========================================================================= Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1996 23:10:54 -0400 Reply-To: Jill Marie Spetoskey Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Jill Marie Spetoskey Subject: Mortals 1/14 (fwd) I'm forwarding this for ks. Send any comments to her instead of hitting reply and sending to me. Hope you enjoy. I have so far. Jill ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1996 20:02:09 -0400 (EDT) From: k s gritten To: jill marie Subject: Mortals 1/14 Greetings to HLFICers. Jill Marie has very kindly offered to repost this Forever Knight/Highlander crossover to your list. I thought, then, that I should provide a short warning--I wrote this for an FK crowd, and it shows ! Apologies if I have stepped on any of the HL canon or toes. Please forward comments to me, rather than filling up Jill's mailbox. Many, many, many (you get the idea) thanks to Eliz Lois Palmer, the High Empress of Beta-Reading; honorable mention to Jill Kirby for inspiring me with her own FK/HL stories, and Maureen the Mad Missionary for making alliteration fun . Legalese: Many of the characters in this story belong to the producers and creators of Forever Knight. Many others belong to the producers and creators of Highlander. A couple belong to me, but I won't tell you who they are yet. :) "Mortals" contains Forever Knight "Human Factor" and a variety of Highlander fourth season SPOILERS. Please beware! Comments, encouragement, derision accepted with polite sympathy. --kg NatPacker kg244989@oak.cats.ohiou.edu Mortals 1/14 "Thanks a lot for giving me a ride home, Natalie." Tracy Vetter pushed back her blonde hair and tried uselessly to work the kinks out of her neck, attempting to massage away the frustrations of another night shift at the Toronto Police department. "I told Nick that my car was in the shop, and he offered to give me a ride, but when I finished up my paperwork he was gone." Natalie Lambert nodded her head understandingly, hearing the irritation in the younger woman's voice. She understood, even though Tracy could not, why Nick had not lingered at the police station to fulfill his promise. Nicholas Knight was a vampire, and only Nat, of all his colleagues at the police department, knew his secret. As she drove through the quiet Toronto streets, Natalie had to wince a little at the tendrils of dawn light which flickered a little over the horizon. Here was the reason that Nick had forgotten his promise. She tried to imagine what it would be like to never again enjoy a sunrise, but quickly pushed the thought aside. 'Don't go there,' she reminded herself firmly, and returned her attention to Tracy, who had continued talking. "I mean, Nick's a really nice guy," Tracy went on, "but sometimes he is just so scatterbrained. We'll be working on a case, for example, and he'll just start zoning. Half the time he doesn't even listen to a word I'm saying. Insensitive, that's what he is." Natalie felt a smile twitch across her lips as Tracy stopped talking abruptly, abashed. "Talk about insensitive. I'm sorry, Nat. I know that you guys are friends--" "That's okay, Tracy. You're right. Nick can be pretty insensitive." She shrugged, not willing to put up a defense against the charges that she too often leveled against Nick in her own head. "He's got a lot on his mind," she said simply. They both did, for that matter. Since Janette, one of Nick's vampire "family" had left Toronto again, she and Nick had grown more distant than Natalie could ever have imagined. 'I can't take that chance,' he'd said, referring to the possibility that Janette had shown them, that if they were truly *together*, Nick might become mortal again. She had known he would say that. It hadn't surprised her. Sadly, it had only strengthened her growing conviction that their lives had changed too much to have a real chance of being together. In the beginning, she had helped Nick because he wanted to regain his humanity. Then she had done it because *she* wanted it. Now? Now she was not sure that either of them-- "Look out!" Tracy's voice came a split second after she saw the figure on the motorcycle veering dangerously close to her car from a parallel lane. At the same time as the occupants of the car realized the danger, so too did the motorcycle driver and he tried to correct the path of his bike. It was too much--the motorcycle narrowly avoided hitting Natalie's car, but both bike and driver skidded dangerously across the pavement. Natalie slammed on the brakes and both she and Tracy ran to the figure lying much too still by the toppled bike. "Oh my god. Tracy, you better call an ambulance--" Natalie began, but the helmeted figure raised a hand to stop her. He pulled himself up carefully and sat still for a moment, then moved to take off his helmet. The face beneath struck Natalie as entirely too cheerful for someone who had almost had a serious accident. Blonde hair surrounded an open face, which at the moment wore an abashed expression. "Are you okay?" she demanded, more harshly than she had intended. She seemed to have absorbed the emotional impact of the near- accident which he had easily shaken off. The young man got up, brushing off his riding pants, and grinned. "Yep. It was worse than it looked. I guess I've been riding too long without sleep. Are you ladies okay?" "Apart from the fact that I just got an adrenaline boost big enough to keep me awake through my next three shifts? I think that we're fine," Tracy answered. She eyed the motorcycle behind him critically, continuing, "Looks like your bike is going to need a bit of work, though." At Natalie's surprised look, Tracy said, a touch defensively, "What? A friend of mine has one." Both Natalie and the young man grinned. He waved a dismissive hand at the machine. "It'll still run. I'll fix the rest later myself. By the way, I'm Richie Ryan." He extended a hand, and both women shook it in turn. "Natalie Lambert," she said, "and this is Tracy Vetter. Are you sure you are okay? You could have been killed, but look at you --not a scratch on you." Natalie tried to keep the inquisitive tone out of her voice, and reminded herself firmly that it was after sunrise. This boy simply could not be anything but human. "I've always been lucky," he said. "I'm really sorry if I scared you guys. Let me make it up to you--let me buy you both breakfast." Both women eyed him warily, and he put his hands up in a gesture of surrender. "Hey, I have two beautiful women looking after my welfare, and you think I'm not going to try to take advantage of it? Besides, it's two against one--what harm could I do?" Tracy grinned. "None. Did I mention that I'm a cop?" "Ooh, a cop. I guess that means that you have handcuffs...."