Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Elena walked into the sunlight on the enclosed promenade. She never had felt appreciative of the sunlight before. She walked with purpose, feeling as if she hadn't felt the sun on her skin in years. She unlatched thee gate to go into the third class. On the deck, the steerage men stopped and stared at her as she pasted by, but she didn't care.

The third class general room was loud and noise. There were mothers and baby, children running between benches and shouting in many languages, being scolded by their mothers in several others. Old woman were yelling. Girls read dime novels and did needlepoint. On the far side of the room, there was even an upright piano. It was there were Tyler sat, playing a lively tune.

Boys shrieked and shouted, causing havoc. Alaric was conversing with an attractive blonde in German, who was sitting with her family. Damon was drawing in his sketchbook, playing with five-year-old Annabel Wu who had ran from her mother Pearl. Andie, the woman Alaric was talking to, straightened as her eye was caught by something. Alaric looked, then did a double take. Damon saw his friend's stare and turned, curious to see Elena walking towards them. The room seemed to become quiet at once. Elena walked slightly quicker, feeling self-conscious of the openly staring steerage passengers. Some stared at the princess with resentment, other with awe. Elena gave a small smile as she saw Damon and walked straight to him. He rose to me her, a smile on his face as he bowed and took her hand, kissing the back.

"Hello Damon." Tyler looked stunned, eyes wide.

"Ciao ancora, Signorina Flemming Gilbert." Alaric gave a nod.

"Miss Gilbert."

"Hello Mr. Saltzman," she said pleasantly, before turning her attention back to Damon, "Could I speak to you in private?"

"Of course. After you," he said, acting every bit the charming Count he was. He gave Alaric a grin and mouth that he'd meet him back in their room. As he followed the first-class princess, leaving a stunned silence.

Elena and Damon walked side by side, passing people reading and talking in steamer chairs. Some of the first class people in the chairs glanced curiously at the mismatched couple.

"So you're from Italy?"

"Yes."

"From Florence." Damon nodded.

"That's correct."

"But where did you live?"

"I lived with my papà at times, others on my own. Sometimes I was with Alaric, other times I wasn't." Elena groaned.

"Why won't you give me a straight answer?" Damon shrugged.

"Look, Elena, we've walked about a mile around this boat deck and you keep asking about where I'm from and how I grew up and how great the weather's been, but that's not why you came to talk to me." Elena paused awkwardly.

"Mr. Salvatore, I-"

"Damon," he simply stated, doing something with his eyes what made her insides melt.

"Damon… I want to thank you for what you did last night, not just pulling me back, but also for your discretion."

"You're welcome. Why not thank Alaric though? Surely, we both would have gone over if not for him."

"I know, I know, but you're the one who talked me out of it. Look, I know what you must be thinking! Poor little rich girl. What could she possibly know about misery?"

"That is not at all what I was thinking. I know the life of the upper class is no more simple that life of the lower classes. I was wondering though what could have happened to make this girl think she had no way out of whatever was happening that she had to take this route?"

"It's not just one thing, you see, it was everything. It was my whole world and the people in it. And where my life was headed, I was powerless to stop it." As if something suddenly made sense, she snapped erect and turned to Damon, "What do you mean you know the life of the upper class is no more simple? How could you possibly know what our life is like? All of your people think our life is so easy."

"I just think the third class has a better time," Damon stated. When Elena's brows furrowed, he clarified, "There is no set schedule of the third class. In first class, you're expected to act a certain way, dress in certain clothes, talk to certain people. That's why I left Italy. I needed a break."

"A break?" Elena asked, clearly confused.

"You say 'my people', but my people, my world, it is all of this. My world is talking business with a baron and dancing with a duchess, and having my father try to have me gain favor with various monarchs' children. My world is the same as yours."

"How? How can it be the same, and yet you wear the third class' clothes?"

"I told you. I needed a break. That's why I only use mia nonna's name instead of my papà's."

"So then your name isn't Damon Salvatore?"

"No," he corrected, "it is. Damon Francesco DeSangue. Salvatore was my father's mother's name." Elena's eyes widened near comically.

"You're the Count no body has seen, one of the most eligible bachelors of all of Europe. I mean, you're a prince." She sighed, "Wow. I thought for sure if you ever turned up, you would be just like the rest of them." Damon shrugged.

"Life is a funny thing."

"Should I be call you by some title?" He looked at her seriously.

"Please don't. Damon is just fine," he told her. She nodded.

"I bet you don't have to marry some woman you don't want to though." She held up her engagement ring. "Five hundred invitations have gone out. All of Philadelphia society will be there. And while I feel like I'm standing in the middle of a crowded room, screaming at the top my lungs, no one would even look up. Last night, I felt so trapped. I realized I would never be able to do so many things, that my whole life was planned ahead already and I just had to get away… even the Titanic wasn't big enough. And then I was over the rail and thinking that I'd teach them not to listen. They'll be sorry."

"Of course they would be sorry. You would be dead."

"Oh God, I am such an utter fool," Elena muttered into her hands, mortified.

"So you don't want to marry him. So don't."

"If only it were that simple."

"It is that simple," Damon told her softly.

"No, Damon. No, no, no, no. I'm sorry, it really is not."

"Do you love him?"

Elena looked up at him in shock. "Pardon me?"

"Do you love him?" Elena flushed. She was flustered at his boldness.

"You're being very rude. You shouldn't be asking me this. I would have thought a Count, royality no less, would have had better manors."

"I do, but the question is a simple yes or no. Do you love him or not?"

"This is not a suitable conversation."

"Why can't you just answer the question?"

"This is absurd. You don't know me and I don't know you and we are not having this conversation at all. You are rude and uncouth and presumptuous and I'm leaving now. Damon… Mr. Salva-" she cut off and paled, "Oh God, I just spoke that way to a Count- er Prince?"

He chuckled, rather amused by the dark hair beauty before him, putting his sketch book in his other hand. "I am not offended in the less. Although, you might want to get out of the sun. It's pretty hot today."

Flustered, she took his arm, unsure of what else to do. He walked her under the covered part of the deck, waving a steward over, telling him to get Elena some iced tea. The steward eyed him warily, until Damon held a fiver. The steward looked at the money greedily and went to get Elena the iced tea. Once the man had left, Damon led her to a chair to sit down. When the steward returned, he handed them each a tea, and Damon gave him the tip. Even though the steward thought that the 'steerage rat' was foolishly giving away his money for once they landed, Damon wasn't giving the bank note a second thought. Money came and went in his world too quickly to find himself caring much.

As Elena sipped the iced tea, she looked at the book Damon had in his hands. "What is that anyways?" she asked him. He handed it to her. "These are actually pretty good. Really good."

"Try telling that to the Parisians." Some of the sketches fell out and blew out to sea.

"Oh, no! Oh, I'm so sorry. Truly!" Damon shook his head and chuckled.

"Don't worry about it. I draw plenty. Besides, they're not worth a thing. It's more of something to help keep my sanity amongst the mindless chit-chat and chatter." He turned the page. "You see this lady?" She nodded, looking at the sad old woman in gaudy jewelry and frumpy, dowdy clothes. "We called her Gioielli di Signora. Every night, she came to the little, well, it was almost like a bar, but it wasn't really. But she wore every piece of jewelry she owned and moth eaten clothes, waiting for her lost love." He flipped a few pages forward. "This is Margherita and her fiancé, Paolo. She was the daughter of Conte di Sicilia and my mother's younger sister and he was the Conte di Sardegna. They got shot the day before their wedding by a commoner who had fallen in love with Margherita, even though she had been engaged to Paolo for almost two years."

Elena's hand covered her mouth. That was awful. "I knew them both, probably better than anyone," Damon added, "They were so in love that it was beautiful. You could just see it when one walked into the same room as the other. It took me years to convince Paolo that she felt the same way that he did. After that, it took another year for him to work up the courage to talk to her or write her letters. I actually wrote her the first one and sent it in his name. She played along with it and wrote back to Paolo instead. My poor friend was so confused why he got this letter from her at it was almost comical. But they really did love each other in one of the purest ways." Elena looked down at the drawing again and she could see the light in his cousin's face and the simple expression of pure happiness on her fiancé's face as they stared into each other's eyes.

"You have a gift, Damon, you do." She looked up from the drawings to the Count with blue eyes. "You see people."

"I see you." She looked right into his eyes. All playfulness and lightness of earlier's conversation was gone.

"And...?"

"You wouldn't have jumped."

Isobel was having an afternoon tea with Noël Leslie, the Countess of Rothes, a thirty-four-year-old English woman. Isobel lowered her voice as she saw Margaret Brown crossing the room towards them.

"Oh, no. That vulgar Brown woman is coming this way. Quickly, get up before she sits with us." Isobel hardly considered the woman worth her time. She was new money and though she wore the dress of the first class, she would never be one of them.

Margaret walked up and cheerfully greeted them as they were rising. The woman was too happy all of the time it seemed, in Isobel's opinion. After all, she was just the child of immigrants. She was no better than the steerage who sat below the deck. "Hello girls, I was hoping I'd catch you at tea."

"We're awfully sorry you missed it. The Countess and I are just off to take the air on the boat deck," Isobel told her, not at all sounding sorry.

"That sounds great. Let's go. I need to catch up on the gossip." Isobel gritted her teeth together. The three of them walked towards the Grand Staircase to go up. Bruce Ismay and Captain Smith were deep in conversation as they passed.

Elena had recovered from being overheated and Damon suggested they walk some more. They pasted people lounging lazily on deck chairs in the slanting, late-afternoon sunlight. The stewards rushed to serve tea or hot cocoa to the first class guests.

"You know, I always wondered what it would be like just to run away from it all. I could run to some tiny little town and never be heard from again. It would be wonderful," she sighed girlishly, reminding Damon that even though she was smart, she was still young. "I'd love to be a writer. I could write books and stories about things where girls aren't treated like porcelain and boys aren't so fascinated with being so great." Damon chuckled.

"A dream world, mio caro."

"So what about you?" she asked.

"I would just head out for the horizon. Alaric and I have known each other for over two years now. He's over ten years older than me, but he's the closet thing to a brother that I have. We've been to all sorts of places, Germany, Lisbon in Portugal, Paris. I've been places that seem more like a fairy tale. My mother's mother was French, so I would go to their house during the summers sometimes. It was a beautiful place to escape to. My cousins, Zach and Joseph, and I would go horseback riding. Someday I'll take you. None of that sidesaddle business though. You have right with a leg over each side. My mother even had a pair of knickers just for riding."

"How scandalous," Elena gasped.

"If you want, I'd have someone make you a pair so you could ride right without having to hike your skirts up to mount." Elena blushed and giggled at the idea of wearing such a garment. Oh, her mother and Klaus would loath the very idea of her wearing such a thing.

Damon looked at the beautiful, dark hair girl who's olive skin was alive with the red coloring that had rushed to her cheek. As if someone had cut the blood off to her face, Elena blanched and Damon turned.

Isobel, the Countess of Rothes, and Margaret Brown had been watching Elena blush and giggle like a school child while the pair had talked about riding in men's clothing. Elena instantly composed herself.

"Mother, may I introduce Damon Salvatore." Isobel gave Damon a cold look.

"Charmed, I'm sure," the woman said in such a icy voice that he was stunned that the warm, charming woman next to him was related to the black haired woman. He gave her a teensy bow, pressing his lips for a split second to her knuckles.

"It is a pleasure to meet you, Signora Flemming Gilbert." Isobel stared at Damon as if he were an insect, one that would cause harm if it were not squashed. The other two women were curious about the man who had saved Elena's life, but Damon politely avoided their questions with such grace, turning their inquiry into compliments. A gutter rat such as this needed to be put back in his place. He needed to be reminded who was in charge.

It was then, everyone jumped as the bugler sounded the meal call right behind them. Isobel glared at him.

"Why do they insist on announcing dinner like it's a cavalry change?"

"Shall we go, Mother?" Elena asked. Her mother nodded. "See you at dinner, Damon," she said with a smile. The Countess followed. Margaret turned to Damon.

"Son, do you have the slightest comprehension of what you're doing?" Damon gave a grin.

"Signora Brown, I know what I'm doing just fine."

"Well, you're about to go into the snake pit. I hope you're ready. What are you planning to wear?"

"I have something lined up. Alaric does too. Don't worry much about me, Signora Brown, I'll be fine," he said as he strolled off.

"I sure hope so," she muttered.

Okay so now we're up to the dinner. It might take some time for that one. It's one of my favorite scenes and I really want to do it justice.

So tell me what you think.

Celeste