Mya and Felipe woke up in each other's arms, safe behind the locked doors of his room.
"I like this." He uttered in a faint voice, startling Mya.
"You… said something?" She asked.
"My voice is coming back. Has been since my death." He told her. "I wanted to tell everyone yesterday, but I just didn't find the right time."
"That is so wonderful, my love!" She said, placing soft kisses on the edge of his lips before capturing his mouth.
"Will you marry me, now, that I'm like you?" He asked as they took a break for air.
"Don't ask me that, Felipe! I already explained that I will never marry again if I can prevent it. Not even you."
"But you love me. And I love you. I don't want to ever be with anyone but you!"
"That's how you feel now. But give it a century or two..."
"And if we'll still love each other then? If we still feel the same in a hundred years?"
"I tell you what. If we still feel the same for each other a hundred… no, let's compromise… Say, a hundred and fifty years from now, I might consider marriage. Do you think you can wait that long?" She teased, completely certain that, even if he thought he did at that point, he'd probably move on in just a few months.
"Yes." He answered. "Although, I'd rather not."
She smiled and realized he was becoming sad. "Would you like to go for a walk?" Mya asked, hoping to cheer him up.
Felipe agreed and they snuck out of the room through the window, in an effort to avoid being found out by the servants who were already roaming the corridors of the hacienda.
They strolled towards the nearby ravine when they stumbled over Diego and Victoria, who had had a similar idea and were lying down, kissing on a blanket underneath a big oak.
"You know," Mya said "I sometimes wish for what they have."
"Don't we have that?"
"No… I mean… mortality. The mere idea that there is only a limited amount of time at your disposal and you must take that time and make the most of it. Laugh, cry, suffer, be happy, love, make children, grow old… We have eternity and many lives, but somehow they are all incomplete. As if whatever you do, there will always be something missing." Mya smiled a bit sadly.
They were about to silently head in a different direction in order to give the newlyweds their privacy, when both of them felt the presence of a third Immortal. They looked around but only noticed him at the last moment.
"Father!" Felipe shouted as loud as he could just as Murad came charging from behind a hill, sword drawn and aiming for Diego.
The caballero pushed Victoria away and rolled to the side as the sword fell right on the place where they had stood seconds earlier.
"Run!" He asked his wife, realizing he was unarmed.
Felipe looked at Mya.
"We need to help him," she said, "but my sword is at the tavern. Go find some weapons and I'll see how I can help him meanwhile."
Felipe hesitated, then ran for the nearby hills, taking Victoria's hand and dragging her with him towards the cave.
Meanwhile, Diego found a fallen, leafless branch and started defending himself with it.
"Where is the notebook, you thief?" Murad asked. "You stole from me! I want it back!"
"It was never…" Diego replied while blocking another trust, "yours, to begin with! You're the one who stole it, and killed its true owner."
"You will pay for what you did!"
As Diego was defending himself, Mya was searching the ground for a better weapon, but was unable to find more than some rocks, which she threw at the Ottoman, with less effect than she had hoped for.
One more thrust of Murad's sword and the branch Diego was using was severed in two useless pieces. The tall caballero threw them at his challenger, and managed to hit him hard on the head, momentarily stopping his attack. At that moment Murad felt another Immortal nearby but paid him no attention, thinking it was Felipe returning. He decided he needed to hurriedly kill the caballero. His first thrusts were avoided by Diego, yet his adversary pushed him towards the nearby tree trunk, giving him no more avenue of escape.
"Say your prayers, Zorro! And after I am finished with you, I'll take what I came here for, in the first place. Your son's head!" He uttered as he was about to pierce Diego's body with his sword.
He launched but, what was about to become a fatal blow was parried by Duncan's katana.
"I hereby challenge you, Murad!" He stated calmly.
"This is none of your business, MacLeod!" The Ottoman warned.
"I believe I just made it my business!"
"Fine! Have it your way…" The man pretended to retreat, then launched at him before his new opponent expected his attack.
Diego pushed Duncan out of the way and Murad's sword injured his arm instead. He held it to his chest, pressing on it as Duncan turned and met the next thrust.
"This is just between us, you need to go!" Duncan told Diego.
"He is right!" Mya confirmed as the two Immortals started fighting in earnest.
Duncan contented himself with parrying the other man's thrusts as they were heading for nearby hills, running into Felipe - who was returning with Zorro's sword - and taking him along as they did so. In their hurry, they did not see Victoria had also followed her husband's adopted son.
As soon as they were at a safe distance the Highlander started attacking and soon managed a deep cut into Murad's abdomen. The man fell on his knees and Diego turned to see Duncan severing his head.
The caballero froze on the spot as he watched, just like Felipe and Mya, the power being released from the Ottoman's body and passing into Duncan's. Then he realized what the term Quickening was referring to as lightning swept through the meadow and through the victor's body and sword causing him what sounded like a very painful yell that made the tall caballero feel a cold shiver down his spine. The tree under which he and Victoria had kissed just minutes earlier was struck by a bolt of lightning and caught fire. Several nearby bushes had a similar fate, as one of the boulders just a few feet away from them was struck to its core, and part of it was blackened.
A few minutes after it was all over, a patrol arrived at the spot, just as the De la Vegas and Mya were returning to their friend and Diego hurriedly took the blanket still on the ground and did his best to put out the fires. The new Mexican Alcalde, Lieutenant Chavez, who was guiding the patrol searching for Sergeant Luna, stopped before the decapitated body of his man.
"What happened here?" He asked at seeing the disaster. The tree and the bushes were no longer burning, but Duncan was still kneeling on the ground next to the body of his adversary, bloodied sword in his hand. "Arrest him!" Chavez ordered his soldier, pointing towards the Highlander.
"No! Wait, Lieutenant!" Diego shouted.
"Are you going to defend a murderer now, Don Diego? Sergeant Luna might have been an escaped prisoner, but his guilt was not yet determined. This man decided to play executioner before he even got a fair trial!"
"Your man attacked me. As you can see, he injured me when I tried to defend myself." Diego said, drawing the Alcalde's attention towards the wound on his arm. I was unarmed and Senor Duncan only did what he could to defend me."
"He is still a murderer."
"Yet you said it yourself: those who attack me condemn themselves to death. So, certainly, those who save me by taking the life of a man already sentenced should at least get a pardon."
Chavez stared at him. "Is that true? Senor Duncan saved Don Diego?" He asked the other two people accompanying the caballero.
"He did!" Victoria told him as she also joined the group, appearing from behind some boulders in the ravine. "Your man attacked me and my husband. Senor Duncan defended him and himself."
"He had no choice. It was him or Sergeant Luna." Mya also told him.
The Lieutenant accepted their testimony but was still disgusted at the scene before him. "One cannot argue with your logic, Don Diego." He conceded. "But I will not have a man willing to decapitate others in this pueblo. Senor Duncan, you are free to go, but you have one hour to leave this place!"
Indicating that his men needed to borrow the De la Vega wagon in order to take the body and the head of his former Sergeant to town, they left about twenty minutes later.
"Will you tell me what on Earth did I just witness?" Victoria asked, turning towards her husband, Felipe and Mya as her legs almost gave out under her.
ZHZHZHZHZ
"So Duncan saved Zorro's life!" Joe concluded.
"Three times." Felipe pointed out.
"What happened then?"
"Duncan had to leave, and Father told Victoria everything. It took her a while to come to terms with the idea that some people, her new son included, were immortal, and wouldn't grow old. But she never treated me differently. She was a great woman, the perfect match for the Fox. They had four children together, five if, as they did, you also include me.
"After a few years, as people started noticing that I wasn't aging, Diego came up with a way for me to hide that reality by using stage makeup, made me grow a full beard and a mustache and taught me how to disguise my voice. It's how I was able to live with them for over two decades. I like to think I helped them navigate some really hard times. You see, Mexicans did not prove any better than the Spanish. As the pueblo grew, criminality increased exponentially and there were more people destitute than before. When my father considered re-becoming Zorro to help the garrison, I convinced him it would be wiser if I did it. He was already in his forties at the time and I, on the other hand, was Immortal… So I took over for a few years, not as Zorro but using some of his tactics, and things got better for a while. Then the Americans took over and tried to confiscate all the land they could get their hands on. My father lost a quarter of his lands to them, yet others lost everything they had. He helped all those he could, but had to sacrifice much of his remaining fortune in the effort to do so.
"When their first-born sons, Alejandro and Alfonso, returned home from their studies, I left and followed my own path. I did, however, make sure to return home every few years and I admit that, after the initial shock of the takeover passed, things did get better… eventually.
"The last time, I went home was when my father died. Victoria outlived him only ten days. I always thought she died of a broken heart. After over forty years of marriage, I guess she just couldn't go on without him.
"As for the others, Sergeant Mendoza took over the management of the tavern after Victoria got pregnant with the twins, and ended up fathering three daughters. His descendants are now running a chain of restaurants in California from what I know.
"De Soto remained at the hacienda a few more days and boarded the first ship to Spain. He and Father remained in correspondence for the rest of their lives and, from what I was able to find out, he did change quite radically. He died while saving a boy who was drowning in the sea, after he retired and returned to his hometown of Cadiz.
"Padre Benitez was forced to return to Spain in the early 1830s, when most of the properties of the Missions were confiscated and re-distributed, but his ship never made it to its destination. We never knew what happened to him…
"Doctor Hernandez retired and left for Monterey, where he died some five years later, just after the birth of his fifth grandchild.
"Lieutenant Chavez only ruled the pueblo for about eight months. He respected Father, but they never really liked each other. In the end he decided to organize free elections and my grandfather became Alcalde for a while."
"How about you and Mya? Or Myrina, to be more precise. What happened to her?"
"She'll always be Mya to me... As my father made her promise, she stuck with me, taught me all she knew, until I was ready to properly defend myself… and several years after that. Despite having started on the wrong foot, she and Victoria eventually became best friends. I guess she liked being part of a family, which is why she stuck around for almost a decade. We told everyone we were married in secret and Father helped us forge the documents attesting to that, but she refused to actually do it. Then, one day, she just left.
"I spent much of my life searching for her and, in the meanwhile, I saw the world. I also found my own calling. Or callings, I should say. I was a sword master, an explorer, a doctor, a veterinarian, a pilot, a scientist… even an astronaut at one point. My father once said that mankind would someday go to the moon, but I don't believe he ever imagined that I would be among the first humans to do so."
"You were on an Apollo mission?"
"No. It was a NASA mission, but not one people know about." Felipe answered.
"Really? Why not?"
"Sorry, but I'm afraid I am still sworn to secrecy, my friend!"
"So… Did you ever find her again? Mya."
"I did. A few times. Each time we were together for five or six years, then she would leave me again. But I am not one to give up easily. Four years ago she finally agreed to marry me, after only one hundred and seventy-two years since we first met."
"Well… I guess true love tends to last."
"Indeed."
"But I don't understand. How did you manage to escape unnoticed for all this time? You and Mya for that matter?"
"Well… Firstly, because, believe it or not, I have only ever taken two heads, and that only because I found no way to avoid it. The men in question gave me no choice. Secondly, because I was never again killed after Mya shot me, so nobody else witnessed me resurrect. Thirdly, because I have infiltrated your ranks several times and made sure to delete any reference to me – although I did only ever find two, both connected to the mentioned beheadings.
"As for Mya, since my father was in possession of the chronicle on her and, after they made peace, he actually started to like her again, he realized that it might be wiser if the Watchers believed her dead. So he inserted an entry in her chronicle mentioning her beheading by Murad."
"Zorro faked our chronicles?"
"My father was a wise man, Joe. It didn't take him long to realize what was going on. That others knew about us - the people who wore the medallions with the symbol you now wear as a tattoo on your wrist - and took notes of our activities. Duncan was gone by then, and I never had the chance to tell him since our next encounters were brief to say the least, but Mya had stayed and was even able to offer Diego some more pieces to the puzzle. By the time the other Watchers came, and my father turned over the chronicles and the medallions to them, we had already made copies of each and had started conducting our own investigation into the Watchers. He pursued that issue even after I left home, convinced that if people knew how to kill us, one day they might decide they should. Fear can easily distort judgement."
"And, unfortunately, it has. You might know about…"
"How Darius died? Yes… I also know he was not the only one to fall prey to mortals' fears."
"So you were also a Watcher?"
"I was. In fact, we have met before, Joe. A few decades back, when you were new to the job. My name back then was Philip Young."
"You? Philip Young? But… Philip was an old man when we've met… I was at his funeral."
"You can do a lot with makeup, I assure you. And… while I never died again after that first time, I know a lot about poisons that make a person look dead, and always had enough friends willing to help me in whatever I needed, without asking too many questions. How else do you think I managed to avoid detection for so long? I did it by pretending to be just like every other mortal."
Joe didn't look convinced, so Felipe added "Remember when you asked me what if, at some point, you will be tempted to get yourself involved? Take sides? I believe I advised you to only do so if you really feel that the one you pledge your loyalty to is truly worthy of it and make sure to remember it is never truly your fight."
"You really are who you say you are, aren't you?" Jos asked, dumbfounded as he recognized the words once told by a man he had considered a mentor.
A few seconds later Felipe felt the presence of another Immortal and Duncan MacLeod walked through the doors.