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hafitalTitle: Missed Connections
Pairing: Duncan/Methos, ~30,000 words, Adult (for violence and adult situations)
Author's Note: More notes to follow the final post. This story is set some time after Highlander: Endgame, and fully ignores Highlander: The Source.
I would be no where without my betas![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
killabeez, unovis_lj, and terrio. Special thank you and hugs and all around adoration to killabeez for just being awesome and generous and wonderful.
Summary: MacLeod lived for Thursdays.
Missed Connections
by hafital
Part 4
~~~
MacLeod landed in Santiago, Chile and immediately boarded another plane flying to Caracas, Venezuela. From Caracas he used cash to buy a beat-up 1989 Volkswagen Rabbit and drove to an isolated airstrip three hours south of the city. There, he bribed a pilot to let him hitch a ride on an uncharted plane bound for Quito. Quito to Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires to Lima, Lima to Bogotá.
Gray from exhaustion and dirt, swaying on his feet, in Bogotá he took a taxi to an area called San Cristobal. He paid cash at a tiny hotel off a main road for four weeks, and followed a wrinkled old man up three flights of stairs to his room.
He had very little luggage--just what he could carry, and his sword. The room they gave him was painted a bright eggshell blue, and the windows had pale curtains lying still from the lack of wind, the air thick and pungent with the smell of roasting pork and chili. The bed was unmade, but there were bleached white sheets and a rough, brown woolen blanket left neatly folded on the bureau. He gave the wrinkled old man, whose name was Javier, a few coins and then closed the door to the world. After three days of traveling, bracing for Immortal presence at every corner, looking over his shoulder, he finally relaxed. From the open window came a constant chorus of honking cars and vendors whistling and hawking their wares.
The bed creaked when he sat down on the thin mattress. He put his head in his hands and didn't move until the walls of the room darkened from blue to purple as the day ended.
His days were filled with the strong South American sunshine and the hot, noisy traffic of the city. He spoke to only a few, and except for Javier and his wife at the hotel, never spoke long enough or often enough for anyone to remember his face. Once a week he called Joe, grateful for the lifeline that connected him to what had come before, to check in and exchange information.
At night he dreamt of sand and running as fast as he could until his chest hurt. No matter how hard he ran, MacLeod could never get close to the man on the beach.
Three weeks into his stay in Colombia, he ate dinner at little a restaurant with greasy plastic tablecloths and a broken ceiling fan. An Immortal slunk in and sat across from MacLeod at the bar, his presence appearing to rattle the bottles lining the back of the bar. MacLeod froze, but continued drinking his beer. He knew the man's face, long and big-eared. He'd seen it for only an instant in Paris.
After ten minutes of staring, the Immortal spoke. "I know you, don't I?" he said, in accented English, interest gleaming in his watery eyes. He was unshaven, graying hair pulled back. His teeth were too big for his mouth. MacLeod could see the wiry strength in his whipcord arms. The Immortal snapped his fingers and pointed at MacLeod. "You're the one from the video."
"I don't know what you're talking about," said MacLeod, pushing his dish away and crumpling his napkin.
"Yes, yes, you are," said the Immortal, as if he couldn't believe his crazy luck. "This is great, wonderful. Wait till I tell mis compadres. Where's your friend?" He looked around as if expecting Methos to come out of the bathroom.
MacLeod stood. "You have the wrong man," he said, tossed some bills on the counter and didn't say good-bye when he left. Outside, the hazy light of dusk glared. He dashed across the busy street and behind a moving bus.
He set out in the opposite direction from his hotel, kept moving from street to street, getting lost in the small paved cow paths that tangled around the historic centre of the old city. The sky was a clear, dark blue, and without warning hail started falling. Pedestrians in the street ran for cover.
MacLeod ducked behind a crumbling building. Immortal presence competed with the clatter of hailstones, louder and louder. MacLeod turned in a circle and saw three Immortals emerge from behind brick walls and broken doorways.
"My friend," said the goat-faced Immortal, stepping forward. He pointed his sword at MacLeod. "We need to talk."
Hailstones pelted the top of MacLeod's head and shoulders. Little white chunks of ice covered the ground like quartz gravel. "Ah," said MacLeod, revealing his katana. "Manny, Moe, and Jack."
All three Immortals withdrew their swords. The goat-faced Immortal had a Spanish rapier.
"Diganos adonde puedan encontrar Methos," said the Immortal on his left. MacLeod dubbed him Moe. "O vamos a matarte."
Hail clattered noisily, scattering across the ground. "And I thought you were all here to start a book club." He lunged toward the goat-faced Immortal.
The ground was slippery, and he used the hail for added speed. Swords clashed. The combatants slid across the ground. MacLeod sidestepped to bring the goat-faced Immortal between him and the other two men, drawing him in close. His opponent was slight but strong, and fought with a vigorous energy. MacLeod was pushed back, almost cornered up against a ragged cinderblock wall. They fought around piles of bricks and debris. He let the Immortal dominate the fight, arching backward away from a hack. Block, spin, a long scrape of blade on blade. Hail fell down the collar of MacLeod's jacket. He slipped closer and locked blades. With a twist, he jammed the Spanish rapier deep into the Immortal's chest. Surprised, the Immortal's eyes widened and then flattened in death. He dropped to the ground.
Without pausing, MacLeod spun around to face the other two Immortals, sliding across. It was like fighting on marbles. The taller one scrambled and fell. With a quick, low slice, MacLeod beheaded him. As the quickening gathered, he turned to the remaining Immortal. They skidded, tripping over the uneven ground. Before the first lightning strike of quickening fire hit him, MacLeod took his head.
Both quickenings drove him down onto all fours, the cold hail burning into his palms. Steam rose as the ice melted. He screamed until his voice gave out, gasping with relief when the quickenings ended. He rolled onto his back. The night sky was black and absent of stars, hail still falling.
Aching all over, MacLeod stood and walked to the goat-faced man. He put his boot to the Immortal's chest and withdrew the sword. The Immortal thrashed as he revived, teeth bared. MacLeod bore his weight down, the tip of the katana drawing blood from the Immortal's neck. The man started coughing and laughing, raising his head high enough to take note of his two men lying beheaded. He lifted his gaze to meet MacLeod's. "They said you were good." His laughter died, sweat-stained teeth bared as he spat blood.
"How many others like you?" MacLeod asked, his voice rough and throat aching. "Who else hunts Methos?" He didn't expect an answer, but he had to ask.
The Immortal's smile widened, and MacLeod saw it in the flat black manic gleam in the Immortal's eyes: a wolfish shadow. "Little MacLeod has lost his friend," he taunted, curling his lips. "Little MacLeod doesn't know where to find him again. Camilla was a bitch, wasn't she? Puta major que todo mundo. I never liked her. I'm glad she's dead."
MacLeod inhaled, skin going cold. Without thinking, he grabbed the other Immortal by his shirt. "Tell me who you are," he yelled. The Immortal started laughing. MacLeod slammed him against the brick wall, again and again. The Immortal's skull cracked, but he was still laughing. MacLeod punched him.
Sirens echoed off the brick walls. "You'd better run," said the Immortal through a clownish smile, fat swollen lips, bloody and bruised, nearly unrecognizable. The sirens grew louder. The hail finally stopped. In a panicked moment, MacLeod put his arms over his head. The goat-faced man scrambled away. MacLeod didn't know what to do. What could he do? He picked up his katana and fled just as the police arrived.
He was gone from Bogotá by morning, taking only money, his cell phone, and his sword.
~~~
MacLeod made his way to Quito and into a hotel near the airport that rented rooms by the hour. He spent a long time in the filthy shower before collapsing on the rented sheets tossed quickly over the bed. When he woke, he took out his cell phone and called Joe.
"He had a smile like a goat eating peanut butter," he said, with a decided lack of charity. He watched traffic through the one window in his room. Overhead, airplanes descended toward the airport.
"And you're certain he knew Camilla?"
MacLeod suppressed a sigh, rubbed his forehead and his eyes. "Yeah." Joe was silent on the other end, and something prickled at the back of MacLeod's neck. "What is it? What have you found?"
"I don't know," said Joe, but there was a hanging weight at the end of his sentence, something left unsaid.
MacLeod sat up. "Joe."
He heard Joe's breathing, low and slightly raspy. "Look, this may be nothing."
"Tell me." MacLeod pressed the cell phone closer to his ear, as if that would help reveal all the answers to his many questions.
"There's a thing that happens sometimes between Immortal teachers and their students. It doesn't happen all the time, only with certain kinds of Immortals. The old ones, usually, because they've been around long enough for a pattern to develop. The clearest example that you'd be familiar with was Rebecca."
MacLeod hit on it a second before Joe continued. "The crystals," he said.
"Right," said Joe. "With Rebecca, she gave each of her students a crystal. That bound them together, made them a group. Not in any sort of organized way. I'm not saying they sent each other Christmas cards or called on birthdays, but they were, in a way, siblings. They have this thing, whatever it is, linking them together. Rebecca was unique. The crystals were a physical, tangible trait, but it's not usually anything so concrete. It can be distinctive, like a certain style of fighting, or less obvious, like a particular attitude or knowledge, or--" he trailed off, and there was a note in his voice that raised the hair on MacLeod's arms.
"Or an obsession," finished MacLeod. "Cassandra," said MacLeod, with a sinking feeling.
"No. It's Kronos. This is all Kronos. Camilla was Cassandra's student, yes, but she was also Kronos's," Joe continued. "After Methos left, I started cross-referencing everything we knew about Camilla with both Cassandra and Kronos's chronicles, to see if I could find other parallels, something to give us a clue. It took some time, with nearly ten millennia between them all. I found three Immortals, in addition to Camilla, with connections to both Cassandra and Kronos. One of them is probably your guy. Diego de Almagro, born 1489, Granada, sometimes called El Cabra--The Goat--by his admirers, first killed by his young wife. Knife thrust to the belly. But he revived and she told everyone that her husband was the devil and couldn't be killed, until the story reached one of our Watchers. It was then that we learned Almagro, thought to be the bastard child of a nobleman, was raised by a maiden aunt. This aunt was wealthy and generous, and provided for him, but when he was a teenager he reported her to the Spanish Inquisition as a witch and she was drowned. He then later joined Pizarro's first expedition to the new world, and our Watcher went with him."
Outside the window, MacLeod could see vendors pushing carts up and down the streets. Children yelled as they played soccer barefoot in an empty lot overgrown with weeds.
MacLeod reached out with his senses. He could feel and hear the other occupants of the hotel moving around in their rooms. Without a doubt, he knew Kronos had sought out Almagro on purpose, keeping tabs on Cassandra throughout the years, quietly appropriating her students. However, Cassandra had been a seer; some part of her knew, with each of her students, what their potential might be. And then there was Kronos. The circle made by the Horsemen, and Cassandra and Camilla, and himself, expanded to encompass Almagro. "Kronos was a conquistador," said MacLeod, with realization. "That's the connection."
"It's one of the few times we had a Watcher on him," said Joe. "Courtesy of Almagro."
"Who else?" he asked.
There was a weighted silence. It was asking a lot of Joe and of their friendship, too close to influencing the Game. It didn't matter that these Immortals were hunting and would likely seek him out. It was still interfering. MacLeod waited, although it took all of his self-restraint not to beg, not to use guilt to make Joe give him the information he wanted. Methos was Joe's friend, too. MacLeod knew Joe was suffering a similar heartbreak and he didn't want to contemplate what Joe would feel if he failed to find Methos in time.
"Two others," said Joe, after a minute passed. "A male, over 1000 years old, goes by the name Keyumars. Persian. Tall, good looking, wears his hair long, a bit of a playboy. He went off radar about two years ago. And a woman, Russian. We have no pre-Immortal information on her, but she goes by the name of Anastasia, and she was young when she first died--eighteen or nineteen years old. They both had Cassandra as their first teacher and later met Kronos. That's all I could find."
The significance of four Immortals banding together wasn't lost on MacLeod. It was almost like Kronos had tried to create a new incarnation of the Horsemen. On the opposite corner from the hotel, a small shop was busy with customers entering and exiting. They sold fruit and fresh baked bread. He could smell the warm yeasty aroma. He wondered where Methos was at that moment, and what he was thinking of. There was no way to know for certain, but MacLeod did not believe it was mere coincidence that four Immortals could have known both Cassandra and Kronos. The only explanation that made sense was that Kronos had sought out each of them for his own purposes.
"Thanks, Joe." He wanted to say so much more. He didn't think he could do this without Joe, without these calls, listening to Joe's whisky-rough voice that grounded him, that kept him from becoming entirely lost. "Thanks," he repeated. The sharp sun made him squint and drew water from his eyes. He turned away from the window.
After a moment, Joe answered. "Anything, Mac. Any time. Just give me a call."
~~~
MacLeod left South America, not expecting to find Almagro again, not so soon. He crossed the globe. Sydney. Morocco. Then Ireland. Then Greece. Then Canada. China. Jamaica. Egypt. Panama. The world became small.
Every month or two, MacLeod was challenged--hotheaded Immortals in search of the oldest, but no one else mentioned Camilla, or had that same shadow of a wolf in their eyes. Once he drew his sword, the Immortals mostly ran away except for a very few. Those that persisted lost their heads. He knew it was changing him, the isolation, the quickenings. He saw it in the faces of those few he met who were not looking for Methos, who were only in the wrong place at the wrong time--wide-eyed, with wary expressions and resigned fear, surprised that he let them live.
Through Joe, Amanda arranged to meet him in Marrakech. She waited for him, sitting at an outside table at a teahouse in the busy touristy center, lovely in shades of rose with pale yellow accents. MacLeod watched her through binoculars from the top of a building one street over, far enough away to avoid Immortal presence. She tapped her fingers on the table, kept glancing at her watch, looking earnestly out to the churning crowd. He let her wait. He couldn't face her, afraid of what she would say when she looked at him. Finally she left, wiping at her cheek. He turned away and stared out to the dusty golden skyline.
In every city, he wandered the streets, kept his mind clear and blank, ready for ambush or assault, almost welcoming the challenges. He tried not to think of Methos, and failed. Late at night, or sometimes early in the quiet hush of morning, he closed his eyes and hoped and prayed that Methos was safe, far away, and waiting for him.
~~~
Eighteen months passed. The multi-colored leaves of upstate New York decorated the side of the road and the top of his rented car. He knew the direction and the address, although he had never been there: in the middle of the Catskills, at the top of a winding road. Cassandra's home was a wooden castle, a log cabin on steroids on acres of land, perched at the top of a hill. The honey brown wood gleamed in the morning light.
One week prior, an envelope had been left for him at the front desk of the Pensión Mari-Luz in Barcelona. It was a baby green color and scented. Inside was a Tarot card--The High Priestess. With the card was a note, written in a childish hand.
You know the way. She always wanted you to visit.
A few days later, MacLeod got on a plane for New York.
The sky was a pale blue, clear except for the dusting of clouds in the distant horizon. He parked and exited the car, the door slam echoing down the valley. Chilly wind blew through his jacket and he lifted the collar ineffectually, rubbed his hands. Trees whispered in the wind, birds squawked and chirped in the distance. He scanned the house and the grounds. It appeared peaceful and quiet, almost idyllic, but MacLeod could feel the heavy weight of abandonment.
He walked slowly up the drive, footsteps crunching over the gravel. The front door swished quietly open, left unlocked. Inside, the air was stale. A clock ticking was the only sound. No sign of forced entry. No sign of disorder or disturbance of any sort.
Quietly, he explored each room. Layers of dust covered every piece of furniture. In the upper floors he found the bedroom, delicately furnished, the bed made. The walk-in closet was ruffled with dresses and shirts clinging to hangers, and drawers open and bursting with clothing, as if someone had dressed without tidying. The clothing smelled like Cassandra, pine needles and cinnamon.
On the dresser, he saw a picture of himself and Cassandra, framed in lovely wrought iron. There were other pictures of men and women he didn't recognize. Two frames were empty. In the wastebasket he found the pictures, scribbled on with a marker to obscure the faces and then torn into shreds.
He touched dying flowers left across an altar, petals left to rot in a bowl of water, long since evaporated. He took the bronze knife that lay diagonally across the altar, the tip darkened with dried blood, and put it in his pocket. Curiously, the bed was neatly made and free of dust, as if recently slept on. Back downstairs, he stood in the center of the large living room. The entire house reminded him of that long ago cabin in the woods with its fire and its magic, but whatever magic that might be held in the house was nearly gone but for the tang of violence left in the air like a bad aftertaste.
He stepped into the kitchen through the archway from the living room and found the first signs of disturbance. On the counter a bottle of red wine lay on its side, and there was a large purple stain on the floor where the wine had spilled. The tablecloth was skewed, nearly torn from the table.
Dinner was set for two, although the plates had crashed to the floor, glasses shattered and glistening in the light. A large knife was imbedded in the wood of a cabinet door. Two of the kitchen chairs were overturned. There were plates of food ready to be served, the food long since reduced to shriveled, gnarled, unrecognizable pieces, dried nearly to dust and left to become a home to flies.
Dried drops of blood spotted the floor, leading to the back door. MacLeod moved carefully through the debris. The cheerful green curtain on the door hung from a broken rod. A smeared bloody handprint decorated the door, stark against the ivory paint.
Outside, the breeze blew clean, fresh air. There was a deck, speckled with more blood, patio furniture scattered and tossed askew.
To the left of the house, a little further down on level ground, MacLeod spotted a wooden, rustic structure, stout pillars circling a covered pool, picnic tables. He heard a faint, soft flutter and tapping noise, followed a moment later by the shivering cold slide of Immortal presence.
As he circled around, he saw a woman sitting at a picnic table. She appeared to flicker in and out of his vision, perhaps a trick of the light and of the pillars interrupting his view. Young-looking and pretty, she looked like an escapee from a reality television show, fashionably dressed in tight jeans and a designer tank top with a printed image on the front he recognized from the streets of Paris. Her russet-colored hair was pulled to the side, hoop earrings dangled from her ears.
She shuffled Tarot cards, hands moving fast. Part, cut, shuffle, spread, repeat. Faster and faster. He watched her expertly stack the deck, then place the cards in a cross formation, seven cards total, face down. Her fingernails were painted a frosty pink, the enamel chipped. From the way she sat he thought she must be carrying a weapon hidden from his view beneath the table.
"You go first," she said, her voice a surprising deep, smoky timber, colored with the faintest trace of an eastern European accent. Her glossy lips and pale eyes outlined in green smiled at him.
MacLeod took one step closer. "Anastasia," he said.
Her lip curled. She snapped her fingers. "Very good. That son of a goatherd told me you're no fool." She leaned in a little, loudly whispering, "I knew you'd come here eventually." She tapped the cards. "It's all in here. Well, pick a card. All right, if you won't go first, I guess I will." She flipped over the bottom card. "Oh, the King of Wands," she said, clucking. "So early revealed."
MacLeod watched her. She was a sugared princess socialite with perfect features and an air of disassociated boredom. "I don't know where Methos is," he said, preemptively.
She sighed and revealed a second card. From his position, he could just make out the image of a lion. "I love this house," she said, as if she were sitting with friends at a café. "Don't you love this house? I used to come here for tea. She always had the best tea. Peaceful. That's what it is. Peaceful."
His skin crawled, his stomach turned. Slowly, he circled a little further around her, glancing back to the house, to the trees dancing in the wind at the edge of the yard. "What game are you playing?" He spoke through gritted teeth.
Anastasia rolled her eyes. "I don't know. I'm making it up as I go along." She flipped another card. MacLeod looked down and saw a man and woman holding hands.
"Did she cook you dinner before you killed her?"
The green make-up made her eyes misty like the sea. For a moment he thought he saw regret, a pale sorrow. Anastasia wrinkled her nose, shook her head in a quick jerk, turned over another card. She picked it up and showed it to him. "The Fool." She gave a coy little smile. "Now I wonder who that could be."
MacLeod refrained from reaching for his sword. "Tell me, what are you and your friends planning to do if you do find him? There can be only one."
The next card showed Death on a horse. Anastasia lit up. "My favorite card."
"She was your first teacher, wasn't she?" said MacLeod, choosing not to comment on the Tarot cards. "She took you in, cared for you. Showed you how to survive, told you who you were. Was she the one who taught you how to read cards? What else did she teach you? Where would you be without her? Did she open her door for you, invite you in? Did she make you feel at home? Is that why you're here, in her house, with her things? You can't even bring yourself to wipe her blood off the floor."
Anastasia put her hands over her ears. "Shut up, shut up, shut up," she yelled. "I can't hear you." She shook her head violently and then suddenly stopped. Holding her hands up, she breathed in and smiled, calmly placed her hands back down on the table. Her gaze met his. "You know how to find him," she said dulcetly. "Of course you know. You must know. Who else but you would know? Only you."
MacLeod ignored her. "Why did you rip up the pictures of you and Cassandra? Did you love her? What did Kronos say to you to make you turn on your own teacher?"
Anastasia didn't answer. She turned over another card. Judgment. "I didn't want to kill her," she said, sullenly, eyes sparkling with unshed tears. "I had no choice. She didn't give me a choice."
"How's that?" he asked.
She lifted her gaze to meet his and all trace of regret or guilt vanished. Instead he saw the same madness he'd seen in Camilla's eyes, the same hunger. "Because she wouldn't help. She wouldn't give him up. At least Kronos didn't lie. In the end, after everything she said about Methos, everything he did to her, she refused. How's that for hypocrisy?"
Lightning quick, she leapt from behind the table. He saw the flash of black metal and had just enough warning to swerve away, the loud crack of gunfire echoing down the valley. A bullet grazed hot against his cheek, another hit him in the shoulder. He spun and drew his sword, swinging, aiming for her neck.
Standing on top of the table, she opened her mouth and screamed: high-pitched, reverberating, growing and growing. His ears exploded with pain. He cradled his head, sword falling from his hands, but he couldn't hear it clatter to the ground.
Suddenly, it stopped. He looked up but was alone. Anastasia's scream was still bouncing around in his head, the pain causing flashes of light behind his eyes. Clutching his wounded shoulder, he looked down at the one remaining unrevealed card on the table, the center card. He turned it over. It was the Devil, in reverse.
~~~
He settled in New York, sinking into the anonymity of the big city.
With Joe's help, he rented a loft apartment in downtown Brooklyn under the name Duncan Nash. It made him feel close to Connor. It wasn't the most airtight of aliases, but he made sure Duncan Nash had a life--there were pictures in the apartment of a family man with many friends, and mail that came in every day indicating a busy life and a job in real estate. There was a doorman, but MacLeod had a key to the maintenance entrance and never went in the front.
Fall brought a chilly breeze blowing in off the East River. Despite the cold, MacLeod sat at an empty table outside a tiny West Village cafe that offered siphon coffee and ordered a double. Whoever had sat at the table previously left a newspaper face down on the table. MacLeod recognized it as The Village Voice. With chapped hands, he picked it up and paged through it, reading half an article here and there. Thinking of maybe picking up a movie in the evening, he paused through the entertainment section but didn't see anything that interested him. He flipped the newspaper closed and took another sip of his coffee.
The back of The Voice had colored advertisements all along its borders. In the center, the newspaper listed what looked like singles ads. At the top, the heading said Missed Connections.
Idly, he read the first one: We bumped into each other on the steps of St. Bartholomew's. You wore a red sweater and had a smile like sunshine. Meet me on those steps again tomorrow. I'll be waiting.
MacLeod smiled, intrigued by the romance. He read the next few ads. Most were explicit requests for illicit sexual encounters. Some were angry diatribes, petty irritations at perceived insults from strangers--To the a-hole who revs his motorcycle down my street at 4 AM, go eff yourself--but a few were lonely souls reaching out into the ether, searching for someone to connect with. They were random encounters, unknowns passing on the street or on the subways: a touch or a look or a glance all too brief, and then gone.
In the middle of the page, his attention was caught by a word.
You walked into my flat, and I threw you a can of beer. Then you said my name, a word now lost of all meaning. I think I loved you even then.
The afternoon sun glared across his eyes and the page blurred. He felt stupid, slow, not daring to believe his eyes, and read the same words over and over again. He knocked his coffee cup by accident and it spilled its last dregs before falling to the ground, shattering into tiny shards.
Methos.
~~~
For the benefit of anyone who might be watching, MacLeod made a show of cleaning the mess he'd made by taking that page of The Voice with those precious words on it and using it as a rag, making sure it was ruined beyond recognition.
He apologized to the wait staff of the café, paid for his coffee, and marched down the street unaware of his direction. Walking calmed his racing heart. He ducked into the entrance foyer of restaurant and picked up another Village Voice from a stand. He flipped it over, and saw the same words. The paper in his hands shook.
At a newsstand on the corner of Broadway and 4th he stopped to buy a magazine. He grabbed the first thing his hands fell on, flipped it open and pretended to read. Next to the cash register was a pile of Village Voices. Casually, he flipped the first one over and his eyes found the ad in the middle of the back page. The newsstand also had on older copy from a previous week, way at the bottom of the pile. MacLeod hesitated, then turned the older newspaper over and scanned the page. There, in the lower left corner he saw the same words.
He walked away from the newsstand. On autopilot, he went down into a subway station and got on an uptown train. It was rush hour, and he had to stand, swaying to the back and forth rhythm of the train. He felt blank. He couldn't think, afraid to believe, to hope. As he clung to the metal pole on the train, he looked down and noticed for the first time the coffee staining his shirt and part of his trousers. He rubbed at the stain, ineffectually. In midtown, he exited the train at 42nd Street. He walked to Times Square and bought a ticket for a movie that had already started, then paid for popcorn and a soda before entering the theatre to sit in the dark. It was an action film with loud explosions and car chases. He slumped in his chair and covered his face with his hand, letting the soda and popcorn sit untouched.
Methos. His pulse still raced from the shock of reading those words, of the wild and impossible hope. In the dark, his recurring dream came back to him--the man in the distance, the panic as he tried to reach him in time. MacLeod was heart-sore, and tired, and so very afraid.
Before the film ended, MacLeod slipped away through a side exit. He thought of calling Joe, but went down into the subway instead. He changed trains indiscriminately and at random. It was close to one in the morning when he returned to his apartment.
The apartment was dark, the blinds closed and the only light came from various electric readouts on the DVD player or the microwave. Without turning the lights on, MacLeod sat at his computer. He used a neighbor's unlocked WiFi and searched the web.
In addition to The Village Voice, there was a website dedicated to missed connections, as well as forums on every Craig's List for every major city.
From memory, he typed the words into a search engine and pulled up entries going back to when he first arrived in New York.
Anastasia had said he could find Methos if he really wanted to.
MacLeod sat in the dark of his apartment with a blank piece of paper and a pen. He let the words come.
~~~
In the morning, he visited the offices at The Village Voice, and spoke to a young woman with red hair and a crooked smile.
"It's faxed in," she said when he asked about the ad. She had ink on her fingers and smelled like newsprint. MacLeod could just make out the claptrap orchestra of printing presses coming through the walls. "Every week, without fail. At first we ignored it. We don't accept fax submissions anymore. They come in by email or through our online interface. We get thousands of 'Missed Connection' ads a week and can only publish about twenty on the back page. They're carefully chosen. But every week, the same ad was sent in. The editor took notice." She shrugged. "Bit of a mystery. You're the first to ask about it," she added with a sweet smile. MacLeod did not ask her name. No names. No connections.
MacLeod took out a folded piece of paper from his pocket and slid it across to the young woman. "Can you run that in the next printing?"
She looked at it. "I'm sorry. I can't guarantee anything. I'm just an intern. The editor decides."
"Please," he asked, just managing to keep his voice from breaking.
She had large brown eyes and she looked at MacLeod curiously. There must have been something in his face, something of the sorrow and desperation he felt because she cocked her head slightly and took the piece of paper and said, "All right. I'll make it happen."
MacLeod could have kissed her but managed a heart-felt thank you instead. He turned to leave but hesitated. He reached for a piece of paper and wrote 'Nash' next to his private cell number. "Call me if anything… unusual happens."
She looked like she was about to ask for more information, but her dark eyes held his and she nodded slowly. He left before he could betray himself further, remembering to leave from a back exit.
~~~
The day we met, we walked together by a river. I was completely in awe and trying to hide it, afraid you would think less of me. I wanted so badly to be your friend.
~~~
It was the slowest, most excruciating courtship and flirtation imaginable, limited to the schedule of weekly publication.
MacLeod lived for Thursdays, the day the new Voice came out.
It became a conversation.
Once I called you in the middle of the night for no reason. You didn't hang up and we talked until morning. You kept me on the phone. I almost told you everything. I never thanked you.
We met under a bridge, fighting. You were soaked to the bone. I wanted to take you home but you said no and slipped away into the night.
Without thinking, I got on a plane and flew across the world to warn you about your ex-girlfriend coming to town. It was just an excuse.
I remember the first time you stepped into my home. You smiled at me. You wore red pants and looked so amused. Did my delight at seeing you show?
I'm so sorry I couldn't change his mind. I wanted to tell you how sorry I was, but was afraid of hurting you more. He loved you. It was the only thing that almost stopped him from seeking darkness.
Sunset. You broke my heart that day beside your car.
I know.
There was nothing you could have done. It's taken me a while to accept it, but I have. I've accepted his choice and what I did. I miss you.
She and I shared a hotdog on a hot summer day, dodging crowds on the boardwalk and watching people shoot each other with paintballs. I left her alone and called you from a pay phone. You weren't there and I didn't leave a message.
I would have talked to you for as long as you wanted. I would have listened to everything you wanted to say, even if it was nothing at all, even if it was just silence. I'm sorry I wasn't there when you called.
Before we met, I read all about you. I didn't think you were real.
I could say the same about you.
One night at the bar, drunk. I tripped and you caught me before I fell and made a joke at my expense. I almost snogged you right there.
One night at the bar, drunk. Walking out, you tripped and I caught you. It was the first time I ever thought of you like that. I should have kept you in my arms. Dragged you back home. But I let you go.
Flirt. If I had known I would have made the moves on you earlier. Shame. In truth, my love, I wasn't ready.
You still owe me one carton of strawberry ice cream, a rice cooker, and a pair of Testoni shoes. Don't think I've forgotten.
Leaving you asleep in my bed was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do.
It took me a while to forgive you, but it was only because I wasn't aware how far you'd traveled into my heart and it hurt so much.
He returned, a knife thrust through my heart. When I left him, all I could think of was getting to you. But she was with you already. He probably knew that.
You may be an irritating bastard, but you're still my friend. You know better than I how the past cannot be changed. It can only be accepted.
Have you been reading too many fortune cookies again?
You ate my food and slept on my couch and I complained. You took my keys and then gave them back. You broke my vase. Strange how I was still sad to see you move out. I liked having you near me.
I'm so far away from you. Do you know how far? I could be next door and still be as far as the moon. I don't know how to be this far away from you.
During the darkest period of my life, you were there, like a beacon of everything strong and generous and wonderful. I cling to that, even now. Hold on.
I miss you, too. How long do I have to wait?
~~~
He dreamt of the beach and the man in the distance. MacLeod ran, as fast as he could with heart bursting and sweat dripping down his face, struggling against the ever-shifting sand. The man turned to face him and it was Methos, too far away. The harder MacLeod ran, the further away Methos went. The wind blew stronger. As if he were made of sand, Methos started to dissolve. Sand poured over MacLeod, down his throat, blinding his vision. He couldn't breathe. He drowned in sand.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 5
Pairing: Duncan/Methos, ~30,000 words, Adult (for violence and adult situations)
Author's Note: More notes to follow the final post. This story is set some time after Highlander: Endgame, and fully ignores Highlander: The Source.
I would be no where without my betas
killabeez, unovis_lj, and terrio. Special thank you and hugs and all around adoration to killabeez for just being awesome and generous and wonderful.Summary: MacLeod lived for Thursdays.
Missed Connections
by hafital
~~~
MacLeod landed in Santiago, Chile and immediately boarded another plane flying to Caracas, Venezuela. From Caracas he used cash to buy a beat-up 1989 Volkswagen Rabbit and drove to an isolated airstrip three hours south of the city. There, he bribed a pilot to let him hitch a ride on an uncharted plane bound for Quito. Quito to Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires to Lima, Lima to Bogotá.
Gray from exhaustion and dirt, swaying on his feet, in Bogotá he took a taxi to an area called San Cristobal. He paid cash at a tiny hotel off a main road for four weeks, and followed a wrinkled old man up three flights of stairs to his room.
He had very little luggage--just what he could carry, and his sword. The room they gave him was painted a bright eggshell blue, and the windows had pale curtains lying still from the lack of wind, the air thick and pungent with the smell of roasting pork and chili. The bed was unmade, but there were bleached white sheets and a rough, brown woolen blanket left neatly folded on the bureau. He gave the wrinkled old man, whose name was Javier, a few coins and then closed the door to the world. After three days of traveling, bracing for Immortal presence at every corner, looking over his shoulder, he finally relaxed. From the open window came a constant chorus of honking cars and vendors whistling and hawking their wares.
The bed creaked when he sat down on the thin mattress. He put his head in his hands and didn't move until the walls of the room darkened from blue to purple as the day ended.
His days were filled with the strong South American sunshine and the hot, noisy traffic of the city. He spoke to only a few, and except for Javier and his wife at the hotel, never spoke long enough or often enough for anyone to remember his face. Once a week he called Joe, grateful for the lifeline that connected him to what had come before, to check in and exchange information.
At night he dreamt of sand and running as fast as he could until his chest hurt. No matter how hard he ran, MacLeod could never get close to the man on the beach.
Three weeks into his stay in Colombia, he ate dinner at little a restaurant with greasy plastic tablecloths and a broken ceiling fan. An Immortal slunk in and sat across from MacLeod at the bar, his presence appearing to rattle the bottles lining the back of the bar. MacLeod froze, but continued drinking his beer. He knew the man's face, long and big-eared. He'd seen it for only an instant in Paris.
After ten minutes of staring, the Immortal spoke. "I know you, don't I?" he said, in accented English, interest gleaming in his watery eyes. He was unshaven, graying hair pulled back. His teeth were too big for his mouth. MacLeod could see the wiry strength in his whipcord arms. The Immortal snapped his fingers and pointed at MacLeod. "You're the one from the video."
"I don't know what you're talking about," said MacLeod, pushing his dish away and crumpling his napkin.
"Yes, yes, you are," said the Immortal, as if he couldn't believe his crazy luck. "This is great, wonderful. Wait till I tell mis compadres. Where's your friend?" He looked around as if expecting Methos to come out of the bathroom.
MacLeod stood. "You have the wrong man," he said, tossed some bills on the counter and didn't say good-bye when he left. Outside, the hazy light of dusk glared. He dashed across the busy street and behind a moving bus.
He set out in the opposite direction from his hotel, kept moving from street to street, getting lost in the small paved cow paths that tangled around the historic centre of the old city. The sky was a clear, dark blue, and without warning hail started falling. Pedestrians in the street ran for cover.
MacLeod ducked behind a crumbling building. Immortal presence competed with the clatter of hailstones, louder and louder. MacLeod turned in a circle and saw three Immortals emerge from behind brick walls and broken doorways.
"My friend," said the goat-faced Immortal, stepping forward. He pointed his sword at MacLeod. "We need to talk."
Hailstones pelted the top of MacLeod's head and shoulders. Little white chunks of ice covered the ground like quartz gravel. "Ah," said MacLeod, revealing his katana. "Manny, Moe, and Jack."
All three Immortals withdrew their swords. The goat-faced Immortal had a Spanish rapier.
"Diganos adonde puedan encontrar Methos," said the Immortal on his left. MacLeod dubbed him Moe. "O vamos a matarte."
Hail clattered noisily, scattering across the ground. "And I thought you were all here to start a book club." He lunged toward the goat-faced Immortal.
The ground was slippery, and he used the hail for added speed. Swords clashed. The combatants slid across the ground. MacLeod sidestepped to bring the goat-faced Immortal between him and the other two men, drawing him in close. His opponent was slight but strong, and fought with a vigorous energy. MacLeod was pushed back, almost cornered up against a ragged cinderblock wall. They fought around piles of bricks and debris. He let the Immortal dominate the fight, arching backward away from a hack. Block, spin, a long scrape of blade on blade. Hail fell down the collar of MacLeod's jacket. He slipped closer and locked blades. With a twist, he jammed the Spanish rapier deep into the Immortal's chest. Surprised, the Immortal's eyes widened and then flattened in death. He dropped to the ground.
Without pausing, MacLeod spun around to face the other two Immortals, sliding across. It was like fighting on marbles. The taller one scrambled and fell. With a quick, low slice, MacLeod beheaded him. As the quickening gathered, he turned to the remaining Immortal. They skidded, tripping over the uneven ground. Before the first lightning strike of quickening fire hit him, MacLeod took his head.
Both quickenings drove him down onto all fours, the cold hail burning into his palms. Steam rose as the ice melted. He screamed until his voice gave out, gasping with relief when the quickenings ended. He rolled onto his back. The night sky was black and absent of stars, hail still falling.
Aching all over, MacLeod stood and walked to the goat-faced man. He put his boot to the Immortal's chest and withdrew the sword. The Immortal thrashed as he revived, teeth bared. MacLeod bore his weight down, the tip of the katana drawing blood from the Immortal's neck. The man started coughing and laughing, raising his head high enough to take note of his two men lying beheaded. He lifted his gaze to meet MacLeod's. "They said you were good." His laughter died, sweat-stained teeth bared as he spat blood.
"How many others like you?" MacLeod asked, his voice rough and throat aching. "Who else hunts Methos?" He didn't expect an answer, but he had to ask.
The Immortal's smile widened, and MacLeod saw it in the flat black manic gleam in the Immortal's eyes: a wolfish shadow. "Little MacLeod has lost his friend," he taunted, curling his lips. "Little MacLeod doesn't know where to find him again. Camilla was a bitch, wasn't she? Puta major que todo mundo. I never liked her. I'm glad she's dead."
MacLeod inhaled, skin going cold. Without thinking, he grabbed the other Immortal by his shirt. "Tell me who you are," he yelled. The Immortal started laughing. MacLeod slammed him against the brick wall, again and again. The Immortal's skull cracked, but he was still laughing. MacLeod punched him.
Sirens echoed off the brick walls. "You'd better run," said the Immortal through a clownish smile, fat swollen lips, bloody and bruised, nearly unrecognizable. The sirens grew louder. The hail finally stopped. In a panicked moment, MacLeod put his arms over his head. The goat-faced man scrambled away. MacLeod didn't know what to do. What could he do? He picked up his katana and fled just as the police arrived.
He was gone from Bogotá by morning, taking only money, his cell phone, and his sword.
~~~
MacLeod made his way to Quito and into a hotel near the airport that rented rooms by the hour. He spent a long time in the filthy shower before collapsing on the rented sheets tossed quickly over the bed. When he woke, he took out his cell phone and called Joe.
"He had a smile like a goat eating peanut butter," he said, with a decided lack of charity. He watched traffic through the one window in his room. Overhead, airplanes descended toward the airport.
"And you're certain he knew Camilla?"
MacLeod suppressed a sigh, rubbed his forehead and his eyes. "Yeah." Joe was silent on the other end, and something prickled at the back of MacLeod's neck. "What is it? What have you found?"
"I don't know," said Joe, but there was a hanging weight at the end of his sentence, something left unsaid.
MacLeod sat up. "Joe."
He heard Joe's breathing, low and slightly raspy. "Look, this may be nothing."
"Tell me." MacLeod pressed the cell phone closer to his ear, as if that would help reveal all the answers to his many questions.
"There's a thing that happens sometimes between Immortal teachers and their students. It doesn't happen all the time, only with certain kinds of Immortals. The old ones, usually, because they've been around long enough for a pattern to develop. The clearest example that you'd be familiar with was Rebecca."
MacLeod hit on it a second before Joe continued. "The crystals," he said.
"Right," said Joe. "With Rebecca, she gave each of her students a crystal. That bound them together, made them a group. Not in any sort of organized way. I'm not saying they sent each other Christmas cards or called on birthdays, but they were, in a way, siblings. They have this thing, whatever it is, linking them together. Rebecca was unique. The crystals were a physical, tangible trait, but it's not usually anything so concrete. It can be distinctive, like a certain style of fighting, or less obvious, like a particular attitude or knowledge, or--" he trailed off, and there was a note in his voice that raised the hair on MacLeod's arms.
"Or an obsession," finished MacLeod. "Cassandra," said MacLeod, with a sinking feeling.
"No. It's Kronos. This is all Kronos. Camilla was Cassandra's student, yes, but she was also Kronos's," Joe continued. "After Methos left, I started cross-referencing everything we knew about Camilla with both Cassandra and Kronos's chronicles, to see if I could find other parallels, something to give us a clue. It took some time, with nearly ten millennia between them all. I found three Immortals, in addition to Camilla, with connections to both Cassandra and Kronos. One of them is probably your guy. Diego de Almagro, born 1489, Granada, sometimes called El Cabra--The Goat--by his admirers, first killed by his young wife. Knife thrust to the belly. But he revived and she told everyone that her husband was the devil and couldn't be killed, until the story reached one of our Watchers. It was then that we learned Almagro, thought to be the bastard child of a nobleman, was raised by a maiden aunt. This aunt was wealthy and generous, and provided for him, but when he was a teenager he reported her to the Spanish Inquisition as a witch and she was drowned. He then later joined Pizarro's first expedition to the new world, and our Watcher went with him."
Outside the window, MacLeod could see vendors pushing carts up and down the streets. Children yelled as they played soccer barefoot in an empty lot overgrown with weeds.
MacLeod reached out with his senses. He could feel and hear the other occupants of the hotel moving around in their rooms. Without a doubt, he knew Kronos had sought out Almagro on purpose, keeping tabs on Cassandra throughout the years, quietly appropriating her students. However, Cassandra had been a seer; some part of her knew, with each of her students, what their potential might be. And then there was Kronos. The circle made by the Horsemen, and Cassandra and Camilla, and himself, expanded to encompass Almagro. "Kronos was a conquistador," said MacLeod, with realization. "That's the connection."
"It's one of the few times we had a Watcher on him," said Joe. "Courtesy of Almagro."
"Who else?" he asked.
There was a weighted silence. It was asking a lot of Joe and of their friendship, too close to influencing the Game. It didn't matter that these Immortals were hunting and would likely seek him out. It was still interfering. MacLeod waited, although it took all of his self-restraint not to beg, not to use guilt to make Joe give him the information he wanted. Methos was Joe's friend, too. MacLeod knew Joe was suffering a similar heartbreak and he didn't want to contemplate what Joe would feel if he failed to find Methos in time.
"Two others," said Joe, after a minute passed. "A male, over 1000 years old, goes by the name Keyumars. Persian. Tall, good looking, wears his hair long, a bit of a playboy. He went off radar about two years ago. And a woman, Russian. We have no pre-Immortal information on her, but she goes by the name of Anastasia, and she was young when she first died--eighteen or nineteen years old. They both had Cassandra as their first teacher and later met Kronos. That's all I could find."
The significance of four Immortals banding together wasn't lost on MacLeod. It was almost like Kronos had tried to create a new incarnation of the Horsemen. On the opposite corner from the hotel, a small shop was busy with customers entering and exiting. They sold fruit and fresh baked bread. He could smell the warm yeasty aroma. He wondered where Methos was at that moment, and what he was thinking of. There was no way to know for certain, but MacLeod did not believe it was mere coincidence that four Immortals could have known both Cassandra and Kronos. The only explanation that made sense was that Kronos had sought out each of them for his own purposes.
"Thanks, Joe." He wanted to say so much more. He didn't think he could do this without Joe, without these calls, listening to Joe's whisky-rough voice that grounded him, that kept him from becoming entirely lost. "Thanks," he repeated. The sharp sun made him squint and drew water from his eyes. He turned away from the window.
After a moment, Joe answered. "Anything, Mac. Any time. Just give me a call."
~~~
MacLeod left South America, not expecting to find Almagro again, not so soon. He crossed the globe. Sydney. Morocco. Then Ireland. Then Greece. Then Canada. China. Jamaica. Egypt. Panama. The world became small.
Every month or two, MacLeod was challenged--hotheaded Immortals in search of the oldest, but no one else mentioned Camilla, or had that same shadow of a wolf in their eyes. Once he drew his sword, the Immortals mostly ran away except for a very few. Those that persisted lost their heads. He knew it was changing him, the isolation, the quickenings. He saw it in the faces of those few he met who were not looking for Methos, who were only in the wrong place at the wrong time--wide-eyed, with wary expressions and resigned fear, surprised that he let them live.
Through Joe, Amanda arranged to meet him in Marrakech. She waited for him, sitting at an outside table at a teahouse in the busy touristy center, lovely in shades of rose with pale yellow accents. MacLeod watched her through binoculars from the top of a building one street over, far enough away to avoid Immortal presence. She tapped her fingers on the table, kept glancing at her watch, looking earnestly out to the churning crowd. He let her wait. He couldn't face her, afraid of what she would say when she looked at him. Finally she left, wiping at her cheek. He turned away and stared out to the dusty golden skyline.
In every city, he wandered the streets, kept his mind clear and blank, ready for ambush or assault, almost welcoming the challenges. He tried not to think of Methos, and failed. Late at night, or sometimes early in the quiet hush of morning, he closed his eyes and hoped and prayed that Methos was safe, far away, and waiting for him.
~~~
Eighteen months passed. The multi-colored leaves of upstate New York decorated the side of the road and the top of his rented car. He knew the direction and the address, although he had never been there: in the middle of the Catskills, at the top of a winding road. Cassandra's home was a wooden castle, a log cabin on steroids on acres of land, perched at the top of a hill. The honey brown wood gleamed in the morning light.
One week prior, an envelope had been left for him at the front desk of the Pensión Mari-Luz in Barcelona. It was a baby green color and scented. Inside was a Tarot card--The High Priestess. With the card was a note, written in a childish hand.
You know the way. She always wanted you to visit.
A few days later, MacLeod got on a plane for New York.
The sky was a pale blue, clear except for the dusting of clouds in the distant horizon. He parked and exited the car, the door slam echoing down the valley. Chilly wind blew through his jacket and he lifted the collar ineffectually, rubbed his hands. Trees whispered in the wind, birds squawked and chirped in the distance. He scanned the house and the grounds. It appeared peaceful and quiet, almost idyllic, but MacLeod could feel the heavy weight of abandonment.
He walked slowly up the drive, footsteps crunching over the gravel. The front door swished quietly open, left unlocked. Inside, the air was stale. A clock ticking was the only sound. No sign of forced entry. No sign of disorder or disturbance of any sort.
Quietly, he explored each room. Layers of dust covered every piece of furniture. In the upper floors he found the bedroom, delicately furnished, the bed made. The walk-in closet was ruffled with dresses and shirts clinging to hangers, and drawers open and bursting with clothing, as if someone had dressed without tidying. The clothing smelled like Cassandra, pine needles and cinnamon.
On the dresser, he saw a picture of himself and Cassandra, framed in lovely wrought iron. There were other pictures of men and women he didn't recognize. Two frames were empty. In the wastebasket he found the pictures, scribbled on with a marker to obscure the faces and then torn into shreds.
He touched dying flowers left across an altar, petals left to rot in a bowl of water, long since evaporated. He took the bronze knife that lay diagonally across the altar, the tip darkened with dried blood, and put it in his pocket. Curiously, the bed was neatly made and free of dust, as if recently slept on. Back downstairs, he stood in the center of the large living room. The entire house reminded him of that long ago cabin in the woods with its fire and its magic, but whatever magic that might be held in the house was nearly gone but for the tang of violence left in the air like a bad aftertaste.
He stepped into the kitchen through the archway from the living room and found the first signs of disturbance. On the counter a bottle of red wine lay on its side, and there was a large purple stain on the floor where the wine had spilled. The tablecloth was skewed, nearly torn from the table.
Dinner was set for two, although the plates had crashed to the floor, glasses shattered and glistening in the light. A large knife was imbedded in the wood of a cabinet door. Two of the kitchen chairs were overturned. There were plates of food ready to be served, the food long since reduced to shriveled, gnarled, unrecognizable pieces, dried nearly to dust and left to become a home to flies.
Dried drops of blood spotted the floor, leading to the back door. MacLeod moved carefully through the debris. The cheerful green curtain on the door hung from a broken rod. A smeared bloody handprint decorated the door, stark against the ivory paint.
Outside, the breeze blew clean, fresh air. There was a deck, speckled with more blood, patio furniture scattered and tossed askew.
To the left of the house, a little further down on level ground, MacLeod spotted a wooden, rustic structure, stout pillars circling a covered pool, picnic tables. He heard a faint, soft flutter and tapping noise, followed a moment later by the shivering cold slide of Immortal presence.
As he circled around, he saw a woman sitting at a picnic table. She appeared to flicker in and out of his vision, perhaps a trick of the light and of the pillars interrupting his view. Young-looking and pretty, she looked like an escapee from a reality television show, fashionably dressed in tight jeans and a designer tank top with a printed image on the front he recognized from the streets of Paris. Her russet-colored hair was pulled to the side, hoop earrings dangled from her ears.
She shuffled Tarot cards, hands moving fast. Part, cut, shuffle, spread, repeat. Faster and faster. He watched her expertly stack the deck, then place the cards in a cross formation, seven cards total, face down. Her fingernails were painted a frosty pink, the enamel chipped. From the way she sat he thought she must be carrying a weapon hidden from his view beneath the table.
"You go first," she said, her voice a surprising deep, smoky timber, colored with the faintest trace of an eastern European accent. Her glossy lips and pale eyes outlined in green smiled at him.
MacLeod took one step closer. "Anastasia," he said.
Her lip curled. She snapped her fingers. "Very good. That son of a goatherd told me you're no fool." She leaned in a little, loudly whispering, "I knew you'd come here eventually." She tapped the cards. "It's all in here. Well, pick a card. All right, if you won't go first, I guess I will." She flipped over the bottom card. "Oh, the King of Wands," she said, clucking. "So early revealed."
MacLeod watched her. She was a sugared princess socialite with perfect features and an air of disassociated boredom. "I don't know where Methos is," he said, preemptively.
She sighed and revealed a second card. From his position, he could just make out the image of a lion. "I love this house," she said, as if she were sitting with friends at a café. "Don't you love this house? I used to come here for tea. She always had the best tea. Peaceful. That's what it is. Peaceful."
His skin crawled, his stomach turned. Slowly, he circled a little further around her, glancing back to the house, to the trees dancing in the wind at the edge of the yard. "What game are you playing?" He spoke through gritted teeth.
Anastasia rolled her eyes. "I don't know. I'm making it up as I go along." She flipped another card. MacLeod looked down and saw a man and woman holding hands.
"Did she cook you dinner before you killed her?"
The green make-up made her eyes misty like the sea. For a moment he thought he saw regret, a pale sorrow. Anastasia wrinkled her nose, shook her head in a quick jerk, turned over another card. She picked it up and showed it to him. "The Fool." She gave a coy little smile. "Now I wonder who that could be."
MacLeod refrained from reaching for his sword. "Tell me, what are you and your friends planning to do if you do find him? There can be only one."
The next card showed Death on a horse. Anastasia lit up. "My favorite card."
"She was your first teacher, wasn't she?" said MacLeod, choosing not to comment on the Tarot cards. "She took you in, cared for you. Showed you how to survive, told you who you were. Was she the one who taught you how to read cards? What else did she teach you? Where would you be without her? Did she open her door for you, invite you in? Did she make you feel at home? Is that why you're here, in her house, with her things? You can't even bring yourself to wipe her blood off the floor."
Anastasia put her hands over her ears. "Shut up, shut up, shut up," she yelled. "I can't hear you." She shook her head violently and then suddenly stopped. Holding her hands up, she breathed in and smiled, calmly placed her hands back down on the table. Her gaze met his. "You know how to find him," she said dulcetly. "Of course you know. You must know. Who else but you would know? Only you."
MacLeod ignored her. "Why did you rip up the pictures of you and Cassandra? Did you love her? What did Kronos say to you to make you turn on your own teacher?"
Anastasia didn't answer. She turned over another card. Judgment. "I didn't want to kill her," she said, sullenly, eyes sparkling with unshed tears. "I had no choice. She didn't give me a choice."
"How's that?" he asked.
She lifted her gaze to meet his and all trace of regret or guilt vanished. Instead he saw the same madness he'd seen in Camilla's eyes, the same hunger. "Because she wouldn't help. She wouldn't give him up. At least Kronos didn't lie. In the end, after everything she said about Methos, everything he did to her, she refused. How's that for hypocrisy?"
Lightning quick, she leapt from behind the table. He saw the flash of black metal and had just enough warning to swerve away, the loud crack of gunfire echoing down the valley. A bullet grazed hot against his cheek, another hit him in the shoulder. He spun and drew his sword, swinging, aiming for her neck.
Standing on top of the table, she opened her mouth and screamed: high-pitched, reverberating, growing and growing. His ears exploded with pain. He cradled his head, sword falling from his hands, but he couldn't hear it clatter to the ground.
Suddenly, it stopped. He looked up but was alone. Anastasia's scream was still bouncing around in his head, the pain causing flashes of light behind his eyes. Clutching his wounded shoulder, he looked down at the one remaining unrevealed card on the table, the center card. He turned it over. It was the Devil, in reverse.
~~~
He settled in New York, sinking into the anonymity of the big city.
With Joe's help, he rented a loft apartment in downtown Brooklyn under the name Duncan Nash. It made him feel close to Connor. It wasn't the most airtight of aliases, but he made sure Duncan Nash had a life--there were pictures in the apartment of a family man with many friends, and mail that came in every day indicating a busy life and a job in real estate. There was a doorman, but MacLeod had a key to the maintenance entrance and never went in the front.
Fall brought a chilly breeze blowing in off the East River. Despite the cold, MacLeod sat at an empty table outside a tiny West Village cafe that offered siphon coffee and ordered a double. Whoever had sat at the table previously left a newspaper face down on the table. MacLeod recognized it as The Village Voice. With chapped hands, he picked it up and paged through it, reading half an article here and there. Thinking of maybe picking up a movie in the evening, he paused through the entertainment section but didn't see anything that interested him. He flipped the newspaper closed and took another sip of his coffee.
The back of The Voice had colored advertisements all along its borders. In the center, the newspaper listed what looked like singles ads. At the top, the heading said Missed Connections.
Idly, he read the first one: We bumped into each other on the steps of St. Bartholomew's. You wore a red sweater and had a smile like sunshine. Meet me on those steps again tomorrow. I'll be waiting.
MacLeod smiled, intrigued by the romance. He read the next few ads. Most were explicit requests for illicit sexual encounters. Some were angry diatribes, petty irritations at perceived insults from strangers--To the a-hole who revs his motorcycle down my street at 4 AM, go eff yourself--but a few were lonely souls reaching out into the ether, searching for someone to connect with. They were random encounters, unknowns passing on the street or on the subways: a touch or a look or a glance all too brief, and then gone.
In the middle of the page, his attention was caught by a word.
You walked into my flat, and I threw you a can of beer. Then you said my name, a word now lost of all meaning. I think I loved you even then.
The afternoon sun glared across his eyes and the page blurred. He felt stupid, slow, not daring to believe his eyes, and read the same words over and over again. He knocked his coffee cup by accident and it spilled its last dregs before falling to the ground, shattering into tiny shards.
Methos.
~~~
For the benefit of anyone who might be watching, MacLeod made a show of cleaning the mess he'd made by taking that page of The Voice with those precious words on it and using it as a rag, making sure it was ruined beyond recognition.
He apologized to the wait staff of the café, paid for his coffee, and marched down the street unaware of his direction. Walking calmed his racing heart. He ducked into the entrance foyer of restaurant and picked up another Village Voice from a stand. He flipped it over, and saw the same words. The paper in his hands shook.
At a newsstand on the corner of Broadway and 4th he stopped to buy a magazine. He grabbed the first thing his hands fell on, flipped it open and pretended to read. Next to the cash register was a pile of Village Voices. Casually, he flipped the first one over and his eyes found the ad in the middle of the back page. The newsstand also had on older copy from a previous week, way at the bottom of the pile. MacLeod hesitated, then turned the older newspaper over and scanned the page. There, in the lower left corner he saw the same words.
He walked away from the newsstand. On autopilot, he went down into a subway station and got on an uptown train. It was rush hour, and he had to stand, swaying to the back and forth rhythm of the train. He felt blank. He couldn't think, afraid to believe, to hope. As he clung to the metal pole on the train, he looked down and noticed for the first time the coffee staining his shirt and part of his trousers. He rubbed at the stain, ineffectually. In midtown, he exited the train at 42nd Street. He walked to Times Square and bought a ticket for a movie that had already started, then paid for popcorn and a soda before entering the theatre to sit in the dark. It was an action film with loud explosions and car chases. He slumped in his chair and covered his face with his hand, letting the soda and popcorn sit untouched.
Methos. His pulse still raced from the shock of reading those words, of the wild and impossible hope. In the dark, his recurring dream came back to him--the man in the distance, the panic as he tried to reach him in time. MacLeod was heart-sore, and tired, and so very afraid.
Before the film ended, MacLeod slipped away through a side exit. He thought of calling Joe, but went down into the subway instead. He changed trains indiscriminately and at random. It was close to one in the morning when he returned to his apartment.
The apartment was dark, the blinds closed and the only light came from various electric readouts on the DVD player or the microwave. Without turning the lights on, MacLeod sat at his computer. He used a neighbor's unlocked WiFi and searched the web.
In addition to The Village Voice, there was a website dedicated to missed connections, as well as forums on every Craig's List for every major city.
From memory, he typed the words into a search engine and pulled up entries going back to when he first arrived in New York.
Anastasia had said he could find Methos if he really wanted to.
MacLeod sat in the dark of his apartment with a blank piece of paper and a pen. He let the words come.
~~~
In the morning, he visited the offices at The Village Voice, and spoke to a young woman with red hair and a crooked smile.
"It's faxed in," she said when he asked about the ad. She had ink on her fingers and smelled like newsprint. MacLeod could just make out the claptrap orchestra of printing presses coming through the walls. "Every week, without fail. At first we ignored it. We don't accept fax submissions anymore. They come in by email or through our online interface. We get thousands of 'Missed Connection' ads a week and can only publish about twenty on the back page. They're carefully chosen. But every week, the same ad was sent in. The editor took notice." She shrugged. "Bit of a mystery. You're the first to ask about it," she added with a sweet smile. MacLeod did not ask her name. No names. No connections.
MacLeod took out a folded piece of paper from his pocket and slid it across to the young woman. "Can you run that in the next printing?"
She looked at it. "I'm sorry. I can't guarantee anything. I'm just an intern. The editor decides."
"Please," he asked, just managing to keep his voice from breaking.
She had large brown eyes and she looked at MacLeod curiously. There must have been something in his face, something of the sorrow and desperation he felt because she cocked her head slightly and took the piece of paper and said, "All right. I'll make it happen."
MacLeod could have kissed her but managed a heart-felt thank you instead. He turned to leave but hesitated. He reached for a piece of paper and wrote 'Nash' next to his private cell number. "Call me if anything… unusual happens."
She looked like she was about to ask for more information, but her dark eyes held his and she nodded slowly. He left before he could betray himself further, remembering to leave from a back exit.
~~~
The day we met, we walked together by a river. I was completely in awe and trying to hide it, afraid you would think less of me. I wanted so badly to be your friend.
~~~
It was the slowest, most excruciating courtship and flirtation imaginable, limited to the schedule of weekly publication.
MacLeod lived for Thursdays, the day the new Voice came out.
It became a conversation.
Once I called you in the middle of the night for no reason. You didn't hang up and we talked until morning. You kept me on the phone. I almost told you everything. I never thanked you.
We met under a bridge, fighting. You were soaked to the bone. I wanted to take you home but you said no and slipped away into the night.
Without thinking, I got on a plane and flew across the world to warn you about your ex-girlfriend coming to town. It was just an excuse.
I remember the first time you stepped into my home. You smiled at me. You wore red pants and looked so amused. Did my delight at seeing you show?
I'm so sorry I couldn't change his mind. I wanted to tell you how sorry I was, but was afraid of hurting you more. He loved you. It was the only thing that almost stopped him from seeking darkness.
Sunset. You broke my heart that day beside your car.
I know.
There was nothing you could have done. It's taken me a while to accept it, but I have. I've accepted his choice and what I did. I miss you.
She and I shared a hotdog on a hot summer day, dodging crowds on the boardwalk and watching people shoot each other with paintballs. I left her alone and called you from a pay phone. You weren't there and I didn't leave a message.
I would have talked to you for as long as you wanted. I would have listened to everything you wanted to say, even if it was nothing at all, even if it was just silence. I'm sorry I wasn't there when you called.
Before we met, I read all about you. I didn't think you were real.
I could say the same about you.
One night at the bar, drunk. I tripped and you caught me before I fell and made a joke at my expense. I almost snogged you right there.
One night at the bar, drunk. Walking out, you tripped and I caught you. It was the first time I ever thought of you like that. I should have kept you in my arms. Dragged you back home. But I let you go.
Flirt. If I had known I would have made the moves on you earlier. Shame. In truth, my love, I wasn't ready.
You still owe me one carton of strawberry ice cream, a rice cooker, and a pair of Testoni shoes. Don't think I've forgotten.
Leaving you asleep in my bed was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do.
It took me a while to forgive you, but it was only because I wasn't aware how far you'd traveled into my heart and it hurt so much.
He returned, a knife thrust through my heart. When I left him, all I could think of was getting to you. But she was with you already. He probably knew that.
You may be an irritating bastard, but you're still my friend. You know better than I how the past cannot be changed. It can only be accepted.
Have you been reading too many fortune cookies again?
You ate my food and slept on my couch and I complained. You took my keys and then gave them back. You broke my vase. Strange how I was still sad to see you move out. I liked having you near me.
I'm so far away from you. Do you know how far? I could be next door and still be as far as the moon. I don't know how to be this far away from you.
During the darkest period of my life, you were there, like a beacon of everything strong and generous and wonderful. I cling to that, even now. Hold on.
I miss you, too. How long do I have to wait?
~~~
He dreamt of the beach and the man in the distance. MacLeod ran, as fast as he could with heart bursting and sweat dripping down his face, struggling against the ever-shifting sand. The man turned to face him and it was Methos, too far away. The harder MacLeod ran, the further away Methos went. The wind blew stronger. As if he were made of sand, Methos started to dissolve. Sand poured over MacLeod, down his throat, blinding his vision. He couldn't breathe. He drowned in sand.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 5
