Come back to me, James. You made me promise not to let you fall asleep, and I'm not going to break that promise.
Her words sounded so distant to him that James knew he had to be drifting off between dreams again.
And pulling himself back from that gentle dalliance of unconsciousness, every flutter of James's lashes felt heavy.
His every movement a comforting reassurance to Millicent Crawley and her eager watchfulness over him.
"Ah, thank goodness," she sighed in great relief. "Don't scare me like that. Every time you close your eyes, I think I've lost you."
"Alright, miss?" his words dragged slowly, as he hadn't yet recovered from wading through the freezing water rising in the ship's corridors. "I'm still with you."
And the quiet fervor of protectiveness he felt for her in those words was hardly suitable for a White Star officer and stewardess, but James had no mind to care anymore.
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 the maid and the officer had made each other a promise.
Should one of them fall asleep before rescue, the other would stop at nothing to bring them back.
To what end, James no longer knew.
Their tethered fate now so uncertain.
But no matter if that end was a rescue from this harrowing food passageway, 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 service corridor 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 corridor.
And slowly, the chinasets leisurely skated in a porcelain caravan down a polished Mahogany shelf in front of them. Dragged forward by the tilt of the ship, as the great Atlantic pulled Titanic down by the head.
Somewhere down the hall, there was still a wall lamp flickering at the far end of the passageway.
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 hallway, James couldn't bear letting her put herself through this any longer.
Not merely for his sake.
"I can't go any further with you, love," James whispered at last. "I'll only slow you down. But there may still be time to get to a boat, if you hurry."
"Don't talk like that," she stopped him. "My mind's already 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 could never save you from this nightmare 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 corridor, only to abandon you in the end? What sort of life do you imagine I'd have after it, if not to go completely insane?"
"But if you stay," James warned her in gentle honesty. "You will die with me, and that's not what either of us want. This isn't how it should end for you, Ms. Crawley."
"You're right...I never imagined dying like this...But leaving you behind, after wishing for you for so long...it seems so unfair, " she kept her words steady over the ache in the back of her throat. "Don't ask me to make that choice, James. If I go, it's with you or not at all. That's what I've decided. You or nothing."
And in the company of such defiant 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, Millicent was not so much a romantic to understate the severity of their ill-fated hand.
"No one's coming back for us," she came to accept the truth of it. "They'd be crazy to try...We're on our own now."
James listened closely to the silence of the hallway around them. Funny to call it a silence, 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.
If they didn't drown first, they'd have no longer than a minute before the crushing sea pressure ravaged them under the surface.
"We should keep moving," James tried to keep her mind off the idea. "She's going fast, and we won't have much time to-"
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 before the lights flickered back on again.
Taking longer to illuminate, and burning noticeably dimmer.
The reddish afterglow bloodying the warm golden light of the food passage lamps, like a horror 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.
It was only a matter of time before the ship reached her limit against the crushing stress, and the rolling gushes of raucous ocean ripped through the white walls around them.
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 into. And no sooner had they taken refuge to catch their breath, the tide crawled within feet of their little corner.
"I'm right behind you," James whispered into the maid's ear. "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 of this place. 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, out of the whole world, this is where I'd rather be."
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 in the corridor apex, and half by her own fancy.
Looking down at her heels and his dress shoes crisscrossed around each other to avoid the shattered dinner plates and overturned service trolleys littering the corridor. 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.
Until he saw all the blood smudged on Millie's snowy bonnet, he hadn't known how serious his head injury was. And what a wartime mess she looked after crutching him with her shoulder and dragging him along the passageway. All because he could go no further by himself without feeling faint from so much loss of blood.
"Shall we then, Mr. Moody?"
"After you, Ms. Crawley."
And with her beside him, James felt as if he could brave anything the Atlantic threw at him.
If only his legs would obey him.
It was like he had ice blocks for limbs instead of the toned brawn he'd built after many years at sea.
He didn't even sense the cold anymore as the creeping ocean swept into their hallway, lapping at the soles of his polished dress shoes and the maid's heels. He watched the water wash over his soles, and then the black socks stricken around his ankles.
But he couldn't feel a damn thing anymore.
Millie turned her head from the sea in front of them until her hazel eyes ran into James's.
Reading in his pale bloodied face an apology and goodbye she was not willing to accept.
She dropped her eyes to his numb blue hand in his lap, wrapping it snuggly against the warm core of her body as she cuddled up closer to James.
"Just one moment longer resting here won't hurt, will it?" she murmured softly to the 6th officer.
James pressed his blue-tinted lips into 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 their knees, never a moment before had they understood each other so deeply.
Knowing that they would go no further than this corridor, Millie shut out the groaning of a dying ship with the comfort of James's beating heart.
"Will it be very painful, do you think?" she asked James. "To die this way?"
"I can't say, love," James answered softly. "But whatever follows it, you won't endure it alone."
"And how long do you suppose we have?"
James scanned the groaning walls surrounding them, vibrating with the gushing sounds of the sea in the rooms adjoining them, washing out the ship's dying wails and knocks.
"It won't be long now, Mills," he comforted her. "Only a little while longer, and we can rest at last."
"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 an accident," James answered. "I meant everything I'd done, and everything I'd said to you. And that's the end of it."
"You can't tease me with words anymore," she said. "Now isn't the time."
"It was never the right bloody time for us, was it?" James remarked. "We we're born into entirely different worlds, you and I. And because of it, it was always this reason or that why it could never work for us. 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 then."
"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 that it was just a terrible mistake, and not from passing conjecture she never wanted to hear at some contemptible evening soiree in Yorkshire. She needed to know that she was right all along. That 8 years was enough time for a man to forget his first love, even if she still held dear every trivial moment they'd made with each other.
Even if after it all, she still wanted James to be happy on finding someone who could love him the way she was never allowed to. She wanted to be happy for the woman who saw in James all the things Millie adored about him, even though she was only allowed to privately love those things about him from afar.
"Now you're the one teasing me with words," James told her. "I waited 8 years for you, Millie. I have no other answer."
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.
And Millie's heart raced with the cadence of the waves as she said,
"My answer is still the same...Had it all been different for us, James...I would've..."
The buzzing lamps shorted in sparks around them, drowning the corridor in complete darkness that robbed her of the last confession to James. That blood-chilling darkness, filled only with the screams of the dying and the bending screeches of fracturing metal would be for the rest of eternity.
James squeezed Millicent tightly against him 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 about like a ragdoll, until the ship gradually righted itself again.
Then they felt it slowly inclining at a much steeper angle than before.
And feeling Millie's heartbeat race against his chest, as she breathed deeply in terror, James would've done anything to distract the maid from the violent sounds of Titanic tearing herself apart.
"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 to find you. 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 caused their unbearable 8 years' silence.
I've loved you since our very beginning, and I wanted nothing but to tell you I did...If I could do it differently...
But there was no time for wishes anymore.
Like every missed opportunity with her he'd lost before, James Moody was powerless to lose Millicent Crawley again.
I'd ask for one more lifetime...One more chance to be at your side, and remain your constant 'til the very end.
But all the more tragic than dying in such a way was knowing one's heart fully, though not a lifetime soon enough.