Work Text:
a dull, aching sort of numbness had enshrouded your hands. whether it was from the frigid breeze biting at your flesh, the unnatural coolness of the metal fused to your petrified fingers, or the chill that ran through your veins from sheer terror, you don't know—all that you could fathom was that it was cold.
so, so very cold.
you were someplace near the stern, clutching onto a railing for dear life, eyes wildly scanning the horde of people that clambered higher up the ship as the bow dipped below the surface of the ocean.
where was vincent?
the two of you had lost each other in the hysteria of the crowd when the flares were first fired. of how long it had been since then, you were staggeringly uncertain. hours had bled into lifetimes, and lifetimes into seconds—for while the iceberg’s killing blow may have landed the starboard, the sands of time were the first to perish and disappear into the atlantic deep.
frost clawed through the crevices of your lungs with every shuddering breath you stole back from panic. tears pricked at the corners of your eyes as the syllables of his name ghosted across your quivering lips in an echoing plea, one that was lost to the clamour and dissonance of every other terror-stricken soul on board.
it felt as if every pound summed from the blocks of cork in your lifebelt weighed nothing compared to the fear that imprisoned your chest between its teeth. and as it seemed that every face on this side of the ship was everyone's but his, it might as well have been heavy enough to sink and tow you headfirst to the ocean floor before the Unsinkable’s hull could crash into it, because fragments of him in the bedlam were all you could see.
an old, ashen-faced gentleman with a nose that sloped like his. a young freckled girl from steerage with a similarly chipped tooth; you saw the gap between her molars as she cried out for her sister. there was a child with watery blue eyes, and another with unblinking glassy greens—then there was their mother, who had a divot in her throat that jutted out almost like the one you kissed every night before you went to sleep.
the roaring pandemonium of screams and the dying howls that erupted deep from within the heart of the ship all but reached the peak of their crescendos as your eyes continued to dredge the thousands for a glimpse of the man you loved in a sea of strangers. the deafening clamour of it all swelled into an orchestra of white noise that tore severely through your head—
—until the first, trembling miracle of the night presented itself in a cry of your name.
and there he was.
God, oh, God—there he was.
vincent stands, almost petrified, at the starboard landing of the stairs that lead up to the aft deck; disheveled, frantic, and wild-eyed all at once. still, wretched as it was, the sight was something straight out of your most sacred prayers. just like he always had been.
though you suppose the ones you used to utter as a young girl were disparate to the pleas you now begged.
the scream that tore from vincent's throat across the deck seemed less like the sound of your name and more like a desperate cry to a God he had ignored his whole life—calling out in the fragile, infinitesimal hope that it would end up saving yours.
because for a split moment in his fear-shaken periphery, as the rear of the ship rose higher and higher into the sky, you were closer to the stars than he was to you.
with a shuddering groan, the titanic tilted and lowered her head deeper into the ocean, yet you paid it none of the mind your life could ill afford to spare elsewhere. the sight of him alone—alive—gave you enough courage to dare taking your hand off the railing. each nerve in your body, your temples, and your eyes were fixated on him as he lurched through the hysterical crowd, lunging past the raining current of people that had lost their grip on bulwarks and the debris that fell with them.
every last shred of wisdom, judgment, and survival fled your wits just as the evils from pandora’s box did so long ago. with a shaking, whispered, "vincent," you feel your body lean forward along with the bow of the ship as you reach out toward him, almost surrendering yourself to the pull of gravity—the same force that he wrestled to defy for his body to collide into your own.
one of his hands seizes the railing before the two of you could slide further down the deck, while the other clutches you tightly to his chest. the rush of adrenaline allows him to swing and hurl you both onto a mooring capstan, but even then, he doesn’t once loosen his hold on you.
instead, vincent pulls you closer. he all but intertwines his ribs into the gaps between your own, almost as if he was trying to merge your two shivering heartbeats into one just so he could be sure yours was still pulsing.
"honey," his breath comes out staggered as his hands find your arms, your hair, the curve of your jaw, and everywhere else his desperation could reach. "oh, baby. sweetheart." the kiss he crushes into your lips with a choked sob tasted of the sea and tears. "fuck." he pulls back, the blue and green of his eyes brimming with trembling, terrified relief. “you’re so stupid!”
“vincent,” a whimper catches in your throat. you utter his name once more, then twice, and thrice again; it felt like the only word your mouth could remember to say. “oh, God, vincent.” your clammy palms find the pallid flesh of his cheeks, tasting a hiccuping sob of your own claw at the ridge of your larynx.
“why the hell didn’t you get onto a lifeboat?” vincent demands, his face crumpled with anguish. you notice his glasses are missing. “they already made the women and children go first and you didn’t—damnit, (name), you could die!”
“i couldn’t go,” you sob, “i couldn’t go, vince. not without you.”
that only deepens the grief that lined his brow. “you could die,” vincent repeats desperately, the pads of his thumbs pressing violets into your cheekbones. “please. not you. anyone and a-anything but you. please. i-” tears flood the precipice of his lashes, yet he fought to make them remain unshed. “i can’t lose you, baby.”
“and i already thought i did!” another heaving convulsion from the dying ship punctuates your futile grief. “i thought you were dead, vincent.”
“rather me than you!”
whatever retort stung the back of your eyes and the cusp of your lips was stolen by the shriek of steel tearing viciously against steel. it resounds ominously throughout the entire ship, followed by a tremor so violent it shook the weakening floorboards beneath your feet. the flickering amber lights saturate into a dimmer, reddish glow that illuminates the vehement fear and anger swirling in vincent’s lachrymose glare—a mournful gaze that once again hardens with a ferocity for survival as soon as the chorus of screams grew shriller against the stillness of the barren atlantic.
he didn’t wait for you to piece back your words. he couldn’t.
vincent clamps his hand over your wrist with a bruising grip and makes a break for the edge of the afterdeck, yanking you right after him. your mouth goes dry from sheer bewilderment, and you numbly let him drag you further up the stern.
a sliver of gold catches in the pulsating light, almost tumbling out of vincent’s left pocket. dazedly, you recognise it as his father’s pocketwatch, yet he doesn’t spare the timepiece a single glance. the chain dangles off the third buttonhole of his open waistcoat, and the fractured dial read II and XVI. 2:16.
the dreadful sound of steel rivets bursting added on to the macabre choir, likening themselves to the crack of gunshots in war. the pinewood decks began to shatter in detonating harmony, and the titanic was succumbing to the depths of the very ocean she had been destined to cross.
vincent skids to a halt once his eyes register the amount of people crowding the taffrail. the pause was barely a moment, yet a century of seconds you could not afford to lose. the floorboards shook beneath your feet, tilting dangerously to a steeper slope.
“vince–?!”
“this way!” he roared, suddenly jerking you to the right. his hand slips tightly from your wrist to your palm as he clambers up the stairs to the docking bridge, hurling you both against the balcony’s balustrade. you yelp upon impact, shouting out in pain, but vincent barely gives you time to recover before he hauls you into his arms and charges toward the port side of the bridge, recklessly pushing past the few people that were also up on the platform.
then, it happens.
you can’t even begin to describe it.
the strobing incandescent lights surged into a final, blazing flash—one that threatened a detonation of its tantalum bulbs—before a mighty crack tore through the ship and plunged it into overwhelming darkness.
wind rushes out of your lungs and whistles past your ears in a scream that never made its way out of your chest. all fifty-two thousand and three hundred-some long tons of the titanic slams her great propellers back into the face of the ocean, and the endless cries of passengers grew impossibly louder upon landing.
reeling from the shock, you break out into a cold sweat and feel panic creeping up the atlas of your spine.
did… did the ship split in two?
eyes widening in horror, you subconsciously raise your quivering fingers to your lips, before slowly closing them over your mouth.
realisation dawns on you.
there were people in the water beneath the stern.
poets and scientists alike had always emphasised how spectacularly light could blind. what they never quite mentioned, however, was how equally harrowing the theft of sight by darkness could be.
“sweetheart?” vincent’s voice whispers weakly. you sense the familiar brush of his touch blindly fumble for you beneath the veil of night.
“...i’m here,” you say hoarsely. every inch and crevice of your body was trembling.
“oh, thank goodness,” he breathes. his hands feebly wrap around your shoulders again, and you notice that he’s trembling, too.
“vinny,” your palpitation stumbles, and you swallow nervously. “vinny, i’m scared. i’m so scared.”
vincent’s right hand moves to cradle the back of your hair as he hushes you. he presses his forehead to yours, almost as tenderly as he did when he first promised you the world. “i know. trust me, baby, i know.”
“i–”
“listen.” for once, the dying vessel isn’t what interrupts you, though it was getting increasingly harder to ignore as its hull begins to rise out of the water again. he pulls you in closer, urgency building in his tone. “we’re going to have to jump.”
your heart stops.
“what?”
titanic gives another agonising lurch, one that seemed like her final deathbound farewell. a jagged noise staggers in your throat from the sudden movement, and you instinctively claw for the front of vincent’s shirt in fear.
“we have to jump before the ship goes down,” he repeats gravely. “when i tell you to jump, you jump.”
“wait, vincent–”
vincent doesn’t stop. “keep your legs straight as you fall. cross an arm over your chest to hold down your lifebelt so it doesn’t seize up and break your neck.” he’s practically just muttering the instructions against your lips now. “and make sure to cover your face with the other hand so you don’t inhale water into your lungs from the shock of the cold.”
“vince–”
“once you hit the water, swim. swim as- as far as possible from the ship so you don’t get pulled down with it. if we get separated in the fall, don’t look back. don’t come back for me. swim for the lifeboats as soon as you can- and live, (name), you have to promise me that you’ll live–”
“goddamnit, whittman, would you shut up for a second and listen to me!?”
the ground tilts into a slanting wall, and it would not have been far-fetched to presume that the propellers once again loomed like guillotines above the sea and below the sky it mirrored. as your eyes begin to adjust to the darkness and the faintest starlight gives you a glimpse of the distress that had overcome his face, you’re almost certain that he, too, could see the outrage that was plaguing yours.
“if i jump, you jump.” you seethe. the tip of your finger jabs into his chest. “we will jump together, and we will stay together.”
his hand catches your wrist, and you feel the anger in his grip as it digs into your pulse. “don’t be a martyr, (name),” vincent snarls. “we don’t have time for this.”
“you think time would mean anything to me once it passes without you?” you spit furiously, though fresh tears were burning rivers through your throat and past your cheeks once again. “what about new york, vincent? the station? your- our dreams?” a choked sound threatens to disrupt your impassioned retaliation. “i’m not about to search for you in every shadow of a city we’ve never lived in!”
“you’re the only reason why!” he says desperately. vincent forces your hand closer to his body, so you had no choice but to flatten it over his chest—right above where his heart continued to beat wildly. his fingers lace through the spaces between yours. “all of it would mean nothing without you. you’re the reason why i even have a dream to lose. hell,” he lets out a watery laugh, before it bleeds into an uncharacteristic sob.
“you are my dream, (name). you are my reason why.”
he knew you were running out of time. he knew it was a fight he would lose. letting you fire back a response wasn’t in the cards of fate, nor was it in his. it just wasn’t.
titanic was already a few degrees shy of ninety by the time you felt him inching you both closer to the edge of the balustrade. it was a dance in the dark—a fragile waltz upon the tightrope that was the railing—strung together in infinitesimal faith with every trembling step he blindly led you through.
“so we’ll jump,” he breathes with finality. “so help me God, we jump.” his nails dig into your skin, a four-crescent etch of promise. “together.”
below you, the ocean spreads its wide behemoth maw, bubbling perilously as it continues to swallow the ship into a watery grave. the thought of it alone was daunting enough, but the fact that the vortex was perceivable only by sound and not sight made it all the more terrifying.
you fumble for the rail, feeling your hand quiver violently as your skin meets iron, and take great care in swinging your leg over the narrow bar.
“careful, now.” there’s a slight, concentrated wobble in vincent’s voice. “i’ve got you. i’m still here.”
almost mockingly, the ship gives another sudden lurch, and you grip his hand even tighter than before.
“it’s okay. shit, it’s okay,” he rambles feverishly, though you aren’t sure if he’s reassuring you or himself. “i won’t let go. you’re fine. keep going.” vincent squeezes back firmly. “but hurry.”
it’s significantly harder to bring your other foot over the railing. your heart hammers painfully against your ribs, increasing in tempo as you inch yourself further to the left, quite literally dancing on the edge of the world.
or what was left of yours, anyway.
you faintly sense vincent all but tumble onto the precipice along with you, hearing the way his chest heaved from the effort. the railing presses coldly into your back, and you feel your stomach drop when you sense the port side twisting the slightest bit forward.
“shit,” you curse under your breath. “oh, shit, shit, shit.”
neither you nor he had to see to know that you now hung off angled toward the ocean. time was ticking, the world was tilting on its axis, and you had to jump now.
“remember what i said?” vincent asks urgently, reaching around your back to lay a hand over your lifebelt’s left shoulder—half with the intention to help you keep it down, but with all the reason to still be able to hold you in the fall.
“yes.” you mirror his actions, crossing your right arm over your chest. you meet his fingers over your shoulder, and he shifts to reposition his hand over yours.
“do not forget to cover your mouth.”
“i could say the same to you,” you say weakly, fingers digging into the canvas.
“good.” vincent tightens his grip. “on my mark.”
impossible thunder roars beneath the ocean, rumbling with a legion of tempests as air collapses within what was left of the broken stern. your fingertips scramble to relearn the grooves in the galvanised rail and commit it to memory one last time; bidding a quiet, heartbroken farewell to the ship of dreams.
“now!”
you let go.
wind howls deafeningly in your ears as the plummet rips you both downward into the darkness. for the shortest, yet longest moment of your life, you were weightless; and the powerful current that gusts with gravity savagely strips the air from your lungs. you don’t hear yourself scream at all, but the pain that seared your throat proved otherwise.
vincent’s fingers claw wildly for your neck as you fall, before all traces of his touch vanish for a bloodcurdling heartbeat. he shouts something, but you barely register it over the vicious sound of the rush.
fear douses your spine as you plunge, untethered, until you feel his body miraculously crash into your back again. he shoots an arm across your sternum and clamps over your right shoulder with renewed strength, snaring you to his chest with more regard for your life than his own.
you struggle against the pull, fighting to force a hand against your mouth. your lungs stagger, you choke, you almost forget how to breathe—
and a thousand knives tear from your ankles to your skull as you slam into the atlantic with a violent crash.
ice shoots up your body, near-paralysing in shock, and a gasp instinctively rips through your lungs from the cold. it snaps your jaw open in a desperate, primal demand for air, one that the ocean was undeniably all too happy to fill. brine floods into your mouth and stings the back of your tongue like lye—frigid and piercing as liquid fire; a cold so intense it burned.
then, almost as swiftly as you plunged into the deep, it hurls you right back out. the cork in your lifebelt nearly forgoes your head, and you struggle to keep it down as the buoyancy sharply forces you to resurface. you sputter out water as the dead, bitter cold sinks its teeth into your skin once again, and you thrash against the invisible current that dared to tow you under.
coughing madly, completely agonised by the ice that burned in your lungs, you heave for air. neither fear nor shadow had ever acquainted themselves with you this much until tonight—and neither bore hands you had ever wanted to shake.
above you, the sky steadily slips the drape that was the titanic’s silhouette off her starlit shoulders. the disrobing of the night was captivating in theory, yet devastating in actuality; for the confines between the atlantic and the styx had begun to surge into a single downward current. the vessel is pulled beneath the water with a haste that paralleled the rape and capture of persephone into the underworld, though some may argue that one’s death was more merciful than the other’s abduction.
she grows drunk on the sea, drowning her hollowed carcass in brine, and filling her rooms with saltwater where she could not carry dreams—dreams that man’s hubris had intended her to carry, for the sake of honour, glory, and renown.
a mighty undead roar rumbles from within the iron cadaver as the bubbling maelstrom that was the titanic’s last breath finally sinks beneath the lifeless tide. and in the briefest, most impossible instant, the unsinkable ship of dreams disappears into the heart of the ocean—with a quiet humility she had never been fated for, and with a thousand five hundred souls she had never been supposed to kill.
it leaves a rattle in your skull and a thunder in your ears, and you feel the distant sound echo through your blood in a hypnotising tempo that fools your pulse into an equivalent cadence.
you don’t know if you should be grateful that you couldn’t tell which direction the ship sank in. orientation had entirely lost its hold on you; left was right and east was west, and you realise too late that it’s not the only thing whose touch your flesh missed. with a growing horror, you realise that the only weight you carried was your own—
and the weight you lacked had no means to stay afloat.
your blood runs cold.
“VINCENT!”
the scream hurts—burns—more than the cold ever could. it tears up the sides of your trachea, trailing fire in its wake, yet is nothing but a needle in a haystack of wails. the placid air seems to have solidified into a tremendous wall of sound that presses upon the surface of the atlantic, petrified by the shrill coalescence of voices crying out for a salvation that would never come.
and oh, how you miss when pain was easier to fathom.
a litany of emotion, sensation, and anguish yank at the veins of your heart, stretching them apart into a forced web of bloodied tapestry, just as the flesh of a lamb torn to shreds by wolves would spill past yellowed canine fangs after the slaughter.
you are entirely alone in the chorus, a discordant note in the paradoxical shrieking harmony, fighting to see even in sightlessness. thrashing in the water, you fight to stay upright, blindly reaching out into the darkness in hopes to feel his skin against your touch. was it foolish? searching for what could not guarantee survival but would have promised life even in death?
perhaps. entirely.
so let it be as it were — thus a fool you’d become, and a fool you’d remain.
blood and screams pounding in your ears, you splash around, kicking and flailing despite the buoyancy wrapped in canvas around your torso. you fling more needles into the hay, crying out into a night that replied with nothing but echoes mocking your desperation.
“oh, God, oh God,” you chant, gasping greedily for breath. “vincent!”
the muscles in your neck strain as you whip your head in every direction, searching without sight. your eyes ache against the darkness, and you thrash to keep upright, carving your fingers into the sea in hopes to latch onto something other than water.
your hand strikes wood—not flesh—and you scramble to dig your nails into it in an attempt to yank the debris closer to yourself. not dense enough to sink, light enough to stay afloat; but too narrow to climb upon.
helpless, you collapse against the flotsam, feeling your cheek burrow into its grooves in a way that was sure to leave marks. you could not find it in yourself to care.
survivors around you had regressed into animals as they fought for breath. their savage struggle for air was inhuman by nature, yet it was the rawest display of humanity you had ever witnessed.
these were all people.
just like you were.
just like vincent was.
is.
tears squeeze out of your eyes, turning to frost before they could slip past your lips. you barely know if you’re even still alive, how much more could you believe he was either?
the darkness answers your ponder in kind.
a hand lurches out of the abyss and clamps heavily around your ankle. panic seizes your throat, wrenching your mouth open in a voiceless scream. the wood pitches downward with a sickening jerk, nearly pulling itself vertical as you pull it down with you. the lifebelt digs into your ribs—taut against your chest, stifling against your stomach.
the weight that came with the intrusive grip was heavy. it almost renders your lifebelt useless as you are dragged down, all the way until your shoulders, and the stranger claws past the skirt and hip of your dress as they try to escape the clutches of the ocean.
but it was a grip you would recognise in every lifetime.
the surface explodes beside you, and a head breaks out of the water with a violent, coughing gasp. the wooden beam falls back against the ocean as the shadow lets out a painful retch, emptying their lungs of seawater. he frantically heaves in air like a man starved—but his first breath was a feeble croak of your name.
you feel your heart somehow stop and revive all at once. “vince?”
the stranger shifts in the water, and the wood dips where he was clutching on to it. “(name)?” he wheezes thickly.
“vince,” you sob in relief, “oh, baby.”
“(name),” he chokes, and God, he sounds so weak. “(name).”
you reach out blindly for him, but he meets you halfway, and you feel the locks of his hair press wetly against the underside of your chin. vincent coughs as he writhes, inching himself closer to you, and his fingernails scratch dully at the back of your lifebelt. he shakily huddles into your chest, right over the sound of your weakening heartbeat.
still, desperately, foolishly—in hope and in agony—he listens. he writes each sequence and impulse into the backs of his eyes and the membrane of his ears and he holds you, holds onto you, with every ounce of strength he had left in his body—the only thing that could still keep him afloat.
you were his only lifeline.
“darling,” your lips move against his hair. “can you–” you give an involuntary hiccup, and vincent presses himself closer to your body. “can you take off your boots?”
“w…what?”
“try… taking them off… if you can.” you loosen your grip just a fraction, but he holds on tighter. “it’ll help you… float easier…”
you feel his hesitation.
“i mean– fuck,” you tremble. “do you… even have enough strength to?”
“if… it’ll help me… stay with you… a little longer.”
his words hang heavy between the two of you. vincent moves, slowly but surely, to untangle his fingers from the straps of your lifebelt. your hand shoots out to clutch the scruff of his collar, making sure he’d still be tethered to you, as he sacrificed seconds of his life to bargain for minutes from death.
vincent takes in a shuddering breath, stoking the ice that burned his throat, and disappears once again into a darkness that swallows him whole. the temporary loss of him envelops you, even though you know he is just inches below the surface. worry festers in you despite yourself.
underwater, he struggles. you feel him thrash desperately as he tries to untie the cords laced through his boots, though his movements are sloppy. sluggish.
he resurfaces barely twenty seconds later.
“i can’t. my fingers– i’m–” vincent sounds completely heartbroken. “i’m sorry.”
“no- no-” you hush him, pulling him close to your body again. “you’re… you’re okay, baby,” you promise, though your breath stutters. “you’re f-fine. i’ve got you.”
you feel him slacken against your chest, and you knew that he, too, was crying.
around you, the wall of wails slowly crumbles into the sea like the city of jericho, fading into a quiet that proved to be more terrifying than the noise.
“tell me… about the house,” you whisper. “the one in… the one in new york.”
“our house?” his voice is muffled.
you breathe out a wet laugh. “yes, my love. o-our house.”
“i’ve–” vincent shivers fiercely as he attempts to inhale, gently untangling from your embrace, then slowly swims toward your scanty piece of driftwood to hold onto it himself. “i’ve already got the deed.”
“y-yeah?” you prompt him.
the wood gives a tiny lurch as he finally drops and rests his head on top of it.
vincent takes a while to respond.
“…and?”
“it’s… it’s in my trunk,” he finally says, before letting out a weak, almost pitiful chuckle. “at the bottom… of the ocean.”
silence stretches for a moment.
nudging the side of your hand against his, you murmur, “t-tell… tell me more.”
“like what?” he asks weakly, quietly.
“the kitchen. the… the garden.” you’re already beginning to feel the cold seep into your bones and ebb at your life. “you told me… it was near…. central park.”
“r–right. it was. it is,” vincent corrects himself. his tremors begin to grow sharper.
“and what… what ab-about it?”
“th’re’s… a big, wide window… in the kitchen,” he breathes, reciting it almost mindlessly off the top of his head. “looks right o-out into the river, so you can watch the ducks as… as you cook. be-because– you… you’d like that. yo-you’d like that, w-wouldn’t y-you… honey?
“i would,” you promise, and your little finger quivers as you try to hook it over his own. “i… d-definitely would.”
he continues. “and a… a big old library. w-with shelves…. an’ ev-everything,” vincent swallows laboriously. “all e-empty, though. ‘c-cause we– we were s’posed to… to fill them up… with books… as time passed. and our children would’ve… ‘d’ve learned how to read… there… ‘cause we’d– we’d teach them how. t-together.”
ice forgoes your heart as it crawls up your muscles, turning your blood into glaciers and your tears into winter rivers. your pulse swells, then it eclipses; imprisoned by frost, and ensnared with grief.
you try not to let him hear the way your voice breaks. “and t-the garden, vinny? tell me about… tell me about the garden.”
anything to keep him conscious.
"flowers... that hang around th-the balcony... lilies, 'c-cause i know those are your f-fav-favourite," he hiccups, then shudders; it was obvious that every word he whispered wracked pain through his body. "and we'll... sit out there... in- in the mornings, ov-over c-coffee."
vincent weakly raises his head with the intention to look at you, but the mind-numbing cold pushes his cheek back against the soaked wood. "you'll call me an idiot... and i'll–" he lets out a heaving cough that sounds like a cross between a sob and a laboured gasp. "i'd tell you that you're beautiful."
it was too dark to see anything. night fell heavy over the waters of the atlantic, and the cries of whoever had still been alive begun to wane into nothingness. your sight failed you—all you could fathom was darkness; but still, you felt him. you’d know his presence in shadow, you’d hear him in silence, and you’d have found him even in places no one else would be found.
the stumbling, fragile flutter of his breath ghosts over your numb fingertips, and vincent’s hand fumbles to lace through the spaces between yours. you lower your head and press a frozen kiss to his knuckles—the bloodless flesh just below where his wedding ring sat.
his next words come out slurred; weak with cold, drunk with sorrow, and heavy with regret. it echoes in your ears and the endless sea, over a still tide that mirrored a moonless sky full of stars you were never meant to name or rewrite.
“i’m sorry i couldn’t get you a better ticket.”