Later in the evening, after most everyone had departed, Stefan found Laura standing in the east tower overlooking the Spoon Island waters. She was swamped by the altitude’s unforgiving mist, yet she didn’t seem to pay it any mind. In fact, she seemed entirely untouched by reality. Perhaps that was simply a fact that hadn’t changed.

He remained in the shade of the doorway, choosing for once his solitude. He had spent these many months in torturous imprisonment--whether it was the monotony or the pain that did more damage to him he couldn’t say. Disjointed minutes of consciousness had gleaned one idea, then another that had eventually formed a plan, a plan to get him out of his mother’s wretched clutches once more and back to the haven of his life so far awry in his absence. Helena, it seemed, had developed a gift for duplication.

The man--or monster, he preferred--in the ground was simply a pawn, though willing, in the Cassadines’ never-ending tale. He had submitted to a face that was not his own, a name he had never heard, and an existence that was meaningless to him in the pursuit of great fortune. And he had found it. All that had been Stefan’s became the property of this abomination--until he outwore his welcome. Then, he became a liability. Next, he became a corpse.

That was years ago, however, and it had taken Stefan this long to work his way back. Following his escape from his mother’s workshop of horrors, he was weak and in no condition to face up to Helena’s malice. Bouts of sickness had left him nearly confined to bed--withdrawal, malnutrition, muscle deterioration; the fact that he had survived at all astounded his caretakers. He’d had this objective in mind all along. If she had not been stopped by the day he could walk unencumbered across the French countryside, he would do it himself. After all there was no better match for a Cassadine than a Cassadine.

“Have you always thought this much, or is this a new development?” She beckoned him from his introspection to the faded glory of the night.

“I’ve always been one for thought.” He walked to her side and took stock of Nikolas’ palatial home. Forbidding in every way, it still carried the stifled cries of ill-fated peasants centuries old.

“That’s funny. I remember you as a man of action. You never believed in letting the worst be.” She wiped her shoulder with a silk handkerchief, soaking stubborn dew drops from her skin. They were turning into a frost.

“Lasha, I think you’re confusing my actions with my conscience. What I know to be right and what I allow have always been distant brothers.” He remembered the island: Lasha bruised and broken in his arms, too hurt to weep. He would forever detest his brother’s treatment of this woman. Had Stavros not been so brutal to her, perhaps she would not have turned to him and treated him to a taste of the obsession that would rule his life.

“Not unlike you and Stavros,” she queried, unknowingly traveling the same day old roads his mind was on.

“No, not unlike us.” They lapsed into silence; him, comforted by her mere presence of sanity and her, still the question mark she had come to represent. He was unsure what to make of her with her good intentions and fully-formed malice. She knew secrets; they were written on the palms of her hands, he thought, though there was nothing when he looked.

Her manner had shifted from tender and nurturing to an indifferent if compassionate aloofness that receded singularly in the presence of her children. Laura, his Lasha, was at a distance. Though they stood side by side, he was aware that touching her would be comparable to caressing a precious reliquary and expecting to receive the word of an adoring god. No, Lasha was much farther.

“What happens now?” He wouldn’t wait for his mother to set another of her contingencies in motion.

“We get her.” Such a concise statement for a worldly task. It would be Lasha to make it seem so effortless. Hadn’t she always done that for him?

“We can’t wait for her to come to us. Too much has happened. This feud has continued for years and I’m exhausted of it.”

“And I’m not,” she asked, looking scathingly towards him. Save for her ability to shrink this Gordian Knot to a mere tangle, she was well aware of what they were facing. If anyone knew the pain Helena was capable of inflicting, she knew. That’s why they were both here, to put an end to it.

“I know you are as well. It wasn’t my intention to imply otherwise. My point is that this can’t continue any longer. This deadly charade must end where it began, with us.”

She nodded. “With us.”

“We’re more likely to find success together than apart, Lasha. You do know that?”

She smiled at him, casting a bare and dwindling light onto his flagging spirits. “I’ve always known.”

With that she had given him more than he’d expected. Neither a promise or a vow, but an acknowledgement. She walked to the parapet, close enough to lean against it. He realized that she was remembering a darker time. Recalling it as well, he touched his hand to her back, as much to secure her position should the railing fail again as to assure himself of the bond between them that seemed eternal.

An immortal bond would have to do, for no mortal thing could conquer Helena.

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