Name Part II of the Helander Trilogy By IcemanGal   And even though The moment passed me by I still can't turn away 'Cause all the dreams You never thought you'd lose Got tossed along the way And letters that You never meant to send Get lost or thrown away And now we're grown up orphans That never knew their names We don't belong to no one That's a shame But if you could hide beside me Maybe for a while And I won't tell No one your name And I won't tell 'em Your name And scars are souvenirs You never lose The past is never far Did you lose yourself Somewhere out there Did you get to be a star And don't it make you sad To know that life Is more than who we are We grew up way too fast And now there's Nothing to believe Reruns all become our history A tired song keeps playing On a tired radio And I won't tell No one your name And I won't tell 'em Your name I won't tell 'em Your name Mmm, mmm, mmm I won't tell 'em Your name Ow I think about you all the time But I don't need the same It's lonely where you are Come back down, And I won't tell 'em Your name ["Name", by the Goo Goo Dolls] "I've been thinking about a yacht," she said to him one day, while they were on the back terrace. The villa had a nice little dock attached to it, leading out into the clear, warm water of the Mediterranean Sea, but when Zander first arrived there was no boat anchored there. "That would be nice," he said in the non-committal voice he often used when Helena made such statements. He was rarely sure, at the beginning, if she was addressing him directly or not. Sometimes she seemed to be talking to the air. "I believe you said something about being raised in Florida? Some familiarity with sailing and the like?" "Yeah…" He was surprised that she'd remember that, but he realized he was always surprised when it turned out she'd listened to what he said. Still, in all fairness, it seemed to happen at least somewhat regularly. He could just never predict when. She didn't say anything more about it; in fact, a moment later she got up and indicated that he should follow her inside for 'a little rest' that would be anything but. Zander didn't think about the conversation again, but a week later a yacht was moored at their little dock. Helena brought her down with him while she checked it out and while she mentioned casually that it was not as large or elaborate as the Cassadine yacht, Zander was impressed by its clean lines and elegant fittings. There was real mahogany there, and gleaming brass. The cabins were spacious - the yacht could easily sleep eight, including crew. Helena sat down on the bed in what was clearly meant to be the master suite. "If I remember properly, you said you had some sailing experience, Alexander…" So she did listen when he talked. He was never quite sure. "Yeah. I did a lot of sailing in Florida, growing up. Nothing like this…" "It's all a matter of size," she said airily. "Everything is relative." She motioned for him to sit with her, which he did. It occurred to him that even this 'lesser' yacht must have cost her a pretty penny, and the costs of the villa, the staff - including himself - and all the nice things she surrounded herself with… and she was in exile, on the run in a way, certainly cut off from the Cassadine Estate…. "Where do you get your money, anyway?" he asked, and immediately regretted it. Her expression froze and the lighthearted mood vanished as if it had been a physical presence in the cabin that had been sent fleeing. "That is none of your concern, Alexander. Rest assured that you needn't worry." Her voice was icy and her entire posture shifted. Zander got up. "I didn't say we were leaving," she said, voice still frosty. "No, Madame," he said, keeping his own voice level. "But I didn't think you'd want me in here with you right now." "Now, you see… sometimes I want you to think and sometimes I do not. Really, you need to learn the difference." "I'm learning things all the time with you," he said, quite seriously. Not the least important of which, he realized, was keeping his own temper. "Oh, Alexander," she said, her voice softening slightly, her unique mix of huskiness, sensuality, and amusement coming forward again. as she put her hand out to him. "It is only just beginning…"   The next day, having 'broken in' the master cabin, they went out on the yacht. Helena had hired a crew but after that first day she indicated that she wanted Zander to take the wheel and learn whatever he didn't know about a craft of that size and type. He found that he enjoyed being on the water again. The yacht was bigger than the sailfish that had been his last boat before the events that had sent him fleeing from his home, but sailing was sailing and the crew was patient with him. He was able to detach his memories of sun and salt and flying across the ocean from those of darker occasions, and to take real pleasure in it, and in his own gradual mastery of the yacht. One day another servant brought him a captain's hat and he understood that it was from Helena and that he was not to acknowledge it but was, in fact, meant to wear it when on board, and he did so. At the beginning, Helena came out with them only on occasion, but as Zander took true command of the yacht she sailed with him more often, short trips up and down the coast. She was not a woman for needlepoint or paperback mysteries, and whatever business she transacted, she did not conduct it in front of him. She would sit out on the deck with him, and sometimes tell him to drop anchor in some secluded cove or another and they would go down into the cabin they had 'broken in' and continue their efforts in that direction. Since she had never cared about whether or not the other servants at the villa knew upon whom she was bestowing her favors it was no surprise that she didn't care what the crew did or didn't know on board the yacht. She never seemed to fear indiscretion. Zander had started to pick up a little French and that seemed to amuse Helena, so she declared the yacht an English-free zone and insisted that he converse with her only in French. That she wanted to talk to him for any length of time at all surprised him at first, but after awhile he got used to it. They discussed the scenery as they traveled along the coast, the weather, other general topics. She read the international papers every morning with her breakfast tray and began passing them along to him, and sometimes they would talk about world affairs as they sailed. Without, at first, being aware of it, his language skills were being gradually refined. One evening she brought another couple onto the yacht; a middle-aged couple that fawned over Helena in a way that even she seemed to find excessive, or maybe she just found them tacky. She introduced Zander to them as 'mon capitaine', and after that night occasionally called him that in a slightly arch way. He knew that she was sleeping with one or two of the other servants, and that didn't bother him at all, though he wondered sometimes why she spent as much time with him as she did since by then a good bit of it was not spent in bed. One night they went on what Helena called a 'little dinner cruise.' The kitchen had packed a delicious hamper for them - although Zander figured he could find his way around the galley, Helena had clearly decided not to take her chances - and there were two bottles of wine. Helena drank rather more of it than Zander, not enough to get drunk - he did not think he had ever seen her drunk, or ever would - but it put her in a different mood. Quieter, more reflective. After checking a few things he sat next to her and she seemed lost within herself. After a few moments she asked him, in French, if he ever thought about people he had lost. He admitted that he did. "Les gens perdu," she said quietly, then smiled as if she rather liked the sound of the words. She drank some more wine; it was a rich, dark red that seemed to shimmer in the moonlight. "Stavros would have liked this." She had never mentioned her older son in front of him before. Zander knew who he was, of course, and that he had flirted with Carly at one point, maybe done some business for or with her, and that Sonny had been upset by it. "The yacht? The night?" "The wine," Helena said with a private smile. She finished what was in her glass. "You should have known him, Alexander. He could have taught you so much…" "I doubt he would have noticed me, Madame." "He might have…" She glanced at him. "You are never quite so defiant as when you are being modest, Alexander." He didn't answer; what could he have said? After another pause she said, "It was almost exactly two years ago that I lost him again. He is very much on my mind. Do you know the play 'Cyrano de Bergerac', Alexander?" He shrugged. "A little." "When Cyrano dies, Roxanne says, 'I have loved but one man in my life and I have lost him… twice." She lapsed into silence and finished what was in her glass. Zander didn't know why he said it, she hadn't asked for a response and this wasn't a logical one anyway, but… "They told me I killed my brother. But I didn't do it." "I know," she said, looking out into the darkness. No surprise. He knew she'd had him looked into before she hired him. After several more quiet minutes she got up and threw her wine glass into the sea. "My darling," she whispered, and Zander knew damn well she wasn't talking about him. That was fine, though. "Return us to the villa," she instructed him.     He never knew when it started, or how she became aware of it, but soon it became evident that someone was getting close to finding Helena. Was it the police? The WSB? Luke Spencer? Her own son or grandson? It didn't really matter. 'Inquiries' were being made… She stopped going out on the yacht, stopped going out at all. She spent time on the phone and computer in the little sitting room she used as a sort of office. One day Zander woke up and found the villa in disarray. Much of the staff was gone and the ones who were still there were running around throwing things together. Madame, he was told, had left during the night. They thought she had taken two bodyguards with her, but no one was really sure about anything. Many of them had been given envelopes which Zander assumed had some form of severance in them. He was surprised when he was handed an envelope himself. Inside was a key and directions to a bank in town, where he was taken to a safe-deposit box, which contained a great many Euros [he thought ten thousand dollars' worth], the deed to the yacht, made out to him, a Spanish phrase book and a short note: "Spain is quiet and might prove relaxing." He pocketed everything - though he later destroyed the note, somewhat regretfully. He took the yacht to coastal Spain, stopping in Marseilles to hire a small crew - a wiry, tough-looking man named Paul as his mate and a plump, suntanned woman named Claudine as a cook, and added some improvements to the yacht, and for a few months he followed Helena's suggestion and stayed along the Spanish Riviera, hiring out the yacht for short cruises to respectable looking people. Paul and Claudine started sleeping together and that was no problem for Zander. He did not miss sleeping with Helena but he missed being with her, missed the grace notes of elegance she always insisted on, missed listening to her conversation and learning from it. He didn't like Spain as much as he'd liked France, which he had not known he had liked so much till he'd left it, but wasn't that often the way things went? After a few months he went back to the French Riviera and sure enough he was picked up and questioned by men who might or might not have been official. It didn't matter. He wasn't telling them anything. He didn't know that much - didn't know where Helena had gone, for one thing - but even the things he knew, he wasn't telling. He didn't admit that he'd ever been with her. They talked about taking the yacht from him and if they'd done it he'd have been sorry, but he'd find his way somewhere, he knew now that he could. In the end, it turned out the yacht had been paid for in cash, and placed in his name from the beginning, so they couldn't link it to Helena. "Your loyalty to her is misplaced," one of the men questioning him said. "She would turn on you in a second if it suited her, she would gut you like a fish for her own amusement." "I don't know what you're talking about," he said in a bored tone of voice. He knew it was true, he knew Helena Cassadine, but it didn't matter. He knew who he was, too, finally, and he wasn't going to tell them a thing. Finally, they let him go and he returned to the yacht. It had never been named. He didn't know why Helena didn't name it herself, maybe she'd always known she'd give it to him and disappear and she wanted him to be able to name it. When he had left for Spain he had thought about names, but nothing seemed to fit. He hadn't named it after her because he didn't want to call attention to their relationship while she was being hunted, and he wasn't going to name it after Emily because… he couldn't. Though, he thought with a smile, he could have called it Pixie Sticks… It had become known along his stretch of Spanish coast as simply Captain Smith's boat and that had been good enough. But he was beginning to imagine himself on the yacht for years to come, showing people around the French Riviera, giving them a break, making a decent living, nothing fancy, but he'd never been fancy, not when he was with Emily, not even when he had been Alexander Lewis in a big house in a posh Florida neighborhood… He would give it some thought. He did not hear from Helena, directly or indirectly, though it was not, he felt, out of the question that he would some day. He subscribed to the Herald's international edition and assured himself every day, over coffee and brioches on the deck that she had not yet been caught. He thought she was elusive enough to continue to evade most men. One day, he and Paul were polishing the brass fittings on the deck when he heard some sort of fracas down the pier, where there were a few local vendors and the occasional itinerant. He went down to see what was going on and watched as a small, lithe figure darted through the carts while one vendor cried out that some urchin had stolen fruit from him. It was Zander's firm opinion that people who stole food probably needed it badly. He went back to the yacht and his work, then went into town for supplies. When he returned he wasn't all that surprised, upon going down into the hold to stash the goods, to discover the same waif-like figure huddled down there. He wouldn't ask how he - no, she, it was a girl, he could see that as he inched closer - had gotten on board, at least not right away. He set down what he was carrying and extended a hand. "C'est bien," he said quietly. It's all right. "Les betes," she spat out. Someone had been a beast to her, that was clear. Zander looked at the girl closely. She was in her late teens, though something in her eyes seemed older than the rest of her. Her jeans were torn, her t-shirt - a plain grey one, nothing embroidered or screened on it - was faded. She had a thick tangle of brown hair in dire need of combing and washing, and there was dirt on her face. But she had rich, full mouth that was set and defiant, and eyes… her dark blue eyes blazed at him, balancing fear and bravado. Go ahead, they challenged, throw me to the wolves. He thought of the damaged, self-destructive boy Emily had known and briefly loved, of the desperate young man Helena had taken under her wing. She had used him to her own purposes but had given him more than he had expected. She had indeed helped him grow, as she had suggested that first day, into his name. He was not Alexander the Great, but he knew who he was, and how to do what he needed to do. "C'est bien," he said again and extended the hand closer. When the girl tentatively touched it he smiled at her. "Ne crains pas." Don't worry. "Comment t'appelle toi?" What's your name?" "Ne crains pas," he repeated. "Je ne devrais pas." I won't tell.