his affection physically once James and I had passed a certain age. In his eyes, it just wasn't proper. He believed that children needed a firm, loving hand and strong guidance. It was nice just to be held by my father again.

"Papa," I said quietly.

"Oh my little girl," he held me at arm's length in exactly the same way that my mother had. "How you've grown."

I smiled at the kindly look in his eyes. He looked exactly as I remembered him, but his temperament reminded me more of the way he had been when I was much, much younger. He had been more relaxed with us and more openly affectionate. As we'd grown up he'd been harder on the ways that he thought that we should be behaving, rather than paying attention to who we were as people. He'd been away a lot, so maybe he had just missed taking note of the kind of people we were. That wasn't really his fault, he was looking at our futures and making sure that they were successful ones, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It had just felt a little detached from us at times.

"It's good to see you," I said truthfully, even if I felt a little bit awkward around him. Largely because I didn't want to know what he would think of my life now and how far I had sailed from his envisioned path.

"You've seen your mother already, I presume?" he asked. I nodded. I didn't know whether I should tell him what I learnt with her or if it was my mother's secret. I kept quiet, just in case. He looked at the frozen image of himself and young James. "We have things to teach you, Isabelle. I don't know why it's this part of our lives that you need to see, but here we are."

He didn't say anything else before the two people in front of us unfroze and so did the screaming from inside the room. I saw young James look frightened, while my father's past self looked immediately worried. I looked at him now, he was watching the scene unfold in front of him with sadness in his eyes. My stomach knotted with dread over what I was about to see and my head was filled with bad omens. It didn't sound like whoever was inside the room was screaming in pain; it sounded more as if it came from a place of deep grief. I didn't sound like labour pains. My father rapped his knuckles against the door. It was opened almost immediately by our family doctor. I only had to look at his face to know exactly what had happened. He was giving my younger father exactly the same look that Isaacio had given me before I died. My father hadn't yet worked it out yet, but I knew exactly what was coming.

The woman screaming was my mother. Her baby was dead. My heart ached for both of my parents.

"I'm sorry," our doctor said in the most predictable way possible, stepping aside to let my father rushed immediately into the room to see his wife, still completely unaware of exactly what the situation was. Caught up in everything, I dashed forward with him. There was a huge lump caught in my throat, formed by concern for my mother. Even though I knew that she would eventually get through this alright, I was still incredibly worried about her. This would crush her, I knew it would. The very same thing had crushed me until I had seen Rebecca safely in my arms. By the time I had entered my father was already by my mother's side, holding her as she sobbed into his chest. He looked around him in wild confusion, clearly still unsure of what was going on. "What's wrong?" he shouted to the doctor before he looked back to his wife, "What's wrong?"

He looked desperate and lost. It was the same look that I had seen in Jack's eyes when we had been in the very same situation. They had both held fear, confusion and a pain he hadn't quite felt the full force of yet. But my mother was feeling it. All of it. Blood soaked the sheets she lay in.

"I'm sorry," the doctor said again. "But we lost the baby. He was a stillborn."

My mother screamed again and my father collapsed into her arms. "No," he moaned, burying his face in his wife's hair. The nurse in the room turned around with the tiny, lifeless body of the sibling I never knew swaddled in a blanket. She laid him down at the foot of the bed and bowed her head respectfully.

"We'll leave you alone with your thoughts for a moment," the doctor said quietly. My father gathered himself enough to nod his thanks. "When you're both ready we'll be outside." The doctor and the nurse stepped out of the room to leave my parents to their grief. I looked to see how this was affecting my father in his present state. He was looking at the image of his younger self and his wife with tears glistening in his eyes. While he had clearly managed to heal himself and pull himself back from the turmoil that had been this part of his life, the memory of it had never left him. It was something he'd carried with him for the rest of his life. And after it, it would seem.

"I… uh," my father cleared his throat and blinked away the grief. "I'm not sure why you have to see this, but… there you have it; your mother had a miscarriage."

I could see him trembling and simultaneously trying to hold himself together. I put an arm around him, tentatively. I had never been in that position before. Comforting my father of all people… it was awkward new territory for me to be in. Awkward for him too, it would seem. He looked at me in surprise, but after a slight hesitation he leaned towards me and hugged me back. "I'm sorry," I whispered past the lump in my throat. "I never knew."

"We never told you," my father said, looking back to his younger self. "You were so young. We shielded you from it."

In the painful chaos that was surrounding the room, nobody noticed young James standing there. His young mind couldn't take in what was happening, he didn't understand what was going on, but he knew that whatever it was, it was bad. He looked at his grieving parents in bewilderment. "Mama?" he said, looking so lost that it broke my heart a little bit to see him like that. "Mama, what's wrong?" His voice was so quiet and small that he wasn't heard in such a big room. When his mother didn't respond to him because she was so wrapped up in her grief, James glanced at his father. "Papa? What's happened? Papa?"

His eyes fell on the body on the bed that seemed to be causing all this upset. I watched on with tears in my eyes as he took in what he saw and tried to wake up the baby that he presumed to be sleeping. It didn't take him long to realise that there was something incredibly wrong with the baby on the bed. James started to cry, he was so traumatised that he couldn't even make a sound. His tears fell silently down his cheeks and he started to shake violently. After a moment my father looked up and saw that his son was in the room. He moved immediately to pick him up and move him away from the stillborn as my mother sank down to sob into her pillow. My father tried to gather himself together enough to speak to his son, but James got there first. "Is the baby dead?" he asked.

My father nodded, almost crumbling into misery again. "Yes… yes I'm afraid he is."

"I'm sorry Papa," James said sadly, which took my young father by surprise as much as it did me.

"Sorry?" my father repeated. "What for, James?"

"For not looking after him," James replied. Then his little face became even sadder and he burst into tears. "It's all my fault," he wailed. My father hugged his son close to him.

"No, no, no, it's not your fault," my father said hurriedly. Both of them were still crying. "James you have nothing to be sorry for. This is nobody's fault."

James was not consoled in the slightest. "I didn't look after him," he said adamantly. "That was my job and I didn't do it."

My father was crying too much to respond. All he could do was shake his head. I wanted to hug James more than anything. My poor brother. My brilliant older brother. No wonder he had been so protective of me.

I wiped the tears from my own eyes as the scene in front of me began to fade. My father looked at me. "I don't know why you had to see that," he said, seemingly angry that I had seen him in a spot of weakness and seen into this secret family pain that had previously been hidden from me. "I don't understand how this will help you in any way."

I looked at the dead child and thought of Rebecca. She was a child I'd lost, but she was with me. I could hold her and interact with her. I knew her well.

Perhaps the child I'd really lost was Baby James. Perhaps this was to help me deal with losing my son if I never got back.

No. We would get back. We had to.

Grief rips people apart. And I couldn't let that happen.

Thanks for reading guys, leave a review :)

AdaYuki: THANK YOU! Sorry it took so long :(

Sookdeo: Thanks, I'm glad you liked it :) It's interesting that you can see it like a movie in your head, that's quite cool :D

DelphineDrewIngle: Oooh, French, that's cool. I'm glad you like the ghosts stories, I hope you liked this one too.

WulfLuvr22: DON'T CRY, HOLD IT TOGETHER.

GoTeamSkipper: Thanks for spelling out the noise you made... I tried to replicate it, now I look crazy. You can wonder all you like, but I'll never let you know if your right or not because I'm annoying that way ;)

lilylilyfairfax: Thank you :) Sorry I took a while