"...A time will come soon, bella, when we will have to leave Ireland... and face our foe together. We should... take this time now...just for us..."

     "I do not care what it costs me. For we live today, bella. That is what matters. And if a man loves, then a man should admit it, if he is a man..." The vodka is lifted up to you. "And I am a man who has never stopped loving you."

     This is sanctuary. A pocket of peace in a world that still struggles to comprehend it. Not that it has ever been his particular business to comprehend peace. Sometimes he buys and sells it. Sometimes he dashes it to pieces. Sometimes he craves it like a man craves water on his fortieth day in the desert.

     And inevitably, War and Time create fissures of space, fissures that can become schisms or chasms. Soon it's a century and you wondered what happened. Then two, and you wonder if you ever knew the truth, or loved, or any of it.

     But you know all this. Just like you know good old Nicu. Old old Nicu. Older than Waterloo, from some old family in Romania. You felt him coming in, to be sure. How could you not? And apparently the whole tavern's full of immortal-types for he's eyeballed all the way to a chair...

     But then the grin erupts with laughter behind. "Alright, dammit... stop... now that you found me, Edwina... mind cutting back on the quakin? Sit like a gentlemen... are all of you Brits heathens to a man?"