A/N: So I just finished watching Titanic really late at night with one of my really good friends, alone in a room with cookies and a box of tissues. And now I have to write this. It's going to be a two-shot—one from Rose's point of view, one from Jack's.
It takes a while for her to get on her feet again. She spends the first month near starving, cold and penniless and scrubbing tables in New York as a waitress. She watches the calluses grow on her hands bitterly, lives in a dingy apartment that she shares with another girl. The bed is hard and worn and she cries herself to sleep every night—the huge, thick, pearly tears and sniffles kind, accompanied dutifully by heaps and heaps of self-pity. She goes from nobility to nothing in the blink of an eye, so she guesses that a grace period of mourning is deserved.
But one day, as she's busing tables and rubbing her knuckles raw, she sees the sunset from outside the grungy diner and her breath catches in her throat and she can feel his fingers intertwined with hers, resting on her waist as she flies and they kiss and the world explodes with life and color, wave upon wave of glory.
And she thinks to herself that as long as there are still sunsets, there is still hope.
So she starts saving her money and brushing her hair, walks into work straight backed with a smile on her face. And each night there is still a sunset.
She meets Thomas Calvert on her sixth week there. He's a regular—she's seen him before, through her dull, hazed eyes, sitting in the second booth on the right every day, ordering the same black coffee and blueberry pancake at 8 a.m. sharp. He looks at her a lot—she never noticed the admiration until now.
She greets him with a grin and a cheerful: "How are you, sir?", and his eyes light up and suddenly she remembers she has dimples and red hair. He tells her to call him Thomas and she feels pretty for the first time in a while. It's kind of nice.
They don't really talk much until two months later, when she finally accepts his invitation to have a cup of coffee. It's idle chit chat—interests and origins, weather and politics. She's excited that he's read Freud before. He seems nice enough, but he's no Jack.
Things escalate a bit. Thomas starts dropping by for dinner, loitering until she gets off shift and then walking her home. She blushes and flinches away when he tries to hold her hand. His skin doesn't feel right against hers.
It takes her a while to notice the change in her nights. She can't find the tears to cry herself to sleep anymore. Instead, she starts dreaming and thinking and planning what she will do with the money—it's getting more and more substantial, and she has such big ideas. When she isn't daydreaming, she's spending time with Thomas or visiting the library nearby, checking out books and reading them. When she's not doing that, she thinks of Jack.
It still aches. It always will. When she closes her eyes, she can see green eyes and a strand of blond brown hair, falling in his face. More importantly, she can see a person who believes in her—really, truly thinks that she can go wherever she wants, reach the stars if she so desires. If she thinks too hard, the hurt gets unbearable.
So she presses on instead.
It's not that Jack ever fades. She will never let him go.
It's that every moment she breathes is a chance at life, a chance to keep going. She knows too well how precious her steady heartbeat is, her constant inhale exhale. Her future was bought with far too high a price for her to waste it moping, no matter how much easier moping is.
Healing is hard, it really is. She wants nothing more than to crawl into a corner and cry, but his reminder is as perpetual as the dull thudthud in her chest.
Make it count.
She has the air in her lungs and blood in her veins, thrumming fiercely. That will have be enough.
She likes to think he's watching her as she goes to the carnival with Thomas and insists on riding the worst spinning roller coaster over and over again, until she stumbles off the cart to the nearest garbage can and heaves and retches her stomach out. Not exactly the most romantic thing for Jack to witness, but nonetheless, important. She's moving. She's going. No matter how hard or how hopeless.
She feels so guilty and dirty at first when Thomas tries to kiss her, pushes him away and runs to a bench sobbing. It's when she's sitting there and she's got her knees pulled up to her chest and the tears running down her cheek that she realizes that she's exactly where she was a year ago—drowning in self-pity alone on a railing, contemplating all the morbidities of the world. Actionless. Caught by inertia. Going nowhere.
She's already been saved once, and it's up to her to save herself this time.
Thomas is really understanding when she explains that they have to take things slow. He is gentle and kind and compassionate, and she looks up at the stars briefly and thinks that maybe, maybe this could work. They don't accuse her—they twinkle just as gently and lovingly as they always did before. Stars are constant. Stars merely want to watch her shine.
It's a long, slow process. Thomas is infinitely patient when she's wearied. There are some nights when she can see Jack's face as vividly as the evening in the car, when she held him so close and their heartbeats raced in tandem. But those nights become fewer and farther between, and before she knows it, she's off in college studying art like she's always wanted to, taking psychology courses in her free time. It's nice to know she shines pretty brightly when she wants to.
So when Thomas proposes, she accepts, and they go on a honeymoon to the beach and ride horseback in the surf. She straddles the mare with both legs and gallops her way down. Her heart is pounding and her cheeks flushed. Her hair flows wild and radiant behind her, and in that moment, she knows he is there, he is watching, he is so proud.
She pauses to remember the sound of the waves crashing in and out against the sand, and hocks way deep back in her throat, and spits like a real man into the ocean.
All the sadness goes out with it.
She's left with only the sunset.
A/N: I'm not sure what that was. Please read and review regardless.