========================================================================= Date: Sun, 17 Mar 1996 00:29:13 -0500 Reply-To: Sandra1012@AOL.COM Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Sandra McDonald Subject: Choices After Evil 1/6 Author's note: Not my characters, universe, copyright, etc, et al, ad ininitum. My story. Hope you like it! This is probably not what's going to happen post season four but it's an idea. Comments and criticism to me at sandra1012@aol.com. I want to especially thank Janette92 for her proofreading! YKYBWriting Highlander Fiction Too Much when you're sitting around the house, playing with your cats, and you start to wonder about the possibilities of Immortal felines . . . nine lives, right? But there are no cats in this story, I promise. Choices After Evil by Sandra McDonald sandra1012@aol.com Richie stumbled from the dojo in a daze. The gashes along his arms and legs stung as they healed, but the deeper wounds inside his head and heart sang with a terrible betrayal and loss that might never be made whole again. In the space of only a few seconds he'd been pushed further along on the road of final death than he'd ever gone before, at the razor's edge of a sword wielded by a man Richie respected and loved as a friend and teacher. The image of Duncan MacLeod dead on the floor from Joe Dawson's gunshots burned against his eyes. The smell of blood and gunpowder still stank in his nose. His heart still thumped erratically in his chest, and his hands were shaking so violently he couldn't hold the banister as he fled downstairs. He didn't know if his legs would hold him long enough for him to reach his bike, but discipline and stubbornness kept him going. That, and the knowledge that MacLeod would come after him and kill him if he didn't flee. Mac, who'd taken a Dark Quickening, who could now only be counted as a vicious and merciless enemy. Hard to see past the tears blinding his vision, but Richie fled as fast as he could down the stairs. His right foot slipped five steps from the bottom. He landed hard, with a solid whack to his back and head. He lay on the clean beige linoleum of the first floor hallway, stunned by this new kind of pain, and then the buzz of another Immortal very close by broke through the upside-down, churning, distressed confusion in his mind. His sword had fallen to the side. Richie scrambled for it, only to have it snatched up by a woman clad in black, her luminous eyes ringed by coal, her mouth turned up in a small smile he remembered as cruel and malicious. He'd last seen her crumpled in a bloody heap on the beach as wind flapped the multi-colored sails of rental boats pulled up to the high water mark. Dark skies, dark eyes, dark heart. In the space of only a few days, she'd ruthlessly manipulated Richie, threatened Tessa with her sword, and gone for Mac's head. That Mac hadn't taken her Quickening that night on the beach was only because Richie begged him not to. He'd fallen for her hard, only to have it turned back on him with a sneer. He'd showered almost obsessively for a week afterwards, to scrub away the remembered smell and memory of her against his body. Now she smiled at him. Felicia Martins. "You've got to be careful with this, Richie," she said, and hefted his sword. *** MacLeod remembered himself in the highlands, a medieval warrior whose life had been dirt and blood, fire and war, raging storms and savage deaths. Superstitions and fears had ruled much of his life. If he'd crouched by the body of a slain enemy and glanced up to see a giant metal beast roaring across the sky, he would have joined his clansmen in renouncing the devil. But now, four hundred years later, sitting in one of those giant metal beasts, he merely waited for the seat belt light to go off before he adjusted his seat backwards and reached for the headset in the pocket in front of him. The first class section was full of travelers, but MacLeod didn't feel like talking to anyone. He was on the first leg of what would be a long journey from Paris to New York to Seattle. There would be time to talk to people later, assuming he didn't let the nagging doubts and worries in his head escalate into full blown melancholy. He wasn't looking forward to his reception in Seattle. He'd left under extraordinarily bad circumstances, the shame of which still haunted him. Not that it was his fault. He recognized that. He couldn't be blamed for what he'd done after the Dark Quickening that had nearly destroyed his and many other lives. But at night, in the dark, alone, he sometimes had trouble convincing himself of that. He remembered Richie's face in the dojo, Joe's expression when he cut him free of the ropes, a housewife's horror in LeHavre. He'd talked to Joe twice on the phone since Methos had helped him fight off the Dark Quickening. Their first words had been tentative and cautious. Joe confessed to great relief at the thought Duncan was himself again. MacLeod apologized for what he'd done. "You couldn't help it," Dawson said, long distance, as MacLeod sat in the barge and watched the gray Seine through a porthole that badly needed washing. "I appreciate the chance you took," MacLeod said sincerely, "by not taking my head." "So you remember that." "I remember it all. Too clearly." MacLeod turned from the porthole and took a deep breath. "How's Richie?" Dawson hesitated fractionally. "I don't know. He left town." "Where did he go?" "I'm not sure." Dawson was a Watcher. He could find out, for heaven's sake. But MacLeod merely said, "He's still . . . alive, though?" "As far as his Watcher knows." Someone spoke in the background, and Dawson covered the phone for a minute before returning. "Look, MacLeod, I got to go. I'm glad you're back, even if you're not back here in Seattle." The second conversation with Dawson came some time later. MacLeod had tried to call Richie at his apartment, but there was never any answer and he didn't have an answering machine. Then, one day, the line was disconnected with no forwarding number. Messages on the dojo's machine went unreturned. Someone was checking them regularly, though, because the number of rings to pick up varied with the number of messages left. Dawson solved that mystery. "Richie hired a manager for the place right after you left. She's real good. Name's Holland Greer. Don't call her Holly." MacLeod frowned at the thought. He didn't have a great sentimental attachment to the place, but he did to some of its furnishings and his personal possessions in the loft. "He hired a stranger?" Dawson said, somewhat testily, "It wasn't as if you were here to make the decision for him, Mac." MacLeod took a mental step backwards. "Richie's doing well?" "Why don't you ask him?" "Because he won't answer my calls or messages." "He's . . . going through some stuff. I think he wants to talk to you, but not like this. Not on the phone." MacLeod fought back a sudden feeling of claustrophobia. Returning to Seattle was not a thought he felt ready to consider. "I don't know when I'll be back," he said. "That's your choice, then." "Is something wrong? Something you're not telling me?" A sigh traveled with the speed of sound from Seattle to Paris. "Everything's fine, MacLeod. Don't worry about it. Come back when you're ready." MacLeod groped for the words he wanted to say. "Joseph . . . it wasn't really me." "I know," Dawson said firmly. But he sounded tired. "Richie knows, too. No one expects it to be easy, forgetting about this." MacLeod didn't expect to forget. He clearly expected that one of the last images he would see when his death finally came would be that of Richie, kneeling and bleeding before him on the dojo floor. The other would be Sean Burns, right before MacLeod took his head. And there would always be Dominique, as full comprehension dawned on her face of what a horrible mistake she'd made letting him through her front door. Now, sitting in first class, the flight attendant bringing him a seltzer water, MacLeod reviewed his decision to leave Paris. The time had come to face what had happened at home. He knew that, deep in his heart. But his palms itched, and his tight shoulders ached with tension, and he had hours and hours of flying time to review his crimes. "Going to the States?" the man beside him asked. MacLeod looked out the window. "Going home." "Going home is good," the man said. "We'll see," MacLeod added, a quiet afterthought, and said nothing more for the rest of the flight. *** Fourteen hours later he paid a cab driver and stepped out on the sidewalk outside the dojo, eyes squinted behind sunglasses, head stuffed from dehydration, body buzzing with weariness, stomach rumbling with too much alcohol and too much airline food. It had been daylight when he left Paris, and now daylight in Seattle, but he wasn't sure if it was the same day. Trans-continental flights were like traveling in time. He was sure, however, that the white, yellow and green sign outside the building was new; that the blue linoleum and whitewashed walls in the hallway were new; and that the bright posters and bulletin boards outside the second floor dojo entrance were new. The dojo itself looked larger and cleaner than he remembered. A class was going on in one corner, with a dozen women and two men in bright, tight leotards jumping up, down and around green benches to the obnoxiously cheerful thump of a state-of-the-art stereo system. The music intensified his headache. A handful of men were lifting weights and ogling the women. MacLeod left his suitcase by the door and edged his way carefully to the office, caught in an odd sensation of familiarity and strangeness. The office had pink blinds and at least thirty potted plants growing like a miniature jungle across the sunny windowsills. Pink blinds was going too far. "Excuse me," he said to the woman leaning over the desk. "I'll be right with you," she said, computing a long list of numbers on the desk calculator. He studied her blearily. She was maybe in her thirties, with dark roots showing through a mass of wavy blonde hair pulled back by a blue plastic clip. She wore yellow shorts and a white and yellow T-shirt that proclaimed herself as part of the dojo staff. She had the hard, polished look of an athlete, and a wedding ring encircled her ring finger. She glanced up at him with two amazingly green eyes, one of which was ringed by a mass of blue and black bruises. She was also pre-Immortal. Shit, MacLeod thought. "You're a little late for step aerobics," she said, with a half-smile, "but I can fit you into the three o'clock yoga class." "I'm not here for class," he said, lowering his sunglasses. "Mrs. . . . ?" "Holland Greer," she offered, shaking his hand with a firm grip. "Duncan MacLeod," he offered. "So, what I can do for you, Mr. MacLeod? Are you looking for a membership? You can have a free week's worth of classes. Our contract is pretty reasonable, and we've got self-defense, karate, aerobics, aerobic dance, Baby and Me - " "Actually," he interrupted, "I own this place." Holland studied him with a skeptical expression. Then her eyes lit up. "*That* Duncan MacLeod! You're supposed to be in France." "I came back," he said testily. He couldn't decide if he liked her or not, but the pink blinds swayed him in a negative direction. "I see that," she said. "You look like hell. Long flight?" "Long enough. You're the manager Richie hired?" "That's me. Richie's been great. He doesn't come by as much anymore, but he really saved this place before I came along." "I'm sure he did," MacLeod said. Suddenly he was far too tired to deal with this bright woman, pink office blinds, bouncing women on step benches, or talk of Richie. "I'm going to go crash for awhile. Later we can talk about what you've done to the place." "Looks great, doesn't it? I think you'll like the profits we've been making." That stopped him for just a second, because even Charlie DeSalvo had never managed to turn a profit. MacLeod pushed his sunglasses back up his nose. "I'm going upstairs," he announced. "It was a very long flight." Holland folded her arms. "Okay. But you could say how nice the place looks." "It looks different," he allowed. "Different," she said, in a voice suspended between amusement and disbelief. "You could say that, too. So does your loft." "What did you do to my loft?" MacLeod asked in alarm. "I did nothing," she said. "The roof did, when it collapsed. You had some pretty bad water damage. But your friend paid for a new roof." "Richie paid for a new roof?" "No, your lady friend." "What lady friend?" Steadily she said, "Mr. MacLeod, I was hired to run the dojo, not keep track of your social calendar. I only saw her once. She arranged for a new roof and the repair of your furniture." MacLeod took the elevator up, his mind filled with disturbing images of damage or destruction. But aside from the newly colored ceiling, the loft looked the same. It had an empty, abandoned air to it that he couldn't blame on anyone but himself. "See?" Holland said beside him. "Good as new. The cleaners come in once a month to dust it out." "Thank you, Mrs. Greer," he said, somewhat curtly. If you'll excuse me. . ." "Sure you don't want to join in for yoga class?" she asked. "It works wonders for your biorhythms." Emphatically he said, "No." "Just checking," she said, hands up in surrender, as she backed into the elevator. From the playful light in her eyes he realized she had been kidding. "Mrs. Greer," he said. "Yes, Mr. MacLeod?" "What happened to your eye?" "Boxing class," she said. "It comes right after 'Ballet for Beginners.'" MacLeod winced at the thought of adolescent ballet dancers pirouetting clumsily across the dojo floor. "Good night, Miss Greer," he said. And went to bed. He spent the next two days adjusting from jet lag, stocking up on groceries, taking the T-bird out of the storage lot that Richie had instructed Holland Greer to put it in, and working up enough resolve to track down Dawson and Richie. He avoided Holland as much as possible. He decided he didn't dislike her, which was an improvement over earlier prospects, but he couldn't argue with the fact she'd taken the dojo into the exciting new realm of actually paying for its upkeep. One midnight he woke from disturbing dreams and went downstairs to search the floor for blood stains. But no trace of his fight with Richie remained. Any evidence of violence which might have remained had been obliterated by the rubber soles of women doing V-steps and grapevines. The next day, around noon, he went to Joe's. end of part one