Author's note:Thank you to my brilliant beta Jenn who's doing a wonderful job.
Let me know what you're thinking and hit the 'review' button. Flattery and constructive criticism make me write faster... ;-)
When Duncan returned from his talk with Methos, he was raging. It hadn't gone well, perhaps because he had unwittingly managed to push the older Immortal over the edge with some ill-chosen words. It wasn't an unlikely scenario. After all she had sensed the anger boiling underneath Methos' calm and collected façade when she had met him. Just the tiniest scratch at those once thick walls that had been worn thin, might have had catastrophic results. It must have been quite some outburst. McLeod had even gone as far as describing his behaviour borderline crazy.
Still there was doubt in Duncan's mind despite Methos' confession to every single crime Cassandra had accused him of. The tiniest smidgen of him still believed in his friend's innocence; bless his noble and foolish heart. As always McLeod needed a sounding board to be able to make his ultimate decision about what to think of Methos. Of course Liz couldn't let this opportunity pass her by. Despite the fact that she was still reeling from her own talk with Methos, though for entirely different reasons than McLeod, she realized that she had to seize this opportunity to swing things in her favour. So she listened patiently to McLeod raging on about how immoral and dark and sinister Methos' past was. She even refrained from making a snappish comment when he said that he could not understand how the man could have committed such foul and horrendous deeds. In the face of his, partially rather melodramatic allegations, she tried to be the voice of reason. She chose to tell him what she told herself over and over in her head. "Think of Methos, think of the man you know and ask yourself whether he's still that monster. Is he still a murderer? Is he someone who takes pleasure in the suffering of innocents?" In her head the answer was always straight and clear. It was a 'no'. But McLeod seemed to struggle with the answer more than she did and that was why talking to her apparently wasn't enough to settle his inner turmoil. Perhaps he thought her to be biased and that was why he needed to hear someone else's thoughts on the matter. So he called Joe. And Joe was happy to oblige.
She didn't stick around to overhear their conversation; its course was rather predictable anyway. She could do without it. Cassandra had also wisely chosen not to interfere in the two men's conversation, quietly fuming in the privacy of Duncan's bedroom over his inability to see what she believed to be Methos' true nature.
Too much drama for her taste. So she left and waited for Joe to come back out in front of McLeod's apartment. She wanted to have a talk with him as well. Pick up where they had left off so to say.
At first she had been pacing in front of the building, now she had taken to leaning against the driver door of Joe's car. When Joe came back out again, he seemed tired. His limp was more pronounced; his hand gripped his cane a little more tightly. His gait faltered, then it came to a halt in front of her.
"If you want to have a big philosophical talk about good and evil, you'll have to find someone else. I've had enough for one night," he told her gruffly.
She shot him a funny look. "Why would I do that unless I wanted to rub my thoughts on the matter in your face? Which I don't. It would be too...," she paused, "... revealing. Where would all the mystery go? A woman's got to have her secrets."
He smirked and looked down. "Which makes it hard for people to trust you. Isn't that sort of lonely? Especially now?"
"Joe, Joe, Joe...," she flashed him a broad grin. "I've got to hand you that, you're quite good. And sneaky. The old appeal to her softer side routine. Bound to be working on anyone, except me. Are you sure I have a softer side?"
He raised his cane and tapped it against the car door right next to her. The sudden movement startled her the slightest bit and she flinched. He had just called her bluff.
"After tonight? Am starting to think you have." The cane pressed against her thigh, gently pushing her aside. She complied and soon their positions were reversed. Joe leaned against the car with a sigh while she stood in front of him, watching him curiously. His leg was probably bugging him, judging by the way he contorted his face when he gave his kneecap a brief squeeze.
She smiled. "You're right. I care for the people I like. I don't want to see them harmed."
"Does that include McLeod?"
Her smile turned a bit broader, but nevertheless stayed on the side of vulnerable. The way she rapidly blinked her eyes, the fact that she couldn't hold his gaze for too long gave away that much. "Yes," she admitted after a while, "you, McLeod..."
"The old guy," he concluded for her. Her head shot up. He was going to say more. "Man, gotta be one hell of a tough spot, walking in your shoes right now."
"Elegant shoes are rarely comfortable. I'm accustomed to this," she smiled enigmatically and walked up to him to lean against the car beside him.
"Somehow I doubt you're accustomed to this."
She sighed and looked at him, shaking her head. "One's got to learn to adapt. To any situation."
"What about Cassandra?" he inquired.
"What about her?" she asked back and kicked at a pebble with her boots. It flew up in the air and bounced off the pavement before it came to lie completely still again a few meters away.
"Not talking about her then, huh?"
Upon his question, she turned her head to study his face. Scruffy beard, some wrinkles around the eyes and on his forehead, dark eyebrows, hair shaven a bit too short on the sides of his head in a way that practically screamed ex-military. Tough exterior, soft heart, not too keen on the scheming and manipulating, but capable of it. She reached out and petted his stubbly cheek affectionately. It was a spur of the moment gesture, which made him look at her in surprise and her grin because of his reaction. She let her hand fall to her side again.
"Not a pleasant topic," she admitted after a while. "One thing's sure though already: We're never going to be friends. But I do get where she's coming from. I can understand she's angry. I don't say she doesn't have a reason to be. I guess if our places were reversed, I'd act the same way... Still...," her voice drifted off and died down as she became lost in her own thoughts.
"What?"
His question brought her back to the present. "Still I can't seem to understand why she can't deal with her own problems. If she's all that old, powerful and self-reliant, why does she need McLeod to fight her battles? Is Kronos that good? Is she afraid he's going to defeat her?" Her questions were more directed towards herself than anyone else. They were part of her thought process which she verbalized for once, due to the exhaustion and the by now overwhelming need to ease the heavy burden on her shoulders.
"She knows Duncan won't turn her away," Joe conceded.
"And she makes sure that won't happen by shagging him." Her crude remark made Joe cringe. As a former soldier he was used to comments like that, just not out of the mouth of a beautiful woman who usually possessed a certain level of sophistication. But he shouldn't have wondered. After the events of today her sophistication had probably been blown to hell.
"You really think so?" he enquired.
She turned her head to stare at him long and hard. "I know so. It's what I would have done back when I hadn't grown a conscious yet." He tried not to be disconcerted by that admission, but it probably showed on his face. "Awwww, Joe, there you go complaining about how I'm not upfront with you and when I finally am, you can't stomach it," she mocked, her voice halfway between dead serious and amused.
"I can stomach it," he straightened himself a bit saying those words, trying to reclaim the authority he had lost somewhere along the way during their conversation.
"Maybe I should try that honesty bit more often. It does have an interesting effect on people," she said with a grin which he rewarded with a dark glance. "Anyway...," she reached underneath her coat and produced a pack of cigarettes which she held out to him. He hesitated. "I thought you'd quit."
"Fine difference. I don't smoke when I'm around him. You see him around here somewhere?" He shook his head automatically. "Thought so. Yeah, I smoke. But I also drink, gamble and I'm an incorrigible flirt. Whole list of bad habits, darling." She waved the cigarettes in front of his face one more time for emphasize. He finally took one. Liz smirked in approval and reached for her lighter which she produced from underneath her coat. It was lipstick shaped, shiny and covered in chrome. She first lit his cigarette, then hers, before she took a long savoury drag.
"You were saying...," she said casually and threw him an expectant look.
"You," he emphasized, "were saying how you didn't trust Cassandra."
She frowned. "It's not so much that I don't trust her. I just think she's too focused on having her revenge. It makes for terrible short-sightedness. Pity, she's not even Italian. I hear they are big on the whole revenge thing. They've even given it a fancy name: Vendetta."
Joe let out a chuckle and coughed as the smoke got stuck in his windpipe. She threw him a smirk drenched in dry humour. "Amateur," she mocked and blew out perfect O-shaped circle of smoke.
"Easy for you to say. You don't have the constant threat of lung cancer hovering over your head..."
"Excuses, excuses," she waved his objection off with a hand gesture and a wink.
Joe took advantage of her brief display of levity. "So, you've talked to him too?" he asked out of the blue and made her face fall. Whatever trace of humour had been there, it was now wiped away. With her reaction so obvious she didn't trouble herself with lying.
"Yes...," she cleared her throat that suddenly felt congested and tight. "Yes, I have."
Joe threw her a pointed look. He had her now and he wanted to make sure he got all the information out of it he wanted.
"It's bad," she met his gaze and for the first time he knew her he saw something akin to fear in her eyes.
"What did he say?" Joe asked. The question left his mouth quickly and spontaneously, almost like a reflex.
She took a long drag of her cigarette. Her gaze drifted off and fixed on a point far down the road. The soft lines around her eyes became more pronounced as she squinted, almost as if to make something out in the distance. "What did he say?" she repeated with a scoff. "Not much. I didn't give him the chance. Would have been lies anyway. With him it's more about what he didn't say. I could tell he was scared. This Kronos character has got him backed into a corner which isn't good for obvious reasons."
"Obvious reasons? I'm afraid I don't follow..."
She blew out a cloud of blue smoke before she turned her head in his direction. "I reckon there are a lot of reasons Methos keeps his true identity a secret. For one thing his age is quite telling. No one lives 5,000 years without having an overly developed survivor instinct and track record marred with a few dashes of blood. There's one thing you gotta know about him. He's a selfish prick. He wants to live. The only question now is what he's willing to do for it."
"Sounds like you don't approve..." Joe's focus was now firmly on her, he was learning more about her and Methos than in the last few months combined. For one thing he hadn't expected her to have any kind of moral backbone. To his surprise he now found out she had, which made her all the more likeable in his book.
She ripped him out of his reverie by laughing a bitter laugh that miraculously managed to sound quite sad as well. "He's a prick alright. But he's my prick. I do want him to live too, but not at the cost of murdering other people. We all have our limits. That's mine."
Joe nodded. It seemed befitting not to say anything now that she had made such a big confession. He was unaware that she was yet to make an even more shocking one in a second.
"Kronos wants him to kill McLeod. In exchange he promised would kill Cassandra for him."
"Did he tell you that?" Joe's eyes were wide in shock.
"Oh, come now! Don't be ridiculous!" She chuckled at his question. "Course not. I tailed him and overheard their conversation." Liz said it like it was the most natural thing in the world and therefore should have occurred to him.
Joe wisely forwent being scandalised by her behaviour and just asked: "Do you think he will do it?"
A few seconds trickled past before she answered. "McLeod is his friend, but I've got no idea what he'll do if it boils down to choosing between his own life and McLeod's."
Joe didn't know what to be more shocked about: her words or her apathy. "So what?! Are you just going to stand by and let it happen? Are you going to watch him kill a friend?"
"No!" The word exploded right out of her. Apparently he had been completely wrong about the apathy part. "No. Of course not. I can live with him being a sinner, but not a monster."
Her words carried quite a weight and they needed time to sink in. Time which they both gave them. A thoughtful silence settle upon Liz and Joe. The way she had spoken had made clear that her words had erupted out of her spontaneously. Maybe she hadn't even been aware of her opinion on the matter until now.
After a sufficient amount of time had passed, Joe dared to ask his next question. "Does McLeod know?"
"Joe...," her tone of voice almost sounded offended, but luckily it held none of her previous rage. "Dear, Joe," she turned towards him and laid both her hands on his shoulders to give them a brief affectionate squeeze, "you really have to work on your question technique. Do I look like I had a lobotomy? Tell McLeod? Seriously! Can you imagine what would happen? Things are messed up enough as they are. He would go into full-on boy-scout mode. He's like a bull terrier once he's on the war path for a righteous cause. There would be no more wiggle room. And right now we desperately need wiggle room. Lives might depend on it."
More silence. Joe needed some time to digest all those information she had dropped on him without a warning, whereas Liz needed some time to formulate a plan in her head.
"I suppose you're now asking yourself why I told you what I know. It's easy. I need someone to confide in. Even I can't shoulder a weight that big," she finally said.
"Are you not concerned I'm going to tell McLeod?"
She smiled at his question. "Not particularly. Because you're smarter than that. Or at least I think you are. If you go and tell him, you could just as well go and behead Methos yourself. Now as I heard you claim to be his friend on more than one occasion, I assume that to be a very unlikely scenario, isn't that right?" she shot him a sidelong glance that was equal parts taxing and sceptical.
"I'm sensing a threat coming on. What would happen if I did?" He had no intention of betraying her trust, but the question forced itself on him. There was no way he could prevent those words from falling from his mouth.
"Well," she licked her lips pensively, "you're asking theoretically?" He nodded. She took the last drag of her cigarette before the heel of her boot extinguished its glow with a decisive twist. "I'd have to chain you up in the basement of your bar and throw away the key until this crisis was over. Theoretically." Joe coughed, some of the cigarette smoke getting caught in his windpipe as he sucked in his breath abruptly. Liz took in the shocked expression on his face and grinned maliciously in response. "Relax. I did say I was speaking theoretically. After all you're not a tell-tale, aren't you?"
"No. You just had me worried there for a second," he said with narrowed eyes.
"No kidding. Even I had myself worried for a second there," she shook her head as if she was willing to get rid off some dark thoughts.
A couple of moments passed without neither of the saying anything. Finally Joe broke the silence. "What are you going to do now?"
Good question. She had been asking herself precisely that question for the better part of this evening.
"I thought about paying Kronos a visit."
Joe flinched. "Is that really a good idea? Call me crazy, but one thing the guy really doesn't need is more leverage over Methos. Once he finds out about the two of you..."
"He's not going to find out. I'm not some bloody amateur," she interrupted him. His remark had made her temper flare. She hated it when someone doubted her skills.
"No, you're not," he tried to appease her. "But will you be able play a role 24/7? You don't know the first thing about this Kronos guy, except that he's evil and nearly as old as Methos. Plus, he's just found out that if he twists the old man's arm enough, he'll get him to do almost anything he likes. Doesn't sound too promising to me if you ask me."
"Yeah, I'm aware of that," she kicked her boot at the pavement in frustration.
"Just imagine your cover is blown, you'll end up making a bigger mess out of things. Methos won't be able to protect you in there. He'll be too busy trying to save his own hide," Joe reasoned.
"You're probably right," she finally admitted. "Call me crazy, but right now I'm less worried about Kronos than about Duncan and Cassandra."
"How come?" Joe asked, extinguishing his cigarette as well. It hadn't been a good idea smoking it. It had left a bitter, ashen after-taste in his mouth.
"With Duncan being this angry and Cassandra spurring him on with her hatred, there's no telling what they will do. Someone's got to try to have them listen to the voice of reason once in a while."
"Don't tell me, you're trying to be that voice of reason. This is bound to end up a disaster then," Joe ran his hand through his hair. Despite the direness of the situation he was trying to make a joke. It went awry.
"Well, desperate times call for desperate measures," she said evenly, ignoring the joke completely. "This might require more than words. I assume you tried to convince Duncan to hold his guns earlier," she waved her hand in the direction of McLeod's apartment building in emphasize of her words. "How did that work out for you?"
Joe frowned when his earlier talk with McLeod inevitably replayed before his mind's eye. "Not too well. He just didn't seem to want to listen."
The shrill chirp of Joe's cellphone abruptly interrupted their conversation. The hushed tones in which he spoke when he answered it, told her it was Watcher business. She impatiently waited for him to finish the call and just as soon as he did, she asked him what it had been about.
"Cassandra has apparently managed to sneak past us unnoticed. The Watcher who's on her case just alerted me to the fact that she's been spotted in the vicinities of Kronos' hideout."
"What are you waiting for then, Joe? Go and tell Duncan," she ushered him back in the direction of McLeod's apartment building. The Watcher, however, was hesitant to go and that for good reason. "You wouldn't be doing something stupid now like chasing after her, would you?" he asked, regarding her through critically narrowed eyes.
"Of course not, Joe. What do you take me for? A fool?" she lied through her teeth with a broad smile. Apparently she was a good enough liar to make Joe leave and no sooner had he headed off, she turned around and started walking towards her car.