Chapter Text
Going To The Gathering
Methos was in class when he felt Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod die. The connection made by their shared quickening so many years before twisted inside of him as bits returned to him and other bits left forever. For an instant he could almost feel some other immortal at the other end of the connection, but then it was gone. Mac was gone. Methos closed his eyes and allowed himself a moment of grief but no more. Mac’s death was hardly a surprise.
The Gathering was taking place only a couple of miles away and Methos was, as far as he knew, the last of the hold outs. He was the last immortal to maintain control of the bloodlust and prevent himself from going on a rampage against either mortals or other immortals. The last of the immortals to still hide himself in the role of a mortal, and a harmless mortal at that. It was difficult, certainly, but he thought he could have maintained control indefinitely if one of his few friends had been the one to win the Gathering.
None of them would, though.
Mac had been the last of his immortal friends to still be in The Game as of the morning news.
Now, there wasn’t much point in holding out.
He would go to the Gathering Arena this afternoon, after class let out.
None of the students had even noticed his brief loss of attention. As the Gathering madness increased, he’d arranged the class schedule to allow him to lecture as little as possible. The students were taking turns presenting and Methos had set a strict grading metric for himself so that he could maintain a fair grading practice despite raising levels of anger and frustration and violent desires.
“Hey everybody, before I start my presentation, it’s my pleasure to announce that that sanctimonious prick MacLeod is finally a head shorter!” Robert was a jock and the class clown and he got the reaction from the students that he wanted: a mixture of awed approval and appalled disapproval at his statement.
“STOP.” Robert had no way of predicting Methos’ reaction. The command that froze the entire room of undergrads was aimed as much at himself as at the students. He forced himself to release the throwing knife in his hand.
“Robert, leave the room. You’ll present to one of the TAs at a later date.”
“Come on, Professor, I was paying attention, I was just watching the news scroll.” The idiot boy thought Methos was mad that he had been watching the news in class.
“Stop talking.” Methos spoke very softly but his voice carried. “Right now.”
Robert finally shut up. He must have seen something on Methos’ face and finally realized that he’d gone a great deal too far.
He was just a stupid little college student who didn’t even think about those men and women in the arena as real people with friends and family to mourn them. He thought he knew MacLeod from the press conferences the man had given over the years. He thought he knew what cynicism was and thought that look down on idealists as being naïve somehow made him more grown up. He knew nothing about what it took to maintain ideals against the ongoing ravages of time.
Ever since Immortals and The Game had become public knowledge, philosophers and psychologists, historians and sociologists, had tried to understand the effects of immortality and repeated mortal combat on immortals. Some of them seemed to actually understand, but most of them didn’t. And this idiot boy had never even made the attempt.
It didn’t mean he deserved to die.
“Angela,” he addressed one of his TAs, “escort Robert out and schedule a time later in the week to hear his presentation.”
“Yes, sir.” Angela was smart and self-aware. She knew something was dangerously wrong.
The rest of the class were still mostly frozen in shock. He hoped they stayed that way for at least a few more minutes, to allow him to get his control back.
Yes, Mac was dead. Amanda and Lee and Seraph and Akbar and Jain were all dead, too. There was no reason, anymore, to not go to the Arena and fight, but he still had his students in front of him, and his job as a professor and his life as just a guy. He needed to maintain control for just a bit longer.
“Phone Service.” He triggered the classroom’s phone line without moving. “Call for 9-1-1 emergency.”
“Professor, what’s wrong?”
“What?”
“I don’t understand.”
They babbled and Methos ignored them.
“This is Cathy at 9-1-1. What is the nature of your emergency?” She had a calm voice and sounded capable as a good emergency operator should.
“Hello, Cathy. I’m Professor Pierce Matthews. I need you to send an armed escort to my location to take me to the Gathering Arena.”
“Sir, armed escorts of that nature were for armed and dangerous immortals who needed help getting to the Arena before they killed someone. They are not for academic purposes.”
“I know that. I am telling you now, I am an armed immortal, I’m in the middle of teaching a session of undergraduate linguistics and I just had to stop myself from killing one of my students. I need an escort.”
“An escort is on the way, they should be there in five minutes. Please stay on the line with me until they arrive.”
“I’ll keep the line open. I’m going to continue the class, but you should be able to hear what is happening.”
“Sir, I should warn you that you will be charged with criminal counts of fraud if you are not actually immortal. And all known immortals are already at the Arena.”
Methos ignored the warning. It hardly applied to him, after all.
“Okay, the we only have one more presentation to get through. I’m sorry you have to present under these circumstances, but it’s a useful experience anyway. So get to it.”
“Sir…” Tanya could barely get her voice above a whisper.
Methos forced himself to sigh, relax, and sit back in his chair again. “Don’t say anything celebratory about the deaths of my friends and we should be good. Proceed.”
At least Tanya had had extensive notes. Her presentation consisted of her reading from them since she was distracted the entire time. In part by the armed guard who came rushing through the door half-way through.
He waived to Tanya to continue, but stood at their wary approach. He removed his jacket and handed it to the first man, allowing him to take possession of his sword for the time being. He handed over his gun and his knives and allowed the guard to place themselves around him, half of them focusing inward, prepared to shoot him if he attacked anyway, the other half facing outward, prepared to repel any aggressive actions.
They would get him to the Arena and would return his bladed weapons at the entrance. If he lost control now, they would simply shoot him and take his body to the Arena. It was, reassuring to have a safety net in place for once.
“Okay class. Your reading for next week is listed on the syllabus and I will not be attending office hours tomorrow. I’ll see you in class next week.”
They likely doubted him, but he would be there. There was no one left in the world to whom he was willing to give his Quickening and there was no reason anymore to hold back in fighting.
He had lived, and everything that didn’t kill him had made him stronger, and now it was another day and time to fight.
He nodded at his guards. “Please take me to the Gathering.”
Getting on with it…
The students had actually shown up to class. Observing them through the window in the door, Methos was impressed. Admittedly, they seemed to have mostly decided that this was a great time an place to meet up to gossip about how the Gathering had gone down.
By the time that the Gathering had actually come to a head (as it were), there had been no way to hide it. After all, not only were methods of surveillance at an unprecedented level of technology but a lot of the immortals who were involved were smart, rich, in positions of authority, and couldn’t be killed without drawing a lot of attention.
There had been a flurry of legislation, but the issues worked out to be that Immortals had essentially a religious calling to participate in mortal combat. Preventing them from dong so would be impossible, so it might as well be made legal. As long as the Immortals involved were both consenting adults and made sure to compete in special arenas where no bystanders (or expensive electronic equipment) were in danger, then the Game was allowed to proceed.
One of the defining features of the Gathering, turned out to be that all the Immortals were consenting. Methos had been a lone hold out for a while, having had plenty of experience suppressing his own bloodlust, but eventually he, too, made his way to the Gathering arena and entered the final battle. He’d been fresh and relaxed when he finally showed up, the last of the Immortals to go public.
Those last days had been a horror, challenge after challenge, but by the time Methos had arrived, most of the other immortals were already dead. He’d fought in the final three days and won every challenge.
It was all done and he didn’t even have to miss a class.
He smirked and then stepped through the door.
“Okay, class, I hope you did your reading, because I’m grading the discussion today. Someone, what can you tell me about pidgins versus creoles?”
The chatter came to an abrupt halt.
“Uh, sir!”
“Yes, Stephen?”
“What are you doing here?”
Methos raised an eyebrow. “I teach this class, as you might recall.”
“But, but you just won The Game! Shouldn’t you be… uh.”
Methos let him stutter for a bit before offering: “Ruling the world?”
“Something other than teaching a college linguistics class?”
“I just fought for my life and my right to live a regular life. I think I’ll get on with living my regular life.”
“But, don’t you need time to recover, at least?”
“Kid, I’m immortal. I’ve been fighting and killing for a very long time, and the one lesson I’ve learned, is that when it’s over, it’s over, and time to get on with living. So, creoles and pidgins. Yes, Rachel?”
“Well, creoles are….”