Chapter Five
The Grand Canyon, two nights later:

Across the campfire… Amber kept a careful eye on Wingate… watching him as he joked with Burke. The two of them were delivering the lines of the old Abbot and Costello "Who's on First" routine. Evidently Wingate was an old fan of the comedy duo… while Burke had simply heard it so much… he had it memorized.

As they finished… they pointed at one another with the line "Third Base!" Then both men collapsed laughing. Amber just shook her head.

She'd honestly feared for Derrick as she'd watched the fight. She'd wanted to protect him… he wasn't ready for a challenge… no matter how good he seemed to be. Even after nearly two and a half centuries, Amber could still recall the trepidation she'd felt at her first challenge… and then the thrill and momentary loss of self that followed afterwards. She'd still been little Kathleen Conroy… but she'd also been Hiram Bigelow… aged one hundred and seven. In the wake of that first quickening she'd taken her first mortal lover… reveling in the rush that followed the challenge and the confidence that she could compete in this game… that Connor MacLeod had taught her well. Still… Amber recalled that actually facing that first challenge… with the knowledge that to survive she'd have to behead another immortal… had been terrifying.

"Let's take a walk."

She glanced up at Derrick who had the sleeping bag cradled under one arm. He held out his other hand in invitation. Casting one more glance at the two laughing immortals… Amber stood and grasped his hand. "Fine by me." She was not in a good mood.

For an immortal who'd spent most of her life avoiding other immortals… having suddenly discovered that she was one of a group… and not exactly by her choice… thoroughly unnerved her.

They'd managed to find an unguarded area of the national park and had settled down for the night… even daring a campfire. But away from the light of the fire… Amber became aware of the panorama of stars, like sparkling jewels on the black velvet of the night. She gasped as one and then another streaked across the sky.

"Meteor shower," said Derrick coming to a stop near the canyon's edge. He stood beside her, holding her hand and like her… gazed at the heavens. After some moments… he chuckled and dropped her hand to spread the sleeping bag on the ground. He dropped onto it and sat cross-legged… still staring out at the night.

"Aye," Amber finally said. "In this modern world with so much false light and fast pace… I sometimes forget about the stars."

"What was it like when you were younger?"

She turned and stared at him. "How do ya mean?"

"I mean… what was it like to live in days when things were not so complicated. When life was slower… and you could step outside your door and see the stars."

Amber laughed companionably and settled on the sleeping bag next to him. "I sometimes forget ya know only this world. That ya're only thirty, that this life is all ya've ever known. Ya sometimes seem to be so much older and wiser than the rest of us."

"Me?" Derrick shook his head. "I don't know anything. I just see people and want to help give them what they need… what will help ease their pain."

"Oh, ya do, do ya? What did ya see in me?"

He stared at her thoughtfully. "You needed someone to love. You needed to let yourself love."

"How did ya know that?"

He shrugged. "I just listened to you."

"And are you that someone?"

Derrick was silent. He gazed out at the open expanse of the canyon and seemed to think about it. "I don't know. I know I care about you and what happens to you. I don't want you ever to feel like I'm asking more of you than you feel you can handle. But I do need you. Without you… I'd never have managed with Burke… and without Burke… Wingate would now be dead."

"What are ya hopin' to accomplish with all this?" She laid one hand on his shoulder.

But Derrick said nothing.

Finally he lay back on the sleeping bag, his hands behind his head and just stared soberly at the stars. "I don't know. Truly I don't."

Amber sat staring down at him. "Ya know what ya need?" she finally said with a wicked grin.

He looked at her thoughtfully.

"Ya need…" she said suddenly sitting atop him and folding her knees down. She leaned forward and whispered in his ear. "… to keep yar hands behind yar head… no matter what." Then she unbuckled his belt. She nearly laughed when he gasped at what she did next. There was something to be said for over two hundred years of experience.

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The morning sun rose in the east and the canyon was still deep in shadow. On the cliff above… Derrick went through the motions of the kata with the great sword. He cleared his mind so effectively that the he could hear the whistling sound it made as it moved through the air… faster… ever faster. He turned and shifted… reacting to the moves he saw in his mind… as if they played out in fast forward. Finally he reached the end and slashed down with power and conviction. He froze and slowly opened his eyes to stare out across the canyon.

The deep red and sandstone colors shimmered in the light of the rising sun. The world looked for a moment as if drenched in blood. Derrick shuddered. Glancing behind him at the still sleeping Amber… he wondered what it was he was doing. As he'd told her last night… he truly didn't know… and there were no voices or flashes of memory to help him. There was only the sense that something had to be done… and that he needed to do it.

He had no plan. He'd seen that Amber needed him… that she needed to be needed by someone. Then he'd seen that Burke needed to learn who and what he was and how to respond to the world and to other immortals. And Wingate? He needed something. It wasn't clear yet… and there was still an element of danger in the aura about him… yet he was not an inherently evil person… corrupted by the darkness of the quickenings he'd taken. He was simply so focused on the game… that he'd never considered there could be anything else. Perhaps by traveling with them… he'd find what he needed.

"I cannot do it alone," Derrick said to the dawn. "I cannot do it alone."

Behind him, Amber stretched within the sleeping bag. She'd be awake soon. It was time to move on. Derrick rose and pulled on his coat… sliding the sword inside it. There were so many things to do here, and all he knew for certain was that he was the product of all he'd seen and learned as a boy and young man. Somehow, all of that was helping to guide the steps he now took.

Amber sat up with a smile… her eyes gazing at him. She drew her knees up in the bag and leaned against them… hugging them to her chest as she regarded him… her face relaxed in a contented smile.

He returned her smile. "It's time to go."

She sighed and looked back towards their campsite as she reached for clothes to don. "I suppose. Still… it's nice when we get to be alone."

Derrick nodded gently. "Yes." But he was already eager to get back… and even more eager to move on. The world was waiting, and time was passing.

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Paris:

Joe Dawson wheeled into the house from the garden… just missing the first of the falling raindrops. He stared at the rain splattering the leaves of the Amy's plants and chuckled. He liked seeing just how fast he could make this thing go sometimes.

He'd turned seventy-five his last birthday, and in this day and age… what with medical advancements… he could still look forward to a few more decades. But… the trade-off after the damage to his body from the caustic agent Avril Mishkov had introduced into his system a dozen years ago… was that he had to rest his heart.

"Monsieur Dawson," the doctor had said. "Your heart is damaged. You've been shot there on two occasions. Now… with this poison introduced into your system… it has weakened. It takes a great deal of effort to use and walk with your prostheses. I honestly think you'd be better off… giving them up."

Joe had wanted to argue. He loved to argue, and he treasured his independence. But he'd agreed. The convincing argument had been that of his grandchildren. He wanted to see them grow up. He wanted to sit in the audience when they graduated from first public school, and then from college. He wanted to see them marry and have children of their own. Having lived so long without a family of his own… having been over fifty before Amy had ever learned of his tie to her… that he'd acknowledged that tie… he was suddenly eager for Amy and her children to be a major part of his life. Thus… he'd agreed to the motorized contraption. But it didn't mean he didn't like to race it a bit… or still be a part of life. If anything… he was even more lively and joking than he'd been. And that was saying something.

"Monsieur Dawson! What are you doing? The rain is getting in!" Estelle, Amy's housekeeper was indignant at the rain pounding onto the slate tile floor of the conservatory.

Joe smirked. As if it could do any damage, he thought. "It's only water!" he snapped teasingly.

Estelle glared at him as she shut the double doors and began to mop up the water on her hands and knees.

For a moment, Joe grinned at Estelle's ample rear shifting back and forth on the floor in front of him. He sighed and chuckled as he hit the pad on the right arm of his chair so that he turned and drove off into the other room. He could still hear her grumbling behind him.

Joe had reached the main hall when his phonecard buzzed in his shirt pocket. He stopped, pulled it out… still amazed at the size and sleekness of the new phones. They were about the size of an old credit card… and about an eighth of an inch thick. On one side was a smooth touch pad… on the other… a plasma screen. He tapped the answer area and grinned as Amy's picture appeared.

"Dad… Hi!" she smiled warmly.

"Hi yourself! What's up?"

Amy shook her head, her brown hair swayed gently about her. "Oh… I was in such a rush this morning that I left my attaché case in my office."

"You want I should bring it over?"

Amy laughed. "No… It's just… I think I left a data disk in it that I needed for a meeting this afternoon. Could you check? I marked it de Valicourt. Their new Watcher is coming in for a briefing today and while I thought I'd left it here… perhaps I didn't. I can't seem to lay my hands on it at the moment. Can you check for me?"

"Already rolling in there. I'll call you back if I find it."

"Thanks… If you do… then you can load it onto the fax and send it. Meanwhile… I'll keep looking for it here."

"Will do! Love you sweetie!"

"Ditto you old rascal." Amy rang off and the screen went blank.

By this time Joe had entered Amy's home office. As he entered… lights automatically came on. One of his old blues recordings began playing softly on Amy's sound system. He chuckled as he drove about looking for her attaché case, finally finding it in the well of the desk. He pulled her chair out and reached in to lay the case on her desk.

He thought for a moment… attempting to recall her case code… then tapped in the twins' birthday with a laugh. The locks opened. "You gotta be more creative than that," he chuckled as he sorted through the contents. Finding an entire stack of disks… Joe lifted them out and began to sort through them. The small two-inch circles in their plastic sleeves all bore the Watcher logo and in Amy's bold stroke… names of immortals or time frames. He did not see de Valicourt on one of them.

Dropping them to one side he pulled out paper files and thin fax films in search of the disk she wanted. A few of the papers slid to the floor. He snorted… and continued to search. He found nothing. Joe shrugged as he began returning everything to the case. Glancing at the floor… he wondered if he should make the effort to get everything returned himself… or call Estelle to assist him.

Grinning he whipped out the long handled tongs Dawson had given him for his last birthday.

"So you can reach things," the boy had grinned.

Joe kept the tongs in his chair. He'd learned they came in handy occasionally… and that they made him feel not quite so dependent on others. He reached down with them and grasped the papers… carefully lifting them and replacing them in the case. Then he leaned down with them to gather the last ones… the ones that had fluttered further away. His eyes fell on one sheet… on the small photo.

Joe froze for a moment. Then he reached over to grasp that sheet and pull it into his lap. He picked it up in his hand and held it before his eyes. His eye surgery two years ago had restored his vision to that of his youth. Thoughtfully he read the information and stared at the photo of the young man. "Damn!" he said.

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Amy entered her home with a cheery, "Yoo hoo!" She could hear Abigail playing Fűr Elise on the piano. Her daughter had evidently inherited her grandfather's musical abilities… if not his taste in music. Dawson passed through the hall; his hands wrapped around a massive sandwich… his expression reflecting guilt.

"Oh… Hi Mom!" he sputtered around the food in his mouth, making the effort to chew and swallow before continuing his snack.

"Hi yourself," Amy smirked. He was going through a growth spurt evidently and seemed to always be eating. "Where's your grandfather?"

The boy swallowed the last of what was in his mouth. "He's in your office. He was there when we got home. I went in to say hello… but he seemed awful quiet."

"Is he all right?" Concern filled Amy's voice and being, as she laid her coat on the hall table.

"He said he was. But he didn't seem to want to talk or anything."

"I better check on him. He seemed fine earlier today when I spoke with on the phone." Amy crossed to her closed office door, and then turned back with an encouraging smile. "I'm sure it's nothing."

Dawson took another bite of his sandwich and headed up the stairs chewing thoughtfully.

Inside her office, Amy found Joe staring out the window at the rain.

"Dad?"

He looked up at her soberly. "Hi… I didn't find your disk."

Amy nodded. "I figured as much. As it turned out… I did leave it at the office. So what's the matter?"

Joe held out a piece of faxfilm. "I didn't mean to snoop… but I saw this."

"You know you can look at anything I bring home," Amy started as she gathered it from his outstretched hand and glanced at it. "How did that get here?" She noted that it was the story of the man who'd died saving car crash victims in California a few weeks ago. She laughed with a shrug. "I must have shoved it into my case a few days ago when I was in a hurry. I'd forgotten all about this one." She gestured to Joe. "What about it?"

"Don't you recognize him?"

Amy glanced again at the photo of the bearded man. She shook her head with a shrug. "No… should I?"

"Do you recall Derrick… the young man you met when Ellie first came to see me in the Paris hospital?"

Amy stared again at the photo trying to recall that day over twelve years ago. She hadn't really been at her best. She'd been worried sick about Joe, Burt, and the children. She'd awakened to see a dark-haired woman offering Joe some water. In the shadows behind the door had been a tall young man. Amy stared again at the face in the photo. This man was at least thirty… which meant he'd likely have been… what… about the same age in 2011. That couldn't be right. The young man had been in his teens… only slightly older than the twins were now… perhaps seventeen… or eighteen. She'd noted his eyes… such old eyes. Amy stared harder… at the eyes staring out at her from the photo… eyes that spoke of serenity… and peace. "What? It can't be the same boy. He was a young man. This is of an older man. If he were immortal… he'd have been closer to this age in 2011."

"Not if he was born in 1993," Joe said quietly.

Amy gazed quizzically at the photo and then at Joe. "Is there something I should know?"

Joe nodded. "You remember when I was shot by Daniel M'Benga?"

"How could I forget!"

"The real reason I was shot was because I was protecting a ten year old boy from being shot. He was pre-immortal."

"In 2003 he was ten?" Amy was aghast. "Then there are new immortals being born!"

Joe shrugged. "That I don't know. I just know about Derrick. Mac and Methos and Ellie thought he was special. When I met him that day… I knew he was."

"How so?" Amy settled on the arm of the sofa.

"Do you remember off-hand what happened in May of 1993?" Joe looked up at her.

Amy's brow knotted in thought. "Let's see… you mean among immortals?" Suddenly she had it and stared at Joe. "Darius was murdered."

Joe nodded. "I think you and I have some calls to make."

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