Gwion's Riddle
By Taz (aka Quisp)
I was in many shapes before I was released:
###
Methos had waited as long as he dared, and then slipped as close as possible without letting either MacLeod or Kristin sense him crouching in the shadow of the pavilion. There were four of pavilions plotting the corners of the water garden. One side was a full length lap pool, but each pavilion covered its own round pool, harbored its own chairs and table. Kristin must have been entertaining just before they had arrived. There was a bottle of wine and two glasses on the table.
He could hear MacLeod raging.
"…you tried to kill him, like you did me years ago!"
"No," Kirsten said. "I could never hurt you. I love you. How could you think me such a monster?"
"Because you are." MacLeod sounded stunned. He was staring at Kristin as if he had never seen her before.
You knew she wasn't right; now you see what she is…
Kristin said, "I was hurt when I attacked you before! I could never hurt her! Or you…!"
Her! Who was she talking about? Louise Barton? Was Kristin Gilles caught in a memory loop of a woman whom she had drugged and drowned three hundred years ago, or…
No! There were two wine glasses!
Methos ran. MacLeod caught up with him. They were in time to save Maria's life. Barely.
"Stay with her," MacLeod had said, and left Methos to call 911.
Kristin had run toward the beach, away from the lights, and people…
###
I was a word in letters, a book in origin;
###
"How do you know who you are?" MacLeod said, out of the drowsy blue.
"I refer to my notes," Methos said. "Many notes. Many volumes." He turned a page of the book he was reading, and cocked a professionally skeptical eye on the man beside him. Prone, cheek compressed on stacked hands, a half-lidded eye…it didn't take much to diagnose post coital brooding. "Do I dare hope that was a rhetorical question?"
MacLeod didn't reply.
"Are you going to talk to me, or not?" From where he was sitting against the pillows, Methos had a particularly fine view of the geography on offer, although, having mapped the terrain pretty thoroughly twice already, he was a bit surprised to feel himself responding to it.
"I'm trying to imagine who I would be if I forgot my family, my clan, or my…"
Save the mark!Methos dog-earred the corner of his page, dropped Being and Nothingness back on the nightstand, and clicked off the lamp.
River reflected lights through the porthole dappled the bulkheads and MacLeod's shoulders with yellow, amber and brown rosettes, turning the man into a gorgeous animal that somewhere along the line had been infected with an unhealthy amount of earnestness.
That last opinion—he had his suspicions as to the source of the infection—Methos was keeping to himself. For now, pressing the breath out of the man was one way of keeping him in the moment. He climbed atop Mt. MacLeod and humped and squirmed, assisted by the wake of a passing boat, until he'd worked his way into the tight cleft in the rocks, and was prodding the magic portal. Knock. Knock. Here it is, if you want it…
MacLeod wanted it. He wanted it like the first sin after confession. Had wanted it since the moment Understanding had bashed him over the head with a truncheon and followed up with a coy flutter of eyelashes and a shyly blushing cheek. (Abashed, he'd looked away, and missed the wicked green gleam that should have warned him.) Had wanted it so badly that, as they were walking along the grass of the embankment prattling of irrelevancies, he hadn't been able to meet Methos's eyes with any conviction, certain that Methos would know he had an erection.
Methos had known, and been charmed to the cockles of his cynical old soul, and had proceeded to tune him up and play him like a lute up until the moment of Kalas's arrest.
The jar of petroleum jelly was discovered between the headboard and the mattress, and the pressure cap, god's gift to lovers, went skittering across the sheets. Methos dipped deep, and applied friendly persuasion to what had to be slightly sore, suspicious muscles, encouraging them to loosen up one more time. He didn't mind investing the effort; after all, the other end might eventually absorb the metaphor. When the bannock was sufficiently buttered, he hoisted MacLeod's hips, angled himself, and thrust. As he worked his way home MacLeod quivered, whimpering a little unconsciously, but it wasn't long before he was groaning for other reasons.
Afterwards, they lay tangled together in a boneless heap. MacLeod, sleepy as he was, had a goofy grin, on his face. "What was that?" he said.
"Me having carnal knowledge of your tail," Methos said.
There was nothing as satisfying, he reflected, as breaking a mount with your own hands.
###
I was a bubble in beer, I was a drop in a shower;
###
The first cutting edge of fall was in the air and all afternoon people come in to the bar, seeking communion.
"Miss Collins weep, Miss Collins mourn,
What made her son, Louis, leave his home?
Angels laid him away…"
The way the words slipped into the music suited Joe's mood. Seemed to suit his patrons', as well, but it had to be the last song. The stage needed clearing for the band performing later.
"Oh, kind friends, now ain't it hard,
To see poor Louis in a new graveyard?
Angels laid him away…"
Over the fading chord, he caught Alexa's rare laugh. He'd noticed she was going back and forth between the bar and the dark corner behind the stage rather often. Joe looked and strained to see past the spotlight to a spare figure sitting alone. There was one duffle bag and a long case with airline tags attached under the table.
"When they heard that Louis was dead,
All the women folk, they dressed in red.
Angels laid him away…"
A rush of adrenalin rattled his concentration; he nearly bobbled the strings. You'd think, after thirty years on the job, you'd pick up the trick of sensing when one of them was around. In spite of everything he'd seen in thirty years, Methos was a miracle whose Presence should have screamed the moment he walked in. The hell! He was flirting with the help! Some of them should be classified as vermin.
"…laid him six-feet under the clay.
Angels laid him away…"
The last note died away.
"Thank you." Joe acknowledged the applause, swung the Gibson over his shoulder and made his way to the dark corner. It was a rare moment when he was glad for the slow pace that the cane and prosthetic limbs forced on him. Just then, Joe wasn't sure he didn't want to take a head or two, himself. MacLeod had stopped by for lunch earlier in the day, and hadn't said a word about Methos coming to Seacouver, and if Mac didn't know…
"Pierson," he said, achieving the table, "What an unexpected pleasure."
Methos gave a crooked smile. "Buy you a beer?"
Joe signaled to Alexa for one and a refill, and sat the guitar case on a chair.
"I like this place." Methos said. "Reminds me of a joint where I used to hang out—The Blue Ziggurat. They served the best beer in Babylon, if you didn't mind straining the husks through your teeth"
Methos was silent during the short time it took Alexa to set down the bottles and take the empty away.
"You can take off, Honey," Joe said. "See you tomorrow."
"I liked that last song." Methos took a swallow of his beer.
"Best thing about owning the joint," Joe said. "It's my party, and I play what I want; When I want to…"
"Special occasion?"
"Yeah. The Fat Man's dead."
"Who?"
"Jerry Garcia."
"Oh. I hadn't heard." Methos lifted his bottle in salute. "To the Fat Man. Did you ever meet him?"
"Once. When I first got out of the army and was still feeling pretty sorry for myself. I wasn't fit for Watcher training, and I didn't want to go home, so I bummed around the coast. The Dead were just a garage band in those days." He clicked his Sam Adams against Methos' Olympia. "Who knew?"
"Who indeed."
"What was Adam Pierson in the sixties?"
"A gleam in his father's eye. I just got here, Joe."
"Pardon me all to hell for doing my job."
"How do I forget how stubborn you are? If you mean me, I was somebody else."
"Who?"
"Did I do something to deserve the third degree?"
"You nearly gave me a coronary a moment ago." Joe let his anger show. "Is it against your religion to call?"
"It's these new-fangled devices! I mean phones…I can't tell whether I should I make a sacrifice before dialing, or not?"
"That's the coins you put in the slot. Give it up, or I call the Marines."
"Long as you don't call MacLeod." Joe reached for his cane. "Okay! It's not much of a story. I spent the Sixties very quietly in Paris."
"You're right; that's not much of a story."
"That's how I like it."
"I take it McLeod doesn't know you're here."
"Seriously, can we talk about this later?" Methos said. "I'm just a bit jetlagged."
He looked more than jetlagged, Joe thought. He looked stretched thin, as if too many nights without sleep.
"Have you had dinner?"
"No. Can't stand airline food—" Methos interrupted himself with a yawn. "I was thinking I'd order room service when I got to the hotel."
"So you're not staying with MacLeod." Joe noticed Methos avoided his eyes, watching Alexa leave. "Look," he said, "if you can hold out until I close out the drawer, you can come home with me. I'll fix you something and you can tell me all about it."
"If it's not too much trouble."
"No more than usual." Joe hoisted himself to his feet, wondering what kind of a sucker he was being played for. "Don't drop the guitar."
###
I was a path, I was an eagle, I was a coracle in seas;
###
Having delivered himself of the opinion that Kalas would keep Amanda alive only as long as he could use her for bait, MacLeod had subsided into a full-blown brood. He'd kept it up until the phone rang. Thinking it was Kalas—they had all expected it would be being Kalas—he had answered prepared name the time and place. The call had been for Joe. Despite being surprised, MacLeod returned to fretting as soon as Joe had grabbed the receiver. He'd paid no attention when Joe turned his face away from, and then bolted from the barge as soon as he'd hung up.
That had left Methos alone with MacLeod for the first time since Kalas's escape had collided with the Salzer mess. Not exactly how he'd meant to drop back into MacLeod's life, but there you are, and that's immortality, and what the hell had Amanda been thinking, pulling a stunt like that?
Methos crossed his arms on his chest. "You don't write; you don't call," he said, "and now I find out you've been sleeping with another girl."
"What are you talking about?" MacLeod looked up with confusion in his face.
"I'm doing your bit for you," Methos informed him. "We haven't seen each other in six months, but I felt like we had something real going there for a moment."
"I'm sorry." MacLeod sighed. His eyes softened as looked at Methos. "I wondered if you had taken off for good. I didn't blame you; survival first, all things considered."
"All things considered, it wasn't up to me. Kalas had his lawyer come nosing around, and Jacques thought that a temporary assignment in London would be good for organizational security."
"You do appreciate why I'm worried about Amanda."
"No, not entirely. She's a big girl who has survived for centuries without your help."
MacLeod opened his eyes wide. "Are you jealous?"
"No. I just have more confidence in her than you do. Give Amanda a chance to show a little thigh, and a man with a lever long enough—and, you know, it's funny how they all have levers—she'll manage to pull through. And, for future reference, just on the off-chance, I have no aversion to threesomes…" Methos looked as if he were thinking back. "Or moresomes."
"I'll bear that in mind." The corner of MacLeod's mouth quirked. "For now, I think we should focus on the problem at hand."
"Why not? We have so little to say, and so much time in which to say it in… And oh, wait. No, we don't! One of us, preferably you, needs to keep his mind on taking Kalas apart."
"One of us already tried." MacLeod let a little honest disgust be evident, and Methos laughed.
"I've heard of jumping the queue, but that was…"
"Ridiculous. I know."
"I was actually going to say bizarre."
He didn't bother looking at the shelf where MacLeod's CD player sat. A tiny gold stud lay there, suspiciously similar to the one Amanda had been wearing in her nose. If she was marking territory, it was hardly because she saw Adam Pierson as a rival, or as threat, either to her or to MacLeod. That left one wondering for whose benefit a cat burglar acts like a cat. Not for the mice.
It wasn't something he intended to draw MacLeod's attention to, but, assuming they all survived without the database getting out, and them all having to scamper like bunnies, he intended to do some digging. Just at that moment, though, he needed MacLeod with his head out his ass.
"Every now and then," the man was maundering, "she'll turn over a new leaf. She said that after everything I've done for her that it was her turn to do me a favor."
"And where, oh, where," Methos opined, "would we be without our friends? Speaking of our friends, you did notice that Joe just ran out of here to intercept Christine Salzer, didn't you?"
"Maybe he thinks he can get through to her, without your help this time."
"Since he took a gun with him; I don't think that's likely," Methos said. "I think he gone to kill her."
"Hell!" MacLeod was on his feet.
###
I was a string in a harp enchanted for nine years;
###
An hour-and-a-half later, Joe slapped a mug of coffee on the kitchen table, and didn't particularly care if it slopped, or not. Having watched Methos polish off a three-cheese omelet without saying a word to the point, he was getting royally pissed.
"Talk to me!" he said. "We both know you're a mean motorcycle, and two dozen different kinds of cool, but, just out of curiosity, where does the Chapter House think you are right now?"
"In Connecticut." Methos' lips spread in a smile. "There's a manuscript at the Bieneke that might relate to the Methos Project."
"Does it?"
"I said might."
"What happens if they want a full report?"
"Written, before I left…" Methos stretched, working some kinks out of his shoulders. "A brilliant thesis on how my presence in Britain is confirmed in the fourth century by the diffusion of certain folk tales…."
"Were you even in Britain in the fourth century?"
"Could have been. When you compare the Egyptian cult figure of Hermes Trimegisthus to Merlin, it seems…"
"Cut the crap."
Methos made wounded doe eyes at him. "It'll make a great book."
"I said, cut the crap, and tell me what you're doing here. Or I'll kick your ass out the door. I might do it anyway, since it's starting to rain."
"Kristin Gilles opened a branch of her agency here in Seacouver last month."
Joe recalled the name. The information had been in the most recent Watcher's advisory. He answered his own question: "You think she's here for MacLeod!"
"I know that she is." Methos took a sip of coffee, and grimaced. "Sugar?"
"Green canister." Joe pointed, and Methos went to root through the cupboard over the coffeepot. "Even if she's here for Mac, what makes it any of your business?"
"Nothing. Nothing whatsoever," Methos said, pulling a box of Meow Mix out of the cupboard. "I didn't know you had a cat."
"I don't." Methos put the box away without further comment. "What about Gilles?" Joe prompted.
"She's been taking care of a lot of old business." Methos turned around with a teal colored tea tin in his hand, and leaned against the counter.
"Why?"
"Because 'there can be only one'" Methos reminded him, "And old lovers are easy prey." He shook his head at Joe's expression. "What? You don't expect a woman to be that calculating?"
"I don't…that's cold!"
"I have news for you; given a fair shot, the female of the species is deadlier than the male. At least that's how I place my bets in the chapter-house pools, and so far I've come out ahead."
"MacLeod gets short odds, but I still wouldn't bet against him."
"That's because you're his biggest fan."
"Let me guess, you have a piece of the action on yourself."
"Of course I do. I get great odds," Methos said. "I just haven't figured out how I'm going to collect."
"Were you always so fucking cynical?"
"Yes," The lid on the tea tin popped. Methos inspected the contents. "Joe…?" he said, looking up. "You are so busted!"
"What are you…?" Joe realized what had happened. "That's the wrong tin!"
"Oh, it looks like the right one to me!" Methos grinned. They both started laughing. Methos got the got the hiccups, slid down the front of the cabinet, and lay sprawled on the floor.
"Hey," Joe gave him a poke with his cane. "You want some, or not?"
"Think it'll help with jet-lag?"
"No," Joe said. "But, I guarantee, it will send you to the moon."
"Methos got up on his hands and knees, crawled over to his chair and used it to pull himself up. His eyes were darker than usual. "Can I, please, stay here tonight?"
"Hell. Why not?" Joe said. He'd already put fresh towels in the bathroom and an extra blanket on the bed in the spare room.
"I was wondering when you were going to offer." Methos yawned.
"Give me that, and go take a shower."
###
I was a spark in a flame; I was wood in a bonfire;
###
"Try it," Methos said.
"Let there be light." MacLeod flipped the switch, andfluorescent tubes flickered to life. "And God saw the light, and it was good."
"Hand me the cover, and spare me King James," Methos said.
MacLeod handed up the cover plate. Methos fit it into the ceiling fixture, and tightened the screws. Then he leaned over, dropped the screwdriver into the toolbox that was open on the floor below. From the top of the ladder, he surveyed the rest of the room in disgust.
"Are you going come down?" MacLeod shook the ladder.
"No. If I do I'll have to deal with you, as well as this mess," Methos said.
He had just begun to move back into his old apartment, when Christine Salzer had called up raving. That had led to a week of frantic damage control, before a seemingly freak power surge had solved their problem by frying every electrical apparatus, appliance, and power point, within a ten block radius of the Eiffel Tower. That night, celebrating with Champaign, not one of them had thought beyond the relief of Kalas's death to the next morning when the frantic run on electronic stores, electrical supplies, and lighting fixtures, had begun.
That had been four days ago. Since then, try getting an electrician on the phone, much less finding a light bulb. The only things he'd had the opportunity to organize were rolls grey-market electrical wire, replacement outlets, light fixtures, and the two fluorescent tubes that MacLeod had managed to scrounge from Maurice, and God knew from where Maurice had scrounged them.
"Boxes, boxes everywhere," Methos said. "I've tripped over every one of them. Someone owes me for this."
"That would be you," MacLeod said, looking upward. When Methos didn't answer, he began to recite, "While Titian was mixing rose madder, his model posed nude on a ladder, the position to Titian suggested coition… I could come up there, and we could…"
"Wouldn't you be a bit embarrassed if 'broke neck fucking on a ladder' wound up being recorded in your chronicle?"
"No," MacLeod said, and gave the ladder another, harder, shake.
"I can climb down on my own." But when Methos's feet hit the floor, and he turned around, and he was trapped between MacLeod in front of him and the ladder behind him. MacLeod picked him up and parked him on a convenient rung. Convenient for MacLeod. "If I'd known you were going to be this randy," Methos said. "I'd have flown to Seacouver with Joe…"
MacLeod had been fizzing with so much sexual energy since taking Kalas's head that Joe had fled home, saying that he was having some seriously disturbing dreams. Amanda had had broken and run two days later. That had left Methos to take the brunt, so to speak.
"Hey! Wasn't me who developed an interactive data base with enough confidential info on it to end the world as we know it." MacLeod paused to nibbled Methos's ear. Then he added, "Are you're sure there's no other copy, anywhere?"
"Don't you think I'd know if there was?" Methos tilted his head back, successfully redirecting MacLeod's attentions. "It wasn't my girlfriend who… a little lower, please…who broke Kalas out of prison… In any event, it was me who had the key to the radio room under the Eiffel Tower, and who knew how to rig the cables so that power surge actually did some good?"
"How…" MacLeod was working his way down, down... "Did you happen to have that key, anyway?"
"I've had it since 1941. You never know when something like that will come in useful. Oh, dear god! Look at me!"
"What?" MacLeod looked up. Which was what Methos had intended. What, he wondered, made that broad lower lip so delectable…? Ah, yes. Rahat Lokum. That was it.Turkish delight. The old fashioned kind flavored with rose water and orange peel. It was so soft, and yet so firm that you couldn't help wanting to sink your teeth into it. When he could bring himself to take a break, Methos said, "I'll send the bill to Amanda."
"She won't pay it."
"It's the principle of the thing… Where has she gotten herself to, by the way?"
"She has work to do on her apartment, as well. She left a message saying she had a line on a new television set, a new stereo, an answering machine… And an electrician…"
"All in perfect working condition…especially the electrician."
"I'm sure…"
"Just slightly dinged from falling off the back of a lorry."
Something like that. She also mentioned a pair of matching lamps with Galle shades. I didn't enquire too closely."
"Wise of you…."
"Are you coming home with me?" MacLeod said. The barge near Notre Dame had been outside the affected area.
"I suppose I could," Methos said. "Or you could help me put the bed together here."
###
I was a bridge that stretched across sixty estuaries;
###
While Methos showered, Joe wreathed himself in a cloud of acrid smoke, made a few phone calls, and browsed 600 years of a life that spoke of little but unsatisfied hunger.
Kristin Gilles was greedy and impulsive—strange the gentle Grace Chandler had been her first teacher. Immortals with so little self-control rarely survived as long as she had, but she'd managed by exploiting her beauty, befriending the powerful, and by limiting her stalking to easy prey: young immortals of both sexes.
Joe clicked the left mouse button.
Methos was right, analyze her kills over the last ten years, and a pattern emerged. In addition to 12 youngsters who hadn't survived their fist death by more than 20 years, there was Zoe D'Alamonti: b. 128-?: d. Vienna 1978. Click! Torbin Reims: b. 1463, d. The Hague 1966. Click! Paul Kantorski: b. 1503, d. Danzig 1982. Click! Timothy Keller: b. 783, d. 1995. Click!
All four had been old lovers of Kristin Gilles: wealthy, powerful, and very skilled, particularly Keller, who had been beheaded in Dublin last year. An investment banker, and longtime patron of the arts, who had once been king in Munster—Keallach MacKeihin—they didn't come much tougher than that.
Among the still living with a verified relationship with Gilles were Amanda Darrieux, Franco Campanile, and Duncan MacLeod.
Joe's last click brought him back to the picture of Kristin herself. There was no doubt that she was beautiful. It was a tense modern beauty, as well. Often immortals were so completely of their time that you took on look and said 'he was a Roman senator,' or 'she was a demimondaine at the court of Louis the XVI.' Perhaps Kristin Gilles had the ability to recreate herself, or this was simply her time. Joe closed his eyes. There was no way MacLeod would kill her in cold blood.
"You all right?" Methos had arrived barefoot and silently. He was wearing only a pair of soft gray sweat pants. The loose coats and sweaters that he favored disguised a surprisingly well-knit body. He flopped on the sofa and gave a pointed sniff.
"Here," Joe handed him the joint, "breakfast of champions. I've been looking up your dangerous lady."
"What did you find?"
"Headless corpses. Tell me something—are there really fewer female immortals?"
"No," Methos gasped. When he finally let his breath out, he added, "Most of them start at a disadvantage. If they survive, it's because they play smarter, not harder."
"Earlier you said she was here for MacLeod. What put you on to her?"
"An accident. That crap Amanda pitched MacLeod about her reason for breaking Kalas out jail. Then there discrepancies in Millet's reports; things that most Watchers wouldn't have noticed." Joe wasn't particularly surprised to hear that. "Kristin Gilles is here for MacLeod. If he doesn't take her head this time, I'm going to."
"You don't think he will, either."
"La belle dame sans merci hath him in her thrall. He'll never kill someone he's slept with."
That corresponded with Joe's belief, although he didn't say What about you? He only said, "It isn't your policy to get involved."
"So what's a foolish regard for consistency?"
"Why did come to me first, instead of MacLeod?"
"I need your help, of course." Methos took another toke and handed back the joint. He held his breath, and then let it out slowly. "Need help tracking Gilles. No reason for me to be here. Millet's paranoid; impossible to pry reports out her as it is." Veronique Millet was Kristin Gilles' watcher, an intense woman and good at her job.
"You want me to help you murder Kristin Gilles."
"You want to collect on your bets, don't you?"
"Go see if you can find some snacks; I've got the munchies."
Methos unfolded himself and padded off, leaving Joe alone.
By necessity, a watcher learns things about their immortal assignment: how they'll respond to a challenge—run, hide, or fight—about their interests and activities during the long, sometimes life-long and incredibly dull, stretches in between. It takes an obsessive personality to embrace an assignment like that—obsessive was almost the job description—along with 'ability to tolerate long periods of solitude'—a combination that often leads to a perverse sense of intimacy with the assignment. An intimacy that had to be one-sided.
Yet he'd seen it happen: watchers crossing the line, becoming invested in an assignment's survival…even protective. Joe knew because he was as far across that line as any fool had ever been. He lived with it by telling himself that, if there could be only one, it should be Duncan MacLeod—and then Methos had entered the picture.
"Biscuits okay?" Methos was back with a bag of Pecan Sandies.
"If I help you, I get something in exchange."
"Yours, if I've got it." Methos resumed his spot on the sofa, and proceeded to tear into the bag.
"I want access to your chronicles."
"Freely available to any Watcher in good standing."
"Not the smoke you've been blowing up the Society's collective ass for the last God knows how long. Methos, I don't believe in accidents."
"Really?" Methos said, looking pointedly at Joe's legs.
"You're a real asshole, you know."
"You not the first one who's said."
So we pay for our sins.
###
I passed time at dawn, I slept in purple;
###
MacLeod went in to make coffee, while Methos found a clean rag and squatted on the top step to wipe his face.
Beyond the wide porch rain fell like a veil, a soft continuous patter, soothing enough to inspire thoughts of bed and tangled sleepy limbs. Coming down like this, it was easy to fool yourself into thinking of rain as mild, engendering blessing, and not a force more destructive than fire. He remembered it marching across the plains in black waves, accompanied by killing winds and lightning, flooding the ravines and scouring the grasslands bare…
The immediate aroma of coffee brought him back to the here and now.
He rescued his mug as MacLeod hunkered beside him. They sat side-by-side, shoulders touching and Methos wondered why the words that came out of their mouths never managed to communicate as clearly as their bodies did.
Maybe this is what it's like to have children…
You think?
Dear, God, he had raised children—not children of his own, although he had claimed a number—but he had raised children; seen them thrive, seen them die; had known them when they worshiped him…had known them to come for his head. That's what Ryan would do to MacLeod when he had nursed that burning core of resentment long enough, and the overwhelming horror of endless existence drove him to kill the last reminder that he'd ever known anything else.
"If you don't take her head, I will."
"Let's hope it won't come to that." MacLeod put his cup down. "Hand me the rag; you missed a couple of spots."
Rag handed over; Methos closed his eyes and let MacLeod dab away the dots of paint he'd missed: one, two, three… He closed his eyes, breathing MacLeod's breath. Their lips touched. MacLeod must have felt him shiver. Presently MacLeod's coat was around his shoulders and he was enveloped in the taste, and smell of the man—salt, wind and rain—it lead, inevitably, to another passage of arms. When had he become MacLeod's to mount at will?
That evening, they were discussing dinner—eat in or carry-out—when Ryan arrived unannounced. His clothes were a mess, but he was none the worse for having crashed through a window and plunging fifty stories. Fortunately, the pan-handler who had seen him hit the sidewalk, and then get up, had taken it in his drunken stride.
"Round two to Kristin," Methos said. "You dump her! And then you turned your back on her! Talk about the blind leading the visually challenged."
"Thanks a lot," Ryan said.
MacLeod said, "What are you going do?"
"You think she'll come after me?"
"No. I think she'll come after somebody you care about."
"Oh, God!" Something finally penetrated Ryan's reeking self-pity. "I got to go to Maria's. See you guys." A moment later he was gone. Then MacLeod was on his feet. Methos looked around. "Where are you going?"
"Kristin's. You coming?" MacLeod had already scooped up Methos's coat on his way to the elevator. "Don't think you'll want to miss this," he said, as he tossed it.
###
I was sword in hand; I was a shield in battle;
###
"What happened? Millet reported a patch of fused sand on the beach. Not a confirmation of death, but…" Joe was making changes to the Gilles entry in the database.
"MacLeod couldn't take her head. He turned his back, and walked away from her."
Not the head of a woman whom he had been enchanted by, once upon a time.
Fool! Never turn your back on a monster, especially if you loved them. Because the monster, crawling on her hands and knees, spitting poison, in endless pain, screaming hate, was reaching for the sword standing upright in the sand…
Methos had stepped closer and let her feel his Presence. He had seen the confusion on her face when she looked over her shoulder, and realized it wasn't Ryan.
Who are you?
Someone who was born long before the age of chivalry.
He had hoped she wouldn't beg. She didn't. She had looked toward MacLeod, standing with his back to them, safely out of sword's reach, not moving, beyond appeal….
Good for him Methos had thought. Why McLeod didn't turn around—a germ of common sense, at last, or respect for the rules of the Game—hadn't mattered.
Pick it up.
"Give her the one grace note that she chose to fight."
"Not the fairest fight."
"No. But, she could have gone down fighting, or she could have gone down."
"How's MacLeod dealing?"
"It will take him a while to process. He thinks he should be angry, but the truth is he's relieved. That's what he's having a hard time with. We change slowly, Joe, but we do change; at least he hasn't kicked my ass out."
"Ryan?"
"All my fault. Can't the sight of me."
"Speaking of which, those chronicles."
"Right… You read Sumerian, don't you?"
###
I was a snake enchanted in a hill, I was a viper in a lake;
###
"Finish up and let's get going." Joe hung up the phone. "That was Ryan's watcher. Kristin is fully occupied, and won't be leaving anytime soon." Methos looked up, paused in the act of repacking his bag, and raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"Details! I want details!"
"Get your mind out of the gutter, and let's move!"
Methos zipped up his bag, and let Joe hustle him out the door and into the car. As they drove across town to the old industrial building where MacLeod was still kept Charlie DeSalvo's dojo running, Joe said. "Your luck she decided to move indirectly," Joe said.
"That has always been her style. If Ryan survives the experience, I predict he'll find himself very popular with the ladies. What's he like, by the way? I mean your sense of him; I read the reports."
"More trouble than he's worth. At some level he still thinks he's won the lottery, and if he's in trouble MacLeod will bail him out. He hasn't been wrong."
"Will he take a hint?"
"He hasn't so far." Joe pulled the car into an empty loading zone. "You hop out here; MacLeod knows my car. The front entrance is in the middle of the block around the corner." As Methos slammed the door, he called, "Good luck!"
DeSalvo's was open. At least the front door was open. Since MacLeod wasn't entirely daft when it came to security, the freight elevator was keyed and locked. That left Methos no choice but to climb the stairs. He was panting slightly when MacLeod's Presence hit him on the sixth floor landing.
He heard feet moving quickly across the floor, but knocked anyway. When making an unannounced house call on another immortal, one doesn't want to be behind with the little courtesies that can prevent an unexpected beheading.
As MacLeod, taking a measured step back, opened the door, Methos sang out, "Candygram!"
###
I am a wonder whose origin is not known.
I shall be until the Day of Judgment is upon the earth.
Finis