Facing the Issues

By Donna and Abs

(Rated R)

Closing the door of the door of the bathroom behind her, Katherine Dixon leaned on the sink, closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths, trying to get her turbulent emotions under control. After a moment, she looked up, studying the face in the mirror. Her face was pale, and the blue eyes that looked back at her in the mirror were red from the tears she had just shed. Her short, wavy blonde hair was a tangled mess, and there was a dirt smudge on her nose. She looked like she felt – like a lost sixteen year old kid, who was all alone in the world.

"Talking about making a lousy first impression," she mumbled to herself, as she ran some water in the sink to wash up with. Once she had washed, she ducked her head in the water, rinsing the pine needles and dirt out of her hair, and then finger combed it so that it looked halfway decent again. She sponged out worse of the stains on her dress, noticing for the first that the side seam of it had some how gotten ripped. Whether in her flight for her life, or during her dip in the river, she didn’t know, but it exposed her right side almost all the way to the hip. She looked around for something to either repair it or at least pin it together, but didn’t find anything.

With a deep sigh, she straightened her dress the best she could and walked back out to face the new world she had somehow fallen into. Methos and MacLeod were still downstairs, as was Lupe, though she was uneasily pacing back and forth. In her edgy state, she kept trying to feed Bogaslav, but the boy had had enough.

He blushed a little when he saw Katherine walking towards them. Bogaslav had thought she was pretty before, but now, all cleaned up, she looked absolutely wonderful to him. The petite woman waved at him, and then turned to Methos. "He's a good kid. He was resourceful enough to get a fire going when he found himself stranded in the woods, and he didn't panic. Got a good head on his shoulders, I can tell. Have you got something useful for him to do? Anything but milking cows. I think the lad has had more than enough of that."

"Really?" Methos asked. "Damn. All the other jobs are filled." Lupe growled at him, and though she did so often, there was a real edge to this one. "Shite. That woman's going to take a piece of my bum one day." He sighed, and then turned to Katherine. "Polish?" he asked, making sure what language to use in addressing the lad. When she nodded, he went up to Bogaslav and asked him what he wanted to do.

"I want to run a shop!" the young man said eagerly. When Methos didn't laugh at his dream, he went on to say that he was really good with keeping figures, so that he knew he could keep the accounts of a shop straight. His eyes were shining as he remembered going into the shops in town as a child, seeing all the merchandise neatly arranged on the shelves. To him, after so many hours in a barn cleaning up after the filthy cows, such a place would be pure paradise!

His parents ran a place that served food and drink, he said, but that was nowhere as nice as this was. He looked around, almost in awe of the hotel/saloon. And though Lupe had scared him with her growls at Methos, she was too pretty not to forgive.

"Speaking of shops," Kat said, motioning to her bare feet with one hand while she held the ripped seam of her dress closed with the other. Not that Methos hadn't seen her in a lot less, but even so. "I could use some shoes and some new clothes. Are we going to use some form of money here, by the way, or will everything be barter for a while?" Having lived out on the *frontier* several times in her life, she was very familiar with the way that worked.

"Actually," Methos began, but just at that moment, Montoya came in. It was clear, from the way Methos clammed up, that he did not want the other man to know what he had been about to tell her. "Actually, I was going to ask Lupe if she would take you over to the mercantile to pick something out. Once we get things sorted we'll think of how to pay people for their work. For now, we're helping ourselves . . . no one has abused the privilege yet," he added.

"Perhaps keeping track of who takes what would be a good job for our young friend," Kat said, eying the pompous looking man who just walked in. There was something about him that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Without even knowing who he was, she decided that he was about as trustworthy as a rattlesnake. And most likely just as deadly. The odd thing though was that he looked Bogy! 

The lad was staring at Montoya, his mouth wide open in amazement. "Yes, I think that would be fine. But I don't think he's the one to help you get yourself outfitted. Lupe? Would you?"

She would rather bite her own foot off than help *him*, but the lady seemed nice, and in need of a hand, so she shrugged at him but nodded to her.

Lupe took her and the lad both to the mercantile, where they went through what was available. Fitting someone as tiny as Katherine was easier said than done, but Katherine assured her that she was handy with a needle. They had found some safety pins to hold the dress she was wearing together until she altered the clothing she had picked out to fit. Shoes were another thing all together. After rummaging around in the back room, Bogy came out triumphantly with what looked like an old fashioned pair of button top boots that looked to be her size. "I'm not going to say just how long it’s been since I've wore a pair like this," Katherine chuckled.

Noting the neat piles of calico and woolen fabric, Katherine commented that push comes to shove, she could always sew up a couple of dresses. "Wouldn't be the first time I’ve had to make my own clothes," she chuckled, smiling at the ecstatic young man who was poking through all that was in the shop, mumbling to himself in Polish.

Lupe looked at her own dress. She wasn't much bigger than Katherine, but she wasn't too concerned with the way her dress hung on her. And she didn't wear shoes at all!

Leaving Bogaslav to continue his explorations, the two women went back to the inn, where Lupe told her that she could stay until she found a place of her own. "Thank you," Kat said kindly. "I'm looking forward to getting to know you. It looks like we are all in this together."

Once back inside the inn, Lupe assigned a room to her, and Katherine went upstairs to work on her clothing. Remembering that the new woman hadn't eaten anything as of yet, Lupe fixed up a plate for her, and then growled at the men just sitting around, suggesting that one of them take Katherine her food before it got cold.

Methos looked at MacLeod meaningfully. "I'd rather no bad feelings, if you know what I mean. At least not on this side of the river?"

With a sigh, MacLeod took the plate and climbed the stairs. Lupe had given Katherine one of the nicer rooms, but it was all the way up on the top floor and way in the back. As he put his hand on the door, he felt her buzz, but at the same time, something else. Something that was drawing him to her, like metal file fragments to a strong magnet. Pushing on the door, he glanced in, only to see her sitting in the middle of her bed, dressed only in some rather flimsy looking underwear as she worked on repairing the ripped seam of her dress with the needle and thread she had picked up at the mercantile.

"Don't you believe in knocking?" she asked, not even looking up. She had known who it was by the time he had hit the top of the stairs.

"Yes, of course, I'm sorry." He started to withdraw but she told him it was too late now.

"Is that food I smell?" she asked, her words mumbled a little as she broke the thread using her teeth.

"Methos calls it mystery meat stew. It's very good. Probably beef, but you never know with Lupe. Could be anything from rabbit to venison."

"I learned a long time ago not to ask too many questions about what goes into the pot. As long as it keeps body and soul on speaking terms with each other, that’s all that matters." She stood up, placing the dress and sewing materials on a nearby stool and walked over to him. Seeing him shuffle his feet and do his best not to ogle, she chided him gently. "You've spent a lot of time in Japan, Duncan my lad. Skin is skin. You should know that by now." She took the plate from his hand and turned to place it on the night stand. This time Duncan made no effort not to look.

"Aye. But family is family, and you are my cousin's woman. It doesnae matter if he's gone," he said, slipping into his dialect, "because he's nae really."

He could see her the muscles in her shoulders tighten as she struggled to control her emotions. "Easy for you to say," she finally managed to get out. "You have his quickening. I have absolutely nothing. Inside of me is a huge Connor size hole that aches to be filled. Sometimes I think that I really died with him that night. My stupid body just hasn't caught on to that fact yet." With a sigh, she dipped the spoon into the food and ate a few bites, even though she really wasn't that hungry.

Duncan looked at her for a moment, then took out his sword and laid it in front of her. "Then you will have him inside you forever," he said, bowing his head. She could see he was as grief-stricken as she was.

For a long moment, she looked at the instrument of death in front of her. So deadly, and yet so beautiful at the same time. With a trembling hand, she ran her thumb along the edge of it, ignoring the sharp stab of pain as the razor sharp steel sliced it to the bone. Standing up as tall and straight as she could, she turned to face the man who had killed her lover, cupping his lower chin with her other hand. Then with her bleeding thumb, she marked the sign of the cross on his forehead, reverting to her own native way of speaking as well. "Ye did wa' ye ha' ta do, Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod. I dinna hold his blood agin ye. Live and grow stronger. Tha' is wa' he wanted. And meself as well."

Duncan had tensed while she was touching his weapon; now he relaxed. And with it came release in the form of bitter tears.

Once more, he found himself holding Katherine's warm little body in his arms, only this time, it was he that was being comforted. "Sshhh," she whispered. "It will be alright. We'll make it through this somehow. He wouldn't want either one of us to give up, now would he?" Her hand, with its thumb completely healed already, tenderly caressed his jaw line. She looked up, seeing the trickle of blood running down his nose from her little ceremony of forgiveness. "Would you like a wash cloth to wipe your face clean?" she chuckled.

"I suppose. I just wish I could wipe it away inside." He stood up, walking away in frustration. "Part of me feels him laughing inside. Reminding me of good times we had together. And then another part . . . sees his face when he asked me. I don't know how to wipe that away, Katherine. How to make it right. Methos would say to just accept it. But how?"

"I know one way," she said softly. Reaching behind her, she unsnapped her bra, tossing it on the stool to join her dress. "Will you trust me on this?"

Duncan turned around to say something, and his jaw dropped in surprise. Inside him, he could hear his teacher's joyous "YES!!!" reverberating between his ears.

He shook his head. "He says go for it."

Katherine threw back her head and laughed. "It would be just like him to say that, laddie, it most surely would! And he'll no let ye ha' a moment of peace if ye gang awa' from me now, and ye keen it in yer heart, do ye no?"

He managed a wry grin. "You have the right of it there," he said, now openly admiring the view.

The voice in his head grumbled, "Don’t just stand there yakking like a blithering idiot, KISS HER!!!!"

"Will you please just SHUT UP!" Duncan yelled, only to hear the laugh again echoing inside his skull.

Katherine raised an eyebrow and tilted her head to one side. "Excuse me?" she asked.

"He..., he was telling me to stop talking and kiss you," he stuttered.

"Sounds like a good idea to me," Katherine said with a musical sounding laugh as she moved into Duncan’s arms. "A very good idea."

He started to say something else, but found other things to do with his mouth as he found out that kissing Katherine took his whole attention. She most certainly gave it hers!

Sometime during the kiss, he had gotten turned around so that his back was to the bed. Giving him a little shove, Katherine pushed him back so that he was sitting on it, and without hardly missing a beat of the dance her tongue was doing in his mouth, divested Duncan of his shirt. Her small hands ran lightly over his muscled chest, back and shoulders, sending little shivers of delight up and down his spine. Not that his hands were idle. There wasn’t much of her, and his large hands could span quite a bit of her sweet body at one time.

At one point, he had pushed her panties down, and she had stepped out of them. Reaching down, she unsnapped his pants, and had him raise up enough so that she could remove them, giving a low whistle of appreciation of what she saw once the last of his garments had been tossed aside. "Ample. Extremely ample," she giggled, finding his mouth again as she pushed him flat on his back. "Up on the bed, Duncan, my lad. I’m going to have my way with ye right now. Just yell ‘Uncle’ when you have had enough"

He started to protest, but the words came out as a wordless moan as her mouth worked its way down his chest and belly to the prize that awaited her. Within moments, he was reaching up to grab the railings of the headboard, hanging on for dear life as she pleasured him.

"Oh sweet Je..... oh wow! Kat, that feels absolutely incredible!....Oh dear God! Stop! UNCLE!" he suddenly yelled, making the walls of the room rattle with the force of his voice. "Where in the world did you learn to do that? Don’t tell me *HE* taught you!"

"All right," she chuckled, an extremely smug look on her face as she straddled him, her blue eyes sparkling with mischief now instead of pain. "I won’t tell you. But you have to admit, laddie, that our man Connor was a very good teacher, was he no?"

Duncan groaned, flipping her over onto her back. In just a few minutes, he had her grabbing for the rails as well, squirming underneath him. But she didn’t yell uncle. As he brought her up to the edge, the sweet, delicious agony of her release washed over him as well, catching him completely by surprise.

"I..., I felt it too!" he said wide eyed as she lay panting, trying to catch her breath. In his head, Connor’s chuckle rang like a bell. "But..., but how?"

"You talk way to much, Duncan," she complained, as he heard almost the identical words spoken inside of him. "It’s time for action. Get ready for the ride of your life, Bucko. Take me. Take me now!"

He did. And as promised, the experience was nothing like he had ever had before. Not only was he feeling the sensations of his own body, but hers as well. Neither one of them made any effort to be quiet, or to hold back. Both Duncan and Katherine needed this badly, and as their bodies became one, so did their minds. As he relentlessly thrust himself in and out of her more than willing body, he caught brief glimpses in his mind of some of the times when Connor had been with her. Whether it was his teacher’s memories, or hers, Duncan didn’t know, or even care for that matter. If anything, it only pushed him on to try to make his own time with her just as memorable.

He renewed his efforts, and the memories faded into the back ground. Nothing in the world seemed to exist other than each other as he made love to the woman underneath him. When Duncan and Katherine’s simultaneous release finally exploded in them with a force not unlike that of a hard quickening but without the accompanying light show, it was his name she screamed out, not Connor’s. And for that, he was extremely thankful.

Afterwards the two Immortals clung to each other, breathing heavily, their sweat soaked bodies still entwined. And for the moment, all seemed right in the world.