Titanic - You Are Safe In My Heart

Rose's Drawing

Elder Rose POV:

Brock approached the state room of me and Lizzie as I put up my pictures on the desk. I cannot travel without them, they help me get through everything. "Can I get you anything, Rose?" He offered, smiling warmly. I hesitated before replying, "Yes. I would like to see my drawing, if you don't mind"

Brock led us to a tank, which I leaned over to look at. I saw the nude drawing of me, an entire 84 years ago. It brought back the memories. I could see his face, concentrating on my body, his perfect diamond blue eyes squinting while his lovely golden locks occasionally flopped over them. I could feel the very goosebumps I had, while trying to focus on staying still. I could hear the pencil impacting with the paper, his finger smudging certain areas. I came back to reality on hearing Brock's voice.

"Louis XVI wore a fabulous stone that was called the blue diamond of the crown which disappeared in 1792 - over 200 years ago, about the same time Louis lost everything from the neck up. The theory goes that the crown diamond was chopped too and reecut into a heartlike shape that became known as the heart of the ocean. Today it would be worth more than the hope diamond"

I memorised the night I wore that necklace, the night I was drawn wearing nothing but the diamond. I could never forget how heavy it was, how it weighed me down, how I could feel a huge weight lifted off of me when I took it off. "It was a dreadful, heavy thing. I only wore it this once"

Lizzie studied the drawing. "You actually think this is you, nana?" She asked me. I didn't think it was me, I knew it was me. It couldn't have been a portrait of anyone else. I was the only woman aboard the ship who knew of the heart, I recognised how I looked, I recognised the style of the drawing. I could never forget that night. I could never forget him. "It is me, dear" I stated. I paused for a moment, before adding, "Wasn't I a dish?"

They all laughed at my joke before Brock continued. "I tracked it down through insurance records. A old claim that was settled under terms of absolute secrecy. Can you tell me who the claimant was, Rose?" I closed my eyes and thought deeply. I was ambushed with the memories of someone different this time. Not the artist, not him. The other guy. The man who wanted nothing out of me but to control me, to possess me, to command me. To make my life an absolute misery. "I should imagine someone named Hockley " I answered, fixating on my memories. "Yep, Nathan Hockley. Pittsburgh steel tycoon. The claim was for a diamond necklace his son Caledon gifted his fiancée, you, a week before he sailed on Titanic. It was filed right after the sinking, meaning the necklace had to have gone down with the ship. You see the date?"

Lizzie and I both study the date on my drawing, which read April 14th 1912, the night the ship collided, before sinking later in the early hours of the next morning. I recalled him drawing the portrait of me just a couple hours before the terror begun. Lizzie reads the date aloud and Lewis opens his mouth. "Which means if your grandmother is who she says she is, she was wearing the diamond the night the titanic sank", he stated, reading my thoughts like a book. I turn to Brock as he smiles at me. "And that makes you my new best friend"

They then led me to a desk, full of things that immediately jogged my memory even more. "These are some things we recovered from your stateroom. We thought you might like to see them?" I gasped as I pick up a handmirror. Memories flooded back. Brushing my hair while looking into the mirror. Doing my makeup infront of the mirror. And staring into the deep depths of the mirror, wondering who the reflection was looking back at me. "This was mine. How extraordinary. And it looks the same asnit did the last time I saw it." I thought for a moment as I stared into my handmirror. "The reflections changed a bit" I didn't mean the reflection of my age. I meant of who I was. How much I had changed as a person since I last looked into that mirror. I hoped he would be proud of me, of what I had become... I couldn't have done any of this without his guidance, his reassurance.

The sight of a hairclip interrupts my thoughts. I placed the mirror back down and slowly picked up the hairclip. It wasn't just any hairclip. It was a butterfly hairclip, the hairclip. The same one I wore when I realised about him and the same one I took off before he begun to draw me. It was extraordinary how such small, things could mean the world to me, could bring out such emotion. I felt tears in my eyes, none of which were able to escape. Kind of like how I was or how I thought I was for so long.