1000 Oceans 'Verse

In then end it always came down to just two. No matter who trained you, no matter how many friends swore stand with you, in the end it always came down to two people, two lone Immortals, each bearing swords and the weight of their skill. It came down to a game, a smaller one in the greater scheme of things but important nonetheless. Two people, one coming that much closer to the Prize and the other… Well, whom could say what happened to Immortals once they passed on. It was never something Cat had speculated on and she wasn't about to start now. She needed her wits about her now, not the answer to life, the universe, and everything. She needed the cold focus of an Immortal, the best companion her sword could have and the heart to wield that sword. If she stopped long enough to question, she might doubt and if she doubted, she would lose. In battle there could be no hesitation, there was only precision of movement, the skill of one blade clashing against another. Much of it was wit and skill but some of it was luck. Who could say why one Immortal won over another and truth be told, she felt it didn't really matter that much. What mattered was winning,* winning * today, so that she might live a little while longer tomorrow.

Jacob Kell had taught her such things. He had taught her many things, some useful, some poisonous to the soul if lingered upon. He had taught her to be strong and to do what was needed, when it was needed. Mercy had no place on the field of battle. The kind soldier was the dead soldier and the sooner that lesson was learned, the longer she would stay alive. Kell had not been inclined to mercy himself and perhaps that was why in the end he had lost. Given just a bit of mercy, Connor MacLeod might have lived. Given just a bit of mercy, Cat might never have lost her life as a Tomorrow Person. Given just a bit of mercy, Duncan MacLeod might have not had the horror of taking his kinsman's head.

Jacob Kell had never given mercy and as such had not been deserving of it. Cat Fraser only hoped that when her time came, someone could say better than that about her.

The horizon was already blackening, clouds rushing over a basin of dark gray and shaking thunder. The wire and lead glass of the ancient factory creaked around them, an ominous harbinger of things to come. Save for the sounds of the air around them picking up, threatening to swirl up with the first clash of their swords, it was quiet. The quiet of a tomb, perhaps her own. It was oddly appropriate, this macabre husk of another life serving as the battleground and perhaps only place she could shed her own husk, shed the web and netting Jacob Kell had so expertly wrapped around her. It was here that she could exorcise his ghost and come to terms with him or it was here that he would have his final victory over all, and perhaps one last laugh at the expense of his student.

Laird stalked, his movements almost strutting as he circled, trying (she thought rather pathetically) to emulate the natural grace of their mentor's movements, trying to capture some of that colossal intimidating ego and failing miserably. Webster Laird was not Jacob Kell. He was just a child; a confused, brain-sick boy who had found his god and never looked back. His faith in a madman had never shaken, not in over two hundred years. He was a fool, and a fanatic to boot. And there were far too many of those people in the world as it was. Given time, he would aspire to become his own god, to become Kell, and lacking that finesse he would only destroy mindlessly. His own glory could only come at the expense of other people, mortal and Immortal alike. He would kill and kill again and continue to do so. Not to survive, but to elevate his own godhead, to assure that frightened little boy in the dark of his mind that he was something, that he was someone, that he mattered. Too bad he didn't realize that fact had never been in any doubt. Of course he mattered but so did everyone else. Everyone had a right to live, to exist. There were mortals and Immortals alike who didn't deserve the horrors he could inflict upon them. His blood might end up on her hands but those deaths would end up on her conscience if she let this play continue without end.

She could live with one but not the other. And so she chose.

"No words of wisdom? No pleas for me to change my mind, to become a better person?" Laird asked, his green eyes bright in the darkness. Predator's eyes, Kell would have named them. The dumb lust of animal for the kill there and nothing else. "You're not what I expected. MacLeod would have begged me to reconsider."

She lifted her chin, face blank and spoke the truth as she always had. "I. Am. Not. Duncan. MacLeod. And I refuse to waste my time on you any longer. You're not worthy of it."

"It was Jacob's time that was wasted. All those hours he might have spent teaching me, molding me, given to you, an ungrateful child who has no idea the value of the gift you were given. Three years! He gave you three years. More time than he'd given to another living soul save Connor MacLeod, his prey. And all I asked was for a fraction of that, for the chance to share in what you were given," Laird was sullen now, almost pouting.

"Did it ever occur to you there was a reason he never came back for you?"

Laird's eyes narrowed, face darkening under his brown curls. "What do you mean?"

"If you whined as much as this, it's no wonder he left you. Two hundred years and he's still all you think about? Even now that he's dead? Oh, Jacob must be having a bonny laugh over this in Hell," Cat purred.

"I was his disciple," Laird snarled. "The only one who understood him. I am the only one worthy to continue in his name! Me! You're just a child, not even a decade into your immortality. What do you know of devotion? I would die a thousand times over to come just one little bit closer to him than I am now."

"Come on then," she said, a slow cold smile dawning her face. "Let's see which one of us is Jacob's true child."