AUTHOR'S NOTE: "Hope Remembered 4: Kindred" and "Dearer Yet the Brotherhood" are companion stories, so if you're curious about some of the things that happen "off-stage" in this story, you can find them in the other one.  "Kindred" is the fourth part of the novel "Hope Remembered."  While I have tried to make each part complete in itself, there are references in this story to past events.
 

At the approach of an Immortal, Connor MacLeod dropped the empty feed bucket and reached for his sword, then moved silently to the window near the stable door.  Cassandra was coming up the drive, the tires of the small, green car crunching on the gravel.  Connor tucked his sword into his coat, then put the bucket away.  Dian whickered as he walked past, and Connor stopped to give the bay stallion a pat.  "We'll ride later," Connor promised the horse, and he went to greet his guest.

Cassandra was taking a suitcase from the back seat of her car, but she straightened as he approached and set it on the ground next to her duffel bag.  Her gray coat hung to her knees, unbuttoned.  From the way she was standing, her sword was probably hidden in the folds of her long skirt, close to her left thigh.  She was watching him, both hands by her sides, waiting,

Cautious now, wasn't she?  Connor stopped several paces away.  His hands were also by his sides.  "Cassandra."

"Connor."  She seemed prepared to stand there all day.  The only motion about her was the faint clouds of white from her breath in the frosty air.

At least they didn't have their swords at each other's throats.  That was how they usually said hello in the Highlands.  Connor hoped things had changed.  "Good to see you," he ventured, smiling just a little.

"It's good to be here," Cassandra answered, with an equally small smile.  Then she waited, her hands still at her sides, still watching, her eyes as dark-green as her skirt.

She certainly had changed, or maybe reverted.  Connor wasn't used to being on the talkative side of a war of silence.  Well, it was his house, and he was supposed to be the gracious host.  For a change.  "Come on in," he said, walking toward her and then picking up her bag.  "We've been making cookies."

This time her smile was real, a smile that brought emerald sparkles to her eyes, a smile he had forgotten.

Connor found himself returning it with a real smile of his own.  It truly was good to see her.  He had been sure she was dead.

"Cass!" Alex exclaimed as Connor and Cassandra entered the kitchen.  The house smelled of evergreens and the warm crispness of Christmas cookies, and the song "Silent Night" played on the radio.

John looked up from rolling out cookie dough and called, "Hi, Cassandra!"

"Hello, John.  Hello, Alex," Cassandra replied, setting down her suitcase and then taking off her coat.  "It's good to see you."

Alex wiped the flour from her hands hurriedly and came over.  "I have to turn sideways," she said with a smile, as the two women embraced.  "I'm huge."

"You look beautiful!" Cassandra exclaimed, pulling back to look at her.

"But huge."

"Yes," Cassandra admitted, laughing.  "Huge.  But you are having twins.  And soon."

"Any day now," Alex said.  "I'm ready."

"Soon enough," Cassandra answered, her laughter gone.  "Soon enough."  She smiled then and turned to John.  "And you're huge, too.  How much have you grown since this summer?"

"About two inches," John said proudly.

"And about ten pounds," Connor said, then added deliberately, "Mostly cookies and cake."

"Come on, Dad!" John protested.  "It is not!  I've been lifting weights."

"Yes, you have," Connor agreed.  "So you can take Cassandra's things to the guest room, right?"

John stopped with his mouth half-open, then grinned.  "Right."  He grabbed the bag and the suitcase, then took off down the hall.

Alex shook her head and smiled at Connor, then suggested, "Connor, why don't you and Cass go talk in the new part of the house?  John and I will finish up here, and then we can eat lunch."

"You sure?" Connor asked, not wanting to leave Alex with all the work, especially since their housekeeper, Mrs. MacNabb, was gone until after Christmas.

"We only have a few more batches to make, and I know you two have 'business' to discuss that John certainly doesn't need to hear about."  She turned to Cassandra.  "We'll talk later, Cass, while John and Connor go riding this afternoon.  Unless you'd like to go riding, too?"

"Later," Cassandra said.  "Maybe tomorrow.  I want to talk with you."  She gave Alex one of her brilliant smiles, and then she walked with Connor through the wood-paneled hall.  "What are you going to call the new part of the house, now that you've added a even newer part?" Cassandra asked as they walked past the stairs.

Connor shrugged.  "Old, new, and newer, I guess.  John will come up with something."  The farmhouse was a common style--two rooms up and two rooms down, with a central hall and stairwell--but a "new part" had been added about a century ago, changing the building from a rectangle to an el.  They had just had another extension built onto the house, widening the el.  Now there was a nursery and a playroom on the second floor, and a study and a guest suite on the first.

Connor and Cassandra went into the new part, the large room that served as the main living area..  Cassandra crossed the room to stare out the window that overlooked the valley to the south, while Connor added a log to the fire.  "Want a drink?" Connor asked, pouring himself a glass of Glenmorangie at the liquor cabinet.

"Yes," she answered, joining him and examining the selection.

"So, you do like whisky," Connor observed as she reached for the Fionnmore.

"It's like a lot of Scottish things."  Cassandra poured herself a shot.  "A bit strong at first, but it grows on you."

"Like haggis?" he suggested.

"I've never become fond of haggis," she replied, with a sidelong glance in his direction.  "Unless you were referring to Ramirez?"

Connor snorted in amusement and surprise.  He had forgotten she knew his nickname for his former teacher, her former lover.  "He wasn't Scottish.  Or Spanish."

"No," she agreed, smiling slightly.  "He was not."  Then she waited with her glass raised for him to make the first toast.

Connor lifted his own glass.  "Cardeis," he said quietly.  To friendship.

Cassandra's smile faded as she met his gaze.  "Cardeis," she repeated softly, and clinked her glass with his.  They drank deeply, but slowly, savoring the golden liquor, then Cassandra lifted her glass again.  "To Ramirez!" she proclaimed.

Connor grinned.  "To Ramirez, the old haggis!"  This time they both tossed back their drinks.

She let out a slow breath, then sat in one of the chairs near the fire.  She waited until he sat down across from her before she spoke.  "I've been drinking a lot of whisky lately."

That was not necessarily a good thing.  He knew.  "By yourself?"

"At first.  But not anymore."  She twirled the glass between her hands.  "You were right, Connor.  I needed to talk to someone."

"And you did."  Connor carefully kept the surprise out of his voice.  He knew Cassandra didn't know many people, mortal or Immortal, certainly not many she could have talked to about such things.

"Yes, I've been staying with her these last few weeks.  She was an 'old' acquaintance."

So, Cassandra's confidante was an Immortal, and a woman.  That was best.  Cassandra had not been in the mood to talk to a man.  Any man.  Connor wondered who this other Immortal was, but if Cassandra had wanted him to know, she would have told him her name.  And asking personal questions about other Immortals was considered--rude.  Not that that would have stopped him, if he had really wanted to know, but Cassandra was entitled to some privacy.

Cassandra added, almost in surprise, "She's a new friend."  She laughed slightly, almost painfully.  "I'm not used to having friends."  She gave Connor a quick glance, a shy smile.  "It's a good feeling."

He nodded and lifted his glass, acknowledging the friendship that was between them now.  "Yes.  It is."

John came into the room, carrying a pile of letters, then set them on the desk in the corner.  "More Christmas cards, Dad.  There's even one for Cassandra!"  He walked over to her and handed her a plain white envelope.

She barely glanced at it before she set the letter face down on the chair.  "Thank you, John," she said with a warm smile, and he smiled back and left the room.

"Your new friend?" Connor asked, surprised--and not pleased--that she had given out his address.

"No."  Cassandra stood and went to the window, staring out at the faded gray landscape, her arms hugging herself close.  "My old enemy."

Connor swore softly to himself and picked up the letter.  The address was printed neatly, saying simply "Cassandra, c/o Connor MacLeod, Glenaladale, Scotland."  The postmark was from Paris and there was no return address, but Connor knew who had sent it.  Roland.

"He's been dead six months, and he's still following me."  Cassandra did not sound surprised.

"You don't have to read it," Connor said, coming to stand with her at the window.

She took the letter from his hand.  "Yes, I do."

Connor nodded and left her there alone.

~~~~~

When Connor came back from frosting the last batch of cookies, Cassandra was kneeling in front of the fireplace, watching the letter burn.  She rose gracefully, dusted off her hands, and joined him at the door.

"Anything I should know?" Connor asked, as they walked through the hall to the kitchen.

"No."  She did not look his way.  "It's over."

He doubted that, but at least there were no more Immortal enemies out there hunting her.  No more than usual, anyway.  None that she knew about.  Just a normal, everyday life for an Immortal.

Still, Cassandra was relaxed during lunch, smiling at John's jokes, laughing with Alex, talking of the babies and history and school.  A normal, everyday life for a family.  Connor dismissed the letter from his mind.  Roland had probably just been gloating, sending her one more little reminder from the grave.

They tidied up the kitchen, and then Connor and Cassandra went back to the living room to finish their talk.  He still hadn't found out what had happened in Bordeaux with her old enemies the Four Horsemen, and he wanted to know.  They had not even sat down when the sense of an Immortal crawled up and down his spine.  Connor immediately headed for the door, intent on getting to his katana that hung from its hook on the wall.  Cassandra followed.  They both stopped a few feet from the hallway when John's excited voice reached them from the kitchen.  "Uncle Dunc!"

Connor relaxed.

Cassandra did not.  She turned to Connor and said mildly, "You didn't tell me Duncan was coming, Connor."

"I didn't know," Connor answered and watched as her polite mask appeared--faintly curving lips, serene eyes, relaxed hands and posture--all lies.  "I'll bring him here," Connor offered then went to the kitchen to greet Duncan, leaving Cassandra standing in the middle of the room.  This was going to be interesting.

"Duncan!" Connor called as he came into the kitchen, where Duncan was busy eating a cookie.  Connor gave him a hug.  "It's good to see you!"

"Thanks, Connor," Duncan said.  "I know I didn't call, but you said visit anytime...."

"Anytime," Connor agreed, slapping him on the shoulder.

"Uncle Dunc, will you come riding with us?" John asked.

"Sure, John," Duncan replied.  "Later though, OK?  I'm hungry, and I need to talk to your dad."

"You two go on and discuss your 'business,' and get that over with," Alex said, urging them both from the kitchen and away from John.  "Duncan, I'll fix you some lunch while you're talking."

"Come on, Duncan," Connor said.  "There's whisky and a fire in here."  He led the way to the living room, then stood aside to let Duncan go first.

Duncan stopped short in the doorway.  "Cassandra!"

"Duncan."  She acknowledged him with a tight smile.  "You're always so surprised to see me."

"At least this time you're not trying to take my head," Duncan said, going into the room.

Was that a joke?  Connor wasn't sure, and neither Duncan nor Cassandra was smiling.  Connor hadn't found it funny when Cassandra had held a sword to his throat.  Either time.  "Cassandra just got here," Connor said, as he walked past Duncan to the liquor cabinet.  Duncan nodded, still watching Cassandra.  She ignored him.  Connor said cheerily, "Want a drink?"

Both Duncan and Cassandra immediately joined him at the liquor cabinet.  Duncan poured himself a glass of Lagavullan, while Cassandra reached for the Fionnmore again.  "Connor?" she asked, and he nodded.  She poured him another drink, too, and then the three of them stood there, silent, their glasses in their hands.

Connor wondered how long it would take before either Cassandra or Duncan spoke.  He was tempted to wait, but it was his house and the duty fell to him.  "Deoch-Slainte!" he suggested, and the others joined him in the toast with relief.

He sat down again in the chair near the fire, and watched the pair of them maneuver.  Cassandra took the center of the couch this time, claiming the entire width of it for her territory by spreading out her skirt, an empress on her throne.  Duncan was left with the other chair, sitting across from Connor.  Then Duncan and Cassandra ignored each other.  Connor leaned back in his chair and sipped his drink.  What had the hell had happened in Bordeaux?  A lovers' quarrel?  A fight over toothpaste?  Or was this all about the Horsemen?

"So," Connor started, when the silence had stretched thin, "how have you been, Duncan?"

"Oh, fine."

"Been traveling?"

"Not really."  Duncan took a large swallow of his whisky.

And Duncan was supposed to be the talkative MacLeod.  Connor decided to give Cassandra a try.  "Traveled much lately, Cassandra?"

"Some," she admitted, her cool gaze ironic and unhelpful.

Connor took another sip of his drink and decided he would simply wait them out.  He knew he could outwait Duncan; he wasn't so sure about Cassandra.  She had had a lot of practice in waiting, and she knew how to be silent.  Yes, Duncan would be the one to crack.

It didn't take long, but Cassandra spoke first.  "Have you seen him?" she asked Duncan, sharp and clear.

Duncan cleared his throat and answered low and quiet, "Not since Bordeaux.  He left two days after...."

After what? Connor wondered.  And who was "he"?  When Connor and Duncan had spoken on the telephone last month, Duncan had said only that the Horsemen were finished.  Apparently, that did not mean dead.  Or at least, not all of them.

Cassandra did not seem interested in silence anymore.  "Your friend hasn't called you?"  There was a definite twist on the word "friend," and it was not a pleasant one.

Duncan's response wasn't pleasant, either.  "No more than you," he shot back.  "At least Methos said good-bye before he left."

Connor nodded to himself.  So, it was Methos then, Duncan's friend and Cassandra's enemy.  That hadn't changed.  Had Methos really been a Horseman?  And if so, why was Duncan still friends with him?

"I sent you a letter, Duncan," came Cassandra's even reply.  "And there was nothing more to say.  You wanted Methos to live, and I permitted him to live."

Connor sat up at that, intrigued.  Cassandra had had a chance to take Methos's head?  And she had stopped because of Duncan?

"Or did you want something more from me?" she asked, the evenness of her voice going sharp again.  "That wasn't enough?"

Duncan wasn't going to touch that one.  He leaned back in his chair and stared at the fire.  Cassandra went silent once more, but she wasn't retreating.  She was waiting.  Connor lifted his eyebrows and his glass.  She had changed.  Over the centuries, Roland had beaten all defiance and aggressiveness out of her, but sometime during the last few months, Cassandra had learned how to attack.

After a moment, Duncan sighed and ran his hand through his hair.  "Cassandra," he began, leaning towards her, his eyes sympathetic, his expression sincere and caring, all of his considerable charm coming forth, "I know it wasn't easy for you."

For once, Duncan's charm wasn't working.  Cassandra shot to her feet and paced between the piano and the couch, then stopped and glared at Duncan.  "You have no idea," she snapped.

Duncan set his glass down and stood to face her.  "Cassandra, Methos told me what he did to you, about your time in the camp, and--"

"He told you?" she broke in, her anger gone in shock and disbelief.  Her face was white, and she was gripping the back of the couch with both hands.

Duncan stopped, then looked to Connor for help.  Connor had none to offer.  He had no idea what was going on, or what Methos had done.  Besides the usual rape, torture, enslavement, and killing, that is.  This was something worse.  Worse?  What could be worse?

Duncan turned back to Cassandra.  "Yes," he admitted.

"He told you," she repeated, nodding slowly to herself, the shock dulled to horrified acceptance.

Connor had held Cassandra weeping in his arms, and he had seen her weeping at his feet.  But he had never seen her so fragile before, as if she would shatter at a touch.  And of course, Duncan reached out to touch her.  She whirled away and Duncan called, "Cassandra!" but she was already gone.

Duncan started to follow her, but Connor stopped him at the door with a hand on his arm and a shake of the head.  Whatever this was about, Connor knew that Cassandra did not want Duncan to see her now.

Connor got the story from Duncan about what had happened in Bordeaux, and then he went to look for Cassandra.  He found her in the exercise room on the second-floor of the barn, beating the hell out of a speed-bag.  She had a good rhythm going, the small bag whappeting back and forth.  Maybe she could show John her technique.

He decided to do some chin-ups while he waited for her to finish.  His arms were beginning to tremble with fatigue before there was any pause in her assault on the bag.  She moved away from the bag to stare out the small window, and Connor dropped to the floor, then went to the weight bench close by her and sat down.  He picked one of the smaller barbells and started to tighten the nut on the end, keeping his eyes on his work as he asked, "Want to talk?"

"Duncan didn't tell you?"  Her voice had that same brittleness, that same fragility he had seen in the living room.

"I didn't ask."  He set the barbell down and looked at her.  She was standing by the window, her arms held tightly across her body, trying to protect herself, trying to breathe her way through pain.  He had seen her in that pose before.  "But I'll listen."

She nodded slowly then gave a small snort of unamused laughter.  "You're good at that.  Now."

Connor snorted in the same way.  "I've had some practice lately."

"Yes," she admitted.  "It's helped."  The brittleness had gone, but the pain was still there.  She still wasn't looking at him, but she said softly, "You've helped."  Cassandra made another sound, a painful whimper.  "I'm not used to that, either."

Help from him, or help of any kind?  Both.  Connor went to stand near her, but not too close.  "Friends help," he reminded her.  "And friends listen."

She nodded again, then after a moment she started to talk, staring out the window at nothing.  "I told you I was a slave in the Horsemen's camp."  The brittleness returned.  "But I didn't tell you Methos was my master."

"You belonged only to him?"

Cassandra shook her head.  "He owned me."

Connor shrugged, not understanding the distinction.

"He *owned* me," Cassandra repeated.  "Body, mind, and soul.  At first, I hated him.  He had killed my tribe, and me.  But he told me he would ... tame me, and he did.  After a week or two, I wasn't angry at him when he hurt me; I was simply grateful to him when he didn't.  Then he started to offer me pleasure."  She closed her eyes as she admitted, whispering, "And I took it."  Cassandra tossed her hair back from her face, shaking her head in disgust.  "After a few months, I didn't even want to escape.  I wanted to stay with him and keep him happy.  It was all I lived for."

"He brainwashed you," Connor said, knowing how terrifyingly easy it was to do that to a person, when there was unlimited time and unlimited pain.

"He tamed me," Cassandra corrected.  "I would have done anything for him.  And I did."  She wasn't done with the guilt.  "I betrayed the memory of my people.  I made love to the man who had murdered my father, and I thought myself honored to be allowed even to touch him."  She paused again then shrugged and moved on.  "But one day his brother Kronos came to the tent, and said it was time to 'share the spoils of war.'  So, Methos shared.

"I resisted Kronos at first, but I wasn't protecting myself.  I was protecting my master's property.  That was my duty.  I even called for him, when I was with Kronos.  I called his name over and over, but he never answered.  He was there in the camp, listening, but he never came.  I knew then I had failed my master, and he would never want me again."

Connor closed his own eyes now.  Ownership, failure, betrayal, guilt, pain--all knotted together to enmesh her in the bond she had thought of as love.

Cassandra continued, her voice dry and brittle, a withered leaf carried by the wind.  "When I realized that, it didn't matter anymore.  *I* didn't matter anymore.  So, I stopped resisting Kronos."  The leaf floated to the ground, dead.  "But I knew the other three Horsemen would just pass me around, again and again, forever.  I didn't know about beheading; I truly thought I could not die.  And I could not live like that."

"Is that when you stabbed Kronos?" Connor asked.

"Yes.  The first night with him, in his tent.  Kronos had left the knife he had been using on the floor, and when I was ... when he had his eyes closed, I picked up his knife and I killed him, and then I ran."

That had been a hell of a chance to take, Connor knew.  Kronos wouldn't have simply "tamed" her if he had survived her attack; he would have destroyed her--slowly.  "Where did you go?"

"I don't know," she said.  "Across the wilderness.  I had been raised in the desert, so I knew how to survive, but I still died several times before I found a tribe that would take me in."  Cassandra moved now, for the first time she had started to tell the tale.  She wandered over to the weight machine, toyed idly with the chain that held up the heavy plates.  "Do you know, I didn't even get angry at Methos for anything he'd done to me for over a century?  I actually felt ... guilty, for having disappointed him in some way, so that he didn't want to keep me anymore."

"And?"

"And one day, while I was watching a man break in a new horse, I finally realized what Methos had done to me.  He had been training me to be his obedient slave, his little toy.  He had been laughing at me as I scurried to do his bidding."  She curled her hand around the chain, tightened her grip until her fingers went white.  "When I finally realized that, I felt so ... used.  So stupid.  So completely and totally *stupid.*"

"Well," she said, letting go of the chain, wiping the black grease from her hand onto a small, white rag, "I don't have to tell you what that feels like, do I, Connor?"

She didn't.  He knew.  She had made him feel like a worthless, stupid toy on that day in Aberdeen.

"I'm so sorry, Connor," she said, near tears, her hands clasped together in a penitential prayer.  "I never meant to hurt you, not like that.  Not the same way he...."

"It wasn't the same," Connor told her, knowing the truth now, seeing her anguish.  "You didn't mean to.  He did.  You're not like him, Cassandra."

"Oh yes, I am," she insisted.  "We're both liars.  We've both watched people die in agony, and we did nothing.  We've let other people own us and use us.  And we have both used and owned and killed people, too."

"For hundreds of years, Cassandra?" Connor asked, trying to make her see reason.  "How many people has he killed?  How many have you killed?"

"One person dead, one million dead," she said in despair, twisting the rag between her hands.  "Does it matter to our victims how many others we've destroyed?  They're still dead, and we're still guilty."

"Do you really think you're as bad as the Horsemen?" he demanded.

"No," she answered slowly.  "Because I care.  But that doesn't matter to the dead, either, whether I stand over their graves weeping, or whether I ride off laughing.  They're dead, and they'll always be dead."

"It matters to the living," Connor told her.  "And it matters to me."  She looked up at that, and Connor said bluntly, "If I thought you didn't care about killing people, or about what you did to me, I'd have taken your head six months ago."

Cassandra shut her mouth after a moment then said wryly, "And that's supposed make me feel better."

"It ought to," Connor said then asked, "You think Methos told Duncan?"

"Brothers share everything," she said simply, looking out the window again.  "I could hear the Horsemen talking, when they sat around the fire at night, discussing which slave had the biggest tits, the tightest ass, which one was best at--"  She stopped and shrugged.  "That's nothing new; men always talk about women like that.  And I know Methos told Roland everything."  The words came faster now, rising in pitch and volume.  "How to tame me, how to use me, what I liked, what I didn't, how to touch me, how to--"

"The letter?" Connor guessed, interrupting her before she got hysterical.  This was Roland gloating.

She nodded and said bitterly, "And Methos told Duncan, too."

"Cassandra, Duncan wouldn't listen.  Not to that."

"No?" she challenged, turning to face him.  "You and Duncan have never talked about women, Connor?"  Her eyebrows lifted in complete disbelief.  "Not even whores?"

Connor wasn't going to answer that.  "Duncan wouldn't have listened to that kind of talk about you."

"No," she agreed, finally.  "Probably not.  But enough.  Duncan knows I was not only a slave, but an obedient and willing slave.  Methos told him.  Methos just had to humiliate me, one more time."  She lashed out with one arm, punching the speedbag hard enough so that it hit the top of its frame and rattled on the wall.  "I never wanted anyone to know."

"You told me," Connor pointed out, sitting on the weight bench again.

"And I told Ramirez, and my first husband, and my first teacher.  But no one else.  Ever.  And I've never told anyone about Roland, not all of it.  Except you."  She wandered over, sat down on the small stool near him, and ventured a smile as she wound the rag about her fingers.  "Earlier, we toasted to *careas,* to friendship.  But, you are not just a *cariad,* a friend, to me, Connor.  You are ... an *anamchara.*"

Connor shook his head, for though he could translate the Gaelic word as "soul friend," he wasn't sure of its precise meaning.

"In Ireland, when the Christians first came," Cassandra explained, "they brought the sacrament of confession with them.  Other Christians had confession, but it was done in public, more for humiliation than repentance.  The Irish made confession private, and your confessor didn't have to be a priest, but someone you chose, someone you could trust with your soul.  An *anamchara* is someone who will listen, and care, but who won't let you get away with less than what you should be, who forces you to be honest with yourself."

Connor rubbed his hands on his thighs, remembering the high leaping of Cassandra's pulse under his fingers back in June, when he had grabbed her by the throat and snarled at her, "Don't lie to me, Cassandra.  Not again.  Not ever."  Then he had tightened his grip, taking grim pleasure at the terror in her eyes.  If forcing her to be honest was a requirement for this *anamchara* role, he qualified.

"I needed that, Connor," Cassandra said, obviously remembering the same thing.  "Lying had become a habit for me."

"Broken it yet?"

"Almost.  Sometimes I forget, but I'm trying."

"Good.  I'll make sure you remember," he told her, accepting the responsibility of being her "anamchara."  God knew she needed one.  "Want to go riding?" he suggested, ready to move on.

"No," she said, walking over to the window yet again.  "You go with John and Duncan.  I can't ride in this mood; I'll frighten the horse.  And, would you tell Alex that I need to be by myself for awhile?"

"Going to break something?"

"Yes."

~~~~~

Cassandra waited until the MacLeods had left the stable before she moved.  There was nothing here to break, except the windows and the mirrors, and she didn't want to destroy.  But she could hit something.

She went to the punching bag and started to hit it, but it wasn't enough.  She could barely feel the pain in her hands.  The wall was better.  The rough concrete split the skin on her knuckles, and she kept hitting.

Damn Methos.  Damn him, damn him, damn him.  Whatever god he prayed to, whatever name he called upon, be it Baal or Christ or Ninkasi or Zeus, she hoped that god would blast him or abandon him or bury him in a pit of sand for the rest of his days.

Damn him!  Cassandra slammed her fist into the wall and cracked the bones of her hand.  She could feel--and hear--the bones grind together, the edges jagged under the skin.  Before the healing was finished, she slammed her hand into the wall again.  And again.  And again.

Finally, she stopped, a retching nausea driving her to her knees, her hand cradled gently against her.  It healed, of course, the skin smooth and unbroken, the bones whole and straight.  The blood was still there.

Cassandra stood and started to hit the wall once more, until she broke the other hand.  She waited until it healed, then she stood and hit the wall again.

And again, and again, and again.

~~~~~

When Connor and Duncan and John returned from riding, it was near dark, even though it was midafternoon.  There was not much daylight two days before the winter solstice.  There was no light on in the stable, either, but Cassandra was still there, her Immortal presence clear.

After he unsaddled Dian, Connor went up the stairs to the exercise room, wondering what he would find.  The mirrors smashed?  Holes gouged in the floor?  The innards of the punching bag strewn about the room?

But there was nothing, just the dark shadow of Cassandra standing by the window, her arms folded tight across her body.  "I thought you were going to break something," he said, trying to make a joke of it, wondering what she had been doing for the last hour and a half.

She did not turn.  "I did."

Connor flipped the light switch, then glanced around the room again, wondering what he had missed.  Nothing.  Maybe she had gone outside for a while and come back in.  Connor approached cautiously, and then he saw the wall.  Red and brown smears stained the white paint.

He walked to stand in front of her and held out both his hands, palms up.  She did not move.  "Anamchara," he called her, claiming the right and the responsibility to know, offering the friendship of the soul.

She did not look at him, but slowly laid her hands in his.  The skin was smooth, the hands graceful, the fingers gently curved.  Blood stained the back of both hands, old and new, bright red and dried brown.  Shreds of tattered flesh clung to the knuckles and the nails.

Connor closed his eyes briefly, then called to her again.  "Cassandra."

She looked at him now--angry, defiant, and ashamed.

"Don't hurt yourself like this," he said softly.

She wrenched her hands away and hid them once again.  "Why not?" she demanded.  "They heal, and I'm used to it.  Roland did it.  Methos did it, too, over and over again, one finger at a time.  Then he would order me to touch him, to pleasure him, to--"

She stopped and slammed her fist into the wall, and Connor winced at both the image and at the sharp crack of breaking bones.

Cassandra swung around and glared at him, her hand dangling limp and twisted at her side.  "Or would you rather I broke more of your dishes?  Or maybe the mirror?"

"No, not the mirror.  John likes that mirror."

That stopped her, as he had hoped it would, even brought the trace of a smile.  "Does he?"

"He lifts weights in front of it.  Watches his muscles flex."  Her smile almost appeared, but she was still upset.  Maybe talking to Alex would help her; he was out of ideas.  "Alex is waiting for you inside."

Cassandra hesitated, and Connor added pointedly, "She's your friend, too."

"Yes," Cassandra agreed.  "She is."

~~~~~

Alex was waiting for her in the kitchen, doing a crossword puzzle and drinking a cup of tea.  "What's a five-letter word for an old Scottish coin, starts with B?" Alex asked.

"Bodle," Cassandra answered after a moment.  It had been a long time since she had lived in Scotland, and money was always changing.

Alex filled in the word and the others that crossed it while Cassandra got herself a cup of tea.  When Cassandra sat at the table, Alex set down her pen and took off her reading glasses.  "How have you been, Cass?" she asked, intent and concerned.

Cassandra shrugged and added sugar to her teacup, then held the spoon gingerly as she stirred the tea.  She had taken a shower and changed her clothes, then washed her hands over and over again, but they still hurt with the memory of pain.  "Not too good," she admitted finally.  "But better now."

"Are you still dreaming every night?"

"No," Cassandra said.  "Not every night."  She tried to smile.  "Once I even went four nights in a row without dreaming.  These last few weeks I've been talking with a woman, an Immortal, who was abused by a man recently."  Abused was a mild term for it.  Elena had been tortured, raped, and brutalized by an Immortal named Claude Bethel for twenty-three days.  She'd even lost her eye; Bethel had gouged it out with a palette knife.  Cassandra shuddered slightly and went on.  "It helped us both to face those memories, instead of running from them."

"That's good, isn't it?" Alex said.

"Better is not always good," Cassandra answered dryly.  "It's more like 'not as bad.'"  The dreams weren't as frequent, and the voices in her head had gone silent, but the rage was still there.  Cassandra and Elena had talked about Roland and Bethel, and a little about Methos, but Elena and Duncan were lovers, and Cassandra hadn't been able to talk about Duncan at all.

"Connor's been worried," Alex said.  "About you and Duncan."

"We were hunting some old enemies, and things got ... complicated for a while," Cassandra replied, telling the truth in essence if not in detail, knowing how curious Alex must be.  "But they're dead, and we're alive, and it's over."  Mostly.

"Do you want to talk about it more, with me?" Alex asked.  "Connor and Duncan took John to his karate class; they won't be back for at least two hours."

"It's a long story, Alex.  Longer than that."  Much longer.  Cassandra set down the spoon and sipped at her tea.  It was hot and sweet and tasted of raspberries, and she was in the Highlands for Christmas with her best friend.  "It's over," she said again, unwilling to spoil the mood, unwilling to remember.  "Let's talk about something else."

Alex lifted her eyebrows in an elegant challenge.  "Do you think we can find something else to talk about?"

"Oh, maybe," Cassandra said.  "One or two things.  Like your babies, or your book, or the history of truffles."

"Or excavation techniques, or John's soccer team, or gardening.  One or two things," Alex agreed gravely, then the two women shared a smile.

They were still talking when Connor and Duncan and John got back from karate, and they hadn't even begun.

~~~~~

After dinner, they gathered around the fireplace in the living room.  Connor and Alex took the couch; Cassandra faced Duncan in the chairs.  John lay on the rug, watching the fire.  "I wish you'd let us know you were coming, Duncan," Alex said.  "Tomorrow is your birthday, and we've already mailed your presents to Paris."

"Then I'll have something to open when I get home," Duncan answered, cheerful as always.  "I can celebrate it twice."

Cassandra set down her coffee cup, trying to remember the last time anyone had bought her a present.  Probably Ramirez, she decided, over five hundred years ago, that blue silk gown he had given to her when they had lived in Spain.  Her new friend Elena had given her a sword, and Cassandra treasured it both as a weapon and as a gift, but Elena hadn't actually gone out and bought it just for her.  The sword had been part of Elena's collection, one of many hanging on a wall.

"We're going to make him a cake, aren't we, Alex?" John asked, as he rolled over onto his back then put his hands behind his head.

"Sounds like you want us to make *you* a cake," Alex answered fondly.

"Better get your piece right away, Duncan," Connor warned.  "John will eat the whole cake if you let him."

"I was hungry," John explained, full of righteous indignation, "and spice cake is my favorite."

"Mine, too," Connor said, and Cassandra met his eyes in sudden apprehension, for she had made a spice cake for Connor, long ago.  He had smashed it to the floor and then made a wreckage of her dreams.  But he was smiling at her now, and she tried to smile, too.  Peace, between them.

"What's your favorite kind of cake, Uncle Dunc?" asked John.

Duncan turned his attention to his nephew.  "Oh, I'm not particular, John."

About much of anything, Cassandra thought.  Certainly not about his friends.

"I like all kinds of cake," Duncan continued.

"We'll make chocolate," John announced.

"Good!" Duncan said, then he turned to her.  "So, Cassandra," he began, "you'd said you'd been doing some traveling this last month.  Any place special?"

As if he cared.  Cassandra reached for her coffee cup then leaned back in her chair.  "No."

"I have your laptop computer," Duncan offered, "and the clothes you left in Bordeaux.  They're in Paris, but I can mail them to you later, if you'd like."

"Yes."

Duncan hesitated, then apparently decided to bother Connor instead.  "So, Connor," Duncan began again, still with that same annoying cheerfulness, "Cassandra told me that she was your teacher."

Cassandra didn't want to meet Connor's eyes now.  She shouldn't have told Duncan anything, not without Connor's approval.  But Connor didn't seem too bothered by it; he answered easily enough, "Yes."

Duncan wasn't done digging.  "Here in the Highlands?"

"Yes."

Duncan looked back and forth between her and Connor, then commented, "You never mentioned that before."

"Lots of things don't get mentioned, Duncan," Cassandra said as she set her cup down carefully.  "Some of them are important; some of them aren't."

"I just think it's a little ... odd, that's all."

"Why?" she demanded.  "Are you the only one allowed any privacy?"

"No, but--"

"Then don't expect to be the only one to have secrets, and don't expect to be the only one to lie," Cassandra told him, and she got up and left the room.

Connor caught up to her in the kitchen, and she stopped with her back against the table, her hands at her sides.  "Look, Cassandra," Connor said, "it's Christmas time, and Alex could have the babies any day.  She does not need two houseguests who are at each other's throats."

Cassandra nodded, understanding.  Duncan was his brother, and he was home for Christmas.  She had no place here.  She could leave the presents she had brought and drive back to the airport.  She hadn't even unpacked yet.  It would be easy.

She hadn't even really started to talk with Alex yet, and she had nowhere to go.  It was hard.  Cassandra forced herself to calmness, to feel nothing, to expect nothing.  She nodded again, then headed for her room to get her suitcase.

Connor stepped in front of her, blocking her way.  "Where are you going?"

She shrugged.  It didn't matter.  "The airport, I guess."

"I didn't say I wanted you to leave."

She hadn't wanted to wait to hear the words.

"I want you and Duncan to settle this between you, or start to.  Can you do that?"

"You want me to stay?" Cassandra asked.

"Yes, Alex invited you," he said.

And Connor would do almost anything to keep his pregnant wife happy, even put up with her.

Then Connor added, "And I want you to be here."

"Do you?"

"Would I say that if I didn't mean it?" he asked, exasperated now.

"No."  Connor certainly would not.  Connor would have absolutely no problem telling her to get the hell out of his house.  He had done it before.  Cassandra blinked back sudden tears, both at what had been, and at what was.

"You were angry at Duncan when you got here, even before he told you about Methos," Connor observed.

"Yes," she admitted.  She had been angry with Duncan since Bordeaux.  "But he saved my life.  I shouldn't be angry with him."

"Cassandra."  The edge of exasperation became a growl of frustration.  "You are angry.  Don't just tell yourself you shouldn't be.  Deal with it.  Scream.  Run.  Do *something.*"

She had done something, and her hands still hurt with the memory, but it hadn't been enough.

"Are you as angry with Duncan as you were with me?" he asked.

She had to smile at that.  "Not even close."

Connor shrugged.  "He can take it."

Cassandra was not so sure.  "Connor ... I'm not angry only with him.  I'm angry with Methos, and Roland, and Kronos, and ... and all of them."  The rage was waiting, and it frightened her.  "I don't know if I can control it."

He nodded, remembering.

"Can you be there?" she asked him.  "In case...."  In case she used the Voice to force Duncan to his knees.  In case she started to take his head.  In case she did to Duncan what she had done to Connor, and had done to Elena.  Cassandra closed her eyes as the terrifying thrill of bloody rage and consuming power flooded through her again, as she remembered Immortals kneeling helpless at her feet, while she drew her arm back for the fatal blow.

Cassandra swallowed hard, feeling ill with mingled excitement and revulsion.  She was *not* going to be like the Horsemen.  She was *not* going to kill and enjoy it.  And she wasn't going to control people anymore, not like that, not like Roland had done.  "Can you be there, Connor?" she asked again, knowing how easily she could drown in that bloody pit of power, tasting how easily she could kill.

"Yeah, I can be there."  Connor didn't seem to mind.  He even looked pleased at the prospect.

She handed her sword to Connor.  "I don't think I should have this right now."

~~~~~

Connor escorted Cassandra back to the exercise room over the barn.  Duncan was waiting for them, doing pull-ups on the bar.  "Cassandra asked me to referee," Connor said as Duncan dropped to the floor and Cassandra went to stare out the window again, her back to them.

Duncan shook his head.  "I don't think we need--"  He stopped when Connor went to the wall and started to remove the swords that hung there.

Connor turned, holding the swords tucked under his arm, and lifted his eyebrows in an ironic challenge.  Duncan had no idea what he was in for.  "Yes, you do."

"Connor--," Duncan protested.

Connor walked over to him and held out one hand.  "Give me your sword, Duncan."

"Give you my sword?" Duncan repeated in complete disbelief.

Connor moved closer and spoke quietly.  "Unless you want to give it to Cassandra later?  When she uses the Voice and orders you to? And then starts to take your head?"

Duncan snorted and shook his head.  "She wouldn't--"

"She would," Connor contradicted him, then locked eyes with Duncan.  "And she has."

Duncan stared at him, then his gaze went to Cassandra, still staring out the window, apparently ignoring them completely.  Duncan looked back at his former teacher, a question in his eyes, and when Connor nodded, Duncan let out his breath in a silent hiss.

"She gave me her sword already.  Give me yours," Connor repeated, and Duncan slowly complied.  "If she starts to use the Voice, Duncan, I'll come in.  Otherwise, you're on your own."

Duncan's anger and disbelief had disappeared into uncertainty, maybe even fear.  Connor couldn't blame him.  Facing a mentally unstable person who was furious at you and had the power of the Voice was unsettling, to say the least.  Connor knew exactly how he felt.

"I'll be just outside," Connor said to Cassandra, then went down the hall.  But not too far.  He didn't want to miss this.  He hadn't even set down the swords when Cassandra started in on Duncan.

"Why did you lie to me?" she demanded, her arms at her sides, her fists clenched.  No more self-defensive postures for her.  She was on the attack.

"What do you mean?" Duncan said, sounding as surprised as Connor was.  Connor had thought she would start by talking about Methos.  Connor moved closer to the doorway, placing himself so he could see into the room.

"In the hotel room.  In Bordeaux.  About the credit card.  Remember?"  Cassandra was not using the Voice to control, but her command of sarcasm was impressive.

Duncan's reply was calm and logical, just the kind of tone that would infuriate her.  "I didn't want you following me when I went to see Methos."

Cassandra nodded, seeming to accept his reason, but her precise enunciation made her anger clear.  "You told me you would 'be right back,' when you *knew* you were going to meet him.  You knew you were going to be gone for at least an hour, probably two."

Connor shook his head.  Cassandra must have misinterpreted something.  Duncan would never do that.  He knew better than to lie to his partner in a dangerous situation, not like that.  But Duncan didn't say anything, didn't deny it at all.  Connor moved so he could get a better look at his former student's face.  Duncan was just standing there, looking off and away.

Connor drew in a slow breath and forced himself to stay where he was, instead of marching in there and teaching Duncan the lesson he so obviously needed.  He had taught Duncan that.  Hell, Duncan's own father had taught him that.  Never--never!--lie to your comrades in a way that leaves them vulnerable and exposed.

"You left me alone," Cassandra continued, "waiting for you, expecting you."

"You've been alone before," Duncan pointed out.

"I've *always* been alone," Cassandra retorted.  "This time, I thought I was with someone I could depend on.  Someone I could trust."  Her gaze flicked over Duncan and then went back to his face.  "I should have known better," Cassandra said.

Both Connor and Duncan winced at that.

"I admit I was foolish," she said, now hiding the anger and the bitterness.  "When I felt an Immortal coming, I opened the door, because I thought it was you.  I was expecting you to be right back.  But you lied to me."

Duncan nodded slowly.  "Cassandra ... I'm sorry.  It was a stupid thing for me to say."

That's for damn sure! Connor thought.

Duncan added in explanation, "I was in a hurry."

"They weren't," she said evenly, not giving him an inch.  "They took their time about it.  Every single time.  In the hotel room.  In the submarine bunker.  That night.  The next day."

Christ, thought Connor, those bastards had raped her again, stood in line and taken turns.  And she had known they would do that if they caught her, and she had still gone after them.

Duncan swallowed hard and nodded, then said hesitantly, "Methos didn't...."

"No."  Duncan looked relieved to hear that, until Cassandra added, "He watched."

Connor shook his head in disgust.  And this Methos was Duncan's friend?

"Still, what does that matter?" she said, then used the exact same tone Duncan had used earlier as she said, "I've been raped before."

Duncan closed his eyes briefly, then walked over to her and tried to touch her.  Connor could have told him it was precisely the wrong thing to do.

She slapped Duncan's hand away, but did not move back.  Cassandra took a single deep breath, then managed to say calmly, "Duncan, I know that even if I hadn't been expecting you to come back, I wouldn't have been able to fight off all three of them.  They would have taken me anyway.  I don't blame you for that; I know it's not your fault."

She was being mighty generous, thought Connor.  He wasn't at all sure he'd be so forgiving if Duncan had lied to him and left him high and dry.  Soldiers simply did not do that in a combat situation, not if they didn't want to get killed--either by the enemy, or by their own side, later.  And hunting Immortals sure as hell qualified as a combat situation.

"I know that I was ... irrational then." Cassandra said.  "I understand that you didn't trust me to do the smart thing, the cautious thing, and so you lied to me about meeting Methos.  I know why you lied, and if I had been in your place, I would probably have come up with some lie, too."

Connor would have made up a lie, too, but not one that stupid.  What the hell was wrong with Duncan?

"But I do want to ask you something," she said.

Watch out, Duncan, Connor thought, she's going to rip you apart now.  Connor felt no sympathy for Duncan at all.

"Do you always trust Richie to do the smart thing?" she asked.  "To be cautious?  To do what you tell him and not get into trouble?

"No."

"And you know that about him, and you make allowances for it, don't you?  When you lie to him to protect him, you do it carefully, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Would you give Richie misleading information that could cost him his head?"

"Not deliberately, no," Duncan admitted.  "I didn't--"

"Or Methos?" she interrupted.

"No, but--"

"Or Connor?"

Connor snorted to himself.  Duncan damn well knew better.  He should have known better with Cassandra, too.  Connor had told Duncan to take care of her, and Duncan was sleeping with her, for God's sake!  What the hell had happened to Duncan's sense of chivalry, anyway?

Duncan merely shook his head this last time, apparently having given up trying to answer her.  Or maybe he was biding his time.

"Tell me, Duncan," Cassandra said, spacing out each word, "when you were a soldier standing guard-duty in the face of superior enemy forces, did you ever leave your post after lying to your comrades about when you'd be back?"

"No," Duncan said quietly.

Cassandra nodded, but she had one more question.  "And if you're talking to a stranger on the street and you sense an Immortal approaching, do you take the time to at least try to get the stranger to safety?  Or to warn them somehow?"

Duncan finally got a chance to say yes, but he only nodded.

"No doubt you'd try to protect a dog, too," Cassandra noted.  "But not me.  You'd take the time to protect a stranger, and you wouldn't lie like that to Methos, or to Richie, or to Connor, or to a comrade-in-arms, but me?"  Cassandra's bitterness had returned, along with resignation and contempt.  Connor wasn't sure if the contempt was for Duncan, or for herself.  She shrugged.  "I should have expected it.  Methos is your friend.  I'm just a woman, and there are plenty of those."

"Cassandra, it's not like that," Duncan protested.  "I just ... didn't think."

"That's exactly it, Duncan.  To you, I'm nothing.  I'm not even worth the time or the effort of thinking up a decent lie."  She shook her head in wonderment, a bitter smile on her face.

Duncan shook his head.  "Cassandra, that's--"

"Even Kronos and Roland lied to me better than that," she broke in.  "Methos certainly lied to me better than that."

Duncan tried yet again.  "You're not being--"

"Not being what?" she demanded, her voice trembling, maybe with rage or maybe with the effort not to cry, as she continued, not giving Duncan even a chance to answer.  "I was certainly stupid enough to trust him three thousand years ago, and I was stupid enough to trust you in Bordeaux."  Her rage won over her tears.  "But not again," she said in cold determination.  "Not you, not any man."  She turned on her heel and left.  She didn't even glance at Connor as she walked by.

Connor picked up the swords, leaving Duncan's katana on the floor, then hung the weapons back on the wall.  When Connor turned to leave, Duncan said, "Connor, I...."

Connor looked at him then, but said nothing.  He did not have to.  Duncan dropped his eyes, and Connor turned and walked away.

~~~~~

Cassandra made it out of the barn before she gave in to the urge to hit something.  The fence posts made a good target, and the wood was easier on her hands than the concrete wall had been.  Except for the splinters.

She had broken her hand only once when Connor appeared, standing a few meters away, watching.  She didn't stop hitting the fence post until she had broken both hands.

Connor stayed where he was.  "Why didn't you hit him?"

Cassandra took several slow breaths as she waited for her hands to heal, the frosted night air soothing the throbbing heat in her hands.  She wanted to break something else, but she settled for walking quickly down the drive, away from the farm.  Away from Duncan.

Connor walked with her, his hands in his pockets, his collar turned up against the cold.  "Why?" he repeated.

Always stubborn, this man.  "The same reasons I didn't take Methos's head," she answered, not slowing her pace.  "It wouldn't change what happened, and I was afraid that if I started, I wouldn't be able to stop."  She swallowed the taste of blood and power once more, hot and sweet on the back of her tongue.  No.  Never again.  She walked faster.

Connor nodded, his long legs easily matching her stride.  "You're going to have to let the anger out somehow."

"But not by hurting someone else."  She was certain about that.  She wasn't going to kill things or break things, either.  No more pine trees, no more dishes.  No more destruction.  No more death.

"Or by hurting yourself," Connor added.

She was not so certain about that.

Connor moved to stand in front of her, blocking her path, stopping her.  "Don't hate yourself like this," he said, his voice gentle and caring, the way she remembered it from long ago.

"Why not?" she demanded, her fists clenching at her sides.  "What am I supposed to do?  Respect myself?  Like myself?"  He didn't answer, and she whirled away, shaking.  What was the matter with her?  He was being kind and understanding and sympathetic, and she wanted to kill him.  She dug her nails into her palms and took deep, shuddering breaths, trying to control the rage.

Connor's voice came from behind her.  "Let it out, Cassandra."  He didn't sound gentle now.  "Let it out."

She did not turn.  "Do you want me to hit you again?" she demanded, for she had done just that this summer, hit him over and over again, while he had stood there and allowed her to vent some of her rage on him.

"No."  He moved to stand by her side.  "I want you to run with me."  She glanced at him, startled, and he gave a jerk of his head.  "Come on."  And he was off.

She watched him go down the road for a few paces, and then she followed.  They ran in silence, side by side, the black ribbon of road ahead of them silvered-gray under the moonlight.  They ran until her breath came short and sharp, and her legs felt like rubber, and still they ran.  Cassandra didn't know where she was or where she was going, and she didn't care.

~~~~~

Connor kept up the pace until Cassandra was weaving on her feet, then he turned off the road and ran up a narrow glen, on a dirt path next to a stream.  The ground was rougher now, the moonlight shadowed by clouds, and he slowed, finally stopping near large gray boulders.

Cassandra stopped, too, and drove both her fists into the unyielding rock, then stood shuddering with the pain.

Connor knew why she was angry with Duncan and with Methos, but he didn't understand this.  "Why are you angry with yourself?" he asked her, leaning back against a boulder.

Cassandra climbed onto the rock and stared silently at the sky.  She huddled there, wrapping her arms around her knees--hiding herself, protecting herself--before she answered.  "I didn't even try to fight when the Horsemen came for me in the hotel.  I just ... let them.  Like I let Methos.  And Kronos.  And Roland.  And all the others, all through the years.  I just ... let them."  She gagged on the words.  "All of them."

How many men?  How many rapes?  He had wondered that before, but he wouldn't ask her now.

"I kept saying I was going to kill Kronos, kill Methos, but I think I was just trying to convince myself that I could."  She closed her eyes as she admitted, "And I couldn't."

Finally, he could get an answer.  "Why not?"

Cassandra took a shaky breath and stared unseeing at the ground.  "I told myself it was because I didn't want to be like him, to kill someone and take pleasure in it, but it was really because I was afraid of his Quickening.  I didn't want him ... inside me.  Not again."

He had once overheard Cassandra tell Alex that Quickenings were like rape, but much worse.

"I hear their voices, you know," she said.

He hadn't known.

"Usually for years.  They whisper to me, call to me.  When I'm asleep, when I'm awake."

Christ.  As if dreams weren't bad enough.

"I don't think I could have killed any of the Horsemen, not even Kronos.  I was too afraid of going mad."  She buried her head on her knees for a moment, then admitted, "I couldn't take Roland's head, and I'll never be able to take anyone else's head, either.  I can't even fight my own battles."  Her voice went quiet and dull.  "You were right, Connor.  I am a coward."

Shit.  He should never have said that to her.  "I don't have cowards for friends, Cassandra," he said, wishing she would let him hold her, wishing he could kill that bastard Methos right now.  "I don't respect them enough."

She caught her breath at that, looked up at him, tears glimmering on her cheeks in the moonlight.

"You went after Kronos by yourself," Connor continued, "and then you went after Methos, all by yourself."

"And I failed."

"But you tried," Connor told her forcefully.

"Trying isn't enough, remember?" she said, quoting what he had said to her during one of their sparring sessions this summer.  "Trying will get me killed.  It almost did."  She said in despair, "I don't know how I'm going to survive."

"You've lasted nearly thirty-five hundred years," he pointed out.

"By running, and hiding, and letting them--"  She stopped, then shook her head angrily and slid off the rock.  "No more," she said, and her words became a vow.  "No more.  I'm not going to 'just let them' anymore."

"Good," he said briskly, glad to see something else in her besides self-pity and self-hate.  "I'm getting tired of this victim crap you keep pulling."

She glared at him, just as he had wanted.  "They--"

"Yeah, men have treated you like dirt," Connor interrupted, brutally and deliberately callous.  "Yeah, you've had a rough life.  But all the men who've done that to you are dead now."  Almost all of them, he amended silently.  Methos was still alive.  "What are you going to do with the rest of your life?  Whine?"

Cassandra started to speak, then nodded slowly.  "No.  No more whining, either."

"Good," Connor said again.  "Then let's go back."

~~~~~

Cassandra did some serious thinking while she and Connor ran back to the house.

Other Immortals would come after her, but she couldn't take their heads for fear of losing her mind.  Therefore, she would not take heads.  Taking heads wasn't proof of courage, anyway.  Connor didn't think she was a coward, and that was enough for her.

She could use the Voice to immobilize them, then tell them to forget her.  She could kill them temporarily, or even call the police.  She could leave the country.  She could live on Holy Ground.  Duncan had mentioned a priest who had lived in a church for fifteen hundred years.  There were ways.

And she wasn't going to swallow her anger and her pride when people pushed her around.  She wasn't going to try to be the "perfect woman" anymore--always smiling and helpful and kind, always hoping to make other people happy, always effacing herself and denying herself.  Always sacrificing herself, and then feeling guilty for not giving more.

Methos didn't feel guilt.  "Yes, he admitted he was a Horseman," Duncan had told her when they were still in Seacouver, just starting to hunt the Horsemen.  "He said he'd killed a thousand, ten thousand."

"Probably more," Cassandra had muttered.

"He said he liked it," Duncan had said, with bewilderment and loathing.  "He said he did it for pleasure."

"He told you that today?"  Cassandra had asked.  "With no excuses, no explanations?  No remorse?"

"No," Duncan had said flatly.  "Methos told me once that he hasn't felt guilt since the eleventh century."

She had been sure that Methos hadn't changed, and that had been all the proof she had needed.

Except that Methos had changed.  Well, so would she.  No more guilt.  No more whining.  Do what is necessary, fix what is possible, and move on.

Cassandra took a deep breath of cold air and lengthened her stride as she and Connor reached the bottom of the hill near his farm.  "Race you to the fence," she challenged him, and they started to sprint.  Connor won, but not by much, and he turned to Cassandra and they both laughed, then jogged for a bit to cool down.

Duncan was standing near the barn, waiting for them.  "Cassandra and I are going to talk," he announced, then added with a hard stare for his former teacher, "Alone."

Connor turned to her, and Cassandra reassured him.  "It'll be all right, Connor.  I can do this now."  She stepped forward, then stopped herself from reaching out to lay her hand on his arm.  She had no right to touch him, not any more.  She settled for a whispered, "Thank you."

Connor nodded, with that slight curve to his lips and narrowing of his eyes that was his version of smile, the smile that warmed her heart.  The look he gave to Duncan was not so friendly.  "Don't do anything that will scare the horses," he warned them before he left.

Duncan waited until Connor went into the house.  "It's cold out.  Should we go back upstairs to the exercise room?"

Cassandra wasn't cold.  "No."

"Then let's walk," he suggested, and they walked in silence along the fence, the frozen grasses stiff underfoot.  After a few moments, Duncan spoke again.  "Cassandra, in Bordeaux, there was so much going on, I just didn't ..."

"... think," she finished for him.  At his embarrassed nod, she admitted, embarrassed herself, "I wasn't thinking much then, either."

"I didn't mean to betray your trust that way."

"I know," she said softly, knowing that Duncan was a man worthy of trust.  She should trust him.  At least as much as she trusted any other man.  Or any woman.

Or any Immortal.

Cassandra jammed her hands in her pockets and walked faster.  That stupid, stupid Game.  But the Game wasn't Duncan's fault, and Duncan truly was a man of honor.  She knew that.  It had been a mistake, and she had made mistakes, too.  She had made one tonight.  "I'm sorry, Duncan.  I shouldn't have taken it out on you like that.  I know how easy it is to say things you regret later."  So terribly easy, so fatally easy.

"Or do things," Duncan added.

"Or not do things."  The words came easily, angry and vicious, and she didn't regret them at all.

Duncan stopped.  "Cassandra...."

Cassandra stopped, too, the rage leaping forth.  His lie to her in Bordeaux may have been a mistake, but the rest of it hadn't.  "You lied to me!"

He merely nodded.  "Yes.  And I've told you why."

"Not just then," she spat at him.  "Not just with words.  In bed when--"  When she had thought they were making love, when she had thought she meant something, when she had been just another fuck.  The rage was fast turning into tears, but she couldn't stop now.  "You lied every time you listened to me, every time you held me when I cried, every time you pretended that you cared."

He stared at her, eyes wide with confusion, head shaking in denial.  "I wasn't pretending."

Cassandra knew better.  She knew what a liar he was.  "You pretended all that time, and then you walked away.  You walked away and left me, and then Kronos--"  The words wouldn't come, but the memories did.

She started to turn away, but he caught her by the shoulder and stopped her.  "Cassandra...."

She whirled under his grasp, turned to face him even as she knocked his hand away from her.  Then she slapped him full across the face, with all the hate and all the hurt she had been holding inside her for over three thousand years.  "You lied to me!"

She tried to hit him again, but he was ready for her this time and blocked the blow.  "Are you talking about me, Cassandra?" he asked, his voice still calm.  "Or are you talking about Methos?"

Methos?  But....

"Cassandra," he said slowly, "I am not Methos."

She blinked and focused on him, on the dark eyes and dark hair, on Duncan, the Highland Foundling, the child and the man.

"I lied to you once, yes," his voice went on, caring and concerned, "but I never betrayed you, never abandoned you."

Methos had abandoned her.  Methos had betrayed her.  Duncan had been her champion, her savior, her friend.  Cassandra closed her eyes in dismay as she lowered her arm.  She had done it again, confused enemy and friend, lashed out in blind, unthinking rage.

"Oh, Duncan," she whispered.  "I'm sorry.  I didn't...."  She pulled away from him in embarrassment and shame, and then she walked away.  She made it to the fence, crouching there, her back to the wind.

Duncan joined her.  "I wasn't pretending when I told you that I cared, Cassandra.  And I wasn't pretending on that night we spent together--that night we made love."

She shook her head.  "How many nights of passion have you had, Duncan?  How many women?"  She wiped at her cheek with her hand, pushing back the tears.  "Can you even remember their names?"

"Cassandra, I remembered you for almost four hundred years."

"Because I told you to!" she burst out, standing up, starting to walk away again.  No!  No more running, no more lies.  She owed Duncan the truth.  "I used the Voice on you when you were thirteen," she told him despairingly, "to make sure you would remember the Witch of Donan Wood, because I knew I would need to use you to kill Roland for me."

Duncan didn't look surprised at that, but he didn't look too happy, either, and she tried to apologize.  "I'm sorry, Duncan, but ... I didn't have a choice.  The Prophecy said--"

"Yeah," he said grimly.

"But that's done with," she said--or at least her part in it was.  The rest of the prophecy spoke only of Duncan, and she could do nothing about that, not even warn him.  "Donan Wood is gone now," she continued, doing what was necessary and moving on.  "The Witch you remembered all those years was a dream, a fantasy.  She wasn't a person, Duncan.  She wasn't real."

"She looked real enough to me," Duncan said, smiling.

Cassandra suddenly remembered Duncan's first introduction to the witch, when she had been bathing naked in a pool, and young Duncan had come outside and watched.  She had to smile, too.  "And you looked."

"Just making sure," he said, as he had said on the night they had spent together, and now they shared another smile.  "Have I been a real person to you, Cassandra?" Duncan asked, more seriously now.  "Or am I just 'the Highland Foundling'?  The fulfillment of the Prophecy?"

"At first," she admitted.  For centuries Duncan had been only an idea to her, her promised champion, not a person in his own right.  One day together had not been enough time to change that.  "I wanted to get to know you better, but Roland came so soon, and then that night...."

"We're Immortal, but sometimes a night is all the time we have," Duncan said.  "That doesn't make it any less real, or any less meaningful.  It doesn't mean we don't care."

"I know," she agreed, hearing the truth in his words.  "And that night, it was enough.  But during the week we spent together, I thought we had become real people to each other, become more than the Witch and the Foundling.  I thought we were friends."

"We are," he said, sounding surprised.

"Are we?" she challenged.  "Methos is your friend.  I'm only ... a convenient companion."

Duncan gave a small snort of laughter.  "You have *never* been convenient."

"No," she said, glad that he could see the humor of it, considering all the trouble and danger she had put him in.  "I suppose not."  She began walking again, and Duncan went with her.  "But that's all I was to him, you know, just a convenience."  Cassandra wrapped her arms about her, suddenly cold.  When Methos had come back from a raid, he had liked something to eat, something to drink, and something to fuck.  She had given him all three, all wrapped up in a nice convenient little package.

Cassandra shrugged and put it all behind her, moving on.  "You'd think I'd be used to it by now, all the times it's happened.  I've given up asking men to care, or expecting them to care."

"I care," Duncan said, his dark eyes sincere, earnest, trustworthy.

"I wish I could believe that, Duncan," she said sadly.  "I wish I could believe you."  She saw the way he flinched at that, this man of honor, this man who deserved trust, this man she didn't dare to trust again.  "I hadn't trusted anyone for centuries," she told him.  "But with you, I thought, 'Finally, here's a man who cares about me.  Here's a man I can believe.'  And then you lied to me, and you went to be with *him.*"

She shook her head and looked away, knowing it didn't really matter, wondering why she was even bothering to talk to Duncan at all.  "But I know why you left," she said hopelessly, unable to put this behind her, for this truth would always be with her.  "I'm nothing.  I mean nothing.  I'm worth nothing.  Not even to you."

Duncan's warm hand closed around her own, and she forced herself to calmness.  Duncan wouldn't hurt her, not that way.  She could trust him this much.  "Cassandra," Duncan said firmly, "that's not true.  You aren't nothing.  I do care."

"Really?" she asked, daring to look at him, daring to believe and to trust, maybe just a little more.

"Really," he repeated.  "I wasn't choosing Methos over you.  Both of you are my friends, and I wanted both of you to live.  It wasn't easy, you know."

"No," Cassandra agreed fervently.  "It wasn't."

Duncan's hand moved toward her face, and again Cassandra forced herself to calmness, to move past that fear.  Duncan would not hurt her.  He wiped his thumb across her cheek, and took away the tears she hadn't even known were there.  "I'm sorry, Cassandra."

"I'm sorry, too."  Sorry for so many things, done and undone, said and unsaid, sorry for so many wasted, empty years.  Cassandra took a deep breath, trying to put it all behind her and move on.

Duncan gathered her to him to hold her in his arms, but Cassandra froze in panic and fear.  This she couldn't put behind her, not yet.  Maybe never.  She couldn't stand the idea of a man touching her, of being trapped in his arms or pinned under his body, unable to move or escape, of being invaded and violated and used.

"I can't," she whispered, and Duncan released her at once.

"I didn't mean it that way," he said, and she could hear the hurt in him now, for he had held her in his arms many nights before, given her comfort and caring and love.

"I know," she said, the tears coming again.  "I wish I could.  It's not you, Duncan, it's me.  I just ... I don't want anyone to touch me, in any way."

"When you're ready," he said, offering her his strength and his gentleness.

Duncan was a man she could rely on, a man she could trust.  She still couldn't bring herself to touch him, but she walked close by his side as they went in from the night.

~~~~~

"I guess you can't sleep, either," Cassandra said to Alex later that night--or rather, early the next morning--when they met in the darkened hallway at the foot of the stairs.

"I'm always waking up nowadays," Alex said.  "I hear it's practice for after the babies are born."  She shivered a little in the chill pre-dawn air and pulled her robe closer.

"Hot cocoa?" Cassandra suggested.  "Or tea?"

"Cocoa with whipped cream and cinnamon on top," Alex said decisively, heading for the kitchen.  "And buttered toast with jelly.  And maybe a banana."

The two women settled at the kitchen table with their snacks, but Alex didn't start eating right away.  "Why were you so angry at Duncan?" she asked, as forthright as always.

Cassandra carefully sprinkled cinnamon on her whipped cream; the cocoa was still too hot to drink.  "At the airport on the way here," Cassandra began, "I overheard two college students talking.  One asked the other, 'What's the difference between toilet paper and girls?'"

Alex grimaced but answered.  "'Toilet paper doesn't expect you to call on the telephone after you use it.'  Yes, I've heard that, too."  She shook her head.  "But Duncan never treats women like that."

"No," Cassandra agreed.  "He doesn't.  But other men do, and Duncan ... Duncan lied to me so he could go meet with his friend.  I felt as if Duncan had been leading me on and then deserted me, just ... used me and walked away, like I was nothing."  Cassandra sighed and nibbled on the edges of her toast.  "I overreacted, I know.  He didn't mean to do that, it wasn't deliberate, and I know that he does care.  But other men have done that to me, and I guess I just blamed Duncan for everything, took it all out on him."

"A scapegoat," Alex said succinctly, scooping up her whipped cream with a spoon.

Cassandra nodded.  "I've been finding scapegoats a lot lately," she admitted, "but ... Duncan just made me feel so worthless!"

"Cass," Alex said, setting down her spoon.  "Duncan didn't *make* you feel worthless.  You made yourself feel worthless."

"I--"

"Even if a guy does use you and dump you," Alex said firmly, "it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you.  It means there's something wrong with him.  Decent people don't treat each other that way."

Cassandra stared into her cup, thinking.  Methos as a Horseman certainly hadn't been "decent," not by any stretch of the imagination.  What had happened between them had been his fault, not hers.  She picked up her cocoa, reminding herself once again--no more guilt, no more whining.

"And Cass," Alex continued, "you know how you spent your life trying to keep Roland happy?  Don't make that same mistake with Connor."

"What are you talking about?" Cassandra demanded, jerking her head up.

"Do you know how often you say, 'Connor wants' or 'Connor wouldn't like that' or 'Connor says'?  Do you even realize you're looking to him for approval all the time, just like you looked to Roland?"

"No," Cassandra said slowly, setting her drink down untasted.  "No, I didn't realize that."

"Don't give Connor--or anyone!--that kind of power over you.  He never asked for it, and he doesn't want it."  Alex smiled wryly as she reached for her toast.  "And he certainly doesn't need it.  I have a hard enough time dealing with his ego already."

"Yes, I suspect you do," Cassandra said, smiling in return.

"You don't need their good opinion," Alex concluded.  "Only your own."

Cassandra carefully made patterns in her whipped cream with the back of her spoon then asked, "How can you be so wise when you're so young, Alex?"

"Because both my mother and my father told me to do what I thought was right and never mind about other people's opinions.  Besides, I haven't had as much time as you have to get messed up."

Cassandra snorted in agreement.  "Nobody has."  Except maybe Methos, and she was by far more messed up than he.  She licked the whipped cream from her spoon and finally took a sip of her cocoa, hot and sweet and smooth.

They finished their snacks then went back to bed.  Cassandra slept late in the morning.  It was nearly nine o'clock before she emerged from her bedroom, and this time it was Duncan she met in the hall.  "Sleep well?" he asked, and she smiled and said yes, for her sleep--though interrupted--had been peaceful and deep, with no dreams.

"Happy birthday," she told him and kissed him on the cheek.  Then she forced herself to tuck her arm through his, wanting to show him her trust, to put the anger behind them.  He laid his hand on top of hers and smiled, and they went into the kitchen for breakfast.

Connor and Alex were there, drinking coffee, but Connor set down his cup and got up from the table with barely a nod.  "Connor?" Alex called after him.

"John needs help with the horses," came the reply from the coatroom, then the door slammed shut behind him.

The clock ticked loud in the sudden silence.  Duncan sat next to Alex at the table.  "Would it be easier if I left?" Duncan asked.  "This isn't the best time for you to have guests."

"No, Duncan," she said swiftly.  "I'd like you to stay, and even if you go, he'll still be angry, and it'll just get worse.  But you and Connor are the ones who need to 'work things out' today."

"Looks like it," Duncan agreed, with no enthusiasm at all.

"Why don't you go lie down?" Cassandra suggested to Alex, for the other woman looked suddenly tired and strained.  "We'll make our own breakfast."

"I think I will," Alex said and headed for the stairs.

"And he didn't even wish me happy birthday," Duncan said ruefully, looking out toward the stables, and then he and Cassandra set to breaking eggs for omelets.

~~~~~

After breakfast, Cassandra went to the small sitting room of the guest suite and started rereading "Stranger in a Strange Land," one of the books she had found in the living room.  She knew Duncan and Connor wouldn't want her around while they "worked things out," whatever it was they had to work out.

An hour or so later, Alex knocked on the door.  "Connor and Duncan are in the exercise room over the stables, and John is watching a video," she said, poking her head in the room.  "Want to go for a walk?"

"Of course!" Cassandra agreed and went to get her coat.  They strolled slowly along the pasture fence, watching the horses run.

"Do you know why Connor is angry at Duncan?" Alex asked her.

"No, I was just about to ask you," Cassandra said, laughing, then ventured an opinion.  "I think Connor might be annoyed about Duncan lying to me."

"So, he's back into teacher mode again."  Alex sighed.  "Duncan won't care for that, I know."

Cassandra wouldn't care for it, either.  Connor could be a bit overbearing at times.

"Have they always fought this much?" Alex asked.  "Every time they get together it seems like they argue about something.  Even at our wedding, they got into this huge debate about the proper way to cook haggis."

"And did they enjoy the debate?"

"Yes," Alex said, smiling.  "I think they did.  But this time ... they're not having fun."

"No," Cassandra said, remembering the look on Connor's face this morning, the reluctance in Duncan's voice, "they're not."  She leaned against the wooden fence, and the horses snorted and wheeled away, hooves pounding on the frozen ground, puffs of white coming from their nostrils.

"If you find out what he's mad about, you'll tell me, right?" Alex asked.

"Right," Cassandra agreed.  "And if you find out, you'll tell me."

~~~~~

But neither Duncan nor Connor was in evidence until well after lunchtime, and then neither of them would talk.  "We worked it out," Duncan said with a shrug, and when Cassandra talked to Alex, it was only to hear that Connor had said the same.

"We'll find out eventually," Alex said, but Cassandra wasn't so sure.  It didn't matter, though, and Cassandra was relieved to have a peaceful day.  She needed one.  She and John made a birthday cake for Duncan (chocolate, of course), and then she went riding with Duncan and John.  As darkness fell, everyone gathered in the living room to play cards.

After dinner, John proudly carried the cake into the dining room.  Four green candles and four red candles burned merrily, red for the centuries and green for the years, and Duncan blew them out with a single breath of air.  John got busy slicing the cake into thick wedges.

"I still wish we had a present here for you to open, Duncan," Alex said, from her place at the foot of the long, oak table.

Duncan shrugged and thanked John for his slice of cake.  "Just being here is enough, Alex.  I haven't spent a birthday or a Christmas in the Highlands in a long time."

Suddenly, Cassandra knew what to give Duncan for a birthday present.  "I remember your first birthday in the Highlands, Duncan."  She was speaking to Duncan, but she was watching Connor.  He gave the sudden lift of his head and his eyebrows that meant he was surprised, then he nodded slowly, once.  It was time to tell the tale.

"You were here in the Highlands, then, weren't you, Cassandra?" asked Alex.

"Yes."  Cassandra turned to face Duncan, who did not yet realize what she meant.  "And I remember seeing Duncan on the day of his birth."

Duncan stopped chewing, then swallowed the bite of cake hastily and set his chair down with a thump.  His voice was quiet.  "What?"

"The wind blew fierce on that first day of winter," Cassandra began, slipping into the storyteller's art, and Connor rose to turn off the electric lights, leaving then with only the fire and the two candles on the table.  Duncan and John's eyes shone dark with the flickers of flame, and Connor went back to sit next to Alex and hold her hand.

"I was asleep in my cabin when there came a knock on the door," Cassandra told them, lowering her voice, drawing them in.  "Young Aileen MacLeod stood there, wrapped in furs and plaids against the cold, for she'd walked for miles through the forest to tell me that Mary MacLeod lay in childbed, with a babe that would not come.  So I gathered my things and I went to the village, but when I came, I knew I came too late, for Mary's baby had died.

"Then Connor came, and in his arms he held a newborn babe, a child of dark hair and dark eyes, a foundling child who needed a home."  Duncan looked to Connor with glittering eyes, but he said nothing, for no one interrupts a *seanachaidh* in the telling of a tale.

"And Connor said he'd found the boy in the shed near my cabin, wrapped in a scrap of tartan against the cold.  I took the child to Mary MacLeod, and she claimed him for her own.  Her husband Ian named him Donnchadh MacLeoid na clannad MacLeoid, a dark warrior of the sons of Leoid, and so the foundling had a home."  Cassandra sat silently with her eyes downcast for a moment, letting the story die into silence, preparing for the questions to come.

Duncan didn't wait long, but then, he had been waiting for four hundred years.  "You were the peasant woman who brought the boy-child," he said slowly, trying out the idea.

"Yes," she agreed, and he immediately turned to Connor.

"Where did the child come from?" Duncan demanded.  "Where did *I* come from?"

Connor's eyebrows did their lightning fast shrug, and he cleared his throat.  Cassandra saw with surprise that Connor was nervous, but then she looked at the unwavering stare on Duncan's face, and she realized why.  Duncan had always wondered where he came from, even more than most Immortals.  His father had disowned him, called him demon and fiend, and Duncan had never gotten over that loss.  Connor had become a father to him in some ways, but now Connor was about to admit that he had known the secret all these years, and had never said a word.

"I don't know where you came from," Connor answered quietly.  "Not really.  I found you in the shed next to Cassandra's cottage when I came back from going to greet the sun at the solstice stones."  He shrugged his shoulders now.  "I thought some village girl had come to the shed and given birth, then abandoned the baby."

Duncan went back to Cassandra.  "Where were you when he was at the solstice stones?"

"In the cottage."

"And you didn't notice anyone about?"

"No," Cassandra said evenly.  "I slept late that morning."  No need to explain just why she had been so tired.  Duncan didn't need to know what had happened the night before.  "Connor had left while it was still dark, and he didn't get back until close to two, so there were at least five or six hours when the woman could have come and given birth, then left."

Duncan was looking at Connor again.  "You found me," he repeated, his face and voice grim.

"Yes.  I picked you up from where you lay on the straw, wrapped in a bit of cloth."  Connor gave a rare grin.  "And the first thing you did was piss on me."

John let out a whoop of laughter, and the grimness disappeared from Duncan's face as he laughed, too.  "Good," Duncan said, when he had finally stopped laughing.  "I'm glad our relationship got off to a fine start."

"A fine start," Connor agreed, still grinning.  "I bundled you up and carried you to Cassandra.  You cried half the way to the village and bothered the horse."

"At least I don't do that anymore," Duncan said.

"I hope you don't do the other, either," Connor replied, and they both laughed again.

"Dad, tomorrow's the solstice, right?" John said eagerly.  "You said I could go with you to the standing stones to see the sunrise after I turned thirteen.  We're going, aren't we?"

"Yes," Connor said, smiling at his son.  "We are.  You coming, Duncan?"

"Absolutely," Duncan said.  "I don't think you and I have climbed that hill on the winter solstice since the 1600s, right?"

"Right."

"Well, I'm not going," Alex announced, her hand caressing the babies within.  "Not this year."

Cassandra spoke up, knowing the MacLeod men wanted to do this alone.  "I'll stay here with Alex."

They finished their pieces of cake and spoke of their plans for tomorrow, then left to prepare for bed.  Cassandra paused in the hallway to give Duncan another kiss on the cheek, ending the day as it had begun.  "Happy birthday, Duncan."

"Sleep well, Cassandra," he said, with a swift smile that flared brilliant in her heart.

~~~~~

Cassandra slept well, staying in bed late again, wrapped deep in a thick veil of sleep, a pure luxury of relaxation, then she lay in bed and read some more of her book.  Total bliss.

Around ten-thirty, she wandered into the kitchen and made herself some coffee, then joined Alex in the nursery upstairs.  "This is a lovely room, Alex," Cassandra said as she settled herself one of the two well-cushioned rocking chairs.  She looked out the wide windows at the loch in the distance.  Sunshine flooded the spacious room, even on this shortest day of the year, for three more windows looked out over the garden below.

"Thank you," Alex said, lying on the couch.  "We went with an animal theme, since our other main choices seemed to be pink ballet slippers or trucks."  She glanced around at the wallpaper border of rabbits dressed in blue waistcoats and kittens wearing white pinafores.  "I prefer Beatrix Potter drawings to Sesame Street cartoons.  Duncan gave us the matching rocking chairs, and the cribs arrived last month."

"Are you ready for the babies?" Cassandra asked.

"As ready as I can be, which means not ready at all," Alex said.  "That's what my mother tells me, anyway.  She says the only way to understand what it's like to be a mother is to be a mother."  Alex shifted on the couch, laboriously rolling onto her side.  "I feel like a turtle," she complained, "except my shell is in the front.  It's hard, too," she said, poking at her abdomen.  "More of those practice contractions."

Cassandra nodded, though she doubted Alex was going to have to practice much longer.  The babies were officially due in five weeks, but twins seldom went full-term.

"What's the youngest child you adopted, Cassandra?" Alex asked.

"The first child I ever adopted was a newborn," Cassandra said, remembering--even now--the wondering gaze of her daughter, the curl of tiny fingers around her thumb.  "My friend Hitaya died in childbirth.  I moved in for a time to help Taleer with the baby and his other two children, and ended up staying for forty years."

"Taleer was your first husband, right?" Alex asked, drawing her knees up.

"Yes," Cassandra said, now remembering Taleer's hands, strong and gentle, remembering the music and the laughter in their home.  That had been a good life, her first life after the Horsemen, before Roland.  She and Alex chatted for a time, then Cassandra went downstairs to make lunch.  Alex said she was going to take a nap.  But when Cassandra went back upstairs to tell her to come and eat, Alex was pacing in front of the windows, breathing carefully, her hands on the small of her back.  After ten seconds of that she stopped and looked over at Cassandra.  "I don't think I'm practicing now."

"How many of those have you had?" Cassandra asked, going over to her.

"It started a little after you left, and I've had three since you went downstairs.  That was four."

Cassandra had been downstairs for only half an hour.  "That means the contractions are about six minutes apart, Alex."

"I know," Alex said then caught her lower lip between her teeth.  "They're not supposed to start this close together.  The books all say they start at about fifteen or twenty minutes apart."

"Then the books are wrong," Cassandra said, keeping her voice even and soothing.  "I've seen other women start this way."  Not often, to be sure, but it happened.  "Can you talk through your contractions?"

"I don't know," Alex said.  "There wasn't anybody here to talk to."

"How long do they last?"

Alex glanced at her bare wrist, then looked around the room for a clock.  "I don't...."

"Don't worry about it," Cassandra said calmly.  "We'll find out during the next one.  Why don't you sit down?"

Alex lowered herself into the rocking chair.  "I guess I'd better be ready for the babies now."

"Maybe," Cassandra agreed.  "The contractions could stop."  But they didn't.  In a few minutes, Alex was up and walking again, unable to sit still, while the contraction lasted thirty seconds.  Alex could talk, but only in short sentences.  "What time are the boys due back?" Cassandra asked.

Alex slowly sat down again, perched on the edge of her chair.  "The sun rises around eight-thirty, and it's a two-hour hike down the hill, then they said something about stopping for lunch in Glenfinnan.  One o'clock, maybe?"

"And it's after twelve."  Cassandra smiled at her reassuringly.  "It'll be fine, Alex.  Connor will be here soon to take you to the hospital.  You'll do fine."

Alex laughed a little, breathlessly.  "I feel like I just got on a roller coaster, and it's starting to go up the first big hill."  She glanced around the room at all the baby furniture and the clothes and the wallpaper, then said plaintively, "I can't get off, can I?"

"No," Cassandra said, knowing what Alex meant.  "But you can close your eyes and scream at the scary parts, if you want to."

"I didn't want to be screaming during labor," Alex protested.

"I meant while you were raising the children," Cassandra retorted dryly.  "You're going to be on that roller coaster for at least twenty years."  Alex smiled at that, but the tense lines around her eyes and mouth remained.  "Alex," Cassandra began, nervous herself, "I'd like to ... to give you a blessing, if that's all right?"

"A blessing?" Alex repeated, then said slowly, "I suppose...."

"It's one I used to do when I was a midwife," Cassandra said.  She hadn't said this prayer in over a thousand years.  Cassandra breathed out slowly, trying to remember, then lay her hands gently on Alex's head.

"Blessings on this mother who loves."  Her fingertips touched Alex's eyebrows, her palms in front of Alex's eyes.  "Blessings on these eyes that watch."  Her hands went to the top of the curve of Alex's breasts.  "Blessings on these breasts that nurture."  Her hands moved sideways, to the upper arms. "Blessings on these arms that hold."

Cassandra took Alex's hands, and Alex responded with a fierce grip.  "Blessing on these hands that help."  Quick shared smiles, then Alex let go and Cassandra knelt before her, hands open in front of Alex's thighs.  "Blessings on this gate of life."  Cassandra lay her hands, palms flat, on the curve of the unborn, then stood slowly, bringing her hands higher, listening for the heartbeats of the children within.  And she could hear it, two steady, rapid beats, so different from the slow surging of trees, so much alike, so alive.  Cassandra swallowed hard, but did not blink back her tears.  "Blessings on these children, that they may have life, and love."

"Oh, Cass," Alex said, tears of her own falling, and the two women embraced.  "That was lovely," Alex said, and the lines of nervous strain were gone.  "I think--"  She stopped as another contraction came, and she held tight to Cassandra's arms.

When it was over, Cassandra brought her the telephone.  "Why don't you call the hospital?  I'm going to put your and Connor's suitcases in the kitchen.  He'll be here soon."

And he was.  Thirty minutes and five contractions later, Connor and Duncan and John arrived, red-faced with the cold.  Alex and Cassandra were waiting for them in the kitchen.  "Did you eat?" Cassandra asked Connor, as she handed Alex her coat.

"Yes," Connor said, his back to them while he took off his gloves.

"Good," Cassandra said briskly.  "Then you won't have to eat in the car.  Off you go."

"Go?" Connor asked, turning around.  "Go where?"

"Duncan, would you get the suitcases?" Alex asked, already heading for the door.  She stopped to give John a hug.  "See you soon, sport.  You can come visit us in a bit."

Connor was still standing in the coatroom, his gloves in his hand.  "Alex?"

"It's time, Connor," she said gently.  "We should go."

"Go," he repeated slowly, then suddenly got the idea.  "Go," he said one more time, with a grin and a quick look to his wife.  "Are you--?"  But Alex was having another contraction, and she had no breath to answer.  Connor took charge.  "Sit down," he said, taking her arm.

"No," Alex forced out, rocking back and forth, while Connor stood beside her, now wondering what to do.

"A lot of women like to walk during labor," Cassandra said, handing Duncan a suitcase, then handing John one, too.

"Did you call the hospital?" Connor asked Cassandra, but Alex's contraction was over, and she was the one to answer.

"Yes," Alex said, breathing normally again.

"What about the doctor?"

"She knows.  She's on her way."

Connor turned to John.  "Mr. MacNabb's not here to help, so remember to feed the horses tonight."

"I know, Dad."

"And don't forget their blankets. It's cold out."

John rolled his eyes and shifted the suitcase to his other hand.  "I know, Dad."

Cassandra shooed them all out the door and into the garden, but Connor had more instructions as they walked to the garage.  "Duncan, the water heater sometimes goes out.  Just relight the pilot flame."

"Sure thing," Duncan answered easily, loading the suitcases into the trunk.

"Oh, and the--"

"Connor," Duncan interrupted, "we'll be fine.  You go be with Alex."

Connor's head whipped around.  "Where is she?"

"I'm in the car," Alex answered, already fastening her seat belt as John shut the car door for her.

"Do we have a camera?" Connor demanded, his keys in his hand.

"It's in your bag," Cassandra told him, opening the car door for him.  "I checked."

"What about fi--?"

"And you have film," she broke in.  "Go, Connor," said told him, resisting the impulse to give him a hug.  "Be with Alex at the birth of your children."

"Yeah," he said, looking at Cassandra and Duncan and John, grinning again, then he finally got in the car.  He started the engine, put the car in gear, then unrolled the window and stuck his head out.  "And you have to--"

"Connor," Duncan growled, "leave!" and Connor finally moved the car.  Duncan shook his head as Connor and Alex disappeared down the lane then observed, "I'm not so sure Connor is going to survive labor."

"Alex will probably kill him before it's over," Cassandra said dryly.  "Either that, or the nurses will."

"So, when will they be back?" John asked.  "When will the babies be born?"

"It can take a long time, John," Duncan said.  "Hours."

"What's Dad going to do all that time?"

Cassandra and Duncan exchanged glances, and then they both grinned as they answered together. "Give orders."

~~~~~

It did take hours.  Duncan and Cassandra practiced swordfighting while John watched, then the three of them went riding, fed and blanketed the horses, made dinner, ate, cleaned up, worked on a puzzle, and still there was no word.  When John started nodding off around eleven o'clock, Duncan ordered him to bed, with a promise to wake him when the telephone call came.

Duncan and Cassandra settled in the chairs in front of the fire, a bottle of whisky between them.  "Did you use the Voice on my parents to make them adopt me?" Duncan asked.

Cassandra looked up from her whisky, not surprised by the abruptness of his question.  "Yes.  I wanted to be sure you had a home and parents who loved you."  She knew how important those early years of childhood were in forming the adult.  Roland had been five when she had found him, and she had found him much too late.

"And did you use the Voice to make them love me?"

"No," Cassandra said swiftly, for Duncan's eyes looked lost.  "No, Duncan.  The Voice doesn't work like that.  Basic instructions in the Voice can last for a time, like a post-hypnotic suggestion, but changing the person inside, the memories, the emotions ... no, not with a simple command.  They loved you because you were their son, not because I told them to adopt you."  She thought back to that long-ago night, to the cold and the wind.  "I thought that would help them in their grief, to accept a new son."

"To replace the boy-child that was lost," Duncan murmured, then demanded, "Did you tell my father to banish the midwife?"

"No," Cassandra declared in a whisper, then swallowed painfully.  "I never thought...."  She took a deep breath, easing away the guilt.  It couldn't be fixed; it was time to move on.  "I didn't mean for that to happen, Duncan, and I tried to help her afterwards.  I asked Connor to help her find a new home."

"Where she died a few months later, alone," Duncan said harshly.  "Connor told me what happened.  Couldn't you have used the Voice to make my father let her stay?  Or used the Voice on her?"

"Margaret had been suspicious and envious of me for years, Duncan.  It's as I just said; the Voice can't erase deeply-held feelings."  At least, not without constant reinforcement over a period of time.  "I couldn't simply tell her to change her mind.  She would have killed you, Duncan, or turned the clan against you, told them you were a demon changeling from the forest."  Cassandra felt no guilt now, for Duncan had been hers to protect.  "Have you ever seen a child Immortal?"

"Yeah," Duncan said, wiping his hand over his mouth, looking away.  "But to know that she died so that I could have a home...."

"Margaret cursed your father and me before she left, if that makes you feel better.  She said your father would banish you and break his own heart in doing it."
Duncan sipped at his whisky then finally asked, "And the curse on you?"

"That one came true, too.  She got her revenge."  Cassandra changed the subject abruptly.  "Do you have any idea where Methos is?"

Duncan sighed and shook his head.  "He said he was going to Holy Ground for a bit, but I don't know where or for how long.  We had a long talk at a church, two days after you left.  He said he was on the edge, that he didn't know which way he would fall."

"Here there be dragons," Cassandra murmured, wondering how deep the pit of power was for Methos, what nightmares and monsters waited for him there in the sea of blood.

"I think it was more on the lines of 'Yea, though I walk the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear my own evil,'" Duncan said.  "He was ... scared, I think, scared of himself, of what he had been, of what he might be again."

"Kronos tempted him," Cassandra said.  "Reminded him of the pleasure of power."  She lifted her glass of whisky, stared through it at the fire.  "Well, we've all tasted that bloody darkness, haven't we?"

"Have we?" Duncan asked her intently.

"Oh, yes," Cassandra answered, and swallowed some whisky to wipe away the flavor.  "Every Immortal does, eventually.  We just don't do it as ... quickly and as thoroughly as you did, perhaps.  But some of us never leave the darkness for the light."

"Methos did."

"After a thousand years," Cassandra said wryly.  "Apparently he's a slow learner."

"But he did leave the darkness," Duncan repeated, in staunch defense of his friend.  "He changed."

"Yes," she agreed, "he did."  And he might change again.  Cassandra set her glass down and leaned forward.  "I want a promise from you, Duncan.  If he goes back to being a Horseman--"

"He won't," Duncan said immediately.

Cassandra simply looked at him.  "Forever is a long time."  Duncan nodded uneasily, and she continued, "If he goes back, I want your word that you will take his head."

"Cassandra--"

"I want your word on this," Cassandra repeated.  "I saved your life with Roland, and you saved my life with the Horsemen, so we're even on that, but you owe me this, Duncan.  You owe me the head of the last Horseman."

"The Horsemen are finished."

"Then you don't owe me anything," she concluded neatly.  When Duncan didn't answer, she pressed, "Do you trust him or not?"

"I trust him," Duncan answered, without even a pause.  "And I give you my word.  If--if!--Methos ever becomes a Horseman again, I'll take his head."

Cassandra leaned back in her chair, satisfied.  "Thank you."

"Do you want the head on a silver platter?" Duncan asked sarcastically.

"Do you want me to dance naked before you to get it?" she shot back then relented.  "I don't want his head at all, Duncan.  I want to be sure I made the right choice in letting him live, the way you wanted him to."  She said slowly and clearly, "I want to make sure he never hurts anyone else again."

Duncan nodded grimly at that, and they sat in silence for a time.  "We talked about you," Duncan volunteered.  "At the church that day."

"Did you?"  Cassandra wasn't sure she wanted to hear this, but then again, she needed to know.  "And what did Methos say?"  Duncan hesitated, and Cassandra urged him on, her tones soft yet compelling.  "Tell me what he said, Duncan."

It hadn't been the Voice, but Duncan answered with no further delay.  "He said you were one of a thousand regrets."

Cassandra nodded slowly to herself, her fingers tight around her glass.  "One of a thousand," she repeated softly.  At least it was an improvement from being nothing.  She shrugged and prepared to move on, but there was one more thing she needed to do, or maybe just wanted to do.  "When you see your friend again, Duncan, tell him this for me.  Tell him that he is alive because I wish it.  Tell him that Beyond can last for a very long time, and that the voices will never be silent."

"I don't understand," Duncan said.

Cassandra smiled to herself.  "He will."

Connor's telephone call came at eight o'clock the next morning.  Duncan snatched the receiver from the kitchen wall.  "Hello?" he said urgently, then leaned against the table with a grin.  "That's great!  That's wonderful!  How's Alex?"  Cassandra stood silent, waiting, as Duncan nodded and finished, "Yeah, we'll come over this morning, right away.  Congratulations, Connor!  See you and Alex--and Sara and Colin!--soon."

Duncan hung up the telephone, still grinning.  "Sara Heather was born at four in the morning, then Colin Duncan followed a little later.  Both babies are just about six pounds; both babies are doing fine.  So is Alex."

"And Connor?" Cassandra asked.

"Tired, but still alive," Duncan said, heading for the door to the stables.  "I'd better go get John, then we can all go in my car."

"You go," Cassandra said, not wanting to intrude.  "I'll wait here."

Duncan paused in the doorway.  "Are you sure?"

"Yes," she said.  "It's a time for the MacLeods, all six of you now.  I'll go see the babies this afternoon.  Go on," she said, with a wave of her hand.  "Get John.  Go see your family."  Duncan nodded and left, and Cassandra watched through the window as he and John drove away, then she sat at the table and listened to the ticking of the clock.

~~~~~

"Alex?" Cassandra called softly, pausing at the door of the hospital room.

"Cass!" Alex exclaimed, looking up from the dark-haired baby sleeping in her arms. Dark smudges of fatigue lay underneath her eyes, and her hair flared in a wild halo of wisps.  She smiled with radiant exhaustion and called, "Come on in," as she slowly and carefully eased herself to a more upright position, gripping the bed-rail with one hand.

"Hard to move, isn't it?" Cassandra asked sympathetically, walking around the two empty bassinets to reach the chair near the bed.

Alex grimaced as she leaned back against the pillows, then she nestled the baby closer.  "You should see me walk.  Now I know why they call them baby steps."

"Yes," Cassandra agreed with a smile, remembering the delicate shuffling of new mothers.  "Any stitches?"

"Just a few.  That's one good thing about having the babies early; they weren't that big."  She went back to looking at her child with amazed adoration.  "But they're healthy and strong."

"Is that Colin or Sara?" Cassandra asked, stretching to see better.

"Colin," Alex said, tilting him up a little, revealing an ancient, infant face with a snub nose and tightly closed eyes.  "Do you want to hold him?"

"Oh, no," Cassandra said quickly, though her arms ached with emptiness.  "He's happy where he is, with you."  And so was Connor, and that was as it should be.  Cassandra asked brightly, "How do you tell the babies apart?"

"Aside from the obvious difference?" Alex said with a grin.  "Sara has more hair, and Colin's a little bigger.  They wanted to weigh Sara again, so she's down the hall in the nursery with Connor."

"And how's Connor doing?"

The radiant smile softened into amused fondness and pride.  "He's in love.  I took a nap for a couple of hours this morning after John and Duncan left, but Connor hasn't slept at all.  He just sits there, holding them, watching them, like he's never seen a baby before."

"Not two of his own."

"No," Alex agreed and added with justifiable pride, "I think he likes the birthday presents I gave him, even if his birthday isn't until next week."

"I'm sure he does," Cassandra said, knowing that to be true, even though she hadn't seen Connor at all.  "He's always wanted to be a father.  Heather told me how much he liked children, how much they wanted their own."

"Did you tell her?  That there wouldn't be any children?"

"No, it wasn't my place to speak," Cassandra said.  "Though it was hard to say nothing while I listened to her dreams."

"Poor Heather," Alex murmured and caressed her son's cheek with a wondering hand.

"She did say Connor was very enthusiastic about trying," Cassandra said, hoping to lighten the mood.  "Always."

"Oh, I'm sure," Alex answered with a grin.  "Anywhere, anytime."

"And those plaids the men wore are much easier to remove than pants," Cassandra confided.  "One brooch, one belt buckle and -- whoosh! -- off it all falls."

"If you even bother to take it off."

"Mmm-hmm," Cassandra agreed, remembering a certain afternoon on a brisk autumn day.  "Though the plaid does make a blanket big enough for two."

"Maybe I'll buy Connor a plaid," Alex mused.

"Another birthday present?" Cassandra asked.

"Yes.  Mine."

They were still laughing when Connor came in, his daughter Sara asleep in his arms.  His face was unshaven, his hair uncombed, his clothes wrinkled, his eyes bloodshot and red-rimmed.  Cassandra had never seen him so look so content.  "Congratulations, Connor," she said, going over to look at the other twin.  "Your children are beautiful."

"Yeah," he agreed, with a tender smile for his wife and son and then a besotted stare for his daughter.  "They are."

"Well, I'm off," Cassandra announced, heading for the door over Alex's protest and Connor's glance of surprise.  "You two need some sleep before the twins wake up," she explained and then promised, "I'll visit tomorrow."  Connor nodded, and Cassandra left the family alone.

~~~~~

"When are we going to open the presents, Dad?" John asked the next evening at dinner.  "Tomorrow's Christmas, and Alex isn't home yet."

"I'll be bringing Alex and the twins home tomorrow morning," Connor said, finishing off the last of his second helping of mashed potatoes.  Cassandra and Duncan had spent most of the day cooking, and there was enough food on the table and in the kitchen to last them a week.

"That's the idea," Cassandra had said that afternoon when Connor had returned from the hospital.  She had pushed the hair back from her eyes, then begun to roll out the pie crust.  "Your housekeeper, Mrs. MacNabb, won't be back until next Monday, and Alex's mother isn't going to get here until Sunday.  I'm leaving the day after Christmas."

"And John and I leave the day after that, to meet Richie in the Swiss Alps to go skiing," Duncan had put in, busy peeling apples at the kitchen sink.  "So, it'll be just you and Alex and the twins for three days, and this way you won't have to cook.  We'll all be back for New Year's Eve."  Duncan had grinned.  "We'll cook then, too."

Connor had nodded and reached for a biscuit, hiding his ... well, uneasiness at the thought of being solely responsible for the twins.  Cassandra and Duncan were being considerate, leaving to give the new family some time alone, but still....

That uneasiness had followed him all day, but Connor shook it off and said to John, "We can open presents after lunch tomorrow."

"Can we open just one tonight?" John asked, as bright-eyed and eager as he had been as a four-year-old.  Duncan's eyes were bright, too.  "Just one?"

"Just one," Connor agreed, giving in cheerfully.  "After we decorate the Christmas tree."  He turned to Cassandra.  "Did I see apple pie for dessert?"

~~~~~

The tinsel on the Christmas tree sparkled and spun in the firelight, and Cassandra carefully hung a single strand on a branch, a final touch on the decorated tree.

"I like to throw it on," John said, pointing to his earlier effort.  "Like snowballs."

Connor had never had the patience to hang tinsel strand by strand, either, and he and John used to lob handfuls of the stuff at the tree.  Alex preferred the more artistic approach, and apparently so did Cassandra.  It must be a feminist issue.  Connor stepped back to examine the effect.  Well, maybe ... as long as someone else did it.

"You might get the chance to throw real snowballs tomorrow," Duncan said.  "It's supposed to snow tonight, so we'll have a white Christmas."

"Can I open my present now, Dad?" John asked, kneeling by the pile under the tree, and at Connor's nod, he pulled out the biggest box there.  "This one's from Aunt Rachel," John said, expertly slicing open the wrapping paper with his pocket knife.

"Is Rachel coming for New Years, Connor?" Duncan asked, and Connor nodded again.  "The whole family," Duncan said, smiling, and Connor smiled, too.  Rachel Ellenstein wasn't really John's aunt; she was his foster sister, Connor's adopted daughter.  Connor had found the young girl over half a century ago during World War II, and they had stayed close ever since.

"Wow!" John said, pulling out the four-foot long fuselage for a model airplane.  "It has a motor and everything.  It really flies."

Duncan was already on the floor beside him.  "After we put on the wings.  Let me see the directions."  The two dark heads bent together, already intent on the details of ailerons and wing angle and propeller.

Connor shook his head in amusement, then went through the dining room to the study and called Alex.  She sounded tired, and they didn't talk long.  "I'll bring you home tomorrow," he told her.  "I'll be at the hospital at nine."

"Good," Alex said.  "I miss you."

"I miss you, too," Connor said, for the bed upstairs was lonely and cold, and the house seemed empty somehow.  "Merry Christmas, Alex."

"Merry Christmas, my love."

Connor leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up on his desk, staring at the wall, thinking of his wife, his children, the joy of being alive.  A soft knock sounded at the door, and Connor stood to let Cassandra in.

She handed him a large, flat package wrapped in silver paper, tied with a green bow.  "Merry Christmas, Connor."

Connor took it from her, feeling the edges, for it looked like a book, an atlas perhaps, but his fingers encountered the sharp corners of a box.  It was too heavy for a shirt, a sweater, perhaps?  "Am I supposed to open this now?" he asked.

"Your one present on Christmas Eve," she said, smiling, then headed for the door.

"Not going to watch?" Connor asked.

"No.  You should be alone."  Cassandra shut the door gently behind her, and he listened to her footsteps recede.

Definitely not a sweater, then.  Connor picked up the letter opener from his desk and slit open the wrapping, then quickly opened the box.  More paper there, blue tissue, and Connor pulled it away.  The back of a picture frame greeted him, a hanging wire stark against white paper.  He lifted the picture and turned it over, then he slowly sat down and carefully placed the oil portrait on his lap.

Heather looked back at him, her eyes bright blue and merry, her golden curls whipped by the wind.  Her head was half-tilted, half-turned to look back over one shoulder, with that saucy look about her that said, "Come follow me."  White butterflies floated behind her, and silver embroidery gleamed on her tight crimson bodice, over the soft flowing white of her gown.

"Heather," Connor said softly, glad to be seeing her again, glad that Cassandra had left him alone, glad that she knew him so well.

"My bonny Heather."

~~~~~

Cassandra watched Duncan and John discussing the airplane for a bit, then she went to the sitting room of the guest suite to finish the work on her drawing.  After about half-an-hour she heard hammering on the wall that stood between the study and the sitting room.  Five minutes later, Connor knocked on her door.  "Hey," he said softly, coming in to perch on the arm of one of the floral-print chairs.

"Hey," she answered, setting her pencil down on the coffee table.

He cleared his throat, his eyes curiously bright.  "It looks just like her."

"I'm glad," Cassandra said.  She couldn't remember the faces of her own mortal husbands; it had been too long, over three thousand years.  She knew that Connor would want to remember, and Alex would want to see.

He nodded.  "You did a good job."

"Thank you."

That brought a half-smile as Connor slid into the chair.  "Thank *you.*"

That was all he said, but it was enough for Cassandra.  The long silence before he hung the picture on the wall had been what she had really wanted to hear.

He motioned toward the drawing tablet on her lap.  "Is that another picture?"

"A Christmas present for Duncan," she said and turned it around so he could see.  "It's a pencil drawing, since I don't have any paints here."  The montage of four sketches showed Duncan as a child, and as a man--Duncan as an infant, held in Connor's arms; Duncan as a young boy of six, running with the wind near the village of Glenfinnan; Duncan at about the age John was now, examining a chess game in Cassandra's cottage; and finally, Duncan in the largest central sketch as a man, clad in full Highland garb.

"He'll like that," Connor said, after a silence which told her that Connor liked it, too.  Cassandra decided to do another one, with Connor and Duncan sparring in the Highlands long ago, and perhaps a companion picture of them as they looked today.  And maybe one of Ramirez, to keep for herself.

"I'm glad you're drawing again," Connor told her after a moment, and she knew he was remembering the picture she had drawn of him nearly four centuries ago, the picture he had ripped into shreds and burned.

"I'm doing a lot of things again," Cassandra said, and she was determined to do more.  Time to put the past behind her.  Time to live.

"Good."  Connor lounged back in his chair and studied her, and she lounged back in her chair and studied him.  His mouth twisted in amusement, and he sat up again.  "We're going to have a party on New Year's Day, partly for the new year, partly for my birthday, but mostly to welcome Sara and Colin.  Would you do a naming ceremony for them, and would you be one of their godmothers?"

Cassandra went to the window, staring through the slits in the blinds, seeing her reflection in splintered strips.  She wasn't qualified to do that, to take responsibility for a child again, not in any fashion.  She hadn't even dared to hold the twins.  And she wasn't ready to perform the duties of a priestess, not yet.

"Alex told me about the blessing you did for her, and she suggested you do the naming as well," Connor said from behind her.

A blessing, a naming ... a prayer.  Cassandra closed her eyes and prayed, and accepted the burden and the blessing of yes.  It was time.  She turned back to Connor and sat down. "I can do a naming ceremony," she told him, "but it won't be a Christian baptism."

"Since Rachel is Jewish, Duncan is not a strict Catholic, and Hideyo and Yuki are Shinto, I think that's for the best."  He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.  "And will you be a godmother?  Or should I say, a goddessmother?"

Cassandra smiled a little, but not with joy.  "You know me well."

"No," Connor said.  "But I'd like to know who you could be."

Cassandra closed her eyes again, this time in pain.  "So would I," she whispered.  "I feel ... fractured, Connor, shattered.  Some of the pieces don't fit anymore; some I don't even have yet."

"But you will," he said.  "In time."

"I think so," she agreed.  "I hope so.  But I don't know how long it will take.  I've been ... insane this last year, Connor, maybe for centuries before that.  I can't even tell.  I tried to be a mother to Roland, I tried to be a teacher for you, and I failed you both.  I almost hit Duncan when he was six years old, and I've never trusted myself to take care of a child again."

"When Duncan was six?" Connor repeated sharply.  "You told me you saw Duncan at the village fair in Glenfinnan that year."

"Yes," she admitted, wishing she'd never opened her mouth, "but I didn't tell you everything."

"Tell me now," he ordered, his gray eyes intent upon her.

Cassandra kept a pleasant expression on her face as she silently debated telling Connor he ought to enroll in a charm school.  The man had no tact.  But she owed him this story, and she owed him the truth.  Best to get it over with.  "I went to the fair, as I told you, but I didn't only go there for supplies.  I was going to take Duncan with me to live in my cottage, so I could teach him about the Voice."

"You were going to take a six-year-old boy away from his family?" Connor asked, cold-voiced and cold-eyed.

"Yes," she admitted again and explained, "I thought a year or two with me would be better than leaving Duncan easy prey for Roland, and the Voice is best learned young."  Connor's jaw was flexing rhythmically, a steady grinding of his teeth, and Cassandra hurriedly finished her tale.  "But Duncan refused to come with me.  Even when I used the Voice on him once, he said no."  She could still see him clearly, his feet planted firmly apart, his arms folded across his chest, that same stubborn set to his mouth she'd seen just the other day.  "His hair was long, covering one eye, you know the way it gets sometimes?" she asked, and Connor nodded, a little less forbidding now.

"I reached out to smooth back his hair," Cassandra said, her hand reaching now, meeting only emptiness, "but he knocked my hand aside and said, 'You're not my mother.'"  Roland had said the same thing to her once, long ago, and she had let him walk away.  "He was right, of course," Cassandra said slowly, "but I got angry, and I lifted my hand to strike."  Her hand was lifted now, half-raised at the memory, and she slowly curled her fingers into a fist.  Her nails sliced into her palm, and she let her hand fall to her lap, still holding tight to the pain.

"When I looked into Duncan's eyes, I saw that he was ... afraid of me."  Just as she had been afraid of Methos and Roland.  Cassandra faced Connor and admitted her most shameful secret of all.  "That's when I knew that I could never be a mother again.  I'm not fit to raise a child."  She stared at her fingers as she straightened them, watched while the crescent cuts in her palm healed.  "So, I told Duncan to forget he ever saw me, and I told him to go home, where he belonged."  She shook her head.  "Thank you for asking me, Connor, but I can't possibly accept."

"Cassandra," Connor began, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand, "all parents get the urge to smack their kids sometimes.  That doesn't mean--"

"You've seen me get angry, Connor," she broke in.  "I can't control it.  I almost took your head this summer, remember?"

"I remember," he muttered, his fingers moving to his throat.  "But you can control it.  You have.  You stopped yourself four hundred years ago, and you didn't try for Duncan's head the other night.  And you let Methos live."

She had let Elena live, too, but Cassandra could still remember the other woman's terror.  "Stopping isn't good enough, Connor," Cassandra said, shaking her head again.  "I should never even start.  No child should have to live with that kind of fear."

"You think Duncan's father never smacked him?"

No doubt he had.  That didn't make it right, and Cassandra would not--would not!--hit a child and then tell him that he deserved it, that it was his fault she was angry, that if he promised to behave, then she wouldn't have to hurt him again.  She started massaging her right hand, one finger at a time, one after the other, over and over again.

"Alex and I have already talked about this, Cassandra," Connor said, breaking into those memories, and she stilled her hands.  "We know this has been a bad year for you.  You lost control.  So did Duncan after the Battle of Culloden; so have I.  But we came out of it, and so can you, if that's what you want."

"You think it's that simple?"

"No," he admitted.  "But it's a start, and so is this.  You can visit the twins only when either Alex or I is in the room.  Or you can just mail them presents once a year and never see them at all.  But Alex and I are inviting you to be a part of this family."

A part of the family, a member of the clan.  Cassandra blinked back tears and went to the window again, unwilling to face him just now.  She'd been alone so long.  But not always.  She'd raised hundreds of children through the years, taught thousands of mortal students, and a handful of Immortal ones.  She hadn't hurt or ruined them.  Maybe--eventually--she would be able to trust herself again, and this could be a way to start.

"Yes," she said, turning to Connor.  "Yes."

~~~~~

"Merry Christmas, Alex," Cassandra said, bringing over a large, flat box wrapped in silver, a twin to the one she had given Connor the night before.  She sat down on the couch next to Alex, being careful not to disturb Colin, who was enjoying his early afternoon nursing.  His sister Sara had already eaten, and their uncle Duncan was gently patting her back, trying to get her to burp.

"My hands are full," Alex said, looking down at her son.  "Can you open it for me?"

Cassandra almost offered Connor the chance, he was staring at the box so intently, but decided to let Alex see the picture first.  Cassandra unwrapped the painting, then held it so that only Alex could see.

"Oh, my!" Alex exclaimed, leaning forward, tilting her head.  "I'd always wondered ... oh, but this is wonderful!"  She laughed aloud as she and Cassandra shared a grin.  "I hadn't realized it was quite so ... long," she said, and she shot Connor a measuring glance before she went back to looking at the painting.  "Oh, my."

"Let me see," John said, getting up from his pile of opened and already half-assembled presents.

"And me," Duncan chimed in, stepping over the case of assorted whiskies Connor had given him for Christmas.  "Oh, yeah," Duncan said and started to laugh, which caused Sara to emit a satisfying burp.  Duncan patted her gently and said of the picture and the burp, "That's perfect, isn't it, sweetheart?"

John joined him.  "Wow.  That's my dad?"

"That's your dad," Duncan said with pride and amusement.  "In all his native glory."

Connor was still sitting in the chair by the fire, and he showed absolutely no signs of getting up at all.  Only his eyes moved, from Cassandra to the picture and back again, narrowed slits of gray.  Cassandra turned the picture around for him, and his eyes narrowed even more.

"I've always wondered what you looked like with long hair and wearing a plaid," Alex said, smiling at him.  "And you refuse to wear a kilt."

"Never have, never will," Connor said, finally getting up to come look at the picture of himself, clad in MacLeod plaid and wolf skins, his hair long and braided, his sword in his hand.  "A real man doesn't need a pre-sewn skirt.  He knows how to wrap his own plaid."

"One-handed," Duncan added, straight-faced.  "And with no help."

"Of course," Connor agreed.  "In the dark.  And in the rain."

"Maybe we should have a contest," Cassandra suggested to Alex.  "Have Connor and Duncan strip naked and then go outside on a dark, rainy night with nothing but a length of cloth, a belt, and a brooch.  We'll time them to see which one can get dressed the fastest."

"And the neatest," Alex said.  "Points deducted for not getting the pleats all the same size."

"And for less than graceful folds," Cassandra added.  She glanced up at Connor, who was staring down at her from only a few feet away.  "Interested, Connor?"

"Depends what the winner gets," he said, and then he looked at his wife.

Alex's eyes were dancing as she smiled up at her husband, and Cassandra suspected that Connor might decide to wear a plaid again, after all.  All he needed was the proper encouragement, and Alex would give him plenty of that, perhaps in another month or two when she had recovered from the birth.

"It's a wonderful picture, Cass.  Thank you," Alex said, leaning over to give her an awkward one-handed hug.  Colin squawked in protest, and Alex settled him at the breast again.  "And now it's your turn.  Connor?"

Connor brought over a small jewelry box and handed it to Cassandra with a smile.  "We were in Strathpeffer a few weeks ago," Alex was saying, "in the tiniest little store."

Cassandra opened the box and stared at the pendant there, an intricate Celtic knot of three crescents carved in white stone, hung on a silver chain.  "Oh, Alex," she whispered, for it was the sign of the Sisterhood of the Temple, and Cassandra had not worn such a pendant in over three thousand years.  She traced the edge of the stone with one finger, but did not dare to pick it up.

"Why don't you put it on?" Connor suggested, but Cassandra shook her head and took her hand away.

"I will," she promised, both to Alex and Connor and to herself, "but not right now."  Cassandra gave Alex a careful hug, avoiding Colin, then she smiled up at Connor.  "Thank you.  It's exquisite.  And it's truly special to me."

"I'm glad," Alex said.  "Connor got you a present, too."

"He did?" Cassandra said in surprise, for she had thought the necklace was from them both.

"I did," Connor announced with an almost-affronted stare, then disappeared up the stairs.  "Close your eyes," came his command from beyond the doorway a few moments later, and Cassandra complied.  There came a gentle thump and a twang, and then Connor's voice again, from not too far away.  "You can open them now."

Cassandra did so and then stood slowly, not quite trusting her legs to work.  Once again, she was afraid to touch, afraid to believe this was hers.  But the curve of the dark wood was solid under her fingertips, the brass wires gleamed in an ordered row.  A frozen structure of grace and beauty stood before her, an instrument of song.  Cassandra blinked back sudden, fierce tears.  A harp.  Connor had given her a harp.  She traced the pillar and the soundboard, and then she dared to touch the strings.  Clear bells echoed, chiming in the air, and then she plucked more gently, to bring a whispered waterfall of sound.

"I think she likes it," she heard Duncan observe, and Cassandra looked up, startled, only to meet Connor's steady gaze.

"I think you're right," Connor agreed, smiling now, and Cassandra smiled back and agreed.

"It's...," she started.  "I didn't really...."  She went back to caressing the satin smooth wood and whispered, "It's beautiful.  I--"  She hadn't played in centuries; she hadn't sung a note, yet in times past music had sometimes been the only solace in her life.  She and Connor had often sung together in the evenings by the fire, when he had stayed with her in the cottage in Donan Wood over four hundred years ago.

"Play it!" John urged.  "Dad's been tuning it every day for the last three weeks, but I've never heard it make any music."

"I'd love to hear the harp, Cass," Alex added.  Duncan nodded, but Connor just waited, as he had waited for her so many times before.

Roland had told her to play, in her house in Aberdeen in 1630, ordered her to entertain him, demanded she perform.  She had refused, unwilling to sully her memories of Connor, of the love and the music they had shared.  Roland had made her pay for that defiance, pay in blood and pain, in a smashed harp and broken dreams.  She hadn't made music since that day, for it had hurt too much, to remember.

There was no pain now, only joy, and her friends were waiting.  Cassandra settled the harp on her lap and began to play.

~~~~~

"Well, both Colin and Sara are asleep in their bassinets," Alex announced as she came into the living room later that afternoon and then slowly and carefully sat on the couch.  "I'm glad we have that guest suite downstairs, so I can lie down and nurse and don't have to climb up and down the stairs to get to the nursery all the time."

Cassandra laid her harp down and dragged over a footstool for Alex to use.

Alex gave her a weary smile of thanks as she propped up her feet.  "Where is everybody?"

"John couldn't wait to try out his new horse, so the three of them went riding," Cassandra answered, now bringing Alex a glass of water from the liquor cabinet.  "But I saw them coming back a few minutes ago, so they're in the stables now."

Alex accepted the glass, then leaned her head back and closed her eyes.  "I'm starting to feel like a chicken on a spit," she said.  "Nurse on this side, roll over, nurse on the other side.  Roll over, and do it all again."  She drank half the water in the glass.  "And they're only three days old.  How did women manage a long time ago, when they had to keep the fire going and pluck chickens and haul the water *and* take care of babies?"

"Twins were rare, but usually women didn't nurse even single babies all by themselves," Cassandra said, taking the chair nearby.  "The other mothers would help with the nursing."

"Wet nurses," Alex said.

"Yes, but in tribes the nursing was shared.  You didn't hire another woman to take care of your baby.  Sisters usually nursed each other's children, and I know Duncan's aunt nursed him.  And as they get older, babies don't nurse so often," Cassandra tried to reassure her.  "It's only the first few months."

"Oh, I know," Alex said.  "And once they start solids, Connor can be in charge of feeding them strained carrots and mashed bananas, and then cleaning up afterward."

"And changing the diapers," Cassandra suggested, completely sincere.

"Right," Alex agreed with a grin.  "So, I guess I can handle nursing them all the time for a few months."

"You're the only one who can do that for your children, and right now that's the most important thing you have to do," Cassandra encouraged her.  "Let Connor and John and Mr. and Mrs. MacNabb take care of the house, and also take care of you."

"It sounds good," Alex said wistfully.  "But--"

"It's the way it's supposed to be," Cassandra said firmly.  "It's the way it used to be.  All the women of the tribe would help a new mother with her daily chores.  In some cultures, new mothers weren't even supposed to leave their beds for a month."

"That doesn't sound so bad right now," Alex observed.  "I think I could use another nap."

"Why don't you?" Cassandra suggested.

"Oh, in awhile," Alex said, stretching her legs and wiggling her toes.  "I just woke up, and it's nice to sit and look at the Christmas tree and the fire."  She did precisely that for a moment, and then she commented, "Connor knew exactly what he wanted to get you for Christmas.  He had the harp picked out ahead of time."

"Did he?" Cassandra said, surprised and touched yet again, her gaze and her hand going back to the harp by her side.  "It's ... very special to me."

"To both of you," Alex said, watching her.

"Alex...," Cassandra began, now hoping to reassure Alex in a totally different area, "he and I aren't ... we don't...."

"He's already told me how he feels about you," Alex told her then asked bluntly, "How do you feel about him?"

Cassandra couldn't answer that one easily, but Alex could.

"You still love him," Alex stated.

Cassandra stood and went to the window, looking out at the snow-covered fields.  "I don't even know how to love, Alex.  Not anymore."

"But you're trying to remember."

"Yes," Cassandra admitted, "but not--"  She came back to sit near Alex, leaning forward earnestly.  "But not with him.  Not that way.  He's ... a friend."

"A brother?"

Cassandra nodded slowly, trying out the feel of the word.  Over the centuries, she had had sons and daughters, lovers and husbands, masters and slaves, teachers and students, sisters and friends, but she had never had a brother before.  The Horsemen had been brothers, and she had no place in that world, no right to lay such a claim on any man.

But that was over.  "Yes," Cassandra agreed, "a brother."  And maybe Duncan could be a brother to her, too.

"That's what Connor said about you."

"Ah.  Thank you.  I was wondering."

"But you didn't want to ask."

"Oh, no.  I wanted to ask," Cassandra said, grinning.  "I just didn't quite dare."  Alex grinned back, and Cassandra continued, "Connor's my friend, Alex, and I want him to be happy, the way he's happy with you."  She added softly, nervously, "I hope that you and I are friends, too."

"We are," Alex said, "and I value our friendship.  That's why I'm asking you this now."

Cassandra nodded, understanding Alex's vulnerability at this time, her need to mark out her territory and lay claim to her man, the father of her newborn children.  "I promise you, Alex, I will never come between you and Connor.  I also don't want him to come between us."

"Good," Alex said.  "As long as we understand each other, and as long as we're honest with each other."

"Always," Cassandra pledged.  She knew too well the poison of lies.  "I'm sorry, Alex.  I guess this visit has been ... awkward."

"Awkward?" Alex repeated.  "To have my husband get in the middle of a fight between his ex-lover and her current lover, who also happens to be my husband's best friend, right in the middle of Christmas and my giving birth to twins?"  She smiled warmly at Cassandra, taking most of the sting out of those words.  "Yes, you could say it's been awkward."

"I would never have come if I'd known Duncan was going to be here," Cassandra protested.  "I knew I wasn't ready to face him.  And I asked if I should leave."

"Did you?" Alex asked, and Cassandra suddenly realized she had asked only Connor, not Alex.

"I'm sorry, Alex," Cassandra said again, more quietly now.  "I haven't exactly been a good house-guest."

"Cass," Alex said, reaching over to her and laying a hand on her arm, "it's all right.  Now," she added with a slow smile.  "Those first two days were tense, but they're over.  And you and Duncan needed to talk, and I think he and Connor did, too, so that's for the best.  And I've needed to talk to you, too, about being in labor and about being a mother.  I'm glad you're here."

Cassandra smiled back through the beginnings of tears and laid her hand on top of Alex's.  "So am I," she said.  "This has been the happiest Christmas I've ever had."  She blinked a few times as she leaned back in her chair, then decided to make sure Alex knew the truth.  No more lies.  "Duncan and I aren't lovers, Alex."

"No?" Alex asked, her voice and her eyebrows raised in surprise.

"We did spend a night together, back in June right after Duncan killed Roland," Cassandra admitted, "but then I found out my old enemies were alive, and I wasn't in the mood, and after--"  She stopped, having no wish to think about the Horsemen ever again.  "I don't want any man to touch me," she concluded.  "Ever."

"You need to see a rape counselor, Cass," Alex told her after a moment.  "Or go to a therapist who's dealt with battered women.  Or both."

"I've dealt with rape all my life, Alex," Cassandra retorted sharply, "and--"

"And you're obviously not dealing with it well," Alex cut in.  "At least not now.  Being terrified of men and hating the idea of sex is not normal or healthy.  You need help," she repeated, "and you need more help than I--or Connor or Duncan--can ever give you."

"How can I talk to a therapist, Alex?" she demanded.  "What do I say?  'Hi! I'm Immortal, and I've got over three thousand years of bad memories to deal with.  Should we start with the Bronze Age or the Fall of Troy?'"  Cassandra snorted in mingled disgust and despair.

"Therapists are like doctors or priests," Alex said calmly.  "They have rules of confidentiality.  Find one you like, and use the Voice to convince her you're telling the truth and to make her keep quiet if you have to, but find one.  Don't keep thinking up reasons why things won't work for you."  Alex leaned toward her and said firmly, "Make things work."

Cassandra didn't get up and go to the window this time, didn't look away from those determined blue eyes.  This was how Alex lived her life, and how Connor and Duncan dealt with things, too.  Make things work.  No more whining.  Find a way.  Cassandra nodded slowly.  "All right," she promised her friend and herself.  "I will."

"Good," Alex said approvingly and then turned her head to the sounds coming from the kitchen, even as Cassandra felt the mind-churning presence of Immortals nearby.  Connor and Duncan came into the room, bringing with them the sharpness of cold air and the muskiness of horses.

"Where's John?" Alex asked, as Connor leaned over to give her a kiss.

"Still in the stable admiring his Christmas present," Connor told her.  "He's trying to come up with a name for the horse."

"Drink, Connor?" Duncan asked from the liquor cabinet.  "Cassandra?  More water, Alex?"  The men settled in front of the fire with glasses of whisky and satisfied sighs, Connor on the couch next to Alex, Duncan in the chair across from Cassandra.  The four of them chatted of this and of that, until a soft noise came from the guest suite and Connor headed for the door.

Alex sighed and looked at the clock over the fireplace.  "They should sleep for another hour, I think.  I hope.  I'd thought I'd get some work done on my book by staying home with them, but now I'm not so sure."

Duncan asked, "How's your book coming, Alex?"

"It's about half-done," she answered.  "I just printed out the latest chapter, the one on Angle and Saxon settlements in Scotland and Northern England.  Want to see it?  It's by the computer."

Duncan brought it to her and sat down on the couch by her side.  As they started reading over the manuscript, Cassandra went back to her harp, playing soft arpeggios and scales.  Connor returned, poured himself another drink, and sat down in the chair.  "Still asleep," he announced, and Alex looked up from her book with a grateful nod.

"What language is this?" Duncan asked her, pointing to a line.

"Angle," Alex said.  "About seventh century.  That name means 'village of the huge, lame pig'."

Duncan started laughing, and Alex joined in.  Cassandra glanced up from her harp at the two of them, but Duncan wasn't laughing anymore.  He was staring across the room at Connor, and Connor wasn't laughing or even smiling.  Alex went silent, looking between the pair, until Connor stood abruptly and left the room and then the house.

Duncan shot to his feet and followed with a slamming of the kitchen door.

A baby wailed at the sound, and Alex turned on Cassandra.  "What is it with you people?" Alex demanded, her eyes gone dark with fury, blinking back tears.  "What the hell is it with you?"

Cassandra froze at this attack from her friend.  "I don't know what--"

The baby's crying grew louder, and Alex didn't bother to answer, just gave her one final glare before she walked away.

Cassandra sat there, in numb surprise and pain, as the baby hushed and then the kitchen door slammed again.  Connor's footsteps sounded rapidly on the stairs, and a moment later, Duncan came back into the room and poured himself a drink.

"I don't think this visit from us is turning out well," Cassandra said quietly, watching Duncan from her chair.

Duncan didn't bother to answer, just snorted in agreement and downed half his whisky.

"What happened, Duncan?" Cassandra asked carefully.  "Is everything all right?"

"No," Duncan said sourly.

"Can I help?"

"No."  Duncan finished off his drink, staring at her the entire time, then he came over and sat on the arm of her chair.

Cassandra breathed out slowly.  Duncan wouldn't hurt her.  She knew that.  She still brought her knees up to her chest and huddled on the chair.

"How long was Connor your student?" Duncan asked.

"Just a few months," Cassandra answered, choosing her words with care.  "Ramirez had been dead for fifty years, and Connor hadn't had much of a chance to practice with swords.  He and I worked on that a bit.  But, I think he also came to Donan Wood so he could say goodbye to the Highlands, to Glenfinnan.  Leaving everything he'd known ... it was hard for him."

Duncan nodded.  "Has he changed much, since you knew him then?"

"Yes.  Of course, he's older now, but he's much ... harder.  More sarcastic, less open."  Less trusting, too, and she knew exactly why and how that had happened.  "And he seems ... angry."  She had seen some of that anger for herself, and Alex had mentioned other occasions.

"He's been like that ever since I've known him," Duncan said, but then he stopped and thought.  "What kind of 'old-fashioned' training did you want him to use on me, Cassandra?" Duncan asked in a soft and dangerous tone, and Cassandra did not want to answer.  "You wanted him to kill me, didn't you?" Duncan asked.  "To teach me a lesson in trust?"

Cassandra nodded, relieved that Duncan understood at least some of her reasons.  She had killed Connor, just as her teachers had killed her, and it was a lesson no Immortal ever forgot.

Duncan shook his head and got off the chair, then started to pace in front of the fireplace.  "You said he refused to follow the 'old-fashioned way,' that he refused to kill me," Duncan said after a moment.

"Yes," Cassandra said as she got off the chair and went to stand behind it, in case Duncan got too close to her again.

"Then why did he?" Duncan demanded.

Connor had actually killed Duncan?  Cassandra closed her eyes in dismay, for she knew precisely how much that type of betrayal cost, on both sides.  "Connor killed you, too?" she asked sadly.

"Too?" Duncan repeated in confusion, then his eyes narrowed and he took off running for the stairs.

From the hallway, Cassandra heard the banging of Connor's bedroom door against the wall, and quiet, angry voices followed, too far away to be understood.  Another baby wailed, and Cassandra forced herself to go to the infant, to face Alex once again.  The harried mother was sitting on the floor of the guest bedroom.  Colin was crying in her lap, Sara was crying in a bassinet, and Alex was crying, too.

Cassandra hesitated, then lifted Sara from the bassinet, to pat her and soothe her and carry her around.  Sara stopped fussing, and Cassandra swayed gently back and forth, rubbing the curve of the baby's back as the soft warmth nestled against her neck.  She had forgotten how tiny babies were, how achingly vulnerable.  She hadn't held an infant in over four hundred years, not since Connor had placed Duncan in her arms.  She had given Duncan to another woman, but she hadn't wanted to let him go.  She didn't want to let Sara go, either.

"Oh, damn," Alex swore softly, still crying.  "Damn, damn, damn."

Cassandra wanted to swear as well, for she was crying, too.

Alex wiped at her face with her hand, then helped Colin latch on to her breast.  Colin whimpered and wailed, then went back to eager nursing, and Alex leaned back against the bed and closed her eyes.  "Damn," she muttered one more time, the tears still flowing.  "I hate to cry."

"It's good for us," Cassandra reminded them both as she sat on the floor, still cuddling Sara close.  "Especially for new mothers.  Our bodies need to cry.  Some of the hormones and chemicals produced by stress, lack of sleep, and physical trauma are excreted in tears."

"I still hate it," Alex muttered and wiped off the tears again.

"Me, too," Cassandra admitted, brushing at her own cheeks.  "Should we cry about it?" Cassandra suggested, and Alex finally smiled a little and opened her eyes, just as the voices from upstairs got louder.  The women listened intently, but couldn't make out the words.  They heard the noises, though, a crash and a thump, and then a sudden shuddering of the house, as if from a body being slammed against a wall.

"Damn," Alex said again, as the noises continued.  "I wonder who that was."  She sighed and said, "I hope John's still outside.  He doesn't need to see this."

"No," Cassandra agreed, but there came a final crash, and then only silence.  The two women waited and listened for a moment, then Sara started to fuss.  "I don't think she wants to wait anymore," Cassandra said and reluctantly traded babies with Alex.  But Colin was just as soft and just as sweet.  She changed his diaper then rocked him until he fell asleep.  Cassandra laid the baby in his bassinet next to Alex, afraid to hold onto him too long.  "Connor and Duncan are still talking, I guess," Cassandra said as she sat down again and looked up at the ceiling.

"And they're probably talking about you," Alex said, with another sharp flash of anger.

"Me?" Cassandra asked in bewilderment.  Why should they talk about her?

"How blind can you be, Cassandra?" Alex demanded.  "After what you did--"  She broke off as footsteps came pounding down the stairs, and this time it was the front door that slammed.  "That was Connor," Alex said grimly, and a few moments later there came a knock on the door.

"Cassandra?"  Duncan filled the doorway, the air about him humming with anger.  "I want to talk to you."

Cassandra slowly got to her feet to go to him, but Alex ordered, "Then you can talk right here."

"Alex--," Duncan protested.

"I already know everything that happened between Cassandra and Connor," she said bluntly.  "I know they were lovers.  I know she killed him, and I know why--and how--he killed her.  And I know what happened after that."

Cassandra stared at the floor, her back against the wall, unable to face two of the people she wanted to call friends.

Alex concluded, "And I have a right to know what's going on now."

Cassandra looked up in time to see Duncan give Alex a brief nod, and then he turned on her.  "I've known Connor nearly all my life," Duncan began, outwardly calm, his voice quiet, a prelude to rage.  "I've known that he would kill for me, that he would die for me.  I've known that he loved me."

She had known that, too, from the beginning.  And she had used that love between them, just as she had used Connor and Duncan themselves.

"And I've known, almost from the beginning," Duncan said, "that he was ... envious of me, but I never understood why, until today."

Cassandra hadn't known that, and she didn't understand why.

"I lied to you exactly once, by mistake, and you damn near took my head off for it," Duncan was saying, his feet pacing out a restless rhythm.  "You said I made you feel worthless, like you were nothing, and I felt guilty about that.  I actually felt sorry for you."

Duncan came closer, his eyes black with fury, the quietness swelling into sound.  "But you lied to Connor for forty years!  Day in, day out, over and over again."  He flung her own words into her face.  "You lied every time you listened to him, every time you pretended that you cared, every time you took him to your bed!"

"No," Cassandra protested in a silent whisper, but of course Duncan couldn't hear.

"You--bitch," he swore at her, softly venomous.

She had nowhere to go and no way of moving, for centuries of training--of taming--pinned her defenseless against that wall, left her waiting hopelessly for Duncan's blow.

"How could you do that to him?" Duncan demanded.  "How could you use him that way?"

"It wasn't like that," Cassandra said, finally finding her voice and her courage, still unable to move.  "And Connor knows it.  We talked about it this summer."

"Three and a half centuries later," Duncan snapped.

"I couldn't go to him earlier; he would have killed me!"

"I'm not surprised," Duncan shot back.  "You ripped his heart out, Cassandra."

"I know," she whispered then put it behind her and moved on.  Connor had forgiven her.  It was over, and so were her centuries of silence.  "What's between me and Connor is none of your business, Duncan."

"No.  It isn't," he admitted, his jaw tight.  "But you've been playing games with my life since before I was born, and now I find out you've been between me and Connor, too.  Do you know what that did to him, to think that he was just some ... *fucking* toy for you to play with, until you finally got to me?"

She knew.  She knew exactly what it was to be worthless, to be used and then laughed at and discarded on a whim.  She hadn't used Connor that way, but for three and half centuries he had believed she had, and the effect was the same.

"And do you have any idea what that did between us?" Duncan asked her.  "All the jealousy, the insecurity, the competition ... all his jokes that weren't really funny, all the little games he's played, all the contests to prove who was 'better,' all those goddamned *lies* between us...."  Duncan slammed his hand against the wall right beside her head, and Cassandra did not move.  She had no right to try to escape his anger.  This, she deserved.

He stepped back from her, breathing carefully, his hands clenched by his sides, and looked her up and down in disgust.  "And it was all because of *you.*"

Cassandra had no excuse for that, no justification.  She looked away, but met only Alex's hard, unwavering stare, yet another friend she never wanted to hurt, and had.  "You're right," Cassandra admitted.  "I'm sorry, Duncan.  I never meant to come between you and Connor like that."

"Just like you never meant for my father to banish the midwife?  Just like you never meant to hurt Connor?"

"Just like that."

Duncan folded his arms across his chest.  "Seems like there've been a lot of things you 'never meant' to happen."

"At least I try to fix them!" she flared.  "At least I didn't make Connor think I cared about him, only to hand him over to somebody else to be raped and beaten and killed, while I stood by and *watched*!""

"Methos has nothing to do with what you did to Connor," Duncan declared.

"No," she agreed, "that fault is mine alone.  But Methos has a lot to do with you."  Cassandra stepped away from that wall.  "You asked me if I knew what it feels like to be a 'fucking toy.'  Oh yes, Duncan.  I know.  Your friend Methos taught me.  He told you about that, didn't he?" she asked, viciously sweet, and barely waited for Duncan's nod.  "You've accepted what Methos did to me, and to countless others, but you're furious at me because I lied and hid things from Connor, and from you.  I was trying to protect both of you from Roland, and I did the best I could."

"Your best wasn't very good."

"I know that," she gritted out, her palm itching to slap him.  "Methos isn't the only one to have regrets.  But at least my regrets don't include the rape and torture and murder of thousands of people."  Cassandra headed for the door, for Connor, hoping to fix this regret and let them both move on.

"Where are you going?" Duncan demanded, reaching for her arm.

She knocked his hand aside as she turned to Alex for permission.  "I need to talk to Connor."

"Go," Alex told her.  "And make things work this time."

~~~~~

Cassandra found Connor walking beside the pasture fence, his coat collar turned up against the wind, his boots crunching in the snow.  She walked with him for a time, as the sun settled behind the hills and heavy gray clouds lowered above, and finally she spoke.  "When did you kill Duncan?"

A few more steps, a few more heartbeats of silence, and Connor answered.  "Two days after I got back from my trip to see you."

"You hadn't been planning on doing that."

His reply came quick and sharp and stinging.  "Not like you planned to kill me."

She had planned that on the very first day, when she had pledged herself to him as teacher, when she had first seduced him into trust.  Another regret, another mistake that could never be changed.  "Is that what you were arguing about upstairs?" Cassandra asked.

Connor gave a swift tilt of his head, a grudging acknowledgment.  "Duncan decided we needed to talk about it."

Cassandra knew they probably hadn't talked about it all, not since the day it had happened.  Connor wasn't exactly the talkative type.  "How did it happen?"

Connor sighed softly.  "We were sparring.  We said some things.  I lost my temper.  I ran him through."

"You were angry with me, and you took it out on him."

"Oh, brava, Cassandra," Connor said with utter disdain, swinging around to face her.  "Anybody ever tell you that you're brilliant?"

"Let me think," Cassandra said, counting on her fingers, curling them inwards with each name.  "Methos said I was stupidly stubborn, and Alex just said I was blind.  You've called me a liar and a coward, among other things.  The friend I was visiting a few weeks ago called me a whore, and Duncan just told me I was a bitch."

Cassandra opened her fist and let her hand fall.  "And all of you were right.  But no, no one's ever told me I was brilliant before."  Connor snorted in exasperated amusement, and they walked on in the cold.  "Are you still angry with me?" she asked cautiously.

"No."

"Why are you angry with Duncan?"

"I'm not angry."

"Envious, then," she persisted, but Connor said nothing, gave no indication that he had heard her at all.  "Connor, all those years when I had to wait for the Prophecy to be fulfilled, I didn't have a choice.  I needed Duncan."  He didn't respond to that either, and Cassandra kept going, determined to make him understand.  "I *wanted* you."

"Cassandra," he said with a tired sigh, dry and remote.  "Stop.  We've been over this before.  You cared about me.  You didn't mean to hurt me.  You're sorry for what you did.  OK, I believe you.  But don't pretend, not any more.  Not with me."

"Pretend?" she repeated, bewildered.

"That you liked the sex," he said simply, and Cassandra stopped walking, trying to make sense of what she had heard.

Connor shrugged.  "I know it wasn't ... pleasant for you, and now that I know what you've been through, I understand why.  It was just something else you thought you had to do, one more way to convince me."

"One more way to lie," she added softly, hearing the unspoken words, and Connor shrugged again and walked on.

If he had thought she had been pretending when they were in bed, then ... oh, Great Mother, no!  How could he ever have forgiven her, if he had believed that she hadn't wanted him to touch her at all?  She caught up to him under a large oak tree.  "Connor, you didn't ... you couldn't have thought that *everything* between us was a lie, could you?"

"Why shouldn't I think that?" he demanded, then repeated what she had told him that summer.  "Being in bed with me reminded you of Roland.  You can't stand to have me touch you, even now."

Oh no, that wasn't true, not anymore, not at all!  Not sex, of course, not with anyone, but she felt safe with Connor, and she had wanted the comfort of his arms about her so many times this last year.  But he was *married,* married to her best friend, and she had promised--

"And I'm a stupid, arrogant man, remember?" Connor continued, before she could find the words to tell him he was wrong.  "I'm stupid enough to believe whores when they smile at me and tell me they've had a good time.  God knows you've had more practice at lying and pretending than any whore ever had.  Of course, when you get paid for it, or get something for it, it's not just practice, is it?"  His gaze swept over her, a chilling, bitter wind.  "That was your job, to make a whore of yourself--body and soul."

Cassandra's heart hammered in her chest, and her hands curled into claws.  Connor just watched her with cold, amused eyes--that smug, self-righteous, arrogant ...!  He had no *right!*

But he did.

She had given him the reason and the right to call her a whore, and all of his words had been true.  And the best defense was a good offense, and Connor was defending himself right now.  "Yes," she agreed, opening her hands and letting go of her anger, hoping to help him let go of his, "I've been a whore.  That was my job."

Connor leaned on the fence, one foot on the bottom rail, his head turned to watch the horses run.  Snow started falling, white flakes driven across the fields.  Cassandra joined him at the fence, speaking out into the wind, for some things were too difficult to face.  "At first, I was sold into it.  Later ... it didn't seem to matter.  What's one more man, after so many thousands?  So, I sold myself.  Sometimes for money, sometimes for other things: a place to sleep, food, protection.  A drink of water.  A child's life."  She turned to him now, hoping he would eventually turn to her.

"I had sex with those men, Connor, but I never made love to them--or with them--the way I did with you.  And I never asked any of them to make love *to me,* the way I asked you, that last day we were together in Aberdeen.  You're right; sex is difficult for me.  It's been so ugly, so many times.  But with you, it was--*you* were wonderful.  I'd never felt so alive, so cherished--so loved--not in over three thousand years."

"And recently?" Connor asked.

Recently?  But she hadn't wanted anyone to touch her, not for centuries, not since--

"Duncan's a good man, Cassandra," Connor said, breaking into her thoughts.  "He'll help you heal."  He gave her a half a smile.  "Better than I ever could."  He started walking again, his shoulders hunched against the cold, heading for his home.

Cassandra stood frozen by the fence, hearing Duncan's accusation once more: "Do you have any idea what that did between us?"  And she hadn't, not at all.

To Connor, Duncan had been the shining son to be loved, the younger brother to be proud of, the friend of his heart.  But Duncan--handsome, smiling, charming Duncan--was the man every woman wanted, the man she herself had chosen, the one man with whom Connor could never even hope to compare.  "You want Duncan," Connor had said to her, on that long ago day in Aberdeen.  "I'm just something for you to use."

Not true--not true!--but she hadn't been able to convince Connor, for she had lied to him too many times before.

"You lied to me," Connor had continued, his pain crystallizing into diamond-sharp hate and lacerating self-doubt, "and you fucked me, and even your fucking was a lie."

"No," she had whispered, for the love between them had been good and true, but what she had said didn't matter.  Connor had left her, believing he had indeed been her "fucking toy," and a completely inadequate one at that.

She hadn't just ripped Connor's heart out; she had castrated him, too, and he still bore the scars.  Connor's anger with her had spilled over into undeserved resentment and unbidden envy of Duncan, shameful and hidden but there, a silent, creeping poison.  Over the years, over "all the little games, all the contests to prove who was better," Connor's resentment had become resignation, a bitter acknowledgment of what he saw as the truth: where women were concerned, Duncan was by far the better man.  She knew Connor trusted Duncan with his life; she knew Connor trusted Alex, too, but still that nagging doubt remained.  Connor couldn't even watch his wife and his best friend laugh together without wondering--maybe only for an instant, maybe only a little--but still wondering if Alex wouldn't be happier with Duncan than she was with him.

"How blind can you be?" Cassandra muttered to herself in disgust and shame, repeating Alex's words.  But Alex had said something else, too, and Cassandra was determined to make it work this time.

~~~~~

Connor walked quickly through the falling snow of a twilight winter day, eager to put all this behind him and forget the entire afternoon.  But Cassandra was running after him; he heard her footsteps in the snow.

"What?" he asked wearily when she reached him, for he was tired, he was cold, and he wanted to go home.  Cassandra didn't answer, but sank to the ground before him, kneeling in the snow.  "Get up, Cassandra," he ordered, in no mood for theatrical displays.

She stayed where she was, her head bowed, her bronze hair spangled with white snow.  "I'm sorry, Connor."

"Yeah, fine.  Now get up."  She didn't move, and he sighed in disgust and moved to walk on.

Cassandra stood and blocked his path, her cheeks reddened with the cold, her eyes bright with determination.  "Connor, I went to bed with you because I wanted to, not because I thought I had to.  I didn't want Duncan as a lover four hundred years ago, and I don't want him as a lover now."

With two quick steps and a vicious oath, Connor reached out and took her by the throat.  God damn it, enough!  He'd been patient and understanding with her for months, generous even, but no way in hell would he let her get away with this!  "Don't *ever* lie to me, Cassandra," he snarled, her pulse beating high and steady beneath his hand, a flare of panic in her eyes.  "I *saw* you."

"I'm not lying," she said, careful and clear.  "I will never lie to you again.  Duncan and I are not lovers."  She made no move to defend herself, no move to escape.  "Ask him, if you want to."

Connor loosened his grip, seeing only a cool challenge in her eyes.  He could never ask Duncan, but she would never have suggested that unless....  With a muttered apology, Connor let her go.  "I saw you," he repeated, flexing his fingers, turning away to face the wind.  "In his arms that first night you were here.  Together the next morning."

"Yes, of course," she said to herself.  "You came back outside, and you were watching when Duncan and I talked by the barn, in case I lost control."  Connor nodded, and Cassandra said lightly, "I only slapped him once."

"I know.  I counted."

She tucked her hands deep into her pockets, traced a pattern in the snow with the toe of her boot.  "How many times did I slap you this summer?"

"I lost count."

They managed small smiles at that, then Cassandra explained, "Duncan started to hug me that night, Connor, but I couldn't stand to have him touch me.  The next morning was Duncan's birthday, and when he and I met in the hall, I had to force myself to reach out to him.  It's only been six weeks since the Horsemen, Connor.  I don't--"  She tossed her hair back from her face with a shake of her head, then went back to drawing lines in the snow.

Connor rubbed his hand across his mouth.  He'd been so sure.  "So, you and he ...?"

She stood straight and met his eyes again.  "No."

"Not while you were hunting the Horsemen?"

"No."

"Never?"

She glanced down and then up, her standard tell-tale pause before she lied, but then she took a deep breath and told him the truth.  "Once.  The night after Roland died."

"And that doesn't count?"

"Count?" she said sharply.  "Count for what?  Points on a scoreboard, notches on a bedpost?  One night six months ago doesn't mean we're lovers now, and that's what I told you, and I told you the truth."

And he had damn near strangled her for it.

"Connor," she began, her sharpness gone, "I know what it looked like to you.  But Duncan and I aren't lovers, not now, not then.  The night after Roland died, it just happened.  I hadn't willingly been with anyone, not lately, and I'd been ... so dead.  I wanted--I needed--to feel alive again."

"Lately?" he repeated sharply, for he knew what that word meant to her.  "You mean, since Aberdeen?"

Cassandra nodded and said simply.  "Since you."

"God, Cassandra," he muttered, shocked and disbelieving.  "Three hundred sixty-six years?"

"I told you that you were important to me," she said with a quiet smile, but Connor was still shaking his head.  Over three centuries with no sex?

"Because of what Roland did?" he asked, for he knew recovering from brutal rape and torture couldn't be easy.

"Partly," she said, looking out to the fields, "but I've gotten over that before, and it usually only takes a few decades or so.  But after you left me, I ... I just gave up.  But I remembered what we had shared."  Her smile mingled joy and pain, and she blinked back tears as the wind gusted cold.  "Those memories were so precious to me, Connor, my memories of you."

And yet sometimes they had hurt too much to remember.  Connor knew.

Cassandra drew yet another pattern in the snow then wiped it out with her foot.  "You healed me, Connor," she said, lifting her gaze from the snow, "in a way that no one else ever has.  Or could.  Not Ramirez.  Oh, he was quite the ladies' man, very accomplished in bed, but with him it was ... fun.  He liked women, enjoyed them, cherished them even, but he never permitted himself to love them, not after his wife Shakiko died."

Connor knew why.  "When my wife Shakiko died," Ramirez had told him one day, his voice quiet, his dark eyes intent, "I was shattered.  But I had to go on, never again to hear the sound of her voice, her laughter."  His gaze had wandered away from Connor, off into some emptiness only he could see.  "She left behind such a silence."

Connor had lived in that same silence for centuries, until first Brenda and then John and Alex had broken it for him, enticed him back into life with laughter and song.

"You give that part of yourself that Ramirez never would," Cassandra said softly, moving closer and reaching for his hand.

Connor pulled away, knowing that for her to touch him--or, even worse, for him to touch her--made her cringe inside.  "Don't force yourself, Cassandra."

"Force myself?" she repeated, her hand hesitating in midair, then she shook her head and moved closer still.  Snowflakes lay on her eyelashes, frosted her hair.  "Connor, don't you see?  You're the one man I don't have to force myself to touch, the one man I feel safe with."  She reached out to him, slowly, to lay her hand briefly on his sleeve, and Connor wondered at her show of trust.  Maybe....

She added, "I know you won't ever expect me, or ask me, to--"

"Alex would kill me," Connor interrupted dryly.

"Probably," Cassandra answered with a smile.  "But even if you weren't married, Connor, you wouldn't ... push.  You wouldn't watch me, the way most men do, the way Duncan does sometimes."

Connor nodded slowly as he realized that Cassandra felt safe with him precisely because he was married, because there could be no hint of sexuality between them.

"In a way, Duncan reminds me of Ramirez," she said.  Connor hadn't been going to ask, and he didn't think he wanted to know, but Cassandra continued, "They both appreciate women.  A lot.  But a woman wants to feel special, and I think Duncan has had many 'special' women in his life.  He and I don't--and never will--mean that much to each other.  For me, I need more."

She reached for his hand, and this time Connor let her take it, a simple handclasp that tightened to a fierce grip between them.  "And you gave me more, Connor.  So much more.  You *make* love.  You create it, with your hands, your voice, just the way you look at a woman, the way you hold her in your arms.  Even the way you reach out to touch her hair.  You give a woman everything you have, everything you are."

A flurry of wind and snow blew her hair across her face, and Cassandra pushed the strands away with her left hand, her gaze never leaving his face.  "The way you touched me made me feel alive again, like a woman, never like a ... thing to be used."  She traced her thumb along his own, then brought his hand to her lips and kissed it, held it tight within her grasp.  "Do you remember in the evenings," she asked brightly, "how you used to sit cross-legged on the bed, sharpening your sword or unbraiding your hair?"

Connor nodded.  "You sewed by the fire."

"Not really," she admitted with a smile.  "I was too busy watching you, because I knew we wouldn't have much time together.  I still remember the way you used to toss your head to shake the hair from your eyes.  After you left Donan Woods, I slept with your pillow for weeks, until your scent disappeared."  She reached up and touched his hair, then followed the line of his cheek and jaw, her fingers lingering there.  "Being with you was wonderful, Connor, going for walks, sparring, taking care of the garden and the animals, cooking--all the little things that make up a life.  But making love to you--and having you make love to me--that was the best of all."

Her eyes were clear and honest, and Connor wanted to believe.  He used the Gaelic to ask, as he had once asked her long ago, during an afternoon spent in bed--and standing up against a wall-- "You liked that then, did you?"

Her answer was the same, as was the sparkle in her eyes and the brilliant smile on her face, and she used the same language to reply.  "Oh, yes.  I liked that.  I liked it a lot."  She stepped back, but did not let go of his hand.  "Alex is blessed to have you as her husband, Connor," she said, in English now, "and I'm blessed to have you as a friend.  I just wish I'd been a better teacher.  A better lover.  I never meant to hurt you, Connor.  I had no idea you ever thought--it never even occurred to me you could think--that I didn't want you."

Connor snorted to himself.  All those years, all those lies and misunderstandings, all that rage and hate and pain--all a goddamned waste.  "Like you said, we don't communicate well."

"Are we communicating now?"

"Yeah."  He breathed deeply of the cold air and covered her right hand with his own.  "We are."

"Good."  Cassandra hesitated then said softly, "I'd like to feel your arms around me, Connor.  I've wanted that so much."

And he had thought she couldn't stand to have him touch her at all.  He pulled her closer, held her tight within his arms.  They stood there silent, her head on his shoulder, his cheek against her hair, while the wind blew the snow across the fields and he listened to the beating of her heart next to his own.

She tilted her head back to look at him, her arms still wrapped around his back.  "Duncan was often in my thoughts, Connor, but you were always in my heart."  She kissed him gently on the lips, a quick touch of warmth that lingered in the cold.  "You still are."

He kissed her forehead, a kiss of forgiveness, of understanding.  "Been a long road for us, hasn't it, Cassandra?" he asked.  She nodded and let go of him, but he gave her a smile as he took her hand in his.  "Let's go home," he told her, and they walked hand in hand as the darkness gave way before the brilliance of the moon, rising full above the hills.

~~~~~

Later that evening, Alex and Cassandra stood by the living room window, each holding a baby in her arms as they watched the raging snowball fight outside.  "Ooh, good one," Alex commented when John's missile smacked Connor in the back of the head.  "I bet Connor's wishing he hadn't spent so much time playing baseball with John this summer."  Connor had already packed his next snowball and was taking aim.  "John's going to pay for that."

"Looks like John knows it," Cassandra said, for John had taken cover behind one of the snowmen she and John had built before dinner.  "And it looks like he has help."  Duncan was sneaking up behind Connor, a snowball in each hand.

"That'll never work," Alex predicted, and indeed it didn't, for Connor whirled and caught Duncan full in the face with his snowball.  But that left Connor unarmed, and both John and Duncan took the opportunity to attack.  They charged him from each side, and the three of them ended up on the ground, rolling in the snow.

"Good thing I came inside before it got that rough," Cassandra said, shivering at the memory of Duncan dumping snow down her back.

"Oh, you had a pretty good aim," Alex said.  "You got Connor once or twice."

"And I paid for it," Cassandra said, then gave Alex a rueful smile as she remembered all the fights that hadn't been with snow.  "We both have."

"But that's over," Alex said.  "Connor told me what you said to him.  It'll help a lot."

"I'm glad.  And I'm glad he's got you to help him, too.  I know I wouldn't have survived these last six months without Connor, and I'm not sure how he would have managed without you."  Cassandra turned to look out the window again.  The three MacLeods had given up taking the time to pack snowballs, and now they were just throwing handfuls of snow.  "I've thought of men as enemies for so long that I had forgotten how vulnerable they can be."

"Like frozen candy bars," Alex observed.  "Hard and cold on the outside, soft and sweet when you warm them up."

"But not too soft," Cassandra said with a knowing smile.

"No, not too soft," Alex agreed.  "And they have chewy caramel parts you can sink your teeth into."

"And nuts," Cassandra added.

"Absolutely.  Of course, sometimes they're like defective M&Ms.  They can melt in your mouth ..."

"... or in your hands," Cassandra completed, and she and Alex both laughed aloud.  The noise disturbed the babies, and Cassandra shifted Sara to her other arm.  The infant yawned and stretched, her tiny fists barely reaching past her ears.  "Your father's a wonderful man," she confided to Sara, and Sara yawned again and sneezed.

"I'm going to miss having you here," Alex said, smiling at her daughter, "and not just because of the twins."

"I'll miss you, too," Cassandra said, for she was leaving in the morning to spend a week at a bed-and-breakfast not far away.  "But I'll be back on New Years for Connor's birthday and the twins' naming ceremony, and after these last few days I think all of us could use some time by ourselves."

"It's been a good Christmas, but I think you're right," Alex agreed, looking down at her son.  "Although my time isn't likely to be either peaceful or quiet."  Colin was gnawing on his fist, making little sucking noises.  "Feeding time!" Alex announced and headed for the couch.

Cassandra watched the MacLeods as they wrestled in the snow, then she turned to the baby in her arms.  "Merry Christmas, little one," Cassandra said softly, and she went to sit with her friend.
 
 

I'd like to thank you for sticking with me this far and this long.  I had no idea that this would be such a huge project when I started it.

Many thanks to:

- Robin L. Tennenbaum, who was relieved to read a "nice" story for a change.
- Vi Moreau, who helped me eschew surplusage.
- Listen-r, who stuck with me as I wrote that final scene.
- Genevieve Clemens, who found some more of those sneaky punctuation thingies.

and most especially to

- Bridget Minta Testa, who cajoled, coddled, and commanded me when the going  got tough.

The story wouldn't have been the same without your help! Many, many
heartfelt thanks.
 

Janeen  Grohsmeyer at < [email protected] >
 

=========
For more about:

- the letter Roland sent to Cassandra, read "The Voice of Death."
- what Duncan and Connor "worked out," read "Dearer Yet the Brotherhood."
- Connor and Cassandra's past, read "Hope Forgotten" and "Hope Remembered: Friend."
- Cassandra's opinion of Methos, read "Hope Remembered: Fury."
- Cassandra's time with her friend Elena, read "Hope Remembered: Confidante."
- Methos's side of the story, read "Long Have I Waited."
- Ramirez and Cassandra's time together, read "Heart, Faith, and Steel."
- Connor and Alex falling in love, read "Wild Mountain Thyme."
- Connor finding the infant Duncan, read "Solstice Sun."
- Duncan being banished, read "They Bitterly Weep."
- the midwife, read "The Highland Foundling."

All stories are available on my webpage < http://www.erols.com/darkpanther/ >.