So, nothing.
Two weeks of waiting, praying, hoping against hope.
And each day of watching Gwen and Drustan together had been the purest kind of hell. Drustan touched Gwen with Dageus's hands. He lowered Dageus's face to kiss her. He spoke with Dageus's deep, sexy voice.
And he wasn't Dageus. He wasn't hers to hold, though he looked like he should be. He was Gwen's, and Gwen was pregnant, and Chloe wasn't. She knew, because Gwen had persuaded her to take an EPT a few days ago, arguing that if she tested positive it would give her something to hold onto. Unfortunately, she hadn't gotten the cheery news Gwen had gotten seven months ago.
Her test result had been negative.
Like her life. A great big fat negative.
"I don't think you should be alone," Gwen protested.
She tried to smile reassuringly, but from the look on Gwen's face, she suspected she'd managed only a frightening baring of teeth. "I'll be okay, Gwen. I can't stay here any longer. I can't stand seeing…" She trailed off, not wanting to hurt Gwen's feelings.
"I understand," Gwen said, wincing. She'd felt much the same when she'd thought Drustan was forever lost to her, and had met his descendants. She could only imagine what Chloe must feel each time she looked at Dageus's twin. And Chloe didn't have the promise of his babies to cling to as she'd had.
The worst of it was, there were no answers. Dageus was simply gone. Gwen had dung to hope too, in those first few days, until Drustan had confided that since the night his brother had disappeared he'd not been able to feel the unique twin-bond he and Dageus had always shared.
They'd decided not to tell Chloe that just yet. Gwen still wasn't sure they'd made the right decision. She knew a part of Chloe was still hoping.
"We'll be coming to Manhattan in a few weeks, Chloe," Gwen told her, hugging her tightly. They clung to each other for a time, then Chloe tore herself away and practically ran to the security gate, as if she couldn't get out of Scotland fast enough.
Gwen wept for her as she watched her go.
The Maybe Game, Chloe swiftly came to realize, was the crudest game of all, far worse than the What-Might-Have-Been Game.
The Maybe Game was parents who left for dinner and a movie and never came home again. The Maybe Game was a closed-casket funeral and a four-year old's imagination when confronted with sleek, glossy boxes and the attendant, bewildering rituals of death.
The Maybe Game was an empty freaking room full of blood and no answers.
Maybe Dageus had used the power of the Draghar to free her, to kill the sect members, and magically transport their bodies elsewhere so she wouldn't be confronted with the horror, where he'd then killed himself to make certain the Prophecy would never be fulfilled.
That was what Drustan believed. And deep down inside her heart, that was what Chloe believed as well. In her heart, she knew Dageus would never risk freeing the ancient evil to walk the earth again. Not even for her. It had nothing to do with love. It had everything to do with the fate and future of the entire world.
She'd endlessly replayed in her mind that moment when the knife had whipped away from her neck and gone hurtling through the air.
It had gone in his direction.
But maybe, another insidious little voice kept insisting, he and the sect of the Draghar had vanished one another…er, inadvertently, and… they would all come back. Eventually. Stranger things could happen. Stranger things happened on Buffy all the time. Maybe they were locked somewhere in mortal combat or something.
Maybe, her mind tortured her, he's still alive somewhere, somehow. That was the most excruciating maybe of all.
How many years had she believed that her parents would one day walk through the front door again? When Grandda had come to take her to Kansas, she'd been terrified to go. She still remembered shrieking at him that she couldn't leave because when Mommy and Daddy come home they won't know where to find me!
For years she'd dung to that agonizing hope, until she'd finally been old enough to understand what death was.
"Oh, Zanders," she whispered. "You can't play the Maybe Game. You know what it does to you."
She had no idea how many days she huddled in her tiny apartment, completely withdrawing from the world. She didn't answer the phone, she didn't check her E-mail or mail, she rarely even stirred from bed. She passed her time mentally reliving every precious moment she and Dageus had spent together.
She'd had the most incredible month of her life, she'd met the man of her dreams and fallen head over heels in love. She'd had the promise of a blissful future. She'd held everything that she'd ever wanted right there in the palms of her hands, and now she had nothing.
How was she supposed to go on? How was she supposed to face the world? To get dressed, to maybe brush her hair, to go out on the sidewalk and see lovers talking and laughing with each other?