Alexis
sat in the car trying to control the tremors of fear shaking her
about like a rag doll, every nerve screaming as she batted down
the terror that slowly slithered up her spine entwining itself in
her mind.
She felt psychically disembodied as if her conscious spirit suddenly
fled her in fear and all that remained was that which exists when
rationality and reason are compromised, the primal and instinctual.
She could feel the adrenalin coursing through her veins, the blood
pumping through her arteries, her body attuning itself to the battle
her mind was waging. She stared down at the hand still holding her
Mother's handkerchief, its fine silk embroidery wadded into a crumpled
white ball as she attempted to crush the bloodstained rose into
dust, its twisted message a heresy to her Mother's memory and a
harbinger of evil to come for her and her daughter.
She waited suspended in time, each whisper of silk against her palm
a turn of the hourglass allowing her to go neither forward nor back,
her existence stuck in the endless cycle of her fears.
Muffled sounds from far away touched her consciousness, pulling
her back to reason and reality. The sounds echoed hollowly as if
she was swaddled in cotton batting, each sound bouncing harmlessly
away even as her mind lunged forward to grasp it. A cadence both
calming and familiar was pressing on her mind as her dazed heart
reached out in supplication to the warm embrace of its comfort.
Cameron
She heard soothing words as he buckled Kristina into the carseat,
his polite thank you to the footman and warm goodbye to Alice, his
deep baritone resonating in her mind.
Her hand burned where the silk touched her, the red teardrop stain
scorching her skin like acid. She heard the car door open and quickly
shoved the silk square into her jacket pocket. Now wasn't the time
to show Cameron.
They turned around in the circular parking area, the gravel crunching
beneath the tires as the car moved slowly down the driveway. As
they cleared the gates and turned onto the main road, the silence
in the car was deafening. Cameron glanced a few times at an uncharacteristically
silent Alexis who appeared deep in thought based upon the frown
that creased her forehead. He wondered what happened between the
time he left her for his walk by the lake and his arrival on the
terrace. There was a subtle difference in her body language eerily
reminiscent of their visit to her parent's Paris apartment.
She is with her daughter and yet she's a world away, he thought
sadly.
Yes, something serious was definitely on her mind.
He decided to break the silence for her. "Penny for your thoughts?"
Her frown deepened as his question invaded her reverie. "What
did you say?"
He touched her hand, surprised by the arctic chill of her fingers.
"I was offering you a penny for your thoughts."
He was waiting for the inevitable Alexis snappy retort about his
frugality when it came to putting his money where his mouth is.
It never came.
She shrugged as she focused her eyes and looked over at him. "I
was just thinking."
With that she turned back to watch the landscape with what he would
term as 'intense purpose' and a way to distance herself.
He reached out to lace his fingers through her hand and she cried
out as she pulled her hand away.
"Ouch!"
"What happened?" he asked as he drew back his hand. He
saw blood, checked his hand and then looked over at Alexis, her
left hand cradled in her right.
"Alexis, you're bleeding."
She ignored him as she continued to be mesmerized by the small droplets
of blood seeping from her palm, the red stain painting her skin
as it slowly oxidized into brown as it made contact with the air.
Voices from the past echoed in her mind, a cry from a child as she
watched her Mother bleed to death, the blood tracing a winding path
of red along her neck to soak the cloth that covered her body.
He parked the car on the shoulder of the road. He grabbed her hand,
looked at the wound, then up into her clouded eyes.
"Alexis, what happened? You've been silent as the grave since
we left the Quartermaines and from the intense concentration on
your face I swear you've been trying to solve the value of 'Pi'.
Obviously something happened and I want to know about it - and this."
She sighed as she pulled the wadded handkerchief from her pocket,
laid it on her lap and looked into his eyes.
He looked at it quizzically. "That is the handkerchief we found
in Paris. I don't understand..."
He stopped in mid-sentence as she slowly shook her head from side
to side. The haunted look on her face was like a punch to his heart.
She stared at him, her brown eyes rendered almost obsidian by dammed
up emotion. When she finally spoke, her voice was devoid of inflection.
"I found it in Kristina's carriage when I put her down. At
first I thought it was Edward's but when I saw it I knew differently."
She looked down at the silk square and smoothed out the lace edges.
Cameron was incensed. "How in the hell did she get that close
to the baby? Edward and his vaunted 'security'.... bah! More like
the Keystone Kops meets Mayberry RFD."
She shrugged delicately trying very hard to keep her equilibrium...
and her sanity. "I told you that she can glide in and out like
a wraith with none the wiser."
"Or have people on her payroll do it."
"Now you see why I was so insistent about returning from Paris.
I know Helena and how her mind works and trust me when I tell you
this is just the opening salvo in her plan. Obviously whatever she
found in the Paris safe was just a small part of the game."
"You refer to this as a game? This is your life - and Kristina's
too."
"To Helena life is a chess match, how well your game measures
up and surpasses hers the scale upon which you are judged. She is
judge, jury and executioner and your ability to foresee how she
will move her piece your only salvation."
"That is twisted and sick."
"That is Helena Cassadine."
"So how did this happen?" he asked as he daubed at her
hand with his own handkerchief.
She shook her head as she looked down at the jagged wound. "I
don't know. I had the handkerchief clutched in my hand..."
"Let me see it," he said as he reached up and turned on
the overhead light.
He examined both sides and as he ran his finger back and forth over
the embroidered rose he felt a snag on his skin. He took out his
glasses and looked closer and saw something blending into the stem
of the rose.
"There is something stitched into the rose."
Alexis looked puzzled. "What is it... I didn't see anything."
"Wait one second. Do you have tweezers?"
"Do I look like someone who carries tweezers?"
"Uh...come to think of it...no."
"How about a paper clip?"
"That should work."
Cameron straightened the paper clip and probed around. He finally
found what he was searching for and after a few seconds worried
the object free. He raised it to the light and looked over at Alexis.
"Do you know what this is?"
It was crafted of spun glass, a needle-thin sliver of iridescence
that curved at end and shone like a rainbow after a nor'easter,
its shimmer painting colors even in the soft reflected light of
the overhead lamp.
Cameron watched as Alexis held it in the palm of her hand, gazing
at it with a combination of wonder and loathing so deep he knew
it was yet another piece of her past come to haunt her.
"Alexis...?" he whispered afraid to touch her.
* * *
"What is that, Papa?"
"It is a rose."
"That isn't a rose. Roses have soft petals and smell pretty.
This is made of glass."
"You are correct, Natasha, it is glass but very special glass.
It is a combination of crystal and another gemstone that was created
in a laboratory. It is just as colorful and precious as crystal
but because it has a friend in the other gemstone it will not shatter."
"What is it for?"
"Your Mama. All roses eventually die, some even need to be
pruned viciously to ready them to grow when their season returns.
When the roses are gone and winter comes, your Mama is sad because
even the hothouse roses are not as fragrant and beautiful as the
ones that grow in her garden. So, I've created for her the perfect
rose, each petal delicate yet strong, the stem a hardy foundation
for crystalline blooms that capture every color of your Mama's garden
and whose season is forever."
"Does it have thorns? Mama says that all roses have thorns
just as all people have beauty and ugliness."
"And the heart that is soonest awake to the flowers, is always
the first to be touch'd by the thorns," he solemnly recited.
She looked at him and smiled. "Shakespeare?"
He shook his head. "Thomas Moore. This rose is my gift to her
and it will never shatter, as our love for each other and for you
and your sister will never shatter."
* * *
"Alexis?" Cameron queried gently as he touched her hand
lightly. It was clammy and he could feel shivers race through her
as her mind ran quickly in pursuit of her past.
* * *
She tucked Kristina into the blanket and ran back into the house.
She needed to help her Mother but didn't know how. She knew the
light lady had come back, the one that stopped her in the market
one day when she went with Magda, how she touched her cheek and
told her how pretty she was for a bastard. She had no idea what
a bastard was and when she asked Magda she was spanked and sent
to dinner without supper. The lady appeared again on the path one
day when she was riding her pony and asked her if she believed in
Fate and the evil that comes to those who defy it by stealing things
that don't belong to them and how they will be punished. It didn't
make much sense but it made her afraid of the light lady and she
told her Mama and saw the look of fear on her face.
After that she was never allowed out alone.
She reached the entryway and heard her Mama's voice, the anger rooting
her to the spot. She heard the light lady shouting at her Mama and
saw them struggle and back into the table as the lady took a dagger
and slide it across her Mother's throat. She watched in horror as
her Mother crumpled slowly to the ground, her hand reaching out
sending her Father's gift, one perfect rose, tumbling to the ground
where it smashed and scattered shards around the woman for whom
it was created, its iridescence now dimmed to twilight as Death
draped its veil upon her.
Her Father was wrong... even perfection shatters. She never forgave
him the lie.
* * *
Cameron saw the tears slip down her cheeks, her own body unaware
of their flowing presence. He brushed them away and grasped her
shoulders and pulled her toward him.
"Alexis... please look at me."
She slowly raised her eyes and stared into his, her own misted by
tears and the phantoms of the past. She gazed into his concerned
eyes, warmth and worry mingling as they reached out to caress her,
to take whatever painful memory haunts her and help her exorcise
it.
She knew there would never be an exorcism... for her.
She looked down at the crystal shard, a sliver of her past with
a message, as she turned it in the light.
"This is a thorn from a crystalline rose my Father created
for my Mother. The rose was shattered the day Helena murdered her."
"I don't understand. What message would a crystal thorn possibly
have?"
She looked out of the car window into the distance as she recited.
"The thorns which I have reap'd are of the tree
I planted; they have torn me, and I bleed.
I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed."
She looked over into Cameron's questioning eyes. "Lord Byron,
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage".
"What does that mean?" he asked, unsure he wanted to hear
the answer.
"Helena is reminding me of the past and warning me that what
my Mother sowed long ago, it will be my destiny to reap."
