Date: Mon, 20 Nov 1995 23:04:29 EST Reply-To: Vi Moreau Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Vi Moreau Subject: Elena Part V This is Part V of Elena. BTW, I know that Duncan put Darius' ashes in the Seine, so he could not have been buried in the chapel graveyard. But surely the Church would have some marker in his memory, and this is where Elena stood to make her promise. Duncan opened his eyes with a start to a familiar terrible feeling. He looked down to see Elena's sword in his chest. He moaned, grabbed the hilt with both hands, and smoothly slid it out. His body arched up with the effort and he almost blacked out. Recovering, he immediately started to look for Elena--he knew there had been no Quickening. He turned his head to the right--that was all the strength he had for the moment--and saw the top of her head right beside him. She was lying on her stomach, not breathing, and resting under her cheek he could see the hilt of his katana. Slowly he sat up, his head hanging down. The pain was starting to recede and his strength was starting to return. He knew the fight was not over yet, so he used her sword for support to lever himself to his knees. The effort left him dizzy, but he still managed to notice when she started to move. He had to hurry now. He knew some Immortals 'revived' faster than others, and he wasn't one of them. He had no intention of just taking her head while she was still unconscious, but he did want to be able to make her an offer she couldn't refuse. Maybe with his blade at her neck he could force her to listen to him. Elena shook once, twice, with the violent spasms that always accompanied her 'coming back to life.' Something cut into her abdomen, and she gasped. She could also feel her nose and cheek lying on something rough, and she opened one eye and slowly brought it into focus--it was the hilt of his katana! She was lying on his sword! She grabbed the hilt with her right hand, took a deep breath, and started to roll onto her back. As she did so she saw MacLeod kneeling right next to her, reaching over her! She tried to swing the blade out towards him, but he put his hand over hers on the hilt and twisted viciously. Something gave in her wrist, and pain shot down her hand and up her arm. Most of the strength left her hand, but she gritted her teeth and tried to tighten her grip. Her left arm was under her, and as she struggled to push up he swung his leg over her. He was sitting on her, pushing the katana down towards her. "!No!" she cried. He tried to wrest the sword out of her hand, and she concentrated all her strength on her grip. She knew if she let go she was dead. Her wrist was screaming, her chest was being crushed, and she was having trouble breathing. She pulled up her knees and put her feet flat on the floor, arching up and trying to buck him off, trying to wriggle her left arm free, but he was too heavy. Then she pushed with what was left of her strength against his arm and felt him give, leaning backwards. With his free hand, he grabbed a handful of her hair and slammed her head twice, hard, against the dojo floor. Duncan felt her body go limp. He took the katana, pulled her head back by her hair and put his sword to her neck. Her right arm lay out to her side, the wrist at an unnatural angle. A simple draw cut would have finished her, but instead he waited, panting. Elena's blacked out briefly. When she regained consciousness she felt his blade at her throat. For a moment, she kept her eyes closed, despairing. She had lost, and not just her head. She also lost the chance to avenge those she loved and to destroy these murdering Hunters. And the worst part was that she was being stopped by another Immortal! She felt nothing but rage. She looked up at MacLeod, full of hate and disgust. How could she have cared anything about him! She had been so wrong about him! He was a worse monster than the Mortals he was protecting! "!Asesino! Go ahead and kill me! I hope they shoot you down next, that you die like a hunted beast instead of like a man! They are murdering us all, and you are helping them! Traitor! !Bastardo! Go and take my head to your masters!" she screamed. She tried to raise her head up to spit in his face and his sword cut deeply into her neck. Only his hold of her hair kept him from halfway decapitating her. She was screaming at him, completely out of control, and he despaired of being able to reason with her. She almost cut off her own head! "Elena, listen to me!" he tried to reach her, "Listen to me! That's not the way it is! I'm not trying to help anyone but you! Please, Elena, I don't want to kill you!" She slowly calmed down and stopped fighting him, but he was still suspicious and stayed tense, waiting. "Elena..." He said, in a soft voice. Elena felt the sword cut into her neck; the pain was the worst she had ever felt. She gasped, feeling nauseous. She found it hard to think straight, but through a mist of pain and hate and fear she heard his words, "Please, Elena, I don't want to kill you!" Blowing out through grinding teeth, she relaxed, bit by bit, until she felt like a rag doll. She looked into his eyes. He was telling the truth--maybe he wasn't working for the Hunters, maybe he wasn't going to take her head, maybe...His eyes were kind. His voice was...kind. Kindness. No one had been kind to her in over a year, not since Maria died. Elena closed her eyes, and suddenly she was there, right there, that terrible night when they came for her. ********************************************* They break down all three doors at once, machine guns blasting, but they don't know about the secret entrance. Even before the guns stop firing, Elena is on her feet, sword in hand. She does not feel an Immortal. Maria wakes up with a scream, and Elena pulls her up bodily. "!Vamos, apurate, nina! We have to get out of here, now!" They go into the closet and out the hidden door into a natural cave. Elena is nearly in a panic, dragging the younger woman along. There is more gunfire from the house, and Elena covers Maria's mouth. She hesitates. They will be found here, and surely they have disabled her car by now. She wonders who they are, although it really doesn't seem to matter. There are horses in the stable, but Maria couldn't ride, and can't run. But they have no choice but to try to make it to the river and the canoe there. Maybe they can lose them in the trees. She is naked, and Maria has only a nightgown, but neither one feels the slight chill in the air. Elena hears them between her and the stable, so they are forced to make a straight run for it on foot. There is no way they can track them in the dark, unless they have dogs. She knows this area, and they start toward the river. If they can just lose them long enough... Then she hears a voice calling out, closer than she thought it would be, "!Duran!" in clear Spanish. "You have no chance to escape. Give yourself up and we'll spare the bitch with you!" Calling Maria a bitch is not reassuring of their good intentions, so Elena says nothing, but she wonders, 'Who are they? What do they want?'although she knows the answer to the second question. "We'll just take your head and be on our way! You know you don't deserve to live! You are an unnatural creature that should have died centuries ago! You're not even human! Your time is up, Duran!" 'Unnatural creature! Who are they?' Elena is bewildered to find that any Mortal even knows about her. They run for a few more minutes, but Maria is tiring fast. "I can't go on, Elena. Leave me! You get away! They are after you, you can draw them away, and they said they wouldn't hurt me! Please, just leave me! !Dejame!" "No, I won't leave you! How can you trust them? They came in with 'metralletas.' They'll kill you too!" But even as she speaks, Elena knows they have no chance at all. Maybe she can at least save Maria. She sighs. "Stay here, querida," she whispers. " Stay hidden. Stay safe. It will be alright. I'll lead them away from you. I'm the one they want. Te quiero mucho." She kisses Maria and moves off into the darkness. From a distance, she calls out, "I'm here, senores! Come and get me!" and immediately hears the search head in her direction. But they also find Maria. "!No! Don't kill me!" she hears Maria scream. "!Elena, ayudame, por el amor de Dios!" Automatic gunfire follows. Elena is momentarily frozen with grief and terror. 'They killed her anyway! !No, Dios mio, no! I should never have left her! I should have stayed with her!' But they're getting closer, coming for her. Then she's being shot at, and the paralysis is broken. Elena rushes effortlessly towards the water, bullets spitting at her heels. She dives into the canoe and paddles out onto the black water. ************************************************ Elena looked into Duncan MacLeod's beautiful, kind brown eyes. Her own eyes filled. 'No,' she thought, 'I can't be weak now, not in front of him.' But the tears came, in a headlong irresistible flood, tears for her beloved Maria. For a moment the pain was so great she couldn't even speak. "!Me la mataron!" she croaked in a raspy voice. !Me la ametrallaron! !Nisiquiera era immortal! Ellos lo sabian... !nisiquiera era immortal! !Y yo la deje, la deje sola para que me siguieran a mi! !La deje sola y me la mataron! !No era immortal!" Duncan had enough Spanish. "They killed her, they machine gunned her, and she wasn't even immortal! I left her alone so they would follow me, but they killed her anyway, they knew she wasn't immortal!" she was sobbing. He removed his sword, leaning down into her face. "They didn't care whether she was immortal or not, Elena! They didn't even know! And you're doing the same thing! Can't you see that? You're just like them!" "!NO! !Ellos lo sabian, sabian que no era immortal! !Estaba encinta! !La ametrallaron y estaba encinta! !Ellos lo sabian! !Estaba encinta y me la mataron!" 'Encinta.' Pregnant. Duncan leaned back, horrified. He moved to kneel next to her, watching her weep from the bottom of her soul. She cried for Maria and for Don Alvaro, and for Darius and for Pepe, and for Gordon and for her own mother, and for Estelle, and for all the friends and lovers she had buried over the centuries. She cried for the Immortals whose heads she had taken, friends and foes. She cried for the Mortals she had killed. She cried for the men and women she had hurt and executed in quiet rooms. She cried for herself, and for what she had become. She couldn't stop, and had no strength left to try. The sobs come from the core of her body, making her shudder violently, and she cried and cried until she had no tears, then continued, dry, racking coughs into her hands, her body curled into a fetal position. For a long moment Duncan knelt beside her, watching. Her misery was so strong he felt he could actually touch it. Finally he put down his sword and pulled her up into his arms, rocking her until she was spent, shuddering. There was a long silence. He stood up with her and she looked around, looking completely lost, sagging as he tried to walk her to the elevator. He picked her up in his arms and she lay limply, her head hanging back, her eyes half-closed, completely exhausted body and soul. She was not light, and he signalled Richie, standing in a corner with Dawson, to help him with the elevator. Richie gave him a long, questioning look, opened his mouth to say something, then shut it again. Before Richie closed the elevator door, Elena lifted her head and murmured, "My sword." "I got it," said Richie. He brought it up in the elevator and placed it on the table while Duncan worked his way to the bed and lay her down on it. She sat up carefully, shaking her head. "A bath," she rasped. "Please." Her throat still hurt very badly, although most of the other pain was gone. She was so tired...When he left her, she put her hand to her neck and was surprised to feel raw tissue, just barely starting to heal. It hurt. Duncan came back while the tub was filling and found that Richie had gone. Elena was carefully touching her neck. 'There may be a scar there,' he thought, remembering Kalas. "Are you alright?" She didn't answer. "Can you walk?" he asked. She nodded, but got very dizzy when she stood up. Duncan steadied her and helped her to the bath. "Thank you," she said, dismissing him. Elena stripped off her bloodied clothes. The hot water felt so relaxing! She sank down into the soapy water, and winced when it touched the wound at her neck. It was still surprisingly painful. Then she put her head back against the edge, soaked, and eventually dozed. She hadn't felt so drained in years. Duncan went downstairs to find Richie cleaning up the dojo floor. Richie smiled, wisecracking, "Gotta get these bloodstains out right away." Then he got serious. "So, Mac, I guess I'll take Dawson over to the Emergency Room, to get his hand fixed up right." Duncan nodded. He just wanted them to leave, but Richie still had more to say. "What are you going to do about her?" "I don't know. I guess it's up to her." "I don't have to tell you how dangerous she is. I mean, you already know that, am I right?" "Yeah." "So...all that Spanish, I didn't catch all of it. Somebody who wasn't an Immortal was shot by what...the Hunters? A friend of hers, right?" "She was pregnant." "That little pregnant girl who was with her? She looked like a doll, Mac. She was so delicate looking. Man, she looked so pregnant...that couldn't have been a mistake. They did it on purpose. So that's why Duran went ballistic, huh?" "I'd say so." Duncan was still thinking of her curled up on the floor, sobbing. "I can understand now, almost. Still, that doesn't excuse...I mean, what she's done..." "I thought you had to go, Richie." "Yeah. We'll talk...again. About this." Dawson spoke up. "MacLeod, she still has something that belongs to me. To the Watchers." "I'll talk to her." He turned to go back upstairs and heard them leave. When he went to look in on her he found her sitting in the tub, head back, apparently asleep. Her sword lay across the tub rim. He could only see her head and shoulders and the swell of her breasts in the water. He could feel his heart rate rise. Elena had brought her sword back with her before rinsing the blood off her body and out of her hair, being very careful with her still painful neck. She wasn't completely asleep, and she certainly felt him coming. Slowly she raised her head and opened her eyes. He was standing in the bathroom door, staring at her with intensity. There was still caked blood on his chest and he looked a mess. 'Dios mio, but he is beautiful!' she thought. She felt a familiar longing deep in her body. He was breathing hard. Slowly she sat up, picked up her sword, and, leaning over, put it on the floor, sliding it partly under the tub's claw feet. Then she leaned back and held trembling arms out to him. Duncan came to kneel beside her. He could see the pulse racing at the base of her neck, right under the cut. He kissed her left hand, then kissed up her arm and up to her mouth. She made a soft sound, and he got into the tub with her, their mouths ever connected. Water spilled, and after a moment they both got out and he laid her down on the bathroom floor. Once again he was on her, and this time he paused, questioning, but she pulled him down into her. Later, on the bed, she on top this time, her large firm breasts moving back and forth in the eternal dance, their bodies covered with water, soap, and sweat. They tasted it all. Then they slept. Once in the night Elena had her inevitable 'pesadilla,' her nightmare. It involved falling off a horse, being raped and left for dead by Eugenio, being cared for by Don Alvaro, feeling safe for a while--then they break down all three doors at once, running through the trees, machine guns blasting--then she looks down at the head that is rolling towards her. She's afraid it's Maria's, but when she sees that it's her own head, she shrieks. But this time, instead of sitting up, bathed in sweat and fear, with her knees curled up in her arms, alone, there were strong arms wrapping her up and a kind voice murmuring in her ear. This is the end of Part V. copyright by Vivian Moreau, 1995 Translations: 'asesino' - assasin 'apurate' - hurry 'ametrallar' - to machine gun someone 'metralleta' - machine gun 'dejame' - leave me 'querida' - my love 'mataron' - killed him/her 'por el amor de Dios' - for the love of God 'te quiero mucho' - I love you very much =========================================================================