A/N: So I watched Titanic for the first time yesterday- I never watched it mainly because I already knew all the spoilers. However, it was actually really good all the same and it inspired me to write this short piece. Enjoy.
Silence
It is very quiet.
Without and within. They have stopped screaming. They have stopped yelling. They have even stopped crying. The panic has evaporated as quickly as it came. There are no more desperate pleas for help. The man with the whistle has stopped blowing it. Silence has begun to seep through the cracks we blew with our screams, viscous, oppressive. Pouring over us, consuming us as the water we struggled in took back the ship for its own. Coating us, muffling our cries, muttering soothing words, pressing down, down, down, so we have no breath with which to form words. Bringing with it peace, serenity. It is unnatural. I know it is. I can feel it deep in my bones, the- the wrong of it. But it is hard to remember a rational reason why. I am so cold. I am so tired.
My head is resting upon the debris she lies upon. My eyes are open, but only just. I can see the ornate carving of the piece of wood, the twists, the swirls, the paint that was new only a few days ago. I can see the fabric of her dress, sodden, weighed down by the frigid water. I do not want to look up. She is not moving, but I think she is still breathing. It is obviously a pulse that my stiff fingers feel in her hand. I will not consider the alternative. I will not.
She is the one clear thought I can form, she is the light I can glimpse through the fog my mind has become. I move towards it, with the body of an old man, bent by my pain, by my inability to reach her faster, to make her safe. I move at a snail's pace, but I make progress. When her light goes out I will be blind. I will have no need of sight, for I will have nowhere else to go. Our clasped hands are the only thing that keeps me afloat, in more ways than one.
The cold, which was so biting when we first jumped, has faded now. That is not to say it has gotten better. It still stabs at my body like a knife of ice, carving away my flesh, burning, melting, freezing, until I am nothing but bone. A long time ago, or maybe no time at all, I tried kicking, moving so that it would not set in so quickly. I don't remember stopping, but I am not moving now. I can't remember what moving feels like. I can't remember what it means to be warm. I can't feel anything at all. Maybe I'm not really here. Maybe the silence has finally enveloped me, and I am nothing, I am the water that doomed us, I am silence and cold. I could believe it but for the hand that holds mine. It is an anchor to reality. I made her promise- I cannot just float away.
Much as I would like to.
Numb. I am numb. My body is numb. My thoughts are numb. It is so difficult to form coherent thoughts. I have become stiff, impenetrable, bullet proof. If that man were to shoot at me now the bullet would shatter, I know. I am hard as diamond. As that stone he planted on me. The heart of the ocean. I am the heart of the ocean now. If he were to grab me now, to pull me from the water, to peel back my skin with a knife, carefully, carefully- I would not feel it. I would not feel it, and underneath he would find that gem he prised so much. I am made of stone, of diamond. A living man cannot be this cold. A living man cannot be this silent.
It is not entirely silent. I revoke my earlier comment. I can hear, through the one ear turned towards the sky, the lapping of water against things. Against debris. Against bodies. Against people, trapped in this limbo as I am, waiting to die. No longer waiting to be saved, because to have such hope would be unbearable. Just waiting. But holding on, because I made her promise. Because I will set a good example, because I will not give up.
It would be so easy.
Just to let go. Just to sink. I think I would sink. My legs and arms and torso are stone, and stone sinks. I could just slip into the ocean, silently; it wouldn't even be cold anymore. I would keep my eyes open, even though it would sting. I would want to see the beauty of death as it greeted me, to see the human bodies, so small, so fragile, from underneath the surface. To succumb to that inky blackness that beckoned me.
But if I jump, she jumps, so I stay.
I will not let her die. To let her die would be to negate us ever meeting in the first place. To let her die would be to negate me ever coming on this trip. Ever winning that game of poker. Ever coming to England. To Paris. Ever being an artist. Ever living.
It is the thought of her death that keeps me breathing.
Hours pass. Days pass. Years pass, and it is still night. An eternal blackness. Every so often she moves almost imperceptibly, or she squeezes my hand, or I notice the rise and fall of her body. She is still alive. The fire that I noticed within her when we first met keeps her going, fights against the cold of the water that threatens to quench it. She is stronger than me, even though she could not see it.
She is stronger than all of them, because look, look around me, see the people floating in those stark white life jackets they forced on us as though they would help? Dead. Dead, all of them. People from all walks of life, the old and the young, babies, grandparents, rich, poor, all of them dead. The life has bled out of them into the water, see, see their cold spirits drain away down, down into the ocean. They do not burn like hers does. It is because of her fire that I am alive.
I could draw them, maybe. They would be such perfect models. Still. Quiet. Bodies not shifting, faces unmoving. I could draw them, those in their finery, the girls in the dresses splayed out in the ocean. Women with babies and men with their families, their friends. I could draw them, if I could move my hand. If I wasn't holding hers. If I didn't think that it was fitting, really, that my best drawing, the one of her, should be my last.
I wonder what happened to it.
It is so quiet.
I listen and listen and strain my ears for a sound, for anything to remind me that we are not alone in this world.
Nothing. Because really, we are.
Come Josephine in my flying machine
It is barely sung, barely spoken. Upon a breath, upon a whisper. The woman who sings doesn't do it for me, but I welcome it, I need it all the same.
Going up she goes, up she goes
So simple, so beautiful, so happy, so sad
Balance yourself like a bird on a beam
Her voice. I need to hear it, I need to breathe it.
In the air she goes, up she goes
Up, up, a little bit higher
Take me to the stars, Jack, she said, and here we are, underneath them, together.
Oh, my, the moon is on fire
It is. It really is. I can see it, Rose, if I close my eyes, you see? I can see it. Tell me a story. A happy one. Let me draw it in my mind.
Come Josephine in my flying machine
Sing me to sleep, Rose.
Going up, all on, goodbye!
Sing me to sleep.
A/N no.2: Reviews = eternal love