Methos went back over to the bed and grabbed Crystal's arms and started to pull her up as he said, "Come on, Crystal, let's get out of here."
"We can't leave yet," she replied as she pushed him away, "Connor hasn't come back with our stuff."
"Well as soon as he gets here, let's go," Methos said.
"What's the rush?" she asked, "You have a prior engagement?"
"No…" he said as he sat down on the edge of the bed, "I just thought you'd want to get back to your home and relax there."
"Methos, after what just happened, I'm in no mood to walk all the way back there," Crystal told him, "And I know you're not either."
Methos moved to stand up but he fell right back down.
"See?"
"Richie," Amanda turned to him, "You're not staying here tonight, are you?"
"No."
"Alright then," she said, "Duncan and I can go stay the night in a hotel and you two can stay here."
"What?" Methos and his sister asked.
"What!?" Duncan repeated.
"Oh come on, Duncan, four of us in this place? That's going to be crowded even by the best of standards," Amanda said, "We'll go and check into a hotel somewhere, and Methos and Crystal can stay here for the night and relax."
Duncan was wondering why he was the only person who didn't have a say at what was going on in his own home, when they felt another Immortal approaching and heard the elevator start up.
"That must be Connor," Crystal said as she sat up in the bed.
Connor pushed the grate up on the lift and stepped into the loft carrying a black trash bag with him, and in a halfway decent impression of Ricky Ricardo, he went over to Duncan and stated, "Lucy, I'm home."
"Hey Connor, did you bring the stuff I asked for?" Crystal wanted to know.
"I think so," Connor reached into the bag and started pulling things out and dropping them on the bed beside her, "I got you a change of clothes…I went back and found your sword, and your gun…oh yeah, and I got this."
He took out of the bag, the same teddy bear that she'd taken with her to the hospital. Richie saw it and snickered.
"That thing was heavy," Connor said, "What'd they stuff it with?"
"I don't suppose you picked up my cleaning kit," Crystal said.
"Uh no I didn't," Connor said, "Sorry, I couldn't find it."
"Oh well," she picked up the gun, "Richie, will you see if there's some Kleenex around here or something?"
"Sure."
Duncan noticed Crystal's sword and he reached for it. "Do you mind?" he asked.
"Yes I mind very much," Crystal responded.
Duncan didn't seem to pay her much mind and he picked the sword up and looked it over. "What is this, Celtic?"
"It doesn't matter what it is, Highlander," Crystal told him, "All that matters is that it does what it's supposed to."
"Not very long." It was then that Duncan realized Crystal had no coat or jacket and hadn't worn one when she was brought in. "Where do you keep it?"
"You don't want to know," Methos told him.
Richie came back with a box of Kleenexes, Crystal took out several and started rubbing down the muzzle of her gun.
"What're you doing that for?" Richie asked.
"This is a very messy model, I can't properly clean it at the moment, so I'll just get off what I can now, and I'll do the rest when I get home," she explained.
After blackening a couple of tissues, she tossed them aside and picked up her teddy bear. She turned it upside down and pulled at the center, opening two Velcro flaps. Reaching in, she pulled out a new, fully loaded magazine for the gun. She removed the old one, put the new one in and then covered the gun with the Kleenex so it wouldn't dirty the interior of the stuffed animal. Then she put the gun back in the bear and closed it back up.
"So that's why it felt so heavy when you hit me with it," Methos noted.
"Connor, thanks for picking up everything," she said to him, "I think we're going to stay here for a while so if you've got somewhere else to be…"
Connor nodded his head in understanding, "I'll see you two around." Turning to head back for the elevator, he met with Duncan's gaze and added, "I'll see you too, cousin."
"Yeah…bye."
"That's neat," Richie said to Crystal, "Where'd you get that thing from?"
"Kronos gave it to me," she answered.
"He did?"
"Oh sure…he thought I could get some use out of it…and it's been very helpful to have around," she told him. "See, Kronos always felt bad that he wasn't able to come around more often than he did, so every time he came, he always brought me something…which would account for the 30-some odd teddy bears that are stacked up in my room."
"Are they all like that?" Richie asked.
"Oh no, they're all different…he got me this other one that I keep a nice, big, sharp knife in…for obvious reasons that one has to open from the bottom too…but then there's another that opens from the back and I keep a smaller gun in that one," Crystal said, "Then I got another that wears a little satchel around his neck…" she looked up at Richie and grinned as she told him, "Got that zombie potion from Haiti in it…find somebody you don't like, you put in their food and then you can bury them. Hmmmm…" she craned her neck around and looked over at Duncan after she said that.
"Does that stuff work on Immortals?" Richie asked.
"I never tried it but I would imagine so…the brain's something that as far as we know, does not heal the way the rest of our bodies do…the mind can be destroyed whether you die tomorrow or live forever. That's why a lot of Immortals go crazy."
"I'm not sure I like the idea of going away and leaving these two here," Duncan said.
"Oh come on, MacLeod, it'll be fun," Amanda told him.
"I don't know."
"Why not?" Amanda asked.
"I don't know…I just don't think it's a good idea," he told her.
"Well what're we going to do?" Amanda asked, "They take the bed, one of us gets the couch and the other sleeps on the floor? Can you imagine trying to sleep under those conditions until the sun comes out tomorrow?"
Duncan shook his head and said again, "I don't know."
"Well you can not know all you want," Amanda said, "But we're going."
Methos looked at the clock and saw it was going on eight o' clock. Crystal had gotten out of bed a while ago and hadn't come back since, but he could hear her scavenging through all the drawers and everything in the loft.
"What are you doing?" he asked her.
"I'm seeing what MacLeod keeps in this dump he calls a home," Crystal told him, "Not much, and what there is…ugly."
Methos smirked and responded, "I know."
"I just can't figure out how it is that Kronos lost his head to that…that…thing, it's inconceivable."
"I know," Methos told her, "But I was there, I saw it happen."
"How could Kronos lose to that thing? MacLeod is only 400 years old, that's hardly a worthy opponent, does he cheat?"
"Only when it suits him," Methos said, "But then again don't we all?"
"What about when he killed Kronos?" Crystal asked as she got back in the bed.
Methos shook his head, "No."
Without another word, she lay down and stared at the ceiling, appearing to be lost in a deep thought.
"Was it worth it?" she asked.
Methos turned and looked at her, "What?"
"All of it," she answered, "All the time we lost…" she sat up in bed and looked him dead in the eyes, "All the years that I spent telling him I didn't know where you were, or if you were even still alive. And telling you where Kronos was off to next, so you knew not to go there. Do you know how sick I got of doing that for all those years?"
Methos opened his mouth to speak but Crystal cut him off. "Methos, I never let Kronos hurt you once in all the years the three of us were together, do you really think I would've let him now?"
"I know you wouldn't let him."
"The three of us could've been together again these last 900 years, it didn't have to come to this, Methos, it didn't have to end like this!"
"I know that!" Methos responded, "Don't you think I know that? I know I'm responsible for his death, I'm going to live with that for the rest of my life!"
The two turned their backs on one another and didn't say another word. Since Kronos' death, tension had been high between the two, but for different reasons.
"Did I ever tell you," Crystal started to say, "About the time he came out to see me at a boarding house I was living in during the 30's?"
"I don't think so," Methos replied.
"It was about Christmas…I was staying at a boarding house with all sorts of loons…good people but some of them were just nutty," she started to explain.
She was the last one in the kitchen and about to join the others in the living room when she felt a Quickening. Crystal went over to the backdoor and opened it up. There stood her brother, covered in snow and carrying something under one arm. Before he could get his full greeting out, she slammed the door in his face and went back to what she was doing. Kronos opened the door and helped himself in, commenting, "Very funny."
"I thought so," she responded, "What're you doing here?"
"I came to see you," he said.
She looked at the bundle he was carrying and inquired, "Is that your luggage?"
"No," he answered, "I brought something for dinner."
"We already have a turkey in the oven, but I suppose we can fit a ham in as well," Crystal said as she pulled down the oven door, "Hop in."
"Oh Miss Dunaway," the landlady of the house, a bubbly woman with a voice like Billie Burke's, entered the kitchen and noted the third person in the room, "Well, I wasn't aware we had company."
"This is my brother, Robert," Crystal said, "He's dropped in to spend Christmas with us."
"Oh well, we're pleased to have him," the landlady said, "Won't you join us in the living room, Mr. Dunaway?"
"…Sure, why not?"
Kronos followed the two women out of the kitchen and into a large room where there sat an assortment of people which included: a young man who claimed to be a playwright who'd been working on the same play for eight years, an older, rotund man who drank all the time and talked out of the side of his mouth, a gray haired, wrinkled spinster who looked like she could remember the Civil War, and a young widow with her capricious young boy who couldn't stay out of trouble, or Kronos' lap for that matter. Every time the child got away from his mother, he went over to Kronos and kept bothering him.
Kronos grabbed the kid, turned him around and sent him off with a shove, and the child disappeared, but not for long. Shortly after, Kronos wound up with cold water being thrown on him from behind; he jumped out of his chair and turned around and saw that same damn kid holding an empty fishbowl. Everybody was waiting to see just what he was going to do, but he surprised everybody, his own sister included, when he just sat back down and acted like nothing had happened.
The hours passed and one by one everybody went upstairs to bed until it was just Crystal, Kronos and the landlady left, and the landlady was about to head up as well.
"Oh Miss Dunaway," she said before she went upstairs, "You'll take care of that thing, won't you?"
Crystal nodded, "Yes Mrs. Meriwether."
Kronos looked from the bubbling older woman to his sister and asked, "What thing?"
"I'm usually the last person up in this place so I got volunteered to finish putting everything out down here," she explained, "Give everybody a surprise for when they come down in the morning."
Crystal reached behind the couch and pulled out a large bag and took it over to the homely looking Christmas tree over in the corner of the room. Like some boob eager to try jerking away the tablecloth but leaving the flowers on the table, Crystal grabbed the bottom of the bag and with a quick flip of the wrists, out dumped a dozen wrapped packages for the tenants and a big metal truck for the boy and she placed them under the tree. She saw her brother looking at her in response to what she did and she answered simply, "Well anybody can do it the hard way."
Crystal headed into the kitchen to check on the turkey that was cooking for tomorrow. Kronos waited in the living room for her to return, but he took one step back too many and his foot met with the toy truck and he slipped and fell back. Crystal came back into the living room and found her brother lying under the Christmas tree. "Well Kronos, what are you doing down there?"
With the middle row of knuckles from his right hand about in his mouth, he grumbled, "Oh I just love sleeping under the tree, makes me feel like a gift."
Crystal laughed, "That'd be one large package with a 'return to sender' sticker on it."
Kronos growled at her and sprang to his feet and chased her around the room.
"You should've been there," Crystal told Methos.
"Wish I had been," he replied.
"It just kills me to think about all the time we wasted," Crystal said, "A thousand years we could've been together."
"I know," Methos responded.
"And if I ever catch that bastard MacLeod alone," Crystal said as she lay back with her arms folded behind her head, "I'm going to make him pay for what he did to us."
Ordinarily Methos would try and argue but he knew he couldn't. This was his sister, the only family he had left, he'd said so himself, their family had been destroyed, but Methos also knew that it wasn't just MacLeod responsible for that. He thought back to Bordeaux and he remembered his brothers…his brother. No, as close as he might have been with the other two, they were never really his family, though he'd liked to think so at the time. He thought about that…all the years he spent studying psychiatry and psychology, and he almost felt that he could examine his own head. But this part about being torn between two families, that left him dumbstruck.
The whole damn thing was confusing. When it had just been he and Kronos…or even he and Christa, back in their village all those thousands of years ago, he knew his place, he knew where he stood. Then it was the three of them, and it was different but he still knew his position in all of it. Then Kronos brought back Silas and Caspian, and Christa left, and that was when things started to fall out of balance. And then after the brothers had separated, and he had found Christa again, then he felt some stability come back into his life. But then he'd found out Kronos was alive, and the rug was pulled out from under him again. He heard the voices and tried to drown them out, but he could not. Those voices had never left him, they just shut up from time to time.
"You can't let Kronos know I'm alive."
"Why not?"
"He'll kill me if he finds out."
"Why would he do that?"
"The last time we saw each other, he said when he found me, he'd take my head."
"Why did he do that?"
"Just promise me that when you see him again, you won't tell him."
"I think you're being a fool."
"Swear."
"I don't understand it, but I'll do it."
"Methos!"
He opened his eyes and realized that Crystal had been trying to talk to him.
"What is it?"
"I'm not tired, are you?" she asked.
Methos shook his head.
"Let's get dressed and get the hell out of this place, I don't like it here," she said.
He nodded in agreement, he needed to get out too; he needed air, he felt he'd go crazy if he had to stay there much longer.
They changed their clothes, Crystal packed her things and they left the loft and the building entirely.
"Where're we going?" Methos asked.
"Well we can go back to my place," Crystal suggested.
"We could," Methos said, not hinting either way if he was in favor of the idea or not.
"Or we could go back to your place," she added.
"We could," he repeated in the same tone.
"Or we could hit the nearest bar and get blind stinking drunk," she said.
A light seemed to go on in Methos' eyes, "Bingo."
They took off running, giggling like a couple of children as they rushed across the street, just managing to avoid the oncoming traffic, and jumped onto the curb of the other side. Before they reached the door, they felt another Quickening. Looking in the glass window in the door, they saw Richie over at the bar, but he seemed to be too absorbed in his drink to notice the presence of other Immortals. They headed in and made a beeline over to him, only when they made an imperfect crash landing on the bar stools on either side of him did he notice their presence.
"Hey Richie," Crystal said, "Who died?"
"Nobody," he answered.
"Oh…still bummed about the race, huh?" she said, and slapped him on the back, "Don't worry, you'll kill them next time."
Richie said nothing and instead finished the rest of his drink.
"I thought you were going to be painting the town with Connor tonight, away from Duncan and all that," she said.
"Na, I just felt like being alone," Richie said.
"Well then you sure came to the wrong place," Methos told him.
"I'm starting to figure that out," he said.
Crystal leaned over and sniffed Richie's glass, "Watcha drinking?" she picked it up and swallowed the last few drops of it and clicked her tongue a few times before concluding, "It's cognac," though she pronounced it 'cog-knack', as Methos knew she had always done just for the hell of it.
Richie turned and looked at Methos who just smiled and offered, "Friends never let friends drink alone," he got the attention of a bartender and said, "Four beers."
"Four?" Richie looked at them again and said, "But there's only three of us here, what's the other one for?"
"It's for whoever drinks their first one the fastest," Crystal explained.
Richie looked at her and then looked at Methos and could tell that this was an old game the two knew very well.
A few hours, and several rounds later, Richie was about as high as a kite from the booze and it was starting to show in how he walked, spoke, and moved in general. Methos and Crystal on the other hand managed to stay coherent though it was obvious both were a little buzzed by what they'd consumed as well. By 3 o' clock, Methos' eyelids were getting heavy and they started to hurt, he wasn't sure how much longer he could stay awake. But he also knew Crystal wasn't in any mood to go, so he grabbed his own coat and told her he'd see her later. She barely paid enough attention to him to get out a quick 'bye' before she went back to the conversation she and Richie were having over a game of pool.
"So tell me something, Richie," she said as she watched him sharpen his cue, "You like this?"
He stopped and looked at her, "Huh?"
"This work you do, in the races," she said.
He shrugged, "I guess so."
"What do you mean you guess so?" she asked him.
"I just wonder about it," Richie said as he clunked the cue ball and made a break but sank nothing, "You know? I used to think about going to college."
"Did you?"
He shook his head.
Crystal aimed her cue and sank two balls, "How come?"
Richie hiccupped and said, "Colleges ain't made for guys like me."
"They are if you're in a fraternity," she replied, "Think about it, booze, drugs, women, oh the women, and the traditional fraternity pranks, like breaking into the girls' dorms for a panty raid. I used to be pretty good at those."
"You?" Richie asked.
"Oh sure, see I knew where all the girls kept their best panties and assisted the guys in retrieving them," she said.
"I'm guessing you weren't too popular in college," Richie told her.
"I certainly was, with the guys," she said, "Of course, ever since I got my hair cut, I've often been associated as a guy."
They gave up their game and headed back to the bar and had two more beers.
"You know, Richie, I'm not complaining about being sister to those two lunkheads, but I think I would've preferred being a brother. Though I suppose there's not much difference."
Richie choked on his beer and asked, "How do you figure that?"
"Well it's easier today…today I could be a brother because you have all the exceptions and loopholes and technicalities…you look in the dictionary today, one definition for brother says 'man', another definition says 'one like a brother', one, not man. You see?"
"I think so," he said, "But I still don't see why you'd want to be."
"I guess it's something that you would've had to have been there to get," Crystal said.
Richie took another swig of his beer and said, "Hey Crystal, were you serious about testing Harley Davidsons?"
"Oh sure," she said, "It's funny, in those times, men and women were separated in most things, but test racing motorcycles was one thing where both sexes came into play, and both were very popular with it. Of course, women usually didn't do the closed in track racing where the oil spilled out and you slipped and crashed. They had others where men and women did the off-the-road races, through the woods, around the bend, back to the starting point, took several days to get a whole race done there. Lots of fun but like I said, very messy and very dangerous, of course that was part of the allure."
"Were you good?" Richie asked.
"Certainly…I still have one, a newer model mind you, I'll have to take you out on it sometime."
Richie started laughing.
"Hey now there's an idea…I should enter the next race you're in," she said, "I could run all those other bastards right off the tracks."
He laughed harder and said, "You'd be thrown out for sure."
"So what? I'm not the one planning on winning," she said, "What's the use of living forever if you can't to make things fair in your own life?"
Richie suddenly looked down at the floor.
"What's wrong?" Crystal asked.
He looked up again and said, "That's what I thought…when I could've killed him."
"Who?"
"Uh…before I became Immortal, I was living with Mac, and his girlfriend Tessa Noel…one night this guy came up and shot Tess and me…she died…and a couple years later, I found the guy who shot her…nobody did anything with him."
"Oh? Not even that self appointed public avenger the highlander?" Crystal asked.
"He said killing the guy wouldn't bring Tessa back."
"No, but he couldn't kill anybody else," Crystal said.
"I had him in my grip, I had him hanging off the fire escape of a building, and I wanted to kill him…but I couldn't."
"Because MacLeod poisoned your mind to make you think like him," Crystal said, "He can find the time to kill my brother knowing it won't undo whatever Kronos did, but he won't get justice for his girlfriend?" she snorted and hawed, "He's got some pretty screwed up priorities."
Richie looked at her, "You don't like Mac, do you?"
"No I don't, and right now I'd like nothing more than to rip his head off with my bare hands," Crystal said, "And sometime soon, I'm going to get my chance."
When Methos woke up the next morning in his place, he saw that Crystal had never come home. He started to think back about what she said the previous night, about catching MacLeod alone and killing him, and Methos started to get worried. He picked up the phone and dialed Duncan's loft but it just rang and rang and rang. He hoped that meant that Duncan and Amanda were still at a hotel, but he had to make sure. Jumping out of bed, Methos got dressed and drove over to the dojo and went up to the loft. The door was unlocked and Methos went in to see that the bed wasn't made but other than that, nothing seemed to be out of place.
At first he felt relieved, but he knew that just meant, if nothing else, that Duncan didn't die here. He hated to think about if Crystal did kill him. Then he thought about the possibility that she might have gone to her own home last night. He picked up Duncan's phone and dialed the number of her house and it rang and rang and rang as well. Well, Methos knew where he'd be looking next. He ran down the stairs and out of the building and headed back for the house. On the ride over, a million things flashed through his mind and it felt like he'd never get there.
On the outside, the house looked normal, nothing seemed disturbed. Methos ran up to the front door and found it was unlocked too. He slowly opened the door and called in, "Crystal? Are you here?"
He felt nothing, yet. He stepped in and looked around through the dark house, not feeling anybody, and not seeing anybody. When he'd searched through the entire first floor, he started up the stairs and it was then that he could feel somebody else in the house. He called out again as he headed up to the next floor, but still got no response. When he reached the upstairs hall, he looked around at the doors, and tried to remember which one led to her room. He spotted it and went over, yes, there was somebody in there. Opening the door, quietly, slowly, Methos stuck his head in the dark room, he could see somebody in the bed. Yes, Crystal was there, but Methos felt his eyes widen at what else he saw. Richie was in bed with her!
Methos drew back and closed the door behind him, he could feel his heart pounding against his chest and a color rose in his cheeks. He couldn't believe it, his sister and that kid? It was inconceivable, it was unconscionable…okay, he admitted to himself, it wasn't that bad. All the same though, he prayed to God that MacLeod never found out about this. If he did, it stood to good reason that MacLeod would once again forget himself, and what was instead of what used to be, and try to take her head for it. And if he did that, Methos knew that Crystal would meet the threat head on, and Methos also knew, as much as it terrified him, that MacLeod would lose, and he would die.