A New Beginning

Chapter 25: Spark

Chapter 25: Spark

Rose rolls over in her bed. Her silk pillowcase is wet with her tears. She shoves off the covers and sits up. She begins pacing the hardwood floors as she had done many nights previously.

It has been two weeks since the sinking and the loss of her beloved Jack. She is back where she started, in Philadelphia, still engaged to Cal and trapped. Her mother and Cal made sure of this.

Once the ship had docked in New York, Cal and her mother always made sure that Rose stayed within their sights. All of them were bombarded by cameras and reporters, asking for a story. The one good thing Cal did that day was to shove the prying vultures aside, allowing them to pass through to the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, which was housing many Titanic passengers as they recovered from the disaster and thought about their next step. Rose was herded into a hotel room with her mother and was kept there for two days while Cal arranged for a train back to Philadelphia. Rose never argued or attempted to leave at any point, she was too depressed and too tired to fight. Jack was gone and he wasn't coming back. He would not be there to encourage her to follow her passions and start a new life for herself...with him in it.

Once back in their home, Ruth removed everything from Rose's room that gave her solace and encouraged her to think independently. Her music, her paintings, her books, anything that made Rose want to be free. She was also always supervised, whether by her mother, a maid, Cal, or his new manservant. Her windows were locked, and the doors were always closed.

Rose, however, didn't fight it and it wasn't like she was going any place. Her world had gone dark and she felt nothing. 

Even as her 18th birthday came and went within those two weeks, there was no joy to be had. It was not as if her mother acknowledged the day or anyone else. If Trudy were still here, she would have been the only one who would have said something, but she'd been lost in the tragedy.

Rose stayed in her room most of the time anyway with only a new maid bringing her food to her bedroom door three times a day. She lay in bed most of the day, hardly eating and mostly crying. Fortunately, her door locked from the inside instead, so she could keep her mother and anyone else out. Rose was alone, and she felt so depressed. To make matters worse, Rose could hear Cal and her mother talking about the wedding. They would postpone it for Rose's sake it seemed, but not for very long. Rose knew deep down she was stalling for as long as possible. She knew she could never marry Cal; after what he had done on the ship, it was unforgivable, but Rose was trapped, a prisoner in her own home. She had never felt so helpless in her life, and this trumps the time in which she wanted to jump off the edge of the ship.

This particular morning Rose had spent the night crying and was now sitting in her room. She found comfort in sitting in her rocking chair and simply going back in forth for hours it seemed. The rhythm was almost like a ship going up and down on the sea, but Rose did her best to forget about that. She had nothing to read or to do with her hands, so she simply rocked until the sun went down and it was dark again.

This morning, however, Rose was feeling different. After ignoring her mother's insistence that she come down for breakfast and the maid's knock to indicate food was here for her, she stands up from her rocking chair. She goes over to her mirror. Rose looks at herself in the mirror. She is pale and thin, her hair had lost its shine and her eyes were dull and dreary, bloodshot from crying and full of misery. There were dark circles under her eyes and her posture was dragging and hunched over. That spark Jack had talked about had long since been extinguished, leaving her a shell of her former self.

She goes over to her dresser drawer and pulls open the top one, filled with her gloves, scarves, and other accessories. The ivory white gloves suddenly remind her of what Emma had told her the night she and Peter got married. How they were concealing who she was and having one on one hand and none on the other is how she felt about her identity. The gloves were superficial and were not who she was. She was...is the girl Jack wanted her to be. She really should be making every moment count and not wasting away in sadness. Jack would never have wanted her to do so.

She dug through her closet and found some art supplies, some things that her mother had missed when cleaning out her room. She opens her windows to let the sunlight in. With difficulty considering she's always been dressed by maids, she changes into something that could get dirty and opens the paint sets. She sets down some paper on the floor and begins to paint.

Her brush becomes part of her hand as she paints what she is feeling. Images of waves by the seashore, the sunset like the one on the bow where Jack and she shared their first kiss. The fiery red she splashed on the paper, reflected the anger she felt towards her life and the people in it. The flowers in her family's garden just outside her room spring to life with all the brightest of colours and the movement of dancing bodies in a hall inspired by the party she attended on the ship.

When she is done, she lets the paintings dry in the sun. They were beautiful works of art if she does say so herself. The lines and colours seem to leap off the canvas and come to life in front of her, much like Jack's artwork did. She felt closer to Jack then, sharing in his passion, but with her own unique spin on it.

She looks at herself in the mirror again. Her eyes seem brighter and there is a slight smile on her face. Her posture has improved, and her hair seems to be lighter, fiercer and fiercer. This is the Rose Jack wanted her to be, a woman who was free and passionate. Someone who was independent, who smiled and laughed just because it was fun. Someone who followed her dreams and made her own choices. Someone who was flying towards a brighter light.

She hears footsteps coming down the hall and her mother's voice, griping at one of the new maids for doing something wrong. That dreading feeling came back. Rose was free in spirit, but hardly in other ways. She was only viewing the open door of her gilded cage but had not spread her wings to break free yet.

She thought about running away, the only problem was, that everyone was watching and had a tight grip on her. She also had nowhere to go and little money of her own. She had to support herself and these paintings were not going to be enough.

A plan is soon formulated in her mind. She would act the way her mother wanted, at least for a little while, enough to gain her mother's trust back. It would be painful, Rose knew that, and incredibly boring, but to gain back that freedom would be worth it. She looks over at her jewelry box and begins searching through it. Many of these diamonds and jewels could be worth a lot and allow her to save some money for herself. The paintings Cal had bought for her, not the ones that had gone down with the ship, but the others that her mother had taken from her, she could sell those to museums so that everyone could enjoy them. It would also indicate to her mother that she was moving on and becoming the girl her mother desired her to be. And all the clothes and shoes she has, she could sell them and give anything else to charity, to those who have very little. She would only pack what she wanted to keep and what was practical. The cover would be to anyone who asked was that she was packing for her honeymoon with Cal. She knew she would have to spend a few more months with the monster that was her fiancé, but she would be gone by the time the wedding rolled around. That would also be humiliating for Cal, his bride leaving him at the altar, to give him a little payback for what he had done.

The plan seemed so perfect that Rose wanted to cheer. She felt a lot better now. She may still be in the place she hated, but she had a plan, a plan to start her life over again, this time with Jack's influence. She would do all the things they planned to do in Santa Monica in honour of him and maybe even become an actress. She was ready to be free, she had been waiting her whole life to do this.

Jack may not be with her physically, but she was there with her in spirit and now he would influence all of her decisions. She was not Rose DeWitt Bukater, but Rose Dawson. A free woman.

The spark was back and this time, it had ignited an inferno.