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The Chaos Chronicles continue...
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Chapter Nine: Bless the Beastes and the Children
"Duncan?" Adam called out softly. "I am sure the world will still have more than enough problems waiting for you after you have had some sleep," he suggested.
"What do you think?" the Highlander hadn't heard a word. He held up a dark, olive pair of slacks and a deep brown erin sweater. "Too casual for a funeral?"
"Still dead?" Adam asked.
The Scot whirled around.
"Oh, you heard that, did you?" the Old Man grinned. "Duncan, they will both be dead this evening and still dead tomorrow morning when we bury them in 'Couver. Come. To. Bed." He plumped a nearby pillow invitingly. "To everything, there is--"
"Shut up!"
"--a time to be silent," Adam amended with a laugh. "They die, Duncan. Surely this is not--"
"Will you shut--"
"--up. Yes, I hear you. I'm not the one who is thrashing around here in a dense fog, Duncan."
"No," the Highlander threw the sweater back into the top drawer and went to hang up the slacks in the closet that had been carved into the rock of this subterranean guest room.
"At least none of the guests were injured," Duncan sputtered and argued, more with his wardrobe than with his paramour. "If only I hadn't gotten so drunk."
"Look!" Adam pushed the bedclothes aside and came walking over to the stubborn Scot. "Master Xavier is probably all done in, dealing with 'Couver Fire and Rescue all night, not to mention a most peculiar debriefing session with the 'Couver policia. If you come to bed now, Duncan, I promise to schedule you with him first thing tomorrow and he can flagellate you much more effectively than you can yourself. He's a pro, Duncan, and believe me, despite your pretensions to the contrary, you are a rank amateur in that department."
"I am not--" Despite his profound anguish, the Highlander did have the presence of mind to halt himself mid-sentence.
"What, Duncan?" Adam sighed. "A masochist? A pervert?" All of the Old Man's fatigue came suddenly into his voice as his patience fled. "Well, Daaaaahling, you can thank your bloody stars, this old fag was there to save your ass last night, and you can just add THAT to your long list of mea culpa's."
Adam grabbed one of Tom's ubiquitous soft guest bathrobes. "Well, come on, then," he paused at the door.
"What?" Duncan stopped flipping through the hangars and looked up.
"Mother wants to talk to you," Adam spoke the traditionally sinister phrase. "I said you'd be too tired, but I was obviously wrong."
The Highlander rushed past Adam, murmuring all sorts of accusations and curses, faulting him for not saying something sooner, and "why didn't you tell me Ram had returned?"
Adam just shuffled after, shrugging and yawning and wondering why nothing the Scot could do ever made him less lovable.
"Good morning, Lord Leod," Ram pushed up in bed and straightened the covers with her good hand. "Thank you for coming. Please, sit. Forgive me, I don't know where the light switch is--."
Duncan plopped down. "There's enough light from the door, Ram. Skip the rest and just tell me what you want."
"Your tears, to begin with," Ram replied coldly. "You have delayed them too long, Lord."
The Highlander smiled and his bright teeth sparkled in the meager light. The effect was so disturbing that Adam paused at the door to Ram's tiny room and did not enter. "Enough of the mystical babbling, Ram. How did you get back here so fast?"
Adam leaned against the door jamb and re-tied the belt on his robe.
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," Ram smiled sweetly.
"Don't you ever get tired of being a lying bitch?" the Scot cursed.
"No," Ram chuckled, "I never do."
"I'm sorry," Duncan shook his head. "That was uncalled for. I am sorry."
"Yes, you are, Lord," Ram grinned again, "You are certainly sorry. You are probably the sorriest."
"And you are going to sit there and lie about last night?" Duncan ignored the jibe.
"I seem to be more semi-recumbent than lying," the dragon parried.
Adam bit down hard on his lower lip and folded his arms, trying to appear noncommittal.
"You called the Gathering!" Duncan roared. "It's your fault we will be burying Tony and Petros tomorrow."
"Yes," Ram lifted her chin. "Yes, it is, Lord.
"I seem to be sorrier than thou," she added.
"Why didn't you warn him to get out of the booth?" Duncan accused. "Why did you let him get crushed to death and burned to cinders?"
"Because I am also a murdering bitch?" Ram suggested.
"Why didn't you stop it, Ram?"
"I did the best I could, Lord."
"And I really think letting Red live was a stupid mistake. Letting him take Grant's place in the nursery--. What could you have been thinking, Ram?"
"It really isn't any of your business what I was thinking then, and I am fairly certain you do not want to know what I am thinking now, Duncan the Distaff."
Adam tried to make it sound as if he were clearing his throat as MacLeod continued.
"Was one of those Immortals the one who attacked you? Is Red the father of this--"
Ram supplied the terms for him, "Gawain and clutch, Duncan, and no, to the rest of your question."
"Why did you call the Gathering?"
"I didn't," Ram shifted under the covers.
"But you said--"
"I said it was my fault, and it is. The babes called them, just like Sean did. I couldn't make them stop. They are still too, too young, too elemental, to understand me, let alone, obey. Believe me, Shield Brother, I tried. I led the Immortals away from the Estates, and I fought them when you could not, beyond that--"
"And you let Stoner die because--?" Duncan turned towards her, trying to see her expression in the limited light and Adam's slim shadow.
"I did warn him," Ram sighed. "He was done with living, Duncan. Tony said exactly, 'You gave me my life here twenty years ago, Ram, and now I'm giving it back to you. Thank you, very much.' "
"Really?" Duncan added one more "culpa" to his ever-expanding list.
"Maybe," Ram burrowed down under the covers, "who can say with such a lying bitch as I am."
"Ram--" Duncan began, but what could he say except to repeat he was sorry?
Ram sat up again and leaned towards him, placing her hand on his. "The same thing that makes you such a good father, is rendering you useless to your family now. Let them go, Duncan. You cannot save them. They are lost. Mary and Anne, Tony and Petros, Tessa and Fitz, and all the others. They cannot be resurrected by your anger. Your pain cannot be avoided by your rage. The living need you now. You know that. You have to let them go, Duncan, or they will take you with them, and all that they were to you will also be lost."
"So you're saying I should weep?" Duncan mumbled. He found that the single thing he understood was what Ram had not said. She had not named Sean in the list of his losses. He was certain she would not have included him simply in the list of "all the others."
"At least lie down," Ram moved sideways a little way and pulled one of the pillows from behind her back. "Your fidgeting is bouncing the bed and I'm sore enough from last night's doings."
Duncan meant to argue that he had not been fidgeting at all, but he found the invitation too tempting, so he just settled down on his side. He felt the tension leave his neck and shoulders as her hand wandered through his hair and rubbed gently against the armor of his stubborn skull.
The great weariness he had held at bay for the past three days descended suddenly and his mind began to drift into more temperate waters. "What are you humming?" he heard himself ask.
"I'll sing it for you, if you like, Brother," Ram's throaty alto shivered his scalp.
"Please," he said.
"Just like the Seneca," she began.
Just like the Seneca, I have lost my place,
And where I've been planted now,
Soon will be shaken.And just like the Seneca,
It's a losin' race.Too soon tomorrow comes,
And nighttime's awakening,
Brings forth a melody I've heard before.Oh, my God, must it be so hard,
Just to breathe and love and learn to be a man.
I'm doing all that I can.Too soon tomorrow,
Nighttime, delay its pace,
Too soon tomorrow becomes yesterday.
"Stop it," Duncan murmured.
"Shhhhh," Adam rearranged the covers and snuggled in behind the Scot. "Go back to sleep. We've only got a few more hours before supper."
"I've cried enough," the Highlander mumbled.
"Yes, Love. Quite enough. It's all right. Go back to sleep."
"Stop singing that song," Duncan's slurred and sleepy complaint continued.
"All right," Adam spoke to the sleeping Scot. "It has stopped. You are in your own bed and the singing has stopped."
"How did I get here?" Duncan started to wake.
"I carried you," Adam stroked his shoulder.
MacLeod fell back to sleep, laughing.
Welcome back to the world, Duncan, Adam thought. He pressed his lips against the thick, dark curls.
Happy New Year, Son of Glenfinnan, and Child of My Heart.
"Good morning," Sean greeted the newcomer to the nursery. The man had the reddest hair he'd ever seen. The wetter it got, the tighter it curled, tiny, gilded copper ringlets over his entire head. Even his eyebrows were the same bright red which made his eyes seem more cherry wood than brown.
"I'm Sean, and you are--?" he continued.
"You don' wanna speak wid me." The short, wide Immortal had a peculiar voice, a sort of a nasal, primitive sound, all at odds with his fabulous mane.
"Perhaps you'd like to speak with me--Stop it, Piper!" Sean chided his charge who had decided to take the new Immortal at his word.
"Uh-uh," the redhead grunted in the negative. He lifted his hands, one Crystal Child in each. "They're talkin ta me," he said, as if he were admitting some serious insanity.
"Oh, dear," Sean crooned. "Nobody has told you anything, have they? Have they--?" he nodded toward the redhead, waiting for a name.
The man sighed, "Gregory. Greg'll do."
"Then consider me your brother, Orphan," Sean added breezily. "Lesson One: these are children, dragon children, Greg. They do speak to you. It isn't your imagination."
Greg brought the blue orb close to his face, "Hello?"
Then both men laughed as Piper sang, very loudly, that her siblings should not speak at all to this "Blood Fuzzy" trespasser.
"Ya mean ol' melon!" Greg grumbled."Piper. Piper!" Sean tried to restrain his babe, but to no avail. He called the other children to him and they waited by the poolside for Piper to stop giving the new man "what for."
"No," he spoke softly to the little ones, "Mr. Granite still loves you very much. Yes, he will come back for visits, but Greg will be your new nanny now.
"If Piper let's him live," Sean joked. Poor Greg. He didn't seem at home in the water, even before the furious little globe began trying to drown him for his disrespect. No, Greg looked every bit an ancient knight, stocky and a bit on the short side, arms like a smithy, and, what Dr. Byrnes always called, "aiming eyes." It referred to an intensity and purpose of gaze that marked the man a hunter or warrior. Of course, the brutish speech patterns reminded one more of "knee breaker" for some Mafia boss of a more recent century, rather than a noble knight of an ancient king.
Well, Sean thought, as he watched Greg play "toss-ups" with Piper--her favorite game--Ram certainly brings us the most interesting gifts. This man was going to be no exception. For all his grumbly, anti-social posturings, he'd won over a very angry Piper...
...and that was a magic of no small import.
The short black man walked around the ruins of his most prized possession, the perfect recreation of Falling Waters, the architectural solution to a difficult building site, by another short man, this one, white. Thomas knelt down, picked up a portion of charred plywood, and mentally continued his list of interior restorations and replacements.
The process was more or less automatic. Most of his life, and the entirety of his wealth, were due to his knack of taking old things and putting them right. He was a junk man at heart, Tom would be the first to admit, though he didn't call it junk. To Tom, these were all treasures, merely awaiting a healing.
Thomas Cross' consciousness focused instead on the mystery that this burned out top floor represented. Digging beneath the broken shards of Christmas ornaments and burned tree branch, he retrieved a bit of burnt down, a handful size, far larger than from a bird, but otherwise, the same. Standing, he held the down and and walked towards the slumped picture window on the south wall, by the entry stair that led down to the river he had made.
Tom ran his wide hands over the casing and moved sideways from the door sill. Finally, he had to climb up onto what was left of the sofa. (Check the upstate warehouse for three-pillow, yellow, flw couch.) Leaning over the back, he reached his left arm as wide as it would go and found it fit perfectly into the starburst warp in the window's glazing.
"Sir?" A tall, blond man, nearly twice Thomas' height, called from the shadows of what had been the pantry.
"Grant!" Thomas spun round and bounded across the blackened wreckage, leaping straight up into the giant's arms as if he were a child whose father had returned, finally.
"And it is good to see you too, Sir," Grant's Moa stone features tried to approximate his internal joy even as they preserved his signature dignity.
"You know," Thomas climbed back down the mountain, patting him on the stomach. "I was thinking it was about time we broke with tradition and redid this in Craftsman style, higher ceiling, more elegant wood..."
"You think it would dishonor Mary to put it back the way it was," Grant's gigantic lungs took in a deep breath. He was not wont to expound in such long sentences.
"Oh, exactly," Thomas wrapped his arms around Grant and hugged. "It is so good to have you out of the nursery."
"I am not sure about that Gawain, um, that Gregory person, Sir," the giant said.
"Father says it's all right," the Master of Cross Estates had decided to call Ram by the name he had always called the dragon. He had decided to end the division in his mind as concerned the many names of Malak, Setan'm, Ram. "Anyway, who better for sitting dragons than a Grail Knight?"
"If you say so, Sir."
"I think I just did. Listen," Tom let go of the giant and began to act out his story as he related it.
"Here," Thomas knelt down at the room's center. "The angel knelt here."
The angel knelt here.
Mary was not here yet. We do not know where she was before she was brought here, but she died somewhere else and was brought here later.
The angel knelt here. The wings were probably furled against his back, tightly. Their span would easily have been over forty feet. The angel had walked into this room in mortal form and built the wings after he knelt down. The ceiling is too low for standing with such appendages.
The angel knelt here, probably praying, maybe singing threnody, maybe just weeping for Mary's loss. Then someone crashed through the river stair door, breaking the handle and splintering the casement, though it was unlocked. Some--thing--in terrible rage, entered, approaching the kneeling angel, from the back.
I do not think he knew he was under attack until the last moment.
Still kneeling, he turned towards the intruder, and was blinded.
He must have been terrified, trapped by his wings in this dreadful box of a room, his eyes so strafed, he could only see darkness--and the little bit of wounding light from the south window. His great wings fluttered helplessly as he struggled to turn towards that light, stripping off flight pinions.
Like a caged bird, Grant. Like an eagle in a snare. It must have been awful.
Somehow, he managed, in his extremity, to finally turn and he charged towards the window, tripping to his knees on the couch, breaking the leading edge of his left wing into the pane.
There, bent over the back of the couch, his face pressed against the frosted glazing, the angel was defiled, torn most cruelly by the, the monster who had stormed this sanctuary and befouled the angel's solemn grief.
"He? Sir?" Grant interrupted the narrative. It had wound down in any case.
"Malak," Tom said quietly.
"But, Sir--?"
"I know. He was dead," Thomas sighed, "You could say he returned for Mary's death, to sing her last song. I don't know, but I do know the forensics say that Malak was here first, and then Ram returned in the same body. Never, mind," he answered the giant's look of consternation. "Whoever was here started out by sodomizing, raping Malak. Later, he raped Ram. Sometime between those two outrages, he found the time to throw Sean off the balcony and into the stream."
The giant's pale eyes gazed out the window towards the break in the balcony railing.
"I haven't spoken with MacLeod about this, but the preliminary findings are consistent with Sean's being assaulted as well," Thomas shook his head.
"What, Sir?" Grant's attention returned.
"There are some indications that Sean was raped also. Of course, there were no marks on his body and Dr. Byrnes doesn't seem to have any recollection of the events between his death twenty years ago and his awakening in the pool downstairs."
"Oh," Grant said, "I see why you don't want to put this back the way it was."
"Really," Thomas mentally tore up his list of replacements. "I'll call Victor in Massachusetts. He can start getting the Craftsman furnishings together for me."
"Won't really help, though," Grant mused.
"Maybe I'll tell Victor to send me a new batch of friends, while he's at it," Tom joked sadly.
The giant started shuddering and making an awful, rolling noise.
"Grant," Thomas smacked the man on his back. "I wish you'd learn how to laugh properly."
After the second set of funerals, after another several days of formal grieving and waking and feasting, and more trips down to 'Couver for depositions and explanations, after the last Immortal to leave, Mokgobja, had said his goodbyes and promised to take all their love with him home to Africa and the Zulu Natal Project--after all of these things had come to pass, then the Cross Estates settled into the more ordinary rhythms of winter.
The first few weeks, they had gone up to the gravesite, the small copse on the hill, and visited with the dead--and with the two mules who had taken up residence as tour guides. It had been a daily affair for a while, but this or that chore took them away and then a late blizzard interrupted the ritual for three days and they hadn't been up to the hill since.
Only Thomas kept the vigil, and that was only because he had little more than two months left to get his mule team ready to kick ass at the Spring Fair. He had to walk up the hill to get them, and they had made this place a tradition as only a mule can do.
The blind dragon kept to herself in the lower levels of Cross' demesne: the library and the study and her own tiny room. Ram didn't speak to them and she made it more than obvious, that she didn't want to listen to them either.
Down in 'Couver, the remains of the Drieg Tower were carted away to a brick dealer in 'Frisco who was making a fortune "retrofitting" the lofts of the rich and homosexual. Thomas' clients kept one each for themselves before the wreckers arrived. Dragon secured the rest of the block where Joe's Bar resided and began to take down the walls and refit the second floor. The Facet did not want for any number of highly-placed investors who missed the old tower's many splendors.
Mayor Dawson knew the era had officially ended when one blustery day in February, a courier delivered the old orange neon "Joe's" sign to the mansion. He'd been so flustered that Lucille had to remind him to tip the man. "Drieg Wharf" they were calling it now, and those few who still prized the blues nights were so few they hardly made a sound. Joe put the sign with the rest of the boxes in the back room, where they were already beginning to pack. Come the spring primaries, he would be a lame duck. When summer was over, they would be gone. Just where they were going was still a spirited topic of discussion, but it seemed they were headed for the Cross Estates to be near their son, though they were neither of them entirely happy about being so close to Joe's ex.
Gregory turned out to be a dutiful, if not loving, nanny. The day he stopped wearing his swimsuit all the time, Sean and Kyle decided he'd finally become true water-folk. His charges wore away at him, like water against a stone, gradually cleaning away the centuries of lost hope that had made his own skin more a barrier to life than his old armor had been. By his second month in the nursery, Greg was even heard to laugh on occasion, but he always denied it, when pressed.
And as much as Sean and Kyle were dying to hear about Camelot and such, they decided between themselves not to speak a word of it, until the old knight should bring the subject up himself.
He never did.
Richard and Alexa Ryan finally finished with foaling season, left the stables in the hands of the neighbors, and flew up to give their belated respects and to see the dragon children and just to visit. Their arrival threw the entire compound into the past, dredging up long-drowned sorrows and bright flashes of joyful beginnings, new love, old betrayals.
Thomas alone met them in the present, as fellow breeder of fine steeds. He was soon enough bartering for two of their newest fillies and extolling the virtues of his own grand mares. Alexa loved the mules, but Richie couldn't stop making fun of them, for which he lost the better portion of his favorite jeans when the wheel Jack took a notion to teach the disrespectful redhead a lesson in the stress tolerances of denim when coming in protracted contact with mule teeth.
MacLeod drove the Ryans down to 'Couver, to catch their plane back. Adam had just disappeared at the last minute, so the Highlander was left to the still-uncomfortable feelings that stood between his former student and himself. Alexa tried to bridge the gulf for the two men, but gave up finally and just sat silently, staring at the grey fog and the melting snow.
Richard plunged into the silence nervously, babbling on about their ranch outside of Albuquerque and the Navajo child they'd adopted, or tried to. After six months of foster care with them, the Tribal Council had decided to place the boy with a family within the tribe, and the child had gone back to Arizona.
"I really admire your being a Dad," Richie blurted out.
"I wasn't a very good father to you, Richard," MacLeod said. His eyes never left the road. His shoulders never relaxed.
"Well, Mac," Richie laughed. "It's not like I had anything to compare. You were all right, I guess."
"Right," MacLeod chuckled. "Right up until I killed you."
Alexa gasped.
"Jeezus," Richie cursed. "I'm new to this Immortal thing, Mac, but even I have learned to let the past go. I don't know what to say. Is that one mistake going to come between us forever?"
"I don't know what to say, either," Duncan agreed. "Forever is a long time."
They didn't say another thing, all the way to Seacouver International.
But at the boarding gate, Alexa hauled off and slugged Richie...
...and Richie shuffled his way back to give the Highlander an awkward hug.
Then the two men held each other so tightly and for so long that the Ryans nearly missed their plane.
"Adam," Duncan MacLeod wound up to give his paramour some tongue pie for leaving him to drive the Ryan's, all by himself to 'Couver.
"With you in a minute, Dunc," Adam waved his long fingers in the Scot's general direction. The light from the many monitors in the Cross command center shimmered over the Eldest Immortal's angular features, carving deep shadows and bright planes over their contemplative surfaces.
"Excuse me!" Duncan grabbed the back of Adam's chair and spun it around. "Dunc?"
Adam looked up. "Not over the Gathering, yet?" he joked. "Wasn't that so two months ago?"
"Where were you?" Duncan began to lose track of the reason for his anger. The Old Man just looked so delicious in soft jeans and bare feet and--. "Hey! What did I tell you about borrowing my sweaters?"
"Can I just stipulate to being the most aggravating spouse on the planet?" Adam surrendered, standing up to wrap his yards of arms around the Highlander. "You smell like Richard," he noted. "Did you two finally make up?"
"Yeah," Duncan entirely lost track of whatever had made him so irritated. "I think it's going to be all right now."
"Listen," Adam pulled back a little so he could look the Scot squarely in the face. "We need to talk."
"What's wrong?" Duncan pulled Adam's arms down from his shoulders
"I didn't--"
"You didn't have to, " Duncan interrupted. "Nothing good ever came after 'we need to talk.' " He took a deep breath. "Spring's coming. Are you thinking of taking off again?"
"Oh, God, No!" Adam gasped. "No, no. The final DNA reports came back today is all. Jeez, Duncan, how can you even ask?"
Duncan shrugged. "History, I guess. That and I've been acting like a jerk lately."
Adam shrugged back. "Yes, you have, but it doesn't really matter, Love. You have had too much to deal with lately. I don't seem to be much help, except as a focus for your anger. I don't mind. I know it won't last."
Adam picked up the mike and paged day-surveillance back to command bay. "Just a minute and I'll hand over the monitor duty, and we can talk about the reports, Duncan."
"So unlike you," Duncan mused from his place at the door.
"What?" Adam bent over the consoles, tapping in data and transfer summaries.
"Oh, uh, taking command like this. Getting so involved. What happened to Mr. Eat-Drink-and-I'll catch you later?"
"I guess it's just the old 'Ball and Chain,' " Adam grinned, ducking just at the last minute and escaping under MacLeod's arms. He dashed out the door, giggling like a hyena.
The officer in charge of security never had such a debrief on change of shift, as Adam babbled the " all clear, monitors reset, nothing to report," all the while speeding by him down the hallway, their Clan Chief in hot pursuit.
The persuasive look of sunrays streaming through stained glass and dust motes of Thomas' underground study was as close to daylight as Ram had been for ten weeks. Two levels beneath the thinning snow, was as close to the surface as the pregnant dragon had strayed for all this time.
Not that it mattered much, with Grant crushing up vitamin D and calcium and prenatal vitamins in everything he brought her to eat. It wasn't as if she was missing out on any winter sights, being nearly blind, or mostly blind, or just blind enough that the light had nothing for her but pain. Ram tried to be quiet and composed, but she was silently bored out of her mind.
Nothing of interest had happened since the New Year's battle. Well, there had been the tedious episode, three, no four weeks earlier, when Doctor Allen decided her left arm needed some Orthopedic work or she was going to lose it.
Ram knew it was her fault, really. Her blindness and the blood and the excitement of battle, all of this had confounded her ability to recognize Gawain at first, or nearly--at last. She'd just about reached his neck with her blade, when she knew who knelt there. What could she do? She had to stop the blade with her broken arm. That had been most unpleasant. So riveting, in fact, she could hardly gather her wits to give Gawain the terms of his salvation.
Anyway, two breaks in one week, no wonder it would not heal. They had wanted to numb her arm and set in a tinker-toy of screws and braces and rods. She couldn't have them do that. The rods would be steel, which was the mortal term for carbonized iron, which would be the death of the babes.
Ram had let them go off to get things ready for her transport, and when they had all gone, she'd cut off the offending extremity after tying the upper part with her bathrobe tie. They had then proceeded to rush her to 'Couver General, via air lift, but there was really nothing to do except sew up what was left and send her back.
Ram had tried to be good since then. She told them to leave her alone because she couldn't possibly be good around them. They all made her too angry now, except for Grant. The giant had a way of being quiet. What did she care that Thomas took her blood at the hospital on some lame excuse or other and was even now learning more about her than anyone on Earth's shiny orb? Damn him! And all the while he was squealing about what a terrible thing she had done, when he wasn't cursing himself for leaving her weapon in her room.
They were so bloody curious, these man beastes, so irrepressibly nosy. Then again, they had survived and, except for the five Ram now carried--plus or minus a few--the dragons were all dead. Perhaps their mortality and curiosity had bought eternity for them. That would be a true Dragon's Iron, that mortality and progeny and a perpetual childishness were the ultimate answer to Time itself.
"I am pulling too tight, Lord?" Grant's gentle phrasing were all at odds with how she remembered him by sight.
"No, not at all," Ram replied, sighing. "You certainly are a gentle hair braider."
"Well," Grant replied, pulling another tendril, brushing and sorting, "the mules won't let me be otherwise. They really do not brook any rough handling."
"So am I practice for mane-braiding, then?" Ram was surprised to find herself in something very like a conversation.
The gentle tugs, the light scratching against her scalp as he separated the strands, the feel of his palms against her temples when she forgot to hold her head still, all made her sleepy and Ram drifted away to Bavil, where the lucent fountains babbled nothing at all so beautifully all day long.
"Lord?" Grant roused her. "Done."
Were she still sighted, this would have been the moment where she gazed into a round glass and extolled the virtues of her gigantic hairdresser, but Ram reached her hand up and felt the intricate weave he had made and did her best to sound pleased.
She suspected he smiled, but there was no way to know.
"Ready?" the giant asked.
Ram heard the glass jar and smelled the wood alcohol. "I suppose," she answered, trying to relax.
She felt the air against the end of the stump as the alcohol focused her attention there. It was such a peculiar sensation, like hitting the button on a metal tape measure and suddenly having it sucked back into its holder. The rest of the time it seemed as if her forearm and hand were still there, broken and throbbing. This was how the Wizard felt, she mused, both his legs still haunting him.
"Sean?" Duncan MacLeod called softly to the ripples that ran little light trails over the surface of the empty pool. Except for a small disturbance in the mist wraiths, his voice was canceled by the soft burbles and splashes of the pipe falls that filled the bright underground nursery.
Well, he'd done as he'd promised. Not his fault he couldn't find his son. Maybe later. Maybe--.
"Hullo, Lad," Sean's familiar face, with Dr. Byrne's equally familiar broad smile, broke the surface of the pool, the luminous orb popping up behind him.
"Greetings, Piper," Duncan addressed the round ruby crystal, Mary MacLeod's unique daughter. "Se--," the Highlander stuttered on the "shhh" sound and he restarted with, "Dr. Byrnes?"
"Yes, Lad," Sean shook his dark curls, flipping a sparkling spray of salty water over the uncomfortable Scot. He did not ask Duncan to call him by his given name, though the "Dr. Byrnes" was more distant than their friendship warranted. This business of being reborn in the body of his godson was a messy bit at best.
"We have a difficult problem," Duncan pressed on, trying to remember how he'd meant to phrase this, when he hadn't really wanted to do this in the first place. "And my spouse reminded me that I'd overlooked the one person who might be the most helpful." The Scot lowered himself stiffly and dangled his feet in the water.
Piper stroked his calves like some sort of water-cat. He could feel her humming solicitously.
"Congratulations, Lad," Sean said brightly. "When did you get married?"
Oh, dear, Duncan cringed. In the confusion and sadness of addressing his murdered friend in the body of his lost son, the Highlander had entirely overlooked the fact that Dr. Byrnes did not yet know about his unusual marriage.
"Duncan?"
"Last summer," Duncan answered when he'd finally sorted through all the secondary considerations and come back to the actual question. "When you married Mary."
"I did?" It was Sean's turn to sort. A distinct and ugly revulsion transformed his fair features. "I am Piper's father?" he asked finally.
"Oh," Duncan rubbed his thighs, "No, no. Their father stole Mary from you on your wedding day."
"Go on," Sean prompted in his best doctor-patient tones, though he was clearly more personally curious than professionally concerned.
"This is just too complicated," Duncan complained.
"You said there was a problem," Sean tried to steer the conversation back to a single question.
"Yes," Duncan thought a moment. "You see, Ram--"
"Ram isn't dead?" Sean interrupted.
Duncan groaned audibly. This was impossible. "What do you know, Sean? What do you remember?"
Sean gathered Piper up in the crook of his arm, kissed the globe lightly, and then tossed her out to the middle of the pool where she floated lazy circles, humming something very like Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. Dr. Byrnes wondered if Bach hadn't run into an angeling somewhere along the way.
"It's a good question, Duncan," Sean began. "I remember you were troubled and you drove out to my estates because it couldn't wait until I was back in the office on Monday. The sun was almost down and the clouds had been hanging in the sky all day, threatening rain.
"We had lost touch after--well, one of the wars--and I was glad to see you, Lad. You said something about evil and good, the one overwhelming the other, something like that. I'm not sure I understood you then, but I knew that wild look on your face, that fire in your eyes was not the MacLeod I had known. Then you calmed a little and your shoulders dropped and your face relaxed. I saw you then, Lad, the Duncan that was my old friend and true.
"I held out my hand to you, and you took it--," Sean looked straight up at the Scot, "--and then you took my life with it." Sean shook his head and shrugged. "And that was that--.
"I'm sorry, Lad," Dr. Byrnes solicitous tones followed the Highlander as he drew back physically from the truth that his mind could still not entirely admit: that he had killed an unarmed friend.
"Duncan, listen to me," Sean pleaded. "It is done and over and much as either of us would have it undone, still--."
"You never did forgive me," Duncan said finally.
"No, Lad. I never did," Sean slapped his wet palm on the poolside, inviting the Scot to retake his place there. "And you never forgave me, either, if memory serves."
"Forgive you?" Duncan asked.
"You heard me, Lad," Sean moved onto his back and floated away, giving his friend time and space. Piper bubbled up to him and feathered her delicate cilia over his abdomen, making him laugh. "The rest of what I remember," he continued on, finishing the answer to Duncan's question. "The rest is, well, I seemed to be strolling through a lovely garden. I don't see it very well. It is just that time of evening where you can still see things, but barely, and better in the periphery than straight ahead. I had these lengthy discussions with the sultry air and I imagined I was speaking to you, and that you answered me. I didn't really hear you, but after a time I began to trust my imaginings.
"Wait--Stop it, Piper! I can't think!"
The little red orb splashed him and she dove to the far depths of the pool to sulk.
"Where was I--oh, all of that was after Ram came to me and told me to wake. She said I was to come to that garden and speak with you. She said that she was carrying your son and that I might return to the world in the body of your son, that his christening would be the day of my new birth, but that there would be complicated consequences and that my life would be different than the one I had before.
"I think I agreed to the terms--," Sean paused, "She must have asked me, but I don't remember."
"Dr. Byrnes," Duncan, seated again on the clammy pool's lip, dangled his left fingers in the body-warm water. "Do you--"
"Oh, and I remember that funny party we had on your barge with Adam's throwing the plates away when you bullied him about washing up. Oh, and I remember he was there the day I died--somewhere in the background. Yes, he was there. I remember thinking the three of us should enjoy a stroll down to the nearest black and white and have a jolly wallow over a few pints together--."
"Sean," Duncan called him back from his progressive reveries. "I think I have the picture now, Sean. Do you remember anything after the christening in Darius' chapel?"
"No, Lad," Sean sculled closer. "Except I do recall the cool rush of water on my forehead--and there was a brief fear about being trapped in the body of an infant--and then I tasted the salt, like a tear on my tongue--.
"Then, then I tasted the salt again," Sean finished, "but it was the water of this pool and my body was--" he glanced down the length of his frame and grinned broadly, "--fine."
"You are welcome," Duncan grinned back. He was at least half responsible, after all.
"Thank you," Sean bowed so deeply that he disappeared under the surface.
A half minute later, the Highlander began to fear for his friend and his son. He slipped into the pool and dove to the bottom. The water had grown so full of plankton that he could not see four feet in front of him, but Duncan moved forward blindly anyway. His lungs finally drove him to the surface gasping.
"Where did you go?" he sputtered.
"I had something to do," Sean said softly. "Come along, Lad. The rest of this is best discussed on land." Sean's fine young limbs lifted him out of the pool and he motioned for Duncan to follow him.
The Scot flipped his wet hair back and climbed out of the pool after him. "What did you have to do?" he asked as they passed through the anteway and all its blinking machinery.
"Kyle says there's a study up one floor that is quiet and bright," Sean looked up one way and down the other, squinting down the dark stone hall. "Do you know where it is?"
"Byrnes," Duncan crossed his arms stubbornly.
"Yes, Lad?"
"I'll take you there if you answer my question, Doctor."
"I've been readying Piper for this moment almost from the beginning, Lad. I said goodbye to her and sent her to the lower pools."
"This way," Duncan started down the hall towards the stairs. "Goodbye?"
"You must know I shouldn't be here, Lad."
The Highlander understood that Sean was not speaking about geographical concerns.
"You said something terrible had happened, Duncan."
Duncan stopped at the stair and turned round. He didn't remember saying that exactly.
"Something terrible must have happened. I am proof of that," Sean passed the Scot and continued up the stone steps.
Duncan followed along. "Turn right," he said when Sean reached the top.
Sean began to laugh. "In all my time in psychiatry," he was saying, "I never thought I would become a pathological symptom."
"Huh?" Duncan opened the door to the study, not a little relieved to find Ram absent. She usually napped this time of day, but one could never tell.
"Something awful happened to Sean, bad enough to regress him--not to childhood, not to infancy, but farther back still, to the time before his birth--to me, Lad."
Duncan rustled around in a small room beyond the fireplace and retrieved some blankets for them. He returned to the study and tossed a soft green comforter at Sean. "I still don't understand saying 'goodbye' to Piper, Sean."
"I've known from the first, Duncan, that Sean would find a way to deal with whatever happened, and when he did--"
"You would be gone again," Duncan finished.
"Well," Sean sighed, "I'd still be me, but I wouldn't know it."
Duncan keyed in the com and asked the day crew to bring them some tea. Then he settled on the low couch before the hearth and wrapped himself in the soft auburn mohair of Tom's stadium blanket. He suppressed the urge to apologize for Sean's murder.
"So," Sean looked up from the floor where he'd bundled nearer the fire. "Tell me all about your wife. Do I know her?"
Duncan burrowed more deeply under the throw.
"Are you blushing, Lad?"
The Highlander mumbled something.
"Newly-wedded bliss, eh?"
"Hardly, we've been together ever since you were a babe, Sean."
Sean got up and answered the respectful knock on the dark carved door to the study. He returned with a tea tray laden with all sorts of goodies. Byrnes pulled a low table in front of the couch and played "mother," remembering the Scot's "a little lemon, one sugar cube, and a biscuit, if it's not a bother." His mouth full of two cookies, Sean chuckled, "How romantic, Lad. You married the governess."
"What?" Duncan choked on his tea. "Oh, I suppose I did. It wasn't exactly Jane Eyre, though."
"No?"
"And it's not really a marriage--really," Duncan warmed his hands on the porcelain teacup and stared at his reflection in the pale gold liquid.
"No sex, eh?" Sean said around another mouthful of cookies.
Duncan put the cup back on the tray and looked straight into Sean's slate grey eyes. "It is still not legal for two men to marry." He paused a moment to give Dr. Byrnes a time to digest the thought. "I am married to Adam Piersen."
"Very funny," Sean swallowed and poured another cup of tea. "Honestly, Lad. You had me going there."
Duncan was damned if he were going to argue the point with Dr. Byrnes. He wrapped the mohair around him in a rough kilt and went prowling round the study where Ram had been spending her lightless confinement. A shame, really, that she couldn't see this cozy little Holmesian study with its Queen Anne-this and its mid-Victorian-that, and everything in rich tones of burgundy and wood and gild. In most homes, this would be the library, complete with it's second floor shelves and the walkway that graced the three walls an arm's length higher than the rest of the room. With the false light streaming through the stained glass windows, it had a certain clerical quality that was at once ordered and stimulating. The cozy marble fireplace completed the Thomas Cross inner sanctum.
"I was in love with Mary Palmer?" Sean's question disturbed the sanctum's silence.
"Very much," Duncan answered. "I think you loved her before you were even old enough to know what that meant. You were raised together for a while, but then she went to Europe with her mother. Evidently, you found each other on the net and stayed in touch. When she returned, you found ways to visit with her, even thought that was forbidden."
"Why?" Sean shifted his blanket down off his shoulders and reached for the last of the cookies.
"Mary's mother did not approve of Adam's and my--uh--arrangement."
"Oh, right," Sean spit cookie crumbs down his front, "No, really, Lad--Why?"
"I can't say I really understand, Sean, but it seems--if you believe such things--that Mary was fated to wed another, a very old--" Duncan wondered how to explain about Ram's people. "You know Ram is not an Immortal?"
"No?" Sean stood up and stretched his back. He moved to the couch. Having finally dried off, the fire was a little too warm to bear. "That would explain the lack of aura, but I do know she is immortal. I can't betray any patient-doctor confidences, you understand--."
"Patient? Ram was your patient?"
Sean did not address the obvious conclusion. "What is she, then?"
"Something else," Duncan tried not to be disturbed by the fact Ram had sought out a psychiatrist of her own free will, even if it had been twenty years earlier. "What Piper is," he said finally, "Only grown up."
"Oh," Sean smiled. "Yes, of course. How could I not have seen that? Oh--" his slate eyes aimed suddenly at the study door. "If it isn't the Missus. Hail there, Adam, Old Man. It's about time you were here to defend yourself. You should hear what this tartan-hearted Highland goat has been saying about you."
Adam grinned wordlessly and handed each man a stack of clothes, much the same as his own--T and jeans--a perfect garment for the early spring. While they dressed, the Eldest Immortal poured his own tea and worried his lovely hands through the cookie crumbs. He'd help them carry Sean down to the pool almost three months ago, but he hadn't really seen him since, not to talk to anyway. "So," he addressed them as they finished dressing. "Any thoughts?"
Sean squirmed inside his clothes, trying to get comfortable. The warm waves of the nursery were so much better for clothing than these inflexible pieces. "Any thoughts about what, Lad?"
"Duncan!" even Adam grimaced at the sound his whining made. "Didn't you even ask him?"
Sean sauntered over to the couch and perched on its wide leather-padded arm. "I'll have to admit it, Old Man. You are beginning to sound like a wife. Ask me what?"
Adam's dusky green eyes sited down on the Scot. "Well?"
Duncan shrugged. "Adam has this idea that we could put you under and make you remember, Sean."
"Doesn't sound like you at all, Dr. Piersen," Sean chuckled. "You're so anxious to see me dead again, then?"
Adam pulled up from his couch-swallowing sprawl and folded his hands on his lap. "I am only anxious that my baby brother return," he said soberly.
"And now you're sounding like a mother," Sean slid down beside him on the couch. "You've changed, Old Man."
"His fault," Adam pointed a long, tapered finger towards the Highlander. "I was perfectly happy to be a lay-about reprobate, but you know how insidiously bothersome this lad can be when it comes to questions of honor and duty."
"I've heard," Sean laughed softly. "So tell me about my mother and I'll consider your suggestion about trying to remember, though I think I'll die awake, rather than drugged, if it's all the same to you."
"You are too brave by half, Byrnes," MacLeod began to pace before the fire.
"Ah, and do I hear the sound of forgiveness?" Sean asked cryptically.
"Forgiveness?" Duncan stopped, turned slowly towards the couch, and crossed his arms.
"That I was too stupid by half?" Dr. Byrnes commented.
"Oh," the MacLeod chief ducked his chin. "I forgive you, Sean."
"As I do you," Sean answered without hesitation.
"If you two are going to hug," Adam grumbled, "then I'm leaving before I gag."
"Now there's the Old Adam," Sean levered up from the couch and went, not to hug the Scot, but to see to the last of the tea. "Okay," he said returning to the couch. "Tell me about my mother."
"She is injured," Adam began. "From the fight New Year's eve, but otherwise she is par for a brooding drake, except for the blindness, of course."
Sean smiled blankly, so Adam asked, "What part doesn't make sense?"
"Oh," Byrnes sighed. "Fight, brooding, duck, blindness. What can any of that do with the lovely Lucille?"
It was Adam's turn to blank.
"Huh?" Duncan asked.
Dr. Byrnes tried again, "You know, Duncan's new wife?"
"Huh?" Adam asked.
Sean slowed his speech to a crawl. "Duncan just got married, so he tells me. He married the governess. That would be the lush Rubens beauty that--"
"Oh," Adam interrupted. "Didn't you tell him that, either?"
"As a matter of fact," Duncan snorted, "I did tell him, but he won't believe me."
"I was your governess, Sean," Adam explained. "I raised you."
Sean bolted up, his fists shuddering at his sides. "I know I've been lolling around this grotto for the past season in a sort of mindless bliss, but, damnation, I was not born--reborn--yesterday, gentlemen! I would thank you two to have a little more respect. I will not be made a fool!"
Adam's thin lips made a round, toothless "O."
Duncan's lush lips pressed together tightly and his nostrils flared from the effort not laugh, though his eyes began to fill with liquid mirth.
"Damn the both of you!" Sean had clearly surrendered his bravery to an anxious anger.
"Sit down, Sean," MacLeod set aside his mantle of father and friend. "Adam and I are lovers. We got married last year. Why don't you have a little respect."
"Oh," the wind rushed out of the young man as he sank back onto the couch. "Oh, dear, I had no idea. But, Duncan, you're not gay."
"No," Duncan's brow lifted slyly, "but my husband is."
Adam fell off the couch and rolled over the table, scattering the tea things in a noisy clamor of breaking porcelain and howling laughter.
Thomas Cross' study soon settled into a more somber tone as its three occupants gathered on the floor before the fire. Adam had cleaned up the remnants of their tea and Duncan had turned off the lights. The three men sat cross-legged in a circle, facing each other. Without a word they joined their hands round the ring and each found the stillness which was the essence of their warrior blood, the reason each had survived so long in the gladiatorial landscape of their long lives.
And they looked for all the world like a seance, as if they were there to raise the dead.
They were there to raise the living and lay the dead to rest.
Dr. Sean Byrnes said his last "God Be's" and they began.
By the pyre-light, the first of the liturgy shimmered over them, simple and sad.
"Is he a good child?"
The two parents gave their unqualified responses in synchronous assertion.
"Is he a brave child?"
And, again, the response.
"Then let us begin."
Sean Byrnes surrendered to the circle, and the Clan Chief, and the Paramour. He surrendered to their thrumming, electric union, like a quickening of victory, though he had never felt so defeated. He tried to take the position that he was dead already, that these not-quite-three months had been his haunting on the world, his gift to the new life he had become, his gift to the boy.
The good boy.
The brave boy.
The boy these two men loved, more than they loved each other.
More than they loved themselves.
Sean, he spoke soundlessly to his younger self, It is time to return to your loving family. It is time to come home.
There was a sudden spasm of light, an explosion of pure energy, and the three men groaned as each jerked back from the circle, gasping.
Only the fire spoke, chattering in crackles and spits, licking their faces with its patient waves of warmth and light, as they waited for their wits to gather enough to speak.
"Sean?" Adam finally sounded the question for them.
Byrnes did not speak at first. He started shivering so violently, he seemed to be seizing. Duncan scrambled to his side and steadied him inside the circle of his broad arms. There followed an unbearable silence as the Scot rocked the lad slowly and they waited for a sign that all was well.
It had just never occurred to either man that things were as they were because they needed to be that way, even if that way did not please them.
"The dolphin," Sean murmured.
"What?" Duncan crooked his finger beneath Sean's chin and angled the young man's face up.
"The dolphin with the bloody nose," Sean said more clearly. His tones were chill with naked fear and threatening madness.
Adam measured the sound of the words, no matter they had no meaning. "It's all right, Sean. We're here. Only a nightmare, Son..." on and on he swaddled the boy in the sonorous tones of his rich voice.
As in times past, Adam's comforting "Mommy song" lulled the boy into sleep and Duncan lifted him up and set him gently on the couch, tucking the afghan over his shoulders and stroking his head until Sean began to snore.
"What now, Old Man?" Duncan whispered when he and Adam had retired to the shadows beneath the ironwork stair that led to the upper study walkway.
"He's back," Adam said, more to himself, than as an answer. "He is back and we can deal with whatever else is wrong when he wakes." The proclamation held more hope than faith.
The sinews in Duncan's hands stood up in the high relief of the fists he made. "He is very ill, Adam. Can't you see that?"
But Adam was not even pretending to listen. His eyes never left the body on the couch as his mind went scudding forward, worrying this permutation and that, weighing each contingency, setting the plan for battle.
Duncan made his hands relax. His was more the ability to react, than to plan. He could only be quiet and miserable, and wait. Whatever was wrong would be revealed and he would deal with it when that happened. He knew what Adam was doing.
He knew it wouldn't work.
"Stop it!" Duncan hissed, in as loud a whisper as he dared. "You can't be logical about this."
Adam disengaged himself from the strong hands that had found their way around his upper arms. "Well," he growled. "What do you suggest?"
"You've been raped," Duncan said simply. "You can't understand something like that. You can only feel it, endure it--I don't know--I--I--don't know."
But Adam's head was already bobbing in a grudging agreement and the sharp angles of his face had slumped like a pale candle as he put himself in Sean's place.
The Highlander wanted to gather the both of them into his arms, his heart. He wanted to take this hurt away from them, Adam, no less than Sean. Of course, he couldn't. As careful as he had been of their safety, still they had been hurt and would be hurt and, sometimes, even hurt by himself, the very champion who lived to defend them. Sometimes it seemed all he could do was share their misery. Duncan walked out of the shadow and lowered himself onto the cold iron stairstep. From the moment Adam had explained about the lab results, he had put this awful feeling aside.
Duncan unfolded his fists again. His son had been violated. The labs said so. There could be no other reason for his DNA to have shown up on Ram's probe specimens except that it had been "sown" there by her attacker, and only if the attacker had first sodomized Sean. They had found Sean too long after the attack for any mark to be left on the boy's body.
Only the mark left on his mind, the "regression," as Dr. Byrnes had described it.
And now they had dragged Sean back to face this terrible thing. Duncan wondered if they had made a dreadful mistake, but Adam had been so convincing in his urgency. The Old Man was afraid that if they didn't bring Sean back soon, they might never have him back at all.
It was all so damned complicated and no way to know how to feel about any of it. Duncan rubbed his temples. He knew it wasn't so, but the only emotion he could identify or understand was the sense that he'd killed Sean Byrnes all over again.
Duncan watched helplessly as Adam shot by him, almost before Sean started screaming.
His son was howling Mary's name, in such vivid tones of agony and horror, that the Scot would not have been surprised to see the fearful apparition materialize before them.
The sound of Adam's palm suddenly smacking against Sean's face, shook MacLeod out of his hesitancy and drove him to the couch.
"All right, all right," Adam held Sean, half-draped over his slim lap, and rocked a counterpoint to his reassurances.
Duncan pressed in on Sean's other side and laid his hand on Sean's bowed shoulders.
Sean was weeping now, an improvement over whatever he'd been doing before. The sobs soon slowed to sniffing gasps and the young man sat up straight and pushed them away from him. "Dahm? Pops?" he said between gulps.
"Don't," Sean put his hands up to stall their intended embrace. "Don't look at me," he said, "Don't touch me."
"I know," said Adam. "That feeling will pass, Sean. There is no shame--."
"Know!" Sean shrieked. "You don't know anything! You can't possibly--!"
Sean struggled away from them, kicked the table out of the way, and tottered towards the fireplace. "Just leave me alone!" he wailed.
Adam and Duncan looked to each other, silently drawing straws.
"You have been through an ordeal, Sean," Adam began.
"We know you were raped, Son," Duncan cut him off.
"What?" Sean turned back from the fire and stared at them, or he seemed to. In the dark room, he was only a black shadow before the flames. "Oh, I see. That's why you're being so nice. No," Sean sighed. "No, I wish that were the case, Pops. I surely do. I--"
He was weeping again, but neither parent knew what to do about it except to give the boy time to collect himself.
"Oh, Father," Sean said finally, collapsing in a heap on the hearth rug. "I have done the most awful thing you can imagine! Wicked! Evil! Filthy!"
His parents mentally disagreed, but held their tongues. Sean could not possibly know how truly awful the things they could imagine were. They were both of them old enough in the world's ways to have no need for imagining-- memory served too well.
Despite Sean's plea to be left alone, Duncan joined him by the fire. "I don't care what you've done. I love you, Son. We love you. Nothing can change that."
"I don't think so, Pops," Sean ducked his head.
"Think so," Duncan commanded.
Sean just cocked his head and shrugged.
"Where is this?" Sean asked as if he had just now come fully awake.
"Thomas Cross' study, Son," Duncan answered.
"Who pulled me from the water, Pops? You?"
"Grant and your brother," Duncan answered, "with Piper's help."
For the first time since his return, Sean smiled. It was a perfectly ridiculous grin which lit up his face more brightly than the fire.
The Highlander took heart from that stupid smile. Sean could love still. Things would be all right with him eventually. "Why don't you take some time and think how you want to tell me this and we will tell you what has happened since you were dumped into the drink. I'll let your brother fill you in."
"Oh, well now," Adam picked up the tray and its meticulously gathered shards of Thomas porcelain. "--if I'm to be historian laureate, then we shall surely need provisions."
"Being a discussion by the Old Man is much akin to a full day's march," Sean finished as Adam disappeared out the door to refill at the galley down the hall.
Duncan braced his thigh against his son's back. "Good to hear you joking, Sean," he couldn't still the urge to hug him. Then he pulled back and sorted a stray lock out of Sean's eyes. "Good to hear you at all. Good to have you back."
Sean's features darkened like a sudden storm, and the Highlander changed subjects. "You are going to be surprised how big Piper has grown, and Hatching Day is not two weeks away," he added a little too enthusiastically.
"Hatching, Pops?" Sean's chin found his chest again as the grin returned.
Duncan was relieved to see the effect just Piper's name had on his sorrowful son. He could not have met her but the once, on the day of her birth, and then only for a short time, but he was clearly smitten, and that might just prove to be the saving of him. He just hoped Piper would be as glad to have him step into Sean Byrne's place. "Yes, Sean. That will be their hundredth day. As I understand it, that is the day they will emerge from their--." Duncan made a circle with his hands. He really didn't know what to call the strange homes of the baby dragonets.
"I get it, Pops," Sean took his father's hands in his own.
"Anne died," Duncan pulled Sean's hands towards him. "And Judge Stoner, in the Drieg explosion with about forty Immortals who came after us. I took Tony to Alberta, to lie with Anne and her mother."
"Geez, Pops--," Sean's palms pushed gently against his father's deep chest. "Are you all right?"
"I am much better now, Sean."
"You won't believe what I did, Father," Sean began in tones he dredged up from his childhood. He began to talk about the dolphin again, gulping little meaningless phrases, pounding up hard against the stricture in his throat.
By the time Adam had returned, the MacLeod heir and beloved son was finally speaking in full sentences as his tones aged to the present and then onward towards some ancient future which only whispered to him now in sighs and sadnesses.
I took a turn down the hallway--wrong way--and then down and down again. I think I was trying to get turned around, back towards the main hall that leads back up to the house. I think Kyle said Mary was resting there. Maybe I only thought so. I'm really not sure.
Anyway, I ended up at the doorway to this lovely pool--like the grotto used to be before the two of you blew it up, only bigger. There was a tiny underground forest walk and a fall of water and light from high in the far wall. It gurgled and splashed and stirred the reflections across the mist wraiths and fog rising from the large pool. Pale marble steps, I remember, and brass railings, too, and two enormous--um--glass tubes with copper fittings.
There wasn't really a dolphin, Pops, just the most beautiful sculpture carved into the wall beyond the forest. Three dolphins in mid-leap, standing out from the cave wall. I don't know how long I stood there, just staring at them, watching the ripples of light wash them, like they were diving through an endless ocean.
But there was a smudge on the middle dolphin's beak and I found I'd laid my hand on it. Then my fingers were in my mouth and I tasted blood. It hadn't seemed red because of all the blue-green light of the pool. And when I put my hand back, the whole wall opened inward and I saw--I saw--I saw--
Sean must have said those two words, over and over again for more than a minute, before he was only silent and staring, seeing whatever it was, for the first time, again. Duncan had surrendered any notion of propriety and just lifted the child--for child he would always be to the Scot--onto his lap, into his arms.
Adam hovered over them both, his long fingers reaching, but not knowing where or how to touch either of them.
Another several minutes and everything seemed to have wound down to the rocking rhythm, the solid embrace, father to son. Sean suddenly wailed and wrenched himself away, from his father, from the fire, from everything he had ever known in two short decades of his princely upbringing.
There he paced, just beyond the firelight's circle, a dark, restless shadow, arms crossed rigidly over his chest, and so thoroughly devoid of his usual bounce that he might have been a stranger. Even his voice seemed unfamiliar now.
"There was a room beyond that hidden door. Several rooms, I think. But there on the bed, across from the door. A day bed it was, under a stained glass window which seemed sunny, all dusty rays, and--," he broke off again and drew further back in the shadows.
Adam collapsed into a crouch beside the Highlander and his hands found their rest atop the broad warrior fists.
"Mary, oh, Mary," Sean wailed and bent over double. He stood back up slowly. "She'd, she'd been torn, torn apart in bloody pieces. Big, sloppy red pools of, of--all over the sheets, and the walls, splashed up onto glass of the window even. Nothing of her left for me to love. Nothing. Nothing. Just her pretty face all grey and slack.
"Nothing," he whimpered. "Torn like a beaste had been at her with its claws and teeth.
"I heard her screaming as if she were still alive." Now that he'd started, Sean couldn't seem to stop. "I still heard her, all the back through the tunnels to the house. No--" he paused and moved forward into the light.
Adam gripped Mac's hands reflexively. Sean's face was so twisted with his grief and madness that it was frightening to behold. Neither man thought of going to him now, though they might have done in any other extremity. The lad was simply murderous and both men were familiar enough with this demeanor on the field of battle, and they knew well enough to stay back.
"No," Sean was saying, in an excited, fevered voice, "I remember I found a glass and I filled it with the water from the pool--yes--
In nómine Patris, et Fílii, et Spíritus Sancti. Intríobo ad altáre Dei...
Suddenly, Sean strode out of the room and into the hall, his parents at his heels as he continued the blessing which had seared and blinded and--
Duncan could finally stand the mad babbling of his son's blind march no longer. As gently as he could, he grabbed his son around both upper arms and spun him around. "Sean!" he called, but the boy still chanted the blessing that made water holy. The blue eyes were wild and wide and senseless as a tomb adder.Exaudi nos, Domine, sanctae Pater, omnipotens aeterne Deus :
et mittere digneris sanctum Angelum tuum de caelis,
qui custdiat, foveat, protegat, vistet,
atque defendat omnes habitantes in hoc habitaculo.
Per Christum Dominum nostrum.Adam hung back, his face settling into grim understanding. When Duncan slapped Sean across the face, Adam did not move to intervene. The Eldest Immortal's fine fingers had found their own fists.
"I couldn't kill Malak for what he had done. He could not be killed, could not--" Sean's hysteria was a dauntingly authentic reflection of a rage that was three months' old now.
No wonder he chose to forget, Duncan thought, his hands still around Sean's arms.
"I couldn't kill him, but I could hurt him. I knew how to hurt him, how to tear him as he had done Mary," Sean gulped hard and then he continued, but his tones were suddenly dead and empty...
...and evil beyond believing.
"He was kneeling there, in the middle of the top floor, where the Christmas trees were. He was naked and his white wings butted up against the ceiling and both walls. He must have made them after he entered. He was praying and as I walked towards him, he looked up at me and smiled," Sean's mouth widened in a feral grin. "And I threw the water across his face. He howled and started scrambling around--
"But, of course, the wings trapped him. There were feathers everywhere and his awful squawking. I had to yell to be heard. I told him what I had come for, what I meant to do. I don't know if he heard me, but he bolted suddenly for the window. Then his left wing crumpled down and he tried to scratch his way through the glass.
"Gave him a hand, I did, smashed him harder against the window with one hand. Undid my belt with the other--. Then I took his blessed honor from him, tore his sacred innocence from him for his tearing Mary from me."
Sean's voice hit a light tone, as if he were discussing some insignificant topic, like the weather. "He stopped squawking and got very quiet. Maybe a soft sort of whimpering sound, but he didn't fight me at all. I had thought it would be harder somehow, that he would fight or hurt me or--."
A noise was rising in Adam's throat, like the quiet cough a great cat makes just before the roar.
Duncan tried not to let his disgust show. Not only Malak had lost his innocence then. He knew then that Sean would not be coming back, not the bouncing, exhuberant Sean of his childhood, anyway.
"Then Mary's father pulled me off Malak," Sean continued sleepily. "But when I looked down, the wings were gone and, and--it seemed that someone else was lying there in Malak's blood. His gold hair was darker and--. I don't know. I was busy getting the bejeezus beat out of me by Uncle Mark. I managed to get out the door and onto the deck, but he caught me there and threw me over. I remember how cold the water was and then something cracked below my throat and I woke up here. Well, there," he pointed back down the hall towards the study.
Duncan felt Adam's heat at his back and he put his palm out to stop him.
"I don't expect you to love me after this," Sean said in his own voice. "It's okay. I understand. I don't think I ever believed that Malak and Ram were the same, but, but I saw her, lying on the couch, her arm broken where the wing had been. My own mother," Sean said it as if the words amazed him. "My own mother."
Sean slipped around his father and stood before the Eldest Immortal. "Go on. I won't defend myself. Whatever, I deserve it."
"All right," Adam's arms pinned themselves to his long sides. "There is one thing which would be just."
Duncan sank down imperceptibly, his weight moving forward to the balls of his feet.
"Yes?" Sean tipped his chin up and waited.
"You will come with me now and apologize," Adam answered.
"But I do apologize," Sean babbled, "I am more sorry than--"
"Not," said Adam, "to me."
