Life, a Doctor's tale with
the Seer from the Queen of Swords by Glacis. Rated NC17, no copyright
infringement intended to either the Queen or Highlander universes.
Early
Where death was only a breath away
And life was too precious to waste
The first time he'd seen
Tessa Alvarado she'd looked like a baby who'd just had her sweet snatched away
from her. The first time he'd seen Luis Montoya he'd nearly had heart failure
until he registered the lack of a buzz and the unscarred eye. The first time
he'd seen the Queen of Swords she'd been making a monkey out of Montoya.
The first time he'd seen
Marta he'd known she was trouble.
It wasn't the first time
Methos had met a seer. They'd been relatively common in
He'd had a feeling then
that it was far from over.
With concerted effort, and
the fortuitous intervention of such life events as a raging epidemic of fever,
a saboteur destroying his lab, and an assassin appearing from his recent past
and wreaking havoc on the innocent (yet again), he managed to avoid the Rom
seer. He had enough on his plate trying to create a new life without a
keen-eyed Gypsy mucking it up again.
Now, he wasn't so certain.
His recent past as Robert
Helm had been much on his mind lately. Memories of war and death, his role as a
spy, once again being anyone he needed to be to do the job he wanted to do,
killing anyone who got in his way : he shoved them down deeply with the old
memories of Death, in a crowded dark box that just kept getting more and more
full. One day it would burst. When that happened, he'd find a way to take his
own head. He wasn't going back to that life.
He'd had more than enough
of death.
A footstep in the doorway
startled him, and he swung about to find himself face to face with the woman
he'd been trying to avoid. He couldn't look away. Her normally warm brown skin
was pale, and her dark eyes were wide with worry.
"What's wrong?"
He almost got the entire question out before she darted forward, pulling on his
arm, sweeping him past his bag and urging him on. He grabbed for the handles on
his doctor's kit as she pulled him out the door.
"Hurry, there's no
time to waste."
He allowed himself to be
chivvied into the Alvarado trap, watching her competent hands on the reins,
thankful she'd let go of him. Her touch made him shiver. He didn't need the
complication.
"Tell me what's
wrong," he half-bellowed over the thunder of the horses' hooves.
"My mistress ..."
She swallowed, and his eyes followed the movement of her throat. "There's
been an accident."
"What kind of accident?"
She whipped the horses into
a near-frenzy, and he clutched the side of the carriage. Beneath the noise of
the road, he thought he heard her say 'bullet.' He stared thoughtfully at the
horse's ears in front of him. An interesting sort of accident. A flash of brown
eyes behind a black lace mask, long black hair whipping in the wind, a
patrician face outlined against the sky ... he had a very good idea what sort
of accident it had been. Not that he'd say anything.
He owed the Queen of Swords
his life. Or this one, at any rate. Besides, steel cross-bow bolts hurt like
the very devil. She'd spared him that.
He would spare her this, if
he could.
The trap had barely stopped
before he jumped down. A peasant ran out to the horses' heads, and Marta flew
down beside him, then past him, leading the way into the hacienda. What he
found in the master bedroom was precisely what he'd expected to find.
Too much blood. A terribly
pale young woman, eyes barely registering his presence. Three bullets, lodged
in her chest and side, barely missing her rib cage, barely missing her heart.
The colonel's soldiers were
terrible shots. It was a very good thing.
Rapping out orders for
clean bandages and hot water, he had servants scurrying. Marta didn't leave the
bedside, her hand firmly clasping Tessa's. Her other hand was busy, brushing
heavy hair back from a sweating forehead, dabbing at the feverish skin with a
towel. She murmured reassurances constantly in a mixture of Spanish and Romany,
endearments falling like rain on the desert. She loved this girl like a
daughter, and she was no doubt feeling Tessa's pain.
His hands were busy,
holding her still, probing for pieces of metal, thanking a god he hadn't
believed in for millennia when he discovered the bullets hadn't fragmented.
Moving carefully yet so swiftly that at times his hands were a blur, he traced
the path of the bullets and removed them, one at a time, bathing the wounds
with antiseptic, packing them with gauze and binding them as quickly as he
could. She'd already lost too much blood. If she lost any more, they would lose
her.
In surprisingly little
time, and still much longer than he would have preferred, Tessa was free of the
poisoning lead, cleaned as best she could be around the sluggishly-bleeding
wounds, and bandaged tightly to stop any further damage and blood loss. He
stared down at her torso, white bandages over creamy tan skin, and found his
eyes fixing on a single freckle by her hip bone. She was too young for this.
They all were.
He felt immeasurably old.
Slender brown fingers
touched his knuckles, making the red washed skin on the back of his hand appear
obscene in contrast. He jolted, and looked up to find Marta staring at him with
concern.
"Will she be all
right, doctor?"
Why did people always ask him that? He was a doctor, not God. He didn't know
what was going to happen. "I don't know," he answered honestly,
flinching slightly as he always did at the instant of betrayal that flashed
through her eyes when he wouldn't lie and say it would be fine. Then her eyes,
improbably, warmed.
"Thank you," she
said quietly. He looked askance at her. "You did all you could."
"I don't know whether it will be enough."
"She is strong."
"Yes," he agreed,
reluctantly. "And young, and in excellent health. The bullets missed the
major organs, but there was damage to the muscle and surrounding flesh, and she
lost a great deal of blood."
"What can we do?"
she asked quietly. He found himself smiling at her. Tessa wasn't the only very
strong woman in the Alvarado household. She'd no doubt learned it from this
one.
"We wait. Watch. And
pray, if you believe it will do any good."
So they did. Well, she
prayed. He watched. They both waited. Too many instances of being worshipped
himself had led him to an uneasy agnosticism. He'd seen strange things. He was
a rather strange thing himself. But he knew too much of pain, death and
hopelessness to put too strong a faith in miracles.
Marta was extremely
efficient. At his suggestion, a message was sent via one of the peones that
lied convincingly that the Alvarado hacienda was hosting a small relapse of the
fever from earlier in the summer. Being terrified of the illness that had
nearly killed him, there was no chance whatsoever of a surprise visit from El
Colonel. After having spent several hundred years outsmarting Kronos, before
running away in the end, his doppelganger was no challenge whatsoever.
Early in the morning of the
second night's watch, he looked up from his book to catch her watching him. It
wasn't the first time she'd done it. It was the first time she didn't look
away. He didn't say anything, just stared calmly back into her eyes. It was an
extremely difficult thing to do. They made him feel naked.
He had too much to hide to
ever feel comfortable naked.
A small sound from the bed
broke their staring contest before he could lose, and he snapped into the
healer role instantly. Marta leaned forward from where she was sitting on the
side of the bed, a cool wet cloth in her hand, and their heads nearly met over
Tessa. He pulled back.
She didn't.
Concentrating on his
patient, he determined that the fever had broken, and she was sleeping
normally, if deeply. He conveyed the good news to Marta in a hushed voice, not
wishing to disturb Tessa's slumber. Those long strong fingers closed around his
hand again, chilled from the cooling cloth, warm beneath the chill. He stared
at her hand holding his.
It brought back memories
he'd just as soon forget.
Wife number thirty, or was
it thirty one? Didn't really matter. Numbers never did. Names mattered.
Hers had been Josefina. Her
hair had been a wild tangle of honey brown, curls blowing around wide sherry
eyes and a peekaboo dimple in her right cheek. She'd smiled often, and he'd
loved the white flash of her teeth in her dark brown face. She'd been so alive.
She'd known what he was, and given up the chance at a normal life, children,
strong sons and beautiful daughters, because she'd thought him worthy of her
love.
She'd read the cards. She'd
known before he did.
His past had caught up with
him, as it often did a thousand years ago, and it had struck at his most
vulnerable point. The camp had been decimated by the hired thugs the Viking had
sent, while he was occupied killing that same Viking in a clearing far from the
wagons. When he'd returned he'd found nothing but death. She had been dragged
to a nearby copse. He'd seen the blood on what was left of her dress, at her
mouth and her hands and between her thighs, dripping into her hair from the
seepage coming from her ear. He'd known she was dead.
He'd been wrong. She lived
still. Long enough for him to gather her in his arms. Long enough to apologize,
to cry into the blood and crushed bone at her temple, long enough to straighten
her skirt over her legs and cradle her to him as she clutched at his shirt
front. Long enough to wear her blood on his skin.
Marta's hand left his skin
as if she'd felt fire, and the memory ended with the removal of her touch. He
took a deep, shuddering breath, and found himself staring at a patch of blood
on the back of his knuckle. He must have missed it when he'd washed.
"She's sleeping,"
he repeated blankly, not looking at Marta, feeling her eyes boring holes
through him. "She's going to be all right." He stood stiffly, not
noticing his book drop to the floor, then walked jerkily into the side room to
plunge his hands in the icy water Marta had drawn earlier in the day. He didn't
feel the cold.
He seldom did.
Consciously erasing the
past from his mind, he stood at the small side window and stared up at the dark
morning sky. The stars were out in full force. They were beautiful, so far out
into the desert, without the ambient city glow from close set, tall buildings
to block out their light. They reminded him of home. Before Death. As far back
as he could remember.
Although no matter how far
back he tried to go, Death was waiting for him.
Marta was watching again as
he returned to the bedroom and took up his place at his patient's side. He
picked up his book, stared blindly at the words that made no sense, and ignored
her completely.
By the next afternoon,
Tessa had woken, and while weak, she was coherent and aware. He pronounced her
on the road to recovery and made use of a guest bedroom to sleep the clock
around, with explicit instructions to awaken him if there were any indications
of relapse into fever or if she reopened any wounds. No one interrupted his
rest. He awoke late the fourth day to the smell of strong coffee, a fresh
orange and sweet bread. Once refreshed, he returned to the sick room. Tessa was
looking almost as good as new, if still very pale.
"Thank you,
Doctor," she said, her voice sincere but her eyes watchful.
"Any time, Senorita
Alvarado," he returned with as much gallantry as if he hadn't been digging
pieces of metal out of her body four days earlier. "I live to serve. You
may wish to take greater care with your guns, however. Accidents such as this
can be fatal if they occur too often."
Her eyes narrowed at him.
"Maldito," she muttered. He grinned at her briefly.
"You don't really
think that tiny scrap of lace can obscure your identity, do you?" he asked
very quietly. She glared at him.
"I don't have the
faintest idea what you're talking about."
Her chin was so high in the
air it was a wonder she could swallow, and it was vaguely adorable to see her
attempt to look down her pug nose at him. He showed her how an expert, with the
proper equipment, could truly look down his nose, and she actually, literally
growled at him. It was delightful. He couldn't remember ever being that young.
"Marta will return you
to your quarters, that is, if you are finished with me?"
Under the bravado was a
trace of true fear. She did trust him, that much was obvious, or he wouldn't
have left the hacienda alive, which would have meant starting over somewhere
else. Again. And he wasn't quite ready for that yet. But she'd also been
through hell with her wounds, and she didn't like feeling weak or helpless.
Being at the mercy of another was not a situation that sat well with Tessa
Alvarado.
"Yes, senorita,"
he assured her gently. "You are healing well. There is nothing more I can
do for you."
He waited until Marta had
entered the room before he gave her a detailed list of activities she could,
and could not, indulge in, as well as a time frame for her recovery and a
recommended diet. He could see Marta taking it all in, as easily as he could
see the mutinous thrust of Tessa's lower lip, and had no doubt whatsoever of
who would win the battle of wills that was sure to follow. Marta handed Tessa a
glass of barley water and stared at Tessa until she drank it. He smiled and
turned to go.
As he left her mulling over
her prescribed week's bed rest and soft diet, he could feel Marta following
closely behind him. She made him nervous.
"I know you'd like to
keep an eye on your charge, so if I could simply borrow a mount, I'll make sure
it's returned to -- "
"I will drive
you," she told him bluntly. He glanced over at her. She was nearly as tall
as he was. Her jaw was set in an expression he'd come to know well over the
last few days. The woman defined determination. He sighed.
"And Tessa?" His
tone implied that the girl would be up and fencing and leaping about on horses
as soon as their backs were turned.
"Is asleep," she
replied with finality.
He cocked a brow at her.
"Laudanum?" He couldn't put as much disapproval in his voice as he
probably should. It was, after all, exactly what he would have done.
"Enough to ensure that
she rests, not enough to hurt her." Never, she didn't need to add. He
heard it anyway.
"Very well then,"
he said briskly, hoping to put her off any friendly attempts at conversation
or, god forbid, having her touch him again. "Let's go."
She made a funny little
humming noise in her throat, and when he looked over his shoulder at her, he
saw that she was looking at his arse. He blushed, nearly tripped, and cleared
his throat loudly, reaching for his bag and stomping out the door. One would
think that he was a mere stripling, not an immortal with 4800 years of
experience under his belt.
The ride back to the town
was as noisy as the ride out had been, if not nearly as urgent and bumpy. She
pulled the horses to a precise stop in front of his living quarters, and he
swung down with as much alacrity as he could without pulling a muscle or
falling on his face.
"Call for me if you
need me," he tossed over his shoulder. He opened the door, walked through
it, and nearly caught her in the face with it as he tried to close it. She
stepped around the edge and finished his movement, leaning against the door
after it closed. He glared at her. "I'm a very busy man, and I've just
spent several days with a single patient, leaving my practice unattended to do
so --"
Her hands were cupping his
face, and she was close, too close, the warmth of her melting away walls of ice
he had worked decades to build. His vision swam, and all he saw were her deep
brown eyes staring up at him. Into him.
So like Khentkawes. He'd
been young, perhaps five hundred, and still believed in ephemera like love.
She'd been a queen, dark eyes as glowing as those that held him prisoner now.
She'd suffered through marriages as decreed by her status, but he'd stayed with
her for thirty years. Trusted advisor, lover's heart; in life he had watched
her grow old and die, and in death he had built a pyramid for her in Abu Sir
and filled it with a lifetime's worth of gold and jewels.
She'd had the Sight, as
well, and had known what he was the first time she'd seen him. Unlike others
who had used him for their own means, set him up as a god or kept him as a
slave, she'd given him her heart, and allowed him to be, for one too-brief
lifetime, simply a man. When he had seen her body off to its eternal rest, posing
as her son, he'd stared into an abyss. She would find peace eternal in the
afterlife.
He would have neither.
Ever.
Within a year, grave
robbers had destroyed the fine home he'd built for her corpse. Desecrated and
robbed the place of peace and beauty he'd created for her, then ambushed him in
the back streets of the city, holding him down, raping then beating him to
death. When he'd revived, they were nowhere to be found, and he hadn't seen
their faces. He couldn't hunt them down. Couldn't remain where he'd been.
Couldn't regain what he'd lost. It was the first of a string of loves violently
wrenched from him.
Not long after that, Death
had been born.
For the first time, he'd
had power. The power of life and death, and he always chose the latter. Every innocent
to die had been, at first, payment for the guilty, then pleasure for the sport
of it. The centuries that followed were a blur. All he remembered was the pain,
and the taste of blood, and the death.
There was a different taste
on his tongue now. Lemon, and mint, and cinnamon, and woman. The hands that had
been cupping his cheeks were now lacing through his hair, drawing his head
down, angling his jaw for better access. His lips softened from the near-rictus
snarl they'd drawn into at his memories, as she tasted him, as he tasted her.
Blood and smoke and death faded in the face of her warmth.
His arms reached out of
their own accord and wrapped around her waist, drawing her against him. The
weight of her breasts against his chest, the softness of her thighs over his,
the strength of her arms holding him close to her were the panacea for the ills
of his memory. His hands roamed down her sides, his fingers reaching for her
laces, as her hands went to the fastenings of his clothing.
They made it through the
outer room, past the curtain that separated his bedroom from his office and
laboratory, without letting go of one another or interrupting their busy hands.
By the time they reached his bed, she was down to her shift, he to his shirt,
his pants tangled around his boots. She slid from his grip and down his body,
and he watched her, fascinated, as she tugged his boots and pants efficiently
off and tossed them aside. The muscles moving under her skin, the curls falling
down the neckline of her shift to caress the cleft between her breasts, the
half-smile that told him she knew exactly what she was doing to him ... he
hadn't been this enthralled in years.
She crawled back up his
body, and his hands captured her shoulders, pulling her into a deep kiss. When
they broke apart, she ran her palms under his shirt and lifted it over his
head. She had to prompt him to let go of her so she could finish removing it,
and he laughed a little at that, and so did she. When his own hands began a
mirror journey under her shift, the laughter died and hunger grew in its place.
He drew the sturdy linen up and over her head, gently untangling curls before
they could pull, eyes darkening at the beauty he revealed.
His expression was mirrored
in hers. Where the sun hadn't reached his body, he was the color of heavy
cream, dark hair and rose nipples, his erection a heavier shade of rose, and
her hands moved over all of him. He enjoyed the contrast between them, the
cafe' au lait of her skin against the lightness of his own, her lean strength
well matched with his. Her nipples were the color of caramel, and as delicious
in his mouth. She moaned as he licked and sucked at her flesh, and he was lost
in the sounds.
A lifetime filled with many
lifetimes crashed through him as he lay with her, her hands on his skin
triggering memories good and bad, the sweetness of her breath on his face and
her thighs beneath his own drowning out the bad with the good. Faces spilled
through his mind, brunette, blonde, red headed and sable, eyes of green and blue
and black and sherry brown laughing and needing and wanting him. There was
magic in her touch, and it wiped away the pain, the times those eyes had feared
him, repulsed him, died for him.
They rolled on the bed, all
arms and legs and hungry bodies rubbing against one another. She straddled him
and sank onto him as they kissed, and her strength swallowed his. The memories
coalesced into a single picture, her face over his, whispering kisses across
his mouth and throat and cheek, her hair falling in a curtain around them,
cutting off the sight of everything except her eyes. She was strength in his
arms, heat wrapped around him, salt on his tongue and sweetness in his mind,
and he sank into the darkness she offered, free of vision. Free of memory. Free
of death.
Surrounded and overpowered
by life.
Her climax took him over,
and he responded in kind, pressing her close, arching into her, muffling his
scream in her mouth. The whisper of memory raced through him again, drawing his
skin up in a shiver, prickling the hair at the nape of his neck, tensing his
muscles for the space of a heart beat before it was gone and he was completely
in the present again.
A present which consisted,
in its entirety, of one slender, wild-haired, keen-sighted Gypsy woman draped
over him like a blanket, smelling of lemons and cinnamon, tasting of salt,
feeling like life. His arms tightened around her, and she snuggled against him
for a moment, before tensing. He pried his eyes open and looked at her, only to
find her glaring over his shoulder at someone standing in the doorway. He
arched his neck on the pillow and rolled his eyes like a skittish horse in
order to see what was causing that inimical glare.
Montoya. Of course. Smiling
at them. If a snake could smile, that's what it would look like. He groaned.
"I can see now what
caused your delay in returning, Doctor Helm."
Belatedly, he grabbed the
blanket and pulled it up over both of them. It was all he had the energy to do
at the moment. "Did you need something, Colonel?" he snarled, spitting
out a mouthful of Marta's curls. She was still glaring at Montoya, who seemed
to find the whole situation quite amusing.
"Only to ensure that
the fever has not spread. As I can see, it is not a fever I need fear, and so I
will leave you to your course of treatment."
"Pendejo," Marta
hissed at his departing back. It stiffened slightly, but didn't stop or turn
around. When her gaze did drop back to Methos, he smiled at her.
"Was that a payment or
a bribe?" She was good. He didn't even see her swing before her open palm
connected with his cheekbone and nearly snapped his neck. Before he could blink
the stars from his eyes, she kissed him on the bruise already forming beneath
his eye.
"My body is a gift,
and not one I give often."
"I am honored,"
he said with the grace of a courtier, eyes still watering slightly from being
slapped so hard his ears were ringing.
"You should be,"
she growled at him quietly, then leaned down to kiss him again, this time on
the mouth. His hand came up and tangled in her curls, and the kiss lasted for a
very long time. Then she stood and dressed, making no fuss, leaning over to
touch him on the shoulder, along the chest, on the tip of his nose, brushing
the fringe from his forehead. Her touch didn't burn, didn't trigger an onslaught
of memories this time.
It left warmth in its wake.
It was dangerous.
She was dangerous.
She turned as she started
to leave and stared down at him, propped up on one elbow, watching her go.
"I don't know what you are. What you've done. But I know who you are now.
A healer. One who creates, not destroys." She leaned down and brushed a
feather-light kiss across his lips. "Thank you for my Tessa's life. Know
that we shall keep your secret as you keep ours."
The last words were only a
whisper, and they echoed in his head. A threat and a reassurance. As long as he
kept her confidence about the identity behind the mask, so would she keep his
about his own mask. It was a promise that he wouldn't have to leave again for
some time. For she was good at keeping secrets.
Almost as good as he was.
He dropped back against the
pillows and stared up at the ceiling, smiling softly at nothing in particular.
He'd lived in the shadow of death for too long. For now, he was alive again,
and painful as it would no doubt become, for this moment, it was worth it.
finito