DISCLAIMER: Highlander and its canon characters are the property of Davis/Panzer Productions or a successor corporation; no copyright infringement is intended.
x
Note: This fic assumes the reader is familiar with the HL:TS Ahriman Trilogy: "Archangel," "Avatar," and "Armageddon" - or at least, with "Archangel."
I realize there have been dozens - if not hundreds! - of fanfics written over the years, to provide alternate endings to the Ahriman story. But I don't remember any of their plots, other than the one I myself used in my "Origins" series. So I won't, at least consciously, be cribbing anyone else's ideas. And this telling of the tale is very different from my previous one (in a fic titled "Awakening," with followup references and explanations scattered throughout the rest of the series).
x
x
"Sometimes I think all of us have lost our minds."
Methos pondered that. One minute stretched into two.
Then he asked, "Do you mean you, me, and MacLeod, or the whole world?"
Joe Dawson's response was a shrug.
The two men were standing at a guardrail, looking out at the ocean.
Not the familiar Atlantic or Pacific. The Indian Ocean. Even Methos was seeing it for the first time. And he couldn't help imagining this guardrail - on the southernmost tip of the Malay Peninsula - marked the edge of that possibly-crazy world. What lay beyond, only a limitless expanse of water...
Did MacLeod stand in this very spot, when he first arrived in Johor? Did it strike him this way, too?
Or are we chasing after another false lead...refusing to admit that MacLeod is long-dead?
Right now, they were working up their courage before checking out that lead.
Joe said miserably, "All of this is my fault. If I hadn't practically collapsed in your arms, when we found Mac after he'd killed Richie all those years ago, you could have gone after him! Even if you couldn't have caught up with him before he took off in his car, you could have followed him in mine - I'd left the keys in it. I had my cell phone, I could have called the Watchers for help..."
Methos shook his head. "No. I was as stunned as you were. And I'm sure I wouldn't have left you alone with Richie's body, even if you were urging me to.
"But I should have realized, before I did, that MacLeod was sane - at least then - and the threat from Ahriman was real."
Joe thought about that, then said, "Even if we do find Mac, and he's sane, I don't know how you expect him to be able to read those ancient records the Watchers gave us. Not when you couldn't do it. You're five thousand years old, Mac only four hundred!"
"I'm not sure he'd be able to decipher them," Methos admitted. "But I think there's a good chance he would. For two reasons.
"First, he's always had a gift for mastering languages - and recognizing cognates. If he checked the oldest languages scholars can translate, he might be able to figure out how the words evolved from words in older ones. Sort of reasoning backwards, to make educated guesses about older word meanings.
"Second, he might be able, now, to understand knowledge he received through the previous Champion's Quickening. Knowledge passed from one Champion to the next - even if that hermit didn't really understand it himself.
"And no, I don't think that means he'd someday have to let the next Champion take his head! Hopefully, he'd be able to tell him what he needs to know."
Assuming this planet will still support life. The assholes in power seem hell-bent on destroying it. Courtesy of Ahriman, I'm sure!
He looked at his watch. "Okay, it's noon. Time to get to that restaurant."
He didn't have to add and meet our contact. That was their sole reason for being there.
x
x
x
After MacLeod disappeared, they'd made a bad mistake. He'd asked Methos to take his head; and when Methos refused to do it, he'd walked off without his sword. Still believing he'd had a mental breakdown, they'd thought he'd try to find some other Immortal to kill him. They'd enlisted the Watchers to help in the search for him - hopefully, to prevent his being killed, but at the very least, to report it. All the Watchers were given recent photos - though most were already familiar with Duncan MacLeod.
But there were no reported sightings. None.
Methos and Joe had kept both his barge and his home in Seacouver just as he'd left them, clinging to hope that he might return to one or the other.
Many years later, when the world collapsed into chaos, they'd realized he might not have been insane. At least, not at the outset - though he might have been driven insane by his having been tricked into killing Richie.
And they'd come up with a new idea. After Methos refused to take his head, he might have decided he didn't want to die - wanted instead to survive and suffer, to punish himself for having killed Richie. So how, without a sword, might he have managed to do that?
By so frightening other Immortals that they wouldn't want to take his head?
Might he also have changed his appearance, so they wouldn't know - if it mattered to them - that he was Duncan MacLeod?
Joe had appealed to the Watchers again - this time, asking whether any Immortals they'd been observing had encountered a very strange, scary, possibly unrecognizable Immortal, in 1997 or later.
And they'd hit paydirt.
There were multiple reports of a filthy man with a tangle of hair and beard, clad in rags - surely demented, the Watchers had thought, because he'd been howling like an animal! The Immortals had backed away from him, and the Watchers had never been sure whether he himself was Immortal. But all the reports included this puzzling detail: when the man wasn't howling, he was ranting about something valuable having been stolen from him while he was asleep.
"He must have been thinking of his sword," Methos had told Joe. "Even if he didn't want to use it, he still wanted to have it. And he was so confused that he didn't realize he'd left it with us."
That wasn't encouraging.
And the most recent reports of those encounters were ten years old.
But today, Methos's otherwise unnecessary raincoat was concealing two swords: his and MacLeod's.
x
x
x
Their "contacts," in most cases, were Watchers - so leery of communications in this dangerous era that they insisted on seeing the aging Joe Dawson in person. In the flesh, not on a computer screen!
Methos had never been "outed" as an Immortal. And as he'd hoped, none of the current generation of Watchers remembered the "Adam Pierson" who'd been in Research back in the Nineties. But he still couldn't risk using that name. They were aware a vaguely described Immortal had used the name "Benjamin Adams." So he was now "Dr. Seth Keenan" - a surname meaning "ancient" - Joe's physician and friend, who insisted on accompanying him on these tiring junkets. The Watchers had been told that Joe trusted him completely; he knew all about Immortals, and about them. They had no choice but to accept it.
This case was different. The "contact" was a young man who'd never heard of either Immortals or Watchers...but might be able to confirm, or refute, the eerie tales that had been told about a certain Buddhist monastery.
Might actually have seen a living Duncan MacLeod.
Five minutes after they'd seated themselves in the restaurant, a youth entered, looked around...and headed straight for their table.
Methos quickly got to his feet and offered a handshake. Noting, as he did, that the young man appeared to be of Chinese descent. That fit with what they'd been told: most Malaysian Buddhists were ethnically Chinese.
And most Malaysians, whatever their religion, could understand - and speak, if only as a second language - English. Thankfully, it proved to be true in this case. Methos knew enough Malaysian that he could have muddled through, but he was on much firmer ground with English.
After they'd exchanged introductions and ordered a seafood dinner - which Joe announced he was paying for - the young Malaysian explained that he'd entered that nearby monastery as a novice. He'd heard strange stories about it, and dismissed them. But then he'd seen...something so shocking that he, like a dozen novices before him, had packed his bags and left.
The seafood dinner arrived...and went untouched.
After telling the travelers his story, the youth made it clear that he'd only agreed to do it because they'd said they wanted to help the man they were looking for. Having met them, he was sure of it. And he wouldn't accept any kind of gratuity, beyond the dinner he hadn't eaten! In fact, he gave them a hastily written "introduction" to the lama in charge of the monastery, vouching for their character and good intentions.
He left, and Methos and Joe sat staring at one another for a long minute.
Methos said, "It's a stone's throw from here." He barely recognized his own voice.
Joe nodded. "Yes. We may not like what we find, but..."
When he seemed unable to go on, Methos finished the thought. "For better or worse, we're at the end of our journey."