Their blades were still crossed in an "X" as the two immortals stood face to face. Ready for combat but never attacking.
After what seemed like hours, Rose finally spoke.
"You were dead...and that's why you left...you didn't stay when you came to Naples...You're like me..."
"I–uh...had no idea you were...like this...." said Jack Dawson.
"How old are you?" Rose said, expecting to discover an old lie.
"I turned twenty-eight a couple days ago...what about you?"
"Can we put down our swords? I'm not interested in your Quickening," Rose asked, letting the absurdity of their situation sink in, no pun intended.
"Not interested in yours either." Jack lowered his sword and so did Rose.
Rose slid her katana back in the saya and tucked it back in her coat; Jack put his away too.
"We gotta walk somewhere..." Jack began.
"You mean not stalking around in dark alleys?"
"Yes."
They proceeded into the open streets, past the crowd. They said nothing for a long time, each glancing at the other's face off and on.
He was alive and more than alive: immortal. Nearly invincible, just like her. Rose couldn't help taking in his face, his completely unchanged face.
"I'm only twenty-six," Rose spoke finally.
"I knew you weren't very old, if you had been immortal then..." Jack trailed off, he didn't want to concentrate on their night of terrible trauma or their love affair. He now knew her to be the wife of his best friend, but she wore no wedding ring. Perhaps she left him. Did she tell him? Did she even know? When had she been killed? "Uh...it didn't seem like you knew anything...if you were. Were you?"
Rose stopped. Now she knew the words and she knew how to begin the story to a stranger—or anyone who had been a stranger to Fabrizio. Here was his best friend.
He can't go on forever without knowing and forever is quite a possibility. You're the only one to tell him.
As they walked down the open streets, Rose could see Jack out of the corner of his eye, glancing at her naked left hand. Though hands were getting numb, she did not warm them in her coat pockets as he did.
"Jack," she said. He was almost startled at the familiarity and calling him by name, "we need to find a place to sit down."
Rose decided on a bench on the sidewalk, if they must be in public, this must not happen inside. He could be her only audience.
She blinked slowly and nodded her head soberly. She looked him squarely in the eyes.
What is Titanic that made you? It made me," he asked.
"No. Are you wondering about Fabri, Jack?"
"Yes."
"For the same reason that I am immortal...is the same reason..." It seemed a crime to tell him. She took a breath, "is the reason, the same reason that Fabrizio is not here with me. I'm so sorry, Jack, he's dead."
Jack said nothing. Rose almost put his hand on his shoulder, but she waited for him to speak. Jack didn't speak for a long time though he looked very pale as he wrapped his coat tighter around his body. Rose could see him gripping the hilt of his sword through the thick, wool overcoat.
Rose nodded to herself. She had just as much right to Fabrizio as he did and she had a right to finish this story...she just couldn't hold it in anymore.
"We stayed late at the site. All the artifacts in there, they're property of the University and the Museum, but they sell like hotcakes for illegal buyers...you understand?"
"What part of it exactly?"
"Stay with me, the part about stealing...I'm rambling..." Rose's heart beat faster and she knew she was stalling on the details of information Jack already knew but it was easier giving this little lecture. Oh, how she hated being inarticulate! She prided herself so much on being a superior little smart-ass, or now, a big one. "It's common for people to plunder archaeological sites. So that's what happened. So we were there and they had guns."
Jack mourned Fabrizio after he walked Rose home. Rose went into her hotel room that she shared with her first mentor, Duncan MacLeod and his best friend, Hugh Fitzcairn. She wondered if she would tell him. MacLeod was the only thing Jack knew about Rose's new life besides poor Fabrizio. It was all she had told him. He assumed these men might be her only family. Or maybe there was something between her and her teacher...he didn't know.
As far as he buried his face in his pillow, he could take in the shock, Fabrizio dead. And he didn't stay! He left him there, never to see him again. And Rose, an immortal with a dark look in her eyes. She was no ingénue when he met her, but she was a virgin and stranger to the world.
The next day he met in her in a café to talk about Tommy's immortality and Rita. About Texas and Washington. He told her about the one-legged prostitute and how he came to Paris looking for her. He had the address of Tessa Dupont in his coat pocket.
She talked about flying her plane, Duncan MacLeod, Sean Burns, and Miwa Soga. About Italy and as much Fabri as they both could stand, about the Great War, Japan, and England.
"I fought in the last year of the War. I was an damn good NCO. First Sergeant," he said proudly. "I loved my boys, but I swear I won't kill another mortal again."
"Don't swear by anything, Jack Dawson. You have a long time to change your mind. Circumstances have a long time to change theirs." She removed off her dark blue velvet hat and, taking some red locks with it as she pulled it down. She took off her dark blue gloves and kept running her finger over the smooth leather. Jack was too nervous to take off any of his winter protection.
That night, the last night he saw her before the Great Death. She had such bright eyes with such hope and youth. Now all of her was like the look in Connor MacLeod's eyes. He knew that she was threat to his head but he was afraid of those dark, bitter eyes now.
"Can I ask you a personal question, Rose?"
"Yes, you do know in a particular personal way."
Jack scratched his head and stood up for a moment.
"Are you leaving?" Rose shot, sounding ruder than she intented.
"No...I. Just adjust—I had an itch."
"Sorry if I made you nervous."
"No, sorry if I made you nervous. Rose—"
"Ask the God damn question, Jack."
Jack's eyes widened. He tried to remember if she ever cursed on Titanic.
"Alright...have you taken a head?"
"Oh...that. No. No, I haven't. I thought you would be the first last night—but I'm glad that you were not."
"I'm glad, too."
"You?"
"Two. I've killed two of us."
Rose giggled, seeming like a young girl for the first time in the past day that he'd seen her.
"I feel like the silly virgin again. No heads taken. Just played around with a sword a little..." she winked.
"Heh..." Jack laughed uncomfortably. Just played around a little? She never made any illusion to physical relations with her old fiancé, Cal when he held her in his young arms. But now in a cheap café, she laughed it off.
"Come on, Dawson. This is France after all...and there's no use pretending. This world is so afraid of their own bodies and their own vulnerability. Don't tell me you've become a monk."
"No but it feels strange...sitting here with you being very casual about it."
"You live along time, Jack, who knows what people will say in cafés fifty, a hundred years from now. So tell me something uncomfortable, it's already strange as you said. Conversation about what men and women do with each other with someone you've known...we almost killed each other last night," she paused, "we lost a friend..." she said softly.
"Something uncomfortable? Fact or feeling?"
"Both."
"I've been with enough ladies to make my mother spin in her grave..though I've calmed down a bit with that...I was young drawing naked girls all the time..." Was Rose smiling? Good god, she was amused. She now knew the darkness in life, quipping about loose behavior was too petty to bother her. "But most of all: I miss Fabrizio. A lot. I thought about you and him all last night and didn't sleep much."
"I miss him too... I'll make a deal with you."
"Deal?" Jack asked, "what kind of deal?"
"Once upon a time I fell in love with a boy," she started, "and I was so infatuated I made my own man of him. Today I realize I do not know this man. Can I get to know him? Because I don't."
"Yes, I can make that deal."
"As my new friend, do you want to tell me how in the hell you faked your death...er, before actually dying...?"
"Called myself Dawson..." Rose smiled sheepishly.
"As in Me Dawson?"
"No, as in the Boston Dawsons."
"I'm detecting sarcasm. Let's go to the best place for sorting out worries." Jack led her out of the cafe. She hurried after him down the gray Parisian streets.
"Where would that be?" Rose asked. "No pubs. I'd prefer not to get silly before lunch. Much too early."
"Actually, it may be hokey but this is what my parents and Dan would always do when life got to be too hard."
"Who's Dan?"
"That's right! I need to tell you all about my childhood, too—don't get too Freudian on my though."
He on the sidewalk a block up from a little stone church and pointed.
"Then I need to tell you that I'm a feminist and the Bible and I aren't the best of friends."
"You're an immortal and this is holy ground. You like holy ground, no? Besides, you've just signed on to be my new best friend and this would make your friend feel better."
He started pulling on her wrist like a child and she pulled back creating a see-saw between them.
"Okay, pal. Church will be our crutch today."
"All them free-thinking book you kids read today..." Jack scolded playfully.
"Holy ground, eh? Couldn't be too bad. Keep them bad man at bay," she prodded with her best cowboy accent.
He ran toward the little stone church with a sign that read St. Julien La Paurve. Rose ran, holding her hat to her head against the cold winter wind.
"As long as some rules really aren't meant to be broken, I'll feel pretty safe." Jack gazed at the little church.
"Maybe true evil might...ever heard the Pompeii rumor?"
"When I see him again, I'll ask," said Jack. He only had one picture for "true evil."
Rose glanced hard at Jack, fearful and shocked.
"Yes, we've known each other since I was a boy. He took everything from me."
"Jack..."
"When I tell you, I want to tell you in here." He pointed at the church, his arm stretched out all the way and straight in front of him. "I never feel safe talking about it, not even with a friend."
"I'll go in," Rose said quietly as she opened the gate for them. He didn't move for a minute. "Jack?"
"Yeah, I'm coming."
They stopped after two steps.
"You feel that?" Jack looked at Rose.
"Naturally."
She looked at him and he looked back, nodding. They walked forward.