Six days after his death, Cesare wakes up at the bottom of the lagoon.
There's rough cloth wrapped around him, carelessly bound with rope and weighted down with rocks. He panics, struggles and thrashes, until his newfound supernatural strength snaps the rope and lets him rip the fabric away from his face. There's water in his mouth now, in his nose and in his lungs, and he panics again, choking and gasping for air.
He doesn't drown. The fear doesn't fade. It's hot and sharp, sliding between his ribs the same way the knife had.
He doesn't drown because he doesn't need to breathe. Not anymore. Not ever again.
Cesare fights his way free of the poor excuse for a burial shroud and strikes for where he thinks the surface is. It's hard to tell. Everything looks the same down here, in the dim stillness. He's dizzy, too disoriented by being shoved back into the shell of his body to think clearly.
The sky is cloudless when he finally breaks free of the water, sun bright in his eyes. It feels wrong. The world had kept moving on without him. The unfairness of it all makes Cesare want to scream, to laugh, to do both at the same time. They used to call him mad, used to call him touched in the head, and while Cesare had done his best to ignore the whispers that had followed him since childhood, he'd never been able to refute them.
It's twilight by the time he reaches the shore. He claws his way up the muddy banks, staggers and falls to his knees in the silt, throws up dirty water and black bile. He coughs and hacks and chokes and reassures himself that it's alright, he's alright, everything is going to be alright. He has friends. They'll take care of him.
There's lights in the distance. Cesare wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, discomforted by how cold his skin feels, and heads towards them.
When he stumbles into the streets of the settlement, a woman points and screams and calls him a demon. The first time he sees his reflection, he understands why.
-
Two months after his death, Cesare wakes up underground.
He'd picked out a little cave for himself, as far away from the prison cells as possible. It's more of a nook than anything, a fissure in the rock barely large enough to squeeze himself into. It's easy to miss, easy to get lost trying to find it. He likes it that way.
Cesare still hasn't quite gotten over the instinctive urge to sleep. They've told him he doesn't need to. Doesn't need to rest, doesn't need to stop the hunt. He can't bring himself to believe it, not yet. He wishes he could. Then he wouldn't keep having the same nightmares, the ones about the knife and the lagoon.
Dying had seemed like a bad dream at first too. They'd come to him when he'd been wandering in the field of fog, alone and scared and angry, and they'd sat with him and listened patiently and told him it didn't have to be like this, that they could give him a second chance. All he had to do was barter his soul.
He couldn't read very well, could barely write, but he could still scratch an X in place of his name. A contract is a contract, even if you don't understand the fine print.
Sometimes when he lies here, curled up into a ball, he can hear water trickling deep in the earth. He's homesick. He misses the canals. He doesn't have a place to call his own anymore. Venice had cast him out a long time ago, even before his murder.
Their mistake. You don't turn your back on a predator.
Cesare runs a finger along the scar spanning his throat and bares his teeth in the dark.
-
A thousand and one years after his death, Cesare wakes up in a bed.
It's not his - he hasn't had one since he was alive - but it is familiar, and so are the walls being painted pink and gold by the rising sun. It's a mundane bedroom in a mundane apartment owned by a mundane man. It's also the place Cesare deludes himself into thinking is his safe haven, his port in a storm. Where the nightmares can't get him.
Doctor's arm around his waist is warm. His breathing is slow and deep and even, a steady rhythm against the back of Cesare's neck. He still smells like paint from working on sets at the local theater.
Cesare knows this won't last. Nothing in his life - unlife - ever does. Lighthouses collapse, shelters get washed away, boltholes get sniffed out by foxhounds. So he's going to enjoy it while he still can. He's greedy like that. Self-centered.
He's not stupid, though. He also knows that the only reason the big bosses let him run around with Doctor like this is because it makes him easier to deal with. Half-domesticated, inexplicably wrapped about the finger of a perfectly ordinary human who never should've mattered in the first place. Cesare's still not entirely sure how that had happened. Just that it'd been a slow build, gradual until it suddenly wasn't.
Having this - he can't define it, doesn't want to define it - lessens the sting of having his promised retirement yanked back out of reach. Only slightly, but it's better than nothing. Cesare might chomp at the bit, but he's not going to bite that hand that feeds him, not when upper management could snap their fingers and he'd drop dead for real. So he puts up with it, ekes out whatever comfort he can find, distracts himself with shiny things. It'll hurt when it ends, when Doctor gets tired of him and moves on or Cesare outlives him, but he'll cross that bridge when he gets to it. Burn it down behind him. He's good at that.
Cesare rolls over suddenly, hating the silence in the room. It's too loud. "Doctor!" he demands, reaching out and tugging on a lock of hair falling across the other man's face. "Hey! Doc! Wake up."
He barely stirs, not even opening his eyes. "What?"
"Just wake up."
Doctor lifts his head off the pillow, blinking blearily at him. "Why? Are you leaving?"
"No." He probably should, but his current target doesn't even come out during the day, so - he can be self-indulgent for a little while longer. "I just want to talk to you."
"Ugh. Cesare." Doctor drops his head back down, closing his eyes again. "I appreciate the sentiment, but can you save it for later? We don't have rehearsal today and I'm not getting out of bed until ten."
"Buzzkill."
One corner of his mouth quirks up, just for a moment. It's not quite a smile, because Doctor rarely ever does, but Cesare will still take it.
"You're missing the sunrise." He's needling, being obnoxious on purpose. "Aren't you artistic types supposed to be all over that?"
Doctor snorts, tugging him closer and burying his face against the side of his neck, hooking a leg over one of Cesare's. "Go back to sleep, boss."
He doesn't need to. He'd unlearned that centuries ago. But right now, he wants to.
So he does.
