I want to give everyone a heartfelt THANK YOU for all your comments and support on the last chapter! Whew, that was a tough one, and I'm really glad to see that people have feelings about it - that means the world to me, because it tells me that you care about these two lovelies, and that's my whole goal in writing their tale ;)
Okay. So we're going to leave our angst-ridden and miserable protagonists here in the present for a moment. The next section will consist of 7 interludes, all but one of which are from Harry's viewpoint. I'm disrupting the story flow at this critical juncture because I want to hopefully provide essential insight into prior and current events from a different perspective, and to help readers understand why and how we got to this point. You've had bits and pieces of Harry's POV before... but that was more of a 10,000-foot view; this is up close and (very) personal. And in order to do him justice, I have to reclassify the story as M (as I warned I might have to do in the Introduction and Disclaimer). If you like your heroes squeaky-clean, this might not be the section for you. Some stuff might upset you, or offend you... but that's not my intent. I want readers to see FictionalLowe as a complex individual, just like all of us. He's both light and dark, and does brave things as well as stupid things. And although these chapters do contain some questionable content, I feel that his actions are in character for the Harry I developed. There are some stories that are innocent (like the first one, which is rated T) - and some that will have long-awaited one-on-one officer interaction! I will indicate at the beginning which contain mature themes, and which are appropriate for all audiences. None of these interludes are essential to understand the rest of the story, although I allude to some of these events in later chapters, so anyone uncomfortable with reading about some of Harry's more controversial exploits can skip over it without feeling like they're missing something important.
One more thing that needs to be stated: this is even more of an alternative history than the rest of the story, because as I must emphasize, none of the events in this section actually happened (this is especially important to remember for the second and fourth interludes). So please, no recriminations or lawsuits!
So with that being said, we're off on a deep-dive into Harry's life. You might think you know him, but we've only just scratched the surface. You've been warned. Ha. And whether you love it, or hate it, or skip the questionable sections altogether... I hope you keep reading.
Final note: because of the rating change, this story will no longer appear on the default Titanic search page (I think they only display K-T stories; getting to the M stories requires a specific search). Therefore, just to make sure I don't lose anybody during the transition, I'm going to hold off posting a new update until next week. That should give everyone enough time to bookmark, follow, favorite, or figure out how to search for W&S under the M section ;) Hope to see you all then!