What can I say? Thanks so much to Emrace-The-Darkness and Keep Me In The Shadows, my two lovely regulars for your reviews, i feel really bad about making such a fuss last time. Happy now, promise. This one's for you guys and, yes, it's a flashback. Thanks to Jared for pointing out to me the very simple paradox in my writing i miraculously missed, any deviation from nothing is a change and thus out of character. My bad.I tried to make hera tad more emotional in this chapter. Hope this pleases you. And lastly to 00 i don't know if you were joking or what but if you actually read the bleeding story before you asked that you'd have realised pretty early on that Dante never at any point mentions marrying Lucia. It's my own flaky character, Madeline, who the proposed wedding plans are with and that seems to have gone south by this chapter anyhow.Try reading it before leaving a review next time. That's all from me, another chapter now, Skaye.

Lucia… the name carried Dante away from the panic-filled serene green room and into memory.

He stood with Lucia in the makeshift firing-range of his home's dark and clammy basement. The two of them had been competing for the past 4 hours to destroy the most targets. So far he was wining by a fair bit and reminded her of it every time she stepped up to take her shot. Target after target fell to his bullets, her knives. They were almost perfectly matched in combat. But not quite, as Dante never got tired of reminding her. They ran out of targets and crossed to the other end of the room once again to stand up more and reclaim her knives. At the far end of the range by the targets, she stopped him suddenly with a hand on his arm. She looked up at him in all sincerity and pressed a knife, flat first, into the palm of his left hand and closed his fingers gently around it. He looked at her quizzically.

"Listen to me for a moment. This knife was once my most treasured possession, Dante. I wish for you to have it."

Dante unfolded his fingers, confused and a little embarrassed by his partner's sudden sobriety. He examined the blade in question. It was almost as long as his hand from finger tip to wrist, smooth well-crafted metal, perfectly balanced for throwing with a small handle for stabbing. It was also razor sharp and deadly. But other than the emblazoned crest of her home on the flat of the blade, nothing particularly special. Lucia kept many knives like this. As he examined it, she laid her hand fondly on it.

"It was my remote link to Matier. If ever I urgently needed her I could use this knife to speak with her. Now Matier is dying, Dante, and it is her wish that I put this knife to better use now. I want you to keep it with you so that when I leave you can always reach me."

Dante wondered silently at her certainty that she would one day leave and also at her solemn but calm acceptance that her beloved mentor and surrogatemother was dying at last. He couldn't speak. She saw this and continued in a more factual tone.

"All you must do is place it in your hand like this then raise it to your head so that you are looking along the blade. You focus solely on thoughts of me and picture speaking to me. Try to hear my voice again. Then just bring the blade down and make a cut across the palm of your left hand. As long as the blood flows over the knife, we will be able to talk no matter where either of us are."

Dante considered this carefully and eventually found words.

"Thank you, Lucia. It's obvious how much this means to you. I'll keep it with me."

They'd stood together in silence among the sharp splinters of wooden targets for a moment while Lucia collected her thoughts and feelings and Dante discretely watched the way her face changed as she held back tears. He berated himself instantly for being such a moron andreset the targets before trudging back up to the firing end of the range ready for the next round of firing but Lucia seemed to have lost interest and walked silently off upstairs. Dante had for one foolish moment felt hurt at her rejection and then after shaking himself thoroughly he resumed fire blasting little wooden targets into smoking splinters.

Back in the green room now, he slipped the hidden knife out of his chest pocket and looked at it again for the first time really since he'd been given it. He ran his finger along the blade too lightly to be cut and thought of her again, standing defiant over him flat on his back after a sparring match gone wrong, her red hair over one shoulder, blue eyes sparkling with laughter or murderous rage (he was never entirely sure which.) He made up his mind quickly and raised the knife to his face thinking, in spite of himself, of a moment in some Shakespeare play he'd caught on TV once. He concentrated on Lucia, warmth spreading through him, and he heard her voice again, 'you can always reach me…'

Time to put that theory to test. Keeping her firmly in mind, Dante brought the knife down and cut a gash across his left hand with it. A painful twinge of sympathy resounded from his still-healing right hand and he felt the blood beginning to seep over the knife. There was a strange lurching feeling like falling, (or was it flying?) and then he heard Lucia's voice clear as a bell inside his head.

"Dante? I hear you. What is the matter?"

He caught his breath with joy. He wasn't doomed.

"Lucia, I don't have long to explain. The matter is life or death. Come to the Islands of Dis in the Mediterranean Sea as fast as possible, I…." He paused, hating himself for saying the words he never thought he'd say to another living being. "I need your help."

He swore he could hear her slight smug smile and then she spoke again growing more indistinct ashis wound closed;

"I'm on my way, hang on Dante."

The blood stopped flowing and suddenly he was back on Planet Earth. Genevieve was looking at him like he was mad and he was sitting on the floor smiling like an idiot with blood quickly clotting around the knife he still clutched in his left hand like a life line. He looked up at Genevieve flipping his hair out of his eyes with a casual tone that suggested they weren't at that moment hiding underground from hordes of homicidal creatures of the night.

"We have back-up on the way. I've called in the cavalry"