Methos, still damp, miserable, and bone-numbingly tired, strode back into the bar with purpose. One thing. He could tell Joe one thing, and that one thing would get the watcher off his back.

It wasn't that he didn't appreciate Joe's concern. Actually, he found it rather touching. It was just that there was no way he could tell the watcher the truth. He couldn't possibly explain the depths of what was troubling him tonight, for those troubles were five thousand years in the making. What he could do was give his friend a glimpse. Just a brief glimmer of the truth—or parts or it—to satisfy the man's curiosity and set some of his concerns to rest.

And so Methos strode intently from the kitchen, his slightly damp shoes making faint squishing sounds as he went. "Joe, I'll take that beer now," he announced as he reentered the bar.

Joe, who had been walking, from somewhere to somewhere else, was taken completely by surprise when Methos entered. He whirled around at the sound of the immortal's reentry, or at least he tried to, for a man with two prosthetic legs cannot exactly 'whirl.' What was worse, he was standing in the puddle that Methos had left from earlier. The one by the door from when he had first returned.

The one that Methos had sworn to clean up.

The one that staged Joe's parody of a pirouette, wherein he crumbled—flailing—to the floor.

Methos could only watch as he inadvertently startled the watcher, who wasn't as light and quick on his feet as his sense-memory liked to believe, whose prosthetic limbs made it impossible for him to regain balance once it was lost. Methos could do nothing as Joe flailed his arms mid turn when he realized his mistake ,as his upper body went one way and his lower body went another. A loud clang when Joe's cane found the floor, and a sickening crack when the watcher's head found the back of the nearest booth.

A heartbeat's pause and Methos was scrambling to Joe's side. He'd been a doctor off and on for more years than he cared to think about down through the ages, and it was comfortingly easy to fall back into the role now. As such, well-trained eyes noted the steady rise and fall of the watcher's chest as he dropped to his knees. Relived that Joe was simply unconscious, he ran gently impatient fingers through the watcher's hair until he found wound. There was a sizable lump forming at the back of Joe's head, and it was bleeding with the common alacrity of head wounds. From there, Methos's fingers wandered down to the base of Joe's skull before ensuring—as well as they could—that he hadn't sustained any neck injuries. Satisfied that his biggest worry was that crack to the head, the immortal hurried over to the bar and grabbed the paper towels. The first thing he needed to do was stop the bleeding.

Methos secured the make-shirt pressure bandage with one hand and took Joe's carotid pulse with the other, finding it strong and stead if a bit fast. From there he did his best to assess the rest of his friend's condition. Joe didn't appear to have broken anything else in his fall, though Methos assumed that his thighs were going to royally protest the shearing caused by his prostheses' lost battle with gravity. Methos knew that it was common practice not to move fall victims unless their lives depended on it, but he also knew that at most Joe would be suffering from a mild concussion. After all, he'd considered himself a student of medicine ever since the Ancient had taught him which herbs could be used to reduce the fevers brought on by their scorching desert sun.

Don't think about that now, he chided himself, as he tried to see if the bleeding had lessened any. It had, but it hadn't completely stopped. However, it had lessened enough for him to chance leaving the bandage for a second. With a shake of his head and a rueful chuckle, he attempted to discern the best way to relieve the watcher of his prostheses.

The solution, he discovered, wasn't one Joe was going to like. There was nothing for it though because Methos couldn't carry him into the office—and to the couch therein—with their dead weight throwing off his balance. And besides, after the fall Joe just took, the prostheses themselves might be damaged anyway.

Several minutes later Joe was bereft of his prostheses—by way of his pants. Methos was just replacing that garment now, knowing from experience that the bar was quite chilly when one was only half decent. Thankfully Joe hadn't stirred during the ordeal, or the entire process might have been made a lot more complicated.

Now the watcher was ready for transport. Methos stood with a groan (his pants were wet, again, from the puddle he still hadn't cleaned up) and made his way to the office, opening the door and making sure that nothing was in the way. That being done, he made his way back to the still-unconscious watcher. Then, after muttering several choice words about Joe being in need of a diet, he hoisted the watcher into a sitting position. From there, he grabbed him from the under arms and then shifted the weight onto his hip the way one would support a child (the absence of Joe's legs making this possible). A few more choice words in several languages later, and Joe was lying down on the couch in his office. Methos reinforced the paper towel bandage—which had been jostled and nearly fallen off—with tissues and scotch tape for security (five thousand years also teaches one to improvise). He covered Joe with the watcher's own coat, which had been draped on the back of his chair. Alas, Methos was certain that his own coat was still wet.

Now that Joe was settled comfortably, Methos grabbed the office phone, intent on dialing emergency. That's when he discovered, much to his dismay, that the storm had knocked out the phone lines. Another litany of multi-lingual cursing later and Methos had to resign himself to his fate. He checked the unconscious watcher over once more, not envying him the headache he would have when he came around.

There was only one thing left to do. Methos returned to the bar and grabbed several bottles of beer. He brought these into the office and grabbed a seat in the chair to wait for Joe to wake up.

He had to wait for a bit longer than he would have liked, but meanwhile Joe's heart rate and breathing remained strong and the bleeding had stopped. The cut wasn't very deep, but it was long as Joe's head had scraped against the booth on the way down. Methos was glad for its shallowness. He had nothing to stitch with here, and hospitals usually don't stitch wounds after ten hours. From the looks of the weather outside, Methos highly doubted that he'd be getting Joe to the ER in that time frame. Especially if they didn't fix the phones, which at last check, were still down.

It was approaching the three hour mark when Joe finally stirred. Methos was at his side in an instant, kneeling by the couch. Joe's eyes slowly returned to focus, bringing Methos's face into view.

"Did we have a pleasant nap?" the immortal quipped as he finished checking Joe's pulse once more.

Joe moaned. "What hit me?"

"A booth," Methos answered matter-of-factly as he moved to once again check the watcher's head wound. Joe winced. "Or more exactly, you hit it, when you fell. Gave yourself a lovely gash back here."

"Am I bleeding?"

"Not anymore."

"Well, that's comforting," Joe said sarcastically as he tried to sit up. Methos's surprisingly gentle hands on his shoulders stopped him.

"I wouldn't be going anywhere just yet if I were you," the immortal advised.

Joe shot the immortal a glare and tried again, this time unhindered. He made it halfway into a sitting position before the room suddenly swam and bright lights danced across his vision. He grabbed the back of the couch for support and felt Methos ease him back down again.

"Can't say I didn't warn you," he said smugly.

Joe would have glared again had he deemed it safe to open his eyes just yet. "What I ever do to piss off a booth?" he groaned out instead.

"Forgetting to insist that your guests clean up their puddles might be one thing," Methos admitted, chagrined.

Joe opened one eye and fixed a curious expression on the immortal.

"You slipped in the water I tracked in from outside."

Joe groaned again. "Graceful," he admonished himself with a slight laugh.

Methos remained silent. Even slightly concussed, Joe could deduce fairly easily that the old man felt guilty.

"So how bad's the damage?" he asked, momentarily forgetting himself and trying to sit up again. That's when he noticed. "My legs—"

"Just relax," Methos's strong yet surprisingly gentle hands once again forced Joe to lie back down. "I couldn't get you out of that puddle and keep the pressure on your head wound by myself with your prostheses just hanging off you," he explained candidly. "Not to mention how awkward it would have made getting you all nice and comfy here on the couch."

Joe scowled, but nodded slightly in understanding. "Where are they?"

"I left them back by the bar," Methos admitted, now feeling slightly guilty for not having brought them inside the office. After all, it's not like he hadn't have the time…

"Are they okay?"

"I think so. Do you want them?"

Joe nodded. Without another word, or even so much as a change of expression, Methos left the office. He returned a few moments later carrying the familiar objects, which he placed by the couch. Joe made to sit up again, but Methos shot him an amused glance that almost dared the watcher to try it, and so he thought better of it.

"When the elephants stop dancing on my brain it will occur to me to be embarrassed," he said, closing his eyes in resignation.

Methos chuckled. "Are they pink?"

"Funny."

Then the smile fell from Methos's face. "You gave yourself a lovely gash, which thankfully isn't deep enough to need stitches, though it bled like a sonofabitch for a while. Even still, I'm betting you have a concussion."

"Was that supposed to make me feel better?" Joe asked, looking skeptically up at the immortal standing over him.

"I'm just saying that I could have been worse."

Joe sighed. "Yeah, and since it wasn't I get to feel embarrassed."

"Embarrassed by what? By the fact that you slipped and fell in your own bar, or by the fact that your underwear has little green frogs all over it?" The latter part of the question he finished with a devilish grin that made Joe blush crimson.

"They were a gag gift from an old girlfriend."

"She must have been your high school sweat heart, judging from the amount of wear and tear."

Joe's blush deepened, if that was possible. "Can we leave my underwear out of this discussion? Please?"

"You got to see me parade around topless all evening Joe," Methos reminded him. "The ten minutes it took for me to get you out of your jeans, figure out how to get those contraptions off without breaking them, and put your jeans back on, hardly seems like restitution to me."

Joe was about to protest but then he remembered their conversations, or rather, everything that the immortal didn't say, that his body said for him, that he wound up being privy to, just because Methos was bereft of his concealing sweater. Joe deemed the immortal to be correct: being seen in his boxers for ten minutes hardly makes them even for the evening compared to what Methos has endured. "You're right," he agreed with quiet feeling.

Methos bit his lip, suddenly uncomfortable. "I'm getting another beer."

While he was behind the bar, Methos picked up the phone again on a whim and was surprised to hear a dial tone. Thankful that his luck was finally changing for the better, he dialed 911. Joe's condition wasn't life threatening, but he really should get checked out by professionals… or at least, current professionals and all their newfangled equipment, and an ambulance was the only way Joe was going to get there in any semblance of time. However, Methos was told that, all these things considered along with the conditions of the roads, it might be quite a while before any rescue personal could get to them.

That done, Methos fetched a beer and a sizeable glass of water for Joe and headed back into the office, fully prepared to hurry up and wait.

"What took so long?" Joe asked as he took the proffered water. "Couldn't decide which particular flavor of beer you wanted?"

"Funny," Methos scoffed, mock-indignant. "The weather has lessened some, but it doesn't look like they've plowed yet. The phones are back though."

Joe blinked. "We lost phones?"

"While you were out."

"And how long was that?"

"About three hours, give or take."

"My grandmother always said I had a hard head..." Joe mused around a small shrug. It earned a modest chuckle from the immortal.

"Yeah, well, you should be thankful for it."

Joe grinned, raising his glass in a lazy salute. "I'll drink to that."

Until that moment, Joe had been lying flat on his back on the couch, aside from his ill-fated attempts at sitting up. Thus he tried to simply tilt his head forward to allow the proper angle to drink his water, but all he succeeded in doing was spilling it down his front. Methos was only partially successful in smothering his laughter.

"I'll bet this is very funny to you," Joe grumped, one hand swiping errant water droplets out of his beard. "Go on, laugh at the cripple trying to take a drink!" As an attempt at self-deprecating humor, the joke failed miserably. The laughter died instantly, replaced by awkward silence.

"I wasn't—"

"No," Joe waved off whatever apologies Methos was going to make. "Gallows humor. My fault. Why don't you help me sit up so I can drink instead of bathe?"

Methos glided into Joe's field of vision and took the glass away from him, setting it on the desk. His expression was closed off, lips pursed into a slight frown. "Take a few deep breaths," he directed, and Joe recognized that look now for what it was—quiet, deliberate concentration. He'd seen the immortal survey chessboards in much the same fashion. He remembered that Methos had been a doctor once, and so had no problems obliging the request.

"Good. Now, you're going to sit up, slowly, on three. One… Two… Three…"

Joe once more tried to sit, but once again felt the world tilt violently, though admittedly, not as violently. However, instead of crashing back into the couch, he found himself continuing to rise.

"Hey, don't make me do all the work!"

Joe realized that Methos had slipped behind him and was supporting his shoulders. He shut his eyes and forced his muscles to respond, lifting his weight up off of Methos's hands. Before he knew it, he was sitting up.

"Take a few more deep breaths," Methos directed, "and open your eyes."

Joe did as he was told. Surprisingly the world stayed in place. "How about that…"

"How 'bout what? You of all people should know I'm no slouch when it comes to this stuff."

"Yeah, my shoulder remembers vividly."

Methos merely shrugged.

Actually now that Joe thought about it, the immortal had removed the bullet, in secret, with only simple tools, a couple of so-called medicinal plants, and a lot of bandages. What's more, he retained full use and mobility of that arm, and there was no blood poisoning, no infection… nothing remotely life threatening aside from perhaps the loss of blood, and that part they couldn't do anything about. For all of his griping and complaining, and well, being the worst patient he could possibly be, for what had happened he realized that he couldn't possibly have received any better care under the circumstances.

Joe was brought out of his thoughts by Methos offering him the water, which he took gratefully. Unfortunately, he'd only managed a few sips before it was suddenly taken away again. Startled, Joe made an ineffectual grab for it, missed, and groused: "what was that for?"

"Head wounds have the nasty little trick of getting your stomach to hate you, as well," Methos explained. "See how that settles, first."

Joe groaned. "You mean I get to be sick, too?"

Methos shrugged. "Hope not."

"Yeah, you and me both."

Joe just sat there, focusing on what his stomach was doing, which, so far, was thankfully nothing. Methos was behind him and out of sight, half-seated on the armrest of the couch with one leg on the floor. He was close enough to react if need be, but far enough away so that Joe was sitting up unaided, balanced on his tail bone on the couch cushion as he had taught himself to do since losing his legs in 'Nam.

"You're pretty good at this doctoring shit," Joe offered at last, breaking the comfortable silence. He heard Methos snort a laugh.

"I've had many years to practice."

Joe shifted slightly in his seat. The obvious question hovered like the elephant in the room—was that penance for his time spent with the horsemen? It made him fidgety, but its circumspect propriety stayed his tongue. "How many years?" he asked instead, and he heard Methos laugh again.

"I've spent many immortal lifetimes as a healer, Joseph," came the answer, and Joe knew Methos was serious when he called you by your full name, but that didn't answer the question that Joe hadn't asked.

"Back in the good old days of leeches and blood-letting?"

Methos let out a wry chuckle. "Looong before then."

"You know, a lot of immortals become doctors," Joe mused, taking a chance. "Grace Chandall, for one, or Sean Burns. They wanted to use their immortality to help people."

Methos closed his eyes, tensing briefly in memory of Sean. Mercifully, Joe was oblivious.

"A lot of us also go into law enforcement, or some other equally dangerous field. Then there are those like Marcus Constantine, who try and keep the past alive so that mortals don't repeat their mistakes down through the millennia. There are many ways immortals choose to help mankind, Joe. Medicine is just one of them."

"True," Joe conceded. "So you said you've spent lifetimes doing this? Any that the watchers may have on file, by any chance?"

The immortal tipped his head, the barest of nods. "Perhaps."

Joe waited, but his patience in the ensuing silence was short-lived. "Well?"

Methos sighed, and remembered his promise to himself. "Most recently I was Dr. Benjamin Adams."

Joe racked his brain over the name. "Sorry, doesn't ring any bells."

"Well I can't help that, Joe," Methos said with a laugh. "But I'm sure you're making a mental note to look it up later, anyway."

"Were you boring or something?"

Methos shrugged. "See for yourself."

Joe was struck by a sudden thought. "Byron called you 'Doc.'"

"That he did," Methos admitted, his voice now darkened by memory. "I was Adams when I taught Byron."

"So you were Byron's teacher."

"You mean you didn't know?"

"Not for certain. I mean, it's not like you tell us these things."

Methos was silent for a time. "I wasn't his first teacher," he admitted at last. "He was found by a headhunter named Lurke. Lurke thought Adams would be an easy target."

"And you convinced him otherwise," Joe concluded.

"Turns out the bastard left a half-trained student," Methos's voice dropped again, turned dark and cold, but the effect was ruined by a sigh. "I was planning on killing him, but… he intrigued me."

"Oh?"

"Have you ever read his poetry, Joseph? Gordon was… He lived so well—loved so well. You could see it in his eyes! And, he was just a boy."

Joe wished he could Methos's face just then. Even if he turned, he couldn't manage it. He had to settle for pulling the expressions out of the immortal with words. "You couldn't kill him?"

"I didn't want his quickening," Methos answered readily, the finality in his tone highlighting the difference between Joe's assumption and reality. In the thickening silence Joe had room to guess that this was what had been plaguing Methos all evening: thoughts of Byron.

Of course, he was only in a small way partially correct.

"So you took him as a student, instead?"

Methos didn't answer right away, instead taking time to weigh just how to explain himself. "Well, I couldn't kill him, and I didn't have any friends in the area, if you know what I mean. And… for some reason, I don't think he was well suited to a cloistered life." Joe heard the shrug in the immortal's voice there at the end.

"So for lack of something better to do with him—"

"Pretty much."

"I see."

Silence once more, the awkwardness of not knowing what to say. Joe was, well, delighted wasn't the best word for it, but he was glad that Methos was finally talking about this. It can't be easy to lose a student, especially to a friend. A friend with whom you've had some bad blood recently. Again, all he could do was talk.

"So, he became your student?"

"In a sense." Joe heard Methos sigh, as though he were trying to string the words together in his mind. "He was a poet—didn't much care for swordplay. And, for some reason, I believed him when he said he could talk his way out of just about any challenge."

There was a palpable sadness to that sentence. Joe could sense that Methos was no doubt grateful that he was shielded from view. "You didn't train him?" he asked in disbelief.

"We sparred on occasion," Methos admitted, "whenever the mood struck. And he wasn't bad, just not… good enough that I would have felt comfortable leaving him to his own devices. And he had that clubfoot..." Methos's voice trailed off, a study in enforced nonchalance.

"Why do I get the feeling that Adams had rather high standards for that sort of thing?" Joe asked, not knowing if the third person would help.

Methos shrugged behind him. "Oh, you'd be surprised, Joe. You'd be surprised."

Joe couldn't help it; he turned part way around at that statement. Methos was slouching, and the watcher caught half a glimpse of the immortal's face. The weariness was back, as though all five thousand years were pressing on his shoulders, stooping them low.

"Then tell me," he urged, quietly, earnest in his concern. Even still, he was considerably shocked when Methos deigned to take him up on the offer.

"Gordon was interested in living," the immortal admitted. "He had a passion for life. 'Carpe Diem' was not lost on him." Then came a heavy sigh. "But, he was still young then. And… naïve."

"And you?" Joe prompted, not wanting the immortal to let go of this.

"Me?" Methos shrugged, his voice all innocence. "Well, let's just say… I was everything Gordon wasn't."

That sat Joe up straight. "Oh?"

"I spent most of my time tending to the sick and dying that couldn't afford treatment, and drowning my sorrows in the bottom of a bottle. If you think I drink a lot now, you should have seen me back then."

"Weeping for the state of the world?"

"Oh, nothing so melodramatic," the immortal scoffed. "More like weeping for myself. For the… losses."

Silence fell again, and Joe was left wonder what Methos had almost said.

"And that's the immortal that took on Byron?" Joe found had to force the lightness of humored disbelief into his tone, and was rewarded with a slight laugh.

"In a way, I guess he was what I needed."

"Someone to look after?"

"Someone with snappy comebacks for all of my piteous wallowings."

"Ah."

More silence, more comfortable this time, as Methos collected his thoughts. The immortal could tell that Joe really wanted to hear this, and he, for some reason, really wanted to tell someone. And it made the wait for the ambulance go by faster, besides.

"And so I took him under the proverbial wing," Methos confessed, matter-of-fact. "I taught him how to survive as an immortal—and I don't mean just with swords, and he, well, he was bound and determined to lighten my outlook on life. So to speak."

"No easy task," Joe commiserated, and Methos obliged him with a laugh.

"He was an obnoxious ray of sunshine in my life for a few decades, and in turn, I was his gloomy little rain cloud."

This time Joe laughed outright, and the laughter made him bold. "Why on earth did he put up with you?"

"Because I kept him alive," Methos answered seriously and without missing a beat, and once again Joe could hear the immortal's age in his voice. "And besides," he added, his tone immediately lightening, "he was gratified by the challenge."

"Wanted to see if he could win you over to his happy-go-lucky ways, eh?"

"Well, I wouldn't call him happy-go-lucky, per se," Methos protested. "And besides, he never really stood a chance at that anyway." His voice fell off again, now down weighted down by memory.

Joe wasn't about to let him stay there. "And what's that supposed to mean?"

Methos sighed, drew it out into a hiss, stalling for time "You remember how he was, Joe. You met the man the Highlander killed. That was not the man I… knew... back then."

Joe took a moment to consider this. When MacLeod killed Byron, the poet was simply a thrill seeker who thought that the secrets to life could be found only in death. He vaguely remembered reading things about death and barriers and life and love and desire, but he was way out of his league with this one. "I remember," he said at last.

"He wasn't always like that," Methos informed him.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, remember how I said that he wanted to live? There was a time when that didn't mean drugs or death-defying stunts. His life was poetry. He lived through his art, and his art followed the patterns of his life. Back when his life—meant something… that was truly a beautiful thing to witness. That man I saw on stage, the one MacLeod killed… His art, his life…" The immortal's words failed him then, dried up right in his throat and left a bad taste in his mouth.

"So what happened?" Joe asked after a brief, respectful pause.

"What do you think?" Methos scathed, though his voice lacked any real heat. He sounded more resigned than anything else. "Decades of seeing me see to sick, years upon years of mortals dying, and seeing how the poor live their lives, and of how the rich—his precious aristocracy—treated them." Methos laughed then, harsh and bitter, half-choked on unshed tears. "A few so-called 'progressive thinkers' write a few books and his entire era crumbles down around him. Throw in a world war or two, and of course, those lovely decades of my cynical and survivalist anecdotes from my long and checkered history—" Methos bit off the end of his tirade, and Joe winced. Never in a million years did he think the immortal would take his ill-thought words to heart. That's generally how he found the freedom to speak them.

"The Watcher Records are littered with the files of immortals that didn't react well to the changes of the world," Joe offered at length, hoping he could trip the immortal's thoughts away from the personal, pull the conversation back into the abstract.

It worked.

"So very few immortals truly have the stomach for immortality," Methos conceded. Then suddenly he laughed.

"What's so funny?"

"Did you know he stopped celebrating his birthday?"

"You're kidding. You mean after he became immortal?"

Methos nodded. "At some point he scrapped the idea of celebrating birthdays and began celebrating his 'death day'—the anniversary of the day he died the first time."

"Well, that's a new one for the files."

"Not really," Methos countered. "Truth is, if I remembered either date, I might have chosen something similar at various points in my life. Like what to put on my driver's license, for instance."

Joe chuckled at that. "What date did you choose, then?"

"Surely you remember Adam Pierson's birthday?" Methos almost managed to sound insulted.

Joe rolled his eyes at that. "I meant, what's its significance?"

"It was printed on the birth certificate I stole."

"Ah." A brief, thoughtful silence. Then: "Why would immortals do that? Celebrate death days, I mean." Joe had a few fairly good guesses, but he wanted to hear Methos's version. After all, he was supposed to be helping the old man talk about Byron.

He heard Methos shrug again behind him.

"Think about it, Joe," Methos pressed in Adam Pierson's dulcet tones, grad student and lecturer. "When we become immortal, everything we know—everything we were—it's all gone. Eventually we learn that we might not even have been born at all, depending on whose version of immortal origins you buy into."

Joe nodded. "The Foundling Theories."

"Exactly! We have our lives ripped out from underneath us… some arguably more painfully than others. Then, well, the game, the gathering, taking heads, living on the fringes of societies and moving often to hide the fact that we don't injure or age, watching loved ones die—of old age if were lucky. Never having children… We see the times change, Joseph. Civilizations rise and fall, languages evolve and even die, but the people—the human race, if you will, and immortals included—we all remain the same. And some, like Byron, they go on living, safe on the little oases they've constructed in the midst of the sands of time, and pretending they're impervious to the point of practically believing it themselves."

"I am a rock, I am an island," said Joe quietly, quoting, and Methos laughed sadly. Yes, there was definitely sadness in that laugh. But there was also something more, something else that Joe couldn't quite place.

"Indeed," Methos agreed. "Unfortunately, it never actually works that way. We are never as impregnable as we like to pretend to be… or even as we have convinced ourselves that we are. Every immortal realizes this, sooner or later."

"And they become like Byron?" Joe didn't believe that, not for a second. He was Duncan MacLeod's watcher—he couldn't believe it.

"Some do," Methos retracted, as though he recognized Joe's patented disbelief for what it truly was, knew what riding beneath it. "Take Gregor Powers, for example. He managed to adapt before the paradigm shift got the chance to kill him." Methos paused a moment, frowning. "That isn't to say that it was an easy feat for him."

Joe had to shake his head. Gregor, right around when MacLeod had finally been able to get through to him, was disturbingly similar to the way Bryon had been, right around when MacLeod killed him. If he were to take a serious look at the chronicles, Joe was certain that there would be many more immortals with similar behavior patterns.

"That's what Sean Burns did for you immortals," Joe he suddenly, voice rising in epiphany and taking Methos by surprise. MacLeod had sent Gregor off to Sean.

"In a manner of speaking," Methos admitted after considerable pause. Thoughts of Sean were still raw, the wounds just barely starting to heal.

"So Byron couldn't handle the march of progress?" Joe asked evenly, torn between wanting to lighten the mood and knowing how blasphemous such a thing might be to the immortal.

"I wouldn't exactly call the Victorian Age 'progressive'," Methos hedged, failing miserably at not smiling, and Joe laughed in genuine amusement. "But yeah. After the end old Victoria's reign, I really thought that he was going to be alright. I insisted that he join me in the States." Here he signed again. "Strasbourg killed him, I think. He never came to meet me."

Joe let the silence descend, allowing Methos—and Byron—the respect of it.

"Was that before or after he started celebrating death days?" he asked at last.

"I'm not sure," Methos admitted. "I saw him again in London, 1947. He worked for city then, helping them rebuild after the Blitz. I'd only just arrived, but that night, he invited me to his death day party. That's when I knew."

"Knew what?" Joe had a sneaking suspicion that there was more to it than just Byron's preference for his death day over his birthday.

"That he was lost to me." Methos's voice was soft, as though the admission had been ripped out of him and left him hemorrhaging inside.

"What do you mean?"

For all of that, the immortal's tone now was surprisingly blunt. "He was no longer the Byron I knew. Oh he had his talents, still, and his face… and his memories and his charm… but the spark was gone… the light. That immortal MacLeod killed? I don't know who he was. He only reminded me of someone I once knew."

The familiarity of that sentiment set Joe's head spinning, and the laugh escaped without his permission.

"What's so funny?" Methos asked, defensive.

"I wonder if you and MacLeod have any idea how similar you two really are."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You must remember how he brooded after killing Ingrid?"

Methos had to contemplate momentarily before it dawned on him. The Ingrid I knew I'll never forget. That woman you killed? I don't know who she was. He laughed at the audacity of it.

"I can't believe you're comparing me to MacLeod!"

"Why not?"

"Firstly, I don't brood." Methos enumerated the point with an aggressive flick of his index finger. He realized how stupid the claim was as soon as he'd made it, but didn't dare rescind it. "And second…" That pointing finger stood down, the immortal's hand drifting as he groped for words. "Second, Ingrid was still alive when MacLeod killed her. She was a cold-blooded killer, yes, but she had passion still. She awoke each morning with the fight still in her eyes, and that's what Duncan extinguished, and that's what he had trouble swallowing. Gordon? Gordon was long dead before I let MacLeod take his head."

"You let MacLeod take his head?" Joe could not let that slip go unnoticed. In fact, it was something of an expected admission. He craned his neck around to try and get a better view of Methos, and he could have sworn the immortal had gone rigid beneath the now-dry sweater. Under Joe's gaze, Methos dropped his head in a heavy sigh. When he looked up again, his expression was unreadable.

"I've stood between challengers before, Joseph," he said gravely. "I've even taken heads over them, as you well know."

Joe figured that Methos was referring to Kristen, or Keane, but there was another truth there, too. One he would bet had also been eating at Methos recently. "You mean like Silas?" Joe knew he was heading out on a very shaky limb, mentioning the Horsemen so directly, especially since his previous M.O. had been more along the lines of 'don't ask, don't tell.'

Methos, for his part, looked like he'd just been pole-axed, before the shock bled out into rigid silence and his eyes flashed hot with betrayal. Then he leaned back, slow and deliberate, an exercise in maintaining control. "Don't go there," he warned, his voice tight and low, and Joe suspected it wasn't all for show. He'd seen Methos do 'intimidating' before, go cold and scathing, let his presence expand to fill a room until you're all but choking on it. This here lacked the feel of it; there was too much raw need in there, undermining the immortal's motives.

Joe was prepared to take a lot on faith. Mostly that Methos was his friend but also that these things needed to be said. They were eating at the old man, gnawing at his defenses until they were full of holes that rode just below the masks. He'd seen Methos upset before; hell, he'd seen him devastated beyond the limits of emotion, but he'd never seen him vulnerable. Not like this, like he had somehow wandered into foreign territory and didn't know how to find his way back—didn't even know how to ask for directions. And that scared Joe, shook him deep for reasons he didn't want to explore. He'd had enough self-awareness for one night, thank you very much. Now, it was Methos's turn.

"But you were right," he said, after entirely too short a pause. Tossed it off with feigned glibness and a casual head shake that went a long ways at hiding his nerves because he didn't know how much he could push before Methos pushed back. "You really are nothing like MacLeod. After all, you haven't felt guilty since the eleventh century."

Methos let go a laugh, sudden and shocking, and Joe strained to hold the immortal in his peripheral vision. He saw Methos bring a hand up, brittle fingers scrubbing hard at his temple before scraping across his face, thumb and forefinger pressing into his eyes for a moment before his palm flatted out to shield the top half of his face. More laughter dribbled out, a harsh, breathless staccato that expanded to cover the tension that stole over the immortal like a storm tide.

Joe saw this, and almost felt guilty for how that tension had to break, but he rationed that Methos needed this. The old man had bought into his own press too long, convinced himself he wasn't human. He needed a wakeup call, and Joe found himself in position to deliver. Lucky him. He hoped to God he was doing the right thing here, started to doubt it the longer Methos sat there holding tight to his control, choking on his emotions like a martyr, afraid to let them go.

In for a penny, Joe figured, and reached out a hand, rested it tentatively on the immortal's arm. "Methos—"

But Methos's free hand uncoiled, reared up like a striking cobra and clamped down like iron atop Joe's fingers, and Joe let him hang on, even as his own hand began to throb in muted protest. And he watched as Methos's shoulders silently shook, his face still buried in that one hand while the other held on for all he was worth. He watched as all that tension bled out at last, behind that hand and into that bruising grip. He watched until his sense of decorum overcame the need, and then he turned away.