Crystal opened her eyes and saw Methos standing in the doorway. She looked behind her and saw Richie was still asleep and turned on his side so he had his back to her. She pushed back the covers and got up, revealing it wasn't as bad as Methos thought, that she was wearing a nightshirt, and she went over to her brother in the door.

"Did you just get in?" she asked quietly.

"Crystal, what the hell's going on around here?" he asked her.

Crystal closed her eyes for a second and ran her hand through her hair and said, "Look, if you're going to start yelling at me, do it over breakfast, I need to get something to eat, I'm starving."

It took a few seconds for her words to register with Methos and when he put it together, he ran off after her. Crystal had already gotten halfway down the stairs but Methos jumped down them five at a time to catch up with her.

"What in the hell went on in this house last night?" he demanded to know as they reached the kitchen.

"Well don't go busting through the ceiling, nothing happened," Crystal told him as she turned on the lights, "Nothing like what you're thinking anyway. Look, you left the bar at three, Richie and I stayed and had a few more drinks. I could tell Richie wasn't going to be in any condition to drive, and I didn't know where he lives, and I know you wouldn't appreciate a four a.m. wakeup call, so I brought him back here. He collapsed on the couch, half an hour later I got him up to bring him up here, I figured I'd put him in one of the guest rooms. But we didn't get that far, I showed him my room and we both made a crash landing on the bed and were too tired to move, so we fell asleep in here, that's all."

Well that was a relief to Methos, provided she was telling the truth, and he knew she was. All the same, if MacLeod ever found out about this, Methos could very easily see the pigheaded Scot coming after his sister for it. He still felt like he and his sister were thought of as a poison, like radiation; MacLeod wouldn't object to Richie's having brief exposure to it, but if he found out how close Richie had gotten with Crystal, he'd consider it a deadly overexposure, but just who it would be deadly for, that's what Methos didn't know.

"You're not lying to me, are you?" he asked her.

"What reason would I have to lie to you?" Crystal asked, "I lied to Kronos for you, you I've always been honest with."

"I know," Methos said, "I just also know you, what was it you always said about the young ones? You could feel the life surging through them; it was like an electric current."

"Yep, and that boy's got a big current in him," Crystal said, "But come on, Methos, he's just a baby."

"A baby with a permanent 19-year-old's libido," Methos told her.

"Yeah, and I'm over 5,000 years old, I got no libido," she replied, "But God he sure is cute…he's got this little birthmark on…"

"I don't want to hear about it!" Methos said.

Crystal looked at him for a minute before responding, "His thigh!"

"Oh…"

"Apparently he's self conscious about it, that's why he always wears long jeans. Oh boy but the legs on this kid," Crystal growled like a wildcat.

Methos laughed, "For having no libido, you certainly do a good impression of it."

"I just said I don't want to have sex with him, doesn't mean I don't like to look," Crystal told him, "But I tell you, if I did, and we did, I have a feeling you'd have to peel that boy off the ceiling with a spatula."

Methos recalled the powerful Quickening they both had taken the other day and he responded, with a slight but knowing and mischievous smirk on his face, "I have no doubt."

"Besides, Methos, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if I did sleep with him."

"I know…" Methos replied, "I just don't want to see you get hurt."

"Or the kid?" Crystal asked.

Methos paused before answering, "Or Richie. He's gotten involved with a few women from MacLeod's past, never pretty."

"Well I'm not one of them," Crystal said, "I like Richie."

"I know you do," Methos said.

Crystal looked down at the floor for a second and then looked back up at her brother and said, "Look…I was thinking of later taking Richie out to Steeplechase, you want to come?"

"No thanks," Methos replied.

"Are you sure?"

"I appreciate the offer but I'm perfectly content with just staying home today and getting drunk," Methos told her, "You two go ahead."

Crystal wrapped her arms around Methos' back and squeezed him tight and said, "Thanks, Brother."

"Yeah yeah yeah," Methos dryly remarked as he pushed her away, "Go on, go wake up the sleeping beauty, and while you're up there, you could use a shower."

Crystal ignored him and, running on her toes, she sprinted back to the front hall and up the stairs and returned to her room where Richie had barely moved except for rolling over into the middle of the bed. Crystal climbed on the bed and on top of him and the sudden weight woke him up. Groggily, he opened his eyes into tiny slits and said, "Where am I?"

"In my room," Crystal reminded him.

"Oh…good, for a minute there I was starting to worry," Richie said.

"How're you feeling?" Crystal asked as she smoothed back a few strands of hair from his forehead.

"Tired," he answered as he closed his eyes again.

"Richie," Crystal said as she pulled his eyelid up.

"Hmmm?"

"Why don't you get a shower, and get dressed, and later I'm going to take you out somewhere?"

Richie groaned tiredly and replied, "Sounds good, what did you have in mind?"

Crystal met his question with only a mischievous smirk.

Later that morning, Crystal and Richie rode out of her driveway on her motorcycle and they headed off for, as far as Richie knew, whereabouts unknown. After about a mile, they got off the main road and headed down a narrow, one lane path that was little better than a dirt road surrounded by trees tall enough to block out the view of the sky.

"Tell me something, Richie," Crystal said, "Have you ever been to a fun park?"

"Me? No," he answered, "Been to a couple of carnivals though."

There was something in his answer that made that mischievous smirk return to Crystal's face. She sped up and the bike started to lean more towards the right, taking Richie back to his days in Europe racing, before the crash. Without thinking, he tightened his arm around Crystal's stomach so if one of them fell off, the other went with them. After a while, they came upon a hill that when they reached the peak of it, Richie could see what was down below, down below was an amusement park.

Crystal parked her motorcycle outside of the large wrought iron gates that had the world STEEPLECHASE built into the bars.

"What is this place?" Richie asked.

"You'll see," Crystal told him, "Follow me."

The gates opened and the two Immortals walked in. Richie had barely gotten a look at the place when a man came up to them to greet them. The man who appeared to be somewhere in his 30s, saw Crystal and was taken aback slightly, "Miss Monet, so nice to see you again."

"Good to see you too, Nick, I brought a friend with me," Crystal said as she emphasized her last words by wrapping her arm around Richie and pulling him close to her, "Thought I'd show him around the place." She took a quick glance around and said, "Things seem to be picking up around here."

"We're doing alright," the man replied, "Well…I hope you and your friend have a good time."

"We will, Nick," Crystal said as she gave Richie a slight shove and they walked away.

"They know you here?" Richie asked her.

"Well they should," Crystal told him, "I supplied the funding for this place."

Richie jerked his head around and looked at her, "You did?"

"Certainly, notice the name of the place?" Crystal asked him, "I'm sure you've heard of Steeplechase Park before, right?"

"Vaguely," Richie said, "Coney Island, right?"

"About a hundred years ago," Crystal told him as they walked through the park, "At least that's when it was in its prime." She let out a slight giggle and said, "I loved the old amusement parks, they were so much fun. I don't particularly care for the newer places."

Richie looked around their surroundings and saw that the place didn't look like a new one; in fact it looked like a time capsule, almost like time had frozen from 80 years ago. Certain parts of the park looked like old pictures he'd seen of Coney Island from the early 1900s.

"How long did it take to get this place up and running?" he asked.

"A couple of decades," she gave him a knowing wink and said, "My 'mother' first brought it up with the others. I 'inherited' her part of it."

Richie started to laugh and said, "They never caught on?"

"Oh nooo," she replied as she shook her head, "Back then I did most of my business with them over the phone or through the mail…they very rarely saw me in person and when they did, I wore one of those old funeral hats with the black veil on it…they never got a definite look at me."

Richie looked up at one ride in progress; it looked like a bunch of WWI planes spinning around as part of some freaky mobile that should be in some deranged kid's crib. "Did you do all this?"

"I helped with a lot of the details," she answered, "After all, who better than someone who was there when it all happened?" She let out a nostalgic sigh and added, "We sure had some good times back then."

"We?" Richie repeated, "You mean Methos went with you?"

"No, back then he was off…I don't know, hiding out in Cairo or something…no, I made Kronos take me," Crystal explained, and she started to laugh.

"Are you serious?" Richie asked.

"Oh sure…and I can prove it," Crystal looked around in all directions until she saw what she wanted and she took Richie over to one sight that seemed terribly out of place: it looked like a high rise in the middle of the park. Actually he noted, it looked like one of the buildings from the old movie 'Metropolis', with a glass elevator on the side of the building. They got in the elevator and headed up to the top floor, and when the doors opened, they went into the building. They passed through a dimly lit corridor until they came to the right door and went in.

"From up here, we can get a good overall view of the park," Crystal told him, "Since I'm a co-owner of the place, I have my own office…and this is it." She took Richie over to a wall, "And here's the proof I was telling you about."

Richie looked to what she was pointing at; it was an old tintype that showed two people in the water and sand, and despite being half drowned, both looked exceedingly happy to be there. Richie recognized the woman in the picture as being Crystal even though her hair was longer and dark and she had dark bags under her eyes and looked half starved, and the man in the picture…Joe had shown Richie some pictures of Kronos after the whole fiasco in Bordeaux had died down…the man in this picture was turned to the side but Richie still recognized him as Kronos.

"He was always a good sport," Crystal remembered fondly, "Anytime he came to town, he would've been perfectly content with just crashing on the couch and catching up on old times. Not me…I wanted to get out of the house and do something. Let's see, this picture was taken in...1903." She laughed, "New York was a great place to be back then…Luna Park, Coney Island, Steeplechase Park, seems every time you turned around there was a new place to go. Coney Island had everything, amusement parks for the daredevils of the time, the beach for the million or so people dying to get out of the summer heat, and a dance hall with a live orchestra for the hopeless romantics."

Richie took a closer look at the picture and saw that Crystal was dressed in one of the old kinds of bathing suits women were subjected to wearing back then, a striped shirt and pants that came down to her knees, everything except for the black hosiery. Crystal looked and she saw what Richie saw and she laughed and said, "Kronos never went swimming because he absolutely refused to wear the idiotic swimming suits they had for men back then…so I'd just pull him in the way he was."

"They really made people wear that stuff back then?" Richie asked.

"Ohhhh yes…one piece suits didn't become popular until Mack Sennett had his bathing beauties wear them in…" she scratched her head, "Either 1912 or 1917, who remembers? I do remember, I tried out for one of those once, but he took one look at me and told me to get out because I was too ugly to look at."

Richie looked at her and then looked back at the picture. He knew it was the same person, he could see all those same facial features, but still the woman in the old photo looked entirely different.

"You look sick in this picture," he finally realized what the difference was.

"Yes…once cameras became of popular use, Kronos said that it was important if we were ever photographed, that we change our appearances constantly so that if we should pop up on an old film 100 years down the line, nobody could connect the dots. That's why he turned to the side when this picture was taken, so you couldn't see his scar."

"What about you?" Richie asked.

"Well I'd been hammering him for the longest time because I wanted to see Coney Island, and when he finally said he'd go with me, I was so excited I couldn't eat or sleep for two days, and back then it really seemed to show up in pictures."

Richie laughed, not sounding convinced and said, "I have a hard time picturing Kronos at Coney Island."

"That's only natural," she replied, "Knowing only what you do about him it's hard to picture him as a lot of things. Incidentally, Richie, did you ever read the Oz books?"

"No."

"Oh well, it doesn't matter...it's too bad you never got a chance to meet Kronos, I think you would've liked him…God, I miss that man."

Richie immediately picked up on the sudden change in her voice when she said that, but before he could try to offer his condolences, she grabbed him and led him back the way they'd come and said, "Come on, Richie, I want to show you this place."

They returned to the scenic elevator and as they headed down 20 stories, Crystal explained to Richie, "When we were building this place, we wanted it to be a testament to the way things used to be, and Steeplechase Park was a place where we had a particularly good time."

"That a fact?" Richie asked, feeling his stomach start to jump as he saw how high up they were.

"We knew its founder, George Tilyou."

Richie laughed at the name, "Tilyou?"

"Don't laugh, he was a genius," Crystal told him, "I loved that place…I remember in 1907 when it burnt down, we were staying at a hotel nearby, we were woken up at 4 in the morning with people screaming that we had to get out because the park was on fire. Everybody was running for their lives but I was too shocked to even move, naturally it didn't matter much anyway with us being Immortal. When the fire finally died down and everything was in burnt ruins, I just fell down and cried because the place had been so beautiful and it was gone. But Tilyou wasn't worried," she laughed, "He knew he'd be able to rebuild the place, and he did. But, a couple decades later, it caught fire again…and again, and then finally on a dark day in 1964 it closed, permanently. Then the rich people bought the land and…well, that was the end of that, progress just has to ruin everything good."

The elevator reached the ground and the doors opened and the two headed out.

"So what we've tried to do with this place is bring back what there used to be. Take a look around and you'll notice it…we've got a few roller coasters here, all of them travel under 60 miles an hour, and look," she pointed up to the coaster tracks, "Not a lot of loops, some coasters don't have any, being flipped upside down on one of those things is only a relatively new idea…they didn't have a successful vertically looped coaster until the Revolution premiered back in 1976."

"So you're kind of an expert on this kind of stuff, huh?" Richie asked her.

"Well you know, there's so much crap in the world we have to put up with everyday…there's just gotta be something that people can still enjoy. And when you live as long as I have…you go through an exceptional amount of hell, after which, if I'm going to be doing something with my life or putting my name on something, it just…" she lost the ability to describe what she meant, "You know? I just couldn't get involved with something that I wasn't happy with." That moment of unforeseen somberness passed and she continued with the tour, "This is the way the old Ferris wheels used to be made, you know today they fit what, two, three people on a car at best? The old ones used to be able to hold 18 in each car. This is one place where I don't get the logic behind the 'progression' if you can call it that."

"You don't say," Richie replied as he looked up at the giant wheel that if he had to guess stood at 100 feet or taller.

"We've tried to recreate the Coney Island atmosphere, of course that's a bit harder to do on the west coast," Crystal told him, "But we do have a swimming area in the back of the park and a dance hall…but you know it's funny about the old days of Coney Island, back then people didn't need so much to be entertained. Do you know that about 100 years ago, people used to go to the park and they would pay you to stuff them in a barrel and roll them around?"

"You're kidding," Richie replied.

"Oh no," she said, "But I'll be honest; it was more fun when people didn't have as high expectations as they do now."

"Well, I don't understand," Richie said, "If you've been working on this place here for so long, how come you only recently moved to Washington?"

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder, at least that's what they say," Crystal told him, "If I had moved here so long ago, I never would've left this place. I had my reasons for being involved with this…some of them personal and selfish…this place, it reminds me of when we went to New York…it reminds me of when Kronos was alive. I think that's why I've stayed on here more than anything."

A sudden chill seemed to run through her and she tightly folded her arms against her chest as she added, "These last few years, everything has just been so lousy…everything had to go to hell at the same time."

Richie reached over and placed a hand on her arm, trying to be of some help to her. The moment passed and she turned to him and smiled, "Come on, I want to show you the whole place. You ought to see it at night, we've got about a hundred million lights in this place, that seems to be when it really comes to life."

As they walked through the place, Richie kept turning every which way to look at all the rides and attractions. The only comment he could make on it was, "Man, this place is neat."

"Yeah," Crystal said, "We don't do so bad for ourselves…it's hard of course with most people preferring the newer, faster, 'improved' rides, roller coasters that go 120 miles an hour, flip you upside down, this way and that, I really could never figure those out, they go too fast to really be able to see anything…but we do manage to get a decent sized crowd most of the year. Come on, I want to show you one of my favorite spots."

Richie followed after her and they came to a giant carousel that had a jungle theme to it: giraffes, elephants, lions, tigers, zebras and rhinos.

"This is neat," Richie said, "They look real."

"I know, this one was my idea," she told him, "It's called the Jungle Safari, you want to go on it?"

"Sure," Richie followed her up the stairs and onto the ground floor of the ride. Crystal sidestepped onto a giraffe but sat on it backwards, her body pressed against the giraffe's neck. Richie got on a giant leopard behind her.

"Make sure you hold on real tight," Crystal said as she wrapped her arms around the giraffe's pole.

"How come?" Richie asked.

A moment later the ride started, and for the first few seconds it went as fast as a normal carousel, but then it sped up and Richie was thrown forward and almost completely off the animal.

"Oh," Crystal said, feigning innocence, "Did I forget to mention that this ride spins around at the rate of 30 miles an hour?"

Richie got a tighter grip and glared over at her and said, "You've done this before, haven't you?"

"A few times," she answered, "When it was first built, I talked Methos into going on it, he thought the same thing you did, that it would be slow and boring, and then when he finally got off, he wouldn't speak to me for a week after that."

"I can believe that," Richie said.

"He was never very big on all of this stuff, motion sickness or something," Crystal told him, "I guess it's understandable, you spend 5000 years on the ground, you get used to it, then along come a few people with the money and the ideas, and they come up with a way of defying the laws of physics and gravity and everything you know of. And for that, people wait in line an hour to spend two minutes being thrown upside down and turned inside out and being jetted around at the speed of light, all in the name of a good time."

"It doesn't bother you," Richie noted.

"I'm not my brother either," she replied.

"I don't know," Richie said late that afternoon when they left, "Paying some guy to stuff you in a barrel with three other people and roll you around…I don't get the appeal."

"I guess you had to be there," Crystal told him as they walked out of the park, "It was pretty much like today, everybody was looking for a good time, only we didn't have so much to work with back then, so you really had to make the most out of it all. They also used to have indoor rides where you'd go into a room, and the floor would start spinning and you and 30 other people would fall down on it and get spun around every which way."

"Let me guess, Methos wasn't very fond of those either, right?" Richie guessed.

"He hated them," she answered.

They turned around to look back at the park before they left, "So this was all your idea, eh?" he asked.

"And most of my money," she added, "Some of Methos' too, when I told him about it, he agreed to help with the funding."

"No kidding, how'd you talk him into that?" Richie asked.

"Never mind that, how I managed to talk Kronos into it is the bigger mystery," Crystal told him.

Richie stopped and looked at her, "Huh?"

"He left for something in Europe right before the whole thing started, but he left behind some money to assist in the creation of this place." She shrugged, "He always said whatever I wanted to do, he'd support me…it's just a good thing I found something like this to take an interest in. Let's face it, despite my age and my many experiences, I'm not qualified to do too many things, and racing motorcycles can only get you so far. As a woman I often found I had as many options open to me as anyone did, but then we came into the 'civilized' countries where they send women back even further than 5,000 years, and trust me I know. That doesn't leave a person with a lot of choices, so a lot of them rely on the world's oldest profession to get by because it's something they know they can do and don't need any degrees or recommendations for. And you know Richie, for some women, lying on their back and spreading their legs comes naturally, but I always found I needed something a bit more stimulating to do with my life than that."

They saw it was starting to get late and they got on her motorcycle and she drove off, over the roar of the engine she told Richie, "Someday we'll come back so you can see what the place looks like at night when it lights up."

"Sounds good," Richie replied.

"Right now we better get back home and see what Methos is up to," Crystal said, "I hate to think what he's been doing all day alone."

After Richie and Crystal had left that morning, Methos had stuck around her home to get a better look at the place his sister was currently residing in. He was more impressed with the place upon seeing it a second time and in better detail. He had killed time by looking through all her belongings, going through all her CDs, skimming over the titles of over a thousand books in her private library, he even went through her closet and looked through all of her clothes. Finally he made himself comfortable in one of the chairs in the living room with a bottle of beer out of the fridge and he waited for the others to come home. He didn't have to wait long, half an hour after he parked himself in the living room, he felt two quickenings approaching.

The front door opened and he heard his sister call in, "Hey Methos, you still here?"

He looked at the clock on the wall to see what time it was. "Yeah I'm here," he answered as they came into the room, "So, how was it?"

"You should've been there," she answered as she took off her jacket, "That's about all I can say."

"It's a great place, Methos," Richie said, clearly still in awe about it.

"It usually is," he replied.

"Well it's been great, Crystal, but I think I better get going," Richie told her.

"Okay, see ya," she said.

They waited until Richie was gone, then Methos asked, "So how was it, really?"

"It was nice," Crystal answered, her voice noticeably lower now, "It was nice being back there again after so long, and it was nice having the kid there, be able to show him everything and he just goes around the whole place gawking at everything…but I gotta tell you, the whole time we were there, I just…I kept expecting to see Kronos there, you know?"

"I know," Methos responded, not saying much for fear he'd say the wrong thing.

"You've lost more people that you cared about than I ever did," Crystal said, "Does it ever get easier? Do you ever stop seeing them, expecting them to show up?"

"Sometimes," he answered, "But some people you never stop looking for."

"Like Kronos," Crystal said.

That night Methos and Crystal lay beside each other in bed, Methos was turned on his side asleep, but Crystal was on her back and staring straight up at the ceiling; her adrenaline was in high gear and she felt about ready to crawl out of her skin. The window was open and let in some dim light from the stars out that night, Crystal looked around the room at the shadows cast on everything and finally she decided she couldn't stay there another minute. She tossed back the covers and got out of bed. Methos awoke at the mattress moving with her weight leaving it and he asked, "What's the matter?"

"I'm going stir crazy in this house," she said.

Methos looked over and even in the dark he could see her getting dressed hurriedly.

"Where're you going?" he asked.

"I don't know, just out for a while," she said as she fidgeted with her clothes.

He saw her take out her sword and conceal it in her clothes and she told him not to wait up for her and that she would be back soon; he was curious as to what was the matter, but he knew better than to try and follow her. Instead, he laid back against the pillows and closed his eyes as he heard her footsteps jumping down the stairs and heard the front door shut, followed by the noise of her motorcycle leaving the driveway. Maybe he should've been worried, but he wasn't because Crystal was like him, and he didn't get to be 5,000 years old by being careless.

Over on the other side of town, Amanda hadn't been to bed yet; the lights were still on in her apartment and she paced around the room wearing silk pajamas and smoking a cigarette as she looked through a large book on ancient Egyptian art, when she felt a quickening approaching. She put her book down and stubbed her cigarette out in an ashtray and called out, "Who is it?" as she reached for her sword.

"It's me, Crystal," she heard on the other side of the door.

Amanda forgot her sword and went over to the door, undid the locks and pulled the door open and saw the woman standing in the doorway looking half dead with exhaustion; her hair was a mess and Amanda could see she'd gotten dressed in a hurry because the buttons on her shirt hadn't even been put in the right holes.

"Can I come in?" she asked.

Amanda was stunned for a second but she quickly recovered, "Yeah, sure." She held the door for Crystal and quickly closed it behind her, inquiring, "Are you being followed?"

"No," Crystal answered, "You don't have anything to worry about."

"How did you find out where I live?" Amanda asked, "Not even MacLeod knows I have an apartment in town."

"You shouldn't tell Richie things, Amanda," Crystal told her, "He may be able to keep secrets from Duncan but nobody can keep anything from me."

"Oh." She nodded, "Well, can I get you anything?"

"No thanks," Crystal sat down on the arm of Amanda's couch and looked around, "Nice place you got here, what is it, modern Chinese?"

"Nothing specific," Amanda answered as she picked up a small box off a table, "Little bit of everything."

"Very nice," Crystal said tiredly, then she saw that Amanda was picking up small white things out of the box with what looked like a pair of tweezers, and snorting them up her nose.

Amanda looked at her a bit self consciously and asked, "Want some?"

"No thanks," she said, "Cocaine screws up my eyes."

"Really? I never knew anybody with that problem," Amanda said as she put the box back on the table.

"Oh yeah," Crystal said, "When you wake up in the morning with bloodshot eyeballs, it's time to give it up. Besides, I never was much for that stuff anyway."

"Probably like your brother and just stick to booze?" Amanda asked.

"For the most part," Crystal said, "I hope you don't mind my coming, but I've got to talk to somebody and I figured you're my best bet since I don't know you so well and I don't have anything to lose by telling you what's happened."

"What did happen?" Amanda asked, "Is something wrong?"

"Yeah, something's wrong," Crystal answered, "I killed my brother."

"What?" Amanda fell back on the couch.

"No, not Methos," Crystal said.

"Oh!" Amanda took in a large breath of relief.

"It's Kronos," she said.

"What?" Amanda asked, "Duncan never said anything about you being in Bordeaux with the others."

"Well, that's because I wasn't there," Crystal said, "And I can't tell Methos about it, but I'm still responsible for Kronos' death. I killed my own brother."

"How?" Amanda asked.