Endless Diamond Sky

Summary: In the fall of 2010, Rose DeWitt Bukater is due to make her grand entrance into New York society. Jack Dawson is struggling to make ends meet by selling sketches in Central Park. The two were never supposed to meet, but anything can happen in New York City. When worlds collide, can Jack and Rose find a way to make it count?

Chapter One

The Penthouse Suite,

#400 East 67th Street

Rose peered out her window onto a gorgeous view of Central Park, just like she did every morning. There were always children running around and chasing after each other, people walking their dogs, teenagers playing football, older couples walking hand in hand... just regular, every day people. How she longed to be one of them, but just the view of the city from 17 storeys above the ground reminded her that she could never be the same as them.

On a Saturday morning, most of the people in Manhattan were out at the museums, or hanging around Central Park or Times Square. Not Rose. Rose was getting ready to go to her weekly cotillion lessons, which she had attended since she was eleven, all to prepare her for her grand introduction to society in a week's time. Ever since she was a baby, Rose's mother had dreamed of her daughter's first debutante season. Rose herself had been dreading it since she knew what it was.

Turning away from the window with a heavy sigh, Rose sat down in front of her vanity mirror and started to put on her make-up. She'd never really liked the stuff at all- it felt like icing smeared all over her face- but at the insistence of her mother, she'd worn it every day since the seventh grade. Now that she was seventeen, she probably would have worn a little bit of mascara and concealer, but it wasn't really something she'd ever had the chance to even consider. Every day she wore foundation, blush, mascara, lip gloss, eyeliner, and, worst of all, pink eye shadow. She didn't really understand why it had to be pink, but that was what her mother insisted upon, so that was what she did.

Five years of practice at anything was enough to make you almost an expert, and it took Rose less than three minutes to do the entire shebang. Gazing at her reflection in the mirror, she was confused and hurt by what she saw. A beautiful face, no doubt, but it was trapped behind the facade of a nigh society debutante. That wasn't what Rose wanted to be. Her long, flowing red curls were pulled off her face by a thin hairband with a huge silver flower on it. It was really a horribly tacky, ugly thing. Rose was truly very fond of her hair. In fact, she thought it was her best feature. She just wished she could let it down and feel the wind flowing through it. She'd never felt that before.

Rose got up from her chair just as her mother burst into her room.

"Darling, please tell me you're ready to go. Your lesson is in a half an hour and you never know how traffic's going to be."

"Don't worry, Mother," Rose said serenely. "I'm ready."

For some reason unbeknownst to Rose, her mother refused to ever take the subway. It was something about germs and common city folk, but taking a taxi everywhere seemed like the hugest waste of time imaginable. Then again, her mother was never really one for sensibility. Ruth DeWitt Bukater enjoyed doing anything to prove that she and her daughter weren't like everyone else in New York City.

"Now, Rose," her mother began to say as they stepped into the elevator that would take them down to the lobby. Rose dreaded hearing those words, because they were always followed by some sort of lecture. "I understand that you don't know why I am still making you attend cotillion lessons, considering how you feel you know everything there is to know about etiquette. However, I'm sure I've told you countless times about Mr Caledon Hockley and how he has expressed interested in marrying you."

Rose rolled her eyes at the fact that her mother never spoke like a normal person, for one, and also at the mention of Mr Hockley. Having grown up in the world of elite society, Rose had thought she understood its ways and that there were no surprises left. Apparently, though, someone had neglected to tell her that arranged marriages were not just a thing of the past. It appeared that now she was facing one herself, and to and man she'd only met twice in her life.

Ruth continued her lecture as she and her daughter stepped out of the elevator. "I have arranged a meeting for the three of us over dinner in three days time. Although I myself am confident that you have learned all you can from years of cotillion lessons, I ensure you that no man will be impressed with a seventeen-year-old girl who does not attend them. So I would like you to please not pout and carry on whenever it's time to go, alright, darling?"

To be honest, Rose wasn't quite sure what her mother was talking about. Sure, this morning she'd moaned a bit about getting out of bed, because the covers were just so warm and seven in the morning was so early for a Saturday. So yes, she had muttered something incoherent and taken perhaps two minutes to stretch before getting out of bed, but it was hardly what she'd call pouting.

She wanted to say all of that to her mother and more, but she didn't. She never had and she probably never would. She wanted to say that she didn't want to marry Cal Hockley; that she hated cotillion lessons and make-up and ballroom dancing and dresses; that she wanted to go to university or maybe run away to California to become an actress. The last thing she wanted to do was get married as soon as she graduated and spend the rest of her life making babies that she would raise in the same lifestyle she'd been brought up in, in a penthouse suite in Manhattan... but she didn't.

"Okay, Mother."

That was all she could think say. Her mother really didn't care what Rose wanted- she just wanted Rose to redeem her family's honour after her father had thrown it all away to drinking and gambling. In the end, it had been the drinking that killed him...

Rose didn't like to think about that. She and her mother were outside now, waiting for a cab. The September air wasn't quite cold yet, but a slight chill crawled up Rose's legs because her mother believed that only skirts were appropriate to be worn to cotillion lessons. While it was true that the other girls rarely wore pants, Rose didn't really care what the other girls wore. Wasn't she her own person, after all?

As she and Ruth climbed into the open door of a yellow taxi, Rose was truly disgusted with herself. She was seventeen years old; not a baby. Not a helpless little toddling thing that had to follow her mother everywhere she went if she had any hope of survival. No; she was a strong and independent woman with a personality as fiery as her hair. Or at least that was how she saw herself inside her head. But now, as she sat in the back of a stupid cab on the way to stupid manner lessons so that she could marry stupid Cal, that was exactly how she felt- stupid.

Okay, so I know this is really short, but they will get longer, I PROMISE. :D