Rose lay at the surface, blowing the whistle as loudly as she could, desperate, cold, dying. Oh, it was hopeless, they would never hear her. She would just die here, like Jack.
"Come back." She croaked weakly. "Come back."
Defeated, she slumped, still blowing the whistle. Maybe dying alongside Jack wouldn't be so bad. What did she have to live for now, anyway? It would be a peaceful escape. And, in a few minutes, she would be laying next to him, finally together for eternity.
Suddenly, a light hit her face, shattering her thoughts. It was the boat, having finally noticed her. She blew the whistle louder. The boat rowed further towards her, scooping her up and covering her quickly with a blanket. The women in the boat fussed over her, tending to her, but all she could do, as they rowed away from the site, was tilt her head as best she could to the sea. She stared weakly at the floating piece of wood, where he had saved her. Frozen tears stung at the corners of her eyes.
"I love you, Jack." She croaked, sobbing inward before passing out against the floor of the small boat.
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Jack's body fell slowly through the icy water. His consciousness lay somewhere, very far off, heaven, maybe? Rose, his thoughts whispered to him. Again, and again. His consciousness was everything, all at once. Happy that she had been saved, sad, that she would live alone, angry at the unfairness of it all, and, lastly, scared, because he was dying.
Rose, his thoughts whispered once more, with increasing fervent, Rose, Rose, Rose. They grew louder. ROSE. His eyes snapped open, his mouth gasping for breath under water. His ears popping from the change in pressure. Just at the surface, he could see the hundreds of floating bodies.
Acting fast, or as quickly as he could manage, he pulled himself to the surface with a few glides of his arms. He was pumped full of adrenaline, coming from the power that he had just died and lived, all in the same moment.
At the surface, he clung to the first thing he could find. Looking down, he noticed it was the piece of wood Rose had been lying on. But she wasn't there.
'Okay,' He thought, 'She got saved. She didn't die, she…she had to've been saved.' He reassured himself, unwilling to believe that she was no longer.
Looking around frantically, he saw, in the distance, two boats. One was further away, going away from him. The other was just on the outskirts of the field of bodies. It was turned sideways, his best shot.
"Hey!" He tried to yell, but, instead, only a slight whisper came out, the product of the cold.
"Over here!" He tried again, with no luck. Jack attempted to scream a few more times, but nothing was working. He had to try to reach them.
He swam, with his dwindling power, to the nearest corpse, latching on to their lifejacket, trying his best not to look them in the face. And then the next, and the next. He continued to do this morbid trick until reaching only mere yards away from the boat.
Jack felt his strength leaving. He couldn't reach the boat. It was all over. His eyes were closing from exhaustion and cold, and his body was tensing up and shaking violently.
"Hey!" He tried calling, one last time, his voice coming out a bit more clearer this time. It was no use. They couldn't hear him. His grasp began to loosen.
Just then, a light flashed over his face, blinding him, causing him to tighten his grasp on the dead person's lifejacket.
"Anybody out there?" A strong, clear voice called, skimming the light over the field of dead.
"Hey!" Jack called again, lifting a weak arm above the water. He couldn't get more than his forearm out of the water. The light continued to skim the field, not seeing him. And then it did. The light fixed on him, making him wince his eyes shut.
"I'm alive!" He called, though the phrase sounded awkward in his mouth.
The boat rowed towards him, slowly, with the man heading it speaking in strong, clear clips. Jack couldn't understand what he was saying, though. It had to've been English, but he might as well've been speaking Latin, for all that was running through Jack's head.
The women in the boat struggled to pull him up, but succeeded, placing him on the floor of the boat, covering him with a thick, woolen blanket. He shook, from the sudden change in temperature. His teeth rattled in his head, chattering.
"Are you alright, sir?" A young woman asked him. She had a child tucked into her coat, and Jack could just see the top of the kid's head peeking from it.
"Y-yes ma-am." He whispered, attempting a smile. Satisfied, the woman turned away, brushing her hand lightly over the top of her child's head. He wasn't completely sure of it himself, though.
As the boat began to row away, toward the awakening light on the horizon, where the other boats were, he slumped against the side, pulling the wool around him tighter. He felt fatigue wash over him, and his eyes, burning for sleep, beginning to close.
Before surrendering to rest, however, he turned his head as best he could to look out over the water, his eyes searching for the piece of wood where he had seen her last. Jack found it, his eyes resting on it, even as they closed for sleep.
"Rose." Came his whisper, with a small, calm smile, because, even if she had died, even if they would never see each other again, which, admittedly, would wreck him, there would always be the Titanic; there would always be their love. And that, that alone, was all he really needed to live.
