A Different Immortal: Side Story Chapter 3
By Lotus1974
Anything you recognize belongs to someone else Review please, still need beta
The idea of Methos teacher is from "Changing of the Guard 3: Be All That You Can Be" By Ecolea
Mac tries to think of what could have happened to Adam that he wouldn't understand, and realizes that the only possibility is that this is about Bordeaux. He remembers that the four of them had been brothers for over a thousand years and their deaths had to affect Adam. He looks at him shaking in his arms and tries to find the words to comfort this hurting child in his arms. The words won't come, it is then that Mac realizes he has never been that close to anyone, with the possible exception of the man in his arms. The most frightening realization is that Methos feels that close to him even after the way Mac has been treating him lately. Finally, the words come "It is alright to mourn them Adam, they were very important to you for a very long time, and I only regret that you had to be apart of what happened to them, Adam." Adam buries his head into Mac's chest at those words and shakes harder as he finally lets all of the grief that he has been holding in out.
Joe looks at them and feels relief that Mac is accepting the fact that he needs this mourning period for his lost brothers. Maybe it would help them both to talk about them like he and Adam had last night. "Adam why don't you tell Mac some of the stories that you told me last night, or other ones, I might like to hear some more myself if you wouldn't mind" Mac looks curious and Adam looks at Joe and smiles.
"I won't tell those stories without her permission but there are other stories that you might enjoy, Joe," Adam says with a watery smile from Mac's chest. "Kronos did tell me that even though he knew that she would know where I was that he never once even thought about asking or following her in an effort to find me. He just went the opposite way from her anytime they did cross paths" He tells Joe with a small laugh that Joe joins in on, Mac looks on like an indulgent parent at his two laughing friends.
"A person that could do that I have to meet, maybe she could tell me what to do with two smartarses that are acting much younger than their ages," Mac states with an indulgent smile at the two men he just described.
"I may be able to arrange that, for a price," Adam says with a watery smile up at the Scot, grateful for his change of heart. "I had already promised to introduce her to Joe, sometime, but I don't know when. She is dealing with a situation of her own right now, and would not like unexpected guests, until it has been resolved, even me. I will try to as soon as I can though." Adam relaxes back into Macs comforting embrace, feels Mac hold him a little tighter, and slowly starts to drift off to the sleep that was deigned him last night.
Mac and Joe look at Adam and are pleasantly surprised to find him fast asleep. "Mac, I'm really glad you were able to put the events of Bordeaux in the past and be here for him, or I was going to see if I could arrange for that meeting to come sooner than he would think possible." Joe is smiling at the picture in front of him, an older brother holding and comforting a frightened younger brother, and realized that is exactly what they are in a way. Adam needs someone to make him feel safe and like the child he was when he came into his immortality, much like Adam does for Rachel, he allows her to be the fourteen-year-old girl she was. Joe wonders if he had ever found that before, perhaps with Kronos and the others. "Mac, why don't you take him back into my office and let him sleep on the couch, you can't be very comfortable sitting with him like that. I am glad that you are here for him I don't know when or if he ever has had someone to take care of him like this."
Mac looks down at his sleeping friend, realizing that not many people can see the frightened young man in the aged immortal, and is proud to be one of the very privileged few to know the remarkable man in his arms. He shook his head at Joe "I think that it would probably be best if I just took him with me back to my place, Night Joe" as Mac starts to rearrange his grip to stand up Adam starts to wake and smiling to Joe Mac guides their sleepy friend toward the door and his car. Joe laughs at the sight of Adam rubbing tiredly at his eyes as he and Mac smile at each other as Mac continues to guide Adam back to his car, where he promptly falls back to sleep. Mac smiles fondly at him as he drives home.
Joe decides to close up and head home himself with a smile as he recalls Adam's face as he was guided along like a small child up past bedtime being taken to bed by a loved one. That kind of trust was not easy for any immortal especially Adam, which made this rift all the harder for him knowing that the trust that he put in Mac was not returned must have made him feel foolish for putting his trust so unfailingly in someone that would throw it away so carelessly as Mac had after Bordeaux. Which made tonight all the more important that Adam could still trust Mac so completely at the first sign of caring from the stubborn Scot. Things were finally starting to look up for his two friends. Mac needed to see Adam for the person he is and not for who he wanted or needed him to be, 'just a guy' to quote the man himself, and a young one at that. Joe can't wait until tomorrow to see how things went tonight.
Mac guides Adam to the bed and makes him comfortable; he looks so small curled up on the king size bed. Mac gently pushes the hair back from his sleeping face before leaving the room and sitting down on the couch, realizing once again how young Methos really is and regretting how he has been treating him. He of all people should have remembered that on some level Immortals stay the same age they were when they came into their immortality and for Methos that is only a few years older than Richie was. Mac decides to get some rest while resolving to start treating him as a much younger brother instead of expecting him to be, if he is honest with himself, more like Darius an older and wiser mentor and guide.
Mac awakens to a scream coming from the bedroom; he runs in to find Methos sitting up on the bed shaking and covered in sweat, the covers spread on the floor telling of the demons haunting his sleep. Mac goes to comfort Adam, asking what happened. When Methos looks at him, eyes shining with fearful tears, it breaks his heart, as he holds him closer. "Adam your safe, it's alright." He repeats until he starts to calm. "It sometimes helps to talk about them; I'm here if you need me. Whatever you need me to do to help, I'll do. Just tell me what you want." Mac says while holding him. Methos looks at Mac and tries to decide if he should tell him about that part of his past or if Mac would turn away from him for good. Methos then realizes that he needs to face this nightmare once and for all and decides to tell Duncan and if he turns from him at least he will know better than to put that much trust in another person again and he can finally move on.
Methos looks down at his lap while gathering his courage to talk about the worst time of his life to one of the few people that he has found whose opinion of him matters. "It happened around four thousand years ago, before I met Kronos and the others and ironically after my own first student that I met the person that could be considered my teacher." Methos takes a shaky breath, as he remembers the pain and fear associated with that time in his life, to prevent them from completely overwhelming him as he continues to bare his darkest memories to Mac "I had been in this small village as a scribe for a few years when we were attacked. I was then captured, enslaved and bought by an Immortal named Ku'ahktar. You might know of him, because of one of his students, the Kurgan, who was exactly what Ku'ahktar made him. Unlike the Kurgan, who was already a killer before his first death, and all of the others, I was a scholar and thereby a challenge. He believed I was a new Immortal and decided to train me as he had them, to remake me from a scholar into a monster. He liked a well seasoned quickening especially when he did the seasoning himself, he would train them and then give them a head start before he would hunt them down and take their heads. The only good thing the Kurgan ever did was rid the world of that monster. I have never met his match in cruelty and bloodlust in all of my life. He was a firm believer in death being the best teacher, like many of us, but where we might gut a student for a mistake in sparing he would be more creative in his punishments." Methos starts shaking as he tries to distance himself from the events he is describing knowing that is the only way to get through this. "The punishments were not just for mistakes fighting but for any infraction real or imagined and the rules changed without warning. He would bury them alive, in the ground or in a wall, whatever was easier for him at the time. He would also whip, beat, starve and torture them everyway imaginable physically as well as mentally and emotionally until you would do anything he wanted just to avoid being punished." Methos feels Mac holding him tighter as the story continues and is comforted by this show of support knowing that he isn't going to be thrown out of Duncan's life gives him the strength to continue. "His final test before setting you free was for you to torture the only person aside from him that you saw, the person that would free you from wherever you were imprisoned by him. You had to kill the source of the only semblance of kindness you knew and do it in the most horrifying way possible, I did just that." Methos voice breaks showing just how hard this is for him to reveal. "When he released me I ran and years later when he was closing in on me I found my 'salvation'." Methos risks a look at Mac before revealing whom his salvation is and is surprised by the horrified look on Mac's tearstained face. Without breaking eye contact he explains, "Kronos and the others were my salvation from Ku'ahktar. We made a pledge not only not to attack each other, but also to protect each other from anyone else. To get to me he would have had to fight all four of us and he couldn't risk that, so as long as we were together I was safe from him, and the things I did as Death were nothing compared to the things Ku'ahktar had me do. I owe them my life and my sanity and how did I repay them but with betrayal and death."
Methos loses his fragile hold on his emotions with that last thought and collapses sobbing into Mac's chest. Mac now understands why Bordeaux was so hard for him, all he can do now is hold his friend as he finally finds release from these conflicting emotions that have been tearing him apart since Bordeaux. Mac rocks Methos and hums a tune that comforted him as a child, and helps to calm Methos as well as helping to get his own fractured emotions under control. Eventually it works and slowly the sobbing stops and Methos drifts into a dreamless sleep.
Mac carefully gets up so as not to wake him and calls Joe asking about Ku'ahktar without telling him why. He tells Mac he will get him the info in a few days, but shares what little he knows, that he died about three thousand years ago and that he was the best example of why the hunters existed, to prevent another Ku'ahktar from coming into being. Mac realizes that Methos left the Horsemen after he died, and was possibly the reason he left them.
Mac returns to Methos and wonders how long it took him to find himself once he was free of both Ku'ahktar and Kronos. Mac's pride at knowing him and respect for him increases when he realizes that Methos was able to turn his back on having absolute power over life and death. There are few if any with that kind of power that ever truly let it go they just change their means of using it, adding to that how young he was and how powerless and out of control he must have felt at the time it is even more remarkable. Mac wonders, who that it was that helped him make the transition from Death back to scholar, and how he can ever thank them enough for helping him find his way back. Mac decides to ask Methos about that in the morning.