That understanding, radiant smile ghosted across the room and fell into Nick's eyes and he held it there just for a moment. For that brief second the music died down, the guests were hushed and all that remained was that smile and in that moment, everything was right and anything could happen.

Then the man turned his head and the volume rose again. Nick watched reluctantly as the man found someone else to smile at. But the smile was for none of them, Nick knew. It was for a figment of imagination, a girl who may or may not have existed once. Now though, her sweet white face had decayed and darkened. Inside, Nick's heart burned for a moment as he chased that smile and then just as he found it, a hail of bullets burst across the music and into the smiling man's chest.

He woke with a start, flashes of a swimming pool and a green light that still blinked at the end of a terrible dock running through his mind. Hurriedly, he threw back the covers and opened the curtains on a new day.

Sometimes, just sometimes, he wished he had been that girl. That it was for him that smile had really been for. That it had been him so none of this would have ever happened.

You can't repeat the past. You can't repeat the past. He'd told himself this over and over again over these last two years.

Of course you can, why of course you can, old sport.

In your imagination, of course you could, Nick sighed softly.

Old sport. He shuddered. He'd almost cried when he'd heard another mouth utter those two words.