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You should be afraid of the woods at night. Great, spindly branches stretch out above your head, only allowing slivers of silver moonlight to shine through, like rapier blades thrust through the trees. Shadows reign, wrapping themselves around tree trunks, draping themselves over bushes and sprawling out across the brown, dry forest floor, obscuring the path in front of you.
You should be afraid. But you aren’t.
Because he is beside you.
Your fingers squeeze Leonardo’s as the two of you walk the darkened but well-trodden path through the woods. He holds a bronze lantern in his free hand, its warm glow a halo of orange light, helping you find your way. In truth, you have walked this path with him so many times, you could easily do it in total darkness but there is something comforting about that small, incandescent soldier, battling the shadows.
He glances over at you when he feels your touch and offers you a soft smile.
“ Stai bene, cara mia ?” Are you ok, my dear?
You stop walking completely, the urge to simply look at him in the lantern light so strong, so insistent that you give in. He is beautiful, with his whiskey-colored eyes and his dark hair, pale as bone at its ends. Your fingers reach up and catch a few strands, touching them reverently. Like spun-silk it slides over your skin and a sigh is wrung from your heart. He catches your hand in his, turning his face to press a warm kiss into your palm.
“You hold on to this, yeah?,” he murmurs. “I expect you to return it next time.”
A sound stumbles from your throat, a Frankenstein built from a sigh and a sob and a laugh. All you can do is nod as you lower your hand, your fingers curling tightly around that precious kiss.
You should be afraid. But you aren’t.
You continue, hand now safely back in his, down the trodden path until the iron gates become visible, rising out of the depths of the autumn night. The trees are less thick here and the moon has a chance to shine her light across the aged metal. Her light is bright and welcoming, an eager usher waiting to assist you through those gates, those damned gates whose sight you have long grown to hate.
You stop in front of them as Leonardo sets the lantern down on the cold ground. The lantern is still battling the darkness, giving you a small circle of light in which you can see him clearly.
“What time is it?” You shouldn’t ask because you don’t really want to know. He holds your gaze a moment and you can see it there in his eyes, a wavering of emotion that has him drop his gaze. He doesn’t want to know either. Something cold and damp begins wrapping itself around your heart.
But he reaches into his jacket and takes out his pocket watch, a gift from Comte decades ago. You can already tell it is late by the way his chest rises and stays there, breath held tight for just a second before he exhales, shoving it roughly away into the pocket of his jacket, where it can’t hurt him any further.
“Three minutes to midnight.”
Your heart is filling with ice-water, growing heavier and heavier inside your chest. The breath you let out shivers, the one you draw in burns. There is nothing you can do but throw yourself into the safe harbor of his open arms, clinging to his warmth like a battered sailor to a ship’s mast during a storm.
“It’s not fair,” you whisper into the soft folds of his clothing.
He strokes your hair, his hands steady, but you can hear his heartbeat and it thunders against your ear.
“It’s more than most get,” he replies gently, but his voice is cracked, splintered with misery.
The seconds slip by, each one faster than the one before. Your fingers clench his jacket, nearly rendering it. You wonder wildly if you should tear it, give him something to remember you by, until next time.
But then his hands are covering yours, so warm, so very warm and his head is tilting downwards as yours lifts, perfectly attuned to one another as you meet in the middle, your mouths finding each other for one last kiss.
It isn’t a wild kiss, messy with passion. It is slow and it is sad and it is searching. You look for reassurance that you will see him again in the taste of his lips, the heat of his tongue. He holds you tightly against his body, answering you, pressing all of his love and want and anguish into you with his embrace, his answering kiss.
Yes, he will be there. Yes, he will always be there. Yes, cara mia. Yes.
Your heart overflows with cold. It seeps into you, crystallizing in your veins, icy-fingers wrapping around you, pulling you away from Leonardo and his warmth.
The seconds are gone. Your time is up.
You step away from his embrace, heavy as stone, cold as midwinter.
“Until next time.” Your voice is the autumn wind through the trees, a susurrus of dying leaves and thin, wooden branches scraping against one another. Fading, like the rest of you.
“Until then,” he answers, voice now shattered and weak. He does not move as you turn away from him, as you walk through the iron gates, guardians of the plane only the dead can enter. Gates that only open once a year, on All Hallow’s Eve. The one night of the year he can see you again.
You leave Leonardo behind, in the lantern light, in the moonlight, as you walk the melancholic path back to your grave. The closer you get, the more the world dims, the more the cold claims you.
As you lay yourself back down in front of the tombstone bearing your name, as you begin to sink down like a coin to the bottom of the river Styx, you know you should be afraid. But you aren’t.
Because you know Leonardo is out there.
And he will be waiting when you return.