For Those Who Served at the Battle of the Line

by Lucillia

When the President of Earth put out a call for volunteers for a final stand at the end of the Earth-Mimbari war, not all of those who answered that call were as young as they appeared.

2. Methos

Unlike those who were too young or too involved in their petty little lives, Methos remembers the Mimbari.

A number of them had come with the false angels who'd set up camp somewhere on Earth back during the Middle Ages. He didn't know where they'd based themselves, but knew that they'd based themselves somewhere. During the few short years that that small number of Mimbari had been on Earth doing whatever the hell it was they had been doing, they had stuck to the shadows and more isolated areas, remaining under heavy cloaks every time they came near any humans after the first hue and cry of "Demon!" had killed two of their small number.

The reason he knew of this himself despite the fact that the creatures had been trying to and had mostly managed to keep a low profile had been because he'd had nowhere in particular to be back then, and had followed the strange beings out of curiosity.

Once again, a number of their kind had been killed by mistake. And, instead of brushing it off as one of the vagaries of traveling amongst a primitive species that didn't know any better like they had the last time, they came back swinging like that ex-military neighborhood watch guy with the arsenal in his garage had when that particularly clannish immortal from the backwoods who'd decided to move to the suburbs had sent him home with an assfull of buckshot.

Despite the fact that he usually valued his own skin more than anything else, he was amongst the first to sign up when the call came. Aside from the complications it would cause in The Game if every other human being suddenly vanished taking the cover they provided with them, Earth was his home, and if it was destroyed, there would be no beer to drink nor any bars to drink it in.

Ten years later, as he watched a number of Mimbari wander past him in the Zocalo aboard Babylon5, he could honestly say that there were no hard feelings despite the fact that he'd nearly had his ship shot out from under him. The Earth was still there, and there was still beer to drink and bars to drink it in, and many of the wars he'd found himself caught up in despite his best efforts over the long millennia he'd been alive had been started over much less.