One can't wander about on the paths between the carefully cultivated gardens of Redway park without feeling a little out-of-place. At least, Arty can't. The fascination that that little slice of 'nature' holds for him can only last so long, especially when winter sets in and the cookie-cutter shapes of the gardens are made more obvious by a clean coating of snow.
What is he to do but find somewhere wilder for a walk, where there are no paths and the plants have never seen pruning shears? And he can't possibly go alone - if he were to become lost, he'd have no one to blame but himself (and he hates doing that). Keye is along with him as company, not as a scapegoat.
But just in case...

Keye also has a cell phone, in case of emergency...through which he could probably even find his way back to populated areas, if they were still within signal range, though he wouldn't know how he was doing it.
In the meantime, he's just fine with exploring, and finds Arty's enthusiasm for it to be a lot of fun. Oftentimes, he's not quite as nimble as the former faerie, because he's a city boy, and as much fun as this is, he's not used to roots or rocks, or tromping through the aforementioned under cover of snow.
So he's a bit slow, but he's enjoying himself, trailing along a little behind Arty and making slightly too-loud conversation about inane topics such as how very shiny the snow is. His breath puffs out when he speaks, and his nose is red from the cold, not to mention his ears (peeking out from a slightly shortened mop), but while he forgot a hat, he did remember a coat and gloves.

Arty chatters enthusiastically back to him, occasionally pausing to point out a particularly interesting bird or cloud formation. He doesn't know the names, nor does he care to find out. They're just interesting to look at.
Like the icy surface of the river, for example.
"Lookit this, huh?"
He skitters down the bank to the water's edge, peering at the slick white sheet of ice.
"I betcha you could skate on this," Arty says cheerfully, looking behind and wating for Keye to catch up. "I mean, look at it. It's all -- smooth, and stuff."

"Yeah?" Keye stops a few paces behind him, eyeing the icy surface warily. It's not currently water, but it's close, and he can see where it gets thinner, towards the middle.
But Arty hasn't got any skates, so no trouble.
"You prob'ly could. Doesn't Vi like ice skating? Maybe you could ask her."

"Yeah. But she likes that dancing - that figure skating stuff."
He gives the ice a tap with a mittened hand, then, when it doesn't give way, steps out onto it.
Ha! Since when does he need skates to skate?
"This is cool." He pushes off the bank, skidding a foot or two across the ice. The thin film of water on the surface makes the ice shiny, but it really isn't all that smooth. In some places, it's even a little slushy.
"C'mon!" Arty looks over his shoulder, beaming. "You gotta try this."

It should be pretty obvious from looking at Keye that there's something wrong with him. He looks rooted to the spot, and has gone deathly pale, even right down to the red spot at the end of his nose.
"Arty," he says without thinking, his voice harsh and brittle, "get the fuck back here now."

The boy shuffles himself another few feet out - the ice really isn't all that good for skating - then turns and makes a face at Keye.
"Why?" he asks, puzzled but not startled by the sudden mood swing. He stamps a foot down on the ice. "It's really solid, if that's what you're worried about."
To be fair, when he was a tiny faery, it would have been really solid. Now that he's a human, however skinny he might be, his weight takes a much bigger toll on the frozen surface.
Tiny white cracks seep out from underneath his heels.

"Arty--" he shuffles a hesitant step forward, then stops as if he's hit a wall, though he stretches one hand out, reaching but still held too far away by fear.
"It won't hold--I'm scared--please come back now..."

"It's fine," Arty replies defiantly. "It's pretty thick here, I mean, I can hear it when I walk on it. Seriously."
He stamps agan, heel-first, to prove his point. A small wet crunch accompanies the impact, and further cracks spider out. He moves his foot aside and leans over to peer at them - and the ice groans ominously.
"Um," he says, eyes widening, and starts inching back towards the riverbank.

"Come back!"
It rings too loudly through the winter air. The tall young man is transfixed by terror, both hands stretched out now, as if he expects that to do anything.
Gods, not the water...water, always rising up, and...please, not the water.

"I'm coming, I'm coming..." Arty replies uncertainly, watching his feet and tiptoeing across the ice. Now, tiptoeing only helps if one is trying to be quiet. When on thin ice, it just concentrates weight on a smaller space.
The ice groans once more, cracks loudly, gives a quieter groan, and shatters around the boy. He drops like a stone into the dark water, with barely a splash.

"Oh my god."
That's enough to bring him skittering to the very edge of the river, but no further, and there he kneels with a wordless cry.
What can he do?
"Arty!" he screams, and thrusts his hand out over the hole, "Take my hand. Oh god, please hear me...take my hand!" the hand hangs above the water, mindless of the fact that offering your hand is the last thing you are supposed to do with a drowning person, and it shakes wildly, almost blurring itself with the motion.

Arty surfaces, having somehow managed to catch hold of the ice as he went under, keeping him from being swept under and away. He doesn't see Keye's hand at first, too busy frantically scrabbling at the ice around him, trying desperately to get something to hold onto.
He's cold. So cold. Dead cold.
Keye's hand catches his eye and he grabs for it, latches onto it, and pulls.

Keye's arm stiffens, and he grips Arty's hand purely by instinct, bringing the other to join it, wrenching upwards. But his center of gravity is not stable, and Arty's hands are slick, and this isn't working--
"My sleeve!" he gasps. His sleeve has to be easier to grip, it'll absorb the water...just don't make him go any closer to the jagged, wet hole!

Arty's teeth are chattering too much for him to speak, and water's in his eyes (some plain river water, some tears). He reaches and just holds on - he can't feel his fingers. He hopes he caught hold of the right thing. He doesn't want to die. It was bad enough the first time, and it's too soon to go back to that again.

Keye is frozen, watching him slip away, because the angle is all wrong, and his mind is numb and nothing...is working...
And he's watching someone else die the same cold death he almost suffered. And he remembers, strangely, how far he would have gone for a fix back then, and it's that which wakes him.
He hurls himself forward, his teeth clamped tightly enough together to make a sound of protest inside his head, and wraps his arms around Arty, underneath the boy's arms before the ice collapses under him as well.
And he isn't even sure what comes next, aside from a flicker of images, bleached black-and-white by terror.

Finding Keye even closer, he thrashes wildly to shift his grip and get a better hold on him. Arty can feel his clothes, heavy as lead, pulling on him, dragging him back down into the dark.
And he knows who's waiting there.
"Help," he gasps, clumsy fingers knotting in Keye's coat. "C, c-cold..."

Keye doesn't answer, and they're under again, and sinking fast. Keye isn't even thinking on a conscious level, but survival instinct can be an amazing thing. An image of a tree, an overhanging branch, just the barest flicker...
A glowing strand wraps around the two, then solidifies into something like fishing line, wrenches violently upward, hard enough to cut, and hurls them onto the bank. Keye lands on top of Arty, and the momentarily-solid illusion dissolves instantly, followed by a warm gush of blood from the taller boy's nose.
One arm still tight around Arty, eyes staring blankly straight ahead, he pulls out his dripping cell phone (it really shouldn't still be working) and hits a button--not a speed-dial button, nor does he even press send, but it dials Violet nevertheless, seemingly of its own accord, because Keye is sure, in his panic, that she is the right person to call. And he has to get help.

Arty quits struggling the moment he feels solid ground beneath him, though it's not immediately apparent because he's shivering so violently. He's still clinging desperately to Keye, irrationally afraid that he'll slip back into the water if he lets go.
"I'm cold," he whimpers between gasps, in case he hadn't been heard the first time.

The phone rings once,...twice, and Violet picks up.
"Hello?"

There's a soft, incoherent sound from Keye's end of the line.
Violet's there. She'll fix it. All right, Keye, think. Think.
"Vi." He manages, blinking rapidly (is there ice forming on his eyelashes? Surely not.), "M-m-me and Arty....at the r-river, f-f-fell in, help..."
That should get the general idea across.
He rolls off of Arty and clutches the boy close to him, conceiving some half-formed idea about sharing body heat, though they haven't much between them. Only a few moments now before the shaking sets in for him as well...

There is silence on her end of the line, just for a moment. Her first thought is, Are you kidding me?
In the next few seconds that follow, though, she remembers that this is Keye, and he doesn't make that kind of joke.
"You fell in the river?" she says incredulously. "I - ,...okay." Calm, Violet. Let's be calm. "Where are you? Are there any, uh, any houses nearby or anything?"

"N-n-not...went off the p-path--I c-can..."
He presses the phone hard against his ear, and his deep, shaky breaths are loud.
And he is somehow able to pinpoint his exact location.
"L-l-listen, Arty's n-not doin' good."
He isn't either, come to that; his vision is blurring, he's freezing cold, wet, and shivering, but...he thinks Arty might just be doing worse. He was in the water longer.

"Okay, I-"
There is the sound of scribbling as she writes down his directions.
"I'm going to call 911 on the other phone-" It was her cell she picked up, after all. "Stay on this line, okay?"

Arty, meanwhile, presses closer - even if he isn't getting warmer, Keye is at least something solid and alive.

"'Kay."
Now he's shivering too, violently, and curling closer around Arty for some imagined warmth.
"H-hang in there, k-kiddo," he whispers. "Vi's gonna take c-c-care of us."

"But sh's not here," Arty slurs, bewildered by the thought that Violet can help from wherever she is. Seemingly at random, his lips (now blue) twist into a smile and he adds, "...We'll be 'kay..."

There is mumbling speech in the background, and after what must seem an age to those on the other side of the line, Violet picks up again.
"Keye? You there?" Please answer...

"Sh-she will be."
There's a long pause. It's getting hard to think, hard to answer. The cold is biting into his bones, and his mind is a mass of static, his head splitting with pain.
"Y...es."
He wasted too much power. He'd be sick, only he has to hold onto Arty.

"Good. Listen, they're on their way. They said,...they said you have to stay awake. So you have to keep talking to me. So that I know you're still awake." Pause. "They'll be there in no time. How long since you were in the water?" Another pause. "How long were you guys in the water?"

"Hey, Arty..."
Come to think of it, he is rather tired. He's already too numb to move. It would be easy to sleep. Obviously, that's why they mustn't.
So he shakes the boy slightly.
"Gotta stay awake, kiddo."
All right. Talking to Violet. He can do that.
"Arty longer than m-me. I was just in for a few s-s-seconds. Been a c-coupla minutes since then."
The only thing that's keeping him from dissolving into a puddle of useless mush is the feeling that someone is depending on him--Arty. He has to take care of Arty until someone else can. Then he can...rest.

Violet makes a small, displeased sound - any amount of time in ice water is too much.
"Right. Okay. I,... What were you doing that close to the-" Wait, wait. Don't blame Keye. Does this really sound like something he would do? Of course not. This kind of mess has Arty's name all over it.
"What was Arty doing that close to the edge?" Violet asks, not unkindly.

Being rather close and therefore able to hear both halves of the conversation, Arty gives a low, kicked-puppy whine. "W-was 'n acc'dent,..n-n-not m-my fault..."

"N-n-nobody's mad at you, it's okay..." Deep breaths.
"The ice l-looked thick enough--I didn't think he'd go without skates, but he d-did--it broke."
He sniffles, trembling and probably pressing Arty close enough to hurt. Tears are only turning him into more of a mess, moving sluggishly down his cold face, sniffling filling his mouth with a thick, bloody substance.

Arty doesn't feel a thing, and that's what scares him more than anything. He refuses to close his eyes, though his eyelids keep drooping - he knows how this goes. It stops hurting, you close your eyes and give up...and then it's just cold. The kind that's more than just a lack of warmth.
Granted, he's really not that close to death right now. He's just miserably cold and numb and tired. It only feels like dying.
"When's she coming?" he asks, mimicking Keye's sniffles. "Soon?"

Yeah, that sounds like something he'd do, Vi thinks, and sighs quietly.
"Okay, And you guys aren't hurt? Just, well, cold?"
(It's an important thing to know).

"C-can't tell."
Too numb.
"My n-nose is b-bleeding. S-somethin' mighta cut t-too, I wasn't real c-careful...I m-might, uh--I overextended. With m-magic. Arty ain't b-bleedin' anywhere I c'n s-see."
He puts a hand on the side of the boy's icy face--he can't really feel it either, but it seems the thing to do. He smiles, his lower lip cracking and beginning to bleed sluggishly as well. No big deal. We're fine here.
"Real s-soon. Don't w-worry."

"Soon," Arty echoes, and nestles his head just under Keye's chin.
...Even that small movement takes far more effort than it should.

Forever later (that's how it feels to the kid, anyway), there are voices besides Keye's and Violet's, belonging to new people all dressed the same. They're pulling him away, and he can see them poking at him, but he's too cold to feel it and frankly, he's too tired to care what they do.
...They do have considerable trouble prying him off Keye, though. He's limp and listless once they get him to let go, but you'd swear he'd been frozen in place up that point.

They ought to have yet more trouble because Keye is beyond knowing what is happening--all he knows is to hang onto Arty. Luckily for the paramedics, he's none too strong.

And off we go.

Violet still isn't sure how they managed it last time - probably by claiming that some documents were lost and the new ones were in the mail - but she found it easier this time, filling out the required paperwork for Arty.
(They can't possibly get away with this for much longer. Someone's got to notice sometime.)

The only part of the hospital she's familiar with is the one she spent a few nights in after being shot. That's not much help when she's looking for the wing where they're keeping Arty. Persistence has to pay off eventually, though, so she's wandering hall to hall, floor to floor, her coat draped over her arm and her hair pulled into a messy, sad excuse for a ponytail.
What this place needs, she thinks, is better, clearer signs. With lots of little arrows and maps with 'you are here' on them.

Keye is hooked up to monitoring devices.
In his (and probably everyone else's) opinion, this happens altogether too often, and he is deeply unhappy with this turn of events.
It beats freezing to death, though.
Already, he has his bed propped partway up, and is nervously tapping a wired finger against his sheet-covered stomach, his lips pulled tight with discomfort. His eyepatch has gone missing, and he keeps trying to shake his hair over the scar-twisted eye, but it--shockingly--isn't long enough. Which only causes him more distress.
Every now and then, he pauses in his usual fidgeting and twitches spasmodically, closing his eyes and shuddering.
Water.
Ugh, water.

Eventually, somebody is kind enough to point the bewildered-looking girl in the right direction. While travelling in the aforementioned right direction, she tries not to peek into patients' rooms as she passes. She really does.
She's curious, though, and she wonders in what state she's going to find the kid, and hey, isn't that Keye in there?
"Hey?"
Vi stops, swaying as if about to take another step, then tips herself into his room.
It is him.
And for all that he could have died, or been severely hurt, or who knows what else, all she can find to say is, "You got your hair cut."

He starts, looking up at her with his mouth open, then laces his fingers.
"Yes. I did," he says, his voice low and scared, "just a little at a time, like you said."

"It looks good," Violet offers, and smiles. She ventures closer, wary of the array of medical paraphernalia nearby. It's not as if it's life support and she's afraid of cutting it off, but machines scare her. Even the quiet ones. Especially the quiet ones.
"How are you feeling?" She leans over and gently rests a hand on his shoulder. "Are you going to be okay?"

He flinches and grips her hand as if to fling it away...then squeezes. All right. Everything is all right.
"I had a seizure in the ambulance, a partial one, like that time in the bookstore. It was from overusing magic, I guess--'side from that, I...I'm supposed to be good to go tomorrow. But jesus, I was so fuckin' scared. You wouldn't believe...I can't even believe I--I was really fuckin' scared, but I...I guess I didn't do the smartest thing ever, but I just knew Arty was gonna die, so I...I didn't even know I could, but I did."