The day Jack had been anticipating for weeks had finally arrived, and he jumped off the couch eager to pack his single bag for the trip. He'd collected his check yesterday with no intention to return to the factory, planning to just disappear into the horizon with Rose and live more freely than he ever had. Roaming around Paris had its beautiful moments, but it was a scrap of a memory compared to what he and Rose were going to do on the open road.

He threw his two other pairs of clothes in along with a comb, toothbrush, his sketchpad, art supplies, and some dry snacks. Fabrizio was already gone to work that morning—they had celebrated Fabri's successful settlement into America and toasted to Jack's new adventure with multiple pints of beer at the pub last night, falling asleep huddled on the couch together like the good old days—but Jack shared one last meal with Tommy before he was to meet Rose at the corner down the street.

"I can't believe it," Tommy said as they finished dining over buttered bread and sausage. "I truly never believed you'd be able to get close enough to that lass to even exchange names with her. Now you're running away together."

"Well, I had no idea stuffy society women like her could have such wild spirits hiding underneath. She took me more by surprise than I did, trust me."

Tommy, not usually one to display his emotions often, had a sad smile on. "I hope she gives you all the happiness in the world, boyo. You deserve it."

"Thanks, Tommy. You too." As Jack picked up his bag and headed towards the door, they shared a brief hug. "Good luck with the pub. Once we settle somewhere, I'll send you an address. Keep me updated." With that, he pulled away and walked out the door, ready to live out the rest of his days exactly like he and his girl wanted to.

For a fleeting second that morning when Rose woke up, she blanked about the events of yesterday and how much she had to figure out. But the cause of yesterday's stirrup and all of her crises didn't care for her peace of mind, and her stomach stirred as she propped herself up and struggled to get out of bed without vomiting all over the floor.

After clearing the nausea from her body into the toilet, she called for Trudy, knowing fully well that she was meant to meet Jack in less than an hour. But with Cal having her on lockdown, she needed someone on her side to talk through how she was going to get out to see him at least one last time; Jack deserved to know what was going on.

Trudy closed the door behind her. "How are you feeling, miss?"

"Oh, Trudy." Rose, who was curled up on her chaise lounge still in her nightgown, couldn't dam her frustrations any longer; her eyes swelled and she started to cry. "Trudy, does everyone downstairs know what's going on?"

Trudy appeared hesitant, folding her hands in front of her. "We were concerned about you when we were cleaning up the dining room. We hoped you weren't too sick."

A weak bark of laughter escaped Rose's throat as she gestured for Trudy to sit beside her, her trembling hand grabbing onto Trudy's sturdy one. "I'm not sick at all. Though I don't know if I can say the same about Cal… What he said yesterday, what he threatened me with. He's vile. I need…" She took a deep breath, the reminder of Cal having churned her stomach. "I need to see Jack today, Trudy. I don't know how, but I do. I can't break his heart then have him show up here looking for me, because I know he would do that. Cal can have him put away for absolute lies, and I can't defend him. Cal's diminished my voice to nothing, not even a speck of dust."

Trudy patted Rose's hand, then handed her a tissue from her pocket as more tears stained Rose's cheeks. "You can't leave the house, miss. I don't want to risk getting you in any more trouble. You need to rest, if not for yourself, then for…" She trailed off, not finishing her sentence, as if vocalizing "the baby" would somehow curse it. "I can give him a message."

"Thank you, Trudy, truly." Rose dabbed the tissue around her reddening nose. "But he needs to hear this news from me. I don't want him to hear this from someone else."

Trudy nodded in understanding, though it didn't diminish her concern for her lady and friend. After a few beats, the beginning crinkles of a grin grew at the corners of Rose's lips. "A part of me wonders, can I still concoct some plan to leave and be able to get everything I want? Some way I can be with Jack and keep our baby…" A hazy picture formed in Rose's mind: she and Jack lounging on the beach in Santa Monica, a faceless child cradled between her legs. Her smile faltered. "I know, right now, it would be stupid of me to try. But I hope, Trudy… I hope one day…" She couldn't finish the sentence, but Trudy pulled her into a hug as she fell apart again, already knowing what she was going to say.

Jack arrived five minutes early to their meeting spot on the corner, dropping his bag at his feet and pulling out a cigarette. He lit it up, bouncing on the heels of his feet, unable to contain the energy tearing him apart.

A clock, ticking along despite having seen better days, hung on a weathered brick building overlooking the street, and when the hour struck, Jack waited anxiously for their lives to start. He patiently stood as five minutes passed, then ten. He fidgeted as those ten minutes turned to twenty, then thirty. A sour feeling knotted his intestines after forty minutes. Rose wouldn't be late for something that mattered so much to both of them.

Just when Jack was about to give up, he saw her walking towards him in the distance. At first, his excitement leapt, but it dropped once he noticed she wasn't carrying anything and her eyes were puffy. "What's wrong?" He stepped closer to soothe her, but she took a step back, stopping him.

"Something has happened. I can't go to California with you," she said, her voice hoarse from hours of crying.

Jack was, plainly, confused. "What...what do you mean?"

Rose looked down at her feet and bit her thumbnail as a fresh batch of tears ran down her cheeks. Usually, this sort of announcement would call for a celebration, but all she felt was defeat. "I'm pregnant." She wiped her face with the back of her hand. "I'm so sorry, Jack," she sobbed, "but Cal has said if I try to run he'll..." She thought she might vomit all over the sidewalk. "He'll have you arrested, and who knows what he'd do with...with..." She encased her flat belly with her arms, still ruminating over how everything had been uprooted yet come full circle.

Jack believed he heard her correctly. His own stomach turned queasy at the initial shock of it. "Okay…" A million words zoomed through his head as he attempted to form a full sentence. He tried to reach out to her again, and this time she allowed him to place a single hand on her shoulder. "But... We can still do this, Rose. If we go fast, he won't be able to find us."

She knew quite well that refusal to believe that things had become complicated, to push through and do what she wanted to anyway; but she had come far in the last twenty-four hours. "We can't just run, Jack. It's not just the two of us anymore," she said, rubbing a tear off her cheek. "You don't understand how much power he has. He'd track us down with a snap of a finger. We can't hide from him." She bit the inside of her cheek and questioned how she had gotten herself so hopeful before. "Not anymore. Not with a baby, now that he knows."

"Then how did you get here?"

Rose pointed to a street corner farther down, where Jack hadn't noticed Lovejoy peering at them from a distance the entire time. "I'm so sorry, Jack," she cried again, and he placed both of his hands on her shoulders, massaging them gently.

"Hey, no, listen. There's nothing to be sorry for. This is exciting, isn't it?" His shaky palms betrayed his attempts to comfort her. His emotions were in such a state of flux, he was on the brink of panic over how he could help the situation. This couldn't be the end, could it? In fact, he was so attentive to Rose's distress and his own upset over the destruction of their original plan, he still hadn't fully processed that he was going to be a father.

"I wish this was exciting, Jack, but I'm terrified. I don't know the first thing about being a mother." She sniffled and broke his glassy gaze. "Or how to be okay with not being one when I know my child is out there somewhere."

Jack's heart, already cracked, was shattered as she explained the rest of Cal's manipulation: that he not only was going to keep them apart, but he was going to eradicate the child from their lives as soon as they took their first breath. Would she even get the chance to hold them? Rose wondered aloud, while Jack silently wondered if he would ever get to see them at all, or if the baby would forever be a figment in his imagination.

"Rose." His head was clearing up now, determined to protect more than their dreams. "We have to get out of here. Don't worry about Cal, I can handle him. But for your safety, and for this baby…" His face flushed as he tenderly placed a tremulous hand on her waist. "We need to go. Settle down far from here."

She inhaled a shaky breath, aware that she needed to be home soon before Cal became suspicious. "I want more than anything to say yes... But if Cal was looking for us, it'd be too dangerous to stay in one place for too long, right? We can't travel once I'm farther along. And how can we introduce our baby to such a turbulent environment? As much as I trust you, Jack, I'd never feel safe. I'd constantly worry for all three of us." She couldn't believe that instead of running to the nearest train station, she was stepping away from her new life. "I'm sorry, Jack. I want so desperately to go with you, but I need to do this, for all of us." She tried to take a step back, but he gently grabbed her elbow.

"Rose, don't go," he pleaded. "We can still figure this out—"

"I spent most of the night thinking over this, and it's just not realistic, Jack. I can't travel in this state, and we can't travel with a baby… As much as it hurts me to think about not seeing you or keeping this child, it hurts less than the idea of you in jail and losing my baby." He let her go, his arm dropping, defeated, at his side. "I need to go, Jack. I already risked a lot to meet you here. I…"

She opened her mouth to say goodbye, but was choked by a sob; instead she turned around without anymore thought and quickly walked back over to Lovejoy, blinking away another bout of tears. He put his hand out and she reached into her pocket, producing two gold rings she'd scavenged from the bottom of her jewelry box as payment. "Thank you, Mr. Lovejoy. I would like to go home now."

When Fabrizio returned home that night, the apartment was dark; Tommy was still at work, it seemed. As he turned on a light, he swore immediately at a tall figure sprawled out on the couch, and prepared to fight him back; but then he recognized it was only Jack, and his fight-or-flight diminished to worry. "Jack? What are you doing here? You're supposed to be gone."

Jack didn't budge from his depressed position staring at the ceiling, and Fabrizio could see, based on the ashtray, that he'd smoked through five cigarettes. "She's not leaving, Fabri," he said, choked up from the mix of crying and cigarette smoke.

Fabrizio sat on the edge of the couch next to Jack's straightened legs; he'd never seen him in such a devastated state before. "Why not? What happened?"

Jack shook his head and placed a hand over his eyes, which already looked more sunken into his skull; maybe once he returned his vision to himself, he'd wake up on a train to California, but he was still looking at the same crackled ceiling. The dozens of times he'd done that in the last few hours, and nothing changed; he was the definition of crazy. "Her fiancé found out. He's threatening to put me in jail if I try to see her. He'll say that I… that I hurt her, forced myself on her, such bullshit. How could he get away with lying about that? He's the one who hurts her, manipulates her, hits her. He's the one who should be put away before he harms her again." His face flushed red, and he had to clench and unclench his fists multiple times to relieve some of the pounding desire to beat up Caledon Hockley. "And that's not all, Fabri. She...she told me she's pregnant, and scared, and I can't see her to help her through any of it. This whole thing is driving me crazy, she doesn't get to keep the baby either. I'm supposed to sit here and pretend that I don't know that I have a kid out there somewhere? Just hope they end up in a loving family? That's total bullshit, Fabri. All of this is. I can take care of her. I want to take care of this baby too, my kid. My kid, no one else's."

Out of all of the pitfalls that could have befallen them, they never expected this. And how could he not have? Wasn't the possibility always dangling in front of him since the moment they decided to delve further in the backseat of that Renault? He was stupid for thinking the rules of nature would somehow evade them that night.

"This...is a lot to process, Jack," Fabrizio said as he patted his knee. He wished he could provide his friend some more solace, but he couldn't promise him anything that his heart was aching for. There was nothing to say, really. No you'll see each other again soon; she may never reach out to him again. No congratulations; he may never meet his child.

"I know," Jack said, his voice calm despite how riled he had been just a moment ago. "I just… I can't leave her, Fabri. She's strong, she always will be strong, but there was something about her that seemed more fragile today. It's no longer just about protecting her… It's about protecting both of them, getting them both out of there before something bad happens."

He blew out the last smoke from his cigarette, missing the tray as he threw it out, the ash dumping onto a few crumpled sheets of paper. Each was scribbled out multiple times, struggling to find the right thing to say, but all were addressed to the same person: Dear Rose…

When Rose returned home that afternoon, she was able to evade everyone with questions about where she was. If questioned, Lovejoy had instructions to say he had supervised her while she walked in her father's garden. She trudded upstairs and avoided collapsing on her bed, knowing that once she did, she wouldn't be able to remove herself from it. Instead, she stepped out onto her balcony and glanced down. The trellis once blooming with ivy, the one that had gotten her through rebellion and gloomy days, was gone. Soon, she thought, it will be as if our plan to sneak away never existed at all.

Propping her elbow on the railing, she relaxed her head into her palm and stared out at the vast backyard she had shrugged off for the vibrant city life the last few years. She expected to get quite familiar with it now that she had nowhere else to go. She imagined a child toddling in the garden, as she watched on alone, an open book in her hand. She couldn't imagine much more than that; not even the color of hair that the child had, or the brand of their shoes. Just a blurry, toddler-shaped blob stirring up feelings inside her that she couldn't quite pinpoint.

Then she peered at the garden shed, her eyes fluttering shut. She could remember the chill air, her naked back pressing into the itchy straw. The only thing preventing her from shivering uncontrollably was his warm body, immune to the cold, on top of her. Other images from that night came to mind: his calloused fingers between her thighs. How her skirts bundled up around her hips and her nails dug into the skin of his back as he entered inside her. How unhurried yet fleeting those final moments felt when soul and body had lined up and become one. A moment similar to that one had left behind a new life.

Something wet pricked her finger and the memory was replaced by the bright, partially cloudy sky; she ran her hand over her cheek, not realizing she had been crying again. That was enough reminiscing about what had been and what could have been, Rose thought. She needed to start keeping herself healthy if she wanted to protect one of her last connections to the outside world and the love that she had.

She went back inside and squeezed into her closet, reaching for a corner that contained a square chest. The chest held nothing more than some old dresses from her childhood, but under the chest—if she remembered correctly—was something special.

The floorboard still pried open as Rose remembered it did. Underneath was the stash of books she'd hidden away as a child and young teenager. Not because they needed to be hidden away, but because it gifted her a thrill in her boring life to have a secret of some kind. She pulled them all out, creating a tower of books untouched for years and a world occupied only by her and her imagination. That afternoon, she called Trudy to help her undress from her morning gown and restrictive corset, and asked to have dinner brought up to her that evening as she wouldn't be dining with her mother and Cal.

This was how Trudy found Rose later that day when delivering her dinner: in a nightgown despite it being 7PM, curled up on the chaise lounge with a fire burning, a book propped in her lap with more books scattered on the floor along with a few sheets of paper near her feet. She blushed when she recognized that they were the drawings done in an intimate setting by her artist lover, along with freshly printed papers covered in Rose's neat cursive handwriting.

"Miss, your dinner as requested." She set the tray by the door as was customary, prepared to leave in order to not disturb.

"Trudy," Rose called out before she left. "May I ask how they seemed?"

Trudy fidgeted her thumbs. "Still upset, miss. I explained you weren't feeling well and they didn't seem too bothered by that."

Rose draped her legs back over the couch, her bare feet chilled by the cool floor. "Do you have a minute, Trudy?"

Trudy nodded and Rose removed the papers she had scattered next to her. "I found all of these books today. Do you remember how much I wanted to keep hiding more of them? We almost had to build a secret room in my closet or something."

Trudy laughed gently. "I remember very well, miss. You would always call me to help you if the floorboard got stuck."

Rose smiled, her first genuine expression of some semblance of happiness since the doctor's news yesterday. "Before Jack, and before Cal… Before anything drastic, really, happened in my life. Everything was so dull to me. These books were my only escape to something better, something more exciting. No matter what I was feeling, they were always here." She gestured to the various stories, ranging from Alice in Wonderland to Pride and Prejudice. "No matter what happens to me now, they'll still be here."

Trudy reached down and picked up a copy of Anne of Green Gables. It had been published four years ago, but Trudy still hadn't read it; even if fifteen was considered too old to read a children's book, she wondered who this Anne was and what kind of adventures she had, never having had enough time growing up to read what she wanted to.

"You can keep that if you'd like," Rose said. "I was obsessed with it when it came out. I think I still have it set in memory."

Trudy hugged the book to her chest. "Thank you, miss. I would appreciate that very much."

Rose's warm expression dampened as she closed her copy of Jane Eyre on her lap. "I wonder if my baby will grow up thinking they're an orphan…"

The crackling fire defended the room from total silence as Trudy felt herself become more heartbroken about the messy situation. "I don't know, miss. There's still a lot of time. Maybe something will change."

"Like Cal will let me go?" Rose laughed out of pain. "I wasn't entirely careful and those actions had consequences. But it's still my choice how I handle it. And I want to go through with bringing this child into the world. Even if I never get to see them again… There will be some part of me out there, still a better part of me than what I'll be leaving behind by being Cal's wife." She leaned her head back against the couch, her mind returning to that nondescript being she pictured wandering through the garden. "All my love is going to leave with that baby. I won't fight anymore, I just know... They'll carry that strong part of me because God knows they'll need it more, being ripped away from parents who would have loved them just as much as they loved each other."

A/N: Weird but true, one of the literature courses I took in college focused on 19th/20th century children's literature. A part of me couldn't help but bring up some of the ones I studied (my favorite being Alice in Wonderland because it's just so trippy and trying to make sense of it for an essay was a strange experience). I also took a course in Victorian literature (my favorite being Jane Eyre). I don't know why, but I'm just fascinated by the Victorian and Edwardian eras and it's made me more sucked into Titanic.