"Immortal Beloved"

Chapter 3: Killing Time

"What do you mean?" Buffy stared up at the Immortal -- well, the man who had introduced himself as Todd -- who stood, silhouetted in the Roman sunlight.

"You're not my princess," he repeated.

"How --?" Buffy sputtered. "How do you? How could you?" She reared up to her full height, which only took her to his breastbone, and gave her best arm-crossed Slayer pose. "I could totally be your princess."

"No, Summers," he said gently. "You really, really couldn't."

"I --" Buffy spread her arms and fell back into the cafe chair. "What is it about me? I'm even scaring my undead stalkers away."

"Technically, I'm not undead. I've never actually been dead at all."

"Who said this was all about you, ego-boy?"

"Ah, how could I forget Ann-gelus."

"You mean, An-JEL-us," she corrected. "That's to say -- Angel."

"Summers, the guy can't even decide what to call himself, much less what he wants from a girl. You can't hold yourself responsible for his mood swings."

"Okay, first, about the names? You are not the one to talk. Second, who says I was talking about Ann-jel, um, Angel? At all."

"Because a girl's likely to have a tortured affair with more than one vampire before she's twenty-five."

"This just proves that you don't know a thing about me." Buffy let out a deep breath. "I could almost make peace with the Angel thing, if people would just stop coming along and picking at those wounds. But the last time I saw Spike, it was all 'I love you,' 'Buffy I can feel my soul' -- and now it turns out he's operating out of Heartworm and Wolf along with Angel and. . . "

"Do I --" he choked. "Do I get to say 'bullshit' this time?"

"Well, maybe it's Wormwood and Hart?"

"No, back up -- Spike? As in William-the-Bloody Spike?"

"Yeah. He's all soulful now."

"I knew that part. And I keep tabs on Wolfram & Hart, naturally, but -- You and him? There was a love thing?"

"It's not like it's common knowledge. By the time I figured it out, I thought he was dead. And now he's not, and he's doing his own thing, Buffy-be-damned."

"Well. Spike and Angelus. That explains a lot."

"Meaning?"

"They were voted cutest couple at Count Woland's Costume Ball in Moscow back in eighteen ninety-three." He shrugged. "Sure, I stuffed the ballot box. But a lot of people laughed. The best jokes always have a grain of truth."

"Besides raising about twenty-seven different subjects that I never want to think about," Buffy said, "that story just confirms that, the more I learn about the spooky, supernatural underworld, the more I feel like I'm back in high school."

"God," he answered. "High school? That's one form of torture I never did have to endure."

Buffy swallowed and a brief silence settled between them. "Is it because of them?" She asked quietly. "Is it because I've been with Angel and Spike that you don't want me for your princess?"

"Want?" He repeated. "Summers, have you heard a word I've said? Want doesn't come into it. Nineteen eighty-nine. The Romanian revolution. I was an anti-government agitator. Tatiana Andrescu was the daughter of a party hack. The father was a Stalinist hangover, total nutjob, vowed he would never let his family live in a post-Communist world. Tania and I were set to get away from all that. We had everything arranged. We'd get out together and live the rest of our supremely boring lives on a beet farm in Saskatchewan. She just wanted to wait and spend one last Christmas with her family. And that was the day they killed the President. Her father thought he was next, took a machine gun to his wife and daughters, then himself."

"That's -- Buffy stammered. "That's awful. That's maybe the saddest story --"

"Oh, but I've got forty-seven more just as fun and bloody. Tania was my last Ramona. And I really thought I was getting out that time. Maybe it was just an excuse to get slow and lazy. But I saw all this symbolism -- the walls were falling down, so I figured whoever's the monkey in charge of this crazy dance sent me one last cold war story to ring out the end of history. You probably don't remember all that garbage people were talking when the wall fell. You were, what, seven?"

"Eight," she said. "A little more with the Sesame Street than the All Things Considered."

"So you see? She died. You were eight."

"Oh," Buffy said. "Pretty much already carnated."

"Wherever Ramona is right now, she's no more than fourteen, probably closer to twelve. The turnaround on these things is longer than you might think. What with all the weighing souls in the balance, calculating karma, cutting a deal with one or the other of the ferrymen on the Styx or the Acheron. . . "

"But shouldn't you know where she is? Keep tabs on her from birth like they do with the Dalai Lama?"

"Waiting for the little girl to get all nubile? No thanks. Unlike some allegedly soulful immortals I could name, I prefer to keep it legal."

"Hey!"

"I'm just saying. Besides, it's not really a matter of me looking for her. We just sort of find each other. No escaping, and believe me, I've tried. I've gone in a Tibetan monastery, hidden in a cave, attempted various and futile forms of suicide." He spread his hands. "Can't outrun destiny, Summers. I'd think you of all people should know."

"Is that what you want from me? Someone who understands destiny?"

"Let me put it this way. A few months worth of doomed, passionate love every twenty years or so still leaves an awful lot of eternity to contend with."

"So the rest of it is just what -- killing time?"

"Partly. That and, you know. World domination. But -- and I can't stress this enough -- not in an evil way."

"Wait, wait, don't tell me. A mission from the powers that be --"

"What I can tell you, Summers, is that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by the Watchers' Council."

"And if I, what? Kill some time with you, you just might show me."

"Well, yeah. Partly because I've got a sentimental attachment to slayers. And partly because it seems like you'd be fun to kill time with."

"Maybe I'm hearing you wrong," said Buffy. "But this sounds like the kind of offer that women are traditionally supposed to find insulting."

"I suppose you could take it that way. I wouldn't entirely blame you. You could also take it as a compliment. Ramona I'm stuck with. You I chose. You I'm actually starting to think that I like."

"Wait a minute. All this eternal torment is over a girl you don't even like?"

"So I should assume you hooked up with William the Bloody because of his charming personality?"

"Score one for ancient stalker guy." Buffy swirled the dregs of her coffee and stared into the cup. "Beet farm in Saskatchewan?"

"Tania saw the name on a map." He gave a thin smile. "She was one of the nicer Ramonas. I think it could have worked."

"So if it works," Buffy said quietly. "If you get the girl. What? You die?"

"Not right away," he said. "But sixty, seventy years? Yeah. At least that's the theory. Sui generis - I'm my own special case, so there's not exactly precedent."

"If you save her, then you die. Can you really be trying that hard?"

"After a thousand years and forty-eight dead girls? Dying of old age in Saskatchewan has a certain appeal."

"Forty-eight," Buffy said, still taking it in. "But it's really all the same girl - right?"

"To me? Yeah. She never looks quite the same, but there's an angle to her head. A light in her eyes. She thinks fart jokes are funny, goes nuts for yappy little dogs, and she can't stand the taste of peppermint. The first time we kiss, she lets out this little breath and moves back like she's going to pull out of it, maybe slaps me in the face or threatens to have me shot for my insolence. But then, whatever she threatened, she doesn't do it. Always a surprise to herself, never to me. And the same with the dying. Every time, she feels the dying just as much."

"And you? Do you feel it more each time? Or less?"

"You tell me, Summers. Which would be worse?"

A single cloud raced over the sun, playing with the long shadows of evening in the piazza. "Less," Buffy said. "Every time you feel it less. And that way is much, much worse."

His eyes focused somewhere far beyond her as he whispered. "Tell the lady what she's won."

Buffy inched a hand across the table until the fingers settled softly on his knuckles. "I've won enough already," she said. "I've been chosen. I've beaten death and eight or nine apocalypses. I beat the last one so good that I'm only about one percent as important as I used to be. And so it turns out, I've got some time to kill. "

THE END (or is it?)