Fifth Officer Lowe has gotten Boats 10, 12 and Collapsible D together with his own Boat 14. A demon of energy, he's had everyone hold the boats together and is transferring passengers from 14 into the others, to empty his boat for a rescue attempt.
As the women step gingerly across the other boats, Lowe sees a shawled figure in too much of a hurry. He rips the shawl off, and finds himself staring into the face of a man. He angrily shoves the stowaway into another boat and turns to his crew of three.
"Right, man the oars." Lowe sends his crew into the silent darkness.
...
The beam of an electric torch plays across the water like a searchlight as Boat 14's crew scans the vast ocean. The officer's torch illuminates floating debris, a poignant trail of flotsam: a violin, a child's wooden soldier, a framed photo of a steerage family. Daniel Marvin's wooden Biograph camera. Then, their white lifebelts bobbing in the darkness like signposts, the first bodies come into the torch's beam. The people are dead but not drowned, killed by the freezing water. Some look like they could be sleeping. Others stare with frozen eyes at the stars. Soon bodies are so thick the seamen cannot row. They hit the oars on the heads of floating men and women... a wooden thunk. One seaman throws up. Lowe sees a mother floating with her arms frozen around her lifeless baby.
LOWE (the worst moment of his life) "We waited too long." he says, swallowing hard, before resuming to his duty of searching for any more survivors...
...
Jack and Thomas lay floating in the black water as the stars reflect in the mill pond surface, and the two of them seem to be floating in interstellar space. They are absolutely still. Their hands are locked together. Jack is staring upwards at the canopy of stars wheeling above him. The music is transparent, floating... as the long sleep steals over Jack, and he begins to feels peace. Jack's face was pale, like the faces of the dead. He seems to be floating in a void. Jack is in a semi-hallucinatory state. He knows he is dying. His lips barely move as he sings a scrap of their song:
"Come Josephine in my flying machine..."
The stars. Like you've never seen them. The Milky Way a glorious band from horizon to horizon. A shooting star flares past... a line of light across the heavens. Jack's hair is dusted with frost crystals. His breathing is so shallow, he is almost motionless. His eyes track down from the stars to the water.
In SLOW MOTION: The silhouette of a boat crossing the stars. Jack slowly turns on the debris and sees men in it, rowing so slowly, the oars lift out of the syrupy water, leaving weightless pearls floating in the air. The VOICES of the men sound slow and DISTORTED. Then the lookout flashes his torch toward him and the light flares across the water, silhouetting the bobbing corpses in between. It flicks past his motionless form and moves on. The boat is 50 feet away, and moving past him. The men look away. Jack lifts his head to turn to Thomas, with a slight difficulty because his hair has frozen to the wood under him.
Theme Song: Hymn to the Sea-James Horner
Jack (barely audible) "Thomas..." He carefully touches and caresses his shoulder with his free hand. Thomas doesn't respond. Jack gently turns his face toward him. Thomas' face is rimmed with frost. He seems to be sleeping peacefully...
But he is not asleep. Jack can only stare at Thomas' once beautiful, delicate, but still face as the realization goes through him...
"Thomas...Thomas..." All hope, will and spirit begins to leave Jack. Despite the bitterly cold, he could feel the warm tears coming to his eyes. He knows he will no longer spend any more time with this wonderful man again. All of those wonderful memories, even if they were short, Jack will dearly cherish. He slowly looks back towards the boat. It is further away now, the voices growing fainter. Jack watches them go. He closes his eyes. He is so weak, and there just seems to be no reason to even try. And then... his eyes snap open! He raises his head suddenly, cracking the ice as he rips his hair off the wood. He calls out, but his voice is so weak they don't hear him. The boat is invisible now, the torch light a star impossibly far away. Jack struggles to draw breath, calling again...
At the boat, Lowe hears nothing behind him. He points to something ahead, turning the tiller. Jack still struggles to move. His hand, he suddenly realizes, is actually frozen to Thomas'. Slowly and carefully he breathes on their hands, melting the ice a little, and gently unclasps their hands, breaking away a thin tinkling film. In doing so, Thomas' frozen body breaks from the wood, and slowly dips into the ocean.
"I won't let go... I promise..." Jack says, kissing and gently patting Thomas' hand as a warm tear falls from his eye, before releasing Thomas and his body begins to sink into the black water. He seems to fade out like a spirit returning to some immaterial plane, while his arm was still out, where Jack held onto earlier. Jack cries for this beautiful boy as he completely disappears into the dark void, before collecting himself, as he needed to come up with a plan to save himself. He slowly and carefully rolls off the floating staircase and plunges into the icy water. He swims to Chief Officer Wilde's body and grabs his whistle. Jack starts to blow the whistle with all the strength he has in his body.
Its sound slaps across the still water...
Lowe whips around at the sound of the whistle.
A/N Apologies to those that wants updates. Its been nearly two years as I didn't know where to go with this story, and as for that ending I do feel very bad about killing off the protagonist, so we'll just see where this story leads. Originally, I wanted to keep both characters, but something told me to write this. Thanks to those who have followed along and even favorited this story.
Please, leave reviews and follow, and thank you for following.