The silence was broken only by the sound of May throwing cupboards shut in the next room as she prepared coffee. Peter had occupied a roomy but worn winged armchair directly across from the sofa. He now stared silently at the two people opposite of him, his hands gripping the sides of his cushion.

"My parents moved to California," Pete said almost automatically, but whether he meant to avoid any questions about the subject or just fill in the quiet Jack did not know. "The cold was too much for them, you know what I mean. They left the house to my sister and me. It's not much, but it works."

Jack opened his mouth to say something, but May stormed out of the swinging door that led to the kitchen and he was so shocked by the furious look in her dark eyes that he forgot entirely about the conversation his friend had tried to start. Her face was actually blotchy with anger, and her knuckles shook as she carried a steaming pot and a tray holding three cups out into the living room. That was something Jack noticed immediately – there were only three cups. He barely had time to awe over the strangeness of the situation when May, whose vision was apparently clouded with rage, tripped over the leg of the coffee table and tripped, managing to catch herself at the last second and hold onto the pot. However, the tray slid out of her hand and the cups crashed to the floor, one breaking as it hit the sharp edge of a chair.

Instantly, Rose was on her knees beside May and carefully picking up shards of porcelain from the frayed rug beneath her. She didn't say anything or ask if help was needed, she just went about her business very quietly, as if determined not to awaken a volcano that was stirring in its sleep. All of this had happened so quickly that Jack was still too startled to wonder what this was all about. He looked at Peter with wide, confused eyes, and Peter looked back just as helplessly. As Rose's gentle hands moved to help May brush off her dress, which was peppered with bits of broken glass, May suddenly swatted at her hands and venomously countered, "I can take care of this myself, thank you." The turmoil in Jack's face became considerably heavier as he sat there, frozen, wondering what in the hell had happened to someone who had once been one of his closest friends. He didn't understand the bitterness in her voice or the cold indifference in her expression.

Peter was also horrified. He had no idea why his sister was acting like this at all, let alone to the breathtaking wife of a man that had finally slowed down, just as she had always wished for him to do. May looked like she was on the verge of tears, tears hot with resentment and hurt. He was left clueless to what had gone wrong. Rose, however, coolly answered, "I'll collect the pieces from the floor while you remove anything sharp from your skirts. You could get badly injured if you don't." She didn't wait for an answer and instead took the glass to the kitchen, where they heard her open the back door and assumed that she had gone and thrown it far from the house. When she came back, the mess was gone, and May was again in the kitchen removing cups that were tin this time, as she had broken three of their good ones.

Rose threw off a regal glow as she again sat down next Jack. There was no haughtiness in the light that surrounded her, just fluid beauty. Peter still couldn't stop himself from staring.

Jack threw a concerned glance over at his wife. He saw the tiniest pinprick of blood where a rough edge had caught her cold fingertip, and he smoothed it over with one of his strong fingers, pressing down until the bleeding stopped. She held in a gasp of discomfort and instead smiled at him weakly, not from pain, but from confusion and disappointment. He held her hand gently, squeezing it from time to time, trying to say without words how sorry he was even though he was absolutely oblivious to what had made May snap like she had.

"Well," Peter said nervously, trying to take the couple's attention away from the embarrassing occurrence, "How long do you folks plan on staying in town?" There was a pleading in his eyes, something that begged them to let it go. They did.

"We don't exactly know. Definitely through winter, but probably for awhile," Jack answered, leaving out as many details as possible, not giving any more than asked. This was completely unlike him, for he usually offered all of himself without fear, but now he had Rose to think about.

"Hmmm. When everyone finds out you're back in town, they're gonna tie you to a wall to keep you from leaving again." Pete laughed appreciatively at his own joke, just like he always had, and Jack grinned despite himself. "So, Jack, where've ya been?"

For a split-second, Jack allowed himself to consider the question. The images rushed thorough his mind like a messily-put-together nickelodeon, some of them blurry and fuzzy, some so vividly clear that he could smell the sharp scents that accompanied them and feel textures that his mind had preserved. They were memories . . . some that made him ache, others that burned and stabbed like a hot knife, others that exhilarated. Then unexpectedly, even to himself, he threw up a dam in his thoughts and ground to a sudden stop.

"Uh, well, you know me, Mr. World-Class-Traveler." Even Rose giggled at that, and May entered the room again with, this time, four tin cups and the same steaming pot, which she carefully set down on the coffee table. There was silence that fell upon the group suddenly, and May blushed such a shameful color of red that Rose was filled with sympathy for her and rapidly took up her husband's sentence, which he had stopped after seeing the icy poison swirling in the girl's eyes. He looked terrified.

"Well, Jack told me that he actually worked in Monterrey and Santa Monica for a time." She gave him a pointed glance, one that he deciphered to the best of his ability to mean something to the effect of, "Stop gawking and open your trap to answer your friend." He complied and looked up at Peter.

"Yeah, after that I made my way across the country to New York City and caught a steamer to Paris." He had told this story so many times to so many people that it felt like a prepared speech. Any second now would come that one comment –

"I knew France would be in there somewhere! Had to follow the art, eh?"

Ah. There it was.

Jack nodded as he choked down the coffee May gave him with trembling fingertips, although he didn't notice them. He also didn't notice the desperation with which she looked at him, and how hard she seemed to be willing herself to speak. Her silent cry of "Please, please, please look at me," went unanswered and he plunged onward, ignorant.

"I found out that most of the guys in Paree were already pretty well known, had a few pieces out there, you know. And they were all so unbelievably educated, a degree in every field of art from every damn university that they could get their greedy little hands on. They'd gone so far into being an artist that they forgot about the art and just lived for the stupid money." He had been getting quite worked up, but he caught himself before he snapped and shoved his hair back from his eyes, demanding that his breathing steady itself. This was something he was good at, controlling his anger, and he let his rational mind take over the irrational fury at people that weren't even there. He swallowed heavily, and Peter's laugh rang out almost harshly in the little room.

"Not everyone is as resistant to the material life as you are, my friend," he said, still chuckling. "Some people like having enough money to put a roof over their heads or foods in their bellies. Not all people are as pure-hearted as you've always thought." The grin slipped from his face and a moody expression roamed across it instead. His gaze became slack and he dropped it to the fire, smoothing the stubble on his chin aimlessly with a free finger. Pete had seen things in his own life, no matter how sheltered it had been, and he shook his head slightly so as not to drown in the memories that threatened to bury him.

"I know that," Jack answered, quiet but strangely defiant. "I've known that for a long time." But he wouldn't allow himself to go down that path. There was no time, and he didn't have enough strength for the treacherous climb over pain that that path represented. As Rose's delicate hand almost invisibly massaged his shoulder, he pretended that nothing had happened and continued with his story. "So I stayed there for a little while, and then I wandered down through Italy to the Mediterranean. Always wanted to do that, couldn't see why I should wait." He hesitated, but he knew that he couldn't bring Fabri into the story. His wound was not yet healed well enough to expose to the open air, it still gutted at him and stabbed at his heart and tortured his soul. The bandage of silence that he had wrapped around it was not something that could be lifted yet, and maybe it never would be. He kept Fabrizio de Rossi safe and unblemished inside of him, in that small corner of his brain where he had left Fabri to be closed off from the cruel world that didn't deserve him. No, the tale of that stocky Italian man was going to have to wait. It was a gash far too fresh, far too deep, far too close to his spirit.

"And, uh, I met some new people in Italy, but I . . . I couldn't stay in one place very long, you know, I got sorta restless . . . I decided I was gonna go back to France . . . back to drawing things that . . . that needed to be drawn, even if art had gone to hell in Paris, it wasn't taking me with it. On my way, I took a long route, went through some more of Europe. Couple of years later I went to London, and eventually wound up . . . on . . . well, back in America."

Rose's piercing plea next to him cut straight through to his insides, and the tears that were trembling on her eyelashes made him feel horribly guilty. This was a bad idea, he knew, to be dancing so close to the line that was Titanic. One wrong step and he would fall across the border into a place that he feared he'd never leave, and Rose would follow him, like she always did. It was almost as if he were holding a gun and reaching to cock it. There was no going back once one crossed that line, none whatsoever. He slowly backed away, for he felt Rose begging him to leave that alone, silently screaming at him with all that she was. He could never deny her anything, and this hadn't changed.

"I stayed in New York, saved up the money, and, well, you know the rest!" The false cheeriness in his voice seemed noticed only by his wife and he raced past this deadly point.

However, he was not allowed to escape so easily. "Whoa, whoa, whoa," Peter objected, a laugh again in his eyes. "How did you meet this angel over there? No offense, Jack, but she doesn't seem to be the sleeping-in-gutters type. What'd'ja do, kidnap her?" He glanced for a moment at Rose, to be polite, but he didn't trust himself to look at her long. She was far, far too beautiful, far too kind, far too everything that was wonderful, and he could never gaze at her in the way he wanted to, and he knew it.

"Not too big of a deal, really. We met . . . near Ireland. And, what can I say, how could she resist me?" Although Jack was quick to hide it, Pete saw the flash of fear that burned simultaneously through Jack's eyes and those of his lovely bride. It was gone before anything could be said about it, and Jack laughed and pretended to stretch out arrogantly over the sofa. Rose smiled a small smile, her face suddenly lacking any color. What was going on here?

Jack had to congratulate himself. He had told the truth, for they had barely left Ireland when Jack had first seen Rose DeWitt-Bukater, but he had managed to dodge everything even about the ocean. Still, this victory didn't taste as sweet as it should have. "No, no, really, I couldn't resist her." He remembered her standing there, like some goddess that had been ripped from her rightful place in the heavens, crying out for someone to show her that they believed she still belonged there. A tender look crossed his face as his hand absentmindedly reached to Rose's fiery curls and threaded through them.

"I can see why," Peter murmured, far too close to the trap that Rose Dawson had built around him in five seconds without even knowing it. He turned away.

"May, you've hardly said a word," Jack said suddenly but timidly, for he had not forgotten the venom that May had been full of only moments before. He prayed it was gone, whatever it had been. "How've you been? Anyone special in your life?"

May's mind sighed, feeling partially angry at him for his blasted ignorance and partially knowing that she could never be truly angry with him, for he was simply too innocent. She wanted to say a thousand things, to tell him that she had thought he was dead and that she had been crushed, to tell him that he was the last thing she saw before she fell asleep and the first picture her mind gave her when she awoke in the morning. She allowed herself to relive, even for just a moment, Jack's fifteenth birthday. The smell of sharp, cool autumn again burned her nostrils and she could almost feel his hand in hers as he pulled her gently away from the group of people talking in his kitchen. The dusk had settled out into velvety night, and he had simply taken her to the forest near his house and kissed her. There had been nothing leading to it, nothing complicated, just his mouth on hers and his arms tight around her waist and her lips being at first probed and then pierced by his tongue. It had been awkward at the first second, but then it had been wonderful, her body had awoken to things that she didn't even know it had the power to awake to and stirred in ways that it shouldn't have stirred for a long time. She had realized that her entire life had been born so that she could be like this, so that she could kiss Jack Dawson, and she knew she couldn't live without him. They went back to the party afterwards, and he hadn't let go of her all evening. She had been walking on air, unbelieving, and every time she had glanced at him her body had melted. But the fearless Jack, the evil twin of the Jack that she loved, stayed this close to her for only a couple of months. Slowly, agonizingly, she had watched as the kisses began to become shorter and less emotional. Helplessly, she had stood there on that fateful December day in her living room, in this very room, as he had told her that he couldn't be with her like this, that his blessed friendship with Peter wasn't going to survive, and that she was a wonderful person and he would always admire her, but someone else had been chosen to love her, no matter how differently he had once thought. She had nodded, said she understood, said she had been thinking the very same thing, and said that there was bound to be the perfect girl for him out there somewhere. She had smiled considerately as he struggled with what to say and even kissed him one last time on the cheek as he grinned with relief, relief that she still wanted to be friends with him, and buttoned up his jacket. As he stepped into the bitter cold to go home, she still stood smiling. But the moment the door had shut, she'd ran up to the attic, flung herself over the chilly wooden crates of junk, and cried until her tear supply had dried up, then waited for it to refill, and cried some more. May Filner had been desperately in love with Jack Dawson, and nothing had changed. He apparently believed that she had meant everything she had said that day, and that she had recovered without any trouble at all, and that she was happy for him for finding this . . . this . . . woman. She would not disappoint him, not if she could help it. She would rather die than see his disappointment directed at her.

"I've been fine, you know, same old same old. Chippewa Falls hasn't changed too much. There hasn't been anything fresh here in ages, if you know what I mean. No new men or even boys to drool over, just the stupid ones from before, but I'm glad to see that you're in one piece." It took all of her strength to say those four sentences. She felt like she was trying to reach the moon. She shook without meaning to and had to hide her hands.

Rose was not ever easily fooled, and now was no different, but this was not her façade, and it was not her place to tell the truth of this lie. Instead, she turned from May, trying to pretend that she couldn't see the look of adoration in her navy irises, and studied Jack. The tense look in his eyes hadn't left, but it had relaxed a little, and she could see the man she loved with her whole heart, her savior, her life. He wasn't fawning over her right now, or pushing up against her, or even looking at her at all, and yet there was a sudden powerful pride and stormy desire she felt for him that hit her like lightning, fast and out of nowhere, splintering through all of her other emotions. He was irresistible right now, with a blonde strand of hair hanging in his face, an ever so slight grin on his lips, strong hands touching her in every respectable way he could. She felt a need to kiss him right at that moment, that was so real and tangible that she had to work to convince herself to be satisfied with just being near him.

"So, Jack, when did you and Rose get married? Do you have any plans to have children, or is that too far in the future?" Peter's questions had started out innocent enough, but the knife that drove deep into Rose's heart at the very moment he mentioned children was viciously twisted by the carefree way in which he regarded the subject, like he was just being polite by filling up dead air but he knew that they were too immature to care.

Rose did not scream at him. Rose did not slap him. Rose did not threaten him or belittle him. She simply stared at him, a ghostly stare with eyes that were painted green with a sea of regret, an expression created with what-might-have-beens, trembling tears made up of broken dreams. Her face was shadowed with pain, a deep and unbearable pain that set her delicate features afire. Memories that were marred to ugliness with hurt surfaced in her irises.

Peter missed it. He was afraid to look at her, afraid to see. But Jack looked at nothing else, and Jack saw it at once. He couldn't breathe. He knew that he should comfort her somehow; he knew that he should change the topic or hold her or something, anything. But he couldn't. He didn't know what to do.

"We've been married since . . . since . . . August . . ." Jack murmured, confused, never taking his gaze off of his wife. Finally, something inside of him clicked, and his hand managed to creep around her waist and he pulled her into him, burying her face into his shoulder. The Filners assumed she was being shy, but silent tears soaked his shirt while she tried to compose herself.

"Yeah," he managed to go on, trying to take attention off of his wife. "We met back in . . . in . . . uhh . . . April, and we ended up both going to . . . to New York." Finally, Rose lifted her face, and a beatific smile replaced the tremulous lips of seconds before. She morphed so quickly that Jack was stunned.

"That wasn't a very long courtship, was it?" Peter seemed to be adding things quickly in his head, but Jack cut him off before he could get too far.

"Love at first sight, you know, couldn't help it." For the first time, he was telling the full-blooded truth without hiding anything from his friend. It had been love at first sight, and that's the way it would be forever. The muscles in his body suddenly relaxed. It would be alright, he knew it.

After supper that evening, Peter had advised Jack and Rose to stay for the night and head out to the Dawson place tomorrow. He said that it would need a lot of work, and that was best left for the dawn of a fresh day. They hastily agreed, with cramps in their exhausted muscles from the restless night before and tiredness beginning to draw its weary blanket over them. After they had both bathed in the washroom with water heated over the stove, May gave them a fat tallow candle and showed them to the extra bedroom, her parents' old room, where they would be sleeping. The bed was rickety and old, but it was big enough for the both of them, and she heaped blankets on the ancient mattress to fight off the painful cold.

The last thing May wanted was to leave. She didn't want to think about the object of her adoration alone, in a bedroom, with someone that wasn't her. But she knew she had to. She delayed long enough, hoping they would be so tired that they would just collapse and not go near each other, but the blistering look that Jack was giving Rose told May that he wanted, that he felt like he needed, time with just his wife. It was this, and only this, that compelled her feet to turn around and walk her out of the room. She would have listened to no one else, but he had power over her that he didn't even know he had. She wanted to hate him for it, but in all of her weakness the only thing she could do was throw herself on her own bed and sob until she felt she would die. That's what she did for hours, as the blackness threatened to suffocate her just like the blackness in her heart.

The moment May shut the door behind her, Jack let out a breath he had been holding since the moment he had knocked on their door. Even with the fire's warmth trickling through the small house, it was still drafty inside, but he unbuttoned his shirt nonetheless and allowed himself to breathe deeply. Reassurance that he had made it through the first crucial hours washed over him like bathwater.

The candle flickered madly as wind crept in the seam between the window and the walls, casting his face into an eerie collage of dim orange shadow. There weren't words for several moments as Rose freed herself from the entrapment of the dress she had worn for far too long and sifted through their suitcases for her nightgown. Soon she found it, and she was pulling it over her head when she felt a powerful arm wrap around her and she was drawn into a bare chest, broad and smelling like sweet sandalwood.

"Thank you for being here with me," Jack's voice murmured huskily, emotionally. "Thank you." He couldn't think of anything else to say, and he just stood there staring at her, loving her, wanting her.

She didn't speak, but instead finished putting on her nightclothes and then looked up and pressed her lips to his, breathing in deeply everything about him, feeling how his lips at first were slow and surprised but quickly turned into live wires, devouring her. There was something inside of them that roared back to life, something that had previously been pushed into the background but was now resurrected to a power that was almost greater than it had ever been. Rose trembled, but not from fear. She had no idea why her body was quivering the way it was, but Jack's touch on her, his mouth against hers, his solid form so close that she couldn't function at all, all of these worked to make the memories of this awkward day fade away, and there was only the two of them.

He stood straight from where he had been leaning against the wall and pushed her back, step by step, until her knees hit the bed and she fell softly into the imprinted mattress. He followed her, his mouth never breaking in its dance with hers, and held his weight up on his forearms. His hands threaded through her hair, and then moved to explore her body, caressing her and listening to her strangled gasps. Their breathing became so ragged that it was a wonder they could get any breaths in at all. The smoldering desire in Jack's eyes told her exactly what he was thinking, exactly what she was thinking.

"No, Jack, we can't," she murmured huskily, hardly able to move, wishing with all her being that she didn't have to say those words. "I can't." She closed her burning eyelids so that she wouldn't have to see Jack's immediate reaction, but she could almost feel the confusion and guilt painted on his face.

He got up off of her and sat on the edge of the tiny bed, tearing his hand through his hair. She heard him sigh heavily, more with bewilderment than disappointment. "Rose . . ." he choked, sputtering, "Did I . . . did I hurt you? Did I do something wrong?" He turned to look at her head on, and she couldn't avoid the intense questioning of his gaze. There was fear in his eyes, fear as thick as the snow outside, and she shook her head helplessly.

"They'll hear, Jack, and we just came back . . . and . . . well . . . I can't . . . I'm . . . after Anna . . . I have to wait . . . we should . . . I haven't heal –"

He cut her off then, understanding completely and not wanting her to have to go down the agonizing path that led to their daughter. "Shh, I know, I know, I'm sorry," he whispered, over and over again. He wanted to beat himself on the head. Why couldn't he ever control his timing? Why was he such an animal? Why hadn't he remembered? It had only been a month, and Rose's delivery had been so difficult and harmful to her body . . . he was such an idiot . . . such an idiot . . .

She stretched out on the bed, sinking her head into a pillow made from down, and reached for him. His worries were forgotten immediately, and he was beside her in seconds, wrapping her in his arms and covering them both with as many blankets as he could find. They spent the rest of the night sleeping peacefully entwined like this, all of their nightmares gone for those few hours, a couple forever together and a boy finally reunited with his home.

Jack sat on the sofa in the living room lacing up his boots. He wanted to leave as soon as possible. Now that he was here, something seemed to have tied strings around his heart and was pulling him violently towards his home with such force that it left him breathless. He hadn't stopped to think if he was ready to see it again. He didn't care. He was going, and that was that. Too much of his life had been spent hiding behind the wall of fear, and it was over.

He had woken up early this morning, before dawn, and had eventually gotten up just as the sun had become a buttery glob on the eastern hills. For some reason, it felt warmer today; still cold, by all means, but a bearable cold, a cold that cleaned the air and left it stingingly fresh. Rose was still sleeping upstairs. She had curled herself around him during the night, and removing her body from his that morning had proven to be a chore. He had done it successfully, and now he let her sleep. She would be up soon; it was almost nine-thirty.

May had served both her brother and Jack steaming hot flapjacks earlier that morning. She still hadn't said much to Jack, and that bothered him. When he had appeared in her door, she had acted like heaven had broken open onto Earth. But soon her adoration had turned to biting indifference, even icy loathing in Rose's case. He didn't know what had gone wrong. If he tried, he could remember how she used to be . . . her black-blue eyes lustrous with devotion, her cheeks pink from laughter, her hair loosening from the pins that entrapped it to fall in one shining motion down her back. He had been so sure that she was his true love, his only love, that she had been his whole world. His dreams had been filled with her, and even though he liked to think he would never had made love to her at such a young age, in truth, for months, it had been like she had been in his bed every night. But the strong passion he felt for her had begun to eerily ebb away, one kiss at a time. He did not race to her when he saw her casually in public; he did not hold her whenever he was with her. It wasn't even that he hadn't wanted to, but rather it just didn't feel right when May was in his arms. She had vanished from his dreams, almost as if his heart was telling him that that place was for somebody else to fill. After weeks of such torment, he had simply let go of her. Now, it occurred to him that he had never questioned how she felt. He had come on so strong, and then he had dropped her like a burden he could no longer carry. He knew that breaking off their relationship had been the right thing. He knew that Rose was the only woman in the world for him, and he knew that she was his soulmate. He knew May would have been a bitter disappointment, because she was not the one that God had made for him. He knew that he loved his wife with every fiber of his being. But after all this, he also knew that he had done a despicable thing to May . . . wanting her so terribly, leading her on so surely, and then leaving without properly explaining himself.

He looked curiously over at where she stood. As he gazed intently at her, he noticed something he had to have missed before. He noticed pain. It dripped off her body like long icicles, reaching out to him and yet cringing back whenever he came near. Suddenly, every bewildering thought about her that he had had since yesterday vanished and compassion winded its silken thread through the room and around her soul. Jack didn't know that he had broken her heart. There was no way that he could possibly know that. Yet, in that second, he did know that he had cut her very deeply. He had been one of her closest friends, and he had destroyed that just because he had given into his body's momentary desires and then, the moment they had quieted, he had left her alone. He had driven a knife into her back. He had hurt her. And in that second, he became truly and desperately sorry. Silently he begged her forgiveness, and silently he apologized for taking advantage of her. But even as he pleaded and groveled, he knew it would never be enough.

May felt shivers rushing up her body and, before she could stop herself, she turned to meet Jack's eyes head on. What she saw took her breath away. He was staring at her so gently, so kindly, and so caringly that, even for a little while, she allowed herself to hope against hope. There was something being transmitted to her that he had never told her before. Her insides stopped working and her heart jumped to her throat. She remembered his lips, his hands, his breath . . . but instead of remembering as one who had lost, she remembered it as one who was about to gain.

He stood up almost as if in a trance, and his eyes never left hers. He opened his mouth, tried to say something, and paused, carefully considering his words. She didn't move, but she felt the smile creeping over her face. Finally, she realized, finally, this was it – he understood that destiny demanded that they be together. He felt fate shoving them towards each other. For the first time, he was not fighting it. Her dreams soared.

There was a movement at the top of the stairs, just as Jack had started to get sounds out to form sentences. In her heart, all of Time held its collective breath and the world froze. Her shining eyes began to slowly dim. The apex of relief was pulled roughly down by reality, and she stopped breathing. She wasn't even aware of her entire body crying out for air as his gaze floated away from her. Her whole frame throbbed with a cry for him to stay, for him to not leave her again, for him to forgive her for however she had wronged him. But she knew, in that one moment in which all moments were captured, she knew that she had lost him forever. It was perhaps the closest to dying she had ever been. If willpower could kill, she would have been dead before she hit the floor, because he had just locked his eyes on his wife. They were eyes like she had never seen, eyes full of hunger and unadulterated relief, eyes brimming with an ecstasy that she didn't know one could possess, eyes bathed in passion, wonder, amazement, cherishment . . . Right in front of her face, right there in those glistening orbs of blue, true love was laid naked and raw. It was all there, the whole story of adoration. She didn't even need to look at Rose Dawson to know that they were communicating to each other. She could feel the shy but blazing waves coming from her direction, and in that minute she hated that woman with a hate pure enough to almost seem holy. She felt tormented, taunted by what she couldn't have. She didn't know what to do. Helpless, alone, and afraid, she fled into the kitchen to hide her viciously hot tears

The snow had finally stopped falling and an almost painfully blue sky unfurled above four people carefully picking their way across the glistening white ground below that burned with pale sunlight. It was early afternoon, but very few people were out. Most were at work, either in the little shops that littered either side of the road, or at the lumber mill. A few managed to find a way to get to Eau Claire and were fortunate enough to snag a job at the shoe factory on the western side of the city.

No one else knew that Jack Dawson was back in town. It wasn't normal, he thought now, pondering as he led the group down the winding street. It was strange to be in a place that remained completely oblivious to his presence. He resisted the urge to run with reckless abandon through the soft mounds of snow and through the woods, down the shortcut he had always taken as a boy. He wasn't ready for that yet. Not yet.

They were getting closer now. He felt Rose's hand lightly grasp his shirt as she held onto him to keep her balance on the ice. He wondered what was going through her mind right now. Did she think that he was crazy, to take her to a place like this, a place with no guarantees, a place with no promise? Was she upset to be here?

Even as he pondered these questions, he knew the answer. He knew she'd follow him to Hell if he led her there, and back again. He knew that she trusted him with her life, her everything. That enormous responsibility weighed heavily on his shoulders. It wasn't a burden. He wouldn't get rid of it for everything in the world. It just amazed him, maybe even scared him a little.

Her tender touch moved to his arm, and without saying anything, she conveyed everything. She told him that she was here, and that no matter what they found, they would find it together. He was so grateful that he couldn't speak. He simply wrapped his arm around her shoulders and thankfully looked down into her dazzling eyes.