Written by Aebhel
Based on some situations originated by James Cameron.

April 10, 1912

Fabrizio hauled off and punched him when the big Swede turned out to have a royal flush, and even though Jack complained that a full house--aces over fives, too--was a perfectly respectable hand, he couldn’t entirely blame him.

They watched the Titanic leave the dock anyway, just for the sheer masochistic pleasure of it.

Fabrizio made Jack buy sausage rolls and a bottle of cheap wine, which they shared underneath a bridge with rain dripping down the backs of their coats. Fabrizio spent the whole night muttering truly blasphemous curses in Italian and shooting him venomous looks from under his brows. Jack smoked three cigarettes and fell asleep with one foot out in the rain. He wasn’t worried. Jack Dawson tried not to worry about tomorrow until it showed up. Things would work themselves out.

April 15, 1912

Jack was smoking behind the bar and avoiding the owner’s wife when a drunk Oxford student accosted him.

"Can you believe it? The Titanic! Unsinkable, they said. Can you believe it?"

Jack caught the man’s shoulder before he could stumble away. He would say later that he could already feel the chill of premonition, but he was probably making it up.

"What are you talking about?"

The drunk stared blearily at him with round blue eyes. "The Titanic! Sunk!" He shoved a tattered paper into Jack’s hands and wandered off in the direction he came from.

Jack skimmed the headline, then abruptly sat down as his knees turned to jelly.

It could have been us, he thought dazedly. Me and Fabrizio. It could have been us.

It was a long time before he could stand up again.

July 3, 1930

Jack rubbed his left temple distractedly before remembering that his fingers were still covered in charcoal dust. Not that it mattered. Even the rich socialites frequenting the Asbury Park boardwalk on a muggy Thursday afternoon weren’t so loose with their change as to drop even fifty cents on a quick charcoal sketch. He’d done three portraits all day, and he suspected even that was only because people felt sorry for him.

He didn’t want their pity, didn’t need it, either. He had a loft back in the city and enough money stashed in his pack to take him a few states up the coast any time he wanted. He wasn’t like those poor bastards begging under the boardwalk, the ones who’d probably be sleeping there when night came. Not too bad this time of the year--he’d done it more than a few times himself--but it’d be hell when winter came.

He’d be moving on by then, back to California, if he had to work his way across the Dust Bowl state by state.

"Mommy! Mommy, can we get a portrait done? Please?"

Jack looked up to see a dark-haired boy of about ten standing a few yards away from him. The cut of his clothing was good, but there was a tear in the knee of his trousers and his hat was on crooked. A little girl, maybe five years younger with flyaway red hair, clutched the hem of his shirt.

"Darling, if we’re going to go to the movies, I haven’t the spare change just now…"

Jack blinked as the mother strode up to take the boy’s hand. She was a tall, shapely woman with red hair like the little girl’s and the kind of impeccable posture that only comes from centuries of good breeding.

"Portraits are fifty cents apiece, ma’am," Jack said quietly, and she looked up at him with a start.

"I really haven’t the change," she said apologetically. "Come along, Andrew, Isabel."

"Mommy, we don’t need to see a show, really," the little boy--Andrew--said. "We’d rather have portraits."

The woman raised her eyebrows at him. "Oh, you would, would you? Perhaps I’d like to see a show. Did you think of that?"

Andrew rolled his eyes. "No, you don’t," he said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. The woman laughed, throwing her head back to expose the clean line of her jaw, and Jack was surprised to find himself staring as he hadn’t stared at a woman in years. He had spent his teens and early twenties working his way through the most disreputable bars on two sides of the Atlantic, spent a good year and a half in Paris earning his keep sketching nude portraits of the neighborhood prostitutes--most of whom regarded him as a particularly aggravating younger brother, anyway--but there was something about this pale redhead with the fragile, too-tired look about her that captivated him. Her chin came down and she met his gaze before he could look away. Her eyes were very blue.

Jack blinked and tried to look as though he didn’t care much one way or another if they stayed.

"Isabel, would you like your portrait done as well?" she asked without taking her eyes off of him. It was only when the little girl murmured a shy assent that she looked away.

"Just for the children, then," she muttered, rifling through her purse.

Jack hid a smile as he reached for his sketchpad and charcoals.

He’d always had the gift of capturing the likeness of a person with a few quick strokes, a smudge here, a line there. He did Isabel’s picture first, and finished before she really started to fidget. Andrew was old enough to sit still, and Jack allowed himself to linger a little over it, catching the dimple in the boy’s cheek and the way his black hair was flattened where his cap was.

The sun was low and golden in the sky when he blew the excess charcoal dust from the pages and sandwiched them between onion paper for safe transportation.

"That’ll be one dollar, ma’am," he said, meeting her eyes directly. Their fingers met for a moment when she handed him the money and maybe she flushed a little, or maybe it was just the light. "Unless you want me to do one of you, too."

She smiled at him distractedly. "No…no, we’d better be getting home. Come along, children."

Isabel held up one hand to her mother, her other thumb in her mouth. Andrew skipped out of reach agreeably. He was examining the image of his own face on the paper with round eyes, and it made Jack smile as he slid his leather drawing case into his kit bag. The woman glanced back as she stepped away, and Jack grinned at her.

"I’ll be here tomorrow if you change your mind," he called, and for the first time, a real smile found its way onto her face. It made her look ten years younger.

"Maybe I will, at that."

And then she was gone.

July 4, 1930

Jack was sitting in front of the bakery, watching the sun rise over the ocean and listening to the ruckus of the shopkeepers preparing for the Independence Day rush, when she found him. She was alone this time, dressed in a neat gray suit with her hair tucked into a prim French braid.

"My children love their portraits," she said quietly. "I’m sorry I didn’t think to thank you yesterday."

Jack smiled and pushed himself to his feet, his knees cracking. He had slept under the boardwalk himself last night, not wanting to spend his cash on a bus back to the city, and he was being painfully reminded that this sort of life was a great deal easier on the joints at twenty.

"I’m glad to hear it," he said. "Can I buy you some breakfast, or will your husband shoot me?"

He was fishing, and from the dry look she shot him, he wasn’t being terribly subtle.

"My husband is dead," she said calmly. "He shot himself last year."

She stared at him levelly as she spoke, gauging his reaction. Jack inclined his head. "I’m sorry to hear that."

A bitter smile quirked her lips. "Don’t be."

He nodded again and offered his arm. "Does that mean you’ll have breakfast with me?"

She stared at him for a long moment, then chuckled, placing her hand in the crook of his elbow. "I’m dreadfully sorry. My manners are usually better, even at this time of the morning. My name is Rose Hockley."

"Jack Dawson."

"It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Dawson."

"Please," he said. "Jack. I haven’t managed respectability yet."

"All right." Her smile was dazzling. "Jack. I’d love to have breakfast with you, if you’d be so kind as to pardon my rudeness."

He grinned back at her. "Consider it pardoned."

They bought rolls from a vendor, and ate them with their legs dangling off the edge of the boardwalk, watching the ocean.

"It’s amazing," Rose said, tearing of bits of pastry neatly with manicured fingers. "It looks so calm…" She shook her head and popped a morsel into her mouth.

"Always did love the ocean," Jack said around a mouthful of roll. "Lived under the docks in Southampton for a couple of months in 1912...let me tell you, it gets damned cold there in April."

Rose raised her eyebrows. "You’ve been to Europe."

"Indeed I have, ma’am." He lay back against the sun-warmed wood, watching a puff of white cloud flit across an impossibly blue sky. "Worked my way from Ireland to France and all the way back again. Almost won a ticket back home on the Titanic--tell you what, that was the luckiest hand of poker I ever lost."

It took him a few moments to realize that she was staring at him with her mouth half-open. "What?"

"I was on the Titanic," she whispered. "Cal--my husband--and I…we came back from Europe on it."

"Huh." Jack met her eyes, but she looked more shaken than anything else. "I guess it’s just a matter of luck that we didn’t meet back then."

It wasn’t really likely, he knew. Her clothes were worn and a few months out of fashion, but they were good quality when they were new, and those were diamonds in her earlobes. She would have ridden in first class, and Jack had worked on enough steamers to know how astronomically unlikely it would have been for a scruffy bohemian artist like him to cross paths with the rich young debutante she must have been.

She blinked. "I’m glad you weren’t," she said. "It was awful. Just…" Her hand moved involuntarily, trying to sketch the shape of something words couldn’t quite encompass. "…awful. Cal and my mother, and I, we were lucky to survive."

Jack nodded. He had read the papers on the wreck. He knew the numbers. Her hand was trembling, the remains of her breakfast pastry crushed between her fingers. He reached over and took it out of her hand, cocking his head at her. "I still have my charcoals," he said, instead of responding. "I can do a portrait, if you want."

Rose nodded shakily, then pulled herself up, back straight and proud. "I’d like that," she said, and smiled.

The End.

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