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 9

Brock's face split by a crocodile smile flickers in the background behind hazy shimmering images of Duncan, while I stand behind thick glass, and pound my fists against it in frustration. The glass prevents Duncan from hearing me, but no matter how thick it is it can not protect me from the faceless fear that slithers and writhes before me. None of it makes any sense.

I wake up with a start, my heart pounding in my chest. Cool night air dusts my back and shoulders. As I reach instinctively for the blanket awareness sets in, and stinging nettles of panic shower over me. I am alone - Duncan has gone.

I turn and reach for his side of the bed. It still radiates the warmth of his body, still bears the tantalizing scent of him. I bury my face in his pillow for a second to fill the burning need, to capture every trace of him. Hot heavy pulses of desire pound my inner core to mush. I fumble for the lamp in the dark.

A flash of relief merges with the desire. His clothes are draped over the chair. He must have picked them up because, as I recall, we left most of our clothes strewn across the floor on our way to the bedroom last night. The door is closed, but his sweat pants are missing from the hook on the back. Maybe he couldn't sleep.

The deep pile of the carpet tickles the soles of my bare feet as I step out of bed and pad across the room. From the other hook, I grab a turquoise silk kimono - a gift from Duncan - then slip into it as I step into the hall. The cool slick cloth slides along my arms and I shiver as it clings to my skin.

"Duncan," I whisper. Why, I have no idea - there's no one else here but us. The hallway is dark and something about the dark demands hushed tones, so I whisper.

Up ahead, a spill of pale moonlight pushes away the curtain of night as it streams in through the living room drapes, and I remember we talked about how wonderful the moon looked earlier as we admired it from my balcony - a full looming Hunter's Moon. We talked about the moon - we did not talk about our relationship - I choked on it again.

As I round the corner, I see him standing in front of the sliding glass doors. Silver light defines his form as it brushes over his long hair and broad shoulders. He doesn't turn away. I can't tell whether he is so lost in thought he can't hear me, or whether he is simply waiting for me to join him. He does that quite frequently. He waits, calm, motionless, silent. Sometimes, he watches me, like when we're playing chess or after we make love, and I have no idea what thoughts slide through his mind at such times. I once tried the penny for your thoughts maneuver, and he just laughed. "I'd be guilty of price gouging," was his answer.

Dancing away as always. He's a master of the dance, my Duncan - both on the floor and in the mind. Ask him a question and he spins away on a cushion of air, but with such finesse he makes you forget what you wanted to know in the first place.

He turns his head and smiles as I reach his side. "Did I wake you?" he asks, welcoming me into the shelter of his arm.

"I had a bad dream," I answer, wrapping my arm around his waist.

The warm soft touch of his back sends delicious shimmers along my arm. I lean my head against his bare chest, then taking a deep breath, I let the scent of him - not the faint trace from his pillow but the real thing - fill me. His favorite brand of soap, mingles with the musky spice of his skin and leaves me breathless, drunk with need. I'll never get a serious discussion off the ground with him standing next to me like this. I don't know why I even try.

He pulls me closer, and presses a kiss in my hair, drawing me deeper into his enchantment. You can't go on like this, a tiny voice whispers from deep in my brain - tiny but insistent.

His chest rises as he inhales deeply. "I shouldn't have done this," he says quietly, sending ripples of alarm through my heart. "I shouldn't have dragged you into my world."

"What's done is done," I say. "We can't go back and change it, now."

"No," he says, with an air of resignation, "but we don't have to go on."

I know where this conversation is streaming, and I swallow the hard lump of panic as I scramble to staunch the flow. "Duncan, if you're in trouble ... maybe I can help. I have a friend who works at the Justice Department, maybe--"

He laughs softly as he holds me tighter. "It's not what you think," he says.

Annoyed at his presumption, I pull away far enough to look at his face. "And what do I think?"

He eases me around to face him, then he brushes the hair back from my face. The moonlight freezes his features into a abstract of shadows and light. He touches my brow, the tip of my nose, my mouth with achingly soft kisses. He caresses my jaw with his thumbs as he gazes deep into my eyes for a fleeting moment. He sighs, then draws me into his arms again.

"You think it's something that can be fixed by a conversation with legal authorities," he says. "It can't ... It can't be fixed, because it's not broken. It's just the way things are."

I lift my head from his chest to look at him again. "Duncan, I'm trying to understand all this ... this whole business with Brock ... and your reluctance to talk about whatever you're involved in ... but I can't do it if you won't trust me. Whatever it is you don't have to worry about me ... I'm not going to run to the police or the Eyewitness news team. I just want to help you."

"You can't," he whispers, then he seeks my mouth for another kiss.

Summoning every ounce of willpower I can muster, I push him away. "Duncan, don't do that. I can't think straight when you're kissing me." Forcing myself, I turn away. I rest my hand on the cold glass of the door, and use the sensation to focus.

Behind me, he laughs softly. I let the luscious sound wash over me, then press my hand into the glass to hold on, to keep myself from getting sucked under again.

"You can't just keep me in the dark. If there is a harsh reality to face I need to know what it is."

His silence chills me far more than the touch of the cold glass.

"You'd think after four--" he says, halting. I can almost hear him bite his tongue. "After all this time, I'd learn."

After four what? That was a slip, What was he going to say? Four women, perhaps? Four wives? There have to have been other women in his life. I know about Tessa, but what of the others? I wonder if one of the women in his past has hurt him deeply ... that might explain his reluctance to let me get close. I can understand those protective walls, I've built a few myself.

"Learn what?" I ask.

He puts his hands on my shoulders - two pools of warmth, luring me away from the cold focus. "That I can't live a normal life like other men."

"Maybe, you can ... if you let me help you."

"It's not that simple," he says. "There's nothing you can do that would change anything."

"I can stand by you, if you let me," I answer.

"You could get hurt," he says.

I turn around to face him, to let him know I mean what I'm about to say. "Maybe I think you're worth the risk."

He shakes his head, a slow forlorn motion, then he steps away to pace a short track. He runs his hand through his hair. "You don't know even know what the risk is."

"That's exactly my point. Duncan, I want to be with you no matter what. I don't know what you're mixed up in, but I figure it's something serious. At the same time, I know ... I can feel it in my heart ... that you're a good man - so whatever it is that's got you by the throat ... I figure you must, at least, have good intentions. Whatever it is I'm in too deep, already ... Duncan, I don't want to lose you ... I love you."

He turns his head to look at me. His eyes widen. Damn ... I didn't mean to say that. I wanted to save it for a special moment. The last thing I wanted to do was blurt it out in the middle of an argument.

"Don't," he says softly - so softly I'm not sure I heard him.

"Don't what?"

"Don't love me ... it could get you killed."

I don't know whether it's the words he used, or the tone of his voice, or the expression on his face, but the force of that simple statement forces me back against the doors. After the incident with Brock, the danger should have been clear, but I guess I'd pushed it to the back of my mind. I chose not to think about it, but now he has thrown it out in the open. It looms between us ... too big to grasp.

I search his face, his eyes. He's deadly serious. He's not being overly dramatic. He means what he said. I remember a Chinese proverb ... be careful what you wish for - you might get it.

When I first met Duncan, I remember being bored with my life. I longed for a little excitement, a thrill with a hint of danger. I wanted something to knock me off my safe platform of complacency and I thought he could do it. Well, it looks like he has, and I've landed hard on my butt in the middle of it. Up to my armpits in alligators. And possibly I got more than I bargained for.

I'm numb. My mouth opens, and I'm making some kind of sounds, but I don't recognize any of them as words. You tell a man you love him ... you don't expect he will tell you it can get you killed. "Duncan ... I--'

Before I can say anymore, he wraps trembling arms around me and holds me close. "I can't do this again," he whispers into my hair.

The slight catch in his voice tears at my heart. Has he lost someone else to whatever shadowy business he's involved in? Tessa? No, Tessa had died the victim of a mugging - that's what Richie told me. What can't he do again?

"Why did you?" I ask. Why ... not what ... it's an easier question to ask.

"Why did I what?"

"Get involved with me ... get involved again ... that's what you meant, isn't it?"

Keeping one arm around my waist, he releases his hold, then lifts my chin with a curl of fingers from his other hand. "You were smart, and cute and you made me laugh," he says. "And most of all because you make me remember the beauty of things I'd forgotten."

With gentle pressure he turns me to face the doors, then he pulls me back against him ... back into his embrace. "I can't remember the last time I even thought about the moon. But tonight you let me see it through your eyes, and it was new again. I was young again ... seeing it for the first time."

Not exactly what I'd hoped for. My punctured ego deflates and erupts in a giggle.

"What's so funny?" he asks. Not exactly the reaction he expected, I guess.

I turn to face him again, then run my hands up his chest. I clasp them behind his neck. "I'd kind of hoped you would say I was the most devastatingly beautiful woman you'd ever met, and that I just swept you off your feet."

Now it's his turn to laugh. "You underestimate yourself," he says.

I'll leave it at that. I'm not going to ask him to explain. "I just want you to be happy," I say instead. "I want to make you happy."

"You do," he says, "but that's not the point. I shouldn't have dragged you into my world."

We're back to that again. I'd hoped we'd gotten past that ... apparently we haven't. I sift through my presumptions and sense there is something more than just the danger he is concerned about.

"Duncan ... I'm not going to lie to you. I'm not going to tell you I can't live without you. I'm a survivor, I guess, because I know if you leave, somehow I'll pick up the pieces and move on. But I don't want to ... I don't want to live without you. Whatever happens, I want us to be together."

He flinches - a minute flash of reaction - gone before I can study it, then he reaches behind his head to unclasp my hands. He holds them in his for a moment, then he kisses them.

"What did I say ... what's wrong?"

"Deja vu," he answers. "That's exactly what Anne said."

"Who's Anne?"

"Doesn't matter ... it didn't work out that way. When she found out ... she decided that being with me wasn't what she wanted after all. I'm not going through that again. You won't understand ... you can't."

"What about Tessa, Duncan ... did she know ... did she understand?"

He flinches again as though I'd slapped him. Immediately, I regret the question, but I can't take it back. I reach up to touch his face, but he turns away.

"Yes," he answers quietly. "But it was all different then ... less complicated somehow."

I step closer and rest my hand lightly on his back. "I'm not Tessa, Duncan ... but I'm not Anne either. Do you think it's fair to prejudge me because she hurt you."

"You're jumping to conclusions," he says with a sigh. "It's not like that at all."

"Duncan, if you don't talk to me ... if you don't explain, jumping to conclusions is the only option you've left open for me. Unless of course, you count wild speculation."

"You don't know what you're asking," he says, letting his breath out in a sigh.

Those words have a final ring to them. He's not going to tell me. I turn away from him, and walk back to the terrace doors. I rest my head against the cold glass and face the cold reality as I fight tears of frustration. No matter how much I want it, this relationship will never work with all these secrets between us. The question now is what do I do about it.

Do I hold on, knowing it probably will never go deeper than it is now? Do I accept whatever crumbs fall my way because I may never again find a man who stirs my blood and makes my soul sing quite the way Duncan does? Or do I chalk it up as a loss, and settle for one of those nice but ordinary men who can't tell a ripe cantaloupe from an unripe one?

I sense him moving behind me. He slips his arms around my waist and pulls me back, but I resist. If he's leaving, I don't want it to be anymore painful than it is.

"I need some time to think," he says quietly.

He gives up trying to hold me close. He moves his hands to my shoulders. The touch of his thumbs caressing the back of my neck, tempt me to give up my stance. I cross my arms over my chest, but it doesn't help. It doesn't grant me any more courage.

"I think I'll go to the island for a couple of days ... give us both time to think."

I take a deep breath to pull myself in - to hold on. "Fine ... whatever," is about all I can think of to say.

He kisses my neck. "I'll call you," he whispers in my ear. Then all the warmth vanishes and the cold stakes its claim as he leaves.

I can't move from the window. I hear him moving around behind me, I can't watch him go. I may never see him again, but I can't watch him leave.

"I'll call you in a couple of days," he says from across the room.

I stare out the doors, stare at the moon. It seems to mock me as I try to swallow this planet-sized lump in my throat. "Good bye, Duncan," I say, struggling to keep my voice from breaking. But I don't think he heard me because at the same time, I hear the door shut softly.