Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Highlander characters "du jour", which
include Methos, Mac, Joe, Richie and the caravan of fun. I do not make any
money. All those lovely characters belong to Davis/Panzer, and their
little throng of people. Coo coo ca choo.
This is slash. Not a first time. We are past that. Lord help me, as I sail the USS "we've been together for a few months". This is also....bizarre. Thanks to my beta, Alice, who says I chill you in all the right places. Get a blankie. __________________
Tongues of Angels
by Amand-r __________________
PART ONE: PANTHEONA
"I love you, dammit. God help me, I do." --Overheard in the men's bathroom at Joe's, a small blues bar in Seacouver
092301.20:45
Whenever Methos moves in his sleep, he has the annoying habit of smacking me in the face.
I know, that isn't the best line to begin something like this, but I have to admit it is the utmost thing on my mind as well as being the source of how this whole thing came about. You know what that 'whole thing' is: me, Methos, the wild sex, the crazed insane moments of 'want-take-have' that we seem to be perforating our relationship with, followed last but not least by my own dying need to tell him I love him.
Hard to believe a good hand smacking can make me want to fuck someone senseless.
Perhaps that was a bad external locus of blame.
Perhaps I should just begin at the beginning...
"I think it's high time that you and I left the bed for supplies," Methos moaned as he stretched and tumbled out of bed. I stuck my head under the pillow. Methos is not a morning person, but he has this annoying habit of being awake as soon as he opens his eyes. He can start a conversation just as he sits up. He can go to sleep having a conversation and wake up with a perfect continuation of the last thing he said the night before dripping from his lips as if sleep had pressed some sort of pause button.
I hate him for this reason.
Okay, hate is a little too strong. But is it bad when the first thing I think is "I love you, but *Goddamn* shut up"?
It is not as if I am not a morning person, I just lack this mystical skill to be ready to do anything before my feet touch the floor. Unless I am woken by something like an explosion, I like to drift awake and stretch a little.
Methos, apparently, was born with rubber joints and muscles, so of course stretching is pointless. For those of us built with oh say, bones and other humanistic anatomical parts, trying to keep up with the living pretzel is a little difficult.
I don't mind the pretzel part . Not. At. All.
If I was being fair, and I sincerely try to be, I could say that I understand his "awakeness". I mean, five thousand years tends to teach one SOMETHING, and I can imagine that this is something he's just decided is more of a good than bad habit.
I wonder if I might ever use this skill.
Then again, he is awake, but not necessarily in a good mood, and moreover, he doesn't want to *do* anything. Well, not much of anything. Lounge, read the paper, whip me with wet towels, or the occas--
092501.22:56
It has nothing to do with a Quickening. It has nothing to do with drunkenness or desperation. There was no drugged food. I would say that it has to do with time. Who was that who said that all things have a precise second in which they are captured complete, self-contained, as prism-like and perfect as a dew drop in suspension?
That would be Methos who said that.
And that is what it has to do with.
092901.11:43
There have been a few times where we have merely stared at each other, and I think to myself 'my God this is a man. A man.' Then Methos smiles and flicks beer at me, or I have to...what is burning?
100401. 02:03
Methos has taken to disappearing for long stretches of time. I keep telling myself that this means nothing; after five thousand years, he probably simply forgets others. I mean, maybe he *needs* this time to screw his head on so he doesn't lose it. Funny, everything in this relationship goes back to the fact that I cannot fathom his head. I cannot understand. Why does he laugh when denture commercials come on the tele? Why does he throw things at me when I mention pease, or oatmeal?
Back to the disappearing, yes.
So, I called him on it. I mean, I was actually a little pissed. I don't know where he goes, for all I know he could be meeting some two-dollar whore named Talulah.
I don't think so. I say these things to hurt myself.
In any case:
"So, who is she?" I asked him casually in the shower, as if we weren't washing and groping each other like curious children. Or those monkeys that check one another...no, maybe that's not where I want to go. That would be a Methosian observation, and this is not his log.
"Who?" he murmured sleepily. I watched him lather his hands and begin to massage the tense muscles of his neck, rolling his head into the hot shower spray.
"The woman you're seeing," I grumbled. I knew the moment I said it that it was like a dark deep wound opening. This had been a mistake. But, true to form, I barreled on, because in the end, you have to say it all at once. If you don't, you end up saving it for your next quarrel. And I had no intentions of any more quarrels. Then again, does anyone? I digress...
"Or a man," I added, turning him forcefully to wash his back as I worked. He let me mumble, listening as if I was bitching about the weather, or that shitty sword oil I bought (which, incidentally, he told me was no good. Sometimes I have to do things to spite him.).
He grunted when I pressed a little too hard with his ugly little scrubber, some hideous little ball of netting in a fuchsia that is way too bright for me to be staring at it this early in the morning.
"Uhm," he said slowly. "I think that part of my back is clean, you know."
I dropped the netting on the floor of the stall, and ignored him for the rest of the shower. I don't know why I did that. I think it just cuts me that I know something is going on, and he is being so casual about it.
"There is no woman," he whispered in my ear through a towel when we step out of the shower. "Or man." When I simply stiffened and concentrated on untangling my hair with a comb, he sighed. "I don't expect you to understand."
I hate being told that. I know, Methos is thousands of years older then I am, and that carried with it the authority to say things like 'you can't understand what it was like' or 'you have no idea yet...'
This does not mean that I can accept it gracefully.
"Then what is it?" I asked. "Is it me?"
Methos sighed again, leaning against the shower stall, still dripping wet. He crossed his arms about his chest and turned away, back into the small stall. "No," he muttered, voice so sotto voce only the amplifying effects of the small space let me hear it. "It's not you. It's me."
100701. 23:49
Is it wrong to worry? Is it bad to see something in his face and wonder why it's there?
100801. 22:53
I found Methos on the roof today. It's kind of funny, because he hates the cold, but whenever it rains, I can find him out in it. Only this time there was no Walkman or raincoat. Hell, there wasn't even a sweater. Just Methos, out there in the fall cold, soaked to the bone, staring entranced at the sky.
I am not the one to be the bearer of bad news. In this case, I think he might very well be losing it.
What do you do when the person you're in love with is going insane? What can I say? What can I do?
I had come home from a few errands I was running, and there he was, on the roof, in a t-shirt and jeans, staring into the horizon like there was something there that he desperately needed to see. What was it? I had decided that even though I usually left him to his own devices, this time was going a little too far.
"Methos?" I called. No response. I wondered for a second if he was asleep standing up. Stranger things had happened to Methos, and I wasn't going to hedge any bets that it hadn't actually happened to him at least once before. This is the world's oldest Immortal, no matter how childish, no matter how cynical and in-expert.
He was curled in himself, if that is even possible. His arms wrapped around his chest so tightly they pressed in like some sort of python. I wasn't even sure if I could touch him. Sometimes certain people emit this wave of "noli tangere" that you just have to respect. If I had touched him at that moment, I am not sure what might have happened. But I couldn't leave him there. So I simply sat down on the ventilation shaft and stared at him.
He must have known I was there. He had to have known. Then I realized that I was simply staring at his ass outlined in his sopping wet jeans. It's funny how any situation can turn to sex.
I tried my best not to give into this kind of thing. Methos was...in pain? Maybe? Confused? Am I dating an immortal with the equivalent of Alzheimer's?
I knew that I had to say something. I had to say the right thing. If I said the right thing, then we could have both gone downstairs and eaten dinner, and watched Jeopardy. And he would have kicked my ass, like normal.
"I have gazpacho."
"I bought that cheese bread you like."
"It's celebrity Jeopardy. I'm going to cream you."
Methos uncoiled his arms, and for a second I thought that the moment of frightening silence was over. And it was, but not the way I wanted it to be.
"PANTHEONA!!!" Methos screamed shrilly into the sky, waving his hands above him. I watched the display. What the hell was Methos thinking? That is always a dangerous question, I think. Getting inside that head is like saying "Oh, wow, I can learn auto mechanics in two weeks! No problem!"
(If you are wondering, I got the nifty little sarcastic idea there from Richie. But this isn't about him, so there really is nothing further to say.)
"Methos," I muttered. "Methos, what's going on?"
He turned to me, as if he had just noticed I was there, and for a second, I could see that he had wanted to tell me. Instead, he stiffened, lowered his arms and shook his head.
"Of all that I have seen," he sighed, eyes rolling to the back of his head. "Of all that I have seen, Pantheona is coming back." He seemed then to fold downwards, as if he could sink through the floor.
I had no reply to that. What could I have said? What could anyone say? What was this, another of Methos's big bad buddies coming from the past? And if it isn't a woman, or a man, then what was it?
My heart fluttered for a second. All of our lives had flooded into the mystic too easily in the past few years for me to be able to handle another spectral visitation.
Methos sighed, gargantuan, fluttered those long lashes and smiled a crooked grin. I could forgive the world for that grin. It's funny how helplessness will usher in relief when it isn't warranted, isn't it?
"Did you say, gazpacho?"
Who is Pantheona? Methos won't say. He turns white when I mention it. Or her. Or whomever.
************************************
NINE YEARS LATER, LONDON:
"If you keep reading in this light, you're gonna go blind," the older watcher muttered, using his cane to tap the edge of the Chronicle. Its holder, a young girl with wide brown eyes, glanced up sharply.
"Huh? Oh. Yeah." She slammed shut the leather bound book and set it back down in the little office cubicle that had been assigned to her by the research division. "I'm sorry Mr. Dawson, I was just curious about that Chronicle--"
"It's not a Chronicle," Dawson cut in, as he abruptly turned and sauntered down the deserted Academy hall. "It's a personal journal you took from my desk without asking." The girl followed in his heels. These young kids, they never did learn. That is, they never did learn in time.
"But I thought--"
Dawson interrupted her as they continued. She dogged his steps a little, as if she couldn't keep up with him. That was charming. He was only going two miles per hour, he was sure, and she was built like a young gazelle. These kids. These goofy polite kids.
"It's not a Chronicle, Natasha." He sighed. "It's a momento."
Tasha looked sideways at him. He could see one comma of hair come down over her eyes. "It was Duncan MacLeod's, wasn't it?"
Dawson smiled and stopped; he turned to Natasha, one of his new aides. She was so young. She was so innocent. Her face, a little rounded thing, spoke only a double decade.
"Come on, I'll buy you a drink."
She seemed to agree, as if his statement had declared something unspoken, waves of chaotic dissonance in the darkness of the Academy halls.
"Mr. Dawson, who is Pantheona?"
The question was a stab. She really didn't mean it. It burned him anyway. Joe stopped in mid walk and turned to her. "Nothing. Nothing and no one."
He left her standing in the hallway, wondering what the hell had just happened, rough staccato of his cane banishing the word into the depths of un-saying:
Pantheona. Pantheona.
****************
MONTANA, THREE MONTHS LATER:
The snow was shading the roof of the house in such a manner that Sher Mackenzie wasn't sure if it would fall off the moment she opened the door. The sun was nowhere to be seen, just that doomy grey sky that might mean snow, might mean cold, might mean all number of things except whether it was supposed to be light or dark. She wondered again why she stayed in the cold when she was supposed to be a desert girl.
Sher shrugged on her big down coat and cinched the waist. She observed herself in the mirror by the door, pulled on the hood, and did her best 'nuclear fallout suit' impression. The she grabbed a pair of gloves and opened the front door cautiously.
No snow fell on her head, though lazy flakes traced spirals down from the overhanging sky, adding insult to injury in what was supposed to be a rather mild winter. She huffed hard into her scarf, regretting it the moment she did so as the moisture from it hardened cold inside the otherwise dry wool, and she rolled her eyes. She had left Texas, for this?
//The cold keeps it immobile, you know that,// she reminded herself. She picked up a shovel from the side of the porch and made her way to the barn, listening to the dull crunch of snow under her feet. //The cold keeps her immobile.//
The horses she had once owned were gone. Ten years ago she had settled into Seacouver, content on leaving everything complicated behind: immortals, Watchers, the entire shebang. She had opened her own little stable and run horses, trail rides. Girl Scout troops came to her for lessons, for Christ's sakes.
But the horses were gone in the fire of 2004. Methos had taken another as his lover a few years before that, and Sher had watched him slide into that life with the want of someone who knows better than to be jealous, but was powerless to stop it.
//And you once licked a cold pole in the middle of winter knowing full well what would happen to you,// she told herself. //Now *that* is a great analogy.//
With the horses gone, and nothing else to stop her, Sher had headed for Rio like one possessed. She tossed Methos in the trash. She severed her contacts with this world, and set off into the forests of South America to 'make like Tarzan' for as long as possible. Who would have known that she would have returned so soon, not just to the north, but to a place where they air dropped groceries?
Sher glimpsed the barn structure ahead over the next rise. With luck, she wasn't snowed out. She needed to feed the critter. //Critter,// she mused bitterly. //Yeah, you call him that.//
What she referred to as 'the barn' only resembled one in structure. It had been a bitch getting a crew to come out and plate an already existing wooden structure with sheet metal walls on the inside, but it had been well worth it. Those walls had saved her life more than once, if not her head. Sher didn't have a blade, sword, knife or sharp edge within the surrounding twenty miles. She wasn't quite sure if Pantheona could rip her head off with her hands, but Sher was in no mood to ever test that theory.
She stood at the entrance to the red painted wooden barn --such a normal construction that even the Amish would have trouble guessing its other purpose-- and punched in the security code on the ice-encrusted panel. The eight-digit code was the easiest thing she'd ever have to remember these days: 12211592. //Cute, Sher, so very adorable.//
The doors opened, not out, but to the sides, sliding into themselves like antiquated grocery store doors, and the evening report came on over the speakers that lined the walls as she headed into the building. She didn't remove her coat; the temperature was still well below comfort. The cold did show the thing down.
"Date, zero, one, eleven, two thousand eleven. Containment, holding. Subject, non-mobile. Restraints, broken, two-thirty am feeding rejected. Shall I try again?" the computer asked so politely it sounded like it had asked her if she would like coffee. Sher rubbed her face with a mitten and shook her head. The computer waited for a response.
"No Tessa, don't try again. If he wants it, he'll scream or something. Sound logs, screen for abnormal frequencies, please," she added, flopping down in the chair and allowing the outer doors to close on her. The facility lights came on shrouding Sher in pale fluorescence.
"Compliance." The computer database worked while her tucked herself into her chair with a comforter. The screen blinked in front of her. An old Liz Phair CD spun in the player, ready to play. She stopped it, and turned up the volume on the overhead monitor speakers. "Ready. Three minutes of abnormal sound."
"Play."
The computer clicked and whirred. Sher knew the cold wasn't that good for it; there was nothing she could do. She could have ordered cold withstanding parts, but the military tended to get suspicious about people who ordered supercomputer parts built to withstand Antarctic cold, but lived in Montana. Sher made do with temperature regulated parts, and she would have to fix it herself if it broke, but the airlift parts weren't due in till next week.
"First session, one sixteen am--"
The first few seconds of the recording were silence, and Sher closed her eyes so that she wouldn't see the voice readouts spiking on the far monitor.
'.....sohtem......' it began, a low sibilant whisper, almost like the hiss of white static. She massaged her temples, and spoke out loud.
"Tessa, please skip all references to 'sohtem', thank you."
The computer paused the recording and reworked the sound files. Sher almost expected it to tell her there were no other sounds.
"Nineteen seconds of abnormal sound.," chimed overhead. Sher glanced up and cocked her head. She pushed away the comforter and stood.
"Playback," Sher told it, not even bothering to look up at the voice monitor.
"First session, one sixteen am--"
'.......arret bus mus oge...oinev....suilif suem.......'
"Second session, six thirty seven am--"
'Omalc....oma et --'
"Sound files finished."
Sher took off her coat and stretched against the wall. "Tessa, return the references to 'sohtem' imbedded in existing files."
"Compliance."
'Sohtem, arret bus mus oge, sohtem, oinev, suilif suem.....Omalc, oma et sohtem....'
The voice was so foreign Sher wouldn't have guessed it for human. This was not abnormal. She was used to that. But the sounds were new. Anything other than 'sohtem' was new. She twisted the words in her head.
"Tessa, reverse recording."
Sher didn't wait for the recording to playback. She grabbed the Taser from the wall and strapped it to her waist, and opened the far doors that led down the corridor into the complex. Tessa's speakers extended down into the halls and to the sub basement. She descended the halls waiting for the recording. The lights kicked on when they sensed her movement.
The bay doors opened with another keypad password--sohtem. She thought the irony amusing.
//The one you wants keeps you trapped here,// she told the creature on the other side of the doors.
Sher had found that Plexiglas wasn't anywhere strong enough to keep Pantheona in; the beast had wrecked it in a matter of hours. Sher had resorted to standard metal bar grids. There was no electricity to keep her warm, and that was just fine with Sher. The thing was Immortal; it could stand being a Popsicle.
The five-foot window was enough to let her and Tessa tend to the creature. Its bars were reinforced titanium rods imbedded in the bedrock thirty feet below them. They were anchored in a cross webbing of structural support that made Notre Dame look like it was going to crumble any second.
Pantheona's cell was hay and cement. Sher allowed the creature blankets, though precious few. She was unclean anyway.
Sher allowed the lights to shine into the cell, musing as she did so that it had not been too many years ago when she had been in Pantheona's place, though for different reasons. The Elders of the Watchers had not been this cruel when they had locked her in a cell for her Quickening. At least she had had heat and a bed.
There was nothing in front of her directly. The creature must have been hidden in a corner. Sher stood a good five feet from the cell bars. She would not be fooled by the silence.
The creature inside this cage had been someone she had loved dearly. She had been deceived by that face once, and it had cost her a finger. Never again.
"Sound file playback--"
'Methos, te amo, clamo.....meus filius, venio, Methos....ego sum sub terra, Methos."
Sher shrugged as the sound file finished. "Pantheona," she called. "Come on, you little bitch....how are we this morning, hungry? Yes?" she finished in a high little voice like she would talk to a baby, or one of her horses. This things had ripped the leg off her last horse. Nothing alive lived with Sher anymore, not even fish. She missed having pets.
A head appeared, hidden in hair, trembling; hands with too long fingernails slid into the crevices between the bars and grasped the cold metal.
"Cold," whined a small voice, childlike in its pain.
"Suck it up," Sher told the barely visible face.
"Cold, sohtem," it told her again.
Sher smiled, and tossed a blanket at it. A man-sized hand that belied the voice grasped the flannel and pulled it in through the thin holes in the bars. Sher speared a quartered apple on a long pike and slid the end of the pole into a vice in the wall. She pulled a lever and the entire section of the wall slid forward, taking the pike closer to the bars. Fingers reached out and delicately removed the apple, one section at a time.
"Thank you," the voice said.
"Save it," Sher spat. The head came into view fully, as Sher translated the phrases in her head. "Tessa," she called louder. "Translate from Latin."
"Compliance--"
'Methos, I love you, I cry...'
Sher stared at that face wondering what the hell had happened to them all.
'My son, I come, Methos...'
Duncan smiled sickly sweet and rammed an apple wedge into his mouth.
'I am under the earth, Methos.'
end part one.
This is slash. Not a first time. We are past that. Lord help me, as I sail the USS "we've been together for a few months". This is also....bizarre. Thanks to my beta, Alice, who says I chill you in all the right places. Get a blankie. __________________
Tongues of Angels
by Amand-r __________________
PART ONE: PANTHEONA
"I love you, dammit. God help me, I do." --Overheard in the men's bathroom at Joe's, a small blues bar in Seacouver
092301.20:45
Whenever Methos moves in his sleep, he has the annoying habit of smacking me in the face.
I know, that isn't the best line to begin something like this, but I have to admit it is the utmost thing on my mind as well as being the source of how this whole thing came about. You know what that 'whole thing' is: me, Methos, the wild sex, the crazed insane moments of 'want-take-have' that we seem to be perforating our relationship with, followed last but not least by my own dying need to tell him I love him.
Hard to believe a good hand smacking can make me want to fuck someone senseless.
Perhaps that was a bad external locus of blame.
Perhaps I should just begin at the beginning...
"I think it's high time that you and I left the bed for supplies," Methos moaned as he stretched and tumbled out of bed. I stuck my head under the pillow. Methos is not a morning person, but he has this annoying habit of being awake as soon as he opens his eyes. He can start a conversation just as he sits up. He can go to sleep having a conversation and wake up with a perfect continuation of the last thing he said the night before dripping from his lips as if sleep had pressed some sort of pause button.
I hate him for this reason.
Okay, hate is a little too strong. But is it bad when the first thing I think is "I love you, but *Goddamn* shut up"?
It is not as if I am not a morning person, I just lack this mystical skill to be ready to do anything before my feet touch the floor. Unless I am woken by something like an explosion, I like to drift awake and stretch a little.
Methos, apparently, was born with rubber joints and muscles, so of course stretching is pointless. For those of us built with oh say, bones and other humanistic anatomical parts, trying to keep up with the living pretzel is a little difficult.
I don't mind the pretzel part . Not. At. All.
If I was being fair, and I sincerely try to be, I could say that I understand his "awakeness". I mean, five thousand years tends to teach one SOMETHING, and I can imagine that this is something he's just decided is more of a good than bad habit.
I wonder if I might ever use this skill.
Then again, he is awake, but not necessarily in a good mood, and moreover, he doesn't want to *do* anything. Well, not much of anything. Lounge, read the paper, whip me with wet towels, or the occas--
092501.22:56
It has nothing to do with a Quickening. It has nothing to do with drunkenness or desperation. There was no drugged food. I would say that it has to do with time. Who was that who said that all things have a precise second in which they are captured complete, self-contained, as prism-like and perfect as a dew drop in suspension?
That would be Methos who said that.
And that is what it has to do with.
092901.11:43
There have been a few times where we have merely stared at each other, and I think to myself 'my God this is a man. A man.' Then Methos smiles and flicks beer at me, or I have to...what is burning?
100401. 02:03
Methos has taken to disappearing for long stretches of time. I keep telling myself that this means nothing; after five thousand years, he probably simply forgets others. I mean, maybe he *needs* this time to screw his head on so he doesn't lose it. Funny, everything in this relationship goes back to the fact that I cannot fathom his head. I cannot understand. Why does he laugh when denture commercials come on the tele? Why does he throw things at me when I mention pease, or oatmeal?
Back to the disappearing, yes.
So, I called him on it. I mean, I was actually a little pissed. I don't know where he goes, for all I know he could be meeting some two-dollar whore named Talulah.
I don't think so. I say these things to hurt myself.
In any case:
"So, who is she?" I asked him casually in the shower, as if we weren't washing and groping each other like curious children. Or those monkeys that check one another...no, maybe that's not where I want to go. That would be a Methosian observation, and this is not his log.
"Who?" he murmured sleepily. I watched him lather his hands and begin to massage the tense muscles of his neck, rolling his head into the hot shower spray.
"The woman you're seeing," I grumbled. I knew the moment I said it that it was like a dark deep wound opening. This had been a mistake. But, true to form, I barreled on, because in the end, you have to say it all at once. If you don't, you end up saving it for your next quarrel. And I had no intentions of any more quarrels. Then again, does anyone? I digress...
"Or a man," I added, turning him forcefully to wash his back as I worked. He let me mumble, listening as if I was bitching about the weather, or that shitty sword oil I bought (which, incidentally, he told me was no good. Sometimes I have to do things to spite him.).
He grunted when I pressed a little too hard with his ugly little scrubber, some hideous little ball of netting in a fuchsia that is way too bright for me to be staring at it this early in the morning.
"Uhm," he said slowly. "I think that part of my back is clean, you know."
I dropped the netting on the floor of the stall, and ignored him for the rest of the shower. I don't know why I did that. I think it just cuts me that I know something is going on, and he is being so casual about it.
"There is no woman," he whispered in my ear through a towel when we step out of the shower. "Or man." When I simply stiffened and concentrated on untangling my hair with a comb, he sighed. "I don't expect you to understand."
I hate being told that. I know, Methos is thousands of years older then I am, and that carried with it the authority to say things like 'you can't understand what it was like' or 'you have no idea yet...'
This does not mean that I can accept it gracefully.
"Then what is it?" I asked. "Is it me?"
Methos sighed again, leaning against the shower stall, still dripping wet. He crossed his arms about his chest and turned away, back into the small stall. "No," he muttered, voice so sotto voce only the amplifying effects of the small space let me hear it. "It's not you. It's me."
100701. 23:49
Is it wrong to worry? Is it bad to see something in his face and wonder why it's there?
100801. 22:53
I found Methos on the roof today. It's kind of funny, because he hates the cold, but whenever it rains, I can find him out in it. Only this time there was no Walkman or raincoat. Hell, there wasn't even a sweater. Just Methos, out there in the fall cold, soaked to the bone, staring entranced at the sky.
I am not the one to be the bearer of bad news. In this case, I think he might very well be losing it.
What do you do when the person you're in love with is going insane? What can I say? What can I do?
I had come home from a few errands I was running, and there he was, on the roof, in a t-shirt and jeans, staring into the horizon like there was something there that he desperately needed to see. What was it? I had decided that even though I usually left him to his own devices, this time was going a little too far.
"Methos?" I called. No response. I wondered for a second if he was asleep standing up. Stranger things had happened to Methos, and I wasn't going to hedge any bets that it hadn't actually happened to him at least once before. This is the world's oldest Immortal, no matter how childish, no matter how cynical and in-expert.
He was curled in himself, if that is even possible. His arms wrapped around his chest so tightly they pressed in like some sort of python. I wasn't even sure if I could touch him. Sometimes certain people emit this wave of "noli tangere" that you just have to respect. If I had touched him at that moment, I am not sure what might have happened. But I couldn't leave him there. So I simply sat down on the ventilation shaft and stared at him.
He must have known I was there. He had to have known. Then I realized that I was simply staring at his ass outlined in his sopping wet jeans. It's funny how any situation can turn to sex.
I tried my best not to give into this kind of thing. Methos was...in pain? Maybe? Confused? Am I dating an immortal with the equivalent of Alzheimer's?
I knew that I had to say something. I had to say the right thing. If I said the right thing, then we could have both gone downstairs and eaten dinner, and watched Jeopardy. And he would have kicked my ass, like normal.
"I have gazpacho."
"I bought that cheese bread you like."
"It's celebrity Jeopardy. I'm going to cream you."
Methos uncoiled his arms, and for a second I thought that the moment of frightening silence was over. And it was, but not the way I wanted it to be.
"PANTHEONA!!!" Methos screamed shrilly into the sky, waving his hands above him. I watched the display. What the hell was Methos thinking? That is always a dangerous question, I think. Getting inside that head is like saying "Oh, wow, I can learn auto mechanics in two weeks! No problem!"
(If you are wondering, I got the nifty little sarcastic idea there from Richie. But this isn't about him, so there really is nothing further to say.)
"Methos," I muttered. "Methos, what's going on?"
He turned to me, as if he had just noticed I was there, and for a second, I could see that he had wanted to tell me. Instead, he stiffened, lowered his arms and shook his head.
"Of all that I have seen," he sighed, eyes rolling to the back of his head. "Of all that I have seen, Pantheona is coming back." He seemed then to fold downwards, as if he could sink through the floor.
I had no reply to that. What could I have said? What could anyone say? What was this, another of Methos's big bad buddies coming from the past? And if it isn't a woman, or a man, then what was it?
My heart fluttered for a second. All of our lives had flooded into the mystic too easily in the past few years for me to be able to handle another spectral visitation.
Methos sighed, gargantuan, fluttered those long lashes and smiled a crooked grin. I could forgive the world for that grin. It's funny how helplessness will usher in relief when it isn't warranted, isn't it?
"Did you say, gazpacho?"
Who is Pantheona? Methos won't say. He turns white when I mention it. Or her. Or whomever.
************************************
NINE YEARS LATER, LONDON:
"If you keep reading in this light, you're gonna go blind," the older watcher muttered, using his cane to tap the edge of the Chronicle. Its holder, a young girl with wide brown eyes, glanced up sharply.
"Huh? Oh. Yeah." She slammed shut the leather bound book and set it back down in the little office cubicle that had been assigned to her by the research division. "I'm sorry Mr. Dawson, I was just curious about that Chronicle--"
"It's not a Chronicle," Dawson cut in, as he abruptly turned and sauntered down the deserted Academy hall. "It's a personal journal you took from my desk without asking." The girl followed in his heels. These young kids, they never did learn. That is, they never did learn in time.
"But I thought--"
Dawson interrupted her as they continued. She dogged his steps a little, as if she couldn't keep up with him. That was charming. He was only going two miles per hour, he was sure, and she was built like a young gazelle. These kids. These goofy polite kids.
"It's not a Chronicle, Natasha." He sighed. "It's a momento."
Tasha looked sideways at him. He could see one comma of hair come down over her eyes. "It was Duncan MacLeod's, wasn't it?"
Dawson smiled and stopped; he turned to Natasha, one of his new aides. She was so young. She was so innocent. Her face, a little rounded thing, spoke only a double decade.
"Come on, I'll buy you a drink."
She seemed to agree, as if his statement had declared something unspoken, waves of chaotic dissonance in the darkness of the Academy halls.
"Mr. Dawson, who is Pantheona?"
The question was a stab. She really didn't mean it. It burned him anyway. Joe stopped in mid walk and turned to her. "Nothing. Nothing and no one."
He left her standing in the hallway, wondering what the hell had just happened, rough staccato of his cane banishing the word into the depths of un-saying:
Pantheona. Pantheona.
****************
MONTANA, THREE MONTHS LATER:
The snow was shading the roof of the house in such a manner that Sher Mackenzie wasn't sure if it would fall off the moment she opened the door. The sun was nowhere to be seen, just that doomy grey sky that might mean snow, might mean cold, might mean all number of things except whether it was supposed to be light or dark. She wondered again why she stayed in the cold when she was supposed to be a desert girl.
Sher shrugged on her big down coat and cinched the waist. She observed herself in the mirror by the door, pulled on the hood, and did her best 'nuclear fallout suit' impression. The she grabbed a pair of gloves and opened the front door cautiously.
No snow fell on her head, though lazy flakes traced spirals down from the overhanging sky, adding insult to injury in what was supposed to be a rather mild winter. She huffed hard into her scarf, regretting it the moment she did so as the moisture from it hardened cold inside the otherwise dry wool, and she rolled her eyes. She had left Texas, for this?
//The cold keeps it immobile, you know that,// she reminded herself. She picked up a shovel from the side of the porch and made her way to the barn, listening to the dull crunch of snow under her feet. //The cold keeps her immobile.//
The horses she had once owned were gone. Ten years ago she had settled into Seacouver, content on leaving everything complicated behind: immortals, Watchers, the entire shebang. She had opened her own little stable and run horses, trail rides. Girl Scout troops came to her for lessons, for Christ's sakes.
But the horses were gone in the fire of 2004. Methos had taken another as his lover a few years before that, and Sher had watched him slide into that life with the want of someone who knows better than to be jealous, but was powerless to stop it.
//And you once licked a cold pole in the middle of winter knowing full well what would happen to you,// she told herself. //Now *that* is a great analogy.//
With the horses gone, and nothing else to stop her, Sher had headed for Rio like one possessed. She tossed Methos in the trash. She severed her contacts with this world, and set off into the forests of South America to 'make like Tarzan' for as long as possible. Who would have known that she would have returned so soon, not just to the north, but to a place where they air dropped groceries?
Sher glimpsed the barn structure ahead over the next rise. With luck, she wasn't snowed out. She needed to feed the critter. //Critter,// she mused bitterly. //Yeah, you call him that.//
What she referred to as 'the barn' only resembled one in structure. It had been a bitch getting a crew to come out and plate an already existing wooden structure with sheet metal walls on the inside, but it had been well worth it. Those walls had saved her life more than once, if not her head. Sher didn't have a blade, sword, knife or sharp edge within the surrounding twenty miles. She wasn't quite sure if Pantheona could rip her head off with her hands, but Sher was in no mood to ever test that theory.
She stood at the entrance to the red painted wooden barn --such a normal construction that even the Amish would have trouble guessing its other purpose-- and punched in the security code on the ice-encrusted panel. The eight-digit code was the easiest thing she'd ever have to remember these days: 12211592. //Cute, Sher, so very adorable.//
The doors opened, not out, but to the sides, sliding into themselves like antiquated grocery store doors, and the evening report came on over the speakers that lined the walls as she headed into the building. She didn't remove her coat; the temperature was still well below comfort. The cold did show the thing down.
"Date, zero, one, eleven, two thousand eleven. Containment, holding. Subject, non-mobile. Restraints, broken, two-thirty am feeding rejected. Shall I try again?" the computer asked so politely it sounded like it had asked her if she would like coffee. Sher rubbed her face with a mitten and shook her head. The computer waited for a response.
"No Tessa, don't try again. If he wants it, he'll scream or something. Sound logs, screen for abnormal frequencies, please," she added, flopping down in the chair and allowing the outer doors to close on her. The facility lights came on shrouding Sher in pale fluorescence.
"Compliance." The computer database worked while her tucked herself into her chair with a comforter. The screen blinked in front of her. An old Liz Phair CD spun in the player, ready to play. She stopped it, and turned up the volume on the overhead monitor speakers. "Ready. Three minutes of abnormal sound."
"Play."
The computer clicked and whirred. Sher knew the cold wasn't that good for it; there was nothing she could do. She could have ordered cold withstanding parts, but the military tended to get suspicious about people who ordered supercomputer parts built to withstand Antarctic cold, but lived in Montana. Sher made do with temperature regulated parts, and she would have to fix it herself if it broke, but the airlift parts weren't due in till next week.
"First session, one sixteen am--"
The first few seconds of the recording were silence, and Sher closed her eyes so that she wouldn't see the voice readouts spiking on the far monitor.
'.....sohtem......' it began, a low sibilant whisper, almost like the hiss of white static. She massaged her temples, and spoke out loud.
"Tessa, please skip all references to 'sohtem', thank you."
The computer paused the recording and reworked the sound files. Sher almost expected it to tell her there were no other sounds.
"Nineteen seconds of abnormal sound.," chimed overhead. Sher glanced up and cocked her head. She pushed away the comforter and stood.
"Playback," Sher told it, not even bothering to look up at the voice monitor.
"First session, one sixteen am--"
'.......arret bus mus oge...oinev....suilif suem.......'
"Second session, six thirty seven am--"
'Omalc....oma et --'
"Sound files finished."
Sher took off her coat and stretched against the wall. "Tessa, return the references to 'sohtem' imbedded in existing files."
"Compliance."
'Sohtem, arret bus mus oge, sohtem, oinev, suilif suem.....Omalc, oma et sohtem....'
The voice was so foreign Sher wouldn't have guessed it for human. This was not abnormal. She was used to that. But the sounds were new. Anything other than 'sohtem' was new. She twisted the words in her head.
"Tessa, reverse recording."
Sher didn't wait for the recording to playback. She grabbed the Taser from the wall and strapped it to her waist, and opened the far doors that led down the corridor into the complex. Tessa's speakers extended down into the halls and to the sub basement. She descended the halls waiting for the recording. The lights kicked on when they sensed her movement.
The bay doors opened with another keypad password--sohtem. She thought the irony amusing.
//The one you wants keeps you trapped here,// she told the creature on the other side of the doors.
Sher had found that Plexiglas wasn't anywhere strong enough to keep Pantheona in; the beast had wrecked it in a matter of hours. Sher had resorted to standard metal bar grids. There was no electricity to keep her warm, and that was just fine with Sher. The thing was Immortal; it could stand being a Popsicle.
The five-foot window was enough to let her and Tessa tend to the creature. Its bars were reinforced titanium rods imbedded in the bedrock thirty feet below them. They were anchored in a cross webbing of structural support that made Notre Dame look like it was going to crumble any second.
Pantheona's cell was hay and cement. Sher allowed the creature blankets, though precious few. She was unclean anyway.
Sher allowed the lights to shine into the cell, musing as she did so that it had not been too many years ago when she had been in Pantheona's place, though for different reasons. The Elders of the Watchers had not been this cruel when they had locked her in a cell for her Quickening. At least she had had heat and a bed.
There was nothing in front of her directly. The creature must have been hidden in a corner. Sher stood a good five feet from the cell bars. She would not be fooled by the silence.
The creature inside this cage had been someone she had loved dearly. She had been deceived by that face once, and it had cost her a finger. Never again.
"Sound file playback--"
'Methos, te amo, clamo.....meus filius, venio, Methos....ego sum sub terra, Methos."
Sher shrugged as the sound file finished. "Pantheona," she called. "Come on, you little bitch....how are we this morning, hungry? Yes?" she finished in a high little voice like she would talk to a baby, or one of her horses. This things had ripped the leg off her last horse. Nothing alive lived with Sher anymore, not even fish. She missed having pets.
A head appeared, hidden in hair, trembling; hands with too long fingernails slid into the crevices between the bars and grasped the cold metal.
"Cold," whined a small voice, childlike in its pain.
"Suck it up," Sher told the barely visible face.
"Cold, sohtem," it told her again.
Sher smiled, and tossed a blanket at it. A man-sized hand that belied the voice grasped the flannel and pulled it in through the thin holes in the bars. Sher speared a quartered apple on a long pike and slid the end of the pole into a vice in the wall. She pulled a lever and the entire section of the wall slid forward, taking the pike closer to the bars. Fingers reached out and delicately removed the apple, one section at a time.
"Thank you," the voice said.
"Save it," Sher spat. The head came into view fully, as Sher translated the phrases in her head. "Tessa," she called louder. "Translate from Latin."
"Compliance--"
'Methos, I love you, I cry...'
Sher stared at that face wondering what the hell had happened to them all.
'My son, I come, Methos...'
Duncan smiled sickly sweet and rammed an apple wedge into his mouth.
'I am under the earth, Methos.'
end part one.
