A/N: I won't be covering the entire movie in this fic because if you're reading this, you've already seen it and don't need the summary.
Rose stretched languidly, enjoying the sore feeling of her body. Jack shifted on top of her, his movements sluggish.
"Jack." she whispered, shaking him gently.
"Hmm." He lifted his head from her shoulder to blink at her.
"We need to go. They'll likely look here soon." She pushed him off of her, and he slid to the floor of the car with a thump.
Rose reached for her clothes, hissing as the soreness became painful. Jack drew in an audible breath, and she turned to look at him. His expression was one of concern and apology.
"Rose, I'm so-"
"Don't you dare," She said, glaring at him. "Don't. Apologize. To me. For anything. That was fantastic and wonderful and absolutely brilliant, so don't say you're sorry." she ranted.
Jack raised his hands in surrender. "Alright, alright," he laughed. "Was it really that good?"
Rose snorted but grinned. "Really. Although," her grin turned sly. "I had no idea you were a biter."
"I bit you? Where?" His eyes were wide in horror.
"Never mind that, Jack, now hurry up and get dressed." Rose said, following her own advice.
Once they were both fully clothed, they climbed out of the car and ran. As they hurried away from it, Rose felt like laughing, like skipping, like shouting out for the world to hear that she was in love and she didn't care who knew it. She would never marry her horrible fiancé, no matter what her mother said. Rose was free.
Finally.
-‹◊›-
They ran and danced and flew, exuberant because they were together. Rose had Jack and Jack had Rose, and they belonged to each other.
Rose truly believed that nothing would separate them.
Until the Titanic hit an iceberg. She could hear the officers; they were concerned.
The unsinkable ship could be sinking.
Rose may have had no desire to ever see her mother again, but she also had no wish let her die.
They ran back to the people who were hunting them in order to warn them of the impending danger.
She absently rubbed her shoulder as she ran, the bite throbbing in time with her heartbeat and beating out the name of her lover.
Jack. Jack. Jack.
-‹◊›-
Then Cal was there, and Jack was being accused of thievery.
Jack said that he was innocent, but why would Cal lie?
And yet, why would Jack keep her from killing herself and then steal from her? Had she been just another one of his French girls?
Rose didn't know what to think. She loved Jack. He was the only one who believed she could be something other than a rich man's wife.
It didn't matter if he was a thief, she decided. She would forgive him because that was what you did when you loved someone.
The bite on her shoulder throbbed again as her heart raced, urging her to find him.
Jack. Jack. Jack.
-‹◊›-
Rose frantically searched for some way to free Jack. The key had been missing, and he was chained to a sinking ship. She would have picked the lock if she had known how. Jack probably could pick locks. As soon as they were out of this she would have him teach her.
Maybe there was someone who could help.
Rose waded through the water, desperate to find anyone who could help her. But the only man she could find tried to get her to leave. She appreciated the thought, but Jack was still down there, and she couldn't leave him. So, in an action that surprised even her, she drew back and punched him in the nose. She wasn't even sorry.
That left breaking the cuffs.
Rose smashed open the emergency fire axe case and lifted the axe off of the wall, breathing in through her nose and out her mouth to keep from panicking. She had never used an axe before, and what if she hurt Jack? Dear Lord, what if she accidentally cut off one of his hands? How would he draw without a hand? He would hate her for the rest of his life if she took away his talent.
There was no time for doubts, though. The water was rising.
She waded through the frigid water, axe in hand. Soon it was too deep to touch the floor, so she used the pipes that criss-crossed the ceiling to pull herself along, back to Jack.
The water was higher than her waist in the room where Jack was being held. Her practice swings had been horrible, but there was no time. Her fears attempted to rush back and swamp her, but she pushed them aside and concentrated on the slender piece of metal that linked the cuffs. She swung the axe and miraculously managed to hit her target.
Together they ran out of the room that had almost been Jack's tomb, hoping against hope that there might be a lifeboat left with space for both of them.
Jack didn't bother pulling the sleeves of his shirt down to cover the cuffs, so Rose saw the burns around his wrists. They hadn't been there earlier, so she could only assume that they had been caused by the metal in the handcuffs. Was he allergic to them?
-‹◊›-
Rose clung to the door, half dead from the cold and wet. She was almost certain that Jack was dead, but she still held on to him. She had promised not to let go after all. The bite on her shoulder had stopped throbbing, and she was almost positive that the lack of pain reflected her slowing heartbeat. She was dying.
A light swept through the darkness, accompanied by a shout. One of the lifeboats had come back.
Rose shook him. "Jack."
He didn't respond. His face was coated in frost, and his hand was stiff and unmoving.
"Jack," she sobs. "Jack, there's a boat."
His hand twitched in hers.
She stared at him for a moment, thinking that it had been only her imagination, but he moved again. He squeezed her hands as if they were a lifeline.
He opened his eyes, and Rose attempted to shout for the boat to come back and save them. However, her voice was too damaged by the cold to work properly.
Jack opened his eyes at the sound of her croaky voice.
"There's a boat Jack." she tried to say. It sounded more like a mouse being stepped on than words.
He seemed to understand her anyways, for he took a deep breath, wincing at the freezing air, and began to shout. "Help! Please, we're still alive!"
The sight of the boat turning around was one of the most beautiful things that Rose had ever seen.
-‹◊›-
They sat together on the Carpathia, sharing a blanket. Jack was restless; he obviously wanted to get up and do something. But he wouldn't leave her, and for that she was grateful. She had been through so much that she would crack into a million pieces if he left now.
He was dead, she knew that. And yet he was sitting next to her, huddled under the same blanket.
"Duck," he said suddenly, pushing down on her shoulder. She did so, but her confusion must have been evident because he explained "Cal is looking for you. Unless you want to be found."
Rose was defrosted enough to recognize the teasing tone in his voice, but she was too tired to do anything other than shake her head before leaning sideways into his legs. She soon slipped off into sleep, her dreams flooded with freezing cold water.
-‹◊›-
"Rose. Rose, wake up. Please, Rose, please wake up."
Rose blearily opened her eyes, blinking at the sudden influx of bright light. She was lying on her back, their blanket twisted around her chest. Jack was hovering over her, a concerned look on his face.
"What's going on?" she mumbled, rubbing her face.
"You were having a nightmare." he said.
Rose held out one of her hands to him. "Help me up."
He hauled her to her feet, and she untwisted the blanket from her torso, studiously avoiding his eyes. They had been on the Carpathia for a day now, and Rose wasn't sure how to ask him how he had survived.
"What were you dreaming about?" he asked.
"You died," she said, closing her eyes to steady herself. "And you didn't wake up again."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I know what I saw, Jack. You were dead."
"If I died," he said slowly, as if to a child. "Then how can I be alive now?"
She could hear the false note in his voice as if he had shouted "I have a secret!" for the whole ship to hear. His distrust enraged her; she had given up everything for him.
She opened her eyes in order to see his face. "Why won't you trust me?"
"Rose, I love you." he said, as if that would be enough. She loved him so much that she had released all of her ties to her life before him; but if he thought that confirming what she already knew would make her go easy on him then he was sorely mistaken.
"And you can trust me. I'll keep your secrets." she said, avidly watching him for any reaction.
He swallowed heavily, at down on the bed, and stared at his hands as if they held all the answers. "It's hard to explain, and it'll be even harder to believe."
She sat down next to him and laid her hand on top of his. Her anger had fled in the face of his agitation. "Try me."
Jack looked up into her eyes as if he was attempting to see her very soul. After a moment, he grinned and began to speak.
"I'm a werepuma."
"What?" Rose said, staring at him as if he had gone insane. Maybe dying and coming back to life had broken something in his brain.
"Every full moon, I turn into a puma. I'm not sure why, it's a family thing. Part of the package is nine lives." he explained.
"So, you used one up in the water?" she asked.
"Yep."
"You have nine lives. Like the superstition."
"Eight now. You could have nine."
Rose found herself again saying "What?"
Jack looked sheepish. "I bit you. That's one of the ways the gift is passed on. You can refuse it if you want to, but I highly suggest you don't."
Rose didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Yesterday, she had been almost certain that she was going to die, and today she had learned that she could live up to nine times as long as she would have if she had never met Jack. It was simple, really. She wouldn't leave Jack, not for anything, and he was a creature straight out of myth. Obviously, the only path for her to take was the one that let her remain with him as long as possible.
Suddenly, something occurred to her, a discrepancy in his explanation. "I thought it was werewolves, not werepumas."
"Werewolves are typically native to Europe while werepumas are found in the Americas. And," he said absently "I can't believe that you're having such an easy time accepting this."
Rose shrugged. "I saw you die yesterday, and yet you're here in front of me. The evidence is irrefutable. So," she grinned at him, sly and cat-like. "How does one go about becoming a puma?"
Jack smiled back at her, his eyes alight with hope, joy, and love.
-‹◊›-
The forest wasn't illuminated by the rising full moon. Jack stood in front of her, completely naked, and she too was clothes-less. She had protested at first, but after he had pointed out that the transformation would only rip their clothes she had been forced to agree.
She could feel the passage of the moon as it slowly climbed into the sky like a spring in her gut that was being wound tighter with each second that passed. If something didn't happen soon, she was going to snap.
Jack was the first one to change; the shift from man to feline was fluid and effortless. One moment, he stood beside her, watching the moon, and the next a large cat was sitting next to her, his head level with her stomach.
Rose's change was not that smooth. The tension in her abdomen fractured, and she was consumed by the twisting, pulling, breaking sensation of her body morphing into a shape it had never been intended for. An eternity later, she was limply lying on her stomach in feline form.
She was unsteady at first, unsure of how to work her changed limbs in relation to what they had been. Her arms had become legs, and her legs worked at an entirely different angle. She had grown a tail.
Her senses were also disorienting. She could hear the huff of her own breathe, the creak of trees as they swayed in the wind, and the beating of a sleeping bird's heart in the tree above her. She could smell the comforting scent of Jack next to her, the pine needles they had crushed on their way into the forest, and the rabbit that had spooked when it saw them enter the woods. Perhaps best of all, she could see, even though it was almost pitch dark under the branches. Enough light filtered in through the leaves for her to see the individual leaves under her paws.
Eventually, after much exploration, Rose had become used to her new shape, and so she ran through the Wisconsin forest on four paws, Jack at her side. She was absolutely free.
A/N: This was beta'd by TheQuietforest. I don't own the Titanic, ship or movie. My next fic will be a crossover between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Dresden Files. Until next time, The Freak.