With a trembling hand, Patrick reached into his coat pocket and pulled out an old Webley 1911, setting the pistol down on the register counter in front of Millie.
"It isn't until now," he stated somberly. "That I am at last becoming something of the brother you needed me to be."
As if Millie needed anymore confirmation that her brother had irreparably lost his mind.
"Why do you have a gun?"
"I met a woman in Belfast, who claimed she could tell me everything I wanted to know by reading my tea leaves," he said to her. "Do you believe in superstitions, Millie?"
"But...what's that got to do with you having a gun?" Millie repeated her question tensely.
"I purchased it for a modest asking price while I was aboard the Carpathia, from a man who swore it belonged to Titanic's First Officer, and that it would be worth a considerable fortune by the time we arrived in New York, once news of Titanic reached the papers," Patrick said. "I had lost all my belongings in my stateroom, and I had no money to pay my fare back to England. So, I kept it as a bargaining token. Though, in the end, it wasn't to Yorkshire that I sailed but to Belfast. I suppose you could say I was seeking peace with myself by tracing your footsteps. And like the rest of the world left behind by Titanic. I wanted answers. An absolution for why it had to happen this way. A place for me to rot in hiding with my remorse over your death, being greatly ashamed of facing everyone at home.
"It was there, while drinking myself to stupor, that a chimney sweep told me he'd just met a oriental woman on the train who could converse with the dead. 'Not my bottle of whiskey', I told him. But I was so tormented with guilt, I was damn near desperate. The very next morning, I paid the fare and handed over papa's watch with your portrait inside. And this train witch, she took one look at you, and told me straight away that she could not hold a seance with me, as you were still among the living. I thought instantly, she must be a fraud.
"Until she told me the most peculiar things...That you surely weren't dead, but lost, and that I should find you locked in an asylum in the city of the Great Apple. She also told me to buy a diamond, that resembled the sea at night, and that my grieving heart would know it when I found the right one. 'So blue,' she'd told me, 'That it's almost as if it weeps with you'.
Millie's eyes followed Pax's distant gaze to the jewelry case under her register counter, where the row of Heart of the Ocean replicas glimmered gloomily in the overhead light.
"The day I lost it, was also the day I found you in that hospital. And I thought it for your own good that I called you Emily. I thought, by letting you forget your old life, you'd be happier here," Patrick told her. "But your nightmares never stopped...and life here, as I came to know, was far more complicated than I ever imagined. I knew we couldn't stay. So I began looking again for Le Cœur de la Mer.
"The Blue Diamond of the Crown, King Louis XVI called it. After his death in 1792, the diamond was chopped into smaller pieces as well. One of which was rumored to be on the Titanic the night she sank. Regretfully, it remains unconfirmed. The so-called 'Heart of the Ocean' was never found after the sinking. But I swear to you, the French Blue diamond, even in pieces, is cursed. We are living proof of it.
Patrick's eyes were dazed as he turned back to Millie. So lost now in his wild theory, that he didn't seem to notice he and Millie weren't the only two people in the room anymore.
"What if...Le Cœur de la Mer was responsible for Titanic?
"Or what if...it's a great deal complicated than that?...What if, it is the most baneful of all cursed objects, and the only thing that moves such evil is death? After all, was it not a most horrific death that brought us together to begin with? Perhaps, like the other deaths in history the diamond is notorious for, we too are its victims? And could it be possible, that the only way to reverse this endless nightmare of ours, is to die in the most devastating ways with the diamond on one's person?
"I couldn't know for certain until I had tested the theory myself. I knew a fragment of Le Cœur de la Mer found its home at the Smithsonian Museum. I marched in and informed the guard that I intended to steal it, knowing well enough that I would be shot to death for doing so. Death, in the end, was my only freedom from this hell.
"I know it sounds mad, but you must trust me, Millie. I would not put you up to this, if I wasn't absolutely certain that it was the only way to send you back home," Patrick said to her. "Please, Millicent, you must heed my word. There's a kinder life waiting for us there on the other side, if you would only take this chance."
"You're out of your mind," Millie could hardly believe what she was hearing. "Are you actually serious?"
"I regret that I cannot bring myself to do this for you," Patrick said regrettably. "I believed I was brave enough to do it...But it's so much like the last time, Millie...Everything about seeing you here now is one more agonizing reminder of the past I took from you. I cannot bring myself to hurt you again."
Millie stepped away from back toward her register.
"Are you really trying to convince me to take my own life right now?" she questioned him. "I don't know what happened to you when you disappeared, but this isn't you, and you're obvious you're very sick, Paxton. We have to get you some help. If that means locking you up somewhere, I'd rather see you there than like this."
"Millicent, please, just listen to me-"
"That isn't my name," she insisted to him firmly. "I'm Emily, Paxton. I'm your sister. You've always protected me from everything. And now walk in here and hand me a gun?"
"Don't make me do it, Millie," he implored her. "Dear God, please don't make me do it again. If you don't do it on your own, I'll have no choice but to..."
"To what, Paxton?" Millie demanded of him. "Can you even hear yourself right now? This isn't you at all!"
"I hope you will forgive me, Millie. I hope you understand that I only ever wanted what was best for you," Patrick whispered, reaching again for his Webley on the counter and cocking another round into the chamber. "Give everyone my love on our side."
"You go another step near her, and I will take you back 100 more years," James Moody warned him, striding into the gift shop with the barrel of Lowe's Browning 1910 pistol in hand.
And the only thing Millie found scarier than her brother's apparent mental breakdown, was how steady of a hand James Moody had with a pistol. With a cool, calculating focus of an adept marksman, not like the sunny poet she had come to know as James Paul Moody, the apartment cat-butler. His iron determination daring Patrick Crawley to call his bluff on meaning every single one of those 100 years in absolute earnest.
And just like that, the situation quickly became more than the retail cashier girl had ever bargained for.
"James Moody, with all his ducklings in a row...What an honor it is," Patrick acknowledged his long-time rival. "My old sparring partner survived the sinking of Titanic after all. I'd expect nothing less of the man who was so hellbent on proving himself as my equal. Well done, sir. Even in this life, it seems our games of war continue. Though, I don't know if I find that more aggravating, or comforting."
"Do not provoke me, sir," Moody warned Crawley stoutly. "We both know still that you never learned your way around a gun."
"So, it would seem," Patrick remarked. "Not much has changed then, has it, Moody?"
Millie's eyes shifted back and forth between them in puzzlement.
"Do you two...know each other?"
"That we were acquainted has never stopped being an inconvenience," Patrick remarked. "At the very least, I should say an introduction is hardly necessary."
"Well, that makes it easy," Millie hoped. "There's no reason then why we can't all just take a deep breath, sheath our pistols, and talk it all out diplomatically."
Because the last thing she needed was for two men in fancy jackets (both of whom claimed to be time-travelers from the Edwardian era) to draw their loaded pistols and duel to the death right upon her freshly mopped floors.
"Just stay behind me, Miss Millie," James said to her. "If he insists on waving his pistol around, he will face a man while doing it."
"Hardly diplomatic," Millie remarked to James.
"She doesn't remember," James told Patrick firmly. "She has no memory of it at all. Look at her. She's bloody terrified by your erratic behavior. Is this how you wish her to remember it all?"
"And you believe you're doing her the favor by keeping her here?"
"Anno I can't say for certain that I believe in your morbid theory," James told him. "Though, even if it were true, and it were the only way back to 1912, I'd say Millie deserves the right to choose for herself what makes her happy."
"Honestly, I'd just be really happy if you both put the guns away now," Millie interjected.
"It's you who made her this way," Patrick accused him. "None of this would've ever happened, if you had just let her be and not gotten to her head. It would've turned out quite differently for her."
And as the game of accusations went back and forth between Patrick and James, it was at that very moment that an oblivious museum security guard finally strolled his way pass the gift shop window, furrowing his brow questionably at Emily, when he saw how tense the cashier girl appeared through the glass.
'Are you ok? 'He mouthed the words to her.
And then his eyes widened when he scanned the rest of the shop. His gaze inevitably landing on James and the Browning 1910 he held fixed on Patrick.
White-faced upon stumbling into such a real-world situation, the panicked security guard ran back the way he came without asking questions, calling the crisis into his radio.
"This is not a drill. We have an active shooter on the ground floor. White male, slim, about 6 feet, light brown hair, blue eyes, wearing a dark double button up jacket and a hat. Active shooter, active shooter in the gift shop. I repeat, this is not a drill."
"What's happened to us is due cause for alarm, but there are women and children about here. Miss Millie is right. There's no reason to turn to violence," Moody tried talking Patrick down.
"That's Miss Crawley, to you, sir," Patrick corrected him.
"This is no time for particulars," James answered him. "And this is not the place to lose ourselves either. If you would only lay away your pistol."
"For God's sake, take it," Patrick told him, yanking open his Webley, as he unceremoniously dropped the bullets clinking one by one around James's dress shoes.
And once he had emptied them all out on Millie's newly shined floors, he stared into James Moody's face again.
"It seems you were right about me, Moody," Patrick told him. "I have no heart for marksmanship."
Then Patrick turned his softened gaze back on Millie.
"Forgive me, miss, for the man I became to protect you," he told her gently. "How many times I wished I could go back and have one more chance to erase what I'd done that night. To give you back the life that was cut so tragically short for you. Though, as your brother, perhaps there is still one more thing I might be able to do to redeem myself."
Then Patrick turned to Moody, and in slow-moving reverence, he gave a nod to the Titanic officer with a touch of his bowler hat.
"The authorities will be here soon. And I must at last take responsibility for my actions. If it's punishment I deserve, then I will go quietly. However, if they question Millie, I fear her identity will be challenged. You should get her safely away from this place," Patrick said to James. "Look after my little sister, will you, Moody? I know I can safely trust her in your hands."
And though it was gentlemen's etiquette that a bow always be returned to the one who offered it, no matter if the gentleman be a friend or enemy, Moody put his honest heart into it.
Respectfully returning a small nod of his head to Patrick Crawley, in honor of that rare moment between them, when the two Edwardian men finally came to understand each other, united by their shared love for Millicent.
"I will, sir," Moody vowed to Patrick.
"Until next time then, eh, James?" Patrick said to him warmly. "Should we ever again meet on the other side, I should very much like..."
Patrick never finished that thought, as his attention was drawn to the shop window, where a caravan of police cars swooped in to surround the museum on all sides. Blocking off all points of exit and entry, as they got into formation to confront the reported active shooter barricading in the gift shop.
"Go now, the both of you," Patrick urged James. "I will take it from here."
But Emily's feet were frozen in place, reluctant to make her retreat and leave him behind.
What was she to make of any of this?
Her brother, an Edwardian time-traveler, like James?
Could this all really be happening?
"Please, Millie," Patrick told her. "Take care of yourself."
And knowing that she couldn't make herself do it alone, James slipped his hand into Millie's, locking his fingers around hers tightly to lend her more courage.
"I don't care what you've done, you're still all the family I have left, and I will come back for you," Millie swore to Patrick, as James began leading her toward the shop's back door. "I don't care what it takes, I will find a way to get you out of that place. I promise."
And as she and James ran down the hallway to escape from the back door, Patrick's stoic figure before the window was the last thing Millie saw of her brother.
Patrick turning to face the window again, and letting go of a deep shuddering sigh as the police swat team sprinted by the glass toward the museum entrance.
James pulled Millie back just in time from being run down by a procession of police cars racing around the dumpsters into the back alleyway with lights and sirens booming.
And with her heart racing, Millie feared what would happen if the cops held them up and demanded her and Moody for IDs.
"We have to get out of here before they ask questions," Millie said to Moody, guiding him along to the alleyway to her parking spot on the opposite end of the building. "This way."
"But they are the constables, aren't they?" Moody wondered, as he kept pace behind her. "Surely, if we only explain the misunderstanding-"
"If Pax is right, and my name and ID really were stolen from someone else, then we're way beyond a misunderstanding now. More like a misdemeanor," Millie said. "'Constables' here are only for 'privileged' folk."
And pulling the driver's door of her Honda open, Millie had just enough time to pile all the fluff of her skirt and petticoat behind the wheel of her Honda and turn the ignition, before her freckled green eyes spotted a cop in the rearview mirror approaching her car.
James glanced over his shoulder from the passenger's seat to note what caused her so much distress.
"You might want to buckle up," she warned him, reminding him of the point once again, as if he could ever forget. "I still don't exactly have a license."
James scarcely had enough time to work out his seatbelt, before she hotfooted the gas and jumped the wheel over the concrete parking stop to evade the policeman behind her.
Galloping forward over speed bumps to make their escape from the parking lot.
And Millie never let up.
Clenching the steering wheel tightly, as she took steady, deep breaths. Her eyes trained on the rearview mirror and the brigade trailing behind them.
Knowing that they were past the point of no return, bracing for whatever was to come in this strange reality of her ever changing world.