It was a typical overcast day in Cardiff. Miranda had left the team to their lunch in favor of eating alone in Cathays Park. She was sitting on a bench watching Nora eat her own lunch and read a book under a tree. Miranda was more than a respectable distance away, there was no way Nora would see her. It had barely been a week since their relationship had ended. Miranda still found herself drawn to the woman, often watching her from afar. She'd wondered why she was doing this to herself. Every time she caught a glimpse of Nora, she felt sadness and regret. She hadn't realised how much she'd come to care for Nora until she'd let her go.
There was a sharp pressure between her temples alerting her to the presence of another immortal. Miranda straightened up in her seat. A stab of panic rushed through her that Terfel had found her, or worse, had found Nora. The park was fairly crowded but she reached into her coat, wrapping her hand around her sword. Trying to appear unassuming, she turned on the bench to look around. She relaxed when she saw Methos's closely cropped dark hair and long face. She dropped her hand and returned to gazing at Nora across the park.
"You could teach the Watchers a thing or two about stalking, my darling," he said as he sat down next to her. He was speaking an old dialect of Ancient North Arabian, long dead and forgotten. It was a language the two of them had used privately for over three thousand years.
Without turning around, she said, "Methos."
"Mei-Xiu," he said and she winced at the sound of her name. Methos was one of only a handful of people alive who knew it.
He followed her gaze across the park. "She's quite lovely."
"Yes, she is," Miranda snapped, tearing her eyes away from Nora. "Where is your precious Highlander?"
"Back at the hotel," Methos said, stretching himself out on the bench. "You hurt his feelings last time."
"I hurt his feelings?" Miranda exclaimed.
"Mei…" Methos said soothingly.
Miranda inhaled deeply and then slowly exhaled as she rolled her shoulders. The two immortals fell into silence. She continued to watch Nora as she packed her things and walked out of the park, heading back towards the University. Miranda knew that it was to teach an afternoon class. Once Nora was out of sight, Miranda turned her attention back to Methos.
He was sitting with his legs crossed, one ankle up on his knee. His arms were spread across the back of the bench. He looked deliciously relaxed and at ease but Miranda caught the tension in his neck and the nervous bob of his raised foot. His left wrist was resting on her shoulder, his hand dangling loosely. He turned that hand and gently rubbed the side of her neck with the back of his index finger.
She closed her eyes at the touch. It was familiar gesture that she had always loved and it gave her a small measure of comfort despite her anger and disappointment. Maybe it's finally time to have this conversation.
"Why?" she asked, not looking at him.
"It just happened, Mei," he said simply. "I've never understood why you've been so angry about it."
"When we're together, we're together. When we're not, we're not. It's how we work. It's how we've worked for two thousand years. In New York, we were together," she broke off as she felt her temper rising. "I'd just left Torchwood when I ran into you at Oxford. We got back together, again. We got married, again. When I was accepted at the surgical residency in New York, you said it would be fine."
Methos dropped his hand. His voice was strained and frustrated when he said, "All these centuries together, back then and now and all the times in between, and you think I fell into bed with someone else because of your job?"
"What was it then?" she snapped.
With another sigh he repeated himself. "It just happened, Mei!"
"Bullshit! You two are still together. You're sharing a bed. You trust him enough to fall asleep beside him. That doesn't 'just happen'." She held her hand up to him when he started to speak. "Yes, Duncan is a man of honour. But you don't just trust anyone, Methos. Not even the bleeding fucking heart of Duncan MacLeod of the fucking Clan MacLeod."
"You mock him. You have no idea the trust he engenders," Methos said softly.
She fell silent, not answering him. The love she heard in his voice was like a knife in her heart.
"You still haven't told me why you've been so angry about it. You've never been one to hold grudges," he said softly, tilting his head at her.
"Because if you wanted MacLeod all you had to do was say so," she said. "I would have been upset and disappointed it was one of us but I would have walked away. The same way I always have when you've asked. The same way you always have when I've asked," she said sadly, "but that wasn't what you did. You took him into our bed."
"I'm sorry. It was… ill timed."
"Ill timed?" she blurted, angrily.
"A poor choice of words," he said in a quick apology, holding up both his hands in surrender.
She remembered the night well. She had called Methos to let him know she was working late, the head of surgery had asked her to assist in a complicated procedure, an opportunity she would have been a fool to pass up. The surgery had ended up being postponed so Miranda had gone home to their apartment on the Upper East Side. She'd dropped her things at the door and gone into the kitchen to find something to eat. A small shout from the bedroom had gotten her attention. Fearing for her husband's safety, she had drawn her blade and rushed down the hallway, kicking open the bedroom door. The two men had been in the bed, naked, so deep in their post orgasmic haze that they hadn't felt Miranda's presence when she'd entered the apartment. Had the surgery not been postponed, she would have been stuck at the hospital for hours and never would have caught them.
Methos leaned forwards, resting his elbows on his knees and said softly, "You were working all the time Mei. That wasn't why things weren't working. I never saw you to talk to you. It hasn't been working for me for a while."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"We've been on automatic pilot for a thousand years. We run into each other, fall into bed and then we go our separate ways," he said. "Tell me you haven't noticed that things haven't been the same since Iran? It's all a routine for us. We're settled in it. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just… It wasn't what I needed or wanted then. I know I should have said."
After the death of her first husband, the man who had been her teacher, Miranda had fled China, riding south disguised as a man. As the decades wore on, she had continued to travel alone, slowly being driven mad by grief and hate and anger. She'd rode across the Middle East aimlessly wandering from town to town. It was there she had encountered the Horsemen. The minute she'd seen Methos, she loved him. Her heart had stopped and she'd forgotten how to breathe. For four hundred years, she had rode with the Horsemen until she'd become bored with the slaughter and tired of the bickering. She had slipped away from the camp in the dead of night. It had broken her heart to sneak off without him but she knew that Kronos would have killed her rather than let her leave.
The first time they'd seen each other again was around five hundred BC. The reunion had been joyous and, after a simple marriage ceremony and a few centuries together, they'd parted on good terms. But Methos was right. The last time they'd been truly happy had been nearly a thousand years ago when the two of them had found each other again in Iran during the Middle Ages, just after the expansion of Islam. A crushing sadness filled Miranda's heart.
First Nora and now this… "This isn't going to be one of our little breaks, is it?" she said, her voice a bare whisper.
"I think this has been a long time in coming, Mei, and neither of us wanted to admit it to ourselves or each other," Methos said, his voice so sad, as he brushed a lock of hair behind her ear.
They fell into silence again, watching the people of the park go about their day.
Methos dropped his hand from her hair back down to her shoulder and tried to push his luck. "Would it be out of line for me to ask you to forgive Mac? He feels terrible."
Miranda wanted to snap at him, wanted to shoot out some snide remark but it died in her throat when she looked into his hazel eyes. He still looked at her with the same softness and gentle love that he had for thousands of years. He was right, she just hadn't wanted to admit it. The two of them had loved each other too much for too long to admit that it was time for a more extended separation or a permanent one.
"I need time," she said, reaching for his hand.
"That we have in abundance," he said with a smile, twining his fingers with hers.
"Is this why you came all the way to Cardiff? To talk?"
"We were worried about you. Joe gave us the incident report from the cemetery."
"Come to give me the proverbial 'I told you so'?" she said with a sarcastic eye roll.
"I would never consider anything quite so suicidal, my darling," he quipped and then his expression sobered. "You're lucky that swine obeyed the rules. He nearly had you… literally and figuratively."
"I know," she said, suppressing the shudder. "I made a mistake. I turned my back on my enemy."
"Four thousand years, you've never had such a close call," he said with another squeeze of her hand. "You don't make mistakes like that, Mei."
"Terfel made his own mistakes. He confused his dick with his sword," Miranda said with a snort.
Methos let out an angry chuckle. "You will pursue him this time?"
"No, there is no need. He will come to me," she said shaking her head.
"You should be wary," Methos said, lifting his finger in the direction Nora left the park from. "You're quite taken with her."
"A moot point," she said with a shrug.
"Ah, I see, perhaps that is for the best," he said. "Terfel would carve her like a Christmas goose. He would have made a fair horseman."
"You give him far too much credit," Miranda said with a sarcastic snort. "Terfel is a brute, nothing more. He has none of our… imagination."
Miranda looked up towards the sky. It was getting late. "How long will you and Duncan be staying?"
"In Cardiff? Not long. We have some business in London over the next few months and then we'll be returning to Paris," Methos said.
"The barge?" she asked.
Methos nodded.
She tilted her head and kissed the back of his hand, letting to as she stood up and turned to look at first time they had married was two thousand years ago. It had been an ancient ceremony performed for gods that were no longer worshiped and practiced by a people who had crumbled to dust. Miranda reached back into her memory for the ritual words, surprised when they came to her so easily. Switching from the ancient Arabic language they had been using to the Etruscan dialect they'd first been married with, she said, "Husband, I renounce your claim."
He stood up as well and, switching to the same language, said to her, "Wife, I grant you severance."
She stood there for a minute, looking at him. His eyes were sad but she could see the more relaxed set of his neck and shoulders. She reached up and brushed her fingers down his cheek before she turned and walked away down the garden path with a heavy heart, alone.