April 15th, 1912
"Come back to me, James. Don't shut your eyes. Remember, you made me promise not to let you fall asleep, and I'm not going to let you go."
And this time, her pleading words were so strangely distant, that James realized he was doing it again.
Snatching himself back from that gentle dalliance of unconsciousness, James forced his eyes open.
His forget-me-not blue gaze a comforting reassurance to Millicent Crawley and her eager watchfulness over him.
"Ah, thank goodness," she sighed in great relief. "Please don't scare me like that. Every time you close your eyes, I think I've lost you."
"Not to worry, miss," his voice seemed to drag and dawdle, as if he were still wading through the freezing ocean water rising in the ship's corridors. "I'm still here."
And the quiet fervor of protectiveness he felt for her in those words was hardly suitable for an officer and a stewardess by all social standard, but James had no mind to care.
In fact, his mind didn't seem to be in league with him at all, as the room drunkenly dipped and swayed in his vision. Blurring and doubling with trailing stars for much longer than before, no matter how many times he squeezed them shut to clear his ebbing sight.
But they made each other a promise.
Should one of them fall asleep before rescue, the other would stop at nothing to bring them back.
Becoming each other's strength in holding on to the very end. A fate yet so uncertain now.
But no matter if that end was a rescue from this harrowing dish pantry, or merely the comfort of not dying alone, James would not abandon her.
He had already made that grave mistake once before.
And so, the 6th Officer fought harder to stay awake.
Giving it everything he had to ensure she survived this unimaginable ephialtes, even against whatever might become of him in the end.
Defying the tantalizing urge to sleep, James put himself to work focusing on something.
Anything.
Any minute detail that kept his mind from slipping back into an abyss.
Like the dishes rocking in their curios, clinking restlessly around him. Rows and rows of white dinner plates, trimmed in Cobalt blue and gold, silver-plated napkin rings, silverware, copper cooking pots, teapots, and many alike.
Was it just his own dizziness playing tricks on him, or did the pantry suddenly look more sharply off-keel than before?
James gave his eyes another good squeeze, though no caliber of good sight could right the steepening angle of the pantry.
And slowly, the chinasets leisurely skated in a porcelain caravan down the polished Mahogany shelves with the tilt of the ship underneath him, as the great Atlantic pulled Titanic down by the head.
Somewhere off, there was still a light outside in the food service corridor, shining in from under the door of the dish pantry.
Sometimes, it dimmed into pitch darkness, and James counted the seconds.
One-one thousand...two-one thousand...three one thousand...
The corridor light outside the door rekindled.
And James felt the stewardess next to him finally breathe.
Quietly, though...so as not to let him find out how much being in the dark actually unnerved her.
But as the ship descended into a sharper angle, the maidservant was pressed so intimately against his side now that it was impossible not to notice when she took a breath...and when she did not.
And realizing how terrified she was of that dark and confining pantry, James couldn't bear letting her put herself through this any longer.
Not for his sake alone, surely.
"I can't come with you, love," James's whispered confession came to her gently. "You and I both know I'll only slow you down. But there's still time to get to a boat, if you hurry."
"Don't say another word," she stopped him. "My mind's made up."
"I've always admired that about you, Millie, but on this occasion, I've no other choice but to take your mind on," James insisted. "Because I won't ever rest, knowing I couldn't keep you safe in the end."
"And I won't ever rest knowing I left you behind," she countered. "To remember you like this, knowing how desperately I tried to carry you beyond this pantry, only to abandon you in the end? What sort of life do you imagine I'd have after it, if I don't go completely insane?"
"But if you stay," James warned her in gentle honesty. "You will die, and that's not what you want. This isn't how it should end for you."
"Surely, I never imagined it all coming to this...And now that I must make this impossible choice to walk away from you again, after wishing for you for so long, it seems so unfair, " she confessed over the ache in the back of her throat. "I can't do it again, James. Don't you see you're the light in my dark? You're the reason I've pushed on this far...And so, it's with you or not at all. That's what I've decided. You or nothing."
And in the company of such remorseless courage, how could James repress any longer that he would've given her the same answer, had she been in his place.
"Alright, Mills...Alright," James nodded assuredly to her. "If you won't give up, then I won't either. We'll keep going on. No matter what becomes of us, we'll go until we can go no further."
But though her mind was resolved to stay, Millie was none so much a romantic to understate the graveness of their situation.
"No one's coming back for us, are they?" she came to accept the truth of it. "They'd be crazy to try."
James listened closely to the silence of the hallway outside the locked dish pantry. Funny to call it a silence, really, when it was anything but.
And the soon-to-be violent and bludgeoning end that awaited them might be far worse than taking their chances in the freezing Atlantic.
Unlike the bow of the ship, her stern was taking on more air than water, and now that the bow was weighed down by the ocean, the stern would sink quickly.
Grim news for anyone like themselves, trapped in a storeroom such as this, so vulnerable to the crushing sea pressure deep under the surface.
They'd have no longer than a minute.
"I suppose one of the stewards might find us still, if by chance, they happen upon this corridor," James gave hope to the idea. "Though I've no mind to wait here and find out...We should keep moving. She's going fast, and we won't have much-"
The lights in the corridor dimmed again, as a chilling thunder of scraping and bending metal echoed through the ship's bowels. Aching under the pressure and tension of her distress.
Both the stewardess and the officer held onto their breath this time.
One-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand, four one thousand...
James counted up to eleven this time before the lights flickered back on again.
Taking longer to illuminate, and still burning noticeably dimmer.
The reddish afterglow bloodying the warm golden light of the food passage lamps, like a harrowing corridor out of a ghost tale.
A telling sign to James that the ship's electrical power was waning.
Titanic would not leave them wondering much longer about their fate.
When the ship's lights extinguished for good, her death would quickly follow.
It was only a matter of time before the ship reached her limit against the crushing stress, as the rolling gushes of ocean water grew steadily raucous outside the pantry door.
The Atlantic had fast caught up to them. Its murky surf tearing locked doors off their splintering white hinges, and devouring all hope of escape through the narrow food passageway James and Millie had only just stumbled through. And no sooner had they taken refuge in the pantry to catch their breath, the tide crawled within feet of the pantry door.
"I'm right behind you," James assured the maid. "The water will rise quickly, just as it did in Scotland Road. So, whatever happens, Millie, don't stop running. Not until you've reached the next corridor and found your way out. Don't be frightened. I'll be with you every step of the way."
"I'm not frightened," she whispered back to him. "I was before...but I know now, I've never been more sure of anything."
The ship officer gazed down to his shoulder again, where the stewardess leaned her head against him. Half out of necessity for the limited space of the storage room, and half by her own fancy.
Looking down at her heels and his dress shoes crisscrossed around each other to conserve the space. And despite their rank and position on the ship, they were happy to make room for each other.
The maid's hair twist falling undone from under her white cap, revealing strands of her ribboning sandy brown hair. Stained with blotches of blood that didn't belong to her.
James hadn't realized he'd lost so much of it.
When he was swept away by a massive wave on the deck, dragged from underneath overturned lifeboat Collapsible A, James never had time to tend to the bleeding darkening his golden chestnut hair. All he could think to do was grab ahold of something that felt like a deck railing for dear life, clinging on as deck chairs, passengers, and the mighty sea itself thrashed down on top of him. The force of the great wave sending his head smashing into what he reckoned was an iron bench armrest that punctured into his skull.
He felt nothing at first, except the numb noodles he had for legs and arms as the shock of the freezing water ripped through his body. Making him forget that he knew how to swim. His joints so paralyzed by the violent jolt of the cold, that he could make his limbs do nothing to save him.
And feeling as if his chest would explode for holding his breath any longer underwater, James pushed the air out of his lungs. Only to breathe in again a smothering kiss of salt water, coal, and blood that wasn't all his own.
Had it not been for a slight shift in the waves around him, chasing after the suction of the ship and pulling him along with them, James wouldn't have had the momentum to push himself back up onto the deck with the surf and totter along with the crowd. Trying his hardest not to give in to the shock in his knees and fall back onto the deck where he'd be trampled on.
Dizziness and a shot of adrenalin had made him oblivious to how serious his bleeding head injury was, until he saw all the blood smudged on Millie's snowy bonnet. Taking in what a wartime mess she looked after she'd all but carried him into the pantry, because he could go no further without feeling faint.
"Are you ready to go on now, Mr. Moody?"
"After you, Ms. Crawley."
And with her beside him, James felt as if he could brave anything the Atlantic threw at him.
But his legs wouldn't budge.
As if he had blocks of ice for limbs instead of the toned brawn and power he'd earned after many years working at sea.
He didn't even sense the cold anymore of the creeping ocean as it swept underneath the pantry door, lapping at the soles of his polished dress shoes. He watched it wash over his rounded toe and then the black socks soaked around his ankles, but he couldn't feel a damn thing.
Millie turned her gaze from the sea at the door until she again found James's.
Reading in his pale bloodied face an apology and a goodbye she was not willing to accept.
She dropped her eyes to his numbly rigid hand in his lap, wrapping it snuggly against the warm core of her body as she cuddled up closer to James's shoulder.
"One moment longer won't hurt, will it?" she murmured softly to the 6th officer.
James pressed his blue-tinted lips against her hair, and closed his eyes. Lingering there in her violet powdery scent, as he gave his last few precious breaths to her for warmth.
And as they watched the water rise to the base trim of the pantry, never a moment before had they understood each other so deeply.
Knowing that they would go no further than this pantry, Millie shut out the groaning of a dying ship with the comfort of his beating heart.
"Will it be painful, do you think?...To die in such a way?" she asked James.
"I can't say, love," James answered her honestly, in the same softness of tone. "But whatever follows it, you won't endure it alone."
"And how long do you suppose we have now?"
James scanned the groaning walls surrounding them, vibrating with the gushing sounds of the sea in the rooms adjoining them, washing out the groaning ship's dying wails and knocks.
"It won't be long," he comforted her. "It's already rose up to our knees...It won't be long at all."
"Thank god the worst part is over then," she said to him. Rather peacefully, James thought. "We found each other in time to say goodbye...I suppose that's an improvement for us, James...Even if finding me again on this ship was only by accident."
"None of it was accident," James answered. "I meant everything I'd done, and everything I'd said to you. And that's the end of it."
"Please don't tease me like this, James," she whispered her plea. "Now's not the proper time."
"It was never the right bloody time for us, was it?" James remarked. "We we're born into entirely different worlds, and because of it, it was always this reason or that why it could never work. But for all their quarreling in keeping us apart, on account of what was proper and what wasn't, doesn't seem to matter much now anyway, does it? We may as well have our honest say."
"Do you love her, James?" Millie asked. "Were you really going to marry her?"
Millie didn't want to know, and she wished she never had a reason to ask. But if this was really to be their last moments together, she needed to know. She needed to hear it from him, and not from passing conjecture she never meant to pick up at some contemptible evening soiree. She needed to know that she was right all along. That 8 years was enough time for a man to forget his first, even if she still held dear every trivial moment they'd made for each other. And even though she secretly did, she still wanted to be happy for James finding someone who made him feel this loved again. Happy that another woman could see in James all the things Millie still loved about him, even though she was only allowed to privately love him from afar.
"I do love her," James confessed. "We would've been very happy together. And it didn't matter so much to her that I was only a sailor. I suppose that's all I ever wanted in a match."
And somewhere in that last bit of his say was a forever-long score settled between them.
A hint of hardened sass that didn't go unnoticed by Millie, even in the finale of their war of belying raw feelings.
Millie's heart raced with the cadence of the waves around them as James held nothing back from returning his own damning question.
"And you, Ms. Crawley? Why did you never marry?"
"I suppose, Mr. Moody..." She could scarcely draw enough breath into a coherent answer. "Well, what I mean is that, in the spirit of honest says, you should know that...had it all been different for us...I would've..."
And then the buzzing lamps sparked around them, shorting out to a pitch black that swallowed all light outside in the corridor and any last words she saved for him.
Casting the dish pantry once again into complete darkness, though this time, for the rest of eternity.
And in that darkness, filled only with screams of the dying and the bending screeches of fracturing metal, James grabbed ahold of Millie and squeezed her as tightly as he could to keep her from slamming into the wall as the ship swung down suddenly.
Using his own body as a buffer protecting the stewardess from being thrown around the pantry like a ragdoll, while the ship gradually righted itself. And then slowly, the pantry began inclining at a much steeper angle than before.
And feeling Millie's heartbeat pulse with panting terror against his chest, James would've done anything to distract the maid from the violent sounds of Titanic tearing herself apart.
But James was sorely out of time, and had only just enough of it to gather his last words.
"I do know it," he murmured into Millie's ear, so that his voice could be her haven from the sound of hell all around her. "I've never stopped knowing for myself. And had I known that you loved me still, I would've turned away from that lifeboat much sooner and run to you tonight. Forgive me, Millie, for how terribly I've made you suffer, being a damn fool and not seeing how deeply you've loved me until now."
And if James had any dying wish, it was that he could undo that tormenting end that came for their summer in 1904 at Downton.
Undo all the hurt he'd caused her in his stubborn 8 years' long absence.
Or at least have a little more time to say to her what he always wished he could openly confess.
I've loved you since our very beginning.
But there was no time for that now.
Like the haunting of every missed opportunity he let pass him by, James Moody watched powerlessly as he lost Millicent Crawley forever more, with no more time left to make it right.
"I know it means nought to you now, but whatever should happen," James made his final words known. "Whatever pain I must endure in this uncertain fate, I will never again abandon you, Millie. And had I more time...If heaven were to grant me this night again with you, or another lifetime after this, I'd come and find you much sooner, and remain your constant until the very end."
And though it was the only answer Millicent Crawley had ever wanted from James Moody, it was an answer that became hers too late.
Because all the more tragic than dying in such a way was knowing such an answer not a lifetime sooner.
