Until We Meet Again
Summary: Rose is struggling to live her life after Jack died. But she still promised and she knows that she must honor that promise, since it was Jack's dying wish. Meanwhile, in the afterlife, Jack is continuously haunted by his memories of Rose, and he begins to doubt that Rose will join him upon her eventual death, even though he promised they would meet again before he departed for the afterlife.
Rose
Well, I survived the war. My granddaughter, Lizzy, was now about twenty. She's been taking care of me ever since Sean died. I had moved in with James and Sarah, since Lizzy was only in high school when her grandfather died. When Lizzy moved out, I went with her. It had been eighty-four years since the disaster and I was a hundred years old. Why hadn't I died yet? Surely I had kept my promise, the one I made to Jack so many years ago. I knew that was what was keeping me alive, but why? All I wanted was to let go and join my true love in the afterlife.
One summer day, I was making pottery. Lizzy had the television going as she went about feeding her dogs. Suddenly, someone on television mentioned the Titanic. My curiosity was sparked and I got up.
"What is it, Nana?" Lizzy asked.
"Turn that up, dear." I requested. Lizzy did as I asked. An undersea explorer named Brock Lovett was talking. "Take a look at what we found just this morning," he was saying, showing the news station his find. "A piece of paper that's been underwater for eighty-four years and my team were able to preserve it intact." I barely heard the rest of what Lovett was saying. The piece of paper that Lovett and his men had found was the drawing that Jack had made of me, wearing only the Heart of the Ocean! I couldn't believe it!
Immediately, I contacted Lovett's crew. A friend of his, Bobby Buell, answered the phone and I asked to speak with Brock Lovett. A few minutes, later, Brock Lovett answered. At first, I didn't think he wanted to talk to me; he was just doing this to be polite. But when I asked if he had found the Heart of the Ocean, he said: "Alright, you have my attention, Rose. Can you tell us who the woman in the picture is?"
"Oh, yes." I agreed, cheerfully. "The woman in the picture is me."
Lovett, needless to say, was very interested in my story. So Lizzy and I flew out to Lovett's ship, the Keldysh, and when he asked me if I wanted anything, I asked to see my drawing. He showed me the drawing and I remembered when Jack drew it. Lovett also showed me some of the things that he and his team had recovered from my staterooms, and I was again overcome by the memories, but these memories were good ones, they didn't hit me like a knife.
"Are you ready to go back to Titanic?" Lovett asked me. I said that I was.
Lewis Bodine gave an analysis of the sinking, but I had had quite a different experience on the sinking ship. There, above the wreck of the great ship, I finally told my story. I hadn't survived the Titanic because I was one of the seven hundred who got into a lifeboat; I had gotten lucky a different way. I had met a man who loved me so much that he was willing to sacrifice everything in order that I would survive. This was the first time I had told anyone about Jack. All the memories came flooding back, but I told my entire story. When I reached the end – when I had told the officer my name was Rose Dawson – Lewis gently said: "We never found anything on Jack. There's no record of him at all."
"No, there wouldn't be, would there?" I agreed sadly. "And I've never spoken of him until now. Not to anyone. Not even your grandfather," I said to my granddaughter. Lizzy's face was streaked with tears; even she hadn't known what I went through when I was seventeen. "But now you know that there was a man named Jack Dawson. And that he saved me. In every way a person can be saved. I don't even have a picture of him. He exists now only in my memory." And with that, my story was over and the submarine returned to the surface, leaving the Titanic in her watery grave.
Upon our return to the surface, I went alone to the stern of the Keldysh and began to climb over the railing, exactly as I had done years ago on the Titanic, on the day that I had met Jack. But this time, I wasn't attempting suicide. I hadn't really come all this way just to tell how I survived the disaster. I still had the Heart of the Ocean, and I had come to return it to the wreck. I looked at the diamond one last time, smiling as I remembered finding it in the pocket of the coat. With a small gasp, I let it drop and I watched it sink to the bottom, exactly as I had watched Jack's body disappear all those years ago.