"How do you know that?" Rose asked MacLeod.
"I was close with your father–"
"I know, I know. Some gang of ruffians tried to assault him London when he was seventeen and you saved him. Why tell you his daughter was a fake? Did he know about you? Did he know about me? Wait, did you know about me?"
"Yes, I knew you had the potential to be immortal."
"Potential?" Rose grabbed the loose curls hanging from her head and got up. (She had sat down during Duncan's story.) Too much weird information at once.
"You can only become immortal if you die first."
"That's some twisted irony," Rose sat down again.
"And no, your father never knew I was immortal or that you could be. He was just a close friend."
"So if he told you about his dirty secret, why didn't you tell him about yours–and mine, considering it's the same one."
"Telling someone your child isn't yours is a little more common than saying your three hundred years old."
"You told me and I didn't believe you."
"You know you can't die, you were going to have to face sometime. You were just absorbing the shock."
"I was absorbing shock? MacLeod, I can't die. I don't have parents anymore and I can't have children if I wanted to...not that I'd make much of a mother right now–but one day I would have made a damn good one!"
Duncan put his hand on her shoulder. "I know you would have. Your father was a good friend, Rose."
"I know, that's what you said at his funeral. Please don't tell me we have anything to do with his accident."
"Why do you think that?"
"Taking a random baby that's not yours, rasing her as if she is, then that baby grows up to...well, not to grow old anymore...is a little off in and of itself, don't you think? A sober man falling off the balcony in his own home now seems a little stranger than it had previously."
"Don't go looking for people to blame, Rose, revenge won't do you any good, not now. Not when you're this young and this helpless an immortal." Immortals have no bloodline, but Duncan could see the young woman had warrior blood despite her rigid upbringing. He had his suspicions about what happened to his good friend Nate Bukater, but they were suspicions only.
"Who would I blame, Duncan?"
"Spicer Lovejoy is one of us–but that doesn't mean he had anything to do with your father's death."
"What? Is he a friend of yours?" she asked with an edge.
Rose didn't like Lovejoy. Surprise.
"No, we're decidedly not friends."
"Would he know about me? I mean, did he know I was a ...pre-immortal of sorts?"
"Naturally, yes. But he had know reason to kill your father."
"Would he have reason to kill me?"
"No, it would be a pretty weak Quickening. Lovejoy's isn't exactly a kitten, but unless he sees profit, he's not one to act...your head wouldn't present profit much at this point."
"What in the hell is a Quickening?" Rose asked with exhaustion than curiousity.
"When you take another immortal's head you receive all of his or her knowledge and strength." Rose put her heads in her hands. "You alright?"
"I need to take a walk," Rose got up and left the room before MacLeod could say anything.
Rose felt sick to her stomach. It was a cloudy day and there was little activity around the hospital, a converted estate. She thought about waiting a thousand years to see her father again and a thousand years to see Fabrizio again. Did Lovejoy kill her father or was it her own paranoia, a need to place the blame as MacLeod told her? What about Jack Dawson? She saw him die, or was that more assumptions, a need for explanations? What does it take to cut someone's head off? Not the skill of fighting, but the strength and the will. She would have to go through someone's neck, starting at one side and slicing straight through to the other; she would have to sever flesh and organs and bones. After thinking hard about that she wasn't sure whether to cry or vomit.
She spent almost half an hour wandering the covered stone walkways around the courtyard before she could feel her self getting sick again, but then shook it off, realizing she was sensing MacLeod. Though feeling indifferent to his presence at the moment, she looked around for him. He was her only friend in the world now.
From across the walkway, a man, not MacLeod, was staring at her. Immediately, she was afraid but dared not show it–though she didn't move and simply continued to look at the man as he approached her. He had red hair and wore a white coat.
"Yeah, it's me," said Rose in response to the buzz she knew she was emitting, and waved her hand stupidly, she felt embarrassed immediately thereafter. She decided he wasn't a threat, unlike most children Rose had always found a comfort in doctors growing up.
The new immortal held out his hand.
"I'm Sean Burns. I'm a psychoanalyst here at the hosptial. You must be Duncan's friend."
"I am," Rose held out her hand for Dr. Burns to receive it. "Rose Dawson. Nice to meet you."
"How are you getting on, Rose?" Sean studied her face. She was looked perpetually frazzled, but was also determined to remain polite but impersonal. Duncan had said this one had seen a lot, a complicated young woman with a rather complicated story. She wasn't any different from his patients, except of course Rose Dawson seemed to have maintained her wits.
"Quite fine for the circumstances, Dr. Burns."
"Sean, please."
"I'm fine, Sean. I'm better than everybody else here at least. Obviously far from dying and I'm not crazy–not yet at least." The two began to walk around the cobble stone path.
"You're safe here. You can do whatever you like while everything else sinks in. Do you play golf?" Perhaps he could get the wayward on better terms with her teacher. The Highlander, true to his roots, loved the sport.
"No, I can't stand golf. It's too boring to be called sport, my God!"
"Well," Sean chuckled, "don't tell Duncan that, you'll upset him."
"I think I already did," Rose said, "but to be fair he was upsetting me first."
"Which part was he telling you?"
"Oh, everything. Beheading, not being my parents' child, you know, the basics. At least I assume those are the basics."
"Oh, yes. I would imagine Duncan knows quite a bit. He was quite close with your father."
"Well, if only that made two of us," she said smiling with a rather sardonic tone. Rose paused, suddenly embarrassed of her blatant bitterness–and her willingness to share it. "I'm sorry. I'm a bit angry now."
"It's normal to be angry, Rose, perfectly normal."
"No, I don't mean I'm angry at the moment. That's what I am now. I'm an angry person. I can't think of my parents without wanting to tear my sheets to shreds–and even little things! I put too much sugar in my tea by accident this morning and I broke the cup. And every time MacLeod speaks I want to plug his mouth up!"
Rose paused, feeling terribly embarrassed that she had admitted to so much. She turned red and felt sick again.
"Like I said," Sean stopped and patted her shoulder, "perfectly normal."
Rose had gone back to her room for a nap. It was easier to relax after talking to Sean Burns, no surprise, the man spent his life making the mad relax. She didn't care if he had somehow manipulated her, she felt better and for now that was all that mattered. But the first hour of her rest she spent attempting to fall asleep and failing, the next hour she did finally sleep, and the hour after that she lay awake in bed. She realized that she had, for the first time in quite a long time, the freedom of laziness. Joyful at the thought, she rolled over and drifted away again.
She awoke half an hour later with nothing but a headache and a few bad images. Her parents arguing, Titanic going down, Jack Dawson, Fabrizio, their last days and the first days, her own headless body. Only the latter was anything new, really, and was to be expected. Rose shrugged and went off in search of a stiff drink.
Instead she found both Duncan and Sean sipping tea in Sean's room. Rose decided to give MacLeod a chance, so she dug up a few warmer childhood memories of Duncan MacLeod and made herself a stiff cup of coffee and some toast, opting for caffeine over alcohol.
MacLeod decided not to be warm and fuzzy in the following weeks. Sean put Rose to work in the ward (though privately she'd much rather be flying her plane.) And MacLeod put her to work out in an abandon field seven miles away. Everyday Rose trudged home sore, with her everything hurting, including her ego.
By the summer, Mac was called back to the front and Rose got a break from sword fighting. Funny, when she was a little girl she'd always wanted to learn fencing, she was sorely regretting that now. She spent until October helping Sean, than MacLeod came back.
"How was your summer?" MacLeod asked, though he'd been reading her letters.
"Alright, I suppose. I've practiced every once and a while when I've gotten the nerve to look at it." Rose held an shining broadsword in her hand.
MacLeod examined his pupil. The months without training–and away from the war–had calmed her. She was placid now, just sad. Perhaps training her would be a little easier...she was reckless at first–but also vicious.
"If I take you to dinner tonight we won't practice for a couple days." Rose half-heartedly smiled. "Unless you've got plans with someone else..." Mac wondered, maybe she was calmer because she'd met someone.
This was not the case as MacLeod had discovered. Sean had reported that the less angry she became the more the young woman retreated into herself. Even with her initial recklessness, Rose was a natural swordsman and he delighted in working with her, even if her temper had soured since last he saw her at sixteen. Now she was apathetic to everything. Working with Sean had calmed but her demons were winning, she was left with utter hopelessness.
One day during a short break from swordplay, Rose walked over to the old abandoned stone cottage and sat down in the dirt. She closed her eyes.
"Break for lunch?" MacLeod asked. "...Anything sore?"
"So do you think someone killed my father or do you think it was an accident?"
MacLeod was caught a little off-guard to say the least.
"...That's a pretty casual tone for such a question."
"I've been thinking about it for a while. I'm used to it now... I may not be three hundred by I can tell when someone's hiding something, even if it's only a thought."
"Rose," Duncan sighed, "I don't know what happened but I have a few ideas. This isn't the sort of thing you can jump to conclusions about–and this is a bad time to get worked up about it. If you're going to do anything. Look into it when you get back to the States. Investigate first."
"God...the States..." Rose laughed. "I haven't been home in..." she thought, "three years. I don't even know what's home anymore. Can't go back to Philadelphia, at least not my part..at least not for until everyone's dead. God! Everyone I know has to be dead before I go home!"
"Not always."
"Say, Duncan, when was the last time you went home to Scotland?"
"1746."
"My God...really? I don't think I could stay away that long. I can't imagine living that long."
"Give it here," Duncan held out his hand for Rose to take and he pulled her gently and steadily to her feet. "You will live as long you choose. You, Rose, are a fighter. When I met you, I knew more than just your immortality, I could see that look in your eyes. You were a tough little girl, whether they fed you on a silver platter or you were digging for scraps. You're a strong young woman, you did more at twenty than most people ever have the courage to do in their whole lives. I saw you grow up and I'll see you grow ancient. And I mean that. You'll live as long as you choose to, even if it means fighting with your every last strength."
"Meaning kill for it."
"It's a very hard life. And you'll live with everyone you've lost and everyone you've killed."
Rose leaned in to hug her old friend Duncan MacLeod–something she hadn't done in five years. She squeezed tighter as she held back the tears. Everything inside her hurt. She had lost her father, she'd lost not one but two men she'd–granted Jack Dawson was alive but all the same–he was dead to her, and she would lose her mother too–not that her mother knew there was anything left of Rose. Maybe one day she'd lose Duncan or Sean.
There was only the moment now. Today was the day to make life count in a very quiet way, to remember that her friends loved her and to remember she had a life to build. And quite a long time to do it in, if, as Duncan had told her, she choose to live that long.
"I was close with your father–"
"I know, I know. Some gang of ruffians tried to assault him London when he was seventeen and you saved him. Why tell you his daughter was a fake? Did he know about you? Did he know about me? Wait, did you know about me?"
"Yes, I knew you had the potential to be immortal."
"Potential?" Rose grabbed the loose curls hanging from her head and got up. (She had sat down during Duncan's story.) Too much weird information at once.
"You can only become immortal if you die first."
"That's some twisted irony," Rose sat down again.
"And no, your father never knew I was immortal or that you could be. He was just a close friend."
"So if he told you about his dirty secret, why didn't you tell him about yours–and mine, considering it's the same one."
"Telling someone your child isn't yours is a little more common than saying your three hundred years old."
"You told me and I didn't believe you."
"You know you can't die, you were going to have to face sometime. You were just absorbing the shock."
"I was absorbing shock? MacLeod, I can't die. I don't have parents anymore and I can't have children if I wanted to...not that I'd make much of a mother right now–but one day I would have made a damn good one!"
Duncan put his hand on her shoulder. "I know you would have. Your father was a good friend, Rose."
"I know, that's what you said at his funeral. Please don't tell me we have anything to do with his accident."
"Why do you think that?"
"Taking a random baby that's not yours, rasing her as if she is, then that baby grows up to...well, not to grow old anymore...is a little off in and of itself, don't you think? A sober man falling off the balcony in his own home now seems a little stranger than it had previously."
"Don't go looking for people to blame, Rose, revenge won't do you any good, not now. Not when you're this young and this helpless an immortal." Immortals have no bloodline, but Duncan could see the young woman had warrior blood despite her rigid upbringing. He had his suspicions about what happened to his good friend Nate Bukater, but they were suspicions only.
"Who would I blame, Duncan?"
"Spicer Lovejoy is one of us–but that doesn't mean he had anything to do with your father's death."
"What? Is he a friend of yours?" she asked with an edge.
Rose didn't like Lovejoy. Surprise.
"No, we're decidedly not friends."
"Would he know about me? I mean, did he know I was a ...pre-immortal of sorts?"
"Naturally, yes. But he had know reason to kill your father."
"Would he have reason to kill me?"
"No, it would be a pretty weak Quickening. Lovejoy's isn't exactly a kitten, but unless he sees profit, he's not one to act...your head wouldn't present profit much at this point."
"What in the hell is a Quickening?" Rose asked with exhaustion than curiousity.
"When you take another immortal's head you receive all of his or her knowledge and strength." Rose put her heads in her hands. "You alright?"
"I need to take a walk," Rose got up and left the room before MacLeod could say anything.
Rose felt sick to her stomach. It was a cloudy day and there was little activity around the hospital, a converted estate. She thought about waiting a thousand years to see her father again and a thousand years to see Fabrizio again. Did Lovejoy kill her father or was it her own paranoia, a need to place the blame as MacLeod told her? What about Jack Dawson? She saw him die, or was that more assumptions, a need for explanations? What does it take to cut someone's head off? Not the skill of fighting, but the strength and the will. She would have to go through someone's neck, starting at one side and slicing straight through to the other; she would have to sever flesh and organs and bones. After thinking hard about that she wasn't sure whether to cry or vomit.
She spent almost half an hour wandering the covered stone walkways around the courtyard before she could feel her self getting sick again, but then shook it off, realizing she was sensing MacLeod. Though feeling indifferent to his presence at the moment, she looked around for him. He was her only friend in the world now.
From across the walkway, a man, not MacLeod, was staring at her. Immediately, she was afraid but dared not show it–though she didn't move and simply continued to look at the man as he approached her. He had red hair and wore a white coat.
"Yeah, it's me," said Rose in response to the buzz she knew she was emitting, and waved her hand stupidly, she felt embarrassed immediately thereafter. She decided he wasn't a threat, unlike most children Rose had always found a comfort in doctors growing up.
The new immortal held out his hand.
"I'm Sean Burns. I'm a psychoanalyst here at the hosptial. You must be Duncan's friend."
"I am," Rose held out her hand for Dr. Burns to receive it. "Rose Dawson. Nice to meet you."
"How are you getting on, Rose?" Sean studied her face. She was looked perpetually frazzled, but was also determined to remain polite but impersonal. Duncan had said this one had seen a lot, a complicated young woman with a rather complicated story. She wasn't any different from his patients, except of course Rose Dawson seemed to have maintained her wits.
"Quite fine for the circumstances, Dr. Burns."
"Sean, please."
"I'm fine, Sean. I'm better than everybody else here at least. Obviously far from dying and I'm not crazy–not yet at least." The two began to walk around the cobble stone path.
"You're safe here. You can do whatever you like while everything else sinks in. Do you play golf?" Perhaps he could get the wayward on better terms with her teacher. The Highlander, true to his roots, loved the sport.
"No, I can't stand golf. It's too boring to be called sport, my God!"
"Well," Sean chuckled, "don't tell Duncan that, you'll upset him."
"I think I already did," Rose said, "but to be fair he was upsetting me first."
"Which part was he telling you?"
"Oh, everything. Beheading, not being my parents' child, you know, the basics. At least I assume those are the basics."
"Oh, yes. I would imagine Duncan knows quite a bit. He was quite close with your father."
"Well, if only that made two of us," she said smiling with a rather sardonic tone. Rose paused, suddenly embarrassed of her blatant bitterness–and her willingness to share it. "I'm sorry. I'm a bit angry now."
"It's normal to be angry, Rose, perfectly normal."
"No, I don't mean I'm angry at the moment. That's what I am now. I'm an angry person. I can't think of my parents without wanting to tear my sheets to shreds–and even little things! I put too much sugar in my tea by accident this morning and I broke the cup. And every time MacLeod speaks I want to plug his mouth up!"
Rose paused, feeling terribly embarrassed that she had admitted to so much. She turned red and felt sick again.
"Like I said," Sean stopped and patted her shoulder, "perfectly normal."
Rose had gone back to her room for a nap. It was easier to relax after talking to Sean Burns, no surprise, the man spent his life making the mad relax. She didn't care if he had somehow manipulated her, she felt better and for now that was all that mattered. But the first hour of her rest she spent attempting to fall asleep and failing, the next hour she did finally sleep, and the hour after that she lay awake in bed. She realized that she had, for the first time in quite a long time, the freedom of laziness. Joyful at the thought, she rolled over and drifted away again.
She awoke half an hour later with nothing but a headache and a few bad images. Her parents arguing, Titanic going down, Jack Dawson, Fabrizio, their last days and the first days, her own headless body. Only the latter was anything new, really, and was to be expected. Rose shrugged and went off in search of a stiff drink.
Instead she found both Duncan and Sean sipping tea in Sean's room. Rose decided to give MacLeod a chance, so she dug up a few warmer childhood memories of Duncan MacLeod and made herself a stiff cup of coffee and some toast, opting for caffeine over alcohol.
MacLeod decided not to be warm and fuzzy in the following weeks. Sean put Rose to work in the ward (though privately she'd much rather be flying her plane.) And MacLeod put her to work out in an abandon field seven miles away. Everyday Rose trudged home sore, with her everything hurting, including her ego.
By the summer, Mac was called back to the front and Rose got a break from sword fighting. Funny, when she was a little girl she'd always wanted to learn fencing, she was sorely regretting that now. She spent until October helping Sean, than MacLeod came back.
"How was your summer?" MacLeod asked, though he'd been reading her letters.
"Alright, I suppose. I've practiced every once and a while when I've gotten the nerve to look at it." Rose held an shining broadsword in her hand.
MacLeod examined his pupil. The months without training–and away from the war–had calmed her. She was placid now, just sad. Perhaps training her would be a little easier...she was reckless at first–but also vicious.
"If I take you to dinner tonight we won't practice for a couple days." Rose half-heartedly smiled. "Unless you've got plans with someone else..." Mac wondered, maybe she was calmer because she'd met someone.
This was not the case as MacLeod had discovered. Sean had reported that the less angry she became the more the young woman retreated into herself. Even with her initial recklessness, Rose was a natural swordsman and he delighted in working with her, even if her temper had soured since last he saw her at sixteen. Now she was apathetic to everything. Working with Sean had calmed but her demons were winning, she was left with utter hopelessness.
One day during a short break from swordplay, Rose walked over to the old abandoned stone cottage and sat down in the dirt. She closed her eyes.
"Break for lunch?" MacLeod asked. "...Anything sore?"
"So do you think someone killed my father or do you think it was an accident?"
MacLeod was caught a little off-guard to say the least.
"...That's a pretty casual tone for such a question."
"I've been thinking about it for a while. I'm used to it now... I may not be three hundred by I can tell when someone's hiding something, even if it's only a thought."
"Rose," Duncan sighed, "I don't know what happened but I have a few ideas. This isn't the sort of thing you can jump to conclusions about–and this is a bad time to get worked up about it. If you're going to do anything. Look into it when you get back to the States. Investigate first."
"God...the States..." Rose laughed. "I haven't been home in..." she thought, "three years. I don't even know what's home anymore. Can't go back to Philadelphia, at least not my part..at least not for until everyone's dead. God! Everyone I know has to be dead before I go home!"
"Not always."
"Say, Duncan, when was the last time you went home to Scotland?"
"1746."
"My God...really? I don't think I could stay away that long. I can't imagine living that long."
"Give it here," Duncan held out his hand for Rose to take and he pulled her gently and steadily to her feet. "You will live as long you choose. You, Rose, are a fighter. When I met you, I knew more than just your immortality, I could see that look in your eyes. You were a tough little girl, whether they fed you on a silver platter or you were digging for scraps. You're a strong young woman, you did more at twenty than most people ever have the courage to do in their whole lives. I saw you grow up and I'll see you grow ancient. And I mean that. You'll live as long as you choose to, even if it means fighting with your every last strength."
"Meaning kill for it."
"It's a very hard life. And you'll live with everyone you've lost and everyone you've killed."
Rose leaned in to hug her old friend Duncan MacLeod–something she hadn't done in five years. She squeezed tighter as she held back the tears. Everything inside her hurt. She had lost her father, she'd lost not one but two men she'd–granted Jack Dawson was alive but all the same–he was dead to her, and she would lose her mother too–not that her mother knew there was anything left of Rose. Maybe one day she'd lose Duncan or Sean.
There was only the moment now. Today was the day to make life count in a very quiet way, to remember that her friends loved her and to remember she had a life to build. And quite a long time to do it in, if, as Duncan had told her, she choose to live that long.