The Café
Methos sat and tried not to watch as Amanda pulled herself together. He had most of the coffee spill cleaned up and was simply waiting patiently while Amanda examined her face in a compact.
"I hate how you can never hide it," she said bitterly as she shut the compact and stowed it away. Her face was a little less red and her eyes a little less puffy, but you could still tell that she'd been upset.
Methos nodded gently in understanding. "Speaking of, we should probably get out of here before they kick us out."
Amanda snorted. "So we stop making a scene?"
"Something like that."
Amanda nodded in acquiescence and they stood from their chairs. Then, donning coats, they headed for the door.
"Where are we going?" Amanda asked casually as they exited the café.
Methos grit his teeth and silently commended her ability to affect such a casual air. He shrugged. "I don't suppose you have a hotel?"
"Not yet. I only just got into town."
"Back to my place then I suppose." And he started walking… the opposite direction from whence they came. Amanda jogged a stride to catch up with him and buried her questions for a later day. They walked in silence for a time.
"Well, at least it's cleared up a bit," Amanda offered, casting her gaze heavenwards at the overcast sky that was a few shades brighter than before.
Methos nodded absently. "I hate Paris weather."
"It's not so bad in late summer or early fall…" Amanda defended half-heartedly.
"This is early spring."
Amanda sighed in resignation. "So it is."
More silent walking, down streets without direction and not coming anywhere near Methos's apartment.
"How long will you be in town?" Methos surprised her by speaking first.
"Oh, I dunno," Amanda answered with a shrug. "I only came back to visit Rebecca; haven't made any real plans yet."
Methos nodded. "Pity MacLeod isn't here." His tone was almost mocking, but Amanda laughed anyway.
"He's still in Seacouver losing money in that dojo of his."
"Why don't you go visit him? Getting on the highlander's nerves is always good for one's mood."
"I only left two months ago. I think we've annoyed each other enough to last a year."
"Only a year? You two used to go decades without seeing each other. Now you barely go months."
Amanda shrugged dismissively, not the response he was expecting. "I'm stealing less, he's moving less… In this day and age, I know where to find him, you know?"
"If you need him?"
Amanda bit her lip but didn't say anything.
"There's no shame in that," Methos continued. "We all have those we turn to in hours of need."
"Sure, I turn to MacLeod," she admitted casually. "When I'm ducking an immortal or running from the cops."
"Ah, the lovely 'damsel in distress' act."
"It's not an act!"
Methos nearly stumbled in his shock—though Amanda was pretty sure it was an exaggerated gesture.
"Ok maybe it is, a little," she grudgingly conceded. "But there were times when I really did need his help!"
"Oh, I believe you," Methos admitted with a touch of humor. "But challenges and arrest warrants are one thing, Leaswene."
"Oh yeah?" And what's the other?"
"Would you go to him now? After you've just been crying over Rebecca?"
Amanda's jaw dropped.
Methos nodded. "That's the other."
"Well—would you?" Amanda stuttered defensively. "About Alexa?"
"You've got it backwards, kid," Methos scoffed, and Amanda could tell her mentioning Alexa probably poked at the wrong can of worms. "MacLeod goes to me for help, not the other way around."
"But would you?" she persisted. "If you needed help, would you go to MacLeod? And I don't mean about challenges, either."
Methos didn't answer right away and Amanda chanced a sidelong glance in his direction as they walked. He was looking down, staring intently at the cobblestones as they passed beneath his feet. She couldn't see his eyes.
"You mean, if I needed a shoulder to cry on over the death of a loved one?"
Amanda nodded expectantly.
Methos chuckled breathily. "Well that's rather an awkward situation, since it's usually MacLeod who's killed them."
Amanda stopped in her tracks, stunned, but Methos kept right on walking. After a moment she closed her mouth and jogged to catch up to him, still reeling from shock.
"What do you mean? Has Duncan killed people you care about?"
Methos laughed briefly, bitterly. "Frequently."
It seemed he was walking faster now. Amanda was striding briskly to maintain pace. "When? Who?" she sputtered. "Is that what was between you two last Christmas?"
Methos suddenly stopped short. Amanda outpaced him but recovered quickly. She turned to face him, and nearly gasped at the sight. His eyes were hard, gold, and gleaming out out of a face that seemed carved in granite. He looked ancient, standing there, and Amanda suddenly remembered that he was.
"Methos?"
"You would do well to forget what you've learned," he warned her, almost threateningly.
Amanda felt the sudden surge of memory slam her in the chest, and her eyes widened.
The Abbey
During the conference, on the other side of the doors
"What do you think is going on, Amanda?"
"I don't know, Grenhyrde. But whatever it is, it's big."
"Can you hear anything?"
"Well, maybe if you'd stop blathering in my ear!"
The two were kneeling on the floor by the doors, ears pressed up against the wood. They had been there for ages it seemed, long enough for their legs to go numb, trying to discern what the 'adults' were talking about.
"Oh, it's no use!" Grenhyrde whined. "I guess we're just not meant to know."
"Wasn't this your idea in the first place?"
"Only because I had to talk you out of sneaking into Lord Adræfan's chamber!"
"Shh! Not so loud!"
"If we can't hear them in there then how can they hear us out here?"
"You'd be surprised…" Amanda put her ear to the door again.
"Come on, Amanda. My foot's gone tingly. Let's get out of here. If it's something important they'll tell us soon enough."
"I wouldn't count on it," Amanda negated. She shifted her position against the door for the umpteenth time.
"Please, Amanda? If we get caught I won't be able to run away what with my legs all asleep."
"You can leave any time you like, Grenhyrde."
"But you can't even hear anything!"
"Shhhhh!"
Grenhyrde bowed his head in defeat, but he didn't move. They stayed that way for another minute.
"Please, Amanda? It's not worth getting in trouble if you don't even have anything to show for it."
"Who said anything about getting in trouble?"
"I know you, Amanda."
Amanda sighed. She just couldn't resist his pleading eyes. "Oh all right!" She pushed herself to standing and the numbness in her legs went away with immortal speed. She reached a hand down to Grenhyrde, who had a bit of trouble getting his mortal legs to cooperate. "I guess we'll need to get answers another way."
"What other way?" Grenhyrde asked as he massaged his calf.
Amanda's face lit up in a wicked grin. "With them all in the conference there'll be no one to catch us in Adræfan's room!"
"Amanda!" His groaning call fell on deaf ears as she was already making haste down the hallway. Grenhyrde had no choice but to go after her.
"See, it isn't even locked!" she beamed as she pushed open the door to Methos's room.
"Only the Lady has keys to these doors," Grenhyrde pointed out.
Amanda ignored him. "Do you have any flint?"
"There should be some by the lamp."
Grenhyrde was right, and soon Methos's room was aglow.
"Not a lot of light in here."
"All the rooms on the east side get dark early. Amanda, what are we looking for?"
"I don't know. I'll let you know when I find it."
"I'll… just keep watch by the door."
Amanda ignored him. She opened the trunk and found only old clothes. She looked under the bed and found only the empty chamber pot and bathing bowl. She sat down heavily on the bed and bounced a few times.
"He doesn't like a very tight bed, does he," Amanda observed.
"Someone should have tightened the ropes," Grenhyrde observed from the doorway. "One of the house servants does that every morning, when they empty the chamber pots and such."
"Hmmm…" Amanda bounced a few more times. "Maybe he asked them not to?"
"Now why would he do that?"
"Why indeed." Amanda suddenly stood up and turned to face the bed. She kneeled down and lifted the feather mattress off of its rope supports. "Aha!"
"What?"
"Get over here!"
Grenhyrde wavered a moment, still wary of being caught. Finally he left the door and stood behind Amanda. "Wow! There must be twenty rolls there!" It was a cache of vellum, rolled and tied with scraps of fabric and lined up in a row down the side of the bed.
"I can't grab them and still hold the mattress, so you'll have to do it."
"Uh… Are you sure, Amanda? Won't Lord Adræfan notice them being gone?"
"We'll have them all back before anyone's the wiser. Now come on!"
"I don't know about this…"
"Come on, this thing's getting heavy."
Grenhyrde didn't budge.
"All right. If it'll make you feel better, just grab one in each hand. We'll read them here by the lamp then put them back and go on to the next two."
"I've got a bad feeling about this…" But he did as he was told. Grenhyrde pulled out the first two rolls and Amanda dropped the mattress back down into place. Then she grabbed the rolls from his hands and went over to the lamp.
"Let's see what our Lord of Horses has been hiding…" Amanda unrolled the first one and smoothed it out beside the lamp. "Hmm, how's your Latin, Grenhyrde?"
"Fair. I stopped learning a while ago so that I could work in the gardens. Why?"
"Well I'm getting pretty good but there are still some words here I don't recognize."
Grenhyrde pushed Amanda out of the way and leaned in closer. "It's an official document," he said. "From the office of the Lord of Horses."
"What's it say?"
"The beginning rambles on a bit, saying who he is and how long he's held the office, stuff like that."
"I read that part! I'm talking about this stuff, down here!" Amanda pointed to another paragraph, several below where Grenhyrde was reading.
He skimmed down to that part. "Woah…"
Amanda's eyes lit up. "What is it?"
"After he talks about all the stuff he's done in office, and about how he's earned the confidences of the king—"
"Yeah?"
"Well, just listen to this: And so I do hereby endeavor to reveal the secrets that I have discovered, for only with the light of truth can our fair kingdom be led from the darkness that threatens to consume it."
Amanda gasped. "A confessional?"
Grenhyrde read some more. "No… A spy's dossier."
Amanda's eyes shot wide. "A spy! For whom?"
Grenhyrde read to the end of the document. "I don't know. He doesn't really say."
"Well what does he say then? There must be some clue!"
"He's given a list of names, people who he claims aren't loyal to the king. He says some of how he found out, and a bit on how he's followed the breadcrumbs up the chains of command." Grenhyrde swallowed thickly and turned from the document to meet her gaze. "He's named some pretty important people here, Amanda. Members of the King's council, his governors, advisors…"
"Well where do their allegiances lie then, if not with the king?"
"I don't know. He only refers to them as 'The Serpent's Hand'."
Amanda blinked. "The serpent? Like in the Garden of Eden?"
Grenhyrde shrugged.
"Maybe it says more in these other parchments!" Amanda swiftly rolled the one they just read and tied it off with a scrap of cloth. Then she unraveled the next one and brought it over to the lamp. Yet there was nothing written on it. It was completely blank.
"Uh, Amanda?"
"Well, maybe he hasn't used this one yet."
"Makes sense. He hasn't been here that long."
Amanda was about to reply when she was interrupted by the sudden intrusion of the sensation of an approaching immortal. "Someone's coming!"
"What? I don't hear any—"
"Out the window! Go!" Amanda ushered Grenhyrde over to the window and practically threw him out of it with the leg up she gave him. "Climb down the espaliered pear tree!"
"But—"
"Go!" She pushed him out and watched him spin and grab the tree. He was safely making his way down and she was about to follow him when—
"You!"
She spun around and blocked the view out the window. "Lord Adræfan!" She saw that his eyes burned in his rage. If this weren't holy ground she would definitely fear for her head right now. Instinctively she brought a hand up to her throat. Then she was hit with the buzz from another immortal presence. Oh, no—
"I thought you said that she was trustworthy!"
"I did." Rebecca's cold, unforgiving glare as she came into view beside Adræfan was worse than any of his perceived threats.
"Rebecca, I—"
"And did we find what we were looking for?" Adræfan sneered as he advanced into the room. Amanda shrieked and tried to dart past him, but he caught her by the arm and threw her up against the bed. He grabbed the rolled up piece of vellum and turned to face her with it; and somehow it looked more like a weapon and less like parchment in his hands. "I trust we are now well informed?"
Amanda sent a panicked look to Rebecca, but her teacher's face was impassive. She'd find no help there.
"Please, sir! My Latin isn't very good, I could hardly understand—"
"Amanda," he interrupted her protests, his voice condescendingly inquisitive. "Is that your name?"
She nodded haltingly. "Yes, sir."
Adræfan's face twisted around a cruel smile. "It seems to me that someone was gravely mistaken at your baptismal. Leaswene I call you, for that is more akin to what you are." He enunciated the name it like a curse and Amanda turned her head, unable to help the tremors or stop the shaming tears.
While her glance was turned aside her attention was caught by the other roll of vellum, left open and sitting up against the glass guard of the oil lamp. Words were visible now, as though they had been branded there by the heat of the lamp. Her eyes widened in surprise and she nearly gasped, for it was written in the Old Tongue, the one Rebecca was teaching her, but she couldn't make out the words. Then Adræfan raised the rolled vellum as if to strike her. She shrieked again and fled to the door. Rebecca let her slip by and then allowed Amanda to cling to her like a frightened child.
"You should keep your children out from underfoot," Adræfan admonished Rebecca, and Amanda clung tighter to her teacher's skirts.
"They generally know better," Rebecca answered pointedly.
Amanda choked back a sob, almost in fear of Rebecca's eventual punishment. Adræfan walked towards them; Amanda could hear his footfalls on the stone floor. She looked up towards him despite her fears. On top of everything else, she didn't want to be seen a coward, too. Well, any more of one.
"And you," he said, addressing her with scorn.
Amanda forced herself to make eye contact, eyes shimmering.
"You would do well to forget what you have learned."
Amanda nodded haltingly again.
Rebecca then disentangled herself from her student. "Come," she directed gently. "Let us leave Lord Adræfan in peace." Then she led Amanda from the room and Adræfan shut the door behind them.
The Street
No time lapse
"Oh no, Methos," Amanda negated firmly, determinedly ignoring the chills his look was giving her. "The last time you said that boatloads of shit hit the fan." The ghosts of painful memories flickered across her face momentarily. "I'm not Rebecca's airhead little student anymore. If something serious is going down… I want to know about it." Her indignation softened a little. She took a step towards Methos. "I want to help."
"I'm flattered," Methos dismissed, sarcastic, "but there isn't anything you can do. There isn't anything anyone can do." His voice had becomea sneer, anger covering self-loathing.
Amanda took another step towards him, but he shied away.
"They're dead, Amanda. They're all dead."
"Who's dead Methos?" she asked gently.
Methos gave her a meaningful gaze, almost as though he was sizing her up. "It's none of your concern," he determined at length. Then he turned around to continue his walk to nowhere.
Amanda called after him. He stopped but didn't turn around, and took a slow, deliberate breath to calm himself down.
"Let it be, Amanda." The command came out as more of a tired, exasperated plea.
Amanda ignored it. "Why?" she challenged. She approached him with caution, as one would a wounded animal. "We've all been worried about you, Methos."
Yet he didn't rise to the bait.
"You left so suddenly. We all thought you'd decided to stay in Seacouver." Then she sensed rather than saw Methos's smirk.
"With MacLeod, Richie, and Joe? One big happy family?" He laughed bitterly. "You're still naïve, Leaswene."
"I may be many detestable things, Adræfan," Amanda retorted indignantly, "but I am not naïve. I know something happened between you and MacLeod, and I'm tired of everyone alluding to it only to change the subject a moment later like you're dangling a diamond in front of my face and then snatching it away. Either let me in on your little joke or stop playing it, because it isn't funny anymore."
Methos stood seemingly frozen, his back still to Amanda. Just when she was beginning to think that he was ignoring her in the hopes that she would just go away, he spoke.
"MacLeod's problem is that he can't reconcile his boyscout nature with the world's moral ambiguity. The longer he lives, the more he comes to learn that the world is more gray than black and white, and the more he grows to hate the world."
"Duncan has his demons, just like everyone else. He isn't even as black and white as he wants to believe."
Methos nearly laughed at that. Nearly. "He hates his own hypocrisy most of all."
"All immortals are hypocrites, Methos, if they live long enough."
Finally Methos turned to face her. Amanda looked older there, in the fading grayish light, than he ever remembered her being.
"Are we?" he asked, the question genuine. "Whose to say that what we do is right or wrong? How can something we do that seems right in the moment be judged as good or evil centuries later by people who haven't seen the things we've seen or felt the things we feel? I remember a time when Hamurabi's Code was law and we all followed it as morally upstanding citizens. Now eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth leaves us all blind and toothless and suddenly I'm a bad person—even though at the time I could have won citizenship awards—and I'm not the one who changed. How can the world change beneath me feet and then dare to call me hypocrite?"
Amanda found that she couldn't hold his gaze and so turned her face away. She had no answers for him.
"I was named Amanda by the woman who found me," she said at length, evading silence. "If she knew what it meant, she never told me before she died. It was just a name, but from when she died until Rebecca found me, it was all I had that was mine and mine alone. It wasn't something I had to steal, or borrow, or earn. It was given to me, and it was mine to keep forever and ever.
"Then I met you, and in a fit of anger you said that name didn't fit me, and so you gave me another. Leaswene: false maiden. And you still call me that whenever the mood strikes. I didn't understand it then, but I think Rebecca did because after we left your room she said it over again to herself, as though tasting a new vintage for the first time. She said I'd learn the significance of names when I got older—just like every other idea of immortality she didn't think I was smart enough or mature enough to handle. I didn't think anything of it until much later, after the abbey had been destroyed. I was with Darius, and for a laugh I told him that story. Well instead of laughing he got very serious, and asked if Rebecca ever called me that. I told him that she called me Amanda, and that I was Leaswene only to you. Well for whatever reason that seemed to cheer him up, but when I asked him about it he just asked me if I knew what the name 'Amanda' meant."
Her words hammered into him and Methos flinched and turned away. Yet Amanda wasn't finished yet.
"Amanda: Latin, one who is worthy of love."
And there his breath hitched.
"You said that whoever named me did a poor job, and took it upon yourself to fix the problem. You named me Leaswene, false maiden, and still use it—and you have the gall to ask the world what right it has to use current morals to judge your past? My past is just as immutable as yours and yet in your eyes who I am changes as often as the state of your own hypocrisy. Answer me my question Methos, and then maybe I can answer yours."
The two of them stood frozen, staring at each other across a four-foot expanse that stretched for thousands of years. Methos's face had a look of pain intermingled with curiosity, as though he'd just been shot and was too busy cataloguing the new sensations to care that he was dying. Amanda, for her part, seemed completely, utterly, hopelessly lost.
All immortals are hypocrites, if they live long enough.
They seemed to come back to the present then. Amanda blinked and the impassive face, the serene visage of quiet thought and innocent yet reflective judgment—Rebecca's face, melted away and it was Amanda standing there again.
"Tell me what happened Methos. Please. I can't help if I don't know."
Methos sighed, exhausted. "I've already told you what's wrong with MacLeod…"
"And that's not what I asked for. What happened between you, Methos? What did this to him?" She stepped closer. "To you?"
Methos sighed and ran a tired hand through his hair. He closed his eyes and the memories flashed before his vision, wisps of smoke in a false dawn. He felt himself start to shiver and wondered if it was because of some sudden chill in the air.
"MacLeod... killed people who were very dear to me," he confessed at length. "Two I had known nearly as long as I had known Rebecca. They were—" he choked on a bitter laugh. "My brothers," he confessed, surprised at how easily the word rolled off his tongue. "And another was my student, one of the very few I've had."
Amanda nodded slowly as puzzle pieces slowly began to fit into place. "I'm sorry," she said softly, walking ever closer, closing the gap between them. Something in the way she said it made Methos wonder exactly what she was sorry for.
"Amanda?"
"That after all that, that Duncan still lives."
Methos's eyes opened wide, but Amanda continued before he could speak.
"He's killed three people that you care about, very recently I gather, and after each one you decided to let him live? I've seen what happens to those who hurt people you care about, Methos. Deciding not to kill MacLeod, and after all he's done... It must have killed you each time."
Methos grimaced, a study in muted agony. "Oh, you have no idea…"
Amanda reached up, tenderly, to touch his face, but he flinched away.
"It's more than that," she concluded aloud, lowering her hand half way. "You let him kill them, didn't you. You let him judge them and then take their heads. You stood aside and did nothing as they died." Amanda's voice, Amanda's face, and yet Rebecca's condemnation, damning him through simple truths, each statement a knife to the heart. "You let him, because if you didn't let him you would have had to challenge him."
"Stop," Methos mouthed, his voice unable to escape around the lump in his throat.
Amanda reached for him again and this time he let her. She smoothed his hair back out of his eyes, her cool fingers burning against his skin. "And you won't challenge MacLeod, because after five thousand years, you don't want to die."
"Stop. Please." Barely a whisper, hoarse and pleading, forced out with the strength of desperation.
Her hand stopped and cupped his cheek, and he thought his knees would buckle. "Or maybe, you can't challenge MacLeod because you won't kill him, and so instead you let his judgment be your penance."
"Please…" No sound again. He tried to look away but Amanda trapped him there, bringing up her other hand to frame his face.
"Whatever your reasons, they're killing you. And he's rubbing your face in it, taking away your right to mourn them."
Methos tried to pull away but she wouldn't let him.
"Grieve, Methos." Her voice was surprisingly gentle despite the obvious command. "It's ok for you to be glad that MacLeod's alive and still upset that the others aren't. You lost people that you cared about, and you don't have to be happy about it just because it means that MacLeod can keep his pretty little head a while longer. Stop damning yourself by claiming that you were too scared to face the highlander—and stop justifying it by claiming that you're too pious in your own purgatory to kill him, and simply grieve, Methos. Grieve for those you've lost."
Methos had no way of escaping. Memories flooded him and Amanda trapped him there. Finally he gave into the weight of it all and the barriers he'd so carefully constructed came crashing down. Before he knew it he felt Amanda's arms around him, as his fists clenched into the fabric of her coat and he allowed himself the precious luxury of a shoulder to cry on—Amanda's shoulder, the second time in as many years.
"You're a lot like her, you know," he said finally, once the tears ran dry. They were sitting on the curb in the middle of some narrow Paris street. Amanda still had a supportive arm draped around him and he was leaning his head against her shoulder.
"Who?"
"Rebecca. She would be proud of you."
Amanda scoffed. "I'm a thief. Always have been." Her voice was bitter.
Methos sat up straighter and put his arm around her, and so they sat, arms about shoulders and leaning into each other for support.
"You were Amanda to her then, and you stayed Amanda until the day she died. She taught you well, and she'd be proud of you."
"Do you really think so?"
Amanda sounded so very young then, with that question. Methos allowed himself to remember that she was only Rebecca's student, despite whatever words he was using. Memory had been confusing his perception. Rebecca was truly dead and gone, and only shades of her returned, shadows graying with the dawn, whenever she needed to hurt him in order to save him from himself.
Methos simply nodded. "I'm sure of it."
Amanda sighed tiredly, content. "Was I right in any of what I said?" she asked eventually, completely oblivious to how the effect was cheapened by her having to ask.
"Some," he answered evasively.
Amanda wasn't about to let him off the hook. "If you want my honest opinion—" he didn't, but what did that matter? "—I think that whatever went down, you allowed it to happen."
"And why do you think that?" he asked condescendingly.
"I don't pretend to know your reasons—" yes you did, but who's counting? "—but I do know that whatever happened wouldn't have happened if in some small way you didn't want it to."
"Fascinating," he said dismissively. "But you still haven't told me why you think that."
"Because you've done it before. At the abbey."
That caught Methos's attention. He stiffened beside her.
"You hated every minute of it, but you allowed it to happen because you believed in your reasons."
"And what makes you think that I believe in my reasons now?" he asked her, genuinely this time.
"I don't," she answered, matter-of-factly, taking Methos by surprise. "That's why I've been so worried."
Methos sighed tiredly and relaxed into Amanda's shoulder again. "I don't have to believe in my reasons," he declared, "so long as they're good reasons."
Amanda ignored how little sense that statement made. "And are they?"
"MacLeod's still here. You tell me."
"Is that your reason?"
"Well wouldn't that just make everything nice and simple."
Amanda nearly choked on her realization. "You believe in MacLeod!"
Methos hesitated just a moment before answering. "Yes."
"Well, can't that be reason enough?"
This time he answered immediately, definitively. "No."
"Why not?"
"If it was, you wouldn't be telling me I need to grieve."
Amanda scoffed. "Personal losses are more than just write-offs in the bigger picture."
"The bigger picture is my reason."
"But you're not even sure you believe in it!"
Methos arched an eyebrow. "I don't have to believe in it, remember?"
"But why don't you?"
"So that I never treat my personal losses as write-offs in the bigger picture."
Understanding bludgeoned Amanda then, and she was silent for many minutes. "Back at the abbey," she eventually hedged, "did you believe in your reasons then?"
Methos nodded. "I did."
"Did that make it any easier?"
A smothered snicker. "No."
Amanda was confused. "Well, what if you didn't believe in them?"
Now Methos laughed outright. "I wouldn't have even been in the position, so it's rather moot."
"Would you have preferred it that way?"
Methos had to think about that. "Yes," he answered a moment later.
"Would you change it if you could?"
Methos could answer that one immediately. "No."
Amanda laughed slightly and shook her head. "How did Rebecca ever put up with you and your ambiguities?"
"Not well," he answered truthfully.
Amanda smiled fondly. "I remember."
