Highlander 1. Chapter 1

Codename: Tommy

Paris is too full of Parisians; even the French don't like Paris. That's what he'd said when he'd first met Alexa. Was that why he'd buried her there? How funny it seemed, every time you thought you knew what you were doing, no sooner did you finish you realized you didn't have one damn idea. He buried her in Paris, he had said to keep her near to him, so what had he done as soon as she was in the ground? Hopped a plane heading back for the states, that's what. As large as Paris was he'd suddenly found that anywhere even in the vicinity of her grave was enclosing, claustrophobic, he couldn't think, he couldn't breathe, he'd had to get out of there before he lost what part of his mind he had left.

And so here he was in Seacouver again, but he hadn't gone to see MacLeod, oh no, not Joe either. He didn't let anybody who knew him know that he'd come back. He found some solace in the fact that he was out of the Paris snows now, and instead thrust directly into the Seacouver late night downpours. He was sure the temperature was no higher than 55 degrees, add the cold of the rain and the wind chill, and he was sure hypothermia could become a definite possibility if he didn't get out of the rain soon. Ah but he didn't think like that, he could think _of_ it, but he couldn't fathom getting out of the rain and going in somewhere, anywhere. He stood out in the rain and just walked through the vacant street and looked around at the buildings and the streetlamps that were the only light in the dark, and were glared in the falling rain.

So now what did he do? That was the next question, the one to which he hadn't quite figured out the answer yet. He was freezing, he could see his breath, maybe the rain wasn't any better than the snow, he couldn't tell anymore; as he clutched his coat tighter against his body it occurred to him that he had to do something. He had to go somewhere. In the midst of all the jumble going through his brain at that moment, he had one coherent thought, one person to call.

He found a payphone on a street corner, he put in a couple of coins and dialed a number that he'd been carrying around for a couple years now, he only hoped that it was still in working order and that the same person was still residing there. The phone rang once, and then twice, and on the third ring he was starting to anticipate an irritable wrong number.

"Hello?" a tired but familiar voice answered.

And for a split second Methos' mind went blank, he didn't even know what he was supposed to say. All he could get out on the first try was, "It's me."

And that was all that was needed for a positive identification.

"Methos?" there was a brief pause, "It's after 1 o' clock in the morning, what's going on?"

Methos tried to swallow his next words but they came out all the same, "Alexa died."

There was a haunting silence on the other end of the line for a few seconds as realization came over the other person. "Where are you?"

"I'm back in town," Methos answered, looking around he said, "I'm at the corner of Lexington and 5th."

"Don't move!" the other person told him, "I'll be there as soon as possible, don't do anything stupid."

Methos only nodded and hung up the phone, and went to sit down on the curb and wait. The rain never let up and he was sure he'd be half dead from the cold before anybody came for him. He rocked back and forth and looked around and never saw anybody coming or going, no people, no cars, nothing, just him sitting out in the rain. He wasn't sure how long he waited but he finally saw a blinding pair of car headlights come up, and the car stopped and he saw the driver get out and come over to him, but until the other Immortal got up close and hovered over him, Methos wasn't able to really see him. And he was sure he looked like a fine mess, sitting on the curb in the pouring down rain, but he had nothing to say in his own defense for his current appearance or behavior.

"Oh, Methos," the other man's voice contained pity, it was not obvious to hear, but Methos knew it was there all the same. He saw the hand offered to him and he took it and was helped to his feet, and as he got up it was then that he was able to fully recognize his brother, Kronos, who wrapped his arms around his brother and held him close for a moment.

"I'm sorry," Methos told him, "I couldn't think who else to call."

"It's alright," his brother replied, "Come on, I'll take you home."

Of course, Kronos meant _his_ home and Methos knew it, but it didn't matter to him. He felt his brother pull away from him, but he wasn't able to move just yet and he clung to him and momentarily buried his face in his brother's shoulder as the grief-wracked sobs he'd been able to lock away for the past few days finally tore out of him. His mind was a blur and the only thing he knew was that he wanted to hurt somebody, he wanted to break something. He'd felt the same way shortly after the burial and had broken the bones in his hands and cut them up pretty well from hitting the neighboring tombstones. And he had made a wreck of the hospital room she had been kept in, he had all but destroyed all the machinery that had been hooked up to her, and that had been while she was still alive, but since her death it had only gotten worse.

He heard his brother talking to him and he became aware that they were moving, he was walking away with him, even though he didn't remember finally being able to move. They walked to Kronos' car and Methos got in on the passenger side and was grateful to finally be out of the rain. Kronos got in beside him and got them out of there, during the drive back, Methos rested his head against the window and just about fell asleep as he remembered, and tried to think. He knew it was quicksand but he couldn't stop himself from thinking about Alexa, when she was alive, and how quickly her life had been stomped out. Whoever made the decision as to who lived and who died and when they died, Methos was convinced, couldn't have thought anymore of it other than just some cosmic cruel joke.

He wasn't sure if he'd actually fallen asleep or if he'd just been close but the next thing he knew was Kronos was shaking him awake, and as he came around he realized that he was crying again, or maybe still, maybe he hadn't stopped. Kronos helped him out of the car and kept one arm around him as if he didn't trust Methos to move alone, as if he might do something drastic if somebody wasn't with him at all times. At the moment though, Methos felt like a zombie, he couldn't think, he could hardly move, he supposed in a way he also felt like a puppet, somebody else was pulling the strings that kept him moving along because he couldn't possibly have been going anywhere of his own free will.

Kronos opened the front door and lightly pushed Methos in, he followed in behind him and shut the door and walked his brother over to the stairs leading up to the second floor. Upstairs was a small hallway, there were doors on all sides and they all looked open, but it was dark and Methos couldn't be sure. He was vaguely aware of catching something in the corner of his eye; the room behind them that they'd just passed by, he would've sworn he saw somebody sitting up in the bed and watching them, but he didn't pay any attention to it. Kronos led Methos into the main bedroom and there, because Methos was still in a state of shock of some sort and currently unable to process a full thought or to do anything for himself, Kronos undressed him. First his trench coat hit the floor, which by now must've weighed about 30 pounds for being soaked clear through, and then Kronos removed the shirt and sweater that he'd been wearing that were likewise weighted down with water.

"Come on," he heard his brother say to him, "Let's get you out of these wet clothes."

His mind still must not have been working quite right because he seemed to black out for a few minutes, he was aware for one instant of being out of his boots and his jeans and felt a cold breeze come through the room, the next thing he knew Kronos had just about wrestled him into a shirt and then Methos was aware of being pushed back onto the bed. Once again he would swear that he saw somebody standing in the doorway watching them but he paid little attention to the matter and couldn't bring himself to focus his attention on it.

Kronos crawled onto the bed beside him and when Methos tried to get up, he pushed him down again and told him to stay there. Methos was half aware of Kronos pulling the covers back and slipping in alongside him.

"Just try and go to sleep," his brother said to him, "You'll feel better in the morning."

And the truth was he was exhausted, he didn't know anymore how he'd managed to stay awake long enough to get back here. He found it a simple command to obey, he rested his head against the pillows and closed his eyes and was already half asleep as soon as he did that. He could feel Kronos beside him and he took some comfort in that presence of another person in the room with him, right beside him, he knew that he wasn't alone and for the first time in days he felt a small sense of security, that he was in safe company, that maybe he would be able to heal from this. He doubted it though, he'd lost too many people already to fully believe that, and yet…he felt an arm around his waist and he felt a body behind him and he knew that he truly wasn't alone at this moment, that was something he could take solace in, something that had been missing for the last few days.

* * *

He wasn't sure if he'd ever gone to sleep but he was sure he'd heard the rain tapping against the windows all night. When he opened his eyes again, it was still dark but through the window he could see that it was lighter outside now meaning it had to be morning. Methos didn't know what time they'd gotten there or even gone to sleep but he was sure that it was after 6 o' clock by now. He turned over in the bed and saw Kronos asleep alongside him. Kronos looked somewhat peaceful when he slept but Methos knew that it was merely an illusion, he knew that in reality his brother always looked troubled by something when he was asleep. They all wore their ages hard, and it seemed to especially become noticeable when they were asleep and let their guards down as consciousness slipped away from them for a few hours. And Methos knew that Kronos, like the rest of them, his life had not been an easy one and despite his best efforts, didn't always get easier with time either.

Nobody knew about the two of them, and even if somebody had, Methos knew that nobody would really understand how things were between them. There had been bad blood between them a thousand years ago when the Horsemen had fallen apart and the brothers had departed, and some people might think Kronos capable of holding onto a grudge for a thousand years or more. And in truth, he probably could, but he did not, the two had bumped into each other several times over the next millennium and had been able to salvage their relationship with one another. Kronos was still the first person Methos went to when he needed help or when he needed to disappear from the world for a while. He'd told Kronos in the beginning about Alexa, about his plans for the two of them. He knew that Kronos didn't approve because he could see no point in getting attached to mortals whose time was already severely limited as it was, and especially one who was already sick and dying; still, he was able to feign happiness for his brother at the time when things were up. And he guessed he'd always known that Kronos would be the first person he'd run to once Alexa had died as well, he'd just tried over the past few months not to think about it.

Methos pushed himself up on his elbows and he leaned over towards Kronos and said into his ear, even though he knew his brother was asleep and would never hear him, "Thank you, Brother."

And when Methos looked up he realized something else; twice the previous night he thought he had seen somebody else in the house with them, somebody standing in the doorway watching them last night, and there _was_ someone standing in the doorway watching them now.

Methos didn't know how old she was; she might've been 12, she might've been 14, he wouldn't guess her for any older than that. The girl had short dark hair that looked like it had been half brushed and the other half ignored entirely, she was dressed in a sleeveless blue striped shirt and blue pajama pants and looked like she had only recently woken up herself. A permanent scowl was etched onto her face and for the life of him Methos couldn't figure out what it meant; part of him took it as a sign that he was not welcome there, but the other part of him remembered last night and if she'd been watching them…he tried to remember what happened last night, Kronos had brought him up here, into the master bedroom, had taken his clothes off and had gotten into bed with him, if she'd been a witness to that he imagined they must've given her one hell of a sight to watch.

He couldn't think of what to say to her, he wasn't even sure where the hell she'd come from or what the hell she was doing there, and while he tried to think of a logical answer to that one, the girl walked over to the bed and reached out with both arms and shook Kronos until he woke up. He murmured something a couple of times before he opened his eyes but once he did, he started to sit up in the bed and looked at her through one eye.

"What time is it?" he asked.

"Six thirty," the girl answered, and Methos noted her cold, hard voice.

"Alright," Kronos said as he laid back against the pillows again, "I'll be down in a minute."

The girl touched him to get his attention and as he looked at her, she pointed at Methos and asked him, "Friend of yours?"

Kronos looked at Methos and told her, "It's alright, he's my brother."

"…Oh," the girl said before she turned on her heel and walked out of the room.

Methos felt like he'd dived right into the Twilight Zone, he looked at his brother and asked him, "Who was that?"

"That," Kronos answered as he got out of the bed, "Is a long story."

"Alright," Methos decided to try another approach, "_What_ was that?"

Kronos shook his head, "That one's no good, I have no idea where she came from."

"So what the hell is she doing here?" Methos asked, "How long has she _been_ here?"

"About three months," Kronos answered as he got dressed.

Methos did a double take when he heard that. Thousands of years ago he knew that Kronos had been married, several times, and most of the time those marriages involved children in one way or another, and he had been good with them most of the time, but still, Methos knew that something wasn't right here.

"Where'd you find her?"

"In a mental asylum," Kronos told him.

"What?!"

"It's all a long story, brother."

* * *

Once the two brothers had gotten dressed, they went downstairs and passing by the living room, Methos saw the girl lying on the couch watching TV. They went into the kitchen and once there, he resumed with the third degree, until finally Kronos told Methos if he shut up, he would explain.

"You remember a while back when I told you about that asylum over in Chicago that some people thought they were experimenting on new Immortals there?"

"Yeah?" Methos said, clearly not getting the connection.

"I went in to find out," Kronos explained, and laughed, "Mental medicine hasn't made _any_ progress in the last 100 years, they're _still_ chaining them to the walls, _still_ pumping them full of electricity and electrocuting them bit by bit. It took a while to check out the whole place and all the patients, but it turned out to be a false alarm, there are no Immortals in there."

"And the girl?" Methos asked.

"She was one of the prized experiments in there," Kronos said, "They never made any progress with her but they considered her a case worth boasting about."

Methos stepped out of the kitchen for a minute and looked in the living room, and then returned to the kitchen and asked Kronos, "How old is she?"

"No idea, closest I can figure is 13," Kronos told him, "And don't ask me _why_ she was in there, that part I never managed to find out, all I know is that she has no family, she is not on record anywhere, and when she was there, the doctors and the so called 'professionals', deemed her a deaf blind mute."

"Triple threat," Methos said sarcastically.

"Shut up," Kronos warned him, "While I was there I got to see it for myself. They ran every single test known to man on her, and nothing."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning they couldn't find out _why_ she was deaf and dumb, no known cause for any of it." He laughed again and told Methos, "You would think that for all their training, that they would've caught on, that they would've figured something out, but they didn't. I was in the room one day when the doctors were discussing the case."

And he remembered only too well; the girl was slumped to the side in a chair behind the two doctors who were talking amongst themselves, and Kronos. She never moved, she never looked, her eyes never registered that she saw anything going on around her. Kronos had only heard half of the conversation but he heard the doctors going over a list of names, of, he supposed, other patients, and when one of the doctors said the name 'Tommy', Kronos couldn't believe what he saw. For a few brief seconds, the girl pulled her head up and looked straight ahead at the doctors, and she looked at them inquisitively before resuming her slumped position and blank stare.

"That was when I knew there was nothing wrong with her," Kronos told Methos, "Not like they thought anyway, she could see, she could hear, talking though, that seemed to be her one setback."

When Methos heard that he stepped out of the kitchen and looked back in on the girl in the living room. It looked like she had fallen asleep on the couch watching TV. He returned to the kitchen and asked Kronos, "Tommy, eh?"

"Yeah," Kronos replied, "I caught the irony of that one too. But it's still the only name she reacts to, so…" he let the rest remain unsaid.

"Has she given you much trouble?" Methos asked.

"Not particularly," Kronos shook his head, "There are of course the usual things to expect."

"I'm sorry?" Methos thought he might've heard wrong.

But the look on Kronos' face made it obvious he hadn't misunderstood, Kronos looked at him grimly and told him, "Brother I do believe she could be one of ours."

And by that, Methos knew that Kronos was not referring to themselves literally, but instead he was implying that the girl in the next room was the child of an Immortal.

"Dear God," Methos inhaled quietly.

The truth was that Immortals could and _did_ have children, but the truth of the matter was so horrible, it was understandable _why_ everyone was led to believe that it didn't happen.


	2. Chapter 2

Methos looked into the living room again and saw the girl laying on the couch, she was practically asleep, she paid absolutely no attention to him whatsoever.

"Don't let her fool you, brother," Kronos warned him, "She notices everything, she just likes to pretend she doesn't."

"I had figured as much," Methos replied, "In order to fool all the doctors, _something_ of that sort would have to be going on." He turned back to Kronos and asked him, "How much does she know?"

"Well, it's been a gradual process," Kronos told him, "I'm sure she knows plenty more than she actually says, but isn't that always the case with ones like this?"

"I think so," Methos slowly nodded in agreement.

There were damn few Immortals left who were as old as they were, and unfortunately too many of the younger ones blindly bought into that storyline about Immortals having no parents, no known origin, just mysteriously wind up somewhere where a mortal could take them in and raise them as their own. And they also blindly believed that Immortals couldn't have children, oh sure, it wasn't on record anywhere; in the entire history of the Watcher chronicles there had never been one documented case of it. Of course not, that would be too easy, and too easy for any rogue Watcher to make sure something horrible happened to those children.

The truth was that Immortals were born to two parents like everybody else, and yes their parents were Immortal, not exclusively though. There were three possible ways for an Immortal child to come into the world: either they had a mortal mother and Immortal father, or a mortal father and an Immortal mother, or both parents were Immortal. It sounded very simple and uncomplicated, unfortunately it wasn't as easy as all that. Yes, Immortals had children, but nowhere _near_ as frequently as mortals did. Methos remembered more than once, Kronos sneering as he regarded mortals as the rabbits of the human race, and what was that supposed to make them? Well he could think of a few likely candidates but he never liked to dwell on the idea. Add to the fact that for some reason, older Immortals seemed to have more kids than younger ones. Apparently being young was not all it was cracked up to be, it was only once an Immortal got a few hundred years under his belt that fertility was even a possibility, or so it seemed.

The reason Immortals seemed so limited was because there were so few of them born at any one time. By his own records, Methos estimated that there were still about 10,000 Immortals in the world, and within a decade there might be 1000 pre-Immortal children born between them all. That was the good news, then you ventured into the bad. More children were born to Immortals than actually grew up to become Immortal. It was impossible to get an actual number on the odds, though if Methos had to guess, a rough estimate he'd say the number of those who grew up to be Immortals who fought and died in the name of 'the Game' were probably 1 out of every 3 children Immortals actually had. And the reason why this was was not so simple. Most of the children would never live long enough to even find out if they _were_ Immortal.

Even as old as Methos was, it was still the damnedest thing he'd ever heard about, let alone seen. And then there was the _other_ side of it; for every 100 pre-Immortal children born to Immortal parents, there was also an additional 10 'duds', that for a reason nobody could figure out, when Immortal and mortal parents mixed there was another rarity, plain mortal children born to them as well, but of these very few of them turned out alright either. But for whatever reason, the fact remained that these were overlooked most of all, in preference to looking at the bigger picture which was the answer of Immortals and where they came from.

He could still remember when the 'professionals' had actually broken through with the term 'mentally retarded' like it was a great discovery they'd stumbled upon. They weren't unveiling anything he hadn't already seen a thousand times in his own life. The world was full of these kids; whose brains would never fully develop, or that were deformed, sometimes they had bodies to match those brains, sometimes they couldn't talk, other times they were incapable of learning, every one of them had a problem and even today the experts in the field were looking for a solution to them. If the doctors felt frustrated after 20 years of failure, Methos thought, they ought to try 5,000 years of seeing children like this and knowing damn little can ever be done to improve them. He didn't know why _any_ child was born this way either, but he especially couldn't figure out why the pre-Immortal children were. Of course, thank God, they weren't _all_ like that, but tragically most of them were, all in varying degrees, and so were the mortal children born to Immortals. Some were beyond all hope, a lot of them were capable of making _some_ progress with time and continual teaching but it was only in the most recent years that anybody had had the patience and knowhow to work with them, but the 'normal' Immortals like they had all grown up to be were actually the rarest of them all.

Yes there was a pattern to it all, and even now Methos didn't know why or how it worked, but there didn't seem to be any way around it. If a child was born to an Immortal father and mortal mother, these were the worst of the worst, these were the children beyond any and all hope, better off dead as horrible as it sounded. If the mother was Immortal and the father was mortal, then they were usually only slightly 'retarded', with the right training they could grow up into functioning people, but still had to be closely monitored because their brains couldn't grasp concepts like deceitful people out to harm them, which for an Immortal was an automatic death sentence. It was only if a child had two Immortal parents that they really came out 'normal', able to walk and talk and think like anybody else deemed 'normal'. And _these_ were where they had _all_ come from, any Immortal who was alive today in the Game, both of his or her parents had been Immortal.

So, knowing what he did about that, why had he never married an Immortal? Better still, knowing this, why had he had so many mortal wives? Well, in the beginning none of them really knew how the process worked; once they did, he took precautions to make sure no wife of his ever got pregnant with his child. He preferred women who already had their own children and that part of their life was nearly over, so it wasn't much of an issue. But in regards to an Immortal wife and why he'd never had one? Well there was always the issue of trust, it was bad enough not being able to trust your mortal spouse not to try killing you in the night, but an Immortal who _knew_ how to kill you permanently, he'd made it a point to get involved with those women as little as possible, much as it pained him to lose out on having children of his own. But he knew it didn't matter much anyway, for as old as he was the odds were he'd only had about 200 kids in his own lifetime, all of them few and far between; and unfortunately damn few of them ever had a happy outcome, most of them had been left out in the wilderness for the elements to claim, as was the custom for those sorts of people hundreds and thousands of years back when nobody understood what was wrong with them and couldn't risk the time and sacrifices it would take to keep and raise them.

Of course, if he'd actually been around, he would've kept most of them despite all the risks he'd run with them. But therein laid a cruel joke on somebody's part, whose? He didn't know, nature's perhaps. For whatever reason, Immortal fathers were seldom ever around when their children were born. Chalk it up to bad luck maybe, unfortunately in more violent and less civilized times, a lot of them were killed in battle and had to disappear before the kids were born, other times their wives disappeared in the middle of the night and had the child somewhere in secret, why? Nobody ever knew, it was just something that happened, and then most of them didn't bother to return, just wandered off somewhere else to start a new life by themselves with just their child. And when it was an Immortal woman who was pregnant, she always ran when she knew the birth was near. Maybe it was an ingrained sense of survival for themselves and their children. As Immortals, you were always hunted, and if it had ever been found out by the rest of the world or even the rest of the Immortal world that you had a child…no, to let anybody else know about that was an impossibility, it couldn't be done and was never done. Luck in part was always on the mother's sides, another inexplicable piece of the puzzle, Immortal women never showed during their pregnancy. They might even be able to claim they didn't know they _were_ pregnant until the birth started, but none of them stuck around to even answer those questions.

That was why so many Immortal babies were foundlings, left somewhere for someone else to find; if there was no trace of an Immortal around, then how could anybody know that it was a pre-Immortal baby? Eventually the child was taken in by somebody, and no one was the wiser until about 20 years later when fate played another cruel joke and welcomed another unsuspecting soul into the Game. Another cruel joke that fate played on them was that the Immortal parents couldn't feel the Quickenings of their own children, that was why in the beginning nobody knew where Immortals came from, because their own parents, if they stuck around long enough, couldn't sense anything from them and thought that they'd somehow given birth to mortals, and on rare occasions they did but for the most part their children were all pre-Immortals just as they had once been. As it turned out, this was very hit and miss, it was not _solely_ the parents who couldn't feel the Quickenings, but they were without doubt and without exception, why half of the other Immortals in the world could and the other half couldn't was anybody's guess.

And here it was thousands of years later, and what he would've thought would be common knowledge by now, was only known to the oldest surviving members of the Immortal race. Try telling it to the younger ones, and do they listen? No. Just like trying to tell them that the Game is a trap and there is no Prize and all the fighting is for nothing, who would believe it? He'd tried before, never gotten anywhere, so he resigned himself to give up and let those idiotic enough to blindly go along with the 'rules' that they didn't know where they came from or how old they were, or even if there was any validity to them, fall to their own fates, which usually left them laying in a ditch somewhere without their heads.

But in the meantime the children always suffered the consequences. Even now, for no known reason why, Immortal fathers were never present when their mortal wives or girlfriends gave birth to their children. Just more of the same old joke, even today they could die publicly and have to disappear, and a lot of them did. And very few were there when their Immortal wives had theirs either. That survival instinct for both mother and child was still alive and kicking in the women Immortals and they still felt a dire need to make themselves disappear and start again somewhere. Maybe they were right, Methos thought to himself, after all mortal women were at most risk of dying while pregnant from their husbands killing them, so why couldn't Immortal women be entitled to share the same fears? They had far more at stake with their children than mortals did.

Of course even over a course of 5,000 years, nothing stayed the same, and in more recent decades, Kronos had confided in him of a new suspicion going round through those old enough to know better; finally there seemed to be some kind of mutation occurring with the children. Now, the ones born to Immortal mothers were starting to turn out closer to those with both Immortal parents, and those with Immortal fathers were starting to become the more 'slightly' cases. Oh he hoped that was true, because now he couldn't stop wondering which was the case for this child Kronos was keeping with him.

"Any idea which she is?" he finally asked.

Kronos shook his head, "No, could be any of them…could even be among the best. You know how it is with them, even with two Immortals responsible for creating them, if they're not found within a certain amount of time, then that throws everything off, everything is delayed, damaged…that could be her, or her mother could be one of us, or by this point perhaps even her bastard father could be one of us."

Gooble gobble," Methos responded.

"Whichever it is, she's been here for three months, and what she already knew and what she knows now is anybody's guess where one ends and another begins," Kronos told him.

"How…" Methos asked, "Did you get her out?"

"Oh," Kronos answered in a cynically nonchalant tone that Methos hated, "Just one of those unforeseen dilemmas, one night the asylum mysteriously broke out in a fire."

Methos tried to keep a straight face but he couldn't resist laughing, "Some things never change, 5000 years later and you're still a fire bug."

"While everybody else was scrambling to get out and take the 'progressive' patients with them, I made my way up to the floor she was being kept on and took her down the back exit," Kronos explained, "Before the night was over we were both out of Chicago."

* * *

Dead weight in his arm, that's what she felt like. He didn't know how old this kid was, but it was obvious they weren't feeding her enough in the hospital. As he opened the door and turned on the lights, he saw that she was unresponsive, she wasn't moving, she wasn't even trying, she just stayed locked in his arm's grip and her feet dangled loosely beneath her like the ringer in a bell.

Once in the kitchen, Kronos put her down and watched to see what she would do. She stood straight and looked straight ahead at the wall, never glanced at anything else in any other direction. Kronos grabbed her by the arm and jerked her around to look at him and he told her, "Alright, you can cut out the feeble tricks, they don't work on me. I knew from the moment I saw you, that you can see," he lunged at her and saw her draw back, "Hear," he snapped his fingers loudly in her ear and watched her flinched, "And I'll just bet I can make you talk."

She looked at him like a dog about to be beaten. He pointed past her and said, "Look over there." She didn't, so he put his hand on the top of her head and forced her to turn around and look, "Look over there, what do you see?"

She didn't say anything, so he picked her up by the back of her hospital gown and set her down closer to the counter, he pointed to the coffee cup and asked her again, "What is this?"

She looked at him as if she didn't know how to respond. So he picked it up and all but shoved it in her face and asked her again, "What is this?"

"C-c-cu-" it sounded like she was trying to clear a hairball from her throat, but she tried again, "Cu…cu-uuu-cu-u-up."

Well that was a start, he felt certain that already they could forget about the possibility that her father was an Immortal. He picked up a can of table salt and asked her, "What's this?"

"S-s-sssssss-aaallllt," she answered.

Kronos felt his eyebrows rise, more out of amusement than actual surprise. "Very good," he put it down and turned her to face the wall the clock was on and asked her, "What's that?"

"Cu-cl-clooooo-ck."

He spent the next half hour having her name the items around the house, with a little coercion he managed to get her to cut the sounds down to half the length she was using which was still twice as long as they actually were, but it was a start. After that he took another look at her and decided she needed to be cleaned up. So he took her into the bathroom, filled the tub with hot water, in one move he ripped her gown off and with another he picked her up and threw her into the tub. She hit the bottom hard and screamed in response to the hot water on her skin. She also screamed when he washed her, though he was nowhere near the point of scrubbing her raw, and she didn't stop screaming until he had her out of the tub and wrapped up in a towel to dry.

Mildly retarded? Might be. Or was it just possible she was kept in a captivity for so long that any normal learning development was permanently stunned? That was what he had to find out, and he knew it wouldn't be easy or quick, which was just fine with him. He'd waited 200 years to find a pre-Immortal child, he could wait a little longer to make her talk.

He let her sleep in the bed that night, she lay where she collapsed upon impact and never moved during the night. The next day he went out and got some clothes that were roughly her size so she could go outside without drawing _too_ much attention to herself. And from there, it was all trial and error. He let her explore the house and look over everything and coaxed the words out of her to describe everything she touched and looked at and picked up to assess how much she had already learned before this point. He also watched the way she carried herself and the little movements she made, more like a 5 year old than a teenager; she kept tripping over her feet, tripped on the stairs repeatedly, got her knees all banged up, for a brief period she crawled up and down the stairs. She pulled her hair frequently and instead of biting her nails she would latch her teeth onto her hand or her arm, more of a sucking sensation than actually biting herself.

Altogether, after he'd had a few days to observe her, he figured he could pinpoint her current mental capacity as being somewhere between a 1st and 2nd grader's, that was a generous estimate though. It wasn't of much matter to him, he knew that given the time and work, that the children like this _were_ capable of learning; to what extent was anybody's guess but he was going to find out, _now_ he actually had a chance to.

A well guarded secret from the old days that most people would be disemboweled before they found out was that he was a sucker for children, and apparently that hadn't changed all that much in the thousands of years that followed; until he could get the girl settled he didn't have the heart to kick her out of his bed at night. She was still having trouble grasping basic words so was at a loss to communicate, her mental buildup thus far seemed to be matched with a much younger child, one that needed frequent attention and close contact with other people; but the fact remained that she didn't know him or this place, the proverbial stranger in a strange land, so she tried keeping to herself, she curled herself into as small a ball as possible when staying on her side of the bed for the night. After a couple of weeks he managed to put her in another room of the house, but it was still a gradual process; the first few nights he'd wake up to the sudden surprise that she'd crawled back into bed with him. She didn't know him, but it was starting to become apparent, she trusted him, as odd as that may seem.

Immortals' children, despite their setbacks, could never cease to amaze. He had figured since she had so much obvious trouble in even speaking, that there couldn't be any way she could read yet. Showed what he knew. One morning he came down and found her in the living room with the morning paper; he had thought she was only looking at the pictures, but upon closer look he saw that though her mouth was closed, it was moving as if she was about to start reading the paper out loud. He'd had a lot of experience watching people over the centuries, and he'd gotten so that on many occasions he could tell what the first word somebody would say when they opened their fat mouth, just on how they moved their lips when they were still closed. But she didn't open her mouth, and no sound came out; after she discarded the paper and went into the kitchen, he found the paper and glanced over the front page story, the print matched up with the words she had been trying to say.

So clearly she _could_ read, but again, to what extent? He didn't know that either, and that unfortunately they would never know because it seemed no matter how hard anybody tried, these children could never explain as well as they could understand; even the best of the best had a fair share of problems in communicating, they often came up blank for words or selected the wrong ones to use in their speech. And it was always obvious that they knew they got it wrong because they easily became frustrated when it happened; and in time he'd gone through the exact same thing with her, more often than not though, it was for the things she couldn't say than the ones she did. These children to some degree had to have had the mental capacity to be self loathers when this happened; Tommy on more than one occasion when she couldn't get a word right would beat her hands against the wall or the table and hit herself in the head and start crying. Very quickly he learned to come up behind her and restrain her when it first started; he grabbed her around the waist and lifted her off her feet long enough to sit down and get her settled on his lap and he grabbed her by the wrists and hands so she couldn't hurt herself, and waited for her to wear herself out. Certainly nobody ever said being a parent was easy, but being parent to a child that would one day become Immortal, even a surrogate parent, that had to be among the hardest things for anybody to pull off. The damn mortals had no idea what they took for granted.

* * *

"And," Methos said, folded his arms against his chest, "For three months' time, what progress have you been able to make?"

Kronos shook his head, "Not much, as you well know it's a _very_ gradual process."

Methos nodded, he _did_ remember.

"But progress is progress regardless of how slow it is," Kronos added.

Methos nodded again, "Like when they bulldozed Chernobyl, two minutes only per day every day without exception."

"Something like that," Kronos replied.

Methos nodded towards the living room and commented, "She seems pretty normal at first glance."

Kronos nodded, "Took a while to get her even _that_ far."

"So…how's she doing now?" Methos asked.

"I'll let you decide for yourself," his brother told him.

Kronos went to the living room and called out, "Tommy, will you come in here?" A minute later the girl entered the kitchen with him. Kronos gestured to Methos and said, "This is my brother, Methos, say hello."

Tommy sheepishly raised her hand and gave a single, far spread wave.

"You can do better than that," Kronos told her, "Say 'hello'!"

"Hello," she said flatly.

He smiled at her, "Hello, Tommy, how are you?"

Tommy turned on her heel and pressed her face against the back of Kronos' jacket. His response was to give her a light elbow to the jaw and told her, "You know better than _that_."

Methos noticed the look on her face as she gazed to the floor uncertainly, and he said for her benefit, "She's just shy." When he took one step towards her, she turned and pressed herself against Kronos so hard she about knocked him down.

"That's the understatement of the century," Kronos told his brother. He added to her, "Cut that out," and slapped her away, though it was more sound than actual impact.

Methos rolled his eyes and commented, "You always _did_ have a way with children."

"Don't let yourself be fooled, this is purely for _your_ benefit," Kronos assured him, and gave Tommy a small shove towards the doorway. Tommy reached her arms out and braced herself against the doorframe, but left the kitchen, and returned a moment later with a book she was apparently reading. She opened it to a spot near the middle and read for Methos' benefit, "'Sex is a fine word, everybody got sex?'"

"Cute," Methos said in his usual tone of sarcasm.

Of course it would be too much to expect that Kronos would have any issue with it. He merely turned to the girl and told her, "Go get dressed."

Tommy nodded and left the kitchen, and this time stayed gone for several minutes. Once she was gone, Methos couldn't help commenting, "I wonder whose she is?"

"Nobody we know, that's a safe bet," Kronos remarked.

Methos nodded glumly.

Fate was a cruel joke. The mothers were driven away from their homes and their families by some internal inexplicable sense of survival for them and their children, and the Immortal mothers left their children where someone else could take them in and raise them. But such was not always the case. Feral children and pre-Immortal children often went hand in hand. Being a foundling was not all it was cracked up to be because sometimes they might not be found for a couple years depending on if someone else dumped them somewhere, if the animals got to them, if the animals accepted them as one of their own. Children who grew up among wild dogs, and lived as wild dogs, were not uncommon the world over, some were found as toddlers, some were found at 8, others weren't discovered until they were nearly teenagers, there was absolutely no rhyme or reason to any of it. Even now though, many wondered what the purpose was for those found later on; still today it was believed what children learned in their formative years was what would stick with them the rest of their lives. And when they said formative, they meant 3-4 years old tops, what then could be accomplished with a child who'd lived in the wild with no people around, for 10-11 years? Oh but, he knew the answer to that one too, and most days it was too painful for him to even remember. As an Immortal, you learned early on that fate being cruel just came with the territory, but it was always different when children were involved.


	3. Chapter 3

All that day Methos watched Tommy with an odd fascination. Maybe it had just been too long since he'd seen any Immortal children for himself, too long since he got a chance to interact with one, but for whatever reason, every little movement she made over the day had him completely mesmerized. Almost, he realized with great irony, like a new parent being completely in awe of every little thing their first newborn did. Though the events of Tommy's day were a bit more progressed than rolling over or sitting up; after breakfast she took the newspaper and found an article that particularly got her attention. She didn't cut it out though, she ripped it out, which in turn ripped up the whole page, but he guessed it was better than actually trusting her with a pair of scissors. She then took the clipping and tucked it away in a manila folder she kept on the coffee table in the living room. He asked if he could take a look at it and found it was full of things that had been ripped out of newspapers. 'Ripped from the headlines' suddenly took on a different meaning. Some of them were the daily comic strips, others little quotations and factoids, and then the rest were headline stories of crime and this, that and the other. An unusual little collection, he thought, but who was he to bring it up?

Most of the day however, Tommy just stayed in the living room and watched the TV. At first glance it might seem like she was content to just lay on the couch and stare at the screen for hours regardless of what was on, but it turned out that even she had her standards. When something came on she didn't like, she went over to the TV and pressed the buttons on the side to switch between cartoons, the morning news, cable movies, and reruns of 80s cop and action shows. They all seemed to be of equal interest to her.

"Not particular, is she?" he asked his brother from where they sat at the antique table in the dining room as they talked among themselves lowly so she wouldn't hear them.

"What she gets out of that rubbish is anybody's guess," Kronos said dismissively.

Methos laughed, "Some things never change I see. Almost begs the question why you even _have_ a television if you don't watch it."

"Oh I watch it," Kronos replied, "Anytime I need a good laugh I turn it to the U.N. peace talks."

Methos laughed even harder, "Nope, you _never_ change."

"What point would there be if I did?" he asked.

Methos knew the question was rhetoric, so didn't bother trying to answer. He watched Tommy laying on the floor watching a rerun of Adam-12, and he couldn't help wondering how much of what she was seeing was actually connecting in her mind, how much of it actually made sense. That was the most infuriating part, they couldn't explain it so you couldn't gauge it, and pretty soon everybody wound up crying in frustration, he knew, from too much experience he knew. He _hoped_ this far down the line that things might turn out better this time, for once, oh he hoped, but anymore he felt he was far too old for there to be any point left to hope.

* * *

Being married 68 times, kids were inevitable, babies were inevitable, babies who woke up screaming in the middle of the night because they were hungry, were inevitable. Granted it was only in the last few decades that that really became the _father's_ problem as much as the mother's, but it was a role Methos knew well. He was so well versed in it, he didn't even open his eyes, he just pushed the covers back and started to stand up. He knew this routine like the back of his hand, and he could do it without opening his eyes once, he'd swear to it.

"Methos," his brother groggily asked as he too woke up, "Where are you going?"

Letting out a particularly loud yawn, Methos answered half asleep, "Time to feed the baby."

That got Kronos' attention, he opened his eyes and told his brother, "Methos, get back in bed and go back to sleep."

Something in what Kronos said got Methos' attention and he opened his eyes and became more awake, he looked around and realized where he was.

"Oh!"

But then…he'd no more fallen back on the bed when he realized where those sounds of somebody crying were coming from.

"That's Tommy?"

"Yes," Kronos answered shortly, "And I'll warn you now, this is nothing new, and you needn't bother wasting your time trying to figure out what's the matter, trust me, you won't get anywhere."

Methos looked from his brother, to the room across from theirs where the door had been left open. The heart wrenching sobs continued.

"You mean she does this every night?" he asked.

"Just about," Kronos answered, "She wears out after an hour or two."

"How reassuring," Methos dryly responded, "How long's she been at it tonight?"

"About half an hour."

"Long night," Methos said.

"You should try it for three months," Kronos told him, "And try wasting the first 6 weeks trying to figure out the cause of it all, and there's none."

"You're sure?" Methos asked him.

Kronos shrugged, "There's nothing _physically_ wrong with her, any other possibilities, it's anybody's guess because she sure as hell won't talk about anything."

Methos lay in bed for a couple minutes listening to the continuous wails, and finally decided he couldn't take it anymore, he kicked the covers back and got up.

"You're wasting your time, Brother," Kronos told him.

"Then that's my problem," Methos replied as he stepped out into the hall.

Methos made his way through the dark into Tommy's room, admittedly he hadn't been in it yet to know where everything was, so he stepped lightly to avoid crashing into something and waking _everybody_ up. What surprised him was that for all the problems Tommy seemed to have and for all her mental self seemed to be stunted more along the lines of a 5 year old instead of a 13 year old, there hadn't seemed to be any reason to leave a light on in this damn room when she was sleeping. Maybe, he thought to himself, she never woke up during the night and _realized_ she was in the dark. Or maybe it was just possible that she was a rare breed of child who wasn't fazed by the darkness, well, he guessed anything was possible. In the dark he felt around until he bumped into the bedstead, aha, he was getting warmer. He felt along the side and found the bedspread, and continued up, and found the top covers, and the girl laying under them crying in her sleep.

He found where she was in the bed and put his hands on her carefully so she wouldn't panic and lash out. He tried to get her to wake up but she didn't hear anything he said, no matter _what_ he did, nothing would bring her out of her deep and extremely troubled sleep.

"I told you," Kronos said as Methos came back to bed in defeat.

"Unbelievable," Methos said, "I think people have _died_ in that deep of sleep."

"And come the morning she'll have absolutely no memory of it whatsoever," Kronos told him, "And the cycle repeats."

Methos turned his head towards his brother and asked him, "How do you put up with it?"

"Besides the obvious?" that being that fateful question of what choice he had, "You get used to it, if you're here long enough."

"That's promising," Methos dryly replied as he burrowed under the covers, "I wonder what's going through her mind right now?"

"Could be anything," Kronos told him, "Memories, flashbacks, nightmares, could even be absolutely nothing at all for all we know."

Methos looked at the ceiling and said to himself, "I wonder where she came from before the hospital found her?"

"That's anybody's guess," his brother said.

* * *

True to his words, Kronos was right, come the morning when they woke up, Tommy was also getting up and seemed to have no recollection whatsoever of anything that had happened the night before. Methos stood in the doorway of her bedroom and watched as she made her bed, then dug around in an old dresser for a change of clothes for the day and pushed past him to get to the bathroom to clean up.

"You can probably guess what my next question is," he said to his brother.

Kronos did. "And the answer is no," he answered as he came up to Methos, "Bathing is one thing she can do by herself, thank you very much." He added, "Though for what it's worth, it won't traumatize her."

"What wouldn't?" Methos asked.

Kronos nodded his head in the direction of the bathroom door, "Watching her. Either that's something she never learned, or she just doesn't care. Either way…"

Methos couldn't resist a small snort as he said, "Little young to be an exhibitionist, isn't she?"

"It's not that," Kronos replied, "It's that she simply doesn't care."

Methos nodded grimly, "And that would make her an ideal victim for a lot of people."

"Exactly," Kronos told him, "Precisely why it's vital she's always with the _right_ person."

Methos nodded again, "That's going to make it difficult when she gets older."

"If it turns out she _is_ incapable of learning," Kronos said, "Until that time comes, I'm not jumping to any conclusions."

"Just have to keep an eye on her all the time," Methos pointed out.

"That doesn't bother me," Kronos told him.

"No," Methos chose his words carefully because he could feel his brother becoming defensive, "But it's not always a possibility, is it?"

"So far it has," Kronos said.

"Right," Methos replied, "And what happens when…" he shrugged, "The nature of Immortals _is_ going to take its course, what then?"

"What do you mean what then?" Kronos asked, "Anybody that tries coming after me doesn't live to tell about it, it's not that hard to figure out."

"Still, what about Tommy?" Methos asked, "Surely she hasn't been witness to that."

"No," Kronos told him, "I always make sure of that."

"How?"

Kronos looked mildly amused, "What's the matter, Brother? Have you suddenly lost faith in the rule of Holy Ground?"

"It protects _us_, not her, not mortals," Methos said.

"It doesn't need to _protect_ her, just withstand her," Kronos told him, "One thing she hasn't caught onto yet is how to pick locks. Lock her in _any_ room and she'll stay, but no headhunter is going to look for a child in a church, especially one who has no Quickening."

"No _known_ Quickening," Methos reminded him, "Just because _we_ can't feel one off of her doesn't mean another Immortal couldn't."

"I doubt it," Kronos said, "So far _nobody's_ picked up on her."

Methos considered what this meant. "Then she might be a 'dud'."

Kronos slowly nodded, "She might very well at that."

And if that were true, it would probably be the best thing that could happen to her. Never become Immortal, never become part of the Game, never wind up on the wrong end of a merciless headhunter. Burying children was always hard, even grown ones that you'd watched grow up while you stayed the same, but if it came to that, it would be a far better fate for Tommy than if she were to suddenly wind up plunged into this miserable excuse of a Game. Cruel as it sounded, it would be more merciful for her sake for her to grow up, live out whatever kind of life she might have, and just fade away in time like the rest of the mortals, and Kronos would move on, as he always had before, as they all had before when the inevitable occurred. It was hell, but no Immortal who _was_ ever a parent _ever_ wanted their children thrown into the Game alongside or against them.

Kronos headed downstairs, Methos was about to follow when he heard a sound from the bathroom. He went in to see if Tommy was alright, and stepped in just in time for the shower curtain to swing back and reveal Tommy standing in the middle, soaking wet in all her delayed adolescent glory, and absolutely no regards whatsoever as he stared at her. Methos slowly blinked and reached behind him to the towels hanging on a hook on the door. He pulled one off and tossed it at Tommy and told her, "Cover yourself, please."

Tommy caught the towel but instead of wrapping herself up in it, she used it to dry herself, first her arms, then her legs, then she buffed it across her back. Methos watched her with an odd fascination and he felt sick considering what could ever happen to her if she'd ever fall in the wrong hands. As an Immortal you had to do well to at least attempt to plan out the immediate next few years of your life, always plan ahead for a new name, new identity, new location, new place to start again so people didn't start connecting the dots. This had all come out of nowhere, but he was starting to consider that perhaps the time had come for 'Adam Pierson' to drop out of the picture, permanently or semi-permanently; because it was occurring to him that finishing the process of raising this girl would easily become a two-person job, at a bare minimum.

"And the Odd Couple strikes again," Methos murmured to himself. He took the towel from Tommy and wrapped it around her and told her, "Come on, Tommy, let's get you dressed."

Her response of choice was to smack his hand hard with her own, she gathered up her clothes and showed herself out of the bathroom, and a few seconds later he heard her bedroom door slam.

"She might be 'slightly retarded' but she's self sufficient," Methos noted.

He listened at the door for a moment, and then finally decided she'd be fine by herself, and went to join his brother downstairs. Never a dull moment whenever Kronos was involved, that was for damn sure.


	4. Chapter 4

As the day passed, Methos was starting to consider the possibility that the weather was directly dictated according to his own mood; all morning it was gray and dreary and threatened to rain in between the times it actually did rain. At the very least he found it mildly surprising that Tommy made no attempt to even go outside. In fact, if the weather and his mood were interconnected, they must've spread out to her too because halfway through the morning, instead of laying on the couch watching TV as she'd done most of yesterday, he watched as the girl pulled a large pillow out from behind the couch, set it in the middle of the floor and curled herself up on it and went to sleep.

"Not very energetic, is she?" he inquired to his brother.

"Not since I've known her anyway," Kronos replied with a small shrug, "Anyway, makes it easier to keep an eye on her, make sure she doesn't wind up in the wrong company."

"Or _any_ company for that matter," Methos said.

"Now you're getting it," Kronos told him.

Methos nodded slowly in understanding, "Well, nobody ever said being a parent was easy."

"Anybody who thinks otherwise is a damn idiot," Kronos grunted.

"You think _everybody's_ an idiot," Methos reminded him.

"Well they are," Kronos replied.

Methos chose to keep to himself the thought that right about now, Tommy reminded him of Columbo's dog, Dog. Kronos seldom got and never appreciated his television references. Which to him, made it all the funnier that he would choose to name the girl Tommy, knowing what it represented. Still it did all fit, a supposedly deaf, dumb and blind child…and where did she learn that? Somebody had to teach her, who? Where? He wondered also if perhaps even Tommy herself understood the joke. Still, he thought back to what Kronos had said, there had been something in the name, or the way it had been said, that drew her out of her self-induced trance. Almost like…no, no, he refused to go there. He wouldn't.

After a while, Methos got on the floor and crawled on his knees over towards Tommy and continued to watch her up close and personal while she slept. No apparent care in the world. Too bad she didn't sleep this peacefully at night. He wondered why?

It was then that something occurred to Methos. He really hadn't been in Tommy's room long enough or well enough to get the layout of the place. It was one thing not to bump into the furniture in the middle of the night, but given her behavior, he was suddenly curious as to what all was in that room. He made his way up the stairs and headed across the hall and found the door standing open. It was a fairly nice sized room, plenty of walking space, that was for sure. There was a double bed in the middle of the room, a dresser to one side, an old bookcase screwed into the wall on the opposite side, half full with old books that had seen better days, yellowed, covers and pages alike ripped, weak spines, half of them covered in dust. He tried to remember what this room had been the last time he was here. Living alone, Kronos didn't have much use for half of the rooms in this gloomy old house, it stood to reason all the furniture was probably already here, since none of it looked like it had been new for at least 20 years. And that said, Methos then tried to remember who had lived here before Kronos got the place, and _why_ the previous owner had left. Oh well, no matter.

The drawers in the dresser were half filled with clothes, save one drawer that was filled with small toys and trinkets. Maybe some of them had also been left behind by the previous owner because many of them were well used, aged, chewed on, faded in paint, etc. Chewed on? He sincerely hoped Tommy didn't have a habit of doing _that_. He closed the drawers and then, looking around the room again, got on the floor and checked under the bed. He pulled out an old medium sized metal truck, and let it roll on its wheels over to the wall and hit it. Next thing he pulled out was a red rubber ball, a bit aged but still a lot of bounce to it. Reaching his arm further under the bed he also yanked out a medium sized teddy bear, soft fur but stiff stuffing, making it a lesser flexible variety of stuffed animals. Next was a tin kaleidoscope, that got rolled out of the way, followed by a chewed up cardboard box with old wooden blocks in it that had designs on the sides half faded away. After that, a large box of old wooden dominoes, it looked like some were missing, and some had gotten small slants on the corners so they wouldn't stand up. Pushing that aside too, he next found an odd and end pile of cards held together with a rubber band, as thick as it was, he guessed it was parts of 4 or 5 decks all put together. The bedstead was too low to the ground for him to crawl under it, hell, he doubted even Tommy could crawl under this bed, so he stretched his arm out as far as he could, and wondered if maybe there was a spot under this bed that led directly to the inside of Mary Poppins' bag, or to Prince Alexander of Daventry's coat pocket, all that was missing was the kitchen sink or a talking rotten tomato and…

"Really, Brother," Kronos' voice took him by surprise, "A man your age, playing with toys!"

"I don't suppose you'd care to explain why," Methos groaned as he stood up and saw his brother standing in the doorway, "She keeps them all stuffed under the bed instead of on those shelves."

Kronos merely shrugged in response, "Beats the hell out of me."

Methos shrugged in like and said, "Well, I suppose they're _all_ weird ones to a degree. Incidentally where did all of this come from?"

"Most of it was left behind by the previous owners," Kronos explained.

"Well you always _were_ something of a packrat," Methos noted, "Never _could_ stand to throw away any junk, could you?"

"I kept _you_, didn't I?" Kronos remarked.

"Very funny," Methos dryly commented.

* * *

That afternoon during lunch, Methos watched and observed Tommy. He'd noticed over the past couple days that she wasn't a particularly big eater. She would swallow some of her food but to fill herself up she'd down a large glass of milk and sit at the table until they all got up. Once she did, and went into the other room, Methos took the opportunity to mention to Kronos, "Not a big talker either, is she?"

"Not particularly," Kronos answered, "On a good day you can get a few sentences out of her."

"You mean if I _wasn't_ here, she would," Methos said.

"She'll get used to you," Kronos told him, "_I_ did."

"Ha-ha," Methos replied. He let a minute pass before asking, "How much do you think she'll be capable of learning?"

"That's anybody's guess," Kronos said, and he added, "But I'm optimistic."

Methos nodded glumly, it was odd to think of someone like Kronos as ever being optimistic, but even he had his moments, and it was during those such moments he wished he shared his brother's enthusiasm. The last few days he just felt cold and distant and he'd even say, depressed. Alexa dying, having to bury her, it was still weighing in on him.

He stepped out of the kitchen and found Tommy laying on her stomach on the living room floor scooting a second toy truck back and forth along the carpet. Methos got down on the floor beside her and asked to see the truck. It was making a strange sound as she moved the wheels back and forth, so he turned it over and saw it was one of those pullback friction toys, drag the wheels backwards to build up some momentum, and it could roll forward of its own volition. Of course it worked better on a hard floor than on carpeting, but even that could work if there was enough friction built up in the tires. He dragged it back and let it go and they both watched as the truck zoomed forward and drove directly into the wall. Tommy had a good laugh at that and even Methos found himself mildly amused, but when he turned to her, she sat up and scooted back away from him, cold, distant.

He got it, of course, she'd been here with Kronos and it was just the two of them for three months, Tommy had gotten used to that, she wasn't used to _him_.

As if she was reading his mind, she folded her arms to her chest and asked him point blank, "How long are you going to be staying here with us?"

Her question caught him off guard, he was dumbstruck for a couple seconds but recovered and said to her, "I'm not sure yet…maybe a few weeks."

He could tell she didn't like the sound of that. She seemed to draw more into herself, he could just see the brick wall she was building around herself. She tolerated him for now because she had no choice, but he wondered how long even that would last?

* * *

That night, Methos didn't remember what time he'd gone to sleep, but sometime during the night he woke up and slowly remembered where he was. Then he noticed how quiet it was. He found the clock and saw it was after 2 o' clock in the morning. Swinging his feet around to the floor, he left the bedroom and crossed the hall and hit the lights. Tommy's bed had been slept in but she wasn't there now, he checked under the bed, though he knew she couldn't possibly fit under there, and in the closet, and behind the door, and even in the dresser drawers, and she was nowhere to be found. Methos went back to the master bedroom, turned on the lights and went over to the bed and started shaking Kronos to wake him up.

"Kronos, where's Tommy?"

Kronos grumbled tiredly and stayed in bed, turned on his side and half buried his head under a pillow and told his brother, "She's in bed."

"No she's not," Methos told him. That got Kronos' attention. He got out of bed and they went out to the hall, looked over the balcony, and saw a light was on downstairs.

"Is she ever up this late?" Methos asked as they went down the stairs.

"She's _never_ up this late," Kronos replied.

The light was on in the living room, as was the TV, but there was no sign of Tommy. Then they heard a strange small sound like an animal choking. Methos went around to the back of the couch and found her there on the floor. She was dressed in a long nightshirt and her hair was half mussed already from being in bed. When she saw Methos she sat up on her knees and grabbed two handfuls of his shirt and tried to speak but only got a bunch of garbled sobs out. Kronos grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her towards him, Methos stepped away and got a look at what was on the TV, and he suddenly felt they'd made one small step and simultaneously one giant leap in finding out how far Tommy's comprehension skills went. It looked as though a nuclear bomb had detonated in South Carolina, and the news was just coming in of the blast.

"Did you ever see this movie?" he asked Kronos as he pointed to the TV.

"What?" Kronos asked.

Methos went over to the set and pointed to the screen. "They made this movie back in the 80's, made it to look like an actual news report, that South Carolina was actually at threat of being nuked by renegades. At the time, everybody bought it."

He could tell by the grunting snort his brother made that he wasn't impressed. But it seemed obvious to Methos that Tommy had very good understanding of what she'd been watching, as well as could be expected anyway. He'd seen the movie when it first went on the air, not entirely plausible or even possible but it was close enough to terrorize the local public to believing it was real. No, he amended his previous conclusion, there was nothing retarded about this girl. He turned off the TV and went over to his brother and tried to help get Tommy to calm down, she'd latched herself onto Kronos and even now had his shirt in a death grip and was hysterical and completely inconsolable.

Methos remained borderline subtle as he tried to pry the young girl off of his brother, but she maintained a death grip on him.

"It's alright, Tommy," he said as he placed a hand carefully on her back and rubbed it gently, "It's alright, it's not real." She started howling, and he told her, "I know, it looks real, but it's not, I've seen it before, years ago, everything's alright, just calm down."

Despite his efforts, the girl remained unconvinced and inconsolable, the two Immortals led her out to the hall and walked her up the stairs and, knowing she'd never stay in her own room tonight, took her into the master bedroom and got her settled in the middle of the bed. After a little while she wound down and fell asleep.

"Where're you going?" Kronos asked as he saw Methos heading for the door.

"I'll be sleeping on the couch for the night," he answered as he disappeared through the doorway.

"Get back in here," Kronos told him in his commanding tone that Methos knew only too well, and so obeyed, "Get in the bed."

"Going to be a bit crowded, isn't it?" Methos asked innocently.

Kronos was unfazed and replied matter-of-factly, "We used to sleep much tighter than this, you remember?"

Methos nodded slowly, "I remember one winter, all four of us and your two wives crammed together in one bed. Garter snakes at mating season aren't so crowded as we were then, and the process was just about the same. Only instead of 100 males with 1 female sorting through them, it was those two trying to climb over you to grab at me in the night."

"They grabbed _everybody_," Kronos replied.

"I know," Methos told him, "Which is why Silas always took one of the slave girls with him when we returned from a raid, to serve as a lookout so they couldn't get into his tent."

Kronos just chuckled at the memory.

"Thank _God_ those two never had kids," Methos said, "I dread to think what they would've been like."

"Well," Kronos remarked, "If they would've, they would've either come from me or you, therefore they would've been fine."

In the bed, Tommy made a small sound in her sleep and turned over onto her side. Methos looked to his brother and said to him, "What _are_ you going to do with her?"

"What else?" Kronos responded, "Come on, let's go back to bed."

"Well…alright," Methos said, turning off the lights and making his way in the dark back towards the bed.

It was a bit more crowded but it seemed to him that they could get through the remainder of the night without anybody getting crushed in their sleep. Methos lay completely still on his side of the bed, he lay awake and listened, in time he heard Kronos' breathing change, insinuating the other Immortal had also fallen asleep, so now he was the only one still awake. In his ear he heard Tommy's light breathing as well, a sound, so low, so simple, so familiar, he couldn't describe it. Through the corner of his eye he looked at the medium sized lump in the middle of the bed and in his head a million questions were racing around, a key one going back to the source of 'Where in the world did you come from?' and more to the point, '_Who_ did you come from?'

* * *

"Quit sucking on your hand and eat your food," Kronos told Tommy at breakfast the next morning.

Methos watched as Tommy slowly withdrew the fleshy back of her hand out of her mouth, the telltale teeth mark indentions red and the skin around it sucked white, she dropped her arm at her side and sat down at the table and started to eat her food. They'd managed to get through the rest of the night without any further incidents, but it was obvious this morning that she was still a bit shaken up over last night. She'd finally taken her hand out of her mouth but with her other hand she proceeded to grab at a chunk of her hair and yank on it absentmindedly.

"You don't have much trouble with neighbors out here, do you?" Methos asked Kronos.

"What neighbors?" Kronos replied.

"Fair point," Methos looked up from his plate and said, "That in mind, would you have any opposition to Tommy going outside?"

Kronos seemed to pick up on what Methos was saying and remarked nonchalantly, "Do whatever you have a mind to with her, and knowing you, you will."

Tommy looked up from her breakfast and stared at Kronos wide-eyed, but it went unnoticed by him. But Methos picked up on it and said to his brother, "You see? That's why none of your wives would stay with you either."

Kronos paid him very little mind in return.

After breakfast, Tommy reluctantly followed Methos out to the backyard, which bit by bit was slowly becoming a junkyard, continuing his brother's packrat methods. A lot of it looked like stuff that hadn't been used or even moved in at least a couple decades, before Kronos even moved here. It was true neighbors were no problem because they were on a fairly vacant piece of land, Kronos definitely knew what he was doing when he found this place.

Tommy walked over to a large shaped rock that in a former life had served as a marker where one yard ended and another began and sat down on it, drawing her jacket tight against her as she looked at Methos, and waited to see what he wanted.

Maybe it had simply been too long, for the life of him, Methos couldn't figure out what to say first, he settled for an out of the blue, "How're you?"

She didn't answer, just stared at him. Methos glanced around the yard, and asked her, "Do you mind if I test you a bit?"

He saw her draw back on the rock, looking terrified, and it was then he realized, though he and Kronos were _not_ brothers in birth, the ability to stick one's foot in one's mouth must've been hereditary, only after the fact did he realize what he'd said; he could just picture her back in that asylum, what sort of tests she must've been subjected to.

"No, not like that," he said, and to get his point across quickly before she did something drastic, he pointed behind her and asked, "Can you tell me what that is?"

Tommy turned her head and looked at an old wooden shack of a building that was still standing from where the property next door had originally trailed off, and she answered, "Ga-rage."

Methos nodded slowly, and pointed again, "How about that?"

Tommy turned her head to the other side, "Wheel-barrow."

Methos turned around and asked, "And over there?"

Tommy looked, and tried, "Wh-wh-wha—_rrrrr_ain, barrel."

He could hear the frustration in her voice and he looked to her and told her, "It's alright, a lot of people have trouble with it."

She didn't look convinced though, she pursed her lips tightly together and shook her head. Then, quicker than the eye could see, she stood up from the stone and walked off to the other end of the back. Methos followed behind her.

Even if they'd never get the story out of Tommy, he could guess part of what had happened to her. _Somebody_ had prepared her for the asylum, _somebody_ had trained her not to respond, not to sound, or visuals, or anything, why? Somebody had trained her not to speak, and he could guess on that one. Somebody didn't want anybody to be able to find out who or what she was, so avoid all identification possible, fingerprints meant nothing to a 13 year old who didn't have the mental capacity to be a juvenile delinquent, but if she ever spoke, they could identify her by her voice, what more they would definitely be able to identify her by the way she spoke and the words she missed. He'd bet anything that that was the real reason she deliberately chose as often as possible not to speak with him around. And he knew, the list was very narrow who could've had her before and who could've prepared her for such a thing. Only a parent, only a _mother_, one who _knew_ what there was to be expected, an _Immortal_ mother; in which case, if that were true, and Methos had a sinking suspicion it was, that meant that it was very likely that Tommy's major malfunction was she'd been abandoned long enough for that lack of stimulation and communication to take its toll on her.

She wasn't retarded, she just had no experience speaking, or speaking _to_ or _with_ other people. He'd bet anything that that's what it was. So of course the question _now_ was _would_ they be able to break her of that? And if so, _how_? So far, she trusted Kronos, Methos knew she didn't trust him, not yet, but he also knew she wouldn't have a choice in the matter, but that could either work in their favor or backfire on them and she'd shut down altogether. For all his previous experience and all that he had since learned, Methos knew he was going to have to tread carefully on this one; fortunately like his brother, time was the one thing he had all of in the world so could afford to do so.


	5. Chapter 5

Tommy spent the afternoon spinning around on her knees pushing one of her toy trucks around on the floor of her bedroom. After lunch she seemed particularly determined to keep to herself, Methos suspected in part because she didn't want to wind up somewhere alone with him again. When it was just he and his brother, Methos confided in Kronos his suspicions about Tommy's origin and just 'what' her birth parent could've been.

"It's the only thing that makes sense," he said, "Her mother _had_ to be an Immortal."

"Meaning at the very least she's not the worst off," Kronos replied, "That much is obvious, but the damage is still already done."

"Possibly more from being abandoned than just who her father was," Methos told him, "She has a great potential. As you said, it's just going to be a matter of time."

Kronos looked to his brother to say something, and noticed that Methos looked like he was having trouble breathing.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"Nothing," Methos shook his head, "I was just thinking…"

Nothing new there.

"What about?" Kronos asked.

"Do you remember…about 25 years ago there was a story in the news…a girl who had been locked in one room for her whole life until she was 13? You remember that? Couldn't talk...couldn't stand straight, only the size of a 5 year old."

"And their idiotic neighbors said they never even knew there _was_ a child, yes, I remember, _everybody_ heard about that case." Kronos' tone of response was slightly annoyed but that was lost on his brother.

"Yes, well…" Methos shook his head, "They certainly did a nice job of shutting everything up before too much time passed, I doubt most people today even remember, 13 years in one room, never learning to speak, then experimented on like a lab rat, then dropkicked like a football from one person to another, to another, only to wind up a ward of the state, shut away from the world once again, muted once again."

"God bless the human race, eh, brother?" Kronos cynically remarked.

"Her own father…that _anybody_ could do something like that to a child, her own _father_ of all people, 13 years tied up in a room, no human contact, no physical contact, except violence, to his _own_…"

Only someone who knew Methos as long as Kronos had could recognize the oh so slight change in his brother's eyes; a wire in his brain had crossed, a memory was triggered, he was detouring off this track and onto something else lost in the past, and Kronos knew it, and he had a good guess what it was. But Methos seemed consciously oblivious to it and he continued on, "Wild animals would've made for a better upbringing…out…in the wilderness…"

Kronos grabbed Methos' arm and it seemed to jolt his brother back to the here and now.

"You alright, brother?" he asked.

Methos was slow to answer, but he didn't waver as he said simply, "Fine."

Kronos simply nodded and replied, "Good." He nodded towards the liquor cabinet and told him, "Come on, let's get a drink."

"Sounds good," Methos said.

* * *

A few days passed, every day more of the same. In the middle of the night Methos would be woken up by the continuous sounds of Tommy's crying across the hall. Kronos on the other hand slept through it every time. Sometimes Methos would creep out of bed and try to wake the girl up and find out what was wrong, he failed every time. Come the morning, there was nothing to indicate she remembered any of it. The only part that surprised Methos was that her throat wasn't raw after all this time. The days were much the same, either Tommy came in and got them up if they slept past 6:30, or she got up when they did, she spent most of the morning either watching the TV, reading and tearing up the newspapers, or staying in her room and keeping to herself. She still hadn't come around to saying much in his presence. He didn't know, Kronos figured in time she would adapt to having a third person in the house and finally give in and speak with him around, but he was starting to bet that this girl could outwait both of them. He was sure she'd had a good teacher.

One night before turning in, Methos stepped into Tommy's room to check on the girl. She was already in bed, absently fiddling with the limbs on a big gangly stuffed blue dog, twisting a paw, turning an ear, like she was trying to jimmy something into place. Her eyes were more towards the ceiling, not focused on the toy or on him.

"Gonna be cold tonight," he said as he grabbed the covers and pulled them up tighter on her, "Better make sure you're going to be plenty warm."

As he tucked her in, his hand met with something stuffed under one of the pillows. He reached in and pulled out an old copy of The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane and he looked at Tommy.

"Kronos know you're reading this?" he asked.

She looked up at him, and without a sound she nodded her head.

"I don't think so," he replied, taking it from her. In truth, he didn't give a damn if Kronos knew or not or if he _cared_ or not. He didn't want Tommy getting any ideas…or nightmares for that matter. He suspected she was having enough of those as it was.

Her eyes gave nothing away but he knew she was mad at him, good, that would be an improvement, at least then she'd be processing through her emotions instead of this continuous brick wall act she was giving him. He was almost out the door when he looked back to her, called out 'Goodnight', and shut off the lights. Then headed across the hall to Kronos' room where he already was, and climbed into bed.

"Have you ever tried asking her if she remembers her parents?" Methos asked.

"Now what would the point in that be?" Kronos asked, "You know as well as I do that she was abandoned the day she was born."

"Probably so, but her mother had to have found her at some point," Methos said, "It's only logical."

Kronos snorted, "You always _were_ big on that concept."

"Goodnight," Methos dismissively said as he burrowed under the covers and against the pillows.

"Oh shut up," Kronos remarked.

* * *

He didn't wake up that night. He never heard any crying from across the hall. Asleep it wasn't really something he noticed, but in that area between asleep and awake, it occurred to Methos, a few seconds before it also occurred to him that he felt like he was on a waterbed in an earthquake. Somebody was shaking him.

He opened his eyes and while the room was too dark to actually see anyone, he _knew_ who had been trying to shake him awake.

"Tommy, it…" he turned and looked at the clock on the nightstand. 5:30 in the morning, and he knew this was right because the room was much darker than when they usually got up at a later time. Holy crap this kid's internal alarm clock must've switched over for Daylight Savings Time or something.

"Tommy, it's an hour earlier than usual," he said as he put the clock down, "What is it? What…"

Even in the dark he was able to make out something, and he knew in that instant that something wasn't right. He reached over, turned on the lamp by the bed, and realized he was right. He reached over and passed along the shaking sensation to his brother to get him up.

"Kronos," he said, never taking his eyes off the girl, "Wake up."

The self proclaimed 'End of Time' grumbled a couple times before his eyes shot open and he shot up in bed, ready to strangle his brother for waking him up. "What is it?"

And then, he too saw what it was. Tommy stood beside the bed, still wearing the nightshirt she'd gone to bed in, her hair was messed up from sleeping, her eyes adjusting to the sudden bright light. Her mouth, her cheeks, her neck, the tops of her hands and the top of her nightshirt were all covered in blood, and it was _all_ in the final process of drying.

* * *

The pillow cases and the sheets on Tommy's bed also had bloodstains on them, so Methos stripped the bed to change the sheets, while Kronos stripped Tommy down and examined her for any injuries that would explain the sudden bloodbath. Nothing that he could find, so then he went about getting her washed up to see if the answer lay somewhere under the blood.

"It's not uncommon for children to scratch themselves in their sleep, some of them _do_ to the point of drawing blood," Methos speculated as he tossed the bloody sheets over the banister down to the first floor.

"I know, which is why I always keep her nails cut short," Kronos said as he scrubbed the blood off one of her hands. He looked _at_ her nails and it occurred to him that the last time it was probably _too_ short, oh well.

"And we know it wasn't a nosebleed otherwise you'd be cleaning _that_ up next," Methos added as he returned to the bedroom.

"Besides, the blood trail doesn't start there, it starts down at her mouth," Kronos pointed out.

"Well unless she's a vampire," Methos said, "It has to be her own blood, so where the hell did it come from?"

"You tell me, then we'll all know," Kronos replied as he pushed Tommy back into the bedroom to get her dressed. He got her into another shirt to cover her and then lifted her up as he sat down and set her on his lap so he could get a good close look at her face as he proceeded to get every last trace of blood cleaned off of it as well.

Methos watched the two of them. He was as clueless as Kronos was, she didn't have a single mark on her, nothing so much as a paper cut, not a single scratch. He couldn't help thinking about how _void_ of emotion Tommy had been when they first saw her. Obviously she knew _something_ was wrong and that's why she came to get them, but she didn't appear panicked whatsoever, excitable maybe, but any other time he'd think if a 13 year old woke up covered in blood, they _would_ be in a panic. But somehow, obviously, despite whatever _had_ happened, she had slept through it, otherwise he couldn't very well see her waiting around until the blood had time to dry to _then_ come get them. Another thought occurred to him, but surely she would've been awake if…

"What about an ulcer?" Methos asked, "How's her mouth look?"

"I already checked," Kronos told him, "No blood spots, no blisters, no sores, no _ulcers_, nothing."

As soon as he finished washing off her face, Methos felt like he'd fallen through the looking glass right into the Twilight Zone as Tommy half turned in his lap and threw her arms around him so he couldn't get up and separate from her. Yes indeed, if _anybody_ were to ever see _this_ side of his brother, _nobody_ would live to tell about it; he had a reputation to maintain after all. But none of it could fool this girl, she _knew_ she could trust him, somehow, she had it figured out that this insane, crazy, maniacal man, was not going to hurt her. No small feat, especially for a child.

Kronos recovered from his minor shock and placed a strong hand on the girl's back and let her stay where she was for a minute. Then he peeled her hands off of him and stood up and said, "Alright, it's obvious nobody's going to get any rest now, so let's go downstairs and get something to eat."

* * *

Methos wasn't sure if Tommy's bed sheets could be salvaged, but he dumped them in the washing machine set for an extra heavy load and for good measure put a combination of salt and meat tenderizer in with them. If _that_ didn't do the trick, they'd just burn them and buy new, a philosophy more than one of his wives had shared over the centuries. Then he joined Kronos and Tommy in the kitchen but once he sat down he noticed that Tommy wasn't eating again. She pushed her food around on her plate but wouldn't put any of it in her mouth. He pushed his chair back, stood up, went over to her side of the table, pulled her chair out and pulled her up out of it and hauled her over towards the sink. He forced her mouth open and rammed his thumb and index finger in to check her teeth. He found one _extremely_ loose molar that, he forced her mouth open wider and saw there was another tooth coming in right on top of it.

"Can you count, Tommy?" he asked. He didn't wait for her to answer and merely said, "One…two…three," and pulled.

"Ah!" she yelped as the tooth came out.

"That should take care of her eating problems," Methos said as he dropped the tooth on the counter.

Tommy picked up a glass of water left on the counter and started to drink it.

"Don't drink that!" Methos told her, "Spit it out, _now_."

Confused as all hell, Tommy spat the water out into the sink, and Methos looked and was surprised to see that it had come out relatively clear, with only a few small red spots in it.

"No blood," he said as he turned to Kronos, he turned back to Tommy and forced her mouth open again and made her tilt her head back and he said, "The hole's not bleeding."

"You lost me completely," Kronos said.

Methos snapped his fingers, "Did she have any loose teeth when you brought her here, or since?"

"No."

"But you _saw_ this one coming up above the other one, didn't you?"

"So what?" Kronos asked, "You rip them out before they're loose, let _alone_ before they're _ready_, you have any idea how much the kid will scream _then_?"

"Obviously it loosened up sometime over the past few days, that's why she wouldn't eat, and somehow the tooth worked itself looser while she was asleep, it stayed in but it shifted enough to bleed out just like when the tooth _is_ pulled," Methos told him, "That's where all the blood came from, that's how come she didn't have a mark on her because nothing was wrong." He pulled up her top lip to show the tooth embedded up in the gum and said, "This tooth," he pointed to the discarded one on the counter, "Pushed down on that tooth to get it out."

"That's what I like about you, brother," Kronos said sarcastically, "Having children around always _did_ turn you into a rambling, bumbling boob."

Tommy reached into her mouth with her finger and felt the hole that would very quickly be filled in with the other tooth shifting down. She made a disgusted face as she stuck her thumb in with her finger and pulled something else out, and showed it to Methos, one of the roots that had stubbornly hung on.

"Open your mouth again," he told her, "I'm going to make sure there aren't any others planning to pop out soon."

She did, and he did, and he was pleased to find the rest were all rock solid.

"Well you should feel better now," he told her, "But the next time one of them's hurting, let us _know_."

The girl slowly nodded, her eyes not quite trusting, reminded him a bit too much of a dog sensing it was about to be beaten, and it showed; the muscles in her face tightened up around her eyes and around her top lip, bracing for a blow. Methos said nothing, he looked towards his brother and he saw that Kronos _hadn't_ seen it, so he decided not to bring it up, still, he couldn't help wondering, was that more of the preparation she had received by whoever had taught her so far? Or was that a reflex based on experience?


	6. Chapter 6

Methos woke up in the night again feeling once more like he was on a water bed with the hiccups. This time he realized though it wasn't someone trying to shake him into consciousness, it was Tommy trying to climb _over_ him to get into the bed between them.

"What the hell is going on?" he asked as he tried to turn over and see if Kronos was awake too or if he was somehow managing to sleep through this.

The turbulence hadn't woken Kronos up, but Methos' question had, and now Kronos was half awake, fully annoyed, and he answered, "Nothing new, this happens once in a while, just move over and try not to fall off."

The things he put up with. It was just no wonder he always came back to this man, he was a glutton for punishment and even he could admit it. His mind wandered to part of a conversation they'd had a few years ago, he couldn't remember now how it started or what most of it was about, but somewhere in the middle of it he could still hear Kronos' smug voice, saying:

"_I think you're not used to pain, brother, what's happened, you gone soft? There was a time you'd bounce back up asking for more."_

Pain was a given in any Immortal's life, physically it got to the point of redundancy, psychological however, that one could last as long as they did, a lesson he'd learned only too well over the centuries. 5000 years later, he still hadn't learned, every time life became overwhelming for him, he still came running back here, to the one individual in the whole world that he _knew_ was just as demented and twisted as he was, and yet despite this Kronos had _still_ proven stable enough to be his rock, the _one_ thing in his life that kept him grounded in reality; while other Immortals less fortunate had a tendency to lose their minds completely, whether from burning out on too many drugs or the grief of losing too many people or maybe simply living too long, whatever the reason Methos had seen a lot of other Immortals crash and burn and the one thing that the ones he knew about all had in common was how much they had bought into the idea of the Game, they'd all come to the conclusion since there _could_ be only one, there wasn't much point in getting attached to any other Immortals knowing it could come down to one of them killing the other someday. How many of them _had_ senselessly died because of that _stupid_ idea? And how many others were still alive and their minds fried to the point the only way their suffering would end _would_ be to lose their heads? He looked at these cases, he was all too familiar with many of them, and they served as a constant reminder of just _why_ he kept coming back to this crazed madman. Ironic though it was, his link to Kronos was the only thing that kept him _sane_ some days.

He inched over towards the edge of the bed so Tommy could get comfortable in the middle. She did, burrowed under the covers, and kept to herself, she didn't crowd in on Methos and he noticed she also didn't on Kronos, though _that_ would've been understandable. Once again he lay awake in the dark and waited, in time her breathing changed and indicated that she'd fallen asleep, and so had Kronos. Hoping he'd be left alone in peace for the rest of the night, he too settled down and tried falling back asleep.

If they weren't about the weirdest bunch of people fate ever threw together…still he supposed they _all_ could've done worse. He dreaded to think who Tommy might've wound up with if Kronos hadn't found her, or worse, kept in that mental hospital for the rest of her life; a case, a test subject, not a person, not a child, forever feigning deafness and blindness and muteness, until eventually she would've had to crack and let on that she could hear and see, and when that inevitably happened, what then? Whose mercy would she be at? No, any way he looked at it, ironically enough she couldn't have wound up with anyone better qualified for taking care of her, than that madman laying over on the other side of the bed. Go figure.

* * *

He woke up alone.

It was the first time since he'd been brought to this house that Methos didn't wake up either with his brother or because Tommy was trying to get his attention. The sun was already up and shining through the windows, he could actually hear birds singing outside, but the other side of the bed was empty and the house itself was quiet as a tomb. Methos looked over at the clock and saw it was 8:30, he didn't even remember falling asleep but he also didn't get why he'd slept so long, and for that matter he wondered where the others were?

A quick search of the house turned up nothing, so Methos headed outside to find out what was going on, that also proved futile, he couldn't find anybody anywhere. He didn't get it but he trusted his brother knew what he was doing, whatever the hell that was, so while he waited for them to surface, he decided to check out the rest of the property and see what all there _was_ to the place. Past the junkyard in the back that seemed to run on forever, Methos found a back road behind the lot that went straight downhill for about half a mile, and from there he discovered it led to a shortcut to what looked like an abandoned construction site. In the midst of the half finished work there was a large rock quarry that was filled with water from the previous rains, about the size of an Olympic swimming pool.

By nature Methos was not a big water person: he didn't like boats, he hated the sea, he could _about_ tolerate the rain, come to think of it he couldn't even remember the last time he'd even _drank_ water, seemed he'd been living off of beer for the better part of a thousand years. Swimming was not in his first nature but he _had_ eventually learned and he _was_ still good at it…and he started thinking. He got close to the edge and crouched down to get a better look at it. Of course quarries were notorious death traps for fools who blindly believed there was nothing under the surface but thousands of gallons of water, he knew better: rocks, abandoned machinery, there was no end to the potential deathtraps that lay down there like Jaws waiting to pop up and bite a meal. He looked up at the sun and thought about it, once it warmed up a little he could check it out and if it proved _to_ be safe, then…

Well, he could think about that later. He headed back to the house and just as he arrived he could hear a car approaching. It was the first time he'd actually noticed the car that Kronos had picked him up in was gone. Odd. Methos headed out to the street and watched it approach, his brother must've been drunk, from where he stood Methos could see the car careening from side to side as it came up the road. Methos took a step back but otherwise stayed where he was and watched as the car came speeding up, then sharply turned into the driveway and jolted to a sudden stop, then he headed over to see what was going on, and traded that answer for another question when he saw it was Tommy in the driver's seat of the car and not his brother.

"Do I even want to know?" he asked the man sitting in the passenger seat.

"No, probably not," was Kronos' only remark.

Methos pointed towards Tommy and asked, "This been going on long?"

"A couple weeks," he answered, and added, "Given we managed to get through this time without the car being totaled says to me it's improving."

Methos just took a step back and shook his head in disbelief.

* * *

Since Tommy had been liberated from her bad tooth, Methos noted how quickly her appetite had made a sudden comeback. Where the last few days she'd hardly touch her food, now she ate everything she could get her hands on. He watched wide eyed during dinner as she practically swallowed her food whole. And once her plate was empty she grabbed two rolls out of a bowl in the center of the table and bit into both of them alternatively. Good Lord, that girl must've been starving the last few days, so why, he wanted to know, hadn't she said anything? To him it was a no brainer, she still didn't trust him, this he could tell _without_ her saying anything, okay, but why not to Kronos? For that matter, Methos went over in his head roughly how long it could be between one tooth coming out and another, of course every child was different and such they all came out at different times, but judging on how far in the new tooth already was he'd guess it had been working its way in for about a year, so possibly it had also been that long since the last time she'd lost one, and where had she been then? Still in the asylum? A further example of how she'd been trained, in the several days he'd been staying with them, he never heard a sound out of her that would imply any pain eating, and since Kronos also didn't know about it, that meant despite everything he _had_ come to know about her, this was one area where she'd never let her guard down.

He thought back to the other morning, her covered in her own blood, _they_ couldn't figure out what had happened until well after the fact, _she_ couldn't possibly have known what the cause of it was. Any other child that woke up soaked in blood, even _without_ an obvious explanation, would've been screaming their head off in a panic. Not a sound. And why, since she _was_ leery of him, did she come and wake _him_ up first? Maybe that _was_ the panic. And yet she still betrayed nothing, her face was as stone as ever before. Thinking about it all again, he didn't believe for one minute that she _hadn't_ been in constant agony with that tooth, so the question was why hadn't she tried removing it herself? All the questions kept going back to her mother, how long had it been since she had been abandoned? Who was her mother? Where was she now? Where had she gone? And why now?

These were the questions they needed the answers to, but Methos doubted they could even risk asking the questions.

* * *

"You know as well as I do that this is rocky territory," Methos told Kronos the next morning, "On one hand I think it's vital we find out as much as we can about her background, but on the _other_, I know what we're looking at if we push too much, if the questions become too personal she'll shut down, maybe even self destruct, we've seen what happens when she's not _able_ to answer questions and gets frustrated. So where does that leave us?"

"Same place we've always been, except this time we _know_ it," Kronos answered without missing a beat, evidently he'd had plenty of time to consider this route as well.

Methos thought about it for a minute and shook his head, "I don't know, sometimes I wonder if she's not just as badly off here as she was at the asylum." He walked over to one of the windows in the kitchen and looked out, "Does she ever get _out_ of here?"

"For what?" his brother asked.

Methos rolled his eyes since Kronos couldn't see it, there were times that Methos felt confident that when they were passing out brains, in some areas his brother must've been standing in line with a sieve. Instead of mentioning that though, since he valued his internal organs remaining internal, he decided to subtly change the subject, "Do you know if she can swim?"

"What are you babbling about now?" Kronos wanted to know.

Methos turned back to him and explained, "There's a quarry about half a mile down from this property, perfect place to find out, _no_ witnesses."

"_You_ don't even like swimming, and I spent two years teaching _you_," Kronos told him.

"Don't remind me," Methos responded cynically, "I _still_ get seasick in a bathtub."

He looked out the window again and saw Tommy in the backyard sitting on a large rock, kicking one foot back and forth as she looked out at the vast piece of land.

"What is it?" Kronos asked, as if he was able to pick up on his brother's brainwaves.

"You ever ask her about her mother?" Methos asked.

"No," Kronos answered simply.

"I didn't think so," he replied, "That's probably _the_ most pertinent question at hand, tell you the truth I don't know if I dare ask either. There's no telling what can of worms _that_ would open up."

"Or if she'd even remember," Kronos added.

Methos sighed and shook his head, "She must, she _has_ to remember, she remembered the training, _only_ her mother could've prepared her like that."

"You presume too much," Kronos told him.

"I know what I'm talking about," Methos turned and glared at him, "The mothers are the only ones who even know _where_ the children are put, they're the only ones that would be able to find them again. It had to be her mother, there's no other explanation."

"So ask her," Kronos said.

Methos did a double take. He responded, "She won't tell me."

"What makes you certain of that?" Kronos asked.

"Because she doesn't trust me, she won't talk to _me_."

His brother replied simply, "She will."

* * *

"_She will."_

Methos knew Kronos well enough to recognize the ominous way he'd said it, discreetly enough that nobody else would've even picked up on it, but Methos could hear it dripping in his voice. They hadn't pushed the matter for the rest of the day, and Methos thought for a moment, foolishly, that they were just going to drop it. Showed what he got for thinking. Later that night as he was heading upstairs, he heard Kronos talking to Tommy up on the second floor. He stopped halfway up the stairs, but he was able to get a glimpse into the conversation from a mirror hanging on the wall that reflected the two of them in her bedroom.

"I do-o-n't want to talk to him," Tommy said with a shake of her head.

"It doesn't matter, you're going to," Kronos told her.

She shook her head again, "No I won't."

"You will."

"I don't want to," she insisted.

That earned her a slap on the cheek, again little actual impact but a lot of noise, and it got the point across.

"Why do I have to?" she asked.

"Why?" Kronos repeated, and added for an answer in the same subtly ominous tone as before, "Because he's your friend."

Tommy shook her head, and poked him, "Y-y-y_our_ friend, not mine."

"Wrong," Kronos told her, "My _brother_."

She just shook her head again, "Don't want to. Don't trust him."

"I know," he replied, "Which is why you're _going_ to."

Tommy shook her head again and turned to leave but Kronos restrained her and pinned her arms behind her back, she screamed like she was being tortured, but Methos knew better. Kronos crossed the line as a rule of thumb, but he didn't brutalize children, his methods were unorthodox by any standard but he always knew the limit of what was _just_ enough.

The girl struggled against him futilely and when she couldn't get loose she sagged her body against him and complained, "No fair, no fair!"

An all too familiar smug look on his face that Methos knew only too well from personal experience, he watched as Kronos grabbed Tommy around her thighs and lifted her up, carried her over towards the bed, and dropped her on it. The springs creaked loudly in protest. Then he yanked the covers up and tucked her in tightly so she couldn't get out.

"Now go to sleep," he told her.

Methos remained on the stairs and waited and saw Kronos turn and start down towards him.

"Was that really necessary?" he asked.

Kronos was unfazed by the question and merely responded with, "Did you enjoy the show?"

"_Well_?" Methos refused to change the subject.

His brother's only reply was, "If you're going to be staying here, she can learn to talk to you like any other human being."

"Still…I can imagine this hasn't been easy for her either, first she was locked up and didn't communicate with anybody, now she's spent the last three months out here with just you, and now here I come along and disrupt that."

"She can adjust," Kronos said.

"I think _you_ presume too much, Brother," Methos replied as they headed down the stairs.


End file.
