"Listen, I haven't seen you in months. And now that we've talked, I still feel as though I haven't seen you. What's going on?"

"I can't help you with that, Wedge."

"Iella, have we stopped being friends?"

She was silent for a long moment. "I suppose we have."

Wedge felt his breath catch. "When did that happen? How did it happen?"

"It's not you, Wedge, it's me." Her mask of serenity slipped, leaving her expression tired, even dismayed. "I just had another direction to go, and you're not there." She put her hood up; suddenly he could no longer see her features. "I have to go," she said, and turned away.

Wedge stood there and watched her fade into the darkness of the plaza's shadowy edges. It occurred to him that this departure was just the image, the reflection of something that must have happened long ago. He just didn't remember when.

"Iella, if General Cracken orders me to play Turr Phennir's game with the aerial duels, I'll refuse. I'll resign my commission." He saw her jaw drop.

"When I do that, I'll have to start over from the ground up. New career, new friends, new world, maybe even a new name. Since I'm on the verge of losing everything, I really need to find out how I lost something earlier. I need to know how I lost your regard."

She stared at him. Finally she shook her head and said, "It's not... like that. It's nothing you did, it's something I did." Her expression lost all self-assurance. "Wedge, let's not do this now."

"When? Iella, we can't do it when I'm a civilian being shipped back to Coruscant in disgrace, now's the time!" He slid toward her, the knot in his throat threatening to cut off his speech altogether. "Please. Because we *were* friends. Tell me how we stopped. Was it my relationship with Qwi?"

A flicker of pain crossed her face. "No. Yes. It's related to that." Her words were a long time in coming. "When Diric died, you and Corran were there for me. And when I gradually got better you didn't wander away, it wasn't a 'you're all fine now, so it's back to work for me.' I can't tell you what that meant to me. And gradually I began to wonder..." She was silent for long moments. "If maybe there was a chance for you and me."

He gave her a nod. "I had those same thoughts."

"But I told myself it was too soon to be thinking about that. I told myself that for a long time. Looking back on it after a while I don't suppose you could have thought I was still interested in you. We became just pals. And one day there she was, Qwi Xux, hanging off your arm. And I realized I'd waited too long. It hurt every time I saw you, knowing that I'd thrown away my opportunity. And you can't be friends with someone who cuts out your heart, even unintentionally, every time you run into him."

"You know, we're not together anymore, Qwi and I."

She nodded, but her expression did not lighten.

"And?"

"And what? And she's gone, and so maybe we can start all over again?"

Surprised by the heat and anger in her voice, Wedge drew back. "So what you're saying is that I hurt you so badly that we can never be anything to one another again."

"I suppose that is what I'm saying." Iella looked on the verge of tears. "I'm sorry, Wedge, I am, but I think you'd better leave."

"It's not leaving that's hard, anymore," he said, scarcely recognizing his own voice. "It's finding somewhere to go."

That's Orion... The handsome hunter. I used to think that somewhere in the world my hero was looking up at him too and one day he would appear and we would know that somehow we were connected and were meant to be together forever.

Just as Anne emerged triumphantly from the cellar with her plateful of russets came the sound of flying footsteps on the icy board walk outside and the next moment the kitchen door was flung open and in rushed Diana Barry, white faced and breathless, with a shawl wrapped hastily around her head. Anne promptly let go of her candle and plate in her surprise, and plate, candle, and apples crashed together down the cellar ladder and were found at the bottom embedded in melted grease, the next day, by Marilla, who gathered them up and thanked mercy the house hadn't been set on fire.

"Whatever is the matter, Diana?" cried Anne. "Has your mother relented at last?"

"Oh, Anne, do come quick," implored Diana nervously. "Minnie May is awful sick--she's got croup. Young Mary Joe says--and Father and Mother are away to town and there's nobody to go for the doctor. Minnie May is awful bad and Young Mary Joe doesn't know what to do--and oh, Anne, I'm so scared!"

Matthew, without a word, reached out for cap and coat, slipped past Diana and away into the darkness of the yard.

"He's gone to harness the sorrel mare to go to Carmody for the doctor," said Anne, who was hurrying on hood and jacket. "I know it as well as if he'd said so. Matthew and I are such kindred spirits I can read his thoughts without words at all."

"I don't believe he'll find the doctor at Carmody," sobbed Diana. "I know that Dr. Blair went to town and I guess Dr. Spencer would go too. Young Mary Joe never saw anybody with croup and Mrs. Lynde is away. Oh, Anne!"

"Don't cry, Di," said Anne cheerily. "I know exactly what to do for croup. You forget that Mrs. Hammond had twins three times. When you look after three pairs of twins you naturally get a lot of experience. They all had croup regularly. Just wait till I get the ipecac bottle--you mayn't have any at your house. Come on now."

The two little girls hastened out hand in hand and hurried through Lover's Lane and across the crusted field beyond, for the snow was too deep to go by the shorter wood way. Anne, although sincerely sorry for Minnie May, was far from being insensible to the romance of the situation and to the sweetness of once more sharing that romance with a kindred spirit.

The night was clear and frosty, all ebony of shadow and silver of snowy slope; big stars were shining over the silent fields; here and there the dark pointed firs stood up with snow powdering their branches and the wind whistling through them. Anne thought it was truly delightful to go skimming through all this mystery and loveliness with your bosom friend who had been so long estranged.

Minnie May, aged three, was really very sick. She lay on the kitchen sofa feverish and restless, while her hoarse breathing could be heard all over the house. Young Mary Joe, a buxom, broad-faced French girl from the creek, whom Mrs. Barry had engaged to stay with the children during her absence, was helpless and bewildered, quite incapable of thinking what to do, or doing it if she thought of it.

Anne went to work with skill and promptness.

"Mrs. Barry was here this afternoon, Anne. She wanted to see you, but I wouldn't wake you up. She says you saved Minnie May's life, and she is very sorry she acted as she did in that affair of the currant wine. She says she knows now you didn't mean to set Diana drunk, and she hopes you'll forgive her and be good friends with Diana again. You're to go over this evening if you like for Diana can't stir outside the door on account of a bad cold she caught last night. Now, Anne Shirley, for pity's sake don't fly up into the air."

The warning seemed not unnecessary, so uplifted and aerial was Anne's expression and attitude as she sprang to her feet, her face irradiated with the flame of her spirit.

"Oh, Marilla, can I go right now--without washing my dishes? I'll wash them when I come back, but I cannot tie myself down to anything so unromantic as dishwashing at this thrilling moment."

"Yes, yes, run along," said Marilla indulgently. "Anne Shirley--are you crazy? Come back this instant and put something on you. I might as well call to the wind. She's gone without a cap or wrap. Look at her tearing through the orchard with her hair streaming. It'll be a mercy if she doesn't catch her death of cold."

Anne came dancing home in the purple winter twilight across the snowy places. Afar in the southwest was the great shimmering, pearl-like sparkle of an evening star in a sky that was pale golden and ethereal rose over gleaming white spaces and dark glens of spruce. The tinkles of sleigh bells among the snowy hills came like elfin chimes through the frosty air, but their music was not sweeter than the song in Anne's heart and on her lips.

"What have you heard? What do you see?" asked St. John. I saw nothing, but I heard a voice somewhere cry -

"Jane! Jane! Jane!"--nothing more.

"O God! what is it?" I gasped.

I might have said, "Where is it?" for it did not seem in the room-- nor in the house--nor in the garden; it did not come out of the air- -nor from under the earth--nor from overhead. I had heard it-- where, or whence, for ever impossible to know! And it was the voice of a human being--a known, loved, well-remembered voice--that of Edward Fairfax Rochester; and it spoke in pain and woe, wildly, eerily, urgently.

"I am coming!" I cried. "Wait for me! Oh, I will come!" I flew to the door and looked into the passage: it was dark. I ran out into the garden: it was void.

"Where are you?" I exclaimed.

The hills beyond Marsh Glen sent the answer faintly back--"Where are you?" I listened. The wind sighed low in the firs: all was moorland loneliness and midnight hush.

"I was in my own room, and sitting by the window, which was open: it soothed me to feel the balmy night-air; though I could see no stars and only by a vague, luminous haze, knew the presence of a moon. I longed for thee, Janet! Oh, I longed for thee both with soul and flesh! I asked of God, at once in anguish and humility, if I had not been long enough desolate, afflicted, tormented; and might not soon taste bliss and peace once more. That I merited all I endured, I acknowledged--that I could scarcely endure more, I pleaded; and the alpha and omega of my heart's wishes broke involuntarily from my lips in the words--'Jane! Jane! Jane!'"

"Did you speak these words aloud?"

"I did, Jane. If any listener had heard me, he would have thought me mad: I pronounced them with such frantic energy."

"And it was last Monday night, somewhere near midnight?"

"Yes; but the time is of no consequence: what followed is the strange point. You will think me superstitious,--some superstition I have in my blood, and always had: nevertheless, this is true-- true at least it is that I heard what I now relate.

"As I exclaimed 'Jane! Jane! Jane!' a voice--I cannot tell whence the voice came, but I know whose voice it was--replied, 'I am coming: wait for me;' and a moment after, went whispering on the wind the words--'Where are you?'

"I'll tell you, if I can, the idea, the picture these words opened to my mind: yet it is difficult to express what I want to express. Ferndean is buried, as you see, in a heavy wood, where sound falls dull, and dies unreverberating. 'Where are you?' seemed spoken amongst mountains; for I heard a hill-sent echo repeat the words. Cooler and fresher at the moment the gale seemed to visit my brow: I could have deemed that in some wild, lone scene, I and Jane were meeting. In spirit, I believe we must have met. You no doubt were, at that hour, in unconscious sleep, Jane: perhaps your soul wandered from its cell to comfort mine; for those were your accents- -as certain as I live--they were yours!"

Reader, it was on Monday night--near midnight--that I too had received the mysterious summons: those were the very words by which I replied to it. I listened to Mr. Rochester's narrative, but made no disclosure in return. The coincidence struck me as too awful and inexplicable to be communicated or discussed. If I told anything, my tale would be such as must necessarily make a profound impression on the mind of my hearer: and that mind, yet from its sufferings too prone to gloom, needed not the deeper shade of the supernatural. I kept these things then, and pondered them in my heart.

I look at these pictures, and I see that spark. That physical chemistry that made Lois and Clark something more than another romantic television show. [...] Three things strike me about this one. There’s still that spark of passion, that indefinable sense of mutual desire. They’re standing pressed together; she’s almost leaning into him. But there’s also an emotion there. She isn’t smirking, or even smiling. She’s serious— she seems content just to be in his arms. His eyes aren’t proud or mocking or covetous. Instead, they seem honest, open. He feels something, and he isn’t afraid to admit that.

But there’s still that possessive mark of ownership. The tattoos say a lot, even without his subtle hold on her pocket. The ‘S’ is a mark of who he is, what he is. A symbol of him. The fact that it’s emblazoned so brightly on her own shoulder, mimicking him, seems a blatant indication that she belongs to him. Like a label or a stamp, his symbol marks her as his own.

If you had asked me a few days ago, this would have upset me.

Aeron had run out without even a cloak, but she felt neither the chill nor the rain, and there under the peony-trees she was again hit by the same causeless sorrow, far stronger now, that had so shaken her earlier that night. An unhappiness like a groundswelling wave spread out to enfold her in one great aching sadness, leaching away her strength until she felt she could scarely continue to stand upright; her bones felt turned all to water, and the darkness pressed in upon her.

Then a deeper darkness seemed to form at the end of the alley of peony-trees; it moved, resolved into a tall shape as she looked up, straining her sight and her othersight through the mist. Even the rain seemed to hush, and then she was running through the dark, and the other was running too, and she flung herself into Gwydion's arms, and he caught her up against him under his cloak.

They did not kiss, not at first; what he felt and knew she shared, was a feeling too huge and deep and solemn to be met with anything save silence and utter stillness, of body and of spirit. He held her close without a word spoken, and she leaned her head against his chest, and they did not move for many moments.

When at last he spoke, it seemed that his words were but a continuation, somehow, of something he had been saying to her forever, a speech that had never been interrupted and that had never been begun.

"They had told me you were dead, do you see; I did not feel it so, but after a while, alone there, times were when I did begin to wonder if they were not right. So even I lost courage in the end - "

"And even I, when I heard you were in Caer Sidi." She drew back a little, looked up into his face. "Just now - I did not think I could bear it."

The rain had ended; the rising wind had torn the clouds apart, so that the moon now shone clear upon them. His countenance in the moonlight seemed suddenly strange; she had known it all her life, had loved it near as long, yet now the white light spilling over the planes of his face made all new: a country of unfamiliar contrasts and terrifying strengths, his skin blanched of all color against the darkness of hair and beard, the grey eyes sparkling silver when the moon caught them, black under brow-shadow when he bent his head away.

What glyphs of change he read in her own face she did not know; surely he mus see at least what Elathan saw, and Morwen and Kieran, and doubtless far more than that. But he said no word of it, only drew one finger, callused from harp and sword-hilt both, down along her cheek and jaw and throat, and closing his hand over the neck-brooch of her tunic pulled her close against him once more.

"Keltia has been asleep without you," he said into her hair. "A troubled, fitful doze full of evil dreams, and all us walking in our sleep. But now will come a fair waking."

But, O Sarah! if the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; In the gladdest days and in the darkest nights . . . always, always, and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath, as the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by. Sarah do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again.

- Major Sullivan Ballou, to his wife, a week before his death in 1861, during the American Civil War.

I have an 8x10 tattoo pic as well that I think is my favorite of the series. I even went so far as to sketch it, though, I never did get around to finishing it. Wah!! I was going to scan the drawing in to share with you guys and I *cannot* find my sketch book.

That's something we've never seen much of in this fandom, funnily enough - artwork

"Is that you, Geordie?" he asked, not turning around. He was dressed in shirt and breeches, and had a small tool of some kind in his hand, with which he was doing something to the innards of the press. "Took ye long enough, Did ye get the-"

"It isn't Geordie," I said. My voice was higher than usual. "It's me," I said. "Claire."

He straightened up very slowly. He wore his hair long; a thick tail of a deep, rich auburn sparked with copper. I had time to see that the neat ribbon that tied it back was green, and then he turned around.

He stated at me without speaking. A tremor ran down the muscular throat lie swallowed, but still he didn't say anything.

It was the same broad, good-humored face, dark blue eyes aslant the high, flat cheekbones of a Viking, long mouth curling at the ends as though always on the verge of smiling. The lines surrounding eyes and mouth were deeper, of course. The nose had changed just a bit. The knife-edge bridge was slight1v thickened near the base by the ridge of an old, healed fracture. It made him look fiercer, I thought, but lessened that air of aloof reserve, and lent his appearance a new rough charm.

I walked through the flap in the counter, seeing nothing but that unblinking stare. I cleared my throat.

"When did you break your nose?"

The corners of the wide mouth lifted slightly.

"About three minutes after I last saw ye-Sassenach."

There was a hesitation, almost a question in the name. There was no more than a foot between us. I reached out tentatively and touched the tiny line of the break, where the bone pressed white against the bronze of his skin.

He flinched backward as though an electric spark had arced between us, and the calm expression shattered.

"You're real," he whispered. I had thought him pale already. Now all vestiges of color drained from his face. His eyes rolled up and he slumped to the floor in a shower of papers and oddments that had been sitting on the press-he fell rather gracefully for such a large man, I thought abstractedly.

"I th-thought you were dead." I had meant to speak lightly, but my voice betrayed me. The tears spilled down my checks, only to soak into the rough cloth of his shirt as he pulled me hard against him.

I shook so that it was some time before I realized that he was shaking, too, and for the same reason. I don't know how long we sat there on the dusty floor, crying in each other's arms with the longing of twenty years spilling down our faces.

His fingers twined hard in my hair, pulling it loose so that it tumbled down my neck. The dislodged pins cascaded over my shoulders and pinged on the floor like pellets of hail. My own fingers were clasped around his forearm, digging into the linen as though I were afraid he would disappear unless physically restrained.

There were other super-criminal geniuses in the world; he had met some of them, dealt with them on occasion. They were chairmen of great corporations, grand masters of martial arts disciplines, heads of departments in executive branches of governments, princes, presidents, prelates, and a saint or two. Unlike Luthor, these men and women chose to retain their respectability. They had trouble coping with honesty.

Luthor was not motivated by a desire for money, or power, or beautiful women, or even freedom. In solitary Luthor decided that his motivation was beyond even the love or hate or whatever it was he had for humanity. It was consuming desire for godhood, fired by the unreasonable conviction that such a thing was somehow possible. He began by being an honest man. He was a criminal and said so.

He sat down next to the woman at the desk, Barbara Tolley, his clerical assistant. She insisted on being called "B.J." even though her middle name was Arabella.

"Anything pressing?" Luthor asked her as he poured them both a cup of coffee from a beaker rigged to a device that kept it constantly filled with exactly sixteen ounces.

"That gadget you dreamed up in the fall - y'know, the way of making pictures jump off the page like you're wearing 3-D glasses?"

"What about it?" It was a method devised by Luthor's inventor alias, Chet Horowitz, to make a holographic image possible on a flat surface so that a picture would appear to hang several inches off a page.

"Every major paperback company in town made a bid for the process. It seems there's this whole new group of people whose job it is to package books like detergents or political candidates or something."

"And they want to put this thing on paperback covers. Good idea. You walk down an aisle looking for a cookbook, and the one that catches your eye has a cover with lobster thermidor hanging into the aisle. So what's the problem?"

"Chet Horowitz stands to make a small fortune on it."

"Yes?"

"He made a small fortune on the gizmo that keeps electric plugs from shocking babies, and another small fortune on the new riveting gun. That's three small fortunes since January. Bernie that accountant says you're overspending and we won't have enough to pay Chet's income taxes this year."

Luthor smiled.

"All right, genius." B.J. gave him the indulgent look she kept as a defense against his. "If the solution's so damn obvious why didn't Bernie think of it himself?"

Luthor obviously had B.J. by the intrigue glands. This happened so seldom that he sat silently long enough to see her eyes crinkle. Then he solved the accountant's problem: "We don't have to pay Chet Horowitz' income tax at all this year. Let a process server try to find him. We're criminals, remember?"

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife

The Lord is my Shepard; I have everything I need. He lets me rest in green meadows; he leads me beside peaceful streams. He renews my strength. He guides me along right paths, bringing honour to his name.