A/N: Short chapter. Next chapter should be up in the next few days though.

Disclaimer: I own nothing...except Dara. She's all mine.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The dream came back that night.

Sitting up in her bed, hands pressed over her eyes, Dara fought down the lingering fear that ate away at her stomach. Always the same dream, night after night—running so hard and fast that her lungs burned from the effort, winding her way through the twisting tunnels that surrounded the Shadow Gallery, pushing herself harder, needing to find him, desperate to reach him, panic squeezing icy fingers around her heart—and always the same sick dread sitting like an anvil on her chest when she finally woke.

She had walked out of the Gallery nearly two and a half months past...and she'd barely had a single night of uninterrupted sleep since.

Feeling the familiar claustrophobia closing in around her, she threw back the sheets and bolted from the bed, her feet treading the now too familiar path from her room to the French doors that opened up onto the terrace. She closed them quietly behind her and turned toward the sea, drawn toward the sound of the waves crashing against the rocky coastline.

"Can't sleep again?"

Whipping around with a surprised screech, Dara stared wide eyed at Caro, sitting cross legged on a lounge chair. "Bloody hell, you scared me! What're you doing up?"

The older woman only smiled serenely. "Waiting for you actually. I know I said I would leave well enough alone for now, but I can't just stand by and watch you eat yourself alive from the inside out."

"It's just a little insomnia," Dara said dismissively. "Really...don't concern yourself."

The girl was stubborn. But that didn't bother Caro...she was even more stubborn. She was also finally ready to forgo the niceties and get straight to the point. "You're in love with him."

Whatever she had expected, it was not the coolly collected tilt of Dara's head or the perfect calm in her expression. "Course I am. Thought you'd figured that out weeks ago."

Caro arched a brow at the girl, considering. "Oh, I did. I just didn't think you knew that you were."

Dara chuckled darkly, crossing her arms over her chest. "Believe me, it's something I've been painfully aware of for a very long time now. It's just not something that I particularly wanted to dwell on the past few weeks."

"Why not?"

Frowning, Dara regarded the other woman in confusion. "You mean you don't know?"

Caro shook her head. "How could I?"

"Well, you knew everything else about me…why not this one too?"

"I do know all the available details on your more public activities over the past year," Caro admitted, "but I certainly don't know everything about you. And I certainly don't know anything about the details of your relationship with V." She paused, bit her lip, considered, then shrugged. "Course…that's not for lack of trying, I will admit. But he's hidden himself better than I ever would have expected."

"You have no idea," Dara sighed, then sniffed and ran a hand over her eyes. "But I suppose I can't blame you for being curious. I know I sure as hell would be if the situation were reversed."

Leaning over to pat the chair beside her, Caro smiled. "Well then, why not come on over and have a sit down? Like I said, I'm a brilliant listener."

"You're really not gonna let this go, are you?"

Caro grinned. "Not bloody likely."

"In that case..." Dara padded across the stones, plopping herself down next to Caro resignedly. "Where should I start?"

"How about at the beginning—how did you meet him?"

A sigh. "If I start at the beginning, it's gonna be a very long story," Dara warned.

Caro shrugged. "Fine by me. I've got nothing better to do tonight—and sleep is overrated if you ask me."

So Dara told her. She told her virtually everything, amazed at how good it felt to finally be able to talk to someone about it—about him. Caro, as it turned out, had not lied—she was a good listener. She didn't interrupt with constant questions, only listened. And it was only when Dara came to the end of the tale—stumbling through an account of their last evening together and the morning after—that Caro began to ask questions.

"Right then, bear with me for a minute while I work this out—you tell him you love him, he says he doesn't love you, then he kicks you out..." a frown, "...did he give a reason for wanting you to go?"

Dara nodded, her eyes cast downward, tracing cracks in the stone beneath her chair. "He said I was a distraction."

Caro's eyebrow lifted. "That doesn't make a bit of sense. If he didn't care about you more than he liked, how could you be a distraction?"

A good question, and one that Dara had asked herself many times over the past weeks. The two months away from him had allowed her to view what had occurred with new eyes, the distance granting her perspective that she hadn't had before. She had come to several conclusions during those long nights spent staring at the sea and contemplating life in general and a certain masked man in particular.

"Well that's simple enough, isn't it?" she said quietly. "He lied. Always knew he cared about me, even there at the end. But now...looking back...yeah," she shifted her gaze upwards, drinking in the stars, "he loves me."

Caro nodded. "Based on what you've told me, I would have to agree. But what made you realize the truth?"

She had been surprisingly candid with her tale, but decided that in this case, discretion was the better part of valor. Her reasons all lay firmly within those moments that she had specifically chosen not to include in her story—because some things were simply too personal to be shared. "Lots of things really," she said evasively. "Problem is though—it doesn't matter that he does. He'll never actually say it and he'll certainly never do anything about it. We'll never be anything but a possibility, because he'll never allow us the chance to be anything more."

That eyebrow arched again. "That was probably the most defeatist speech I've ever heard in my life. And just why does he get to make all the decisions, might I ask? Don't you have any say in this at all?"

Dara shrgged. "I'm not being defeatist, Caro, I'm being sensible. I can't force him into anything—he's gotta want it as much as I do. If I try too hard…" She stopped, dropping her head against the back of the chair and watching the blinking lights of a plane as it passed high overhead. "I don't wanna push him any further away than he already is."

"Dara...he's in England—you're in Greece. He sent you packing and it looks like neither of you has any intention of ever seeing the other again. How much farther away could he possibly get?"

It was true...but...

"You're scared, aren't you? You're scared to even try."

Dara's chin jerked up. "I'm not..."

"Yes, you are," Caro cut in, and shook her head. "You're scared that if you try, you'll fail. But Dara, you're going to hate yourself if you don't take the risk. Not knowing what could've been if you'd only tried—the possibility that you could have had something wonderful if only you'd made the effort—it'll eat away at you as the years go by. Trust me, luv...there's nothing more powerful or more painful than regret for the things you didn't do or say. Those are the regrets that haunt you till the day you die."

For a long time, the only sound was the crashing of the waves. Caro kept her eyes on Dara, who kept her eyes on the star-strewn sky above. Finally, the younger woman let out a long, deep sigh.

"Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage which we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden," Dara quoted, her eyes still trained upward.

"A quote?"

A nod. "T. S. Eliot."

"Wise man."

"Maybe." Dara lifted her head, eyes meeting Caro's. "The best I can do," she said at length, "is promise that I'll consider going back—because that's what I know you're getting at. But if I do...it's gonna have to wait till after the Fifth. It'd be pointless to go before. But after it's all done—once the Fifth has come and gone—then...then maybe I'd have a chance of getting through to him."

"Like I said," Caro reached out and took one of Dara's hands between both of hers, "you'll never know 'til you try. And when you go back, I'll keep my fingers crossed that you find your rose garden."

Dara didn't miss Caro's choice of words—or the inflection she placed on them. "If I go back," she retorted in kind, "I won't settle for anything less."