Witches and Waffles (gen, lyricwheel fic)
Disclaimer: I do not own MacLeod, Methos, Cassandra, or Barney the Dinosaur. Barney does not grace these pages, but I still do not own him. Heck, there's a lot of stuff I don't own. Let's not get into that. The Immortal characters belong to D/P and Rysher, I do believe. Anyhoo, this is the first in the lyric wheel challenges. May there be many more, cause they rock. Oh, feedback, should you want to flame this encounter, I understand.
Thanks to Dana for the lyrics, and to Alice for making the idea go "pa pa pa ping!" in my noggin.
Witches and Waffles
...by Amand-r, mystic of the fruit bar
------------------------------------------------------
Look on down from the bridge
There's still fountains down there
Look on down from the bridge
It's still raining up here
Everybody seems so far away from me
Everybody just wants to be free
Look away from the sky
It's no different when you're leaving home
I can't be the same thing to you now
I'm just going, just going
How could I say goodbye?
How could I say goodbye?
Goodbye
Maybe I'll just place my hands over here
And close my eyes real tight
There's a light in your eyes
And you know, yeah you know
Look down from the bridge
I'm still waiting for you
-----Mazzy Star, "Look on Down from the Bridge"
When you get to the coffee shop you are expecting that familiar buzz of another immortal, so you are not surprised when you feel the Presence. It is deep and resonant, not familiar. At least, not like Mac's. Hell, this doesn't even feel like anyone you're around at all, even the dead ones. So you stop and consider for a second. Should you even go in, make yourself visible and bait the hook?
You start to turn, and then you feel something else, an overlapping Presence. There are two in there. This one you know. You know it like your own hand. And now that you feel Mac, you start to recognize the other.
It is a taste of hard power. Of rawness, like touching a live wire. It screams danger, a poisonous snake sliding up the back of your neck to clamp teeth with your neck and pump you full of venom. And that is what she will do to you, this person behind the Presence. She would bite your neck, and any exposed part of you with the steel of her sword, and cleave your soul for the wild dogs to eat. No, not dogs. That would be too good.
Cassandra would make sure that you would never be recovered. Here or in the afterlife.
The only recourse, you know, is to stand outside the coffee shop, where Mac had told you to meet him, and mutter every curse you can think of, in every language, including the dead ones, until your hand gets cold from clasping the door handle, and people actually want in or out of the establishment.
Well, if it's the only thing to do.
Start ranting....now.
"(German) I don't believe (French) the temerity of that (censored Afrikaans) little Boy Scout, freaking (Domitic) getting in everybody's business (Ebonics) thinkin' he all that-"
Your rant is cut short because apparently Cassandra had the same idea you had, except she didn't know where exactly you were in the middle of having it, and so both of you are now performing your Duncan-induced hissy fits, staring at each other through the door. The only thing separating you is the pane of glass. You hands are gripping reverse of the same doorknob. You see the word "bastard" in Sumerian die on Cassandra's lips the exact moment as it does on yours, and you suck in a breath. Her eyes have gone misty and clouded, as if she is an animal caught in the middle of fleeing from the scent of the predator. She is totally taken by surprise.
Not that I'm much better off, you think to yourself. You muster a wan smile at the parallel images the two of you seem to represent. Cassandra does not see the charm. She yanks the door outward, narrowly missing you and your nose. You dance back in a scuffle of tennis shoes and flat palmed innocence, eyes wide. She'll never go for the wide-eyed look, at least, not from you, and you know that. Why do you even bother?
If you had known she would be here you wouldn't have come. And the same could be said (you know this) for Cassandra. Neither of you have any interests in reconciliation. Why should you? The circumstances under which you met were less than savory. Hell, slavery tends to color someone's self image and sense of personality for quite some time. That she is 3,000 years older doesn't do a damn thing, you know this.
You can't tell her that. You can't say that you are sorry, because you weren't at the time and for a long while after that, and regret is a worthless tool, so you refuse to give in to it. You can apologize for your treatment last year at Bordeaux, but you will not apologize for something you did eons ago in the spirit of the times. She can bite you.
But her eyes, as she stands frozen before, are fury mixed with what? Humor? A little bit of terror? Does she remember any of the specifics at all? Does she remember the game you two used to play...that when you returned from the camp each night, she opened the flap seconds before you would reach to pull it open, yanking you inside gently, enthusiastically, eager to please you if you wished it, eager to demonstrate the skills she was learning from the other more experienced slaves in the encampment? Does she know how much this door opening action here in the present reminds you of this?
Yes, she is aware. Her eyes are a little narrower than they were a few seconds ago, and her mouth, as you noticed millennia ago, quirks up at the left corner when she is able to see irony. You call it her "illumination mark". She tilts her head to the side, (your hand is still glued to the doorknob.), and listens to Duncan call her back. She spares Duncan a glance, the lovely Scot with the mournful brown eyes that might convince a grand jury. Her face softens, and you know that look. That is the "you are so gorgeous I'll relent this time" look. You know this because you used to get it, back before large shoulders and ponytail hair became a major ideal in the twentieth century.
Then she slams the door in your face, and storms back to her seat across from the empty booth side.
So much for re-living old times.
You slide into the booth across from the Highlander. Damn the witch, you have your stomach set on waffles. With blueberries, and nothing shall deter you. Cassandra waves away the waitress who has come to take your order, and refill their coffee cups. You glare at her, since you were ready to request the largest stack of waffles they could physically tower on to one plate. Then the two of you glare at Mac.
"What is the meaning of this?" the two of you ask Duncan simultaneously, and then glare at each other again for the echo. Lots of glaring going on here.
"The meaning of what?" Duncan asks innocently, sipping his orange juice. His eyes are wide. Your jaw drops and you look at the woman in the booth with you, who is trying to cover her disgust for you by gripping the sides of her coffee mug so tight her hands vibrate, and the knuckles turn white. Her eyes are wide orbs of fury. She may very well be more pissed then you. Well, that wouldn't be hard. You're more amused and embarrassed then pissed.
That is, unless that waitress doesn't return to take your order soon.
"This is charming, Mac," you mutter, trying to wave the waitress up with your eyes and hand. "And I see the moral platitude behind this and all, but I don't think it was very wise."
Cassandra nods, and her hair obscures her face partially. "You have no right to meddle in my affairs-"
"Our affairs," you mutter, and she kicks you under the table. Your eyes widen, and she tilts her head in the "try me" pose. Mac kicks your other leg under the table. Not as hard as Cassandra, but enough to scrape the skin under your jeans. You yelp. Cassandra, thinking it was her, smiles to herself behind a veil of hair that separates her expression from the Highlander's view.
You reconsider. Isn't there another diner down the street? Or in another city?
Like, Seattle? There are diners in Seattle...
"Fine then," Mac says suddenly. "I am out of here." He stands, pushes past Cassandra, and you settle back into your chair. If he leaves, then she will, and you can stay and have your waffles. You pick up the menu, and peruse the flavored syrups.
"Byeseeya," you say, not looking up. Mac moves, and now he is walking down the aisle to the door. Cassandra has not moved at all. You stare at her over the menu. "And you're still here because...?" you ask her.
"I can go and do whatever I like," she says. I do not need this independent crap, you think. She's going to pull this just to prove that you don't own her. Mac is hovering a few feet away, unsure of whether or not he should remain, or leave, trusting you to fly apart from each other like magnets from the same pole.
"Yeah, it's called free will," you reply, hoping to alienate her so that she'll leave as soon as possible, and you will be able to eat without feeling like
she's going to use that echo voice and entrance you into doing something like playing in traffic. You smile at her. "It's a fairly unique concept. In the past two thousand years I think it's become quite popular. Besides, everybody just wants to be free."
Cassandra isn't biting; instead she pulls out a menu, and opens it. You sigh.
"You and I were not meant to be in the same place for over five minutes. It's kind of in the great chain of being, you know." You stare down at the menu.
Cassandra pauses, as if she is going to say something, then she just looks at you. Whatever Duncan might have said to her is permeating her skull, and you know that she has been watching you for the past six months. Every once on a while you had felt her presence, as familiar as it is, and so you are not surprised when she waves the waitress over.
"I want the Belgian waffles, with blueberries," she tells your waitress, 'Patti'. You consider changing your order just to spite her, then think better of it.
"The same," you croak. Cassandra's eyes twinkle, but it is in wicked delight.
"I'm going to say this once," you tell her, sotto voce. "Mac is watching from the street, and I know that you've been lassoed into this too. All I want is breakfast. I will not apologize for the past, and I will not touch you ever again."
She tilts her head, and drums her long nails on the countertop. The song on the jukebox, one of those ancient things you can make selections at in every booth, is Elvis's Jailhouse Rock". How apropos. She can't be considering your words.
"Fine," she says finally, her voice that of the low grade throttle. You gape at her. Her face is impassive.
There is nothing to say. You cannot apologize and she could never forgive you.
Perhaps in a normal life span this would have been difficult to comprehend, how that the two of you with such a torrential relationship, fraught with travesty and violence, with submission and humiliation, are sitting across from each other, not touching, or talking, merely, comprehending.
Because you are not who you were, and she is not who she was. Both of you were making discoveries down the dark path to ruin, and Cassandra, to you, was just another casualty long the way. One that would not die, and one that will always haunt you.
Perhaps that is her role, to be your tormentor.
She smiles then, folding her napkin in her lap, and you sip from Mac's abandoned coffee mug.
The waitress brings your food, and you eat in silence.
You stare at her for a long duration, and she looks everywhere but you, a throwback to old mornings where you ate and she stared out the tent flap, out at the sky. She plays with her sausage, and you take a large bite of waffles. The jukebox switches to Prince's "Gett Off" and you turn the volume down at your booth.
Mac's presence fades, the true test of your relations, totally unchaperoned, even by the unseen force of the Highlander. Cassandra could really let loose on you now. She sets down her fork, and you wince, thinking that this is how it is going to end, on this fine spring day.
She will challenge you, and you will take her head, just as you should have three thousand years ago. Then Mac will take yours, simply because you strive to live forever at the cost of a victim.
Cassandra looks at you, and you see her fully, for the first time, not as an object. She is not spite incarnate, she is not a witch, merely a woman that you beat and raped and subjugated and made whispering wind to your every whim. She has brown eyes, and this chestnut hair that reminds you of a cross between Alexa's and Charlotte's. She has a strong neck so long it is a pillar, like the bride in the Song of Solomon. If you were to tell her that now....
Oh, hush, you are not an old married couple. You were her Master. That does tend to put a damper on things.
"Was I terrible?" You ask. She freezes then, so scared, as if she is falling back in time to that place, where for a few years, you were the one thing to stop her dead in her tracks.
"Yes, you were," she says to you, and you sigh. Then she picks up her fork, and you wonder for a second when she acquired nerves of steel.
Perhaps she always had them. And you never knew. Did you? That is the way of things, you suppose.
***
Mac paid your bill in advance. The two of you left without saying another word. Cassandra turns down the road, the opposite of your direction, and you wonder about her. You wonder how she became so strong, in the spite of fear. It would be sick to think that you had something to do with how much of a fighter she became, but well then, after the Horsemen, the two of you could probably do anything.
You watch her from the corner. She walks proudly, a bit of a long legged stride of pride. Only someone who was once a slave can walk like that. You want to run after her, to grab her by the shoulders, to scream in her face what she must already know:
I'm not that person anymore! Don't you see? I can't hurt you anymore! Do you understand! We are all slaves to something! Shall I be a slave to his regret forever? Shall you make me pay, forever?
She knows all of this. It is in her walk, and she means for you to know that. She sat across from you to show you that she is not the slave in the cage, that she is free to do whatever, and she will not be intimidated. She will not be bullied. And she may hate the ground you walk on, but never again will she be frightened of you.
But you? Can you look at her ever again, and not be frightened of yourself? Can you look in the mirror at home, in your free and open apartment, and run your hands down your face and not see the demon that lurks there? And will you someday kneel before that woman, as she swings back with a sharp edged blade?
Not today, you know, not today. And not tomorrow.
"So," Mac whispers behind you, coming out from behind one of the shop eaves behind which he has been lurking. You sigh. "How did it go?"
You turn to him, and consider decking him right now. Instead, you shrug, smile and walk away. He will be furious. He will rant that he deserves to know, and you shall tell him nothing. He will sulk for days.
He will point out that he paid for breakfast.
But it started before God even thought of him, and it was resolved before God ever created him. It was back then, the ending was cast, and the players just outlived the game.
That is the nature of things, isn't it?
END
Thanks to Dana for the lyrics, and to Alice for making the idea go "pa pa pa ping!" in my noggin.
Witches and Waffles
...by Amand-r, mystic of the fruit bar
------------------------------------------------------
Look on down from the bridge
There's still fountains down there
Look on down from the bridge
It's still raining up here
Everybody seems so far away from me
Everybody just wants to be free
Look away from the sky
It's no different when you're leaving home
I can't be the same thing to you now
I'm just going, just going
How could I say goodbye?
How could I say goodbye?
Goodbye
Maybe I'll just place my hands over here
And close my eyes real tight
There's a light in your eyes
And you know, yeah you know
Look down from the bridge
I'm still waiting for you
-----Mazzy Star, "Look on Down from the Bridge"
When you get to the coffee shop you are expecting that familiar buzz of another immortal, so you are not surprised when you feel the Presence. It is deep and resonant, not familiar. At least, not like Mac's. Hell, this doesn't even feel like anyone you're around at all, even the dead ones. So you stop and consider for a second. Should you even go in, make yourself visible and bait the hook?
You start to turn, and then you feel something else, an overlapping Presence. There are two in there. This one you know. You know it like your own hand. And now that you feel Mac, you start to recognize the other.
It is a taste of hard power. Of rawness, like touching a live wire. It screams danger, a poisonous snake sliding up the back of your neck to clamp teeth with your neck and pump you full of venom. And that is what she will do to you, this person behind the Presence. She would bite your neck, and any exposed part of you with the steel of her sword, and cleave your soul for the wild dogs to eat. No, not dogs. That would be too good.
Cassandra would make sure that you would never be recovered. Here or in the afterlife.
The only recourse, you know, is to stand outside the coffee shop, where Mac had told you to meet him, and mutter every curse you can think of, in every language, including the dead ones, until your hand gets cold from clasping the door handle, and people actually want in or out of the establishment.
Well, if it's the only thing to do.
Start ranting....now.
"(German) I don't believe (French) the temerity of that (censored Afrikaans) little Boy Scout, freaking (Domitic) getting in everybody's business (Ebonics) thinkin' he all that-"
Your rant is cut short because apparently Cassandra had the same idea you had, except she didn't know where exactly you were in the middle of having it, and so both of you are now performing your Duncan-induced hissy fits, staring at each other through the door. The only thing separating you is the pane of glass. You hands are gripping reverse of the same doorknob. You see the word "bastard" in Sumerian die on Cassandra's lips the exact moment as it does on yours, and you suck in a breath. Her eyes have gone misty and clouded, as if she is an animal caught in the middle of fleeing from the scent of the predator. She is totally taken by surprise.
Not that I'm much better off, you think to yourself. You muster a wan smile at the parallel images the two of you seem to represent. Cassandra does not see the charm. She yanks the door outward, narrowly missing you and your nose. You dance back in a scuffle of tennis shoes and flat palmed innocence, eyes wide. She'll never go for the wide-eyed look, at least, not from you, and you know that. Why do you even bother?
If you had known she would be here you wouldn't have come. And the same could be said (you know this) for Cassandra. Neither of you have any interests in reconciliation. Why should you? The circumstances under which you met were less than savory. Hell, slavery tends to color someone's self image and sense of personality for quite some time. That she is 3,000 years older doesn't do a damn thing, you know this.
You can't tell her that. You can't say that you are sorry, because you weren't at the time and for a long while after that, and regret is a worthless tool, so you refuse to give in to it. You can apologize for your treatment last year at Bordeaux, but you will not apologize for something you did eons ago in the spirit of the times. She can bite you.
But her eyes, as she stands frozen before, are fury mixed with what? Humor? A little bit of terror? Does she remember any of the specifics at all? Does she remember the game you two used to play...that when you returned from the camp each night, she opened the flap seconds before you would reach to pull it open, yanking you inside gently, enthusiastically, eager to please you if you wished it, eager to demonstrate the skills she was learning from the other more experienced slaves in the encampment? Does she know how much this door opening action here in the present reminds you of this?
Yes, she is aware. Her eyes are a little narrower than they were a few seconds ago, and her mouth, as you noticed millennia ago, quirks up at the left corner when she is able to see irony. You call it her "illumination mark". She tilts her head to the side, (your hand is still glued to the doorknob.), and listens to Duncan call her back. She spares Duncan a glance, the lovely Scot with the mournful brown eyes that might convince a grand jury. Her face softens, and you know that look. That is the "you are so gorgeous I'll relent this time" look. You know this because you used to get it, back before large shoulders and ponytail hair became a major ideal in the twentieth century.
Then she slams the door in your face, and storms back to her seat across from the empty booth side.
So much for re-living old times.
You slide into the booth across from the Highlander. Damn the witch, you have your stomach set on waffles. With blueberries, and nothing shall deter you. Cassandra waves away the waitress who has come to take your order, and refill their coffee cups. You glare at her, since you were ready to request the largest stack of waffles they could physically tower on to one plate. Then the two of you glare at Mac.
"What is the meaning of this?" the two of you ask Duncan simultaneously, and then glare at each other again for the echo. Lots of glaring going on here.
"The meaning of what?" Duncan asks innocently, sipping his orange juice. His eyes are wide. Your jaw drops and you look at the woman in the booth with you, who is trying to cover her disgust for you by gripping the sides of her coffee mug so tight her hands vibrate, and the knuckles turn white. Her eyes are wide orbs of fury. She may very well be more pissed then you. Well, that wouldn't be hard. You're more amused and embarrassed then pissed.
That is, unless that waitress doesn't return to take your order soon.
"This is charming, Mac," you mutter, trying to wave the waitress up with your eyes and hand. "And I see the moral platitude behind this and all, but I don't think it was very wise."
Cassandra nods, and her hair obscures her face partially. "You have no right to meddle in my affairs-"
"Our affairs," you mutter, and she kicks you under the table. Your eyes widen, and she tilts her head in the "try me" pose. Mac kicks your other leg under the table. Not as hard as Cassandra, but enough to scrape the skin under your jeans. You yelp. Cassandra, thinking it was her, smiles to herself behind a veil of hair that separates her expression from the Highlander's view.
You reconsider. Isn't there another diner down the street? Or in another city?
Like, Seattle? There are diners in Seattle...
"Fine then," Mac says suddenly. "I am out of here." He stands, pushes past Cassandra, and you settle back into your chair. If he leaves, then she will, and you can stay and have your waffles. You pick up the menu, and peruse the flavored syrups.
"Byeseeya," you say, not looking up. Mac moves, and now he is walking down the aisle to the door. Cassandra has not moved at all. You stare at her over the menu. "And you're still here because...?" you ask her.
"I can go and do whatever I like," she says. I do not need this independent crap, you think. She's going to pull this just to prove that you don't own her. Mac is hovering a few feet away, unsure of whether or not he should remain, or leave, trusting you to fly apart from each other like magnets from the same pole.
"Yeah, it's called free will," you reply, hoping to alienate her so that she'll leave as soon as possible, and you will be able to eat without feeling like
she's going to use that echo voice and entrance you into doing something like playing in traffic. You smile at her. "It's a fairly unique concept. In the past two thousand years I think it's become quite popular. Besides, everybody just wants to be free."
Cassandra isn't biting; instead she pulls out a menu, and opens it. You sigh.
"You and I were not meant to be in the same place for over five minutes. It's kind of in the great chain of being, you know." You stare down at the menu.
Cassandra pauses, as if she is going to say something, then she just looks at you. Whatever Duncan might have said to her is permeating her skull, and you know that she has been watching you for the past six months. Every once on a while you had felt her presence, as familiar as it is, and so you are not surprised when she waves the waitress over.
"I want the Belgian waffles, with blueberries," she tells your waitress, 'Patti'. You consider changing your order just to spite her, then think better of it.
"The same," you croak. Cassandra's eyes twinkle, but it is in wicked delight.
"I'm going to say this once," you tell her, sotto voce. "Mac is watching from the street, and I know that you've been lassoed into this too. All I want is breakfast. I will not apologize for the past, and I will not touch you ever again."
She tilts her head, and drums her long nails on the countertop. The song on the jukebox, one of those ancient things you can make selections at in every booth, is Elvis's Jailhouse Rock". How apropos. She can't be considering your words.
"Fine," she says finally, her voice that of the low grade throttle. You gape at her. Her face is impassive.
There is nothing to say. You cannot apologize and she could never forgive you.
Perhaps in a normal life span this would have been difficult to comprehend, how that the two of you with such a torrential relationship, fraught with travesty and violence, with submission and humiliation, are sitting across from each other, not touching, or talking, merely, comprehending.
Because you are not who you were, and she is not who she was. Both of you were making discoveries down the dark path to ruin, and Cassandra, to you, was just another casualty long the way. One that would not die, and one that will always haunt you.
Perhaps that is her role, to be your tormentor.
She smiles then, folding her napkin in her lap, and you sip from Mac's abandoned coffee mug.
The waitress brings your food, and you eat in silence.
You stare at her for a long duration, and she looks everywhere but you, a throwback to old mornings where you ate and she stared out the tent flap, out at the sky. She plays with her sausage, and you take a large bite of waffles. The jukebox switches to Prince's "Gett Off" and you turn the volume down at your booth.
Mac's presence fades, the true test of your relations, totally unchaperoned, even by the unseen force of the Highlander. Cassandra could really let loose on you now. She sets down her fork, and you wince, thinking that this is how it is going to end, on this fine spring day.
She will challenge you, and you will take her head, just as you should have three thousand years ago. Then Mac will take yours, simply because you strive to live forever at the cost of a victim.
Cassandra looks at you, and you see her fully, for the first time, not as an object. She is not spite incarnate, she is not a witch, merely a woman that you beat and raped and subjugated and made whispering wind to your every whim. She has brown eyes, and this chestnut hair that reminds you of a cross between Alexa's and Charlotte's. She has a strong neck so long it is a pillar, like the bride in the Song of Solomon. If you were to tell her that now....
Oh, hush, you are not an old married couple. You were her Master. That does tend to put a damper on things.
"Was I terrible?" You ask. She freezes then, so scared, as if she is falling back in time to that place, where for a few years, you were the one thing to stop her dead in her tracks.
"Yes, you were," she says to you, and you sigh. Then she picks up her fork, and you wonder for a second when she acquired nerves of steel.
Perhaps she always had them. And you never knew. Did you? That is the way of things, you suppose.
***
Mac paid your bill in advance. The two of you left without saying another word. Cassandra turns down the road, the opposite of your direction, and you wonder about her. You wonder how she became so strong, in the spite of fear. It would be sick to think that you had something to do with how much of a fighter she became, but well then, after the Horsemen, the two of you could probably do anything.
You watch her from the corner. She walks proudly, a bit of a long legged stride of pride. Only someone who was once a slave can walk like that. You want to run after her, to grab her by the shoulders, to scream in her face what she must already know:
I'm not that person anymore! Don't you see? I can't hurt you anymore! Do you understand! We are all slaves to something! Shall I be a slave to his regret forever? Shall you make me pay, forever?
She knows all of this. It is in her walk, and she means for you to know that. She sat across from you to show you that she is not the slave in the cage, that she is free to do whatever, and she will not be intimidated. She will not be bullied. And she may hate the ground you walk on, but never again will she be frightened of you.
But you? Can you look at her ever again, and not be frightened of yourself? Can you look in the mirror at home, in your free and open apartment, and run your hands down your face and not see the demon that lurks there? And will you someday kneel before that woman, as she swings back with a sharp edged blade?
Not today, you know, not today. And not tomorrow.
"So," Mac whispers behind you, coming out from behind one of the shop eaves behind which he has been lurking. You sigh. "How did it go?"
You turn to him, and consider decking him right now. Instead, you shrug, smile and walk away. He will be furious. He will rant that he deserves to know, and you shall tell him nothing. He will sulk for days.
He will point out that he paid for breakfast.
But it started before God even thought of him, and it was resolved before God ever created him. It was back then, the ending was cast, and the players just outlived the game.
That is the nature of things, isn't it?
END