Chapter Text
“I love you, Jack.”
Rose’s voice, which had been quiet and shaky and hoarse all night, was suddenly strong and confident. In fact, it was her voice, even more than the words she’d said, that echoed in his ears, warming him up ever so slightly.
I love you, too, Rose.
The words were instinctual. The kind of words that he simply felt. The kind of words that were so natural to say that they practically fell off his tongue without any conscious thought. The kind of words that were so fundamentally true, that it was strange to think he hadn’t been saying them every day of his life. The kind of words he just needed to say.
And he very nearly did.
But, as he met her eye, looking more lost and hopeless than he’d ever seen, and as the reality of where they were set in, once again, he chose different words.
Words that were intentional, not instinctual.
“Don’t you do that,” he said, squeezing the hand that held his with all the strength he could muster. “Don’t you say your goodbyes. Not yet. Do you understand me?”
“I’m so cold,” she said. The despair and fear on her face hadn’t wavered. She clung, desperately, to his hand, as each slow, uneven breath she took seemed to pain her.
He hated seeing her this way. He hated it. Even more than he hated being in the cold water himself.
Just as he’d tried to convince her twice now – first on the railing and then in the gymnasium – she deserved a life. She deserved to dance and explore and laugh and read and get angry and love deeply and try hard at something even if she totally failed and feel the sand between her toes and stick up for herself and pick up some sort of weird hobby. She deserved to live.
And he would give her a life, even if it was the last thing he did.
“You’re going to get out of here, Rose,” he said, meeting her eyes with intent, trying to make sure she believed what he was saying as much as he did. “You’re going to go on, and you’re going to make—” he paused, here, whether because he was too cold to get the words out, or because he wanted to emphasize the next word, especially, he had no idea. “Lots of babies. And you’re going you watch them grow. You’re going to die an old lady, warm in her bed. But not here. Not this night. Not like this. Do you understand me?”
“I can’t feel my body.”
That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. He wanted to hear the strength and the fire he knew she possessed. He wanted to hear the same confidence that had been in her voice when she confessed her love to him. Hell, he wanted to hear her say anything that would convince him she was just as determined as he was that she’d make it out of here. Because, just as he’d told her, only a few hours ago, she had to be the one to save herself.
I love you, Rose.
He should say it. Give her something to believe in. Give her something hopeful to cling to. Some comfort.
But Jack was not a dumb man. Or a delusional one. He knew that, however slim her chances were, his were far lower. And, as much as he wanted his last words to be an expression of his deep love for her. As right as it would be for I love you, Rose, to be the last breath that leaves his body, he knew that, if he wanted her to survive – to live a life and fall in love and make babies – he’d need to say it in another way.
“Winning that ticket, Rose,” he said, his breath even shakier than it had been before. “Was the best thing that ever happened to me,” He was struggling to get the words out, and he could feel his body starting to fail him, but he didn’t dare to loosen his grip on her hand or break the eye contact between them. “Because it brought me to you.”
A tiny, tentative smile spread across Rose’s cheeks. A smile that warmed Jack just as much as if someone had poured a cup of hot tea down his throat.
“I’m thankful for that, Rose,” he continued. “You must,” he said, as he looked away from her just long enough to kiss their joined hands with trembling lips. “You must do me this honor. You must promise me that you’ll survive. That you won’t give up, no matter how hopeless.” A tear slipped down Rose’s face, and he wanted nothing more than to climb up and kiss it away, but they’d learned the hard way that the board wouldn’t hold him. “Promise me now, Rose,” he demanded, with all the strength he lad left. “And never let go of that promise.”
“I promise.”
He kissed her fingers one more time, before laying his head down across their clasped hands. He tried to resist falling asleep, but all that talking had taken more strength than he had left, and he had to fight hard to keep his eyes open. He faded in and out of consciousness – each time he felt himself starting to slip away, Rose’s husky voice, singing to the stars above them, brought him back. Each time the pain was too much to bear, he focused only on the place where their hands were joined, and he felt alive again, even if only just.
But, as the endless minutes stretched on, the moments when he was delirious, unaware of who he was or where in the world he happened to be started overpowering the moments where he was alert. His love for Rose was strong, and it had brought him back from the brink more than once tonight. But perhaps it wasn’t strong enough, on its own, to keep him tethered to this life and this reality.
And he blinked his eyes closed.
Off in the distance, a blue light flashed – brighter than any light he’d ever seen before. Bright enough for him to see through closed eyelids. And, for one moment – one perfect moment of clarity – he felt like himself. Not like the shell of a man who’d been fighting to stay alive in the North Atlantic, but a kind, resilient, and whole man who had lived a full life and who had loved, deeply and desperately.
Behind his eyes, he saw Rose, flashing him the brilliant smile that she reserved just for him. He saw every moment they’d ever spent together, all at once. And he was overwhelmed with love.
And then everything went black.
--
When he opened his eyes, the first thing Jack registered was bright light. Light that was brighter and harsher than he ever could have imagined possible. It flooded every corner of the windowless and featureless room where he stood, blinding him from every angle, all at once.
And good lord did his head ache.
The space just behind his eye sockets was throbbing, blurring his vision and sending shockwaves of pain all throughout his head. The sharp, bright light couldn’t be doing him any favors, and he pressed his eyes closed, hard.
But the darkness was worse. As soon as he closed his eyes, he was back there – back in the water, where he’d been only moments ago. Back in the water, where he’d been on the brink of death, freezing, and well past the point of coherent thought.
Then there’d been a light.
No, that can’t be right. The light is here. Wherever here is. The water waspitch black.
But, no. Jack’s brain twitched once more, as another memory came to him. He rammed his eyes shut, once again, blocking out the horrible light. And it was only then that he remembered that there had, indeed, been a light in the water. A flash. A flash of blue light.
And, in the span of an instant, he’d been physically drawn toward the light, as if it were a black hole. Somehow, the light pulled him out of the water, slowly at first, but then much quicker, until his hand was jerked out of its grip on Rose’s—
And then it all came back to him, as suddenly and shockingly as if he’d been hit by a train.
“Rose!”
His voice was hoarse, as if he hadn’t spoken a single word in days.
“Rose!”
He opened his eyes, blinking once again against the glaring light, turning in every direction, as he reached out futile hand after futile hand, trying to make contact with Rose.
“Rose! Rose! Where are you?”
“There, there, Twelve,” came a stern, female voice, with a strange accent Jack couldn’t quite place. “Let’s get you something to sleep it off.”
There was a tiny prick of pain on the back of Jack’s arm and, before he even knew what had happened, it was pitch black once again.
--
“Our sincerest apologies, Twelve,” said a new voice, as Jack blinked awake once again and took in his surroundings. He was in a single bed in a sterile, windowless room, completely drenched in the same harsh light he remembered from before it had all gone dark. This new voice, which carried the same strange accent – it was almost English, but with a strange twinge to it that Jack couldn’t place, despite all his travels – belonged to a man. “We had every intention of your bridge being there to greet you when you awoke, but we had no idea the sedative would wear off sooner than it did for the others.”
“What?” Jack stammered. It was all he could think to say. Well, almost. “Where’s Rose?”
“Your bridge is one of our finest,” the voice continued, unbothered by Jack’s question. “Her name is Aditi, and she should be here momentarily. I just wanted to be here, first, to offer our apologies for the fright, earlier.”
“Where’s Rose?”
“And I’m afraid I must apologize again, Twelve. I neglected to introduce myself. I’m Julian Rumford, the undersecretary assigned to this project.”
“Where,” he began, fully opening his eyes to meet Rumford’s gaze, despite the harsh light. “The fuck,” he continued. “Is Rose?”
A knock sounded from the other side of the wall, and, completely ignoring Jack’s question once again, Rumford stood up from the chair next to Jack’s bed and strode over to the wall. Only it wasn’t a wall at all. Julian pushed at a specific point near the top of the wall until a well-hidden door popped open, just a bit, to reveal a figure standing in the door frame.
“Ah! Aditi!” Rumford said. “Perfect timing. I trust you’ve read up on Twelve’s file?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Then I’ll leave you to it.”
And, with that, Rumford pulled open the secret door one more time – from the brief glimpse Jack got out of it, it looked like it opened into another sparse and brightly-lit room – and was gone. In the chair that Julian had occupied only minutes ago, now sat a woman with dark brown hair, cut just above the shoulder and with tiny streaks of blonde running through it. She was pretty, he couldn’t deny that, with uncannily straight teeth and a light dusting of makeup, but she didn’t hold a candle to—
“Please,” he begged. “I need to know where Rose is. I need to know that she’s okay.”
“Rose?” She said, raising a curious eyebrow. “Who’s that? I don’t recall anyone by that name in your file—” But Aditi cut herself off, as if she’d suddenly remembered she wasn’t supposed to say that. “But, never mind all that for now. There’s a right way and a wrong way of doing this, and after the fiasco earlier, I intend to do this strictly by the book. I have to warn you, some of what you’re about to hear may be frightening or uncomfortable, but you’re in good hands, I promise.”
“Please,” he begged, once again. “Please tell me how to find Rose.”
“I’m sorry, Twelve, but we—”
“And why does everyone keep calling me Twelve?”
“That’s all part of what I’m here to explain to you,” said Aditi, gently. “So if you’ll just be patient, it’ll all be clearer in a few minutes. But I’m afraid I must insist there be no more interruptions. It’ll all go much smoother if you let me get through everything I have to say. And then you can ask me any question you’d like.”
“Unless what you have to say is how to find Rose, I’m not interested.”
“Twelve,” Aditi scolded, sharply.
“Right,” said Jack, tossing his legs over the side of the bed to stand up, and starting towards the door. If no one was going to help him, he’d just find Rose on his own. “I’ll be on my way, then.”
But Aditi gripped his forearm, tightly, halting him in his tracks. Reactively, he pulled his arm away, but she was a lot stronger than she looked, and she directed him back to the bed.
“Perhaps you’re not quite ready yet after all,” she said. “I can call Julian to arrange for another dose of the sedative—”
Jack let out a sharp breath. Until now, he hadn’t given much consideration to where he was and how he got here. It was an eerily empty and painfully bright room, but, so far, he’d thought it was just a room. Now, though, after not being allowed to leave, it seemed he might be some sort of prisoner here. What his crime had been, though, he couldn’t begin to say.
“I suppose you’d better tell me what’s going on,” he said, resignedly, as he sat back against the headboard.
“Wonderful,” said Aditi, reverting back to the clipped, professional tone she’d used when she first came in. “The first step is introducing myself, My name is Aditi, and I’m a civil servant within the British government. You are here, in a classified location in City of London—”
“London?” Jack asked. “But I was just—”
“Questions at the end, please. Now, as I was saying, this may come as a bit of a surprise to you, but you’ve actually been here a little over three weeks. We’ve found that the jump can be jarring for many of the participants, so we established a new protocol of keeping them – you,” she corrected, “sedated for a short period of time while your body acclimates. But have no fear, we’ve kept you well fed and had some of the finest doctors in the NHS looking after you and making sure you got all your proper vaccines.
“You will remain here a while longer as you continue to acclimatize, but you will not be sedated. Instead, you’ll spend your time learning about life today. We’ll start slow – who the Prime Minister is and what an answering machine is and such, maybe an episode or two of Ab Fab – and then we can fill in some of the bigger gaps. When you’re ready, you’ll be free to integrate into society. But do not worry in the slightest, as I’ll be there to guide you the whole way.”
“I’m sorry,” said Jack. “But I’ve been to London before. I’ve been lots of places. I’m perfectly capable of finding my way around without a guide.”
“Not this London, you haven’t,” said Aditi. “You, Twelve, are in London in the year 1995.”
“What?”
“You heard me correctly. The world outside looks and feels a little different than you remember, which is why I’m here to prepare you for it.”
“But why?”
“I must insist, I’m afraid. Questions at the end. But, as it happens, the why of it all is the next item on the docket. I won’t be able to tell you all of it right away, as it’s a lot to take in and, to be frank, some of it is classified even above my pay grade. But the upshot is that, quite recently, in a joint project between MI-5 and MI-6, some scientists developed a prototype device that allows people to travel through time. It’s still an extremely experimental tool, but as one of the final stages of the research, we selected several individuals from different times throughout history and brought them here to test how they fare in present day. It’s recluses, mostly, the type whose absence won’t be noticed in their own time—”
Jack winced, ever so slightly.
“Oh, er, sorry – perhaps I should have phrased that differently,” Aditi said, not unkindly. “But the point remains. You are here with seven other people from different eras and regions of the world. For now, you are known as Twelve because you came from 1912, just like the man in the room next door who came from the Battle of Hastings is known as Sixty-Six and the woman two doors down, from the fall of the Ming dynasty, is Forty-Four. Once you’re out of here, you are free to use your real name or adopt a more modern one, should you choose. And, if you end up successfully integrating, then we are well on our way to considering the device a success and starting to work on other uses for it – perhaps in intelligence or military, maybe even in education or entertainment. Now, I’m sure you have questions.”
“Sure,” Jack said, as casually as if he’d shrugged. “My first one is: Where’s Rose? When your device came and picked me up, did you take Rose, too? Is there another Twelve around here?”
“We have only taken one person from each era.”
“Thanks,” said Jack. “That’s all I needed to know. Now, please, return me to where you found me.”
“You’d like to go back to freezing to death in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean? Because that’s what’d happen to you. In addition to recluses, we were looking to identify people who died, in their own times, to avoid any disruption to the past.”
“Well then drop me back to a few hours before you found me,” he said, as practically as possible, not daring to let a blush rise up his cheeks as he remembered where he’d been, then. “I’ll get both of us in a life boat.”
“We can’t do that.”
“Fine,” said Jack. “If all you can do is send me back to the water, then go ahead. I need to be with Rose.”
“I’m afraid we can’t do that, either.”
“I don’t care,” said Jack. “You can’t keep me here. I was brought here through no choice of my own and I’ve committed no crime—”
Aditi gave him a sideways look, before nodding down at the handcuffs, still on his wrist. Why no one had bothered to remove them during his three weeks of sedation was beyond him. But, then again, pretty much everything that had happened in the last three weeks was beyond him.
“I’ve committed no crime,” Jack repeated, firmly. “So I’ll be going. I’ll figure out how to get back on my own.”
“No,” said Aditi. “You misunderstood me. We can’t do thatbecause the device only goes one way.”
Jack’s anger, shock, and frustration was building, faster than his ability for rational thought, and he very nearly demanded that they go back with their little device and pick up Rose, too. He very nearly demanded that they bring her here, with him.
But, luckily, he cut himself off.
Moments ago – okay, three weeks ago, but it felt like moments – he’d used what he thought would be his last breath to make Rose promise she’d live a full life, even if it was without him. He’d wanted her to live, free from the plans that had been made for her in her life so far, and to, instead, forge her own path ahead and make her own choices.
How could it possibly be fair to take all that away from her?
How could it possibly be right to bring her, without giving her a choice, into a room just like this with the bright lights and no company save for government employees, on the off chance that he might see each other again in whatever strange new world this was.
But, then, a worse thought occurred to him.
“I need to know if Rose survived that night.”
“That night?” Aditi asked, puzzled. “Oh, you mean the night Titanic sank–” Jack winced. “Er, sorry, I do sometimes forget that what’s history for us was recent memory for you, so I should be gentler. My apologies. Do you mean did she survive the, uh, night we found you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, either. It’s strictly against policy to let any of the participants learn anything about your own historical time until you’ve been sufficiently prepared. In our experience with past participants, that usually takes about six months to a year.”
“But, really,” Aditi continued. “What I don’t understand is who Rose is to you. As bridges, we get a file on our participants – you know, details about your life in your own time so we know what to expect when we meet you – and there was no mention of anyone named Rose. In fact, you were a perfect candidate – a lone wolf, even as late as the evening of the 12th. Two nights before we found you, you were—” she opened a small folder on her lap. “Let’s see – yes, here we go, you were alone on deck, smoking a cigarette.”
Jack had no idea where they got all that information, and couldn’t deny that it was a little terrifying, but there was no time to really consider it. Not when there were more pressing matters at hand.
“Rose is the woman I love,” he said, with a tiny jolt in his heart at finally saying it out loud for the first time, followed by a swell of despair as he realized it wasn’t her he was saying it to. “We were together in the water, and I need to know. Please. I will cooperate with anything you need me to do for the experiment if you just find out this one thing, I promise.”
“It is highly against protocol. I could lose my job.”
“Please,” he begged, once again, as uncontrollable tears welled in his eyes. “Her name is Rose Dewitt Bukater.”
And then, without Aditi needing to say a single word, she told him.
She did her best to hide it, but as the expression on Aditi’s face turned from shock to confusion to sympathy, it was clear that she wouldn’t need to find out what had happened to Rose. Because she already knew.
And the news couldn’t be good.
The pace of Jack’s breathing increased, even as the world slowed down around him. No, this couldn’t be real. He couldn’t be here in 1995, while she’d been dead in the water for eight decades. She couldn’t have died, alone in the water, after he’d been taken from her. She couldn’t have.
“No,” he said, aloud.
“Look,” said Aditi. “I had to read up quite a bit on Titanic in order to prepare to be your bridge. So perhaps I know a bit more than the average person about the passengers on board. But anyone with even a passing interest in that history knows about Rose Dewitt Bukater; her death is one of the greatest unsolved mysteries from that night, as she was absent from that last dinner, for no reason anyone could explain, and then, as far as anyone knows, was never seen again.”
“She was with me,” Jack managed to croak out, before the tears overtook him. “Oh Rose,” he practically wailed. She didn’t get the life she deserved. The life he’s been willing to trade his own for. The life that he wanted for her, even if he didn’t get to share it.
But, then, a thought popped into his head, The same one he’d had only a few minutes ago. But, this time, it didn’t feel like quite so much of a betrayal.
“I need you to go back and get her,” he said, wiping the tears from his face. “You told me yourself that you only take people who died. So go get her, like you got me, and bring her here. We’ll integrate, however you want, together.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” said Aditi. “Decisions like that are well above my pay grade. But, really, you loved her? How did that come about?”
She spoke professionally, but Jack could hear a very clear undertone of skepticism. And while he didn’t totally blame her for being surprised, it still rankled. He and Rose had wasted so much of the time they had together not being together, partly due to other people’s opinions about who they could and couldn’t love. And, now that he would never see her again, all those other people’s opinions seemed so trivial and boring.
“It’s a very long story,” said Jack. “But she’s – she was,” Jack corrected himself, with a lurch, deep in his chest.“She was brave and strong and funny and smart, and I love everything about her. I was even lucky enough to have her love me back.”
“Hmm,” Aditi said, before her expression changed, once again, to one of sympathy, as if she’d suddenly remembered she was speaking to a person, not a science experiment. “I really am sorry for your loss, Twelve, er – that is, Mr. Dawson. If you’d like to talk more about her, I’m here to listen.”
“I think I’d rather be alone.”
“Very well,” she said. “There’s something I need to speak to Julian about, anyways. But before I go, I’ll bring you some tea, and perhaps a book to occupy your mind? What do you want? John Grisham? Stephen King? Michael Crichton? His Jurassic Park might be relevant to you, in a strange way.”
“Are there no women who write books in 1995?”
Aditi stopped, in her tracks, and looked back at him with an utterly shocked expression on her face.
“And, suddenly, I see why she loved you back,” she grinned. “I’ll see if I can find you a copy of Outlander. In fact, that might be relevant to you, too,” she said, though she added, under her breath but just loud enough for Jack to hear. “But we might have to have a conversation about what World War II was, first.”
--
Jack spent the first few weeks after waking up and learning Rose’s fate in a daze. He slept a lot – well, if slept could be defined as laid awake and stared at the ceiling – he read a little, he tried to get food down, where he could, but his appetite was abysmal. He asked for paper and a pencil, to keep up with his drawing, but he couldn’t really manage more than a bit of absentminded scribbling.
Aditi came to visit almost every day, sometimes just for a few minutes to see how he was holding up, other times she stayed longer, trying to engage him in conversation about life in the 1990s. He let her talk, giving curt, subdued answers when he felt like it was appropriate, but he retained very little of it.
Each time Aditi came to visit, she brought along a little taste of the outside world along for him to try. The Milky Bar was too sweet, and he set it aside after one bite, but the Gregg’s sausage roll had been a bright spot in what had otherwise been a particularly tough day of missing Rose. He enjoyed the color photographs she brought and was vaguely interested in the cassette player, even though he found the music to be more noise than music. So, instead, he took the tape apart to see if he could figure out how it worked.
As spring rolled into summer and it began getting a bit muggy in the small room – Aditi promised him she would look into getting him set up with something called air con, whatever that was – Jack’s fog hadn’t lifted. He still went through the motions of learning about the future – the present, he corrected himself, cynically – but he found it incredibly difficult to care about glossy magazines or the Fall of the Soviet Union or whatever the hell the World Wide Web was.
“I have a surprise for you, Twelve,” said Aditi, on one of her visits in late August. “Genuine 1990’s men’s fashion, right off the high street.” She placed a small bag at the end of his bed and, barely concealing a grin, indicated he should open it. Jack first pulled out a pair of extremely baggy trousers, followed by a light overcoat with a strange, pastel design on it. “It’s JNCOs and a windbreaker!” Aditi continued. “Aren’t they outrageous?”
“I suppose,” Jack shrugged, setting them aside. “What are we learning about today?”
“Look, Twelve,” said Aditi. “I’m sorry about what happened to Rose. Truly, I am. But out of all the participants, you’ve made by far the least progress. Sixty-Six and Fifteen – 1815, that is – both got so much pleasure out of those clothes. They put them on and pranced around like a gazelle or something, chortling the whole time. I believe Forty-Four is nearly ready to head out into the world. I know you’ve been grieving. I know that. But you also promised me that, if I told you about Rose, you’d go along with the experiment, and so far, you haven’t followed through on that.”
Jack didn’t say anything for a long time. He just chewed on his lower lip, turning Aditi’s words over and over in his head. They were true. Of course they were true. But that didn’t mean he liked them.
Make each day count, right? Came a voice in his head, one that he summarily scoffed at.
But the fact remained that he was alive. He was alive and Rose wasn’t. And, if he wanted to live that life, to make it count, he’d have to get out of this goddamn room. And, to do that, he needed to learn enough about the 1990s to pass as a native born – what was the term again? – oh, right, Gen Xer.
“All right,” he said.
“Good,” said Aditi. “Now I have something for you. And don’t go flapping your lips about it, as it’s expressly against protocol. But I thought you might, well—” she held out a small package, wrapped in a copy of yesterday’s Times. He peeled back the newspaper to see that it was a book – The Story of Titanic. “You’ll want to turn to page 118,” she said. “And you’ll also want to read that newspaper that it came wrapped in, as I’ll be quizzing you on what was in it when I come back tomorrow.”
As soon as Aditi was out the door, Jack ripped open the book, flipping past story after story of what had become of people he knew and encountered, what had happened in the immediate aftermath of the wreck, and the story about the expedition that found the ship, on the bottom of the sea, decades later. He was desperate to read them, but there would be time for that, later. Instead, he breathlessly turned pages until—
He knew he’d made it to 118 without needing to look at the page number at the bottom, because there, right in front of him, was a full page photograph of Rose, looking almost exactly as she had the afternoon he first saw her.
Thank you, he whispered, under his breath, hearing the relief in his own voice. And if he was thanking Aditi or the universe or, somehow, Rose herself, he had no idea.
And, with the comforting presence of the photograph by his side, Jack came out of his shell a bit more over the weeks and months that followed. He kept his word, engaging with his studies and quickly catching up with the other participants. He even joked, on his birthday, whether he should have 21 candles or 104.
By October, they let him outside – just in the courtyard in the building, not outside outside – to get some exercise and to learn about how sport had evolved over the decades. He enjoyed skateboarding a bit, once he managed to stand up long enough to actually move, but he found curling and Ultimate Frisbee to be a little pointless. In November, they set up a TV and VHS player in his room and, in early December, he tried out a PC for the first time. He even almost got used to the bright, electric lights.
The photograph of Rose had helped, immensely. As promised, he’d kept it hidden and hadn’t dared told anyone about it. But, whenever he was alone, he brought it out of its hiding place under his bed and just stared at it. Most nights, he tucked the book under his pillow, so that he could imagine Rose’s face close to his as he slept.
He couldn’t deny though, that as much comfort as the photograph brought him, there was an equal twinge of sorrow each time he saw it. Sorrow that, in the only image he had of her, she was looking so stiff and demure, so much like a porcelain doll. Sorrow, too, at how short lived her freedom had been from that life, sorrow at the big dreams she had that she never got to achieve.
So, using the picture as a reference, he began to draw her as he remembered her. He drew her over and over, each time remembering a new detail or capturing her with a different expression on her face – wonder, amusement, dare he even say, seductiveness? Over time, he even began to draw scenes that would happen only in his imagination – scenes of her living those dreams she had for herself, of growing older and, somehow, even stronger and wiser, of her, holding a tiny baby that he just knew would have red hair. He tucked each drawing into the book, adding them to the rest of the stash he hid under his pillow.
He knew this probably wasn’t the healthiest thing to be doing. That if he really did intend to live a life as part of this experiment, he’d need to be present in the here and now. He’d need to get out there and make friends and even date, eventually, or else he’d risk facing the new world he found himself in completely alone.
But, for now, the picture and the drawings were what kept him sane. So, each day, after Aditi left and after any scheduled heath checkups, he pulled them out and kept them close. Tonight, he really should have been studying up on how to load a dishwasher – Aditi said there would be a test on it next week – but he couldn’t really be bothered. Instead, he nursed a tea and a Milky Bar – they’d grown on him over time – and stared at one of his most recent drawings, trying to remember what Rose smelled like. What her skin felt like. What her skin tasted like—
When the harsh, bright lights suddenly turned off.
A few minutes passed, in pitch black darkness, nearly as dark and disorientating as that night had been, and Jack felt himself begin to panic. When he heard the door open with a creak that, in the dark, silent room, sounded deafening, he let out a tiny, involuntary shriek, and he hastily shoved the drawings and the book back under the pillow.
“Jack?”
“Aditi, is that you?”
But, no. It couldn’t be. Aditi never called him Jack. No one here did.
Before he could ask again, though, a dim halo of light, as if from a candle, lit up in front of his bed, illuminating the face of an elderly woman. Her skin was wrinkled and marked with liver spots, and her hair was thinning. But her eyes were kind, with a little glint of mischief in them. They almost reminded him of—
He gasped.
“Rose?”
“I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to see you again, Jack,” she said, as she helped herself to the seat next to his bed and held the light up closer to get a better look at him. From this angle, he could see she was holding a camping lantern, albeit a more modern-looking one than he’d ever seen, with a lightbulb instead of kerosene. It was an impossible, incongruous sight. And he couldn’t quite wrap his mind around it.
“How are you here?” Jack blurted. “How are you alive?”
“I’ve been alive this whole time,” Rose laughed.
“But that would make you—”
“I’ll be one hundred and one in six months,” she said, with a gentle smile. “And we’ll talk – really talk in a moment, I promise. But, first, there’s something I have to tell you, and I don’t know how long we have until they figure out we messed with their power, so—”
“You made the lights go out?”
“Well, technically, it was Evan who actually did it,” she said, with a little chuckle. “But the plan was my idea –I’ve always hated how bright all the lights are in the ‘90s, you know. But, please, Jack. Listen to me. I need you to know that you can’t trust Julian and Aditi. They’re lying to you.”