(Authors note : I should apologise for this story, but I won't. First, I had too much fun writing it. Second, I just had to get the old guy out of my system. Okay, okay, so he's not out of my system yet, but I'm still not apologising! ;-)
For Lisa M., for her patience, her encouragement, her support, her friendship... Heck, just for being her!
SAM:
I blinked a few times, trying to adjust to my new surroundings. The first thing I was aware of was that I was holding something in my hand. Looking down, I found I had to blink a few more times before I could focus enough to see that it was the handle of a refrigerator-door. I frowned, peering into the contraption, not sure whether I was supposed to retrieve something or finally close the door. Before I could decide either way, a feeling slammed into me, something akin to a cold shudder running down my back, accompanied by a faint feeling of nausea.
"Can't make up your mind?" an amused, English-accented voice sounded behind me, standing so close that I could feel his breath brushing the back of my neck, both the sound and the feeling making me jump.
"Don't do that," I snapped annoyed, much the same way I sometimes snapped at Al when he popped in unexpectedly. I slammed the door shut and whirled on my unexpected visitor, finding myself face to face with a tall, slender man in his early thirties. There was a definite look of alarm on the other man's face as he raised a questioning eyebrow at me.
"Are you all right, MacLeod?" he asked, his voice unable to hide the anxiety he was obviously feeling. This man obviously cared a lot about me, or rather this MacLeod I'd leaped into and it made me feel guilty for having snapped at him, just like I always felt with Al too.
"Sure I am," I tried to assure him, even though the queasy feeling I'd felt hadn't vanished completely. Hazel eyes were searching my face, a most unsettling sensation and strangely enough, they seemed to hold a wisdom and age that belied his youthful appearance. His face was striking, a strange combination of features that on any other face might have looked disproportional. High cheekbones and a nose that was far too big. I smiled at that thought. I should talk about a big nose! But what drew me to the face again and again were those eyes, those large, strange, unsettling, green-brown eyes that seemed to miss nothing. The eyes, in combination with the creamy smooth, English-accented voice, were what made this a very attractive man. English? Had I leaped into England again?
His brow furrowed as he continued to study me and somehow I couldn't shake the feeling that he could see right through the aura and knew that the person in front of him wasn't his friend anymore. I would have done anything to get away from those probing eyes and I moved away uncomfortably, taking in my surroundings for the first time. We were in a large room, apparently a loft, with a spacious kitchen on one side and a couch on the other, a bed on the farthest side. I awkwardly made my way towards the couch and dropped into it with a sigh, all the while very conscious of those eyes that had never left me. It was more than unsettling and it made me even more edgy. "Why wouldn't I be all right?" I asked and I flinched at my own tone. That definitely came out a lot harsher than I had intended.
The man didn't move, just leaned against the fridge and crossed his arms in front of him. "Well, for one thing, I've never been able to sneak up on you before."
"There's a first time for everything," I muttered, and it was with somewhat of surprise that I saw a brilliant smile appear on his face.
"You've said a true thing there," he said, the smile now turning into a knowing smirk. "But when you offer to get me a beer and then slam the door closed without said beer in your hand, I get worried."
I pulled a face and didn't reply, simply because I didn't have one. How could I do something that I didn't know I was supposed to do? The smirk still on his face, he turned around, opened the fridge door and emerged with two beers in his hand. He walked towards me, his body moving with such fluid casualness that I wasn't sure whether it was unconscious or it was all carefully practised to perfection. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what or who he was from his appearances, clad as he was in a bulky sweater and old, faded jeans.
He handed me a bottle of beer, the movement revealing something on his wrist that looked like a tattoo in the shape of a black circle with some kind of symbol that I'd never seen before. Maybe I could ask Al about it later. If only Al would show up. It was kind of difficult to hold up a conversation with someone when I didn't even know his name, especially when there was no one else besides the two of us in the room. I took the beer from him and sipped it gratefully, feeling the couch dip under his weight as he insinuated himself onto it. That strange, unidentifiable feeling had grown stronger again as he moved closer and it worried me even more now. Almost afraid of the reaction I'd find, I avoided looking at him, taking another swig of my beer instead. The feeling increased even further, but this time I didn't need it to know that he was moving even closer, leaning towards me in a way that was far too intimate for my tastes. There was no way I could avoid it any longer and I finally turned towards the man sitting next to me, to find him looking at me with those all-knowing hazel eyes.
"The problem with you, Mac," he finally said, his voice soft and incredibly gentle, "is that you need to unwind. Let the world turn without you for a while. They're big boys and girls. They'll survive without you for the next few hours."
"Maybe they won't," I countered, panic slamming into me full force as I read the intention in those eyes. I'd done a lot of things on my leaps, but by the strangest force of luck, I'd always managed to avoid this. Not this time it seemed.
"The eternal boy-scout," he admonished, shaking his head with a soft, tender smile, before he closed the final few inches and what I'd dreaded, happened. As his lips met mine, I closed my eyes and tried to close my mind, trying to think myself somewhere else, not here, not being kissed by a man. But the man doing the kissing had totally other ideas in mind and I was slowly starting to get persuaded to his point of view, finding the experience not half as distasteful as I had feared it would be. When he finally let me up for breath, there was only one way I could react.
"Oh boy!"
AL:
The most disturbing aspect of this whole business had always been walking into the Waiting Room and seeing someone else there in Sam's place, but I could understand why everyone else, including Verbena, was even more reluctant to go in there than I was. Unlike them, I could see past the aura of Sam Beckett and see the person who'd leaped in here, which made this thing a lot easier to deal with. Or did it?
For five years I'd managed to close off my heart, pretend that I wasn't bleeding to death inside. And the worst of all was that I could never tell Sam. Could never even hint at the special relationship we'd shared before he'd leaped, a relationship that went so much deeper than simple friendship.
Still, no matter how many times I stepped through this door, it never got any more bearable to see a total stranger standing there instead of the man I loved so very much. I took a deep breath and plunged into the deep end once more, conjuring up a reassuring smile that I didn't feel at all in my heart.
A tall, muscular man swirled around at the sound of the Waiting Room door whisking open, a truly murderous glint in his very, dark brown eyes. His broad chest was stretching the fabric of Sam's fermie suit to its maximum capacity, the short, angry breaths he took further emphasising that notion. He had long wavy dark brown hair that fell onto his shoulders in a tousled shamble.
"Where the hell am I?" he snapped the moment he saw me and it wasn't the first time I'd been greeted by that particular phrase. I opened my mouth to say something, but I didn't get the chance. "And what have you done with Me..." I noticed how he checked himself just in time. "Adam?"
Reassure them first, simple questions next. That's how it had always worked before, whether I was dealing with a frightened child, or a UFO-enthusiast who was convinced he'd been abducted by aliens.
"You're here by mistake. An accident," I told him, noticing the eyes narrowing as if they had expected something else from me. "We are trying to get you back as soon as possible, but we need your help. We need to know who you are and where you come from, so we can return you." It said enough without revealing a thing. It usually worked.
He nodded slowly, but the narrowed eyes told me that he wasn't convinced yet. Apparently he had decided that answering a few questions couldn't hurt.
"Why don't you tell me what your name is?" I asked him. It was unsettling enough to wake up in a totally foreign, strange, blue room, without having to find out that their memory was full of holes. Their names were usually the safest bets.
A dangerous glint flashed in those dark eyes. "I am Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod," he said solemnly, his voice suddenly attaining a very pronounced Scottish accent.
Great. One down, about a zillion to go. Apparently he also seemed to remember someone named Adam, so I decided to pursue that course, anything to get us to Sam as quickly as possible.
"Who is Adam?"
A soft smile appeared on his face, one that immediately got my attention, but the moment he noticed, it vanished. "Adam is a friend. We were just..." He hesitated, needing to dig a little further in his memory this time. "We were sitting around. Having a beer. Joking around," he said, a pensive frown crossing his forehead. "That's the last thing I remember." He suddenly glared at me. "What have you done with him?" he snarled, and I got the faint impression that he was ready to tear me up with his bare hands if I didn't reply him soon. And something told me that he could do it too.
"Adam's fine," I assured him, adding silently to myself, as far as we know. "You're the only one who's here. Adam's without a doubt still where you two were before you arrived here."
"He will hunt you down until he finds me," the Scot continued, with heartstopping conviction and this time I couldn't help staring at him. The sentiment he'd just expressed came a little too close for comfort. I tore my gaze away from his threatening eyes and evil smile, and decided to focus them on the handlink instead.
Sitting around with Adam, having beers, I punched into the handlink and then turned back towards the tall Scot. Maybe it was time for some more basic questions. "Maybe you can remember your date of birth?"
He had to think this one over for a second, but then his face lit up. "1592!" he crowed in triumph, the certainty ringing through his voice so strongly that it never even occurred to me to question it.
Oh shit!
I took some further information from Duncan MacLeod, even though his co-operation wasn't wholehearted and then practically fled from the Waiting Room. This was bad. Real bad. If such a thing could really be possible, if Sam had really leapt as far as the turn of the 17th century, we were in some very serious caca. Not only did Ziggy's archives reach back only as far as 1953, but the question whether she could project me as far back as the 17th century was a very big if indeed.
"Oh Sam," I mumbled softly to myself, as I rushed through the Project corridors in the direction of Imaging Control. "What have you got yourself into this time?"
SAM :
They do say that you can get used to almost anything, if you give it enough time. I'd only been kissed twice by the man, but not only was I getting used to it, I was actually starting to enjoy it too. After all, it wasn't all that different from kissing a woman. Not really. It was only when I found his long fingers tugging into my hair and I actually found my own hands on his back, doing a damn good impression of a caress, that I started to worry. Kissing okay. So far. Anything beyond that I was more than certainly not ready for.
The decision was taken out of my hands when the telephone rang and my companion's head jerked up. He looked at me for a moment, then pulled a face and buried his head into my neck.
"Why?" he moaned, not happy at all. "Why, Duncan?"
Why did the phone interrupt us. How the hell should I know? I was only grateful that it had. When he didn't make a move to answer the phone, I looked at him expectantly.
"What?" he finally said. "It's your phone!"
It was? Oh, right! Another thing I couldn't have possibly known. Pulling that same smirk at me, he got up from the couch and grabbed the phone attached to the wall. With a sigh and look of infinite patience, he fell back onto the couch and most importantly on me, and held the receiver out against my ear.
"Hello?" I spoke into it non-committing.
"Adam Pierson?" someone asked on the other side. Was that me? No, couldn't be. The other guy had called me MacLeod. And Duncan. Duncan MacLeod?
"Adam?" I asked, playing dumb. At the mention of that name, the smirk on my companion's face turned into a frown and he cocked an eyebrow at me. I had a hunch and I decided to play it. "Must be for you!" I said to him, secretly holding my breath that my hunch was right.
It would appear that it was, because he grabbed the phone and completely moving away - and more importantly off me - he spoke into the phone.
"Adam Pierson."
Finally, I sighed. A name!! Now, where the hell are you, Al? I know it's not polite to listen in on other people's phone conversations, but good manners can't always be my first concern in my line of business. I saw a look of disgust cross Adam's face before he replied, of all things in French.
"C'est une blague, j'espère. Je suis à Seacouver maintenant. Je ne peux pas aller à Paris. J'étais à Paris il y a deux jours!"
His French was good and almost without an accent. Not only did this tell me something about Adam's intelligence, but it also told me that we were in Seacouver and that he'd just arrived from Paris two days ago.
"Ce ne sont pas vos ognions!" he growled into the phone. "Je fais mon boulot et c'est tous ce que vous devez savoir!" Silence and I saw the glare in his eyes. "Non! C'est hors du question!" And without a further explanation, he slammed the receiver back onto the phone against the wall. He had his back towards me, but I could see how the anger made a slight tremor run down the length of his back. He had it immediately under control though and when he turned back towards me he was the picture perfect of calm.
"Trouble?" I asked.
He shrugged, but instead of replying, he held up his left arm, pulled the sleeve of his sweater up slightly to reveal the strange tattoo on his wrist. Apparently this was supposed to mean something to Duncan MacLeod, because he didn't offer any further explanation as he pulled the sleeve back down and walked back towards the couch. Unfortunately though it meant nothing to me, at least not until Al showed up and his delay in doing so was starting to worry me more every minute. Another guess.
"What did they want?"
He picked up his beer from the coffee table before answering, taking a thoughtful sip. "Ah, the usual," he finally said, his voice sounding impatient and tired. "They want me in Paris within two days. Something urgent has come up."
"Will you go?" I asked when he didn't look at me. It might have something to do with the reason I'd leaped in here.
He snorted and finally turned towards me, the smirk on his face all the answer I needed. "Are you kidding? They don't know who they're dealing with!" He smiled that brilliant smile of his again and leaned closer. "Now where were we?"
I knew where we'd been, I was just worried where it would be leading. But as his lips softly brushed mine, we were again interrupted, this time by a loud voice calling from downstairs.
"Hey guys! Can I come up?"
The look that Adam was giving me now was downright murderous. "We've really got to work on our timing, MacLeod!" he said, his voice sounding slightly accusatory, as if all the interruptions were all my fault. Not that I wasn't happy with them. Anything to get Adam's mind away from thoughts about him and MacLeod doing the horizontal tango.
Taking a deep sigh, he hoisted himself up from his not-quite-lying-on-top-of-me position and walked away towards the elevator. As I watched his retreating back, I suddenly noticed that, coming or going, the view was equally spectacular. Talk about moves! I shook myself hard. Must be residuals from Duncan MacLeod. I hoped.
Adam turned a key on the elevator and yelled "Come on up, Joe" down the shaft. A few moments later the elevator gate was swung open and an older man walked into the room. He looked somewhere in his fifties and supported by a cane, he moved rather oddly, in a way that I immediately recognised from my residence years. He was walking on prostheses, from the looks of it on both legs.
"Hi Mac," Joe greeted me briefly, before he turned on Adam who was sauntering back towards me, his words drowning out my own greeting. "You're in trouble, friend!"
Adam stopped in mid-saunter and turned, raising his eyebrows in amused puzzlement. "Am I?" he asked, and it didn't come as a big surprise to see that smirk on his face again. For someone so young, he definitely had a rather cynical look on life.
"Yeah!" Joe said, leaning against the kitchen counter for better support. Apparently he didn't see any reason to come into the room and sit down. "I just had a call from Roger." I noticed how he pronounced the name like the French did. He frowned at the blank look on my face. "You remember, my man inside the Watchers headquarters?"
Adam actually laughed when he heard that name. "Oh come on, Joe! Is that what this is all about?" All appearances of worry disappeared from his face as he continued his walk towards me and sat down. It seemed that attaching himself to me like he had done earlier was not something he was considering doing in Joe's presence, as he sprawled on the total other side of the couch, alternating his sips of his beer with small, knowing smiles. "The Watchers!" he said, the tone of his voice a cross between derision and disgust. "I just had a call from them too! They want me to return to Paris pronto."
The Watchers! So that's what that symbol represented. One more piece to the puzzle, hopefully the one that would make the entire picture come into view.
"Yeah, well, according to Roger they've got a pretty good reason too, man!" Joe said, not even trying to disguise his annoyance with Adam for trivialising the matter. "They're onto you! They know who you are!"
There was a look of shock on Adam's face, one that he immediately tried to disguise with an indifferent smile. "What do you mean, onto me?"
"They know you're Immortal!"
"Immortal?" I couldn't help but squeak. Surely they didn't mean that literally?
Adam and Joe both looked at me as if I'd grown another head. No, must mean something else, probably some kind of code in this Watcher society. "How did they find out?" I quickly added, hoping to salvage some of the damage. It seemed to work, because Joe and Adam immediately focused again on the matter in hand.
"Something about you and Amanda breaking into their headquarters?" Joe directed the question towards Adam, obviously not familiar with the details of that particular event himself. A wistful smile now crossed Adam's features.
"Methuselah's stone," he murmured softly, apparently meaning it only for my ears. "For Alexa." There was a sad look in his hazel eyes at that name. "She never knew how close we came." Suddenly he turned towards me, all sadness gone from his face and voice. "Have you heard anything from Amanda lately?"
I shook my head, the only thing I could do. If I said that I had, I probably would be asked for details of the when and how.
"Well, it seems that you were shot in the process, but immediately got back to life?"
"Yeah! So what? Everybody who witnessed that got killed in the end. They only had themselves to blame though. Stupid bastards."
"Wrong!"
"What do you mean, wrong?"
"Not everybody who witnessed that got killed. Apparently there was a guardsman on duty and he saw the whole thing! When he saw you come to my defence he went straight to Jack and spilled the beans!"
"But Jack Shapiro doesn't have anything to do with the Watchers anymore!"
"That's probably why it took so long for them to get organised enough to find his paperwork."
"And me. What do you think, MacLeod?"
"Huh?" I stared at the two men open-mouthed and wide-eyed, slowly starting to wonder if I'd unknowingly crossed over into the Twilight Zone. Immortals? Getting shot and immediately coming back to life? I prayed to god that it was just some crazy ritual these Watcher people went through.
"Eloquent as always," Adam said and his voice wasn't devoid of sarcasm this time. When he saw that there was nothing more sensible coming from me, he turned back to our companion. "But they don't know my real identity, do they?"
"I don't think so. But I could hardly ask Roger that without compromising your anonymity.
"That's true." He sighed, a sound that strangely enough didn't speak of uncertainty or indecisiveness, but more of annoyance. "I guess that leaves only one thing I can do."
"Yeah," Joe agreed.
"Don't go to Paris!" I chimed in, but immediately regretted the decision when two pairs of eyes stared at me in total disbelief.
Finally Adam's mouth curved into a smile, a very sinister and sarcastic smile at that. "Oh sure," he said, snorting softly. "Don't go to Paris. It's that easy. After all, it's not like the Watchers are a world-wide organisation or anything!"
Joe looked at me with a frown. "Are you okay, Mac?"
The remark elicited another snort out of Adam, who turned those unfathomable eyes on me again. "I've been asking the same question for about an hour now," he said softly, and I didn't like the way he narrowed his eyes when looking at me. It was making me nervous, which in turn made me irritable.
"So what do you suggest we do then?" I asked sharply.
Adam didn't reply, just smiled and widened his eyes in suggestive speculation, which made Joe smirk.
"Don't tell me," the older man said. "This is where the standard response to unforeseen dilemmas comes in."
A broad smile flashed across the younger man's face. "You're learning, Joe," he said brightly, but Joe just shook his head slowly in a sad, disapproving way, his lips drawn into a thin line.
"You can't just do "nothing", Adam", Joe objected.
The smile disappeared from Adam's face and was suddenly replaced by an ugly, angry set of his jaw, his eyes flashing with fury.
"Well, what do you suggest then, Joe? That I waltz into their headquarters, get down on my knees and beg their forgiveness for deceiving them? How do you think they'd react? Commend me for my honesty and simply switch my name from the Watcher side to the Immortal side? I don't think so!"
Leaning even heavier on his cane, Joe sighed and lowered his eyes. "You're probably right."
"I know I am," Adam said with total conviction, smiling and picking up his beer that he'd left forgotten on the coffee table. Joe shook his head again, but this time it was accompanied by a smile.
"If I live to be a hundred, I'll never figure you out, Adam," he said, his voice sounding strangely awestruck.
"That's okay," Adam said, a wicked gleam dancing in his eyes. "I still haven't figured me out!"
"And you," Joe said, finally turning to me. I was starting to wonder if they'd forgotten about me and I would have thanked them if they had, because this conversation was too weird to contribute much to it. "What do you think about all this?"
I hadn't been leaping around for the last five years without learning something in the process. "Whatever Adam decides, I'm behind him."
A small frown appeared on Adam's face as he stared at me, but before he could say anything, Joe's voice cut in. "Yeah, in more ways than one!"
Adam choked on the swig of beer he'd taken and glared at the older man. "Joe, you rascal!" he admonished, while the other man smiled broadly and I blushed down to my hairroots.
"Yeah well," Joe finally muttered, "if that's what the final decision is, I'd better be going." He glared down at the two of us lounging on the couch. "Some of us actually have a life!" The only reply he got was a smirk from Adam, who sprawled even wider on the couch and raised a mocking eyebrow. "I'll see you both tonight?" was the last thing Joe asked.
"Sure," Adam replied evenly.
"Great," Joe said, pushing himself away from the counter and finding his balance on his cane. "I'll see what I can come up with about this Watcher business in the mean time."
The moment the elevator carrying Joe had started its descent, Adam straightened and turned to me, his eyes cold and hard as steel. In all my life I'd never seen anything that impressed or scared me quite so much.
"Who are you?" he asked, his voice deceptively quiet and even. It didn't fool me for a second. Just as I'd suspected the moment I'd leaped in here, he knew who I was. Or rather he knew who I wasn't.
"What do you mean?" I returned the question, smiling bravely in the hope of bluffing my way out of this.
"You know precisely what I mean," he said and again he didn't even bother to sound threatening. Just the clipped tone of his voice and the look in his eyes did enough to convey the message of imminent danger to me.
My mouth started to open but before anything could come out my heart did a triple somersault at the sound of the Imaging Chamber Door opening right next to me. Relief flooded my senses when I saw the very welcome sight of my hologram stepping through, a wary, tired look on his expressive features.
"Hiya, Sam," he started, trying hard to sound cheerful, even though he knew I could always see right through him. Whatever he was planning to say next died on his lips when he saw the look of panic on my face and the man with me. "We need to talk," was all he added, his eyes flicking anxiously between the two of us.
No kidding?!, my eyes shot back at him and I winced at the hurt look in his eyes. When would I learn not to take my anger and fear out on Al? Never, probably. Aware of Adam's cold stare boring into me, I mumbled, "Need to use the bathroom" and made a mad dash for the only door I could see, praying wildly that it would be the bathroom. I could almost feel Adam's eyes burning holes in my back like a laser, but I stubbornly ignored it and resolutely locked the door behind me. Even so I still caught a glimpse of that face, and the cold, angry eyes and the compressed set of his lips promised me that I had a hell of a lot of explaining to do.
My heart was beating its way outta my chest as I turned around and came face to face with my reflection in the mirror. I don't know what I expected, but my appearance took me somewhat by surprise, momentarily chasing the questions from my mind. Duncan MacLeod was tall, dark and stunningly good-looking. My attention was immediately drawn to those dark, smouldering eyes, even though the rest of his face, crowned by shoulder-length dark hair tied together in a ponytail, was equally perfect. The black pants and shirt did nothing to conceal the tightly muscled figure underneath.
"Quite a package, huh?" a voice sounded behind me and I spun around, dying to find answers to my questions. One in particular was burning on my lips.
"What the hell is going on here, Al?" I asked totally bewildered. If I had been able to touch him, I would have grabbed his shoulders for emphasis. The fact that I couldn't only made me feel worse.
"God, Sam, I wish I knew," he breathed softly, raking a hand through his hair in confusion. The gesture alone was enough to alert me to his fatigue and uncertainty and I reminded myself once again not to be so hard on him.
"Problems at the Project?" I asked, my own worries suddenly sinking into the background. He didn't answer, just smiled gently and shook his head, a silent signal to me to drop it. My concerns were this side of the leap, he would handle everything back at the Project.
"Just had a hell of a time finding you."
I nodded in understanding. "Yeah, you sure took your time getting here."
Al fidgeted with the handlink for a moment, but didn't look up when he replied. "Yeah, well, we were kinda in shock when the guy you leaped into said he was born in 1592."
"What?"
He finally looked up and even found a smile from somewhere. "You can imagine how we felt. We thought you were lost forever."
No wonder he'd looked so relieved to see me safe and sound. "So how did you find me?" I asked, leaning against the sink, needing the support after his last statement.
"Ziggy did some cross-referencing. You wouldn't believe how many Duncan MacLeod's were born in the last few centuries! There's one almost every generation!"
"So you just found the latest one?"
"More or less," he said, "but Ziggy's still not happy."
Of course not! That would be too simple. "Any particular reason or is she just being obnoxious?"
Now the smile that greeted me was genuine. "Both!" The smile vanished again. "She says it doesn't make any sense. All these various generations of Duncan MacLeod's have nothing to do with each other. They're not even related."
"Coincidence?" I asked.
He shook his head. "Nah. Ziggy says the odds of it being a coincidence are fifty thousand to one."
Definitely not good odds. Not that it mattered, at least not at the moment. "The important thing is that you did find me."
"Yeah," he breathed, and the look in his eyes was so overwhelmingly loving that it almost took my breath away. It reminded me of another look that someone once gave me, but for the life of me I couldn't remember who it was. I shook it off impatiently.
"So, who is this Duncan MacLeod?" I asked, forcing us both back to business. As soon as that thought entered my mind, I was reminded of the man outside that door who was waiting for a damn good explanation. I only hoped that whatever Al would be able to tell me would give me one.
"Okay!" The handlink gave its usual squeak when Al punched information into it and then hit it upside the head a few times. I shook my head in affectionate amusement, wondering how long it would take Al to figure out that I knew he was only doing that to distract me. "You're Duncan MacLeod, born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1962. You're now in Seacouver, Washington by the way, where you have a residence. You alternate between living here and on your barge in Paris. That's where you met Adam Pierson..." He looked up from his handlink to look towards the bathroom door. "That was Adam Pierson I guess?" he asked. I simply nodded and he continued. "Where you met Adam Pierson, born in Wales, 1964, who was studying there at the Sorbonne."
"That would explain his French," I remarked. He just looked at me, one eyebrow raised. "He speaks perfect French," I told him. He simply shrugged and turned back to the information on his handlink.
"Sure. Whatever. Adam was... no, wait... is working on his doctorate in ancient languages."
A goofy smile crept up my face. Ancient languages. I had a doctorate in ancient languages. I could just imagine the things we could talk about. The stern look that crossed Al's face told me that he was already way ahead of me.
"Ah uh, Sam!" he warned, shaking his head. "Don't think what I think you're thinking." He didn't even wait for me to ask how he knew what I was thinking. "Because I know you!" he said with emphasis. "You may have a doctorate in ancient languages, but Duncan MacLeod doesn't. You can't do anything that might look suspicious."
I almost added, any more suspicious than I already am, but seeing how anxious Al already was, I decided to keep that particular piece of news to myself.
"So why am I here?" I asked instead. Al suddenly seemed to find something extraordinarily fascinating about Duncan's bathroom floor, which told me more than I wanted to know. "You don't know." I guessed correctly.
He looked at me apologetically. "It's not that we don't know, but we've had our hands full just finding you. Running scenarios wasn't our top priority so far. Besides this Duncan MacLeod is so shrouded in mystery, you wouldn't believe it. It's like no one knows where he was born. No records of his death have been found or anything."
"So you don't know!" I said again.
"Ziggy gives it a 53 % probability that you're here for Adam."
I frowned at him. "Adam?"
His eyes locked with mine and I could feel a shiver running down my spine as I waited for his next words. "In two days he disappears off the face of the earth!"
I gasped in shock. "What?!" What was Ziggy thinking giving this scenario only a
53 % probability? If I leaped in two days before Adam's disappearance, it was blatantly obvious that I was here for him. Before I could question him about it, something suddenly struck me.
"The Watchers!"
"The what?" Al asked.
Thoughts were racing through my head so fast that I just blurted them out in excitement, not sure if Al was getting any of what I said. "The Watchers. It's some sort of organisation that Adam belongs to. They ordered him back in Paris within the next two days. Joe seems really concerned about it, and so is Adam, although he's trying his damnedest to deny it. They have a tattoo on their wrist."
"Whoa, whoa," Al warned, holding up his hands to stop the outburst. "Slowly. Run that by me one more time. Slowly."
I took a deep breath, but at the last minute got an idea, turned around and blew it out against the mirror. I could sense Al's confusion behind me, as I drew a circle in the condensation, the Y-shape in the middle completing the symbol that both Adam and Joe had tattooed on their wrist.
"Adam has this symbol tattooed on his wrist," I said more calmly, turning around to face him once more, "and so does a friend of them named Joe... Joe something, I don't know his last name. It belongs to a society called The Watchers. I haven't been able to figure out exactly what they do, but they've ordered Adam back in Paris in two days. Joe said something about the Watchers being on to Adam, that they knew what he really was. Have Ziggy check them out, see what she can come up with!"
He nodded enthusiastically as he copied the symbol onto the handlink and added some more information. "According to Ziggy, this Joe should be Joe Dawson. Runs a blues bar that you and Adam spend a lot of time at." I saw a shadow cross his face and his eyes looked haunted when he turned back towards me. "He lost both legs in Vietnam."
Vietnam. Of course. I might have guessed. "That's him!"
"Ziggy can't find anything on these Watchers though." He smiled encouragingly at me. "Yet," he then added softly. "I'll put her onto it."
"Thanks, Al," I said, genuinely grateful for his presence. It needed to be said more often. As always he shrugged it off dismissively.
"That's what I'm here for." And again as always when faced with mushiness as he phrased it himself, he chose to seek his refuge in flight and he hit the command to open the Imaging Chamber door. Outlined by the blinding light behind him, he almost looked like an angel and I smiled at my own sentimentality. "I'll see what I can get out of the guy in the Waiting Room," he said as he stepped through the door.
I was still smiling, until I realised that I still had no idea what I was going to tell Adam. But somehow that didn't seem as important as something else I needed to know right now. "What's the date?"
The dark eyes sparkled at me and the light made his smile positively dazzling. "February 13, 1997! Tomorrow it's Valentine!" The next moment the door whooshed closed and I found myself smiling stupidly at the shower curtain.
Valentine! And here I was with my lover. My male lover! The smile was gone from my face in an instant. Why hadn't Al mentioned anything about this particular aspect to Duncan and Adam's relationship? Could it be that he was embarrassed? Uncomfortable. Or did he simply not know? I decided I'd prolonged the inevitable quite long enough and should face the music, before Adam lost his patience and came looking for me.
Taking another deep breath, I turned the handle and opened the door, but the moment I took one step into the living area, I was slammed against the wall with so much force that it knocked the air out of my lungs. Before I had time to recover, I felt something cold pressing into my throat and as I tentatively opened my eyes, I found myself staring yet again into the deep, blazing eyes of Adam Pierson. I had been expecting his anger, but what I hadn't expected was the cold steel of a broadsword's edge being pressed against my throat, forcing me to remain standing perfectly still as the razor sharp blade held me against the wall. At any other time I might have stopped to admire the obviously antique weapon, right now the only thing I could do was stare wide-eyed at it in shock and bewilderment.
"Who are you?" Adam hissed, his face so close to mine I could see right into the dark irises of his hazel eyes and again what I saw there made me gasp. As if this man who looked only thirtysomething had lived a hundred different lives, all of them hidden behind those eyes.
"Duncan MacLeod," I stammered again and wasn't surprised when the blade dug even further into my throat. Surely he wasn't actually gonna... I reconsidered when I felt the sharp pain of the sword cutting through flesh, sensing rather than feeling a trickle of blood slide down my chest.
"Who are you?" he asked again, his handsome face twisted in anger and determination.
One more attempt. "Adam, what has gotten into you?" I asked, not even having to try hard to sound confused or frightened.
The eyes only inches away from mine narrowed to mere slits, but the next moment the sword was lowered. I didn't have time to sigh in relief, because the next instant the sword was replaced by his left hand closing around my throat, holding me against the wall almost more effectively than the sword had.
"What's my real name?" was the question he now hissed into my face and I felt the solid ground sink away under my feet. His real name? Adam wasn't his real name? No wonder he looked at me so oddly every time I called him Adam. The next moment I felt like kicking myself in the butt. They're on to you. They know who you are. I could still hear Joe's voice saying those precise words. Why hadn't I thought of that? He must have seen the realisation hit my face, because this time his voice was less insistent, as if he already knew that I wouldn't know the answer. "What's my real name?"
There went my last hope of bluffing my way out of it. "I don't know," I said softly, and the hand fell away almost instantly. Satisfied that he had gotten a confession out of me, he took one step back, his eyes never leaving mine. It was almost as if he was trying to penetrate my thoughts with the intensity of his look, but I forced myself to hold his gaze. Something told me that this guy didn't react well to impudent defiance, when his right arm swung around in a broad, almost theatrical gesture, bringing the sword back, but this time he held the tip of the blade against my chest, aimed straight at my heart. Just a slight push forward and it would be all over.
"Who are you?" he asked, for what seemed like the thousandth time that day, but this time his voice was calm, even and surprisingly gentle.
I knew there was no point in pretending anymore, so I didn't even bother. "My name is Sam Beckett. And I don't wanna be here any more than you want me here!"
His eyes narrowed even further and the point of his sword dug just slightly deeper into my chest, but not quite deep enough to cut. "Sam Beckett," he murmured softly, "Sam Beckett," and I could practically hear the cogs inside his head screeching to a halt as he figured it out. "The quantum physicist?" he asked, his eyes now growing wide in wonder.
"You know me?"
"Who doesn't?" His voice had that distant quality to it that people got when their minds were too busy thinking to focus on what they were saying, his gaze turned inward. "Nobel Prize," he mumbled almost inaudibly, "String Theory. Experimenting..." His eyes shot up towards me and this time the fire shining in them was one of sheer incredulity. "Disappeared two years ago during what is believed to be an experiment in time-travel!"
"How the hell do you know that?" I asked, too perplexed to realise what I was actually saying. Man, this guy was good. Not to mention unbelievably intelligent.
A slow, not particularly pleasant smile crossed his face. "You'd be surprised at the things that I know."
"I'm sure I would," I couldn't help muttering, dropping my gaze pointedly towards the sword still digging into my chest. He followed my look, but made no attempts to move the weapon.
"Where is Duncan?" he asked next, the look in his eyes warning me that he wouldn't settle for anything but the truth. Considering everything he'd already guessed himself and even more important the fact that he could turn me into a kebab with just a flick of the wrist, made me opt for that choice too.
"He's in the future. He and I changed places. It was an accident."
"Is he okay?"
I nodded quickly. "Oh yes."
"How do you know?"
"Al would have told me if he wasn't."
"Who's Al?"
Who's Al? My guide? My friend? My soul? All of the above.
"He's my link to my own time."
"And this..." he paused and then spat out the next word as if it was a profanity, "...experiment went slightly wrong and so you accidentally switched places with MacLeod?" All I could do was nod, the accusations in his eyes more than I could handle. He shook his head slowly and sighed, almost like an exasperated parent with an overzealous child. "Messing around in time and space. How conceited can you get!"
He finally drew the sword away from me, apparently convinced that I hadn't done something dark and eerie to his lover. I drew a deep breath, as he turned around and headed straight for the kitchen. He didn't even look at me once as he slammed the sword down on the kitchen counter, walked to the fridge and got out another beer. Only then did he turn back towards me. Flicking the bottle cap behind him without care, he took a deep swig at the bottle. Lowering he bottle he looked me straight in the eye and even from across the room, those eyes still had the same effect.
"How do we change you back?" he asked.
"I don't have any control over it."
He chuckled without amusement. "Now why doesn't that surprise me? Didn't quite think this whole thing through before you started, did you, Doctor Beckett?"
"To be honest, I don't quite remember." I stepped away from the wall, but something prevented me from putting one foot in front of the other and walk. I stayed rooted to the spot.
He shook his head, before he lifted the bottle to his lips for another sip. "Get's better all the time. So don't tell me you're stuck here?"
"Hopefully not." I was reluctant to tell him more, especially about the changing-the-past thing. How could I tell Adam, or whatever his name was, that he was supposed to disappear in two days and that this was the reason I'd leaped into his lover, to prevent it from happening? "How did you know?" I asked instead, to steer his mind on another course.
"I've dabbled in quantum physics a little," he said with a shrug, leaning against the refrigerator in much the same way he had done earlier that day, only now his body was a lot more rigid with tension.
"No," I said, shaking my head, "Not about my identity. That I wasn't MacLeod? Was it because I kept calling you Adam?"
"Part of it. Not all. I know MacLeod too well. You couldn't fool me."
"You and Duncan are..." My voice trailed off at the dagger of warning his eyes shot at me from across the room. "I take it it's not exactly public knowledge."
"Joe knows. A few others. That's all."
I nodded, recognising something in his voice that said, It's better that some people don't know, without him needing to say it. It made me think of what Joe had said about the Watchers being on to Adam.
"Just what is your real name?" I asked, the ease of our conversation making me forget the sword he'd held against my throat mere moments ago. My fingers unconsciously felt the spot on my neck while I watched him burst into genuine laughter.
"No. Sorry. No can do!" he said, a broad smile on his face. The smile slowly faded as he watched me turn my fingers around and stare at them in confusion.
"I could have sworn you cut me," I said, frowning. There was no blood on my fingers, nor could I feel any wound on my throat.
"I did," he said.
"But there's no wound!"
"Well, of course not," he started in that same exasperated parent-tone, "you're Im... " His words died on his lips and he just stared at me. Stared right through me, it almost seemed. And then, so sudden that the movement made me step backwards, he came towards me in quick, long strides and grabbed me violently by the shoulders.
"You've got Duncan's Quickening! I can feel it!" he yelled at me.
"I've got what?"
"Duncan's Quickening! Oh my god!" There was almost something like panic in those hazel eyes as they stared at me in shocked realisation. "This is a lot worse than even I can imagine!"
AL :
Check out the Watchers, he said. Sure, nothing to it, right? Wrong. No matter which archives or databases she checked, Ziggy couldn't find anything on these guys. Even the symbol that Sam had drawn for me produced nada. As time went by, we were all getting pretty frustrated. Verbena kept telling me to go and rest while Ziggy was doing her research since I couldn't do anything to help her with that anyway. I refused, wanting to be with Sam, but like she cunningly pointed out, there was little use for me to go see Sam if I didn't have anything new to tell him. Just being there with him was enough reason for me to be there, but I didn't tell her that.
Reluctantly I had to accept her logic. After all, it wouldn't do either of us any good if I ran myself into the ground with fatigue, but as I walked down the corridor towards my quarters, I decided on a little detour. The next moment I was standing in front of the Waiting Room. Sally, one of Verbena's nurses was at her desk at the observation window and she nodded at me with a friendly smile.
"How's our guest?" I asked. It couldn't hurt to know more about his frame of mind.
"He's reading," she informed me, "or at least he's trying to." I raised an eyebrow in question and her smile deepened, reaching her blue eyes. "He's been on the same page for the last thirty minutes."
I followed her eyes and found she was right. Duncan MacLeod was sitting in an easy chair, a thick book on his lap, but although his eyes were on the words on the pages, the look in them was turned inward, his focus on his own thoughts instead of the prose inside the book. He looked up as I entered and I'm sure the look of accusation and disgust he threw at me had brought down plenty of lesser men. What Duncan MacLeod didn't know was that it hardly made any impression on me.
"Good book?" I asked, trying to sound non-committal and unthreatening.
He shrugged expansively. "I guess. My mind's not really on it."
That much was obvious. Maybe we both needed to get this out. I needed information Ziggy couldn't give me and he needed to be reassured about his friend. His friend? Or maybe something more?
"Maybe I can help settle it," I tried tentatively. It was never a good idea to tell a leapee too much about his own future, but I needed to get this information to Sam right now and that meant getting at it by any means available.
"Tell me Adam's okay," he replied, his voice tight and tense. I knew it took all of his will power not to close his hands around my neck and squeeze.
"Adam's okay," I obliged without qualm. That much I could tell him without compromising myself. "But I can't guarantee he will stay that way."
The dark eyes flared at me and he leaped to his feet, advancing towards me with such menace that I involuntarily took a step backwards. I quickly held up my hands in surrender.
"Not us! We're not trying to hurt him! We're trying to save him!" His eyes grew wider as he stared at me, weighing my words carefully, trying to determine if I was worthy of his trust. "You can save him, Duncan," I tried, seeing the look of anguish now lighting his dark eyes. "With just a few answers to a few questions."
"What questions?" he asked warily. "What's going on?"
"Don't ask me how," I replied, "but we know that in the next two days, Adam's gonna disappear off the face of the Earth. We're trying to prevent it."
"Why would I believe you?" he asked next, still not sure whether to trust me or not. I silently thought about it myself. It was a good question and I wondered how Sam would reply to it.
"Can you afford not to?" I asked. "You can trust me, and you and Adam live happily ever after, or you can continue to give me the sulking Scot routine and you lose Adam in two days."
The pain that flashed across his face as that thought entered his mind said it all. It also made up his mind for him.
"Maybe nothing happened to him," he finally said softly, sinking back into his chair with a quiet grace. "Adam's a master at disappearing. It wouldn't be the first time. If he doesn't want to be found, he won't."
It took me a moment to assimilate that information. The thought that Adam might have staged his own disappearance had never even occurred to me.
"Maybe. But it's kinda suspicious that he just received a phone-call from the Watchers..." I watched him closely and didn't miss the blink of his eye at that name, "... with the order to report to their Paris HQ in two days and it's in exactly two days that he disappears." The anger that now filled his eyes was impossible to miss and easy to interpret. "I take it then that you believe the Watchers capable of harming him?"
His voice was quiet and hard as nails. "I wouldn't put anything past those damn Watchers. I've told Adam time and again how much better I'd feel if he just left them. It's not safe for one of us."
I nodded, trying to appear nonchalant while inside I was doing a victory dance over all the information I'd already managed to squeeze out of him. "What can you tell me about these Watchers?"
An ugly smirk contorted the Scot's handsome features. "What? Your fancy computers couldn't find anything themselves?" he asked with a mocking sneer.
I simply shook my head. "Their security is tighter than the FBI and the CIA put together."
MacLeod snorted loudly, his disgust and contempt for the organisation evident. "The Watchers could teach the FBI and the CIA a few things about secrecy and conspiracies! What do you need to know?"
"Anything that might help!"
He nodded in understanding and settled a little deeper into his chair, apparently preparing himself for a long tale. Despite the fatigue, I remained standing right where I was, aware that any sign of weakness at this stage could be fatal.
"The Watchers have been around as long as we have," he started softly, not looking at me, but studying his hands instead. "They're supposed to observe and record, but never interfere. And most importantly, we're not supposed to know of their existence."
"But you do." I gathered from his tone of voice.
"Some of us, not many. Adam's the only one of us I know who's also one of them. If they ever found out..." He shuddered in horror and Sam's words came back to me. Joe said something about the Watchers being on to Adam, that they knew what he really was. No use in worrying Duncan unnecessarily.
"Who are these us?" I asked intrigued. Them. Us. It brought images of wars and battles to my mind. None of them very pretty.
"Immortals," he said as if it was the most common thing in the world, smiling at my unintended double take.
"Immortals as in...?"
"As in living forever, unable to die."
OK! I'd definitely heard enough. As much as I wanted to believe him, it was obvious that Duncan was either still affected by the leap or one rib short of a full barbecue. He chuckled at the look of disbelief on my face.
"I'm Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod," he said again in that same solemn tone, "and I was born in Glenfinnan in 1592. I've been alive for the last 405 years. The only way to kill me or any of my kind is by beheading me. That's why you'll never catch an Immortal walking around without a sword."
He was silent for a moment, saw the set of my jaw and reached a decision. "Get me a knife!" he commanded firmly, his voice gaining that slight Scottish brogue again. I raised an incredulous brow. "Trust me," he added, his voice flat and demanding to be heard, "I won't harm you or myself." When I still refused to budge, he sighed deeply and slowly rose from his chair, halting just in front of me. "You asked me to trust you."
It was a long time since anyone had managed to make me blush, but the guilt that now crept up on me at his accusation almost managed to accomplish it.
"You're right," I said softly and without further explanation turned around. Sally, who had followed the entire conversation, stared at me in shock and disbelief as I halted at her desk.
"You're not actually..." she started, but she didn't continue when she saw the determination in my eyes. I could order her but I preferred not to let it get to that. Reluctantly she reached into a desk drawer and dug out a Swiss knife. The incredulous look I shot at her was answered by an apologetic, mischievous smile.
I found Duncan MacLeod at exactly the spot I'd left him and handed him the knife confidently. Before I could prevent it, he flicked it open and before my startled eyes, slid it down the palm of his hand with lightning speed. Blood immediately flooded the olive skin, but as I reached stunned for something to stem the bleeding, he held up his hand to stop me, the knife still held firmly in his fingers. The cut must have hurt like hell, but apart from a slight trembling of his hand, there was no apparent sign of any discomfort in his composure, only an enigmatic smile dancing on his lips. I didn't know what to think, but I was totally bewildered as I stared at the scene playing out in front of me. Duncan was still standing there, smiling softly as the blood continued to well and gather in his palm. I didn't know what he was trying to prove to me, but the smile slowly started to fade, and the eyes grew wild and wide as more blood welled and started dripping onto the floor.
Enough was enough and I quickly tore some strips from the bed linen, gesturing wildly for Sally's assistance. As she helped to press it to the gaping wound, dressing it quickly, Duncan almost seemed to be in a trance, paralysed as he stared at the palm of his hand.
"It's not healing," he finally said, his voice distant and quiet in awed shock. "It's not healing."
Sally finished dressing the wound, glaring at me with accusing eyes I tried to ignore, when MacLeod flung her hands away, pushed me to the side and stalked to the far end of the room, casting his eyes up into the air.
"Methos!" he yelled, more desperate than I'd ever heard him since he'd leaped in here. "What's going on here?!"
I couldn't help but add my own silent plea to that assessment. Methos, whoever you are, what is going on here?
SAM :
"Quite a story," I said softly, torn between feeling excited, overwhelmed or simply void of any sensation or feeling at all. Adam was sitting in the chair, leaving the couch to me, both of us on our third beer. How much of the fantastical tale he'd just told me could I believe? "Unbelievable springs to mind."
A mocking smile curled his lips. "As unbelievable as time travel?"
I could feel the same smile appear on my own lips. "Touché," I agreed. I let it sink in, all of it, watching Adam observe me across the rim of his beer bottle, a talent that undoubtedly served him well in his task as a Watcher. "Immortals. Unable to die." Another thought suddenly struck me. The lives I'd seen behind Adam's eyes. "Just how old are you exactly?"
The hazel eyes crinkled with delight. "A lot older than even MacLeod," he said in an amused voice.
Older even than MacLeod. And he had already clocked up more than 400 years. Just how old that made Adam was too much for my mind to contemplate. "I thought as much," I said nonetheless. My companion just raised an eyebrow in query. "You have old eyes," I told him in clarification.
He chuckled, a very warm sound. "Do I take that as a compliment?"
"You do," I said, my smile as big as his. I sobered quickly and added, "It was the first thing that struck me about you. That your eyes held so much more than somebody of your young age could possibly know." He slumped down even further into his chair, if that were remotely possible and I recognised the gesture at once. He was starting to get uncomfortable under my scrutiny and that thought made a smile appear on my face. It was kinda reassuring to find that no matter how many centuries old somebody could grow, he could still hold on to his human insecurities. "Maybe that's why I didn't hesitate to tell you the truth. Something in your eyes told me that you would believe it and not think that Duncan had lost his mind." A sad, yet tender smile graced his face, making me wonder. "Why did you believe me so easily?"
Shaking his head with amusement he set the bottle of beer aside and a conspiratorial gleam in his eyes, he leaned into me, an invitation to come closer that I couldn't resist. As I listened with rapt attention to the wisdom that might come out of a man who had lived for hundreds of years, he said softly, "Because Duncan doesn't have that much imagination." At the look of total shock on my face, he burst into genuine laughter.
"You don't think much of the man you love, do you?" I asked bewildered.
The laughter died, but the smile remained. "On the contrary," he said with affectionate tenderness. "I think the world of the man I love. It just doesn't make me blind to his flaws." Now the smile too vanished and a dark gleam settled on his features. "We all have mistakes to forgive," he said so softly that I almost didn't hear it. It was only then that I realised that I wasn't meant to, the words a private whisper to his inner demons, of which he must have plenty after a life spanning 500 years or more. I watched the slender frame shudder under the remembered shadows and then gather itself together again with stunning ease. As he saw the emotions chase across my face, he once again broke into cheerful laughter. "Oh my god, Sam Beckett," he stated, trying to get the words out past the chuckle in his throat, "you're one of them, aren't you?"
"Them?" I asked in surprise, still a little bewildered by the ease with which he switched moods.
"Boyscouts," he said, picking up his bottle of beer and gulping the rest down with a grin.
I felt a matching grin creep up my own face. Al accused me of being a boyscout constantly and within the span of only a few hours, Adam had assessed me as the same. Which could only mean one thing, that he had a vast knowledge of them himself.
"Something tells me that you like boyscouts though!" I said lightly, feeling comfortable enough to tease him.
"Careful, youngster," he warned in jest, "four hundred years is not too old to be put over my knee."
The smiles died on both our faces as we realised at the same time what had happened, how for just an instant Adam had forgotten that I wasn't Duncan MacLeod, but a stranger in his lover's clothes. The pain that flitted across his countenance at that realisation was more than he could allow me to see and he jumped up abruptly, turning his back towards me as he hurried towards the kitchen. Yet another beer was retrieved from the fridge, sending alarm bells up and down my spine. Immortal or not, it seemed Adam Pierson did a lot more drinking than was good for him.
Finally, as he gulped a few mouthfuls, he turned around, but instead of looking at me, his eyes fell on his sword still lying on the kitchen counter. He put the bottle down and slowly picked up the sword, studying it as if he'd never seen it before in his life. I wondered what was going through his head, until said head snapped up and round eyes stared at me in alarm.
"Oh god," he muttered with ardour, "what if somebody challenges you while you're here?" The sword firmly held in his right hand, he advanced with quick, long strides and just for a split second I feared for my life. Instead he halted in front of me and pointed the sword at me, his stance and grip on the weapon speaking of years and years of practice. Or make that centuries of practise. "I don't suppose you know how to handle a sword?" he asked, his voice still hard and insistent.
"Sword?" I stumbled in total confusion. "I can fence..." Or was my memory confusing me with someone else? "I think."
"You think?" he asked, his voice now loud and... what exactly was he? Angry? Concerned? Afraid? As if all the steam had suddenly gone out of him in one go, he fell into his chair again, the sword held across his lap. "This is just fucking great," he finally muttered defeated. "Of all the Immortals you could leap into, you had to choose the Killer-Immortal-of-the-Week-Magnet. Just fucking great!"
None of what he was saying was making any sense to me, but I was sure he would have explained it all, if Al hadn't shown up at that precise moment. He was still wearing the same black and purple outfit he'd worn before and I was sure that he'd spent all his time running around for me instead of getting any rest. Although it made my heart swell with such love, it also made my head fill with worry.
"Gee Sam," he said in his usual form of greeting, "this guy in the Waiting Room has really gone over the line this time!"
I couldn't help but smile at those words. If Duncan's story was anything like Adam's, I could just imagine Al's reaction. "Nice to see you too, Al," I said, reprimanding him for his lack of good manners in jest.
"Uh yeah, sorry, Sam," he quickly amended, stammering through his apology, "it's just that this..." He stopped in mid-sentence and stared at me, while my smile turned into a grin at his look of surprise that I'd addressed him in front of Adam. Before he could open his mouth to say something about it, Adam beat him to it.
"Al's here?" he asked, his eyes flicking across the room but finding nothing.
"Yeah," I said, smiling at my hologram, who at least by now had closed his mouth again.
"Why can't I see him?" Adam asked.
"He's a hologram, tuned into my own brainwaves. He's standing right here!"
I indicated the place Al was occupying and we both watched, me grinning in delight, Al frowning in suspicion as Adam moved just in front of the spot marked X. As he was quite a lot taller than Al, he looked straight over Al's head, though I was sure his intention was to look him straight in the eye.
"Listen you," he said, his voice again flat and soft, that quiet threat I'd come to admire and fear. "If anything happens to Duncan MacLeod, I will hunt you down no matter where you are!"
It took a moment for Al to regain his composure, but once he did, his entire posture just radiated confidence and assurance. It made my heart beat faster than Adam's quiet threat ever could. The single word that fell from his lips made me grin like an idiot.
"What?" Adam asked, obviously not liking the fact that somebody could talk behind his back, while he was actually there himself.
"He said ditto!", I told him.
Adam looked at me as if I was talking gibberish, then the meaning finally sunk in and as if on cue we both started laughing uncontrollably. Al too was grinning, but more at the sight of me being happy than anything else, I realised.
"Point taken." Adam bowed theatrically in Al's direction. "I will take care of your boy if you take care of mine."
Even though I was the only one who could see him, Al bowed in much the same way, as always making sure that my own mind was sufficiently entertained. "We have a deal, Mr. Pierson."
I passed along that information to the Immortal, who nodded and after picking up the sword he'd dropped into his chair, folded his lean frame into it again, the sword again laid across his lap.
"Good," Al said, "Maybe now you'll explain to me how come this guy knows about us?"
The look of accusation he was casting my way wasn't having any effect at all and he backed down after only a coupla seconds.
"Tell me, Al," I asked instead of replying his question. "How did you get the information you needed? From Ziggy?" Knowing about how secret an organisation the Watchers were, I knew that couldn't be the case. Consequently there was only one source for answers he could have gone to.
He started shuffling his feet and I had to struggle to keep the smile that was aching to spread across my face inside. "I talked to Duncan," he admitted in a not very happy voice.
"Exactly. You did what you had to do. I did what I had to do." My tone left no doubt about. End of discussion, no debate possible. I'd told Adam, it was the only course of action and there was no way that he was gonna make me feel guilty about it.
"Yeah, well, for all the good that did," Al said with a sigh. "I don't know if this guy is still affected by the leap or what, but he's talking total nonsense. Going on about immortals, not being able to die, being four hundred years old. He's a coot, Sam."
"Four hundred and five," I replied without blinking.
"Four hundred. Four hundred and five. What's the difference here? The point is..." His eyes narrowed as he looked at me suspiciously, the words sinking in. "Hold on, Sam," he said, his voice soft, but firm, "you're not buying any of this, are you?" I didn't reply, just looked him straight in the eye. His eyebrows almost disappeared above his head. "You really believe in this immortality crap?"
Again I didn't say anything, knowing that nothing I would say could possibly make Al believe. There was only one way to prove it, the same way Adam had proven it to me. Without a word to even my tangible companion, I reached across and took the hilt of the heavy sword in my right hand.
"What are you doing?" both Al and Adam asked simultaneously, one in alarm, the other in simple interest, as I lifted the weapon and briefly tested its weight. Then before Al's startled eyes, I slid the sword down the palm of my left hand, biting my lower lip at the searing pain of the blade cutting through my flesh.
"Sam, are you outta your mind?" Al shouted, hovering above me and staring at me in wide-eyed shock, while Adam just snorted, got up and walked with unhurried but resolute strides towards the bathroom to fetch a towel. He quickly came back to mop most of the blood away. Having done that he bent down and picked up the sword that had fallen out of my fingers, as I needed my right hand to support the left and lift it up to hold it under Al's nose. His eyes grew even wider as he watched how the flesh grew together and the wound sealed up before his very eyes, all in a matter of half a minute. Although I had seen the same thing happen to Adam's hand, it was still rather disconcerting to see it happening to my own and it left me as shaken as it had when Adam had done the same. "Oh my god," were the drawn out whispered words that finally came out of my hologram's mouth.
"Still the most convincing way to make a point," Adam said matter-of-factly. As I looked up from my healed and looking-just-like-new hand, I found him yet again sprawled in his chair, using the towel to clean some of the blood from his sword. "Is he convinced yet?" he asked, without looking up.
My eyes went from Adam's composed face to Al's wide-eyed, open-mouthed shocked face and as I unconsciously rubbed the perfect, scar-free skin of my palm, I saw my hologram slowly nod.
"He is. A bit shaken, but I think he's got the point."
Al finally tore his gaze away from my hand and looked at me, the shock and disbelief in his eyes at what he had just witnessed almost too painful to watch. "My god, Sam," he finally said, his voice sounding small and almost reverent. "Duncan tried to do the same thing in the Waiting Room, but the wound didn't heal. He freaked out."
"I bet," I mumbled, my mind racing. Imagine being mortal after 400 years of immortality. It must have scared Duncan to death. "I've got his Quickening," I explained to Al.
"His what?"
"His Quickening. His healing powers. His immortality, whatever you want to call it."
His eyes grew even wider and almost tentatively, as if he was afraid I'd bite, he came a step closer. "You mean, you're Immortal?" he asked in awe. My eyes never left his as I nodded slowly and what I read there in reply took my breath away. Horror, fascination, relief, all rolled into one. And acceptance and love, those always.
A sigh from my right made me tear my attention away from Al. "So what's he done now?" Adam asked, clearly alluding to Duncan since my part of the conversation was all he could follow.
I held up my healed left hand, palm towards Adam. "He tried to make a point. When it didn't heal, he kinda freaked."
Adam closed his eyes briefly and sighed. "I can imagine." His eyes flitted across the room as if he was searching for something, but when he couldn't find it, he addressed thin air. "Take care of him," he said softly, his voice filled with worry and tenderness.
"He will," I replied carefully, before Al could even open his mouth.
"I will," Al seemed to find it necessary to add, "He keeps asking for Methos, but Ziggy can't find anything on the name."
"Methos?" I asked and this time I didn't miss the subtle raising of Adam's eyebrows or the look of interest flashing in his eyes. It didn't take me long to put two and two together. "You're Methos," I concluded. He opened his mouth and I could tell that he was about to deny everything, when he saw the look in my eyes and merely shrugged. It was the only admission I was likely to get out of him. Methos. It meant myth in Greek. Whatever could be so special about him that would constitute making him a myth in his own time? As I watched the gold-green eyes observe me with scrutiny, I knew that there was so much more to this man than he let on. Growing more uncomfortable with every passing second, I shook myself hard and turned back to Al.
"So what else have you found out?"
The look he shot at me in reply wasn't very promising. "Not much, as I said. Duncan kept babbling about immortals, we just thought he was talking gibberish. And then when he tried to prove it by cutting open his hand like you..." His voice trailed off as a shudder passed through his frame and I winced in sympathy.
"And what about the Watchers? Have you found out anything about the situation?" As I was rather reluctant to talk about Adam's disappearance in front of the guy himself, I hoped Al understood was I was referring to. Of course that was one thing I never needed to worry about. Al always knew what was in my head even before I did.
He shook his head, almost in defeat. "Sam, Ziggy can't even find these guys. They're so well-hidden they make Project Quantum Leap look like Open University." Considering the fact that Methos had guessed about us, I wasn't so sure that it wasn't. I turned to my companion.
"Adam, can you tell us where to find the Watcher headquarters?"
He shook his head, his lips twisting into a grim line. "No. Last I knew they were operating under the name of International Asset Corporation, but after the whole Shapiro / Galati thing they went even further underground than before. Paris probably but that's just an educated guess."
"Then how were they expecting you to report to them?" I asked in amazement.
The grim line slowly morphed into a knowing smirk. "Like I said, youngster," he replied, his voice dripping with sarcasm on the last word, "You don't find the Watchers. The Watchers find you!" A frown of concentration appeared as the smile slowly faded. "Joe might know though," he added and at my questioning look, explained, "He's higher up in the Watcher hierarchy than I am." And the smirk was back when he added, "After all, I'm just a piss-ant grad student."
"Yeah, right," I muttered softly, but still unable to keep my own lips from curving upwards. Joe, huh? Damn! He'd been here just a few hours ago. As if he'd read my mind, Adam suddenly jumped up.
"Come on," he said, in a tone that brooked no resistance. "Let's go. I've got to get out of here for a few hours!" As he reached for two coats hanging by the door, he added under his breath, "And a drink!"
"Methos," I softly called, my words Don't you think you drink a little too much? on my lips, but knowing who was silently watching our conversation, I stopped them just in time. Despite my restraint, he slowly turned around, the saddest look I'd ever seen covering his graceful features.
"Please," he almost pleaded, "call me Adam. It's hard enough as it is to remind myself that you're not Duncan."
I nodded solemnly, once again reminded and overwhelmed by the magnitude of what I was really doing. Invading Adam and Duncan's lives and privacy without even asking for permission. That it was done with the best of intentions or the best of reasons didn't take the edge from the sadness in his eyes. Adam smiled, but the melancholy hadn't left his eyes as he handed me a beautiful, long, dark blue coat. I took it from him and then muttered a silent curse as it almost fell out of my unprepared fingers. The coat weighed a ton, as if there were a few loose bricks lying about in it's pockets. A quiet inspection of those came up empty, until my hand brushed against something solid and with eyes huge in wonder I retrieved the most stunning piece of craftsmanship from the folds of the heavy coat. I whistled hard in admiration at the blade I was holding in my hand. It was a Japanese katana, the same kind I used in my martial arts exercises, but it didn't take me more than a casual look to immediately acknowledge the rare beauty and value of this piece of art. The silver glistening of the blade's steel and the intricate carvings adorning the ivory hilt told me just how valuable this antique was.
"One piece of advice," Adam said and I looked up into his laughing hazel eyes, "if you lose MacLeod's katana, he'll..."
"Hunt me to the ends of the earth," I finished for him. Moving the blade slowly, testing it's weight and flexibility within my grasp, I could hardly blame him.
A warm chuckle sounded next to me. "Bright boy!"
I shrugged into the coat and after watching Adam hide his own broadsword in the folds of his long coat, I tried to do the same with the katana, but it felt awkward and uncomfortable. At my pleading look in his direction, Adam rolled his eyes expansively, reached inside my coat and adjusted the blade more comfortably for me. It still felt awkward and I stepped forward with stiff moves.
"Heaven help us!" Adam said in mock exasperation. "Me. Protecting Duncan MacLeod! It's a world gone mad!" And with these words, he pulled his own coat around his slender frame with a flourish and stepped into the elevator, leaning against the wall and raising his eyebrows at me in question when I remained rooted to the spot.
"Al?" I asked, turning around to find him gone and I frowned at his sudden disappearance. Sure that he would meet us at Joe's, I finally stepped into the elevator and pulled down the gate as I pretended not to hear Adam's muttered dig.
"Boyscouts! They'll be the death of me!"
AL :
Damn Ziggy, she always had to call me away when things were getting interesting. I hated to leave Sam without a word of farewell, but he seemed too busy with the sword he'd just found to hear me anyway. An emergency in the Waiting Room, the message on the handlink had read, which needed my personal magic touch. It wasn't like there was anything I could do at Sam's end at the moment anyway and I also knew where they were heading, to Joe's. Still I couldn't stop the trepidation I felt on my way towards the Waiting Room. This whole thing, immortality, swords, watchers was giving me the creepy crawlies and I wasn't at all sure how I felt about Sam being dragged into it.
My mind was still on the image of Sam slicing his palm with that huge sword and involuntarily I shivered, not noticing the commotion and noise coming out of the Waiting Room until I was almost standing right on top of it. Verbena, Gushie, Sally and Tina were all there, as were some people whose names I didn't know but looked vaguely familiar, and they were all talking at the same time. Looking around I found there was one person missing from the room, the only one who had any business being in this room in the first place. I grabbed Tina's arm and pulled her to the side.
"Where's Duncan?"
She turned those gorgeous baby blues on me and blinked. "Oh Al, I'm so glad you're here. I just came in to say hi and see how Mr. MacLeod was doing and he grabbed me and before I knew what was going on he was gone and..." She halted and swallowed. "He's escaped, Al."
"Escaped?" I hissed. "This isn't the fucking zoo!"
"There's no need to swear at me, Al Calavicci!" she sulked, pulling herself up to her full height, sticking out her not so ample bosoms. When she glared at my fingers that were still curled around her arm, I immediately let go, realising I must have grabbed her a lot tighter than I had intended.
"Ziggy!" I shouted to thin air.
"Yeeeees, Admiral," the velvety tones of Sam's hybrid computer sounded.
"Get a fix on MacLeod!" I ordered and while she was working on it, I swung around to the rest of the party. "Everyone who's not supposed to be here, get OUT!"
One by one they filed out of the room, Sally returning to her desk and Verbena was walking over to me when Ziggy informed us that Duncan MacLeod was on the 11th floor. I turned around when I felt Verbena's hand on my arm.
"Be careful, Al," was all she said.
I sighed. After all these years you'd think she'd have a little faith in me. "Don't worry," I said, a little harsher than was strictly necessary. "I won't do anything to hurt his little sensitivities."
A frown made place for a brilliant smile. "Okay," she said, "but that I knew. I want you to be careful for you, Al. That boy is strong."
And wasn't Sam Beckett. Something these people could easily forget when they were faced with Sam's aura, but something that I was never allowed to forget. I nodded and kissed her cheek, before I quickly made my way to floor 11.
It still took me the better part of half an hour to find him and finally I did, huddled in a corridor niche between two offices. His knees were drawn up to his body, his bandage hand lying on top and his eyes were intently focused on the maddening appendage.
"It's scary, isn't it?" I said softly, trying not to startle him. Apparently he'd already heard me coming because he didn't even look up.
"What is?"
I sat down beside him, leaning against the wall. "Coming to terms with your own mortality. It's scary." He nodded, as if he understood what I was saying and something told me that for the first time in four hundred years, Duncan MacLeod did know what it was like to feel mortal. And like the rest of humanity who weren't blessed with his regenerative powers, it scared the living daylights outta him.
"Methos always says that it takes a lot more courage to be mortal than immortal."
"Wise guy, this Methos." He looked at me for the first time since I'd arrived and I smiled at his startled, almost panicked expression. "Don't worry," I quickly reassured, "we already know Adam is Methos."
He groaned loudly and lowered his head onto his knees. Watching him, I almost felt an irresistible urge to stroke his wild black hair. Four hundred years old and he made me feel like I was dealing with a lost, confused puppy.
"Methos is gonna kill me," he muttered almost inaudibly against his knees and I chuckled.
"Yep, very likely."
"This isn't funny," he said vehemently, but as he lifted his head to glare at me, I could see that he had to swallow to hold back his own giggles.
"If it's any consolation," I said, finally giving into the temptation and resting my hand on one knee, "this is just temporary. As soon as you leap back into your own time, you will have your immortality back. Just let Sam run with it for a coupla days, okay? Can you manage not to get yourself killed in the meantime?"
He glared at me for an instant, as if trying to determine something. "You didn't believe me. Does that mean that now you do?"
"Yes, I do," I said. He nodded, apparently sufficiently appeased and I let out the breath I had been unconsciously holding. "Listen," I added, trying for lightness, "I think I can swing it so you'll be allowed to leave the Waiting Room sometimes, but you must warn us if you do! You're four hundred years out of practice when it comes to being mortal. We don't want to dig your corpse out of some hole because you forgot that you can get killed."
"Aye," he said, his dark eyes full of promise. "I'm sorry." His tone was so repentant that it made me groan, which in turn made him chuckle. "That's always Methos' reaction too!"
Now I laughed from genuine amusement and pulling myself up to my feet, I reached out a hand towards the Scot. "Yeah, well, your Methos sure knows how to pick 'em! Boyscouts! What did I ever do to get them dumped on me?" We laughed all the way back to the Waiting Room.
Thirty minutes later I was back in the Imaging Chamber. As I stepped through the door I had to blink a few times to get used to the smoky low lights and I realised that we were in Joe's bar. I immediately spotted Sam sitting by the bar, nursing a coffee, so what else is new, talking to an elderly man, probably Joe. The bar was still mostly empty, but there were a few patrons scattered around the tables.
"Hi Sam," I said cheerfully, making most of the fact that he couldn't respond with Joe standing so close. "Sorry I left in such a rush, but we had a little problem. Solved now, no biggie. So what's going on here?" Knowing Sam couldn't answer anyway, I looked around the dark room. "Where's Adam?" I followed his eyes towards the restroom door. Oh right, silly me. Joe saw the look and grinned.
"Relax, Mac," he said with an affectionate smile. "Man, you can be a mother hen sometimes." Sam nodded and took another sip of his coffee. "Has it ever occurred to you that this guy did just fine for five thousand years before you came along?"
Coffee sprayed across the bar as Sam coughed and spluttered in shocked surprise. I just stared. Surely Joe didn't mean that literally?! Joe immediately reached across the bar to pat Sam's back, grabbing a towel to clean most of the coffee away.
"You okay, Mac?" he asked, his brow furrowed in worry.
"Yeah, sure," Sam choked out, gasping for breath and throwing a desperate look at me, which I just answered with a dumbfounded shrug, "just went down the wrong way."
"Yeah, that can happen," Joe sighed, apparently not in the least bit surprised. Resting his hands on the bar, he leaned a little closer towards Sam. "But I can understand why you react that way to Adam. Hell, he looks so young and vulnerable that I have to remind myself constantly how old this guy really is."
Someone at the other end of the bar called Joe's name and after patting Sam once more on the back, Joe picked up his cane and went about his bartending chores. Sam and I immediately turned to each other.
"Five thousand years old?!" we both said simultaneously, the same bewildered expression on Sam's face that no doubt graced mine.
"Ah," I said, shaking it away with a wave of my hand, "Joe must be exaggerating. Nobody could live that long!" But we both narrowed our eyes and stared at each other, as if contemplating the idea. "Naaah!" we finally both agreed, smiling at our own gullibility.
"So what have you found out from Joe?" I asked, eager to get back to business and producing the handlink from my pocket.
"Well, not much, but something," he said, lifting his coffee cup, but when he saw that it was empty, he put it down and turned back to me. "According to Joe, the Watchers now operate from Le Havre under the guise of 'L'Institut d'Observation International'." I simply frowned and muttered "Yeah sure" as I keyed the information into the handlink. "But that's only their "official" address. He has no idea if it's their real address or just a decoy."
"Ziggy's already working on it," I told him, giving him one of my most reassuring smiles. There was still something that bothered me though. As always he knew it even before I did.
"Out with it, Al," he said sternly, "what's bothering you?"
"There's something I still don't get," I said. "What exactly are these Watchers?" He frowned, as if that wasn't what he'd been expecting, but I continued anyway. "And if they're so secret and Immortals aren't supposed to know about them, why is Joe giving classified information to one of them?"
"Simple," Sam said, swivelling away from me and facing the bar to make it at least appear as if he wasn't talking to thin air. "Every Immortal has his own Watcher, who keeps track of everything that Immortal does. Sort of like his shadow, his own private Observer." His voice went all warm and soft on that last word and the look he gave me spoke of such tenderness and love that for a second I thought he remembered. I ached to hold him in my arms and let him know how I felt, if only for just one second. I shook myself hard, kicking myself for letting my feeling interfere with the leap, something that I should know by now I couldn't afford to let happen.
"Joe had been Duncan's Watcher for years before Duncan found out. While investigating a murder, he thought that the strange guy who followed him around everywhere was the murderer, forcing Joe to tell him the truth. They became friends. And if it came to a choice between Duncan and the Watchers now..." Sam smiled fondly. "Well, you only have to look at Joe to know where his loyalty lies."
With Duncan, that much even I could see. Okay, that explained some but not everything. I opened my mouth to ask another question when I saw Sam go slightly pale, swaying in his barstool and clutching the bar.
"Sam, you okay?" I immediately asked, the question and the worry second nature.
He nodded, but instead of replying, he swivelled on his barstool and scanned the place. My eyes followed his gaze when it settled on Adam, who had returned and was now helping Joe set up on a stage at the far end of the room.
"It's the Quickening," he explained, his colour slowly returning. "Immortals can sense each other, sort of a warning system. Adam says I'll get used to it after a while."
Peering at him worriedly, I nodded, the whole thing upsetting me much more than I would let him know. I didn't much care for the effect that the mysterious Immortal had on Sam, whether it was unconscious or not. Or maybe it was just plain jealousy.
"And what about Adam?" I asked. "Doesn't he have a Watcher?"
Sam laughed with genuine amusement at that question, and the twinkle in his eyes and the grin he flashed at me spoke of such mischievous admiration that I involuntarily smiled too.
"Oh Al, you won't believe this guy," he sighed, and pausing for the right dramatic effect he added, "He's his own Watcher!"
Now why didn't that surprise me? "Smart," was my only comment, "but how?"
"Well, unlike Joe, Adam doesn't work as a field agent, but he's a researcher, part of a team that investigates and researches the lives of ancient or untraceable Immortals, in the hopes of locating their whereabouts." I could already see what he was leading up to. "And can you guess who Adam is in charge of finding?"
"Methos!"
"You got it!" Sam was grinning so wide that it looked like it might split his face in half. "Of course he dazzles his supervisors with his uncanny knack for finding missing links in the Methos Chronicles."
"Because he knows exactly where to look for them," I realised.
"Yep, and in the meantime he makes sure that they never find too much!"
I could barely hide the admiration I was starting to feel for the guy myself as I watched him hook up a set of mikes on the low platform. Apparently there was gonna be some kind of performance later on this evening. "Pretty cunning," I had to admit.
Sam chuckled behind me. "I think calling Adam Pierson cunning would probably be the understatement of the century." My sixth sense concerning Sam Beckett kicked in again and though my back was turned to him, I could almost see the smile disappear from his face. "I've been thinking about Adam's disappearance, Al," he said softly, making me turn around to look at him. There was something haunting about his eyes.
"Don't worry, Sam," I rushed to reassure him. "We'll make sure that nothing happens to him."
"Yeah, I know you'll do your best, Al, but I'm not so sure if it will be enough this time." He winced and shook his head when he saw the hurt look I couldn't keep from my face. "I mean, if Watcher security is really that unbreakable, what if you don't find out in time what happened to him?"
It was something I'd been thinking about myself too. I had a few plans, one in particular I was sure Sam would never approve of, so I didn't even bother to bring it up. What the kid didn't know, he couldn't forbid.
"So I was thinking," he continued, without waiting for me to say something, "that in case you can't find anything from the Watchers, that maybe you could go talk to Duncan." I simply stared at him, trying desperately to hide the smile that was straining to break free. He didn't dare look at me, gazing at his fidgeting hands with singular determination, obviously fearing my reaction. Sam, oh Sam, I thought, my heart fit to burst, I do love you, kid.
"You're not talking about Duncan in the Waiting Room, are you?" I asked softly, not letting on how he'd read my mind. Yet again. He still didn't look at me as he shook his head and I couldn't help myself any longer, the goofiest smile breaking free. "Okay!" I said, quickly chasing the expression away when he looked up at me, the sunniest smile on his face.
"Thanks Al," he said and my heart broke. Someday, I swore silently, someday, Sam.
SAM :
We ended up staying at Joe's bar until well into the night. It wasn't like there was any place we had to be and the atmosphere in the small blues bar was truly wonderful. No wonder Duncan and Adam spent so much time there. After he'd finished helping Joe set up the stage, Adam sauntered back towards me and pulling two beers from the tap, he dragged me along to a table where we would have the best view. The bar was slowly starting to fill and before long the noise, the laughter and the beer made me forget about the worries of my leap, and I could start enjoying the evening and the wonderful company Adam turned out to be. It seemed as if we talked about everything, discovering how many things we had in common. When an animated discussion about hieroglyphics turned into speculations about the Rosetta stone, Adam presented his arguments with so much conviction that it was almost as if he'd been there himself. Considering Joe's statement I briefly wondered if maybe that hadn't been the case and shuddered at the thought.
Probably the most overwhelming subject we talked about, was the reason why Immortals walked around with swords tucked beneath their coats. I listened with my mouth wide open to Adam's tale of the Game, Immortals challenging each other in sword fights to the death, the winner taking the loser's head and with it, took, absorbed the other's Quickening. It was gruesome, but Adam shrugged. It was life.
Just after nine Joe and some others took place on the stage, and for the next hour the entire bar listened with rapt attention to one of the best blues singers I'd ever heard. Joe had real talent, making me wonder why he preferred to bury himself in this little bar when he could be shining like the star that he was. More than once I felt rather than saw Adam observe me as I listened to Joe's music and I wondered what was going through his head. If there was one thing I had discovered in the few hours I'd known him, it was that Adam was the most complex person I'd ever had the good fortune to meet.
Finally we both agreed that it was time to go home and after saying our farewells to Joe, who let us go with a suggestive grin that really made me uncomfortable, we rode back to Duncan's loft in his beautiful, classic, black Thunderbird. Al would have been literally drooling over it. It was Duncan's car, but I wisely let Adam do the driving, considering that he knew which way to go, and more than once I caught him casting sideways glances in my direction. Night was falling around us, the silence and Joe's grin and Adam's stares all conspiring to made me feel very edgy and jumpy.
I tried to buy some time by hanging around in the dojo, studying the familiar weapons decorating the walls. The loft was above the dojo and I'd discovered from Adam that Duncan was the owner of them both, Duncan being a sensei in four different martial arts. No wonder he preferred a katana to Adam's heavier broadsword. I sniffed up the unique smell found in these places, my mind reaching for those forgotten memories and sighing when I failed to grasp them.
A soft, gentle laugh made me look up and I found Adam leaning against the wall, watching me. Did that man ever stand up straight? "Don't tell me you're a martial arts expert," Adam grinned, "or I might make undying vows to you right here and now!"
Despite the grin on his lips there was something sad in his eyes, something I understood in a flash. "No, you wouldn't." I said seriously, looking him straight in the eye.
His lips quirked in something I couldn't quite call a smile and he blew out a puff of air, shaking his head. "No," he finally said, "I wouldn't. As much as I hate to admit it, that Scottish brat has got under my skin!" He literally detached himself from the wall and pulled up the gate of the elevator, looking back towards me in invitation. I followed him in, my worries slightly settled, but not completely.
"Man, I'm bushed," Adam sighed as he walked into the loft and flung his coat onto the nearest chair. "Finding out that a mad scientist has leaped into your "significant other" really takes it out on you." I stood there totally speechless, watching him walking towards a closet near the bed. "Significant other," he mumbled, almost oblivious to the fact I was still there, "I've never been able to stand that word myself. What exactly does it mean?"
He turned around from the closet, his arms filled with a various assortment of bedclothes and pillows and as I understood what he was planning to do, I let out a huge sigh of relief. "What?" he asked, when he saw me looking at the contents of his arms and then looked back at me, a mischievous smile playing around his lips.
"Don't worry, kid," he said in that same teasing, patronising tone that suggested he was a lot older than he looked, "I'll take the couch. I've slept on it many a night before Duncan..." He trailed off looking for the right word and then added, smiling broadly, "... got wise." He dumped the linen on the couch and turned back to me. "The bathroom is over there, but you already know that. So..." And flashing a brilliant smile at me he walked in exactly that direction.
It didn't feel right to me somehow. "Adam!" He turned around slowly, his eyes full of indifferent interest. "I don't want to kick you out of your own bed!"
"It's Duncan's bed!" he explained, chuckling softly to himself as he disappeared into the bathroom. Five minutes later I heard the shower being turned on and picking myself up from the spot I'd practically taken root, I dropped onto the couch in a heavy sigh, pushing the cushions away from me.
Part of me needed Al here desperately, another part was glad that he wasn't. One thing I didn't need right now were suggestive remarks about Adam and Duncan's relationship. Then again, he hadn't even brought up the subject once, making me wonder if he even knew they were lovers. In any case it was a moot point, since Al hadn't even shown his face after he'd left us at Joe's place. I was startled out of my thoughts by a soft cough and looking up, I stared into the laughing green eyes of Adam Pierson, gazing down on me in obvious amusement.
"Well, kid, changed your mind and decided to share my bed after all?" he asked, his voice and eyes so filled with suggestive promise that I blushed down to my hair roots, and quickly jumped from his makeshift bed as if stung. It wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't been standing there wearing nothing but blue boxershorts. I mumbled something incoherently under my breath and tried to flee, but he halted me with a hand on my arm, all amusement gone from his expression.
"What's got you so frightened?" he asked, his voice soft and caring. "Would you be this jumpy if you'd been locked up for the night with a woman?" Not even needing to wait for an answer, he shook his head slowly. "There's nothing to be frightened of, Sam. If there's one thing I've learned in my not inconsiderable years, it's that it doesn't matter what's outside. Those are just the casings we come in." His hand reached out and I stopped breathing as he put his palm against my chest, right over my heart, the gesture so tender and so unexpected. "It's what's in here that matters." His long, slender fingers rested there for a single heartbeat, then he withdrew it, locking those wise, ancient eyes, keeper of age-old secrets and wisdoms with mine and refusing to let go. Then, just as suddenly, he turned around and started arranging the linen on the couch. "Water's still warm," he said casually as if nothing had happened and my mind gone completely blank I literally flew into the bathroom
As I showered I tried to let the hot water calm my spirits, but as I towelled dry ten minutes later, my mind still hadn't settled. The strangest thing of all was that I wasn't sure why. It wasn't even what he'd said to me or the intimate way he'd touched me, but it seemed that the gentle contact had awoken a memory, one that was still so vague and far away that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't grasp it. And it was driving me nuts.
I shrugged into the sweats Adam had laid out for me and hesitantly returned to the main room. Adam was lying on the couch, seemingly vast asleep, but I knew that he wasn't. I didn't know how I knew, but there was something about his Quickening that didn't feel right, no doubt something Duncan's instinct was telling me. Quietly I tiptoed to the large bed against the wall and crawled under the sheets, closing my eyes resolutely, determined to get some sleep. Ten minutes later I was still staring wide awake up at the ceiling. The noises of Adam tossing and turning on the obviously less than comfortable couch didn't help either. When he punched his pillow in a more comfortable form for the fifth time, I'd had enough and I sighed deeply.
"Adam?"
A head appeared over the back of the couch, tousled hair standing in peeks around his head. "What is it?" He sounded truly worried and alarmed.
"Come here!" I said, just firm enough to make him understand that I wasn't suggesting anything and more importantly that I was serious.
He cocked an eyebrow at me. "Why?"
I actually smiled at the suspicion in his voice. Wasn't he the one who'd just told me that there was nothing to be frightened of? "Because if you're gonna keep tossing and turning on that couch, neither of us are gonna get any sleep tonight!"
He actually stood up at those words and coming closer, he eyed me carefully. As his body clad in nothing but boxer shorts moved in my direction, I couldn't help but stare at him. I'd been too disturbed to pay any attention to him earlier, but for some unfathomable reason I could now look at his almost naked body without even a single feeling of discomfort. As if the memory he'd unleashed with his touch, had dug up something else, something that I couldn't for the life of me recognise but which made me feel all warm and loved inside.
One thing was certain. Those bulky sweaters did nothing for this man, hiding a body that was indeed very slender, but not skinny, the tight, well-formed muscles rippling across his hairless chest and strong limbs as he walked closer, giving him the appearance of an athlete, a track-star, a swimming-champion. I shook myself hard as he reached the bed, looking at me with a very peculiar frown.
"The bed is big enough for two," I said, untucking the covers on the opposite side of the bed, not at all aware how that must have looked to him. When his lips curled into the wickedest smile I'd ever seen, I blushed, no matter how I'd promised that I wouldn't. "Just to sleep," I added quickly. "Just to sleep."
"Of course," Adam said, but I didn't the miss the laughter in his voice. "I didn't expect anything else."
I knew it was my idea, but I still couldn't help tensing up slightly as his slender form slid into the bed next to me. He noticed it at once and turned to me.
"You sure about this?"
I dug around in my mind and found that place again, that certainty, that calmness that spoke of something that somehow felt like second nature. "Yes," I whispered into the darkness.
"Ok," Adam said and settled in more comfortably under the sheets. A few moments later a soft voice reached me from the pillow next to me. "Good night, Ma..." Silence and I closed my eyes. "Sam."
"Good night, Adam," I whispered back. Sixty seconds later I was fast asleep.
The soft hand lay on my chest, fingers spread out as if to cover the whole area of my heart. I gasped at the feeling, so tender, so unexpected, closing my eyes to block out all other senses and concentrate on that touch alone. A warmth spread through me, a feeling of belonging and love that was nothing like I'd ever felt in my life. So this is what it's like to be loved, my mind whispered to me.
Just as I was about to open my eyes to see my mystery lover, the hand was gone and I gasped in disappointment, which immediately turned into a gasp of the most exquisite pleasure as the hand was replaced by a set of lips. A smooth, very knowledgeable tongue flicked out to taste a nipple, sucking it into his mouth and a groan escaped from deep within my throat. The mouth moved to the other nipple, the hand returning to slowly, torturously stroke down my stomach. When it contacted with my hard cock, I hissed.
"You like that, Sammy?"
No way I could mistake that voice, that deep, husky growl that almost made me come at the sheer sound of it.
"Al," I whispered, hardly able to get my mind together enough to utter that simple word. "Please." It was a shameless plea and a throaty whisper followed it.
"I'll do anything you want, baby," he vowed, "anything at all."
The little bit of coherence I still had left vanished then as my cock was engulfed by his mouth and there was nothing I could do but clutch the sheet underneath me as my body moved of it's own accord, driven by that skilful mouth. The sensation was overwhelming as he drove me closer and closer to the edge and then just as quickly stopped.
I could have cried from sheer frustration, when my hips were lifted onto his lap and I knew what was coming next. Yes, my mind sheered, but that was the last thought it was allowed to formulate as he entered me and electricity shot through my entire body.
Pleasure filled my body, my mind, was my entire universe as he filled me and drove me nuts. Passion flared hot, I couldn't contain myself and pushed myself even harder onto him, wanting him all, needing him all. It was too much. It was not enough. It was...
Aaaaaalllll, I screamed as I came, clutching to him like a life raft as I floated adrift on the ocean...
I woke with a start, needing a few moments to recognise my surrounding, when an unfamiliar sensation registered. Opening my eyes, I found that Adam's long limbs were wrapped all around me, his arm flung across my chest in a casual embrace. It didn't even occur to me for a second to question his motives as it was quite obvious that he'd rolled into this unconscious embrace during his sleep. I was just contemplating how to extricate myself from his tight hold without waking him when my eyes widened in sudden concern. I didn't need any Quickening to know what that sound meant. The Imaging Chamber door. Al.
Al.
Just as I started to panic about what he'd think if he found me here wrapped in Adam's arms, the memories of my dream slammed full force into me and I gasped so deeply that I almost found it impossible to catch my breath again. With a clarity that was both stunning and unbelievable, I knew without a doubt that the dream was a memory. Not something that was a fantasy or was even brought on by sharing a bed with this man, but something that had really, truly happened. Al.
Oh god, Al.
I closed my eyes, my heart going into absolute overdrive as the short figure stepped from the light. I waited, but no sound came. Shock, I realised. I didn't want to hurt him, but part of my mind screamed, good! How could you keep this from me, Al? When the seconds ticked away, Adam softly stirring in his sleep and unconsciously nuzzling deeper into my neck, I finally opened my eyes.
"Good morning, Doctor Beckett," Gushie said, looking a little green around the gills, but surprisingly in control under the circumstances.
"Gushie?" I breathed in disbelief. The first emotion that filled me was anger at Al for his cowardice in sending Gushie, but once rationality sank in, I felt nothing but worry. Al would never send Gushie without a good reason. "Where's Al?" I asked, loud enough to wake Adam, who shot up quickly and peered around him in wary concern. When he saw nothing in the room at all, he looked down at me and then smiled rather sheepishly when he saw how he'd woken. I hardly noticed, too concerned with the red-haired hologram. Instead of replying, Gushie looked down at his watch and I sighed in exasperation. "Gushie!" I warned him, none too gently.
Adam shook his head and slid out of bed, padding barefoot towards the bathroom, mumbling, "I'm not even going to ask who Gushie is!"
"Admiral Calavicci should be in Glenfinnan, Scotland by now!" Gushie finally replied, peering at me warily.
"Glenfinnan?" I gasped.
"Glenfinnan," Adam immediately echoed in alarm, retracing his steps and returning to me.
Gushie's eyes were round in concern. "Well, you did tell him to go talk to Mr. MacLeod." His whole posture screamed tension and his voice started to go too. "That is, the Mr. MacLeod in our present, not the one in the Waiting Room."
"And the present Duncan lives in Glenfinnan?" I asked a little softer this time, having recovered from the shock and all too aware of Adam's narrowed eyes fixed on me.
"Yes," was all Gushie replied.
"And so Al has gone all the way to Scotland to talk to him?" Sounded almost too unbelievable to be true.
"You know that Admiral Calavicci does everything you ask of him, Doctor Beckett," Gushie said, and I raised an eyebrow at the amount of suggestiveness the little computer programmer managed to get across in his voice. The words from my dream returned to me and I blushed. I'll do anything you want, baby. Anything you want. One of these days, I would learn to keep my mouth shut.
AL :
Twelve hours on a plane, two more on a train and by the time I got into the cab my defences were slowly starting to fade. I'd managed to get a little shut-eye on the plane, but not nearly enough, especially not with that obnoxious kid in the next seat. I shook my head wearily, remembering the times when I could go entire days without hardly any sleep. Like Hell Week during Navy training. Times which were irretrievably behind me now. Maybe there was something to be said about being Immortal.
I guess I could have let someone else handle this, this confrontation I was supposed to have with MacLeod, but paranoid as it may sound, I didn't trust anyone with it. I was starting to get to know the MacLeod in the Waiting Room and he could be a real stubborn son of a bitch if he wanted to. Getting information outta that guy had been hard enough. How would this man, who had no idea who I might be, react? The situation was far too delicate and too explosive. Besides, nobody at the Project had a vested interest in the outcome like I had.
It made sense, I kept telling myself. The address in Le Havre that Joe Dawson had given Sam did lead to the Watcher Headquarters, but as was to be expected, their security was tighter than a drum. No matter how many ways Ziggy tried, she was denied access every single time. A search for Joe Dawson had revealed that the man had died six months later in a car accident. He'd been drinking, something Ziggy gave a 68,8 % probability could be traced back to the events Sam had leaped into. Other than going to Le Havre, which seemed a rather futile attempt, there was only one other place I could go to in search of some answers. Then why did I feel so guilty about leaving Sam behind?
The quaint village of Glenfinnan, Scotland rolled by me outside the cab, but much like the rest of the beautiful Highland countryside we'd passed, I hardly took any of it in. Shuddering slightly, I tried to shake the unsettling feeling away, but it wouldn't go. It was ridiculous. Sam was in perfectly good hands with Gushie. Besides, it wasn't even his life that was in danger, but Adam's. Then why wouldn't this feeling go away?
"We're here, sir," the cabby announced in his Scottish brogue, a much stronger version of MacLeod's. I looked at the medium sized house we'd stopped at, wondering what I'd find behind the bright green painted door. Thanking and paying the cabby, I retrieved my small bag and stood on the sidewalk. Time to face the music.
A few minutes passed while I waited for my knock on the door to be answered and when it was, the man himself stood before me. It was sheer reaction that made me gasp at his appearance. Was this the same man who was right now sitting in the Waiting Room, fuming and raging about his fate? He was still the tall, good-looking, muscled man I knew, but that was where the comparison ended. The glowing cheeks were drawn and he looked far too thin for anyone's good. His long dark hair had been cut into a fashionable short style. But what shook me most were his eyes. Gone were the smouldering embers, the passion and the fire. These eyes looked blank, vague, hopeless. Dead. There was no doubt in my mind any longer. Adam Pierson, aka Methos, was most definitely dead. As dead as this man's spirit.
"Mr. MacLeod?" I asked, just for appearance's sake and he gave a slight nod. "I'm Albert Calavicci. We spoke on the phone."
A grim expression twisted his face. "You came a long way for nothing, Calavicci," he muttered, but despite his words he stepped aside and let me in.
The room he showed me to was large, full of light and it reflected much of the same eclectic tastes I'd seen earlier in the loft. As I looked around, I suddenly felt my breath catch in my throat. Hanging on the wall was the beautiful, priceless katana Sam had been brandishing just a few hours ago, but that wasn't really what hit me the hardest. Displayed next to it was the huge, heavy, antique broadsword Sam had used to cut his hand with. Methos' sword.
"Whatta you want, Calavicci?" MacLeod barked and I spun around startled. He was standing in the middle of the room, his arms crossed in front of him, glaring me down. Another version of Duncan MacLeod that was about to learn the hard way that Al Calavicci was not that easily intimidated.
"We already discussed it on the phone," I said, sitting down on the leather couch, even though he hadn't invited me to. "I need whatever information you can give me about Adam Pierson." I paused just long enough to let it sink in. "Methos."
In three long strides he'd reached me and grabbed my left wrist with so much force that I hissed in pain, turning it around to look at it.
"I'm not a Watcher," I said, when I realised what he was looking for.
"Proves nothing," he muttered, releasing my arm. "The bloody bastards are everywhere! The tattoo went out of fashion a few years ago. But you vultures are still around. Even here I can't get rid of the smell of you!"
There was such loathing and disgust in his voice that it made me sit back. So Sam had been right from the start. The Watchers were behind Adam's death. I snorted at the thought. You'd think after all these years I would learn to trust Sam's gut instinct over Ziggy's careful statistics.
"Did Watchers kill Adam?" I asked carefully, but firmly. He glared at me, the fire returning in his eyes for the barest second, but then he sank, almost defeated, into the chair opposite me.
"No", he said softly and resting his elbows on his knees, he lowered his head into his hands, shocking me with his next quietly mumbled words. "I did." I could tell that the admission took everything out of him, his whole posture slumping in his chair.
"What happened?" I asked, almost before I could stop myself.
He didn't even look up. "Why? So you can put it in those damn Chronicles of yours?"
"I'm not a Watcher," I replied automatically. "I'm..." What? A concerned citizen? Someone who wants to give you Adam back? "I'm someone who's lost too many loved ones of his own!"
He looked up at me then, and the eyes that locked with mine were so troubled and haunted that I found myself looking away involuntarily.
"Listen, Calavicci," he finally said, "I've lost everyone who ever meant a damn to me! Methos was just the start." He needed a few moments to collect himself. "Then Richie." He shuddered slightly.
Now who was this Richie? And how could Ziggy have missed it? I wished I had my handlink with me to check. MacLeod fell silent, lost in his own thoughts.
"And then Joe?" I prompted carefully. He looked at me and snorted.
"Dawson," he muttered, shaking his head wryly. "He drank himself to death. Sometimes I wish it were that easy for me." Another long silence stretched between us and I was just about to open my mouth to prompt him further when he started talking again.
"Dawson and I could have been there for each other when Richie died. But I blamed him... or rather the Watchers for Methos' death. We'd grown apart. Daw..." He swallowed hard. "Joe took Richie's death pretty hard. Harder than even I could have guessed. I had no idea."
"What happened?" I asked again, encouraged by his candour so far.
He raked both hands through his short dark hair and when at last he met my eyes again, I gasped at what I saw there. The horror, the loathing, the pain. "I took their heads."
Jeeezus! His voice was so soft that I had to strain to understand it, but understand I did and it left me shocked and cold, unable to utter a word. "Richie was an accident," he said and his eyes were directed at something so far away that I wondered if he even realised that I was still in the room. "But Methos... I'll never forgive myself. Never."
He gasped, deep and loudly, and continued, the words falling from his lips. Now that the gates had finally been opened, it all came flooding out, in short incoherent bursts. "Five thousand years. All of his memories, experiences flooding my mind. The strength, the power of his Quickening, earthshattering. It was hellish torture and pure ecstasy. More painful than death. More intimate than sex. It was... Methos, invading all my senses, coursing through me like an electrical current. It took all of my strength and willpower to reassert myself, to find Duncan MacLeod again among the miasma of memories and experiences inside me. I still haven't sorted through all of them. I never realised. The pain. The despair. The wonder. The joy. So much I never knew about him. Kronos. Byron. Cassandra..." He suddenly wrapped his arms around himself. "I can still feel him," he said, his voice almost breaking in despair, "but I can't feel him!"
I didn't know what to say, the words he was using too close for comfort. I just sat there in stunned silence. Finally I asked softly, "Why did you take his head?"
MacLeod shook his head, his brow furrowed in concentration. "It was Valentine's day, I'll never forget."
Valentine's day! Today! Oh god, Sam!
Duncan didn't even notice the shock on my face as he continued, "Methos was terrified, I still don't know why, but I'd never seen him so upset." He took a deep breath and a sense of calm seemed to settle on him. "He drew his sword, challenged me. He'd done it before, the first time we'd met actually, goaded me into taking his head. I'd refused to fight him then, thought it would work again. But this wasn't anything like Kalas!" The loud snort spoke of deep disgust, but for himself, I realised.
"I was an arrogant son of a bitch. A child. I thought I could take him on. I'd fought Methos before. We sparred frequently. I misjudged the depth of his determination. It was too easy to underestimate him. I'd never realised how much he held back when we'd fought before. Not this time. He gave it all he had." A slow smile spread across his face, as a long lost memory surfaced. "He was magnificent. All controlled strength and expertise. I wasn't aware of the danger until it was too late, when I seriously started to fear for my own life. Instinct kicked in. Instinct to survive and I was fighting on that alone then. At the height of my defensive attack, the cunning bastard," he spat the word out with a combination of hate and admiration, "flung down his sword. It was over before I knew it. I didn't know I'd taken his head until I regained consciousness half an hour later, trembling and shaking on the floor."
He was shaking now, still holding on to himself. When he finally managed to get a hold of himself, he looked at me, his face twisted in pain and stunned disbelief. I could only guess what kind of look he found on mine.
"Why am I telling all of this to a total stranger?" he asked quietly.
It was the strongest case of déjà vu I'd ever experienced, only in my memory the roles were reversed. Sitting in MacLeod's chair, his drunken head in his hands, was a weary, bitter, beaten, old Navy soldier. And sitting here listening patiently to his tale and just being there was a naive, idealistic, genius scientist. I'd asked the same question then.
"Because I'm listening," I echoed Sam's words, smiling without amusement.
He nodded slowly. "I never got to tell him how much I loved him," he whispered.
Sweet Mary, mother of God!
I got up so fast it made my head spin. I needed a drink and I needed it now, before MacLeod completely got inside my head and verbalised any more thoughts I'd managed to keep locked inside for five fucking years. It didn't take me long to find the drinks cabinet and I'd already poured out two fingers of the Glenmorangie I'd found there, when I pulled myself together. I twirled the amber liquid around in its glass once, twice, brought it to my lips and stopped.
Damn that boyscout! Even from miles, not to mention years away, he still controlled my every thought. I lowered the glass and walking back to MacLeod, offered the glass to him.
"Drink," I ordered gently, "you look like you can use it."
He took the drink from me and gulped it down in one go. Holding the empty glass in both hands, he dangled it between his knees. We just stared at each other, neither of us really sure what to do next. Some of the colour had returned to his face, but he still didn't look like he should be left alone. An amused chortle interrupted my thoughts.
"Don't worry, Calavicci," MacLeod said, his voice low and rumbling. "I can't kill myself even if I wanted to. And trust me, I've wanted to so many times you wouldn't believe it."
I nodded and sank back onto the couch, prepared to spend the next few hours here. My mind screamed to get onto the first plane back, but I knew I couldn't leave Duncan to his pain after dragging the awful truth out of him. I only hoped that I could warn Ziggy fast enough, so she could warn Gushie.... Ah, what the hell was I talking about? There was no way in hell that there was any threat of Sam taking Methos' head! So why didn't that make me feel any better?
SAM :
Spending Valentine's Day away from the one you loved was proving to be hellish, for both Adam and me. Now that the memories of Al and me had been unleashed, I couldn't wait to see him. To tell him. But then again, tell him what? The suspense was killing me and it didn't help to ease the tension already hanging around the two of us, both wondering what on earth was going on between Al and Duncan right now.
Gushie drifted in and out, but as he had very little to report, he didn't stick around long. The whole situation seemed to make him uncomfortable, even though there was nothing more intimate he could have walked into than he already had that morning. It made me wonder how much the people back at the Project knew, or had known, about Al and me.
Al and me. It felt strange even to me, but now that the initial shock was starting to subside, the idea sounded less and less weird, and more and more appealing. Yes, I loved Al, always had and always would. No question in that department. So was the step from emotional love to physical love really that big? If Al had been a woman, I wouldn't even have thought twice about the answer to that question. But Al wasn't a woman. I remembered Adam's soft words, his hand laid gently on my chest and I knew the answer was the same.
But for now my problem was a little closer at hand. While I was quite prepared to spend the day at the loft, avoiding any dangers, Adam was edgy to be doing something. We spent most of the morning in the dojo, Adam showing me through some basic moves of sword fighting. It resembled fencing enough for me to feel quite comfortable with the blade after only a few attempts. The katana was not as heavy as Adam's sword and a lot more manoeuvrable too, but every time the man had me flat on my butt in less than five minutes without even breaking into a sweat. I could only guess how good Adam really was when he didn't hold back.
After two hours of complete humiliation I'd had enough, but Adam refused to stop. He was like a man possessed, pushing me to my very limits and beyond. I tried as hard as I could, knowing what was behind it, his simple concern that the price he would pay for me being here would be his lover's head. And neither of us was willing to pay that particular price.
It was half past eleven when I came outta the shower, having rinsed most of the morning workout sweat off of me, and I was just in time to see Adam shrug into his coat and stalk towards the elevator.
"Where are you going?" I asked in concern.
"We're out of beer," was his simple reply, not even looking at me, like a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
At the rate you guzzle it down, no wonder, was my first thought, but I kept my mouth shut. Instead I reached for MacLeod's coat and joined him. "Let's go then."
He glared at me, those knowing eyes narrowing in suspicion. "I don't need a babysitter, Sam," he said, his voice tight with tension.
It was uncanny how easily I could read the look in his eyes and interpret it. I knew that if I said the wrong thing now, I could kiss all my lovely progress goodbye and I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd been in this position before.
"No," I said, staring him straight in the eye, "but I do."
A slow smile spread across his face and I locked it up in my memory. The you may not need me, but I need you, speech still worked then. I didn't flatter myself into believing that he wasn't onto me, especially when he replied, "Careful, kid. Mind-games are my territory!", and pulled the gate of the elevator down behind us.
We stopped for lunch first and we were just loading the shopping into the Thunderbird when I saw Adam cock his head slightly. I didn't need to ask what the problem was, because I felt the sensation slam into me exactly thirty seconds later. The nausea wasn't as bad as the last time, but the vertigo forced me to hold on to the car to stay upright.
"Trouble?" I asked, watching the hazel eyes scan the parking lot around us quickly, finally settling on an apparently deserted alley just to our right. I had no idea how he used the presence to determine the other Immortal's location, but his eyes never left the alley as he snapped,
"Get in the car!" I didn't even think twice about it and obeyed on the spot. Adam snorted. "I wished that worked as well on MacLeod!" He jumped behind the wheel and immediately tore out of there.
I didn't even dare to glance backwards, but it was with a feeling of relief that I felt the other Immortal's presence subside, a feeling that didn't last long when I heard the sound of a gunshot in the distance. A second later pain like I'd never felt before in my life seared through the back of my skull. A strange sense of warmth spread throughout my body as the world turned black before my eyes. Knowing I was dying, my last thought was of Al and the anger he'd feel when he returned to find me dead, and then all sensation left me as I sank deeper and deeper, and finally died.
The first thing I was aware of was a strange buzzing in my ears, next an enormous pressure on my chest and from far away I could hear two voices arguing. Air. I needed air desperately, the cause for the pressure on my chest, I realised, and I gasped deeply, welcoming the pain of my lungs being filled with much needed oxygen.
"He's back," I heard a voice say and the next moment there was a soft hand on my forehead.
"Ssshh," Adam's calming voice soothed, when memory returned and I tried to sit up in panic. "You're okay. You didn't lose your head, just got a little bullet in the back of it!"
"I died," I croaked and then frowned at the sound of my voice. My throat was dry and my tongue felt like it was made out of cardboard. I cracked open an eye and saw Adam gaze down at me in concern.
"Geez, Mac, you'd think it was the first time," an amused, light voice said and as I slowly turned in the direction of the sound, I saw a kid of about twenty with red, curly hair and amused blue eyes look at me.
"Rich, go make yourself useful and get him a glass of water," Adam snapped with little patience, as he helped me sit up. It was only then that I noticed that I was on MacLeod's bed, safe and sound back at the loft.
"What happened?" I managed to wheeze, watching Rich's retreating back and the look of concern in Adam's eyes, as he sat down on the bed next to me.
"The presence we felt was Ryan," he said, not even trying to disguise the disgust in his voice.
"Hey, wait a minute," the kid said sharply, his back still towards us as he filled a glass of water at the sink. "I'm not the one who shot Mac in the head, you know."
"Keep your shirt on, Rich," Adam said, his voice softening already, "we know that." His hand, which had been stroking my hair, suddenly clenched into a fist and I almost yelped at the intensity with which he grasped my hair, my eyes flying to his face for a clue. What I found there made my mouth fall wide open. Adam's face looked so drawn and his eyes so haunted that I just knew that something horrendous must have happened while I was dead. My world collapsed on that last thought.
"I was dead," I mumbled in total disbelief. A sad smile appeared on Adam's face as his hand slid from my hair and he stroked my cheek with the back of his fingers.
"The first time is always the hardest," he said softly, so Rich wouldn't hear us and his hand slowly disappeared behind my neck. "I know you want to freak, but try to keep it together. For Ryan's sake."
My gaze turned back to the young man who'd returned with a glass of water and was now standing at the foot of the bed, a colour matching his hair creeping up his pale cheeks when he saw the intimate way Adam was cradling my head. Adam gestured for the water and taking the glass from Rich, brought it carefully to my lips. I gulped it down greedily, welcoming the cool, clean taste.
"Man, I've never seen you take a death this hard, Mac," Rich said, obviously impressed and I noticed, also still a little embarrassed by the closeness between Adam and me.
"It was more than just the dying, Richie," Adam said softly, watching me closely as I drained the glass.
"Yeah, I know," Richie breathed softly. "I still can't believe what happened." I was just about to ask what exactly had happened, when he added, "Those damned Watchers!"
Adam's head jerked up and his eyes were blazing with such a dark fire that it made me suck in my breath. "Rich!" he snapped, his voice quietly forceful. "Go home!"
The kid was obviously startled. "What?!"
Adam took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. "Go to Joe! Tell him what happened!"
"You don't really think Joe knows anything about this, do you?" Richie asked and the tone in his voice betrayed his own anxiety and a little annoyance at Adam for suggesting such a thing.
"Of course not," Adam said, sighing lightly. "But I want to know who those guys were! What they're up to!"
"And you think Joe can come up with something," Richie finished his thought.
"He'd better," Adam growled menacingly soft, meant only for my ears.
"OK then," Richie said, shrugging into a black leather jacket and picking up the helmet lying on the kitchen counter, "I'll see you both a little later at Joe's then?"
"Yeah, sure," Adam muttered, but he didn't even look up at Richie, his gaze too intently focused on me.
Richie had hardly closed the back door behind him or Adam pounced, his lips finding mine in a kiss that was brutally demanding. I knew the kiss wasn't meant for me, but for MacLeod, and more importantly for Adam himself, to reaffirm that he'd not lost his lover, that he was still here, alive and breathing, so I tried to give him what he needed as best I could. One hand tangled in my hair and he pulled hard. I hissed at the pain, but he wouldn't let go, his need to urgent. I must have made some noise of protest, because just as quickly he let go and putting his hands against my shoulders, pushed himself away from me and the bed. He didn't stop walking until he'd reached the kitchen island, bracing himself against the counter with both hands, his whole posture trembling with the effort.
"What's got you so scared, Adam?" I asked quietly, too stunned to move from the bed myself.
Adam snorted loudly, but he kept his back turned towards me. "I'm not scared of anything, kid!"
"Methos," I said firmly, deliberately calling him by his real name. The slender back straightened slightly at the sound, but he didn't turn around. "Not only are you scared, but you're petrified. Tell me what happened."
A sound that was something between a snort and a sob escaped him, as he slowly turned around and lifted his eyes to meet mine. What I read there took my breath away. If one look could be filled with hopeless desperation, irrational hate and heated determination, then his eyes were doing so now.
"Watchers," he said, his voice so soft I had to strain to hear it. "Bloody, fucking Watchers!"
Just as I'd thought. But there was more to it, even I could see that. I didn't say a word, just waited, knowing there was more coming. He leaned his back against the counter and remained silent, gathering his thoughts. Then, when I'd almost given up on an answer, he blurted it out.
"They tried to take my head, dammit! I thought we'd done with all that after Horton and Shapiro, but those bloody Watchers tried to take my head!" The intensity and the desperation almost matched the disgust in his voice and it shook me to the core. There was something else he was saying, but I couldn't figure out what. Yet. Adam smirked. "If it hadn't been for Ryan's intervention, they would have done it too!" He chuckled without amusement. "And I treated him like dirt."
"You were shook up," I said, but shut up again when he shook his head violently.
"No," he insisted, not even looking at me, "no". He kept shaking his head in short, jerky movements, the words spilling from his lips. "It's not the first time it happened. I mean, that Stern guy was going to take my head too when Amanda and I got caught stealing the Methuselah Crystal two years ago, but this wasn't the same. Two years ago it hardly mattered. So I was going to lose my head. I'd had a good life. But now..." He lifted his eyes to look at me, almost pleading for comprehension. "Now I panicked. I didn't want to die. I didn't want to..."
And a huge lightbulb flashed into existence. Two years ago it didn't matter if they took his head. Now it did. Now he had something to live for. Now he had Duncan. All the pieces of the puzzle started to fall together and the picture it presented was amazingly clear. Adam wasn't frightened of the Watchers, or even of losing his head. It was the intensity of his feelings for MacLeod that scared the living hell outta him. The realisation that he needed someone so badly, that that someone needed him. The thought alone had brought lesser men to their knees.
I was on my feet before I realised it, apparently not even noticing that only half an hour ago I had been as dead as the proverbial doornail. I didn't see Adam Pierson, grad-student ancient languages, or even Methos, five-thousand-year-old man. All I saw was a man in pain, a man in need, and like I'd done a hundred times before on previous leaps, his needs were all I considered as I walked to him and wrapped him in a tight embrace. He remained tense and rigid in my arms, but then suddenly he went all limp and I practically had to hold him up.
"Sam," he murmured into my neck.
"Sshh," I silenced him, "Let it go, Adam. It's over. You and Duncan still have your heads very firmly attached to your shoulders."
A shiver ran down his body, followed by a deep sigh. For the next five minutes he was content to just let me hold him, but finally he straightened and pushed himself away from me. I let go of him, but I didn't step back and neither did he. Standing mere breaths away from each other, he looked solemnly into my eyes.
"Sam, I've told you what happens when an Immortal takes another's head."
I simply nodded. The dead Immortal's Quickening merged with the living one, adding all his strengths and weaknesses, goodness and evil to the survivor, to finally settle and become nothing more than a distant whisper in the back of his mind.
"Do you realise what happens when a mortal takes an Immortals head? Someone who doesn't have the ability to assimilate a Quickening?"
The thought had never even occurred to me. It would never have occurred to any normal human being to kill someone else by cutting his head off. The only non-Immortals who would know that this was the only way to kill an Immortal would be Watchers. I understood where he was going with this and shook my head.
"The energy is lost," Adam said simply, his voice chillingly calm. "All that knowledge and power is lost."
As the information sank in, I stared wide-eyed at him. If the Watchers had been able to kill Methos today, five thousand years of life would have been irretrievably lost. Forever. The thought made a shiver run down my own body. No wonder it had freaked him out like this.
"I can't let that happen," Adam added, his voice low but calmly determined. He lowered those expressive eyes, refusing to look at me when he repeated softly, "I can't let that happen."
Before I knew what he was planning to do, he shoved me aside and walked with long strides towards the couch, where I saw both our coats flung down carelessly. The long fingers rummaged through the folds of the fabric skilfully, the slender frame straightening with a sword in each hand. I couldn't read the fiery glare in his eyes when he turned back towards me, but they were burning cold and hot at the same time. His lips were drawn into a determined line, nostrils of that impressive nose flaring with barely controlled fury. Something told me that I'd hugely misjudged his intentions earlier and that impression only got stronger as he slowly came closer, his eyes holding mine with singular intent.
"Methos?" I asked in a small voice, sure to use his real name. It was something I'd soon learned cut through all his defences the quickest; his name spoken in his lover's voice. He blinked, but the fire in his eyes didn't dim as he stopped about a foot away from me. "What are you doing?"
"What does it look like?" he growled suddenly, and as I watched a predatory smile curl his lips, he tossed me the katana in his right hand and in the same movement switched his own sword from his left to his right.
"It looks like you're challenging me," I said shakily with enough presence of mind to grasp the beautiful antique sword more firmly in my palm.
"Bright boy!" he snarled and the next instant, his sword swept through the air, coming towards me with frightening speed and force. More out of instinct than anything else, I held up the katana to block the attack, but barely in time and the edge of his sword cut lightly into my upper arm. I hissed at the sensation, but it was more shock and surprise that registered than the pain he'd just inflicted with his sword. Clutching my upper arm with my left hand, I stared wide-eyed at the figure in front of me. The transformation that had taken place in the last five minutes was earthshattering. Gone was soft-spoken, laid-back, casual Adam Pierson. In his place was a lean, greyhound body, all one muscle, strained now for combat.
"Why?" I asked softly, not even expecting an answer.
"Because there can be only one!" he said cryptically, and he attacked again. This time I was better prepared and I managed to block his next few strikes easily. Too easily, I immediately realised, which meant that he was lulling me into a false sense of security. Even during our sparrings earlier that day, he'd made more of an effort.
I was right, as each blow he delivered became more focused, more wily and devious, more intent to strike and kill than to teach a lesson. I was still not attacking myself, merely defending myself by blocking the blows as best as I could. It became harder and harder with each passing minute and it soon became clear that I was indeed going to have to fight for my life. I had no idea what had caused the transformation in Methos, but as the adrenaline filled my blood and sight started to blur before my eyes, all of that hardly seemed to matter any more. I was bleeding from so many cuts that I lost all count which were new ones and which were healing miraculously fast.
As he continued to rain blow upon blow on me, I still couldn't help but admire the grace with which he moved, even as he backed me further and further against the wall. Any more of this and Al would definitely be coming back to me lying on the floor, my body and head a few yards apart. Feeling the cool brick against my back, I knew it was now or never and drawing upon every reserve I still had left, I centred my mind, the way my martial arts training had taught me. Taking a deep, nurturing breath, I raised my sword, cut through his defence in one glorious swoop and turned the tables. It wasn't beautiful, it wasn't graceful, but it was effective. The best defence is distance, I heard Al's voice say in the back of my mind, but I didn't pay any attention to it, my mind focused on my attack. Blood flooded my head and it made every thing in front of my eyes red. There wasn't a rational thought in my mind, except the inbred instinct for survival, as I swept the katana at my opponent again and again.
If I had been rational, I would have seen that something wasn't right. It would have been blatantly obvious that there was no way a skilled, but still amateur swordsman like me could cut so easily through the defences of an expert like Methos. If I'd been thinking, instead of feeding off adrenaline, I would have seen the change in him. I would have noticed the moment he stopped fighting, the moment he even stopped defending himself. But I wasn't thinking. Fury, fear, instinct, in combination with the adrenaline coursing through me made me blind to anything but my fighting, an unconscious feral smile forming at the terrain I was gaining, slowly backing him further into the room.
It all happened so fast, and yet looking back on it, it seemed to go in slow motion, but my katana swung in an angle perfectly calculated to impact with his neck, a blow that I was sure he would block without the slightest effort. Instead I heard the soft clatter of a sword falling to the ground, the soft ring cutting through the buzzing in my ears somehow and I had perfect, free access to that most vulnerable place. The katana swept through the air...
"SAM!!!"
I'm still not sure if any other sound would have penetrated the fog in my brain as effectively as that voice calling my name did. All I know is that I managed to hold back in mid swing. For a few seconds I couldn't see anything else but my own white knuckles where both hands were clutching the hilt of the katana almost desperately, my arms shaking with the effort to hold back. Hours seemed to pass as I pulled myself together long enough to lift my eyes and look at the scene before me.
Still hovering in the doorway between my world and his, I could see Al stare at me, a look that spoke of equal shock and horror across his drawn and exhausted face. Part of me couldn't understand how he could be back from Scotland so fast, while the other part gratefully drank in the concern and the love radiating in those dark eyes. It took sheer will power to tear my eyes away from him, to see Joe Dawson in the doorway, an almost identical expression like Al was wearing on his face. Richie was standing just behind Joe and I wasn't sure whether he looked like he was gonna faint or gonna be sick.
Only then did I allow my eyes to settle on the sight that so appalled them and I took in an involuntary shuddering breath myself. Adam... Methos was standing in front of me, his tall, slender body held perfectly still. He was facing me, but his eyes were closed, his head tilted back slightly, revealing that strong neck, as if he was offering himself up in sacrifice. Noticing the way his hands were held out from his body, his sword at his feet where it had fallen from his outstretched fingers, I realised that was just what he had been about to do. My breath caught when I saw my own katana resting against his neck, just barely held back, a small trickle of blood falling from the small wound where the blade had superficially sliced the pale skin of his neck. Everything suddenly dawned on me in one breathtaking moment and I stepped back in total horror, the katana falling uselessly at my feet.
An almost collective sigh of relief seemed to rise from the three spectators to this little spectacle, but all they did was take a step closer, the Imaging Chamber door closing behind Al, all of them too aware of the tension in the room to utter a word. Adam was still standing there, his eyes closed, as if he'd retreated into himself. Considering the fact that he'd fully expected to be dead right now, that wasn't so hard to understand. I realised that this would be delicate and I placed a hand softly in the back of his neck, my thumb unconsciously covering the quickly healing cut from my sword.
"Methos?" I asked softly and his eyes flew open, the fierce terror in the soft hazel depths taking my breath away.
"MacLeod?" he muttered, as if he couldn't understand what had happened. I opened my mouth to say something, but I never got the chance as Adam crumbled in on himself and sagged down to the floor. I held out my arms just in time to catch him and without any further thought, I lifted him and carried him to the bed.
It was as if that single action unglued my audience of three from their spot, because they all came after me, all talking at the same time.
"Sam, have you completely lost your mind?"
"MacLeod, what the hell is going on here?"
"I toldya there was something strange about him, Joe!"
All questions I couldn't answer right now, so I chose to ignore them, focusing instead on the man who had almost successfully managed to make me take his head, the reasons behind it still escaping me at the moment. He was lying on his back, staring up at me, a faint smile playing across his lips.
"Care to explain what that was all about?" I asked softly, sitting down on the edge of the bed next to him, but the only reply I got was a faint shrug of his shoulder. "First you're in a funk because some mortal tried to take your head and the next moment you're as good as offering it to me?"
I looked up when I heard two gasps of comprehension and saw a light of understanding appear in both Joe and Al's eyes. Richie was flicking confused eyes between Adam and Joe, and back to me, his mouth opening in "what?" movements, but without any sound coming out. I felt like joining Richie and shout, "What? What?", when my attention was drawn to a hand snaking up my arm and I saw Adam was sitting up on the bed. His hand moved further without stopping, caressing my shoulder, into my neck, to finally rest against my cheek. That soft smile was still on his lips as he leaned in and touched them to mine in a gentle, chaste kiss. I could hear three embarrassed coughs and I could just imagine how our audience looked, shuffling their feet, trying to look everywhere but in our direction, but I didn't care.
"Why?" I asked, as his lips left mine and I looked into hazel eyes only inches removed from mine.
In reply he put a hand on my heart, just like he'd done the night before, but the way he looked at me, I doubted whether he realised that I wasn't Duncan MacLeod. "If I have to die," he finally said, his voice hoarse with emotion, "I want to go on living in here."
I closed my eyes and shook my head, mentally kicking myself for my own stupidity, as all the pieces of the puzzle finally fell into place. I'd leaped in here to make sure that Adam... Methos didn't disappear and here I was the instrument of that disappearance all along. Had he actually managed to provoke MacLeod into taking his head? I only had to cast a look at Al to read the answer there.
"You idiot," I scolded affectionately, "what would that have accomplished?"
He smiled sadly, almost apologetically. "I would have been with you forever."
The sentiment was lovely, that was true, but the practicalities were a little less than ideal. "Yeah," I said rather harshly, "and driven Mac..." I halted just in time to realise that Joe and Richie were still listening too, "me insane in the process."
The smile faded from his lips and his eyes became dark and hard. "You'd survive," he said firmly and again I wasn't so sure whether he knew he wasn't talking to MacLeod. "And so would I," he added softly.
"Life is more than just surviving."
He didn't even blink or smile when he said, "Exactly."
I sighed again at my own stupidity, shook my head and gathered him in my arms, holding him tightly. Sometimes I could be such an ass. From the things he'd told me I knew that's exactly what he'd done for the last coupla thousand years. Survived. Nothing more, nothing less. MacLeod had given him back his passion, his ability to dream, his wonder and joy in life itself. It was a heady, intoxicating feeling and once tasted, hard to give up or live without.
"What were you thinking?" I finally asked exasperated.
He actually managed to chuckle at that question. "I wasn't thinking. I was improvising."
I smiled in reply. "Well, improvise on this." I glanced up long enough to look Al straight in the eye, willing him with my eyes to understand what I was trying to do. I hoped he understood, as I turned my attention back to Adam, leaned closer and kissed him forcefully and fully on the mouth. He returned the kiss almost instantly, letting me in greedily, while his hand closed around the back of my neck to draw me closer. All feelings of awkwardness I'd had before were suddenly out of the window. Not because of Adam, but because now there was another man's image in my mind's eye; dark eyes instead of hazel, short compact figure under my hands instead of tall, slender, and the intensity of feelings that imagery conjured up had me drawing back from Adam gasping for air.
He immediately drew closer, holding me tightly as he laid his head against my chest. Over the top of his head I could see that Joe and Richie had turned their backs towards us, looking at each other awkwardly and obviously at a loss about what to do. Only Al was staring at us intently, a strangely fascinated look in his eyes, as if he knew what had been going on inside my head. I held his gaze firmly, smiling softly, as I spoke the words that were meant more for him than anyone else in this room.
"I love you. And I don't ever wanna lose you. Don't ever forget that."
A tender smile slowly crept up Al's face and there was such intense love and longing in his eyes that I almost had to blink back tears. The man in my arms stirred slightly.
"It's a good thing then that you're such a bad swordsman," he teased and I chuckled, grabbing his upper arms and holding him away from me.
"Careful, Old Man," I returned the tease, "you're talking about Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod here!"
"As if I could forget," he muttered tenderly, kissing me lightly, before he leaned back into my arms.
Al cleared his throat loudly and making a big spectacle of checking the handlink, he finally turned to me.
"That's it. That's why you were here, Sam. To stop MacLeod from taking Methos' head." I nodded, having already figured out that much myself. He didn't say anything else and I silently continued to cradle Methos in my arms. Finally, what seemed like a lifetime later, Al spoke again. "By the way," he said, his voice hoarse with emotion, which made me look up towards him, a gloriously goofy smile spreading across my face with his next words, "I love you too."
That was supposed to be it. Done my thing, figured out a few things along the way, leap out time! One small problem. Two hours later, I was still Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod. Even Ziggy couldn't figure out why I hadn't leaped out yet. Duncan and Methos were okay back in the future and most importantly still together, which made me very happy indeed. Joe's connections and importance within the Watchers had even managed to smooth out the problems with Methos, who finally did the smart thing and left the organisation. The only bad note in the new happy tune was that Richie was still going to die, about four months from now. I briefly entertained the thought that maybe I still had to do something to prevent that death, but Al soon shook me out of that dream. Duncan had told him that Richie's death had been a freak accident, something that couldn't even have been imagined, let alone prevented four months before the events. On a brighter note, Joe didn't die. Richie's death hit the three of them pretty hard, but they were there for each other, had each other to see them through.
Which left only one question. What the hell was I still doing here? Soon after Joe and Richie had left to try and sort out Methos' mess with the Watchers, Al and I retreated into the bathroom for some private counselling. Al was pacing back and forth, alternately swearing and cursing at Gushie, and pounding the hell out of the handlink, but neither methods produced any significant solutions. Watching him with newly opened eyes, I chuckled softly.
"What's so funny?" he demanded, turning on me with an angry glare in his dark eyes.
"Well, not so much funny," I said with a smile, "as adorable."
"Saaam," Al warned, intensely quiet, stopping all movement to look at me almost shyly.
"Not forgetting gorgeous."
"Pleeeeasse."
"Oh and did I mention drop dead sexy?"
His eyes snapped up at me at those words. "Do you realise what you're saying?" he asked, his voice dangerously soft.
I simply nodded. "For the first time in years, I know exactly what I'm saying." I took a step closer and then cursed. "Damn! I wish I could touch you."
A sad smile appeared on his face. "Not half as much as I do, Sammy," he said softly, so I leaned in anyway, touching the space that should be occupied by his lips with mine and imagining for the briefest second I could actually feel them.
"Some day," I muttered softly, tracing my hands down the lines where his arms should be. "I promise."
"Soon," he said softly.
I nodded. Now that I knew what was waiting for me back home, I had every intention of seeing that last leap home. "Just promise me one thing," I added.
"Anything."
"If I forget during our next leap, tell me!"
He hesitated for a second, so I gave him something that I knew he could never resist, the full power version of the puppy dog look. He crumbled almost immediately.
"I promise."
We were interrupted by a knock on the door and when it opened, Adam hesitantly peeked inside.
"Is this a private party or can anyone join?"
I waved him inside. "Come on down, Adam Pierson," I called happily. "Maybe you'll be able to tell us why I haven't leaped out yet."
He shrugged, obviously as lost as we were. "You said everything works out for Mac and me. I don't see what else..." He stopped talking and frowned at the look on my face when Al's handlink started squawking noisily. Al peered at it curiously and I knew it was bad news when I saw the look on his face.
"What's wrong?" I asked, aware of Adam's narrowed eyes on me.
"Oh no," was the only thing Al could mutter. "That's terrible. Not after everything we..." His head snapped up towards me and his eyes were burning so bright, it made my heart skip a beat. "Tell him about the horsemen!" he said, his voice intensely harsh.
"What?" I asked. What he was saying wasn't making any sense at all.
Al shook himself, sighed and when he looked at me, he smiled. "Tell Adam that he has to tell MacLeod about the horsemen!" I frowned at him. It still didn't make any sense. He smiled. "Just do it. He'll understand."
I turned to Adam and found him watching me with barely concealed curiosity. "Adam," I started carefully, wondering if the next remark would have him laughing in my face, or slapping it. "You have to tell MacLeod about the horsemen."
The way all colour drained from his face, his eyes practically popped out of his head and he started shaking violently all over, I knew we'd hit the jackpot. Good old Al, coming through again.
"What?" he breathed so softly, I had to strain to hear him. He suddenly needed support and leaned heavily against the bathroom door.
More information kept coming from Al and I listened carefully. "Don't let MacLeod find out by himself," I warned Adam. "It will..."
"Destroy everything between us," Adam guessed himself. He closed his eyes and a shudder ran the length of his body as he swallowed hard. When he finally opened them again, they looked so haunted that I gasped involuntarily. "That's what I'm afraid of," he said softly. He shook his head slowly. "I can't," he finally said, bowing his head in shame, shaking it in denial. "I can't. He'd never understand."
I put my hand under his chin and lifted his face to look at me. "Why don't you try? He might surprise you."
He snorted derisively. "Yeah. Or he might well take my head after all." I cocked my head slightly and tried the same magic on Adam I'd tried on Al. He rolled his eyes and actually almost smiled. "One boyscout wasn't enough," he sighed, sounding almost whiny. "How can I possibly resist two?"
"Then you promise you'll tell him?" I asked hopefully, grabbing hold of both his shoulders, as if I was afraid he'd bolt out of here.
He started shaking his head violently, but at the relentless plea I shot him with my eyes, he finally gave in, turning the no-shake slowly into a yes-nod. He sighed dramatically. "I promise."
I was so relieved I kissed him with a resounding smack, feeling something tingling up my spine that I immediately recognised. I almost panicked, realising that there were still so many things to be said, but then smiled with resignation. "Remember your promise," I reminded them both, as the first sparks of the leap out grabbed me. I could just make out an "I will!" said in unison, Al even throwing a kissy face at me on my way out, before everything sparked blue and silver around me. The last thing I heard was Al's soft plea, "And you remember yours!"
I would. With my last coherent thought, I vowed to keep that promise come what may!
THE END