Date:         Fri, 17 Nov 1995 14:38:54 -0600
Reply-To:     Julia Kosatka <JKosatka@UH.EDU>
Sender:       Highlander TV show stories <HLFIC-L@PSUVM.PSU.EDU>
From:         Julia Kosatka <JKosatka@UH.EDU>
Subject:      In the Dark, 14/21 (REPOST) ADULT

       "I'd love to, then.  Shall we?"  She linked her arm through his and they
 headed for Ten-Forward.

                                   ****

       Duncan sat in the dark in his stateroom, nursing two fingers of
Scotch and thinking about his life.  He was trapped in the web of
depression that had afflicted him more and more often of late.  It started
whenever he thought about how long he'd been around.  He'd been born in
the sixteenth century, and it was nearly the twenty-fifth now.  Soon it
would have been a thousand years.  What had he done with his life in all
that time?  What good had he done... and what evil?  What mark had he
left?  Not much of one.  He had composed no music, painted no paintings,
written no books.  His only real contribution had been to help whenever
and wherever he could.  Normally that was enough, but every once in awhile
he wished he could have been more.  Deep inside him there was a spark of
creation that burned and twisted, but he'd never yet found what it was he
was supposed to do.
       Deanna Troi's startling resemblance to Thalassa Demetrious had
raked open long-scabbed-over wounds.  Gods, but it was so hard to
continually lose the people you cared about!  By loving mortals, he
condemned himself to the pain of separation again and again; yet what else
could he do?  He couldn't love an Immortal either.  It wasn't allowed, all
because of some stupid Game, some mythical Prize!  What the hell was it,
anyway?  After a thousand years, it didn't matter any more.  He didn't
even believe in it any more.  That was the worst of it.  He'd come to the
stunning realization that the Game could be just that, a myth created by
some long-dead Immortal who had needed to rationalize his own desire to
kill.  The legacy of that myth had doomed countless Immortals to fear, and
pain, and loneliness.  They couldn't just love each other and live their
lives as mortals did.  They had to hide, and fight, and kill.
       Over the years he'd almost managed to convince himself that he
didn't need anyone but himself, but sometimes in the night he knew a
fierce longing to have someone to be with, forever; and not have to worry
about someday facing them across the edge of a sword.  Being surrounded by
mortals as he was on this ship, seeing them free to love as they would,
made him feel the absence of it all the more deeply.  Aboard his own ship
he could almost convince himself that he was normal.  Here, his
abnormality was starkly laid bare, and he couldn't hide it from himself
even if he could from others.  He hadn't had a relationship with a mortal
in over thirty years, not since Ginevra had died.  He had kept to himself,
avoiding contact with anyone other than his Watchers, trying not to let
himself care for anyone.  Even then, it didn't work well.  He had gotten
interested in Valhalla despite his best efforts not to, and had ended up
becoming friends with Jeremy Dikembe... he just wasn't cut out to be a
loner.
       He tossed back the remainder of his Scotch in a swift gulp, and
stared at the empty glass.  Empty.  Like himself.  His fingers tightened
around the glass and it shattered.  He swore, staring at the blood
dripping from his fingers.  The pain began to fade almost before he'd
really felt it, leaving behind only a slight tingle.  Idly he picked up a
piece of the broken glass and drew it across his palm, opening a wound and
watching it heal.  He wondered if there was another Immortal in the
quadrant, preferably one who didn't like him.  It was awfully hard to kill
yourself when you could only die by decapitation.  Not an easy task for
any would-be suicide.  Far easier to let someone else do it for you.
       The door-chime made its damnably cheerful little chirp and he
sighed.  It was probably the Doctor, still trying to find a way to coerce
him into Sickbay.  Even so, it would be better than sitting in the dark
thinking about death.
       "Come."
      The door opened, and someone stepped into the room.  He didn't
bother to see who it was, but remained staring out at the stars.  She
moved closer, standing behind him.  He knew it was a woman, from her
scent, from the sound of her clothing.
       "What's wrong, Duncan?"  the voice was gentle, and concerned.
       "Hello, Guinan."
       "I could feel you all the way from Ten-Forward.  Do you want to
talk?"
       "Not really."
       "All right."  There was no recrimination in her voice, but she
didn't leave.  Instead, she moved around the couch and started to sit down
next to him.
       "Wait, careful..."  he picked up several shards of broken glass and
moved them to the end-table.  "There.  Safe now."
       She sat, and took his hand, looking at the dark stains that crossed
it.  "You should see the doctor."
       "No need.  It's healed."
       She looked more closely.  "So it is.  Must be nice."
       "I used to think so."
       There was a short silence, then she nodded.  "I see."
       Of all people, she just might see.  "How do you do it?"  he asked,
obliquely.
       She understood, as he had expected she would.  "I just take things
a day at a time, and I put up walls to keep people from getting too close.
But you know, I didn't realize I was doing that until you came.  You kind
of... woke me up."
       "I'm sorry."
       "No, don't be.  I needed it."  She looked out at the stars.  "Do
you remember the talk we had in your apartment, all those years ago?"
       He remembered it.  He remembered everything.  "Yes."
       "I was pretty glib, wasn't I?  It's so damned hard not to feel
guilty.  Even if it had nothing to do with you.  And for me, it wasn't
just one person, it was my people."
       That got through.  He turned and looked at her, only to find her
staring out at the stars just as he had been.
       "What do you mean?"
       "You've heard of the Borg, right?"
       "Who hasn't?"
       "They destroyed my world, and assimilated my people, all but a
handful.  I survived because, as usual, I wasn't home.  I've always been
so interested in other worlds... my family said I was too interested in
them.  In the end, I lost them because of that."
       "But if you'd been there, you'd have been assimilated too."
       She sighed.  "I know.  Sometimes..."
       "...you wish you had,"  he finished for her.  She nodded, and he
continued.  "I know the feeling.  On Earth, during World War Two; there
were times I thought it would be so much easier to be one of the victims
rather than one of the survivors.  I did what I could, but it seemed like
so little at the time."
       "I heard, and read, and felt... from the survivors.  I wasn't there
then, my father said it was too dangerous and wouldn't let me stay, though
I thought maybe I could be of some help, somehow."
       "Your father?"  he asked, surprised.
       "Yeah, you know, male biological parent,"  she said, smiling.
       "I--"  he laughed, shaking his head.  "I guess I thought that since
you're like me in other ways, you were like me that way to."
       "And what way is that?"
       "No family.  No parents.  None of my kind have family."
       She shook her head.  "Oh, I have-- I mean, had, family.  A lot of
it.  Now it's just me, and Jahn."
       "Jahn?"
       She sighed.  "My son.  When he claims me, that is."
       "You have a son?"  he asked, stunned, but unable to not ask.
       She nodded.  "I do.  Jahn's... oh, two hundred and three now.  He'd
be the black sheep of the family if we still had a family.  I guess I
wasn't a very good mother.  Not when he needed me to be.  Now that I know
how, it's too late."  she sighed and looked off into the distance.  "We
ought to be required to have a license to procreate."
       "But at least you can."  he said starkly.  He felt as if he stood
on the edge of a cliff, looking down into a roiling chasm of pain.  Her
words had opened up a place inside of him that he normally walled off even
from himself.
       Her head snapped around toward him, her eyes narrowed as she
studied him.  "Duncan... you..."
       "It's not important."  he grated out.
       "But it is.  I can feel it.  I'm sorry; I didn't know you felt this
way or I would have--"
       "You would have what?  Hidden it from me?"  he interrupted,
angrily, though he was more angry with himself than her.  After almost a
thousand years he kept thinking he'd dealt with this problem.  "No, I
can't go through life having people hide their families from me just
because I can't have my own."
       "What about adoption, or fostering?"
       He closed his eyes, remembering.  Kahane.  Viola.  Michelle.
Douglas.  In some ways even the Immortals he had mentored been substitute
children for him.  "I tried that.  It never worked.  I was a hazard to
them.  I've learned that lesson."
       "That doesn't make any sense!  How can it be dangerous for a child
to have a parent who cares about them?"
       Duncan sighed.  "It's because of what we are.  Because of the
damned Game, having families is a liability.  Our enemies know they can
attack us through them.  The other problem is that since we can't have
children of our own, we're inevitably drawn to mortal children.  Even if
they manage to avoid becoming bait for a trap, eventually they come to
realize the strangeness of having a parent who unlike them, doesn't age,
and doesn't die."
       She reached out and took his hand, lacing her fingers through his.
"I never thought about how hard that would be, or how dangerous.  Why do
you still hide what you are, though?  In this day and age, with sentients
as diversely alien and far-flung as they are, why is it necessary?"

"Because even now there are those who would use us as research animals,
just to find out how we work.  We've managed to avoid that so far, we
haven't even tried to find out for ourselves because the knowledge is too
dangerous.  There are a lot of theories, but no real facts.  Is it magic,
or genetics, or a bit of both?  Who knows?"
       "Dangerous?  How?"
       "If it could be artificially duplicated, there are those who would
do it, and then use their position to enslave those who don't possess the
secret."
       "There's nothing that says a naturally-occurring member of your
kind wouldn't do just that,"  Guinan pointed out reasonably.
       "Nothing but those of us who won't let them."  Duncan said grimly.
       She gazed at him thoughtfully.  "You realize, don't you, that if it
could be duplicated, perhaps it could also be... fixed."
       He laughed humorlessly.  "Oh, I've thought of that.  Believe me, I
have.  And despite these periodic fits of depression, I've come to realize
that I wouldn't change what I am.  I just want to change how I live.  I'm
so damned tired of being alone, even when I'm not alone.  I'm tired of the
guilt, and the shame, even though I know it's not really my fault that I'm
alive and they're not.  It always seems somehow like it must be.  I'm
tired of hiding.  I'm tired of not belonging to the world I was born on."
       She reached out and put her palm against his face.  "I know,
Duncan.  I know.  I live with that too."  She shook her head.  "I have a
people without a home, you have a home without a people.  We're quite a
pair, aren't we?"
       He covered her hand with his and turned his head so it was against
his lips, holding it there for a moment, feeling the warmth of her palm,
the warmth of her presence.  Some of the ice inside him started to melt,
and he chanced a look at her face.  He saw the his own pain reflected in
her eyes.  Reaching out, he drew her closer, his arms tight around her,
hers slid close around him.  They sat that way for a long time.  After a
while she lifted her head.
       "If only I'd known then what I know now..."  she began.
       Duncan shook his head.  "Don't.  There's no point in that.  What's
done is done.  We can't change the past, only the future."
       She sighed.  "I know.  But it's hard not to think that way.  Isn't
it strange how things work out?  Tell me, something... was Joe Dawson one
of you?"
       Emotions swept him.  The pleasure of remembering a good friend, the
pain of thinking about how long he'd been gone.  It was always this way,
remembering mortals.  He shook his head.  "No, though I always wished he
had been.  He was a good man, a good friend."
       "You miss him."
       "A lot."
       "I wish I'd had a chance to know him better."
       Duncan grinned.  "So did he."
       She smiled, shaking her head.  "You know, it's probably just as
well that I had to leave when I did.  When I was there studying Earth
cultures we were under strict rules not to-- how shall I put it--
`fraternize with the natives.' I don't know that I could have stuck to
that if I'd stayed around, and I don't know that I could have chosen
between the two of you."
       He lifted an eyebrow.  "I thought you didn't do threesomes."
       "I was young and naive," she said with a wink.
       He laughed, shaking his head, and she laughed with him.  God, it
was good to laugh and really feel it.  He shifted position, stretching
out, and then he drew her against him so they were touching along the
length of their bodies; for some reason craving the physical contact.  It
was no more than that.  He had no other expectations of the moment.  He
just wanted to touch and be touched by another living being.
       She settled against him comfortably, her head resting on his
shoulder, her face turned upward.  He followed her gaze and found her
looking at the stars again.  They were both drawn to that view; the
brilliant stars and the dark, empty spaces between.  Too much like their
lives, he supposed.
       After a while, Guinan spoke again.  "Duncan, why is it you seem to
think you don't deserve to be happy?"
       "I was cursed by a Gypsy,"  he told her, dead serious.  "She told
me I would never find happiness."
       She looked at him, smiling a little.  "Don't you know that a curse
only has power if you believe in it?"
       He gazed back at her steadily.  "Could I be what I am and not
believe in magic?"
       She thought about that for a moment, and finally shook her head
ruefully.  "I guess you've got a point.  Still, don't you think a few
hundred lifetimes is long enough for a curse to run its course?  I have
some Gypsy friends, would you like me to have them remove the curse for
you?"
       He chuckled.  "Why didn't I ever think of that?"
       Her gaze was candid, and so was her reply.  "Because you like
brooding, Duncan.  You're good at it.  Byronic to the core."
       He winced.  "Ouch.  That hurt."
       "It was supposed to.  Face it, you like being unhappy."
       "No I don't!"
       "Then break the cycle.  Do something to make yourself happy!"
       He studied her for a long time, then finally found voice to ask the
question that kept slinking out from the shadowy corners of his mind.
       "All right, I will.  Stay with me tonight?"
       She contemplated him for several long moments, then a smile spread
over her face, a wide, unforced, joyous smile.  "As long as you like,"
she said finally.  "And that will make both of us happy."
       He felt himself begin to relax for the first time since he'd come
aboard the ship, no, for the first time in years.  She reached up and
repositioned his arm where it rested across her shoulder, then took his
hand and threaded her fingers through his.
       "It's nice to find someone who really understands,"  she said
quietly.
       He nodded, his lips brushing her hair.  "That it is."

                                    ****

      For a long time he just held her, his arms a bulwark against their
mutual loneliness.  She felt safer and more content than she had in years.
Gradually, though, she became aware that her body was not nearly so
content as her mind.  A gentle ache burgeoned low in her belly, a subtle
tension infusing her with awareness of him, his body warm and firm beneath
hers.  She knew he would leave it at this, just being together, but she
could feel his need, she felt its echo singing inside her.  Like her, he
wanted more.  They had waited a long time for this... a very long time.
       She reached back and let her fingers play along his jawline,
feeling the rasp of hours-old stubble against her fingertips.  It was an
oddly sensual feeling, and a slightly surprising one.
       "You still shave?"
       He chuckled.  "It's a hazard of being an Immortal.
Beard-repressors don't seem to work worth a damn on us."
       "You could just grow a beard."
       "I have, many times, but I prefer myself clean-shaven.  I look less
like some sort of minotaur that way."
       Guinan laughed.  "Bullheaded you certainly are, though I agree that
you look better without.  It would be a sin to hide that mouth of yours."
       She moved her fingers from his jaw to the soft fullness of his
lips, and she felt them curve in a smile, though he said nothing.
       "Do you ever get tired of being told how beautiful you are?"  she
asked, curious.
       He chuckled.  "Now there's a double-edged question.  Damned if I
do, and damned if I don't!  I think I'll plead the fifth."
       "The fifth what?"
       "Amend... oh, never mind.  Just an old saying."  He sighed and
shifted position slightly.
       "Are you uncomfortable?"  she asked hopefully.
       "Just a bit... why don't you turn toward me?"
       "Why don't we go someplace where there's more room?"  she
countered.  "I think at our age, making out on the couch is passe."
       Duncan laughed, shaking his head.  "You do cut right to the heart
of the matter, don't you?"
       Sitting up, she wondered suddenly if she'd been too direct.
Insecurity made her look at him with doubt.  He saw it.
       "What's wrong?"  he asked gently, sitting up as well, and reaching
out to cup her face in his broad palm.
       "I... "  she shook her head.  "Nothing.  Just out of practice."
       He smiled ruefully.  "You and me both."
       She eyed him with disbelief.  "You expect me to believe that?"
       "It's no more than the truth."
       It was.  She realized that now.  "Why?"  she asked, surprised that
this man of all the ones she knew would be out of practice, then she
realized she already knew the answer.  "Never mind.  I know why.  With
your own kind, there's always the wondering if you might one day have to
kill them.  With others... after awhile it just seems so unfair, to both
of you."
       He nodded.  "That's it, exactly.  Thank God that's not the case
here,"  he closed his eyes, shaking his head. "Guinan, you don't know how
much I've needed this."
       She looked at him steadily.  "Yes, I do.  As much as I've needed
it."
       He smiled.  "I'm glad,"  he said, then as if afraid she'd
misinterpret him, he clarified. "I mean, that you understand, not because
you've been where I am."
       He leaned forward and his hand slid behind her neck, fingers gently
tracing patterns on the delicate skin there.  She shivered.  How had he
known?  How could he possibly know that was the one place he could touch
her that would make her instantly ready for him?  He noticed her reaction
immediately, and slowly pushed aside her hair, leaning forward.  She
gasped as his mouth brushed the back of her neck, just below the hairline,
sending a shower of sparks through her.  First his lips, then his teeth
grazed her sensitized skin and a soft moan broke from her throat.
       "Look at me,"  he whispered.
       She complied, and found herself startled by the dark fire in his
eyes.  What exactly was she letting herself in for here?  She had a sudden
suspicion that it was more than she'd bargained for.  He moved his hand
from her neck, tracing the curve of her jaw, then gently burnishing the
soft pad of her lower lip with his thumb until her lips parted.  He bent
and brushed his mouth over hers, lightly, but enough to make her feel it
with every nerve-ending in her body.  Slowly he drew back.
       "I wanted to do that the first night we met... but things just
didn't seem right then."
       "Now they do?"  she asked, her voice curiously husky.
       He nodded, then his lashes shuttered his eyes closed as his mouth
came down on hers again, hungrily this time, drinking her in.  She
shuddered, lifting her mouth to his as her arms slid around him.  He felt
so wonderfully substantial, so perfectly formed for her arms.  His skin
was cool to her touch, but she had no doubt of the warmth inside him.
Finally he pulled away, regarding her with such utter seriousness that she
was afraid something was wrong.
       "Guinan, before we go any farther with this, let me make sure... we
are compatible, aren't we?"
       She blinked at him owlishly, for a moment not understanding, then
realization came and she grinned.
       "Yes, Duncan, we are.  Some things may be a little different, but
the basics are the same.  We should have no trouble at all."
       He looked so relieved she had to laugh, then she stopped, suddenly
suspicious.  "Am I the first non-human you've ever been with!"
       He nodded.  "Aye."
       Her grin broadened mischievously.  "Oh, Duncan... you're a virgin!"
       His eyebrows shot up, then one lowered slightly, leaving the other
raised in an ironic query.  She shook her head and reached over to pat his
thigh reassuringly.  Beneath her fingers he seemed as solid as steel, yet
as supple as a tiger.  She left her hand where it was, loving the feel of
him.
       "Don't worry about a thing, I know what I'm doing."
       His gaze turned amused and one corner of his generous mouth lifted.
"I think I might know a thing or two myself."
       His fingers returned to the back of her neck.  She closed her eyes
and leaned into his hand as he stroked her there.  After a moment she felt
his hand move to her shoulder and he was turning her away from him,
lifting her hair.  She shivered with anticipation before his mouth finally
brushed a kiss behind her ear and his tongue took over where his fingers
had left off.  The shiver turned into a shudder and her hand clenched on
his thigh as she fought for a little control.
       "Are you sure you've never done this before?"  she managed to gasp.
       His chuckle was low and throaty.  "Like you said, the basics are
the same, even if a few details differ.  One thing I do know is how to
notice when a woman likes something."
       "Well, you just keep right on noticing."
       His hand moved to her thigh, fingers sliding beneath the edge of
the side-slit in her caftan.  She closed her eyes and flexed her knee,
feeling the fabric slide with his fingers down the inside of her thigh.
She shivered as his hand moved higher, feeling disinclined toward
movement, wanting just to be immobile and let him caress her.  That wasn't
fair, though, so she lifted a hand to touch his cheek, letting her
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