Thanks to Arianka for inspiration and translating and to lbindner for beta reading.
Disclaimer: I do not own characters and I don't make any profits on writing.
Kisses
Part one
For the first time Zorro gets to know the taste of the death's kiss in the Perdido canyon. She reaches for him with a stray bullet that wounds Toronado, so the stallion throws his rider right into the precipice. And when he lies there among the rocks, he confuses the coldness of the stones with the hands' touch and he thinks he sees her at the edge of his view, the silver-haired lady in a gray dress, with a face soft and calm like a dream, with her eyes like blue steel. He tastes blood in his mouth and he knows that death is somewhere near.
Since then more than once he thinks he sees her. Her light silhouette somewhere in the house's shadows, caught in the corner of an eye when the musket balls fly around, a figure the color of smoke, partly hidden behind a curtain of the fire in a burning house, a shadow gliding on the wall, when he balances dangerously at the ridge of the roof, the sound of her light steps echoing in a half-collapsed mine or in the corridors of the Devil's Fortress.
From time to time he is sure that his unexpected companion gives him a kiss. Bitter like a poison going through his veins, like the one that Palomarez used, or the contaminated water he accidentally drank; salty like blood, when he has to fight on the path of pain; burning like a venom of the rattle snake or the fire. And when he fought with Gilberto, she gave him even two. One was salty again, like the blood from his shot arm, the second one dry like the dust from the stones that fell on him.
These kisses are always unexpected and always give him a strange sense of peace, an invitation to taste them and lose himself. But Zorro knows he cannot do this, cannot allow one of them to become the last. So he fights doubly hard. He defends himself against becoming listless with effort, anger, pain and recollections of Victoria Escalante's kisses. He sometimes dreams, that this swarthy spirited woman is opposite to this imagined, gray-dressed lady. But always then, when he fights, he seems to hear her laughter. "How long, you insolent Fox? How many times will you resist me?"
He recalls it now, in the night silence in the jail. The sobbing señorita Escalante was taken away long ago, the sad and compassionate padre Benitez also went away, along with Felipe, clenching his fists in a vain anger, and the shaken, despairing don Alejandro. Now the silence is disturbed only by the guards' callings. The garrison is vigilant, because the alcalde cannot allow the finally caught opponent to be freed. Ignacio de Soto himself bustles in his quarters, prepares for the journey, to his dreamt comeback from his banishment. Through the small window in his cell, Zorro can see the night sky and the stars moving in it as the hours pass by. He also knows, that if he stands up and comes to the bars, he will see the gallows silvered by the moonlight.
The death has kissed Zorro eight times and eight times he has managed to step back, before he has lost himself. But now he knows, that in the noon of the coming day he will meet her again. He knows that she is waiting for him, cold and calm, gray like a dust, silver like the moon shine, with eyes like polished steel. And looking from the window at the gallows, he wonders how this last, ninth kiss is going to taste.