Love Abhors History

*It couldn't end like this. We couldn't have been so far together to end with this failure. Not after all he went through by my fault. But how could have I known it was a mistake? As I watched Raziel disappear into the Spectral Realm I felt my memory faltering. Soon I wouldn't remember what had just happened. There was still a way to change history. Raziel wasn't supposed to be back in that instant. If I acted quickly, before my reshaping memory made me wonder why I was there and decide to go back to my time, maybe I could alter history. There wouldn't be any paradox. I had thrown the Blood Reaver away. There will only be one Reaver. Only one Raziel. Mine.

I knelt beside the dead Sarafan and took him in my arms. In death he had lost this mad haunted look on his face. He looked both at peace and in pain. I wonder if he had understood who had killed him. He looked so much like my little Raziel when he had awoken in my arms to his new life. So long ago, and so far in the future for the time we were in then. But this was just a corpse, and he wasn't going to open his eyes. Not yet. I needed to find Raziel and have him merge with this body. I rose with the corpse against my chest and called Raziel, telling him to stay there and wait. Somehow I felt that as long as I would held the Sarafan things wouldn't change anymore, as if time had frozen to wait and see what I was going to do and what it had to do next. But time was something I had learnt to tame, and I knew I could count on it. My memory had already stopped changing, waiting for the events to come to tell it what to do.

I had done this before. Turning humans to vampires was something that could be difficult but also something that became easy when you had done it several times. But that time had never been so difficult. I couldn't fail. A failure in other times would have only meant finding another "victim" and start over. This was something else. I wasn't doing this for myself, I wasn't trying to bring back my precious lieutenant. I was doing it for Raziel. I loved him too much to let him there, waiting for his terrible fate.

I knew Moebius was watching, though I couldn't feel his presence there. I guess he was wondering what I was doing. He may had thought I was going back to my time after all this. But at that time, he must have been worrying. That bastard! I still wonder why Raziel hadn't swallowed his soul when he had the opportunity. Maybe he thought it would have tasted too bad... I had to hurry. Moebius was dangerous, and I feared he was up to something. I tightened my grip on the Sarafan and concentrated on my task.

I didn't want him to wake in that horrible era so I had taken us back to our time as soon as his soul had merged with the Sarafan's body. I knew there still was some time before the newborn vampire could wake. What I didn't know was if he would remember anything. He shouldn't, but everything was so different this time. It wasn't just a soul I had taken back to life. It was Raziel. I waited sitting by his side, watching him, watching this body learning to live again. As I had suspected, he woke sooner than the other time.

As he opened his eyes I held my breath. Now what? Will he remember something? The worst would be that his body had somehow kept his Sarafan's memory. And what about the Reaver? Was it still there in him? If these two possibilities were true, I was lost. And so was he. He couldn't survive alone in this time as the Sarafan. He would become mad, I guess. But I suspected this Sarafan already was.

He was looking at me with his wonderful golden eyes and I couldn't find out what he was thinking. I couldn't move, as if his stare was turning me into stone. And then he smiled and raised his arms to me, calling my name gently. He remembered, then. I had won this time. Moebius could prevent me to save Nosgoth, but I had understood that there was one thing he couldn't take from me. Something more important than Nosgoth. Raziel's love.*

"Still writing in that diary, Kain? Nobody cares about us or about our lives. Especially our love life... You're wasting precious time you could spend with me."

"Nosgoth's history still needs to be recorded, Raziel. All that had happened is part of its history. And now we have all the time we need for ourselves, love. You're beautiful."

"I think I know I am. Do you know how many times you've said that to me, both in this life and the previous one?"

"There isn't a previous one. You have always been alive, even when you were chasing me all around Nosgoth. I just gave you back what I should have never taken from you. You and our love are the only important things, now."

"Why are you still interested in this land's history, then? We won! Actually, you won. You did it. Look around us, so many things have changed since you brought me back here in this body. If you hadn't fought to take me back... I just don't want to think about what I would be doing now, and where."

"Maybe... But... why my centuries of writings in that diary didn't change?"