Date:         Wed, 17 Aug 1994 08:48:31 EDT
Reply-To:     Highlander TV show stories <HLFIC-L@PSUVM.PSU.EDU>
Sender:       Highlander TV show stories <HLFIC-L@PSUVM.PSU.EDU>
From:         "(Nancy Cleveland)" <NancySSCH@AOL.COM>
Subject:      Aloha Chapter 2 (p 43-48)

Other memories....fresher, more immediate...admiring the dimple in a woman's
cheek...learning to piss up a tree...rolling in the mud with another
boy...fighting....drinking....slapping a whore on the rump....bedding
her.....killing...

Maybe I've changed. Maybe I will change again. But I am in a man's body now,
so I must act like a man.

How does a man act?

So much was gone.

All the voices, the hidden companions, more than just voices, friends,
comforters, teachers...the knowledge they carried, the information they had
shared, all gone too...so many holes, so many gaps, where something hovered,
understanding just out of reach, just out of his grasp.
His...fingers...clenched, unclenched, blindly reaching for what was lost.

*He* opened his eyes. Bright. Hurt. Too bright. Wet. Tears. Blink. Close.

Noises came. Noises like words, coming through his...ears. Noises that were
words, now that he concentrated. Noises...from outside. Not me.

"He seems to be coming out of it."  A man's voice, deep, gravelly. The words
sounded strange, the accent, the pacing...wrong.

"Have you ever seen a response like that?" A husky voice, lighter. Woman's
voice. Older woman. The same strange accent, but he was getting used to it
now, .....remembering it....could understand the pattern and flow of the
language. English, it was. But not even that, different from that, too.
Different accents. Different words.

"Nothing like it, anywhere in my experience, or any of the literature. He
went completely catatonic. It would make an interesting paper, if you give me
some more time with him. I'd like to see why it happened. Maybe try it again,
different doses, see if we get a different reaction this time."  The man,
again.

Concern, fright, fluttered in his....chest. Fright.

He opened his...mouth. It was dry. Lips were...cracked. Tongue was dry, too.
Words. He  pushed the air up his...throat, breathed out the word.

"Na."

It was almost inaudible. He could barely even hear it,  himself. Try again.
Harder.

"Na  agin." A whisper of sound, scratching in his throat.

He blinked, eyes tearing in the bright light. Fuzzy shapes swam into focus.
A... face, resolved from the blur and looked down at him. Another moved to
join it. A man, and a woman. Familiar faces...somehow. Not friends. Enemies.
Tried to hurt me. Hurt us. Drove away my voices. Left me all alone.

"So, how are you feeling?"  The man again.

Different. This place was different. No noise. No vibration. Not on
an....airplane any more. Where? Ask...

"Where?" The word husked out this time, barely.

The woman pursed her lips, deciding whether or not to give away that tidbit
of information.

"We're at the Agency, of course. The Director will be here to see you, soon.
You're a fascinating case, Mr. Cartwright. You must have had extensive
chemical interrogation blockage therapy. I'd be very interested in learning
who you really are and where it was done. Unfortunately, our best methods
don't seem to work on you at all, so we'll have to come up with something
else." She smiled, grimly.

<Don't like that. Don't like that at all.>

He tried to sit up. Could only raise his...head.  Hands, feet, unable to
move. Tied to the...bed. <Wouldn't know where to go, anyhow.>

He lay his head back, exhausted. Just the effort of raising it had left him
dizzy, sick and sweating. <What happened to me? Why can't I remember who I
am? Cartwright...it means nothing. Nothing at all. These people, I hardly
know them...what do they want from me? Who am I? What am I?>

The woman stepped away, he heard her footsteps fade back on the hard
floor...tile?...then they returned. He opened his eyes again, the light
hurting less each time, but still making him blink, the forms still blurry,
his vision still unclear.

She was holding something. He blinked again, trying to focus. Long, dark. She
moved,  pulling back her arm. He heard the soft hiss of metal on wood, and
the glittering sword emerged from its sheath like a snake from its lair.
Deadly.

It was a...sword... no.....a..... katana. The word floated to him, from out
of his past. A flash of memory. His arm swinging down, solid impact of metal
on flesh, on sinew and bone, and a nameless man's head jerking and falling
free, rolling red and loose across the blood stained carpet. The katana lay
at his feet, on the floor, the blade stained with his own blood, and that of
others...

<I 'm a killer. Do they know? Is that why I'm here?>

"Now,  Mr. Cartwright, why would you be carrying three swords, and nothing
else?" The  woman slid the blade back into its sheath, the soft hiss
promising death, vengeance. <Whose death? Whose vengeance? For what?> He knew
there were answers to these questions, knew he had known them once, himself.
But now, now he felt lucky to make three words fit together in a sentence, to
get the meaning from them...

He closed his eyes again. Too tired. Time to sleep. Nothing made sense, yet.
Maybe it would, later.

  *  *  *  *  *

Every breath hurt, like pulling frozen ice into his lungs, each tiny crystal
slashing the sensitive membranes as it melted, then the next wave driving in,
sharp and bitter and icy cold. And thin, so thin. Like breathing space,
trying to draw nourishment from a void. Jonathan gasped, pulling at the thin
air in deep convulsive breaths, almost sobbing at the pain each straining
breath caused him, like a thousand tiny spears piercing his chest, twisting
and burning and flaming.

He clung determinedly to consciousness, using the pain like a weapon, using
it to goad himself, to keep his focus, to keep himself awake and holding
tightly to the wheel's huge hydraulic cable, the vibration moving up his
shoulders, grinding at the muscles and bones in his arms, in his back, his
fingers rigid and locked in place. <Will I ever move them again? Or will I go
through life with these frozen metal claws that once were hands.> He could
feel nothing, below his wrists, only watch and hope the muscles still obeyed,
somehow, his desperate will and need. <Hold on. Hold tight. Hold....hold.>

Perhaps he had died already, his brain starved for oxygen, his heart pumping
vacuum, his lungs collapsed and empty. Died, and come back, over and over. It
was possible, he supposed. His hearing had come, gone, come and gone again,
as he felt his eardrums burst, screaming aloud from the pain, his voice lost
in the howling roar of the wind as it rushed past the opening carved in the
smooth metal skin of the aircraft. He  , had felt his ears heal, then felt
them burst again. Then heal.....

He looked at his hands. Were they slipping? The rusty red stains they'd left
on the cable seemed no larger, no further from his fingers. They seemed
secure. His shoulders were shaking from the strain, from the vibration of the
engines. < It must be almost eight hours. We must be ready to land. Soon.
Soon. It must be soon.>

Knowing, intellectually,  that he would... <might>... return from the dead
was one thing, believing it, another.  He glanced down, glanced at the soft
fluffy cotton clouds that slipped silently by, beneath his feet, beneath the
wheel, beneath the plane. If only they were as solid as they looked. <I'd
love to go to sleep now, to stretch out on that soft fluff of cotton....> No,
that was the way to death, to sleep was to die, here. He took another gasping
breath, the pain ripping through his chest, forcing him awake. Forcing him to
live.

"The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave die but once."  The refrain
haunted him, replaying in his mind, as he thought back to the scene in the
airport.

<I ran. I killed and I ran and I left MacLeod to pay my price. Why did I do
it? Why? Why?> He could have let them take him, let the hunt end there, let
them pry whatever secrets they thought they wanted from his brain, before he
forced them to kill him, or killed himself, to end the whole charade. That
had been the plan. Why hadn't he been able to go through with it? Why?

It was as if another, hidden level of being had reared up and taken over, in
the corridor. He had seen them coming for him, known how the scene would be
played out, been prepared to put up a token resistance...<Have to make it
look good, would't be right to be taken without a fight..> But then, his
token resistance had flowed into a full blown escape, almost without his
conscious involvement.

He'd ducked, meaning to stun one, maybe two of the men, and let the others
subdue him. When the gun had gone off, the impact, the shock, the pain, had
brought back all the memories of his last/first/only death, had triggered his
rage, his killing rage at reliving the deaths of Jari, and of Hikari.

Instinct had taken over, and red, bloody fury had driven his hands, his feet,
his body, as he slipped and twisted away and grabbed the gun, turning it to
shoot the agent dead, feeling every bullet leave the gun as he fired and
feeling their every impact in the man's body almost simultaneously, as he
held him close in his fatal and instant embrace and then fled away.

< I could have killed more of them. I could have killed them all...> No, it
was like the Dragons, just like the Dragons. Senseless rage, senseless. <
What is the point, what is the profit, in killing?>  Revenge.....such a
meaningless word. How do you avenge a death? How do you bring back to life,
what has died? < I could pour out their blood across this entire continent,
and Jari would still be dead. >

The man's eyes, as he died. Staring at him in a sort of amazed wonder. From
two inches away, I saw his soul slip out of his body. Slip away. Never to
return. Never to live again.

< Do I even still have a soul? When I died, what came back? >

He had an instant's vision of himself, a dark eyed, soulless monster, feeding
off the lives and souls of the living. Hunting for life, for warmth, for
blood, for eternity. He shuddered, and closed his eyes. <I'm hallucinating.
Its the lack of oxygen. That's all.>
But the image stayed, hidden, lurking in the back of his mind. The question
he would never really be able to answer. <What have I become? What... have I
become?>

Maybe it was just a fluke. < Maybe I imagined it all. Maybe I never really
died at all...... And maybe I did.>

He could find out, of course. Anytime he chose to. He could simply let go.
Pry his frozen fingers from the cable, and slip down, down through the
deceptively solid clouds, down past the place where the air was so thin he
had to fight, to force himself to breathe. He could fall, and die, and see
what happened. It was tempting. Seductive. Easy.

But he'd already had a chance, and he'd run. Why die now, for no purpose at
all except to satisfy his idle curiosity. <If I have to die, I want it to be
for  a reason. Some good must come from this life, from this death. What
other point is there? What other meaning, what other purpose, in existing? I
need to find MacLeod, to make sure I haven't hurt him too badly, exposed him,
pulled him into my game and left him, a sitting target, in my place.>

There. A purpose.  Something beyond vengeance,  beyond death. To save a
friend...to pay a debt...to redeem his honor. He thought back to the teaching
of his sensei, of the burdens of obligation, of debt. I carry MacLoed's *on*
and I must repay it. It was enough, for now. Enough to live for. To die for.

He drew another shuddering breath, flinching again, in anticipation of the
pain. It was there, but the flaying tiny knives in his chest were dulled,
their sharp edges blunted, no longer tearing and burning with every gasp.The
air seemed richer, his straining lungs filled, satisfied for once, his heart
slowing its wild beating. < We must be descending. At last. Thank the gods.>


The wheel groaned in its housing and began to slide out of the well. Jonathan
tightened his legs around the cable, digging the toes of his shoes into the
small gap between cable and metal housing, wedging himself as deeply as he
could, to to take the shock of landing.

The clouds whipped by, no longer soft and fluffy cotton balls, but elongated
damp sheets of moisture that chilled him and beaded him with the dew from
their sloppy wet  caress. Through the clouds now, he could see the tiny
houses, cars, roads, growing rapidly larger as the plane roared into its
final descent, the engines slowing, straining as the pilot instituted the
noise abatement procedures required at all major airports. Washington
National was no exception.

The shrill roar quieted and the runway came up and hit the bottom of the
wheels. Jonathan was almost shaken loose by the bounce. Yellow lines flashed
by, the engines roaring in reverse now, pulling against the straining tons of
metal that never wanted to stop. Grudgingly, the wheels slowed, the flashing
yellow lines visible a moment longer now, the blur of the runway resolving
into details of cracked concrete, oil stains and rubber tire marks. Lots of
rubber tire marks. <I've never seen a runway like this before.>

The plane turned, and taxied for the gate. <I have to time this perfectly.
I'm sure the Agency is here, watching. It's so obvious. I can't drop too
soon, or I'll be exposed on the runway. If I wait too long, they'll find me,
and this whole chase will have been for nothing. I need to be ready, when we
meet again. Not weak as a kitten.>

Jonathan shrugged his shoulders back, tensing them and experimentally pulling
against his rigid and clenched hands. He could feel the beginning of a pins
and needles sensation in his fingers as he tried to flex them, one hand at a
time. <This is going to hurt, I can tell already.>

One finger moved, then the next. His right hand curled, then held his full
weight while his left stretched and relaxed. One quick glance at the
approaching terminal. The shadow of a baggage truck, a fuel tanker...Jonathan
dropped, rolling, to the ground, rolling under the parked tanker, panting for
breath, his face gritty with oil stained dust, tiny sharp pebbles digging
into his chest, his knees, his palms.

He lay face down, turned his head and looked quickly in both directions to
see if any of the ground crew had seen him. None of the men or women glanced
his way, intent on their tasks, they motioned the plane into its gate,
directed the baggage truck to the side, connected the fuel hose....the fuel
tanks above him hummed and gurgled, as the tanker unloaded its liquid
cargo.<I have a few minutes cover, anyhow.>

He wanted to lie there forever, hugging the dirty tarmac, spent, exhausted
from the strain and stress of the last eight hours clinging to the bottom of
a transcontinental flight.  He wanted to melt into the ground and sleep. But
he had work to do....and the agency's teams were no doubt sniffing at his
trail already. <How many flights to D.C. from San Francisco this morning, I
wonder? How many planes are they watching? How thin are they spread, here, on
their home turf?>

They couldn't be sure, of course, not unless they saw him, identified him.
They couldn't be sure he was here, like they had been sure he was on the
plane from Hilo. It would be easier to slip away this time, easier to avoid
killing....< But if they come after me, if they do see me, can I let them
take me? Can I do it, this time? Am I ready, yet? Will I ever be?>  He was
embarrassed, shamed, at his own cowardice. His face flushed as he remembered
his wild, mindless run for freedom, at the airport. <I only thought of
myself, thought with my gut, not my heart, not my mind.>

The scent of old oil and dust mingled with tobacco smoke. < Tobacco? Who the
hell is smoking near a tanker?>  Jonathan hunched back, crawling on elbows
and  knees into the shadows under the truck's double set of wheels, and
watched a pair of feet approaching. The feet wore scuffed work boots,
untanned yellow leather with rawhide laces. Faded blue jeans peeked out from
beneath the regulation blue cotton ground crew coveralls. The feet, ankles,
moved closer, then stopped, inches from Jonathan's face. The boots rose onto
their toes, the crew member evidently reaching up to adjust a gauge or read a
dial. A thunk on the side of the tanker, and a voice came from above
Jonathan's head, from the truck's cab.
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