Disclaimers:  all things Raven are not mine.     Not for profit, just for some good angsty fun.
time: c.  1996
place: hawaii
spoilers: not this time.
rating:  PG-14; Romance.

Back from the Dead

© 2000, dragon

Part One

July 1950

The small dark eyed, dark haired woman sat staring blindly into the dark.  In her arms lay the fragile husk of the man she had loved.  He had ceased to breath an hour earlier, but she couldn't bring herself to let him go, even as the body grew cool to the touch.  Gary was gone.  They had tried for five years to keep him alive; to find a cure for the blood disorder that slowly took him away from her.

Her eyes burned, dry from her unblinking stare.  Finally, she blinked, looked down into his peaceful face and admitted he was gone.  She gently laid him down on the bed, his head against the pillows.  "Good bye," she said softly and went to arrange for the death certificate, the funeral, the burial.

Three days passed.  The doctor had no problem with the death, knowing that it had been only a matter of time.  The funeral was well attended, family, friends, foundation personnel, everyone loved her companion.  And they avoided her, no one knowing exactly what to say to a companion in that day and age.  Finally, they gathered at the grave, said their final good byes, and left her standing beside the open grave, alone.

She dropped in a dozen roses, all different colors, one at a time.  She was devastated, desolate, a void standing beside the opening into the earth.  "Good bye.  I love you, darling."  She reached down to the dirt, took a handful, and dropped it on the polished wooden surface at the bottom of the grave.  Then she turned and walked away, out of the cemetery, out of the lives of the people who had surrounded the two of them.  She walked away leaving all of it behind her.



1965

Darkness.  Suffocating darkness.  Trying to breathe, to focus, to find light.  Where was he?  What was he doing here?  He'd just closed his eyes, just for a minute, that was all.  He'd been so tired, each breath was a fight, each heartbeat.  What had happened?  Where was Kesh?  Where was he?  He tried to lift his arms.  Thunk.  Fingertips slid across the surface above him, so close above him.  It shredded under his probing.

God!  No!  Buried!  Dammit!  She'd buried him alive!  He yelled his denial in the darkness.  The sound was loud in his ears, echoing, confined within the small area of the coffin.  He pushed at the surface above him, dislodging small wriggling things, worms and other destroyers of flesh.  It dawned on him that he had been there for a while.

He screamed and continued screaming until his ears no longer heard the sound, until his lungs collapsed from lack of oxygen, until he lapsed into an unconscious state again.

Darkness.  Madness.  Despair.  He cycled through all of these again and again.  And then something changed.  He heard a sound outside of his cramped arena of existence.  It sounded like a machine.  It was a machine.  Someone was digging nearby.  He could feel the vibrations through the ground.  Help?  Please?  Someone hear him?  He started thumping on the side of his coffin.  Please, God, let someone hear him.  Let someone help him.

The gravedigger stopped his work, shutting off the engine of the small backhoe he was digging up a new grave.  Thump.  Thump.  He frowned at the sound.  He looked around.  He was alone.  He shook his head and climbed down from the backhoe.  Thump.  Thump.  He heard it clearly now.  He looked around.  The new grave was very close to an old one.  He leaned over.  Thump.  Thump.  No.  No way.  Thump.  Thump.  The man backed away, his eyes getting big and round and then he turned and ran.

Thump.  Thump.

A tall, dark haired man walking through the cemetery heard the noise.  Curious, he came toward the new grave.  He looked in.  Empty.  Thump.  Thump.  Not in the grave, next to it.  Oh, hell.  He looked at the backhoe, discovered the key in the ignition and turned the machine on.  Swiftly, he demolished the dirt separating the next grave from the open one.  With a crack, he broke through the rotted wood of a coffin.  He turned the machine off, jumping down and into the open grave.  Swiftly, he pulled wood away and made an opening.  A hand, slender, dirty, the nails ripped up, reached out and grabbed him.

"It's all right.  I'm getting you out.  You'll be OK."  The Scots lilt to the voice was somehow reassuring to the man coming out of the coffin.

A few minutes and he had the buried man out of the disintegrating coffin.  He took a quick look around and hurriedly pulled himself out of the grave and turned back to give the other man a hand out.  The surface of the grave in which he'd lain collapsed, filling the empty space within the coffin.

The man looked back and shuddered.

"Come on.  Let's get you out of here."  He was aware that there was no indication the man he had just rescued was one of his own kind.  Yet the condition of his clothing indicated he had been in the grave for a long time.  He had to be an Immortal.

He bundled the man into his car and drove away as the gravedigger returned with help.  Well, that would leave them with a mystery on their hands.  "Duncan MacLeod, of the Clan MacLeod," he introduced himself to the man.

"Gary -- Gary Windom," the other man responded in a voice that sounded too long unused.  He was still looking at the world in wonder.  He looked at his hands, strong and well muscled.  He stared at them in wonder.  The last time he'd seen them, they were pale, frail and nearly useless.  He didn't understand what had happened.

"How long?"

"What?"

"How long ago did you -- die?"  There was the faintest hesitation in the other man's voice.

"I didn't -- did I?" Gary sounded bewildered.

The sound was a normal one for those who had just become aware of their difference.  And yet, there was no resonance between the two of them.  Duncan was just beginning to realize this.  "Yes, you did.  The grave I broke you out of was not a new one."

Gary regarded him wildly for a moment, then took in the longish hair, the clothing Duncan wore.  "The last thing I remember, it was 1950," he said in almost a whisper.

"It's been 15 years," Duncan told him, keeping a wary eye on the man for his reaction, while continuing to drive toward the hotel where he was staying.

"That's --- " he looked at Duncan as though seeing him for the first time.  "You're an Immortal," he said quietly.  "That's why you're not disturbed by all this."

It was Duncan's turn to look disturbed.  "You know about Immortals?" he asked cautiously.

"Yes.  Kesh told me about them."

Duncan could hear the sadness in the other man's voice.  "Who's Kesh?" he asked gently.

"Keshthal Dah bosh Neth."

The name was unfamiliar.  Duncan shook his head to indicate that he did not know the name.  "Not familiar.  But there are a lot of them I don't know."

"Kesh said that.  But that doesn't explain --"

"You."

"No.  Kesh said she could always feel other Immortals when they were near.  I don't feel -- anything."

"I've noticed.  There's no indication that you're one of us.  Which doesn't explain how you came to be alive and trying to get out of that grave fifteen years after you were put in it."

"No.  It doesn't.  Kesh wouldn't have known -- I guess I need to find her."

"I'll help."

Several days later, Gary realized that Kesh was nowhere to be found.  Instead of running the foundation they'd established, she had walked away from it.  "I don't believe this.  That -- she left.  She just flat left."

"It was time.  You were gone.  Nothing to hold her here."

He turned on the man who had pulled him out of the grave, anger firing his eyes and voice.  "There were people relying on her.  She should have stayed."

Duncan's eyes grew cold, distant.  "Should she?  If you were as close as you've said, your death left her with nothing to hold her here.  The foundation seems to be doing well enough."

He thought about that.  "Yeah.  And it's not as though I need it.  Although it does seem to be doing some good."

"That's all you can really ask."

"So, how do you find one of you who's wandered off?"

Duncan looked at him curiously.  "Why?"

"I love Kesh," he answered glibly.  Oh, yes.  He loved the bitch who buried him and left him to rot.  A part of his mind was worried by this train of thought.  Surely, it argued, if she had known he would come back, she would not have buried him and left.  But she did.  She did.  She did.  The thought kept hammering at his brain.  She had buried him and left him to the darkness, the rotting, the airless home of decay.  And she had  known.  If the man beside him knew, then  she had also and she had abandoned him, cast him off like so much decaying flesh.

// If she had known and wished to discard you, she'd have taken your head.  She didn't know.  //

\\ She knew.  She knew.  She knew.  \\

And so he began his hunt for his ex-lover, and his introduction to life as an Immortal.

Years passed, Kesh stayed out of sight, Gary and Duncan drifted in differing directions.  They had agreed that whatever Gary was, he was not a part of the Immortal mythology and existence that Duncan and his friends knew.  Still, he learned to use a sword, just in case someone made a mistake.  He learned the mythology.  He learned everything Duncan could teach him.  And then they parted, friends.

He continued to search, no longer certain what he would do when he found Kesh.  He hated her.  He loved her.  He wanted revenge.  He wanted to find her and -- well, he'd deal with that when he found her.  And he prayed that no one else would find her, would fight her, would take her head before he found her and his reckoning was taken.



January 1996

Duncan MacLeod looked up from his drink, aware that someone he knew had entered the bar, but not who.  He looked around.  A young man, golden brown hair brushing his shoulders, blue eyes adjusting to the dark interior of the bar, stood in the doorway.  He looked around, spotted Duncan and smiled.

"Windom," the Scot greeted him as he crossed the room to join the taller, dark haired man.

"Duncan.  How've you been?"  His voice was soft, melodic.  The sharp edges Duncan remembered seem to have softened with time.

"Not bad.  Drink?"

"Thanks."

"Joe.  Lager for my friend."

The graying man behind the bar nodded and brought a lager for Gary, nodded companionably and went back to polishing his glasses.  He kept an eye on the two men at the bar, but not so closely that it felt like they were being observed.  Joe was very good at what he did.

"So, what brings you here?"

"I was looking for you."

Danger signals went off.  "Why?" he asked casually.

"I've found her.  But someone else is looking for her as well.  Or -- I'm not sure.  But I'd appreciate your help in getting in touch with her."  He took a long pull at his drink and set it down.  "I'm still very ambivalent about seeing her again.  But I think I need to do so.  What is it they call it these days?  Closure?"

"Closure.  You're still angry."

"I'm -- no.  I think I understand what happened, but I'd like to hear it from her.  And, yes.  There's still this irrational thought that she should have known.  But I've run into too many of you to not understand that -- I'm something else."  He shrugged his shoulders.  "I need to hear it from her."

Duncan gave it some thought and shot a surreptitious glance at Joe who was frowning.  "OK.  I'll help."

Continued

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