She lay beside him, listening to the sound of his breathing as he slept, holding herself still so she wouldn't wake him, willing her thoughts away from where they wanted to go, where she couldn't bear to go and onto anything else, onto the House or the star ship and roaming the universe with him, or Christopher standing guard over her children his face serious and intent, the communication between he and them a tangible thing.  She thought about all those things, forcing her breathing to stay even and deep, regular breaths, in and out to the rhythm of his heart.  She kept doing it as the minutes ticked by knowing if she did it long enough she'd fall asleep and in her sleep there was silence and the terror didn't exist.

This time, though the dreams came like they had before, dreams of Mac and the worlds, the past and the future were all jumbled together there wasn't any room for them because Angus got there first, cajoling her, tempting her, promising her things while she whimpered and pleaded, cringing away from him, trying to make herself small.  So the dreams turned on her, blaming her that there wasn't room for them, and Mac became Angus and the worlds became cells and she was fighting him and he was screaming at her, and he was in her mind...in her mind, twisting it, using it to hurt her, hurt her babies, to destroy them and she couldn't get him out.  As she fled from him, hearing him behind her, his steps so steady and patient, closing on her, the past and the future became one thing, and it was the scream she couldn't escape, the terror she would drown in if she acknowledged it, because it tempted her, beckoned to her, promising her things she couldn't have.

Then the scream and the terror became Mac and Angus and the worlds and she couldn't run fast enough or far enough, find a place deep enough in her mind where she'd be safe and she was losing, her tears running down her cheeks as fast as her feet were trying to go.  Her chest was heaving and her head was pounding and she looked down and realized she had the babies, her babies, the babies she's carried and tried to protect when she couldn't even protect herself.  She was holding them and if Angus/Mac caught her, if the scream and the terror reached her they'd take the babies and she couldn't let him have them and she couldn't get away.

She felt herself falter while the world started spinning faster and faster, sucking her into it down to where Angus was waiting, his mad laughter married to the scream and the terror and having babies of his own only they were her babies and as she opened her mouth to scream a scream of her own, a no of denial and protest and rejection, a rising scream that became the scream, endless and terrified because now she was the terror, it filled her, consumed her and became her, consuming her babies.

She felt a presence in her mind, demanding her attention, demanding she hear him, demanding she see him. It was, despite everything else a place to shelter, a place of safety and the words, 'you're safe" kept drumming into her mind, even as she tried to deny them. She opened her eyes to scream and saw Marc.  He had her by the shoulders and was staring into her eyes, saying over and over, "You're safe, you're safe."

She saw him and knew it was him.  She heard the words and knew what they meant.  She wanted to believe him but her head kept moving back and forth and the only word she knew was no.

He shook her hard and then put his mouth over hers, as he did so using the newly formed bond to flood her with his love and his understanding and his will that she hear him and believe.  She responded instinctively to him, the taste of him filling her mouth as she grabbed hold of him, scoring his back with her nails, desperate for him and the storm inside of her exploded in tears.

She felt his relief as she broke down and sobbed, relief that she was admitting and acknowledging her fears, his relief that she was reaching out for him and not withdrawing from him. His reassurance that he was there, and that the bond was there always and he wouldn't let her go.  She felt all those things as she sobbed against him, her hands fisting on his back, all the tears she'd denied herself because she was defying Angus as the only way she knew to stay sane.  She felt herself lay her mind against his, a place that soothed and accepted while the terror receded.

He just held her and murmured silly words that both of them knew made no sense, but that both of them knew gave her a connection to him, the sound if nothing else. He held her, ignoring the fists against his back, just held her tight and let her get the storm of emotions out.  Eventually she calmed, more because of exhaustion than because the storm was past.   "Shhh," he was saying. "it's all right. Whatever it is, it's all right. We'll make it be all right."

She hiccupped and sniffled and tried to catch her breath, her nose clogged and trying to drip, letting the words flow over her.  Finally she lifted her head enough from where she'd buried it in his chest and tried to mop her eyes with the backs of her hands.  "I'm sorry," she said.

"Don't be. Christ. You were kidnapped by a sadist who happened to be your father. If you don't have a reason to be emotional no one does. Are you... was it a nightmare? Or are you having flashbacks?  I couldn't tell exactly what you were seeing, only that it was ruddy well terrifying even for me."

"What's the difference?" she asked him seriously.  "Whether you're awake or asleep?"

"Flashbacks feel more real. With bits of what really happened impinging on you when you're awake as well as when you're sleeping. They're confusing, I'd think, either way. But if they're flashbacks then we need to talk about them."

"Then I don't know."  She sniffed and mopped her eyes again.  "I mean it might have been, because it felt like something familiar, like I'd done this before for real but it wasn't what happened and it wasn't me, like me now but some other me that I didn't know but had to protect, if that makes sense."

"Could it be from past incidents with your father? I know you were really young. Maybe you're mind is trying to make sense of all that." He grabbed his shirt from beside the bed and began mopping up her tears with it.

"So, do you think you can get back to sleep? Or do you want to get up, get some coffee, and go park ourselves in front of the fire downstairs?"

"I don't want to sleep right now," she said.  "It's like it's still there, close by and waiting."  She shifted herself upward against the headboard and looked at him.   "And I can't answer your other question because I don't remember.  The earliest memory I have, other than of my mother crying and unhappy, is Stephen taking me to my grandmother's."

He nodded. "Would you mind if I read the files Stephen has? The ones he gave you at the hotel?"

"I never read them.  I gave them back to him.  So you'll have to ask him for them."

He nodded again. "Okay, but it's your private stuff, Dinah. I won't read them if you'd rather I didn't. But I was thinking.. that maybe, with the bond, if I knew what happened then I might be able to help you deal with the nightmares, or flashbacks or whatever they are."

She smiled at him and caressed his cheek.  "I don't mind.  I just never wanted to know.  And with the bond, well, won't you know anyway, eventually?"

"If you're gonna keep waking me up and scaring the crap out of me, yeah. But even with the bond you can keep some privacy. As it forms I'll show you.  I just want to feel you through it, wherever you are, so ... so I don't lose you again."

"Me too," she told him, before she kissed him.  "So, coffee or hot chocolate with marshmallows?"

"So, you wanna stay here? I'm gonna go make some coffee and you that hot chocolate. Otherwise I can't promise to stay awake with you."

"You should sleep," she said.

"No I shouldn't.  I don't want to think about you sitting there going over and over this in your mind. I'm up, until you sleep too."

"Then is coffee the only thing that will keep you awake?"

"Hmmm. I can think of one or two other things that might do it," he said, reaching for her.

Stephen reached for his coffee while he read the latest breakdown on labor needs for the teams and missed, knocking it over and flooding the top of his desk.  He swore and yelled for Tommy frantically moving paper out of harms way onto the floor.

"Having fun?" Marc asked, following Tommy into his office.

Stephen made a unfriendly noise with an accompanying gesture and helped Tommy mop up the mess.  When order had been restored and Tommy sent for fresh coffee Stephen looked across at Marc and grinned.  "Here for parenting tips already, dad?"

Marc dropped wearily into a chair across from Stephen's desk. "I wish."  He yawned. "No, I'm looking for the files on Angus. Dinah's having flashbacks, or at least horrible nightmares. From what I saw, I think its stuff all mixed up from this incident in Bhutan with the stuff from her childhood. I'm hoping if I understand what the hell the bastard was up to I can help her somehow or another."

Stephen nodded and headed for the file cabinet.  "Trevor just gave the stuff on Angus back to me.  You want that too, or just the stuff on her?"

Marc frowned, then said, "Better make it both. You knew him? Or did you just come in on the end of things, and just into the trial?"

"I met him when he awoke," Stephen said, handing Marc a stack of files.  "I always remembered it because we don't get new ones who are mentally ill or who go on to disintegrate into full blown psychosis.  He was already exhibiting signs of antisocial personality disorder, as we'd call it today.  So he was memorable.  Then, when he became psychotic, a paranoid schizophrenic, I got handed the job of finding him and dealing with him somehow. "

"Talk about a thankless task. Were you able to do anything at all with him?  I expect what was done to Dinah must weigh heavily on that conscience of yours."

"It does.  It's why, in the beginning, I kept an eye on her.  As for him, well it took forever to find him and then I didn't know what he was really doing, besides getting women pregnant and leaving them to fend for themselves while sobbing about how they loved him and he really was a good man.  So we shipped him Home and I did what I could for the kids.  They put him in the hands of the healers and the empaths, who didn't know what they were doing but meant well and called him cured and let him loose with orders to stay on Home which, of course, he promptly ignored.  The next thing I know is he's making the rounds of the women and sterilizing the babies, then he starts killing them, calling them garbage because they were failures.  Plus he's making new babies."

"So why did he treat Dinah's mother so differently, I wonder," Marc said, more to himself than to Stephen.

"In what way do you mean?"

"Well, why stay with her firstly and then why try to get Dinah to kill her?  I mean, he seems not to have scrupled to do it himself before, so why the change?"

"Dinah was the only child he produced who was talented.  He kept trying to get her mother pregnant again and it never happened.  As for trying to use Dinah to kill her, I think he was testing her against himself, if that makes sense.  She was four years old and she managed to keep from doing it which was pretty remarkable."

"True enough," Marc agreed. "When Doni was having flashbacks and nightmares, you said you used the bond to ... to do what exactly? Put yourself into the memory as a way to change it?"

Stephen nodded.  "Basically.  The thing about it is you'd have to relive it with her, and with her knowing that you're there. It doesn't change what happened, but it changes her perception of it enough that it can be brought out into the open."  He looked at Marc for a moment, weighing him.  "It won't matter, once you start, what's between you, she'll fight you with everything she has, and you'll have to find all of the memories.  So you'll end up places in her head and she'll end up places in yours that you might have trouble with because you'll have to be open to her, trusting her the way she needs to trust you.  On the other hand, if you want a truly intimate relationship with her, you'll have it when it's over, there's no question about that."

Marc frowned, looking down at the files in his hands. "I'm not sure I want her to see that deeply into me. Not now. She's seen enough with her father. She needs to trust me now."

Stephen considered the top of his desk for a while. "Well, it's possible to do it while keeping a part of yourself protected, I imagine.  But I think you're selling her short and possibly yourself as well if you still think there's something she could find out about you that would damage her trust in you, especially since the message you're sending is that there's no part her she can't trust you with."

"Possibly. But I'm not willing to risk it at this point. She's fragile, Stephen. Trying like hell to seem strong, but ... I'm afraid she'll break into a thousand pieces and I'm not sure how best to help her. Indulge her desire to run away and not deal with this?  Or help her face it now.  I'm for Door Number 2 but then I'm not the one who will have to deal with the consequences if I make her take that path and I'm wrong."  He sighed. "Mostly, I want to give her time to get there herself, if she can. And I think she can."

"If she's still having flashbacks about what happened when she was four..." Stephen shrugged.  "All I can tell you is my experience.  I waited a hell of a long time before I did it the first time.  She'd seem to be dealing with it and then something would happen, something would trigger it.  When I got her back last summer, she was already in a thousand pieces as you call it.  What I did was give her some glue and help her use it."

Marc nodded unhappily. "She wants to buy a space ship and take off for the stars. You got any ideas on how I handle that one?"

Stephen grinned.  "Does she?  Well now.  Tell me something, is it, do you think, that she won't trust you or she won't trust herself?"

"I'm not sure what you mean," Marc said with a frown. "Trust herself or me with what?"

"In facing the memories."

"Dunno. All I know is I like the idea, but I don't want her doing it to escape.  Especially if she's going to regret it and use it to beat up on herself afterwards."

"Well Dinah didn't want to know what was in that file so she gave it back to me without opening it.  My guess is she terrified to remember because she was so terrified then.  So maybe what you do is cut a deal with her, telling her exactly what you just told me, about your concerns.

"What she faces down her monsters and then we go star hopping?"

"Pretty much.  But I'm thinking that you get Julian to help and you go back with her to watch it as it happened."

"And be there literally. It's a thought," Marc replied. "It's a thought. I'll give it some serious consideration and maybe, if things don't get better, discuss it with her. Thanks, Stephen. I'll be in my office sleeping if you need me."

"Yeah, and when do you want your wake up call?"

"Somehow, I doubt I'll need one."

The site of enlightenment is right Under your feet.
- T’aego (1301-1382)

Anja had spent a week at St Michael's meditating on her choices, on her state and on her fitness to take the vows of a warrior monk. Reluctantly, regretfully, she accepted that it was not for her. She withstood the grilling of the head of the order and of her master. They'd reluctantly agreed she should follow her heart.

But that was the question. She needed to understand her heart. Oh, not passion, as she knew well where that would lead her. But her heart. She'd seen the power of love and devotion and come to understand on a more visceral level than she'd ever thought possible that the body was only a vessel and that the most demeaning acts one might be forced to accept were nothing in the face of one's recognition that the mind transcended the body and could, in the proper state of mind, soar - regardless of the depredations others might force upon one.

She'd also see that out of the worst of moments, the darkest, regard and kindness could still blossom, and that intentions really were the truest measure of man - or woman.

She walked in the cloisters in St Michael, trying to find a center and a calmness from which to consider the rest of her life. Thinking about it, she realized there was only one place to find it. She went there.

It wasn't much of a world as they went. It was an insignificant planet in the unimensional worlds. It was a quiet contemplative world. A world of high crags and pure white snowscapes, of the deepest purest blue glacial lakes, and of flesh-eating blizzards, a world of crystal blue skies and high alpine meadows strewn with wildflowers in summer. It was spring there.

She stood on a balcony of the monastery where she grew up, looking out over a deep valley. A river meandered through the pass far below, snow crowned the mountains across from her and even yet hid in the places in the monastery where the sun never quite reached.   She smelled freshly baking bread, brewing coffee. She was, she realized, or at least she had been, homesick.

She turned and exited her cell and took the narrow twisting stone stairway down to the warm and inviting dining hall. There was the feel of people, but not much noise. These monks weren't the sort who talked a lot. Nor did they make much noise with cutlery. There were no colicky children, or laughing adults, or a shy woman being ardently pursued by a man who adored her.  There was no Tabitha being slapped on the bottom by an amused Eli, there was no...

She collected her breakfast and took a seat, her mind a million million miles away praying that Dinah was recovering and that the babies were well. That someone on a mission was having sense enough to take care. Yes, he always had sense. He could focus, he would be fine.

When she'd eaten she took the long, rickety, narrow wooden staircase that followed the natural rock down to a meadow she remembered well from her childhood. She was not surprised to see a group of children playing there. Children such as she. Orphaned in the world, who hoped someone would take them and love them. She smiled and waved at them and in her heart wished them well.

She walked across the meadow, collecting wildflowers.  A waste, really. They'd only die. But then so would we all.  She found the small copse she remembered. An exuberant stream ran through it and she found a flat rock that was in sunshine and sat on it. She had been there some time, pondering many things, when she heard a noise behind her and turned. There was a small dragon behind her, curious and friendly in all his youth. She smiled at him. "You are lost?  The dragon court is back that way," she explained, pointing to the west.

The tiny ruby colored dragon did not look around. Instead he lowered his head to her. He was perhaps 10 feet from head to tail. He couldn't be more than a year old.  "Your mother will be worried for you, little one."

He shook his dragon head, his black eyes staying on her.

"Can you not speak aloud?" she asked him.  He dropped his head. "Oh, my dear," she said and stroked his nose. "Can you think to me your name?" Anja asked.  She listened for him and began to hear something. It was very tentative, not at all like the dragons she knew. But she reached out to him, encouraging him.  "Think to me your name," she spoke in his mind. And finally came the word, "Snow."

"Your name is Snow?" she asked, grinning. The dragon grinned back at her. She laughed at the idea of a ruby colored dragon named Snow.   He crawled a bit closer and curled up in the sunshine near her.

Her mind began roaming the stars again, trying to decide what she could do with her life. Laszlo had said he wanted her to go back. And she'd replied she wanted to go back. But as of yet, she saw no clear path for her to do so. And the more she sought serenity, the less she seemed to find, which made meditation difficult.

She gave it up as evening fell. She shivered. It was growing chill. Even in summer this world was cool the moment the sun sank. "Snow," she said to the baby dragon. "Snow come, I will take you to your mother."

He opened his mouth wide in a prodigious yawn and then wagged his tail at her. With a dragony grin he lifted up into the air and shot off toward the dragon lairs.  She smiled watching him go, grateful for the company of such a one.  She turned and returned to the narrow stairs climbing them rather than zapping up to the monastery.

The bells were ringing time for the evening meal.

The next few days she meditated by the stream. Snow appeared there each day and she fell into the habit of reading to him.

Wanting nothing,

With all your heart stop the stream

When the world dissolves,

Everything becomes clear.

Go beyond this way or that way,

To the farther shore

Where the world dissolves

And everything becomes clear.

Beyond this shore and the farther shore,

Beyond the beyond,

Where there is no beginning, no end,

Without fear, go.

- Buddha in the Dhammapada

It was a week of such study for her, with Snow mostly sleeping through the lessons, but the saying of the things aloud helped to focus her mind, for her heart kept demanding attention.

That evening, when she reached the bottom of the stairway that led up to the monastery, an adult dragon was there waiting for her. Snow stood between the mother dragon's feet.

Anja smiled to see it. She bowed deeply with respect to the adult. "Your child is precious. I hope you do not mind him spending his days with me."

The mother dragon lowered her head and met Anja's eyes. They regarded one another for some time.   "Meditate on courage, not on the mind, child."

Anja smiled at the idea of being called child, but she knew there was much dragon wisdom hidden inside the joy of the creatures so she bowed her head and replied, "I will do so. I thank you for this wisdom."

She would have walked toward the stair but the mother dragon had not yet done with her. "Snow has chosen," she announced.

"Oh, I am very glad. I hope he has found someone who suits him and will give him joy," Anja replied with a bow and a grin at Snow.

The mother dragon cocked her head to one side. "Silly child. He has chosen you."

"Oh, but I am not..."

"He has chosen," the mother said, and with her nose shoved Snow forward. "The dragon decides."

Anja looked at Snow and then at his mother. She bowed. "I will do my best to bring him joy."

"See that you do!" the mother dragon said and flew off, leaving Snow and Anja regarding one another.

That night, in a new room, one of the ones reserved for those who came to the monastery with dragons, Anja read until the dark hours closed her eyes.

"Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart... Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens."  Jung's words echoed in her head as she slept.

Later, awake in the night she remembered the words, "The chemist who can extract from his heart's elements, compassion, respect, longing, patience, regret, surprise, and forgiveness and compounding them into one can create that atom which is called love," by  Kahlil Gibran.  She looked down at Snow who was curled up in front of the fire.  "Your mother is very wise, little one. But I still do not understand what love is."  Snow proved not to be of much help. He merely snorted and went back to sleep.

The next morning she dressed in the cold, her teeth chattering, Snow watching her closely. The books she'd been reading toppled to the stone floor and fell open to a page. As she picked it up she read:

"The word courage is very interesting.  It comes from a Latin root cor, which means ‘heart’.  So to be courageous means to live with the heart.  And weaklings, only weaklings, live with the head; afraid, they create a security of logic around themselves.  Fearful, they close every window and door - with theology, concepts, words, theories - and inside those closed doors and windows, they hide.

The way of the heart is the way of courage.  It is to live in insecurity; it is to live in love, and trust; it is to move in the unknown.  It is leaving the past and allowing the future to be.  Courage is to move on dangerous paths.  Life is dangerous, and only cowards can avoid the danger - but then, they are already dead.  A person who is alive, really alive, vitally alive, will always move into the unknown.  There is danger there, but he will take the risk.  The heart is always ready to take the risk, the heart is a gambler.  The head is a businessman.  The head always calculates - it is cunning.  The heart is non-calculating."

Snow as usual listened. He lolled at her and asked her in her head to go flying with him.

She hesitated. "Are you sure you are big enough for that?"

He grinned and reached out and tossed her onto his back. He ported them out of there, her laughing at him and shaking her head.  They were high above the monastery. Then he asked her where she wished to go.

She thought for a time and said, "Shall we live dangerously, Snow?  Take me to a place of the heart."

They ported out.

Laz leaned his board up against the house and wiped it down.  Then he went inside and changed into a pair of jeans and grabbed a beer before going back out to sit on the deck overlooking the lagoon below.  He'd finished the Pakistan job for Blackheath over a week ago and gone back to the Refuge.  Restless and irritable he'd plowed through the accumulated paperwork that had appeared on his desk since Dinah had been kidnapped.

Paul had taken to giving him sidelong looks of a speculative nature and getting between him and the unsuspecting.  Finally Paul had cornered him the night before last and told him he was being a pain in the ass and impossible to work with or for and if he didn't get his head sorted he, Paul, was looking for another job.  Laz had tried to protest and then had just said fine and told Paul he was taking a few days off, maybe more.  Paul had nodded, unmoved, and watched him zap away.

Now he was here, alone with the silence like he'd been for two days now, watching the sun set and no closer to figuring out what was going on with him. The only thing he knew, he thought, setting the beer aside and propping his feet on the railing, was that something had changed, fundamentally in the orientation of his life and it had to do with the fact that when he thought about Dinah, ever since Bangkok, it was different.  He'd loved her for so long he'd never considered what it would be like to not love her or how that would feel.  But sitting there, watching the sun sink, a ball of flaming red, he was inclined to think he didn't love her anymore, at least not the way he had.  He cared about her, and he thought maybe he always would but it wasn't the same.  And it wasn't the same because...

He cut the thought off, not wanting to go there, deciding that knowing it had changed was enough for now.  It was also enough to know, he thought, that what had happened in Bangkok could be viewed in perspective and didn't have to drive his relationship with Anja.  And then he caught himself up short, tripping over the word relationship.  Is that what they had, he wondered?  He ran through his mind all of their meetings, all of the time they'd spent in bed together, the want she created in him for her and her alone, and the feeling he had when he was with her and he put it all together and his heart skittered and his brain decided it was time to reboot.

He hadn't even gotten it back on-line when he saw, drifting down from the sky, a flash of brilliant scarlet coming in for a landing on his beach with a white haired, black-eyed woman on its back.  As a product of wishful thinking it couldn't be beat and his brain rebooted again.

The dragon skidded to a stop on the sand, looking around curiously. Anja, in shock, slid off of him. She put her hand up over her eyes to try to see.  Brilliant gold from the setting sun distorted the perspective.

She had no doubt where she was, but she had no idea if he'd be here. She had no idea why _she_ was here. Oh.  Yes, she did. Snow gave her a shove in the small of her back and in self defense she moved toward the house.

He watched her climb the stairs while the dragon started to investigate the lagoon, probably scaring all the fish away .  When she got to the deck he stood up and smiled at her, feeling the restlessness that had plagued him for days lift and some inner compass right itself.

She had no idea what to say. But when he smiled, she felt her doubts about being here fade. "Hullo," she said, her smile matching his. "That's Snow."

"Hullo to you, too." he said.  "He, she, it, yours?"

"He. Yes, he chose me. They choose. How have you been?"

He regarded her for a moment, wondering why she was there and what she wanted.  Then he shrugged mentally, saying, "Lonely for you."

And with a thought she moved into his arms, her lips finding his, her desire for him an almost tangible thing. He grabbed tight to his instincts and when she lifted her head he set her back from him a bit and shook his head.  "It's not that I don't want you, because I do.  It's just that I have this feeling that it's gone beyond just want for me and if it hasn't for you we might have a problem."

She regarded him for some time before answering. "It was never about just want for me. Nor need. If it were want I could have merely looked to others. Need is something to understand and control not indulge.  We are here because, having read a meditation on courage, I asked Snow to help me learn to live dangerously, and to take me to a 'place of the heart.'  Here is where he brought me.  I do not believe he was wrong in this."

"I'm a simple sort of guy, Anja," he said.  "So I need you to tell me what that means, exactly."

"It means that seeing you fills my heart with joy."

"Ah," Laz said, leaning back against the rail.  "Well, I don't know about filling my heart with joy, but I can say that I haven't felt right since you left and I'm suddenly feeling right again."

"The body has its own sort of wisdom. One should listen to it."

"Well, I'd have to say that that is truly a guy sort of philosophy."  He looked at her, sorting through the various things he wanted to know and the ones he needed to know.  "So how long are you here for?"

"Here being...?"

"Well, here being here, and here also being where ever I might happen to be, if you want to go that far.  But mostly I get the feeling this is just a sort of visit, that you just dropped by unexpectedly."

"Ah," she said, dropping into the chair he'd evacuated.  "It is true this visit was not quite what I expected, although I will say that I was pleased to find myself here. Would you like me to stay? Well, not necessarily here, as I don't see many opportunities toward a career here."