Date: Wed, 23 Mar 1994 21:14:50 -0700 Reply-To: Highlander TV show stories Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Robin Fingerson Subject: HLFIC: And Promises to Keep (3/3) Finally! Tell me what you think....Robinf@pvi.com "...And Promises to Keep" (3/3) Duncan could barely see her in the dark. "You can't possibly be serious!" he gasped, his voice echoing out into the narrow alley. "I'm very serious, " she murmured, "Parset was frightened. He was frightened of death and thought that if h e killed me, he'd have the power to survive. I won't be a target anymore, Duncan." "If that's what you wanted, you should have let Parset take your head!" he snapped back. "I thought I could, " she said distantly, "Let my guard down and just let him do it. It's harder do to than it sounds." Her laugh was brittle. Duncan could only stare at her shadow in the dim light, the tight roiling terror in his belly starting to convince him that his friend was serious indeed. The wail of sirens intruded into the silence, forcing them back into the shallow doorway to avoid the flashing lights. Duncan pushed open the door, and they stumbled inside and climbed the stairs. Averroe flinched when he slammed the door to the loft hard enough to rattle the glass in the tall windows. She had never seen him this angry. Averroe collapsed on the couch like a rag doll. Refusing to look at her, Duncan tossed her a towel to wipe away the blood, and poured brandy from the open decanter they had left on the counter. He held out the heavy glass to her but pulled away from Averroe's hand when she took it. He turned back to the counter, his knuckles white where he gripped the edge, rigid with fury. She could see the ropy muscles in his back tensing as he tried to regain his composure. What she had asked him was unthinkable, but she had to make him understand. "I have never asked anything of you, Duncan." The strain made her voice a harsh whisper. "But I am asking you for this." She jumped back as Duncan slammed his fist down on the counter, heedless of the shards of broken glass driving into his hand. He turned on her furiously, "Are you mad? How can you come here to convince me my life if so damned precious when all you wanted was help committing suicide!" he yelled at her. " My God, Averroe! How many more people do I have to lose?" Averroe didn't back down. She didn't sound desperate anymore, and the matter-of-fact tone she took only heightened his unease. "I won't do this anymore." she stated flatly. "It's what we _do_. We all have to live with it. For centuries we have lived on the outside, waiting..." "Waiting for what? " she exploded, "What in the hell are we fighting _for_? Knowledge? Power? We have knowledge if we want it, power if we dare to take it -- we have the luxury of time. Some spectral Prize? We don't even know what it is that has us hunting each other like animals for thousands of years! What kind of prize is worth killing friends?" Duncan stared at her blankly. She was right. They didn't know what they were fighting for. All they knew was the inexorable force drawing them into the gathering, following rules handed down from teacher to student, unquestioned. Averroe returned the gaze evenly, almost defiantly. "There's always holy ground." he said, grasping for the barest hint of an argument. Averroe didn't look at him when she responded. Turning her back to him and stepping away, she said quietly, "I'm not Darius, to retreat to hallowed ground. It's not for me, you know that. He was content to watch from the sidelines and influence those immortals he could, without playing the game. I've been a warrior all my life, I can't hide now." "It's not hiding." Duncan said defensively, "It was his choice. He wanted to spend his life in peace." Averroe smiled gently at him, "Whatever it was, it didn't save him. Refusing to participate doesn't mean that I'm not involved anymore. The game will still go on, even if I decide not to play. " "Go find some other executioner, Averroe." he snarled at her, "I won't be party to your death. Find someone else." "I promised you once that I wouldn't let you live a life you no longer wanted. Don't you think you owe me the same consideration? Do you really believe I haven't thought of just letting the Watchers take me? One misstep, and I'd share the same fate as Darius. Everything I am, everything I have experienced would be lost." The implication was clear - he would receive her quickening, and the power Parset had coveted. Before she could move, Duncan grabbed her in a bruising grip, blood soaking into her sleeve from his cut hand. "Don't try to make this out as some self-sacrificing martyrdom for my benefit! I don't your damned quickening. " he shouted, shaking her violently. Averroe's head came up angrily, a harsh retort on her lips, but she met the hard look on his face with resignation. Duncan faltered under that stare. There was such loneliness and sorrow in her eyes, he thought, his anger suddenly fading. His hands dropped to his sides and he realized he was shaking uncontrollably. "I can't do it, Averroe. You ask too much." He sat on the couch, his elbows on his knees and pushed his hands through his hair. Averroe picked up one of the scattered chess pieces and turned it in her hand. She stared out the window and listened to the sirens, wondering how many times she was going to have to face this if she couldn't end it now. I was getting harder every year, moving from one identity to another, from one life to another, leaving behind pieces of her life. Parset hadn't been the first to hunt her down. He had only been the latest in a line of immortals so desperate for survival that they had lost their humanity. Parset. She shuddered with the memory of taking his head. Parset's will was formidable - receiving the quickening had been a sheer force of will to survive. Averroe wasn't sure if she'd survive the next one, if she could force back the countless other lives she had taken one by one through the centuries and still retain her own identity. The voices ricocheting in her head, thoughts that were not her own rushing to the surface. But it was the memories that were so hard to control - countless thousands of memories of lives she hadn't lived, of people she didn't recognize. It was getting harder each time to separate her own identity from those immortals whose quickenings she carried with her. "I am so tired." "We all are." Duncan sighed. " that, too, is something we must live with." Averroe turned finally, her haunted eyes following him as he paced around the loft, "The Gathering is close, a few centuries, perhaps even a few decades. Unless I retreat to holy ground, my life from now on is spent looking over my shoulder, waiting for friends I've known for centuries to find me. If I do live to the Gathering, it's only because I've eliminated everyone I ever knew, even you. I won't face that, Duncan." "You and I could never.." he began Her voice was sharp, "We have been friends for three and a half centuries. Parset was my friend for almost three thousand years. _He_ came for me. What makes you think that you and I wouldn't eventually face each other?" He didn't have an answer for her. If the Gathering reached for them, they wouldn't have any choice. Averroe continued, not expecting an answer. "Now, today, I can control my own fate. As there are fewer of us, I don't think that we will have that choice any longer. I've spent too much time being pushed and dragged by the game. I'm tired of waiting, and I don't want to kill any more of my friends." Duncan's answer was a monotone. "But you'd ask me to do it." "You are the only one I could ask. There are many of our kind who shun the mortal world, living instead in its shadow where nothing can affect them but the ebb and tide of the game. You and I, we are too much involved in eh world around us. We feel its losses and its joys. " She searched for understanding in his dark, handsome face. "It has ceased to hold joy for me, Duncan. " The sound of the rain starting on the roof filled the loft with the low murmur of a thousand unseen voices. Averroe shivered briefly in the chill wind coming in over the water, and turned to pin the other immortal with her gold eyes, as if she saw straight through him. "I ask you to fulfill your promise. " Averroe said flatly, willing him to understand. Duncan shuddered visibly under the force of her words. "Earlier tonight you offered to die for me, Duncan. Parset would have killed you without a thought. Why can't you do this thing that I ask?" Almost pleading, he answered her, "Because you always had a lust for life I couldn't understand. You reveled in it. I can't believe that you've lost that." Averroe turned back to the window, watching the rain hit the glass and staring out into the darkness. "I haven't lived in centuries, my friend. I've survived. And it's not the same thing at all." The longing in her voice was painful. He wanted to shout at her, to scream at her, shake her. He groped for something to say to convince her she was wrong, that there was so much more life had to offer her. But Averroe had lived her life, a life far longer than he could possibly imagine, and she had aged immeasurably tonight. Parset's challenge had brought her worst nightmares to life - there was nothing he could say to ease that blow. He couldn't deny her the chance to choose her own fate. His own choice, perhaps, would not be so different. "Yes." he said in a whisper," If you ask this of me, I will do it." . . . . . . . . . Averroe was sitting on the park bench, staring out into the darkening sky, oblivious of the falling rain. It would be dawn soon, she recognized that strange stillness that preceded the sunrise. For a long time Duncan stood beside his car, watching her sadly. She didn't turn when he shut the car door and walked across the wet grass. "I wasn't sure you would find me here." she said. "I wasn't even sure you'd come" He almost laughed, but the sound died in his throat weakly, "I wasn't sure either." When Averroe had left the loft, hours earlier, she knew she would have to provoke this fight, she couldn't force him to simply take her head as she stood passively awaiting the final blow. That would have been too cruel. In the heat of battle, with the pain and the blood and the fury, he could subdue his conscience and keep his promise to her. There was no reason to wait. The files she had left on his office table explained what she wanted done with her considerable estates, and held letters to many of the friends that they shared. Duncan could do with them what he would. So she stood, dropping her long coat and stepping out onto the grass. Her sword wa still sheathed, the dark scabbard tied to her back, as was her custom. Duncan followed, the scrape of steel on leather grating on his already frayed nerves as he pulled the katana free of its leather sheath. In truth, he hadn't been sure he would come. Only the chance that he could change her mind, as she had shocked him back to life, brought him out after her. They didn't need words. Averroe reached behind her with an easy grace and pulled her sword free of its sheath. The silvered blade almost disappeared in the mist. The rain started coming down in ernest, turning the field into a gray, shadowed stage. The chill rain soaked his white shirt and plastered it to his body. Averroe had always loved storms. Loved the raw power they released, something primal. She spun the long blade casually, as if they were sparring, as they had hundreds of times before. Duncan's first attack was hesitant, and Averroe responded by slashing the tip of her sword under his lunge and ripping across his chest. His shirt tinged pink as the rain washed blood from the wound. Duncan jerked back, startled, and raised the katana again, respect blossoming as he met her gold eyes, staring across the gap between them like a stalking tiger. He realized that she was forcing his hand, and in the end, it would be not easy, but inevitable, to take her head. Duncan attacked again, locking their blades and shoving her backwards. Averroe fell and narrowly avoided the quick slashes as she rolled to her feet. She danced out of his reach, her laughter trilling out over the wide field, echoing in the darkness. "Come, Highlander. " she coaxed, "Show me something I haven't seen before." Duncan met her attack easily, and they traded blows with a practiced rhythm honed by years of swordplay. Meeting her broad smile with one of his own, he swept forward, the katana throwing sparks as it slid down Averroe's blade. The misty rain muffled the sharp crash of metal on metal and it seemed they were only shadowy creatures dancing in the glow of far off streetlights. Averroe scrambled back from his lunge and slipped on the rain slicked grass. She hit the ground at his feet, and froze as the cold steel of his katana swung down and stopped a hairsbreadth from her neck. Their fight went from playful sparring to deadly serious in that second. The long blade trembled slightly, and Duncan took a deep, tremulous breath. "Do you wan to die?" he asked. Averroe gazed up at him, at the harsh heaving of his chest as he fought for air, the trembling sword. She levered herself to her knees. With renewed resolve, she forced her weary body to its feet, and faced her friend. Deliberately, she thrust her long sword to half its length into the damp earth. She was done fighting. This was the Averroe that Duncan knew, enbracing life with arms flung wide. They stared at each other over the crossed hilt of her sword, gasping in deep draughts of the misty air. Eye to eye, they remained so for what seemed like hours. The katana sagged his hands and Duncan took an involuntary step backwards. "Yes." she said fiercely, "This is what I want. Do it!" The blade didn't move as she raised her face to his, the falling rain gilding them both in streaks of silver. He tried to still the shaking of his hands, willing himself to move muscle by muscle as he drew the blade back. "Do it." Her hands clenched into fists. "Averroe...." "Do it!" Almost a caress, that voice. Yearning. From somewhere, Duncan summoned the strength to do it. If Averroe had flinched or closed her eyes, he wouldn't have been able to strike. The sword began its downward swing, hissing forward with brutal precision. Averroe's exultant cry mingled with his howl of rage and despair as the katana arced down. Duncan fell to his knees, and the quickening burst instantly around him like an explosion, unbelievably bright. The howling of the wind rose to a crescendo, the lightning surrounding him in an agony of light. Distantly he heard the booming of thunder and shattering glass, as from a hundred miles away. Millennia of life, a thousand lifetimes poured into him with dreadful force. He lay gasping, face down in the wet grass, wracked with tears, screaming with fury. Every fiber of his body ached, stretched wire taut. The hoarse screaming sounded faint in his ears, and he could hear the rushing of his blood in his veins, deafeningly loud. The maelstrom died abruptly. leaving silence in its wake so profound he thought for a moment he must be deaf. He fell to all fours, hunched forward, gagging. Several trees were still on fire, the tight smell of ozone stung his nostrils. Rocking back on his knees, he stared at the devastation around him. The rain sizzled as it hit the damp earth. The crackling of power still surged around him, and in that last, final moment, as the howl of the wind died and the lightning faded, he felt her loneliness and he understood. Staggering to his feet, he took her torn coat from the mud, covered his katana and walked quietly back to his car. In the distance, he heard sirens, and wondered how many times he would face this before it was finally over and the game was won. . . . . finis . . . . =========================================================================