The door banged against the wall as Methos strolled into Xavier's office. As he had suspected, the majority of the X-men were in there, discussing.

Scott leaned against the desk, Storm was seated on the couch, Logan was pacing, and Xavier, obviously, was in his wheel chair.

Whatever conversation they had been having died away when Methos made his entrance. Scott stood straight and walked over to Methos, vaguely, Methos was aware that Scott was yelling at him but from long experience he knew that whatever was being said was probably not helpful. Emotional people never focus on the solution when they are busy assigning blame to the problem.

Raising one hand, Methos cut him off.

"None of that is important now, what is important is finding him."

Smoothly Methos fell into a military role. This was a safe, easy role for him. No repressed memories or fainting here, only a goal and the way to it.

Methos looked at Charles expectantly. Scott stood for a moment, dumbfounded by Methos calm response. Storm and Logan looked at Methos with new respect. In just one day he had gone from slightly unstable and unwashed to calmly waiting for information to help them find a lost student.

Charles cleared his throat and began. "We know he is still on the grounds. There is a human with him, possibly his captor. He has been gone since shortly after you stopped your sword practice."

Methos made several connections at once, someone had been watching him practice and he hoped that they had looked away for those few moments when he had stumbled. He also recalled the group of students organizing the hide and seek game.

"They were playing hide and seek…"

"Precisely." Charles confirmed. "One of them was hiding in the woods and that is when we think he was taken."

"But why take the student, and why stay on the grounds?" Logan asked.

"Because who he has taken isn't the end goal. He isn't a kidnapper, this is a hostage situation." Methos intoned in what he hoped was a confident manner. His mind drifted to the movement he had sensed the day before as he approached the mansion. Had that been more than a simple guard? Keeping that information to himself, Methos listened quietly for the duration of the briefing.

The rest of the meeting went along smoothly and soon they and some of the older or more powerful students were divided up into search teams to scour the grounds. Charles was monitoring their location to ensure that the kidnapper and his hostage didn't leave.

Methos and his team melted smoothly into the woods. Night had fallen and all under the trees was in shadow. His group moved with determination but Methos fell behind, letting the gap grow wider and wider between him and his compatriots. He had a nagging suspicion about what was going on.

As the last of the group disappeared into the shadows, Methos walked cautiously deeper into the shadow…

"But one by one, we must all march on through the narrow isle of pain…"

Something about dark and uncomfortable woods made Methos spout poetry… how curious.

Hearing a rustle behind him, Methos gave his instincts a much deserved pat on the back.

"It's me you want isn't it?" Methos asked softly.

A gruff chuckle was his only response. From the shadows before him a fearsome figure emerged. A man, bedecked in faded army fatigues holding a glistening knife to the throat of an obviously terrified child.

Methos noted absently that it was the one who was warned against using their power of invisibility to unfair advantage.

Some small part of Methos mind was screaming, wailing and otherwise raising a ruckus. Here was danger, pain, and possible death. What was one small life in the balance? He could easily incapacitate the soldier and get away. Away from the uncertainty, the doubt, the stress, the fainting. He need never think of this again. In a few hundred years it would be just a distant blur in his past along with everything else. But a long dormant and alien voice called above them all.

It was the voice of reason that said that this child's life was worth it. In all likelihood this horrid vestige of a human being wouldn't be able to kill him. He didn't know how. It would only hurt for a short time but then he would be free of them, free to move on with his life and possibly to ferret out some small part of his past. No one had to die tonight.

Methos hand flexed and relaxed as he debated and longed for the sword that he head left in his room on the bed. Stupid.

"Let her go, I'll do what you ask." Methos choked on the last words, still unable to believe that he was saying them.

The man grinned, the knife nicked the child's throat and a small stream of blood trickled down the blade. Methos felt his anger rise above his calm. His memory stirred but he beat it back. This was not the time. The image of this man's face overlaid in his mind with another location, a similar scene. He had seen this man before…

He was drawn back to the present by the sound of something landing at his feet. Half expecting a body part, he looked warily down. There at his feet lay a pair of handcuffs.

"Put them on." The voice, rough like broken glass and just as sharp came from the knife wielding lunatic.

Methos bent slowly and picked them up, fastening them on one wrist.

"Let her go first."

The man gouged the knife deeper, eliciting a whimper from the captive.

"Let her go, we both know that you aren't here for some nameless girl mutant."

The man chuckled… "You always were a smart one…"

He shoved her gruffly towards a tree. She stumbled and caught herself, looking pleadingly at Methos, he muttered one word, "Run."

Methos braced himself to attack, only to feel a cold blade press against his throat.

"Don't even think about. I'll chop your fragging head off. Now put on the cuffs."

Methos realized with a start that he may have badly under estimated the situation. He cursed himself and just about everything else he could think of. What had he ever done to deserve this amount of bad luck. In the last few weeks he had been trapped in an underground bunker with dead men, drowned, nearly frozen to death, subject to fainting spells, drawn to a place against his better judgement and now he was the hostage of a possibly unstable individual. He was understandably irritated.

Methos put on the last cuff with a snap. Wishing he had something punch, stab and or yell at fiercely. All he wanted was a warm bed and some place to hide out for the next hundred years. Sigh.

To top it all off, the song from the Rolling Stones, You Can't Always Get What You Want, was now stuck in his head. Damn it.

Deciding there was no use in being stealthy when you are already captive, he hummed the song as the man in faded fatigues encouraged him forward with a friendly jab to the ribs with the pointy end of a machete.

"Quit that humming."

Methos hummed louder.

"I said quit it."

Methos sung the words, quickly approaching the chorus.

"Stop…"

Methos belted out the chorus at the top of his lungs.

The hilt of a knife jammed roughly into his left temple ended the song abruptly along with all of Methos conscious thought.