Author's Note: Drabble inspired by Parda's "Changed Utterly." Seriously, Parda's story is brilliant. I've read a lot of fanfic over the years and this masterpiece might just be the best I've seen.
All the Blood in Neptune's Ocean
(A Highlander Fic)
As a child, Duncan was many things; quick and clever, headstrong and brave, articulate in the presence of all save Debra Campbell. At the age of thirteen he had already decided how the world worked and had efficiently divided it into two halves: good and evil. This was the way of the world: there is both darkness and light. Good must always triumph over evil. The strong must always protect the weak and the warriors must always defeat those who would prey upon the helpless.
There was no room for moral ambiguity. There were only good men, bad men, and justice dealt with at the point of a sword. The universe was made up of two colors: black and white. There was no gray. Gray could only exist in the absence of black and white. There was no such place. The universe thrived on darkness and light. Without the two there would be nothing.
For the longest time this was how Duncan saw the world. Duncan MacLeod of the clan MacLeod was a warrior of virtue; he judged others worthy to die. For the longest time he accepted that as his fate. To live he must kill. He killed those who deserved to die. By judging others he made himself God, for only God is without sin. He alone is allowed to pass judgment over His creations. Duncan MacLeod becomes God every time he kills. He is a murderer who has struck down friends and lovers as discriminately as he's destroyed his enemies.
Duncan MacLeod is not God; he is the Betrayer. He is Death, and he will always be alone.
He did not always think so. When Duncan had been but a lad with a child's dream he'd imagined the world to suit his own needs. He was a chieftain's son. It was not his destiny to be alone. He would lead his clan to many glorious victories. He would be a fine warrior, one with a stout heart and a powerful blade. He would have many strong sons and vivacious daughters. And Debra - beautiful, beautiful Debra – she would be his forever, and he would never be alone.
How could Duncan have known that Debra would never reach her twentieth birthday? How could he have known that his father would disown him and his clan cast him out? How could a child's mind conceive infertility, and Immortality? How could he conceive of a life beyond death, a life surrounded by headless bodies?
Duncan MacLeod has no clan. The name he's borne for over four centuries is a lie. He is a Foundling, as all Immortals are. He has no mother, no father, no ties to anyone. He has nothing, and he is utterly alone.
Perhaps that is his true fate. He destroys everyone around him. The ghosts circle him. Everyone he's ever loved, everyone he's ever killed. Each one is an ache inside him, a remainder of what he is. The pain tells him he's still alive. Duncan knows that he is a monster. Only a monster destroys those who love him.
The clock reads 7:30. It is May 24th. Richie would have been twenty-six next September.
"Will you put out that bloody fire? We're in the middle of a heat wave." Methos enters the barge without invitation, as he is prone to do.
Duncan's cold.
"Do you know what day it is?" Duncan asks.
Methos knows. He chooses his next words carefully, but also bluntly. "What happened to Richie wasn't your fault. It was an accident."
Duncan almost smiles. He's told himself that every day for the last three years. Innocence is relative; truth is a matter of perception. Duncan killed Richie. The reasons are not important. The action is what matters. A judge condemns the crime; he never considers the reasons why.
Richie's gone. He died by Duncan's hand. That is the only truth that matters.
"What's done is done, MacLeod."
Does that finality make the act any less real? Duncan is a murderer.
Methos doesn't understand. "You need to move on," he says. Impossible. The murder of a son is unforgivable.
"You'll lose your head if you don't."
What has he to live for? He is Death.
"Dammit, MacLeod. Snap out of it!" He grabs Duncan by the labels and shakes him.
He can't. All he is - is gone.
"Leave me alone, Methos," Duncan whispers, his voice dull and passionless.
""Not until you listen. Richie's dead, you're still alive."
Duncan doesn't feel alive. He's dead inside. His life ended when he took Richie's head.
"I killed him," Duncan mutters.
"Ahriman killed him. He used you, do you understand? It wasn't your fault."
Oh, but it was. Duncan never would have raised a hand against his student unless he desired it. There can be only one. That is the rule. It is the code that all Immortals live by. The knowledge is embedded so deeply into their psyche it has become instinct. To live one must kill. A Quickening is power. It is a sacrament felt only through murder. Built into every Immortal is the desire to kill, the desire to gain power.
Power is gained through the deaths of the weak. The strong overpower the feeble to become stronger. The teacher must always lust for the head of his pupil.
Duncan remembers clearly, in the throes of the Dark Quickening, raising a blade to Richie's neck.
"Just tell me why," Richie had begged, desperate to understand a father's betrayal.
Why? Because he could. That is what it all comes down to. Duncan kills because he can.
"Richie's dead," Duncan informs Methos, in case he's forgotten. "He trusted me and I slaughtered him."
"It's done, MacLeod. You can't undo it."
The reality of this has haunted Duncan for three years.
"What would you have me do, Methos?" asks Duncan, furious. "Forget Richie like he was nothing?"
"No, MacLeod, remember him, but do not mourn him. Don't die for a memory."
"My memories are all I have left." That, and a box filled with photographs, and a treasured, leather glove.
"You have your life."
The sentence, trite and cliché, escapes Duncan's mouth before he can stop it, "There is more to life than just living."
"You don't think I know that?" Methos snaps. Duncan wonders why the ancient Immortal is suddenly angry. "You think you're the only one who's ever lost someone? You think you're the only one who feels?"
Duncan beholds him. Pale horse, pale rider. Death. Death on a horse.
"Do you think you're the only one of our kind to kill a friend?"
Duncan remembers Warren Cochrane and knows that is not so. Duncan's Hell is not private, but that doesn't make the pain any easier to bear.
"I killed Silas," Methos continues. "I allowed you to kill Kronos. I can't even use the excuse that I was delusional, or under the influence of a Dark Quickening, or a – a Zoroastrian demon. They were my brothers for over a thousand years, and I killed them," he finishes with an almost childlike wonder in his words. "I killed them."
Duncan knows that voice. It is the voice of a man who hates himself. He looks into Methos's eyes and sees five thousand years of hidden knowledge and bitter regrets. He knows that he is not the only one to feel pain.
But Silas and Kronos aren't Richie. Methos cannot know what it feels like to have inside him a friend who trusted him beyond anything, a friend who loved him and was loyal to him even as the sword cut across his neck.
Methos cannot have a son in him. He cannot know what it feels like to sacrifice a son.
He cannot have in him one who spent his youth telling his teacher of his hopes and dreams. Dreams so similar to Duncan's, dreams that had been shattered irrevocably by the end of mortality and the harsh reality that death is not always an absolute certainty.
Duncan dreamed his own dreams once. Now he dreams the dreams of the ones he's killed. In life, Richie had many dreams. He had dreamed of a wife in much the same way a young Duncan had dreamed of Debra. He had dreamed of children, of a family Duncan knew he would never have. More than anything Richie had dreamed of a life without swords and monsters that wore the face of friends.
With the blinking of his eyes, Duncan remembers Richie's earnest desire to see Kamir's India. Duncan had promised to take him there one day. With an ancient pain, Duncan remembers he also vowed to race spaceships with him come the year 2396. So many of Duncan's promises were like that, empty and worthless.
Kassim had been right. Duncan has no honor. He is a coward, and a liar; murderer, his mind screams, first and foremost, Richie-killer.
Duncan is more than that. Richie is a part of him. His face, his memories, his soul is in Duncan.
And it's killing the Highlander to have such goodness rotting inside of him.
He has wandered for over a year. His wandering has brought him back here, to Paris, to his barge. Duncan can't live without his ghosts. So many of his loves died in this city, so many of his enemies were slaughtered in this place. The years have not been kind to Duncan. So much death… Duncan thinks he'll soon retch from the pain of it.
Perhaps he shall leave again, but where can he go? The Highlands hold no peace for him. There is too much blood on his hands. How can Duncan possibly return to the land of his birth, kneel before his parents' grave, and honor them? What can he possibly say to their remains?
All of Duncan's life has been a search for peace. An elusive peace he has not felt since before Robert's death at his hands, a peace he had experienced all too briefly in Tessa's arms before being so carelessly lost to a junkie's bullet.
Duncan knows the dead feel nothing. Yet, he wonders; if that is true, why do his hands still stubbornly clasp together in prayer?
Deep in his heart, Duncan is ashamed, and he knows that if his parents still lived they would sense it, too. Duncan feels so very dirty next to the holiness of the dead. It astounds him that, with all the ones he's killed, this feeling of filth only came to him after he took Richie's head.
He is a stealer of souls, an ender of lives.
He is evil.
When Duncan cries, Methos is silent. He now knows the pointlessness of comforting a man beyond absolution, beyond the price of forgiveness.
Duncan's cold.