Shallow Water, Part 2
By Missy

SERIES: Shallow Water
PART: two of a fic of undetermined length
Author: Missy
Email: lasfic@yahoo.com
RATING: PG-13 (This part), for dramatic angst.
PAIRING(s): L/L

DISTRIBUTION: To LW, Kai, and FG so far; any other archives are welcome to ask (Please Email Me), but disclaimers must be included, my email left intact. send a URL, and provide full disclaimers as well as credit me fully. Please inform me if you are going to submit my work to any sort of search engine. Please do not submit my work to a search engine that picks out random sets of words and uses them as key words, such as "Google"

Please contact me in order for this story to be placed on an archive, or if you want know of a friend who would enjoy my works, please email me their address and I will mail them the stories, expressly for the purpose of link trading. MiSTiers are welcomed! Please do inform me that you'd like to do the MiSTing, however, and send me a copy of the finished product. I'd also love to archive any MiSTings that are made of my work!

DISCLAIMER: Laverne and Shirley, of course, not my property and belongs to its creators.

CATEGORY: Humor, SOL, L/L
CANNON/SPOILERS: California era. Hippie-era, pre Altamont.
FEEDBACK: PLEASE?!
SPOILLER/SUMMARY: Laverne accompanies Lenny on his first ever professional music tour...and then tragedy strikes.
NOTES: Just a little fluff piece I came up with out of nowhere.

****

Squiggy. Never in her life had she before worried for the little worm. Now she frantically combed through the snow, searching for any signs of his dark head in the blindingly white snow.

Part of her wanted to kill him, and yet another knew that if he died, Lenny would die with him. Despite his perversion, he proved the very best friend that Lenny had ever kept in his life.

She crawled over the wreckage, her feet going numb; her eyes scanned the snow for a pair of shoes and found her best pair lying feet apart, scattered over the perfect white surface. They were little protection from the elements.

She discovered a parka, lying wide-open upon the snow. Seizing it, she crawled into its downy covering, nearly breaking the zipper in a frantic rush to be warm.

"Vernie!" Lenny shouted through the distance, "Over there!"

Laverne's eyes followed the gesture of Lenny's free hand; there, she noticed a pajamaed figure with dark hair, still curled up in a fetal position and lying, prone, in the middle of the road.

"Squig!!" She shouted. He didn's stir. Panicked, she fell to her knees in the snow, placing her hand over his mouth. Relief filled her; he was breathing. But horror pricked the aura of comfort she had built about her; a massive lump had formed over his right eye. He was unconscious, and would freeze to death.

"Hold on, Squig!" She demanded, shucking off the parka and wrapping him in it. She knelt by him.

"Is he..." Lenny couldn't bring himself to actually say the word 'dead'; instead, his voice ended on a tearful sob.

"Nah! He's alive!" Laverne cried, and Lenny broke down completely. "Don't cry, not even if yer happy, Len!"

"Why?!"

"Tears'll freeze on yer face!" She called. What to do now?! She felt tempted by the notion of crawling to Lenny and wrapping herself in his arms, but she could not reach him, thanks to that damned seat. He would at least remain relatively warm in the hollowed-out shell of the bus. Squiggy would remain sheltered by her parka.

Laverne stood, trying to move about as much as possible. That, she knew, would be the only surefire way to keep herself warm in the flimsy nightgown she wore.

God, how were they going to get out of here?! It was the middle of the night! Valiantly, she battled down panic; they were in the middle of a highway. Someone would see the bus and rescue them. Someone would see...they had to.

Boy, would this make a great story to tell Shirley!

Fear seized Laverne. Carmine!! She raced around the wreck, searching for her beloved friend. Suddenly, she stopped cold; in front of her a ravine appeared.

There was a gap in the overpass and, indeed, the entire thing had been closed for construction. Laverne realized, with a sudden shock, that the driver had plowed through a series of barriers before breaking.

Turning away from the barrier, her eyes fell upon a dark form, lying flat on the highway below them. She screamed once, twice, realizing what it was.

"Vernie?!" Lenny's voice came. "Aww geez...Aww no..."

"Carmine!" She screamed. "CARMINE!" But her pleas fell on deaf ears. Her friend had been thrown from the wreckage, off of the overpass, and to the two-lane highway below them. It was too late for him.

She couldn't break down now; Lenny's screaming brought her back to reality.

"LEN!"

"Wh-wh..."

"I think..I think we should pray." She began walking back to where he was, slowly, "Help me say a rosary."

He sobbed, unresponsive to her words, so she began, "Our Father, Who Art In Heaven, Hallowed Be Thy Name..." her words had an oddly soothing effect upon him.

"Thy kingdom come, thy will be done...." The distance between the bus and her place on the overpass seemed tremendous, but she trudged through it, "On earth as it is on heaven."

Lenny's sobbing quieted as the bus seemed to get closer, "Give us this day our daily bread."

"And forgive our trespasses..and those who would pass against us.." She listed to Lenny's mangling of the verse and smiled sadly.

Suddenly, the effort to keep the prayer together seemed to heavy. It would be nice to lie down in the snow...rest like Squiggy...like Carmine. She thought that her prayers had worked, brought about the magical white light which would take her to a better place.

Only when her body hit the concrete did she realize that that white light came from the headlights of a fire truck.



TBC!



To Part One

To Part Three