(The Chaos Chronicles continue)

Ernest Hemingway, In moveable feast. 1964

Thomas Gold Appleton, Oliver Wendell Holmes
the autocrat of the breakfast table, ch. 6, 1858

---

        "You know," Adam Piersen remarked, flipping through a brochure, "In the time when this plane used to fly out of Dallas, they had to sell the plane back to Air France when they reached New York, before the next leg of the trip to Paris. They had to buy and sell between Braniff and Air France four times every trip, and then..."

        "Shut up!" three voices howled in unison, Duncan and Anne, and a passenger behind them who had been trying to sleep his way through his first supersonic flight.

        Adam did petulance better than any other posture, better than any other entity on the planet...or ten miles above, as they were now, speeding towards Europe in the cramped quarters of the SST, where all seats are tourist, or VIP, depending on your perspective. "I am bored," he proclaimed.

        Anne smiled with her mouth closed, always a bad sign. She handed over Adam's newborn baby brother across the narrow aisle, followed by a plastic bottle full of formula. "Here," she said evenly, "Knock yourself out." Then she sidled past the stew up the aisle towards the "facilities," where Sweet Lucille had disappeared...too long ago.

        Adam attempted a lateral pass to Duncan, but the stolid Scot was having none of it. His long frame would no wise fit in the chair, nor his legs fold in any suitable position that would leave his knees away from the seat back ahead of him. "Look, Adam. Like it or no, it is you and me and Sean for the next several decades at least. You're going to have to start pulling your weight in this family and it's your turn with the baby."

        "Well don't count on me to be the 'little woman,' Darling," Adam quipped, trying to adjust his long, lean arms into a suitable cradle for his soundly-sleeping brother.

        "Have no fear of that," Duncan grumbled and shut his eyes, letting his inward sentinel take over the watch. He thought for the first time how much he had liked the idea of having a Shield Brother to share the watch, and how much he missed Ram, now she was dead. Now he had killed her. He peeked sideways at Sean, assured himself the babe was fine in Adam's awkward care and drifted farther away from the sizzling whisper, the peculiar sibilant whine of the SST hull, partly air friction, partly boiling moisture from the heat of a steel bullet going Mach 1.5 through the air.

        Duncan wondered momentarily what could be keeping Sweet Lucille so long. Anne would take care of it. He wondered if his bones were going to still be in working order at the end of this four hour flight, reminded himself to call the hotel when they reached the airport, to call Maurice when they reached the hotel. The barge needed to be motored up into place at Quay de la Tournelle. He would have to call the Port Authority and the Consulate. They'd had a fit about Sean with no visa at the Seacouver airport, no telling the reaction at de Gaulle. Then he wondered if enough of their luggage was going to make it with them...or any of it. What with the delay at Denver, the diversion at la Guardia, the idiot cabbie who couldn't find his elbow in the...well, they'd nearly missed take off at JFK. God knew what had happened to their bags.

        He made another mental note to call the bank at Montparnasse and arrange a transfer from an account in London. After that...

        Even in your sleep, you're a clan Chief, Duncan, my boy. And what a lovely clan it has become, though.

        Sean? Duncan had been so busy of late, he'd neglected his shadowy mentor.

        And how is my godson?

        He is beautiful and healthy and...

        ...and you love him, Duncan. I know. He is quite wonderful.

        He seems to be the only one tolerating this trek. He's been the perfect traveler, no fussing at all.

        And what, pray tell, would little Sean have to fuss about, hanging off Luz's left tit and watching the world go by? Certainly very close to the ultimate metaphor of paradise.

        My son, Duncan wallowed in the delicious idea. Something impossible had come into being. A miracle.

        It will be marvelous to watch him become a man...almost as entertaining as watching Methos trying not to become a mommie.

        ....Oh, it's surely been a laugh a minute, Sean. Duncan stretched his neck, side-to-side. Adam's been a real pain..

        You killed his mother and so did my namesake. How else could the poor lad be?

        He's hardly a "lad," Sean.

        One is always a lad where his mum's concerned. Even when he's five thousand years old. Would you stop fidgeting.

        You can feel that, Sean?

        Sean started humming. Duncan hated it when he hummed. Unlike many Gaelic sons and daughters, Sean was tone deaf...not entirely, just a half-step or so, just enough to be truly grating.

        All right, Duncan said silently. The internal cacophanous strains stopped. I know I promised not to mention your actual presence or absence. It's just...

        "Duncan!" the outside world intruded. Anne leaned on his shoulder again.

        MacLeod sat up, "What?"

        "Lucille's sick," Anne explained. "Change seats with me."

        "But you're the doc, Anne."

        Dr. Lindsey's eyes narrowed in an all-too-familiar expression.

        "All right, all right," Duncan climbed over Adam's boney knees and took one step into the aisle seat next to Luz. "What can I do?" he asked the Titian-haired beauty in the window seat with the ice pack on her pale face...and another, he noted, on her chest.

        "You can not jostle me for one," Luz snarled.

        "What is the matter, Lucille?" Duncan folded as much of his frame away from the woman as was possible.

        Sweet Lucille dragged the pack down from her face and glared at Duncan as if this were all somehow his fault. "Anne says it's milk fever. Very common in new mothers. An infection or some such. It goes all over the blood stream and you get to have fevers and chills and..."

        "I'm so sorry, Luz. What can I do to help?" Duncan was unfamiliar with this malady, but Lucille did look toxic as a poisoned toad.

        "Anne gave me an antibiotic. I won't be nursing for at least seventy-two hours," Luz's voice started to break, "I'm a failure, Duncan," she sobbed. "I always thought I was such a paragon of womanhood."

        Evidently Luz was caught in a storm of unfamiliar hormones and a high fever. Duncan subdued the urge to hold her and tried to let his voice serve instead. "You are the only woman in the world who could be so very ill and still look ravishing doing it, Luz."

        The tiniest smile crept in at the edges of Sweet's luscious, fever-flushed lips. With the skill of a gymnast, Duncan leaned over, missing the more uncomfortable portions of Luz's new anatomy and tenderly touched her heat with his lips, neck and chin and mouth.

        Two more ice packs later, Lucille was sleeping fitfully, and Anne had finally convinced baby Sean that the bottled brew was every bit a decent substitute for the "on-tap" version.

        And Adam hovered over Dr. Lindsey and the baby, worrying about such divers items as when he should be burped and how much he should drink, and what would they do if he choked, and what was this about a "soft spot."

        Duncan was at least grateful the Eldest Immortal had traded in the Concorde brochure for the Doctor Spock.

        Or, you'd be hearing about how the plane is going so fast it actually elongates up to ten inches in full flight, Sean, the former, commented.

        Duncan studied the cabin joins and listened more closely to the various metallic shifts and groans. Oh, like I really needed to know that, Sean.

        Then Sean started humming again.

        Duncan thought it might be "Scotland the Brave," then again, given Doctor Sean's musical impairments,  it could just as well be "O'Reilly's  Reel."

        Supersonic or no, it had all the makings of a long, long flight.

---

        Joe Dawson tried to focus on the meeting, but his mind wouldn't attend. Paris was miserable in the late Fall. He sorted through the papers before him. None of them made sense, so he asked the Russian representative and the Chinese delegation to discuss their current status. He must be standing in for James, but he couldn't remember why. He didn't think James was dead, just temporarily out of commission.

        Ram. The thought bobbed up into his consciousness. Ram must have died at last, or he would never be here in the first place, chairing a national meeting of the Watchers at HQ Central. Which was undoubtedly why his brains were a mush at the moment. His profound grief must be addling his wits...

        "Hey, Joe!"

        A new Watcher, large fellow, probably east coast US, growled disrespectfully.

        "After the meeting," Dawson said in a low tone.

        "Yeah, right," the big man laughed. "You usually have three-day meetings with no rest stops, Buddy?"

        "Please," Dawson said, putting more command into his tones, "We will discuss this after the China delegation finishes its reports."

        "Oh, so it's the China delegation, now, is it? Was that before or after the Mars contingent?"

        "Be still," Joe cautioned, "And I will discuss this with you later."

        "No, Joe," the insolent man argued, "No time like the present. I am not going around the bend with you again...all that 'Immortals from the dawn of time,' shit, or any more of the 'There can be only one,' crapolla, or even a single more time around the 'Beheadings and Quickenings' tree."

        "Now!" the voice boomed out across the meeting hall and a cold splash of water, gallons and gallons, it seemed hit Joe Dawson across the face.

        Meeting adjourned.

        Joe came up in a flurry of fists and spontaneous profanity.

        "Hullo there, Mr. Dawson," the Bear said cheerily.

        Joe tried to reorient, but nothing made any sense. "What is going on?"

        Dr. Palmer leaned forward and put his large hands on Joe's chest. "You have been very ill, Joe. We thought we were going to lose you there for a bit, but I can see we were wrong."

        Different questions burst like fireworks inside Joe's pounding head. "Ram?"

        The Bear squinted, "Who?"

        Dawson shook his head and nearly tipped over sideways. After Mark the Bear had righted him, he asked, "Sean? Ms. Seaton?"

        "Oh, your little lady is hanging in there, Joe. Two more surgeries since you checked out, but came through with flying colors and she goes off dialysis by the end of the week if her labs keep improving. No, she's still out. Listen, friend, you should be careful there. Like I said, you been sick."

        All the while the bear droned on, Joe had been trying to get out of bed. His legs were off and the covers were too heavy, and he'd only managed to work up a sweat. "Sick?"

        "Yeah," Mark looked suddenly uncomfortable. He handed Joe a towel and then strode over to the window where his great bulk nearly blotted out the sun.

        The dark, cool shadow of the doctor, the bear, was a comfort to Joe's poor head. "Well, what happened?" He tried to play back tapes of some meeting in Paris and wondered if he'd spoken aloud in his sleep, whether he had betrayed the Watchers to this man.

        "Joe," began the bear, clearly working up to something unpleasant. He lumbered back to the bed bringing the cool, comforting shadow with him. "You have a lot of pain all the time, don't you?"

        Joe shrugged. "Some."

        "Dr. Baird's a good man, but...sometimes a little near-sighted."

        Joe heard his family doctor's name. He didn't remember telling Mark that name. He shook his head. Where was the bear going?

        "And you're prone to throw back a few in a day...every day," Mark continued.

        "So?" Joe thought this an odd turn in the conversation. Who, after all, had brought the holy Jameson's over that first awful night of the Watch?

        "So? Well, you have been so wrapped up in your lady's sad plight..." Mark's broad chest rose in a deep sigh, "And you've neglected your addictions, buddy. You've just come out of a week's worth of the worst damned DT's I ever saw."

        "What?" Joe couldn't believe it. He was a bartender for God's sake! He knew what a drunkard was and he was no drunkard!

        "Yeah, Joe, you are an addict. No doubt about it. Narcotics and booze. And you had a one in four chance of dying when you started to withdraw. I came back from supper six, no seven, nights ago and you were down on the floor in a full blown seizure. We'd like to never got you stopped long enough to drag you in here and get you set up on monitors and IV's. And..." Mark moved in so his face was close to Joe's, though the emphasis was not needed. "You died, Joe. Technically, anyway. Your heart went into a wild rhythm. I couldn't get it stopped and you arrested." He paused, letting the message sink in.

        Joe looked at the tears filling up in the big bear's very large eyes. He couldn't think of anything to say.

        "After we got you back, you were hallucinating and going on about The Watchers and The Immortals, and then there was a whole interesting story about this Ram--I guess you meant your fiancé--but your were talking about this winged, scaled...I don't know, like a dragon or something."

        So, he had divulged information about the Watchers, but Mark didn't believe him. Good. He was addicted to his pain meds and to alcohol. Not Good. There must be a mistake.

        "I have to see Sean," Joe said suddenly. "Where are my legs?"

        "Sorry, buddy," Mark shook his head. "Orthotics has them. Some of the metalwork is nearly rusted through and none of it is fitted correctly. You go swimming in 'em?"

        Joe remembered the mad row across the bay in the leaky boat. "Sort of," he replied. "Then a chair," he demanded.

        "If you'll promise to behave," Mark cautioned and left the room.

        Joe grabbed the phone, inset in the control panel of the bedrail. "Operator? I need an outside line. Lieutenant Crane, Seacouver PD, District 2."  Damage control was the first order of business.

        Then he'd see to Ram.

        Then he'd get back to this drunkard thing.

 

         Well, Duncan, my boy, have we gotten the children out of Egypt yet? Sean Burns, deceased, spoke silently to the stepson of the Scottish Highlands, now transplanted to the back garden of the Palais Royale. His roots were definitely shocked in the process and he sat in the tiny parlor by the--what else--French doors, sipping an indifferent wine and staring into the darkness.

        Duncan MacLeod was simply too tired to sleep. Coming back to Paris was always a difficult business for him, laden with too many memories, too many losses. Something Tessa had said, a lifetime ago. She had meant it to be encouraging, meant it to buoy him up as he went off to fight, once again. It had done so at the time, but now that Tessa was dead, those same words cursed this city.

        "Remember, Duncan," Tessa had said, the Belgian accent sinking his name to a purr, "Paris is our city."

        And so it was, even now, and he an errant visitor, never to know it's heart again.

        It was at that point in Duncan's dark ruminations that Sean started humming, some awful lament, rendered all the more painful by Dr. Burn's unique tonelessness.

        Jesus, Sean! Duncan was damned if he would be jollied out of his case of the Celtic Black Humours. Do ye not grieve someone, Lad?

        I am dead, Duncan. I can hardly grieve the living, can I?

        Duncan decided not to pursue this any further. It always made him nervous and he had yet to ask the good doctor what it was like to be dead. He was fairly sure he didn't want to know. Yes, we finally got the children out of Egypt, he turned the soundless dialogue back to the original question.

        And the Fair Lucille is...?

        Sick with milk fever. She's sleeping in the bedroom off the main hallway with Dr. Lindsey.

        And the Old Man?

        Upstairs with your godson, Sean. I should think they'll all sleep through tomorrow.

        Rough crossing?

        Duncan sipped at the wine and tried to think what about this particular trip had been so exhausting. A scattered jumble of images, bureaucrats and papers and lost luggage and Lucille's illness and...

        It must have been difficult traveling with a newborn...Sean suggested.

        Duncan started to laugh quietly. No, actually my son was the one bright spot in the trip. He slept and he ate and he never fussed, just watched and snuggled and...

        A darling child, indeed...Sean agreed.

        I was just thinking of the four of us strewn about an office at de Gaulle while some woman in a uniform went on and on about what could we be thinking to bring a newborn on such a rigorous journey when it was clearly Sean who was in fine fettle and the rest of us frazzled wrecks. And for all of her concern, she was none too pleased when I cleared part of her desk to change his diapers. You know, Sean, I do believe if it were only my son and I, we would have made the trip with no trouble whatsoever.

        Ah, but then those are the hazards of la familia dysfunctionale.

        Duncan thought Dr. Burn's french was worse than his humming. And are we so dysfunctional?

        I have yet to meet a functional family in my line of work.

        But you do treat people with problems and you have no family of your own, being Immortal...

        Oh, and have you decided to elect yourself to higher office now you're..."with child?"

        No, Sean, it's just...Duncan thought a moment. Well, yes, yes...I am now officially a Father. Duncan levered himself up and trudged off to the quaint little kitchen to find something to eat and heat up a bottle for Sean the Younger. He browsed through the amply stocked refrigerator, decided on a heel of bread and some juice.

        En petit mal de l'air?  Sean inquired solicitously.

        Sean's atrocious brogish french made Duncan laugh, despite himself. Yeah, too much hanging in the sky for one day. I thought I was never so grateful to see solid land again, if it wasn't Maurice's chubby face waddling 'cross the terminal....or this nice little haven, all stocked with food and clothes and books and right next door to the Palais, across the street from the Louvre...

        Ram, said Sean in a way that made Duncan hurt from deep in his throat all the way up to the top of his scalp. It was less a question or a comment, more of a simple invocation.

        Is that why you cannot sleep? Sean asked. Or is it because you won't lie down in the same bed as Adam Piersen?

        Sean! Duncan thought this live-in psychiatrist was getting to be something of a burden. Actually, Sean, that is exactly it. (Better to take the offensive or they would be all the rest of the night in some Freudian discussion about the artificiality of gender preferences, or worse..)

        Really?

        It seemed he had managed to catch Dr. Burns off guard.

        Yes, Adam is an impossible bed partner.

        Oh, Sean commented with an unconvincing air of unconcern.

        When he falls asleep, he kicks. And he's so long of limb there is no safe haven even on the largest bed.

        And you have made a study of this? Sean asked lightly, almost.

        Wouldn't you like to know? Duncan so rarely had the upper hand with Sean.

        We'll talk about that later, Lad. Which was probably as close to surrender as Dr. Burns was likely to get.  The late Sean Burns decided to change the direction of the inner dialogue, Ram seemed to have planned well. This is a beautiful place.

        Yes, she seems to have thought of everything. Where she got the money...Definitely magic broom.

        What? Sean asked.

        Oh, what Adam says when his mum does something that seems to be impossible.

        Did, said Sean.

What? Duncan asked. Oh, it is so hard to think Ram is gone when she is still so much with us. All the little things...Finishing the bread and the juice he slipped silently up the stairs to see to his son's supper. Not that the infant had awakened, or that he had done any amount of crying...too many people around, tuned in to his grumpy snuffling that signalled his requirement for their attendence. Not three days old and Sean was monarch in his kingdom, sleeping in his beautiful, lace-draped crib by his brother, Adam's, bed.         With hoards of happy serfs, respectfully tugging their forelocks, and dropping to the carpet at a mere sideways glance. Not the least of these the tall Scot who had seen victory in countless bloody battles and now practiced the gentler art of the gracious surrender to this bloodless coup of the heart.

        Sean the Elder was likewise affected, giving forth with all manner of helpful, if obvious, commentary about babies' overly flexible necks and banes against colic and...

        Lord help me, Duncan pushed back in the rocker--which Ram had surely arranged, large and sturdy, just right for Daddy's and rocking--and savored the sublime pleasure of holding a baby, his baby, in his old soldier's arms. It all would have been divine perfection...

        Except for Dr. Burn's sudden impulse to attempt a lullaby.

        That, and the fact that, while the barge was being refitted,  Ram had managed to cram them all into this two bedroom, one bathroom, cottage...as surely as if she were packing the powder in a keg. What was more, Duncan was convinced Ram had meant to do just exactly this.

        But to what purpose?

---

        Joe Dawson sat by Ram's bed, shifting uncomfortably in his new legs. They were Cadillac, top of the line, recoil ankles, pressure sensors...Hell, they could probably walk all by themselves--like Seuss' pale-green-pants--with nobody inside 'em. But Joe was more an old Chevy kind of guy and these new limbs, though measured with non-contact lasers and the latest in the CAD computer arts, still...they were definitely no match made in heaven.

        He probably would have liked them a little better had they not been so exquisitely fitted for him by the pale blond OPT tech down in the lab. The man had taken a notion, as Ma Dawson would have described it, not having been schooled in the particulars of desire's esoterica. The young man was definitely "light in the orthotics," and each session had been a trial for Joe, though nothing actually had happened, nothing overt, just the tension in the air which was thick as cement. He was glad to have graduated over to PT and the very butch lady who ran the Therapy Dungeon, though no one actually had the balls to call it that to her face.

        And things would have gone better all the way 'round with just a bit of the Creature...but none such. Not now. Not ever again.

        Joe gently lifted Ram's right hand from its place on a pillow by her side. He was so constantly in attendance, the Occupational Therapist had taught him how to do Ram's "ranging," moving all the still joints so they would not freeze, so the sinews would not wither and contract. He always began with her right hand, the most recognizable feature which remained...pale, long fingers, like an artist or a healer. With utmost care he began with the thumb, urging it out of its curl, bending and stretching each joint, massaging the spare flesh of the palm, rocking the wrist back against the flexors of her still muscular forearm.

        Now five weeks into Ram's perpetual night, forty days upon the bleakest plane, with one brief diversion down a dark road of his own, and Joe was so accustomed to this place that he no longer smelled the peculiar antiseptic air, no longer felt the musty, grey aura of the nearly dead, no longer heard the pages and the bells, the screeching alarms of all the many summons and machines. The click, swoosh, gulp of the respirator was moved out ten days ago for good. The grotesque metal halo was gone from her crushed skull. The hair grew back in dark fuzz and hid the tracks of the thick, red scars where they had invaded the caved fortress of her brains. The elaborate harness and traction for her sundered left shoulder and arm was retired in favor of a lighter half-cast, brace, and a spider work of metal fingers and elastic slings to keep her left hand in position while it healed.They were still working around the awkward external fixation framework on her shattered left leg.

        Of all the things which lay there to disturb him, Joe found himself fussing silently over the job they had done on her face. He started again with the thumb, folding over and then back, rubbing the base. He was astonished when the Plastics team had come in to remove the final sutures from the halo bolt holes and pronounced their job finished and excellently so, if they did say...

        That was yesterday, or maybe it was the day before. Joe had wanted to yell at them, but he refrained. Well, Dr. Mark, the Bear, had refrained him by waltzing him right out the door.

        "But she doesn't look anything like that!" he had protested

        The Bear had only shrugged his very broad shoulders. He hadn't known Ram before. "She looks good to me, buddy," was all he said in reply.

        Back to the wrist. Damn, it was getting tighter than ever. Joe could only think Ram must have continued to practice with that ten pound sword, the forearm muscles were so hard and unrelenting, drawing her hand into a palsied claw. They'd have to start using a brace soon at this rate. Then again, with her left leg shattered and the left shoulder gone...this stubborn right limb might have been the only way she'd managed to get clear of the wreck before it exploded. He changed tactics and started kneading out the knots in the forearm, all the while staring at Ram's new face.

        He couldn't think why it so distressed him. God knew it was an improvement over the smashed and battered, swollen and bruised visage of the wreck. And both her eyes had survived the damage...as nearly as they could tell with her still unconscious. The nose, the hawkish, raptor's proud beak had been crushed completely. They had taken a rib fragment from the damaged left chest wall and placed it, curve up, to give the rotated forehead flap a framework for the alar plates. It was a believable nose, just not Ram's nose.

        God damn it! Joe looked again. That was the disturbing quality about her face...if they had taken MacLeod's nose and replaced Adam's with it...the result would not be dissimilar.

        Now, Joe thought, we will really have something to laugh about when you wake up. When you wake. Now would be good. Now.

        The forearm relaxed and the hand finally came out of its curl.

        "You know," he began, still feeling foolish about talking to a person who was dead asleep, but they had told him that was desirable, any and all stimuli might help...or not. "I did finally go to an AA meeting last night..." Joe rolled the sheets off Ram's right leg and lifted it carefully free, bending the knee over his left hand. Moving his right hand under the ankle, he began stretching the hip. "I stood up and started into the 'Hi, my name is Joe' and they said the 'Hi, Joe,' part...but when I started to say, 'I am an alcoholic,' the whole thing just...you would appreciate this, Ram...it just struck me as so funny I couldn't stop laughing. The lady who runs the group threw me out of the meeting. I don't think they're gonna let me go again. Hey, no loss."

        He ranged the hip through lateral circles, thinking how he now knew her body better than a lover, had seen every bit of her naked and then some. He wondered how hospitals did that. How they took every bit of the passion right out of you. Joe thought back about the night she'd come to the bar to "put the moves on him," as Adam had suggested later. That white sweater with the buttons down the front and cobalt blue jeans, tight as a deacon, also with a line of very inviting buttons. And all of that with clearly nothing underneath except her very good will.

        Joe remembered how enticing she had been, though not aggressively so, how he just knew he had only to reach out and the buttons and Ram would be his without even asking. He had often fantasized a different ending to that night.

        But as things turned out, this was the ending to that night. He finished with extensions to the knee and moved to her foot, working his thumbs into her sole.

        "Mr. Dawson?" a somewhat imperious tone rang from the door. "They said I would find you here." This last was said in the pure "Now you're going to get it" tones of a mother.

        "Mrs.--" Dawson pulled the sheet back over Ram's leg and, retrieving a cane, he went to acknowledge the lady from the AA meeting whose name he could not remember.

        "Manning," she supplied, coming full into the room. "You work here, Mr. Dawson?"

        Joe could see her mentally figuring out how she could report him to his boss, being an uppity alcoholic and all, and not fit for patient care.

        "No," Joe said evenly, "This is my wife," he indicated Ram, still as death on the wide, white bed, two IV's, the gastrostomy tube, the EKG monitor, and a couple of tubes leading out, a drain from the abdominal surgery, and the foley. Not as impressive as a few weeks ago, but still enough to set Ms. Manning back on her heels. And, of course, Ram wasn't his wife yet, but she would be, if she would only wake up...

        ...but maybe not just now. He needed to get this all-too-sober psychology-soc worker person off his damn back.

        "Oh, dear," said the chastened Ms. Manning. "Oh, I had no idea...Oh." She was nearly in tears.

        Joe was not however due to give her any mercy. He moved his cane forward, just into her line of vision.

        "Oh," poor Ms. Manning gulped, hook, line, and..."Was your leg hurt in the accident also?"

        Joe had to turn his face away to hide the very wicked grin that had suddenly twisted his mouth. Breathing deeply, he turned back towards the hapless woman, and said in his best version of wounded dignity, "You cannot hurt 'em, if you don't have 'em, lady."

        The Manning person's mouth slacked open, the lower lip pouted forward, and she ran, sobbing, from the room.

        "And let that be the last of your candy ass we see around these parts," he grinned. Don't mess with me, people, he thought defiantly, I been to the wars.

        And he didn't just mean Vietnam.

---

        "Okay, now," Doctor Mark Palmer blew into the room like a the big bear that he was, in this case like an ursine avenger come up out of a too long winter's hibernation. "What's going on here? First Chuck from Orthotics is up in my office going on about some affront or another, and now the Chief of Psych has his knickers in a twist about some hoohaw you pulled at the hospital AA meeting last night. What gives, buddy?"

        Joe was sound asleep, sitting by Ram's bed, his head bent over on the pillow which cushioned her right hand. The warm afternoon sun coming through the window had lulled him into a nap. He replied with a jerk upright and an, "Mmmph, s'matta?" or something to that effect.

        The Bear didn't apologize for his rude entrance, but he did go about a rather arbitrary patient assessment, while he gave Joe time to wake. Ram's vitals were doing well, her lab looked good except for the mild hypoproteinemia which reflected their inability to feed anything in higher concentration without risking a roaring diarrhea. She was just slightly malnourished and they'd been careful about vitamins and trace elements. Last EEG was a week ago, the one due today had been bumped to later in the evening...some child with encephalitis and status epilepticus got priority.

        Hell, everyone got priority to the veggies, except this very special produce...partly his fault, Mark admitted silently. Please wake up, Ram. In some fashion or another...some song on the late night movie, yeah, wrapped in ermine or mink or saran, anyway that you can.

        Come back.

        "So what exactly brings you to darken our door, Doctor?" Joe rubbed his eyes and stretched his shoulders.

        "You have got to take some deep breaths, instead of spouting off all the time, Joe," Mark began, "I know it's been a rough go with the ethanol withdrawal and the step down in pain meds..."

        "As in none," Joe corrected him.

        "Well there is the Tylenol and Motrin and..."

        "They don't count."

        The Bear's mood softened. He wrapped a paw around Joe's shoulders. "I'm sorry, Joe, but neither your heart nor mine could go through that again. Is there a lot of pain?"

        "Yeah, well, suppose I just kick you in the ass once a day, and we'll call it even."

        "I see," the Bear thought a moment, reached in the pocket of his tent-sized white coat. "Here," he offered Joe a familiar white tablet.

        Joe took it and put it in his mouth without thinking. Then with all the will that was in him, he spit it back out again. "You son of a bitch! You reprehensible, lumbering, oafish bear of a..."

        "Sorry," this time the Bear apologized profusely. "We all took a vote and I lost. They told me if I didn't get you back on something...and soon...there would be all hell to pay."

        "They who?"

        "You've been pretty hard on the staff since you sobered up."

        "Oh?" Joe smiled.

        "Yeah, you've just beat me out as the most obnoxious anal orifice of 'Couver General."

        "Oooh."

        "And I want you to know I've held the title now about ten years running, buddy," the Bear pulled up a chair and sat down beside Joe. He pulled a letter out of another pocket.

        "I'll try to behave myself and you keep your pills to yourself. Deal?" Joe held out his hand.

        "Deal," the Bear's paw swallowed up the bartender's hand. "Joe, since we're on civil terms, I believe this is the time we should cut the shit and get a few other things settled."

        Joe got up and went over to the coffee maker, beginning a new pot. "What things?"

        "Like, well, okay like when are you planning on telling your friends that Ram is still alive?"

        "Oh," said Joe, "those things."

        "The reason I ask is," the Bear waved the letter, "Anne is coming home the beginning of next week with her mother and Mary and Sweet Lucille."

        The Bear had sent Mary with her grandmother over to Paris to stay with Dr. Lindsey the second week after Ram's "death."

        Mark continued, "I can't keep this secret from Anne after that. She's going to give me hell that I did so in the first place."

        "It isn't a lie," Joe had obviously thought a great deal about just this problem, "Ram did die on that highway five weeks ago and when this person wakes up, she won't be Ram...if she wakes at all."

        The Bear just stared.

        "I have been listening. I have seen the scans. I do know part of her brain...no, that substantial
parts of her brain are gone. Ram is gone," Joe punched the button on the coffee maker and returned to his chair.

        "But if you know that, if you really believe that, Joe, then how can you go on with this vigil?"

        Joe breathed in very slowly so he could be a little more sure of his voice when he said, "This is the person that Ram has left behind for me. Not unlike she has left Sean behind. This is a child of what she was and may be very like her, or only so in tiny flashes, or never like her again. If not her, then hers..."

        "...and mine," he added.

        The Bear was very quiet for a while. "You never cease to amaze, buddy. I am impressed," he paused, "Something I have got to tell you," he sighed, "Let me start with the letter and I'll get back to the other in a minute."

        It turned out the letter was all about their first night in Paris and Sweet Lucille and how she single-handedly stormed the Louvre in her nightgown in the middle of the night, mad with fever...

        ...and something more.

       Sometime after Sean's supper, Duncan wandered downstairs and for no reason he could later recall, he peeked in on Anne and Lucille. Then a quick check down the hall, no, the bathroom was dark, empty...then a hurried tour of the cottage and Duncan set up an alarm, waking the house.

        Sweet Lucille was nowhere to be found. Not in the tiny garden beyond the glass doors, not any place in or about the house. He sent Adam and Anne east and north towards the Palais Royale and hied himself across the lane, south towards the Tuileries gardens, thinking he would canvass that area and then turn back north and trace the streets towards the Opera. Where in hell had she gone. Nothing was missing. She must be wandering the streets in the Renaissance style white dressing gown which Ram had left in the downstairs bedroom, or rather had arranged to be delivered to Maurice to place there.

        It was the fever. She must have awakened when he was up with Sean and he had been too preoccupied to hear her leave. Poor Luz.

        The night was still young enough that the gardens were clogged with tourists and natives, out for a stroll or a gawk. He settled into the old skills and let his inner sentinel read the crowd, looking for the sort of disturbance in pattern that might mark the passing of a mad woman in a white gown. He found none. A little more ordinary reconnaissance, as in asking this or that person and then the gendarme at the eastern edge of the grounds netted him a story about the Titian-haired wraith, asking "Ooo aye La Louvra?" who had passed them a quarter of an hour earlier, headed for the open arms of the old fortress.
 

         In the depth of a fever-dream, Sweet Lucille found herself transported backwards along the drift of time to the moment when Ram had said goodby to her. The night she had gone off to seduce Papa Bear Dawson and ended up instead at Duncan's loft and...the rest was baby Sean and Ram a corpse in the 'Couver General basement.

        But that last night, Luz had asked the strange mother of Adam Piersen to stand by the window in the sunset so she would have an image to remember Ram by. And Ram had given Lucille that image, but she could no wise remember it. In her dream, Lucille saw Ram looking out the window and then the sun's dying rays bathing her hair and her body in liquid fire and then Ram started to turn around slowly, and then...

        Sweet Lucille woke up in a chill sweat...

        It was here, close by, standing silently in the great castle across the way. The key was here in Paris. She would remember if only she could see...

        For Ram, now cold and dead, for her own sanity, she would know. She would make herself remember the terrible truth of that moment. And that was the most she remembered: that it had indeed been terrible, had made her draw away from the woman ever after. Lucille remembered she had called Ram a monster. What had she seen? What had Ram done to her in that last moment before she started to die?

        Lucille moved silently away from Dr. Anne and slipped out of the bed. It was out there in the night. She must find it. Oh, Ramikins, she thought, wait for me. The cold air brushed her pale cheeks with a bright flush and curled the sweat-soaked tendrils wildly about her temples and down the long, slender slope of her neck. The long gown billowed behind Luz as her bare feet carried her down the narrow lane and across the main road to the gardens. People everywhere, the bright lights confused her. She tried to ask her way, but they drew back, afraid.

        As I did, that sunset moment, Luz thought.

        Finally a policeman tried to stop her and Lucille summoned up her dim memory of French to ask for directions, then she kissed him full on the mouth and in the ensuing hesitation, she dashed off towards the brightly lit palace and the answer to Chaos.

Duncan went into the Louvre from below ground, through the Entresol level and up two floors to enter in the middle of the south, the Denon, wing where the Egyptian collection resided. He slowly made his way east down the main corridor, checking each room as he went. The last time he'd been here, post-Napoleon-- just--most of the first Egyptian collection had still been in boxes, and Napoleon had suggested building a pyramid in the very spot where the glass one now resided. It felt very strange to be walking around a building twice as old as he was, with objects old as Ram, and just, sadly, as dead. Here was the King, Set, with the familiar cartouche Adam carried. Duncan wondered if this might indeed be a depiction of their dearly departed. The profile was certainly familiar.       And in the far room, the Tanis Sphinx, possibly older than Adam. He must remember to ask the Old Man about that sometime, maybe bring him here and get the real story, though he had to admit Professor Piersen was usually too reticent to be a helpful historian.

        And all the while Duncan made his way towards the Sully, the throat of the fort, he imagined bringing his son here and telling him about the fire that destroyed the Tuileries Palace and what it was like to live in a time when men like Napoleon and Wellington walked the earth, and how the Duke himself came into the Louvre to retrieve one of the paintings Napoleon had stolen from him.

---

        As Duncan strode above in the second floor sand dunes, Sweet Lucille made her way along the first floor Renaissance rooms. The Highlander made his way like a warrior out of legend, a conqueror, while dear Luz scurried forward, shadow-to-shadow, a madwoman in a white gown, like a vixen fox, far from home struggling to go to ground.

        And everywhere, painted mirrors cast back her image, the Titians and the Renoirs and the Boticellis, mocking her or calling her back to them. Indeed, many of the Louvre's clientele viewed her as some avant-garde living art piece, she seemed to have simply stepped down from one of the paintings, fever-flushed against the pale marble of her skin, perfect in scale and scope, bearing an intensity of soul which would put an Immortal aura to shame.

        Lucille was driven by her memory of that sundowning vision, more than a year past when she had seen...what? She could remember her intense anger, her outrage at what at the time had seemed a violation of all reason, a personal assault of the spirit. Ram had picked her up from her collapse on the carpet, had carried her into the bedroom...well, Luz could almost remember that, but there was some irrefutable sense of loathing at that inhuman touch...

        Light though it was...

        Tender beyond measure...

        And you said, Luz thought back, speaking to the dead ears of her lost friend. You said there would be a moment when I had only this to remember you by and that you would give me a key to remember. Paris, you said, first  floor, in the Louvre, at the head of...

        But Lucille had interrupted Ram at that point. had sworn on all that was holy, that was sane...

        ...had sworn there never would be such a time, never a moment when such monstrosity encroached upon the list of her desires.

        Where, thought Lucille, slipping into yet another gallery of familiar faces, where are you? Please, help me, Ram. I was so wrong, so utterly wrong to have hurt you, to deny what you were.

        I was too afraid. Be not afraid, you said, Ram, but I could not stand it anyway.

        Where are you? Where is it? Surely here. Somewhere. Where?

        Sweet Lucille's frantic searching carried her farther and farther down the south wing, looking for the key Ram had left her. Her illness and despair were warring within to see which would undo her first, which would take her down with the exhaustion which threatened ever nearer. She was nearly up to the Sully and still the thing could not be found.

        Left and right, and she heard the heavy, measured tread of the Louvre protectors, finally roused out of their fascination and coming after to drive her from this place, this moment.

        I have failed you, Lucille thought. I cannot do this. I cannot find you. With the last of her strength, Lucille ran out this last room and collapsed at the foot of an endless marble stair, all billowing gown and red tendrils of mane overlying the silent sobbing shoulders.

        "Lucille!" a warm voice called from the head of the Darus Stair and the Highlander rushed down the marble steps.

        Lucille heard her name and looked up, but she never saw Duncan MacLeod tearing down the marble case, five steps at a time, never heard the guards rush in behind her.

        She saw instead that moment in her high vaulted home when Ram had turned from the window and in the dying light of day had shown Lucille a truth, most wonderful...

        Most terrible...

        Above her, at the very top of the stair, rose the key to that memory, as Ram had promised...

        in all its glory and wonder, in all its impossible beauty...

        angel and Nike, human and eagle,

        The Winged Victory of Samothrace.

        "So what happened then?" Joe asked the Bear.

        "Duncan carried Luz from the Louvre and everyone acted as if he were stealing an art treasure, or so Anne says. Lucille recovered over the next few days and life returned to whatever is normal in Paris this time of the year." This last, Dr. Palmer said in his lowest bear tones.

        Joe looked up from his task massaging Ram's stiff hand. "Meaning?"

        "Let me tell you what I came to say first," said the Bear, more or less ignoring the question.

        "Okay," Joe turned his attention back to his comatose fiancé. "What do you think Sweet Lucille saw?"

        "I don't know," Dr. Palmer started slowly, "I am wondering that myself. Let me start at the beginning, Joe."

        "I'm listening."

        "Well, I guess it's cause you and Ram are my only patients since the hospital took me off my regular practice to run interference so you won't sue our asses off..."

        "Yesss," Joe tried to sound sinister. Damn, Ram's hand was turning into a tight claw. He began again on the rigid forearm.

        "Anyway...I got to looking more closely at your little lady's injuries. There were so many older scars and wounds that could not have been part of the accident. And then there was the finding on the pelvic that I still can't explain to this day...and well, there was also the matter of the pigment they found beneath the skin when they were doing the open reduction on her left wrist injury..."

        Joe only half heard the stalling, rambling discourse.

        "I have seen the same tattoo on your wrist and Lucille's and that Lieutenant, Crane. I guess it didn't surprise me that a similar tattoo had been removed from Ram's wrist. So I got Greg up from forensics to go over Ram and tell me I wasn't nuts...he confirmed what I had found, but I didn't like his conclusions, or my own for that matter."

        "Being?"

        "What?" the Bear got up and lumbered over to the window.

        "Conclusions. You said you came to some conclusions," Joe prompted.

        "Well, Buddy," Dr. Palmer put his large paws in his white pockets, "Your lady gave birth to a baby, not yours. She's got marks all over her that indicate she's been battered, tortured, in fact. There's an indication she and you belong to a cult. You are a good man, Joe, but alcoholics have blackouts and rages. I thought you might have been..."

        "Never!" Joe roared. "I have not so much as touched her!" At least, he thought, until she was unconscious.

        "Well, and that's even more curious...She IS your fiancé after all...Or is she, Joe?"

        She was now, Joe thought silently. "The baby is Duncan MacLeod's," he said quietly.

        "Curiouser and curiouser," said Palmer. "Given that MacLeod, being Immortal, isn't supposed to be able to have children."

        Joe's breath stopped. He played over what the Bear had said. There was no mistake. Damn!

        "It's okay, Joe," Palmer pushed back his left sleeve and flashed a new Watcher's tattoo. "I had a rather lengthy discussion with Lt. Crane and he signed me up. I must say I have not done so much studying since med school, but I think I'm up to speed on your friend, Duncan, and his ilk."

        "Greg did some studies too, on Ram here, and determined all the ancillary injuries were self- inflicted...course that raises all kinds of other questions, but the battering is ruled out."

        "You are too kind, Watcher Bear," Joe snorted.

        "Yeah, I deserved that...but I did have your lady's best interests at heart," Palmer ducked his head. "So maybe you can tell me, Joe? Why, or rather how, is she still a virgin?"

        "What?"

        "Brother, you DO have an unusual relationship."

        Joe bristled. "I don't see how that's any of your..."

        "I'm her doctor, damn it!"

        "For all the good it's done her!" Joe's smoky voice grew tight with rage.

        "Maybe we can talk about this later, Joe. But I have got to ask you, what the hell is she--excuse my french--that she can carry an Immortal's child and without penetration, evidently? Did he, like Archangel Gabriel, whisper in her ear? Are we talking Second Coming, Buddy?"

        "Oh, of course not!" Joe jerked around to see if the Bear were joking. He was not. The large, ursine frame was shaking. "No," Joe said more gently. "She is the race which bred the halflings we call Immortals. Though she had the same regenerative powers initially, Ram has, through a series of circumstances been rendered Mortal. More than," he added sadly.

        "It was so clear to me that you loved her, I just couldn't see you letting MacLeod..."

        "Any more than I can see you letting MacLeod..." Joe returned.

        The Bear drew up to his full height. "What do you mean?"

        "Well," Joe sighed, "I may be a drunkard and a cuckold, but I am not blind, and I am not stupid. Mary is your daughter."

        The Bear's grin was more teeth and less cheer, "Yeah," he said. "Anne is going to tell me that one of these days. She still thinks I don't know." Dr. Palmer walked around the bed and headed for the door. He paused, "You want to leave off the Physical Therapy there and go get a real cup of coffee, brother to brother?" He acknowledge their mutual membership in the society of difficult affairs.

        "Sure," Joe lifted his hand away from Ram's stiffening fingers, or he tried to.

        "Well, come on then," Dr. Palmer held the door.

        "I seem to be stuck," Joe replied. He looked up at the Bear. The door swung shut suddenly. The Bears great maw dropped open. "What is it?" Joe asked.

        Dr. Palmer shook his head, staring with enormous, shiny eyes.

        "You could help me," Joe grumbled and he bent back to disengaging Ram's fingers.

        Then he felt her eyes on him.

        Joe could not have been more stunned had he fallen at the feet of the Darus Stair. That thing for which he had prayed and waited these forty days and forty nights, now come to pass, frightened him out his breath, his pulse, his sense.

        The round, grey-green eyes blinked in the light they had not seen through the long vigil. Joe turned to close the shades, but she would not loose his hand. "Ram," he started softly, "let me go and I can make the room darker, so your eyes won't hurt."

        Her expression was of a child waking in a strange room, frightened beyond belief, beyond even the more ordinary terrors of night's mare. In the spare frame of her lean palor and against the small, upturned nose, the fear-dilated orbs were enormous, unreal. Her open stare revealed not even the slightest understanding of Joe's words, not even a reaction to the speaking of her name.

        "Ram?" Joe said a little more loudly, but he elicited no sign of recognition. "Oh, God, Mark. She's deaf!"

        The Bear brought his great paws together, Smack!

        Ram dove into Joe's chest and huddled against him, shaking. Joe was relieved. "Ram," he said again, folding her in his arms. What would it be like, he wondered, waking from coma?

        Palmer came back towards the bed and Ram sank down until she was just peeking over the rim of Joe's strong arms. "Call her something else. Sean?" he suggested.

        Ram pushed the back of her head against Joe's heart. Well, at least she trusts me, Joe thought. Though he seriously doubted she still knew him. What was he going to do now--call her "Satan" in front of God and the Bear and all? What were the Egyptian god names? Ah, yes Setan'm...

        Joe stroked her fuzzy skull tenderly, "Set?"

        Ram turned around and looked up at him with a smile. "Set," she repeated in a dry rasp. "Set, Set," she nodded enthusiastically.

        The Bear went to get her a glass of water.

        Ram lifted her right hand up, the long fingers curled gracefully, and brushed Joe's lower lip with the back of her first and second knuckles. Back and forth, light as moth wings, sensuous and slow. It gave Joe the shivers. Then she smiled and the life came back into her face and the haunted look retreated. "Set?" she asked.

        "Here," said the Bear, handing Joe the glass.

        Joe lifted it to Ram's, Set's, lips and she sipped cautiously. Drawing back from the glass, she asked again, "Set?"

        "I don't understand," Joe shook his head and smiled back.

        "She wants to know your name," Mark suggested.

        Joe took her hand and brushed her lip with her knuckles. "Set," he said. Then he put her hand back up to his mouth and said, "Joe."

        Set tipped her head and stared. "Joe," she tried the sound. The water had much improved the quality of her voice. "Joe, Joe," she said again and nodded.

        The Bear leaned in and reached for her hand to add his own name. Set came over the top of Joe's embracing arms like a striking cobra. Craack!

        Palmer reeled backwards, his paw over his mouth, sawing his jaw side-to-side, obviously surprised she hadn't broken it. He staggered over to the sink and started rinsing the blood out of his mouth.

        "Damn, Buddy," the Bear said finally. "You gotta give me the secret to your physical therapy techniques. Your lady hits like a Missouri mule. She okay?" he added as an afterthought.

        "Leave," was all Joe said to him, but it carried the weight of a judgment or malediction.

        Dr. Palmer followed the line of Joe's sight to his own wrist where he had smudged the ball point of the false tattoo. "I just had to know," he started to explain, but the twin glares of malice drove him from the room.

        When the Bear was gone, Set reached up again and grazed Joe's lower lip with her knuckles. When he did not respond, she grabbed his beard and pulled him down to her, mouth-to-mouth, replacing her knuckles with her soft upper lip.

        Joe was mesmerized. He tried to remember what the Neurosurgeon had explained about the thalamic injuries and sexual disinhibitions, but he couldn't concentrate with the heat of her breath tracing his teeth.

        Before he could find his way back to reason, Set awakened him with a kiss.

Duncan hesitated across the street from the old chapel nestled in the urban park off the hub of the Arc de Triomphe. St. Joseph's never seemed to change outwardly. He could not remember the place looking anything but old.         Except that it now seemed empty, or at least bereft. Now the dark doorway with the enormous carved doors framed only absence and loss where they had once held the ever-welcoming visage of a dear friend and mentor. Brother Darius had been the best--and the worst--of the Immortals, a Goth general in the centuries before MacLeod's birth who had turned his life to contemplation of the greater order...Peace.

        He had been slaughtered in this old church, his sanctuary had been trespassed and Darius had not even been afforded the honor of a soldier's death. Cut down by rabid mortals, murdered with a brutality unworthy of the gentle man's long life.

        Duncan started across the roadway, approaching the sadness as if it were an advancing army, but he stopped shy of the doors and just let his grief wash over him like a tide, surrendering to the wave of memories.

        "Are you all right, Duncan?" a too familiar voice staggered him backward.  He looked up to see a young monk.

        "What did you say?" MacLeod asked.

        "You are Duncan MacLeod," the monk said. "You came here many afternoons to play chess with Darius. Perhaps you have forgotten? Brother John," his hand appeared, like a magician's trick out of the loose sleeves of his brown robes.

        "Oh, yes," Duncan acknowledged.

        "Please, enter God's house," Brother John held the door back and followed MacLeod into the chapel. "The eastern transept," the monk whispered and pointed rightwards towards a tiny alcove, hardly a transept, off the edge of the nave.

       MacLeod fixed his eye on that point, and was able to traverse the dark grey stones that had taken the last of his friend's life and blood.

        "I feel him here all the time," said the young man, quietly as they entered the sunlit baptismal. "As if he never left. Sometimes it is comforting," his voice drifted off to silence and dust motes, drifting like fireflies in the afternoon light.

        "I have come..." Duncan began.

        "I know," Brother John bowed his head in a perfect arc of graciousness and piety. "Sean's christening. We are expecting you in the morning, after mass, if you wish to forego the services...With such a tiny infant..." the monk's shoulders lifted.

        "How?" Duncan asked.

        "Mrs. Seaton arranged it. You know Mrs. Seaton?"

        Duncan opened his mouth to reply, but he thought better of it and just nodded.

        "You wished to change the arrangements?" the monk asked.

        Duncan shook his head. He was feeling too small and too fragile to trust he could keep his anger in check.

        "Oh, I forgot," Brother John said suddenly, "Wait here, please."

        Duncan studied the martyrs' portraits in the small altar.

        Well, Duncan, so here it is...

        Here what is, Sean?

        The center of the universe, my boy.

        Sometimes the psychiatric obscurity rendered Dr. Burns somewhat less than charming. Could you just speak English, Sean?

        Goodbye, then.

        Duncan felt the bottom of his stomach drop, pulling his heart down with it. What?

        Well, not till the morning, Duncan. We still have this night and that get-together on the barge.

        Then you will go, Sean? Much as he hated to ask, Duncan couldn't help adding, Where?

        Back around the Great Circle, Lad.

        Sean, Duncan whined silently.

        Well, I am not supposed to tell you this, but it isn't like Ram's going to be coming back and cracking me over the head for the transgression. The next time we speak, I'll probably be calling you Da and drooling down my front.

        Sean!

        "Mr. MacLeod?" the little monk tugged at his sweater sleeve.

        "Yes?" Duncan turned and Brother John placed a small, flat box in his hand. "This is...?"

        "Mrs. Seaton had a christening gown made in Brussels. It's the most beautiful lace. And..." he reached into his sleeve and brought forth a letter, "She sent this two months ago," Brother John tucked his head, "She said we might see the gown, but the letter has remained sealed."

        "Thank you," Duncan took the letter. "How do you know Ra--Mrs. Seaton?"

        "Oh, she is something of a legend to us, Mr. MacLeod. She's the only chess partner Brother Darius could never beat."

        Duncan cleared his throat and placed his broad palm on the monk's shoulder. "And I am sure she is likewise trouncing him even as we speak."

        Brother John's brows canted quizzically and then he understood. "...in God's Arms," he intoned the blessing. "I will say mass for her in the morning before the christening."

        "Thank you, Brother," Duncan needed to leave. He'd had all he could take of this sad church. He left a suitable offering with the good brother and took himself out into the sunny afternoon and the many raucous sounds of a Parisian Saturday.

        Read the note, Duncan.

        Grumbling, MacLeod tore into the envelope, read the single line, and then sauntered off west towards the Market, laughing like a madman.

        He stopped suddenly and brought the flat of his hand down sharply on the top of his head.

        Ouch, said Sean. You didn't have to take it literally!

---

        The Bear stood guard at Set's door, his broad shoulders canted back against the pale green wall, his large arms crossed over the great barrel of his chest. "Hello, Fil," he acknowledged the diminutive Castilian Neurosurgeon.

        "Hello, Mark," the impeccable little man answered the frowzy bear. "Just checking in on Mrs. Seaton...weekly assessment. Any changes?"

        The Bear's forefangs gleamed. "Not that I've noticed."

        Felipe sighed. "Ah, well, what could we expect, after all?" He put his bronze manicured hand on the door handle.

        Dr. Palmer shook his head and pursed his snout. "Wouldn't go in there 'til Dawson gets back," he warned. "Shouldn't be too long...half hour at the most," he added.

        Dr. Nuñez didn't heed the good bear's warning. He pulled the door open and walked in.

        Bear tucked his head and started counting. One, two, three, four...

        A thick-throated "Boom!" issued forth as the door slapped open, propelled by Fil heading ass-over-teacups towards the opposite hallway wall.

        Nuñez regained his feet, sputtering and fussing, settling his clothes around him. "You said Mr. Dawson would be back in half an hour?" He spoke with a tone that completely belied his ruffled dignity.

        "Oh, probably sooner than that," replied the Bear, good-naturedly.

        After checking up the hall and down the hall, making sure no one else had witnessed, Dr. Nuñez settled back against the wall beside Dr. Palmer. "Remarkable recovery," was all he said.

        "Tell me about it," the Bear turned toward him, lifting his chin, where the entire jawline was beginning to swell and purple.

---

        Grandma Lindsey graciously offered to babysit Sean and Baby Mary at the apartment on the Palais Royal grounds while the rest of the Seacouverians-in-Paris met at the pre-christening celebration on the newly refitted barge. Within earshot of the Latin Quarter, at the Quay de Tournelle, none of the neighbors were going to complain if the party got off to a loud start and escalated from there.

        ...which it did in short order. Sweet Lucille regaled them with tales of yet another grand shopping tour with Anne. Even given the french reputation for stand-offishness when assailed with tourist attempts at their noble tongue, still Lucille's pidgin french was everywhere well-accepted. Of course, Luz was difficult to refuse in any language and after recovering from the fever and her sleep-walking through the Louvre, she had absolutely bloomed into the essence of Renaissance sensuality.

        Anne had not fared so well in the land of the Normans. She was thinner, more strident than usual, and generally on edge about absolutely everything...except in the company of the Lucille, where she regressed to childish giggling and general silliness.

        Adam was his same old--very old--sarcastic self, if one did not count the enchanting baby-talk vocabulary he used with his infant brother when he thought no one was listening.

        MacLeod was in his element, proud patriarch and clan chieftan, floating through the damp, chill days as if they were aberrations of springtime and not premonitions of an early winter.

        They talked about inconsequential things, light conversations without substance, avoiding the sadness which began to descend upon their merriment like the incoming fog. Anne and Lucille, Grandma and Mary would be gone tomorrow, after the christening. Anne had made list after list of things they might need to know about childcare and development. She had daily expressed any number of reservations about the two bachelor Immortals as pertained to their parenting skills.

        "And in month four," she said as they gathered around the new harvest table installed in front of the barge's fireplace. "When you start foods, one food a week, or if he..."

        "If he gets a rash, we won't know which food he's allergic to," Duncan pulled a chair out for Lucille and then went to do the same for Anne, "and stay away from the citrus fruits and strawberries. I know, Anne. I promise to call you if we have any questions..."

        Adam sat himself down in Duncan's chair at the end of the table and started reciting phone numbers, beeper numbers, emergency pager numbers, email addresses...He looked up to see the Highlander standing over him just waiting.

        "Well, it's not like your name's on it," he grumbled and slid into the chair around the corner.

        Duncan settled his elbows on the table and turned slowly to stare at the Eldest Immortal.

        "What now?" Adam asked.

        MacLeod tucked his chin and breathed slowly. "What are we doing here?"

        "Dinner party for Sean's christening. What are you...?"

        Duncan surveyed the place settings up and down the deep wood top. "And what's wrong with this picture?"

        Adam threw his napkin down and pushed back from the table. "Oh, fine...sure I'd love to be the maid, and the cook, AND the butler...too kind of you to ask, Darling!"

        Anne buried her mouth behind her palms, giggling. Lucille offered to help, but Adam would hear nothing of it. When he'd served the table, he reclaimed his place, reached for the salad, and...

        Duncan smiled sweetly and held up his empty wine goblet. Adam's eyes narrowed and the hook of his nose drew down over his scowl.

        "Don't you fret, honey," MacLeod did his astonishingly good imitation of Sweet Lucille. "I'll get the wine."

        "They're gonna kill each other," Lucille said over a bite of brazed brisket. "I give them two weeks, tops."

        Anne choked on her asparagus tips.

        ...and so it went through the entire meal. Duncan finding something missing and Adam up and down, getting this or that, until he ended up eating his dinner standing by the sink and filled with such rage, he could hardly swallow. Duncan proclaimed the feast done and suggested they would have coffee and brandy settled around the window seats in the stern...just as soon as Adam got done with the dishes...

        Adam stacked the dishes up both his long arms and went topside. There was a splash and Adam reappeared at the door. "Done," he said and walked past them to sprawl on the couch. "I'll have that brandy now."

        "Ten days," said Lucille as Duncan went to fetch the brandy.

        "Well, now," Duncan began as soon as they were all settled and brandied. "This is going to sound a bit strange, but I ask you to bear with me. You know that I killed Dr. Sean Burns some time back..."

        Three sets of sleepy eyes came suddenly awake and aimed his direction.

        "Not something I am proud of, but it happened and I cannot change that."

        Adam pulled up to sitting, all his senses testing the tones and the silences, the affect and attitude of the Highlander. This was rough ground for MacLeod and it made the Oldest Immortal ache for him.

        "Sean Burns, by dint of the Quickening and Ram's interventions," he said her name as evenly as the rest of the words...but it had been so pointedly unspoken between the four of them, that it shouted like a clarion. "Sean Burns is still here, inside me."

        Anne Lindsey started an automatic tactical review, an emergency room reflex for the risk of impending patient-out-of-control status.

        Lucille's gold eyes began to melt, liquid in the soft light of the barge "sitting room."

        Duncan hurried on. They would surely think him mad, but he had promised Sean. "Sean Burns tells me this is his last night with me, his last night away from life...Tomorrow, at the Christening, he says he will enter my son and they will pass through their lifetime together..."

        Adam heard the sorry sounds for what they were. Having been unable to come to terms with murdering a friend, Duncan had made this gentle fantasy to ease his heart. He had not so much as mentioned Dr. Burns' name since the incident in the car, coming back from the cabin. Adam wanted to touch the brooding Scot, if only to confirm he was not alone in this.

        "In light of that," Duncan continued on, "Sean says he'd like to hold his last 'T' group and you have all been invited to join in that endeavor."

        MacLeod rose and the three others drew back from him.

        "I would tell you I am not crazy," Duncan sighed and went to turn off the light, sending them all into dark silhouettes and flickering fire shadows. "If I thought it would do any good."

        MacLeod returned to his place at the window seat and folded his hands in his lap, waiting.

        "And you turned off the lights because...?" Adam asked gently, reaching beneath the couch to run his long fingers along the cool steel blade there.

        "So it wouldn't be too disorienting hearing two voices coming out o' the same yap, Lad."

        "Sean!" Adam was almost exuberant. Then he remembered his manners. "Dr. Burns, this is Dr. Lindsey, Anne, and Sweet Lucille." He gestured in the general direction of the two women framed in the lights of the other Seine barges.

        "My pleasure entirely, Ladies," Sean acknowledged them, bowing Duncan's frame. "And you, Old Man, how goes it?"

        "Rather better than a short while ago, Sean."

        "When you thought this brick thick Scot was about to join the rationally impaired?"

        "Exactly, Sean. Why? What is this about?" Adam swore he could almost see Dr. Burns in the shadow at Duncan's place before the window. The gestures, the posture, the phrasings...all so damn familiar it brought a lump to his throat.

        "It is just as Duncan has said, Adam," Sean stretched Duncan's back and flexed his fingers. "Just wanted to practice my trade one last time."

        "You're a psychiatrist, right?" Anne tried not to think how crazy this all was. "We're going to do some sort of group analysis?"

        "No, Dr. Anne. Just a conversation between friends who will soon enough be parted."

        "What have we been doing these five weeks if not that?" Sweet Lucille spoke up.

        Sean laughed, "Well, you have made loving noises at one another...and not so loving noises," clearly this last was not directed at the "Ladies." "...but I fail to hear you speak about the things which hold any profound meaning for you."

        "Which are?" Duncan asked. The entirely different voice coming from the same spot in the darkness was unnerving. They were glad, one and all, he'd turned out the lights.

        "Ram," Sean floated the word out in front of them and let it hang in the night air, the dark cabin.

        "...for one," Sean continued when it became clear no one was going to speak and the resulting silence was too painful. "And returning to the real world, and what you will take away from this place and this time."

        "You know, Sean," Adam shifted on the couch and the springs squeaked, "I had forgotten what jolly fun you could be at a party."

        Sean was having none of Adam's irony. "Ah, Lad, but I do not forget how your fear sometimes makes you too foolish to bear. If you cannot contribute something worthwhile, then at least respect the others."

        Another long silence seeped round them with the night fog and the river chill.

        "You are right, Dr. Burns," Lucille's silken tones floated over the pall. "We have been sheltered here, swaddled like babes, away from all the things which would remind us that Ram is gone. She seems only in another room, sending messages and presents and..."

        Anne covered Lucille's back, "...and we will have a hard time of it, going back to the place where she died...where I, I..."

        "I hope you are happy with yourself, Sadist Burns. Now you've got the gentle women all weeping." Adam stumbled in the dark and brought them both tissues. "Ram knew she was going to die almost from the start...she said as much...and so often we all got tired of hearing it. It is not anyone's fault but her own."

        "If it isn't mine," Duncan's voice was steady and certain.

        "Oh, pullease," Adam nearly whined. "Is that what this is Sean? Oh, dear, and me without a hair shirt to my name."

        "Look," he went on, returning to his former slump on the couch, "Why don't we just all have a good cry about poor old dead Ram and be done with it! She's gone. It can hardly make any difference to her now."

        The harsh edge of his diatribe quieted the group.

        "Bravely said, Lad," Sean said. "But I should think it braver still if any of it were true."

        Adam cleared his throat and spit on the floor. It was a very old symbol, but not lost on the psychiatrist.

        "What are you going to do, now you're an orphan too?" Duncan asked.

        "Oh, get off of me. I didn't agree to play this stupid game," Adam's usually snappy repartee had deteriorated noticeably.

        "I think I am going to take Mary back to the house with my mother and listen to all those stories about the family that I never seem to have time for. Then I am going to go back to work in forensics," Anne said.

        Lucille gasped, "How can you go back to all that death, Anne?"

        "Well, if for no other reason, Luz. They remind me I am alive," Anne swallowed, "...and also...that I won't be alive for long." Anne leaned toward Lucille and wrapped her in a sudden hug.

        "When I get home, I am going to go stand in my solarium and tell Ram goodbye," Lucille's tones were almost light, "Then I am going to have the longest bath in the history of the world."

        "And what is the first thing you will do when you return to the world, Sean," Duncan asked.

        Sean laughed at the breach of convention. "Myself, I am looking forward to that metaphor of paradise we discussed earlier on the plane."

        Duncan explained and they all laughed until they thought they would burst.

        Except for Adam who thought the whole thing entirely in the worst taste and was rude enough to say so, for which he was roundly pelted by all the loose pillows in the place.

        "Well, Adam," Sean said finally when the group had settled a bit, "If you will not talk about your dearly departed Mum, then perhaps some other point of consequence in your life? Fair?"

        "I suppose," Adam agreed grudgingly.

        "Well, then, Lad, share with us one good thing you learned from your time with The Horsemen."

        Duncan gasped at the cruel question. Sean! he admonished silently.

        The two women stared in the dark, understanding the gravity of the question, if not the particulars.

        Adam's glower nearly lit the dark room.

        "Well? Is there nothing of worth you took away from that time, Lad?" Sean was nearly gleeful.

        And why not? thought Duncan, he has the Old Man on the ropes. His aim had struck Adam clear to the marrow.

        "Yes," Adam hissed, "As a matter of fact, I learned something very valuable from that time in my life."

        "You are among friends here, Adam," Sean said encouragingly, "Please, tell us."

        Duncan felt his gut knot.

        Adam sat up very straight and tall. "I learned this: "

        The dramatic pause wrenched them all.

        "First, you pillage, THEN you burn."

        Lucille led them off on another gale of laughter.

        And this time even Adam joined in.

---

        Dr. Mark Palmer watched Joe depart Set's room for his afternoon session at the Physical Therapy Dungeon. He waited until the elevator doors closed and then he snuck into Set's room. He brought all the acuity of his considerable attentions to bear on Dawson's betrothed. Like dancing with a tiger, he thought...an occupation of high delight, if not a little hazard.

        "Set," the great bear of a man stood back from the woman's bed and cautiously waited. Her dark brown hair was a little longer than half an inch, bushed over her pate like a hedgehog, adding to the wildness of her every aspect....not that she was mad, but that she was entirely undomesticated, a primordial version of her former self. Except that when Joe Dawson held her and told her to be still, she was quiet and cooperative. If Joe held her, Mark was convinced they could do major surgery and Set would never move, never make a sound.

        Without Joe in the room...well, you held your life in your hands, that much was certain.

        "Set, we've only one more day. They'll be here tomorrow and everything's got to go right," he could never restrict himself to the meager list of meaningful words which she had acquired in her first week of waking. The Bear knew Set did not understand, but maybe the sound, if not the meaning...

        Daily, he'd forayed into her den while the "trainer" was away to set up his conspiracy. "Set, I need you to..."

        The woman rolled towards him quickly and he jumped back. The Bear's wide features were tracked with bruises and scratches when he'd been too slow, too unable to read her, those first few days.

        Set laughed, her throat still strafed from her long time on the respirator. "...And no more hitting!"

        That was her first name for him, because he had said it so often that first day or two. She said it exactly as he had, same tones and inflections, if a bit higher in pitch. And it meant nothing to her yet. Her eidetic memory, short term, was ironically as intact as ever, and she could hold long conversations already just copying what the people she heard had said. Of course, she didn't understand any of it, but her delivery was flawless, and her replay of personalities on morning rounds was priceless.

        "Bear," she used Dawson's nickname for him.

        And he heard what she was saying. "He," the Bear stroked his chin and then his mouth with his knuckles to make sure she knew who he meant. "Will be back," Mark walked over to the large clock on the wall at the foot of the bed. He pointed at the hour hand, reached in his pocket for a bandaid and taped it at the next hour mark. He pointed at the hand again and then slid around the clock face to the bandaid.

        Set nodded. "...And no more hitting?"

        Why was he here? Well, because he was an old foolish bear, of course, and he was tired of his very empty den, seeing winter was so close and all.

        Mark stayed at the foot of her bed though this was no longer a very safe perimeter now the external left leg brace was off and she could maneuver her very strong right leg like a marshal arts expert. He touched his right index finger to his right temple.

        Set smiled and began the recitation, "Joe, you have long been in my heart, the central unchanging theme, of..."

        She had it down cold, as she had the previous two days since he taught it to her. Okay, Mark thought, so it wasn't Byron, or Shelly, or Keats...an old bear can be forgiven a romantic notion or two.

        A small toe contacted his thigh, perilously close to ye olde gene factory. The Bear jerked out of his reverie to see Set smiling again. She was walking her foot around to his pocket where...

        "Oh, Set," Mark reached in his pocket for her reward, the magic item which had cemented, if not friendship, then at least an understanding, between them. "Here," he said apologizing for his slowness. He reached in his pocket and retrieved the gold-wrapped, chocolate covered cherry bon bon...her medium of exchange. "It was perfect," he threw the bon bon and Set snatched it out of the air with her right hand as if she were a game hawk on a dive, accurate as death.

        Instead of tearing the wrapper off with her teeth, today she steadied it in the mangled left hand. Good, he thought, good sign...she is not content to remain as she is even if it works for her. He knew Set's will and fire would get her the optimum recovery from this devastation. Whatever endpoint that was remained to be seen. Didn't help she was always slightly drunk from the seizure meds, but they didn't dare take her off. Set still had the occasional absence spell.

        "Hitting?"

        The Bear supposed that was his nickname in her mind. "Yes, Set."

        She crooked her finger, all smeared with chocolate, at him and he came cautiously nearer, down the side of the bed. Reaching forward, she popped the finger into his mouth. He wondered if this sexual disinhibition thing was going to be a problem for Joe. Yeah, right. I should have such problems, the Bear thought. He sucked off the chocolate and backed away.

        "Thank you," said Set with a slow, uncertainty. Joe had been working hard on her manners.

        With a deep bow and flourish, the Bear returned the "Thank you."

         "Anne?" she prompted.

        The Bear settled himself down on the floor by her bed. Set rolled over on her stomach and rested her chin on her crossed forearms, gazing down at him, waiting for a story she could not understand.

        He wondered how she could stand bending her left shoulder so acutely, when it had been disarticulated halfway cross her back not six weeks ago. She was tougher stuff than he was used to.

        And he wondered why this story about Anne and Mary and him...again...what was it? The fourth time in as many days?

        The Bear put his paws, pads up, before him and described the woman who would return in the morning. He told Set how they had first met and how he had held back in the shadows while the brilliant Scot rode into the fore. And he told her about Anne's dark eyes and the spot on her shoulder where it joined the long, pale neck, which was too often stiff if you did not approach with care. He talked about the first time he saw Mary in the emergency room--Anne had delivered in the wreck of a collapsed building --she'd gone to help the rescue unit. The ubiquitous Scot had been there for the delivery. The Bear remembered it had been so hard to be grateful to Duncan MacLeod. But any bad feelings he might have had melted in the moment he had first heard Mary cry.

        The moment he had held her in his big bear paws and known some tiny piece of the Grand Design.

        He lost himself so deeply in the Fable of the Bear that he did not hear Joe return.

        He did not see Set rise up silently and silence Joe with her slender hand across his mouth.

        When he was finished he looked up to see Set weeping in Joe's arms.

        He wondered why.

---

        The Seacouver Airport was surprisingly empty. People probably saving there pennies for the approaching Holidays--Christmas, Petit Noël, Chanukah...

        Dr. Mark Palmer always told everyone he was druid. Not quite Sol, he found himself standing at the ticket counter, uncomfortable in his new suit when he spent most of his days in the 'Jammies, they called "Scrubs." He was here to welcome back the pilgrims...

        ...and to confess his sin of omission. Hopefully the pilgrims would be returning with forgiveness in their hearts. Hopefully the good news would outweigh its delay in delivery.

        The Bear was nearly up to the counter to ask about the flight from O'Hare when a familiar cadence and melody turned him around to see little Mary waddling towards him, burbling her delight and smeared stem-to-stern with some grape candy mess. With no care at all for the expensive suit, he gathered her up and held her over the sudden ache that had developed at the base of his heart. Who could have known love could be so physically painful?

        "Mrs. Lindsey," Mark shifted Mary into his left arm and reached his right out to Anne's mother. "So how was Paris?"

        Mrs. Lindsey shook her head, "It was quite an adventure, Dr. Palmer." She returned the hug and then led him back to the baggage carrousel where Anne and Lucille were plotting which one would return to Paris when the inevitable phone call came that baby Sean was too much for his father and brother to handle alone.

        Dr. Palmer waited till the bags came round, paid the porter, and ushered the ladies towards his beige Lincoln with the MD plates. Mary never stopped chattering, some of it in French baby talk, it seemed. Oh, little girl, the Bear thought, one of these days...

        Not today, though. Other deeds brewing and one big confession to be made.

        The Bear waited until they were all sorted into the car--Anne in the front passenger seat, and Lucille, Mrs. Lindsey and Mary across the back--and they were on their way before he interrupted Lucille mid-sentence.  "Here," he said and handed her back a bottle of pills. "Two a day for the next week and then come in and see me."

        "Oh," said Sweets, "for the milk."