"New life, new city, old me," Leo thinks as he takes the same route to work as every day. He takes the subway from his apartment and then he walks through the park. He looks at the large carved door of the church opposite his store, wonders at the artist who made those carvings and crosses the street. He opens the record store and spends the rest of his day listening to music and talking to the customers.
It starts to rain heavy that day just after lunch. He is usually happy when it rains because that means less customers. People are less likely to walk around in the rain. This then leaves him with more time for his drawings. He starts sketching the façade of the church and he is deep in his thoughts when he looks up at the church and sees a man walking in. there wouldn't be anything special about that had not that man turned around and looked straight at Leo at the same time. Leo is stunned by the pale face looking at him.
Leo feels an intense headache somewhere behind his eyes. The pain hits him so hard that he loses his breath. For a second he feels like he is having a stroke perhaps, but the headache disappears just as quickly as it came. He rubs his eyes and looks back towards the church but the man is no longer there.
Leo tries to forget about the pain and turns to the records. He skips the shelf with the most recent records and goes towards the classical music. He chooses a violin concerto, puts the record on and tries not to think about the strange man.
He closes a bit early that day and skips his usual drinks at the neighbourhood dive. He goes straight to his apartment instead. It is still raining but he doesn't open his umbrella. Instead, he allows the raindrops to wash over him. The raindrops on his skin feel like the pizzicato on violin strings of that concerto he had listened to earlier. By the time he reaches the subway he is completely soaked through. The people look at him strangely but he does his best to ignore them.
When he gets home he is greeted by Nico, his ginger cat. The cat is a perfect remedy for any pain, and he considers taking him to work in case the headache returns. Leo takes off the wet clothes and goes straight to bed, falling asleep listening to Nico purr.
That evening he about Leonardo Da Vinci, again. He's had dreams about the strange genius all his life, but this last dream was different. In the middle of a dream as he was following Leonardo through the streets of Rome, Leo hears a thunder, there must have been a thunderstorm outside while he was sleeping. The loud noise of the thunder brings back the headache in his dream. The pain then spread all though his body and he felt like he was being ripped limb from limb. The pain is too much and he can no longer focus on Da Vinci, the streets disappear, and all that is left is him, spread on cobbled street, writhing in agony, and through all this he hears a voice, soft as velvet whispering: "It is our choices that define us, you told me a long time ago, Artiste. It is still true today."
He wakes up on the floor, disoriented and with one of his arms tangled up in the sheets still on the bed. He counts his blessings. He just fell out of bed. The last time he woke up from his dream in the middle of stairs and lost his footing. The result was a couple of broken ribs and a stay at the hospital.
After every such dream he feels that there will soon come a day when he can't take it any more. When his past lives finally prove too much for him. The burden of all those memories, all those cities, all those lives and deaths is immense. As if sensing his pain and fear, Nico comes to Leo and rubs his head against Leo's. Leo picks him up and scratches the cat behind the ear, "Nico, my faithful guardian."
All that morning Leo remembers the voice of his love from the dream. He feels the ache and the emptiness of being away from the count. He remembers all the unsuccessful attempts at getting Riario to remember, but he also knows that in each attempt, in each life, he has come one step closer to achieving his goal.
"Maybe this life will be the one," he says in hope.
There is one thing that bothers him, however. With each life, he remembers less and less. With each life it takes him longer to realize what he is supposed to do.
"What if one day I don't remember?"
