Chapter Text
Chicago Union Station Power House, now
Damien was waiting for them when they arrived. “Two of you? You know the Rules.”
“Yes. I do,” Methos said, “and I’m here to make sure they’re followed.” He nodded in the direction of the other Immortal on the catwalk. “And him?”
“Also here to enforce the Rules. I know you too well, my old friend.”
“I was never your friend.”
“Teacher, then.”
“For my sins, yes. I taught you what it meant to be Immortal. You taught him how to be a possession.” And he knew the irony in that, oh yes.
As did Damien. “Do you deny that I learned it from you? How to take and keep what I want? And Eliot had such potential,” he said, with a tone that was unsettling in its fond nostalgia. “The perfect weapon, mine to command, mine to control. What other reason should I need? You of all people should know how it is.”
“Believe me, I have lived to regret that.” But Damien would never understand that. “You saw his potential, yes, but then you hobbled it.”
Damien chuckled. “And you think this team of his has changed him for the better? Ask him about the little job he did for me in Washington.”
Eliot didn’t so much as blink. “Y’know, you’d think a man like Atherton being assassinated would be all over the news.”
Damien directed a pointed look at the catwalk. A few moments later, long enough for a quick web search, an indignant shout came down. “I watched you kill him!”
“Did you check?” Eliot scoffed. “I would have.”
Damien turned to him. “You see why I need you.”
Eliot glared. “Are we gonna get on with this or not?”
“You persist in this foolishness,” Damien said indulgently, shaking his head like a disappointed parent. “I don’t want your head, Eliot. I want you, back at my side where you belong, free of any petty distractions. I’m still willing to forgive you. If you give me their location now, I’ll be lenient. And this time I’ll only make you watch.”
Methos had gotten familiar enough with Eliot to detect the minuscule twitch in his otherwise impassive stance. It probably stood out like a beacon to Damien. He tilted his head in affected curiosity. “That almost sounds like you’re refusing the Challenge. Are you? Because if you do, then I challenge you, as I should have done when he was young and untrained.”
Damien laughed, actually amused. “You? I rode with you when you were Death. That person, I feared. Now? You’ve gone soft.”
“You never did understand the difference between soft and restrained.”
“Was it restrained, when you did whatever your brothers asked? … No, I take it back. You were a coward, even then. When Kronos pushed, you caved.”
Methos shifted, just enough to be menacing, face to face with his former student, his voice dangerously calm in a way that Damien obviously remembered quite well, much as he tried to hide it. “We were brothers for a thousand years. Do not pretend you know how it was between us. You rode with us, but you were never one of us.”
Damien stood there long enough to pretend he wasn’t being intimidated, then stepped back and turned to Eliot. “Fine, I accept. Just remember how things always ended whenever we sparred.”
By the time the two of them crossed swords, Methos was already up on the catwalk, because dodging Immortals mid-Challenge was not something high on anyone’s list of smart life choices. Plus it would give him an excellent view. That had, after all, been one of the selling points of the place.
Chapman looked pointedly down at the space next to him, then up at Methos: an invitation, a truce, and also a practicality: at that distance, neither could pull a weapon without being stopped by the other. Methos nodded and moved to join him.
“This won’t last long,” Chapman said, leaning casually over the railing to watch as the two continued to test each other.
“Sure of that, are you?”
“Oh, he’s unstoppable against anyone else, but against Moreau? He chokes. Always has.”
“Perhaps.”
Chapman shook his head. “I’ve known him since Florence, back with the Medicis. Moreau hired as many of us as he could find, put Spencer in charge.” He smiled nostalgically.
“I was there, yes,” Methos said dryly. “I remember.” Florence had been the center of banking, culture, and intrigue, and Damien had used his skill at making connections, along with his Immortal condottieri, to establish a silent presence in all of them. Even Methos’ favorite persona of a harmless scholar hadn’t been enough to keep him out of the politics of the moment.
“Anything he asked, Spencer would do.” He turned a curious look on Methos. “The old ones said he’d trained him the way the Horsemen did, that’s how they built their army of Immortals. Unstoppable, totally loyal.”
Fuck. That was never going to stop coming back to haunt him. “Do either of them look like someone brainwashed into eternal loyalty?” he scoffed. “It’s a trick. It doesn’t last, and trust me, when it fails, it fails spectacularly.”
Damien seemed to be coming to that realization; none of his old tricks were working, his taunts not so much brushed aside as completely ignored. He settled down to actually fight, but Eliot’s unexpected composure was having a bad effect on his own.
He could sense Chapman’s interest perk up, as if finally recognizing what was going on below them. “Spencer’s…”
“Yes.” He spared a glance at the Immortal beside him, noting that Chapman seemed sincerely admiring of Eliot’s skills. An interesting take for Damien’s second.
“Don’t get me wrong, any tricks from either of you and I will shoot you both—” and at least he had to sense to not say take your head “—but watching Spencer cut loose? It’s a thing of beauty. Even that last time that ended with him shooting me. My fault, really. I gave him an opening, and I know better than that.”
Methos turned back to the duel, and realized he’d never seen Eliot completely unrestrained — training together did not provide the same perspective. Oh, he’d seen Eliot sparring with other Immortals back when he’d been visiting Damien, who did so love to show off his treasures, but he’d been holding back. This was the perfect weapon Damien had desired, and Methos had no shame in his satisfaction at being the one who’d helped Eliot reach that peak.
If Damien hadn’t been very good, the fight would’ve been over in mere minutes. As it was, the final blow came as a surprise. Eliot moved left when even Methos expected him to move right; it left him dangerously exposed, but Methos never had convinced him to have any care for his own skin. The quick slash of the previously hidden dagger caught Damien off guard, his parry against the unexpected weapon leaving his sword too low to block the fatal blow.
Before the first glow had even emerged from Damien’s body, Methos had darted back to the nearest concrete platform, not even pausing as he scruffed Chapman like a kitten and dragged him along. The other Immortal sputtered a bit but didn’t resist. Methos nodded at the catwalks and railings, steel mesh and pipes. “You’re not going to want to be standing near any of that,” he said, just as the first flash of lightning hit.
It was like standing in the eye of a hurricane; lightning chasing through the metal that surrounded them, flaring up in nearly solid sheets. And this was just the overflow; he tried to look at Eliot, but he was lost in the blinding flares of Quickening energy.
The storm vanished as quickly as it had risen, leaving Eliot on his knees next to Damien’s headless body. Chapman looked down at him, started to say something, and then realized Eliot was in no condition to hear him. He looked at Methos instead. “Rules are rules,” he said. “Tell him there’s nothing left between us.” Methos nodded and headed down the stairs closest to Eliot, while Chapman headed off in the opposite direction.
Methos sat on the ground near Eliot, his back against some rusted piece of machinery that had once controlled lightning nearly as impressive as it had just witnessed, and waited for the younger Immortal to recover.
“Welcome to the club.”
Eliot blinked at him fuzzily. “What? What club?”
“Those of us who’ve survived taking the Quickening of the oldest of us. It’s very exclusive. Far as I know, it’s you, me, and MacLeod.”
“Yeah?” Eliot flopped over onto his back. “Can’t say I’m fond of the initiation rites. Any perks?”
“You have someone to talk to who knows what you’ve been through.”
“Yeah. That’s… there’s a lot. I can see my whole life, from his perspective. Everything he thought about me.”
“Don’t,” Methos said sharply. “Resist the temptation. Put it in a box, seal it away. You can look at it later, once you’re certain of the lines between who you are and who he was. If you blur those lines, it can be very hard to come back.”
“Yeah, I feel… ok, I’ve got it. I think. Now what?”
“We work on that box until you know you have it. But first, we tell your family you survived.”