France, 1802

"I will never go back to France," Ysanne said.

Edmond Dantès shifted on the sand, looking at her. It was a quiet night, the two of them sitting in a small sandy cove, rugged cliffs behind them, a moon-silvered sea spread out before them.

"It's been years –" he started.

"I don't care."

They sat in silence for a while.

It had been eight years since Edmond had escaped the guillotine.

Eight years since he'd tried to warn Ysanne and her lover, Giovanni, that an angry mob was coming for them.

Eight years since Giovanni had sacrificed himself to give Ysanne and Edmond time to escape.

They'd fled from France and had spent all that time travelling around Europe, trying to avoid the Napoleanic Wars, but now Edmond felt that it was time to return to his home country. He'd hoped that Ysanne would go with him.

"Why do you even want to go back? There's nothing there for you," Ysanne said.

Edmond glanced away, focusing on the sea as it crawled up the shore, then retreated again.

But after all this time, Ysanne didn't need to see his expression to guess what was going through his head.

"This is about them, isn't it? The two you killed," she said, her voice softening.

Images flashed through Edmond's head – Nicole's dead weight slumping over his chest, the savage bite marks on Baptiste's neck after Edmond had finished with him.

"Will you ever forgive yourself?" Ysanne asked.

"How can I?"

"The girl was an accident."

"That doesn't make it better."

"The boy was self-defence," Ysanne insisted.

Edmond shook his head.

"He stabbed you, Edmond."

Edmond touched his stomach, remembering the awful punch of pain when the blade had slid in.

"I deliberately baited him. I could have forced him to leave before he drew his sword. I could have taken the sword away from him without anyone getting hurt. I chose not to, and the cost was Baptiste's life. I can't let that go as if it was nothing."

"What does that have to do with you going back to France?" Ysanne asked.

Edmond watched the sea again, as it came and went, came and went. "I have to find a way to atone."

If he was human, then a prison sentence would be his atonement, but things didn't work that way for vampires. Unless his prison cell was proofed against the sun, it would be a death sentence, and he hadn't fought to escape the guillotine only to die in chains now.

But the two deaths that he was responsible for weighed heavily on him. He couldn't just forget about them.

"What do you have in mind?" Ysanne asked.

Edmond stared out to sea, the wind rippling his hair off his face. "You and I are both wealthy," he said.

He'd lost his fancy home when he fled Paris, but his investments were still solid, and Ysanne had long since learned to squirrel her wealth away across France, so she always had something to fall back on. But these last eight years they had been living simply. Edmond's extravagance and self-indulgence had helped contribute to the atmosphere that had cost two people their lives – he couldn't bear to live like that now, and Ysanne had forgone her comforts to support him.

Ysanne waited for him to continue.

"I want to help people," Edmond said. "The Revolution happened because the peasants of France were being trampled underfoot, and no one cared to listen to their pleas. I was one of them once. Then I became one of the people who trampled them."

"We live so long that it can become easy to lose sight of who we once were," said Ysanne.

"The peasants of France are still suffering. I could help them. It will never make up for what I've done but . . . I have to do something."

Ysanne took his hand. "My winter boy, I love you more than anyone else in this world, but this is something that I cannot do. I can't go back to France. Not ever."

There was a thick knot in Edmond's throat as he said, "But I have to."

"I know you do. It seems our paths are diverging once again."

"We're always leaving each other," Edmond said.

"True," said Ysanne. "But we always find each other again."

Edmond climbed to his feet, brushing sand from his clothes. "Swim with me?"

Ysanne rose and started stripping off her clothes. "You didn't mean to swim fully clothed, did you?" she said, when Edmond hesitated.

"I wasn't sure," he admitted.

Ysanne tossed her dress onto the sand. "My dear boy, I have seen it all before, as have you. You can swim in your clothes if you wish, but I would like dry clothes to change back into."

She strode down to the sea, the moonlight painting her skin silver.

Edmond smiled and shook his head. She was right. They shared a bed most nights, even if it was for nothing more than sleeping, but they had been lovers for many years in the past. They both knew exactly what the other looked like naked.

He undressed and joined Ysanne in the water.

This would probably be their last night together, until the next time they met, and he had no idea when that would be.

"What will you do?" he asked.

Ysanne thought about it, sculling water with her hands, her hair floating on the surface of the water.

"I think I'll go to Italy," she said.

That took Edmond by surprise. They'd been there before, over the years, but since Giovanni's death, Ysanne couldn't bear to return to the country of his birth.

"Really?" he said.

"Giovanni used to tell me all the places he wanted to take me when we eventually visited Italy. He'll never get to show me any of them now, but I think it's time I saw them anyway."

"Are you sure you're ready?" Edmond asked.

Giovanni's death had broken Ysanne, in a way that he had never seen before. He'd lost count of how many nights he'd woken to the sound of her quietly sobbing, how many times he'd pulled her into his arms and held her until she fell asleep again.

It was happening less and less these days, but the thought of her lying awake at night, wracked with grief and no one there to hold her, wrenched at Edmond's heart.

"I've been thinking about it for a while," Ysanne said.

She didn't say that she'd hoped Edmond would come with her, but Edmond was sure she was thinking it.

He'd spent the last few years drifting around the continent, coming to terms with everything he'd done, everything he'd become, trying to find the man he had once been in the hollow shell of the man he had become.

He couldn't have done it without Ysanne.

But she was right. Their paths were diverging once again.

Ysanne needed to go to Italy. Her grief over Giovanni's death was still so raw and perhaps this would help her heal.

But Edmond had done terrible things in Paris, and while nothing could ever change that, he could show some kind of penance by doing everything he could improve the lives of Paris's downtrodden peasant population. He could never help them all, and he could not singlehandedly change the system that kept these people in such wretched circumstances. But he could use his wealth for good, for once, and he couldn't do that from Italy.

Ysanne ducked under the water, and stayed down for a while. Edmond trod water, waiting for her to come back up.

"Are you sure you'll be safe in Paris?" Ysanne asked when she resurfaced, pushing her hair back. "It's only been eight years."

For just a moment, Edmond was back in Paris, in that awful square, surrounded by people howling for his blood, looking up at the guillotine as it hung in its wooden frame, waiting to take his head, and a shudder rolled through him.

"The Terror is over," he said, pulling himself back to the present.

"That doesn't mean you'll be safe, especially not if someone recognises you," Ysanne cautioned.

"I'll have to be very careful, then, won't I?" Edmond said.

"You'd better be. I'll be very displeased if you get yourself killed," said Ysanne tartly.

Edmond smiled. "I wouldn't want to displease you."

They swam for hours, going further out to sea, and then swimming back to shore, over and over again, until the moon started to fade, and the horizon blushed with coming dawn.

Then they finally waded out of the water and lay on the sand, stealing those last few moments when the cove was still theirs, before the human world came to life.

Before it was time for them to go their separate ways once again.

Next week, we're going to see how Ysanne met Adele, who you may remember making an appearance in Changes :)