Wow, so this chapter took me a while. The sinking is suck a hard scene to right because it is so tragic that you have to get it just right.
My heart really goes out to all of the victims and their families of the Costa Concordia.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Not even Caroline's dress. She's coming up in the next chapter. There is this chapter and the next before the epilogue, so our story with our wonderful, handsome Prince Damon, and our brilliant Klaus and Elijah (for mayor). That alone might make me cry!
I loved the last scene of two weeks ago on TVD, how Elijah was just standing there with the heart in his hand and Klaus is kind of just like staring and I'm thinking 'can hybrids go into shock?'
I'm giving you an instrumental song to look up on youtube and listen to with this chapter. It's called 'Rose'. It's by James Horner.
As men, we are all equal in the presence of death. ~ Publilius Syrus
In death we are all equal. ~ A Jewish Phrase
People were jumping from the well deck, the poop deck, the gangway doors. Some hit debris in the water and the people were hurt or killed. Hundreds of passengers, clinging to every fixed object on the deck, huddled on their knees around Father Byles, who had his voice raised in prayer. They were praying, sobbing, or just staring at nothing, their minds blank with dread, fear overtaking them.
The propellers were twenty feet above the water and rising faster. Elena's hand covered her mouth as she watched. On the other side of the wreck, Isobel was making the same gesture as her daughter. Damon looked onward in sheer horror and Klaus barked out to the two seamen to row faster. Alaric was unable to tear his glaze away from the picture before him of the ship straight in the water behind them, wondering if the young Count had made it from the accident. Tyler looked at the dying liner, then placed his hand on his friend's shoulder and they continued rowing away from the scene. Bonnie stared ahead, unblinking, remembering her mother was in there, along with countless others, all about to meet the same fate.
On the A Deck promenade, passengers lost their grips and slid down the wooden deck like it were a giant children's slide, slipping hundreds of feet down before they hit the water. Emily Bennett, Isobel's maid and Bonnie's mother, slipped as she struggled along the railing, and slid away screaming.
The propellers were one hundred feet out of the water and they rising. People clung to the rail that Elena once tried to fling herself from. Others leapt from the poop deck rail, screaming as they fell, and then hit the water like mortar rounds. A man fell from the poop deck, hitting the bronze hub of the starboard propeller with a sickening smack, leaving a line of red and he fell into the ocean.
Swimmers in the water looked up and saw the stern rising up, the propellers reaching for the stars and swam faster.
Isobel listened as the sounds of the dying ship and the screaming people came across the water. Titanic's lights were still blazing, reflecting in the still water and moonless night. Its stern was high in the air, angled up over forty-five degrees as if Titanic was a toy boat that a child was carelessly playing with and left it there like that. The propellers were one hundred fifty feet out of the water, rising about frantic people. Over a thousand passengers clung to the decks, looking from a distance more like a beehive and a swarm of bees. The image was unbelievable, unthinkable. Isobel stared at it in utter shock, unable to put the tragedy into any proportions.
"God almighty," Margaret Brown whispered beside her. The great liner's lights flickered.
In the darkness in the ship, Chief Engineer Bell hung onto a pipe at the master breaker panel as his men climbed through tilted cyclopean machines with electric hand torches. Water sprayed down as pipes broke, hitting the breaker panel, but Bell would not leave his post. The breakers kicked. He slammed them in again and there was a blast of light. Something melted, and arcing filled the engine room with nightmarish light before the lights finally went out and the Titanic became no more than a vast black silhouette against the starlight background.
In Collapsible C, J. Bruce Ismay had his back to the ship, unable to watch the great steamer die along with hundreds of people. Even though his eyes were averted, he couldn't block out the sounds of the dying people and machinery aboard the ship and in the water, he couldn't block out the looks of horror on his boat mates' faces.
A loud cracking came across the water and the deck split near the third funnel. A chasm opened with a thunder of breaking steel. Men fell into the chasm to their deaths. The people falling looked more like dolls than human beings.
Fires, explosions, and sparks lit the gapping chasm as the hull split down through nine decks to the keel. The sea poured into the gaping wound. It looked like a portal straight to hell.
Workers screamed as the immense machinery came apart around them, steel frames twisting like bits of taffy. Their torches illuminated the foaming blackness that overtook them as they tried to climb.
The stern half of the ship was almost four hundred feet long in length. Damon looked in repulsion as he spotted a little girl, Annabel Wu, trying to bob above the freezing water in her lifebelt. Without thinking, he dove off the boat and into the icy ocean with little regard for himself. He heard Elena scream, heard her fighting someone who was holding her back, as the water splashed in his ears. Swimming faster than he had in his life, he grabbed the five-year-old and swam in the opposite direction. He ignored the screams from above as he unhooked her lifebelt when he saw the ship coming down on them and said, "Hold your breath, Anna, and don't let go on my hand." They propelled themselves beneath the unforgiving surface as the stern nearly missed them.
"Damon!" Elena screamed in pain, lunging towards the two figures that went under. Klaus grabbed her around the waist to hold her back as she fought him, yelling at him to let go, ignoring as she beat on his arms with her fists. Finally, as she watched her husband submerge beneath the surface, she began to break down.
The stern pushed out a mighty wave of displaced water, Anna and Damon in it. They emerged from the port side of the stern, gasping heavily. They then started swimming as fast as they could, the horrible mechanics about to play out. The stern was rapidly tilted up by the weight of the flooded bow.
Everyone was cling to benches, railing, ventilators, anything to keep them from sliding as the massive stern was lifted again. The farther up it went, the louder people seemed to scream, sliding and tumbling, flailing to grab something, anything, to help postpone their death. They wrenched other people loose and they fell forward with them. There were a large number of bodies clinging to the stern's forward rail.
The stern was now straight up in the air. It hung there, as if it were a note in sustain. People who didn't climb over the railing hung and fell one by one, plummeting down the vertical face of the poop deck. Some bounded sickeningly off of deck benches and ventilators.
Damon anticipated the stern's final sinking and yelled at Anna to swim faster. They weren't going to make it back to the lifeboat as the stern's plunge gathered speed. Both him and the little girl taking another deep breath, they disappear with the liner under the water. Where the ship has stood, there was nothing, only the black ocean.
Bodies were whirled and spun, some struggling, others like limps dolls, as the vortex sucked them down and tumbled them like a vision out of a horror movie or some Greek tragedy. Damon kicked hard for the surface, holding little Anna tightly, pulling her up.
At the surface, it was chaos of screaming, thrashing people. Thousands were now floating where the ship went down. Some were stunned and gasping for breath. Some were praying, others were crying and moaning, screaming and shouting. Damon and Anna surfaced amongst them. They hardly had time to gasp for air before people were clawing at them. Some had already frozen to death, and Damon removed the lifebelt from two, putting them on him and Anna.
A man pushed little Anna under, trying to get onto anything. Damon punched him hard in the face and pulled her free. "Swim, Anna! Swim!"
She tried, but her strokes were not as effective as Damon's because of her tiny arms trying the reach the water in the lifebelt. "Keep swimming. Keep moving. Come on, you can do it."
It would have been so easy to give up, with nothing but blackness stretching as far as the eye could see, but somehow, Damon found the will to keep going.
"Look for something floating. Some debris...wood...anything."
"It cold, Daiwin," the little girl said, mispronouncing his name.
"I know it is. I know. Help me, here. Look around." His words helped to keep her mind off the cold for a bit. She let out a shriek as the black French bulldog swam at her like a sea monster. Beyond it, something was floating in the water.
"What that?" she asked, pointing. They made for it together. It was a piece of wooden debris. Damon slid on, laying on his back, and pulled the little girl onto his stomach to keep her from the water. She clung to him. "Where my mommy, Daiwin?"
"I don't know," he told her.
"We going to die?" The Count shook his head.
"Don't say that. We're both going to get out of this and be nice and safe on land."
Nearby, a ship's officer, Chief Officer Wilde, was blowing his whistle, knowing the sound out carry for miles over the water.
"The boats will come back for us, Anna. Hold on just a little longer. They had to row away for the suction and now they'll be coming back."
She nodded, his words helping her. She was shivering uncontrollably, her lips blue and her teeth chattering. He rubbed her arms up and down, trying to warm the little girl. People were still screaming, calling to the lifeboats.
In Boat 6, Isobel had covered her ears against the wailing in the darkness. The first class women in the boat sat, stunned, listening to the sound of dying hundreds screaming, all knowing that could have been them.
"They'll pull us right down, I tell you!" Hitchens told the woman.
"Aw, knock it off. You're scaring me. Come on, girls. Grab your oars. Let's go," Margaret argued. Nobody moved. "Well, come on!"
The women couldn't meet her eyes as they huddled into their ermine wraps.
"I don't understand a one of you. What's the matter with you? It's your men back there! We got plenty of room for more."
"If you don't shut that hole in your face, there'll be one less in this boat!" Hitchens snapped. Isobel stood suddenly.
"Pass me an oar, Maggie. My daughter could be in there." Maggie grinned triumphantly and handed Isobel the oar. Trudie Peterson stood.
"Pass two oars this way," she said, passing an oar to Honoria Fells. More women followed their example, making room for survivors to crowd into the boat. Defeated, Hitchens sat down. The woman began to row back towards the wreckage.
In Boat 1, Sir Cosmo and Lucille Duff-Gordon sat with ten other people in a boat that was mostly empty. It was meant to hold forty people. They were two hundred yards from the screaming in the darkness.
"We should do something," Fireman Hendrickson said.
Lucille squeezed Cosmo's hand and pleaded to him with her eyes. She was terrified. ""It's out of the question," Sir Cosmo told them.
The crewmembers agreed. They hunched together guiltily, hoping the terrible sounds would stop soon.
Twenty boats, most half full, floated in the darkness. None of them made a move other than Lifeboat 6 towards the other boats, looking for survivors farther out.
Damon floated on the board with Anna on his belly. "Daiwin, tell me a stowee."
"Well, once upon a time, there was a beautiful girl, a Countess. She wished for a handsome young man to sweep her away, but he never seemed to be coming. There was a young man, a Count of another land, who had been in love with her for as long as he could remember, but was so afraid of her, he didn't make a move."
"Why was he afwaid if he wuv her?"
"Because, her momma was a princess, a beautiful princess."
"Did she wive in a castle?"
"A big, beautiful castle, complete with a vineyard, a mote, and a stable full of purebred horses…"
"Lots of ponies?" Damon smiled.
"Yeah, lots of ponies." He looked up at the stars, "So anyways, the Count, he had a friend who plotted with the Countess to get them together, so his friend wrote the Countess a letter pretending to be the Count and she responded to the letter."
"Was he angwee at his fwiend?" Damon shook his head.
"No, he was stunned that she had wrote to him. He wrote back and within the year, they were engaged to be married."
"What happened? Did they mawwee and wive happwee evew afwer?" Damon smiled sadly at the sky.
"They're together forever and ever. They can never be separated," he said, not wanting to tell her the truth.
"It getting quiet," she whispered, minutes later.
"Just a few more minutes. It'll take them a while to get the boats organized..."
"The man with the whistle is sweeping." Damon turned his head and saw that Officer Wilde had died from exposure.
"I don't know about you, but I intend to write a strongly worded letter to the White Star Line about all this," he laughed weakly, "I know my papà will have a thing or two to say to them."
"If we don't find Mommy, will you be my new Daddy?" Damon smiled sadly at the little girl, hugging her to him, trying to keep her warm.
"I'll be your new Daddy, Anna. Elena will be your new Momma too. Is that okay?"
"That okay. I love you, Daiwin," she said, her eyelids beginning to droop.
"No!" he said, and her eyes blinked open, "Don't go to sleep on me! Don't give up."
"But I cold."
"I know you're cold, but you're going to get out of this. We're going to get out of here and I'll take you to a big house in America with large fireplaces, and warm beds, and lots of ponies and you can have your own. You're going to grow up and meet boys and break their hearts, and get married and you'll have lots of children, and you'll die an old lady, warm in her bed, but not here. Do you understand me?"
"I can't feel my body, Daiwin."
"You must do me this honor and keep this promise from a very handsome prince from far, far away." He was going to try everything to keep Anna awake, even if he had to stoop as low as using this. Sure enough, the little girl's eyes opened wide, staring at him in wonder.
"From a pwince?"
"That's right, from a prince… and he wanted me to make you promise that you will survive… and that you will never give up… no matter what happens… no matter how hopeless… promise me now."
"I pwomise."
"Never let go of it."
"I pwomise. I nevew wet go, nevew, evew wet go," she said, more cheerful now. She grabbed one of his large hands in both of hers. It became quiet now, except for the lapping of the water.
Fifth Officer Lowe had gotten Boats 10, 12, and Collapsible D together with his own Boat 14. He got everyone to hold the boats together, and was transferring passengers from 14 into the others, to empty his boat for a rescue attempt.
The women stepped gingerly across into the other boats and he saw a shawled figure in too much of a hurry. He ripped off the shawl and he stared into the face of a man. He angrily shoved the stowaway into another boat and turned to his crew of three.
"Right, man the oars."
The beam of an electric torch carried across the water like a searchlight as Boat 14 came through the water. The torch illuminated the floating debris, an emotion trail of wreckage: a violin, a child's wooden soldier, a framed photo of a steerage family, a wooden Biography camera.
Then came the first bodies. The people had frozen to death. Some looked as if they had merely fallen asleep, others stared up at the stars. The bodies became to thick to row without hitting the heads of floating men and women. A seaman threw up at the sight. Lowe saw a mother with her arms frozen around a lifeless baby, trying to protect the child from the cold all around them.
"We waited too long," he said softly, wanting to throw up as well.
Anna woke from her nap against Damon's warm chest. She had been lulled to sleep by his soft heartbeat and woken to him having a fit in his dream, calling for a woman who she could only guess to be his mother into the night. Anna stared over the bodies. She knew she would be dying. It was a miracle she wasn't already dead. She couldn't feel her arms and there was frost crystals stuck to her eyelashes and hair. Her lips barely moved as she sang a song Damon had taught her.
"Come Wosewine in my fwying machine…"
Their raven hair was dusted with those little frost crystals, making them appear to be unearthly beings, her breathing shallow and nearly motionless. In seeming slow motion, she saw the silhouette of a boat coming near. She saw men rowing it slowly, lifting the oars out of the syrupy water. The men sounded slow and distorted.
The lookout flashed his torch toward her and she reached toward the pretty light. The boat was fifty feet away, and moving past her. The men looked away. Suddenly snapping to, she shook Damon awake. He wasn't waking up. Was it too late for him too?
"Daiwin, wake up! Daiwin, thewe's a boat!"
Slowly, the man blinked opened his pretty blue eyes and looked at her.
"Daiwin, thewe's a boat." He turned suddenly.
"Come on," he told her, off the board and into the water. She followed and shivered. How was Daiwin not cold, she wondered, how was he not frozen like ewewyone else. He swam to the man with the whistle and yanked the whistle from his hand, blowing it hard and loud. Anna clung to his shirt, unable to do much else. The sound slapped across the still water.
In Boat 14, Lowe whipped around at the sound of the whistle. He turned the tiller. "Row back! That way! Pull!"
Damon kept blowing as the boat came to them and Anan continued to cling to the man. He was still blowing the whistle when Lowe lifted Anna from his back, wrapping the tiny child in a blanket and helping Damon aboard. They scrambled to cover him with blankets as he fought unconsciousness.
"The other boats," he asked, "Collapsible C, did it make it away okay?" he asked Lowe, not seeming very regal at the moment.
"They're okay, son."
"Not that young," he muttered, pulling Anna's blanketed form to him, "I'm twenty."
"Get some rest. You're safe now." Damon nodded tiredly.
"That's good. Papà will be happy. Grand-mére and Nonno won't have to hold another funeral so soon," he muttered as he drifted into a dream world.
Klaus held Elena to him, making room for her next to him. She was still cold, but at least she had fallen asleep before the sounds of the people in the water lost their voice as they slowly froze to death. She didn't have to think about her lover, now probably dead under the Atlantic's surface after the stern fell. He was jealous that she had chosen a steerage man over him.
Klaus couldn't sleep. Someone had to come for them. What felt like lifetimes later, the Carpathia showed itself from the distance, and he allowed himself to finally relax.
I replaced Rose with Anna for the sinking. I didn't want Damon to die. Do you have a problem about that? If you do, tell me in a nice little review!
Ok, so depressing chapter. Reviews make me happy. 50 reviews before the next chapter! If I get 55 reviews on this story, I'll stop working on Where We Begin and finish up the next chapter. :) (I feel so uninspired at the moment. How awful is that?)