Date: Mon, 16 Oct 1995 16:25:47 -0500 Reply-To: Samantha Anne Copeland Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Samantha Anne Copeland Subject: Daddy's Little Girl part 05 X-To: Patricia Terris , Art Pena , Norman Sundheim , "Dittohead, Neal" , Martha Wright , Dylan Kaufman , Melissa Lynne Tomlin , Ellen Karp , Gini Smith , Dan Richter , Peggy Stubblefield , Charles Purwin , Mike May , James Miller , Pete LaPlant , Jeff Dorfman , Aaron Johnson , NiKi Coleman , Dave Hirvela , "Robert P. Thurstans" , Ron Ronsayro , Laura Penuel , Stephen Brown , Robert Solomon , Brenda M LeBlanc , Phil Wright , Ron Brooks , "Roger W. Smith" , Kim delaFuente , "Brian R. Miller" , MonicaPDX , "Joyce A. Williams" Daddy's Little Girl Samantha Copeland copelasa@vuse.vanderbilt.edu ******Part 5****** The next morning Chris awoke to the smell of coffee brewing. For a few minutes she just lay there on the couch trying to remember and forget the events that had transpired earlier that morning. For a moment there it seemed like it had all been just a bad dream, but if that were true, how did she get here? No, she wasn't even going to try to answer that question. She looked over to the kitchen where Duncan was industriously making pancakes. Pancakes did seem like a good idea, now if she could just finish waking up, the coffee would certainly help with that. With that last thought she sat up and swung her feet around into a normal sitting position. "Mmmm, something smells good!" "You're up. I've got pancakes and coffee, if you don't like the choices, I'll see if I can find something that you'll like better." "Pancakes are just fine." With that she hopped up and sat down on one of the tall chairs next to the kitchen counter in eager anticipation of sampling MacLeod's culinary skill. MacLeod went and grabbed another mug off of the shelf for her. She took it and poured herself some coffee and added a little sugar, and took a sip. * That was the good stuff, some sort of gourmet blend. If his pancakes are half as good, I'll be spoilt. Pancakes will never be the same again. * Right about then MacLeod took the big one he was working on and slid it onto a plate with another that had already been finished. Chris took a bottle of syrup and covered the pancakes. After one bite, she knew that she was spoilt. He hadn't gone and used Bisquick like most people, he had made the mix from scratch. To top it off, real maple syrup, not that cheep imitation stuff you can get at the grocery store. MacLeod saw the look on her face and beamed inside, he had been working on his culinary skill in the past few years and it looked like it was paying off. In the past, the women in his life did most of the cooking, now that he had "been on his own" for the last year, it had become a cook or die situation, after all he couldn't very well go out to eat every night. "I take it that it meets with your approval." "_Oh yeah!_ , I haven't had pancakes like this since I was little. Every Saturday morning from since I can remember, till I was 16, my dad made homemade pancakes for us. He didn't cook a whole lot, but what he did was real good." "Why did he stop?" MacLeod asked casually. Chris got a sad look on her face like it was something that she didn't like talking about, but then decided that she might as well get it over with. "It's kind of a long story, you sure you want to hear it?" She asked slowly. "Why not? It'll give me a chance to get to know you better." "O.K., here goes," she began tentatively, as though still feeling some sort of sadness over the events she was to tell of. "When I was in tenth grade my mom was in a car accident. She was on her way to pick me up from band practice and her brakes failed. She slammed into a stopped truck and died about a week later... My dad was a wreck for months afterwards. He nearly lost his job, tenure or not. He didn't go anywhere or do anything, he would just sit at his desk looking at a picture of me and mom taken shortly before the accident. I was really upset about what happened, but the way Dad was acting, it was like both of them had died. I was lucky I had my license, getting around wasn't going to be a problem. Neither Mom or Dad had much family so we were alone in that big old house. After a month, I began to get really concerned, I think he had hardly changed his clothes or shaved since the funeral. Well anyway, a few nights later an old friend of dad's called. Some guy named Russell Nash called down from New York to talk to him. He talked to Dad for a while, then landed on our doorstep a few days later." She saw Duncan grinning at her and couldn't understand why. "What are you smiling about?" "Oh, I think I know the guy. Tall, blonde, unusual accent. Does that describe him?" "Yeah, that is definitely a good description of him.... When I asked how did somebody from New York City know somebody in Birmingham the answer I got was, 'I'm a friend from the old neighborhood'... Kinda strange," she dismissed the remark. Duncan thought to himself, * Connor you devil! * The wheels began to turn in MacLeod's head, doing some simple arithmetic if you will. Connor called Chris's dad a friend from the old neighborhood, a term that Connor reserved for his Immortal friends. This little tidbit made MacLeod very suspect about Chris's dad, not to mention about how much Chris really knew. But if she did know more than she were telling, he highly doubted that she would be telling him all that she was. If her dad was who and what he suspected, Chris would be in good hands if his teaching her didn't work out. "...He managed to talk dad into shaping up. He stayed for about a week, to make sure dad didn't relapse or something, then he left. Meanwhile Dad had begun to look after himself more, though instead of shaving off the beard he had grown, he trimmed it to a manageable length. He said that he thought that it made him look more distinguished. I don't know about distinguished, but it certainly made him look a few years older. After that he has never quite been the same... I don't suppose that he ever will." She looked down at her food and pushed a bite around in the puddles of syrup. "I'm sorry to hear about your mother. It seems that you have been through a lot in the last few years." "I was sad for a while there, but there was nothing that I could do about it so what's the point of getting down about it?" MacLeod took a few minutes to ponder what she had said. He might have slipped into a similar funk after Tessa had been killed if it hadn't been for Richie's presence. He would have lost any reason to live. If it hadn't have been for the need to get Richie trained, he might have gone off to the island and just stayed there until someone came to drag him back to civilization. For a while he wanted to blame someone, Richie had been there so he blamed Richie even though he knew deep down inside that it wasn't his fault. He'd blamed himself until a few months ago, he had sent them out to the car, he had kept telling himself that he should have been there. He finally forgave himself when he realized that he had no way of knowing what was going to happen that night. Meanwhile Chris finished off her pancakes and coffee. She wandered over to her bag and removed a brush and a squishy headband. She undid the braid in her hair, though most of it had come undone as she slept. She bent at the waist and brushed her hair out. It was still a little damp from the shower she had taken after the tournament. She had braided it because there had been no time to get her thick hair dry before going out. After she got her hair brushed out, she scrunched it to take a little of the frizz out, and put the headband into place. She righted herself and shook her head a little to settle her hair. She flopped onto the couch and stared up at the giant mobile that was hanging from the ceiling. Just as she was about to ask about its origins, the sound of the elevator motor distracted her. A few moments later something else distracted her even more: the feeling that another Immortal was near. With that she sat up, ready to get out if need be. "Expecting someone?" she inquired hesitantly. "Always." To be continued...... Kind of goes without saying, doesn't it? ________________________________________________________________ As always and forever, just send questions and comments to me. If you pick this up in the middle, I will be happy to send you past installments. 6 should be comming out sometime later this week, I just happen to have a few tests this week and don't really have the time to do that one final edit on it. The ending of this installment ought to make you wonder. Maybe I should let you people make some guesses before I send out the next part. Hmmmm... Idea! Samantha Copeland copelasa@vuse.vanderbilt.edu copelasa@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu =========================================================================