A/N: I don't really know where this came from, just an idea floating around in my head, but I hope you like it enough to maybe review because I love them! Enjoy :)
"Can I get your name, miss?" the ticket inspector asked. The old woman looked up at him and smiled briefly. The man had the same good looks as the lad she had fallen in love with many years ago: floppy golden hair, eyes as blue as the ocean and a smile that warmed the darkest depths of her soul.
She saw him everyday; her Jack was everywhere she went. He was the horse-riding instructor, the guy next to her on the roller coaster, the man who took her order in restaurants and now the ticket inspector.
And always it was the same. As soon as she blinked, Jack was gone and his handsome features were replaced by someone else's. Her soaring spirit would fall, like a plane that had been shot down, and she would have to cover up for it in one way or another.
But today she was determined not to blink or look away so she could gaze upon his face once again after all these years.
"Rose Dawson," she replied, her eyes beginning to water as she refrained from blinking.
"Okay, have a nice day, ya hear me?" It was not the same mellow accent that escaped the man's mouth; he was just an illusion. The young man punched a hole in her ticket and moved on to the young girl sitting to the right of her. Fighting the urge to blink was becoming increasingly difficult, her eyes hurt so she had to eventually give in.
One minute it was her love, her only love, Jack Dawson. In a millisecond he had changed into another man with a different life.
His life is probably not nearly as interesting as Jack's was, Rose thought to herself. She smiled weakly as she remembered his tales of adventure and daring. The time he fell into an ice cold lake and it felt like needles stabbing him all over. The times he drew pictures of the women in Paris. The time he ran away from Italy's police force through the streets of Venice. The time he fell in love with a rich girl. The time he was on top of the world and the time he died to save another's life.
In that moment, she finally found happiness. Rose wasn't surrounded by ghosts of her past anymore, but of the real people, each with a different story to tell and a life to live. That's what Jack prided himself on; living life to the full and moving on from the past.
She found herself letting go of all of the mistakes that she'd carried across oceans and actually seeing things around her. Soon she found herself chatting to a man who was a similar age to her sitting on her left and they found they had a lot in common.
And that's how 87 year old Rose Dawson found a new love in her life, on a train back from Mt Kenya to Nairobi, having just overcome the biggest mountain of her life.
