Disclaimer: Highlander belongs to Davis/Panzer. They are being borrowed and returned hopefully in about the same shape they were taken in. Jeff, Emmy, and just about everyone else, belong to me. You can use them if you like, just return them please.

Chapter 6

Emmy woke up, her body flooded with adrenalin. She looked around cautiously. She was in an alleyway. She could see police on the road, but they had not noticed her yet. Her entire body ached, though she was recovering quickly. No one was looking toward the alley yet. Her sword was digging into her back, probably slightly lodged into her skin back there. It was painful, so she got up slowly, trying not to attract the attention of anyone covering the wreck, and moved deeper into the alley and the darkness.

She was not afraid of dark alleyways. She had the fighting skills to take out any common attacker who tried in any way to hurt her. Though at the moment she was not sure she could really fight anyone. She had never purposely put herself into an accident before, though she had been in several. Over the course of six hundred years it was inevitable that at some point you would be hit by a car, or be on a bad flight, or get run over by a wagon. Or two. Or three.

Never, though, had she dreamed of the kind of pain that could come from throwing yourself off of a motorcycle when you sent it under a speeding van. She could not remember a time when she had ever been in more pain. Somewhere along the way she had lost her helmet, and her head was still healing. She felt as though clots were forming on the inside of her skull. It would be a couple of days before she was totally back to normal. She actually wished she had been killed in the accident. It would have meant healing faster. Death always meant healing faster. Emmy never really understood that, but it was true. Now she would have to suffer through two or three days of pain until everything put itself back together.

She pulled her sword out of her back and settled it into its normal place in her leather jacket. The pain from that felt so minor compared to everything else right now, she did not even flinch. There was a lot of talking going on in the street, but no one seemed interested in the alleyway at all. Emmy wondered to herself if it would be safe to sleep here. Not that she could, with a thousand daggers stabbing into her brain and sides. She wondered what it was like for a mortal who survived this kind of an accident. They probably would end up as a vegetable, able to breathe and blink, but not able to move a muscle. It was while she was thinking these things that she felt the disturbing presence of another Immortal. Emmy pulled herself to the wall and wrapped her arms around her legs. If she was lucky, they would search and not find her. With all the cops around, maybe they would just go away. Unless the Immortal was a cop.

Rick and Jeff started back towards the neighborhood where Emmy had crashed her bike into the pursuing van. They had gone back to the bike shop, argued, and finally Jeff's angry, "Fine, I'll go without you!" had gotten Rick to come. He felt that if Emmy had been found by the cops, she was most likely in the hospital and would be out again and back on her feet the next day. Jeff, though, was still young. Emmy was someone he worried about even though, intellectually, he knew that she would be fine. Emotionally, he still wanted to protect this girl who looked younger than he was. Just as Rick looked younger. Though in Rick's case, in another fifteen years everyone would believe he was just "well preserved" as Tolkien put it. Still, it was in Jeff's nature to want to save damsels in distress. Even the ones who could probably take him out with a round house kick on the first try. Rick did not blame him; he had been the same way for a long time. Now he was more of an every-man-for-himself kind of guy.

Two streets away from the accident, Jeff slowed and pulled over. "Looks like they've got some major police blockades out. You think she's there?"

"We'll never know until we look, come on." Rick got out of the car and headed towards the sirens.

"Wait up man, you aren't going to just walk right up and into that action are you?" Jeff gasped, grabbing Rick's arm and pulling him to a stop.

Rick shook his head, "No, I'm just trying to get close enough to see if I can sense her. I can't do that from here, so how about you be quiet and just follow me, so we don't end up getting into the middle of this whole mess."

"I think we're already in the middle of it," Jeff said.

"Nope," Rick said. "That's why Emmy did what she did, so we wouldn't be stuck in the middle and we could save Casey. Let's be smart about this so her efforts weren't wasted."

Jeff nodded, and the two walked closer to the shops that lined this particular street in Ft. Myers in order to stay out of the light. They had walked quite a way towards the crash when Rick stopped and nodded at Jeff, and then pointed into the nearest alley. They walked down it, and came out around the back of a laundromat. On the other side was another very thin alleyway before the next store, a salon this time. There, to their surprise, they found Emmy crouched against the wall. She looked at them and a sigh escaped her lips. It sounded loud to Rick, but he was positive that with all the noise was going on in the street, no one heard it. Her eyes were glazed and she looked more through them then at them.

Jeff was at her side in an instant. "Emmy," he whispered, "are you okay? Can you walk? How did you get down here?" He was very carefully touching her arms. Her head jerked towards him, eyes sliding in and out of focus.

In that moment, Rick realized he had been mistaken. Emmy was not Jeff's MJ, nor his Felicia, she was his version of Aunt May. The way he was trying to take care of her was not in the manner of a concerned boyfriend or lover, but of a family member.

"Yes, I'll be fine. I'm immortal, remember, we heal quickly." She smiled weakly, and Rick could tell she was in a lot of pain.

He came forward and knelt on the other side of her. "Can you stand?"

Her gaze jerked in his direction. "Maybe."

"Here, give me your hand, I'll support your weight. We need to get out of here, Em, or we're going to attract attention."

She nodded and allowed Rick to lever her from the ground. Not to be left out, Jeff slid his arm under her other elbow and twined their fingers together. Trying to look as natural as possible, practically holding her up between them, they slowly and carefully made their way back towards the car.

"That was smooth." Jeff said, smiling tightly as they settled Emmy into the back seat.

"Yeah, well, let's get out of here before we run out of luck for one night," Rick replied. He was cautious. All Immortals were, if they wanted to live for any amount of time.