A/N: Sorry it's been so long since I've updated. I attempted to finish my FMA and Razia's Shadow fanfic before I dove back into this one, but I find I can't stay away forever. Hopefully all of my Vengeance fans are not hating me and enjoying the new story. :D

For everybody who hasn't read Vengeance is Written in Blood... go read it first. For everyone who has, I want to mention that I've thought of a different- and way better- ending for it. I'll reveal it later, but I'm not going to publish the rough/final copy anywhere online. Sorry!

Finally, I really want to apologize if all this description of slaves and life in the south offends anybody. Anything racial that my characters blab about does not, in any way, reflect my personal views. I'm just doing what I can to make this part of Taylor's life historically accurate, and while this point in time was awful for blacks, note the progress made from then compared to now. (note black Prez, yea). Sure, there's still racism in places and stereotypes are really out of hand, but this country can only grow from the past toward total equality for race, gender, religion and nationality, and we all play a crucial part in that! 'nuff said.

(If anybody noticed, I'm uber passionate about freedom/equality of religion. I don't have time for racist bullshit when a good chunk of Christians in this country are being hypocrites and most of the population thinks 'Muslim' and 'terrorist' are interchangeable terms. /They are not/. )

Book One
Chapter Two
A recollection of the past between 1850-1855
The Unacceptable Rule

"I followed the bright green blur as she moved quickly and quietly through the maze of hedges in the garden on the east side of the house, and onward down the hill to the slave's housing. Compared to the fancy Palladian architecture of the main home- its tall, brick-red walls were well crafted and an elegant facade of white columns caught the essence of southern plantation owners- the housing for the slaves was comparable to an urban city slum. The Negros lived in small, single-room wooden constructed sheds that were bitten with termites and crowded like a chicken coop. Five beds to a house, and perhaps double the amount of beds was the amount of Negros that lived in a single home. They were constantly breeding, which my father saw as no consequence- for what is better than a stock of cattle than a fertile stock of cattle? Because of their multiplication, houses would be even more crowded than speculated. But what did it matter to us, the white, slave-owning family who lived in a mansion higher on the hill? Absolutely nothing, except for dear Carolyn.

"I followed her, I later realized, out of curiosity more than protection. I knew her goal was to make contact with the slaves, perhaps introduce herself even though they all knew of her and called her 'Miss Carolyn, Miss Halen.' I wondered, why did she have such an avid interest in those breathing chattel? I noticed, when I'd given her the tour of their housing a few days earlier, how she looked at them with those bright, hazel-green eyes; awe and enthusiasm beamed from her whenever she looked at the Negros, like they were a wonder worthy to behold.

"The young sister I treasured was barely seen in the first rays of dawn as the sun rose in the east as I followed. Her black hair blended perfectly into the surrounding shadows, though her glowing white skin and green dress gave no aid to her stealth. She approached the closest of the slave shacks, the one most in the open and nearest to the main house just in case the visit did go awry and she needed to flee.

"I resisted the urge to walk up and scold her on the spot, but my curiosity flared over my better judgment. I watched in the shadows of a bush as she knocked carefully on the door. The slave's work day would begin as soon as the sun allowed. An overseer hired by my father would have been coming to herd the Negroes into the field in the next half hour or so.

"The door opened.

"Carolyn seemed to stiffen as a gasp of surprise came from the mouth of the Negro mother who opened the door. Her skin was dark, her body plump and hard with the effects of years of physical labor. I knew that particular slave was a mother to several children that were grown or growing on our plantation. She addressed young Carolyn as politely as she could while she looked around nervously to see if she were being tested. Indeed, if my father had been in my place in those bushes, he would have stormed out and punished both Carolyn and the slave, probably for no apparent reason other than being the one to answer the door. But I was not my father, and my curiosity was not yet satisfied. What did Carolyn want with these things?

"The Negro asked Carolyn if she could assist her with anything, a standard question. At first, I thought my ears deceived me at her reply when she said, 'May I play with some of them my age?'

"My baby sister, family to the owners of the woman she spoke to, asked permission if she could play with the woman's children. Taken aback, I only watched the woman look around again with unsureness and then at Carolyn's young, begging face framed by black curls. I could only imagine the amount of sparkle in her hazel eyes, and Carolyn's charm seemed to work as the Negro nodded and disappeared within the shack to fetch two children that were the same height as Carolyn. The Negro introduced the two children, both dark of skin and full of some fear and unsureness. I could feel their unease from standing so close to my sister, white daughter of the Master who would surely beat them if they were found socializing with my sister freely as Carolyn demanded.

" 'Chase me!' Carolyn commanded. She enjoyed playing a game of cat and mouse, mostly because she was confident in her victory. The two children and their mother looked horrified as Carolyn darted away with playfulness. Social conventions at the time labeled Carolyn's actions so unseemly, so unheard of..."

"I think I understand," Allison interrupted.

Taylor blinked. Her voice broke him out of his deep and detailed recollection. "No, I don't think you understand completely. Even after slaves will be emancipated in the south, respect for them from the whites won't increase. In some places, respect still hasn't increased to this day. It was against the unwritten rules to talk to a white woman if one was a black male after emancipation, and even though the U.S. Constitution gave blacks the vote after the Civil War, most who lived in the south didn't vote because they lived in fear of what would happen to them if they exercised their rights. Radical organizations like the KKK could be thanked for that. If something as simple as conversation was taboo, having a playmate and everything Carolyn did was extraordinarily wrong."

"Are you a racist, Taylor?" Allison finally couldn't help but ask.

Taylor seemed more bothered by the question than any before. "Do you want to hear the rest or not?"

The listener nodded.

"Good. So, Carolyn ended up playing one round of chase and one round of hide-and-seek with those two slave boys. Their mother was both horrified yet grateful at the scene of her two children experiencing a game of equal respect. I suppose looking back, she dreamed of equal respect for whites and blacks, but I had not noticed it then.

"As the dawn became more prominent and the sun peeked over the horizon, the slave mother's apprehension finally took hold and she feared what would happen if her boys were caught playing with someone as highly ranked on the social ladder than Carolyn. The mother suggested Carolyn go back to the main home so the boys could prepare for the day, even though young slaves didn't work in the fields until they were older, but Carolyn seemed very pleased that she was able to have found a couple playmates so close to home. Her visit had been a success, I presumed, as a sure happiness radiated from her smile. I heard her say, 'Don't worry, I won't tell anyone,' to the mother, who held a look similar to mine. She was questioning whether Carolyn really knew what sort of rules she was breaking by coming here and wanting to play with black slaves. By her comment and the comprehension in her eyes, I knew she understood everything about the social conventions well, the only thing she didn't understand was the reason why the social barriers were in place, and after that visit to the slave housing, she would question me about it often.

"I waited until Carolyn disappeared over the hill leading back to the house before I moved from my hiding place. I had to run as I saw the overseer coming in on horseback.

"Later in the day, around brunch, I sat alone in the dining room of our home when young Carolyn entered and joined me for a meal. Travis and Trevor already excused themselves, and I had a feeling that young Carolyn waited for them to disappear before she approached. She greeted me brightly, since I was her favorite brother, and I tried hard not to let any recognition of her misguided actions from earlier reach my features. I felt the need to address the issue and correct her, to tell her kindly of her mistake before, God forbid, Trevor find out what she had done.

"But six-year-old Carolyn held a questioning look on her face as she crawled into the large wooden chair and sat on her knees with her elbows on the polished table; she exerted very improper table etiquette for a lady of her standard by doing this, and I felt certain she did it on purpose. She set her chin in her cute, tiny hands and tilted her head so that her black curls shifted around her little fingers.

" 'Taylor, how come Millie isn't allowed to go to dinner parties at Mr. Duncan's plantation? She's a pretty lady, but she isn't allowed to dress up like I do and talk to Mr. Duncan as I talk to him.'

"I discovered two things about Carolyn as she asked me this question. She proved to me that she was aware of the social differences between whites and slaves, but she did not understand why they were in place, or more importantly, she did not seem to accept these social customs. Her tone was one of distaste, like treating Millie the house slave less than a human with rights like whites had was wrong. At the time, it wasn't that I thought it was wrong to treat Millie the house slave as a slave, it was just a social custom that had always been in place since my birth. Blacks were property, whites were on a higher level. It had been that way since my father's birth and his father's birth.

"In response to Carolyn's question, I told her something like 'that's just the way it is,' because truly, there wasn't any other reason.

"Carolyn happened to be the first of few in the south who held this new thought that slaves were not lesser just because their skin was a different color.

"Every Sunday after that brunch, on the ten mile walk to church, Carolyn and I would catch glimpse of the lower class whites who lived without slaves, mostly surviving off subsistence farming. Historians today, and people back then, considered those lower-class whites backward, or 'poor white trash' if you want to use slang. Back then, a large percentage of whites in the south owned no more than a handful of slaves or none at all. The contemporary image of America's antebellum south people have today is of the large plantations with many slaves picking cotton, but in reality, only the aristocracy owned enough slaves to support a plantation. And the aristocracy, only a tiny part of the entire population, controlled most politics and government in the south. Startling, really. Anyway, whenever Carolyn and I passed the non-slave owning whites on the way to Sunday service, she made startling comparisons between those whites to the slaves, like note how they were usually not literate, just like blacks, and worked their entire life on a farm to survive, just like our slaves. The girl was only six and already unveiling the social flaws in the white supremacy belief. Those backward, illiterate whites, even though they were backward and illiterate and actually no higher than slaves on a biological scale, were still considered to be higher on the social ladder by society just because they were white. Carolyn didn't see skin colors, however.

"In some strange and eerie way, she made me start to question the social rules as well.

"In all my thirteen years of life, I'd never once bothered to question why things operated the way they did. Strange that a six-year-old should trigger such questioning in a person's morals."

"It was not long after Carolyn began expressing her borderline-abolitionist views to me that our father returned from the Mexican War after the annexation of Texas five years prior. He retired in December of 1849 and returned home permanently the following January, but his absence for the five years really took a toll on the Halen family.

"My two older brothers were the caretakers of the home in my father's absence, but Trevor was still only sixteen when our father left, Travis fourteen, and they stood at twenty-one and nineteen when the man returned. Leaving all that responsibility in the hands of a couple teenagers caused Trevor deep paranoia toward slave riots and trust issues with anybody outside the family, while Travis learned that he was sick and tired of life in the south (mostly realized from the tight leash the eldest brother kept everybody on while he was the man of the house).

"When our father returned, it should have been a relief and a joy. What we met when we welcomed our long lost parent through the front door was a stingy old man with a gimp in his right leg and a rude attitude toward anyone who wasn't white. Any kindness our father once possessed couldn't be traced, and the friendly air he raised my brothers and I in was completely at stand-still. I mentioned that this darkness in his character began after the death of his wife and our beautiful mother, but now that he'd had five years to throw himself into work with the military and push the awful memory-as well as his humanity- to the back of his head, he was only a hollow shell of the man he'd been before.

"Every day in our home after the death of my mother was a suffocating void of pressure; we felt it tenfold when that worn stranger arrived.

"Bitterness radiated from him as he stepped through the threshold of our home, and the first thing he said- after he glanced over all his children who stood in a line wearing their Sunday best, and grunted with moderate approval- left a lifetime of damage on poor Carolyn.

"My beloved sister stood at the end in the line of his offspring dressed her favorite blue dress, which was adorned with several ribbons and delicate lace. It was an extravagant design to match her mentality. Her small hands rested in the palm of Millie and myself, Carolyn's caretakers since infancy. The reason Carolyn asked the two of us to hold her hand at all was because she felt nervous to meet the man she would have to call 'Pa;' his arrival would be her first impression since she didn't remember him, and she expressed that she felt butterflies in her stomach when we saw his carriage draw up the grove toward the main home.

"Father took one look at Millie and her hand interlaced with his daughters', the spitting image of his late wife, I might add, and said 'Git yer negro hands away from my girl, slave! Don't you have better things to do, worthless animal!'

"Needless to say, his loathsome tone left a terribly awful impression on Carolyn, who bolted from the room, crushed and crying after Millie pulled her hand away from hers. My father should have shown shock in this sort of situation, but he only shook his head with disapproval. His thoughts may have been something along the lines of, 'I didn't dismiss her yet,' instead of ones filled with concern like mine were. I glanced up at Millie as she turned to walk away, though did not dare move from my own spot, and recognized the fear on her weary, dark face. Her expression reflected Carolyn's right before she'd burst from the room.

"The stranger of a father who returned from Texas dismissed us with a violent wave of his arm and a deep mumble before he walked away. Though he seemed so cruel, I could tell he was tired. Not from his journey back to Georgia, but from life itself.

"Even we, his children, could not give him joy. All of us received the silent treatment and a hard stare after his return, only spoken to if it were a disciplinary correction or to learn information from us. Not so much as a good morning or good evening, nothing civil or polite, unless the man spoke to some other plantation owner in our community. Maintaining a spotless and well-respected image for the Halen family came before everything else for that man, including his love for us.

"Over the next several weeks, a power struggle manifested in the house. Trevor attempted to remain in authority like he was used to, but our father demanded respect and stricter discipline than before. The old man slandered Trevor's upkeep of the plantation and hired more overseers, which went against every self-preservation technique Trevor practiced. The negative criticism was meant to throw the boy into enlightenment, but the frequent arguing and fighting between father and eldest son only upset the already unhappy household. After two months of this war, Trevor demanded the money to attend West Point to continue his education, and the following year, middle-brother Travis would follow just to get out of the deep south.

"My reaction to my father's attitude was a personal escape. I found myself taking off the harsh workload my father ordered on Millie some days, mostly because Carolyn insisted I help her for reason that the house slave was a target to our father's cruelty. I still found it difficult to negate Carolyn's desires, so I was obligated split logs for firewood whenever our father left to visit another plantation. The manual labor was not familiar to a house slave, which made it unfair for our father to order such tasks for Millie; surprisingly, I found satisfaction out of doing the hard work myself, rather than ordering another to do it for me. For those couple hours a day I spent splitting logs in the corner of our main property, for all of the sweat and muscle I poured into the task, I felt like I had a purpose. I knew by giving that effort my family would keep warm during the winter, and it would be because of me. The reward of doing something for myself consoled me, and my contribution on Millie's behalf kept my sister satisfied.

"As for Carolyn, ever since our father startled her with his careless racial outburst, she'd developed a mentality unlike any other girl her age. Her sense of racial justice only grew from that moment, and every day, she expressed her opinions, but selectively toward me- and on occasion- Travis. Both of us would try and talk her down, try to tell her to let these thoughts go, but just like when she was an infant, she could wrap anybody around her little finger and beguile her listener. She knew what she wanted, she never let anybody think for her. As she grew, she perfected her abilities as an enchantress. She knew mention of her contempt of our social customs would only upset our father, which is why she waited until she was old enough to get away with such speech before she let certain lines drop.

"The year was 1855. Carolyn turned eleven. Trevor graduated from West Point the previous year while Travis still attended and worked on his title. I was eighteen, and my skinny, post-pubescent body and massive height are only two things of many my father disapproved of.

"Carolyn, on the other hand, had a mind like an abolition activist from the north, but no one outside of myself knew because of her innocent, adorable features and ability to control what people thought about her through her fronts and carefully planned actions. Her skin was still pale and her hair was rich, dark and full of curls, as always. She was still as beautiful as the day she was born.

"The Halen family sat at supper in the ornate dining room when she decided that that day was the day to test our father's temper. She poked his button with the phrase, 'I wonder if the slaves would enjoy a story from the bible?' Asked with intent to get up from the very table and go read to them in the fields; my father replied, 'those mindless niggers won't understand anything you say, don't bother,' and he kept his voice calm even though he mentally disapproved. 'Perhaps if they could read...' she added under her breath. Father and clone-Trevor continued on with their meal and made nothing of her speech. They enacted the difference in genders then, by ignoring her personal opinion because she was female. This definitely enraged her.

"I knew my precious sister better than them, so I knew that she was going to do something in retaliation. Up to this point in our lives, I'd kept her personal opinions a secret from the rest of our family aside from Travis, but that didn't mean I approved.

"She made me question the 'why' of southern customs more than once, but I was just like every other white from the south. Even if I thought there was injustice in the peculiar institution of slavery, which I didn't at the time, there was no way I was about to change the economic business the south had. No slaves meant that our agricultural business- the only business that earned money to live the aristocratic life Carolyn and I did- wouldn't survive. Like many, I feared change in the current system. No white, rich or poor, could imagine working alongside a black for the same amount of pay. Even the north, the place where slavery was outlawed, had trouble grasping this concept completely.

"I knew Carolyn alone could never change the social rules enacted around whites and slaves. Her job was only to grow up as the proper lady she was born as, get married and bear children to continue the cycle.

"My job was to keep her safe until then.

"Anyway, the weather grew cold early on that October in Georgia. Early mornings were especially stingy with the loss of summer heat. About a week after the dinner with my father and eldest brother, where Carolyn first pushed my father's button concerning slaves, I glanced out my second-story window at a familiar sight: an eleven-year-old Carolyn sneaking away from the plantation home.

"There was a strange déjà vu that washed over me as I followed the creeping girl in a dress toward the slave quarters; I quickly realized that I hadn't seen her do this since she was six, and that didn't lead to anything practical. With an inward groan, I fought against the brisk morning of autumn by rubbing my palms together and placing them on my cheeks.

"My sister wore a deep red dress this time around, which made it more difficult to pick her out against the dark background of our property. I managed to keep an eye on her until she knocked on the door of one of the shacks, probably the same shack as before. Instantly, a light illuminated inside the cabin, followed by the door quickly opening. I clearly saw the joy and nervousness on young Carolyn's face in the light, and how her delicate black curls bounced as she was greeted by several dark faces. I recognized the mother of those two slaves boys all that time ago in the front, and she welcomed young Carolyn with a certain familiarity- I wondered how many times Carolyn snuck out without my knowledge before this event. By the excitement and openness of the slaves compared to the last time, it was probably often. From my hiding place behind a bush, I watched the door shut behind Carolyn after she stepped inside the shack, then my stomach squeezed itself until I felt nauseous. I barely noticed the black shawl wrapped around her shoulders before she disappeared. Inside the shawl, she carried a book."

Taylor seemed to recreate his facial expression he held at that point in time, because he looked absolutely distraught, Allison noted. "Is that bad?" she asked naively.

"Of course it's bad!" Taylor jerked. "Heard of the phrase, 'knowledge is power,' by chance? Carolyn mingled with our slaves, something already heinous in the eyes of society, but she couldn't stop there. She was a stubborn soul who was absolutely sure of the way God intended things to be, and she went inside that slave house that morning with intent to teach them to read. Nothing,and I mean nothing, was more unheard of in the south."

"Poor girl. She was just doing what she felt was right," his listener argued.

"Yet Carolyn's definition of 'right' was all sorts of wrong in the deep south. Back to that morning... I slid quietly to the one window carved into the cabin and tried my best to look inside without being noticed by one of several slaves inside. I quickly noted how many bodies occupied one of those abominable huts and still seemed smaller than my bedroom, which was meant for comfortable living of two. Still, this thought was easily pushed to the back of my mind when my mind finally clicked to what Carolyn stole away there to do.

"Her voice was muffled through the glass window and poor insulation, but the set-up of the inside of the cabin gave her away. She sat at the head of the house under the lamp, a white beauty in a room full of dirty workers, and dictated what each letter was in the pages of the very book I taught her to read from. They would repeat what she said, and judged by their progress, I concluded that she visited several times before.

"Without lying to you or myself, I'll admit that I felt completely and utterly sick when I spied on the scene. Back then, I wasn't sure if my unease was because of my sister's actions or what I thought her punishment would be if my father ever caught her, but I knew later on it was a mixture of both. In a moment of confusion and some rage, I pounded on the wall of the shack in order to relieve some of my inner turmoil.

"Instantly, I realized my mistake and regretted blowing my cover. My head snapped up and my dark eyes darted straight to the hazel of my sister's through the window's glass. The shock and dread etched into her rosy cheeks was a mirror to all the dark faces around her, and probably reflected my own expression. For one instant, my brain didn't register skin color, only the shared emotion on every human in that room.

"Overcome with a demented revelation only my sister would be proud of, I turned and flew back toward the estate.

"A pleading, almost hysterical Carolyn chased after my trail as if her life depended on it. Her soft hands grabbed my slacks before I could reach my destination, and we both hit the dewy grass. 'Please, please don't tell Pa!' she pleaded, her voice desperate and dilapidated. I wrestled with her and tried to break free from her stark grasp. 'Travis would never tell Pa if he'd seen me!' I couldn't believe that my sister would say something so threatening like that to me, but at the time, it worked. I had wanted to tell our father, she knew it before I did. Some small part of me thought his corrective punishment would keep her from thinking the way she did, from doing the things she did... keep her safe in the long run. But Carolyn knew just what to say to get her way.

" 'Alright, I won't tell,' I assured her after we stood up again. 'But you can't do this, Carolyn! You just can't do what you're doing! It's wrong!'

" 'Says who?' she demanded. Her hands rested on her hips and her attitude demanded a real reason, not 'because.'

" 'Says Pa, that's who!' I finally snapped at her, the threat clear in my voice. 'If I catch you doing this again, I will tell Pa! Don't think I won't,' I added in response to the skepticism on her face.

"A foul air rested between us on our way into the plantation house. She was angry with my disagreement of her logic, I was angry with her stubborn attitude. Our father would have never found out if she hadn't left her shawl and book in the shack."