mhalachai | Smoke and Blood On Her Tongue (Highlander/Supernatural)

Smoke and Blood On Her Tongue
A Highlander/Supernatural story
by

mhalachaiswords

Summary: There was fire and there was blackness. But nothing lasts forever, not even death, not for Jessica Moore.
Disclaimer: Highlander belongs to Davis/Panzer et al. . Kripke and co. own Supernatural. I am but borrowing the characters for a brief time and shall return them intact at the end.
Spoilers: None. Well, except for the Supernatural pilot, but that was years ago so yeah.
Rating: PG for language
Characters: Jessica Moore, Duncan McLeod.
Pairing: None/Gen
Date: November 4, 2005.
Words: 1,000
Author's note: I've been seeing a plethora of HL/SPN fics recently, and this was an idea that was fun to play with. Certainly would put a whole new spin on Sam seeing Jess in "Bloody Mary".

~~~

Black.

All around her was black.

Jess opened her mouth to scream, but there was no air, nothing for her to breathe.

Fire.

She remembered the fire, taking all her air away.

Jess kicked, fought with the blackness holding her. She couldn't breathe and she couldn't get free and it was going to be like that forever, worse than the burning of the fire, worse than anything--

The earth moved under her, sliding, rolling, then the blackness surrounding her cracked open in an explosion of light and air and sound.

The air tasted like smoke and blood.

"Easy, lass," came a soft male voice. Hands were helping her sit up as she shed the blackness like a snake's skin, a skin she'd long since outgrown. "You're all right now."

"Fire," Jess croaked. "There was fire--"

"I know," the voice said again. He pressed something into her hand, guided her hand to her mouth, and she drank. The water was sweet on her tongue, washing away the ashes in her mouth. "You're in the morgue at Palo Alto General."

Jess dropped the glass. Water sloshed down her chest, cold and uncomfortable. "Sam!" she exclaimed. "Where's Sam?"

"He's fine." The man stepped back. "We have to leave."

"Leave?" Something pounded in Jess's head, something she couldn't remember. "We can't leave, I need Sam!"

"That's not the way it works." The man's voice was soft now. "Jessica, I have to explain something to you. What happened two days ago... there was a fire, but you didn't survive it."

Fire.

Before the fire, a man.

"No," Jess argued, kicking free of the black skin-- no, a body bag. A body bag in a cold steel room full of trays and impersonal walls.

A room where they put dead things.

She put her feet on the ground, bare feet covered in ash and dried blood. The floor was cold and solid. "Is this hell?" she asked, a fine tremor spreading through her limbs. She'd gone to church with her Momma when she was a baby, cut her teeth on the hymnal while the preacher's words of hellfire washed over her.

Fire.

Before the fire, a man.

A man but not a man, cutting her, burning her.

"This isn't hell," the man contradicted. He held out his hand. She backed away, slamming into a cold steel table. "Jessica, you're Immortal. You died, but you came back."

Fire.

Before the fire, a man.

A man but not a man, cutting her, burning her.

A man but not a man, with a honeyed tongue and hell in his eyes.

"Shut up!" Jessica screamed. "You're just like him, you're lying!"

"I'm not lying, I promise." The man stepped closer. He touched her arm and it didn't hurt. She wasn't on the ceiling anymore, her insides weren't bleeding out and she wasn't burning. "My name is Duncan, and I'm like you."

Jess stared at his hand. His skin was calloused, fingers wide, just like her Daddy's hands, the hands he used to fix cars and fences and everything he could to make the money to pay for her braces and dollies and college.

Even though he wasn't really her daddy, and Momma wasn't really her momma, they always pretended and it was enough.

"What do you mean, you're like me?"

Duncan removed his hand from Jessica's arm. "I'm Immortal, like you. And I'll explain everything else but right now we need to get out of here before someone finds us here."

"What do you mean?" The cold was sinking into her bones, another kind of torment after the fire. "No, I have to go home, I need to find Sam--"

"He thinks you're dead, and so do your parents," Duncan pressed folded clothing into her hands. "If I hadn't been passing through town--"

"No, I need to go home!" Jessica hugged the clothing to her chest as if it might actually give comfort in this cold place. "I need to--"

"Jessica, you can never go home." Duncan's eyes were full of sorrow, a pain remembered. "Your family thinks you're dead. And to them, you are. You can't go back."

Jess stared at him. "But... What about Momma?"

Twenty-one years old and she was still talking like a little girl, when Momma could kiss better every scrapped knee, when Daddy could fix her bike's broken wheel and build anything, just for her

But the fire had taken all that away.

Fire.

Before the fire, a man.

A man but not a man, cutting her, burning her.

A man but not a man, with a honeyed tongue and hell in his eyes.

A man who watched her as she died, who laughed as Sam was pulled from the room by the other one, whose triumph turned to outrage and defeat as everything went black and she died.

"We have to go before anyone sees us," Duncan said again. "I'll tell you everything when we get out of here."

Jessica stayed where she was. A thin tendril of anger was beginning to burn in her chest. "Who was he?" she asked.

Duncan stopped mid-turn. "Who was who?"

"Who did this to me? Do you know who he was?"

Duncan frowned. "There was an electrical fire, that's all the reports said. It was an accident."

Jess looked down at her hands, curled around the clothing. There was black blood under her nails where she'd clawed at him, before he'd sliced into her and put her on the ceiling and watched her burn.

She'd hurt him before.

Now she was going to find him and kill him for doing this to her.

Her hands curled into fists around the cloth. She was going to find the man who had murdered her, took her away from her family and from Sam, and she was going to make him pay.

"Jessica, it's time to leave."

Jess took a deep breath, the taste of smoke and blood lingering on her tongue like a promise.

--fin

PS Possible SPN season 3 spoilers in comments!