A/N: Thank you all for your wonderful reviews. They certainly made my day. I'm also happy to hear that you liked what happened to Miller and that you're now concerned about Horatio's and Cal's relationship. Let me tell you that you will find out here if they can work things out or not. Please enjoy.

Chapter 11

It was later that day, already evening actually, when Calleigh stopped her car in front of Horatio's house. Deciding between staying at her own safe house and visiting her boyfriend hadn't been an easy decision, but in the end her need to get some answers had been too strong to quell. So here she was, standing in front of his door and not being able to knock.

When they had arrived at the police station, Molly's parents had already been waiting for their little girl and it had been a very satisfying feeling to see the family reunited again. This little girl had gone through a lot and the journey would probably never end due to the loss of her grandparents, but Calleigh hoped that she would make it. Her kidnapper would never get out of prison again (something Horatio had promised the parents and Cal knew that he would make sure of that) and this was the very first step to heal.

Sighing to herself, she shook herself out of her thoughts and rang the bell. This meeting and the conversation she'd surely have with him, would either end their relationship or make it stronger; it was just as easy as that. Well as easy as such a serious situation could be anyway.

"Cal, hey, I didn't know you were coming over tonight," Horatio greeted her pleasantly surprised by her visit and smiled at her.

She really had to be more in the here and now; she hadn't even heard him opening the door. "Oh..yes," she mumbled, clearly a bit surprised that he was actually talking to her. "Can I come in?"

"Of course," he nodded, noticing her strange behaviour instantly. Opening the door a bit further, he let her in and closed the door behind him again. Back at the lab, she'd made it quite clear that she needed some space from him, so seeing her now in his house was a bit odd; Horatio didn't mind though. They all needed some time alone every now and then, especially after such cases. "Can I get you something to drink?"

Calleigh had just entered the living room, when she noticed a glass with some red liquid on the couch table. Closing her eyes, she wondered if this visit had been such a great at all. "Horatio?" she turned towards him.

"Yes?" he furrowed his brows.

"Is that tomato juice?" she asked and pointed at the glass.

Following the direction, Horatio tried his best to hide a smirk. "Do you want it to be?"

"Yes," came the quick reply.

"Well then it is," he said seriously, though he was rather amused.

"Really?" she asked doubtfully.

"I'm afraid...no," he shook his head and quickly reached for the glass "Sorry, I didn't expect any guests so..I.."

"It's okay," she interrupted him and held up her hand. "Do you have some lemonade or something?" She really didn't need to have this particular discussion about his "food" right now.

"Sure," he nodded, "be right back. Make yourself comfortable," he smiled at her and vanished into the kitchen. There he quickly gulped his glass and prepared two new ones for him and Calleigh. You didn't have to be a genius to realize that something was seriously wrong; he just didn't know what it was. He was determined to find it out though. "Here you go," he greeted her once he was back in the living-room and handed her the glass.

"Thanks," she smiled politely and took a large sip. She was nervous, something she'd never really felt when she was with Horatio and this disturbed her. "So…"

"So…," he repeated and sat down next to her on the couch. When she didn't continue, he took matter in his own hands. "What's wrong Cal? I mean...you're sitting here, as stiff as a poker…"

"I'm not sure if we should continue this," she suddenly blurted out without thinking and took another sip to quieten herself.

Taken aback, Horatio looked at her. "What do you mean?"

Looking at him, she took a deep breath. "I don't know who you are anymore."

"Well, last time I had a look at my I.D. I was Horatio Caine," he laughed, but stopped when she didn't join in.

She didn't find this funny at all. "Well yes, your I.D. might say that, but who are you really? Horatio Caine? The vampire?"

Ah, now there was the rub. "In actual fact, I'm a combination of both, though I don't let the latter out quite often," he replied carefully. Seeing that this wasn't enough of an answer for her, he smiled. "I feared that this situation might come up. You're not the first woman asking me this particular question."

"I'm not?" she asked quietly and looked at him.

Shaking his head, he looked down for a moment. "No, no you aren't." He carefully rested his hand on hers and started to rub it with his thumb. Relief flooded him when she didn't pull away. "It's been a very long time ago.."

"Who was she?" she asked intrigued. Normally she wasn't eager to hear about past lovers, but somehow she knew that it was important this time.

Giving her a soft smile, he answered her in a far away voice. "My wife, Kathryn."

Calleigh was stunned. His wife? She'd never heard anything about a wife. Was she already dead? Was she a vampire like Horatio? There were so many questions in her mind, but she was only able to utter one. "Your wife?"

"Mhm," he nodded. "My first and only wife." He got up from the couch and walked to the bookshelf. "So where are you.." he mumbled to himself and then reached for another photo album. "Here you are," he exclaimed and walked back to Calleigh, who was looking rather confused at him.

"You have pictures of her?"

"A few, yes," he answered and sat down again.

"When..did you meet her?"

"As I said, a long time ago. I was almost 18 when we met," he grinned at her.

"This is a very long time," she dead-panned, which made him laugh.

"Most definitely, yes. Do you want to see her?" he asked and was pleased when she eagerly nodded. "Okay here we go."

"Oh Horatio," she exclaimed when he opened the album, "those are wedding pictures."

"Yes, we were very lucky at that time to have pictures of our wedding. Her brother was a photographer," he explained and pointed at the different people on the picture. "Well I guess it's obvious that this is me and Kathryn," he chuckled.

"Oh you looked very neat in your suit," she giggled at the very young man who was grinning at the photographer. She had always tried to picture him at such an age, but to no avail. Seeing him now, really made her laugh. "And lanky."

Snorting at that, he rolled his eyes. "I'm not showing you these pictures to make fun of me."

Patting his knee she gave him an apologetic smile. "It was just an observation and I realized that I like the way you look now a lot better." Without waiting for some impish reply, she went on. "This is Kathryn? She looks beautiful."

Nodding at that, Horatio smiled softly. "She did; she always did. But I can't remember a day where she'd looked more beautiful as on the day she became mine."

Hearing the proud and love he had for this woman, Calleigh got even more intrigued about her. "You loved her very much, didn't you?"

"I did, I still do. To be honest, she'll always be the love my life, I just moved on. I'll never forget her though."

She should have been envious of this woman, a woman that was still holding Horatio's heart in her hands, a woman that was long dead, but still, Calleigh couldn't. There were only a few people who were lucky enough to find their true love and it seemed that Horatio and Kathryn had been two of them. "And who is this?" she asked and looked at the pictures again.

"This is her side of the family, her parents and both her brother and sister. Here's my part, my parents and great parents."

"No siblings?" she asked.

"Nope, spoiled only child," he laughed.

"Or you were quite a handful," she joked.

"Maybe that too," he grinned.

"So how did you two meet?" she asked and turned the page.

"Do you really want to know?" he replied confused. "I thought women don't want to hear about such things?"

"Normally, I'd agree with that, but I find it highly interesting to learn more about your past. I mean…only if you want to tell me, I guess it's not that easy to talk about her?"

"It depends," he shrugged. "Sometimes I can only feel sadness, thinking about her, but other times, just happiness. I think this time it'll happiness."

She smiled encouragingly at him. "Tell me your story then."

"Well this can be very long.."

"We have the whole night," she silenced him.

"Okay, then...here we go. It all started with a small town feast. My best friends and I thought it would be a good idea to find some nice women," he grinned at the memory, "and so we decided to take a look around. You see, Kathryn lived in the next town, so we didn't know each other... Anyway, when we arrived we made it straight to the large tent where all the dancing was and the moment I entered the tent, my eyes fell on a group of young women. They were giggling about something and suddenly I saw her. She was wearing a wonderful dress, her brown hair was curled around her shoulders…and well...I was mesmerized by her," he said amused about himself.

"You sure sound like it," Calleigh smiled.

"When my friends noticed that I was staring at her and not listen to them, they dragged me further into the tent and started teasing me."

"Just like today," Cal laughed.

"Yes, today's youth isn't really different from then," he agreed. "So they tried to talk me into going to her and ask her for a dance and when I finally agreed to it, she'd disappeared."

"Typical."

"Let's go the whole hog, right?" he smirked. "Suddenly one of the boys saw her on the dance floor, dancing with some good looking and seemingly also rich fellow. No need to say that I wasn't particular happy about this. But then again, Kathryn was a beautiful woman, so there was no way that I was the only man being interested in her. So my friend had the brilliant idea to ask one of her friends for a dance, to get some information about her."

"Sneaky."

"Very much so, but he came back with the one or other interesting information. First of all, we found out about her name and who this fellow was she was dancing with. This information though, crushed my little, fragile heart."

"You're doing that on purpose, huh? So spill it, who was he?"

"Her fiancé."

"No.."

"That was my first reaction as well, believe me. Since her friends had been quite talkative, we had a lot of information about him and her. It seemed like Kathryn wasn't so keen on marrying him, but didn't have a chance to say no."

"A forced marriage?" Calleigh asked shocked.

"In a way…yes. You see their fathers had been best friends and promised that their son and daughter would marry. You see, this had been quite normal at my time; it was a good way of keeping your family, properties and your money safe."

Calleigh just snorted at that.

"Well I wasn't so happy about this as well, but as I said, it was a normal procedure in the...upper class."

"So Kathryn belonged to that upper class and this jerk as well," Cal concluded.

"Yes and no. You can't really say that Kathryn's family was overly rich, but her fiancé's family was. And her father wanted her to be in good hands, nothing wrong with that."

"I can see the point, yes, at least back then."

"Good, well where was I? Ah yes, her talkative friend. It was just my luck that Edward, her fiancé, had to leave and that my friends wouldn't leave me alone until I'd ask her to dance. Not that I was as enthusiastic about it as I'd been before, but in the end, I relented. So I asked her and well…it was the best decision of my life. I'd never felt like that before when we danced and even though we'd been complete strangers, it was very easy to talk and laugh with her. Let's just say that I really hated it when my boys wanted to go home again."

"I feel with you. So how did you two end up together? I mean she was already spoken."

"Well the day after the festival, I started my career as a police man and, believe it or not, the guy who was my instructor was in fact her uncle. At first I didn't have a clue, but when we visited his relatives next town and Kathryn opened the door, I thought I was going insane."

Laughing, she shook her head. "That's what I call a coincidence."

"Tell me about it," he chuckled. "Well after that, I saw her quite often, actually every time he visited them she was there. I also talked with him about her and this Edward fellow and I was pleased when I found out that he wasn't happy about this forced marriage either. He had also talked about this with her father, but it hadn't changed anything."

"Her father didn't seem to be a nice man, I mean...forcing her to marry some guy she didn't love.."

"On the contrary, he loved Kathryn a lot; he wanted her to be taken care of, he thought that Edward would love her plus he was a man of honour and didn't want to break the promise he'd made years ago with his best friend."

Calleigh had, of course, a slight different opinion about this, but then again, she hadn't grown up at that time so it was very hard to judge on it. "Okay," she just nodded. "So why didn't she marry him, but you instead?"

"At that time, my life seemed to be full of coincidence. You see, me and my partner were following a robber, when we suddenly heard a woman calling for help. We decided that money wasn't worth a life, so we followed the screams. They led us into a dark alley and at the end of it, there was a woman and a man. It didn't look like he was attacking her, but he was fumbling with his trousers and.."

"He tried to rape her.." Calleigh finished the sentence.

"Yes, he tried. He couldn't though, because we pulled him away from her. When I saw his face, I thought I was dreaming; it was Edward, Kathryn's fiancé. The very man she was spoken to had tried to rape a woman in a dark valley…"

"Oh my..," Cal sighed. "I'm sure he tried to look innocent?"

"Of course he did, he tried to bribe me because he knew me, due to my regular visits. He got the shock of his life though, when my partner spoke to him," he grinned, "it was Kathryn's uncle."

"Perfect, I can really picture his shock."

"Oh yes, suddenly, he was a loss of words and it was quite easy to get him to the police station, believe me. When word spread around at what he did, the town was in commotion. Katy was ready to strike him, which she would have if I didn't stop her and I don't need to mention that the betrothal was broken. There was no way that her father would want her to marry such a filthy guy. The fact that he was imprisoned for a while made the decision even easier."

"Serves him right. So that's when you came into the picture.."

"Yes, but it took me quite a while to show her father that I was worthy of her. I mean.. Katy and I…we...had already fallen in love and it was me who asked her uncle to visit the family, so I could spend some time with her. In the end, it was him who talked to his brother and convinced him that I was good enough for her."

"Very romantic, like a Hollywood movie," she awed.

"Ha..yeah, but not romantic when you're right in the situation," he laughed softly. "But we did have our happy ending as you can see here," he pointed at the bride and groom and at the two rings underneath it.

"Those are yours?"

"Yes. When Katy died I couldn't wear the ring any longer and I decided to put them both inside the album."

"This way you're still close."

"Yes...in a way," he agreed and closed the book again. Looking at his watch, he realized that it was late evening already. "Wow, we talked quite a lot. Are you hungry? I mean, did you eat something before you came here?"

Being a little confused about his change of topics, it took her a moment to answer. "I..uhm..no, I didn't." She had been too uptight to be hungry, but now that he was asking, she realized that she was starving.

"I could make you something, if you want to."

Well she liked to be cooked for, but she wasn't sure if she wanted to eat the kind of food Horatio was eating. Thinking about it, she would never ever eat that kind of food. "Uhm..but..I mean you.."

"Don't worry Cal. I'm not talking about this kind of food. Since Alexx comes over here quite a lot and her kids anyway, I have some real food in the house. Or we can order something, as we did before."

"I think I opt for that." Seeing the slight hurt in his face, she smiled at him. "It's not that I don't trust your cooking," though she wondered if he actually could cook, "but I don't see the need for you slaving in the kitchen for me tonight. Why don't we just order some Chinese, okay?"

Though he wasn't sure if this was the real reason, he decided not to question her about it. "Sure," he just shrugged. He liked Chinese food and even though he didn't need it, he liked to eat it. "Let me get the menu.."

Much later that evening, Horatio and Calleigh were lounging around on the sofa. Their meal had been eaten some time ago and the movie they had watched had already finished. In a normal case they would've gone to bed already, but Calleigh, in particular, didn't feel like that. They hadn't really talked after his story about Kathryn, so her question was in fact still unanswered. And she couldn't make a decision about them until she would get an answer. "Horatio?" she asked softly, not sure if he was still awake or not.

"Mhm?" came the quiet reply, which was joined by a light yawn.

"I know we talked about Kathryn, but you still haven't answered my question," she pointed out and made herself a bit more comfortable on his chest.

"What question?" he asked confused.

"Well," she sighed, "I asked you who you are and you told me that she had the very same problem."

"Oh...yes," talking about Kathryn had made him forget this subject. "Well when I was turned back then in New York," he started, but was immediately interrupted by her curious question.

"You were turned in New York? I thought you lived in Ireland?"

Chuckling, he patted her back. "I grew up in Ireland, yes, but Katy and I...we wanted to see the New World…we…didn't see a future for us in Ireland, you know? I had a good job as a police man, but Katy wasn't happy. It was actually her who brought up the idea of moving away and I would have done anything for her."

"She actually seemed to be a strong-willed and in a way...modern woman," Calleigh mused.

"Oh believe me, she was one heck of a stubborn Irish woman," he laughed. "She had a heart of gold, but when she had set her mind on something, it was almost impossible to stop her. You know…you two are quite similar in that way. Both strong-willed, charming and beautiful women.."

"Flattery will get you nowhere," she slapped his chest playfully. "But please, keep on talking…"

"As you wish my dear. So yes, we decided that we'd take the risk to move away from our families…friends…knowing that we'd never see them again."

"This must have been hard.."

"More than that. Of course...you could write them a letter, but in those days…this took months. It was a goodbye...forever. When we arrived in New York at first, it was all exciting and new, but once we'd settled down, we felt pretty lonely. We were missing everyone and it took us a while to find new friends, but to be honest, it had never been that kind of friendships like we had in Ireland." Feeling her nod in understanding, he continued. "I quickly found a job as a police man and Katy started in one of the several factories around the city. Life was pretty good, better than in Ireland when you leave out the homesickness."

"So it had been the right decision, I guess."

"Yes and no. If we hadn't moved to America, I might have never been turned."

"Is this a good or a bad thing?"

"Sometimes, I'm not so sure about this myself. I would have never met so many people, which would be a shame, but then again, I have seen so many things, I would've appreciated not to see."

"Hmm, I guess I see your point. I mean I always think that after a bad case or something, but living for so many years, it's not possible to only have happy times."

"No it's not," he agreed, "but we were talking about different things. So things were working just fine between us and we started to think about a family. We'd been married for two years back then and well…it surely was time."

A baby? Did Horatio really have a child? A child that most definitely was already dead? Did he mean that, when he talked about those unhappy times? "A child?"

"Yes, but it never happened. I don't know why, maybe it was fate that already knew what would happen to me, maybe we just weren't able to conceive a child…no matter what it was, it didn't work out. My so-called friends tried to talk me into taking some mistress or something, to create an heir no matter what, but I couldn't do that. I loved Kathryn with all my heart and I couldn't betray her. I mean, it probably was my fault that we couldn't have a baby, so how could I take the liberty to have an affair?"

This was so Horatio. Always faithful and just thinking about others. That's why she had fallen in love with this man.

"Katy was of course sad that we weren't able to start a family and it took me some work to get her out of this depression, but in the end we decided to move on and live our life. Every now and then I saw the longing in her eyes, when the neighbour kids visited us, but it always disappeared."

"And what about you? Did you want to have children?"

"I did, yes; but not so much that I would stop living. I wanted to fulfil her wish, I couldn't and never will, but I moved on."

"You're good with kids, I noticed that today again with little Molly," she smiled. Horatio and kids was a combination that warmed your heart.

"Thank you," he chuckled, "but I'll never have my own kids. I don't mind though, I already spoil Alexx' kids as much as she allows me to."

"I would have loved to see you babysitting them when they were little," she grinned at the thought.

"It wasn't a pretty sight, I can tell you that much. Those two are quite a handful, just like their mother."

"I'm sure they are," she giggled. Everyone knew that Alexx was also a very strong-willed woman and if her children were only half as stubborn, every babysitter would fight a losing battle.

"Anyway, it was several years after that when I was turned. I can hardly remember the first days afterwards...it's all a blur… All my senses were on high alert, no human food I ate made me stop being hungry, I didn't want to believe what I became…in the end it was another vampire who helped me through this. All I wanted was to go back to Katy, to see her again, feel her warmth again. I wanted to forget what had happened; I wanted to go back to my old life."

"The other vampire warned me, told me that I shouldn't. That this life was over; that she wouldn't accept me. Of course I didn't listen and went home. At first Katy was happy to see me again, but she soon noticed that something was wrong with me. You know…it takes a long time to control the vampire in you, if you want to that is, and so it happened very quickly that it showed its ugly head. In the end, Katy threw me out; she was afraid of me and I couldn't blame her."

"So you not only lost your life, but also the woman you loved," Cal sighed and her heart went out to him. This was a real tragedy.

"At first, yes. I was devastated and so full of anger. My life had been destroyed in one single night and I had no way to change it back. I knew that I either had to make Katy believe that it was still me, or I would ask someone to finish the job. There was no way that I wanted to live without her in my life. In the end, it took me months to get her trust back and the other vampire helped me to deal with my vampire side. Nowadays it only appears when I'm really, really angry and frustrated like today. I'm sorry that I frightened you and snapped at you, this was never my intention. All I was thinking about was this poor little girl and this jerk who had kidnapped her to do nasty things with her."

"I was afraid of you. When I saw your eyes and your fangs...when you hissed at me like that, I wasn't sure if you would cross the line and hurt me."

"I'd never do that," he quickly reassured her. "First, because I love you, second because I'm not allowed to hurt humans that way. You'll never have to be afraid of that."

Taking this as an answer for now, she changed the subject back to his late wife. "So how did Kathryn live with it?"

"We made the deal that...if I was really angry and knew that I couldn't control myself…I wouldn't come home until I cooled down again. She also asked me not to eat in front of her, but I had no intention to do that anyway. It took us some time to adjust, but it worked out. The other vampire became my mentor, so to say, and this helped me a lot."

"Well thinking about the fact that I've known you for some time now and that I'd never seen you like this until this day, I guess your anger management worked out quite well."

"It did, yes. I still have my moments, but then again, who doesn't? I look a bit more diabolic while I'm angry," he chuckled, "but other than that…others can be quite vocal as well when they're angry," he pointed out.

"True," she nodded. She always threatened to shoot someone when she was really angry, so this wasn't all that better from Horatio. "Can I ask you one more thing?"

"Shoot," he just smiled. He was feeling that Calleigh opened up to their relationship again and he was more than happy with that.

"You probably don't want to talk about it, but..how..did she..I mean..die? Why isn't she here with you?"

This was one of the questions he hated to answer, but he couldn't blame Cal to be curious about that. "She died due to tuberculosis. It was a very common and deadly disease back then."

"Didn't you say that you have healing blood? Couldn't you use it?"

"No...I couldn't," he shook his head. "We tried of course, but it didn't work. It made her feel a little better, but it neither stopped the disease, nor did it cure it."

"So..then you could have turned her?"

"I wanted to, by god I wanted to. Once she started to feel worse, I begged her to let me turn her. I couldn't stand the thought of losing her, to live without her presence in my life. I pleaded every day, but she wouldn't listen. My Katy had had a very strong belief in God and she said that we shouldn't cheat Him like this. If He wanted her to come to Him, she wouldn't disobey. Of course I didn't care about that, but as I said, my wife was a stubborn Irish woman."

Sitting up a bit, she looked at him. "You had no other chance than to see her die?" she asked compassionately, because it was easy to see that her death was still affecting the man that was sitting here with her.

"Yes…we used my blood to soothe her pain, but in the end, yes, I was bound to see her die. I was with her of course, nothing and no one would keep me away from her once she'd reached a critical condition…," he sighed and looked down at his hands. When he continued, his speech was soft and full of sadness. "It was the worst day of my life when she left me. It was like time stood still. Suddenly, my whole reason for being was gone and all there was...was grief. So much grief that swirled around me… I hardly remember the funeral. It was like I was an empty body. Nothing was of any interest for me, I didn't care about anything. I just took her ash with me. Most of it was buried in New York but a very small part was buried in Ireland, in her home town. I had promised her that before she died and I fulfilled her wish many years ago."

When she saw the first wet drop running down his cheek, she knew what her decision would be. This was Horatio Caine; a man who was able to feel love, sorrow, joy and sadness. This was the man she'd fallen in love with all those months or maybe years ago and she didn't want to lose him. Seeing him like this, with all his walls crumbled down, she knew that the vampire was only a very small part of him; and if it would show itself every once in a while, they'd deal with it. So she just wrapped her arms around him and pressed a light kiss on his temple. "I'm so sorry, Horatio. I know this won't bring her back, but I'm sure she'll watch over you. Love like this doesn't stop with death, it never does."

Horatio couldn't help but smile at that. Knowing his Kathryn, she would surely do just that. She had always kept an eye on him, so why should she stop that? "I guess you're right," he mumbled and was a bit embarrassed by his tears, so he quickly brushed them away. "Sorry for being…"

"What? Emotional when you talk about her? Well I'm surely not sorry for that, I'm rather happy about it," Cal interrupted him.

"Why?" he asked confused in return.

"Because it answered my question, that's why," she smiled at him. "I'm not sure if I'm as strong as Kathryn was, but I want to try. You're a wonderful man, Horatio and I probably overreacted earlier." Seeing that he tried to protest, she just put a finger on his lips. "I let my fears and insecurity rule without even taking the time to analyse the situation. I won't say that you handled the situation perfectly, because you didn't, but in the end, everyone is allowed to lose their temper. Vampire or not, doesn't matter."

"I'll try to be a bit more careful, especially when it comes to suspects," he promised, because he knew that he'd been very close to reveal his true nature today.

"Good, because I don't want you to share with some freaky vampire fan girls, who believe that, every vampire is like the one in their weird books," she grinned and kissed him again.

"Don't worry; there are a lot of things I'm dreaming about, but that's surely not one of them," he joked and stroked her cheek. "And talking about dreaming…," he grinned.

Taking the clue, she nodded. "I think it's way past our bed time."

"I think so too, my dear. And I just know the perfect place," he got up from the couch and held out his hand.

Accepting it, she got up as well. "The question is though, if we really get some sleep there…"

"This is what we're going to find out…"

tbc if you want