Shelter from the Storm Chapter 12

All standard disclaimers apply. This story is mine, as are the characters of Leyza Berard, Ray Garcia, Phillippe and Marie Vachon, Francine, Solange Laperrier and Jeremy Cole. Please do not borrow them without asking.

The Highlander concepts and the characters of Duncan MacLeod, Joe Dawson and May Ling Shen are not. They belong to Gregory Widen, Davis/Panzer, Rysher, Gaumont and probably a few others I've forgotten. I've dared to use them without permission, and hope they'll forgive the transgression, because this story is merely a labor of love. I'm not making a cent from it.


Leyza pushed the front door shut, then she watched Duncan through the glass pane as he walked away with jaunty stride. His shoulders were squared, his head held high and his long coat swirled in his wake. He seemed to possess a much lighter spirit than he had a few weeks ago - and of that she was glad.

A tiny phantom of guilt nibbled at the edges of her conscience, though, when she remembered that she'd lied to him. Lied when she told him she'd forgotten about meeting him the night of the fire. Fire or no fire, Duncan MacLeod was not a man she could easily forget. In fact, he hadn't been far from her thoughts for the entire three days she'd been gone.

From the first moment she'd seen him on the Pont St. Louis, he'd captured her imagination. After a few minutes of conversation, he'd left a deeply etched imprint on her soul and captured her heart as well. How could she not have thought about him?

His beguiling smile could tease, promise passion or offer comfort. His deep voice caressed her ears with rich resonant tones that sent tingling spirals of need coiling around every nerve ending until she fairly hummed with it. His expressive brown eyes could melt her with a single sultry look, and his luscious mouth simply begged to be kissed.

Beyond his countless physical charms, Duncan MacLeod was a paradox, a conundrum, a chambered nautilus of a man she could know forever, yet never know at all.

He held a fierce pride high and with both hands like a standard bearer, and yet he was quietly humble. He was a man of strength, but beneath the strength coursed a molten core of vulnerability. He was a man who contained a storm of emotional pain, yet it raged under a deep sea of serenity. And he was a man she wanted to explore further, a man she wanted to hold and comfort, a man she could love.

Leyza smiled as Duncan paused at the gate to waggle his fingers in a wave. She waved back, but he'd already rounded the corner of the wall. With her hand pressed against the glass, she stood there until the sensation of him faded, then she turned away.

"So that's the reason you've been disappearing for hours every night," the young Asian woman said with an impish smile that implied she knew the whole story.

For a moment, Leyza regarded the young woman she'd rescued from the horror that was Da Nang in the spring of 1975, then she smiled back. "That, my dear, Francine, is none of your business."

Francine responded with a broader smile, then she looped her arm around Leyza's waist. "He's quite a hunk," she said. "I'm impressed ... so is he like you and May-Ling?"

With a gentle tug, Leyza freed her arm. "You know better than to ask that question."

Francine pushed her lower lip out in a pout as she sighed. "Yeah, but it's no fun knowing about Immortals if you won't tell me who they are."

"Unless I think they might be a threat, you don't need to know who they are," Leyza said. "And it's--"

"I know," Francine interrupted with a smile. "None of my business. But you have no idea how totally awesome it was to watch May-Ling come back to life after she shielded us from that bomb blast. I may have been only three, but it's an image that will stay with me even if I live to be a hundred." Francine narrowed her eyes as she stared at Leyza. "Or if I live to be four hundred or five hundred ... or a thousand."

"Oh Francie," Leyza said with a sigh as she reached out to tuck a strand of dark silken hair behind her ward's ear. "We've been through this before. You're not Immortal. I'm sorry."

"C'est la vie," Francine said with a shrug. "You can't blame a girl for hoping. I'll be in the library - I have tests to grade. But please feel free to interrupt if you care to share any tidbits about the intriguing Mr. MacLeod." She added a wink to a wicked smile, then she whirled in a perfect pirouette before she sauntered off toward the back of the house.

Francine didn't know that her innocent dance step triggered a twinge of painful memories for Leyza. Memories of another young woman - one who could dance like a fairy queen - one who had been Immortal. Francine didn't know about Solange, because Leyza had never told her - couldn't bring herself to tell this young woman about the other young woman she'd thought of as her only child.

Though she'd raised Francine since the girl was three, she'd done it from a distance. She'd given her all the material things a child could ever want - the best nannies, the best toys, the best schools - but she couldn't given her a mother's unconditional love.

* * * * * Not again, Leyza thought as the little girl looked up at her with a wide-eyed intelligent stare. I can't go through this heartache again.

But it was already too late. When the child smiled, then slipped a tiny hand into Leyza's, she also slipped beneath Leyza's carefully erected defenses.

Chattering away in a garbled mix of French and Vietnamese, the tot towed her over to a battered army cot. Though Leyza couldn't understand more than a word or two, it didn't take a linguistics expert to figure out that the child wanted to show off her most precious, and most likely sole possession - a grimy baby doll with one eye missing, no clothes and hardly any hair.

Leyza drew a deep breath. Knowing it was a mistake to let her heart catch the little girl's infectious spirit, she still crouched down to the child's level so she could examine the doll.

"A couple of the soldiers brought her in last week. They brought her the doll yesterday."

Leyza glanced over her shoulder at the sound of a very familiar voice.

"We don't know her real name, but she answers to Francine," May-Ling said, with a grin. "So it must be something close to that."

Dressed in rumpled camouflage pants and a stained black tank top, she lounged against the door frame of the partly bombed-out building her group was using as a gathering point for the children of Operation Babylift. When Leyza returned her grin, May-Ling ambled across the room, then crouched down beside her.

Leyza let the warm rush of friendship flow over her, then she laughed. "I don't know how I let you talk me into this," she said, turning her attention back to the child.

May-Ling smiled as she ran her hand over the child's dark matted hair. "I can be very persuasive," she said.

"Tell me something, I don't know," Leyza said, then she stood.

May-Ling stood with her and as the two women embraced, Leyza wished for a moment - a very brief moment - that they could be normal friends. Mortal friends who'd met at work, or at a PTA meeting, or because they were next door neighbors. But then she remembered that kind of friendship wouldn't have lasted nearly 700 years, and she wouldn't trade one moment of it for all the normalcy in the world.

"I almost died three times just getting here," Leyza whispered. "This is insane!"

"But you didn't die," May-Ling said with a smile. "And we need help getting the orphans out of here and into the hands of the adoptive parents we have waiting for them in other countries ... besides you owe me after Singapore."

"Now don't start that up again - it was nearly 20 years ago," Leyza said, laughing softly as she sat down next to Francine on the sagging cot - one of about 30 in the room.

"I spent two weeks in that miserable, rat infested jail," May-Ling said with a grimace, but a sliver of humor slipped into her voice as she slipped her arms around two raggedy tots who had rushed to her side. "And they confiscated my plane."

Leyza fought with her emotions as Francine curled up next to her, then used her lap for a pillow while sucking contentedly on a dirty thumb. She made one brief attempt at removing the girl's thumb from her mouth, but quickly gave it up as a hopeless cause.

You can't afford another Solange, she thought as she glanced up to catch May-Ling watching her with gleam in her eyes and a sagacious smile that barely curved the edges of her mouth.

That keen look made Leyza feel like the test subject in a behavioral experiment, but then she frequently felt that way with May-Ling. It was her old friend's nature to observe and analyze everything around her. May-Ling couldn't stop following the path to wisdom anymore than a plant could stop turning to the sun.

"I've told you a thousand times - I didn't know Jon's friends were smugglers and grave robbers," Leyza said with a smile and a faint sigh. Their adventure in Singapore had become a routine discussion with them whenever they hadn't seen each other in awhile. It served as a focal point, and put them on the same page again. "And I got you out of that jail, didn't I?"

May-Ling smiled as she shrugged. "Took you long enough .... and I never got my plane back."

Leyza laughed. "It was an old plane."

May-Ling's smile slipped into a wicked grin. "Sometimes old is best." The smile faded, then caring concern filled her dark eyes. "How have you been?"

Leyza shrugged. "I've been better."

"Solange, again?"

Leyza nodded. "She came to see me last week."

"Came after your head, you mean," May-Ling corrected. She separated herself from the skirt of children that had formed around her, then held out her hand.

"Come, I'll make some tea ... we'll talk."

Leyza wadded up the thin blanket that barely covered the cot, then she tucked it under Francine's head. Shifting the sleeping child gently, she stood, then took May-Ling's hand. "There's nothing to talk about."

May-Ling linked their arms, then guided Leyza across the room. "Then we'll talk about something else ... but it's not your fault - you should know that by now."

"I keep trying to convince myself of that," Leyza said with a sigh as she glanced back over her shoulder at Francine. "But I can't help thinking maybe if I'd done something differently, she wouldn't have ended up so bitter.

"

"You did all you could," May-Ling insisted. "You took her in, you loved her like your own flesh and blood ... and you helped make her one of the greatest ballerinas of her time."

Leyza shook her head. "I can't take credit for that ... she made herself a star. But I knew she was going to be one of us - I shouldn't have let Jules Perrot see her dance. I shouldn't have encouraged her ... but she was so very talented, I couldn't resist."

May-Ling had led her to another room that barely had space for an old grey metal desk, two straight back grey chairs and another cot. The only window had a broken pane that had been patched with a piece of cardboard. She released Leyza's arm, then crossed the room to a scarred wooden table covered with tins of food, and cooking utensils. Her small graceful hands fluttered over a chipped clay pot and a battered tin dappled with rust spots as she prepared the tea on a sterno stove.

"Hindsight," she said, pouring the brew into thick white mugs, "Is a sharp sword. A wise person handles it with care."

Taking the mug May-Ling held out to her, Leyza smiled. "Are you questioning my judgment, old friend?"

"I'm merely suggesting that you question it yourself," May-Ling answered, then she tapped her cup against Leyza's in a brief salute. She smiled, took a sip of her tea, then crossed the room to sit in the chair behind the desk. "You said she came to see you ... what did she want?"

Leyza's humorless laugh ended in a brief snort as she took the chair on the opposite side of the desk. "She went to see George Balanchine."

"To dance for him?" May-Ling asked. Her dark eyes widened with undisguised astonishment.

"Yes, she'd concocted some story about defecting from Russia. She told him she'd danced with the Kirov."

May-Ling's eyes grew wider still. "And she expected him to believe her?"

Leyza glanced down at the cup in her hand. She gazed into the dark steaming tea as though it held the answers. "I guess," she said with a shrug.

"She was very upset that he didn't rush to put her in his next ballet. She never even got past his assistant. I don't know what made her think she could pull it off ... she knows everyone, who's anyone in the dance world, knows everyone else."

"She's a fool," May-Ling said, shaking her head in disgust.

Leyza shrugged. "She's obsessed. From the first moment she stepped onto the stage at the Paris Opera House, she was hooked, and dancing was the drug. She has this twisted notion that somehow I took dancing away from her. She doesn't want to understand, that because she's Immortal, she can no longer be the prima ballerina, she was."

"Does she think you made her Immortal? Does she think you arranged for Carlo Donatelli to end her life and her career by plunging a knife her chest?"

"She's so bitter and delusional, I don't know what she thinks anymore." Leyza set the cup on the desk, then she stood. She dragged her hand through her hair as she paced.

"She came to me before she left for New York, and we had a big argument when I told her that her story wouldn't fly. I asked her if she planned to tell George Balanchine that she had studied with Jules Perrot and Marius Petipa, or if she would tell him she danced in the premier performance of Giselle ... she didn't think it was funny."

May-Ling laughed. "I'm not surprised. She never did have a sense of humor."

Leyza shrugged, then she dropped down into the chair. "Not where dancing is concerned anyway. And she doesn't want to understand that no major dance company is going to hire an unknown dancer who's 28 years old. Faking dance credentials is not like forging a fake college degree ... it's a small community and people talk to each other. But she won't give up trying."

"Perhaps you are the one who should give up trying," May-Ling said, quietly. "Count it as a bad experience and forget her."

Standing again, Leyza considered May-Ling's advice. It made perfect sense from a logical point of view, but it didn't take into account the emotional entanglements. For better or for worse, Leyza thought of herself as Solange's mother. She slid onto the corner of May-Ling's desk, then picked up her tea cup. She swallowed the mouthful of tepid tea that remained, then she smiled at her old friend.

"You're absolutely right ... but I can't get myself to do that," she said with a sigh. "Perhaps that's why we can't have children of our own ... it gets way too complicated."

May-Ling nodded, but then a scuffing sound from the doorway caught the attention of both women. Clutching her doll under her arm, Francine toddled into the room. She stood before Leyza, then lifted her arms in a irresistible bid to be held.

Leyza drew a deep breath to break the ropes she felt being looped around her heart, then she bent to pick the child up. She settled Francine on her lap, then glanced at May-Ling.

Her old friend didn't say a word. She didn't have to - her shrewd expression said it all.

"Not this time," Leyza said, making a promise to herself as well as assuring May-Ling that she knew exactly what could happen. "I've learned my lesson. If she wants a friend, she gets a friend ... if she want's a mother, she'll have to look elsewhere."