Disclaimer: still not mine…sigh.

A/N: Sorry this took so long, but I was finally inspired to return.

She looked blankly at the screen, reading and re-reading the words they'd written together. She could hardly remember writing them, but she remembered him. How close he'd been and the way he smelled, the way he smiled, the way he laughed. If she closed her eyes she could still see him in front of her; awkward smile and shy laugh. She held on to that, because the next thing she remembered was coming to at the bottom his stairs, bruised and battered.

She shuddered and slammed to top of her computer down, standing quickly and pacing once across the length of her living room before moving to the kitchen. She rummaged through the fridge and pulled out a beer.

She twisted off the cap of the brown glass bottle and took a long drink from it. She was a woman trapped by memories; by haunting nightmares that held her with their long bony fingers and dragged her back to the times when the smell of coppery blood and death filled her nose.

How had her life fallen apart so quickly? She had been raised in such a nice home; the kind of sitcoms and day time television. Where the mom stayed home and the dad worked a good solid office job. She was the middle of three children, with an older brother and a younger sister; Jacob and Melanie. Her life had been picture perfect…on the outside.

It was as if the vale of childhood had protected her from the truth about her life. The innocence of a minor had shielded her from knowing about her father's affairs, and her mother's self-destructive behaviour. It seemed as if for the children's sake they had all tried to stay sane.

Then she became an adult and nobody hid anymore. She became privy to the private horrors of her seeing her father in a bar with another man. She witnessed her mother's addiction to prescription drugs overtake her and even put her in the hospital. She saw the reality that her parent's had managed to hide from her.

Jacob just shook his head. He'd seen it from the time he was young, younger than her. He told her, when she was an adult, that he'd tried so hard to protect her and her sister from the evil in their family; because if he could give them the perfect life then they would be better off.

So Cassandra took Melanie to spend the summer with her in her new apartment in down town New York. She'd moved in with her boyfriend of three years and they were starting a life they hoped would be as beautiful on the inside as it could be seen on the outside.

But it seemed she was destined for the terrible life of a V.C Andrews novel. The day she came home to her apartment and smelled the bitter smell of blood around her. When she'd followed the trail from the living room through the kitchen to the back bedroom where she saw her.

Melanie lay on the floor near the bed, a pool of blood around her, and her eyes open in death. She'd run to her sister's side trying desperately to wake her, refusing to believe that she'd lost someone so close to her. She'd only wanted to protect the young girl from her family.

When she'd run to get the phone, to call for help, she saw her boyfriend. Kris was over six feet tall, more than two hundred pounds and the kind of man that had always seemed to be protecting. Now, with a gun in his hand he looked like the terrifying monster that some of her friends had once claimed he'd become.

She didn't remember much, except running past him towards the kitchen phone. She heard the gun go off clearly in her mind and then it was black.

She found out later that her boyfriend had claimed self defence because he thought she'd killed her sister. But because nothing could be proven on that side and because she'd almost bled to death in hospital, she somehow managed to escape spending her life in prison.

The looks of passer-byers who hardly knew her but had heard her tale were punishment enough though. Not a day went by where she didn't see some person who recognized her because of her awful crime.

So she'd tried to start over in Tashmore Lake. And she thought she had. She thought that the kind man who could understand her story and offered to help her write a new book would be someone she could trust. Leave it to her to meet up with a crazy person.

She threw the bottle across her kitchen and it shattered on impact with the wooden wall.

"Now look what you did," said the voice in the back of her head. She sank to the floor, back against the wall, pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms tightly around them. She buried her face in her knees, and cried.

Mort's fist collided with the wall, which did nothing but cause him untold amounts of pain. Other than that it did nothing to relieve his stress or his frustration.

What had he done? How could he let Shooter take over like that, and hurt the one person he'd been able to get close to in months? He'd been so good lately, and he'd almost thought that Shooter might be gone, under control and out of mind. Literally. But somehow the evil southern bastard had wormed back in and caused pain once again.

"How 'bout this," he said to the empty room, "I'll write my life story all over again. About the man who loved the woman, only to find her with someone else, then becomes a recluse who sleeps too much. Then he's confronted by a figment of his imagination that kills his dog, his lawyer and his friend before finally murdering his wife and her fiancé. Followed by more months of solitude and the brilliant meeting with a beautiful girl; who he tries to kill!"

"You shouldn't talk to yourself," said his reflection from the sofa. "I might just be inclined to talk back."

"I do not need you around here too," snapped Mort at his doppelganger.

"Sure you do. After all, you can't have Shooter around here and not me."

"Why? Because you're the all knowing voice of logic and reason that directs me away from murder and sinking into my own deranged fantasies?"

"No. Because without me you can't convince yourself you're sane."

"That's rich. I need to hallucinate to convince myself I'm not going crazy."

"Look, you can listen to Shooter or you can listen to me. Listening to me has the distinct advantage of not ending up with you killing Ms. Cassandra."

"That's a plus in my books. Continue."

"So now you want to talk to me?"

"It beats talking to myself…forget the irony of that."

"Gladly. Can I suggest initiating one of your numerous ways of apologising, and perhaps proving to her you really want to know what's going on and that you don't want to kill her?"

"What good will that do? She already knows I'm mental."

"You could see a doctor."

"You're just the visualization of my stupid ideas aren't you?"

"We're brainstorming."

"I'm having a conversation with myself."

"True. Now, how about this; go tell her everything. Tell her that if someone else knows, then maybe you can get through this. If she trusts you, then she can help you. She's been hurt before, and she needs someone who understands. Tell her that, tell her you want to help her through her problems. Together you can get back on track; live your old lives."

"That's not a bad idea. It's not the best I'm sure, but it's not bad."

"Go try it out before she runs off and you loose her for good. Shooter may not like her, but he'd prefer you be a loner forever. I'm quite intent that we find someone to make the place less lonely."

"That fact that my subconscious can't decide what's best for me gives me little hope for the future of the three of us."

"Ah, you need to stop thinking of Shooter as one of us, and then maybe he'll go away."

Mort took a deep breath and looked at his reflection, who was properly back in the mirror.

"You make a good point, which is scary and ultimately disconcerting. I'm going to put your brilliance into affect, but on the condition that you stay in the mirror from now on. Okay?"

He wasn't sure, but he thought his reflection nodded. He shook his head and started out across the lake to see Cassandra.