Chapter Text
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