Caged

Twenty Three - Sarah

Not edited.

Thanks for reading, and for sticking with me this far! :-D
(And I can't believe I only updated yesterday... !)

---

Dead.

I can only stare.

Dead.

What... How... Why? Why? Why did she have to die? How did she get in the river in the first place?

Dead.

Of all the things I had imagined, this was possibly the worst. I had imagined her injured, sick, recaptured... Dying, yes. But I hadn't believed - hadn't let myself truly believe - that she was dead. She couldn't be dead. She was Myra. But there she was, in front of me.

Dead.

I didn't even know her that well. How did her... Her... Her death effect me so much? Why do I suddenly feel so, so angry? So sad? So horrified?

Dead. Dead, dead, dead. The word echoes around my head. People die all the time, animals die all the time - God knows, as a vet, I knew that. I have put animals to sleep myself, animals too tortured, too injured, to suffer life any more. I had known this might happen. But I never really knew.

Why does it hurt so much? Why can't I do anything but stand here, next to her, staring at her body, my eyes blurry with tears that will not come.

She couldn't be dead. Even if the proof was right next to me, she couldn't be dead, she just couldn't. Because she was Myra, and she had endured so much, because she loved the pups in the zoo so fiercely that their survival meant ,pre to her than her own. Because she was a werewolf and had such an amazing wolf and an amazing personality. Because she was my friend and she couldn't be gone, because she had a werewolf and advanced healing powers and-

I froze. Advanced healing powers. She shook off a cold in less than a day. Her throat healed itself in twenty minutes. She was strong, so, so strong, and I had an idea. A reckless, stupid, amazing idea.

I lean over. Blood is still gushing from the side of her head - an awful, red stain, like her life is draining away in front of me, yet... Blood is still flowing.

I don't know how long she has been lying here for, but it cannot be long. Not if the blood is still flowing. 

I reach out a tentative finger. Her skin is cold, ice-cold, death-cold, and wet. Yet the water is freezing, and her blood is still flowing. I rub her skin, some flicker at the back of my mind dragging up the first aid course I took a year ago. Warmth. I have to get her warm.

Then I slow down. What's the point? Even with a werewolf's healing, death is final.

That is...

If she's dead.

And slowly, so damn slowly, I trail my hand down that too-wet, too-cold arm, and reach her wrist.

Nothing.

I press harder, my eyes glittering with silver tears and dying hope. 

Was that...

A weak throb? A last effort to keep her alive? A flicker of life in a hopeless situation?

I press a hand to the wound on her head, because it is still bleeding, still staining her head and the cold, hard ground and now my hands, too. It is still bleeding, because her heart still beats. And she is still alive.

Now the tears really are coming, hard and fast, and sobs wrack my chest, but I fight them, wiping them away with one bloody hand. Her blood is smeared on my hands, my body, my face, but I don't care because she is alive. Alive.