Date: Sun, 3 Dec 1995 18:49:34 -0600 Reply-To: Samantha Anne Copeland Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Samantha Anne Copeland Subject: Daddy's Little Girl part 15/21 Daddy's Little Girl Samantha Copeland copelasa@vuse.vanderbilt.edu ******Part 15****** Joe was in the bar, wiping off the counter, cleaning up after the evening's activities. "Hey Uncle Joe!" "Well, well, well. If it isn't Grace. You're just in time to help me clean up," Joe joked. "I need to talk to you about a friend of mine," Grace said, her tone not at all the relaxed one that her uncle's comment would have normally gotten. Joe stopped what he was doing, and looked at her. Grace didn't come around a whole lot, just the usual 'how are you doing' sort of a visit, the kind parents put their kids up to when there are relatives in town Her visit, especially at this late hour, had already set off a few alarms, the rest were about to go off. "So why come to me, what's the problem?" Joe asked, offering a sympathetic ear. To make her more comfortable, he pulled a couple of sodas out and brought them over to a table. They sat down at a table next to the bar, Joe opened his can, and waited for her to begin. "Do you remember Friday very well?" "Yeah, I'd say pretty well." Joe replied, wondering just what she was getting at. "Remember how I didn't come by and hear the guys because I had a date?" "Yeah." "I suggested to the fencing club that this would be a good place to celebrate. One of my friends, I especially thought would enjoy it since she's a bit of an amateur musician. You couldn't have missed her, she's really tall." "I think I know who you are talking about. I had an enlightening conversation with her the other night." "Yeah, well, I just had a rather enlightening one with her a little while ago." "She told you?" Joe asked concerned. He couldn't figure out why a girl that had just found out she was Immortal would tell a friend something like, 'Guess what I'm an Immortal!' He wondered what had happened to drive Chris to tell, * Alexander? *. "Well, I don't think she really meant to. She came by with MacLeod... Well I reacted badly, she thought it was just shock at such a large age difference in a couple. After she introduced us, well, MacLeod put it together and asked just what I knew. That's the problem. She's my best friend... I... I just don't know what to do. You've been at this longer than I have. I'm just winging it right now. I don't know if I should stay her friend or if the rules mean anything. I've done a lot of research, but I've never done any field work, I don't really know where to start. I mean, well, neither of us knew this was going to happen." "You're both the same people, just a very big secret shared between you. Besides, I'm friends with MacLeod, that's a little different, I knew before we met who and what he was. I know that it's against the rules, but maybe it doesn't matter, you can choose who your friends are but you can't choose your life. You can choose to be a Watcher, but your she can't choose to be anything other than what she is." "MacLeod said about the same thing to me earlier." "Wise man, MacLeod. So, anything in particular you want to talk about?" "Well, I don't suppose anyone's been assigned to her yet," Grace asked, hoping not to sound too eager. "Not yet, though I've been compiling a file for the Watchers to use when someone does get assigned." "Do you suppose I could get a look at it sometime." "You can look at it right now if you like." "That's not really necessary right now. But I would like to know how MacLeod figures into this." "If I understand correctly, he's going to teach her and help her with a problem." "Does this problem have a name?" "Robert Alexander." "That name sounds vaguely familiar. Do you suppose I could get a look at his file?" "Yeah. I pulled his file earlier. It's in the top drawer in my desk. Why don't you look it over while I finish up here, then I can answer any questions that you might have." "O.K." Grace thanked her uncle for his help and went into the office. Joe went back to cleaning up. She found the file exactly where Joe said it would be, in the drawer. She took it out and flipped through it. The first few pages were recent events from the last two weeks. It had the attempted kidnapping and the midnight break-in. * Gee, this guy's been busy. No wonder Chris is sticking close to MacLeod, this is one mean s.o.b. * She moved on to the next few pages, the general history of this guy. He was somewhere around 240 years old. He exhibited a strong tendency to go after Immortals with families. He had a tendency to separate the family from the Immortal and then fight the Immortal on his terms. * Interesting. * She read the next passage, "...compensates for weak sword skills by disabling his intended victim with a gun or other such weapon, thus allowing Alexander to take the head of his opponent with little difficulty." * I think I may pass this little piece of information along to Chris, it might just help. * She closed the folder, surprised that Uncle Joe hadn't appeared. She went out into the bar area, he was on the phone with someone. She sat on one of the stools near the phone, all the better to eavesdrop. From what she could hear, it seemed that MacLeod and company was going out to the island tomorrow morning. * They won't be the only ones. * She decided. Joe said his good-byes and hung up. "Who was that Uncle Joe?" "That was MacLeod. He was letting me know that he was going out of town for a few days so I wouldn't worry about something happening." "That's nice of him... I've been thinking Uncle Joe, you haven't assigned anyone to Chris yet, and I have been helping out some for the last year or so. Don't you think it's about time that I got my own person to watch. Besides I'm already familiar with the subject." "Well, you might be right about that, but don't you think that you might rushing it a little? Not to mention complicating matters." "Maybe a little, but like I said, she's my friend." "I still don't like it. This could turn out badly. Mac and I have had a quite a few rough spots because I'm a Watcher and he's an Immortal." "I don't think it matters if you like it, just whether or not I'm ready to be assigned or not. If I'm not ready, then assign somebody else, but if I am ready, I think this would be the best time to start." "O.K., I'll see what I can arrange. But for the first few weeks I'll have Mike or someone help you out if conflicts arise, personal or otherwise." "Sounds fair enough. Thanks for believing in me Uncle Joe." With that Grace left, leaving Joe to finish cleaning up. When Joe finished, he went into the office. He pulled out a file that held Grace's work, the times she had helped out or had been asked to do research. It wasn't insubstantial, it _was_ about time that she got here own subject. He thought for a long time about the possible implications that this might have, then finally decided that if she thought she could handle it, then put her to the test. This would be the fastest way to find out if this would work. He made an entry in the log sheet to that effect, to let her know it was arranged he called her number and left a message. He opened the drawer and pulled out the file he had been putting together on Chris. It was very basic, where she was from, schooling, interests, and even a duplicate of her senior yearbook photo. Someone had gotten hold of one of her high school's yearbooks and faxed him the picture. Knowing his niece the shutter bug, he knew that there would likely be a few better additions to the file. Since there was such a strong connection between Chris and Andrew Balfour, there was a cross-reference to his file, which Joe pulled. He looked through the file, to see what kind of person he was. According to the file he tried to stay out of the Game as much as possible, seldom encountering other Immortals. In the last twenty years, only a handful had crossed his path, and most of those were friends. The most recent was Connor MacLeod. It seemed that on one of Connor's occasional visits back to New York, he called Andrew up and paid him a visit. Other that that, information was pretty scarce, he managed to vanish out of sight periodically. He'd served in a few wars, gotten married a few times. Lately he was a professor at UAB, teaching history. * I'll bet he tells his students a few things they won't find in the books. * He nearly lost his job nearly three years ago following the death of his wife. He slipped into a deep depression for a while, he had one of his grad students take the class over. Interestingly enough, student that took over the class was also his Watcher. After he finished reading that file, Joe closed it up and put all of the ones he had been looking at into a drawer and locked it. He got up, turned off the light and left. _____________________________________ Thanks to everybody who wrote!!! I was just feeling unappreciated, no longer! Any way, I'd never do something like that, can a story after putting that much work into it. Samantha previous installments can be found at: http://www.vuse.vanderbilt.edu/~copelasa/home.htm =========================================================================