A Quiet Night (2/2)

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A Quiet Night - Part 2

Disclaimers in part 0

************************************

A Quiet Night - Methos

Dinner has been eaten and we've headed into the living room with the intent
of catching up on work that has been piling up thanks to other concerns that
have crept into and out of our lives. I sit down at my desk and begin
marking some university papers that my students have handed in recently,
while she curls up on the couch behind me with some books.

She is intending to continue research she's been working on for the museum
in preparation for the sixtieth anniversary of the fall of Paris and an
exhibition they wish to run for it. She's been intending to complete this
research for the last three weeks and so far I don't think she's managed any
of it. She is still too much in awe of me. I smile to myself at that
thought - how arrogant I sound. Yet it's true. I can feel her staring at me
even now. At the moment, she's wondering nothing more mundane than what I'm
working on; if I'm writing in my journal or if I'm doing something more
ordinary. Not so much because she wishes to read my work, but more because
she's always curious as to what language I might be working in.

In my journal, more often than not, I write in a mix of ancient and modern
languages that inevitably use a mix of alphabets. On any given page, there
might be roman letters and English words intermingled with Sanskrit, or
ancient Arabic, or Modern Greek. The mix is not a sign of showing off - it
isn't me saying 'look at me - I can remember all these writing systems' - it
is simply a mirror of how I think. Modern languages are reserved for
cultural comment; older languages for memories; ancient languages for
personal thoughts. There is the added bonus, of course, that unless you
happen to be a grade 'A' linguistics expert you can't just casually read my
journals.

To ease her curiosity, I mutter, "French," without looking up from the page
before me.

I continue to scribble on the papers, making observations and comments about
 the work, but most of my mind is occupied by wondering what aspect of my
psyche she is trying to pin down tonight. I am a hard man to get to know.
Even to my own kind, who have some concept of what it is like to constantly
out live your friends and family, I stand alone. I am six thousand years and
probably some odd number of centuries old. The next oldest known Immortal
after me is not even four thousand. To a mortal, who might not even live to
reach sixty, the figure six thousand is so large it cannot be grasped.

Come to think of it - I have trouble with it sometimes. There are days when
I sit in a library and look around at the other people working and wonder
'Why is it I have survived so long?' 'Why is it I am always the one left to
bury, to mourn, to avenge, to remember?' 'Why do I continue to survive?'

Then I might hear a child laugh, or see a pair of young lovers or some other
sign of normal, mortal life and I remember the good things. Like being in
love, and being loved. And I know why I continue to fight and continue to
want to survive: Life.

There have been moments in my existence where I have barely been living for
one reason or another, but there has always been someone to come along and
drag me back. Sometimes kicking and screaming - just ask the perennial Boy
Scout, Duncan MacLeod. Until I met him, I had thought I was in the perfect
life - with the Watchers, so I was more or less safe from other Immortals;
researching myself; interacting with people but without any kind of
emotional risk. Then real life came crashing through my door in larger than
life Scottish form and I knew I had been deluding myself. It was about then
that I realised she had crept into my soul, under my radar.

I tried to give up those feelings, knowing nothing could come of them;
suspecting that it was purely infatuation on my part. Then came the madness
of Kronos' return and Cassandra's incautious - or possibly intentional - use
of my real name in front of witnesses. One witness: Melanie Hinds.
Cassandra's Watcher at the time. That confrontation between Cassandra and
myself in MacLeod's dojo made its way across the Atlantic, to Paris. To her
ears as my replacement on the Methos chronicles. I didn't have time to give
it thought then, too busy trying not to die either at Kronos' hands or
MacLeod's. But when I returned to Joe's bar after the whole mess was finally
sorted and with the Horsemen gone for good, and I found her there, talking
to Joe, about *me* I knew what had happened. What was likely to happen. Who
would be believed.

After all that I had survived, this was, I thought, the final straw. Despair
griped my soul. And then this wonderful, amazing, mortal woman said,

"No. Maybe then...maybe three or four thousand years ago...sure...the world
was a very violent place...it would fit that someone...a...a survivor like
Methos would do something to...to fit in...but... He's not like that now."

Looking at her face, I could see she truly believed that. She accepted my
past - could accept that I might once have been a very different person in a
vastly different world. And for the first time in two weeks, I felt
something I thought I had lost the moment Kronos' knife pierced my heart two
weeks earlier: Hope.

At this point in my thoughts, I realise I can still feel her eyes on my
back. I smile to myself, suspecting that she's gone beyond actually seeing
me. Sure enough, as I turn to look, it takes a good minute before she
realises I'm looking at her.

"You're thinking again," I comment, a smirk creeping around the corners of
my mouth.

"I do that a lot," she replies. "I find it helps me to do those little day
to day tasks."

My smirk turns to a grin. "And you can't work and think at the same time?" I
suggest, indicating the unopened reference book lying in her lap. She
blushes and concedes the point.

We both turn back to our respective projects and for probably the first time
in three weeks, I hear the reference book in her lap open. I smile to myself
again. I know she's still thinking about me.

It sounds so arrogant to state it baldly - but people who meet *me*, rather
than Adam Pierson, or Benjamin Adams, or any of the other aliases I've used
in the last two thousand years, always have questions. Did you see...? Were
you there...? Do you know...? Did you know...? She's a historian first and
foremost, so for her the questions aren't about the Egyptian Pyramids or
Stonehenge (which out dates me anyway - not that people necessarily realise
it); they are more intimate. What were the times like to *live* in? What did
the people of the times *really* do? But even so, it's like being looked at
as a walking, breathing encyclopaedia at times.

I'm just a guy. I don't hold all the answers. Some questions don't have
answers - at least as far as I've found. But if she asks me, I will answer.
Because I owe her the answer. Because I love her far too much not to answer.

I haven't felt joy in simply being in the same room as another person in so
long. Far too long. Please, Gods...Fates, let it not be some aspect of my
life that ends this. I can bear the thought of watching her grow old,
because in my eyes, she will forever be beautiful. But should some random
head-hunter see her as a way to me... Please, Gods, don't let that happen.
Please let her be here to ask me the questions she wants to ask for a long,
long time.

I hear her stir behind me. There's a question coming now, I know. And sure
enough...

"Methos..."


The End

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