Hope Triumphant I: Healer (part 4)
LEGACY
Wednesday, 28 May 1997
Fort William, Scotland
The spring afternoon grew warm, and Jennifer opened the window in her office to let in the fresh air, then waved to Cassandra who was on the sidewalk below. Jennifer noted with pleasure—and some relief—that Cassandra had finally chosen colors beyond the neutral palette. Her shorts were dark blue, her blouse patterned in ocean swirls of aqua and teal. She was even wearing jewelry: dangling silver and blue earrings, and a pendant of Celtic design on a thin green ribbon around her neck. "Come on in!" Jennifer called, and Cassandra waved back and came up the porch stairs and opened the door.
"Methos came to see me last week," Cassandra announced, right at the beginning of their session, just as soon as they had settled in the chairs with their tea.
"He knows where you live?" Jennifer asked, disturbed by this new development. Cassandra was still vulnerable and uncertain of her own feelings, and if Methos had decided to pursue her...
Cassandra shrugged and put her tea cup on the end-table. "He's good at hunting." Jennifer didn't find that reassuring, but Cassandra went on to explain, "A common acquaintance had died. Methos stopped by to tell me."
"And is that all you talked about?" Jennifer asked, but she knew already it wasn't. Cassandra was too controlled and too flippant, too busy hiding her emotions. She was trying to hide herself, too, pulling her knee up to her chest, sinking deeper into the chair.
Cassandra started tapping her fingers on her knee, an intricate, obsessive pattern. "He sent me a present," Cassandra admitted, without looking up. "A book of poetry." The tapping degenerated into a steady drumming of all eight fingers together, increased in intensity and speed to become a hammering of nails into bare flesh.
"Cassandra," Jennifer called, hoping to stop the other woman's compulsive behavior. "Cassandra!" Jennifer repeated, and Cassandra finally stopped, looking up in surprise. "When did he send you the book?" Jennifer asked. Cassandra's lashes fluttered, then she looked up with a steady, apparently honest gaze. Jennifer knew better; she had seen Cassandra lie before. "When?" Jennifer repeated, adding a touch of sternness to the word.
Cassandra opened her mouth, shut it, and tried again. "Last month."
Jennifer exhaled slowly as she reached for her own tea. Too soon. Much, much too soon. Methos might have had good intentions, might have been trying to make amends, but Cassandra wasn't ready for him. And Cassandra shouldn't be hiding things, either. "Why didn't you tell me about the book?" Jennifer asked, trying to make her tone as non-accusing as possible.
It didn't work. "I don't have to tell you everything!" Cassandra snapped, uncoiling from her chair and staring down at Jennifer, like a deadly cobra poised to strike. "You don't own me!"
Jennifer didn't move and tried not to flinch, just stared back impassively and waited. She'd seen this before, too. It took Cassandra a little longer than usual, but she finally whispered an apology and sat back down, then huddled in the chair. "Why didn't you tell me about the book?" Jennifer repeated, gently this time.
"I don't know," Cassandra said slowly. "I didn't even open it for two weeks; I tried to forget about it. I was afraid—" She stopped, her chin on her knees, arms wrapped around her legs, a tight ball of misery.
"Afraid of what?" prompted Jennifer.
Cassandra shrugged, a tiny helpless movement. "Roland used to send me things. Drawings, letters, photographs, descriptions of what he'd done to me. What he was going to do again. Even presents sometimes: jewelry, pottery, clothes, my favorite kind of tea. Just little reminders that he knew where I was, and that he knew what I liked."
A standard tactic for a stalker, Jennifer knew, to terrorize their victims from afar, paralyze them with fear, and then move in for the kill.
"But after our session two weeks ago, when we talked about my being in control of my actions," Cassandra was saying, "I went home, and I opened the package, because I wanted to prove to myself that I could, that I wasn't going to be afraid anymore. And it was just a book, and I liked it." Cassandra sighed and uncurled slightly, lifted her head and let go of her knees. "And it didn't bother me anymore, so I didn't tell you last week." Jennifer nodded understandingly, but Cassandra wasn't finished yet. "And I didn't tell you that I made Methos a present in return."
Jennifer didn't like the sound of that, but Cassandra wasn't acting defiant or ashamed, so maybe it wasn't too bad. "What did you make him?" Jennifer asked, moving onto neutral ground.
"An illuminated manuscript of one of his favorite poems," she answered, with some small show of accomplishment.
"Why?" Jennifer asked, which, of course, was the real question here. Why was Cassandra being nice to Methos, and why was Methos being nice to her? A healthy reconciliation, or a return to a dominator-submissive relationship? In her present state, Cassandra wouldn't be that hard to seduce. She was lonely, vulnerable, and confused. Offer a little kindness, some flattery, a taste of love—Methos knew exactly how to do it, too. He'd proven that before. And that type of relationship could be addicting, for both people involved.
"To be his equal?" Cassandra offered, getting up from the chair and pacing in front of the bookshelves, walking between the window and the door. "To show him some of what I'd learned in the last few thousand years? Because I won't accept gifts from him with giving something in return? Because I have my pride?"
"Do you?"
"Some," Cassandra replied, stopping behind the chair. "Yes. I'm not his sorry little slave anymore, and I want him to know that."
"Good," Jennifer said warmly, responding to the first half of Cassandra's statement. "You're defining yourself as a person. That's wonderful, Cassandra! You've made a lot of progress in finding out who you are, and in taking pride in what you can do." Cassandra stood a little straighter and even smiled at the words, but Jennifer couldn't let it rest there. "Perhaps you might think about whether you illustrated the poem to make yourself happy, or to make him happy."
Cassandra considered that, tapping her fingers on the back of the chair. "Both, I think, but mostly for myself. That's all right, isn't it?" she asked, suddenly unsure.
"Yes," Jennifer agreed. "As long as it doesn't go too far."
"It won't," Cassandra said firmly. "Never again."
"Good," Jennifer said again, but it was easier to say that than to do it. "How do you feel about Methos now, Cassandra?"
Cassandra sat in the chair again and went back to sipping tea, considering. "I guess ... I'm seeing him less as a symbol of evil, or as the master I remember, but more as a whole person. A person with his own interests and worries, his own sorrows and joys. Even ... a person not all that different from me."
"And how do you feel about him?" Jennifer asked once more, for Cassandra hadn't really answered the question.
Cassandra thought some more. "I think I'd feel safest if I didn't care about him at all. But I've loved him too much and hated him too much ever to be completely indifferent. Right now ..." She sighed and set down her teacup. "He's amusing, witty, and challenging, and I enjoy that. And I understand some of what he feels and what he's been through, so I feel empathetic to him, if not sympathetic."
Jennifer tried a third time, making it explicit this time. "How do you feel about him, Cassandra? Do you think you love him?"
"I don't know," she answered slowly. "I remember loving him, and making love to him, and I remember him making love to me. In some ways, I've started to like him and to see in him the person Duncan says Methos is. Would it be so bad if I forgave Methos, if I accepted him for what he is now? Duncan wants me to."
"But is it what you want?"
"I think that I should stop living in the past and get on with my life. Right?"
"Yes," Jennifer agreed cautiously. "But that doesn't mean you have to forget everything, or forgive everything."
Cassandra's mouth twisted in a wry and bitter smile. "I don't think I'll ever be able to forget, no matter how much I want to. But forgive?" She got up again, to go to the window and toy with the leaves of the spider-plant, but not—Jennifer saw with relief—to mutilate any of the leaves, living or dead. Cassandra said, more to herself than aloud, "I've had a lot of practice forgiving people who hurt me." She let go of the plant and tossed her head to flip her hair from her face, addressing Jennifer now. "Of course, I am still angry with Methos, and I want to make him realize what he's done, and I want to make him pay."
Jennifer nodded encouragingly, waiting for Cassandra to sort her way through this maze of conflicting emotions.
Cassandra came back and sat down, on the edge of the chair this time. "Yet, in a way I like him, and ... he seems to like me. He just sent me a present, and when we talked, we shared things I don't think we've ever told anyone else. So, is that love? To care that much about another person, and to enjoy being with them, yet also to want to teach them right and wrong, to make them accept the consequences for their actions?"
"Is that how you see love?" Jennifer asked, hoping against hope this wasn't going where it seemed to be going, but letting Cassandra have her say now. Later, they would sort through it piece by piece.
Cassandra leaned forward earnestly, her earrings swaying with the movement. "When we take on Immortal students, we have to be hard taskmasters to teach them enough to survive, yet often, the bond between teacher and students lasts for centuries. Like Ramirez and his student Rubio, or like Connor and Duncan."
"Or like you and Roland?" Jennifer challenged. From what Cassandra had described, most immortal relationships weren't exactly healthy, and they certainly weren't normal. Roland's relationship with Cassandra had been sick.
"Roland loved me," Cassandra replied, with complete certainty and an air of surprise. "Yes, he was abusive and obsessive, but he loved me. I was the most important person in the world to him. There were times ..." Her eyes unfocused and her voice softened, as she spoke of things she'd never mentioned before. "He used to bring me presents: music, pretty clothes, my favorite foods. We lived on a farm once, just the two of us, and in the evenings in the summer we would watch the sunset. In the winter we would sing together in front of the fire. He could be so sweet. For months, even years at a time."
Honeymoon phase, thought Jennifer, the seductive aspect of the cycle of abuse, and all the more seductive because the love was real—a sick and twisted love, to be sure, but still love, and for many people, any love at all was better than being alone.
Cassandra went on, still staring at nothing, "I would think, 'He's getting better; I've helped him. He just needs me to be with him, the way I should have been with him when he was a child.' And when he did ... get angry, I knew, at those times, he needed me even more, so I couldn't leave him. Even though I hated what he did, I still loved him. And he was so frightened of being alone."
And now the classic "as long as he needs me" refrain from that asinine song in the musical "Oliver." Jennifer closed her eyes briefly, wondering how in the name of God such complete self-sacrifice could ever be condoned. But it had been, for century after century, in story after story, sermon after sermon, song after song. For Cassandra, who had been Roland's mother and then forced into the role of lover, the urge to help and protect him had been doubly strong.
Cassandra concluded, "He needed me, and he loved me. No one else did, not for thousands of years. No one."
Jennifer bit her lip to keep from saying: Because he murdered your husband and children in front of your eyes, killed everyone you cared about, and made it impossible for you to have any kind of relationship with anyone but him! This wasn't the time for such words; Cassandra wouldn't hear them. She had begun to weep, mourning the son who had nearly destroyed her, the son she had begged Duncan to kill, the son she had truly loved.
Jennifer handed the box of tissues to Cassandra, and she took them but said, with a tentative wave of her hand, "Would you ...?"
"Would you like to be alone?" Jennifer asked, and at Cassandra's nod, Jennifer left the room, murmuring something about the water closet down the hall. As Jennifer washed her hands at the sink, she glanced at her reflection in the mirror. More gray. She peered more closely. And more wrinkles, too. Add her bifocals and a little—all right, more than a little—extra padding around her hips and thighs, and she already looked a perfect grandmother. At least she wasn't one yet; Dorcas and Miriam weren't even out of the house, though they'd be gone in few more years. And by then, of course, Jennifer would also be older. "Fifty-four," Jennifer murmured. When Miriam turned eighteen, Jennifer would be fifty-four.
Six months ago, she hadn't minded that so much, or she hadn't thought she minded. But six months ago, she hadn't known about Immortals. But then again, to be enslaved, raped, tortured, killed, conquered, and banished over and over again, to move all the time, to go about in fear of all other Immortals, to watch family after family die, to be so alone ... even staying forever young and enjoying intermittent decades of peace and happiness didn't make up for that.
Jennifer dried her hands and considered her next move with Cassandra. Later, maybe at the next session, they could finally stop talking about Methos and the Stockholm syndrome, and get started on Roland and the cycles of battering, where the serious long-lasting damage had been done. But today, they needed to finish this business about Methos. He wasn't really that important in Cassandra's history—one year in over three thousand—but he was still alive, so Cassandra tended to focus most of her emotions on him, a convenient dumping ground.
When Jennifer came into the office, Cassandra was back at the window, tracing the leaves of the plant from stem to tip with a single finger, over and over again. She turned at Jennifer's entrance and resumed her seat. "Well," she said briskly, when Jennifer had sat down, "I guess I still haven't answered your question: 'Do I think I love Methos?'"
"I'm supposed to be the one to say that," Jennifer said, smiling, glad to see Cassandra had regained enough composure to show some humor. Cassandra smiled briefly in return, and Jennifer offered, giving Cassandra a choice, "Would you rather talk more about Roland now?"
"No," Cassandra said. "We'll get to him later, I'm sure. Let's finish Methos."
"All right," Jennifer agreed, pleased, then prompted one more time, "Do you think you love Methos?"
Instead of answering, Cassandra reached for her tea. She sipped and swallowed, then clutched the cup in both hands. "I know that I can love someone and hate someone, all at the same time. And right now, that's how I feel about Methos. I'm angry with him, but I also know that he could have killed me, and he didn't. He fought his brother to save my life. And maybe ... maybe I helped him, too, helped him turn away from his brothers in Bordeaux. Last month in Brighton, he told me that when I was with him three thousand years ago, I reminded him of what he used to be before he was a Horseman."
Jennifer swore silently in concern and dismay. For the past five months, Cassandra had consistently used the word "slave" when she spoke of her time with Methos, and now she had been "with him"? As if they had been dating, or going to a movie?
"Maybe if I'd been with him longer then," Cassandra said, "he would have changed a long time ago. Maybe I should have done more for him. If I'd only—"
"Cassandra," Jennifer broke in, "are you saying it's your fault Methos was a Horseman?"
"No," she answered slowly. "But I should have stopped him, somehow, or tried—"
"Why?" Jennifer asked, recognizing the familiar refrain once more. "Why is it your responsibility to fix him?"
Cassandra stared at her blankly, then explained as if to an idiot, "Because that's what women do."
"That's what women used to be expected to do," Jennifer replied, trying to bring Cassandra into the twentieth century. "Things have changed."
"Have they?"
"Yes," Jennifer said. "Women can work now, or be in politics, or go to school—" She stopped abruptly, for Cassandra had started to laugh.
"Oh, Jennifer," Cassandra said, still laughing. "Women have always been in politics. We're the best lobbyists in the world. A few of us, the exceptional ones, have been empresses and queens. We have held such power in our hands. And women have always worked. Always."
"Are you saying things aren't better for women now?" Jennifer asked. "Are you saying women's rights haven't given us more opportunities? My daughters can go to schools that used to be only for men. I've been to college. I'm a professional."
"Oh, yes," Cassandra admitted breezily with a wave of her hand. "In a few countries, in a small percentage of the world's population, the privileged, wealthy women have more options than they used to. But for most women in the world, nothing has changed. We still birth and rear the children, take care of the sick and the old and the dying, do all the daily chores. Women grow the food, maintain and often build the houses, feed the families, make and clean the clothes, haul the water, gather the fuel and keep the home fires burning. That hasn't changed, not at all. That's what women do."
"But women are good for more than just those chores," Jennifer protested. "We can do more than that."
"Of course, we can do more!" Cassandra snapped. "We can do it all. We can build, we can go dancing, we can kill, we can even do math. But what do you mean by 'just those chores'? Do you have any idea how complicated it is to manage a household of three hundred when that household includes a castle and a wool industry and gardens and breweries and children and animals and a fighting force of fifty men?"
"Sounds like a running a corporation," Jennifer acknowledged, hoping to get Cassandra off her rant.
"Yes, and women were the CEOs. And even on a smaller scale, running a household isn't easy. Women used to be respected for what they did, both by men and by other women. Caring and providing for others was a holy obligation and a joyful duty, not a 'chore' to be dumped on someone with less status than you. Lately, it seems people only do things for themselves. Are you saying that 'women's work' has no value? That taking care of others is not worthwhile?"
"No," Jennifer said, forcing herself to say the word calmly. She took a deep breath and tried to regain control of the conversation. "I never said that. Don't put words in my mouth, Cassandra. I meant only that women now have the opportunity to work outside the home."
"So do men," Cassandra retorted. "They didn't use to, you know. Everyone used to work 'at home,' and the status between men's work and women's work was more equal then. Now everything's based on money. You should read more history."
"You're right," Jennifer agreed instantly, allowing Cassandra this small victory, because Cassandra needed to feel like she'd won somehow, and besides, Cassandra was right. Jennifer did need to read more. She just didn't have time.
Cassandra stopped to take her own calming breath, but she wasn't finished yet. "Even when women do work outside the home, things haven't changed that much," Cassandra insisted, and when Jennifer opened her mouth to object, Cassandra asked swiftly, "What is your chosen profession, Jennifer?"
Jennifer didn't answer immediately, and Cassandra smiled as she captured her prey. "You fix people, Jennifer, just like you're supposed to do. Women rear the children, keep the homes, work in the schools, the hospitals, the communities, the churches ... we civilize the men. That's what women do."
Jennifer leaned back in her chair with a sigh. That was indeed what many women did, and had done throughout the ages, and still did, but it was long past the time for both men and women to start civilizing themselves. And long past time to get back to Methos. "All right, most women usually try to help other people," Jennifer agreed. "And that's a good thing, and it would be even better if men did it, too. But sometimes, women take on too much. We can't possibly fix everything, and we shouldn't blame ourselves for that. You couldn't have stopped Methos from being a Horseman, Cassandra. You can't change someone who doesn't want to change. Each person has to take responsibility for themselves."
"Methos changed me," she retorted. "And you told me earlier that it wasn't my fault. Well?" she demanded. "Was it my fault? Did I want him to 'tame' me?"
"No," Jennifer said firmly. "To do that to you, he had to take away your freedom—and that took away your responsibility, too." She tried to make the matter clear. "You're right, Cassandra, you can change someone against their will, but to do that to another person ... it makes you as bad as he was."
"But he did start to care about me," Cassandra insisted, still clinging to that tattered scrap of affection. "All those stories and books about men being changed by the love of a good woman—are they all lies? And Methos cares about me now, so isn't it better for me to realize that? Especially if, this time, I'm the one in control?"
"Do you want to be like Methos was?" Jennifer challenged. "To be like Roland? Controlling people with pain?"
"No!" Cassandra replied. "I meant—I want to be in control of myself, and in control of what I feel. And isn't it better for me to love more than I hate?"
Maybe not right now, Jennifer considered saying, but decided against it. It seemed they wouldn't be ready to move on to Roland so quickly after all. "Cassandra, I think you need to be very clear on what hate is, and on what love is—healthy love, not obsessive love—before you can come to any decision about Methos."
"I know the difference between love and hate," Cassandra said earnestly. "I know Roland hated me, even as he loved me. I can see that. And I know he was insane and that he hurt many people, not just me, but most of the time when I was with him, he wasn't like that."
"You've never spoken of those times before."
"I didn't want to remember the good things. I needed to hate him, completely, before I could ask Duncan to kill him. I was terrified that Roland would find me, yes, because I knew the first few months would be—" She stopped, her knuckles going white as her fingers tightened on the cup.
"Like your first weeks with Methos," Jennifer supplied. A living—and dying—hell. Torture, rape, humiliation, sleep deprivation, beatings, being locked for days into a box too small to stand in, enforced prostitution, starvation, murder, strangling—the list went on and on, over and over again.
Cassandra nodded mutely, then slowly relaxed her fingers and went on. "After Roland was sure I was ... tamed, he didn't hurt me. Just like Methos. Except, when Methos got angry, he took it out on another slave. When Roland got angry, he took it out on me. But that didn't happen very often, and even when Roland hurt me, he'd tell me that he loved me, that he wouldn't do it unless he cared, and that he was just trying to make me a better person. Methos told me that, too. I've heard many parents tell their children the same thing during a spanking, and I know they love them."
Cassandra leaned forward, a school-child sure of her lesson and eager to please, "So, isn't that love?"
Continued in "The Watchers"