Summary: Tohru receives tickets for the luxury cruise upon the Poseidon for her birthday, along with 9 other people from the Sohma family. Midway through the cruise, the ship is fatally struck by a rogue wave, and is capsized. Now Tohru must find out where everyone else is and escape the bowels of the ship before it slips under the ocean's waves. But not everyone can survive fate. . .

Poseidon
Chapter Nineteen
Endless Ocean

The flare exploded above her head, and shone a bright red, piercing even the sun's rays with light. Tohru held a hand to her forehead, as she loaded the next flare into the gun.
What was there to do now? Tohru sniffled slightly, still reflecting on the past however many hours it was since she'd had to begin escaping the ship.
Why did she have to be the only one left? Why did the Poseidon take so many innocent lives with it?
Questions buzzed around Tohru's mind, as she thought when the last time she had slept was. It must have been about 20-odd hours ago, as she remembered getting up early that morning to go jogging on the deck... Her eyelids were getting heavy now... She also remembered dancing, and begging Kyo to dance with her... She yawned loudly... Oh, and how vividly she could still remember the capsizing... Boy, she felt very tired, as she lay on her side, blanket still over her... She also had a photographic memory of seeing every person she loved around her, dying... All... Dead...

She awoke with a start. Nothing was around her, still the miles of ocean. The only thing that had changed was the sun's position, which hadn't really risen much. Tohru had wished she had worn that beautiful watch Kyo had given her for her birthday the previous year. It was so beautiful, and she cherished it so...

She opened up a bottle of water, and guzzled most of it down in one, and there was a sandwich made up. It didn't look too edible, but Tohru was too hungry to care. She had grabbed all the other blankets from the raft, and created a fort of some kind, which she kept constantly around her, to stop herself freezing. She enjoyed the sandwich, it was slightly stale, but she'd eat anything at the moment. She sat there in contemplation once again for several hours. How long had she been drifting like this now? One, maybe two days?

She began to mutter to herself, just to keep herself sane. She dreamed of being back home in Tokyo, and relaxing by the roaring fire, wrapped in Kyo's arms, Yuki reading a book, and Shigure engrossed in his notes.
How she longed for that back. How she had taken it all for granted.
She then came back to when Kyo had first shown her the tickets for the cruise, and Tohru had blatantly said no.

"It wasn't my fault..." she muttered to herself, her voice slightly croaking "it wasn't my fault. I said no to getting the tickets, yet the forced them onto me! I had said NO! Yet they still made me come on this CRUISE!!! DAMN YOU, OH, MIGHTY POSEIDON!" she bellowed.

She quickly stopped, as she realised she was stood up, arms in the air, shouting to no one. She quickly sat back down and become poised once again. She cleared her throat. In the box, she had found a pack of cards.

"What in the-?" she had thought, as the cards rolled onto the raft's rubbery floor.

She picked them up, and began to play a card game, first it was Pyramid, then Clock, then Solitaire. The hours seemed to fly by. This was the most fun Tohru had had in a long time... Or so it seemed now.

She was shuffling them, when they slipped out of her hands, and flew around the raft. Tohru's hands dropped by her sides, as she began to chuckle. Then suddenly, she burst out laughing wildly.

"The cards!" she guffawed "They flew around the raft!" and she laughed hysterically.

She laughed so hard she began to stamp her feet and hands on the raft. She was beginning to crack. She needed help soon. Otherwise, she'd die out here, that's not what she had promised Kyo, or anyone else, for that matter.
But then again, they'd all said they'd make it out alive, and hadn't.

Tohru slumped in the blankets, as she began to pick up the playing cards. She checked the back of one, each one had the Poseidon on the back, sailing into a sunset; the same as the picture hung above Tohru and Kyo's bed.

The sun had risen over Tohru, and was beginning to slowly settle over the other side, in the West. Night was approaching again, and Tohru was beginning to feel hungry. Her stomach rumbled as she reached for the food supply. She pulled out the last sandwich. She was also down to her last bottle of water.
She needed to conserve these as much as possible now, who knows when she'd be rescued.
So, she took a mouthful of the sandwich, and a swig of the water.

It was then, she knew, she'd be drifting for quite a while in the cold, desolate ocean around her, and she had made peace with that, as she continued to drift into the unknown...

(A/N: Okay, final chapter next, omigod! It's ending!!!! I can't believe it. Anyway, hope you've enjoyed it so far. The next chapter is more of an epilogue than anything, but anyway, enjoy it all the same – it will be updated tomorrow more than likely. Trust me, it'll be longer than this, and wrap up the story – look out for it!)