A/N: Hello, my darling readers! Forgive my delay in updating, I've only just gotten back from vacation and finally pieced together the writing I did over the week. Forgive me in advance, this is quite an info dump of a chapter and not much happens. It's really just a filler chapter, but the next chapter, I promise you, is going to be very exciting! Thank you for your continued support. I love you all so very much. If you could, if you enjoy, please leave a review! They're my only pay!
13 April 1912
When Cal proposed to Rose, she had still held a stuffed bear at night while she slept.
She had long known of her mother's ploy to marry her off, and hence adulthood had been thrust upon her so violently she had not the time nor the will to part with all of her childhood self in one fell swoop.
And so, the raggedy bear, far past his prime, her bosom friend through ordeals neither her mother nor her fiancé could ever understand, lay in her bed in England, always ready to comfort her no matter what tormented her mind. And by the time Cal had asked for her hand, more tormented her mind than either of them could withstand with any modicum of strength.
Her mother admonished her every time she caught sight of it peeking over the mountain range of her counterpane, and told her in a hissing, scandalized whisper how such a habit could discourage Cal from wanting to marry her and ruin everything.
And yet Rose kept him and, as she walked along the promenade, the noon sun gleaming down on her and the empty decks with sympathetic rays, the only thing which brought her comfort was the knowledge that that very bear lay hidden from prying eyes beneath silken frocks at the bottom of her trunk. It was the only thing that kept her sobs at bay and protected the tact of her internally tattering reputation, restraining the display of her heartache to a few solemn tears dripping down her cheeks.
Not all of me is gone yet. All of me will be gone when I am forced to marry Cal, but not yet. Not while I'm still here. Not when he is somewhere around that I can still find him.
As she strolled, she remembered being in England and waking each morning with her bear in the crook of her arm.
And even more so she remembered at breakfast reading the name "Thomas Andrews" and the name of his creation in so many newspapers and letters and columns for so many consecutive days she nearly wretched when her mother and fiancé returned to their hotel one morning, smiling and flaunting First-Class tickets for the RMS Titanic's maiden voyage, waving them before her face like a rattle to a fussing infant.
Had she been but a day younger of mind, she would have crossed her arms and set her jaw and set alight that blazing emerald in her eyes until her mother huffed and reprimanded her for her childish reaction and called her a brat, for Rose wanted absolutely nothing to do with Thomas Andrews nor Titanic nor what the pair of them, unified in nascence and emergent history, would bring to her own life, no matter if their harm was unintended.
She wanted to hate them with a vehemence she did not possess. But even when he was strolling the decks on the first day of the journey, the ship having hardly passed the docks, the long resting spine of his black notebook finally cracked once again and its pages ready and hungry for his think pieces and appraisals, an awed smile painted across his lips, she could not. She could not hate him even when, sauntering idly, he passed by them and smiled at Cal who excitedly and clumsily greeted him and introduced him like an old friend to his fiancée and future mother-in-law as if he had a right to do so, and he grinned at them, ignorant of what he had caused, and expressed his pleasure at meeting them and engaged in small talk when he could have walked on without a single solecism to his name, acclaimed and demanded man as he was. Nor could she when, had she cared enough about him or about anything that was not the doom she was soon to face to do so, she would have noticed the twinkle in his midnight eyes as he looked on her that first-ever time, that would have told anyone more experienced in the art of reading the emotions of man that he thought she was the most beautiful woman who had ever graced him and that her spirit flowed with unnatural hands and threaded itself within his mind with the first ocean blue gaze which met his own.
No, it was not until she sat across from him at luncheon the next day with the skinning wound of his modesty and humbleness fresh on her, not until she realized just how difficult it was to hate him, that she decided she hated him, indeed.
After all, if she could pride herself on anything that could truly be her own, it was a success at achieving things that, in the suffocated and suffocating world in which she was chained, were absolutely impossible.
She hated him then and she continued to hate him even when he laughed at her jab at Ismay to which any other man would have been instantly repulsed and mentally docketed her with a select shadowed few who were deemed unworthy of his attention or acknowledgment. She hated him still, even when he sought her out in a moment when she felt there was not a single kindred soul on Titanic, in the entire world which could understand her with even a single iota of what she so desperately needed, and commended her on her wit.
Thomas Andrews was the single entity, person or otherwise, who threatened her little world in which she was content with her suffering, where she was used to sharp stabs of needles of what was truly a gentle breeze of wind, as one becomes used to a new pair of slippers, and for that, she hated him more than anything she had ever known in all her days.
She recalled afternoon tea on the second day of the voyage after her episode at luncheon and remembered her mother hissing like a snake with a placid face and straight back to the Countess of Rothes how earlier that day the improper and queer Thomas Andrews had answered a summons from some Second-Class family who was having trouble with their washroom sink and had spent four hours repairing it with his own hand, refusing the assistance of the ship's plumber. Rose had not forgotten it, not even in the depths of the partisan negation that so often occurred when one was angry at another.
She had not forgotten just hours later when she had been taking a turn about the deck before dinner, her mind already simmering with the desperation from which he would inevitably save her, seeing him girdled by two raging women in White Star Line uniforms. They were stewardesses, engaged in an acrimonious spat, the details about which Rose did not care enough to remember.
He had stood between them, ever patient, raising and lowering his hands, trying to calm them, speaking in that smooth, titillating Irish brogue that was enough to soothe even the most unfeeling, bloodthirsty beast. He allowed them to voice their respective sides, keeping one quiet as the other opined in heated tones, giving kind and near-silent reprimands when insults spilled from their lips. And with his own words, he built a bridge of understanding and compromise which, after many tiring minutes, the effect of which Rose felt even as a mere bystander, the two girls eventually crossed and upon which shook proverbial hands.
Even after they had walked off and he had given a great sigh of exhaustion, wiping his perspiring forehead with his stark white handkerchief, she continued to watch him, finding him more fascinating than even the most celebrated French opera which she had so vehemently begged her mother to see.
She remembered feeling her shoulders aching from her sudden wince of anticipation as a raggedly dressed steerage passenger approached him in the aftermath of his whirlwind, turning and pointing in the direction of the stern, talking nervously about a shade of paint in the Third-Class General Room being too dark. She expected him to roll his eyes, to scoff with incredulous snobbery, to laugh as he stalked away as one would brush off a child as Rose's mother would do and had done so many times before.
But instead, his eyes widened, alight with interest, and he reached into his inner pocket and replaced his handkerchief and procured his dear notebook, scribbling with a quick passion, nodding his head and responding to the passenger's concerns and ideas as if he were speaking to a Harland and Wolff executive. After writing for some minutes, conversing and debating over the paint and asking the man's opinion on other matters which he was less than obligated to do, Mr. Andrews gave him a genuine friendly pat on the shoulder and sauntered on. He reviewed his notes with true reminiscent care, his smile restored, and the passenger looked over his shoulder in astonishment, his faith and hope in a more equal and integrated human race restored and all thanks to Thomas Andrews, the very top tier of elite royalty.
She had not forgotten any of it.
All her mother had ever wanted was for Rose to become an adult long before it was due, and as she continued to walk, her tears long since dried in shiny, transparent lines tight on her skin, she realized that she had.
She had become an adult; she had grown into a mind that thought for itself, free from the vices of the opinions and directions of others. She had become what her mother wanted her to become, and yet ladyhood told her in no uncertain terms that she did not want Cal, she did not want riches and luxury and to be the elite at the throne atop everyone else.
No, all adult Rose wanted was freedom, and her ticket to such and companion in it was all tied together and found in him.
Damn that he was married, damn that he was old enough to be her father, damn that he was a self-made man of humble beginnings. She wanted him; him, and everything having him entailed. She wanted Thomas Andrews as she had never wanted anything—person, place, or thing—in her entire life.
He was no longer to her the fabled figure whose name, meaningless in its incessant repetition, invaded the narratives of her morning newspapers like a rip in the page. He was no longer the peculiar fellow who meandered around his ship, mindless of those around him as he constantly bumped into people with a brisk apology and a tilt of his hat, inscribing notes in the notebook which served as the only barrier between him and the rest of reality. No, now he was all she had ever wanted and all she would ever want again.
The rest of the First-Class did not understand why he did not just close the book, for if he did, he would be just like the rest of them and free from their perturbed stares and whispers, even if he was a parvenue.
After all, it was custom that the aristocrats should not care about one thing enough to be as distracted as he was.
But he did not close it, for Titanic was the only reality in which he was interested, and that little black book was like the enchanted doorway to the land of his dreams. And yet, even though he inadvertently betrayed everything she had been taught to know and believe, Rose could not think of him or look down at him and his anomalousness with the snobbish hauteur she so often forced within herself, but instead found she loved it. She loved how different he was, how he had hardly a care whether his peers minded or not, and how he somehow found the capacity within himself, with enough talent and good nature, to acquire their good opinions despite it all. He was a walking oxymoron and flowing in liquid gold between the walls of fascination and confusion was love in the corner of her busy heart reserved especially for him, and she could no longer ignore it.
She did not want to ignore it, either, for it was the single feeling within her entire self uninfluenced by whims or dreams or rebellion; these, her feelings for Thomas Andrews—the celebrity to her obscurity, genius to her shielded brain, grown man to her foolish girl—was the only thing that was not conjured into independent existence by the false idea that it was original in her head, that it was brought from deep within her where what she truly wanted and who she truly was resided. No, those were all influenced; whether it was resentment of Cal or a long-needed rebellion against her mother, everything she wanted that directly challenged the ways of the world in which she was ensconced were swayed by something.
But not this; she was falling in love with Thomas Andrews, humble Irishman, director of the Drafting Department at Harland and Wolff in Belfast, Ireland, chief naval architect of the RMS Titanic, and it was so novel and vernal in its freedom from selfishness that with the thought of it came a new breath of cool, fresh air to her lungs. It was as if her true self was a map and she was slowly revealing it after all these blind years, and the recognition of her unbiased love for Mr. Andrews was the piece that made acquaintance with her eyes when the spotlight of discovery shone directly on her neglected heart.
But her mother could not have been wrong about her.
If Rose could give Ruth DeWitt Bukater credit for anything, it would be that despite their difference in inclination and priority, she knew her daughter like the back of her hand, and perhaps, Rose feared, she knew her better than she knew herself. The sharpness of the dagger to her heart when her mother told her with a confident sneer that she did not love Mr. Andrews nor care for him could not have been simply of her mother's own design, her own handpicked knife to damage her daughter just enough that she could be once again molded into submission.
No, Rose had taken that weapon and sharpened it herself and impaled herself on it.
Her mother could not have been wrong.
But yet Rose could so clearly see herself and Mr. Andrews, unashamedly arm in arm as they departed his beloved Titanic together, smiles everlasting; she could see them marrying in a quaint little church in Belfast with a few rushed witnesses, the figureheads of their disobedience to custom. She could see them in a humble little cottage in Belfast or County Down, her stomach swollen with their child, the floor and desk of his study worn with use as he slaved over the blueprints for his next ingenious creation that was to grace the world, only ever pausing to dine with her and kiss her and make love to her and sleep beside her.
Rose could see in her head their litter of children, their lives together, and in her vision, so close to being tangible she could almost touch his hand and kiss his lips as she so craved to do beyond it, and in it, she gave not a single thought to Ruth or Cal or any of the rest of them.
Her vision was noble and unthinking of what she was betraying. It was full of love, and who felt betrayed by it and who did not, who supported them or wished their love to crash and burn was inconsequential; they did not care, for one another was their only vital source of contentment.
So how could Ruth be correct about Rose?
How could she be correct when the imagining of her life with Mr. Andrews was the most altruistic thing she had ever done even if its circumstances were the fence to their manor, laced and choked with the poisonous vines of selfishness?
It was an oxymoron, she realized, just as he was, and for that, she trusted it with all of her being.
But Ruth could not have been wrong about her. She never had been, and just because Rose wanted her to be so terribly she could taste the bitterness of it on her tongue, why should that change now? After all, the world had never been so kindly ironic and easy for her before and she hardly suspected it would attempt to rectify its unkindness now.
No, her mother could not have been incorrect.
Her walking brought her to just where they had had their conversation hours earlier. The lifeboats stared at her with unfeeling, judgmental eyes, and as they rocked in the wind with a gentle metallic creak, they seemed to say to her, "We saw what you did! We saw what you did! We know how stupid you are!"
She gave a great sigh, her corset gnawing at her skin like a rabid dog, and she was resigned to turn and run to an unknown destination, needing to be free of the scene of her own emotional sort of homicide, when she caught a sound among the taunting of the boats which twirled and twisted about her ears with the twinge of an Irish brogue.
It's him, damn him! If only the man was content with working in the solitude of his own stateroom, what pains from which she would have been freed!
Or, perhaps, he was not to blame; perhaps it was God himself tittering on her from above in a taunting manner.
Well, it's no matter, God. I shall pay for my stupidity soon enough, and I daresay it shall be a lifelong debt paid only with a lifelong sacrifice. So why must you do this to me now?
He stood with Captain Smith, the conversation unintelligible to her from her distance, the words shattered like glass on their path to her by the whipping April winds. She heard a few of them; "ice," and "boilers," and "warning," and "bad idea," and yet she could not pay attention. Rose could only watch the raising of his eyebrow, the pulling of smooth, alabaster skin upon his cheeks as he spoke, the wetting of his lips as his tongue darted out in between sentences. He spoke heatedly, she could tell, for his voice was loud even if she could not understand it, and sweat began to bead at his temples even as the temperature for the afternoon was closing in at just about fifteen degrees above freezing. It was a passion that was left undisplayed in everyone around her, the damned poised couples who tiptoed around her even as she stood there watching him, and her love grew within her chest. Damn him!
Had Rose been paying attention and her thoughts loosened their grip, she would have noticed him catching sight of her, all aglow in dulled fiery reds in the noon sun. His dark eyes watched her, memorizing every breath that expanded her dress to a renewed glisten of silk, trying to remind himself that she was somehow real. The fires of her burned him within, the desire and the sadness and the confusion all pulsing in tandem in their searing hot flames.
How this had happened, he was sure he would never know; how he had fallen so quickly for a seventeen-year-old girl whose father he had been aware of but not known, how two alike spirits, so rare in the atmosphere of their compatriots, so different in physical circumstance but alike in internal propensity, had found themselves intertwining and embracing on the little floating universe of his own design. It all seemed so very impossible. And yet...
He had never been a forward man, and he had told her so.
He had been so stumbling and nervous when he asked for Helen's hand that he sent her a letter of apology the evening after her acceptance for startling her so terribly.
And yet, he had stood there just hours previous, nerves escaping him like the steam from Titanic's copper funnels, and all but proposed to Rose! And what was he planning to do had she accepted his proposal, whatever it presupposed? Divorce Helen? embroil the pair of them in an inescapable scandal? leave her a widow far too early when he died long before she?
He did not know just what he would have done; and yet even with these thoughts and so many others which raged in his naturally but suppressed pessimistic mind, all was worth it to him if at the end of it all he could have Rose DeWitt Bukater.
But it could never be. She had denied him and with good reason. He had to forget her. He had to try, for Titanic was only a temporary reality, and the more permanent one lay just beyond her bow, almost visible now on the horizon, and it was coming to sneak its preternatural tendrils around him and snatch him, the most unwilling prisoner.
They were frozen. All that stood between them was the Captain before Mr. Andrews and the feet of empty distance beyond him, flanked by well-to-do couples who were unknowing chaperones in their brawl of unkempt, secretive desire. They thought all these thoughts and they were displayed like a nickelodeon in their eyes, flashing in clarity to the other even from such a distance, and they were damned if they were going to try and pretend that they did not understand.
He's the only one who can understand me.
She's the only one who can understand me.
Rose watched Mr. Andrews's respectful eyes upon her even when his motion picture of desperate and desirous thought ended in a burst of flames. Hers was just in the middle, reaching the climax of running to his arms and throwing caution to the wind, but she could not let him see it. She would not.
And as he continued to watch her, the Captain's words falling on unhearing ears, his unattainable angel, the queen of his oceanic universe turned on an elegant foot and fled.