========================================================================= Date: Sun, 17 Mar 1996 00:32:58 -0500 Reply-To: Sandra1012@AOL.COM Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Sandra McDonald Subject: Choices After Evil 4/6 When they arrived for dinner at seven, Felicia looked slightly nervous. MacLeod didn't admit to it, but he wasn't very comfortable with her in his loft. Richie studiously ignored them both until the tension began to ease over salad, soup, and then three excellent steaks. The movie Richie and Felicia brought was a foreign film, obviously selected for MacLeod's interest. Richie fell asleep halfway through. MacLeod, who'd seen the movie but was too polite to say so, moved to clear the table of dishes. After a moment, Felicia disengaged herself from Richie's side, carefully spread a blanket over him, and then moved to help MacLeod. "It's okay," he said. "I want to," Felicia insisted. They moved quietly around the small kitchen area as Richie continued to sleep on the sofa. "It's a nice place you have," Felicia said as they loaded the dishwasher. "You like this better than the old place?" "It's different." "I'm sorry about Tessa." "Funny," he said, without malice, "since you once tried to kill her." Felicia wiped her hands on a dishtowel and studied him in the dim light. "I'm sorry about that, too. I'm sorry for that whole thing." "You were very convincing." "It's a way of survival," Felicia said. "You understand that part, at least." MacLeod closed the dishwasher. "I understand survival, Felicia. I understand the rules of the Game. We were just more necks to you. Did you know then what Richie would become?" "I thought he might be pre-Immortal," she confessed. "I've only run into one other in my life." "After you'd taken care of me, you would have killed him." "I understand you would have killed him a few months ago, if it weren't for Joe Dawson," Felicia retorted. "Look, MacLeod, I'm not trying to pick a fight with you. I was wrong in a lot of what I did. But I either let it consume me, continue on the same path, or make a new life for myself. So here I am, trying really hard, and Richie's doing all he can to help me." "About that - " MacLeod started, then stopped. He cleared his throat. She was the only one he could think who might be able to answer the question that had nagged at him since his return, but it was difficult to ask her advice. "What?" "How do you do it? How do you put it behind you?" Felicia took his question seriously. "You acknowledge it, you turn it over, you take a hard look at yourself, you make amends wherever possible." MacLeod gave her a blank look. Felicia grabbed hold of the open wine bottle they'd removed from the dinner table. "Let's kill this solder," she proposed. They retired downstairs, to the dojo, and sat out on the wide hardwood floor with the bottle between them. Felicia told him she'd been born in New Amsterdam in the year 1650, to an extended family of poor Dutch farmers. As the oldest daughter, she'd been the recipient of her father's drunken incest from the age of seven years old on, and had fled the farm when she was twelve. She fell in with a trapper who made a fortune selling furs and women to soldiers and colonists. By the time she was thirty, she'd married and outlived three violent, abusive husbands who found their ends in tavern brawls. "I didn't kill any of them," she said, somewhat defensively. When she did die, of a raging venereal infection picked up in a Boston whorehouse, she found herself clawing out of an open pauper's grave. She'd stumbled in a daze from the graveyard, and into the path of a coach driven by a rich woman and her husband, both Immortals, who spent months cleaning her up, straightening her out, and teaching her what being Immortal meant. "Rebecca was really nice," Felicia said, with something like wistful nostalgia. "She was my age, but kind of like a mother. Only thing was, she was real stupid about guys. Her husband was sneaking into my room every night." "Rebecca? Red hair? Several hundred years old?" "You know her? I always meant to look her up, but I didn't think she'd want to see me." MacLeod swallowed a deep gulp of wine to blot out the irony of Rebecca having mentored both Amanda and Felicia. Now that he looked for the similarity - no. Better not to think of it. "Why not?" "Because I took her husband as my first Quickening," Felicia said darkly. "Bastard came to my room once too often." "Rebecca's dead now." MacLeod gave her the bottle. "Oh," Felicia said, and downed a hearty swig of the wine. They sat in silence for a few moments, remembering Rebecca, and then Felicia said, "I left Boston, went to London, fell in with this guy who forged maps. Turns out I was pretty good at it. Did that for awhile, took more heads, went to France. Reinvented myself as a French Immortal in need of a mentor. Took more heads. Settled on my great strategy of killing wives and adopted children as a way of undermining confidence from a guy. When the heat got too bad, I skipped back to New Amsterdam, which they changed to New York City, and would hide out for a few decades. Then back to France, Spain, Italy, wherever. Always taking heads." MacLeod had mellowed with the wine. "It's what we do." "I liked it too much, MacLeod. I slaughtered innocent people so I could get just one more Quickening. It was like an addiction to me. Every time I took a head, I thought it would help me forget my father, my brothers, my uncles, my husbands, whoever. All the bastards. But it never worked." "And then?" "And then, you let me live. No one had ever done that. When I woke up on that beach it was dawn, and I was covered with my own blood, and I realized just how sick and twisted the whole thing had become. Trust me, the old Felicia Martins would have gone back to your antique store just to prove how tough she was. The new one went to ground. I spent two years in therapy, lying about dates and times and places, but working on the real problems. Now I'm trying to put it behind me and make amends." "You said that before." "It's an important step. Number nine." "The ninth step?" MacLeod asked. Then, suddenly, everything clicked in his mind. He stared at her incredulously. "You're doing a twelve step program? Where? Immortals Anonymous?" She poked his leg. "Laugh if you want to, MacLeod, but violence is an addiction like anything else. You get hooked on it, you need it, you can't do without out. Tell me you haven't seen Immortals you liked get sucked into it. Were they all Dark Quickenings? My ass if they were. You were the first one in about a thousand years. What about those who just get drawn into the darkness of it all?" "Not everyone does," he said. "And those who do, sometimes they find a way back," Felicia said triumphantly. "They don't take a dip into a holy spring, they work on the problem at hand." MacLeod looked at her squarely. "What's this 'they' business?" he asked. Felicia smiled. Then she let her smile fade, and said, "What's really troubling you, MacLeod? It's not me. It's not what happened with Dawson and Richie, because you guys have gotten past that." MacLeod took the bottle from her and shook his head. "Just memories." "What kind of memories?" Slowly he said, "There was a . . . woman in LeHavre. The wife of the captain of the ship I crossed over on. I wanted revenge on him. So I beat him, stole his bags, went to his house. Charmed my way in. Plied her with wine. Told her lies about her husband. Made her laugh. And then I . . . took her to bed." Felicia said, "Did you force her?" He was sitting with a woman who'd been raped by her own father, and dozens of other men in the seventeenth century slums she'd survived through. MacLeod closed his eyes. "I don't know," he said. "Yes you do, MacLeod." The elevator ground to life, saving MacLeod from an answer. Richie came down, the blanket wrapped around his shoulders, and peered at them groggily from the haze of half-sleep. "What's going on?" "We're talking about you," Felicia said roughly. "Good," Richie yawned. "As long as you're not going after each other's heads." Felicia took Richie back to his place, leaving MacLeod to think about the things she'd said. Dominique swirled her way through his nightmares that night, weeping and lost, and for several nights afterward. In one dream she haunted the farms of Felicia's youth, and in another she and her husband both came to the dojo to settle the score. Wednesday night the nightmares kept him tossing all night, and he slept until nearly noon the next day. When he finally made it downstairs to the dojo, Holland was on the phone and circling ads in the morning newspaper. Two suitcases sat in the corner of the office, and her ring finger was bare. "You left him," MacLeod said. Holland paused between phone calls. "Yes," she said steadily. "It's still none of your business." "You need a place to stay?" "Maybe. Maybe I like calling the classifieds all day for fun." "You don't have to be sarcastic." "Yes I do," she said. "It's a way of coping." Then she sighed, and rubbed the palms of her hands against her eyes. "Sorry. It was a long night." "You okay?" "I will be, one day." "You can crash with me until you find a place. I can take the sofa." Holland shook her head. "You're my employer. It wouldn't be appropriate." "Let me be the judge of that," MacLeod said. Then he sensed another Immortal, and turned to the open doorway. Billy was sweeping the floor, and in the corner, a half-dozen mothers and toddlers were doing a play workshop with one of Holland's aerobic instructors. "What's the matter?" Holland asked. "You've got a look on your face." "What look?" he asked automatically. "Indigestion." "Trust me, it's not indigestion." Holland rose from her chair and came around the desk to study him more closely. "No, it's not. It looks like a ghost walked over your grave." The Immortal must have stopped in the hall to read the bulletin board. Now he came into the dojo - a short man, late twenties, short black hair, thick nose. He looked like he was of Latin descent, probably Italian. He wore a coat too heavy for the spring weather, and a smile that spoke of malicious mischief. He crossed the dojo to the office. "I'm Duncan MacLeod of the clan MacLeod. What do you want?" "Not you, my friend," the Immortal said. "I was looking for another one. Red hair, smart ass? Thinks he's tough?" "Why?" MacLeod asked. The Immortal laughed. "Why do you think? We've got some unfinished business to take care of." He turned his attention to Holland, and favored her with a leer. "My, my, you're just full of potential, aren't you? Anyone explain the facts of long life to you yet, my dear?" "I think you should leave," Holland said. "Maybe Felicia's around instead," the Immortal said. "I could talk over old times with her. She taught me the tricks of the trade, you know." "The lady said leave," MacLeod growled. "Hey, we don't need a scene here." The Immortal let his coat fall open. He had two guns strapped in holsters, and a wicked looking hunting knife in a sheath. His glittering eyes fixed on MacLeod. "If I wanted to, I could take you out of here and you'd go peacefully. Just so the little kiddies don't get hurt." Holland reached for the phone. "I'm calling the police." "No," MacLeod said, grasping her arm. "He's leaving." "Yeah, that's me. Gone with the wind. Just tell the Whiz Kid that Danny Dieppa's looking for him, okay?" MacLeod couldn't stop the flare of recognition that crossed his face. "Heard of me, huh?" Dieppa grinned. He'd had extensive dental work before his first death, and gold glinted from several teeth. "I heard you were dead." "Yeah, that's probably what Felicia told him. She's such a kidder, you know?" Dieppa took a bow and then backed his way out of the dojo. Holland let out a shaky breath. "What was that all about?" "None of your business," MacLeod said, not unkindly, and went upstairs to his loft. He immediately called Richie, but there was no answer at his apartment. He called the houseboat, but Felicia wasn't home either. He called Dawson, who already sounded like he'd been hitting the bottle. "No, I haven't seen them, neither one." "Joe, are you drinking this early?" "Is it early? I hadn't noticed. Lighten up, MacLeod. I'm drinking Scotch, you should be proud of me." MacLeod was in no mood to deal with Dawson. Thirty minutes later he tried Richie's apartment again. No answer. Another half hour passed, and then Richie picked up on the fifth ring. "Richie! It's about time." "What's wrong, Mac?" "A visitor came to the dojo a little while ago, looking for you and Felicia. He said you two had unfinished business. He said his name was Danny Dieppa." Richie immediately protested, "That's impossible. Felicia took his head." "You saw her kill him?" "Well . . . no. I was unconscious, or dead, whatever. I had poles through my chest, Mac, there were other things on my mind." "Well, whoever this Immortal is, he seems to know Felicia." "I'll talk to her." "You need to do more than talk, Richie, if this is the same guy. It means Felicia lied to you. If she was his teacher, they're probably in league together - " "Mac, stop!" Richie interrupted. "Give me some time to work on this. I'll find Felicia and we'll get it straightened out." "Don't be so blind that you can't see a trap, Richie." "I'll keep your worthy advice in mind, Mac," Richie said angrily, and hung up. MacLeod slammed down the receiver in anger and worry. It was too easy to imagine Richie trapped in Felicia's machinations again. She'd put on a good show, but her true colors were showing again. He wanted to find Danny Dieppa, but knew nothing about him. Dawson might have been able to help, but Dawson was no longer a Watcher. "Well, that was an interesting one-sided conversation," Holland said shakily from behind him, and MacLeod whirled. "What are you doing here?" he practically shouted at her, to where she stood in the stairway door. "How did you get in?" Holland clutched the key in her hand with whitened fingers. "I still had the copy Richie gave me." "You weren't supposed to hear anything. Just stay out of it. Isn't that your famous refrain? It's none of your business." "There's a difference between my marital problems and murder, MacLeod. Who killed someone? Is Richie in trouble?" "Leave," MacLeod said. "Just go." Holland stood staring at him. "Go!" he told her. Stung, she turned and fled. MacLeod buried his head in his hands. Then he grabbed his jacket, and sword, and went to go find Felicia. *** Richie's heart was thumping with anticipated betrayal as he grabbed his helmet and went out the door. MacLeod had to be wrong. There was no way that Danny Dieppa was still walking the earth, because Felicia had killed him. She'd told him so. She wouldn't have lied. Not about that. Unless Mac was right. Unless Felicia had been tricking him all along. He took the stairs down three flights and jumped on his motorbike, which he kept locked in a side alley. He was supposed to meet Felicia for an early dinner at five o'clock, at one of their favorite restaurants on the pier, but she'd mentioned something about visiting a friend down in the Heights. He thought if he found her telephone book, he could track down the friend. He kicked up the stand and started the ignition. He gave it gas, shot forward accordingly, and then felt the whole bike rise up from under him. Somehow it was over him, crashing dizzily through the sky, and he was on the ground, incredible agony shooting up his legs and groin, flames licking at his clothes and skin. He rolled, came up against the now crumpled remains of the bike, rolled the other way. His own screams filled the helmet as redness stole up his chest. Then, mercifully, someone was dumping a blanket on top of him, smothering the fire. Then doing more - trapping him, blinding him, choking him, and he fought a losing battle against both his unseen opponent and consciousness. He went to a blackness that might have been death, knowing that rigging his motorbike was a stunt worthy of Danny Dieppa's unscrupulous tactics, and frantic with the fear he might never awaken to see Mac or Felicia again. end of part four