Home Previous Next
"I dreamt about you baby, - L. Cohen
it was just the other night,
most of you was naked,
but ahh, some of you was light,the sands of time were falling
from your fingers and your thumb,
and you were waiting for the miracle,
for the miracle to come..."
THE LOVE
Rory V. Pascual
Eng VariationCHAPTER ONE:
Any citizen walking past the dark alley behind the decrepit edifice of de Salvo's Martial Arts would think the man slumped against the wall, head bowed low, was drunk. The ratty fisherman's sweater, the bitter weeping and pitiful mumbling only added to his sodden portrait of intoxication.
It was a false portrait. The man was not drunk, nor was he even a man, not in the ordinary sense anyway. He was an Immortal, an heir-apparent to the Throne of the World, a Prince of the Universe-- the oldest of his kind. Other Immortals knew him as Methos, a name he tried not to use very much, since most of those who recognized it would dearly love to separate his head from his shoulders, the only way he could be killed.
Even if Methos had not indulged this night in his favorite beer, still he was not sober by half. A greater intoxication held him in sway, rolled him in seas of self-pity and abject grief, set him to wallowing in a memory now nearly two seasons' past.
Indeed, seven months had passed since that awful day in Paris. Immortals tended to remain apart from each other, since the entire imperative of their existence revolved around fighting each other to the death. Not fertile ground for intimacy that. A friendship between Immortals was a rare and precious circumstance, the more so because of its fragile and temporary nature. Duncan MacLeod, of the Clan MacLeod--or so he proclaimed each new challenge--was such a friend to Methos, a friend he nearly lost that day, that awful, awful day.
– the day Liam O'Rourke shot Duncan MacLeod, killing him.
--the day Liam O'Rourke would have taken the Highlander's head.
--the day Methos watched the light go out of Duncan MacLeod's eyes, and the briefest instant before, when the Scot's soul had revealed itself, like a star going nova just before it goes dark. Methos saw the weariness that had cut deep into Duncan's heart, the unrelenting guilt, the intense desire to sink into the comforting oblivion of death, and the euphoric, almost rapturous relief that his desire to be finished with the pain, to be ended forever, was, at long last, finding its fulfillment. He had watched the calm and blessed resignation come over the Scot and Methos had been seized with repulsion and terror.
NO! The Oldest Immortal wasn't sure he had protested aloud, but the screaming of it inside his own skull still echoed, even now. Fight, you damned Scot! I didn't teach you this! Live! Grow stronger! Fight another day! Do not choose death, Duncan! CHOOSE LIFE!
Even now Methos wasn't sure if the Highlander had heard his silent, desperate plea. With a singularly uncharacteristic hope, Methos had tried to believe in a bond between himself and the Scot, a bond whose existence was confirmed and strengthened when they were caught in a Double Quickening. True or not, Duncan rose up and fought and walked away, if not redeemed, then at least, victorious.
Duncan MacLeod was still in the world, but not of the world, as Old Saul would have said. He left them that day, that awful day, disappeared on a quest. What did he seek? Methos wondered, Clarity, rebirth, peace? Dona nobis pacem, Methos mumbled, Lord, oh Lord, that would be the paragon of hopeless pursuits if ever there was.
All of them would have blindly, gladly, gone on this quest with the Highlander, such was the power of the man, but all that Duncan wanted was to be left alone. Only time and solitude would help him find and mend the scattered, shattered remnants of his will, what his clansmen would have called the Brave Heart.
Which left the rest of them, Joe Dawson, Amanda, and Methos, to fend for themselves, to return to the ordinary world and get on with all the petty demands, the mind-numbing routines, of their lives.
God only knew where Amanda had gotten off to--probably back to her prior nasty habits, thievery mostly--but Methos had seen a new fire burning in her eyes, which had nothing to do with greed – a pure, bright light, so reminiscent of a certain stubborn Scotsman. Methos smiled inwardly thinking about the contagion of MacLeod's persona as Immortal superhero. Amanda's transformation notwithstanding, Methos was convinced of his own immunity to such blatant romanticisms.
Joe had decided to take a break from his clandestine vocation of watching and chronicling the Immortals to concentrate on his "day job," his music and his bar. He even wrote some gritty, down and dirty blues, splendid songs, under the aegis of the two Muses, misery and loneliness.
"Even I can't believe feeling so bad about losing Mac could sound so good," Joe commented, as they raised a glass to their missing friend.
Methos couldn’t resist asking about Mac. To this, Joe replied he had kept his distance, out of respect for the Scot’s privacy. However, he’d been hearing a few things now and then, nothing definite, nothing that could be confirmed. Just rumors.
The Conventional Wisdom had Duncan staying a month in Seacouver, sorting out the numerous businesses he had in the city. He hadn't sold the dojo, probably for sentimental reasons, but had hired someone to manage it in his stead. Having settled all his business affairs, the Immortal left the city for good and hadn't been heard from since.
There were others, however, who suspected MacLeod had never left Seacouver, that he'd retreated to his fifth floor loft above the dojo and taken to haunting the city by the dark of night. Some Watchers had even insisted that they had seen the Highlander, strolling in the park, buying groceries, vanishing utterly when they tried to pursue him.
Joe chuckled, "Guess after all our years as friends, Mac has become an expert in the Watchers' tricks of the trade."
Methos hardly heard him. He was too busy chaining the possibilities, link by link: If the tales are true, then Mac is still in the city, if Mac is still in the city, then maybe I can find him, if I can find him, then maybe--.
And all the while, his more cynical self argued that Mac did not want to be found, or he wouldn't be hiding. Hadn't the Scot learned the art of the clean getaway from a master, Methos himself? Wouldn't Mac be angry if his solitude were forcibly ended?
The bitter internal voice followed Methos out of the bar and into the next several days, but it did not keep him from searching the city for the Highlander. Finally, his search ended at the dojo. Duncan MacLeod was not in residence. The identifying aura was nowhere evident in the old martial arts studio, but he still had to ask the caretaker, had to hear the words aloud that Mac was gone, from the city, from Methos' life.
Methos was surprised how profoundly wounding the words were, even when he knew what they would be, must be. Even though he knew everything was over, probably for all time. He didn't honestly think that Duncan was going to walk the world for very much longer. Another Immortal would take his head. Who would be there to encourage the Scot that life was preferable to death? Mac would die alone, the news would wander slowly back to Methos, and on that day--
Methos all but stumbled out into the darkened street, his eyes glossing over with the tears he tried vainly to stop. He felt his heart slowly but steadily being chipped away, piece by bloody piece.
So goes the way of all fools who hope and dream. What else did you expect? Fool! the voice of his dreary reason mocked him mercilessly..
"Shut up, damn it!", he cursed, unmindful that he'd said the words out loud. People who saw him muttering to himself steered clear from his path. A shame they'd shut down the 'Couver Asylum. You couldn't walk the streets anymore without tripping over one of these derelicts.
"Unfair!", Methos complained. "This is so unfair! Duncan shouldn’t have to go through this alone, when he is always there for his friends. Was always there," he amended.
And who then would have been Duncan's most unreliable friend, if it weren't you? Adam's internal adversary declared sarcastically. Who said he didn't last 5000 years by worrying about anybody but himself? What could you possibly offer the man, if you evaporate every time the situation gets the least bit dicey? This can't have anything to do with any altruism on your part.
Methos covered his ears with his hands, "Stop it! I don’t want to hear anymore!"
But the voice was infuriatingly persistent as he ran blindly down the street and into a dark alleyway. It isn't, after all, Duncan's concerns, but your own, that have driven you to this soppy and pathetic state. You merely hunger before a most sumptuous feast. Nothing at all to do with loyalty, or friendship, or any of those artificialities which so complicate the simple business of survival. You want him to stay alive simply because you want him. You want this young Immortal with the dusky sad eyes and the elegant bronzed flesh, this man who loves only women.
"All right! ALL RIGHT!", Methos shouted to the blind, empty buildings on either side of the alley. "I ADMIT IT! I want to fuck Duncan MacLeod out of his mind! I want to feel that body writhing beneath me, wanton and abandoned and--mine alone."
That must be it, only lust. Who wouldn't be tempted by the stunning Scot? Rational and reticent, still Methos was not made of cold dead stone, after all. Even in the face of numberless betrayals and disappointments, agonies and abandonments, there was some small part of Methos that was tempted by Duncan MacLeod to believe again.
To believe that age upon age of lonely wanderings were not the best he could hope for.
Just when he would have sworn there was no one and nothing for him in the world, Methos had happened upon MacLeod, and little by little, the hearty, gentle, exuberant Glenfinnan stepson had drawn Methos into all manner of happy and foolish endeavors, dangerous things like ethics and fealty and--.
Methos' lanky frame slumped back against the brownstone and he slithered down to the ground, stifling a sob, roughly brushing aside the tears on his cheeks. I have been alive with this man. How can I go back to just existing, to just not being dead? He felt like an addict. What did they call it? A serious Jones, that's what ailed him, but it felt more than serious somehow.
It felt like a matter of Life and Death.
And it hurt so much, all he could do was wrap his long arms around his knees and weep in agony, like the junkie going "cold turkey," which he appeared to be in every detail.
The dog hours found Methos scudding his way back to harbor, the meager flat which was home and hearth to him in this place and time. The tears had dried to salt on his cheeks and his long back hurt from having sat in the damp alleyway so long, letting his sadness vent itself into exhaustion. Unlocking the door he stepped through, his right foot lost traction on something, and he flipped over backwards, landing hard on the threshold. It was some paper lying just inside the doorway. No, an envelope. Methos rubbed his backside with his left hand and examined the thing in his right. Frowning, Methos saw that the name "ADAM PIERSON" was neatly printed on the envelope. Tearing the side open, he took out the small note inside. His eyes slowly widened as he read its contents. The Immortal had to blink hard several times, wondering if his woe-swollen eyes were just playing tricks on him. However, the words on the note didn't change.
Damnation! Or, in the vernacular, Shit! The sorry distaff of a Scottish wolf had been spying on him! Oh, great, Methos choked, he must have heard that whole mess in the alleyway. How much had he spoken aloud? Bad enough Duncan should watch him weep, did he also hear him say--What exactly had he said? Oh--that bit about wanting to fuck his brains out. Oh, bloody lovely! Damn, damn, damn!
Adam, We need to talk. Could you please meet me at David Markum's grocery store tomorrow morning at 10?
Hope to see you again.
Duncan........................Levering up, Methos slammed furiously around the apartment, muttering to himself, throwing off his coat, peeling off his sweater--Wait a moment.
Methos plopped down, sitting on the edge of his bed. What was he going on about? This was a good thing. Exactly what he had wished for, that Duncan MacLeod discover Methos' true feelings, desires, whatever. If the Highlander weren't at all interested, he would never have gone to the trouble to leave a note, after all. Methos smiled.
Then again, maybe Duncan only felt, as he always did, that his friend's unhappiness was somehow his own responsibility. The Scot probably wanted to see him in the morning to let Methos down easy, and more likely to tell him to get lost and stop trying to find him. Methos frowned.
But wait, wait. Methos went charging back into the living-dining-kitchen room and retrieved the letter from the floor where he'd thrown it. Hope, Duncan had said he hoped to see him again. Maybe, just maybe...
Oh, Dear Lord, Methos' chin dropped down on his chest. Is this what I've been reduced to? Trying to find a lifetime in a single word of a note, only three lines long, that says nothing really. I am a fool.
Still, he held Duncan's letter over his heart and tried to believe: in himself, in Duncan, in whatever might become of them both. And all of it rested upon the tiny word which sighed at its beginning and ended in a kiss.
Hope.
Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod was beginning to wonder if Adam hadn't found his note, or if the Oldest Immortal had merely ignored it, or whether Adam Pierson, PhD and self-proclaimed ne'er do well, was just being late as usual. Duncan, true to his own habits, had arrived at the Markum grocery at a quarter to ten. He'd been wandering around the store, trying not to look like a thief, since, and it was now about ten-thirty and no Adam anywhere.
Duncan could not tolerate waiting. So, why, he wondered, had he the bad habit of always showing up unfashionably early? Because, truth be told, he was just about as nervous as he ever could remember being. Given four centuries of life, he was still Adam's junior by many more ages than he could imagine, but that was plenty of time to have been more worried than this about something so seemingly simple. Half a year had made him miss the Old Man more than Duncan wanted, at first, to admit. The scene in the alleyway last night had only served to strengthen his resolve to come to some reconciliation with the Old Man. First, he was so entirely delighted just to see him again. Second, Adam's unintended confession had so moved him that Duncan could no longer pretend to ignorance.
Last night the Highlander had to admit, if only to himself, that despite four hundred years of thinking this was impossible, he had fallen in love--sexually, intellectually, romantically--with a person of his own gender, with the man, Adam Pierson. Duncan had been all night trying to think of a way he could convey this to Adam. He'd pulled out his books on philosophy and romance and a largish dictionary and tried to compose just the right sentence that would resonate with the Oldest Immortal's incredible intellect. Something to say that wouldn't sound like, "Yeah, duh, it would be okay if we went to bed together."
After many revisions, and a constant reminder that brevity, sweet brevity, be the soul of wit, Duncan had come up with a clean and direct declaration which he hoped would serve.
Duncan looked up as the bell rang above the door to the grocery. No, not Adam. Two young men, scruffy and furtive, had entered, one short, the other tall, but thin as a stick. Alarms went off in the Immortal's warrior instincts and Duncan reached beneath his coat, to touch the katana sheathed there. He didn't like the tall one's hands, dug in the pockets of the faded jacket, nor the way the short one looked as if he were about to wet his pants with fear.
They weren't here for the fresh produce, that much was certain. Duncan started a slow stride which would, by his calculations, intersect the tall one's path straight for the register and Mrs. Markum, sweet old Mrs. Markum, the owner's mom, who had come west from Toronto to help after Dave's wife was killed. He planted himself at the melon bin and picked one up to thunk. No, too green. Another. Maybe, in a day or two on the window sill. Another. Mushy and brown. Perfect.
Just as the thin boy passed behind him, Duncan did a smooth roll left and smashed the melon into the thief's face. The move was so unexpected, that the Highlander had the young man down on his belly with his right arm high behind his back and the Highlander's weighty knee at his waist, before the boy had time to think of a defense. Duncan pulled the gun out of the boy's hand, engaged the safety and dropped it into his own pocket.
Duncan leaned in close to the scoundrel's ear and hissed, "If you and your friend there just leave, then I won't call the cops. If you've a mind to fight, I will break your arm."
The thin lad did not have the brains God gave him. He struggled beneath the Highlander.
And Duncan broke his arm, or more correctly, forced an anterior dislocation of his right shoulder. The would-be thief dug his head in the floor and stifled a scream.
"You feel like leaving now?" Duncan asked, almost kindly. "Excuse me? I didn't hear."
"Yes," the boy gasped.
"One more time?" Duncan asked again.
"Yes, Sir," the boy sobbed.
"Oh, well," Duncan let go and stood up. "It's so nice to see young people with some respect and manners, for a change. You!" he called over to the short friend trembling two aisles over, "I believe your buddy here has hurt his arm. Can you help him out?"
The little one looked as if he would break out blubbering any moment, but he sidled over to his friend and helped him up. They hobbled out the door together, ringing the bell behind them.
Duncan picked out three perfect melons for breakfast and some limes and paid for them at the register, bidding Mrs. Markum the top of the morning. He picked up the paper bag and walked through the door.
It was a pretty good line, Duncan thought. Too bad he wouldn't be using it this day.
The love that comes between two souls knows neither ethic nor gender, neither age nor time. That two such souls come together is not magic nor mystic nor mystery. It is only, and ever, inevitable.
Maybe it was just as well. Adam might laugh at Duncan's pretense at poetry. Duncan might laugh himself had he not been up nearly the whole night working on the blessed thing. He kept practicing, just in case. He wanted to roll the words out as if he'd just thought them up in that instant.
"The love that comes between two souls," he recited softly, "knows neither--." A sudden, familiar, most welcome buzz ran up his back and registered at the base of his skull. Adam!
Yes, there was the lanky rapscallion, draped against Duncan's T-bird, half a block away. Duncan tucked the bag of melons under his left arm and reached out his right, "Adam!"
The Old Man smiled widely, in spite of himself. Adam stood up straight and began walking toward Duncan.
Duncan knew why the Elder Immortal had been late. He was scrubbed and polished, in his finest sweater, cleanest jeans. Must have been working on his shaggy cowlick all morning. Adam had spiffed up for him. Duncan wondered that his knees didn't melt with his heart. This wasn't going to be easy, but it had all the earmarks of being wonderful, a new chapter in his life, a new love.
The love that comes between two souls...Duncan kept reciting it silently.
Adam halted abruptly, a strange look on his face. He bobbed his long frame sideways and dug into his navy-coat pocket.
Oh, no you don't, Adam, Duncan thought. You don't get out of this so easy.
The Highlander continued walking, straight for Adam. The love that comes...
Just as Duncan reached the Oldest Immortal, something smacked him hard on the back of his head and wiped the world away in stunning shades of absolute black.
Adam Pierson, Methos, had seen many men fall in battle, but this was possibly the worst, chiefly being so damned unexpected. He moved the T-bird over two lanes and started towards the River District and Joe's bar. Methos glanced in the back seat where the Highlander lay, little more than a corpse, with a great, gaping exit wound that had taken away most of his forehead. Methos' coat and sweater and even his skin, face and neck, were splattered with Duncan's brains and blood and tiny shards of the Highlander's thick skull.
Methos took deeper breaths and tried not to think what this might mean. Damn!
He could still see the brilliant Scot, shining in the morning sun, his new, shoulder length hair flying behind him like a cape. Thinner, but high in color and spirits. Methos' whole being stirred to the sight of him. Here was his friend as he had been before, hale and hearty, a paragon of life and living.
Methos had thought his heart would burst with gladness.
Then a shaky, little kid crouched down on the sidewalk near the door to the grocery and drew a bead on Duncan's back. Behind him, a skinny mortal boy, with his right arm cradled in his left, spoke a non-stop stream of bullying commands.
Methos moved sideways, his hand reaching for his own gun. Too late. Duncan side-stepped in front of Methos and the boy shot, driving the Highlander forward into the Eldest Immortal's arms. Then the sirens began to wail, the boys took off, and Methos bent down under the senseless form of his friend, slipped him over his shoulder and dumped him, as gently as could be done, in the back of the T. They were gone before the police arrived...just...
Leaving behind them only Duncan's blood and brains and the melons that had smashed as they dropped from Duncan's arm.
Methos had seen the light go out of Duncan's eyes, the terrible wound bursting above the brows, the blood, like tears, pouring down the cheeks, and the lush lips, working to say something. It was an image Methos would have for a long while, all of it happening not six inches from his own pale eyes.
Duncan moaned and shifted slightly.
Good. The immediate paralysis was resolving. A good sign. He might be all right after all.
"The love," Duncan murmured.
"It will be okay, Duncan," Methos turned right down River Road, "We're almost there. Just try to relax." He reached behind him and patted Duncan's side. "I'm on the watch. You are safe."
"The love, the love, the love," Duncan said, over and over, like an antique vinyl record, stuck in the same groove.
Probably not a good sign, no matter the encouragement that word might have engendered in any other circumstance.
"You break that door down," Joe struggled out of his office and across the bar, cursing, "And you will frigging pay for it. I said I'm coming, God Damn It!"
Dawson was in the foulest of moods this morning, a combined consequence of late and busy doings in the bar last night and his falling asleep on his office couch, leaving his prosthetics on, never a good idea. He hurt all over, not just the pressure points of his bilateral amputations, but his back and his head and--
"So what--?" Joe started to ask angrily, as he unlocked and threw open the door, "Oh, Jeezus, Sweet Jeezus! What happened?"
Adam elbowed by him, the Highlander draped over his arms, dead and disfigured, half his head blown off by the look of it. As Dawson watched, the Eldest Immortal laid the body down on the floor.
"I thought I'd just stop by--get some help--then--" Adam gasped, waiting for his breathing to catch up with the exertion, "then he started seizing--couldn't stop it--died."
"That much I can see," Joe placed a steadying hand on Adam's bowed back. "How did this happen?"
Adam stopped gulping and stood up straight. "Some idiot punk at the grocery store shot him in the back of his head from about twenty feet away. I thought he was aiming for Duncan's back, but the recoil must have kicked his aim up and--. Damnation!" Adam stopped again and breathed deeply. "If Duncan weren't so tall, he might have been missed entirely."
Dawson's Watcher instincts took in the words and the images, sorted and ordered and began to make sense of them, even through the fog of something very like a hangover. "You were standing in front of him?" he asked Adam.
Adam looked down his front, his graceful hands moving towards his lapels then jerking away in disgust.
Joe moved slowly, stiffly towards the lift, "Come on, Buddy, let's get him upstairs. You can put him in my bed, and then you can get cleaned up while I--um--Man!" Joe shuddered all over and leaned hard against the side of the elevator, "really takes you back to the good old days."
"Flashes?" Adam asked as he grabbed the body's ankles and dragged it into the lift. "I'm sorry, Joe. I didn't have a lot of options."
Joe shook his head and punched the up button to the second floor, half-floor, of the bar. "I'm okay. Just got away from me for a minute. I'll be all right now. Damn!"
Joe worked with Mac's corpse while Adam got showered. Mentally, the Watcher within ticked off the minutes, now approaching forty-five, that the Immortal had lain dead. While he stripped off the ruined coat and shirt, Dawson was struck by how far he'd stepped outside the bounds of the normal world. As a paramedic, he should be seeing to Adam, not this worm meat. And so he would have been in the time before he stepped through the mirror, into the world where resurrection was such a usual event. Only a matter of time, Joe thought, and the dead shall rise, alleluia. He dealt with his jealousy of the Princes better than most, but he still hated all of them, just a little bit.
Every time a friend died, every time another evidence of his own aging reared its ugly head, every day of his life, knowing he was walking, however ineptly, ever closer to his own grave--he was reminded that the Warriors, the Champions, were especially blessed, even as they were especially cursed.
Joe soaked a washcloth in the bowl of warm water that Adam had brought out before he disappeared under the steam and the water. He dabbed tentatively at the enormous wound which, though healing, was still so unnerving as to make the old veteran gag. Brains were a delicacy one had with scrambled eggs. They were not something one expected to be cleaning off a friend's forehead.
After Joe had finished, as well as he could, with cleaning the body, he unbuckled his trousers and retired to the battered wheelchair in the corner of the bedroom. Time to take these bad boys off, he thought, before I end up with an ulcer the size of Cleveland. He hated to be around people with his legs off, but there was no help for it. He propped the prostheses against the wall and tucked a blanket around his waist and lap--half a lap, maybe three-quarters.
Adam strolled into the room, wearing a pair of jeans Joe's niece had given him which turned out to be too long. They were more than ample on the Eldest Immortal's spare frame and hung precariously from Adam's hips. Not so spare, Joe amended, just elongated, with that fine lat spread and shoulder width known as a swimmer's build.
"Hey," Adam lifted his arms away from his sides and turned around, "Take a good look." He pumped up a bicep and looked back over his shoulder at Joe.
"Hey, yourself," Joe chuckled, "I'm a Watcher. It's my job."
Adam's brief bout of humor deserted him as his concentration narrowed to the body on the bed. Duncan looked more dead now than he had with the blood all over his face. The bronze skin was dusky and sallow, the muscled arms slack and cold.
Joe watched Adam lean over Duncan's corpse. He watched the artisan's hands travel lightly over the barrel of the Highlander's broad chest and down the still arms, where they curled around the meatier hands of the Scot and squeezed gently. Then Adam bent closer and brushed his lips against Duncan's right ear. "Live," was all he said, but Joe heard volumes in the tones and the secondary harmonics and the sad, sad melody of the word.
"You think he might not make it," Joe stated the obvious in soft, smoky words. He rolled the old chair up to the bed.
Adam drew back suddenly from the corpse, momentarily embarrassed by his lapse in convention. He stared at the chair, at the odd lumps, one much shorter than the other, in the place under Joe's blanket where legs would have been. Of course, he knew Joe had lost his legs, bilateral AKA, in the Vietnam conflict, but it had always been a theoretical reality before now.
"Why don't we just pay attention to the problem at hand, all right?" Joe suggested when he'd had enough of Adam's staring. "There's a sweater in the bottom drawer over there you can have. Holes in the elbows, but otherwise it's servicable.
Adam pulled on the offered sweater and sat down on the bedside near the Watcher. "What do you know about Immortal head wounds?" he asked Joe.
"Well, Buddy," Joe sighed, "I'd really expected that would be my question. You don't know?"
"Not this extent, I don't," Adam glanced back at Duncan's ruined face.
"I have to admit," Joe dug his fingers in his salt and pepper beard, "I'm not all that clear on what happens with wounds above the shoulders on you guys. I know the Kurgen bore his neck scars for centuries, had them when Duncan's cousin killed him, in fact. Sort of a cut-on-the-dotted-line situation. Conner just revisited the cut that Ramirez had carved there four centuries earlier."
"And there's Kalas' throat wound," Adam added, "a century later and his voice never recovered."
"And there was that disfiguring wound across Kronos' right eye," Joe added, trying to make it seem like a clinical question and not a slur on the one surviving Horseman, seated beside him.
Adam didn't miss the reference. "Doesn't count," he answered, "He got that before he was Immortal."
"I thought that was the wound that killed him," Joe glanced over at Duncan. Still dead.
"You thought wrong," Adam said, in a way that made it clear he did not want to pursue this particular subject.
"And you broke your nose before you became Immortal?" Joe asked.
Adam's hand went up to his prominent beak, "What makes you say that?"
Joe tilted his head and squinted through one eye, "Maybe the way it wanders off to your right."
Adam put both his hands on his nose, either side. His hazel eyes looked as if they were trying to view his own face as he measured the symmetry of his features.
Joe shrugged, "Barely noticeable."
Adam's hands drifted down from his face, "You're a terrible old man."
"And don't you forget it, Buddy," Joe said jovially. "Hey!" He pointed behind Adam.
The real Old Man twisted around suddenly as the Highlander's chest shuddered and rose. His long arms straddled the Scot as he leaned over Duncan and brought his face even with that of the recent corpse. "Duncan?" Adam crooned softly, "Duncan, it's all right. I'm here. You don't have to be afraid. You are safe now. Duncan?"
The dark eyes blinked open.
"Duncan? It's Methos, Duncan. You were hurt, but everything's going to be all right now," Adam watched the dilated pupils, the black, blank marbles Duncan's eyes had become. "Duncan, can you hear me?"
"Give it a little time, Buddy," Joe tugged at the sleeve of the borrowed sweater.
"Duncan!" Adam's summons were becoming a little desperate. "Duncan? I don't think he can see me, Joe. I think he's blind! Duncan!"
Joe spent most of his time more or less walking on his arms. They were surprisingly powerful. Joe wound up and slugged the Eldest Immortal with full force in the middle of his long back. "Get a grip!" he said commandingly.
Adam spun away from the blow and jumped to his feet. His flesh remembered what do to in such a situation, even if he didn't. The redoubtable Dr. Pierson came to his senses just in time to pull the reciprocal punch which was aimed straight for the Watcher's as-yet-unbroken nose.
"Truce!" Joe called out, "Look."
Adam's attention returned to the Highlander. The Scot had curled up in a defensive ball, the dark eyes round as platters, watching them both.
Adam returned to sit by Duncan, "You don't have to be afraid," he repeated.
Duncan sank down into the bedding. He was trembling all over, making little lowing noises like a calf.
Adam reached out very slowly and grazed the healing forehead, trailing his fingers into the dark tangle of the Highlander's mane. The frightened eyes softened and then closed as Adam went on crooning reassuring tones and stroking Duncan's head. Adam pulled a pillow off the stack at the head of the bed and started to replace the blood-soaked one under Duncan's head. A broad hand reached out clumsily and snatched the pillow from him. Duncan pulled the pillow into a tight hug against his chest and belly. Then the massive muscled hand that had taken countless fierce Princes to their final reward, wadded up in a fist and popped a thumb between the full lips. Sucking noisily, his breathing deepened, and Duncan was soon fast asleep.
Joe watched Adam, Methos, Death on a Horse, turn slowly away from the Highlander. He saw every day of five thousand years scrawled across the patrician features in a stigmata of sorrow as disfiguring as the healing blow-out wound on Duncan's face.
Joe had found Duncan's note to Adam earlier, when he was sorting their ruined clothes. He thought he knew now what that meeting was going to be about. It was clear by everything that had happened since Adam arrived with Duncan draped over his arms that the Eldest Immortal--whose sexual preferences were known to be eclectic-- was profoundly in love with possibly the most heterosexual animal on the planet.
Joe Dawson patted Adam on his knee, but the Immortal was lost inside himself for the moment. Why should it surprise him, Joe wondered, that the two most powerful Immortals should have manufactured between themselves a tragedy of epic proportion?
CHAPTER TWO:
Joe Dawson rolled the old chair back from his desk and ticked off his list of things to do. Finished the books from last night, check. Called Mike and gave the staff the night off, closed the bar, cancelled the band, check, check, check. Called the dojo and gave the caretaker the week off, saying they'd be around in the morning to house sit and he was to make arrangements. Done and done. Mike had arrived with the supplies--and no questions, thank God.
One more thing, Dawson tried to think. Oh, yes, Granny. He took care of this and then there was no more stalling. Upstairs and assess the troops, like the good, if reluctant, paramedic Joe was.
They'd both slept most of the day, Adam and Duncan, but they'd been bumping and rustling around upstairs for the past half hour. Joe plopped the large plastic bag of goodies on his lap and punched the button for the lift. He'd begun to hear Adam cursing, a little louder as more time passed. Things were no doubt going badly. Time to intervene.
"All right!" Joe roared as he rolled cautiously into the room, in time to hear Adam wind up and fly with the best of his vocabulary. Not, unfortunately, English. Or maybe that was for the best, considering the flushed look on the good doctor Pierson's usually pale features.
Adam whirled towards the door, "You!"
Joe rolled the chair back, almost out of reflex alone, such was Adam's ire.
"High time," Adam continued. "This, this--willful child is about to get the beating of his life!"
"Oh, sure," Joe rolled over to Duncan who was sitting on the side of the bed, innocent as a babe, an expression on his face of quiet happiness, vacant and unbothered. "As if this sweet child would give you a moment's care." He patted Duncan on his knee and the Highlander patted him back, smiling.
Adam rolled his eyes and walked over to them. "Here," he said, offering the glass of water to Dawson. "You try it."
"Duncan," Joe began, shaking his head and smiling broadly, "You haven't been giving Uncle Adam here a hard time, have you?"
Duncan's dark eyes drank in every word as if they were scripture, and he smiled vacuously and mimicked Joe's head shake.
"See," Joe said. "Why don't you try again," he suggested.
Adam cupped the Scot's chissled chin gently in his left hand. Despite is threat of a beating, Adam touched the younger Immortal as if he were porcelain. Adam tipped the glass to Duncan's lips and poured some in. Then he stepped back.
"Now that wasn't so hard," Joe commented, looking at Duncan's delightful pursed smile.
"Wait a minute," Adam said, his prominent nose hooked down over an exasperated scowl. He put out his pale tapered hand, palm up, below Duncan's chin. "All right, Duncan."
The large eyes opened and lifted towards Adam's rolling baritone. His smile widened a little bit and the water ran out of the corners, down his chin, and into Adam's hand.
"He just does that, drinks, won't swallow," Adam sighed, "At least he's stopped spitting."
Joe reassessed Watcher Pierson. He hadn't noticed in the low light of the bedroom that the lanky Eldest Immortal was sopping down his entire front. "Oh, I see," Joe said softly, "it's okay, Duncan. Uncle Joe to the rescue."
Like a demented Santa, Joe began pulling items from the bag. "Here," he handed three plastic bottles to Adam, "Rinse them out carefully before you fill them," he handed over a gallon of Gatorade.
Adam was soon back from the bathroom with three loaded baby bottles and the rest of the sports' drink. "Duncan. Here," he put the nipple to Duncan's full, pouting lips and they shut down tighter than an old maid's parlor door.
"No, no," Joe reached for the bottle, "Haven't you had any foster children in your long life, Adam?" He put the nipple into his own mouth and chewed it awhile, biting several more holes around the rim. Then he brushed the nipple against Duncan's cheek and the rooting reflex turned the Scot's head toward the bottle and he latched on like a pro. Duncan was soon wrapping his broad hands round the bottles and draining them faster than Adam could keep refilling and chewing on the new nipples and being thoroughly disgusted with the whole process.
"This is impossible," Adam complained, opening the second gallon.
"Oh, this is nothing, Adam," Joe chuckled, "We haven't even got to bathtime or--" He tossed a box at the flustered Immortal.
Adam's reflexes engaged and he caught the box and tossed back a, "What the hell!"
"It is my bed," Joe began to explain, "And I'd like to think I'll be able to use it after you and Duncan are back at the dojo."
"But these are, are--" Adam handed off the next bottle to Duncan, who was beginning to slow down his intake and had rolled on his side, more playing with the bottle than actually drinking. "Diapers, Joe, they're diapers for adults!"
Joe tossed a smaller object. Adam made the catch again, "And--? Corn starch?"
"Well, I don't know about you, but I'm not looking forward to a two-hundred pound Gaelic warrior with the rash," Joe smiled sweetly.
"And while I'm doing all these chores," Adam complained, "Just exactly what will you be doing?"
Joe rolled by him to the back wall and started sorting out all the periphernalia for putting his legs back on, "First I get upright. Then, I make a dinner run to the Chinese place up on Waters. Duncan is going to realize he's hungry pretty soon, now he's no longer thirsty. I'd say we have about a ten minute window of opportunity while he naps.
Indeed, the Scot was snoring softly, the bottle just hanging on the edge of his lower lip.
"Which means," Joe finished with the right prosthesis and started on the left, "I'll be back about the time you're finished bathing and tidying up. Just toss the linen on the floor. I'll take it down to the washer when I get back. Clean bedding is in the top drawer of the chest in the hall."
Adam went off grumbling to start the bath water.
"And Adam?" Joe called out as he strode past the bathroom door on his way to the lift.
"What now?" Adam spit back.
"If Granny Grimes gets here before I get back--you will be your gracious self and invite her in and see to her comfort?"
"Yeah, yeah," Adam answered back heedlessly as he adjusted the water and worried about how he was going to get Duncan down the hall if he wasn't to the crawling stage yet. The words didn't register until several minutes later. When he rushed into the hall to ask about the whats, whys, and wherefors of the redoubtable Granny, Joe was long gone. Off on a quest for supper.
And Granny Adams was on his own.
Adam Pierson reasoned with himself that this was his fault for having drawn Duncan out of hiding--or at least partly his fault. God knew what the Scot had done to provoke the punk into shooting him. Then again, he hadn't been careful what he'd wished for and this was it--in spades. Not the sort of relationship he had prayed for, but he hadn't really been that specific. This was a nightmare.
Adam returned to Joe's bedroom to find Duncan awake, hanging over the bed's edge, communing with the dust bunnies underneath. "Duncan?" Adam called out in as good a humor as he could manage.
Duncan pushed up and rolled back on the bed, reaching both arms out.
Oh, God, Adam swallowed hard. This was taking on all the hellish edges of the most cruel irony. He'd wished to be held in those bronze, strong arms. He had asked and pleaded for exactly this--well, not exactly. "Duncan, it's time for a bath. Do you think you could walk?"
Duncan's features lit with the most amazing, almost beatified, expression, and he just reached toward Adam harder.
"Duncan?" Adam leaned over and the Highlander caught him in a gleeful hug, gurgling and laughing like a demon child. Adam struggled back up. "Come on then. No time for this play, Duncan. Bath. Believe me, you need one."
Duncan stared, open eyed and watchful, as if Adam were speaking Swahili. He reached up again, this time with his legs as well.
"Oh, Dear Lord," Adam read the obvious, even as he wished to remain ignorant, "I'm not carrying you! You outweigh me by two stone, easily. I can't. I won't. And that, me buckoe, is that!"
Ten minutes later, Adam staggered into the bathroom with two hundred pounds of obstinate Highland child in his arms. He laid Duncan down on the tile floor and bent over, gasping. "I don't suppose--you're up to taking off your own--No, I didn't think so--Give me a minute--No, Duncan! Don't do that--bath, we have to get you into the tub."
Disconcerted by Adam's gruff tones, Duncan had rolled up in the bath mat and was sucking his thumb and rubbing the top of his head with his free hand. Adam untangled him from the mat and propped him up to sitting against the tub side.
Shirt first, Adam thought, starting with the originally pale blue shirt now tie-dyed with all manner of nasty stuff. It was raw silk. It would never be clean again. Adam tossed it in the trash can under the sink and turned back to remove the stinking cobalt jeans that had looked so fetching not eight hours ago. Well, at least he hadn't shit in them, Adam thought, not really feeling grateful at all.
The man whom he loved, whom he ached to have, to see, to touch, to--. Right there, sitting cross-legged, stark naked before him, hunched over his lap with his thumb in his mouth and his free hand stroking the bath mat. Adam felt his own body respond even as his mind rolled with disgust at the thought.
"Aaaaaah!" Duncan howled as he leaned his bare back against the cold porcelain of the tub side. He jumped up, quick as thought, and dashed out the door.
"You son-of-a-bitch!" Adam scrambled after him. "So you made me carry you down the whole frigging hallway and all this time--!
The lift was set to return to the second floor and park there when it was not being used. Duncan had probably banged all the buttons and somehow the lift had taken him down to the bar.
"Duncan!" Adam took a deep breath and called over the railing down to the bar floor, "Duncan, you stay there, Duncan. I'll be down in a minute. It's all right, really." No time to wait for the lift to return. Adam dashed the other way down the metal walkway ledge and shot down the stairwell.
When Adam entered the bar, it was empty. A noise to his left, Joe's office, sent him scurrying that way. If the back door were open--! Damnation! "Duncan!"
With a wild yelp and a wicked baby laugh, Duncan disappeared through the alley exit out of Joe's office, just as Adam entered. The Eldest Immortal grabbed Dawson's coat, hanging on a hook by the door and sped out into the alley after the bare-assed escapee.
This was definitely not the part of town in which to go flashing your assets. The River District would be waking in an hour or two. This was so not funny. There! Adam caught sight of the beautiful bronze skin down at the end of the alley, just shy of the street. Oh, damn, damn, damn!
A tan coupe cut Duncan off and a bright blond with the prototypic headlights of a gumshoe novel, slithered out of the driver's side. "My, oh, my!" the blond exclaimed, staring at Duncan.
Adam rushed up and threw the coat around Duncan, who was gurgling and smiling at the lady, and, Adam noted, drooling. "You will have to excuse my cousin, Miss. He's had a serious illness and--"
"He surely looks healthy now," the blond directed her entire attention to the Highlander's open, sunny face, "Don't you now? Yes, you do," her voice wandered up and down the scale and Duncan responded to it with head bobs and baby noises. "We better go inside now. Yes, oh, yes. I'll bet there's something nice to see in here. Something sweet and fine and--"
Her singsong tones were so encouraging and inviting, that even Adam could not help following her back to Joe's alley door and into the bar. Duncan hurried up to her, "talking" a mile a minute, with the blond nodding and concurring in that same hyper-happy song.
Goo, goo, Adam thought. Deliver me.
"Well?" the blond said as they walked into the bar, pulling down the jacket hem of her navy blue power suit.
Duncan turned back and looked questioningly at Adam.
"Well, what?" Adam snapped.
Duncan started burbling and nodding and then he barked twice and pointed a knuckle at Adam.
"Yes, indeedy," the blond bubbled, "I think he's in a mood and a half, at that. Tsk, tsk, tsk," she added shaking her head.
Duncan pushed out his lower lip and shook his head in an exact imitation.
"What do you think?" she stroked Duncan's shoulder, "Do we tell him? Or do we just let him figure it out for himself?"
"Who the hell are you?" Adam grumbled.
Duncan barked again and they both laughed at the Eldest Immortal.
The blond sighed and extended her hand towards Adam, "Watcher Dawson said I might stop by and do an assessment. He said I wouldn't be sorry. Brother, was he not kidding!" She looked back and smiled at Duncan, who took his thumb out of his mouth long enough to smile back. "My name is Ethel Grimes. I am a Pediatric Neurology Fellow at Seacouver General, and--" She reached down and pulled up her wristwatch, beneath, on the palm-side of her wrist, was a tiny Watchers' tattoo.
"Granny Grimes!" Adam reached out, only to have his hand slapped.
"God Damn that Dawson!" Ethel cursed. "If I've told him once--!"
Duncan started barking and pacing around the empty bar.
"It's okay, Honey," Ethel called out and Duncan returned to her side. She reached up and stroked his blood-matted hair. "Oh, my," she said softly, "This is Duncan MacLeod. Oh, dear--No, Honey, it's all right. All right."
Duncan had heard some tone in her voice that made him reach both his hands for her shoulders and lean towards her, protectively.
Adam wasn't surprised. Of course, the boyscout would have been so from birth. "And I, if it's any interest whatsoever, am Adam Pierson, PhD, research assistant, Methos Project."
"And godfather to a naked Immortal in need of a bath," Ethel finished for him. "Come on, Duncan, race you to the bathroom." Duncan beat her to the lift and waited for her to make it work. He couldn't make the door open and it was parked on the second floor again. Ethel showed him how to punch the button and then waited, watching if he'd learned the lesson, but after a short wait, she punched the button herself and then they both disappeared into the elevator.
Which left Adam in the middle of an empty bar wondering why a blond with the build of a Venus and the intellect of a rocket scientist would know exactly where Joe Dawson's bathroom was.
Adam wandered down the hall, picked up Joe's coat, and entered the bathroom. "Do you really think that's in the best of taste?" he commented.
"See, Duncan. It's easy," Ethel paid no attention to Adam's rude entrance as she went about showing Duncan what the plumbing was for--his own and the bathroom's. "In a career that's filled with brain tumors and spinal transects, this is the most fun I've had in weeks. Good boy, Duncan! Then what do you do?"
Duncan reached up and put the seat back down.
"And that," Ethel turned towards Adam, "Is something most adult males never learn. And then?"
Duncan stepped back from the toilet and started to pop his thumb back in his mouth.
"Uh, uh, uh," Ethel said lightly, taking his wrist and leading him to the sink, "Forgot a step." She turned on the taps and washed his hands, an occupation which soon deteriorated into a suds and splash game, both of them giggling together like wicked children. "Okay, okay," Ethel more or less called surrender.
Duncan put his thumb in his mouth, made a disgusted face, and stuck his thumb back under the tap until it tasted right again.
"Duncan?" Ethel went back to the toilet, "One more step. Come on, it won't hurt you. You don't have to be afraid."
Duncan wandered over behind her and peeked around her back as she flushed the toilet. His eyes went wide, but he stood his ground.
"It will be a while before we work that out," Ethel said, never looking at Adam. "And his maximum tasking sequence so far is three, and that's with a lot of repetition. Good boy, Duncan! How about a bath now?"
Adam was struck by Granny's ability to speak in two voices, one for him and one for Duncan. He didn't think he liked what she was saying in the voice she used to talk to him about Duncan.
Ethel kicked off her shoes, pulled off her hose, and sat on the edge of the tub, testing the water and adding some more hot until it was right. Without even asking him, Duncan climbed in beside her and dangled his legs in the bath.
"Be still my beating heart," Ethel said laughing. "Lordy, Lordy!" she fanned herself with her fingers. "All right, Duncan. You sit down there in the suds," she picked up a handful of soapsuds and blew, sending them all over Duncan's chest. Duncan settled down into the tub and gathered up armfuls of bubbles, blowing large tunnels through them and laughing.
Ethel took off her jacket, handed it to Adam, and rolled up her sleeves. "There's a natural sponge in the bottom drawer to the right," she pointed towards the sink. "If it wouldn't be too much bother, Dr. Pierson."
"And even if it would," Adam got the sponge and brought it back. This was supposed to be his bath, after all. His chance to wallow in the luxury of that body, the bronze cape of that perfect back and narrow waist, the--
"Dr. Pierson," Ethel said evenly, biting her lip, "If this is too stimulating for your delicate nature--"
God help him, Adam groaned inwardly, can I just be any more embarrassed or what. Even his thick canvas jeans couldn't hide his stone-hard erection.
Ethel chuckled, "It's all right, Adam. If I had one of those, I'd be pointing it to blessed heaven myself." She leaned forward, nose-to-nose with Duncan, "Because you are such a beautiful baby, Duncan. Such a handsome boy. Yes, you are."
"Were you and he--?" she paused, framing her question, "Before the accident, were you lovers?"
"Not yet," Adam sighed.
"Oh," Ethel held a round soap out for Duncan. He took it and turned it in his hands and gave it back to her. "Very, very good, Duncan. Try this one," she handed him a square soap and he did the same thing. "That makes things a little complicated, doesn't it?" Ethel picked up a flat oval soap and gave this one to Duncan. "All righty, Duncan, now comes the hard part," she set the square soap and the round soap on the tub edge. "Which one is that like? Does that go with this?" she picked up the square soap in her left hand, "or does it go with this?" she picked up the round soap in her right hand.
Duncan held up the flat oval, so he was sighting along its edge. He tipped his head sideways and stared at her left hand. Then he manipulated it around and studied its top, then its bottom, then he looked at her right hand.
"Oh, excellent, Duncan! Excellent!" Ethel crooned. "Marvelous child!" She put her hands together, so that both the soaps were cradled together and Duncan put the oval between them. Then he dunked his thumb repeatedly until the soap taste went away.
"Well, come on then, Adam," Ethel invited him over, "Lust or no, we need to bathe this babe. Yes, we do." Duncan splashed the suds around gurgling and agreeing and thoroughly enjoying all the attention.
Ethel stepped out of the tub, but Adam did not take her place. He wasn't in the mood to take his jeans off in her presence. Instead, they both kneeled on the floor, Ethel beginning to work on Duncan's long, matted mane, and Adam getting all the rest to himself.
Duncan melted back in the tub, smiling and chattering on about how happy he was, or something lyrical which might have meant that. There was no question about how much Duncan's whole body loved being tended. It wasn't so much a sexual, as a sensual, thing--for Duncan, at least. He nearly relaxed himself into a sleepy drowning and there was a scramble to drain the tub while Adam propped the heavy Scot above the sudsy waves.
Duncan woke up fast enough when Adam turned the sprayer head on him to rinse his hair and hide. There followed a wrestling fight on the tile floor which ended Adam as soaked as if it had been his bath to start with.
Ethel managed to stop her hysterical laughing long enough to call a truce and throw a bathrobe on Duncan. She led him down the hall to the bedroom, while Adam did his best impression of the proverbial wet hen.
Borrowing some of Joe's things, Ethel showed Duncan how underwear and clothes worked, and what a brush was for, and how to drink out of a cup. She stripped the bedding and commented lightly on how it really wasn't good manners to wet the bed if you could possibly avoid it. After remaking the bed and tossing the dirty linen out in the hall, Ethel settled in at the head of the bed, propping her back on the pillow pile, after sorting out the bloody ones and tossing them into the hall as well. Duncan snuggled in beside her and she read him a funny story book with rhymes and colors and clocks and all manner of interesting things. Duncan pointed out the answers when she asked him.
She pulled a tiny light out of her jacket pocket and made him blink. She listened to his neck and his chest. She tickled his feet and made him stand up with his eyes closed. Then Ethel changed sides with him, handed Duncan the book, and let him play doctor with her. With all seriousness, he opened the book and crooned to her encouragingly and laughed and patted her shoulder when she got the answers right.
But Ethel, despite her natural leanings, cut the game short of the listening-to-the-chest part, and they both settled down for a short nap, while Adam finished cleaning the bathroom and changing his clothes.
"Well, I like this," Joe leaned against the bedroom door frame, "I'm out slaving over a hot wok, and you're up to God Knows What behind my back. In my very own bed. The nerve."
Adam looked up from a book, he hadn't been reading for a while in the big stuffed armchair which was Joe's favorite piece of furniture in the entire bar. "Well, if you're going to be gallavanting around, then you have to expect the home fires will go on burning without you."
"I don't see your fires burning all that brightly, though," Joe tilted his head towards the hall. "Foods here. Downstairs."
Adam unfolded his long frame and went over to wake Duncan. Ethel woke up in an elegant stretch.
"Joe, Honey," she said sleepily and crawled to the end of the bed like a cat. "How are you, you old devil? This was one primo assignment, I must say."
"Always happy to please," Joe watched her reach for her jacket, but leave her hose and shoes at the end of the bed. For some reason, this seemed ominous, but he couldn't quite think why. Something about corpses and barefeet. Very Abbey Road. He walked into the room and picked up her shoes and hose.
"Here you go," he threw a stuffed toy to Duncan. It was a tiny, very worn green and brown patchwork teddy bear, with shiny black buttons for eyes, a pugnacious nose and a stupid grin on its face. Around its neck was a green satin ribbon, limp and wrinkled.
Adam could not fail to notice that one of the patchwork repairs was a small square of MacLeod tartan. "What's with the bear?"
"I'll thank you to be a little more respectful of Master Teddy," Joe harrumphed, "Teddy and I go back a long, long way. And I can see Duncan knows how to treat a paragon of bears."
Duncan busied himself, introducing Teddy to his two friends, lifting him up high, and them cuddling him in close, rocking and babbling and sharing his best thumb. The fingers of his left hand found the silk ribbon and went to their repetitive stroking as he wove Master Teddy into the frayed and unfamiliar tapestry of his new life.
"I don't know, Joe," Adam shook his head, "You don't strike me as a Teddy Bear kind of a guy."
"That is not for general publication, Buddy," Joe elbowed the Eldest Immortal and then left for the lift and supper.
They reconvened around a large round table in the bar, laden with at least thirty little boxes with handles and Chinese characters on the side. Duncan was soon up to his very thick eyebrows in sum gum and duck and rice and sweet and sour sauce. They had talked him into sitting Teddy up on the bar where he wouldn't get messy with the dinner fare.
Adam took some egg drop soup over to another table and tried to collect his frazzled wits while Duncan played performance art with their supper. He wasn't looking forward to another bath--or mopping the bar floor either. Joe took pity on him and brought him over a beer.
"Bad evening?" he sat down beside the Eldest Immortal, gazing over at Ethel and Duncan doing the food fight scene from Animal House, or something very like.
"He ran out of here stark naked," Adam began, "If it hadn't been for Granny there, I don't know what would have happened. Is she for real?"
"And then some, Buddy," Joe toasted her with his beer.
"She surely does seem to know her way around upstairs," Adam commented, reaching into the WonTons which Joe had brought with the beer.
"Oh, that's not the half of it, Buddy," Joe chuckled. "You know what they say about snow on the roof."
Adam was about to come back with a nod to his own permafrost, but Ethel interrupted.
"Gentlemen," she said in that second voice she did not use with Duncan. "Much as I would like to stay and party. I'm on call this eve and I still need to go do my rounds at the hospital."
"You've finished your assessment already?" Joe asked.
Adam started to ask something, but Joe's hand on his wrist silenced him.
"Yes," Ethel said solemnly. She unzipped an inside pocket on her jacket and drew forth a small bottle of pills and a hypodermic syringe loaded with some clear fluid. "I have finished. You want the report?" She sat down across from them and placed the two items on the table.
Joe looked at Adam, squeezed his wrist again, and nodded.
"From the nature of the wounding," Ethel began in a disembodied, clinical voice which betrayed no trace of augury, "I am surprised he is not blind, but his vision is better than normal. So we can only assume the vagaries of a blowout and dispersement of forces are at work here. He is non-lingual, though not non-verbal, and I believe he will regain a measure of his speech, from the uninjured hemisphere, if nothing else. Being left-handed, he has an advantage, in that his speech centers will be less localized than usual and the secondary language centers will probably compensate eventually. His proprioception, the localization in space, is intact, for the most part, he has a minor deficit to the left, which is not very noticeable, except to direct confrontation. He has the barest left neglect, just a trace, and this is consistent with the other deficits."
"I would estimate his current mental age to be about sixteen months, with gross and fine motor skills of a twelve year old, and speech expressivity at eleven months, with receptivity at the four-year-old range, maybe higher, but not much. I am more concerned with his sequencing and multi-tasking difficulties. As I told Adam, three in sequence is the most I could manage with him. This would indicate a more serious vestibular injury, if it were not for his remarkable physical abilities and motor functions. But it does show an inability to concentrate, and this shows up again when we test for short term memory, although his logic processes are better than normal for his general age average."
"He is in excellent physical condition," Ethel dropped out of character and flushed, "Oh, my, yes!" She waved across to Duncan and blew him a kiss. "And he is otherwise fit and recovered from the injury."
"So what are you saying?" Joe asked. "This is as good as it gets?"
"I can only estimate, Joe," Ethel couched her answer, "It's now been ten hours since the injury. I do think maximum restoration has occurred. It may be more a matter of amputation. Xavier's hand is an instance of the parts being removed from the body and not regenerating. The brain is simply not all there any more. So any further recovery is going to depend on how well the remainder will come to compensate for the missing portions. In mortals, neurological recovery in such injuries can continue for two years with intensive therapy. In Immortals, one would expect ten hours to be sufficient time. I think he will get some better." She shook her head and straightened her hair with both her hands, closing her eyes. "I don't think he'll ever be Duncan MacLeod again, as you knew him."
Adam felt the air go suddenly dead and thin. He felt his heart beating wildly against the inside of his ribcage. "But surely there is something we can do?" he heard himself saying.
Ethel put her palms flat on the table. "Do you want to know what I recommend?" She pushed the pill bottle and the syringe towards them.
"Tell us what you would do," Joe asked officially.
Adam could only nod and clench his teeth.
"Take all the pills out of that bottle and crush them into applesauce or something he really likes. Then see that he eats it all up. When he falls asleep, find a good vein and push the syringe in, all of it, as fast as you can push without blowing the vein," Ethel swallowed and reached for Joe's beer. She took a long drink.
"And that will cure him?" Joe asked.
"No, Honey," she returned his beer, nearly empty, "that will kill him. I'm assuming you know how to take his head."
"What?" Adam nearly screeched as he jumped up out of his chair.
"You asked my opinion," Ethel looked Adam straight in the eyes, "Think about it. That is Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod, one of the most powerful Immortals in the world. He is a veritable Immortal magnet. They will hunt him down and take his head. You are in danger sheltering him here, even now. He is more vulnerable than a baby Immortal and you know what a tragedy those are."
"But there must be something--" Joe gasped, "Holy Ground--?"
"Yes, you could take him to Holy Ground," Ethel sighed, "but if today is any indication, you'd have to chain him in some monastery somewhere. You won't be able to keep him from his natural athleticism and curiosity. You won't be able to confine him. It's not in his nature. There is one other possibility, but it is a pipe dream."
They hung on her words as if they were a gigantic hook.
"I suppose, if you could find a powerful Immortal to adopt him, tend him and care for him, forever, some Immortal who could and would fight all MacLeod's challenges for him, then he might just have a chance," Ethel wiped her eyes, "I don't see that happening, given the Immortals were born to kill each other. I can't, for example, see Amanda tying herself to a retarded man for the rest of her days, no matter how much she used to care for him when he was whole."
Ethel rose from the table. She picked up her jacket and Joe retrieved her shoes and hose. They hugged briefly and Ethel went over to get a sticky kiss from her patient. She returned the honor with a tender peck on his forehead, "Goodby, Duncan. It was so good to meet you. I am honored."
Duncan looked up at her and tears filled his eyes. He reached up and stroked her cheek with his hand. There was a humming sound rose from his throat, a comforting and hopeful note, more expressive than words.
Ethel nodded, "God must watch over you, Duncan. If there is any justice in the world."
Adam walked her to the door and held it for her. "Here," he said instead of goodby, "take these back." He gave her the pills and the hypo.
Ethel shrugged and replaced them in the special pocket of her coat.
Adam leaned in close and said softly, "There is justice in the world."
And God help them all, Adam thought to himself, that I should be the purveyor of that justice.
Before turning in, Adam couldn’t help but look in on the sleeping Scot. Duncan was lying on his side, arms wrapped around the pillow. Tucked under his chin was the teddy bear. The Highlander had kicked off the blanket and his long legs were bared. Duncan wouldn't have it with the diapers, so Adam had given up and compromised on sheet liners and just a T-shirt for his charge. Which was how he was now treated to the remarkably intoxicating view of Duncan's buttocks. Adam could admit to no warm, maternal reaction over seeing the white round of a precious baby's bottom. No, not at all, he felt the unrelenting tide of his lust rush up within him, drying his mouth, readying his flesh, and driving him mercilessly.
Swallowing hard, Adam made his tremulous hands pull up the blanket until only Duncan’s and Teddy’s heads were exposed. As chastely as was possible, the ancient leaned down and pressed his lips to Duncan’s cheek, very close to the corner of the full mouth. He could almost swear that a small smile formed on those beautiful lips.
"Sweet dreams, my Celtic angel," Adam said softly, remembering the times he had tucked his own adopted children into their beds. "Let the dark night's mare pass by your sleeping."
Saying this, the Immortal carefully stood up and walked down the hallway to the den, where Joe was already fast asleep on the couch. Which only left the adjacent floor and its carpet for Adam's old bones.
Sometime during the night, Duncan woke up. Rubbing his eyes drowsily, he picked himself up from the bed and trudged outside the room, teddy bear in tow. The Scot glanced briefly at Joe before his eyes fell upon Adam, sleeping on the floor.
Getting down on his hands and knees, Duncan crawled up to the Immortal, easing himself close…very close…to Adam. Unconsciously, Adam's left arm went up and hugged the Highlander, pulling the young man close to him. Duncan peered at the ancient through sleepy eyes. Duncan pursed his lips and shyly kissed Adam's mouth. It slacked open in a somnolent, pleased sigh.
Yawning, Duncan snuggled up next to the Old Man and they fell into the perfect slumber of innocents and angels.
Home Previous Next
