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Most asked when he was born, where he grew up, the names of his adoptive parents, the date of his first death. And most were dissuaded by his disarming smile and well-practiced explanations. He didn't remember any of it and, besides, it was in another country and the wench was dead. The past didn't matter, not the way they thought. It was only trivia and the same as every other Immortals'. It's only the details that changed.
Methos supposed Duncan knew of the frustration. His first question was asked in bed, quietly and with no force of righteous curiosity behind it.
He wanted to know what Methos' name meant.
--
"Atlantis?" Silas was laughing. "You must be mad."
"Or joking," Caspian said and slammed his fist down on the table. "No jokes, Methos. Tell us."
--
Joe's first question was rushed, in the middle of last call. "And-oh-yeah-when's-your-birthday?" Methos asked for another beer.
Two months later, Joe slid an ancient piece of parchment across the bar top. "The earliest mention of you we can find," he said in explanation. "Well," he amended. "The earliest mention we can translate."
Methos looked it over, then laughed. "The equinox? Really, Joe, I'm more of a Capricorn."
"Or a Sagittarius?"
--
Methos came over the hill in time to see Kronos hand the merchant gold in exchange for the bauble.
"Have we sunk so far, brother?" Methos asked, smirking. "Have we resorted to buying and selling?" The necklace was heavy and would leave rough marks during sex. Kronos never wore jewelry. Interesting.
Kronos growled, but let Methos pocket it. "Take it. It's for you."
"For me?" Methos' surprise was white in the harsh morning air. "What's the occasion?"
--
Amanda waited longer. Methos watched her pace along the barge, came with her when she stole, drove the getaway car. After five thousand years, he'd heard all about impenetrable security and it was always a nice challenge to break through it.
After all, he would tell Joe when really, really drunk, the Trojans had thought so, too, and look what happened to them. Defeated by a bunch of sea-faring, sheep-shagging, oil-rubbing Greeks.
It wasn't, he would say after another three or so drinks, that he had anything against Greeks. But there was something to be said for burning cities to the ground just for fun. He loved the smell of napalm in the December morning.
That was when Duncan would run out of the room and Joe would have to fork over the fifty dollars. Never bet against the oldest man alive.
You don't ever come out the winner.
--
Stay away five hundred years and the landscape wouldn't match your memories. Methos was tired, but he knew the way. He could never forget it. In the dream, he forced his horse onward, forward, faster and faster.
But the waters kept rising, dark and black as the night. And there was no horse. All the horses had run days before. It had been the city's only warning.
Methos' eyes snapped open as his father's screams echoed in his mind. He stared up at impenetrable stars. Wait five hundred years and everything changes.
--
Amanda's question, when it came, was simple.
Cassandra was gone for six days before she came stumbling back. She came back in the early dawn to steal a horse and almost succeeded.
Methos had forced a dagger into her heart, then tossed her into the river.
And others; countless others.
What Amanda wanted to know, he couldn't tell her.
Sometimes time did play tricks on his mind. Sometimes he really couldn't remember. In five thousand years, how do you even begin to count? How can you even remember the screams?
He couldn't. That was Kronos' gift to him.
--
"What a pile of shit." Caspian spat onto the ground. "What do they call it?"
"Lutetia." Kronos stared at the city gates. "Methos is inside."
"We aren't supposed to meet him for three days."
"Oh, I think he'll be early." Kronos took a swallow of water from his flask. "He won't recruit Darius."
"Darius can't have changed," Silas said, voice thick with dust. "Not Darius."
"Rumor says he has."
"Not Darius," Silas repeated. "It's the solstice in two weeks. We're supposed to..."
"There won't be any raids," Kronos said with satisfaction, watching a man on horseback race away from the city. "There's our lost brother."
--
What do words mean in obsolete languages? How can you translate concepts lost in the rubble of earthquakes and floods? How can you describe a stark, brisk, beautiful dawn, the kind that either forces you awake or kills you? How can you describe the fear of darkness swallowing, darkness everlasting?
"It means nothing at all," Methos said. "My mother liked the way it sounded."
Like iron and bronze. Like the chill in the air and frost on the ground. Like death and searching forever without finding your home. Like indigo sunsets after crimson dawns. Nothing translated.
After five thousand years, how can they expect you to remember? (But how can you forget?) How dare they expect you to tell them? (But they don't know. They can't understand.) How dare they presume?
Monsters. The lot of them.
--
'My gift,' the mother whispers. She holds the baby close against her breasts. 'My Methos.'