Chapter Thirteen

At exactly ninety minutes before the contest start time, Methos entered the dojo. He was wearing a black turtleneck and black jeans, as suited the occasion. It was important to blend into the background during the contest.

He had felt MacLeod before he left the outer hallway, and the Highlander – also in black – was already watching him as he came into the workout room. Methos scanned the room quickly.

"Where's Cassandra? I told you both we needed to arrive ear – "

Duncan had already started to cross the room at a brisk pace the moment he entered, and now he took Methos' arm in a crushing grip, pulling him toward the office. The older immortal had been dragged for several paces before his impatience drove him to yank his arm away. When Duncan took his arm again, Methos pulled away harder, taking a couple of steps backward.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"We need to talk."

"Talking's a non-contact sport."

Duncan gave a forceful sigh. "I want to keep it private." When Methos made no move, Duncan motioned toward the office in an almost courtly gesture of invitation.

The old man was in no mood to be manhandled, nor indeed for a private chat with yet another person who had a grudge against him. But since it appeared that their departure would be delayed until he participated in the pre-game show, he returned MacLeod's inviting gesture with a great flourish, and the Scot grudgingly led the way into the office, indicating that Methos should close the door once inside.

Duncan stood by the window and folded his arms. "What happened last night?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Cassandra left in the middle of the night. When she came back, she was a mess, like she'd been in a fight. She was crying, but she wouldn't talk about it."

"Why assume I had anything to do with it?"

"Because you're all she talks about, you're all she thinks about, and the whole thing is driving her insane."

Methos snorted. "It's not as if I instigated this blast from my past, you know. I was quite content, minding my own business – " As he spoke, MacLeod took three strides and gripped him by the lapels of his trench coat.

"What did you do to her?"

Methos had to give a short, barking laugh at that. "Believe me, you're reversing the question completely. It's not every night a woman shows up at my door to clean my clock. By the way, how do you suppose she knew where to find me?"

The distraction worked like a charm. Duncan's expression shifted from fierce to puzzled and he released Methos' coat. "She came to you? To your apartment?"

"With a vengeance. Fortunately, head-hunting wasn't on her mind, or we'd have one team member on the permanently disabled roster."

Duncan had turned away, moving to the window and putting his hand on the sill. Hoping against hope that they could wrap things up now, Methos said, "So, if you're satisfied that I haven't wronged the lady, perhaps you'd be good enough to fetch her so we – "

He regretted the choice of phrasing the instant it left his mouth, and not just because MacLeod spun around and looked ready to thrash him. He threw up his hands in a mollifying gesture. "I was referring to last night, obviously, not to ancient history."

"What is really going on here, Methos? What's your true agenda? I need to know before I let her go into this in the shape she's in."

"My agenda, strangely enough, is precisely as I've expressed to you. Kronos wants me to join him, I don't want to, the contest will serve to equalize us in combat…and I need your help. Desperately." He turned slightly, hands in his coat pockets, and leaned against the wall, just beside the doorknob, planning as always for a quick getaway if needed. He added, gently, "And truthfully, I don't think it's your decision about Cassandra. She's her own person, making her own decisions."

"Decisions that are being driven by events from two thousand years ago. By things that you were responsible for doing to her."

"True enough. But what do you expect me to do about that now? I didn't want her in on this. She insisted, remember?"

MacLeod's frustration hovered in the office like a storm cloud. Unable to find an argument against what Methos was saying, he decided to address what hadn't been said.

"How could you do it, Methos?" His voice was choked and quiet. "How could you have done those things? To all those people? To Cassandra?"

Methos heaved a sigh that seemed to span ages. "I know it sounds lame to say this, MacLeod. But the world truly was a very different place back then than it was even when you were born. The beginnings of civilization were just that, beginnings. The concept of human rights wasn't even a glimmer in anyone's eye.

"People were made into slaves routinely. It was commonplace, accepted, even expected. And the people who were unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end would have been just as quick to take slaves themselves if their positions had been reversed. It was the way of the world.

"Those who were strong took what they wanted by whatever means was expedient. Life was cheap because it was short – for mortals, anyway – and there wasn't any reverence for other people, other cultures. It was a textbook demonstration of Darwinism at work."

"But the killing," Duncan interjected.

"Was necessary for the strong to maintain their dominance. Without the barbarism, there was no fear, and without fear, no power."

"Stop using the third person, Methos," Duncan said, right in Methos' face now. "You killed all those people, you were the one using barbarism. And you…"

"I what?"

"You…enjoyed it." MacLeod's eyes were boring into his, almost pleading for him to convincingly deny the accusation.

Methos met that gaze without flinching, but also without granting his friend's wish. "Yes, I did. Completely and wholeheartedly. It was part of what I lived for, I'll admit that. Do I like that about myself? No. Can I deny it? Absolutely not."

As MacLeod's expression looked pained, then hardened: "Can I erase it? No. Do I still long for it? No! That part of me is gone, MacLeod, long dead. I buried it many centuries before you were even on the planet. Why can't you handle the fact that in my 5000 years, I did some things that you do not approve of? Why does our friendship have to hinge on whether I got pleasure from doing those things at the time?"

"Because it means I misjudged you!" Duncan spat. "It means you're capable of things that I never dreamed of, and that you're not the person I've thought you were all along."

Now Methos folded his own arms, squinting dangerously at his friend. "Well, then that makes you guilty of voluntary stupidity. How long have you known the truth about who I am, MacLeod? Long enough to have figured out that a man who has lived for 5000 years has probably pretty much run the gamut of human behaviors. The world has changed dramatically over that period, but I have always lived as a man of the times."

He gave a derisive laugh. "Did you honestly believe that I brought a 20th-century sensibility to life in the Middle Ages or ancient Greece? Did you think I championed equality when social norms demanded I keep slaves? No, I lived as a member of whatever society I belonged to at the time. I didn't dispute the customs, I lived by them, because they were my customs, too."

"So torture and rape were among the customs you embraced?" MacLeod's eyes shot him a perilous challenge. Suddenly, they were talking about Cassandra again.

Methos pinched the bridge of his nose. "Again, we are talking about the social norms of the day. Think about it. Unless a person was born into slavery, they tended to resist adopting the slave mindset. It was necessary to break them down and remold them to suit them for whatever role they were intended to fulfill."

"By torturing and humiliating them?"

"Yes."

"By taking pleasure in it?"

"All right, that's enough!" Methos was close to losing control of himself for the first time during this encounter. "You can't get your mind around someone getting off on hurting and degrading another person, because you can't imagine yourself doing so. But you were born in a different place and time from me, MacLeod, so you don't really know what you might have been capable of in my day and age. Do you?"

"I know what I think about what you did to Cassandra and her people, and no, I don't think I'd be capable of that. In any time or place."

Methos laughed loudly, a chilling sound in the small office. "That's because you can't imagine yourself as anything other than Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod, righter of wrongs and arbiter of justice. I, on the other hand, don't have to imagine. I have been a great many different things. I know how malleable the human soul can be."

As Duncan started to turn away in disgust, Methos found himself grabbing him by the shirt. "No, you will stand still and hear this. You know what your problem is? You want to blind yourself to unpleasant realities…about life, about me, and especially, about yourself. Because if I could do the things I've done, maybe you're capable of them, too."

MacLeod tried to pull away, but Methos gripped the shirt tighter and tugged him close. "But that's what all this is really about, isn't it MacLeod? It's about you, and your hurt, and your anger. You feel that I lied to you, that I pulled the wool over your eyes, fooled the great Duncan MacLeod, detector of evil. And now you're going to hide behind your horror at what I did thousands of years ago, instead of facing your disappointment at what you think I did to you in the last few years."

Duncan hands grasped Methos' wrists forcefully, but the older immortal held firm to the unlucky black fabric.

"What do you see when you look at me, MacLeod? Do you see the… the young grad student in need of protection? The mild-mannered, non-violent immortal masquerading as a Watcher? Well, that's not me, MacLeod, that's Adam Pierson, a fiction I created to help me stay out of the Game. Away from killing, away from violence. But make no mistake, my friend, once upon a time...I was Death. And you would do well not to forget that."

MacLeod seemed frozen, mesmerized by what he was seeing in the old man's eyes. Inanely, Methos suddenly felt that MacLeod had somehow shrunk, until he realized that the perception came from the way MacLeod was looking at him, as one would regard some unfamiliar, horrifying beast. He felt a stab of astonishment laced with regret and released the shirt abruptly, pulling back shaking hands. Backing away, he noted Duncan's gaze traveling toward the door at the same time as he felt the approach of an immortal. Methos turned to see Cassandra just disembarking the elevator and walking toward the office.

Dressed all in black like her teammates, she looked small but hard, even brittle, wound so tightly it was clearly an effort to move without jerking or lashing out. Apparently unaware of any emotional upheaval in the air, she looked at them both with shrouded eyes.

"We're late," she said.