HEARTS CAN BREAK
Chapter Sixteen

A whistle pierced the screams and rang in Rose's ears. She would never forget the screams. They would haunt her beyond eternity, beyond forever. They filled her body with sorrow and regret.

She turned, shaking, to see an officer hanging for life onto a deck chair. The words RMS Titanic were painted in red onto the wood.

The man blew again. "Return...the boats...!" She allowed the lonely sound of the whistle to beat into her heart. The lifeboats...where were they? She could remember Mr. Andrews’ words--

"About half, actually. Rose, you miss nothing, do you?"

"The boats are comin' back for us, Rose," Jack whispered near her, his hands shaking around her own. She turned her head to look at him and saw, horrified, that strands of ice were glistening in his hair. His skin was changing from white to blue. She tried to scream, but no sound was admitted from her lips.

"Hang on just a little bit longer," he continued, gulping to warm his throat enough to speak. "They...they had t-to row away for the suction, but now they'll be...comin' back."

He tried to smile, but there was nothing to smile about. He wasn't even sure that the boats were coming back. Even if they had rowed away just for the suction, he found it hard to believe they would throw themselves into at least a thousand victims. He would hate to be in the boats--oh, God, how he would hate it. Having to choose who died and who survived...what human had the right to do that?

He tried to keep himself thinking, keep himself awake. Rose! he yelled to himself. Think about Rose! He could feel her trembling in his grip and see the terror and pain shining like candles in her eyes. How could he have done this to her? The guilt he was sure Thomas Andrews had felt was weighing on his heart like the world thrust upon his soul. If anyone deserved this, damn it, anyone, it was him.

Everything was his fault. Rose, Fabrizio, Tommy...the cold was nothing compared to the hurt he felt now. It was hard to believe that one week ago he hadn't known Rose, had been sleeping under a bridge barely living from one day to the next. What a sorry excuse for a human being he had been.

He had been missing something. Jack Dawson, the free and contented man everyone else saw, had been missing something. Maybe it was the weight of his parents' death. Maybe it was the absence of love in his life. Maybe it was the heartbreak of leaving his hometown and knowing he would never see it again. The strange thing was, he hadn't known of the lost piece in his heart until just last night. He had been happy before, with his best friend beside him, the world ahead and behind, and a giantess of the sea beneath his feet. But--Jesus--how could he have possibly known what he would feel?

Jack had been missing Rose DeWitt Bukater's smile. He had been waiting twenty years to see her laugh.

It all felt now like a distant memory, one he truly didn't have the strength to grab back. The colors and faces were blurring, the music was fading, and the scent was ebbing away. The only thing that remained focused and bright was Rose, Rose clapping and smiling, dancing and laughing. His Rose.

She was still the same beautiful woman, still had that fire in her. But she was dying. She lay sprawled on the door as if she had no energy to fix herself into a more comfortable position.

It just wasn't right! For God's sake, she was only seventeen! She had just broken from society, had glanced at the beauty of the world she had been hidden from her whole life, and had found, in him, someone who wouldn't leave her even if his life depended on it.

With a sigh, she dropped her head on his hand, tracing the outlines of his bones with her fingertips. He turned abruptly to look at her. Damn it. She looked so exhausted. He was right. She was dying. He couldn't let her die. He couldn't. A thousand deaths of his were not worth one of hers.

Rose was tired. All she wanted to do was sleep. Maybe the pain and freezing water would go away. The screams were growing softer now. Had everyone else fallen asleep? Surely, then, she could, too.

But the only thing that greeted her closed eyes were horrific nightmares beyond her wildest dreams. Visions of Titanic pointing to the sky, dark and black and evil, clouded her already confused mind. She could feel no emotions but every emotion at once. Jack's skin was ice cold, but she couldn't remove it from her face. It seemed the last preserved relic of a life once lived--a life full of the love she had only read in storybooks. She could see the pages now. There was always a beautiful princess, living a contented life in a beautiful castle, but longing for someone to share her heart with. And then a prince came, an amazingly handsome prince, who somehow saved the princess' life and fell deeply and forever in love with his girl, riding off into some magical sunset to a distant kingdom...

She fought an evil desire to laugh as she thought of her relationship with Jack. She had been a beautiful, wealthy young maiden, trapped and seemingly content in a life only the privileged lived. And slowly, ever so slowly, her handsome, adoring prince had saved her from dying in what everyone else would have called perfection. They, too, had fallen in love by fate, and only fate, for the better or worse. How hard she had fought it for a whole day, trying unsuccessfully to banish him from her mind. But when he cleared, there was only a desperate passion to be with him again...

She sighed. Somehow, they had gone from the magical sunset to the clutches of death. Shivering, she felt the painful rush of water over her feet again. It jerked her back to reality. The people hadn't fallen asleep--they were dead. The Titanic had sunk and all she had left was Jack Dawson.

"It's getting quiet," she managed to murmur, noticing he wasn't moving. She had to keep him awake. How could she live without him? She had been searching for him before she had met him, and how could she possibly go on after she had found him?

He didn't reply to the depressing statement, but attempted a stab at a more lighthearted conversation. "I don't know 'bout you, but...I intend t-to write a...a strongly worded letter to the...White Star Line about...all this." Again, he tried to grin, but he couldn't anymore. His mouth seemed frozen. He blew frozen breaths on frozen hands, trying to warm not just his frozen body but his frozen heart.

Rose lay there, silent, and she suddenly realized something. They were going to die. There was no way they could both live through this long, horrible night.

As a little girl, she had always expected to be terrified of death when it came. It only made sense, now, that she was shocked to find she wasn't. Her life with her mother and Cal had been worse than hell could possibly be. If she closed her eyes, she could almost see her father.

Rose, he whispered. Rose...

How she had loved him.

She tried to weigh in her mind how it would be to be forever hushed in the silence of the past while the rest of the world moved on. To lie in peace for an eternity at the bottom of the North Atlantic, to be blanketed by a tragedy that no one could understand, in the warm and comforting arms of a person who would never leave her. Maybe she would go back, back to Titanic, humbled just to be in the very presence of bravery like earth had never seen--Thomas Andrews, Captain Smith, the band, Fabrizio, Tommy, Cora and her father, and Jack...oh, Jack...

He had to know. She had to make sure he knew. Just twelve hours ago, she had thought she would never see him again, but right now she would rather go with the devil than die without him knowing the truth. After everything she had said in the gymnasium, on deck...

If he didn't know, she would give up and die right here.

It was a hard thing for her to say. She had said the same thing about Cal, and she had thought that she would never say those three words with any true meaning whatsoever. She had never dwelled on the saying for more than a few moments, but now it made her pause.

It was an unbelievably important thing to her, to realize that she would die without him and would die with him all in one night. Her throat was iced and scratched. For a second, she thought she wouldn't be able to say it, but finally it poured out.

"I love you, Jack."

Jack looked at her in amazement. No matter how much he had tried to believe it, he had never really grasped the idea ‘til now. She loved him.

The joy of the instant was washed away as he realized something. It had taken all of her heart to say those words. For some reason, she thought it necessary that he know now, tonight, in the icy hell that they were trapped in. She was watching him for a response, but her eyelids were ever-so-softly closing.

She was saying her good-byes. She...was...saying...her...good-byes...

It didn't register with him for a split second. When it did, hate filled him like never before. Not at her, oh, God, no, not at her. Not at God Himself, because He was never responsible for anything evil.

He was feeling hate towards himself. Towards himself for putting her through this, for falling in love with her tonight of all nights, for not making her stay in a lifeboat, for feeling this way at all...

And then he just wanted out. He wanted to get her out and to get out, to be free from these horrible waters that were sucking the life out of Rose and him. He had never envisioned his end to be this way and he couldn't stand the guilt and pain of it being hers.

"Don't...you do that." The powerful statement came out as a fierce whisper, all he could muster right now. It opened him to how hopeless the situation was. He became more desperate. "Don't you say your good-byes. Not yet...do you understand me?"

Rose shivered inside. She hadn't wanted him to take it that way, but she realized how truthful he was. She was giving up. Rose DeWitt Bukater, the fiery redhead on her way to America, was giving up.

"I'm so cold," she murmured, tears finding their way into her voice. She was so cold...she had never been this cold. Her body was freezing and it hurt so--so damned much. She felt like she was being tortured, like the sea was being cruel and evil just to torment her. And with that thought, she lost hope. It just evaporated, leaving her heart and soul just as frozen as her skin. A tear traced its way down her smooth cheek and embedded itself on Jack's strong hands, the hands of an artist.

His heart broke. She sounded like she was in so much pain, pain he hadn't been able to imagine ‘til now. He had sworn to himself earlier today, while they were racing from Thomas Andrews to the boat deck, that he would protect her and never let anything hurt her. But he had failed.

His heart had broken so many times tonight that now it was just a pile of shattered glass, barely thudding life anymore. He wanted to spare her from feeling this, at least. Slowly, ever so slowly, he began to release faith in his own survival. He knew that he wouldn't see Rose break free. But she has so much to offer the world, he thought again. That fire and that intelligence, that stubbornness that he loved so much.

"Listen, Rose," he mumbled, his voice growing softer with the chattering. She shifted her gaze to look at him expectantly. This was going to be hard for him to say, but Jesus, she had to live. No matter if he did or not, she had to live.

"You're gonna get out of here," he went on, finally managing a small grin, his eyes melting into hers. "You're gonna...go on," he whispered. "...and you're gonna make...make lots of babies...and you're gonna watch 'em grow..."

Rose didn't understand him. Of course, if they lived, they were going to go on. She could picture having his children--they would have beautiful blue eyes and perfect gold-blonde hair, his freedom, his personality, and maybe her perseverance.

She noticed his mouth struggling to open. He wasn't finished yet.

"You're gonna die an old...old lady...warm in her bed. Not here...not this night. Not like this...do you understand me?" Was she imagining it, or could she see tears in his eyes? His voice was full of an intense determination that she had never heard before.

A sudden pang of pain abruptly took away her concentration. She was only seventeen. Should it really hurt this much?

"I can't...feel my...body," she groaned, her Philadelphia accent choking with surrender. Wait, Rose! Jack tried to say. Instead, he could only think it. Don't go yet! Not...yet...

His expression turned to that of a frantic need to tell her something. Rose turned, a feeling of ice stabbing in her neck. He pulled himself closer to her and she realized, aghast, that there were tears there, mixing with the blue of his face.

"W-winning that ticket, Rose, was the best thing that ever happened to me. It brought me to you." He smiled hesitantly. "And I'm thankful for that, Rose. I...I'm thankful." She managed to smile back, and he could feel her delicate bones shivering beneath her creamy skin. If he had never met her, his life wouldn't be worth anything. He would rather die, knowing her today, than live for eternity alone.

He heaved himself even nearer to her. Why did this have to happen tonight? Why did he have to do this to her? He had such a passion for her and everything that she believed in that he wished he could change his mind and let her float away with him. He could picture them both now--his arms wrapped tightly around her warm and beautiful body, his lips moving hungrily against her own, drifting downwards and downwards to the place where their love had been born--Titanic.

Then he realized how selfish he was being.

"I love you, Jack..."

"To the stars..."

"Put your hands on me, Jack..."

"I'm flying!"

"Not without you..."

"You jump, I jump, right?"

"I didn't. I just realized I already knew..."

"Wearing only this..."

He physically grimaced at the thought of taking her away. The world needed her so much more. She was so wonderful that it ripped away his breath. It was a lover's good-bye that he was about to give.

Ma, he silently prayed, Pa--the cold is so bad here you can't even begin to comprehend. I've never been this cold. I'm in so much pain and I just want it to end--please, please spare me...make it end...

This girl right here, see her? I love her. She is everything that today needs. She crossed that boundary for me--the boundary of social divide--and she crossed it only with love. I can't take her with me. I just can't. It's like when you died--I wanted to die, too, so, so bad, but if I had I would never have met Rose. I can't deprive her of something amazing and beautiful that could happen.

It tears me up to see her like this. She's real and there and incredible, but now she's got ice woven in her shocking red curls, which have lost their color and turned dull. Her skin looks ghastly and her eyes look empty. The sea is robbing the life out of her. The freedom she so recently found.

I'm tired, Ma and Pa. I can't go on like this. It hurts so, so, so much. I would rather be shot a thousand times than have to be here. I can't think straight anymore. I'm getting confused. My body isn't working right. I can't control myself. And to top it all off, I gotta leave her. She finally trusted me and now I've gotta leave her. I feel so guilty that I can barely speak, but I need to know, I just need to have her word...

He closed his eyes for a brief minute, until the threat of tears had passed. There had to be a reason there was only room on the door for one.

That night that he had saved Rose from committing suicide, he had been lying on a bench and staring into the glittering sky. He had been trying so hard to visualize life back again in Chippewa Falls, without his parents. For some reason he hadn't been able to, and maybe this was why. Maybe he wasn't supposed to go home.

He felt like a helpless child cowering from a murderer. He wasn't afraid of death. At the age of twenty, he had already seen so many people die that he knew sometimes it was the only way to let the others around you live on. No, what he was afraid of was for Rose. He didn't have the strength to stay and make sure she got in a lifeboat. She wouldn't want to go on without him--hat else did she have? She was so tender and new to the life he lived, but her mother had probably disowned her and her fiancé was a bastard in gentlemen's clothing, who beat her, kicked her, spat on her, and had most likely tried to rape her.

He was scared that she would just give up once he died and lie there, in the pain and cold alone, like a porcelain doll discarded into the rain. Would she think he had abandoned her?

He would never do that. He loved her. It was for that reason that he was doing this.

"You...you must...you must do me this one honor..." he chattered. Her eyes got large and round, afraid and in disbelief. Her grip on his hands tightened and he could tell that she was about to say no, just by the way she was gazing at him.

"You must promise me..." he rushed on, as strong as he could be, his face echoing his fierce will for her survival. "...that you'll survive."

Rose began to weep, her throat making it impossible for her to give anything other than great, gasping sobs. What was he doing? What was he saying? Why was he making her promise? How could he possibly think that she could live without him?

"That you won't...give up..." he murmured, quietly as the wind rushing over the empty ocean. She began to cry harder, tears staining her face, some freezing on her cheeks and others snaking onto his hand.

In the desolate, empty, and lonely North Atlantic, she wept. Everything was so black now and she knew why. The boats would not come back. Jack was dying.

In her mind, she cursed God for making her feel this way. Jack was Rose and Rose was Jack. She couldn't live alone, couldn't make it without her Jack Dawson by her side. She was not that strong. She was surrounded by a sea of utter and complete misery and death. And she had no will to live.

"...no matter what happens...no matter how--hopeless..." Jack's expression was suddenly painted with pain as his beautiful face contorted with the effort of speaking to her.

He took a ragged breath and sighed, the moan swirling through the freezing air like a death march. She couldn't stand to see him like this. Why was love not enough? How could her love not be enough? She couldn't love him anymore than she already did, and she couldn't live without him loving her back.

"Promise me now, Rose," he rumbled, his voice gaining strength from his anxiety to know she would survive. "...and never let go of that...promise."

Everything was lost to Rose in that instant. The Titanic, which had been, just a few mere hours ago, floating like a grand palace, crowning the foaming waves, was now lying miles beneath her, in a place so cold and dark she guessed it could be hell itself. Her foundation had crumbled when she had been forced to watch her fellow humans die like swatted insects--tumbling and screaming and shrieking and praying. The blood that swirled in the water was not invisible to her--streaks of red surrounded a few of the bodies that she could see. So many, many people were in her view--some still feebly groaning, a soft cry every once in a while filling the air like ghosts. They stilled their frantic paddling and--Rose saw with horror--did not move again. She was still terrified and she was in so, so much pain. It was this blackness, this pain, this certain death, this blood, and this lack of love that split into her mind and tore out her spirit, soul, and heart. She felt empty, useless, not worthy to live. It was a dark hour. It wasn't 1912 anymore; there was no time, no world, no life, no joy. Only hurt and suffering coated her body.

But through it all, he was still here. He had not left her. He had comforted her in her times of despair and tried to save her and now...Jack Dawson was giving her the ultimate sacrifice.

Sacrifice. What a frightening, dreadful word.

Everything she saw was in shades of blue, black, and gray. She felt so...lifeless. Was that the right word?

Helplessly, desperately, she turned back to Jack. He wouldn't really make her promise, would he? He knew that she couldn't go on like this, alone. Didn't he?

She hated to see him like this. His eyes were filled with uneasiness that shown in their amazing, beautiful, enchanting, shimmering pools of blue. She became lost in him, lost like she always was, hopelessly drowning in the love that had already claimed her heart and threatened her life. The anguish in those eyes shocked her--the guilt, the hurt, the sadness, the pain. She softly allowed her eyelids to close. How could she bear to let him go on like he was now? Titanic sinking wasn't his fault. It was not Jack Dawson's fault that she was so, so cold, that her soul was being sucked from her, that she couldn't think, could barely breathe, hell, she wasn't sure she even wanted to breathe. It was not his fault. He had saved her so many times--how could he not see that? How could she let him not see that?

And it was in that moment that she gave in. She would do anything--anything--to wipe that horrible look from his eyes. She wanted those orbs to sparkle their soft, free blue; twinkle with barely sustained laughter; gaze upon her like a love struck fool that had just woken from a trance. She wanted him to be her Jack again.

Besides, it couldn't really happen, could it? Nature was not that cruel. It would not give her love and snatch it away from her like that. They would both live or they would both die. She didn't have a choice in the matter. But just to make him feel free--maybe for the last time--she owed it to humanity, it seemed, to give the world a grain back of the true man before her.

So, that was how it happened that she spoke the most barricading words she had ever spoken, chaining her to a promise she didn't even understand.

"...I promise."

Those eyes that had made a decision for her drove into the last bit of heart she had left and seemed to be searching for something, anything, to convince him that she meant her word. He couldn't control his emotions, but they were spiraling insanely out of control. Trust me. Trust. She trusts me.

"...never...let go," he almost gasped, painfully. Pain. That was another thing. The pain was shooting straight through him, burning and freezing and confusing and terrifying all at once. He'd do anything to spare Rose from this kind of pain.

He didn't want to do this to her. He loved her, he had allowed her to lean on him, believe in him. He had instilled thoughts of a blissful future in both of their minds.

"No, we'll do it. We'll drink cheap beer; we'll ride the roller coaster until we throw up...and after that we'll ride horses on the beach, right in the surf. Now, you'll have to do it like a real cowboy. None of that--sidesaddle--stuff."

Now it was all gone. Everything--everything--was gone. Disappeared. Vanished. Just because of one night, one iceberg, their lives had been altered in mere moments.

Now, as if to awaken him to ever present love and misery, she spoke with that voice that lifted him and chilled him. It was glazed with cold and hurt, bright with love and triumph, sad with death and parting.

"I'll never let go, Jack...I'll never let go..."

He squeezed her hand harder. The tears began to slip down those pale, pale cheeks again, freezing on her frozen skin. The whiteness and fragileness of her made her look, even in the midst of all this tragedy, like an angel. A beautiful angel that he was afraid to loose, lest she fly away.

Rose continued to sob, her almost silent, grief-filled moans echoing in her head. She felt so lost now, so, so lost. He smiled at her, tried to smile away the pain and suffering, but knew he couldn't. Before his grin vanished in the depressing mold of his face, she felt a spark of life in him burn.

He kissed her hand, not being able to muster the strength to kiss her face. His lips brushed against her knuckles, icy cold but transmitting the fiery heat that had been there only hours before.

She looked at him, so sad that she couldn't speak anymore. The lonely vastness of the black North Atlantic, the horror of the dead around them, and the creaking, groaning wreck of a queen lying forever still in a freezing, murky grave spoke for her. There was nothing to do anymore but pray.

He lowered his head and blew hard, trying to warm himself. It was the only way to survive. On his glance, she pressed her forehead against his own, and they trembled and shivered so much that their bodies rocked back and forth, swaying in the ever-changing pain that they knew would never melt away.

She truly is like a rose, Jack thought blandly, confused, like a beautiful, delicate flower that just got buried in frost and will never be warm again.

Chapter Seventeen
Stories