Chapter Text
VII.
"Dio!" Falcone exclaimed, after Amy had finished translating the article for
him, which was, for Falcone, a very restrained reaction. Annette Darneau
remained silent, looking slightly queasy. Amy did not feel too well herself.
There was no doubt whose handiwork this mass amnesia, some mysterious deaths and
the destroyed research facility was, and it certainly wasn't, as the writer of
the article suspected, the product of violent animal rightists who had attacked
vivisectionists.
"Well," said the fourth member of their team callously, "that probably takes
care of the discovery problem, but it doesn't save your ass yet, Thomas. Now we
know they have been there, but we still have to track them down again."
She didn't care too much for Jan Marek, but he had a point. Ideally, Amy would
have traveled with MacLeod, found Methos, and enjoyed MacLeod roughing him up a
bit, either verbally or physically, preferably both. Then, she would have called
the others in, presenting Methos and Cassandra on a silver plate, thus restoring
her reputation. Unfortunately, they didn't trust her enough for that, and she
couldn't blame them. It was a small miracle that she had even been given this
opportunity to redeem herself instead of getting fired at once after she had to
admit to having lost Methos. She could have claimed having lost him by accident,
of course, unintentionally, but she had had about enough of lies and evasions.
Not that being duped gave a better impression than being clumsy. And now it was
worse. Of course she couldn't have stopped Methos and Cassandra, and she wasn't
even sure what they had done was not better than the alternative. But some
people were dead, and many more what could only be called brainwashed. It
chilled her to the bone. Marek alone didn't seem to be bothered by it; he was,
of course, the most experienced member of their team. She wondered, somewhat
rebelliously, whether experience always had to equal callousness.
"We will," Amy replied, trying to sound as confident as possible.
"Oh really?"
"I think he wants to be found, now that everything is over. He wouldn't have
given me the clues, otherwise."
Later, she talked to Joe who travelled with MacLeod and had, consolingly, some
difficulties dealing with the way the Lazarus Project had been destroyed
himself. She repeated the same thing. Joe's voice sounded thin through her cell
phone.
"Maybe. But surely he doesn't expect us to check every goddam hotel for A.
Strider or other Tolkien pseudonyms."
No, Amy admitted, this would take too long. If he expected them to come after
him, he would have wanted them to arrive soon.
"I've gone through what exists of his chronicles again," she confided,
depressed. "But he doesn't seem to have a favourite place in the U.S., except
Seacouver, of course."
There was a moment of silence on the other end, then Joe's voice, charged with
new energy, came through again.
"That's it! That's where he went, the calculating bastard, I'm sure of it. Amy,
I could hug you."
"Not in front of your immortal," she replied, finding some relief in the fact
she was able to tease him, after all. Joe chuckled, promised to give MacLeod
the good news and checked with her to make sure she had the address of MacLeod's
loft memorised.
Well, Amy reflected after hanging up, perhaps she was qualified to watch Methos
after all. If Joe's hunch turned out to be a wild goose chase, of course... This
was certainly not the exploration of America she had had in mind when talking to
Joe about a visit to the U.S. some months previously.
****
Showing the world to someone else, seeing familiar things through new eyes, was
a downright intoxicating experience. He should know. Showing Alexa the old
world, while knowing they were racing against time, and death could take her
away any minute. Showing Cassandra the new world was similarily time-
constrained, since amnesia in an immortal could not, would not last forever. But
on the other hand... it just might, considering the way she had gotten it. In
any case, it was a gift from the gods.
Once she got over the stench from the automobiles and their incredible
fastness, she enjoyed driving, comparing it to her old dream of moving with one
of the desert winds. He had forgotten her people had seventeen different words
for winds blowing in the desert, but she taught him anew. The skyscrapers were
palaces to her, magical palaces, enchanted giants left there till the spell was
broken. As for the food, the incredible variety of fruits and vegetables
delighted her and turned a supermarket into an overflowing oasis. The modern
sounds were a bit harder to accept, especially the blowing of horns and the
white noise a city provided on a regular basis. And she was truly disturbed by
the fact nobody but Methos was able to understand her language, and she couldn't
understand anyone else.
"There is a girl in my tribe, Dorina," she explained, "who cannot hear. Once
she nearly was run over by a mad buffalo, because she could hear neither him nor
us, screaming at her to warn her. But when she sees you and you speak very, very
slowly, and paint images with your hand, she understands a few things. Very few.
I feel a bit like Dorina, now."
"You'll learn to understand them, very quickly," he reassured her and
introduced her to ice cream, which in his opinion ranked very highly on the list
of desirable items the twentieth century had made available to everyone, right
up there with rock' n roll and that invaluable plaything, the walk-man. Watching
Cassandra treasuring the coldness and sweetness in the middle of summer brought
it back to him: the rare times he had been served ice cream in the Renaissance,
because only the nobility could afford it, and being near nobility meant being
in the public eye and prone to get murdered besides. Finding it more common by
the end of the nineteenth century, but still a luxury. And now you could buy it
everywhere, regardless of the season. It almost made you believe in progress.
When they returned to the Loft, it was almost dark again. Entering through the
gym, Methos took some time to return the locks on the front door to some
semblance of working order. He had no scruples about using MacLeod's home, but
he didn't want the Scot to be robbed by the next mugger who tried. Well,
hopefully MacLeod had had the sense to not leave anything too valuable here.
When he had finished and straightened up again, Cassandra kissed him, lightly.
It was a chaste kiss, a mere touching of lips, but under the given
circumstances, it startled him.
"What was that for?" he asked, trying for casualness.
"To find out whether you were my husband," she replied, laughing, "since I did
not want to ask."
"And? Do you think we are married?"
"No. I never kissed you before," she returned, convinced now.
Of course, that was the moment, when he took her hand and guided her inside,
that he felt the immortal signature. And not just anyone's immortal signature.
Ever since Bordeaux, he could discern the Scot from all over immortals.
"What is it?" Cassandra asked. Aragorn had gone still, like an animal
confronting its hunter, knowing it can't run away anymore. When he answered her,
his voice sounded brittle.
"The best laid plans and all. They have a way of catching up with you."
Her slight headache from the morning was returned. She attributed it to the
unpleasant noise that strange thing behind the bars made when it moved. It was
moving now, downwards. At the same time, she heard light footsteps coming down
the stairs. It was one of the many odd things about this house, that it had a
noisy magical instrument to transport you where you could just as easily go on
foot.
The noisy thing arrived first. It opened, and out came two strangers, a tall,
dark-haired man whose skin was closer to her own, tanned colour than to
Aragorn's, and an old man whose legs looked strangely stiff. The tall, dark one
looked at her and Aragorn with a mixture of relief and anger. There was
something about the scene, something about the two of them standing here and
coming out of the moving thing, that tore at her with an elusive familiarity.
Something wrong as well, like those mirrors Aragorn had shown her today, that
reflected you the other way around. But she could not make the connection.
Slightly out of breath, a young woman appeared, running down the stairs. When
she saw Aragorn, she went to him, slapped him and turned on her heels in one
fluid motion, going to the old man who shook his head, while not very
successfully hiding a grin. Aragorn, for his part, did not react at all.
Instead, he kept locking gazes with the dark one, until the other man finally
broke the silence by barking a sentence in the same unfamiliar language everyone
else talked in. By now, she had the distinct feeling her dream was turning into
a nightmare.
More incomprehensible sentences followed, this time obviously directed at her,
since he was now looking at her. She shook her head, telling him she could not
understand, and the half relieved, half betrayed look became puzzled. It did not
stop him from talking, till Aragorn turned to her.
"He wants to know what I did to you," he said resignedly.
"He knows me?"
"Oh yes. You are old friends."
The feeling of wrongness became stronger and stronger. If they were old
friends, and she did not remember, she must be missing out on a much greater
part of her past then she had thought. But first things first. Even if she could
not understand the words, the hostile body language her "old friend" now showed
towards Aragorn was unmistakable. As she would have done with Dorina, she
resorted to gestures, to show him Aragorn had not harmed her. Opening her arms,
pointing, smiling. It did not help. The questions he fired at Aragorn only
became faster, more heated.
"Is he always this furious?"
"I like to think only I have this effect on him. Now, however, you contributed
something as well. We did some things on our journey he strongly disapproves of.
Not to mention the fact that we neglected to tell him a few things, so he feels
betrayed *and* left out."
Understanding dawned. "Oh. You mean we lived together, with him, and then we
left?"
This somehow had the effect of lightening the dark mood Aragorn had fallen into
since the strangers arrived. He laughed, which made the other man look even
angrier. "No, not... not exactly," he gasped, when he could breathe again. All
this circumvention annoyed Cassandra. "So why don't you tell me what *did*
happen?" she demanded, irritated. "You are worse than Mirali when she had to
tell me about monthly bleedings!"
Abruptly, Methos sobered. It was his curse to see the funny aspects of even the
darkest of situations, but now the fun was definitely over. Reality had caught
up with him again. And it was his own fault. There Mac was, ready to protect
Cassandra even though he was angry at her as well, just as he had planned.
Bringing with him the reality of those recent deaths and annihilated memories as
well. Poetic justice, considering how he had cherished the amnesia that held
Cassandra in her grip. "Wait," he said to her, and turned to MacLeod again.
"Look at her," he said as quietly and reasonably as he could. "She truly does
not remember. She is as she was three millennia ago, before we destroyed her
village. She even believes she is mortal. It won't last, of course it won't, but
let her have this gift as long as she can. Don't tell me you wouldn't want a
chance like that."
It was true, Duncan thought, that aura of agelessness and hidden pain around
Cassandra was gone. Next to Methos stood a young woman, a bit angry and
confused, but by no means frightened or resentful. Young, incredibly young, full
of expectations, like the young woman whose existence Joe had only recently told
him about. Innocent like a mortal again.
He looked at Methos, and suddenly understood.
"Methos, you can't do this," he said, not furious but sad, for he could
comprehend the motivation all too well.
"What do you mean?"
"A second chance for Cassandra is not what you really want. You know she would
be incredibly vulnerable like this, prey for the next headhunter. It's a second
chance for you. Meeting her and treating her as you should have done the first
time. Erasing your guilt. But we can't return to the past, Methos, you taught me
that, you know."
The hazel eyes grew cold.
"You are an infant, MacLeod. You have no idea what you are talking about. Do
you think she would thank you for returning her to the way she was, memories all
intact? She was sick of it, Mac, so sick of it she even asked me to kill her. Of
course, that should sound familiar to you, but I wouldn't have thought you'd
want everyone else to share your suicidal inclinations. She is much happier this
way. Let her be."
Of course, the dammed Scot who somehow had managed to install himself as
Methos' conscience couldn't do as he was told. He couldn't even get provoked
enough to turn away in disgust. Instead, he went into full Clan Chief mode,
stern and compassionate at the same time.
"What about Alexa?"
Give the infant credit. That was a low blow, worthy of Methos himself. "What
does Alexa have to do with this?" But he knew.
"Once, when Warren Cochrane had lost *his* memory, you told me it might be a
good thing, to start again like this. Since everyone had things they'd rather
forget. But when I asked you whether you would want this for yourself, you said
no, for who would remember Alexa then? Methos," Duncan came closer, near enough
to see he looked exhausted and couldn't have slept too much in the last days,
either, "Cassandra has more than just pain in her past. There were people she
loved just as much as you loved Alexa, and whom nobody else can remember. You
can't take that away from her."
No, he couldn't, not after taking some of them away the first time around, but
couldn't MacLeod have left him the illusion for a short time longer? That was
the trouble with illusions. They tended to evaporate pretty quickly.
"Let's ask her."
"What?"
"She is an adult, MacLeod. She was an adult when Kronos killed her. She can
make her own decisions, she doesn't need you to make them for her. And before
you ask, I promise to explain it to her so that she can understand it. Assuming
you'll accept my word."
He didn't wait for a reply. Of course MacLeod would accept his word, and the
cursed thing with faith like this was that one felt obliged to honour it.
"Cassandra," he said, gently, since this was probably the last time he could
use this tone with her, "you were ill. You forgot many things. There might be
away to bring your memory back to you, to cure this illness."
She had always been good on intuition, had Cassandra. Now she immediately
discovered what he had left unsaid. Curious and disturbed at the same time, the
stated: "You do not want me to remember."
"That is incidental. Some of the memories will be very painful to you. Others
might be very happy. Unfortunately, I only know about the painful ones, but
then, we have known each other for a very short time, compared with the rest of
your life."
This was stranger than everything else. He had given her the impression that
they were very familiar with each other. In fact, she had known there was
something about him she was supposed to remember before he had spoken his first
word to her. As for the rest of what he had said... To be robbed of your past
was intolerable. And a cure was often connected with pain. She was a healer, she
knew all about this. Yet the patient was grateful, in the end. It was not a hard
decision to make.
"I'm sorry," he said. "It might not even work. And if it doesn't, it will be
the last time I will do this to you, I promise."
Before she could ask what he meant, she felt an incredible pain in her chest.
Disbelieving, she stared at him, at the knife that had just left his hands.
"Why?" she heard herself ask, as the sensation of pain and betrayal tore her
down into a dark, absorbing tunnel, but she never heard his answer.