April 16, 1912
RMS Carpathia
The world around him seemed a shade of dreary saturated blue and the air was crisp and suffocating.
In a slow dreamlike state, Cal dragged his feet across the wooden deck. He butted shoulders with various people around him. And like him, they were also in a shocked dazed and confused, not even noticing him as he passed.
Cal placed his hand over the rail of the stairs and carefully stepped down them. He lifted his dark eyes, moving them around the crowd of people in hopes to find Rose.
As he boarded the Cunard Liner from the lifeboat he was rescued on as the Titanic was being sucked down beneath the surface.
The Carpathia stewardess greeted him first when he boarded the ship. Cal could see her mouth moving but he couldn't for the life of him understand what she was saying. Unsure how to respond to the shock that he felt, Cal blankly looked at the stewardess and silently shook his head.
With perfect understanding, the woman stepped aside to offer her services to the other survivors behind the aristocratic man. Cal stood stagnant, unsure where to go from here.
He walked from the First Class triage area and kept on walking until he found the stairs to the stern of the large passenger steamship.
"Sir," a well-mannered Titanic steward looked at Cal up and down then continued, "you won't find any of your people back here." Cal passed the steward without a single glance. "It's all steerage." The steward watched the well-dressed man for a moment then finished writing down the line of people in front of him shouting out names of their loved ones.
Cal stared at the pile of Titanic life jackets. Rose.
The image of her piercing blue-grey eyes glaring at him with disdain before she spat in his face and ran off to find Jack Dawson haunted his memory. He remembered being so angry.
Cal's drifting mind was cut short by a dirty coal trimmer. "'Cuse me, sir," the trimmer swiftly apologised and kept walking.
Unsure what had just transpired, Cal turned around and watched the coal trimmer continue through the crowd. He didn't have a place to go nor did he have any loved ones aboard the ship.
Rose.
His mind went back to the fiery redhead that had captured his heart long ago. For only seventeen, Rose was mature for her age. Cal remembered when they had first met, she eyed him skeptically just knowing that he would be trouble. Only she wasn't afraid of him. Rose embraced it; ready for a good adventure.
Seated on a bench of sorts and covered by a flannel blue-green blanket that had embroidered: RMS Carpathia on its edge, Rose caught of glimpse of the familiar dark-haired man she once called her fiancé.
Her blue-grey eyes were on him as he walked towards the side rail of the ship and looked out into the direction where the Titanic had sunk the early morning before.
There was something different about him, Rose decided. He appeared as disoriented as everyone else. Apart of her was pleased by this, wanting him to suffer but then it had occurred to her, what was he to suffer about? He still had his fortune, his life, and all of the prospects waiting for him in Philadelphia, so why did he seem so lost?
As she mulled over the question floating over Cal's head, she almost didn't realise that he was turning back around to leave. It was then she attempted to hide her face behind the blanket covering her head.
She was a fraction too slow. Cal caught a glimpse of her red hair and paused untrusting his own eyes.
Cal paused and stared at the flannel blanket-covered woman wondering if his eyes deceived him. He figured the likelihood of Rose's survival was slim since he last saw her running below decks with Jack Dawson.
Unable to shake the feeling of hope in his chest, Cal cautiously stepped towards the blanket covered woman. He swallowed nervously and gently pushed back a piece of the flannel blanket hiding her face.
His jaw tightened and his heart nearly stopped as he stared down at Rose DeWitt Bukater and she stared right back at him.
Unsure what to do next, Cal gently touched her chin with the tip of his forefinger. He wanted to fall to his knees and cry, thankful for her survival but he didn't. All he could do was stare and remind himself to breathe.
After a moment, Cal's hand dropped to his side. He looked above Rose's head in search of the man that had stolen her heart during their four day trip across the sea.
"He's dead,"
Cal dropped his gaze back down to Rose's pale-skinned face in question.
"He's in the water…" her blue eyes glassed over as she shifted from Cal's face to the wooden floorboards, "… like the others."
He watched as she desperately tried to force back the tears, refusing to cry in front of him but it was becoming harder and harder as the pain of losing Jack Dawson sunk deeply into her heart.
Without thought, Cal crouched down to her eye level and wrapped his arms around her cold body.
The confusion set in for Rose as she felt Cal's strong arms hug her tightly in an uncharacteristic manner.
The realisation of the traumatic events that had transpired and the loss of Jack suddenly set into Rose. She unleashed her tears, unable to stop them from flowing from her eyes.
She buried her face into the body-hugging her tightly, mourning the loss of her lover.
Cal could feel her tears soak through his once crisp white dress shirt. His nose burrowed into her matted red hair. She smelled salty like the sea. It was then he realised that Rose was in the water when she must have been rescued by a lifeboat passing by.
He clenched his jaw in anger in Rose and the fact she stayed aboard the dying ship liner until it sank beneath the freezing waters. He was angry at himself that didn't do more to convince Rose to board a lifeboat. He was angry at Jack for dying, leaving her to survive on her own.
The minutes that passed seemed like hours.
Rose calmed herself as if she realised just who she was taking comfort in. She removed herself from his embrace and looked at him with contempt.
Cal stood and watched her firm expression soften and her manicured brows curl with curiosity as she glared at him. "Why couldn't you have died instead?" She asked.
Feeling as if he was stabbed in the heart by her quiet, yet cutthroat question, Cal tried desperately to keep his anger down beneath the surface when he replied sharply, "God wasn't listening to you."
Pursing her lips, Rose felt hatred in her heart, "I will never forgive for what you've done."
"I didn't kill him."
"Yes, you did." Anger shown in her piercing blue eyes.
Cal's frown deepened unsure of what she had meant when he suddenly realised, "I didn't have an understanding with an officer like I thought I had." He admitted. "I couldn't've saved Dawson even if I wanted to. My money couldn't save me any more than it could've saved any other man on that ship." First Officer William Murdock's face flashed in his mind as Cal's money was being thrown back into his face.
"Then why are you here?" Rose asked frankly.
Unsure how to respond to her question, no matter what he said, Rose wouldn't like his reply because no matter what, it didn't bring back Jack Dawson.
"I'm still wondering that myself," Cal replied.
There was another heavy silence between them, the tension between the pair was thick. Things that needed to be said weren't. Rose was stood fixed on her anger for the man that stood over her and Cal didn't know where to begin in addressing his regrets.
Matching her hardened exterior, Cal stood up straight and clenched his jaw as he looked down at Rose, "Your mother is worried."
"Good," she said.
Cal cocked a high brow but said nothing in response.
"I want her to think I'm dead." Rose looked away scorned by the scars her mother left on her.
"She already does," Cal said.
Rose looked down at her hands as she twisted him together then let out a breath, "What do you want from me, Cal?"
He knew he didn't have the right to ask her for anything, but he did. He asked her for one single thing, "Go to your mother. Don't let her think that you're dead. You're all she has left."
Sharply looking away from, all Cal could do was watch her. He could almost see the wheels in her head-turning. He held his hands into his trouser pockets hoping that she'd do as he pleaded.
Rose watched a Carpathia stewardess move in what seemed like slow motion around the crowd as she held a tray of disposable paper cups of hot tea to the Second and Third Class survivors.
"He has reddish-brown—reddish-brown and a white beard!" Rose heard an Irish woman cry out in a panic to anyone who cared to listen. Her eyes lingered over the hysterical woman for a long minute.
Cal watched Rose, trying to follow her gaze but there were too many people around them to understand where she was looking.
She looked back at him and said, "I'll go. But then I never want to see you again." Rose stood and dropped the flannel blanket on the bench where she sat and added under her breath, "None of you."
Cal watched as she began to walk towards the crowd of people and to the stairs that led back to her former life.
Leave a Review