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"Cassandra?" Godric appeared in the doorway, having been drawn on awakening from the back of the house to the library by the sound of her gentle crying. "What happened? What are you... oh." He gently closed the book and crouched next to her. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"The fall of my city, my family... my whole world and it's a fucking bedtime story." She kicked the desk and swore again, rubbing her bruised foot. "Damn it!"

With a sigh, Godric took her foot and gently pulled her boot off, his cool hands tickling her skin slightly. "But we all remember... would this not please them?"

Cassandra snorted, "Ha. Achilles maybe. My mother too I suppose but father? Hector? Even precious, stupid Paris with his helpless loves? They wanted to live. Watch their children and grandchildren grow up." She wiped angrily at her eyes. "They called my brother Hector, 'tamer of horses'... he kept the best stables in the world. He wanted to be remembered for his stables, for the great deeds of his sons... not because the mighty Achilles abused his body in front of my aunt and father!"

"There is no justice in history, Cassandra. Wherever your brother is now, I am confident he has his horses... and that he would be very sad to see you so angry with the world." He let go of her foot and reached up to tuck a lock of her dark hair behind her ear.

"Hector would have liked you..." She said softly,dabbing the last moisture from her eyes. "He was a hopeless optimist too."

"Quite often, princess, a man will wear a mask of optimism... if it will make a beautiful woman smile for him." She blushed a shy, embarrassed red and looked down at her lap, unable to form a coherent thought, let alone a pithy reply. Godric smiled and stood, kissing the top of her head on the way up.

"Are all grain farmer's son's such flatterers?"

"Two thousand years of experience can teach the lowliest pig farmer to say the right thing." He flashed her a boyish grin, and for a moment she imagined that he might once have been an impish, roguish boy. "Trial and error is a powerful thing. You just came along after the error part of the learning process." He grinned again as she rewarded him with a girlish giggle.

"I have to make an appearance at Fangtasia before Pamela rebels and burns the place down out of spite." Eric said gruffly from the doorway.

"Fangtasia?" Cassandra giggled again. "I like that!"

Eric spared her a quick grin, and then looked to Godric. "Will you be coming in as well? I'm afraid I do not keep true blood in the house..."

"Would you care to accompany me?" Godric asked Cassandra differentially. "I'm sure Eric has an empty kitchen as well, we will need to stock it for you."

"Will there be a lot of people there...?"

"Fangtasia is not a large nightclub, but by its nature it feels quite... cramped. It is the atmosphere the humans expect." Eric explained. "There are offices in the back however, should you need them."

"I will be with you," Godric told her with an encouraging smile. "We can explore this den of inequity together."

"Joy..."

"I suggest you find something dark, and modest to wear." Eric told her. "Being in Godric's company will keep most everyone at bay, but it might be best, your first night out, to draw as little attention to yourself as possible."

"I've never really understood 'modest' dress. We went largely naked most of the time at home." She slid her foot back into her boot and stood.

"I wouldn't suggest going naked to Fangtasia, little sister." Eric grinned, filthy and lecherous at her, but strangely she could see his playfulness and found it reassuring. "Even Godric might have difficulty scaring off potential suitors."

She blushed again, a process both vampires found amusing and fascinating, having long lost the ability to do it themselves. "Could I wear my dress?" She asked. For some reason she had taken to the plain white linen dress the convent had given her. Something about it made her feel invisible.

Godric opened his mouth to say no but Eric cut him off. "That would be fine. But leave the cloak at home, wear a coat instead. You will look too timid to be a vampire and not brazen enough to attract anyone's interest. Godric's presence should do the rest."

She smiled gratefully at him and ducked past them both to the bedroom which would be hers where the mountain of clothes Sookie had forced her to buy were still in the store's bags piled high on the bed.

"I would rather she not use that dress as a shield." Godric said carefully.

"I would have thought you would rather she be as shielded as possible." Eric lent back against the doorjamb and Godric sat on the desk looking at him thoughtfully. "She isn't just a traumatized girl, Godric... Her fears are not the phantoms of her mind. They are real. It would be reckless of us to school her otherwise. She has survived three thousand years, she knows how to get by."

"I know..." Godric dropped his gaze and, as sometimes happened, adopted an almost submissive posture. One that suited his looks rather than his age. "I suppose I wish that by my will alone I could make things different."

"Don't we all?" Over the centuries, Eric had grown used to the strange changes that could come over his maker at random. He'd been honest with him, the night he'd taken his human life and given him this new one. Father, brother... child. The only other vampire that Eric knew who was as physically young, was the recently made Jessica, and she hadn't had time to mature yet. Perhaps, because of his physical age, Godric really was capable of being all three. He certainly played all roles equally well, sometimes when he seemed to need it... other times when it was what Eric needed. "She affects you a great deal..."

"For a long time now... hundreds of years, if I'm honest, I have felt as if I were an old man, trapped forever in a young man's body. My spirit has been stooped and slow, heavy with age and it seemed obscene to me that my body did not fit my mind." He looked up and his eyes were sparking again, as Eric remembered they had for the first hundred years. "Her smile makes me feel that I fit again inside my skin. The childhood she remembers is the same as mine, and like me, her age does not match her face..."

"She is a singular woman," Eric admitted, "and I have not seen your face so animated in many life times. Consider this," he paused carefully and then plunged on. "We know of no way to lift her curse. What she is, she is likely to be long after both you and I have gone to dust. And if you could cure her... she would be mortal, like the rest of them. Would you turn her to have her with you forever?"

"I have thought of all these things..." Godric conceded softly. "When she brought me down from the roof, she made me say out loud that I believed her, that I would live..." He looked at Eric sadly, "I think she thought that changing something might break her curse. She broke down, not because of the shock, but the horror that it didn't work..."

Eric was nodding slowly. He considered that on the night he was born, Cassandra had already been alone for two thousand years. All that time to cling to a hope which turned out to be false... there would be no freedom for her, even if she did somehow create her utopia. A thousand years of watching progress and learning new ways, but in his heart Eric was still a howling north man. A Viking, and ancient legends of heroism and bravery still spoke strongly to his soul. His shoulders slumped slightly in defeat and he put a hand on his maker's shoulder. "We do what we must, and what we can... there isn't anything else."

With a grateful smile, Godric nodded and clapped Eric once on the shoulder in return. "Thank you."

"You always knew exactly what I would do." Eric said in confident amusement.

"I had hopes."

"Hmmph," Eric grunted, standing back and gesturing to the doorway. "Try to look menacing tonight. I want no disturbances. Once your identity has been made known it will no longer matter, but for now you should look the part."

"As you wish." Godric looked down at his slightly oversized fawn colored jumper and simple dark trousers... he had to admit he looked more like a S.N.A.G than a vampire.

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Cassandra Stood in front of a full length mirror, in an endless feedback loop of watching herself watching herself. The long black coat Sookie had picked out for her sat well over her dress, or at least she thought it did. The wildly fluctuating trends of fashion had long since gotten away from her, she wasn't even sure what was attractive anymore. With one hand she pulled her hair back and tried holding it up as though in a ponytail and looked at herself in the mirror.

"I can understand the desire to have it out of the way," Godric said from the doorway making her jump. He gave her an apologetic smile before continuing, "But I think it looks beautiful down."

She looked back at the mirror and dropped her hair, letting it fall however it pleased. "I cut it myself for a long time... to keep it out of the way. I don't remember when I gave up on that. There is so much of it now!"

"I believe it suits you well. Are you almost ready? Eric is... concerned for the well-being of his establishment. His child Pamela does not enjoy being in charge."

"She wont know, will she?" She spun and looked at him slightly wild eyed, though it was apparent to him that she was trying very hard to control herself.

"She will not. You are my companion, that is all she needs to know."

"I wish Sookie were coming," She said, turning back towards the mirror to hide her fear. "I can't tell you anything without her once we leave the house."

"Then I will have to give you my undivided attention." His smile was encouraging and tender, as it had always been before, when she was just little sister and everything had been, after a fashion, blissfully normal. "We will work this out, Cassandra. In the beginning it will be difficult, but we have time. More than either of us wanted, I think, but it would be wasteful not to use it to its best advantage."

"Sweet words for a man who wanted to kill himself two nights ago." She couldn't look at him and in truth he couldn't blame her, though her tone had stung him sharply. "Do you think I haven't tried...?" The question came out in a whisper as she met her own eyes in the mirror again. "When the usual means failed turn the trick, I started getting creative. I can be very creative when the mood takes me. Guns, knives, poisons... all they did was hurt. In China I thought their explosive powder might be my way out... I even made my way to Nevada for the testing of the Atomic Bomb..."

"But... surely there would be nothing left to heal..." Godric said softly.

Cassandra shrugged "I've often thought of going back to look. See if I could find some charred fragment of myself. Never got around to it I guess." She turned to face him, hands on her hips. "As near as I can tell, if I destroy my body entirely, I wake up six weeks later on the hillside at Hisarlik, right about where my bedroom would have been... Took me ages to work that one out. The first time I managed it the city was already long gone."

"You just reappear there?"

"I wake up there. No one's ever been around to let me know how I got there. Who knows. Maybe I spin into existence out of nothing. Maybe ants bring all my scattered atoms together like Horus and then lightning shocks me back to life. Whatever happens, it takes about six weeks and then I'm naked and alone in middle of nowhere. As you can imagine, I've given up trying to destroy myself, it just makes life harder."

Godric looked at her helplessly before holding his hands up in surrender. "Tell me what you want me to do."

"Just... be like everyone else! Hate me, stone me, drain me and dump me on the side of the road, only don't pretend that you'll stay!" She stormed over and beat at him ineffectually with her fists. "Don't... don't just stand there with your big stupid eyes and sad stupid smile and act like we're in this together! There is no together, not when you can get out anytime you like and I'll go right back to being as I was! God, you sadist, why are you doing this to me?"

One cold, strong hand closed around both her wrists and pulled her away, and Cassandra found herself being measured up by a stony faced Eric. He glared at her hard for a moment, her hysterical crying affecting him not at all, before slapping her sharply across the face. Godric went to object, but Eric shook the princess and snarled down at her. "Do you hate him?"

"Who...?"

"The one who did this to you. Do you hate him?"

"... yes!" She hissed and the malevolence in her eyes chilled Godric for a moment.

"Then hurt him." Eric shook her once more, his eyes boring into her face. "Thwart him. Somewhere, in a stinking mire of his own self-congratulation he wallows in his victory over you. He's made you suffer, he's made you hateful, he has warped the woman who refused him... The power of the torturer is in the pain. So much that you can't open the unlocked door he taunts you with. Do not let the pain make you fearful, little sister... let it make you determined. Make him suffer."