SPLASH!

The cold hit Regan like a thunder bolt. Jolting her to her very bones. The murky water of the Danube encompassed her like a frozen blanket - jarring yet comforting - wrapping her in its icy folds and washing the pain and confusion away with the swift and steady current. She sucked back the putrid water into her lungs - gulps at a time - and watched the hole in the ice slip up up and away until she could no longer see it through the hazy flows.

Lucius ran through the street of the city. The screaming winds cutting into his frozen skin. His t-shirt had frozen in places - across his chest and the small of his back - as he zig zagged through the streets and alleyways. Hoping . . . praying even. The pavement was like an ice rink under his feet ... as far as his dazzling black eyes could see ... ice ice ice. It slowed him down ... it was cutting into his reaction time!

*Zut! Zut! Zut! Merde! Merde! Merde! Oh FUCK!!!*

It was cutting into her time.

Regan closed her eyes and sang a comforting little song to herself in her head. The current swept her along at a frightening pace. Faster faster faster . . . her white skin had started to turn blue. Her limbs to ache. Her dress - pale blue like ice - swirled around her thighs as the water pulled her along.

I'll crouch beneath the boat . . . I'll learn to breathe . . . When I fall asleep . . .

Regan tried to fill her mind with blackness. The pain had ebbed away slowly after the first few minutes *how long does it take for a golden child to drown* but there was a lingering sickness in her stomach . . . to be more precise, her lower abdomen. Like it was saying YOU CAN'T FORGET!!! I WON'T LET YOU!! I WON'T LET YOU!!! The cold flowed through her body . . . calming her blood and her thoughts . . . blackness encompassed her fuzzy, disoriented mind and slowly swam through her veins but her pelvis throbbed and ached and flip flopped YOU CAN'T FORGET! I WON'T LET YOU!

She tried to help the cold take away the memories.

Tea parties. The races . . . the soccer riots and the parties and the raves . . . the blood and the guts and the euphoric look on Spike and Mummy's faces when they ripped into some poor sods throat. The good things in life. The good things . . . blood blood blood. Mira's face as Spike drove the last long shaft of steel into her body. Then suddenly the face wasn't Mira, it was Rai'Sis staring back from behind her own eyes. Her face. Suddenly the memories shook free and the thoughts rushed back to her. The steady rhythm of his breath on her temple, his hands on her skin, his eyes, his mouth all prim and proper until he smiled and then suddenly so warm and delicious. His smile his smile his beautiful smile.

I'll crouch beneath the boat . . . I'll learn to swim . . . soon I'll have fins . . .

Regan let out a screaming moan into the murky water. She opened her eyes . . . trying to usher the pictures in her mind away. *GO AWAY GO AWAY GO AWAY OH GOD PLEASE GO AWAY I DON'T WANT YOU ANYMORE PLEASE GO AWAY*

Lucius fell with a thud. His footing had failed him four times in the last ten minutes and he was losing ground with every slip. He climbed back onto his feet and started back towards the river. His wavy black hair hung in thick damp locks, getting in his eyes. Thick icy sleet had started raining down from the heavens. Cutting into his skin like thousands upon thousands of tiny blades. He couldn't think about that now . . . not now not now not now. Her time . . . her time.

*Pourquoi?* was all Lucius could think to himself as he skidded around a corner ... he could see the river *Why?*

Slowing. Slowing.

Regan's mind was beginning to fill with an icy static that could only mean that sleep was near. Her thoughts began to slow,  druggedly, but the memories of the last few weeks would not go away. His thoughts and memories haunted her. His mind still screamed inside her own . . . still still still.

She slowly closed her eyes and let the freezing swirls carry her away. Her head began to nod and bob in the water as unconsciousness slowly engulfed her. Tears mixed with the murky dirty Danube as soon as they left her tired frozen ducts. It was a fitting end. Regan started singing the song to herself again, her brain slowing so the words passed before her eyes a rainbow of fuzzy misty colours.

It was a fitting end.

The ice bit at Lucius' hands as he clawed his way to the water below. His skin was blue, his hair and clothes were soaked and clinging to his tall taught physique as he dug through the ice with his fingernails. He could feel her sadness . . . the despair . . . the self-hatred. Tears started welling up in his black dead eyes as he tore at the thick ice. An animal growl of desperation - his baby his baby was dying his baby was dying - rumbled up from his gut as he jumped to his feet and started kicking furiously at the hole he had started with the heel of his boot.

‘Casser! Goddamn you don't let her die! Bebe ne peut pas mourir! She is NOT going to die! BAIS TOI! CASSER! CASSER!!!'

Suddenly, as if the ice were obeying his words, it broke. The loose chunks were almost immediately swept away by the current and Lucius knew he would only have one chance. He kicked furiously at the edges of the hole, making it big enough for him to climb through.  It gave much more easily now and the hole was soon nearly three feet across.

Suddenly a surge of static exploded in his freezing temples . . . she was close.

She was not going to die.
 

Regan's mind struggled to stay alive as her heart began to succumb to the freezing waters. Her pulse was slowing. Her limbs locking. She couldn't even open her eyes anymore . . . The pain and the cold made everything numb and quiet. Peaceful.
She let the memories come back now . . . she didn't have the strength to force them away anymore . . . filling her sleepy head as the water pulled her along.

That night in his flat . . . the lights turned down low and the wine rushing to their heads. *Sweet caress ... and tenderness ... kiss her breast . . . and then he fell* Dancing toe to toe and cheek to cheek in the wee hours of the morning . . . she had woken him up . . . those ridiculously proper pajamas. The way his face flushed. The way he . . . he . . . it was all a dream . . . just a dream . . . just a horrible wonderful horrible horrible dream . . .

Regan's tired mind drifted in and out of consciousness as the Danube pulled her with it . . . all rivers lead to the sea . . . the self-hated has slowly ebbed away but the violation and the regret still sat in her mind like a stubborn child.

It was a fitting end.

Suddenly a strong hand grabbed her by the collar and jerked her up towards the surface. The water would not let such an illustrious victim go so easily though and it pulled back. Regan barely registered the tug-o-war between the hand and the waters of the Danube . . . her head too heavy her body too cold and her lungs too full of water. With one violent movement the hand yanked Regan's head out of the black water and her body spasmed as her waterlogged lungs instinctually sucked back a desperate breath.

Lucius gathered Regan's blue body out of the water and lay her down on the ice. Her entire frame was blue. Her bright blue eyes had faded to the colour of ice. Her hair hung from her drenched scalp like white sea kelp. Her unmoving face was a mask of pure misery.

She had been underwater for almost half an hour.

Lucius was about to roll Regan onto her stomach and push the water out of her when her body spasmed again and a great stream of water poured past her lips. She never coughed. She never gagged. Her body simply expelled the water from her lungs in a small waterfall - up her throat and over her lips - onto the ice beside her. A moment later she flopped back onto the ice with a thud and didn't move for nearly five minutes.

When she finally did, Regan turned her head to face Lucius. Her face was a mask of pure and utter grief. *Mon Dieu who did this to her* She stared into her beloved friend's dark, dead eyes for a long moment before a her body shuddered and she began to cry. The tears started pouring down her blue cheek, freezing on her wet skin. Lucius lifted her up into his lap - her hair ripping off the ice where it had frozen stiff in places - and pulled her close. Regan sobbed into Lucius' drenched, freezing shoulder as he rocked her back and forth whispering comforting, idiotic words of reassurance.

‘Oh God . . .' was all she could say through her sobs, ‘Oh God.'
 

Regan sat silent in a shadowy corner of the flat, watching Lucius for some sort of reaction. She had just told him everything. Every confusing, horrible detail of the past five weeks. From Mummy's manic phone call from Brazil to seeing Spike off two weeks later to that final biting snipe as she threw him against the wall of the hospital and sped off into the night.
Lucius hadn't moved in over an hour, he just sat across the room - next to the fireplace - very very quiet. He had not asked a single question or made a single comment in the past two and a half hours. He simply sat in his overstuffed leather chair and listened. It was making her nervous.

‘Well . . .' he finally said after an agonizingly long silence, ‘Well . . . . . . .'
‘It's not my fault,' Regan murmured into her chest, waiting for him to explode into a barrage of ear splitting expletives en Francais at any moment. Lucius looked up at her - catching her eye for the first time in hours - and shook his head.
‘No it's not is it?'
‘What?'
Lucius rose to his feet and walked over to his not so little ward, ‘It's not your fault Regan . . . c'est . . . it's not your fault.'
Regan gave him a little smile and took his hand - twenty years and her hands still seemed to tiny compared to his, all long and thin and white - giving it a little squeeze, ‘I try to believe that. I really do . . .but I know that it did what it did because . . . something in me wanted to and that's . . .'
Lucius cut her off mid-sentence, ‘Non. Regan, non.'
The two friends were silent for a long, long moment. Lucius' shoulder length jet black hair slipped from behind his ears and fell in his face as he looked down at Regan's down-turned face. Regan couldn't ever look at him. The shame. The self-loathing. She wished he had let her die. Finally she raised her head just enough to see his eyes through her hair,
‘What do we do now?'
‘What do you mean?'
‘What do we do tell them?' she said, referring to her ever-over-protective parents.
‘Will et Drusilla.'
‘Yeah. What do we do?'
Lucius looked down at Regan, shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head.
‘Je ne sais pas chere.'
‘Me neither.'