Warning: Violence, profanity
Disclaimer: Not my universe, not my characters.
Hope Forgotten VI
SENTINEL
by Parda (September 1998)
... and a hope that you've forgotten ...
Saturday Afternoon, 8 June 1996
Cemetery, Seacouver
Cassandra was waiting. Again. She was always waiting. She was so fucking tired of waiting. And yet there was nothing she could do except wait.
She sat on the ground under the shade of a great willow tree and watched the ants. They continued their ceaseless work, following unseen trails through the moss and over the roots. Several of the ants were tugging at the remains of a large butterfly wing. She didn't think it would fit through the entrance to the nest.
She had been waiting here at the cemetery for over an hour, ever since Duncan had been forced off Holy Ground by the policemen under Roland's influence. She didn't know where Duncan was. She didn't know where Roland was. Even if she had known, there was nothing she could do. Once battle was joined, no one could interfere in a fight between two Immortals. And most certainly she could not interfere in this particular fight. This fight that would determine her life. This fight that had already determined her life for the last three thousand years. She must wait.
When she had left Connor last Sunday she had flown to Paris, thinking to find Duncan there, but an older man had told her that Duncan had not been to his barge for several days. She did not know who Duncan's Watcher was in Europe, and she hadn't seen her own Watcher, either. She hadn't seen any Watchers at all. She had gone to New York and used a detective agency to track Duncan down. It had taken the detective agency three full days to tell her that Duncan had reservations on a flight to Seacouver for Friday. It had been a very long wait during those three days in the hotel room.
She had arrived in Seacouver yesterday morning and had waited in Duncan's loft all day. He had been very surprised to see her when he came home that night.
Friday Evening, 7 June 1996
Duncan's Loft, Seacouver
She stepped into the light and saw him blink as he realized who she was.
"Cassandra?" he asked in disbelief.
"Have I changed all that much?" She had not aged of course, and she had chosen a russet gown, the same color as the gown she had worn the last time she had seen him, three hundred and ninety years ago.
He shook his head and swallowed, then lowered his sword a fraction. "No."
"But you have." Her gaze swept over his with approval and appreciation. She had seen one or two pictures of him over the last century, procured for her by her unknowing Watchers, but they didn't capture the vitality of him, the sheer physical presence. He was different than Connor, a little taller, broader, darker of hair and eyes, more classically handsome. But, of course, they weren't really related. She had so often thought of them as clansmen, as brothers, that she forgot they were not truly kin. She smiled a little. "I often wondered what sort of man you'd become."
Duncan set his sword down and sat on the edge of the couch, still staring at her. He wrapped his arms about his knees. "I'm surprised you didn't just look in your crystal ball."
He sounded bitter and hurt. Cassandra sat down on the table in front of him. He wanted sympathy, and she would give it to him. "Your road's been hard, hasn't it?" Not nearly so hard as hers, nor so long. But he didn't need to hear about that. She didn't want to tell him about that.
He shrugged. "A lot's happened in four hundred years. But I survived."
"I knew you would," she said with confidence, striking a match. She watched it flare and die, seeing nothing but fire in the flame.
"Of course, you did," he said disparagingly.
Cassandra knew what that tone meant. What was the point of struggling and dying and hoping if everything was already determined? What was the point of hope? She did not know the answer.
Duncan asked, "How did you find me? Witchcraft?"
"Why bother?" she answered lightly. She knew he didn't believe in witchcraft anymore, and she wanted him to take her seriously. She set down the match and stood up. "This is the twentieth century. I used a detective agency."
She came to stand next to him, almost touching him. "I need your help, Duncan." The plea for assistance, the damsel in distress asking the valiant knight to be her champion. And it was true enough. From what she knew of Duncan MacLeod, it should be very effective. It wouldn't have worked with Connor MacLeod at all.
"Why?"
Cassandra swallowed hard; it was not often she spoke his name. "Roland Kantos," she said, giving his latest alias.
"One of us?"
She touched his cheek with the back of her hand, as she had touched the boy so many years before. No boy now, but a man, the man she had been waiting for. The man Roland had been waiting for. And Roland was coming. She looked away from Duncan then, dreading the long-awaited confrontation. "He's more than that. Much more."
She told him then, of Roland, of the Prophecy, but she could see that Duncan did not really believe her. She could see that he was tired from jet-lag, and he was bothered by something else as well. This was not a happy homecoming for him. She decided to wait until the morning to talk to him. He insisted that she take the bed, then he fell into an exhausted sleep on the couch. All night long she lay wide-eyed on the bed, waiting.
In the morning they drove out of Seacouver and parked near the shore. The morning was fine and cool, and they sat on the hood of Duncan's T-bird.
"It's not the Highlands," Duncan said, leaning back on his elbows and watching her, "but it has its charm."
Cassandra looked out at the empty water and listened to the lonesome cries of the birds. He seemed to expect her to say something. "It's beautiful. I can see why you want to stay." Then she turned to see him staring at her. "Why are you looking at me that way?" she asked with a small laugh, hoping to make him feel at ease with her.
Duncan smiled a little in return and sat up. "The last time I saw you, I was thirteen years old, and you were…a witch in the forest." He shook his head. "I went back into the forest a hundred times, but I never found you."
Cassandra looked down and smoothed her gown. He had found her. Several times.
Duncan continued, "I convinced myself that you were a dream."
No, she had convinced him that she had been a dream. He had been very susceptible to hypnosis then. She hoped that did not mean he would be very susceptible to the Voice now. Cassandra looked back at Duncan and said, "How could you know? How could you know that I was Immortal, or see what you would become?"
"But you knew?"
She heard the longing in his voice, carefully hidden but still apparent to one with her training. It was the same longing she had heard in Connor's voice, the need to know where he came from, the desire for a home, a family. She knew that feeling herself, but there was nothing she could do to satisfy that need.
However, she could give Duncan a sense of purpose. "I knew from the moment I laid eyes on you, that you would fulfill the Prophecy." She had known from the moment Connor had placed him in her arms, an infant nestled against her heart.
Duncan snorted. "Like you said, this is the twentieth century. I left prophecies behind with the witches and the fairies."
Cassandra leaned forward on the hood and said earnestly, "Duncan, listen to me." He must believe her. She did not know how long it would be until Roland found them. "The Prophecy tells of a Highland child, born on the Winter Solstice, who has gone through Darkness into Light, and survives to challenge the Voice of Death."
Duncan moved away from her. He knew what the Darkness was. He swung his legs off the hood and walked away from the car, taking refuge in sarcasm. "Really? And is this before or after I slay the dragon?"
"Duncan, this is real," she insisted, getting off the car and following him. "I've waited centuries for the time to be right." She had waited millennia.
He turned to look at her, remembering her words from the night before. "And is this Roland part of the Prophecy?"
Cassandra stood in front of him and looked into his eyes. He must believe her. "Yes."
"He's right behind you."
She went cold at his words. How did Duncan know that Roland had followed her through the centuries? "He always is," she admitted.
Suddenly she froze, careful to keep the fear from showing on her face as she felt that familiar prickling feeling at the back of her neck as an Immortal approached. She didn't want Duncan to see how much Roland frightened her. And it was Roland. Of course, it was Roland. Three thousand years of waiting and only a few hours to prepare Duncan. It was not enough time. She lifted her hands to her cheeks in the half-forgotten gesture of clairvoyance and said softly, "It's him."
Duncan did not listen to her when she had told him they must leave the shore immediately to escape from Roland. She watched in despair as Duncan went to confront him. For once, Roland had not even spared her a glance; he was completely focused on Duncan.
She could not hear their words, but she could see that Roland was toying with Duncan, enjoying his control over him, relishing his power. And when Roland raised his sword for the final blow that would have sliced Duncan's head from his shoulders, Cassandra screamed. It was a scream of power, of pain, a scream that reverberated within the skull and shattered the concentration and the will. Roland was especially vulnerable since he had been trained in listening. He stepped back, shaken, and Duncan fell from the cliff. Cassandra went to Duncan at the base of the cliff and hurried him away, followed by Roland's malevolent stare.
Back at the loft above the dojo, Duncan recovered enough to demand some answers. "What was that back there? What was he using?" He straightened up from the chair he was leaning on. "And don't tell me it's magic!"
"Call it what you like! The power of suggestion…!" She spoke more softly, remembering, "Or a trick, learned over a thousand years." It hadn't taken a thousand years to learn it, but Roland had much more than a thousand years to practice it.
"And is this trick something you taught him?"
"Roland was my student," she admitted. Duncan turned away from her in disgust and went to pour himself a drink. She could not bring herself to tell him anymore. It had been hard enough to tell Connor.
She spoke quickly, trying to reach out to him before he left her completely. "It was ages ago. Once he realized I had nothing left to teach him, he tried to kill me." That was true, in a way. Roland had known nothing about immortality and had thought she had nothing to give him. Except her money. And her body. And her life.
"I was stronger than him then." She had not really been stronger; she had run away. "I'm not anymore."
But that didn't matter now. Only the Prophecy mattered. She walked over to the liquor cabinet and took Duncan's arm. "It's the Prophecy, Duncan! You're the only one who can stop him!"
He looked at her incredulously. "You still believe that?"
"So far, it's all come true." All her visions came true, but not always the way she thought they would.
But he was interested in something else. "If you knew all that, why didn't you warn me? If you saw my future, did you see the life I'd lead?" He turned away from her, but his pain was clear in his voice and in the way he stood. "Did you see my father disown me?"
Cassandra had not seen that in her visions, but she had been there to hear Ould Margaret's words: "If you banish me thus, Ian MacLeod, I tell you now that the day will come when you will banish that…that changeling. And it will break your heart to do it, just as you are breaking my heart now." She saw that it had broken Duncan's heart as well, but there was nothing she could do.
He could not stand still with his anger and his pain. Duncan walked over behind the couch and took a large swallow of his drink. "Did you see Tessa die for a chunk of change?"
Cassandra had not seen that either, but she must stop him from dwelling on the past. "It's not that simple. I wish it were."
"No?" he demanded.
He had no idea what it was like. She stood next to him again and tried to explain. "I see only glimpses, only fragments, never the whole."
Duncan stared into her eyes and said very quietly, his voice still rough with unshed tears, "Do you see my death?"
"I see death, Duncan." She saw death all too frequently, in the flames, in her dreams, in her memories, in her visions, in her life. And she saw Death, too.
"Whose?"
"I don't know." That was the truth. There was a quickening coming soon; she had seen the rippling lightning and heard the tortured screams as a man stood within the burning outline of the triple crescents of the Goddess. But the figure was in darkness, and she could not see his face.
Moments later, Roland came in search of them again, and Cassandra was forced to use the Voice to get Duncan to safety at a cemetery. He did not like that. He did not like that at all.
"I don't like being controlled," Duncan told her angrily. "Not by you, not by Roland, not by anyone!" Duncan stopped at the bottom of the steps and refused to go with her.
Cassandra turned to face him, feeling a little more comfortable now that they were on Holy Ground at the cemetery. "What other choice was there? He would have killed you."
"Maybe not."
How could he be so blind? Connor had said Duncan was stubborn, but this was ridiculous. "Duncan, you felt his power," she said urgently.
"Power or no power, this is Holy Ground." Duncan walked up the steps and sat down on the stone wall. "He can't harm us here."
Cassandra took a deep breath and controlled her impatience. There was so little time to convince him. "And none of us can avoid our fate."
He only looked at her then, still uneasy with the entire idea of an ancient prophecy.
She repeated it for him, to make him see the inevitability. "An evil one will come, to vanquish all before him. Only a Highland Child, born on the Winter Solstice, who has seen both Darkness and Light can stop him. A child, and a man." She could tell that Duncan had no patience with ancient words. A battle was coming, and he wanted to be prepared.
"Teach me like you taught him," he demanded.
She recoiled from him, shaking. "I can't!" She would never teach another Immortal the Voice. But she would not tell him that, and he needed to hear a reason. "I can't. With Roland the gift was always there."
"Then what?" His voice was edged with desperation. "What do I do?"
"Use the Prophecy." The answer must be in there. It must. "If you're the man, then who's the child?" She put her hands on either side of his face and stared into his eyes, humming almost inaudibly, putting him under a trance again as she had done in Donan Woods.
It lasted only seconds, then he opened his eyes and blinked. "Did you do that?" he asked.
"I helped," she said quickly, dismissing it. "What happened? What did you see?" she asked eagerly.
"Me. As a child."
She felt a surge of excitement and grasped his hands. "The child, and the man." Connor had said that Duncan listened only to himself. He certainly hadn't listened much to her. "It's the Prophecy!"
But then policemen under Roland's control found them before they could discuss it anymore, and Duncan was forced to run. She was alone again, waiting.
Cassandra reached out and touched the gravestone near her, the stone cool and rough under her hand. It was a simple rectangle, engraved with a five-petalled rose in one corner and a cross in the other. The white marble was only slightly tinged with green and gray lichen and bore the simple legend "Brigit Mary Mahan 1925 - 1988." Another Brigit, Cassandra thought, remembering the other witch of Donan Woods. She traced the letters of the name. Perhaps it was a good omen. Or perhaps not.
She moved from the gravestone and sat down with her back against the willow tree, feeling the reassuring roughness of the bark supporting her. The tree was an old one for an American city, perhaps as old as Duncan. It must have escaped the axes of the early settlers. Though she appreciated many things about the last few centuries, she missed the trees and the forests that had been devastated in the name of progress. There were so few of the ancient trees left. There was so little of anything left.
Cassandra closed her eyes and listened to the light rustle of the leaves above her, the sounds of the birds nearby. She felt a small tickling on her hand and opened her eyes. A spider had swung down from a thread suspended on the branch above her. She watched as it crawled across the back of her hand, and thought with wonder of the vastly complicated interweaving of life that this one tree supported. There were beetles under the bark, and the nymphs of cicadas among the roots, squirrels and birds nesting in the branches, fungi in the ground, insects burrowing in the willow, and countless other creatures who lived and thrived and competed and died, all on this one tree. There was beauty and death and life and hope.
A squirrel chittered at her from a branch, and Cassandra opened her eyes. There was a pile of acorns near her, perhaps collected from one of the nearby oaks and left by a child. Cassandra tossed an acorn away from her. It took the squirrel several moments to decide it was safe to retrieve the nut.
A cheerful whistle from the tree branch in front of her made her glance up. Perhaps she not completely alone, she thought, looking at the robin, remembering the squirrel and the spider and the ants. They were still here. She looked down and saw that the ants had dragged the butterfly wing to one of their holes. She had been right; the wing did not fit.
But the ants had tried, hadn't they? And she could try, too. The vision of the child had worked once; maybe it could work again. She took several deep breaths and centered herself, feeling the earth below and the sky above, the presence of the tree nearby. She closed her eyes and thought of Duncan, thought of him then and now, thought of the child and the man. She thought of him as an infant in her arms, soft and warm against her heart. She thought of him then, the child, his face eager and ablaze as he spoke of becoming the chieftain of his clan, his smile of sunshine. She thought of him now, the man, a man whose eyes showed the darkness within, the sunshine shadowed as she had foreseen.
But still he was a champion, a white knight, a hero. Duncan had moved through the Darkness and into the Light. He was the fulfillment of the Prophecy. He would challenge the Voice of Death and win. Good must always triumph over Evil.
"Hello, witch."
Cassandra's eyes flew open in shock, and she scrambled to her feet. She knew that voice. She had heard it in her dreams, in her nightmares, over and over again for the past three thousand years. But this was no dream. He was here. Roland had found her again.
Continued in Chapter 2
