Fic: Lightning Storm (PG-13)
Title: Lightning Storm
Author Name: Lferion
Fandom: Highlander
Characters|Pairing: Methos,
Highlander_50 Claim: Methos
Prompt: 6: Quickening
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 680
Disclaimer: Panzer/Davis &etc. Not me. No harm, no foul, no money.
Summary: An unenviable conclusion
Warnings: None
Author Notes: gryphonrhi gave me a prompt for bells and fireworks. This is not that fic.
She has a fabulous universe with a character named Aidan, in which there are several references to Methos' nightmares, and the fact that Aidan and Duncan generally see to it that Methos is in the middle when the three of them are all in the same bed. Plus, both Aidan and Duncan get page-time "being unstrung" as in taking the tension off of a bow. I am working on giving Methos some of the same attention. This is not that story either, though it is the prologue to it. I hope it will please as a promissory.
(gryphonrhi's Aidan-verse stories can be found here, with many other lovely tales.)
Thanks go to jblum for useful critique, and auberus and rhiannonhero for betaing.
Methos hadn't liked taking heads for a very long time. He hadn't taken quickenings well for even longer. Those facts were but part of the reason he avoided challenges and found creative solutions to the unavoidable fight whenever he could. He'd managed to avoid taking Owain ap Rhys. This one had been both unavoidable and without scope for creativity. And by the end of a more than ordinarily vicious fight, Methos was in no mind for mercy. 'Danny Cutter' needed to be put down, for like ap Rhys, or Walker; having set his sights on Adam Pierson, he would just keep coming back if not stopped here and now.
Wrists steady, Methos felt the smooth stretch of muscle across shoulder and back, the terrible, familiar pull of power from the earth beneath his feet, up legs and spine, out along arms, hands, the seamless extension of strength that was his sword. The unmistakable sensation of edge slicing flesh, bone, air. Follow through. Recover from the stroke. Ground. Center. Ground. His sword point found the Earth, his hands gripping the pommel, knuckles white. This one was going to be bad.
Light took him, burning along each nerve in an agony of ice and fire. Consuming energy engulfed his body as insidious, persistent tendrils of presence thrust at his mind, pried and scraped at his will, howled and screamed against dissolution, dissipation. Memory battered at him as the flashflood of knowledge, sense, skill roared into him, each bolt of energy striking deeper, harder -- the essence of Tanotaliknos Kuitos filling him in obscene parody of love, pooling with harsh insistence in groin and arse, hardening his prick. All of it laced with the poison of malice, deliberate cruelty, the slime and stench of hundreds of years of rage and hatred, caustic with the last outrage of impossible defeat.
Older than Methos had thought, but not more powerful. Tanotaliknos had been Gaulish, not French and a far cry from English.
The quickening-storm drove Methos to his knees, gravel pricking through the thin cloth of his trousers. The Ivanhoe was still holding him up, channeling the overflow of pure electricity back into the earth. Every nerve was raw, his skin flayed, flinching against the weave of shirt, the settling wind. His ears still rang with the shriek of lightning-split air. His lungs stuttered with the effort to draw breath, and light, sound, smell were all an assault.
Aidan was going to be furious. Duncan wasn't going to be any too happy with him either. 'Danny Cutter' was not going to settle well or easily. He was going to need them both. Distantly, he was grateful that he had them both; however much grief they would give him over this, they would be there for him.
The last of the thunder faded, and the wind died, leaving only the random chink of falling glass and the distant yowl of a car alarm. Methos allowed himself another moment, resting his forehead on the pommel of his sword. No other Immortal presence impinged on his nerves, (other than the ever-so-faint awareness of MacLeod that was with him always, irrespective of distance) but there was Cutter's watcher to take into account, not to mention the local authorities. A cleanup crew was likely already on the way, but he would take care of his own mess.
He hauled himself to his feet, nearly doubling over with pain. Kuitos was a spider in his guts, scrabbling at the walls of his will. He breathed, clenching his teeth hard against the cramp and nausea. Experience told him this was a battle he would lose, but he was determined that it would not be lost yet. Deal with the moment.
The world spun and settled finally into a fragile equilibrium. Damp air lay against his skin, shaping him in space, the earth pressed against his shoes, shoring up his bones. No Gaulish upstart could shake his sense of self. But that didn't mean subduing the acid fire of him would be anything other than a long and painful job of work.
He really, really hated taking quickenings.
Author Name: Lferion
Fandom: Highlander
Characters|Pairing: Methos,
Highlander_50 Claim: Methos
Prompt: 6: Quickening
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 680
Disclaimer: Panzer/Davis &etc. Not me. No harm, no foul, no money.
Summary: An unenviable conclusion
Warnings: None
Author Notes: gryphonrhi gave me a prompt for bells and fireworks. This is not that fic.
She has a fabulous universe with a character named Aidan, in which there are several references to Methos' nightmares, and the fact that Aidan and Duncan generally see to it that Methos is in the middle when the three of them are all in the same bed. Plus, both Aidan and Duncan get page-time "being unstrung" as in taking the tension off of a bow. I am working on giving Methos some of the same attention. This is not that story either, though it is the prologue to it. I hope it will please as a promissory.
(gryphonrhi's Aidan-verse stories can be found here, with many other lovely tales.)
Thanks go to jblum for useful critique, and auberus and rhiannonhero for betaing.
Methos hadn't liked taking heads for a very long time. He hadn't taken quickenings well for even longer. Those facts were but part of the reason he avoided challenges and found creative solutions to the unavoidable fight whenever he could. He'd managed to avoid taking Owain ap Rhys. This one had been both unavoidable and without scope for creativity. And by the end of a more than ordinarily vicious fight, Methos was in no mind for mercy. 'Danny Cutter' needed to be put down, for like ap Rhys, or Walker; having set his sights on Adam Pierson, he would just keep coming back if not stopped here and now.
Wrists steady, Methos felt the smooth stretch of muscle across shoulder and back, the terrible, familiar pull of power from the earth beneath his feet, up legs and spine, out along arms, hands, the seamless extension of strength that was his sword. The unmistakable sensation of edge slicing flesh, bone, air. Follow through. Recover from the stroke. Ground. Center. Ground. His sword point found the Earth, his hands gripping the pommel, knuckles white. This one was going to be bad.
Light took him, burning along each nerve in an agony of ice and fire. Consuming energy engulfed his body as insidious, persistent tendrils of presence thrust at his mind, pried and scraped at his will, howled and screamed against dissolution, dissipation. Memory battered at him as the flashflood of knowledge, sense, skill roared into him, each bolt of energy striking deeper, harder -- the essence of Tanotaliknos Kuitos filling him in obscene parody of love, pooling with harsh insistence in groin and arse, hardening his prick. All of it laced with the poison of malice, deliberate cruelty, the slime and stench of hundreds of years of rage and hatred, caustic with the last outrage of impossible defeat.
Older than Methos had thought, but not more powerful. Tanotaliknos had been Gaulish, not French and a far cry from English.
The quickening-storm drove Methos to his knees, gravel pricking through the thin cloth of his trousers. The Ivanhoe was still holding him up, channeling the overflow of pure electricity back into the earth. Every nerve was raw, his skin flayed, flinching against the weave of shirt, the settling wind. His ears still rang with the shriek of lightning-split air. His lungs stuttered with the effort to draw breath, and light, sound, smell were all an assault.
Aidan was going to be furious. Duncan wasn't going to be any too happy with him either. 'Danny Cutter' was not going to settle well or easily. He was going to need them both. Distantly, he was grateful that he had them both; however much grief they would give him over this, they would be there for him.
The last of the thunder faded, and the wind died, leaving only the random chink of falling glass and the distant yowl of a car alarm. Methos allowed himself another moment, resting his forehead on the pommel of his sword. No other Immortal presence impinged on his nerves, (other than the ever-so-faint awareness of MacLeod that was with him always, irrespective of distance) but there was Cutter's watcher to take into account, not to mention the local authorities. A cleanup crew was likely already on the way, but he would take care of his own mess.
He hauled himself to his feet, nearly doubling over with pain. Kuitos was a spider in his guts, scrabbling at the walls of his will. He breathed, clenching his teeth hard against the cramp and nausea. Experience told him this was a battle he would lose, but he was determined that it would not be lost yet. Deal with the moment.
The world spun and settled finally into a fragile equilibrium. Damp air lay against his skin, shaping him in space, the earth pressed against his shoes, shoring up his bones. No Gaulish upstart could shake his sense of self. But that didn't mean subduing the acid fire of him would be anything other than a long and painful job of work.
He really, really hated taking quickenings.