Chapter 8

Spike didn't love her any more.

She tried the phrase out again and again in her head, turning it over and over like a Rubik cube, trying to find something there that made any sense. That would help her understand what move she was supposed to make next. Spike was over her. He had moved on and what was more, he wanted her to move on too. He was happy that she had someone else, had practically pushed her into another man's waiting arms and, when she'd turned to say a final goodbye, he had turned over and gone back to sleep.

Leaving the hospital, she felt oddly dazed. Carlo had offered to drive her home of course and she'd refused, thinking about spinning him a line, telling him that she was exhausted and needed to sleep, but in the end had just decided to go with the truth. Anything else would have required energy.

"I'm sorry. I'm just…it's hard to talk about ok. I think I just need to be on my own for a while. Work through some stuff ok?"

His embrace seemed to be trying to offer her comfort although, with a detached kind of curiosity, she wondered why he would even try.

"Si. It is…still painful. For both of you, yes? Posso capire, Baffy, I understand."

"You do?" Stepping back from him, she folded her arms across her chest and looked at the ground. The grass verge beneath her feet was a rich deep emerald green. "I thought you might be jealous or something." She lifted her head, "You seemed upset before. In the waiting room I mean."

"Of course. Who would not be? But when you have lived as long as I have, you understand that when love exists between two people, it is something powerful. Something that should be respected and revered. To come between two people who love this way is…impossible"

His voice was warm and dark like chocolate, and when he reached for her hand again she didn't bother to resist. Nodding his head, he sighed softly.

"I will not lie to you Baffy. When I saw how you looked at this vampire, how you spoke his name, I felt…a very great envy. But I see now that you understand your feelings for him belong to another life. That this love is in the past now, yes?"

His words dropped into her like cold pennies and, standing with her head bared to the late evening sun, Buffy felt each one add to the weight inside her.

"The heart it is…very precious. It is not something to be taken by force, but something to be given freely, with all the soul and the spirit. I do not want to take your heart Baffy. I cannot. I want only to receive it. So for your loss, I am sad for you, yes, but I am also glad. Because maybe now, your heart can finally be mine. Will you trust me with it?"

Far off in the distance a church bell was ringing and, absently, she looked for its source. Rome was at its most beautiful at sunset, particularly in the summer; a pale rose-colour sky promising the warm, balmy evenings that had first made her fall in love with this city. She thought back to the first few months after they'd moved, when she'd spent every night walking its silver-blue streets, searching for something to bring her back to life. How many she'd spent dining alone, overlooking beautiful piazzas, listening to people, couples laughing and living all around her and wanting it for herself. Spike had been in her heart then, and he still was. Maybe he always would be. When she'd imagined a figure across from her, laughing sideways in the candlelight, holding her hand under the table, it had always been him. And when she watched the moon rise above the great dome of the Pantheon for the first time, it was him she'd shared it with, describing it in her head as if she were writing him a postcard. He had given her this city, this whole life, but had never been there to share it with her and, with a painful dawning certainty, she realised that now he never would be. In a way, it had been easier when he was dead.

Feeling The Immortal's fingers tighten around her own, she looked down at the pale hand that enclosed her own and, responding, Carlo opened it in a caress. Running from one side of the palm to the other, his life line was a thick heavy crease in the flesh broken by a series of deep knots and, curiously, she wondered at its similarity to her own. Her Mom had commented on it once - wondering what the two sharp twists in it might mean – but she'd just laughed it off. After her run-in with The Master though, she'd sometimes worried about the second knot. The one that looked like a knife scar; cutting her life in half before it slowly faded back in again. Only on the night sheíd turned to jump from Glory's tower, had its meaning finally become clear.

"Baffy. You do not answer me."

Frowning, Carlo withdrew his hand from her and pushed it deep into his pocket. The action was casual enough, but the sudden tension in his body made her curious about what she had just seen.

"I think, as you said, you need some time to think. Maybe you will consider what Ihave said."

Seven knots. Carlo had seven of them. Seven to her two. Watching his back as he walked away, she found herself wondering why. Why an Immortal man might have died seven times and why, stranger still, he'd never once thought to mention it to her

ooooooooooooooooooo

The green display of her alarm clock glowed faintly, illuminating the nightstand in front of it and, lying curled inside her quilt, Buffy stared silently at it. 1.55am again. Seemed like it was always 1.55am.

For about the fourth time since she'd gone to bed five hours before, she considered getting up, maybe making herself a cup of coffee. But then Dawn would probably hear her and get up too, and she had no desire to tell her any more about what had happened than she already had. As it was, her explanation had been stilted; punctuated with long, painful silences and all she'd really said was that Spike was safe and recovering in a nearby hospital, but didn't want to see either of them. Unsurprisingly, her sister's reaction had been a mixture of confusion and anger, both with Spike's rejection and with Buffy's refusal to explain further, and the resulting mood between them was now more than a little strained.

She knew she was in the wrong, but her old defense mechanism – don't talk about it and it won't hurt so much – refused to be countermanded. She was in crash position, still curled tight against the shock of nearly losing Spike a second time, reeling from what he'd said to her afterwards and the idea of explaining how that felt to someone else was horrifying. Dawn couldn't understand. She wasn't a child, but she'd never been in love either and, as real as her sympathy would be, it was no substitute for empathy.

Finally giving up on the idea of sleep, she sighed and turned on her bedside light. Her two favourite rings; the one Mom had given her and the silver one she'd bought in Capri, lay on top of the novel she'd been trying to finish for the last three weeks and, reaching out for it, she knocked them both to the floor.

"God…dammit!"

They'd rolled right under the bed and in the end she had to get out to reach them, grasping around in the dustbunny-filled darkness until her fingers closed over a thick sheaf of papers. The memory of what it was came back to her, even before she'd drawn it out. The Council's dossier on The Immortal; everything Giles and the small number of surviving Watchers had managed to piece together, had been crammed into single file-folder and secured with three sturdy elastic bands. Fastened to the front, his elegant copperplate hand covered several sheets of thick cream-coloured paper and the sight of it filled her with equal measures of affection and guilt.

"…approach with the utmost caution, as I trust you always do. I should warn you Buffy that his expertise in nearly all of the martial arts disciplines is quite legendary, as is his reputation as a womanizer and completely amoral seducer of impressionable…"

"Ok. So tell me something I don't already know."

Rolling her eyes, she flipped to read the reverse.

"…many legends and rumours as to how the gift of immortality came to be bestowed upon him, it is a fairly well-substantiated fact that he was, at least at one time, entirely human and may have been originally of North African origin."

Most of it was familiar - she certainly remembered the part about his 'voracious sexual appetite' - but there were whole chunks that she definitely hadn't read before. Turning to the third page, one particular phrase seemed to jump out from the rest;

"Council records are hazy on the matter (for obvious reasons), but there is a suggestion that he has been romantically involved with a number of Slayers, although details of their identities are currently unavailable…"

Unavilable. That was Giles speak for 'details are now toast'. Frowning, Buffy's eyes skimmed swiftly down through the rest of the letter and then returned to reread the paragraph again.

So Carlo had dated a Vampire Slayer before, maybe more than one. The idea wasn't so surprising, he made no secret of his admiration for strong, passionate women, but the fact that he hadn't ever mentioned was …odd. Another in a long line of creepy omissions. Twisting off the bands that held the file together, she sighed with annoyance as, with a soft slither, the photographs contained inside spilled out across the carpet.

Candid 80s Carlo at some big flashy gala dinner, a big-breasted, golden Italian Madonna on his arm. Long-haired dark-eyed Carlo, circa maybe 1910, posed with one hand on the bonnet of a shiny new automobile. Slick-haired 1950s Carlo in a dark-grey suit you could have sharpened pencils on. In every picture a different hair-style, a different era - and a different woman and, curiously now, Buffy slid them out from under each other, fanning them around her in a wide arc.

They were all of a certain type; the women. She'd noticed that before. All dark and curvy, long tumbling hair and big batting eyelashes. She saw them everywhere in Rome and, in all of Carlo's photographs, lithographs, etchings, paintings, the same type of woman was echoed. The classic Italian beauty, the kind of body guys hacked out of slabs of marble and cast in bronze. In other words, the kind that wasn't her.

She remembered how much it had bothered her at first, that she was not his 'usual physical type', but he'd assured her that her 'beauty transcended others'. That her strength and spirit was what he'd been attracted to, not her body or face. At the time it had seemed terribly romantic - that he loved her solely for her mind - but later she'd found herself staring at these photographs a little too often, wondering what it was about their minds that had been so damn interesting.

Shaking her head at the memory, she started to gather the pictures back up into a pile when one small image she hadn't noticed before caught her eye. Printed on soft, heavy paper, it showed a young woman in plain, un-fussy Victorian dress with hair pinned severely on top of her head. Studying the portrait intently, she compared the girl's features with those of the other women. She certainly wasn't beautiful and her figure was nothing to shout about, in fact she was a world away from Carlo's usual physical type. Her hands - neatly folded in her lap - were skillfully drawn and in them, twisted through the fingers of her right hand, hung a set of rosary beads and a heavy crucifix.

"Marie-Helen Lumiere." Turning it over, Buffy read the note Giles had scribbled. "Possible paramour of The Immortal. Born: Marseilles 1880 – Died: Unknown."

He hadn't noted it, perhaps thinking it would be as obvious to her as it would have been to him, but there was no doubt in her mind that this girl was a Slayer. The eyes in the heart-shaped face were fierce and clear and, although it was only an etching, the lonely, proud expression in them was unmistakable.

Placing her picture gently on top of the others, she stared down at it for a long time, before closing the file and climbing back under the covers. Beside her on the nightstand the clock's glowing display showed the time as 2.15am and, closing her eyes, she tried to visualize something that would bring sleep. A softly flowing river, sun through leaves, but the image of Spike's face; the expression as he'd turned on her angrily, sprang to life behind her eyes again like a movie.

"That's what made the difference between me and a thousand other vamps. I don't give up. I never give up. You of all people should know that."

Opening her eyes, she stared at the ceiling. But he had given up. He'd given up on her. Why, when he'd never faltered before? When he'd given up everything just to give her what she needed. Why when he'd never given up on anything before in his whole undead life?

ooooooooooooooooooo

"Buffy? Are you awake?"

A soft tapping woke her and, rolling to one side, she nudged the alarm clock round to face her. The shutters on her windows blocked the light out so effectively that it could be noon and she would never know it and, grimacing, she saw that – in fact – that's pretty much what it was. Almost midday. At least she had slept a little then, in between the recurring episodes of Spike-rejection and disturbingly vivid dreams about the pale, Victorian Slayer.

A second knock, a little louder than the first, and this time Dawn's voice held a hint of a tremor.

"Buffy? Are you still asleep? I have to talk to you."

"No. I'm…up. Now." Reaching for her jeans, she almost tripped over the file, kicking some of the photographs loose again. Her foot slid on one and, grabbing it up, she groaned as she saw it was 1950s shot. The slicked-back Al Pacino look was so very him. "You can come in."

Throwing open the shutters, she turned to see that Dawn was dressed for the street. Dark glasses pushed up on her head, some lipstick, her most expensive purse and a fabulous soft buckskin jacket that, if she remembered rightly, had been a birthday present to Buffy from Carlo. Letting it pass, she looked around for her comfortable sneakers.

"Going out?"

Dawn's lips were a thin line, "I've been out already. I told you. It's noon."

OK. So she was still pissed at her. That was understandable she supposed. Dawn hated being kept in the dark about anything, particularly her sister's love-life, and by the looks she was giving her, she felt especially aggrieved this time. Finding one sneaker under her chair and another by the door, she turned to meet her accusatory glare with a weary sigh.

"Look Dawn, I told you everything I could, ok? I just…I don't want to talk about it right now. Can we just…leave it?"

"I went to see Spike."

Her voice was cold and clipped and, biting back a curse, Buffy threw back her head in exasperation.

"Godammit Dawn! Didn't I tell you…"

The words hadn't even left her lips and her sister's face crumpled. Dropping her head, she covered her face with her hands and slumped onto the bed. The sight of her narrow shoulders shaking with sobs was more than Buffy could bear and, after a second or two, she sat down beside her.

"It's ok."

Dawn scrubbed her knuckles against her eyes.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was just so mad at him for…not wanting us." Sniffing, she picked at the stitching of her purse. "I just wanted to tell him…that he was an asshole. But then the yellow Doctor guy said I couldn't go in…because…he was resting, but I snuck around through the emergency exit and…Carlo was there." She swallowed, "At first I thought he was checking his heartbeat or something. He had his hand on him, on his chest, smiling, but then I noticed he didn't have a stethoscope or anything. And then he moved a little - and I saw Spike's face." Her voice cracked and she stared up at her sister with wide blue-green eyes. "He was in pain, Buffy. I think what Carlo was doing was hurting him."

She'd heard Dawn's words, but now she was no longer listening. Inside her chest, her heart felt as if it were trying to escape - beating so hard that it was almost painful - and, laying a hand to it, she stared down at the pictures at her feet. Dark-eyed, dark-haired beauties – all of them. All of Carlo's many conquests. All but a small, plain French girl – a Slayer. What had drawn Carlo to her? Her strength? Her power? Or like her, had there been something inside her he'd wanted, something that only she could give him? Something he was willing to do anything to obtain.

Lifting his picture from the floor she stared deep into his black fathomless eyes.

"What are you?" she said.