Chapter One

20 years later:

A Diego with hair that was now more silver than black sat unmoving astride his current Palomino mare of choice, fighting to calm even this laid back animal. Shouts and whoops and curses and yells still shattered the air as the bandit Zorro quickly gave chase to the three outlaws who had attacked the Mexico City stagecoach. They'd left a dead driver, robbed the passengers, frightened the horses into plunging recklessly in their traces, then jeered crassly at the black bandit before galloping away as fast as they could go, the pueblo's bankroll in their saddlebags. Zorro had only taken time enough to ascertain the safety of the passengers, to assure them that help was on its way, and to gallantly kiss the hand of a particular young lady bound for Los Angeles with her aunt, then to dash away in immediate pursuit of the outlaws. Predictably enough, he left chaos in his wake: a mess of strewn clothing from overturned suitcases, a dead driver, frightened horses, and terrified passengers. Only the girl he had deigned to pay specific attention to was anything close to calm as she watched the hero gallop away.

As usual, the mess had been left in Diego's capable hands. He sighed, perturbed at being left holding the proverbial baby, but also admitting to himself that he had a freakish talent for soothing distraught stage passengers, for calming plunging horses, for getting things done that few were willing to do, like burying the dead before the vultures descended. It was the best and the worst part about Zorro, and always had been. Diego's curse was to be good at it. Now that he was too old to gallop around on a half wild black stallion, righting wrongs, avenging the innocent, picking sword fights, and challenging evil of every kind, he supposed he should be grateful for even this small link to the bandit he used to be.

His soft sigh, however, denoted his dissatisfaction at the way that advancing age had effectively sidelined him from his preferred role. But he figured that was fate, his destiny, his new role in an ever-changing Universe. A resurrected Zorro lived now, just as the original Zorro had surely died twenty-five years before. Diego had mixed feelings about this resurrected bandit as he allowed himself to watch the exciting departure before turning his attention to the task before him. His ride to the pueblo for the weekly livestock auction had now ground to a halt, as he had secretly planned, leaving him available to pick up the pieces that one of Zorro's adventures inevitably left behind.

A group of strangers standing near their abandoned stagecoach met his gaze, most gathered around a fainted woman. Some of the men were uselessly fanning her with their hats. The señorita whom Zorro had singled out was staring after the masked man with avid interest, and another older lady was doing her best to calm the horses while also staring just as avidly after the receding bandit in black. Ignoring them both, for they looked perfectly healthy, if somewhat rattled, Diego turned his attention to the woman who'd fainted first.

After swiftly dispatching his head vaquero to the pueblo to fetch the doctor and a squadron of soldiers, Diego dismounted, cautiously introduced himself to the group standing near the stagecoach, then examined the woman, paying specific attention to her head in case she had injured herself when she fainted.

His first challenge was to find one of the passengers who spoke Spanish. Once he did, his job became a lot easier. "She just fell over, you say?" he quietly asked one of the male passengers attending her.

"She seemed fine to me, but the moment the man... the black..."

"You mean Zorro?"

"Is that what he calls himself? Funny name."

An ironic smile ghosted across Diego's face. "Yes, well, there's no accounting for taste. Did she strike her head when she fainted?"

"Not to my knowledge. Mr. Miller caught her before she could hit the ground. What do you think is wrong with her?"

Diego paused, still exploring her head with nimble fingers. "Well, I'm no doctor, just a passing Samaritan with an interest in human health, but my guess would be..." And he quickly yanked at her broken ankle, setting the bone with one decisive move. A gushing inhalation of air later, the woman gasped a breath and regained consciousness.

"What..? Who..?" she sputtered in English as she blinked against the bright California sunlight. "OW!" She glared at Diego, who still gingerly held her foot.

Diego deftly splinted her foot with some convenient spokes from the broken stagecoach wheel, then wrapped it. Last, he slipped his arm under her shoulders and helped her sit up. The man who spoke Spanish translated for him as he said, "You're alright, among friends. Can you tell me what happened, Señorita... uh, Miss?" Meanwhile, Diego again reminded himself that improving his English would only make his life easier. The California territory wasn't the same as it used to be - many more Americans were now living there, and learning their language was bound to ingratiate himself with the local troops stationed in Los Angeles. He had to wonder what he was waiting for?

Maybe it was his ties, no matter how tenuous, to the mother country, though Spain had long been gone from California. It definitely wasn't his ties to their Mexican followers. Those followers had caused so much damage with their constant need for governmental change over the next decades that he really couldn't forgive the way they had so confidently warred for independence only to show disinterest in the people when it truly counted. But no matter how poorly anyone of Spanish or Mexican descent was now treated, even he couldn't ignore the recent influx of Americans into the formerly Spanish territory. Letting himself learn English was simply one more concession to the occupation.

He may be willing to make a concession or two, but he was also glad that his father hadn't lived to experience it.

The injured woman was now sitting up on her own, gratefully sucking dusty air into her starving lungs, but no longer needing Diego's support. She leaned against the side of the coach, carefully didn't move her splinted foot, and took sips of water from a canteen Mr Miller had offered.

"Sip slowly," Diego warned. "Drinking too fast will just make you throw up." He had learned long ago that trying to be delicate and gentlemanly when a person's health was at stake was just a waste of time. But he was doubly glad that his father couldn't witness that, either. "Anybody else need help?" He looked at the passengers crowded around him.

"I cut myself on my hand mirror when it broke just now," one young girl informed, and Diego focused on cleaning and wrapping the wound in a temporary bandage.

Moments later, he was just finishing up when he heard the distant sound of echoing hoofbeats. "That will be the doctor and soldiers from the garrison... I mean, the fort at Los Angeles." It would still be several moments before they arrived, since he knew that sound waves bounced strangely off the cliffs in the area, but he felt sure enough of their eventual arrival that he could soothe the passengers. "They'll take your testimony, and any complaints you have. The injured should see the doctor, even if I treated you." He gave a bashful smile. "I'm no doctor, just a friend."

"We thank you, Señor," the translator said to Diego, now speaking rapid Spanish. "If I might ask, what's your name?"

"There's no need for thanks," Diego graciously said. "I'm just glad I happened to be here."

"But we wish to thank you properly," the man persisted.

Rather than protest again, Diego simply gave in, though he knew that leaving a Spanish name would do him no good in this American controlled country. He reached out and shook the man's hand. "Diego de la Vega, at your service."

The man smiled and pumped Diego's hand. "Well met, Señor. I'm..."

"Diego?" The feminine cry sounded incredulously across the crowd to mix with the screech of birds in the nearby trees. "Diego de la Vega?"

Diego craned his neck, slowly rising to his feet as he wiped his hands on the rag one of his men had handed to him. "Si," he said, glancing around to discover who had called him. "Is there something I can do for somebody?"

The next moment, he was practically knocked off his feet as a small woman threw herself into his arms. "Diego! Madre de Dios - you're alive!"

Diego was forced to take a step back or risk falling over. He instinctively wrapped his arms around this newcomer who claimed to know him, even though he had no idea who he was hugging.

Dark hair tickled his nose, and the strangest feeling of familiarity hovered at the edge of his mind, but it wasn't enough to help him identify this mysterious stranger. "Señorita, I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage," he said to the top of her head.

"Diego, it's me!" The woman reared back to put some distance between their faces so that he could see her.

But Diego didn't need to see her face. Now, without her hair covering his nose, he got an unhindered whiff of the tavern in Los Angeles that he remembered so well. It was the tantalizing smell of stew simmering on an open kitchen fire. It was the smell of baking bread, the smell of chile con carne. It was the smell of home, of comfort, of acceptance. Without a doubt, it was the smell of...

"Victoria?" he whispered in astonishment as he slowly set the woman back on her feet. His heart suddenly thundering in a painful cadence against his ribs, he gasped a breath so dusty that it almost made him cough. He ignored his discomfort to fervently seek her face.

And there she was, quite suddenly and without any input or help on his part. It had to be one of the most anticlimactic events of Diego's life. He'd finally found Victoria, long after he'd lost all hope of ever finding her. But it was her all right, a little older, a little grayer, but definitely her. Diego couldn't believe his good fortune. He had turned over heaven and Earth looking for her, made several trips to Mexico City, both alone and with companions in the hopes of discovering her whereabouts. He had painted more pictures of her in the last years than he ever had when he'd been Zorro. In particular, he had grieved for the woman in his arms for nearly three decades. And now that he was staring her straight in the eyes after years of dreaming of this moment, he couldn't speak, and didn't know what to say if he could. His mouth soundlessly opened and closed, numbness stole over him, and he clutched her with a vise-like grip lest she vanish again. He couldn't suck in air into his suddenly aching lungs.

But he couldn't just stand there, staring at her in utter astonishment, either. Hardly daring to believe his eyes, his heart pounding so hard that it almost cracked a rib, he croaked, "I thought you were dead!"

As first sentences go, it was hardly much of a welcoming homecoming. The woman in Diego's arms was so surprised to hear it that a small gusty breath burst from her, and with that tiny sound, confirmed everything.

Diego had heard that little sound so many times coming from Victoria while in her tavern kitchen at night on his secret visits as Zorro. He associated it with better times when he'd been free to hold her, when he'd kissed her, when he had simply been with her. And for the first time, his frazzled mind fully beleived. Prickles exploded to cover every inch of him in goosebumps. Tingles forced their way up his legs, down his back, across his scalp. Astonishment froze him until he finally accepted what his eyes were already telling him: this was without a doubt Victoria Escalante, returned from... wherever she now called home.

"Victoria!" His happy cry exploded out of him and he pulled her to him again, desperately hugging what he'd thought he'd lost so long ago. When he loosened his hold enough, he let his eyes drink in the sight of her.

She was undeniably older than he remembered, but so was he. Besides the graying hair, wrinkles now exploded out from her eyes in laugh lines, showing that she at least had been amused a good deal wherever she had been. But the mouth was the same, the eyes were the same, the voice, the smell, the feel of her - nothing important had changed.

Acceptance again roared through him, and he pulled her against him in another desperate hug. "Victoria! You're not dead!"

"Of course I'm not dead!" she gurgled as soon as Diego's arms had once more loosened enough for her to speak. Diego just stared at her now in delight, feeling like he would never get enough. "You know where I've been - with Ramon."

"In Mexico City?" he eagerly asked.

Victoria paused. "Oh. Well, no, not for years. In Guadalajara."

Diego was bombarded with confusion. "What? In Guadalajara?"

"Si. Ramon bought a tavern there, and I cook for him, and the children help with the customers. It's near the University."

"Why didn't you write?" he half asked, half accused, completely missing her mention of a university, which would have interested him at any other time.

Victoria took on a befuddled look. "I did write to you - twice! I always assumed that you had ignored my letters."

Diego was stunned to hear this. "I never got any letters. Do you mean you've been with Ramon and his 2 children all this time?"

"Three children," she corrected. "Juliana had one more child."

Diego was going on practically before she answered. "I didn't know any of this. I thought you were either dead, or you were in Mexico City all this time, helping Ramon's wife."

"Mama died when I was born," said a voice suddenly at his side.

It was as if the voice acted like a bucket of cold water thrown over their heads. Recalling where she was, Victoria turned towards the woman at her side, an ecstatic smile on her face. "Maria, I'd like to present the man I've talked about so often, Diego de la Vega."

Maria did a double-take of pure confusion. "You always said that Señor de la Vega was dead."

"I thought he was. But I was clearly wrong!" Victoria beamed as she turned to Diego. "This is Ramon's youngest and my niece, Maria."

Diego recognized the woman whose hand Zorro had kissed. Now he enthusiastically took it in both of his. "Victoria's niece - Buenas Dias!"

"Buenas Dias," she replied with a smile aimed at him. This woman may be almost as small as her aunt, but her slight frame hid an inner light that fairly zipped out of her. "Tell me, who was that man who rescued us? The one in the mask?"

"That was..." Diego sent a quick glance at Victoria to gauge her reaction. She was so cool that she didn't even look at him. "... Zorro," he finished with an apologetic air.

"Zorro!" Maria exclaimed, and immediately turned to Victoria. "But Aunt, you said that he rode years ago!"

This time, Victoria did sneak a glance at Diego standing beside her, though she remained outwardly calm. "Zorro can ride forever," she stoutly declared in a loud and loyal voice.

The nearby clop of hooves and the jangle of bits accompanied the arrival of the American contingent from the Los Angeles fort just then.

Victoria's rather rash statement still rang in the air as Diego noted that Captain Gillespie rode at the front of his company of men. "Um... perhaps I'd better duck out for a minute or two. My presence tends to make the captain a bit..."

"Nervous?" Victoria added in amusement, ending the phrase with a word that Diego as Zorro had often used years before.

Diego corrected, "Not 'nervous' so much as 'angry as de Soto on a bad day.' He seems to think I cause more trouble than a swarm of bees." Without saying a word, he referred to the way the captain inevitably found him cleaning up the messes left over by Zorro. Connecting him with the trouble the bandit frequently averted was only natural, but it caused many unfortunate misunderstandings. "Perhaps I'll just step aside for the moment." He looked avidly back at Victoria before he left, once again drinking in the sight of her. "But you'll stay? At the hacienda, I mean. I'll send Juan to bring the carriage back for you and your bags."

He quickly dispatched his men to the hacienda, and gave Juan the task of bringing the carriage back. Then he grabbed the reigns of his horse and led her to a small copse of trees at the side of the road just as the soldiers appeared over the nearest hill. As he watched Captain Gillespie from his post in the trees, he wryly admitted to himself that he missed the days when he could count on dealing with the friendliness of Sergeant Mendoza. Though that man had also been in the military, he had been much nicer and more familiar than these American soldiers. No matter how often he tried, Diego just couldn't warm up to the man in charge of these foreign soldiers. Captain Gillespie had always been rather reclusive to his Mexican subjects, and remained an unfamiliar commodity. Ironically, Diego almost longed for the days when de Soto had been in charge. He had at least understood de Soto.

Now the captain took statements from all the passengers, and noted which direction the outlaws had galloped away in, and sent three of his men galloping after them. Next he made arrangements with his remaining men to transport the deceased stage driver to the mission for eventual burial after his next of kin was contacted. Diego was glad for that - it would have been much harder for him to do a kinship search than the captain. He didn't have the resources the captain had.

Last, Captain Gillespie was arranging for the continued transportation of the stage passengers when Victoria commented that she and her niece would be staying with a friend who had promised to provide passage of his own. When asked who that friend was, due to the fact that he needed to know the whereabouts of all the citizens under his jurisdiction, she proudly said, "We're staying at the hacienda of Don Diego de la Vega. Do you know him?"

The man who'd translated for Diego was again acting in an official capacity, and repeated her words for the captain, whose reaction was instantaneous. "Oh, him." His lips gave an unfavorable curl. "I should have known that he would be involved in this somehow. Trouble seems to follow him around wherever he goes." Then he barked an unamused laugh. "If it wasn't for his age, I'd say he was that nuisance, Zorro. But as it is..." Gillespie's lips curled even more until he looked alarmingly like Ignacio de Soto. "If you're staying with him, you have my condolences, Ma'am." He turned away before a shocked Victoria could respond. "Baker!"

One of the soldiers stepped smartly forward. "Yes Sir!"

"Take five men back to Los Angeles and bring another stage coach for these people. Make it quick!"

Baker saluted his understanding of the order, then rushed away to carry it out. He was much more efficient - and quick - than Mendoza had ever been.

Meanwhile, the American Doctor Saunders offered his services to the passengers, treating the Americans first, the Mexicans last, but he did treat them all, which was more courtesy than they could have counted on from the other pueblo doctor, Dr. Satterfield. Prejudice was rife in the larger pueblo of Los Angeles, barely controlled by the American military. As Diego looked on from his vantage point among the trees, he ruminated that he had benefited from the two previous Alcalde's erroneous views on social status, and then on the Mexican's view of 'ignore everybody alike.' But now that he was no longer ignored, his social status within the Spanish peerage did nothing for him.

And for once, he didn't care. His entire attention was taken up with watching Victoria. He revelled in the sight of her, at last allowing his avidity to show. She was like a tonic to him, soothing all the rough places still left over from her original disappearance 25 years before. It amazed him that after all this time, he'd found her not by perseverance, but purely by accident.

It suddenly occurred to him that he didn't know why she was traveling to Los Angeles in the first place, that he didn't even know if she was married or not. The fact that she was traveling with her niece rather than her daughter indicated an unmarried state, but still Diego didn't want to assume. He could hope, and did, that she was as unattached as he was. But, he wasn't sure yet, and didn't want to make an idiot of himself by assuming anything.

But at last he decided it was enough that she was here, by his side, finally, even if she was married. He had been looking so long for her that in truth he had given up. He was sure that she was married by now, for how could all of Mexico not appreciate her beauty and inner fire as he did? She was either married, or dead.

That reminded him... Diego narrowed his eyes, recalling what she had first said to him: 'I thought you were dead.' Why on Earth had she thought he was dead?

The new stage from Los Angeles arrived, scattering his confused thoughts. The calmed horses were added to help pull this new conveyance without incidence, and all the passengers except Victoria and her niece were transferred to this new coach. Their bags and trunks were passed down from the roof of their original stage by Gillespie's soldiers and placed to the side at her direction. At last, this second stagecoach lurched forward just as the de la Vega carriage appeared over the the hill, driven by Juan and pulled by the most well trained horse in the de la Vega stable. Diego was glad that Juan had thought to hitch Thunder to the buggy. His black coat blazed in the afternoon sunlight, making it shine like a rainbow.

"Aunt Victoria, look at the horse!" Maria exclaimed in appreciation. "It reminds me of the stories of Toronado you used to tell me when I was little!"

Victoria shrewdly eyed the gelding. "Si, he does sort of remind me of Toronado."

Diego sauntered forward in time to hear this last statement. But instead of telling everyone that he should look like Toronado, as he was one of the famous horse's grandsons, he jauntily loaded Victoria's and her niece's trunks and bags onto the back of the carriage, tied his horse to the back as well, then happily assisted each lady into the buggy with a gallantry that he hadn't displayed for years. He joined them, and they were on their way in moments. His constant smile showed how thrilled he was to be back in Victoria's company, even if his voice was well modulated and controlled. But inside, he was simply bubbling with joy, positively ecstatic to have Victoria home at last.