The Sigh Of Things(1)   Mono no aware wo shiru Loosely translated from the Japanese, it means "an awareness of the sigh of things." This is not just any sigh. The Buddhists knew there were as many sighs as there were stars in heaven. This sigh, the sigh of things, is the sigh of imperfection. It is the sigh of resignation. It is the sigh that says if only. I have heard this sigh from many men. Old men, with their grey faces and their wrinkled hands, whose thickly-polished business shoes no longer stride in confidence but shuffle slowly down to dust have sighed this sigh when they think of what they might have been. Heartbroken men who brace against the night, whose fingers curl around a glass of vodka as they calculate what it would take to pull her back to this door, this bed, this heart, have sighed this sigh when the brilliant dawn arrives alone. I have even seen men at the point of death; men whose lives flicker as the balance turns against them; men who in one moment come to terms with their extinction, have sighed this sigh for all they've left unfinished. The Japanese Buddhists, in their subtle wisdom, find beneath this sigh the truth that is release from all things corporeal. I am no Buddhist, my love. All I find within this sigh is surrender. When I first saw our son standing there, I might have sighed the sigh of things. Years had passed, you understand. A lifetime had been stolen. He might as well have been a mirror reflecting back everything I'd lost. In truth, it was hard not to hate him for that - for what he symbolized by the very fact of his being. And yet for me there was no surrendering sigh. Just a kind of wonder. An awe of him. His reserve, his grace, his commanding presence - all of this an echo…as familiar as a stretch of notes on a sheet of music that his fingers set to playing once again. I looked into his eyes and I could see us dancing those many years ago; my hand at your slender waist, that shadowed smile I found so bewitching as we turned. We were there to be seen in his stance, in the set of his shoulders - such strength as we had when at last we were one. In him nothing had been surrendered, you see. All of it was there. All of us - what we were, what we are - remained. I have lost faith in you many times, my darling. Yes, this is true. You have a mind that cannot keep its course. There are sticking points, like rashes on the skin you cannot stop from scratching. I am the one who takes your wrist and pulls it from the itch. In this way I save you from yourself. That you would marry him again - once I might have hated you, when I was young and full of misconceptions. What I failed to understand was this diseased need for sanctuary; a little house, a little life - the smallness of a world never challenged by an absolute power, an immeasurable wealth, or the savage demands of a superior destiny. You were afraid. I understand. This fear is your illness. This fear made the choice for us once. I could not let you make the same mistake again. I apologize for killing your stepfather. He wasn't much of a man, yet the act seemed to pain you so - and it is this I regret. Surely you saw my remorse in the quiet moment afterward? I thought you did. I thought you knew my heart as I held you in my arms. I thought you knew my soul as I slipped the needle in; as the universe began to swim before your eyes; as your spirit trickled down to nestle in the palm of my hand. Never…never did I realize the true burden of compassion until those few seconds you struggled - as a butterfly might - in the warmth of my embrace. I had a new understanding of medicine, then. And as I looked at the doctor bleeding on the floor of that ridiculous little attic, I did feel for him. I was sorry he had lost - dare I say it? - his noble art. Of course by this time that insipid ex-husband of yours was lumbering up the stairs. I think I've truly changed, my sweet. Perhaps in the space of those few seconds, when I experienced compassion, something inside me was altered. Something permitted me to step away and let you have your precious endings. That barn, and again that attic in the tarnished dress. A sentimental moment spent tying up all those old loose ends. I tell you it is as if there has been a subtle shift at the very core of my being. I am actually grateful to my brother! How hard is this to believe? Had it not been for Stefan's experiments with your mother, we might never have been able to achieve this success. And Luke, the perfect stalking horse! How well he laid the trap for himself. That rescue attempt - so very well timed to begin the last stage of the inoculation process. Do you know they have declared your condition permanent, my darling? Do you know your visitors must remain behind that very pane of glass? They are afraid of aggravating your condition! But no one can reach you now, my love. No one in the world but me. In a few months time I will awaken you. We will leave this dreary English town and travel the Continent together. We will be as we were meant to be. Strong. Invincible. As immortal as the gods. I am your heart as you are mine. What need have we for sanctuary? Was that a sigh, Laura? Surely…surely it was not a sigh. The Sigh Of Things (2)   Jerusalem is filled with second sons, the unnecessary elements of empire… And it was this he remembered: "As each kinglet came to sit upon his cradle-throne, the need revealed to bear another. Infants died so swiftly then; lost to fever in a night, to sickness in a week, to weakness borne of weakling nature - gone. What kingdom held, or ducal land, or peerage if bereft of titled issue? ...So twice-blessed the baroness!" He could still scavenge a smile for old Tatia's tale of the reason for his birth. Yet what amused him as a boy became distinctly less amusing in those modest years at school, as he read the fate of the ancient second-born. Once the eldest princeling had passed the stage of childhood diseases, a clear demarcation had been made. To the right lay the future king, his training filled with privilege, his course straight and true. To the left lay the dismal path of priesthood; a long, featureless journey through the kind of cloistered life in which no virtue would remain unpunished. How could any be surprised that the coldly unchosen had made themselves a choice? Holy Orders or Holy Land - where a kingdom could be crafted if a man had the strength for it. He had the strength, but that Age had passed. Now? What was now but a string of hopeless moments racing then? He wondered if it were true that a child's character came fully-formed by the age of three. He wondered, too, if thirty-six months of equal treatment had purchased him this lifetime of wrenching ambiguity. Even the smallest of boys could comprehend displacement; could feel the vagrant nature of a cast-aside existence. If not king…what? It was the common younger son's lament and a breath was all he gave it - a shortly-blown exhalation laced with the memory of every promise never kept. His thumb pressed the band of the ring he wore as if it were a talisman. The sharp onyx point glittered in the lamplight, a dangerous impression left by the tip of the Cassadine crest. I am a prince in shadow, he admitted to himself. Yet I am still a prince. His hands performed the deft gesticulations required to communicate in the family's silent battle-language. Four agile figures emerged from separate stations along the darkened street. Pooling like oil in a puddle of rain, they advanced on the building, making quick work of their target's security systems. Access had been established in a matter of moments. Later he would wonder at the ease of it all. They slept as predator and prey; his sinuous arm draped possessively over her chest, one muscled leg encroaching at her hip. A mere minute was given to survey the scene and thank the idle grace of Fate that permitted her an ignorance of her predicament. The quick flick of his wrist brought the team into the room, where they took position at each corner of the bed. Here they would stand, still as stone, awaiting his removal of the primary threat. This languid pose, replete with subtle signs of rest - the measured breath, the listless drape of his fingers, the passive weight of the head upon the pillow - would have given even the most practiced assailant a certain sense of confidence. And confidence it gave, though not the type his brother had intended. The game was old between them… "Come To Kill Me," he had called it on those soft summer nights in his quarters on the island. And come a smaller Stefan had, with a cat-footed stealth, the shadow of a shadow creeping silent to the side of that great mahogany bed. Year after year the contest was enacted, with ever-more precision, at an ever-increasing lethal stake. Had Stavros only known who stood above him now he might add another stroke to his tally of fraternal victories. That he did not gave this plan its only hope of success. When the fist shot out he was ready for it, grasping at the wrist and twisting to deflect the force of the blow. A shoulder turned, as expected, launching the remaining arm into motion, its hand flexed to capture his throat in a vise. This move he permitted, though it cost him in air and blood-choking pain. Now sure of his conquest, Stavros abandoned all extraneous action to focus on his strangle-hold of this attacker. Just as his vision began to cloud, Stefan lifted the ring to the taut tendon of his brother's arm and sunk the point into its flesh. Only then did Stavros open his eyes, a smile playing lightly on his lips. "Ah," he chuckled softly as the sedative took hold. "All hail the second son…". The Sigh Of Things (3)   Empathy, having no point of personal reference, sits in the back of the room, twiddling her thumbs… My son came as well, she thought, remembering the illness - years lost in a fog of medicated indifference, her own weight bearing her down to a cold bed or a colder chair; diseased, defenseless and deformed as old Methuselah. The body as prison was a concept she had been forced to embrace - knowing no one, not even the blood of her loins, would weep as Nikolas had at the sight of his mother's cruel confinement. When Stefan came, as she recalled, it was merely to assure himself the lock would hold. She did not look for love and, as a consequence, never found it. There were more suitable pursuits. Power. Wealth. The mastery of men. Better to be the flint that flames his unruly passion that the kitchen match lighting his stove. Her cruel allure had seared the hearts of many men, Mikkos among them - branding their souls and forging a hunger she could twist into steel. Lover, husband, son; all felt her fire, bent to her will. Her controlling hand had conquered every frivolous inclination, and what it could not dominate it surgically removed. After all, what was the throat of an innocuous little songbird to the tightly-razored crest of a Cassadine hawk? Sentiment, if given its share of rope, could strangle the ambitions of an entire bloodline. She had taught them this. They had known it once. She watched Stefan's men load both gurneys into the unmarked van. He had taken Laura, of course, yet his second theft had been the more unpleasant surprise. She raised a talon to the glass, glazing it along the supine form of Stavros - now unconscious, quiescent, constricted by the straps. What faint fault had she left in this child? What hairline fracture had she missed that could have split wide enough to open to the poison that was Laura Spencer? Stefan she understood. Stefan, who was his own stubborn contradiction. Stefan, the Anti-Cassadine. But Stavros? How had she failed this one magnificent promise of a son? "Bring her in," she ordered coldly, turning from the second-story hospital window to enter the scene of her lesser son's crime. Such an elemental flaw in his plan! The stupid, stupid man. To think a female patient, catatonic or not, could be stolen in the night without notice! Did he imagine no alarm would sound? No chase be given? Yes, yes, her spies had informed her well of his intent. Certain members of the staff could not help but remember the tall, dark man who had supervised her treatment. Who had made her case wholly his own. The suspicious "transfer" of certain experts on her condition. Money changing hands. Perhaps a body or two? The inevitable sketch from fragmented memory of a face so nearly that of Stavros Cassadine. Interpol, then? A manhunt complete with watch lists and "Wanted" flags at every bus station, train station and airport. Stefan thought to throw a circuitous trail. Leave it to him to manufacture such a complicated hindrance when the answer was as simple as…well…as this. She didn't know the woman's name - the name was immaterial, as was every salient fact that attached to her life. Just another lonely victim of the harshness of society. Forties. Divorced. Possessed of no family or extraneous entanglement. How happy she had been to accept the plastic surgery that would sculpt her face to this angelic degree! And now the very last operation, she'd been told, and to which she had most readily agreed. Helena ran a finger down the smooth, ivory cheek slackened by the drug just hours ago. Poor Laura, she thought. That is what they'll call you. Poor Laura, who slipped into a catatonic state so deep we doubt she will ever awaken. Stavros would have done this, she was sure. Her eldest had no compunction to protect the weak, the senseless, the ridiculously unimportant. Stavros, who was now at the mercy of his brother. Helena smiled suddenly, a crimson thinness to her lips. With Stefan there would certainly be mercy. Of this she could be sure. It was his "finest" failing. "Finish there," she ordered, pricking the speed of the men as they transferred the slumbering body that would be Laura's doppelganger. One wheeled the now-empty gurney from the room, as the other tucked legs beneath sheets she suspected were still warm with Laura's heat. She scanned the scene for evidence of either son's passage; clothing, papers, any incidental proof that the Cassadine men had traveled this road. She found none. The track was covered. Stefan's plan properly polished to insure no bloodhound would be set upon his heel. Not that she did this for the one son, but more for the other and, in the end, herself. Turning at the door of the hospital suite, she took a last look at her clever piece of handiwork. A sigh escaped into the humid, medicinally-scented air. "Ah, Laura," she whispered, with no small amount of longing. "If only this were you." But that would end the contest, she reminded herself, slipping from the doorway and out into the hall. Why call the game when, truly, there was so much more of it to play? Mother was coming.