Date:         Sat, 29 Jul 1995 19:42:43 -0400
Reply-To:     JillMari@AOL.COM
Sender:       Highlander TV show stories <HLFIC-L@PSUVM.PSU.EDU>
From:         Jill Spetoskey <JillMari@AOL.COM>
Subject:      Lighting a Candle

This one has a couple of WAGs about the structure of the Watchers in it.
 There's also one "after the fact" bedroom scene, so this story would
probably be PG-13. Comments are welcome as always at jillmari@aol.com or
jilkey@grfn.org

Lighting a Candle
c. 1995 by Jill Spetoskey

"I'll light a candle for you."
     -Joe Dawson to Peter Horton

1995, Switzerland

   Laura Inverness fidgeted on the cool metal folding chair as the speaker at
the podium droned on in French.   She'd never had much talent for language;
the most she'd ever managed was a "you have the right to remain silent" in
Spainish when she'd still been with the police.  Pausing to push a wisp of
brown hair that had escaped her braid behind her ear, she looked down at the
program explaining the speaker's words in half a dozen languages that sat in
her lap.  Her eye caught on the tattoo near her wrist.  Damn thing.  If that
weren't there, things might be different. Her mind drifted back as the
speaker seemed to drone on forever.
***
     She lay snuggled up close next to Jeff, her head on his shoulder. The
small size of dorm room beds can actually be nice when it encourages
closeness, as well as being aggravating during other things, she thought.  He
ran his fingers lightly across her body, tickling her bare skin.  She started
to squirm away from his actions. Noticing her discomfort, he increased his
efforts, a blond, blue-eyed devil wearing only Old Spice. Half-sitting up,
and leaning away from his persistent hands, Laura started to fall off the
bed.  Jeff reached over trying to catch her, but he barely was able to grab
her by the wrist before she crashed to the floor.
   "You okay, Laura? I didn't mean to hurt you."
   "I'm fine. I'm just lucky that I won the coin flip for the bottom bunk,
though."  She arranged  herself into a sitting position, her wrist still
caught in his hand.
    "You know, I never knew you had a tattoo there before? What's the deal?"
    "Well, we've only met over the winter, and I've always worn long sleves
around you before. Earlier tonight, you seemed a little preoccupied with
other things."
    "What's the deal with the design though? I don't think I've seen anything
like that before." His fingers lightly traced a circle around the design."
    "You see, I used to be in a sorrority at the school I transfered from.  I
could tell you what it means, but then I'd have to kill you."
***
     Stop it, Laura, she firmly instructed herself.  You don't want to go to
pieces this early in the serivce now.  The rank and file aren't allowed to
come to Aix-le-Rien very often. Enjoy it while you can.  For a few moments,
she was able to keep herself in the present by looking past the speaker and
onto the grounds of the fortress.
     Aix-le-Rien was an ageless former monastery that sat in a secluded
valley wedged between the mountains and a mountain lake. With her back to the
fortress, Laura could look over the neatly manicured grounds and caught sight
of the perimeter guards to one side of the assembled group, Uzis in hand.
 Even though the monastery was still holy ground, there were too many highly
placed people here today for the organization to be taking any chances.
 Besides, because of the Hunters, you could no longer assume that the only
danger in Watching came from the immortals any more.
    As she looked further across the lawn, she was reminded of Jeff again.
Every five years, all Watchers were invited to Aix to remember those who had
died.  Last time, they had come here together to honor a Watcher named Andrew
Lorris.  Laura had never expected to spend her time with the Watchers
following any specific immortal.  She had been a police officer, concerning
herself with the research end of Watcher business, and developing a
reputation for having an interest in bizarre murder cases.  Her husband Jeff
had been a landscape architect by day, and had been assigned to watch
immortals who were only going to be in Chicago for a few days, or whose
normal watchers were gone from the city on business of their own. They'd
never expected to have an immortal of their own to watch.
     That expectation had changed on a hazy summer morning during an
expectedly routine raid on a drug dealer's house.  The police officers had
been ambushed instead, and two officers had been killed.  Laura had taken a
bullet in her shoulder, and was told she had lost sixty percent of movement
in her left shoulder. She'd retired with disability pay at the age of
twenty-three, and the Watchers had asked herself and Jeff to take over
watching an immortal on a full-time basis.
   Andrew Lorris had been watching an immortal named Ken Darrow, but he was
starting to feel the effects of bone cancer.   They'd watched with him for a
few months before another of Andy's hospitalizations had left them following
Darrow on their own.  After Andy had died, it had been Jeff who had spoken
about him the last time people had come to Aix to mourn the lost.  She
thought back to the gentle Andy, how he had kept a sense of humor even when
she knew she would have been crying. She smiled briefly, but was suddenly
interrupted by her thoughts by a familiar voice at the podium.
   "I am Joseph Dawson, and I am here today to speak about Peter Horton."
Laura felt her jaw drop to about her waist.  She knew that Joe and Horton had
been close at one time, but she'd heard the same stories about Horton's death
everyone else had. She'd never expected to see Joe speaking about the man he
was supposed to have killed.  Remembering the last time she had argued with
Horton, she couldn't have spoken for the man under  any circumstances.
***
    "Thanks for your help in getting rid of Hyser for us.  We're making real
progress in things, now."
    "It was my pleasure, Horton." Laura thought back to the trail of dead
women that Hyser had left behind him wherever he went.
    "We're making real progress in France right now, too.  We've taken
eighteen other immortals out of the Game in the past two years, and our
numbers are growing, too.  We even got rid of some that never would have lost
their heads on their own."
    "Like who?"  Laura could think of a number of immortals that deserved to
die because of crimes against humanity.
   "Darius, for one. He never would have left holy ground on his own."
   "Darius? He hasn't so much bothered anyone for centuries, much less
created any sort of threat to humans.  Why him?"
   "Because all of them are dangerous, girl! It doesn't matter how they look
on the outside, they're all a danger to us, and must die."
    "Even an unarmed man who hasn't so much as looked at a weapon in a
millenia?"
     "Yes." The momentary silence was thick.  Laura gathered her thoughts and
made a decision.
     "I want out then. I won't betray you or any of the rest of us. If you
feel like you need leverage on me, you still think you have something on me
concerning the whole Ken Darrow thing. I just want out. When you approached
me about the Hunters, you made it sound like we would be getting rid of those
who deserved to die, the Kurgans and Graysons who destroyed for centuries
because no one would do what needed to be done.  I agree with that, but I
can't agree with what is happening to the Hunters now." She saw anger take
over in Horton's face, and wondered if she'd gone too far.
     "I'll leave you alone for now, Laura.  Just remember that if you do
anything to interfere, or you betray us to those weaklings in the
organization, we will know.  Think of yourself as a walking dead woman,
Laura."  He stormed out of her small, empty house.
    "But in some ways, I already am." She replied softly as the door slammed.
***
    Joe was finishing his speech, which had not contained a single negative
mention of Horton's life. It was funny, she thought, that an organization
like the Watchers, which had always stressed the need for objectivity in both
personnel and their observations encouraged that no one speak badly of the
dead during this event.  Maybe they just know human nature too well.
   As Joe concluded his remarks, he turned to a long, white covered table
with a thick white candle in the middle of the table and a number of
candlesticks along the table's edge, some empty, some  He picked up a tall,
red candle and took the few steps between the podium and the table
immediately to the podium's right.  He placed the red candle into the other,
and paused a moment for the flame to catch.
    "To Peter Horton.  May he find eternal peace, and may perpetual light
shine upon him." He said, his voice barely loud enough for the crowd to hear.
He placed the red candle into one of the candlesticks, and walked silently
and stiffly away from the podium.
     Closure. Laura felt like that she was laying some of the worst moments
of her life to rest today.  Horton had been the only one who had ever guessed
what had really happened to Ken Darrow.  Now she was the only one who knew
the truth.
***
     They had been trying to find out why Darrow had rented the warehouse
space in a marginal part of town that night.  They had known that Darrow had
needed money; his Swiss accounts were dangerously low by nearly any standard,
so they had decided to see what sort of business would be going on there.
 Laura hadn't been overly surpirsed  that the search of the cavernous, two
room warehouse had revealed that the construction of a drug lab was in
progress.
     "What do you think it is, Laur? You're the cop." Jeff whispered softly
as they carefully poked gloved hands through boxes of lab equipment in the
second, larger of the two rooms.
     "Noy sure, but my guess would be either LSD or cat. Ready to get out of
here?" She sneezed in the musty air.
    "Yeah."
     They made their way back to the warehouse, flashlight beams set on low,
and only on at all to keep from tripping over the debris that remained in the
warehouse from its previous owner.  Laura bumped her wrist against a pole,
and noticed her watch was missing.
    "Jeff, I need to go back a minute.  I think I lost my watch back there,
the engraved one you gave me with our names on it."
    "Want me to come?"
    "S'okay. I just want to check to make sure I didn't just drop it in a box
of test tubes. I probably left it in the other room. Be right back." She saw
Jeff nod and duck into the shadows.
     She quickly made her way back to the lab room, as she was beginning to
think of it, and gave a brief look around.  Suddenly, she heard distantly
what sounded like footsteps, and  something in her mind started screaming
that things were going wrong.  Drawing her gun, she abandoned her search for
the watch, and quietly made her way back to where she had left Ken.  The
sound of a door opening made her increase her speed to as much as she dared.
    Gunshot. Oh God, please, no.  She was at a run now, her shoes keeping
good traction to the dirty floor.  The lights were coming on throught the
warehouse in a sodium hum.  As she reached the doorway to the smaller office
area, she paused to listen. No good to just go charging in like that, she
thought.  She heard two people in the other room, Jeff moaning in pain, and
another voice demanding to know why he was here.  Gun first, she pushed
herself around the corner.   Darrow was kneeling over Jeff, gun in one hand
demanding to know if Jeff was alone in here.   She reacted, and fired. The
Browning in her hand seemed to recoil all the way up to her bad shoulder as
she sent five shots into Darrow.
     He crumpled to the ground, and she crossed the room to the two men.
 Picking up Darrow's gun, she shoved it in the waistband of her jeans.  She
looked at the immortal only long enough to make sure he would stay dead long
enough to get Jeff to safety, and turned her attention to her husband,
setting down the Browning by his side.  There was too much blood there, she
knew.   She didn't have much time.
    "I love you, Jeff.  I wish I didn't drag you into this whole awful
business." She felt herself starting to cry.
    "I love you too, Laur.  Be...." He coughed and was silent.
    One part of her mind was in shock, but the other part of herself knew
what she had to do.  Darrow was probably starting to heal,  but he would be
immobile for at least another hour, she guessed.  She moved over to the
immortal,  rolling him over so he was on his stomach, and finding the
scabbard she knew had to be there.  She untangled the sword from the cloth of
his coat, bringing it up high enough so she could  deliver the last blow.
      "I always though of watching as a sort of game or our own.  Now I know
its all too real."
     She brought the blade down through Darrow's neck, hearing the sword
clang when it sliced through its target and hit the concrete floor.   She
then went back to move her husband into the alley, and explain to the cops
that they had been coming back to Jeff's nearby office to look for the watch,
and had been mugged there.  The lab in the warehouse would quitely catch fire
soon, and her actions would be safe.
****
   As others spoke of other Watchers, she felt the tears flowing freely from
her eyes.  Then, it was her turn.
    "I am Laura Mackelvy Inverness, and I am here to speak about Jeffrey
Inverness.  This is how I would like him to be remembered........"

Finish
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