Author's note: In this chapter as well as upcoming ones there will be
certain plot twists that go against the plot according to the events of
Titanic, i.e. who's alive, who's dead, later events suggested by Old Rose.
But this is a bit of AU fic. (Really?) So I've decided to screw with the
plot where I so fancy. As a side note, I hope to continue this as a
series, so when I move into modern times...Archangel–nope didn't happen.
Believe this will make the story so much better.
~~~~~~~~
Chapter Eight - This is how you say Naples, Italy
Tommy and Rita got married that summer. Jack found an apartment in town about twenty minutes walking distance from his friends. They settled into a very cosy, comfortable life. Tommy and Rita ran Juniper Street Books and Jack worked there as a clerk and drew in the backroom on slow days. He had picked his art again and it became as natural as breathing once more.
Sometime in early 1916 Amanda waltzed into Seacouver hoping to run into Duncan MacLeod but found Tommy Ryan instead. Jack had been out on a fishing trip with his girlfriend, Annalee. It was nice that Jack found a nice girl. It wasn't very serious, but Tommy and Rita were glad he found someone. They had been going together for a few months now. He hadn't told her about his immortality. Jack liked her and he cared about her–he didn't love her. He decided to never tell her.
When Jack came back Amanda was gone, but she left a name and location in her place. "Rose Dawson lives in Naples, Italy."
"Rose *Dawson*...*lives* in Naples, Italy" Jack repeated as Tommy gave him the facts. The Ryans' house was small, but spacious and sunny and bright compared to Jack's modest one room apartment downtown.
"Yes, she does. She's been livin' there since the winter of '13. She works for the National Archaeological Museum. She flies a bi-plane in transporting artifacts around Southern Europe–or she did until the War got too big. Now she works out of the University of Naples and does some sort of on site work at Pompeii. Fabrizio De Rossi has similar employments. They work down at Pompeii together now..." Tommy waited for Jack's reaction, musing his curls nervously. Jack wasn't saying anything. His two best friends were alive and well and leading what Tommy considered to be rather interesting lives.
"So they're alive and Rose is using...presumably...my last name."
"Yes."
"They work at Pompeii?"
"So says Amanda. Doesn't think she's got the diamond though. Says those two are hard to keep tabs with the way they operate. Hockley didn't have it. She checked that one out." "Screw Hockley. You just told me Fabri and Rose are alive. And in one place!" He was elated, but had to sit down. "I think I'm gonna shake out of my boots."
"Maybe you'll stop trampling those smelly things through our house everyday," Rita came behind him and hit him in the butt with a newspaper, giggling. For the first time Jack noticed she had aged just ever so slightly. Her long, lazy black curls still shone and she still had that youthful glow in her eyes. But she looked older. Fours year isn't much of a difference between twenty-eight and thirty-two. It was less of a difference between nineteen and twenty-three. Jack didn't look a day older and he never would.
"I need to go to them. Oh, wow...oh, no...what do I tell Annalee? I don't know how long I'll be gone or what will happen." He ran his hand through his hair and exhaled.
"Look at me, querido, find your friends," Rita grabbed his face, "Tell Annalee what's right. You'll find the words, I know you will." She kissed him on the cheek and hugged him.
Tommy patted Jack on the back. "Time for another journey, lad. You be ready?"
"As I'll ever be."
"You write," Rita ordered.
"I will."
"The door's always open, boyo. Besides, who else is goin' to do our books?" Tommy laughed. Rita pinched her husband playfully. Jack looked up at his friend and mentor as Tommy held his wife. Jack was leaving the nest.
"Naples, Italy," Jack said to himself as if he was learning the words for the first time.
***
When Jack finally told Annalee that he was leaving he decided to end things. She was sad, but made little protest. On their last embrace he felt a deeper pang then he would have imagined. When he came back he would see the Ryan's, but not Annalee. She never told him to write or come back soon. She told him not to forget her. Jack tried to put her out of his mind. He had to admit he would miss her now that their fleeting romance had come to end. But he couldn't stick around in her life, not with the life he had.
As she left to go back into her mother's house that night she looked so young. She was only nineteen, but she looked even younger with her sweet, round face and wispy blonde hair. She smiled sadly and went inside, to a happy, uncomplicated life Jack hoped.
He closed his eyes, pictured her getting married, having children, growing old, then gracefully leaving a full life. It's what he wanted for her, but it hurt to think about it.
***
His last night in New York he spent wandering Lower Manhattan with another immortal, named Louie Dee, that he'd run into on Christopher Street. Louie was fun, loud and obnoxious with a gold tooth. He liked him. They went out drinking and carousing one Saturday night. Jack nearly made it with a girl but passed out drunk and woke up to a hangover and Louie's sword.
"What are you doing?" Jack fell backward, knocking over a chair in his hotel room.
"Sorry, kid. There can be only one." He swung again at the defenseless Jack. *Where in the hell is my sword?*
Jack scrambled around the room, trying to avoid Louie's blade and found his excalibur and struggled to his feet.
"Are you crazy? Are you drunk, Lou?"
"Life's a game, Dawson, and only one of the players can win."
Without thinking Jack charged at him, impaling him in the gut. He pulled out his blade and Louie dropped to his knees. He placed his sword to Louie's neck, as he had been training for four years. Jack still swinging gently and tapping Louie Dee's neck as if he were teeing off. He squeezed his eyes shut and swung with all the force in his body.
He could feel it. Like the way he felt it when he accidently ran over that squirrel with his bike when he was thirteen.
He waited, scared out of his mind, for what was coming. He knew it wouldn't kill him. He had just slaughtered the immediate threat to his life. He could feel something coming through his body as an energy came from Lou's lifeless and headless body.
Jack cried out in pain as his first Quickening shot through his body. It might have lasted no more than minute, but to Jack it was an eternity of pain. When at last he was released, he collapsed from his knees to the ground. He had liked Lou. He wanted to cry like a little boy, but he pulled himself to his feet, panicked he took everything he found on the floor and stuffed it in his suitcase and ran out of the building before anyone came to see what happened. ***
His trip continued to be hell. Hey, at least it was consistent, Jack thought. He had to get on a boat for the first time in four years. He sucked it up and got on but he suffered from nightmares and paranoia for the first three days, and just felt anxious and overwhelmed the rest. He thought about what happened in New York. Jack felt disgusting, even though Louie had lured him in and tricked him. He killed somebody and he killed somebody he had liked. He felt like he had just lost his virginity to his best friend's girl.
It was late February 1916 when Jack arrived in Naples, the city where he first met Fabrizio De Rossi when they were barely seventeen. Fabrizio was here now. So was Rose. And she had Jack's name with her.
It was a sunny Sunday afternoon. Spring would be coming to Southern Italy. Jack walked down the noisy and crowded streets of Naples with only a light jacket. He liked Rome better. So exciting, so wonderful. There was something every block, the Colosseum, the Trivoli Fountain, the Forum, cobble stone parks. He and Fabri spent a whole month there before they left for Spain and France. He could have lived there his whole life.
But Fabrizio and Rose were in Naples, which had its charm of sorts. It was noisy and crowded and poverty stricken. Jack grew up working class, but for a time true poverty made him uncomfortable. But now he hardly noticed.
He looked down at the address. Fabrizio and Rose apparently lived together. Strange for a single man and woman to live together. They must be good friends, they obviously knew each other and now they were academic colleagues. He wondered how they paid for university. Either way, he was glad they found each other and stuck together. He couldn't wait to hear their story.
The apartment looked humbler than his own, but with a better view. Just as Fabrizio talked about growing in this city, every morning waking to see Mt. Vesuvius out his window. He wondered if his bedroom was the room facing the view of Vesuvius. Jack remembered what he loved about Naples again.
He stood in the neighborhood for the better part of a hour, aimlessly wandering the chaotic Neapolitan streets. He was sweating all over. Four years. He thought they were dead. And they had no reason not to think he was dead as well.
He wandered in and out of alley ways. *Maybe they're not home. Maybe I should leave. This was a bad idea. Breathe, Dawson, breathe.* He couldn't seem to think straight yet thought too much. Jack's life had taken a new path; theirs had too. Maybe their lives were too different now? Could he tell them about what he was now? Jack was an immortal with an eighth grade education. Rose and Fabri were university people now. *Oh, hell, I'm not moving in with them to play house. I'm just stopping by.* "Just stopping by" seemed like an odd phrase for stalking estranged friends to tell them you're alive.
Jack crashed head on into a local as he wasn't looking out where he was going. The man shouted at him, Jack shouted back. After the man was out of sight among the dozens of others wandering, who took little notice of their exchange, Jack laughed to himself. *Ah, Napoli!* Feeling a little lighter, he decided now was the time. It was close to evening now and the light around him was all pink and orange.
Finally, he went back to their door and knocked–too lightly at first. Fabrizio and Rose lived here. They could be behind the very walls as he stood. He knocked harder and pulled his hand away as if he'd just touched something too hot.
He heard a young man's voice murmur from within. It was unmistakable. It was Fabrizio! Praise heaven and earth! Jack could hear the sound of awkward footsteps coming closer. He ignored the strange hobbling and waited for his truest friend to open the door. He waited to see his brother's face and be in his life once more. The knob turned and his heart skipped a beat.
~~~~~~~~
Chapter Eight - This is how you say Naples, Italy
Tommy and Rita got married that summer. Jack found an apartment in town about twenty minutes walking distance from his friends. They settled into a very cosy, comfortable life. Tommy and Rita ran Juniper Street Books and Jack worked there as a clerk and drew in the backroom on slow days. He had picked his art again and it became as natural as breathing once more.
Sometime in early 1916 Amanda waltzed into Seacouver hoping to run into Duncan MacLeod but found Tommy Ryan instead. Jack had been out on a fishing trip with his girlfriend, Annalee. It was nice that Jack found a nice girl. It wasn't very serious, but Tommy and Rita were glad he found someone. They had been going together for a few months now. He hadn't told her about his immortality. Jack liked her and he cared about her–he didn't love her. He decided to never tell her.
When Jack came back Amanda was gone, but she left a name and location in her place. "Rose Dawson lives in Naples, Italy."
"Rose *Dawson*...*lives* in Naples, Italy" Jack repeated as Tommy gave him the facts. The Ryans' house was small, but spacious and sunny and bright compared to Jack's modest one room apartment downtown.
"Yes, she does. She's been livin' there since the winter of '13. She works for the National Archaeological Museum. She flies a bi-plane in transporting artifacts around Southern Europe–or she did until the War got too big. Now she works out of the University of Naples and does some sort of on site work at Pompeii. Fabrizio De Rossi has similar employments. They work down at Pompeii together now..." Tommy waited for Jack's reaction, musing his curls nervously. Jack wasn't saying anything. His two best friends were alive and well and leading what Tommy considered to be rather interesting lives.
"So they're alive and Rose is using...presumably...my last name."
"Yes."
"They work at Pompeii?"
"So says Amanda. Doesn't think she's got the diamond though. Says those two are hard to keep tabs with the way they operate. Hockley didn't have it. She checked that one out." "Screw Hockley. You just told me Fabri and Rose are alive. And in one place!" He was elated, but had to sit down. "I think I'm gonna shake out of my boots."
"Maybe you'll stop trampling those smelly things through our house everyday," Rita came behind him and hit him in the butt with a newspaper, giggling. For the first time Jack noticed she had aged just ever so slightly. Her long, lazy black curls still shone and she still had that youthful glow in her eyes. But she looked older. Fours year isn't much of a difference between twenty-eight and thirty-two. It was less of a difference between nineteen and twenty-three. Jack didn't look a day older and he never would.
"I need to go to them. Oh, wow...oh, no...what do I tell Annalee? I don't know how long I'll be gone or what will happen." He ran his hand through his hair and exhaled.
"Look at me, querido, find your friends," Rita grabbed his face, "Tell Annalee what's right. You'll find the words, I know you will." She kissed him on the cheek and hugged him.
Tommy patted Jack on the back. "Time for another journey, lad. You be ready?"
"As I'll ever be."
"You write," Rita ordered.
"I will."
"The door's always open, boyo. Besides, who else is goin' to do our books?" Tommy laughed. Rita pinched her husband playfully. Jack looked up at his friend and mentor as Tommy held his wife. Jack was leaving the nest.
"Naples, Italy," Jack said to himself as if he was learning the words for the first time.
***
When Jack finally told Annalee that he was leaving he decided to end things. She was sad, but made little protest. On their last embrace he felt a deeper pang then he would have imagined. When he came back he would see the Ryan's, but not Annalee. She never told him to write or come back soon. She told him not to forget her. Jack tried to put her out of his mind. He had to admit he would miss her now that their fleeting romance had come to end. But he couldn't stick around in her life, not with the life he had.
As she left to go back into her mother's house that night she looked so young. She was only nineteen, but she looked even younger with her sweet, round face and wispy blonde hair. She smiled sadly and went inside, to a happy, uncomplicated life Jack hoped.
He closed his eyes, pictured her getting married, having children, growing old, then gracefully leaving a full life. It's what he wanted for her, but it hurt to think about it.
***
His last night in New York he spent wandering Lower Manhattan with another immortal, named Louie Dee, that he'd run into on Christopher Street. Louie was fun, loud and obnoxious with a gold tooth. He liked him. They went out drinking and carousing one Saturday night. Jack nearly made it with a girl but passed out drunk and woke up to a hangover and Louie's sword.
"What are you doing?" Jack fell backward, knocking over a chair in his hotel room.
"Sorry, kid. There can be only one." He swung again at the defenseless Jack. *Where in the hell is my sword?*
Jack scrambled around the room, trying to avoid Louie's blade and found his excalibur and struggled to his feet.
"Are you crazy? Are you drunk, Lou?"
"Life's a game, Dawson, and only one of the players can win."
Without thinking Jack charged at him, impaling him in the gut. He pulled out his blade and Louie dropped to his knees. He placed his sword to Louie's neck, as he had been training for four years. Jack still swinging gently and tapping Louie Dee's neck as if he were teeing off. He squeezed his eyes shut and swung with all the force in his body.
He could feel it. Like the way he felt it when he accidently ran over that squirrel with his bike when he was thirteen.
He waited, scared out of his mind, for what was coming. He knew it wouldn't kill him. He had just slaughtered the immediate threat to his life. He could feel something coming through his body as an energy came from Lou's lifeless and headless body.
Jack cried out in pain as his first Quickening shot through his body. It might have lasted no more than minute, but to Jack it was an eternity of pain. When at last he was released, he collapsed from his knees to the ground. He had liked Lou. He wanted to cry like a little boy, but he pulled himself to his feet, panicked he took everything he found on the floor and stuffed it in his suitcase and ran out of the building before anyone came to see what happened. ***
His trip continued to be hell. Hey, at least it was consistent, Jack thought. He had to get on a boat for the first time in four years. He sucked it up and got on but he suffered from nightmares and paranoia for the first three days, and just felt anxious and overwhelmed the rest. He thought about what happened in New York. Jack felt disgusting, even though Louie had lured him in and tricked him. He killed somebody and he killed somebody he had liked. He felt like he had just lost his virginity to his best friend's girl.
It was late February 1916 when Jack arrived in Naples, the city where he first met Fabrizio De Rossi when they were barely seventeen. Fabrizio was here now. So was Rose. And she had Jack's name with her.
It was a sunny Sunday afternoon. Spring would be coming to Southern Italy. Jack walked down the noisy and crowded streets of Naples with only a light jacket. He liked Rome better. So exciting, so wonderful. There was something every block, the Colosseum, the Trivoli Fountain, the Forum, cobble stone parks. He and Fabri spent a whole month there before they left for Spain and France. He could have lived there his whole life.
But Fabrizio and Rose were in Naples, which had its charm of sorts. It was noisy and crowded and poverty stricken. Jack grew up working class, but for a time true poverty made him uncomfortable. But now he hardly noticed.
He looked down at the address. Fabrizio and Rose apparently lived together. Strange for a single man and woman to live together. They must be good friends, they obviously knew each other and now they were academic colleagues. He wondered how they paid for university. Either way, he was glad they found each other and stuck together. He couldn't wait to hear their story.
The apartment looked humbler than his own, but with a better view. Just as Fabrizio talked about growing in this city, every morning waking to see Mt. Vesuvius out his window. He wondered if his bedroom was the room facing the view of Vesuvius. Jack remembered what he loved about Naples again.
He stood in the neighborhood for the better part of a hour, aimlessly wandering the chaotic Neapolitan streets. He was sweating all over. Four years. He thought they were dead. And they had no reason not to think he was dead as well.
He wandered in and out of alley ways. *Maybe they're not home. Maybe I should leave. This was a bad idea. Breathe, Dawson, breathe.* He couldn't seem to think straight yet thought too much. Jack's life had taken a new path; theirs had too. Maybe their lives were too different now? Could he tell them about what he was now? Jack was an immortal with an eighth grade education. Rose and Fabri were university people now. *Oh, hell, I'm not moving in with them to play house. I'm just stopping by.* "Just stopping by" seemed like an odd phrase for stalking estranged friends to tell them you're alive.
Jack crashed head on into a local as he wasn't looking out where he was going. The man shouted at him, Jack shouted back. After the man was out of sight among the dozens of others wandering, who took little notice of their exchange, Jack laughed to himself. *Ah, Napoli!* Feeling a little lighter, he decided now was the time. It was close to evening now and the light around him was all pink and orange.
Finally, he went back to their door and knocked–too lightly at first. Fabrizio and Rose lived here. They could be behind the very walls as he stood. He knocked harder and pulled his hand away as if he'd just touched something too hot.
He heard a young man's voice murmur from within. It was unmistakable. It was Fabrizio! Praise heaven and earth! Jack could hear the sound of awkward footsteps coming closer. He ignored the strange hobbling and waited for his truest friend to open the door. He waited to see his brother's face and be in his life once more. The knob turned and his heart skipped a beat.