Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 22:38:29 -0500 Reply-To: Sandra1012@AOL.COM Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Sandra McDonald Subject: "Not Every Problem" 1/4 All standard disclaimers apply . . . not my own characters, no infringement intended, etc etc . . . no gratutious violence, one sentence very mildly gory, one profane word. It doesn't even rate a PG-13. Not my first fanfic, but my first to this list. Constructive criticism welcomed . . . enjoy! Not Every Problem by Sandra McDonald sandra1012@aol.com MacLeod would later remember the accident as a series of crystal clear snapshots, one after the other in a sequence that never varied. A September afternoon in the mountains, with the colors and prospects of autumn waiting for the turning of the years, cool sunshine peeking from behind growing storm clouds and dappling through the canopy of firs and elms and oaks overhead. A long twisting road, the nose of the Thunderbird as he drove leisurely towards home. The convertible top up, because it was cold out. Tessa leafing through a magazine in the seat beside him, Richie curled up asleep in the backseat, snoring. A classical symphony played softly on the AM station MacLeod had tuned to a half hour before. "I didn't know Richie could snore that loud," MacLeod offered. Tessa flipped a page but said nothing. Ten miles later, as raindrops began to dot the windshield, he asked, "Is something wrong?" She didn't look up. "Why should anything be wrong?" MacLeod knew better than to answer right away. He thought back over the last week or so. The three of them had taken a vacation in the mountains. A chance to get away from the city, the normal grind, the men and women who came after the Highlander with swords and blood. He'd expected Tessa to bridle at Richie's presence - his arrival in their lives had not been without drawbacks as well as great rewards - but she hadn't made any direct or indirect comments to indicate annoyance. In fact, MacLeod thought she and Richie had managed to get along extremely well. Richie had been on his best behavior, not an easy thing for an unruly, unwanted, undisciplined eighteen year old who was only now beginning to open up and trust them. "I don't know," he finally admitted. He turned on the windshield wipers for a few seconds to clear the scattered water drops. With luck, the weather would hold until they were out of the mountains. "You tell me." Tessa didn't answer for another five miles. Then she put the magazine down by her feet and crossed her arms over her maroon sweater. Lips pursed, eyes focused out the window, she said, "I had a very lovely week. But when we go back, that Gathering will still be there. This Game you and the others play will still be there." MacLeod hadn't told her that the Game had been in the mountains as well. On the third day, on a shopping trip into town to restock the prodigious amount of food Richie ate, he'd felt what he thought was the very faint buzz of another Immortal. But no one had appeared, and he'd later decided he might have just imagined it. His own nerves had been somewhat strained recently. The vacation hadn't just been for his friends' benefit. Now he reached his right hand over to rest on her warm thigh. "I can't help that." "I know," Tessa said. "And I'm not angry at you. I'm angry at the people who want to kill you, just because you're Immortal." Richie snorted and rolled over in the back seat. MacLeod reflected grimly that the Immortals after his head would someday be after Richie's as well. Neither Tessa or Richie knew that Richie was destined to one day join the ranks of the sword- wielding. It was a secret that only MacLeod and a few other Immortals realized, and MacLeod was determined it should stay that way until the day Richie endured his first of what would hopefully be many deaths to come. Richie was too young to die, MacLeod had decided. Too young to be drawn into the Gathering's blood and combat. "And none of you even know why," Tessa said tightly. "'There can be only one.' What is that supposed to mean?" "I suppose it means there can only be one of us," MacLeod returned, a trifle sharper than he intended. He suppressed a sigh. He and Tessa had already fought a few times about the Gathering's obscure rules, and he had no desire to start another heated discussion. "Sweetheart, you know that it's as much a mystery to us as it is to you." "But you have lots of time to figure it out," Tessa retorted. "Tessa," he said, "not every problem in our lives is caused by Immortals." She turned a glare on him. "And just how many problems do you think we have, Duncan MacLeod?" Then she turned forward, and bit down on a sharp cry of alarm. MacLeod twisted the steering wheel as hard right as he could, but was too late to avoid a horrendous collision with a white Ford that swerved down on them at twice the speed limit. The tires skidded out beneath the Thunderbird as the brakes locked. They went through the guard rail and plummeted down through a canopy of leaves. Brush, saplings, rocks and dirt slammed up against the windows, ripping through the convertible's top, sending glass and metal shards everywhere. Another set of snapshots: Tessa jerking against her seat belt, the upside down sky seen through the shattered windshield, the hood flying off. The car plummeted, twisted, bounced, reversed itself, flipped, and landed with an impact that sounded like thunder. Blood in MacLeod's eyes nearly blinded his vision. He was aware of an incredible pain searing through his body, and looked down to a see a branch wider than his fist had impaled him through the stomach. He couldn't breathe, couldn't move, couldn't scream. Blackness and red pulsed around him, and as he tried to drag in a lungful of air, he recognized his own imminent death. But Tessa and Richie . . . he had to know. Had to know if Tessa was alive. Had to know if there was anything to come back to, or if his reawakening would be greeted with her lifeless body, a grief so wide it was impossible to imagine. "Duncan?" he heard. Her ragged voice. Her cool hands, shaking and clammy, on the sides of his face. Her eyes, boring into him. The sobs of her fear and grief. She was alive. He could help her when he reawakened. Duncan MacLeod surrendered to the darkness and died. *** Tessa let go of MacLeod's face as life slipped from his face. Death eased his awful grimace of pain, but left his eyes wide and staring at her. With a sob she pulled back to her corner of the front seat, bile threatening to rise in her throat. The knowledge that he wasn't forever dead didn't help the numbness spreading from the base of her brain down her spine and through her shaking body. She realized she was awfully cold, and sitting on glass. The Thunderbird had come to a rest on its four flattened wheels, at a thirty degree angle with its nose in a ravine. The top lay half caved-in above her head. With a start she remembered Richie, and bent over the twisted seat to find him semi-unconscious on the floor, blood matting the side of his head. She tried to open her door and found it jammed. Tessa pushed at it, but the crunched metal refused to budge. She clambered over the seat, trying very hard to ignore MacLeod's temporary corpse, and wedged herself in beside Richie. The back door opened with a protest, and she spilled out into mud and ripped foliage. Fresh air cleared her head a little, and the fall of drizzle on her face did the rest. She leaned in to assess Richie's injuries. The car seemed in no danger of explosion, and moving him might be dangerous. "Richie, can you hear me?" she asked. Her voice sounded tinny in her own ears. "Richie, come on, snap out of it!" "I hear you," he mumbled thickly, trying to rise up on the crooked floor of the Thunderbird, his hands going to his head. "Tessa? I think I hear you." "Stay still. Where does it hurt?" "Doesn't hurt," he insisted, and despite her misgivings he staggered out of the wreck. Tessa had to hold his arm, and after a few feet he let her ease him to the ground. Richie sat at a canted angle, his eyes clouded, his face pasty white in the gray afternoon light. "I thought I was dreaming," he said, his voice hesitant, his words unsure. "What an imagination, huh?" He could be going into shock. Tessa pulled the blanket from the back seat and wrapped it around his shaking shoulders. "You must lay back for me," she insisted, and with more words of encouragement and persuasion she got him on his back with his feet up on a fallen log. Richie stared up at the overhead trees, and she guessed he was living and reliving the parts of the crash he remembered. "Don't move," she told him, and wedged a tissue from her pocket against the bleeding cut on the right side of his head. "Just stay here, okay?" Before she could move away, he snatched her hand. "Mac?" he demanded. "Is Mac okay?" "He will be," Tessa reassured him. Going back to where MacLeod lay impaled in the front seat, however, cast a serious doubt on Tessa's optimism. He was pinned by a three-foot long broken branch, and upon investigation she saw that it had penetrated through his body and seat. She tried to wedge the trunk open for the toolbox and first aid kit, but the lock was jammed. Tessa turned, swearing aloud, her body beginning to ache as the numbness wore off. She was peripherally aware of a dozen cuts and beginning bruises that would no doubt hurt for days, but they weren't important. Freeing MacLeod so that his immortality could assert itself and finding medical help for Richie could be her only priorities. White in the trees above her made her put those priorities on hold as she realized the Ford that had hit them had also gone off the road. It hung in a web of broken trees maybe a hundred feet or so further up the slope, flipped on its side. Tessa began to climb immediately upwards, the brush tearing at her legs and hands. Although her stomach churned in fear and dread, she crouched down to the side of the car and found what she'd expected; the driver, dead behind the steering wheel. She just didn't expect to find him dead of bullet wounds. He was a tall man with a thin face and brown hair cut very short. He looked about her age, or maybe a few years older. His expensive gray overcoat had been irrevocably ruined by two bullet wounds five inches apart in his upper right shoulder. Tessa reared back, appalled. Then, with a flash of energy, she scrambled to her feet and scanned the roadside above. Clear. Tessa circled to the trunk of the white Ford, but it from the license plates found it was a rental. No toolbox or first aid kit filled the back. She half-slid, half-ran back down to the bottom of the ravine. MacLeod hadn't moved from where he lay skewered in the front seat. She wrenched his door open, barely aware of the rain and sweat mingling on her skin. She leveraged herself against the dash as best she could, wrapped her hands around the branch, and pulled. The resistance of seat and his body blocked her, and she couldn't bear the feeling of Mac's dead eyes staring at her. With the choked syllables of his name and an apology in her throat, she closed his eyelids. Then she kicked out the shattered remains of the windshield, sat herself on the hood, placed her feet against his shoulders, and yanked the branch backwards. It came out with a sickening sucking sound, glistening with blood, fluids, sinew, flesh. Tessa barely had time to turn away before her stomach rejected the remains of her breakfast. The world went gray for a brief moment. She came back to herself on her knees in the mud, the taste of bile in her throat. MacLeod was still dead. She didn't know how long it would take him to revive; she didn't know how long they had if the person or people who'd shot the driver of the Ford came looking for the car. Groans from Richie brought her back to her feet. He was struggling to sit up in the rain, his hands on his head, blood running pink through his hair and down his neck. She could see now that his left jacket sleeve was badly ripped, and blood had stained the denim in a wide dark pool. >From the way he favored his left side, she guessed he might have bruised or broken ribs. "Careful," she told him, going to her knees again, holding him in her arms. "Richie, you have to stay still. You've been hurt." "I'm okay," he mumbled. He slid sideways, leaning heavily into her. "You okay?" "Fine," Tessa lied. She felt awful - cold and hurting, sick over Duncan, fearful about the dead man in the Ford. "You should lay down." "Wet," he complained, focusing on her for the first time. "Where's Mac?" "He died in the crash," she said. So strange to hear the words spoken aloud. "But he should be back with us anytime now." Or so she hoped. **************************************end of part 1********************* =========================================================================