Night had come again except this time he didn't have to sneak in and watch her sleep. She lay on him within her bed, sound asleep as he stroked her hair as she lay her head on his bare chest, one arm laid across his chest the other down his side.

Even now he continued to punish himself for thinking that she wouldn't accept him, that she would shudder at the sight of his scars. Instead she had tenderly traced the smooth streaks of flesh as she fell to sleep in his arms, soothed by his presence.

All these years he had hated living a lie, watching her as she went through life thinking he had gone. So many times he had wanted to reach out to her from the dark, yet his insecurities tore into him pulling him back. Plus there was the guilt that gnawed at him, the blood that stained his hands. It had happened when he returned to Dali a couple of years after the fire and when Lani was elsewhere following a bounty.

He couldn't resist the temptation of revenge when he saw them there so smug and happy. A red haze had come over him and when it lifted the two of them were pinned to the wall by his bolts, eyes wide and dull with fear and death, blood trickling and pooling beneath them. He couldn't remember if Lani ever got the news of her parents deaths, although he knew she hated them as much as he did, but guilt still took because they were still her parents and he had murdered them.

Cain decided to stop dwelling on the past as Lani nuzzled into him in her sleep murmuring softly. Back then it hadn't been like this what with her parents denying them every chance to be together, trying to call it puppy love just because they were teens. They weren't children, even when they was they were made to work the fields. In Dali fifteen years of age was pretty much adulthood. He had boiled inside having to keep his distance during the day, hiding in the dark for secret trysts at night. But now six years later they were free to do what they wanted without someone watching them radiating distrust.

Cain soon drifted to sleep, his hand running down Lani's back rumpling her nightdress as her warm breaths tickled his chest. It was then as he fell from deep sleep into light sleep that the dream struck.

Voices, angry and low hissing in his ears as the argument continued below. For years it had been the same, usually over land or harvest, but now he was older and understood he knew it was all jealousy. We had it and they wanted it except they had something he wanted. They had been neighbours for as long as he could remember and he'd grown up with Lani, watching her work in the shop whilst he slaved in the fields pulling ploughs and in Autumn, harvesting with a sickle and trowel. Her parents' animosity to his family kept him from having more than a passing acquaintance with her but as he watched her blossom into a beautiful young woman he became infatuated with her and soon found she felt the same.

The night had been theirs, slipping out of his window to meet her behind the windmill where they lay next to each other holding hands and looking at the stars whispering secrets to each other.

Then came an awakening in the late night to yells and screams of horror, to the pain of searing heat and a throbbing in his arm. He had yelped in agony as the flames licked up through the floor which was now blackened and full of holes. He rolled off his bed as the burning timber collapsed around him the floor creaking ominously.

Smoke filled his eyes and throat burning and choking, his eyes watering as he stumbled in the room. The screams died away as the heat and crackling intensified. He fell back against the wall and fumbled with his good arm for the window.

He smashed the glass with his fist, blood trickling as small shards stuck In his skin, smoke pluming out of the hole as the extra oxygen caused the flames to enlarge.

He climbed out the window coughing and spluttering crawling over the dry blazing thatch roof that sagged under his feet. He fell from the edge landing on his knees, wincing in pain as the joints clicked and agony flared in his right shoulder as he tried pushing himself up.

He dragged himself to the well aware of the silhouettes around his burning house, not noticing as he dunked his arm into the cold water, snarling at the blistering of his arm and then felt the soothing numbness. He looked up from the well, his face blackened by soot as he could hear Lani screaming at his blazing house. He wanted to run over to her but a look in her parents' eyes made his blood chill. Realisation crystallised in his mind, his parents had been murdered, burned alive, and someone tried to kill him and he had a damn good idea who it was, and yet the others just stood and watched.

He broke into the General Store stealing cloth which he used to bandage his burnt arm and the rest he fashioned into a cloak as he escaped Dali under the cover of darkness, the flames towering and blazing behind him.

A guard at South Gate took him in for a while as a guard for a worker known as Mary. But that all changed as Lani came through the Gate running away from Dali too but she never saw him through the slot in the wall of the Guard hut. He could see the pain she was in and with the few belongings he had followed her to Treno where she finally settled.

To his surprise she became a bounty hunter and so to keep near her so did he. Luckily the cloak he wore gave him the perfect image and mystery and he could only swell with pride as he heard of her successes.

A few years passed and it was during a mission in Lindblum that he came across that imposing blue skinned, red headed figure. It was then he was challenged to a duel, one that ended in a draw with tem both standing in a sweaty, huffing face-off. It was then he had suggested to Red that he took up a security job in Treno which he only agreed to because he was searching for people to test his skill with. Strange how simple meetings can change the Fate of a person.

And then Lani did a job for the Queen and she disappeared and he became consumed by worry and dread until he learned where she now lived.

Cain awoke with a start, gasping as he looked around wildly as his heart purred frantically. He wound down slowly as he realised he was still in bed with her and not dying as he thought, what with his life flashing before his eyes in his dream. It was as he held her still dreaming peacefully that he let go of his past finally to concentrate on his future with her.