| Disclaimers:
It may be summer outside, but in my mind the wind is from the north-northwest,
and a handsaw seems far more likely than a hawk. And had the
characters but turned left, then this story might be right.
1013 thinks they own one of 'em; Rysher: Panzer/Davis has hopes for
the rest. Exodus 22:18 Industrial grey cinderblock walls ran down to the grey-green painted floor, stained here and there with unsettling red-brown patches. The floor in turn sloped just enough to run water -- or other liquids -- down to the rusted metal grate in the corner. Ductwork lay exposed along the ceiling and the dangling track lights had real bulbs, not the florescent trash so common these days: bright and harsh. Two long tables stood against the walls, one with a mattress under it, and both covered with items of such nondescript appearance that the only surprise was that they had been arranged in that sequence... and why the toolbox was next to them. Cigarettes lay next to a coat hanger, a straight razor alongside bobby pins, a small jeweler's hammer and a roll of primer cord next to a package of straight pins and a coil of fine copper wire.... Cassandra turned her head away from the modernist nightmare as best she could, and looked at the man who'd been standing there, motionless, since she'd woken. "You can't do this," she purred, or tried to. Days of dying and reviving hadn't done her Voice any good, and the mortal simply shook his head, neither upset nor amused by her attempt. Cassandra drew breath to try again, simultaneously attempting to ignore the itchy sensation of dried blood flaking on her chest. She'd known that feeling intimately once; repressed memories surged unpleasantly against her controls, and she shoved them down again. The dark-haired man held her sword up for her to contemplate. Light should have glinted from the steel and bronze, thrown sparks and lines of light with each breath, each shift of wrist under its not-inconsiderable weight. Instead, the sword was held expertly, frighteningly, still. The man was no stranger to blades, even ones much longer than a buck knife or butterfly. But how...? "You're mortal," Cassandra said, trying to deny what she almost Saw coming. "What do you think you can possibly gain from this?" The green-eyed man watched her, as unsettlingly cool in his equanimity as he'd been when he came to her door with an outsized UPS box and claimed to need her signature for delivery. The sword shifted up in a precise, effortless motion that laid it at rest over his shoulder as he said quietly, "You're the last, Cassandra." "The last what?" She'd have backed away if she could, but when she'd revived this time, the knife finally removed from her heart, it had been to the feel of heavy iron shackles on wrists and ankles. Suspended between ceiling and floor like a deer hung wrong for butchering, she couldn't even turn to keep him in view, and he kept circling her.... "The last revenge for that fucked-up disaster in Bordeaux," the mortal answered with the same disturbingly level tone that had been frightening her since she first heard it. He sounds like Methos in the old days, Cassandra thought, willfully disregarding all the inconvenient memories of gentleness given by a man who should have known better even then. Methos should have known I'd want revenge, she reminded herself and forced any cries from her conscience down into silence. Those cold green eyes watched her. Full, too-pretty lips were motionless on a face that should have been almost cute... but wasn't. There are always monsters, Cassandra realized, and now the terror was shivering through muscle into bones. The tremors drew blood from the heavy iron around her flesh as she shuddered convulsively, but she didn't notice. She couldn't move, she couldn't seduce, he'd already resisted the Voice as casually as Methos or Kronos ever had.... Her thoughts spun madly, ideas sparking and splattering against her consciousness as they were hastily tested and found unsuitable. Words, though, words might be worth trying. She had nothing else available, after all. "Bordeaux? I don't understand." She stopped there, abruptly sure that she didn't want to play the disingenuous idiot to this mortal. Bordeaux was four years ago; why is he bringing it up now? The last what, damn you? The mortal moved fully into her view, then, and smiled. "Simple enough, Cassandra. You tried to kill some people who were mine." "Or you were theirs," she couldn't resist growling. He didn't reach for any weapon, made no attempt to silence her. The control only added to her growing terror. "Damn right I was," he said in that same low, husky voice that she had to strain to hear. "I could have diverted Kronos, though. Turned him against something even you would agree needs to be destroyed. But you had to interfere, Cassandra, and put a pawn into play to get your precious revenge. You turned MacLeod against Methos, and that was the one extra straw that broke all of it. What did you do?" he asked, his voice dropping back to that seemingly casual tone. "Play the helpless victim? Take him to bed again and whisper to him the way you did when he was fourteen?" "What?" She didn't realize the word could make it out of her suddenly dry throat. He laughed anyway, a surprisingly rich, husky sound. "The Witch of Donan Woods. Cassandra, the prophetess, the visionary-- Lady, you are so full of shit, it's a miracle your eyes are green instead of brown." He stalked back in front of her. "You may not know about the Watchers," and she tried to keep the recognition out of her eyes, but suspected she had failed, "but they know a lot about you. Thanks to them, so do I," he commented, shrugging easily. "Meaning what?" "Meaning even if I didn't have a reason to want you dead," the mortal said pleasantly as he circled behind her again, "you'd have been my first pick for this. As it is, well, you're perfect." "It won't do you any good to kill me," Cassandra said softly, desperately. "My quickening would do you no good." That got another rich chuckle. "Yeah, well, it's not for me." He came back into her line of sight and knelt in front of the table, then stood back to reveal a skull sitting on the mattress. "Why shouldn't I have had my revenge?" she growled. Reason wasn't working, coercion wasn't working, perhaps sheer emotion would. "He--" "For things that happened when you were a slave?" the mortal asked with an insultingly scornful rasp to his voice. "Three thousand years to find Methos? Or were you really looking for Kronos all along? Three millennia as the all-knowing sorceress and you never heard or suspected that Caspian was alive, or Silas? You're incompetent, Cassandra. And stupid. Once the chains are off, all debts are paid." He smiled then, a chilling expression. "At least until you're the one holding the leash. Your mistake was using tools to do something you couldn't do yourself." "And you think you could have," she sneered, raising her head defiantly despite the burning ache of her shoulders and neck. Tangled, sweat-matted hair fell auburn and brown around her face as she did. "Damn right I could," he answered with a chuckle, "and more than once, I did. I had Kronos like this," he went on pleasantly, his smile widening as her disbelief shifted slowly to acceptance. "And I helped him with Methos, too. In those chains, actually." He watched her eyes dilate with shock and terror, and his smile spread with them. "Oh, yeah. I know what you can take... and what you do and don't heal. If you don't cooperate, it's going to be a very long night, Cassandra." "What do you want?" the immortal woman grated, holding to her anger as a shield. "To hear me scream?" "That's just lagniappe," he said idly, dark head cocking to one side, however, as if he were considering the option anyway. "I don't care if you scream or not, only that you do what I want. Sooner or later," he added in that same lazily certain voice, "you will. The only question is how much you want this to hurt first." Cassandra looked into his eyes and saw... nothing. Nothing but purpose, will, and a desire that would not care if she stood in its way. Caspian she might have been able to work on, with his mad passions and his undeniable artistry. This one, though, was as focused as Methos. He knew what he wanted and how he intended to get it; she suspected his goals included her death. "What do you want?" she finally asked. "Simple enough," he answered in that same whiskey rasping voice. "You're the shape-shifter. I want you to shift." "To what?" she asked scornfully. "A wolf? There's no room in these shackles." He let her see the fist coming and caught her face against something hard and non-organic to hold it in place when she would have rolled with the blow. Cassandra spat blood and two teeth and held her silence. "Better. You're not entirely stupid. Just close." Green eyes narrowed, watching her intently as he explained, "I want you to shift into Kronos." "Never!" The answer came out of her mouth before her brain had quite processed it, but she didn't try to retract the word, once spoken. He waited only long enough to see that refusal in her eyes before he shrugged and turned away. "I was kind of hoping you'd do this the hard way," he chuckled. ~*~*~*~ Alex shook his head in amused contempt when Cassandra passed out almost mid-whimper. "Stupid bitch," the assassin murmured. "I warned you." On the memorable evening that he'd helped Kronos punish Methos, Alex hadn't been able to prevent the torture, but he had done his best to make it bearable for Methos. Until he'd been able to divert some of Kronos' anger into possession and lust, that had been all he could manage. Nonetheless, his careful attention to Kronos' techniques had paid off nicely tonight. Immortal memory had worked against Cassandra this time. Kronos had taken his time with her once, evidently. Her familiarity with the ways and types of pain Alex was dealing out now had made her anticipate what was coming almost every time. That only made it worse, he knew. I've got her weakened; now I break her, Alex decided calmly. I wonder if this will really work, though? Most of Kronos' quickening went to Methos and MacLeod. Methos is in London at the moment, and MacLeod hasn't been seen since he vanished in '98. Methos is sure he's not dead; I'll take his word for it. Alex shook his head, almost amused. If it had been up to him, he might have taken MacLeod's head for the times and ways he'd made Methos hurt. Part of him knew it was mutual, that Methos had almost certainly put the same kinds of rips and punctures in MacLeod's trust... but Methos was his friend, not MacLeod. No, Alex had never attacked MacLeod for the same reason Methos didn't go after Mulder. It would hurt Methos if he did -- badly. As much as it would hurt me if someone killed Mulder, he admitted grudgingly. But damn it, we need Kronos back. Methos knows about the aliens; he's had more luck than I have in trying to figure out why they left so suddenly. But we don't know if they're going to come back one decade. Someone's going to have to back Methos up if they do... and I don't trust MacLeod to do it. I don't trust MacLeod to believe him about the aliens. Not in time. A groan drew his attention back to the dangling, blood-streaked form in the middle of the room. Alex tilted his head to consider her more carefully, his hand flexing and stretching absently against the dried crust of blood and serous fluid from her burns. He'd have to wash that off before starting again; he hated sloppy work and this was going to have to be very precise to force her into a shape she didn't want. Alex knew that he was doing this in part because he missed Kronos, and because the immortal's death, however necessary at the time, had been a wound that had almost undone Methos. Emotions should never be more than a tertiary reason for plans, however. Mainly, they needed Kronos. Needed his focus, his soul-deep drive to protect those things that were his, his almost mad, slantwise approach to problems -- all of it devoted to an enemy off planet. Which should make Kronos the willing protector of the entire Earth. Hell, he may decide this is the best challenge he's ever gotten to fight. Alex let Cassandra wake to his wicked chuckle without explaining it. Even his pleasure could be used against her this time. He was a professional, after all. ~*~*~*~ "You don't understand," Cassandra gasped through the blood running down her throat where she'd bitten through her own lip and cheek trying not to scream. "I can't." " 'Can't?' " The green-eyed man asked sweetly. "Or 'won't?' " Her vision blurred as she tried to follow his motions with her eyes. His form distorted for a long moment, and she couldn't be sure if she faced a man or a puma. The soft creak of moving leather brought her back to reality, snapped his image back to human, and Cassandra admitted, "I've never shifted to any male form before." "Great." The disgusted, contemptuous look told Cassandra what he thought even before he went on, "For a witch, you've got the most limited damn imagination.... Or did you decide that because men had raped you that you were never going to take a chance on possibly being 'overwhelmed' by the body?" "What would you--" With only a twist of his torso, the mortal swung a punch into her solar plexus that left Cassandra trying to double over in the chains, gasping for air like a fish thrown onto land. When she could breathe again, he had a bruising grip on her jaw. It should have been a minor pain under all the rest, but he'd set the pads of thumb and forefinger against the pressure points and was squeezing hard enough that she wanted to scream. "You're not going to live much longer," the mortal said bluntly. "But you're going to understand this before you die, Cassandra. There is nothing that could have been done to you that hasn't been done to other people. Including Methos. Including Kronos. Including me. 'They raped me' is nothing but an excuse for you to go on getting your own way and convincing other people to feel sorry for you." He shook his head in disgust. "And then you go on to seduce a child and tell him it's for the good of the world. You don't have a lot of room to talk about anything, or complain about it. Three thousand years and you can't manage to heal yourself? As a witch, you're incompetent." "And I suppose you've been killed?" she sneered when he let her go. I'm not going to survive this; why should I guard my words? Her captor shrugged and the faintest of cynical smiles tilted those full lips... but the green eyes studying her held nothing mutable that she could attempt to influence, not even so small a crack in his shell as true humor. Another time, Cassandra might have raged over his inflexibility. She might have been infuriated that after three thousand years, after surviving the Horsemen and the Plague years and the Inquisition, her final death awaited her in the hands of a mortal. The years of wondering if the younger MacLeod would ever trust her again, if the older MacLeod would realize what she had done to his clansman when Duncan was young and vulnerable had taken their toll, and left her... worn. Now, after days of dying and reviving, after hours of pain, anticipation, and more pain, Cassandra found that she wasn't simply resigned to her death but grateful to be done with life. In the shocking emotional free-fall of that acceptance, she almost didn't hear his answer. She thought those cynical, implacable eyes recognized her own relief, but all he said was, "Cassandra, I've sat in the back of my mind and watched something use my body and not been able to stop it. After that, dying would be simple." Before she could decide if she wanted to answer that, he circled around her with that same appalling predator's grace. His next words came over her shoulder, whispered into her ear. "Now. Enough of this. You have an immortal's memory; you know exactly what Kronos looked like. Close your eyes. Remember him." He ran the flat of his knife down her back, a barely cooler than body temperature warning of what would happen again if she disobeyed. And still that purring whisper slid across her thoughts, almost by-passing her ears and going straight into her mind as his breath made the skin of her nape shiver under the coat of cooling, drying blood. "Hands no bigger than yours, but stronger and with that scar across the knuckle on the right hand. Callused and muscled from the hilt of his sword." His knife had vanished somewhere in that litany. Flesh and plastic hands ran over her fingers and palms, the motions easy and matched as they slid over the chains and onto the forearms in time with his words. The touch of his fingers molded her to his own memories of Kronos. "Layer on layer of muscle across the arms, shoulders, and chest: fine-honed rather than bulky. Sharp features and strong tendons along the throat. The scar running down his right eye and onto the cheek. Even teeth, and shockingly soft lips," the mortal's voice whispered as he shaped her to the remembered features with the deft touch of a sculptor. Cassandra had no energy to fight him, no will to resist despite the small voice screaming in the back of her mind. The odd mortal shaped her to Kronos' form with the familiarity of a lover, the skill of someone who knew and understood Voice, and all the while she changed, her quickening shot sparks as it healed the damage he'd done to her. She'd recovered from worse, changed into stranger forms than simply a man's, but never both at once, and a whimper broke from her throat as she wondered helplessly if she would be able to return to her own shape if she survived this. Cassandra wanted to be shocked when she realized that she was the one who noticed that the whimper had been pitched too high. Somehow she shifted her vocal cords so that the next sound that broke from her throat sounded like Kronos' husky growl. That drew a pleased purring noise from the mortal who knelt behind her now, apparently heedless of the muck on the floor as he continued to whisper his instructions for the alterations to hips, thighs, calves, feet.... His satisfaction with her sang through her nerves with the same relief that pleasing Methos had always brought. Not even that terror, however, could break the spell this mortal had woven around her. Inexorably, word by word, touch by touch, reminder by reminder, he reshaped her into Kronos, down to the smallest scar and mole, the last sprinkling of hair along arms and belly. His voice matched the deft touches across flank and abdomen as he made sure she'd completely changed the internal appearance as well as the external. When his hands finally came away from her -- and somewhere in the process she'd simply stopped noticing that one was plastic and the other wasn't -- Cassandra shivered, trying desperately to haul her mind back from the place he'd pushed it. Fear hammered at her precarious defenses and she wondered in that secluded part of her mind if he'd really ever felt so lost in his own consciousness as this. "Hold that thought," was his final purred comment, and Cassandra found herself checking one last time to be sure that the shapechange was finished, and correct, and holding.... ~*~*~*~ This had better work, damn it. He'd come up with another idea if it didn't, Alex knew, but damn it, just once in his life he wanted something for himself. He wanted this to work. The witch has shifted, and damn, she's better at this than I would have believed if I hadn't seen some of the bounty hunters. I can feel Kronos battering at my mind to get out. Alex repressed a shiver that had nothing to do with cool air on bare skin and didn't let himself think about how much this was going to hurt. If it worked, it was worth it. If it didn't, well, Kronos would heal everything, as he'd been healing quite a few things for Alex ever since Bordeaux. The knife slid down his forearm smoothly, running parallel to the vein and just far enough away that stitches would be possible if necessary. Red blood spurted out and Alex pulled a line down the witch's left arm, the one that matched Kronos so perfectly just now.... He stepped in against her/his bound body, flesh to flesh, skin to skin, and drew his knife between their chests, opening another matched set of gashes that flashed and sparked in their shadow. Kronos had gathered himself into a tight bundle in Alex's mind; he seemed to want something else, just one thing more.... Oh. Of course. Alex would have laughed if he didn't have other uses for his mouth. He caught the witch's/Kronos' head in his prosthetic and lifted his right arm, knife still in hand, to lay the wound on his arm against hers/his. Then he was drowning in the familiar taste of Kronos, startled by how well Cassandra had remembered it, and grateful. He bit down on the lower lip, drawing a bit more blood, pulled back enough to do the same to himself, and then dove into the kiss in earnest, savoring a taste, a mouth, he hadn't felt on his in four long years. In the middle of that assault, Kronos somehow pushed out and away... and Alex's self-inflicted wounds weren't healing the same way they had. The body clasped against him spasmed, tried to thrash against the chains holding it, and some instinct drove Alex to pull away and slam his fake hand down on the skull waiting on the table. Bone fell to powder, to splinters, and Alex chuckled wickedly, sounding surprisingly like Caspian as he gashed open the neck and shoulders now in front of him and began to force shards and pieces of bone into the wounds. The pained cry sounded female for a moment and the form in the chains wavered like a fading desert mirage. Alex didn't intend to let her win. Heedless of the blood dripping off his own arm, he drove more of the broken skull into the flesh ahead of him, feeling current raise the hairs on his arm every time he touched the suspended immortal. It didn't matter, nothing mattered but finishing what he'd started. The compulsion burned at him, like a hacking job half-started, a necessary lock almost picked -- he was in the center of some pattern and the only way out was through the exit. Kronos' loss left a hollow emptiness in his mind that would hurt later, Alex somehow knew. The blood loss made his hand slick and the ends of his fingers were tingling, but he didn't stop until the last of the bone had been forced into flesh. Something in the pattern of healing wounds almost seemed to outline the arch of wings along that back, but Alex didn't know where that impression had come from, or why he'd positioned the bone shards in that sequence. All he could do was sag against the bound, familiar body, and murmur, "Damn it, Kronos, don't tell me you're going to let this stupid bitch win a fight this simple?" The sudden electrical field might as well have been a bolt of lightning hitting at ground zero. It threw Alex back against the wall, and the lights in his head almost matched the lightshow outside his eyelids as the rumble and boom of thunder and lightning crashed through his workshop. Part of his mind wondered if the remaining Oil in his blood would remember how to heal him, but it was only a small part, and it dropped into unconsciousness as precipitously as the rest of his thoughts had. ~*~*~*~ Alex awoke to darkness and the sound of breathing. He held his own breathing steady and slow as he reached back through his memories to place where and when he was. It took an effort; after North Dakota, he didn't like pitch-black rooms. This smelled familiar, though, like blood and pain.... My lab -- Kronos! That pulled him upright and Alex felt cautiously under himself to see what he was lying on. Not the table with the candles. Of course. He shifted forward cautiously, got his feet under him, and only then realized that his arm didn't hurt. Maybe the Oil was still good for something, even without Kronos there to guide it. Only Kronos would leave me a present like that. Three careful steps through the darkness let him get the candle and matches he'd left along the back of the table just in case he did end up with some kind of quickening going off. From the looks of the room, he had. The familiar smell of sulfur filled the air as he struck the match, and even that little light made him want to whistle with surprise at just how much damage had been done. He hadn't taken the witch's head, but apparently her quickening hadn't realized that. Alex lit the candle and walked over to see what, or who, he was dealing with now. The dangling form still looked like Kronos, but those wickedly vivid grey-green eyes were closed at the moment. Alex didn't know who was in there. He just knew Kronos wasn't with him anymore. "Fuck, if I just blew the only chance I had...." Green eyes opened, dark in the light from the candle, and Alex saw Kronos was wide awake, dangerously alert and amused by something. Then he heard, "After you rigged the battleground, Alex? Of course not," and had to laugh. "Arrogant... I missed you." Alex grinned at him, a flash of his own predatory nature coming free, and went on in a deliberately pleasant, reasonable voice, "Now, if I let you down are you going to be reasonable?" "What did you want, precisely?" Kronos purred, trying not to flinch too visibly. "I don't like this any better than you do, but we leave MacLeod alive." Alex considered that and changed it to, "In fact, we don't do anything to hurt him." "He killed me," Kronos protested, but there was something under his tone that made Alex eye him thoughtfully. "Really." The assassin studied his captive for the space of several long, deliberate breaths and finally said, "Kronos? Don't try that shit with me. You remember everything that I thought while you were in my mind, don't you?" "You and Methos plotted against me," Kronos said almost mildly. "Because you thought you had to." He shrugged as best he could in the chains. "I've seen your aliens, Alex. You're right. They'll make an interesting challenge." Alex said grimly, "Kronos, I didn't bring you back to start trying to destroy the world again. Now, if you want to help me take over what's left of the Consortium, that should be enough power even for you, and it'll still leave people to make beer and music and books to keep Methos happy." "Books," Kronos scoffed before breaking into a sly smile of his own. "I don't make the same mistake that often, Alex. I'll let Methos do the planning this time." "And you'll let him or me set the limits," Alex told him implacably. "The witch is gone. Methos isn't here. If I have to, I can kill you again. And this time I won't find a way to bring you back." "It's that important to you?" Kronos asked thoughtfully. "I've spent my entire life keeping this planet safe from the invasion. You don't get to destroy it either, Kronos. Do something more interesting. Work on taking it over just far enough to keep it safe and not so far that you interfere with the important things." "Beer, books, vodka, music... your Fed, perhaps?" Kronos offered in a suggestive purr. "Mulder's not mine." Alex pushed away the lingering ache of that and saw Kronos smile at him: the old, familiar, accepting smile. He hadn't felt this complete since "Bordeaux", since Tunguska. "We'll have to work on that," Kronos finally said with a chuckle. "Even I can admit when a plan was completely wrong. One that cost me Caspian and Silas...." The loss in his eyes ran as deep as his age. But that did it, Alex decided. With Caspian and Silas dead, so are the Horsemen. I'm giving him a new challenge at just the right moment. I'll have to tell Methos to work on that. Kronos pulled himself away from that pain with an effort as visible as Methos' had been after Bordeaux. "Now, let me down and let's go find Methos. We have a Consortium to take over. That means we need a plan--" "--and for that we need Methos." Alex set the candle into a convenient can on the table, heedless of the way the wax would surely run over his roofing nails. He braced Kronos with his good arm and reached up with the prosthetic to undo the chains. "Not that you just want to see him, of course." Kronos let numbed, aching arms fall over Alex's shoulders as he dropped the few inches to the floor and felt his legs nearly buckle. The assassin took both their weights and lowered Kronos to the concrete only long enough to free his ankles, too. With a grunt of effort, Alex hauled the immortal's not-quite-dead weight up again and walked them both into the next room with its battered pallet and old, musty sheets that should nonetheless be free of the debris that now littered the mattress in the main room. Kronos waited until Alex had sprawled next to him to point out, "And miss the look on his face when I come back from the truly dead? Don't be ridiculous, Alex." The prospect made them both laugh, and gave Alex an odd sensation just under his breastbone that felt suspiciously like hope, or love, or some other dangerous emotion. Of course, maybe now he could afford to let emotion reshape him. Not much, of course, but with both of these brothers back, a little bit might not be a problem. And if it
is a problem, well, we can probably deal with it. Alex grinned
at that thought, a feral wickedness that matched the predatory, possessiveness
smoldering next to him. It might even be entertaining. ~ ~ ~ finis ~ ~ ~ Comments, commentary, & miscellanea: 1. Exodus 22:18, the King James version – Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. 2. Lagniappe – a good Cajun word. The icing on the cake, the extra bit of sauce on the dish... an extra. Nice, appreciated, but definitely extra. 3. Many, many thanks to the betas for this one: tarsh, Misha, and Ali. Bless you, ladies. Above all, thanks to Sleeps With Coyotes, who started the whole 'Let's resurrect Kronos' challenge and who doesn't scream when I ask to play in her versions of these universes.... Highlander
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