He calls you friend, but in your mind are words from dusty Chronicles of past Watchers. One, who you've found less dry than most, once wrote: We are to them as passing shadows.

You wonder if he would agree with it. How long has he lived? Five thousand, as he claims? Less? More? Long enough that sixty years is a paltry number left behind long ago.

He is good at making you forget that, though. He is not as rooted as other Immortals who cling to this or that from their past – Mac his name, Darius his faith, Amanda her trade. Even Kalas had his revenge and Kronos his legacy.

Or perhaps, sometimes you half wonder, that which he claims is so vast you cannot see it. What does a man older than human history claim as his?

When you were younger, you would stretch above a lamp and make dog and rabbit and crocodile shadow puppets on the ceiling to amuse yourself. You wonder if that's just what he's doing – entertaining himself by interacting with the shadows that flicker across his walls, pretending that this silhouette is a human and that there a country. Do any of them last long enough to grow an attachment to?

You've seen him take on so many shapes – doctor, lawyer, protector, sycophant, student, lover, idealist, cynic, killer – that you can almost imagine the real him standing in front of a fire, twisting his arms and contorting himself to throw sharp shadows dancing through time. Perhaps the fire is in the past, an ancient campfire from his birthplace; perhaps it's in the future, the burning remains of a civilization Methos has helped destroy.

How does a man survive five thousand years? It's a secret that you, as mortal as you are, will never know. You have your own shadows creeping up on you, doctors grim as they point them out on your scans. One way or another, shadow is soon all you will be.