Dear Fate

They raced around the corner and down the side of the ship several feet. Holly saw a crowd of people surge forward quickly and Tommy pulled her towards them. They pushed their way through the crowd and came to a low rising wall. Tommy helped over it before he and Fabrizio jumped over it themselves.

They saw several officers and stewards trying to get one of the collapsible boats down with oars underneath it, though they weren't being very successful about it. Finally, the oars supporting it broke and it fell to the deck, very luckily on its bottom, facing up.

One of the officers, Murdoch if she wasn't mistaken, started shouting orders to get it hooked into the davets so it could be lowered into the ocean, though by the look of things it wouldn't need to be as the ocean was steadily rising closer and closer to the top edge of the ship.

A crowd of people were trying to get closer to the boat, pushing everyone at the front closer and closer.

"Stop pushing!" Officer Murdoch shouted, trying to get all the people under control as the other members of the crew worked quickly to get the boat hooked in.

Finally Murdoch pulled out his gun and pointed it at the crowd, repeating his same warning from before.

"Give us a chance to live you limey bastard!" Tommy shouted at him, pulling Holly slightly behind him and away from the gun.

"I'll shoot any man who tries to get past me! Get back!" Murdoch shouted frantically, panic filling his eyes.

Holly felt someone push past her and was shocked to turn and find Mr. Hockley, hair and clothes disheveled and looking quite worn out.

"Get back!" Murdoch shouted at him as he tried to come closer to the boat.

"We had a deal, damn you," Mr. Hockley said, still trying to push his way forward.

Murdoch reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a wad of bills, throwing them in Mr. Hockley's face, "Your money can't save you anymore than it can save me. Now get back!"

He pushed Mr. Hockley back, who went stumbling into Holly. She held her hands up against his back to try and balance him so he wouldn't knock the two of them over. With Mr. Hockley and Tommy in front of her, she could no longer see what was going on in front of them.

A man jumped forward and tried to jump in front of the crowd and Holly was shocked to hear a gunshot ring out. Mr. Hockley backed into her once more and before she knew what was happening, another gunshot rang out. Suddenly she was on the ground, having been knocked down by Tommy falling to the floor. At first she thought he'd just been surprised and tripped, but when she saw Fabrizio kneel down beside him and start screaming at Officer Murdoch did she feel a wet sensation underneath her leg, though a rather warm one instead of the freezing one of the water.

She looked down and saw a bright red staining the skirt of her dress. Looking forward, she saw Fabrizio cradling Tommy's head and screaming profanities at Officer Murdoch. She crawled forward and saw a bright red stain standing out against the pure white of Tommy's lifebelt. When she looked at his face, she was terrified to see the same bright red coming from his mouth.

"No," she whispered, reaching forward and touching the red spot on the lifebelt.

She barely registered the sound of a third shot going off, and only when she heard a shout of "Will! No!" and the sound of a splash did she look up. Officer Murdoch was nowhere to be seen and by the looks of the crewman looking over the side of the boat Holly could only assume that he'd taken his own life.

Holly looked over at Fabrizio, panic in her eyes. She didn't know what to do now that Tommy was gone. He seemed to be the leading force, and now she felt lost. Fabrizio held Tommy for a minute longer before he started pulling off his life belt.

"Stand up," he commanded once he had it off.

Holly immediately did as was told and Fabrizio began putting the life belt on her, tying it securely and making sure it was tight and wouldn't fall off. The water surged faster around them and in seconds was up to their knees.

"Get in that boat," Fabrizio instructed as he finished securing her in the lifebelt.

Holly did as she was told and climbed inside the boat, ending up sitting beside Mr. Caledon Hockley himself. Holly was extremely confused to see a crying little girl in his arms. She couldn't think on it for long, however, as so much was going on around her.

"Cut these lines!" One of the crewmen was shouting, talking about the boat she was in.

The water was coming up to fast and the boat needed to be cut away or it would sink with the ship. Fabrizio went to work cutting on one of the lines while several other men cut some of the others. The water was rising quickly and it looked to Holly as if they wouldn't cut it on time. In a matter of seconds, the boat was being overturned by the surging water. Holly saw Mr. Hockley hand the little girl to another woman as he stood up on the side of the over turning boat, careful not to get himself wet. Holly scrambled to the other side of the boat and tried to do the same, climbing up on top of what would have been the officers' quarters. She lost sight of Fabrizio and suddenly felt very lost, being on her own for the first time since the ship started sinking.

She ran over to the other side of the building and peered over the edge, seeing one of the collapsible life boats upside down in the water, a few men and women on top of it and several more scrambling to get up there as well. The water was rising steadily higher and Holly had no idea what to do. All the other boats were gone and the one she was just in was floating away, the bottom of it filled with water and just barely afloat. She decided her best chance was to try and get over to the one that was overturned and get on the top of it with some of the other people.

She looked down over the side of the small building to see that the water was only a few feet from the top, and would soon be at her feet in seconds. She made the plunge into the water and let a shriek of pain filled surprise escape. She had known the water would be cold, but feeling it all over her body was a whole different kind of pain than she'd been expecting.

For the first few seconds she could hardly move, her body in too intense of a pain to respond to anything her brain was telling her to do. When she'd adjusted, or at least become numb to the pain, she began to slowly make her way over to the small boat. Holly heard a loud groaning behind her and turned to see one of the four smoke stacks on top of the ship falling towards the water. She could see people in the water trying desperately to get out of the path of the giant metal cylinder, but before they could move even feet, it crashed to the water on top of them, surely killing them all instantly. The wave from the impact sent Holly pitching forward, towards the overturned lifeboat as luck would have it.

The boat surged forward as well, away from the sinking ship. Many people had been taken out by the smoke stack, so the number of people scrambling towards the small life boat had diminished significantly. Holly made her way over to the upturned boat. There were several men on top of it, including an officer of the Titanic, though one Holly was unfamiliar with. She was suddenly at the boat, though in the big black overcoat James had given her, and with it being soaking wet, she could not pull herself up.

"Here," a voice said, a hand coming out in front of her.

Holly grasped the hand and the arm attached and they worked together to get her on the underbelly of the boat. She looked over at the person who had helped her and saw a young man, probably in his early twenties at the most.

"Thank you," she replied breathlessly, sitting back slightly.

He nodded and looked back at Titanic. Holly looked as well and saw that they were quite a ways away from it, the wave from the previously collapsing smoke stack pushing them out quite a bit. She looked out around them at the water and surprisingly there weren't that many people around them, most of them being closer to the sinking ship and not realizing the lifeboat was there.

There were several people actually sitting on the boat, including herself, the officer she had seen before, and the boy who had helped her up. Many more were clinging to the bottom of the boat, trying desperately to stay afloat. The people on top of the boat turned back and watched at the horror before them as the Titanic slowly slid into the Atlantic Ocean.

Holly closed her eyes and covered her ears, trying frantically to drown out the sounds of people screaming. She could not block out the great cracking sound that came next, however. She opened her eyes slowly and watched as the Titanic slowly broke in two, the stern falling back into the ocean for several seconds before the sinking bow pulled it upright again.

It did not take long for the second half of the ship to succumb to the ocean. In scarcely five minutes, the stern plunged all the way into the ocean and Titanic was no more.