They run out of gas before they get out of the mountains, assuming that there is anything on the other side of the mountains to get. They are tired, and naked as birth, and thick with dust from the road and happier than they have ever been.

"Utena," Anthy says, and she just uses the name. "I think we passed a lake a little ways back."

Utena rises from the wreckage of her escape vehicle and stretches, breasts rising in front of her, muscles pleasantly achy. "We should probably use it," she says. "If nothing else, there might be some food we can catch in it or something. And we can get clean."

Suddenly, cleanliness sounds more appealing than it ever has before. Utena pauses, realizes she can't remember a time she's taken a shower ever before in her life. She can't remember a time she's been in water except when the drowning happened.

"Utena?"

"It's nothing," Utena says. She turns away from the fuselage of her vehicle, she doesn't need it anymore, she can walk in this world on her own two feet. "Just back this way?"

Together, they walk in the dusty roads, jagged ruins of civilizations lining the road they've taken. These are all dreams that have fallen apart, but it's good for dreams to fall apart now and then. Utena runs her hand over the fallen expressionless mask of a giant broken statue, feels the wide arch of its cheek, its lips, its chin.

"Are you sure we're going the right way?"

Anthy turns back to Utena with a brilliant smile. "Yes. For the first time."

Utena follows Anthy between broken statues, off the road, they make their own path as they head back through dead time and find, just past the rise, just past a destroyed temple, a small pool.

"This is a lake?"

"Doesn't it look like a lake to you?"

There's no need for them to strip down. Anthy runs for the pool, jumps in, wades up to her waist and splashes herself to a chocolate shine, hair trailing in the water. She is a lotus, or perhaps a water lily, some spread flower that means something to someone who knows flower language. Utena stands on the edge of the pool and hesitates, but no red shoes bubble to the surface.

"Aren't you coming in?" Anthy asks. "The water's fine?"

Utena closes her eyes, falls forward, hair streaming out behind her like ribbons as she hits the surface with a sting, falls under water, rises again as her feet find ground, tosses her head and hair as she breaks the water, breaks it, droplets fly everywhere, it's broken.

"Good?" Anthy asks, right behind Utena. One of her hands is on Utena's shoulder, the other is on the small of her back, and her breasts press two soft circles like wings on Utena's back.

Utena turns, smiles, tugs Anthy close against her, like they were when they escaped, when they left the past behind.

"Good," she murmurs, and lets the water wash them clean.