The Sigh Of Things (49)   Did we say good-bye at the speed of sound screaming? Did we say good-bye? While the bulk of the room's attention followed his brother as he crossed the floor, Stefan's gaze remained at the door, contemplating Regret. That kiss of her hand ran counter to every fact in evidence - and not just the evidence of Stavros' disdain for "Contessa Derniere," the woman whom he strove to degrade and destroy as an example to the kin - but all the proof he had of the character, the nature and the temperament intrinsic to the mistress he'd kept for the last twelve months. Yes, he'd suspected an alliance of sorts prior to the Deciding, but judged it merely a mild flirtation indulged as an act of diversion for them both - Stavros from the challenge he was facing and Regret from her captivity…perhaps even, were he vain enough to claim the thought, to escape the pain of her broken heart. Yet were this a simple distraction, an amusement entertained to bide the time between one circumstance and the next, the rape should have put an end to that. A rather definitive end. Less than twenty-four hours ago she'd fallen victim to one of the most humiliating dances he had ever witnessed, properly taken umbrage and struck her partner in response, only to be driven into that salon and ruinously ravaged; an assault he himself protested but had not found the means to prevent. Add to this the subsequent spectacle made of her spoiling and her final, desperate attempt at revenge, and there was no conceivable reason he could see for her presence in this room today, much less at his brother's side, much less taking a kiss, any kiss, from that decidedly degenerate mouth. He'd thought her gone, fled in the night on tattered wings, driven off in horror and disgust. That fraudulent band gave her leave. Her violation gave her leave. Hell, this family gave her leave to run screaming from the scene, renouncing every terror and never looking back. It was a natural reaction, a logical response - the wholesale rejection of everything Cassadine now and for the rest of her life. Yet here she was, not only present but seemingly content to stand at her ravager's side, to take his part, to accept his display of affection. And from what he could discern she was not afraid; not at all angry or distressed by her state. It was, as a development, highly unexpected; as a truth, beyond confounding. He was either observing the most blatant case of Stockholm Syndrome the world had ever seen, or there was something else riding the rails beneath this presentation. Something cunning. Something shrewd. Something worth knowing. This deduction was made with the speed of an epiphany, fully-formed in his mind before Stavros came to a stop and turned to face the crowd. "Speak of the devil and the devil appears," quipped their prince with a wink and a smile. "Someone, anyone, tell me - exactly how much has the devil missed?" "Stavros!" his mother exclaimed, stepping forward to lift a hand to his cheek. "You've regained your sight!" She inspected this miracle intently, confirming it was true. "How wonderful. I'm so very pleased." "And when has the universe failed to turn toward the accommodation of your pleasure?" he teased, nuzzling against her palm. "You rarely give it a choice." This culled the kind of loving look she would offer no one else; a look betraying a discomfiting mix of joy and adulation. He lazed in the admiration a moment, then shifted his eye to Stefan. "Do you have what you need?" Helena flicked a startled glance in the direction of her second son and caught his solemn nod. Her hand fell from her prince's face. "You're with him in this," she accused. "In this? Of course," he responded, his neck arching back in a parody of bewildered surprise. "How could you imagine I'd be anywhere else? I won't be bound by extortion, and neither would you. Are you suggesting I submit to a condition you yourself would refuse to endure? I think not. You have your silver band and your wide assortment of captives, Stefan has your every scheme clutched tightly in his fist. I've worked to level the field, just as you would have done had you found yourself in a similar position. Honestly, Mother," he enjoined, his expression laced with injury. "I would have thought this was something you'd respect." "An interesting word to choose, my son," Helena countered coldly, watching as he wandered across to the prisoners idling against the wall. "Respect is what I hoped to have earned from you. Loyalty. Some measure of allegiance. I've kept your empire in play, after all. Nurtured it. Sustained it. My careful attention through the years is what insured you'd have a kingdom to come back to." "Actually, I believe that was Stefan," her prince contended, arriving at the line of captives and the men who held them under guard. He moved toward Laura and Adolfo balked, but Stavros simply waved him off. Several seconds were spent staring into her eyes, her features hardening beneath his gaze. "Did you wonder what had become of me?" he inquired in a wounded tone. "Even once?" When she refused to answer he moved on. "Stefan?" huffed Helena, incensed by his correction. "Stefan was the one who brought us down this mortifying path. If it weren't for him we'd have had no need of a Deciding. Your brother forced you through that hoop with his mismanagement of the Estate. Had he not seen fit to abandon your son at the most critical stage of his princeship, Argos would never have fixed his hold. You are forgetting Nikolas entirely. Nikolas, whose training failed to prepare him to detect, much less confront, the most fundamental challenge faced by a reigning Cassadine prince. One must wonder at the reason for that," she remarked, pausing to express her despair with a profound sigh of remorse. "I guided the boy when and where I could; protected him; parented him to the extent his uncle would allow. As I taught the father, so taught I the son. Whatever princely quality you sight is a quality I engendered. He is a true and worthy Cassadine upon my diligence alone." "Again, no. Nikolas is a Cassadine of Stefan's manufacture. You had very little to do with that," her prince relayed distractedly, taking his measure of the swollen eye on one of Sancia's guards. "Ouch," he exclaimed, grimacing wryly. "That must hurt." The man scowled with the wound to his pride as Stavros took a step toward the girl. A hand came to lift her chin, to peruse the damage to her nose. "Have you seen this yet?" he inquired in a tone firm enough to call for a response. Her head shook slightly. "It's not as bad as you think." "And what of the Oath of Abjuration, Stavros?" his mother spat contentiously. "As long as you're awarding your brother his credit, let's give him all the credit he's due. You caught that line he so slyly inserted, and commented on it as I recall. A comment cryptic enough to have me re-read the document for cause. A rather castrating codicil, I thought. But perhaps you prefer the role of eunuch to that of plenipotentiary prince?" "And that, Madame Cassadine," her son announced gravely, "is most certainly none of your business." Stefan watched his brother turn in deliberately incremental degrees to fully face the woman whom, it seemed, had finally crossed the line. By the time that half-revolution came complete he was every inch the Prince - his shoulders straightened in arrogance, his eyes gone hard, his aspect stern, his bearing as resplendently righteous as that of any warrior-king. The atmosphere took a charge from this dramatic transformation, suddenly crackling with the force of his scorn. The mood of this confrontation grew tense, the anticipation ominous. Even his mother, to this point combative and consumed with her complaints, retreated from that fractious course to hold still as she fell beneath the chill of his imperious regard. "What disturbs me most," he began in a voice as dark as doom, "is your perpetual insistence that I take your side, not only against Stefan but against your every enemy du jour. All and sundry. Laura, Alexis, the Spencers, the kin, Port Charles, the world-at-large. Anyone standing in your line of fire. Anyone. Who. Opposes. You. Do you see the problem? Not yet? Well then, let's approach this from a different angle." The Prince strode to where she stood and slipped in behind her - his hands rising to rest on her shoulders, his mouth tucking tight to the crest of her ear. She stiffened at this tactile assault, but he shook her loose with a gentle nudge. "Come, Mother, it's your son. The son who loves you. The son you love more than anyone else on the face of this earth. It's your Prince. Your darling. Your dearest one. The cherished child whose life you wrested from the greedy jaws of Death itself. So much planning, so many years. Why, the fire of your fidelity to my coldly-coffined corpse was all that kept my soul alive! A staggering proof of devotion. No son could ask for more. I owe you my existence, my every breath, my endlessly eternal thanks." Helena nodded in satisfaction, content with his recollection of events and the honor he bestowed. A small smile graced her face as she covered his hand with her own. "Ah, yes, there she is," he acknowledged warmly, gifting a kiss to the side of her head. "The redoubtable Helena Cassadine. Formidable, indefatigable, the goddess to whom I owe the boon of my miraculous resurrection. Who else could have performed such a feat? Who else could have found the skill, the science, the secret to restoring her prince to life? And I know the minute you arrived at a cure, the very second you had that answer, you revived me forthwith. You didn't wait on the turn of a plan. You didn't delay for the devolvement of a scheme. You didn't bide my time to set your every chess piece in its proper place." His clasp of her shoulders constricted, cruelly trapping those fingers underneath as his voice took on a harsher edge. "How many days did I lose, Mother? How many months went missing? Or were there years I gave as sacrifice to your quest for the perfect biological weapon? You were so terribly prepared when I opened my eyes. It does set the mind to wondering." "I worked to lay the world at your feet!" she exclaimed in a tone that tried for pride but disclosed her disconcertion. "I dedicated every resource to presenting you an empire worthy of your rule. I sought to make you more than a prince, more than a king, more than the master of a single nation. I would have you hold dominion over all. This is how important you are to me. This is how much I love you." "And how I did depend on that!" he proclaimed sardonically, shifting position to bring his lips to the curve of her opposite ear. "I waited for you, you know. At the bottom of that bottomless pit. With all my injuries, in all my pain, I waited for you to come. Such a singular faith in his mother had this fearfully fractured son. You saved me once, I had every reason to believe the bond still held. The love. The need. The value of the child you claimed to adore above all else. An hour passed, then two. A night and another day. She will come, I assured myself until those words turned less convinced and a good deal more convincing. She will come. She will come. She will come. I intoned the phrase like some insufferable Tibetan mantra; over and over in my head, on my lips, through the air that echoed with the lie of its every note - She will come. And when, at last, I heard those voices high in the air above me I knew, I knew my salvation was at hand. I knew my faith had been redeemed. Imagine my surprise when that opening closed and the steel was bolted into place. My light was lost, my ordeal erased, my suffering deemed irrelevant and inconsequentially obscure. Where was the woman who weighed my existence more precious to her than gold? Where was the woman who'd sworn her life meant nothing without her prince? Where was this woman who'd sought with such determined dedication to lay the world at my feet? Where were you, Mother? No," he commanded, two fingers come to press against her lips, to insure her continued silence. "The question was rhetorical. The answer, as we both know, is this: You were not there." He suddenly released his grip, as if Helena had grown too hot to touch, and resolutely backed away. "Shall we even bother to talk of the time I spent chained in Stefan's cell? You knew where I was. You knew you could free me, yet you sought to steal Laura instead. A telling choice, Madame," he intoned as he slowly circled around her. "And here I thought your love for me made such alternatives unthinkable." "Are you not free, Stavros?" his mother inquired with a look that bore a touch of frost. "Did I not deliver you? To whom, pray tell, do you attribute the unlocking of that cage? Disparage my means as you will, you cannot discount my end." "A horse from the paddock. A tool from its case. You withdrew me for use, Mother, let's not deny the facts." He took a step toward her, his eyes blazing in anger, and she began to back away. "How blind have I been through all these years to believe you worked on my behalf? How deluded? How naïve? The cause you advance is your own; the ambition you slake is the ambition of a woman who seeks not to gift her son his rule but strives to rule through him." Another foot advances, another one retreats. "I will not be your puppet prince, your cat's-paw, your creature. I may be a fool, but only for so long as I allow this folly to go on. The days of my delusion have come to an end and so, Madame, must yours." He had driven her around the curve of the room until she stopped before the door. Helena glanced over her shoulder to judge the nearness of escape, but resisted that course when she recalled what it was she held in her hand. Her arm shot out, the trigger box aimed directly at Sancia. "I will kill her," she declared, her expression hardening, steeled to the intent. "By all means do," dared her son. "Your reticence to use that weapon is growing increasingly absurd. Press the button and be done." What happened next was a blur. Stefan couldn't tell if his brother's words were the long-awaited signal or if some other sign had passed between them, only that Paolo had finally been given the nod to make his move. This monolith of a man burst into the room with a speed that belied his size, closing the distance from the door to his mother in a matter of seconds. One muscled arm snaked around her waist while a massive hand seized her wrist - this powerful clutch shocking her so completely she lost her hold on the trigger box and sent it flying through the air. Stavros caught it with ease, then turned to pitch it to Stefan who cursed this cavalier action, contriving to catch the device on reflex alone. Lifting a gaze to offer his reproof, he was startled to find his brother's eye widening in horror at a movement behind his back. Stefan turned just in time to see Louis take aim. "NO!" Stavros' roar was lost beneath the thunder of the pistol's discharge; the bullet fired and tearing a course straight through the chaos of the scene to slice into the neck of the man who held his mother under guard. Paolo's upper body snapped back with the impact, a puzzled expression unfolding on his face. Only when he looked down and saw the fountain of blood flowing over the blouse of the woman he restrained did he recognize what was done. His arms squeezed tighter around Helena, in part to keep her prisoner, in part to keep his feet, but the wound continued to pour and his weakness overwhelmed, causing him to slide down the length of her body and collapse into a heap on the floor. His captive extracted herself from his grasp and moved away in shock. Stavros was at his side in a heartbeat; his knee bent, his hand curving beneath the man's neck, unmindful of the oozing blood and shredded flesh that met his touch. Paolo's eyelids fluttered, straining to hold aloft as he sought his Prince's face. "Forgive…" he croaked, a crimson ribbon bubbling at the corner of his mouth. "I did not see the gun." "There was no gun to see, Paolo Esperanza," his Prince intoned in a voice so strong it succeeded in erasing any lingering doubt from the dying man's mind. "You fall in the service of your lord with every honor intact. Cada cousa a seu tempo. Everything has its time. A warrior knows this." His aspect softened, his words now reassuringly resolved. "Go fearless to the god of your father, as I have gone before you, knowing the battle of your life is won. You are my Hand, you are my glory. We will meet again." On the brace of this benediction the mortally wounded Paolo, ever-faithful to his duty as Hand of the Cassadine Prince, closed his eyes and gifted his lord his final, faltering breath. Stavros leaned forward to press his lips to the dead man's brow then slowly rose to his feet, his palms now slick with blood. Crossing to his mother - who cringed in expectation of the curse he'd choose to inflict - he halted a mere arm's length away and grew dangerously still. Believing she could use this silence to advantage, spending its quiet to purchase her reprieve, she straightened to his stillness and lifted her head in a gesture of conciliation. Whatever sentiment she thought to spout through those pleasantly placating lips was lost on the backhanded blow he delivered in a crack across her cheek - a strike so sharply brutal and fraught with his contempt that it sent her frail form spinning on its force before sending her to ground; Paolo's blood now streaking the milky expanse of her skin. "What punishment accords the murder of a Hand?" her son growled grimly. "Come, Mother, you know that answer. Confess the penalty of your crime." He was about to advance, about to haul her to her feet, when he felt the barrel of a pistol hitch hard to the back of his skull. Stefan watched his brother's expression infuse with amusement; his gaze glittering, his menacing frown twisting into a grin. And though it seemed infinitely longer, barely a second passed before another incremental turn began; Stavros coercing the cold steel around the circumference of his head until the mouth of the gun came to rest precisely at the center of his brow, squarely between his eyes. "Fire," he directed in a quiet voice, beckoning the bullet and whatever backbone his assailant could muster to complete the task. Louis lagged, his features skewed in agitated appraisal. "Come on, man, you have your target. You couldn't hope for a better shot. Pull the trigger and loose the round." Louis' focus squirted beyond him, fixing to the level of the floor and the mistress who lay upon it. "No!" bellowed Stavros, grabbing the minion harshly by the jaw and drawing that focus back. "Never waver from your enemy's eye. Seek it. Sink into it. Stake your claim. Own the act you are about to commit. That's it. That's it," he soothed, guiding this skittish mind along. "There. You have it. Now fire." Stefan saw the pistol shift, then quiver uncontrollably as Louis sought the courage to accomplish the deed. It was obvious his victim's gentle goad had thoroughly unhinged him. Add to this Helena's stern negating glare and her stealthful rise to emphasize that countermanding order, and the henchman was left to wrestle through an unenviable quandary. To the one side stood the man he held at gunpoint, the man who'd maneuvered him past the threat and straight to the precipice of murder, promoting his death and scorning the length of time it took to arrive - while on the other stood his manipulating mistress who, despite the abuse she'd suffered, would cut him down without a second thought were he to justly deliver her revenge. Caught between a pair of Cassadines any sane man would fret to face singularly, Stefan felt a moment's pity for the pest now squirming in their trap. It was no surprise to find Stavros laying his hand atop the gun; no surprise to see Louis' consternation melt into a kind of relief. The decision had been taken from him, and he foolishly imagined this disarmament served to conclude his part in the play. It was all too clear what would happen next, could well have been adjudged pre-ordained - that hold of the jaw dropping to his neck, that practiced grip, that steady stare. The only inexpectation, the only move that caught him unaware, was the swift execution of the fool's about-face; a purposeful turn toward Regret. Stavros, flat at his victim's back, his angle taken, his pride held high, snapped the man's neck with an efficient precision and tossed the corpse before her; not so much as a hound dropping a kill at his master's feet, but more like a sophist intent upon making a particularly important point. Stefan's eye shifted to Regret, who had no eye for him but only the brother whose meaning mystified every other mind in the room. Stavros matched her stare even as he released the clip from the gun, emptied the bullet from its chamber and pitched the piece across the floor. Unable to discern the reasoning here, Stefan's attention strayed to his mother, whose own attention had likewise shifted from the pitiful end of her poor Louis. Why was her focus drawn to her captives? What fresh plot occupied her mind? Before he could even embrace a trepidation, Laura let out an anguished cry. "No!" she shrieked, shoving at the gnarled form of old Mrs. Garber who had crept in behind her with a needle in her hand. "Get away from me! No!" Adolfo, surprisingly quick on the uptake, blocked Laura's attempt to escape and held her still as that syringe took aim. Stefan launched into action, hurtling himself at the scuffling trio and managing to knock the guard off his feet. His right hand crushed to a fist he threw straight at the neck of the repugnant old crone; the point of his signet ring breaking her skin to drive deep into her throat. She reacted with a quick intake of air yet had enough awareness left to thrust her weapon into Laura's flesh and depress its contents in the waiting vein. Mrs. Garber then crumpled to the floor and her victim would soon have followed had Stefan not caught her in his arms. Sancia stepped forward to pull the syringe from where it dangled in Laura's skin. "My coat," instructed Stefan, too encumbered to accept the needle from her hand. Sancia followed his order and slipped the syringe into his pocket just as the two remaining guards began their advance. "At the risk of pandering to an ancient irony, I would ask you gentlemen to freeze." All attention turned to Stavros who had taken full advantage of Helena's occupation with her housekeeper's struggle to steal behind her and secure her much as he had her newly-deceased lover; constraining her in that self-same embrace, her eyes gone wide as he took his brutal hold of her neck. "I'm more than willing to produce an encore for those who missed the first," he announced, pushing her forward to provide a better view of his ill-gotten gain. "She is my mother, true, but then those filial affections have recently suffered a rather disheartening reverse. Shall we test the measure of my restraint? Perhaps I've kept some love in reserve." His thumb ran down the line of her jaw, his predatory gaze narrowing to examine her fear. "Then again, perhaps not." "Stavros, let me go." Her words came calm but were completely betrayed by the terror in her face. "Why Mother, I just don't know," he replied in a deceptively gentle tone. "I have half a mind to try my hand at bringing you back to life. Of course, the other half of that mind is notoriously impatient. Were I not to succeed in a timely manner I might lose interest entirely and be forced to move on to a more satisfyingly animated pursuit." Her sudden look of dismay was enough to stop her henchmen in their tracks. Even Adolfo, who'd risen from the floor in a murderous rage and started toward Stefan, shifted his fury into neutral and slowly backed away. "That's right," Stavros asserted, tipping his head toward this one retreating man. "Follow your companion's lead and step apart. Further…further…" he instructed, maneuvering his mother around his brother and over the body of the drugged Mrs. Garber until they stood as a barrier between the guards and the captives he'd protect. Only after he'd achieved this aim did he bother to spare a word for Stefan. "Get her out of here." "You can't…" "I said get her out of here. Or would you rather risk bequeathing her to another one of Mother's grand ambitions? I think we've given enough to that particular charity." Helena squirmed in affront and he tightened his hold of her throat. "Now's your chance, brother. Rescue her. Save her from the gruesome grasp of this family. Make that dream come true. And while you're at it," he added in a surprisingly earnest aside, "take Regret with you." "She's still banded," their mother's voice somehow managed to purr. "And you're still talking," noted her captor, jerking her head to an awkward angle so that he could meet her eye. "We took care of that device some time ago. What you see on her wrist is a copy. Perhaps you should think about employing someone to keep you up to speed. Go!" Stefan knew the instruction was his, though Stavros had spit it in Helena's face; the chuff of his breath puffing back her hair and causing her to blink. He lifted Laura into his arms and signaled for Sancia to lead the way. The girl refused to move. "I would only put you in danger," she explained, her arm rising to remind him of the bomb she wore on her wrist. "She's right," snapped Stavros dismissively, restless now with the wait. "Sancia will have my back." His head knocked toward the one-way mirror. "Leave through her secret room and close that panel behind you. Let's limit the exits to one." Stefan nodded, pausing for the moment it took Regret to arrive at his side. Maneuvering the burden of Laura carefully through the cut in the wall, he then shifted to the left to admit the woman Stavros would have him preserve. She hesitated at the entryway, casting a backward glance, and he marked the genuine intensity of the look that passed between them. "If I am lost…" his brother offered. "I will find you," Regret maintained. It was doubtful Stefan would ever forget the flash of abject gratitude that lanced through the features of this prince's face as that panel closed behind him and he was, at last, abandoned to his fate. The Sigh Of Things (50)   It is understood that women will disappear. For a moment they will flicker - the wick will spark or sour soft condensing fire, light and smoke and in that secondary pause between what is and what may be he must decide… She trailed him through a side door and into the carriage house, every step taking her further away, further apart…from what? Danger? Death? All she held important in life? She had no time to think, she could scarcely keep up with this brother and his burden of Past - his Laura, drugged but nearly safe, nearly saved the way he needed. Her hips swung wide as she skirted the cars, the boundary of bumpers on these luxury vehicles; the Lexus, the Ferrari, the mammoth Rolls Royce, until they reached another door, a smaller door, and the deceptive liberation of the outside world. Too bright, that sun. Anyone could see. It was the reason he'd taken this circuitous route, chosen to emerge not from a primary exit but a servant's outlet, a chauffeur's egress, where no roving eye of a guard or groundsman would automatically think to look. Not that he believed an alarm had been sounded. Not that he believed the staff was on alert. He was simply being cautious, simply taking heed - his motive plain in the care with which he carried this prize, this woman who'd imprisoned his heart. Tenderly. Reverently. With a mind to protect. They were coming in circles, these events; closing like serpents in on their tails; rounding off, achieving balance, inching back to where it all began. Laura - insensate, in need of rescue. Stefan - reaching for that need. And Regret, extraneous Regret, hopelessly in love with a man who simply was not there. The only difference arising in the fact that it was suddenly possible he might be. If he managed to survive this day, if he managed to survive his mother, if he managed to survive his desire to die, there was suddenly a single, savage chance this ineffable illusion of a man might, at long last, appear. They kept to a periphery of trees and plants that stretched out from the house, spanned the length of the drive, then angled toward the gate. From shrub to bush to topiary trunk, he wound his unobtrusive way, pausing when cover allowed to measure the distance left to travel and calculate the odds of success. The grounds remained quiet, the manor still, yet he never varied his covert course, never risked revealing their position beyond what this track of land did demand. And if the weight of the woman he carried began to strain in his arms, to oppress his strength, to drag him down, he never once complained. He never once asked for a hand or a moment to compose. It was as if he had been hunted for a lifetime, pursued through the years without surcease, forever on the run from an enemy he knew would never leave him be. And Regret wondered, as she slipped into the shade of yet another stand of trees, whether what it was he refused to surrender lay in his arms or in his soul. The answer, she suspected, was at that moment elusive to them both. Only when they reached their destination did he relieve himself of his burden, laying Laura to a gentle rest against the ivy-covered wall that served to stand as a barrier between Helena's estate and the outlying street. Satisfied with her placement, he turned to burrow through the trailing vines until he came upon the camouflaged control box that held the workings of her gate. Its lock was broken, she could see - and as he threw the tin door back to pluck a key from an inside shelf, she rightly discerned who held the responsibility for its breaking. His fingers curled to call for her hand. "My car is parked outside this wall, beyond the range of the camera," he informed her, pressing the key into her palm. "Take Laura to the airport. A jet has been chartered under the name Greyson. You will find several sets of traveling papers in the glove box. Select the two that apply. Leave the car in the "C" lot and I'll follow when I can. Should I fail to arrive within the hour you must continue on alone. Make your way to London, Blake's Hotel in Roland Gardens, and wait for word from me there." Regret looked down at the key in her hand, then up to the man instructing her. He seemed so convinced she would obey. "No," she responded, taking hold of his wrist and returning that key to his care. "I won't leave him behind." "Don't be ridiculous," he scolded, attempting to redeliver the key only to have her retreat from his extended arm. "Regret, I'm going back. I'll help them if I can. There's absolutely nothing you can do for him now." His features creased in agitation as she stubbornly stood her ground. "Isn't this what you wanted? To return her to that hospital? Isn't this what was worth breaking my trust? My faith? Every single confidence I had in what we meant to each other?" A cruel cut. She stiffened on its censure. "You are halfway done with your saving, Stefan. Finish what you've started." His voice dipped to a softer pitch, his tone a wounded reproach. "Is she any less worthy of rescue now? Are her children any less alone?" "I will not leave him," she asserted with a vehemence that brooked no dispute. Stefan narrowed his eye to this obstructive behavior, then slowly turned to replace the key on the shelf of the gate's control box. "Here," he gestured, calling her attention to the green circle of a button at the center of the panel. "This is the manual override. If you change your mind, or anything happens to change it for you, open the gate, take the key and go." She gave him a grudging nod and he settled for that, bending his knee to make a last, cursory exam of Laura. "He didn't rape you, did he?" Less a question than a comment he offered as he drew a tendril of long blonde hair away from the woman's face and lifted it over her shoulder. "Is that what buys such loyalty? The suffering he refused to inflict? Has he gained your favor by rejecting his own barbaric nature? By restraining himself from behaving as the man all know him to be?" Stefan's head twisted around, his hard gaze finding her own. "A temporary reprieve, I assure you. Time will bring him back to what he's always been. To what his choices have made him." Noting the absence of argument, he took her silence as a sign his warning had been received and rose to his feet. "Think, Regret," he advised as he brushed the dirt from his trouser leg. "Her life is in your hands." With this he spun on his heel and began the long trek back to the house. The echo of his howl - still indignant, still contemptuously enraged - resounded down the corridor and bounced up the stairs, announcing to his brother that this Prince remained alive, his battle unfinished, his victory as yet unmet. Ripe as it was, and at times so chillingly raw, he was not surprised to find that roar had silenced all the softer noise common to the house. Not a single servant's breath or voice or involuntary sneeze braved to break its intermittent thunder, leaving Stefan to wonder at the length of time these cowards would cower in their corners before finally taking flight. Some had undoubtedly arrived at that pass, the newer recruits, those fresh to the service of the Dowager Princess Cassadine who remained unaware of her vengeful bent and the extraordinary length of her retaliatory reach. The rest, the alumni of her cruel-schooled wrath, would bide until the contest had reached its end. Harsh as her penalties for desertion were, her rewards for fealty came equally sweet. Should she live to find a soul had kept its faith and was still willing to obey, his mother could be generous indeed. He had just arrived at the door of her war room when a hulking figure shot through its frame, to be caught mid-retreat by a glancing blow to the top of its head. The skull was thick, however, and required a second crushing strike to bring its gargantuan body down. Once this mountain fell to the ground, his brother was revealed behind it tossing the fragments of a shattered computer keyboard atop the other wreckage at his feet. Half bent forward, a hand on his knee, he breathlessly motioned Stefan inside. "We may be finished, we may be on a break," he panted, trudging to the console for support. "If it's the latter, I leave the next to you." Stefan stepped over the fallen giant and into the aftermath of his brother's war. The room had been demolished, its machinery laid waste, its every unanchored object smashed to pieces on the floor; a floor conspicuously littered with the detritus of dead men (or unconscious enough to pass for dead), two or three wearing faces he'd never seen before. "How about it, Mother?" he inquired, turning to the corner where Sancia stood, her iron arms imprisoning the lady of the house. "Have all your guests arrived, or are we expecting more?" Helena made an effort to extract herself from her captor's tight embrace, thinking the arrival of her second son brought with it a certain decorum, but that courtesy was denied. Her chin thrust up defiantly. "If you've finished playing your roughhouse games, the negotiations may begin." Stavros managed to expel a laugh through the wheeze of his exhaustion. "You'd need a position for that, ma mere. The one you've got…" His sentence corrupted with a cough and his wrist revolved in the direction of her hostage state to finish it. "He's right," Stefan remarked, picking up where his brother left off. "You lack a bargaining posture. The time for maneuvering is over. You have only to defuse Sancia's band for these games, as you put them, to end." He watched his mother's eye harden to the truth, then saw it skirt to scrutinize the floor. Before he could discern what she was looking for, her gaze danced back to her sons. "And what if you've made that impossible?" she charged. "Look around. See the damage you've done? Why, I'm surprised it hasn't gone off already!" Helena drew to a haughty height, peering down on them with disdain. "I bear no responsibility for this. You have taken the matter out of my hands. If you would seek a solution to her predicament you are left to rely on yourselves." "Sounds like a lie to me," Stavros offered genially. "And it looks like one as well," his brother observed, noting her distinct lack of fear and the absence of a plea to put some distance between herself and that silver shackle. Their mother's instinct for self-preservation was all too strong and very well-known. "Leave her to me," her captor stated flatly. The tone was too vacant, too empty to read. Stefan wasn't at all sure what his protégé had in mind. "I don't think…" "And I do," declared Stavros, cutting that opinion off. "As long as we continue to listen, Mother will continue to talk. Sancia is a woman of action. Let her negotiate in kind." The Prince released a heavy breath, as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, then searched the ground for the next obligation he was duty-bound to perform. His finger pointed in the direction of Paolo's lifeless corpse. "Could you clear a path to the door, Stefan? His is a body I must retain." "You can't just leave me here with this…with this mutant! I won't be abandoned to a servant. I am your mother. I will be treated with respect." Stavros gifted this choleric complaint the ambivalent look it deserved, deigning finally to climb over the carnage and join her where she stood. His hand came up to caress her face as he examined the wounded affront in those over-proud maternal eyes. "You have made yourself an enemy," he murmured through a mouth advancing ever-closer to her own. "Can you turn that enemy to friend? This might be something worthy of respect." At the final second his angle shifted to bestow a kiss to her cheek. "When all of this is over," he announced, withdrawing to turn away, "there will be much to discuss. Should you come, come absent of a scheme. Assuming you are capable of that." As he picked a path through the ruin, he spotted an object of interest on the floor. "Is this yours?" he inquired of his brother, lifting a cell phone from the mess. Stefan's brow furled. "Yes. Yes, in fact…" His palms pressed against the pockets of his coat, taking inventory by touch. The syringe he felt. The trigger he did not. "Wait." His fingers slid into those pockets; the left, the right, the inside breast, only to come up empty. "The trigger. I'm missing the trigger." "A needle in a haystack at this point, I'm afraid," observed Stavros, shaking his head. "Well, we can't leave without it. She loses her advantage. In the wrong hands…" He let the implication ride as he began to sift through the debris at his feet, scrutinizing every space and shadow in a fevered attempt to regain the device. "We struggled where? Here, I believe." He was about to sink to his knees when he heard her voice betray its origins in the soft declaration she floated through the air. "A destra." And he knew before his eyes rose, before his mind had time to process the thought. She'd done it. She had finally picked the right pocket and made away with her prize. Sure enough, there stood Sancia, the trigger box balanced in the breach between two fingers and a thumb - her impudently victorious smile erasing all the years in-between so that she seemed for a moment the same bedraggled waif he'd caught plying her trickster trade on those dusty steps outside a church in Rome. "Be careful with that," Helena warned, fear apparent for the first time in the worried lines of her face. While it was clear she held the trigger on the one side and his suddenly unnerved mother on the other, Stefan now understood she'd come to hold a great deal more. This urchin, this apostle, this warrior ward, had taken her fate into her own hands and would make of it what she could. This is my battle, those dark eyes said as her powerful shoulders squared. And you will let me fight it. Gone. Gone was the little thief whose obstinate glare served to hide more pain than any child should know. Gone was the disciplined student struggling to surmount her rage. Gone was his seasoned soldier, his spy, the extension of his will - to be replaced by a force independent of rule; a spirit with a life of its own. He could feel the recognition fix at the heart of his awareness and knew, with a certainty not untinged by sadness, that he would have to let her go. It was not about permission anymore, or orders, or cleverly crafted tactics. It was about respecting her sufficiency and honoring the woman she'd become. He accorded Sancia a stately bow that spoke to this release, then joined his brother at the door to take a mirroring grip beneath the massive arm of the freshly-deceased Paolo. On his mark they lifted this cumbersome weight and dragged it through the threshold, out into the hallway toward the stair. And though their mother continued to cry each son's name in its turn, neither brother found the filial need to take a single backward glance.   "Captain?...Yes, there's been an accident and we've lost a man. I'll need two of your strongest to assist me in bringing his body back to the ship. We're taking him home…Porto Alegre, Brazil. We sail within the hour." Stavros snapped the cell phone shut and passed it to Stefan - who dropped it to a pocket without looking up from the corpse they'd laid in the short green grass of his mother's front lawn. "I'll give her thirty minutes," said the Prince, gesturing toward the house. "If she hasn't buckled by then she never will. Helena comes with me. I would have her at that funeral to face the family of the man she's killed. Sancia's dilemma is yours to resolve in whatever manner you choose." His brother nodded distractedly. "I didn't know you'd bring him," he remarked. "Or Regret, for that matter. When I called I asked you to come alone." Stavros offered a rueful smile. "I didn't bring him. He brought himself. I only caught wind of him as Mother rounded that final bend to the door." "I don't understand. Then why was he…?" "The heart is a stubborn thing, Stefan. I'm sure his insisted." The sight of his brother's confusion brought a reproving tone to his voice. "They were lovers, Stefan. Paolo and Sancia. He's been bedding her for weeks." Stavros had barely finished the sentence when his brother spun about and began a quick sprint back to the house. The low rumble of the first explosion turned that sprint into a full-on run. The thundering force of the second knocked him straight off his feet and provided him a perfect, recumbent view of the west wing's roof lifting into the air as each second story window blew out in rapid, glass-shattering succession. Were it not for Stavros' expediency - the catch of a wrist to drag him away and his own concussed condition permitting it - Stefan would surely have found himself beneath the wreckage as it fell, hard and hot, to the ground where he lay. Drawn back to where he started, he wrested his arm from that grip and rose to his elbows to watch his mother's mansion burn. "How could she?" he exclaimed, cursing the action and the precious life it cost. "How could you not have known, you mean," quipped his brother between recovering breaths. "It's not Romeo and Juliet, I agree. But she seemed too practical for that." "There were other ways," he asserted, offended by the choice. "She didn't have to die." Stavros chuffed a rascal's laugh. "And who's to say she has? Mother was in there too, remember. And I'll not count her dead unless and until I take that life myself. Hope, Stefan. Even in the face of death…perhaps especially in the face of death…a Cassadine should have hope."   She was halfway down the drive before she knew what she was doing; unaware of all but the roar of the explosion and the terrifying sight of the entire west wing erupting in a cloud of glass and wood and smoke. A voice in her head, one she could hardly hear through the reverberation of the blast, kept telling her this was how he'd die, in just this way, at the heart of a cataclysmic conflagration - combusting like some ancient primeval force too long bound to the constriction of earth and turning with a fury to disgorge itself in a surge of convulsive destruction. Her feet betrayed her emotional distress, trotting at times just to skid to a walk, stop, walk to a skipping stride as she tested her need to know what had died and what had managed to survive. It was always going to be like this, always the ruinous risk of his loss, always the chance he'd gone down a path she couldn't find or follow. She hated him as much as she loved him for it - his fearless habit of taking that risk. As if nothing were worth the doing unless balanced on a ledge in a devil's gambit for his stake of immortality or death. Had he won this time? Had he won? The body on the grass, clearly dead, shook her to the core and elicited a jolt of manifest resentment toward the figures idling aside it. Helena's henchmen, no doubt, thrust into the mix to insure that enough of him was salvaged to resurrect. This eternal denial of a final peace sparked an indignation so pure it spurred her to run, to rush forward in an effort to…what? Protect his choice? Spare him the reviving of his life? What he would want, what she desired, all of it tumbled to a conflict in her mind. None of it made any sense but then again, it didn't have to. If he needed her, even in death, she would be there. One man turned in a familiar way, his head revolving with an arrogant grace she recognized immediately. Stefan! Good. Excellent, in fact. Stefan could be reasoned with, made to understand, compelled to listen to the case she made on his late brother's behalf. Stefan would hear her. He may not agree, he may not consent, but he would hear her through to the end. The other man…this other man…was…was… Her run slowed to a lurching gait that grew steadier the closer she came until, finally, it tapered to a walk so filled with purpose and deliberation it was doubtful any opposing force could find the means to divert it. She walked right up to him, walked right into him, walked with such a determined intent it was as if she sought to forge a path through him - the thrust of this collision obliging him to take a stumbled step back before finding the wherewithal to hold his place. "You've got to stop doing this to me," she scolded into the fabric of his shirt, then grew still and silent as those arms wrapped around her and her heart found its beat. He nuzzled near her ear, his voice so low, so carefully clear. "I would if I knew how." His brother grew restless, anxious to leave. "Laura, Regret. Where is Laura?" "Right where you left her, Stefan. Everything…everything is as you left it," she assured, closing her eyes to seek the relief the moment promised. Stavros adjusted his head to speak over the bond of this embrace. "Once you have her secured, bring the car around. Regret will be leaving with you." "I will not." But it was a whisper, a thing he could pretend not to hear, so she waited until his brother had gone before announcing it again. "I won't go with him." "Yes you will," he responded calmly, as if certain she would relent. "Regret, I am not the man for you. I will never make you happy and I can't continue to delude myself into believing that I can. You are kind, generous, and ethically just. I am arrogant, selfish, and morally corrupt. There is no principle I will not bend to serve an underlying need. There is no wound I will not salt, no weakness I won't exploit, no chaos I'll fail to twist into a havoc, if only to provide an amusement for myself. You've seen my way. You've fallen victim to it. As filled with insight as you are, you must have known for quite some time that this would never work." He took hold of her shoulders and extracted himself from the circle of her arms. "Stefan will return you to the world you deserve. He'll take you where you belong." One look at those solicitous eyes, so very satisfied with the sacrifice he made, and her despair splintered into rage. "I should leave with your brother? Why? So we can both be cowards? No. Absolutely not." His gaze sparked, his mouth drawing to a line on her implication, but she didn't care. It didn't matter at all. "You list our differences as if that somehow proves something - it does not. Generous, selfish, arrogant, just - I take your point. Now take mine. We are, the both of us, filled with courage. We are valiant in the fray, firm in our convictions, loyal to a fault. We are stubborn as the day is long; relentless in pursuit, undaunted by the odds and above all else, my reluctant prince, we do what must be done. Are we wrong? Are we right? Who can know without the doing? So I ask you, Stavros, why back away now? What forces that foot into retreat?" "You know," he thundered, shying from the blade she balanced at the throat of his pride. "Tell me. Tell me anyway," she dared, watching as he took his turn apart to face anything that wasn't this. She saw his hands flex and fist as the tension journeyed up his spine. "No!" he snarled contemptuously. "I will not explain myself. It shouldn't have to be said." "Is that fear I hear in your voice?" she taunted. "Come, Stavros. Spit it out. Like the poison you think it is." He rounded in a rage, his expression dark, his eyes brightly blazing. "I love you. There. Are you satisfied with that? I love you." "As I love you," she stated quietly, factually. "And you recognize now, don't you, that neither one of us had to say it to make it true?" His arm shot up, his hand aching to take her by the throat, and it was only through his fierce resistance of this habitual response that he found the means to drop his grip to the curve of her shoulder. "I kill people, Regret. I murder them," he seethed. "You saw what I did. In that room. To Louis. What is love to that?" She sought to touch his cheek but he drew back indignantly, refusing her caress until she found the courtesy to answer the question. She relented with impatience. "Do you imagine I don't know the difference between battle and indiscriminate killing? He shot your man. He put a gun to your head. If we're looking for cause…" "But we aren't!" he howled. "Don't you understand? There doesn't have to be a cause. Just a mood. Just an arbitrary inclination. Sometimes it's simply a matter of breaking up the day." His features fractured in futility as he relayed this bitter truth. "Stavros," she sighed, reaching in again to touch the frustration in his face, to place a finger atop those lips in an effort to quiet their pain. Her voice, when she spoke, came solemn and gentled to a hush. "You've been chasing death for so many years and that's such a lawless road. Are you tired yet of begging humanity to kill you?" His eyes dulled resistantly, glittering with tears he would not shed. "I know, I know," she soothed. "And it's harder now, so much harder when you have something to lose." The anger seemed to seep from his body, his posture breaking as he released a breath she suspected he'd been holding for twenty years. "You've come upon a fork in the road, Stavros. You know this. You can feel it. Do you continue your reckless pursuit of death or will you turn toward chasing life?" Her lips pursed, her head shaking as she pondered that choice. "It's a hard thing, Your Grace, chasing after life. There are rules to this that can't be broken, precautions you'll be forced to take. Sometimes contriving to find the means to meet tomorrow intact is all you'll have to work toward, the dawn of another day the only thing you'll gain. It's not for the weak or the easily defeated. Understand that from the start." The back of her hand came to lift his chin, her head dipping down to meet his eye. "So what say you, oh noble Prince of the Cassadine? Life? Yea or nay?" His brow bent to touch her own, his eyes closing as he weighed the thought. "Will you be there?" he inquired softly. "I'd insist upon it." "And I can't kill anyone?" "Not unless they try to kill you first." She could sense him consider that condition, testing its feasibility. "What if they try to bore me to death?" he demanded in a sullen growl. "Show me a man who's died of boredom and we'll talk." "I can think of three off the top of my head…" "Stavros," his brother called from the drive, through the open window of the car. "The authorities are on their way. If you wish to leave, the time is now." "Go," the Prince commanded, never breaking from her gaze. "I've got to hunt through this wreckage for a life. The woman stays with me." The Sigh Of Things (51)   There is such a grace to his confusion… Had it always been like this? Had he always hovered over her pain; pondering its prognosis, pensive to the study of its cause and cure? Had he always loitered at her bedsides? Lingered in her sickrooms? Languished in the shadow of her suffering like some stiff-lipped Cassadine ghost performing its spectral act of contrition? What did he have to feel guilty about? What crime had he committed? What bought this slavish servitude to her every afflictive need? Laura would hate this. It was all he knew and the only answer he could bring to the questions he would never presume to ask. A man had a right to keep his penance private, to abase himself in any manner he chose; free from all query and constraint. Yet as he watched this scene reveal through the pristine pane of the hospital glass, a truth occurred to him more sharply than it ever had before. His brother, for all his righteous indignation, for all his moral supremacy, for all his fustily superior ways had, somewhere down the road of that exemplary life, fallen victim to a curse of his own. The return of Mrs. Spencer to her London clinic had been greeted with no little chagrin. It was a testament to the serendipitous nature of pure Cassadine luck that this worked to their every advantage in the end. Well, luck and money if one stickled a point. Unwilling to face a police investigation, the resultant legal ramifications and the subsequent reputational abuse, the hospital's board of directors had decided to accept a rather large donation in return for striking the standard monkey's pose - seeing, hearing and speaking no evil of events now consigned to the past. A clean solution for all involved. And if the occasional orderly or nurse happened to look at him askance, recalling the "doctor" whose obsessional devotion had once commandeered their patient's case, they wisely chose to view this as less a cause for censure and arrest than yet another proof they'd got their patient back. The right patient. The original patient. The patient the family was paying for. But what of this other woman, they'd asked, driving the brothers aside for a solution to the last sticky problem on the plate. We can't keep her. We don't know who she is. We have no idea what she's suffering from. Concerns that might have been allayed by the continued finance of her stay had she not looked so identically akin to the Mrs. Spencer already on hand. Some things could not be easily explained, or expected to be adequately swallowed. He had suggested they dye her hair and fatten her up a bit, but no one took this seriously as it was obvious he really didn't care. Stefan's suggestion of a public facility, a nursing home or hospice, was regarded as respectably sound and might actually have gone off had Regret not been sitting in the room at the time. Regret, who had admonished this table of men - and they were, all of them, men…he hadn't noticed until she'd pointed it out - that, as far as this patient was concerned, they should be less fixed on solving their problem and far more focused on solving hers. This produced many blank faces and a large amount of mystified blinking. Four phone calls later and she'd obtained the woman's admittance to a private sanitorium specializing in the treatment of narcotically-damaged minds. Not only that, she'd arranged for a British charitable foundation to foot three-quarters of the bill. The last quarter she offered to carry herself but he laughed and told her no. He'd pick up the debt and, if she had no objection, agree to have her work it off in trade. This elicited a look so beguiling its memory made him laugh even now - a chuckle that served to disconcert Stefan as he left his vigil of Laura to step back into the hall. "Any luck?" he hailed as his brother crossed to join him at the window. "None. It's not the drug she used before. This appears to be a hybrid." Stefan sank into the nettle of the thought as he viewed the woman behind the glass. After a moment's contemplation he roused to pronounce, "Nikolas will be moving her." This was news. "You've been in contact with him, then? Told him what's happened?" "No." Though he tried to hide it, Stefan's expression couldn't help but grow a bit bleaker. "As far as Nikolas knows, his mother's convalescence has proceeded without interruption. I'm not privy to his thinking here. He hasn't said a word about it. He's keeping the entire matter to himself." A harsh exclusion. He could almost sympathize, and might have had this brother not been equally harsh in his efforts to keep this father from his son. "Where does he plan to put her?" Stefan's gaze turned guarded. Stavros could tell he was questioning the wisdom of sharing what little information he had with the man who'd made a career of abducting Laura Spencer. There was nothing he could say to ease that mind, no assurance he could offer that might be even remotely believed. He let the silence stand. "Within visiting distance," was the answer he got. "I've spoken to the physician in charge and explained the nature of her illness. An overview only. Once she's settled I'll follow with the files and the particulars." "Stefan," his brother reproved. "Do you really think that's wise? No need to undercut the boy. If he wants to take charge of his mother's care you should let him have his way. It's high time he shouldered some of these responsibilities." Stefan snorted dismissively. "I fail to see how cleaning up a mess you made can be considered one of Nikolas' responsibilities." "Nor is it yours, brother. Would you prefer I took her off your hands?" Toe-to-toe now, their hackles rising. Such a familiar dance. "You have no idea what you've left us with, do you?" Stefan charged restively, his tone tempted to thunder but constricted by the venue. "Apart from Argos and the years he spent stripping this Empire bare, we now have Mother's expenses… Yes, she found the means to tap the very source of the fortune, siphoning off whatever funds she required to finance her every scheme - not in a small, inappreciable stream, mind you, but a veritable deluge of dollars, dinars, marks and francs. Her debt alone could have crippled the Estate had Argos not beat her to it. Add to this the cost of your obligatory Deciding and it should not shock you in the least to learn we've fallen quite deeply in the red." "A locust year," remarked Stavros, calmly absorbing his brother's fury. "Nikolas will have to get to work, and soon." Stefan's back arched, his eyes widening in outrage. "You would leave this to him? Grind him to dust beneath the weight of this insufferable insolvency? Force him to meet, not with partners and investors, but with creditors exacting their claim to monies he never spent? Millions he no longer holds to make good on such a debt? He'll be defaulting right and left, leveraging every holding, mortgaging every property, auctioning off all he has just to keep a foot free of bankruptcy!" "And he will begin to understand what it means to be Prince," his brother observed remorselessly. "Unless, of course, you rob him of the chance. He's not a child anymore, Stefan. Save him and you enable his weakness. Make him work for what is his by right. This is the only way, the only way, he'll ever come to respect it. Even, I suspect, to feel he deserves it." "Deserves it? Deserves it?" Stefan turned on his heel and began to stalk down the hospital hall. His brother drew a tired smile and pulled from the window to follow, lengthening his stride to catch up. "Yes. Deserves it. You're not used to dispute on this subject, are you?" he inquired impishly. "This subject is my nephew. Your son," Stefan rebuked, glaring from the corner of an eye. "I'm not surprised to find you need reminding. It's not as if you've been present for the trials of his life. Or could begin to understand them," he amended with a ruthless snap. Stavros dropped a hand to his shoulder and spun him about, fire in his gaze. "You have no clue who I am, or what may or may not lie within the scope of my understanding. You were never prince. You don't know what it means, nor will you ever completely comprehend the bond it creates between myself and my son. We share a knowledge that eludes you, that trumps your influence and surmounts your sway. I am telling you what must be done if Nikolas is to lead this empire into its next generation. You cannot have expected all the steps to be small and cheap. It's an earning, Stefan. And that's the right he was born with. The right to earn it." His brother shook off the impeding hand and continued his march down the hall, veering toward the bank of elevators. Stavros stood his ground. "I give you a year," he announced to that retreating back - a statement that stopped Stefan in his tracks and coerced a cautious turn, his glare narrowed in suspicion. "What?" "You heard me," Stavros averred, closing the distance between them and blithely striding past. "What does that mean, you'll 'give me a year'? And then what?" Stefan demanded, rushing to arrive at his side. "Why, another resurrection, I expect," he remarked, coming to a jaunty stop. "I'm getting quite good at those." His fist stretched out to punch the elevator button and call for a car to take him down. "To what purpose? You'll have no say." Stavros revolved to measure this brother who seemed determined to be obtuse. "I give you twelve months, Stefan. If you can't pull this Empire back from the brink then I'll be forced to return and do it myself. In the meantime I suggest you inform my son of the location of his bootstraps. He's a prince, by God. It's not all ponies and playthings, you know." He watched his brother's expression curdle with disdain, his eyes gone flat and cunning. "You appear to have forgotten the Oath you signed. You are bound to leave the Empire be. I have as witness every member of the kin. Don't think for a moment I won't hold you to that pledge." "What pledge?" he disputed with an insolent smile, taking pleasure in this merry misapprehension. "In your effort to hide that clause from me, you hid it from the family as well. Do you imagine they know what they signed? Do you imagine they've forgotten who they voted for? And what might be their reaction, I wonder, to discover you've taken it upon yourself to set aside their choice. I can't think they'll be pleased." "Pleased or no, it's in writing now." "And what will you do when they balk, Stefan? Take them all to court? You might as well stitch a target to your back. You'll never get to trial alive." Though he tried to hold it in, he couldn't help but release a wickedly triumphant laugh. "Despite your best efforts, brother, this Empire won't be run by spiritless scraps of paper. Not yet, in any event." The elevator chimed to announce its arrival, its doors parting to provide its passengers leave to disembark. Stefan stepped to the side, spitting his invective in a quieter voice. "The Estate belongs to Nikolas. It is his to manage as he sees fit. I will protect that position with the same dedication I've employed for the last twenty years. No matter the nature of the threat or the strength of the opposition, I will prevail." Stavros bowed in acquiescence, his palms lifting in a gesture of surrender as he backed through the elevator doors. "Proceed as you feel you must, Stefan," he allowed, depressing the lobby button. "I sincerely doubt you'll see them coming. I know you won't see me." As the doors closed on this fraternal conflict, both brothers clearly understood that these would be the last words they would speak to one another for a very, very long time. She was a woman too tan for a London street, too warm for the doughty drizzle of the day, too bright for the dull reflection of a world that didn't deserve to have her in it. She seemed, if anything, misplaced in the murk of the multitude, in this cold crevice of civilization. Better to bounce her back to Brazil, to the blustered blue of that sky, that sea - her body bare on a burning beach, her brow forever kissed by the sun. So many smiles she'd had for him there, it was incomprehensibly astounding. While he knew no one wept on his behalf, it had never occurred to him how very few smiled; the lowly number of mouths made happy by his presence in a room; his words, his touch, the substance and style of his nature. It had never occurred to him how very few found pleasure in the mere fact of his existence, in the proof of his being as it played its song in counterpoint to their own. And it had certainly never occurred to him, never in a graceless age occurred to him, that joy could come in such a bountifully bewildering number of degrees. He would vacillate between the right and wrong of it, the good and bad of it, the blessings and the curses inherent in holding this angel to earth as he did. What she called Life he experienced as a moribund torment awash in rules and regulation. It was a kind of death, in its way, and could be a slow and hopeless thing. The waiting alone - for a table at a restaurant, an answer to a question, a man to move aside - was enough to set his teeth on edge. Absent a deliciously malicious threat and a brutally expedient incapacitation (two favored motivational tools he'd taken for granted all his life), and these plebeian exchanges took on the savor of rank social subjugation. That everyone bowed to such oppressive restraint counted very little with him. They were drones, all of them; nothing more than cogs in a sterile societal machine that cranked its bourgeois gears to the tune of a deceptively democratic ditty - as if it could still be posited that they were somehow, each one of them, the same; that no single man was better than the next. Yet some were rich and some were poor, some were jailed and some were free. The whole of the construct ran ripe with hypocrisy and blatant miscalculation. Aim for enforced equality and achieve a common mediocrity. His father's words; a father who had tried to freeze this world so that he might improve on it a piece at a time. The breadth of that paternal ambition now humbled him, the critical need of it garnering a fresh respect. She'd discovered quite early on that his "blending with the masses" could only be attempted for hours at a stretch and not as a slave to schedule. He was not a follower of lists or a maker of appointments, and many were the afternoons they'd argued the merits of valuing other people's time. It was his time in the end, and nothing he felt inclined to share or submit to the control of a doctor, a lawyer, a banker or a clerk. A market run in Itabuna made the point as no volley of words had done. A request by her to retrieve plantains from a stall around the corner became, for him, an exploration of the artisan culture of the Karaja Indians - reputed to have lived underneath the earth until a lone warrior scrambled through a hole and brought his tribe to the surface. The sun had set by the time she found him sucking on a cheroot, his linen shirt spattered with clay, his pot half-made and himself half-drunk on their cacao-fermented native wine. She might have scolded him, she had good cause, but instead pretended to be shopping for an urn and ended, after no little wrangling, in purchasing this tipsy foreign man from the tribal elder at the corner of the tent - whom, he observed through his inebriated haze, had snickered throughout the deal. They'd made a tender love that night as she whispered gentle threats of tying bells to his clothing lest he follow those savage friends of his right back beneath the ground. He loved her, true, but this life - this legally proscripted, socially restricted, lethally conventional life - could simply not be borne. He knew enough to recognize he had neither the tolerance nor the temperament required to make the kind of compromise it asked him to. Take, for example, this ambulance attendant. An ordinary man, a solid British chap, who'd come to work this morning with a job to do. A menial employment; the transport of a patient from here to there - in this case a woman who looked very much like the catatonic Laura Spencer. Of course he doesn't care. It doesn't mean much to him. Just a chore. Just a labor. Just a routine run from one residential clinic to the next. But hold up, mate. What's this? Who's the dolly standing out in the rain, supervising the move? She's a choice bit, she is. Got some extra time for her, yes I do. She engages him as she engages everyone, oblivious of her charm; ignorant of the mist that sparkles in her hair; the way the grey of the day deepens the green of her eye, the flush of her cheek, brightens the white of her smile. He's transfixed as any man would be, any man with half a handle on his lust and a keen appreciation of the heat she inspires. So he spends more minutes than he should tightening the straps on the gurney at her side, securing a patient already secured, just to bask in the glow of her attention, to lure a few more words from that decidedly captivating mouth. He would make her laugh; is trying his best to amuse, to enchant, to justify the cognitive expense of giving him a second look. And when she shivers because her coat is thin and the chilly London air is not, he leans an inch closer, extending his concern, an arm rising up with a peasant's paw upon it to pat a path into the warmth of her grace. And the Prince of the Cassadine, solitary, standing like a statue just inside the clinic's door, suddenly finds his grin. He is thinking now of the many methods available for use to detach a man's arm from his shoulder. There are quick means and slow, simple and complex, those done by hand and those requiring an instrument. Or two. Or three if it needs be particularly fun. He is thinking of an alley, a backstreet or a basement; of haunted eyes and desperate supplications for mercy. He is thinking of vengeance and violence and pain; of how long it's been since he sent a man to knee, recalling how it looked and acknowledging how very much he's missed that. These are the thoughts that bring him to life, that fire his soul, that feed his predator's spirit. And the only thing better than the thoughts themselves were those thoughts put into practice. No man can retreat from himself. No matter how hard he tries. Her words there. Her words. And this is how he knows it will never work, this heartfelt little experiment of theirs. Because every step forward is a step apart, every better act a betrayal. It was like willfully walking into prison, or plunging one's arms into the overlong sleeves of a morally-obedient straightjacket and smiling at the sound of each restraining snap as it was fastened into place. His warrior instinct could not be trained away, nor his fundamental essence erased. He was the child of Mikkos and Helena Cassadine, their firstborn son and legitimate heir, the designated prince of the Cassadine Empire and, were he to honor their grander ambitions, the bona fide ruler of the civilized world. You couldn't pack that birthright in a briefcase and carry it around the town. In the same way you couldn't stuff the makings of that man into the circumscribed life of a law-abiding citizen. Try and he was doomed to fail…and she'd be doomed to watch it. The day seemed darker now; hard and horrid with a thousand bitter miseries. Bleak was the gaze that sought her out, that hunted her kindness, that hungered for her love. And it was at this precise moment that her hand reached back blindly behind her - her empty hand, her open hand; a hand he knew she meant for him. How she could sense he was there without looking was a mystery he had yet to solve. But she did. She always did. He was through the door and out into the rain in a matter of seconds. And as he took that hand in his own, felt its fingers thread, the chill of its skin humble to his heat, he acknowledged the terminal nature of the refuge she provided; the transient passage of this perfect bliss. It would end, they would end, it would all be over in the brutal blink of an eye. Because of who he was. Because of what he was. And because he had no right to this. She turned to him then, offering one of those achingly genuine smiles, and an ancient understanding dawned. A truth he'd never been able to grasp began to coalesce inside him. And all it took was her lightest kiss, delivered with the taste of drizzled rain, for him to know in his mind, in his heart, in every splintered shadow of his broken soul, that after all these miserable, god-forsaken years he'd finally come to find it. It had finally come to be perceived. Mono no aware wo shiru. His awareness of the sigh of things.