Sorry for the extremely late update everyone! I lost my USB and everything was in it. I was between screaming swears I never knew I could and crying my eyes out until I realized it was hidden behind a stack of books the whole time. Don't ask me how it got there, but at least it was there to be found =D

And it was then with a shock that he showed up, "I love you, I love you," he said, "I have followed you because I have loved you. I have loved you, I have loved you." And I sat with my head down and my hands beneath my thighs and he sat on his knees in front of me and wept on the stones and I couldn't say anything because it was hard to breath in the closeness.

So the ghost and I lived together. Vivi and I. He cleaned my house just like it had been only a few years ago, laundering the sheets in the cool air of the wintertime, airing them out the window with great motions of his long arms, flicking his thin wrists.

I wanted to ask him about his life. Where did you go after Herculaneum? After you left me. But he would hold my hands between his hands, sitting on the floor in front of me and I would not be able to speak. And it was that, it was all he wanted; to be close to me, to have someone to touch, to talk to, to not be so alone. He was not passionate. He was still a ghost, but it did not matter that he was a ghost so much anymore because he did not have to be very much for me to need him, to crave him, to desire him. And he slept in my bed and he shivered in my arms and I slept with my head on his chest, his hand in my hair.

He whispered things to me, just like air, things that didn't have to mean anything, and I felt something-a kind of safety in his arms, in the drowsy sunlight of an afternoon, some kind of safety that might have eluded me in the past but which I couldn't decide how I had lived before without. I could fall asleep there and he would continue to whisper. I never found out about his life or about his retinue within it. These are mysteries that neither of us have wondered too much about.

"Now," he said in my ear so gently, so gently, "Now you must find these things."

"These things," I wondered.

"Those things," he said, holding me softly, "Those things that you have loved."

"I don't know what I have loved, if anything. What is so good about things that I might have loved?"

"Dumb questions from those who are dying," he said.

"I don't even know if I know what they mean half the time," I said, "And I don't know if they know what I mean."

"Are you afraid that they will misunderstand you?"

"I don't care."

"I think you thought so when I was a child too."

***

I was with Vivacio when I walked into the cathedral where Ariel was. He was inside the box so I went inside it too, and he rolled back the shutter with a loud rolling snap so I could see him through the grate.

I watched him watching me; his grey eyes did not tremble. When he spoke I felt the whole earth rumble, a vibration from the bottom of the planet that felt like words.

"He is in Vienna."

The grate snapped shut again.

***

In the future, cold and meticulous Vivi does not surprise me at all. He kills the same way he lives, which is without passion. He tortures his lovers by not loving them. I find him hard to figure out myself, but to me he has always been a shadow. I don't think I ever kept him because I wanted him. He could always only be pale to Vasvius.

Vasvius remains fiery, though he is more scholastic. He brings me books sometimes, though he will not outright help me, he seems to understand that language and understanding are essential to continuing my existence. Sometimes also I think he just wants to share with someone, and I won't betray him to anyone for that. Many of us I know are only living because we are living.

"You are winding up into nothing, perpetually," Dasius said, the snake who was near to being born when I was alone in the dark thinking of Escha in Vienna, who would soon meet my most precious one in Paris and begin things that were new. When I found Escha again, these things were already far underway.

***

"Dear, dear, Butterhead, these things shouldn't happen to those who are so very sweet."

Nataniellus always called Escha by that name.

***

I cannot say that I was lonely. I was not alone all the time, so I did not go to Paris to follow Escha because I was lonely. I was not there because I missed him.

I had not been to Paris before. Like many times in my life however, the last thousand years of it is scattered across my mind and my consciousness and when talked about the details, they usually come unbidden and in an unfocused way. So much has changed within those years that it is hard to organize for me. When did this happen? Who are these people? It is so much the truth of it that I do not know myself, but I am so much more confused by things these days than I used to be.

I went to Paris in the early 19th century. I stayed there by myself for some time. It was fascinating to me, because I had always been someone to avoid really major modern cities; too much noise, too much light, too many people, too many dangers. Escha has been my opposite in that sense. Moscow, Vienna, Paris; he loved all of these places. Rome, Herculaneum, Alexandra, Cairo; these were my cities. Some things were familiar, though much of it turned out to be altogether too foreign for me to handle by myself. Perhaps I am too withdrawn. Perhaps I am too personal. Perhaps the way that I had learned to do things no longer suited my world, but I reached for him with a hand that needed him, and it was a hand that he did not want, and in the end it was a hand that he only took because he needed something from me. He gave away all his responsibilities to me, and I have them still. What could I do but take them from him when I saw how he had suffered? How could I know that it would not help him at all?

***

"You only want him in contrast to you, who is libertine, and he only wants me in contrast to him, who, for the moment, we cannot tell if he is worse than you or not, because you cloud and mingle your judgment of yourself towards and with that of others. You are a clown," the child spits at me.

***

My first introductions to Escha's companions were made through spying, and they were delicious and horrible. I had not yet heard the story, about the orphans whom he had adopted for himself after the conflict with whom I suppose to have been a former love affair. There was, there is, Nicolas with his brown hair and his small body. Nicolas is almost exquisite, but his eyes betray him constantly, for he is full of locusts and only in the black pits of his eyes can they be seen.

I had been in Paris for a few weeks, keeping to myself mostly, smelling Escha's smell and trying to be peaceful. The day that I first caught view of Nicolas and Dasius, the smell had been too overwhelming for me not to follow it. It was easy to see that the older of the two was different, but while it did not surprise me that the younger one was not as he seemed, I was intrigued. It was not interesting to follow them, because life is so mundane. Watch the child get his hair trimmed, watch the older one watching him. I was more interested in the child at that time.

And then I saw Escha for the first time in so many centuries and I was stricken completely. Everything about him was wrong. He was present completely, but dressed like one of them, his hair was down and done and restrained. It was all so wrong to me. It was all so out of place. Escha; beautiful, delicate, looked tired and old, putting up with the younger one when he pulled on his arm. I wanted to destroy them both and take him with me. He walked into my field of vision, surprising me so completely that I almost cried his name.

I crawled through his window instead and searched his room for things that might remind me of him, trying to preoccupy myself with some notion of the past, but he had left me for another world and given me nothing to remember him by. All of his baubles and mementos were from different times, and I found myself taking his pillow and crawling under his bed, destitute. I wished desperately for some kind of token of my Escha. I slept there in his room with his smell.

***

When I woke he had come into the room, locked out the others. He was sitting on the floor against the closed door, sobbing in a language I cannot speak, and I grabbed his leg.

***

They didn't like me at all. They spat at me and criticized me to him; that I was dangerous to him, that I had some motive, that I was old and therefore untrustworthy. I kept my own peace and he would come to me, like he had as a child, and lie on me and rest, and I would play with his hair with all of the love I have in my body and hold him. He would not speak to me at first.

It was not hard for me to see that he had brought responsibilities into his life like these children in order to feel needed, wanted, to be thought of. I didn't really want to know about the things he had done, or the things he had seen. I didn't really want to talk to him at all. The child's criticisms were constant.

"You are a clown. You are selfish. You are two-faced. You do not love him the way that we love him."

It swayed me to stay that he was so tired, that he would gesture to his Nicky and hold him in a way that seemed so familiar. His real treasure was Dasius, the taller and older one, the darker one. Dasius would hide from me in the shadows, watching me. He was not very vocal. I wanted to kiss him.

It is Dasius, so derided by Escha in his later years, who cares for Escha now while he dies, more desperate than myself to have him live, and this desperation is because Dasius and I are not so different. He has more of Escha in his behaviors and devotions than any of the ones who crowded around him because he has needed Escha the most, and Escha was not blind to this, abusing him by keeping distance and mocking his attempts to get closer. I have watched Dasius as much as he has watched me, and it is probably appropriate that he despises me and I keep it an amusing secret that I love him the best.

He has gained a reputation for ruthlessness, viciousness, and general evil, but I feel that there is no such thing as general evil. It is far too subjective a business. It is easy to dislike someone who is generally evil, and easier to fear them if they are also vicious. I find that it is a reputation fed by an inability to communicate and a lack of desire on the opposing side to listen. In truth, he is far too delicate for all of this ill treatment but I love to watch him struggle because he hates me so. I lose my ability to be objective.

Nicolas, in contrast, I would like very much to strangle to death.

I cannot forgive him the things he has done.

***

In the quietest moments I would dream. It was hard in a place, so metropolitan to go out and find a place to lie in the sunshine, and perhaps my dearest wish has always been only to be on a gentle slope someplace warm with maybe a pomegranate or a mango and the afternoon to myself, watching the lights come on after twilight, the stars twinkling into life one by one and sometimes in great sweeps, glimmering. The business of daytime would settle and become quiet, and I would close my eyes and be content, if not happy.

I spent a lot of time indoors or slinking around the smaller avenues of Paris, away from large crowds of people and an excess of noises and smells. A few times Dasius followed me, but finding that I was not up to anything he soon ceased to do so. I could not convince Escha to come out with me on such sojourns, maybe to show me his favorite places. He became increasingly melancholy, coming home later and later, forgetting his Dasius and his Nicolas, drinking great draughts of blood and fainting in my doorway.

Nicolas called him "Madonna", caring for him like a martyr, but that, to me, is something that is too whimsical. Escha would often go to Nicolas, sleeping in his bed at night and losing his temper in the daytime because of Nicolas's complete lack of regard for rules. Things that to him seemed "merely intuitive" escaped or remained ignored by Nicolas, things like not killing women with families or cleaning up after oneself were, to him, a matter of being honorable of the creature of man. His rules were not Nicolas's rules, and while to him it must have felt disrespectful, he had a certain need for the validation that the violation of his principles delivered in the child's behavior. If Nicolas is wrong, then he must be a more moral, forgivable character. It was easier that way, and Nicolas knew this very well.

Nicolas did not and does not care for any self restraint in any matter including in those involving hurting those he loves. I am sure that he has feelings and reservations just like everyone else, but he is unforthcoming, and very practiced at giving nothing away in his face or body. Escha has entreated me compassion for him, whispering to me at night about how murdering and stalking and drinking blood is all that Nicolas has ever known.

"He was only a child when I had to take him, Leechtin. I love him. Please care for him."

I won't. Now that Escha is dying, I worry that I will have to make sure Nicolas comes to no harm in his absence, but for my heart I cannot judge how I might reach out a hand to a creature for whom I have nearly always felt nothing but severe bitterness and contempt.

***

"I might have died."

"No," I whispered.

Escha turned around to me in the café, smoothing his hair back from his face.

I looked away from him, refusing to speak.