PROLOGUE

"Wh-Where am I?" Big eyes blinked in confusion. "Who are y-you?"

The hushed sound of whispers.

"Answer me, goddamnit!"

The steward looked at his charge with concern. He wasn't a doctor, he didn't know how to handle this. "Miss, I just need you to calm down."

The woman glared at him with unmasked animosity. "Why am I not on the Titanic? Where is Libbie? Where is my husband?"

The steward looked at his feet. "If you tell me their names and class, Miss, I can check the lists—"

The woman flew into a fit of hysteria, sobbing and wailing at clutching at the air, and then her chest, and then the steward's lapels.

Rose pulled the blanket up over her face, trying to block out the woman's screams. But she couldn't block out the screaming she heard inside of her head whenever she closed her eyes.

Screaming. That was one thing she remembered. Screaming and then silence. A cacophony she could never forget. Rose found it easy to pretend she was alone. She told the people who asked that she was a woman from Wisconsin, who was travelling back to the States alone and therefore had nobody and nothing to lose. She could pretend she wasn't engaged, that she wasn't in love. She could even pretend, at night, when everyone either slept or screamed, that she was dreaming. That she would wake up, wake up as Rose DeWitt Bukater, and Trudy would be fluffing her pillows and serving her griddle cakes and her mother would whisk the treats away, making some remark about how Rose was having a hard enough time fitting into her old clothing anyhow and didn't need the added sugar.

But, in the morning, when the sun's cruel rays pierced through her heavy eyelids, that's all it was. Pretend. Because as much as she could pretend that Jack was not dead, he was. And he had left her alone in this cold, dark place.

The water was freezing, stabbing and sharp. He could hear the weakening sound of Rose's labored breath, and that was all he could hear, aside from the thunder in his own head. It was silent, silent but far too loud, and he knew that the silence would be his death shroud.

It was funny, at least he thought so, that he would die like this. He never expected to freeze slowly in the middle of a black ocean, clinging to the hand of the girl who had waltzed into his life and turned it upside down. But, then again, Jack never gave much thought to how he would die. But he figured this was a pretty good way to go, he'd rather die than see her porcelain cheeks fade, the cloud of icy air that escaped her lips cease to appear, her ocean eyes glass over and cloud. If she lived, he could die a happy man.

And he did. The darkness that crept into his mind, blurring and fuzzing everything, couldn't quench the vivid memories of her hand in his, of her smile mere inches from his face, of her satin kisses and feathery words.

And it was dark, incredibly dark, when he opened his eyes again. The night was gone, the board was gone, the corpses gone, and she was gone, but he was still there. Suspended in a blackish-green cesspool of death and dark and silence.

Realization dawned on him as fast as the cold did, both cutting deep to the bone.

Rose.

He kicked his feet and arched his arms, powerfully gliding to the surface. But it was so damn cold.

Rose.

He was almost there, almost to the surface.

Rose!

His head broke the surface of the water.

He had done it.

He had lived.