*****************************************
*WARNING*
Not Yet Adult!  No M/M! No Violence! Intermittent Angst!
Alcoholic Beverages Consumed!  Implied Unmarried Het Canon Character Relationship With An OFC!
 Unsanitary Bar Practices!  Probable Liquor Law Violations!  Pawkish Attempt At Humor!  and, oh
yeah, before I forget...
*WARNING!*
This story includes Methos, Duncan, Joe and Belinda (A dreaded OFC, who is not based on me...)  The first three are borrowed from Rysher and Co with no intent on or clue as to how to make a profit.  They can have them back when the director yells "Action!"

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Belinda's Tale
A Sidebar Story to "Risk" set during Joe's Epic Night
 

It was night two of Joe's Epic Night, and it was standing room only in the bar.  Joe Dawson was
holding forth on the stage,  playing a hot set with some musicians just in from the East Coast.

Joe Dawson almost looked as if he hadn't a care in the world.

Methos and Duncan MacLeod knew better.  Dawson was out on bail for a murder he hadn't committed, but wouldn't deny.  He had only five more days until he returned to court, and his chances didn't look good.  True to form, Joe was spending as much strength and time as he could afford doing what he loved best--playing music with his friends.  For his friends.

And Joe had a lot of friends.  An amazing and eclectic number of them packed the bar, hemming in
Methos and MacLeod at a small table jammed near the stage. MacLeod kept a protective eye on both Dawson and the crowd surging around them.

Methos kept a protective eye on his rapidly shrinking beer.

Suddenly the surge quieted, and they felt a commanding presence loom over them.  Beauteous Belinda had taken over the cocktail shift.  Two draft beers appeared on the table.  Methos took a precautionary taste.  Kilt Lifter.  How appropriate.

Methos' scalp prickled.  The looming presence remained.

Turning, Methos stared at the nametag that hovered before his face, attached to a strategic spot on
Belinda's breast.  When he finally decided to narrow his focus, he made out the words, "Hi! I'm
Fonda Peters!"

Shifting back in his seat, he could just make out the words emblazoned on her royal purple T-shirt:
 "Snap Out Of It!"  Methos casually dropped a quarter on the cocktail tray Belinda carried.

With studied concern, Belinda looked at the quarter for a long moment before picking it up.
 Carefully, from a height of about three feet, she dropped it into the full beer she had just placed
in front of the oldest Immortal.

" 'Tipping' is not a city in China," Belinda stated severely, and she swept away into the crowd.

Methos snapped out of it.  Over the last two days, some instinct had caused Methos to carefully and
unobviously avoid the tall forward woman with the silver-limned red hair.  It wasn't easy.   Belinda
had grandly assumed the duties of cocktail waitress, greeter, bartender and all around manager for
Joe without a single word of objection from the bar's owner.

And then there were those T-shirts she wore with the ridiculous sayings.  Hardly becoming on a woman of her obvious maturity.  "If Only These Were Brains."  "She Who Dies With The Most Boys, Wins." "Eat, Drink, and Remarry."

Methos was disgruntled.  And suspicious.  An alarming bell of vague recognition was trying to escape the reptilian base of his brain.  Unfortunately, he had accumulated a very thick layer of reptile in his brain over five thousand years.

Methos' affronted countenance caused a small smile to curl on MacLeod's face, the first that had
appeared on the chronically dour Scot's face in days.  "I don't believe that Belinda buys your
frugal graduate student act."

Methos slid lower into the chair.  Taking a pull off the draft, he ignored the quarter sliding
around in the bottom of the mug.  He watched Belinda's ballet through the overcrowded room, between tables, customers and musicians.  "I may have made a tactical error in calculating my tip," Methos reluctantly admitted.

That admission was certainly true.  Without Belinda's lifeline to the beertaps, he might run a
serious risk of dying of thirst.  The bar was lined three deep with actual paying customers.

"I may have made a tactical error in sitting with you," MacLeod groused, looking at his own lowered lager.

Methos followed Belinda's movements around the bar.  He would have to approach this campaign very carefully.  Like the Punic War.  The third one.  Of course, none of them had turned out...well.

There was a break in the music, and Belinda made her way forward through the crowd to the stage like the masthead on the "Cutty Sark" gliding through the ocean waves.  She placed a pony beer next to Joe Dawson, casually touching his leg as she leaned in to whisper in his ear.  Dawson flashed a rare young grin in return.

MacLeod didn't miss the exchange, but was too polite to comment upon it.

Methos wasn't.  "So...do you think they're an item?"

MacLeod shrugged.  "You're his self-proclaimed Watcher, Adam. What do you have in your files?"

Methos cast an annoyed look at the Highlander.  Given MacLeod's rough lack of respect for reference material, no wonder Joe got ticked at being treated like a librarian.  MacLeod had no idea of the bloody work involved in collecting the raw data.  Methos answered, "Nada.  Zip.  Zilch.  No Watcher tattoo.  No Watcher record."

"Dare we assume she may not be a...gasp...Watcher?"  MacLeod needled melodramatically.  "Joe obviously has a life outside the Watchers," MacLeod gestured to the blues fans hanging from the rafters of Joe's Bar.

"You mean he had a life,"  Methos muttered, too quietly for MacLeod to hear over the band.  The murder charge hanging over Dawson's head was making that life extremely problematical.

"What?"  MacLeod questioned, detecting something in Methos' undertone.

"Nothing."  Methos stirred restlessly.  "We know someone is after Joe, someone who knows him well.  Very possibly someone in this room.  I think we should ask Joe about Belinda and their
relationship."

MacLeod nearly choked on the dregs of his beer.  "Belinda?  An arch-conspirator?  You have got to be kidding.  You just want the lowdown gossip."

"Well, yes, that too,"  Methos said innocently.

The liquid level in his beer mug was perilously low by the time Belinda again drew near their table.  Suddenly, Methos straightened up and leaned toward MacLeod, pitching his voice so Belinda could overhear.

"I tell you MacLeod, Joe needs a friend's help with this new problem.  It's eating him up inside.
 You have to do something before..."

MacLeod looked surprised, concerned and then worried in perfect order.  Methos was impressed.
 MacLeod looked like he knew exactly what Methos was talking about.

Methos didn't even know what Methos was talking about.

About thirty seconds later, double drafts appeared in front of the two Immortals.  Methos looked up, wide-eyed.  "My deepest thanks, Belinda.  May we ask you to join us?"

Belinda materialized a chair out of the maelstrom, and disappeared the cocktail tray from one hand.
 A bar margarita was conjured into the other.  "Speak to me," she said imperiously.

Methos did not speak.  His attention had been dragged back to the stage by the rollicking black
humor of the Old Dogs tune that Joe was now singing with and Jake and Fast Eddie and the other Joe:

    So you better have some fun
        Before you say bye-bye
     Cause you're still gonna, still gonna,
        still gonna die...

Methos felt a chill on the back of his neck.  Without looking, he could tell that MacLeod had spiked
his Dour Meter.  He glanced back at Belinda, who was watching him like a...well, like a Watcher.

Methos took in the laugh-lines in Belinda's face, and the quizzical half-smile that bespoke a wealth
of life experience, a mortal wisdom beyond the ken of Immortal knowledge. Methos had seen that light in Dawson's eye.  Belinda and Joe shared more than an age and a generation.

"I'm waiting, my boy," Belinda prompted.  She pointed to the words emblazoned across her vasty
chest.  "Snap Out Of It!"

Methos' tongue froze, as he was suddenly convinced that he was looking into the reincarnated
gray-green eyes of his thirty-seventh wife.  The reptilian portion of his brain was apparently
not...bottomless.

Belinda gave up on him, and switched her attention to the Highlander, who was regaining his humor as Methos floundered.  MacLeod said smoothly, "My friend here, Dr. Pierson, was wondering if your attentions toward Joe..." MacLeod purposefully lowered his voice, "...were honorable."

Belinda's laugh turned half the heads in the bar as she belted out her inevitable answer.  "Of
course not, my boy!  Whatever were you thinking?"

Methos cringed at the unwanted attention that Belinda had attracted.  His thirty-seventh wife,
indeed.  He leaned forward and pitched his voice to a more discreet decibel level.  "I'm going for a
second doctorate in musicology, and I'm putting together my Master's Thesis on the psychological
influences on modern blues musicians.  Joe Dawson is my main subject."

"Your thesis, my ancient fanny," Belinda mocked.  "You're one of those damn secret society cultists
Joe took up with all those years ago.  Own up, or shut up."

"We're getting together the people that Joe trusts, pooling their resources--"

"You mean you don't trust me, and you're fishing for information."  This time the look in Belinda's
eye was clearly less than friendly.  "Joe is hurting.  Really hurting.  You don't have to invent
stories to get my attention."

"Listen," Methos tried again.  "We both have Joe's best interests at heart, here..."

"I know I do," Belinda cut in.  "I don't know diddly-jack about you.  Where were you when that cult group or organized crime war or whatever it was got Joe shot full of holes a few years ago?"

Something in Belinda's voice stung Methos into replying with the cold truth.  "Joe got himself shot
full of holes.  Where was I?  Drinking beer somewhere, no doubt."

MacLeod stepped in before the conversation degenerated further.  "Dr. Pierson took a bullet out of Joe...and sewed up the other nicks."   MacLeod's conscience kicked him hard enough to add,  "He saved Joe's life."

Belinda studied the two Immortals through narrowed eyes.  After a short silence, she asked, "Where?"

"France," MacLeod answered cautiously.

Methos swirled his beer.

Belinda waved MacLeod's answer away, and lasered a look at Methos.  "The bullet, man.  Where did it hit Joe?"

Methos met Belinda's gaze and deliberately tapped a point on the left side of his chest.  His
immortal memory flashed on the tumbling path of the bullet that had miraculously missed both
heart and lung.  Joe Dawson's luck ran to serious extremes.

Belinda sighed and relaxed her guard, with one plaintive response.  "You sure left one honking scar,
Dr. Pierson."

Methos rolled his eyes.  "Everybody's a critic," he muttered.  He took the opportunity to regain some modicum of control over the conversation.  "How long have you known Joe?"

"Known Joe?  Or known Joe?"  Belinda's eyes sparkled.  "Since before you were born, pup."

"That's Dr. Pup, to you," Methos countered.  "I am far older than I look," he said righteously.

Belinda just laughed.  Methos maintained a wounded expression.

MacLeod smiled slightly.  At least now they knew that Belinda only had a vague idea of the Watchers organization, and no inkling of the existence of Immortals at all.  Dawson had been circumspect over the years, even with his closest mortal friends.  Maybe too circumspect.  All too many times his Immortal and Watcher friends had let Joe Dawson down.  Belinda might have filled that void.

"When did you first meet Joe?" MacLeod asked quietly, his warm voice countering Methos' arid tones.

"Since someone finally asked politely,  I might answer," Belinda hesitated, undecided.  "That's
really Joe's tale, as much as mine.  You'll have to ask him.  But I'll own up to part of it."

Belinda's bouncing contralto became abnormally quiet.  "We met in the VA hospital, after Joe was
flown back from Vietnam.  I was a student volunteer.  I was also a radical activist, working at the
VA under false pretenses to collect information on the horrors of war for the local Underground
press.

"I thought I knew everything.  After one look at Joe's face, I realized I knew nothing.  He broke my
heart."  Belinda returned from a place and time far-removed.  "And then, I broke his heart."

Belinda took a long breath.  "And then... he broke my tape recorder.  End of story," she said.

"Beginning of story,"  MacLeod chided softly.

"Don't contradict your elders,"  Belinda admonished, though she smiled.  "We saw each other again,
over the years, between my marriages and his secret meetings.  I just never quite got it right."

There was a moment of silence, while the Immortals considered the story.  MacLeod marvelled at the secret complexity of Joe Dawson's life, and the painful choices he had made over the years.

Methos wanted to find a way to keep Belinda talking.  "He broke your tape recorder?" Methos said,
with just the right touch of disbelief.

"Oh, yes.  Joe had quite a temper when we were kids.  You youngsters wouldn't know it now, from the way he's mellowed."

Methos came perilously close to spilling his beer.  Methos had seen "mellowed".

A sad blues chord from the stage caught Belinda's attention.  The laughter fled from her eyes.  The
band moved into a Clapton number, and Joe's quiet guitar silenced the audience.

"Listen to Joe," Belinda said, suddenly all business.  "He'll tell you what you need to know."  She
fled back to the safety of the bar before her suddenly bright eyes could shed a tear.

MacLeod and Methos sat back and listened to Joe.  His voice poured out of the speakers, slow and
low.

"...a half mile to the downtown bar
    that I run from in disgrace..."

MacLeod closed his eyes, his emotions drawn out by the raw pain he could hear in his friend's voice.  He wished he could will the pain away, take it on as his own, anything to help Joe discharge the hurt and make it bearable.

Methos kept his eyes open, watching as Dawson became the blues, losing himself completely in the song.  The musician's eyes sparked in the floodlights, flashing like a minor Quickening.

"Three more days, I leave this town
    and disappear without a trace
A year from now, maybe settle down
    where no one knows my face..."

"I wish that I could hold you,
    one more time to ease the pain
But my times run out and I gotta go,
    got to run away again..."

Methos shook his head.  If Joe Dawson didn't have music as an outlet for the fires in his soul, he would burn to a cinder.  He was saying things with his music that he couldn't bring himself to say in person.  Joe Dawson was leaving:  leaving everything he had built or known or loved in his life.  Belinda knew that.  She was hearing Dawson clearly.  She was already grieving.

"Still I catch myself thinking
     One day I'll find my way back here
You'll save me from drowning,
     Drowning in a river of tears..."

Methos shook himself.  This morbidly sentimental line of thought was not at all productive.  He was palpably relieved when the band moved to a higher energy level, and Dawson broke out an old
Roy Orbison classic, sending a bawdy wink to the proud, statuesque woman who guarded Dawson's bar like a lioness.
 

"I've got a woman, mean as she can be
Sometimes I think she's almost mean as me..."

"Mean Woman Blues."  How appropriate.  Sadly, Methos surveyed the empty glasses on their table.  Now there was a subject worth singing the blues over.  A heartening presence suddenly loomed over their table.  The empties were beamed away, but the fulsomely full glasses remained on the cocktail tray.  MacLeod suavely deposited a bill that was not a one upon her tray, and won a fine whisky for his work.

Belinda grinned an evil grin at the oldest Immortal.

Methos straightened abruptly, and began searching his pockets for money.  He had actually gotten out of the habit of carrying cash in Joe's Bar.  Another appalling strategic oversight.

"What are you, short all over?"  Belinda observed tartly, and sailed away into the crowd, still
holding the beer hostage.

MacLeod did not quite hide a snicker at Belinda's implied insult.

Methos slumped back in his chair, hurt and thirsty.  "Mean Woman Blues," indeed.
 

          *          *          *          *
 

Later in the night, when Joe Dawson had joined them for a nightcap and restored the beer pipeline,
MacLeod dared to broach the subject of Joe's private life with Joe himself.  Methos' curiosity was
affecting the Highlander.  Or perhaps it was the Lacavullan whisky .

"Why haven't Belinda and you gotten together, Joe?"

Dawson's eyes flashed.  Talking about his personal life wasn't his strong suite at the best of
times.  Talking about his love life in front of Methos was particularly low on his list of
priorities.

Methos sighed.  MacLeod could pick the most hellacious times to ask personal questions.

Surprisingly, Dawson reined himself in, and appeared to be considering a serious answer to the
question.  Methos read his face, and then, wished he hadn't.  Hellacious times were all they had
left, and Joe knew it.

"Gotten together?"  Joe shook his head.  "We have "gotten together"--as you so delicately put
it--maybe half a dozen times over the years.  I just never quite got it right."

A quiet, lost note in Joe Dawson's tone stopped MacLeod's probing cold.

Belinda's words exactly, Methos noted.
 

         *         *         *          *
 

Methos had settled himself unobtrusively under the stairwell to keep a quiet eye on the bar and the
approaches to Dawson's room.  It was four in the morning, and the music was at its most subdued.
 Some diehard listeners surrounded the stage, nodding with the beat, or with sleep.

A firm step upon the stair brought Methos out of a light doze and he whirled out from under the
risers in full battle mode, his sword barely concealed under his coat.  He stared straight up at the
Rafaelesque figure above him.  Belinda was now dressed in a gossamer caftan that revealed her
dancer's legs.  From Methos' angle of vision, it actually revealed a lot more.

Belinda lifted her eyebrow.  "Sir, you are no gentleman..." she said in her best Mae West voice.

"Whereas, Madame, you are a true redhead," Methos replied wickedly, misquoting his old drinking
companion.

Belinda chastely drew her caftan about her.  "Are you guarding Joe's portal, or staking a claim of
your own?" she asked, amused.

Methos drew back and bowed. "Your campaign, Milady," he said, surrendering the field.  "And this
time?  Get it right."

Belinda nodded regally, and ascended the stairs to Joe's apartment.  Her firm tread made it obvious
that she was bound and determined that this time, this very short time, they would get it right.

Methos returned to his cubbyhole under the stairs, and for the first time in a millennia, he dreamed
some very happy and energetic dreams of his thirty-seventh wife.
 
 
 

**********   So ends Belinda's Tale   ***********
 
 
 
 

Notes, Credits and References

Musical Credits:

Lyrics are quoted without permission, in the hopes that Eric Clapton, The Old Dogs, and especially
Roy Orbison don't mind...

Eric Clapton and Simon Climie, "River of Tears" from the
"Pilgrim" CD  Warner Bros, copyright 1997

Roy Orbison's "Mean Woman Blues" from the
"In Dreams: the Greatest Hits" CD, Virgin Records 1987
Music composed by Claude De Metrius (Gladys Music, ASCAP)

The Old Dogs (Waylon Jennings, Mel Tillis, Bobby Bare and Jerry Reed) "Still Gonna Die" Atlantic
1998 "We may be Old Dogs, but we can still bury a bone."
 
 

Film Credits:

Lines are shamelessly stolen and adapted from an exchange between
W.C. Fields and Mae West.  The original exchange runs something like this, as the inimitable Mae
West ascends a staircase:

"Sir, you are no gentleman."
"Madame, you are no blonde..."

I believe the dialog occurs in "My Little Chickadee", but I may be far aField...
 

Beer Credits:

"Kilt Lifter" is indeed a beer.  It is a Scottish Ale put out by
the Pike Brewing Company.

My special thanks to my alpha/beta readers Janeen Grohsmeyer, Edie and Mary Galasso, for their
valuable time, even more valuable suggestions, and priceless encouragement.

All errors and lapses in taste are mine.

This story is a sidebar to the longer tale "Risk", and is set during the seven day long concert
known as 'Joe's Epic Night'.
Though is isn't necessary to read "Risk" to catch the drift of this story, certain obscure allusions
(not all...<g>) will become clear if you read the longer tale, available at Seventh Dimension, and
at

HTTP://members.tripod.com/ggalasso/Default.htm

or at

HTTP://www3.bc.sympatico.ca/holly/stories.html
 

This tale is for WFGGFC:  World Famous Gorgeous Glender From Canader.  Little do they know...they are brains.