Date: Fri, 17 Nov 1995 11:07:24 -0600 Reply-To: Julia Kosatka Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Julia Kosatka Subject: In the Dark, 3/21 (REPOST) ADULT "So, are you going to introduce me?" "On one condition." "That being?" "Try not to be so damned charming, okay?" Duncan's eyebrows shot up. "Blows the wind from that quarter?" Joe looked a touch embarrassed. "I didn't mean..." "Say no more. I'll do my best boor imitation." "Oh God, no!" Joe moaned theatrically, his head in his hands. "Anything but that!" **** There he was. Guinan sensed him getting closer, that seductively powerful aura like a torch in the room full of muddy, drunken souls. She looked up and found Joe and his friend approaching the table. Whatever Joe's problem had been, the meeting must have mitigated it. His surly expression was gone and she could sense that though he was still concerned, he wasn't frantic with worry as he had been earlier. As they approached, she was forcibly reminded of a pair of wolves; one grizzled and a bit the worse for wear, but still hell in a fight, the other younger, stronger, but perhaps more impulsive. She smiled privately at the comparison, and reminded herself that wolves hunt in packs. The younger man turned his chair around backward and straddled it, the already-taut denim of his jeans stretching to the point where she wondered why a seam didn't give. She pretended not to have been looking anyplace where she would have noticed. As he flipped his heavy coat out behind him, she flashed back to trying to sit down in a hoopskirt, and understood why he was sitting in the chair the wrong way. Joe waved a hand at his companion. "Guinan, I'd like to you meet a friend of mine, Duncan MacLeod, Duncan, Guinan. She sings with the band." "Only when they want to thin the crowd a bit." Guinan said, with a grin. "I'm pleased to meet you Mr. MacLeod." "Call me Duncan, please. Being called `mister' makes me feel ancient." Joe shot an amused glance at his friend, who shrugged, one corner of his mouth quirking upward. Guinan wondered what that was all about, but refrained from asking. "All right, Duncan it is, then. I see you've managed to help Joe out of that nasty mood he was in earlier. Let me guess... you owed him money and you just paid up?" That drew a laugh from Joe, who shook his head. "I'm more likely to owe Duncan money than he is me. No, it was nothing like that, I just had some important information I needed to relay to him." She sensed undertones of protectiveness beneath his words. Whatever the information had been, Joe had felt his friend endangered by not knowing it. Now that he had passed it on, he was still not completely at ease, but far more so than earlier. "Well then, I guess you don't need me to keep you away from the bar any more." she pushed her chair back, and stood. "Hold on, where are you going?" "I thought you'd want to talk with your friend." "I can talk with him any time. You, I've just met, so sit down." She grinned and sat, as Duncan stuck his lip out in an exaggerated pout. "Well, what am I? Chopped liver?" "Not quite," Joe said, grinning. "Go get us a beer." "From chopped liver to errand boy! I can tell when I'm not wanted!" Duncan put his nose haughtily in the air and stood up. His coat caught the chair behind him and knocked it over with a resounding crash. Looking sheepish he straightened it and fought his way out of the coat. "Damned thing's a hazard." he muttered, draping it over the back of a chair. Guinan admired the way his sweater emphasized his chest and shoulders, and wished it weren't quite so long as he walked off to get the drinks. The track lighting gleamed on his hair, a sable cloak across his shoulders. So often long hair on men seemed affected, but his did not. It looked utterly appropriate. A second later Joe sighed, and she turned her attention back to him, to find him gazing at her with a rather resigned expression. "He's done it again, hasn't he?" "Done what?" Guinan asked, puzzled. "Never mind." She hated it when people did that. "I won't `never mind!' What?" "It's just that Duncan seems to have this... effect... on women." "Oh, that," she said, matter-of-factly. "He does, doesn't he? It probably annoys you." "It's petty, I know." "It's normal. It's a guy thing." Joe cringed. "God... what an awful thought!" "Well, take heart, I noticed you first." Joe lifted an eyebrow. "But would you have if we'd both been here last night?" She chuckled. "Good question. Unfortunately, we'll never know the answer. Besides, if you can honestly tell me you don't notice good-looking women, then you can bitch about me noticing good-looking men. I saw you checking out that blonde at the bar last night." "I did not!" "Yes you did." "Did not!" "It was a nice diamond necklace she was wearing, wasn't it?" Joe frowned thoughtfully. "She wasn't wearing a necklace." Guinan snorted. "I rest my case." Joe opened his mouth to protest, then shut it again without speaking, looking as sheepish as Duncan had a few moments earlier. Duncan made his way back thought the crowd to the table, balancing a tray of drinks like a professional waiter. "I wasn't sure what to get, so I went with three draft Wickeds. I asked Jerry what the lady was drinking, and he said coffee, so I brought one of those too, just in case." Guinan sighed. "Isn't he sweet?" Joe snorted. "Give it a rest, Duncan." Guinan waved a hand at him. "Oh hush, Joe. The boy can't help it! Besides, you might learn something." "Boy?" Duncan echoed, incredulous. "I'm not calling you a girl, now am I?" "I'm older than I look." Guinan said. "So am I." Duncan returned. They stared at each other, narrow-eyed, for a moment, like a pair of cats circling before a fight, then Joe started laughing, which set them all off. Duncan almost dropped the tray, but managed to rescue it, with only minor spillage. He set it down and distributed the drinks. **** Scully sat back with a sigh, tossing her glasses onto the table as she rubbed her eyes and yawned. "You know, Mulder, I had no idea how popular decapitation was as a modus operandi. This is truly astonishing. Some of these occurred on the same day, close to the same time, but in different countries. Unless our killer can bilocate, they can't all have been done by the same person." Mulder looked up from where he sat on the bed, surrounded by stacks of paper, just as she was. "When I requested information from Interpol on unsolved murders involving decapitation, I expected a handful of reports, not hundreds! This is not making life any easier!" He yawned too, trying to hide it behind his hand. "Now you've got me doing it!" he said accusingly. "You know better than to yawn, it starts a chain reaction!" She grinned. "The fact that it's after midnight couldn't have anything to do with it, now could it?" "Not a thing." He dropped the stack of reports he'd been looking at and picked up a different one. "Maybe the U.S. ones will be more helpful... at least there are fewer of them." He started paging through the collection, then suddenly slowed, and started over, pulling out several sheets. "What is it, Mulder?" Scully asked, watching him with interest. "I think I may have something here, Scully! Remember how the pattern indicated the killer was heading for the Northwest coast? It looks like he's either been there before, or maybe he lives there. Here are seven unsolved reports of decapitations, all in or around the Seattle area. This is interesting, some guy named MacLeod turns up in four of these reports. He was investigated in connection with the murders, but released for lack of evidence. Get this, he's an antique dealer!" Scully made the connection instantly. "Like Nash! It could be him, using an assumed name!" "It could be. There's only one way to find out, though. We're going to Seattle." Mulder grabbed the phone and started dialing. "So much for sleep," Scully said, her mouth tightening in a moment of self-pity as she thought of her hotel room, and its unused bed. He looked at her sympathetically. "It's..." he started, then his attention was diverted to the phone. "Yes, you can. I need two one-ways from Reno to Seattle on the next flight out. What? Yeah, I can hold." He returned his gaze to her. "Sorry, Scully, but isn't it worth a few hours sleep?" She nodded. "If we can keep him from killing again, I'd stay up for a week. I'll get the file on Nash and fax a photograph to the police there. We'll see if it matches this MacLeod guy." **** Duncan sat staring into space, feeling a distant sadness. It had been a wonderful evening, no mistake. He and Joe and Guinan had laughed and talked until nearly closing; but now he was alone, and remembering. Gods above, but sometimes he wished there were a way to turn memories off. What he wanted to remember often eluded him, and what he most wanted to forget slipped like fog from all the dark nooks and crannies of his mind. He'd tried various ways of forgetting over the years, alcohol, prayer, women, meditation, exercise. Some succeeded better than others, but all of them were, in the end, only temporary. So now he sat on the low concrete wall that bounded the parking lot down the street from Joe's bar, and waited for the alcohol haze to clear from his mind so he wasn't a menace behind the wheel. A few hundred years experience had taught him how to tell when he was safe from when he wasn't. Right now, he wasn't safe, but he was remembering all too well. Sixteen-ninety-four. Greece. Thalassa. A small woman with a ready laugh and warm heart. Her hair had been thick, and curling, black as a raven's wing, her mouth as full and red as a cup of bordeaux. She too had been an Immortal, and they had found some comfort in the friendship of another like soul. They had been friends and sometime lovers for close-on a year then. He had, with reluctance, left for three weeks to help a friend with some business dealings, and had returned to find she had vanished from the small house they shared in a village on the Mediterranean coast. The overturned and broken furnishings, and deep metallic gouges in the walls made him suspect she had met another Immortal and fought there. Because she was gone, he was fairly certain she must have lost the battle, though he had thought her skills improving from their sparring partnership. Whoever she had fought must have disposed of the body. As he sat on the stoop, unseeing, unable to even grieve yet, the boy who lived across the way came out and touched his arm. Duncan had looked up to find the child looking frightened and sad. "What is it?" "Bad man." Duncan looked around, wondering if someone had been bothering the boy, needing a battle, and more than willing to take one on for the sake of a child. "Where? Has someone hurt you?" Niko shook his head solemnly. "Took her. I saw him." "Her?" Duncan felt a flash of hope. "You mean Thalassa?" He sat up, head clearing. "Took her? She was alive?" Niko nodded. "Where did he take her?" Duncan asked intently. Niko pointed toward the foothills the village backed onto. "There." "When?" Niko frowned, concentrating, then his expression cleared and he smiled triumphantly. "Wash day!" For a moment Duncan was puzzled, then he understood. Every Monday the village women did laundry together. If she'd been taken on Monday, that meant Thalassa had been gone four days. He almost despaired, the trail would be stone cold by now... but he had to try. Thanking the boy, he had gone into the hills, searching for any sign of her, and almost immediately had found one of Thalassa's ribbons caught in a tree. A bit further on, he found one of her rings. He consistently found small signs, almost as if he had been left a trail. WHen he had found *her*, he realized that was exactly what had happened. The man who had taken Thalassa had meant for Duncan to find her. At a hundred and two years of age, he had thought himself inured to horror, but he found he still had the capacity for it. Dane had tortured her. If a normal human were tortured that way, they would simply die, and that would be the end; but an Immortal kept returning, to be tormented again and again. What had been left of Thalassa was a gibbering wreck, pleading for the true Death, with just enough mind left to tell him who had done it to her, and to convince him to deliver the coup de grace. After it was done, he had been sick. To gain a Quickening at the expense of a loved one was the worst thing he could imagine. He had never felt guilt like that before, not only because in a sense he had benefitted by killing her, but because he knew Dane had tortured her in retribution for his own interference in his affairs a decade earlier. Knowing that Dane was so vicious that he had foregone a Quickening just to leave Thalassa for Duncan to find hadn't made the pain any easier to bear. "Hey there..." The voice in the darkness was soft. Startled, he leaped to his feet, his sword ringing as it left its sheath. For a moment didn't see the speaker, then he caught the gleam of streetlight on sable skin, and the curve of a broad cheekbone. "Guinan?" She nodded and stepped forward into the pool of light cast by the lamp. He felt a bit sick at how close he had come to harming her. "Damn it! Don't you know better than to sneak up on someone in the middle of the night?" Cold sober from the rush of adrenalin, he sheathed the katana, slipping it back into place much more quietly than it had emerged, but too late to keep her from seeing it. "You seemed sad," she said quietly. He was momentarily taken aback, having expected her to be ask why he carried a sword, not about his state of mind. It took him a few seconds to gather his wits, and he replied honestly. "Just memories, that's all." "Memories can hurt just as much as the original incident, sometimes more." He nodded, and they stood in silence for a moment. Finally he looked at her again. "You shouldn't be out here by yourself so late." She smiled slightly. "Neither should you." He shrugged. "I can take care of myself." "So can I." "I never doubted it," Duncan said gravely, sensing that it was something she felt strongly about. "I thought you went home." "I did, but I realized I'd lost something, and came back to find it." "What was it?" "A pin. It must have fallen off somewhere. I hoped it was in the bar." "Something valuable?" "No, not really. The bar's closed, though. I'll have to look for it tomorrow." He nodded. Silence fell again for a time. It was an oddly comfortable silence. After awhile, Guinan spoke. "Do you want to talk?" "About?" "Memories. I'm a good listener. I come from a long line of good listeners." Duncan shook his head. "No. I don't need to talk about it. I came to terms with it a long time ago." "Then why do you still feel guilty?" Her quiet words struck with the keen precision of a blade, sliding past his defenses, straight to the heart. He closed his eyes, not looking at her. "I don't," he lied. "You do. It's in your eyes, your voice, your body... come on. Surely there's a greasy spoon around here somewhere. Buy me coffee and we'll talk, you need it." He had to swallow before he could speak. There was an obstruction in his throat, and his vision was blurred. Neither had anything to do with alcohol. "I'm not sure I can," he whispered. "Then we'll sit in silence. You shouldn't be alone." That was the truth. He felt a sudden odd kinship with the woman at his side, a strong desire to turn her face to his and find out if her lips were as soft as they looked, to find out what her mask of serenity hid. But... there was Joe. He stepped back. "You wouldn't want the coffee at Mel's Place. That stuff'll kill you. How about you come to my place and I'll make coffee?" She cocked her head to one side and eyed him speculatively. "Step into my parlor?" He spread his hands. "Honest, I'm a gentleman." She gazed at him a moment, and nodded. "I know." He felt complimented. With a sweeping bow, he gestured toward the black Thunderbird in the lot behind them. "Your chariot awaits, milady." She laughed. "You do that so naturally." He shrugged. "I'm a bit of an anachronism." She paused, looking up into the darkness at stars she couldn't see, then shook her head and started for the car. "So am I." **** MacLeod's apartment was as interesting as his aura. An eclectic mixture of Eastern and Western influences, antique elegance, and modern comfort. She moved around the open loft examining various of his treasures as he busied himself in the kitchen. The paintings on the walls were all originals, the rugs on the floor hand-knotted. A black silk yukata hung starkly against a white brick wall, an artifact in itself. Photographs graced another wall, again originals, from the early days of photography. On a shelf a scattering of small objects caught her eye and she stopped to look at them. It was a collection of carved fetish figures. One in particular seemed to call out to her and she picked it up. It was a turtle fetish, a beautiful thing that gleamed wth the translucent gold of amber and had inlaid turquoise eyes. Another fetish beckoned, and she touched it reverently. A frog, carved of some dark green stone. The style was distinctly different, she thought it might be Asian, rather than Native American. Both pieces were gorgeous. None of the others captured her interest quite as much. She looked up to find him watching her, and smiled, walking over to join him in the kitchen. There again, he was an odd mix of modern and archaic. The coffee maker was the yuppie sort that made everything from espresso to drip, and probably had a setting where it would wax the floor, but he was grinding the beans in an old-fashioned hand-crank grinder. She watched in bemused interest as he operated it, fascinated by the unconscious grace of his movements. As he set the coffee to brew, she finally spoke. "Is that a gym, downstairs?" "It's called a dojo; a school for martial arts. I own it. Sometimes I teach." "Ah, that explains it, then." "Explains what?" "The way you move." He turned from the refrigerator, a carton of cream in his hand. "What do you mean?" "You move beautifully, like a dancer." He chuckled, shaking his head, and rubbed the side of his nose. He seemed to do that when he was embarrassed. "I... ah... thanks." "For what? Stating the obvious?" He grinned. "Go on with you, what do you want?" "Do I have to want something?" "In my experience, most flatterers do." "I don't. No, I lied. Actually, I do. I want to know where you're from. Your accent slips in and out, and every time I think I've got it pegged, it changes." "I was born in Scotland, but I've lived all over the world. I guess I've picked up little bits and pieces from everywhere. Anything else you want to know?" "Are you any good?" His eyebrows lifted, his mouth curved. "At what?" he asked, his voice silky, and rich with innuendo. She returned his smile, her own voice just as seductive. "Swordsmanship, of course." She half expected him to make a double-entendre out of his reply, but instead he nodded, seriously. "I'm very good." "Why a sword?" she questioned. "For protection." "Wouldn't a gun be a lot easier to carry? I'm sure Freud would have some interesting things to say about your choice of weapon." That drew quick grin. "I'm quite comfortable with the size of my genitalia, thank you. Besides, when it comes right down to it, Freud would have had interesting things to say about any weapon. I carry a sword because it's honorable. You have to look a man in the eyes before you strike. With a gun it's too easy to forget who you face." She thought about that for a moment. "Interesting philosophy. Is swordsmanship one the things you teach?" "I can. My repertoire includes many weapons, many styles, many disciplines." "I've always wanted to learn to fence." "If you're as good with a sword as you are with words, you could be a master." She grinned. "Now who's flattering whom?" The coffee maker hissed steamily as it finished the brewing cycle, and MacLeod took two mugs from a cupboard. "Coffee's ready." He poured coffee into two mugs, handed her one, and picked up the other one himself. She added cream and sugar to her own, took a sip, and =========================================================================