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And that had left Thomas Cross alone to see to the burying of the blood bay stallion that was Adam's pride and joy, and the new runaway that Thomas had taken into his care as stable boy. The boy had mistakenly let Adam's killer horse loose and had his skull crushed as he recognized his mistake and stood between the mad horse and the children. Thomas tried to think the boy would have been just as dead had he remained on the street, but the thought was not comforting somehow. So, he'd buried the child, which had hurt his heart, and he buried the horse, which hurt his heart and his back and nearly broke the winch on the old truck. Then he'd returned to the quadrangle, picked up Ram's body, and carried it down to his secret cellar.
Thomas Cross picked his deep mahogany body off the floor of his cellar, or more accurately, his fallout shelter beneath the forty-horse barn of the spacious Cross Estates. He had really meant to keep the watch, but that had proved impossible. Thomas, for all his trim, small body was in excellent shape, had simply worked beyond his limits and had finally fallen exhausted to the slate stone floor of the hallway outside Ram's cell. He listened. The awful sound of her grieving had stilled. It was probably hours he'd lain upon this floor, naked and cold, and dead to the world, while a dragon wailed the other side of the locked steel door. Thomas had told her the mortal, her spouse, Watcher Dawson, was dead. Surely this was so. The savage stallion, now dead by Ram's hand, had crushed the crippled blues singer, chest and belly with its deadly, sharp hooves. Then Adam's mad horse had killed Ram, but not before she returned the favor. Both corpses had been left in the bloody quadrangle, while Cross saw to the helicopter to take Dawson and Dr. Lindsey to Couver General, and Duncan took the children and their lush nanny home. Adam had left with MacLeod.
Where he had undressed her and washed her and placed her on a bed in one of the lock cells and put the second pair of shackles on her neck and wrists. Adam had said the iron cladding would keep her in human form, that she was a dragon. Cross didn't know what to think about that. He knew she was not an Immortal as he was, but after that he was almost ready to believe anything about this fabulous creature of Chaos. Cross had injected her with quite a dose of the barbiturates he kept for putting ailing horses down. She had awakened just drunk enough to go absolutely wild when he told her Dawson was dead. Ram had told him to lock the door and not to return until the noise stopped.
And so he had waited, and waited, and had finally fallen asleep.
Thomas padded across the short distance to the door and reached for the digital key. The heavy steel swung inward on its hinges with a tinny croak, opening on an empty room. Damnation! The woman had escaped! He hurried into the room, taking its feel, its temperature. Ram had left this cell hours ago. There had been a terrible struggle, pain, and then he felt the bolt mechanism ripping out of its bed in the thick casement of the door. What he could not sense was either fear or sadness and this perplexed him greatly. He did not know this one, but he verily hoped to learn, or at least to have some more time with her to try.
Out in the corridor again, Thomas dashed down the hallway, listening at the doors as they whipped past him. There, he thought, in the far room on the right. The Library and Crafts room. Thomas had seen to all the amenities should the bombs fall. Now that seemed unlikely, the cellar which was more the size of an underground mall, had become a repository for all his special possessions and collections, a well- stocked retreat from the merciless world.
Thomas entered the large room quietly to see Ram seated beyond a canvas and easel, painting something, bathed in the false indirect sunlight of the rich room, a painting herself, flesh tones against the different woods that formed the furniture and shelving and oak flooring. She perched perfectly on a stool, one leg bent, one leg extended, her toes rubbing and curling against the floor as she worked, entirely absorbed in the project at hand.
"Good morning, Ram," Thomas saw that the grandfather clock behind her read quarter of six.
Ram looked up slowly, "Happy birthday, Mr. Cross," she said cheerily.
This took Thomas aback. Yes, it was his two hundred and fiftieth birthday. "Mr. Cross?" he asked softly, "If I'd known we were going to be so formal," he glanced down and then over at her, "I might have dressed."
Ram laughed and went back to painting, or jabbing paint on the canvas before her with a deft, furious motion. Thomas wondered what she could be doing. "How did you--?" he began to ask, but then changed his mind, asking instead, "You no longer mourn your husband, Ram?"
"Joe woke up a little past two this morning," Ram explained. "He is physically all right again."
"Physically?" Thomas approached, settling down in a couch by the functional-but-false fireplace.
"You are so perceptive, HorseMaster," Ram said it in a way that was neither compliment nor disparagement, but a little of both.
"He is alive, but ill in some other way?" Thomas rephrased, but stayed on track. A simple trick that, when one cue did not serve, there were always many others and no need for confrontation. He could not ask the question he wished, as in how the hell did Ram know this when Joe was in a hospital fifty miles south of them, though she surely did know it.
Or she thought she did. Maybe that was for the best. He would call later and confirm the worst, for now, what did it harm either of them to dream and hope?
Thomas looked up to see her staring at him over the top of the canvas. "Do you really want to know how the Watcher fares, Mr. Cross?"
"I believe he is dead," Thomas said simply. "I did not mean to lie to you last night, Ram."
"Yes, you did," Ram went back to stabbing the canvas with the brush. "Just as you meant to kidnap me when everyone had left for 'Couver."
"It is all true," Thomas sighed. She would probably kill him for hurting her so badly, for taking her from her friends, her love, her sons, and lying to her about her husband's death. "I can't even ask you to forgive me, Ram. I had to have you. Something overcame me. I swear to the Father of All Horses that I never stole a horse or a slave before. Never. Not even when the slave was myself."
"You really have no idea how comforting you are to me," Ram replied.
Thomas Cross heard her words, but he could not believe them.
She stopped painting and began to clean the brushes, "So I will explain it to you. Thomas Cross, HorseMaster Extraordinaire, Joe is lost to me for now. It is not by death, as you suggested," Ram shook her head and the dark curls flashed under the lights. "Joe is always--his amputations--most of the time they are not an impediment to him, because of his sublime powers and loving ways and talents and charisms and--"
The sound of her lauding the Blues Man, made Cross ache at his center.
She laughed but her grey eyes began to shine. "This accident. He feels it is his fault, because he fell, but it is more. It emasculates him that I came to his rescue, that I died trying to save him. When he woke, my son, Adam, was there at his bedside--which is itself very odd, because it is definitely not the sort of thing Adam would do, but then you have changed him most wondrously. In any case, when Joe asked Adam where I was, and was told I wasn't coming till the next day..." Ram's low alto faded a moment.
"He was disappointed for an instant, but then Joe was grateful I wasn't there. He didn't think he could face me. He felt ashamed and helpless, mutilated and crippled. He thinks he is not a man because of this. He can't feel his strength just now," Ram continued sadly, "and he can only feel my love as a wounding, shaming thing for him. Joe has let his fear set me aside again, Thomas."
Ram was too strong for any master, Thomas thought, and Joe is wise enough to know this, but not wise enough to know the entirety, the blessing, of her surrender.
"If you did not bear me away in your strong, bronze arms, like some maid in a fantasy, then I would have been utterly lost and alone. I cannot express my gratitude, HorseMaster. It is too great for words. You did say I might stay here with you?" Ram looked over the top of the canvas and waited for his answer.
Cross was lost a moment in the look and luster of her, the abject ease with which she posed against the light. Then he heard her words in memory and answered. "You may stay as long as you will, Ram. Whatever is true, that is."
"Done," she said happily, as if they were having some other discussion, one entirely without want or weight. She shrugged. "Anne, Dr. Lindsey, Mrs. MacLeod--whatever we shall be calling her these days-- gave me a gift for you from Adam. For your birthday today. It was why he went into town, because he thought of this print and how you reminded him of it. His first true gift. Adam spent days thinking what would be the perfect gift for you, and he got his nose broken and himself bedded with Duncan into the bargain, in the course of getting it for you."
Thomas cocked his head.
"But it never occurred to him you probably had many prints of this work," she pointed to the paper bag leaned against the couch, "that you might even have the original--"
Thomas pulled out the print. He did indeed have the original, but he was nonetheless touched.
"--because you posed for it, with a relative of Black God, if I am not mistaken," Ram finished.
"You are not mistaken, Ram," Thomas ran his dark, wide hand over the picture. Dear Adam.
"Anyway, I said I would get you another painting today, never thinking what would happen in the meantime," Ram went on, "When I stopped howling and knew Joe was alive, I went wandering around your catacombs here, looking for something to do for your birthday, since it was clear I wouldn't be returning to Seacouver any time soon. I found this lovely study of yours and your paints and a blank canvas, and--" Ram lifted the painting by its edges and turned it around. "Happy birthday, HorseMaster Cross."
Cross did not remember standing, but he was halfway to her and the gift when he became aware he was moving. Then he stopped. "Adam?" he asked.
"Do you like it?" Ram asked like a child who really doesn't yet know his worth.
"Oh, Ram," Cross breathed, "it is beautiful." He used the word he only spoke for those special things which touched him truly, by their form and their courage and their sheer delight. This was one. A seemingly placid scene of a nude man hugging a grey horse standing in a stream with the forest rising behind. Quiet in theory only, because every stroke of the brush had assaulted the canvas, splash upon splash, the grey horse really a kaleidoscope of greens and purples and blues, the water churned and almost muddy, the forest behind a tense collection of blobbish greens and mustards. The horse might be dazed or sleeping or angry, the man weeping or sleeping or dead. The whole piece made him shiver with its power and energy. "That is rather more sensual and sexual than one usually expects a mother to perceive her son," he commented.
Ram laughed, "Then you don't know many mothers."
Ram sat at the corner couch/booth affair in the bomb shelter's "galley." Cross' underground city was laid out a little like a submarine, a lot of its fittings, including this kitchen and the study seemed like sets straight out of 20,000 leagues beneath the sea, or some such. Ram ran her slender hand along the leather covered, curving booth and watched across the shellacked surface of the pale pine table top. Thomas Cross had donned a pristine white T-shirt and was busy at the stove putting together an excellent omelet which perfumed the air in bright notes of garlic and parsley and butter.
Cross checked the sausages and called over his shoulder, "What would you like to do after breakfast?"
"Are you also the concierge?" Ram asked, smiling.
"What?" Cross turned to look at her. "Is there something you want?"
"Why do you ask, HorseMaster? What could I possibly want?"
"Well, you seem to be staring, as if--" Cross shrugged. "Are you waiting for something?"
"The tarragon," Ram commented softly.
"You don't like tarragon?" Thomas picked up the spice bottle.
"Oh, I find it amusing is all," Ram smiled.
"How?" Thomas wondered why it was so difficult to speak with this woman, outside the fact that her thought processes were so--so dis-ordered, chaotic.
"Well," Ram began, "You are such a tidy person, HorseMaster."
"Yes," Thomas wondered that he could not seem to guess her direction. He had ridden a cutting horse once, a friend's. It was not unlike this conversation, being jerked laterally, following a calf he could not ken. Maybe that was the problem, though, cut off from her herd, she was trying every direction to get around him and return.
"And I just know you will be putting the tarragon back in that top shelf over the stove sooner or later," Ram ended there as if that were all she had to say about the matter, as if that was all he needed to understand.
Thomas stared at the bottle in his hand and the shelf above his head. What was she talking about? The comprehension came to him in an hilarious rush. He wasn't wearing anything but the T-shirt, and that only because he didn't cook sausages, or bacon, for that matter, in the nude--far too hazardous.
He was glad for his dark skin which hid the sudden flush. "Are you coming on to me?" he asked.
"No," Ram laughed softly, "I just never understood why Lucille was always going on about 'guys who had great buns.' I think I see her point now. Quite fetching all in all, really."
"You know I'm never going to be able to get anything off that top shelf again without laughing," Thomas commented, putting the tarragon back just a little more slowly than was absolutely necessary.
"Which, I would wager, is a better way to feel than you used to about having to reach up so high," Ram replied.
"Agreed," Thomas flipped the omelet out on a Mayan glazed plate and arranged the sausages, just so, along one side. His lack of height vexed him in the most unexpected ways sometimes.
"I am no taller than you are," Ram arranged the silverware and napkins and pushed the juice away from her place. Sliding out of the booth, she headed for the refrigerator and the ice. "And I don't like being short either, but what can you do?" she shrugged.
"Some of us don't have thirty-foot high dragons as our alter egos, though," Thomas brought over the coffee pot and watched Ram's ritual with the ice tray at the sink: dumping out the cubes, inspecting and rinsing them one by one, picking four and crushing them inside a towel, putting the chips into a cup, and draining off any excess water.
"--because the problem," Ram sat back down at the breakfast, chewing on the ice, "the problem with your not being a thirty foot high dragon sometimes is that you never get to feel how incredibly burdensome the earth's gravity can weigh upon you. You and I are just the right size to be light and balanced and easy for horses to carry, even if we do have to look up at the behemoths of the world like Lord MacLeod and Doctor Piersen."
"Not even mentioning our great buns," Thomas laughed between bites of egg and sausage. "Here," he replaced the juice in front of her plate, "This is yours, Ram."
"No," Ram shook her head, "the ice is fine."
Cross' eyes narrowed and he studied her. "What is it? I can get you something else to drink."
"No, you can't," Ram replied, finishing the ice and starting on her portion of the omelet. "I don't drink any more."
Thomas poured a glass of water from a carafe on the table. "Here, try this," he suggested.
Ram stopped mid-bite and slammed her fork down on the plate. "There are some things you do not need to know, HorseMaster. This is one of those things. I fully realize I am something of a new pony in the barn, let loose in the arena to gauge my gaits and disposition, but make a note, Cross, this is one old mare who has won her red ribbon the hard way!"
Cross watched her rise and stomp across the kitchen. She was right, of course, but he thought that way about all the people he met, as if the whole of humanity were just another herd of beastes, some of which would be worthy of training. He dared not laugh about the red ribbon remark. That was the way you designated a mean mare who kicked, by braiding a red ribbon in her tail.
Clearly he had said something about the juice to anger or frighten her, or both. "I think I will need to know this though, Ram."
She slapped both her hands down on the sink's counter top. "You know too much about me already. How is that?"
Thomas wiped his mouth, folded his napkin and walked over to stand behind her, knowing full well he risked being kicked. But this was what he did with such mares. He surrendered to their better instincts and he was almost never wrong, almost.
"You know that your son has been staying with me here since he brought the horses back, since he and Duncan MacLeod brought you back from your dragon's den in the chains I forged, Ram."
"You forged?"
"Yes, Ram," Thomas was surprised at the question. "You remember when you came to the Drieg, my club, to have the chains removed? When you danced with Cassandra?"
"Oh," said Ram, "vaguely. I was fairly ill. I do not remember that clearly."
"Ill, Ram?"
"Yes," Ram turned around and faced him, "your iron was poisoning me and I hadn't eaten for two days."
"Oh, I am sorry. Adam never said the shackles would hurt you, Ram, just that they would keep you from changing into a dragon again," Thomas paused. He had wanted to ask this since he first found her gone, but he'd sensed it would not be wise--still. "How did you get out of the chains, Ram?"
"Trust me," Ram smiled and ran her index fingers around the T-shirt's collar, "you do not really want to know. Suffice it to say I cleaned up the mess after, as soon as my hands regenerated, and I cut off the neck circlet with the diamond string saw in the study."
"You broke your hands?" Thomas pulled her hand down from his neck and held it between his.
Ram's gaze slipped sideways and down, "Yes. Sort of."
"How sort of, Ram?"
"Off," Ram replied, "I was too furious to finesse it, I'm afraid."
Cross stepped back from her and nodded, "You are like your son, I think, a little too needful of pain."
"You can hardly expect me to answer truthfully if you are going to be judgmental now, can you?" Ram folded her arms. "Just think of it as an object lesson in the wisdom of not chaining me to the furniture. Next time I won't clean up the mess."
"Forgive me," Thomas sketched a deep bow.
"I suppose," Ram answered petulantly, "even though I fear I was not at the most favorable view for that bow.
Cross took the T-shirt off, "Better?"
"Oddly," Ram commented, "no. I suppose it has something to do with anticipation or hidden treasures or some other thing like that."
"Right," Thomas padded back to the table and began clearing breakfast.
Ram came over to help. She reached for the glass of water and brought it up tentatively to her lips. What would it hurt? She hadn't even tried this for a while. Maybe nothing would happen. One small sip. Ram immediately felt the burning as the molten bronze began to congeal against the back of her throat. Nothing had changed after all.
Whack, a burning stripe sliced across her shoulders. "Oh, no," she heard Cross bellowing, "I'm not cleaning your bloody dead carcass off my clean kitchen floor. Stop that! Now!" Another whispering whistle and...whack. The contact was so stinging, Ram could feel it, like an electric current, all the way down her back.
She spewed the mouthful of water out in a gout of froth and omelet bits.
But no blood, no smoke. No tearing mid-gut. All of which went utterly unnoticed in the building fire of her wrath. The blows had thrown her forward against the table. She now rose back towards upright and twisted her head around slowly on her long, slender neck, casting a look at the HorseMaster which would have turned a lesser man to stone. Then she glanced over her shoulder, "You bastard! You cut me!"
Thomas Cross merely stood his ground, tapping the long dressage whip--about a yard of narrow fiberglass wrapped in smooth, black leather with a silver handle--on the palm of his opposite hand. "Just don't go trying that bronze gargle trick again. Adam told me what Duncan told him about how Hell is and that you were there for a very long time. He also told me about the drinking thing and how everything liquid you put in your mouth in Hell turns into molten bronze and solidifies into an impaling spike. I won't be having you play that in my kitchen, thank you very much."
"It's just water," Ram hissed, turning her marked back towards him and reaching again for the glass of water. In one fluid movement, she had it to her mouth and tossed it back in a single gulp.
Thwack! Thwack! Hisss, slap! Cross drew the cuts in rapid succession down her back, orderly lines, an inch apart.
On and on, until the slender fingers reached around the whip hand faster than thought, gripped down like a steel clamp, and stopped just short of breaking Cross' wrist. The whip dropped to the floor, denting the silver heel ornament.
Ram spit a mouthful of water straight into the black man's face. She gulped the rest down and yelled, "It's just water!"
Cross held his expression still and calm though the pain in his wrist made that difficult. "I believe the point's been made, Ram. At ease."
Ram dropped his wrist and drew back from him, astonished. "You tricked me!"
"Yes," Cross tried to flex the fingers in his injured hand. "Yes, I did, Ram."
"You lied to me!"
"Yes, I did," the feeling started coming back in his palm. He didn't think anything was broken.
Ram stared at his wrist and then over her shoulder at her back. "You hurt me," her ire was fading.
"Yes, I did," Cross went to one of the built-in cabinets and searched through the middle shelves, coming up with a jar of ointment. "Sit," he commanded, pulling a chair away from the table and into the middle of the room.
"I don't like you nearly so much as I thought I would," Ram sat down glumly on the chair and leaned forward, elbows on her knees, while Cross began tending her welts and cuts with the ointment and his remaining good hand.
"I didn't have any expectations you would like me at all, Ram," Thomas said matter-of-factly. "I am not here for you to like."
"No?" Ram jerked as he hit a particularly sore spot.
"You are speaking to a student of the Father of All Horses, Ram, and he taught me better than that."
Ram looked back and up at him, shaking her head. "The what--?"
"The Master of Masters, the First Whisperer, he had many names, and he was, for a time, my own Master," Cross explained, "Long ago--well, as I measure time. I suppose that would be yesterday in your terms, Old Girl."
"I don't believe you hit me there," Ram growled as Thomas' touch strayed.
"By which I take it, you are not disposed to lie with me?" Thomas thought it would be better to approach this head on and without pretext. "For I am surely predisposed to lie with you--"
"Old Girl?" Ram finished for him. "However I am disposed, Thomas, it makes no difference. Joe will not set me aside forever and when I am returned to him--he will not be pleased if I have betrayed him with another man. I am sorry, that is the way he sees it."
"Will you stay here anyway, Ram? I will respect your decision. I will not press you, nor tease you again. "
"Let me stay down here," Ram sat up straight. "I will keep the place tidy, and you may come visit whenever you have the time. I promise to be an amusing guest, and I offer such talents as I possess to your use, save those which I have specifically vowed to my husband. Wait--"
Cross watched Ram's grey eyes unfocus and her shoulders squared under a sudden, invisible stress. "Ram?"
"Ram?" he called again.
"I need to rest," Ram stood up, dazed and confused, and infinitely sad. She staggered and collapsed, but Cross caught her and lifted her up in his arms.
"Ram, what happened?" Cross carried her down the corridor to an airy arched room. He laid her down gently on the soft bed at the room's center beneath a tent of sheer draperies.
"Adam flushed it down the toilet," she finally answered the question Cross had asked in the kitchen.
"What, Ram?"
"Joe told him to take his wedding ring and--," her voice caught in her throat. She continued in tight, whispering tones, "He cannot stand to be so ashamed of himself, so helpless. He has decided to blame me, because I am not Set, because I am not the woman he loved, after all, but some kind of murderous, monstrous twin of that woman, a fetch, like the wraiths in Hell. I don't know how he could...It makes no sense...Oh, oh I see," Ram threw herself over on her side and slapped the bed with her hand.
"What is it, Ram?" Cross asked again.
"I couldn't be there," Ram said, almost to herself, "I couldn't be there or this would all be different."
Cross laid his hand on her arm. "What would be different?"
"Joe has gone through a First Death, Thomas. On the helicopter," Ram replied. "It seemed outwardly as if he'd arrested and been revived, but in truth, he died."
"But he is not an Immortal," Cross commented, beginning to run his hand lightly down the length of her arm.
"No, he is not, but my blood has made him similar in many ways," Ram answered him, "and he has gone through First Death alone."
"Oh," said Thomas, remembering his own First Death. "I understand. Mr. Dawson thinks if he sets you apart from him, he will lose his immortality. Joseph does not want to deal with his sudden affection for death. He is afraid. Oh, Ram, he needs you now. Who else can comfort him?"
Ram shook her head. "Others, Thomas, there will be others to bring him back to life. I have sent him too near death, sent him there alone. He is right to put me away from him now while he finds his way back."
"You are probably right, Ram," Thomas sighed, "but what happens to you?"
Ram snorted, "I may not have the advantage of learning from the Father of All Horses, Thomas, but I do know better than that, also...
"...or if I didn't, then I have finally learned better than that. I am not here to be liked."
"Well," Thomas ran his hand through her dark curls, "if it's any consolation, Old Girl, I like you a lot."
"You won't when you really get to know me, Thomas."
"Excellent, Ram."
"That you won't like me?" Ram asked.
"That you will let me get to really know you," Thomas replied and tucked her into the soft comforters. All the while he waited for her to fall asleep, he tried mightily not to revel in his very good fortune, bought at the high price of this creature's misery.
Adam assumed an easy slouch at a nearby barstool and leaned back against the bartop while Duncan rustled around behind the bar setting up the coffee. "I could start with a beer," Adam said.
Joe Dawson returned from the hospital, foul of mood and bitter of heart, in the company of his two Immortal friends, the Highlander and the Eldest Immortal. The two men ignored the Watcher's lapse in his usual even temperament and bore with his colorful and inventive sputterings as they brought him into the bar that was his name and his occupation, his former addiction and his home. "I am not a child," Joe growled.
"Anne only let you come home on the condition you would go right up to bed," Duncan MacLeod coaxed. "Two days ago, you were on a respirator, Joe. That you survived the horse attack at the Cross Estates is nothing short of miraculous--"
"Way short, Mac," Joe interrupted, "And when did Dr. Lindsey--fine woman that she is, don't get me wrong--ascend to godhood?"
The bushy, dark brow lifted over Duncan's right eye and Adam waltzed in between the two men before the Scottish stepson decided to defend his wife's honor.
Adam helped Joe out of the wheelchair and into a real chair at a table by the bar. Then he folded the offensive conveyance flat and set it by the elevator. "Some coffee might be welcome," he suggested to Duncan.
"Could you now?" Duncan snorted, reaching for a mug and slapping the tap.
"Thank you so much, Bar Keep," Adam ran a long, slender finger around the too-generous suds and waited for them to settle. "Can I get you anything?" he asked Joe.
"You can get the hell out of here," Joe suggested. "And go play house someplace else."
The former Watcher and Methos researcher did not rise to the bait. His relationship with the Highlander was far too uncertain and complex to be good fodder for any witty repartee. "Is there something in particular that irritates you, Dawson, or just everything in general."
"Look, you soporific excuse for a latter day gunsel," Joe began, ticking off mentally how many more days until he could get rip-roaring drunk again--one thousand minus six times thirty.
"Been reading Hammett again, have we?" Duncan commented as he turned on the coffee and came around the bar to sit next to Adam.
"When did everything get so complicated?" Joe complained.
Adam and Duncan stared at each other and shrugged in unison.
"Oh, stop!" Dawson moaned.
"What is the matter, Joe?" Duncan could list a dozen candidates for what ailed the Watcher, a top ten, starting with where Mrs. Dawson had gotten off to, which was anybody's guess.
Dawson settled his elbows on the table and leaned over his crossed arms. "Why would you think anything was the matter, Buddy?" he sighed. "Not like the Watcher Network isn't tits up and Ram run away and the two of you--God knows what, and the trial over the kids' custody, excuse me, hearing, not trial. And Grace off to Africa with Cassandra, and..."
"It has been an interesting year so far," Adam put down his bear mug and wiped the suds off his prominent beak. "But tell me, Mrs. Lincoln, other than that how did you like the play?"
"Very funny," Joe put his forehead down on his arms.
Duncan checked the coffee, not quite done, and walked over to rub Dawson's shoulders. "You've been through--we have all been through--a great deal of stress lately." Joe's muscles were nearly in rigor they were so tight with anger and fear. "You were nearly killed, Joe--"
"There was no 'nearly' about it, Buddy," Joe's voice floated up solemnly from the crook of his arms.
Adam straightened up. "First Death," he hissed.
Duncan nodded, "I see."
Joe lifted his head. They were doing it again, that "unspoken understanding" thing, like an old married couple. "Why don't the two of you just go take that someplace else?"
Adam walked over, pulled out a chair and sat down on Joe's left side. Duncan settled in on his right.
Joe pushed up straight and stared disgustedly, first at Adam and then at Duncan. "What exactly did you not understand? The 'get' or the 'out?'"
"In some ways," Duncan began softly, "You are an Immortal, Joe. Because you have tasted dragon's blood. As an Immortal--"
"Which I will not be in exactly seven hundred and eighty two days," Joe said.
"What?" Adam asked, suddenly doing the math for how long since Alexa had been saved by the same magic.
"You heard me," Joe answered.
"It's only temporary?" Adam tried to think. Sean was nearly a year old, eight months before that was three months after Ram had come to Couver, which was--Alexa's first born was already in the world, which was a year and a few months after she'd fled to New Mexico and married the trucker, Kuehl. "That isn't possible, Joe. Alexa would be dead by now."
Duncan was entirely lost. "Would someone explain this to me?"
"I think you better do the honors, Joe," Adam yielded to the Watcher.
"Ram's blood does convey a type of Immortality, rapid healing and recovery--I don't know about beheadings and Quickenings--and no more aging...and no more getting drunk," Joe began.
"But--" Duncan prompted.
"But, it only lasts a thousand days, then," Joe cast about for a proper description, "Ram said it was a, yes, a blood covenant which required renewal every thousand days. I am sure she fixed things with Alexa when she was there, pregnant with Sean."
"Oh," Adam redid his calculations. He wouldn't have to start worrying again until Sean was two.
"But I still don't understand what happens in a thousand days," Duncan complained.
"Something called the 'hunger,'" Joe replied, "I can only imagine, but it's fatal if the blood thing isn't done again."
Duncan's brooding visage twisted in horror, "Are you saying--?"
"Yeah," Joe's laugh was eerie and hollow, "we all turn into vampires. Well, not really, but Ram seemed to be saying we'd start going after mortal blood if we did not have dragon's blood available," he stopped suddenly, "Listen to what I'm saying! Sounds like a low-budget Hammer flick. This can't be happening."
"Easy there, Joe," Duncan laid his hand over Dawson's, "This is just First Death. It's making you, um, unsettled."
"Frigging nuts, you mean," Joe put his head back down on his arms. He knew it wasn't so, but the room seemed to be tipping wildly, like the deck of a sundered ship.
"We all come to First Death in our own ways," Duncan said gently, "I think you are doing very well. Certainly better than I or Adam handled this."
Joe didn't need to look up to know they were exchanging that "look" over the top of his head. He supposed his irritation with them was just mean-spirited jealousy on his part and they did make a handsome pair. He seemed to remember a time when life had been ordered and the sun still rose in the east. These days, it was anyone's guess what the next moment would deliver, except you could count on it being utterly unbelievable and unexpected. What else? If you slept with Chaos how could you expect to wake up to Order?
"Do you think it would help if we told you how we dealt with this?" Duncan asked.
"With what?" Joe asked.
"First Death," Adam explained as Duncan went to pour them some coffee.
"Why do you keep saying that? What does it mean?" Joe stretched his back.
"Tell us what happened at the Cross Estate, from your point of view, Joe," Adam suggested.
Joe turned his head and rested his right cheek on his arms, looking sideways at the lanky Immortal. "Why don't I just rip my eyes out and juggle them for your amusement?"
"Why don't you just get a grip," Adam said quietly. "I know the accident was not your fault. I am sorry that Ram killed my stallion, but I am more sorry that you were hurt. Tell us what happened after the helicopter arrived to take you to Couver."
Joe thought a moment, "Yes, I remember the helicopter, because it made me think of Nam and the evac unit after I stepped on the mine. Thomas Cross had done something that made the pain distant, bearable, but I could hardly breathe..." Joe wiped the sweat that had beaded up on his forehead and pushed up straight again. "I tried to remember what Malak had told me about the blood thing, about how it would heal all but the worst injuries and I began to wonder if this were the worst, because..."
Duncan returned with the coffee and Joe took a sip. "You know that look a soldier gets when he's going?"
The two men waited quietly for Dawson to find the words.
"That listening to the angels look they get, like they've stepped off the earth?" Joe asked again.
Duncan sat down again, "Yes, Joe, we know."
"Well, I was feeling that look from the inside, like I did when I got blown up and almost died," Joe continued. "Only this time there was no 'almost' about it. I just kept going, farther and farther away. I knew Anne was there and the paramedics and they were bustling about, hoisting me onto the chopper, saying things I could hear, but just as sounds, not words. I think we lifted off and then Anne got this 'omigod' expression on her face and started pushing one syringe after another into the IV line and I knew it was over. Dragon's blood or no, I was a dead man," Joe stopped and picked up his coffee again, trying not to shake.
"I felt that last little panic as if there was something else I should do to try and stop this from happening, but I just couldn't remember what. And then," Joe looked up at the two Immortals, "I died." He said it as if, even now, he could not believe.
"And the next thing you remember?" Duncan asked after Joe had been silent too long.
"What? Oh, they were taking that stupid tube out of my throat and telling me to cough--at the hospital. Adam was there," Joe added.
"And in between?" Duncan's broad hand slipped over Dawson's shoulder.
Joe shook his head slowly. "I really don't--," then his memory cleared for an instant and nearly drove him back out of his chair, but for the strong hand on his shoulder. "How do you stand to stay alive, Mac?"
Adam leaned towards the Watcher, "Because we know it won't last forever, Joe. Because time draws the curtain on our memories. Because there is a blessing in our separation from each other, even as we long to return to that singularity."
"Blessing?" Joe croaked. "What blessing?"
"Love, Joe," Adam said tenderly.
Joe closed his eyes and tried to find the mercy of forgetfulness. He just knew they were looking at each other "that way" again. But Adam was right, you could not love after you had become Love.
Mac took his turn relating the difficulties, the particular dilemmas of his own First Death, and Adam trundled off to the kitchen to make brunch. He'd heard the tale before: the banishment from the clan the long years of wandering alone, the meeting with the Millennium Hermit and taking his first head.
Adam timed it just right to return with eggs and toast and hash browns and new coffee, just as Duncan finished the touching tale about how Mary, his mother, had offered him back the sword of the MacLeods, the blade that should have been the young Scot's birthright, except he was a distaff and an abomination. To Mary, Duncan was a son, only one step down from God Himself in her pantheon of the holy and the honored.
And it was in Mary's memory that Duncan MacLeod had called out the name of his clan as his rightful identity in all the many battles that were to come.
They passed around the plates and ate quietly, each man lost to his own thoughts, each of them sharing the netherworld between the quick and the dead.
Adam sliced through the skins of the soft yolks, cut his toast into triangular quarters, and proceeded to dunk them in the yolks. Needed something. Maybe a little pepper. Adam reached for the center of the table. His long fingers curled around thin air, causing him to look up.
Duncan and Joe were staring at him.
"What?" he answered their attention.
"I don't know, Buddy," Joe began, leaning sideways towards the Highlander. "But it would seem to be Adam's turn."
Duncan made a big show of counting on his fingers and then sucking some jam off one of them. "Yeah, I'd say it was Adam's turn."
Adam rolled his eyes and sighed, "Yes, I'll do the dishes."
"Did I say anything about dishes?" Joe looked at Duncan.
Both men shook their heads.
"What?" Adam nearly whined.
"I believe Immortal Dawson--" Duncan began.
"Power," Joe corrected him.
"Power?"
"Yes, as in the Powers," Joe answered, "It's something Cassandra started calling us, me and Alexa and Anne, the ones who'd participated in the blood covenant."
"I stand corrected," Duncan bowed his head curtly, "Powers Dawson here is referring to it being your turn to tell the tale of First Death, Adam."
"I don't have anything to add," Adam dunked his triangular toast in the sun yellow yolk.
"Not so, Brother Adam," Duncan said, "We don't really know what happened the first time you died."
Adam choked so badly Joe had to pop him on the back before he could breathe again.
"I told you that already," Adam gasped when he could finally draw breath.
"I think it's a matter of the fact we know too much from too many sources and most of them contradict each other," Joe explained, handing the Eldest Immortal a glass of water.
"What do you mean?" Having been driven to the wall, Adam took the course of last resort, answer a question with a question.
"Well," Joe continued, "We have Lucille's version, and Ram's several versions, and the Malak journal story, and your version. And they don't seem to fit together very well. Or at all," he added.
"I'm sure some of them are partly true and most of them are mostly false," Adam replied, but the rasp in his voice from the toast going down the wrong way somewhat dampened the affect of his wit.
Duncan was enjoying this far too much as he suggested, almost helpfully, "Why don't we start with the versions we know and you can tell us what is false and what is true?"
"At least we'll have only one story then to deal with," Joe added, indicating that they weren't even going to take his word for it entirely.
"Damn you both!" Adam growled.
Both men laughed loudly. "I believe that boat has already sailed, Adam," Joe spoke the obvious.
"Well," Adam said, rising from his chair, "much as I would love to stay and play 'I'll show you mine, if you'll show me yours,' I have some dishes to do."
"No," Duncan's strong fingers curled around Adam's wrist, "you don't."
"I don't?"
"No," Duncan repeated, engaging a grip that stopped Adam's breath and made him bite his lip to keep from crying out.
"I suppose," Adam surrendered through gritted teeth, "they can wait." He sat back down and Duncan released his wrist.
"Well, go ahead," Adam said with all the enthusiasm of the condemned.
"Maybe if we did this in the order of the stories," Duncan mused. "I'll start with the first one I can remember."
Adam made too much of cradling his wrist in his lap and suffering silently.
"Let's see," Duncan had spent a great deal of energy not remembering the night he'd invited Ram to his loft over the dojo. The night Sean had been conceived.
Ram had told him all the Danaan males had disappeared beyond Last Gate looking for a way into another world and that the remaining Danaan women had been forced to try to rebuild their race by breeding with humans, which was the beginning of the Immortals.
When Adam stopped laughing, he said, "Well, of course, that's all a lie, since there are no such things as either male or female Danaans as such."
"And how does that work exactly?" Joe asked.
Adam shook his head, "I don't know. It was a long time ago," seeing this was not going to appease them, he continued, "all right, I don't remember there being any women in The City, except for my mother, The King. Everyone else was male. No, wait," Adam rubbed his temples, "It was said that the former King was in the World of Men, and that she was staying there until she got with child. So that would have been the only other woman I knew about. I--" Adam chewed his lip, "You have to understand, I had many friends in The City. Everyone was kind to me there. I was a curiosity, I suppose, for some, but I do believe some of them liked me, though I must have seemed retarded, or a baby, to them. I was the only child in the entire City and they all spoiled me rotten. But they were always seeming to test me in this way or that, and I always felt I failed them, time after time."
"Of course, they were waiting for me to show any signs of Immortality or, I guess, Danaanness. Which I didn't at all. I just kept growing, taller and taller and taller. Some of my friends teased me about becoming a giant and I worried about that a lot. God, I'd forgotten that," Adam's eyes softened as some pleasant memory or another warmed him, "Well, anyway, my mother explained to me that my father was very tall, but that he was not, she swore to me, a giant."
"Which I think," Joe interrupted, "brings us to Lucille's story and the Malak tale and how they don't fit together at all. Adam, what do you know about your, um, your father?"
"Well, I know he wasn't the former King or the guards that waylaid Malak on the way back from the Privy Council," Adam replied.
The irony did not escape Joe that Adam should transpose Ram's identities to distance the rape in exactly the opposite way, but for the same reason, as Malak did himself. For Adam, Malak had been ravaged by the dozen returning guardsmen. For Malak, it had been Ram, or Chaos, as he called her.
"Because?" Duncan asked.
"Because then I would be a Danaan," Adam replied. "Ram always told me my father was a lowland farmer, tall, blond and fair, a bit dim-witted, but kind and honorable to a fault. None of my friends in The City would admit they knew any differently. What did Lucille say?"
Joe looked over at Duncan for help.
Duncan shrugged and began, "Adam, Lucille related a story your mother told her about your conception. It is like the story about the guards, and that's probably where that story comes from, but instead of guards, it was five mortal brothers who waylaid her and--the rest. She said she could not say for sure which brother was your father."
Adam's none-too-dark complexion went suddenly paler. "That is probably true," he said finally, though his voice was so caught in his throat he could hardly be heard. "I always wondered why Mother would actively seek out sexual congress with a being the Danae consider to be little more than an animal, a beaste. So her pregnancy with me was a mistake."
There followed a sorrowful silence in the dying harmonics of that last bitter tone. Duncan said nothing, just slid out of his chair and wrapped the Eldest Immortal, chair and all, in a sheltering circle of arms and comfort and caring.
"I think I'll start on these dishes," Joe murmured, though he knew the two men weren't listening. I need someone to wrap me up in their arms like that. Damn you, Ram! You've addicted me to something far more habituating than alcohol. I am jones-ing for you, Darlin'. And where the hell are you? Up to my hip-boots in Immortal love birds and not a one left over for this lonely Power.
When Joe returned from the kitchen behind the bar room, Duncan and Adam were talking together, foreheads nearly touching in low, comfortable tones as if the world hadn't just dropped out from under one of them. Maybe he should just let them go off to the dojo while he went upstairs and got some rest, like a well-behaved patient. It surprised him that he wasn't more surprised about this turn of events with Duncan and Adam, surprised him even more that he found it not at all disgusting and actually quite charming. But then, his single experience with Malak had been delightful, for all that Joe would have sworn that wouldn't be to his taste.
Joe told himself he should send them off even as he joined them at the table. His curiosity would not let this rare opportunity pass him by. "I would really be grateful if you told me what First Death was like for you, Adam."
Both men looked up at him, as if his presence surprised them. Adam started to refuse, but Duncan took the slender hands into his own and just nodded as if everything would be all right.
"I was explaining, trying to explain, to Duncan," Adam began, "about how differently the Danae feel about sex than do mortals, or Immortals either, for that matter."
Joe was so unused to hearing Adam speak in such a simple, straight-forward manner, it was a little disorienting. As if Dr. Piersen had been whispering all this time, had drawn Joe in to listen very carefully, and was now suddenly speaking in clear, normal tones. It was practically deafening. Joe readjusted his perceptions.
"The Danae spent most of their lives as men. They were all men. There was no such thing as being gay. They just did not come in two genders," Adam shook his head, "They don't even have such a concept. Except for Malak, who absolutely refused to bed anyone, they formed any number of casual and serious relationships with each other. Not marriages, exactly, there being no need as most would never breed, and the King's consorts only remained in kyr, breeding form, for brief amounts of time."
"Did you have lovers in The City?" Duncan asked.
"Did I? Oh, no, I had not ascended yet. That would not have been suitable," Adam replied.
"Ascended?" Joe asked.
"Yes, the, the--" Adam stopped suddenly as if a shadow hand had reached out and strangled him.
"Adam?" Joe leaned over the table and touched Adam's long arm lightly.
"Did Ram tell you why she killed me?" Adam asked coming up suddenly from some deep memory.
"Yes," Joe answered, "She said the Privy Council decreed it because they thought you were simply a mortal like your father. She said she killed you on their command."
Adam laughed, but the sound he made held no joy in it. "Does she never stop standing my shield?"
After another silence, Duncan finally spoke, "We don't understand, Adam."
"No," Adam breathed deeply, "No, of course you don't, and I didn't either, but I think I do now. If you are human," Adam searched for the words, "then there are traits you carry genetically which would prove disastrous if you should have a custom of sleeping with close kin. So through evolution's merciless prunings the human race is left with only those members who have a tendency to avoid incest, not absolutely, but so prevalently that the exceptions are regarded as perversions of the norm."
"But if you belong to a race of beings without imperfection," Adam folded his hands together to quiet their trembling, "then there is no such word even, no taboo against familial relationships. In fact, there might even be ritual--" Adam pushed away from the table and stood up, stretching his long back. He began to pace his lank frame around the table as he continued, "When you are a child, you are a child. There comes a day when you are not a child any longer. That is true if you are Immortal or Danaan or human--"
Duncan detested the way Adam had sorted them out of humanity but he held his tongue. This was obviously very difficult business for the Eldest Immortal, the first of their singular kind.
"I hate to sound like Freud, God knows," Adam went on, "but you really do have to--maybe not kill, but at least overcome your parents, to ascend to adulthood. You have to become their equals. If you are a human or an Immortal then you move out of the house, get a job, take a spouse, make your own way in the world--"
"You never overcome your parents," Dawson laughed. "The last time I saw Mama Dawson, she was still callin' me 'Sonny.'"
"I suppose there is something to be said about being a foundling, after all," Duncan commented.
"Some of my friends in The City," Adam said softly, "at least I thought they were my friends. Now I wonder. They sat me down at the end of my second decade and told me about the ritual of ascendancy, the Danaan custom of coming into adulthood--"
"Oh, my God," Joe's acute percipience sent him forward to the very place Adam was trying to avoid. "That's why she killed you!"
Adam wrapped his arms around himself and tucked his chin. "Yes."
Duncan closed his eyes in frustration. He had, in truth, been far more attentive to Adam's distress than to his words, and he was left far behind in total confusion.
"There is a logic to it, Adam. I can understand--" Joe began.
"Well, I can't," Duncan complained. "Could we do subtitles or something?"
Adam strolled up behind MacLeod, leaned over him and reciprocated the earlier hug. He looked over at Dawson, "but he is so cute, anyway," Adam crooned.
"I'll 'cute' you!" Duncan flailed his arms up suddenly, but Adam was too quickly out of his reach.
"As I understand it," Joe tried not to laugh, but he was hardly successful. "Adam can correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems what one does--if one is of perfect genetics anyway and without sanctions against incest--then it only seems logical that the way you achieve parity with your parents is to have sex with one of them."
"Oh, God!" Duncan's disgust spewed forth faster than he could think of a more civilized response. This was way more than he ever wanted to know about the beings that humans had called "Angels," and a great many other things as well.
Adam drifted farther away from them.
But Duncan was so repulsed he never noticed this. "Oh," the Scottish stepson acquired the logical permutation of what he'd just learned. "So you went to Ram's room--"
"Duncan," Joe warned quietly, watching the Eldest Immortal turn in on himself, almost physically shrinking away.
"Thinking she expected this ascendancy thing--" Duncan sped on heedlessly.
"Duncan," Joe repeated, a little more sternly.
"Probably the image of the five brothers coming after her--"
"Duncan!" Joe cocked his arm back and let fly--smack--against Mac's cheek.
"What?" Duncan drew up righteously.
Joe's eyes narrowed and he shook his head, looking over at Adam.
Duncan jerked around, and then he was up out of his chair and across the room to Adam in the blink of an eye. "I am so sorry," he said awkwardly.
Adam shrugged and walked back to the table where he slumped down dejectedly. "It's not like you're in a position to be so judgmental, Highlander," Adam said, but he couldn't muster the ire for an effective retort.
"No it isn't," Duncan admitted graciously. "I had no right at all. Why did Ram lie?"
"By the standards of Ram's race, I have never come into adulthood, because she wouldn't let me do so," Adam said more truth in more ways than he intended to. "She is bound by her actions to be my mother, and I, her child, for all eternity, it seems. And the answer to your question is: Ram does everything within her powers, and they are considerable, to make it seem as if I were an adult, all the while she thinks of me as a baby."
"I always thought this was a cruel damnation on me," Adam continued, "but since I have known and loved Sean--I wonder how I could have been such an ungrateful child after all."
"You are," Duncan pinned Adam in his smoky stare, "believe me, no child, Adam."
Joe watched them generate that look, the electricity between them, almost as daunting as a Quickening. Joe ducked his head and blushed, "You guys."
"You don't approve?" Adam asked.
Duncan's dark visage opened in amazement, "You know?"
"I'd have to be blind, deaf, and dumb, not to," Joe said, "and, yes, as if it mattered, but I do approve, whole-heartedly. Forgive me if I don't share your enthusiasm for things romantic just now that I've lost my wife again."
"Oh," said Duncan, "I'm sorry, Buddy. I just didn't stop to think. We can go look for her again--"
"No," Joe said a little too abruptly. "I'm not ready. I have to get over this dying-living thing."
"And I never did tell you about my First Death," Adam added.
"It's okay, Adam," Joe sighed. "You've said more about yourself in the past hour than I ever hoped to hear and I am honored, really."
"She was sleeping," Adam said calmly. "I slipped in beside her. I can't tell you how excited and afraid and--God, I was so stupid and so very young then. Marak, her brother--who was himself very much in love with her, now that I look back on it--had spent a great deal of time teaching me all the things I needed to know about--about what to do."
"And at first, she responded to me. It was wonderful. Almost more power than a Quickening and just as disruptive. She was facing away from me. I can still to this day, all this time later, I still can remember exactly how her back curved and the soft angle of her neck and--."
"Then she awoke and turned towards me, sitting up. Those grey eyes of hers were like some kind of shiny alloy. I thought she was looking at me in passion, but I know now it was fear and rage. She opened her arms and I sat up and drew close to her. I felt a catch in my chest, just a prick and then a sting."
"And then I felt my blood spilling hot and thick, pulsing, down my chest and belly. I felt her jerk as she woke all the way and recognized me, but she never made a sound. I tried to speak, to ask what had happened, but my breath wouldn't come and all around me the room was sinking into darkness, all the candles going out."
"The last thing I felt was her arms around me. There really wasn't any pain or panic. I felt as if I were much younger and she was putting me down for a nap. I couldn't remember that Marak had said anything about this, and I wondered," Adam began to chuckle, remembering his innocence, "I wondered if this were sex, then I wasn't sure I'd be doing a lot of it, because it really wasn't at all to my liking."
"Then I was bound over to The One and my initial objection about sex was completely reversed. Maybe I'd be doing this every day, it was so wonderful. Well," Adam cleared his throat, "you know how it is. Then I came back to the living world and it was more than a year later. Malak was making me breakfast and I never saw my mother again. Until, what is it now, twelve, thirteen years ago when I walked into Watchers' HQ Central and there she was, sitting on the floor of the Archives, with five books in her lap and looking like something a cat coughs up when his coat is turning. And I never recognized her as the Danaan King, or my mother either, for that matter."
Adam breathed in deeply and exhaled slowly, "I understand now why she killed me, but there is still one thing I don't understand."
"What is that?" Duncan ran his hand through Adam's cropped brown hair.
"She couldn't have known about Immortals, since I was the first."
"Yes," Duncan agreed.
"So, as far as she knew I was dying. And I know she was fully awake and recognized me before I died."
"Yes," Duncan said again.
"Why didn't Ram save me? Why didn't she make me a Power?" Adam's question floated above them, hovering around the darkened bar, unanswered and unanswerable.
Joe sat at his antique desk and began to go through the mail and the bills, wondering when he'd gotten so used to all of this madness. He was fast acquiring a palate for all things weird and wonderful.
All things weird and wonderful,
All stories wild and tall,
All things phantasmagorical,
For Chaos made them all.Joe imagined some future Dr. Harriot tooling through the rolling countryside on his way to a house call on a dragon with a head cold who couldn't stop smoking up his cave. He wondered how his own dear drake was doing these days. He knew where she was now that he thought about it, but he did not think he'd be going after her this time, not after the debacle at the Cross Estate. It was his fault, of course, no matter what Adam said. Joe knew if he'd only stood his ground and not tried to back up, then he wouldn't have fallen, wouldn't have been waving his cane in the air, wouldn't have made Ram kill Adam's precious stallion...
...wouldn't have died himself. Joe put both his hands on the desk top clutter. He wondered how the Immortals did this, how they managed to find some other impetus to continued survival even though they knew this plane was not the last, and certainly not the best. How could they wait here century after grinding century? He understood completely now why the Danae had hurtled pell mell into oblivion even though they had known there was little chance of their survival.
And without actually meaning to think about it, Joe finally understood what damnation had been laid at his wife's door, the simple edict that she never die. Ever.
Yet Ram took it all with an even temper--well, for her, even--a good heart and a humor that blessed them all. He hoped Cross appreciated what he'd gotten into. Thomas would be good for Ram, someone to do all those things Joe couldn't, ride and run and...
All those purely physical talents which Ram always repressed when she was with him. Joe couldn't begrudge Ram these pleasures, and many others, if the tales about Master Cross were even some of them true.
Joe sighed and looked at the ceiling, the second floor, where ironically Mac and Adam had tried to make him go to rest after his hospital discharge this morning. One gut-wrenching conversation later, the two Immortals had respectfully appropriated Joe's bedroom. Well, Joe did not begrudge them either. Not their fault he had no such use for his own bed, and probably wouldn't for some time to come.
Or not to come, as things seemed to be shaping up. Joe saw the last of his life, two or three more years, laid out before him, a time to be quiet, to be by himself, settling his affairs, watching the children grow, seeing to his friends, a little mirth and a lot of music, and baskets-full of lovely, luscious memories to sort, peruse, enjoy. Perhaps he would write about them, another sort of Watcher's Journal, now the Watchers were no more.
He let his heart feel around the edges of the very peculiar sort of mourning he suffered for Set, the brain and flesh-wounded mortal that Ram had become in the year following her nearly-fatal collision with the school bus. It almost seemed sometimes that Set was a creature of Joe's imaginings or desires. Had Ram really been so reduced to her more essential self, the sweet child who could not read or write, who thought he was a wizard with magical powers? He really needed to write about Set Dawson, to place her in words so she would never be forgotten.
He had told Set he would eat the gun behind the bar if he ever lost her. He hadn't done so. Not yet. Not with Ram around to confuse him about his loss and his love. Joe had to admit he just was not up to loving Ram. He kept remembering what Set said to him on one occasion about his being too mighty and her being too small. Set had had the courage to remain with him. He was not so brave as that.
Though he'd done a good job of fooling himself for a while now since her return, until the accident with the stallion, two days and a whole different world away from now. Watching her taking down the great horse with her bare hands, Joe saw the entirety of her courage and her power and all the very scary aspects of her nature which Ram was always so careful to keep hidden from him. He knew in that moment, even occupied as he was with his own mortal injuries, he knew it was never going to work between them, that he did not have the heart for it, what the Gaels called the Brave Heart.
Not brave enough, Joe admitted sadly, not nearly.
Who would have thought that something so tender as love would require the steel and the courage of the mightiest warrior in full-pitched bloody battle?
 |
Duncan MacLeod held the sleepy Eldest Immortal as Adam drifted in and out of a blissful after glow. He could not quite believe how silly they were acting of late. The only truly responsible thing Duncan had done so far this whole day was bring Joseph Dawson home from the hospital. If one did not count calling home to Anne and telling her they were running late and would stay in town at the dojo tonight. He might have been grateful his wife did not scold him. As it was, Duncan was only amazed that Anne had guessed that would be the case and they would be at the Cross Estate in the morning, if Duncan and Adam were finished... How had she put it? Ah, yes, "playing." If they were finished playing by then. |
Duncan was amazed he could be so stupid about such things. Here when he thought he was being the essence, the very model, of subtlety and propriety about his relationship with Adam...Well, Duncan thought, he wouldn't have to worry about breaking the news gently to his dear "clan." Not that he really knew exactly what form that news would take. Anne was right. They were just playing, like willful children. Duncan could not think where this was all going. This thing between himself and Adam was still too new, too indistinct, to bother him. He hadn't really run the grinding reassessment about being gay or whatever, and what that would mean to how he perceived himself. But then, he had bedded his brother, Chaos, and everything else seemed pretty normal after that.
He had his marriage to Dr. Lindsey for all the things he needed a marriage to do: legitimacy for the children, stability, and so forth, but it had become all too clear that his days as Anne's lover were done and passed by him down the never-ceasing flow of Time. Duncan had even stopped thinking that it would be a good idea to marry Ram. It probably had never been a good idea, but Sean's legitimacy had seemed paramount at the time.
The particular sensitivities of a foundling, he surmised. Sean had a father. He had a mother. He had a name that was truly and rightfully his. That was enough.
He felt the light touch of Adam's fingers along his bottom lip, "Don't you ever rest, Duncan?"
"Of course I do," Duncan smiled, "Just have to get some serious guilt time in, that's all."
"And do you feel guilty, then?" Adam's grey-green eyes blinked sleepily.
"About this? Oh, no, Adam. No." Duncan curved his neck forward and kissed Adam's forehead. "No," he repeated. "And I think I would rather you stop asking all the time."
"I should hate to think you were only humoring me, to take advantage," Adam, the wicked little boy, came suddenly to the fore, all over his more usual proper English face. He shifted his long, lean frame over the more muscular build of his bed partner.
"And why would I do that?" Duncan snuggled down underneath him. "When you know I only love you for your keen and canny wit?"
Adam crossed his arms on Duncan's wide chest and studied the Highlander. "Are you saying I have nothing at all else to recommend me, then?"
"Would you rather I loved you for something else?" Duncan's hands wrapped over the long, broad cape of Adam's marathon swimmer's back, down to the slender waist and over the round of his tight rump.
"Are you shopping, or what?" Adam squirmed under Duncan's sure touch, bringing them both to a quick, hard readiness, still coated in the almond oil from their last encounter. He was relieved Duncan didn't have a generalized disgust for all oils, after the fiasco with the olive oil at the loft earlier in the week. Adam's knees slid outside Duncan's thighs as the hands pressed him open and utterly took his breath and his mind, canny wit and all, far, far away.
"Duncan?" Adam settled back to earth only to find the Scot still as stone beneath him. "Is something wrong?"
"Well, no, not really," Duncan tried to think how he would frame what he wanted to say.
Adam rose up on his hands and knees, breaking the nearly painful contact between them. He readied himself for the inevitable betrayal, the harsh, ugly moment when Duncan came to his senses and decided this would just never do. "What?" he barked, unable to bear the anxious waiting in silence.
"Make love to me," Duncan said.
Adam's eyes squinted, "I thought that's what we were doing, Duncan."
"No, that's not what I mean--"
"Oh," Adam interjected, "I understand. Why?"
It was a good question, Duncan thought. "Because I can't help worrying that I'm hurting you. I want to know what it's like to--" he couldn't think how to say this.
"To be taken, Duncan?" Adam shed all the sarcasm and his voice seemed quite a bit lower thereby, not a bass, but close. Duncan had never really noticed this before because the Eldest Immortal always used his throat in such a light and teasing style.
"If you say so, Adam. Is it really so uneven as that?"
"No," Adam scooped his right arm under Duncan's left shoulder and rolled him over, lowering himself along the length of Duncan's back. "It is absolutely equal and opposite."
Duncan crossed his arms under his head and tried to relax. "Just so you stay away from that spot that nearly got us both drowned when you were showing me that tantric thing."
"Now that," Adam paused and reached for the almond oil, "might just prove to be a problem." He poured the oil, cold, right out of the bottle onto the middle of the Highlander's lower back. Duncan jerked.
"Hey!" Duncan complained. "I'm not the one who's into that pain is pleasure theory."
"Pity," Adam said in tones more unctuous than the oil. He pinched Duncan's right cheek hard. Not the one on his face.
"Look," Duncan started to rise, "If you're not going to be serious about this then--" Before he could quite ken what had happened, Adam had twisted his left arm up behind his back and pinned him effectively against the counterpane.
"Look, yourself, Dear," Adam leaned close to his left ear. "I talk, you listen."
"What happened to 'totally equal'?"
"I lied."
Duncan fumed as only a true son of the green isle can, complete with noisy silence, all windy sea gales and terminal asthmatic Gaelic sighs. Adam finished with the oil, talking all the while, saying absolutely nothing. No doubt the more cerebral Egyptian or Aramaic or Babylonian, or whatever, version of Duncan's dark pout. Then Adam began to say real words with real meanings and Duncan began to hear.
"You don't really want to do this, Duncan. You do not appreciate helplessness. It is an acquired taste, the art of surrendering and trusting and letting someone else hold the weight of the spheres, even if for one brief moment."
"I can do this," Duncan said, his voice muffled in the pillows.
Adam let go of Duncan's arm and leaned over him, tousling his hair. "Oh, give it up, Duncan. This isn't a some sort of holy travail that must be born with grim determination. Another time. Not now."
With that, Adam climbed off Duncan and then off Joe's bed and padded over towards the bathroom to bathe, before Duncan used up all the hot water showering.
"You son of a bitch!" Duncan cursed, rolling onto his side and propping up on his elbow.
"Sad, but too true," Adam agreed. "I wonder what the old dog is up to or where..." he mused.
"I can't help it," Duncan grumbled, "When I was in hell, you hurt me doing this. I know it did not happen really, but it haunts me nonetheless."
Adam slapped his palm hard against his forehead, "Oh, Bloody Hell. What a dolt I am!" The long legs brought him back to Duncan's side before the next second was done. "I am sorry, Duncan. I did not understand what you were asking me. I just did not think. Damn me!"
Duncan reached over and stroked Adam's back. "I didn't ask well. I just wanted to stop being afraid of what would happen when we reversed positions. I thought I could handle it. Seems I was wrong--"
"No, Duncan, you weren't wrong," Adam climbed over Duncan's legs and settled behind him like a silver spoon in a tea tray. He nuzzled Duncan's neck gently. "I'd tell you to thrash me, if I didn't think I might enjoy it."
Duncan's laughter melted his reserve and softened the muscles beneath Adam's wonderful hands, smoothing and teasing, light pinches, tender tugs. And all the while, Adam's soft lips wandered over the planes and crags and valleys of the Highlander's hard face, gentling its surface, loosing the sinews that pulled from jaw to temple, slacking the lush lips, where they made final assault, counting his teeth with the velvet warmth of his tongue, stroking his palate and melting him utterly.
So skillfully did Adam ply his talents that Duncan did not feel the transition between pressing and entry, just the gentle, pulsing stretch of Adam's long sure fingers, and then a rustle of sheets and Adam was just inside him, motionless, waiting. Duncan felt Adam's warm hands enfold his shaft, teasing lightly. He heard his own voice rising up from somewhere deep in his center, a throaty, bottomless moan, deeper than midnight, irresistible as battle rage.
In that sound he heard himself surrendering, giving himself over, and he might have been afraid, but Adam was there, constant and quiet and sure. You could so easily kill me, Duncan thought, but you never would. Without even realizing it, Duncan found he had moved ever closer to the man at his back, taking him completely inside as smoothly as if Adam had always been there, deep within him, like the kindness of the blessed death, the wound at battle's end when there is no other remedy to the pain.
When Duncan was ready, Adam began to withdraw slightly and then to press inward in slow, driving strokes, bumping up against the inside of that self-same spot that had caused Duncan so much concern. He tried with the remnants of any reserve he had to stay with the moment, but each thrust set off star- sparkled shocks over the entirety of his flesh, lighting him like a Roman candle and there was nothing he could do but surrender himself into Adam's care and hope for the best.
Duncan felt the spasms start somewhere near Adam's entry and he relaxed into wave after wave of impossible paroxysms, fighting for a space in between, where he could at least breathe. Then he felt his face go numb and his eyes pulled upwards and everything went suddenly, blissfully away.
"Duncan?"
"What?"
"Are you all right, Duncan?"
He felt the cool hand come to rest on his forehead. "Adam," Duncan put his hand over Adam's, "I believe that would be the understatement of the last several centuries." He felt Adam's head come to rest between his shoulder blades, felt the bobbing of his silent laughter.
