New York City

Autumn, 1914

Rose

Moving to strike a match that would light the old gas burner in the corner of her single rented room, Rose keeps her gaze pointedly fixed anywhere but upon her unexpected guest. Entertaining is not what she had intended for this evening, and she had especially not expected the current company. It makes shame at the state of her life curl putrid in her gut.

Her day had passed as unremarkably as most do, nowadays; now that she has finally gotten into a stable enough position to remove herself from the mercy of charity, no longer dependent upon the favor of desperate, lonely men, and instead upon the boredom and materialism of their lonely, miserable wives. She feels as if she has finally settled into a somewhat respectable life– at least, by a pauper's standard, anyway, plying cosmetics and hosiery at a department store counter with other young women her age, rather than promising her company for a penny or cup of soup, when she had been entirely desperate and wrung out. Both make her feel cheapened. She's reduced still to relying on her looks and well-bred charm to get by rather than her mind, though the sound head upon her shoulders feels anything but, nowadays. It's a living, she tells herself. It has become her mantra. Still though, for her current company to see any of it, and the way she still pinches and scrapes to live in squalor, she feels utterly humiliated. She had promised to live, and though "a living" she may be earning, she knows that this is never what he meant when he asked it of her. This isn't living. It's just… existing. She goes with the motions, and that's all she does, anymore.

She's tired; aching with it. She had been on her feet from just before sun-up, run ragged with errands to and from the basement store rooms of the sprawling department store of Saks Fifth Avenue, for women she once would have rubbed elbows with, and under the constant supervision of the department lead Mrs. Ellis, whom she still cannot decide whether it would be more apt to liken to a viper or a hawk. Either way, she feels like small prey within the old woman's sights, with a swift strike coming the minute she lets her guard down, and in this job there's no three-strike rule. That had been made clear enough: one toe out of line, and she's out. She has seen it happen often enough to other girls who had gotten too comfortable. Rose is pretty sure that it has been her saving grace that she can act, because as far as anyone there knows, she's just a normal girl; a third class widow working to stay afloat. Dressed plainly in her uniform, and with her hair dyed over dark, not even the ladies who swan in from her old life– the ones that probably should recognize her for all of the soirees and te halls they had frequented together– have been able to pick her out as anything extraordinary.

Mrs. Ellis' attention aside, she had also spent a large portion of her day, and the last several months, attempting to avoid the unwanted attention of Mr. Gimbel– the shopping emporium's co-founder and manager, whom it is rumored to have already lost interest in his new wife, two years younger than Rose herself. She had known by the way his eye had wandered the day he had agreed to give her the job– one of three chosen from a line of girls down the office hallway, even though she had no real references to her name– that he'd be one she'd have to avoid, and now that, too, has become a part of her daily routine: demonstrate how to apply the mascara, fetch the order of hat boxes for Mrs. Shaw from the haberdashery department, wrap the parcels for the waiting lady's maid, fetch yet another tea for Mrs. Ellis (and with haste this time, missy! No dallying!), duck around the corner when Mr. Gimbel comes for his inspection rounds of the floor, and nurse her aching feet once she arrives home.

Well past dark, she had finally made her way from the subway station at Bleecker St. where she had disembarked from fifth, walking her way to her Greenwich apartment, desperate for the reprieve of an evening spent in solitude, out of the cold November snow that had begun to fall, wet but not heavy enough to coat the streets. She had planned to have what dinner she could: perhaps a cup of hot tea, and the second half of the sandwich she had allowed herself on a lark and then had not been able to finish the day before, guilty at her own impulsiveness in spending the extra nickel.

She had wanted to try and get an early sleep in preparation for doing it all again tomorrow, but the presence of her current guest on the stoop of the tenement house when she had rounded the corner towards home had erased all prior notions from her mind.

She doesn't speak as she lights the little stove, which not only cooks her food and heats the water she uses to wash, but provides her only source of heat against the bone-deep chill that rattles the thin windows in their panes as it gusts through the streets below. She doesn't answer any of the questions he had desperately flung at her on the way up the stairs, following just a pace behind.

She can tell that he had been taken aback by her appearance, and her cold reception. He had noted her shock at his presence with an expression that seemed to belay understanding. He had opened his arms to her, eyes hopeful, and she hadn't missed the way that those arms had dropped slowly back to his sides as she stepped around him instead, his face falling as she moved to insert her key into the door that would let them in out of the frigid stairwell. She hadn't missed the look on his face, one of complete hurt, when she hadn't even returned his hello. She had instead bid him to be quiet as they made their way further up the stairs to the door of her tiny flat, desperate not to have him noticed and removed, as male visitors here, in the company of unmarried women, are strictly forbidden, and she's not about to lose her apartment at the start of a long winter ahead.

Finally, the job of lighting the range done and with no other immediate way to procrastinate, she faces him.

His expression now gives away nothing of his thoughts. He looks around the small room, until his eyes return to her with interest, certainly, but they hold no judgment, and that surprises her, though it probably shouldn't. Somehow she finds the lack of judgment as maddening as his mere presence, and reminds herself that this is a man who spent years without a roof to call his own. Maybe he still wanders that way. She knows nothing about him now.

She glances around the room herself, considering what it is he must be seeing; a fall from grace, if she's honest with herself.

It's not just that the place is small– every place in New York is small. Even those in her old crowd reside in apartments and homes at half the size of their usual mansions when they're in the city, and are often forced to deign to sharing a street with lower classes. She had certainly heard Cal complain about it enough– how his Park Avenue address butted up against tenements much like the one she's currently in. Such is the reality anywhere where the number of people far outscales the available real estate. The real problem right now under Jack's scrutiny– what is causing her such shame– is the complete lack of care she has shown towards the room, and worse still, herself.

The scuffs in the floor and the mold visibly climbing up the wall paper from summer humidity and autumn damp are not things she can help. A roof is a roof, and at the price she's asked for this roof, she knows there's no use in wanting an improvement. Beggars can't be choosers, after all. She had been lucky that the landlord had even allowed her to move in, being a "widowed" woman with no real history of employment. She hadn't dared cite the tragedy of the Titanic for pity, afraid of being traced; found. The landlord had taken pity, though, and she still shutters to think of the ulterior motives he likely had in the decision. She has been careful to double and triple check her locks at night, and has been saving every penny possible so that she might afford one of the boarding houses the other girls at work reside in, closer to the shop, and warm, and not two trolleys or a train away.

It's not the room itself that has shame and embarrassment welling up, but the untidy state she has allowed it to get to.

She wakes before dawn with the rattle of the pipes as other tenants in the building rise as well. She dresses in the scant light of this stove, and the small oil lamp on the single bedside table. She works for nearly twelve hours, and returns, so exhausted that it's all she can do to heat up something simple to eat, most days, and sometimes she doesn't bother. She has become prone to leaving her soiled clothes in a heap until they can get attention, maybe on her Sundays off, and to letting her dishes sit out until they're next used. Dust has built up; cobwebs in the corners to match the cobwebs dusting her mind because it's the apathy that has let it all settle. It's the lethargy of despair that this is where she has wound up, both in the literal sense, and within the broader scope of her life– a life that she had promised the man now standing just inside her doorway that she would keep living, but she knows– and she's sure he can tell– she hasn't truly been living any kind of a life at all. She has merely been existing; practically a ghost to match the specter of Jack across from her.

When she finally speaks, she grimaces internally at her own tone of voice, more cold and harsh than she had intended. She feels surprised at her own anger. She doesn' think that it's Jack that she should be feeling any amount of anger towards, but she finds that it comes out, regardless.

"How did you find me?" she asks.

It's not what she really wants to know. What she would rather know is how he survived, and why he has come, but those questions feel too loaded. She supposes, however, that the mere fact that he is here and that he obviously has survived, makes the how of it irrelevant.

If Jack is surprised at her tone, he doesn't let it show. The upward quirk of his eyebrows seems more a response to her finally speaking at all than to the way she has addressed him.

"It's kind of a long story," he answers. His gaze lingers on her face as if he's memorizing it– drinking her in, and she has to look away, back to the toes of her boots.

She fidgets with her skirts. She realizes her hands are within view, stained with powders and rouges from the products at work, and red-raw from constant washing, and then hides them back into the pockets of the coat she's still wearing from being outside. She usually makes no move to remove it until the room has heated through, and it's still cold.

She moves to sit upon the edge of her flat old tiny mattress, back stiff and ramrod straight, and in lieu of what else to do, she gestures with a nod of her head towards the lone wooden chair near the stove, pushed up next to a pair of upturned crates she uses as a makeshift table, inviting him to sit.

He does. His long limbs seem longer in the tiny space, folding to fit, and the whole of him is so impossible to her mind which is still struggling to catch up– to believe that this is actually real: that he's real. She has built up such a fantasy in her mind over the last few years of a meeting just like this; of an impossible scenario where he somehow lived, somehow came for her, to once again take her away from her current misery, and now, here he is, and yet she can barely believe it. She finds that she can barely trust that her mind hasn't just conjured up this specter, whether for torture or for escape, but she supposes that her mind wouldn't be clever enough to have him look the way he now does.

He appears older than she remembers. His hair is a little shorter – a little neater, smoothed back with product. He seems to have filled out more within his broad shoulders and chest, no longer holding himself with the same lanky boyishness he once had, and it makes her wonder if perhaps it's because he gets regular meals now.

His clothes, while ordinary, look to be of a higher quality than she remembers him wearing, and almost new– thick gray trousers that she could swear are tailored to fit his long legs, and a clean creamy white shirt beneath a brown tweed vest. The long woolen coat he's wearing overtop fits well upon his shoulders, suggesting that unlike the last one she had seen him wear, this one actually belongs to him. He has a hat held between his fingers, which he had removed upon catching sight of her outside in a gesture of respect and attention that she simply isn't used to having anymore from anyone. Men aren't gentlemen to her anymore.

There's a dusting of facial hair upon his cheeks that hadn't been there in 1912, growing thicker at his chin and around his mouth, and lines etched between his brows and at the corners of his downturned smile seem to lend more towards a frown than the easy, charming grins she remembers. His eyes, when she finally meets their startling blue, are still trained steadily upon her, and still betray none of his feelings about the way she has been studying him. He simply allows it as if he wants to be pinned beneath her gaze.

As if dispelling some reverie or memory, he shakes his head. His eyes finally drift from her, out towards the window, allowing her to breathe, and the snow falling outside is easily visible, stark against the dark of the night sky. Everything is bathed in the yellow of the street lamps beyond, still gasoline in this part of town, lit by young boys with tapers and rickety ladders, who have never known a sense of safety. They have always made Rose think of Jack.

"I've been looking for you for so long, Rose," he says finally, breaking the silence that has settled. The way that he has to clear his throat around the words as if to dispel some latent emotion has a lump swelling within her own throat.

"Since the moment I knew– found out for sure that you were still alive, and still out here somewhere– I've been looking. I've been doing everything I could to find you. There isn't anything else I could possibly do but look for you."

His eyes find hers again, and she's struck motionless by the sincerity– the truth she finds there. The very thought that all this time he may have been looking– that he hadn't just given up… it feels like so much. Her shame flares anew when she thinks of it; him searching, and her, not even a week on dry land and already unfaithful out of necessity to live– to put food in her stomach and some kind of a roof over her head. She remembers cursing her own naivety at the realization that not only had Cal been right to say she'd never make it alone– he'd shouted that at her as she had slipped into the crowds disembarking, that rainy night– but that Jack had been right as well about it not being easy, when everything still felt bright and new and she had made up her mind to leave the ship with him. She had needed to be quick to come around to the reality of it being far harder just by being a woman. With no working experience to her name, and it being obvious the high pedestal from which she had fallen– jumped, plummeted at her own accord– it had only taken five days for her to reach such desperation that she had succumbed to her mother's worst nightmares, and the bawdy tragic realities of the penny dreadfuls she had consumed as a young girl, and had allowed herself to accept a few paper bills in a dark corner, before scraping her way back up, clawing and scrambling all the while to where she is now.

Now, to know that Jack had been out there and searching this entire time, she feels even worse.

"But how?" she asks again. "I don't understand." She doesn't ask why. She thinks, with the way he's still looking at her with such awe and open adoration, underpinned with something that looks like relief, that she knows why, and it's not that she doesn't feel the same, but that she simply doesn't think that she deserves it. She had worked hard to stay well hidden, and she doesn't think that she deserves to have him care enough to search in the first place.

His chest visibly fills as he takes in a deep breath, and he settles further back into the stiff wooden chair. His eyes go towards the window again, and he begins to tell the story.

New York City

Spring, 1912

Jack

Jack tries to ignore the harsh bite of guilt he feels as he rests within this sitting room. It's a hotel nicer than any he has ever set foot within before: the Waldorf Astoria. He had seen it from the outside, once, before he ever made his way to Europe. He had been about sixteen, sat on a bench at the entrance to Central Park across the way, offering up quick portraits to the rich folk out for their leisurely strolls, knowing he'd never be lucky enough to see what it's like on the inside. He thinks at this point he should stop thinking about luck, and whether he has it or doesn't. Every time lady luck comes to visit, she seems to leave just as quick, and she takes her gifts with her. His Ma always said luck was a fickle lady and not one to flirt with, and he should have listened. If he had, maybe he wouldn't know the misery of losing Rose.

The guilt at being here is tempered somewhat with the fact that it's not only the charity of his current company allowing him to enter, but that this hotel had been opened up to all survivors of the sinking, for a short time at least, regardless of social status. He supposes he should feel grateful, after everything, to be given the opportunity to have a place to sit and collect his thoughts; a place to rest his head for a night and will away the chill that he doesn't think, now, will ever fully leave his bones. When they arrived last night, soaked to the bone, he had spent the first two hours alone soaking in a warm tub and stoking a rather unnecessarily large fire in the hearth of his room within this ridiculous suite.

Now, the next evening, he's sat again in borrowed clothes, and he looks to Molly Brown, seated so casually across from him, sipping on hot tea and whiskey as she speaks, intrepid in her onwards and upwards mentality. She has been trying since she had found him, barely lucid and scuttled between the other poor souls scooped from the water, packed into a small infirmary cabin aboard the Carpathia where she had stopped in to see if she could be of assistance, to convince him to simply stay with her a while until he gets on his feet; to allow her to bestow upon him charity that he doesn't feel like he deserves in the least. He's never been very good at accepting help without having something to give in return.

Before everything that had happened, he probably would have chosen to see the offer of a little while spent living in this comfort– the lap of literal luxury- as a gift from a universe that he had always known to give back just as much as it took away, for he had always received generosity and inspiration and beauty in equal measure to tragedy, grief, and loneliness. He would have looked at it as the next leg of the adventure that was his life, determined to make every moment count, but now…

Now that he's shouldering the grief and guilt of waking from a darkness he had thought he was embracing as death, to find that he had apparently survived, been rescued, and left Rose, whom he had been bound to love from the moment he saw her, dead, frozen at sea, without even being aware of it happening at all… he doesn't think he deserves anything, let alone these dry clothes, and this warm room he finds himself in, or the finger of whiskey on ice clutched within the crystal tumbler in his own hand, untouched.

"All I'm saying, Jack," Molly continues, along the train she's been on for the last hour, "is that you're young, and you're bright, and you're capable. There's no doubt in my mind that we won't find you some suitable work at the very least, and in the meantime I won't have it on my conscience to see you sleeping rough. I simply won't allow it– not when I have more room than I know what to do with. When we check out of here tomorrow, you're coming home with me."

He wants to argue some more– is about to when the both of them are stopped short by the sudden explosion of voices raging in the corridor, several rooms down.

"This is unacceptable, Mr. Hockley! You simply cannot do this!"

The voice is loud, shrill, and he finds that he recognizes it right away in spite of having only ever heard it on a handful of occasions. 'Charmed, I'm sure,' floats to the forefront of his mind, unbidden, coupled with the way that the owner of that voice had looked at him as if he were vermin under her dainty shoe. He tenses, breath held, as Molly meets his gaze, her own words halted on her tongue, and then she's up like a shot, moving to open the door and poke a head out into the hall, not caring a wit about whether it's nosy. Opening the door only serves to make the argument happening outside that much more clear from where he sits, frozen on the sofa.

"I believe you'll find that I can, Ruth," comes the other voice, darkly; one that Jack now knows equally well, and which still brings a bitter swell of rage to the pit of his stomach.

"You and I both know that this entire farce was for your own benefit. I was happy to go along with it in the beginning for what a beauty your daughter was, but I should have heeded my father's warnings from the start. I admit Rose was tempting enough to make it seem worthwhile for a time, but I've been a damned fool and I'll not let it go on any further. I should have taken her when I had the chance. You can be assured that I tried, once I found her on Carpathia, to keep a hold of her, but now that I have it all back– the jewels, the money in the coat– when she slipped my grasp at the docks, I simply saw no further need to go after her. She became damaged goods the moment she let that gutter rat put his hands on her, and I do not purchase damaged goods."

"But—" He hears Ruth falter. "You can't do this. You can't just turn me out. I've nowhere to go! You simply can't. You must find her! You have to–"

Jack feels his own pulse quicken, his heart pounding within his chest, because here it is, laid out plain– Rose, his Rose, is alive. She's somewhere out there, with Cal Hockley refusing to lend chase. She's alive. She's alive, and she has apparently gotten away, which means she has fought– she is fighting. She's escaping the life she had so badly wanted to be removed from, and with a swell of pride and relief, he feels his eyes fill with tears, completely uncaring that it may be pathetic to show this much emotion.

"I have to do nothing!" Cal is shouting, now. He hears a noise, like a closed fist against a wall, and he can picture the man acting out with violence. "There has been no marriage, ergo there has been no contract– no prenuptial agreement. I owe you nothing, Ruth, and if I'm honest I'm happier to see you go than to have you hanging on like a canker. I was far too lenient with your daughter, and that was my mistake, but it is not a mistake that I am willing to repeat. As far as the world is concerned– as far as society is concerned– Rose Dewitt-Bukater died on the Titanic, and I no longer have any need of any association with you, god forbid the awful rumors of her infidelity have reached land along with that ship. With a forwarding address I will have the staff at the estate send you your clothing and whatever items you have left there, but beyond that you'll not be getting a thing, and you will no longer find any charity from me. If you're lucky, perhaps the hotel will still have some vacancy. Or maybe, that vulgar woman lurking at the end of the hallway will take more pity on you than I."

There's the sound of a slamming door, loud and echoing, that lets Jack know that Cal truly has left, and it takes less than a moment for Molly to disappear entirely from his line of sight. He can hear the sound of Ruth's sobbing down the hall, and he feels possibly the first shred of his own pity for the woman for the first time since Rose had described to him their fraught relationship. He may not like her, and he may not understand her, and the way she had seemed so ready and determined to throw away her own daughter's happiness and her autonomy, simply to assure that their means and their status would never change, but he does understand some of her sorrow now. Hadn't they both just borne witness to unimaginable horrors over the past few days? Haven't they both been mourning the loss of Rose?

Though, he realizes with a start, it's not mourning, is it, if she's still alive?

The sobbing gets louder, as Molly ushers the other woman towards this room. He feels frozen to the spot in anticipation of what reaction Ruth is likely to have the moment she spots his presence. He sits up straighter, feet planted as if bracing for impact, and finally lifts the highball in his hand to his lips, tossing back the amber liquid like a shot, needing its false courage. Right now, there's no time to savor anything. Right now, he has a job to do, and that is to find Rose by any means necessary, and he knows that he will not rest until he does.

New York City

Autumn 1914

Jack

The nerves that Jack had felt, waiting upon the doorstep to this tenement building have not yet gone, even as he's seated across from her in this small space. Everything feels stilted and wrong, and he wishes he could have given her some kind of prior warning. It feels like she's not very happy to see him at all, and he wonders if maybe he should have given her a choice. All he wants is for everything to feel okay again and he doesn't know if it will. Once upon a time this woman had jumped back onto a sinking ship to find him and rushed right into his arms, and now she won't cross even the six foot distance between them. He wonders what else lingers between them, now. He has a vague idea, formed around the places he had gone searching and the people he had spoken to in order to find her– a vague timeline pieced together with fraught desperation– but he doesn't really know.

He doesn't know what he had expected, either. He realizes now that he had been naive to assume he'd find her and she'd fall right into his arms and that she wouldn't have misgivings and fear and distrust. To his relief, she is at least giving him the chance to speak rather than outright dismissing him from her presence, but the reception has not exactly been warm.

She's standoffish and tense, holding herself stiff and at a distance. He can sense her shame in her surroundings. Her very being seems to have darkened and dulled along with her appearance and he hates it– hates that though she sits in front of him he still feels like he's seeking the woman who had once burned so bright because this Rose isn't her. This Rose is acting as cover for a woman she seems to have given up on being, and it makes him hurt for her.

There are the obvious differences, which he spots right away. She has gotten thinner. Her complexion is pale, her cheeks lacking any color beneath a smear of makeup. When he has thought of her, most often it's with the bright flush of giddiness– of cheeks hot and bright with dancing and laughter and cheap beer at that party below decks. He thinks of the way her eyes had sparkled with hidden laughter, and had reflected the stars in the sky right back into his own as they had shared secret wishes in whispered confidence. Now those eyes are dull and sad and trained on the floor.

She has dyed over her fiery locks– darkened them to a brown that only allows a hint of auburn to burn through. As she had approached with the dark tresses gathering snow outside he nearly hadn't recognized her. He hadn't been fully certain until she had looked up and he had seen the shock of recognition on her face, color draining as if she saw a ghost.

He knows that his own mouth has twisted into a frown as he watches her move about the small room, lighting a little stove before perching upon the edge of her little bed. She looks weary. The line of her shoulders appears to be fighting gravity and exhaustion to stay back, her head held high but wanting to nod with tiredness. Her eyes are wary and mistrusting, lighting upon him only briefly before darting away again, and he wants to know everything that has happened to make her look like this– to make her look at him like this.

"But how did you survive?"

She interrupts his story about the Waldorf Astoria, and the question is almost pleading.

"I don't understand," she says. "I saw you slip under the water. You were gone. I… How are you alive?"

"I don't really know, Rose," he tells her honestly. He frowns, wishing he had a better answer than that, but truthfully he doesn't, and he had never felt bothered enough to go seeking an explanation. He remembers all too well the feeling of letting go and of slipping beneath the water, but he doesn't remember resurfacing, or how he could have been identified as still alive enough to have been pulled from the water by the crew who had returned. He's got vague, hazy blue memories of gasping for air, maybe splashing for attention, but he's not sure. Everything is so muddled and confused. "I don't really remember how it happened– just that I woke in a little room with a couple of other poor saps hauled from the ocean, when we were still on the Carpathia. That's where Molly found me."

"Molly Brown?" she asks. "You've really been living with Molly Brown this whole time?" He nods, shrugging, unsure why she sounds so skeptical. He has already told her this part.

"Not technically, any more, but for a while, yeah. When I got fully on my feet I was able to rent out a room from her here in the city, and then eventually she decided to sell me her place when she headed back out west. I'll always be grateful to her for taking me in. Me and, well, your mother."

He pauses so she can absorb this information.

"My mother?" she asks quietly. It's clear that she's surprised by this information. He knows she had said her goodbyes to Ruth Dewitt-Bukator while the Titanic had still perched above the waves. He knows that Ruth has been assuming for a long time that she would never have the chance to see her only daughter again– to apologize for all of the ways she had wronged her. Whatever Rose is feeling, she's doing a great job at masking it.

"She lives in Colorado now," he offers. "She decided to go with Molly." He doesn't tell her how Ruth had never been very confident in his endeavor to find her daughter. He does't mention the disgust, distrust and insults of those early days. She had never seemed to understand why he would care as much as he does to go looking in the first place, while the man that Rose had been engaged to had simply refused. Even when he had hit a bit of luck, and risen from his station to secure the means to search properly without charity from Molly, she had scoffed at his efforts, even as Molly had continued to encourage his belief, and he had begun to financially support Ruth himself on principle. Rose doesn't need to know about all of that right now, though.

"Why didn't you try and find me on the ship?" she asks him. She sounds accusing. It hurts.

"I would have, Rose. I promise I would have if I had known, but Molly had been told that you were gone. Cal made everyone think you were. He reported you as among the dead and missing. We were on land for two days already before we heard their fight and I learned the truth. It wasn't until then that I even thought to look for you on the survivor list under any other name."

At the mention of the survivor list her eyes rise to his for a moment before she looks away again, and he sees a bit of color finally flare in her cheeks. He realizes that she's embarrassed that he had seen it– the way she had taken his name at the docks. He wonders if he presses at that a little more if he can melt a little of the chill between them.

"I think it suits you better than it suits me," he tells her earnestly. "Rose Dawson."

As he watches, her resolve seems to crumble in real time. Her shoulders drop from where they've been held tense by her ears, and the severity of her expression softens, the wall between them dropping ever so slightly. Her eyes rise again from the floor boards to meet his own and catch there, holding.

"This is real?" she asks finally. "You're really here? I'm not just imagining it this time, daydreaming? You're real?"

That hits him somewhere deep and makes him ache. The idea that she has been imagining him– imagining a scenario like this one; no wonder why she's so wary and guarded. The idea of it has hope blooming in his chest, though.

"I'm real, Rose. This is real. I think if it weren't we'd both be a little warmer right now."

It's a poor attempt at humor and he knows it, but it lands well enough if her watery chuckle is anything to go by. He pulls himself forward, and crosses those few feet of distance to kneel down in front of her, careful to watch for any signal that she still doesn't want him in her space, but she doesn't move away and so he finally takes her hands. They're cold, too, he notes, and dry from use, marked at the fingertips with smudges of kohl and color from her job. He smoothes a thumb over the place where an engagement ring used to sit, her fingers now bare of any jewelry, and chides himself for the thought that he'd like to fix that, because it's far too soon to be thinking that way.

He stays still for a breath or two, thinking up what to say so as not to scare her off. He has the feeling that no matter what he has to say she'll probably remain skittish and unsure, but he can be okay with that. She's the one to surprise him now, when, instead of pulling back again, it's she who leans forward, nearly throwing him off balance as her arms reach to go around his neck in an embrace for the first time in more than two years. All he can really think to say now is "I've got you. I've got you, Rose. I'm never gonna let go again. I promise."

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