HEARTS CAN BREAK
Chapter Eighteen

The first thing he noticed was the cold. Tearing and ripping at him like the teeth of a lion, assassinating his mind and leaving him numb.

Where was he? Why was he here? He was back in the ice pond...but the pain was far, far worse this time. Not only physically, but he detected a heavy misery and guilt lying in his barely-beating heart.

He tried to open his eyes but all he could see was blackness--and the sting of salt against his eyeballs. Salt, cold, water...

It all hit him so fast he gasped and the sea washed into his lungs. Titanic. The Atlantic. The sinking. Rose...

Oh, God! Rose!

God damn it all to hell!

The buzzing feeling that wracked through his body whenever he heard her name was filling him like the air he so desperately needed until his entire being was throbbing in its voice. The last he remembered was looking into her beautiful, beautiful face--seeing those deep sapphire jade eyes and longing for her ripe lips to be red and full again.

Now it was dark and he was alone. Alone...

Terrifying visions of a woman lying in the darkness met his mind. He could almost see the dying licks of her fire. Oh, God, was that his fault? Was it his fault that she was alone, in the cold, without love?

These thoughts were so confusing, but the entire time he felt his body drifting down and down, deeper and deeper. He was being torn from her again and he felt like a patient lying on a freezing metal table with his heart ripped from his chest and blood pooling around him.

He was exhausted and was forced to helplessly go limp. Strangely, he felt as if he was watching the scene of his death from outside of his physical body, through the eyes of the sea. It terrified him so much that he closed his own eyes again, as though he could shut out all of the pain he was feeling.

How could I do this to her? he asked himself, his mind reeling. I made her promise, swear to me that she would survive, that she would go on. And now I am the one giving up?

For some strange reason, the memory of the first time he had ever seen her fogged in his brain. Maybe it was because it was the only comforting thought in his mind, his first vision of perfection...

*****

The image was being captured on the paper slowly, perfectly. The only sound was the scratching of charcoal as he looked up and recorded what he saw before him, a tender moment between father and child, between little Cora and her papa.

They were having some conversation, but Jack wasn't listening. Words really didn't matter to him while he drew--it was the picture that would stay with him no matter where he went.

It was a beautiful day. The sky was shining with all of the mysterious blueness it held, dotted with small fluffy clouds on the horizon. As it was high noon, the sun beat mercilessly down onto earth, leaving lemon-yellow streaks in the air. The sea itself was green, foaming and churning with its emerald beauty. And Titanic was as majestic as ever, steaming her way across the North Atlantic.

Fabrizio sat beside him, arms eagle-spread over the metal rails, his hat tilted carelessly atop his dark waves of hair. He looked past Jack, past the ship, perhaps trying to envision America, the land of golden dreams--or in Jack's case, the land of painful memories.

Now, he didn't know how it felt to be going home. He had been so excited to win those tickets--ecstatic, shouting and carrying on, proud to finally be able to return to Chippewa Falls.

But now he was unsure if he even wanted to go back.

His motto had always been to put the past behind him and look forward to the future, because if he hadn't he would just be the same old farmer's boy in Wisconsin, grieving over the loss of his parents.

The recollections that would be stirred to the surface of his mind at going back to the place of his youth, at viewing the whitewashed cottages and red barns, would be almost too terrible to bear. Besides, he had changed in the five years since he had left, and he didn't want anyone mistaking him for the boy he had been. Now he was a man and he had experienced more than most people would in his entire lifetime. He had visited it all--Italy, France, Switzerland, Spain, England--and had seen so many cultures starved for understanding and begging for mercy from the rest of the world.

He remembered the prostitutes in France, dressed in their skimpy clothing, batting their eyelids flirtatiously at any as they passed. But beneath their makeup and garments were wasted, used bodies that desperately needed to be cherished and truly wanted instead of taken for pleasure and spat away. So he had tried to show them that there was something other than selling themselves for money. Never had he lain with a single one, but he could remember drawing them. Carefully, trying to make their inner beauty come forth so that they could understand they were not trapped by their lifestyles, that everyone is in possession of the key to free them.

"Nice ship, no?" Fabrizio's voice wound around Jack's ears and he sighed, frustrated, trying to focus on his drawing. The ever-smiling Fabrizio di Rossi, however, did not respond to his friend's obvious aggravation. Instead, he shifted his weight on the board slightly, turning to face the counterpart in his conversation.

Glad that his friend was occupied and no longer staring at his work, he continued to sketch Cora's face and was again lost in decisions that no man should have to face but were rearing their ugly heads right in front of him.

So much must have changed in Chippewa Falls since he had up and gone. All of his friends were grown, some married, and maybe even a few had kids of their own. He would be so out of touch with the world he once knew that he reconsidered his decision to go back seriously.

His charcoal stub scratched a few final touches into his drawing.

"Yeah. It's an Irish ship."

The unfamiliar speaker had a rough voice pasted with a heavy Irish brogue that was pleasant to hear. He stopped sketching for a moment and listened lightly to the conversation next to him, not truly eavesdropping but just curious.

"She's English, no?" Fabrizio sounded genuinely confused. He had boarded in Southampton. She was owned by the White Star Line, whose manager lived in England...

"No. She was built in Ireland. Fifteen thousand Irishmen built this ship. Solid as a rock. Big Irish hands."

Fabrizio nodded, not truly believing this man, but thinking the conversation was pointless.

Jack was startled by a jangling sound near his feet. He dropped his charcoal pencil in his lap and looked down. The heat warmed the back of his neck as he saw a harried steward leading four...dogs! Before the anger bubbled up in his throat, he was overcome by amusement. The same ruddy Irish voice spoke his thoughts before he had time to think it.

"That's typical." He tapped his cigarette against the rail and placed it back in between his lips. "First class dogs come down here to take a shit."

Jack's face broke into a grin and he turned to the man. His face was ruddy and cheery. He was tall and had sand-colored hair tightly curled around his scalp. His jacket was hanging loosely around his shoulders and he was leaning back, obviously too relaxed to unleash his fury.

"Reminds us where we rank in the scheme of things," Jack remarked, his eyes dancing with laughter.

The Irishman turned to him and smiled back. Clearly, he had been waiting for an event to be sarcastic about class differences. Jack could tell that underneath all his pride and dignity, he had a righteous temper.

"Like we could forget?" His smile widened and he puffed once on the cigarette. Then, quite suddenly, as if following orders, he plucked it out of his mouth. "I'm Tommy Ryan."

Jack leaned forward and shook his extended hand. "Jack Dawson."

"Hullo."

He turned to the Italian sitting beside Jack and shook his hand as well. "Fabrizio."

"Hi."

Tommy leaned back against the rail and started smoking again. Now his eyes were trained with interest at the sketchbook in Jack's lap. Jack watched his pupils follow every detailed line and gaze at the image of Cora and her father on the paper. He took the cigarette out and pointed it at the pad.

"D'you make any money with your drawings?"

He was about to answer. The grin was still on his face, his mouth was open, and his tongue was already forming the words.

Then he glanced up.

And froze.

For in that moment, Jack Dawson saw an angel.

He had never seen one before, but somehow he knew the moment he laid his eyes on that beautiful woman above him that she was an angel. Her long curls were elegantly fastened along her neckline, a few stubborn strands gorgeously hanging to her shoulders. Every silky lock was blood red and gleamed with fire from the orange sunlight, dancing in the breeze around her heavenly face. Her dress was light and looked absolutely striking on her--fantastic white lace flowing over an apple green gown, rippling around her amazing body in the wind. Her skin glowed with its shocking purity...

God, he thought numbly, I would love to draw her.

He didn't even notice that Tommy had turned curiously to see the celestial creature he was gazing so fixedly at. The Irishman's green eyes blurred for a moment from coming face to face with such amazing beauty. Then he seemed to almost shake his head of confusing thoughts before slightly shifting to make eye contact with Jack. He smiled again, this time with sympathy and pity for the American across from him. Another poor man enthralled by the impossible...

"Ah…forget it, boyo." He swallowed and absentmindedly tried to grind the heel of his boot against Titanic's solid wood decks. He blew the ash out of the tip of his cigarette and, shaking his head, swept his eyes up to the clouds. "You'd as likely have angels fly out of yer arse than get next to the likes of her."

Jack did not pay attention to him. Butterflies took wing in his stomach because, as though she felt his stare, she turned abruptly to glance at him. He was taken aback as their gazes met.

He read everything within her by just looking at her eyes, getting caught in those pools of deep jade, sapphire, emerald, and ocean swirling like pathways into her soul. Those eyes were so miserable, like shimmering ponds of hopelessness. He had seen that look before--a beautiful, dying dove needing to break out of her cage lest she let go of life.

Her irises wept with neglect. She had been forgotten by all that she cared for and the relationships had melted and broken away, leaving her alone to fight through the drama of life without someone there to pull her up when she fell. Every glimmer of light that caught into those orbs of color reflected with starvation for freedom and love. How desperately he could tell she needed freedom and love! She was like an encased jewel--beautiful on the outside but decaying on the inside. Had she ever been held in her life with arms that would never let her go, shown the tenderness and affection needed for humankind?

She looked away quickly as though shocked at her own daring, to make eye contact with a third class stranger. For a moment her chest heaved as she breathed in and out, scandalized. But he saw that her own curiosity, something she had obviously denied herself for so long, pulled her gaze back to him again.

Suddenly, Jack was astounded by his own mind. For the first time in his life, he didn't just want to sketch her. He wanted to crush her against his chest, assure her again and again that he would keep her safe, brush the curls from her skin, kiss the hollows of her neck as soft as a feather...

He was vaguely aware of Fabrizio's arm coming into his view and blocking his vision of the angel for a moment, but it soon disappeared. A small chuckle at his side went unnoticed, as did everything else in the world.

She was first class. He was someone who slept under bridges. She was society. He was a starving artist. But all of a sudden all of their differences melted away. A woman and a man in a lonely world--that's all that there was. And in that moment, he would have died a thousand times just to take her hurt away. He didn't know her name, her scent, the sound of her voice...but he would have shouldered her burden a million times over just to make her smile.

He felt something beautiful and hot fly lightly around his heart and he breathed deeply. An emotion he didn't know.

As he watched, a man walked up to this amazing woman and touched her lightly on the arm. As his soul crumbled, he realized that this man was some...lover...of the red-haired angel. He possessively grabbed her arm and pulled her closer to him. Horrified, Jack watched as his fingertip slipped softly and teasingly across her breast, as if he was declaring his ownership. The man had a fancy suit on and clasped a top hat in his hand. His dark hair was slicked back from his high forehead and his black eyes seemed so dull and dead...

The woman jumped as the man touched her, wrenching her stare from Jack and turning angrily to her side.

Jack barely caught her voice, seething with fury, say, "Do you mind?" Oh, God, it was a beautiful voice--longing for the harmony and richness of the life that was being snatched from her.

The man seemed amused for a moment, but quite quickly turned cold and scolding. "I hope you're proud of it," he muttered, as though not wishing to cause a scene.

Jack watched as the girl pulled herself out of his grasp, murmuring incoherent phrases at him that Jack was willing to bet were not compliments. She rolled her eyes and swept away with all elegance imaginable, furiously brushing a curl from her face.

The man stood there for a minute, his lips pressed tightly together as though not to allow the words he wanted to say to tumble from his mouth. Then he tossed his hat in his other hand and turned on his heel, stomping off inside.

Jack sat there, simply staring ahead, thinking. He could never be with that woman. He would probably never see her again. He couldn't dwell on her like this. He had to clear his mind.

Therefore, he accepted Tommy's lazy invitation to a poker game.

All throughout the evening, though, that beautiful face kept dancing in his head. An angel going through hell.

One thought rang again and again through his mind. How could people become so...hopeless?

*****

Hopeless. Jack knew everything was hopeless.

He had loved and been loved--true love. Something so beautiful, so pure, so...so sacred that it was still so much like touching the moon for him.

And it was gone.

It wasn't fair. He didn't deserve to float away into some deep black pit. Oh, God, Rose didn't deserve it.

A shocking, terrifying, and ripping pain tore across his legs, making them scream from the icy fire that the hurt spit out. He gasped but only water filled his lungs, making him cough and sputter with the freezing temperature pumped inside of him. Bubbles streamed around his face.

All through this entire time, he realized suddenly, he had been feebly kicking upward.

Upward. Where the air was.

Where Rose had been.

What if he couldn't find her? What if...what if she was...

No. No way in hell was he going to give up on her like that. He didn't give a damn what odds were against him, but he was going to find Rose. Because without Rose, he wasn't Jack, and if he wasn't Jack, Rose wasn't Rose. He would die before making her lose her newly found self.

With a barely audible sputter, his frozen face was thrust from the terrible sea into the horrible world. It was so cold...his skin no longer felt like ice, it was ice. He could hardly move. His limbs were in so much pain that they refused to respond to his brain.

His lips, slack and lifeless with near death, managed to shape her name, but his voice box wouldn't work. He snapped open his eyes, but told himself not to react to what he saw. Not to feel.

It would have been simple, except God made human hearts to feel.

A little girl with a head of golden hair was lying motionless in the ocean, her eyes open wide and glassy with fear and pain. A worn brown shawl moved against her body, flowing over the waves with almost beautiful grace. How dare it? How dare there be such beauty flooding the terror of no mercy...

She had had her whole life ahead of her. She should have been able to lose another tooth, or run in the mud, or climb trees--fall in love, get married, have children, have a life...

But a world that could have been had died with her, becoming a world that would never be.

He looked away, shivering with fear and cold and despair. Was Rose having to see this? I have to find her.

"...Rose..." The sound came out as a scratchy murmur, hardly enough to stir the air around him. He received no answer.

"...Rose!" Slightly stronger this time, her name flew like wind around him, like wings.

All that replied to him was dead silence.

Dead silence.

He didn't let himself think about the context of those words. It's not like that, he thought, she's strong. She's stronger than anyone I know. She...

"...Rose!" Suddenly he was frantic. He tried to swim, but he couldn't. Water splashed around his body, sending ripples across the smooth surface of the sea. He struggled madly, not paying attention to the pain. He looked around, terrified, for Rose, that exotic beauty who had come into his life and turned everything backwards, his goals inside out, his dreams upside down.

He would give anything to kiss her. To take in her rosewater scent. To crush her against him and bury his face in her hair. To tell her everything would be all right.

But he couldn't.

Titanic had proved something. For the first time ever, Jack Dawson couldn't say everything was going to be all right, because it wasn't. For the first time ever, Jack Dawson couldn't.

He could still feel her trembling with nervousness against him, even though she said she was fine. Still feel his hands roaming over her body, unsure of what to do, but knowing that he just wanted to show her gentle, fierce love. There could be gentle, fierce love.

Her face, looking at him with adoration and trust...

Furiously, he pounded his fist in the water and the throb, the tearing, the fuzziness shot through him.

Trust. He had betrayed her. He was no better than the son of a bitch she had been engaged to. She was out in this hell, alone, freezing, somewhere, and here he was, dying, not having the strength to find her.

It was dark and empty...bodies were lying still beside him...

In his mind's eye, he saw a girl, her colorless curls frozen to a board, her body so still, her wide open eyes sparkling with ice--

He didn't realize he was crying. He couldn't feel the cold tears or the sting of the salt on the cuts on his cheek. He was losing consciousness, everything ebbing away from him.

It was too late for him. He knew that now. He could barely remember the heavenly bliss he had been sealed in, the icy terror he had been thrown into. The tangible horror of Titanic, the soft kisses of his love.

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

His eyes, which had been ever-so-gently closing, jerking open with a painful, tearing sensation. He was so tired...so tired...

But Rose had been, too. Rose was in this pain with him. And Rose would not give up.

How could he?

He was here under the judgment of billions of stars, throwing their sparkle in the quiet black canvas of the evil sea. But more than that, he was in the being looked at through the eyes of one beautiful, amazing, free woman who was like the waft of a flower in the current of the wind, who he loved, and who adored him. To let her down was worth a million of these cold, senseless deaths. There was a bit of hope that he could find her.

And for Jack Dawson, that had always been enough.

"I saw that in a nickelodeon once, and I always wanted to do it."

"And if you don't break free, you're gonna die. Maybe not right away, because you're strong, but...sooner or later, that fire that I love about you, Rose, sooner or later that fire's gonna burn out."

"It's not up to you to save me, Jack."

"Hello, Jack. I changed my mind."

"You're trembling."

"Do you trust me?"

"I trust you."

"Nervous?"

"...no..."

"Put your hands on me, Jack."

"Let's say we'll go there, someday, to that pier, even if we only just talk about it."

"No, we'll do it! We'll drink cheap beer, we'll ride the roller coaster ‘til we throw up, and then 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."

"You mean...one leg on each side?"

"Mmmhmm."

"...will you show me?"

"Sure. If ya like."

"Come Josephine..."

The song drifted as a haunting memory around him, as ghostly as the blackness, the sea, the cold, and the death.

"...my flying machine..."

Orange sunlight, the last rays of day, were warming his body now. She was in his arms for the first time. His heart was skipping beats. His breath was on her neck. Their lips were so close...the wind was whipping like a truth he couldn't grasp around them. The waves crashed on the bow. It was intoxicating, being so near to her, catching the scent of her rose curls...

"...and it's up she goes..."

Suddenly everything went black and he was alone. He shouted her name and reached for her hand. He had to find her, had to pull her with him, to safety, but something was in the way...

"...up she goes..."

She drifted to the stars, away from him, and he could hear her scream.

"Jack!"

She was trying to run to him, but she couldn't.

"I love you, Jack..."

She was everything to him. He would die without her.

It had hit him tonight, when he had been staring into her eyes. Eyes that sparkled like that jewel he had been blamed for stealing. Swirling like mysteries of sapphire-emerald.

The shame in those eyes, the guilt, when they had pulled that damned diamond out of his pocket had been unbearable to him. She had looked so hurt, so betrayed, so confused...

And he had done that. He had.

It had hurt him so much that he hadn't been able to breathe. All he had wanted was to hold her, to whisper into her curls that shone like scarlet flame, to kiss the tears away from her eyes. But she had looked at him with such spiteful hate that he had literally backed away. He didn't want to hurt her like that. Goddammit, that was the last thing he had wanted to do.

So he had found himself begging in front of her, looking into those crystals and pleading for her to see the Jack that he truly was, not the Jack that these cowards had tried to make him be. He could still feel her soft body under his and wasn't ready to give away that emotion.

Truly, he wasn't ready to give away love.

Now he could feel that feeling rising in his throat, that desperate desire to tell her the truth, to hold her, to reassure her.

For a moment the cold and blackness ebbed into his brain. For one terrifying minute he couldn't remember her face.

He could barely bring to his mind that red hair caressing her skin, tumbling in curls down her back, her smooth face, her beautiful jade eyes. He couldn't see every curve of her body like he had been able to and her voice in his mind sounded blurry.

Oh, God! No, no, no! I don't care about the pain, the cold, the darkness, the water...but I love her! Don't you ever take her away from me! Please! If you take her away--just kill me. Rose! Don't leave me. Oh, God, don't leave me.

Without warning he felt a bitter, evil hate towards himself. He wanted to rip himself into shreds, cut at his body, stab his chest. It was all his fault. It was his damn fault that Rose was here, dying this horrible, terrible death. His fault Rose was alone. His fault! She was in so much pain and he did that. He had hurt her worse than he could even imagine. She had left everything she knew for a son of a bitch like him! What an asshole he was! Damn!

He was slamming his fists in the water, the pain tearing through his body but him not noticing. His mind cleared. "Rose!" he shrieked. "...Rose!" All of a sudden his throat burned so badly that he couldn't speak. It constricted and tears flew down his face, draining will and life from him, leaving his chest stinging and his soul empty.

He didn't know the screams were from him. They sounded so unearthly and in so much shock...

He couldn't understand. He didn't want to understand. All he wanted to do was drown in his confusion and guilt. What else did he deserve? The cold wasn't as bad now...he was losing the feeling in his body and he knew it. The only thing after could be eternal darkness of hell. Right now, all he knew were the black screams.

Suddenly, the cloudy vision that had been misting in his eyes suddenly vanished and was replaced by a bright, white light that seared through his eyelids and attempted to silence his shrieks. The beam swept across his face.

If this was death, he didn't want to be spared.

"...Rose..." he choked, struggling to say her name. The name of an angel that was too holy to be forced out of evil lips like his own.

"...here's another one...right then. He's more than half dead already...a drowned rat...damn this..."

The words sounded so strange, so devoid of the pain Jack was feeling, so heartless and cold, colder than the water. A blurry figure staring down on him, with deep coal-colored eyes like endless, lightless tunnels. Empty. Unfeeling. Or maybe everything else looked like that to just him.

He was halfway convinced they were only figments of his imagination, not truly there. He was going crazy, losing his mind, and he couldn't hold onto it. Not that he wanted to.

"Here...pull him up...I'm going to sue White Star's bloody ass off if we ever get out of this..."

Before Jack could register the words of the strange man, two broad, warm hands gripped him under the arms. He felt himself being heaved up...out of the water...away from Rose...

"...no..." he gasped. His weak, crumbling body suddenly lashed out and fought against the people. He couldn't leave her. He promised he would never leave her. He told her it would be all right.

"...you don't understand...my Rose..."

Again, a bitter, sour, painful taste came into his mouth when he sputtered out her name. He heard a sigh near him, from either man or wind he knew not.

"...she's out there...please..."

The men did not listen. Their grip, much stronger than his half-dead fight, only tightened around his muscles and pulled him away from the black waves.

"...I can't abandon...she's...Goddammit, I love her...I love her..."

He was crying again, more bitterly and pained than he ever had in his life. In the sea of bodies around him, all he knew was the lonely breeze sweeping from the gray horizon and the death, the hurt, the aftermath of Titanic. A tear fell into the sea, and he knew something. He knew that that tear was filled with love and pain and horror and hope, parts of him that would never leave this betrayed place.

There was a thud, and he felt nothing, not even warmth, when he was hauled out of the endlessly deep Atlantic and dropped onto the hard keel of a lifeboat. He couldn't feel the wood against his back or the freezing temperatures that were claiming his life. Instead he just felt as if a hole had been gouged from his heart, leaving it bleeding and forsaken. His spirit and soul cried one thing, their voices entwining together like a vine choking the breath from his lungs.

Just kill me.

Chapter Nineteen
Stories