O.D. 2.1.2000 [12:49 p.m.]

(And one more Vittorio/Mercedes scene. This one's Rachel's favorite. My favorite is their last, where all his deadly flaws (sins) come crashing down on his head, but...I didn't put that in my mailbox. So, heh.)

She knew she would find him here. Dark brown eyes narrow at his unmistakeable form, the impeccable cut of his trousers, the line of his broad shoulders.

Once she might have been happy to see him there. On the pier where they had talked, laughed, kissed. Once she might've rushed to him, pressing soft lips to his, the brackish ocean salt still tasting on his mouth--once.

Was it fate that had, once, brought them together? Were they 'meant for each other,' as the girls sighed and giggled in the schoolyard? Had they a future together beyond the eternity that faced them, locked together in darkness? Had they some bond, some link, that he deliberately chose to ignore with an inhuman efficiency? For if not, then what is it that alerts him so easily, so instinctively, to her presence?

(Perhaps it was the glide of her footsteps over the hot shifting sands. Perhaps it was the subtle change in the sea's scent at her approach. Perhaps it was merely habit...)

...once, he might have turned, smiling (was it she who said, once, that when he smiled he looked a boy, innocent and sweet?). Once, he might have held his arms out to her. Once, they might have been lovers, a pair. Once...

He does not turn now. The line of his back does not soften to her approach. He stares out at the horizon where the blue sky met the blue sea, hazy with the heat. And if she passes him by, he might not even turn to see her leave.

Fates?!? What cruel mongers would take a creature as she and torment so. A creature more fit for heaven than banal sands (though soft and tumutuous between her toes) over which she so effortlessly tread. An angel with hands more pure than gold. (The same hands that lingered over your skin, your breath halted, every nerve in your body surging for just-one more-touch --the same hands that captured *so perfectly* your smile with long penciled strokes.) The progeny of demons, ( Did you forget her family?) gifted to man by the Gods themselves. (Such were the miracles prayed for) Once she had graced you with sun kissed smiles and laughter, --Once.

FATE? Dear dear boy..do you *know* what fate is? Three homely spinsters idling the day with nothing to hold their too-agile minds but knitting and the pusuits of man. If you were lucky you might hope & pray (get on your knees Vittorio) idle eyes pass you by, pale inhuman gazes might wander to other mortals(targets). Unfortunately you are not so blessed.

Mercy's eyes narrow still smaller, slitted as a cat's might be, a predator spotting her quary. A 300 year child. A mere infant, in games as these, her futile hands tense and flex impotent as her rage-- broiling ,smoldering, she marches up to him. "Bastard."

Still, for many moments he does not turn. Those eyes--those dark eyes that had once flared passionate on that moonless night in that old inn, while the rain poured and poured outside--those eyes do not leave the distant horizon, blue on blue. At last he seems to rouse himself from what might have been a reptile's midday slumber, turning in slow splendor to face her in a shuffle of feet on sunblazed sand.

"Why do you say such things?" His voice is soft, and she might well think he were hurt, did she not read the lines of his face so well. He might have been addressing the weather, the ocean, this year's harvest. He might have been addressing the one who would die at his hands tonight.

She waits as he does, watching him, her breath sucked in, he eyes ablaze with fire unspoken. He DID NOT know who she was. Long strands, of near black hair blow across her face, across, for form, full of baited breath and anticipation--for the response that will surely be an apology--will surely be an explantion... will surely...

The thoughts die even as he speaks. The carelessness, the impudence. The bastard.

She draws herself up to her full 5'10 height. Standing there in the shifting sands as some princess (she was), some queenly entity, merely clothed, in the garb of the commoner, merely dressed as woman, merely cast in the role of the spurned lover. Her imperious gaze fall on him oh -so- softly, as sweet lips--did you remember that mouth? The feel of feather soft kisses alighting your palms-- pucker (for a kiss?) tighter and tighter...and she spits. The small wad of saliva flying through the air to land on his smooth(uncaring?) brow. Boldly triumphant in her hate.

His reaction is as cool as the night he will be doomed to haunt--cold in this world of Mediterranean heat. He merely closes his eyes, lightly, as she spits upon him. Then, calmly, he draws from his breast-pocket a handkerchief, with which he carefully wipes away her saliva. The handkerchief is cast down to be ground into the sands or washed out

to booming sea as the winds pleased.

"Mercedes," he murmurs at last. He reaches for her--the nerve!--and lays those hands upon her face. "You should have known from the start that this would never be. We are hinderances to one another." Holding her fast, he presses his lips softly to her brow, her lips. Then, releasing her, he pats her lightly on the cheek and steps back. "Go now, darling. You have your life. I have mine."

The nerve. His hands on her face(on her heart), too reminiscent of before. Of love touched and lost. She hadn't seen it coming (How? Why?), the calculated ease, the inhuman coldness. Why, she was more human that he--it seemed. Sadness loomed around her like a blue haze, her own aura prickling before her eyes. She saw her own depair, and as clear droplets of water graced her cheeks, the sadness grew cold. The coldness grew stale--bitter..dry in the heat of an Italian summer...and with his final words the burst into full Italian fury.

It wasn't a thought, it wasn't even a response, for to say that would imply the instantaneous hesitation required to process the stimuli fed. It was rage blinding and simple-- pummling his chest with her fists, flinging the vilest of curses at his ear in the smooth lyrical Venetian she had once used to beguile him. Ending finally with a word. ......"Bestia."

He nods--he nods to her curses in assent--as he finally catches her wrists and holds them still. "Yes." Those eyes--those hands--he had loved her, once, as an Italian would: as passionate, as hot, as the midsummer Milanese sun. But now? Winter. Dead Siberian winter on this endless beach of shifting white sand, blazing beneath a midday sun. "Bestia. That is how I am. You know that now. I am sorry."

The worst of it all was that he meant it. He meant his apology, but it was delivered as impersonally, as sincerely, as though he had been comforting her, and someone else had spurned her.

Her eyes so large so laughing, grow rounded in inky black hatred. The smallest specks of gold reflecting the sunset behind him. Hatred and love, Beauty and Bitterness. Her long near-black tresses lashing them both in the uncaring wind.

"I despise you.." She finally utters, after a long silence had curled and stretched between them, the words cold and dead apon her lips as dying embers apon a hearth.

All around him the day shines on, ignorant of the storm brewing--a storm that would last, perhaps, the rest of their long, long lives. The Mediterranean sun still blazes; the sea, deep blue touched with green, still laps at the white sands; the inverted bowl of the sky is still a flawless, crisp sapphire, an infinitesimally bluer blue than the sea. Nothing has changed--and this scene, this image of Mercedes, beautiful Mercedes, torn and angry in the perfect landscape; this scent of the sea wind, so like the scent of tears; this lash of her hair, and the straining tautness of her wrists in his hands--this will all stay with him, affect him, haunt him.

He is not a man without emotions. He is simply a monster frighteningly capable of detaching himself from those emotions. Mind and soul were completely separated in him, and the latter seems, often, to be locked away somewhere, unseen and unheard from. And yet it was there. And it would remember.

Again, he nods--just once. "And I love you." How can he say the words so truthfully, and so passively? He has never said it before, and though she must have once longed to hear them--this was not how she imagined it. Not like this. Not this chillness, this vast, empty hollowness, as endless as the sea. He presses his lips to her clutching, angry hands, and then to her mouth. And then he simply...lets go. "Goodbye, Mercedes."

He turns away, back to the distant horizon.