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Shadows and regrets had no place in the life of an Immortal. Methos thought he had learned his lesson before the world was round, never expecting to mourn yet again for his brothers, these ones chosen with care to never die, to never leave him. Valuable lives, irreplaceable lives, now as fallen as Babylon.
Immortals were never born to die, but too many did. Too many did. Alas, my brother...
It was a month after the double Quickening when Methos finally stopped looking over his shoulder, when he finally let himself breathe, believe, and mourn. Thirty days, then thirty more, and a thousand years of fraternity were reduced to a sole, desperate plea for more time.
Five thousand years of regrets, and Duncan assumed that Methos' ancient constant companion had been merely a petty tyrant. That was the cruelest cut of them all, but Methos didn't try to explain. Duncan was too young to understand, too young to have truly lost, too young to understand the impossible choices. Maybe that was why Methos had stayed. Maybe that was why he always sought out the young ones.
"How many people have you killed by leaving?" Macleod asked one dark afternoon, sky overcast. "Two, five, ten?"
"How many more by turning your back, by closing your eyes, by doing nothing?"
Children. Their innocence cleansed, yes, but their naiveté shattered. They had never learned the bitter lesson of why the gods only required you to fight to the death to prevent the loss of a brother. They had never stood on the site of their father's long-destroyed marriage bed and still felt a thousand miles away from home. They had never heard dying screams. They had never known true helplessness.
"How much blood, Methos? How much blood is on your hands?"
It was the same question. It was always the same question. Methos stared at the glint of light reflecting in his fingernails and looked up, over, at the only friend in centuries to both know the truth and reject it. "You can't even begin to imagine."
--
He wrote their names in the first snow he ever saw. Ninhos, Poratha, Parshandatha, Ashraya, Aspatha, Parmashta, Kinhos, and the stillborn baby never named and so forever cursed. The snow accepted their names and swallowed their shattered legacies.
Ninhos, the eldest, who rode in the hunting parties of the priests. The twins Ashraya and Aspatha, who killed their mother in childbirth and so forsook forever the touch of a wife. The youngest, whose place Methos had usurped. He was the gods' gift, coddled and pampered, and his brothers had protected him far longer than they should have.
All dead now. They had given him life and his first death, seeking that he should die amongst them. Their ghosts haunted him even after ritual and honor had been satisfied. They did not like his new brothers, their replacements. They had taught him to walk away, but not how to forget.
The new brothers were rough and they did not fear the rage of the dead. Kronos, the eldest of the three, the one Methos himself had named in the desolation of the solstice night for the sun itself, had almost lost his eye to a war blade. Julei and Mnentek were young hunters, always bickering, who could not be trusted with even the secrets of their own existence.
They called him Kiri, the devil spirit of the East, until the ghosts disappeared into the northern snow and Methos was free to give them that power over his heart.
--
He went back to avoiding Macleod after that. Joe didn't question it when Methos asked him to help him get a new passport under a different name. It was time to move on and he would have to adapt to losing yet another lover. When it was a question of survival, the human body could be forced to accept any indignity and Immortals were no different. Methos had learned that lesson the hard way. There never was any other way to accept the brutal equation. Each challenge had only two choices, and one choice was not a choice. It was the last resort of a learned coward.
Methos didn't keep track; there were no notches on his swordhilt. Simple arithmetic, years multiplied by centuries, and any man would be forced to kill far more times than would suit Duncan Macleod of the clan Macleod.
The world had changed too much. Even the champions of the age were too soft-hearted, too tender. Kronos had understood what necessity was. Kronos had understood the consequences of constrained power, the freedom of the tyrant. Never weak, always severe. It was what had tempted Methos the most, and it was his deepest regret.
When he walked down the street, he had eight shadows. When he embraced Duncan, he could feel the ghosts still standing behind him, Silas' gaze the most accusing of them all.
His brothers had taught him how to hunt and they had pushed a dagger into his chest as the first waves rose. He had choked on his own blood, and they had taught him how to kill. They had lowered him with love to the floor, and they had taught him how to worship the gods. They had closed his eyes and taught him about death.
Kronos had never known. Mac never asked. Joe believed him when he said that he awoke after the floodwaters had receded. Joe believed him when he said he woke up, surrounded by the bodies, still trapped in the house. Joe believed him.
Joe didn't know that, after the knife, the flood lasted forty deaths.
--
The gods sent orphans to test the people and to give them eternal life. The people rejoiced. The orphans grew, died, and were forever condemned to carry the weight of the dead, the burden of years and memory. But they remembered.
Four hundred years ago, Methos had consigned his brothers' ashes to blue-lipped Genhe. He should be dust mingled with red clay. He should have died a true death long ago. But after four hundred years, he no longer sought death. It would come to him or not at all.
He had sent too many before him into the arms of the queen of stars and there would be no warm welcome for him. It was better to be forever alone than forever cold. But it meant that he would never see his brothers again. Never, until the final, unending darkness.
He could live with the ghosts, the regrets, the memories. He settled in deserts, walked across kingdoms, and finally married a widow in a land beyond the setting sun.
Two years later, the devil wind ripped through his body for the first time and images assaulted his mind. He remembered places he'd never been, lovers he'd never met, enemies he'd never respected. He remembered blood on floors his sisters had never swept and the laughter of children he'd never held in his arms.
And when the wind retreated, he knew what he was. Gagras, the undying.
It took all day to build a pyre large enough to burn the body and Methos stood by it all night, watching, wondering, absorbing. When he came home, he refused to discuss it save to say that he'd fought the answers he'd sought.
And he wondered which of his brothers had sired his long-dead children.
--
"Hey, Adam," Richie asked after he had been persuaded to take up the sword once more, after they had returned from France, his motorcycle helmet dangling from his fingers, "if you're so old and wise, do you know where we come from?"
Joe scoffed, but Methos nodded. He placed his hands on the bar top, imagined he saw campfires, faces, reflected on it. "We're from the blood spilled in a kinslaying. The gods send a born orphan to absolve the families of bloodguilt and our lives are the renewal of their honor." Back when he had been cherished, back before he knew of the game. "We're the shadow of the Quickening." The brotherhood of orphans, the fraternity of the fatherless.
There was the scratch of a pencil on paper as Joe dutifully wrote it down. Richie twirled his helmet around his fist. "You ever tested that or is it just some fairy tale?"
In his mind, Methos saw blades striking against blades, the eternal struggle played out to its deadly conclusion time after time. He shook his head. "We're as old as the first murder, that's all anyone knows for certain."
"There are hundreds of legends," Joe said, giving Methos a sharp look. "The older ones emphasize battlegrounds. The newer ones have more to do with aliens than unforgiving gods and weregild."
Richie dropped the helmet to the floor. "But there's a reason you believe that one, Adam? Did someone in your family kill his brother?"
Methos paused, his mug halfway to his lips. I did. He lifted it to the ceiling, then drank it down. "No," he said. "Joe's right. It's just a legend." He'd done more for the continuation of his species than any protecting Watcher ever had, but the child was still too young to understand. They all were. "Believe what you like, Richie. None of us will ever know for certain."
"But the Watchers...can't they...?"
"The Watchers don't know everything," Methos said, echoing Joe. The Watchers knew enough to make life very difficult for Immortals, but not much else. Methos had made certain of that. He'd whitewashed history the way he couldn't his memories and never let himself forget that Immortals would have to live in the world long after the Watchers were dust. It was no sin to lie to a mortal.
Joe, bless his conflicted soul, understood that.
--
"Good morning, kinsman."
Methos' eyes snapped open. His head ached from the healing but he ignored it as he jumped to his feet, his hand going automatically to his neck and then to his belt. His money and sword were both gone. Methos looked with narrowed eyes at the Immortal facing him. This one was young; Methos could read it in his face. Scarred, yes, but not beaten. "Good morning," he said levelly. "Did you see which way the robbers went?"
The Immortal shook his head. "No, but I imagine they went towards town." He pointed south. "That way. I'm Sata."
"Kinhos." It was a safe name. He hadn't used it in centuries. The ghosts at his heels murmured amongst themselves at his choice and approved. It honored them.
"Would you like some help in finding them?" Sata lifted his sword halfway out of its sheath. "I have that much to offer."
"There's no need." Methos tousled his hair to remove the clumps of dirt. "The gold will bring them no luck. It has been stolen from me before."
"The hazards of traveling without guards apply even to our kind," Sata said diplomatically. "And you are disadvantaged without a sword."
Ah. Methos almost smiled. It was better when one of the wanderers was candid about what he was. "Has business been that slow, mercenary, that you walk the crossroads, waiting for those robbed to revive and pay you for your services?" But the suggestion was not entirely unwelcome. If he was to make a new life for himself, he would have to establish himself at the start as a man of means. A mercenary in his employ would ease the way. Methos scratched his chin and looked again at Sata, assessing him. "How strong is your arm?"
"Strong enough." Sata's smile was full of teeth. "Allow me to accompany you as you retrieve your gold, then decide for yourself."
"Very well." By the time they found the robbers, Methos would know the measure of this man and he would be in a better position to bargain about price.
They walked down the road in silence. They were five feet away from the first marked mound before they saw the bodies.
Sata cursed low beneath his breath. "Sorcerer."
Methos laughed. "No, merely a scholar." He knelt down and picked up the money pouch. There were two gold coins half-hidden beneath the bodies and Methos handed them up to Sata. "Look."
Sata studied them carefully. "This black powder isn't dirt."
"Poison." Methos laughed as Sata dropped the coin. "It will not harm you permanently. Simply wipe your hands before you eat."
"But robbers, in their greed," Sata said slowly, a true smile lighting up his face, "will test the gold as soon as they feel safe."
"And therefore kill themselves, saving me the trouble." Methos searched the bodies for his sword. "All mortals should be so considerate."
--
In the hollow month of February the year before Kronos returned to claim him, Methos told only the truth, knowing he shouldn't be surprised by the results, but still amazed and amused.
"I'm fascinated by term limits," was pillowtalk to Duncan. "Peaceful transitions of power." Methos propped his elbows up on the breakfast table and smiled at Richie. "And rooms. You people have rooms for everything. You even have rooms for getting to other rooms." Decadence and luxury of the highest order. "You have so many lights you can't count your shadows. You walk forward without knowing where you came from." He shook his head. "Fascinating."
Revisionism had left his most ribald and dirty stories dry and bland, but Joe wrote them all down. Wrote them down and didn't believe a word.
Duncan was still too young to have experienced true culture shock. He would ask about Plato, about Alexander, never understanding that history was the tide that washed over the names written in sand, names only Methos remembered. The Watchers wanted to know the true history of Immortals, safe from folklore and fairy tales. Methos knew that truth was a dirty word. He preferred to forget, preferred to move on. He knew how to leave friends, family.
He knew how to forget his own name.
Children could always be born, wives could always be taken, only brothers could never be regained. Before Caspian, before Silas, before even Kronos, Methos had held seven lives in his hands. And when he had walked away from their burnt ashes, he had vowed never again.
The gods were unforgiving of those who failed in their duties. Methos did not want to ever pay that bloodprice again, the price of ages spent alone, the leper exile from the community, until the gods forgot him.
Sometimes Methos woke up and didn't know when he was. Disorientation. It was always a shock when he dreamed someone else's memories. They were never the ones he wanted to remember.
He wanted Kronos' memories. He wanted all those lost moments spent together, wanted them like his throat begged for water, like his soul cried out for the end of the wanderings. But after these three deaths, after giving his brothers' necks to a hired killer, Methos knew the gods would never forgive him.
He searched through the Watcher files for his brothers. He collected sketches of grotesquely distorted scars, of beady eyes and sharp teeth, fashioned collections of mug shots taken in florescent-lit police stations of men he knew better than he knew himself. Stolen Chronicles were spread out on the floor, disrespected and found wanting, in Methos' effort to piece together lives only he knew belonged to the same men.
So many had hunted them, so few had found. And the one who had had no right to their lives.
Methos had buried bodies of Immortals he had killed and considered none of them his brothers, but he had let a child kill his Kronos because he had not the strength to do it himself, to do what he had known to be necessary. He was the worst kind of brother, the worst kind of traitor. The gods' gift had failed to protect seven. He had no excuse for forsaking three.
Methos blamed himself and knew it to be true.
--
He missed Kronos.
Methos tugged at the hem of his tunic then forced his hands behind his back once more. He had to appear calm, composed, the very image of the perfect god. After an excruciatingly public Quickening and subsequent resurrection, he'd been forced to accept this role once more.
He chuckled. Forced. Kronos would mock him for the gracious way Methos had taken up the mantle. It was his weakness, his recurring temptation. The power beckoned as it always did and Methos always took it. It didn't matter that he would have to flee at the first sign of trouble, that it was only good to be a living god during the good times. He loved the bowing and the scraping, loved the sacrifices and palace intrigues, loved the sheer power of it all.
And if he looked over his shoulder every so often, if he stared too long into the fire or wondered if he was imagining what he saw out of the corners of his eyes, then what of it? He and Kronos had parted well after fifty years, with the bounty shared to satisfaction. Kronos had taken the east road, Methos the south. They had made no plans to meet, but when the wanderings were complete, Methos knew he would meet Kronos in the ancient quarrel and one of them would die. He had lost too many brothers to lose another to his own blade. He would not lose Kronos, the friend he himself had named. He would lose everything in those final days and he would not allow himself another brother to mourn.
The ache in his chest was merely the pain of another dawn with the threat of famine growing. The emptiness at his side was simply the hard stare of another functionary who wanted to know what else the god demanded in return for rain. And the itching in his fingers was simply for the sword. He would leave the city soon, too soon, and he would have to live by the blade once more.
Century after century, he played the game. Respite was scarce and he was far, far too old for love.
--
Even in this modern age, voices still cried out in the night over forgotten graves. Methos could hear them across continents, centuries, and the sound of his own tears. Even after all these years, he still remembered, and he buried his brothers.
"Ten are the times I have stood and watched as my brother fell."
Who is that crying out in the night, giving the mourner's call to witness? Are you brother, father, king? Are you mother, sister, slayer?
"Nine are the times I have killed my own son."
Who calls to justice and the gods of vengeance, mourning for the murderer, the pillager, the monster? Who mourns for the man, the past, and old men's regrets?
"Eight are the faces I've erased from all memory. Seven are the dreams of the dead as they wait for burial."
Who is man, myth, mourner? Who mourns for Kronos killer of ages, for legions of men who marched until death? Who mourns for the men without families, for the brides who sowed their wombs with blood and salt?
"Six are the villains that the gods forsook. Five are the generations between slave and king, oxcart and scepter."
Who mourns for the nameless? Who mourns for names forgotten? If he mourns for Kronos, will he mourn for Death itself, for the horseman and slayer of thousands?
"Four are the names of the gods of vengeance, whom we worship above all others. Three are the divisions of the stars, the celestial tripod which holds up the world."
Who cries out in the night? Who mourns for Methos? Who calls him to justice and his mother's arms? Who dreams him the dream of the eternal? Who makes him Immortal with a thought?
"Two are the seasons, two are the crops, two are the spear and the sword, the bow and the arrow, the murderer and the dead at his feet."
Who mourns for the survivor and comforts him in his grief? Who hardens him for battle once more? No one will close his eyes or cross his wrists upon his chest. No one will slide a coin into his mouth or cover his ankles with the ashes of a tree planted at his birth.
No one, for someone must be left alive to mourn all those who have passed. Someone. And he has done his best. It was all he could do.
"And there can be only one."