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Jaakko could feel Sirpa’s weight as she leant against him, her presence heavy with a kind of exhaustion he knew wasn’t just physical. Her breaths were shallow, fading in and out like the tides, yet her warmth seeped into his side, anchoring him.
Tonight felt different, and they both knew it, although neither had dared to put it into words.
The iceberg wasn't just a dot on the horizon anymore.
She was wearing the soft sweater he had gifted her last winter - the one that apparently had a hideous pattern, she had said it looked like a swamp monster puked on it, but he loved to feel under his fingertips and Sirpa loved to wear it. Her new favorite sweater, she had called it when she pulled it out of the gift wrapping, all while she laughed at the design.
Her laughter was lighter these days, wisps of what it once was, and her body leaned into him, tired but present. He could feel the fabric of the sweater under his palm now, the loose knit gone soft from washing, the slight give of it over her ribs. Her ribs. He tried not to count them. The weight of her against his side was different from six months ago. Different from three months ago.
"It's your turn. Pick a movie, Jaakko," she said, and her voice was soft, like a whisper carried across a great distance.
The request, one they'd made to each other a hundred times, felt like an invitation he didn't understand yet. It was a request that was asking for so much more than what he heard.
He ran his hand over the DVDs already sitting on the blanket spread across his lap, and eventually his fingers brushed against Titanic, its smooth, sealed plastic still untouched. The only one in his collection still untouched.
He hesitated, and then lifted it, placing it in her lap.
"How about Titanic?" he said, and tried to make it sound casual, and did not succeed.
He'd been thinking about it. It had been a long time coming.
Sirpa shifted beside him, a brief spark of surprise coloring her fatigue. "I thought you swore you’d never watch it?"
Jaakko smiled, a faint curve of his lips as he reached for her hand, finding her frail fingers and tracing them just as he had a million times before. "It doesn’t count if I’m with you," he murmured. "It's like, I’m watching your favorite film... not Titanic."
A thin chuckle escaped her lips, and it was a sound he savored. "I don’t think that’s how it works, Jaakko," she whispered back, her voice raspy, "but... I won't tell anyone if you won't."
He could hear the smile on her lips, and it was the most beautiful thing in the world.
"It'll be our little secret," he smiled, and let go of her hand as she stood.
Jaakko could hear Sirpa's walker scraping against the floor as she slowly made her way to the TV. He heard the plastic crinkling, the sound amplified in the quiet room. He imagined her fingers, delicate and beautiful, tearing through the seal he’d left untouched for years, the seal that hadn't been torn since giving it to her when they first met.
The weight of that unopened film, so long spent sitting in his collection, felt almost prophetic now. Opening it felt as if they were both admitting what was to come.
It was closer.
She returned to the bed, collapsing next to him as the opening score played, the music swelling into the room. She curled into him, resting her head on his shoulder, and he felt the shift in her breathing, as though she was exhaling a weight she’d been carrying for years. The way she leaned into him told him she was finally letting herself surrender, letting him carry the weight he knew he’d soon have to bear on his own.
What would be left after the ship settled on the ocean floor, far beneath the waves?
The movie played, but Jaakko was more aware of Sirpa than anything else - the steady hum of her breathing against the sweeping music, her hand still folded in his. Every so often, her grip would loosen slightly, and his heart would stutter and skip, wondering if she had sunk just as the Titanic had so long ago.
He could not see the ship or the ocean or the faces. What he had instead was the music, and Sirpa, and the living architecture of her against his side - the flutter of her eyelids when something moved her, which he could feel at his collarbone; the small sounds she made in her throat when the scene shifted, her hand in his, their fingers interlaced, He couldn't see her, but he felt every tremor of her body, every sigh, and every beat of her heart as it synced with the fading energy she had left to give.
She occasionally spoke, telling him of the intricate details of the scenes that she had clearly seen hundreds of times before, but he found himself paying more attention to her voice rather than her words.
Somewhere in the middle of the film, she shifted, wincing, her breathing more labored. Jaakko brushed a hand over her back, murmuring reassurances as he felt her lean back into him. He pressed his lips to her hair and didn't say anything, and she continued to speak, and her voice was the whole film for him - the ship and the cold and the people desperately clinging to things that couldn't hold them. After a long period of silence, she stirred, her voice a whisper barely above silence.
"I always wished," she murmured, somewhere in the middle, "that they'd had a little more time on the ship. Before."
"Before," Jaakko whispered, his voice hoarse.
"Well, it is a love story," Sirpa turned her head, resting her cheek against Jaakko's. "...but it's also about how time lies to you. Or, well, how your heart does. You think you're in the middle of something, that you have all the time in the world, but you don't realize you're actually at the end."
Jaakko had nothing to offer to that. He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles instead, and she turned her face into his shoulder.
Around what he estimated was the two-hour mark of the film, she winced. He felt it more than heard it - a small involuntary tension that moved through her body and released. He moved his hand to her back and she let him, leaning into the pressure, and they didn't speak until it passed.
"I'm sorry," she said then.
"Don't."
"Jaakko, I am," she weakly insisted. "For... leaving you here, alone."
And there it was, the iceberg.
He felt the ache settle in his chest, the words sharp, a plea for something Jaakko couldn’t give. He brought her hand to his lips, brushing a kiss over her knuckles.
"You'll never leave me," he said. The words felt insufficient. He'd known they would. "You'll always be here." He brought her hand to his chest, over his heart, held it there. Right here. "I'll still be able to find you. I know where you live. Where you'll always be."
She made a sound that was almost a laugh and almost not.
He felt a tear slide down his cheek, and another followed.
By the time the film reached the final scenes, Sirpa was breathing in faint, uneven rhythms, and he could feel her leaning into him like she was drifting, as if he was the only solid feature in a wide and empty ocean. Her voice was faint, as fragile as the last flickers of warmth fading from her hand.
"Thank you, my dear," she whispered as the credits rolled, each word falling from her lips slower, softer. Her voice was a thread, barely sound. "I’m... I’m very tired, Jaakko."
And there, the sinking began.
He tightened his grip on her hand, feeling the warmth slipping through his fingers like sand. Desperately, he raised his hand to her face, tracing her features with trembling fingers, trying to memorize every line, every curve, committing her to memory in a way he wished he’d started doing long ago. He traced her slowly. Forehead. The bridge of her nose, which had always been slightly crooked from a fall she'd taken as a child, a story she'd told him so many times he felt he'd witnessed it himself. Her cheekbone. The corner of her mouth. He pressed his fingertips very gently to her eyelids, feeling the flutter of her lashes like something trying to stay awake, and felt the wetness there, and he could feel his heart begin to break.
"Rest," he said. His voice had stopped working properly. He cleared his throat, and said it again. "Rest now, Sirpa. Close your eyes. I'm right here."
The TV was silent now, and in the silence he waited, holding her hand, the last remnants of her warmth fading as he clung to her presence. He waited, holding onto her with all the strength he had left, as if somehow, he could keep her anchored to him, keep her from slipping beneath the waves.
The house around them was silent, the world a vast emptiness that he couldn't bear to face alone.
For a moment, he imagined them together on the edge of a ship, like how she had described it happening in the movie, where the cold of night turned warm and their hands were joined, the two of them facing eternity, knowing that they were together - and that nothing else mattered because of that.
But now, he sat alone, listening to the soft, unyielding quiet, his hand still wrapped around hers.
He brought her hand to his lips again. He kissed her fingers. He held them there.
"Good night, Sirpa," he said.
She didn't respond, and her hand was cold where it lay, unmoving, in his.
He thought about the ship. The way she'd described it - so many lights. The passengers who'd stood on the deck and watched the horizon and not yet known what was underneath it, all that cold dark weight, moving toward them through the water without a sound.
You can't quite believe it would ever go down, she'd once said.
No, he thought. You can't.