"So Methos," Duncan asked, leaning forward, a bit eager. "What's the worst way you've ever died?"
Joe seemed to pause, holding his cards still close enough that Methos couldn't get a glance at them. Even trying to use the reflection of one of the dangling light fixtures didn't reveal the Watcher's hand. Everyone thought he picked this spot so that his back was to the wall (which was part of it), but the bigger reason was to use reflections.
For many reasons, he wished Darius was alive so he could gloat that learning to read mirror writing was an extremely useful skill and not a pointless trick intended to impress his one wife in the 800s.
They had previously been discussing one of Amanda's latest forays into legitimate work (going poorly so far). Amanda had been complaining about her recent public death and how painful it was, and Methos had probably looked unimpressed. Well, being shot multiple times tended to be over quickly, so compared to the other slower methods of death, it wasn't that bad. Duncan clearly felt offended on her behalf and so wanted to prove a point.
Amanda just seemed to sigh as if the question itself was futile. She probably agreed with Methos that the shootout was pretty mild. Privately, Methos thought she was complaining not about the death per se but the thousand-dollar outfit she had been wearing. While tending today more towards bargain bin sweaters, t-shirts, and jeans, Methos could readily agree that replacing your wardrobe was very annoying.
Not to mention there were some questions you really didn't ask other Immortals. Methos was kinda surprised this question came from Duncan. He really should be old enough to know better. Methos had actually been expecting Richie to ask that question, but he never did. The kid did have some tact.
Why couldn't Methos ever just have a nice quiet evening where he masterfully raked in a huge win-fall since he could count cards (and make use of reflections) and MacLeod couldn't? Well, Amanda was surprisingly challenging, and Joe was no slouch either. Richie also had some good instincts and natural skill that, if paired with a good system, would probably net him more money than MacLeod had in a few decades if he learned disguises and infiltrated Vegas.
Methos never said he didn't have to work for his wins.
Everyone was still staring at him.
Right, he had to somehow answer without answering.
Hmm.
There were a lot of ways to answer that question.
Drowning was one way that, while objectively not the most unpleasant, seemed to be uniquely scary to him. Methos suspected it must be something from his pre-immortal years, perhaps his unremembered first death. An Immortal's first death tended to be traumatizing, after all. Methos occasionally dreamed about a fifty-meter-tall wall of water and a woman screaming. He might be holding a stone-tipped spear in it and wearing animal skins, but it's difficult to tell because when he started to think about it, he usually would freeze up and start hyperventilating…oh his heart was starting to race, Methos covered by taking a quick sip of his beer, glad once more that modern beer had such a high alcohol content. Liquid courage and all that.
Moving right along.
To die by fire was also terrifying. Feeling your flesh literally melting, the subcutaneous fat bubbling beneath your skin, your lungs filling with flames and smoke as you paradoxically started to drown in your own blood. Plus, all the variations of fire made it worse. Usually, if the human body ignited, you were in a bad place, but when you combined, say, gasoline or other combustibles…
...that wasn't a great place to dwell either.
So…the ways people have come up with to kill each other.
Ah, what a pleasant topic.
Stoning. It took a bit for an Immortal to die by stoning. And it was such a social affair, everyone standing around flinging rocks at you, laughing and mocking as your bones break and your blood flows in the streets. Children laughing. Old ladies cackling in that distinctive old lady way. The great mob of people cavorting to the sounds of your death. In some ways, the sheer black hatred was almost worse than the actual pain itself.
Then there was hanging, which, while not as extreme as stoning or being burnt at the stake, seemed to be an execution method designed to tease Immortals with true death. You're not going to lose your head in a hanging (usually), but as you choke and your neck snaps, you think you might. All Immortals acted completely blasé about hangings because stuff like fire and stoning was much scarier, but everyone also secretly hated it with a passion.
The firing squad was probably his favourite—it was so quick. A sudden pain in his chest, and he's breaking out of an unmarked grave and off he goes. It also made killing people easy. He didn't have to get close to someone as they died, smell the urine soaking their pants, or hear the gurgle of blood as their body drained. Guns are simply fantastic, and while many Immortals bemoan the transition from a blade culture to a gun culture, Methos welcomes it. After all, with a few exceptions, guns can't kill an Immortal, whereas decapitation is far more common when swords are everyone's weapon of choice.
But Duncan wasn't asking for anything serious. He wasn't asking about the time several mortals hogtied him and…did things to him until he died. He wasn't asking about the time he and Kronos got into a fight and Kronos cleaved his still beating heart out of him, and all he could think of as he died was how he would get his revenge by cleaving out Kronos's liver, spleen, and lungs (and he did). He wasn't asking about the time his one wife actually murdered him in his sleep by stabbing him multiple times in the chest as revenge for not giving her children. He awoke in his bed to find that she ran off with his servant but not before making off with all his valuables. And Methos just had to pick up and leave because what else could he do?
Nope. Nothing serious.
It had to be painful but also quite ludicrous too. Something funny. Maybe a bit scary too. But basically, something people would laugh at because nobody wanted anything serious.
This was a lighthearted game of cards between friends. A confession of something deep and dark wasn't what anyone wanted. People say they want to know what keeps you up at night, your unspoken traumas, doubts and fears. But they are lying. It puts your weight on their shoulders, and nobody wants that.
Methos leaned back, allowing a small smirk to cross his face, and shrugged his shoulders.
"Hornets."
Richie actually spat out a mouthful of beer and was coughing while Duncan regarded him with the widest, most disbelieving eyes Methos had ever seen. Like seriously, his eyes looked about twice as big, and Methos wondered if that's where the anime trope came from. He'd have to ask in that chat room later tonight. Joe just got his exasperated 'okay, where exactly are you going with this' look (he tended to make that face a lot around Methos), and Amanda actually laughed.
"Hornets," Duncan said in disbelief.
"Well," Methos hedged, re-arranging his cards in his hands. "The Asian giant hornet, the Vespa mandarinia, to be exact."
"Never heard of it," Richie said, having gotten over his coughing fit. "But seriously, Old Man—bugs, your worst death came from bugs?!"
"You got it," Methos smiled. He had them right where he wanted them.
"Like, not even a snake," Richie said, spreading his arms out. "Like a boa constrictor, or a viper or… I don't know, something scarier than freaking ugly bees."
"Well, most snakes are scared of Immortals," Methos replied.
"Scared of Immortals or scared of you," Joe asked drily.
Methos laughed at that and said, "Getting back to the hornets…"
"Like seriously, actual hornets, more so than hanging," Duncan searched, and Methos could see in Amanda's eyes agreement. Again, all Immortals hate getting hanged. "Or stoning or shot or…"
"These ones are about this big," he held his fingers apart about 5cm. "Largest hornet discovered in the world. They can kill humans just with their stings."
"I've been stung by bees before Methos..." Duncan began, but Methos cut him off.
"First off, hornets aren't bees. Bees are pollinators. Hornets are predator insects. They aren't even in the same genus," Methos had to correct him. He knew a sentence like that made him sound like a pretentious know it all (rather than just a know it all), but Methos couldn't let something like that slide.
After Methos made the mistake of mischaracterizing dogs and having Kronos lecture him for six hours of the eleven-hour flight from the United States to Europe and then repeatedly mock him when they flew from England to Ukraine on the connecting flight, Methos made sure to learn some basic classification. Kronos might be dead (was probably dead, and Methos probably needed to check his grave later this month), but he never wanted to be subjected to that ordeal again.
The biggest achievement Kronos ever accomplished was making people think he was just a charismatic sociopathic warlord seeking world domination. They tended to forget that he had also been an incredibly excitable nerd.
The Watchers even fell for it. Kronos didn't get into fights in bars because he chose names like Melvin and Eugene (which weren't considered nerdy in that era, being a nerd wasn't even a social category back then). Kronos got into fights in bars because someone would make some stupid remark about science, he would take issue with it, and then he would resolve the whole matter as he always did when words didn't work by bludgeoning everyone in the head and doing a whole lot of stabbing.
"Yeah, yeah, but the point is they are flying insects that sting. Big deal," Richie said dismissively. "Explain how you could get killed by one, let alone have it be your 'worst death.' I've been stung; it hurts, but it's not as bad as getting shot."
Left unsaid was that getting shot was low on even Richie's list of painful ways to die, and being shot was his First Death.
"Not like this, they got very long stingers and can sting multiple times, and their venom is very potent," Methos explained. Oh, the sweet innocence of youth. Richie, and clearly MacLeod judging by his unimpressed stare, didn't believe insects could be a source of torment. "Over 30 people in Japan die every year from their stings."
"But hornets," Duncan sputtered. He just couldn't let this go. "Like, in five thousand years, that's the worst death you've ever experienced?!"
"Let me describe the situation to you," Methos said instead of answering. After all, this wasn't about answering the question but providing a pleasant experience. "There it is, the early iron age, and I've washed up on the shore of Japan."
"You were in Japan in the early iron age," Joe said skeptically. He hadn't really been participating in the conversation so far, and Methos rather thought it was because Joe realized Methos was completely messing with everyone. He was, but only insofar as people expected him to. Methos had expectations to fulfill. They all did. Amanda got into trouble with the law, Richie did stupid youthful things, Duncan got into tussles with headhunters, and Methos said sarcastic, trolly stuff. Methos wouldn't disappoint.
"Joe," Methos warned.
"Okay, okay, continue oh great storyteller," Joe said, bow and all.
Why was it that when he told mortals about his real identity, they inevitably became painfully sarcastic? Did he really rub off on them that much?
"Thank you." Methos sniffled and took another sip of his beer. "So, I wander on this island, trying to figure out where I am, when I stumble into a nest."
"A nest was just right there?" Richie asked doubtfully.
"Their nests can be underground, so you can unknowingly bump into them," Methos explained. Underground animals, in general, were a constant hazard. Humans—and Immortals were humans (at least, on good days, Methos thought that)— weren't good at assessing threats from below or above. Humans are more about threats in front of your face.
"And I stupidly swatted them," Methos admitted.
Oh, was that ever stupid.
"And about several hundred of them rose up from the hive. They saw their fallen fellow hornets, or more likely smelled them, and promptly started to hunt me down," Methos gazed at the ceiling, remembering that day. He was already suffering from scurvy due to a prolonged period of poor diet on his ship, so after the ship sank, he was not in the best physical health to begin with, and he wasn't thinking clearly. Usually he was more circumspect when encountering new animals and insects.
That day he was not careful, and he paid dearly for it.
"And I tried running; I could see this big, massive cloud, like a locust swarm, teaming with several hundred of them, all massively larger than any other wasp or hornet I had ever seen," Methos spread his arms as wide as they would go to demonstrate the size of the swarm.
The cloud had been so large that the sun was blotted out.
"Then they started to sting me," Methos said, "and usually your quickening repels insects to a certain extent…"
"The quickening repels insects! Since when?" Richie demanded, putting his beer down, and looking completely baffled. "I get eaten alive by mosquitoes every freaking summer."
"Do you now Richie," Duncan challenged him.
Richie seemed to think, "Well, I mostly live-in cities."
"Cities have a lot of mosquitoes," Amanda pointed out. She tried subtly to see Methos's cards, but he angled his body away. "Look at the mortals and their obsession with birdbaths."
"I never got the point of birdbaths," Methos admitted. He glanced down at his hand, not reacting but internally pleased by it—a full house. "Now, having a lake on your property that you can fish in that's good and practical. But why a birdbath?"
"I prefer rock gardens myself," Amanda confided, clearly unruffled by her failure to cheat. "Much easier to maintain. I hate grass."
"Trees are fine, but grass is entirely pointless unless you're grazing cattle." Seriously, why were mortals these days so obsessed with grass lawns? You can't eat it, and you must put in work to maintain it. At least rock gardens were pretty to look at and low maintenance. Methos made it a point ever since that stupid craze took hold that whenever he was in the Western world, to replace all his grass lawns with nice sensible rock gardens. He could see Amanda nodding vigorously.
"But I think the point Methos was trying to make Richie is that you haven't been bitten since your First Death because your quickening protects you," Amanda stated.
"Wait," Joe looked absolutely floored. "Insects don't bite Immortals!"
The three older Immortals at the table looked at each other with the slightest bit of awkwardness. Duncan shook it off first and said, "Well, yeah. We heal instantly. What do you think would happen if an insect bit you and your quickening glided over the wound? They know better than to bite us."
"I think it has something more to do with the energy field of our quickenings," Methos said. "Like those little devices that put out a hum that you can plug into an electrical outlet. These devices, to an extent, deter pests. It's also possible we look different to them. Some insects can see different wavelengths of light..."
Methos trailed off as everyone was now looking at him, and he once more hid his discomfort by taking a drink which was getting kind of low, so he reached over to the bar just off to his left and grabbed another beer.
"Sorry, what," Duncan asked, confused.
"So, about the hornets that attacked me," Methos cut him off. He knew he was repeating himself, but everyone kept going off on different tangents. Methos would have to be careful; he was probably getting tipsy. Methos had good tolerance for alcohol, but the game had lasted several hours now, and even Methos could be hard-pressed to remain sober when faced with the power of modern drinks. Even the beers were harder than the ones from his youth.
Methos could tell Joe would be trying to gently pry information from him in the coming days, but no amount of prying would make him confess that after the whole mess in Bordeaux, he found and kept Kronos's treasure trove of research. Because, of course, Kronos had to research for several decades to build his unstoppable supervirus. You don't just make something like that at the drop of a hat.
And while most of the material was in the field of biology, for whatever reason, Kronos had books, journal articles, and academic papers on everything from astrophysics to advanced mathematics to nuclear physics (quite a bit there, which suggested to Methos that Kronos was toying around with building a nuclear bomb before he decided to go with biological weapons of mass destruction) to quantum mechanics. The latter Methos found interesting, especially as it seemed to relate to Immortals. Most of the research touched on the intersection between quantum mechanics and biology, and Kronos even penned a few articles himself theorizing about the scientific origins of Immortals.
If only he had kept in that direction rather than genocide, he might have made some real breakthrough discoveries. Like all Immortals, Methos was curious about his own Immortality.
"I screamed at the first sting. It felt like someone took a red-hot knife, stabbed it into me, and then shoved in acid for good measure," Methos looked at the dangling lights as he spoke, remembering his yell that allowed some to crawl in his mouth and sting there too. "And then this sort of thing was multiplied by several hundred as they swarmed me, piling on and on and on."
Just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hornets, all murderously bearing down on him with one goal only—to kill him and make sure he stayed dead.
"And," Methos looked MacLeod in the eyes. "They stung me all over again."
"All…" Duncan said slowly.
"Everywhere," Methos nodded. "All the sensitive places—they crawled in my mouth and stung me in the throat," Richie grimaced. "My eyes." Amanda looked horrified. "Other areas…"
All the men at the table winced.
"So, I died."
"Then I woke up," Methos said, remembering that terrifying day that made him avoid Japan for the foreseeable future. He still hadn't been back. "And they were waiting for me.."
Richie started to look a bit pale. "What do you mean they were waiting?"
"The giant Asian hornet will often sting corpses to death to really much sure they are dead," Methos explained with a thin smile. "So, upon revival, they were ready to sting me with hot knives, pouring acid into my body and driving me into the ground. All accompanied by the sound of hundreds if not thousands of them buzzing."
"So, I died again."
"And revived," Methos smiled again with dark humour, "and there they were, ready to kill me."
"Um, Methos, look, I'm sorry about asking…" Duncan looked extremely uncomfortable, realizing that his jokey demand went somewhere dark. Well, not actually dark, this story was kind of funny to remember compared to his other memories, but that served him right, asking questions he shouldn't ask.
"Oh no, MacLeod, you wanted my worst death, so let us discuss it," Methos cut him off, not allowing him the escape. Whether in war or duels, or a discussion with friends, Methos never allowed his opponents to escape. Methos might escape, but that was different. "Let's continue talking about it."
"So much like ourselves, in being incapable of letting something go," Methos continued, quite aware that everyone at the table was now not enjoying the discussion, but Methos was feeling quite vindictive. Well, everyone was uncomfortable except Joe. The Watcher looked as if he was trying to figure something out. "I was besieged by the hornet swarm for probably close to a day, and during that time, I revived and died so many times the ground was soaked so thoroughly with my blood I'm pretty sure the native Japanese must have some sort of tale about it."
It wouldn't be the first time his death left a lasting impact on some community.
"Just over and over and over. The sky swarming and seething with enraged flying monsters that were devouring me alive." It might sound like Methos was laying it on thick, but if anything, he was understating it. Even being burned alive didn't offer the terror he felt upon reviving and being immediately set upon by an unstoppable alien force.
And here, Methos changed the story. "So, at some point, I must have stayed dead long enough that the swarm moved on."
The reality was far more horrifying.
His quickening, subjected to repeated assaults with no letup, had fully exposed itself. His entire body was a pin cushion. There was more uncovered muscle and blood than skin. It was extremely rare that any animal attacked an Immortal that long and that hard. Superpersistent hunting was more human than animal, after all. And Methos's experience in Japan showed why it rarely happened and why virtually all animals avoided attacking an Immortal.
When an Immortal lost their head, their quickening went to the victor Immortal. Most of the quickening was bound up in lightning that was directionally focused on the dead Immortal. But when a mortal kills an Immortal, the quickening diffuses. It's mostly invisible save for soft tuffs of glowing vapour rising into the sky. Mortals who kill Immortals are so rare that most people don't realize what that vapour is.
The quickening was often compared to lightning, but it was probably better thought of as a high-intensity energy field. Especially for an old Immortal, the buildup of energy over time compresses, the wavelengths becoming extremely short.
All forms of life will give off some form of radiation. Radiation was often a scary word to most people, but most of it was harmless. Light was radiation. So too were things like radiowaves and microwaves. Those wavelengths were very long, with radiowaves being over a kilometre long and visible light more like a few hundred nanometers long. Humans and animals glowed with infrared radiation.
It was not radiation per se that was dangerous but ionizing radiation. Ionizing radiation, after all, imparted enough energy to cause biological systems to part ways with electrons from their usual location in atoms. Ionizing radiation isn't always lethal. There was always a certain amount of background radiation from the sun. Skin cancer is a thing, but nobody simply dies from routine sun exposure.
However, dosage and scale matter.
And, as Methos discovered that day so long ago in Japan, the quickening, while normally inert, was technically ionizing due to being an extremely short-wave energy field. It was tightly contained in the body, so usually not a threat to others. Immortals wouldn't set off Geiger counters. Even healing from serious wounds would only maybe spike, say, 0.1 μSv (the equivalent of eating one banana). Being in the presence of an actual quickening after a head was taken was more like 40-50μSv (like taking a long airplane flight). Nothing more dangerous than living in the modern world. The Watchers, on whole, were not all coming down with cancer.
However, that's because the exposure was brief, and the quickening was still either fully contained by the body or homing in on another energy source, like in a challenge. This was different. His quickening, while still bound to his body, with no target Immortal to strike, and without completely dispersing due to Methos still having his head, basically unfolded from his body and spread outwards. It was like having his head taken without losing his quickening. Only repeated and continual damage would produce this type of reaction. Because it wasn't normal, as even those who torture Immortals won't keep up a constant stream of strikes for several hours without allowing the body to heal, what happened next was without precedent.
It was around the European iron age, so about the first century AD when it happened. Methos had absolutely no context for what he saw after he awoke from death with his quickening safely coiled back into his body.
It was a massacre. There were tens of thousands of dead hornets for at least a kilometre. And every other living thing was either dead or suffering from what looked like some strange sort of burn. Or they were struck with a disease. Seeing what looked like fire damage concentrated on animals and insects or an out-of-nowhere plague just freaked him out.
Methos ran from the island. Right into the ocean. He had to get away. And after several weeks of starvation, dying of thirst, and exposure, Methos washed ashore on the Korean peninsula and slowly made his way back to Europe and Africa. He thought the island was cursed and that he needed to escape immediately or suffer whatever had struck those animals and insects. He had no idea what could have caused all of them to die.
Today, with his modern scientific perspective, and a few good books, Methos realized that his confused beleaguered quickening had put out the equivalent of 4 Sv.
That's a fatal dose of radiation.
Kronos had also realized this (and Methos didn't know if it was because Kronos had a similar experience or had just postulated it as a possibility from his research) and had theorized a few ways to weaponize the quickening. Methos memorized those articles despite his horror because he would never allow an advantage to slip by him. But then he burned the articles. Methos also, to really make sure they were gone, deleted the data from the computers Kronos kept them on and then drilled the hard drives to make extra sure. Methos was beyond thankful Kronos never stored his research on the Internet. For even Kronos had felt this was too uncontrollable to weld and had decided biological weapons of mass destruction were far more useful to his ends. After all, Kronos wasn't seeking to kill every living thing.
Just all the mortal humans.
What happened to the Hunters who killed Darius and the other Immortals completed this terrifying picture. Of course, Horton died shortly after at the hands of MacLeod, but there were other Hunters there. After reading Kronos's research, Methos sought out the five surviving Hunters. Despite being young and relatively healthy, the Hunters all inexplicably had advanced-stage cancer. One, presumably the one closest to Darius when he died, had already died of brain tumours. That suggested to Methos that a quickening released by a mortal when there is no Immortal to receive it will attempt to go to them and only after failing release into the atmosphere. So maybe 100-400 mSv.
It probably wasn't just Darius, as there were other Immortals they killed, but Darius had been the oldest Immortal they killed, so his death probably released the most radiation.
Darius had died peacefully, though, just a strike to the head, and that was it. What would have happened if Horton had first agitated his quickening (by torturing him) and then killed him?
Maybe it was better Darius was dead because had he survived, Methos wasn't sure if his old friend would have been able to live with himself.
Even Methos...even Methos had trouble with this. Since all evidence seemed to suggest Immortals grew more powerful as they got older, did that mean that if someone ever managed to kill Methos and there wasn't an Immortal to catch his quickening, he would literally go off like a nuclear bomb? If at 3000 years old, he managed to depopulate a beach (and Methos was beyond thankful nobody human was on that beach, especially given what recently happened in WWII; all of this was making him beyond uncomfortable at the implications), what sort of impact would he have at five thousand?
Do you know who I was? Death! Death! Death on horse!
Methos had been speaking metaphorically to Duncan. He didn't want it realized in literal fact. And the fact that it could be even remotely possible unnerved Methos.
Again, Methos didn't say any of this because this was a friendly game of cards and talking about the uncomfortable implications that Immortals had so much energy that they could be weaponized as nuclear weapons given the right circumstances wasn't a light topic of conversation.
"And so," Methos took another sip of beer. His now empty bottle of beer meant…oh wow, he drank maybe just a bit too much. As a rule, Methos didn't like to get drunk. Being drunk made him vulnerable. Currently, he was dangerously close to being drunk. "I managed to slink away from the beach and hide for a while."
All lies. He ran in sheer terror, stumbling across dead macaques, deer, tanukis, and even sea eagles. And so many hornets. All dead. Or dying. Everything around him had been terrified of him, seeing him as a moving black pit of destruction. And at the time, he hadn't known, hadn't realized.
Why did he go down this route again? Ah, yes, Duncan asking stupid questions.
"I…" Duncan was speechless and clearly uncomfortable. He had given up the pretense of holding his cards, which lay discarded on the table. He didn't even hold his beer bottle but looked directly at Methos. He then closed his eyes and seemed to take a deep breath. "I'm sorry I brought this up, my honoured friend. It was uncalled for."
Richie looked confused, staring at MacLeod in askance. Joe didn't react, which was a reaction. Amanda seemed to disappear in her seat, a trick that Methos thought only he had perfected. Neither Richie nor Joe spoke fluent Gaelic, and Amanda wouldn't say anything. It was difficult to translate, given he said it with a thick Scottish accent, but Duncan's word choice was clearly formal. Duncan felt guilty. Of course, he did. Duncan's conscious was very easily wounded.
This no longer felt like a friendly game of cards.
"Well," Methos knew he had drunk enough. He glanced down at his hand. "I fold." He pushed his beer away, feeling more than a little tipsy. He miscalculated. He just wanted everyone to have a good laugh, and he forgot that he was bothered by that death, but not for the reasons everyone would suspect.
He also forgot that not everyone he called friend wanted him to suffer.
He stood up and slipped on his coat, his Ivanhoe a comforting weight. His .22 sitting snuggled against his back. The thing about swords is you only kill what you mean to kill. Same with guns.
He wasn't tipsy enough that he couldn't walk, but he stumbled all the same because his memories just weren't cooperating with him today. He needed to go sleep this off. Sleep was a great blessing. You forgot a lot when you slept. Alcohol never made him forget. Must be a quirk of the quickening.
Duncan grabbed him gently, steadying him as he lurched. Duncan's face was still open and regretful. Methos spoke before he could rethink it and was out the door before Duncan could react. The hush that fell in the wake of his departure probably meant that Duncan understood. It wasn't like Methos was the only person who spoke Greek.
No apologies necessary, my dear friend.
Duncan would take that to mean that Methos accepted his apology. Left unsaid was that Methos should never have told that story to begin with. Unanswered was so much concerning Kronos's megalomania (and their love/hate relationship), Methos's fears, and maybe a small sliver of shame that he hurt someone that genuinely cared about him.
But, like so many things, not everything needed to be said.
