Sooooo… I can't say I know where my emotional state was when I wrote this. It got so much darker than I was intending. But you know what? Sometimes you just need to pound out an angsty, depressing one-shot every now and then.
This story is dedicated to kateelizabethwinslet26 (on Instagram) AKA KateWinsletor265 (on Wattpad) AKA KWinsletor265 (on FFN). Her Kate/Leo one-shot on Wattpad, "Nighttime," inspired me to write this one, which is based off of that story but adapted to fit a Jack/Rose story. I hope you enjoy. (As much as you can enjoy sadness and despair, I guess?)
Midnight
By Lady Elena Dawson
Disclaimer: I do not own Titanic (1997)
The cheery chatter of families gathering for New Year's Eve, and the fading echo of Christmas carols past, contrasted against the bleak interior of the Dawson household. Jack hadn't bothered to light the candles or put up the wreaths, or buy a proper bottle of wine to celebrate the end of another year. How could he, he thought, when he could find no reason to be excited for a new beginning? Another night would pass, just like any other day on a calendar; all meaning lost on him as the decade would become a passing memory.
Eight years. Almost eight years since they had met. Jack could still remember that moment he had first seen her, gazing across decks that were two separate worlds. The way some of her curls, as bright and red as fire, had escaped their restrictive style and been blown against her face by the breeze. He could briefly recall her lacy gown through his peripheral vision as his eyes were glued to her delicate facial features. When she had finally paid him attention, that first glimpse, his heart hadn't raced like one would expect it to. Instead, he had been calmed, and was distraught when she left.
As the sun set on Santa Monica, Jack watched from a chair on the porch and felt the blood boil inside him. He could hear the waves crashing on the nearby beach while he cleaned off another bottle of beer. Rose loved the sunset, to the extent that she would drag him out the door so they could watch it occur on the shore, even if the temperature was unpleasantly chilly. The irony wasn't lost on him that she remained in love with the beach despite the horrors that they had witnessed on the ocean, the tragedy they were part of.
The sinking. He remembered opening his eyes the morning after and wondering if he had discovered life after death. Why else would he be awake? He had been so certain he was going to die that night, he was surprised when he was told he was alive and breathing. But then his mind had drifted to her: Rose. She had been by his side in the infirmary until they had docked, ready to start their new life together. Would she be a passing memory as soon as the clock struck midnight tonight?
Though they expressed a strong desire to settle in California, they didn't rush their time to get there. Jack could still recall their route from New York City: they skipped through Pennsylvania, then made stops in Cincinnati, St. Louis, Oklahoma City, and Albuquerque before reaching their final destination of Santa Monica. At each stop, Rose experienced a part of history she hadn't seen before, never having been further west than Pittsburgh. Jack, however, knew some local spots in each city, having navigated through many of them across the country, from coast to coast, before he had hopped on a boat to Europe. With a small wad of cash and the clothes on their backs, they spent nights in communes while spending their days exploring the vastness of the country.
Once they reached Santa Monica, though, they set up their roots. They both took up jobs to afford to pay rent for the garret they were living in, and Jack hadn't seen anyone happier to work so much for so little. "Look at my hands, Jack," Rose said after her first week of labor, a glint of pride and excitement in her eyes. "They're blistering!"
For a while, they had to sleep on a worn-out mattress on the floor, but neither minded. Jack had to get up earlier for work than Rose, so he could make it to the beaches while tourists were still out and about. He was pleasantly surprised when he would be woken up by her lips on his neck, an alluring request to spend some intimate time with one another to start their day off properly. He had no problem with the wake-up call, obliging each time.
While Jack split his time between his art and a fishing boat, Rose learned to be a seamstress during the day with the intention to audition after work. Jack had come home multiple times to her feeling defeated, but managed to cheer her up by serving her his famous chicken noodle soup (they couldn't afford to eat much else) while curling up under the thin covers. Then they would move on and repeat the process the next day, Rose never giving up hope.
As Jack got up to grab his jacket, he slammed the bottle against the wall while entering the house. He had left his boots on since he returned home from work, not bothering to remove them. She wasn't here to nag him about taking his shoes off at the door anymore. As he limped to the coat hanger, he scratched his stubbly beard before pulling the jacket on and stepping back out into the salty ocean wind.
Despite his leg aching every single time he would make this trip, he did it anyway. He didn't care to feel the physical pain anymore because it never hurt as badly as the aching inside his chest. As his pace slowed down, he looked around at the houses he passed, the people who used to be his neighbors, congregating with each other and their families and friends to celebrate through the night what was supposed to be a fresh start: a new year, a new decade.
As the houses faded behind him, he reached the city square and passed the church. A woman in a white dress and veil was surrounded by well-dressed admirers, an equally pleased gentleman on her arm. Jack had to stop walking, his heart trying to cave in on itself. He glanced down at his own hand, a tan line on his finger from where a ring had recently been, but no longer was.
Summer, 1913. Jack couldn't let go of her, couldn't let his lips leave hers. Ever since he was told he could kiss the bride, he was intoxicated by her: her mouth, her cheeks, her forehead, the top of her head crowned with red ringlets and white flowers pinned in. His hand was always reaching for her waist, to keep her close to him. Since becoming Rose's husband, he didn't want to leave her side for another minute.
Rose showed off the wedding band and engagement ring to her friends from the theater, two simple bands since they couldn't afford anything elaborate or expensive. Jack had used months of savings to get a tiny sapphire placed on the engagement ring, a reference to the massive diamond necklace that he had mistaken for a sapphire and that she had used to strip in front of him for the first time. The entire time she was fawned over—for the rings, her dress, her overall beauty—Jack was beside her, hugging her close. Rose didn't mind, since she had been wanting to marry Jack Dawson for a long time. The wedding wouldn't change much about their everyday life, but it was an impeccable moment to celebrate their love with those they had befriended in the Santa Monica community.
Going to bed that night, Rose brushed out her hair and felt like something was different about her: she thought her skin was glowing. As her hand crept across her collarbone, she saw her new ring glint and reflect in the mirror, and blushed. She was a wife now, and a wife to someone she wanted to be a wife to. Even if there was a sense of novelty to having his weight on top of her that night, as if she was thrown back to being that virgin in the backseat of an automobile, she was no stranger to how he loved her. The final part of her transformation came undone, and she was put back on sturdy legs to be the woman she always wanted to be. From that day forward, she had blossomed into her full potential since meeting Jack Dawson.
Jack spent that night, where he trailed kisses along her jaw and listened to her whisper his name, questioning how he had been so lucky to have this woman in his life. When he had seen her from the deck, he had been well aware of their class differences, and the likelihood of them ever even meeting was slim. But now, here she was: his love and his wife, living with him in a garret for over a year, sharing a bed with him, sharing her body with him, sharing her life and her soul and her mind and everything with him. How could anyone be so lucky?
By the time Jack regained the strength to keep walking, he was only halfway to where he needed to be, and the sky was getting increasingly darker. Passing by all of the stores, his pace slowed again as his heart tugged at him to stop. He remembered this place. Glancing through the storefront window, he saw a mother pushing a pram through the aisles inside. He looked up at the sign. Katherine's Baby Supplies and Goods.
In early 1915, they learned they were expecting a baby. Unbeknownst to Jack, Rose had left work early, and was running late to rehearsals, to attend a doctor's appointment, where she had gotten the news. She'd suspected as much, given her symptoms; but she was surprised regardless, since they hadn't been planning for it.
As Rose left the hospital, a pamphlet with some basic information on what to expect from her body in the coming months in her hand, she felt like running to rehearsal instead of stopping at home first. In the past, she and Jack had discussed children a mere handful of times, coming to the conclusion that they loved children, that they wanted their own, but that was years down the line. Less than two years into their marriage, and she was already pregnant.
Despite the shock of it, Jack was excited for the baby. He and Rose had perused this store when she was seven months along, her belly getting in the way of everything. They had bought a crib and put money down on a house. They were ready to settle. As Jack pulled himself away from the store, his heart too stiff to keep looking at it, he could hear the cries echoing in his head. Her cries. After eight months, their baby had been born early—stillborn. He could feel her nails digging into his back, unable to let go, while her tears soaked his shoulder.
He tried to stay strong for her, holding her with all of his support. The nurse swaddled the baby in a blanket anyway, and Jack's brain panicked as Rose loosened her grip on him to look at their lost son. If it wasn't for the ashen tint of the skin, Jack would have thought he was just sleeping. Somehow, Rose had the strength to let go of Jack's hand and take the baby in her arms, her tears now soaking the blanket as she brought her forehead down to meet his.
Jack remembered sitting there, lost somewhere else, as Rose cried over the child she had grown but never had the chance to know. She kissed his head, whispering a goodbye, and Jack recalled accepting the baby into his arms before Rose collapsed her head into her hands. With a stiff embrace on his child, Jack stood up and walked towards the bedroom door, not sure where he was going or what he was doing. But as he stepped out into the hall, where the doctor and nurse were waiting with sympathetic and apologetic expressions, he thought he was falling. He looked down at the infant he was carrying, and his vision blurred as he finally let himself grieve.
Jack opened the gate, which was always welcome to strangers, his figure bathed in the purple-red hues settling over the sky. As he passed the gravestones, he was reminded of his own mortality, of his own eventual demise—and why living could be so insufferable. When he approached the patch of ground, he kneeled in front of it. He and Rose used to bring flowers and small toys here often. Now, he rarely brought anything, and usually only came to sit and reflect on what used to be good.
He settled in front of the tiny gravestone. James Henry Dawson. The son they never got to have. Then he glanced at the gravestone next to it. Rose Elizabeth Dawson, loving wife and mother. Jack had asked the stonemason to add the "mother" part because Rose never let go of the idea of being one, and feeling like one despite her first child never taking a breath. He hoped that Rose would have appreciated the gesture and the thought that Jack put into the design of her headstone, which was engraved with flowers and wild birds.
Rose had become stricken after the premature death of their son. She'd locked the door to the room that was going to be the nursery, disposed of the key, and focused all of her attention and energy on a task every single minute of the day. She couldn't let her mind rest, no matter how much Jack had tried to get her to just sit and talk with him. So when that day in late summer of 1916 happened, the day that Rose approached him with a soft smile and asked to go to the beach, Jack was ecstatic. Despite how much she had loved the ocean, they hadn't gone at all that summer until that day.
Rose packed a lunch and put on a bathing suit she hadn't worn in over a year, since before she had started showing. If Jack was a stranger peeping through the window, and didn't know their story and what they had been through, he would have thought they were just a happy young couple looking to spend the last days of summer at the beach.
Jack carried the basket and hunted out their favorite spot, a place on the shore farther away from the tourists, while Rose trailed behind, holding a rolled blanket under one arm and her hat in place in her other hand so it wouldn't fly off her head. He offered to lay the blanket down while Rose discarded her hat in the basket, a bit frustrated by the breeze that afternoon.
They didn't discuss much, instead enjoying the presence of each other's company and the warmth of the sunlight on their skin instead. Since moving to Santa Monica, Rose's favorite place was the beach. They spent much of their spare time at the pier, and walked the shoreline after their wedding reception ended. She felt drawn to the water, despite the damage it had done to them before.
"It's getting hot. I'm going to go for a swim," Rose said, standing up and brushing some sand off of her legs. She smiled as she looked at him, tilting up one corner of her mouth, her flaming hair lit up by the sun behind it. "Are you going to join me?"
"I'll meet you out there in a minute. I'm just gonna clean this up first," Jack said, and started to pack up their picnic so nothing would go flying in the wind. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Rose approaching the shoreline, her calves sinking into the salt water. After that, he focused on rearranging a couple of containers so the basket would close properly, and when he was done, he looked up, and Rose was nowhere in sight.
He stood up with caution, as if making a sound would make the situation—whatever the situation was—worse. "Rose?" he cried out, though he knew he was too far away for her to hear him from this distance. He walked, like nothing was amiss, to the shoreline. As he approached the water and still saw no sign of her, he broke into a run and dove into the waves.
"Rose?" he yelled, panicked. Where was he supposed to look? Where did she go? He took in a deep breath and dipped down below the surface, trying to keep his eyes open and look around, but he couldn't make out anything too far or deep in the distance. After a few minutes of frantic searching, he resurfaced and saw someone getting swept onto the shore a few hundred feet away from him. His stomach knotted as he got closer and recognized the bathing suit and the wet hair, a damp copper color.
He didn't notice he was hyperventilating as he rolled her over, gently, in his trembling arms. She looked peaceful, like she was sleeping, despite being tossed around by the waves. He listened for her breath, but her chest wasn't moving. Goddamit, he thought, that they had settled so far away from others. "Okay," he whispered, setting her down and placing his hands on her abdomen. He pressed down on it, trying to move the liquid out of her lungs; and he did that for a couple of minutes, watched some water dribble out of the sides of her mouth, and then he waited for her to take a breath. His eyes eagerly watched her face for any sign of movement, but nothing happened. "Shit," he murmured in frustration as he started the compressions again. "Come on." He increased the pressure, saw some more water spill out of her mouth, but her head didn't move, her eyes didn't flutter open. "Rose… Come on!"
His hands shook as he took them off of her cold body, and his vision became blurry as he stumbled back and fell onto his arms. She didn't move, and she wouldn't move again. She was...gone. One moment there, alive, smiling, ready to move on, and the next, gone.
He wiped away tears until the skin on his cheeks were raw and burning, sitting there next to her motionless shell. There were specks of people moving on the other end of the beach, and in a rational world, he would have thought, was he going to have to leave her there temporarily to find someone? How was he going to move her? But instead, all he could think was, What am I going to do without her?
A rip current. That had been the explanation. That she had been dragged out into the sea, couldn't escape, tried to fight it, and washed up when she went unconscious. Then, as Jack gave the doctor her medical history, the speculation brewed, and he was asked if it was possible that she knew how to get out of a rip current, but chose not to. The doctor offered, as "something to consider," that she had suffered a major loss, and the beach was her safe haven. "No, she wouldn't have done that," Jack had said, fist clenched, adamant. "We still love each other… We want to grow old together."
"What would I do without you?" Jack asked the morning after their wedding, curling up onto her shoulder.
"Don't think like that. I just promised you forever, didn't I?" Rose's eye flinched as he nuzzled into her neck and a piece of his hair flopped into her face. She brushed it away and tangled her fingers in the back of his head. "I always want to be with you…"
Even after he buried her next to their son, he was in a constant state of bouncing between reality and disassociation. She was dead, but not dead. He would wake up one day and force himself to get through work with the reminder that the ring on his finger belonged to a woman six feet under, then he would wake up the next and imagine that he would see her when he would return home for dinner. He could picture her standing on the beach, her feet in the sand, alive and warm; and the next lying washed up on the shore, cold and blue. Was he ever going to compromise between the two and just see a vast ocean, untainted by her presence?
With the war ravaging across Europe, it was only a matter of time before the United States got involved; and when it did, Jack didn't bother to get drafted, he volunteered as soon as he was allowed to put his name in the hat. What was left for him here, anyway? No wife, no children, everything he had planned to grow old with had withered instead. Somehow, despite carrying his emotional baggage everywhere with him and slowing him down, he survived through the war with only a minor leg injury. On his best days (and there weren't many), he wondered if Rose had intervened to make sure he returned home safely.
After reminiscing in front of the gravestones long past dusk, Jack stood up and acknowledged his family without a word or gesture. One day, he thought, we can be that family again. Despite having years to move past Rose's death and the loss of his son, turning his back to their graves punched him in the gut every single time. A part of him wished he didn't have to leave them in that cold ground, but everyone told him that they rested well together there, mother and child reunited. He shoved his freezing hands in his pocket and walked back to his house under the night sky, alone.
Opening the front door, Jack was met with a dark house littered with bottles and cans, exactly how he had left it. He dragged himself upstairs and halted at a doorway with the door bashed in; he peered in at the dusty crib and said good night to the ghosts that haunted that room, a part of his nightly ritual. Then he returned to the bedroom—not their bedroom—and collapsed onto the bed, not caring to change his clothes or turn on the lamp. He was bogged down by the darkness of the night, lightened only by the sliver of moonlight seeping through the crack of the closed window curtains. How Rose used to adore leaving the drapes open at all hours of the day and night… Now, he couldn't dare look through the panes that faced the beach, to see the horizon with the ocean which she had loved and which stole her life when it couldn't take her the first time.
Jack picked up the ring he kept on his nightstand and slid open the curtain, letting the gold bathe in the light. As it glinted, he thought of the two she still had with her, and that day they exchanged vows—how innocent they were, how little they knew then.
The muffled chants of a countdown from a neighbors' house traveled across the street, and Jack realized it was approaching midnight. Three, two, one… "Happy new year, Rose," Jack said as a cloud moved across the sky, unblocking the moon and letting more light pour down. "Here's to a decade without you…"
If he had looked up at the stars that night, he might have seen one fall from the sky, a soul returning to heaven.
What can I say, the more I wrote of it, the more of a train wreck it became.
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