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Dying is not actually the worst.
Neither is the worry about what might happen to his body while he is dead, although that is most definitely worse.
No. It’s the reviving he can’t stand.
Or rather, the way he revives.
That isn’t to say that Methos doesn’t hate dying. Of course he does. There’s nothing he fears more than eternal oblivion, and each death is a risk, but he doesn’t fear death. During his long life he experienced it in every form imaginable and even some not. He was Death, once, and maybe deep down he still is.
But even if not, he’s familiar with death. Knows very well what it feels like to die, has gone through the experience countless times before, enough that he sometimes wonders if he’s ever possessed a mortal’s conviction that dying meant death. If he has then he certainly doesn’t remember.
He hates dying because it means he failed to stay alive and because each moment unconscious presents a danger. Immortals rarely die in the safety of their home after all.
But unlike most immortals he does not fear the short non-existence each death brings. He does not remember a time when he worried if maybe the previous resurrections were all a fluke, if maybe this time death will stick.
It’s a feeling he does not envy his younger kin, especially because he knows most if not all never quite manage to shake it off.
Not him though. He knows what to expect, knows that with the awareness of an immortal’s body there will be no shock or numbness to ease his passing, that he will be alert and able to feel everything until the very last moment, that his body will keep fighting even if his mind knows that giving in and succumbing means a quicker return.
He knows with an undeniable certainty that each time he dies he will come back, or at least that he will as long as no outside force decapitates him while he is unconscious.
Knowing what to expect does not make dying any easier. Neither does knowing that with his age and the strength of his quickening the time he spends dead is much shorter than that of any other immortal, that he needs to act if he doesn’t want other immortals to start questioning how a recently immortal Adam Pierson can walk off three gunshot wounds to the gut.
Avoiding his alleged mentor Duncan MacLeod would solve that problem quite easily. The fact that most people, immortal or not are rather oblivious and know less of the world than they might think also helps.
In any case, being able to predict the details of his death and resurrection the moment he is aware of the danger only serves as a reminder to go out of his way to steer clear of any situation which might invite such dangers.
Again, giving Duncan MacLeod a wide berth would decrease any such risks and dangers significantly, but alternatively saying no to the man when he wants to hike through the wilderness in pouring rain for reasons meaningless enough to be easily boiled down to chivalry and needless heroics would have worked as well, at least in this specific case.
He curses himself for getting so attached to the dumb Scot. It had been centuries since he’d been caught in a mudslide, but then risking it had been the safer option rather than foolish.
Moving out from under the rocks crushing his right side is both helped and made worse by the fact that everything around him is wet and slippery.
He finally manages with a grunt and looks around, his eyes searching.
It wasn’t a proper mudslide, thankfully. Neither he nor Duncan are buried completely, and isn’t that a blessing if there’s any. Just enough to destroy the path and make them lose their footing, sliding down the hill along with the wet mass of dirt and rocks underneath their feet.
Duncan is lying not too far away, still unconscious or dead. There is a large rock pressing down on the better half of his torso. It is not as large as the one Methos has just escaped from, but it is in a place more vital. Duncan won’t revive as long as his chest can’t move.
Methos crawls closer. His right arm and leg are tingling, his quickening hard at work to return the bones and muscles and sinew to what they were before.
He curses again, for therein lies the entire problem.
An immortal’s quickening heals injuries, patches up wounds, and the stronger an immortal is, the quicker it does so.
Methos is strong. Strong and old. He can shake off injuries which would kill most younger immortals whose quickening needs the temporary pause of death to work at its most efficient.
It is why he is going to wait with pushing off the largest rock for a bit. Duncan’s quickening has other injuries it should focus on first, injuries which will heal faster if there is no distracting breath and heartbeat to take up energy.
It might sound contradictory at first, and Kronos certainly never let him try out what he thought to be nothing more than a suicidal theory, but immortals do heal faster when dead.
Methos guesses it makes it easier for the quickening to reset the body to the time it first awakened, to bring it back to how it was when it first flittered through the muscles and nerves and bones, taking note of what needed to be adjusted to make it whole and healthy again.
There is a reason why so many immortals who make it past their first century are soldiers and warriors. He hopes this will change now in this new millennium with all its advances, but there will always be a distinct advantage for those who died in their prime and trained in fighting.
Methos might have died in his prime, but he doesn’t remember the time before that one death he now calls his first. He only knows that he can't have been a warrior when he died the very first time. Not like Duncan, who died on the battlefield with a sword in his hands and whose muscles remember this fact every time they need to be rebuild.
Methos' don’t. Holding a sword and fighting has long since become instinctual for him, his need for survival as strong as ever, but his body is not that of someone who was trained to carry a sword and shield, and certainly not of someone who’d spent his mortal years in armor or with a helmet on his head.
It could have been worse, he knows this. He could have first died as a child gathering berries. At least his body was grown and that of a hunter. Lean, good at both sprinting and long chases on foot.
A body built to fight animals, not humans, with clubs and rocks and crude, self-made weapons, and every time it was killed and injured enough to require rebuilding rather than just patching up it resurrected him as just that, a hunter.
Someone whose instincts and muscles expect him to reach for a sling rather than a sword and whose body is used to regularly going without a proper meal for days at a time if not more.
His instincts he managed to train out of this habit once swords became common, but it took him centuries. He can’t teach the muscles in his right arm which only minutes before were thoroughly crushed to do the same.
It is almost healed now, but there was too much damage to just repair it to how it was before the mudslide. He can feel it.
No, instead his quickening remembers a time Methos himself can’t, as it heals him cell by cell to how it remembers it being that very first time, and Methos curses again.
He knows it will take weeks of training for him to be able to wield his broadsword with the same level of ease he did just this morning. Weeks of repetitive strengthening exercises with just as many breaks to keep his quickening from kicking in to sooth sore muscles, time he’d rather spend reading.
He clenches and unclenches his fist. His arm is fully healed now, as is his leg, even if both are far from how they should be.
He feels sorry for himself, if just for a moment. It’s not like he will ever tell Duncan about this. Duncan who is doubtlessly entirely unaware, and who has it much easier.
Duncan died at the pinnacle of his physical fitness, during a time when swords were common and firearms new. He most definitely does not have the same problems, does not have to start anew every time he gets injured beyond repair.
Then again Duncan is still young and far from reaching consciousness. Methos’ right side might not be as muscular and well fed as it was minutes ago, but he is already fully healed and alert and could be a mile and a half away if he wanted to be.
Deep down inside Methos knows that if given the choice, he will always pick the quick recovery of an ancient immortal before the strength of a warrior.
He prefers being quick and agile, and if need be, experience and adrenalin can make up for the rest, as thankfully his quickening does not interfere with the latter.
He squats and pushes the rock off Duncan’s chest.
It’s another hour before the other man wakes up, and by the time he does, Methos has pushed away any thoughts of reviving and instead complains to Duncan at length about the wet and the cold and the stupidity of insisting to come out here in the first place.
He also makes sure to list and describe the kinds and amounts of beer he demands in compensation in detail, enough so that Duncan half laughs, half scoffs as he points out that his fridge is always stocked with all of Methos’ favorites anyway.
Methos counters that those obviously don’t count, and that they passed a microbrewery on their way up which sounded like it had potential.
Duncan might as well start making up for this disaster there.