Emory Garland hesitated as she entered Joe's bar, unzipping her coat as she looked around.  It was more than a little strange for  her to be here, especially considering the lateness of the hour.  It was, in fact, closing time for this Tuesday night, and the bar was  empty of its earlier crowd. The watchful eyes of Mike Barrett snapped up as he saw Emory step in, the words 'We're closed'  undoubtedly on his lips, but the expression on his face softened with recognition andhe nodded to her in welcome.

Joe Dawson was on the stage,  Gibson in hand,  playing some hard core blues.

Emory leaned against the bar, listening thoughtfully.  She had a pretty good ear for music, although it was mostly untrained, and she  could recognise the anguished phrases of Dawson's music as indicators that not all was right in the Bluesman's world.

She turned as Mike appeared at her shoulder, having officially closed the bar.  "What's going on?" she wondered.

Mike shrugged uneasily.  "He's... working something out."

Emory nodded and turned her attention back to the stage.  Mike, having nothing more to add, contented himself with cleaning up the bar.  She noted absently that Joe must have spent at least a portion of the evening tending bar, because he was dressed in a nice gray, button-down shirt and dark slacks, instead of the casual jeans and open necked sweaters he usually wore.

Now he had surrendered his bartending persona, loosened his collar, rolled up his sleeves, and become the Bluesman.  Dawson was wholly involved with his music, trying to feel his way back to his center.  It wouldn't have been worrisome, except that the normally hyper-observant man had failed to notice her entrance, and the chords he played were growing increasingly jarring and agonized.  Emory's fingers ached in sympathy.

After a few more minutes, Emory moved closer to stage, and stood near one of the tables.  She didn't know whether to break into his internal musings with conversation or to simply leave Dawson alone and enjoy the performance.  She finally decided on neither, choosing not to interrupt, but to let him know that she was here, nonetheless, by scraping back a chair and sitting down.

The Bluesman sensed his audience.  Suddenly self-conscious, his fingers stilled.  His hand cramped into a fist as he looked up.

"Emory?"  he said.  It was the last person he expected at this late hour.

"Hey!" Emory greeted him.  She couldn't prevent a worried glance at his fist before flicking her gaze back up to rest on his face. "Uh... Sorry Joe.  I didn't mean to interrupt."

"Emory,"  Joe repeated, noting her worry, and uncertainty.  "Hey,  What's up?"  he asked, recovering himself.  He shook his hand out, and laid the guitar away.

Emory shrugged uneasily.  "I was going to ask you the same thing.  Nice riffs there, but they sound a little hard on the fingers."

Dawson looked away, suddenly aware of his loss of shielding.  He often used music as a release, but there were some dark places in his soul he never meant Emory to see.  Or hear.  "Have to practice,"  he said lamely.   "Hey,"  he said more brightly.  "You're never an interruption.  Can I get you something? Cransoda, or ..."

"No thanks, I'm fine," she interrupted hastily. Almost immediately she realized her mistake.  "I mean... Actually, yeah, I would like ... A cransoda would be great.  Care to join me?"  She fumbled, feeling stupid and awkward.  Joe must see right through her.

Dawson canted his head, listening carefully.  "Please.  If you don't mind, Em.  We need to talk.  I need to apologize, I think."

Emory blinked.  Huh?  "Apologize for what?"  Had she missed something?  Now she *really* felt stupid.

Dawson got off the stage carefully, and met Mike coming from the bar, drinks already poured.  A silent look passed between them,  and then, Mike was gone.

Emory shrugged out of her coat, watching and waiting.

Dawson sat, not quite across from her, and not quite looking her in the eye.  "I'm sorry about getting you involved with the Watchers.  I'm sorry about what happened with the drugs, and all... and I feel like a fool."

Emory frowned at her drink.  "How is what happened *your* fault?" she asked, genuinely perplexed.  "*I'm* the fool here.   I knew Bertrand was bad news the moment I laid eyes on him, but I got into the car anyway just because I was mad."  She grimaced, frustrated with her own carelessness.  "Anyone with sense knows that the first priorty in a dangerous situation is not to let the bad guy get you alone," she muttered in dissatisfaction.

"Emory,  I allowed you to be trapped in that position in the first place, by letting you know about the Watchers, and by not taking adequate steps to protect you once I knew that you knew--damn, that sounds stupid.  Just like me.  I was stupid to let them take you.   I didn't realize how bad things had gotten."

"Protect me how?" asked Emory.  "By posting an armed guard?"

"Hell, I don't know." Dawson admitted, running his hand hard through his silvered hair.  "You live with two armed guards, after all."

"And you are *not* stupid, Joe," Emory objected, disturbed by his self-defacement.  "If you're going to call one of my best friends stupid, I'm afraid I'm gonna have to ask you to step outside..." She smiled a little, attempting to lighten the moment.

Dawson tried to match the smile, failing by a hair. "Em, I left you in the lurch.  You didn't have enough information to protect yourself.  I feel responsible."

Emory laughed ruefully.  "Well, that's kind of flattering, I guess...  Kind of weird..."  She snorted. "Possibly insulting, if I get all feminazi about it..."  Emory shook her head irritably.  "Joe, you *did* warn me that reading up on Watcher Material would get me... *us* into trouble," she reminded him.

Dawson looked down.  "I didn't tell you why.  Or how. Or, especially, what.   Hell, that was insulting on my part, I guess.  I owe you some free answers, if you still have questions."

"Joe, I was kidding about the insulting, part," she tried to get him to look her in the eye, so he could read her sincerity.   "You said it yourself, you *didn't know* how bad it had gotten. Frankly, I'm glad I didn't wind up doing something that could have gotten you killed."

Dawson's eyes snapped up to meet her's, measuring. Then they drifted away again.  She didn't know how close to the bone that statement had cut.  She didn't know about the Watcher Tribunal. "Em,  you're a friend.  I hate to see a friend hurt."

"Yeah, and I hate to see a friend hurting.  Joe..." She cast her eyes about the room, looking for the right thing to say.  She didn't see it.  "...Joe, what happened wasn't your fault.  You *told* me that the Watchers killed people when they had to, and I blew you off.  I didn't take it seriously because it sounded like something out of a James Bond flick."

"Em, it isn't right," Joe said earnestly, trying to make her understand his position.  "And it especially isn't right where you are concerned.  Ask Methos. He'll tell you the unvarnished story about my ability to walk between rationalization and truth when it comes to the Watchers.  They can be dangerous, and I should have properly warned you."

Emory's brow furrowed in consternation, what was she supposed to say to that?  Clearly Joe was taking her near-abduction by the Watchers as a personal failure. How could she convince him that he wasn't responsible for what happened?

A slow grin began to spread across her face, and she hid it behind a sip of her soda before Dawson could see.  She knew what Adam would do if he were here, listening to Joe heap blame upon his own shoulders. He'd annoy the Hell out of Joe Dawson.   "You know what Joe?  I think you're absolutely right.  This is all your fault.  You're a middle aged, middle class, white, heterosexual male.  That makes *everything* your fault.  Plus, you're *Catholic,* which only makes it worse.  If Original Sin doesn't get you, all the others will.  There's no getting around it, Dawson, you are definitely going to Hell."

If the floor hadn't been there, Dawson's jaw would have preceded him to the Nether Depths. "Em!  What kind of way is that to talk!"  Then a wave of embarrassment buried his wallowing case of the guilts.  "Jees, I sound just like my mother."

Emory tried hard not to laugh.  "*And* you carry a handgun, so the accessibility of firearms is partly your fault too.  And I don't even want to *touch* the fact that you are pushing a metabolic poison off on people who are too weak or ignorant to protect themselves from the harm they do to their bodies."

Dawson winced.  That last crack about the bar hit pretty hard.  It took a large swallow of beer to wash it down.  "Listen, Em..."

"No, no, no," Emory pressed her advantage.  "You can't tell me that you had nothing to do with those toxic waste dumps in Nevada.  Or what happened to Jerry Garcia."

"Em," Dawson tried to interject,  "I don't think that's what...  I mean..."

Getting into her role, she frowned sharply.  "Did you have anything to do with the Exxon Valdez?"

"Hell no!"  Dawson finally exploded.   "I was nowhere near the Pipeline Bar that night!"

Emory stared at him suspiciously. "No?"

"No!" Joe retorted.  He finally grinned sheepishly at her manipulations.

She smiled at him wickedly.  "So you're *not* trying to take responsibility for things *well* beyond your power to control? Because that's what happened with Bertrand, Joe," she said seriously.  "Even if I'd *known* that the Watchers might be coming for me, that's still no guarantee that I wouldn't have been walking down that street at night, alone, after I'd fought with Adam."

Dawson sighed.  "Point taken,"  he admitted.  But not necessarily agreed to.  "Do me a favor, though.  Leave off on the walking at night alone bit?  It's like summoning Murphy."  Joe Dawson was a firm believer in Murphy's Law, and tried to stay well out of his earshot.

Emory sighed and rubbed her face with her hands.  "I'm not *usually* that stupid, Joe.  I wasn't *thinking.* I was *mad.*"  Not to mention hurt, but Emory didn't want to bring that up right now.

Dawson snorted, and smiled, a slight faraway look in his eye.  "Yeah, I've been there."

"No!  Really?  I'd never have guessed, what with your lifestyle and your oh so very *flexible* moral standards."

"Ouch,"  Dawson grimaced.    "Flexible moral standards?"

"Sarcasm, Joe, ever hear of it?  It's not just a geological phenomenon anymore."  She arched her eyebrows and looked down her nose in what she hoped was a manner reminiscent of Adam Pierson.

This time the grin that touched his face was real, and lasting.  "Shoot, and I was thinking you knew something that I didn't."

Emory grinned back, happy with the results of her taunting.  It worked!  It actually worked! "Well, the two phenomena are *not* mutually exclusive, Mr. Dawson."

"Sarcasm and morals?   Maybe... I guess I always shot for the ethical side of the issue, not the "moral", Dawson evaded.  His lifestyle wasn't the issue.   Yet.

Emory groaned.  "Me *knowing something* and being sarcastic," she clarified.  Then she stopped and reviewed the conversation in her head.  She suddenly realized that her "lifestyle" comment could be taken a lot more-- personally--than she had intended.  She could feel her face beginning to heat.  "I actually was referring to your lifestyle as in 'being part of the Watcher's and being Mac's friend."  Shoot!  She sipped at her drink, hoping it would cool down her face.  It didn't.

Dawson lifted an eyebrow at Emory's odd withdrawal. But then, he had started with the evasions first. Time to remedy that.  "Em,  I'm a Watcher, and Mac's friend, and that dichotomy makes my ethics and morals generally suspect.   Sometimes I even have a shady sort of life beyond that, too. What part bothers you? If you don't mind my asking?"

Emory paused.  What had she just waded into here? "Uh... nothing about your life actually *bothers* me, Joe.  I just don't want to ask any questions that aren't any of my business."

"I will stay well to the south of that geologic hazard, Sar Chasm, and just say 'bullshit,' "  Dawson said calmly.  "Mac's your business.  The Watchers, unfortunately, are now your business, too. And all that makes me your business.  Emory,  I owe you the truth at the very least."

Emory shifted and took another large gulp of her soda to buy time.  "Um.  Okay.  But see..." Asking Joe for information about the Watchers was one thing, asking about his life-- and invading his personal privacy-- that was something else again, no matter what he said.  "I guess the thing is that I don't like *asking,*" she temporized.  "It's totally antithetical to my preferred MO."

"Your preferred MO?"  Dawson asked, his eyes twinkling.  "And what, pray tell, is your preferred MO?   Hanging out in corners, unnoticed, til someone lets out the truth, forgetting you are there?"

Emory could feel her face warming again.  She'd forgotten how well Joe knew her.  "Well-- yeah! It works for me, okay?"  She crossed her arms defensively over her chest.

"You realize, don't you," Dawson said sternly, "that that is my preferred MO, too.  In fact, it's my job. I'm a professional hanger-outer.  And if we keep this up, we won't have anything to talk about."

"So?" Emory blundered forward foolishly.  "We'll let Adam and Mac do all the talking for us! We'll just be their potted plants! And they'll water us and occasionally turn us toward the light."

"Hey, Em,"  Dawson said quietly.  "Sounds too good to be true."

Emory ducked her head, embarrassed by whatever it was that drove her to avoid this kind of direct interaction.  "Yeah, I know," she mumbled quietly.

Dawson's measuring regard made her anxious, so Emory grasped for a change of subject.  "So, as a professional hanger-outer, are you afraid that this amateur will cramp your style?" she  asked with a hesitant smile.  "Or do you want to offer me some pointers?"

"Oh no, no pointers.  I'm hearing footsteps as it is. More than one set,"  Dawson said ruefully, instinctively checking to make sure the bartender had really left.  He meant it as a compliment to Emory, but was also unable to forget Mike's ubiquitous presence.

Emory sobered a little as she realized that Joe was referring to Mike Barrett, the Watcher who had been assigned by the paranoid organization to watch Dawson and his interactions with Immortals. "You know, I understand you being mad at him.  But... he *did* rescue me."

"I didn't say anything about Mike!"  Dawson said, a little annoyed that she had read his mind. "But you're right.  He did rescue you, and I'm grateful to him for that.  We have no quarrel.  I understand his decisions."  Dawson's quick answers were all too curt, even to his own ears.

"Good.  Because *I* don't have a quarrel with him either," she said seriously.  "Things got out of *his* control too."

Dawson just nodded, silent.

Emory played with her glass.  A drink was a useful thing to have when you were working on a conversation.  It gave you something to do when you weren't talking.  "Do *you* have any questions?"

Dawson was jarred out of his bitter reverie.  "Me?" He asked.  "Em, you aren't a part of the game.  I know you value your privacy.  No.  I won't question you." Dawson said, trying to project reassurance.

Emory gave a little whuff of relief, and then smiled a little sheepishly.  "It's not *privacy* exactly... I just..." she sighed.  "I don't know..."

"It's hard consorting with legends, when you feel so...mortal..."  Dawson suggested. "Methos and MacLeod can be overwhelming."

"Yeah," she agreed.  "That's *part* of it.  But...  I mean it's not just them being *Immortal* that makes them so powerful to me.  I mean, *you* sort of scare me a little too," she mused thoughtlessly.

"Me?  _Scare_ you?"   Dawson was disturbed and confounded by the thought.    "What did I do?" he asked, wondering.

"Oh, nothing!" Emory said hastily.  "That-- that wasn't what I meant.  I... *scared* isn't exactly the right word."  She scraped around in her brain, trying to find the words that she needed to convey her meaning.

"There's-- there's something about this, all of this," she made a sweeping motion with her hand, "that makes me want to be very still and very quiet and not make any sudden moves.  And I'll sit and absorb information, and no one will notice me, and that will make it all okay.  And I don't even know what it is, or why."

Dawson thought back to the hard years after Vietnam, when he had fought his way into the ranks of the Watchers, into the field,  and he thought he knew what she was feeling.  The insulation of pure observation could be so comfortable, so comforting... and Emory had had such a beleaguered childhood.  He dipped his head in recognition.  "I'm sorry, Em."

"No!" She was doing everything wrong tonight.  "I *want* to be here!  I want it more than anything in the world!"

"I know," Dawson said simply.

Emory stopped her inward panicking for a minute as she met his eyes.  "Yeah?"

"Yeah," he answered, evenly returning her gaze. "MacLeod wasn't always my friend."

For a minute Emory didn't know what to make of that. Then she remembered that Mac had been Joe's assignment before he'd been his friend.  "Was that better?" she wondered, rolling her glass in her hands.  "Just looking in?"

Dawson drew in a breath.  Emory knew how to ask the hard questions.  "It was easier.  It wasn't _better_,"  he acknowledged.  "When _all_ I did was Watch, there were no hard decisions, or judgments, of me or my friends or my conduct.  Now, that's all I seem to face.  But I can't just observe any more."

"Yeah."  Emory knew what he meant.  "Me either," she mumbled.   Before all of this happened, it had been easy to stay out of people's way.  But now, she was totally enmeshed in Adam's and Mac's and Joe's lives. It was scary.  She hadn't been this close to anyone since Haylie's death. But she couldn't let go.  She couldn't find it in herself to step back from these strange new friends and regain some measure of perspective.

Dawson considered Emory's admission.  He knew she had a hard time talking about herself, much less her fears.  "It scares me, too," he said, almost to himself.

"What's scary for you?" she asked, caught somewhere between curiosity and a vague sense of desperation.

Dawson cast his thoughts back over the last few years, and beyond, to the time before he had met MacLeod.  Em deserved an honest answer.  "It scares me to make decisions that could affect people.  Mortals, Immortals, the whole Game.  Even small things have large effects.  I hate being a pawn.  But when I make a wrongdecision--"  Dawson stopped, caught in his memories.

Emory sighed inwardly.  "I think your a lot braver than I am.  I haven't even gotten *that* far, yet." Of course he would be afraid of someone else being hurt.  His first thought was always for others.

"Don't be ridiculous, Em.  You're farther along at your age than I am likely to ever get,"  Dawson smiled.  "You saved both Methos and MacLeod in France, and damn near got killed in the process.  You saved my ass, too.  Not only did you keep your head in that brush with Bentresh, you made sure everybody else kept theirs."

"That wasn't *scary!*" Emory protested irritably.  "I mean well, yeah it was *scary,* but it all happened fast!  I just... it was just a case of move it or lose it. It wasn't... there wasn't *thinking* involved.  It was just *reacting.*"

Dawson laughed silently.  "Can't fool me, Emory. I...Watch."  Dawson lost his smile.  "But I'm still worried about you, after Shaw, and Bentresh and now this damn Watcher mess.  You should have been safe, here."

"Joe..." She didn't know how to say what she meant. She wasn't even sure if she *knew* what she meant. "*That's* what makes it scary.  It wouldn't be scary if I didn't know I was safe here. If  I knew I wasn't safe, then I'd know what to do."

The confidence of the young.  Dawson had to remind himself that Emory _was_ still young, for one so wise.  "No one is safe, Em...not in the Game.  And like it or not, we're both caught up in the Game, despite ourselves.  It's the penalty for interfering."  Dawson thought back.  "I remember thinking I could be safe, once, Watching my friend Mac and cheating, just a bit, with the Watchers.  Bad assumption on my part,"  he said philosophically.

"But Joe, you *are* safe," Emory protested.  "You're safe with Mac.  If anything happened to you, Mac would come for you.  So would Adam."

"That's the problem,"  Dawson said hollowly.  "They did."  Thorne.  The Watchers.  O'Rourke. Even Richie had come for him, or  his shadow, that terrible night at the racetrack.  It was a memory he could hardly bear.  He was silent for a moment, before adding, "I told you I hated being a pawn."

"See!  See, now *that's* what I'm talking about!" she cried, starting to get excited.  "Tell me it isn't scarier to know that Mac and Adam would come for you than it is to know that you're in trouble all by yourself!"

Dawson looked at Em with dawning understanding. "Can't argue with that, Em. "

"Right!  That's what I mean!  When I was by myself, everything was fine.  I didn't have to worry about being understood or anything.  And if I wanted to understand someone else, I'd just sit and watch!  No one had to know I was there.  But now, people *see* me." She flapped her arm out helplessly.  "Now I'm out in the open, and I can't cover myself back up again. I don't even *want* to.  And I don't know exactly what to *do* about that."

Dawson knew exactly how Emory felt.  After MacLeod had tracked him down in his lair at Shakespeare and Co, Dawson had felt like a hermit crab without his shell. But when he had tried to return to it,  he had discovered that his old shell was too small. "You _are_ here, Emory, and I, for one, am glad.  As for what you _do_;  I'd say do what you want.  Kick over the traces.  Live dangerously..."  Dawson's eyes twinkled.  "Let's make a pact you get in trouble, you call me.  I'll see if I can keep the big boys out of it.  And you can do the same for me. Let's us mortals stick together,"  he teased.

"Oo-ooh," she said, rubbing her hands together in anticipation.  "Sounds like a conspiracy..."

"...Our very own secret society..."

"The Listeners!" Emory rejoined.

"The Listeners."  It was agreed

Dawson and Emory sat in quiet comfort for a while, happily listening, letting the silence sprawl comfortably between them.  Then Dawson stretched, easing a nagging kink.  "So, Emory, how is it going up  at the loft?  Not too crowded, I hope."  Dawson was still wondering what brought her out so late.

Emory couldn't keep the flush from creeping into her face.  "No, not *crowded* exactly.  But a little... noisy."

Dawson winced sympathetically.  "It's hard to stand so close to the fire." he said softly, feathering his answer to keep her from feeling more embarrassed. He'd been singed a time or two himself. It couldn't be easy for an unpartnered person like Emory to be around MacLeod and Methos in the raging limerant stage of love.  Dawson knew what it felt like to be the odd man out.

"Em, if you ever need some, well, peace and quiet-- my apartment has a comfy couch.  Not as long as Mac's, but..."  Dawson paused, wondering if the offer sounded wrong.  He didn't even invite MacLeod up there, after all.

Emory smiled at him gratefully.  "I think it'll be okay once I get a CD player or something," she said, shrugging a little.  "But right now the room is so big and empty, everything echoes, and I can hear every... uh, *footstep* over my head."  Not to mention the *other* things going on over her head.

Hear every footstep?  Dawson was intrigued.  "You aren't in the loft anymore? You're under it? In the storage room?  Em, I can do better than that," he said, a little nonplussed.

Emory laughed.  "No! I'm sorry, I forgot you didn't know."  He always seemed to know everything else, after all.  "I'm moving onto the fourth floor!  Mac went out and got me a bed and everything.  Well, right now I've only got a mattress, pillows, and sheets, but the day after tomorrow the bed part will show up. All I'll need is a bookshelf and I'll be all set!" She beamed at the prospect.  Her own place.  And still with Adam.  It still seemed too good to be true.

Joe had to smile at her enthusiasm.  A bed, books, and music.  Her priorities were in order.  He ignored the tiny disappointment curling up in his chest.  He couldn't adopt Emory as if she was a stray.  "Just as well,"  he joked.  "My reputation would go up in stock, but I'm afraid yours would go down."

Emory stared at him for a moment, trying to decide if he was making a joke.  Was he nuts?  Was he totally oblivious to the rows of women who had drooled over him at Le Blues Bar?  Did he not know that a soulful, sensitive, musician type was a fantasy of just about every woman on the planet?  Was he *blind* to his own appeal?  "Uh, actually Joe, I think you may have that the wrong way around," she said awkwardly.

Dawson laughed at himself, and tilted his beer in Emory's direction.  "In my dreams,"  he said, grinning.  "Forget I said anything, Em.   I don't want to make you uncomfortable.  And my lifestyle isn't your style, I know."

Emory opened her mouth.  Then she closed it just as quickly.  She shouldn't ask.  Except... was that an invitation?  It had certainly piqued her curiosity. And it would kill her if she *didn't* ask. "What..." Wait, how did she want to go about this?  "What do you mean by that, exactly?" she tried hesitantly.

Dawson replied easily, "Oh, the bar... the drinking... late nights wrangling with Methos over petty points of history .."  He slowed, realizing that that was not the answer Emory was looking for. "Em, for all the difficulties you've gone through, you are a family person.  You stayed with your mother under the worst circumstances.  You cared for your grandmother,  and now you've adopted Methos and MacLeod.  But me?  I live alone.  I like it.  I've been alone a long time. Some people can't wrap their thoughts around that.  I enjoy the bar, but solitude is a part of me, too." Dawson wondered if he told the full truth, even to himself.  "Some people consider solitude... perverse."

Emory thought about that for a minute.  On one hand, she thought she understood exactly what he meant.  She knew only too well about all the comforts of a solitary lifestyle.  But on the other, it seemed sort of silly for a man who belonged to Mac's family, the Watcher's family, and thrived on the attention garnered from being centerstage in a spotlight to call himself ...*solitary.*  "So you're telling me that you're a closet pervert?" she teased.  "Wait'll I tell Adam..."

Dawson rolled his eyes.  "Don't you dare, young lady..." he said in his sternest parochial school nun imitation.

Emory giggled.  She decided *not* to swear herself to secrecy.  "Seriously Joe," she began, as much to deflect his attention as anything else.  "Are you telling me that you... what?  You never get involved in relationships?  That you've never *been* involved in a relationship?"

Dawson had been finishing off his beer.  He nearly wasted it on his lungs.  Laughing and coughing, he waved off Emory's alarmed look.  "Next time don't beat around the bush, Em," he said with mock seriousness. "I've been around the block on relationships, Em. Filled those squares.  Didn't work out."

Oops.  Maybe that was a little too close to home. Damn.  It had been a long time since Emory had threaded her way through the labyrinthine turns of a serious, one-on-one conversation, and she had forgotten how many mines lay buried in the field. "But Joe, regardless of whether or not you've found someone compatible with your lifestyle, you can't say that you *prefer* isolation when you keep going out and connecting with people."

Dawson's grin faded.  "Yeah, you're right.  And I wouldn't have met you, either," he said honestly. "Just put it down to 'Once burned, twice shy,'  and leave it at that.  Except--I was burned three times," he admitted softly.

Now *that* sounded like an invitation.  "Three whole times?  You got me beat," she said in a tone that begged the questions: who? when? why?  He didn't have to answer if he didn't want to, but she left the option open to him.

"I would think so,"  Dawson said tartly.  "I had a big head start on you."  He was silent for a moment, considering.  "Betsy was my high school sweetheart. After Vietnam-- well, Mac can tell you that story, sometime.  I can be stubbornstupid."  he said in self recrimination.  "And not a real fast learner, either. The second time, maybe I had too much to prove, and not enough judgment to fill a condom.  Only one good thing came of that,"  he hesitated.  "My daughter."

Emory struggled to keep her expression neutral but interested.  *Daughter?!?*  Oh my God. Omigodohmigodomigod.  That was *not* something she had expected.  Joe had fallen silent and was steadily examining her for signs of... what?  Shock?  Anger? It suddenly occured to her that her own father... her biological father, whoever he was... could be a little like Joe.  Some guy who meant well, but couldn't or wouldn't or wasn't allowed to stick around after the deed was done. Maybe Joe was thinking about that too, and that was why he was regarding her so measuringly

"I didn't know you had a daughter," she said finally. "What's she like?"

It wasn't the question Dawson was expecting, and it punctured a hole in his unwarded heart.  He looked down, and toyed with the empty beer bottle.   "I don't know," he said distantly.  He knew her height, her school grades, and the color of her eyes when she was angry.  But he didn't know _her_.

Emory's heart sank in sympathy with the crushed expression on Joe's face.  She had jumped onto a landmine with both feet, but it had blasted Joe instead of herself.  She honestly didn't know whether it would be better to press forward or to drop the conversation entirely.  She didn't want for Joe to feel any *more* uncomfortable, but she also didn't want him to feel she was shutting him out.  "So... Did you-- have you ever met?"

For a minute she had a bizarre idea that Joe had visited Atlanta once, and that she and her father were sitting across from each other at this very table. Just as quickly, she dismissed the fantasy for lunacy.  She knew better.

Dawson pulled back into the present, gathering himself.  "Yes, we've met.  I even saw her a few times growing up.  Her mother was a Watcher."  He said with brittle self possession.  Then he met Emory's eyes. "She was married to a veryloving man.  She didn't want me to 'interfere.'  Seemed like the logical thing to do at the time."  Dawson took a closer look.  "Em?  I hope I didn't dredge up bad memories for you..."

Emory sighed.  "No," she replied.  "No memories for you to dredge up.  As far as I know, I've never met my father."  She laughed bitterly.  "Well, of *course* not, right?  Like anyone's going to try to get close to the wife and supposed daughter of a State Supreme Court Judge.  The guy must have been crazy from the start, and after Shaw found out..." She trailed off uncertainly. What had happened to him after Shaw discovered his wife was pregnant?  Was he even alive?

"You know something funny?" she asked.  She didn't really wait for a reply.  "I had *dreams* of being someone else's kid.  You know the ones.  My *real* father is a government spy trapped behind the Iron Curtain and that's why he hasn't rescued me yet, but just as soon as he gets out..." She shook her head. "I never really *believed* it though," she finished softly.

Dawson reached out to touch her hand, just brushing the back of her wrist as she curled her hand away. "I'm sorry, Emory," he tried to keep the words from sounding empty.  "After all that's happened, hasn't your mother told you who your real father was?"  A stray, niggling part of Dawson wanted him to charge off and check Shaw's Watcher's Chronicles... but that was Emory's decision.

Emory barked with laughter.  "Are you *kidding* me?" she asked incredulously.  "Joe, my mother is a Southern Baptist!  We do *not* talk about sex!  And how the heck would I bring the subject up?  'Hey Mother, by the way, I found out that Pop belongs to a race of people who are all sterile, so you mind telling me who boffed you to bring me into the world?'"

Dawson winced at the image.

Emory shook her  head.  "Trust me Joe, even if I used softer language, it wouldn't fly.  She'd be offended that I'd think she was capable of adultery, and then she'd *never* stop sniping at me." When she wanted to, Evelyn Shaw could be pretty vicious with the subtle digs that seemed to be the most prevalent art form in Southern society.  It had been a point of her mother's personality that Emory had glossed over during her years away from Atlanta, selective memory being what it was.  But Emory had been reintroduced to the unpleasant trait since she had first begun her ritual of calling her mother on the phone every Saturday morning.  "No thank you.  I do *not* need my mother to start playing head games with me again at this stage of our relationship."  She shuddered at the thought

Dawson shrunk away a little, taken aback by Emory's diatribe.  "Bad idea, I take it," he said dryly. "Listen, Emory--there may be nothing, and I don't want to invade your privacy more than it already has been... but... I could try to look it up," Dawson offered uncertainly.  He didn't know how Emory would take the idea that her mother's relationship with Shaw had been _observed._ Not to mention Emory's childhood in his household.

Emory could feel her face failing to keep a bland expression as her skin started to crawl. Someone had been *Watching*...?  She realized that the fact shouldn't surprise her, Shaw had been Immortal, after all, and that was what Watchers did...   But... Someone had been observing her all that time?  Had Watched her mother when she met Shaw?  When she married him?  The idea that a group of complete strangers might have her mother's entire affair on record somewhere was just too *disturbing.*

Emory tried to come up with some kind of calm response, but nothing came to mind.  She didn't want to make Joe feel badly about his suggestion.  She knew he'd meant well by the offer, but... "Joe, I don't think I can think about this right now without having an aneurism or something.  Can we change the subject?"

Dawson was heartsick at the wounds he had opened.   He fought the growing conviction that he had just alienated Emory as completely as he had lost touch with his daughter.   "Yeah, sure, Emory.  I'm..." Saying 'I'm sorry' again would be stupid.  "I'm stupid..." he offered with finality.

Emory didn't even try to suppress her groan.  This was what she'd wanted to avoid.  "Darn it Joe, you're as bad as me," she said irritably.  "Didn't I tell you I wasn't going to stand still if you were going to go around and insult my friend?  I'm not mad at you," she said earnestly.  "I'm not mad at all... exactly.  I just..." she tried to find the right words.  "I don't know *how* I feel about this right now," she finished weakly.

"I should have thought out what it would mean to you, Emory.  That was unforgivable.  Hell, you _should_ be mad at me,"  Dawson said angrily.  He was certainly pissed at himself.  But Emory didn't want to dwell on it now.  Time for him to drop it.  "Your turn in twenty questions, I think. My turn to own up.  Hit me with your best shot..."

Emory gaped at him in dismay.  "Are we keeping *score?*" she asked in distress.  "Joe, please, don't do this to me.  I can't talk like this *and* keep count.  I lose track of the numbers too easily."

"I was never a math major myself..." Dawson allowed.

Emory heaved a little breath of shuddery relief. "Don't scare me like that," she cautioned him, only half joking.  "I mean, we're *talking* here, right? Nobody's feet are over coals, are they?"

"Em, I'm just here listening, remember?  You can tell knock-knock jokes, if you want...though I suspect your sense of humor has more...pith and substance than that..." he said, letting his voice trail away. Dawson cautioned himself to dial back the questions. Emory was almost as skittish as Methos.

They lapsed into silence again, this time a less comfortable, more brooding stillness.  Dawson tapped his bottle nervously, once, then shifted forward.

Emory couldn't stand it.  She had to try to lighten the mood.  "So, you ever hear the one about the Rabbi, the Priest, and the goat?"  She smiled winningly at the grizzled man.

He looked up quizzically.  "I think I missed that one..."

Emory feigned disappointment.  "So did I!" she said with mock annoyance.  She beat her hands on the table in an imitation of the theatrical  be dum bump' that followed vaudeville one-liners. "Maybe I should ask Adam..." she mused pensively.

That forced a laugh out of Dawson.  "Yeah, if anyone knows, the Old Man knows.  Especially if it involves goats," he added evilly.

Emory squawked with delight at the rib, and raised her half empty glass in salute.  "To Adam, the know-it-all!"

"To Adam, the knowitall pain in the ass."  Dawson agreed.  His bartending instincts took over, as he saw Em sip her flat drink, and he toasted with the warm dregs of his beer.  "Let me get you another, Em."  He was feeling dry himself.  "Name your poison."

"Oh no," Emory waved him off.  "I think I'll be happy to nurse this one for a little longer."

Dawson pushed himself up, his face momentarily blank. He made his way carefully to the bar, and considered the single malts.  It had been a long, bad day after a longer night, and he was feeling the need for a pain killer.  But for Emory's sensibilities, he picked out another beer.

Emory frowned at the beer that Joe had picked up for himself.  How many of those had he had tonight?  "You know," she said, and then she hastily cut herself off.  No, no, NO!   She was *not* going to nag.  She was *going* to keep her mouth shut.

Dawson caught the look.  The "Look", as he tagged it in his brain.  It sometimes flickered in MacLeod's eye.    "Four, Emory."  He answered the unasked question.

Shoot!  Emory could have died on the spot.  "I didn't *ask,*" she said in lame protest.  How did she always end up with her foot in her mouth even when she kept it closed?

Dawson gave an arid smile.  "You didn't have to, Emory.  I know you disapprove."  But he didn't drink for her approval.  "Part of that raunchy lifestyle."

Emory winced.  "I don't *disapprove,* exactly," said the girl.  "I just thought maybe you'd rather try some aspirin for your fingers, and that doesn't mix well with alcohol."  It was true, if only in part.  And Emory thought it wasn't a *bad* save.  She wondered if Joe would buy it.

"Nothing wrong with my fingers..."  Dawson said, a little too abruptly.  Hell.  They were the only part about him that _didn't_ hurt.  Mostly.  Damn.  "Sorry, Em.  Didn't mean to snap.  So what's the problem with mixing aspirin with alcohol?"  he asked, vaguely amused.  It had kept him going for years.

Emory gaped at him in horror.  "Joe, you're *never* supposed to mix alcohol with *anything!*" she said anxiously.  "It's a metabolic poison!   And it affects how your body responds to other medications.  It's *dangerous!*"  For godsakes, didn't he *read?*

Dawson looked at Emory, then down at the bottle in his hand.  "What, this little old thang?"  he teased. But only briefly.  "Take it easy, Emory.  My Irish forbears would be spinning in their graves if they heard you.  A couple of beers isn't going to kill me."  Thank god she'd never seen him on a tearaway.

Emory closed her eyes and took a long, deep breath. It didn't help, so she took another one.  She firmly told herself that it wasn't her business, that attacking a man's position only  forced him to defend it, and that her copy of Avram Goldstein's book *Addiction: from Biology to Drug Policy* was still in herapartment in Eugene, and she couldn't use it as a resource to argue her point. "Well, far be it from me to argue with your Irish forbears," she backed down willfully.

Dawson recognized the passive-aggressive approach when he heard it, and grinned.  That was usually his stance.  "I'd give you a week's sobriety to hear you deliver the same temperance lecture to Methos,"  he challenged, but he replaced the beer and brought them both a Calistoga.  He would trade his painkiller to see the pain in her eyes erased.

Emory scowled, and then her expression softened when she saw him bringing over two bottled waters.  "It's different for Adam," she said.  "He's never going to be on the list for candidates for a liver transplant."

Dawson cringed at the thought.  Then relaxed.  Given the hospital guidelines, he'd never make the "A" list, anyway, in that unlikely event.  "Em.  My liver is fine.  Don't be summoning Murphy again,"  he cautioned.

"I'm not summoning him!" she snapped suddenly. "*I'm* not the one tempting fate, am I?"

Dawson snorted.  "Just who walked in off the dark street after the bar closed, Emory?"  he countered. "Keep that up, and you'll damn well drive me to drink." he warned.

"I *didn't* walk in off a dark street, you nitwit!" she said sharply.  "A *taxicab* dropped me off less than five feet from your door, Joe Dawson.  I know my limitations, and my limitations keep me from finding your bar during *daylight* hours.  I'm certainly not going to go poking about in search of you in the dark."  She knew her tone was too sharp and her words too snide, but she couldn't seem to rein herself in. Darn it, why was she making such a big deal out of this?

Dawson smiled fleetingly.   "No.  Of course not."  He shrugged unapologetically.  "I worry, Em," he said simply.

"Well, so do I," Emory retorted ungraciously.

So much for changing the subject, Dawson thought wryly.  Emory wasn't easily eluded, once on the trail.  "Emory.   I won't apologize for my bad habits.  It's taken me a long time to perfect them."

Emory blinked.  Then she began to laugh.

"What are you laughing at?"  he said, his own eyes twinkling.

"I knew there was something familiar about you," she said between spurts of giggles.  "Adam said exactly the same thing when Mac called him on throwing a bottle cap behind the 'fridge."

Dawson looked proud.  "Taught him everything I know..."

"Oh *baloney!*" Emory cried, astonished that he would even *suggest* such a thing.  She was definitely going to mention that 'pervert' remark to Adam now.  Joe was asking for it.

Dawson grinned evilly.  "Tell you what.  If you do a careful archaeological dig behind the refridgerator, you will find at the bottommost layer some Redhook bottlecaps.  Methos hates Redhook."  Dawson averred.

Emory narrowed her eyes.  "Do you have a bet on with Adam that you can get me to clean behind the 'fridge? Because it's going to take a lot more than *that* to get me there, Joe Dawson."

Dawson laughed.  "Curses, foiled again...."  he said, then added,  "Nah, I'd never do that to you," he added.  "Besides, Mac is too obsessive.  He cleaned back there last week, if I read my Scots correctly.

Emory bit down on her question about how many beers Joe had been drinking, considering they hadn't been in Seacouver for a week yet.   She could feel Joe's growing dissatifaction with the turn of the conversation.  She tried to think of something to discuss that would bring them around to something more pleasant.  "So, your band is playing tomorrow night?" she asked.

Dawson accepted the change of topic as a break for them both.  "Yeah, the boys are coming in. We haven't had a chance to get together here in town for way too long.  Will you come?" Dawson paid close attention to her reply.   Emory's answer was important to him.

Emory grinned.  "What are you, kidding?  I wouldn't miss it!  We're all going to be here."

"All of you?"  Dawson was surprised.  He wasn't sure the Highlander would feel comfortable in the bar any more.  He was sure Methos wouldn't.  Not now that they were _all_ watched, including Dawson himself.

His bar wasn't really 'holy ground' any more.

Emory processed that cryptic remark quietly, trying to determine what Joe was pointing to.  "Why wouldn't we all come?  Joe, we're your biggest fans!"  This whole conversation had been off kilter from the start. First Joe was desperate to grab at guilt because of something that wasn't his fault. Then the usually even tempered man baited her and had met her blow for blow in a fight about hisdrinking choices, which she couldn't seem to back down from, even thought she *knew* how stupid it was.  And now... what?  What was going on here?  What was Joe trying to work out inside his head?

His biggest fans...Dawson let that slide past.  He wasn't trying to cultivate a fandom.  Just please a few friends... Again a wave of anger, and uneasiness gripped him.  He liked playing for his friends in _his_ house... _his_ bar.  And now the Watchers had wormed their way into his sanctuary, and destroyed that little fantasy...  "Forget I said anything, Em. Methos is careful.  He has a right to be."

Now Emory was completely lost.  Careful?  Careful about what?  And what was she supposed to forget? That he'd worried that they wouldn't come, or that he'd wanted them here to begin with? "Well, it's not like he'd be coming here unarmed," she offered, feeling her way in the dark.  "I think he's looking forward to hearing you.  He says your group here is even better than your group in Paris."

"Sorry, I wasn't being clear.  The place is lousy with Watchers, Emory.  Adam doesn't like living under a microscope.  At all."  Dawson observed logically. "And the organization makes Mac's skin crawl.  I don't blame them.  Hell, I've gotten on their nerves often enough over the years. And in this case, music doth not sooth the savage breast..." he predicted gloomily.

*Ohhh...*  Now she got it.  But... Adam, afraid of Watchers?  The thought was almost ludicrous. She broke into a big grin.  "What's Adam got to worry about?" she asked innocently.  "Nobody's going to give him a second glance now that he's got all these decoys surrounding him."  She giggled.  "A third of the Watchers are Watching Mac, a third are Watching me, and a third are watching you.  He's going to be practically invisible.  Heck, he'd probably be able to swing his sword around in the bar, and no one would notice."  She giggled at the idea, and touched Joe's hand briefly to let him know she wasn't laughing at *him.*

Dawson could practically feel the eyes of the Watchers on the back of his head even as they spoke.  He clamped down on his paranoia, and summoned up an answering smile.  "Yeah, you're probably right, Em. The situation will keep him wholly amused."  And it would, Dawson realized, his smile widening a fraction.

Emory arched an eyebrow speculatively.  That smile was *almost* back to normal.  Emory decided she wouldn't be happy until it was all the way there.  "Besides," she said,  "Adam loves a good bout of intrigue."

Dawson nodded in agreement, the Old Man had, after all, spent nearly thirteen years hiding in the ranks of the Watchers.  "It's that, sometimes I worry about what's going to happen when the intrigue gets a little too-- confining," he admitted.  "Methos' preferred response to any possibility of entrapment is to run, you know," and then, to lighten the moment, he added, "and I'd never get that backrub you owe me."

Emory choked on a sip of her soda.  She'd forgotten about that backrub offer.  But now that he brought it up... her arms had recovered from the tworub stint with Adam and Mac the other night. She should be rested, and Joe shoulders were screaming with tension.  She didn't even want to think about his back, because if the task seemed too daunting she knew she'd chicken out.  "So, you want that backrub I offered?"  She flexed her fingers experimentally.  "I have the time now."

Dawson looked startled at the change of topic.  "I wasn't trolling, Emory... relax.  And it's getting pretty late, anyway," he ducked, and covered.   "You need a ride home?  We can conspire to conquer ages old secret societies in the morning."  Dawson winced as his back called him an idiot.

Emory schooled her features to neutrality.  "If you want me to go, I can always call a cab," she said quietly, firmly refusing to let herself give in to the urge to tease. //Your lips say "no," but your eyes say "yes,"// a naughty little voice singsonged in her head.  "I didn't mean to take up your time, and you're probably beat."

"No, Em-- that's not it," he growled, not up to fencing with both Em and his spasming back. Especially given the raunchy language his back was using.  "How's your hand 3doing, anyway?" he asked in concern.

Emory smiled.  "It's all rested and ready for action. But it's okay, Joe, we don't have to, if it makes you uncomfortable," she added sweetly.

Dawson wanted to pound his head on the table.  Emory did have a talent for dragging him out of his nice, safe, stonewalled Fortress of Solitude.   And she fought downright dirty.  He hadn't been guilted like that since... Methos and his daughter, Amy.  Drat the man's lessons.

Emory circumspectly checked her watch.  She'd been here for over an hour now, though somehow she thought that Adam and Mac wouldn't be sleeping yet.   Right. Call it a hunch. Which meant that letting Joe drive her home was out of the question.  Unless she wanted to roam around the dojo some more.  "So," she said, "Are you going to break down and accept already, or are you going to think of more reasons to refuse?" She smiled to take any sting out of her comment.

"Okay, okay, I knuckle under."  A little neck rub couldn't harm him.  Could it?  It would at least distract Emory from her fixation on rescuing him from himself.

Emory stopped herself before she could giggle with triumph, but didn't manage to quite suppress the gleeful little smile that wanted to erupt on her face. "Okay, do you want to go up to your apartment then?" she asked.  "It'll probably be more comfortable."

"My apartment?"  he said blankly.  For a neckrub?

Emory arched an eyebrow and crossed her arms. Clearly, he was going to be stubborn about this, but that was okay.  She could do stubborn, too.  Stubborn did not require any special wit or grace on her part. "This all comes in a specific order," she explained. "First the shoulders, then the back, then the lower back, and then I turn you over and finish with a neckrub.  And then you fall asleep on floor," she finished with a grin.  "Trust me, neither of the guys complained the other night, not even after I stole the first hot shower."

"Ohhh...."  Dawson said succinctly.   He had a hard time picturing Methos on the floor. Uncomplaining. "You sound like you know what your doing,"  he said. She sounded like someone named Olga in a 007 movie. Firm.  Very firm.

Emory beamed.  "Oh yes," she nodded happily as she got to her feet.  "I used to do this for Haylie all the time.  I'm a little out of practice, but it's all coming back to me."

"That sounds pretty hard on your hand," Dawson said doubtfully,   Somehow Emory had gotten him up, and was corralling him toward the elevator to the apartment. "And hey!  I haven't even unpacked from Paris, yet. The place is a mess."

"Mess, shmess," Emory said blithely.  "Wait'll you see *my* place, it's littered with art as far as the eye can see."  And what extraordinary art it was too.  She still hadn't finished unwrapping them all.  She wanted to savor them one at a time.  "And let *me* worry about my hand," she added, addressing his other question.  "It held up fine the other night, and I'm sure you can't be *that* much more tense than Mac and Adam just before Mac went to meet Dr. Lindsey for lunch and a revelation," she lied glibly.

Dawson quirked a smile at the image, though it didn't relax him one whit.  His shoulders were so tense after the plane flight and subsequent events of the last three days that he was amazed his ears were still visible.

Emory gave Joe a once over as she stepped into the elevator behind him. "Joe,getting all wound up over the prospect of a backrub is sort ofcounter-productive," she teased gently.

Dawson consciously pushed his shoulders down again. "Who's wound up?"  he said innocently. Emory's gently spun web had him totally wrapped up.

"Nobody's wound up," Emory denied easily.  "I was just making a casual observation."  She tried very, very hard not to grin like the wicked person shewas.

Likely story,  Dawson observed to himself.  Then the elevator swished open, to reveal the great square room that was his apartment.  It reeked of bachelorhood.

Emory looked around at the open, inviting apartment with interest. The room was clear in the center, with all furnishings: a couch, three chairs, a beautiful roll-top desk (closed), and a long set of wooden cabinets (also closed) hugged up against the walls. There was a half refrigerator and some low-slung cabinets around a small sink, but the only other sign of  a cooking area was a small microwave on a clean, plain formica counter.

The hardwood floors gleamed dully under the lights, and Emory noted that there weren't any rugs in sight. Nothing to trip over... or roll over, she realized belatedly.  She assumed that the mess' which Joe had warned her about down in the bar referred to the duffel bag and two suitcases stacked neatly next to the couch.

All in all, the apartment felt a lot like Joe.  It seemed very upfront and ordinary, until you noticed that nearly all the aspects of an apartment which would lend clues about the person who lived here were conspicuously absent.

The wall hangings were mostly maps with a few landscapes to break up the monotony.  No art. No family pictures.  Emory cast a quick glance around for the stereo.  It had to be there, but she didn't see it.  It was probably hidden in the closed wooden cabinet.   Everything that was about Joe in this room was safely tucked away out of sight.  She wondered what on earth could have happened to make him so desperate to keep himself under wraps.  Was it just being a Watcher, or...?

"So, where would you like to do this?" she asked. "The floor is best, but if you'd rather we can do this on your bed, or your couch, or whatever."

Dawson looked away before Emory could see him frown. The floor held different connotations for a legless man.  It could be so damn hard to get up off of... he hesitated a split second too long.

"Oh." Realization hit a moment too late.  And the flush on Joe's face told her that he'd understood what her unbidden vocalization referred to.  Damnation. "Joe, I'm sorry, I really wasn't thinking. I'd for-" she cut herself off.  She'd sound even stupider if she said she'd forgotten he was wearing prosthetics.  It wasn't exactly that she'd *forgotten* anyway.  It was more that she'd just...  "I wasn't thinking," she repeated lamely, kicking herself savagely in her head.

Dawson shook his head, and grinned reassuringly at her.  "It kind of tickles my ego when people forget..." he said in a stage whisper, as if imparting a deep secret.

Emory gave an uncertain little laugh of relief.  "Let me start over," she offered.  "Where would you like to do this?"

"Bed is more comfortable for me, if you don't mind the connotations."  He laughed.  "I can just see Mac and Methos breaking in and finding us in _bed_ together," he said with his tamest leer. Second tamest.

Emory snorted.  "No fears," she said ruefully.  "They won't be breaking in any time soon."  She shook her head to clear the embarrassing images that had suddenly appeared therein.  "So?  Lead the way."  She waved her hand, indicating that she would follow.

"Not far to go."  Dawson observed wryly.  Tucked into an ell in the room was a bed.  No walls separating it off from the rest of the room.  A big walk in closet, some books.  That was it. Except for the wheelchair.

Interesting.  One big space, just like Mac's loft. Except, of course, that Mac's place was bigger and he kept everything except the alcohol out in the open, whereas Joe's stuff was all closed up. Emory looked at the wheelchair curiously.  She had never actually seen one up close before, but she forced herself to look away, in case her interest made Joe uncomfortable again.

Suddenly Emory remembered when she had woken him up in his apartment last month, after she'd been reading up on Bentresh.  He'd been so terribly self-conscious then...  How was this going to work?  Maybe she needed to give him a moment.  "Um," she told herself not to be embarrassed, "before we start, can I ask you where your bathroom is?"  It didn't work.  She was embarrassed. God, you'd think she was twelve, not almost twenty-five.

Dawson nodded toward the corner opposite the bedroom, carefully ignoring her sudden case of the jitters.  He was getting figurative cold feet himself.  He could relate.

Emory darted off.  She really *did* have to go, now that she thought about it.  She knew she shouldn't have taken that cransoda, but she'd needed the excuse of the beverage to get Joe to talk with her.  Stupid social conventions.  As she shut the door behind her, she took casual note of the metal bars that ran along the walls on both sides of the toilet, the seat in the shower that was just visible from behind the half-closed glass door, and the low counter top.  It was, quite noticably, a wheelchair accessible bathroom.  Emory also noted that the counter top was relatively empty except for a tube of toothpaste, a toothbrush stand, and a bar of soap.  Not just an accessible bathroom.  A *man's* bathroom.   Jeez...

Dawson double checked the room, just in case a pair of boxer shorts magically draped themselves over a lamp, or something similarly embarrassing.  But Dawson's Marine-instilled neatness had left the place in it's usual spare, boring emptiness.  Carefully, he sat on the edge of the bed, and waited.  Maybe Emory would come to her senses.

Emory stepped out of the bathroom, drying her hands on her jeans.  Joe was sitting on the edge of the bed, still dressed.  Well, okay then.  "This will probably work best if you take off your shirt and lie on your stomach," she suggested.  "But all things are negotiable."  If he really balked, she could work through the fabric.

"Sorry about the towels, Em.  I still have to unpack some stuff,"  he apologized.  He looked down at the shirt he was wearing as if it were a suddenly foreign object.  But his back talked his fingers into unbuttoning his shirt and pulling out the shirttails. Too late, he forgot the damn scar on his chest.

Emory stared at the scar curiously.  What was that? Another memento from Vietnam?  "No problem, Joe," she assured him, hastily returning her attention to the conversation.  "My jeans work fine." She hesitated, her self-assurance suddenly vanishing into nothing. "*Are* you okay with this?  I didn't mean to back you into anything.  I just... thought you'd like it, that's all."

Dawson eyed her knowingly.  "Didn't mean to, my Aunt Fanny," he chided.  You have studied 'Advanced Manipulation' from a Master.  I know your kind,"  he said with a wink.  Suddenly it seemed more important to put Emory at ease than to cater to himself.

The girl rolled her eyes.  "Yeah, sure, I meant for you to accept, but not because *I* wanted you to," she looked at him pointedly.  "Are you okay with this?" she reiterated seriously.  "'Cause this isn't going to work if you can't be comfortable.  I promise I won't get fresh," she deliberately flashed an insincere smile.

Dawson grinned back wickedly.  "Rats.  Another opportunity wasted."  Then with practiced ease, he reached overhead to snag a handhold that extended down from the dark rafters on a chain.  He pulled himself up and back, before dropping down and flipping over on his stomach.  "Go ahead. Get fresh.  I dare yah."  He could do this.

Emory grinned and rubbed her hands together, both in anticipation, and to warm them.  She settled down beside him, discarding the idea of straddling his waist.  There were limits, after all, and not just to *his* comfort levels.  With practiced ease she gripped the muscles where the neck met the shoulders, and she began to knead at them, gently at first, and then harder as the knots came into clear relief under her fingers.  She moved her fingers in small, neat circles over the muscle, imagining the knots that held her attention slowly dissolving away like cotton-candy on a summer day, leaving behind nothing but the memory of a sweet sensation.

Despite his best intentions to relax, Dawson's spine twitched at Emory's first touch.  It had been a very long time since... no, he would not go there.  Betsy was not an acceptable subject for thought.  Dawson just attempted to clear his mind.  A daunting prospect.

Emory could feel Joe tensing under her touch, and she firmly pressed on with her task.  Maybe this would be easier with something distracting him.  "When did you start playing the guitar?" she asked as she moved her hands outward to run down the lines of his shoulder blades.  The Bluesman was strung as tight as his own instrument.

Dawson frowned a moment, gathering his thoughts.  'Not thinking' was too damn much hard work.  "When I was a kid.  On an old six-string my mother got me for Christmas, who knows how... there was music all over the old neighborhood..."  Music.  Music felt good. Em's fingers... felt good.

Emory mentally congratulated herself for picking the right topic, and she threatened her tired brain with bloody murder if it dredged up so much as a single mention of Immortals or Watchers. She eased her way back towards his spine, and then pressed into the hollows that surrounded the vertebrae.  Knots, knots, knots.  You sure you weren't in the Navy, Joe?  She decided that wouldn't be a good topic either.    "Lots of music?" she prodded. "Did you have a band or anything, later on?"

Dawson laughed into the bedspread.  "In the sixties? Every kid whose Dad had a garage had a band to park in it.  My best friend Deke had a big garage.  Come to think of it, maybe that's why he was my best friend." Damn.  He hadn't thought of Deke in years.

Emory laughed softly.  "I guess I don't know much about it," she admitted, enjoying her friend's noticable enthusiasm.  "What was it like?"   She moved down another notch on his spine, and then methodically traced the muscles that lined the ribs attached there.

Dawson hissed involuntarily, as something...shifted...then settled back.  Not pain... something very like it,  but not pain.  "Like?  I don't know how to describe it.  God, we were young. The most dire problems in our lives revolved around getting a new carburetor, or introducing yourself to a new girl."  Hell, Dawson still hadn't gotten that one down right, yet.

Emory chuckled softly.  "Right.  Good cars and bad girls were the order of the day," she teased. She pressed her thumbs down into the hollows that bordered his spine, and fanned her fingertips out, kneading patiently.  "So did you have a car of your own?"

Dawson sighed, a mixture of contentment and regret. "Emory, you are good at this,"  he said quietly.  And she was.  Not only was her massage superb, her interrogation techniques were outstanding.   Dawson curved an appreciative grin on both counts.  "No, I didn't have a car.  I lusted after one, of course... this cherry 1963 and a half Galaxie 500XL Convertible, bucket seats, leather interior, pushbutton transmission..."  Dawson recollected himself, and laughed.  "But it was not to be.  The choice was car, or college, and to my mother, that was no choice at all.  She was right, of course, but..."  his voice trailed off.

Emory smiled at the hushed compliment.  It felt good to here.  Comfortable.  Something like home. "Poor Joe," she sympathized.  "All those automotive dreams cast to the wind."  She couldn't quite suppress the gentle laugh that arose from the image of a younger, less wearied, Joe Dawson, realizing the logic of his mother's demands, and still overwhelmed by the *wanting* of that unattainable dream.  "So what about Deke? Did he have an instrument as well as a garage?" she asked, bringing the topic back around to music. No frustrated desires tonight, please, we're all stocked up.  She eased her fingers lower, she was nearly halfway down his back now, and she could feel her touch soothing them both.

"Deke?  Oh, he had them all.  Couldn't carry a tune on any of them.  And God help us if he took over the drums.  He had a great talent for promotion, though... even got us a gig at the High School Prom."  Dawson's eyes were closed, as he dusted off and recataloged the memory.  "I always thought he'd turn up either in jail, or running for Senate.  Or both."

Emory almost asked what had happened to Deke, but she stopped herself.  Anything could have happened, and often sweet memories could be poisoned by the knowledge of what would come twenty years later.  She paused for a moment in her thoughts to turn her attention to a particularly stubborn knot that did not want to resolve itself.  She braced her left hand with her right as she pressed down with her first two fingers, slowly increasing the pressure until she was leaning down on Joe with a good percentage of her bodyweight.  "So you played at your own prom?" she asked.

"Yeah.  Deke talked me into it.  Boy, was Betsy mad." Dawson grinned at the memory.  "But we made up afterwards...Betsy _did_ have a car..." Dawson's voice cut off in a puff of air, as something rearranged itself in his middle spine.  "Feels good, Em,"  he reassured.  "Feels damn good."

The girl gradually leaned back on her heels again, satisfied that one more knot had met its match. She probed cautiously around the area, checking to make sure that no smaller sites of pain had escaped her notice.  "So you didn't dance at your own prom?" she asked a little sadly.  Joe should have had that, at least.  She shoved away memories of her own prom before they could distract her.  She moved her hands farther down, concentrating on her friend.

A small furrow appeared on Joe's brow.  "No... I got caught up with the music.  The crowd, the kids celebrating and cheering us on when we played the latest Stones hit, or the moony looks the couples got when I played a Lennon tune..."  Dawson paused,  "So it was really my fault when Betsy cut a tall, gangly senior transfer out of the herd, and danced with him all night.  He looked pretty handsome in his new ROTC uniform.  I couldn't really blame her,"  he laughed at himself.

Poor girl, Emory mused.  Even then it was clear that anyone who involved themselves with Joe Dawson would always be vying with his other love, his music.  She continued on down his spine, now into his lower back, a veritable minefield of tension.  She shifted on the bed and shook out her hands for a moment, wanting to do this properly.  She thought about the music he mentioned. "So this was pre-blues?" she wondered as she put her hands back to work on the rigid muscles.

"Nothing is pre-blues..." Dawson said cryptically. Then he turned slightly to look up at Emory. "Em?  You okay?  If you're tired, that arthritic mess down there can wait.  I'm fine.  In fact, I haven't felt this good in years."

"No, I'm fine," she assured hurriedly, not wanting to end this converstation prematurely.  Besides, she didn't want to leave his back half-finished.  It ran against her ingrained sense of order.  "Turn your head back," she instructed absently.  "I don't want your spine curving that way."  However, it was apparent that simple kneading was not going to be effective. Not yet, anyway.  She had to get some of this overall tautness resolved first.  She balled her hands into fists, and leaned over Joe, rolling her knuckles into his back with methodical precision.  "So, did you play blues with your band?  Or just rock and roll?"  Maybe they had been catering to their audience, at the prom.

Dawson obediently lay his head back down.  Olga the Overbearing, indeed.  He whuffed out a little air as Emory dug into his back with renewed ferocity.  "Oh, I snuck in blues riffs wherever I could,"  Joe said wickedly.   "Deke was a pure fan of whitebread rock and roll, but I did my damnedest to bend in some blue notes.  He even fired me once over it.  Of course, since he never paid me, the action was purely a formality,"  Dawson said, grinning evilly.  "He had to hire me back six hours later, or his Dad threatened to pull the plug on him.  Turns out his Dad liked my music.  Better than Deke's."

Delight poured through her, and Emory giggled.  "Poor Deke," she said.  "Betrayed by his own *father*..." She giggled again.  She couldn't help it.  Once the fit had passed, she refocused on her hands.  Joe's back was as tight and hard as Haylie's after an evening of haying.  He needed to take it easier on himself.  Not that he'd appreciate the suggestion, she reminded herself firmly.

She turned her thoughts back to Deke, and his father demanding him to reestablish his friendship with Joe. Deke had probably whined **but Daaaad!**, not wanting to give up his pride.  But Dad had been adamant.  Had he been so out of a desire to look out for Joe?  Or because he had known that Joe was the kind of boy who would look out for Deke?

The humor faded for a moment, as Emory experienced an unexpected pang of resentment.  Her own father had also chosen her friends, though perhaps not so wisely or well.  "So did you have any other gigs?  Besides Prom, I mean?"

Dawson thought about that.  That era of his life seemed at a far remove, dusty, like an ancient Chronicle.  "Some dances, at various schools.  Even a mixer at the Catholic college, once.  Egad. Skirts four inches below the knees.  Nuns with rulers.  Those were the days."

Emory gave a mockshudder, and then remembered that Joe couldn't see it.  "Catholic school," she mused.  "And here I thought *I* had problems."  She pushed into Joe's back to distract him.  The strain there was starting to ease, soon she'd be able to start with her fingers again.  "So what was your most memorable gig?" she asked curiously.

Dawson tried to repress his laughter at Emory's tart assessment of parochial schools.   "Catholic school wasn't _that_ bad,"  he protested.  "Well, mostly." The nuns did view his music with more than a little suspicion.  Now that he thought about it, Dawson's neighbors and school had kept a pretty close eye on him while he grew up.  Neighborhoods were closer, then, and one-parent families rarer.  He shifted to Em's other question.

"My most memorable gig?  Well, there was the time Deke booked us over the phone into a bar on the lower east side, pretending we were all of age.  Turns out it was a great blues bar... and we were the only white boys there.  I about died.  Here there were these blues _immortals_ in the audience, and we're this....Crickets imitation..."

Emory giggled again, picturing young Joe's horror when he had discovered what Deke had done. **You did WHAT?!?**  "Well, now it's sure come around, hasn't it?" she said as she pressed at a knot experimentally with her fingers.  "Now you're the great player, and everyone wants to be in your bar."  She laughed again.  "So, when someone tries to book over the phone now, do you check their ID when they come to the door?"  By degrees, the knot became more pliable under her fingers, until it finally smoothed under her ministrations.  She smiled a little to herself, pleased.

"Their ID, their DNA, their IQ..."  Dawson mumbled. Great player, indeed.  Emory had some damn strange ideas.

Emory shook her head.  "Meanie," she accused amiably. "So did you actually play?  At that club, I mean?"

"Had to.  The manager was so ticked that he _made_ us play.  I think he was hoping the audience would tear us apart...he relented after two songs, though... he became a good friend, over the years.  Of course, as we were leaving, I about fainted when someone grabbed me around the collar and dragged me down the hall. One of the _real_ blues men wanted to show me the right fingering on _his_ song.  Scared me to death."

Emory cried out in glee.  "Hey!  Somebody recognized the talent!  That's so great!"  She was just as glad Joe couldn't see her earlicking grin.  She didn't want to seem any younger than she already did to him.  Her smile softened as she continued her manipulations on his lower back.  She was having to go about it one handed, bracing her left with her right.  There was too much tension here for the two-hand approach to be very effective.

"Aw, they were just being nice..."  Dawson said in denial, though there was a pleased smile on his face at the recollection.  "Hey, Emory!  you take it easy! You just got out of a cast, now.  Those burls have been years in the making.  You won't wear them down tonight."   Dawson firmly believed that, and worried about Emory injuring herself.  Years of hauling around the eighteen pound dead weight of the prostheses had done a job on his back.

//We'll just see about that, Mr. Dawson,// Emory thought with grim determination.  She had every faith in her own ability here.  She'd done this for Haylie as soon as her hands had been large enough to manage the necessary pressure.

"Don't worry about me," she said easily.  "I can't *hurt* myself doing this.  The only thing that could possibly happen is that muscle fatigue will get the better of me," she assured.  "But we'll both know when that happens, because I won't be able to keep the pressure constant,'" she added as an afterthought. Then another thought occurred toher.  "Do you want me to stop?"  Maybe he wanted to get some sleep.

Frankly, the thought terrified him.  "No... if you sure you're okay..."  he said doubtfully.

"I'm great," she reiterated.  "So, what was the guy's name who showed you the fingering to his song?  You keep in touch?" she teased, unable to help herself.

"Hell, I haunted that club for years.  I spent some nights just staring at his fretwork, memorizing his licks.  I was a pest,"  Dawson laughed.  "You wouldn't know him.  Grady just did the club circuit, never recorded a song in his life.  He was old when I knew him then,"  Dawson said more quietly.

Emory absorbed the oblique reference to Grady's death in silence, still persistently working out the snarls that tied up Joe's lower back.  "Hey," she exclaimed, as a thought occurred to her.  "I thought you said that Deke was a through and through white-rock musican?"

"'Whitebread.'  Insofar as the term is generally used... yes."  Dawson felt vaguely traitorous to his childhood pal... but truth was truth...

"So what was he doing, booking you at the best bluesclub in town?" she wondered aloud.  "Was it your birthday, or did Christmas just come early that year?"  She leaned forward heavily for a moment, focusing her weight on the tips of her two fingers.  Stubborn knot here.

Dawson hissed.  Getting to Not Pain... could be momentarily painful.  Then he arched like a cat as a muscle he didn't know he had loosened.  He hadn't really paid attention to Emory's question. "How'd you know it was my birthday?"  he asked, puzzled.

Due to his position, Joe missed the sweet smile that spread over Emory's face.  Deke had given Joe a birthday present.  What a wonderful kid.  Sometime she was going to have to ask what happened to him.  "Lucky guess," she replied glibly.  "So which one was it? How old were you that year?"

"Daaaamn... I was just...seventeen?  Turning eighteen?  End of our senior year, as I remember...sixty-six. Eons ago."

"Still just a *little* thing," Emory teased, using the voice she normally reserved for teddybears and baby animals.

Dawson chuckled.  "A wee babe,"  he said agreeably. "Though Betsy didn't see it that way," he added archly, with a less than innocent grin.

Emory rolled her eyes.  Great.  Another male in her life with a healthy sex drive and a trunkload of racy memories.  Just what she needed.  She frowned in frustration at the spot she was working on, just to the left of the spine, right above the line of his pants.  This one required drastic measures.  "Joe, this is going to hurt for a minute, but then it's going to feel a *lot* better, I promise.  Take a deep breath, and let it out when I push down."  She got into position as he obediently filled his lungs, and then she pressed down sharply, leaning her whole weight onto that single point on his back.

Dawson was glad Emory had warned him.  A pain like fractured glass shocked him into gripping the bedcover before he caught and contained it.  Pain was a familiar companion to him over the years.  This wasn't too bad.  Just-- unexpected.

Emory winced in sympathy.  "Sorry," she apologized. She continued the apologywith her fingertips, letting them soothe the soreness away with gentle strokesand little circular caresses. "So who else was in your band?" she asked.  "I assume it wasn't just you and Deke."

Dawson consciously evened his breathing.  The pain was already receding, replaced by a glowing warmth coaxed to life by Emory's gentle fingers.  "Forget the 'sorry' part, Emory."  he said simply. "It feels great..."   It was a second before he registered Emory's next question.   "The other guys in the band? Lessee...Tolliver...Luchese...Elastic Elmo...there were a few, some just short timers. It was always an adventure balancing out the instruments.    One gig we had two bass players, a drummer, a baritone sax, and me.  I damn near busted something trying to carry the high end."

She laughed with him at the memory he shared.  His back was loosening up considerably now, she noted. And it was a good thing too, because her hands were starting to tire.  Still, she thought she had the energy to finish this up properly and then give him give his neck a good rubdown.  No point in doing this by halves, after all.  "Elastic Elmo?" she queried, wondering about the odd nickname.  "Dare I ask...?"

"Well, you can _ask_.  Do bear in mind this was a mindless collection of adolescent males," Dawson warned.

Emory faltered, her hands momentarily going still as her mind raced with all the possible reasons why Elmo could be described as 'elastic'.  "So, which of your members played the drums?" she asked, a little too brightly.

"None of them.  That presented a problem, as you might expect,"  he said dryly.

Emory groaned. "You are just impossible, you know that?"  She resumed her manipulations.  It was easier now.  Most of the knots were gone, and the remaining ambient tension was kneaded away with relative ease. She paused again and shook her hands out again.  She scowled.  There had been a time when she could do this without a problem.  She needed to get back into practice.

 Dawson stirred a little.  "Don't overdo it, Em. You've already worked a miracle, in my book."

"Jooooe!" she complained, shaking her hands more vigorously.  "I'm *fine*! Would you just let me do this?"

"Yes,  Madame Olga..."

Emory thought about poking him in the ribs, but decided not to undo all of her hard work by making him tense again.  "Jerk."  She ran her palms up and down his back, splaying her fingers out to cover as much surfacearea as possible.  "Actually," she decided, "I think we're ready for you to turn over, and I'll give you your neckrub."

"I seem to have temporarily forgotten how to move," Dawson observed into the bedspread.  But he screwed his elbow into the bed and levered himself over without Emory's help, executing a boneless flop on his back that would have left Shamu the Killer Whale envious.

Emory let Joe settle himself, and then she crawled around to his head.  Kneeling on her heels, she scooted up so that her knees touched his shoulders. She smiled down at his uncertain blue eyes. It *was* an odd position for both of them.  "Trust me," she said, making it both a request and a command as she carefully slid her hands under Joe's head, and began her massage at the point where the neck joined with the skull, enjoying the feel of his short, silver hair bristling under her fingers. "So tell me more about your band.  Did you have a name?"

Dawson schooled himself to relax.  It was oddly harder, looking into Emory's eyes, rather than listening blind to her gentle, teasing voice.  But the muscles at the base of his skull _loved_ her. "Feels great, Em. "  His mind went inward, thinking about those last years of adolescent freedom. "The bands? Hell if I remember.  When Deke went away, the Dominators fell apart.  I drifted into groups, sometimes just filling in for a night.  Grady would even call me from the club, some nights, and let me sit in for a share of the tips.  But _I_ didn't have a band.  Too expensive."

"Expensive? How so?"  Emory lifted her eyes away from Joe's face, knowing how disconcerting it could be to look into a pair of eyes when you were already so vulnerable.  She let her eyes drift over to Dawson's shoulder and left them gazing there.

Equipment, amplifiers, travel expenses, sheet music for practice, practice venues, food, beer... Dawson recalled the drill as if it was yesterday.  "Boys get hungry,"  was his short answer.  It really covered everything, from Cheetos to the newest Stratocaster in the store.   His shoulder started itching where Em was staring.  "Don't worry about the scar, Em,"  he said, hoping to shortstop her concern.

Emory started, and glanced at him in puzzlement. Scar?  She looked back at his shoulder and realized that she had, indeed, fixed her eyes on that nasty scar that she'd noticed when he'd first taken off his shirt.  "Oh, I'm sorry," she blurted.  "I, uh... I wasn't... I..." she trailed off uncertainly, not knowing what to say.  Brilliant, Emory.  Way to relax him.  Why not just ask him if he had a good time In Country, while you're at it?

"Em.  Em... Hey, Em!  You aren't _listening_,"  Dawson needled.  "I said _Don't Worry About The Scar._ Should I bellow?"  To himself, he added,  Damn Methos and his sixteenth century stitches, anyway...'

Emory squeezed her eyes shut as a grimace of embarrassment contorted her face.  Then she willed herself back to her task, shaking her head. "I wasn't really looking at it," she explained helplessly. "I was just fixing on a spot."  She rolled her eyes. "Let me try this again," she said, smiling, and fixed her eyes on his *other* shoulder.  No scar there, thank goodness.  She frowned again, her hands had forgotten their place.  She pressed gently, testing the muscles.  Ah, here she was...

Dawson sighed.  Emory could withdraw into a funk even quicker than _he_ could.   "Em, you can look at it. You can even touch it.  Just one thing... _not_ looking at it won't make it go away." Dawson was a little worried at her reaction.  If that little hole bothered her so much, how would she react to his stumps?  Thankfully, he hadn't changed out earlier.

Emory's shoulders slumped in defeat.  She was never going to get this right.  "Okay, Joe, I hear you," she answered.  "I'm not trying to make it go away.  I just didn't want to bring it up.  I'm going for *relaxed* here."  She arched an eyebrow at the irony.  "I can't seem to achieve the state myself, so I try to experience it vicariously by instilling it in others."

Dawson settled his head back, relieved, for the moment.  "Go ahead.  Admire the handiwork," he said with a testing grin.  "It's Adam's..."

"What?" Emory gasped in horror.  Adam *shot* Joe?

"Emory, get a grip.  Adam sewed me up."  Dawson rolled his eyes.  "He's a much better shot than that."

"Joe, don't *do* that to me," she begged, wheezing. She looked at the scar.  The idea that Adam had done that, accidentally or in anger was just too *horrible.*  "Wait a minute.  He sewed you up?  He was there?  I'd have thought Adam would have been as far away from Vietnam as he could get."

"Vietnam?"  Dawson asked, now totally confused himself.  "What's Vietnam got to do with it?"

"Hang on, I'm lost here," Emory confessed.  "How did you get that?  That's a gunshot wound, right?"

"Ah.  Yes.  Right.  We are both agreed there." Dawson had had no intention of upsetting Emory like this.  Best now just to gloss over it.  "There was a fracas.  I got caught in the middle.  No heroics. Just a combination of bad luck, worse luck, and good luck.  Mac hauled my ass out of there, and Adam fixed it.  End of story."

End of story.  Yah-sure, you betcha.  Emory realized that the 'fracas' was a sore point.  If it was a sore point that included Adam and Mac, then the only question was whether an Immortal had been involved, or a Watcher.  If it hadbeen an Immortal, Emory doubted Joe would be so closed mouthed about it. Definitely Watcher business.  She suddenly remembered her dinner with Bertrand, and his mention that although Joe had been kidnapped, he had also *survived*. She decided not to go there.  If she really had to know, then she could ask Adam later.

"Well, I'm glad Mac was there to haul ass, and Adam was there to give you a fix," she quipped lightly. "It would really have sucked if I never met you, Joe."  She moved her hands farther down, now kneading where the neck met the shoulders.   It was a good job.  Not her best work, but she thought that she could get back into form with a little more practice.

Dawson captured one of her hands, and gave it a chaste, courtly kiss. "Likewise, I'm sure, milady." Then he added, with a small worried glint in his eye, "If you _need_ to know more, ask Adam.  He'll give you an entertaining account.  But don't do it when Mac's around.  Promise?"

"Promise," she answered promptly, rather surprised by the kiss.  And even more surprised by how it warmed her.  "So," she fished shamelessly.  "Feel better?"

Dawson inhaled deeply, and took stock.  "Emory, I feel young again.  I really must thank you for kidnapping me and forcing your attentions on me.  I must insist that you do it again."  He said, with a hopeful gleam.

"Done!" came her immediate reply.  "But I wouldn't say I *kidnapped* you," she objected. "*Coerced* maybe, or subverted..."  Young.  She'd done that?  The notion filled her with bliss.

"...extorted... threatened..." Dawson added to the list... If you could bottle what Emory had done, the bars wouldn't be able to keep it in stock.

"Yeah, I know.  I'm just an all around bad apple," she agreed.  She shifted around on the bed, so Joe was no longer looking up at her upside-down.

Dawson captured her thin, recently injured hand, and examined it, rubbing lightly between the fingers and thumb.  "Is it okay, Em?"

"Yeah," she said, startled, but letting Joe hold it. "It tires easily, but otherwise it's not a problem."

"Take care of it, Emory...it's worth it's weight in diamonds..."

Emory couldn't keep the smile or the flush from her face at the unexpected praise.  Joe not only had a way with words,  he also knew how to deliver the line so that you really believed it.  "Uh... thanks," she said gracelessly. "Glad you liked it."  She gently drew her hand back, disengaging from his warm grip, which was somehow both soothing and...  unsettling.

"Yes, Emory,  I _liked_ it,"  Dawson said, still smiling.  He looked around the apartment, suddenly aware of how empty and _quiet_ it was.  "My pardon, Emory.  I'm not used to being a host up here.  There's some orange juice in the fridge, if you want,"  he gestured to the little half fridge on the floor in the corner.  "The morning crew keeps it stocked.  They won't let me downstairs without a hit of vitamins to even out my temper,"  he said with a grin.

Emory laughed with Joe at his joke. "No, really, I'm fine, thanks," she responded.  The only thing she really wanted, at this point, was a little sleep. Except that she didn't *really* want to sleep, she wanted to talk some more with Joe.  It had been *forever* since she'd last stayed up so late, just to enjoy another person's company.  She didn't want to cut it short for something as silly as going to *bed.*  It seemed wasteful, somehow.  "So tell me more about your hometown," she said in a kind of wistful demand.

"My hometown?  Chicago?"  Dawson cast back his thoughts with a certain puzzlement.  "A city like that... parts of it just seep into you, you know? Like the blues scene, or the wind whipping off the lake in January, or being a Cub fan.  Some parts stick more easily than others.  It's changed since I lived there."

"So you liked living in the city?" Emory asked.  "I mean, a real city, as opposed to Seacouver?"

"Seacouver isn't a real city?"  Dawson teased.  Emory had the West Coasters habit of whitewashing the population center.  "I didn't live in _the city_, Em. I lived in the neighborhood. And that neighborhood is gone, now.  People move on.  I moved on."  There was no particular sadness in his voice.  In fact, there was no inflection at all.

"So tell me more about your neighborhood, then," Emory persisted.  "Tell me *something.*"

"Shoot, I don't know,"  Dawson said, thinking back. "There was the drug store.  It still had a real live soda fountain.  Banana splits for a dime, on Saturdays.  Deke's Dad used to take us to the Legion Hall for Scout meetings... the older Legionnaires always used to kid us, in our uniforms... We got bagels at Schultzes, and brats at Herkimers, and ...well...boring, really."

Emory grinned.  "You were a boyscout?" she asked. "How many merit badges?"  She completely ignored his mention that his childhood had been boring.  This was all new to her.

Dawson felt embarrassed.  "A few,"  he admitted.  He'd beaten out Deke by one, and gotten his Eagle badge. He'd always felt bad for Deke, and more for his Dad, who had sponsored Joe in the Scouts.  He should have _made_ Deke study for that last test, no matter what he said about it being a dumb kid's game.  Deke was into his grown-up phase by then, and claiming he hated the uniform. He was on a James Dean/Steve McQueen jag, Dawson remembered.  Just starting to rebel against his conservative ex-Marine father.  Now how the hell was Emory dredging up all these memories?  Joe asked himself, partly in awe.

Emory's grin grew wider as she caught embarrassment on her friend's face.  She flopped down next to him on the bed, lying on her stomach and  propping herself up with her elbows.  "So didja make Eagle Scout?" she pressed.

Dawson snapped his head back, avoiding Em's eyes.  "It was just a kid's game, Em."

"You did!" she cried happily.  "Good for you, Joe." Emory nudged him with an elbow.  "Was that fun? Scouting?  I was in Girl Scouts for a year or two, but there really wasn't anything to it. We mostly baked brownies, and did stupid cross-stitch projects, and visited museums."  She grimaced at the memory of Shelby Anderson throwing an egg at her face.  Emory had actually caught it, in a rare moment of hand-eye coordination, and had promptly been covered in yellow slime.

"Yeah, well, probably better than training to be miniature soldiers..."  Dawson mused.  Deke had had a point.   All these years, and Dawson still had conflicting feelings about the ideals he'd soaked up in the Scouts, versus the ugly realities he'd seen in Vietnam.  But Em didn't need to hear about that. "How about you?  What kind of merit badges did _you_ win?"

Emory rolled her eyes.  The Humiliation badge.  The Learn to be Invisible badge.  "Actually," she honestly scoured her memory,  "I don't remember.  Wait, there was one... it was some sort of science badge.  I don't remember real well, it had to do with water.  I remember that the badge itself had a drop of water and a rainbow and a snowflake on it.  But..."  she grimaced.  It had been a pretty badge, but she couldn't remember anything other than that.  It hadn't had any meaning for her then, and now had all but faded from her memory.  "Girl Scouts was kind of a joke, you know?  We never went camping or learned any cool survival skills.  It was just some dumb activity to keep the girls out of trouble while they weren't in school.  None of the stuff was very interesting."  She shrugged in dissatisfaction.

Dawson watched the microexpressions cross Emory's face as she talked.  No peer-bonding for her.  No fast friends.  He suddenly felt his childhood was an embarrassment of riches, compared to hers.

Emory swallowed, vaguely uncomfortable under Joe's gaze, though she didn't know why. "Actually, there was this one field trip that was kind of neat," she offered.  "We all went to the Art Museum to see a bunch of Rodin sculptures on loan from... well, from somewhere," she smiled. That had been cool.  She'd managed to ditch the other girls by sneaking into the bathroom when they moved on to look at the Chinese vases.  She'd doubled back and spent the whole time looking at all that amazing art until Mrs. Miller came after her and dragged her back.  "I couldn't get enough of them, you know?  And then Adam took me to the Musee Rodin in France," she added with a laugh. "The fulfillment of a childhood dream."

"I remember when he took you,"  Dawson said, amused. "He was pretty jacked about it.   I think I spent a year in there, one day, myself."

"Yeah?" Emory smiled again.  It pleased her to know that she and Joe had something in common. Besides Mac and Adam, that was to say.  And it was sort of neat to know that Adam had enjoyed that day too.  It remained one of her happiest memories.

"Yeah.  All them nekkid bodies..."  he mock leered. Rodin was Emory and Methos's connection. He had no intention of poaching.  "Did you study art?  Along with all your other degrees?

Emory blinked.  "What other degrees?" she scanned her memory.   She didn't think she'd ever talked to Joe much about college.  "I only got the one.  And in English, at that.  And no, I never studied art.  Just admired it.  We had some Rodin at the U of O for a year or two, actually.  That was fun to visit.  They didn't have my favorite, though."

"Which was your favorite?  and why?"  Dawson explored.  He ignored the statement about other degrees. Knowing Em, she had probably garnered enough hours to get more than one.  Emory had a habit of staying terminally out of the limelight.

"The Centauress," she supplied.  "You know that one? I saw the bronze casting of it in Atlanta, but in Paris, I got to see it in marble.  It's just this beautiful, equine woman.  She looks like she's just gotten up in the morning, and is stretching out.  I don't know why it's my favorite, exactly," she admitted.  "I just thought that she was so beautiful and... mysterious."

Dawson remembered the sculpture vividly.  It was almost unicornesque, without the horn, of course,  but with the heavy mythic underpinnings... and so like Emory, full of promise... he shook off the vision.  He shifted gears.  "You would have liked Tessa's sculptures.    Richie put them in storage for Mac years ago.  Maybe you can get Methos to give you a tour of them."  It was one of the odd forbidden subjects that lay between Mac and Dawson.  Tessa. Their silence on the subject had become sheer habit. Maybe Emory could help Mac heal an old wound there.

"Oh I *do* love her sculptures!" she affirmed enthusiastically.  "I'm living with them!  Mac is letting me share the fourth floor with them," she clarified in response to his puzzled look.  "I haven't finished unwrapping them all yet, but I will soon. It's really neat, Joe," she confessed. "It's like walking through a secret garden."  As soon as she'd said the words, she felt incredibly foolish and childish.  But that *was* how it had seemed, discovering all those beautiful sculptures.

"Oh."  Dawson was slightly stunned.  He'd wondered for years what had happened to Tessa's sculptures, and had been too cowardly to just... ask.  And now Emory had discovered and appropriated them after less than a week in town.  It was a grand jest, and Dawson treated it as such.  "Damn!  That's great, Emory,  I hated to think of them in some dusty, lonely room."

"Oh *totally*," she answered in complete agreement. "I mean, it was sort of sad, Joe.  They were all just *sitting* there when I found them.  All covered up and hidden.  I didn't even know what they were.  And then I uncovered that first one.  Inammorata.  Do you know the story about that one?"

Dawson shook his head.  "No.   I've only seen the sculptures from a distance.  And Mac-- he never talked about Tessa with me.  And I never asked.  I don't blame him.  I was spying on him the entire time.  It must have bothered him immensely, when he found out," Dawson said with some heavy regret.  "Hey, Em,"  he said, closing away that conundrum with MacLeod.   "Are you going back to school?"

Emory paused, caught off guard.  "I don't think so," she demurred.  "I mean, I guess I could.  I haven't really thought about it.  Nothing I want to study right now.  Except maybe some more French," she qualified.  "Why?"

Dawson stirred, surprised at himself for asking such a-- parental-- question.  Soon he'd be following it up with  "What do you want to do with your life?"  Em would kill him.  "Just wondered,"  he said lamely. "Mac has good connections at the University."

"Yeah," she agreed.  Not that connections would necessarily get her in.  "I suppose I could always sit in on his class and ask annoying questions," she said with a grin.  "But I'm not sure I want to go back right now.  It's sort of nice to be away from that."

"The dusty halls of academe?"  Dawson asked, smiling. Deep inside, he sorely missed his truncated college years.  Probably a very bad case of  rosecolored glasses.'   "Methos will be keeping you too busy, I'll bet."

Emory shrugged.  "I don't know.  We haven't really discussed it."  It occurred to her that something other than idle curiosity might have prompted Joe's question. To her mind, Joe seemed like an educated man, but she realized that he could easily be selfeducated rather than a product of any institution.  And there were also the Hallowed Halls of the Watcher Academy to consider. "Did you go to college?"

It was eerie how Emory followed his thoughts, Dawson observed to himself. "Just the City College for a couple of years." he said dismissively.

"And then what?" Emory asked unthinkingly.

Dawson was silent for a moment, wondering what would upset Emory more,  a flip answer, or the bare truth. The fact was, it had been so long, he was no longer sure of the truth.  "It was a combination of things, really.  My sister got into a good college, and, well, the family finances were stretched pretty thin.  I was working, and playing too many clubs, and my grades went south," he shrugged.  "I thought maybe a tour of duty, send the money home, get eligible for the GI Bill... hell, most of my friends had already been drafted, or enlisted.  I figured I'd better go before they nabbed me, too."

For a moment Emory didn't know what to say.   It pained her to think of Joe, who was so intelligent and wise, losing his chance for a good college education in order to provide for his family.  But it didn't surprise her in the least.  That kind of self-sacrifice was just Joe's style.  She shook away her regrets on his behalf.  For all that he may not have finished college, his education and intellect had hardly suffered for it, after all.  Maybe he didn't have a lot of science or math, so what?  Lots of people didn't.

She considered dropping the subject, but then she remembered Joe's reaction when she'd avoided looking at the scar on his chest.  Not looking at it wouldn' t make it disappear.  "So do you regret not ever finishing college?"

"Sometimes.  I caught some grief over it, through the years.   Gave me a little bit of impetus to study harder in the Academy... hell, I studied my roommates into the ground.  They hated me," he laughed.   "But after having a couple of years in the sun, playing football, dating cheerleaders, being the insufferable BMOC, well, I had a lot to prove when I got to Geneva.  God, my French was execrable!"  he laughed.  "je m'appelle Joe..."  he said in warped Midwestern.

Emory laughed too.  "BMOC?" she wondered, unfamiliar with the acronym.

"Big Man On Campus,"  Dawson admitted in a low whisper.  "You ever read Spider Man comics? Nah, probably not..."  he said regretfully.  His college career had resembled Flash Thompson's more closely than Peter Parker's.  Emory ducked her head.  "No. Not Spiderman."  She dithered for a moment, and then plunged in.  "Xmen.  And later Excalibur, for a while."

"Ah!  Scott Summers!  The Cyclops!  The Beast! Angel!"  Then Dawson remembered,  "Damn... the group changed a bit over the years, didn't it?"

"Yeah!" Emory cried in recognition.  "And yes, the teams have changed... well, more than a bit, really. But all the originals are still there.  Or they were," she added.  "It's been a while since I checked."  She shook her head.  "I can't believe you read those too."

"You kidding?  I was the star of my unit when I smuggled a pinup of Marvel Girl into Firebase Arrow."

Emory burst into laughter.   She couldn't stop.  The idea of a bunch of hyper, horny, homesick teenagers drooling over an oversized *comicbook character* was too much to hold inside.  She hunched over, trying to keep her stomach from pulling apart.  Unfortunately, that motion upset her precarious postion on the edge of Joe's bed, and she fell off.  Hitting the floor only made her laugh harder. "Oh god...  Joe...."

Dawson made a grab for Emory, nearly following her down to the floor before recovering.  "It's not that funny, Em!"  he said, a little miffed.  And a lot amused.  He contemplated Emory a bit haughtily as she snickered on the floor.  "Hey, at least we weren't reading "Wonder Woman."  We had a definite preference for good plotting and characterization, even then," he sniffed.   "Not to mention the fact that Wonder Woman went out with an _Air Force_ officer."

Joe's pretense at hauture just made it all funnier. Now she  was imagining a bunch of Marines loftily arguing the various intellectual merits of different comic books.  "Only  the very finest of the Graphic Novels," she wheezed painfully.

"Oh, absolutely!"  he reminisced, winking.  "Not that we didn't appreciate the stray "Playboy" that came down the pike.  For the fine fiction and articles, of course."

Emory screamed weakly.  "Yeah," she gasped.  "And Rita Rudner goes to the mall for the music."

Rita Rudner?  Dawson was a little weak on current popular culture.  Damn.  Getting old.  "Who was your favorite villain?"  he asked.  "I always had a sneaking admiration for Magneto."

Emory managed to calm down enough to answer the question. "Yeah, he was pretty cool.  And later on they made him a really three dimensional character. Do you know that he was a good guy for a while?"

"Haven't kept up, I'm afraid,"  Dawson said, as he extended a hand to Em on the floor, but she dodged him, and he pulled back before he tipped over.  "A good guy, huh?   Next thing you know, the Avengers will be bad guys."

Emory frowned, looking up at Joe from where she lay on the floor.  "How did we get onto this topic anyway?" She wondered.  "Oh yeah, I remember.  BMOC.  Having a lot to prove."  She took a deep breath.  Satisfied that she wasn't going to hurt herself by doing so, she sat up.  "You don't still believe that, do you?  That you have something to prove?"

"Comes with the Y chromosome, I'm afraid,"  he said, self-deprecatingly.

Emory peered at him over the mattress for amoment, and then stretched out an arm and poked him.  "You're silly," she informed him gravely.

The statement made Dawson inordinately pleased, for no particular reason.   "You going to stay down there all night?"  he asked.  "Maybe I should get you a pillow?" he nudged.

Emory grinned foolishly.  Truthfully, she found something about this position strangely appealing. She felt very small, just barely topping the mattress to look over at Joe.  "I guess not," she conceded.  She climbed back onto the bed again.  "I'm just making sure I'll stay up this time," she offered gamely.  "I could seriously hurt myself, falling from this great height."

Truth to tell, Emory's soft eyes looking up at him from over the edge of the bed had bored into a strange empty hole in his heart, where he once kept the imagined pictures of Amy growing up. "Hmmm,"  Dawson regarded her gravely.  "Maybe I could rig a safety line from the chandelier," he offered in his best handyman voice.

Emory choked and clapped a hand to her mouth, attempting to keep herself from going off again. She must really be tired, for now her mind was envisioning a special, for-yuppie's-children-only, safety device which attached a line to the ceiling and to the sleeping five-year-old who was perpetually falling out of bed.  In her mind's eye, the sleeping child bobbed on the end of some ridiculous bungee cord, while his parents struggled to catch him and return him to his bed.

"Whoa, Em, hold on, this time..."  Dawson snagged her before she went over again.

Emory froze, a rush of adrenaline washing away her laughter like it was never there.  Her heart drummed an alarm of warning in her ears.  The large hand that held her down was no longer familiar, or friendly.

Dawson felt Emory lock up under his hand, and snatched it away.  Hell, sitting on a stranger's bed, no one around... "Em?  Are you okay?  I didn't mean..."  What didn't he mean?  To be a friend?

Emory sat up, embarrassed and confused.  "Yeah," she said uncertainly.  What the Hell was that? "I'm fine."   Whatever it was, it wasn't Joe's fault.  There was nothing to fear from Joe.  What was the matter with her?

"Yeah, right."  Dawson kept his voice low, and easy, and unthreatening.  "I know that  I'm fine' line. I've got it copyrighted.  You pay the royalties, and tell me what's wrong."  Em couldn't think that he would...

"Nothing!" Emory cried, wholly lost.  "There's nothing wrong!"  She was safe, here with Joe.  She *knew* that.  So why had that hand seemed so threatening?

Dawson wanted to envelope Emory, keep her safe from whatever ghosts were haunting her-- but he didn't dare touch her.  "Em, that kind of 'nothing' gave me nightmares for years. Don't give me 'nothing'.  I might be able to help.  I want to, if you'll let me. I owe you."

Emory pressed her palms to her eyes and clenched her jaw with frustration.  "Joe, I don't *know!* Okay? You didn't do anything."  She knew she was handling this wrong.  She could *feel* that. But she was too disoriented to know how to fix it.  "You didn't do anything wrong, okay?  I'm fine."  She forced her hands down and pressed them against each other, trying to warm them.

Dawson didn't accept that.  Watching Emory in such distress, he *could* not.   In his mind, he replicated the events just before Emory so devastatingly withdrew.  She had looked over the bed, so childlike, then sat next to him, laughing, and trusting, then... he had grabbed her, before she fell off, again.  "Em, did Shaw touch you like that?" he said baldly.  He didn't know how else to get through.

The question startled her.  Shaw?  Her father had been the furthest thing from her mind this evening. Talking with Joe had been easy and fun.  Had Shaw ever touched her like... what?  He was her *father*, he touched her all the time.  Sometimes gently, and sometimes... not.  She'd spent a lifetime living in fear of that touch.

Suddenly, Emory understood what Joe was getting at. "Joe, we..." she cleared her throat, finding it suddenly dry.  "We were always getting into it, toward's the end," she managed finally.  She wasn't aware that she had wrapped her hands around her knees and was rocking slightly where she sat.

Dawson noted Emory's agitated body language, and he deliberately shifted to give her more room. He'd have gotten up and sat across the room, if he could, but he thought looming over her, even for a moment, would be a very bad idea.  "Em, tell  me about it,"  he said gently, keeping his anger corralled in a deep, dark place.

She shook her head, not so much in negation as simply to clear it.  "About what?  Shaw-- he wasn't a very nice man," she said absently.  Her head was starting to ache.  "And sometimes I'd do something that really pissed him off.  Sometimes I even meant to."

Dawson waited, listening.  Listening hard.

She closed her eyes.  She did not want to discuss this.  She really didn't.  If she thought she could leave now, without throwing Joe into some kind of horrible guilt trip, she would have been out the door in no time flat.  But there was no getting out of this.  Not without severely damaging this strange and special friendship she'd been forming with this man. "So we were always getting into it.  I'd piss him off... talk back or break curfew or whatever...  He'd yell.  I'd yell back.  He'd hit me.  It was stupid." She would have been smarter to have let it slide. Looking back, she realized how stupid, how *really dangerous* baiting Shaw had been. "I should have known better."

Dawson listened carefully to her words, funnelling off his anger to the deep spot underneath, so he could study her words rationally.  "Em, you couldn't know better.  You thought he was your father.  That meant he should have acted like one.  There's something you need to remember, though I know you only just learned recently that Shaw was Immortal.  You have to unlearn a lot of assumptions about who Shaw was--"  Dawson paused to give his words more effect.  "Shaw was _not_ your father.   And he _knew_ that."

Emory snorted softly.  "Yeah, right."  Right.  He had known she wasn't his, even when she hadn't. He had been the only father she'd ever known, but... what had she been to him?  "Once, he almost killed me."  A high-pitched, hysterical titter escaped her mouth. "Twice, actually."  She was forgetting Reims...  "But he's the one who died, in the end."

"Em,"  Dawson damned the distance between the two of them, a canyon created by Shaw's ghost. "He's still alive in your dreams, isn't he?"  he asked sadly, _knowing_ it was true.  Ghosts like Shaw were hard to lay to rest, and Em had been with him a very long time.

Emory shook her head again.  Her shoulders hurt, her back hurt, her head was pounding.  "I don't know," she said distantly.  "I don't think so."  Last night she'd slept soundly on Mac's couch.

"Last night doesn't count."  Dawson gently reminded her of the Watcher fiasco.  She'd been drugged to the gills.  "Tell me about the last couple of months."

"I don't know!" she snapped irritably.  How *had* she been sleeping?  She hadn't really been thinking about it.  At first she hadn't done anything *but* sleep, after Adam had brought her home to his apartment to recuperate from her injuries.  And then he'd had all those late-night, early-morning comings and goings while he was distracting Bentresh.  Naturally her sleeping patterns had been disrupted.  If she woke up early, to the sound of his rising, or returning, often she couldn't get back to sleep, but-- so what?  It didn't mean anything, did it?  She'd always been a light sleeper.  And every thing over the last couple of weeks had been so hectic, what with the impending move, and all...

"I guess I haven't been doing a lot of sleeping," she admitted finally, just coming to the realization herself.

Dawson started fitting together the small bits of the puzzle he could see.  He'd seen a lot of stress disorders in the military, and later in the Watchers. Emory was a prime candidate.  "I don't know all of what happened at Reims, Emory, but I know how you came out of it-- on a stretcher.  Do you want to talk about it?  Or the other time Shaw attacked you?  How it started?"  He had to get her talking.  She couldn't go off like this.

Emory rubbed her brow absently.  She felt like she had one continuous ache running from the base of her spine, through her shoulders, up into her head. Abruptly, she realized how tense her posture was.  She forced her shoulders down from next to her ears, and moved them around for a second as she tried to get her back to relax.  There was *nothing* to be afraid of. Shaw was dead.  And the only person here was Joe, who would never hurt her.  "I... I don't really remember much about Reims," she said slowly.  "I mean, I *remember* but... some parts are blurry."

"Damn, Em, you look like you are in desperate need of your own backrub,"  Dawson observed, trying to relax her.  "I'm not surprised parts are blurry," he said easily.  "You had a concussion on top of everything else."  And selective memory would make the ordeal easier to bear, in the short run.

Emory gave him a watery smile.  "I appreciate the offer, Joe.  I really do.  But how about a raincheck? Okay?"  She looked him over carefully, trying to see how he would take her refusal. "Nothing personal," she added hastily.  "I just I don't feel like it, right now."  She decided not to bring up the fact that she rarely received backrubs.  She'd given them to Haylie, because her grandmother had always needed them.  But Emory had been young and strong, and not prone to back pain.  Also, she'd always been wary of disrobing in front of Haylie.  Anyone else might buy some story about Emory's clumsiness, but her grandmother would always know the real reason behind any suspicious bruise.  And Emory hadn't wanted to worry Haylie. There was nothing her grandmother could have done.

Dawson nodded, not offended.  He realized the last thing Emory needed was a stranger's prodding touch. "Actually, I was thinking of Methos,"  he said suggestively.  I don't have his... experience..." Dawson retreated away another foot, giving Emory breathing room.

Emory frowned.  The idea of bringing *any* of this up with *Adam* who was then *sure* to bring it up with MacLeod...  she didn't like that at all.

She noticed Joe shifting away from her, giving her space on the bed.  At first she panicked, wondering what she'd done wrong now, but his calm regard reassured her.  He was just trying to give her comfort room.  She  shifted towards him, just a little, so she could lean out and touch his arm briefly, before she drew back.  "It's not you," she affirmed.  "I feel safe with you, Joe.  I don't know what happened."  She caught her shoulders riding up again, and made herself take a deep breath.  "I really *don't* know why I freaked out like that.  I know you would never hurt me."

"I grabbed you."  Dawson said matter-of-factly.  "And you had a flashback.  I've seen them.  Hell, I've had them.  Not your fault, Emory.  Not your fault."  And not mine, either, Dawson admitted to himself.

Flashback?  Emory was familiar with the term, but she'd always associated it with veterans and accident vicitms and survivors of... trauma.  She exhaled a shuddery breath.  Yeah, she guessed that she qualified.  She latched onto something Joe had said. She knew she shouldn't ask, that she had no right, but she couldn't stop herself.  "You've had these?"

It was Dawson's turn to go silent, while he laid savagely into himself.  Em did _not_ need to hear war stories.  Those demons that haunted him were his own. He cast around for an answer.   The truth then, but not all of it.  "Flashbacks, yeah, I've been there.  I learned to hide them, after a fashion.  Otherwise the Watchers would have chucked me out a long time ago. Have you ever had one before?"  he tried to draw her out.

Emory drew her knees up to her chin, and wrapped her arms around them.  "I don't know.  Maybe not."  She wasn't sure.  Had she ever experienced this sense of startling dislocation?  "I don't think... I'm not sure I ever...  I'm not sure anyone's been close enough to..."  She realized she was rocking again, and she forced herself to stop.  She must look like a total nutcase.

Again, Dawson had to stop himself from reaching into her space to comfort her.  His inadvertent touch had brought this on.   "Take it easy, Emory.  You don't have to talk about it.  I won't force you.  I just know-- not talking about it won't make it better." Not in the last thirty years, at least.

"Talk about what?" Emory demanded in frustration. "What do you want me to say?" she gestured irritably. "I don't know what you want here, Joe.  I don't know what I'm supposed to do.  I'm not afraid of you!" she cried.  "It doesn't make sense!"

Emory's cry shook Dawson to the core.  She wasn't afraid of him?  It sounded almost like a challenge, like something she would fling in Shaw's face.  She wasn't completely back.  "I want you back, Em..." he said, nearly helpless in the face of her pain and fear.

Abruptly he pushed himself up and went to the fridge, pulling out the orange juice.  He put it on the table next to her, and retreated to his corner of the bed. "Drink.  You've had a shock."

Meekly, Emory sipped at the offered glass.  It tasted good, and it felt even better just to have something wet in her mouth.  "Thanks," she mumbled, slightly abashed that she had shouted at her friend.  This had all started out so well, why was she becoming more and more unnerved?  "I'm sorry," she tried.  "I don't mean to take this out on you."

"Not on me, Em.  You're taking it out on yourself. Just think of me as invulnerable.  Let it loose."

Emory slammed her glass down on the bedside table. "Joe!" she paused, bringing her voice down to a normal tone.  "You're not listening.  I don't know what wants loosing. I don't know what happened.  What do you want?" she wondered in bewilderment.  "An entire backlog of my whole childhood?"

Dawson could hear the fragile uncertainty behind the anger in Emory's voice.  He closed his eyes and forced himself to remember his own early episodes.  "It's frightening, isn't it?"  he whispered. This was hard. "There doesn't seem to be a reason, or a thing, or a person, but all of a sudden, everything's... gone. All your foundations get ripped out."  Hell.  He couldn't put it into words, either.

Emory frowned, rubbing her hands together.  Something flickered in recognition at Joe's words. "I wasn't... Nothing was *gone,*" she said slowly, attempting to articulate just what had happened.  "I mean, it wasn't an absence of anything.  It was this-- this presence of fear."  She grimaced.  She couldn't seem to find the words.  "Or maybe an absence of safety," she tried.  "One second I was fine, and the next I was scared to move.  For no *reason.*  And then it was gone."

It wasn't gone.  Dawson knew.  It was still there, hiding.  Deep down Emory probably knew it, too.  She was stone stiff, and protesting too much.   "Em, little things can bring back bad associations, even if you don't consciously remember the source.  For me...."  he hesitated.  "For me, it was clicks." This was a bad idea.  They should be talking about her.

"Clicks?" Emory asked curiously, eager to move the focus away from herself.

"Yeah, clicks, " he said reluctantly.  "Small ones. Like the sound a clock makes before it arms it's alarm in the morning.  Or a metal pen ticking against a desk."  He took a deep breath.  "Or  a mine, arming."

Emory inhaled sharply.  A mine.  Her eyes involuntarily flicked to Joe's prosthetics.  Yeah, that would do it.  "I can see how that would happen," she offered.  "It must have been weird for you."

"Heh.  That's an understatement.  I thought I was in the Twilight Zone.  Took me years to figure out why I woke up in the jungle every morning, _just_ before my alarm went off,"  he said with a weak smile.

Emory returned Joe's smile with a sickly one of her own.  "Did you really... I mean," she stopped, trying to compose her thoughts into an actual question.  "Did you really think you were in the jungle?" she asked finally.

"I didn't think I was in the jungle,"  he said, hating the admission.  "I _knew."

"Really?"  Emory could feel some of her panic and confusion bleeding away into curiosity.  "Did you really think-- I mean, was it-- did you just know because of feeling scared, or could you see and hear...?" she didn't know quite how to ask what she wanted to know.

"It's a moment out of time, almost.  Just a few tenths of a second, real time.  But in my mind, much longer."  Interminable.  "See, hear, taste..."  and feel.  That was when the phantom pain was the worst.  But Em didn't need to know that.

Emory shuddered.  She didn't like the sound of that at all.  If that happened to her...  God, it would be like Shaw could reach out and grab her from beyond the grave.  "Do you still...?"

Dawson looked off into the distance.  "The seeing and feeling and tasting part?  No."  Hardly ever.   Dawson didn't want to give Em the impression that it never got better.   "Some friends helped me along the way. Otherwise..."  It didn't bear thinking about.

Emory swallowed convulsively.  "But you're okay now, right?"

The slight note of returning panic in Emory's voice jarred him out of his self-pity.  "Easy, Em.  I was never _sick_.  It was just..."  Dawson stopped, hearing the denial in his own voice.  "Yes," he said firmly.  "I'm okay now."

Emory nodded.  She didn't like the idea of Joe still being tormented by those old ghosts.  "It wasn't like that," she whispered hoarsely.  "I didn't see or hear anything.  I just felt scared for no reason."  It was easier to say that now, though she couldn't say why.

"When I grabbed you,"  Dawson mused.  Too many people had been grabbing at Em recently. Shaw.  Bentresh. And now the Watchers.  No wonder she didn't feel safe.   Even from him, in the back of her mind.  "Em, it does help to talk it out.  It took me too damn long to figure that out.  I don't want you to go through the same thing."

She sighed.  "I don't know what to *say*."  She rubbed her clammy hands on her jeans.  "Usually it wasn't all that bad.  I mean, most times I'd just get off with a few bruises or getting the wind knocked out of me.  He almost never did anything *really* bad."

_Really_ bad.  Dawson had to clamp down on his anger again.   He would have to look up Shaw's Watcher reports.  Em needed help on this.  "Can you tell me? If not, maybe Anne could help..."

Emory stared at him, wondering if he'd lost his mind. Talk to *Anne?*  This was hard enough just talking to Joe, and she felt *much* closer to *him*.  Then Emory realized that Joe simply offered up Anne because she was a doctor.  He was tacitly suggesting that she seek help of a more experienced person.

"I don't think Anne would be the best choice," she said.  "But I think I see what you mean."  It occurred to her that this was probably difficult for Joe.  In spite of his willingness to offer help to a friend, he had his own issues to deal with, and might not feel equipped to carry all of Emory's baggage too.

Dawson wasn't sure Emory saw what he meant at all, so he struggled on.   "Em, there's things you can talk about with Anne, that you wouldn't with me.  No offense."  Damn.  He was totally at sea, now.

"No,"  Emory said firmly.  "First of all, Anne's a surgeon, not a psychologist.  And secondly, I'd feel weird about it.  I hardly *know* the woman, Joe.  I don't want to talk to her about how my father-- how Shaw laid into me when I pissed him off."  For that matter, she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to talk Joe about this whole mess.  But he was definitely preferable, if there were only two options.

Dawson nodded.  It was her choice.  The best he could do was keep her lines of communication open _here_. "He beat you, Em."  he said bluntly.  "Did he do anything else?   The English police have a cold metaphor for it.  Did he 'interfere?'"  Dawson felt like a blundering idiot.  He had no idea how to approach the subject.

The unfamiliar term was lost on Emory in her surprise.  Anything *else?*  "What, that wasn't *enough?*" Emory cried in disbelief.

Dawson flinched as if she had slapped him.  With damn good reason.  Of course, physical abuse was enough. It was way, way too much.  "Forget I said that, Em," he said miserably.  "Please."

Emory stared at Joe for a moment, trying to interpret whatever question he seemed so reluctant to ask.  And then all at once, his meaning became dreadfully clear.  The bed.  The... intimacy of the setting.  She shuddered.  Oh God.

"No," she said quietly.  "No he never did *anything* like that.  He just hit me, Joe."  She hugged her arms around herself more tightly.  "Once he... smothered me. Unconscious."  She shut her eyes against the sudden memory of Shaw's terrifying bulk pressing her into the kitchen floor, closing off her nose and mouth...  "But all the other times he just hit me." And usually just with his fists.  "He never did anything worse."  Jesus.  And just think how bad the 'worse' could have been.  She'd been very lucky, Emory realized.  So many girls... so many children... weren't as lucky as she was.

"Oh,  hell, Emory,"  Dawson didn't dare move.  His instincts screamed at him to _hold_ this child-- but Emory was no longer a child.  And she couldn't bear to be touched.

Emory shrugged.  "It was a long time ago," she said simply, putting the memories away.  "It wasn't too bad.  And he can't hurt me anymore, now."

"I'm so sorry,"  Dawson whispered, all to aware of his own ineffectuality.  Shaw could hurt Emory, and did. Every day.  Dawson mentally spit on his grave.

Emory brought her hands up over her face.  "No, I'm sorry,  I didn't mean to shout, earlier."  Joe could claim invulnerability all he liked, but Emory knew better.  She could hurt him.  And as a friend she could probably hurt him worse than an enemy.  She wasn't blind to the pain in his eyes. He was struggling here as much as she was.

"Don't be sorry, Emory."   Dawson hunted around for an approach.  Usually, as a bartender, he had a hard time getting his clients to shut up, not talk.  But a shot of whiskey was not on the agenda.  Unless it was for himself.   "You aren't at fault here.  And I guess I'm not either, if you say so."

"Of course not," she snapped irritably.  "Darn it. Joe..." she floundered helplessly.  "I *trust* you. You didn't do anything.  That's why this is so weird. I mean, I'd understand it if you were someone *spooky.*  But you aren't."

"It wasn't me, spooky or not, Em.  It was the reminder that I triggered.   _That's_ what spooked you.  It could have been anything.  Taste.  Smell.  Sight.  In my case, sound.  In your case... touch."

Emory digested that for a moment in silence.  It made a certain amount of sense, now that Joe had said it. She'd reacted to Joe's harmless grasp the same way he'd responded to a ticking alarm clock.

Dawson read her silence as permission to continue. "Em, the sculptures.  You like to touch them, don't you?"  Her talent with nerve bundles and pressure points was uncanny.  "You are very touch oriented. Empathetic.  Shaw's touch must have been painful, on many levels."  Dawson paused, trying to think this through.

The line of questioning unsettled Emory a bit.  "I guess," she said uncertainly.  She hadn't thought of it before.  "I mean-- well no, I don't just go around *touching* them, I'd get them all dirty." She could see her mother frowning down at her, saying 'don't touch that, Donna.'  But, she had touched that first one, before she'd thought to stop herself.  She pulled one leg under her, and rested her chin on the other knee, wrapping her arms around it in a protective little hug.  "But I guess maybe you're right.  About my associations with Shaw being contact oriented."

Emory was still wrapping herself up, defying the world to get through her defenses.  Dawson wondered just how many people had gotten close enough to Emory to be able to surprise her with a touch, in the last year. In the last decade.  It grieved him deeply to contemplate. "Desensitization?"  he mused to himself, wondering.  He'd tried it once, with clocks.  Drove him nuts.  Stupid idea...

Emory frowned, catching the word.  "What?" she asked. "Desensitizing what?"

Dawson started.  He hadn't meant to speak aloud. "Desensitizing.  Like with phobias, and allergies... Never mind, lay psychology.  I don't want to give you bad advice."  Dawson wondered.  It was driving him nuts to not be able to reach out to Emory.  He wondered if it had been a similar impulse that had driven her to offer him the backrub down in the bar.

"No, wait."  Emory was curious again, and she welcomed that feeling in preference to the roiling confusion that washed over her at unpredictable intervals. "Tell me what you're talking about."

"Something I heard about phobias-- and that's not what you have, really, so it may not apply at all. People afraid to fly, afraid of spiders, that sort of thing. They're gradually exposed to their fears in controlled environments, slowly increasing their tolerance."

Emory raised an eyebrow skeptically.  "So I'm supposed to get used to getting hit?" she asked. And once the words left her mouth, they were no longer ironic or sarcastic.  Had she?  The very concept stunned her, as if it had hit her right between the eyes.  Had she been *used* to it?   By the end?  Had the violence in her childhood become so ordinary and expected that she had been able to ignore it as commonplace?

"SHIT, no, Em!"  Dawson said, shocked.  Then, embarrassed, he said more calmly,  "Excuse my language.  I was talking about touch.  Simple touch. One human to another."   He looked away. "Like you touched me."

Emory chuckled softly, shaking away that unnerving thought to examine for a later time. Reaching out, she poked Joe's shoulder in a halfplayful gesture. "Touching?" she asked sheepishly.

Dawson met Emory's eyes, and raised his hand, slowly. With infinite care, he reached out to touch Emory in exactly the same spot on her own shoulder,  his eyes never leaving hers. "Touching."  he grinned.

Emory rolled her eyes as an embarrassed giggle escaped her.  "You know, I can't help but wonder when I got so out of practice," she confessed.

"Out of practice?"  Dawson asked.  "At what?"

"Touching," she clarified.  "I don't remember when I stopped."  Probably when Haylie died, she realized now.

Dawson frowned slightly.  "You 'touch' just fine, Emory, as my back can attest.  You're fine when you control the circumstances.   It's the 'being touched' that is the problem."

The bald assessment startled her.  It was true, she realized.  How bizarre.  "I guess I don't know when *that* started, either."  She thought for a moment. Maybe high school, or junior high, even, when touching had suddenly carried a myriad of undesirable connotations.  It occurred to her suddenly that it had been around that point that her altercations with Shaw had begun to escalate in frequency and intensity.

"I'm not like, *really* controlling, am I?" she wondered suddenly.  She didn't like to think of herself as some scary micromanaging type.

Dawson smiled, "You mean  'Madame Olga'?"   he teased.

Emory groaned and hid her face in her hands.  "That was *different,*" she protested.  Darn it all, he'd needed that backrub.  And he'd *wanted* it too.

Dawson relented.   "No, you aren't _really_ controlling, at least when it comes to other people. But when it comes to yourself..."  Dawson let his voice trail off.

Emory shot him a dirty look.  "You'd better not be referring to my choice of beverages," she warned with a smile.  "I *like* being in control of myself.  Means I'm less likely to do something stupid.  Not that I don't do plenty of dumb things anyway," she qualified.

"Liquor has nothing to do with it,"  Dawson said, then qualified,"Well it may be one of the symptoms, but it's not the underlying factor.  And there's nothing wrong with being in control of yourself, Em.  Just give yourself a break, every once and awhile. Be....silly."  he said seriously.

Emory chuckled and looked away. "I can do silly," she murmured.  "Of course, that only accentuates the fact that I'm the 'baby' of this group here," she pointed out.

"Of this group?  I think not.  Mac does a surprisingly strong silly.   Methos is silly in an easily amused sort of way.   And I am _well_ on my way to my second sillihood."  Dawson confessed.

Emory slid him a sidelong glance.  She drew herself up as tall as she could while sitting on Joe's bed  "I think," she said with grave dignity.  "That I have been made fun of."

"Now _that_"  Dawson said with a twinkle,  "is _silly._"

Emory grimaced.  "Well I sure *feel* silly," she responded with a touch of grumpiness.  She knew Joe was just trying to make her feel better, but she also knew she was right.  The other three men all saw her, at least in part, in terms of her age.  But maybe there was no getting around that, and she decided to let it go.

She took a deep breath.  "I feel better," she realized aloud.  Tired and still not quite on balance, but definitely better.

"Good,"  Dawson said.  The sense of relief he felt caught him by surprise.  "I feel better too, Emory Garland."  It was quite true.  Talking with Emory about things...mortal...had done him a world of good. Not to mention her magic fingers.

Emory nodded.  "Maybe I will go talk to someone about Shaw," she said quietly.

Dawson looked back at her, startled.  "If you do...well...maybe I'll go talk to somebody... about clicks."  he said, amazing himself.

Emory nodded again, feeling a little selfconscious. "Uh... Joe?  Would you mind if I borrowed your couch for the night... for the morning?" she asked hesitantly.  "I don't really want to try for a cab this late..."

Dawson grinned.  The request made him irrationally happy.  "My couch is your couch, Emory.  Anytime."

Emory pushed herself up off the bed and straightened out her clothes.  "Thanks, Joe," she said sincerely. And then, before she could chicken out, she leaned down and kissed him on the cheek, just where the line of his beard began.

Dawson felt himself blush.  It had been _years_ since that happened.  He pushed himself up and gathered the wheelchair, trying to hide his fluster.  "I'll be quick in the shower...do you need anything first? I'll leave you out towels..."  Rambling now.  Perfect.

"No, I showered this morning, yesterday morning," she corrected herself.  "I really don't want to do anything but sleep for a little while."  She watched him move the wheelchair with idle interest

Dawson dimmed the lights, and stripped the comforter off his own bed to cover the couch.  "You sleep, then, Emory.  I'll see you in the morning,"  he said gently.  And he left before he could tuck her in.  She'd smack him.

Emory snuggled into the comforter,  which was still warm in spots where they had been sitting on it together.  She'd thought to protest that she didn't need *his* blanket, but couldn't make herself do it. The gesture was too lovely to be refused.  "Night Joe," she mumbled as she cuddled in deeper, breathing in the warmth of her surroundings.  The persistence of his presence was calming, and comforting, and the sense of safety it instilled lulled her into a dreamless sleep.

When Dawson had stacked his prostheses in the corner and rolled out of the bathroom, the room was dark.  By the bathroom light he glided over to Emory, just to check... he didn't know what. Just to check.  And very, very carefully, without waking her,  he tucked her in.