Title: The Truth

Author: Belynda

Email addy: belindat@ihug.co.nz

Fandom: Highlander/Sentinel

Pairing: Jim/Blair, Richie/Alex

Rating: NC-17

Archiving: Ask and I wont turn you down. Just tell me where it ends up.

Series: Travelling Highlander

Feedback: I love it, need it, crave it. belindat@ihug.co.nz is the place to send it.

Notes: Beta read by the fast Zerena. Thanks heaps for making my story that bit more readable<g>.

Website: http://slasharchive.simplenet.com/belynda.htm

Disclaimer: Sigh, okay they don't belong to me. I play with them, let them do their thing, and give them back at the end of the day.

Summary: The men of Cascade finally learn the truth. But someone dies along the way...

Mac took one last look at Simon laying bare-chested in his bed, relaxed and spread out, before he quietly closed the door. Bracing himself for anyone else who might be up at this early hour, he removed all emotion from his face. However, seeing no one about, he relaxed and stepped outside to do his early morning exercises.

With sweat dripping off him, Duncan performed one last kick as he finished his routine. Turning toward the cabin, he stilled. There on the steps, was an audience of his roommates.

"Wow, Mac, that was awesome. Do you do that every morning?" Blair asked.

Nodding, Mac headed toward his towel which hung over the rail. Before he could get near it though, Simon picked it up and handed it to him. Pausing for a second, Mac accepted the towel.

"So how long does it take to learn?"

"Years, Blair. Lots and lots of years. But if you are interested, I could teach you a few things."

"Wow, that would be neat. When can we start?"

"Tomorrow at 5:30. If you can get up that early that is." Mac challenged.

Blair accepted the challenge. "I can do 5:30. But why not today? It’s not like we have anything else to do."

"You will have plenty to do Blair. Just wait. Now, has anyone had breakfast?" Mac carefully steered the conversation away from the day’s events. Today was the day that the truth would be revealed.

Half an hour later, dishes washed and put away, they were all sitting in the family area. Blair was just finishing telling a story about a student, so they were all in a relaxed kind of mood. But Jim noticed that Mac, Richie and Alex were a bit tense. Something was about to happen.

Mac started the conversation first. "So Blair, I suppose in your line of work, you’ve come across a lot of myths. The unexplained. The unthought of."

"Yeah. Sometimes I do find things that are out there. Why?" Blair asked sharing a look with Jim. *Could they know our secret?*

"Blair, Jim, you have nothing to worry about here. This isn’t about your secret. It’s about ours which will in turn become yours. Jim’s, Blair’s, and Simon’s. And it won’t leave this cabin. Ever." Alex tried to put them at ease.

Again Jim and Blair shared an uneasy look.

"When I came to Cascade several months ago, I was going to look you up, Blair, and give you that book. And as I said at the time, my visiting was hastened by the fact that you had died the previous day. And as soon as I walked into your apartment building, I knew for sure that you had died. Without a doubt." Alex started.

Blair was puzzled. "But how could you know that?"

"Haven’t you noticed Blair? Whenever I or Richie, or even Simon get near you, you get this buzzing kind of feeling at the base of your skull. You too Simon. You would have been feeling a weak version of that since your death. And once Blair died, it would have been stronger."

"I thought that I just didn’t like the soaps or shampoo Blair used. Thought it gave me a headache. And what did you mean, since my death? I would remember dying." Simon asked, concerned as to where this was going.

"Simon, were you ever involved in a accident of any kind where you were unconscious for a period of time and woke up with a headache and no other injuries?" Mac asked softly.

Thinking, Simon flashed onto a incident that happened a few years ago. "Years ago, I was in a accident. A car accident. I was driving and it was raining. I crashed. When I can to I did have a headache but no other injuries. I didn’t think anything of it at the time." Realization struck. "Are you saying that I died that night and came back to life?"

"Yes."

"Hang on a minute. Are you saying that the three of us have died and come back to life and that we can tell if someone else has too?" Blair asked, still puzzled at this turn of events.

"No. Jim hasn’t died yet. But if he did, yes, he would come back. When you experience your first death, you are changed from being mortal to immortal. The buzz you feel from us is that of a immortal. The weaker buzz you feel from Jim is that of a pre-immortal." Alex explained.

Jim sat forward. "Immortals, and pre-immortals? Do you really expect us to believe you? This is some kind of April fools joke isn’t it?"

Shaking his head, Mac continued. "Once you have had your first death and have become immortal, you feel the buzz whenever another immortal or pre-immortal is nearby. You have to be careful that you don’t mess with the wrong immortal. It could mean your death."

"Hang on a minute. Immortality means, never dying. Now you just said that meeting the wrong immortal could mean our death. Which is it?" Blair asked trying to figure everything out.

"There is one way to die. Decapitation. Not very pleasant. But very final." Richie said shivering as he thought about it.

"Decapitation! Okay, enough is enough. This has gone too far." Simon demanded, fed up with Duncan’s games.

"Yes, decapitation! This isn’t something to laugh about. You don’t understand what’s at stake here. This is your lives we are talking about. Your lives! Maybe if I told you about myself you wouldn't be so narrow minded." Mac asked.

"Go ahead. It’s not like nothing you say will change anything." Jim put in.

"My name is Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod. I was born four hundred years ago in the Highlands of Scotland. I had my first death during a clan war. When I came back from the dead, healed, I was cast out of my clan as a demon. Since then I have been travelling the world, meeting new people, meeting immortals, making friends as well as enemies.

"Any injury I receive, I heal from. I have no scars. I don’t age. And I fight others to live on for another day. We hide and try to keep a low profile in society. We don’t know how many of us there are, and we don’t know where we came from. We are all foundlings, found by someone and raised as their own. . . " Here Duncan paused and looked at Simon with a look of sadness on his face. "We can not have children."

"What? But Daryl?" Simon asked, the possibility of Daryl not being his son unthinkable.

"I’m sorry, Simon. No immortal can have children. Children at any stage of their life."

"Well, now I know you are lying. I had a blood test to prove that I was Daryl’s father. Nothing you can do can change my mind, because all of this immortality crap is just that. Crap." Not wanting to be near Duncan, he got up and went over to the window to look out.

"Come on man. This has gone on far enough. Let’s stop the joke before it goes any further. We’ll all forget about it." Blair asked, not wanting Simon to be hurt, or for anyone to be hurt for that matter.

"There is only one way to prove that we are telling you the truth. Richie?" Alex asked, dropping to his knees beside the table. Richie placed several towels on the two foot tall table. Alex then pushed up his sleeves. Then he placed his left arm across the table, palm up.

"What are you doing? Jim, what’s he doing?" Blair asked his lover, while squeezing his hand tightly, as pictures flew through his mind.

Jim could only shake his head in disbelieve as Duncan produced a very sharp-looking hunting knife. "Oh no you don’t. I want this to stop know. No one is going to get hurt here today. Mac, put it away. Now."

Duncan just shook his head. "You need proof. We are going to give it to you. Nothing more, nothing less." With that he handed Alex the knife.

Alex gripped it like it was a familiar tool. "Jim, I’ve been around even longer than Mac. I’ve done this lots of times. No one will be hurt today."

Simon had come over to watch what was unfolding before his eyes. As Alex lifted the knife to cut himself, he pulled out his gun from the back of his belt. "This. Will. Stop. Now."

Alex looked straight down the barrel of the gun. "I’ve been hanged, drowned, stabbed, poisoned, burned to death, and a few other unsavory ways of dying not worth mentioning. I have never been shot though. Mac, Richie, what’s that like?"

"Not to be recommended." Richie offered.

"Hurts like a mother if it isn’t a clean shot. If you have to be shot, it’s best to die instantly. Aiming for the heart is good." Mac suggested casually, sitting back down.

Alex looked at the knife in his hand and then at the gun. He thought for a moment.

Jim, Blair and Simon looked at each other with panic. The other three men were too calm, which wasn’t a good sign. What had been planned as some R & R was quickly turning into a nightmare.

Before they could do anything, Alex jumped up on the table and flung himself at Simon, knife aimed for his heart. In reflex, Simon fired.

Silence.

Then a thud as Alex’s body hit the floor.

Simon stood there stunned. It had been more than five years since he had actually fired his weapon at anyone. And here he was now. A few years before his fortieth birthday, and a corpse lay at his feet.

Blair fell to his knees beside Alex and pressed his shaking fingers to Alex’s throat. No heartbeat. With a cry he backed away from the body. Jim was there waiting for him. He had known before the body had hit the floor that he was dead. The body. *God, Alex, why did you take this so far? Why didn’t you stop? What about Richie? Richie, oh god.* Searching, Jim found Richie standing over the body of his lover. Then with a sigh, he knelt down and placed one of Alex’s arms about his next.

"Mac, if you could?"

Together, Mac and Richie moved Alex over to the couch. Once Alex was spread out on the couch, Richie knelt beside him. He shook his head as he took in the blood stained shirt. "He loved this shirt. Said it was his favorite. He is going to be pissed when he sees what he’s done to it."

"You’ll have to take him shopping once you get back to Cascade." Mac offered, as he passed Richie the hunters knife.

Taking it with a "Thanks", Richie quickly cut open the ruined shirt. With Duncan’s help, they removed the shirt.

Jim was now able to see the entrance wound. Surprisingly, there wasn’t much blood. In fact, the blood flow had stopped.

They waited for twenty minutes in silence. Watching as Duncan and Richie cleaned up what blood there was. Simon was still in shock, standing where he had fired the weapon that lay on the floor at his feet. Blair had pressed himself against Jim and hadn’t let go since.

It was the hardest for Blair as he was the closest of the three to Alex. To know someone and becomes friends like they had, it was numbing to see Alex like he was.

Jim saw it first. The faint blue electricity that appeared from within Alex’s body. He stood and moved closer, Blair a unwilling participant until he to saw the blue sparks in the wound. Within a minute it was healed. Then Jim heard it.

*I hear Alex’s heartbeat. . . but that’s impossible. . .* Jim thought.

Then Alex was taking a deep breath in, shocking the three men in to motion. They stepped closer, and watched as Alex took another deep breath. As he was taking his third breath, his eyes opened and he looked up into the eyes of his lover.

"Hi there, lover. You okay?" Richie asked in concern, his finger tips slowly tracing a line down the side of Alex’s face.

Alex groaned as he sat up. "I’m fine. A fucker of a headache though. Must be all of you." He rubbed at his forehead for a moment and then accepted the shirt Mac handed him. "Is my shirt ruined?"

"Yeah. It’s seen it’s last days. I’ll have to buy you another one. Do you want something to drink?"

Nodding, Alex accepted the glass of water that was placed in his hand. He drained it and, once it was on the table, looked at his three shocked friends. "Now do you believe me?"

"Yeah, man. But did you have to do it like that? Couldn’t you have done it in a less violent way?" Blair asked, still pale.

"Would you have believed me? I don’t think so. Simon, I want to apologize. I shouldn’t have used you like that. I’m sorry." Alex offered, knowing what he had done was very low off him.

Shaking his head, Simon backed away. "I don’t want any of this. I . . . I’m going for a walk." And with that he was out the door.

Mac stopped Jim from going after him with a hand on his arm. "I’ll go after him. You two stay here and listen to what Alex and Richie have to say. Any question you have, they can answer. I’ll see if I can’t help Simon."

Jim accepted what Mac was saying and watched him follow Simon.

********************

Stepping off the porch, Mac saw movement off to the right of the cabin. Knowing that Simon needed to calm down and think about things first, he followed at a distance, not wanting to disturb Simon.

Thinking about all that had gone on inside the cabin, he knew that Simon was probably thinking about how he had killed Alex. Regardless of the fact that Alex was an immortal and had come back to life. Regardless that Alex had come at him with a knife and would have been injured himself if he hadn’t defended himself.

Guilt could be a wonderful companion. And it was Simon's best friend at the moment. He would have to try to make Simon understand that he wasn’t at fault. And he would try all day if he had to.

********************

"So Richie. How old are you?" Blair asked.

"Sorry to disappoint you Blair, but I’m only 24. I died my first death when I was 18. I’m a baby compared to some other immortals. Mac over four hundred years old. And Amanda is a eleven hundered years old."

Alex coughed as his drink went the wrong way. "Amanda? That thieving Amanda? You know her?"

Richie nodded. "Yeah, met her several years ago. Good friend, you just have to watch your wallet around her."

"Do you ever! She stole several items from me over the years. Expensive items at that. How do you know her?"

"She and Mac have had an on again off again relationship for a long time. But these days they are just good friends." Richie shrugged.

"We can live up to a eleven hundered years? Just imagine how many places you could visit in that time." Blair breathed, the possibilities running through his mind.

"Ah, actually Blair, Amanda is a eleven hundered years old, but there are others older that she is. There is even a myth about one of them, Methos, who is supposed to be five thousand years old."

At this Alex eyes grew dark. "If I ever meet Methos . . . He’s a dead man."

"What?" Richie asked confused. He hadn’t meant to mention Methos, but it had just slipped out.

"Me and Methos have a history. There is spilled blood between us. We are enemies and nothing can change that. If I ever meet him again, if he is still alive, I *will* take his head." The coldness in Alex’s voice showed that he meant every word.

Shocked, Richie could only stare at Alex for a moment. "But Methos is a myth. He isn’t real."

Jim picked up on the fact that Richie was lying. He didn’t know why, but it was interesting. Richie was protecting this Methos, who obviously was alive and well.

"Methos is no myth. I have encountered him several times over the years. And we always fought whenever we met." No one challenged Alex’s words, although Richie looked close to saying something several times.

Blair was the one who broke the tense silence. "So you mentioned something about a Game before?"

********************

MacLeod sat and watched as Simon leaned against a tree not far from where he was sitting. The black man had been sitting there for a hour in silence and Duncan wasn’t about to disturb the man in his thoughts.

Simon really hadn’t changed in the past eighteen years. He was still as handsome, strong and able as he was then. And even back then he was fond of having a cigar between his lips.

Remembering how he had first meet Simon, Mac couldn’t help smiling. Simon had arrested him at the scene of a crime. Of course Mac hadn’t been guilty, but during the investigation, they had become friends. He had met the then pregnant Joan, although he or Simon hadn’t known that at the time. Lunches together had soon turned into dinners, then the weekend BBQ’s. He had always gotten the impression that while Joan was glad Simon had someone to talk to about work, that she was also jealous about the amount of time they had spent together.

Then MacLeod had been caught in another compromising situation. Their friendship had began to break apart. They fought and finally they didn’t even see each other.

He had then come to the decision that it would be best if he left town. Getting up the nerve to go and see Simon had been the hardest thing he had ever experienced. But he did go, and although it didn’t turn out the way either of them thought it would, Mac knew that he didn’t regret it.

Seeing Simon yesterday on his doorstep had been a shock.. Even knowing how close he was to Cascade, he hadn’t thought that he would ever meet Simon again.

"Duncan, I know you’re there. Why don’t you come over here?" Simon spoke, startling the long haired man out of his thoughts.

Standing, Mac made his way over to his old friend. Sitting down, he couldn’t help checking Simon out to see what he was feeling. By the looks of things, the cop had accepted what had happened in the cabin.

"Are you alright, Simon?"

Sighing, Simon looked out into the woods. "No, I’m not. I learn that I’m immortal. That my son, who I would die for, isn’t my son. And that I shot a man dead. It’s a lot to take in Duncan."

"I. It is. But don’t look at it as bad things Simon. You are immortal. Yes, you won’t die by normal means, but you have the opportunity to do so much more now. Daryl is still your son, no matter what. Your love for him won’t change. And yes you shot Alex. But he attacked you first. As an immortal, it’s good to act first and think later. And Alex is alright now. In fact, he and Richie are probably telling Jim and Blair all about being immortal, right now." He gave the taller man's shoulder a squeeze. "You will be alright Simon. You just need time to think things through."

Shaking his head at Duncan’s words, Simon stood. "It’s getting cold. Let’s head back to the Ccabin and on the way you can tell me all about immortals. If I have to learn it, it might as well be now."

Together they started to walk back to the cabin. "So. You’re four hundred years old. Ever been married?"

********************

That night saw the newly enlightened immortals and one pre-immortal, quietly eating dinner. For Blair, this was very odd. But as he had said earlier, it *was* a lot to process in a day.

Alex collected the dishes. "Mac, did you remember to bring the equipment?"

"I did."

"Equipment for what?" Jim asked.

Richie grinned. "For your training of course."

Jim sighed and shared a pointed look with Simon. "Richie, what training?"

"We are going to train you on how to use a sword and how to defend yourself. Starting tomorrow."

"Yeah, so I suggest that tonight you get as much sleep as you can. You will soon discover muscles you didn’t know you had." Alex grinned from the kitchen.

Blair rolled his eyes and placed his head on the table. "Oh, boy" was quietly heard by the others.

Laughing, the others turned their thoughts to tomorrow. For tomorrow was when the real work started.