by Carol Roi
Part 6
When Megan awoke, the grey light of dawn was filtering through the window. Cocooned in the blankets, she tried to remember all she had experienced on her journey to the spirit world. Had Diandra really been alive in Ancient Greece? Or did the Companion's comment about her having an "old soul" mean she had been reincarnated? The answers she had been given only led to more questions. What she really wanted was to talk to Dee, to lay all the pieces she had on the table and have her show Megan how they all fit together.
Yawning, she pushed the covers down and sat up, letting out a startled squeak as she spied Jim sitting in a chair at the end of the bed. "Glad you've returned to the land of the living, Connor," he said with a slight grin. "I was beginning to worry."
Megan curled her arms around her knees and raised one eyebrow. "Really? Why?"
"You were having some kind of a nightmare last night, screaming and crying, and I couldn't wake you." The sentinel's gaze was concerned.
She ran a hand through her tangled curls. "I had a vision," she said finally, her voice raw with emotion. "It was... disturbing to say the least."
"Any thing I should know about?" Jim asked.
Megan nodded. Forewarned was forearmed. "You killed Sandy." At his shocked gasp, Megan elaborated. "Or, rather, the jaguar killed the wolf and was slain by the black mare, who then laid down and died. The Companion told me it was a vision of the future, and it was my responsibility to prevent it from coming true."
Jim leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees, his hands dangling loosely. Memories of the vision he'd had of shooting the wolf during Alex's reign of terror flashed through his mind. It was happening all over again, he thought, and he said as much.
Scooting down to the end of the bed, Megan took his hand. "Jim, this time is different, this time we know what the vision means."
"Do we?" he asked. "I thought I knew before, so I sent Blair away, right into Alex's clutches."
"There is no Alex this time, only the four of us, and the jag wouldn't have attacked the wolf if he hadn't come between the cat and the mare."
Shaking his head, Jim straightened and clenched his jaw. "It always comes back to her, doesn't it? When she moved back to Seacouver, I thought she was out of our lives forever, and now she's right in the middle again, coming between Blair and me."
The Aussie was shocked at the anger and bitterness that colored his voice, along with more than a hint of fear. How could she reassure him that this was not what the vision meant? She seized on the Companion's words. "Jim, the Companion said I had the ability to stop that from happening, and I will do everything in my power to make sure it doesn't. She told me it was my duty to protect the 'three who are one'. Do you know what she meant by that?"
Jim immediately thought of the connection he shared with his guide, and the blue-white ribbon of energy woven through the gold band. That connection had been strong enough to transport the effects of a Quickening over 50 miles. He rubbed his hand over his face wearily. "The three of us are connected, our life forces intertwined. Dee is connected to me through Blair, or at least that's what she told me. I don't know how much stock I can put in what she says."
Megan frowned at him. "Jim, Dee seems like a pretty honest person to me. Has she ever lied to you?"
The detective considered her question for a long time, then said, "No, not really. She just... I don't know... I just don't trust her."
Megan snorted. "Jim, you have a hard time trusting anyone, myself and Sandy included. It's part of your nature and it's what makes you a good cop, but it plays havoc with the rest of your life. Maybe, just this once, your suspicions are unfounded. Sure, Dee is a difficult person to get to know, but so are you, and for much the same reason. You're both wary of letting anyone too close for fear of being hurt again."
Slouching in the chair, Jim gave a short mirthless laugh. "And where did you get your psychology degree, Connor?"
Her answer followed an exasperated sigh. "Sandy doesn't seem to have any problem trusting her."
Ellison rolled his eyes. "He's blinded by love, or lust, take your pick."
Megan chucked a pillow at him, smacking him square in the face. "You are bloody insufferable, Ellison. I don't know how Sandy puts up with you. Would it kill you to just -believe- for once? To just take someone at face value and quit looking below the surface for some reason to justify your own insecurities?"
Jim got to his feet, his jaw muscles working overtime. "Are we finished?"
She was very, very tempted to say no, but the thought of spending an entire weekend getting the silent treatment was rather unappealing. "For now," she finally replied.
Grumbling, he stomped off to the kitchen to presumably start breakfast. Shooting one last irritated glare at his back, Megan headed for the shower.
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Dee slid out from under the quilt, trying not to wake Blair. Shivering in the cold air, she tossed on her flannel shirt, and padded into the other room. She threw a couple logs on the fire, stirring up the embers of the old and adding enough kindling so that it began to blaze again. She did the same for the stove, setting a pot of water on for coffee, then she headed back to the bedroom, and got back into the still warm bed.
Blair stirred, mumbling something about freezing. Dee moved closer to him, wrapping an arm over his chest, and intertwining her leg with his. His breathing evened out, and he slept again. She kept watch over him, listening to the sound of water beginning to boil in the kitchen. An indeterminate time later, the world came rushing back to her, Blair's anxious eyes peering into hers.
"Dee, follow my voice back, come back... " he was saying in an almost frantic voice.
Taking a deep breath, she blinked, then said, "It's okay, Lobo, I'm here." Raising up on her elbows, she shook her head. "Shit, I zoned, didn't I?"
Blair nodded. "Big time, though what on, I don't know." He ran a forefinger down her cheek. "You scared the crap out of me."
"Sorry," she answered sheepishly. "Guess I was still pretty tired." A noise from the kitchen drew her attention. "And I think I zoned on the coffeepot." Rising, she walked into the other room, added more water to the pot, and put it back on the stove.
After pulling on his sweats, Blair followed her. She looked up from breaking eggs into a bowl. "How are you feeling this morning?"
He ran both hands through his disheveled hair. "My knee's okay, and the rest is just minor aches and pains."
Dee set a skillet on one of the burners and added a pat of butter. "How are you otherwise?"
Pausing in his search for coffee cups, he gave her a curious look. "Otherwise?"
She didn't know quite how to approach this. "Yeah, emotionally, spiritually, psychologically. You know, we really didn't talk much about what you went through last night. Are you having any side effects from the Quickening, any questions you want to ask me, that kind of thing."
At her words, Blair was transported to that moment in the alley. He remembered her urging him to run, but his injured leg had betrayed him once again, and he'd fallen, her hands grabbing his upper arms in an instinctual move he could see she regretted as soon as the first surge of Quickening energy struck her.
It had flowed from her to him following the path of least resistance, carrying with it indescribable agony, and at the same time, overwhelming pleasure. Hitching a ride with the physical sensations had been mental ones, visions or memories of a life long past. He would have expected them to be Hale's, but instead he found the Quickening opened up the doorways to Diandra's mind, and scenes from her life flashed by like slides in an out of control projector.
Most of the scenes he'd been unable to absorb, so quickly had they passed, but he could recall a body-strewn field at sunset, and the turquoise eyes of her dying companion. Images whizzed by, slowing to a vision of Dee dressed in sequins and tights, astride a large horse in a circus setting, watching a dark-haired woman perform
on the trapeze.
The memories shuffled, and he caught a glimpse of Diandra sitting on a bench in Victorian dress, a large mansion visible behind her. A small blond girl raced across the lawn, leaping into Dee's arms for a hug. Blair could see her face clearly, and though she was smiling and laughing, the child's eyes were hard and cold and familiar. Before he had time to wonder about that, the idyllic setting became a jungle and a fatigue-clad Dee crept through the underbrush toward a World War II Japanese stronghold.
Once more the scene changed, flipping past images of the Australian Outback to pause on a recent event, set in MacLeod's dojo. Methos was on his knees, bleeding from a fatal wound to the chest, Dee poised to take his head when the Immortal Blair knew only by reputation, Duncan MacLeod, deflected her blow with his own sword. Diandra's face contorted in rage, and she raised her right hand toward him, palm out. Energy exploded across the short distance between them, hurling MacLeod the full length of the dojo, shorting out the lights, and breaking all the windows.
The slides changed again, and Blair saw three black clad figures burst through a doorway to find a man holding a sword to the neck of what Blair assumed was an Immortal. Again energy sprang from Dee's hands, fueled from the combined power of herself and the Immortals on either side of her, MacLeod and Methos. The man with the sword was lifted into the air and ripped apart, releasing a Quickening that brought the walls down around them.
The vision shifted to dark, storm-tossed woods. Diandra stood in the center of a clearing, then whirled to find a blond haired boy of no more than 11 or 12 standing over a fallen man, a sword clutched in his grasp. She chased the child through the forest, taking him down with a kick to the head, then severing his neck with his own sword.
Another change, and Dee was battling an Immortal female in a parking garage, while a wounded Dana Scully leaned against a post in the background. Dee disarmed the female, then turned her attention toward her student, sheathing her sword inside her coat. The other woman continued to verbally bait Diandra, though Blair couldn't make out the words. Something she said must have pushed her over the edge, because Dee drew her katana and whirled, taking the other Immortal's head in one smooth movement.
The next picture was more recent still, Diandra kneeling on the pavement, scattered books around her, looking up at a chestnut haired, blue eyed grad student. Moments from their friendship flew by, training together, sharing lunch, dancing at Joe's, the battle at the lighthouse, Diandra leaving, finding Megan, the talk on the stairway, the Cherokee exploding, and finally her arms around him as the Quickening finished.
"Lobo, Blair!" Dee's hands were on his shoulders, shaking him gently. "Blair, are you okay?"
Blinking slowly, he looked up at her. She pulled a chair out from the table and pushed him into it. "What just happened, Lobo? You were a million miles away."
He swallowed with difficulty, not sure how to explain. "I was... remembering the Quickening. I... everything was you... all these images, these visions of you, from your life. The closer they came to now, the stronger they were." Leaning his elbows on the table, he buried his hands in his hair. "God, Dee, how do you do it? So much violence, so much death... "
Taking a deep breath, Dee sat down next to him. This was not what she had expected, but then nothing about the previous night had been normal. She reached out to him, her hand hesitating over his. Goddess, how do I comfort him? She withdrew her hand, placing it in her lap. Physical contact from her might not be welcome at this moment. "How do I do what?" she finally asked, her voice shaky.
Blair lifted his head to look at her. "Survive. How do you not go crazy knowing you'll outlive everyone you've ever loved... " He frowned as a thought crossed his mind. "I'm sorry," he said suddenly, "I'm sorry I can't be with you forever, that I have to leave you... "
Tears stung her eyes, and Dee slid off her chair to kneel beside him, gazing up into his tormented face. "Oh, baby," she breathed, "Lobo, it's okay. You will always be with me, in my mind, in my heart. I will never forget you, forget how much you care. That's how I survive, how I stay sane, by remembering the people I've loved and knowing they wouldn't want me to give up, that they would want me to go on."
He caught her face in his hands, leaning down to kiss her fiercely. Her hands tangled in his hair, and she deepened the kiss, pulling him off the chair to join her on the floor. The smell of something burning, and the trilling of Blair's cell phone interrupted any further activity.
Breaking away from her, Blair scrambled to the living area, pulling his phone from his backpack. Smiling at his eagerness, Dee got to her feet, taking the skillet off the burner and waiting until it cooled a bit before she wiped out the burned butter. Blair walked back into the kitchen the phone pressed to his ear.
"Yeah, Jim, we made it here okay. It was just pretty late." He tucked the phone between his shoulder and his ear and poured two cups of coffee, adding milk to them both, then glanced at Dee, who mouthed, "No honey, use sugar," at him. "So how did the two of you manage last night?"
Jim leaned against the kitchen counter, one ear listening to Megan talking to herself in the other room. "We managed okay, except for the little incident with the Bronco. Next time you're going to get in the middle of a Quickening, give me a little notice, okay?"
"Shit, Jim! What happened?" Blair's worried eyes caught Dee's.
"I felt it. Connor said it was like a zone out at first, and I nearly drove us off a cliff. Fortunately, she managed to save our asses, at the expense of the truck. Then she said I had a seizure."
Blair bit his lip, considering the events. "The energy must have traveled down our connection. Did you get any images with that?"
Jim started to shake his head, then realized Blair couldn't see that. "No, no images, just pain. Lots and lots of pain, enough that I started to like it." He shuddered involuntarily. "I would rather not go through it again." He could hear Dee's voice in the background.
"Dee thinks it was just a freak incident, since she was in physical contact with me when the Quickening happened. I don't plan on being anywhere in the vicinity next time she has to take a head." He felt the Immortal give his shoulder a reassuring squeeze.
"Look, Chief, I don't know how good the cell phone reception is going to stay up here, but I want to let you know you're not so far away that I can't hear you. Dee can probably hear us too. So if anything happens, and the cell phone is unavailable, just give a shout. I'll be keeping an ear open."
Blair looked over at Dee, who had her eyes closed, and her head cocked toward the west. After a few moments, she opened her eyes and nodded. "She's got you, Jim. We'll do the same thing on our end. Listen, I have about a million things I want to talk to you about, but I have no way to recharge my phone here, since MacLeod seems to be a fan of the rustic life. We'll have to do it once we're back in Cascade on Monday." He lowered his voice. "I miss you, man. Us being apart just doesn't feel right."
Jim was surprised at how much his guide's words warmed his heart. "I miss you too, buddy. Stay safe."
Blair clicked off his phone, staring silently out the window across the dark expanse of water. He felt Dee's arms slide around his waist from behind, and she rested her chin on his shoulder, not saying anything, but her silent presence letting him know she understood. Finally he turned toward her, and asked, "What's for breakfast?"
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Jim paced back and forth across the living room of Simon's cabin, waiting for his call to go through. He'd waited until lunchtime to contact his superior, feeling better knowing most of the PD would be away from their desks. He glanced over at Megan, who was sitting in front of the large picture window, an artist's sketch pad in her lap, a box of pastels on the table next to her. She'd discovered the art supplies on a search of the cabin that morning, a leftover reminder of the time Simon had tried taking up painting as a stress reducer. She had finished the rough outline of her drawing in pencil, and was now contente
dly, almost obsessively, filling in the colors. From his position, he couldn't see enough of the work to know what it was, but if it kept Connor busy, and her mind off of psychoanalyzing him, then he was happy.
"Simon Banks."
Jim tore his attention from the Aussie. "Simon, it's Jim. Just thought I would update you on what's going on here."
"I was beginning to worry there, Ellison. Did you make it to the cabin okay?"
"Yes and no, sir. We're fine, but the truck is not. I'm afraid you'll have to send someone to get us late Sunday night. We managed to get it stuck pretty good." He pinched the bridge of his nose, waiting for the Captain's response.
"Ellison! Can't you manage a simple babysitting job without wrecking a vehicle? Brown is going to be pissed. You get to be the one to tell him about it."
Jim sighed. "Sorry, Simon, it's a long story, one I don't have time to go into now. What's the situation there?"
