Author's Notes: I want to thank everyone who's reviewed so far. I really do appreciate all the feedback.
~Edited to shift notes to the end~
Chapter 2
Preparations and Nightmares
Diego glanced at the book he'd brought with him, but mostly he watched Victoria, trying to figure out the best way to approach her. The nightmares of the past week were still haunting him though.
The first nightmare— a relatively mild one at that— occurred the night after his talk with his father. He dreamed he was back in the cave the day he proposed. As he did that day, he'd forgotten to change back into his Zorro outfit, but this time Felipe didn't rush in to remind him, and Victoria who'd been sleeping in his chair woke up and saw him standing there.
He stood frozen as she stared at him and then asked, "Diego? Where's Zorro?"
Incredibly the words that he seemed incapable of saying while awake just popped out of his mouth in the dream. "I'm Zorro."
To his horror, Victoria laughed. "Don't be silly, Diego. You're nothing like Zorro. You're not tall enough or brave enough or even romantic enough. You're too busy reading or getting sick to be Zorro."
Diego opened his mouth to protest when a voice came from closer to the entrance of the cave. "She's right, you know. You really are nothing like me." Diego whirled to see himself— to see Zorro— walking right in.
Victoria launched herself at the man in the mask. "Zorro, I knew you'd be back," she said, hugging him tightly, while Diego looked on stunned.
"This isn't possible," he said. "I'm Zorro. I always have been."
The masked man looked at Diego coldly. His eyes were red in the dim light, and Diego had to repress a shudder. "You've tried very hard to keep us separate, but all that you want is already mine, and you will never get it back." He glanced at Victoria who held him apparently oblivious to the conversation. "She will always be mine." He reached a hand up to caress her cheek, and that's when Diego woke up.
He spent the morning trying to banish the dream from his head. His arm was just a bit sore, and it frustrated him. At least he had company in his father, whose wounds were still troubling him as well. They spent some time going over business that would need to be dealt with while Alejandro and Felipe were away. It was mostly minor details. His father had already dealt with the most important matters.
As he finished with the business, Alejandro glanced at a letter that had been laying on the desk as well. "Oh, Diego, I'd almost forgotten about this letter. It's from a Don Ladislao Dracula."
"Dracula? The name seems familiar, but I don't..."
"They are a very distant connection. Actually I thought the family had died out, but apparently not. In any event he's recently arrived in California and is inquiring about a book that he believes that your grandfather brought with him from Spain. I don't really know anything about it (it's not in the library), but there might be some mention of it in your grandfather's papers. You might look through them if you have the time. Señor Dracula mentions that he might be arriving in Los Angeles sometime within the next three weeks, and that he's already made arrangements to purchase the old Torres estate."
Diego looked up. "That place? It's been closed up for ages and is rather isolated."
"He seems aware of its conditions and prepared for it, but do offer to let him stay here if it requires renovations. He is family. Anyway, here is the letter. Read it through later, when you have the time."
"All right, Father. Anything else?"
Alejandro looked through the papers on his desk. "No, no. I think that's everything. I trust your judgment if anything unexpected comes up, and you know where to send a messenger if needed."
That night Diego had another dream: he was in the abandoned windmill where he and Victoria had taken shelter from a storm that time they'd gone to Santa Paula to speak with the King's Emissary. This time he tried telling her, and instead of laughing, she simply got angry and ran into the storm. When he tried to follow her, Zorro once again appeared. This time he held him back with the point of his saber.
"Give up. It is the legend she wants, and it is the legend she will get," his double said.
"How can she? You are me. You have always been me," Diego protested.
"Not anymore. Soon I will be free of you," Zorro said before lunging at him with his sword, and Diego woke up with a start, almost expecting to feel the point of the blade in his chest. Once again, Zorro was standing between him and Victoria, but this time he seemed to want to kill him. It was very disquieting. Was this really about his fears that Victoria only loved the legend and not the man? And was his mind really determined to drag him back through all the times he should have told her?
He tried putting the dream out of his head as he spent the day with Felipe. His father was meeting with some caballeros, and he and Felipe slipped down to the cave. Diego told Felipe what he could expect to see in Monterey. Felipe asked about Señor Montez and Diego gave him the letters to read. They did a little light practice with swords— Diego using only his left, while having Felipe practice with both hands. All in all it was a good day, and Diego hoped that he'd be spared another nightmare.
He wasn't.
He was back at the horrible time when Victoria had been shot in Zorro's stead. He was sitting by her bed, praying that she'd live, regretting that he'd never told her the truth, knowing that if she died he couldn't go on. "If you die, Victoria, Zorro will die with you," he said.
"You keep wanting to kill me," a grating voice said from the across the room. Diego looked up to see the figure dressed as Zorro again, hand on the hilt of his sword. "You'll never succeed. Even in death I'm more powerful than you, and I'll still take her with me."
"Who are you?" Diego asked, angrily, crossing the room to stand between the masked man and Victoria's bed. He wouldn't take her if he could help it.
"You know who I am," the dark figure said, drawing his sword.
"No, I don't," Diego said, not moving. "You're not me. You're not even the Zorro of legend. What is it you want from me?"
There was a laugh. "Now that is the right question." Impossibly, the masked man was suddenly across the room, sitting on the edge of the bed next to Victoria. He brushed one hand against her hair, and looked back at Diego. "The answer is— everything." He swept his cape around Victoria, and they both vanished in a flash of light.
Diego stared at the bed for a moment before rushing out of the room towards the garden, terrified and desperate but determined to find Victoria, even though he felt with sickening certainty that he was too late.
He found her body where he knew she'd be— lying on the ground at the spot where she'd first kissed him. She looked unnaturally pale and bloodless even in the moonlight, and he fell to his knees beside her, trying to find some sign of life. But she was gone. He'd failed her.
"And this is not the worst to come," a soft, malevolent voice spoke from behind him.
Diego raised his head, anger burning out over his grief, as he stared at the strange figure in Zorro's costume. "What can you do that is possibly worse than this?" He rose to his feet.
"You'd be surprised, de la Vega," the other said, coolly. "There are much worse things than death." He stood looking at him with glowing eyes before finishing, "I am one of them."
Without thinking, Diego launched himself at the false Zorro, who disappeared the moment Diego touched his cape. Momentum carrying him forward, Diego fell heavily against the ground. As he started to push himself up, he saw a faint glow just in front of him. Looking up, he saw his grandfather standing close to him. Somehow it didn't seem unnatural for him to be there, though he'd died when Diego was a child.
"What is going on, Grandfather?" Diego asked, rising to his knees.
A brightly glowing aura surrounded Sebastian de la Vega. It started flickering as he spoke, as if speaking drained him. "Be careful, my boy. He'll be here soon. Don't let him in. Keep the secret safe."
"What secret?"
His grandfather ignored the question as he seemed to be fading fast. "Help is coming too. You trusted his brother... trust him... old wisdom... Diego..." The ghost vanished.
Diego stared at the spot for a long moment. Then as he started to get up, he felt a hand touch his shoulder. Turning quickly, he fell back against the ground as he saw it was Victoria who'd touched him. He couldn't understand it. How could this be? Was she a ghost as well?
Gingerly, he touched her hand. It was solid. She was real. Although she still looked ghastly pale and her eyes had a curiously dull look in them, all that mattered to Diego was that she was alive. Quickly sitting up, he hugged her tightly. Her hands slid up around his neck, and he pulled back slightly to look at her. There was a strange smile on her face, and before he could decipher her expression, he felt her fingers on his throat, tightening with a more than human strength. Desperately, he tried to pry them off, but she was impossibly strong. As the blood thundered in his ears, all he could see was Victoria's eyes glowing with hatred. Then he woke with a strangled gasp.
Bathed in sweat, Diego sat up and put his hand to his throat. He could still feel the imprint of fingers there, and the horror of Victoria's expression stayed with him. It took him some time to calm down, and a sick feeling had lodged itself in the pit of his stomach.
What was going on? He could understand dreaming about Victoria rejecting him, but this was so much worse. And there was something unsettling about the other Zorro who kept appearing. On one level he supposed this could be a manifestation of his increasing frustration with having to be the masked hero, but he couldn't imagine why Zorro was become increasingly more malevolent. And exactly what did his grandfather's ghostly warning have to do with any of this?
Wanting to find something to read that might distract him from the haunting images from his nightmares, Diego went to the library and picked the dullest book he could find before returning to his room. It was nearly dawn before he fell into a fitful sleep that didn't last much more than a couple of hours. Giving into the inevitable, he got dressed and joined his father and Felipe for breakfast.
"Diego, you look terrible," his father said. "Didn't you get any sleep?"
"Some. Maybe I'm not used to these early hours," he said, not wanting to mention his nightmares.
"Maybe you're worried about a certain conversation you're going to have," Alejandro replied significantly.
"Perhaps," Diego said shortly. He didn't want to discuss that topic either. "It doesn't matter. I've got to go over the articles for the Guardian today, though it will have to wait until the next shipment of paper arrives. I can't imagine why that's been delayed, but I must admit I'm grateful. It's been hard to determine just how to report recent events."
Alejandro's expression tightened; this was a topic he clearly didn't want to deal with. "Yes, but I'm sure you'll find a way," he said briefly. "Felipe, I hope you're ready to go to Santa Paula. Your suits should be ready by now. And we have a few other things to pick up there. After all, we're leaving in two days."
Felipe nodded. He signed to Diego.
"Yes, I'm sure I need to work on the articles," Diego said, when Felipe had finished. "The paper should be here any day now, and I need to be ready for it. And you need to finish getting ready for your trip to Monterey, and I don't think my excuses for not going to town will hold up if I ride with you and Father into Santa Paula."
Felipe signed something else.
"I don't expect to see Victoria today," Diego replied. "I'm sure she's quite busy too. And, Father, don't say anything; I know it's not right to be avoiding her, but right now, I'm avoiding everybody by staying at home, so it's not specific to her."
"I wasn't going to say anything at all about it, son," Alejandro said dryly. "I've said my peace. I think you might need to get some more sleep; you seem a bit sensitive this morning."
"I don't think sleep will help," Diego said, repressing a shudder at his latest nightmare. "I'm sure I'll be fine in a little while. You two enjoy your trip."
After Alejandro and Felipe had left, Diego went to the library and sat at the desk. He spread out all the papers in front of him, trying to get everything sorted. As he looked through the articles, Diego saw that Don Carlos had actually managed to write a brief account of the Emissary and the war tax that while basically factual, managed to leave out Risendo's more insane actions, made his death sound almost accidental and left out the revelation of his relationship to the de la Vegas' as well. Considering a part of Diego wanted to write a less disingenuous account and another would rather not ever be reminded of the events again, he was actually grateful that Don Carlos had gone to the trouble of writing this very sanitized piece and decided to let it go as written. Some things were too personal to see print.
As he put the article aside, Diego was struck with a sudden disturbing thought. What had happened to Ynez Risendo? After Alejandro's final words to the woman as they'd come into town, she had walked away, and no one seemed to have given her another thought. He hadn't. His father hadn't mentioned her. She had vanished from the pueblo as if she'd never been there— the dead body of his lost brother the only remembrance of her vendetta. For a few minutes, Diego sat in perplexed horror. This woman had stolen Diego's brother and raised him to be a weapon against the de la Vegas, a hate that apparently extended over decades, and she simply disappeared and no one, not even the victims of that hatred, even wondered what had become of her. It was incredible, unbelievable, and yet...
Before he could follow that train of thought further, Diego was disturbed by a knock on the door, and in that moment, his concerns about Ynez Risendo seemed to vanish as if wiped off a slate. Crossing the room with only the vague feeling that he'd forgotten something important, Diego opened the door to see Victoria standing there.
~TBC~
Tomorrow: Chapter 3 - Meetings and Departures.
Episodes which formed the basis of the three nightmares were "An Affair to Remember," "One Special Night," and "Broken Heart, Broken Mask."
~Moved from the top~
I'm trying to reedit to remove spoiler stuff from the top while still leaving what I already had written so my reviews still make sense.
Anyway, to be unusually brief, here as promised is Chapter 2 which has a bit more preparation and a bit more foreshadowing and most definitely nightmares. The third nightmare is the worst. *Edited because I didn't mean to imply the third chapter is the worst (third chapter is actually reasonably light, all things considered). I think it was too early in the day when I wrote that. Sorry.*
