Title: The Old Ways
Author: Tsutsuji
Fandom: Highlander: the Series
Characters/pairing: Methos/Kronos
Rated M for references to violence, just to be on the safe side
Written for Kink Bingo 2012. Kink: Historical Roleplay, with elements of Blades, a hint of Exhibitionism, and maybe just a touch of Guro.
Content Notes: Reference to violence against non-consenting unnamed characters.
Summary/notes: Waxing nostalgic, the Four Horsemen recreate a scene from their glory days. Takes place in the "...Not To Be" timeline after Methos has rejoined the Horsemen.
Six months after Methos left his old life as mild-mannered Watcher behind and rejoined the Horsemen, Kronos shows up at the their headquarters one morning with a huge, old-fashioned scythe slung over his shoulder. Methos eyes it skeptically.
"What on earth do you think you're going to do with that, brother?"
Kronos has that crazy grin, that gleam in his eye. Methos remembers that gleam, that smile, very well. It's the clarity of a pure madness that he hasn't seen in years. That the world hasn't seen in years.
"What do you think, brother?"
Methos slowly drifts across the room towards him. There's a good bit of a sneer in his voice as he speaks, because he's already comfortable enough with Kronos to get away with it again, like he used to.
"You always did love your schemes and your crazy plans, Kronos, even when all you had to plan with were scratches in the dirt. Nowadays you can plan a whole, world-wide campaign of terror on a computer, and set it into motion with the click of a button. And yet, here you are, waving around - a scythe?"
"World-wide terror is all very well and good," Kronos says, in that strangely reasonable way he talks about the most hideous things, "but really, what is the point of bringing a city or even a whole country to its knees if you can't even see the people actually kneeling before you? Can't even see the looks on their faces when they fall, can't hear their screams and smell their fear, can't feel the clutch of their hands reaching out in their useless attempts at supplication? If you can't look down at them, right there in front of you, with the sheer power of knowing you can spare them - if you chose to - or not."
Reluctantly, Methos inclines his head, conceding the point. The Horsemen now are just one more ordinary terror among all the other terrors flashing across TV screens every day. There is more violence, greed, pestilence, and death in an hour of CNN than even Kronos' darkest dreams could hope to achieve, but it's not enough for the leader of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
In other words, Methos thinks, Kronos wants to be a legend again.
"The world is too small for legends now," Methos insists, resisting the siren pull of this insanity. "Who cares if some ragged little group of men in face paint and black leather wipe out a whole village? That would barely make a footnote on the six o'clock news. No one will even notice!"
"They will," Kronos said, with that jackal smile and that old gleam in his eyes. "The ones we cut down will notice - because it will be the last thing they ever see."
Methos feels the thrill of it run through his veins in spite of himself, some very old feelings rising up through his world-weary cynicism. Maybe it is time the whole, stupid world got another glimpse of this pure, unfettered destruction that the Four Horsemen used to represent. Not destruction for profit or for power, certainly not for glory. Just for the sheer joy of it.
Kronos, with that scythe in his hands and that quietly insane smile on his scarred face, is the very image of an ancient god of destruction, ready to sweep down and slice through everything in his path. It suits him perfectly. There is something so much more primal about this great, curved blade, this weapon that's designed to strike at the very root of life. Nothing so precise and honorable as Methos' sword, nothing so elegant as the dance of a sword fight refined through centuries of custom and practice.
Methos feels an old, grim smile slowly stretch across his face, like a death's-head mask, fitting perfectly over what's left of his civilized, modern self.
I was Death... he remembers. Death had been his purpose, his identity, his desire. How can he not love what he sees standing there in front of him?
Maybe it's a matter of scale after all.
A rational part of Methos' mind still insists that this is ridiculous. One man with a scythe; four men, even with the biggest swords, on horseback no less, against modern armies and modern weapons, competing with modern fears. They would just look silly.
Another part of him doesn't care. The Horsemen of old are a mockery of this modern age, and if ever an age needed to be mocked...
"Just don't expect me to go and paint my face blue, like some kind of murderous Easter egg," he says with a nasty sneer of sarcasm. Even as he says it, he's sauntering over to Kronos, and his body language is all "let's do it."
Kronos watches him like a snake, like a stalking lion; not moving, just waiting. Already waiting, Methos knows, for the more intimate frenzy that comes after the slaughter. Methos has been trying to resist that, too, and it is some kind of flattering testament to how much Kronos wanted him back, how long he's waited and schemed to get him back, that Kronos has been relatively patient with him.
In fact, aside from the pure, insane joy of it, that's very likely what this is really all about: the seduction of Death. It might even be working. And if it is, well, he just hopes Kronos is ready for the consequences.
Methos gave up any illusion of living a civilized kind of life in that moment when Kronos crashed through the window, when the living light went out of the eyes of last mortal he might ever have cared about. Maybe it's time to completely give up any pretense of being part of this so-called civilized world at all.
In the end, he does paint his face along with the rest of them. He claims it's just because he doesn't want to be the odd man out.
"Wouldn't want the locals to mistake me for one of them in the midst of the fray," he says airily.
Silas and Caspian are like two excited little kids when Kronos reveals this plan to them. Half the fun for them is recreating their old Horsemen clothes and armor, but then again, Methos realizes, they've never entirely forsaken that look. That could be because the world has never entirely forgotten the significance of it, all the black and leather and silver-link armor and the soot-black paint on their faces. He's not so certain about his own old costume, though. White is no longer universally the color of Death, and as for the woad, well, he's fairly certain some sports team or other has claimed that particular shade of blue.
That just means it's time to reclaim the image of Death and seer it into the modern mind. He recreates it reasonably closely, with a few modifications for comfort and practically.
It's more for show than for practical purposes. anyway. The armor, especially, was neither effective nor necessary even against the weapons of the ancient world in which the Horsemen rode. It is a joke in the face of modern weapons, but in a way, that's the point. They even consider "updating" their image, but Kronos rejects that idea on principle. They are not going to look like some common Hollywood version of a biker gang, he declares, and the other Horsemen laugh and nod, and grin like feral animals.
When Methos gives in and pulls together a semblance of his old white tunic, after he sees the others recreate their old leather and studded metal armor shirts, he realizes Kronos is right. There's no point in updating the Horsemen to suit the modern world. The Horsemen are going to drag the modern world back to their own savage age, if they have to do it bit by tiny bit.
However, if only because he was always the logical one, the voice of reason (relatively speaking) among them, Methos continues to protest and mock the entire idea. "This will never work" becomes his frequent refrain. The other Horsemen indulge his cynicism with brotherly smiles and knowing nods to each other.
He keeps on saying it right up to and including the moment they crest a rolling hill and look down on a picture-postcard village.
"Ever the skeptic," Kronos says, both mocking and admiring.
Methos looks down on the pretty little town, laid out below them like a virgin sacrifice. His horse shifts under him, restless and eager. He can already feel his sword singing in his hand, just like he can feel Kronos' hungry gaze on him.
They ride down the hill, and it feels like riding right back into history.
All the smoke and smell of blood and the screams that he remembers from so long ago surround him again, rising like a wave that carries them along as they cut their first swath through the town. There is also the pop of gunshot and the roar of car engines and the rumble of machinery trying to halt their ride or mow them down, but it is as if they have been granted good fortune by the old gods. Perhaps it's their reward for reviving these old rituals of sacrifice. Modern weapons do no more than briefly injure them, and they cover each other long enough to revive and keep right on going, keep right on killing. That only serves to add a new spark of terror to the last living light in the eyes of their victims.
An hour of glorious chaos later, Methos feels Kronos approaching, not just his Immortal buzz but the hum along his nerves that he gets when Kronos is watching him. He lets Kronos find him standing over a small heap of bodies, wiping gore off his sword. He looks up calmly, twists his lip in distaste.
"I forgot how much I hate getting shot," he says, quite matter-of-factly.
Kronos' jackal smile stretches a little wider as he rides over to join him. Methos sighs dramatically and shakes his head, waves his hand at the half-destroyed town, the clouds of black smoke, the bodies trampled into mud and smeared across pavement.
"It's just not the same," he whines. "The smell of petrol, the annoying sound of gunfire..."
"Of course not!" Kronos bellows, laughing. "The screams, the rage, the moment when you wipe their stubborn disbelief off their faces! It's even better! Isn't it, Brother?"
Methos holds up his sword, thoughtfully inspects its gleaming edge, shakes his head as if he's just not certain all of that is worth the trouble anymore.
The truth is, he already knows the answer. Maybe it's just nostalgia on his part, sentimentality finally claiming him in his old age, but riding with the Horsemen again is even better than he remembers, even hotter and wilder, even more free.
Movement behind Kronos catches the corner of his eye; two men, smudged with soot and bloodstains, creep around a corner, with eyes narrowed and with a pair of shotguns aimed at the Horseman.
"I'll have to get back to you on that," Methos says.
Kronos turns in the same second that both men fire their shotguns. The double shot blasts a hole in his chest, and his startled horse bolts out from under him. Kronos doesn't even quite die, but starts healing before he hits the ground, with visible sparks, miniature lightning bolts of Immortal energy arcing across his body.
Methos stares wide-eyed at his fallen Brother and then at the two men. He holds his sword out at arm's length, lets it swing from his fingertips as if he's going to drop it in surrender.
The gunmen only keep half an eye on him, though, distracted by that strange spectacle of Kronos' Immortal healing. They don't even notice at first when Methos stops only a few feet away from them and lets a smile spread across his face. They only look up in time to see him rushing toward them, sword swinging at them like an arc of light, like the weapon of an old god. One of them manages to fire off a single wild shot as Methos slices them open.
He hears harsh breaths behind him on the ground, hears those breaths catch and even more clearly feels Kronos' gaze on him, nearly as tangible as those sparks from his healing. There are times when that gaze has made his skin crawl, but today he revels in it. He makes sure to stand there, sword thrust out at the apogee of its arc, the comfortable stretch of his body on display for the space of several deep breaths before he turns and helps his fallen brother Horseman back to his feet.
"I am sorry," he drawls, thick with sarcasm. "What was the question, Brother?"
Kronos just grins. He doesn't bother to ask again. Just the same, when they are alone together, later, Methos gives Kronos the answer he's been waiting for, and it is a most definitive "yes."
~~the end~~