Disclaimer: Connor MacLeod and all 'Highlander' characters are copyright Davis/Panzer Productions, and Balthazar Blake and all 'Sorcerer's Apprentice' characters are copyright Disney. This fanfic is based off a lengthy Role-Play, heavily edited for added narrative. No profit made, but a hell of a lot of fun. Being an RP, this is effectively co-written by my girlfriend, who played Balthazar.

Apologies for some necessary perspective shift, because getting back into Balthazar's head while he's unconscious makes for tricky writing. Also I realize this is by far more surreal than anything else in this story thus far. If you like it, there's more ahead, if you don't… hang on, because it's temporary and there's some good adventuring still ahead for our characters.

Sword and Sorcery

30. Fortress of the Mind

Except for Dave swearing quietly at traffic, it was a quiet drive back to the house. Connor seemed almost to be asleep for the ride, but he was first out of the car. Together they hurried into the house, and found Veronica on the couch cradling Balthazar's head in her lap. He was very pale, but breathing deeply, as if asleep.

"Is he…?" Dave looked deeply distressed.

"He's out of danger, but… he won't recover quickly." Veronica kept her voice low.

Face still bruised and bloody, but on the mend, Connor shadowed the apprentice. He eyed Balthazar with worry. "Would ssome… magical transfusion help?" He spoke slowly, as if it still took effort.

"It might…" She stroked Balthazar's forehead gently.

Dave kneeled on the floor next to the couch stiffly.

"Then do it." Connor spread his arms a little. "I have life to spare. Let me help him somehow?" His voice was quiet and calm, but a hint of desperate frustration lay beneath.

"You already have, Connor." Veronica gave him a weary smile, but nodded. "David, get Balthazar's carpetbag."

The boy nodded eagerly and got up, rushing off to the study.

Connor gave a vague grunt and went to hang up his coat, sword, bloodstains and all.

When Dave returned, Veronica hesitated. "This might be better done in the bed."

"I can levitate him up." Dave volunteered, anxious to be useful.

Connor appeared to still be aching from the fight, and made no protest. It was enough to get himself up the stairs.

Getting the unconscious sorcerer upstairs was a painstaking process, but they settled his limp body in his own bed.

"You'd better lie down, too, Connor. You may pass out." Veronica warned.

The immortal eyed the double bed uncertainly. There was room enough, but Veronica was still moving stiffly with cracked ribs. "I… can lie on the floor."

"For the next eight hours?" She raised an eyebrow. "This may take time."

He shrugged, stiffly lowering himself to the carpet beside the bed. "You'll want to be beside him, later. Don't break off if I pass out?" Connor gave her a warning look from the eye that wasn't swollen shut. "Don't break off if I die. I'll come back."

She hesitated, "Maybe this isn't the best idea…"

Connor sighed. "It doesn't mean to me what it means to you." He gave a brief and very painful smirk as he lay back. "I was expecting to die at least once tonight."

"That's not what… never mind." She sighed and pulled out a silver ribbon from the bag, moving stiffly. Bending carefully and as little as possible, she bound the men's wrists together with the ribbon.

Connor closed his eyes and sighed, grateful for a few minutes to just lie on the floor, although it probably wouldn't be restful for long.

Dave helped settle him in with a pillow and blanket wordlessly, then skulked in the back corner of the room, watching.

After a moment Connor murmured, "You did good, lad." His praise was rare, but the apprentice had a hand in saving Balthazar's life that night.

The young man looked very surprised, and sat, replying shyly, "Thanks."

Veronica chanted softly, and the ribbon glowed with the slow activation of magic.

Connor's breathing slowed, steady and even, as if he were meditating. He seemed to be forcing himself to relax. The pull of magic was warm, and insistent, but not painful.

Balthazar stirred and moaned softly, then relaxed again. The flicker of his thoughts seemed to wander over the magical link; the connection felt more real than the goings-on in the room around them.

His thoughts drifted, remembering Horvath in their younger days, how warm and brotherly their friendship had once been. He felt only forlorn bewilderment now over how badly things had gone wrong. Gradually he became aware of the thin thread of Connor's presence, sympathetic and resigned, but glad to have kept Horvath's death off the other sorcerer's hands.

Balthazar reached for the connection, with a sense of longing to fix things, and a terror of failing his immortal friend and losing him. Distressed by the way his own problems seemed to stir up bad memories and unresolved issues for Balthazar, Connor's presence seemed to hover just out of reach. With a ripple of tired resignation, Balthazar began to retreat, then sank deeper, tumbling into a dreamscape. Not entirely mentally composed, he appeared as a young man, scrawny and vulnerable-looking, in a dark blue tunic. He looked around with puzzled blue eyes.

Behind him stretched the expanse back to his own mind, a bridge easily crossed, but under and around him was rocky terrain and dry grass. The ground was hilly and uneven, but looked like an area suffering severe drought or something else that had drained life from the land. Fog or mist shrouded the distance. Before him stood a stone wall, stretching both up and away on either side as far as he could see, but it was badly weathered and worn. The stones were cracked, and small chinks showed, making the entire structure look untrustworthy.

Connor stood half-turned away before the wall, a small rock in his hand, but he was not the Connor Balthazar was used to seeing. The clothes were familiar, but he looked tired, gaunt and grim and old, with grey hair. He also looked slightly bewildered to see the boy Balthazar there.

Hesitantly, he approached the immortal, rubbing his magic ring absently. "Connor…?"

"What?" The old man shook his head. "You'll be okay. Your family is with you." He wedged the rock he'd been holding into a chink in the wall, trying to shore up the massive, crumbling structure, then looked around for another useful rock.

"What are you doing?" The question was almost childlike.

He shrugged. "Just holding it together." It was a casual, matter-of-fact response, as if he was unaware how fragile the whole thing looked.

"What is it?" Balthazar wandered closer on bare feet.

Connor blinked at him wearily. "...It's my wall."

He raised an eyebrow. "This is a metaphor for something, right?"

Connor sank down on a boulder to sit, with a weary smirk. "Sure. Not a very creative one, but…" He shrugged, unashamed.

Balthazar came to sit beside him. "Looks kind of shaky."

He looked up at it, frowned, and resumed looking for stones. That and dead grass seemed to be all he had there to repair it with. "It's just… old. I can hold it together. I have to."

"Why?" He watched him innocently.

"Because the alternative is…" He shook his head, and got up to wedge another stone in. When he was done he turned back to eye the young man. "Look how close you are. If it fell, you'd get hit with a lot of falling rocks."

Balthazar shrugged and looked around. "Are you keeping things out, or in?"

"…Yes. I live on both sides." He carefully stuffed dry grass in a crack.

"Maybe you should build a gate."

He spread an arm wide at the rocky expanse around them, but seemed intent on plugging up the crack. "Not much left here to build one with."

"You're looking wrong. Do you want help?"

Connor hesitated, one hand against the weathered rock. "I'm… tired. I'm getting old." He sank down with his back to the wall. "I can't go far to look. I have to save what energy I've got left for the fights." He held one side of his coat open a moment, showing the katana kept there.

Balthazar slid off the rock and crouched by him easily, placing a hand on the grass. "It's not dead. The roots are alive. I'll show you." The dry grass began to turn green beneath his touch.

Eyebrows lifting, Connor reached to run a hand lightly over the revived grass. "It… used to look like that, back when the wall was a lot lower."

"It could look that way again." Roots sprang from the grass and wound across the lower stones of the wall.

"Careful… careful." Connor stroked the roots at the wall's base. "It has to hold. There's so many rocks…" He touched them thoughtfully, still sitting on the ground. "See, these are the ones they threw at me in Glenfinnan…" His hand crept upward. "And these are from Heather's grave…"

As if in response to his words, heather flowers bloomed up from among the gently winding roots. "Wouldn't it be better to have a low wall that holds than a high one that doesn't?"

"My Blossom…" Connor murmured fondly, and smiled a little, stroking the flowers. "It's too high to climb to the top to rearrange them." He frowned in thought. "There used to be a door somewhere, or a window, just for Duncan, but it got smaller and the last time I walked the perimeter I couldn't find it."

"Stairs!" Balthazar suggested brightly.

"…Maybe…" He sighed, gaze still lingering on the flowers. "They'll take a long time to build… but there's always more rocks." Connor began to drag himself to his feet, a very tired old man.

The flowers crept up the wall, shedding a sweet scent, and Balthazar stood. "Let me help?"

"You can collect tocks. I'm good at building."

Balthazar's back arched slightly, and wings sprouted, the soft-feathered, brown-striped wings of an owl. He picked up a round white stone and brought it over.

Connor watched him, reaching tentatively to touch a wing, then shook his head and went to work setting stones against the wall.

Briefly, Balthazar brushed a wing against him, then darted off to fetch stones, sometimes on foot and sometimes flying short distances.

What Connor had said about there being no end of rocks seemed true, and the landscape held an endless supply. Gradually he fit them together with skilled hands, building a staircase set flat against the wall, both reinforcing it and braced by it. The old warrior seemed very tired at his work, but doggedly persistent. Only once, when the stairs were just high enough that they could see from the top step that there was indeed an upper limit to the wall, did he pause to rest.

Balthazar joined him and wrapped a wing around him while he rested. Together they looked out at the desolate landscape around them, rocky terrain and dry grass, fading into fog in every direction. The flowers Balthazar had grown still clung to the wall, but the green patch remained small.

Connor leaned into the wing wearily, unbothered by the height. "I hope no one comes to fight me while I'm busy up here."

"I'll protect you," The winged boy Balthazar offered earnestly. "Do people come to fight you often?"

"Sometimes none for years, sometimes every few months." He shrugged lethargically. "I'm not afraid, I just get so tired of it. But I don't get a choice."

"New people, or people you've already fought?" Balthazar tilted his head a little, stroking Connor with one wing.

"Oh, it's always somebody different. It's just the Game. I have to fight, and I'm good at it."

Balthazar frowned in thought. "I'm not sure why it's called the Game. It seems very serious."

Connor gave a dry, hollow chuckle. "I don't know, but I've thought the same thing before. It's older than me. Older than you. Nobody seems to have the answer to why."

"No one knows why they're on this world, really." He soothed gently.

"No, but most people don't spend their lives being hunted." The grizzled old warrior sighed and got to his feet. "Come on. It only gets harder the higher we go."

Here was where the wings became truly useful, as Balthazar flew back and forth to bring stones up to Connor, sparing him the climb up and down. He considered, once, simply trying to fly over the wall. The height of the wall, the fog, and Connor's own psyche seemed to provide barriers that could only be breached the long and grueling way. The immortal seemed a little surprised by the assistance, but uncomplaining.

When the last step was in place he pulled himself, stiff and aching, to stand on the very top of the wall. Balthazar stood beside him, looking down into a swirling mist that shrouded whatever waited below. Connor very slowly spread his arms wide, stretching, and tilted his head back, eyes closed.

Balthazar fanned his wings gently. "I could carry you down."

He shook his head, arms dropping again. "I have to stand guard on this side. Protect the rest of me in there."

"I understand." Balthazar hugged the greying warrior gently, then dove off the wall and circled down.

Connor watched him go, then turned and began his slow descent back down the stairs.

The fog inside the wall thinned out as Balthazar descended, but there were still shreds of mist at ground level. Drawing in his wings, he walked slowly and quietly through a landscape that was first scraggly woods and rocky terrain, then city streets full of a refuse and grime, then lights woods again. The scenery was consistently inhospitable and lonely, but eventually he came upon a vast cemetery, the gates wide open.

This struck him as ominous, but he entered willingly, and the ground seemed to tingle under his feet in a not-unpleasant way. It was calm here, peaceful, and the air was a little warmer. He walked between the graves softly, until he heard a small whimpers from behind one of the largest gravestones, a kind of monument nearly as big as a person, and certainly big enough to hide one.

"Connor?" He called softly, approaching the stone and peering around it.

The figure there was in tartan and rags, filthy, bleeding, and with both wrists lashed to an old oxen yoke that lay across the back of his neck. Connor looked up with his face full of terror, nineteen years old and looking even younger. His hair was long and matted, with a few braids. He made a scrambling move to get his back against the monument and the yoke clunked against it, making him gasp and wince.

Balthazar was a little shocked, but he knelt in front of him and spoke softly in Gaelic. "I'm not going to hurt you, Connor. Do you know me?"

Connor eyes him warily, breathing heavy. "…B-Balthazar? Ye look… different." Even his voice, although it still had the familiar faintly raspy quality, sounded lighter and younger.

"So do you." Balthazar fidgeted. "…Can I help?"

"Do I?" He looked down at himself, apparently bewildered, then glanced around fearfully. "I… we're mostly safe here."

Balthazar reached out to him gently, hoping to release him from the yoke.

Connor flinched and cowered slightly. His wrists were raw and bleeding where he'd strained against the ropes.

"Ssh… sh." He touched the rope lightly, and it slowly fell apart, dissolving.

He gasped, hands dropping, and curled up in pain. After a long time in the yoke, it clearly pained him to bring his shoulders and neck into a more natural pose.

Gently, Balthazar lifted the yoke away and touched his shoulder, easing the pain magically.

Hands shaking badly from muscle fatigue, Connor rubbed at the back of his neck and shoulders. It was a familiar gesture, one usually made under stress. "Tapadh leat*..." He leaned back against the stone memorial, seeming to take comfort from it.

Balthazar nodded absently in acknowledgement, studying the stone monolith. It was the biggest he'd seen in the cemetery, mossy and a little timeworn, but marked in big letters was the name 'Ramirez'. There seemed to be a faint etched background texture, some sort of feather design.

"He'll come. Even here…" Connor looked tired, scared, and he turned desperate pleading eyes on Balthazar. "I can't fight him."

"Who? Who's after you here, Connor?" Balthazar reached out to touch the side of his head soothingly.

"Jacob." His gaze searched the sorcerer's face.

Balthazar frowned. "Jacob Kell. Is he the only one?"

Connor looked uneasy, head lowered. There were no walls here, and his guilt was very transparent. He slid into Gaelic again. "When he comes, everyone else is close behind. They all throw stones… but I deserve it."

"You don't deserve it." He pulled Connor into a protective hug.

The boy Connor felt too thin, all limbs, and he was trembling slightly. "But… the Clan can't be wrong!"

"Why not?" He stroked his back tentatively.

"Because… because they're my Clan!" He seemed a little puzzled that this was not clear. "They're kin. They're everything, and they cast me out. Kate wanted them to burn me…"

"They're important, but not infallible. It was a long time ago, Connor." He continued to hold him.

"We have to keep secret. I have to keep secret. The whole world would cast us out if they knew… or worse." The young immortal was sagging into his arms.

Balthazar rocked slightly, stroking his back. "There are a lot of secrets kept in the world. I'm sorry yours is so lonely."

Connor tensed suddenly in his arms, in response to a strange soft ringing sound on the air.

Looking around warily, Balthazar let him go. "What's that?"

"Jacob." Connor staggered up, bare-legged between kilt and fur boots, ragged shirt hanging off him. He seemed determined to protect Balthazar, and although he carried no sword he stood shakily with both arms out, trying to shield the sorcerer with his own body.

Still unsure of the source of the danger, Balthazar stood and placed a hand on his back.

Through the fog, a man in modern dress approached, frowning calmly. He looked easily twice Connor's age, with blonde hair cut close to his scalp, but eyes a similar grey-blue to Connor's. "What's this?" His Scottish accent was barely a trace, erased by time and travel. "Who is your friend, Connor? Is he a better friend than I was?"

Balthazar narrowed his eyes. "I hear you have a strange definition of friendship."

"Me? Connor's the one who murders childhood friends…"

Connor trembled, legs weak. "Jacob! I didnae mean to…"

Balthazar probed the man before him with subtle magic, unsure if he was merely a projection of Connor's guilt, or remnants of the real thing. What he sensed was a true presence, and deep roots, as if he had worked his way to a level of control.

"You didn't mean to kill my father? You didn't mean to kill me? You didn't mean to start the fire that burned most of Glenfinnan to the ground?" His tone was quietly accusing.

Connor dropped to his knees.

Balthazar stroked Connor's hair once, then stalked around him toward Kell. "Enough. I think you're done here."

Kell took a step back, wary. "I belong here. Connor brought me. I live here… you're merely a visitor." He taunted, fading into the mist.

"I'll be seeing you again." He called, ring flashing on his hand, but the presence had slipped back into the depths of the dreamscape, or possibly Connor's own psyche. After a moment Balthazar turned back toward Connor worriedly.

On his knees, crying silently, Connor was reaching for the yoke he had been so recently freed from.

Balthazar pushed it away and moved between it and Connor, going down on his knees beside him. He cupped the immortal's face in both hands to force him to meet his eyes. "Connor… it doesn't have to be like this."

"It's all my fault. All these…" He gestured to the cemetery with one hand, but clung to Balthazar's shirtfront with the other.

"No. It's not. People make choices; we don't make them for them."

"What about my choices?" He wiped an arm across his eyes, still crying. "I did everything Jacob said…"

"Was there a reason?" There was no judgment in his tone.

Connor swayed on his knees, clinging. "I… was angry…" He hesitated.

"You can tell me, Connor." He put both arms around him for support.

"They were… they burned my mother. But that was for me, too…" He pushed his head against Balthazar's shoulder, shaking and crying like a child.

Balthazar curled around him protectively. "You did what any man would have done, Connor."

Connor sobbed quietly, his words hard to understand through it, accent thick. "I pulled her down but she died in my arms. She died for me! She died because I live…"

There were voices rising, outside the cemetery and the mist, angry taunts and jeers. A few stones came at them through the fence.

Balthazar conjured up a shield around them both, blocking out the sounds as well as the stones. "Ssh…" He stroked Connor's back. "She loved you, and she knew you loved her. Mothers make sacrifices for their children every day."

Connor sank closer to Balthazar. "They said I'm a daemon, a monster… there's so much blood on my hands now, I'm not sure they were wrong." He was leaning heavily, in a slow collapse, mumbling, "And the yoke is so heavy. I'm tired."

"Rest, then. I'm here." Balthazar rested his check lightly against his hair. "Just rest."

The boy Connor wound down his crying with the occasional sob, curled in the embrace of his friend. The taunting figures faded with his grieving, leaving the landscape desolate once more, but thickening mist made everything seem flimsy and insubstantial.

Balthazar clung doggedly to the connection until his mental energy was sapped, and he sank into a deeper, dreamless sleep.

On the bedroom floor, Connor gave the occasional soft grunt of pain until he too fell into deep sleep. His face was still black and blue, and tiny blue crackles like electricity traveled the ribbon and danced around Balthazar's injuries. Veronica and Dave took turns watching them until the former was satisfied the transfer was complete. She undid the ribbon carefully and allowed Dave to work on healing her own injuries before sending him home. With Horvath gone, they could all take the time to rest safely.

*Tapadh leat = Thank you (Scottish Gaelic)