"If you're real, then why don't you kiss me?" she asked, eyes steely with anger and defiance.
"I won't, Rose. Not here. Not like this. I'm not going to start over with you like this."
Rose regarded him coolly for a few minutes, knees drawn into her chest on the chair by her boudoir, ash dropping silently from the tip of her cigarette onto the stained and scuffed wooden floor.
"Why are you here, Jack? Why now? Why didn't you look for me before if you still wanted me. For fuck's sake, I thought you were dead. I'm still not sure you're not a ghost, the way you just appeared in my room. If you're here for my services, then say so. If not, I demand to be paid for the time you've taken from other possible clientele."
Jack's eyes rose at her use of fowl language and the bitterness in her voice, but I he had to admit that he wasn't all that surprised, considering where they were, and what she was assumedly doing here. As he surveyed both her and their surroundings, he fought to keep bile from rising in his throat. The room was gaudy, furnished with painted faux gold and tatty furs, and was full of smells; tobacco smoke, cheap perfume, piss, and sex. Rose, his Rose, was nearly unrecognizable aside from her red curls, which had dulled considerably, and her wide stormy sea eyes. She was scantily clad. A sheer silk robe went down to only mid-thigh, and hung haphazardly open in the front revealing more than enough midriff and cleavage than he thought was necessary, even for this so called career. Black stockings adorned her legs, riddled with holes and runs, and held up by garter belts so worn with use that they almost didn't do their job. Rouge was smeared on her cheeks, hollowed out by not enough food, and probably too much drink, for too many years. Mascara lingered under her eyes and in thin trails down her face, and he reckoned that she had recently been crying, if that wasn't what she had been doing when he had first entered the tiny room. She wasn't herself, and yet he could still see his Rose underneath this threadbare disguise. He could still see a little fight left in her; a little fire smoldering just underneath the surface, and he intended to fight for it: to fight for her.
"I was dead," he said evenly. It hurt, even these two years later, to talk about the Titanic. "At least, I think I was, for a minute there. I remember holding onto your hand, just wishing on every star I could see that you would survive and go on. I remember the cold, and how it felt like it was trying to strangle my heart- trying to strangle the love right out of me, and I remember you calling my name, saying there was a boat, but I couldn't get my eyes to open. I couldn't move. My body wouldn't listen. I remember beginning to sink into that water, Rose, but then I heard a sound, like a bell, and somehow I swam toward it blindly. Someone told me later that that bell was a whistle, and that it had been a young redhead blowing it and I knew it had to have been you. I was unconscious when the boat picked me up, and I was told that you were too. It's no one's fault that we got separated. I didn't wake up until days after the Lusitania arrived in New York, and by then you had disappeared into the city."
Jack paused, and looked up, hoping to gain some insight into her thoughts, but he was met with just as stony an expression as she had worn previously, although he thought he saw a flicker of something pass through her eyes.
"I saw your name on the survivor list in the paper. Rose Dawson. "
Rose looked away at that, sticking her cigarette butt into an absinthe bottle, and watching as the ashes mixed with the bright green liquid making it look even more putrid, shaking the small bottle with a thin hand adorned with chipping red nail polish. He noticed now that all four of her knuckles were deeply bruised, and he wondered how it had happened. Who had she fought?
Jack couldn't help it anymore. He stood, knocking over the stool he had been sitting on, strode forward in two heavy steps, and grabbed the bottle out of her hand before she could lift it to her lips for a swig.
"Damn it, Rose, this is horse shit and you know it. Why are you living like this? Why are you poisoning yourself this way? You're better than this, and you know it!" He didn't care how loud he was being. All he cared about in this moment was breaking through her steely resolve.
"Why didn't you look for me?" she yelled back, words laced with venom, and fresh tears springing into her eyes.
Jack looked at her in disbelief, running a frustrated hand through his blonde hair, his other hand throwing the absinthe bottle against the nearest wall where it promptly smashed. Neither of them seemed to care, and the establishment was undoubtedly used to loud noises. Jack was angry. Not at her, but at the situation. At the world, or whatever higher power there may be, for having put the both of them through this hell and still denying them a peaceful reunion. Hadn't they both lost enough already?
"I looked for you, Rose. I've been looking for you every day for two years, and I've finally found you. You didn't make it easy, and now that I have I'm not going to just give up. I don't care what's happened. I don't care what you've been doing or why. I still love you, and I'll never stop. I'll never give up until you understand that." Jack now had tears in his own eyes as he straightened the stool he had previously been sitting on, and claimed it again, hands thrust deep into the pockets of his brown trousers.
"If you're going to stay here, you'll have to pay the difference." Rose's expression was still icy, displaying no emotion. Jack's jaw clenched.
"Fine," he said fishing a wad of bills out of his shirt pocket, and thrusting them toward her. "For the price I'm paying I assume you wouldn't mind if I stole a smoke." He reached past her onto the vanity top, his had brushing her bruised knuckles in an attempt to get her expression to change, before he grabbed the cigarette tin.
He watched her carefully as she unrolled the bills. All $100: A veritable fortune. Her eyebrows rose in disbelief and then furrowed in anger.
"And just what services do you think you're buying tonight, Mr. Dawson? Certainly if you've spent all this time looking for me with such romantic notions you wouldn't be paying for such a common, lowly whore."
"No services, ma'am. Just a room is all. This room, and your company. Surely that is well enough over your hourly rate to cover for months, if need be. I'm sure Mistress Beauville won't object." He fought to keep his expression as cool and emotionless as hers. "I'm not leaving here unless you leave with me." He reached past her again, this time brushing his hand against her bruised shoulder in order to light his cigarette on her burning candle.
Yes, he would stay for however long it was necessary. He certainly had the means to now. He would stay until her resolve faltered, or he was able to get her to open up to him. Whichever came first.