Chapter Four

"Wha…What do you mean, save me from my fears?" I stuttered.

Jesse made me sit down once more as he quietly said, "Susannah, you have a right to fear Paul. Susannah when we meet in the future, it's hundreds of years in the future. The time I'm from is over three hundred years away. I've never met you but yet met your ghost. Susannah you were killed in the trials."

My heart sunk. I knew that's what he would say when I asked the question but still I had to ask.

"So Paul really did turn me in when I refused to marry him."

It wasn't a question but still Jesse answered.

"Yes."

I sat there for a minute and finally I broke.

"These trials are out of hand!" I yelled. "You are telling me that I'm going to be hung. Oh God! My mother! What is this going to do to her? She's already lost my father and yes, she has Andy and his sons but still, I'm her daughter! Her only child of her blood! And after I'm convicted as a witch what's to say they won't come after her too. And even if they don't there's nothing stopping anyone from making her life hell. She's a respected woman in the community. If the hang me that will all change, she'll be the mother of the witch. I can't do that to her. I can't let this happen. Jesse you have to help me!"

Jesse shook his head, "Susannah I've already told you that's what I'm here for."

I then asked a question that I didn't really want to ask, "Jesse do you know when? I mean, what day are they going to hang me? How much time do we have to stop this?"

Jesse then looked at his feet and was quiet for so long I thought he wasn't going to answer.

"They hung you on July 19th of this year."

July? Ok I can handle that. It's only April, late April but April.

"Ok so that's three months away. Then we have plenty of time."

"No Susannah, we don't."

"What do you mean Jesse? We have three months."

"Susannah July 19th was when you were hung. You were arrested on accounts of witch craft on April 30th."

'April 30th!' my mind shouted. It was already April 20th.

"Ten days? You're telling me I have ten days. Ten days before I'm dragged from my family," I wanted so badly to shout it at him but I couldn't find the strength in my voice. How could he? How could he give me false hope like that? He claimed to care for me, and if I really thought about it I guess he did what with traveling back three hundred years to save me, but right now I wasn't feeling it. He knew I only had a few days left with my mother and he kept it from me. And with that thought I found my voice.

"How could you keep this from me Jesse? How could you take away time I could be spending with my mother? How could you do this? How?" As I was saying this I started crying and quickly lost my voice again.

Jesse held me as I cried. He pulled out a handkerchief and set aside what looked like a rag that had been wrapped in it. As he wiped my tears he said, "Susannah that was never my intention. I had always planned on telling you the truth. Father Dominic was the one that told me not to, that the truth would be too great of a shock for you to handle. Still even with his warning I planned on telling you, but when I saw you I couldn't. I had never seen you so happy. I could see that you were worried about the trials but you were still so happy, so loving, and so full of life. I had seen those things in you before but never to the extant I did that first day here. I couldn't bring myself to destroy that. I wanted to get to know you fully, how you where before you're death, not just after it. It was selfish of me and for that Susannah I am truly sorry."

I looked at Jesse. He looked as scared and even as sad as I did. What I heard Father Dominic say to him echoed in my ears. Jesse loved me. Or at least, he loved the future me. From the second I met Hector Jesse de Silva I found myself feeling a strange pull toward him. Was the pull love or at perhaps instead the promise of love?

As a child I remember my mother telling me grand stores of love. My mother was a well-educated woman. Her stores came from all over the world. The one I remember most she said was told to her by her grand-father who was a college professor in England. She told me that the story came from Greece. It told of how when man first came to be they had two heads and four arms and four legs. The Greek god Zeus became jealous of the bond that mankind had threw down lighting and separating man from his other half leaving each with only one head, two arms, and two legs. Afterwards man went on living life but never felt complete and they spent their whole lives looking for their other half but only a small number of them ever found it.

I had not thought of that story in many years. Living in Salem surrounded by Puritans I had all but forgot the stores of the Greek gods. Here there was only one God and that seemed all we should know. But looking into Jesse's eyes and seeing the way he looked back at me I could not but help thinking of that old story and wondering if perhaps Jesse was my other half.

"I understand, Jesse. You know me better than I know you. You are a stranger to me and yet still I feel a strong connection to you. I cannot imagine what you feel toward me having known me."

Jesse looked shocked for a brief moment but quickly recovered.

"My dear Susannah, my sweet querida, there is more than just a strong connection for me. For me there is love, a strong love that many will never have the pleasure of feeling."

It touched me to know that. I do not why but it did. I had barely known this man three days and still the fact that he loved me made me inexplicably happy. Then I got caught on to something he said, a word that I had only heard once before when he said it to me before. Querida, it was a strange word. I word I had never heard before Jesse. Still he said it with such warmth that I had to know exactly what it meant.

"Jesse, what is querida?"

Jesse smiled. It was an amazing smile, a bright smile. I fell in love with that smile in an instant and knew that I was close to falling in love with the owner of the smile.

"Querida is a Spanish word. It means darling. It is a term of endearment. I have always called you by it."

I smiled. How could this be? How could after just a few days could she feel this about a man that she hardly even knew?

"Jesse," I said breathlessly. I was only the when I realized how close we were and when I said his name Jesse moved closer to the point that our foreheads where almost touching.

Ok this was really not right, this was not only not right, this was downright improper. In fact just being alone with him in the woods was improper but with how close we were it was horribly improper. Still I felt myself lean closer to him. And then our lips touched and I felt fire and saw white flames behind my closed eyelids.

A/N: I'm back-imagine that being said in much the same way as the little girl in Poltergeist 2 said "they're back" (and before you say anything I know in Poltergeist she said "They're here" but in Poltergeist 2 she did say "they're back." Look it up)-Anyway I can't believe it's been almost two years since my last update. I promise you guys I did not realize it had been that long. I'm really bad at writing things in a reasonable amount of time but in order to get better at it and not abandon you guys again I will be posting a posting schedule for my stories on my profile within the next week and to make it up to you guys for being gone for so long tomorrow I will be posting my first ever Frozen fanfiction. It's just a simple one-shot but when I finish this story I have an idea of revising that one-shot into a chaptered crossover with Tangled so be sure to let me know what you think. Now a bit on this chapter, the Greek story that Suze told came from an episode of Xena that I happened to remember when I was trying to think of a story to kind of explain what Suze was starting to feel for Jesse that she would have possibly known. I made her great-grandfather a professor because I always felt that Helen Ackerman should be a well-educated women no matter what setting she would be in and in this time period women weren't educated and the story of the Greek gods were not common knowledge so I figured the man who educated Helen needed to be a bit more educated than the common man so professor he became. I hope you enjoy this chapter and I promise it won't be another two years before the next.