20th February 1914

Annette sat outside the building on a bench for a moment to catch her breath when a woman's voice made her look up "May I sit here?" Annette nodded, studying the woman curiously. She looked third-class but her accent was most certainly not. "I'm Annette Aveline."

"Rose Dawson." Annette froze for a moment. She inwardly shook her head. Dawson was a common enough name. "Are you alright?" Rose looked at her in concern. Annette nodded.

"Sorry, I knew someone years ago with the surname Dawson." Rose's pink lips parted a little and recognition flashed in her eyes. A memory came back to her in an instant. "No, no, no, no ,no. She was a one-legged prostitute, you see. Ah, she had a good sense of humour though." In Rose's mind, she saw the woman in the drawing and the woman sitting in front of her. They were the same woman.

"Do I know you?" Annette asked.

"Who did you know years ago?"

"A man named Jack Dawson." She narrowed her eyes. She had never imagined Jack settling down, when she'd known him, he'd always been so eager to live and see the world. But could this woman be… "Are you his wife?" Rose nodded "I was." Another thought came to Annette. If Rose was Jack's wife, surely he was here. "Is he here?" She asked hopefully. Rose shook her head sorrowfully. Then Rose's answer registered to her. "Wait, you were his wife?" Rose nodded again. Dread started to creep through Annette. What had happened to the laughing artist she had met three years ago? "What…happened… to him?"

"You've heard of the Titanic, I'm sure." Annette gasped. Oh god no. "I boarded in first-class, he boarded in third. He won his ticket in a game of poker." She said, answering Annette's unanswered question. "I was… unhappy. My father died in 1910 and left us with huge gambling debts so my mother was desperate to marry me to a rich gentleman who could pay them. Later that year, I met my fiancé, Caledon Hockley. At the beginning, I loved him. Or I thought I did at least. But then we had an argument and he changed. He became possessive and controlling. We travelled through Europe and we were sailing back to America on the Titanic. It all got too much one evening, the 12th, and I climbed over the railing at the stern."

"You were going to jump?" Annette interrupted. Rose ducked her head. "Yes. That was how I met Jack, actually. He convinced me not to jump. When I turned to climb back over, I stepped on my dress and slipped. He managed to pull me back over, I was not much help, I'm afraid, and we both ended up on the floor. But I'd screamed, and some crew members found us in a…rather compromising position." Annette chuckled and Rose smiled. "I made up a story about looking at the propellors which they believed thankfully. Cal invited Jack to dinner as a "reward" for saving me. It was obvious he wanted Jack to show up looking poor and out of place so they could all laugh at him."

"That bastard!" Annette was furious at the thought of anyone doing that to her friend. Rose nodded grimly "I went down to third-class to thank him the next day and we walked round the deck. I thanked him for pulling me back and for his discretion. Jack asked me what happened to make me feel like I had no way out and I told him how trapped I had felt and he saw the real problem even though I hadn't told him. He asked me if I loved my fiancé, Cal, and I refused to answer him and I was rather rude and I snatched his portfolio from him as a way of changing the subject. He was such an exquisite artist." She smiled sadly and the dread in Annette increased. He was such an exquisite artist. She continued listening, hoping against hope that the story would end a different way from which it was heading. Then she remembered something else. Unless Jack had a different portfolio to the one he had in Paris, her drawings were in that book. She went bright red and Rose giggled, guessing what she was thinking. "I'm sorry, I did see…" She trailed off. Annette shrugged, waving her hand "It is alright, I let him keep it, I do not mind if you saw it."

"Why did he draw you?" Rose asked, not jealously.

"He drew one of my friends, her name is Rosine."

The two girls sat on a bench early in the morning, giggling. "I met this man last night." Rosine told Annette. "I think we all did." Annette answered drily. "No, no, no, not like that, not really. He is an artist." Rosaline said.

"Ooh, an artist." Annette teased her. Rosine shoved her playfully "I found him drawing on a park bench and I asked him if he'd ever drawn a woman and I asked him to draw me."

"With clothes or without?"

"Without. He agreed and he has such talent! And he is very handsome."

"Can he just use his hands for drawing?" Annette raised her eyebrows suggestively.

"I do not know." Rosine replied, pretending to be sad. "Oh, look! There he is, over there!" She pointed to a man sitting again on a park bench drawing a group of children playing in the grass. "Jack!" She called, waving. He looked up and saw them and Annette for the first time saw just how handsome he was.

"Rosine, and…"

"Annette."

"Nice to meet you, Annette." Jack grinned.

"Then what happened?" Annette prompted.

"We ended up talking about art and his travels. We talked about going to the pier in Santa Monica and drinking cheap beer, riding the rollercoaster til we threw up, and riding horses in the surf. He taught me how to spit over the side of Titanic-"

"Always the charmer."

"Oh it gets better. My mother found us spitting and she was not impressed, to say the least." They both burst out laughing.

"Oh god."

"I explained how we met, the story I'd told Cal, not how we really met, and then they blew the horn for dinner. Mother and I left to get dressed for dinner." She continued to tell the story, waving her hands while she spoke occasionally.

When she got to the part where Jack had drawn her, Annette laughed "Like one of his French girls, huh?" Rose just shrugged her shoulders and crinkled her nose. "Wait did you and him…"

"No, Jack was very… professional."

"Yes, drawing girls without their clothes is the height of professionalism." Annette quirked.

"Well of course." Rose said in mock-surprise. "Unfortunately, Lovejoy, Cal's valet came down to the suite and we had to run. He chased us down into the boiler rooms and Jack, he pulled me back and kissed me." She sighed dreamily and they both giggled.

"He never kissed me." Annette pouted. "I never saw him have any love affairs in the whole time I knew him, even though he had plenty of offers, as you can probably imagine."

"Mmmm. We went into the storage compartment and we found a car, a Renault." Rose went red as the flower she was named after and Annette guessed what happened next.

"Damn, you lucky girl."

When she got to the part where it all went wrong, Annette sucked in her breath. She was pretty sure she knew what Rose was going to say and she didn't want to hear but she knew she had to. She had to know what had happened to her friend.

"You went back to your mother and Cal?" Annette asked incredulous. Rose looked away ashamed.

"It was stupid, I know that now, but I wanted to warn them. She is my mother and I didn't want Cal to die. Yet." She shook her head and continued "We went back to the cabin and Lovejoy was waiting for us. He was on Jack's side and that was when he must've…"

"He must've what?"

"We walked into the cabin and the Master of Arms and some stewards were there. Cal ordered them to search Jack and they found the Heart of the Ocean in his pocket."

"What? But Jack wouldn't steal from anyone unless he absolutely had to!" Annette protested.

"I know that now but… Cal said that he must have taken it while I was putting my clothes back on and then it turned out that he had taken the coat and I, I let him get dragged out. He begged me to believe him but I couldn't." Rose was almost sobbing. Annette was silent in her horror. All she could see was Jack drowning, handcuffed and trapped, unable to escape. It overwhelmed to think of her friend dying like that. But she couldn't bring herself to be angry with Rose either. It wasn't her fault and she knew Jack wouldn't've blamed Rose and he wouldn't've wanted her to blame Rose either.

"What happened?" She said gently. Rose gathered herself.

"I almost got on the lifeboat. I almost left him to drown! But then, then I realised that he hadn't done it. I can almost thank Cal for that. He said something and I realised what Cal had done. I ran away from the lifeboats and Cal tried to stop me. He caught me and I told him that I'd rather be Jack's whore than his wife." Her lips curled in a hint of a smile. Annette breathed a short sigh of relief before realising that Jack still wasn't there with them.

As Rose continued to speak, apprehension and dread rose in Annette. Rose told her of how she had rescued Jack from the handcuffs and anger boiled up in Annette when she heard of how the third-class people had been trapped behind gates. As the story carried on, Rose had to force her words out. Telling someone out loud about Jack was so, so hard.

"When I look back, I don't know how I fell for Cal's lies again."

"You were scared." Annette said comfortingly. A few moments later, she gasped.

"You jumped off the lifeboat?"

"I couldn't leave him." Rose said simply.

"I saw Helga, Fabrizio's love, when she was hanging from the rail, her parents had fallen, and we only looked at each other for a few moments before she fell to her death." Tears started to drip down Rose's face. "I held onto Jack's hand, but when the ship went under we were dragged apart."

Every time Rose spoke of being separated from Jack, Annette held her breath, bracing herself for the pain. And each time, she breathed a sharp sigh of relief. But this was to be the last.

"He stayed in the water." Tears were pouring down her face by now. "He made me promise to live and I should have realised, I should have realised what he was doing! But I thought we were both going to die, and I didn't register that he was telling me that I was going live, not we were going to live. When he was telling me that, I thought maybe he was trying to be hopeful for a future for both of us. I didn't realise, I didn't realise… He told me I was the best thing that ever happened to him, but if it weren't for me, he'd still be alive." She broke down in sobs.

Annette wiped away her own tears. " His death wasn't your fault. Jack wouldn't have wanted you to realise Rose. Because what would you have done if you realised he was dying? Would you have promised to live on without him? Or would you have refused to leave him?"

"I would never have left him to die alone if I'd known. Never." Rose answered.

"Exactly. Jack wouldn't have wanted you to know, Rose. I know-knew him well enough to know that." Annette stumbled over her words. Knew. In the past. Jack was in the past.

"When the lifeboat came back, I turned and I- I tried to wake him up, but he wouldn't wake up. He wouldn't wake up! I wanted to stay with him, but I remembered the promise I made to him but our hands were frozen together and I had to watch him sink to the ocean floor." Rose sobbed.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, lost in their grief. They got a few odd looks, two women sitting crying on a bench, but neither of them noticed or cared. Annette broke the silence "What happened afterwards?"

"I never went back to first-class. Cal came down to third-class, looking for me-"

"He survived?" Annette interrupted. Fury rose up in her like a river. Rose's evil fiancé had survived but not Jack, the kindest man Annette had ever met.

Rose nodded "He did. When the steward asked my name" She continued to tell the story, "I told him my name was Rose Dawson. I travelled through America and then came back to Europe." Annette gave a little smile at the romance of the story. Jack deserved to have a great love story like she knew he had had with Rose.

"On a ship?"

"I wouldn't've if I'd had another choice, trust me."

"Annette! There are men waiting!" A harsh voice shouted.

Annette heaved a sigh "I have to go. I'll see you again?"

"I'd like that." Annette smiled and, on an impulse, leaned forward and hugged Rose. "Annette!" She rolled her eyes. "I'm coming, I'm coming!" She turned and strode back inside.

The next day, Annette sat in a park with Rosine. "I met someone yesterday."

Rosine looked at her curiously "Who?"

"Rose Dawson. Jack Dawson's wife."

"Jack? Jack married? Is he here?" Rosine asked excitedly.

Annette winced "No." Rosine noticed the miserable look on her face. "Annette?"

"He's dead, Rosine."

Rosine stared at Annette in shock. "What?" She said finally.

"He was on the Titanic." Tears ran down both of their faces. A flash of red caught Annette's eyes. Rose was walking through the trees at the other side of the park. "That's Rose." She pointed. "Rose!" She called. Rose turned in the direction of her voice. She broke into a smile "Annette!" She walked towards them.

"This is Rosine." Annette introduced them.

"Nice to meet you." Rose smiled "Can I sit here?" Rosine nodded.

"Sure."

"So you're Jack's wife."

"In every way except the legal sense, yes."

Rosine furrowed her brows "You have a lot to tell me, it seems."

Over the next few months, Rose, Annette and Rosine became very close friends. But when war was declared, Annette and Rosine convinced Rose to leave. She protested, but eventually they convinced her. They came to say goodbye when Rose boarded the ship taking her home. "I'm going to miss you both." Rose smiled sadly.

"We'll miss you too!" Annette wrapped her in a hug and pulled Rosine in as well.

"Final call to board!"

The three women parted reluctantly. "I hope I'll see you again." Rose said before walking away towards the ship. Annette and Rosine didn't move from their spot and a few moments later, Rose appeared on deck. She ran to the rail and waved wildly.

"Goodbye!"

Author's Note: I'm sorry! I know its been ages but please don't give up on me, I have more oneshots that are in progress. What did you think of this one?