=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 29 Mar 1996 07:10:18 -0500
Reply-To:     Sandra1012@AOL.COM
Sender:       Highlander TV show stories <HLFIC-L@PSUVM.PSU.EDU>
From:         Sandra McDonald <Sandra1012@AOL.COM>
Subject:      Lay Down Your Sword 5/8

Connor MacLeod sat in the cleared attic of the novice house,
cleaning his sword.  He'd discovered the large space shortly after
retreating to the monastery, and fashioned it into an exercise room
where he could practice the art of death without disturbing the
monks.  For hours he would duel against the memories of his most
vile enemies, until his muscles betrayed him with exhaustion.  He
would rest, renew his strength, and then duel again.  He had to stay
in shape, if he were to ever leave Gethsemani.

Leaving.  An interesting concept.  He didn't even know why he
was still here, four months after Ris had nearly taken his head in
Cairo.

Surely it wasn't fear.

He sat by the small window set in the far end of the attic, cleaning
his sword by the afternoon light.  A storm had come down on the
mountain, but it was still bright enough for him to do his work.  As
the rain and wind rattled the tiny pane he thought about the vista
that usually greeted him from his perch - a stunning view of the
Alps and the green valley below that poignantly reminded him, for
some reason, of home.

Only in this place had he found the same wonderful isolation
amidst wilderness that the Highlands had.  The clean air, the
closeness to the sun.  Of course, Switzerland was taller, but he
could live with that.  At their fundamental cores, both places
shared a  focus on ancient power and the natural cycle of the earth's
seasons,  not on the crazy, mixed-up, misplaced priorities of thirty
billion arguing mortals.

Fear of Ris was not what kept him here.

Instead, maybe it was just a weariness of the world.

He'd been thinking a great deal of the Highlands lately, and of
Heather.  Time had blurred many details of his eight hundred
years, but could never erase her face.  She'd grown old in his arms.
She'd been his life.  And she'd gone, as they all went, into the
ground, leaving him cold and grieving by the graveside.

He'd loved others.  But never as he'd loved her.

Connor cleaned his sword methodically, thinking of Heather,
thinking of Ramirez.  Why, after eight hundred years and
thousands of friends, did they stick in his mind so completely?
Because he'd been young then, and new to it all, and had all the
time in the world.

He still had forever, but forever didn't seem as long as it once did.

Amanda came up into the attic.  "Well, well, well," she said,
surveying the space. "Why is it the MacLeod men claim all the
territory they can, wherever they go?"

"Territorial is not the first adjective I'd use to describe myself,"
Connor replied steadily.

She rest her hand on an overhead beam and gave him an appraising
look.  "How about humorless?"

"I'm not humorless."

"You're not exactly a laugh riot, Connor," Amanda said, and
moved to sit across from him with her knees drawn to her chest.
She rested her head on her knees and gazed out his window.  "The
weather's getting worse."

"With over two thousand years of life between us," he said, "you
have to pick the weather as a conversation starter?"

"Are we enemies?" she asked, without looking at him.

Connor paused for thought.  "Not exactly."

"I've had warmer receptions from glaciers."

"You complicate things."

"I take pride in complicating things."

"You heard what happened to Jason in the chapel."

She nodded solemnly.  "Minette came to me, distraught.  She said
he suffered some kind of collapse.  You blame me?"

"Maybe the sight of you precipitated it."

"I've been known to inspire a lot of reactions in men, but never
nervous breakdowns."

"That's not funny, Amanda."

"I didn't mean it to be."  And from the solemn expression on her
face, the lack of beguilement in her eyes, he knew she was telling
the truth.  Amanda drew herself tighter against the breeze that
came from the cracks around the poorly insulated window.  "Why
does he call himself Jason?"

"He really believes he is Jason Sanger."

"And Jason Sanger was who?"

Bells began ringing from the chapel, calling the monks to Vespers.
Connor waited for them to fade before saying, "Jason was a mortal
friend of Richie's at the Sorbonne.   He was killed the night SIDI
raided Felicia's flat and dragged Richie and Felicia to Versailles.
By the time Duncan, Methos and Ceirdwynn could come to the
rescue, Felicia lay in small severed parts and Richie was mentally
shattered.  They brought him here.  He recovered physically, but
with nearly complete traumatic amnesia.  He insisted his name was
Jason Sanger, and would withdraw into catatonia or hysterics
whenever he saw Duncan or Methos."

Amanda took a deep breath.  "Duncan's been lying all these years,
saying Richie was dead."

"Not exactly lying.  For all intents and purposes, Richie is dead.
Jason remembers nothing of his life before this place.  Whatever
Richie was has been wiped away."

"I refuse to believe that," Amanda said.  "He's still Richie, no
matter what protective devices his mind has set up to shield him
from whatever happened in Versailles.  If Duncan didn't believe
that, he wouldn't have sent me here."

Connor sheathed his sword and shrugged.  "I'm not a psychiatrist.
I couldn't say."

Amanda drew her legs in tighter.  "That girl, Minette.  She really
loves Richie.  Or Jason, whichever.  She's just a baby."

"She's seventy five years old, Amanda.  Hardly a baby."

"Not by my standards," Amanda said wryly.  Then her small smile
faded.  "Oh, Connor.  I didn't mean to cause Richie pain or
distress."

"You didn't know."

"When this storm clears, I'm leaving.  There's nothing for me to do
here.  He's in your hands and Gregor's hands, and I can't think of a
safer place for him to be."

"You assume I'm staying here."

"You're coming to Sanctuary?"

"There are other places to go.  The whole world."  But he didn't
believe the words even as he said them.  And because she had
opened to him, because his code of honor was telling him to do it,
he said, "Amanda, I'm sorry about your husband.  I never told you
that."

"All the miracles of modern medicine," she said softly, "couldn't
save him from his own aging heart."

He thought of Heather, how she'd begged him to leave her before
her youth fled.  Mortals had died younger then.  There'd been no
medical miracles, no faith-healers of science.

Amanda unfolded herself and climbed to her feet.  "You know
what, Connor? We're not Immortals.  We're just charter members
of the Dead Spouses Club.  I don't know about you, but I'm
starved.  Let's go raid the kitchen while everyone's at choir."

But everyone wasn't at choir.  Gregor was sitting in the rectory,
alone in the dark, his hands flat and square against his knees, his
head bowed.  For him to miss choir offices meant something
terrible, Connor knew.

"What happened?" he asked immediately.

Gregor's voice was barely audible. "He left."

An alarm shrilled in the back of Connor's mind. "Who left?'

"Jason," Gregor said.  "He left.  He said he had a decision to make.
And he walked right out the door."

"And you let him?" Minette demanded, appearing in the doorway.
"How could you?  He's confused, disoriented, he hasn't had
anything to eat in almost two days - "

Amanda couldn't help but feel for the young woman, her obvious
concern for the man she loved.  Or thought she loved.  How could
she love a man who didn't even know his own history, tragedy,
accomplishments?  Connor's face darkened, although he made no
immediate comment.

"You let him go out into this storm?" Minette continued to hammer
at Gregor.  "What if he falls into a ravine and can't get out?  What
if he gets trapped by falling rocks or mudslides?"

Gregor lifted haunted eyes to them.  "What else was I supposed to
do?"

Minette's face turned bright pink.  "You were supposed to stop
him!"

Amanda said to Connor, "She's right.  He's in no condition to be
out in this."

Gregor shook his head.  "You don't understand.  He wants this.  He
needs this."

"A few hours ago," Connor said tightly, "he was nearly hysterical
in the chapter.  He could barely speak to us.  And now you're
saying he told you calmly and rationally that he needed to take a
walk?"

Gregor held Connor's scathing gaze.  "Yes. Leave him be."

Connor shared a look at Amanda.  Whatever their differences were,
they now had a common goal.

"No," Connor said.  "Grab your coats, ladies.  We're going to look
for him."

***

Richie walked for what felt like a long time in the freezing rain and
hail, his thin body buffeted by the whipping winds, his clothes
soaked and useless as protection after the first few feet.  He
couldn't see in the darkness, but some deep-rooted confidence kept
his feet moving beneath him without misstep.  He didn't know
where he was going, and he didn't suppose it mattered.  God, or
Fate, or Destiny, or the Game, would take him to where he needed
to be.

Alone, afraid, he stumbled on the mountain and sought guidance
from the turmoil in the skies and in his heart.

To be Richie Ryan again he had to accept everything - all of the
memories, the joyous as well as the horrific.  The feel of Felicia as
she took him inside her.  The agony on her face as SIDI agents
tortured her.  The first time Tessa ever came to his room and
soothed him, a seventeen year old who'd never really had a mother,
from the nightmares that plagued his youth.  Mark Roszka's bullet,
ripping into her chest and shattering her life.  The day Duncan took
him to the park and taught him how to wield a sword so he could
face Annie Devlin.  The cold afternoon Duncan had shut him out
of his life for killing Mako.   Their reconciliation, months later, in
Paris.  And then the night he couldn't imagine ever forgetting, the
night Duncan lifted his blade to complete an arc that would have
sliced Richie's head neatly away from his body.

Four hundred years of memories had broken through the barriers in
his brain, filling his mind with the triumphs and tragedies he
forged in his life as an Immortal, and they cut like twin swords of
good and evil through his middle.  Every breath felt like fire, and
every remembered face brought wetness to his eyes.

In a way, it would be so much easier to just admit defeat and
become Jason again, whose memory would be a blank wall but
who would be safe from the horror.  Richie wasn't sure, but he felt
deep within a seed of enormous power that could be used to
transform himself  back into dumb, naive Jason, if he used it right.

He realized he was no longer walking.  That he was poised on the
brink of a greater darkness than that which surrounded him.  Richie
looked down, trying to focus, but the weakness in his empty
stomach and shaky knees made him regret the idea.  It came to
him, by degrees, that he was standing on the precipice of a deep
ravine.

He resisted with all his might the urge to fling himself into the
nothingness.

It wouldn't accomplish anything.  He was Immortal.  Doomed to
walk the face of the earth while beloved mortals died, while
murderers took away his friends and lovers, while the whole world
order fell to chaos and mayhem.

The wind seemed to be lessening.  He raised his arms to the sky,
beseeching whoever might be watching, and felt power rip through
him from the ground to the churning, boiling clouds.

Immortal.

He couldn't change that.

If he was very lucky, he could fling himself down into the ravine
and land in such a way on a sharp boulder or rock that he'd cut his
own head off.  He could go back to the carpentry shop and rig a
guillotine that would do the job more neatly.  He could ask Gregor
as a final favor to sever his head for him, rather than let it fall into
the malicious hands of SIDI.  He could walk off the mountain and
find the first nasty Immortal wandering around Switzerland, let
him do the job for fun or practice.

Or he could block it all out again.  He could destroy himself with
the power he held within, and in doing so destroy whatever
Duncan and Tessa and Felicia and his mortal wives and his
octogenarian adopted children and the rest of the world had loved.

He could choose not to be.

He lifted his arms up higher, and let out a scream that seemed to
shake the very earth.

***

Connor went out looking for Richie, but found Duncan and
Holland instead.  He brought them back to the monastery and fixed
them up with dry clothes and hot coffee in the rectory.  Amanda
and Minette returned a short time later, their faces written with
frustration.  Gregor had disappeared, but at the recognition of more
Immortals he returned with a prayer book firmly in his hands.

"It's good to see you," MacLeod said, grasping Gregor's shoulders
and pulling him into a hug.

"And you, my friend," Gregor said, holding him warmly.  "You're
looking well.  If just a little wet."

MacLeod introduced him and Minette to Holland.  She was still
too cold and storm shocked to make much conversation, but
listened with wide eyes in MacLeod's reassuring arms as Connor
recounted the events of the day.

 "What decision do you think he has to make?" Duncan asked
Gregor.

"I'm not sure," Gregor admitted.  "But it's his, and his alone."

A shadow at the doorway made them turn.  Brother Hans, one of
the oldest of the order, shuffled in with a vague look on his face.
Gregor immediately rose from his bench and went to the old monk.

"It's late, brother," he said.  "You should be in bed."

The old man muttered in German about looking for some cheese.

Connor slapped Duncan on the back.  "Come, let's find you
someplace to lay your weary head.  The day starts very early
around here."

"How early?" Duncan asked warily.

"Three a.m. early," Amanda said as they left the rectory.

Gregor went off to see Brother Hans to his room, and came back to
find Minette clearing the coffee cups from the long tables and
rinsing them in the old cast-iron sink.  Gregor helped her, working
in silence, aware of her feelings for Jason.  She no longer seemed
mad at him, just withdrawn and afraid.

"He'll do what he has to do," Gregor said finally.  "It's his life and
decision to make.  You must trust in God."

Minette sank slowly to a bench.  "I don't.  I never have.  I'm sorry
to say that to you."

Gregor sat beside her and admitted.  "There was a time I didn't
either."

"Do you think . . . " she started, then reworded her question.  "Does
God really forgive people every wrong they do?"

"If they seek forgiveness, he gives it," Gregor answered.

"What about to those people who are so awfully evil?  Like the
ones at Versailles.  Like the one who nearly killed Holland in New
Stans.  How can God forgive them?"

"I think God only sees the goodness in people.  You could be a
terrible person, done terrible things, but that's all invisible to God
as long as there's one flicker of something good in your heart."

Then, because he sensed a need, he asked, "Minette, is there
something you want to confess?"

Her face lit up with a small smile.  "No, Gregor.  There's nothing I
want to confess. It's just that being around all of you makes me feel
very young, and very ignorant.  I haven't lived as long as you all
have.  I don't know that I ever will."

Gregor patted her hands.  "Trust God."

Minette kissed his cheek and left the rectory.

Alone, in her room, she sat on the edge of the bed and stared out at
the howling storm.  Jason, Richie, whoever - he was out there,
alone and defenseless.

Exactly as she needed.

Minette activated her I-mail transceiver and sent a message down
to Ris and Valery, waiting ever so patiently below.

end of part 5
******************************************************************************
******
"I'm on planet X looking for a dweeb who wears this jacket and glasses
and clucks like a chicken."  Kurt Russell, about James Spader's character,
in Stargate