Flower of the Apocalypse: Grindhouse (Planet Terror) Fic
Author: Bitterfig
Title: Flower of the Apocalypse
Fandom: Grindhouse (Planet Terror)
Pairing: Dr. Dakota Block/Cherry Darling (Dakota/Tammy past)
Summary: Before she can build the world a new, Dr. Dakota Block has to come to terms with her past. A sort of fairy tale.
Beta Reader: Nzomniac
Word Count: 2671
Rating: R
Warnings: Shoujo-ai, violence, gore, language.
Author’s Note: When I set out to write Dakota/Cherry femslash, I hoped to produce something quite porn-y. This turned out rather differently than I expected… This story is being used for
100_women prompt #096: Memories. (click here to see my 100_women progress chart).
Flower of the Apocalypse
In Mexico we had a few days peace before things got ugly all over again.
The problem wasn’t zombies--it was ordinary people. Panic spread faster than the infection, and there was general apocalyptic chaos-looting, riots, rape, whole cities going up in flames.
People seem to be really good at fucking things up.
All through the chaos, I stood beside Cherry Darling, keeping watch over our ragtag gang of survivors.
“Look at them out there,” I said to her. “They don’t even need to wait for the zombies to go to pieces. They’re just like my son, Tony. I gave him a gun to protect himself with, and he ended up shooting himself in the face.”
When I said that, tears welled up in her eyes; her face showed that her heart was breaking for me.
I turned away from her, refused her compassion. Yeah, we’d both lost everything, but we couldn’t look back. We had to be strong now. We had to be brave.
We couldn’t afford to fuck up anymore.
*****
“Sneaking around like this is ripping you apart, Doc,” Tammy said. We were standing in the lobby of a Motel 6 off the interstate. I’d just finished chewing out the desk clerk for using the wrong credit card.
I was too wound up to listen. “That idiot,” I fumed. “I specifically told him not to use the card number on file anymore. Bill’s been checking my statements. If I hadn’t caught it, he would have seen the room charge.”
“Doc…”
“Asshole,” I raged. “Stupid fucker.” Tammy turned me in the direction of the mirror covering the lobby wall.
“Look at yourself,” she said. I looked. She was plush and sexy as ever, and beside her I was a witch, tense and brittle. My hands were clenched like claws. “Look at your face; it’s like a mask about to crack. Those women who have bubonic plague injections smile easier than you. You’re lashing out at everyone but the one you’re really mad at.”
The one I was really mad at was Bill. Or maybe it was me. I was the one who’d married him (the rat fuck son of a whore). I was the one who stayed with him. It wasn’t a matter of not loving him, I pretty much hated his guts, but there were other things to take into account.
“I can’t just leave him, Tammy,” I told her. “We have got a medical practice together, a house, a son…”
“You know that’s bullshit,” she said. She was right.
“He’ll come after us. We’ll never get away from him.”
“I’m not afraid of him,” Tammy said.
“I am.”
*****
The zombies followed the riots quickly enough. We managed to salvage a few who, like us, seemed immune to the whatever it was that changed humans into zombies.
Before he got his brains blown out, Abby (the guy who created this madness) said that we were the antidote--those of us who had been exposed to DC2 but had not transformed into zombies. With this in mind, I set up in what was left of an abandoned hospital and started searching for a common denominator among those of us who hadn’t been infected.
I’d been a hick town anesthesiologist, not a bio-chemist, but I knew enough to do some basic tests. I was hoping to get lucky, stumble on some magic solution. Maybe you didn’t turn into a zombie if you had type AB blood or if you’d had chicken pox as a kid. Maybe you were immune if you could roll your tongue or were left-handed or smoked. That was what I was looking for, some shared trait that might be the basis for an antidote.
I didn’t make a hell of a lot of progress and basically I hated the work, the futility of it, and the isolation. I hated being in the lab, breathing hospital air. It made me think that Bill could walk in at any second.
Where I really wanted to be was with Cherry Darling.
Cherry was out every day, trying to round up anyone who was still human. Since the roads were impassable, she rode out on a horse. I’d see her through the window of my makeshift lab, galloping down the beach like a creature from a fairy tale, a dark haired woman on a white horse going out to gather up the left behind and lead them home.
I could imagine riding with her, like I had on that motorcycle in Texas. I felt myself on the horse’s back, arms around Cherry’s waist, flying over the sand….
Then I banished my dreams and got back to work.
It had to be done, didn’t it? Someone had to try and find an antidote. Who was better qualified? Who else deserved as much as I did to be saddled with this task?
Cherry might be the flower of the apocalypse, a warrior angel on a white horse, but I was the witch locked up in the tower doing penance for the mistakes I’d made.
*****
Tammy met me at the park while Tony was at little League, just like I’d asked. She’d come straight from work, still in her paint splattered coveralls. They were unzipped just enough that I could just glimpse the fullness of her breasts. So beautiful, I knew I couldn’t look at her. If I looked at her, I’d never be able to say what I had to say.
“I can’t see you any more,” I told her. “I mean, I don’t want to see you any more.” When I started talking, all I could hear was Bill’s voice. Everything Bill had shouted in my face the night before started coming out of my mouth. “I’m a married woman, okay? I’ve got a husband and a kid and a good life. I’m a doctor; people respect me. I have some standing in this community. I’m not throwing all that away for some dyke who doesn’t even have a high school diploma.”
I wanted to make her feel as bad as he’d made me feel, but Tammy saw right through me like she always did.
“Looks like Dr. Block finally found out about you and me,” she said.
“It’s over, okay.” My voice was shrill. I felt like I was teetering on the edge, about to fall.
“Then it’s over,” Tammy said. “If that’s what you really want.”
That was when I broke down crying.
*****
We’d been in Mexico about two months, and the zombies were getting snappish, drawing in around our camp, trying to ambush anyone who came or went.
From my laboratory I would hear gunfire. Sometimes I would hear screams. We lost a few, even that few were too many. Our numbers had grown from Cherry’s diligent search and rescue, but the zombies’ ranks were growing even faster, hundreds and thousands more every day. We’d been out of contact for a long time, the phones were dead, the television screen static, the internet disconnected. It seemed like a real possibility that all the rest of the world might be zombies by now.
Cherry came to see me.
I could hear her coming, the clattering step of her machine gun leg followed by the light fall of her foot.
“What’s up, Doc?” she greeted me. From her it sounded sultry. She’d fallen naturally into calling me Doc, just like Tammy had.
“How are things going out there?” I asked. She must have picked up on how much I wanted to be out there instead of in here.
“You should come out and see for yourself. It’s rough, and it’s going to get rougher, but I know you can take it.”
“I’d love to take it, Cherry pie, but somebody has to try to cure this plague,” I said. Try to cure this plague. Not cure this plague. I didn’t believe I could find an antidote; just that I was bound to try the way Sisyphus was compelled to push his rock uphill.
“How much have you found out, about the plague or whatever it is?” she asked. She seemed a little tentative. Cherry Darling, tentative … who’d have thought it?
“Not a hell of a lot. Was there something you needed to know?”
“I need to know what would happen to a baby… if they’d be … could they be infected when they were born… even before they were born…” She was stumbling over the words, speaking fast. I rested my hand on her shoulder. She took a breath and started again. “I’m pregnant,” she said. “Wray and I, the last time we were together… I’m going to have a baby. I need to know if my baby will be infected.”
As a woman, as a mother, I knew exactly what to say. “Holy fucking shit… I mean…”
Cherry smiled. “You mean holy fucking shit, Doc. I’ve said it a couple times myself. I mean, circumstances aren’t exactly ideal what with daddy dead and an army of zombies closing in.”
“But you want this kid, don’t you?”
“More than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. Is she … he … going to be infected? Is there any way to tell?”
“I think your baby’s going to be okay, Cherry,” I told her. At least I’d learned that much from my research. “I haven’t figured out anything really useful, but all the data I do have and everything I’ve seen indicates that whatever immunity exists to this thing is genetic. Sheriff Hague and his brother were both immune, my son was, and my father. Neither of those psychotic little bitches… I mean the lovely Avellan twins, have turned into a zombie, and I know you’ve found a couple families, parents and children. You and Wray were both immune. Your child will be, too.”
Cherry slumped down onto a chair and covered her face.
“Thank you,” she sobbed. “Thank you. I’ve been so scared, dreaming every night it turned to a monster inside me … giving birth and then watching my baby change into one of them. ”
You shouldn’t see her like this. Don’t see her like this, look away. A voice inside my head insisted, the same voice I’d heard the night of the riots when I turned away from her. The same voice that told me I needed to stay in the lab, save the world to atone for all the mistakes I’d made. Whose voice was it anyway? Not mine. I wanted to comfort her, reassure her, to be as open for Cherry as she would have been for me. Maybe it was my father-not the man who saved my life, but the one I married Bill to get away from, the one who’d shut me out for years. Maybe it was Bill, but weren’t they both gone now? It was a new world; Cherry and I were the ones who had to make the rules about what was strength and what was weakness.
I put my arms around her.
“You must think I’m pretty pathetic,” she said, smiling tightly through her tears.
“I think worrying about your child is a tremendous burden for anybody, honey,” I said. “Especially when you’ve also made yourself pretty much responsible for salvaging what’s left of the human race. How long have you been carrying this all by yourself?”
“I’ve known since Wray died,” she said. “He told me that night, but I didn’t want to say anything till I knew for sure I was pregnant, then I didn’t want to say anything because I was afraid of what you’d tell me.” She clenched her fists, clenched her teeth not to cry. “I don’t know how I’m going to do this, Doc. I don’t know how to be a mother any more than I know how to be a leader. Wray believed in me; I don’t want to let him down. I don’t want to let down this kid or any of these people who look at me like I’m the Statue of Liberty with a machine gun leg instead of a torch, but I’ve screwed up everything I’ve ever touched…”
Suck it up; get your act together, girl. There’s no more margin for error. You can’t afford to fuck up any more.
Those were the old rules. Dad’s rules. Bill’s rules.
“Honey, I want you to know you’re not the only one who’s screwed up. Maybe you aren’t the Statue of Liberty for the next millennium but don’t be thinking I’m its Madame Curie.”
“But you’re a doctor; you accomplished something. I was a freaking go-go dancer...”
“I married Bill to get out from under my father’s thumb, and by the time I figured out what an asshole he was, we’d already had Tony. Poor kid, I resented the hell out of him. I was miserable with his father, and I took it out on him, made it his fault that I had to stay with Bill when I was the one who didn’t have the guts to get out. Not even when I had the crazy luck to find someone who loved me in spite of everything. My lover, Tammy, she died because of me. She died because she was coming for me in her piece of shit car because I couldn’t get in my fucking SUV and go to her. My son died because I expected him to protect himself instead of protecting him like a parent should, like my dad protected me even though we were always fighting. So believe me, Cherry, you’re not the only one who’s messed things up. That’s another burden you don’t have to carry all by yourself.”
I’d told her everything that disgusted me about myself. I expected her to be disgusted too, but she didn’t look disgusted. She looked like she had that night I turned away.
“You know, Doc, we get to decide what kind of world my baby grows up in,” she said. “All we have to do is dodge the zombies, and we get to make it any way we want. I want my kid to know that everybody makes mistakes, but it doesn’t have to be the end of everything. You can learn from them and keep going.” Her fingers laced with mine. “I want my kid to know its okay to be afraid, that you don’t have to hide it or be ashamed of it. That being scared doesn’t make you weak, it just makes you human, and the way things are, human is pretty precious.”
She smoothed my hair back, a smile playing over her red, red lips.
“You don’t need to punish yourself any more,” she said. Somehow she knew what I’d known all along. I was never going to find a cure, a way to stop the plague. I’d just been hiding in my tower, making myself pay for all the times I fucked up. “Nothing’s keeping you here … you’re free.”
Her lips touched mine. She really did taste of cherries.
“We’ll look out for each other, Doc,” she whispered.
“That’s right, we’ll look out for each other,” I said. “Starting right now.”
A crowd of zombies pushed through the door. I grabbed a beaker of whatever potion I’d been working on and threw it in the face of the first one in line. It might not have been the antidote, but it did a pretty good job melting the zombie’s face into green gas. Then Cherry extended her leg and pirouetted like the dancer she was, and soon enough we were alone again.
“Uh, I sort of shot your lab to hell,” Cherry commented, surveying the wreckage.
“That’s okay,” I said. “I’m done here.”
*****
To one side of us was the end of everything: a burned out cityscape was still smoldering. On the other side, the ocean, open and unknowable as our future and the future of mankind. And in the midst of it were Cherry and I, riding down the beach on her white horse. My arms around her waist and the wind blowing her dark hair across my face
Title: Flower of the Apocalypse
Fandom: Grindhouse (Planet Terror)
Pairing: Dr. Dakota Block/Cherry Darling (Dakota/Tammy past)
Summary: Before she can build the world a new, Dr. Dakota Block has to come to terms with her past. A sort of fairy tale.
Beta Reader: Nzomniac
Word Count: 2671
Rating: R
Warnings: Shoujo-ai, violence, gore, language.
Author’s Note: When I set out to write Dakota/Cherry femslash, I hoped to produce something quite porn-y. This turned out rather differently than I expected… This story is being used for
100_women prompt #096: Memories. (click here to see my 100_women progress chart).
Flower of the Apocalypse
In Mexico we had a few days peace before things got ugly all over again.
The problem wasn’t zombies--it was ordinary people. Panic spread faster than the infection, and there was general apocalyptic chaos-looting, riots, rape, whole cities going up in flames.
People seem to be really good at fucking things up.
All through the chaos, I stood beside Cherry Darling, keeping watch over our ragtag gang of survivors.
“Look at them out there,” I said to her. “They don’t even need to wait for the zombies to go to pieces. They’re just like my son, Tony. I gave him a gun to protect himself with, and he ended up shooting himself in the face.”
When I said that, tears welled up in her eyes; her face showed that her heart was breaking for me.
I turned away from her, refused her compassion. Yeah, we’d both lost everything, but we couldn’t look back. We had to be strong now. We had to be brave.
We couldn’t afford to fuck up anymore.
*****
“Sneaking around like this is ripping you apart, Doc,” Tammy said. We were standing in the lobby of a Motel 6 off the interstate. I’d just finished chewing out the desk clerk for using the wrong credit card.
I was too wound up to listen. “That idiot,” I fumed. “I specifically told him not to use the card number on file anymore. Bill’s been checking my statements. If I hadn’t caught it, he would have seen the room charge.”
“Doc…”
“Asshole,” I raged. “Stupid fucker.” Tammy turned me in the direction of the mirror covering the lobby wall.
“Look at yourself,” she said. I looked. She was plush and sexy as ever, and beside her I was a witch, tense and brittle. My hands were clenched like claws. “Look at your face; it’s like a mask about to crack. Those women who have bubonic plague injections smile easier than you. You’re lashing out at everyone but the one you’re really mad at.”
The one I was really mad at was Bill. Or maybe it was me. I was the one who’d married him (the rat fuck son of a whore). I was the one who stayed with him. It wasn’t a matter of not loving him, I pretty much hated his guts, but there were other things to take into account.
“I can’t just leave him, Tammy,” I told her. “We have got a medical practice together, a house, a son…”
“You know that’s bullshit,” she said. She was right.
“He’ll come after us. We’ll never get away from him.”
“I’m not afraid of him,” Tammy said.
“I am.”
*****
The zombies followed the riots quickly enough. We managed to salvage a few who, like us, seemed immune to the whatever it was that changed humans into zombies.
Before he got his brains blown out, Abby (the guy who created this madness) said that we were the antidote--those of us who had been exposed to DC2 but had not transformed into zombies. With this in mind, I set up in what was left of an abandoned hospital and started searching for a common denominator among those of us who hadn’t been infected.
I’d been a hick town anesthesiologist, not a bio-chemist, but I knew enough to do some basic tests. I was hoping to get lucky, stumble on some magic solution. Maybe you didn’t turn into a zombie if you had type AB blood or if you’d had chicken pox as a kid. Maybe you were immune if you could roll your tongue or were left-handed or smoked. That was what I was looking for, some shared trait that might be the basis for an antidote.
I didn’t make a hell of a lot of progress and basically I hated the work, the futility of it, and the isolation. I hated being in the lab, breathing hospital air. It made me think that Bill could walk in at any second.
Where I really wanted to be was with Cherry Darling.
Cherry was out every day, trying to round up anyone who was still human. Since the roads were impassable, she rode out on a horse. I’d see her through the window of my makeshift lab, galloping down the beach like a creature from a fairy tale, a dark haired woman on a white horse going out to gather up the left behind and lead them home.
I could imagine riding with her, like I had on that motorcycle in Texas. I felt myself on the horse’s back, arms around Cherry’s waist, flying over the sand….
Then I banished my dreams and got back to work.
It had to be done, didn’t it? Someone had to try and find an antidote. Who was better qualified? Who else deserved as much as I did to be saddled with this task?
Cherry might be the flower of the apocalypse, a warrior angel on a white horse, but I was the witch locked up in the tower doing penance for the mistakes I’d made.
*****
Tammy met me at the park while Tony was at little League, just like I’d asked. She’d come straight from work, still in her paint splattered coveralls. They were unzipped just enough that I could just glimpse the fullness of her breasts. So beautiful, I knew I couldn’t look at her. If I looked at her, I’d never be able to say what I had to say.
“I can’t see you any more,” I told her. “I mean, I don’t want to see you any more.” When I started talking, all I could hear was Bill’s voice. Everything Bill had shouted in my face the night before started coming out of my mouth. “I’m a married woman, okay? I’ve got a husband and a kid and a good life. I’m a doctor; people respect me. I have some standing in this community. I’m not throwing all that away for some dyke who doesn’t even have a high school diploma.”
I wanted to make her feel as bad as he’d made me feel, but Tammy saw right through me like she always did.
“Looks like Dr. Block finally found out about you and me,” she said.
“It’s over, okay.” My voice was shrill. I felt like I was teetering on the edge, about to fall.
“Then it’s over,” Tammy said. “If that’s what you really want.”
That was when I broke down crying.
*****
We’d been in Mexico about two months, and the zombies were getting snappish, drawing in around our camp, trying to ambush anyone who came or went.
From my laboratory I would hear gunfire. Sometimes I would hear screams. We lost a few, even that few were too many. Our numbers had grown from Cherry’s diligent search and rescue, but the zombies’ ranks were growing even faster, hundreds and thousands more every day. We’d been out of contact for a long time, the phones were dead, the television screen static, the internet disconnected. It seemed like a real possibility that all the rest of the world might be zombies by now.
Cherry came to see me.
I could hear her coming, the clattering step of her machine gun leg followed by the light fall of her foot.
“What’s up, Doc?” she greeted me. From her it sounded sultry. She’d fallen naturally into calling me Doc, just like Tammy had.
“How are things going out there?” I asked. She must have picked up on how much I wanted to be out there instead of in here.
“You should come out and see for yourself. It’s rough, and it’s going to get rougher, but I know you can take it.”
“I’d love to take it, Cherry pie, but somebody has to try to cure this plague,” I said. Try to cure this plague. Not cure this plague. I didn’t believe I could find an antidote; just that I was bound to try the way Sisyphus was compelled to push his rock uphill.
“How much have you found out, about the plague or whatever it is?” she asked. She seemed a little tentative. Cherry Darling, tentative … who’d have thought it?
“Not a hell of a lot. Was there something you needed to know?”
“I need to know what would happen to a baby… if they’d be … could they be infected when they were born… even before they were born…” She was stumbling over the words, speaking fast. I rested my hand on her shoulder. She took a breath and started again. “I’m pregnant,” she said. “Wray and I, the last time we were together… I’m going to have a baby. I need to know if my baby will be infected.”
As a woman, as a mother, I knew exactly what to say. “Holy fucking shit… I mean…”
Cherry smiled. “You mean holy fucking shit, Doc. I’ve said it a couple times myself. I mean, circumstances aren’t exactly ideal what with daddy dead and an army of zombies closing in.”
“But you want this kid, don’t you?”
“More than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. Is she … he … going to be infected? Is there any way to tell?”
“I think your baby’s going to be okay, Cherry,” I told her. At least I’d learned that much from my research. “I haven’t figured out anything really useful, but all the data I do have and everything I’ve seen indicates that whatever immunity exists to this thing is genetic. Sheriff Hague and his brother were both immune, my son was, and my father. Neither of those psychotic little bitches… I mean the lovely Avellan twins, have turned into a zombie, and I know you’ve found a couple families, parents and children. You and Wray were both immune. Your child will be, too.”
Cherry slumped down onto a chair and covered her face.
“Thank you,” she sobbed. “Thank you. I’ve been so scared, dreaming every night it turned to a monster inside me … giving birth and then watching my baby change into one of them. ”
You shouldn’t see her like this. Don’t see her like this, look away. A voice inside my head insisted, the same voice I’d heard the night of the riots when I turned away from her. The same voice that told me I needed to stay in the lab, save the world to atone for all the mistakes I’d made. Whose voice was it anyway? Not mine. I wanted to comfort her, reassure her, to be as open for Cherry as she would have been for me. Maybe it was my father-not the man who saved my life, but the one I married Bill to get away from, the one who’d shut me out for years. Maybe it was Bill, but weren’t they both gone now? It was a new world; Cherry and I were the ones who had to make the rules about what was strength and what was weakness.
I put my arms around her.
“You must think I’m pretty pathetic,” she said, smiling tightly through her tears.
“I think worrying about your child is a tremendous burden for anybody, honey,” I said. “Especially when you’ve also made yourself pretty much responsible for salvaging what’s left of the human race. How long have you been carrying this all by yourself?”
“I’ve known since Wray died,” she said. “He told me that night, but I didn’t want to say anything till I knew for sure I was pregnant, then I didn’t want to say anything because I was afraid of what you’d tell me.” She clenched her fists, clenched her teeth not to cry. “I don’t know how I’m going to do this, Doc. I don’t know how to be a mother any more than I know how to be a leader. Wray believed in me; I don’t want to let him down. I don’t want to let down this kid or any of these people who look at me like I’m the Statue of Liberty with a machine gun leg instead of a torch, but I’ve screwed up everything I’ve ever touched…”
Suck it up; get your act together, girl. There’s no more margin for error. You can’t afford to fuck up any more.
Those were the old rules. Dad’s rules. Bill’s rules.
“Honey, I want you to know you’re not the only one who’s screwed up. Maybe you aren’t the Statue of Liberty for the next millennium but don’t be thinking I’m its Madame Curie.”
“But you’re a doctor; you accomplished something. I was a freaking go-go dancer...”
“I married Bill to get out from under my father’s thumb, and by the time I figured out what an asshole he was, we’d already had Tony. Poor kid, I resented the hell out of him. I was miserable with his father, and I took it out on him, made it his fault that I had to stay with Bill when I was the one who didn’t have the guts to get out. Not even when I had the crazy luck to find someone who loved me in spite of everything. My lover, Tammy, she died because of me. She died because she was coming for me in her piece of shit car because I couldn’t get in my fucking SUV and go to her. My son died because I expected him to protect himself instead of protecting him like a parent should, like my dad protected me even though we were always fighting. So believe me, Cherry, you’re not the only one who’s messed things up. That’s another burden you don’t have to carry all by yourself.”
I’d told her everything that disgusted me about myself. I expected her to be disgusted too, but she didn’t look disgusted. She looked like she had that night I turned away.
“You know, Doc, we get to decide what kind of world my baby grows up in,” she said. “All we have to do is dodge the zombies, and we get to make it any way we want. I want my kid to know that everybody makes mistakes, but it doesn’t have to be the end of everything. You can learn from them and keep going.” Her fingers laced with mine. “I want my kid to know its okay to be afraid, that you don’t have to hide it or be ashamed of it. That being scared doesn’t make you weak, it just makes you human, and the way things are, human is pretty precious.”
She smoothed my hair back, a smile playing over her red, red lips.
“You don’t need to punish yourself any more,” she said. Somehow she knew what I’d known all along. I was never going to find a cure, a way to stop the plague. I’d just been hiding in my tower, making myself pay for all the times I fucked up. “Nothing’s keeping you here … you’re free.”
Her lips touched mine. She really did taste of cherries.
“We’ll look out for each other, Doc,” she whispered.
“That’s right, we’ll look out for each other,” I said. “Starting right now.”
A crowd of zombies pushed through the door. I grabbed a beaker of whatever potion I’d been working on and threw it in the face of the first one in line. It might not have been the antidote, but it did a pretty good job melting the zombie’s face into green gas. Then Cherry extended her leg and pirouetted like the dancer she was, and soon enough we were alone again.
“Uh, I sort of shot your lab to hell,” Cherry commented, surveying the wreckage.
“That’s okay,” I said. “I’m done here.”
*****
To one side of us was the end of everything: a burned out cityscape was still smoldering. On the other side, the ocean, open and unknowable as our future and the future of mankind. And in the midst of it were Cherry and I, riding down the beach on her white horse. My arms around her waist and the wind blowing her dark hair across my face