The wind started as a breeze, gentle and soft, stirring the sheers in the windows she’d left open to outside, loving the scents of the night mingling with those of the ocean, and the feel of the air, a silky texture on her skin as she fell asleep.

Always, when the night was right, she’d open the window and pull back the sheers and lay, looking out and dreaming the dreams of childhood and girlhood, adolescence and even adulthood until she fell asleep. She’d leave the radio playing softly in background, just barely discernible, classical or soft jazz as a counterpoint to her thoughts and a launching pad for flights of fancy, imagined heroics or stunning accomplishments that she’d plan, detail by detail while watching the moon rise and set and the stars wink at her, her secret accomplices in all those things.

Tonight she’d fallen asleep dreaming of Marc, sorting through the tangle of her feelings and her fears, mixed in with memories of Mac. Mac had been a slow infiltration, a gradual impinging on her awareness, a wanting that had bloomed and been savored from its budding, the consummation of their relationship as sudden as reaching it had been slow.

Marc was something else, something that she’d seen in his eyes that had reached out and grabbed a hold of her imagination at a level she hadn’t recognized but had responded to instinctively. It was something that lived in his smile, his humor, his care of her, that grew and expanded in his arms, when they talked or argued or made love. It was something that knitted together want and need and created a yearning she was afraid to name.

The wind began to rise about midnight, not long after she’d fallen asleep, picturing Marc in her mind, reviewing her memories of the play of light on his face, and the range of expression that would flash across it. Then the trees began to rustle and bend, moving in the rising wind, their sound becoming a part of her dreams, weaving in and out of them. The rain started as a soft patter on the roof, a gentle splashing against the glass, the smell of wet pavement mingling with the ocean smells and merging into one.

The first distant crack of thunder was no more than a low bass note at first, taking its place along side the sounds of the wind and the leaves, moving her slowly from dreams of Marc to dreams of others. While the rain began to fall faster, the wind blowing it in the window and spraying it on her face and dampening her nightgown, the faces in her dreams shifted and blurred. By the time the storm began to overcome the summer night with fury and light, the faces had firmed, becoming those of her mother and her father and she was a small child again, frightened and powerless, feeling something move in her mind with brutal indifference, forcing her mind outward, filling the room in the dream with all the nightmare images of a lonely and neglected child, too young and too sensitive to have defenses capable of protecting her, mentally or emotionally.

The sound of her fear was a rising moan that lifted in counterpoint to the wind and then was drowned by the thunder as it moved closer. It entered her dreams as the voice of her father’s demands in the child’s mind, her moans became the child’s whimpering fear, her thrashing, tangled and trapped in the sheets wet with the rain the child’s struggles to escape, helpless and futile.

It was the storm, directly over head, making a tenor voice of the wind that was in an almost groaning harmony with the roaring sounds of the ocean in the background, while the thunder sounded and repeated, a series of percussive shouts, punctuated by the lighting, that brought her from her nightmare, a silent scream of her own caught in her throat and sent her without pause into another kind of nightmare, a waking reliving of the dream she’d just fled. Trapped by it she fled as the child had never been able to, seeking safety that the child had never found…safety from a source and in a place that her rational mind would have rejected, but that her instincts sent her flying towards without doubt or hesitation.

Far to the west the rain had finally lulled him into sleep. He'd missed her. Not the sex, but her. It worried him. But he was good at putting private fears aside, locking them into dim storage areas of his mind he likened to the locked areas at Ocala. There were things in storage at Ocala. Deadly, wonderful, unbelievable, ugly things. Things he'd used before, things he'd refrained from reaching for.  It was the same with parts of his mind. There were memories and dreams and fears he did not want to revisit. Yet, here he was revisiting one.  He'd sighed, and listened to the rain. He'd finally fallen asleep, and was dreaming of thunder and flooding and death when his mind snapped awake.

She was cold, and shivering and up tightly against him as if she were a tiny child in need of her father. His arms went around her automatically before his mind was fully awake and functional.  He held her, sharing his warmth and the strength of his body.

Outside, the back edge of the cold front hit the ridge of warm, moist air in front of it and saw the range of mountains it had to cross to reach it's destination in the Atlantic and stalled to consider its preferred path.  As it stalled the warmth and moisture met the cool air and the vertical drift of its currents and struck up a conversation, the results of which were a sudden crack of thunder punctuated by lightening striking the upper cliffs.  Perhaps they were telling each other jokes and laughing. 

Dinah knew only the result and trapped, relived a past she had no defense against because it was a truth she'd never heard.  It was late and dark and her mother was screaming and her father was laughing and she was huddled under the kitchen table, rolled into a ball, trying to hide.  When he found her he laughed louder, a sound that mixed with the storm then and the storm now, while he invaded her mind, finding and using the power of her gifts to invade another mind, filling it with images of self loathing and futility, of worthlessness, shame and guilt.  He twisted something in her and it was her voice, the lisping contralto of a child that he used to fill the woman's head with taunting, hate filled words about failure and inadequacy, while the woman sobbed and begged, and madness, delighted and sexual, animated his face.

Dinah fought the arms that held her, like she fought the mind invading hers, twisting against them and, finally, finding a space, her mind fled towards it, into the mind of the man she was fighting.
 

He'd realized, when her shields snapped off, that she was in the midst of a flashback. Lord knows he'd had enough of those himself over the years. But he could only 'see' bits of it. Mostly he 'saw' emotions. The rest he had to guess at to make sense of. When she began fighting him, both physically and mentally, he realized she'd taken him for whomever it was who'd used her mind in this way, probably her father. And, he realized she thought she was reliving it, that he was suddenly her father.

He had only two choices at that point. Lock her mind down, and shut her down, or... But she was terrified of exactly that... So that left only one option. When she attacked his mind, he dropped his shields rather than harm her. He gritted his teeth as her consciousness rushed in.  She was untrained, confused, afraid. She could, the rational part of his mind knew, kill him, or turn him into Rory. Still, he kept the shields down and began trying to calm the raging, frightened thing that was rushing down the corridors of his mind, bathing it in reassurance, utilizing the tools he'd developed with the babies, calming the rage and terror, recognizing that the threat to his own mind was unintentional.  She slowed in her rampage, suddenly confused, as the mind wasn't reacting the way she'd expected. He 'watched' her consciousness as it sat there, considering. Kill this mind, or...

Dinah sensed, without understanding, the shifting of the mental landscape she inhabited.  Madness and coercion had become something else and she struggled to make sense of it, examining it, not understanding at all what she was doing or what she was capable of doing.   Her gifts, freed of the constraints of the phantoms of her father, sought the answers she needed to orient herself, invading the memories of the consciousness, of the compelling intelligence that surrounded her.

There were locked doors here, places that hid themselves, and the consciousness around her tried to steer her from those doors. But she began to panic at the slightest bit of coercion and instead threw one of the doors open and rushed into it seeing escape.
 

The door opened onto a landscape that drew her up to a stop. It was alien, yet ... human somehow. It was hot and muggy, and the trees and grasses that blew in the familiar wind were unlike yet like those she knew and understood. A marshy area off to her right was filled with the most beautiful of huge blue flowers.  The centers were a surreal dark blue, the petals fading to white at the tips. They reminded her of something... Then she looked up. It was as if she were looking down at the landscape, soaring over it, as it spread out below her, growing smaller and smaller until she could see a river, with waterfalls and the steep sides of cliffs defining it. Then the view shifted again and she heard a laugh that sounded familiar and yet frightening at the same time. A woman, a tiny woman, stood at the edge of the precipice, staring at a man floating in the air opposite her. His hair was black with a streak of white, his eyes hidden under dark brows.  He wore a dead black one-piece sort of space suit. The woman cringed back and away at his laughter. "And you would kill yourself?" he asked.

"I know who you are," she said bravely. "I will not let you steal my gifts."  Dinah could hear in that voice absolute terror. She would destroy herself before he could get one inch closer to her.

He laughed again. "And you would self-destruct rather than..."

"I warn you, I know you, Angel of the Abyss, I have no choice. We are trained against your coercion."   She held up her hand to show him a diamond that gleamed on her finger. "The moment you invade my mind it will shut down." 

Her words stabbed into his heart, even as his face froze into a mask to hide his reaction. Misery, self-loathing, regret, shock at how frightened she was. He pretended it didn't hurt.

"Even," he said quietly, no amusement in his voice now, "if I can help the children?"  He was offering her a gift. Cautiously. Afraid, even then, she'd reject it and he'd be, again, alone.

"You're trying to trick me," she hissed.

"Look," he said simply and his mind opened as if it were a rose bud, each petal unfolding, opening up before her the vista of .. of something Dinah had no words to describe. It was a sort of diagram, a sort of plan, almost in the language of mathematics, but the symbols were new to her, like nothing she'd never seen. It was a language she did not speak.

The woman looked at the design and her heart turned over. Hope. Joy. But still, the terror underneath. The terror that he would  invade her mind and take control of her, destroying her in a way that would be far more painful than a fall from the cliff.

"You may use it with Creyn and the others," he finally offered. A way to give her the gift without expecting her to trust him.

Shock at this offer, followed by delight and relief lit her mind. Finally the woman said, "Marc ..."
 

Dinah snapped out of her enthrallment and came back to herself as the name registered and the surroundings explained themselves  She pulled her mind out of his without finesse, leaving a trail of bewilderment and confusion, warring with the dismay and regret she felt as she realized both her intrusion and her ignorance, in her wake.  Her bewilderment verged towards panic again as she opened her eyes, fully awake and aware, with no understanding of where she was or why she was there.

He let go of her then, and lay still, saying nothing. Giving her a chance to understand where she was, to look around and realize who he was. When she turned her eyes back to his she saw a wall behind his eyes. He was shuttered tightly, closed off, no longer knowable, now all dark fiery eyes that looked at her warily.

Even before she fully realized where she was, she knew him, and compassion and a grieving understanding flooded her for him, filled with regret for her hurt of him.  She responded to it from a place inside of her she was still unsure of, wanting only to comfort and care, an impulse borne of an acceptance that went beyond the superficial, that wanted to wrap itself around him like a balm.  It was a response that filled her eyes as she looked at him, her voice as she whispered his name, and informed and guided the caress she dared with the hand that stroked his face and then stilled itself again.

Surprise filled his eyes first. Then his mind reached out tentatively to hers. She removed one brick from the wall, reassuring him she was all right and that she knew what it had cost him for those few seconds. He hesitated as he considered that and in that moment of doubt she kissed him. He accepted the kiss at first, and then suddenly was returning it. One hand tracing the curve of her back, the other holding her tightly against his chest.

The storm had worn itself out and its fury spent it now merely cried tears of rain.  He said nothing, as their kiss ended.

She spoke then because she needed to, because she needed to say it and know he heard it.  She said it because in that moment words, a debased and worthless currency without the power to change the wrong she'd done to him, were all she had to give him besides the agony she felt over it.  She gave him that too with the words.  "I'm sorry, for all of this, but more than anything for hurting you and for invading your privacy."

He took a moment to answer her, during which she felt an eternity of doubt, but then she felt his stiffness leave him. Whether it was merely acceptance of a thing done, or an acknowledgement of her sincere apology, she'd never know for certain. But he managed a slightly shaky smile at her. "We'll have to give you a speed course in Awakened mental etiquette. Although anyone, when they are in fear and confusion might easily misstep as did you.  It's all right, Dinah. Now, rest. Sleep. You're safe. As safe as I can make you."

She moved then, snuggling as close to him as she could, fitting her curves to his, murmuring as she did, "then I couldn't be safer." She feathered a kiss across his chest and relaxed, her eyes drifting closed.

He held her until her breathing slowed and she slept in his arms. Then he held her some more.

What the hell was he thinking, Marc asked himself as he sat there in the darkness holding a sleeping Dinah.  He touched her and he seemed to forget himself. Granted he'd been alone for a very long time. But he'd learned over the centuries, the millennia, to keep a distance. It wasn't that women weren't available. It was that .. The only women he'd chosen to get to were those who were not the least interested in a relationship of any kind.

He'd sensed Dinah wanted more, had told her flat out he couldn't offer her more, and yet here is where she'd come. Not to Laszlo who loved her unguardedly, but to him, who was doing his best to keep her at arms length other than for sex.

His thoughts skittered back to the scene with Adrianna. It had been the first time he'd been directly confronted with how others of his kind, those who were operant, felt about him and his flawed and destructive legacy. There was a ban on allowing operants through the time gate. Adrianna had a brain injury had had gone latent, with no hope of regaining her powers, so she'd come through the timegate a broken woman. But it somehow had changed her, and now, she was the only one like him, other than his own people - or what was left of them.  He considered what he'd seen in her mind.  His brother Jack who'd fought against him was considered a Saint, even given the name St Jack the Bodiless. Jack's partner Dorothy, called Diamond Mask, of equally revered memory apparently, even to the point of Adrianna wearing a diamond on her finger as a sort of ward against his own evil temptation. Angel of the Abyss. Abaddon. Well, not every failed rebel could claim to be identified quite so literally with the Devil himself.

He remembered back to his first meeting with the old monk Brother Anatoly who'd taken it upon himself to serve Adrianna in her function as planetary regent. He'd wanted to hear his confession. Right. Anatoly, terrified down to his toenails had stood between himself and Adrianna, ready to die to protect her from his evil.

What hope could he have....

Then there was Tabitha, seemingly convinced that he was some sort of hope of the future, when all he was was the scourge of it.

Dinah sighed in her sleep and he stroked her hair until she fell back into a sound and relaxed sleep.

Keep her safe. What a farce.

Finally, when it was nearly dawn, he fell into his own troubled dreams.
 

Dinah drifted slowly back from her dreams, her head nestled on Marc's chest and the distinctly male scent of him filling her senses.  She savored the feel of him against her as her wits rearranged themselves.  As they did the night before came back to her, stilling her.  She decided a long pause was in order and considered the implications of a number things telling herself, forcefully, it was time to get honest with herself.  There were a lot of things she could call what she was doing with this man but a simple affair, from her perspective at least, wasn't one of them.  A love affair, yes, but it wasn't simple and it wasn't casual and it had never been for her, not from the second she'd landed in his lap and took a swing at him.

The one real question that needed answering before she went any further involved the word to describe what she was feeling, not if she was feeling something other than the attachment produced by great sex with a hot male who made her toes tingle without even trying.  And the only candidate left after the demonstration her instincts and impluses had staged last night was love.  She'd bloody well gone and done it.  She fallen in love with the man and now she was screwed, with a capital S and no orgasm in sight at the end of it.

She eyed the man she was wrapped around and considered her alternatives.  She could stick or she could run.  Her green eyes narrowed and she pictured the mess he'd made of her life.  She pictured the implications of  her preferred alternative and the odds that she'd end up wishing she'd done the other.  She inhaled and the scent of him filled her again. 

He deserved the hell he was going to put them both through before it was over and eventually she'd find a way to make him pay for it, jack-ass that he was, but she'd be damned, she thought, before she ran. 

She rolled herself gently from her position curled around him and made herself comfortable on his hips smiling at the sight of him, sound asleep and oblivious to the fate awaiting him, considering her plan of attack, both right now and in the long run.  Then she reached down and pulled off her nightgown and tossed it to the floor and zapped her panties away to join the gown.  If anyone was going to run it would be him and she had not the slightest doubt he'd try that at least once.  Letting him, she decided was the way to handle that.  He'd do the rest all by himself.

She leaned forward and drew her tongue lightly along his collar bone, her smile one of pure sexual wickedness and proceeded fill her senses with him, the taste and feel, the scent and the shape of him.

His body awoke before his brain, she was delighted to see. His interest arose making itself quite plain. One hand found its way to the inside of her thigh and wound its way upward toward it is ultimate destination. His eyes, when they opened where still a bit confused, as if he'd thought he was dreaming.

"Hi there handsome."

He considered his fate and tossed reason to the wind.