Disclaimer: Everything you recognise from the film series isn't mine.

Feedback: Always appreciated.

AN: Reference will be made here to a Death Dealer called Nathaniel, who actually did appear in the films. The novelisation identified Nathaniel as the name of one of Selene's colleagues during the shoot-out in the subway station in the opening scene of the first movie, and he was actually the vampire Raze killed when he pursued the aforementioned lycan into the tunnels. The novelisation mentioned that Nathaniel had a few 'nods with history' in the sense that he had met various famous figures from history, such as an encounter with John Milton and a time that he dabbled in archaeology with Howard Carter in Egypt, so he seemed an appropriate choice for this particular twist.

The Lone Wolf

The more time Michael spent with Selene, the more uncertain he was about how they were getting along in the first place. He appreciated that they hadn't exactly spent much leisure time together, but it had been weeks since they'd met and he still knew almost nothing about her beyond that her family had been killed by lycans and she'd spent her life hunting them down in revenge.

It wasn't like he didn't trust her; everything Selene had told him about his new lycan heritage so far had been fascinating, even if he privately found himself taking everything with a grain of salt considering what she'd told him about her own history with the werewolves. They still hadn't been able to do much about the possibility of him getting better control over his transformations, so he'd spent another couple of nights back in his storage locker, but Michael appreciated that she had volunteered to cover some of the costs for his rent of that particular locker in the absence of a better solution.

Right now, he was using a rare non-full-moon-related day off to deal with a more human pain; the second anniversary of Sam's death. He'd resisted the temptation to just go to a bar and drink away his sorrows, but he knew that he wouldn't be fit to work on this date, so he'd already taken the precaution of requesting the day off last month, and was just grateful nothing big had happened that might have forced him to stay on-call. He'd still ended up sleeping a fair portion of the day away just because he'd been so exhausted after his last night shift, but he was ready for his private memorial.

A glass of blood and a rare steak on a tray in front of him, Michael sat down on his couch and turned on the DVD he'd rented from a nearby shop, smiling thoughtfully as the screen displayed that strange drone thing searching through the wreck of the Titanic.

Maybe watching a film about a doomed romance to remember his dead fiancé would seem strange to outsiders, but Sam had always liked the film ever since it came out, and he liked to think that she wouldn't want him to forget what she'd loved just because she wasn't there any more. If he wanted to remember her, wasn't it better to focus on what she'd enjoyed in life rather than fixate on memories relating to her death?

As the film progressed, Michael let the story just wash over him for the first few minutes, taking in the moment when that archaeologist found the vault and the sketch of young Rose, but then he heard a sound from the side just as old Rose was looking over the drawing on the expedition's boat. He paused the DVD and turned to the source of the sound, only to find himself looking at Selene standing in the door of his small living room.

"What are you watching?" she asked, looking curiously at the screen.

"Uh… Titanic," Michael said, suddenly embarrassed that the woman who'd heard him howling in a storage locker had caught him watching a romantic film. "It was one of Sam's favourites, and since this is…"

"The anniversary of her death," Selene said, curiosity shifting to sympathy. "And the anniversary of the day you-"

"I… don't think of it that way," Michael cut her off, rubbing the scratch on his arm that he had tentatively identified as the wound responsible for his transformation. "I mean, I get that that's when it happened, but it's not like I knew that anything else had happened until a few weeks later; I tend to think of the day I first… changed… as the actual anniversary…"

"I understand," Selene nodded in understanding, before she looked at the screen. "Titanic… after the ship?"

"Yeah, it's set on the Titanic itself, looking at…" Michael trailed off as he took in her reaction. "You haven't seen it, have you?"

"I don't really have much time for the cinema in my line of work," Selene said, looking at the screen with new curiosity. "But I admit… I have heard about the ship…"

"Really?"

"You have to keep in mind that my organisation have… we've had some history hunting lycans that goes beyond my own membership," Selene explained, with what Michael could almost swear was a smile on her face; at the very least the corners of her mouth were turned up. "I… I believe that one of our members was actually on the Titanic when it sank; he… left written accounts of his experience-"

"He?" Michael looked at her in surprise. "You have a written account of a guy who survived the Titanic?"

"He was left in the sea after it sank, was picked up by a returning lifeboat, and spent the next couple of days huddled up in a mass of blankets to cope with the hypothermia," Selene explained, before she tentatively indicated the other half of Michael's couch. "If you wouldn't mind…?"

"Uh… no problem," Michael said, realising what she was suggesting. It was a bit strange to suddenly have to adjust his plans to include someone else in his planned private viewing of the film, but it wasn't like Selene was being pushy about it, and he had to admit that he wouldn't mind having someone else here…

As she settled in on the couch beside Michael, Selene wasn't sure why she was doing this beyond casual curiosity at the opportunity. She hadn't been entirely lying about the fact that she'd heard the tale of the Titanic from another Death Dealer; she'd just bent the truth a bit to avoid mentioning that Nathaniel had told her about his experience after the fact rather than her reading a report he'd written at the time.

When Amelia had still been working on establishing the vampires' influence in America, Nathaniel had booked passage on the Titanic to check out some parts of the country himself. Spending a few days on a ship like the Titanic was a difficult prospect at the time, considering the limited opportunities to feed without giving away their nature, but he'd brought a suitcase with blood bags kept in ice, which he could have theoretically lived on discreetly for the whole voyage. When the ship had to be evacuated, Nathaniel had obviously failed to get on one of the lifeboats when it was being deployed, but had managed to keep swimming after the ship sank, gorging himself on a few of the older passengers who could never have survived that cold water until the lifeboats came back for him. He'd spent the next couple of days on the lifeboats and the Carpathia hiding from the sun under blankets, but his gorging experience had allowed him to make it to New York without needing to feed on any of the other survivors. It had been easy enough for Nathaniel to claim that he was sick if anyone wondered at him going around wrapped in the blankets, and once the ship had arrived in America it had been easy enough for him to sneak off after the sun went down and most of the other passengers had left.

However, once Nathaniel had managed to make contact with Amelia's coven, with most of his weapons lost, even with the American vampires providing him with new resources, his search of America had been relatively unsatisfactory, and he'd returned to Europe without anything particular to report. His report had just skimmed over the actual sinking, considering his own fondness for humans, but now that Michael had mentioned the contents of the film, Selene was suddenly curious to see the human perspective on that event, even if most of the direct witnesses were dead by now.

"Could you… give me a bit of context?" she asked. She felt embarrassed to be asking that kind of question, but if this film was important to Michael, she wasn't going to ask him to start it all over again if he didn't have to. "I mean, I assume this is about specific people rather than just the sinking?"

"Basically, back in 1996, this archaeologist has been looking for a rare blue diamond, the Heart of the Ocean, that was supposed to be on the Titanic when it sank, and he found a sketch in a vault that was made on the night the ship sank of a woman wearing the diamond," Michael explained. "An old woman saw a news report about it and called the ship to reveal that she was the woman in the picture; she came out to the archaeologist's ship to tell her story, and has just started talking about her experience on the Titanic over eighty years ago."

"I see," Selene said, as the film began to play again, an old woman's voice talking about the Titanic before a figure in a white dress and a large purple hat stepped out of a car, followed by a young man of around her age and an older woman who was likely the girl's mother. "I assume that's her?"

"Yeah, that's Rose," Michael nodded, before he fell silent as the film continued. Listening to the old woman's comments on how Titanic was basically a prison ship taking her to an unwanted marriage, Selene was suddenly struck by the thought of Kraven's own unwanted interest in her. She might be more willing to tell Kraven to leave her alone, but she could appreciate that such an approach wouldn't be practical for a human woman of the era when Titanic had set sell. When Rose ran for the back of the ship and almost jumped into the sea, Selene was surprised to find herself feeling anxious in the moment before Jack helped pull Rose back to safety, but later felt a surprising sense of sympathy as Rose spoke with Jack about why she'd been driven to such a point.

Selene couldn't imagine considering suicide as an option herself, but faced with a whole society full of hypocrites who just ignored her suffering in favour of their own views, she could see why Rose preferred Jack's simple honesty and appreciation for life over the wealth everyone else she'd ever met had to offer. That idea was only further reinforced when Jack attended that first-class dinner party and then took Rose down to the lower decks, Rose having genuine fun among third-class where she just seemed to be tolerating the talk at the upper-class party.

The context was different, but it reminded Selene of her own attitude when she was forced to deal with some of the coven's upper-class parties rather than get out and hunt lycans; she was more at home out on the streets than rubbing elbows with the elite. Seeing the way Hockley tried to order Rose to go along with his ambitions and plans inspired a surprising sense of sympathy with Selene. Obviously Kraven would never dare to act that way around her compared to how Cal felt free to treat Rose that way, but Kraven would certainly have expressed those sentiments if he thought he could get away with it.

As Rose joined Jack at the front of the ship, and Jack guided her into position on the bow with her arms outstretched, Selene was suddenly struck by the thought that this was very similar to what Michael was doing for her, giving her a new experience she'd never have considered before…

She forced that thought down quickly even before Rose and Jack kissed; the context of the situation was drastically different. She was just spending time with Michael to help him not be a danger to other people and the possibility of convincing him to be an inside man against future lycan operations; the fact that she liked him was… well, it wasn't important.

Even after the 'future' Rose confirmed that they were now on the night of the sinking, Selene was surprised to find that she'd almost forgotten that fact as she became caught up in Jack and Rose's time on the ship, ranging from Jack making that sketch of Rose to their sexual experience in the back of the car. When Cal's plan to frame Jack for theft became clear, Selene's tentative comparison of him to Kraven became more blatant; Kraven wouldn't have the nerve to do something like that to her as any kind of blackmail, but he would definitely try to hurt or control her friends if he thought it would put her in his power.

The shift to Thomas Andrews discussing the fate of Titanic was unexpected at first, but Selene had to admire the acting in that scene. Even knowing that she was just watching actors, it was surprisingly easy to see the moment when all concerned parties realised that Titanic was destined to sink, no matter what they tried to do to cope with it.

When the narrative shifted back to Rose, Selene wondered briefly at Rose's decision to stay on a sinking ship for the sake of a man she'd only met a few days ago, but she had to admire the determination behind the young woman's actions even if Selene wasn't sure she could understand the emotional motivation herself. As Rose ran through the Titanic to find Jack, Selene found herself wondering just how many of these little moments had been true examples of what had taken place on the ship; she recalled Nathaniel mentioning the musicians playing as the ship had sunk, but she had to wonder if anyone would have done what Rose and Jack did when they saved that little boy…

As the last of the lifeboats left the Titanic, Selene was once again struck by the scale of the tragedy as she saw so many people left on the still-sinking. It wasn't a total surprise that Cal found a way off even after losing the diamond to Rose, but Selene found it hard to worry about that little girl she didn't even know the name of when her mind was focused on Captain Smith and Thomas Andrews, each man silently accepting their perceived punishment to go down with the ship for a failure that neither could have anticipated the scale of. Even if she hadn't particularly registered Fabrizio beyond his connection to Jack, Selene still winced when she saw him get crushed by the fallen funnel, and watched with a certain horror as the rear of Titanic briefly fell down onto some of the already-swimming passengers before it sank properly.

The film didn't focus on the drowning bodies in depth, but recalling Nathaniel's story of those events, she could easily imagine how it must have felt, so many people freezing to death around them, help such a relatively short distance away even if it was impossible for them to reach it…

By the time a boat came back for any survivors, Selene was surprised to find herself genuinely moved when Rose realises that Jack had frozen to death. She wasn't entirely sure if the wooden panel Rose was on would have been able to support Jack or not if he'd been careful, but she supposed that she could admire Jack's resolve to give his life for another, particularly when it had actually paid off.

As the film returned to the present, Selene was surprised at the sudden need to blink as she took in the full scope of the film she'd just watched. She hadn't actually cried since she'd lost her family to the lycans, and she wasn't about to break that 'streak' over something that she knew wasn't real, but seeing how Rose had found something she'd never known, only to lose it…

Selene would have to be made of stone not to feel sad about what had happened to her, even if she wasn't real.

The moment when Rose had tossed the diamond over the edge of the boat surprised Selene for various reasons, but when she thought about it, it said a great deal about Rose's character. She wouldn't have been able to sell the diamond without being accused of its theft or giving away to Cal that she had survived, but she had kept it as a memento of those days on Titanic, and she was now returning the diamond to the ship that had defined her life for so long, back where it was meant to be.

The brief glimpse of the photographs in Rose's room affirmed that she had done what she had promised Jack and found a way to make her life count, but Selene didn't have time to think on that before the film shifted to the wreckage of the Titanic, and then transitioned from the wreck back to the ship as it had been when it set out. As the camera panned through the gathered faces of the victims of the disaster, Selene wasn't entirely surprised to see Jack standing at the clock, but she wasn't sure how to react to the sight of Rose, young once again, walking up to Jack and kissing him, the crowd around them applauding the reunion as the screen faded to black. When the credits started to play, Selene simply sat for a while and listened to the song, unused to thinking about music as anything more than a distraction but amazed to find herself understanding this song in a way she'd never felt before.

Every night in my dreams…

Love can touch us one time…

Near, far, wherever you are,
I believe that the heart does go on…

"Gets me every time," Michael's voice broke into Selene's thoughts as he turned off the film, looking at her with a tentative smile even as his eyes glistened with unshed tears.

"I… I can see that…" Selene nodded, looking tentatively over at Michael. "This was… her favourite? Even when it ended like that…?"

"Sam always said that the film wasn't about the fact that it had a sad ending," Michael explained. "It was about the fact that Jack taught Rose to make her life count; she didn't have to be trapped or held back by society's expectations any more, but could just… be whatever she wanted to be, seize what was important, open herself up to people…"

"Yes…" Selene nodded as she looked at the DVD box lying near the television, suddenly lost in thoughts she'd never considered before Michael came into her life.

It probably wouldn't happen for a while even with the lycans' rapidly-depleting numbers, but what would she do with herself when Michael was the last lycan left? She'd spent so long fighting to avenge her family, but aside from a few friends such as Kahn, did she have any kind of life outside of her mission of vengeance?

Looking at Rose's face on the box, Selene suddenly felt as though she understood the other woman even more. The only difference between them was that Selene liked the life she was 'trapped' in where Rose had wanted to get away from everything before she met Jack, but did it really matter when neither she or Rose knew what they would do if they didn't have this life?

As she shot a discreet glance at Michael, staring wistfully at the screen as it returned to the main menu, lost in memory of a woman Selene would never know, the vampire found herself wondering if he could be 'her' Jack…