#wc02

But there was a girl in the distance, a beautiful blonde with long beachy waves, and she was calling out to him. He couldn't leave Dan, when he looked down, the body was gone, only sand slipped through his fingers. What had he been doing? Sitting in the sand, he had to get to the girl....

He got up and ran, as quickly as he could, chasing her, but she seemed to be disentegrating into the air around him, and it was hot, it was so hot, she was slipping through his grasp and he couldn't breath, the air was thick with smoke, choking him, gripping his lungs, he was falling. 

To the ground, she was laughing, her voice a harmonic yet eerie echo swelling and cascading around him, dancing as if in some sort of taunt as he crashed. Great rippling flames of iridescent blue and wild licking red urging closer to him, wanting to feed from him, wanting to take him once again. 

A hand reached out to help him, the face of Dan Humphrey looking down offering a saving grace, but Nate couldn't move, his body was heavy with impending death, the man was trying to say something.

"You were too late." 

A solemn cry to a nagging thought and Nate closed his eyes, sputtered breaths and the walls of fire closing in around him, inhaling ash....