A/N: Ummm? Yeah, hi. It's been a while. Last time I updated this story, I was in a place of uncertainty due to a life transition. That transition extended into a full year of one hectic life event after the other. If I tried to explain it all, it would be its own multi-chapter story. But I recently got back into writing fanfic (though not Titanic), and I realized I still have some chapters written up and waiting to be posted. That being said, I haven't touched my Titanic stories the majority of the 12-ish months I was gone, and I don't know when I intend to return to them. But the least I can do is upload what I have already finished, and return to them whenever I'm in the mood to do so. (Life is still crazy, after all, and I'm not currently in a Titanic phase.) I have four chapters already written for this story of the 10 I intend to write. I figure one day I'll finish this one, given its much shorter compared to my past stories. I hope you enjoy!

September 1916

Just like Jo when she was a baby, Michael was joyful to play with. When he was wide awake and Rose was in a brighter mood, she'd set Michael down on her lap and play with him to witness the breadth of his curiosity and simple happiness. He'd recently started to smile, too, adding to the power of his ocean blue eyes. Rose melted with each look.

She was playing with Michael then, and she couldn't contain the grin on her face. Michael's response to her tickling his tummy and clapping his hands together was to smile back at her. Even in moments like those, Rose could feel her love deepen, leaving a chasmic slash on her heart. But the moment had nothing to do with love, and everything to do with feeling at peace with another living person. (In this case, a person Rose had created and brought onto this planet.)

As Rose giggled (and groaned) at the drool bubbles dripping out of her baby's mouth, she was brought back to a time when she didn't feel so safe in Michael's presence. She had been unsafe not because she believed her baby could harm her, but because he stirred up feelings that were so foreign, a swirling breeze of unfamiliarity. If she wasn't careful, she thought, those emotions would build up to a raging tornado. But no such storm had occurred. Instead, since they first cropped up, these foreign feelings only set up home in her head.

How to describe such a feeling? She couldn't describe it to Jack, and the only way she could explain it was that she was a bad mother. A few days after Michael was born, Rose was cradling him against her chest when an eerie shiver took hold of her spine. At the time, she couldn't quite say what was going on as she looked upon her sleeping infant, but the closest defining feeling she could fish out was dread. Who felt dread when looking down at a precious baby?

Then she realized, later on, that the feelings weren't so new after all. During her pregnancy, Rose had gotten caught up in the same shivers, the doubt trying to cram its way inside her head. After it had swept her away, what it had left behind was an insecure mother and a bout of depression—one that she might not have woken up from yet.

A week after Rose had found out she was pregnant again, she was walking on butterflies. She'd banished the thought that she wasn't ready with the wave of a hand, and vowed to enjoy this pregnancy, unlike the last one which she spent in isolation. Not that being pregnant had been fun; but she wanted to feel the thrill of having a baby instead of experiencing the fear of losing them.

As Jack worked on a painting (he'd been trying out colors again instead of black-and-white pencil), Rose hummed while knitting. Though skilled in needlework, having spent many a boring day with a canvas, she was less than mediocre at knitting. She was aiming for another scarf, but always ended up with something funky—not a scarf. Jack loved her creations regardless, and kept them in a box in their closet, fluffy pieces of pink, blue and yellow.

"What does a baby need with a scarf?" would have been Jack's question if he wanted to stamp out her good mood. But she was too happy singing while she worked, he couldn't question her about it.

"Whatcha doin' there?" he asked instead, setting his brush with the colorful splotches of paint on its handle aside.

"Knitting a scarf," Rose said, as expected. She said no more, becoming contemplative of her fingers working the needles.

Jack nodded his head, said, "looks nice," then returned to his own creation. He didn't question Rose's silence as anything out of the ordinary. On the outside, she was cheerful and playful, but that wasn't close to matching her insides. No, on the inside, she was smothering her true emotions, attempting to block them out in case her fear of them broke loose.

Jack's bar had been open for over a year and a half now, and was quite a busy spot in downtown Santa Monica. Making that decision to open a business with his friends was one of the best Jack had ever made (after marrying Rose and having Jo and Michael, of course). Not only did he get to be his own boss, something he hadn't experienced as someone who'd always been following someone else's rules, but he got to work with his friends and family. The entire situation was a win, win, win.

He found himself in charge of the bar that day while Rose waitressed, though the crinkles in her face were enough to scare customers away. Their babysitter had cancelled at the last minute, so they had to bring Jo and Michael with them, which meant that Rose was being constantly pulled back and forth between orders, changing diapers, and making sure Jo didn't get herself in trouble or walk away with strangers. Jack put in his part, too, but he could tell by the nervous expression on Rose's face that she wished she didn't have to have any of it.

"I wish I was at the theater today," Rose confessed as the lunch rush died down to a near silent hum, taking a cigarette outside with Fabrizio. She'd been talking to Fabri with confidence, not expecting Jack to be around until she turned around at the sound of the back door closing.

"Care if I join?" Jack pulled out a cigarette of his own. At Rose's examination of his body and the floor around him, he explained, "Tommy's watching Jo and Michael."

Rose exhaled a big puff of smoke, a pout on her lips. "I can't believe, after all of that work, I'm just the understudy." Usually she was called in for every rehearsal, but the second lead actress wasn't in today. Therefore, she was at the bar, wiping tables and drying off mugs while picturing the path her life had taken.

"I believe you will get a show, and you will be amazing," Fabrizio said in support, looking at Jack to prompt to offer his own.

"Yeah, I bet the same," he said, and he watched as Rose's face stayed turned downward. With the rush of running the business and watching the kids at the same time, he wasn't the greatest support at the moment, he guessed.

"Yes," she sighed, and Jack let her have an extra five minutes to her break as he and Fabri stomped out their cigarettes. He hesitated at the door as he watched her look out onto the street, curls flowing down her back but pinned out of her face. But in the end, he let the door close behind him without a word.

Returning from that hard day at work, Jo was a handful. She insisted on holding each of their hands on the walk home, meaning someone had to incapacitate themselves by also carrying Michael. Jack volunteered himself to be that sacrifice, keeping a firm grip on the wicker handle of Michael's basket. In his other hand, he swung Jo's.

Like a babbling brook, Jo said, "And then the prince would meet the princess and she would say, 'How did you find me?' and he would say, 'By how your hair is glowing,' and she would say…"

The story never seemed to end. Rose fought back a yawn, and tried to wake herself up by caressing the back of her daughter's small hand in her own. Sometimes she was still astounded by how small Jo was, despite how much she had grown.

Once Jack and Rose settled the kids for a nap at home, they found themselves alone, a rare occurrence since Michael's birth. With that lonesome togetherness came the option to talk, which Jack fetched with a somewhat eager, somewhat hesitant hand.

"When are you next needed at the theater?" A simple enough question, if he wasn't asking it based off of what he had heard Rose grumble earlier.

Rose sighed, a habit she'd adapted in the past couple weeks to help her get past uncomfortable moments like these ones. "Not tomorrow, but the day after."

Typically, she would go on some tangent about a scene she was worried about performing if it came down to it, but in this case she stayed silent. Jack nodded his head, as one often did when they were lost on what to say. He continued to take out his pencils to sharpen while she sat down at the vanity, taking to her hair with a brush.

What was it about being a mother a second time that made things so difficult? When she couldn't be a mother to Jo, she thought she was slowly dying with each day that passed. Now, she was a mother to Jo and more, yet that urge to pass away with each breath unless she was with her children wasn't there. The admittance to such a feeling made her stomach start eating at itself.

She could still remember the feeling of Michael's warm body on her chest as they both dozed off, and the feeling of his baby-thin hairs rubbing against the bottom of her chin when she would pick him up. How serene those moments felt. Why did they not last?

Thankfully or not, Rose was allowed some time to herself, a chance to step away as a mother and really sort this out. But as the worry nested in the sack of her stomach, her thoughts veered further away from her melancholy, and avoided confrontation at all costs. Instead, she spent the rest of her precious free time painting an abstract scene, putting colors together just to occupy her mind.

In the end, she returned to her duties with a calling cry, and remained stuck at the start.

When Rose got up the next morning, she didn't wince at Michael's screams. Instead, she took care of him with a delicacy she hadn't exhibited since his birth, her voice as soothing as she wanted it to be for weeks. During the night, she'd dreamed something phenomenal, something that lifted her up out of her funk long enough to see a twinkling light.

In her dream, she was out in a grassy field next to a large lake. (Some part of Wisconsin that she'd made up in her head, she guessed; she'd never been.) In that field, her hair dripped down her back, each curl loose and free from any restraints. She held Michael, propping him up on her stomach. With a single finger tap on his nose, he emitted a giggle strong enough to cause a breeze to knock over the grass. His laugh, so light and pure, made Rose laugh in return. That was when she woke up, the combination of their high-pitched giggles echoing in her ears being fought over by infant screams.

Days like these came every so often, when she could sense her breathing open up in her chest. She'd had similar dreams after having Jo, though they left her melancholic for most of the day after they happened; Jo was taken away. But not with Michael. With Michael, she didn't have to worry about him being given up. He was entirely hers, no hiding about it.

That morning, Michael, in response to Rose tickling his stomach, laughed and smiled. His gurgles reminded Rose of the first time she saw him grin, how ecstatic they were to witness their son interact with them. All of those firsts…

That's what made it all the more difficult when Rose, at the end of her lighthearted day, felt that heaviness creep in again.

"Okay, you two, time for a nap!" Jack announced as he set Michael's basket down and let go of Jo's hand, which he'd had to keep a firm grip on for the past mile-and-a-half walk from the beach. "Jo, head to bed. I'll be there in a minute." He sighed, relieved, as he watched Jo run off to her bedroom, leaving him with a simple "Okay, Papa!" Her red curls bounced in their blue ribbons as she disappeared.

"And you," he said to Michael, who watched him with his eyes too large for his head. Picking his son up, Jack smiled while brushing some sand out of Michael's hair. "Time for bed, little guy."

After putting Michael to bed with ease (he believed he was getting ahold of this newborn parenting thing again), Jack realized that he hadn't seen Rose yet. "Rose!" he called out, figuring she must be in their bedroom. He didn't notice Rose so out of touch with reality as he ran to her side at the desk she was sitting at.

"Hey, check this out." Jack pulled out a drawing he'd made of a magician out by the beach, in the middle of pulling a rabbit and some birds out of a hat. Jo had found the spectacle quite exhilarating, while Michael had watched on with his same wide, clueless expression.

When he saw that Rose wasn't looking, however, he stopped and placed the drawing on the bed. She had a letter laid out in front of her, but was examining a yellow bruise on her wrist, which she'd gotten when she bumped Michael's basket on the doorframe a week ago. "Rose, what is it?"

"It's my mother." Rose set her fingers on the letter, having read it over more than a few times already. "She's moving to Santa Monica."