Bring Me To Your Stars

Between Dreams

Moody had seen distress flares at sea before...sternlights...masthead lights...all-round lights...but none quite like this.

Reds and blues flashing and circulating, appearing and disappearing again... something about the way they dimmed in and died out unnerved him...He couldn't exactly say why, but they had quite a foreboding effect on him.

His heart raced, but he kept his breathing steady.

Calm and calculating as he gazed into the passenger's side mirror at the police brigade lying in wait behind the Honda.

"This is the P.D.," an amplified man's voice boomed, as if he were God almighty himself. "Put your hands up and get out of the car. Surrender the gun immediately."

Surrender his weapon?

How could he trust such an order when they cornered him like an animal?

He felt for Lowe's Browning 1910 in his coat pocket.

Having no intention of ever using it, but knowing he was none the less safer by keeping it.

James looked away from the fever dream of lights dancing through the passenger side mirror.

Turning his worried gaze again on Millicent, who still hadn't stirred in the driver's seat. Her bonneted head slumping against the shoulder of his own bench.

And after theoretically "dying in a shipwreck", James was amazed to find he'd survived the collision without a scratch.

The Miss, however, had taken the brunt of the hit as her car swerved like an unbroken horse in its chase, smashing into a grove of trees off-road. 

"Millie," James tried again to wake her, his eyes desperately searching her pale face for any signs of life. With only just her subtle shallow breathing giving him a small measure of hope. "Can you hear me, miss?"

And rubbing his icebergs for hands together, breathing warmth into them so he wouldn't shock her with his numbly cold fingers, James gently grazed his fingertips across her brow. Sweeping back her disarrayed hair as his fingers dragged down to the closed lashline of her eye, and slowly rounded into a pause at her cool cheek. Wishing for the warmth of his touch to coax her back to life, as he traced her heartbeat lightly against his fingertips.

The discovery of its fixed slow beating being much to his relief.

Until at long last, the chill of his wintery touch carried her back from the empty dreams of lifelessness. Making her stir against his hand as she unconsciously leaned in closer to the lulling comfort that only seemed to belong to him. Chasing his touch by her heart, rather than her senses, as if an innate longing within her had waited more than a century to find him and would be damned to wait for him any longer.

Millie's lashes slowly fluttered open to him, caught between dreams. 

Feeling strangely and ruefully emptier when his hand slipped away from her cheek, as she awoke to the world again. Missing all at once that fading warmth of a dream her soul was convinced she'd once knew with this man next to her.

Even as she was absolutely sure that she never had until now.

"James?" she whispered, surprised to find that, out of all the absurdities that had hit her today, the Titanic officer from 1912 staring back at her was still more strange than anything. "What happened?"

"Easy now, Miss Millie," he urged her. "You took a right nasty hit, and moving too hastily may worsen any blood gathering in the head. It's brain congestion, I worry for."

"I'm fine," she said, though feebly enough to leave James unconvinced.

Wincing as she pressed her hand against her throbbing head, the Miss appeared entirely confused by the flashing lights parked up the embankment behind them. "Did I really just crash my car?"