Date: Tue, 29 Mar 1994 09:52:57 -0700 Reply-To: Highlander TV show stories Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: L J Constantine Subject: Til Time... part II Til Time and Times Are Done A Forever Knight\Highlander story by Tara O'Shea The Raven was, as usual, packed with people. Niamh didn't know so much velvet clothing could exist in one place at one time. Niamh was wearing a loose dress of black crepe which she had dug out of a trunk in the shop's basement. It smelled of lavender and a time long past, and she was actually fairly comfortable in it. Fitz noted that she had worn it in Dublin. He didn't even want to know where she had stashed her katana. "Funeral clothes." Niamh sighed as she watched the black-clad young people on the dance floor. She spotted a young woman sitting at the bar, a long, tapered cigarette holder in one hand, a glass of wine sitting untouched in front of her as she watched the patterns the blue smoke made in the changing lights at the edge of the dance floor. Niamh recognised her by the choker. Nick said he hadn't seen her without one in two years. Janette noticed them the moment they walked in. Their clothes, and the way they wore them, spoke of people who had lived in them, rather than children who had searched through vintage and trendy shops for them. The way they moved, the way their eyes moved as they scanned the crowd, their faces momentarily blank, told her that perhaps they were different. "Janette?" the girl made the question a statement, and she nodded. "I'm Niamh. I'm in your debt." "Ah, you're the one who bled all over Nicky's car!" "What a wonderful way to be remembered." Niamh shook her head, cracking a smile. "This is Fitz." she cocked her head in the direction of her companion, who bowed gracefully, a gleam in his eyes as he took Janette's proffered hand and kissed it. "Hugh Fitzcairn at your service, madame." He did not release her fingers, and Janette smiled at the peacock's charm. "Fitz, give her hand back." Niamh sighed, realising just how much she had missed him. When he hesitated, Niamh leaned closer, a ghost of a smile on her face. "She's bites, Fitz." She said in a stage whisper, and he dropped Janette's hand, still smiling. "Now be a good lad and go find yourself someone else to dazzle for the evening." "I thought you wanted a drink?" "I do. But I also need to talk to Janette, and it might bore you." "My dear girl, how could two such jewels of your sex possibly bore me?' "Girl stuff, Fitz." Niamh replied cheerfully. "I won't be long, now run along and play." "You're friend is quite the charmer." Janette remarked, taking a long drag of her cigarette as she watched Fitz slip through the crowd after a slender blonde. "Perhaps I should warn him." "Hmm?" "To find someone else besides Alma--" "Oh, I don't think it matters. It's not like she can kill him." "Ah." Janette studied her openly. According to Nick, Niamh was older than he by little more than a century, and was of an entirely different kind than Lacroix and all his kin. "Fitz came all the way from Paris to give me a book." "That good a book?" "I think it may be." She leaned over, and very softly explained the cures and how Darius thought they may hold the key to Nick's mortality. Janette listened with measured calmness, trying to decide if she should be pleased or upset. "Have you told Nickolah?" "That's just it, I can't find him. Or Nat, that's why I'm here. That, and the fact that I could use a stiff drink and some company." "Surely your amorous friend..." "My amorous friend simply reminds me too much of someone else right now." Niamh's tone was light, but the depth of her pain shone in her pale eyes, and Janette knew that look well. Nickolah got it often. It meant some crushing defeat. He always got his hopes up too high, and she guessed it was much the same for this nine hundred year old woman before her. She motioned for the bartender, who refilled her glass and handed Niamh a rum and coke when she asked for one. They carried their drinks to a table in a remote corner of the club, away from prying eyes and ears. As they sat down, Niamh took a long sip of her drink, her throat suddenly tight. Niamh plucked the wedge of orange slice from the rim of her glass and stared at it with a sad smile on her face. "I remember when I would have killed for an orange." Janette just watched her with large blue eyes, unblinking, impassive. But she carried her own memories. "I remember how our gums used to bleed, and the children's bellies in winter would swell from hunger, and we buried half that were born, some years. Winter now means hot chocolate and snowmen, and Father Christmas on every corner." She sighed. "Times change, so fast sometimes it seems. People don't...." "Don't they?" Janette purred, sipping her wine and blood. "I think perhaps they are not as blind as they were." "How so?" "Now, everyone questions. They question everything. Religion, politics, life. No one blindly follows anything as they once did." "I wonder about that." Niamh laughed. "Look at these children, slaves to fashion as ever man was." "Perhaps." Janette allowed herself to smile. "Now we have, oh what is it called.... Grunge, is it? Children who even when they want not to look fashionable are fashionable." "They all dress alike now. Remember when fashion meant something? When dressing was a ritual that denoted class, household, clan and status?" "When dressing took hours, and required the help of at least three servants?" Janette laughed. "I hated those days!" "Why?" "Because I never had the servants, and Nickolah was ever eager to *unlace* something, but lace up? He and Lacroix were as useless as newborn babes." They both collapsed into helpless giggles. "Men." Niamh snorted, noticing Fitz seemed to be holding his own with Alma. "I only ever knew one good one." "Really? Only one?" "Darius." Niamh swallowed the rum and coke, tears stinging her eyes. "Ah, he was the best." "Lover?" "No." Niamh choked on a laugh. "No, Darius was a priest by the time I got to him. I can still remember what the day was like. Paris in January. Miserable. Grey, damp, chill. Perfectly dreadful. Himiko was bundled up to her ears in furs, and me in my woolens. God, I haven't thought of this in years. It was right after the Normans had torn up England, conquering they said, like the Northmen they really were. Pirates the lot of them. Crossing the channel was hell, even with Himiko's perfect French we never slept a wink with all the sailors up to their mischief. They'd never seen anyone like her, and there I was, this grubby little Celt. Well, not grubby. Not any longer. "Anyway, we finally got to Paris. All the students were drunk, and partying in the streets and we stole along in the dark to this stone church at the gates of Paris. It's much larger now, grand, a cathedral. In any case, back then the roof leaked in the monks quarters, and it was cold and damp, but it had a marvellous library. "I don't know how Himiko managed it, her being an infidel and all as far as any and all were concerned, but next thing I knew we were in the chapel. I had no idea what I was in for, Himiko had been strangely silent the whole trip. I had never known any immortal besides her, and was terrified when I sensed him. So old. So much raw power in one being, he must have been two thousand years old even then, and I fumbled for my sword until he turned around, and he had the face of an angel. "His eyes were pale blue, like the sky on a crisp fall day, and he just smiled. I felt like I had known him all my life in that one second. Darius had that effect on people. Ah, but he was a sweet one. Sly sense of humour, you never knew it till it was upon you." She laughed. "He and Himiko used to brew these teas. The two of them were like mad scientists, with their molds and fungus." "Sounds perfectly dreadful." "Oh, I assure you they were." "What happened to this friend? Did he die inDD what do you call it?" "The Game? No, Darius was on holy ground when he died. He hadn't taken part in the Game in over a thousand years. Darius was a pacifist. He was once the greatest General in all the world, and yet he spared Paris, and become a priest. He rarely left the church, maybe venturing out once every hundred years or so to do some good deed. None of us would have dared kill him, except perhaps Greyson, and he's dead now." She sighed, draining her glass, feeling the liquor warm the emptiness in the pit of her stomach, making her just a bit fuzzy. She welcomed the effects of the drink, blurring the hard edges, blunting the pain just a bit, making it more bearable. Janette was silent, thinking back to a time in Paris, not much later than the winter Niamh had described, when Lacroix had insisted on entering a church. She had not followed, been unable to follow, and the fledgling Nicholas could not have withstood the fire in the holy symbols, so she had waited with him out in the snow while Lacroix disappeared into the building for hours. She never knew what had happened. She wondered now. What would two ancient beings might have said to one another, if they had ever known one another at all. What two beings so opposite might have shared just by the virtue of their nature, both having lived so long. Not unlike herself and this Niamh, this girl who was a little like a mirror of herself. Alike, yet exactly the opposite, an image flipped by the glass. Had the two of them sat down to tea, or had they raged at one another? Had Lacroix played the gentleman or the truant child with this Darius, this amazing priest? She would never know. "Have you ever lost someone?" Niamh tried to make the question sound purely academic, but the ice in her glass shifted as her hand shook. "I think I have lost and found Nickolah more times than I can count." Janette smiled sadly. "If he does become mortal again, as he longs to, would you let him go?" "You ask hard questions." "Hey, I bared my soul. Now it's your turn." "Some might say my kind have no souls." "Bullshit." Niamh leaned back in her chair, cradling the empty glass in her chilled hands. "Every living thing has a soul. I can feel it in the land, the animals, and men. I can feel it in you." "Can you?" Janette was amused. "I can feel it strongest in mine own kind, but yes, I can sense life in all it's forms. It's like background noise. Like the vibrations of the music that hum under my feet and hands. If you didn't have a soul, there were be a void when I look at you. But there isn't. I can't explain." Janette laughed. She didn't believe a word of it. "How did your friend the priest die?" "Mortals." Niamh said, shaking her head. "There is a group, almost like a religious order who watch us. Fitz knows more about it that I, he actually was caught by one of them. He said that only the renegades hunt, that they are founded merely to watch and record." "And you don't believe that?" "I don't know what to believe." "Tell me more about this volume that has come into your hands from your ancient priest." "From what I can tell it's written in an old Indian dialect, some form of Sanskrit. Darius made some notes in French and German among the pages, those I could understand. I just scanned it before I put it away in the safe." "Are you sure it's safe there?" "Janette, you, Fitz and myself are the only people on the planet who are aware a copy of the abarat even exists." "In this place, the walls have ears. I would not bring the Enforcers down on your head." "The Enforcers?" "I see Nick did not tell you everything. The Enforcers enforce the code, and if we are threatened with exposure to the mortal world, they will do anything to ensure that does not come to pass. If tangible proof exists, a photograph, a book, a computer disk, anything concrete, the mortal cannot be hypnotised. Therefore..." "Therefore they must die." "Yes." "What about Nat?" "No one knows, and of the few who do, none would turn her in. They fear Nick and myself more than they do the Enforcers." "I see. My kind have no such code." "But you do have rules, as we do." "Yes. But some of them are conventions only, adopted so long ago we don't know if they are physical, or merely etiquette." "What do you mean?" "The Quickening is something none of us really understand. In all of my memory, I have never heard what would happen if we fought on Holy Ground. Some say we can't hurt each other, that there is something physically barring it. Others say there will be no Quickening if there is a kill on Holy Ground. Still others say that Quickening gotten on Holy Ground would destroy the recipient." "Ah." "Indeed. And I am not one to break a law to test a theory. Not if it could mean my life, or worse." The bartender brought Niamh another rum and coke, half of which she drained in one long sip. Janette raised a brow, but said nothing. "Darius's Quickening was lost. There was no one to receive it when that bastard took his head." "Which do you mourn more, the loss of the knowledge, or the loss of the man?" "Both. They are all tied up together for me. If someone had been there, gotten his Quickening, then a part of him would live on. But..." "But now he is well and truly gone. Just like a mortal." "Yes. He deserved so much more... Darius should have lived forever. If any of us deserved it, it should have been *him*." "Your friend, Fitz. Would you kill him, if it came down to it?" "I don't know. I have few friends left. I don't like to think about it, what would happen if we were the only ones left. I hate it!" She hissed, tears blurring her eyes. Janette touched her hand, lost in thought. "I hate all the death. I'm getting so tired of it, all of it. But what can I do?" She laughed hollowly. "It's not like I can kill myself." =========================================================================