Hi, so here is another chapter, we are now heading to the end of this story with only two more chapters left, one in this present and one in the future. I hope you all enjoy until then.
Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine.
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Drifting Back
Chapter 13-The First Day Of The Rest Of Your Life
In which there is the beginning of the end. Isabella and Tommy get married. Jack and Rose discuss their future. Happiness is felt in abundance. Slightly shorter chapter.
Time moves on. Slowly but surely. Time moves on.
It had only been a week or two but with the annihilation of Bruce Ismay (as her brother's had taken to calling it) plans for a wedding were back on. It was nice, normal, natural but Isabella was not involved in much of the planning of her own wedding because the second her Uncle was gone it was like the baby inside of her had been waiting to tear her guts apart with a vengeance.
The morning sickness (which was terribly and inappropriately named) ripped through her. She had never been seasick on the Titanic and she had been almost amused by the high society ladies that had claimed that they were but now she was beginning to understand just how a few of them had felt. She was sure that she was going to be sick at some point throughout the whole day and more often than not Tommy found her curled up around the toilet in the Patterson house covered in cooling sweat and shaking as her baby wrecked havoc on her insides.
"Once" she said to him as he put down some ginger tea that her soon to be stepmother claimed was a saving grace for pregnancy. "Once Thomas, we are doing this once. I am not going through this again"
Tommy had flashed her a laugh and then he had slipped one arm around her. She rested her head on his shoulder and let him rub her arm up and down. She wanted to close her eyes and sleep but now when she did she felt too hot. These early stages of pregnancy were too much for her to handle. She had heard so much from society magazines about how pregnancy was the sole objective for a woman. About how she should sit still and be nice and wait for the precious life inside of her to grow and she wondered if the woman who wrote those articles had ever really experienced pregnancy as a whole. Because if they had there was no way on earth that they would have spouted such foul lies about how wonderful the whole experience was when it was anything but.
Tommy for the most part seemed to realise that there was nothing that he could do to take her out of the mood she was in and she smiled against his chest when he just huffed against her hair and his hand came to her stomach. The flatness had now hardened to a round little bump that she knew would soon grow fat.
"Just think" Tommy said quietly one morning, the morning before the wedding, "This time tomorrow we will be man and wife"
"You getting cold feet?"
"Never" he said into her hair. "You saved me you know"
"I saved you?" the idea was almost quite insane considering she knew he had saved her. And he had. Tommy Ryan had come into Isabella Ismay's life and he had saved her in every conceivable way a person could be saved. He had saved her from the big things in life twice, from herself and from the Titanic and he had saved her time and time again with the little things in life, like his touch, his smell, his smile. He had kept her going even when all she had wanted to do was lie down and never get up again and she loved him for it. Whatever was going on inside her body she loved the man who had put the baby inside of her and she loved stubbornly the baby that was a proof of their love, of their survival, of that room with the golden dress crumpled on the floor and their sheets rumpled from lovemaking and the warmth coming from the bath, the light and the warmth that was now in it's watery grave never to see the light of day again.
"You did" Tommy said into her hair. "You did. I should have been dead. When the officers were firing off pistols I nearly caught a shot and it was you…I don't know how but it was thought of you that made me duck. Got some other poor bugger instead and I got a load of cold water up the arse but it kept me alive, kept me going, kept me fighting until I could find that lifeboat and then I rowed until my hands were bloody in some desperate attempt to find you. And I did. And I found you and our baby and we are going to have the best life together you and me"
Isabella smiled into his chest.
"Since when did you become such a romantic?"
"Well I met this girl see" he began but she was already laughing and she pushed against him. He kissed her and she melted like sugar in a sauce pot at his body against her.
Until there was a knock at the door. That was the thing in this house. One was constantly interrupted.
But it was worth it.
It was so worth it.
There was one more thing that she needed to sought out though and as she ate dinner that night she pondered over the best way to ask. Everyone was excited about her wedding. Everyone was talking ribbons and hair clips everyone but her because she was too busy thinking about what she was going to have to ask. It had been the one reason why she had come to this place. Why she had begun this journey in that shabby hotel room with Tommy on one side of the room and her on the other.
"I need to ask you something" she said quietly to the man by her side.
"Hmm?"
"Can you…I mean…would you…I know we have not really discussed it but…"
"Isabella just say what you mean, please"
She was acutely aware that Tommy's eyes were on her. Tommy who was forced to sit on the other side of the table and whom she was not going to see at all tomorrow until, until she married him.
"I was wondering if you would walk me down the aisle and give me away"
Theo Patterson dropped his fork. It clanged on his plate with a loud clatter that effectively ended the conversations that were taking place around the table.
"Really?" he said just as quiet as she was and she nodded. And for once in her life she had the sense to hope. To trust. To believe.
Hormones, that was what it was. Hormones. Otherwise she was turning into a complete sap and she did not want that. The Ice Princess she had once been had not cultivated the nickname lightly.
"Yes" she said quietly. And then because she was feeling braver than she had ever felt before she tacked on.
"Father"
It felt odd to say it, but it also felt…good…
Perhaps one day it would not feel odd and it would not feel good. Perhaps one day it would just feel normal.
That day was not today, but she had hope.
Her father looked at her for a long time.
"Yes" he said finally as if he was choosing his words very carefully. "Yes I will walk you down the aisle"
And then he hugged her. She hugged him back and it was as easy and as natural as breathing.
It would have been as easy and as a natural as breathing when she was a child too.
It did not matter to her however. What mattered is that she knew what love was. For the first time in her life from being an unloved child to an unloved young woman she knew what actual love was. She knew that the love that she felt for Tommy was real, the love that she felt for her family both from the ship and afterwards was real, and that the love that she felt for her baby was real. No child of hers was ever going to say that he or she was unloved.
It did make her wonder in the same way she knew it made Rose wonder, just what they had been doing all those years when they had been dealing in the false coin of vanity and social standing and oppression when all along there had been this currency of pure gold underneath.
"Thank you" she said finally pulling back.
"I think" Olivia said cutting through the conversation so that they could get back on track. "That we have your wedding dress all done Isabella. I know you can't get married in white but I we've gone with blue. Nice colour and a nice fit. Of course it would help if we could see it with a corset on and—"
"I do not wear corsets" Isabella said. Tommy snorted into his water.
"What?"
"Oh boy"
"You mean you haven't since you fell pregnant?"
"I mean I haven't since the Titanic, I don't believe in them anymore. I am a free woman and I like a nice breeze as any woman does"
John choked on his water. Charlie dropped his fork. Her stepmother stared at her. Rosalie and Eugenie immediately put their heads together to discuss this radical change to woman's fashion and her last night as an unmarried woman turned into a delightful debate on woman's fashion that made her almost forget how nervous she was about what was coming next.
Her dress was royal blue. It was simple, homemade and she suspected hand-me-down in a few places but it was her wedding dress. It wasn't something that was dripped in gold and tripped in dollars. It had been made with painstaking hard work and love and that was worth it's weight in gold.
It had long sleeves and had a collar that showed just the top of her shoulder. It came down to the floor and the top of it was folded down a little. It was a lovely shade of blue and she stepped into her shoes and pinned her hair back off her face and knew that she was choosing her husband, her wedding dress, her destiny.
Her hand came to her little bump and she knew that the baby was inside of her listening to her.
"I am going to marry your father" she said to the little life that was inside of her.
"I am going to marry your father and I am going to be happy. And you are going to be so loved"
There was a knock at the door.
She knew who it was.
And she knew that she was ready.
And for the second time in her life she turned her back on the warm and golden room and stepped forwards into the future.
Rose had been sat on one of the chairs watching the marriage of Tommy Ryan and Isabella Ismay when Jack moved his lips to her ear.
"I think we should stay for a while. Get Cora settled"
It startled her out of her bout of emotional apathy and she turned to face him.
"You what?"
"You heard darling. I can…I can get work anywhere. And I think it's important that we get Cora settled. She's been through so much recently. It's only been recently that her life has been torn apart. And we owe it to Burt and his wife. They told Cora to find us, I think maybe because they knew that she was going to have a better chance getting off that ship with us than with them"
Rose nodded. "I would like that" she said finally. "But don't you want the adventure of a lifetime?"
Jack smiled at her and it was still as beautiful as it was the day she told him she was getting off the ship with him.
"Darling the adventure was always you. As long as you and I are together I don't care where we go or where we end up. As long as we are together. Today is the first day of the rest of our lives."
The minister pronounced Isabella Lizabeth Ismay and Thomas Henry Ryan husband and wife and Jack Dawson kissed Rose Dawson and it really was as simple as that. A happy ending at last. The first day of the rest of their lives.
Helga kissed Fabrizio and Rose pulled back and smiled at her husband running her hand down his well warn jawline.
Everything was perfect.
This was the dream. This was what she thought she could never have when she boarded the Ship of Dreams.
But she had it, Isabella had it, Helga had it, the three girls who had all thought they were in chains and yet had found freedom and life and liberty and family and home and love. Just…love.
Pure and simple.
And today was the first day of the rest of their lives.
And what a glorious life it was going to be.
And there you go, penultimate chapter will be up there soon.
Next Chapter-A baby is born, happy endings are abundant, and our heroes get the ending they so richly deserve. Last chapter to be set in the early 1900s.
