[Hope Triumphant: Duende 3/4] ~~~~~ "Ahi esta Methos!" Elena exclaimed when she felt the approach of an Immortal during dinner on the last night of the cruise, though who else could it be? There were only three Immortals on the ship, and Cassandra was sitting right across from her. Elena waved one hand high in the air, and Cassandra turned around to see. From the doorway of the busy restaurant, Methos nodded in return, unable to wave because of the utterly gorgeous blonde clinging to his right arm and the equally stunning redhead possessively stroking his left. Fashion models from Milan, Methos had told Elena three days ago, when she had asked. That threesome was being pretty obvious, Elena thought. Not that Methos wasn't absolutely charming, very funny, and technically the best lover she had ever-- Elena shook her head and stopped those memories cold. That night in Miami Beach had been once, only once, under a specific set of ... circumstances. And now Elena was married. By the Catholic Church. And in spite of everything, Elena Duran did not betray the vows she made to her husbands and before God, not even if her husband did run off and have an affair with a mousy little hairdresser only nine months after the wedding and-- Elena took a deep breath, turned her attention back to her meal, and sawed the last of her filet mignon in half, then popped one of the pieces of dark pink meat into her mouth and chewed. Eventually, she swallowed the meat and sighed. It had been a Quickening, ese maldito juego inmortal. She'd explained it all to Lorenzo before they'd gotten married, of course, but seeing the beheading and the lightning had startled him, maybe scared him, and that, in turn, had humiliated him. There were certain disadvantages to being with the kind of strong, macho man she favored. But there were also definite advantages. Lorenzo was tall, blond, rich, a fearsome opponent on the polo field, un semental in the bedroom. Elena sighed once more, remembering his warm brown eyes, his loving touch, his laughter ... Lorenzo made her laugh, and she deserved to laugh, damn it! Perhaps she shouldn't have stormed off quite so quickly. Perhaps she might answer his email after all. Elena ate the last bite of her meat. Methos and his companions had seated themselves on the other side of the room, and the two women together offered Methos a strawberry from the platter of appetizers on the table. Methos allowed them to feed him, bite by succulent bite. Elena smiled as she imagined Methos dressed in a toga in Rome being fed by slaves ... until she remembered Cassandra. Elena sobered before she glanced at her companion, but Cassandra was smiling, too, amused and tolerant. "Looks like he's the cruise champion at more than just table tennis," Cassandra observed as she lifted a spoonful of wild rice from her plate. "Doubles, no less," Elena added, but she was glad to see Methos hadn't spent all of his nights--or afternoons--alone. Those three had been together almost constantly these last four days. It was good for Methos to be content; it kept him out of mischief. It had also kept him busy enough not to get back at her for that little scene she and Cassandra had staged--yet. Elena grinned; for once, she'd been one step ahead of His Deviousness. The look on his face for that one split instant had been worth ... well, whatever plot he was devising in his little head. She hoped. Cassandra probably hoped so, too, though she hadn't said much about Methos during the entire cruise. Elena dangled some bait, hoping to find out more. "You don't hate him anymore," Elena ventured. Cassandra's smile widened as she speared her last bite of salmon with her fork. "I have better things to do." That was good to hear. "Do you think you two will ever be friends?" Cassandra set down her food untasted. "I trust my friends. I'll never trust him." "Ever?" Cassandra was completely serious now. "Do you?" Elena thought about it for a minute. "I don't think he'd deliberately hunt me--but if he felt he had a good reason, I believe he would kill me. And the truth is, I'm not convinced that I could stop him." She shook her head. "No. He is not on the short list of Immortals I trust." She lifted her wine glass in salute to Cassandra and said earnestly, "But you are, mi amiga." Cassandra's smile came back, a happy one this time, and she lifted her glass in return. "And you are on mine." They clinked the glasses and drank, but then Elena rolled the wine around in her glass and watched the liquid swirl. When she'd first met Cassandra, Elena had been only twenty-six, not even an Immortal. She hadn't liked the perfectly composed and eternally watchful woman at all. Nearly a century later, they'd met again, on a shipboard crossing from Buenos Aires to Capetown. Elena had been running from the Inquisition, who had already burned her at the stake once, and she'd had no hair, no hope, and no trust left for anyone. But Cassandra had listened, eternally patient that time, and Elena had come to appreciate that. Then ten years ago, after Bethel ... Elena put a hand to her missing right eye. She and Cassandra had been through hell, but they'd come a long way, both of them, and they'd traveled some of that road together, bringing that closeness that comes only from shared suffering. Elena had come to trust Cassandra ten years ago, and Elena still did--even now that she knew about the Voice. She drained her glass and poured herself more wine from the bottle. Cassandra waved a graceful hand at their elegant surroundings. "You were right, Elena. Traveling by sea is different than the first trip we took together, nearly three hundred years ago. Very different." Elena looked around at the paneled walls, the crystal chandeliers, the black-jacketed waiters carrying platters of food, and she leaned back in her chair with a contented sigh. "The good old days were only good to those who didn't have to live them, eh? Remember the rats? And the worms in the food?" Cassandra chimed in. "The green beer. The chamber pots tipping over in a storm. Being seasick." Elena shuddered, remembering that smell: pungent urine mixed with sickly sweet vomit, usually several days old. No wonder everybody got sick. "I like modern times--especially hot and cold running water, especially on a boat." "So do I," Cassandra agreed fervently. "And you and I are different, too, mi vida," Elena said, leaning forward now. "We're stronger. We're not running anymore, either one of us." "No," Cassandra agreed, her gaze now gone dark and inward. "Never again." She reached for a shrimp and peeled it with her nails, then dipped it in cocktail sauce and ate it in three neat bites. "So," she said cheerfully, "are you going back to Argentina, Elena? Or staying here in Italy?" "Lorenzo knows the cruise schedule. If he's waiting for me at the dock with a dozen roses in his hand, maybe I'll stay. If he's not ..." Elena shrugged, but she wasn't really sure what she would do. What if he wasn't waiting for her on the dock? What if--? "He'll be there," Cassandra said, and she sounded very sure. Elena lifted her eyebrows in amusement, even as she hoped it was true. "Is that a prophecy?" "No," she said with a small smile. "Just experience. Most men aren't hard to predict." Elena nodded knowingly, because that was definitely true. Most men thought with their cocks, and *that* was never hard to predict. Cassandra now ... she wasn't so obvious. "Are you meeting Amanda in Rome tomorrow?" Elena asked, still slightly surprised by that partnership. Elena hadn't thought the sex kitten Amanda and the sexually repressed Cassandra would get along very well. Maybe opposites did attract. "No, we're meeting in Athens on Tuesday," Cassandra answered. "I thought I'd do some sightseeing in Rome for a few days, do a little shopping, see a movie or two." "I like the one that came out this summer about Simon Bolivar!" Elena mimicked a saber thrust with her steak knife as best she could sitting down. "Great action, and a true hero! Just like Jose de San Martin, the general I fought under during one of the never-ending Latin American wars of independence against the Spanish. I had to wear men's clothes, of course." "Of course," Cassandra murmured. "It's too bad they never made a movie about Dona Encarnacion," Elena continued. "She was a female caudillo and led a montonera, a group of women ...," she paused, looking for the right word, "... guerillas." Cassandra shook her head. "I've never heard of Dona Encarnacion." "She was crazy!" Elena smiled fondly, remembering the energetic, dark-haired woman in her late thirties--old by the standards of those days, but what a leader! "Oh, those were happy times, but hard, too. I had to be careful of the soldiers in both armies; I rode with Dona Encarnacion for protection against the Argentine men!" Elena said, laughing. "Hey, we were women's libbers way back in the nineteenth century, and we fought just as hard as the men! The authorities called us bandidos, but we thought of ourselves as patriots, fighting for our people, our land. Then after the Spaniards were defeated, her husband, Juan Manuel de Rosas, took power and became a tyrant. He turned against the Indios. But she never did, and even her husband didn't dare cross her." "A female Argentine Robin Hood," Cassandra said, smiling back. "You're right; that would make a great movie." "Maybe. Or maybe they'd ruin it the way they ruined the story of Vercingetorix five years ago, or Joan of Arc the year before that." Elena took a drink of her red wine, pensive now. Battles and fighting involved lots of bloodletting, and they didn't always turn out well. Anyway, she should be the last person to romanticize war. "Como han pasado anos," she murmured. So many years. And even more years for Cassandra, and the last few hundred had been bad. Elena studied her ancient friend. Dark-red hair down to the middle of her back--worn loose like that it was very sensual. So were those green eyes. And at last she was dressing to show off her figure, in a clinging white dress of soft angora wool. Why the hell work out so hard and then cover your *assets* with long, loose, flowing clothes? Cassandra had wasted a lot of time. Not anymore, Elena decided. "You should get a boyfriend," Elena told her. "Someone to go to dinner with, go dancing with ..." She grinned and lowered her voice suggestively. "Go to bed with." Cassandra pushed her empty plate aside. "Elena--" "You haven't, have you? Not once in the last ten years." And, except for one night with Duncan MacLeod, not for three hundred sixty-six years before that. Being raped by Silas, Kronos, and that other bastard didn't count. "No, I haven't," Cassandra replied evenly. "I have not been ... good company these last ten years, Elena. I couldn't inflict myself and my moods on anyone. Except my therapist, and I pay her to put up with me." "Still?" Elena had never gone to a therapist, and her nightmares had not completely stopped, but they were less intense--and she suspected most Immortals had nightmares, anyway. Time did heal most wounds. Cassandra shrugged. "Not so often now, maybe two or three times a year. I think I go mostly just to talk. I'd been silent so long." Elena reached across the table and touched her hand. "You can always talk to me, amiga. Always." Cassandra squeezed Elena's fingers lightly. "Gracias, che." Elena squeezed back and smiled as they let go, but she wasn't done yet. "What about that cute Swede?" Elena prodded. "You know, the one who's been smiling at you all week? The one who's looking at you right now?" She waved and smiled at the tall young man with the crewcut near the entrance, and he waved and smiled back. Cassandra didn't turn around this time. "Elena ..." "Oh, go on, Cassi," Elena encouraged. "Last night on board! Sex is good for you; it's good exercise! Give someone your body, and your heart will follow. And if it doesn't--well, at least your body had fun!" "Yes, but ... it doesn't work that way for me, not anymore." Cassandra swirled her wine glass, watching the liquid flow in circles inside. "I've tried." She drained the last of her wine, but kept staring at the empty glass in her hand. "I miss it," she admitted. "The freedom, the joy." She grinned across the table, the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth, her eyebrows raised and her voice lowered. "The power." "!Claro que si, m'hija!" Elena agreed, letting the last word become a growl. To bring a strong, powerful man, no matter how great a warrior, to the point where he was begging *you* for release--that was sweet victory indeed ... and even sweeter surrender. "But you will want to again, someday," Elena reassured her. "Someday," Cassandra agreed but then set her glass down firmly on the table and announced, "And I'm going to start now. Dinner's over, but perhaps Lars would like to join us for dessert." "And dancing?" Elena suggested. Cassandra smiled. "Perhaps." Elena pushed some more. "And then ...?" This time Cassandra laughed. "I remember the first thing I heard your father say to you, Elena, before you were an Immortal. Do you?" Elena smiled softly, a little abashed. As much love as there had been between them, memories of her father always brought forth a little bit of a sense of unworthiness on her part. "Oh, yes. I heard it a lot. He said: 'Slow down.'" Cassandra added gently, "He also said you had more heart and guts than anyone he'd ever met, man or woman." Elena asked in a hushed voice, "He really said that about me?" "He did. He was very proud of you." Cassandra reached over and touched Elena's hand. "And he would be very proud of you now." Her father had admired courage above all other qualities. Elena grinned, too pleased to even speak. Don Alvaro had never told her in so many words that he was proud of her. Her eye glistening, she basked in that glory for a luxurious moment. "And now, if you'll excuse me," Cassandra said, rising from her chair, "I'm going to talk to Lars." Elena shifted to the right side of her chair so she could see better past the bald head of the man at the next table. Lars straightened up and self-consciously ran his hand through his hair as Cassandra neared him. He had a dazzling smile in that bronzed Viking face, and his eyes were a bright blue. He looked much like Lorenzo, although a bit taller and leaner ... now he was laughing at something Cassi had said, good for her! She deserved to laugh, too. Elena's gaze wandered, and she noticed Methos looking at the couple. El viejo didn't miss much, did he? Then, as if he could read her mind, as usual, Methos caught Elena's glance, smiled, and raised his glass. Elena did the same, drinking a toast to Cassandra's future and bidding a farewell to the past. Then Elena drank again, looking forward to her own future, and to seeing her husband again. ~~~~~