Shades and Echoes - chapter nine
Right. So the campaign was suspended today, which means that I have all sorts of free time at the moment. I'm starting school again in September -- I got into grad school, and I'm going for my PhD -- but until then, I think I might just take some time to myself. Amanda wants my help planning the wedding, and I want to be at least a little involved; also, I could honestly use the time to relax and recuperate.
Anyway. That's enough of my ramblings. Here's the next chapter of Shades and Echoes -- sorry it took so long to finish. It's up on the f-list a day early; tomorrow it gets posted to the comms.
Chapter Nine:
"Did you see that?" Don demanded, grabbing Joe's arm with a force that made him momentarily unsteady on his feet. "Sorry -- but did you see that? He knocked MacLeod right on his ass!"
"I saw," Joe said grimly. For one dizzying, terrible moment, he'd thought they were about to watch Adam die; the realization that it was an object lesson had come only a few seconds before Adam's unexpected turning of the tables. The angle had prevented them from seeing Adam's face, but MacLeod's had been telling enough, at least to Joe's eyes: surprise had been followed by a flash of apprehension, and when he'd climbed to his feet, he'd looked at Adam with an expression of startled approbation.
"What's wrong?" Don turned his head, frowning. "It's a good sign; hell, it's the first one we've seen that he's at all interested in surviving."
Joe didn't say anything. Don wasn't a field operative; he never had been, so he didn't have a frame of reference for what they'd just seen. Joe did. There had been a brutal, elegant efficiency to Adam's attack that only training - real training, not whatever basics MacLeod had been drilling him on - could have produced.
The flash of wariness in MacLeod's face had also spoken volumes. For a brief moment he'd seemed to see Adam as a threat, and that was a lot more telling than his later acceptance of Adam's explanation. MacLeod, after all, was basically a trusting guy -- and he'd also been on the receiving end of what Adam had done to him; hadn't been in a position to see the clean, practiced movements with which he'd been taken down.
"Joe?" Don persisted. Down on the barge, Adam was swinging his sword around just a little too clumsily.
"He's been playing us," Joe muttered, appalled.
"What?" Don turned to look at him, binoculars still halfway to his eyes. "What are you talking about?"
"Adam. He's been playing us." Joe shook his head, still not quite able to believe it. Adam was -- he was Adam, awkward and sarcastic and far too bright, the kid who'd flunked out of all of his basic surveillance classes because he'd been too busy thinking about some trick of Sumerian grammar and who'd filled in behind the bar all last summer while the regular bartender had been home with her new baby. He wouldn't have believed it -- but he'd seen it with his own eyes, and Adam shouldn't have been able to do anything about a sword at his throat. "This whole time. Jesus Christ!" He slammed a fist into the bridge railing.
"Joe!" Don grabbed his hand, face urgent with concern. "What do you mean, he's been playing us?"
"I mean," Joe said, "that he's not a new Immortal. No new Immortal could have taken MacLeod out like that; not with a sword to his neck." He scowled, disgusted with himself for having been taken in so easily. Don at least had the excuse of being a researcher; he, on the other hand, had spent the better part of twenty years in the field. To have missed an Immortal hiding right under his nose was galling, and it didn't help much to think that everyone else had been tricked as well.
"You can't be serious," Don was saying. "So he knocked MacLeod down; so what?"
"So I know the difference between a lucky break and a deliberate, trained attack." Joe could feel the headache starting to form behind his eyes, a headache that the cold would only make worse. "That was definitely the latter."
"You're wrong," Don insisted. "I've known him for two years, Joe! I think I'd have noticed something by now."
"Don -- " Joe sighed. His friend had practically adopted Adam. Pressing the issue would offend him in more ways than one; his pride would be as injured as anything else. Joe could sympathize. "I know what I saw. So did MacLeod - did you see his face? He was worried for a minute."
"He's not worried now," Don said, gesturing to where Adam and MacLeod were going through a series of slow passes. "I think your brother-in-law might be rubbing off on you."
Joe took a deep breath. Don hadn't meant to be offensive. For all of his brilliance, he could be remarkably insensitive when it came to the subtleties of human interaction -- unlike Adam, whose naivete disguised a surprising ability to understand, if not always empathize with, almost everybody.
"You can think whatever you want," he said carefully. His tone of voice was enough to clue Don in to the fact that he'd crossed a line; the other man winced and opened his mouth, presumably to apologize. Joe rolled over him; Don wasn't going to like what he was about to hear, and it was best to get it out while he was still feeling guilty. "I have to talk to him anyway."
"That's it?" Don asked, apology forgotten in his concern for Adam. "You're not going to say anything to HQ, are you?"
"Not until I've talked to him," Joe said, and wouldn't promise anything more, no matter how Don pressed him.
***
MacLeod was relatively quiet during dinner, for which Methos was grateful. He'd come very close to slipping out from behind Adam Pierson's mask earlier, and it still felt a little tight. Only the Highlander's own innate truthfulness had prevented what could have been a truly uncomfortable moment. MacLeod did not lie, and so he assumed that others told the truth until it was proven otherwise.
The man was foolish, infuriating, and horrifyingly tempting. The desire to let Adam Pierson fall away, to show the Highlander some of what lay beneath the disguise and to interact with him on an equal footing, was shockingly strong. He was glad to have some time to slip back into Adam's traces.
"It's very good," Methos said, after a few mouthfuls of pasta. The smile that the Highlander gave him was as brilliant and uncomplicated as sunlight after long darkness, and almost as painful.
"Thank you." MacLeod reached for his wine-glass. "You know, I can teach you to cook as well as to fight, if you like."
Methos was tempted. Worse, he was tempted to offer lessons in return: old dishes that had been forgotten generations ago, things that only he remembered. Instead, he laughed.
"I'm afraid that microwaving a tin of whatever's to hand is about as far as I get," he said ruefully.
"That'll get pretty old after a couple of centuries," MacLeod warned. The humour in his dark eyes and the easy curve of his mouth tugged at something in Methos' chest. "I'll show you a few things tomorrow. It's not hard."
Oh, Darius, I am going to have your hide. You should have warned me about this, old friend, Methos thought, while Adam Pierson nodded his acquiescence.
After dinner he helped MacLeod with the dishes, because it was the sort of thing that Adam Pierson would do. He hadn't counted on the size of the Highlander's kitchen, which forced them to stand so close they were almost touching. Methos could feel MacLeod beside him, his solid presence seeming to almost radiate warmth, and found himself watching the man's strong, broad hands as they moved gently over the dishes.
"No dishwasher?" Methos asked. He had one in his flat, and thought it one of the miracles of the modern age.
"I've got two," MacLeod grinned, gesturing between himself and Methos with one hand before passing the latter a freshly-washed plate. "There's a dishtowel hanging on the oven," he said, "and the cabinets are fairly easy to find things in." As Methos took the dish from him, their fingers brushed, MacLeod's touch radiating up his arm and down his spine like a low-grade electric shock, and he had to tighten his grip to keep from dropping the plate. Fortunately, MacLeod didn't seem to have noticed; he went back to the dishes without commenting.
There weren't many dishes to wash, but it took long enough that every nerve in Methos' body was thrumming by the time they'd finished. The casual brushes of MacLeod's hands, shoulders, arms, against his own had left him almost shaking with a combination of desire and horror. This was so much worse than the temptation to tell the man the truth. It had been fifty years since he'd wanted someone so badly; since his body had responded with such unthinking eagerness to such unintentional contact.
The feel of MacLeod's hands on his own, wet and soapy and callus-rough, sent shivers chasing themselves over his skin, and when the man offered him a brandy afterwards, it was all Methos could do to say no. He headed out into Paris' rain-wet streets, pulling his coat close against a cold wind that snatched his breath away almost as thoroughly as MacLeod had done.
***
By the time he got to Le Blues Bar it was nearly nine o'clock, and the desire to throw off Adam Pierson was like an itch under his skin. He ducked in through the door, still hugging his coat tight around him and glad to be out of the cold -- and was immediately confronted by a tight-faced Joe Dawson.
"You," he said flatly. "Into the office."
"Joe?" Methos asked, projecting harmless innocence for all he was worth. Joe had been irritated with him before, but canny as he was, he'd always calmed down a little when faced with Adam's earnestness. This time, though, his eyes got harder instead of softer, and he jabbed an accusatory finger at Methos' chest.
"Don't you even start." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Get in there."
Methos did as he was told, careful to keep his shoulders hunched and his posture defensive. All the while, his heart was pounding. The irritants of playing Adam Pierson had been forgotten in the sudden necessity of doing so. He could only think of one reason for Joe to be so upset, and there was no way this was going to go well. A Watcher who suddenly turned up Immortal was one thing; an Immortal who'd infiltrated the Watchers was quite another, and that 'don't even start' had had ominous undertones.
Joe followed him into the office and closed the door behind them quietly before turning around to face him. The man's expression was still cold and distant, but there was something in his eyes that made Methos think that he was as afraid as he was angry. A glance at the tense set of his shoulders confirmed it.
"What the hell's going on?" Methos demanded, careful to be just as indignant and as rattled as Adam would be, and no more. "Joe - "
"I told you not to start that shit with me," Joe snapped. "I was watching your training session with MacLeod today, and while he still might be buying your little act, I'm not any more. Where did you learn to knock someone like the Highlander on his ass?"
"I didn't exactly have an easy time of it growing up," Methos snapped. "So I learned a few tricks in the schoolyard; what of it?"
"There's no way you took down Duncan MacLeod with a trick you learned on the playground."
"It was a simple heel lock, Joe. You were watching; you should have bloody well seen it." Methos took a deep breath. The look of mingled betrayal and anger on Joe's face hurt far, far more than it should have, and as a result, the edge in his own voice was fast approaching a sharpness that was not at all Adam Pierson's.
"I saw it all right," Joe said coldly. "And you must think I'm an idiot if you're trying to use an excuse like that. I saw how fast you moved -- or did you want to tell me you picked that up on the playground, too?"
The damnable thing was that he had moved too fast. One moment he'd been lying happily to Duncan about his age; the next there'd been a sword at his throat, and he'd been fighting not only five thousand years' worth of reflex, but his own automatic and probably inappropriate reaction to the sensation of razor-sharp steel on his too-vulnerable neck. Knocking the Highlander on his arse had been pure instinct, an act of self-preservation in more ways than one, and he'd moved faster and better than Adam Pierson had any right to do. It had been instinct and it had been sloppy, and Joe Dawson had well and truly caught him.
"I thought you weren't going to watch my training sessions." When in doubt, attack. Unfortunately, Joe was smarter than that.
"I said I wasn't going to report your training sessions."
"Don't play semantics with me," Methos snapped, still attempting to deflect the conversation. This was not a part of his plans.
"Nice try," Joe said, and his eyes were rock-hard again. "Why did you infiltrate the Watchers, Adam? Are you hunting MacLeod, Methos, or just anyone unfortunate enough to get in your way?"
"Infiltrate the -- who said anything about infiltrating? How the hell was I supposed to know -"
Joe cut him off by slashing one hand through the air.
"Don't you do it. Don't you dare open your mouth and lie to me again. I've been sticking my neck out for you, and I'm still sticking my neck out for you, and the least you owe me is the truth. How long have you been Immortal, Adam? Two centuries? Three?"
"Try fifty," Methos said, stung beyond caution by the raw anger in Joe's voice, the words slipping out before he could stop them. He closed his eyes, appalled, as the silence stretched itself out between them.
***
( Chapter Ten)
***
Author's Notes: First, my thanks to
lferion,
marauderswolf, and
morgynleri_fic for beta-reading this chapter for me. Any remaining mistakes are due to my own stubbornness. The dishwashing scene in particular is thanks to
lferion.
As always, thanks also to everyone who's taken the time to read/review thus far. Sorry for the cliffhanger ending; the next chapter won't be nearly as long in coming, I promise. And, as always, feedback is love.
Anyway. That's enough of my ramblings. Here's the next chapter of Shades and Echoes -- sorry it took so long to finish. It's up on the f-list a day early; tomorrow it gets posted to the comms.
Chapter Nine:
"Did you see that?" Don demanded, grabbing Joe's arm with a force that made him momentarily unsteady on his feet. "Sorry -- but did you see that? He knocked MacLeod right on his ass!"
"I saw," Joe said grimly. For one dizzying, terrible moment, he'd thought they were about to watch Adam die; the realization that it was an object lesson had come only a few seconds before Adam's unexpected turning of the tables. The angle had prevented them from seeing Adam's face, but MacLeod's had been telling enough, at least to Joe's eyes: surprise had been followed by a flash of apprehension, and when he'd climbed to his feet, he'd looked at Adam with an expression of startled approbation.
"What's wrong?" Don turned his head, frowning. "It's a good sign; hell, it's the first one we've seen that he's at all interested in surviving."
Joe didn't say anything. Don wasn't a field operative; he never had been, so he didn't have a frame of reference for what they'd just seen. Joe did. There had been a brutal, elegant efficiency to Adam's attack that only training - real training, not whatever basics MacLeod had been drilling him on - could have produced.
The flash of wariness in MacLeod's face had also spoken volumes. For a brief moment he'd seemed to see Adam as a threat, and that was a lot more telling than his later acceptance of Adam's explanation. MacLeod, after all, was basically a trusting guy -- and he'd also been on the receiving end of what Adam had done to him; hadn't been in a position to see the clean, practiced movements with which he'd been taken down.
"Joe?" Don persisted. Down on the barge, Adam was swinging his sword around just a little too clumsily.
"He's been playing us," Joe muttered, appalled.
"What?" Don turned to look at him, binoculars still halfway to his eyes. "What are you talking about?"
"Adam. He's been playing us." Joe shook his head, still not quite able to believe it. Adam was -- he was Adam, awkward and sarcastic and far too bright, the kid who'd flunked out of all of his basic surveillance classes because he'd been too busy thinking about some trick of Sumerian grammar and who'd filled in behind the bar all last summer while the regular bartender had been home with her new baby. He wouldn't have believed it -- but he'd seen it with his own eyes, and Adam shouldn't have been able to do anything about a sword at his throat. "This whole time. Jesus Christ!" He slammed a fist into the bridge railing.
"Joe!" Don grabbed his hand, face urgent with concern. "What do you mean, he's been playing us?"
"I mean," Joe said, "that he's not a new Immortal. No new Immortal could have taken MacLeod out like that; not with a sword to his neck." He scowled, disgusted with himself for having been taken in so easily. Don at least had the excuse of being a researcher; he, on the other hand, had spent the better part of twenty years in the field. To have missed an Immortal hiding right under his nose was galling, and it didn't help much to think that everyone else had been tricked as well.
"You can't be serious," Don was saying. "So he knocked MacLeod down; so what?"
"So I know the difference between a lucky break and a deliberate, trained attack." Joe could feel the headache starting to form behind his eyes, a headache that the cold would only make worse. "That was definitely the latter."
"You're wrong," Don insisted. "I've known him for two years, Joe! I think I'd have noticed something by now."
"Don -- " Joe sighed. His friend had practically adopted Adam. Pressing the issue would offend him in more ways than one; his pride would be as injured as anything else. Joe could sympathize. "I know what I saw. So did MacLeod - did you see his face? He was worried for a minute."
"He's not worried now," Don said, gesturing to where Adam and MacLeod were going through a series of slow passes. "I think your brother-in-law might be rubbing off on you."
Joe took a deep breath. Don hadn't meant to be offensive. For all of his brilliance, he could be remarkably insensitive when it came to the subtleties of human interaction -- unlike Adam, whose naivete disguised a surprising ability to understand, if not always empathize with, almost everybody.
"You can think whatever you want," he said carefully. His tone of voice was enough to clue Don in to the fact that he'd crossed a line; the other man winced and opened his mouth, presumably to apologize. Joe rolled over him; Don wasn't going to like what he was about to hear, and it was best to get it out while he was still feeling guilty. "I have to talk to him anyway."
"That's it?" Don asked, apology forgotten in his concern for Adam. "You're not going to say anything to HQ, are you?"
"Not until I've talked to him," Joe said, and wouldn't promise anything more, no matter how Don pressed him.
***
MacLeod was relatively quiet during dinner, for which Methos was grateful. He'd come very close to slipping out from behind Adam Pierson's mask earlier, and it still felt a little tight. Only the Highlander's own innate truthfulness had prevented what could have been a truly uncomfortable moment. MacLeod did not lie, and so he assumed that others told the truth until it was proven otherwise.
The man was foolish, infuriating, and horrifyingly tempting. The desire to let Adam Pierson fall away, to show the Highlander some of what lay beneath the disguise and to interact with him on an equal footing, was shockingly strong. He was glad to have some time to slip back into Adam's traces.
"It's very good," Methos said, after a few mouthfuls of pasta. The smile that the Highlander gave him was as brilliant and uncomplicated as sunlight after long darkness, and almost as painful.
"Thank you." MacLeod reached for his wine-glass. "You know, I can teach you to cook as well as to fight, if you like."
Methos was tempted. Worse, he was tempted to offer lessons in return: old dishes that had been forgotten generations ago, things that only he remembered. Instead, he laughed.
"I'm afraid that microwaving a tin of whatever's to hand is about as far as I get," he said ruefully.
"That'll get pretty old after a couple of centuries," MacLeod warned. The humour in his dark eyes and the easy curve of his mouth tugged at something in Methos' chest. "I'll show you a few things tomorrow. It's not hard."
Oh, Darius, I am going to have your hide. You should have warned me about this, old friend, Methos thought, while Adam Pierson nodded his acquiescence.
After dinner he helped MacLeod with the dishes, because it was the sort of thing that Adam Pierson would do. He hadn't counted on the size of the Highlander's kitchen, which forced them to stand so close they were almost touching. Methos could feel MacLeod beside him, his solid presence seeming to almost radiate warmth, and found himself watching the man's strong, broad hands as they moved gently over the dishes.
"No dishwasher?" Methos asked. He had one in his flat, and thought it one of the miracles of the modern age.
"I've got two," MacLeod grinned, gesturing between himself and Methos with one hand before passing the latter a freshly-washed plate. "There's a dishtowel hanging on the oven," he said, "and the cabinets are fairly easy to find things in." As Methos took the dish from him, their fingers brushed, MacLeod's touch radiating up his arm and down his spine like a low-grade electric shock, and he had to tighten his grip to keep from dropping the plate. Fortunately, MacLeod didn't seem to have noticed; he went back to the dishes without commenting.
There weren't many dishes to wash, but it took long enough that every nerve in Methos' body was thrumming by the time they'd finished. The casual brushes of MacLeod's hands, shoulders, arms, against his own had left him almost shaking with a combination of desire and horror. This was so much worse than the temptation to tell the man the truth. It had been fifty years since he'd wanted someone so badly; since his body had responded with such unthinking eagerness to such unintentional contact.
The feel of MacLeod's hands on his own, wet and soapy and callus-rough, sent shivers chasing themselves over his skin, and when the man offered him a brandy afterwards, it was all Methos could do to say no. He headed out into Paris' rain-wet streets, pulling his coat close against a cold wind that snatched his breath away almost as thoroughly as MacLeod had done.
***
By the time he got to Le Blues Bar it was nearly nine o'clock, and the desire to throw off Adam Pierson was like an itch under his skin. He ducked in through the door, still hugging his coat tight around him and glad to be out of the cold -- and was immediately confronted by a tight-faced Joe Dawson.
"You," he said flatly. "Into the office."
"Joe?" Methos asked, projecting harmless innocence for all he was worth. Joe had been irritated with him before, but canny as he was, he'd always calmed down a little when faced with Adam's earnestness. This time, though, his eyes got harder instead of softer, and he jabbed an accusatory finger at Methos' chest.
"Don't you even start." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Get in there."
Methos did as he was told, careful to keep his shoulders hunched and his posture defensive. All the while, his heart was pounding. The irritants of playing Adam Pierson had been forgotten in the sudden necessity of doing so. He could only think of one reason for Joe to be so upset, and there was no way this was going to go well. A Watcher who suddenly turned up Immortal was one thing; an Immortal who'd infiltrated the Watchers was quite another, and that 'don't even start' had had ominous undertones.
Joe followed him into the office and closed the door behind them quietly before turning around to face him. The man's expression was still cold and distant, but there was something in his eyes that made Methos think that he was as afraid as he was angry. A glance at the tense set of his shoulders confirmed it.
"What the hell's going on?" Methos demanded, careful to be just as indignant and as rattled as Adam would be, and no more. "Joe - "
"I told you not to start that shit with me," Joe snapped. "I was watching your training session with MacLeod today, and while he still might be buying your little act, I'm not any more. Where did you learn to knock someone like the Highlander on his ass?"
"I didn't exactly have an easy time of it growing up," Methos snapped. "So I learned a few tricks in the schoolyard; what of it?"
"There's no way you took down Duncan MacLeod with a trick you learned on the playground."
"It was a simple heel lock, Joe. You were watching; you should have bloody well seen it." Methos took a deep breath. The look of mingled betrayal and anger on Joe's face hurt far, far more than it should have, and as a result, the edge in his own voice was fast approaching a sharpness that was not at all Adam Pierson's.
"I saw it all right," Joe said coldly. "And you must think I'm an idiot if you're trying to use an excuse like that. I saw how fast you moved -- or did you want to tell me you picked that up on the playground, too?"
The damnable thing was that he had moved too fast. One moment he'd been lying happily to Duncan about his age; the next there'd been a sword at his throat, and he'd been fighting not only five thousand years' worth of reflex, but his own automatic and probably inappropriate reaction to the sensation of razor-sharp steel on his too-vulnerable neck. Knocking the Highlander on his arse had been pure instinct, an act of self-preservation in more ways than one, and he'd moved faster and better than Adam Pierson had any right to do. It had been instinct and it had been sloppy, and Joe Dawson had well and truly caught him.
"I thought you weren't going to watch my training sessions." When in doubt, attack. Unfortunately, Joe was smarter than that.
"I said I wasn't going to report your training sessions."
"Don't play semantics with me," Methos snapped, still attempting to deflect the conversation. This was not a part of his plans.
"Nice try," Joe said, and his eyes were rock-hard again. "Why did you infiltrate the Watchers, Adam? Are you hunting MacLeod, Methos, or just anyone unfortunate enough to get in your way?"
"Infiltrate the -- who said anything about infiltrating? How the hell was I supposed to know -"
Joe cut him off by slashing one hand through the air.
"Don't you do it. Don't you dare open your mouth and lie to me again. I've been sticking my neck out for you, and I'm still sticking my neck out for you, and the least you owe me is the truth. How long have you been Immortal, Adam? Two centuries? Three?"
"Try fifty," Methos said, stung beyond caution by the raw anger in Joe's voice, the words slipping out before he could stop them. He closed his eyes, appalled, as the silence stretched itself out between them.
***
( Chapter Ten)
***
Author's Notes: First, my thanks to
lferion,
marauderswolf, and
morgynleri_fic for beta-reading this chapter for me. Any remaining mistakes are due to my own stubbornness. The dishwashing scene in particular is thanks to
lferion.
As always, thanks also to everyone who's taken the time to read/review thus far. Sorry for the cliffhanger ending; the next chapter won't be nearly as long in coming, I promise. And, as always, feedback is love.