Disclaimer: I don't own them, etc.
Rating: PG-13 / 12A
Series: The "Rebirth" series.
Warnings: Crossover universe - The Sentinel/Highlander.
Summary: Blair Sandburg struggles to come to terms with who he is.
The Choice
By NorthernStar
Blair stared at the sword in his hand, into his own eyes reflected on the brilliant blade. He remembered the day Naomi gave him this, with tears streaking her face and a whispered prayer that he wouldn't need to use it. In the eight centuries he'd carried it, he hadn't taken many heads, far fewer than Immortals half his age. His journeys through primitive lands and tribal cultures hadn't brought him into contact with many his own kind. Those that he met usually became friends, allies…
And of the 76 who had not, who had fallen before his blade…
Their faces haunted him still.
But the world changed; that was the only constant in life. And when the march of western 'civilisation' began to erode the tribal ways, and the incidences of Sentinels fell, Blair had made the choice to leave the path of the Guide and rejoin the world. He had waited out the finally years of his Sia, and when her body had been ashes, took up his sword and a few possessions and returned to the continent of his birth. Grief eased the choice and anger spurred it.
But the Europe he returned to was not the one he left. Its spirit was bowed low under the threat of Nazism, and the march of the self proclaimed Master Race. Driven by anger at the dispossession of his people, Blair had quickly been caught up in the tide. Unsure of resistance and war, he did the only thing he could: aiding the desperate rescue of Jewish children. He could still smell the smoke of the kinder train as it chugged from the station with its precious cargo, the sounds of the families' terrible, terrible grief at being wrenched from their children echoing in his head and finally drowned out by the noise of the engine.
And then the war began and he'd been trapped in Poland…
Blair snapped himself from the memory. Around him, the Amazon was alive, movement in the trees and undergrowth, ripples on the pool his legs were dangled in. The cloying oppressive heat was a long way from the bitter cold of Auschwitz and he let the heat fill his mind.
The press of an Immortal on his conscious alerted him to someone's approach. The water rippled as Naomi surfaced beside him, her long red hair hanging in tangles down her back. She looked up at him and then down at the sword. There was disappointment in her eyes: she knew it meant he was thinking of leaving.
Without a word, she plucked the blade from his fingers and laid it on the moist soil beside him before lifting herself out of the water and onto the bank. Water dribbled down her naked body. He didn't look at her.
"Let it go." She murmured; soft words from a Jew who'd never known the pure disgust and righteous hatred of the Nazis'. Naomi had spent the last hundred years here, in the Basin, cloistered away from the holocaust. She knew virtually nothing of horrors he'd faced, only what Darius had told her after he'd rescued Blair from the camp during its liberation. Darius had taken him to Naomi and she had, in turn, taken him to Tibet and Ingsel. Herr Mehler and Doktor Josef Mengele had treated him like a thing, an object to do with as they wished. It was almost bitter humour to realise his friends had done so too.
She wanted Blair to stay here, in the safety of the sacred forest, return to the life they'd had together before the arrival of 'civilisation' and the start of the erosion of the ancient ways of the jungle. Student and teacher, seeking peace away from the Game: he'd believed that was possible once.
His head lifted, eyes met hers. "I can't, Naomi."
Somewhere out there, in the world he barely knew, was a Sentinel child. And if he wanted to Guide that boy, he would have to join the Game. North America was a popular destination for Immortals, seeking the burgeoning violence and possible riches of the fledgling nation.
"We…you…are so much more than this." She told him.
When he'd been young and full of fear of the gift inside him and the violence it bred, Blair had thought that too. Maybe he would again.
But not here, not now: he'd finally been touched by the brutality of his birthright. He couldn't step back.
Blair took his shamshir from the ground and held it up. "This is what we are."
Whatever she might have said was lost under the press of another Immortal. Blair stood up as Methos made his way through the tangle of greenery.
Naomi looked up at him. "Blair…"
He looked back at her, eyes full of regret, then his fingers tightened on his shamshir and he walked towards the oldest. She watched as the jungle swallowed them.
*
Methos walked, not looking the younger Immortal at his side. In the months it had taken them to reach Naomi's home, the younger Immortal hadn't spoken much. He found he missed the youth in his friend, so different for most aged Immortals. Maybe that Blair was still in there, buried under the past, ready to be reborn.
Methos stopped, turned to look at Blair. The shamshir, loosely gripped in Blair's hand, glittered in the light. Blair was probably better now with a blade than he'd ever been. Methos had taught him well.
He raised his own sword but Blair's remained low, not accepting the challenge. They always went through this, but Blair's reluctance was becoming less every time.
"Naomi wants me to stay here." Blair said.
That came as little surprise. "Naomi doesn't understand." Methos lowered his sword. "She's never felt it. The need for revenge."
Blair's fingers tightened on his sword.
Methos smiled. "Quite an achievement after one thousand years."
"I'm not…" The words trailed off. And the blade lifted.
"You've started living again." Methos readied his own sword, falling fluidly into a defensive stance. "It's natural."
"I want to help that boy."
"Of course." He studied his friend. "And Herr Mehler?"
Methos watched Blair flinch, saw his hand tighten on his blade. But the memories didn't overwhelm him as they once did. "What should I do?" The question was fierce, whispered harshly.
"Nothing."
Blair just waited. The boy was like so many others, expecting him to have all the answers because he'd lived just a few thousand years longer than them.
"Standard response. Revenge'll get you killed." He tapped his blade to Blair's. "This, on the other hand, will save your life."
The rage suddenly burst free. "He experimented on me and hundreds of others!"
"Then hope one of them will do the job for you."
"THEY'RE ALL DEAD! They're all dead because of him!"
3rd June 1943
Blair awoke under bodies, the press of the filthy naked people crushing the air from his newly healed lungs. They stank, even worse than when they'd been herded into the showers for…de-lousing. But the pipes had released gas and not the promised water, the acrid smell of it quickly overriding the stench of the unwashed bodies. Then the choking began and the bodies around him voided themselves at the point of death.
He immediately felt another of his kind and then the bony corpses were being shifted to aid his struggle free from their weight. When he pulled himself up, Blair came face to face with another Immortal.
Herr Mehler smiled down on him. "I will have your head, Jew." He promised softy before another man, a mortal, approached. Blair bowed his head. Doktor Josef Mengele stared down at him; his eyes were wide and full of awe.
"It is just as you say, Herr Mehler! He lives again!" He looked at Mehler. "You must tell me how, I beg of you."
Mehler knelt beside Blair, taking his chin between his thumb and finger and tilting his face up. "I do not know." He said.
"But you knew! How did you know he would rise again?"
"I have seen his kind before, Herr Doktor."
"I must know his secrets!"
Mehler smiled "We shall find those answers together."
***
"Mortals die. Its unfair but I don't make the rules."
Blair raised his sword and approached. Methos didn't flinch, didn't move.
"My head won't bring them back, Sandburg."
Blair's sword clattered to the ground, his body folding after it like a puppet with its strings cut. He stayed like that for a long time, on his knees, head bowed. Then his head rose. "Neither will Mehler's."
But the echo of Naomi's teaching sound like just that – an echo. It didn't sound like something Blair believed anymore.
"I know where he is." Methos said finally. "Mehler."
Blair looked up at his teacher. There were no tears in his eyes, just acceptance of his birthright.
"I…have a few connections." Methos murmured. The oldest held up his sword. "It's your choice…"
*
The clash of metal on metal sent birds fluttering into the sky and animals racing for cover. In the tribal hut, Naomi's eyes opened; the depth of her mediation broken by the sound.
So Blair had chosen war after all…
~~Fin~~
Historical Note: While Herr Mehler is my own creation, Doktor Josef Mengele did exist and conducted grotesque experiments at Auschwitz on anyone he deemed aberrant, in particular twins. Out of the 3,000 he used, only 160 survived.
The kindertrain was also very real, taking children from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to safety in Britain. It was responsible for saving the lives of 10,000 Jewish children. Many of them never saw their parents again.
Remember Auschwitz.
~~~ 27 January 1945~~~
Lest We Forget.