Work Text:
Stolen Time
In the Year 2001
It was early, an hour shy of midnight, and Joe decided to close the place down before more full on full lunar riffraff wandered in. The regular bar crowd had melted after his last set, abandoning the blues for a rave down by the docks where the rising gibbous moon lit a silvered path on the bay.
The night crew had stocked and cleaned before Joe cut them loose for the night, but he still wiped down the bar out of habit. He turned the music down a click and the lights up a touch, hoping the last remaining couple at the end of the bar would cop a clue.
The dark lady in red had a killer smile, but the guy in the yellow shirt accompanying her seemed a little too full of himself. The way he played with his fancy palm pilot instead of paying attention to his companion made Joe cast a sympathetic look to the lady, who rewarded him with the sunniest smile he’d seen in years, warming him to the cockles.
“Down, cockles,” he warned himself, adding just a bit too loudly, “You’re thirty years out of her league.”
“Thirty light years,” Palm Pilot Boy replied, dismissing Joe altogether by dropping an insultingly large stack of suspiciously new bills on the bar. He then strode toward the door, still arguing with his office equipment, while his more civilized companion lingered, offering a silent apology.
“You deserve better, milady,” Joe stage whispered, earning a bright eyed wink.
“Next time we’ll sing the night away,” she promised back, glancing at his darkened stage. “Stars willing.” She waved, and slipped out into the night.
“Next time…,” Joe echoed, giving back his best return hither smile through his regret. The lovely woman had a _ lovely _ voice. Out of instinct and habit, he followed to the door to check their vehicle and license, but they had already vanished from the lot. Thoughtfully locking the main door to his sanctum, he considered some guitar practice might be in order, just in case he got musically lucky.
Then from behind he heard a tiny snick from the emergency exit, followed by the more authoritative click of the opening door, which cooled his cockles and raised his hackles.
The riffraff had picked the back door lock and ambushed him from the rear. Riffraff from his own checkered past, this time.
“Ripper! What the hell are you doing here?” Joe, astonished, gripped his cane and squared off.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Joe. I assure you I’m corporeal,” the intruder said, holding his hands wide in a show of innocence.
“With your lot, Ripper, doubt creeps in,” Joe said. “And me without my holy water.”
“You can borrow mine, if you like.” Patting his own pockets, he offered up a clear vial. “I come in peace. And I tend to respond to Giles these days.”
Joe started edging for the bar, where he had a modest hidden arsenal. “The last time I saw you, your merry band got tossed out of the Fringe for freaking out the Goths. You were vowing demonic revenge on all music critics.”
“Ah, the halcyon early eighties, punk and parties,” Giles temporized. “The band did have a certain untamed cachet.”
“Untuned, more like.”
Giles winced. “To be fair, that was before I emulated you and grew a moral compass.”
“Now that sounds like a real fairy tale.” As Joe gained the dubious safety of the back bar, he wondered if he should pull out the whisky, or the Beretta. Or both. “You’re looking pretty spry, carrying around the weight of all that conscience.”
“Your sterling sense of honor inspired me,” Giles laughed. “ It’s good to see you survived the millennium, Joe, in spite of it. Can I buy you a drink in celebration?”
“Last time you stiffed me with the pub bill,” Joe objected. “After you claimed to cast a spell of forgetfulness on the whole bar, as I remember. That didn’t work on me then, bud, and it won’t work now.”
“In my defense, I was very inexperienced at the time,” Giles hedged.
“Weren’t we all,” Joe admitted, finally choosing the whisky. The well scotch, not MacLeod’s curated top shelf. “What are you doing lurking around Seacouver?”
“I need a secure place to safekeep an artifact, far from my all too curious companions. Watcher to Watcher, I hope you’ll grant me this favor,” Giles said with a certain formal cadence. He carefully placed a carved box on the bar. It could have held cigars. It probably didn’t.
“This is not a bank vault. And I’ll need to know exactly what contraband you’re trying to stash, Ripper.”
“Fair point,” Giles allowed. “It is a temporal anchor, wrought a millennia ago by the sorceress you know as Rebecca. When a time stream is disturbed, it can serve as a lifeline, for lack of a better word.” He held up an amulet with a ram’s head surrounded by a five-pointed star. White crystals glittered in the center, and at the points. “Don’t worry, it can’t be activated without a power source.”
“ ‘Don’t worry,’ he says. Powered by what?” All in all, Joe would have preferred magic mushrooms.
“Quickenings. Finely tuned, freely channelled. Immortal energy.”
“A turbocharged time machine,” Joe meant to joke, then he recoiled. “Are those shards of Methuselah stones?”
“You recognize them?”
“You broke them?”
“Rebecca herself called the pieces of the amulet into this configuration to fight the Roman incursions, according to the lore. It was lost, then recovered with another mortally tainted crystal my people retrieved from the Seine.”
“Tainted? Probably Daniel Geiger’s doing,” Joe guessed, disgusted.
“The damage will heal, over time, with rest. Rebecca’s influence over the matrix is still quite persuasive.”
“If you’ve heard the stones promise life immortal, you need to do more research. Death follows those crystals like a very bad habit,” Joe warned. White light danced in jewelwork, as if laughing at him. “What unholy game are you playing? Why give this to me?”
“Because you are a careful man with a strong imagination, and you understand the unholy potential. And also because it likes vintage music,” Giles said with a brief, ironic smile Joe recognized from Giles’ Ripper days. “Time travel is, indeed, a hellacious journey, and too many of my companions have reason to be tempted. Now. Can you show me your safest hideaway?”
After many more drinks and reminiscences, insults, arguments, and importuning, Joe did finally allow the artifact to be hidden away in his second safest hideaway. He wasn’t going to put it anywhere near his unedited Chronicles, but the thing had been Rebecca’s, and that counted for a lot. He’d get the full story from Amanda or Methos the next time they wandered by.
Joe did mount one last objection as he showed Giles the door and awarded him the bar bill. “My ‘sterling sense of honor’ is pretty well tarnished this decade, Ripper. How do you know I won’t try to jump start your toy to go back and change a few things to suit me better?”
“I know you won’t. Not yet. Because you promised Rebecca.”
“Wait, what? I’ve never met her. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“And I also told you if you survived the millennial demon, I’d leave the time bending amulet with you for safekeeping, until it was needed.” Giles tilted his head. “You remember that spell of forgetting I made a mess of in the ‘80’s?” He made a curious gesture that made Joe blink. “I’m much more experienced now.”
As Joe locked up behind his last patron, the bar tab fluttered away into the night.
In the Year 2021
Two immortals walked into a ferny lounge in Seacouver that was not called ‘Joe’s.’
“Why are we at this fancy hotel, paying for drinks, when you have a pub down by the docks where you can cadge good whisky for free?”
“Amanda is meeting us here,” Duncan said with a happy grin. “She said she had a surprise for us.”
“She probably needs an alibi,” Connor said, but he did return a smile of merry memory. “Did she book a room for three?”
“Does she ever plan that far ahead, when she’s meeting us?” Duncan asked rhetorically.
“Only when crown jewels or national treasures are to be plucked,” and they both laughed.
“Or the Queen’s Guards are on her trail,” Duncan reminded ruefully.
“Ahhh, that was an epic night, indeed.” Connor paused as their GlenDronach was served, and properly tasted and toasted. Only then did he signal the bartender to leave them to the bottle, and private conversation. “What happened to that footpad that used to follow you around?”
“Adam or Joe?”
“Either is trouble, but mainly the mortal. He is more creative in his mischief making.”
“Not by choice. Twenty years older, twenty years slower, Joe’s still working the blues bar,” Duncan replied wistfully.
“Haunting it, more likely, since the recent plague cut down the trade,” Connor replied. “I know you pay most of the bills,” he said with a frown.
“It’s one of the last cultural bastions of blues music on the north coast,” Duncan defended. “There aren’t many places left where the young bands can work on their craft. Business will come back, but the music is more important. He brings us more joy playing on the stage than pouring drinks.”
“Speak for yourself, youngling,” Connor warned. “Never forget, The old wolf makes himself findable. That makes you findable, Duncan. And Amanda,” Connor warned. “Your Joe once warned me to never trust the Watchers.”
“I’ve made it clear to them--he is untouchable,” Duncan said firmly. “The peace between us has held for twenty years. That includes you.”
“Hmph. Hardly long enough to signal a trend, my friend.”
“Joe is under my protection, too, Connor,” Amanda declared as she slid into the narrow space between them, kissing Duncan and nipping his cousin to punctuate the point. “The Watchers may be cautious of Duncan, but they are terrified of me.” Her long nails ruffled the short hairs on the backs of their necks.
“They are?” Connor was intrigued. “What did you steal from them this time?”
“Time itself. Where would you go if you could change the past?”
Duncan was alarmed. “What did you do?”
“I stole a medieval time machine,” Amanda smiled joyfully, with only a touch of evil mischief. “More of a time twisting necklace, really. And it’s really not stealing if they stole it from Rebecca. It really should have come to me, anyway, right?”
“Sounds reasonable. Almost legal,” Duncan agreed, distracted. Connor nodded, and both leaned back into her gently exploring fingers.
“How old is it? How is it powered?” Connor asked dubiously, though ever with an eye for a working antique.
“It’s from Rebecca’s Gaulish era,” Amanda answered. She fluttered her fingers over an imaginary device. “Apparently it runs on sprinkled blood magic and a dash of quickening…the Celts did appreciate a good shamanic show. Not so much the Romans. Constantine was furious.”
“Where will it take us?” Duncan asked, stroking the skin on the inside of her wrist, lightly, so lightly.
“Whenever your heart desires,” Amanda promised airily. “Shall we take it for a test drive?”
Connor poured her a dram with an indulgent smile. “This is your first time?”
“Do you know many people who have piloted a time machine, Connor?” Amanda challenged.
“Only one. More than once?” he asked innocently. “None. Best check the fuel and the battery.”
“I always bring extra batteries,” Amanda shot back tartly. “But it should be in good working order. We can always take it to Rebecca’s abbey first, just in case she needs to make any finer adjustments.”
“Aha! The truth comes out,” Duncan declared. “You only want us around to change the tires when the wheels come off.”
Connor grabbed the bottle as they headed off for Amanda’s room for three, and glanced over her head at Duncan. “ ‘Time machine’ is a metaphor here, yes?”
“What else, cousin?” Duncan laughed, as the elevator whisked them away.
The next day, the only trace of them left in the room was the empty bottle.
Joe searched for them for three years.
Back In the Year 2024
It was late, even by Joe’s Bar standards. Joe was parked next to the stage, replacing an unraveling A string on his guitar, when Methos dropped in out of nowhere. Literally, nowhere. He did land somewhere, on top of the tippy table in the far corner that always had a matchbook under one leg. Now it was a jumble of firewood tangled up with a pissed off Immortal.
“I told you to factor in the Cascadian tectonic lift, Ensign!” Methos snarled into his…palm pilot?
Until the interruption, Joe had been humming to himself some of the vocal riffs the Lady in Red had performed earlier that night, before her sudden departure. She came unannounced, left without warning, but was always welcome on Joe’s stage. He never asked, she never told, and Joe just celebrated her rare arrivals as a kind of magic, not to be questioned. Someday, he might learn her name.
Methos’ arrival, now that he questioned. “I liked that table,” Joe stated in his mildest, most dangerous tone. He did like that table. Richie had carved his initials into the center one hilarious, drunken night, and Joe forbade anyone from sanding it out. He parked there most nights, now, to work on a song or talk with the clientele. Or occasionally doze, these days, to be honest with himself. “You’re late checking in. About a year late.”
“Joe!” It was rare to see Methos truly astonished, but he recovered swiftly. “You have no idea how late,” he answered without answering as he rose out of the wreckage and brushed himself off.
Joe’s Watcher habits kicked in. Methos was wearing a weird sleeveless pale gold tunic sporting an emblem with a fist around a knife, stabbing through a globe. And skinny bell-bottoms. “Kinkier than your usual threads. I thought you were green-trending with recycled Patagonia this decade?”
“You should see this outfit with the full sash. By the way, I’m glad I didn’t land on top of you,” Methos said in as much of an apology as Joe would ever get. “But you shouldn’t be here.” His face was paper white in the single stage light, Joe noticed.
“I shouldn’t be here?” Joe carefully put the guitar down on its stand. “Just where the hell do you think you are?”
“2021?” Methos asked. “April first? And you’re supposed to be at the opera.” The hope in his eyes took Joe aback. “The night before MacLeod disappeared.”
“2024. April, yeah. And you’re supposed to be out searching all the places I can’t go nowadays, looking for Mac, Connor, and Amanda, not here cosplaying Space Force Cadet.”
“I’m three years late.” Methos cursed himself and his invisible ensign in gutter Sumerian. “God knows what kind of trouble they’ve caused over three years in the nineties.”
“What, exactly, could be worse than the nineties we actually went through?” Joe asked, highly confused, but genuinely interested.
“Kronos might still be alive?”
“Okay, you win, that would be worse.”
“At least this isn’t 2025.”
“What happens then?” Joe asked, clearly humoring him.
“You don’t want to know. I wish I didn’t.” Methos started pacing around the room, running his hand over the polished bar top, sending a yearning glance at the tap.
“Well, if you’re going to pour yourself one, bring one over for me,” Joe ordered.
“Contraindicated, sadly,” he said in a strained imitation of his ‘Doctor Adams’ voice that he used to forge prescriptions for Joe. “We’ll need our synapses clear, if this is going to work.”
And that didn’t make any sense at all, since Methos’ synapses autohealed almost faster than he drank. “No beer? What is this ‘we’ shit? Did you tangle with Cassandra again? Get possessed by a dark Quickening? Run into another Akkadian demon?”
“All of the above. And I went to Mars. Vastly overrated,” Methos confessed. “It’s been a busy couple of centuries.” He took a deep breath. “I time-traveled back to try to prevent the worst from happening. We need to repair the timeline that Amanda broke.”
Joe was silent for a long moment. “Have you been reading William Gibson again?”
“No, Joe. Amanda stole a timebender, and without properly anchoring it, she catapulted Connor, Duncan, and herself back in time. And something went badly. Very, very badly. This is real. Real science, and real magic. Watcher magic.”
“What?” Joe felt insulted.
“Hellmouth Watchers. Your black sheep brethren with the phobia about fangs. Does someone named Giles ring a bell?”
Joe closed his eyes and put a palm to his head as a white hot pain lanced through his forebrain. “Ripper. I swear, this time he’s dead. He had me hide something for him. A flashy thing. Claimed it was a time…temp…,” Joe paused, double checking his aging memory, because Ripper was almost as good as Methos at hiding things.
“...temporal anchor?” Methos finished, color finally returning to his cheekbones as he loomed over Joe, gripping the armrests of his chair. “Where is it, please?”
In the Year 1994
“Shhhh, Amanda!” Duncan hissed.
“That was Connor,” Amanda hissed back.
“It itches,” Connor complained.
“You’d think you’d never taken a tumble in the hay,” Amanda chided.
“Not in this century. Well, half century,” Connor amended.
“Hsst. Behave, children. Luther’s coming. On my signal,” Duncan ordered.
Not one to take orders from striplings, Connor erupted out of the loose hay first, as Luther sensed Immortal presence and drew his sword. He came near landing a lucky strike as Connor scrabbled at some hay stuck in his collar, but was distracted by the rest of the bodies tumbling out of the stack on his heels.
On even footing, the fight was not pretty, nor was it very long, with Connor meeting Luther’s severe strokes with swift parries and canny counterstrikes. Amanda crossed her arms and fumed on the sidelines as the sound of swordwork chimed over Rebecca’s fields. Duncan watched, quiet, tense until the final blow, easing only as Connor raised his sword to the sky. Then the Quickening came down, frizzling all three, vibrating the carefully hidden necklace around Amanda’s neck.
Even as they thought the storm clouds had subsided, just as thunderously, and rather more dangerously, Rebecca descended upon them, livid, only to be diverted by a single word.
“Fire.” Connor’s laconic warning mobilized them all.
Everyone scrambled to keep the lightning singed harvest from going up in smoke, stamping on smouldering tufts. Before it spread, Rebecca’s husband John Bowers calmly appeared from the stables with a hose and turned smoke to steam. Spying Rebecca’s demeanor, Duncan hurriedly found a way to be more helpful, and farther away, grabbing a pitchfork to stir and turn the hot spots for wetting.
“Luther was one of my students, and had as much right to sanctuary here as you do. What on earth are you doing, Amanda, bringing his death to my doorstep?” Rebecca asked coldly, identifying the instigator, if not the perpetrator.
“Saving your life?” Amanda returned with a touch of youthful timidity. “Luther cheated you, and took John hostage. He killed you, for the Methuselah stones. We came back to put it right.”
Rebecca frowned, and stepped closer to Amanda, taking her chin and looking closely into her eyes. “You’ve changed. Grown. And you stink of temporal magic. How did you get here, Amanda?”
“More to the point,” Connor interrupted. “How do we get back?”
In the Year 2024
“Where is the time anchor, Joe? I need it to find Duncan.”
“We hid it. _Not_ with the Chronicles. It’s in the fake cinder block wall you installed behind my desk.” Joe said, getting annoyed at being loomed over. “Let go of my chair, and I’ll go get it.”
But Methos just vaulted over the ruined table and into Joe’s office, returning triumphantly with the amulet, crystals winking. “Now we need to pinpoint when they went…ow!” Methos tossed the amulet from hand to hand, as if it burned, and dropped it quickly on the table in front of Joe.
“Between you and Amanda, I might just as well put everything in a file cabinet, arranged alphabetically,” Joe grumbled, staring at the winking jewels. “Okay, first things first. Let’s say for argument’s sake this is a time machine. What’s the range?”
“With this artifact? Within the user’s lifeline,” Methos said.
“Well, for you, that doesn’t even narrow the bracket to the Babylonian calendar,” Joe said acidly. So the MacLeods and Amanda could be anywhere in the last 5,000 years?”
“No, Joe, not my lifetime,” Methos said quietly, and sat down at the table across from Joe, pushing the amulet toward him with a careful fingertip. “Your lifetime. You’re the anchor. The light in the window. Giles gave it to you.”
One point of the star flared angrily, then dimmed as Methos quickly released it. Joe reached out to touch the amulet gingerly, and the centerpiece kindled like warm candlelight. “It knows you,” Methos encouraged. “You’ve been its keeper for years, and it knows your energy field. It knows me, too, because I did visit the bar so many times over the years. MacLeod, Amanda…” Methos stroked the other tiny points of light without any reaction. “Connor was a rare guest. He’s very dim.”
“I’ll tell him you said so, next time I see him,” Joe promised with a grin. “He came by a couple of times with Mac, but he doesn’t like me much. He doesn’t trust Watchers.”
“He shouldn’t,” Methos said sharply. “Reinforce that feeling, if you see him again.”
Joe laughed. “Go ahead, throw me to the wolf.”
“It’s…important,” Methos said with such feeling that Joe felt a chill. “I need to find them, Joe. We need to repair the present, and change the future.”
“I’ll try not to let you down. I’d come with you, if I could.”
Methos stared at him, then around at the darkened, empty bar. “Why not?”
“Hah. He who travels fastest, travels alone,” Joe reminded, shifting in his chair. “I’m old. You’re evergreen.”
“He who travels farthest, travels with friends,” Methos shot back. “Immortals don’t age, going forward or backward. But for you, the farther back we go, the younger you get.” Methos stilled. “In fact…” he ventured, “1968 is well within your range. You register as a conscientious objector, and hey, presto, you’re a new man with a new job!”
Joe inhaled sharply. “That’s insane.”
“Then we skip forward, target by target, and seal off the branches that lead to true insanity two centuries from now.” Methos warmed to his pitch. “Hear me out, Joe. I literally have a little list. Look,” he reached under his tunic into a hidden pocket. “In Latin, on real paper, which is a bitch to find 200 years from now, but more secure than any AI infected computer.”
He slid the paper over to Joe, who unfolded it as if it were a priceless codex. He grew more unsettled as he read. The Latin was legible, but a number of the strategies were terminal. “Hey, I voted against Reagan, but this is a little extreme.”
“Or you could get Martin Luther King a different motel room. Tackle Sirhan Sirhan. We could hang around the Dakota in December and get an autograph from John Lennon.” Methos grinned, with no humor in his eyes. “Anything is possible.”
“This doesn’t sound like you, Adam,” Joe said, angry at his own temptation.
“Adam, Piers, Methos. Who cares? Who does it sound like?”
“Ahriman.”
Back in the Year 1985
“How do we stop the Kurgan from dueling Kastagir?” Amanda asked, whirling around to take in the sights and sounds of New York in 1985.
Boom boxes boomed, Ford Crown Victorias vied with Fiestas, Buick Skylarks and taxis on Park Avenue. Disco cassettes abounded. Duncan winced.
Connor ignored the cacophony, wholly at home in the chaos. “I know where Kastagir died, in a back alley, but I don’t know how he was ambushed. It would be better to deflect Kastagir before he gets there.”
“And when did he die?” Duncan asked gently.
“Near midnight on April 1st. We drank most of the previous night away together in a bar,” Connor added, visiting a faraway memory. “We were always…competitive. You’d have liked him, Duncan. And you’d have loved him, Amanda.”
“What makes you think I didn’t?” Amanda said with a saucy glance. “Then the solution is easy.”
“It is?” Connor raised a brow, always wary of an easy solution from Amanda.
“Duncan and I catch Sunda as he leaves the bar, and we keep on partying.”
“Another night, or two, if necessary,” Duncan pitched in, warming to the idea.
“And what do I do?” Connor objected, outraged at being left out.
“We need a lookout who knows the area, and the players. Be very, very quiet, and watch the bar. You wouldn’t want to meet yourself going…”
“...Or coming…,” Duncan added unhelpfully,
Amanda managed to keep a straight face for all of three seconds at Connor’s woebegone look. “Oh, you look like Methos when Joe cut off his free beer on New Year’s Eve because the liquor inspectors were getting suspicious.”
“Your sense of humor needs more exercise,” Duncan escalated, earning a scowl.
“Here’s an idea you might like more. You rob the petty cash at your shop and get a suite at the Plaza,” Amanda ordered.
“Why am I buying?” Connor protested.
“All our cash has an inconvenient mint date in the early 2000’s, darling, not to mention Duncan’s credit cards. Now, we’ll bring Sunda, and then we’ll all lock ourselves in with a lovely open bar until Kurgan’s Quickening blacks out New York.”
“And then we party some more,” Duncan added, grinning like a fiend. “Don’t meet yourself going!” he warned as Connor stalked away.
In the end, it was the Plaza that needed to do a liquor audit. Sunda ended up leasing the suite for years, until the hotel changed hands and lost its charm. Amanda’s impromptu addition of the trapeze was never noted on the bill.
Back in the Year 2024
“The last thing Ahriman would do is rescue the MacLeods and Amanda,” Methos retorted, but he observed Joe’s deep unease and shifted his focus. “Think. Where did they go in time? You know them all, their histories, their joys, their sorrows. Those yearnings will guide the timeflow as much as their quickenings will power the journey.”
“I think you know them, too. You just want to see if I agree.”
“Correct. But I’ve had a very long time to think about it.”
“Connor first--I think he’d try to save Kastagir. I hope he does. The man knew how to spread joy. I’d love to get a taste of that boom boom someday. I doubt that a moonshine recipe is your divergent point in history, though.”
“Never underestimate the invention of beer,” Methos reminded.
“Duncan, now,” Joe bowed his head at the memory of so many past heartaches, but there was only one answer. “Tessa…he’d save Tessa. But brilliant as it is, I kind of doubt Tessa’s future art will cause a world catastrophe. Duncan won’t stop there, though. He’ll keep on working to save as many as he can. They all will.”
“Agreed. Continue.”
“Which brings us to Amanda in 2021. She would go back to save Rebecca, of course, and she would convince Connor and Mac to go to her abbey first, even though their heart’s desires are further back in the timeline.”
“Because Rebecca knows how the timebender works,” Methos confirmed. “She can send them all back to rescue Tessa and save Kastagir, and return them safely, to boot.”
“Right!” Joe leaned forward. “Before Luther stole the crystals, Rebecca should have had both working parts of the artifact.”
“But if they had all the pieces, why didn’t they return to the home timeline, in 2021? Why is there still this great, gaping hole in my history? We’ve got to find out.” Methos reached out over the anchor matrix, and a tiny spark of Quickening jumped out to sting his wrist. “Ow. Stop that.”
The matrix dimmed. Joe cupped it protectively, instinctively, and it brightened again, warming his hands. Then he looked over at Methos, studying him, his drawn face, his wiry wrists, and the violent emblem on his chest that marred the tunic he wore. “Is that supposed to be Earth?” Joe asked softly. “With a dagger through the heart of it?”
“It stands for the Terran Empire.” Methos looked away. “That doesn’t matter. None of this matters, if we can fix it. You’re right. Amanda will go to Rebecca first. The time rip has to start near there.” I’ll go to Rebecca and we’ll work up and down the timestream, until…,”
“No.” Joe interrupted, cradling the anchor between them like a treasure, or a heartbreak. “The answer is no.”
Back to the Year 1993
Duncan guided them through the dark and damp streets of Seacouver. “He was a renegade Watcher. Pallin Wolf. He took Tessa to draw me in. I killed him. I saved her. I thought I had saved her. I was right there, in that house right there, while she and Richie stood alone on this same dark street, waiting for me to do what? Search an empty building. Find evidence of…fools following fools.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Duncan,” Amanda said softly. “And you can’t rush in. You heard Rebecca. You need to stay completely away from yourself, for the fates to allow us to make this right. Just like Connor did in New York.”
“If you meet your younger self, you meld, and we lose you,” Connor said sternly. “If you carelessly die, you unbalance the spell, and we might all lose the way back as well as the opportunity to save her. And I absolutely forbid you to lose your head.”
“And what about Richie? It was his first death…,” Duncan shook his head. “I handled it clumsily.”
“The boy could use more seasoning before his first dying breath,” Connor did not disagree. “I could foster him for a while, take him to the high country, have him follow the sheep and run off some of his city ways.”
“Ohhh, poor Richie,” Amanda burst into laughter. “That would be his teenage definition of hell on Earth.”
“ ‘Tis soft as pillows, compared to how Ramirez trained me,” Connor protested, hurt. “These younger generations need more cozening, true. I learned that from weaning Duncan, of course,” he added, ducking and sidestepping Duncan’s tackle with a quick turn of ankle.
“Behave, you two. We stick to the plan. Duncan, you get watch duty this time. Connor, you disarm the mugger before he turns the corner, and give him a good scare in the bargain, but don’t hurt him. Much.”
“And Amanda, you’ll swoop in and save the puir boy from the terrible man, and take him to the soup kitchen and charm him into treatment,,” Connor said with a touch of acid.
“Amanda Nightingale, at your service,” Amanda said, adjusting an imaginary nurse's cap. “And then on to the next mission.”
“Ramirez?” Connor asked wistfully.
“That’s a lot of history to change,” Duncan said uneasily. “But we can ask Rebecca. Richie remains on the list, until we confirm otherwise. Koltec. Sean Burns.” The three quickenings still burdened his soul. “But first, we’ll have to ask Rebecca to send us back just a little further,” he glanced around, looking for agreement, if not absolution.
“Darius,” Connor nodded.
“Darius,” Duncan echoed, relieved.
“And Fitz, while we’re there,” Amanda added. “I miss his cooking.”
Back to the Year 2024
“No?” Very slowly, Methos reached beneath his tunic and drew a very long knife, placing it on the table sideways, between them. It looked remarkably like the dagger embroidered on his chest.
“No.” Joe curled his fingers just a little, away from the edge of the blade, but continued. “Because if your story is correct, you aren’t the Methos that this anchor is attuned to in this time and space. You’re from the future you want to prevent. However you got here, using magic, or technology, or gravity, or just plain cussedness, it isn’t mixing well with Rebecca’s gift here and now.”
“So it stings a little when I touch it. I still have to go.” Methos held up the dagger and touched it to the palm of his hand. “Old fashioned blood magic. Add quickened healing energy. So the crystal matrix needs power? I’ll give it power.”
Joe didn’t flinch from Methos’ sudden fury, but it was a near thing. “What if the damage to the timeline you’re looking for in the past hasn’t happened yet? But does happen--because you don’t belong there. A catch-22.”
“I’ve got to bring MacLeod back.” Methos visibly ratcheted down his anger, but not his desperation. “He’s needed, Joe. They’re all needed. You can’t understand.”
But Joe wasn’t going to be distracted by common insults, and truly, Methos wasn’t even trying hard. “You didn’t tell me what point in time you’re drawn to, Adam.” He used the familiar name deliberately.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Are you drawn to MacLeod, before he fought Koltec? To Richie at the racetrack? To Byron? What would you change? Exactly? Leave the time divergence aside, for now, that’s an effect, not a cause.” He hesitated, then drove in the final nail. “Would you be drawn to Silas?”
Methos drove the dagger into the table in frustration. “You already know. Alexa was doomed in the past. But not in the future. They can cure her in the future. And there was no one except you and me to miss her! I CAN just take her forward, just for a day. An hour! And I could heal her.”
“And then, that future, where you come from, would be fixed in time,” Joe said quietly. “A dagger through the Earth. Alexa wouldn’t want that. You don’t want that.”
“You of all people, Joe, know there are times we can’t just stand by and do nothing,” Methos pulled the dagger on the table between them. The blade glinted blue in the underlighting from the bar. “We find MacLeod, all the rest falls into place.”
“You can't be sure,” Joe said, anguished.
With a swift move, Methos slashed the palm of his sword hand and slammed it down to grip the amulet between Joe’s cupped hands. “I have to try!”
Joe gripped the artifact as quickening fire danced over their entwined hands, limning their arteries, sparking bone deep.
“You can’t,” Joe repeated, a bare whisper. “But maybe I can.”
Joe braced his elbows, and called on all the strength he could yet muster in his knotted arms, wrenching the artifact away from Methos’ blood-slick hand for a few critical seconds. Quickening tendrils were drawn into the artifact with a final electric snap, but their light kept growing and redoubling inside the central jewel.
The walls blurred, and the stage lights spun into a pocket tornado. Methos stumbled back, holding his arms up to protect his vision as actinic light burst from the central jewel. Cursing himself for dropping the knife, he reached out to find Joe by touch alone, but there was only a smooth tabletop. Gradually the blurring cleared, the lights dimmed, and the room ceased to rotate. Joe’s Bar was back.
But the anchor was gone. And so was Joe.
Back in the Year 1994
Rebecca bent over a five pointed amulet in the center of a round table in her private study, her focus undisturbed by the distant sounds of John Bower and Sunda Kastigir preparing dinner in the abbey’s remodeled refectory.
There was a flash, and a stink of singed silk, and then a tumble of limbs and laughter as Amanda and the MacLeods materialized in various positions on the carpet around the table in front of the stone fireplace. This time, at least, they were fully dressed. Rebecca had taken the precaution of assigning her husband kitchen duties this time, just in case, and Sunda had cheerfully volunteered to help. It made her wonder just what they were cooking up.
“Your sleeve is smouldering,” Connor warned, as he shook off the cobwebs of the passage and found his bearings.
Rebecca sighed, dipped her fingers in her water glass, and pinched out the spark. “You were successful.”
“Tessa was so beautiful!” Amanda celebrated with Duncan.
“Aye, she is, isn’t she?” he agreed. “Alive!” Then, with a rare expression of doubt, and a flash of fear, Duncan looked to Rebecca. “She does still live, here and now?”
“To my best knowledge, yes. But I have grown careless, and we are toying with the unknown.” Frowning at her circle of unexpected houseguests, she added, “I am still trying to fathom what damage I could incur, if I send you journeying again.”
Amanda lost her smile. “You’re pale, Rebecca. And your hands are trembling.” She enveloped her teacher in an embrace. “You’re as cold as winter well water.”
“Truth to tell, I feel my ability to recall all of you here has waned. There are still but three of you--and it is unbalancing me.” She gestured toward the necklace nested with its matching amulet on the table. The gems linked to Connor and Duncan glowed like the bright coals in the fireplace, and Amanda’s glittered happily. But the fourth gem remained dark, and Rebecca’s centerpiece was ashy and dim.
Rebecca raised her head, and adopted her teaching tone. “Timebending makes the immutable…malleable. Reweaving the warp and weft of time after your disturbances…it may take many years to replenish the wells of power I have tapped in this long week knitting time itself. I cannot send you back to meddle again.”
“We can’t return to save Darius?” Duncan was stricken. Amanda squeezed his hand and even Connor grasped his shoulder in sympathy.
“Darius has the sight and the power to save himself,” Rebecca snapped, then her shoulders slumped. “Or had. Even Emrys’ patience with him probably wore thin over the years.”
Duncan removed his duster, enveloping her shivering form as if to lend her his own strength by force of will alone. He remained silent, but his eyes pled for his friend.
Rebecca shook her head sadly. “If my strength failed, and my Quickening were drained dry, you might never return home. You might even be…unmade.” She said with chilling simplicity. “Please do not forget, even in the seeming safety of these walls, you are still unmoored to this place and time. Loose ends, as it were. To complete and preserve the weaving you have wrought on the fabric of reality, you must return to the march of your own hours and days.”
Amanda guided her to her chair by the fire. “You should not have allowed us to waste your energy,” she chastised, even as she removed her own coat to wrap around Rebecca’s legs. “Were we foolish to be so greedy?”
“My, you have grown, Amanda,” Rebecca laughed quietly, while Duncan plied her with tea, and Connor poured her a brandy. “Foolish me, for attempting even one sortie with an unbalanced matrix. Three? My own hubris is at fault, here, child, not your enthusiasm for reclaiming the lost. Your shared joy recharged us all. I am grateful to you all for believing me worthy to save, and it is, and will be, an honor to return the gift threefold.”
Connor also had found the whisky, and drew Duncan to sit near him, sharing his broody mood. “Then we will return. But where? We had no anchor in the hotel where we started.”
“And how often did I tell you to read the entire recipe through before attempting to bake a new dish, Amanda?” Rebecca needled. “First anchor the boat, _then_ plunge into the sea after the sail. Luckily, the remedy is simple. I will recharge the anchorstone here for as many seasons as is practicable, or wise. If I sense it is unsafe here, I will send it with a wizard I trust to a haven of your choice. What hearth or home do you all visit over time that will still be standing in 2021?
“Darius’ church,” Duncan said, his last hope flickering.
Rebecca shook her head. “Not that haunted hall. Despite, or perhaps because of, Emrys’ Druidic proclivities, Darius rather deeply disapproved of chronomancy. We had words.”
“I don’t set down deep roots,” Amanda fretted. “The barge?”
Duncan shook his head. “Too often empty, or towed, and the floods are too unpredictable. Nash Antiques?”
But Connor shook his head. “There is one place you return to again and again, cousin,” Connor reminded. “And Amanda, and that scalawag friend of yours, Adam, as well. You return to your blues bard. Joe.”
“ ‘Blues bar’,” Duncan corrected, then shrugged. “Well, both.”
Rebecca smiled, reviving at the thought. “A bard. Perfect. Almost as good as a wizard.”
Back in the Year 2024
Joe was gone. Methos stared at his empty chair, bereft of his last friend, and near weaponless. But not quite alone.
“I always wondered how Joe managed to pull that off,” came a voice from the deep shadows behind the stage. “Does no one ever read the owner’s manual in this benighted decade?”
Methos dove for the knife and rolled to his feet with the blade pinched between his fingers, ready to throw. “Who are you?”
“Rupert Giles.” Giles came out into the light cautiously, holding a Beretta down and away, but available, if needed. “I come, as they say, in peace. Hopefully you will agree to come with me in a similar spirit.”
“Come with you where?” Methos adjusted his stance, estimating he could throw just a fraction of a second faster than the mortal could aim.
“To where your heart desires,” Giles said with just the hint of a smile. “To reunite with your errant friends in 2021, to be precise. Two MacLeods and a siren named Amanda. Let me assure you, we are all highly motivated to solve your temporal problem as well. Or will be. Have temporally sensitive tenses been invented in your era? No?”
“How do you plan to do that?” Methos glanced around suspiciously, for Giles’ minions. Or worse, his own, from his hopelessly poisoned future. “Joe’s…vehicle…is gone.”
Giles’ smile broadened, and taking a risk, he pocketed the gun and unbuttoned his shirt, exposing a necklace of dancing crystals. “To paraphrase the late, great Warren Zevon, ‘Your ride’s here.”
Finally. In the Year 2021
Four Immortals and one mage materialized in Joe’s empty bar long after the last glass had been washed and bottle recycled. It was a messy affair, without Rebecca’s stern oversight. The initial chaos finally resolved with weapons sheathed, and Duncan and Methos embracing in wordless delight, and Connor glaring at Giles and Methos, and Amanda regaling all with their (edited) exploits, and Methos trying to explain why bell-bottoms were back in style in 200 years, complete with funky boots. And before, during, and after the furor died down, everybody was looking for Joe.
Methos and Connor did not shy from plundering the bar to stay hydrated, though they gave each other a very polite berth at opposite ends of the taps. Amanda demanded they both pour fine reds for her, and she took the extra glass to Duncan, who tasted it absently, as he narrowly watched Giles. Giles, in turn, wandered slowly around the room as if tasting the air, and finally settled at the old tippy table near Joe’s office, back to the wall, with an excellent view of the floor.
Gradually, they all gravitated toward the scarred old table, hovering over the bejeweled chain as Giles held it cupped in his hands, watching the center jewel flicker, fire, dim, rekindle. And fade again. Sometimes one or another would turn their eye or head and catch grey slips of ghostly fog, or glimpses of ethereal forms and faces, phantasms in the shadows, memories, dreams. Not real. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.
Once, grimacing, Giles himself flickered like a badly edited silent movie with missing frames, and a sternly beautiful woman with brown hair flashed into his place. Just as quickly, the revenant was gone. Giles gasped, and pulled his hands away to cover his face. “Jenny,” he whispered, before recovering himself and placing his palms flat on the table to either side of the necklace.
“It’s losing power, isn’t it?” Connor finally voiced the truth. “He may not have the will to return.”
“His heart is stronger than you imagine,” Amanda said sharply. “He may not be your clansman, but he is our kith, if not kin.”
“You know more of his heart than I, but you saw how the anchorstone drained Rebecca in her full strength.” Connor said, trying to soften his natural growl. “The man is but a mortal.”
“We have to do something,” Duncan roused, rounding on Giles. “You can bind all our Quickenings into one, recharge it, make it reach out…”
“This isn’t a Delco battery,” Giles snapped, then shook his head. “I’m sorry. I haven’t Rebecca’s lore, or, frankly, Joe’s blind beginners luck. He will have to find his own way back. He knows…knew… enough to approach any one of us for help in the past, before his own anchor’s power faded. He did not. He may have found a new life, married, and turned his back on the magic, yours and mine.”
“Joe would not turn his back on us,” Duncan’s fingers curled into a fist in fierce denial. Silently, Methos, pale as death, rose to stand by his right shoulder. Connor, clansman and shieldman, took his left.
“He may have been killed by James Horton. Or Daniel Geiger. He may not even have survived a second tour in Vietnam.” Giles was angrily relentless. “The man had a life before he met your lot.” Slowly he deflated. “We all did.”
“He’s right, Duncan,” Amanda whispered, sinking into the chair next to Giles and putting her hand over his. “But he’s also quite wrong. And we have proof. Methos has proof.”
All eyes turned to Methos. Stunned, MacLeod ran his hand over Methos’ shoulder, down the smooth blue fabric now covering his arms, and finally laying fingers on his chest, to trace the symbol emblazoned over his heart.
Methos looked down, and ran his own fingers over the emblem. “Memory Alpha. It was destroyed. And now…,”
“It’s not? Whatever it is?” Amanda, ever the optimist, stood up, almost overturning the table, and enveloped Methos in a comprehensive hug. “Joe’s still out there!”
“But how?” Giles asked, looking at Methos. “He’s a musician, not a mage.”
But Methos wasn’t going to give up all his sins. “You’ll just have to ask him yourself, when we get him back. Now try again!”
Giles bent to work, and the night wore on. The intervals between flickers of light grew longer. Hope flickered with each appearance. To Methos’ discomfort, his uniform changed twice more, leaving a fleeting itch of tasks forgotten, duties unmet and loyalties lost.
But each fashion fit his skin more comfortably, and the symbol of the globe with the dagger piercing its poles did not return.
“It’s morning.”
Rousing from their vigil, Connor and Duncan stood, and stretched, and looked around, as if their lost ram might be dozing in a corner of the bothy after all, but Joe’s chair remained empty. Amanda and Giles stared at the darkened anchor silently.
Silently, as for countless previous attempts, Methos nicked his finger and touched the core jewel. It did not even muster a spark to sting him.
Giles said the sad and tired words. “The power well has been drained. There’s nothing left to call the traveler here, even if he’s still alive.”
Connor sighed, glancing around at the dispirited crew. “It is not all a tragedy. The original Joe Dawson you know still lives in this time and place, and will for at least another three years, if Methos is to be believed, or the bar would have disintegrated around us.”
Amanda glanced around the bar, daring any glass or guitar to be out of place, but slowly nodded, brightening. “Our Joe is still here. He’s still home.”
Connor poked Duncan, and gestured to the empty utility chair Joe used in the bar as proof, and finished his glass. “Aye. The whisky tastes as clean and sharp as when we began this benighted night. Still, we should all clear up, and clear out, before your living friend rouses and returns and charges us all with burglary and maudlin drunken sloth.”
But even as he spoke, a key scratched in the lock to the front door, and the portal opened wide, spilling fresh sunshine into the gloom. A tall man filled the space, long, silvered hair backlit by the sun, feature shadowed. Hesitating, he appeared to be counting the heads of his astonished audience.
Joe strode into the bar on his own two feet, sporting a clean chin, black brows, and a spectacular graying mustache. He took a deep, cleansing breath. “It smells like home.”
“It smells like the morning after at every tavern all over the world,” Giles pointed out, glaring at him.
“What I said,” Joe shrugged as the immortals looked on in various stages of disbelief, joy, suspicion, and just a touch of horror.
“What he said,” Methos managed to agree as he sorted out whether he should fight, fly, or pour another beer.
“I only have an hour now before my grumpy self rolls his lazy ass in here to do the liquor order,” Joe warned. “Pro tip, you should bus your tables before he arrives, or he will not be amused.”
Then he declaimed words that had never been previously spoken in the annals of Joe’s Bar: “But until then, drinks are on the house!” He pinned a glare on Giles. “Except you, Ripper. No open tabs for you. It’s long past time you paid the piper.”
Everybody froze, looking from one to the other, as internecine warfare between Watchers had a tendency to take a deadly turn.
Stalking up to Giles, Joe pulled his unresisting body out of the chair, and pushed him gently toward the door. “Oh, by the way, Jenny Calendar sends her regards, and says if you don’t return her phone call _right now_, she’ll send a Fiyarl demon after you. I’d take her seriously, if I were you.” And Giles vanished out the door, bar tab forgotten. Again.
Joe closed the door, locking it firmly against the riffraff, and laughed as he was surrounded, embracing Duncan, smacking Methos on the side of the head before giving him a bear hug, and thoroughly kissing Amanda, three times for good luck, until Connor tapped him on the shoulder.
Joe straightened, nearly drunk from Amanda’s aura alone, and braced himself, looking at Connor warily in the eye.
“You lived. That earns my respect,” the Immortal allowed.
Joe grasped his hand with a cautious nod, and glanced over to meet Methos’ concerned gaze. “Thank you,” he answered with a touch of embarrassment. “But I’ve been reminded to tell you not to trust the Watchers.”
Connor grinned, and still grasping Joe’s hand, he turned over his wrist. “But you’re no Watcher now, are you?”
Joe’s wrist was unmarked and unscarred by a tattoo of any kind.
“You’ll not disrespect Joe in his own home,” Duncan warned sharply. Amanda joined Duncan, and glared at Connor.
“No, he’s right.” A brief flash of pain passed over Joe’s face, and he dropped his eyes. “It’s not my home anymore. I followed a different path at the crossroad.”
“But Joe, with your knowledge, you could have merged, you could have saved yourself,” Methos stopped, when he saw the look on Joe’s face.
“And stolen my own youth?” Joe shuddered. “For better or worse, I own those mistakes, and earned every one of those scars. I needed every lesson they taught me. I needed all his courage to wait this long before knocking on my own door. It wasn’t until today that I truly knew that you all survived.”
There was a long silence, then Connor held out his hand again. “Welcome home, kinsman.” It was not an apology. It was far more.
Joe waved off the Scottish gloom threatening to descend. “Hey, this was better. you only live twice, right? And without all the teenage angst. If I survive the next three years and one day, I’ll come back again, and we’ll have one helluva welcome home party. We’ll even have Chef Fitz fly over from Paris and cater it.”
The reunion celebration may have been short, but they made a heartfelt dent in young Joe’s inventory before his elder self pulled Methos aside. “I hate to say it, but it’s getting time for us to blow this pop stand. We need to go.”
Methos fingered the emblem on his shirt, flinching when it emitted a quiet beep. “Go where? Back to the age of agony booths? I should just follow your example, and steal away through this current of years. I’ll avoid space travel altogether,” he promised.
“And have two of you in one millennium? What could go wrong?” Joe asked, genuinely alarmed at the thought. “Besides, there’s a beautiful lady in red waiting for you just outside, and it would be impolite to keep her waiting. She’s not the kind to leave a crewman behind.”
Methos looked his new old friend over. Stronger, straighter, more balanced, this age had been kinder to him, except in the eyes, where ghosts lurked. “Joe, how did you do it?”
“With a little help from you, my friend.” His head tilted, and voice lowered. “I’ve got a little list, ‘with apologetic statesmen of a compromising kind, such as what d’ye call him--,’ ” Joe sang, for Methos’ ears only. “ ‘--thingamabob,and likewise--never mind,’ ”
“For they’d none of them be missed,” Methos joined in, under his breath, “Oh, they’d none of them be missed.”
As they trailed off, Joe pulled out a much tattered and taped and laminated piece of paper. It was covered with numbered Latin entries, and checkmarks. Many checkmarks. Joe handed it to his friend. “For your Chronicles.”
Back in the Year 2302
Stardate{redacted} Lieutenant Piers Adams signing off on the {redacted} mission involving close observations of abnormal fluctuations in gravimetric readings in orbit over {redacted}. Data collection has been completed, and all personnel on the unscheduled landing party have been returned safely, including myself.
As per Captain Uhura’s orders, I will proceed to Memory Alpha to do further research on my report on “The Unification Theory of Science and Magic.” I concur with the conclusion in Captain Uhura’s mission notes concerning {redacted}, and believe further disruptions to the time/space continuum are not expected.
At this time.