Emily's eyes tug-o-wared back and forth from James to the blue diamond caged in his hand.

It looked real enough.

It's glimmering contour less of a heart-shape, and more of a trilliant cut, giving it a soft roundedness that distinguished it from the ones in her jewelry case. While Emily could often spot a rainbow reflecting in the ones sold by the shop, this one only reflected indigo in the light. A sapphire as blue as a bottomless ocean with a clarity unlike the others.

Meaning if it were the actual Heart of the Ocean from the movie, it'd be valued at over $300 million today. At least according to her brother, Pax, and his obsessive research of the fictional diamond lately.

A bit cartier for some stupid office prank.

"Are you saying...that you honestly actually think," Emily could hardly believe she was entertaining the idea. "that you're literally an officer...literally from the Titanic?"

"Well, yes, that's what I've been trying to tell you from end to end of, that it's nobbut the truth," James insisted eagerly, relieved that they appeared to finally be getting somewhere. "I'm not coddin' you, I swear it on my own, and I gain nowt from holding back."

"But how can you be here and be from there at the same time? That's not possible."

"Well, I'm not certain what 'here' is anymore, if I'm honest."

"'Here' is 2022," she warily informed him. "And just doing some basic math here...If you were actually on the Titanic...That would've been the year..."

"1912," James confirmed, nodding certainly. And then, not so certainly, "Simply because that's the year it ought to be now...isn't it?"

Emily shook her head. "Not anymore."

"You mean...no longer?" James hesitated. "As if to say it's truly..."

"2022," Emily reiterated for him. "Yeah."

"Can you by chance..." James murmured, afraid to go on. "Can you to me prove somehow that what you're telling me is the truth?"

"Well...it's a Titanic museum," she pointed out, as he'd apparently missed it ."So...Wouldn't that be proof enough that if you're here, you can't possibly be the real Officer James Moody from 1912?"

"But I am the realOfficer James Moody from 1912," he insisted earnestly.

"And I'm Harriet Tubman."

"I'd sooner put my money on that than you trying to sell me a dog and tell me it's 2022."

"Fine," Emily let him have it. "Not my problem you live in a fantasy world."

"Well, miss, I'd fancy your dreamworld might be as much a stack of cards as mine. So, how should we know which reality to believe then?" James contended. "If this really is April of 2022, and my time has already gone, there must be proof. A record, perhaps, of the 'real' Officer Moody of White Star? The countless letters I penned to my sister, perhaps. Or perhaps photographs of me aboard the Oceanic, or Conway, or Rosebury Prep, for God's sake, should we regress that far. If you've owt at hand, perhaps we can set the record straight of which is the truth, Ms. Amberflaw. Your fever dream or mine?"

And thus, presented with his absurd challenge of proving "her version of reality", Millie glanced to her right at a bookshelf stocked with dozens of historical volumes on the Titanic and its fateful tragedy.

"This is completely insane," she whispered to herself, as she scanned the spines of hardcover books around her.

But she was too far down the rabbit hole now to not at least be a little curious about where it took her.

And pulling any book that might wrap this up quick and easy for them, Emily reached for the closest book within a comfortable range of her height, A Maiden Voyage, by Geoffrey Jules Marcus.

Throwing James one last cynical glance, Millie set the book on the glass counter between them. Flipping through the pages until her finger pinned down the chapter titled, "Sixth Officer James Paul Moody".

Born the youngest of four in Scarborough, Yorkshire, among breathtaking sandy beaches and majestically rising limestone cliffs overlooking the North Sea, Jim had lived a privileged life in many respects. His father John Henry Moody was a solicitor and served on the town council, and his grandfather, John James Paul Moody, had risen to prominence as a town clerk. The overall wealth and social pedigree of the family made it reasonable for the Scarborough lad to be sent off for his secondary education in a career at sea...

And skipping a page or two over his rather verbose biography, Emily stopped.

Her attention immediately drawn to the becoming portrait of a Royal Navy officer...identical to that one grainy photo in the gallery she'd rolled her mop bucket pass in a hurry so many times before.

And when she gradually dragged her eyes back up to James...her lips formed into a muted Oh.

Forgetting to breathe in again after.

"It's me there, isn't it?" James whispered, forced to accept the evidence, now that it stood irrefutably between them.

Leaving both lady and officer suddenly chilled, as the photograph settled their smoldering debate, confirming the unlikely and inconceivable paradox at hand.

They were both telling the truth, though it would seem, different versions of it.

"Who..." Emily stopped herself, realizing that who wasn't the real question anymore. "What are you?"

And James dreaded his own question in return, his eyes frozen on Millie, as he was too afraid to look down again and read what else that ruddy book in her hands had to tell.

"Might your book answer that for us both?" he braved the query.

"Well, it says that you..."

"Yes, miss?"

But unable to make sense of her racing thoughts at this point, let alone read, Emily turned the book around on the counter to face him.

Forcing James to read his ultimate fate on Titanic himself.

Sixth Officer James Moody was the only junior officer to die on the Titanic on April 15th, 1912. Based on testimony given by Officer Lowe during the U.S. inquiry, Moody was reportedly last seen by Lowe assisting with the launch of lifeboats 14 and 16. Despite being Moody's senior in rank, Moody insisted that Lowe take the lifeboat first. Lowe proceeded into Lifeboat 14, under the impression that Moody would man lifeboat 16 after him. However, Moody never made it into a lifeboat in the end. He was reportedly sighted last trying to free Collapsible A off the officers' quarters, though Second Officer Lightoller could not say for sure that he saw the Sixth Officer when the lifeboat swept off the deck.

Moody's reasons for never leaving Titanic, and his ultimate fate thereafter remain a mystery. His body was never recovered. Unquestionably, he died in the brave performance of his duty, keeping the deck calm in order to save as many passengers as he could with the limited lifeboats remaining. A memorial plaque bearing Moody's name rests in the Church of St. Martin on the Hill, Scarborough. It bears the epigraph:' Be Thou Faithful Unto Death and I Will Give to Thee a Crown of Life."

James's trembling hands graciously set Ms. Amberflaw's book back onto the register counter.

"Are you certain?" he asked her, the subdued anguish in his whisper barely contained. "Do you mean to say that I am really...dead?"

"If you really were from 1912," Emily quietly affirmed. "There's no way you couldn't be."

"But things don't happen this way," James shook his head in denial. "What would that even mean for me, I wonder? Am I a ghost? If I was really lost at sea to Titanic, am I nobbut a damned soul now searching for rest?"

Emily's reply was gentler than before, her gaze softened with more empathy, "I'm sorry...I don't think I know how to answer that."

"But you can see undoubtedly that flesh and blood, I am? I'm not a ghost," James eagerly tried to convince her. "I stand before you alive and well, and it's beyond me why anyone would write such a blimmin' book of lies, all to do with..."

And then his eyes shifted around him to the historical memorabilia, that in his haste, he never really had a mind to take in before.

The haunting image of the ship, the RMS Titanic, painted on everything within reach of him. Coffee mugs, wall canvases, key trinkets, tartan fleece blankets, miniature display models, odd baggy shirts with hoods he couldn't find a name for, blankets, bags, socks, board games, decorative coins...

"This is entirely irrational," he shook his head dazedly. "How can I be dead when I'm surely breathing now? I know that I am real. I know it sure as owt. It's this world that can't be."

And what was this so-called "gift shop" that it was allowed to sell such tasteless souvenirs, worshipping a shipwreck as if it were the next best thing to St. David's Day?

How had the night of April 14th-his supposed "death" at sea among the hundreds of lost passengers and crew with him-become the morbid fetish of this perverted alien world?

These dizzying reminders of the ship haunting him with so many impossible questions.

Had Titanic, the "unsinkable ship", as they called it, truly foundered in such a way after she hit that iceberg?

Was that truly the way of history, as his own time had known it?

Or was it only so in the history of this parallel reality he found himself trapped inside of?

And if this scenario existed in this version of reality, did that mean there were others?

That, in some sister reality, Titanic remained afloat in 1912, safely ported in New York on Wednesday morning as she was always meant to be?

How could he be certain which one was fact, when he couldn't remember dying, nor ever making it to port with the ship?

Could it all be just some nightmare he was waiting to wake up from?

Was he still out in the Atlantic with Titanic somewhere, keeping watch for icebergs and growlers over a sea of glass and stars after wishing Lowe a goodnight on his watch?

Or was he truly lost at sea, a spectre wanting to be laid to rest but finding no comfort or hope of being found, having gone down with the ship that brought him into this unimaginable afterlife?

"No, it's not reasonable, I tell ye," he kept insisting. "Whatever this is, it can't happen this way. You can't exist, and neither can your delusional perspective of history."

"No, you're the one that can't exist," Emily insisted back. "Because that would mean you were born over 100 years ago."

"1887," Moody informed her. "The 21st of August."

"And I'm the delusional one?"

"Then are we the making of each other's dreams?" James ventured. "Because sure as day, we both stand here, Ms. Amberflaw. And if history is logically chronological-which we both know it is-then you and I can not exist at the same time on the same continuum. It just wouldn't happen. That is to say, none of this should have ever-"

"I know," Millie murmured softly, her voice carrying such an arresting effect that stopped James's tormented anxieties all at once. "Something you can't explain happened to you, and no matter how desperately you try to remember, you don't have any words for it. And I'm so sorry that's happening to you. I wish I knew how to understand it but I don't...All I know is that we're here...Now...And you can't be hurt anymore."

But it was almost as if she weren't speaking to him anymore, James noted.

As if for a moment, she were another person, in another place far away from there.

Because wasn't this all so painfully like dejavu?

Hadn't things been the same for her only a year or so ago?

Numbly staring into the white walls of the hospital room around her, swearing to the nurses that the teapots wouldn't stop smashing the dinner plates, and that the "big wave" was coming to get her.

Her ravings being a dizzying consequence of the needle they'd stabbed into the sensitive flesh of her arm, still tender from the bruises under her wrists, where they'd roughly forced her tearstained face down onto the pristine tiled floor.

And so heavily sedated was she in this dreamworld that she barely noticed when a man, with rueful hazel eyes so much like hers, caught her pale face between his shaking hands.

Please, Millie, just look at me. Open your eyes, I beg of you. I'm your brother, don't you remember? Don't you remember any of it? Dear God, this is all my fault. It's all my fault, Mills, and I'm so terribly sorry. It was all an accident. Just a terrible, terrible accident. I'm going to get you out of this wretched place. I promise you I will. I don't care what it takes from me, I'm going to find a way to bring you home.

So, when it was all said and done...if anyone knew what a horror it was to wake up to a world you felt like a complete stranger to, Emily remembered it intimately.

Of course this man was scared.

It was so much easier to imagine up a new reality for himself than accept whatever hell he'd just walked out of.

Whatever "accident" his mind was too terrified to let him go back to.

That hell may not have been Titanic.

Emily was almost 110 percent sure that it couldn't have been Titanic.

But she believed him when he said it was something.

Recognizing her old self in his eyes, and feeling so deeply his pain for that bygone world he believed he left behind.

Regretting that she'd have to be the one to tell him it might've never existed to begin with.

"I'm sorry," she whispered again to the officer. "But it really is just a gift shop."

And gazing back into that unintended look of pity for him in her eyes, James felt deeply ashamed of himself.

There this poor lass stood, frightened out of her wits and shaken up all on account of him.

How could he, a man and a bloody White Star officer, ever put such a burden on a woman's shoulders?

Had he really come in there to cause a stir, sniveling and lamenting to the Miss like he wasn't wearing the uniform he'd put on?

She'd already made it plain to him that she could not help him, and it was embarrassingly discourteous for a man to go on vexing a lady like so.

Thus, reaching for his cap on the counter again, James politely nodded to the shopgirl.

"I'm sorry to have troubled you," he said in parting. "If you will please excuse me."

But just as he turned on his heels to make for the door once again, he stopped short.

Halted by the dark hourglass with ears sitting upright and noble at James's dress shoes, shamelessly blocking the officer's exit, as he took his time licking between each of his extended claws.

Clearing his throat, James turned back to Emily.

"If I may," he began. "I can't trust my own head to know what's real and what isn't anymore. Perchance...is that a kittlin?"

"Captain Wentworth," Emily hurried around the register toward the cat, having completely forgotten he was still running loose after all this chaos.

Basking in plain sight for anyone who wanted to see him, of course.

Wentworth dodged her the second she went for him, reminded of the looming threat of his cat carrier waiting for him in the breakroom.

"Captain, no, bad kitty," she mumbled a scolding at him, trying not to draw too much attention as she tried to catch him. "Come on, before somebody else sees you!"

"Oh, thank God," James sighed, shaking his head and utterly relieved that he hadn't gone completely overthe deep. "I'm not the only one who saw the blooming cat then."

"Is that a goddamn cat?"

This time, the question came from a man appearing behind James.

And when Emily's eyes widened at the sight of her manager, standing in the doorway ajoining the museum and the gift shop, James turned around to face the right portly fellow in turn.

"It is, sir," James informed him heartily. "I can attest to ye surely, that beyond all doubt, we mark the same cat."

And then Emily's bulging eyes turned around to the officer, who appeared so nervously pleased with himself.

Her nails digging into the palms of her tightened fists, so as not to try and kill him all over again a second time.

And after first looking hard at James like he'd just magically dropped out of a nether dimension, the manager turned his attention back to Emily.

"Can you explain to me how a cat got in here, Millie?"

Millie?

James glanced back at the shopgirl.

Caught off guard by the unexpected nickname her overseer had called her by, as it brought him to some unrealized revelation about her face.

"Millie," James whispered her name again to himself.

Short for Emily, naturally.

But why did it strike him so?

How did it feel so right when he said it aloud?

And why did it seem more fitting to him now that she should look, behave, and sound more like a girl called Millie rather than just an Emily?

"W-Well, I," Emily went on stammering to her boss. "I, uh, I...He's-well-"

And after taking another look at the girl he knew now as Millie, James went prickly hot all over his body, as the truth suddenly hit him.

'Of course,' it dawned on him. 'The kittlin is hers...Ah, what a way to muck things up! Blinking hell, Jim, ye reet berk!

"You do know that's a violation of code, and a write-up. You can't have that cat in here," her manager reprimanded her. "I'm calling animal control out here to get somebody to pick him up."

"No, wait!" Emily stopped him before he could march back to his office in the museum. "You don't have to do that...Because well, he's my-"

"He's mine, is why," James spoke up, sweeping the cat up in one scoop of his arm, with an assuredness that left Emily flabbergasted at how easy he made it look, and how willingly her cat let him. "This kittlin is with me, and so getting him away won't be necessary. He's my...Well, what I call him is my-"

"Emotional support animal," Emily helped Moody out.

"Aye, that's the one," James affirmed, as Captain Wentworth dug his razor-sharp claws into the officer's neck trying to climb him like a tree.

Wincing, James peeled the cat away claw-by-claw from his shoulder, the wooly fabric of his coat snatching off like ripped velcro, as he securely pinned the bellicose feline between his elbow and ribs. "That's surely what this li'le bugger is."

"And what are you supposed to be?" the manager noted James's double-breasted coat and smart shoes.

"James Moody, sir," James introduced himself graciously. "Pleased to make your acquaintance."

"You can't have that cat in here," the manager repeated gruffly.

"Very good, sir, my mistake," James apologized to the manager, placing on his cap again and quickly making his way to the door he'd first come in through. "Well, I'm off then. Good day to you, sir."

And then glancing over at the breathlessly moon-eyed Emily.

"Miss," he acknowledged the lady, tipping his hat in parting.

And then went on his way with her cat out the back door.

"Don't look so relieved," her manager threw in his last two cents as he walked out of her shop. "You're still 20 minutes late clocking out, and that's a write-up. I'll have it waiting for you to sign in my office."