The echo of a scream was ringing in Methos' ears. He sprang up in bed and looked around and saw that he'd fallen asleep with his lights on again. Well why not? he asked himself, he'd already spent over a million and a half nights of his life plunged into complete darkness, now that he could see what he was falling asleep to, he liked to take advantage of the opportunity.
But what was the noise he had heard? Had it been real, or was he dreaming? What time was it? It was still dark outside but anymore that didn't account for much. He found the clock and saw it was early in the morning; very early, 4:30 A.M.
Part of him was convinced he had only been dreaming, but he didn't want to take the chance. He got up, dressed and headed out into the hall to see what was going on. Caspian and Silas's rooms were still dark, but a crack of light shone under Kronos's door. Already Methos was regretting what he might find, but he turned the knob and went in. The first thing he saw was his brother's back. Kronos turned around and saw Methos and asked him, "What are you doing in here?"
Methos didn't answer him, he looked past Kronos to the bed and saw the girl in it, covered only in a sheet, and she was asleep, or unconscious, he didn't know which.
"Again?" Methos asked as he turned around to face Kronos, "You are relentless, you know that?"
Kronos wasn't in the mood. With an annoyed look on his face, he asked his brother, "Why don't you shut up and take a closer look?"
The two brothers went over to the bed and Kronos pulled back the sheet. The girl was rolled on her side and curled in a ball. Kronos rolled her over onto her back and Methos saw what Kronos was talking about. His eyes opened as wide as they could and he felt his bottom jaw separating oh so slightly from his top.
The autopsy scars on the girl's chest and abdomen were gone. All that remained was a faint trace of new pink skin that spanned the Y mark of her body.
"How?" was the only word Methos could think of.
"One of my more successful experiments, dear brother," Kronos answered with a knowing smirk on his face, "For years I've been trying to come up with an acidic solution that will eat away damaged skin but leave the healthy skin intact as well as everything else," he pointed to his own scar, "Photography becoming a worldwide sensation a century ago has increased my need to get rid of this so I can fade into the background as easily as you and the others do, as you can imagine, that hasn't been so easy for the last few decades."
That was something Kronos had never really brought up with him. He'd made a few passing comments over the centuries about if he could get rid of his scar, but Methos didn't know, though he had suspected that Kronos had thought that deeply about the matter. He certainly didn't know, though knowing Kronos, he shouldn't have been surprised by it, that Kronos was working on a chemical solution to that little annoyance.
The first thing that came to Methos's mind that he wanted to say was, 'I don't know, I'm not sure I'd like you so much without the scar', more of his usual sarcastic repartee, but he couldn't, his attention was still on this girl and seeing that large, gaping, fresh, infected incision gone.
"That's what you were doing the other night?" Methos asked him, "Preparing for this?"
"Just making sure that there weren't any other areas to cover," Kronos replied, "As hard as it is to conceive, I wanted to make sure that she didn't have something even worse that I could try it on."
"And it worked," Methos was still astonished by the results.
"Not without its downside though," Kronos told him, "Apparently it's still quite painful to endure…understandable though, we're all familiar with what it's like to have acid eating away at your flesh piece by piece like a swarm of termites in a large oak."
Methos was starting to get the picture, "And you didn't bother putting her under before you did it, did you?"
"Wouldn't be much point in that as this is still an experiment," Kronos insisted, "I wanted to see just want kind of reaction she would give me."
"And?" Methos asked.
"Were she not tied to the bed during the procedure, she probably would've destroyed everything in the room," he answered.
Methos placed his hand on the girl's cheek and saw she didn't react to the touch. "What's wrong with her now?"
"Nothing, she's sedated now," Kronos answered.
"You would've made a horrible dentist," Methos commented with a snort.
"Yes, but not a bad butcher," Kronos responded, "Unfortunately, I'm going to have to make a new batch of this stuff to try on myself, it took the whole bottle to fix her."
Fix her? Methos shook his head when he heard that, no, Kronos might have been able to repair the exterior damage, but interior, that was always the damage beyond salvaging, and they all should've known that.
It was several more hours before the girl finally woke up and when she did, and she saw what had happened to her, she spent several minutes standing in front of the mirror looking at her new skin.
"Well," Kronos remarked from where they sat on the other side of the room, watching her, "It's cheap entertainment but it's still one hell of a view."
Methos tried to look away but found he couldn't. He was as amazed with what he saw and the girl was too. He tried to laugh it off and repeat his line of Kronos being an old pervert, but found it difficult because he was also seeing the same things that his brother did. How long had it been? It didn't matter, he wouldn't…he knew there had been some truth in Caspian's smartass remark the other day, but he didn't get to be 5,000 years old by lack of willpower. He struggled to remind himself that in his days as a doctor, he never allowed himself to get involved with a patient, no matter what, and now things weren't much different.
The girl caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror and she turned to look back at him. He tried not to make eye contact with her. There was something about those eyes, and that face, he would swear he had seen that face 100 times before, and every time, those women, all from different points in time and all from different walks of life; and every one of them, when put in a compromising situation such as this one was now, all of them looked at him with those haunting eyes that just said they'd rather crawl under a rock and die. Not this one however, Methos could tell just by looking at her that she was too far gone for that. Her eyes said as much, it wasn't the exact same as he had seen before, every time before, those eyes had something in them that was missing now, what was it? Some trace left of their innocence? Their dignity? Something that had stayed preserved in them up until this point, but Methos could tell just by looking at this girl that she possessed none of those traits and clearly had lost them a long time ago. All the same, she turned away from the mirror and surprised him by grabbing the sheet off the bed and wrapping it around herself.
"Looks like the show's over," Methos said to his brother.
The girl went around to the other side of the bed and started picking up some of Kronos' clothes to change into. Without unwrapping the sheet, she stepped into a pair of his jeans and slipped into one of his T-shirts before removing the sheet and discarding it on the bed. As she picked up Kronos' jacket, she felt something hit her in the back of the head and she fell to the ground screaming. Kronos yanked the leather jacket out of her hand, saying only, "Give me that."
"Possessive much?" Methos asked as he walked up behind his brother, "Though that reminds me of something I thought I'd bring up with you."
Kronos turned back to him, "What?"
Methos pulled his brother close to him and said into his ear what he was thinking. Kronos looked at his brother as he spoke, then moved one eye over to look back at the girl as he considered what his brother was saying.
"I suppose you're right, but how do you propose to do that?" Kronos asked.
Methos reached into his pocket and pulled out a measuring tape. Kronos glared at him and sarcastically remarked, "You just think of everything, don't you?"
"I try," Methos answered.
The girl got up as the two men approached her again. Kronos grabbed her from behind and wrestled her out of the shirt and locked his arms around her chest in an attempt to hold her still, but she struggled and screamed and when he lifted her off her feet, she swung her legs out and kicked Methos. What followed was a half hour long wrestling match between the three people and nobody came out of it the winner.
"Well that sucked," Methos said as they left his room.
"Anymore bright ideas, genius?" Kronos asked.
"Yeah, I say we just get her some clothes and we'll worry about size later," Methos answered.
Kronos let out a humorless snort of a laugh and murmured, "That should be interesting."
"Of course, for some obvious reasons I think it'd be better if I took her into town with me," Methos said.
"And what if she tries to run off again?" Kronos asked.
"Do you really think she would?" Methos asked.
"I just thought of something…did you notice that this morning she wasn't hobbling around the room?" Kronos asked him, "I hadn't noticed it at the time."
"Neither did I," Methos realized, but he didn't seem put off on the idea, "I'll just keep a close eye on her." He turned to look back and added, "Maybe I'll take Caspian with me, just to make sure."
"Oh sure, nothing could go wrong that way," Kronos scoffed.
Kronos spent the remainder of the morning and part of the afternoon down in the basement working on a new bottle of his acid and hoping to have as much success with it as the last batch. Around 2 o' clock he heard a lot of noise upstairs and assumed it meant that Methos and Caspian were back with the girl and trying to put her in some clothes. This was an event he had to see for himself; he would get back to his work later. He went upstairs to see what all the noise was about, and upon entering the living room he saw that his two brothers had managed to wrestle the girl into a pair of jeans and a bra, but that seemed to be all the more progress they had made so far.
"Well now," Kronos cynically said with a mischievous look in his eyes, "That's attractive."
"Ha ha," Methos dryly replied, "Very funny."
Looking over the mess of clothes that were scattered and tossed all over the room, Kronos picked up one shirt and saw it was so low cut it would only come up enough to cover the bottom half of the bra she wore. "Don't tell me, let me guess," he said to Methos, "You thought of this all by yourself."
It was clear from the look on Methos' face that he wasn't in the mood for jokes. His only response to his brother was, "I don't want to talk about it."
"Certainly," Kronos remarked, glaring at the girl, "This picture alone is worth a thousand words easily."
Of course the girl said nothing but she closed her eyes and scrunched her face up into a mock smile like a cat before opening her eyes and restoring her face to its usual sour disposition.
"Where did you take her?" Kronos asked.
"A small thrift shop where there are no questions asked and no cameras to pick up anyone's picture," Methos answered, then he added directly into Kronos' ear, "You know, Kronos, I've been thinking it over and I think it would be a good idea if she spent the night with Caspian tonight."
Kronos looked at him and only smirked and said, "I like the way you think, brother."
Kronos and Methos may have been pleased with Methos' idea, but Caspian was not. Bright and early the next morning he stormed into Methos' room and looked ready to kill him. Methos had left the lights on through the night again and had been up for a few minutes already when Caspian came barging in.
"Sleep well?" Methos asked, feigning innocence.
"I'm going to kill you," Caspian told him, "You knew that thing bites in her sleep, didn't you?"
"That's right," Methos answered with a small laugh, "Payback's a bitch, isn't it?"
Caspian growled at Methos and was about to choke him when he was hit on the head with something heavy. Methos watched as Caspian fell down and saw the girl was standing behind him, carrying a large and heavy candle holder. Methos laughed and then he saw that the girl, who had staggered into the room like a zombie, wasn't even awake. Caspian hadn't been knocked out by the blow but he was dazed momentarily, Methos grabbed him and helped him to his feet just as the girl picked up a bronze paperweight off of Methos' dresser and bashed Caspian in the head with it and he fell down again.
"She's more dangerous asleep than she is awake," Methos said as he helped Caspian up again.
"Oh yeah? Well I'm going to fix that," Caspian said as he went over to the girl and punched her in the face. She fell back and hit the floor and woke up and saw the two men standing over her.
Both men got on either side of her, grabbed her arms, pulled her up and took her downstairs and dropped her in one of the chairs at the kitchen table. The girl laid her head down on the table and went back to sleep.
"Another day and no daylight to show for it," Methos said as he looked out the window at the gray surroundings, "Sometimes I wonder if the sun will ever come out again."
"Not that it would make much difference for you," Caspian told him.
Methos turned and looked at him, "What's that supposed to mean?"
"I could never figure out how a person could spend 2,000 years in the desert, burning in the sun every damn day, and never change colors," Caspian said to him, "I don't suppose you'd care to explain that one."
"You're one to talk," Methos replied, "If your eyes were a different color you could pass perfectly as an albino alligator."
The two were yelling at each other again and about to knock their heads together; all of which their guest at the table was completely oblivious to. She was still at the table, albeit awake then, when Caspian returned a few hours later and sorted through a junk drawer under the sink, apparently looking for something. The others could be heard in a room close by, but nobody was paying any attention to the girl as she got up from the table and staggered over to the oven and reached for the knife rack over the oven and pulled out a steak knife with a particularly sharp blade; then, concealing the knife, she crept up behind Caspian who was still standing with his back to her.
In the living room, Methos and Kronos were sorting through a box of groceries Silas had brought up from in town; also in the box was the town's daily newspaper, all smashed and buried under everything else. Methos straightened up the pages of the paper and turned it up and over to find the front page, and when he did, all the blood ran out of his face.
"Oh shit," was all he could say.
"What is it?" Kronos asked.
Methos held the paper out to him like he was worried of catching something off of it, "Look at this."
Kronos took the paper and saw what his brother had seen, and while his response wasn't the same, he too became a slight shade paler.
On the front page of the newspaper was a picture of the girl, her hair was longer and she looked ratty, but it was the same girl, no mistake about it, and under her picture was the headline POLICE SEARCH FOR ESCAPED KILLER, and below that was an article explaining that the police were in pursuit of 21-year-old Francesca Giardello, who escaped from the Grayson Institute for the Criminally Insane, where she was serving a life sentence for the brutal murders of three people earlier that year.
Methos had just opened his mouth and started to speak when they both heard a scream that was horrifying even by their standards, and it was coming from the kitchen. They ran in and immediately saw the back door was open, then they saw Caspian lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood; Methos knelt down to see what was the matter and pulled the knife out of Caspian's back and came to a sickening conclusion that Caspian's spinal cord had been completely severed, and it looked like, Methos told Kronos, it was done in one move.
Kronos ran out the backdoor and jumped off the porch and looked around the yard but didn't see the girl anywhere, but he did see Silas around the front. Silas told Kronos he hadn't seen anything, and a few moments later Caspian and Methos came out to join them and Caspian told Kronos that the girl had run out of the house after stabbing him. Still, Kronos doubted she could've gotten far, so they searched the grounds, but didn't find anything.
In the middle of the hunt, Caspian got an idea and climbed up to the roof for a better look. The roof itself was another labyrinth in itself; arches and points everywhere with flat surfaces in between. He climbed over one arch and looked around but wasn't seeing anything from this viewpoint either. Then, he felt a weak quickening, he heard something, and turning around, saw the girl rising up behind another arch; she threw something at him and the heavy weight hit him and threw him off balance and he fell off the roof and made a crash landing on the front lawn.
Kronos and Methos heard the body hit the ground and ran over to see what had happened and they saw Caspian lying on the ground, then heard something from above. They looked up and saw the girl standing near the edge of the roof and she called out in a bellowing voice, "Well look at that! Christmas came early this year, my warden's dead!"
Methos looked up at the girl completely dumbstruck, Kronos grabbed him and had Methos follow him as they climbed up to the roof to corner the girl. When she saw them coming, she dashed over to another corner of the roof, but the tiles she stepped on broke off underneath her and that part of the roof became slick and she lost her balance and also fell off the roof and her body hit the ground hard. Methos and Kronos went over to the edge and looked down and saw the girl sprawled out in the yard, her arms at her sides in a mock crucifixion posture and her eyes were open wide as if in shock, and she said nothing now but only moaned in pain. Standing by the body was Silas, who looked at her, and then up at his brothers and without saying anything, wondered what the hell at happened. Methos and Kronos wondered the same thing as they turned and looked at each other.
