Pairing: Duncan/Connor
Archive: Please ask.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Slash. Also, this is my very first Highlander piece. About half of it was written before I saw any Highlander other than Endgame.
Spoilers: Yes, for Endgame.
Summary: Connor's POV during the last part of Endgame.

Silence brought the answer. "I would rather have my head taken than his," Connor had whispered to the night and the cold gravestones, after Duncan left, after Kell left, after she-who-had-been-Kate left, all vanished down the hill toward reality.

"The Game is so cold, so devoid of anything that really matters," he said into the silence. "So useless."

That realization had led him to the Sanctuary, only to even lose that faint hope of rest forever, no matter the cost. The life of an Immortal was no true life, no set pattern of birth-growth-decline-death, but a ceaseless weariness that only a true sadist (or masochist) would actually enjoy.

"There can be no forever love in the Game," he said, the words breaking the cold of the starlit graveyard. "And I...I am in love."

I am in love. The words struck him anew as though he had not said them. In love. The desperate yearning to be *in*, of, through, his beloved, took hold of him, pulling at him with cords of velvet.

"Duncan," he gasped into the night. "My Duncan."

****

Wind swept through his hair as Connor climbed the stairs to the rooftop. The noises of the early morning streets were non-existent here, the only sound his harsh breathing. The silence of a sword taking a head, the whisper breathlessly in his ear, the sound of a lover's gasp, all were the same to him now.

If only Duncan could see it his way. Could he understand? Together they could destroy Kell, never if they fought alone. And the rage of years, deeply hidden, surfaced for a moment as Connor thought of the body of his mother lying on the cold ground.

A shiver passed through him. Again Kell had threatened what was most dear to him. But this time Connor was open-eyed to see the threat. He was living on borrowed time, Kell had said to Duncan. And Duncan then had answered only one thing, steady, unexpectedly.

"So are we all," he'd said. "So are we all."

Duncan had said it like he hadn't thought through the words, but nevertheless Kell had turned, a fiery look in his eyes. A swift wave of pain passed over his face, quelled almost instantly. And Connor had then turned silently toward Duncan. The interview with Kell was at an end. No heads would be taken that hour.

And in the early morning gloaming, the darkest-hour-just-before-dawn, Connor waited for the love of his life to walk onto the rooftop and kill him.

It would not be a true killing, not as a mortal thinks of a killing, Connor reflected. His power would pass into Duncan, his life would strengthen his beloved. Inside Duncan, an embrace more intimate than sex, more powerful than the blood of a martyr, they would forever be entangled.

Connor shivered, not from the chill night air. Inside Duncan. The very thought was erotic, though not in the sense that sex was erotic. It was a far deeper, bloodless, spiritual eroticism. The sense of flesh was missing, but the spirits of Connor and Duncan would be together forever, and in that kind of consummation-devoutly-to-be-wished, what need was there of immortality?

The quiet sound of footsteps alerted him just as much as the sense of Immortal presence. "Duncan," he whispered into the night air.

"I'm here," came the soft answer.

And simultaneous with the drawing of his sword came the swift flash of  thought. "There can only be one, Duncan," he whispered under his breath. "May it be you."

END