Titanic: Voyage Of The Damned

Chapter 9: Shattered Dreams

 Jack cradled Rose tightly as exhaustion threatened to drown them amidst Carpathia's organized chaos swarming the recent refugee influx. Though overwhelmed crewmen had ensured hot meals and dry blankets all around, still bedraggled survivors drifted listlessly about the deck, ghostly as Charon's shades freshly ferried over Styx from catastrophe's depths. The asylum of their unexpected deliverance is now freshly contrasted with unspeakable trauma haunting all behind them.

As the crew called over the cacophony for able survivors to identify recovered bodies, fresh weeping erupted around dazed multitudes not yet prepared to reconcile the gruesome tally. Jack clasped Rose closer beneath a shared wool blanket, shielding her from the wrenching cries seeking imprint of familiar features on frozen corpses hauled aboard. "There, my love...there..." he soothed vaguely when words proved unequal consoling depths of her distress. Hot tears soaked his shirtfront in place of her muffled keening. Though the nightmare sinking lay hours behind, still it exacted relentless reckoning from its refugees.

They had stood too often on death's parenthesis not to deeply feel the instant. Life's fiber was wrenched ever thinner when stretched to those polarized points. Rose yet clung like shipwreck driftwood to his frame, the last real thing intact when other pillars crumbled to flotsam. Even an officer's distant cry for alphabetizing survivor names carried cruel irony, invoking civilized order far divorced from extremities still hounding them beneath enlightened veneer. Perhaps such necessary structure kept fiends of madness and despair at bay only by fragilest thread...

Jack swallowed numbly, yearning for profound words to anchor his beloved beyond trauma's riptide. But even divine poetry must fall short fully assuaging the torment behind her raw weeping. 'You suffer beautifully...' drifted inadequate phrase near his exhausted tongue before dying unvoiced. Human agony defied aesthetic transcendence. So he pressed fervent lips to her temple in silent oath, vowing by breath and bone to weather the tempest swirling within and without.

As the hours passed, reality slowly filtered back in episodic fragments, though merciful numbness cushioned its sharp edges when possible. Evening dusted mauve calm over the brooding sea rendering itself innocuous again as weather softened toward penitence. The deafening furor of saved and lost souls gradually quieted toward fitful mourning. Jack supported Rose's frail form around the listing deck, coaxing circulation that warmed and revitalized by increments. Salt air filled their lungs now untainted by recent horrors. To all outward views, just two more haggard refugees restoring human rhythm to their frames.

But inwardly behind scarred eyes, whispers of the hovering phantoms yet hounded them. Sleep remained barred by visions of bloated forms and screaming silhouettes burned onto mind's retina - all those writhing, condemned innocents engulfed by the sea swelling its ranks by thousands. And beneath churned the shattered corpse of mighty Titanic, tragic monument to mankind's warped conceits lying in state two miles below. Whether by carelessness or hubris or malignant forces nameless, old worlds had perished when rich and poor drowned together, erasing lines between powerful and powerless flailing the same for purchase beyond fate's grasp...

At some undefinable point, Jack felt Rose sag harder against him, her tousled head nestling protectively into the refuge of shared pain under his collarbone. There amidst the small universe of heat their tatters still generated together, maybe peace stole brief advance against panting horror nipping always at heels. His chafed hand cradled her own tenderly where prior veins had nearly burst from gripping rescue lines and his battered frame until the end. But he smiled now through creased lips to envision her beautiful pulse gently thrumming there again against his worn skin. All unspoken language of body and spirit exalted 'Here still beats the shared flame rendering meaningless the chaos momentarily surrounding us...'

And when strength inevitably broke again behind her brightening eyes, still Jack cradled Rose fathoms deeper than ration alone dictated possible. Long after cold precision documented names or tragic ends; when his own grappling mind no longer even charted sensible coordinates or sequence, she yet floated secure in their sway and flow together. Deepest flesh and breath enacted timeless choreography dictating homing instinct no horror could unseat. Survival alone proved insufficient measuring the mysterious filament binding both transients firmly yet to vital purpose. 'Where you drift, I anchor fast...' Their joined hands whispered through midnight gusts that had ultimately torn all else asunder. Who yet defined soul-deep fusion by earthly words or planning charts? Love alone took prow against infinitude - no beacon shone truer in the dark.