Date: Fri, 9 Sep 1994 19:14:11 +0100 Reply-To: Highlander TV show stories Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: John Markor Subject: immortal unawares 1-4 --========================_11459090==_ Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Supporting characters in television shows are unsung heroes. We never really know anything about them, and they tend to be very static.....never changing and seldom seen except for a few minutes here and there and sometimes unseen for weeks on end. With IMMORTAL UNAWARES I decided to put Joe Dawson in the forefront, make him a more dynamic character, put him through some changes. I have also give Joe a back story, answering many questions we have had about our favorite "Watcher". Enjoy....... --========================_11459090==_ Content-Type: text/plain; name="Immortal_Unawares_-_Part_1"; charset="us-ascii" Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="Immortal_Unawares_-_Part_1" PART ONE: Mid September, 1993 Glancing across the table to the woman opposite him, Joe Dawson felt his eyes misting over. The cocktail lounge was dark and the music mellow, but this atmosphere couldn't disguise that this lounge was at the airport and his female companion was about to depart and Joe wasn't going with her. Reaching out, and touching his face, she gently wiped the tear from his eye, "I don't have to read your mind to see how you're feeling Joe." She squeezed his hand for a moment, "This isn't just my dream or Ian's, but, Joe, it's a little bit yours too." Nodding in agreement, " Oh Liz, I know that, I just wish you didn't have to go so far away to make this dream come true." Reaching into his inside jacket as he spoke, he pulled out a flat blue velvet box, "Liz, I want you to have this," he placed the box into Liz's hands, "Open it..." Slowly opening the box, she found a large opal and diamond necklace. "Joe! It's beautiful!" Picking it up, she smiled, leaned across the table and gave Joe a quick kiss. "Thank-you." "It's a token of my affection." Returning the kiss, he felt his eyes well up again. He shook his head, "God, I'm a turning into a sentimental old fool aren't I?" Liz's eyes weren't exactly dry either, "No Joe, you're no more a sentimental fool than I am. I'm going to miss you too. I wish you could come with me. She scooted over to Joe, and knelt by his side, "Now my dear Joe, why don't you help me put this beautiful necklace on?" The airport public address system intruded on their moment with a rude reminder of reality. Liz's flight was boarding. It was time for them to go. Helping Joe from his seat, slowly and painfully the walked arm- in-arm to the boarding gate. Their conversation was sparse and strained. Liz knew Joe was thinking of the dream she, and Ian and Joe shared so many years ago. She turned to Joe and spoke with certainty, "Joe, Ian is with us now, and he is very happy that our dream is finally coming true." Now it was her turn for her eyes to well up with tears. They arrived at her gate in time for the final boarding call. Flight 1017 for Hollywood-Burbank Airport was departing in ten minutes. Pausing at the threshold of the boarding ramp Joe touched her face and held her close. "A year is a long time Liz...." "You're still visiting in January, aren't you?" She held him a bit closer to comfort him. His pain only made hers even more difficult to deal with. At times like this her gifts were sometimes overwhelming . "Of course I am...." he said softly, choking back his emotion. "But it's not the same." His voice trailed off. The flight attendant broke the spell, "If you want this flight, you're going to have to board now...." Steadying himself, he reluctantly pulled away from Liz. "Take care of the dream.....and make it come true for all of us." He glanced around, as if Ian was truly there. " For Ian too." "I'll take good care of our dream." With one last kiss and quick embrace, Liz turned and walked down the corridor to the waiting jetliner. "Bye Joe, see you in January." Leaning hard on his cane, fighting back tears, Joe bid Liz farewell,"Bye Liz, Bon voyage." The woman he had taken to the airport was not the same woman he watched boarding the plane. Elizabeth Buchanan, who many years ago won Ian Tyler's heart and who married him four years later,had become more than a special friend. Twenty-five years of friendship had changed, and now he realized, as flight 1017 taxied away from the terminal, he had fallen deeply in love with her. A rapidly growing, gaping void in his heart cried out the words his voice could not speak. "I love you Liz Buchanan." Taking her seat in the first class cabin, Liz heard Joe's aching cry, and silently replied with her heart, "I know Joe, I know. I love you too." Her feelings warmed his cold and aching heart and comforted him as he turned from the gate. Returning to the cocktail lounge he found a window table where he watched the snowy eastern mountains turn pink in the setting sun. Joe's mind wandered back some twenty-five years to the afternoon Ian and Liz met in the Student Union Building at college. Joe had never met anyone quite like Ian before. An Englishman beginning work on a Master's degree in film making, Ian had answered Joe's ad in the student paper looking for a roommate. Ian, a tall rangy sort of guy who could eat anything and never gain weight, wore mismatched and baggy clothes. Topping his disheveled look was a shaggy red mane forever falling in his face. Quick to laughter, joyful and expressive could best describe Ian. Joe enjoyed Ian's company, and being around Ian helped him take life a little less seriously. Ian was as carefully rumpled as Joe was neat. Joe thought about the hit Broadway play, "The Odd Couple" and laughed quietly too himself. Ian looked intensely at Joe and muttered at his roommate. "I don't think so Joe." "What?" said Joe, glancing up at his roommate." I didn't say anything." "We are not Felix and Oscar!" laughed Ian as he picked up his pen and returned to work on a story board for a film class project. Glancing at his roommate Joe frowned, I swear, he thought to himself, that guy can read minds! Ian smiled and continued drawing. Ian looked up in time to watch a very young female freshman walk by and stand in the food service line. Ian and the girl exchanged smiles. From the corner of his eye, Joe noticed Ian's eyes sparkle. "Joe, you see that girl over there in the blue coat?" Joe looked up from his notes, "Yes, what about her?" . Quite matter of factly Ian stated , "I'm going to marry that girl over there." Joe placed his notes in a folder and stared at the daft Englishman sitting across from him. "Uh, Ian......have you even met her yet?" "We just did." Emerging a few minutes later from the serving area with a tray full of food, the girl scanned the crowded dining room for a table. Joe, still puzzling over his roommate's intent to marry proclamation, noticed him smile and wave to the girl. Returning his smile, she soon turned in their direction. As she wound her way through the crowd and toward their table, Joe noticed she was quite young looking for a college student, even for a freshman. Her face showed signs of an ongoing battle with acne, and her blue-green eyes partly hidden behind thick glasses and dark auburn bangs sorely in need of cutting. Quite tall, with a slender, boyish build she moved like she wasn't really sure where her feet were at all times. In her eyes was the same sparkle that Ian had in his as she sat down across from him. "Thanks for sharing your table with me guys. I missed lunch at my dorm so I had to eat here." She wasted no time in introducing herself. "I'm Liz Buchanan." "Ian Tyler." He took her hand and kissed it. "Pleased to meet you." Ian kept his hand on hers for a couple of minutes. Liz blushed a bit but didn't take her eyes off Ian. "I'm Joe Dawson, Ian's roommate." Joe watched with fascination at the chemical reaction taking place between Ian and Liz. The two of them seemed to glow. "A cartoon?" she finally spoke, glancing down at Ian's storyboard. "Sort of," he answered. "It's a storyboard for a film class. I'm here to study film making." With a laugh he added, "And become the next Felini!" Joe noticed the time was getting late and he had a section of undergraduate world history to teach in a few minutes. He excused himself and headed off to class........ It didn't take Joe long to realize that Ian and Liz were masters of a very special kind of non-verbal communication, a form of communication more often claimed by cranks, but possessed by only a rare few. Ian and Liz were full blown telepaths. A loud and boisterous group of travelers jolted Joe back to the present day. The barest hint of sunset reflected on the eastern mountains. Joe glanced to the south, the direction Liz's flight was taking. He felt Liz's presence. He thought to himself, Is this what it means to share love with a telepath, never really being apart? "Yes it does." was the unheard reply. Even though she was miles away by now, the link was still there. His heart leapt with joy. He knew it would have to wait, but he was eager to explore more corporal aspects of his new relationship with Elizabeth Buchanan. Maybe January wasn't so far off after all. "If I have to spend any more time in this hotel, I think I'll scream!" Liz beat the pillow in mock insanity as she spoke into the phone. "I don't know who's going battier, Jack and Kelson at the kennel or me in this hotel!" "Well," said Joe on the other end, "why don't you go and look for an apartment?" "If only I had the time.....And I already hate Los Angeles. I think I can get away Sunday. I've heard the Tehachapi Mountains are nice.....and believe me Joe, I need to get away to some mountains! All those meetings with studio lord high muckety mucks and their ilk are really getting to me. But hey, I've got something they don't. I can see through their phony sincerity and can see they are sincerely phony!" Joe roared with laughter, "As long as you keep your sense of humor I won't have to worry about you......just miss you. Love, I gotta go now. I just heard the bell ring. I've got a customer in the shop." "Okay, I'll reluctantly let you go. I love you Joe." "I love you too. Bye." "Bye". Liz hung up the phone and pulled out a road map. "Hmmm, she thought, "Walker Basin, Piute Hills......Looks interesting....close to Tehachapi......That's where I'll go on Sunday." Joe, over a thousand miles to the north glanced down from his balcony reading room in his brother-in-law's antique bookstore and for the first time in his life as a Watcher, would come face to face with the object of his observations: Duncan MacLeod. The best route to Tehachapi it seemed, was to go north on I-5 to the 14 and at Rosamond take the Willow Springs road into town. Liz figured she'd find a cafe and hope the locals could tell her where she could go for picture taking. As she drove north she noticed how beautiful these mountains were. They were drier and the shades of green were lighter and she noticed more browns and tans than what she was used to seeing in the Pacific Northwest forests. On the outskirts of Tehachapi she spied a cafe, and being a bit thirsty she drove into it's parking lot. The dark and smoky cafe was filled with a mixture of people of all ages, and in the far back corner two Native Americans sat drinking coffee and talking quietly among themselves. One of them, an elderly woman looked in Liz's direction. She felt the old woman probe her mind. It happened so fast Liz didn't have time to block the telepathic probe. In fact if Liz hadn't been so caught up in admiring the mountains and trees she could have sensed the presence of this other telepath and masked her nature, not just the old woman's probe. Liz stared at the woman. The old woman wasn't malevolent at all. The old woman's probe was more of a greeting; like mind to like mind. The woman stood at the table and beckoned Liz to join them. Liz wanted to meet the locals, so why not? The old woman smiled as Liz approached her table. "Hello," she said as the old woman took her hand. Something akin to a mild electric jolt surged through her body. Liz sat down across from her hosts. "She is of the blood, isn't she?" whispered the woman's male companion. The woman nodded. The man looked at Liz and smiled. "I'm Martin, and this is my sister Maria." "I'm Liz," She paused, "This is a most unusual meeting." Martin stared at Liz and she felt uncomfortable under his gaze. He again nodded at his companion. The Native Americans were strong telepaths and shared a communication Liz was not privy to. She respected this, but was puzzled by their interest in her. Maria gently took Liz's hand again and gazed into her eyes. Feeling nothing but concern and warmth, Liz lowered her block and allowed Maria to search her soul. Maria nodded, "Liz, you don't like living down below do you?" "Down below?" Martin laughed, "That's what we call Los Angeles around here....Down Below.....as in hell." Liz laughed. "Oh God yes! But I'm working on a movie and I need to be close to the studio. I've got meetings all the time. Every word I write is read by six illiterate studio MBAs and sent back to me for rewrites...." She had no idea how frustrated and exasperated she was with her role of screenwriter. "We can help you. We have a property that needs someone to take care of it. It's not far from here......You are perfect for it." Maria opened her mind to Liz and Liz saw a cabin high up in the mountains, surrounded by California Oak and tall pine trees. "Well, I wasn't much looking forward to apartment hunting in North Hollywood or Burbank." --========================_11459090==_ Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" *************************************************** * John and/or Lydia - Can there be only one? * * sundari@halcyon.com * *************************************************** --========================_11459090==_-- =========================================================================