HIGHLANDER:

BORROWED TIME

(Every New Beginning...)

By Lisa Beth Darling-Gorman

ONE

Like any other early June day in Vermont, the brightly shinning sun was beginning to beat down upon the rolling hills with something, not quiet, but nearing, a vengeance. It cast out strong warnings of hot summer days to come. Days which would send one running for the local swimming hole before the heat melted them in their tracks.

Sarah sat at her desk in the game room, fingers on the keyboard as she typed out the notes to a new song which had been rolling around in her head. Other than the constant tap-tap-tap of the keys, not a single sound echoed anywhere in the house. Everything was so interminably quiet here since Duncan had closed the Inn. Not that it had been any where near noisy before, either. Guests, were few and far between, but they had managed to find their way here. Sarah hadn't known how much she'd miss them until the inn hadn't opened for business this year. While just the mere idea of it saddened her greatly, Sarah had given little protest at the idea of closing the inn to guests. It was no longer wise to have just anyone come traipsing through her home anymore. But it was so damn quite.

A slender hand reached up from it's work and flicked on the portable CD player sitting on the mantel. Matchbox20 began to pour through the speakers and Sarah sang along in a soft voice to the tune Back2Good. Sarah let out a low sigh. A tired, slightly shaking hand, raised itself to her forehead in a weak attempt to ease the coming headache. Headaches which beginning to come all too frequently. Stress, she told herself over and over again. They were nothing but annoying little headaches brought on by the stress of her new marriage and all the changes which had come with it. But, other than the occasional row newly married couples sometimes go through, the month she and Duncan had been handfasted had been peaceful. Methos had departed their company within a week of the ceremony and the townspeople had pretty much left them to their own devices. Mae and a few of the others stopped in from time to time, (just to say hello you understand).

Life had returned to something which closely resembled ‘normal’, . . . whatever that was...hadn't it? A slight smile crossed her lips as she thought of different they were; him with his feet planted firmly in the Earth and she with her whole being floating endlessly on the higher planes. Such an odd couple. But she loved being with him. There wasn't anything in this world or any other that would make her want to leave his side. Duncan was everything to her now.

Their days had been filled with conversation and lessons. Him teaching her how to sword fight--or at least attempting to-- and Sarah attempting to show Duncan the more magickal side of life. Try as she did, Sarah was terrible at swordfighting. No matter which weapon they chose for her Sarah could only wield it strongly for a short period before she tired. In the few minutes where she could wield it, she thought she was doing much better than when they had begun three months ago. She had no idea of why he insisted that she learn how to do it, wasn’t it him who had insisted she would never be able to wield a sword properly in the first place and hence the need for her Champion? Sarah thought it was but never mentioned it to him.

When they weren’t giving each other lessons, they spent endless hours walking through the Vermont woods, holding hands and stealing kisses. As they walked, Duncan would tell her stories of her own family's past and fill in the pieces which had either escaped or been skipped over by her mother and grandmother. He told her how Hannah's parents had forced her into the marriage to Simon. Although Sarah suspected Duncan had not wanted to disclose the information of his brief but intense love affair with Hannah, he had done so. Sarah didn't know how she had felt about that, it was bad enough being compared to the first Sarah Cooper, now she had to contend with the memory of her mother as well rattling around in his mind and his heart. So much competition...how would she ever live up to it all? Duncan told her of Simon Cooper, a man Duncan had once trusted and considered a friend, of how he had turned into a horrible money hungry wife-beating monster. The information confused and saddened Sarah to the point that she was scarcely able to look at the portraits of Simon and Hannah hanging in the family room anymore. From time to time she would stop and force herself to look at them and to tell herself that was all in the past, it was over, dead...buried. They were memories to him and nothing more, they couldn’t possibly be anything more because they were dead, all of them, dead. There was part of her which was glad to know the truth. Now she truly knew who those people had been and that was something not even the best of genealogists get.

On the outside everything looked as though all were right with the world once again. Except it wasn't and Sarah knew it. So did Duncan. While she had slept in his bed, wrapped snugly in the warmth and strength of his arms since they were Handfasted, Sarah had yet to fulfill her role as his wife. Duncan had been patient and understanding, never once did he even try to push her, no matter how much he might have liked to. Never once said a cross word or gave an indignant look to her when she pushed him away. No matter how far they'd gone. Sarah felt sure that he must be beginning to resent her by now, if for nothing else than the terminal case of Blue Balls she must be giving him each night. The time had come and he had been patiently waiting for her to put up or shut up

James had told her that if Duncan ever made love with her it would only because he pitied her. More often than she liked to remember James' voice and those words echoed in her head when Duncan kissed her or touched her. An incessant dark voice in her head whispered that maybe it was something just a bit worse than pity? What would happen after she laid under him? After she gave birth to his child and Duncan MacLeod was finally awarded that which he said he desired most in the world? If he pitied her he would simply turn his back and walk away. If it were something just a bit worse than pity, he would turn his back and walk away with his son in his arms.

Sarah eased herself back in the chair away from the desk and stretched her back. The pain in her head grew worse as the muscles in her neck tightened. Again she raised her hand to her forehead, this one was going to be relentless, she could feel that already. There was something wrong with her, a certain something which she could not explain on the level where communication was conducted in mere words. Times when her head felt incredibly light Sarah was sure it would just suddenly pop off and go floating out into the space it seemed to yearn for so intently. Her vision would blur at those times, she could actually feel her eyeballs moving in and out in and out, of their sockets as the pupils dilated inside. Were she standing at those times, Sarah would have to reach out and steady herself against something until the wave passed. Normally that was fast enough but sometimes they lasted a bit longer. Thankfully during those times there was no one around who might notice her unsteadiness.

There were darker days. Like today, when it started out as nothing more than a dull ache behind the eyes. Slowly it grew into a throbbing stabbing pain. These were the days Sarah could hardly bare to even remember once they were gone let alone think about them. The stabbing turned into something worse, something which felt as though someone were trying to split in down the middle with a rusty axe. On those days her vision was not blurry in the least, no on the contrary it was quite clear. Clearer than she ever though vision could or even should be. Colors so bright that she could see the colors within them. The horizon extended so far off into the distance that she would swear she could see the Canadian border just over twenty miles away. She could see something else then, something that she never she would never be able to fully explain to anyone. A Somewhere, some odd and wondrous somewhere--the place where time and space meet perhaps--in between those folds faded and a bit distant but visible just the same, Sarah could see the other dimensions and planes floating like holograms between the Vermont mountains and herself. One on top of the other, layers within layers.

Universes within Universes.

Without fail the intensity of the rusty ax crashing itself against and through the top of her head would cause Sarah to go slinking to the very cherry desk at which she now sat, when Duncan wasn't looking. All she needed was forty-five seconds out of his sight...that's all. Not too much to ask. Is it? Forty-five seconds and in ten minutes she would be feeling better. In fifteen the pain would be so dull that it no longer mattered. In twenty it no longer registered at all. If Duncan knew about those times and what she did to ease them, well let's just say Sarah was positive he wouldn't like it in the least. And then there were the nights when the rusty ax headaches hit. She'd end up biting down on her fist to keep from screaming out and waking her sleeping husband.

Getting out of the bed was no good, Duncan woke as soon she planted both feet on the floor wether she had a headache or she was just making a late night trip to the bathroom. Sarah could not get to the desk then. All she could do was to lay cuddled up in a fetal position with her back to him, biting down hard on her fist while the tears streamed down her face and she begged all the Gods for relief.

Lying there in the dark, that in between place came into even clearer view. It wasn't the same in between place as she saw in the day light. Rather it was one area, one place which stood on its own without use of the others. In that place the darkness glimmered with a life of its own. Hard stone walls were covered with centuries worth of filth and slime. The air was slightly rank and slightly chilly. It made her skin crawl with goosebumps. The absolute worst thing about this place was the ghoul who lived here. Endlessly he or she rattled their heavy chains and threw their body against the slimy walls which shuddered and shook with a little more force each time.

Whatever it was it howled to the Universe its unending desire to be free of its prison. Nothing she did blocked out that sound. Nothing. Onya. Wailing from her prison. Struggling against the chains Sarah tried fought so desperately to keep her in.

As the last of the light outside the windows began to fade away, Sarah opened the main drawer of her desk, tapped the brass button in the back.

Pop.

Out slid the hidden drawer.

Without thought, hesitation or reservation, she reached greedily for what was
hidden there.