The world was cold.

Will had never really noticed before, but now he did. There was a biting chill in the air, that wrapped itself around him like a sentient creature, or like the heavy canvas of a fallen sail. It was seeping into his rain-soaked clothes and not leaving, and from there it was slowly creeping into his skin. First just his fingers, then through his arms, his chest, and he was sure he could feel it in his heart.

And the world was dark as well. So dark. He could barely see the mast, even Davy Jones himself was naught but a shadow far away. The problem of another life, another age, and it didn't seem to matter any more.

There was one thing he could see. A carefully wrought handle, laid with gold filigree, with a tassel swinging slowly down. He followed its movement with his eyes, feeling time drag on, each swing of that bedraggled pendulum a year, a decade, a century, and a drop of rain slithered down that familiar folded steel blade. He recognised it, but he didn't remember making it any more. All he remembered now was the cold and the darkness, and this was all there was and had ever been. He had never known anything else.

And he breathed out, let his eyes begin to close. He was ready.

Then there was warmth, warmth on his face, and with a gasp he forced his eyes open. Hands; desperate, pressing hands, and from a thousand leagues away he heard a voice.

"Will! Will! Look at me, stay with me!"

Stay with her? He'd like that, he decided. She was warm and reassuring, and she brought light with her. Through this new-found glow he looked, just as she had asked, and it took a moment for him to realise what he saw.

She's beautiful. Is she mine?

"You're alright! Will, Will, look at me!"

I think she might be mine.

"Look at me!"

He'd gladly look at her forever, to do all that she ever asked of him and more, but that darkness was returning. No, it wasn't right, it wasn't fair! He wasn't ready now; she had reminded him that there was something he had to do, something that he had not yet said!

"No, no, no, no!"

No!

He wouldn't go! And he fought against the darkness, imagined any kind of light he could - a candle, a fire, the sun itself - and imagined that he was warm, that he didn't feel a dull twist in his heart every time he breathed, that he and the beautiful girl were alone on a sun-swept beach under the shade of waving palm leaves, with gentle waves crashing, that the two of them were free and each other's, completely...

But though he now knew that he had once been warm, that there had once been light, he could not feel it, could not quite believe in it.

"Don't leave me!"

Never! Hadn't he made her a promise? A vow?

"I won't leave you!"

But she was leaving him. Was it just that his face was numb or that her hands were gone? He forced his eyes open, only in doing so realising that they'd ever been closed - and he was right, she was gone, and shadows were advancing. He tried to raise a hand but he couldn't feel his body. He couldn't feel... anything.

And in those last few seconds, the last moment before he died, Will remembered.

He remembered her name.

He remembered what it was that he had wanted to say.

Elizabeth. I...

Will stopped breathing.

And the Dutchman plunged beneath the waves.