He was drawing again, Death liked to draw, he liked to remember things that way, to savor the experience. These drawings were far different from those that Prentiss had seen, those were his tamer works. These, well, he could almost hear the distant din of screams, taste the smoke and blood on his tongue, the stink of fear. He sat up slightly and shifted on his seat easing a cramped muscle, then let out a tittering giggle and bent back to his work.

He paused in his drawing, his aborted stroke frozen, his hand shot across the paper with such force and speed that it tore the paper and broke the charcoal. He let out a snarl and threw the charcoal down, he rose to his feet and started to pace.

"No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, YOU HAD YOUR TURN! No!" He snarled voice frantic, gestures frenetic as he paced. He tittered again and turned on his heel walked out the door leaving it open behind him.


Max's phone buzzed against her hip. She was drinking a coke through a straw watching the lunch crowd from the corner stool at Joe's. She pulled her straw from the glass and chewed it absently as she reached for her phone.

She ran her thumb across its screen waking it from sleep mode and examined the message. She hopped to her feet and slipped it into her back pocket.

"Hey, Joe, I'm out." She called still clenching the straw between her teeth. Joe waved an absent hand at her in acknowledgment. She turned on her heel and left the bar. She walked calmly for half a block then broke into a jog. She'd left a proximity sensor on Methos' door, if anyone entered or left the sensor was set up to text her phone. Odds were it was Macleod stopping in for a chat…

She picked up her pace as the sidewalk traffic died down and was soon running flat out to the building. She didn't feel Methos' as she drew closer, she felt a spike of adrenaline ripple through her and with it the cold glee she rarely acknowledged, the monkey on her back, her murder lust.

Max slowed down and slipped into the building by a back entrance she'd scouted days before. She carefully made her way down to Methos' den. It was her first opportunity to snoop in days. She hadn't thought to do it before because she didn't she'd find anything. The old guy was off his rocker not hiding anything, but after his weird behavior with Prentiss she wasn't so sure anymore.

The drawers held nothing but clothing and oddments, a few books, pens a couple CDs so on. Under the bed was empty, there was nothing under the mattress or the pillows, nothing hidden in the pillow cases. Max conducted a swift but through examination of every nook and cranny in the large basement area then turned her attention to the desk.

She felt her stomach lurch when she examined the drawings. Max had seen a few battles in her short life, participated in more and killed many people but even she was nauseated by the stark patiently rendered carnage on the pages.

"Thank god it's black and white." She whispered hoarsely then wondered if that was really a blessing, maybe color would wash out some of the more…accurate details. She stepped forward to get a closer look and felt something shift underfoot. She glanced under the desk and spotted the drawing Methos' had ruined before storming off. She knelt and picked it up.

"You're fighting back." She said after a half minute of studying the page. She folded it up and slipped it into the inside pocket of her jacket. She adjusted the garment and rand her hand behind her back and under the jacket insuring the asp sword hybrid was still firmly sheathed against her spine. It was habit, she would know immediately if it wasn't.

Satisfied she turned to leave and felt Methos' presence wash over her. She darted up the steps praying that he wasn't shielding his quickening and she had more time than average to avoid him or play innocent. Instinct told her he would be upset if he found she'd stolen the picture. If he'd wanted those works seen they would have been on the desk when Max and Prentiss had visited.

She nearly slipped at the threshold but caught her balance. She closed the door and hurried to the rear exit. As she slipped through she heard the stiff front door pop open and the familiar tread of her friend. Max carefully closed the rear door then circled around to the front and entered.

Methos would have felt her, known an immortal was nearby, if she went back to the bar he'd be suspicious. All of them had been bugging him daily, if she came by but didn't wait for him to come back or make an effort to see him his suspicions would be heightened. She took a deep breath, ran a hand through her hair and opened the door.

Forcing her voice to sound like it's cheerful bantering norm she shouted a greeting.

"You up lazy bones? A beautiful day and icy cold beers await!"

"You really should learn to knock someday." Methos growled. It wasn't his normal mildly annoyed snarl that usually conjured an image of a bored hot male lion being plagued by a duo of cubs, it was hard, mean.

"Did ums have a pea under his mattress?" She asked mildly as she finished walking down the steps. Max tried to get a look at the room to see if she'd left any sign of her intrusion.

"I have a headache Max, what do you want?" Methos sighed. He was sitting on his cot, apparently in the midst of removing his boots when she'd walked in.

"Beer." She insisted solemnly.

"Why do you keep coming here?"

"That's a stupid fucking question." She shot back with real hurt in her voice.

He looked at her with hooded cold eyes, a mean smile on his lips.

"Why?" He demanded contemptuously.

"For the same reason you didn't let me rot in the basement of the SGC when that bitch had a grip on my skull, the same reason you faked your death, the same reason you faced her alone in the UK, because we're family you fucker and you clearly aren't playing with a full deck anymore. So I'm not going to stop bugging you and if I could I strap your ass down and sort your brain myself but I can't. That bits up to you, so stop acting hard and mean and get your shit together." She snarled.

He stared at her long and hard. She noted the way his hand flexed on his leg, itching for his sword? Wanting to hit her? Nervous.

"If you want to come at me, come at me, but remember you taught me, I'm the best student you've had in centuries and I won't go down easy, you'll probably win, sure. Probably but it's not certain so unless you're willing to risk your life over a bullshit fight back off." She hissed hand straying behind her hip, fingers itching for her sword.

He chuckled, low, languorous and somehow sour. The sound of it made her skin crawl.

"Get out." He grunted spitefully and slipped his boots off. Max realized that she was shaking, humming with adrenaline, but the pleasing coolness, the calculated killer within wasn't surfacing, wasn't straining for action. Instead she felt like the unwanted, helpless, child-woman she'd been before her murder. She felt, exposed and horrifically weak before his contempt.

She fled.


Methos watched her leave, he wanted to feel satisfaction, wanted to taste the thrill of victory but it was dull…like biting into bread and finding it stale and crusty and not fresh from the oven as promised. He was suddenly angry, enraged, he rose and cleared his desk with one strong sweep then turned on his books, throwing them, tearing pages free, he pulled the dressers down enjoyed the way the cheap construction exploded as it hit the cement floor and vomited its contents into the dank basement. He raged, he screamed and lifted the desk from the floor and hurled it against the wall gaining some small enjoyment from the sound it made as it disintegrated. He howled, shrieked, and roared until his throat was itchy with healing over battered tissue and then he sagged to his knees and beheld his empire of destruction.

There was no joy, no thrill, only dull disappointment.

"Stop it you fuck, you dirty greedy fuck, you had your turn." He gasped chest heaving, sweat running down his face. His hands were bloodied, the cuts and scrapes healed but the blood lingering, drying and caking.

"You had your turn." he said brokenly.


Max ran from Methos' building, ran and kept running, ran until her lungs burned ran until the buildings were single story strip malls, ran until her legs ached and burned, her feet throbbed, ran until she was numb below the waist, ran until time lost meaning, ran until her vision dimmed and narrowed to points, ran into the darkness.

A distant whirring noise woke her. She tried to think of what it could be. An alarm? No, it wasn't loud enough, a toy? Of course not she was far too old for toys. Her phone?

Her eyes fluttered open, light, neon bright and hard stabbed at her. She raised her right arm to shield her face and tried to focus. The noise came again. She scrabbled at her coat trying to think what pocket her phone was in, unwilling to lower her arm and bring the light back. The buzzing and whirring continued. She closed her eyes dropped her arm and rolled onto her side. She scrabbled at her pockets with one hand and managed to hook her phone.

She brought it to her face and stared at it blearily. The time was wrong had to be. She grunted and sat up. Wiped at her face and looked at the phone again.

She'd lost a day. She blinked and frowned. She had three voicemails and two texts waiting. She ignored them, put the phone back in her pocket. Max tried to get up but found, that for the first time in ten odd years, she was incredibly sore and her stiff limbs were nearly refusing to do her bidding.

She took her time getting up and once up vowed she would only sit down again if there were someone on hand to help her broken ass get up again.

She was in an overgrown ditch, knee high grass surrounded her. She imagined that once she'd fallen her body had been hidden by it. Just as well, whether she'd been dead or unconscious when the darkness took her there'd be awkward explanations regardless. She shook her head and limped stiffly out of the ditch and up onto the shoulder of the road.

"Where are you dumbass?" She muttered staring up the two lane road first one direction then the other. No street signs.

She slipped her phone out and checked it's battery charge. Half full, though it would lie sometimes. She thumbed over to the GPS and tapped in the address of Joe's bar and hit route.

Max let out an impressed cackle. She'd run her ass right out of the city and well into suburbia. A quiet underdeveloped branch of it anyway. She thumbed over the phone pad and dialed Joe's bar.

"Joe's." A gruff baritone answered.

"Mike, is Joe there?"

"Where the fuck have you been Max? Some army dude was in here asking after you –"

"Where. Is. Joe. Mike?" She asked impatiently.

"In the back."

"Go get him, my phone doesn't have much charge."

She heard the sound of the receiver being laid down, bar noise and after an eternity Joe's sour worried greeting.

"Where are you and what the hell happened between you and Adam?" He grumbled.

"You're not going to believe me." She sighed with a half laugh.


Methos looked at the artwork scattered before him. He analyzed the precision and skill of the renderings, the way light and shadow combined for effect, the depraved details even the small touches that proved to him they were renderings of true recall. He wanted to feel sick, wanted to rage, he wanted most of all to deny that he was the twisted soul that had created them, both in the flesh and gore of reality and again here on comparatively sterile paper.

His fingers were blackened with charcoal dust and blood, nails caked with it, streaks of it on his face. His eyes were hot and fevered, skin pale. The pages were filled from edge to edge with the dark images Death so loved, front side and backside. He'd run out of paper and started to draw on the floors and walls, he'd run out of charcoal and started to use his own blood until he'd grown tired, like a child filled with too many sweets…he'd thrown a tantrum, destroying anything left standing from his first fit and falling asleep.

He'd woken feeling…calm, even, human, he couldn't feel Death's eager clamoring for chaos. He didn't feel Death at all. Before he'd let his better half out of his cage for good, thanks to the events in the temple, he had felt Death constantly without realizing what it was. A dull thrumming pressure in his system that had occurred and strengthened so subtly over all the long cold years of his existence that by the time he realized it was there it was nearly overwhelming.

Then Death had gone free. Now…he didn't feel the hot hum of Death locked again in his former prison, didn't feel the sour clamoring need in his skull. Had he actually left? Or had Methos somehow managed to overwhelm and incorporate the miserable fuck?

He was too tired to think about it. He levered himself upright and began to collect the disturbing artwork. Carelessly smudging the lines and details as he handled them. He stacked them in a patch of clear ground took one last long look at the room. Then turned and walked away.


Max was shivering and footsore, lurching along like a bad imitation of Frankenstein's monster when Joe's sedan stopped beside her.

"I fucking love you man." She sighed leaning into his window and smiling wearily at him.

"Get in you damn fool." Joe said affectionately. She half fell into the passenger seat and let out a pained but pleased groan and managed to get the door shut.

"So?"

"What?" She shot back.

"Why the hell are you out here without a ride?"

"I ran out here, I told you."

"Seriously." He pressed.

"Seriously!" She growled.

"You ran out here?"

She ignored him.

"You are fuckin' nuts."