With a now-dull pencil in hand and a business ledger and calculator standing at the ready, Joe was pouring over the latest fiscal year's financial records for his humble place of business. Recently, the notoriety of the bands he was booking were bringing in record crowds, and business was up considerably. However, the more money the bar made, the more hassle and paperwork its owner had to fill out. Dancing around city, state, and federal income tax forms was hard enough for a normal small business owner, making sure absolutely nothing was traceable back to the Watcher Network added entirely new levels of headache to the task.
Joe had respectfully declined each offer for Thanksgiving dinner he had received, telling Mike, his other colleagues, and Duncan MacLeod that he was spending the holiday in Chicago with his late sister's family. He of course told Lynn that he was spending it in New York. Everyone who cared was convinced that he had a family gathering welcoming him tonight, and so no one was worried about him.
He told himself that he declined the offers so that he could use the rare span of free time to take care of the business end of the bar, such as these financial dealings, the inventory and ordering of supplies, booking bands, and massive cleaning to prepare for the upcoming annual board of health inspection. He also told himself that the reason he didn't tell anyone his true plans for the holiday was because he didn't want his friends and family fussing over him and reminding him of the importance of family. He told himself that he didn't need to celebrate Thanksgiving, he'd missed more than a few of them with his combined time in Vietnam, the Watcher Academy in Geneva, and while watching the various immortals he's been assigned to over the years when they weren't living in the U.S. or Canada.
The thoughts he wasn't allowing himself to think centered around the real reasons, of course. He couldn't spend the holidays with his sister's children because of James. After all, he'd shot James with intent to kill. It didn't matter that he didn't succeed. How could he face the children of the man he tried to kill in cold blood? Or even worse, for revenge?
Of course he could have easily flown to New York with Duncan and Richie. In fact, if Connor and Rachel had decided to fly to Seacouver he probably would have been convinced to attend dinner with them. But it wasn't in Seacouver. It was in New York at Connor's townhouse. As Duncan's watcher, Joe just didn't feel right in attending, no matter how welcome they professed he was. He would feel like an outsider accepting the charity of the Clan MacLeod, and Joseph Dawson did not need anyone's charity!
Subconsciously he rubbed one thigh at that thought.
Joe was sitting in the booth, totaling up his yearly expenses by category, when suddenly the front door swung open. He distinctly remembered locking that door after he came in, and he grabbed his automatic pistol from its holster sitting in the booth next to him. He flicked the safety off and pointed it at the door.
"Is that how you greet your friends on holidays?" Methos asked when he found himself with a gun pointed at his head. He slammed the door against the bitter cold without taking his eyes off the man and his gun.
"Jesus Christ, old man!" Joe exclaimed as he restored the safety on his pistol and put the weapon down. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Nice to see you, too," Methos replied flippantly.
Joe sighed. "What are you doing here?" he repeated, kindlier this time.
"I could ask you the same question," Methos returned.
"That door was locked." Joe was fully aware he was changing the subject.
"Oh, right." Methos turned and re-locked the door.
As much as Joe tried to be angry at this surprise and uninvited visitor, one look at Methos conveying the easy shy awkwardness of Adam Pierson as he waited for the bartender to invite him in was enough to break his resolve. He shook his head with a laugh. "Get you a beer?"
"That'd be great," said Methos, smiling. He followed the watcher to the bar, and taking a stool down from its resting place, melted into the cushion in his usual fashion. Joe filled a glass with some random draft and handed it over to the immortal. "Thanks."
"I suppose I should go grab mine," said Joe as he made his way back to the booth. He returned a moment later with his bottle. "So when did you get in?" he asked as he returned to his preferred spot behind the bar.
"Just this evening," Methos answered after taking a long sip of his beer.
"And how was 'business'?" Joe's question was laced with amusement. He knew Methos hated being called back to Geneva.
The immortal's eyes darkened considerably at the question. "I really hate these annual meetings, Joe," he said sourly. "Why the Powers That Be decided that my researchers need to meet and discuss once a year is beyond me."
Joe shrugged. "I guess they want to make sure everyone's making progress."
Methos laughed, but Joe caught the resentment in the amusement.
"Progress indeed," Methos scoffed. "The only real progress we made was in verifying that-that poser last yearwasn't really me."
"I thought that was already agreed upon?"
"It was, for the most part. There still were a few believers in the ranks, though, until Rothman pulled out something that the Chinese had been sitting on. Turns out he was a viking named Skalf and he'd been impersonating me for three hundred years."
Joe got the distinct impression that Methos was secretly disappointed by this. How convenient would it have been to convince the world that 'Methos' was really dead? Of course, allowing the world to think that one Richard Ryan was now carrying the quickening of the world's former oldest immortal would hardly earn Methos any favors.
"Really? And where did 'Adam Pierson' stand?"
Methos flashed a smug little smirk. "Adam has always agreed with Don on the matter. No immortal as old as Methos ever reveals their true identity to the masses at random."
Joe nodded. He'd expected as much. "Especially those who've managed to learn about and then evade the watchers for years?"
Methos's smile was pure innocence. "Like I'd give the others away."
"So there are others!"
"You believe what you like, Joseph," Methos said cryptically. Joe knew that the old man wasn't about to reveal anything more on the subject.
"What exactly do you do for the Methos chronicles anyway?" he asked instead.
"Mostly I try to verify other's research--their translations mostly. If they think they've got a lead on Methos I check it out for them."
"So you debunk them."
"Not as often as you'd think," Methos admitted. "Last year they got a line on me in ancient Rome. I verified that I was senator for a time."
"Were you?" Joe asked suspiciously.
"Of course not, but what's wrong with a little resume padding?"
Joe laughed. "Let me guess, you were the senator's brew-master?"
This time Methos laughed. "Why brew it yourself when you can have others brew it for you?"
"And I'll bet you mooched off some bartender friend back then, too."
"Didn't have to. Caesar provided all his servants with all the alcohol they could drink."
"You didn't serve Caesar," Joe dismissed.
"Sure I did," Methos defended. "I was his personal bodyguard for a time."
"Hell of a job you did, too."
"Hey!" Methos protested. "I'll have you know I died in the line of duty a whole eight months before that happened."
"No kidding?" The seriousness with which Methos defended his claim made Joe start to believe that the man wasn't lying about this.
"Yeah. Took an arrow in the chest on the road from Gaul."
"Ouch."
Methos half shrugged, as though that particular death was of little consequence. "We were ambushed. I managed to kill… quite a few of them before one of their archers got lucky. Lived just long enough to die in Caesar's arms."
"You're shitting me." Joe still wasn't totally convinced that the immortal was telling the truth.
"I most certainly am not! I hammed up my death scene quite a bit, too. Told Caesar to take care of my wife and everything."
"Wait, you were married too? This just keeps getting better and better!"
"Her name was Lenora."
"Wow," Joe breathed, shaking his head with a smile. "I never would have guessed that."
"Haven't you learned not to underestimate me yet?" Methos asked, returning the smile.
"Yes, and that's why I'm skeptical." They both laughed at that. Then: "Wow, that must have been hard on her." Joe watched the smile fade from Methos's face, the humor in his eyes replaced by something else, wistful nostalgia maybe, colored by a long-forgotten pain.
"I bet it was," he said softly after a moment's pause. Then he shook his head as if to clear the memories and when he looked over to Joe his expression had changed completely. "Well, what's it take to get a refill around here?" he asked impatiently.
Joe took and refilled his glass, knowing it was wiser to just let the conversation drop. Methos had uncharacteristically chosen to volunteer a portion of his past, and Joe was both lucky and thankful for it. He knew that the immortal wouldn't divulge any more because the memories had just become too painful, and Joe knew better than to ask.
The conversation lapsed into silence. Methos nursed his beer while Joe wiped down a spotless bar. Eventually they both decided to end the silence before it became overbearingly awkward. However, they chose to reclaim conversation at the exact same time, which caused them both to be reduced to the godsend of tension-relieving laughter.
"You were saying?" Joe asked, getting the better of himself quicker than his companion.
"No, no," Methos dismissed. "You first, I insist."
Joe grabbed himself another bottle of beer and snapped the top off. "So what brings the oldest living immortal to my doorstep on Thanksgiving?"
Methos genuinely shrugged. "I was looking for a good brew."
"Don't you know most places are closed on Thanksgiving?"
"I don't celebrate Thanksgiving, and I just flew in from Geneva, where they don't celebrate Thanksgiving. How was I supposed to know what day it was?" Methos knew his lie wasn't convincing, even if the logic behind the statement could have been. The elongated glance he earned from Joe signaled that his story hadn't been wholly believed.
"What do you have against Thanksgiving?" Joe asked at last. "You eat lots of food, drink lots of beer, and watch lots of football. Sounds right up your alley."
Methos nodded slightly, thoughtful. "What about the enforced enduring of one's extended relations?"
"Well there is that," Joe conceded.
Methos then saw his opening. "Is that why you're sitting alone in your empty bar keeping company with your tax records?"
Joe tensed. The conversation wasn't supposed to shift around to him. "It's a rare moment when I can close the bar and get some actual work done."
"I see," said Methos, nodding in feigned understanding. "Pity they just happen to coincide with those rare moments where you're expected to spend time with your family."
Joe recoiled slightly, not liking this conversation turn at all. "I was never very good at stuffy social encounters," he said dismissively, busying himself with continued bar scrubbing.
"Yeah, I know," said Methos, once again with enough feigned understanding to lure Joe into false security. "That's why you didn't MC the Watcher year-end party three years in a row."
Joe didn't know whether or not it was Methos's exact deflations of his obvious lies or the simple smug look that the immortal was wearing that caused him pound the bar rag into the bar. The sudden vehemence of anger made Methos jump more so than the sudden pounding.
"Dammit Methos! What the hell do you want from me?"
Methos flinched a bit at the outburst, and then seemed to shrink back into himself. Shoulders rounding, head bowed, hands drawing together atop the bar. He was Adam Pierson again, shy grad student extraordinaire. "I just want to know why you're spending the holiday alone," he answered in the sincerest voice Joe had ever heard the man use. His anger softened into bitter resentment.
"Alone here or elsewhere, makes no difference," Joe said, turning his back so as to pretend he was wiping the grill. "Here at least I'll get some work done."
Methos nodded, his suspicions confirmed. Adam Pierson retreated back into the ether, his purpose served. "I know why you didn't go to New York," he said at last. Joe stopped wiping the spotless grill and stood motionless. "The Clan MacLeod can be a very closed society." Joe said nothing so Methos pressed further. "A father in his own house, with daughter, brother, and nephew. No amount of invitation could make an outsider feel welcomed there."
Perhaps it was the truth to the statement, or perhaps it was the kindred loneliness Joe heard in Methos's voice, but he turned around to face the immortal at last. "They invited you too, didn't they." It was a statement, not a question, and carried all of Joe's hopes at finding a kindred spirit.
Thus Methos's baldly stated "No" left him blinking in surprise.
Joe stopped his current pity train in its tracks. It never even occurred to him that Methos would have nowhere to spend the holiday.
"What do you mean, no?"
"I mean no, they did not invite me." Methos was gone again, and Adam Pierson sat, stiffly hunched over the bar, gazing into the shrinking head on his beer. Joe tried to search for the right words, but found none. "It's no big deal," Adam said dismissively without looking up. "It's not like they thought I'd be back in town or anything."
"Don't you have anywhere to go this evening?" Joe asked at last.
"I said it wasn't a big deal, Joseph. I don't celebrate this holiday, remember?" Adam had shifted out and Methos was back again. Joe wondered if Adam appeared when Methos's defenses were down or if Methos appeared as Adam's defenses. In a way both seemed true.
"Yeah, but food, alcohol, football, fellowship," Joe stammered. "Even you must want those things at least once a year. Why not on the day when everyone else is pursuing them?"
Methos sighed. "Yes, Joe. Why not?" His gaze was fixed and pointed, and Joe felt like he'd just been played. His anger returned all the sharper.
"You know perfectly well why not."
Methos arranged his face into the perfect semblance of Adam's confusion. "You mean about why you didn't go to Chicago?"
Joe wasn't falling for it. Methos and Adam were the same person and he should start treating them as such. "Lynn's father is dead because of me, because of MacLeod. Murderers aren't welcomed at the dinner table." If Joe had been thinking more clearly he would have chosen his words better. Anger and alcohol would do that to a person.
"No, your brother-in-law is dead because of Darius." Was that Methos or Adam Pierson? Joe honestly couldn't tell.
"Darius wouldn't have wanted vengeance," he said weakly. It was a poor argument.
"MacLeod did," Methos countered. "And you wanted vengeance for MacLeod."
"Mac did what he needed to do, to protect the immortals from us."
"And you did what you need to for the sake of the watcher creed."
"Tell that to Jacob Galati," Joe said with finality.
Methos pushed back from the bar and sat up straighter. He didn't expect this turn, but that didn't make it impossible to deal with. "Jacob was killing watchers the way Horton was killing immortals. Both needed to be stopped."
"You and Mac were right, I led Galati to his death. How many other immortals have died because I broke my oath?"
The amount of guilt and self-loathing in Joe's voice surprised Methos, but he had the best retort.
"What would have happened to MacLeod if you hadn't?"
"Mac can take care of himself."
"And Richie?"
Joe sighed heavily. Richie still owned Joe's most direct interference in the game to date. He took a moment to gather his thoughts. "Horton tried to shape the game the way he saw fit and many people died. How is they way I've lived my life any different from that?"
This time Methos sighed. Joe had been spending entirely too much time around the Highlander lately. "Easy," he answered. "Intent."
Joe regarded the immortal critically for a moment, prompting Methos to continue.
"Horton wanted to rid the world of immortals. You're helping MacLeod to rid the world of evil. Don't feel guilty about Horton's death. MacLeod wouldn't have killed him if he wasn't evil."
Joe wasn't buying it. "He broke his oath and I broke mine. How the hell could I judge him to die for crimes I myself have committed?"
Methos broke eye contact, but covered it by taking a sip of his beer. Those sentiments were hauntingly familiar. But if a good offense was the best defense... "Is that why you were willing to let the watchers execute you?"
Joe was stunned to silence. The conversation wasn't supposed to come back to this. He needed a hasty retreat from it and chose anger.
"What the hell would you know of it?" He snapped, and Methos nearly laughed at the audacity of the question. He was all set to remind Joe of exactly how he knew but the watcher cut him off. He was quite tired of the old man's tricks. He wasn't MacLeod. He didn't need to be lead down some path towards self-discovery. He wasn't in the mood to rediscover his inner self-worth after some slight promptings from the world's oldest man. There was no harm in his feeling guilty over this; it wouldn't cost him his life so he didn't need the requisite kick in the ass that MacLeod so often did. Indeed, this guilt was his last tie to his biological family. He'd be damned if he'd allow Methos to rob him of it!
"Please spare me the old routine of anecdotes and riddles from your long and checkered history," he said, sounding tired and annoyed. "Methos, world's oldest man, breezing in and out of people's lives just long enough to inform them of how fucked up their world view is all because they don't mesh with his cynical, survivalist instincts."
That shut Methos up right quick. Joe was gratified at the unfiltered surprise that washed across the immortal's expression. It gave him the impetus to continue. "What? No flippant comeback? You disappoint me, old man."
Methos blinked, and Joe could just see any and all manner of replies as they flitted through Methos's mind behind the windows of wide green eyes, but the watcher was on a role and wasn't about to let Methos get a word in edgewise. "You break in here, expecting to steal some of my beer because I'm of course going to be participating in some rank social gathering, but having been caught in the act you quickly decide to rationalize your intentions by dispensing a few lines of your fortune-cookie wisdom that will get me to realize the error of my ways and learn the true meaning of Christmas."
"Thanksgiving," Methos whispered into the silence left as Joe stopped to catch his breath.
Joe continued as if he hadn't even heard him. "Did it ever occur to you that the friends you casually avoid whenever the mood strikes might actually have legitimate pain of their own? Rather than try and trick us into converting to your own skewed beliefs why not try actually empathizing for a change?" He paused to let that sink in, but didn't really take stock of the immortal's face. If he had he might have stopped there. "Well sur-prise! Good old Joe wants to spend this holiday alone." This last word he delivered right in the immortal's face, waving his arms in emphasis of the third person reference. He was actually enjoying finally giving Methos a piece of his mind. It seemed like it was a long time in coming. "I have all the company I need right here with the IRS and a six pack. Go steal your booze someplace else. Let someone else put up with you for a change."
It was actually quite fascinating, watching the subtle shifts in Methos's expression as the immortal seemed to wither under the heat of such angry, hateful words. The flippancy was long gone. So were the arrogance, the sarcasm, the devil-may-care. What was left was a pair of wide green eyes, shockingly bright against a chalk-white face, until that head bowed low and fell back into shadow as the man pushed out of the glare of the overhead lights as he stood from his stool. When he looked up again the shadows crept forward, pooling in the hollows of that angular face, and green eyes had faded into flat grayness, as if the light behind them had guttered out. Joe watched, fascinated, as the old man fumbled his wallet out of a back pocket. With slow, precise movements a crisp Swiss banknote was removed from the aging leather and placed face-up on the bar with nimble fingers that never touched the surface, as though the polished wood would burn them.
As unfamiliar as he was with Swiss currency, Joe glanced down in abject curiosity and slid the bill towards him. He missed Methos replaced the wallet and grabbing his car keys from his jacket pocket.
"I came here, didn't I?"
The sudden intrusion of the immortal's voice, the sound shocking in the heavy silence, startled his attention back where it belonged. His first, utterly irrelevant thought, was that Methos looked old. Methos never looked old. He'd seen him tired, resigned, depressed--hell, even devastated,but never old. The incongruity tripped him up long enough that he barely registered the immortal's departure until the door clicked shut behind him.
Joe blinked, startled, and it was like waking up. The memory of what he'd said to Methos tumbled through his mind, along with the bits and pieces he'd seen of Methos's reaction, and he heard again the immortal's words. I came here, didn't I?
Oh, shit.
The old man had actually come here seeking nothing else but company for the evening, having no doors welcoming him tonight. And for his troubles, he'd been shoved back out into the cold, chased from the bar by harsh words and accusations. Joe was about to scramble towards the door when he finally noticed what Methos had done as he was leaving.
Double shit.
Methos had never paid for his beer up front before. Was this gesture in direct response to Joe's accusation? The watcher scrambled to the door, fearing all implication, and threw it wide open. All he saw was that a winter storm had kicked up and near whiteout conditions blanketed the empty street. Tracks in the freshly fallen snow were all that was left in evidence of Methos's presence, and they were slowly being devoured even as Joe stood there staring.
He had no choice but to return to his booth and his taxes. Methos was gone with no certainty of ever returning. Worse, Joe couldn't drive now that the storm hit. He was stranded alone at the bar with beautiful memories of making an ass of himself, and a cold pit of worry that he just might have driven Methos away for good.
