onny got out of bed and went to check on Jocelyn Jerrold to see if there was any chance me might still be alive. "He's dead." He told Brenda, surprised she wasn't hysterical about having just shot a man. In fact, one might say she was being quite cold and emotionless about the whole thing. She was just sitting on the bed looking down at the body of Jocelyn Jerrold in a very detached manner.

"Good." Brenda sighed in relief. Then she shocked Sonny even further by adding. "Now if Jax were only dead, everything would be perfect."

"You want Jax dead?" Sonny couldn't believe what he was hearing. This must really be a fantasy. The day would never come that he'd ever hear her say that, although many times he had wished he would.

"Jax is to blame for you being here." She explained. "He's the one who sent you here." She added. "With Jerrold dead, Jax can't try to come here and harm you, again. We're finally free of him, forever." It was part of the reason Brenda had been determined to make sure Jerrold died when she arrived. So Jax would no longer be able to try and come here to ruin things between her and Sonny. With Jerrold dead they were beyond Jax's reach forever.

"And just where is here?" He asked carefully. He still wasn't sure he wasn't really imagining all this.

"1792, as you well know." She could see he was having a hard time with all that had happened to him and was still happening to him. But at least he knew who she was. One of her greatest fears was that he wouldn't even know her when she arrived. "I know what you're feeling Sonny. You feel like Alice in Wonderland. But this is all real." Then she explained. "Jax found some woman." Oh, why not just come out and say it. "Who am I kidding? He found himself a witch who could cast a spell on you to send you back to relive a past life you lead, while bringing the person you were in that past life to the present. I know it sounds ludicrous, but it's true. It all happened."

He held up his hand to halt her. "I don't think I want to hear anymore of this." He told her. "The more I hear, the more I become convinced I'm in a psych ward somewhere strapped down to a bed and shot-up on so many drugs I'm living in some drug-induced fantasy world that I think is real." He added. "Witches casting spells sounds like something out of a fairytale. It has nothing to do with real life."

"Truth is stranger than fiction, baby." She replied. Brenda had felt the exact same way when she had seen him disappear before her eyes on the docks and Marco Consuelos had reappeared in his place. "You're living the life. You know it's true. Sometimes you've just got to believe and not question things. That's what I had to do after you disappeared and your past self reappeared in your place. If I hadn't, I wouldn't be here with you now. If I had, I would be questioning my sanity the way you are now." She added. "Neither of us is crazy. This is real. It's all happened. There's still magic in the world, Sonny. You and I are proof of that."

"So we're both basically trapped in the past, forever." He replied, trying to come to grips with this new reality, if that's what it was. Then he thought of something. "What about Belinda. What happened to her? She disappeared and you reappeared in her place." He added. "Her husband had just shot her and she died in my arms." He asked hopefully. "Is she still alive in the future?"

"No." Brenda hated to disappoint him. She knew he was already blaming himself for her death. "If she was dead in this time, then she'll be dead in the future, as well. Her dead body will reappear in my place and everyone will think that Brenda Barrett is dead when they find her."

"It's my fault that she's dead." Sonny declared, as the guilt began to eat away at him. "Her husband was going to shoot me and she threw herself across my chest to protect me."

"No, it isn't." She grabbed him by the arm and shook him. Brenda refused to let him blame himself the way he always did when something bad happened. "Listen to me, Sonny." She punctuated that with another shake. "It was her destiny to die that way. When Marco showed up, I did some research on his past and found out both he and Belinda Jerrold had been shot to death by her husband. Ever since I found that out, I've been desperately trying to find a way to save you before you ended up dying in Marco's place. It was her and Marco's destiny to die that way, and you came periously close to living out Marco's destiny." She added. "If I hadn't showed up when I did, you would have."

"What about Marco?" He asked. "Is he still alive in the future?"

"I would presume so." Brenda replied. "While some events of the past played out just as they were supposed to, others have been changed."

"Why couldn't Belinda have escaped her destiny." Sonny wanted to know.

"She might have." Brenda replied. "If the spell had made us switch places a few seconds earlier. Of course, I might have died in her place, just like you almost died in Marco's place." She added. "I think the only reason the spell worked was because Belinda was still alive when Magda started it." She sighed. "Unlike Belinda, Marco managed to escape his own destiny, but he paid a high price for it. He escaped it by never knowing the love he could have shared with Belinda before it ended up costing them both their life. She was the love of his life and now he'll never know what it was like to love and be loved by her."

"Belinda never knew it, either." Sonny sighed sadly. "I cheated her out of knowing it."

"Not you, baby." Brenda reminded him. "Jax. Jax is to blame for everything that happened here. He succeeded in doing to Belinda and Marco what he wanted to do to us." She added, not daring to let herself believe it was true. "So, you didn't love Belinda?"

"No." Sonny looked over at her as they sat side-by-side on the bed. "When I couldn't remember anything, I thought I was in love with her. Then I began to remember you and knew the feelings I thought I was feeling for her, were actually just my feelings for you. I decided I had to end things with her because it would just be too painful to be with her when the person I really wanted was you and I could never have you again. So I told her my decision and she asked me to make love to her one last time to say goodbye to her." He added in amazement. "And still she sacrificed herself to save me."

"That's because she loved you." Brenda told him. "So you're wrong. She did experience the great love with you that she would have had with Marco Consuelos. If she hadn't loved you like that, she would have never been willing to die for you." She added. "That's probably how she and Marco originally died. She threw herself on top of Marco to save him and after she died, Jerrold killed Marco, too."

"But she knew I didn't love her back." Sonny pointed out. "So it was hardly the great love she and Marco had shared and hardly worth dying for." He got up from the bed and started pacing the floor. "Jerrold was going to let her live. Her punishment was to watch me die. So why didn't she?"

"What kind of life would that have been for her?" Brenda asked. "An empty life being married to the man who murdered the man she loved." She added. "Sonny, don't you see. You gave her more than she had before. She knew what if felt like to feel a great love and passion, even if it wasn't returned to her. And that's more than a lot of people can say." She sighed. "The one I really feel sorry for is Marco. He doesn't know what he's missed. He doesn't even know he's missing it. He'll never know what it's like to love someone so much you're willing to sacrifice yourself for them just to keep them safe. He's a very sad and empty human being without loving and being loved by Belinda. He's also cold and selfish. I think he'll do far better as you than you ever did."

"So." Sonny looked at her. "There was no way to bring me back to the present, so you had to come back to the past so you could be with me? You gave up everything you knew to be with me?" He was completely mystified that in as many minutes two women would sacrifice so much because they loved him so much. He didn't feel worthy of such a sacrifice.

"What exactly did I sacrifice?" Brenda smiled at him. "A life without you? That's no life at all as far as I'm concerned." Then because of all she and Sonny had been through, she decided to tell him the truth because they were long past telling lies to each other. "Besides, my sacrifice wasn't as selfless as you're making it. In fact, what I did was very selfish. I could have brought you back, but I decided not to because I wanted you free of the mob. I decided it would be best for the both of us if we both lived out our lives in this time instead of our own."

"And just why did you do that?" He wanted to know. Curiously he wasn't angry. At least not yet. "What's so great about this time? What does it have that our own time doesn't?"

"There's no mob." She answered. "It's the thing that has constantly torn us apart and it would have done the same in the future." She added. "When we were going to get married, we were going to go on the run together to escape the mob for a new life together. Consider this our new life."

"Well, the mob certainly won't be able find us here." He picked up his clothes off the floor and began to get dressed. "We haven't even been born yet, nor has the first real group of organized crime been formed yet." He looked at the modern clothes she was wearing. "You'd better go to Belinda's wardrobe and find something to wear. Your days of wearing micro mini's are over."

Brenda didn't know quite to make of Sonny's behavior. Why wasn't he yelling and screaming at her for what she'd done. For taking all that precious mob power away from him and condemning him to a time where he was considered nothing but an indentured servant.

She walked over to the wardrobe and just stared at the foreign looking items. "Just what am I supposed to take out to wear?" She asked in confusion. Sonny walked to the wardrobe and picked out all the acoutrements she would need, including underwear. When he handed the bundle of clothing to her, she looked at it in puzzlement. "And just how am I supposed to put it on?"

"I had the same problem as you did when I first arrived." He decided not to mention to Brenda how he'd learned to dress himself. He somehow didn't think she'd appreciate hearing how Belinda had personally dressed him or how much he'd enjoyed it. "I'll show you." He added with a leering look. "First you'll have to take off your clothes."

"I guess in your time here you got pretty proficient at removing women's clothes." Brenda couldn't help the spark of jealousy she felt, as she stripped her clothes off.

It was strange. He had seen Belinda's body naked many times, but it didn't move him or make him feel the things that seeing Brenda standing naked before him did. All his hands wanted to do was to touch and caress and make love to her body. It took great restraint on his part to cover that body with clothes and not to take any liberties with it while he was doing it. "It took me a little time." Sonny flashed a smile at her. "My bra-flick no longer worked in this time." Not that he could even remember how to do it at the time.

She smiled back at him, knowing he wanted her and wanting him with the same intensity in return, as he helped her fasten all her laces and button all her buttons. But now wasn't the time and they both knew it. She glanced over at Jerrold's body laying on the floor. They had made love before with a dead body in the room, but they weren't trapped in the catacombs now. They were faced with the threat that servants might soon be bursting in the door at any moment. So they continued to play their light-hearted game together.

Brenda well-remembered the bra-flick. She had been a recipient of it many times in the past. It sometimes amazed her how quickly he could remove her bra from her. One moment she'd be wearing it and the next it would be gone. Sonny had explained to her once when she asked how he could do that that it had taken great practice to obtain the skill of removing a woman's bra with just a flick of his wrist.

He stepped back and looked at all his handy work. "All done." Then he glanced over at Jocelyn's dead body. "You do realize that in this time I'm an indentured servant and you're Jerrold's wife. When they find him shot to death, their going to think one or both of us are to blame." He added. "We may have escaped the mob in this time, but we may not escape the hangman's noose." Then he told her of the stunt Belinda pulled to lure Jerrold to her room to find them in bed together. "When the servants talk it could look like we were in this together to get rid of him so we could be together."

"He was trying to kill you." Brenda declared. "He killed Belinda. It was self-defense."

"Try telling a jury that." Sonny retorted. "Especially when you explain that Belinda's body was transported to the present, while you took her place in the past." He added. "We're going to have to go on the run and if they ever find us, we'll probably both be hanged."

"It seems we always have to be surrounded by some kind of danger, doesn't it?" She sighed, then added drily. "It does tend to make life more exciting for us. Sort of like a beer chaser."

He couldn't help himself. He just had to laugh. This was just so typically Brenda, his Brenda, that he was suddenly filled with a happiness he thought he'd never feel again. "What am I going to do with you?"

"Just love me." She told him seriously. "And never let me go." "I won't." He cupped her face in his hands. "I'll never let you go, ever again."

"I love you, Sonny." She looked up at him, her eyes filled with her love for him.

He lowered his mouth to hers. "I love you, too."

What a joy it was to kiss Brenda and not feel something was missing. To feel that love and passion all rolled up into one that he'd once been so afraid of. He never wanted to face a future without Brenda in it ever again. He never wanted to be without her. He had felt dead inside when his memory returned and he realized he was trapped in a time that Brenda didn't exist in. Twice he had faced living an existence that Brenda wasn't a part of and he never wanted to experience that again.

As their kiss began to grow in intensity, words from Peter Cetera and Cher's song After All began to play inside his head. Look here we are again. I guess it must be fate. We tried it on our own and deep inside we've known, we'd be back to set things straight. I still remember when your kiss was so brand new. Every memory repeats. Every step I take retreats. Every journey always brings me back to you. After all the stops and starts. We keep coming back to these two hearts. Two angels who've been rescued from the fog. And after all that we've been through, it all comes down to me and you. I guess it's meant to be. Forever you and me, after all. No truer words had ever been spoken.

Everything would be all right. If Brenda could come back to the past in the nick of time to save his life, then they'd both find a way to survive and strive in this strange new world they found themselves in. As long as they were together, everything would be all right.