OMG, I am very behind at this point! But I don't think it matters as much anymore, not with the sinking over and done with.

Thank you to: Krytical, Lamashtar Two, Chairisse, Xenia van Hausen, gracezilla, Spica-san Dee, Guest, IcarusWing, Guest, thinkingthatifpeoplewererain, Iggy Butt, Guest, Juni, Guest and i Mel-chan i!

Saturday 8th May, 1915

Sheer exhaustion had claimed Alfred the night before; for, when he closed his eyes, all he saw was the Lusitania screaming and pouring smoke as she keeled onto her side and was swallowed. He hadn't been expecting sleep - and, when he woke early on the morning of the 8th, it was with aching joints, a crick in his neck and a dry mouth. He felt as though he hadn't rested at all.

He bathed, scrubbing the the salt from his skin, and took breakfast alone; milky coffee and porridge that he barely tasted. An official brought him the morning's newspapers, all emblazoned with screaming headlines like LUSITANIA TORPEDOED and CUNARD LINER SUNK above photographs of the ship and gory, inaccurate illustrations of the sinking. All hazarded guesses at the number of lives lost, well over a thousand each. Alfred turned them all over so that he wouldn't have to look at them.

He had heard nothing of Arthur. Before bed, exhausted and shaken up as he had been, he had give express instructions to wake him if anything of Arthur was communicated. Alfred's rescue boat had been one of the first to get in, after all, and he'd been whisked off within a matter of minutes by his panicked officials.

His sleep had gone undisturbed, however, and he ate breakfast none the wiser. He hadn't seen Arthur since the botched lowering of the lifeboat; had he even gotten off the Lusitania before she'd gone down?

Blakely came in, standing at the tableside. He was a man in his early forties, dark-haired, with a brisk and official demeanor; Alfred pinpointed his accent as New Hampshire.

"Frost is down at the dock," Blakely said. "He'd like for you to join him, if you will."

Alfred was quiet for a moment, fidgeting with the corner of one of the newspapers. Blakely watched him.

"You really ought to," he went on. "Even for an hour or so."

"I-I will." Alfred rubbed at his forehead and got up. "Is he expecting me now?"

"As soon as you're able." Blakely went for the door again. "I'll have the car brought around."

"Thank you." Alfred looked up at Blakely as he started through the door. "Mr Blakely!"

Blakely looked back.

"Yes?"

"Has... has there been any word of Arthur?" Alfred asked, his heart pounding. "Anything at all?"

"No." Blakely shook his head. "It doesn't seem as though he was picked up by a lifeboat or a rescue vessel."

"O-oh." Alfred hadn't been expecting that; did this truly mean that...?

Had Arthur been dragged down with the Lusitania?

It didn't bear thinking about, that he'd been condemned to an endless loop of drowning and reviving, trapped inside the sunken liner. Alfred put the horrific image out of his head with sheer determination, hurrying to get his coat and meet the car at the front.

The drive through Queenstown was a silent one, Alfred miserably in the back with his forehead pressed to the cool window. The streets were busy, filled with people with tongues aflutter, no doubt, about the previous day's disaster; they were full of billboards, too, flogging newspapers off the back of the tragedy. He spotted a few survivors amongst the crowds, wandering sightless, dazed, like ghosts in the same clothes they had been rescued in. It was as though they couldn't quite believe what had happened.

They pulled up at the dockside to the sound of the waves hitting the shore and the screech of circling seagulls. Wesley Frost, the American Consul, came to the car to meet them, grasping Alfred's hand as he stepped out.

"Mr Jones," he said, shaking forcefully with him, "I'm so glad to see you safe. You got off the ship in a timely manner, I presume?"

"The lifeboat I was in overturned," Alfred replied, "but I was pulled into another not long after she went down."

Frost nodded; his face was grim.

"It's been grave news otherwise, I'm afraid," he said. "We've been pulling bodies out all night. I regret to say that a great number have been identified as Americans."

Alfred nodded; he wasn't surprised, given the chaos.

"How many so far?"

"About five hundred bodies so far; with sixty-one Americans." Frost shook his head despairingly. "I expect there will be plenty more. I've had preliminary survivor lists and there are a lot more passengers to find. We haven't found Vanderbilt yet."

"Who?" Alfred asked dazedly.

"Alfred Vanderbilt," Frost repeated. "Millionaire socialite and sportsman. Nice man, for all his money."

"O-oh. Yes, of course." Alfred shook his head, feeling stupid. "Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt - of New York."

"That's him. We're offering a thousand pound reward for his body."

"You think he's dead?"

Frost looked at him.

"At this point, we're looking for bodies," he said. "Nobody could survive in that water for more than a few hours - besides which, the word is that Vanderbilt couldn't swim."

Alfred looked up at the clear sky, watching a few seagulls dive at each other. He let out a breath.

"Shall I help?" he asked softly.

"If you're up to it." There wasn't much condescension in Frost's voice; he looked at Alfred very sincerely. "I will, of course, understand if you'd rather not."

"No, it's... it's the least I can do." Alfred hitched up his slipping glasses; they didn't sit correctly, not like the ones he'd lost.

Frost nodded.

"Very well." He beckoned. "I hope you've got a strong stomach."

"I've been in many wars, sir," Alfred said pointedly.

"Yes," Frost sighed, "but this isn't our war, is it?"


Alfred had just finished draping the last of the thin, cheaply-manufactured Stars and Stripes over the coffins of confirmed Americans when the trawler pulled in. He straightened, watching Frost greet the Irish crew as they stepped down onto the dock.

"We found seventeen, sir," one of the fishermen said tiredly. "Couldn't tell you what nationality they are, though."

"No, no, that's our job," Frost replied; he looked at Alfred as he approached. "Seventeen more."

"There's another one coming," the fisherman added. "They were still pulling some in when we left."

Frost nodded and stepped aboard, Alfred following - taking a deep breath to brace himself for what he might find. The trawler's captain accompanied them, too, telling them that many of the bodies had likely washed away in southerly tides, for they had been greatly scattered.

Alfred helped Frost and the captain to pull back the tarpaulin, uncovering a neat line of soaked-through bodies: men, women, children, clear by their clothing that they were of all class, all age. Titanic had favoured the rich and the female and the young; Lusitania had spared no-one.

"Recognise anyone?" Frost asked, glancing at Alfred.

Alfred looked over them all quickly, shuddering. Arthur was not among them.

"No, sir," he said quietly.

Frost nodded and crouched down, starting to go through the pockets of the dead man nearest to him. He took out a sodden wallet, pawing through it for some form of identification. Alfred felt rather ill watching him do it.

"Nothing." Frost put the wallet back in the dead man's coat and rifled inside his waistcoat pocket, finding a pocket watch, which he turned over. "No inscription, either." He frowned. "I'd say he's Second Class by the clothing and the wallet, however - and this watch is made in London." He sighed. "I'll just have to mark him down as unidentified for now." He took from his coat pocket a small stack of printed numbers, peeling one loose and placing it on the man's chest; then he made a small note in a notebook and moved on to a drowned woman, the next in the line.

"Ex-excuse me." Alfred stumbled away. "I think I need to sit down."

Frost didn't answer, only waved him away, engrossed in his work.

Alfred clambered shakily down the steps and back onto the dock, breathing heavily. No, he wasn't ready for it; he wasn't ready to watch Wesley Frost deal with the dead like pieces of meat, inanimate things to be numbered and processed as quickly as possible.

Of course, it was the only way to do it, he knew; and he'd dug graves for soldiers in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, unidentified men with nameless markers. It was easier to be distant, to get the job done.

But having watched Lusitania go down in so few minutes, having been in the water surrounded by screaming and thrashing passengers, having listened to the waters grow quiet...

No, he couldn't. Americans or not, he just couldn't.

He desperately wanted Arthur, who had wrapped his arms around him when they'd read of the final death toll inthe newspapers following the Titanic disaster. It hadn't been much comfort, it was true, but at least he'd had him.

He sat on the edge of the dock, legs swinging several feet above the grey water, and dragged nervously on a cigarette, his hand shaking. Further down, the shore was awash with pieces of the Lusitania's wreckage: white wood from shattered lifeboats, bits of rope, broken deck chairs, torn lifebelts.

These were suvivors, having escaped the wreck; clinging to the sand like ghosts.


"Arthur!"

The beach was dark; and the sky, too, and the sea-

Which was strange, he thought, because the Lusitania had sunk in broad daylight.

He had a lifebelt on, tied tightly around his waist, and after a long moment, hearing no answer but the rushing of the waves, he climbed carefully from the dock, lowering himself into the water. The water was so shallow as for him to be able to walk, the lifebelt lifting his feet from the silt.

The water didn't feel cold, though he knew it must be. When he was some way out, he looked back towards the dock to see how far it was, finding that he could no longer see it. He was completely alone in the sea, the black waters stretching out on all sides quite as far as he could see.

"Arthur!" he called again, growing desperate. "Where are you?!"

His feet were no longer touching the bottom; he trod water, the lifebelt doing most of the work. The sea was completely empty, no wreckage, no bodies, no lifeboats, nothing at all.

Far away there was a ripple. He began to paddle towards it, determined; and stopped, recoiling, only when it made itself apparent as the stern of a great ship being vomited back up from the deep. She had the rounded back rail of Titanic and the open decking of Lusitania, bathed in a green light, ghoulish as she calmly remerged, sinking in reverse. The smoke came with her; and the monstrous groaning and creaking of twisting metal, her wails filling the silent sky. First one funnel emerged, then two, then three; and then he could see all four, black spikes against the greenish sky as she hung out of the water at an impossible angle, twisted in the middle as though she might once have been in two pieces, a nightmarish black shape like a hole in the sky-

"Alfred!"

He was shaken roughly, awakening with a start; his skin prickled with a cold sweat and the sheets were twisted around his legs. Blakely and another aide were at his bedside, Blakely with one hand clasped to his shoulder.

"Good god," Blakely said breathlessly, "you were shouting in your sleep. I could hear you all the way down the hall!"

"S-sorry." Alfred sat up, shaking. "I had a nightmare, that's all."

Blakely nodded.

"Can I bring you anything?"

"No, that's..." Alfred swallowed, looking at the sheets. "That's alright. I'm fine."

Blakely took his hand back.

"If you're sure," he said, though he sounded dubious. He straightened up. "I'll head back to bed, then."

"Yeah." Alfred looked at him. "Sorry to have woken you. I'm alright."

"Very well." Blakely nodded to him, ushering the other man to the door. "Goodnight."

He closed the door behind him. Alfred sat perfectly still for a moment, looking at the lock, trying to gather himself together. He was so terrified that he could barely breathe.

Even now, his first instinct was to reach for Arthur - who, of course, was not there. Who knew where he was. There was no trace of him whatsoever, nobody seemed to know a thing, which only made Alfred fall deeper still into despair, certain that he'd been pulled under with the ship.

He didn't know what to do with this thought. It drove him to absolute distraction, made him want to pace up and down until his feet were raw, made him want to throw himself at things, made him want to bang his head against the wall, made him want to clutch and claw at his own skin, grind his teeth, press his hands to his head and scream bloody murder.

He would be glad to live with the nightmares if only Arthur was there, safe and warm in bed, when he woke up.

He leaned against the headboard, clutching at the sheets, twisting them tightly in his fingers. He was strong and they ripped, of course, when he stressed too hard.

His hands would not stop shaking.


Wesley Frost was a real person, the American Consul in Ireland, and was very involved in the bringing in/identification of bodies, particularly Americans. He offered one pound per body and one thousand pounds for Alfred Vanderbilt, who was never found. Vanderbilt, who couldn't swim, was last seen on deck giving his lifebelt to a woman with a baby.

Blakely was not a real person, though. XD

Where is Arthur? It is a mystery. o.O

The next chapter will encompass both the 9th and 10th May; and possibly even the 11th.