"A dream is a wish your heart makes
When you're fast asleep
In dreams, you will lose your heartache
Whatever you wish for you keep!"

-Cinderella, A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes

Jack and Rose walked around the various boat decks. Right now they were in first class. Rose looked at him. "So why did you leave in the first place?" she asked.

Jack smiled sadly. "Well, I've been on my own since I was fifteen, since my folks died, and I had no brothers or sisters or close kin in that part of the country so I lit on out of there and I haven't been back since. You can just call me a tumbleweed blowing in the wind," he explained, giving a slight laugh.

Rose nodded. Jack looked at her. "Well, Rose, we've walked about a mile around this boat deck and chewed over how great the weather's been and how I grew up, but I reckon that's not why you came to talk to me, is it?" he asked.

Rose shifted uncomfortably. "Mr. Dawson I-"

"Jack," he corrected her.

Rose nodded. "Jack, I wanted to thank you for what you did. Not just for, for pulling me back...but for your discretion."

Jack smiled at her. She's talking about helping hide what she tried to do. "You're welcome."

Rose stopped and turned to face him. "Look, I know what you must be thinking. Poor little rich girl. What does she know about misery?" she sighed, leaning against the side of the deck.

Jack hung onto one of the ropes and leaned back against the wall. He shook his head. "No, no, that's not what I was thinking. What I was thinking was, what could have happened to this girl to make her think she had no way out?" he asked.

Rose sighed miserably. "Well, I...it was everything. It was my whole world and all the people in it. And the inertia of my life...plunging ahead and me, powerless to stop it!" She showed him her engagement ring.

That thing really is huge. "God, look at that thing! You would've gone straight to the bottom!" he said.

"Five hundred invitations have gone out. All of Philadelphia society will be there, and all the while I feel like I'm standing in the middle of a crowded room, screaming at the top of my lungs and no one even looks up!"

Jack looked at her. "Do you love him?"

Rose was startled and offended. "Pardon me?"

Jack repeated his question.

Rose looked at him in shock. "Well, you're being very rude. You shouldn't be asking me this!"

Jack shrugged. "Well, it's a simple question. Do you love the guy or not?"

Rose rubbed her forehead, clearly agitated. "This is not a suitable conversation!"

"Why can't you just answer the question?" he asked curiously.

"This is absurd! You don't know me, and I don't know you, and we are not having this conversation at all! You are rude and uncouth and presumptuous, and I am leaving now! Jack, Mr. Dawson, it's been a pleasure. I sought you out to thank you and now I have thanked you-" she said, shaking his hand repeatedly.

"And you've insulted me."

"Well, you deserved it!"

"Right."

"Right."

"I thought you were leaving."

Rose spun around to face him. "I am. You are so annoying!"

Rose walked away, but then stopped in her tracks and turned back to Jack. "Wait! I don't have to leave. This is my part of the ship. You leave!"

"Whoa ho-ho! Well, well, well! Now, who's being rude?" Jack said.

Rose snatched his notebook that he'd been carrying."What is this stupid thing you're carrying around?" she demanded.

Jack just smiled again as Rose flipped through his drawings. "So what are you, an artist or something? Well, these are rather good. They're very good, actually...Jack, this is exquisite work," she said, impressed by the craftsmanship and detail in the drawings.

"They didn't think too much of 'em in Ol' Paree."

Rose looked at him. "Paris? You do get around for a poor-" she started and cursed herself inwardly for possible reinsulting Jack. "Well, a-a person of limited means..."

Jack laughed. "Go on, I'm a poor guy, you can say it," he said. He wasn't ashamed in the least of being from third class.

Rose blushed, and then looked back down at his sketches. "Well, well, well...and these were drawn from life?" she asked.

Jack nodded. "Well that's one of the good things about Paris; lots of girls willing to take their clothes off!"

Rose laughed and examined another drawing. "You like her. You've used her several times," she observed, referring to the model Jack had used for the drawing.

"Well, she had beautiful hands, you see?" he asked, showing off the girl's soft hands.

Rose smiled teasingly. "I think you must have had a love affair with her."

Jack laughed and shook his head. "No, no, no...just with her hands," he insisted. "She was a one-legged prostitute, see?"

Rose looked closer. "Oh." She laughed awkwardly. Ladies of gentle birth did not ogle drawings of nude women.

"Ah, she had a good sense of humor though," Jack reminisced. He flipped to another sketch. "Oh, and this lady. She used to sit at this bar every night, wearing every piece of jewelry she owned, just waiting for her long-lost love. I called her Madame Bijoux. See how her clothes are all moth-eaten?"

Rose greatly admired the show of artistic talent and detail in the picture. "Well, you have a gift, Jack. You do. You see people," she said.

Jack looked her dead in the eye. "I see you."

Rose looked up, curious. "And?"

"You wouldn't have jumped," he said simply.

Jack looked at her as they walked to the first-class promenade deck. "I've never really cared for all that Dadaism and Cubism. It just had no heart to it," he admitted.

"I like some of it," said Rose.

Jack looked at her. "Really?"

Rose smiled. "Yes."

"Well, Paris for me was more about living on the streets and trying to put it on the paper. You know what I mean?" Jack asked.

Rose sighed enviously. "You know, my dream has always been to just run away and become an artist! Living in a garret, poor but free!"

"You wouldn't last two days! There's no hot water and hardly ever any caviar!" Jack teased.

Rose turned to face him, suddenly angry. "I happen to hate caviar! And I hate people telling me what dreams I should and shouldn't have!" she said, fed up with being shot down.

Jack nodded apologetically. "I'm sorry, you're right."

Rose looked at him uneasily. "Well, alright."

She was exasperated. "Everybody expects me to be this delicate little flower, which I'm not! I'm sturdy. I'm strong as a horse! I'm here to do something, not just sit around and be decorative! You see these hands? They were made for work!" she snapped. Jack nodded.

Just then, a steward approached them. "Would you care for something, Miss? Would you like some tea or some bullion?" he asked Rose.

"NO!" Rose snapped. The steward stepped back in shock, and Jack laughed. They kept walking, and Rose looked at Jack.

"There's something in me, Jack, like a dynamo. I feel it. I don't know what it is, whether I should be an artist or a sculptor or I don't know, a dancer. Like Isadora Duncan, a wild pagan spirit! Or a moving picture actress!" she exclaimed, jumping into the shot of an oncoming videographer.

Rose was giggling as her picture was taken.

The sun began to set, and the two chatted up on deck. "Well, I worked on a squid boat in Monterrey, then I went down to Los Angeles to the pier in Santa Monica and started doing portraits there for ten cents apiece," he explained as they gazed out at the sunset.

Rose smiled sadly. "Why can't I be like you, Jack? Just head out for the horizon whenever I feel like it?" She turned to face him and gave him a sly look. "Say we'll go there sometime, to that pier, even if we only ever just talk about it."

Jack grinned at her. "No, we'll do it! We'll drink cheap beer, ride on the rollercoaster till we throw up." Rose burst out laughing. Jack continued. "And we'll ride horses on the beach, right in the surf. Now you'll have to do it like a real cowboy...none of that side-saddle stuff!" he teased.

Rose looked at him curiously. "You mean... one leg on each side? Can you show me?" she asked, her eyes lit up.

Jack flashed her a warm smile. "Sure, if you like." For the first time in her entire life, Rose felt almost free, respected, and cared about. She became overwhelmed with happiness and excitement.

"Teach me to ride like a man!" she said in a funny fake Southern accent.

Jack grinned. "And chew tobacco like a man!" he said, imitating the accent.

Rose giggled. "And...spit like a man!"

"What, they didn't teach you that in finishing school?" he joked.

Rose shook her head. "NO!" she was giggling hysterically.

"Come on I'll show ya," he offered.

At this, Rose became alarmed. "No Jack! No, I couldn't possibly, Jack..." but he was already pulling her back onto the covered bridge.

"Watch closely," he instructed.

He hawked up a wad of spit, and spit a large glob over the rail. "Oh, that's disgusting!" Rose said.

Jack laughed at her reaction. "Alright your turn!" he told her.

Rose looked around to make sure no one from her circle could see her, and quickly spit over the rail. Jack shook his head. "That was pitiful!" he exclaimed.

"You really got to hack it back, get some leverage to it." Rose looked at him. "Use your arms, arch your neck."

Rose watched this and hacked up some spit of her own. "Now you see the range on that thing?" Jack asked, pointing to something in the distance.

Rose nodded. "Mhmm."

"Go!"

Jack nodded. "Really try to hack it up, you know. Get some body to it."

Rose tapped his shoulder, noticing her mother and a gaggle of first-class ladies.

Rose was startled. "Mother! May I introduce Jack Dawson?"

Ruth was greatly displeased but kept calm. "Charmed, I'm sure..."

The others were gracious and curious about the man who'd saved Rose's life. But Ruth looked at him like an insect, a dangerous insect which must be squashed quickly.

As Rose introduced Jack to the group, Molly Brown smiled warmly. "Well Jack, sounds like you're a good man to have around in a sticky spot." Just then, the dinner horns sounded, and she shook her head in annoyance. "Why do they always insist on announcing dinner like a damn cavalry charge?"

Rose giggled and turned to her mother. "Shall we go dress, Mother?" she suggested. "See you at dinner Jack," Rose called over her shoulder. "Son? SON!" She said to Jack, who was too busy staring after Rose to listen.

Jack was shaken out of his reverie, and he looked down at her. "Do you have the slightest comprehension of what you're doing?"

"Not really," Jack confessed.

Molly looked at him in exasperation. "Well, you're about to go into the snake pit. What are you plannin' to wear?" Molly asked. Jack shrugged and gestured at what he was currently wearing. Molly sighed. "I figured. Come on."

Author's Note: When I first wrote this story, I didn't want to include too much of the Jack/Rose love story. But the more I edited, the more I realized their story could intertwine with that of Sammy and Tommy.