'When I'm losing my control,

The city spins around,

You're the only one who knows,

You slow it down...'

Look After You, The Fray

Chapter Two

Wedding Plans

Two days into Cara's vacation, Dorothy Catalonia Winner, seven months along with her first child, arrived from a business meeting with the intention of taking Cara to pick out a wedding dress. Cara had demured as best she could, saying that they didn't want a real wedding, but a little ceremony with friends in the parlor of the Winner Mansion. Dorothy had paled. Her own wedding had been a three day feast.

Cara tried to get out of it, complaining that less than a week was not enough time to plan even a small wedding. Dorothy had a gleam come into her eyes, and had said very cryptically, "We'll see,"

Before the day had even begun, Dorothy had dragged Cara through three different stores in search of the perfect gown. Cara was sick for the first hour or so... literally... but Dorothy kept dragging her along. After hours and hours and hours of exhaustive searching, Cara and Dorothy finally agreed.

It was a simple dress of snow white gauze, calf-lenght and strapless. Paired with plain white high-heel sandles and Cara's heirloom diamonds, Cara would be the picture perfect late spring/early summer bride.

Then, Dorothy had thrown Cara head-long into planning the actually ceremony, even dragging Duo into it, though he beat a hasty retreat, like all husbands to be.

It too two days for the small ceremony to be planned out to Dorothy's expectations. Dorothy would be Cara's Matron of Honor, and the elusive Sally Po, arriving with her husband later that week, would be the maid of honor. Duo had attempted to lure in Hiro to be his best man, but the former 'perfect soldier' would be unavailable the day of the wedding to Duo's evident disappointment, so Cara's brother and Dorothy's husband, Quatre, was brought in instead.

For Cara, this was a quiet little miracle. For nearly a year, Quatre had remained in opposition to Cara and Duo's relationship. But after discovering that the two's feelings ran deeper than anyone had every thought, her brother had accepted it, and finally, found peace with it, even going as far as rekindling his old comrade-in-arms relationship with Duo. Cara had never understood Quatre's aversion to her and Duo's relationship. The only grounds he had was the way he found out about it.

Admittedly, finding your best friend and your sister tousled, naked, and in bed wasn't the best way to find out. But besides that, Quatre's stubbornness over accepting the fact was quite uncalled for, and quite an over-reaction. Cara and Duo were both mature, consenting adults. Well... one out of three wasn't bad.

At the time, Duo had been only about three months younger than Cara- both a mere eighteen years old. And no one who really knew Duo could call him mature and keep a straight face. Duo was a child at heart, but Cara found his silliness and happy-go-lucky personality intriguing, especially considering the rough life he'd had. She herself was far from being so easy to deal with, she knew. Her trials in life had been the opposite of his, but just as grueling. He'd taken lives, while she fought to save them. But his past didn't matter now. He'd done what he had to do, and now Cara understood that.

She loved her brother, but there had always been a little rift there. Cara hadn't understood about why her brother fought and killed so much, while she labored for days without sleeping trying to save the lives of people who'd been injured by machines just like his. But Duo had opened her eyes. He hadn't been trying to, but he had. She'd realized that even bad things, if done for the right reasons, were still bad and wrong. But she'd accepted it. She knew that for the greater good, for the peace they now enjoyed, there had to be sacrifices made. And every time she saw that shadow behind Duo's bright amethyst eyes, she knew that he, too, had made his sacrifices.

There were nights when he had nightmares so startling, so horrid that she'd have to spend half the night just holding him close, whispering that it would be alright, that things were better now. He was caught up between a million different people inside of him. He could have turned out any one of them, but he'd turned out a mesh of all of them. And she knew every single side, every facet of his personality, like it was a diamond she'd been staring at.

She knew his kind, sweet, romantic side- the side he had shown on that Valentine's Day. She knew his funny, charming, child-like side- the side he showed every day at their little clinic, making parents and children alike feel at ease. She knew his 'ditz' side as she called it- the side that came out whenever he did something utterly stupid or brainless... which was pretty often, or when he honestly made a mistake; to him, it was the same thing, though she tried to point out the differences. She knew his cold, hard side- a side she rarely glimpsed anymore, a side that sometimes she feared. She knew him when he was weak, crying, clinging to her in the middle of the night as the memories of the dreadful things he'd done came back to haunt him. She knew him when he was passionate, vibrant, showing her exactly how much he loved her. She knew his smart, intellectual side, and his calculating, methodical side. She knew every aspect of him, and she loved them all.