Immortality

Chapter Twenty - A Starling Hung in a Little Cage

Author's note - wow. I really let this slide. So long since an update. To everyone who stuck with me, I don't deserve you. You were far too patient with me and I took you for granted. It's not going to happen again. I'm back and I mean to stay! Also: this chapter's quote comes from Laurence Sterne - "A Sentimental Journey." Because a girl has got to put her English degrees to good use!

Victor slept with one arm over Nightingale. She did not sleep at all - she sobbed into her pillow the whole night, silently and without stopping.

"You've been crying," he remarked when he woke up. He had reached for her and she had gone very stiff and utterly stony, but when he lifted himself up to peer at her, he had been able to see her puffy, red eyes, eyes that would have had Bobby howling at her in an instant.

She said nothing. He reached over and turned her face. She refused to meet his eyes. He was lucky she did not bite his hand. When he leaned forward and kissed her, tears leaked out of the eyes she had shut to avoid seeing him.

"You're crying," he said, with more anger in his voice. "Stop crying. Smile, won't you?"

Nightingale waited for him to hit her, unable to stop her tears. She felt very much like Rose. Soft, sweet, weak Rose. Rose, her sister. Rose, whom she loved.

"Rose," she murmured, very quietly.

"What was that? Stop muttering," said Victor.

Nightingale sat up, naked to the waist above the sheets. She did not cover herself. She stared right into Victor's bright, bright eyes and spoke again.

"For Rose," she said. Her tone was even. Her breath came and went in measured intervals. Her thoughts had cleared.

"What are you talking about?" asked Victor, though he seemed a little less angry since Nightingale had stopped crying.

Nightingale spat directly in his face.

She was ready for the slap and when it came, she refused to make a sound. Victor backhanded her across the face, and her head snapped to the side. She felt her teeth tear into the inside of her cheek and she tasted blood - her own. She turned back to face him. He looked angry.

"Look what you made me do," he said.

She refused to respond to that. After a moment, he gave a sigh.

"I suppose this is to be expected," he said. "The influence of that damned Detective Beckett has soured you. You used to be so sweet - what happened?"

Nightingale considered that it would be so easy to kill him - so easy to take his throat in her hands and crush the life out of him. But his life meant that of so many others - of all the Inamoratas in his grasp. Each and every one of them was a sister, or a brother. She would not betray them.

She lifted her head and stared into his cold, cold eyes. Her own eyes burned the tears she had shed. But she was determined that those tears not be in vain. If she was to suffer for the freedom of her brothers and sisters, so be it.

"I - I don't know," she said. She made her voice soft and shy. He would think that he had won - good, he needed only to think that for a few more hours. Then the case would be over and she would be free. "I - forgive me, Victor. I am so confused."

It worked. She was still a good actress. She was still the Queen of the Bordello, and the protectress of the Inamoratas. He cocked his head and touched her face.

"It's all right," he said. She thought about ripping his fingers off, one by one, and used that perverse pleasure to force a smile onto her face. "You'll have time to figure things out. I'll help you."