I don't know how much longer I have.

They were kneeling together at the edge of the craggy drop to death, and these were his soft words. She took a firm hold of his hand, never straying from her unwavering connection to his eyes....and ran the tip of her thumb over his shivering fingers.....his heart immediately recongnizing this sweet mimicry of him.

Gabi: You have as long as I'm still around, Antonio. My life was hanging by a thread on that cliff, and if I'm still here after that....you're gonna make it. What we have...as many odds against us as there are...what we have is good...is incredible. You just hold on to that, OK? Don't be afraid of it anymore. Don't turn away from me with your heart trembling inside you. I feel everything you do. I know.

Antonio: I can feel that you're afraid, Gabi....

Gabi: I'm afraid you want to give up on life because you're scared of the future. That we have to admit that we've been living lies. It doesn't scare me anymore. HE doesn't scare me.....or the looks.....the ones we'll get the first time I walk down the street holding your hand, Antonio..........yours.

Antonio: (very emotionally) ......I swear that you can read my mind....I've thought of it, so many times...day and night....the simplest things I used to take for granted...you know I want that, deep in my heart, more than anything, Gabi.............but what we'll put everyone through......

Gabi: Look at what we've put each other through! A thousand goodbyes.....empty goodbyes, Antonio!! We say them while we're walking away...and we keep looking until we're tiny dots on the horizon and we can't see each other anymore. But we always look back...always. That's what pain is. What hurting is. But you're not gonna get away from me tonight....you're not disappearing from my sight ever again.......

Antonio: Well...I might be zero for two with the biblical serpent tonight, but you always have a flair for making me believe in the impossible....

Gabi: You're the reason I do, don't you see? You've been absolutely impossible since the day I met you, Antonio....but you never let me fall...

Antonio: I have to say I definitely prefer rescuing you in the metaphorical sense. A lot less chance of a heart attack involved. But.....I always wanted to go to the end of the earth for you.....and here we are......

Gabi: (raises an eyebrow) Leave it to you to take it literally, Antonio.

Antonio: (sighs) Knowing me the way you do, are you amazed at all?

Gabi: Only by you.....and that we're getting out of out of here alive....together.....

Suddenly, a very distressed expression sank over his face. She could tell he was trying so hard to shut it out, but it was all in the way he started to squeeze her hand tighter...

Antonio: ......gabi........

........and tighter until he fell forward from his kneeling stance into her surrounding hands.....his bright eyes muddled and heavy.

Gabi: Antonio!!!

Antonio: ....Gabi, we gotta go now.....I.....I think I'm blacking out...............

She clutched his face with panic....his eyes were a frail red, his face a milky pale.....

Gabi: My God, you're feverish!!! Listen to me, Antonio, please....your body's trying to fight the poison......you have to let it!

Antonio: I can't......I......I'm not gonna get the cure for this in time.......I feel myself falling....everything is pain, Gabi, everything.......

Her eyes crumbled as she held him, comfortingly stroking the nape of his neck....but nothing could calm him. He was quaking in her hold, and she realized he was crying.....

Gabi: ...I'm here, Sweetheart.....I'm here and you're not gonna fall.........you hold on to me as tight as you need to.......

Antonio: I..I don't want to leave you here all alone, Gabi.......I can't..........

She trembled with tears of her own.....to know this.....to know that she was the only blurred image in his mind......while his whole world was disintegrating.

Wrapped firmly around his shoulders, she looked to her hands. One of them somewhat shined with a gold ring that looked dull beneath her scraped and bloodied fingers. She regarded it longingly with everything it represented.....as if it was given to her by this man suffering in her arms. But it wasn't. Everything it truly represented jarred her like a ton of bricks.

You're mine forever....you whore.

With dark smudges of mascara dragging down her cheeks, she looked to the ravine close by that had almost been her grave....that this dying man had fought to pull her from and given up the last strains of his precious life energy to do so. Even with every lie she had told him.....he had lived up to every unsaid vow. Terrible golden shackle.....it meant nothing.

She twisted the band off slowly. Antonio's head, heavy with the white light of a horrid venomous migraine, was buried in her neck. He didn't notice when she let it go and it bounced with a mourning silence into the crevasse.

The black and white TV hadn't been turned on since he used to watch Dragnet with Poppy, and now, the news anchorwoman's face in the tube was covered with flecks of beer.....which now happened to be trickling out of the side of Ricardo's mouth too. He knelt to the television like an altar, clamping his hands around the sides the way he once did when he saw another twisted tableau, breeder of all his jealousies that had lead up to this God-forsaken night.

News Anchorwoman: *The carnage all started when Ricardo Torres--who is believed to be suffering from multiple-personality disorder--exacted a pitiful, hole-filled plot to frame his own wife and brother for his phony, cadaverless murder.

*And if that doesn't seem pyschotic enough....this all took an even more bizarre turn when Torres turned the gun on them instead.

Ricardo: I what ??!!!??

*But why, do you ask? What motivated the madness?? What would lead a decorated hero of Sunset Beach to become the subject of hate-fueled websites such as WWW.RICKPIG.COM? Yep, you guessed it. A love story.

[And the goddamn tape appeared.]

*As you can see in this edited-for-television clip, Gabi and Antonio Torres were apparently madly in love, thus sending Ricardo Torres to total insanity. When his flimsy murder set-up went awry for whatever reason...he made a chilling call that one local lifeguard will never forget. Here's a liberal re- enactment.

[A man who looked absolutely nothing like Ricardo stumbled onto the screen holding a cell phone and an 8K-47.]

*Nobody loves me!!! THEY MUST PAY!! THUS TO THE TYRANTS!!! DIE, DIE, DIE!!!!! {BANG, BANG, BANG!!!!!!!!}

Ricardo: (sneering) Miiichael. You DIDN'T!!!

*[Michael Bourne, lifeguard who got psychotic phone call] Michael: I was just, shocked, man. To hear him screaming at Antonio and Gabi and then gunshots...it was....creepy!

Ricardo: Goddammit!!! Way to go, Hassellhoff!!! H-he got it all wrong.....ALL WRONG!

*But where ARE Antonio and Gabi Torres? FBI Sources report that they've disappeared into the woods beside the hellish time-share cottage where they were attacked by the demented detective. ARE they alive?? WERE they dragging their severed limbs behind them? Lets go to our Sentinel Correspondent in the Street, Vanessa Hart.

*Vanessa: Thanks, Fizzy. I'm here at St. Joseph's Mission, where several of Father Antonio's parishoners are holding an all-night vigil awaiting his safe return. Ma'am, I see you've handcuffed yourself and your dog to the door. Why?

*Woman: Father Antonio is the sweetest man alive. (cheering)

*Vanessa: Uh...but Ma'am, it's been exposed that Father Antonio was involved with a married woman. Doesn't this taint his image in your mind?

*Woman: Well, she was obviously married to a real wingnut, wasn't she?? He saved her!!! Father Antonio saved that woman with love, and now I pray to God they'll come home safe!!

*Vanessa: Er...in that case, you're praying for an instantaneous defrocking??

*Woman: Halleluiah!!!!! (cheering)

*Vanessa: *Ahem*....(to camera) Blithering idiots, or rebels with a cause? YOU be the judge. Back to you, Fizzy.

Ricardo: (pacing wildly) OMIGOD.....I think I'm gonna be sick .......I.....I gotta go....gotta go NOW......Miami here I come....hope the Golden Girls got room!

*News Anchorwoman: Thank you, Vanessa. Finally, the question that local authorities are seething for an answer for is--where in the world is Ricardo Torres, anyway?

Ricardo: Awwww no.........!

He started flinging things in a suitcase hastily...and when he looked down in terror at his starched-black coordinates, he realized his only change of clothes was in the duffel at L.A.X. He was stuck in this damned priest's garb!! He wanted to tear it off and burn it....but then there was no way he'd be leaving the state unnoticed. Unless of course he joined a nudist colony. Hmm......

*News Anchorwoman: One thing's for certain. Torres won't be making a break for any airport from here to Sacramento anytime soon. And especially not disguised like this.

[A lovely screen-capture of Father Ric flashed before him.]

Ricardo: What the??!?!!!

*News Anchorwoman: Posing as his biblical brother. Terrorizing his wayward wife. When will this man be brought to justice? When will~~~~~~CRRSSHHHHHH~***~~~~~~***

The TV suddenly fuzzed into oblivion and Ricardo began to back away from it slowly, his eyes like fishbowls.

Ricardo: No.....this can't be happenin'......it's all cavin' in on me...........I'm trapped.......

He didn't exactly know whether the total self-horror he was experiencing was for what he'd done or because he'd been caught....but was only a matter of time. His own colleagues and friends would bust down the door of his childhood sanctuary and pin him to the floor with disbelief and disgust. Unless.......

His straw-grapsing mind turned to Antonio and Gabi. They still hadn't found them. His heart quailed. They don' know anything. That it was me who shot the gun....that I was plannin' any of this....that I can walk, for God's sake! If I can find 'em first.....Jesus, it's a longshot...I might be able to talk to 'em....I could come out lookin'........dammit, lookin' what??? There's no way I'll get anywhere near that time share unless a Rottweiler bites me in the ass. Wait.....!! There might be another way..........

......I gotta get back to Sunset Beach..................

Back to the beach, vestments and all, went he.

The search party rapidly began to assemble as more and more Beachers arrived at the time- share cottage. Revved up for action, Annie turned to a sombering sight that dampened the rush a bit. It was a woman with light chestnut hair, ruefully resting a hand on Antonio's S.U.V....her dark eyes low.

Annie: Maria!

The redhead ran to her and embraced her, a gesture not uncharacteristic to Annie when it came to her best friend.

Maria: I'm so glad you're here!

Annie:....Maria....everything that's already happened to you tonight....are you gonna be alright.....?

Maria: Don't you worry about that. I'm not gonna let feeling sorry for myself over Derek stop me....not from finding Antonio. (smiles a little) Annie.... I am so proud of you. You look like a regular Bond-girl, leading the search for my brother and Gabi like this. I could definitely get used to the effects your new undercover hunk are having on you, honey.

Annie: (looks to Jude) He's a big part of it. But I'm here for you guys, Maria, you, Antonio......and Ricardo.

Maria: ...Ricardo.....God, I don't know what to feel for him, Annie....he's all over the news. One day....he was my brave big brother....the next, everyone's saying he's a revenge- crazed lunatic...who was lying to all of us. And as horrible as I feel for lying to him too....I never thought in a million years that he'd do THIS if he found out the truth!

Annie: You knew that Antonio and Gabi were....?....were.....what exactly are they, anyway??

Maria: I don't know, honey...I just don't know. It got so hard for me not to say anything. Even after Gabi and Ricardo got married...it, it seemed like she and Antonio got closer than ever....even when they flat-out insisted that what happened between them was over. I saw it in their eyes. They weren't over, Annie. And Ricardo knew it too.

Annie: ...How's Carmen doing, Maria?

Maria: Oh God....you don't want to know. She's at Lupe's, who I hopefully convinced to ban her from the TV for the night. I don't want her to see how the whole town is making a villain out of him, Annie......because they're right. And he's going to have to face up to what he's done.

Annie: God, I hope he does....for his own sake.

Maria: But Gabi and Antonio...they don't deserve what they got. They must be scared to death.....I just hope we're not too late for them. I hope Ricardo didn't....didn't.....(tears)

Annie: No, I don't want to believe that he hurt them, Maria......I won't believe it!

Maria: He was going to let them be sent to jail for the rest of their lives, Annie. I don't know what he'd do next, not anymore! I saw him act so cold to Antonio, so many times...I didn't understand why. That rage just ate him away.....it might've destroyed his love for his own brother.....MY baby brother......

Annie: Don't worry, Maria....we're gonna find T, and...um....his...lover the Priestess too, OK?? Hang on, hon, I'm gonna get you some coffee, alright?

Annie wandered past the gathering of search-partiers.......Casey.......Michael......Tyus Robinson.......cousin Em.........a sly rise of her brows when she spotted Meg and Ben.

Ben: Well, Meg, no one had better brand us 'self-absorbed' ever again if we're about to venture out into the woods to find our friends in our current states of complete exhaustion.

Meg: The timing definitely isn't the best...but I guess you never know when you're gonna find out 3 people you're close to have been living double lives. Some a lot stranger than others....ohhh, no......

Annie: (approaching) Well, well, well.....looks like when we said "Send in the cavalry," we should've added, "Hold the hillbillies." Eh-heh. Sorry kids, I know you've both been through hell tonight--yadda, yadda, Maria's left with nothing, oh shucks--but, it's a given that I'd add to your oh-so-wretched suffering anyway. See you in the Hundred-Acre Woods!

Ben and Meg looked perplexed as she started to stroll away.

Ben: Waaaait a moment. Just one snide remark?? Annie, are you sure you're feeling well this evening?

Annie: (wryly) Oh, Ben...Heroic Ben. Here to help the cause? More like lead the Ricardo-Rebellion! The irony is just too much. You can't tell me that after all the years your fave Detective accused you of being a criminal, you're not feeling a twinge of gloating here?? A little image-boost, maybe?

Ben: Perhaps. But I don't believe I'm particularly your concern, Annie dear.

Annie: Exactly my point, Ben. Now if you'll excuse me, there's a guy over there who's proven himself worthy of my time. Byeeee.........

Annie strutted away from the eye-rolling pair. I am SO over you, Brit-Twit....and it won't be long for Maria either.

Jude: Alright, everybody. We're heading out. Stay with your assigned team, and guard the flare-guns with your life.

Annie: You'd better guard my batch of Irish Cream with your life, Jude. (pours) Empty?? Gaad!! Do you people come to search parties for coffee freebies, or what??

Brad: (gulps) Um.....sorry, Annie.... guess I went on a caffeine binge there....hheh......

Annie: It's decaf, you buffoon!

Jude: Alright, alright, get moving, Bradley, everybody, move out!! ....Well, Annie, here goes nothin'.....

Annie: (aside) By the way, hon....my best friend is here, who also happens to be a Torres? So exnay on the icardo-Ray okes-Jay???

Jude turned and saw Maria's sullen face approaching in the group.

Jude: (whispers) My God....look at her. Didn't he see what this would do to his family? She gets to go from being doped up in a serial killer's Shack O' Horrors to THIS mess....talk about brotherly support.

Annie: She's the strongest person I know, Jude, but I don't know how much more she can take. I just hope Antonio and Gabi are alive out there...........

Maria: (approaches) So....are we ready for the rescue?

Annie: As we'll ever be, Maria.....as we'll ever be.

Antonio struggled not to lean too heavily on her....and realized she was practically holding all his weight as he staggered. His whole body was racked with aches....his mind semi-concious. But only one person was clear.......and you don't exactly have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out.

[Hint: It started with a G, but it wasn't God.]

They were standing beside a flat rock at the side of a stream that was all silver and purple, stirring along the rays of the moon. Her voice filled with thorns, she beckoned every shred of strength she had not to break down as she realized this might be the last place Antonio would ever see.

Gabi: Do you....do you want to lie down....?

Antonio: .......no.......I....just want to look at this for a second...it's....it's beautiful.......

Gabi: I know. It almost looks like the moon is right there in the water, huh..? Hey.....look at that. You did pull it out of the sky for me after all......

She looked up at him, his weak arms all around her and cried....

Gabi: Stay with me.....please stay with me......we were meant to see things like this together, Antonio....it was destined that way......you were a priest and I was with Ricardo, and it never stopped us from wanting to see beautiful things together....the same way...as if we shared the same thoughts, the same dreams....the same body...........

The latter words made them both shudder....and as Antonio took her eyes in his own....stared at her with that look that made her want to cry, laugh, scream, devour those eyes of his like Milky Ways.....he knew....and soft words began to rise out of ancient dust.

...................

Antonio: ......I.......I don't know how much longer I have here...but the one thing that'll never die....ever.....

[A rush from both their eyes of recognition.]

Antonio: .....is the way I feel about you. I love you, Gabi.....and I always will, no matter what.

[She closed the rivers that were her eyes, almost hearing her name yelled out from above by a once-love...the way it was. But the sweet words that followed were much obliged to replace history......]

Antonio:.....and I don't want to die without showing you how much.......

Her eyes rose to love and there was no turning back, no past....only this, flying towards them at the speed of light....only this.

Nothing could have stopped him at that moment....not the frailty of his body....the pains that would sink into his guts and give way for new ones every second, the thunder in his head that begged him to sleep...... it had been his last vocation to save her....and his final plea with the world was to love her.

He looked down at her as if she was a dove in his hands he wanted to keep...putting his fingertips to her tears and taking them all away. He tightened his hold around her waist and pulled her closer, as if he was asking her to dance....the greatest slow dance of their entire lives....to live one last time before he was swallowed up by night and she was left half-hearted, half-lunged, part of her forever still.

He cast away his anguish as they lowered slowly on the coolness of the rock. He needed to give her every sensation humanly possible...she knew where he needed to be. She husked her coat from her small frame and slid the sleeves off of each shoulder, all while drilling into his eyes with the darkening coals of her own, as if presenting him with a gift...to which he was graciously overwhelmed. She felt him needing to rush towards them and gently held him back, slipping his coat from him as she did.....then his shirt....running her hands up him all the while...holding the skin and warmth.....looking at him with wide eyes as he made his descent.

He dropped with the power of a storm, his tender mouth grasping for her shoulders....her dark hair was a bit longer this time around, and he sifted through it with a rash force to reach the fiery skin it rested on with cobweb softness. She exhaled every pent up dread and fear with a sigh she wasn't ashamed to turn into a weighty moan as she knotted her fists in his hair with white knuckles. How many times...how many times she'd expelled sparks of wonder from her brain at night of how in all the knowlege in the universe...he had known about this live wire of her body hidden to the male imagination that jolted her to her very melting marrow beneath his warm, honeyed trek. But she knew......he knew how to love her as naturally as the current of air he was dragging from her skin as if she was its source.....and by now the violet shirt was long gone....and everything under it.

Dissolving beneath the pressure of his lips....she felt him tiring ever so slowly...fighting his own body to illuminate hers with the last of his warmth.....she turned to him and cradled him by the small of his back and laid him down, her arms shielding him from the frigidness of the rock........she pinned him down with a kiss he accepted fully.....with a gentle tension of need, he was searching for the pieces of his heart inside......long and heavily.....falling further into one another.

Bared of everything...they sat upsright in each others' arms and kissed like this for what seemed like ages....without pause, without any other thought but their roaming mouths....she traded swiftly between his lips, his neck, his chest, his neck, his chest, she careened across him, moving from soft hollow to soft hollow as he watched her....between intervals of his eyes being shut so tightly with the steady rush of heat and pain.

They shifted weightlessly into full love with complete ease...their lips still clinging...her hands lacing around his face, his in her hair...they moved...they held....they were unstoppable. He was her every surging emotion until there were no blurs of gray in the wilderness anymore.....only a burst of blindingly bright white light as she murmurred his name into the warmth of his shoulder....and it was this that twisted his soul into pure lightning....brought to the same vivid end.

There was nothing more he could do but collapse to her, kissing her lightly almost in shock from the shore they'd washed up on together...tangled in this melted crystal forever.....for now.

Gabi: I love you..............and I promise you, I'll never regret this...I'll never wish I didn't love you, Antonio............the only thing I'll ever wish......is that this didn't have to be goodbye.....

He looked at her so lovingly through his haze, as his connection with anything other than a dreamworld began to subside.

Antonio: (weakly)....it....it isn't goodbye, Gabi........you're gonna get out of here....you wait and see. And..... you're gonna keep on making everyone happy and making them smile....and driving them crazy with the way you make them want to love you, Gabi......and I'll see everything.......through your eyes....that's where I've always been, Gabi......since the first time we looked at each other and knew...........................that I loved you...that we were...in love..............

They both fell silently asleep at that moment......they couldn't resist the darkness that drained them......he didn't want to think about never waking up......she didn't want to think about awakening to find him never to wake......all they wanted was to sleep in each others arms in the afterspell of making love.........secure at last.

To Be Continued

On to the next chapter....