It was Emily's turn again.
"Dare," she declared to James confidently.
A smirk fell over James's face, having hoped all along that she'd take him on.
"I dare you to close your eyes," he challenged her. "And not open them until I say."
"I can't see where I'm going if my eyes are closed," Millie countered, suspiciously.
"Why, that's the total nature of a dare, Miss Emily," James answered her. "Though, it's great luck for you, that you won't need to, so long as I'm here."
And knowing she wouldn't dare back out of his dare now, Emily tried her hardest not to peek, as James took her hand, and guided her eastward off the path that looped around the memorial gardens, and closer to the one that took visitors around the harbor's edge.
Without looking (on her honor, of course) she knew that it had to be the seaside trail James was leading her, against the misty oceanic wind brushing her face.
The cadenced rocking of waves crashing against the shore making Emily's blood surge hot, and her heart skip nervously for an unexpected feeling of dread hitting her out of the blue.
She didn't know exactly where it came from.
Or why she felt this sudden and frantic desperation to get as far away from the water's edge as possible.
Her knees feeling more and more like jello, as James slowed his pace, and led her to an eventual stop.
At last, Millie felt the protective steel railing of the seaside trail lightly bump against her hands. Making her realize instantly that they had reached the point where the shore ended, and that beyond the cold railing gripped by her slightly trembling fingers, she faced nothing but the wild vastness of the Atlantic ocean.
Don't open your eyes. Just get away from the water.
Every instinct of survival screaming for her to turn back around.
Making her so desperate to get away, that she almost quit the dare then and there, and pulled James back to the safer garden path with her.
But wouldn't that appear a bit melodramatic?
They were safely on the land side of the railing, and each panel was bolted in by cement blocks buried securely underground.
So secure, in fact, that if she fell in and drowned, it would have to be intentional.
And with so many safety nets in place, falling in just wasn't an option for her, and convincing herself that it wasn't, Emily decided that hyping herself up about nothing wasn't worth losing her truth-or-dare game to James.
She would finish this dare, come what may.
And why shouldn't she?
Was there any logical reason for her anxiety kicking into overdrive now, at the thought of opening her eyes and seeing nothing but ocean staring back at her?
As long as she stayed out of the water, it wasn't anybody's business that she didn't really know how to swim.
"This is a really long dare," she remarked to James, blindly waiting for what felt like 100 years for him to tell her when she could open her eyes.
"Nearly there now," James said to her. "A bit more this way. If you'll allow me, Miss Millie."
And then Emily felt James's hands gently on her elbows, turning her at an angle just so, until she was facing a spot picked for her by his exact specifications.
"Right," the officer's murmur behind her was achingly soothing, as he asked her, "Are you all ready now, love?"
"Ready for what?" Emily gave in to a jittery smile. "Honestly, I'm so nervous to open my eyes right now."
"Well, I'm right here with you," James assured her softly. "It's my dare too, you know. We'll see it through together. You have my word I won't abandon you in this."
And though Emily was still completely terrified by the idea of accidently falling in, feeling the warmth of James's body so near to her, it gave her enough courage to take a chance on the Titanic officer and finish the dare.
Slowly, her eyes fluttered open.
Her gaze finding the Statue of Liberty in front of her and James, where the gray clouds over the harbor had momentarily sailed out of the way of the blushing peach sunset radiating onto her face through the vallary crown of Lady Liberty.
"Now then, that wasn't so bad, was it?" James's hushed tone teased the Miss lightly. "We've made it here at last, Millie. Just as I'd promised you we would...And look...the sun's found its way back to us as well. Just as you once assured me."
"So, it has," Millie whispered back to James, blushing in the warmth of the shimmering sunlight dancing all around them.
It had to be that she'd seen the Statue of Liberty a thousand times before Officer James Paul Moody wandered his way into her shop.
And knowing Titanic's fate, and how much the sight of Lady Liberty before them understandably meant more to her shipwrecked officer than her, Moody's excitement to share this long awaited moment with her made her see it all through his eyes, as if for the very first time.
A small token of bittersweet closure coming to James Moody at last, after his otherworldly and tragic death onboard a ship that never brought him to New York in the end.
And Millie felt so happy for him, now that he had it.
How could her heart not skip for his sake, watching his journey come full-circle at last, against everything he'd gone through on the night of April 14th, 1912.
Yet...something about standing there with him on shore, as the sun slowly fell behind the clouds again beyond Lady Liberty, felt inexplicably gratifying to her. As if a part of herself, trapped in the numbly cold unknowns of her soul, recognized in this moment a happy ending that she was not just a passive observer in.
As if, in a weird knowing way, this moment with him belonged to her too.
And that her long waiting for that something "wanted", which left an aching void within her, was steadily coming to an end.
Or at the very least, she hoped she'd one day know for herself a happiness like the one in James's eyes then. That feeling of total completeness, after finding something so wildly desired for so long.
And so suddenly and greatly did she desire him...that Millie didn't stop the Titanic officer when James's hand rose to lightly comb back her dancing locks that had gotten caught in the seaside winds.
Her windswept curls playing on both hers and the officer's cheeks, as the pad of James's thumb lightly dragged across Emily's lips, that only obediently parted at his beckoning touch.
"I must warn you, Emily," James said to her. "The way I feel as I look at you now, if you don't walk away from me, I fear I won't be able to stop myself from kissing you."
Emily leaned in closer to his lips, intoxicated by the endless ocean-blue in his eyes and the unexpectedly intense adoration she began feeling for him in that moment. All the while, holding herself back with one last stand of hesitation, as she remembered all at once, God, but it's only been 3 days since I met him.
Stopping her just short of meeting James's lips.
But not enough to stop her from realizing that it was this her heart seemed to want the most, and there was no going back from it.
"I dare you to do it," she whispered her answer to James.
Giving him way to a smile.
"This game of ours will soon be our undoing, I reckon," he murmured playfully to her. "I haven't yet gone back on a dare."
But before James could close the distance between their lips, and once again defend his perfect record of honoring all dares Emily Amberlfaw challenged him with, something in the Miss's expression changed as her gaze wandered back to the railing guarding them from the water.
Emily's attention abruptly drawn to something rounded and white bobbing with the harbor at the corner of her eye.
The mysterious object partially hidden from view behind the railing.
At first, she assumed it was some kind of buoy seesawing with the current.
But as said buoy gradually came around into clearer view, she spotted the vivid crimson stains ominously smudging it on one side.
Is that...blood?
"Alright there, Miss Millie?" James asked her in concern, following her fixed gaze out into the darkening harbor. "You look as if you're seeing a ghost."
"Do you see that?"
"See what, miss?"
Distractedly, Emily freed herself from James's arms, approaching the railing inquisitively to investigate the strange object.
Steadily coming to realize that the thing of interest was attached to a body.
A white cross-back of an apron tie against a black dress materialized from the water, with a pair of pale hands, trembling erratically under white dress cuffs, clinging onto the wooden skeletal frame of some kind of china curio cabinet.
And what she had taken for a small buoy was actually a white ruffled bonnet, pinned over a ghostly bluish neck with stricken wet locks of golden brown hair curling over a white collar.
"James," Emily alerted him at once. "There's someone in the water."
And as the woman lifelessly bobbed along with the ocean, Emily hurriedly scanned the railing in front of her for any gate or opening wide enough to attempt a rescue and pull the woman onto shore.
But found nothing.
Kneeling down next to the railing to get a better look at the body through the bars, Emily said urgently to James, "I can't tell if she's breathing or not. Will you pass me my wallet underneath my umbrella there?"
"Forgive me, miss, I don't understand what you-" James started telling her, utterly baffled and confused by the request.
"My phone's in the big pocket there," Emily told him. "My password pin is 1891. Click the little phone picture icon on the main screen, and it should take you to a number pad. Push the numbers 9-1-1, and tell whoever answers that there's someone in the water at Battery Park and there's a lot of blood."
But still holding Emily's wallet in his hands, James had lost her at the 9-1-1 part, utterly dumbfounded as the Miss reached her hand out toward the water through an opening in the railing.
Her eyes shifting down nervously at the evening ocean tide lapping against the shore just below her.
Her heart racing, as every measure of her self-preservation urged her to get away from the water.
You can't swim. If you fall in, you're going to die.
It was all she could think about as she stared into the twilight indigo depths of the water welcoming her to take that dare.
But against her own conscience, Emily knew she couldn't just leave this woman floating aimlessly in the ocean to drown by the time an ambulance arrived.
Maybe she could buy some time by helping the woman drift closer to the shore, and grab onto the railing until someone could pull her out.
With one last timid glance at the ocean rolling below her, Emily rallied her courage and offered the woman her hand.
"If you can hear me, I'm here to help you. If you can paddle yourself a little closer to me, I can pull you to the railing," Emily called to her. "Can you reach my hand?"
But the woman didn't move or react to the sound of Emily's voice.
Her back still turned to the railing as she went with the waves.
And noting all the blood soaking the woman's dress and hair, Emily could only guess how badly she was really hurt.
How had this woman even gotten out there in the first place?
It was only a second that Emily had turned her head away from the harbor to James and asked him, "Is the ambulance on its way?"
And then suddenly, a hand like ice grabbed ahold of Emily's wrist.
So abruptly cold, that it sent a shock through her whole body, burning through the warmth of her unprotected skin, as icy fingernails bit into the tender underside of her wrist.
The woman in the water shivered violently as her head rose slowly to meet Emily's eyes.
But the sudden shock of the woman's freezing fingers digging into her skin wasn't what terrified Emily the most.
It was the identical image of Emily's own face staring back at her from the water.
As if she and the woman were looking through a mirror parallelling each other's reflections. Same confused and frightened hazel eyes, same waving chestnut hair, same antique early 20th century maid's costume that Emily often wore to work.
Unlike Emily on land, the Emily in the water had no make-up over her naturally beautiful features. Her hair was done up more simply too, pinned in a strict bun under her maid's bonnet. And the color in the other Emily's cheeks was not like the rosy pink under Emily's astonished eyes.
The pale bluish discoloring puffing up around the water Emily's eyes made her look like a corpse frozen in the frigid Atlantic.
How this woman was still moving and breathing, while still feeling like ice to touch, Emily didn't know, but everything about it scared her out of her right mind.
Frantically, Emily tried to pull her hand back from her deathly doppelgänger, but the specter imitating her likeness refused to let her go.
Clinging onto Emily's wrist with surprisingly unrelenting strength, with the kind of desperation like someone drowning and grasping for anything to hold on to.
Her eerily blue lips quivering with great difficulty, as she stammered hoarsely to Emily, "Will...will it...will it be painful...do you think...to die in such a way?"
And by that point, Emily was so horrorstruck by what she was seeing, she stopped fighting to break free.
Frozen in time against the railing, as she stared back into her own hazel eyes, with a racing series of broken images taking possession of her.
.
A little girl with a burgundy ribbon tying half of her curls in a pony-tail, with her arm wrapped around a boy's shoulders, as they sat in front of a tombstone.
Evelyn Louise Lammin-Moody, it read.
"I miss my mother too," the girl told the boy. "I'm Millie, by the way."
"James," he sniffled his answer, wiping his eyes with the back of his sleeve.
"I'll stay here and keep watch of you, James," she promised him.
.
"A bustle of forget-me-nots resting in a basket left unremembered on a rainy window.
"Forgive me. I do apologize for the misunderstanding. Cross as I am with my father, you did not deserve to become the brunt of it. I only wish I could take it all back."
.
The touch of someone's forehead against hers, their features unrecognizably blurred from imagination, as she melted into the warmth of this someone's arms.
"I don't know how to answer that. Not while knowing how it will hurt us both in the end. Because if I were that girl, I could never ask you to abandon everything you love at sea for me."
"Don't worry yourself about that now. The only question that matters to me is if you love me. It was you that I meant I'm in love with. It was always you, from our very beginning. Tell me I'm not too late. I will promise myself to you. Just tell me you want me, and I vow to be yours."
.
A trail of white carnation flowers rocking in a slow dance with calming waves below her, against the towering black hull of a ship next to them.
"I'm afraid I must disagree. We were always kinder to each other as strangers."
.
A pristine white hallway lit up by chandeliers, glimmering like fallen stars over long elaborate red and gold-trimmed carpeting.
She was running.
Dodging people wandering confused in the hallway, dressed peculiarly in long pajama trousers with long overcoats.
Racing to get somewhere in a hurry against an endless game of dizzying white doors on either side of her.
Pushed on by a sense of urgency that she needed to knock on so many of them in so little time.
"Pardon me for waking you at this hour, madam, but there's been a situation," she panted to the woman who answered her urgent knocking. "The captain has ordered that all women and children put on their lifeboats and get up to deck."
"Now?" the startled woman queried her in surprise. "Have you any idea what time it is? It's the middle of the night."
"I'm very sorry, miss, but I must insist you take this," she forced a lifebelt into the woman's hands.
And not having anymore time to explain, she hurried off to the next door.
And the next, and the next, and the next.
Delivering the same urgent message over and over again.
Until a steward dressed smartly in his black victualing jacket called after her as he hurried around the corner, escorting an elderly woman in bowl for a black hat and black fur-lined coat.
"There you are, love. We've been looking everywhere for you," he told her. "I was told only a while ago by an officer, that if I happened to see you by any chance, I was to tell you that you were missed."
"An officer?" she asked, taken by surprise.
"Yes, a-uh-Moody, I believe he said his name was," the steward told her. "He seemed quite keen on finding you. I told him I would let you know, should I see you walking by."
"Did he say where he was going?"
"Said a young lady dropped one of her belongings out by a lifeboat, and he intended to return it," the steward answered. "He said she belonged to first class. A young lady with red hair, a man's jacket, and a white and lilac gown. I reckoned she might be one of yours. Oh, and there was a lad who appeared to come from steerage accompanying her, with irons on his wrists. It was rather peculiar, I should say."
But before she could press him for more details, a man appeared at the opposite end of the corridor, a lifebelt fastened over his black evening jacket, as he opened one of the suite cabin doors without knocking.
"Anyone in here?" his soft Irish timbre called out into the dimmed suite.
Finding no answer, he moved on, catching the colleague in the hallway that she had only just talked to a moment ago.
"Steward! Check the starboard side."
"Yes, Mr. Andrews!"
Then he stopped a woman to his right, who was taking her sweet time fitting her black gloves over her slender hands.
"Madam, please put on a lifebelt. Get to the boat deck immediately."
And then he turned to her, placing a hand gently on her cheek in a desperate plea.
"Please, Millie, for God's sake, put on a lifebelt. I'm depending on you and Lucy to set a good example."
"Forgive me, Mr. Andrews, but I am looking for one of the junior officers, Officer Moody. I was told by a steward that he was last seen here. He was trying to catch the attention of a lady passenger running about the ship, with a man who appeared to have broken irons around his wrists. I know it sounds daffy, but the lady had red hair, a pale lilac and white gown, and a man's black long coat. They appeared both to be in a hurry."
"Miss Dewitt-Bukater and Mr. Dawson, you mean?" Mr. Andrews recalled, looking somewhat relieved. "So, she did manage to find Mr. Dawson after all? Thank goodness. That a girl, Rose."
"Have you any idea where they'd gone?" she asked him. "I was informed that the officer had been looking for me. I believe he may have gotten the impression that I was in some kind of danger. I must find him and let him know I'm alright."
"I'm sorry, I haven't seen any officer here, and it has been some time now since I last spoke to Miss Dewitt-Bukater," Mr. Andrews said. "I do believe we've alerted all the passengers under your charge. I beckon you to make your way to a boat immediately. Please, don't wait."
And then she watched him hurry on his way down the hall, to urgently knock on the next suite door to his left. "Is there anyone still in here?"
.
It was like something out of her worst nightmare.
Rounding the staircase descending onto D-Deck, the water flooding the first-class dining saloon was easily knees-deep.
Stopping her just before she reached the last dry step of the grand staircase.
Her heart pounding madly out of her chest at how much the ship flooded already.
"Oh, dear God," she whispered to herself, remembering all of a sudden why it was she never let herself look too long over the railing of a ship at sea.
Every instinct of survival within her begging her to think of her own life and turn back around.
But the question of how she would keep herself kicking above water, if the flooding dining room got any worse, was second to the question of whether or not she had heard his distinctly Yorkshire voice yelling somewhere nearby.
"James!" she cried out into the overflow of rushing water and flickering chandeliers hanging over the watery saloon, pushing pass her fear of the rising floods, as she stumbled into the frigid cold of the ocean.
Dinner plates, chairs, goblets, silverware drifting all around her maid's skirt, as it floated like a black dahlia over the red and gold carpeting underwater at her dress heels.
But nothing answered her back, except the ominously sparking dinner lamps sliding off their dressed tables, and dishes clinking roughly as they ran into each other with the pull of the water.
And watching the dining saloon tilt with the steepening angle of the ship, she finally understood the full meaning of Mr. Andrews's plea that she not wait.
But she'd come so far already.
And she was so sure the voice she'd heard only a moment ago had to be James.
He was so close to her now.
She couldn't stop looking.
"James!" she called out for him again.
And then by another lucky chance, against the groaning bowels of the ship, she heard the officer's voice not far off from where she stood at the grand staircase.
"I said stop this at once!" James could be heard giving order to an older man, who held another blonde male passenger in a stand-off with a Colt M1911 pistol.
"There are still good men aboard this ship, and we officers especially will not stand for any misconduct," James had him know.
"My apologies," the man answered him dryly, who may have been a valet to another first class passenger, judging by his own smart dark evening suit. "Though, this is a private matter, and we do not require the assistance of any officer to resolve the issue. I advise you to carry on with your business, sir."
"If your resolution is that you will continue to harass this pair here, I will not stand for any such handling of matters," James swore to him.
And having quite enough of the young meddling junior officer, the valet suddenly turned his pistol away from the blonde man and pointed it at James's own head.
"Then I regret to say that you'll be joining them, sir," the valet informed the 6th officer.
It happened in the blink of an eye, right in front of her.
So fast, that she had no time to prevent it, when the valet pulled the trigger.
"James!"
And as she stumbled through the water to reach the 6th officer, screaming his name frantically, her unwelcome presence was made known to the valet, who turned his pistol on her next.
"Stay back," he ordered her. "I won't hesitate to cut you down either."
Giving the blonde male passenger time to charge the pistol man from behind, grabbing his arm and trying to wrestle the pistol out of the valet's hand, as he ran forward. Smashing the valet's head into a glass window panel nearby. But even as the shattered glass rained into the water around them, the valet refused to surrender the pistol.
Forcing the male passenger to roll with him over dinner tables and wrestle the valet splashing through the water, as two pistol shots fired off in the middle of the scuffle, landing in the ornate ceiling above.
"Jack!" the female passenger rushed out from the table she'd been hiding, desperate to help him subdue the rogue pistol man. "Jack!"
"You little shit," the valet derided the male passenger, as he advanced on the one called Jack again, throwing another punch.
Jack dropped out of the way of his swinging fist, and threw back a counter-punch at the valet. Stunning the manservant as he grabbed him by the collar and ran him into one of the many white beams supporting the ceiling of the dinning saloon.
"Compliments of the Chippewa Falls Dawsons!" Jack paid the valet one last favor, hooking another uppercut into the valet's gut that dropped him to the swamping floor.
And as the red-haired female passenger James had followed into the saloon waded back to Jack's side, the stewardess had taken cover in a small dish closet, dragging the 6th Officer along inside with her.
"James! James, good god, look at you!" she whispered hysterically to him, as she desperately used her own handkerchief to try and stop his bleeding from the gunshot taken to his head. Careful to keep her voice low and hidden, in case the unhinged valet was still out there waving his pistol around.
"I'm so terribly sorry, Millie ," the officer wouldn't stop shaking, shivering from both the freezing water around them and the amount of blood he'd already lost from his head injury.
His hands soaked with his own blood, as he caged something glittering like a diamond in his tightly closed fist, which he hadn't let go of since he was shot.
"I tried my hardest to-"
"Hush, don't start fretting over me now," she beckoned him, trying to keep her own voice from breaking as she cradled his head in her lap and applied more pressure to his wound. "I've got you now. I won't let you go now that I've got you."
"I've got you, Millie. I swear, I've got you, and you haven't anything to be afraid of. Please, say something to me, love. I'm begging you to just say something."
.
Emily blinked numbly.
Her eyes staring cold and bewildered back into the face that belonged to that voice.
The ringing in her ears gradually giving way again to the sound of the ocean waves in the harbor beside her.
Just as Officer James Paul Moody's worried blue eyes became steadily clearer out of the tears that blurred her vision.
"Emily?" James held her face with his warm hands worriedly, his eyes desperately searching for the light he knew so well in her that had vanished from her eyes. "Please answer me, darling."
She couldn't.
Her cheeks streaming with tears as her ghostly gaze stared back into James's.
She wanted so badly to say something. To scream, even.
But she absolutely couldn't make any sense of words anymore, let alone, understand exactly what had just happened to her.
"Emily, for god's sake, just look," James begged her, desperately trying to convince her of something about the water's edge next to them. "There's no one there, love. There wasn't ever anyone there."
"James...it was...I saw..." she finally managed to murmur back to him.
"Good God, Millie, you're shaking," James said in deepening concern, pulling her into his arms to try and wrap her up in the warmth of his own body.
His heart breaking for her every instant that she couldn't say a word back to him, feeling useless for not being able to chase away whatever had frightened her.
"James," Millie whimpered back to him, her trembling never stopping, even as he vowed never to let her go from his arms, if it would only keep her warm. "Am I going completely mad?"