With Friends Like These

"Old friends are the worst. They claim the more of your soul."

~ The Valkyrie ~

~*~

"But you had to know Kronos would come for you one day."

"I tried not to think about it."

"You could have killed him. Why didn't you?"

"I wanted to! But we were brothers – in arms, in blood, in everything except birth and if I judged him worthy to die, then I judged myself the same way. And I wanted to live. I still do."

~ Revelation 6:8 ~

Guilt is a funny thing.

You never know when it will corner you and strike – like a serpent hidden in the grass beneath your feet. I thought I had stomped it out. I had, in fact, and it left me alone for nearly a thousand years. And then I met MacLeod. Funny how one man's guilt can poison another. MacLeod is always tussling with one or another of his moral dilemmas. Kill an old lover. Kill a friend. Betray one for the other. The boy scout's heartfelt struggles have given me more than a few laughs.

And myself?

I never had any morals. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say I've had too many and so can pick and choose among them at will. In that respect, I may be the only truly amoral man alive. At least I like to think so. I certainly like Mac to think so. And really, how can anyone who's lived as long as I have take concepts like right and wrong seriously? What is right? What is honor? What is justice? Pick a century – I will tell you. And you will not believe my words. Just as MacLeod would not believe them – would not hear them. Or could not, perhaps?

"What are you going to tell me, Methos? That's how the world was!'"

I'll never admit to him how much his words angered me. I knew it was what he would think, which is why I never shared with him the unpleasant details of my past. I knew he would never understand. How could he? The world MacLeod was born into was by no means an Eden – but there were codes, rules, morals – more contemporary than some might think. There was chivalry – to my dismay. But at least there was some sense of the human, of life having intrinsic worth and dignity. He can't understand what it was like before such concepts existed, when human life had no value beyond the price paid for a slave. He can't comprehend it. Perhaps that's why I like him so much – why I trust him more than any immortal I've ever known – because he can't understand me or the times in which I've lived. But that's also why he infuriates me to no end. Yes, dammit! That is how the world was – it was harsh and cruel. The only law was that of survival – the animal will. And I'm an expert in the art. How does he imagine I survived this long? By being good? By being honorable? I only survived this long because I am not good, because I have no honor, and because I live by one principle alone – survival, above all else. It is the one great maxim I still cling to with religious fervor. And so I've rarely felt guilt for anything I've done to preserve my own life.

Rarely, I said, not never.

After the deaths of my brothers I told MacLeod I had a thousand regrets and that was no lie. But what I failed to tell him was that most of those regrets are small – asides to a long life largely free of second guessing. I do not and will never regret the fact that I am alive. But that doesn't mean I don't feel a bit guilty from time to time. Just a bit, mind you.

For you see, morality is not necessary for loyalty or love to exist. And the truth of the matter is I felt guilt when I betrayed them – Silas, Caspian, Kronos. They were my friends, my brothers, my companions for a thousand years. MacLeod can't even begin to imagine what it's like to call someone friend for that long. Few immortals can. And I loved them. I loved them all – even when I hated them, too. And that is also something Mac will never understand.

But in the end I let them die. More than that – I orchestrated their deaths so that I could live. I breathed a sigh of relief when MacLeod killed Caspian and I justified it with the surety that I had never really liked Caspian at all. Loved him as a brother, perhaps, but never liked, and if ever across our centuries together I had to lose one, I would gladly have sacrificed Caspian over the others. He was Kronos' pet – a madman to the depths of his rotten soul. Even in the ancient world Caspian's penchant for torture and feasting on his enemies was off putting – particularly when those enemies were still alive when he began carving their flesh. Yes, it was easy to brush Caspian aside and it may be that I felt no guilt whatsoever at his passing.

Silas was more difficult to justify because I killed him with my own hands. 'You don't know anything about me!' I said when I raised my sword against him. And he didn't. Not really. But he was mine, you understand. I found the great oaf. I taught him. I formed him into an instrument of death. And now I imagine what he might have been had I never crossed his path – a shepherd, a farmer, perhaps? He loved animals and was tenderer with them than with any woman he took to his bed. I turned him into a monster, and I slew him just the same. A perfect circle, really. But I liked Silas, or, at least, I liked the gentle, simple man I knew him to be when his axe was not in his hands. But he had to die – and so I killed him. I feel guilt for that, but I would do it again. I would do it again a thousand times over. I feel guilt for his death – but I do not regret it.

Kronos is another matter entirely. I called them all 'brother' but Kronos was the first and only man I ever held so in my heart. I called him brother. I remember the day, the moment perfectly, but I can't recall what language I spoke. All I remember is the Greek 'adelphos' though surely that was not the word I used then. We had not set foot on the Balkan Peninsula and the great city states were yet to be born. We were somewhere to the east – or north, perhaps? The details don't matter. What matters is what the word meant to me.

My brother.

His hand was slick with blood and his face – like mine – was painted for war. I called him brother and we laughed. We laughed at the death all around us, the destruction we wrought. We rejoiced in knowing it would never end, that our reign of terror would go on as long as we ourselves did – forever – if we desired. And so for a thousand years across three continents my brother rode and fought and killed beside me.

A thousand years – and then I woke up.

MacLeod probably fantasizes that I had a change of heart, that I was finally touched by some burden of guilt for my crimes and wished to redeem myself of my past life. The truth will be a disappointment – and the truth is – I grew bored. The world was changing all around me. Villages were slowly replaced by walled cities and those cities grew into empires. Even the stars had wandered across the sky, but I, I remained unchanged. Time had simply passed me by. The old world was dying all around me and I wanted to live in the new one rising from its ashes.

So I betrayed him – Kronos, that is – for the first time.

I had no choice. He would never have let me go. I was his right arm, the one who planned his raids. I was his instrument of terror. I was too valuable an asset to set free. So I poisoned his wine. I remember the look of surprise on his face before he crumpled to the ground. I should have ended it then, cut off his head and been done with it, but I couldn't. I'm not sure why. But whatever the reason, instead of ending his life I abandoned him and ran.

MacLeod will never understand my decision to let him live. How could he? A thousand years is a long time to call someone friend – to rape and pillage and burn with another. And though at the time I wished more than anything to leave the past behind, I could not kill Kronos for clinging to the old ways, nor could I justify his murder by drawing up an account of his crimes. His crimes, after all, were my crimes. His past was my own. I wanted freedom, but I could not be his judge and executioner.

So I ran. And for the next two and a half thousand years I waited for him to find me. And he did, as I always knew he would. He was my brother, after all. But we were not so alike as Kronos claimed. I knew him better than anyone, of course, and he knew me – to a degree – but I was always the cleverer. That's why he needed me while I could abandon him. That's why he knew I would betray him again but could not see the dagger until it was planted firmly in his back.

Kronos knew I had killed him in that brief moment before his death. Or more rightly, he knew that I was the auteur of his destruction. MacLeod, himself, had done the honors, just as I knew he would. The plan was perfect, as my plans always are. MacLeod killed my brother, and I was free at last.

I told MacLeod later that I had wanted to kill Kronos myself and maybe that is true. I believed so when I said it. But what I did not tell him was that I felt guilt for betraying Kronos. Despite the terrible things we'd done together and the crimes he'd committed since – Kronos was my brother and there was a time when we were one. I felt guilt for betraying him … and more. Part of me believed I should have died with him, been judged as he was judged. Just a small part, mind you, the greater part is happy to be alive.

And so I sit here untethered, the past now laid to rest. I should be comforted by that fact but instead I feel more alone than ever. In the months before my dark past decided to return to me I had begun to trust MacLeod, care about him even. I had on more than one occasion come close to thinking of him as my brother – a young, immature and utterly annoying brother, true – but a brother just the same. And now I am alone again. My oldest friends in the world are dead and the closest friend I have had in the last two thousand years walked away from me. And again I feel guilt and a small sliver of shame – for letting Mac down, for once again failing to live up to the ridiculous expectations he has of The World's Oldest Immortal. But what I told Joe is as true now as it was two years ago – I'm just a guy. I've made mistakes – more than I can count and greater than I can measure. I'm no Buddha, no Einstein, no Jesus Christ. I'm just a guy. A guy who fears he may have lost the best friend he's ever known. A guy who regrets that, too.

A/N: A little musing from Methos's POV. Nothing new, really. Just an exercise in character study in an attempt to cure my writer's block.