Archive of Our Own

You've reached MacLeod's Antiquitites. Leave your name and number and I'll do my best to return your call within two business days. Thank you.

'Hey. Me again. I can't tell at this point if I'm just timing these really well to get your machine instead of you, or if you're screening your calls.' Methos stirred the pot and left the spoon resting on the cutting board, turning into the phone cord to untangle it and leaning on the windowsill instead to look out over the street. 'Got us settled in a rather charming old terrace house in San Gimignano. The Manhattan of the Middle Ages. Fourteen mediaeval towers still standing, lots of nicely preserved Romanesque and Gothic architecture everywhere. Our view is mostly of the neighbour's brick wall, but it's only a few minutes walk to the old town centre, and you can see the entire valley from the hilltop. You know, there used to be an Etruscan village here. Third century BCE or so. It was all forest back then, didn't even wall it in for another nine hundred years. Supposedly Saint Geminanius saved the place from being overrun by Attila the Hun-- sorry, don't know why I'm giving you the tourist spiel... don't know why really I keep coming back here, never even really lived here long. Just nice to have a place not so loaded with the bad stuff or even the good stuff. Just come here to be, sometimes.

'Still rambling. Going to fill your tape with these. Er, look... you can reach me at this number, if you ever decide you want to. I'll let you know when we move on, but I think we'll stay for a while. I like the quiet.' He twined the twisted cord about his forefinger. 'I guess that's all there is to say. Er... tell Joe I said hi. Or not. He's definitely screening his calls.' He knocked the receiver into his temple, sighing. 'Okay. Good-bye, Mac.'

George hardly glanced up from plucking soft notes from his guitar as Methos carried the tray in, but Methos could practically feel the face his houseguest pulled at his back as he set the tray on the table. 'More peasant food,' George muttered.

'Onions are nature's vitamin packs. And the antioxidants will reduce inflammation and lower your blood sugar.'

'We're Immortal, Doc. Surely one of the benefits has to include regulated blood sugar.'

'It does,' Methos affirmed, setting out two bowls of soup, napkins with spoons, and tearing the remainder of the wholewheat loaf into two roughly equal portions. 'Even immortal regeneration can be dysregulated with sufficient effort, and you've been exerting more than sufficient effort with all those nightly truckloads of coke and ketamine. You've developed chronic pancreatitis and your insulin and glucose need to normalise. Stimulants impair the brain, it doesn't take a medical degree to figure that one out, and severe hypoglycemic episodes aren't helping with this lovely mood of yours. So eat some fucking onions, please.'

George set his guitar gently in its stand beside the old wrought iron bed, which creaked almost as mightily as its occupant as George heaved himself upright to come to the table. 'You know, once upon a time, the benefit of befriending a doctor was access to the good stuff, not being ordered off it.'

'You must have been hell to be around during Prohibition.' Methos sat, and George took the other chair, knee pulled in to his chest and fingers wrapping limply about the spoon to swirl through the steaming soup.

'Fuck you, like I'd stay in any bumfuck country locking away the alcohol.' With a distinct lack of enthusiasm, George took a bite, and gave an exaggerated shudder. 'You know it doesn't matter how much spice you use, it's still onions.'

'Gruel it is, then. Save me an hour's effort every day.'

George leant over enough to knock Methos with an elbow. 'Shut it, I'm only... thank you. For the effort.'

Methos only hummed a response, pretended to be absorbed with buttering his bread. An Immortal might dry out faster than a mortal, but they hadn't got to the hard part, yet, not by half. George had to want to stay this way, and there'd be plenty of rows to come. He knew as well as anyone how vicious George could be in full brat mode. So they ate their supper in silence, broken only when Methos returned to the kitchen for an after-dinner digestivo of chinotto. Hydration was important, too, and a tall glass of the bittersweet soft drink diluted in water and served with an optimistically jaunty slice of lemon at least got George to imbibe the entire thing, unlike the plain water Methos had brought him with their meal. Empty glass clutched to his chest, George tipped back his head and sat there, drained of energy and distraction, shrunken in on himself like a living cadaver. Methos had treated the starving before, and in his way that was what George endured now. An enervating need that hollowed him out and left him a shell of himself, a hunger that could never be satisfied.

Never was a long time. Never was borrowed time, really, and Methos felt the tick of the clock marking each passing hour.

'Cards?' he asked, stacking their dishes and setting them aside to deal with later.

'Good God, man.' George stirred himself back to life with a dusty exhale. 'No, Christ Almighty. I'd rather drink a beaker of cyanide than play another hand of cribbage.'

'That's rather a low jab,' Methos said mildly. 'You want to revise that statement?'

'Oh, so you didn't kill yourself in despair over the mis-attribution of your piddly little bloodsucker story to me?'

They'd never had it out at the time, having fallen out with each other years earlier by the time the scandal hit. Lord Byron had received all the acclaim for the publication of The Vampyre, and admittedly Methos found it annoying, for all he'd never intended the story to be published at all. That stormy summer night in the Villa Viadoti had done much to make clear to Methos how completely he'd ceded all control of himself to the seductive chaos that followed Lord Byron everywhere. What had begun as a genuine devotion to the philosophy of sensualism had deteriorated into pointless hedonism, and his young student's self-destructive streak had come to unflattering light that night. Immortality was bestowed by chance, not merit. It didn't suit everyone. And sometimes it even destroyed some key piece of what made a man accountable for his actions. Constrained not just by the morals and mores of the time which birthed him, but bonded to the people who filled their endless years with the joys that sustained immortal wandering. How brilliant Mary had been, to grasp it so quickly. Methos could still recall the visceral electric charge of her eyes connecting with his. The wind whipping at her strawberry hair, the alien ozone scent of the Quickening George had just taken, the warmth of her trembling body tucked tight beneath his arm. The weight of the love he'd felt for her, not just or no longer only the romantic infatuation he'd carried for months but a stark and longing recognition of the uniqueness of her spirit, the rarity of such a treasure. The weight of knowing he would have to walk away from her in just a moment, never to see her like again. What were vampires and the trivial stakes of literary grievances after that?

He doubted George remembered anything at all of that night.

'Boiled the wrong beaker, actually,' he said, and a twitch of something that might just have been an apology creased George's downturned brows. 'I was drunk and careless. An ignominious end. I don't recommend it.'

'Died a few times in the seventies in similar circumstances,' George muttered sheepishly. 'No stones to throw from glass houses.'

'Were you really Jim Morrison?'

'Please, as if I'd ever pose as an American.'

'Oh, forgive the slander.' He swept crumbs off the table and brushed his hands over the dishes. 'Should have guessed. The Doors were better than your shit music now.'

'Oi!'

'You can object all you like, I'm not wrong.' Methos propped his chin on his fist. 'Why'd you go back to it? The rock star bollocks, that is. You're not the sort to enjoy the rigours of the road, stadium tours full of anonymous fans. You've always preferred your boot-licking up close and personal.' George kicked out at him with the raised knee, and Methos batted him away. 'Kidding. Mostly.'

'You're not wrong,' George conceded, slumping back in his chair. 'The tour was a bad idea from the start. Lawyers this-ing and that-ing about all the contract stipulations I was breaking with late appearances and skipped venues. Fucking bankrupted me. Couldn't get insurance, not after the last time. Insurance! All these modern trappings impeding pure artistic expression, all this, this, this bureaucracy of corporate creation. I loathe it.'

And being trapped in a web of his own making had always made George worse. 'We could kill you off,' Methos suggested facetiously. Mostly. 'Some public place, trip you down the stairs, splat, contract void.'

'Why should I have to concede the field to some bean counter's red pen!' George tossed his hair. It was curling again, in the Italian humidity. Methos liked it that way. 'I'm far too famous to disappear and simply pop up again in a new country with some lame pseudonym.'

'Far too famous?' Methos barked a laugh. 'I hate to be the bearer of bad news, my very dear GG, but I think that's a gross overestimation of your legacy. Even your lawyer stopped baying for your blood already.'

'You couldn't just let me have that one, could you?' George thrust to his feet, hobbling slightly in his socks to the balcony. The glass doors rattled as he threw them wide, and he adopted a gargoyle hunch over the balcony with a dramatic scowl. Methos stayed where he was, turned a little to look at his student's back. The lightning-quick moods had always plagued George. Rage that could evaporate in a minute. Depression that could swallow him like Jonah in the whale's belly, helpless and trapped til he finally repented his latest sin and earnt his deliverance, only to start it all over again in a week or two.

He'd treated those low moods with blood letting and plunge baths, when George had still been a mortal man. Psychology was a century away, then. He'd searched for some physical remedy that wasn't the laudanum George was already swilling in dangerous amounts. He'd never found one. Bipolar, probably. Manic episodes when the creativity sang through his soul, hyper-productive, impulsive and elated by it. Followed inevitably by intense melancholia, that predisposition to grief he'd ascribed to himself in an unusual bout of self-awareness. And the world had gone and turned those tormented passions into an admired literary archetype, the Byronic hero, mad, bad, and dangerous to know.

'Want to have a sit in the garden?' Methos asked that tortured back.

'I think I'll pass on beginning my grandfather phase,' George snapped. 'Can I at least smoke a cigarette? I'm not going to catch cancer.'

Methos traced the fraying edge of one of the linen napkins. 'You can do anything you want. Including leave.'

Too-bony shoulder blades shifted beneath the Byron! band tee shirt. 'Can we take a walk, instead, maybe.'

'Sure. Yeah.' He stood. 'Getting a little cool out of doors. Want a jacket?'

Former student. Important to remember the former. His former student flipped about to face him. 'You've really doubled down on that old man act you've always had. Live a little, Dad. Risk a shiver.'

'Sure, George.'

His former student had himself a deep inhale, and it seemingly gave him to strength to hold back whatever it was nipping at his teeth to get out. He smiled tightly at Methos. 'Lead on, Doc.'

**

You've reached MacLeod's Antiquitites. Leave your name and number and I'll do my best to return your call within two business days. Thank you.

'Hey. It's me.' Methos carried the old rotary phone with him across the kitchen, as far as the cable would stretch. It got him to the wine pantry, and he let himself in, browsing the dusty shelves. It wasn't an inventory-- much-- George had said they didn't need a lock, vinegary old Bordeaux wasn't his thing. Nothing seemed missing, no fingerprints on the bottles. He could have sworn he had a couple of bottles from the early 1800s pre-phylloxera invasion that had devastated so much of Euro's viticulture. It wouldn't be drinkable now, of course. Vinegar was right. It happened, when you let the wind carry you across the world following your whimsy. Or being chased off by Watchers. Or on the run after your best friend informed you you were done, and never really revoked that statement.

'Checking in,' Methos said. He eased down to sit on on a crate that sloshed. Brandy, maybe. He'd bought a case because the young man running the tasting room had had a good laugh. 1956, maybe? '57. 'Sorry for the late night call. Couldn't sleep.' He risked a lean back against the wine racks, shifting his shoulders til the corks weren't digging so deep into his spine. 'Consequences of skipping town without a plan-- a lot of things I wish I'd brought. Miss my books. Could probably get a packing service to ship them on, but I hate other people messing with my classification system. We ever talk about classification systems? You're the fussy sort who'd know all that, like me. All respect to Mr Melville Dewey, I've always been partial to Ranganathan's colon classification system. You strike me as a BBC. Bliss Bibliograph classification. Could have ourselves a really epic debate over dinner sometime.' He pulled a bottle of Fiano di Avellino white from the shelf, rubbing dust from the label. 'Haven't been keeping up my journalling. I don't blip like that. Every Sunday like clockwork. I even journalled right through the eruption of Vesuvius, I ever tell you that? But all anyone ever talks about is Pliny the Younger's sole eyewitness account, blah blah.' He slotted the bottle back into its place. 'His Watcher made it to town. He's got a real babe. Are we still allowed to say that? Babe. Rather a fan of the politically correct movement. Of course I remember when it was a Marxist thing from the '30s, and this pejorative thing now is pretty obvious whataboutism, but you remember how the New Left used it in the '70s? Merton of the Movement, that comic book. Self-monitoring against orthodoxy. We have thousands of years of orthodoxy in the Watchers. A party line, so to speak. Objectivity, objectivity like they use it in science, in research. Objectivity is a goal, the elimination of personal and cultural biases during observation, testing, analysis. It ensures your methods and empirical facts are reproducable and impartial. We observe, we record. We never interfere. And that's that, Bob's your uncle, Fanny's your aunt. We don't have a PC thing of our own, to make us question our orthodoxy. You get emotionally involved, it's a personal failing, not a problem with the organisation, not a corruption at the root of our philosophy--'

Beep.

Methos dug the knuckles holding the receiver into his eyes til he saw stars. He hung up.

**

'Wheezing a little, there,' Methos observed.

'Fuck off,' George panted. He dragged himself up the last twenty steps, chest heaving when he finally joined Methos standing at the arch. Methos dug into a pocket for a tissue, and George mopped his sweaty temples. 'So I'm slightly out of shape, possibly.'

'That little octogenarian with the cane passed you,' Methos pointed out, amused. 'Maybe some gentle calisthenics after breakfast wouldn't go awry.'

'Exercise! How dare you, sir.'

'Best hope we don't run into the Kurgan out here.'

'Wasn't he killed a while back? Forget who it was who did the deed.'

An unfortunate door to stumble through. 'Yeah, I heard that too,' Methos said vaguely, and searched for a distraction. 'You used to fence, you still practise?'

'Not in this century.' George propped himself in the curve of the arch, gazing out from the tower at the impressively lovely view. Torre Grassa rose fifty-four metres over the rest of the town, and it was possible from this height to imagine the world as it had been. To remember yesteryear. On a clear day with a northerly wind, you could see the Apuan and Pistoian Alps, the northernmost point of Tuscany, and, to the south, Mount Amiata, marking the border with Lazio. Laid out all about them, a verdant green carpet under a vivid orange sunset, the stone city with its meandering streets a labyrinth walked by residents in jean shorts and bright white trainers, not the voluminous layers of wool and bright-woven brocade and luxurious velvet of centuries past. Past and present mixed, at this height, like vertigo and déjà vu, a dizzying combination that almost, almost made him want to step off the edge, that crazy, what was it called? The sudden, fleeting urge to jump. The amygdala triggering a freeze reaction in the face of danger. The cerebral cortex catching up a second later, the conscious mind evaluating the situation and recognising safety, the rail, the distance of his feet from the ledge. The cognitive glitch, the misinterpretation trying to make sense of the crossed signals. I am safe, but my heart is racing, I felt myself moving-- I must have wanted to jump. The flawed logic of the brain trying to fill in the gaps. The high place phenomenon, that was it. L'appel du vide. He almost reached for George's sleeve, seeking to hold. For which of them, he wasn't even sure.

'Did you fight in the World Wars?' George asked suddenly, brushing his hair out of his eyes as the wind tossed it and brought lively colour to his pale cheeks.

'Er. Yeah. African theatre, both wars. Medical corps.'

'See any action?'

'Mahiwa in '17. El Alamein in '42. You?'

'Italy, actually. Two years at Isonzo River in the northeast. No-one would take me in '39. The fucking foot.'

'Bastards.'

'I fought in dozens of battles for a hundred and fifty years. To be rejected by some rubber-stamping Selective Service administrator...' George tucked his hair behind his ears, and didn't grip the safety railing after. 'I think that's when it all began to... to turn. The world was changing. I'd had a title, a name, my fame. Those bootlickers who made me think I was important and charming and could get away with anything I wanted. But the modern world has all these-- rules. Standards. Forms to fill out and examinations to weigh you and find you wanting. I never understood why you bothered with schools and little paper certifications til I'd been turned away from every recruitment station in Europe. I stood there clutching my rejection and I thought of you. How prepared you'd been for a century that hadn't even happened yet. You'd seen it all coming. How everything would become smaller. You made yourself smaller in readiness for it. I suppose you could call it genius, that gift for prognostication and prudence. Or you could call it pathetic, that you knew and never fought against it. I suppose the truth is somewhere in the middle, as ever.' He tucked his hair again, and turned back to the stairs. 'Shall we?'

**

You've reached MacLeod's Antiquitites. Leave your name and number and I'll do my best to return your call within two business days. Thank you.

'It's me. It's, er. About ten here, Sunday. Not sure if you're still in France or if you've gone back to Seacouver yet. If you're even checking this machine. Wanted to, er. Debated the best way to do this. Very, excruciatingly aware you'd prefer me not to do it at all.' He cradled the receiver between his ear and shoulder, and positioned his fingers on the fret of George's guitar, hugging the smooth delicate wooden frame close til some vague sense memory brought him gingerly into position. He hadn't played a string instrument since the fucking lute. Not that long before George had been born, actually. The last one he'd played had fourteen strings versus the guitar's six, but musical theory was musical theory was musical theory, at least since Pythagoras. Mathematics made audible. He fumbled out a chord, and then a run. 'And I know it's not a test, to see whether I'd do it anyway. Trust me, I'm as conflicted as you are. Probably. Sorry. Putting words in your mouth. Very, excruciatingly aware that you don't, any more. Trust me. I could say I told you so, warned you all along. I'd be lying. I liked it, how much you welcomed me in. Really did try not to take too much advantage of it, bar a couple of nights bumming on your barge that one time.'

Strummed the chord again, a couple of individual notes, nothing coalescing into a melody yet. Aimless exploration, re-learning a skill. He'd only ever been proficient, at that, not naturally gifted, not like George. A thing to do to fill his many centuries, a passing curiosity, a jobbing bard and a court musician a time or two, even, but not the sort to pick up an instrument and feel an affinity, feel an inspiration. Inspire others with his creation.

'You probably saw I sent flowers. I give it fifty-fifty whether you threw them straight in the rubbish. Well within your rights. And a donation for the charity the parents, his parents, the one they listed in the announcement about the service. I won't tell you what to do, but I hope you let that through. Seemed like they were trying to make some good out of a horrible thing.' He flattened his hand over the soundhole, cradling the body a little more comfortably under his arm. Ran his thumb over the taut wire string nearest, just barely enough to send a shiver of vibration up the length. 'I really am sorry about Mike. He had so much raw talent. Was so young still, the way people are today. We were men as soon as we could swing a sword, but these kids today... you're better at that part of it than me. Like with Richie. Never quite understood why you were so protective of him, why you treated him like he needed so much sheltering, so much, I dunno... I didn't take it seriously enough. I was defencive. I was dismissive. And if not for that, I should at least have acknowledged the power imbalance. Of course Mike wouldn't turn him down.' He closed his eyes, gently plucking the string for a clear, sweet low E. 'I'm truly sorry for what happened. Which may not mean anything to you, given what I did. And I have to admit I would still do it. But I'm maybe a little more, a little more... a little more clear-eyed about why I did it. He's my friend, Mac. Which I know isn't exactly a ringing endorsement. But I couldn't undo what happened to Mike, what he did to Mike, and the only thing I could do was make a split-second decision to try to save my friend.'

He knew the beep was coming, this time. He pressed the plunger in time with Mac's answering machine. Set the receiver carefully into the cradle, and pushed it away from him, giving himself room to settle back into the kitchen cabinets, legs stretched out towards the island. The ochre floor tiles needed a good sweeping. It could wait til tomorrow.

He brought his hands into place again, and haltingly played a half-remembered song from John Dowland's 1600 Second Booke of Songes or Ayres. Musical form based on the pavan, with the signature falling tear motif, starting on an A and descending to an E by step. It had been a very well known tune, frequently requested well into the century, printed all across Europe in both solo and group arrangements, kept alive hundreds of years as late as Benjamin Britten's Lachrymae for viola. It was meant to be at least semi-improvised in motivic development; he'd had an enlightening conversation with Joe once about the historical origins of jazz improvisation. Methos would be improvising to fill the holes in his memory, unfortunately. His voice was as rusty as his playing, but he hummed through the first try, and sang the second, his tone thin and too soft to carry.

Flow my teares fall from your springs,
Exilde for euer: Let mee morne
Where nights black bird hir sad infamy sings,
There let mee liue forlorne.

Downe vaine lights shine you no more,
No nights are dark enough for those
That in dispaire their last fortuns deplore,
Light doth but shame disclose.

Neuer may my woes be relieued,
Since pittie is fled,
And teares, and sighes, and grones my wearie dayes, my wearie dayes,
Of all ioyes haue depriued.

Frōm the highest spire of contentment,
My fortune is throwne,
And feare, and griefe, and paine for my deserts, for my deserts,
Are my hopes since hope is gone.

Harke you shadowes that in darcknesse dwell,
Learne to contemne light,
Happie, happie they that in hell
Feele not the worlds despite.

'You'd have better pitch if you weren't hunched over putting downward pressure on your diaphragm.'

He didn't start. It was hard to sneak up on an Immortal. He'd felt George coming, and carried on anyway, aware it would yield a critique-- George being George-- and deciding in the moment, at least, that he didn't care. Now, though, he sighed, and scrubbed at his wearily burning eyes.

'Help me up?' he asked, and extended a hand.

George didn't take the hint, or didn't obey it. 'I didn't mean to disturb you. Keep playing, if you're of a mind.'

'Of a mood, maybe, and one that shouldn't be indulged.' George took his hand, then, and levered him upright. Methos handed over the guitar. George let it rest atop his bare foot, blocking Methos an easy exit from the kitchen towards their bedrooms upstairs. 'What?' Methos asked him, perhaps more shortly than intended, so he rolled his shoulders and tried to look inviting of inquiry. Judging by George's face, it wasn't working. 'Go on, ask.'

'You didn't encourage questions before.'

'Your pardon, sir, I recall several instances chiding you for diving in no questions asked.'

'Not about the immortality bag.' George waved that off unimportant detail. Tapped on the neck of the guitar in his other hand. 'You always deflected when I'd ask about you.'

Methos crossed his arms, aware it would look prickly and guarded and yet too tired to stop himself. He managed at least a casual lean against the countertop behind him and crossed his ankles. 'Your pardon, sir,' he repeated, 'but I recall no instances at all of you ever asking me about myself. Not exactly your bag, sharing any of the oxygen in the room.'

'Granted,' George said, a hint of the old smile, mischievous and plotting, bringing out the faint parentheticals beside his smart mouth. It faded. 'I can't say I was genuinely interested. Not til you were long gone and I had no-one to... no-one to offer any answers.'

He was tired. He hadn't slept well in weeks, between the reason for fleeing across the continent with an Immortal fugitive from justice and the fear of what that fugitive might be doing behind the closed door of another room. And it hadn't been a particularly good year before George turned up in Paris, and it wasn't like it had been restful before the Horsemen. An unbroken line of stress-fuelled nightmares, really. Making his inevitable break with the Watchers in the wake of the Jakob Galati affair; Galati shooting up the Watcher Tribunal mere moments before they would have pulled the trigger on Joe and nearly costing Methos the one fragile connection he still had to mortal affairs after the torture of Alexa's last months. After Kalas killed Christine and Don before her. There'd been a once-in-a-millennia Dark Quickening in there somewhere and it didn't even rank in the top five most disturbing events of the last few years. And that before he'd finally made a choice so selfish he could kiss any whisper of friendship and acceptance good-bye, and all for a man who wasn't fucking grateful and wouldn't fucking change and probably wouldn't even live out the rest of the fucking century.

His eyes filled. He blinked rapidly, trying to will it back, that surge of sudden overwhelm. He was just tired.

'I'm sorry,' he said, as evenly as he could manage. 'For leaving. I shouldn't have.'

No clue how George took that unprecedented apology. Methos wasn't looking at him. Couldn't.

'Did my best to drive you off,' George answered dryly, a beat and a half too late. 'Can't give you all the credit. I... didn't want to learn what you were trying to teach.'

And still didn't. That went without saying. And it wasn't an apology in kind, not really, but Methos supposed he appreciated the acknowledgment, all the same.

'Want to have a sit in the garden?' Methos unwound his arms to stuff his hands into his pockets instead. 'Could give me a private concert. Never listened to any of your albums before.'

'What, none of them?' George squawked, proper offended, and they grinned at each other. 'Right, can't let that insult stand. Let's show you how it's done, Old Man.'

**

You've reached MacLeod's Antiquitites. Leave your name and number and I'll do my best to return your call within two business days. Thank you.

'Hi.' Methos leant his head against the frigofero. The faintly humming doors felt cool and smooth on feverish skin. 'Are you replacing the tape on the machine? Or am I just talking into the void? That would be kind of hilarious, honestly. Do you know I've managed to avoid confession for, well, for the existence of Catholicism? Neat trick, huh. I mean I've faked it, obviously I've had to fake it for two fucking thousand years. Not even the saintly Darius ever tempted me to spill the beans.' He turned his cheek into the chiselled brick beside the frigo next. Coarse, dry, indifferent to him and unchanged by his presence as it had been by every other human hand that had caressed its contours. 'Darius came closest. To being like me. He'd have understood, more than anyone. More than some village priest or Dominican inquisitor who couldn't imagine an evil bigger than praying to the wrong God.'

He inhaled. He held it. Let it go only when it began to burn.

'I shouldn't have chosen you. You probably won't believe this... I'm not sure I even believe myself. I tried so fucking hard not to-- all this time. All those years. Thousands of years, Mac, I held the line for thousands of years and I was so fucking-- smug about my success. Look at me, world, I managed to clear the lowest bar for accomplishment by not doing something I knew better than to do. I went thousands of years without interfering, Mac, I went thousands of years without putting my thumb on the scale. I don't even want it for myself, that's the stupid-- that's the stupidest fucking part of it, I was being magnanimous. I was being so very generous to the world by withholding my influence, my wit and wisdom, my vast experience. My orthodoxy. Watch. Record. Never interfere.' The breath left him in a choked-off laugh. 'I convinced myself you were worth the exception. The best of us. The best choice for the One. My choice for the One.'

He was ready and waiting for the beep. Hung up and released the plunger for a new dial tone, and jabbed at the buttons immediately.

You've reached MacLeod's Antiquitites. Leave your name and number and I'll do my best to return your call within two business days. Thank you.

'And I held you to an impossible standard and didn't give you the tools you needed to deal with the problems I landed on your head. Kronos, Cassandra. The Watchers versus the Immortals, I was so bogged down in the principles of the thing I made you lead me by the fucking nose to the fact that they were going to blow Joe's head off if we didn't do something, not especially proud of that oversight. All you've ever been looking for is moral clarity and I've acted like that's such a fucking sin, like you're too stupid to solve the puzzles and that the complexity is the point like I'm fucking Immanuel Kant preaching about the unknowable universe. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I've focussed on what you did to me and not what I did to you, like you got what you deserved for dropping in on my life when I'm the one who orchestrated meeting you so you'd be fucking grateful for the honour. I'm sorry-- I'm sorry I tested you, that night, offering you my head. I was so confident I knew what you'd do I thought I was giving you a gift, if you can believe that, I was giving you self-knowledge, self-confidence, I was giving you the boost you'd need to go out there and kill Kalas with a smile. I'm sorry for pretending a fucking CD-ROM with some photoshopped Immortals in a database I half-assed one bored afternoon had any kind of inherently world-ending power. It never even occurred to me you could lose, that's the only excuse I have, I thought I was annointing you and thinning the crowd of the more obnoxious pretenders to the title and I thought you were too thick to even notice I was doing it. And then a real threat did turn up and I didn't believe in you after all. I don't mean fucking Kronos, I mean, obviously I mean Kronos, that was shit and I'm sorry, I'm just sorry, I am, I mean Byron... I didn't believe in you, Mac. Duncan. I didn't believe you'd understand, so I didn't even make a good argument. I didn't give you a chance to choose between justice and mercy. I forced your hand with Kristin and then I ran before you could force mine with Byron. It was wrong, Duncan. For whatever it's worth, and if it's worth fuck all that's what I deserve-- for whatever it's worth, I know it was wrong.'

Beep. Redial.

You've reached MacLeod's Antiquitites. Leave your name and number and I'll do my best to return your call within two business days. Thank you.

'I lost all objectivity. I thought I ever had any objectivity, that's the laugh. Delusional, thousands of years of delusion that I could just rise above it all and make a wholly rational decision, no emotion involved. You've wrecked the whole fucking ecosystem-- I've wrecked it all, I've driven a fucking Titanic straight into the iceberg-- it's the paradox of self-deception. I'm both the deceiver and the deceived. And I don't even believe I can save him, Duncan. I'm going to lose him like I've lost you, and I can't...'

He ran out the long seconds til the next beep in silence. Wiped his burning eyes on his sleeve. Dialled again.

You've reached MacLeod's Antiquitites. Leave your name and number and I'll do my best to return your call within two business days. Thank you.

'Sorry for the insane rambling. Really hope you burn these instead of listen to them. Joe, if you're tapping his line, hope you're fucking enjoying this.' He blew out a carefully controlled breath that only shook a little. 'I'm sorry for everything,' he said, and hung up. And this time he yanked the cable out of the wall and tossed the phone into a drawer with a collander and an old garlic press, kicked it closed with a knee, and washed his damp face in the sink. Dried his cheeks on the tea towel and just stood there, for a bit, brain finally flat-lining and heart--

The strains of the guitar playing upstairs rose in a momentary wail, then faded back to subliminal white noise. Methos breathed. He breathed, and then he reached for the kettle he'd been heating a half hour ago before he'd decided to verbally assault an answering machine in France and tested the plastic with a thumb. He ran it again til the kettle steamed, and poured two cups over two bags of Bonamelli chamomile. Didn't chuck them into the wall, just let the impulse come and go unanswered. 'George,' he called up. 'Tea's ready.' And he stood there alone in the kitchen and sipped it down, and that was just how it was going to be, wasn't it.