Gwion's Riddle, for dswdiane
Title: Gwion's Riddle
Author: tazlet
Written for: dswdiane
Characters/Pairings: Methos/MacLeod
Rating: PG13
Warnings: No Rogers and Hammerstein lyrics were harmed in the production of this fic; can't say as much for the Cad Goddeu of Taliesen.
Wordcount: 5,933
Author's Notes: The author made every effort to meet the recipient's request, but the work will stand or fall on its own merits.
Summary: There is no explanation. There is only faith, fascination, and the persistence of time.
Gwion's Riddle
I was in many shapes before I was released:
~*~
Methos waited, and then slipped as close he could without either of MacLeod or Kristin sensing him crouched in the shadow of one of the pavilions that plotted the corners of the formal garden. It was a water garden, one side bound by a lap pool, but each of the pavilions shaded its own round pool, subtly lit, with chairs and tables. There was a bottle of wine and two glasses on the table in the one where they found Kristin; she must have been entertaining just before their arrival.
He could hear MacLeod raging.
"...you tried to kill him, like you did me years ago!"
"No," Kirsten said. "I could never hurt you. I love you. How could you think me such a monster?"
"Because you are." MacLeod sounded stunned. He was staring at Kristin as if he had never seen her before.
You knew she wasn't right; now you see what she is...
Kristin was saying: "I was hurt when I attacked you before! I could never hurt her! Or you...!"
Her! Who was she talking about? Louise Barton? Was she caught in a memory loop of the woman she'd drugged and drowned three hundred years ago, or...
Two wine glasses!
Methos took off running. MacLeod caught up with him. They were in time to save Maria's life. Barely.
"Stay with her," MacLeod said, leaving him to call 911.
Kristin had toward the beach, away from the lights, and people...
~*~
I was a word in letters, a book in origin;
~*~
"How do you know who you are?" MacLeod said, out of the drowsy blue.
"I refer to my notes," Methos said. "Many notes. Many volumes." He turned a page of the book he was reading, and cocked a professionally skeptical eye on the man beside him. Prone, cheek compressed on stacked hands, a half-lidded eye...it didn't take much to diagnose post coital brooding. "Do I dare hope that was a rhetorical question?"
MacLeod didn't reply.
"Are you going to talk to me, or not?" From where he was sitting against the pillows, Methos had a particularly fine view of the geography on offer, although, having mapped the terrain pretty thoroughly twice already, he was a bit surprised to feel himself responding to it.
"I'm trying to imagine who I would be if I forgot my family, my clan, or my..."
Save the mark! Methos dog-earred the corner of his page, dropped Being and Nothingness back on the nightstand, and clicked off the lamp.
River reflected lights through the porthole dappled the bulkheads and MacLeod's shoulders with yellow, amber and brown rosettes, turning the man into a gorgeous animal that somewhere along the line had been infected with an unhealthy amount of earnestness.
That last opinion-he had his suspicions as to the source of the infection-Methos was keeping to himself. For now, pressing the breath out of the man was one way of keeping him in the moment. He climbed atop Mt. MacLeod and humped and squirmed, assisted by the wake of a passing boat, until he'd worked his way into the tight cleft in the rocks, and was prodding the magic portal. Knock. Knock. Here it is, if you want it...
MacLeod wanted it. He wanted it like the first sin after confession. Had wanted it since the moment Understanding had bashed him over the head with a truncheon and followed up with a coy flutter of eyelashes and a shyly blushing cheek. (Abashed, he'd looked away, and missed the wicked green gleam that should have warned him.) Had wanted it so badly that, as they were walking along the grass of the embankment prattling of irrelevancies, he hadn't been able to meet Methos's eyes with any conviction, certain that Methos would know he had an erection.
Methos had known, and been charmed to the cockles of his cynical old soul, and had proceeded to tune him up and play him like a lute up until the moment of Kalas's arrest.
The jar of petroleum jelly was discovered between the headboard and the mattress, and the pressure cap, god's gift to lovers, went skittering across the sheets. Methos dipped deep, and applied friendly persuasion to what had to be slightly sore, suspicious muscles, encouraging them to loosen up one more time. He didn't mind investing the effort; after all, the other end might eventually absorb the metaphor. When the bannock was sufficiently buttered, he hoisted MacLeod's hips, angled himself, and thrust. As he worked his way home MacLeod quivered, whimpering a little unconsciously, no doubt it had to sting. It wasn't long before he was groaning for other reasons, though.
Afterwards, they lay tangled together in a boneless heap. MacLeod, sleepy as he was, had a goofy grin, on his face. "What was that?" he said.
"Me having carnal knowledge of your tail," Methos said.
There was nothing as satisfying, he reflected, as breaking a mount with your own hands.
~*~
I was a bubble in beer, I was a drop in a shower;
~*~
The first cutting edge of fall was in the air and all afternoon people come in to the bar, seeking communion.
"Miss Collins weep, Miss Collins mourn,
What made her son, Louis, leave his home?
Angels laid him away..."
The way the words slipped into the music suited Joe's mood. Seemed to suit his patrons', as well, but it had to be the last song. The stage needed clearing for the band performing later.
"Oh, kind friends, now ain't it hard,
To see poor Louis in a new graveyard?
Angels laid him away..."
Over the fading chord, he caught Alexa's rare laugh. He'd noticed she was going back and forth between the bar and the dark corner behind the stage rather often. Joe looked and strained to see past the spotlight to a spare figure sitting alone. There was one duffle bag and a long case with airline tags attached under the table.
"When they heard that Louis was dead,
All the women folk, they dressed in red.
Angels laid him away..."
A rush of adrenalin rattled his concentration; he nearly bobbled the strings. You'd think, after thirty years on the job, you'd pick up the trick of sensing when one of them was around. In spite of everything he'd seen in thirty years, Methos was a miracle whose Presence should have screamed the moment he walked in. The hell! He was flirting with the help! Some of them should be classified as vermin.
"...laid him six-feet under the clay.
Angels laid him away..."
The last note died away.
"Thank you." Joe acknowledged the applause, swung the Gibson over his shoulder and made his way to the dark corner. It was a rare moment when he was glad for the slow pace that the cane and prosthetic limbs forced on him. Just then, Joe wasn't sure he didn't want to take a head or two, himself. MacLeod had stopped by for lunch earlier in the day, and hadn't said a word about Methos coming to Seacouver, and if Mac didn't know...
"Pierson," he said, achieving the table, "What an unexpected pleasure."
Methos gave a crooked smile. "Buy you a beer?"
Joe signaled to Alexa for one and a refill, and sat the guitar case on a chair.
"I like this place." Methos said. "Reminds me of a joint I used to hang out-The Blue Ziggurat. Served the best beer in Babylon, if you didn't mind straining husks through your teeth"
For the short time it took Alexa to set down the bottles and take the empty away, Methos was silent. Joe said. "You can take off, Honey. See you tomorrow."
Methos took a swallow of his beer. "I liked that last song."
"Best thing about owning the joint," Joe said, "it's my party; I play what I want and when I want to."
"Special occasion?"
"Yeah. The Fat Man's dead."
"Who?"
"Jerry Garcia."
"Oh. I hadn't heard." Methos lifted his bottle in salute. "To the Fat Man, he said. "Did you ever meet him?"
"Once. When I first got out of the army and was still feeling pretty sorry for myself. I wasn't fit for Watcher training, and I didn't want to go home, so I bummed around the coast. The Dead were just a garage band in those days." He clicked his Sam Adams against Methos' Olympia. "Who knew."
"Who knew."
"What was Adam Pierson in the sixties?"
"A gleam in his father's eye. I just got here, Joe."
"Pardon me all to hell for doing my job."
"How do I forget how stubborn you are? If you mean me, I was somebody else."
"Who?"
"What did I do to deserve the third degree?"
"Nearly gave me a coronary a moment ago." Joe let his anger show. "Is it against your religion to call?"
"It's these new-fangled devices... I can't tell whether I should I make a sacrifice before dialing, or not?"
"That's the quarters you put in the slot. Give it up, or I call the Marines."
"Long as you don't call MacLeod." Joe reached for his cane. "Okay! It's not much of a story. I spent the Sixties quietly in Paris."
"You're right; that's not much of a story."
"How I like it."
"I take it McLeod doesn't know you're here."
"Seriously, can we talk about this later?" Methos said. "I'm a bit jetlagged."
He looked more than jetlagged, Joe thought. He looked stretched, as if too many nights without sleep.
"You had dinner?"
"No. Can't stand airline food-" Methos interrupted himself with a yawn. "I'll order room service when I get to the hotel."
"So you're not staying with MacLeod." Methos avoided his eyes, watching Alexa leave. "Look if you can hold out until I close out the drawer, I'll take you home and fix you something."
"If it's not too much trouble."
"No more than usual." Joe hoisted himself to his feet, wondering what kind of a sucker he was being played for. "Don't drop the guitar," he said.
~*~
I was a path, I was an eagle, I was a coracle in seas;
~*~
Methos crossed his arms. "You don't write; you don't call," he said, "and now I find out you've been stepping out with another girl."
"What?" MacLeod looked up.
"I'm doing your bit for you. We haven't seen each other in six months, but I thought we had something going."
"Yeah. Sorry." MacLeod sighed. "I thought you had taken off for good-didn't blame you; survival first, all things considered."
"All things considered, it wasn't up to me. Kalas had his lawyer come nosing around, and Jacques thought a temporary assignment in London would be good for organizational security."
"Then you'll appreciate why I'm worried about Amanda."
"No I don't. She's a big girl who survived for centuries without your help."
"Methos...! Are you jealous?"
"No. I just have more confidence in her than you do. Give Amanda a chance to show a little thigh to a man with a lever long enough-and it's funny how they all have levers-she'll manage. But, for future reference, I have no aversion to threesomes...or moresomes."
The corner of MacLeod's mouth quirked. "I'll bear it in mind, but, for now, can it wait?"
"Why not? We have so little to say and so much time in which to say it...oh, wait. No, we don't! One of us, preferably you, needs to keep his mind on taking Kalas apart."
"One of us already tried," MacLeod said, with evident disgust.
"I've heard of jumping the queue, but that was..."
"Ridiculous. I know."
"I was going to say bizarre."
Having delivered himself of the opinion that Kalas would keep Amanda as alive only as long as he could use her as bait, MacLeod had subsided into black brood. He kept it up until the phone rang, and answered it as if he finally meant to tell Kalas where to meet, and been surprised when the call was for Joe. Joe had grabbed the receiver, turned his face away, and then bolted from the barge as soon as he'd hung up, saying something about having to see a man about a horse.
That had left Methos alone with MacLeod for the first time since Kalas's escape had collided with the Salzer mess. Not exactly how he'd meant to drop back into MacLeod's life, but there you are, that's life, and what the hell had Amanda been thinking...?
He didn't bother looking at the shelf where MacLeod's CD player sat. A tiny gold stud lay there, suspiciously similar to the one Amanda had been wearing in her nose. If she was marking territory, it was hardly because she saw Adam Pierson as a rival, or as threat, either to her or to MacLeod. That left begging the question for whose benefit a cat burglar acts like a cat. Not for the mice. It wasn't something he wanted to draw MacLeod's attention to, but, assuming they all survived without the database going public, he intended to do some digging. But right then, he needed MacLeod with his head out his ass.
"Every now and then," he was maundering, "she'll turn over a new leaf. She said that after everything I've done for her that she was trying to do me a favor."
"And where, oh, where," Methos opined, "would we be without our friends? Speaking of our friends, you did notice Joe just left to intercept Christine Salzer, didn't you?"
"Maybe he thinks he can get through to her, without your help this time."
"Since he took a gun with him; I don't think that's likely," Methos said. "He's gone to kill her."
"Hell!" MacLeod was on his feet.
~*~
I was a string in a harp enchanted for nine years;
~*~
An hour-and-a-half later, Joe slapped a mug of coffee on the kitchen table. Having watched Methos polish off a three-cheese omelet without saying a word to the point, he was getting royally pissed, and didn't particularly care if it slopped, or not.
"Talk to me!" he said. "We both know you're a mean motorcycle, and two dozen different kinds of cool, but, just out of curiosity, where does the Chapter House think you are right now?"
"Connecticut." Methos' mouth twitched, and broadened into a smile. "There's a manuscript at the Bieneke that might relate to the Methos Project."
"Does it?"
"I said might."
"What happens if they want a report?"
"Written, before I left..." Methos stretched out his shoulders. "A brilliant thesis on my presence in Britain being confirmed in the fourth century by the diffusion of certain folk tales...."
"Were you in Britain in the fourth century?"
"When you compare the Egyptian cult figure of Hermes Trimegisthus to Merlin, it seems..."
"Cut the crap."
Methos made wounded doe eyes at him. "It'll make a great book."
"I said, cut the crap, and tell me what you're doing here. Or I'll kick your ass out the door. I might do it anyway; it's starting to rain."
"Kristin Gilles opened a branch of her agency here in Seacouver last month."
Joe recalled the name and information from a recent newsletter. He answered his own question: "You think she's here for MacLeod!"
"I know that she is." Methos took a sip of coffee, and grimaced. "Sugar?"
"Green canister." Joe pointed, and Methos went to root through the cupboard over the coffeepot. "Even if she's here for Mac, what makes it any of your business?"
"Nothing. Nothing whatsoever," Methos said, pulling out a box of Meow Mix "I didn't know you had a cat."
"I don't." Methos put the box back without further comment. "What about Gilles?" Joe prompted.
"She's been taking care of a lot of old business." Methos turned around with a teal blue tea tin in his hand, and leaned against the counter.
"Why?"
"Because 'there can be only one'" Methos reminded him, "And old lovers are easy prey." He opened his eyes at Joe's expression. "What? You don't expect anyone to be that calculating?"
"I don't...that's cold!"
"I have news for you; given a fair shot, the female of the species is deadlier than the male. At least that's how I place my bets in the chapter-house pools; so far I've come out ahead."
"MacLeod gets short odds. I still wouldn't bet against him."
"That's because you're a fan."
"Let me guess, you have a piece of the action on yourself."
"Of course. I get great odds," Methos said. "I just haven't figured out how I'm going to collect."
"Were you always this fucking cynical?"
"Yes," Methos popped the lid on the tin, and inspected the contents. "Joe...?" He looked up. "You are so busted!"
"What?" Joe realized. "That's the wrong tin!"
"Looks like the right one to me!" Methos grinned. They both started laughing. Methos got the got the hiccups, slid down the front of the cabinet, and lay sprawling on the floor.
"Hey," Joe gave him a poke with his cane. "You want some, or not?"
"Think it'll help with jet-lag?"
"No," Joe said. "But, I guarantee, it will send you to the moon."
"Methos got up on his hands and knees, crawled over to his chair and used it to pull himself up. His eyes were darker than usual. "Can I stay here tonight?"
"Hell, why not?" Joe said. He'd already put an extra blanket on the bed in the spare room, and fresh towels in the bathroom.
"I was wondering when you were going to offer." Methos yawned.
"Give me that, and go take a shower."
~*~
I was a spark in a flame; I was wood in a bonfire;
~*~
"Try it," Methos said.
MacLeod flipped the switch. "Let there be light." Fluorescent tubes flickered to life. "And God saw the light, and it was good."
"Please," Methos said. "Hand me the cover, and spare me the King James."
MacLeod handed up the cover plate. Methos fit it into the ceiling fixture and tightened the screws. He dropped the screwdriver into the open toolkit on the floor, and surveyed the rest of the room in disgust.
"You coming down?" MacLeod said.
"If I do I'll have to deal with you, as well as this mess," Methos said.
He'd just begun to move back into his old apartment, when Christine Salzer had called raving. After a week of frantic damage control, a freak power surge four days ago had fried every electrical appliance and power point within ten block radius of the Eiffel Tower.
That night, not one of them had been thinking past celebrating Kalas's death to realize what kind of run there would be the next morning on electronics, electrical supplies, lighting fixtures and light bulbs.
Since then, the only things he'd had the opportunity to organize were rolls of wire, replacement outlets, light fixtures, and two fluorescent tubes that MacLeod had managed to scrounge from Maurice, and God knew from where Maurice had scrounged them.
"Boxes, boxes everywhere, and I've tripped over every one of them," Methos said. "Someone owes me."
"That would be you," MacLeod said, looking upward. When Methos didn't answer, he said, "I know a poem, too: While Titian was mixing rose madder, his model posed nude on a ladder, the position to Titian suggested... I could come up there, and we could..."
"Wouldn't you be embarrassed if 'broke neck fucking on a ladder' wound up in your chronicle?"
"No," MacLeod said, rattling the ladder.
"Let me climb down on my own." Methos's feet hit the floor. He turned around, and found himself trapped with MacLeod in front of him and the ladder behind him. MacLeod picked him up and planted him on a convenient rung. "If I'd known it was going to make you this randy..."
MacLeod had been fizzing with so much sexual energy since that night that Joe had flown home, saying that he was having seriously disturbing dreams; Amanda had fled to her own apartment two days later. That left Methos to take the brunt, so to speak.
"Hey! I wasn't me who developed an interactive data base with enough confidential info on it to end the world as we know it... Are you're sure there's no other copy?"
"Don't you think I'd know if there was?" Panting hard, Methos put his head back, successfully redirecting MacLeod's attention. "It wasn't my girlfriend who... Do that again... Broke Kalas out of prison." He managed to make his point. "Anyway, who had the key to the radio room, and knew how to jigger the cables under the Eiffel Tower so the power surge actually did some good?"
"How..." MacLeod began to work his way down, down... "Did you have that key, anyway?"
"I've had it since 1941. You never know when something like that will come in useful. Look at me!"
MacLeod looked up.
What was it that was so attractive about that broad lower lip...? Ah, yes. Rahat Lokum. That was it. Turkish delight. The old fashioned kind flavored with rose water and orange peel, so soft, and yet so firm, you just wanted to sink your teeth into it.
"I'll send the bill to Amanda."
"She won't pay it."
"I know, but it's the principle of the thing... Where's she gone off to, by the way?"
"Left a message saying she had a line on a new television... A new stereo... New answer machine..."
"All in perfectly good condition... Just slightly dinged from falling off the back of a lorry...?"
Something like that... She did mention a pair of matching lamps with Galle shades... I didn't enquire too closely."
"Wise of you...."
"Coming home with me?" MacLeod said. The barge near Notre Dame had been outside the affected area.
"Or you could help me put the bed together here. Mmmm...?"
~*~
I was a bridge that stretched across sixty estuaries;
~*~
While Methos was showered, Joe wreathed himself in a cloud of acrid smoke, made a few phone calls, and browsed through 600 years of a life that spoke of little but unsatisfied hunger. Kristin Gilles was greedy and impulsive-strange the gentle Grace Chandler had been her first teacher. Immortals with so little self-control rarely survived long, but she'd lived by befriending the powerful, and by limiting her stalking to easy prey: young immortals of both sexes.
But Methos was right, analyze her kills over the last ten years, and a pattern emerged. In addition to 12 youngsters who hadn't survived their fist death by more than 20 years-Joe clicked the left mouse button: Zoe D'Alamonti: b. 128-?: d. Vienna 1978. Click! Torbin Reims: b. 1463, d. The Hague 1966. Click! Paul Kantorski: b. 1503, d. Danzig 1982. Click! Timothy Keller: b. 783, d. 1995. Click!
All four had been old lovers of Kristin Gilles: wealthy, powerful, and very skilled. Particularly Keller, beheaded in Dublin last year. An investment banker and longtime patron of the arts, who had once been king in Munster-Keallach MacKeihin-they didn't come much tougher than that.
Among the living: Amanda Darrieux, Franco Campanile, and Duncan MacLeod.
Joe's last click brought him back to the picture of Kristin herself. She was beautiful, and it was a tight modern beauty. Often immortals were so completely of their time that you looked at them and said 'he was Roman senator,' or 'she was a demimondaine at the court of Louis the XVI.' Perhaps Kristin Gilles had the ability to recreate herself, or perhaps this was simply her time. Joe closed his eyes. There was no way MacLeod would kill her in cold blood.
"You all right?" Methos had arrived barefoot. He was wearing only soft gray sweat pants. Loose coats and sweaters disguised a surprisingly well-knit body. He flopped on the sofa and gave a pointed sniff.
"Here," Joe handed him the joint, "breakfast of champions. I've been looking up your dangerous lady."
"What did you find?"
"Headless corpses. Tell me something-are there really fewer female immortals?"
"No," Methos gasped. When he finally let his breath out, he added, "Most of them start at a disadvantage. If they survive, it's because they play smarter, not harder."
"Earlier you said she was here for MacLeod. What put you on to her?"
"An accident. That crap Amanda sold MacLeod about her reason for breaking Kalas out jail. Then there discrepancies in Millet's reports; things that most Watchers wouldn't have noticed." Joe wasn't particularly surprised. "Kristin Gilles is here for MacLeod. If he doesn't take her head this time, I'm going to."
"You think he won't?"
"La belle dame sans merci hath him in her thrall. He won't kill someone he's slept with."
That corresponded with Joe's belief. Joe didn't ask What about you? He only said, "It isn't your policy to get involved."
"What's a foolish regard for consistency?"
"Why did come to me first, instead of MacLeod?"
"Need your help, of course." Methos took another toke and handed back the joint. He held his breath, and then let it out slowly. "Need help tracking Gilles. No reason for me to be here. Millet's paranoid; impossible to pry reports out her as it is." Veronique Millet was Kristin Gilles' watcher, an intense woman and good at her job.
"You want me to help you murder Kristin Gilles."
"If you want to collect on your bets."
"Go see what you can find in the kitchen; I've got the munchies."
Methos unfolded himself and padded off, leaving Joe alone.
By necessity, a watcher learns things about their immortal assignment: how they'll respond to a challenge-run, hide, or fight-about their interests and activities during the long, sometimes life-long and incredibly dull, stretches in between. It takes an obsessive personality to embrace an assignment like that-obsessive was almost in the job description-along with 'ability to tolerate long periods of solitude'-a combination that often lead to a sense of intimacy with the assignment. An intimacy that had to be one-sided.
Yet he'd seen it happen: watchers crossing the line, becoming invested in an assignment's survival...even protective. Joe knew that he was almost as far across that line as any fool had ever been. He lived with himself by telling himself that, if there could be only one, it should be Duncan MacLeod-and then Methos had entered the picture.
"Biscuits okay?" Methos was back with a bag of Pecan Sandies.
"If I help you, I want something in exchange."
"Yours, if I've got it." Methos resumed his spot on the sofa, and proceeded to tear into the bag.
"I want access to your chronicles."
"Freely available to any Watcher in good standing."
"Not the smoke you've been blowing up the Society's collective ass for the last God knows how long. Methos, I don't believe in accidents."
"Really?" Methos said, looking pointedly at Joe's legs.
"You're a real asshole, you know."
"You not the first one who's said."
So we pay for our sins.
~*~
I passed time at dawn, I slept in purple;
~*~
MacLeod went in to make coffee, while Methos found a clean rag and squatted on the top step to wipe his face.
Beyond the wide porch rain fell like a veil, a soft continuous patter, soothing enough to inspire thoughts of bed and tangled sleepy limbs. When it came down like this, it was easy to fool yourself into thinking rain was a mild, engendering blessing, and not a force more destructive than fire. He remembered it marching across the plains in black waves, accompanied by killing winds and lightning, flooding the ravines and scouring the grasslands bare...
The immediate aroma of coffee brought him back to the here and now.
He rescued his mug as MacLeod hunkered beside him. They sat side-by-side, shoulders touching. Methos wondered why the words that came out of their mouths never managed to communicate as clearly as their bodies did.
Maybe this is what it's like to have children...
You think?
Dear, God, he had raised children-not children of his own, although he had claimed a number-but he had raised children; seen them thrive, seen them die; had known them when they worshiped him...had known them to come for his head. That's what Ryan would do to MacLeod when he had nursed that burning core of resentment long enough, and the overwhelming horror of endless existence drove him to kill the last reminder that he'd ever known anything else.
"If you don't take her head, I will."
"Let's hope it won't come to that." MacLeod put his cup down. "Hand me the rag; you missed a couple of spots."
Rag handed over; Methos closed his eyes and let MacLeod dab away the dots of paint he'd missed: one, two, three... He closed his eyes, breathing MacLeod's breath. When their lips touched, MacLeod must have felt him shiver. Presently MacLeod's coat was around his shoulders and he was enveloped in the taste, and smell of the man-salt, wind and rain-it lead, inevitably, to another passage of arms. When had he become MacLeod's to mount at will?
That evening, they were discussing dinner-eat in or carry-out-when Ryan arrived. He was none the worse for having crashed through a window and plunging fifty stories. Fortunately, the pan-handler who had seen him hit the sidewalk, and then stand up, had taken it in stoned stride.
"Round two to Kristin," Methos said. "You dump her! And then you turned your back on her! Talk about the blind leading the visually challenged."
"Thanks a lot," Ryan said.
MacLeod said, "What are you going do?"
"You think she'll come after me?"
"No. I think she'll come after somebody you care about."
"Oh, God!" Something had finally penetrated Ryan's reeking self-pity. "I got to go to Maria's. See you guys." He grabbed his coat, and was gone.
A moment later MacLeod was on his feet. Methos looked around. "Where are you going?"
"Kristin's. You coming?" MacLeod scooped up Methos's coat on his way to the elevator. "Don't think you'll want to miss this," he said, as he tossed it.
~*~
I was sword in hand; I was a shield in battle;
~*~
"What happened? Millet reported finding fused sand on the beach. Not a confirmation of death, but..." Joe was making changes to the Gilles entry in the database.
"MacLeod couldn't take her head. He turned his back, and walked away from her."
Not the beautiful head of a woman he had been enchanted by, once upon a time.
Fool! Never turn your back on a monster, especially if you loved them. Because the monster, crawling on her hands and knees, spitting poison, in endless pain, screaming hate, was reaching for the sword standing upright in the sand...
Methos stepped closer, let her feel his Presence, and saw the confusion face when she looked over her shoulder, and realized it wasn't Ryan.
Who are you?
He hoped MacLeod wouldn't have to listen to her beg.
Someone who was born long before the age of chivalry.
She had looked toward MacLeod, standing with his back to them, safely out of sword's reach, not moving. Good. Some germ of common sense? Respect for the rules of the Game? It didn't matter.
Pick it up.
"Give her the one grace note that she chose to fight."
"Not the fairest fight."
"No. But, she could have gone down fighting, or she could have gone down."
"How's MacLeod dealing?"
"He thinks he should be angry, but the truth is he's relieved. He's having a hard with that, and it will take a while to process. We change slowly, Joe, but we do change; at least he hasn't kicked my ass out."
"Ryan?"
"All my fault, and can't the sight of me."
"Speaking of which, those chronicles."
"Right... You do speak Sumerian, don't you?"
~*~
I was a snake enchanted in a hill, I was a viper in a lake;
~*~
"Finish up and let's get going." Joe hung up the phone. "That was Ryan's watcher. Kristin is fully occupied, and won't be leaving anytime soon." Methos looked up, paused in the act of repacking his bag, and raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"Details! I want details!"
"Get your mind out of the gutter, and let's go!"
Methos zipped up his bag, and let Joe hustle him out the door and into the car. As they drove across town to the old industrial building where MacLeod was still keeping Charlie DeSalvo's dojo running, Joe said. "Your luck she decided to move indirectly," Joe said.
"That's her style. If he survives the experience, Ryan will find himself very popular with the ladies. What's he like, by the way? I mean your sense of him; I read the reports."
"More trouble than he's worth. At some level he still thinks he's won the lottery, and if he's in trouble MacLeod will bail him out. He hasn't been wrong."
"He won't take a hint?"
"Not so far." Joe pulled to a stop in an empty loading zone. "You hop out here; MacLeod knows the car. The front entrance is around the corner in the middle of the block."
As Methos climbed out and slammed the door, he called, "Good luck!"
DeSalvo's was open. At least the front door was open. Since MacLeod wasn't entirely daft when it came to security, the freight elevator was keyed and locked. That left Methos no choice but to climb the stairs. He was panting slightly when MacLeod's Presence hit him on the sixth floor landing.
He knocked, despite hearing feet moving quickly across the floor. When making an unannounced call on another immortal, one doesn't want to be behind in the little courtesies that can prevent an unexpected beheading.
MacLeod opened the door, taking a measured step back.
"Candygram!"
~*~
I am a wonder whose origin is not known.
I shall be until the Day of Judgment is upon the earth.
Finis
Author: tazlet
Written for: dswdiane
Characters/Pairings: Methos/MacLeod
Rating: PG13
Warnings: No Rogers and Hammerstein lyrics were harmed in the production of this fic; can't say as much for the Cad Goddeu of Taliesen.
Wordcount: 5,933
Author's Notes: The author made every effort to meet the recipient's request, but the work will stand or fall on its own merits.
Summary: There is no explanation. There is only faith, fascination, and the persistence of time.
Gwion's Riddle
I was in many shapes before I was released:
~*~
Methos waited, and then slipped as close he could without either of MacLeod or Kristin sensing him crouched in the shadow of one of the pavilions that plotted the corners of the formal garden. It was a water garden, one side bound by a lap pool, but each of the pavilions shaded its own round pool, subtly lit, with chairs and tables. There was a bottle of wine and two glasses on the table in the one where they found Kristin; she must have been entertaining just before their arrival.
He could hear MacLeod raging.
"...you tried to kill him, like you did me years ago!"
"No," Kirsten said. "I could never hurt you. I love you. How could you think me such a monster?"
"Because you are." MacLeod sounded stunned. He was staring at Kristin as if he had never seen her before.
You knew she wasn't right; now you see what she is...
Kristin was saying: "I was hurt when I attacked you before! I could never hurt her! Or you...!"
Her! Who was she talking about? Louise Barton? Was she caught in a memory loop of the woman she'd drugged and drowned three hundred years ago, or...
Two wine glasses!
Methos took off running. MacLeod caught up with him. They were in time to save Maria's life. Barely.
"Stay with her," MacLeod said, leaving him to call 911.
Kristin had toward the beach, away from the lights, and people...
~*~
I was a word in letters, a book in origin;
~*~
"How do you know who you are?" MacLeod said, out of the drowsy blue.
"I refer to my notes," Methos said. "Many notes. Many volumes." He turned a page of the book he was reading, and cocked a professionally skeptical eye on the man beside him. Prone, cheek compressed on stacked hands, a half-lidded eye...it didn't take much to diagnose post coital brooding. "Do I dare hope that was a rhetorical question?"
MacLeod didn't reply.
"Are you going to talk to me, or not?" From where he was sitting against the pillows, Methos had a particularly fine view of the geography on offer, although, having mapped the terrain pretty thoroughly twice already, he was a bit surprised to feel himself responding to it.
"I'm trying to imagine who I would be if I forgot my family, my clan, or my..."
Save the mark! Methos dog-earred the corner of his page, dropped Being and Nothingness back on the nightstand, and clicked off the lamp.
River reflected lights through the porthole dappled the bulkheads and MacLeod's shoulders with yellow, amber and brown rosettes, turning the man into a gorgeous animal that somewhere along the line had been infected with an unhealthy amount of earnestness.
That last opinion-he had his suspicions as to the source of the infection-Methos was keeping to himself. For now, pressing the breath out of the man was one way of keeping him in the moment. He climbed atop Mt. MacLeod and humped and squirmed, assisted by the wake of a passing boat, until he'd worked his way into the tight cleft in the rocks, and was prodding the magic portal. Knock. Knock. Here it is, if you want it...
MacLeod wanted it. He wanted it like the first sin after confession. Had wanted it since the moment Understanding had bashed him over the head with a truncheon and followed up with a coy flutter of eyelashes and a shyly blushing cheek. (Abashed, he'd looked away, and missed the wicked green gleam that should have warned him.) Had wanted it so badly that, as they were walking along the grass of the embankment prattling of irrelevancies, he hadn't been able to meet Methos's eyes with any conviction, certain that Methos would know he had an erection.
Methos had known, and been charmed to the cockles of his cynical old soul, and had proceeded to tune him up and play him like a lute up until the moment of Kalas's arrest.
The jar of petroleum jelly was discovered between the headboard and the mattress, and the pressure cap, god's gift to lovers, went skittering across the sheets. Methos dipped deep, and applied friendly persuasion to what had to be slightly sore, suspicious muscles, encouraging them to loosen up one more time. He didn't mind investing the effort; after all, the other end might eventually absorb the metaphor. When the bannock was sufficiently buttered, he hoisted MacLeod's hips, angled himself, and thrust. As he worked his way home MacLeod quivered, whimpering a little unconsciously, no doubt it had to sting. It wasn't long before he was groaning for other reasons, though.
Afterwards, they lay tangled together in a boneless heap. MacLeod, sleepy as he was, had a goofy grin, on his face. "What was that?" he said.
"Me having carnal knowledge of your tail," Methos said.
There was nothing as satisfying, he reflected, as breaking a mount with your own hands.
~*~
I was a bubble in beer, I was a drop in a shower;
~*~
The first cutting edge of fall was in the air and all afternoon people come in to the bar, seeking communion.
"Miss Collins weep, Miss Collins mourn,
What made her son, Louis, leave his home?
Angels laid him away..."
The way the words slipped into the music suited Joe's mood. Seemed to suit his patrons', as well, but it had to be the last song. The stage needed clearing for the band performing later.
"Oh, kind friends, now ain't it hard,
To see poor Louis in a new graveyard?
Angels laid him away..."
Over the fading chord, he caught Alexa's rare laugh. He'd noticed she was going back and forth between the bar and the dark corner behind the stage rather often. Joe looked and strained to see past the spotlight to a spare figure sitting alone. There was one duffle bag and a long case with airline tags attached under the table.
"When they heard that Louis was dead,
All the women folk, they dressed in red.
Angels laid him away..."
A rush of adrenalin rattled his concentration; he nearly bobbled the strings. You'd think, after thirty years on the job, you'd pick up the trick of sensing when one of them was around. In spite of everything he'd seen in thirty years, Methos was a miracle whose Presence should have screamed the moment he walked in. The hell! He was flirting with the help! Some of them should be classified as vermin.
"...laid him six-feet under the clay.
Angels laid him away..."
The last note died away.
"Thank you." Joe acknowledged the applause, swung the Gibson over his shoulder and made his way to the dark corner. It was a rare moment when he was glad for the slow pace that the cane and prosthetic limbs forced on him. Just then, Joe wasn't sure he didn't want to take a head or two, himself. MacLeod had stopped by for lunch earlier in the day, and hadn't said a word about Methos coming to Seacouver, and if Mac didn't know...
"Pierson," he said, achieving the table, "What an unexpected pleasure."
Methos gave a crooked smile. "Buy you a beer?"
Joe signaled to Alexa for one and a refill, and sat the guitar case on a chair.
"I like this place." Methos said. "Reminds me of a joint I used to hang out-The Blue Ziggurat. Served the best beer in Babylon, if you didn't mind straining husks through your teeth"
For the short time it took Alexa to set down the bottles and take the empty away, Methos was silent. Joe said. "You can take off, Honey. See you tomorrow."
Methos took a swallow of his beer. "I liked that last song."
"Best thing about owning the joint," Joe said, "it's my party; I play what I want and when I want to."
"Special occasion?"
"Yeah. The Fat Man's dead."
"Who?"
"Jerry Garcia."
"Oh. I hadn't heard." Methos lifted his bottle in salute. "To the Fat Man, he said. "Did you ever meet him?"
"Once. When I first got out of the army and was still feeling pretty sorry for myself. I wasn't fit for Watcher training, and I didn't want to go home, so I bummed around the coast. The Dead were just a garage band in those days." He clicked his Sam Adams against Methos' Olympia. "Who knew."
"Who knew."
"What was Adam Pierson in the sixties?"
"A gleam in his father's eye. I just got here, Joe."
"Pardon me all to hell for doing my job."
"How do I forget how stubborn you are? If you mean me, I was somebody else."
"Who?"
"What did I do to deserve the third degree?"
"Nearly gave me a coronary a moment ago." Joe let his anger show. "Is it against your religion to call?"
"It's these new-fangled devices... I can't tell whether I should I make a sacrifice before dialing, or not?"
"That's the quarters you put in the slot. Give it up, or I call the Marines."
"Long as you don't call MacLeod." Joe reached for his cane. "Okay! It's not much of a story. I spent the Sixties quietly in Paris."
"You're right; that's not much of a story."
"How I like it."
"I take it McLeod doesn't know you're here."
"Seriously, can we talk about this later?" Methos said. "I'm a bit jetlagged."
He looked more than jetlagged, Joe thought. He looked stretched, as if too many nights without sleep.
"You had dinner?"
"No. Can't stand airline food-" Methos interrupted himself with a yawn. "I'll order room service when I get to the hotel."
"So you're not staying with MacLeod." Methos avoided his eyes, watching Alexa leave. "Look if you can hold out until I close out the drawer, I'll take you home and fix you something."
"If it's not too much trouble."
"No more than usual." Joe hoisted himself to his feet, wondering what kind of a sucker he was being played for. "Don't drop the guitar," he said.
~*~
I was a path, I was an eagle, I was a coracle in seas;
~*~
Methos crossed his arms. "You don't write; you don't call," he said, "and now I find out you've been stepping out with another girl."
"What?" MacLeod looked up.
"I'm doing your bit for you. We haven't seen each other in six months, but I thought we had something going."
"Yeah. Sorry." MacLeod sighed. "I thought you had taken off for good-didn't blame you; survival first, all things considered."
"All things considered, it wasn't up to me. Kalas had his lawyer come nosing around, and Jacques thought a temporary assignment in London would be good for organizational security."
"Then you'll appreciate why I'm worried about Amanda."
"No I don't. She's a big girl who survived for centuries without your help."
"Methos...! Are you jealous?"
"No. I just have more confidence in her than you do. Give Amanda a chance to show a little thigh to a man with a lever long enough-and it's funny how they all have levers-she'll manage. But, for future reference, I have no aversion to threesomes...or moresomes."
The corner of MacLeod's mouth quirked. "I'll bear it in mind, but, for now, can it wait?"
"Why not? We have so little to say and so much time in which to say it...oh, wait. No, we don't! One of us, preferably you, needs to keep his mind on taking Kalas apart."
"One of us already tried," MacLeod said, with evident disgust.
"I've heard of jumping the queue, but that was..."
"Ridiculous. I know."
"I was going to say bizarre."
Having delivered himself of the opinion that Kalas would keep Amanda as alive only as long as he could use her as bait, MacLeod had subsided into black brood. He kept it up until the phone rang, and answered it as if he finally meant to tell Kalas where to meet, and been surprised when the call was for Joe. Joe had grabbed the receiver, turned his face away, and then bolted from the barge as soon as he'd hung up, saying something about having to see a man about a horse.
That had left Methos alone with MacLeod for the first time since Kalas's escape had collided with the Salzer mess. Not exactly how he'd meant to drop back into MacLeod's life, but there you are, that's life, and what the hell had Amanda been thinking...?
He didn't bother looking at the shelf where MacLeod's CD player sat. A tiny gold stud lay there, suspiciously similar to the one Amanda had been wearing in her nose. If she was marking territory, it was hardly because she saw Adam Pierson as a rival, or as threat, either to her or to MacLeod. That left begging the question for whose benefit a cat burglar acts like a cat. Not for the mice. It wasn't something he wanted to draw MacLeod's attention to, but, assuming they all survived without the database going public, he intended to do some digging. But right then, he needed MacLeod with his head out his ass.
"Every now and then," he was maundering, "she'll turn over a new leaf. She said that after everything I've done for her that she was trying to do me a favor."
"And where, oh, where," Methos opined, "would we be without our friends? Speaking of our friends, you did notice Joe just left to intercept Christine Salzer, didn't you?"
"Maybe he thinks he can get through to her, without your help this time."
"Since he took a gun with him; I don't think that's likely," Methos said. "He's gone to kill her."
"Hell!" MacLeod was on his feet.
~*~
I was a string in a harp enchanted for nine years;
~*~
An hour-and-a-half later, Joe slapped a mug of coffee on the kitchen table. Having watched Methos polish off a three-cheese omelet without saying a word to the point, he was getting royally pissed, and didn't particularly care if it slopped, or not.
"Talk to me!" he said. "We both know you're a mean motorcycle, and two dozen different kinds of cool, but, just out of curiosity, where does the Chapter House think you are right now?"
"Connecticut." Methos' mouth twitched, and broadened into a smile. "There's a manuscript at the Bieneke that might relate to the Methos Project."
"Does it?"
"I said might."
"What happens if they want a report?"
"Written, before I left..." Methos stretched out his shoulders. "A brilliant thesis on my presence in Britain being confirmed in the fourth century by the diffusion of certain folk tales...."
"Were you in Britain in the fourth century?"
"When you compare the Egyptian cult figure of Hermes Trimegisthus to Merlin, it seems..."
"Cut the crap."
Methos made wounded doe eyes at him. "It'll make a great book."
"I said, cut the crap, and tell me what you're doing here. Or I'll kick your ass out the door. I might do it anyway; it's starting to rain."
"Kristin Gilles opened a branch of her agency here in Seacouver last month."
Joe recalled the name and information from a recent newsletter. He answered his own question: "You think she's here for MacLeod!"
"I know that she is." Methos took a sip of coffee, and grimaced. "Sugar?"
"Green canister." Joe pointed, and Methos went to root through the cupboard over the coffeepot. "Even if she's here for Mac, what makes it any of your business?"
"Nothing. Nothing whatsoever," Methos said, pulling out a box of Meow Mix "I didn't know you had a cat."
"I don't." Methos put the box back without further comment. "What about Gilles?" Joe prompted.
"She's been taking care of a lot of old business." Methos turned around with a teal blue tea tin in his hand, and leaned against the counter.
"Why?"
"Because 'there can be only one'" Methos reminded him, "And old lovers are easy prey." He opened his eyes at Joe's expression. "What? You don't expect anyone to be that calculating?"
"I don't...that's cold!"
"I have news for you; given a fair shot, the female of the species is deadlier than the male. At least that's how I place my bets in the chapter-house pools; so far I've come out ahead."
"MacLeod gets short odds. I still wouldn't bet against him."
"That's because you're a fan."
"Let me guess, you have a piece of the action on yourself."
"Of course. I get great odds," Methos said. "I just haven't figured out how I'm going to collect."
"Were you always this fucking cynical?"
"Yes," Methos popped the lid on the tin, and inspected the contents. "Joe...?" He looked up. "You are so busted!"
"What?" Joe realized. "That's the wrong tin!"
"Looks like the right one to me!" Methos grinned. They both started laughing. Methos got the got the hiccups, slid down the front of the cabinet, and lay sprawling on the floor.
"Hey," Joe gave him a poke with his cane. "You want some, or not?"
"Think it'll help with jet-lag?"
"No," Joe said. "But, I guarantee, it will send you to the moon."
"Methos got up on his hands and knees, crawled over to his chair and used it to pull himself up. His eyes were darker than usual. "Can I stay here tonight?"
"Hell, why not?" Joe said. He'd already put an extra blanket on the bed in the spare room, and fresh towels in the bathroom.
"I was wondering when you were going to offer." Methos yawned.
"Give me that, and go take a shower."
~*~
I was a spark in a flame; I was wood in a bonfire;
~*~
"Try it," Methos said.
MacLeod flipped the switch. "Let there be light." Fluorescent tubes flickered to life. "And God saw the light, and it was good."
"Please," Methos said. "Hand me the cover, and spare me the King James."
MacLeod handed up the cover plate. Methos fit it into the ceiling fixture and tightened the screws. He dropped the screwdriver into the open toolkit on the floor, and surveyed the rest of the room in disgust.
"You coming down?" MacLeod said.
"If I do I'll have to deal with you, as well as this mess," Methos said.
He'd just begun to move back into his old apartment, when Christine Salzer had called raving. After a week of frantic damage control, a freak power surge four days ago had fried every electrical appliance and power point within ten block radius of the Eiffel Tower.
That night, not one of them had been thinking past celebrating Kalas's death to realize what kind of run there would be the next morning on electronics, electrical supplies, lighting fixtures and light bulbs.
Since then, the only things he'd had the opportunity to organize were rolls of wire, replacement outlets, light fixtures, and two fluorescent tubes that MacLeod had managed to scrounge from Maurice, and God knew from where Maurice had scrounged them.
"Boxes, boxes everywhere, and I've tripped over every one of them," Methos said. "Someone owes me."
"That would be you," MacLeod said, looking upward. When Methos didn't answer, he said, "I know a poem, too: While Titian was mixing rose madder, his model posed nude on a ladder, the position to Titian suggested... I could come up there, and we could..."
"Wouldn't you be embarrassed if 'broke neck fucking on a ladder' wound up in your chronicle?"
"No," MacLeod said, rattling the ladder.
"Let me climb down on my own." Methos's feet hit the floor. He turned around, and found himself trapped with MacLeod in front of him and the ladder behind him. MacLeod picked him up and planted him on a convenient rung. "If I'd known it was going to make you this randy..."
MacLeod had been fizzing with so much sexual energy since that night that Joe had flown home, saying that he was having seriously disturbing dreams; Amanda had fled to her own apartment two days later. That left Methos to take the brunt, so to speak.
"Hey! I wasn't me who developed an interactive data base with enough confidential info on it to end the world as we know it... Are you're sure there's no other copy?"
"Don't you think I'd know if there was?" Panting hard, Methos put his head back, successfully redirecting MacLeod's attention. "It wasn't my girlfriend who... Do that again... Broke Kalas out of prison." He managed to make his point. "Anyway, who had the key to the radio room, and knew how to jigger the cables under the Eiffel Tower so the power surge actually did some good?"
"How..." MacLeod began to work his way down, down... "Did you have that key, anyway?"
"I've had it since 1941. You never know when something like that will come in useful. Look at me!"
MacLeod looked up.
What was it that was so attractive about that broad lower lip...? Ah, yes. Rahat Lokum. That was it. Turkish delight. The old fashioned kind flavored with rose water and orange peel, so soft, and yet so firm, you just wanted to sink your teeth into it.
"I'll send the bill to Amanda."
"She won't pay it."
"I know, but it's the principle of the thing... Where's she gone off to, by the way?"
"Left a message saying she had a line on a new television... A new stereo... New answer machine..."
"All in perfectly good condition... Just slightly dinged from falling off the back of a lorry...?"
Something like that... She did mention a pair of matching lamps with Galle shades... I didn't enquire too closely."
"Wise of you...."
"Coming home with me?" MacLeod said. The barge near Notre Dame had been outside the affected area.
"Or you could help me put the bed together here. Mmmm...?"
~*~
I was a bridge that stretched across sixty estuaries;
~*~
While Methos was showered, Joe wreathed himself in a cloud of acrid smoke, made a few phone calls, and browsed through 600 years of a life that spoke of little but unsatisfied hunger. Kristin Gilles was greedy and impulsive-strange the gentle Grace Chandler had been her first teacher. Immortals with so little self-control rarely survived long, but she'd lived by befriending the powerful, and by limiting her stalking to easy prey: young immortals of both sexes.
But Methos was right, analyze her kills over the last ten years, and a pattern emerged. In addition to 12 youngsters who hadn't survived their fist death by more than 20 years-Joe clicked the left mouse button: Zoe D'Alamonti: b. 128-?: d. Vienna 1978. Click! Torbin Reims: b. 1463, d. The Hague 1966. Click! Paul Kantorski: b. 1503, d. Danzig 1982. Click! Timothy Keller: b. 783, d. 1995. Click!
All four had been old lovers of Kristin Gilles: wealthy, powerful, and very skilled. Particularly Keller, beheaded in Dublin last year. An investment banker and longtime patron of the arts, who had once been king in Munster-Keallach MacKeihin-they didn't come much tougher than that.
Among the living: Amanda Darrieux, Franco Campanile, and Duncan MacLeod.
Joe's last click brought him back to the picture of Kristin herself. She was beautiful, and it was a tight modern beauty. Often immortals were so completely of their time that you looked at them and said 'he was Roman senator,' or 'she was a demimondaine at the court of Louis the XVI.' Perhaps Kristin Gilles had the ability to recreate herself, or perhaps this was simply her time. Joe closed his eyes. There was no way MacLeod would kill her in cold blood.
"You all right?" Methos had arrived barefoot. He was wearing only soft gray sweat pants. Loose coats and sweaters disguised a surprisingly well-knit body. He flopped on the sofa and gave a pointed sniff.
"Here," Joe handed him the joint, "breakfast of champions. I've been looking up your dangerous lady."
"What did you find?"
"Headless corpses. Tell me something-are there really fewer female immortals?"
"No," Methos gasped. When he finally let his breath out, he added, "Most of them start at a disadvantage. If they survive, it's because they play smarter, not harder."
"Earlier you said she was here for MacLeod. What put you on to her?"
"An accident. That crap Amanda sold MacLeod about her reason for breaking Kalas out jail. Then there discrepancies in Millet's reports; things that most Watchers wouldn't have noticed." Joe wasn't particularly surprised. "Kristin Gilles is here for MacLeod. If he doesn't take her head this time, I'm going to."
"You think he won't?"
"La belle dame sans merci hath him in her thrall. He won't kill someone he's slept with."
That corresponded with Joe's belief. Joe didn't ask What about you? He only said, "It isn't your policy to get involved."
"What's a foolish regard for consistency?"
"Why did come to me first, instead of MacLeod?"
"Need your help, of course." Methos took another toke and handed back the joint. He held his breath, and then let it out slowly. "Need help tracking Gilles. No reason for me to be here. Millet's paranoid; impossible to pry reports out her as it is." Veronique Millet was Kristin Gilles' watcher, an intense woman and good at her job.
"You want me to help you murder Kristin Gilles."
"If you want to collect on your bets."
"Go see what you can find in the kitchen; I've got the munchies."
Methos unfolded himself and padded off, leaving Joe alone.
By necessity, a watcher learns things about their immortal assignment: how they'll respond to a challenge-run, hide, or fight-about their interests and activities during the long, sometimes life-long and incredibly dull, stretches in between. It takes an obsessive personality to embrace an assignment like that-obsessive was almost in the job description-along with 'ability to tolerate long periods of solitude'-a combination that often lead to a sense of intimacy with the assignment. An intimacy that had to be one-sided.
Yet he'd seen it happen: watchers crossing the line, becoming invested in an assignment's survival...even protective. Joe knew that he was almost as far across that line as any fool had ever been. He lived with himself by telling himself that, if there could be only one, it should be Duncan MacLeod-and then Methos had entered the picture.
"Biscuits okay?" Methos was back with a bag of Pecan Sandies.
"If I help you, I want something in exchange."
"Yours, if I've got it." Methos resumed his spot on the sofa, and proceeded to tear into the bag.
"I want access to your chronicles."
"Freely available to any Watcher in good standing."
"Not the smoke you've been blowing up the Society's collective ass for the last God knows how long. Methos, I don't believe in accidents."
"Really?" Methos said, looking pointedly at Joe's legs.
"You're a real asshole, you know."
"You not the first one who's said."
So we pay for our sins.
~*~
I passed time at dawn, I slept in purple;
~*~
MacLeod went in to make coffee, while Methos found a clean rag and squatted on the top step to wipe his face.
Beyond the wide porch rain fell like a veil, a soft continuous patter, soothing enough to inspire thoughts of bed and tangled sleepy limbs. When it came down like this, it was easy to fool yourself into thinking rain was a mild, engendering blessing, and not a force more destructive than fire. He remembered it marching across the plains in black waves, accompanied by killing winds and lightning, flooding the ravines and scouring the grasslands bare...
The immediate aroma of coffee brought him back to the here and now.
He rescued his mug as MacLeod hunkered beside him. They sat side-by-side, shoulders touching. Methos wondered why the words that came out of their mouths never managed to communicate as clearly as their bodies did.
Maybe this is what it's like to have children...
You think?
Dear, God, he had raised children-not children of his own, although he had claimed a number-but he had raised children; seen them thrive, seen them die; had known them when they worshiped him...had known them to come for his head. That's what Ryan would do to MacLeod when he had nursed that burning core of resentment long enough, and the overwhelming horror of endless existence drove him to kill the last reminder that he'd ever known anything else.
"If you don't take her head, I will."
"Let's hope it won't come to that." MacLeod put his cup down. "Hand me the rag; you missed a couple of spots."
Rag handed over; Methos closed his eyes and let MacLeod dab away the dots of paint he'd missed: one, two, three... He closed his eyes, breathing MacLeod's breath. When their lips touched, MacLeod must have felt him shiver. Presently MacLeod's coat was around his shoulders and he was enveloped in the taste, and smell of the man-salt, wind and rain-it lead, inevitably, to another passage of arms. When had he become MacLeod's to mount at will?
That evening, they were discussing dinner-eat in or carry-out-when Ryan arrived. He was none the worse for having crashed through a window and plunging fifty stories. Fortunately, the pan-handler who had seen him hit the sidewalk, and then stand up, had taken it in stoned stride.
"Round two to Kristin," Methos said. "You dump her! And then you turned your back on her! Talk about the blind leading the visually challenged."
"Thanks a lot," Ryan said.
MacLeod said, "What are you going do?"
"You think she'll come after me?"
"No. I think she'll come after somebody you care about."
"Oh, God!" Something had finally penetrated Ryan's reeking self-pity. "I got to go to Maria's. See you guys." He grabbed his coat, and was gone.
A moment later MacLeod was on his feet. Methos looked around. "Where are you going?"
"Kristin's. You coming?" MacLeod scooped up Methos's coat on his way to the elevator. "Don't think you'll want to miss this," he said, as he tossed it.
~*~
I was sword in hand; I was a shield in battle;
~*~
"What happened? Millet reported finding fused sand on the beach. Not a confirmation of death, but..." Joe was making changes to the Gilles entry in the database.
"MacLeod couldn't take her head. He turned his back, and walked away from her."
Not the beautiful head of a woman he had been enchanted by, once upon a time.
Fool! Never turn your back on a monster, especially if you loved them. Because the monster, crawling on her hands and knees, spitting poison, in endless pain, screaming hate, was reaching for the sword standing upright in the sand...
Methos stepped closer, let her feel his Presence, and saw the confusion face when she looked over her shoulder, and realized it wasn't Ryan.
Who are you?
He hoped MacLeod wouldn't have to listen to her beg.
Someone who was born long before the age of chivalry.
She had looked toward MacLeod, standing with his back to them, safely out of sword's reach, not moving. Good. Some germ of common sense? Respect for the rules of the Game? It didn't matter.
Pick it up.
"Give her the one grace note that she chose to fight."
"Not the fairest fight."
"No. But, she could have gone down fighting, or she could have gone down."
"How's MacLeod dealing?"
"He thinks he should be angry, but the truth is he's relieved. He's having a hard with that, and it will take a while to process. We change slowly, Joe, but we do change; at least he hasn't kicked my ass out."
"Ryan?"
"All my fault, and can't the sight of me."
"Speaking of which, those chronicles."
"Right... You do speak Sumerian, don't you?"
~*~
I was a snake enchanted in a hill, I was a viper in a lake;
~*~
"Finish up and let's get going." Joe hung up the phone. "That was Ryan's watcher. Kristin is fully occupied, and won't be leaving anytime soon." Methos looked up, paused in the act of repacking his bag, and raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"Details! I want details!"
"Get your mind out of the gutter, and let's go!"
Methos zipped up his bag, and let Joe hustle him out the door and into the car. As they drove across town to the old industrial building where MacLeod was still keeping Charlie DeSalvo's dojo running, Joe said. "Your luck she decided to move indirectly," Joe said.
"That's her style. If he survives the experience, Ryan will find himself very popular with the ladies. What's he like, by the way? I mean your sense of him; I read the reports."
"More trouble than he's worth. At some level he still thinks he's won the lottery, and if he's in trouble MacLeod will bail him out. He hasn't been wrong."
"He won't take a hint?"
"Not so far." Joe pulled to a stop in an empty loading zone. "You hop out here; MacLeod knows the car. The front entrance is around the corner in the middle of the block."
As Methos climbed out and slammed the door, he called, "Good luck!"
DeSalvo's was open. At least the front door was open. Since MacLeod wasn't entirely daft when it came to security, the freight elevator was keyed and locked. That left Methos no choice but to climb the stairs. He was panting slightly when MacLeod's Presence hit him on the sixth floor landing.
He knocked, despite hearing feet moving quickly across the floor. When making an unannounced call on another immortal, one doesn't want to be behind in the little courtesies that can prevent an unexpected beheading.
MacLeod opened the door, taking a measured step back.
"Candygram!"
~*~
I am a wonder whose origin is not known.
I shall be until the Day of Judgment is upon the earth.
Finis