So why was he still here? Why was he so reluctant to leave?

Sighing softly, his eyes swept the slender figure lying next to him on the bed. Gently he touched her silken hair, careful not to wake her up from her deep slumber.

God what kind of a spell had she cast on him? Why couldn’t he walk away from her? Stay away from her?

He studied her carefully. She was beautiful, but then he had known women who were even more beautiful. Exotic. Sensual. Passionate. None of them had tugged at his soul like this one. This girl he barely knew. This girl he had almost killed.

God Jagger this is dangerous ground you’re walking, he whispered the words silently to himself. You made your life a long time ago and there is no room in it for complications of any sort.

And Emily Quartermaine is a complication of a major sort.

He reached down and gently traced the scars on her wrist. He hated the thought that she’d been hurting so badly that she had considered that an option. She was like this butterfly, incredibly fragile yet strong in ways that a bystander could only imagine.

Was that what attracted him? The lure of her vulnerability combined with her inner strength? The need to protect and cherish yet at the same time knowing that underneath the surface she was made of tempered steel. Strong enough to endure almost anything.

Strong enough to return his ....

He stopped himself. Don’t go there. Don’t even go close to there. He closed his eyes and leaned back against the pillow.

It made him sick to think of her being hurt in any way. It made him even sicker to think that he had been the one to hurt her.

He drew in a breath as he opened his eyes and traced the bruise and the swelling on her forehead.

Jagger sighed as the truth began to sink in. All he had to offer Emily Quartermaine was more hurt, more pain, more things she would have to endure, more scars- both seen and unseen. His world was filled with death and violence and other things that normal people only encountered in their worst nightmares. How many men and women and children had died at his command or even at his hand? All casualties of a war that had consumed him a long time ago, a war that claimed him body and soul.

There was nothing left to give someone like her. All he had and all he was had been pledged to the Consortium years ago.

There was nothing left. Nothing.

The only thing he could offer her was his protection. His vow that while he was around nothing and nobody would hurt her.

Not even him.

Especially him.

Rising from his spot lying on top of the covers, Jagger gently drew the blankets tight around Emily’s sleeping form.

Giving in to some kind of mad impulse, he dropped a kiss on the sleeping girl’s forehead.

With one last look at her, Jagger turned and made his way out of her room and down the stairs.

There were monsters out there waiting to be killed.

And that was what he was after all, a killer of monsters.

It was all he was.

No matter how much he might occasionally wish otherwise.

He never looked back or he would have seen the tear falling from the corner of an eye that was not closed after all.

I knew I loved you before I met you
I think I dreamed you into life
I knew I loved you before I met you
I have been waiting all my life

The Penthouse

He’d spent the night watching her sleep, wondering why it felt so natural to be here with her.

He could almost forget the circumstances they were thrust in when the moment was like this, soft and imminently peaceful. He could almost forget that his wife was dead, his son kidnapped, and that this young woman was blackmailing him into participating in a deadly game that could destroy them all.

She didn’t look like a killer sleeping. She looked exactly like what she was, the daughter of middle class doctors who had lived the most sheltered of lives for most of her life.

She was an enigma.

She was also fast becoming his personal obsession.

He remembered the heat of her kiss last night. He’d felt that kiss in ways that he hadn’t felt anything in years. He’d wanted to pull her close and bury himself in her until they both forgot the rest of the world was there. It had taken all of his strength to remember why she was there and what this was really supposed to be about.

He liked watching her sleep, seeing the peaceful look on her features. The long lashes shielding those blue eyes, eyes that he knew would be filled with bitterness and contempt when they opened.

She didn’t like him. Of course he hadn’t been particularly likable either.

Jason shifted uncomfortably. In the years since he had awaken in that hospital room he had not often taken a good hard look at himself, at the person he had become. In the last twenty four hourss he had.

And he wasn’t sure that he liked what saw.

He’d manipulated Carly into a marriage, not because he loved her but because he wanted Michael and Carly was the key to getting Michael. The fact that Carly had known the score, had known that he saw her as nothing more than a good friend, that she had believed he would love her someday, none of that changed what he had done. Carly had deserved a real family, not this facade that their lives had become.

Now Carly was dead and it was too late to make it up to her, to late to set her free to find that happiness was more than a series of discrete and sometimes not so discrete one night stands.

And Emily...Jason winced as he remembered the look on his sister’s face when he had entered that hotel room. The combination of disbelief and wariness had cut him to the heart. He’d known how badly her break up with Nikolas had hurt her. Just like he had known that AJ’s death was a blow she wouldn’t easily recover from. AJ’s death had hit him hard too. Instead of understanding when Emily turned to drugs, he had turned away from her. All because she had almost cost him Michael. He’d picked Michael over Emily just like once, years ago, he’d picked Michael over Robin.

What kind of man could turn his back on the people he loved so easily?

He shuddered as he remembered Emily’s attempted suicide and the decision afterwards to send her to Ferncliff. He could have stopped that hearing. He could have interceded. Bought the judge off. Paid for specialists to discount Alan and Monica’s experts.

He could have. But he didn’t.

He’d known what Ferncliff was like and he’d done nothing to stop the Quartermaines from sending her there. And in the time since she was released, he’d refused to see her and forced Carly to go behind his back to let Michael see his aunt.

God what a sanctimonious bastard he could be.

He watched the girl sleeping in his bed. Sarah Webber. He wondered again what had happened to transform the school girl who had left Port Charles into the professional killer who had returned.

Somehow he doubted if she would tell him. She was too full of secrets binded by too many layers of protection.

In some ways she reminded him of himself, that same desperate hope that if you could just eliminate what caused you pain than you could eliminate the pain too. There were so many ways to push the hurt away. Use your money and position to placate the wife you can’t love. Tell the girl you once loved that it would be better if you never saw her face again. Ignore the desperation of the sister you adored.

Kill the man who had hurt you more than anyone can imagine.

He wondered how long it would take Sarah to realize what he was just beginning to understand.

That it never worked. She could kill Kosokov as easily as he had managed Carly, banished Robin, and ignored Emily.

But it wouldn’t ease the pain.

He watched her sleep.

His wife was dead. His son kidnapped. He’d play this game of hers until he was sure that his son was safe. That was all that concerned him at the moment. Michael’s safety.

And even as the thought crossed his mind he knew it was nothing but a lie.

There's just no rhyme or reason
Only the sense of completion
And in your eyes, I see
the missing pieces I'm searching for
I think I've found my way home
I know that it might sound
more than a little crazy
but I believe...

The Penthouse
A little later

She was walking through a dark tunnel, but for some reason she wasn’t afraid. There was a light at the end of the tunnel and she knew that once she had found it, she would be okay. She would be safe. Everything she had endured would be over.

The pain had to end sometime, didn’t it?

She took step after step, not paying any attention to where she was going just that she was going. Her gun was in its holster at its side and she resisted the impulse to draw it, telling herself that she wasn’t afraid.

Fifty more feet. Fifty more feet and she would be there. In the light. The darkness that had grown inside her from the moment she had watched her father die and made a decision to live would be chased away, banished by the warmth of the light. She could go back to being the Sarah Webber she used to be. Forget about the gang rape and the torture. Forget about her failure to save her parents. Forget about the lives she had taken.

She could go back to being that high school kid who had considered staying out late with her boyfriend breaking the rules and living dangerously.

All she had to do was travel fifty more feet.

She felt his shadow cross over and she knew suddenly that she wasn’t going to make it.

That she had in fact never stood a chance.

She looked up into the face of the man she was going to kill and she almost cried. Instead she smiled.

Kosokov grinned, his yellowing teeth betraying the evil of his disposition. “You can’t fight me.”

“No, but I can kill you.” Sarah drew her gun.

“I don’t think so. A pathetic creature like you. You couldn’t stop me from raping you. You couldn’t stop my men from raping you.” His eyes gleamed with a lust that made her skin crawl. “You were, how do the Americans say it, a good time enjoyed by all.”

“You bastard. You’re a sick bastard.”

“Maybe. But I am a powerful sick bastard. Too powerful to be stopped by you or your precious Consortium. Do you think you are the first to try to kill me?”

“No, but I will be the last because I will succeed.”

“You’ve already lost Sarah Webber. I’ve killed your parents. I destroyed your innocence. I’ve poisoned your soul. Kill me or not, you will never undo the damage I’ve done to your life.”

Sarah nodded. She had long ago accepted the truth of his words. “Maybe not. But I’ll sleep better at night.”

“Brave words. I wonder how you will sleep knowing that you are responsible for the death of yet another person you love....”

“What?” Sarah looked up startled as Kosokov suddenly held a familiar figure in his grip. A petite brunette still in her wedding dress staring at her with begging, frightened eyes.

“Sarah?”

“Lizzie? My god Liz.” Sarah stepped forward to help her sister but some force stopped her.

Frantic, she lifted her gun and aimed it at Kosokov’s head, pulling the trigger.

Nothing happened.

She pulled again and again and again.

The gun clicked like a toy gun. Looking at it, Sarah realized that was exactly what it was. A toy gun.

“Sarah! Help me. I don’t want to die.” She could hear her sister’s screaming.

“Liz! I’m trying but I can’t...” Even as she continued to push at the barrier that held her in place, she knew it was too late. She saw the knife come out, saw it slice the pale throat, saw the crimson blood spurt out staining the white satin.

Saw the look of blame in her sister’s eyes before the life fled from them.

She’d failed her sister just like she’d failed her mother and her father.

She turned to a grinning Kosokov. The gun was back in her hand, but this time it was a real gun. She aimed it blindly in his direction and began shooting.

Knowing all the while that it was too late.

Sarah sat up with a jerk, still shaking from the intensity of her nightmare.

It took her a moment to remember where she was. Morgan’s bedroom. She flinched as she remembered the night before. Their argument. That kiss. She could feel the satin warmth of his sheets almost as if she could feel his presence, as if he had been her watching over her.....She shook her head at the fanciful thought as she moved to slip out of the warm bed.

Shivering, she picked up the outfit she had worn the night before and then threw it back down a second later. She found a robe hanging on the back of a peg and put it on, heading to the shower.

Once in the shower, she turned the water on full blast and as hot as she could stand, trying to cleanse her mind as well as her body. Washing herself quickly, she put her hair in a simple pony tail, pulled a pair of Morgan’s jeans over a white T-shirt. She stopped at the door, her hands still shaking. She couldn’t shake that dream from her head. Moving away from the door, she turned towards the window instead. Bulletproof. Impenetrable. She stared at the city visible through it.

Damn Kosokov for coming to Port Charles. Being here, being in this city, was tearing at her sanity. It was causing her to doubt herself, doubt her mission, for the first time since she had first started dreaming of revenge.

The kind of doubt that could get her killed.

She sighed. It was too late. A chain of events had been sent in motion that she couldn’t stop, even if she wanted to.

And the truth was she didn’t want to.

She wanted Kosokov dead. She needed him dead.

Nothing else mattered.

With a renewed determination, Sarah picked up her gun, put in her holster, put the holster around her hips, and headed down the stairs to find Morgan and begin their plan.

I knew I loved you before I met you
I think I dreamed you into life
I knew I loved you before I met you
I have been waiting all my life

A thousand angels dance around you
I am complete now that I've found you

An airport in Eastern Europe

Like many of his fellow country men, Illia Kosokov was of medium height, olive complexioned, dark hair, mustache, and a stocky build. Physically, there was nothing about him that would lead you to suspect that he could command the loyalty of soldiers or invoke the hatred of civilians.

Not until you looked at his eyes. His eyes were both oddly flat and somehow hypnotically intense.

Like those of a snake.

One look into those eyes and you knew that this was a man who killed without hesitation. Who would kill you without hesitation.

His soldiers were loyal to him for the same reason that those who lived in the lands he had destroyed with his evil touch hated him.

Fear that same day he would turn that gaze on them.

He looked up from studying his reports, carelessly knocking back another shot of vodka.

“We leave in fifteen minutes, General Kosokov.”

“Good.” Kosokov nodded. “We will arrive in New York early and catch Corinthos and Morgan off guard. Arriving early gives us the surprise and the advantage in these little negotiations. It will be the perfect way to see if Corinthos and Morgan can do for us what they claim. ”

“And if they can’t?”

“Than our business will end before it even begins.”

And having seen that look in their General’s eyes, his men knew well that their business would not be all that would end.

I knew I loved you before I met you
I think I dreamed you into life
I knew I loved you before I met you
I have been waiting all my life

I knew I loved you before I met you
I think I dreamed you into life
I knew I loved you before I met you
I have been waiting all my life