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The water was warm as she broke the surface. It lapped around her ears as she fought to keep her head afloat. She couldn’t open her eyes, she didn’t know why; they felt heavy with something untouchable. She blinked until slivers of light clawed their way in. The boat, the street lamps, the London Bridge in a blue, midnight haze in the distance. It all felt too bright, like she had been hungover for weeks.
River water flooded her lungs as she gasped and choked for air, her waterlogged shoes dragging her down like anchors. She needed air if she was going to go back under.
With another wheezing gasp, she plunged back under the water, keeping her eyes open despite the burning sensation that clouded her vision, like needles around her irises. She kicked and pushed, dragging her body against the tide, flailing to force herself deeper. Her lungs screamed, coated in river water, itching for clean air. It felt like her chest was cracking at the edges, threatening to burst with a rage. Still, she pushed deeper, her ears popping and ringing with the pressure.
With the absence of light, she couldn’t see much. As she got deeper, the darker the murkiness became, shrouded in abyss. With a few more kicks she found herself at the corner of the emptiness below her, at the ridge between life and death; the only things she could see were pale fingers reaching out from the darkness, floating endlessly and reaching for nothing. She barely held in a poorly timed gasp before kicking deeper, her movements jagged and untimed, weakening without air to carry her. She pushed through the seething pain in her chest, blossoming rapidly into her throat, clouding her thoughts, only to reach for the empty fingers and hold. Index across index, ring across ring, their hands intertwined like spring ivy before she pulled with all of the strength she had left; it wasn’t much, but it was enough.
From nothing to something, from dark to light, both bodies moved in tandem, floating to the surface with the flow of the tide around them. Just as suffocation blackened the corners of her vision, Eve Polastri broke the surface once more. With a heady gasp, she screamed.
“Please! Please somebody! Somebody please help us!” Knives dragged inside of her throat, cutting and severing every last tendon she had left. She couldn’t scream anymore, all she could hope was that someone had heard her the first time. Until then, she treaded.
She kicked her legs and desperately hoped they would be able to hold the weight of two bodies, weightless in the water but heavy in their bones, with one of them entirely unconscious and unaware.
“Please, no no no God please stay with me, stay with me Villanelle,” Eve croaked, her hoarse voice coming out as more of a whisper than a desperate plea. She struggled to keep Villanelle’s head above the water but did so nevertheless. She had always wondered about those mothers who could lift cars off of their crushed children, or dogs who could run back into the fire for their smothering owners. She imagined it would feel a lot like this.
All of the burning, the aching, all of it was gone. It vanished as soon as a blonde halo broke through the waves, head lolling backwards with the motion. Eve felt nothing, her body was numb, a vessel of adrenaline that kept her legs in time. A perfect percussionist, a fine tuned instrument her body had become through continuous practice. Little did she know then how useful it would become.
The sound of a sliding door rushed over her head, echoing in delayed space. Footsteps ran across hardwood, muffled chatter floated into the air. Eve looked up, only to be met with a dozen pairs of eyes staring at the two of them. Though it felt like forever in that moment, the partygoers moved quickly. The men shuffled from the boat deck, removing their ties and suede jackets before jumping overboard in a rocking splash of bodies. Hands pulled at Eve and Villanelle, rushing them to the emergency ladder towards the bow of the ship, keeping Villanelle’s head above water while giving Eve’s leg a much deserved break.
When Eve’s hands touched the metal, she jumped back into action. With a bent leg, she leaned onto the ladder’s steps with one hand on the railing, beckoning above her with the other for a life preserver. Without having to speak, a flustered woman just above the ladder seemed to have read her mind. The woman’s head disappeared, only to return with a large white and red ring, faded yellow rope tied around the circumference. Eve barely nodded a thank you before sending it down behind her. A man with a shirt collar popped by the waves took the lead, wrapping an arm inside the ring while holding Villanelle with the other.
With wary trust, something rarely afforded when it came to the blonde, Eve climbed up the ladder with shaking legs, practically rolling onto the boat deck. Her clothes sopped and slapped against the wood beneath her. She crawled to her knees and dragged herself back to the ladder’s edge to look down, holding out a hand. Within seconds, another hand appeared on either side of her, two strangers reaching down with open palms.
The men paddling in the water lifted Villanelle’s limp body in a hoist, pushing her up towards the offering arms above them. When Eve’s fingers reached around her lover once again, a fire burned and blazed within her, drying her skin and bringing heat to her cheeks. She immediately pulled Villanelle upwards, dragging her body over the edge of the boat.
Eve pushed Villanelle onto her back and opened her mouth. Wasting no time, she threw a leg over Villanelle’s abdomen and positioned herself on top of the unconscious girl beneath her. She crossed her hands and interlocked her fingers together before pressing down onto Villanelle’s chest. One, two, twenty beats, she counted each one in her head before pulling a hand up to Villanelle’s nose. She pinched and leaned down, connecting their mouths before breathing a gust of air into Villanelle’s open mouth. She sat back, resuming the pressure on her lover’s chest, tears brimming at the corners of her eyelids.
“Come on, come on, come on Villanelle wake up. Fuck, wake up please.”
Another breath, another rhythm, no result. Tears began to openly flood down her cheeks, mixing with the chilling air and the drying river remains. Her skin trembled and blossomed with goosebumps in the midnight air. The palms of her hands were coated in the girl’s caking blood. People that had once flooded around them had migrated inside, calling every emergency number they knew. The chatter had died, the questions had stopped. The deck had emptied. Now, it was just the two of them once again.
She was about to give up. Her body screamed at her to call it, her legs cramped against Villanelle’s sides. Yet she refused, sending the girl beneath her one last breath.
A sputtering cough shot Eve backwards, scrambling to get off of the blonde.
Water pooled out of the corners of Villanelle’s gaping mouth, every breath sending more water out from her lungs. Her eyes remained closed, squeezed in what Eve assumed to be pain.
“There you go, just breathe,” Eve murmured, quickly positioning herself behind her lover and rolling her onto her side, stroking up and down her spine to aid the exit of the remaining water.
With a few more coughs and a groan of discomfort, Villanelle’s body finally relaxed, tension vanishing from her muscles. Eve felt her sink further into her arms, her body nearly thrumming against her palms.
Eve wiped the wet strands of hair from her face, pushing them back behind her ear as she cradled the girl’s cold face in her hands. Villanelle relaxed her eyelids, smoothing the wrinkles from her forehead as she felt Eve’s knee, sturdy and warm, beneath her head.
“Hey, hey, stay awake for me, okay? The ambulance is on its way, just keep your eyes open for me baby,” Eve pleaded, rubbing her thumb across the swell of Villanelle’s right cheek.
Mossy eyes fluttered open, the whites swathed in the red of broken vessels. As much as it clearly pained her to do so, she managed a slight smile in Eve’s embrace. She hummed as she felt her body being held so closely.
“I told you to save yourself,” she croaked, her throat dry and aching. Eve smiled sadly at her before leaning down to place a warm kiss against the girl’s forehead.
“Don’t you know me better than that by now?” Eve chuckled, resting her nose against the crown of Villanelle’s head, placing the odd kiss against her hairline through a trembling smile.
“You’re so stupid, Eve.” Villanelle breathed a laugh, raw and whispered against the pain in her chest. Eve could only laugh, hugging her closer to her chest.
“Don’t be a dick,” she replied, grinning from ear to ear despite the tears rolling down her cheeks, further wetting Villanelle’s hair. She felt the girl in her arms roll closer to her heart, breathing in and out in a slow rhythm, seemingly inhaling the scent of Eve; the scent of home .
Sirens wailed behind them. Eve rocked her lover back and forth as they waited.