Originally submitted to the Lyric Wheel. Thanks to tarsh for the lyrics, and for introducing me to a really good (if slightly melancholy) musical artist. I have, by the way, rearranged the order of Cockburn’s verses. Literary (ahem) license.
This story, to my surprise, is a postlude to my trilogy Yom Kippur,
Communion, and Kaddish. If it seems a little more, well, maudlin than my
usual, blame it on the lyrics.
MacLeod put the kettle on for tea, the sounds of Methos’s grief washing through him. The oldest immortal lay crumpled, face down, on MacLeod’s couch, a blanket of Hunting MacLeod tartan thrown over him. MacLeod stared blankly at the fire, waiting for the water to boil.
The kettle whistled and MacLeod poured. No point in offering any to Methos; the man was still weeping, oblivious to his surroundings. MacLeod had brought him to the barge, it being the nearest haven from curious stares, but Methos had been unconcerned about anything, and barely willing to walk. MacLeod stoked up the fire against the damp Parisian winter chill.
He sipped his tea and waited for the storm to subside. Methos’s unstinting sobbing unnerved him. It seeped into his soul and unsettled his own griefs. It was as if the oldest immortal wept for the burdens of the world - for waste of lives and losses of centuries. Memories of his own failures, his own crimes, paraded through his thoughts. Loved ones outlived, friends forgotten. How many had there been? How many would there be? Familiar territory, and dangerous.
MacLeod shoved those thoughts aside, trying not to hear the mourning of his friend. Impatient, he moved to a porthole and looked out at the late afternoon sky. Would Methos cry all night?
It seemed unmanly, this grief. The kind of thing you might indulge in private, but never let another see. Certainly not another man. MacLeod glanced at the lanky form on his couch and sighed. What did they view as unmanly five thousand years ago, he wondered. And what did it matter? Methos had more than ten times MacLeod’s life span, and with it, more than ten times the sources of grief. If the events of the day had caused that dam to break, let him weep. But MacLeod couldn’t stand to stay and listen to it. It was waking his own ghosts.
On the deck of the barge, he danced through his katas. The sunset he couldn’t see still cast brilliant, bloody streaks over his head. A cold evening wind blew, but he ignored it. Passersby paused to watch him, but their dinners and the cold soon moved them on. He ignored them, as well.
Darkness settled on the City of Lights as Duncan MacLeod came to rest,
and again noticed his surroundings. His own ghosts at bay again,
he went to see what could be done about the ghosts of his friend.
The barge had skylights which could serve as windows to the interior. MacLeod peered in one to see Methos, still wrapped in Hunting MacLeod, moving restlessly from porthole to door and back again. Pacing the cage. He had to know MacLeod was on deck, blocking his escape.
A cold gust blew past MacLeod as he opened the door to the barge. Methos turned to face him, gold eyes gleaming feral in the firelight.
"You’re up," MacLeod observed. He switched on the light, transforming the oldest immortal from the eyes beyond the campfire to a tousled looking, tear-streaked teenager. The spell broken, Methos tossed the blanket on the couch and made for the door. MacLeod closed it, and stood in the way.
"You’re not leaving." Command or query, even MacLeod wasn’t sure.
Methos halted, uncertain, then looked at the floor.
"Look MacLeod, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do this to you."
Still in the thrall of the expansive, serene mood caused by his katas, MacLeod heard many levels to the words.
"Apology accepted," he replied softly.
Methos gave him what would have been a suspicious look, had he been in better emotional shape. As it was, he just looked upset.
"Haven’t you had enough of apologizing today?" MacLeod inquired, smiling.
Methos grimaced and turned away. MacLeod frowned. No fair sparring with a wounded opponent.
"What do you want from me?" Methos bit out, his back still to the Highlander.
I want you to be okay. I want to fix it. MacLeod recognized that futile desire in himself and set it aside with a sigh. He also recognized that he didn’t want the role of jailer, no matter how well-meaning. He came down the steps, away from the door.
"I don’t want you to leave."
"Why not?"
"Well, it’s dark, it’s cold, it’s getting late, and you don’t have a coat, a sword, or a car."
Methos turned back to him with an incredulous look. MacLeod regretted choosing the practical argument. He switched tactics.
"Like I said before, I’d like your company. I’ve missed it."
"Well, miss it some more," Methos said, and bolted out the door.
Still calm, MacLeod banked the fire, put on his running shoes, and turned out the light before locking the barge behind him. He’d expected this, and, for some reason, knew what he was going to do, though he wasn’t entirely sure of why.
The cold air was bracing. MacLeod breathed deeply before beginning to run.
He mounted the bridge and crossed the river. He turned onto Rue de Rivoli - the most obvious route to take from the barge to either Methos’s flat or Shakespeare and Company. The running was soothing, allowing him to focus his thoughts. Why did it matter so much to him to keep the oldest immortal in his life? Just what did he want from him?
He turned up Av. de l’Opera and cut behind the old opera house, site of many pleasurable evenings in his long life, but also the place where Kalas had used the innocent and talented daughter of a friend to lure the Highlander into a duel. Another fight for his life. A fight to defend her, and to avenge the immortals Kalas had murdered just off of holy ground. How often had MacLeod killed to defend or avenge? And how often had people he knew or loved been put in danger because of him?
There. The awareness of another immortal, and just ahead - Methos. The other immortal spotted him and began to run, too. MacLeod had expected that. He held to his pace. All he had to do was keep the other man in sight.
MacLeod had not expected Methos to be such a good runner. He’d seldom known the man to take much interest in any kind of physical training, yet he’d defeated Silas in a no-holds-barred, sword to ax contest. And he kept that trim build somehow. A runner’s build, MacLeod now realized. Oh well. MacLeod had untapped reserves of strength. He was quite sure he could follow Methos to the ends of the earth. He could catch him, too, if he chose, but that would not get him what he wanted from him. Whatever that was.
MacLeod neither sped up nor slacked, and Methos set a marathon runner’s pace. He veered away from his home, perhaps realizing it was no real haven from a determined Highlander. He also made no real attempts to lose MacLeod in traffic or alleys or by going over walls. Through the streets of Paris, in the dark of a winter night, the two immortals ran, criss-crossing the Seine on most major bridges.
When Methos finally turned off into a familiar cemetery, leaping the
locked gate, MacLeod knew what it was that he wanted.
Holy ground was where Methos stopped, though that might have been coincidental. Methos collapsed, panting, before the headstone of Alexa Bond. MacLeod joined him, falling to his knees on the frozen turf. The eddying winds had cleared the grave site of its earlier dusting of snow.
Their run had lasted four times as long as MacLeod generally ran for training. As his heart rate and breathing slowed, his awareness slipped out of the semi-meditative state it had been in, and he began to see the ludicrousness in the situation.
"Feeling any better?" he panted.
"Warmer," Methos said, and laughed. Laughed.
MacLeod rolled to a sitting position and sank his head onto his knees to hide his smile. Of course, the cemetery was dark, so Methos probably wouldn’t have seen it, anyway.
Still lying on his back, one knee up, Methos said "Damn you MacLeod. What do you want?" He sounded more amused than angry.
"I want to talk to you."
"So you chased me all over Paris. Ever hear of the phone?"
"You ran from me all over Paris. You that interested in avoiding the conversation?"
"Yes. I don’t want to talk. It hurts. Can you possibly understand that?"
"Yes." But you came here when you were finally ready for me to catch you. "I’m proud of you, Methos. What you did today has to be one of the hardest things you’ve ever done."
"You chased me to tell me that?!"
"Yeah, partly."
"You’re proud of me. Do you have any idea how patronizing that sounds?"
"Yes. I can’t help that. I am proud of you."
"Why are you being nice to me, MacLeod? You’re only nice to me when you want something."
MacLeod was glad the darkness hid his face so Methos wouldn’t see how that had hurt him. Was that really the only time he was nice to Methos? No, he reminded himself sternly, Methos uses the truth to wound when he’s backed into a corner.
Of course, that meant it was the truth. At least as Methos saw it.
Well, Methos was fighting with edged weapons, now. MacLeod saw no reason to hold back. His inability to see the other man’s face isolated him from the pain he would cause in this blind duel they were engaged in.
"And you only tell me the truth when you want to hurt me with it. When you’re hurt yourself, or frightened. I’m on to that, now."
Methos rolled on his side, resting his head on his raised hand. "Oh, and now you’re psychoanalyzing me? Is this compliments of Sean Burns?"
MacLeod almost gasped. For a moment he feared he had challenged outside of his league. That had hurt.
"Ow," he said after a pause. "Good one."
Methos was silent. He rolled back on his back.
"What do you want from me, Highlander?" he asked quietly, after a while. He sat up and hugged his knees. They were both cooling down from the run, and the night was cold. At least the terrain of the cemetery deflected the wind.
I want to learn from you, even though you won’t teach. I want to know how you live with crushing guilt. How you stay sane when so many immortals go power mad. How you stay interested in the world when time traps you like a bug preserved in amber. How you can like yourself when you’re a killer. How you can love what you will lose, and do it over and over again.
"I told you, I just want your company."
Methos stood up. "You don’t want my company, MacLeod. You’re attached to some wise myth named Methos. Just let me go."
MacLeod stood, too, and stamped his now cold feet. It could have been an expression of anger, so he used that. "That’s not true," he denied. "It may have been at first, but when my favorite myth turned out to have been a mass murderer …" He felt, though he couldn’t see, Methos flinch. Well, two could play this truth game. "… I lost interest in him. But I never lost interest in you."
"Oh, right." Methos turned away and began walking toward the cemetery exit. MacLeod caught up, and fell into step beside him.
"Is that so hard to believe?" And haven’t I proven it by now?
Methos didn’t look at him. They arrived at the closed gate, and Methos reached up to vault over it. He waited on the other side while MacLeod followed.
"Okay, MacLeod," he said, once they stood together again. "You want my company, you can have it. On one condition."
Dread tightened MacLeod’s chest.
"What?"
"You have to call me Adam. All the time, even in private."
Relief almost made MacLeod laugh, but then a strange unease set in. To never again call a living man by the name of the myth … Methos was right; he was attached to the myth. Giving it up would be a loss he would mourn. And Methos had known that, damn him.
He didn’t answer at first; he stayed in step with Methos as they headed for the river.
"I’m hungry," Methos volunteered. "You hungry?" He steered them toward the café district.
MacLeod followed along, carefully laying the myth of Methos in the grave with his other dead heroes, so he could eat dinner with Adam.
"All right, Adam, it’s a deal."
The End
Lyrics by Bruce Cockburn, taken from the album, "The Charity of Night", copyright 1996 High Romance Music Limited and Golden Mountain Music Corp.