Archive of Our Own (BETA rev. 2101)

INCUBUS

I.

She sat in her armchair, waiting. For a while, she had tried to meditate, but this
time the discipline of millennia failed her, as it had done ever since she received
his letter. After Bordeaux, Cassandra had spent some time in Switzerland, for no other
reason than that the little village in the Alps where she stayed was completely
unconnected with anything in her previous life, especially the Horsemen and Duncan
MacLeod. There were not many places in the world she had not visited, but this was one
of them, and she needed a place without memories in order to recover. She thought she
had managed, at least as well as it was possible, when she returned to Britain, though
she still avoided her cottage in the Donan Woods. Then, just when some semblance of
normal life had returned, the letter arrived, written in a language few remembered and
just one person, to her knowledge, knew how to speak, throwing her once again into the
crucible of fury, hatred, helplessness and those memories she had so successfully
avoided for centuries. Trust him to destroy her life once more. But this time, she
wouldn't let him.

"I'm not your sorry little slave anymore," she had told him, and she wasn't. His slave
had been an ignorant village girl, new in her immortality and all too easily led to
believe that it was he who gave that ever returning life to her, that he was a god, a
god to be worshipped, feared and adored. And yet, sometimes she yearned for the
innocence of that pathetic girl, for in all the centuries that followed she had never
been able to trust another person again, not completely, though she had loved many,
loved them sometimes enough to risk the true death for them. But the ability to trust
deeply and thoroughly was something that seemed to be taken forever, ironically enough
not by the destruction of her people, the murder of her father and herself: no, by the
abandonment of the murderer who had made himself her god.

Seeing him helpless before her, on his knees, should have been the fulfillment of her
fantasies, the end of her pain. It wasn't, and not just because Duncan, her special
child, the child of the prophecy, had screamed his demand of the man's life at her. In
the end, she had not spared Methos because of Duncan. Duncan was too far away, both
literally and figuratively; he could hardly stand, let alone reach her in time to stop
her. And though she had always felt a connection to him, even before finding him again
as a man, the friendship they shared and their brief affair paled against her
millennia of grief. The possibility that he might take her head if she killed his
so-called friend didn't even enter her thoughts: not then, not later. She might feel
betrayed by the choice he made, but she knew he was no murderer. No, ultimately Duncan
had not been the reason why she did not go through with her vengeance.

In her first century, when the Horsemen were still there, ever-present in the tales
the people shared and haunting her nights, when she had learned, gradually, how to
submerge the fear, how to cope with her immortality and the gifts that slowly started
to change her, she had not even dreamed of revenge. That had come later, when the fear
had vanished and with it the last traces of the slave girl, when she had realised the
full magnitude of what he had done to her. Then, she had wanted to find him, to break
him as he had broken her, to kill him. But this wish, too, had changed as the past
grew ever more distant, leaving only the dream of his death behind, not as a burning
obsession but as a secret pain, hidden and pale for most of the time. It had not
become an obsession again until she saw him alive.

During all those stages, however, one thing had remained constant. She had thought of
him as he had been then, during their year together. She had seen him enraged, she had
seen him calm, she had listened to him planning the destruction of villages just like
her own with his cold efficiency; she had heard him laugh, both scornfully and without
malice, really amused; she had experienced his brutality and, more rarely, the
gentleness he was capable of, the gentleness which was ultimately his greatest deceit.
But never, not even once, had she seen him cry. She simply had not thought him capable
of tears, let alone the grief that produced them. Looking down on the man sobbing
before her, so shattered that he didn't even seem to notice her, she raised the ax
which could end his life: once, twice, searching for Death and failing.

"Don't hate yourself," he had told her, earlier, trying his deceit of gentleness
again. But she did, now more than ever when she had let the one moment that could have
brought her peace pass, because the man she could have killed seemed to be, at that
moment, not only completely unaware of her but also completely unlike the image that
had haunted her for so long. She had thought Duncan naive and blind when he insisted
to her Methos today was different, might genuinely want to help them; feeling his
death in her hands, for the first time she had also felt doubt. It confused her, hurt
her, left her almost as shattered as the man kneeling before her. When Duncan had
shouted for the second time that he wanted him to live, it had been the excuse she
needed to walk away.

In her darkest hours, Cassandra wondered whether the tears had not been a last
manipulative effort. Yet, each time she thought of that moment, reason and observation
told her that Methos had been beyond any self-control and manipulation. If never
before or afterwards, at least then. It did not take away one iota of his crimes, of
course. But it helped her to convince herself she made the right decision and to pick
up her life again. The other three Horsemen were dead, and in all probability she
would never see Methos again. She tended to avoid other immortals anyway, and she
certainly would not go near Duncan unless forced by extreme circumstances. The time in
Switzerland helped to settle the tumult in her soul somewhat, and working, getting
back into the routine of her daily life where the sight of Kronos had interrupted it
had proven to be the medicine she needed.

At least, that was what she thought until she received the letter. Her address had
been written by a type-writer, as had been the one of the sender, an unknown name,
but once she had opened the envelope and seen the hand-written note inside, she knew
at once who had sent it. He had taught her to write those letters, after all. Probably
just an amusement for him, he was so easily bored, but it had enraged Kronos, who
could not stand to see Methos talking to her at all, at least when it did not entail
giving orders. The sight of those letters sent her back to the desert, to the wonder
of learning and the fear she had of failing, of displeasing him, for he had shown
her all too clearly what displeasing him meant.

Why did he do this to her? You would think that any man whose life had been spared
under such circumstances would be both grateful and cautious enough to avoid the
person who had spared it. But no, he had to ask for a meeting. With a flash of dark
humor, she thought: At least he didn't turn up out of the blue. Giving her the advance
warning and the possibility to decline was clever, but then she had never doubted his
intelligence. She could have either refused or disappeared. Only the latter would have
proven she was still afraid of him, and the former was made impossible by the hints he
gave in his letter. Something to do with Duncan and her prophecy, something so
disturbing that it had, he wrote, come close to destroying the Highlander.

Of course it could be another lie, a trap. Methos could have simply decided that she
was too great a risk to his continued survival. Only the cold voice of reason which
had helped ensure her own survival told her that this was unlikely. He had had several
opportunities to kill her, and had not done so. Even if he had changed his mind, there
were better ways of doing it. He obviously knew where she lived, so why not take her
by surprise there, if this was what he wanted? Why leave evidence behind in the form
of a letter no one else could have written? Why demand a meeting on holy ground?

Still, she could decline. After all, she had given Duncan the life he asked for, and
that should settle the debt between them. She still had not sorted out her feelings
for MacLeod, the hurt from the implicit choice he had made in Bordeaux mixed with the
gratitude for the nobility he had shown in the past, taking on her battles when she
asked him to, comforting her when she needed comfort and compassion more than
anything. All in all, she knew friendship would win out in the end, but she had not
thought of having to see Methos again to prove it.

Finally, cursing the two of them and herself, she answered the letter, agreeing to a
meeting on holy ground, but adding a condition on her own: The meeting should take
place in her cottage, in Donan Wood. It was holy ground, had been since she
consecrated it as a Druid centuries ago, but it was her ground at the same time. And,
among other things, it was revenge as much as distrust and caution. Whatever Methos
was really up to, he had to wonder whether she wouldn't use the opportunity to trap
*him*. Imagining your death at the hands of your enemy was an ugly way to pass the
time, something she had ample experience of, most recently in a cage, surrounded by
four living nightmares.

When Cassandra felt the immortal signature, it took all the discipline she had to not
stand up and grasp her sword. Instead, it lay on her knees, visible, but untouched, a
demonstration of her ability to defend herself as well as her agreement not to attack.
She schooled her features in immobility, determined not to show Methos anything.
Still, when he entered she felt the blood rush to her cheeks. The man who stood there,
in the entrance, leaning against her doorpost and regarding her silently, could not
have been more different from the sobbing wreck she left behind in Bordeaux. Calm,
collected and utterly without any sign of guilt or remorse. For a moment, her
returning rage threatened to overwhelm her. Then, she suppressed it, reminding herself
that to give into the rage now, before she found out whether something really had
happened to Duncan and what Methos wanted, would be counterproductive, to say the
least. He seemed determined to out stare her, but two could play that game. He had
come because he wanted something from her; he could speak first. So she regarded him
while he regarded her, noticing that he did not hold his sword, either, but that the
hands in his pockets probably weren't empty. Even back in what people now called the
Bronze Age, he always had had more than one weapon.

Apart from the coat, he was dressed, as he had been in Seacouver and Bordeaux, in
jeans, a sweater and hiking boots, old boots at that, showing how muddy his trek to
her cottage must have been. Casual harmlessness itself. No wonder MacLeod had been
fooled. The features, of course, were the same, had always been the same, though she
had to admit the short hair contributed to the harmless look. But the hazel eyes did
not, taking everything in, giving nothing away. She knew that expression. Back then,
she had learned to read all his expressions, because it could mean the difference
between life and death - temporary death, but death still, and as she believed he
alone had the power to bring her back, she never knew whether one day he might not
bother anymore. Right now, he was assessing an enemy.

She wondered what he saw. His captive, superimposed on the woman who nearly killed him
some months ago? On an impulse, she decided to show him someone he had never met.
Cassandra the Queen, who had ruled the Iceni for decades before she grew sick of the
power and vanished, leaving that life behind and turning into Cassandra the Healer
again. With the small, disdainful inclination of the head she had used to greet
unruly chiefs, she silently motioned for him to enter.

A spark of amusement crept into his eyes. He followed her admonition, but instead of
either greeting her or continuing their silent exchange of looks, he grabbed the
nearest chair, straddled it and sat on it.

"Well," he began without further preliminaries, "as prophets go, I'd certainly take
you over two babbling old fools. Too bad Mac didn't. At least you wanted him to play
saviour just for you, not for the rest of humanity as well."

He proceeded to tell her about Landry, Ahriman and MacLeod's increasingly strange
behaviour, his studied sarcasm and flippancy a stark contrast to the story. She
abandoned the idea that the whole thing was an elaborate ruse almost as soon as it
came to her. Millennia myths and Persian demons weren't something the Methos of old
would have come up with, and the 20th century version seemed to be even more
sceptical. When he paused, she said, frowning: "In my own vision, I saw Duncan
fighting evil. But it always had a human face - one of us, I thought. Not something
from the nether regions. I would have warned him..."

"Oh, ultimately it was one of us," Methos interrupted, and for the first time, the
determined flippancy had completely vanished from this tone. Instead, he sounded
bitter, worried, and above all, very serious. He paused for a moment, then he said,
looking straight at her: "He killed his student, believing him to be the demon. And
then he asked me to take his head."

All the resentment she felt for Duncan vanished as the horror of it all sunk into her.
Demon or no demon, the man she knew would be destroyed by such an action. She had
never met Richie Ryan, but Duncan had told her about him, with the pride a father felt
for his son, and she knew, only too well, how utterly devastating the loss of a
student could be. It was one of the reasons for telling MacLeod about Kantos. She
couldn't have killed Kantos, and not just because the powers of her former pupil had
outstripped her own. Students were the closest thing the immortals had to children,
and at the same time they were even more. The older you were, the more you needed
young immortals in order to find contact to the present. They taught you as much as
you taught them. The killing of a student, even a student who had rejected one's own
way, was devastating. It tore up your soul. The killing of a beloved student...

"How will he bear it?" she whispered.

Sounding slightly questioning, Methos said: "You did not ask me whether I took it."

"Should I?" she replied, without really believing it. If Duncan were dead, she would
have known. She had her ways.

"Am I to take that as a vote of confidence in my reformed character?"

The returning sarcasm cut through her horror and the pain she felt for her friend.

"No," she said coldly. "You did not take his head because he's more useful to you
alive."

This, at least, had been easy to figure out during those weeks in Switzerland: the
reason why Methos had insinuated himself in MacLeod's life, making him his friend.
Duncan was one of the best fighters that their strange, sick race, doomed to fight one
another to extinction, had ever seen. At the same time, he was one of the few who
really hated the killing, for whom friendship and the protective instinct for all his
friends were stronger than the addictive power of the quickenings. Having Duncan
MacLeod as your friend might be the best life insurance an immortal could find.

"Where is he now?" she continued, because, obviously, this was the point the whole
conversation had been leading to. Getting her to help. While the messenger was the
one person she had hoped never to see again, the message was certainly important
enough to bury her own feelings about Methos for the moment. "Still in Paris? I'll
need an hour to pack my things, but then..."

She fell silent; Methos was shaking his head, and from the way he looked, she knew the
string of bad news still wasn't over. She braced herself. How much worse could it get?

"At the moment, I doubt that anyone can reach him. He vanished after Ryan's death. I
needed some time to track him down again, but ultimately I did. He's in a monastery in
Malaysia, and the one time I spoke to him, he insisted he never wanted to see any of
us again. Now, there are two possibilities. Either he's had a nervous breakdown. His
life in the last few years has been strained enough, to say the least. In this case,
retreat to a monastery where there are some experienced healers isn't a bad idea.
Beats a sanatorium with overcurious doctors anytime. He can't hurt anybody, and nobody
can hurt him. Or, and I still don't believe it, he's really haunted by a supernatural
being. Again, that makes a monastery a sensible choice. In any case, he needs time to
deal with what happened to the kid, and the one sensible thing he said during that
conversation was that nobody would be able to use his friends against him if he knew
none of them were nearby."

What MacLeod actually had said was something Methos did not intend to share with
anyone, especially not with Cassandra. The Dark Quickening had been bad enough, but
back then Methos had at least known exactly what had happened, could trust in Duncan's
strength to reintegrate all the personalities of the quickenings. This was different.
Demon or breakdown, either was out of anyone else's comprehension and ultimately not
as important as the result, the action the Highlander could not, would not deal with.

"It's you who doesn't understand," MacLeod had said, orange-clad monks by his side
because he refused to meet Methos alone. "I don't want to hear a lecture about how to
cope with being a murderer, especially not from you. Oh, I've no doubt you did
something like this in the past, and that you managed to forgive yourself. You seem to
have an infinite capacity of forgiving yourself, don't you?"

Bloody boy scout. When did his opinion start to matter so much? It had looked all set
for a screaming match, and if there was something the man did not need right then, it
was this. Sometimes the best you could do for people was really to leave them alone,
especially if you couldn't trust yourself not to say things which would do more harm
than good. So here he was, trying to deal with a part of his past he had successfully
avoided thinking about for more years than most people could count, and trying to
figure out the Ahriman mess to boot. Sometimes you really had to believe in divine
punishment.

"When exactly did all this happen?" asked Cassandra much too quietly. He told her, and
watched as her green eyes narrowed and an icy fury, so very different from the rage
she had shown in Bordeaux, lacerated her words.

"You must have realised I could have helped Duncan. At least more than you with your
bigoted egocentric I-never-saw-a-demon-views. So why didn't you ask me when it
happened? Or immediately afterwards? Did you fear for your life so much?"

Still, those kind of accusations he could work with. Infinitely preferable to
MacLeod's stony silence which had followed their short, bitter exchange on how to
survive after killing one's student. "It was a consideration, yes. But more
importantly, you and Duncan didn't exactly part on good terms. Frankly, I wouldn't
have been surprised if he had joined me on your list of least likable males."

Her right hand clenched to a fist around the pommel of her sword, but otherwise she
made no move, he was careful to note.

"You bastard. He is my friend, but then, you wouldn't really know what that means,
would you?"

He said nothing. For a moment, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

"So why are you here?"

"For information. First, what about this hermit MacLeod met shortly after becoming
immortal? It seems unlikely that your paths never crossed, living so closely. Second,
what about Ahriman? If he isn't a delusion, that is. Some certainty would be nice, and
according to your chronicles, you picked up some useful talents in that area over the
millennia. Third, I hate living looking over my shoulder. A declaration of either war
or peace would be nice as well. What do you intend to do with the knowledge of my
continuing existence?"

Reporters who had just caught politicians in compromising situations had received
friendlier glares.

"You," she said, obviously trying very hard not to raise her voice and scream like
hell at him, "are unbelievable. This is all about you, isn't it? Duncan's life has
been shattered into a million pieces, and all you worry about is how it affects your
miserable neck."

He had no intention to start a discussion about his improved ethics and capacity for
friendship. This was something she either came to believe of him, or didn't. Besides,
such an argument might prove counterproductive to the one purpose of his visit he had
not mentioned yet.

"Something like that. But don't let that stop you from answering my questions. You
could, of course, go to Malaysia yourself. I'll even give you the exact location of
the monastery. But I doubt you'll get a much different reception at the moment. But
once your hero is ready to face the world again, he might need some answers, and it
would be nice if someone could provide them for him."

She pondered this, hating to admit there was some truth in it. Oh, she wouldn't take
Methos' word on Duncan's whereabouts and psychological situation. She had used mortal
detectives once, she could do so again. And since she had touched his soul when
leading him to confront the child he had been, she would be able to find him in the
Otherworld, at least. Meanwhile, trying to find some answers to the questions the
infuriating spectre of her past had posed could actually be helpful.

"I knew an immortal who vanished into our woods," she said, relenting, "but it was two
centuries before Duncan was born, so I can't be sure whether it was the same person.
I'll try to find him again, or at least the place where I saw him last. As for
Ahriman..." Involuntarily, she shuddered. Her kind weren't the only immortals on the
planet. In her three millennia, she had encountered some strange and bizarre
creatures, drawn to her because of her psychic abilities. Not all of them were
hostile, but all were dangerous.
"Again, I'll try to find out whether such a being exists."

"Thank you," he said, and even sounded as if he meant it. Just when she started to
hope that it was over, that he would go now he had had his say, he shrugged off his
coat, though he kept it tucked under one arm.

"Cassandra?"

"Yes?" she replied, disturbed by something she could not lay her finger on, until she
realised it was his pronunciation of her name, drawn out, without any of the modern
American a's most people, knowing no better, used. The correct pronunciation was
something she heard very rarely, so it would have been unusual in any case, but to
hear it from him was something else again. Names used to have power, in the world into
which she was born. Back then, he had not often called her by name. Usually, it was
"girl", woman", slave", according to his moods. When he did use her name, it had
always meant... She shook herself. She wouldn't think about that.

"What about my miserable neck?"

In a weird way, such relentless selfishness was almost a comfort. It spared her
further ponderings over whether or not he had changed.

"I don't go back on my decisions. When I spared your life," she answered, hoping to
sound as disdainful as possible, "it wasn't so I could gnash my teeth and hanker
after my lost chance for the next century."

He looked doubtful, and though it was absurd, she felt insulted. "You'd like that,
wouldn't you, Horseman?" she said scornfully. "Me, thinking about nothing else but
you. Or even better, me turning into a bloodthirsty lunatic like your dear brother
Caspian, so that you can feel justified in killing me. Well, add this to your
information: I had a life after I left you bastards behind. Three millennia of it. I
won't throw them away for a year of hell."

"Cassandra," he said again, actually smiling, and she never had wanted to hit him
quite so much, "I bow to your reason."

Before she could stop herself, she replied in kind.

"Bowing is not necessary. Just leave."

"If you can recommend a hotel in this godforsaken area. I'm not camping in the woods."

"What?"

"Look, I hate to sound offensive, but I don't trust you to call me if and when you
find some of those answers. Let's just say I understand that I'm not on your priority
list. So I'm afraid I'll have to stick around."

The expression on her face was new, or at least one he could not remember. Not quite
horror. Not quite hatred either, interestingly enough, something else in between he
had yet to figure out.

"Do you have any idea," she said slowly, "what this is doing to me? Talking to you?
Letting you live when you are actually around reminding me with every word how much
you would have deserved to die?"

He did, that was the problem. He had always known exactly what he was doing to her,
each step on the way. He had been a slave himself more than once, and so had
experienced the full spectrum - from humiliation and fear to the desperate eagerness
to please. For a fleeting moment, he remembered making some off-hand remark about
never being sold later than mid-morning to Joe, teasing Joe about some historical
event as usual. Unfortunately, MacLeod had sat within earshot and had just been drunk
enough to do what he usually avoided, bringing up Methos' Horseman days and asking
how, if Methos had been a slave, he could have enslaved others. Trust MacLeod to
believe being a slave made one somehow into Spartacus. How he could reconcile this
idea with all the slave-owning freedmen in the ancient world was another question, but
then MacLeod thought of slavery primarily in terms of the 19th century, of his own
experience. What slavery had done to Methos was confirm that he, to quote one of
MacLeod's idols, Abraham Lincoln, preferred to be the master in a world of slaves and
masters, thank you very much. Distaste of slavery per se had started much, much
later, and for other reasons.

For a moment, he wondered what kind of mistress Cassandra had been. He did not doubt
that she had owned slaves herself: in three millennia, with just two centuries that
frowned upon the custom, it would have been inevitable at one point or the other. But
now wasn't the time to speculate. *Focus on the task at hand, old man*, he told
himself.

Trying to project as much soothing calm as he could muster, he answered: "Yes, I do.
And I wouldn't ask if it weren't important."

Cassandra turned her face away, so she wouldn't have to look at him for a while.
Important, no doubt, to his own long-term plans. Still, she thought, there might be an
advantage in him staying around she had not considered yet. She hated to admit it, but
the last time she had been sure about his aims - terrorizing the world with Kronos -
he had proven her wrong, partially at least. When they had first met, she had been
ignorant and new-born into a bizarre, terrible world, and so it had been quite
understandable he had been able to manipulate her into becoming exactly what he
wanted, acting exactly like he wanted. He shouldn't have been able to do this to her
now, though, to use her again as a pawn. Yet that was what he had done. Not again. By
keeping him within her sight, she should be able to stay one step ahead of him, to
find out what exactly he had planned for MacLeod, if he couldn't use him as a shield
anymore.

"There's an inn in Glenfinnan," she said, still without looking at him again. "As a
matter of fact, it is owned..."

"....By the lovely Rachel MacLeod, I know. I know her; that's the problem. I was
hoping there was another one so I wouldn't have to come up with some plausible lies
about her hero when she asks."

This surprised her and forced her to face him again. The fact that Duncan had
befriended this mortal descendant of his Clan had been known to her, but Methos? With
one exception, Rachel had not left her home for years now, so this meant Methos must
have met her either then - or he must have been here before. Seeing Kronos again in a
modern city had been a terrible shock; seeing Methos here, in her sanctuary, without
warning, would have been... in a way, she thought drily, she had been lucky. However,
the whole thing posed several questions. He had mentioned her chronicles. So he had
known she was alive before Seacouver, had probably known where she lived, just as he
had known where to look for Silas and Caspian. So why hadn't he tried to kill her
years ago, when nobody important to him would have known or cared?

Better to think about that later, when he was gone. She tried to concentrate on what
he had said about Rachel, who was something less than a close friend, but more than a
casual acquaintance to her.

"If she *knows* you," she replied sarcastically, "lies, plausible or otherwise, won't
surprise her. Why don't you try a truly shocking thing and dabble in truth-telling?"

"Bright idea. So I tell her Duncan has killed his student. She'll either throw me out
on the spot, or actually believe me, drop everything and rush to his side, making him
feel even more guilty in the process. In either case, the inn would be closed to me."

Cassandra had to concede he was making sense, at least until she got her own
information. If he lied and Duncan was ready to accept help, Rachel might actually be
just the person... but then again, she was mortal. Best to keep her away from either
this Ahriman creature or an unstable Duncan, and the possibility of the latter still
existed, much as she wanted to deny it.

However, she was not prepared to admit to Methos he was right about something if she
could avoid it. So she said, with more bitterness than she intended: "You would know
about guilt and students." In the instant she had spoken, she wished she could take
back the words. She had not meant to show him this particular part of her pain.
He should have been her teacher. Of course, some immortals simply killed new immortals
on the spot when they found them - cheap victories in the game - but if they didn't,
an etiquette as ancient as he was demanded that they became student and teacher. But
what he taught her had had nothing to do with the game, or immortality. And when she,
centuries later, started to teach her own students, and failed with some of them, like
Kantos, she could not help but wonder whether this was due to some basic flaw. To an
incompleteness in her teachings, something she should have known but didn't. It was an
irrational idea, but one that returned with alarming regularity.

He was quick, she had to give him that. He did not need to ask what she meant. And of
course, he used his understanding for another cheap flippancy.

"Oh, please. I can just see myself telling Kronos: Sorry, I won't be available for the
next two hours, I have to teach Cassandra how to kill us all. It would have made his
day, my day and certainly yours - he would have beheaded you on the spot."

An enraged reply hovered on her lips, but she bit it back. What was the use? To
exchange insults with Methos while everything was going to hell would not help anyone,
least of all herself.

"There is a second inn, if you don't want to stay with Rachel, but you will meet her
anyway, Glenfinnan is too small," she said abruptly, suddenly feeling very tired. "No
doubt you can come up with some convincing excuse for your visit."

He shrugged, nodded and rose. Having automatically fallen back into searching his face
for the smallest signals, she could not help but notice that he looked tired himself,
tired and restless. Unbidden, the question which had haunted her since Bordeaux
escaped her before she could hold it back, and it did so without the anger that had
driven nearly everything she had said to him today.

"Do you ever feel responsible or guilty? About anything?"

His eyes narrowed, and for a second she felt fear, before the present grounded her
again in self-assurance.

"Okay," he said. "Let's strike a bargain, Cassandra. How about this: One year of my
life, against one year of your life?"

"Is this a joke?"

"No. If you agree, I'll stay around, no matter how this Ahriman business turns out.
I'll teach you, and believe me, you'll need it. That Voice of yours might be useful
against the young ones, but it didn't help you with Kronos, and it won't help you with
me. Frankly, I'm not the best swordsman myself, but I can ensure you don't lose your
weapon two minutes after the fight has started. We can have all the intense
teacher-student-conversations you want, you blaming me, me taunting you, both of us
improving our verbal skills in the process. At the end of that year, you'll even get
your fight, and we'll make damn sure no one else is in the neighborhood this time. But
if you lose, don't expect me to spare your head, because I'm really, really sick of
this particular melodrama."

"You're crazy," Cassandra whispered, horrified and spellbound at the same time. One
hour with him was bad enough, but a year? And yet, and yet... it could enable her to
bury the past, once and for all. In more than one sense. In the sixties of this
century, she had worked as a social worker with raped women, and she remembered
telling them how important it was to confront their fears, to stand up to their
rapists, accuse them in court instead of giving in to the fear of ever seeing them
again. Easy enough to say, if you didn't have to do it yourself.

It was one of the reasons why she had gone after Kronos, once she had discovered him
by accident, without asking Duncan or any other friend for help. Why she had gone
after him alone again even though Duncan had insisted on fighting her battle for her.
Fear of Kronos had been so deeply ingrained that she had been sure, if she did nothing
to confront this fear, to exorcise the nightmare by rewriting the end, it would haunt
her forever. Well, Kronos had never been her worst nightmare. Her hatred for him had
always been pure, unadulterated by any other emotion. Her worst nightmare had been the
man in front of her, who had just offered her what she had dreamt of for so long, even
though she had tried to bury that dream in the last months. To fight him as an equal,
to have that slave girl avenged by the woman she had become, and not by default, not
because he was weaponless and broken.

He was manipulating her again, of course. Oh, the arrogance of him. Not believing in
her word she wouldn't go after him, but so sure that after one year in his company,
she would not want to fight him anymore. And if she did, she'd still be not good
enough, for he was hardly suicidal. One did not have to be a genius to figure that
particular calculation out. But two could play that game. She was no stranger to
manipulation herself. Methos might be in for a surprise. As for her fighting skills,
let him go on believing they didn't amount to much. She had hardly been on her best
when confronting Kronos, not after the shattering discovery that Methos was still
alive as well and had somehow wormed himself into Duncan's life. If he thought that
the short and admittedly humiliating skirmish was all she had to offer, that in 3000
years she hadn't learned to fight better, all the worse for him.

So, shuddering, she suppressed the voice of reason which told her that this was her
worst decision yet and said, switching to the ancient language they had spoken when
the Horsemen still ruled the world she knew: "One year. I must be mad myself, but I
agree... on one condition."

His eyebrows rose.

"During that year, we'll fight only on holy ground. Of course, we could swear not to
kill each other for a year, but I don't trust your oaths, you just proved you don't
trust mine, and I trust neither of us not to yield to temptation in a critical
situation."

"Again, I bow to your reason. Still, I have a little condition on my own. Neither of
us tells anyone else of this little arrangement. I don't want any well meant rescue
missions, for either of us."

She nodded, and wondered how many blind friends besides MacLeod he had who would
bother rescuing him, but refrained from saying so. For now, she was tired of the quips
and taunts. She swallowed, then she did something which surprised both her and him.
She rose, putting her sword aside for the moment and drawing the little dagger, shaped
like the half-moon, which was one of the reminders of her time as a priestess in the
service of the Great Goddess. Quickly, she cut herself, and just as quickly, she took
his hand and cut him, pressing their opened palms against each other, feeling the
tingling of his quickening and her own as the flesh healed, but not before the blood
had intermingled.

Methos looked at her, not speaking. Kronos and Cassandra, both so sure in the sanctity
of blood oaths. It was a parallel she wouldn't appreciate. Still, he had achieved at
least his last purpose. It was risky as hell, to be sure. Living with a woman who had
tried to kill you several times was not the best survival technique. A part of him
wondered whether he had finally lost it. But the alternative had turned out to be more
and more of a living hell. When he took his leave, silently, he wondered whether this
night, at least, would be free of the crap his unconscious had managed to drag up for
months now.
**********
End Part 1

II.

The nightmare started, just as it always did, out in the middle of nowhere. He was
talking to Kronos, had been for some time, for he never remembered any start of their
conversation. Kronos' appearance kept shifting between the man he had first met, all
those millennia ago, and the modern incarnation who had tracked him finally down in
Seacouver.

"But of course," Kronos said, smiling, "you didn't really expect him to forgive you,
did you?"

"Of course not," Methos replied, aware that he, too, shifted through time, and finding
it normal in the way dreamers do. "I never asked him to. Just to accept. He can do
that."

"How pathetic. I never thought to see my brother, Death, groveling before a Scottish
boy. I suppose you want the bitch to accept you, too? Is that why you are here?"

"You don't understand. You never did. That's why you're stuck here," Methos said, for
now they were in their camp, standing in front of Caspian's collection of skulls,
even though Kronos still wore the sword he had in Bordeaux, rather than his Bronze
weapon. "I found a way to leave, and so will..."

He didn't finish; he never did. The searing pain in his chest told him that Kronos had
stabbed him again. They were back in Seacouver, and Kronos caught him just before he
hit the floor.

"It's you," Kronos murmured, "who doesn't understand - Brother. The only ones who'll
ever accept you are those you have betrayed." Rage transformed his voice into a hiss.
"Death you were for us, and Death you'll always remain!"

Instead of the blackness of death, there was the bright, merciless light of the
desert. He remembered that day; Silas had just saved him from getting beheaded by one
of those annoying mortals who had figured out how to kill them. But instead of
embracing him, as he had done in the memory, Silas stepped back, confused rage and
heartbreak written on his face.

"Why, Brother?" he asked. "Why did you kill me?"

Methos stood frozen, unable to move, even as Silas swung. But it wasn't Silas anymore
who held the ax; it was Cassandra, and a part of him knew that the worst part of the
nightmare had only just started. For again, as soon as the blade touched his throat,
there was no plunging into oblivion, only a new distorted memory. Twilight, weariness,
and Cassandra serving him. He wondered about her strange ability to make him feel
peaceful. Then Kronos came, just like he always did.

"Growing attached, Brother?"

As soon as he denied it, he knew the woman behind him, who stared at him,
disbelieving, while Kronos started to drag her out of the tent, was not Cassandra
anymore. She screamed his name, but it was not a name he was to bear for thousands of
years. Those screams were addressed to a person who was not there yet, and yet he
should be, and his awareness of his failure to be there tore him apart. He closed his
eyes, not wanting to see her, but he knew the voice, desperately calling for help. Not
Cassandra, but Alexa. Alexa cried for Adam, and he never managed to bring Adam into
that time and place. There was only Death, and he knew Kronos was right.

The nightmare that came to Cassandra was unexpected, for it did not relate to MacLeod,
Methos or the other Horsemen at all. After Methos had left, she had made some calls to
investigators she knew, and then, once she could manage to center herself enough to do
so, started the dreamwalk to find Duncan in the Otherworld. She was partly successful;
for a moment, she was sure she touched the essence of her solstice child, the champion
she had searched for and found. Only his aura was dark, grief-stricken and nearly
shattered. She tried to transmit friendship and help, and thought there was a spark of
recognition, but then she was suddenly cut off, thrust away, and try as she might, she
could not reach him again, only something her imagination translated into walls, walls
of grief and rejection. When she opened her eyes again to the material world, she
realised she must have cried. Since the strong echoes of Duncan's grief which
reverberated in her left her in no shape to try and find a demon as well, she
postponed that and went to bed, knowing sleep would be hard to find but necessary if
she were to cope with Methos on a day-to-day basis.

When she finally had managed to surrender conscious thought, her unquiet slumber drew
her into a memory she had avoided for years. She was living in what was later called
Germany, working as a midwife. It was the time of the first millennium since people
had began to count from the year they had fixed as the year of birth of their god. A
time full of prophecies about doom and destruction, though for Cassandra one of the
times where she definitely avoided using her own abilities in that direction. Besides,
she didn't need those powers to notice that the people waiting for doomsday and the
Antichrist grew more and more suspicious of anything out of the usual. So she kept to
helping women survive their pregnancies and births. Consequently, to be arrested as a
witch was unexpected, and she wasn't prepared for it. It didn't help that the
magistrate coveted her sword once it was found. He declared it to be stolen, of
course, for how could a midwife afford something which was the privilege of nobility?
Cassandra thought of using both Voice and mind-tricks; but decided against it. For one
thing, fanatical and single-minded as the town's citizens had become, it might not
work with all, and for another, if it worked only on some, these would later
undoubtedly end up as accused themselves. She did not wish this fate on any mortal.

So she confessed, expecting to be hanged, which was to her experience the usual fate
for witches. It made no sense to let them torture her - not only because of the pain,
but because the age she had reached by that time made her heal very quickly, and once
they noticed that... Better to get it over with quickly. Only she wasn't hanged. The
magistrate turned out to be slightly ahead of his century and ordered her burned.

In her dream, she was back on the stake, and the pain was more terrible than anything
she had ever known. Not even dying of thirst in the desert, escaping from the
Horsemen, could compare to this agony, and it drove her mad. Somewhere back in her
mind she knew she had recovered from this, even if it had taken her years on holy
ground and the acceptance of help by Christians whom she had ample reasons to
distrust. But this bit of awareness was nothing, compared to the engulfing nightmare
which had her sobbing, screaming as she had done then, cursing her immortality with
its healing powers that only prolonged this torture. This was hell, and it went on
forever.

The recuperative power of their quickenings aside, the next morning saw two weary
immortals with not enough sleep and too short tempers making their way through the
woods, following MacLeod's vague description of the place where he met the hermit, or
rather Richie's even more vague rendering of it, and Cassandra's centuries-old
memories. The things she remembered about the immortal she had encountered two hundred
years before Duncan's birth were not very helpful. He hadn't been any more Scottish
than she was, similarly gifted and as keen on preserving his privacy. After carefully
establishing that neither wanted to challenge the other, they had gone their separate
ways.

"Wonderful," Methos said, when noon had come and gone and they still had not found
anything resembling the cave Richie had mentioned. "This gives a whole new meaning to
the phrase 'fool's errand'. And speaking of phrases, I don't suppose you could
broadcast something on the lines of 'Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi' and summon the old guy
from the beyond, providing he existed outside of Macleod's imagination?"

She retorted that their search had been his idea in the first place, but it was an
half-hearted reply. There were too many things puzzling her. When she had still been
mortal, Hijad had taught her to listen to her dreams, a lesson she never forgot. So
what had been the message of this one? That she had survived through worse things than
the Horsemen? She had known that before, had clung to it during her recovery in
Switzerland. Watching Methos, who looked as tense and tired as she felt, she fought
against her instinctive response, which was to run as far from him as she could.
Millennia ago, this state had signaled danger, and the more they were in each other's
company, the more she realised she had never quite lost those trained reflexes to his
every mood. Perhaps she would now. She couldn't decide whether this would be more or
less dangerous. In any case, it seemed he had spent as bad a night as she had, and she
wondered. No matter how determinedly detached he behaved during daytime, everyone was
prone to nightmares, given the right circumstances. Their situation was certainly
incentive enough, but if there was such a thing as Ahriman, it might very well try to
influence them through their dreams.

This brought her back to the horrible sensation of being burned. She shuddered, then
forced herself to confront the dream once again, still not understanding why she
should think of this particular incident in her life, unconnected to the man walking
beside her. Had she subconsciously replaced the magistrate of that German hovel with
Methos? No, certainly not. She had not even hated the magistrate. Despised him, yes,
even pitied him a little, for giving in to greed enough to murder another for a sword,
but now she could not even recall his name. Even then, after she had recovered enough
to leave holy ground again, she had had no desire to search for him and the others who
had burned her to avenge herself on them. She had simply moved on.

The realisation hit her. She had been willing to be hanged instead of forcing the
mortals bent on her death to free her, so that none of them would be killed later for
helping a witch. Later, after they had put her through the worst torture of her life,
she still had not wanted to retaliate. It had not been forgiveness, really, just that
they were mortals, whose time on earth was incredibly short and generally unpleasant
anyway.

*But Methos is immortal. Worse than that, as far as I know, he was the eldest immortal
even then. He should have known better. I cannot...*

What? Use the same standards as she did for mortals? Let it be, and move on?

"Let's move on, shall we?" She flinched as his voice interrupted her thoughts, using
the very expression which had come to her mind. High-strung as she was, she would have
suspected him of reading her mind, but she had always known Methos was head-blind,
something which she had been profoundly grateful for in the past. "I'm giving this one
hour more, then we have to postpone the search until tomorrow."

"Why? There will be daylight for at least three more hours, if not four, and I've
brought searchlights."

"I told you. I'm not camping in the woods."

"This convinces me. You *have* changed," Cassandra said sarcastically. "You never used
to whine when you were terrorizing the world."

"I like my 20th century comforts," Methos returned, unruffled. "Don't tell me you're
pining for the glorious days of lice and flea and half-frozen water in the middle of
winter."

She didn't, and if he had been another man she would have said so and smiled. Things
being as they were, she settled for a noncommittal sound and suggested trying out
another path. For a while, they walked silently again, and she was struck by the fact
that, his complaints aside, Methos certainly hadn't lost his gift for moving
noiselessly through the wilderness, something inbred for those who had been born in a
world where sound could be deathly. The younger immortals never seemed quite able to
do it. That was what had made her certain about Kronos, when she saw him after three
millennia. Not the face, though even without the warpaint and with his hair cropped,
it was familiar enough. But that could have been a bizarre coincidence; during her
long, long life, she had encountered men and women, both mortal and immortal, who
looked completely alike though born centuries apart. No one born in the last
centuries, however, moved like an ancient who was hunting or hunted.

Methos was thinking about Kronos as well, and his reason wasn't that different. He
remembered the last wilderness, those Ukrainian forests where Silas had lived. When he
had offered Silas and Caspian to Kronos, it had been a last resort; he knew very well
that, no matter the outcome, he was condemning them to death. Even if Kronos had
killed MacLeod, and he had not challenged Silas, they would still all have died.
Reality wasn't a James Bond film, and a few men couldn't hold the entire planet ransom
with a virus. No matter how many thousands would have died, the idea that the
governments of the most influential nations would simply turn over their power to some
mythical creatures out of their legends was ludicrous. They would have been hunted and
found pretty soon, and by then, some immortal, or more likely a Watcher, horrified by
what they had done, would have told the world the way they could be killed. That
Kronos, who had been one of the most intelligent men Methos had known, had not seen
that, was a better comment on his insanity than anything he had said.

Condemning Caspian to die had been easy. Even in the heyday of the Horsemen, Methos
had never cared much for Caspian. Giving Silas to Kronos as a kind of living
sacrifice, though, whose death was imminent, had nearly torn him apart. Silas had been
content in his woods, would not have harmed anyone if his brothers had not come for
him. Thinking about Silas and the look on his face when Methos had challenged him hurt
too much, even now, so Methos contemplated Kronos again. He had told MacLeod the truth
- he could never have killed Kronos. Silas, who had trusted him the way Kronos never
had, yes, but not Kronos, and even when he made his half-hearted attempt with the
sword, ignoring all the other useful instruments of death in his possession which were
to prove so helpful with Keane and MacLeod later, they both knew it. Kronos had seen
it as the latest in the thousands of mind games they played with each other, and in a
way, he had been right. Mind games... he couldn't be sure whether his nightmares
weren't exactly this, the result of however much of Kronos' quickening he had taken
when the bizarre link between him and MacLeod had occurred. It would certainly be just
like Kronos, possessive bastard that he was, to invade his mind even in death.

*We don't need any Persian demons, Mac*, Methos thought, *we have enough of our own to
haunt us.* He grimaced, aware that he was being melodramatic. He couldn't bring
himself to see Kronos as a demon; he left that to the pure and righteous like MacLeod
or Cassandra. Too many memories of being just like Kronos, though without the insanity
which had overwhelmed Kronos in the end. Too many memories of being drawn to the
elementary life force that was Kronos, being fascinated by the younger immortal the
way he was going to be fascinated by the man who would kill him. Not that either
Kronos or MacLeod would appreciate the comparison.

It was inevitable, though. Now Kronos was dead, Mac had withdrawn deep into himself,
shattered by the closest thing the immortals had to infanticide, and he was traipsing
around in the forest with his best enemy in search of he didn't quite know what. It
had all the makings of a prolonged bad joke, but no one was laughing. Who would have
thought that he was going to regret killing that Kristin woman? If she had taken the
kid's head years ago, it would have resulted in a guilt trip for MacLeod, sure, but
nowhere on the same scale. *Stop it*, Methos told himself. *More brilliant logic like
this, and you're going to wish you whacked the irritating youngster yourself. You
really need to get more sleep.*

For a moment, his memory showed him Richie Ryan again, earnestly, loyally insisting
that Mac didn't hallucinate and might actually be haunted by a demon. He hadn't known
the kid very well, had just seen him as MacLeod's sometimes useful, more often
bumbling sidekick, not really a person in his own right until those last days, when
the kid had suddenly been the adult, taking care of his tormented teacher, defending
him. Who had said that you never appreciate people until they were gone? Doubtlessly
someone with a rare gift for platitudes. Still, there was truth in it, and now that he
desperately tried to recall every single word Ryan had spoken shortly before his
death, he could see the irony.

Just when he thought he had finally succeeded in finding another clue, he felt it and
stopped. A second later, Cassandra stood still as well. The sensation was very, very
faint, but close. Not another immortal. A pre-immortal, and a very young one at that,
or the signature would have been stronger already. Methos and Cassandra looked at each
other, in a rare agreement of complete uncertainty. Then, their ears picked up the
presence as well; a quivering, high voice wailing and crying for help.

"It's a child," Cassandra said, stating the obvious because she couldn't believe it. A
child, so deep in the woods, and a pre-immortal child at that? Well, she could wonder
about it later, she decided, pinpointing the location of the mystery very easily now
she had two senses to help her. Methos followed so close that he nearly crashed into
her when she halted abruptly, seeing what had alerted their attention.

It was a child, all right, a small girl, no more than five or six years old. But what
shocked Cassandra into freezing on the spot was that someone had beaten that little
girl within an inch of her life. She was bleeding, covered with bruises, and
completely naked. When she lifted her face, looking at them, they could see that one
of her eyes was completely swollen.

End Part 2

III.

After the initial shock, it was a matter of seconds before they were both kneeling at
the child's side. Cassandra started by making calming, reassuring noises, subtly
switching to using her Voice, telling the girl to sleep. In this state,
unconsciousness was a blessing, and besides, it would be easier to examine the child,
to see what damage was done and what immediate aid she could give. It would have been
bad enough had the child been a normal mortal. Of course they all died, and especially
during the first half of her life she had had to watch more children die than adults,
but it still hurt her every time to see it. Children, the one thing Immortals could
never have, were more than precious to her. Yes, to see a normal child in such a state
would have shocked and infuriated her, but it would not have chilled her with the
panic she just barely suppressed while she lulled the child to sleep. If the girl died
now, she would be trapped forever in a body which made immortality an obscenity.

The most obvious wounds she noted and classified at once. They would have to be
cleaned, in some cases stitched and bound, none of which she could do here, except for
some preliminary wrappings. "The sleeves of your blouse," Methos said, following the
same line of thoughts. Normally the tight, worn expression used to signal barely
contained rage would have alarmed her, but right now it hardly registered, as she
nodded.

"We have to get her away," she murmured while tearing one sleeve apart, "but since we
don't know what kind of internal injuries she has, that might kill her."

Concentrating, she could feel the struggling forces of mortality and immortality in
the girl's aura. If the child had been mortal she would have risked projecting all the
healing force that was hers, as she had unconsciously done all those centuries ago
with her tribe. But now she knew her gifts were entwined with her quickening, and just
might push a pre-immortal in such a state over the edge. It was one of the few
occasions when she wished she had given in to the late-20th-century fad for
technological communication and had bought a cell phone. They could carry the girl,
certainly, but this kind of transport might be worse than not moving her at all.
Methos held one of the girl's arms, carefully moving it in a way which told her later,
when she had time to think about it, that he must have gone through some medical
training at one point.

"Okay," he said, "time for desperate measures. I don't suppose you have a cell phone?"

He hardly waited for her denial. "Neither do I. They can track you through those
things. But as it happens," he continued, switching into Akkadian, "there's someone in
the neighborhood who does. Excuse me for a moment."

He rose again. The girl still claimed all her attention, so she didn't bother to look
up in order to see where he was going. While carefully bandaging the worst cut on the
right shoulder, she silently cursed the person who did this. With all the worry about
possible attacks by demons, it was easy to lose sight of the daily horrors which
occurred all too often in this world.

After a while, muffled protests grew loud enough to claim her attention. She was
reasonably sure the child wouldn't awake for a while, but she knew better than to test
it. Raising her head in the direction of the noise, she saw Methos and a red-faced,
middle-aged mortal who looked vaguely familiar and stared at her and the child with a
mixture of anger, embarrassment and profound unhappiness.

"Pierson, this is - I can't - how could you..."

"Oh, but I have and you will," Methos said coldly, and she noted he had a gun pointed
at the man. "Cassandra, may I present your friendly neighborhood Watcher, Andrew
Lanart?"

Out of necessity, Duncan had told her about the Watchers when presenting her to his
friend Joe Dawson while asking him for information on Kronos' whereabouts. She found
the idea of being stalked by professional voyeurs faintly repellent, but had otherwise
ignored the knowledge since she had so much else to think about. Obviously a mistake,
since the man glared accusingly at Methos, which meant Methos must have had some
connection with this organization that went beyond what she had guessed. Previously,
she had thought he had gotten his information about her and the other three Horsemen
through Dawson, just like Duncan. She had not missed the thinly veiled hostility the
barman had shown towards her, and had classified him as yet another victim of Methos'
pretensions of friendship and harmlessness. Well, in any case, this time she actually
felt grateful for this particular bit of deviousness. She wouldn't have thought of
having a Watcher on her tails, let alone using him to save the girl.

Meanwhile, the man was babbling on about "non-interference" and "I'll be reassigned,"
and she was quickly losing patience. "Does he have one of those phones?" she asked
Methos, ignoring the unfortunate Lanart.

"Certainly. By now, it's basic equipment. Pull yourself together, Lanart; you just
have to call the ambulance and tell them we need a helicopter because of possible
internal injuries. If you don't mention it in your report, nobody will ever know you
talked to us. Don't tell me you'd rather let a child die, a child who has nothing
whatsoever to do with the Game."

No need to mention pre-immortality, Methos thought, while Lanart sighed, and did as
ordered, all the while continuing to glare at him. If things hadn't been as wretched
as they were, he would have felt amused satisfaction. After all, he owed Lanart. The
man had faithfully reported his dumping Cassandra over the bridge, thus effectively
destroying any chance of Adam Pierson returning to the Watchers. He probably wouldn't
have in any case, not after the Galati mess, but he liked to keep his options open. At
least, Lanart had shown sense enough not to follow when Cassandra was abducted, which
had spared him the identification as Methos. Not that Lanart would have had the chance
to tell his discovery. Kronos was very astute at noticing pursuers, and would have
killed any mortal sneaking around in his base without a second thought.

Waiting for the ambulance to arrive gave him time to think of a cover story. After
all, he and Cassandra could hardly tell the police what they were really doing in the
middle of the forest, and neither could Lanart. In the end, they agreed on posing as
historical researchers, looking for ancient Celtic artifacts with the help of a local
guide. Periodically, he checked the child, even though he knew there was not much
more he and Cassandra could do except hope that the girl's mortal life force would be
strong enough to prevent her immortality from igniting.

Immortal children... he remembered meeting Amanda, centuries ago, with her protegé
Kenneth. The joy she took in the boy. *It is one of our greatest vulnerabilities*, he
mused, *the seduction of having a child.* Kenneth had been innocent then, truly a
child and adoring Amanda, but of course he hadn't stayed that way. None of them did.
No matter what their original nature had been, in the end the bitterness overwhelmed
all of those few child immortals who managed to stay alive.

Thinking about Amanda made him wish he could have found her. Not just because she was
one of his few friends, and at the moment the only one without a reason to resent him,
but because Amanda had a rare gift among immortals, a joy of life somehow intact and
flourishing even after many centuries. If anyone could have pulled Mac out of despair
and self-loathing and into the real world again, it would have been Amanda. Hell, to
be frank, if anyone could distract *him* from his own state of mind, it would have
been Amanda. But all of his guesses as to her whereabouts had proven to be wrong, and
after that, he hadn't tried anymore. Amanda being Amanda and probably embroiled in one
illegal scheme or the other, she wouldn't thanking him for pointing attention towards
her by making inquiries. He knew he would be furious, if the situation were reversed.

So now, on top of the Ahriman fiasco and his risky scheme regarding Cassandra, he
would have to deal with an assaulted child who could not be allowed to die.

Watching Cassandra ministering to the child abruptly reminded him of the days when he
had started to notice more about her than was strictly necessary for a diverting toy.
Even after he had tamed her, after she had given up struggling against him, or trying
to escape or trying to kill herself, she had never reverted to a dull, accepting
stupor. Instead, she had installed herself as the healer of the camp. Looking after
the other women, binding their wounds, sharing her food with them so they could keep
up with the Horsemen a bit longer, for those who were too weak to follow were left in
the desert to die. Some women who had had the misfortune of being captured by Caspian
in a bad mood, had been too badly damaged for any healing. For those, she had mixed a
quick poison, ensuring a merciful death while being with them, comforting them,
instead of leaving them to the sun. It had been astonishing.

Caspian hadn't cared one way or the other, Kronos had first laughed, finding it
useful, but must have later started to watch Methos watching Cassandra, and Silas had
actually started to like her after she had used her herbal knowledge to heal a sore
ankle of his horse as well. As for himself... it had been a strange experience. Not
falling in love, by any means. But she had become intriguing beyond her physical uses,
challenging enough to talk to, and, though he would not have admitted it at the time,
to learn from. It had been Cassandra who had awakened his interest in medicine, in the
workings of the mortal body. Much, much later, after the Horsemen were no more and he
had relegated Cassandra to the corners of his mind where he kept those memories he
didn't want to think about, he had still, on occasion, flashes of her using every
little herb she could find in the wasteland to make her healing potions, mostly when
he returned to being a doctor every second century or so.

Well, now definitely wasn't the time to dwell on that. If ever. Better to think of the
problems at hand, such as how that child got here.

"You haven't seen anybody who...," he began, addressing Lanart, who shook his head.

"No." Defiantly, he added: "And that's the truth. I would have stopped anyone
treating a child that way. But that doesn't change the fact that what you did is
wrong, Pierson."

"Using your cell phone? Give me a break."

"Lower your voices," Cassandra whispered furiously, pointing at the girl, who had
started to move and to moan, albeit still with closed eyes. After she had calmed her
into unconsciousness once more, Lanart answered, quietly:

"No, staying with the Watchers. We have figured it out by now. Kalas killed you,
didn't he, when he came after you three years ago? And that's why you fell in with
MacLeod. You became his student. But you should have told us. Hell, Dawson should have
told us, since he obviously knew, and you should have resigned then and there. Does
your oath mean nothing to you?"

Another believer in oaths. But really, to expect him to feel remorse about using the
Watchers while lying to them was almost endearingly naive. He had done that for longer
than anyone, including Joe and MacLeod, ever suspected. It made him like Lanart a
little more, so he put on his best innocent Adam Pierson expression and said, as
sincerely as possible: "Look, I'm sorry. It was all so scary, waking up as an
immortal; there just seemed to be no other way."

Cassandra snorted, which proved she had been listening. Still, she said nothing to
correct his lies. Once again, he wondered why she hadn't told all and sundry of the
immortal world that to get a really good quickening, they should contact Adam Pierson,
a.k.a. Methos, to be found hanging around a certain infuriating Scotsman. He had his
suspicions, but he liked to work with certainties.

Which was why he decided to come with Cassandra to the hospital after they had given
their statements to the police. He considered letting her take care of the problem the
child posed. If the girl died, she was more than capable of getting her out of the
hospital before anyone saw her reviving. But for one thing, he doubted she was capable
of doing what was necessary afterwards, and for another, he couldn't get the image of
that little broken body out of his mind.

It brought him back to his time as Dr. Adams, Mary Shelley and all her dying children.
First, there had been William, then Clara, and in between stillbirth after stillbirth.
Haunted Mary, turning her loss into a tortured creature accusing its maker of betrayal
and abandonment. He had always been fascinated by mortals who used their imagination
to deal with their cruel lives, turning them into art, and it had brought him back to
Mary again and again, even though it had been dangerous, as she knew his secret. But
he had managed to save at least one of her children, and in return she had saved him
on more than one occasion. While all the others of that strange summer in Switzerland
had died young, Mary endured. Went on with her life, fought against her resentful
father-in-law, poverty, disease and brought up her one surviving son. Still, those
dead children found their way into her work, again and again, and she had been gifted
enough as a writer to transmit those nightmares to him.

*Live*, he thought at the child, lying between white sheets in intensive care, *live*.

Since no one had been able to identify the child and the girl herself had yet to say
anything coherent, the people at the hospital permitted the couple who had found her
in the woods to stay with her, Lanart having excused himself as soon as he could. As
they silently watched the child, the sterile, cold atmosphere of the room began to
sink in, and Methos shivered before he caught himself. Alexa had died in a room just
like this, in Geneva, too far gone to notice he was with her, holding her hand. She
had called for him again and again, and it was the most painful sound he ever heard.

He wanted to push away the memory, concentrate on the brief, intense time they had
spent with each other, but instead he kept thinking how much he had ultimately failed
her. The way she had accepted his leaving her to help MacLeod through his Dark
Quickening had been a miracle, but then, after he had promised never to leave her
alone again, he had done just that, left her in a hospital in Geneva with people who
didn't know her, whose language she could not speak, on a mad quest for the
impossible.

Yes, it would have been forgivable if he had brought the stone back, if it would have
worked, saved her, restored her - all very big ifs - but instead, those days spent
away from her had been in vain, had done nothing to help her and everything to hurt
her. He had failed her, and a part of him had died when she did, still without
noticing he had come back. After that, it became harder and harder to be Adam anymore.
Adam had belonged to Alexa, and she was gone. Most of his identities were bound up
with people he had loved or hated - it was a way to keep precious memories from
fading - but this one more than most others. For a while, he had continued to be Adam
for the Watchers, but not in private anymore, not when surrounded by those few friends
who knew anyway. MacLeod had noticed at once, Methos thought, never calling him Adam
anymore, and Amanda, who knew him from another time and place, never had done so
anyway. Joe did, though, and he let him, because Joe was the only link to Alexa left,
and Methos suspected this was one of the reasons why Joe wanted to keep Adam around.
But even that had changed after Kronos came to town. Now Adam was gone, save as a name
in a faked passport, as utterly obliterated as Alexa was.

...."Why," she kept asking him, never crying though her eyes burned with unshed
tears, "why did you to this to me?" Then she screamed his name, again and again, while
Kronos took her away, but it was the wrong name. She didn't belong in that time and
place, it horrified him beyond words to see her here, but he was paralysed and the
only thing real was the feeling of utter failure which made him scream out loud.

"Wake up," someone murmured urgently, "wake up!" He felt a hand on his mouth and
struck out blindly, hitting a slender, but strong arm. The movement was enough to free
him from the rest of his nightmare. His eyes flew open, and he knew again when and
where he was. And who was with him. Cassandra had let him go, eyeing him warily. When
she had been his slave, waking him up forcefully had been something she almost never
risked, for it put him in a foul mood for the rest of the day, and she was the obvious
person to take it out on. It couldn't have been easy for her to do it this time just
because he had a bad dream, but before he could find words to express his gratitude, a
moan came from the bed, and Cassandra's expression shifted from caution to anger.

"You woke her up," she said accusingly.

With all the sedatives the doctors had pumped into the girl, the child should have
slept through a full-scale rock concert, but the was no denying it: she moaned again,
opened her eyes and stared at Methos and Cassandra, with a frightened, but lucid gaze.
Her eyes, or rather the one she *could* open, were huge and dark, a stark contrast to
the blond hair, which was almost as pale as sea foam.

"Who are you?" she whispered. Methos noticed the faultless pronunciation - no trace
of Scottish dialect, or, as a matter of fact, any kind of accent. She sounded like a
BBC speaker.

"We found you," he replied. "Remember?"

She shook her head. When Cassandra moved towards her, wanting to embrace her since a
hug was one of the easiest methods to reassure a child, the girl shrank back.

"You are safe now," Cassandra said, withdrawing again; the reaction was not uncommon
in abused children, though neither she nor the doctors at the hospital had found
wounds caused by sexual abuse, something she was profoundly grateful for. Being beaten
was bad enough, but easier to recover from than rape. "In a hospital. No one will hurt
you. You are safe."

The child's gaze flickered between her and Methos.

"Who are you?" she repeated.

"Adam," he answered, smiling at her, and for the first time, his twentieth-century
ability to look utterly harmless did not infuriate Cassandra. "And..." He hesitated.
Her current pseudonym was Cathy Lester, which he knew, of course. Still, he left it to
her to introduce herself.

"Cathy," she said. "And what is your name?"

The child looked confused, then horrified. "I don't remember," she exclaimed. Amnesia
as the result of the traumatic beatings was possible, of course, but usually, the name
was the one thing which remained with most amnesiacs. Cassandra frowned, wondering
whether to use the Voice again in order to determine the child's identity, and whether
there were any people caring for her apart from the person who had nearly killed her.
In the end, she decided against it. To enforce memory wasn't always advisable, and in
such a case, it was certainly better to wait until the child was at least physically
recovered. Even then, perhaps one should respect the protective shell the child's mind
had built around the pain. There were certainly other methods to find out where the
girl had come from, and whether it was safe for her to return there.

"Then we'll have to find a name for you, won't we?" Methos said. "Otherwise they'll
just call you Jane Doe, and you don't look like a Jane. Let's see... what about
Amarylis? Annunciata? Rapunzel? She-who-makes-the-grounds-shudder?" He rattled off one
extravagant or ridiculous name after the other, and the child gradually relaxed into a
shy smile, then, a giggle.

Cassandra had mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, this child badly needed
distraction, and if Methos was the one to deliver it, then so be it. On the other
hand, if the child started to like him, it could only end in pain. She knew why he had
come with her to the hospital; any pre-immortal, let alone a child one, couldn't be
allowed to experience her resurrection from the dead in the full glare of medical
attention. But as soon as it was established the child would live, he would never
bother to see it again. This vulnerable creature shouldn't become attached to someone
who was, to put it mildly, untrustworthy, bound to disappoint, and who just might be
dead before the year was over.

In the end, Methos and the child settled on Rebecca, Becky for short, "after a magical
lady I once knew," Methos said. This made Cassandra wonder whether he actually had
known Rebecca Horne. Certainly, if Rebecca knew him, she had never told Cassandra so,
and they had been close for a time, in Jerusalem, shortly before the last Jewish
revolt against Rome. The newly named Becky was overcome by the sedatives again, and
when she could be reasonably sure the girl slept again, Cassandra said to Methos,
using her oldest language to make sure no accidental listeners would understand:

"Well, I don't think she's going to die now, though we need a few more days to be
sure. But I can't just leave her to circumstance afterwards. If they don't find out
where she comes from, or if whoever has beaten her is in charge of her, I'll adopt
her. Which means," she added, driving her point home, "that your... proposal will have
to wait for some years, till she is old enough to take care for herself and could
become immortal. So you can leave right now."

Before the poor girl starts to like you, she concluded silently, but didn't think it
wise to say it aloud. To her dismay, he shook his head.

"No way. A deal is a deal."

"Can't you wait for fifteen or twenty years before trying to kill me? After all," she
finished cuttingly, "I waited for three millennia."

"I thought you said you had a life after leaving me behind? Anyway, just in case
you've forgotten, this isn't solely about us. We've yet to determine whether that
blasted hermit existed, to say nothing of a Persian demon who may or may not be a
hallucination of our common acquaintance currently residing in Malaysia."

She blushed. In her worry about the girl, she had indeed neglected to think of Duncan.
Suddenly it occurred to her that if such a creature as Ahriman existed, she would be
in no state to fight it if she had a child to care for. The danger of getting the girl
killed would be too great. Well, there was always the chance that a complete stranger
was responsible for the beatings and the child had loving adoptive parents who waited
anxiously for her return. But she couldn't gamble on that and ignore the plight of
this fragile pre-immortal. If she had other immortal friends she could trust with
the girl... but she had not, not anymore, and any mortal might not be enough to
protect the child till she had grown up.

Her mouth hardened. She would continue her investigation, but if events took the worst
possible turn, if there was an Ahriman for Duncan to fight... then this child, unable
to defend herself, would have to come first. Duncan might need help and she still hurt
for him when she thought about the terrible way in which he had lost his student, but
he was also the champion she had foreseen, who had gone through darkness and light,
possibly the best their race had ever produced.

As for the additional torture of living practically next door with Death of the
Horsemen... well, if she had the strength to do it on her own, she would have the
strength to do it while caring for the child, and the fact that the girl needed her
would give her additional incentive to stay alert for any betrayal, and to finally
defeat him. All of which, of course would be academic if Becky had a good family. Then
it would be enough to keep watch from afar, as she had done with Duncan.

"As you wish," she said, her tone mocking the submissive phrase she so often had to
use with him in the past. "Stay for a year. But I'm warning you, involve this girl in
one of your convoluted plans, and oath or no oath, I will kill you right then."

"Cassandra," he said, sounding deceptively tired, "do you think it might, just might
be possible that not every single action I undertake has some sinister plan behind
it?"

She surprised him by replying with something like dry amusement. "Well, I never
thought your snoring was caused by anything other than your overly sized nose. It
could be possible you did it just to keep me awake, but I give you the benefit of the
doubt."

"I don't snore," he protested, secretly amazed that Cassandra actually was capable of
making a joke referring to their common past. He had thought her humorless, albeit
with a gift for sarcasm, but then, being in the company of one's former owner and
present nightmare did not encourage dazzling displays of wit.

She grimaced. "You did snore then, and you do now."

"Well," Methos commented, trying to encourage her unexpected change in moods by
displaying a little vulnerability and politeness, "now I know the real reason why you
woke me up. Still, I'd like to thank you for that. I didn't exactly sleep peacefully."

She bit back a Shakespeare quotation or two about conscience and sleep, because a
disconcerting realisation had taken hold of her, and it wasn't that she had assumed
something of a civil tone towards a man who didn't deserve it. She remembered her own
nightmare the night before. And Methos, come to think of it, had looked as if he had
not slept too well, either. It might not be caused by more than their respective
proximity and both the fears and memories it stirred up. But then again, as she had
thought before while walking through the forest, nightmares were a favourite toy for
creatures of the nether regions to invade human souls.

"What did you dream?" she asked disturbed. He gave her a strange look, and she hoped
he did not misconstrue her question as concern for his welfare. It had been insulting
enough to be told she had been in love with him. The arrogance of the man really was
breathtaking.

"About... my first death, I think," Methos, who had not the slightest intention of
telling her of this particular dream or anything connected with Alexa, answered. "I'm
not sure, though. It seems I can only remember it in dreams. Never when I'm awake."

"You don't remember your first death?" she exclaimed, and was almost certain now that
he lied, though she could not figure out the reason. Immortals had nearly eidetic
memories, perfect up to a degree. She had noticed that after her first millennia, some
events began to fade. Now, there were certain gaps, things she could not recall
anymore. Consequently, she would have accepted it if he had mentioned such gaps; he
was, after all, still two thousand years older than she was, if not more. But
everyone, really everyone, every single immortal she had ever met, remembered his or
her first death, the only death they shared with the mortals, occurring as it did
without the certainty of return. She would never forget the sickening sensation of
Kronos' sword cutting through her flesh, of Hijad crying out, of seeing the white
rider turning towards her as if noticing her for the first time and raising his own
sword to kill Hijad. It was the last thing she had ever seen as a mortal, and the
image was burned in her brain; it was also the first thing she associated with Methos.

"No. I don't remember anything before taking my first head. I couldn't even tell you
if Methos was the name I had as a child, but it is the first name I can recall."

"I don't believe you," she replied, "and to be frank, I don't care. But you should pay
attention to those nightmares. They might be important."

She went to the chair the nurse had provided for her and sat down, with her back to
him, signaling that the conversation was over. Neither of them fell asleep again
during the rest of the night.

End, Part 3

IV.

Rachel MacLeod was, by now, used to odd things happening around her. This didn't mean
she accepted them at face value. Some years ago, she would have called anyone who
would have told her she was about to meet a living legend crazy. Add to this the
suggestion that some months later, she would entrust the precious sword of the
MacLeods to a complete stranger and rush with him to the aid of said living legend,
and she would have called the next sanatorium. But ever since her kinsman Duncan had
entered her life - and he *was* her kinsman, that she knew now - she sometimes felt
the world had taken a slightly bizarre, strange colour her eyes had almost, but not
quite, become adjusted to.

The latest occurrences didn't look too strange, were it not for everything that had
happened before. Duncan's English friend, Mr. Persuasiveness who had somehow convinced
her to give him the sword, was back. Writing a book on "Viking Influences in early
Scotland," or so he said, adding with an wide-eyed, schoolboyish look that Duncan had
told him astonishing things of the Viking finds in this area. Well, she vaguely
remembered that the card he had given her on their first meeting had said,"Dr. Adam
Pierson, University of Paris." So far, so good, and she was even willing to admit
that his enthusiastic tales about his theory--that the historical MacBeth, otherwise
called Thorfinn, had, because of his half-Viking ancestry, introduced many Viking
elements into the Celtic culture--were not without charm. At least, he didn't presume
she knew nothing of her history, which was what most of the annoying Sassenach
tourists plaguing Glenfinnan now and then did. But it was soon obvious to her that
Adam Pierson had another, less scholarly agenda, and one didn't have to look very far
to figure out what it was, or so she believed.

Rachel knew Cathy Lester as a London freelance editor who had a cottage in the woods
around Glenfinnan she used for irregular intervals, and found her much less irritating
than the few other Southerners who thought a second home in Scotland would be somehow
romantic. As a matter of fact, she was somewhat fond of the woman. Cathy Lester didn't
snoop around, she respected people's privacy, and in return, they respected hers.
There was a bit of curiosity because no one could make a good guess as to where she
came from - not a born Londoner, was Cathy - and since she was, as old Mr. Ridenow put
it, "a real looker," one tended to notice her when she was in town. But it didn't go
beyond that.

A year ago, an unpleasant character had pumped the locals for gossip and information
about Cathy's whereabouts, and though Rachel couldn't see why, the townspeople had
been surprisingly willing to indulge him. Not her, though. It had caused her a
headache, and her ears had somehow rung, but she had given him short-shrift. Besides,
she really hadn't known where Cathy Lester was at the time. Now, Cathy was back, and
it seemed that not twenty-four hours after her arrival, she had found a beaten-up
child in the middle of the forest while being in the company of none other than that
earnest researcher of Scottish history, Adam Pierson.

Rachel's efforts to dismiss that intriguing bit of circumstance and keep to her own
business fell flat when Social Services made inquiries about Cathy's character. It
seemed that so far, no one had been able to find any clues as to where the poor lass
had come from, and Cathy had offered to care for her. Vouching for Cathy wasn't
difficult, but keeping her tongue and not bursting with questions when seeing Cathy
next was. Still, she managed to do so. The next thing you knew, Cathy and the girl
whom she had named Becky were seen walking through the town and the surrounding area,
Cathy trying to get the girl used to other people again. And, quite regularly, they
were accompanied by Adam Pierson, who had by now become Rachel's regular pensioner.
Seeing Cathy with Adam was something else again, because they were sort of treading
around each other, like two cats who both didn't much like to be touched.

First, Rachel thought Adam must be Cathy's former boyfriend or possibly even
ex-husband, because one could almost smell the bad blood between them. She still
hadn't abandoned that theory completely, but had grown more and more skeptical. Cathy
was a strong-willed woman, and if her ex were pestering her, she'd presumably tell him
to get lost, not tolerate him hanging around her and her new, hopefully
soon-to-be-adopted daughter. The lass, by the way, had grown quite fond of Adam,
behaving more open and playful with him than with any other of the townsfolk Cathy
presented her to. She even imitated his English accent, or maybe it came naturally,
Rachel couldn't tell. What she could tell was that Cathy rarely let Adam Pierson out
of her sight when he was around, but she certainly didn't watch him like a woman in
love, or even an annoyed ex-wife. Instead, there was something in her gaze which
reminded Rachel of the one time she had caught a rabbit in a snare. The rabbit had
looked at her that way while choking, and it cured her once and for all of that
particular habit. Granted, Cathy wasn't very rabbit-like otherwise. But one would
almost think she had cause to be wary or even afraid of Adam, which, since Cathy
wasn't given to hysteria, caused Rachel to adjust her assessment of the guy from "nice
and charming" to "deep water, possibly trouble."

Still, it was hard not to like him. When not out in the woods, doing his research, or
visiting Cathy, he sprawled all over her furniture, kept his tab ever growing while
emptying her beer supply, and entertained her with pointed observations on American
tourists he encountered now and then, wicked little anecdotes of Duncan which didn't
disguise his fondness for the man, and tales about his research which never grew dry
enough to bore her. He was a good listener, too, and she found herself recounting the
local legends, which she rarely did with strangers.

Dour Andrew Lanart, who owned a holiday cottage here, too, and otherwise worked at the
University of Edinburgh, once all but warned her not to fall for Adam Pierson, but
there was no danger of that. For one thing, Adam never made a pass at her, being
obviously fixated on Cathy, and for another, he wasn't her type. Too boyish, in a way,
still too adolescent. When it came to love, she preferred more mature men; what she
had started to feel for Adam was instead the sometimes exasperated fondness for a
younger brother. Interesting about Andrew Lanart, though. Apart from Cathy, he was the
only one who showed something like hostility towards Adam. And wasn't it a coincidence
that, he, too, had been in the forest with Cathy and Adam when little Becky was found?

"So, Adam," Rachel said one evening, after finding him slouched over his accustomed
bar stool, "what's between you and Andrew Lanart?"

"Hot air?" he tried, and after seeing her smile, added: "It's professional rivalry, to
be frank. There's a historical society we both used to belong to, and some years ago I
got a research project he desperately wanted. Now, with him being older, more
experienced et cetera, he was of course infuriated they gave it to me. Didn't help
that I quit, either."

Something in her brain clicked. She remembered the middle-aged gentleman with the
double amputations who had stayed here with Duncan, remembered noticing the blue
tattoo on his wrist. That one had called himself a historian, too. Come to think of
it, Andrew Lanart had the self-same tattoo. Adam's wrists, though, both clearly
visible since he had pushed the sleeves of his sweater back, were unmarked, and the
pale, almost translucent skin showed no sign of scars.

"Must be some historical foundation," she commented, "if it can afford high-class skin
operations for quitters."

He knew at once what she was referring to, and his eyebrows rose. "You're too quick
for me, Rachel MacLeod," he said, and took the beer she held out to him.

"Oh, I don't think so. Otherwise I wouldn't have to ask you what you're up to with
Cathy Lester."

He made a noncommittal sound and drank. Then, he said: "You wouldn't believe me if I
told you it's just a professional interest as well, would you? After all, I need
someone to proofread my book about the Vikings, and while a University publication
gets you a good name, it's hardy profitable. With her connections, she could get me in
touch with a first-class London publisher."

"Tell me another."

He sighed. "Okay. Can you keep a secret? Especially from her?"

"Cross my heart."

"Wish I could. Well, winning Cathy as an editor is just half of it. The other half is
more complicated. See, she had this sweet, slowly enfolding romance with Duncan, and
here I was, coming between them. To put it mildly, I fell for her, was jealous and did
some not very nice things to ruin their relationship. Now they've broken up, Duncan's
travelling the world, Cathy has withdrawn to tend to her wounds and I feel guilty as
hell. So I figured the only way I can live with myself is to somehow make it up to
her. Get her to accept my help and then, when Duncan comes back, reconcile them."

This made more sense of things than anything she had thought of. Still, she suspected
he hadn't told her everything. She looked at him. He had such odd eyes, Adam had; not
quite green, not quite gold, mostly hazel, mirror eyes, letting no one in, and, at the
moment, strangely out of place in his young, open face.

"Reconcile them?" Rachel asked slowly. "Or reconcile the two of you... haven't given
her up yet, have you?"

"Maybe. I'm trying my best, though. It's not always easy to keep to the straight and
narrow path, Rachel. But I wish her only the best, and Duncan *is* my friend."

She recalled the two of them entering the barge while she was cleaning up. Duncan had
been nothing like the strong, self-assured man she had first encountered, looking like
a patient after a long illness, and regarding both Adam Pierson and her as if they
were something between apparitions and doctors. When Adam had excused himself and
left, going to the mortally ill young woman Duncan had later told her about, her
kinsman had stared after him with an intensity and gratitude which had caused her to
comment: "A good friend."

"One of the best," Duncan had said.

Even if she had not grown to like Adam by now, she would have given him the benefit of
the doubt for that alone. She couldn't resist a final dig, though.

"If you say so. So which one exactly were you jealous of, Duncan or Cathy?"

The look he gave her was genuinely amused. "As I said," he answered, "you're too quick
for me, Rachel."

End Part 4

V.

Being a mother, Cassandra discovered, or rather rediscovered, had its drawbacks. Oh,
she didn't regret her decision. She couldn't have lived with herself if Becky simply
had been dumped into the next orphanage run by the state, and it provided her infinite
satisfaction to see the girl step by step recapturing life, the joy of life, and a
childhood. But it had been so long since her last adoption that she had almost
forgotten the never-ending worries, from small things like lost shoes to large
anxieties like Becky running precariously close to the edge of a cliff. Not to mention
the never-ending questions, once Becky had overcome her shyness and accepted her as a
friend. Unfortunately, she had accepted Methos as well.

"Isn't Adam here yet?" or "Look what Adam has brought me" were common phrases day in,
day out. Cassandra gritted her teeth, told herself it wouldn't do any good to give
Betty an inkling of her true feelings towards "Adam" since it would only make the girl
unhappy, and that would come soon enough. An additional side effect of caring for
Becky was that there were rare occasions for sword fights, since they obviously
couldn't practice with Becky around, and she couldn't leave Becky alone, not when the
girl still woke each night screaming with terror. Cassandra's own nightmares, oddly
enough, had vanished. In the pure spirit of scientific investigation, she asked Methos
and was told the same, which she believed since he had no reason to lie about it. In
any case, having no nightmares didn't mean quiet nights. In the beginning, she kept
Becky with her, and later, she always took care to leave the door between the guest
room, which had been converted to Becky's room, and her own bedroom wide open. It made
it easier for Becky to fall asleep, but it didn't keep the nightmares away.

Cassandra found herself teaching Becky age-old riddles and verses against the darkness
and all kinds of danger. Oddly enough, something the Minoans had used to calm the sea
worked best for Becky. Soon, the girl could recite the conjuration from memory and
made Methos write it down on the fine, white paper he used for his notes. He had a
laptop, too, but his regular trips to the local shop for all kinds of writing utensils
and the slowly gathering files in his room where Rachel could see them ensured that
his cover as a researcher was never questioned by anyone. Now Becky's room was
plastered with an old Minoan sea poem written in Roman and Greek letters as well as in
hieroglyphs, though Cassandra could not read the latter. When she had visited Egypt
for the first time, the Ptolemaians had been in charge, soon to be disposed by the
Romans, and hieroglyphs were already a forgotten art.

Seeing the poem gave her an idea. There *were* things he knew that she didn't, and she
might as well take him up on his teaching offer. Besides, it gave him something useful
to do instead of insinuating himself with the locals and cozying up poor Rachel.

Becky insisted she wanted to learn the "picture-writing" as well, and so they
sometimes sat around Cassandra's large table or on the floor of Betty's room, drawing
pictograms that were invented millennia ago. To Cassandra, the most astonishing thing
was that the domesticity of the situation didn't make her choke. But as often as she
found herself actually enjoying it, the reminder of the last time she had fallen into
this trap chilled her at once and restored her much-needed caution. Oh, he was good in
showing interest, amusing himself with teaching and even questioning her about her own
knowledge. But as soon as you began to believe things had changed, a brutal reminder
of reality was due, anything from a slap in the face to being handed over to the next
barbarian. Never, ever again.

About two months had passed when Becky had grown confident enough to befriend Rachel,
who suggested she could babysit now and then "so you can have some time on your own".
Cassandra didn't like the implication of that phrase, or rather, the way Rachel said
it; Rachel seemed to have some odd ideas about Methos and herself, and Cassandra had a
very good idea where they had come from. Unfortunately, there was not much she could
do about this, either. It was as good a cover as any for his regular visits, and she
could hardly tell Rachel the truth. Even though Rachel had accepted Duncan as
something out of a legend, he had never confided about his immortality, let alone
about the rest of the immortals. And Cassandra was too old and wise to involve an
innocent mortal in the game, which invariably happened if you told them, just because
she had been set up by a master of lies.

So Rachel stayed with Becky now and then, and Cassandra and Methos started practising
in the old cemetery, newly restored after Kanwulf's vandalising. The first fight,
carefully planned on her part, gave her the immense satisfaction of seeing the
smugness wiped from his face. In the beginning, she let herself be disarmed easily,
though she had to repress the terrible fear she felt when his sword touched her
throat. Then, after he had grown relaxed and overconfident around her, she used a
move--taught to her eons ago by a gladiator who had been freed from his contract
through a friend of hers--and had him flat on his back. His expression was priceless.

"And this," Cassandra said as gently as she could, "is how it's done, pony-boy."

Later she thought that perhaps it would have been better to let him continue with his
underestimation of her, but then she recalled his face again. It had been worth it. In
any case, afterwards the sword practice grew in intensity, though she suspected he
held back moves of his own.

Most immortals were in love with the sword, but she had never been. It was the
instrument of all their deaths: that would have been enough to cause her dislike, but
the first time she had ever seen swords had been the day when her father and all her
people were slaughtered by them. It had taken her a long time to outgrow her hatred of
the weapon and accept the simple necessity of it. Fortunately, most immortals could be
disarmed by the Voice. She had not taken a head for a long, long while, but she
recalled the sensation as if it had been yesterday, the invasion of mind and body, an
ecstatic agony one despised and yet also craved.

She wondered whether, if she had taken Methos' head directly after he had taken
Silas', and, from what she had watched, a part of Kronos' quickening as well when the
spiral formed between him and MacLeod, she could have survived with her sanity intact.
The idea of being possessed by three of the four horsemen horrified her. But she was
reasonably sure she could manage to integrate Methos' quickening now, if she had to.
He had obviously managed to deal with Silas and Kronos without falling into a Dark
Quickening. It was one of the reasons why she was so certain that the changes in
Methos could only be superficial, at best: he must have an incredibly stable sense of
self to survive as long as he had done, when most immortals either snapped or grew
suicidal, an unchanging core.

"Do you remember a time before the swords?" she asked him once during their evening
walks, which they took when neither was in the mood for swordplay. What she actually
meant was a time before the Game, for she had her suspicions about the Game. If it had
already existed by the time she became an immortal, what had kept the Horsemen from
killing each other? But then again, together they were more powerful and effective
than any of them could have been alone. It might just have been enough to outweigh the
lure of the Prize.

Methos, however, decided to take her literally. "Barely. Flintstone before Bronze
before Iron. I told you, I remember taking my first head. Believe me, there is a
reason. Ever tried to behead someone with a flintstone axe? It's messy, to say the
least."

"I should have known you would have found a way to kill before it became easy to do
so, Death," she answered, but there was more sadness than heat in her reply, and so he
swallowed another sarcasm, keeping, instead, to memories.

"Strange, but I can recall the change from bronze to iron much more clearly, and it
was less important than from flintstone to bronze. I thought it was a fad, first.
Bronze was so much more reliable."

"Adamas," she murmured, recalling the Greek name for the unruly metal. She, too,
remembered a time when iron had been used mostly for jewelry, not for weapons. But
now, in retrospect, it seemed that all too soon people had found out that they could
kill each other much more effectively using iron. Every new invention sooner or later
ended up as a weapon. It was a depressing cycle. Thinking of new inventions and
deadly weapons brought something else to mind.

"What became of the virus?" she asked, suddenly startled that she had never thought of
this before.

In the moonlight, his sharp features had the eerie, cold hardness she always
associated with his pensive mood. It used to change into either a sudden, brutal
lashing out or a deep withdrawing, when he would not talk with her for days, just
communicating through gestures if he wanted her to do something.

"A little late, aren't we?" he replied, proving the maliciousness was still there, and
covering it up at once with a deceptively mild: "Don't worry. I destroyed the damned
thing without bringing it into contact with air or water. It wasn't easy, especially
the bottle Kronos had installed at the water supply, but it gave me something to do
instead of dwelling on your graciously allowing me to live."

"Oh, I could think of several other subjects that might have diverted you," Cassandra
retorted coldly. " Such as what would have happened if Kronos had defeated Duncan.
Thousands would have died before anyone could have stopped him, but then, that would
have been nothing new for you. I guess the only thing you would have cared about is
how to explain to Kronos that there were only the two of you left."

"The three of us. Let me remind you that you, my dear, stayed around, instead of
getting the hell out of there. If Kronos had won, you would have had two heads to
choose from, and I grant you probably would have killed one of us. I flatter myself I
would have been at the top of your list, but that would have left you with Kronos,
which would have left him with taking your head after you had taken mine and having
his brain completely destroyed by all those quickenings. And then, yes, thousands
would have died."

She wondered. Would she have been too distraught, too bent on revenge to realise that
killing one horseman would mean death by the hands of the other? That then, there
would be no one left to warn the world? She didn't like to think so.

"Not much of a plan," she said aloud, inadvertently using the same words as Kronos
had, which nearly caused Methos to flinch. "You gambled on two victories and one....
weakness."

Now that she had sparred with him, she knew Silas, with all his brute force, hadn't
had much of a chance of killing him, especially after the shock of seeing his
favourite brother turning against him, as he turned against anyone who trusted him.
She couldn't spare much pity for Silas, though. He would have killed her without a
second thought. His was a simple nature: there were the four horsemen, there were
their pets, and then there was the rest of the world, theirs for the taking. He had
never been gleefully cruel like Kronos or Caspian, but neither had he shown mercy to
anything with two legs. To be butchered without added viciousness was still to be
butchered. Still, she had never hated him as much as the rest of them and would not
have bothered to pursue him if he had been on his own. Chances were that Silas without
Methos or Kronos would have withdrawn from the world again.

Kronos, though, was another matter. Kronos and Duncan were equally matched. He could
have won. As a matter of fact, he could have won by default much sooner, if Silas and
Caspian had succeeded in their mission. Methos certainly wouldn't have stopped him,
she thought, and said so aloud.

"Are you sure?"

"How can I not be? When you thought Duncan had died, your resolution amounted to
'Let's keep Kronos happy, be a good little slave again'. You would have gone on
planning his mass murders for him, doing what he wanted, keeping him happy, just as
you always did."

He stopped. They weren't far from her cottage now; she knew every tree, every bush and
even the earth sang its calm song of safety and sacred ground to her, but his voice,
deep and drawling as he had not used it in this century before, at least not towards
her, laid her nerves bare, with the precision of a scalpel.

"What exactly are we talking about, Cassandra? What is it you really want to know?
Whether I would have saved the world, or whether you still would have lost a
competition with Kronos?"

"You bastard!"

He saw her hand coming, but didn't move. Because the moon was full and, rare for this
climate, there were no clouds, and because he was very fair-skinned, she could
actually see the marks her hand left before the immortal healing reasserted itself. It
had not been a stage slap; she had used her fist. They stood and stared at each other,
while the pain in her knuckles, too, faded within seconds. She could hear their
elaborate breathing.

"I'm sorry," he finally said, sounding for once neither flippant nor insulting, but
sincere. Yet he left it open what exactly he was apologising for.

"It's easy to be sorry afterwards," she answered tonelessly, as she turned away from
him and went back to her cottage.

VI.

Not every meeting without Becky to hold them back ended in an argument, thankfully.
Sometimes they managed to discuss quite civilly questions like the one haunting all
immortals: Where did they come from? Who were their parents? Hijad had regarded her as
a present from the Gods, but Cassandra had lost faith in that comforting explanation
when she met her living god, whose way of giving her life was to kill her first. Even
years later, when she had realised Methos had been no more a god then she, when she
had entered the service of the Great Goddess, she could no longer believe in a divine
origin for foundlings.

Methos, or so he claimed, never had. He told her about several theories the Watchers
had - recurring genetic mutation being a favourite, though that did not explain how
the parents of such mutations knew they had to get rid of them, since there was no
technology which could tell a pre-immortal from a mortal child. One of the more
outlandish theories of the last years, proposed by a Watcher whose cover was the
existence of a screenwriter in Hollywood, was that they were all aliens from outer
space.

"And people actually believe that?" Cassandra asked, amazed.

"You'd be surprised. Well, aliens have replaced sightings of saints and gods. Frankly,
I don't see much difference between a Roman peasant counting his eagles and sparrows
for lucky omens, his Italian descendant going to Naples to see the blood of St.
Januarius become fluid each year, or his grandnephew, born in America, getting
abducted by aliens."

"You wouldn't," she said, leaving it at that as she didn't want to discuss religion
with him, of all people. Instead, the debate shifted to mortal and immortal
physiology. Both had, at different points in their lives, done vivisections, but not
in this century, where the risk of witnesses and records was simply too great. They
had not found any additional organs, though Methos pointed out that the blood, when he
had had the chance to watch it under those lovingly made lenses the Dutch created in
the eighteenth century, did show some tiny differences. Unfortunately, they could not
dare to cross-check it now against mortal samples.

"I wonder," Cassandra said thoughtfully, "whether it might just hold the clue against
something like the AIDS virus. There must be something similarly adaptive in our
immune system - if it could be reproduced on an artificial basis..."

"Yes. But would you be willing to risk our existence on that supposition? We'd
probably end up as human lab rats; make no mistake about that."

Another question, a more urgent one, was where Becky had come from. The police still
hadn't found any clues; there were no descriptions of missing children fitting her.
Grateful as she was for the unexpected gift of a child, Cassandra couldn't help but
feel a vague sense of unease. In this, she was in rare agreement with Methos.

"It is almost as if someone had placed her there," he said, and used his excursions
into the forests which were ostensibly connected to his book and in reality to the
ever-fading hope of finding the damned cave or whatever relicts the hermit had left,
for investigations about Becky as well. There was not much chance he would find
something the police hadn't, but there was always the possibility another immortal was
involved, who knew Becky was a pre-immortal and had left her there to be found by
Cassandra, or Methos, or both, with unclear intentions. If so, he or she might return,
and no mortal policeman could sense that.

As it grew colder and colder, and Christmas approached, these forest trips grew ever
more uncomfortable. Methos disliked the cold. Which was why he all too often ended up
in cold climates; he didn't want to become predictable by indulging in his natural
preferences too much. Paris in winter was less than idyllic, always had been, even
when called Lutetia and used by Caesar for a meeting with some Gallic chiefs. But it
was downright southern when compared to Scotland.

*Explains much about MacLeod*, Methos thought, feeling the unpleasant in-between of
rain and snow needling any exposed skin it could find. *Anyone who grows up in this
climate *has* to be stubborn and immovable as a rock. Explains much about Cassandra,
too. After all, she stayed here for centuries.*

Christmas per se had no meaning for him, but he could understand the need for solstice
celebration which had prevailed throughout the centuries. He didn't want to think
about the last Christmas, when all had been well within the small circles of intimates
he had fallen in with. There had been a celebration at Joe's with MacLeod, Amanda, and
the inevitable Richie Ryan.

Fun and teasing on all sides, as Mac made Amanda prove that her gifts were actually
bought, and she paid him back by presenting the bills... each and every one from his
credit cards; as Methos got a CD from "the worst band I could find, so you'd really
like it," as Mac put it, and a silk shirt from Amanda who claimed she would found an
anti-Sweater-league if he didn't wear it at once; as Joe had presented songs he had
written for each of them. He tried to ignore the idea of Joe spending a lonely, bitter
Christmas in Paris, worrying about MacLeod. He could have told Joe Duncan's
whereabouts, but Joe being Joe would have traveled to Malaysia, only to be met by
exactly the same reception. Besides, Joe needed time on his own to mourn the cursed
kid whom he had regarded as something of a son as well. Even less did Methos want to
think about the Christmas before, when Alexa had been still alive. Anything but that.
So he said yes when Rachel invited him to her Christmas celebration, and busied
himself in making presents for Becky.

*Stupid*, his voice of reason, who didn't think much of this prolonged sojourn to
Scotland anyway, told him. *There is a reason why you didn't take any more students
after Byron. A reason why you thought MacLeod was foolish to have taken Richie. Any
immortal born that late in the Game is bound to die, and at the rate it accelerates,
sooner rather than later. Getting attached to mortals is bad enough, but at least you
know where you are with them, there's no chance of your emotions getting the better of
you and causing irrational hopes.*

*Oh, and the Methusalah Stone wasn't an irrational hope?*

There she was again, Alexa in the hospital, crying his name. No, better to think about
anything else, anything... even Cassandra. She had to spend a week in London, since
one of the authors she worked with insisted on a personal meeting, and had reluctantly
entrusted Becky to Rachel.

"I hope," Rachel said, eyes sparkling, while she prepared the inn for the big
Christmas party, having somehow bullied Methos into holding ladders and carrying
buckets around, "I hope you know what this means."

"Enlighten me."

"That she's entrusting the lass to you as well, of course! It's a declaration of good
faith if I ever saw one. Now Adam, all you have to do is listen to me. We'll fix this
between Cathy and you."

He wondered whether it was possible that some psychological structure was passed from
generation to generation of MacLeods. Certainly Rachel enjoyed taking charge of
people's lives every bit as much as Duncan did... had done. She made an ideal clan
chief. It didn't mean she was right in this case, though. Cassandra and he managed
some fairly normal conversations, now and then, but this didn't mean she had abandoned
her distrust of him. Nor was it necessary for her to do so. He had never intended
them to become friends. But he had intended to get rid of his nightmares, and whether
it was because of Becky or because of Cassandra, they had left him.

"Do you have a present for her?" Rachel asked.

"For Cathy? No. Believe me, she'd feel insulted."

"Adam my boy, you don't know women. No woman ever feels insulted if she gets a
thoughtfully selected present."

"Is that a hint?" he parried. "Don't worry, I've got something for you."

He had grown quite fond of Rachel, but in this case she really didn't know what she
was talking about. Giving Cassandra a present would automatically remind her of the
way he had used presents before. They had served him both as rewards, for obedience,
and punishments, for Cassandra the child of the desert had at first hated the
elaborate face painting he forced upon her. Teaching her to use charcoals on her eyes
and henna on her cheeks and mouth had not been a kindness; he had done it because he
wanted his prize to look as good as possible.

He could just imagine Cassandra's reaction if he presented her with some make-up now.
Or jewelry. Oh yes, by the time he had given her the gold torque, she had liked it,
but it had not been two days before Kronos had taken her.

However, the subject was brought up again, by Becky of all people. She showed him the
painting she had secretly done for Cassandra - featuring someone who, to judge by the
long hair, must be Cassandra, surrounded by the moon and the stars - and asked him
about his own present.

"Do you know what the celebration is about?" he said, hoping to distract her.

"Yes, Cathy told me." She stumbled across some of the longer words. "The birth of
Christ and the 'newal of all things."

The renewal of all things. The solstice night. She continued to look at him
expectantly, entreatingly, with her big dark eyes. The tiny scar, dangerously close to
her left eye, was still more red than pale. Blast it, he should have told everyone he
had to visit his family, risked the return of the nightmares and spent Christmas on
Tahiti or Bora Bora. A plunge in pure hedonism would have taken care of the dreams,
and he wouldn't feel the ridiculous need to reassure this infant that Daddy and Mommy
were getting along.

"Tell you what," he suddenly said, "we're making a trip to Edinburgh to get Cathy her
present. Have you ever been to a big city?"

"I don't remember," she said in her small voice, and he cursed himself.

"Then it's time!"

Originally, he had planned to take Rachel's car, but she needed it on that day, so he
decided a little blackmail was in order. Andrew Lanart had, surprisingly, not followed
Cassandra to London. Perhaps they already had a new Watcher assigned, because the
overconscientious fool didn't keep his mouth shut, or someone of the London staff
needed the training. Be that as it may, Lanart was in for a surprise. Predictably, the
man felt obliged to be outraged at first.

"Come on," Methos said, "giving us a lift to Edinburgh is hardly a big sacrifice. Take
it as a tribute to the spirit of the season."

"Look, Pierson, perhaps Dawson is foolish enough to still associate with you, but
certainly not me!"

"That's not what the headquarters are going to hear."

"What?"

"If you continue to act out this virtuous get-thee-behind-me-immortal-thing, then I'll
tell my old acquaintances at HQ Paris all about my good buddy Andrew who led me to the
woman whose head I'm planning to take. I think that's called interference in the
Game. No offence, Andrew, but people get fired for stuff like that. Sometimes they
even end up before tribunals."

The man's face took on an interesting shade of gray.

"You... you are..."

"Yes, I know. I've been told often enough. Now," Methos said gently, "about the use of
your car and that trip to Edinburgh..."

"I hope she tortures you before she takes your head," Lanart hissed, but he complied.

It resulted in a mostly enjoyable excursion. Becky, bless her, actually figured out
something he could give to Cassandra without risking having it thrown in his face.
While they were wandering down a street, she stopped before a pet-shop, pressed her
nose against the glass, and sighed.

"Are those wolf puppies?" she asked, pointing to a black, yelping bundle.

"No, just normal dog puppies."

She actually looked disappointed and explained that Cathy had told her tales about a
wolf puppy she once had owned. This propelled Methos to be unusually demonstrative and
whirl her around in his arms.

"Bright girl, Becky! That's it!"

Not a puppy, though. Wolf cubs notwithstanding, he just didn't see Cassandra as a dog
person. But a kitten would do nicely. He had never given her anything living in the
past; she couldn't blame the animal for its donor, and with her soft spot for pets
might actually like it. Besides, it would be a present for Becky as well.

He had been mildly concerned about encountering another immortal in a city the size of
Edinburgh, but luckily, none showed up, and the only thing that gave him pause for
thought was that Andrew Lanart didn't just glare at him; he looked at Becky with
something like distaste as well when they met in the late afternoon again as agreed.
It was just a glance, but it caused his skin to prickle.

With a combination of luck and skill, Methos had successfully managed not to be
discovered by James Horton and his followers while they were still in the Watchers,
secretly conducting their hunting. He had met Horton once, though, when the man came
into the library in order to check on Darius' chronicles. The expression with which
Horton had regarded the volumes had been similarly distasteful. Not that Andrew Lanart
had any connections with the Horton group, but there was always the chance he might
develop a basic dislike of immortals, a milder form of the resentment and hatred that
had driven Horton. It was a risk that came with the job. But even then, he had no way
of knowing Becky was a latent immortal as well, and thus no reason to feel any
hostility towards her.

Maybe it was just paranoia on Methos' part. But paranoia had kept him alive for quite
a long time, so he usually listened to it.

Cassandra spent only two of the days in London with her author. On the other days, she
did what she could not have risked in Glenfinnan: she went on another dreamwalk in
search for a demon. By now, she had confirmation about Duncan actually being in
Malaysia, and since there was no progress as far as the hermit was concerned, she
decided to follow the only trail left. She visited the British Museum and stayed for a
long time among the Persian monuments. It helped her to adjust to the state of mind
she needed, to form the visual images that were necessary as aids in the Otherworld.

The first time she tried, all she found were echoes of past lives, long, long gone.
The second time, she decided to concentrate on the immediate past, tried to find
Duncan at the point where he had taken his student's head. It was difficult, but at
last she had pinpointed the familiar aura in conflict with some severe disturbance.
She could get no closer than that, though, and as she was not sure whether she had
successfully kept to the past or had become drawn to the present again, she attempted
to consciously contact him in the here and now afterwards.

It was a mistake. She was too exhausted, and all too easily repelled by the walls of
grief and withdrawal he had formed. And the futility of her attempt wasn't the end of
the consequences. Her nightmares returned again. The first one even felt like a
vision, but in the state she was in she couldn't be sure. She saw Methos as Death,
cutting down Becky just as swiftly as he had murdered Hijad and all the others she had
watched him kill, and the same helpless, paralysing agony burned in her as she was
unable to stop him.

Then, it was the time after she tried to commit suicide for the last time. She had
thought she had finally figured out a way to escape him. Her people believed that the
soul hovered around the body for a day and a night, but after that, could not be
called back anymore. So if she managed to hide successfully for that time, if he
couldn't find her before a day and a night had passed, she would truly be dead.

She had waited until the horsemen were camping in an area full of rocks, mountains and
caves. Had been obedient and submissive to a fault, until she sneaked away and hid in
a cave, praying to the spirits of her ancestors for salvation and plunging the knife
she had stolen into her heart. When she had awakened, he had been with her, smiling
sardonically, and she had finally accepted that there was no escape, that he would
always find her, always bring her back, that he truly was a god.

"Really, woman," he had said, pulling her up none too gently, "this particular game
gets tiring. And you don't want me to get bored. You'll have to make it up to me."

"I hate you," she sobbed, hating herself for being reduced to such futile
protestations, "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!"

With the bit of awareness that was not caught up in the past her sleep had conjured
up, she thought it couldn't become worse, but it did. Her dream shifted to a time some
weeks later. She kneeled next to Lystris, one of Kronos' women, who had just finished
the drink Cassandra had brewed to break her fever. Her body tingled, as it always did
when her Master or his Brethren approached, and she raised her head, praying it would
not be Kronos asking for Lystris once again. Her relief to see Methos turned into fear
as she thought he might disapprove of what she did. Still, she stood her ground. So
many of the women died: Lystris was one of the few who had an actual chance, and she
was determined to bring her through.

"Forgive my boldness," she said, "but please permit me to stay a while longer. She
needs me. She...." desperately she searched for an argument that might convince him,
"is more useful alive, she already knows her duties, a new woman would have to be
taught."

"Indeed," he said, nodding, and crouched beside her, taking the emptied cup away from
her and sniffing at it.

"Tell me," he asked, "are those the same herbs you used to make the skinny one with
the broken leg sleep yesterday? Something calming? And what are those herbs?"

Cassandra shook her head, glad he wasn't angry but still very careful, for his mood
might change any minute.

"No. This one got her fever from the knife cuts, and so I used...."

He listened, not interrupting her even once, while she spoke of herbs and mixtures,
always keeping her voice on a low, pleasing level so that neither he nor feverish
Lystris would be disconcerted. It was an odd, new sensation, having his complete
attention directed at her in a way which did not threaten anything. He even looked
different, serious, but not cold, and his voice, when she had finally ended and he
questioned her further, had lost its taunting edge.

That night, he did something else that was new: he kissed her. He had touched her in
any other way, both brutally and, when he wanted to humiliate her by showing her he
could get her body to respond to him even while she hated him, skillfully, but he had
never kissed her. It was the first sensation he caused in her which she did not hate
and resent, and she started to wonder whether to be chosen by a god was really such a
terrible fate.

Cassandra woke up, tears still streaming down her face, and the time she needed to
realise that the cold she felt came from an unheated hotel room in London and not from
the caves of Anatolia was disconcertingly long. The last dream, without any violence
at all, had been the worst. She could not stop the tears. The bastard had been right
in Bordeaux. He had actually managed to manipulate her into falling in love with him
back then.
For the rest of the week, all her endeavours to focus long enough for another
dreamwalk failed.

End, Part 6

Cassandra returned to Glenfinnan a day sooner than planned, and consequently was
annoyed to find Methos had taken Becky on a trip to Edinburgh. It was completely
irresponsible. Chances were that you met other immortals in cities, which was one of
the reasons why she had not taken Becky with her to London. Of course he was good at
evading fights and getting away, but what if this just turned out to be impossible?
She shuddered to think of Becky witnessing a beheading, getting injured or... She
couldn't forget the image of her first dream which had felt so much like a vision.
Rationally, she had no real cause to think Methos would harm Becky. He liked the girl;
even she would admit as much, and there was nothing to be won by killing the child.
Nothing but hurting Cassandra, and he was so very, very good at that...

*Pull yourself together*, she silently ordered her panicked imagination, while trying
to present a normal front to Rachel who had just returned from some errands of her
own, collecting all the fresh meat she would need for the Christmas party from the
farmers of the area. Rachel, however, saw through her.

"Don't worry," she said cheerfully. "They'll be all right. You know, Adam does have a
responsible streak; he just keeps it carefully hidden. Sometimes I think that boy's
never going to grow up."

"You don't say," Cassandra replied drily, before she could stop herself, but the irony
helped her to put things a bit into perspective.

"Cathy, look, I know it's none of my business, but couldn't you give him another
chance? I mean, I can understand how you feel about Duncan. The man kind of sweeps you
away. I'll admit I was a bit swept away myself, but I knew at once there's no future
in it. Friendship, yes. But our Duncan was just not made for monogamy. So if I were
you, I'd look on Adam long and hard. He's not a bad sort, basically, and I can vouch
for the fact that he didn't give any other woman here another glance."

It was very difficult to decide whether to burst into indignation or into laughter.
She had suspected Methos of telling Rachel some fairy tale about the two of them
having been romantically involved, or that it was his intention to court her which
made him stick around. But this surpassed her wildest expectations. *Don't get
hysterical*, she ordered herself. *Think. Pay him back in kind. Let's see how
embarrassing you can make it for him.*

Cassandra swallowed both indignation and laughter, lowered her lids and sadly replied:
"Rachel, you don't know the half of it. Here I was, thinking they were both interested
in me. It was, as you can imagine, very difficult to choose. But then I found out the
truth. They were both setting me up. Using me just as a cover. You see, Duncan's
living in America most of the time, and they're still pretty conservative over there."

Rachel's eyes were round as saucers.

"You don't mean...?"

"Yes. The discovery was very humiliating. How would you feel to be used and betrayed
in that way?"

"I'd want to castrate the bastards. Well, to tell you the truth, Cathy, it isn't a
complete surprise...."

*It isn't?* Cassandra thought with something of a shock.

"....but I still think it wasn't all a deceit. Adam's genuinely interested in you;
believe me, I can tell. Though I can understand now why you're so skeptical. Let him
suffer for a bit longer; it's just what he deserves."

"I intend to," Cassandra answered.

Becky was wildly excited about something, but managed actually to keep it a secret,
which was a rare thing for a child. However, she put all that energy into pestering
Cassandra to accept Rachel's invitation for the Christmas party.

"Everything is going to look too beautiful!" she breathed. "I made some of the stars,
Cathy! Adam and Rachel showed me how. Please, please, let us go!"

Finally, Cassandra relented, though she pointed out to Becky that the girl would miss
much of the party anyway, for she would be put into bed whether they were at Rachel's
or at home. So she spent the solstice night with a bunch of eager, happy mortals, who
seemed younger to her than ever, plus her new daughter and her oldest enemy. Methos
and Cassandra both carefully avoided any double-edged taunts or innuendos or any
delicate subjects, with the result that they were perceived as skittish new lovers,
confirming everyone's suspicions. Finally, while Methos was upstairs trying to put
Becky, who missed her written charms, to sleep, Cassandra couldn't stand the amused
glances any longer, grabbed her coat and announced she was out for a bit of fresh air.
Of course, she wasn't five minutes alone before she bumped into Methos.

"Why do you follow me?"

"Honestly, I didn't. Rachel just said I looked as if I could use some air, and she
wasn't far off the mark. By the way, thanks for enlightening her about the immortal
variation of Jules et Jim. She dropped some heavy hints about being honest about one's
feelings, not covering them up at the expense of someone else."

"Well, you started it with that ridiculous soap opera you told her."

"True." He suddenly laughed.

"What?"

"If Mac ever returns from the monks and life ever gets back to normal, at least normal
enough for him to contact Rachel, he's going to strangle us both for ruining his
reputation with her!"

The giggle that bubbled up in her simply had to be freed, and so he heard her laugh,
carefree, low and sweet, untouched by bitterness, and it was a revelation. But
thinking of Duncan reminded her soon of the dire, painful reality he was caught in at
the moment, and she sobered up quickly. Still, the spiced punch Rachel had served must
have mellowed her to a degree she had not anticipated, for she heard herself remarking
pensively and still without rancour:

"He was born on this night, you know. The night of the winter solstice. I remember it
so clearly... Sometimes I wonder whether I should have adopted him myself, like Becky
now. He wouldn't have been cast out of his clan then. Would have known what he was."

"Instead off getting the quickening of a suicidal hermit, if this is what happened,
and thus being drawn into the present fiasco. Yes. But he wouldn't have become the
Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod who annoys all of us, right?"

"If anyone is annoying, it is you. But I suppose all this immature behaviour is the
reason why people don't discover your identity. Except when you want them to. Tell me,
did you create the legend of Methos the Eldest yourself so you could impress younger
immortals like Duncan if it was necessary?"

The edge had returned to her voice, and as their brief truce was obviously ended, he
replied with a cutting remark of his own.

"Tell me, did you deliberately impress yourself on a thirteen year old as his first
adolescent dream so he would be bound to you forever?"

She blushed and hoped he wouldn't notice in the darkness. At least tonight, there was
no bright moonlight.

"I learned from the master," she said coldly.

"Thank you. Let's go inside before this gets any more unpleasant, shall we?"

It was something of a miracle that they not only managed to suppress further
hostilities, but also draw some enjoyment from the rest of the party. Rachel looked at
them and shook her head, but thankfully refrained from further well-intentioned
efforts, at least for this evening. Methos danced with her and with a few of the other
women present, though he knew better than to ask Cassandra. He did, however, notice
she had her circle of admirers. Now and then one of them went upstairs to check on
Becky, and gradually the entrancing harmony of the evening settled in again.

The next day, everyone received his or her presents. For Becky, it was a notebook in
which he had written some fairy tales, both in the hieroglyphs and in the Roman
letters he taught her, and another notebook for her to practice. Rachel received an
Ibis earring he had ordered sent from one of his hideouts, and, to keep with the
Egyptian theme, a receipt on how beer was brewed on the shores of the Nile millennia
ago, "all the result of some motivated research," as he explained. She laughed, gave
him the new sweater she had knitted for him and vanished, to return with the kitten
she had, on his request, kept hidden until now.

"This is your present, Cathy," Becky cried. " Adam let me pick him. It's a tom-cat."

Cassandra found three pairs of eyes looking towards her, two expectantly, one warily.
Strangely enough, the memory of former presents did not hurt half as much as she would
have thought. As a matter of fact, ever since her return from London, the nightmares
had vanished again and with them the feeling of desperation. Even the nagging concern
about her failure to make any kind of contact through her dreamwalks seemed less
important here. She turned her gaze to the cat. A lovely, gray short hair, with yellow
eyes that blinked lazily. A Carthusian.

"What shall we call him, then?" she asked slowly.

Rachel breathed a sigh of relief and beamed. Becky, who had never doubted that they
would keep the kitten, eagerly answered: "Duncan!"

Rachel burst into laughter. "This was your idea," Cassandra said accusingly, looking
at Methos. Then, she smiled and knelt down next to Becky, who was stroking the cat. It
proved to have a patient nature, since it let her, though it must be tired by now from
the constant touching.

"Duncan it is," she confirmed.

End, Part 7

VIII.

The spring arrived, and the peaceful interludes in their daily lives grew longer and
longer. Only during their irregular sword practice, when the physical proximity, the
movement and the smell of sweat triggered memories of the body as well as of the mind,
did Cassandra feel her hatred with its full intensity. But she was no longer sure she
wanted Methos dead, or even that she wanted never to see him again. She had nearly
grown to accept their strange, new relationship, when the deception they both lived in
was brutally shattered. The beginning of the end started on the day when Methos
finally found the cave.

*******

Cassandra was reading one of the more outlandish romance novels that she had ever come
across, "Blade of the MacLeods," because Rachel, who had been among the locals
interviewed by the author when the woman had done her research, had received three
copies she didn't quite know what to do with.

"First I thought, oh no, not another bloody American tourist in search of her
ancestors or her soulmate across the centuries," Rachel had said when giving Cassandra
the book. "That Gabaldon woman has a lot to answer for. Now every single woman in need
of consolation who ever lived seems to think the Highlands are bursting with
sensitive, sexy men for the picking. How they get that idea when the only sex symbol
Scotland has ever produced is over sixty, with no successor in sight, is beyond me."

She grinned cheekily. "Well, the only *screen* sex symbol. Anyway, the thing was,
this Carolyn Marsh was depressed as hell because she was just going through a divorce,
and I can't help myself; I'm a softie for divorce cases. So I thought I'd cheer her up
and told her some local legends, to get her through the *all men are bastards* stage."

"Rachel," Cassandra had said, staring at the bare-breasted man on the cover who looked
suspiciously like Duncan, "you didn't give her a physical description as well, did
you?"

"In for a penny, in for pound. I *really* wanted to cheer her up. Well, I could be
snobby and pretend I didn't read the book, but I did. It's crap, but entertaining
crap. Every girl needs a little romance now and then. Didn't you ever want to be
ravished by a strong handsome barbarian?"

Cassandra gave her a dark look. "Don't go there."

All of which had led to the guilty pleasure of presently wallowing in highflown
descriptions of the hero saving the damsel in distress for the third time in a row,
while Becky was busy piercing together the pieces of a gigantic puzzle, when Methos
arrived, carrying a thick briefcase under his arm. He didn't give Becky more than a
short nod, which was unusual enough to tell Cassandra immediately that something was
wrong.

"What is it?" she asked in Greek, because Greek was more adjustable to modern problems
while being at the same time incomprehensible for Becky.

He slumped in the next chair. "Your immortal acquaintance of some centuries ago and
Duncan's hermit are one and the same. He did exist. I found the damned cave."

There had not been much left which could be used. Rotting wood, for the most part.
Some cave paintings, too sophisticated to originate in the stone age, though it needed
an archaeologist or the world's oldest man to tell. He had made hastily drawn copies.
But most importantly, there was, in the midst of that rotting wood, a book. Equally
rotten, but consisting of the fine parchment which had been made to endure for
centuries, so there was actually something salvageable left.

"And what do you think our mystery man used? Persian letters? Sumerian? Assyrian?
Something as nice and uncomplicated as Greek? I'm not even demanding Roman letters -
Russian or Egyptian would be just fine. But no, the guy used *runes*." He made a
disgusted face.

"Not very big on runes, are you?" Cassandra asked sweetly, always delighted to find
chinks in his armor.

"Are you kidding? You might have had fun hanging out with German and Gallic
barbarians, but I was in Rome at the time. Well, most of the time. Nice, warm,
civilised. I miss the thermae to this day."

"Well," she said, regarding the heavy volume he had laid out on the table before her,
"this means work."

It made her uneasy from the beginning. Runes were not just letters: they were magic
signs, the language of the gods, and once she had sworn to keep them secret. But now
that they finally had found something which could be of help, any further hesitation
would be unforgivable. While Methos tried to make some sense of the wall paintings,
she sat in front of the half-destroyed pages, hour after hour, trying to decipher them
and only interrupting when Becky made her presence more than noticeable by crying out
loud. Absently, she prepared dinner for her. Methos called Rachel and asked whether
she could babysit once again, but she had to decline; the inn was too full. So they
told Becky they were working on something which was very, very important, and were
pleasantly surprised when the girl actually nodded and quietly began to play with
Duncan the cat.

Finally, Cassandra looked up, pale, but resolute. "He knew of the same prophecy; that
much is certain, but he interpreted it differently. The foe is not human: it just uses
humans, eating up their essence, and it has to be defeated by 'one of the bounteous
immortals'."

"Anything on why it has to be an immortal, or how to defeat this thing?"

"No. At least not on the pages I could decipher. But there's quite a lot on what it
wants. It envies both mortal and immortal humans the combination of spirit and flesh,
the fact that we can enjoy the tactile sensations while having minds as well. He
writes there's much resentment, especially of the immortals, for we can absorb each
other's souls without paying the price, the abandonment of our own body. This seems to
indicate it was once physical as well. And , according to Taliesin, this is what it is
getting at. Defeating the champion in body and mind, absorbing his soul completely,
thus becoming physical again. It doesn't want to be trapped in a mortal body, though,
which would die quite soon, making the whole enterprise pointless."

Methos didn't waste time asking who Taliesin was. She had discovered the name of the
hermit quite early on. "Of course. An immortal body means immortality and the ability
to absorb other souls. And not just any immortal body, but the one of the champion,
who will take the Prize and live forever."

They looked at each other. Cassandra wondered whether Methos would argue that the
hermit could have been delusional himself when he wrote this, but he didn't. She saw
only certainty in his eyes.

"We have to tell Mac at once. He could be still in Malaysia, but with our luck he's
roaming the world again. Unfortunately, they don't have phones in the blasted
monastery. I'm all for taking the next airplane, but if it turns out to be a wild
goose-chase we'd be wasting valuable time."

"I still have the number of some Malaysian investigators," Cassandra said. "They can
check. And..."

She stopped. After London, she had not attempted a dreamwalk again. She could try now,
of course. Only... her glance fell on Becky, absorbed in playing with the cat. An
immortal host. If she encountered Ahriman in the Otherworld and was defeated, he could
wreck incredible havoc with her body and her abilities, and the girl might very well
be the first victim. She would not be used by evil again. She had told Methos the
truth in Bordeaux: she would rather die.

Meanwhile, Methos had plans of his own. Time to pay Andrew Lanart another visit,
preferably in his absence. The Watchers had changed their codes after he left, of
course, but he was reasonably sure he could hack into their database when operating
from a secured terminal. It had been easy enough from Joe's, after all. But then,
Joe's access codes were predictable. Andrew Lanart's might just take a longer time.
Well, the man needed some distraction, and after all, he still was Cassandra's
Watcher, as far as they knew. He fell back on Akkadian, a language he could gamble on
being beyond Lanart, and told Cassandra of his idea.

An hour later, she vanished into the woods, Lanart in tow. The man was far from
clumsy, but Methos had been a Watcher off and on for a long, very long time, and he
could spot them practically everywhere. He waited a safe interval. Then, he did
something they had never done before, which was why he was certain Lanart would never
suspect. He left Becky, who had just fallen asleep, alone in Cassandra's cottage.

Breaking into Lanart's house was a piece of cake. Getting into his computer was much
more difficult. At first, all he could get his hands on were the man's
in-and-out-going e-mails. Well, it was better than nothing, and just might give him a
clue for the access to the International Database.

He skimmed through some personal mails. One, by a chatty American Watcher, caught his
attention because it referred to Richie Ryan's death.

"Andrew, you wouldn't believe what's going on here in Seacouver. I mean, the kid was
cute. I watched him in his first immortal year before Mike was assigned to him, and I
can tell you, he was quite popular with the female population. So now there is this
weird group of former girl friends hanging out in Dawson's bar, pretending Ryan isn't
dead, talking to him as if he were alive and calling themselves, ' The Clan Denial'.
Hey, whatever gets you through the night, I always say."

Methos would have found this mildly amusing, but he just didn't have the time. Some
e-mails later he found something which chilled him to the bone. Lanart wrote to a
superior in Paris:

"I can assure you M does not have the slightest suspicions. Believe me, ever since
over- hearing that conversation between C and DM in the dojo I have not had the
slightest doubt of how dangerous he can be. I let him believe we thought Adam Pierson
became an immortal after the Kalas affair, and he bought it hook, line, and sinker."

Wounded vanity was the least of Methos' concerns. So much for anonymity. If any other
immortal got his hands on this, it was head-hunting time again. And Lanart sent this
through a public net? Bloody hell.

"You assigned me to C because of my proven ability to handle the ancients, and I think
I have shown I can handle M as well. Another Watcher will not be necessary in the
present situation and could be counterproductive, since a new arrival would only raise
his suspicions. As long as he stays with C, I can do the M chronicles as well."

*Oh no, Andrew*, Methos thought. *Not if I have anything to do with it.*

Well, this presented additional incentive to break into the database as quickly as
possible, check on MacLeod's whereabouts, and then get out of here. Time to end this
doubtful Scottish idyll.

It took him ten more minutes, but then he had successfully hacked his way into the
database. He started by looking for current reports from Joe Dawson. What he found
there drove Andrew Lanart from his mind, at least for the moment. First, Joe had
assigned four Watchers on a quest for "an immortal, older than Methos." They were
reported as killed in various gruesome ways. Physical or not, this Ahriman creature
was clearly more than dangerous. Second, Mac was back in Paris. Having adopted a
monastic lifestyle, with Joe none too happy about it, it seemed. Which didn't matter
right now. Time to grab the book, get Cassandra, and take the next plane to France.
Cassandra and the few facts they had about Ahriman delivered, he would ditch Andrew
and hit the road again. Sure, Mac would need comfort after getting rid of the demon,
but Joe and Cassandra could deal with that. Methos had no intention of offering the
net world further reports on his existence.

He shut down the computer again, after following an impulse to start the ditching
process, while he was at it. He wrote an e-mail to his successor as chief researcher
of the Methos Project.

"Dear Ian: Frankly, your concern about M discovering my knowledge of his true
identity is getting tiresome. Besides, chances are C will rid the world of him quite
soon, and the world will be the better for it, I'm sure. After spending nearly a year
close to this horrible example of what 5000 years of immortality produce, you would
agree as well. So stop pestering me about caution - Andrew."

If this display of partisanship and bigotry did not get Lanart reassigned, nothing
would. So much for Andrew Lanart. Methos returned to Cassandra's cottage still on the
alert, but in a better mood than he had expected. After waiting for Cassandra to
return for a while, it occurred to him he would not see Becky again for a long time,
and the thought was painful to an astonishing degree. Still, it couldn't be changed.
He decided to check on her, to make sure she had no nightmares and perhaps to catch a
last glimpse of her.

The door to her room was closed: that was the first thing which was wrong, and he knew
at once something must have happened. When he opened it, the cat nearly jumped at him,
fur bristling and claws stretched. And Becky was nowhere to be seen, only the signs of
what little havoc a struggling girl could cause when being dragged away against her
will. He did not even have the time to curse, for that was when Cassandra returned. He
ran downstairs and in a rush, brought her up on recent events.

She went white. "We did this," she whispered. "We left her alone, and it took her."

"No, *it* can't have. Remember, it's not physical. Someone certainly did, and I
think..."

He stopped, disbelieving, when he heard an all too familiar laugh.

"Having grown attached, brother?"

Cassandra gasped, which proved she heard the same voice, saw the same man, leaning on
the frame of her entrance door and regarding both of them. The cat, withdrawing into
the deepest corner of the room, hissed.

"You are dead," Methos said and even to himself, his voice sounded uncertain. Then, he
shook himself. This was how it had started for MacLeod. Seeing the dead, who were
nothing but illusions.

"Kronos is dead," he repeated. "We both saw him die. So whoever you are, you are not
Kronos, and you might as well stop playing this ridiculous game."

"Ah, but I like the reaction this shape gets me from the two of you. Such a thrill."

The voice was perfect, and even the laughing glint in the eyes was exactly the same.
The overall appearance, though, was wrong, now that Methos had pushed his shock back
far enough to consider it. Ahriman had chosen the Kronos of the Bronze Age, but had
equipped him with his modern weapon. Now what did this remind him of? *My dreams*, he
thought, and felt sick to his stomach.

"Bright boy," the Ahriman creature said, mocking Methos' own phrase. "Of course I
invaded your dreams. From the beginning. You were so easy, both of you. Pathetic. The
old mortal in Paris was a larger challenge; let me tell you that. You let yourselves
be distracted from helping your champion by some quiet nights and a chance to live in
never-never-land. You immortals are so sentimental. Children. Forming a family. Gets
you every time. And, of course, some dulling of the memories so that you can actually
live with each other instead of killing each other. Easy. And now the battle has
started, and you are not there to help your champion."

"He won't need our help," Cassandra said. Because she stood so close to him, Methos
felt her trembling, but her voice was deathly calm and quiet. "He will defeat you, as
has been prophesied."

"Sure of that, are you, witch? You couldn't even understand your own prophecy. No,
there is this delightful concept of free will. He can lose. He will lose, and soon,
your pathetic race will be gone from the face of the earth while I rule."

"Now this does sound like Kronos," Methos interrupted, desperately clinging to the
sarcasm that was his favourite weapon. "Unfortunately, he lost his head the last time
he sounded like this. Can you take a hint?"

"Not from you, Death. What a presumptuous name for you to take, by the way. And
neither will your champion. Oh, he is good at killing, a truly gifted killer, but as
we all know, he can't kill something which has no body to begin with. Only those
unfortunates standing in the way. Which brings me to my gift for you, both of you. You
don't assume it was an accident I permitted you to find the cave now, do you? I
thought you might want to share some personal experiences of the tragic kind with dear
Duncan before his soul departs this world."

Suddenly the apparition vanished, but only seconds later, someone else appeared within
the door frame. Andrew Lanart, holding Becky with a gun pressed on her head. Only they
had never seen Lanart with such an expression, as if someone else moved his muscles.
The eyes which regarded them were red.

"This vessel let me in, and it is not the first time," Lanart's voice said, with an
alien intonation. "He wasn't so resistant as his colleague in Paris, I'm happy to
report. After all, l promised him he could become just like you, and this is what they
all want, isn't it, those mortals who watch you?"

Becky stared at him with stark terror. "Cathy," she whispered, "Cathy, I remember now.
It was this man. He took me in the forest. The man with the red eyes."

"As I said," Lanart continued, disregarding her and smiling benevolently at Methos and
Cassandra, "immortals are easy. They always fall for a child. And who would better
know about mysterious foundlings than a Watcher?"

Methos turned to Cassandra, trying to ignore Becky' s desperately pleading eyes.
"Could this be another illusion?" he asked her. "Could Becky have been always an
illusion?"

She shook her head, violently. "No. Many people besides us saw her. She is real, and
she is really here now. I can sense her. Remember, this is how he tricked Duncan the
first time - making him believe his student was an illusion."

"Oh yes, the girl is real, witch. Wouldn't be any fun otherwise. You see, I still have
some use for you two, and she is my way to ensure you will obey. As I've said, at this
very moment, your champion is preparing to fight me, and while I'm reasonably certain
of the outcome, I would like to leave nothing to chance. So, just in case he has found
a way to defeat me, I will not let him practice it for long. You see," Lanart went on,
and took a few more steps inside, never losing hold of Becky for a moment, "there was
this odd occurrence at Bordeaux."

Methos was busy with juggling plan after plan to overwhelm Lanart without endangering
Becky, so Cassandra saw it first.

"The double quickening," she said slowly.

"Exactly. It leaves the champion vulnerable to an attack from that particular side.
There is a connection. Don't you find that ironical, witch? A connection between Life
and Death? Sad to say, Death is blind when it comes to the spiritual plane, so here is
what I want you to do. Take him on a dreamwalk. He will find the champion, even if you
can't. And then, he will take his quickening. Isn't that what you had always planned,
Death? Take the champion's quickening when there is no one else left but the two of
you? Now you can do it without risk, without a fight, and without that beheading your
race is so fond of."

Lanart laughed. "Here is a historical detail for you, my dear," he continued, now
addressing Cassandra again. "Remember what he told you about taking his first head
with a stone axe? He truly brought Death into the world then, at least to your world.
No one knew how to kill an immortal before he did this. I'm in a generous mood, and
once he has finished taking poor naive Duncan's quickening, I might just let you
avenge your entire race on him. I haven't decided yet which of you will have the
honour of being my vessel if I can't have the champion."

"Neither, I'm afraid," Methos said grimly. "Sorry, but you've made a gigantic
miscalculation, Ahriman. We both know your present vessel cannot truly kill this girl.
Not permanently."

"No, but you would, rather than condemn her to eternal hell in this body. Of course,
it will tear apart what is left of your soul, and the woman will hate you even more
for it and kill you immediately afterwards."

Methos looked at Becky, who had, by now, started to cry. "Help me," she whispered,
"please, Adam, Cathy, help me."

Then he glanced at Cassandra, hoping she would understand what he was getting at,
hoping at the same time Ahriman was too busy with battle preparations to read his
thoughts any longer. Powerful Ahriman might be, but if he were truly going to fight
Duncan quite soon, he would have to leave Lanart's body. Of course, Lanart could
continue to hold Becky hostage on his own free will; they didn't know whether Ahriman
had said the truth about his cooperation. But without the demon inside him, Lanart
could not possibly prevail against the Voice. They would just have to play for time
now.

"True," he agreed, "this doesn't sound like a healthy prospect to me. And we all know
I'm a survivor, above all. But you see, Ahriman, Cassandra is one of those
problematical types with ethics. She wouldn't just stand by and let me take Duncan's
quickening, let alone bring me into a position to do so. Doesn't look like this
dreamwalk was one of your brighter ideas."

"But you have already chosen the child before the champion, haven't you, witch?"
Lanart/Ahriman taunted. "Besides, if you are so sure that destiny protects him, then
he might win against both me and Death. How strong is your faith in him?"

"This has nothing to do with faith," Cassandra retorted. For a moment, the red in
Lanart's eyes flickered, and Methos had to use all his self-discipline not to show any
reaction. Cassandra ignored it, which meant she either had not noticed or had a
similar strong hold on herself by now.

"Even if I were willing to sacrifice Duncan, I could not take Methos to the Otherworld
now. You know very well how much I hate him. To touch his soul in that way against all
my wishes would require a tremendous effort of will and concentration, and with my
mind split between worry for Becky and worry for Duncan as it is, I cannot make this
effort."

For the first time, Ahriman showed anger. One of Lanart's hands dug deep enough into
Becky's shoulder to make her cry out loud while he snarled: "Do you hear that, child?
They are both willing to let you die!"

"Help me," Becky sobbed, "please, help me! Why are you doing this?"

She called their names, again and again. Cassandra whispered something, but Methos
didn't understand it anymore. He had shut himself away, far, far away from this time
and place.

*How could you do this to me?*

Lanart shivered, as if feeling something cold touch him, and the normal, pale gray
returned to his eyes. Methos felt Cassandra tensing beside him.

"Andrew," she said, low and steady, using the Voice to its full effect, "you don't
want to do this. It cannot make you. Get away from the child. Your arms are heavy,
Andrew. Very heavy. You want to throw that revolver away."

He looked at her, confused, and started to lower his arms. Then, he shivered again,
and his eyes burned for the last time.

"Very well - if that's how you want it!" the thing inside Lanart's body screamed, and
the muffled shot against Becky's head coincided with Methos jumping him, pushing him
away from the child. Lanart crumbled to the floor, but it was too late. They felt it
both, the ebbing away of mortal life, without Becky making as much as another cry.
Blood and parts of her brain were flooding on Methos as he cradled her.

"No," Cassandra whispered, "no...."

They hardly noticed Lanart slowly sitting up again, breathing heavily and breaking
into sobs.

"Oh God," he cried helplessly, "I killed her! I killed that little girl! I didn't want
to, I swear, that thing forced me. It was in my head, in my head; I didn't want to
kill her!"

No more, probably, than he had wanted to abduct her, beat her, and leave her in the
forest for Cassandra and Methos to find. Whether or not he had agreed to his
possession was not important to Cassandra, as she took Becky's dead body from Methos.
She did not even hear Lanart leave. But when time began flowing again, it was much
later, the blood on her hands and on her dress had dried, and the cat was the only
mortal creature in the house. Methos still sat on the floor with her, as Becky slowly,
oh so slowly, began to stir again.

The girl opened her eyes to find them both bent above her.

"It hurt, Cathy," she said. "It hurt so much. But not anymore."

Cassandra forced herself to smile at Becky. "No," she replied. "And nothing will ever
hurt you again."

Becky sat up. "Am I magic now, Adam? Like the MacLeod in Rachel's story?"

"Just like him."

Cassandra took her to the bathroom, cleaned her and asked her whether she was hungry,
since she had not eaten much for dinner.

"No. But I'm afraid the bad man will come back. Will you stay with me this night,
Cathy? You and Adam both? For the whole night?"

"I promise," Cassandra said. "But little girls who have just become magic must have
something in their stomach, so I'm going to make you a very special drink, only for
magical people, which you will drink to the last drop. Then, we will stay with you for
the entire night."

The body in her arms felt so warm, so alive, when she carried Becky outside. With the
sleeping draught and her Voice-enforced command, there was no chance of Becky
awakening now, but she still moved very, very carefully. When the warm air of early
summer touched her, Methos, who had not spoken a word that was not directed at Becky,
finally said: "You don't have to stay. Believe me, experiencing it is worse than
imagining it."

"It is my punishment," she answered, hardly audible. "I did this to her. I left her
alone. I let it happen."

"We both did."

"Yes."

Two thousand years ago, she might still have protested, would have done everything to
protect Becky from what Methos was about to do. Three thousand years ago, even
Cassandra the slave girl would have been horrified enough to risk another death in
order to save this child. But by now, she had as much experience with child immortals
as he had. And she, too, had not found a single one who was not bent and twisted by
time, not in all the millennia. She would not do this to her daughter. What had that
creature said? Condemning her to living hell in this body. Not to her Becky.

When they were outside the consecrated circle around her home, she laid Becky down on
the ground, brushing the pale hair away as it fell on one cheek. Methos knelt again
beside her, and as he kissed Becky on the forehead, she reached out for the first time
in millennia to touch his hand. His fingers closed around hers and stayed that way
while his other arm moved, so swiftly she could hardly see the flash of steel in the
dark.

It was a pitifully small quickening, short and light, as the girl's life had been, the
girl whose true name they would never learn. Images of pain and fear, but also the
relief of not having to be afraid anymore, and the love Becky had felt for both of
them. They stayed with her for the rest of the night, as they had promised, all the
millennia of grief helping nothing with the guilt and the devastation. Finally, when
the horizon grew brighter, Methos asked Cassandra whether she would stay at
Glenfinnan. He didn't think so, not because of the inevitable questions of both police
and social services; she could deal with that, and ensure Lanart would take the blame
for Becky's death. Consequently, he wasn't surprised when she shook her head.

"No. I will not say I will never return, for we both know that nothing lasts forever,
but certainly not for a long, long time."

"You could go to Paris," he said, watching her. "Don't worry about me being there. I
couldn't stand the company at the moment."

The company, the questions, the concern. Also the necessity to show some concern
himself. Just how he knew that MacLeod had succeeded, had defeated Ahriman, he could
not say, but he was certain. Probably another thing to blame on the double quickening.
It did not change anything about the emptiness he felt inside. He would go to Paris
when he was ready to resurrect Methos the invulnerable.

She shook her head, then asked so softly he almost could not hear her: "Is it true,
what Ahriman said?"

"What in particular? That I brought Death into our world, or that I'm planning to kill
MacLeod when this whole sorry business has come to an end?"

"Both."

"Cassandra," he sighed, "why ask something when you won't believe the reply anyway? If
I said yes, it could be to taunt you; if I said no, it could be to protect myself. In
any case, the creature obviously wasn't omniscient. It could never have been defeated
otherwise."

He was silent for a long time, but when she wanted to rise, he suddenly added: "It
also said you would kill me for this."

Her face was expressionless. "I cannot forgive you anymore than I can forgive myself.
And maybe the world would be better without both of us. But at this moment, I could
not kill you any more than I could kill myself, either."

He was careful not to read either too little or too much into this answer. For all the
terrible mistakes he had made this last year, the things he had neglected to see, he
had, in a way, received what he had come for. A way to deal with a regret that had
been festering for too long. For someone who did not believe in any kind of religion
anymore, it was strange to realise that Cassandra was his penance, which would endure
as long as she lived. He wondered whether she knew.

"Farewell, Cassandra," he said in the ancient tongue, rising with her, and added a
salutation he had not spoken for many centuries and barely even remembered. "May the
winds and the sun and the sea be kindly for you."

Something mingled with the grief and exhaustion in her voice, as she answered, never
taking her eyes from him:

"Farewell, Methos. We will meet again."

THE END