2001-03-28 at 1:46 p.m.

Highlander: Thy Will Be Done

Part 4: A Cleansing Rain

by The Vault

“Duncan MacLeod of the clan MacLeod,” the thin, angular man said from his position on the marble stairs.

“Hello, Methos,” Duncan said as he approached.

“What brings you to my humble abode?” Methos cast a jaded eye around the mansion and gardens belying his statement.

“I need your help.”

“Why me?”

“You have five thousand years of experience. I could use some advice.”

Methos sighed dramatically. “And here I thought it was a social call.”

They walked around the stately, airy-columned porch. “Ever had nightmares?” Duncan asked as he fell into step with his friend.

“We live violent lives, MacLeod. Some things are bound to stay with us.”

“Yes, but nightmares that interfere with your katas? Occuring ten years to the day after Connor disappears?”

Methos turned powerful green eyes on him. Although to most humans he looked barely older than thirty, Duncan could see the weight of his millennia in Methos’s gaze. “Connor had good reason to leave... I knew how much Rachel meant to him...”

“Who’s Rachel?” a new voice said, its brogue lovely.

Duncan raised his gaze. A young woman was leaning against one of the pillars, not far from where a folding table with a wine bottle on it had been erected in the beautiful afternoon. Looks were certainly deceiving - although her telltale ring of immortality had been cloaked by Methos’s, he knew she was much older than she appeared. Her words and expression were innocent enough, but the knuckles of the hand holding her wine glass were strangely white with sudden strain.

“I didn’t know you had company,” he said to the other man, turning away from the girl’s disturbingly direct gaze.

Methos actually contrived to look sheepish. “Duncan MacLeod, meet Meggan Ivyblade.”

“Charmed, I’m sure,” Duncan said, extending his hand.

“You could be,” she answered, and sat down at the table looking at Methos.

“That’s the amusing thing about the Meggan,” Methos said to Duncan as he offered him a chair. “She’s a witch.”

“I can tell,” Duncan muttered. The girl actually smiled at him, although her eyes were still cautious.

“Not like that. She can do magic, is what I mean.”

“Surely I’m not the only immortal so talented,” she demurred.

“But certainly the most charming,” Methos replied gallantly. “See, our Meggan has had one of the most interesting lives I’ve had the pleasure to Watch, and I like to tease her about it.”

“And I’d like to punish him for it, if I wasn’t so sure of his skill.”

“One of the marvelous things about Meggan is her sword and namesake, the Ivyblade,” Methos was telling Duncan with a sly, ingenious expression. “Go ahead, pull it out for him, there’s a good girl.”

She unsheathed it from her leather trench coat in a single smooth pull and laid it on the table. Methos poured MacLeod some wine. True, it was a beautiful sword with incredible craftsmanship written into its distinctive lines, but he saw nothing unusual.

“He trots me out like a show-pony every time we’re around someone else,” Meggan told Duncan in a semi-exasperated tone, although the look she flashed Methos was fond.

“Women have two options when it comes to surviving in the Game: basically, fight like cornered cats or... find someone big and strong and persuade them to do it for them.” Methos stroked the bridge of his nose and looked at the girl. “We all know women who seduce other immortals in order to find protection. As far as I know, Meggan has never sought out a big male brute to do her dirty work.”

“There were those two decades in the seventeen hundreds that I owned an Irish wolfhound,” she reminded him.

“And a fine animal it was, but I don’t think it counts. So she goes the first option. Trouble is, women in the Game tend to pick swords too big or heavy for them to use, and suffer for it. I think that’s why there are more men than women immortals.”

“More likely,” she responded hotly, “men tend to pick carreers or fights that make them into immortals, while pre-immortal women are for the most part too sensible for that.”

“Barring the occasional witch-burning, then,” Methos responded, not unkindly. Duncan felt distinctly on the fringes of this private joke. “But Meggan has the Ivyblade, an enchanted sword that is reputed to be as quick as a shrew’s tongue and the perfect weight and size for whoever holds it.”

“Oh it is,” she purred, and suddenly she was pushing it across the table towards MacCleod. “Try it, Duncan.”

“No, MacLeod, don’t touch the sword.”

"Really, it’s a marvelous thing.”

“Don’t do it, Duncan,” Methos warned again, in a tone that froze his hand in mid-air. “It’s also reputed to be cursed.”

“Awww,” Meggan sighed, and pulled the sword back. “You always ruin my fun, Methos - and I’m fairly sure it wouldn’t have done anything permanent to him.”

“I wouldn’t be.” To Duncan he said, “It tends to inflict things on people other than the Meggan who attempt to touch it. What’s the list up to now, my dear?”

“Madness, blindness, deafness, boils, leprosy,” she ticked off on her fingers, “and one other thing that I’m not sure about, but the man ran off clutching his crotch.”

MacLeod very calmly folded his hands in his lap.

“Thing is,” Methos said, sniggering, “it’s cursed her, too. She’s tried to drop it down a well more than once. Tell him what you’ve had to do, Meggan, go on!”

“I’ve had to climb down a friggin’ well, that’s what I’ve had to do.”

Methos burst into full-blown chuckles at the look on her face. “She can’t leave it behind... or else within a day she’ll get shakes and pains like any other addict.”

“Yep, we all have handicaps we must live with,” she admitted. “Much like Methos’s sense of humor.”

“This isn’t getting me anywhere,” Duncan interjected quickly. “I came here to ask what these nightmares could have been.”

“The Sanctuary,” the Meggan answered, as if it were obvious.

"The Sanctuary?" he parroted, feeling more than a bit stupid.

“Oh my Goddess, Methos!” she said suddenly, and got up from the table. “You deal with him.”

Methos watched her walk down to the end of the porch and pace there with a concerned expression. “There are Buddhist monks in this world who cannot bear the thought of harming or killing another living creature, not even to crush a blade of grass beneath their feet,” he said thoughtfully. “In order to protect others from themselves, they enter into a kind of... protective custody. There is something for immortals as well.”

Duncan stared at him in amazement. “Connor would never do something like that,” he protested.

“Connor has been around since before you were born,” the Meggan answered from her distance. “You don’t know what evils he’s seen.” She came back at last, put a hand on Methos’s shoulder which he covered comfortingly with his own.

“What happened last night?” he demanded of their unreadable expressions.

Methos sighed deeply and upended his glass, allowing the wine to pool on the table, as deep and thick as blood. Meggan Ivyblade turned away in sudden disgust.

“It was annihilated,” he said simply.

“Has anyone... survived?”

“We have no idea.”

“Methos, I have to go there. I have to know.”

Methos pulled an old grocery receipt out of his pocket and scrawled an address from memory onto the back, obviously against his better judgment. Meggan shook her head reflexively; not in negation, MacCleod could sense, but to clear it.

“Duncan, if Connor still lives, he won’t be anywhere near that place,” she said firmly. “You’d do wisely to search his old haunts first.”

“I may just do that,” he said gratefully, and with that he took his leave.

Methos looked up at her as soon as Duncan was out of earshot. “ ‘Who’s Rachel,’ my ass.”

“Some secrets become habit,” she said, sitting down in her chair again and crossing her long legs.

“You don’t like MacLeod very much, do you?” he pressed.

“What was your first clue?” She stared into the middle distance, a mannerism that he’d learned years ago meant that she was watching that inner picture show. “He would have given in on something that he shouldn’t have. It would have been disastrous for everyone.”

He didn’t ask her to explain (knew, in fact, from past experience, that she preferred to be vague just in case she was ever wrong), instead he said “Did you feel this future coming? The destruction of the Sanctuary, is what I mean.”

She rubbed her eyes tiredly. “Yes. Yes I did. This has been coming for quite a long time. And before you ask, no, I couldn’t have stopped it, and I don’t want to make myself decide what I would have done if I could have.”

Fair enough, he thought. “So why are you here, then, my dear?”

“First, to see your handsome face...”

“Ah,” he sighed, “finally someone who appreciates me.”

“...and to have you help me update my will.”

He reached for the briefcase sitting off to one side. “I knew it,” he admitted mournfully. “I’m used by everyone.”

“Yes, but we use the best.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere.” He passed her a sheaf of paper and a red pen. As her closest immortal friend, Methos had helped her execute her estate since they had first met, being in the know with people who could forge identification materials and birth certificates. Over the years, Meggan had mostly designated her money to go to different charities as each emmerged. Ten years ago, however, Meggan had come to him with a big secret - if she had died then, Rachel Ellenstein would have been her sole heir. And now he watched her cross out names and dates with the pen, and wondered who it would be this time. When she passed the will back to him, he couldn’t remember having had a bigger surprise since he’d won that bet on the Wright brothers. He peered at her suspiciously over the top of the page.

“You know something I don’t know,” he hissed.

“And it has to stay that way, my dear,” she said and took him by the hand, her eyes somber. “He is alive - but he is not himself, Methos. If a certain someone were to come after him right now he’d die, and all this would be for nothing. He’s been through more hell than you know, and he needs time to heal. I owe Rachel that, at least.”

“You treated her royally, Meggan. She was a princess in your house - she wanted for nothing.”

“But it still isn’t enough. I don’t know if I can explain it to you.” She dropped her gaze. “She is my best friend.”

He clutched at his heart melodramatically, partially in an attempt to lighten the mood, partially to cover his dismay over her use of present tense. It was a distressing habit she’d always had, of talking about the dead as if she could still see them. Maybe she could.

“You mean I’m no longer your best friend?”

“Best mortal friend,” she amended, and giggled. “We sound like kids on the playground.”

He smiled at her gently. She was by far one of the most original people he’d ever met, and a continuing delight across years that seemed to get drabber by their progression. Something made him want to hold on to her hand just a little tighter and capture the memory of this moment, when she was laughing open in the beautiful afternoon as the wind blew over lands that, two thousand years ago, had been his beautiful, prosperous vineyard.

“I need you to do this for me, Methos. Make the identification, birth certificate and passports for this name.”

“Why?” he asked, his heart plunging as something occurred to him. “Have you had a premonition about -“

She laughed at him then, but tenderly. “Cautious people don’t need premontions, my dear friend. They have foresight, which is nearly as good.”

Meggan got to her feet and sheathed her sword. “I need to be going,” she said, but he refused to let go.

“Tell me that you’re going to take care of yourself, too,” he ordered, his gaze concerned. “You nearly killed yourself last time.”

Meggan bent down and pressed a kiss on his forehead. “With protective boys like you,” she whispered softly, “who needs a wolfhound?” Laughing her musical laugh once more, she left him alone on the porch.

Methos thought about swearing but decided in the end it would accomplish nothing, and spouting expletives when no one’s around to hear is a sign of a failing mind. So he poured himself an over-full glass of wine instead and drank it slowly while reading over and over the name she’d scrawled in her beautiful round handwriting. “Connor Ivyblade.”

**********

He awoke with a start. It was night again, and instinctively Connor MacLeod knew he’d slept a night and a day. He could not move, and over him hovered the woman from his drugged dreams. In her hand she held a ivory-handled straight razor, wickedly sharp and only a few inches from his throat.

Connor filled his lungs and screamed, hoping to break out of his nightmare.

“I’m going to let you move your hand,” she said in a low voice that cut through his cry, “but nothing else.” He closed his right hand - around the hilt of his sword.

“See?” she asked. “You’re not completely vulnerable.”

“Oh yes I am,” he whispered, a cracked voice emerging from his raw, clogged throat, realizing that he was mother-naked except for a towel draped modestly across his lower half.

“Oh, that,” she said, as if she could read his mind. “Well, you did that to yourself. I was just going to take the moment available to shave you. I had no idea I’d look so threatening like this, but I guess I should have known.” And with that, she began to apply the razor carefully to his lathered cheek.

“Who are you?” he tried to ask without moving his jaw, since he liked his nose where it was.

“I am the Meggan Ivyblade. But of course, you can call me Meggan.” She smiled gently. “All my best friends do.”

“Meggan, I can’t remember anything,” he said, a bit anxiously. He knew there was something bad in his mind... could feel the churning emotions it gave him, but couldn’t put his mental grip around it.

“I’m doing that, Connor. You’re not quite well enough to handle some of your memories, so I’m not letting you.”

He pondered that for a moment. “Wow,” he said at last.

“Wow, indeed. That’s probably one of the most honest responses I’ve ever gotten about that.” She smiled at him again. He liked how a tiny dimple appeared in one cheek, not big enough to be ‘cute’ but still there, a flash that softened the determination of her face and took the edge off the power of her eyes. “First thing we’re going to do is to cut off all this fur. Then we’re going to get you into the shower and clean the rest of you up. And then perhaps we can see about you remembering things.”

“Okay,” he agreed. She finished his face and throat in record time, working efficiently without cutting him accidentally. Meggan rinsed him off with a washcloth dipped into a basin full of warm water, then pulled back a bit to study him.

“I think we’ll keep this bit,” she said softly, fingering a lock of his long brown hair. “Once we get you cleaned up, this will be very handsome. Now,” she went on in a business-like manner, setting aside the razor and washcloths to lean on the mattress, “are you satisfied that I won’t be killing you, after I’ve put out all this effort to make you look decent?”

“Mostly,” Connor admitted. Goddess, his eyes were innocent, she thought. So free of pain. Meggan honestly didn’t know if she could let him regain his memories... not if it would mean his agony returning.

“And will you promise not to kill me in return?”

“Of course,” he replied. And his voice... when he’s feeling unguarded like this, his brogue starts coming through, like music...

“Then I’ll let you up, and perhaps you can leave your sword out of the shower, okay?”

“Okay,” he agreed, and clinging modestly to the towel stood up with her help and tottered from the bedroom into the spacious bathroom.

“Oh, I gotta piss like a racehorse,” he mumbled suddenly. Grinning, she changed direction and guided him to the toilet, where she good humoredly faced away while he did his business.

“Better?” she asked after a long, simple moment.

“Much.”

Bearing the better part of his weight again, she helped him into the huge shower and onto a plastic chair with rubber-tipped feet that looked as if it had been made for this purpose. “You know that you’re going to have to lose the towel sooner or later, right?” she asked, and began to shrug out of her filthy t-shirt, revealing the top half of a blue bikini. “It’s nothing that I’ve not seen before.” In a minute she was standing on the tiles in her bathing suit, sliding shut the etched glass door and turning on the water to test its temperature. He let it go and managed not to blush too hard as she turned the chair to face away from the showerhead and let the warm water rain down on his head and back.

“Relax, Connor,” she said as she poured a liberal amount of shampoo on his dirty mane. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I’m not worried about that,” he said, painfully aware that a) his nose was nearly in her soft, rounded cleavage, and b) he was very very very naked.

She chuckled. “Thinking bad thoughts, Connor?”

“Trying my best not to, Meggan.” He relaxed and shut his eyes, feeling the tug and massage of her thorough cleansing. He could feel clumps of greasy shed hair loosen and fall away, streaming down the drain. She rinsed him twice and washed him again with the heavy-duty shampoo. At last he was beginning to feel clean and relaxed, so when she gently applied a washcloth to his clean-shaven face he merely sighed. She was so close he could feel the heat of her body. Terrycloth ran lightly over the curve of his throat, the top of his shoulders and chest.

Long scarred body, she was thinking. His limbs were well-muscled, with perfect lines. She could feel his chest and abdomen flex beneath her minstrations - and when her gaze drifted down still further she turned away with a timidity she’d not felt in nearly six centuries.

“You’ll have to finish up the rest,” she said dryly, pressing the washcloth into his palm and turning around to face the corner of the shower. He managed not to laugh.

“Done,” he said after a minute.

She moved his chair out of the path of the water, offered him a towel to begin drying off. “Mind if I take a turn?” she asked, undoing her long blond braid.

“Go right ahead.”

Lazily he watched her lift her golden mane under the water. It seemed she’d almost forgotten he was there, for she shampooed once, slowly, ran a razor over both lithe legs, and lathered her body with some sweet-smelling gel she’d squeezed into a shower puff.

“Okay, Connor, hand me your towel,” she said, gesturing blindly towards him as she finished her last rinse and cut off the water.

“Could I get dressed now?” he asked plaintively.

“Oh, of course, how stupid of me. Come,” she said, toweling her hair energetically.

On command? he thought, an instant before clean and neatly folded clothes dropped into his lap. He squeaked and she flashed him an amused grin.

“It’s always a shock when you first see it.”

He wriggled into underwear, a t-shirt, and a pair of blue jeans that all fit him perfectly. Once she was satisfactorily dry she helped him out of the shower, deposited him in a comfy chair in front of a large sink and vanity mirror, and skipped into a walk-in closet, humming.

“Meggan,” he called after a moment.

“Hmm?” she responded, her voice muffled by the clothes.

“This is a really big bathroom.” He could see in the mirror where renovation had been done around the door - it had been enlarged to something a little more than a meter wide.

“It is indeed.”

“And the shower...” He grinned, saw the expression in the mirror and grinned wider. “The shower is huge.”

“It had to be, yes.”

“Why, Meggan?”

She came back out again, wearing a loose pair of silky black meditation pants and tugging a small t-shirt down over her bosom. “I had a friend,” she replied, her gaze empty and composed. “She got very sick and had to use a wheelchair, so I had the bedroom and bathroom set up so she could get around easier.” Running a brush quickly through her hair, she pulled it back in a pony tail.

“Oh,” he said, and shifted in his seat. “Did she get better?”

Connor watched her in the mirror as she began to brush the tangles out of his hair. “I think she did,” she said, but he could see her cheeks go pale.

“Oh,” he said again. There was something important going on here, but the gentle fingers in his hair seemed to scatter his thoughts like birds taking wing.

She made him sit still until she’d gotten his hair untangled, then another fifteen minutes while she blew it dry. Meggan seemed to be in another world as she plied the brush and dryer, her eyes distant. He wanted to ask her, wanted to know more about what had happened, but he could not find the words. Hell, right now he couldn’t even remember his last name or why he found a sword in his hand so comforting. Far from being upset however, he realized it seemed to be a protective and nurturing fog in his mind. She pulled his hair into a ponytail at the base of his head, let a few locks straggle free around his face and played with them as she studied her handiwork in the mirror.

“What a handsome man,” she said approvingly. “Much better.”

He chuckled, a deep warm laugh. He’s got some sandy streaks in his hair, she thought, and tried to soothe the twitching of the flesh on the back of her neck at the realization. Goddamned ringing noise.

She led him, walking under his own power now, back into the bedroom. “Ugh,” she said, crinkling her nose at the sweat-damp, filthy sheets. “To the trash,” Meggan ordered, making a shooing gesture, and suddenly the bed was bare. “New linens, please,” and the bed seemed to sprout clean sheets and pillow covers. Meggan took in a deep breath, looking a bit flushed. “Now lie down, Connor, and we’ll see what we can have you remember.”

“Okay,” he agreed docily, and stretched out in the middle of the matress. She sat down beside him and laid his sword next to his hand.

“Just relax,” she said, placing a light hand on his temple. The fog seemed to roll back a bit and with a rush Connor knew who and what he was.

“Tell me about yourself, Connor,” her voice said, sounding as if it came from a distance.

“I am Connor MacLeod of the clan MacLeod,” he croaked. “I was born in 1518 in the village of Glenfinnan on the shores of Loch Shiel. I am an immortal...” His mind could barely stretch around the concept.

“Very impressive,” she was saying when his vision cleared. “I’m Meggan Ivyblade, a bastard child found on a dirt road in a nameless village in 1353. Pleased to meet you.” Connor clung to her hands, dizzy from the sudden rush of nearly 500 years of memories reassuming their proper places. She stroked his face until he calmed a bit. “If I could make it easier on you, I would, Connor.”

“It doesn’t matter. Keep going.”

“Don’t push yourself too hard; all it can gain you is hurt. Can you tell me where you’ve been for the past ten years?”

This time he pushed at the fog from within. “The Sanctuary,” he said hesitantly, and on the tails of this realization came another, strong with the pain of loss.

“Rachel!” he said, and strained against her grip. “She’s dead!”

“Yes she is, Connor,” Meggan said, and bit her lip until it nearly bled. The lines of grief had re-etched themselves across his skin. The raw newness of his agony ripped the half-healed scab from her own.

“It’s all my fault,” he whispered, his eyes tightly shut.

“No, it’s not, Connor.” She stroked a thumb gently under his eyes, wiping away his hot tears as she ignored her own. “Not even I could stop the cancer.”

His eyes flew open, his gaze locking suspiciously on her face. “What do you mean?”

“I saved her from the bomb, Connor, but by the time we tried to get in touch with you, it was too late.”

“No...” he groaned.

“She was with me all this time... but her cancer developed four years after I’d met her. When we discovered it at last, it was too far gone. She tried so hard to wait, Connor -“

“Stop, please!” he begged in a broken voice.

“-but her poor body just gave out. She died a year and a half ago, in this very room, in this very bed - and I was where you should have been. Right here holding her!”

Her anger flared white-hot for a moment, clouding her vision. It was erased in the next instant, however, when she could see his face again and the bitter self-recrimination it wore.

“I’m so sorry,” he managed in a breath before he curled up around his ball of grief, sobbing against her hip. She was forcing him to complete the process of his tears, begun all those years ago. Not only did he weep for Rachel’s loss, but also - now as he did then - for the years they could never spend together, and all the time lost so wastefully.

Meggan stroked the back of his neck, cupped the base of his scalp in her palm, and listened as his tears gradually faded into dry hoarse sobs. “Shh,” she soothed quietly, and even despite his grief and her own she could not help noticing again how beautiful he was, how soft his clean flesh was beneath her fingers. She could only breathe in his pain, soak it up through her skin and replace it with love, as she’d done for the one before him. These old walls were full of Rachel’s pain - they could withstand a bit more; and as for her, Meggan had never had the trouble of running out of love.

At last he seemed to calm, looking up at her out of the corner of one reddened, tear-filled eye. Meggan did not know if he could sense her presence in his mind, or feel her touching his soul and making it bleed all those painful emotions like “love” and “hope” after all these years. She didn’t know if he would thank her for her healing touch or curse her. But she could see as if over-layed on her corneas the image of Rachel curled up where he was, ward of her care.

Beautiful Rachel. Wonderful, unique Rachel.

So it should be forgiven if she gave into separate but twin urges and bent to place a tender kiss on Connor’s cheek. When she lifted her face she felt the weight of his fingers on her temple.

Tell me everything, Meggan, his clarion voice resounded into her very mind - causing a wild and unknown part of her to rise up out of the ashes of melancholy like a phoenix, burning and free.

I have to know.

Continue to Part 5