Survivors

Disclaimer: Duncan, Methos, Joe and Immortals in general are the property of Panzer/Davis and Rysher. Everyone else is mine. And before I get flamed, this form of epilepsy does exist, and can be damned inconvenient.

Duncan and Methos were working out at the dojo when they felt the approach of an Immortal and heard the sounds of teenagers howling with laugher as they pushed in the doors. Then they heard a female voice say "Oh fuck, not again!" and two young women rounded the corner of the hallway and came into view. One was short and blonde, the other tall, with a long, thick waterfall of curly red-brown hair. The taller girl was pressing her fingers to her eyes and holding her friend's arm at the elbow.

Assuming this was an effect of the Buzz, Duncan stepped forward carefully. "Can I help you with anything?"

The women looked at him, but the taller one's eyes did not seem quite to focus on him. "Yeah, my name is Wyn, this is Rachel. I'm here to sign up for the Tae Kwon Do class meeting next week. Any places left?"

"Sure, I just need you to sign some forms in the office."

He walked into the office, holding the door open, and the two girls continued to walk together. Wyn leaned over the desk as Duncan pulled out the forms and showed her where to sign, then she pulled out a pre-written check and handed it to him after she signed her name. "And the class is at four?" she inquired.

"That's right." He looked at her curiously. There was something a little off about the way she was moving, but he couldn't put his finger on it. But there was no question that she was completely ignorant of Immortals, since she gave him no sign of recognition. With her friend there, he thought it was a bad idea to try and get her alone to talk to her, but tomorrow after class he should be able to talk to her in private.

"Great. I'll see you then." she responded, and the two girls walked out again. They seemed so stuck together that Duncan wondered half-seriously if they were Siamese twins.

The next day, Duncan was getting ready for class when he heard "Jesus H. Christ! Not again!" and Wyn stumbled through the door, pressing her fingers to her eyes and releasing them.

"Migraine?" Duncan asked, trying to find a pretext to get her alone.

"Something like that," she commented wryly.

"I've got some Tylenol in my office, why don't you come sit down for a second in there?" He was surprised when she caught his elbow lightly, as though for support, and walked with him into the office. She slumped down heavily in the chair, and Mac closed the door behind them. "Wyn, did you have any experiences lately where you thought you were going to die, but you survived?"

Her head came up at that. "That's a really strange question, Mr. MacLeod."

"Can you answer it?"

Wyn shrugged. "Two years ago I fell and hit my head hard, there was blood everywhere, but there wasn't a mark on me by the time my brother got to me. Why?"

"Wyn, you're Immortal, and so am I. There are others like us--"

"Wait, slow down a minute. What the hell are you trying to tell me?"

"You can't die. You can't get sick, you will never get any older. We can sense each other, all of us, that's the headache you're feeling."

Wyn winced. "Then I'm going to have to withdraw from the class, I'm afraid."

"It's not that bad, and the reaction gets better with time, there are things you have to--"

"No, you don't understand, Mr. MacLeod. I can't see."

Duncan's heart froze in his mouth at that. "What?"

"I can't see," Wyn repeated patiently. "I have a form of partial epilepsy, my vision used to cut out randomly when I was a kid. I grew out of it when I get to sixth grade or so, but every time I get near you, I can't see a damn thing. This explains the other day, at least, I really freaked out when it happened. You say I'll get this whenever I'm around Immortals?"

Duncan swallowed hard. "It looks that way."

"Well then, that's easily solved. I just won't go around Immortals, and if I have to be around any, I'll just tell them to leave me alone." She seemed rather cheerful at that. "Now if you could just point me towards the front door..."

Duncan led her out without a word, leaving her on the front stoop and walking far enough into the building that her vision could clear and she could see well enough to leave. He was still trying to get over the shock of her statement, he couldn't bear to tell her what was in store for her.

"A blind Immortal?" Joe asked incredulously. Methos leaned over the bar to listen in, Mac looked at the two of them with dark worry.

"It's worse than that. If she was normally blind, she would have some coping skills at least, but she only loses her sight when she gets in range of another Immortal..."

"Which is the absolute worst time for her to be disabled," Methos finished grimly. "Does she know about us?"

"Sort of." Mac took a large pull on his beer, he was going to need it. "I didn't tell her about the Game."

"WHAT!" Joe and Methos shouted together, then both lowered their voices when they saw the other bar patrons staring at them in startlement. "Duncan, you have to tell her!" Methos whispered urgently.

"Tell her what, that her best chance is to let me take her head now, before someone else has a chance at her?"

"You could train her, there's a chance--" Joe protested, but he stopped when he saw the look in Duncan's eyes. "Mac?"

"Joe, I tried to kill Richie three times, and in the end I succeeded. Now you're telling me to take on a pupil who can't even see me coming..." Mac shook his head.

"Mac, she has to know," Joe demanded flatly. "Methos, do something!"

Methos looked at Duncan, who was drowning his sorrows in the Sam Adams in front of him. "I'll train her. I'll work this out somehow, if you won't. I'm not going to let her die without even knowing what's going on." He turned to Joe. "I need two favors from you, if this is going to work."

"Name them," Joe replied, both of them ignoring Duncan.

"First, I want you to go to her apartment and explain all this to her. I think she'll be more reassured if she can see when she hears about all this. Duncan must still have her address from when she signed up for the class yesterday."

Joe nodded. "And the second?"

"Make sure she doesn't exist. No chronicle, no Watcher."

"What? Methos, this could be valuable material!"

"Look, it's been proved before that the chronicles aren't secure, I don't want anyone coming after her for an easy head. You can write her up in your diary. If she lives long enough to start taking heads, you can add that to the chronicles the Watchers set up for her, but I want a head start, at least." Methos protested.

Joe nodded. "Right. If anyone asks, she's as mortal as they come. Duncan, I need her address."

"Gwyneth Levin, 467 Crescent street, apartment 8D," Duncan answered without looking up.

Joe blinked in surprise that Mac had the address memorized, but simply got out a pad and pen and asked, "Repeat that a little slower?"

Wyn came home and saw Rachel playing on the computer. "Hey," she called out cheerfully.

"Hey yourself. I thought you had that TKD class."

"Nah, I quit and got a refund. Long story. Anyway, Rae, have you seen my data from yesterday?"

Rachel shrugged. "Like I could find anything in this mess?" The apartment was covered with papers, empty soda bottles, CD cases and paperbacks. Wyn actually found it a highly useful system for finding things, since anything of importance was usually in the pile by her bed. Rachel herself contributed to the mess, and the two of them got along fine, as long as Rachel didn't play Jim Morrison incessantly and Wyn didn't do sit-ups at five in the morning before going off to work.

"Right," Wyn agreed, sifting through the pile by hand until she found the tapes of interviews she had conducted the day before. "I should be heading out in an hour, I'm planning on sleeping down there for another two day stint." 'There' was a tenement building where Wyn was conducting a study on unwed teenage mothers.

"Suits me. Got everything you need?" Rachel personally could not understand why Wyn would split rent for a nice -- though small -- apartment and then spend half her time in a slum, but she wasn't about to complain. Rachel's work as a physical therapist kept her as busy as Wyn. The apartment was only used when one or both of them completely crashed, which was the main reason it was such a mess.

"Yeah, I think." She pulled out her Swiss army knife, looking to make sure Rachel was in the other room. Then she made a careful slit on her arm, pulling the blade down with a sweet, sharp motion and watching the blood well up in droplets, then meld together in a scarlet line. Then there was a tiny tickling sensation and the wound healed before her eyes. There was blood left on her arm, but not the slightest marring of pale skin. "Holy shit," she breathed, "this is real."

"What did you say, Wyn?" came the voice from the next room.

"Nothing Rae, just talking to myself again." She gave the knife another, deeper experimental pull, watching the results with interest.

"You really have to stop that, you keep talking to yourself and people will think you're crazy."

"Think I'm crazy? I'm obviously not working hard enough." Wyn replied easily. That was when the doorbell rang.

Two hours after talking to MacLeod, Joe was ringing the doorbell of apartment 8D. It was opened by a pretty, petite blonde. Joe blinked in surprise. "Um, are you Wyn Levin?" he asked, uncertain.

"Not in the slightest," she responded. "Wyn, there's some guy at the door for you!" she yelled over her shoulder.

"Is he cute?" came an answering yell, "Just hang on a moment."

When Rae yelled for her, Wyn swiftly put the knife in her pocket, wiped the last traces of blood up with a tissue, and went out to the door. She saw a man leaning on a cane, a man with iron gray hair and a slightly worried expression. The years had been hard on him, but he looked like he'd been hard on the years right back. A fighter. "Can I help you?" she asked, slightly worried at the thought that strange old men were knocking on her door for no reason.

"I'm Joe Dawson, I'm a friend of Duncan MacLeod's. He asked me to come and see you about the business he discussed with you earlier today." Dawson looked the girl over. She was in her mid-twenties, pretty and reasonably athletic, a very large bun of red-brown hair knotted behind her head. She was wearing jeans and a tee-shirt which said Princeton co-ed naked fencing: do it with 32 inches of steel. Her features were delicate, almost elegant, but the casual expression she wore was too tomboyish to complete the look. She had large brown eyes and earrings that looked like Hershey's kisses. She didn’t look like someone about to be handed a death sentence.

"Oh, I see." She turned to her friend. "Rae, you mind if I talk to Mr. Dawson in private?"

"Sure, Wyn. I'll be out here if you need me."

The apartment was a friendly mess, with papers and junk all over the floor. It looked like it hadn't been vacuumed in a while, and Wyn blushed as she tried to clear a path to the second-hand couch. "If I had known company was coming, I would have cleaned up, but Rae and I tend to make a mess when left to our own devices. Can I get you anything?"

"No, I'm fine," Joe replied as he sat down heavily on the couch.

"You're not like Duncan and me," Wyn commented.

"Yeah, there's some things you have to know, and we all thought it would be best if you could see the person who told you."

Wyn leaned back on the couch casually, looking at him. "Go for it."

Joe looked to make sure that Rae was out of sight, then said, "Immortals don't just happen, they're around for a purpose. They're all supposed to hunt each other down until only one is left, that one gains what's called the Prize."

"Oh shit," Wyn breathed. "But I thought we couldn't die?" She curled her knees up to her chest protectively, she looked like a little girl.

Joe hated this more than almost anything else he had to do in his life. "You die if your head is cut off. There are rules to the combat, it has to be one on one, and you can't hurt someone on holy ground."

Wyn swallowed hard. "I'm not living in a convent the rest of my life, I'm Jewish and I have things I want to do."

"Holy ground means holy to any religion," Joe explained patiently, "But if you don't hide on holy ground, you'll be killed."

Wyn looked at him. "How is this combat performed, anyway?"

"Swords." Joe told her, and saw relief wash over her features.

"There's a mercy, at any rate. I have two and a half years of fencing and Kendo under my belt from college. I even have a sword." Her features clouded. "But I can't fight blind, especially not against people who've been practicing for centuries." She shook her head. "Jesus H. Christ, I am screwed but good."

Joe nodded. "There's an Immortal whose willing to teach you; his name's Adam Pierson. If you're interested, this is his number." He handed her a slip of paper. And anything I can do to help..."

Wyn smiled tensely. "Thank you, Mr. Dawson."

"Please, call me Joe."

Wyn looked at the slip of paper. "This is not going to be enough, even if he can help. I'm going to have to learn to get along as a blind person, so I can handle myself. Do these fights happen in nice, flat arenas, at least?"

Joe shook his head. "Alleys, empty warehouses, docks, grassy hills, just about anywhere."

Wyn grimaced. "Lovely." She shook her head. "This really hasn't hit me yet, I always have delayed reactions. If I need someone to talk to...?"

Joe nodded in sympathy. "This is my number," he wrote down a second one below Adam's, then an address. "That's my bar. Duncan and Adam hang out there a lot, so you might not want to go there, but if it's an emergency you can almost always find me there, or find someone who knows how to get a hold of me."

Wyn smiled bravely. "Thank you, Joe."

Joe nodded. "Glad I could help." He let her show him out, then took the elevator down and got into his car, working the hand controls to pull out of the spot. It was times like this that he wished he had never talked to MacLeod, so things like this wouldn't happen to him, and he could just be an anonymous Watcher with little emotional investment in his assignments.

Up in the apartment, Wyn dialed the first number on the piece of paper, hearing a male, British voice answer. "Pierson here, who is this?"

"Um, this is Gwyneth Levin," Wyn replied.

"I take it you've talked to Joe?" Adam inquired. "Are you interested in the offer he discussed?"

"Yeah, I'd really appreciate any help you can give me."

"If you're free this Saturday, we could meet somewhere," he said.

"How about three o'clock at the Ivy Gym? They have practice rooms, and I have a membership there."

"I know the place, I'll see you there."

"Wish I could say the same," Wyn joked weakly, and hung up. Then she got out the yellow pages and thumbed through it for the number she wanted.

"Rediscovery Institute, how can I help you?" came a secretary's voice.

"Hi, my name is Gwyneth Levin. I'm losing my sight, and I need lessons in how to get around." She felt a tight lump in her throat as she said it; all of a sudden it seemed real.

"I'm sorry to hear it. Do you have insurance?" The two of them worked through the details and Wyn set up an appointment with someone named Craig Irving, who would come by the apartment to give her the first lesson. She hung up, feeling very tired and worn.

The next day, she showed Craig into the (now clean) apartment. The two of them sat down, and Craig asked, "I was told that you were losing your sight, but you don't seem to have any problems. Can I ask?"

Wyn sighed. "I have this stupid form of epilepsy where my vision cuts out and my hearing gets duller. For a long time it wasn't a problem, but now it looks like I'm going to be having more and more attacks, and they're lasting for longer periods of time. I need to know how to get around, I don't just want to huddle up in a ball for hours until it's over."

Craig looked at her and nodded. "That's a healthy attitude. If you don't mind, I'll start by asking some questions. Is the apartment usually this neat?"

"No, we're a real pair of slobs, Rae and me, why?"

"Well, you're going to have to get used to putting things away neatly."

"Why, so there aren't obstructions when I walk?"

"That's part of it. The other part is that you're going to have to get used to the fact that you won't always be able to see things when you need to find them. You're going to have to label things in Braille and sort them so you always know where they are." He stood up. "I'm going to walk you around the apartment and show you how to adjust things, all right?"

For two hours they walked around the small four room apartment, putting small ridges on the oven dials, sorting clothes, folding dollar bills so that tens, twenties, fives and singles were all folded differently in her wallet. Then Craig blindfolded her and showed her how to make landmarks in a room to tell where she was and what else was there, so she could navigate. He gave her a stick to help her orient herself as she walked around blindfolded, showing her how to use it properly. He showed her how to fill a glass without overflowing it, and other small details she wouldn't have thought of. They made an appointment for the next day, and Craig gave her a card of Braille letters and numbers to study, a set of labels and a Braille puncher. "Learn the symbols, write out passages of the newspaper, and then try to read them blindfolded. Label everything, your orange juice and milk, whether a long-sleeved shirt is white or brown, everything. Practice making landmarks and walking around with your eyes closed. You'll do fine."

"Thanks Craig," Wyn replied. "See you tomorrow."

"See you," he agreed, taking the elevator down.

Wyn's hand tightened on the Braille card lightly as Rae walked in a few minutes later. She'd have to tell Rae what was going on, or Rae would leave things all over the place. The explanation was a partial one, leaving out the whole problem of Immortals. Rae had known before that Wyn's epilepsy was acting up, but she was never one for pity. "At least you're alive" she informed her friend with quiet conviction, "As long as you're alive, you can keep going until you get through it."

"Yeah," Wyn replied ironically, "At least I'm alive."

Wyn was standing next to one of the practice rooms at the Ivy Gym when she felt a sickening rush and her vision cut out. "Adam Pierson?" she asked worriedly.

"That's right. Do you remember me from the dojo?"

"I didn't see you at the dojo, for obvious reasons, and you didn't talk. You were there?"

"Yes," he answered, "shall we?" He noted that as she entered the room, she did not hesitate or stumble, the only indication he had that anything was wrong with her sight was the fact that she didn't turn to face him when they entered until he spoke again. She was orienting on his voice, he made a note of that. "Joe told me you know a little Kendo? At least I don't have to teach you the basics blind."

"Thank heaven for small mercies," she replied.

He looked her over. Never having taught a blind person before, he wasn't completely sure how to manage it. He got into a ready position, then lightly touched her sword to his. "Use my sword to orient yourself, at least until we get the hang of this."

Wyn swallowed hard. "You know, you could just take my head right now and I wouldn't even know it until it was over," she commented tightly.

"Yes, but that would leave such a messy stain on the wood floor," he replied lightly. "You're just going to have to trust me, Wyn. Now let's get on with it."

Slowly, carefully, the two of them advanced and retreated, turned clockwise and counter clockwise, mirroring each other's moves. When Wyn was comfortable with that, Adam began talking to her in a light, conversational tone, moving out of physical range and striking without warning as he spoke, letting her orient on his voice and block his strikes, gradually picking up the speed as her responses became more confident. Then he stopped speaking, watching her wide eyes flit left and right, terrified, as she swung her sword in panic without even listening to what was going on around her. "Adam? Adam?" she called out in terror, her voice choking up.

"It's--" he suddenly had to parry when her blade came flying at him. "Wyn, it's all right, it's all right!" Wyn backed up against the wall in panic as he tried to reassure her, he could see her blind eyes rolling around in desperation, trying to find anything to orient on. She was far too panicked to work with anymore. "Wyn, I'm going to leave the room and go outside, so you can see again. I'll meet you back here at the same time tomorrow, all right?" He backed out of the room carefully.

Wyn barely heard him, but when her sight returned and placed her in an empty room, she could feel her heart beating again. She grabbed her practice bag, sheathed her sword, and ran down the street as fast as she could.

An hour later, she was in front of a stone building with the word Joe's in pink neon next to the door, and she pushed her way in. The bar was empty at this hour, it was still early afternoon, and Joe looked up as he saw Wyn race in, panicked. "Wyn? Wyn, are you--"

He didn't get any more than that out before the girl collapsed by the bar, crying hysterically. Joe pushed hard on his cane, coming around to the customer's side of the bar and putting his arms awkwardly around her while the terrified girl cried her eyes out on his shirt. He leaned on the bar to take the weight off his legs, stroking her back gently until she was exhausted and hiccupping. "It's all right," he soothed, "you're safe here, it's all right. You want to tell me what happened?"

Joe had to force two glasses of sherry on her, the only thing he could get her to drink, before she even approached coherence. He managed to get the story out of her, at least, and wasn't sure whom he felt more sorry for, Wyn or Methos, since both were way over their heads. "Wyn, just take it slow. You'll get better, I promise."

Wyn shook her head, shivering despite Joe's arm around her. "Better is probably not good enough. I'm going to have to be good enough to fight people when they can see what the hell they're doing and I can't. I can't do it, Joe, I was never more than mediocre in the first place!"

Joe caught her chin gently with one hand to make her look at him, and replied, "you never had to fight for your life before, either. You'll make yourself better than mediocre. I've been a Watcher for twenty-five years, you'd be surprised what you Immortals can do when you have to survive."

Wyn nodded, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. "I think the sherry is getting to me, finally." she commented, slumping a little as the tension drained into exhaustion.

"Good," Joe replied, finally sitting up on one of the stools, though his hand was still protectively at Wyn's back. Her hair was still up, he asked randomly, "Do you always wear it in a bun?"

She looked at him, confused. "What? No, I wear it down sometimes. But I can't think with my hair down. The hairs tickling my face and eyes are too distracting."

Joe nodded, running his hand up her back to lightly touch the tightly bound hair. It was silky and streaked with natural color, but little else could be told about it. "Can I see it?" he asked.

Wyn looked at him and shrugged, pulling out three heavy duty bobby pins and giving her head a shake. The hair clung for a moment, then spilled downward to cover her back and butt, swinging over her shoulders. It changed the shape of her face, somehow, and quite became her. "What happened to your legs, may I ask?"

Joe made a wry face. "Lost them in 'Nam, a friend of mine dragged me back to base camp, then disappeared. I had seen him die, but no one would believe me. That's when I found out about Immortals and became a Watcher." He paused, pouring himself a beer. "More sherry?"

"No thanks, this is more than I've drunk in my life as it is. Got any water or ginger ale?"

Joe handed her some water from behind the bar, sitting across from her rather than next to her, the bar between them. "How about you? What's your story?"

"My parents work on a kibbutz in Israel, one of the newer ones. We've lived there since I was seven, me and my twin brother."

Joe perked up at that. "You mean you know your biological parents? You have a brother?" he asked excitedly.

"Not really. The night my brother was born, there was a mix-up and I somehow ended up in his incubator, he was premature. I was a preemie too, but they couldn't find my parents. So Mom and Dad decided that it was a gift from God, since they'd been trying to have kids for so long, and they just called us twins. We look so much alike anyway, it's not hard to believe." She flipped open her wallet and showed a picture of two little kids with bright red hair running around in a backyard. "That's Nimi. My hair darkened, his didn't, and his eyes are blue. But even now, the resemblance is scary." She flipped past a picture of an older couple, Joe's age, and came to another picture of the boy, this time grown up and wearing beatnik glasses, looking silly. "See?"

Joe grinned. "Yeah, he does look like you." It was a shame, he had thought he'd finally met an Immortal who wasn't a foundling. Ah well. "Those are your parents?"

"Yeah." They're great people, but I don't know how they're going to handle this."

"How did you die? I mean, did they see?"

"Sort of. My brother did. There's this desert in Israel called the Negev, and it has this set of craters and cliffs that are perfect for hiking and rappelling. My brother was halfway down, and I leaned over to see how he was doing. That was when the ground fell out from under me. When I woke up, my brother was leaning over me and there was blood by my head, but no mark. The doctor said there was no concussion, not even a scratch. We never talked about it again.

"Anyway," she said, changing the subject, "I went to Princeton and majored in anthropology, and right now I'm doing a study of teenage mothers in urban ghettos for an independent study of welfare. So how did you end up running a blues bar? Do you play?"

Joe grinned. "Yeah, a '69 Gibson Hummingbird. Want to hear?"

"Sure," she replied, her earlier panic dissipating. Joe disappeared into his office and came back with his guitar, setting himself up on the stool beside her and tuning it for a moment before starting to play. Wyn just closed her eyes and listened, letting the music wash over her. Joe was a passionate and practiced singer, and it was no sacrifice to spend almost an hour listening to him play. Though normally she did not like blues music it was impossible to deny the effect that it had on her now.

Then she gave a small gasp, and the door opened. Duncan saw Wyn sitting with Joe and stopped. "Oh, I'm sorry Wyn, I just wanted to talk to Joe for a minute." Wyn nodded mutely, her eyes clenched shut as if to claim control over her blindness. The tension had returned to her shoulders, but at least she wasn't panicking, as far as Joe could tell.

"What's the problem?" Joe asked Duncan.

"No problem, just wanted a drink and some company," Duncan responded, slightly defensively. "I can come back later if--"

"That's okay," Wyn interrupted, "I was just leaving. With an efficient movement she twisted her hair up and secured it with the bobby pins again. She flicked her wrist to release a collapsible stick with six inches at the bottom marked in red, using that to tap her way to the door. "Thanks for the company Joe," she called over her shoulder, trying to manipulate the stick without looking like an idiot, "I'll see you soon."

Wyn's life had been turned upside-down in a short time. Every object in the apartment she shared with Rachel was labeled in Braille, from underwear (the label was attached to the tag) to milk; and every day Craig arrived to teach her something she'd taken for granted, such as crossing a street or walking down stairs. He pushed her into learning Braille, made her buy books in Braille to practice.

Every night she met Adam at the gym and practiced for three hours, fighting back the panic attacks that came every time he pushed her a little past her limit, though every day her limits receded a little farther. "Care to show off what you've learned for me?" he offered cheerfully.

"Must you always talk like an exhibitionist?" she inquired crossly.

"No need to be touchy," he replied.

"Sorry, you know I get cranky when I can't see a bloody thing." She lifted her sword, taking a breath and a moment to orient herself. Then she got into an attack position. "Ready when you are."

Methos moved delicately, trying to avoid making any tell-tale noises.

Wyn moved cautiously, her eyes darting ineffectively and her sword ready. Her ears were perked, she heard the slight skid of Methos's shoes on the floor and parried him as he came up behind her, her blade whirling to meet his. At this point, Methos ran much more of a risk than Wyn. He wouldn't really hurt her, but she couldn't see, so she couldn't stop her blade before she actually beheaded him or severed a limb. Their blades met and whirled, and then Methos retreated a step. He lunged silently, or so he thought, and Wyn's blade rose to meet and counter, then she had one hand at his throat and the other holding the blade to it. "Do you yield?" she asked tightly.

"Yield," he responded, and she released him. "How did you know?"

"When you're about to make a drastic move you make a little gasp for extra breath. If I listen for that, I generally manage all right."

"You're certainly getting better," he encouraged. "You couldn't have done that back when we first started."

"Yeah, those lessons with Craig are really helping."

"Is he nice?"

"He's all right. Rae thinks he's cute. Not my type, though." She lowered her sword and touched his face absently. "What do you look like, anyway?"

"Stunningly handsome," he replied with dry wit, "a raven-haired Apollo."

"I hear all the time about blind people touching people's faces to see what they look like, but I can't figure out for the life of me how they do it." she replied with irritation. "Oh well, I suppose there are some advantages. If they ever take me in to a police station to identify you or Duncan by mug shots, I can pass a lie detector test saying I've never seen either of you guys in my life." She grimaced. "But how often does that happen, anyway?"

"You'd be surprised," Methos replied, "what with all the decapitated bodies wherever we go."

"How come Duncan always avoids me, anyway?" Wyn asked, "I mean, Joe told me about the Game and you teach me to fight, but Duncan's the one who found out about me in the first place. It's a little weird."

Methos shrugged. "We all have our limits. Mac's had a hard time lately, he's scared that if something happens to you it'll be his fault. A little too much has been his fault lately."

Wyn nodded, sensing Adam didn't want to say more than that. "I'll see you tomorrow?" she asked.

"Tomorrow," he agreed.

On top of everything else, Wyn was still working on her ethnography. She spent the greater part of her mornings and nights helping unwed mothers younger than herself change diapers and burp babies. The study was going well, she was working on two angles at once. The first was whether such mothers could support themselves and were happy with their lives. The second was how the situation affected the kids, and whether it made them want to better themselves or if they remained in the same cycle of debt and pregnancy. Her favorite family to work with had the surname Blythe, and consisted of three generations living in two apartments and supporting each other as best they could. She spent time helping the oldest boys with their homework and contributing to the daycare of the youngest kids two days a week so that the mothers could go to work.

One of the ironies of her situation, Wyn thought, was the fact that she was supposed to intimately trust Adam and Duncan when she didn't even know what they looked like. She also found herself reacting defensively wherever she was, whenever she walked into a room or down a street she instantly made note of landmarks, obstacles and people, just in case her vision suddenly cut out. It was damned useful, she was surprised at how often an Immortal would simply pass by in a car and leave her disoriented for a few seconds, or walk into a room while she was trying to do something.

As for her family, Wyn was still in contact with them. She wanted to wait to tell them about all this until she was home; it wasn't exactly the thing a telephone was made for, after all. They exchanged pleasantries and horror stories about work. When Nimi came home from his yearly army duty the twins joked and laughed together over the phone, interchanging Hebrew and English words without a thought, just using whatever came to mind first. Nimrod was a photographer, and made a joke about the irony of being such a good shot with both a gun and a camera. He could tell something was wrong with her, though she didn't speak about it, and finally asked, "Wyn, you okay? I mean really?"

"No, but it's a long story. I'll tell you all about it when I come home for High Holidays."

"Love you, then."

"Ani ohevet otcha," she replied, "lehitraot."

Wyn sat in Joe's bar, nursing a ginger ale. It was a weekday morning, the bar was empty and Joe was polishing glasses. "Ironic, isn't it?" she inquired suddenly. "I mean, that if I was mortal I would outlive you, barring accident, but that it's very likely that since I'm Immortal, you'll outlive me."

Joe shook his head, putting down the glass. "You are one of the most depressing people I know."

"That's because I'm on my best behavior," Wyn commented, "If I was being cheerful, you'd have my filthy puns to put up with."

"Not much of a choice there, but I'd still prefer the filthy puns."

"You sure? You don't know what you're getting into," she warned with a grin.

"I can handle it." he replied with a returned grin.

"I'd like to give you something to handle," she replied without missing a beat, leering mischievously. "Or were you already handling something of your own?"

"You're awful," he laughed.

It went on like that for nearly an hour, with Wyn constantly interrupting the conversation with lewd remarks and glances, some of which made Joe roll his eyes in exasperation, some left his sides aching. It was like shaking up champagne and letting the cork fly. He started teasing her back, until it wasn't clear how much of what was going on was a joke. At that point Joe pulled back a bit. "Wyn, behave."

"Aw, don't you like me naughty? You said you could handle it," she teased, "what do I win if it turns out you can't?"

Dawson smiled and shook his head a little bitterly. "I'm old enough to be your father, Wyn, leave it be."

"I'm Immortal. If I looked like this and I was a hundred, would you say no because I was twice your age? I can handle it."

Joe shook his head again, the bitterness creeping into his voice. "And do you think you can handle this too?" he asked, looking down for a moment. "Honestly, do you think you can handle damaged goods?" He was pulling away now, not wanting the inevitable reply to hurt.

"Honestly?" Wyn asked, looking at him. "Honestly I have no idea. My first boyfriend had a two inch dent in his chest. That didn't bug me, but I've never dated someone who was really disabled. I don't know. But I'm willing to try."

"Yeah? Well I'm not."

Wyn kicked the barstool in frustration. "Look, I can't give you guarantees! I don't know myself that well! I don't blame you for not wanting to get hurt, I'm scared too. But you're the one I come to when I'm scared and hurting, you've gotten further inside than I've let anyone but Nimi get. I don't know what I'd do without you. Doesn't that mean something?"

Joe shook his head. He had opened himself up to Diane, and she'd been killed by an Immortal before anything could come of it. He'd let Betsy into his heart again, after all these years, only to have her turn around and leave. He just couldn't trust anymore. "Wyn, we're friends, all right? Let's leave it at that."

Wyn shook her head. "I don't want to leave it at that, all right? I had plans for my life. I was going to have lots of kids and grow old charging around Israel on archeological digs. All that's gone, I can't count on living more than an hour at a time. I don't want to be patient anymore, I want to take what I can while I can. I love you, Joe Dawson, and I don't want to wait for you to stand at my grave before I know you love me too."

"And you think it will be better if I stand over your grave and miss you more?" he asked hoarsely. "I don't think you even know what you want."

Wyn punched the bar in frustration. "Yes I do, damn it! I want you." She looked him straight in the eye and repeated, "I want you. I love you."

Joe forced down his emotions and laboriously polished another glass. "You have to go do your work."

Wyn shook her head. "I don't punch in timecards."

Joe shook his head. "Wyn, go. Now."

Knots in her stomach, she leaned forward and kissed Joe on the lips. She was terrified that he would say no -- or say yes. Then Joe's strong hands tightened on her back and his mouth opened under hers and it would never be anything but yes...

She pulled away from him for a moment, looking in his eyes for confirmation. His eyes were begging her to kiss him again, but his mouth began forming protests. She shook her head swiftly. "Joe, someone might come for my head tomorrow, or today. I don't want to regret anything I didn't do." She kissed him again, and her scent filled his senses as the protests melted away.

They were still kissing and lightly touching each other's faces and hair when Wyn pulled away with a small gasp, her eyes searching blindly, frantically. Methos walked into the bar, unaware that he was interrupting anything and sat down beside Wyn with a casual thump while Joe tried to get a hold of himself. "Adam, what's up?" he asked.

"Just thought I'd come by and say hi, I didn't realize Wyn was here. Sorry, Wyn."

"S'okay," she replied in a slightly strangled voice. "Just don't scare me like that." She fumbled around for her glass, found it, and took a shaky gulp.

"Joe, do you know anything about an Immortal named Jeremy Harmon?" Adam asked, accepting a mug of beer from Joe and taking an appreciative pull at it.

"Harmon? Not much. He's about a century old, comes from Cheshire originally. Keeps to himself, nothing remarkable. Why?"

"We met, we have a tentative agreement to fight if we meet in a private place. We were in the middle of town last time. You know how these things are. I was just wondering if I should be worried, if he was one of those who cheat at the Game."

"Not that I know of," Joe replied.

"I'm getting back to work," she replied. "I'll see you both later." With a flick of her wrist, she released her walking stick and began tapping her way to the door.

That night, as she walked to the gym, Wyn's vision cut out. Not overly concerned, thinking it was Methos, she kept walking towards the gym until she felt a hand on her shoulder. "I am Jeremy Harmon, and I've not yet walked away from a fight, not even with a lady," he informed her.

"Gwyneth Levin," she replied. "Let's get on with it. There's a parking lot behind the gym."

At that moment Methos arrived and stopped. "You were following me," he accused Harmon, "Your quarrel is with me, not with her."

"I've already challenged her, I'll deal with you later. If you'll excuse us?"

Methos glared at Jeremy Harmon, but could not object. Instead, he lightly caught Wyn's hand and used to contact to subtly propel her into the underground parking lot. No point in letting Jeremy know any more than he had to. "Right," he muttered subvocally, "We have some room here, but there are cars he could hide behind. Don't follow him, let the fight come to you."

"Adam," she whispered tightly, "What if the Quickening screws with my brain and cuts out my sight permanently?"

"Just get through the fight, don't deal with more than you have to."

"I wish Joe was here," she murmured.

"Shall we get on with it?" Jeremy offered.

Wyn shifted into a ready position, holding her sword in front of her. "Please do."

The battle was quick-paced, a lightning show of swords and bodies consumed in the deadly dance. But to Wyn, it was a labyrinth of subtleties. An intake of breath, a rush of sliced air, the skid of a sneaker on the ground, all these tiny cues had to be instantly and correctly interpreted. At one point Jeremy tried to take the fight to the maze of cars a few feet away, but Wyn just stood there and laughed. "Are you a coward, then, that you can't fight a woman on level ground?"

"I am no coward," Jeremy replied, leaping up to assault her again, and she used his voice to orient herself again as the spun and flew. Then her left wrist flicked out and Jeremy screamed in sudden surprise and pain. Wyn had snapped out her walking stick and stabbed him in the eye with it before he had a moment to relax. Then she swung downwards with her blade and made the fatal stroke.

Wyn felt cool air rush up through her body like a river, then a few tingles of delicious energy. Then there came the sounds of explosions as her body shattered again and again, terror, panic and pain flooding through the ecstasy. The storm passed, leaving her curled in a ball on the ground.

Methos ran to her. "Wyn? Are you all right?"

"I can't see!" she whispered, panicked and hysterical. "I can't see!"

Methos flipped open his cellular phone and speed-dialed Joe. "Dawson, get over to the parking lot behind Ivy Gym now." he snapped it off before Joe had a chance to respond.

Twenty minutes later Joe's car screeched top a halt next to Methos, and Joe disentangled himself from the car's controls and limped towards Wyn, who was still curled up, rocking herself and crying. "Methos, get out of here now," Joe ordered, then grabbed Wyn's face in his hands as best he could, considering that he couldn't kneel. "Wyn, it's fine, you're safe!"

"I can't see," she repeated forlornly, looking up at him with empty eyes.

"The Quickening knocked out the lights. If you just get up and move a few feet, you'll be fine." Joe prayed that he was right, gently coaxed Wyn to her feet and made her stumble out into the light. She gasped and blinked, leaning against him and looking about her in relief.

Then she looked back and walked back into the darkness for a moment. She fought down her sense of nausea and revulsion and picked up Jeremy Harmon's head. The cut had not been neat, she had severed it through the jaw. But still, she could see that he had been a handsome man with sandy blonde hair and gray eyes that were already glazed. She sensed Joe behind her and said, "It's sad, I was so frightened that I might have gone blind that I didn't even stop to think that I had killed a human being. Jeremy Harmon. Somehow I didn't think killing someone would be like this."

"It never is what you expect it to be," Joe agreed quietly, noting Methos watching them from one side, Jeremy's Watcher from the other. Well there was no getting out of it now, Wyn was most definitely listed as an Immortal. She gently placed the head back on the ground, feeling the wiry hair slip from her grip. Funny, she thought, his hair doesn't feel any different dead.

She meekly followed Joe back to the bar, Methos had decided to leave so that she would have some time to calm down with all her senses intact. Wyn took a sip of ginger ale and looked at Joe. "It's funny, all this time I've been so worried about dying young. I haven't really thought about the fact that I'm Immortal at all. How long do we live?"

"There's an Immortal who's been out there for 5000 years, according to legend," he told her, not mentioning that he was her teacher.

"Wow. I can't even imagine what the world will be like in 5000 years. Do you think I'll live that long?"

"Who knows," Joe replied.

"Joe, I meant what I said today." She hesitated a moment, then leaned forward and kissed him, gently, on the lips, resting there just long enough to feel him respond. "That's twice I've offered. If you still don't want it, tell me and I'll leave you be, but I love you and I want to try this, at least."

Joe swallowed hard, fighting both his fears and his desires. "Can't hurt to try," he replied, though in his heart he knew that if she rejected him, it would be devastating.

The chair in Joe's office was not made for acrobatics of any kind, and since the two of them were unsure about what they were doing, Joe simply sat down in the chair and let Wyn attempt to maneuver around him. Shyly, gently, the two of them began their tender exploration, neither wanting to hurt the other, both unsure of how their caresses would be received. When Joe slid down his pants and took off his artificial legs, Wyn looked at them, trying to decide how she felt about the two scarred stumps that marked Joe's payment for his life in Vietnam. Then she took a deep breath and touched them gingerly, while Joe's worried face asked her mutely if she thought him any less of a man.

There was a moment, of fear, revulsion, curiosity, but it passed leaving behind a sense of acceptance. This was part of who Joe was, and she loved him. She kissed him passionately, feeling his hands tighten on her back in relief and need, and soon they began answering to needs of all kinds.

As they lay back in the chair, sated and calm, Joe looked down at her. "Wyn?"

"Yeah?"

"I love you too."

She kissed him on the tip of his nose. Then her expression became serious. "Joe? If anything ever happens to me, will you tell my family? You don't have to tell them how I died, but I think the news should come from someone who cares about me."

"Nothing's going to happen," he assured her, "except things we should both be owed for what we've gone through." And with that, he kissed her again, and all was well.

Rachel looked up as Wyn came in, still chattering to Joe Dawson. Rachel rolled her eyes. Personally, she thought Wyn a little strange for dating a guy old enough to be her father, but they seemed happy and Joe treated her right, and that was what mattered. "Did you guys have a good time?" she asked.

Wyn looked at her friend with a grin. "Fabulous." She curled an arm around Joe's back and gave him a kiss. "I have to get to work early tomorrow, or I'd ask you to stay."

Joe kissed her back. "See you tomorrow night?"

"Of course. Lehitraot," she murmured, slipping back into her native Hebrew. Joe gave her another kiss and then moved to take the elevator back down. Wyn turned back to Rachel, blushing happily. "God, Rae, I swear I've never loved anyone that much in my life."

"Except Nimi," Rachel teased.

"You know what I mean," Wyn replied, spinning around in sheer happiness. Her long red-brown hair spun out around her, then curled back around her body, and her brown eyes sparkled with excitement. She was taller than Rachel, though they were both athletic. If comparisons could be made, Wyn was an earth mother or a gypsy type, whereas Rachel was a lithe silver-blonde fairy with an iron spine.

"Yeah. I just don't know why you fell for him instead of that sexy Duncan guy. Why did you drop out of his Tae Kwon Do class, anyway?"

Wyn shrugged, subdued. "It's complicated. I told you."

"Yeah, but you didn't tell me why." Rachel frowned. "You never tell me anything."

Wyn turned away. "I have to get some sleep."

"Look, Wyn, I've taught you all I can," Methos argued, "It's been a long time since I really practiced like this. A really long time. Other teachers should expand your repertoire from here."

"And what am I supposed to do? Waltz up to strange Immortals and say hi, want to train me?" She turned to him angrily. "You really think they won't take my head? When I can't see them, when I don't know they really mean to?"

Methos looked her over. Wyn was a eager and determined pupil despite her disability, but it was a more than valid argument. Wyn's blindness was something a prospective teacher would have to know about, and if Methos was in her shoes he would rather spend his years on holy ground than dare to trust someone -- anyone -- with that secret. "I can think of two people who would train you without using that against you."

"Who?" she responded wearily.

"Duncan and his teacher, Connor MacLeod."

"Duncan hates me. He's been avoiding me like the plague since he told me I was Immortal."

"He doesn't hate you, he's..." Methos groped for a word. Afraid he'll come after you like he did after Richie? "He's sensitive to your disability; he’s afraid of feeling anything if someone comes for your head and wins. He recently lost a student; he didn't want to lose another so soon." That was more tactful than Methos was used to being, the effort exhausted him. "But you've already had a fight and won, I think that should prove to him that you'll be fine." And if it doesn't, I'll just have to pound Mac's skull for him. Methos thought grimly.

"What about this Connor guy?"

"Right now he's living in Egypt with his adopted son. It's a bit of a commute."

"For now, yeah, but whenever I go home for the holidays it's practically next door." She sighed. "But I'm not going home any time soon. I guess I have to hunt down Duncan."

Duncan was practicing in the dojo with a few members when he felt the Buzz. In walked Wyn, tapping a small white cane to guide herself. "Can I help you?" he asked.

"Adam told me I should come talk to you. He says he's taught me all he can, and that you're better than him. He wants you to teach me."

"He told me. I'm not going to."

"I've taken a head already, I know how to manage! It's not like you're going to take my head, so it should be fine."

Duncan was very grateful Wyn was blind, so she couldn't see him flinch at those words. "Wyn, I'm sorry, but--"

"Sorry doesn't help me." She sighed. "I guess I'll start teaching Adam a few things then, huh? If you change your mind..." she trailed off hopefully.

"I won't," he responded.

"Right then. I'll give your regards to Connor if I see him." With a flick of her wrist she uncollapsed her walking stick and lightly tapped it in front of her to make her way to the door.

She spent the rest of the day interviewing unwed mothers and their children. Her research here was almost complete, she was just about ready to write up her information and send it in. She had no idea what to do next. She was tempted to go back to Israel, either working on the kibbutz with her parents or going back to the archaeological program she had worked on every summer since she was in diapers. That was one of the great things about Israel; because it had been conquered by all the nations of the world at one point or another, it made for great archaeology. And archaeology had been the second half of her double major in college, so she really didn't mind shifting gears.

There was one reason that she couldn't leave, though. Joe was here, and it wasn't fair for her to ask him to choose between her, or Duncan and the bar.

She walked into Joe's later that night, flicking out her stick when she felt another Immortal and her vision abruptly cut out. She made her way to the bar and sat down, kissing back when Joe leaned over to greet her. "Let me guess, Adam?" she inquired casually.

"Got it right on the first try," Adam replied, "How do you do that, anyway?"

"Easy. Yours is the only Quickening I've met strong enough to white out my sight, everyone else just blacks it out. You must be pretty powerful, or something."

"Or something," he agreed.

She accepted the glass Joe handed her, a sip informed her that it was ginger ale. "MacLeod won't budge. Is he always that depressed?"

"He's had a hard time the last five years," Joe commented.

"What the hell right does he have to come off like that? No one has that hard a five years."

"Wyn," There was something in Joe's voice that penetrated. "He's had a really hard five years, all right? Leave it be."

She sighed. "Isn't there anything you guys can do?"

"I might be able to persuade him, I have an idea," Adam said, "But I don't guarantee anything. You have Connor's number?"

"Yeah. We're going to meet when I come home for High Holidays. Speaking of which, Joe, care to take a vacation to a balmy clime?" She grinned. "Of course it does mean you have to meet the family, which is enough to chase anyone off, but you're a strong man."

"A vacation for how long?" Joe asked, "I can't just leave the bar."

"Ten days?" she asked. "Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur?"

"I'll think about it. We've got a while, yet."

Duncan finally agreed to teach Wyn, and she came by the dojo the very next day. It started out simply, just trying to get her measure, but all of a sudden it was more than practice. He carved her to pieces, easily knocking the blind girl to the floor, where she cowered, her eyes darting everywhere in a vain attempt to see what she would never see. "Just tell me why!" she pleaded in anger, "Is it the teacher kills the student? Is it that there can be only one?"

"That's as good a reason as any," he replied with a cold laugh, and the sword swung downwards. There was an explosion of pain--

"NOOOoooooo......" Duncan jerked out of sleep in terror, fighting the blankets.

Methos opened the elevator grate to see MacLeod staring at him from the bed, pale, wide-eyed, sweating. "Are you all right, MacLeod?"

"I'm fine. What are you doing here?"

"It's about Wyn..."

"I told you I don't want to train her."

"Even if she takes my head?" Methos asked. "She can't see, Duncan, and she's my equal in fighting now. She can't stop her sword before she takes my head, because she can't see whether I'm blocking her or not." This was a partial lie, since when Wyn won she simply disarmed Methos and used her free hand to sight the blade. She never went for a mid-battle decapitation. But Duncan didn't need to know that. "She's not going to get any better like this, she needs a better teacher. She needs you."

"Like Richie needed me?" Duncan asked.

"That was...a fluke." Adam replied, "You wouldn't have done it if you were yourself."

"It was the third time, Methos. I should have just left him alone after the Dark Quickening. He would have stayed away if I hadn't interfered."

"And if Wyn dies because you won't interfere? Or if she takes my head by accident, because I'm not good enough to stop her?"

"If she was that dangerous, you would have taken her head by now. You're no boy scout."

"And apparently you aren't one either. Why did you do this to me? I spent thousands of years losing my conscience, you force me to find it again, and then you go and lose yours!" Adam threw up his hands. "I just love irony, don't you?" he stormed out.

Two days later, Rachel was cooking dinner while Wyn unloaded the dishwasher when Wyn gave a hiss of pain. "Shit! This glass broke!"

Rachel grabbed her friend's hand out of reflex, working in a hospital she had the habit of coming to the rescue of injured friends. Rachel reached for the iodine, and Wyn tried to jerk away. "It's just a scratch!" Wyn yelled.

"For Pete's sake, iodine isn't that bad, Wyn. I'm all out of bacitracin."

Wyn yanked her hand away, clutching it for a second. Then she held it up for examination. "See? Just a scratch. Already sealed over."

Rachel took a deep breath. "Okay, you want to tell me what the hell that was?"

Wyn washed the blood off her hand in the sink. "I told you, it was just a scratch."

"Like hell it was, you practically severed your goddamn thumb!" Rachel's voice was nearly a screech.

"Look, can't you just leave it?" Wyn begged.

"No, I can't."

"I told you, it's just a scratch." She ignored Rachel's hurt expression. "I have to go write up my notes. Call me when dinner's ready." She fled the room.

Methos entered the dojo and saw Duncan slump over the weight machine. "Aren't you tired of this by now? You've been here three times already this week. I'm not going to take her on. When are you going to drop it?"

"When you admit total surrender to my superior will and intelligence," Methos replied coolly.

Duncan glared. "I killed Richie, or have you forgotten that?"

"Yes. You killed Richie. You've killed a lot of people, and probably quite a few of them didn't deserve it. But you have to survive. You have to move on, MacLeod."

Duncan's Scottish accent came out in his anger. "I'm not sane, Methos. It keeps happening. I won't let it happen again."

"I trained her myself. She's damned good, but she panics the instant things seem out of control. She won't let you hurt her." I hope, he added mentally.

Duncan studied the floor for a minute. "I dreamed about Richie," he finally told Methos, defeated, "except he had Wyn's face..." He closed his eyes, but he could still see the nightmares. "You know it's ironic but when I first met Richie I pulled a sword on him. It seemed to set the tone for the next five years. I loved him like a son, Tessa and I took care of him, tried to set him on the right path. But then Tessa died and Richie found out he was Immortal, and somehow it all went crazy. I kept facing opponents who turned my mind against me, and every time it happened the first throat I went for was Richie's. The first time Richie yelled and I snapped out of it. The second time Joe shot me and yelled for Richie to run. And Richie did run, and he wasn't coming back."

The words were spilling over themselves in Duncan's attempt to absolve his sins, but Methos just listened silently. "Richie would have -- should have -- stayed away. But I couldn't stand how bitter he was, how much he hated me and let that poison his life. I begged him to come back, let me prove that the last time had been a fluke. I won him back, I showed him that he was wrong, that he could trust me, and then it happened again and he was just standing there..."

Methos watched the Highlander fight back tears, unable to help. "I'm not going to tell you it wasn't your fault. It was. You murdered someone who trusted you, who hadn't hurt you in the slightest. But you have only two choices. You can wallow in it, or you can earn your way back into humanity. It's up to you to decide which of those hurts more."

"There's a third choice," Duncan evaded, looking at his katana on the floor.

Methos shook his head. "Absolutely not."

"You said that before."

"Death doesn't solve anything, MacLeod. Death gets you off the hook and makes everyone else suffer even more."

"Why won't you kill me?" Duncan asked.

Methos pounded his head lightly against the wall before turning on MacLeod. "So I'm supposed to kill a friend who killed a friend? Then who kills me? And who kills them? How will losing you make any of us feel any better? What will it solve?"

"It’ll keep me from killing anyone who trusts me ever again," MacLeod muttered.

Adam shook his head. "I know you don’t believe this, but you’re worth the trouble. You're too important too lose."

Duncan closed his eyes for a long minute while Adam fidgeted. "I'll do what I can." he said finally. "I'm just scared of what might happen if I lose it again."

"Only one way to find out," Methos replied.

Duncan shook his head wearily. "All right, I'll call her. She can come to the dojo. You can be damned persuasive."

"You get good at it after--"

"--Five thousand years," Duncan finished. "Some day, I'm going to prove it's all a hoax, and you really are just Adam Pierson. No one this annoying could have survived that long."

When Duncan walked into Joe's, he heard the conversation between Wyn and Joe break off. Wyn stiffened in her chair. "Hi Duncan," Joe called out, both to be social and to inform Wyn of who had walked in. "You want a drink?"

"I'll have a Sam Adams," Duncan decided, walking up to Wyn. "If you come by the dojo, I'll teach you," he muttered.

She turned to him, surprised. "Thank you," she said. "I'll come by tomorrow, if you don't mind."

"Fine," Duncan agreed, draining the beer in two long pulls and heading for the door.

The tension drained from Wyn's shoulders as her sight returned. She smiled at Joe. "Now where were we? Oh yeah..." She kissed Joe on the lips. "Right about there, I think."

Joe shook his head and grinned back. "I've thought about your offer," he said, "I'd like to meet your family."

Wyn smiled at him. "You're a brave man," she joked. "I'll arrange it. I still haven't told my family about you, I just know what Nimi is going to say about that." She kissed him deeply. "You're not doing anything for another few hours, are you?" she inquired.

"Well, I was going to fix this leaky beer tap," Joe teased, looking at the fire in her eyes. "But if you have a better idea..." his words trailed off as Wyn kissed him again, and his hands tightened in her thick hair.

The next day, Wyn showed up at the dojo. She dropped her sword bag in the corner and took out a katana she had bought back in her college days, which she had been using ever since. "Shall we?" she asked Duncan.

"Ready when you are," he replied with grim humor, watching her orient on his voice and get into a ready position. The two of them went at it in a practice round, so that Duncan could get a sense of Wyn's skills. She was a conservative fighter -- hardly surprising considering her disadvantages -- but she could think on her feet, and it was hard to believe that she couldn't see him.

Then he called a halt. "This is going to be hard, since you can't see what I'm doing," he commented, thinking hard. "I'm going to have to describe the motions first, and that'll slow things down, maybe too slow to follow how it's supposed to look and feel. We'll give it a try, but if it doesn't work I'll have to get Adam to spot you."

This technique actually worked rather well, though it still took a lot of explaining to get a concept to penetrate Wyn's mind. Mac was able to show her two techniques that worked rather well, though she was still a little shaky on both of them. When they were both feeling the strain of standing on one position for too long, Duncan offered, "Want a lift to Joe's?"

"Sure, thanks." Wyn stood and flicked out her walking stick. "Come on, then."

Methos was already at the bar when they got there, and a couple of hours later, the four of them were relaxing and talking together. Wyn managed quite well, considering that it had been more than four hours since she had been able to see. She trusted her friends not to hurt her, but it was annoying to be cut off from what was going on around her.

Joe was glowing under Wyn's attention, kidding around with Methos and listening to the band on stage. Methos was joking right back, glad to see Joe in a good mood for the first time in a long while. Wyn was good for Dawson, they were good for each other. Each of them depended on each other's strengths and gave freely of their own, and there was a deep bond growing between the young Immortal and the older man.

As it grew late Duncan excused himself, explaining that he had to finish up some paperwork. Methos also left, and Wyn gave a sigh of relief as her vision returned. "That was eight hours, almost," she informed Joe. "I'm sorry, but I think I'd like Duncan and Methos a whole lot more if I didn't dread getting within ten feet of them."

Joe shrugged. "Wouldn't want the competition anyway," he responded. "Do you have to go back tonight?"

"Not especially," she replied, "what do you have in mind?"

It didn't take them long to make their way to his apartment. Wyn smiled across the room at Joe, who removed his artificial legs with a sigh of relief. By the end of the day they always hurt, and it was good to take them off and feel the air on his skin, or what was left of it. Wyn was taking off her sneakers and her shirt, then she walked over to him wearing only her jeans.

Joe smiled, unclasping the jeans for her and reaching up to touch her as she leaned forward to kiss him. He pulled the jeans down as she stepped out of them, her light fingers delicately tracing lines on his neck and chest. Then she slipped into bed beside him and turned off the light in silence, letting fingers and tongues communicate what needed to be expressed.

The sun filtered through the airplane window, and Dawson looked out as the approaching scenery resolved from a patchwork of houses and farms into a more detailed view. Then they were touching down in Ben Gurion airport. He woke Wyn, who was dozing lightly beside him. It wasn't surprising, the flight had been more than 14 hours, with a short refueling stop. Joe could never sleep on planes, not after Nam. "Wyn? We're here."

Wyn rubbed her eyes and pushed her tousled brown hair out of her face, looking up at him. "Morning," she murmured sleepily. Then she looked at her watch and frowned, setting it forward seven hours. "Or afternoon, actually." She heard the plane's wheels touch the runway, and then the plane began braking. When it had stopped, she clipped off her seatbelt and rubbed her eyes again. "Can't get out until you do." she remembered, since Joe had the aisle seat. "Man oh man, I am going to be so freaking jet-lagged tomorrow."

Joe waited for the crush of passengers to get by him, then got out of his seat and stretched his back out as he leaned on his cane. Wyn hauled down their gear from the overhead compartment: Wyn's backpack and sword (the sword was in a bag for fishing poles), Joe's guitar case and small carry-on. Their real luggage would be waiting for them, if it had managed to get on the same plane going to the same destination.

As they walked down the mobile staircase to the waiting shuttle-van, Joe winced. He had really been on board that plane too long, and the stairs weren't helping. His legs were giving him more than a twinge. But they made it to the shuttle and then to the airport, and they filed down a corridor with the rest of the sheep who had just left the airplane. Then Wyn gave a yell and jumped the turnstile despite the impediment of Joe's guitar and the bags, crashing headlong into the arms of a well-muscled, red haired Israeli man who whirled her around with a shout, much to the consternation of the local security. Then Wyn gave the man a fierce kiss on the cheek and turned back to Joe, who was standing beside them with a tolerant smile. "This is your brother Nimrod, I take it."

"Jeez, where are my manners? Nimi, this is Joe Dawson. Joe, this is Nimi and--" her eyes caught on the woman standing behind her brother "-- his wife Yafit."

"Pleased to finally meet you," Nimi greeted cheerfully. "How was the flight?"

"Best forgotten quickly," Joe replied with a smile that bordered on a grimace. "Come on, let's get our luggage and bug out of here."

"My sentiments exactly," Wyn agreed. They trooped over to the turning luggage dispenser, which was turning around boxes and bags of all nature.

Trusting Wyn to grab their bags, Joe took the moment to observe their companions. Nimrod was the perfect model of the Sabra, the tough-as-nails Israeli with the tender heart. It was amazing how much the twins resembled each other. The Levins had a hard time conceiving, and when they finally had a son they thought God was smiling down on them at last. But when one of the nurses was on her rounds, she found that a second infant had mysteriously appeared in the boy’s little bed, unmarked and untraceable, though they tried for months to find out where she came from. Eventually they gave up and named her Shiri – my song -- Levin, with Gwyneth as her English name, writing on both birth certificates that they were twins. Despite their lack of actual genetic similarity, the two of them looked and acted so much like fraternal twins that people believed it without question.

Yafit was smiling and dark-skinned, with thick and glossy black hair that curled around her waist. She was tall and lithe, athletic, and was dressed in jeans and a tee shirt with the caption "Join the Israeli Army! Go to interesting places, meet interesting people and kill them" Joe looked at her, she didn't seem like the type to go in for tasteless humor. She'd probably gotten the shirt from Wyn or Nimi, if the twins shared a penchant for sick tee-shirt slogans. Yafit grinned at him. "So what do you do, Joe?"

"I run a blues bar," he replied, "and you?"

"I'm a junior exec at Bank Hapolim in Jerusalem." He must have been staring at her attire, because she laughed, "When I have a day off, I like to make the most of it." She looked over at the luggage Wyn and Nimi had retrieved. "Shall we?"

They wound their way through the crowd and out to the parking lot, maneuvering past taxis to a battered up old jeep. Nimi slipped into the driver's seat and popped the trunk. As Yafit and Joe got in, Wyn dumped their bags in the back and jumped in beside Yafit in the back seat. Then Nimi hit the gas and peeled out of there at a reckless speed Joe was sure would get them arrested. But when he asked Nimi, the redhead merely laughed. "They have a real loose interpretation of traffic laws in this neck of the woods, Joe. The Palestinians use their driving to piss off the Israelis, and the Israelis do it to piss off each other. I'm not doing anything I haven't done a hundred times before."

"Nimi, Jesus! Things aren't nearly as bad as you make them out to be, you're the most dangerous Israeli driver I've seen in the eighteen years we lived here!" Wyn argued. It was an old argument, Nimi could be damned cynical about Israeli politics, in Wyn's opinion.

"Oh fine then," Nimi replied with a grin, easily shifting into a more normal form of driving. "Besides, I've got more to be careful of now."

"Oh?" Wyn asked curiously. She turned to Yafit with a grin. "Yafit, what did you do to him?"

"Oh, just persuaded him to obey one of the holy commandments," Yafit teased, kissing her husband's neck as he drove.

"What, 'thou shalt not kill'?" Wyn asked.

"Be fruitful and multiply," Yafit corrected with a pleased smile, "you're going to be an aunt in about six months."

Wyn squealed and gave her sister-in-law a hug. "That's wonderful! Do you know yet if it's a boy or a girl?"

"It's a girl, we're naming her Jmaine Havah Levin, after Yafit's grandmother." Nimi replied. "Though Jmaine isn't a Jewish name and it's devilishly hard to pronounce in a language that doesn't have a letter J." He glanced back at them "I thought we would drive all the way there today, rather than wait for the morning, that's why our bags are in the back too. That okay with you two, or are you too tired of traveling?"

"How long is the drive?" Joe asked warily.

"Two hours. We're driving across most of the country, after all." Nimi replied.

"In America, driving across half the country takes more than a week." Wyn reminded her brother.

"Does put things in perspective, doesn't it?" Nimi remarked cheerfully. "Well?"

"I'm game if you are," Joe replied with a grin. He decided he liked Nimi, the boy had a youthful exuberance and cynicism, and a definite charm.

The drive was long but cheerful, even for the strained and exhausted nerves of the two recent arrivals from the States. The three Israelis in the jeep yelled out when they saw anything of historic importance, wanting to show off their country to Joe. This meant that they were shouting and pointing every three minutes until they got on the highway. They were the only jeep on the road; most of the other cars were compacts. At one point they broke into song, going through several bawdy tunes with Wyn supplying the translations to Joe. Then Wyn did a tragic love song in English that had everyone in the car cracking up because it was between a Scotsman and his sheep.

Somehow they made it to the kibbutz alive. Joe had some vague idea that a kibbutz was a Jewish commune, but had little experience of either. They drove through an iron gate painted green to a set of identical houses in rows. They drove up to one of these, where a couple roughly Joe's age came out to greet them. Nimi braked and parked the car, jumping out to hug his mother and father, and Yafit followed suit. Wyn waited for Joe, walking forward with him as though to signify that they were together. Then she hugged her parents cheerfully and introduced him, they told Joe to call them Jonathan and Michal.

The house inside was bright and cheery, with big windows to let in lots of light. Joe immediately went to go shower. The shower head was mobile, so Joe loosened it and then took off his legs and got in. The hot water felt great, washing away a whole day's worth of travel dust as his muscles unknotted. He got out reluctantly, drying off and going to the bathroom before letting the next person in. He noticed that there were two switches on the toilet, one for liquid waste and one for solid. Ah, the joys of water shortage in Eastern countries.

Wyn took him into the bedroom that Nimi and Yafit were sleeping in, which was still set up as bunk beds with posters on the wall and furniture that hadn't changed since the twins had lived there. She opened the closet with a grin and pulled out a hanger with a khaki skirt and military type shirt with a bandanna at the collar and several patches on the arms. "My uniform from Nitzonim," she informed him.

"You mean you have girl scouts in Israel?"

"No, just Scouts, no gender distinction. Although Nimi didn't have to wear this stupid skirt," she commented with a giggle.

An hour later, Joe was resting on the sofa bed in the living room while Wyn paced. "You don't have to tell them, you know," he reminded her.

"The only other option is to fake my own death and never see them again. I'm too close to them for that."

"So how are you going to prove it?" Joe asked, "My gun? I still can't believe it got through customs."

"Hey, you have a permit for it, after all." Wyn replied. "No, if I were to use it all the neighbors would come running to know if we were okay. That's what happens in a country like this; it's like the 'small town' syndrome meets the 'relatives' syndrome." She shook her head. "I really, really don't want to do this."

"Don't want to do what?" Michal Levin asked as she entered the room.

"Nothing, Mom." Wyn answered automatically, then stopped herself. "Actually, there's something I have to tell all of you. No time like the present, I suppose."

Within moments they managed to assemble the family in the living room, looking at Wyn expectantly. "I, well--" she paused. "There's really no easy way to say this," she explained awkwardly, then drew a knife out of her boot. "I feel like a stupid magician," she commented, then shoved it home deep into her stomach and yanked it free again, trying not to bleed on the furniture. At least she hadn't really liked this shirt. She heard her mother cry out as her family all pushed forward at once to help her, but she pushed them back to pull up her shirt so they could see the wound closing. "I'm Immortal," she explained as her sight blurred with the effect of the Quickening healing. "I can't age or have children, not ever. As you can see, I heal from just about everything."

"How did this happen?" Michal asked, "Is Joe immortal too?"

"No, Mom, but Joe's one of the people I found out about this from. I was born with it, I can't get rid of it or pass it on." She paused for a moment, looking at Yafit, Nimi, and her parents. They were shocked, but not repelled by the news. "There's another part to this that I have to tell you, or two more parts depending on how you look at it. Please, I need to get this off my chest."

Nimi looked at her and awkwardly touched her hand. "Anything."

"All the Immortals are supposed to fight until only one is left. I don't pick fights, but I defend myself if I'm attacked. I've already killed; I'm sorry, but I had to. But when I get near Immortals it triggers my epilepsy, I can't see until they either go away or die. So I have to fight blind. My chances aren't too good because of that, but I've survived so far. I just want you to know, if anything happens to me."

"Yofi. Mitzuyan. This is supposed to make me happy, knowing you're going to be murdered in the near future?" Michal's biting sarcasm was the thinnest possible veil over her fears for a much-loved daughter. "Shiri, at bati! Ani lo rotzeh li--"

"Michal, maspik," Jonathan put a hand on his wife's shoulder as much to restrain as to support her. "Gwyneth, this is going to take some getting used to. We need some time to absorb this."

"I understand. It took me a while to think it through too." Her family kept looking at her like she was some alien masquerading as their daughter. She felt Joe's hand on her waist and leaned into him gratefully.

"Shiri, when this has sunk in, I'm going to have a lot of questions for you," Michal told her daughter in a controlled voice, "for now, I'm going to wash the floor. This is too much tzuris, I need to do something to get out my aggression."

"I'll take Joe around for a tour," Wyn suggested, "introduce him to Itzy, Rami and Ayelet." She led Joe outside, squinting as the sun hit them in the eyes. As they moved away from the house, stumbling slightly from sun-blindness, she started babbling. "In Israel we dump water on the floor and then squeegee the whole mess out the door. She's doing it as much to get us out of there so she can think as she is to have something to do..."

"I know," Joe replied, his hand remaining at her waist as they walked, though it meant bearing down on his cane on the uneven ground. Trying to distract her, he looked around for something to question, his eyes lighting on the trailers mounted on cinder blocks at the edge of the compound. "Who lives there?"

"Those were the houses of the original settlers, while they were building the kibbutz. People undergoing trial membership live there for a year. I remember when we moved here that they were dark and cramped, and I was always afraid I was going to break through a wall or the floor." she smiled a little at the memory.

Encouraged a little by her reaction, Joe smiled back. "I bet you were a real holy terror," he commented.

"Oh we got into all sorts of trouble when we were kids, stuff you wouldn't believe. Remind me to tell you sometime about the endangered caterpillars. Then there was the time we tried to walk across the Dead Sea, which is the Jordanian border..." She kept on talking, and Joe listened with half an ear as they walked through the grassy shade of a citrus orchard. Wyn picked up an orange that had fallen from a nearby tree and peeled it as they walked, handing half to Joe and pulling a segment off her own half, popping it in her mouth.

Joe followed suit. The sweet explosion of rich taste in his mouth was more intense than any other orange he'd ever tasted. "When are you going to touch base with Connor MacLeod about lessons?" he asked in a moment of silence.

"Dai, tafsik!" she exploded, "lama atah--?" she broke off in the middle of the question when she saw his bewildered face. "Joe, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to yell and I didn't mean to switch over to Hebrew. I'm just tired and I'm juggling too many balls to have you throw me another one."

"Look, I'm tired too! We've been traveling just about a day now, and I'm as worn out as you," he argued. "They're your family. Nimi's your twin. They're not just going to abandon you, Wyn."

"I know, they're tough, Sabras. But I'm still scared, Joe. I've never been unsure how Nimi felt about me, let alone Ima and Aba" she used the old childhood names for her parents without thinking.

"Then you don't know me too well," a voice spoke from behind them, and Wyn whirled and drew her sword without thinking. Nimi jumped back in surprise. "Jesus H. Christ, maybe I should have thought twice before saying that!"

"Slach li, Nimi, I'm just jumpy lately."

"I can imagine." Nimi moved up beside her. "Sorry to sneak up on you like that."

"Either you've gotten better at it, or I've gotten rusty," she replied easily.

"I've gotten better. How many people did you kill?"

"Three, so far. The last was the worst. Once they find out I'm blind, they think I'm an easy mark, won't even consider a truce."

"With that?" he asked, looking pointedly at her katana.

"We fight with swords. We can only die by decapitation," she explained. The katana had been hers long before she had known her nature, a mark of her skill at Kendo. The scabbard was a mottled cobalt and gold, the handle wrapped black silk cord. Most importantly, the blade was flexible and balanced, polished and sharpened, with a full tang. Like the collapsible walking stick she kept hidden in her shirt cuff, it was ready at a moment's notice in case of trouble. Embarrassed at her reaction, she re-sheathed it with a slight hiss of metal.

"Jesus, Wyn," Nimi commented, then shook his head. "Look, I came out here to tell you that no matter what anyone else decides, you're my sister. Whether you live for three years or three hundred, that won't change."

"Well, we won't be able to pretend we're identical anymore," she joked, putting her arms around him and hugging him tightly in relief.

"I'll say 'Who, her? She's my daughter! See the family resemblance?'" He slapped her back in rough affection, then moved away from her to look at Joe. "You're going to have a time of it, aren't you?" he asked, not expecting an answer, "You're already a lot older than her. People will stare."

"Not the people who matter," Joe replied.

"No, I suppose not," Nimi agreed lightly. He picked up an orange off the ground and tore it open with a swift motion, plunging into it and letting the juices drown his throat. "Mom's probably done washing the floor now, let's get back."

Back in the house, over dinner, relations were strained and Joe did his best to be polite and charming. The food was strange, a mixture of Eastern European and Mediterranean, but it was very good and Joe had quite a bit of it. After dinner no one was much in the mood for conversation and the various couples all went to their various beds, though no one was much in the mood to sleep.

Wyn tossed restlessly next to Joe until he thought he would scream in exhaustion and irritation. He finally rolled over and ignored her, trying to get some sleep. It was not his nature to turn his back on a friend or lover -- either figuratively or literally -- he ranked them too dear for that. But after more than twenty-four hours of travel, pain from his nonexistent legs and emotional stress, he was more than at the end of his rope.

Things looked decidedly better in the morning, after sleeping until what was past noon here, though it would have been before six in the morning back home. Wyn was already up and gone, he didn't know where. Joe cleaned himself up and walked into the kitchen, where Michal was sitting at the table and peeling carrots for soup. She looked up as he entered. "Did you sleep well, Yosef?"

"Please, call me Joe," he replied. "A little jet-lagged, but pretty well, thank you. Where's Wyn?"

"She and Nimi sing the sun up every morning when they're together. It's a little hard to explain. I'm sorry for my rudeness last night, I'm not usually inhospitable. But you have to understand, it's a deep shock for me."

Joe nodded. "Yeah, I could see that." He sat down opposite her and took a carrot, holding out his hand for a peeler. She handed him hers and got another one from the drawer, smiling at his willingness to help. "That scar on your wrist," she asked quietly, "what happened?"

Joe winced a little at the memory, though he was still a part of the Watchers, the troubles of the past year were not forgotten But maybe telling Michal about his own experience would help her accept her daughter's new life. "I've known about Immortals since Nam. I lost my legs, and a buddy of mine who had no earthly business even being alive carried me all the way back to base camp. I was recruited to an organization called the Watchers; we watch Immortals, but never interfere."

Michal laughed at the irony of that, and Joe chuckled. "Yeah, I know, you wouldn't know it to look at me. My three closest living friends are Immortals, I was put on trial for that and very nearly executed. I had to choose: my friends or my oath. I had the tattoo removed and renounced my oath, but when I told my friend, he asked me to rejoin the Watchers. So here I am, the Watcher who interferes every chance he gets."

Michal shook her head at the humor and irony in his words. "You are a brave man, to do this for your friends, to risk death for what you believe in." She looked at him pointedly. "And you count my daughter among these friends?"

"I've loved Wyn from the moment I saw her."

"Why?" Michal probed. It was obvious she was trying to see her daughter through his eyes, as he was the one who knew her and loved her in this alien aspect as an Immortal.

Joe was happy to comply as he scraped layers of grime off the ruddy carrots to expose their sweet natures. "The first thing I noticed about her was how strong she was. When I told her what she was, and she understood she'd have to fight blind and kill to survive, she just tried to make do the best she could. She was vulnerable, scared and alone. And she's disabled like me, it makes the two of us alike in a lot of ways, though it's not the same. We both get frustrated for the same reasons. And most of all, I love her because she sees something in me that deserves to be loved." He couldn't believe he was telling all of this to a relative stranger, it was not his way to be this open or to talk this long. But it was needed.

Michal picked up a knife and began slicing the peeled carrots into small coins. "It is a wonderful thing, to have someone who sees in you what you cannot see in yourself. More so to have someone who can understand your pain without wallowing in it." She took a deep breath. "I am not upset that my daughter has killed to survive. Yonatan, my husband, fought in the six day war, and I was perimeter guard for the kibbutz back then. I have never killed, but I have been prepared to many times. I can understand. But it is hard for me to grasp this Immortality. It seems to make her more or less than human, not my daughter, not anything I could love or understand."

Joe sighed heavily. He had spent half his lifetime examining Immortals and the last few years befriending them. At times it seemed like they were close, but almost always there was a gulf between him and Duncan, between him and Methos, one that couldn't be bridged. He had not yet felt it with Wyn, she had never thrust her Immortality between them. Perhaps it was the fact that she had not yet lived long enough, that it was the gulf of years, not natures, which separated him from MacLeod and Pierson. But it was more likely that she had neither the need nor the knack to do it. Yet. "Wyn's as human as they get," he replied, not telling even half the truth of what waited behind those words.

Michal nodded quietly, and he didn't know whether she was in accordance with his words or if she saw to his deeper conflict and was agreeing with that. The carrots were finished, she opened a bag of potatoes and washed them off, one by one. "What are you two planning to do while you're here?" she inquired, changing the subject.

"Oh, we thought we'd do a little sight seeing, look up some old friends." Joe replied easily. "We have more than a week, after all."

"Will you go up to Jerusalem?" Michal inquired.

"Yes, during the week we were thinking of staying with Nimi and Yafit. Wyn said they live in the Old City."

Michal nodded. "Have a good time."

Just then, Wyn walked in and planted a kiss on Joe's mouth. "Morning," she greeted, still a little sleepy. "Mom, you need help?"

"It's all right, Joe's helping," her mother informed her. "If you want you can help peel potatoes, but it's not really necessary."

"Biseder," Wyn stopped her mother, pulling out yet another peeler from the drawer and peeling the glistening wet dark skin from the white meat, leaving little flecks behind. "It's weird, being in this house and not sleeping in the bunk bed with Nimi. Feels very strange." She grinned and kissed Joe again. "Not that I'm complaining, mind you."

"Well then, I won't take it personally," Joe replied lightly. He could see that though both mother and daughter were trying to be casual, there was still tension between them that had not been there before. He wondered if it would ever be repaired.

After lunch, Nimi and Yafit went off with Joe to introduce him to some of the other members of the kibbutz and Wyn was left alone with her parents. Michal had a quilting project she was working on and handed the opposite end to Wyn to work on without comment. Both woman needed something to do with their hands at all times or they went crazy fidgeting.

"So," Wyn started, trying to get her parents to talk.

"Wyn," Her father paused. "I'm sorry, this just feels very strange. It's like after twenty-eight years, I don't know you."

Michal continued stitching the squares of fabric together. "Wyn, you could die. I don't like this at all."

Wyn shrugged, matching her mother's movements. "So? I could get caught by a suicide bomber on a bus here. It's no more risky than anything else in life."

"But what kind of a life can you make for yourself, living in fear all the time like that?" her mother asked worriedly, "Wyn, you wanted children, you wanted to live like a bohemian, running all over and doing whatever you fancy. Can you still do all that if you have to worry about people trying to kill you all the time?"

"I'm not going to live my life in hiding, that's no life at all!" Wyn protested. "I'm going to take each day as it comes, good and bad, and not waste a minute of it worrying about what might happen next! I don't know how long I have left, it might be hours or centuries, I'm going to make every minute count!"

Her father looked at her. "You've changed a lot over the past year, Wyn. You used to be more laid back. Not that it's better or worse, it's just very different."

Wyn smiled hesitantly at him. "Thanks, Aba."

He nodded. "I want to see you fight."

"Dad?" she asked, uncertain. He couldn't possibly be asking her to pick a fight ... could he?

He saw her expression and shook his head. "No, I mean practice fighting blind. I want to see what sort of a chance you have."

Wyn thought a moment. "When Nimi comes back I could put on a blindfold. He's the only person around here who'd be close to my level, and I was planning on sparring with him anyway."

When Nimi, Yafit and Joe came back, Wyn explained the situation to them, and Nimi went to get his katana out of his bag. "I should warn you, I'm a little rusty. I haven't done more than katas in ages," he declared as his parents and wife joined Joe by the outside bench to watch. They were behind the house, where no one would come by and see, the ground was dusty, dry and full of pebbles and rocks.

"Nimi, I don't think you'd ever let yourself get rusty at a martial skill." Wyn teased, "and I bet you're still a better shot than me. Come on, you can't hurt me unless you go for the throat, I can take plenty of damage."

Nimi's sword turned out to be an exact duplicate of Wyn's katana; the twins had ordered them as a matched set when they had mastered Kendo. Wyn put on the blindfold and checked it for fit, then put up her blade. "Come on, let's see what you've got," she taunted, lowering her stance and beckoning with her free fingers. The two fighters circled each other for a minute, then Wyn charged and swung unexpectedly and heard and felt the clang of metal as Nimi blocked and riposted efficiently. She blocked the riposte and parried as his blade tried to swing up and avoid hers. Their swords flashed as they dove and leapt in an intricate dance. Joe had never seen Wyn fighting so smoothly, it was like the two of them were parts of a well-oiled machine, or choreographed dancers who had played the same role year after year. He decided it had to be the fact that they were not only twins but had also trained together, they knew exactly how the other person would react at the same moment.

In the end, it didn't matter. Wyn had gone on in her training, working obsessively with both Methos and later Duncan in her efforts to be the best despite her disability. In the beginning, her blindness and her fear of hitting her twin had made her hesitant, but she conquered both her worry and her opponent with a brilliant, though suicidal, countermove that impaled her on her brother's sword as she lightly touched her own to his neck.

For a long moment, no one moved, though Michal had screamed when she saw one twin stab the other. Nimi swallowed hard as he pulled his blade from his sister. She tried not to show how much it hurt, not wanting her family to panic, but Nimi knew as he looked at her that yes, being stabbed in the stomach hurt her as much as it would anyone else, and she really wanted to crawl off into a corner and die. He touched a hand to her back, holding her for a long moment until she healed.

"You stained your shirt," she teased weakly, pulling off the blindfold.

"So did you, meshuggenah."

"Hey, if I'm crazy, what does that make you?" she demanded with a grin as they turned back to their audience. "Thank you, thank you, don't throw flowers, just money." She had to do something to relive the tension, it was all she could think of. Loss of blood tended to do that to the thought processes.

Yafit was staring at her with a terrified expression, one hand instinctively pressed to her belly. Joe watched with casual, though concerned, silence. Michal's knuckles, pressed to her lips, were white with worry and tension. Jonathan was little better, though they were both handling this incredibly well. "Nimi? Shiri? Atem biseder?" he finally asked.

Nimi nodded shakily. "Just need to wash my clothes out. 'Fit? You okay? Mom?"

Yafit and Michal nodded shakily and declared that they were fine. Wyn and Nimi awkwardly went in to get changed and wash off, and Yafit turned to Joe. "How can you watch that so calmly? Do you get used to seeing something like that?"

He shook his head. "The healing? After thirty years, yeah. You don't get used to watching the fights, though. Not the real fights."

Yafit shook her head. "I'm just glad Nimi isn't a part of that, I wouldn't be able to sleep nights."

"I won't be able to sleep nights," Michal declared. "She's my little girl, I don't want her doing that to survive."

"Joe?" Yafit looked at him worriedly. "There's no chance my baby might be an Immortal, is there?"

"No, Immortals are just sort of found as infants, I've never heard of one who had biological parents."

Yafit looked confused but relieved. Just then Nimi and Wyn walked out in fresh clean clothes. Nimi was in khaki shorts and a shirt that advertised Maccabee beer. Wyn was barefoot and had on a shirt with tire tracks over the outline of a dog and the caption Lassie didn't come home over a pair of denim cutoffs cut as high as they could be. Joe wondered with silent but wry amusement where the hell she had managed to hide her katana in an outfit like that.

"All better now?" he inquired, partly to put the family at ease.

"Mostly," Wyn replied, "I'm surprised I didn't die from that stunt, I usually do." She laughed. "That’ll teach me to show off."

Nimi grinned and kissed her forehead absently. "If you promise not to pull stunts like that again, you have a sparring partner while you're here."

Wyn knelt where her parents were sitting. "I'm sorry if I scared you, I just had to show you I can take care of myself."

Jonathan nodded. "Okay, I'm convinced." Michal seemed worried, but willing to let it go for now. After that, the visit was a friendly one, where the family got to know Joe and reacquainted themselves with Wyn, learning to accept her for who she now was.

Days later, Joe and Wyn were exploring the sights and smells of Jerusalem, which ranged from the mystical experience of putting a hand on the warm and tingling stones of the Western Wall to wrinkling their noses against the peculiar stench that could only be found in a Jerusalem alley.

They barely made it to the Tayelet in time to meet Connor, who had come up to see them for the week. The Tayelet was a long and scenic promenade made of the same white-pink stone that made up the rest of Jerusalem, which turned a fiery golden rose at sunset. Wyn stiffened as her sight abruptly first swam and then left her completely, gripping Joe's hand to signal her handicap and her need to know if the Immortal approaching was the one they sought.

Connor MacLeod was dressed in loose white robes that looked like a cross between Bedouin gear and a British summer suit. "You must be Miss Levin and Mr. Dawson," he greeted them in an accent that sounded more Spanish than Scottish, "I'm Connor. Duncan has told me so much about both of you."

"I'm pleased to meet you, Connor, call me Wyn. Do you mind if I make myself a little more comfortable, since you know about my ... problem?"

"Of course," he replied, as she flipped out her walking stick to guide her as they walked to a little shaded alcove with a bench built into the Tayelet. "I have been most curious to meet both of you."

"I've wanted to meet you too," Joe offered, "I've seen your file, it's very impressive."

"It makes me feel like a specimen," Connor joked, "to think that I have a file somewhere recording everything I say and do. I always liked my privacy." He turned to Wyn, who was looking straight ahead, but turned to orient on his voice when he spoke her name. "Wyn, we can go practice now if you like; I don't have to be anywhere."

"Thank you so much for this," she returned with a smile, "I know this must be a major hassle for you, you have no idea how grateful I am."

"Hey, it's fine," he replied, "I don't know the area too well, where can we go where we won't be seen?"

Wyn thought for a moment. "There's a grove of trees right here, but I don't want to risk cutting into them, they have enough problems growing this close to the border. That leaves two places. One's an underground archaeological site, the other is a half-built apartment complex. It's Saturday, no one will be working at either. The underground one is more out of the way, but there's some natural stuff to watch out for, like a deep subterranean spring."

"Let's go then," Connor offered, and took them to where he had a rented car. The three of them drove slowly, describing visual landmarks as they passed so that Wyn could direct them. They ended up underneath the Old City, in a set of rooms lit by subtle electric lights. Originally a rich house in the time of the first temple, their arena was now part of a set of tours around the Old City. Wyn took a moment to draw a mental map of the room by looking for the walls and obstructions with her fingers, then she drew her katana and collapsed her walking stick.

At first they sparred, testing each other and learning all they could about the other's techniques and weaknesses. Then Connor began showing her several moves, using his voice, Dawson's guiding hand on Wyn's katana and his own example to make it clear what he expected of her. Adam Pierson and Duncan had taught her well, she learned quickly and had a good base of skills for him to work with.

During the day, Joe and Wyn explored Jerusalem and the surrounding areas. Connor and Wyn could not practice during the day, because of the nature of their arena. They had to be very careful, practicing at night after the tours had all gone, but the space was still a suitable one. However, more than once someone tripped or overestimated their step and fell into the large pool in the front of the room, which had once been a ritual bath.

Wyn found herself liking Connor, who, like herself, was a survivor who saw life in shades of gray and never let life turn his sense of humor into cynicism, very much unlike both Duncan and Adam in both faults and virtues. Joe didn't mind him either, he was a very different man in real life than Joe had expected from reading the chronicle of this Highland warrior.

Duncan hadn't told Connor much about Wyn, it turned out when Connor questioned her that his kinsman had not even told her of the Game, so despondent was he over the loss of his last student, whom Connor had met only once. It had taken months of convincing and the fact that she took a head before Duncan decided to take the chance and train her.

Connor knew his kinsman was prone to angst and self-recrimination, but this was going too far. Jeopardizing the life of a new Immortal was unforgivable in Connor's book, he would have to have a long talk with Duncan about Richie one of these days if this kept happening. Duncan wouldn't have such problems if he stopped trying to see everything in black and white, good and bad. If he could accept that neither he nor anyone else was either all good or all bad, he wouldn't be so open to the cycle of madness and regret that always seemed to hit him.

Nevertheless, Connor began on that first day and on those that followed to shape Wyn's style and her senses. He taught her things that Ramirez had taught him, but which he had been unable to make clear to Duncan: how to sense the Quickening both in Immortals and in all life, to sense it changing as their movements and thoughts changed. This must guide her as much as her other senses in a fight.

At first she found this more than a little difficult to understand, so he had her match his movements, side by side. At first she had to listen to his movements and breath, always a moment behind him, out of synch. But slowly this other sense developed, pulsing in her throat, in her belly, in her mind, in her womb, until her motions were guided by the slightest shifting of his Quickening, perfectly matched and identical. Joe had to admit that it was impressive to watch. Now that Wyn did not have to rely on physical or auditory cues as much, her reactions were quicker and more confident. She swung, dove and rolled, trusting her senses and her techniques.

Though this was the most vital thing Connor taught her, it was not the only thing. He showed her techniques for disarming an opponent or striking the side of an overly aggressive one. He showed her how to fight without fearing small wounds (though his idea of small was relative and ruined more than one favorite shirt.). Though Wyn had done this once in the battle with Nimi, it took her a long time to trust herself and her teacher enough to take that risk, since she knew with Nimi that neither of them would really hurt the other, but with Connor there was no such assurance.

Connor understood the fear he thought Adam Pierson must have felt, training a student who couldn't see to stop their blade in time, though Wyn had developed her entire technique around disarming her opponent first, then going for the throat, which meant her blade never went near him, at first. But although it meant a risk to his own safety, Connor knew he had to teach her not to be so consistent. Luckily, this intersected well with her growing ability to sense the Quickening, so she was less of a danger to him, though there were many times when he thought her blade was not going to stop.

Joe took a nap at noon one day, waking up suddenly, startled by a dream he could no longer remember. The shades were down to darken the room, a massive plastic contraption with little pinholes for light to come through. When the shade was out of the way it was a door to the little balcony, or mirpeset, that every New City apartment and even a few Old City ones like Nimi's had for hanging laundry and sitting down to talk. Nimi and Wyn were sitting out on the balcony talking, and Joe decided to listen in, since there was no way they would know he was awake.

"...think about it." Wyn was saying, "But my project with the university is over and I can't get a grant for a new research project. Not in Canada, anyway. Besides, I'm not so sure I want to do it for a while, I want a change of pace."

"What about switching back to archaeology?" Nimi asked her. "You loved working on the Roman and Greek digs here, or you could do work in Europe."

"Yeah, all the authentic Jewish sites here get tied up in government procedure because if they find even one dead body they make a stink about it probably being a graveyard and not disturbing the deceased. You're right, I always did like the sites here, but I can't do it. I can't make Joe leave the bar, it's his dream. And he needs to be with Adam and Duncan, they're his friends. I can't ask him to leave them either. But I just don't know what to do with myself. I need a job, I need something I care about, something I really want to be doing. I'll go insane if I don't."

Joe swallowed hard. Was Wyn saying he was a burden to her? That he was holding her back from what she wanted to do? He didn't want to think about it, but it clawed his heart and stomach with an icy, sickening grip.

"You don't know how envious of you I am, Nimi," she declared, "You're married, you have a job you love and are good at and a baby on the way. I'd kill for any one of those things."

"What about teaching?" Nimi asked. "You could be around kids all day, and you could get a job in Vancouver easily with a teaching degree."

"Go back to school again? Nimi, come on, I'm not going to school again! I've barely had a year out of university, for crying out loud, I don't want to go back so soon!"

"Fine then, don't," Nimi commented casually. "But it would solve two problems, having kids and letting Joe stay with the bar and his friends."

"Nimi, I just feel..." she trailed off, frustrated. "I don't know."

"It's all right," Nimi soothed. "Life's not always easy. But you don't have many more options. You've already got two university degrees, you can easily throw in a few courses for your teaching license and spend a year as a substitute, and you'll be all set."

"I don't know," Wyn repeated, but she sounded less against it than before. "Nimi, next time I'm up here I want to go rappelling again with you." she decided changing the subject. "I miss that."

"So do I," he said.

Later that evening, when Connor and Wyn were both cooling down after two hours of an almost fanatic workout, Joe went up to her and asked, "Wyn? Are you happy with me?"

"Of course I am, Joe." she replied, "Do you think I would have dragged you all the way to Israel to meet my family if I wasn't happy with you?"

Joe looked at her, fighting back his reactions. "Wyn, if you give up everything you want for me, you're going to end up hating me." He hated doing this with Connor almost in earshot, he hated this more than anything, but he couldn't wait for privacy, he needed to know now.

Wyn froze, surprise and concern on her face, guessing with shame that he had overheard her conversation with her brother, or the tail-end of it anyway. If he had heard the first hour of it he wouldn't even think of questioning her. "Joe, I love you. I want you to be happy, I would never ask you to give up the bar or Duncan or Adam. I would never ask you to choose between me or them. I'm just trying to figure out right now what I want to do, and that's a lot more flexible then you seem to think. I've been an anthropologist, I've done archaeology, I had an offer to join the Mossad, I've worked on my parents' kibbutz both in the fields and as a day care worker in the nursery school. You're not cheating me of anything, unless you cheat me by pushing me away 'for my own good'." She could hear Connor waiting for her. She leaned over and kissed Joe's tearstained face passionately for a long moment, holding his face in her hands. Then she stood, put up her sword and began sparring again.

And so it was that two days later, after awkward farewells to her parents, brother, sister-in-law and teacher, Wyn returned home with Joe to Vancouver. They sat down at the bar and Wyn sighed heavily as Joe poured her a ginger ale out of habit. "I feel like a stranger," she commented, looking around, "Like I'm not myself anymore. It was like they didn't know me, like they had to get to know me again. But they worked through it, I'm really amazed."

"They're your family, of course they worked through it." Joe reassured her. "They’re good people. They’d probably make good in-laws, too."

"Come on, quit kidding around," she said.

Joe grinned. "Who’s kidding? I can see us with a bunch of little kids running around our ankles, can't you?"

"One small problem with that," she reminded him.

He rolled his eyes. "So we'll adopt." He looked at her worriedly. "If you don't want to..."

"Joe, not this again! I told you, there's no better way I could possibly think to spend these next few years -- or decades or whatever -- than with you. I love you."

Joe clasped her hands in his and asked her, "Marry me? I'd get down on one knee, but..." he trailed off in a mixture of humor and bitterness.

"Joe, are you sure? It's not going to be easy for either of us, we'll be at each other's throats!"

"I'm sure," he replied steadily.

Wyn's fingers tightened gently around his and she smiled into his eyes. "Then I'm sure too, for however long we both have left."

"What are you going to do, then? I know you don't want to stay at home and play June Cleaver, and I don't want to hold you back."

"I was actually thinking about something Nimi suggested, I think I might just get my teaching license and teach elementary school. It'll be a bitch and a half taking more courses, and I'd hate to spend time as a substitute teacher, but I always did love kids. And I love you and want to be with you."

Wyn stepped through the door and was about to shrug off her heavy coat when a ball of giggling childish energy flung itself at her and threw its arms around her. "Mommy!"

"Hey sweetie," Wyn picked her daughter up and kissed her. "How was your day?"

"Fine." Siobhan giggled and kissed her mother back.

Joe's voice called out from the back of the apartment, "I was just about to leave for the bar, Wyn."

"Sorry, I know I'm late," Wyn apologized, setting Siobhan down and going in to greet her husband. The years had been good to Joe, though his hair was now pure white, he still moved as sprightly as his injuries allowed. Wyn had not changed much in eight years, which was not surprising, given that she was an Immortal. She kissed Joe in apology. "What's for supper?"

"Siobhan and I already ate, there's leftover spaghetti. I'll talk to you in the morning."

"I hate Mondays, I have after-school activities and I don't get to spend any time with you." Wyn had discovered a liking for teaching children and had earned her teaching license five years ago, and now taught English and social studies in a local public school. Though she loved her work, it made problems between her and Joe since the bar was open in the evenings and school was in session during the day.

"I have to go, I'll see you later." He kissed her good-bye hurriedly, though passionately, and grabbed his coat as he went out.

Wyn grabbed a plate of spaghetti and crushed some garlic over it with a little grated parmesan and olive oil. There was no way she was going to drown perfectly good noodles in ketchup, the way Siobhan did. Her fingers absently brushed the dials on the stove, which had marked ridges to show temperature. Like most objects in the apartment, the stove was labeled in Braille to make sure that when Adam or Duncan came over, Wyn would be able to carry on with whatever she was doing despite temporary blindness. She sat down at the table and told Siobhan to get out her homework and start doing it, looking over her daughter's shoulder to see that she didn't have any problems.

Wyn and Joe had adopted Siobhan after they'd known each other for a year. She'd been a nameless infant from India, and they had raised her as the child they could not have. They'd given her the Hebrew name Shoshana, rose, and with her enormous brown eyes and pretty pixie face, she lit up any room she entered.

After she ate, Wyn put her dishes in the dishwasher and took Siobhan up to bed. After she told her daughter a story, she turned on the night light and sat there for a moment, watching with a smile as her daughter tried vainly to fight off sleep. Only when Siobhan's breathing became deep and even did Wyn reluctantly stand and leave.

Wyn's next stop was the bedroom, where she flipped on the computer and called up the coded file that marked Joe's diary. Years ago he had resigned the Watchers only to reclaim his position as a favor to Mac. But when he had met Wyn, he had switched to being her Watcher, since he couldn't be there for both of them, and of the two, his wife needed more watching. They never spoke of the fact that Joe recorded everything that went on in her life -- as well as Adam's and Duncan's -- for future generations of Watchers, but as a concession they also never spoke of the fact that Wyn read everything Joe wrote about her. Today's entry was mostly about Adam, though there were some references to her. She read it carefully, then shut down the computer and got out papers to grade.

Absently, she glanced at the table on her side of the bed, which had pictures of Methos, Duncan, Joe, Siobhan, and Connor. The pictures of the Immortals didn't mean much to her. She never saw them when they were together, only through pictures, second-hand. With that thought, she went back to the papers.

It was hours later when Joe finally came home and took off his legs with a sigh of relief. "How was your day?" she asked with a kiss.

"Fine. Adam says hi. He may stop by tomorrow for dinner, he's at loose ends with Duncan in Paris."

"That's fine, I'll cook." They each undressed with the casual, matter-of-fact attitude that comes to those who live together for years, but when they touched it was clear that marriage had spoiled none of their ardor and devotion to each other. Afterwards, they lay curled in each other's embrace. Wyn could feel Joe's fingers trace the thin band of carved gold that adorned her left hand. "I love you," she whispered, feeling him chuckle into her hair.

In the morning, they had a hurried breakfast together and Wyn drove Siobhan to school. As she entered the building, she felt a surge of vertigo as her vision cut out. She knelt a moment and kissed Siobhan. "Run along to class, honey, I have to talk to someone." As Siobhan left, she felt a hand on her shoulder.

"I'm Gilbert Addison," a voice introduced itself.

"Wyn Dawson. We don't have to fight."

"It's what we do," he insisted, "you can't give up the Game. No one can."

"This is a school," she reminded him, "Very public."

"I know. I'm going to be a substitute here for the next few months, while Mrs. Engles is on maternity leave. What do you teach?"

"English and social studies," she replied. If she could keep him talking, she'd get a good idea of where he was, so she could orient on his voice and look like she was able to see him. It was a useful trick, and generally worked. "I have to get to class." She took a breath and made a mental map of the hallway, using the wall next to her to ensure she walked in a straight line and did not betray her handicap.

"There can be only one," he murmured after her, pitching his voice so only she could hear. "I'll be waiting." Then he turned and walked to his own classroom.

Wyn taught her classes and avoided the faculty room, not wanting to take any more chances than necessary. Her stomach was tight with tension, her muscles ready to flinch at the slightest hint of trouble. She ended her last period a little early and grabbed Siobhan to go home, hoping that way she could avoid meeting Gilbert Addison again, at least for today.

Wyn's hands were white on the steering wheel as she tore out of the parking lot.

"Mommy, what's wrong?" Siobhan asked worriedly. Joe and Wyn hadn't yet told their daughter about Immortals or Watchers, wanting to wait until the girl was old enough to understand and keep a secret. Wyn wasn't about to break that pattern now, Siobhan was precocious, but not that mature.

"Nothing, sweetie, Mommy just has a headache." When they got home, Wyn started chopping mushrooms for the tuna casserole she had planned for that night while Siobhan watched cartoons. Joe heard them come in and went to kiss his daughter, who greeted him enthusiastically, then went to look at his wife. "What's bothering you?"

"Nothing," Wyn replied tersely, opening the cabinet violently to take out the pasta.

Joe sighed heavily. "Not when Siobhan's here?" He kept his voice low.

"I'd like to keep her ignorant of some of my dealings."

Joe growled. "An Immortal? Did you fight?"

"Not yet, but I'm going to have to," she explained. "He works at the school. I was a wreck today, even Siobhan picked up on it. I refuse to live like this."

"Who was it?" Joe demanded.

"Gilbert Addison," she said.

Joe sucked in his breath sharply. "Wyn, you can't take him! You--" he stopped when Siobhan turned around from her cartoons to see what was the matter. "You're not good enough, he's a master swordsman." he finished in a fierce whisper.

"I don't have a choice," she declared, "He's not going to leave me alone, and the longer I wait, the better chance he has of realizing I'm -- you know." She didn't say the word 'blind,' even Siobhan didn't know about her mother's handicap. All she knew was that Mommy used a little walking stick sometimes, and that she had to keep her toys off the floor, especially when her godfathers -- Adam and Duncan -- came over.

Joe took her by the hand. They hurried out of the apartment and used the key to get onto the roof. Then he yelled at her. "Are you trying to get yourself killed? How do you think Siobhan's going to like losing her mother, huh? Why can't you just let Methos take him?"

"I don't need you getting on my case about this," Wyn yelled back just as fiercely, "I can fight my own damn battles, Joe, I don't need Methos -- or you! -- standing over me like a mother hen! I'm not a child!"

"You sure are acting like one! What the hell are you trying to prove? You are blind Wyn, no matter how good you are, you still can't see anything during a fight! I am not going to lose you because you have something to prove!"

"I'm not trying to prove anything!" she hollered back, eyes blazing with fury as the wind whipped her thick brown hair over her shoulder and tore at her shivering body. She should have grabbed a coat, so should Joe, but she was not about to go back inside. "Why can't you just accept that I can handle myself? Are you afraid that if I'm independent, I won't love you any more? God, Joe, you and Siobhan are the two people I love most in the world, I would never leave you! Why can't you see that?"

"It's not about that," Joe cried out in frustration, "I just don't want you to die, you stupid war-hungry Sabra! Why can't you just give up the Game and live with me and Siobhan for twenty years or so, so I don't have to worry so much about you?"

"And live on holy ground for twenty years, afraid to move or breathe? That's not a life, that's a prison sentence!" she shot back. "Joe, you watch me every second of the day when you don't have one of your guys tailing me, I don't have to answer to you! What the hell are you going to do, fight my battles for me?"

"I'm your husband," he answered quietly, "I think that gives me some vote in whether or not you decide to jeopardize your life."

That silenced Wyn, and the two of them held each other briefly. Then Wyn pulled away. "It's freezing out here, let's go back inside."

That night Adam came over for dinner, laughing when Siobhan met him at the door, crashed into his gangly frame with a hug and demanded a piggy back ride. The past eight years had been good to him, he smiled and laughed a lot more now. He had let a few rare people through his shell, despite the knowledge that he would probably outlive them all.

He picked Siobhan up and put her on his back, careful not to bang her head on the ceiling, then went to greet Joe. "I believe this belongs to you?" he commented with a wry smile, looking up at the munchkin clinging tightly to his neck.

"Thought you'd return her to the rightful owners?" Joe replied.

"No, I thought I'd run off with this lovely maiden to Bangladesh or some such place." He looked up at Siobhan. "What do you say? Want to travel the world together? See the seven wonders of the world?"

Siobhan giggled. "Daddy? Can I go with uncle Adam?"

"Hm, only if you promise to brush your teeth every morning when you're in Bangladesh."

"I promise."

"And give me a kiss."

Agreeable to the situation, Siobhan bent over to plant a kiss on her father's forehead.

"Dinner's ready, if you'd all like to come in," Wyn announced, "Good to have you here, Adam, pull up a chair."

Adam could tell there was something wrong. Wyn was normally a little tense when around Immortals, since her sight cut out until they left. But tonight Joe was as jumpy as she was, and the two of them seemed to be avoiding each other. Siobhan didn't notice, she was telling Adam and her parents all about the school play that was coming up, in which she would get to play the planet Venus.

The food was good, though Joe had to leave in the middle of dinner to go to the bar. Adam and Wyn sat and talked while Siobhan went to her room to do her homework, with the promise that uncle Adam would tell her a bedtime story.

Adam looked quietly at Wyn, who was eating her food and making conversation that, though pleasant, obviously had nothing to do with what was on her mind. Finally Adam confronted her. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"No."

"Should I ask Joe about it?"

That got her. "Adam, you trained me, you were my first teacher. Do you think I'm good enough to fight and win?"

From the way she phrased the question, Adam knew he had to watch out, or he'd be shoved to one side or the other in a fight between Wyn and Joe he knew nothing about. "You fight marvelously for a blind person. Why?"

She frowned, but continued. "There's an Immortal, he wants to fight and I can't avoid him. Joe thinks I should scurry away to holy ground with my tail between my legs."

"Very sensible man. Nothing like cowardice to keep you alive." He saw her screw up her face in frustration.

"Damn it, I don't want to live my life in hiding! That's not who I am, that's not what I do!"

"I know," he retorted dryly, "that's why I'm the oldest living Immortal and you and Duncan have less favorable survival rates." He paused a moment. "Wyn, you lied when you and Joe adopted Siobhan. They ask for your medical history to make sure the child will have parents all the way to adulthood. That should have clued you in that it's unfair to raise a child when you're going off trying to prove you are better than everyone else with a sword. It's selfish, and I never thought of you as selfish. That's more my department."

Wyn shook her head. "Adam, I don't want to put my life on hold for twenty years and live on holy ground, not even for Siobhan. I need to do things, I can't live my life sitting in a stupid monastery watching the world, go by! I'll go insane!"

Adam nodded. Typical. Wyn only saw two choices when it came to her blindness: cower in the corner and pray nothing hit her, which was out of the question; or charge blindly into the teeth of the storm. He realized she wasn't able to see his face, and so tried to vocalize some of what he felt. "Wyn? I've seen Joe lose women he loved before. It isn't pretty. I don't want to see what happens when he loses the woman he adores more than anything. I'm entrusting you with his life. Do what you want, but I'll be very angry with you if you die and hurt him or Siobhan. I'll have to come drag you back from the underworld and spank you or something." He saw her grin dubiously at that. "I'm going to go tell Siobhan a story, she's probably almost done with her homework."

"Adam?" Wyn asked, tugging at his arm as he passed her.

"What?"

"I won't let you down, I promise."

The next few days were tense between Wyn and Joe, with many fights and crying sessions. Joe left the bar in his assistant's capable hands and spent his days carefully shadowing Wyn from a distance. She usually spotted the extra surveillance and yelled at him about it late at night. Siobhan didn't understand much of what was going on, but she was upset and frightened at the tension in the house.

Finally Wyn got up the courage to go to classroom 205 and wait for Gilbert to notice her. When she heard the door open, she muttered, "there is a park about twenty minutes from here. Kelsey park. Meet me at the traffic underpass there at 9:00 tonight, if you're so determined to fight."

"9:00, Kelsey park," he repeated. "I'll be there."

Wyn strode across the parking lot to the bushes where Joe was staked out and handed Siobhan to him. "You can drive her home today, I have to run the writer's workshop." Normally she said "I love you" instead of good-bye. Today she said neither, going back into the school with a brisk walk born of tension, leaving Joe to explain to his daughter what he was doing hiding in the bushes.

Instead of taking her home and making dinner, Joe took her over to Methos's house and left hurriedly, returning to the school. Upon his arrival, Joe was informed that his wife had left earlier. Damn, she had given him the slip. He had to find her before anything happened to her. He flipped open his cell phone and called Gilbert Addison's Watcher, Matthew. "Matt, I need a favor. There's something going down between Wyn and Gil tonight, I can't find her. Can you let me tag along with you?"

"Currently about a block behind you," Matt replied, "get into the car and I'll tail him."

The two Watchers waited outside Gilbert's apartment for hours before he finally emerged and went to his car. Then they followed at a discreet distance, making sure he didn't see. Following him in the park was the hardest part, as Gilbert was looking around, and there was not much cover for two men, especially when one of them could not move fast or crouch. They ended up by the cement underpass, where Wyn waited. "You're early," she told Addison. Even from where he crouched, Joe could see how white her knuckles were on her sword.

She'd chosen a good location, from what Joe could see. No one ever walked by here at night, and there were no lights in this part of the park, despite numerous complaints to the city officials. Addison wouldn't be able to see well, which tipped the odds ever so slightly. Every edge counted.

They drew their swords and began circling each other. The fight was first a series of feints as each tried to get the other's measure. Then Gilbert attacked, and Wyn parried swiftly, and the battle began in earnest. Joe tried to judge Wyn's chances. Her senses would have to work at a feverish pace, turn every subtlety of sensory information into data faster than Gilbert could complete any move he made. The difficulty was that Gilbert was wearing sneakers and was in excellent shape, neither his breath nor his footsteps were as apparent as she would have liked. At least it was level ground and familiar territory. She knew where the curving walls were, so she didn't bump her head. But finally Gilbert executed a swift series of moves which knocked her to the ground and left a light line of fire at her throat.

Gilbert was about to raise his sword for the final swing when Joe cried out in desperation, "If you take her head, I swear I'll shoot you and take yours." His voice was choked with tears.

"Dawson, no!" Matt protested beside him, "Joe, your oath's shot to hell as it is, don't you dare!"

"Joe, stay out of this," Wyn agreed tightly. Joe knew she wouldn't beg; she was beaten and beaten fairly. She would not give her killer the satisfaction and disgust of hearing her beg.

"And what is she to you?" Gilbert inquired contemptuously.

"She's my wife," Joe pleaded, "And I swear I'll kill you before I lose her."

"Joe Dawson," Matt added levelly as he cocked his own gun at Joe's head, "You do and I'll kill you for treason. Watchers don't kill Immortals."

"Go to hell, Matt," Joe shot back, "She's my wife, I'm not going to lose her."

Gilbert took one look at the legless man with the gun and decided he was no threat at all. Wyn yelled out, "Joe, I love you," as the blade came down and the world exploded.

Joe shot five bullets into Gilbert Addison even as he lunged forward to grab Wyn's blade. The Quickening of his wife glittered around them both. Joe sliced though Gilbert's throat while the Immortal stood helpless and shuddering. The double Quickening surged into the air, searching for a host. Joe could feel Wyn's spirit in that unholy fire, and sobs wracked his body as the cobalt inferno slowly faded.

Matt stood there, still holding his gun, for a long moment. Then he shook his head. "No, that's enough death for one night. I can't kill you." He put his gun in his trousers again and gently took Joe's hand. "We have to get out of here," he said.

Joe swallowed hard. "I know." He took Wyn's sword and scabbard, leaving everything else for the police to find. Everything else he could reclaim later, when they called him to identify the body. He swallowed hard, fighting revulsion and grief. "Matt, I need you to pick up her head, I can't kneel."

Swallowing hard, Matt did so, pulling up the mass of bloodstained hair that had once shimmered about her shoulders. Joe kissed the cold lips reverently, tears still streaming down his face. "I love you too," he whispered. Then he gently lowered the head to the ground. He didn't feel Matt's hand on his shoulder, gently guiding him back to the car. He would never feel anything again but the dark widening maw that swallowed his soul.

Under Joe's direction, Matt dropped him off at Adam's apartment. Adam opened the door. "Joe? What's wrong?" Matt took that moment to quietly excuse himself, obviously embarrassed about this blatant breaking of his oath.

Joe fell into Adam's arms and sobbed silently, trying to purge the grief from his broken heart. Adam held him tightly. "Who was it?" he guessed when Joe's weeping had slowed a little. "Tell me and I'll take his head," he demanded.

"I already did," Joe replied woodenly, sitting down heavily on the couch when Adam guided him there. "Adam, I can't do this."

Adam wrapped an arm around Joe's shoulder. Wyn was the first student he had taken in a long time, he still felt very close to her. Because of her blindness, they had been forced to trust each other deeply. He felt a vicious stab of grief akin to what he had felt at the deaths of Silas, Caspian and Kronos, and for a moment he wept brokenly as well, the two men taking what little comfort there was to give from each other. "We need to call her family, and Duncan's in Paris; they'll want to know too."

Joe nodded wearily. "I need a minute, I can't handle that yet." He wanted to crawl into a hole and die.

Finally Joe reached for the phone and dialed Jerusalem. "May?" he asked tightly, "Is your mommy or daddy still there?" He could hear her frightened voice on the other end of the line, and wondered what was wrong. "Are you all right?"

"The house exploded," little Jmaine said in a frightened voice. "Daddy? It's uncle Joe."

There was a pause, and then Nimi's terse voice answered, "Joe? What the hell just happened?"

"Someone killed Wyn. An Immortal named Gilbert Addison. I killed him. What happened on your end?"

There was a pause. "Joe, I've never seen a Quickening, but is it a massive explosion of blue energy and lighting that feels like an orgasm in an electric chair?"

Joe swallowed hard. "Yes." Somehow he wasn't surprised that with no Immortal host available, the Quickening had gone to Wyn's twin brother.

"That explains what happened over here, then. It's pretty easy to tell the neighbors and insurance that it was a bomb. I didn't want to believe it, but it couldn't have been anything else. Jesus, Joe, what the hell are we going to do?"

"I'm going to--" Joe broke down again for a moment. "I'm sorry," he finally managed. "There'll be a memorial service here, but I think she would have wanted to be buried in Israel. I need to call everyone, I'll talk to you again with more details."

"Joe, take care of yourself." Nimi pleaded, his voice cracked with grief over his sister's death. Joe hung up.

The call to Wyn's parents was worse, Michal gave a scream of grief when he told her and began keening as her husband tried in vain to comfort her, his own voice choked with tears. They exchanged tense words and then hung up.

It was somehow less hard to talk to his niece and ask her to drive up for the service. Joe's relationship with his own family had grown more distant over the years, especially since James Horton's death. Wyn was very close to her family by comparison, and they had welcomed Joe in whole-heartedly after a rocky beginning. Joe was used to the old friction with his own family, but had few defenses against the pain of his in-laws.

Then Joe dialed the number of the hotel in Paris and pressed the number for the room where Duncan was staying, bracing himself. He had thought nothing could be as bad as watching Wyn die, but it was almost worse to have to tell all her closest friends the news. Duncan's sleep-blurred voice answered. It was only three in the morning there. It had been seven AM in Israel, which was how he had caught Wyn's family at home.

"Hello?"

"Duncan, Wyn's..." he forced the words past his throat. "She's dead."

"Joe?" his voice turned sharp.

"There was an Immortal. Gilbert Addison. I told her not to fight, and then I...I begged him not to kill her." He broke down crying again.

"Are you alone? Where's Siobhan? Is the bastard still out there?" The words were practically on top of each other.

"I'm with Adam, Siobhan's asleep. I haven't told her yet. The Immortal's dead." Joe was not looking forward to explaining to his little girl what had happened to her Mommy. "Duncan, promise me you won't talk about this with her? I don't want her to know how her mother died."

"She's bound to ask." said Duncan.

"When she grows up I'll tell her Wyn was assaulted in the park. I'm through with this, damn the stupid Gathering and my oath!" He lowered his voice when he heard a sleepy murmur from the bedroom where Siobhan slept.

"Joe, you can't mean that. You're upset." He sounded lost, defeated. "We'll talk when I get home. I'll take the next flight out."

"I'll see you then." He hung up abruptly. He realized he was still clutching Wyn's katana, with its cobalt and gold tracing on the scabbard.

Adam's hands were surprisingly gentle on his friend's back, it was rare for Methos to show compassion or grief. "You're staying here tonight," he ordered. "You're not going through this alone."

Joe nodded mutely. Aside from the little trundle bed Siobhan occupied, there was only one large double bed, but neither of them was in the mood for modesty, they both needed comfort. Joe curled onto Methos's shoulder and felt the grief swallow him whole.

In the morning, Joe went quietly into Siobhan's room and touched her gently to wake her up. "Siobhan? Sweetie?"

Siobhan looked up, sleepy and confused, not remembering where she was. "Daddy? Where's mommy?"

"Mommy's..." he paused. Gone? Passed away? "Mommy's dead. She died last night."

Siobhan looked at him, confused. "Oh." He was pretty sure she had no idea what death was, he would wait for it to sink in with her.

"You don't have to go to school for a few days," he informed her, and saw her eyes light up. "Siobhan, I have to go out. Will you be good for uncle Adam?"

"Where are you going?" Adam asked, coming up behind him.

"I have to go back to the apartment and listen to the machine. The police should have called by now, I have to pretend I don't know until I hear the message. Then I have to go down to the coroner's office to identify..." he didn't want to say more in front of Siobhan.

"I'm not letting you go alone, Joe," Adam replied.

"You have to watch Siobhan, I'm not taking her down there. If you want to help me you can start making the funeral arrangements."

Adam looked conflicted, but agreed. "All right. Should I call the school as well?"

"Please." Joe got his coat and cane and went out the door.

The weather was cold and gray, and Joe drove to the hospital with a heavy heart. At least he got to use handicap parking and didn't have to search long for a spot. He asked at the desk for the morgue, walked down chilly corridors that smelled of illness to the room of metal drawers.

The coroner looked up as he walked in. "Are you here to identify someone?"

"I got a call that my wife might be here."

The coroner nodded. "Caucasian female, last night? It's a little messy." He pulled open one of the drawers and pulled back a sheet.

Joe swallowed hard, looking down at the head and body lying there. "That's her."

"I'm sorry sir, but for the record you'll have to say her name, to confirm."

"Gwyneth Levin Dawson." Joe dutifully uttered. "Please, can I take some of her personal belongings, or are they needed as evidence?"

"Depends on what you want." the coroner replied quietly.

"Her wedding ring and the necklace she was wearing." Joe managed.

"I don't see why not," the coroner replied, reaching into a bag with gloved hands and taking out the two items. The carved gold band and the kabbalistic filigree hand winked sadly in his palm.

"How soon can you release the body?" he asked, "I need to make funeral plans."

"I've made all the examinations I have to," the coroner informed him. "I checked for drugs and semen, and for any marks of assault, et cetera. Nothing there, just the head."

Joe nodded. "Thank you," He was finding it very hard to talk.

The coroner handed him a form to sign and patted his back. "Do you want a minute alone?"

"No, I have to get home. My daughter needs me." He left as hurriedly as his legs would allow. He wasn't looking forward to dealing with the police later, either. He peeled out of the parking lot and went back to Adam's apartment.

Duncan was already there. He expressed his sympathies, but Joe really didn't hear him. He smiled bravely for Siobhan and took her in his arms. "Are you doing all right?" he asked. She nodded, seeming distracted. "What needs to be done?" he asked the others.

They sat down to figure out who was coming from overseas and where they could stay. Duncan would take Connor and his son, so that the clansmen could lean on each other. Wyn's childhood friends would stay with Anne Lindsay and her daughter Mary, who were more than happy to help. And of course Wyn's family would stay with Joe and Siobhan, though the apartment would be cramped.

Joe and Duncan would pick people up at the airport the next day. Adam would make arrangements with the funeral home, and would take care of plans for the coffin to be shipped back to Israel for burial after the service.

Joe drove back to the apartment with Siobhan and spent the next few hours cleaning up and setting up beds. Then the police came to talk. One officer asked him questions, writing down his answers, while another took Siobhan into the next room and talked to her. Joe could guess that Siobhan was asked whether mommy and daddy fought a lot, or whether daddy hit mommy sometimes, etc. At this point even he was a suspect in the double murder, though he had only committed half of it. Joe was glad his gun was still concealed in his jacket, he didn't want to deal with the questions that would arise when it was found that the five bullets in Gilbert Addison's body matched the one in the chamber.

After three hours the police finally left, satisfied with Joe's alibi that he and Siobhan had gone to Adam Pierson's house for dinner on the night in question and had stayed late for talk and drinks. Joe was very glad he had taken time earlier to coach Siobhan on what to say.

They ordered pizza for dinner. Siobhan didn't understand what was going on, but had the sense to realize that it was best not to ask questions about where mommy was and why daddy seemed so tired. But she insisted on being put to bed properly, with a lullaby. He got out his guitar and fingered it gently, tuning it for a moment. Then he began a blues-y love song Siobhan adored, watching her eyes light up a little and her body relax. She was a good kid, and was holding up pretty well, under the circumstances. Her eyes closed as the song neared its end and Joe kissed her good-night and went to his own bedroom. He was alone with his thoughts for the first time since Wyn had died.

Joe stared down at the ring and necklace in his palm. Though the necklace was a kabbalistic symbol of protection, it had done Wyn little good. Joe slid the ring onto it and clasped it about his neck, sliding it under his shirt. He took off his legs and his jacket, feeling the gun as he did so. He took it out and looked at it. It was the same gun that had shot Horton and Duncan. The thought of James made him even more tired and sad. The worn grip fit perfectly in his hand.

Joe could remember the first time Wyn kissed him, the warm hesitation in her lips. The memory made him close his eyes. Then he recalled their wedding day. It had been a strange affair, with both a rabbi and a priest presiding, but somehow it had worked out. Wyn had been a vision of lace and cream. The audience had been eclectic: a mixture of family and friends that included both Immortals and Watchers. The latter group had been torn between pretense that this wasn't happening, and intense curiosity for the once-in-a-millennium event. Joe had been curious to see which of his long time colleagues had been there for that blatant oath-breaking.

They had made their own vows so that all might meet on common ground in the strange but beautiful affair. "I, Joseph Dawson, swear to love and cherish Wyn for as long as we both shall live, forsaking all others." Joe whispered, as the words came back in a rush. "And for the rest of our lives I swear that we are one person with one soul, and that this oath comes before all others." Joe's hands had trembled as he slipped the ring onto her finger with the Hebrew words of consecration on his lips.

And I, Gwyneth Levin, swear to love and cherish Joe, forsaking all others for as long as we both shall live. I swear that we are first and always husband and wife, before all other roles we must play, and that even if I outlive him or he outlive me for a thousand years, every day of joy together will be remembered for eternity. The Hebrew words had spilled like liquid crystal from her lips as her long fingers slid his own ring onto his hand and the look in her eyes despite her blindness doused any fear Joe might have had about whether she regretted this.

Alone in the apartment for the first time all day, Joe felt everything crashing around him. This was the first time in eight years that he hadn't had Wyn to hold and talk to. It was devastating to think how much he'd come to rely on her love and presence in such a relatively short time. The decision was almost easy to make, he felt like he was dead already. He raised the gun to his temple and checked the angle. The last thing he needed to do was screw this up and end up a vegetable.

Somewhere there was a bell ringing insistently. It was infuriating. Why couldn't anyone leave him alone so he could die? He put his legs back on with a grimace, not bothering to put his pants back on, and made it to the door, leaving the gun on the bed. He unlocked it and opened it curtly.

It was Duncan, who pushed his way in before Joe could close the door on him. "Can we talk?"

"You're lucky that racket didn't wake Siobhan," Joe accused.

"Siobhan could sleep through a nuclear bomb, Joe," Duncan reminded him, settling down on the sofa. "Joe, I wanted to talk to you."

"Look Mac, I appreciate the gesture, but I really just want to go to sleep right now."

Duncan swallowed hard and said "I wanted to talk about Tessa. You met Tessa, you understand what she meant to me. Little Deer and Debra Campbell are just chronicle notes to you, but Tessa..." Duncan's jaw clenched, and he pressed his fingers to his eyes for a second. "She was incredible. We had more than a decade together and I thought," Duncan choked on his words. Joe was touched, usually the Highlander didn't admit weakness to anyone. "Somehow I forgot that I'd have to say good-bye someday. I didn't think it would be so soon."

Joe tried hard to push Duncan's words away before he lost control. "But you can move on, once you're done with your grief. You had Anne, and there was always Amanda. And when they're gone it will be someone else. Duncan, I'm old and I'm tired and unlike you I can't just put a new name on my driver's license and pretend the years don't matter. I'm too old to start over, and I don't think I want to."

Duncan put his arms around his friend, not looking at him, and asked, "So you want Siobhan to lose her mother and her father in less than two days?"

Joe pulled away and glared at him. "That was a cheap shot."

Duncan shrugged. "Did it work?"

Joe closed his eyes in denial, but it didn't help. "Yes, damn you. Why won't you just leave me alone?"

"Because I've lost too many good friends lately," Duncan replied, "I don't want to add you to the list."

Joe nodded. "I think we both need a drink." Duncan stayed until almost sunrise, only leaving when he had to run errands for the funeral. By then, Joe felt too tired to kill himself. He remembered this from many times before. There was always something that got in the way when you wanted to kill yourself, and then another thing and another until you got past the bad times.

He made it back into the bedroom and picked up his guitar, tuning it again. He had to think of a eulogy for Wyn, and he could not express his grief in words without losing control completely in front of all the people who would be there. The blues had always been his refuge from pain, they were there for him now. He started out with a sharp hard tempo that expressed his rage and grief, but stopped himself. That was for later. That was for himself. It didn't make an appropriate memorial for his wife, not for public listening.

His fingers rested lightly on the strings, barely throbbing against them, and as they twitched idly he felt the stirrings of a melody within him. He played it out and pulled at it gently, finding the words in his soul as though they had been waiting there for him to find them. Sometimes the songs just wrote themselves, and Joe was grateful that this was one of the times. He didn't think he could have managed fighting himself to get the words out.

He looked up suddenly when he smelled smoke. As though on cue, the smoke alarm went off. He hurried into the kitchen and saw Siobhan standing there in her nightgown with her hands clapped over her ears. He hit the button on the alarm and then looked around in anger and irritation.

There were cheerios and spilled milk all over the floor and a chair next to the stove. The burner on the stove was going with a pan on top of it, emitting black smoke and a foul smell, and Joe growled as he snapped off the burner and threw the whole mess in the sink. Then he turned around and saw Siobhan's frightened face. He was tempted to hit her, yell at her, anything. Siobhan knew better, she was in second grade, for chrissake!

Siobhan saw her father's upraised hand and his grimace of fury and tears spilled over her cheeks. Joe looked at his daughter, ashamed, and gathered her up in his arms. "I know," he murmured softly, "I miss mommy too." They stood like that until the door bell started ringing, admitting first a delivery man with plates of deli meats and breads, and then Duncan a few minutes later.

Joe flipping on Sesame Street for Siobhan while Duncan cleaned up the kitchen. "Let me get some clothes on," Joe muttered, going back to the bedroom. Duncan followed and didn't comment at either the gun or the guitar on the bed. Joe was glad, he would have had to strangle Duncan if he had. When Adam showed up, Joe pointed to Siobhan. "See if you can get her cleaned up and dressed, all right?"

Dressed and reasonably respectable, Joe exited the apartment with Duncan. At least the older man was taciturn by nature. Joe didn't feel much like talking. Finally Joe caught sight of his in-laws and waved to them until they saw him.

Michal and Jonathan Levin had aged drastically since Joe had last seen them, he was willing to bet that most of that had occurred over the past two days.

"Yosef," Michal opened her arms.

Joe hugged her tightly but briefly, then shook Jonathan’s waiting hand. "Was the flight all right?"

"Fine," Jonathan responded.

Nimrod, Wyn's twin, looked like hell. There were bags under his eyes and his usually charming face was pale and wan. His curly red hair was unkempt and his clothes were wrinkled. His wife and daughter both looked worried and nervous. "God, Joe," Nimi murmured, hugging him tightly. There was nothing else to say.

Wyn's three Israeli friends, Rami, Ayelet and Itzy were all a little awkward. They knew Joe at least, but not Duncan, and they were a little at a loss for words under the circumstances. They gave their sympathies to Joe, who nodded tightly. Connor greeted Joe calmly, with his son standing mute behind him. It took them less than half an hour to get their luggage, that was one of the benefits of such a large group, a greater percentage of the bags were theirs, they just pulled them off the turnaround as they came through.

Out in the parking lot, they split up so that Nimrod, Yafit, Jmaine, Jonathan and Michal were in Joe's car and the rest squeezed into Duncan's. Both were a tight fit, and several people had to sit on each other's laps.

On the way back to the house, Joe turned to glance at Nimi as he switched lanes. "Are you all right?"

"No, I'm not," Nimi replied tightly to Joe. "She was my twin, I feel awful."

"I meant after we talked."

Nimi shook his head. "It's weird in a way. It's like she's in my head all the time. I don't mind it too much, it's only a little stronger than the bond I usually had with her."

"Nimi, mah atah omer?" Michal asked.

"Wyn's Quickening, Mom. Somehow when she died, I got it. Made a real mess of the house. Joe, does this mean I'm Immortal?"

"No," Joe replied, "Mac would have pulled you aside and said something. Nimi, do you want Wyn's sword? I'm keeping the necklace you gave her, if you don't mind."

"Not at all," Nimi reassured him with a hand on his shoulder as Joe worked the hand controls of the car. "Yes, if you don't want her sword, I'll take it. It's identical to mine. We got them specially made together for our Kendo classes, saved up our paychecks for months for them. It has a lot of good memories for me, despite what just happened."

Michal shook her head. "I never understood this, any of it. Yosef, I brought some things of Wyn's, I thought Siobhan might like to know what her mother was like as a child."

Joe nodded as he came up to his apartment building and pulled into the parking space, while Duncan drove on to the other houses. In the apartment Joe showed them where to put down their bags, and watched them look around and get used to their surroundings. Adam and Siobhan were gone.

Michal handed Joe a photo album. "Open it," she told him, putting a hand on his shoulder and making him sit down on the couch. The first page held a picture of two small and serious looking infants on a knitted pink blanket with their limbs in the air. The next page had a picture of Wyn on her father's lap while her brother ran in circles, a blur before the camera. The pages were filled with pictures of Wyn throughout her life. Towards the back were written pages sealed behind the clingy plastic covers. "Those are the eulogies and other things we all wrote for her, and I'm going to ask her friends here to put theirs in too, along with other memories of Wyn. It's for you and Siobhan, she'll need connections to her mother, and I thought you might like it too."

She touched his hand gently. "You're the one who made me see her for who she was, after she told us she was Immortal. If it wasn't for you, I think we wouldn't have had these last few years with her. I can't forget that."

Joe nodded. "Thank you," he replied, strangled with grief.

A few hours later, after Duncan had returned from his errands, Adam and Siobhan came in, holding drippy ice cream cones. Siobhan ran to her father and hugged him tightly, and for a moment everyone in the apartment was silent as Joe held her and rocked her back and forth. Siobhan finally got a hold of herself, and Joe was sorry to let her go. He almost felt like all these friends and relations, with their good intentions and grief and sympathy were aliens from another planet. He just wanted to shut them all out and make them go away, but he had a responsibility to deal with them. Siobhan was the only one whom he couldn't shut out.

"Shoshana, at biseder?" her grandmother inquired.

"Biseder," Siobhan replied hesitantly. "You want to go play?" she asked May.

"Sure," May replied, "I'm sleeping in your room."

In Siobhan's room, May sat down on the bed. There was a khaki uniform folded neatly on the bed that hadn't been there before, and a ragged old teddy bear. "What's that?" Siobhan asked.

"That was your mom's scout uniform. Gram brought it for you."

Siobhan took off her clothes and tried it on. It was big on her and made her smile when she saluted the mirror. "Mommy's dead."

"I know, she's inside my daddy now." May confirmed, "I heard them talking."

"What do you mean?" Siobhan asked, confused.

"Aunt Wyn had this thing where she couldn't die unless someone cut off her head and then someone did and there was all this lighting. Then daddy started crying and said she was inside him. Our house was all messed up. Daddy said to say it was a bomb."

"Why would someone cut off my mommy's head?" Siobhan argued, looking upset.

May shrugged. "Ani lo yoda'at."

"What do you mean you don't know?" Siobhan demanded, grabbing her cousin angrily, "you're lying!"

"I am not!" May countered, "Daddy said so!"

"Why?" Siobhan yelled, hitting her cousin.

The adults came in when they heard the noise and found both girls scuffling and crying as they fought. "What happened?" Joe demanded.

"She's a liar!" Siobhan yelled.

"She hit me!" May hollered at the same time.

"She said someone cut off mommy's head!" Siobhan protested, "No one would do that!"

Joe turned on Nimi, furious. "I told you I didn't want Siobhan to hear this," he accused tightly. Then he turned to his daughter. "May's right, someone cut off your mother's head. He was a bad man, and he won't hurt anyone ever again. I took care of it."

"And mommy's inside Uncle Nimi?" Siobhan asked.

"What?" Duncan interrupted in surprise.

"I took her Quickening, we think it's something to do with the fact that we're twins." Nimi explained. "Yes, Siobhan, Wyn's a part of me now."

The other adults waited tensely as the young girl considered this. Then she asked, "But why did the bad man kill mommy?"

Joe sighed heavily and picked up his daughter, sitting down on the bed and placing her in his lap. "Mommy was a very special person and the bad man was jealous of something she had. Siobhan, I need you to promise me you won't tell anyone about this, all right? I'll tell you who it's safe to talk to about this, but other people wouldn't understand."

Siobhan scrubbed away tears with the back of her hand. "I'm sorry I hit you," she told May.

"It's all right," May conceded, "you didn't hit that hard."

Matters got worse the next day, when Joe's niece showed up. Lynn was ignorant of much of her uncle's life, and didn't know Wyn that well. She was trying to offer sympathy, but somehow it grated on his raw nerves, since she didn't really know anything about the situation.

The funeral was closed casket by Jewish tradition, but the casket was opened beforehand so the Levins and Joe and Siobhan could say good-bye. Joe knelt by Siobhan and asked her if she wanted to do this. Then he reminded her, "Siobhan, sweetie, this is just mommy's body. What really makes mommy who she is is here," he touched her chest and then his own, and continued, "and that's not going to be in the coffin." Then he nodded to Nimi, who opened the coffin.

Her body was wrapped in plain white sheets, and they Nimi pulled back the veil to reveal her face. The burial society had tucked the head in so it wasn't at all apparent that it wasn't attached. Siobhan touched a hand to her mother's cheek, then drew back a little when she felt how cold and clammy the skin was. Joe touched his daughter to reassure her, then leaned over to smooth back Wyn's hair and plant a last kiss on her cold and unresponsive lips. Then he moved away while Nimi, Michal, Jonathan and Yafit paid their respects as well. Adam and Duncan came up to say good-bye to Wyn before the coffin was closed. The Immortals were silent and grim. Once the coffin was closed, the rest of the mourners came in.

Slowly people filed in, stopping to talk and to offer sympathies. Joe noted who came with an eye used to recording everything that happened around Immortals. Most of the colleagues Wyn had worked with arrived to express their sympathies, as did several of her students. There were people from the hospital where Wyn tutored children, both parents and doctors. Wyn's three friends were there from Israel, along with some friends of hers from her early childhood whom he had never met, but who had decided to come and show their support. Connor was there with his son. Joe's niece. His daughter. Anne Lindsay and her daughter Mary. Amanda, surprisingly enough.

Joe felt a twinge of bitter appreciation when he saw that several Watchers were sitting in the far back, observing without acknowledging him. Though a few were simply there as the Watchers of those Immortals in the room, others were there out of some reminiscence of friendship, unable to talk to him without coming under suspicion of treason, but not wishing to abandon him either.

The rabbi waited for everyone to be seated, and ventured a sad smile. "It is good to see so many of you here, who knew Wyn Dawson and cared for her in life. I knew Wyn for six years, ever since she started tutoring children in the hospital where I volunteer as a counselor. Though I know Wyn started that role on a whim, and saw teaching only as something to do to keep her busy, she almost immediately changed her view, realizing how deeply she cared for the children, and how much she was needed there. I believe that this is true for everything Wyn did in her life, she entered everything on a passionate whim and stayed because she realized how much she loved and was loved. All of you here are a testament to how deeply she has affected people from all the roles she chose to play in life: her family, her students, her colleagues from all the fields she studied, friends who range across two continents and many different temperaments. And although her life was violently and tragically cut short only a few days ago, she accomplished much in her short life, squeezing everything she could into these years. I would like to invite those who feel they want to share what they knew and loved of Wyn to speak now." He stepped aside, and Jonathan, Michal and Nimi stood.

Jonathan cleared his throat and looked down at the little index cards he had prepared. "It is a terrible thing to outlive your child," he began, fighting for control. "A lot of work goes into a child, time spent feeding and washing them as a baby, singing them to sleep and teaching them the values you think will serve them best when they're out there on their own. We tried to raise both Wyn and Nimi to be caring, loving, responsible individuals with a strong moral code and a sense of purpose and dignity. We tried to set them a good example by standing by our own beliefs and teaching them the value of standing up for their beliefs, even in the face of social pressure. I remember when I took them to their first peace rally in Tel Aviv and tried to explain to them why we were protesting the actions of a government I had always told them was a good one.

"And so it both upset me and delighted me when Wyn took my words to heart. She left the dreams and goals Michal and I had always tried to live by and went off in her own direction. She decided the kibbutz life was too stationary for her and went off into the world looking for adventure, but she never lost the love for the land or the love for those in her community that are the essence of kibbutz life. I refuse to believe that the essence of the woman I first knew only as daughter and later as friend has vanished, she is here in the eyes of all of you, her husband and child, her friends, her students, all those she has changed and touched, those she has gathered to her in her migrating, loving kibbutz." He stepped back, still tightly gripping the hand of his wife as she went to the podium to speak.

Michal Levin was impeccably dressed, but looked centuries older than she was, holding tightly to her husband, her son and her self-control. "I think I never really understood Wyn when she was growing up. I had always been a shy, quiet, nervous little girl, I didn't know how to relate to her casual, tomboy strength and laughter. I didn't understand how to talk to her, or how to discover her deepest soul and feed her dreams. I knew she had to be far more complex than the quicksilver surface I saw, but neither she nor Nimi showed others what they saw and felt.

"It wasn't until she adopted Siobhan and became a mother that I really saw and understood her. It was through Siobhan that I first really talked to my daughter and felt she knew how much I loved her, our shared motherhood was the Rosetta stone we used to identify ourselves in the other. Whether the call was about an allergic reaction to a bee sting or what to make for a picky child's appetites, underneath was the question 'how do I love and nourish this little life that has been entrusted to me?' And I would reply, underneath the surface explanation of Tylenol or peanut butter, 'you do the best you can, and then step back and let her do the rest for herself.' And so I look to Siobhan in this terrible time when I have lost my daughter, because so much of the love and essence of Wyn was poured into her husband and child." She stood back and let Nimi step up to the podium, and her eyes swam with tears she refused to shed before others.

Nimi had been unusually quiet and thoughtful since this whole mess had started, and it was obvious that he was trying to figure out how to go on with only half a soul. "My first memories were of Wyn. We had bunk beds together, and every night we got into pillow fights and kicked each other's bunks. Sometimes we stayed awake talking long after we should have gone to sleep, or singing to each other quietly. There were very few people who knew we weren't biological twins, when we found out we lay awake in bed that night very quietly, neither of us sleeping or talking. Finally I rolled over and looked down at her and told her that God had made her out of my rib, like Eve. Hey, we were six years old, it seemed to make sense at the time. We never talked about it after that, we just decided we were two sides of the same person and left it at that.

"Despite the different paths we took, I never felt separate from her. We raised our children and lived our lives through the telephone and modem, but we never really needed words. I still wake up at sunrise each morning and know that somewhere across the ocean Wyn is singing to the sun with me."

Joe stood and guided Siobhan up to the podium as he leaned heavily on his cane. Siobhan stood on a chair beside the podium so that she could see over it. She read aloud a carefully printed letter to her mother. She asked her mother where she was and when she was going to come back. Then she went back to her seat. Joe sat down on the chair she had used as a stool and began the tune he had composed for his wife. Maybe it was less eloquent then some he had written for her in life, and certainly very different from his usual blues style, but it was from the heart and precious for that:

The poet says that love is blind so faults remain unseen
And though my life's a darker one she made my soul seem clean
I loved her with my soul and heart and wish that she could hear
These words which say so little of the one my heart holds dear

How could you leave me here to walk this path alone?
I do not have the strength to follow where you've gone

For love is like a candle, and love is like a blade
That separates the lightning from the one whose light must fade
And though my life's a moment just as bitter as it's brief
I'll hold her in my memory 'til time can ease the grief.

He managed to get to the end of the song at least, before breaking down into shaking sobs. He felt hands on his shoulder and under his arms guiding him back to his seat and holding him until the tears drained from him, he never noticed whose hands had tended him in that moment, and he missed Duncan's eulogy in his grief.

Joe shut off his brain through the reception that afternoon, while Michal set out cardboard boxes for the mourners to sit on and Jonathan helped Joe say the prayer over the candle that was supposed to burn for seven days in memory of Wyn. He let his mouth run on automatic and sat on the cardboard box while the adults talked together and the three girls, Mary, May and Siobhan, sat in the back room and watched Fantasia to keep them occupied and out of the way.

That night he slept alone in his room with the sheets cold and lonely around him, and imagined Wyn in his arms, her lips warm and responsive against his mouth, his ear, his neck, her breasts rising under his hands and her laughter in his throat. All around him he could hear the sounds of grieving relatives going to sleep, talking in murmurs, and wished for nothing more than to be alone.

He remembered standing with her in the Negev at the top of a crater that ran for miles, a series of cliffs and mountains and jutting rocks over a cavern floor where gazelles nibbled delicately on the infant leaves of olive trees. "This is where all the major religions got their start," she informed him with a glow of pride, "these cliffs are God's and they put all your pain and ego and soul in perspective." He thought of that now, those craters where Wyn would be buried in a few days. If he was whole in body and didn't have a child to worry about, he would lose himself in that landscape.

Pulling the blankets tighter around himself, he rolled over and buried himself, trying to banish memory long enough to sleep in a bed that seemed much too big for one person to sleep in.

He was woken by the sound of someone singing, and a glance at his alarm clock told him it was five in the morning. He groaned, rubbing a hand over his stubble. He put on his legs and a robe and getting his cane, then walked out of the room and followed the music to the kitchen, where Nimi was sitting by the window looking out at a rainy gray dawn. Nimi finished the song and turned to look at Joe with an embarrassed smile. "Sorry I woke you, I didn't yesterday."

"Is that what 'singing up the sun' is?" Joe asked. "It's beautiful."

Nimi nodded. "I do it every morning, then go back to bed for Yafit. Wyn did the same thing with you?"

"Yes, but I'm a late riser. I never listened. Now I wish I had."

"If you want, you can join me." Nimi offered.

"I don't know much Hebrew," Joe warned.

"There's no set format, we just used to sing whatever was appropriate, in whatever language."

Joe nodded. "Let me get my guitar."

A few minutes later, Joe sat down next to him at the table and tuned his guitar, starting to sing one of his older songs, hoping Nimi would not mind. To his surprise, Nimi closed his eyes and began singing counterpoint to it in a smooth tenor. He went on to another and Nimi kept up his role, then switched to taking the lead in a Hebrew love song Joe had heard Wyn sing to Siobhan many times, one he knew well. Finally they silently agreed to stop. "Thank you," said Joe.

"Thank you too, it's been a long time since I've had a partner for this."

"How did you know my songs?"

"Are you kidding? Wyn taped them and sent them to me years ago." Nimi smiled. "You want some coffee, Joe?"

"Thanks, black."

"Coming up." The two men drank in silence for a few moments, watching the rain trickle down the windows outside. Then Nimi, who had been looking at him for a while, asked, "May I?" He moved behind Joe and started massaging days of painful knots out of Joe's back and shoulders with expert fingers. Joe, who normally would have fought him off, settled back against Nimi and let the younger man work on him. It felt almost like Wyn, when she would skillfully and gently ease the tensions in his wounded soul and body. Apparently that gift for healing was something the twins had in common. He felt himself unclench and relax, closing his eyes to enjoy it fully.

All too soon, Nimi's hands were rubbing his back in the motion that always signified Wyn thought he was fine now. "Again, thank you," Joe blessed Nimi for his kindness.

"You needed it," came the soft, almost casual reply. "I'm going to go wake Yafit now though, if you don't need me."

"Go, go," Joe replied with a smile. It was the first time he had felt human for days. Nimi departed to go wake his wife in the most pleasant way possible, and Joe went to make himself presentable. With the Levins in the house he wanted them to see him at his best, none but his closest friends ever saw him at anything less. Then he went to kiss Siobhan good morning.

The day passed quickly, more prayers, more arrangements, more sympathy calls. Joe was waiting for the evening, when he could get away to the dojo and talk with the people who knew the real Wyn. He had Mike, his assistant, deliver several cases of various kids of alcohol to the dojo, knowing they would need it. That night, with the kids under the watchful eye of Anne Lindsay; Duncan, Connor, Adam, Nimi, Yafit, Michal, Jonathan, Amanda and Joe assembled at the dojo to pay their respects to the real Wyn, the one who couldn't be spoken of at the funeral in front of strangers.

Adam cleared his throat. "There was a lot I wanted to say at the funeral. I thought Wyn was a thrill seeker for a long time, and dismissed her because of that. Being Immortal, I've met enough tawdry risk-takers among our kind. It took me a long time to understand her. She was so insistent about enjoying life. Every day was new for her and she made it new for me too. That passion for life is what I'll miss most, I don't know anyone else who could make me feel so alive again after all this time.

"She was one of the strongest people I've ever met. Even when her blindness got the best of her and she ended up panicked and scared, she would get a hold of herself, pick up her sword and start sparring again. I never told her how much I admired her for that, I would never have had that kind of courage."

Connor nodded. "I'll second that," he replied, raising his glass in tribute to his late student.

Nimi shook his head and tossed back a shot of whiskey. "If you ask me, I've had enough of eulogies and depression, and if Wyn were here she'd be making gagging noises at all of us." He turned to Amanda. "You're the only one here I don't know."

"Amanda," she offered with a smile that left Yafit on the defensive, though Nimi was not in the least impressed.

"Good to meet you. What do you do?"

"This and that. I'm in...acquisitions." she managed, elbowing Duncan when he choked on his scotch.

"Ah. I'm a photographer for the Jerusalem Post. Not nearly as lucrative, I leave that to my wife. But I do stand-up comedy in an amateur club on weekends. Where do you work?"

"I'm currently ... freelance. More of a consultant, really. But there are some new ... offers which seem promising."

"Well I hope you get them," he responded. Slowly, resisting the abrupt change in mood, the other people followed him and started talking of things other than the death, other than the funeral. Everyone had been depressed for days, they needed a wake more than a memorial.

Methos was determined to get very drunk in a corner, though. Drinking helped. Methos drank a lot more than most people seemed to realize, especially in moments like these. Why was it that he always attracted friends with low life expectancies? Mortals like Joe. Immortals like Wyn, who didn't have a prayer of surviving. Immortals like Duncan, who went charging in on their white horses whether they had a prayer of surviving or not. Was it that their lives burned brighter for being so short? After five thousand years he should have had more sense.

Wyn's parents went home early, claiming exhaustion, though Nimi held out remarkably long. But eventually he left with his wife and it was just Joe, Connor, Duncan, Amanda and Methos, all very drunk and depressed. Joe suddenly remembered that he was the only non-Immortal in the room, and thus the only one of them who could actually die of alcohol poisoning, so he passed out on the couch.

In the morning, Joe awoke with a pounding headache and was very grateful that he had packed the night before. He went to retrieve Siobhan and picked up everyone he had to drive to the airport. Somehow everyone, mortal and Immortal, ended up on the right flight with the right luggage, a heroic feat, since the people supposed to be in charge were all hung over.

The burial was close to the kibbutz in a graveyard that overlooked the cliffs Wyn had loved in life. It was a small and subdued affair, they'd already said their good-byes. It was just her parents and brother, her sister-in-law and niece, Duncan, Joe and Siobhan, Connor and his son. It was pouring rain, typical for Israeli winter. Joe looked around and knew that despite the rain and the cold, this was the only place Wyn could have been buried, in the land she had fiercely loved and defended since childhood. He touched Siobhan's shoulder and pointed out over the cliffs. "That's where mommy and uncle Nimi used to sing up the sun when they were your age. She loved it here." These cliffs are God's, and all your grief and fear and love is swallowed up within.

End.

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