1stmacleod | What never will be

Current Mood: devastated
Current Location: Kairos house, Sanctuary

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What never will be

Staying just off the Nexus makes it easier to visit, and Connor is tentatively getting familiar with the place. He's been told by a couple of people that he needs to get a PINpoint, and he's learned to reliably find the free bar. He's met a girl who wants to get some sword training from him, which is something to do, and he hasn't felt the buzz of another immortal since his first time here, and that was Ramirez.

He is almost, just barely, settling in.

Then he answers a casual question, and the woman who asked it starts to tell him about the other Connor MacLeod. The one who still has a good friend and true brother in Duncan. The one who still has Alex. And John. And Rachel. An ageless, immortal Rachel.

Connor staggers back to Kairos' house, with a box of chocolates he's supposed to give to his own Duncan along with the apology he's dreading to make. Over the past five years he's mostly pulled his mind back together. He no longer hallucinates, he has enough presence of mind to walk around in public without attracting stares. He remembers to shave at least every couple of days and shower whenever he gets a chance, and he can carry on normal conversations. He's walking a fragile edge, though.
Now his mind is swirling with the stories he's been told of a big happy family with another Connor MacLeod at the boisterous center of it all, somewhere out there not so far away. It's the most wonderful thing he could possibly dream of to know his family is happy and healthy somewhere, and the most agonizingly painful thing ever to know that it's not his family, and it never will be.
He comes into the house and pets the dogs, and puts the box of chocolates on the dresser in the guest room, and sits on the floor beside the bed with his head in his hands and shakes all over for the next few hours.

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At five-ten sharp, there's a whirlwind of activity as Kairos comes home. There's a tinge of cold in the air, and that always pumps her up. She throws her rainbow-hued scarf on the hook in the hallway, dumps her work portfolio in her studio, and peels off her shoes - finally.

In the hallway, barefoot and exhilarated, she stops. Listens.
Then she frowns. She's used to Connor being so quiet, but this quiet felt.. odd. She's not preternaturally empathic but she finds herself going to his room, twisting open the door, and looking inside. A little worried to what she'd find, to be honest.

"Connor?..?" she calls quietly, not wanting to startle him.

Usually Connor lurks around the house doing chores, and keeping out of the way quietly, but with an air of relative contentment. Today there may be some underlying tension in the air, like the brooding dark before a storm. Even for his kind, Connor's got a powerful quickening, and that's bound to have some subtle effects for the magically sensitive.

He's still sitting on the floor, trembling all over, but dry-eyed. He hasn't really cried in years. His voice comes out in a cracked whisper, dull and flat. "What?"

She crouches beside him, concern evident. "Are you okay?" Stupid question, Kairos. "I mean, what's wrong?"

He takes a long, slow breath, and rubs his face with shaking hands. "You... know about alternates?" It's all a little new to him, but he was forewarned of the concept at least, before he found out about his own.

Kairos reaches over to rub his back gently. She nods. "Yeah. A friend of mine - John, you've heard me talk about him - has a couple of alternates. He's very good friends with a couple." That's Kairos being tactful. John knows them in the biblical sense. "But I don't have any, and other than Joan I'm not familiar with any."

"I met... not mine- someone who knows mine. And... my whole family... she told me all about them, alive and well..." His voice is always a little raspy, but when he's distraught he sounds like he has a case of laryngitis. He wraps his arms around his knees, curled up in a compact ball of trembling shock.

The massage turns into a 1 armed hug, and attempts to curl herself around him to give him added comfort.

So he's happy that they're still alive, but sad that they're not his. She can understand that. "I'm so sorry, Connor."

Without thinking about it he leans into the embrace. He's very tactile by nature, and he needs some basic human comfort, right now.

She's got the situation pegged, if she just adds sheer shock at the mere existence of an alternate family. "I don't... I can't... I'm glad they're alive..." He shuts his eyes tight, and he knows there's guilt in his voice for the other half of that equation.

She pets his back a little bit, laying her head on his shoulder. She'll let him talk it out, mostly being silent except for a "I know." or other verbal affirmation.

"She said... they don't come to the Nexus much, at least." Which is good, because he's in no shape to meet them. He's not sure his shattered sanity could handle it.
Unfortunately, Connor's not good at talking anything out. He's the quiet type by nature.

"Maybe that's good," she says. "Obviously it's not a case of out-of-sight-out-of-mind, but it might help the healing process if you don't have to deal with another-you getting something you've lost."

He nods, because he was relieved to hear he's not likely to run into any of them, but he doesn't look especially pleased about it. The trembling is easing a little, though. For a long moment he rests his forehead on his knees, leaning against her slightly, then he rouses himself to reach under the bed. He draws out his battered old suitcase and opens it, and reaches into the deep pocket in the lid. Everything he owns is in here, apart from what he's wearing and his sword. There's about half a dozen shirts, another pair of jeans, some underwear and a shaving kit. But what he pulls out of the pocket is a small jewelry bag and a slim manila folder holding two photos, and a child's crayon drawing. He shifts to it cross-legged and pulls these into his lap.

Her heart really does break for him. Kairos tries to be subtle as she looks at the drawing.

He opens the folder, tilting it for her to see. That's why he pulled it out, after all. One photo shows him smiling and scruffy, with bangs, up close with a woman with fluffy brown hair. Together they're holding a dark-haired baby, probably almost a year old. There are wedding bands visible. There's something dated about the hair and clothes, something very 1980's about them. The other photo looks more recent, but still not new. His hair is shorter in it, closer to how it would look if he cleaned himself up a little now. He has a blonde woman on either side of him, one slightly sharp-looking, with narrow arched brows and a quiet smile, probably in her thirties. The other woman is in her forties at least, slightly built with smooth waves of pale gold hair, and a neat suit. She's beaming, leaning against him. In front of the trio is a boy perhaps ten years old, with dusky skin and dark hair, and an impish smile. None of them looks related, but they look like a family all the same.
The crayon drawing is two figures playing catch, and the words 'I love you Dab' are across the bottom.

"Aww." She gently traces the outlines of the little ball with a fingertip. "How sweet, Connor. Your family is beautiful."

"That's... John, in both pictures." His voice is still crackling a little. It's pretty safe to assume the picture is from John, too. The paper is just a tiny bit yellow, and there's crease lines from where it was folded twice for a while, but it's only fifteen years old. "He was... the second picture was taken the year before..." He leaves it at that. They were all too young for death, but especially him. "My daughter, Rachel- ah... she's the older one..." Because that's always awkward. In the photo she looks old enough to be his mother. "My girlfriend Alex..." He strokes the older photo with the baby in it, hand shaking. "And my wife, Brenda. We were only married a year before there was a car accident..."

There's something to say about Sanctuary's eccentricities. Kairos doesn't blink an eye about children that look older than their parents. Her own mother is in her seventies, though she looks forty. "I'm sorry, hon." She pets him a little more.

The jewelry pouch sits unopened on his knee, but she may guess at the wedding rings in there, among a couple other items of Rachel's and Alex's.
He stares down at the photos, taking slow breaths. It's both painful and good to look at them, because he never wants their images to fade from his mind. "If they hadn't known me..." To say that would have made them safe isn't technically accurate, because Rachel would have died as a child without him, and John's fate as a baby in an orphanage is impossible to guess at.

"If they hadn't known you, they wouldn't have known the love you have for them, and vice versa."

"Was that worth their lives?" He gives her an agonized look.

She's quiet for a moment. "I would have laid down my life for someone to love me, so if someone was lucky enough to have someone love them back, then yes. Even if it were for five minutes, it's better than not."

A hard shiver runs through him, and he shuts his eyes again. "They deserved someone better... and they deserved to live." There's another shaky sigh, but he's starting to slowly get a grip on himself again. "I'm not... I'm no good, without them. Everything of me that was worthwhile died with them."

She can't argue with deserving to live, and she's not even going to try. "You need to live, and live well, to honor their memory," she murmurs. "It's a horrible thing, to live without someone you love. But it's worse to live without someone you love and not try to live for them." If that makes any sense. It sounded better in her head.

"I've... forgotten how." He tilts his head back against the side of the bed, shaky and drained, but calmer now. "I'd forgotten how even before... they came into my life. I needed them to remind me every day. I'm so tired..."

"Then it's good you're here. Safe. Maybe you could remember."

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