2001-03-22 at 09:08 p.m.

Highlander: Thy Will Be Done

Part 2: Watching The Watchers

by The Vault

"And the jester sang for the king and queen, in a coat he borrowed from James Dean, and a voice that came from you and meee..." the voice warbled as Rachel stepped out of the shower.

Chomp. Chew, chew, chew, chew. Gulp.

"Oh, and while the king was looking down, the jester stole his thorny crown..." the voice resumed. The clicking of a mouse button, the sudden chomp/gulp of a fry meeting its demise. "The court room was adjourned, no verdict was returned! And while Lenin read a book on Marx, the quartet practiced in the park, and we sang dirges in the dark the day the music died..."

Rachel wrapped a towel around her dripping hair, swaddled up in the comfortable burgundy bathrobe provided and padded barefoot into the sitting room where Meggan had set up her laptop and was demolishing the rest of their meal.

"Hello, Rachel!" Meggan said cheerfully over the top of the screen, took another huge bite out of a burger and swallowed. "I took the liberty of purchasing a few garments for you in your size, in addition to sending the one you were wearing to the laundry. I'll not have you meet Connor in a soot-stained, day-old outfit."

"You sound like you know him, almost," she replied, sliding into a nearby chair.

"I've never met him personally, but I've learned as much about him as I could." She rolled her eyes. "And he does have a reputation. The Kurgan used to be the big scary fish until the Highlander took him out. The Kurgan was pretty simple emotionally - he just wanted to rule the world - but we have no idea what Connor MacLeod desires."

"As far as I know, just to be as mortal as possible." Rachel smiled softly, and Meggan hid her own grin. One thing she did know - Connor would have to have been either too "honorable" or too damned blind if he had let Rachel love him silently all this time without responding to it.

"Well!" she said with a note of finality. "Let's not extend the torture any longer. Do you want to dial him up?"

"I do," Rachel said quickly, "but I thought it rude to ask."

Meggan laughed. "I get sidetracked in my own drama, dear -- don't ever hesitate to snap me back out!" She picked up the phone, lifted the handset, and dialed in a number she'd never used before but knew by heart. One ring. Rachel watched her face expectantly. Meggan winked at her, made her smile and relax.

Two rings.

Three.

A click, and then a cultured female voice. "We're sorry, but this number has been disconnected. Please --"

She slammed the phone down. "No," she protested, but the universe didn't listen. The buzzing rose up in her head. She fought it desperately, fought that terrible knowledge, clenched her teeth on the waves of nausea and pain that threatened to make her violently ill. Meggan pressed it to the breaking point, as she had not done in years. She had forgotten how much Destiny could hurt.

She came to on the floor minutes later. Rachel had removed the towel on her head and placed it as a pillow under Meggan's neck, hovered over her now with a look of concern.

"Are you okay?" she asked as soon as she saw Meggan was coming around.

"Oh Rachel," she croaked dizzily. "I'm so sorry."

"What happened?"

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. "He's turned fucking martyr, Rachel. He's sought Sanctuary, and now he'll be near-impossible to touch."

"I don't understand," she said quietly. Meggan studied her as the room slowly settled. Sweet, gentle Rachel. Patient Rachel.

"Help me up," she said at last, and when they were seated together on the couch, Meggan told her all about the Game. How immortals killed each other to receive the other's memories and strength in something called a Quickening. How when there were only a few immortals left, there would be the Gathering -- a time when immortals would feel compelled to fight. And when only one immortal was left, he or she regardless of merit would receive the Prize -- the power to look into the hearts and minds of all men, and the privilege of living and dying just like one of them.

Then she sighed, and continued about the Watchers -- all of their internal squabbling, their many factions, their fear; and the attempt of those at the Sanctuary to ensure that the Game never ended, and the Prize was never won.

Rachel brought her a soda. Meggan kept on, morosely, staring into the middle distance. "Just like any other man or woman, immortals can get bored to the point of melancholy. Or sometimes the endless parade of death across the centuries can eat away at one's mind. For whatever reason, they sign their lives and themselves over to the Sanctuary. The Watchers there drug them and lock them away like flies in amber, sustaining their lifeless bodies with medical means for literally eternity."

She cussed a long moment in Gaelic. Rachel let her vent for them both. "I knew that I had to keep you alive and return you to him," she said after a moment, restored to some control. "I just didn't think that he'd go this far. I had no idea that he could be this depressed."

"Can't we go to the Watchers?" Rachel asked. "Say it was a mistake... check him out somehow?"

Meggan smiled despite her weariness. "He's not a library book, Rachel. The Sanctuary Watchers are militant zealots. They believe that their efforts will save the world from a superhuman tyrant. By no means will they release him without a fight -- and legally, they have the advantage. By now he's signed papers stating that he wants to be sedated and stored away." She exhaled slowly. "And even if I did gather a sizable group of friends, I doubt I could free him by force. Other immortals have tried in the past, for various reasons -- the results haven't been pretty."

"Then what can we do?"

"I will find a way," Meggan replied grimly, scarcely knowing why this of all things mattered so very much to her. With a flash she had drawn her sword, held it with one hand under the blade and one on the grip. It was beautiful, thin-bladed, the metal so light it appeared to glow white. The perfect size and weight for a woman, it was beyond razor-sharp, and down the flat of the blade on both sides was worked a pattern of green ivy-vines, her namesake.

"I swear it to you," Meggan said, "that I will get him free -- and no one's ever gotten the best of the Meggan before."

Rachel stared at her for a moment, a strangely solemn picture in her bathrobe and half-dry hair. Then with a decisive movement, she put her palm between Meggan's hands, flat down on the blade.

"And I promise that I will do whatever necessary to help you," she said.

Meggan watched her in obvious disbelief. Self-conscious, Rachel removed her hand but Meggan caught it and studied it suspiciously. "It's never done that before," she muttered. "You feeling okay?"

"Yes, of course. Why?"

"Long story," she said dryly. "I can tell you it later; tomorrow perhaps. But I know of one way that you can begin helping me tonight."

"Anything!"

She smiled at the other woman's eagerness. Motioning her to wait, Meggan went into her bedroom of the suite and secured a cloth-wrapped bundle from her luggage. "I had been going to keep this for myself," she admitted, laughing as she flopped back down onto the couch, "but I suppose I can always order another one... Go ahead."

Rachel unwrapped the linen and then paused with trembling fingers. "How exquisite," she breathed, and picked it up carefully.

"It won't break," Meggan said in amused tones.

It was a book, the cover of tooled leather in the design of a wide-spreading oak that stretched from the front to the back of the book. It was clasped by a leather thong that wrapped around a silver button shaped like an acorn on the front. Rachel undid the thong and spread the creamy pages. "But it's empty," she said, perplexed.

Meggan nodded. "Every day until we bring Connor out, I want you to write at least one page in this journal. Tell him what's going on in your life, your thoughts and emotions. That way, when you are reunited, the weeks or months in between need not have been wasted. Understand?"

Eyes shining, Rachel nodded.

**********

The years passed, as years are wont to do. Connor MacLeod floated on in ethered silence, only vaguely aware of when they changed his IV, or gave him his monthly bath. Such things had long since ceased to bother him.

Beneath the metal visor of his strange bed, all was light and the darkness feared to trespass. He lived in dreams of Heather and Brenda and Rachel. They were healthy and happy, content in his love. In his dreams he kept them safe from every harm.

He had only one strange hallucination however, that occurred in his fourth year. In this dream he saw the balcony of a huge dark house. On it stood a young woman, with a thick blond braid of hair down to her waist. She was leaning on the wrought-iron railing, frowning down at him or someone behind him. The light of the sunset blazed cruel over her, the shadows making her face a stark relief. With a start he realized that she was immortal. But there was something different about her - perhaps in the way she wore the weight of her years like a light spring mantle, or the flash in her eyes that spoke of hope and vigor. That strange something reached him, touched a long-dead string within his heart.

"It seems like I find you out here every night," a familiar voice said warmly, and Rachel joined the young/old stranger at the railing.

The girl smiled back at Rachel, clasped her shoulder with deep affection. Connor sighed aloud, startling the watcher on guard in the stony pit of Sanctuary. Rachel looked so ancient, so faded and fragile. How could this be? She had always been young in his dreams. He watched the stranger's face tighten with concern before quickly covering the emotion.

"I'd like to think that there's someone down there watching me," she was saying. "That they know that I'm up here, watching them."

"I don't see how they could help knowing," Rachel said lightly. Although she was older, Rachel seemed more serene and at peace than he'd ever seen her.

"I have made myself a nuisance, haven't I?" she admitted. "But it still hasn't been enough."

"We'll get them eventually," Rachel assured her. "You've got an excellent team of hard working attorneys being paid very well for top effort. Look how far we've gotten already."

"We've pushed them a few states, yes. But it's not what we needed. They seem willing to take any amount of punishment, just as long as they can continue their mission." Her expressive face hardened. "But I swear it, Rachel. I'll harry them until eternity, if I have to. Someday they will break."

Rachel looked so tiny, and so very solemn. "The Meggan," she said clearly, "I don't have that long." The Meggan - if that was the blonde stranger's name - looked as if she'd been punched in the gut. Her eyes were stricken.

"Why do you do this, Meggan?" Rachel asked sincerely, her gaze never leaving the blond girl's face. "Why do you throw your money and your energy away in the effort to free a man you don't even know?"

Meggan shrugged. "The first day felt like any other day. Get up, brush teeth, set the world right, go to lunch... I'd thought I just move on, like I always have. That night, I would have answered that I stayed because someone had messed up my streak, that I hadn't really finished my job. A week later, I would have said I stayed because I believed that the Sanctuary is barbaric and disgusting and needs to be destroyed. At a year I would have said it was for Connor himself - if he's as great a guy as you've told me, he's got to be worth rescuing, right?"

She sighed. "At two years I would have said that I was in too deeply, too involved to break away. I'd been at work on this flaw for so long it seemed to be the central factor of my life." Rachel nodded.

"But I know now what it truly is," she continued. "I stay and keep working for you, Rachel. You're the reason." She swallowed hard, her eyes bitter for the first time. "You're my best friend ever. I just want you to know."

"I always have," Rachel replied, and the two embraced.

"Come back inside," she urged after a long moment. "Let the Sanctuary watch itself for a night." The glance Meggan directed over her shoulder as she went back into the huge house was filled with mixed emotions, made Connor think of warm summer sun and cool winter snow all at once.

Wow, he thought groggily. They were talking about me. What strange dreams. I wonder if they've changed my medication.

And consciously (relatively speaking, of course) he dismissed it, and went on with his drugged daydreams of a bright and healthy world where no one was snatched from life - from him - violently or unnecessarily.

Yet ever after, on nights when the wind blew cool and the stars twinkled in all the glories of the heavens, when the moon rode high and the world was still and beautiful, Connor MacLeod's drowsing body would become restless and yank fitfully at his iron restraints - and the Sanctuary Watchers would become very concerned indeed.

On To Part 3