The concept of the Highlander universe and the character of Duncan MacLeod were created by someone else. They belong to someone else. Actually, they belong to a bunch of people - Gregory Widen, Peter Davis, William Panzer, the folks at Gaumont, and those at Rysher Entertainment, as well. They do not belong to me, and I'm borrowing them without permission. Because Highlander-The Series is my favorite TV show, and because this story has been written out of love with no hope of monetary gain - I hope they'll forgive the transgression.


Move over Mary Sue - Chapter 8

"So what do you think," Dara asks as she twirls before me. The blue glass beads on the dress glitter in the harsh fluorescent light of the small dressing cubicle.

I can feel the flush spread up my face as the memory of making love with Duncan mingles with the image of Dara standing before me.

Dara narrows her eyes as she stares at me. "Hello," she says grinning, "Why do I get the feeling, you're not thinking about my dress?"

"Sorry," I say. "I haven't been getting much sleep. I guess I drifted off."

"I'll say," she says, chuckling. I hate it when she reads my mind. Luckily for me she probably stopped at the sex part and didn't chase down the rest of what I was thinking.

She turns her back to me as she rearranges the order of the dresses on the hook. "I know Duncan is terribly distracting, but you're supposed to be helping me pick out a dress, remember. And get more sleep - you need to conserve your energy with a guy like him."

She sets all but three dresses aside, the blue one which she is still wearing, the black one and the pale green one. "So what do you think?" she asks.

"I've already told you, I like the blue one, but you obviously want the black one - so get it."

"Don't you think it's sexy?" she asks, running her finger along the silver sequins to the bottom of the deep V in the back. She grins. "I can't wear a bra with it, and Mike said they will have music for dancing." She holds the dress in front of her as she waltzes in a tiny circle. "He'll have his hand on my bare back ..."

"It's a corporate function, Dara," I remind her. "Mike's on a fast track to the executive suite, remember? You have to think about the image he wants to project. The blue one is understated, classy and it will bring out the blue in your eyes."

She lifts her lip in a pseudo-snarl. "What about the green one?" she asks.

I can't help laughing. We know each other so well, yet we always try to get around it. "The green one's a red herring ... and you know it. Just like you know you should buy the blue one. You only asked me along to be the bad guy."

She perches her hands on her hips as she does a pretty fair imitation of a frown. "I really hate it when you're right," she says, then she sticks her tongue out at me. "Do you always know everything?"

She's only teasing, but something about that question sets me off. I've been holding in my bizarre thoughts and real concerns about Duncan far too long. My hands start to tremble and my knees buckle. I sink down onto the small stool in the corner. "I don't know everything," I groan, clutching my aching head. "In fact, don't know anything at all."

She puts her hand on my shoulder, and I look up. She's hunkered down in front of me, her eyes shining with concern. I remember what best friends are for, and I love her for being mine. "Hey, kiddo," she says. "What's wrong?"

I swallow to ease the fist-sized lump of pressure in my throat and fight to hold back the tears. I refuse to cry about this, even in front of my best friend. It's been gnawing at me since the other night and there's nothing I can do about it - that's the frustrating part. And it's all my own fault. I've never let a man get as far into my soul as I've let Duncan MacLeod. I've succeeded in keeping every man I've ever been involved with at a safe distance, so I don't get hurt. But the mystery of Duncan MacLeod has been so intriguing that I forgot to set up barriers to keep him out. I've let him become an integral a part of me, and if he leaves he will rip out the guts of who I am. I never wanted this to happen, but it has ... and it beginning to scare me.

I take a deep breath to find some small measure of calm. "Dara, I'm going to lose him."

"Wow," she says, standing. "He really must be something else. I've never seen you like this ... you're always so in control. Even when Danny Lockwood split ... you were over it in a week." She snaps her fingers to make her point.

Danny Lockwood was the center of my life in college. I really thought I loved him. Now, I know, I wasn't even close. His leaving hurt my pride more than anything else, but - though I never let it show - it took longer than a week to get over him. Along with that large chunk of my pride, he took a small piece of my heart as well. After that I vowed I would never again let a man get so close. Guess what ... I failed - big time.

"Thanks," I say, getting a grip on my emotions. Dara is making me angry, and I suspect that is exactly what she intended to do. It doesn't solve any problems, but I feel better ... more myself instead of this stranger, I've become. "You make me sound like an ice maiden or something."

She chuckles. "You're welcome, she says. "But you are a control freak, kiddo - always so icy cool and safe at a distance. If your best friend can't tell you that - who can?" She slips out of the dress and wriggles back into her jeans. Tapping me on the head with a hanger, she smiles. "I like the new you ... now you're human, like the rest of us. I think we need a drink."

Not a bad idea. "What are you going to do about the dress?" I ask.

She holds the blue one in her left hand and the black one in her right. "I'm taking both. If Mike gets that promotion, we'll need to celebrate," she says with a wicked little grin.

I lift one eyebrow as I take a gander at the price tags. "Better you than me ... the folks at Visa will be overjoyed." I would worry about overextending myself, but Dara won't ... and somehow she'll manage to pay the bill.

She shrugs. "I can learn to love peanut butter sandwiches. Come on - lets go get that drink."

I wanted a beer, but Dara insisted that the occasion of my fall from the summit of control required something more frivolous. In a dimly lit bar decorated with dusty fish nets and dingy cork floats, we sit sipping deadly concoctions of rum, and who knows what else - deadly concoctions hiding behind innocent paper parasols and little swords filled with fruit. The sign above the door read, Pirate Pete's Paradise Cove - just the place to fritter away a rainy afternoon.

It's the kind of place, I'd go around the block to avoid, but it's the kind of place that appeals to Dara's bizarre sense of whimsy. She's still giggling over the stuffed parrot the bartender wears perched on his shoulder ... that and the eye patch. She really loves the eye patch.

"So how many more of these do we have to drink before you tell me why you think you're going to lose Duncan?"

A lot more. I let my breath out in sigh. "It's a long complicated story," I say to put her off, but I know it won't work.

I sketch out the framework, but I don't fill in the details. I can't because I know what she will say and I don't want to accept the reality that what she will advise is the only safe course.

Dara sees things in black and white. She categorizes quickly ... good and bad ... right and wrong - and makes her decisions accordingly. I wrestle with shades of grey. I analyze the nuances and the effects of circumstances. And I'm never quite sure I've made the right decision. It's probably why I am - as she says - a control freak. If I maintain a safe distance and stay in control, I can protect myself from the results of a wrong decision. I can prevent myself from getting into the kind of situation I now find myself in.

There is no way can I tell Dara that I think Duncan has killed someone. She will tell me to get away - as far away as I can. She will tell me to cut my losses and run. And she would be right, but I can't leave him. If he leaves me, I will have to deal with it ... somehow I will have to find the strength to put my life back together. But I can't leave him ... no matter what has happened ... I just can't.

I'm not even sure he has killed someone, but strong instincts tell me it is so.

"I took care of it," is what he said when I asked about the man I found waiting for me when I came home from work last week. "He won't be coming back to bother you."

As luck would have it, my car was in the shop for repairs, and Duncan drove me home or I don't know what would have happened. Like the gallant knight he perceives himself to be, he dropped me off at the lobby entrance, then went around to park the car. He actually thinks he's doing me a favor by saving me the small effort it takes to come up from the garage. At times, I find his anachronistic chivalry endearing, but at other times it's simply a pain in the butt.

Like many other things I've given up arguing with him about it. Arguing takes too much energy ... energy I can use for other things - like making love, which is what I was thinking about as I slipped my key into the lock.

When I walked into the apartment, I nearly jumped out of my skin. A man sat on my sofa, thumbing through a magazine as serenely as though he was expected for tea.

"Well, hello there," he said, standing.

He was about as tall as Duncan - maybe taller - with sandy blonde hair, a winning smile and the coldest, most predatory blue eyes I've ever seen. "W-who are you?" I demanded with as stern a voice as I could muster around the stammer.

I dropped my briefcase and fumbled in my purse for the can of mace, I remembered I have somewhere in its oversized depths. "How did you get into my apartment?"

"I'm a friend of Duncan's," he said, answering my first question - ignoring the second. "A very old friend. Nice place you've got here."

No way I'm buying that story - it just doesn't sit right. The situation was so bizarre, I felt a fit of hysterical giggles coming on, but terror held them in check as my fingers found the comforting shape of the aluminum cylinder. I extended my arm to its full length. My finger trembled on the mace can nozzle. "Don't come any closer."

The intruder laughed - an arctic blast of mind-numbing sound. "Do you think you can stop me with that?" he said stepping toward me.

"Maybe not," I said, "but I can slow you down until--"

The sound of Duncan's key in the lock, drowned me in a sea of relief. When he opened the door, his eyes grew wide as he stared at me for a very long second, then he threw the door back and flew into the room. "What are you doing here, Brock?"

"Just visiting this lovely lady," he replied. Glancing around Duncan's shoulder, Brock leered at me. The evil promise in that smile left me numb.

Duncan took a step closer to Brock so they were standing nose to nose. "Leave her out of this," he said. I couldn't see his face, but I had never heard such a lethal tone in his voice.

Brock stared at Duncan for a moment, then made little tsking sounds as he shook his head. "All's fair in love and war, MacLeod," he said. "You should have remembered that before you took up with her. I hope you can live with your conscience." He chuckled then, as though he was enjoying some private joke, but all the humor had been sucked out of the sound. "For as long as you have it."

Duncan stood frozen, except for his fists which clenched and unclenched in the same uneven rhythm as my heart beat.

"I'll see you around," Brock said, stepping to the side.

He began to walk around Duncan, but Duncan grabbed his arm. "No, let's settle this now," he said.

He had turned his head, and I had a clear view of his profile. The muscle at his jaw twitched with barely contained fury, and I had never seen his eyes so cold. I had never seen this side of him at all. I had suspected he was capable of towering rage, but until now it was pure speculation based on the intensity of his other emotions.

Brock cast a glance brimming with contempt at Duncan's hand on his arm. He plucked Duncan's fingers from his sleeve, then dropped his hand as though it was merely an annoying insect. "All in good time, MacLeod ... all in good time. I really hate to be rushed - don't you?"

Brock stepped up to me, then he bowed slightly as he took my hand. You could have knocked me over with the flick of a silk scarf as he pressed the back of my fingers to his lips.

"It was a pleasure," he crooned over my fingers. "Pity I can't stay. Perhaps, we shall meet again."

Maybe, it was shock. Maybe, it was the surreal circumstances. Maybe, it was pure survival instinct, but a flash of anger-filled adrenaline surged through me at that moment, and I slapped his face as hard as I could. At the same time a squeaky voice echoed through my head. Are you out of your mind, it shrieked. Most likely, I thought in response.

I flinched, prepared to duck, when Brock laughed. I didn't even see Duncan cross the room to my side. He stood between Brock and me, but I could still see Brock just beyond him, standing with his hand on the doorknob.

"She has spirit," Brock said. "I like a woman with spirit." He bowed his head to me again, as he pulled the door open and left in a swirl of long dark coattails. Duncan raced after him, while I melted to the floor in a puddle of shock, terror and confusion.

I didn't tell Dara any of this. I can't talk about it. I couldn't even bring myself to ask Duncan about it when he came back into the apartment. I keep thinking that if I don't talk about it, I will wake up and find it has all been a nightmare. I'm definitely in denial, and I remember a slogan I saw on a t-shirt. Queen of Denial, it read under a bust of Cleopatra. That's me - Queen of Denial. Guess I'll have to get one of those shirts.

Though my mind has blocked out most of what happened after Duncan returned, I do remember him taking me into his arms. I remember him, holding me and rubbing my back. I think I asked him who Brock was - at least I know I should have asked - but maybe I just remember that the thought crossed my mind.

I seem to remember that he explained Brock was an old adversary - someone from his past who arrived without advanced notice. I guess old adversaries are prone to do that, but I don't have any, so I don't really know what such a person might do.

I remember little spikes of anger sifting in through all of this. I should have been angry. After all, my home was invaded. I was frightened half out of my wits. And whatever strange things Duncan is involved in have finally spilled over into my life. But I couldn't seem to find the strength to be angry. My anger floated just out of reach, like a piece of driftwood on a storm-tossed sea. I couldn't get a firm grip on it and I drowned in my confusion instead.

Before I could regain contact with the thinking part of my brain, Duncan made love to me. That was my undoing. It always is. The flames of our passion devour any logical thoughts I might have. Each time I begin to analyze our relationship, he must sense it, and I suspect making love to me is his defense. The shimmering glow that remains afterward serves as a barrier to conscious thought, and I can no longer remember my objections - until they lift their heads again in the harsh light of his absence. When he returns he takes me around through the dizzying cycle of awareness and blind desire, once again. I'm lost in him - quite lost.

.

"I'm worried about you, kiddo," Dara says, shaking me out of my reverie once again.

I'm worried about myself. I told her about meeting Brock, but I left out the detail of finding him in my apartment - the detail that makes the whole episode a lot more sinister than if told without it. I don't want her to worry about me. I don't want to worry about me. I really want my life back on even keel - with Duncan on board, of course - but as the Rolling Stones sang, "You can't always get what you want."

"Worrying is a waste of effort," I tell her. "It never accomplishes anything."

"No," she replies, "but maybe it's time you did accomplish something. Maybe it's time you and Duncan had a long serious talk."

I hate it when someone else points out the obvious solution. I keep telling myself this very same thing, but if I do that I risk losing him - he's been dropping hints that he's having second thoughts about involving me in his life. But even after the incident with Brock, I'm not ready to take that risk. Still I know that I will have to do something, and I will have to do it soon, before I lose contact with who I am. I'm not sure which is worse losing him or losing me.

"He's coming over for dinner tonight," I say, wondering whether I will summon up the courage to confront him. "I'll talk to him then." Easy enough to say, sitting here far away from Duncan's intoxicating presence - sitting here in Pete's Paradise Cove fortified with Pete's Paradise Punch. I wonder if they sell this stuff to go.