The Sigh Of Things (13)   …and it's all dark humor and thunder is God's baritone laughing. He is laughing so hard… She comes each day to fish for me. She takes her seat beside this fouled stream of consciousness and gently holds my hand. She baits her hook with news of the children - my melancholy prince, my lonesome renegade, my soft-spoken sprite - as if they were lures she'd crafted and cast to prance through the murky depths of my mind. She thinks to bloody these waters just enough with my past, my pain and the promises I'm breaking to somehow draw me to the surface of this dream. And if I could string my thoughts into words, if I could finally stretch to express them, do you imagine she would stop? Would anyone really stop? Fine for you, Regret, to sit screwed like a hinge between right and wrong. One door opens to the beast, another to the brinksman - and you think you can detect the difference between black and a darker shade of black? Such a jejune emotional construction! Founded on love, no doubt. Never once did I believe, even at the tender age of twenty, that love held enough solid force to bring about a man's redemption. Any illusions I had on that score were lost on the floor of a discotheque. Now there's a story worth telling, if only you had the ears to hear it. If only you could understand. But this wouldn't be the true tale, would it? Just a chapter and not nearly enough to provide you with a glimpse of why I am here. There is a reason, you know. There has always been a reason. It begins with a tangle, like a tangle in your hair. You're only a child then, of course. And if you're lucky there's a mother standing by with a comb. A mother who sees the knot before it can get any larger, and with a careful, motherly patience seeks to work that problem through. Lesley never saw the tangle of her abandonment, or if she did she thought I'd get over it. Twelve years lost to the Vinings before the great Doctor Faulkner comes to call. A mother's reclamation. How small, that chance she gave us, before she sent me back like a bad plate of clams. Maybe it was Rick. As the years go by and the stone sinks deeper and deeper into that past, I've come to believe Rick Webber was the one who harnessed her up for another race toward motherhood. Rick, who made her take me back. Rick, who married her. Rick The Savior. Doctor Rick Don't Pin Those Hopes On Me Webber. They came and went, these parents of mine. In and out. Back and forth. I killed for both of them, you know. And like a clever little cat, I laid the dead-eyed mice at their feet. Mama, here's David Hamilton. Do you love me now? Do you? To step-daddy dearest I present the body of your sweet Theresa Carter. Will you stay now, daddy? Pretty please? Both hands bloodied before I was old enough to drive a car. Of course it's not a tangle anymore now, is it? Now it's a full-fledged Gordian knot. Still, as rebellious as I was, as deceptively dangerous, as woefully miserable in my own cold skin - Time was the comb my parents chose to use. Given time everything would smooth itself out. They were well and truly wrong about that and I've never lost the stain of it. I don't imagine I ever will. Do you believe in reincarnation, Regret? Do you believe it can come through the hands of a bright blonde boy, through his sweet blue eyes and his engaging smile, through a heart that loves you a million miles out to the horizon and all the way back again? I surely did believe my life would start brand-spanking new, right there at the center of the warm embrace of my beautiful Scotty Baldwin. My white knight on his great white stallion, come to rescue me from two tyrants who simply did not love me enough. Scotty loved me enough. Yes…yes he did. Then Luke came along to love me more. It didn't take us long to recognize the exquisite power of danger - the way it sparks the heart to fire, like a jolt to a passion gone flagging from the banality of everyday life. Frank Smith was nothing more than a charged electrical paddle - and the Cassadine scheme to freeze the world? Two fists to pound on the chest of our ever-waning affections. The why of this great romance with Luke rests squarely atop the premise that risk is the oxygen required to maintain an abiding love. Though I love Lucas Lorenzo Spencer, it never quite escapes me that he loves me so much more in those moments when neither of us is free to breathe. When the beast took me the first time, he covered his tracks too well. Stay if you like, Regret, with the faith that a lover can know; that through some mystical awareness he can feel your heart still beating despite the proof of your death; that he will come with a singular relentlessness; that he will never end his search. Stay with that faith as long as you are able and I would know your road. The shoes of my certainty fell apart on that road. My knee buckled to the gravity of truth. The body that he loved fell once, then twice, then down, straight down to hell. Even an animal is attracted to the sparkle of a thing. A glittering bauble in a clump of weeds. A glint in a puddle, a glamour in the mist. And if this shiny object holds value to just one other being, even an animal will weigh the worth of its taking. Might he carry it away in his teeth, lick it once and then toss it back into the darkness of his den? This is the story of my life with Stavros from beginning to end. Don't you see it? Can't you tell? Every time he looks at me he's looking for his name. Nothing more. Nothing less. I've been branded the property of a Cassadine prince. I am a jewel in his royal collection. And if I am gone - and I am often gone - it can only be because I've been stolen. How hard do you think it was to be a pretty piece of treasure at the back of his lair? How long do you think I might have stood for that, as young as I was and strong and smart and filled with such a hunger for love? What lessons do you imagine I took at the knee of that savage prince? His brother? His mother? No one considers this time; the sharpness of its blade; the way it carved so close to the bone. What was severed? What was made? Ask them! Ask any one of them if I am a Cassadine. No one will deny it. Not even the man you so erroneously call your own. If only you knew me when I was alive - or as animate as your lover would like me to be - you would understand everything. You're a clever girl. You could guess in an hour where Stefan's soul was truly placed; his single, sad vulnerability and the cruel use I've made of it. Perhaps if the beast brings me to the fore I'll save you the trouble and tell you myself. Until then we will sit by this stream, you fixed in ignorance on the wrong children of the wrong mother, and I wishing only for the day you will stop. They will stop. This, all of it, will cease to be. She comes, Regret. Open your eyes to the Cassadine way. She comes. Author's Note: Some history - Lesley believed her daughter died in childbirth. She had actually been placed with the Vining family and lived with them for the first twelve years of her life. Lesley discovered the truth during her marriage to Cameron Faulkner. They retrieved the girl, but things went badly and Laura was given back to the Vinings. It was only after Faulkner died and Rick entered her life, that Lesley came to try again with her daughter. David Hamilton was a friend of Rick's who came to "recuperate" in the Webber home. Laura became romantically attached to the man, who did in many ways string her along. At the climactic moment of their relationship, when Laura wanted to run off with him, Hamilton informed her of his feelings for her mother. Laura "pushed" him, he fell and died. Laura then ran away and Lesley was put on trial for the murder, etc., etc., etc… Theresa Carter was a lover of Rick's whom Laura - many years later in the attic above the garage - remembered killing as well. The Sigh Of Things (14)   What could be made did depend upon more than means. ----- My love, my heart, Stefan - Should I tell you this is a thing you will never understand? Would you believe me? I think not. You will fret and ferret for a secret where none exists. It is your way. I know this as I know it will not be my absence that alarms you, but the absence of the woman I have taken in the night. She is your prize, after all. The sun and the moon I have stolen from your sky. However did I manage to race this one step ahead? You will determine it was your trust in me that permitted this theft. And, once again, you will fall into error. I never asked what you intended for her after she awakened. Did you never wonder why? For the simple reason that any answer you gave would have proven sadly irrelevant. Any plan you had, a pleasant dream to turn its lovely head and devour you whole. I have a stalwart soul, my love. I can brace against the wild wind, resist the rip of a tide, abide even the bone-buckling gravity of this catechistic Cassadine life…yet I would find it quite impossible to survive that lone moment past the one in which you found not a single drop of gratitude in her eye. Your Quixote to her harsh Dulcinea. How your heart would bleed, and mine run dry at the sight of it! I am, by my own hand and action this night, no longer of any consequence to you. I recognize this. More, I accept it. Yet when this howling storm has passed, when Laura is well and gone from both our lives, you could find me. If you set your mind to the task, Stefan, you could find me once again. Until such time…whether it comes or no… I am yours always, in all ways, Regret ----- She tucked the envelope beneath the sheet of Laura's empty bed. It took no skill to imagine him here, grasping the linen and snapping it back in a gesture of sheer astonishment. He will spy the water-blue paper packet, snatch it up in a fist and pounce on the words with an overwhelming thirst for reason. His arm will stretch behind him then - an arm that had once embraced her - now blindly thrust into the air to order a search for a sign or a hint or a clue so that what had just happened might be held; frozen in its place. Stop! She heard his order in her head, detected the underlying confliction in its tone…what in Stefan Cassadine did pass for panic. An instant would he give to their love. And an instant later she would lose him. An instant later he would mark her prey. She spied the half-emptied glass of milk on the nightstand, took it up and returned it to Laura's hand. Laura, who's recalcitrance had chosen a bad moment to assert itself. She'd resisted Mae's attempt to dress her, soothing to the process only when Regret had come and, with a firm voice, insisted she be still. Mae then made to pack her bag only to have Laura charge back and forth to void it item by item. A by-blow followed - just the knuckles of an open fist, yet Regret could tell where this was going. Here the reason for the mild sedative she'd mixed in with the milk, just enough to lower her down to a chair; quiescent but conscious. Conscious. Ah Stavros! Could you bring me no more than this? Laura's initial and somewhat astounding response to his "improved" treatment had elicited an increasing degree of cognizance. Yet over the past five days that progress seemed to stall, as if her mind had found a corner to curl itself into, a safe space to shelter through these dark and desperate times. Regret had waited the endless wait that comes with convalescence. Every day the study for a single whisper of improvement, a subtle shade of difference to her mien or her manner - all the while censoring her own predilection for whimsy. Many were the gestures and the looks, the stutters and starts one so longs to attribute to wellness, but are little more than the products of a wistful imagination. How often had she thought this woman on the very verge of speaking? How often did she imagine a keen intelligence behind those eyes? How many times had she immersed herself in the dream of returning a fully-functioning Laura Spencer to that hospital in London? No matter now. What could be done had been done. She would not pay the price for waiting one day longer. She looked up to find the glass empty and a furtive Mae standing at the door. "We're ready, then," she said, setting the cup aside. In answer, the old maid crossed to the chair and brought Laura's left arm over her shoulder. Regret bent as well, taking the weight of the right. Together they managed to guide the woman's halting steps through the doorway and down the hall to the service exit. Here Mae transferred her burden to her partner, shuffled outside and across those last few feet of the alley's pavement. With a strength that belied her ancient physique, she thrust the van's panel down its track and motioned for her nephew to start the engine. At last, the moment was upon them. This had been the true trick, after all. Egress. A way out. Stefan's security precautions were, for the most part, designed to prevent the escape of his brother - whose location at any given time was the subject of continual broadcast over hand-held radio. What remained of his protective force - a cadre of expert marksmen - had been assigned to a revolving perimeter patrol, making flight on foot out of the question. Access to the estate had been limited to the East and West Gates, one of which (the East) had been sealed by Stefan shortly before Laura's arrival. Barring some fantastic and entirely too impractical extraction by air, she'd been left with only the West Gate option. Enter Mae, whose friendship she had cultivated upon discovering the easy, almost unrestricted passage the maid had been granted to and from the estate. Here Stefan had no doubt relied upon his infamously thorough background checks to provide him with the whiff of potential betrayal. Once she'd passed his tests and descended to her hands and knees to scrub his floors, Stefan had succumb to the malaise commonly found among the very rich - servant blindness. He had completely lost sight of her there at his feet. Even after the new round of security assessments, Mae's comings and goings had merited only a cursory second inspection - this disregard enhanced to great degree by the disdain found among the guards he had stationed at his gate. Truth be told, after the first few weeks of searching through her nephew's company van; underneath the tarps, behinds the cans of paint, the brushes and the buckets, all the while subject to the irritatingly eye-stinging odor of turpentine, they came to give the entire exercise only their most desultory attention. The van door would only be opened, she was assured, then almost immediately slammed shut again. Apart from Mae, there had been two delicate considerations for Regret. The first was timing. One night a week Stefan held a meeting of his staff, followed shortly thereafter by another with the heads of his security force. Mae was required on these nights to remain until those meetings concluded and perform the necessary conference room cleaning. Thus her late-hour exit on these evenings had become a routinely-expected consequence. Such a night was this; the best opportunity, she felt, for an undetected escape. The second consideration, and one she found much more disquieting, had been contending with the problem of Roger. Laura's personal guard, assigned to her when she was in residence, was a man of great strength and even greater good humor. They were friends, in a way, Roger and Regret. And when she began to bring him cups of his favorite blend of coffee in the night, knowing the welcome the caffeine would receive, he took them with a ready smile. Hard, so hard had it been to begin to lace them with that sedative. Over the past ten days he had noted with chagrin how the brew was failing in its purpose. Drowsiness became something he had come to expect. She watched him fight the fatigue brought on by her deceit and had to force herself to turn away, so false did she feel toward the man. Now, having crept past his slumbering vigil, her only consolation lay in the knowledge she would never have to trick him again. That was done. The rest was up to Fate. Regret fell a bit beneath the weight of her drowsy charge and sought to readjust the burden. After shifting her hip backward to better allow for the dash to the van, her head rose to find those two cerulean eyes staring directly into her own. "No," hissed Laura, stubbornly through her teeth. Shock sparked through her mind, but only for a moment. Oh, the timing of this! Regret cupped the woman's face gently in her free hand and returned a look as intense as the one she had received. "Do you want to stay, Laura? Laura, answer me," she ordered firmly, almost under her breath. "Do you want to stay? Here?" Resignation cast its shadow over those determined eyes. "No," she sighed. Then her head fell in misery and sent her body pitching forward. Regret used the motion to propel her from the door and in four quick steps they were both at the van. Swiftly were they buried beneath those paint-spattered sheets, Laura curled against her like a frightened child as the van panel thundered shut. The front passenger-side door opened and Mae took her accustomed seat aside the nephew. Laura whimpered as this door, too, was violently slammed. And now the van was on its way. She brought her arm up around the trembling woman and in that rank patch of darkness managed to pull the hair from her eyes. Through simple sense of touch she made an effort to calm; stroking her face and leaning a cheek to its furled brow. Silence now, she thought, as if the warning could be plucked from her mind. Silence now and still, still as mice in the shadow of a cat. Suddenly the door opened and, as she had been promised, closed quite quickly shut again. Yet it wasn't until the great squealing creak of the Cassadine gate faded to her ear that she reminded herself it might be time to breathe again. Twenty coastal miles of minutes passed before they turned into the drive of the nephew's home. From the sound of it he lived on a quiet street, and to her uselessly open eyes, in a comfortably dark, residential neighborhood. All the better. Few if any would witness the transfer of two women from underneath a tarp in a van to a waiting car that, in no time at all, would be rapidly departing for the airport. She heard the driver's door open and shut. She heard the nephew's footsteps as he rounded the front and came to assist his aunt. She heard this door shut as well. Then… …nothing. Regret waited for the sound of the car pulling up to the side of the van. The arm she'd cast around Laura was now a dead weight. She flexed her fingers and felt the sharp needles that signaled a resurgence of pumping blood. Sliding herself apart and away from the quiet figure at her side, she gently rolled the great sheet back from the both of them. The new air was welcome, despite its acrid, chemical tang. Braver now with the little light cast from the stars and a quarter moon, she carefully stretched her arms and legs, then tipped her head against the crick in her neck. Where was that car? The crash of the van panel's opening ripped a scream from her throat. The nephew's face emerging from the dark did nothing to calm the hammer of her heart, pounding now against her ribs like the beat of a primitive war drum. Regret was still scrambling for her wits when a light came on behind him, too high to be shining from the front of a car. One hand went to her eyes, the other to the outstretched arm he sent to pull her neatly from the van. Once on her feet and half-recovered of her bearings, Regret turned back to assist this man in coaxing Laura from the vehicle. Obviously frightened herself, she had scurried to the furthest corner of the floor board and was stubbornly refusing to budge. His boot had just risen to step inside when a voice, like a slender shard of crystal chiming clear through the chilled night air, began to speak. "Oh, I really don't think that's necessary, Louis. Let the poor girl be." All heads turned to the sound, as they had been meant to. "You are Regret, I believe? Such a clever little name," the voice remarked in a clipped, patrician tone. "Forgive me," it said without an ounce of remorse. "I usually don't require an introduction. I am Helena. Helena Cassadine." The Sigh Of Things (15)   Were I not fertile none would be. "I am Helena. Helena Cassadine." Mother, he had said, as if it were a word written on a page. My mother, spit through his lips like a curse. And as she regarded the vessel of the voice, her eyes burned hot with the liquid of sudden, undelivered tears. Her mind attempted to retreat from the truth, to scatter itself in pieces to the past; to pockets of memory - her dancing shoes, Gigi's masquerade ball, the garret in Milan - any innocuous sliver of her life that she could grasp to prevent this moment from unfolding, to impede its advance, its becoming real. Yet all she could find in that past was his face, in every yesterday his face half to shadow in a book, upturned to the spray of his shower, lost of its focus above her in the night as he rode through the turns of his passion. Mother, he had said from a face devoid of expression. My mother, with a tongue that had tasted defeat. A blink to the tears and this creature broke to fragments; glittering shards in the dark. Seven soft shells of pale-spun gold turned her hair into a fan of crowns. Her ivory visage fractured like a puzzle of virgin snow, no sense to be made of its whole. Pricks of blue should have been her eyes yet more now like the blue at the base of a dozen flickered flames - dancing, darting, seeking out a thing to be burned. Her stomach broke like a cyst inside her as the motion queased and the bile rose. Regret brought her fingers to her lips and bowed her head, the full fat drop of a tear falling hard to the pavement at her feet. "Mrs. Garber, please show our guest to the house. Louis, you will remain with Mrs. Spencer." A firm hand cupped her elbow at the joint and angled her down a cobblestone path. There should be language for this moment, was her silly little thought, as the old maid swung the great door wide. Language filled with accusation, with blame, with insistence on a motive. Language wielded like a knife to lance and drain away the sting of betrayal. But there was no language, only silence here, and so she would be silent. Silent as a calf to the slaughter. Silent as a fine craft sinking through the brine. Silent as a death from poison. Violins wept in the great room; single, yawning notes of misery and grief. Even the music could capture her despair. This was a state of mind, she supposed, as she imagined every surface from the darkly-polished tables, the brocade of the sofa and it's partner chairs, the Renaissance tapestries, the oriental rugs and the vast expanse of marble at the hearth to be dripping with ancient Cassadine blood. It was an old blood, this red, almost black in its age and worn by the room as if in tribute to a battle long forgotten. A battle someone wanted to recall. Regret took her seat and swept her hand across the fabric of the cushion, surprised it returned to her dry. "Tea?" asked the woman who was invisible to her now; the woman she should never have seen. Spoken to. Conspired with. And it occurred to her then in an odd, bitter twist that giving Mae her confidence, her faith and an implicit trust in their common objective was really just another kind of blindness. Was there anyone…anyone…left in the world whose vision remained intact? "You may go now, Mrs. Garber." And with this abrupt instruction, Helena's arrival was announced. The room chilled considerably. Regret pressed her hands together in her lap and watched the fingers intertwine. She had no value to this woman. She possessed nothing of substance that might merit her the least consideration. She wondered, in a vague, out-of-body sense, how it was she remained alive. "Your adventure went smoothly, I trust?" Crossing from the entryway, Helena stood before her and waited for Regret to look her in the eye. When this did not happen quickly enough, a talon came to lift her chin. "I went to quite a bit of trouble over this. Stefan has a tendency to hire guards who simply cannot be bribed. He isn't quite as careful about blackmail, however. That certainly fell to our favor." And while Regret noted the conspiratorial tone, noted even the lamentable news of the blackmailed guards, it was Helena's casual use of her second son's name that tripped her mind into focus. Stefan, who would sense this Black Queen plotting at the opposite end of his chessboard. Stefan, who would have marked every piece in her army; bishop, knight, rook and pawn. He was a master of strategy and battle tactics; of the clean, swift strike and the brutally devastating countermove. There was a faith to pin a hope upon! He would come. He might, at this very moment, actually be on his way. So completely did she clutch at this slender straw, it took every ounce of her restraint to keep from turning to the door, expecting him there. "He has your heart then, does he?" she inquired, with an ill-disguised note of scorn. "Oh, don't be so surprised! You wear him like a cheap perfume." The finger pressed firmly beneath her jaw to move her head to the side and back again. "Look at how he's molded you. Quiet. Quaking. Frantic as a schoolgirl caught in a lie. Is Papa going to come and save you? Look, if you must. Turn! Look!" The talon was withdrawn and Helena, glacial to the core, waited for the seeking and the sad turning back. "You forget the length of our acquaintance, my dear. Sadly eternal, this mother and her son." Regret, now grounded in sorrow, cast her reluctance aside and examined this woman in full - the perfect coif of her hair, the finely-chiseled features, the long silk sweep of her jet-black dress. Every inch the widow spider save the diamonds that sparkled at her fingers and her ears. "You are a beautiful woman," she stated, and watched a glimmer dance in the spider's eye. "Yet I see neither one of them in you." "But they were, weren't they? Once." Helena smiled a bemused little smile, retreating to settle in a blood-red chair. "I will have my sons again. Not inside me, no, but here at the heart of the Cassadine family. The nest has been empty for far too long." Regret troubled with the image and tried to dissect it in her head. "It was my understanding you saw no value in Stefan. None whatsoever." "True enough in the past," she acknowledged, her mouth setting for a moment in a sour frown. "But I am willing to take one with the other. I must, in the end, or the Cassadine Empire will fall." Rousing herself as if from a morbid thought, Helena looked again to the girl. "What do you think he will do once he finds your earnest little note?" "I'm sure I have no idea," she lied. "That is not what I meant and you know it. He will come for Laura. He always does. What I'm asking is this, what do you believe he'll do about you? Did your worth disappear with your betrayal? He will conclude we've been working in concert, you and I…" "No!" This impassioned denial escaped her lips before she could call it back. And the jubilant peel of this spider's laugh drove her mind scurrying to contain it. "He would never believe that," she countered. "Stefan knows me too well." "Stefan doesn't know you at all, my dear. Yet after tonight, I think, yes. You may finally be granted that privilege." The twinkle in her eye diminished as her attention was drawn to the space just above Regret's left shoulder. "Well, at last!" she exclaimed in a tone that announced her displeasure. "You certainly took your time." Regret might have turned if she felt it would have made the slightest bit of difference - this one foolish head turning, this one foolish heart grasping for his presence in the dark. And once she heard the voice she knew it was better left undone. This single choice, out of all of the rest she'd made on this horrific night…this single, solitary choice had been right. "I knew of none of this." She felt a tremor there, in her hand. Regret held it fast and bent her head, waiting for the shock to subside. "And you're surprised?" the spider taunted, smug with her mastery at the web. "I thought you might have noticed by now that I quite prefer to keep you uninformed. A surprisingly considerate gesture on my part. Surely it makes the job easier? You should thank me." "Thank you, Helena." Like a dog for a biscuit. Was it cold? Regret was cold. Her fingers were cold, her hand still shaking despite the embrace of its mate. "You're welcome," she replied. "You've seen Laura, then?" There must have been a nod. If Regret could close her eyes she was sure she could easily imagine it. Or not. "She's entirely too awake for my liking. But you have the remedy for that, I trust?" "Of course," the voice assured, yet with a pause to indicate the desire for further discussion. "Yes?" drawled the spider, indulgently. "Only this. She has not achieved full awareness. She is, however, cognizant enough to give them purpose. She has just enough life to compel. Rid yourself of that and you may find your goals, whatever these may be, pursued with a good deal less…enthusiasm." Though it did seem to gall her, Helena weighed the point. Regret watched those predatory eyes narrow, her words now laced with suspicion. "You can guarantee her inability to mount a defense?" "I am willing to stake my word, yes." "Ah, but a word is a word. I much prefer an action. You will submit to me in this, yea or nay?" "Yea," said the voice without hesitation. Good dog. Clever dog. Bully for you. "What about the girl?" "What about the girl?" Helena responded, returning her attention to Regret. "I find her amusing. More so when I picture the look on Stefan's face; that first expression she will trigger when he sees her after this. I doubt she has any value as a wedge. Lost it to a night of well-intentioned treason, didn't you my poor, poor dove?" She offered an exaggerated pout to her captive, then brought her mind to bear. "What do you suggest?" "She has experience in caring for Laura. She is capable of managing the day-to-day maintenance. A control. Simply a control." "I have no objection to that." Gifting her with what on any other face might have passed for a sympathetic smile, Helena slowly rose from the chair. "Quarters have been readied in the East Wing. You will see them settled. All the guards tonight, I think. And you will remain as well. We have business in the morning." Regret closed her eyes, knowing the spider had scuttled away when she heard the heels of her shoes leave the carpet to click against the marble flooring in the hall. Click-click, click-click, click-click fading with the distance like an old carriage clock running down to the last. How long was silence? How many miles could it stretch before it wickedly snapped you back into action? Regret felt they tested this; she and the traitor behind her. Truth be told, the traitor had the edge. It was so much easier to wait the wait when you knew the cards you held in your hand and had an inkling as to how you'd play them. Harder when tossed like a chip in ante to the pot at the center of the table. The game, the stakes, the gamble - all of this would happen around her now, as if she did not exist. Save the one moment. Just that one. Stefan would see her, the spider had said, and she took this as a promise. Actually more as a warning of inevitable injury; a deathblow delivered on a glance. What Helena had alluded to was not so very far from the truth. She had conspired against him. She had broken faith. Whether he would see her as treachery incarnate or a pure, simple-minded fool made no difference in the end. She would be judged. He would condemn. The slaughter of her heart impended and she had only one hope to hold her straight - that once his knife had finished its deft evisceration, he would take this uselessly ridiculous organ with him when he left. It was all she would ask, and a good deal more than she deserved. Regret took her fatigue in hand and rose to face the person in whom her failure would be made manifest. This slender, compact frame; a cage of iron for the myriad energies, instincts and well-honed skills that would serve their master's purpose. The tight curve of a determined jaw, a perfectly grim line of lips, the well of a dark, unfathomable eye. And the lie, in the end the lie of softness in this singularly straight black hair. Force, it was all about force in this one, imprisoned yet accessible. Well, it would not be triggered tonight. She simply didn't have the strength. "Regret." The name stood alone on the air as a fact beyond debate. "Sancia," she countered with the final acknowledgement of defeat.