*Hannah's reference to Methos being the son of Accasta is due to his being the pupil of same Immortal.
ABOVE RUBIES
BY MAGGIE
PART ONE
Venice
Hannah was his oldest friend really; she had been his mistress back in Roman times, and on and off lover since then, but he had known her for more than three thousand years. She was also his best kept secret. If he was a myth then she was the secret of a myth. He had made sure of that.
Hannah had kept him from going mad so many times, he had lost count. She was a glory of normality, what he considered normal. She had no political or religious allegiances, no excessive opinions, only a calm acceptance that he had watched her acquire as a child and then put to good use as a young woman. She was independent and capable, and he had seen to it that hardship avoided her when he could, though there had been many times when he had known her deal with it in the same ultimately rational way that she dealt with everything else.
There had been times when he had gone to her, demons raging inside him, and she had stood her ground against him, left him alone when he needed it, bathed his brow or loved with him for the sake of comfort.
Of all the people, of all the things, of all the experiences he had had in his life, she was his greatest prize, her worth, to him, above rubies, and now he went off to find her once more, feeling wretched and alone, heartsick for Alexa, gone into the earth but a day before this, and he knew of only one solace that would keep him from darkness, at least for long enough to be able to pick up and go on with his life again.
He found her in Venice, cataloguing endangered frescoes and exterior decoration. She was staying in the same hotel that she always used when she was in Venice. Hannah had always loved this city; he hated the smell when he was there, but she said she never noticed it. Now he was painfully reminded of Alexa's disappointed reaction to his comment about the place, and wished he had never opened his mouth on the subject. She was right; he had become blase blasé that he hadn't even been aware at the time of how his words had tried to crush her innocent sense of wonder.
The feelings twisted up inside him again, as he paced the hotel lobby waiting for Hannah to return. In the end, he couldn't wait any longer, and he left the hotel to go in search of her. He hired a boat, considering it the best way of combing the city with a chance of spotting her.
He spied her eventually, halfway up a ladder with a shorthand pad, making notes on a gargoyle which had lost its wings and what looked like an ear, on the Northwest corner of a church not too far away from what he had recognised as the Palazzo Malcontento.
Tying up the boat at a nearby mooring he made his way over to her location, once again admiring her dogged enthusiasm for her work. They each of them did their best to preserve history in their own ways; who was he to say that her way was worth any less than his? Admittedly, he was more interested in preserving the lessons of history, lest mankind eventually be doomed to repeat them, but she preserved the beauty that dry facts could never illuminate. And mankind could never have enough beauty, especially now that the world moved at such a speed that it barely gave itself enough time to breathe, let alone appreciate the deeper truths that artists around the globe had expressed, in one form or another, for centuries.
Reaching the bottom of the ladder and instinctively holding it steady lest it should slip, he called up to her.
"Hannah! What are you doing up there?"
She had felt his Quickening while he was still in the boat, millennia of his company having taught her the subtle nuances of it that were exclusively him, no matter how it changed over the centuries with each occasional head that he had to take, and she turned now at the sound of her name and looked down at him.
He never failed to feel good at the look of genuine delight she gave him whenever they met up after a long time; it filled up a small, private place inside him with warmth and light, as it did now. It was like a beacon, afire only for him, at the end of a long, dark tunnel; and this latest tunnel had been particularly dark. He ached to have her with him, knowing that every word of the burden he carried would be released soon. When those words were given lives of their own, he would finally, with her help, be able to see it all in perspective; then he could begin to find a place inside him for all the memories, from which he could launch himself into his life once more, healing and ready to go on.
Pocketing the notebook, she descended the ladder and without a word, put her arms around him, drawing him close. It was probably all the centuries he had known her, but he always felt safe with her. She was the only one who had seen all his faces, known nearly all of his names, been acquainted with a good deal more of his life than anyone else. She knew him; it was enough.
"You've been through a rough time lately," she said, seeing it clearly in the clouded eyes, the withdrawn expression and the impression that his body gave at such times that it was trying to fold in on itself in a vain attempt to crush the pain into immobility. Methos nodded barely, though not ungratefully as she took his arm and walked with him back to the boat. It had been unspoken between them that whatever time they had to be together, they spent together, and besides; neither of them had work that couldn't wait for a little while.
Hannah knew the relationship was not exactly symbiotic, but that Methos' reasons for staying alive were more than merely selfish; the concept of service was at least as old as he was himself, and she acknowledged that she fulfilled her purpose in life by being there for him. She realised that the women's libbers of today would be horrified by her attitude, but it was one that she had learned a long time ago, and she had had plenty of time to appreciate the subtle rewards that it offered.
Back at the hotel they went up to her room and she ordered dinner for them; lightly poached sole with a fresh salad and a bottle of five year old Chianti. She noticed the way he fidgeted nervously and, knowing that it had nothing to do with her, decided that he needed to relax before he could begin to open up about whatever had happened to distress him this much.
Going over to him, she took him in her arms once more, rubbing softly along his back and between his shoulders. Feeling the tension begin to ebb away and a deep sigh give way to gentle, almost silent weeping, she held him tighter, until the first wave of grief was abated.
Sitting him down on the edge of the bed, she left him for a moment to go to the bathroom and turn on the shower.
She turned and found him leaning against the door frame, smiling palely at her.
"Hannah ..."
"It's alright," she told him calmly, leaving a fresh towel where he could easily reach it, and moving back into the living area. "Go on," she said. "Dinner should be here by the time you're finished."
"Oh, I don't know if I can eat," he confessed wearily, already pulling at the buttons of his collarless black shirt.
"You'll feel better when you've had a shower," she advised him, "and you look as if you could do with a square meal."
"Okay," he conceded and proceeded into the bathroom, stripping off as he went.
She was right, the water did feel good, almost too good. The sensation of it pounding his tired muscles, the sting of the spray on his skin made him feel a little more alive and he began to soap away the dirt and sweat from the day's journey. Once he felt clean however, the touch of the water started to summon recent memories of need put away time and again in the name of Alexa's safety and he was driven from the water's arousing touch ironically, by the need for release.
He and Hannah had been lovers for centuries; it was a part of their relationship, more of a loving complement to it than a reason for it and he needed what only Hannah could give him; a physical expression of love without question and without a price.
When he walked out of the bathroom, wearing only the towel that Hannah had left for him, dinner was indeed waiting for him as she had predicted. He couldn't even contemplate eating at that moment; all he wanted was to feel Hannah, warm and alive in his arms.
She was staring out the window at the Sun setting slowly over the ornate rooftops; he went over to her and hugged her fiercely against him, his breathing ragged with a primal desire born of too many conflicting emotions.
"Hannah ... I can't eat, I can't ...."
Already prepared for his desire, Hannah turned to him, sexual tension building in her, fuelled by the scratchy bronze of his voice, the quiver of his muscles against her, the overwhelming presence of his pain. Throwing off her clothes quickly, it was only seconds before they were skin to skin already twining limbs on the bed, reaching out, hard and fast for satisfaction and release.
There were no thoughts in his head now but simple primitive ones; home, warmth, home, home, closer, tighter, more, more ...
Driven by deprivation, simple lust, a strong sense of safety, as well as a thousand other things which had accumulated over the last six months, Methos thrust into her, the sting of her nails as she, overpowered by her own desire, clutched at his back and shoulders, pressing him relentlessly on towards climax.
It was soon over; a necessary process, that was all, and one Hannah and he knew well. There had been times, centuries past, when Methos had felt the need to spend time in self-recrimination over this, but eventually Hannah had put a stop to that, having to be harsh with him in order to make him see the sense and the balance of his actions and of her acceptance of them as a necessity.
There were no apologies now and, temporarily sated, he fell back onto the pillows at her side, drawing her lazily half over him and falling, without words, into sleep.
An hour or so later, Hannah awoke to find Methos still asleep; turning on her side, she watched him for awhile as he slept, tracing with her eyes the classically sharp lines of his face, the equally clear lines of his shoulders which, under other circumstances, she would have spent hours delineating in loving detail. The bones beneath the flesh were a little too sharply expressed at the moment; he had lost some weight, probably due to too much nervous energy and too little to eat. The shadows beneath his eyes told her that sleep had been the first victim of this nameless grief and she was glad that he had come to her now. That he felt safe with her was something she had known a long time and that expression of trust was one of the rewards of her self-imposed service to him, and as such she valued it highly.
Groaning suddenly in his sleep, he shifted position, his long legs slipping along hers as he unconsciously reached for her. Hannah ran her hands gently through his hair and over his forehead, bringing him slowly awake.
"You're home, Methos;" she reassured him, "and it'll be alright, in time, whatever it is that's troubling you so much."
Taking her hands in his, he held them still against his chest, stroking across her knuckles with his thumbs. He sighed, deeply, wondering as always, out of habit, where to start. One look in her eyes told him, again as always, that it didn't matter, that she would put the pieces together as he gave them to her. He smiled and gave voice to the one thought that was uppermost in his mind at that moment.
"The worst of it was this," he told her, gripping her hands a little tighter. "Just this." His eyes fell away from hers into memory; Alexa, lying sleeping in his arms in their little rented mud-walled house on Santorini. She was already noticeably weakening, he could tell, but she had given no overt sign of it, though he knew she was almost constantly in pain now, and sometimes had difficulty catching her breath. One of the bravest people he had ever known and all he wanted to do was express how much he loved her because of that, and so many other things about her, but he couldn't; to talk of it, could only serve as a reminder of her condition and he had sworn to do everything he could to put that to the back of her mind, leaving her free to enjoy all the places, all the sights, all the experiences that he wanted her to know before it was too late. So he said nothing, and worst of all, did nothing, nothing overt to make her think of him as anything more than a companion with which to share this journey.
Her health of course, always lurking somewhere in the forefront of his mind, also precluded any such physical expressions of his feelings towards her, and the more time he spent with her, the more he came to love her and the harder it became for him to hold that back, to be instead a considerate friend in an innocent relationship with her, intent only on making her laugh and keeping her spirits up against the encroaching darkness.
"I ... I couldn't ... love her, as I wanted to," the words so difficult to say, even to Hannah, the memories too close as yet to cause anything but an almost stifling pain. "She became so fragile; I felt as if she was nothing more than eggshell in my hands!" he gasped out, in the grip of the overpowering feelings that he was unable to walk away from, even though Alexa herself was at peace now. "I couldn't love her, I could barely hold her without causing her pain towards the end, and I loved her so much! To not be able to tell her, show her ... "
Leaning up on one elbow, Hannah felt she could almost see this woman in his eyes; she had really got to him, removed brick by brick, the careless wall, that blasé normality that he kept in place around all the ultimately secret places that he carried around inside him, that most mortal women he had known had never found. He knew how to love women, did Methos, and as for the sixty-eight women who had married him, he had managed to blind most of them to those secrets by making them feel wanted and treasured and loved in a way that only women could appreciate. She didn't know how many of them had known that he was Immortal; she had never thought to ask him, and she supposed that he had never thought to volunteer the information.
"Was she ill when you met her?"
Hannah's questions, like Methos' volunteering of information, could be haphazard; she preferred to get to the heart of what he was going through, rather than try to get the facts straight chronologically. She knew that was one of the things that he loved about her; her understanding of what was necessary, and her ability to cope with that.
"Yes, she was," he volunteered, "although I didn't find that out until later."
"It wouldn't have made a difference if you had known?" she asked him, already sensing that she knew the answer.
"No," he replied, softly but with certainty. "It couldn't; to not have come to know her, to not have been able to spend time with her, even though it couldn't be the lifetime I wanted it to be ... To do anything other than what I did would have been ... unthinkable."
Hannah noticed the special emphasis that he gave that last word, and she filed it away with the rest of what he'd told her; another piece to be fitted into the puzzle eventually.
"How did you come to meet her?" she asked, finally coming to what should logically be the beginning of the story; it seemed to her to be the right time to ask.
"There's a bar near MacLeod's dojo, run by his Watcher, Joe Dawson; I met her there," he told her, falling easily into the rythmn of the story to be told now. "She was working as a waitress and there was just something about her as soon as I saw her; a brilliance, a grace and a timelessness that drew me. I can't help it, I'm just a moth really, Hannah, and she was such a beautiful flame -"
His voice breaking on this last, tears escaped his eyes once more and the tender, anguished sound of his weeping knifed her heart as it always did, and she wrapped him up close with the blankets and herself, at that moment more mother than lover.
It was deep into the velvet black Venetian night before he slept again, the darkness of more than night still surrounding him, but at least now he was safe; safe and free from the need to pretend that he was okay, free to be himself. So necessary that, because he was so, so tired.
The next few days were spent just walking; the city, the islands, and neither of them spent too much time sight-seeing. His heart still resembling lead - both grey and heavy - Hannah encouraged him to continue telling her about this woman whose beauty and situation had irresistibly lifted him to mountainous heights and knocked the bottom out of his world at the same time. They walked, Methos talked, and wept a little at times when he got too deep into a memory that was painful. On a trip out to Torcello he did spend some time just sitting and looking around at the magnificent architecture there; not because he was in any mood to admire it at that point but more because there was an atmosphere there which reminded him of Alexa and he found himself wondering what she would have thought of the place.
"If only she'd lived long enough ..."
He left the rest unsaid, shaking his head sadly, still caught up in an overwhelming sense of waste; Hannah understood this and just let him sit in silence, alone with his thoughts then because they were beginning to tangle up in his head once more, in pretty much the same way as his feelings.
Grieving was a circular process which moved upwards through different states of being, only slowly; this was common to all mankind and was no different for Immortals than it was for mortals. Even having lived five thousand years, Methos was as subject to this same process as anyone; the difference was that he understood that and was neither too proud nor too afraid to ask for Hannah's help. How many times now had he come to her with this?
Realising that he had lost count he looked up at her from where he was sitting on the crumbling remains of a low wall and was momentarily riveted by the sight of her, dressed in a long, flowing, dark blue, Indian cotton dress, and baggy, black sweater. She was gazing up at the nearby bell tower and seemed lost in some deep thoughts of her own. 'She looks like she belongs here,' he thought and spent as long as he could holding onto the sight of her like that, as much because he was amazed by the ways that there still were for him to be surprised by her, as in respite from the constant pain.
"She would have loved you," he told her when she finally turned back to him. "I haven't even told you her name, have I?" he admitted quietly, a scared feeling creeping through him even as he spoke.
"I knew you'd tell me when you were ready to," she smiled, sitting down next to him on the wall.
He swallowed, hard, recognising the source of the fear he felt now. He didn't know if he could say it.
Battling the demons ready to rise up again at the sound of her name, he made an effort to breathe deeply in an attempt to calm the raging emotions. "Alexa," he whispered finally. "Her name was Alexa."
This was a very particular moment in the weathering of the storm which had driven him to Hannah's side; those three uttered syllables had summoned up a wind, a Sirocco, which could break him if he fought against it, and they both knew that.
Recognising the moment, Hannah held herself silent, waiting for Methos to come to terms with what must happen now, and in that small interval gathered together the words which would help to guide him in his passage through this moment in time. She sensed the subtle change in his demeanour which indicated that he had made a decision of some kind and reaching for his hand, gave it a quick squeeze, indicating that she knew what was happening and that she was ready to go with him in whichever direction the wind would take him.
Reaching into his inside coat pocket, he withdrew a packet of photographs, and Hannah, her breath momentarily stilled, tightened the grip on his hand, already knowing how hard this would be for him.
Fingers trembling slightly, he opened the flap and withdrew the packet's contents; held them reverently in his long, slim fingers. Thirty odd pictures taken at different times in his travels with Alexa. On top was one of her standing under a Joshua tree out in a desert somewhere; it was taken from a distance of about six or seven yards and from what Hannah could see she was wearing jeans, a rollneck sweater and a thick jacket. She couldn't see the details of her face from that distance but she instantly noticed, and was taken, by the wealth of this woman's light auburn hair which fell in a single lustrous length over her shoulder, almost to her waist.
Methos, the breath caught in his throat, regarded the photograph, memories of that time invading his mind once more and tears sprang to his eyes; with an effort he let them go, and handed the photograph to Hannah.
"Her hair ..." she whispered.
There were the beginnings of a certain knowledge in those two words, and Methos grasped them gratefully, hope appearing from out of nowhere now, that this would not be as hard as he had anticipated.
"I know," was all he said in reply, gaze still fixed on the initial photograph, reluctant to dismiss it in order to go onto the next one, and also because he remembered now what the next one was. It had been taken on the porch of a wayside diner, Alexa sat across a table from him, as collapsed as she could be in a fit of giggles when his camera had caught her struggling manfully with a double cheeseburger two times too big for her mouth.
Her eyes were big with surprise and threatened later retribution for taking the snapshot, and her nose crinkled delightfully with laughter; her sense of fun was as beautiful to him as all the rest of her, and his heart clenched painfully as he witnessed it once again, though he could not help but smile at the same time.
He did not immediately notice the charged silence as he handed over the picture, so captivating was that particular memory. Only when he let his eyes drift across to the next photo did he become aware of that silence, joining it himself, as he looked at it. He had glanced at the photographs only once when he got them back from processing, automatically checking that they had come out all right; at the time he hadn't really looked at them, too afraid of adding to the already leaden weight which he was carrying around with him.
Now, like a Quickening, the silence was around him and inside him, and time was stilled as the face before him looked up at him again, too many wonderful things mingling in the depths of those Celtic blue eyes. Gratitude, love, contentment and an understanding that strangely had nothing to do with any of them; nothing, and everything, in a way that he comprehended only in the depths of him, past delineation by any language.
The silence seemed to stretch out into infinity. It hung there between him and Hannah like a thing alive with its own purpose, lofty and intense and ultimately final.
"O-o-o-oh, Methos, she's ... more than beautiful," Hannah breathed, breaking the silence as quietly as she could. Still, the words sounded too loud in her ears and she glanced quickly up at her companion to see how he was taking it.
There was a limpid quality to his eyes which adequately expressed his state of mind. Hannah could see that he was in a world of his own, with Alexa, living that moment, captured, timeless, on celluloid, beyond the final challenge of death. There was no sign of sadness in his gaze; it was almost unreadable, even to Hannah, but she thought she saw something she had never come across in him before; sudden recognition of something that had been hidden until this moment.
"Oh ... my God ... Hannah ..."
His voice trailed away as he looked up at her in disbelief, unable to react to the fond understanding in her face.
"Moved up another level, haven't we?" she told him gently, and speechless he just barely nodded to her, the white-hot pain trapping the breath in his lungs, though he barely noticed; there were no words for the exquisite torture, suspended helplessly between glory and agony. It had been there all the time and he had not seen it until this moment, this too-late moment.
When he could speak he was surprised to find that he was quite lucid; normally, at such a moment, it took him a while to find his way back to words.
"I knew I loved her, but I was so busy trying to keep her cheerful and unworried, that I just didn't see it. I didn't see how much she ... understood; knew ... about me. Gods, how could I have been so blind?"
"Like you said," Hannah reminded him, "you were a little busy at the time."
Running a hand through his hair and handing her the photographs, he stood suddenly, his gaze fixing on the water's edge a few yards away. There was a motorboat tethered there and it drew him irresistibly. Hannah, beginning to see the instinct that was driving him, followed him, trusting his prime need for survival to keep him from doing anything too reckless. She watched as he climbed aboard, started up the motor and then steered the boat into the middle of the expanse of sundrenched water.
The motor sputtered into silence and Methos stood up and slowly removed his coat, his eyes never leaving the watery depths. Then, almost too quickly to see clearly what had happened, he was gone, diving down into water that was shockingly cold, despite the sun which rippled on its surface.
Hannah found herself praying wordlessly to ancient gods that were redundant in the modern world. It seemed appropriate somehow; this woman, Alexa, had been possessed of an old soul, of that much Hannah was certain. It was even possible that their paths might cross again, and Hannah filled her mind with that thought, appealing to the gods for such a thing to come about.
Without warning, an inexplicable shiver ran through her; in her mind, insistent as a blaring trumpet, she saw a balance tipped one way. Slowly, seeming to take forever to move, the balance righted itself and then began dipping down on its other side until eventually it achieved a mirrored stance to its original position. Then it was gone, leaving her gasping for breath and struggling with an indefinable fear.
What was it? What did this vision mean; what force did it possess that could so frighten her?
Looking around to regain her bearings, Hannah spotted Methos just climbing wearily back into the motorboat, and the fear solidified into a word; 'Turnabout'.
"No ..." she breathed softly, fear becoming anguish now as she recognised the terminal essence of that one word. If Methos and Alexa ever met again, ever had a second chance for their love, it might be Methos who paid the ultimate price for that, and there was no chance that she had ever come across, of him returning as - according to the beliefs of many mortals - Alexa might.
Hannah watched him, awareness fixed afresh on his every movement, as he started the motor and returned the boat to its mooring. Watched him as he clambered back onto the short pier and walked, sodden and tired, but somehow more at peace now, to her side.
It was a peace that, suddenly, she could not share and she dragged her gaze away from him as he came nearer, having to make a pretence of looking for the presence of other people who might have witnessed, what to them, would surely be, some very strange antics. Despite the presence of such vast amounts of water, one did not go swimming in Venice voluntarily. He was right; the water did smell, and there was a less than pleasant reason for that. They would certainly be given plenty of room by the other passengers on the trip back from Torcello.
"Hannah; what's wrong?"
He stood before her, dripping, hair plastered to his skull, and very, very still; the wheels inside him that had incessantly churned up his emotions before were at rest, at least for now, and he was watching her as she had watched him only moments before.
Taking a deep breath, she decided to deny him explanations for the moment. He wasn't quite out of the woods yet and coming out into the sunlight and being able to accept it and move on was still a little way off; so she shook away the feelings of impending loss, and summoned a smile from somewhere, making an effort to focus her thoughts on the present situation once more.
"It's nothing," she told him sighing, and hoped that he would leave it at that. "Something for another time," she added, knowing that he wasn't likely to be easily satisfied with any other answer.
His penetrating gaze stayed on her a moment longer and then he nodded, acknowledging the fact that he would eventually know what had troubled her and telling her with the simple gesture that he could let the matter rest until she was ready to discuss it.
To steer him further away from the subject she pointedly held her hand up to her nose, her face creasing up into humorous distaste.
"Didn't I say?" he returned, a wry smile lighting up his thin features. "I can't believe you've never noticed it before."
"You've never gone swimming in the world's largest cesspool before," she pointed out, pushing herself away from the fearsome black hole which had invaded her mind and reaching out for that still centre to which she was more normally accustomed. "Come on," she urged him, "we'd better get you back to the hotel and acquainted with a long, hot bath."
"Only if you join me," he teased her, beginning to get the hang of that particular hobby of his once more.
"Methos, son of Accasta*, if you think I'm bathing in the same water with you in that state, you have another think coming," Hannah told him severely, her face desperate to twitch into a smile. There was no denying it, though only to herself, that, as he looked at present, he was almost unbearably cute.
'Yes," she thought to herself as they began to walk back to the dock to wait for the next lido steamer, 'he can certainly do cute, damn him.'
"I want to meet this Duncan MacLeod of yours," teased Hannah while they were taking tea out on her hotel balcony a day or so later.
"He's not MY Duncan MacLeod," Methos growled back, poking unenthusiastically at a plate of pasta; he had started eating again under Hannah's sternly watchful eye, but he still didn't have much of an appetite. "And anyway, you can't," he retorted smugly. "When I left he was in Moscow with Amanda; as far as I know, he's still there."
"I still want to come back with you," she told him more seriously. "Via Geneva."
The careless smile left his face; he knew it was part of the process of beginning to heal, but he wasn't looking forward to it. "Oh, Hannah, you're not going to make me do this, really, are you?" he pleaded, more to let her know how he was feeling than as a genuine protest. He knew she wouldn't give way on this; she never did. "You're heartless, you know that?"
"Oh, I'm heartless, am I?" she came back, perfectly well aware of all the sub-text hidden in the conversation, but continuing with the verbal skirmish nonetheless, knowing he expected it, and was just feeling sorry for himself. "You're going to avoid Geneva for the rest of your life then, are you? You're really going to waste all this time I've spent getting you back on the rails, by cutting corners for the first time in your life? Are you?"
"Bitch," he remarked half-heartedly.
"Bastard," she returned, trying not to smile, recognising the repartee of old.
"Not," he protested. "Got no parents."
The sulky lower lip got to her every time, and she had to hold back from throwing her arms around him and ravishing him on the spot.
"Nor me," she pointed out, seemingly careless of the fact.
"Orphan," he bemoaned, noticeably enjoying this now, as the corners of his mouth twitched upwards in spite of the 'poor-little-me' expression that he affected.
Turning her face to look up into his, she curled her own lip in mock sadness.
"Me too."
Unable to hold to the parameters of their game any longer, they laughed, throwing their arms around each other.
"Want to kiss and make it better?" he said, the humorous twinkle in his eyes, irresistible.
"Mmm," she nodded, and dragging him to his feet, made her way with him back inside where they began, slowly, luxuriously and very, very caringly, to make love.
Four hours later and they were still there, exhausted, peaceful and drifting very slowly towards sleep.
"You'll stay with me?" he asked her in anticipation of the trial that the next few days would present him with.
"Every moment; I promise."
Methos hated hospitals; to him, who had never had an illness in his life, they had always meant sadness and loss. Loss of mortal friends, wives and lovers who, according to the nature of their kind, could be with him for a time he could only count in years and in this case, months; never the centuries or millennia that he sometimes wished for. The hospital in Geneva where Alexa had spent her final days rated as number one on his 'Most Hated' list, and in light of everything he had told her, and the visual evidence of Alexa's extraordinary qualities that Hannah herself had seen, she could finally understand why.
"I'm sorry, Methos, but you know it has to be done. Sharing that place and all the memories that it brings back is the only way you will be able to come to terms with what happened there. Loss has to be faced and accepted, you know that."
Rolling over onto his side, he faced her, and with lazy fingers idly drew tendrils of her wavy brown hair down across her shoulders. "But not tonight," he said firmly, determined to put into practice her own maxim that she had told him too many times for him to ever forget; 'Sufficient unto the day, is the evil thereof'.
"No, she smiled, seeing, and grateful for, the peace that was still in his face. "Not tonight."
Geneva
Their flight landed at Geneva airport at Two in the morning and by Three they had booked into a hotel and were busy unpacking.
"Why don't we just get some sleep?" Hannah suggested. "We can always unpack in the morning."
"No, I don't think I can sleep right now," came the terse reply and Hannah, seeing that the fidgeting nervousness had returned, sighed. "You're tired, Methos," she began but he was already faced off against what he was doing, liking it less than spit, and unable to listen to, much less act on, what she was saying.
"Look, I just can't do that right now, okay!?" he threw back at her, whilst he tossed clothing haphazardly into a drawer then closed it sharply enough to wake whoever was sleeping next door. A loud complaint nearly drew a yelled rejoinder, but he bit his lip on it, feeling out of control, and hating it, but unable to do anything about it.
Hannah blew out her cheeks, realising that confinement in a hotel room for the rest of the night was hardly going to help matters. He was restless and the only thing that would help was if he could walk and keep on walking until he had worn out the nervous energy which was driving him.
"Okay;" she gave in finally. "Let's just leave everything and get out for awhile. Alright!?" she almost barked out, too dog-tired herself to want to do anything but collapse into temporary oblivion, but not wanting him out roaming the streets on his own. She had promised after all.
So they walked, the light rain on her face waking her up enough to enjoy the fresh air and empty streets. She liked roaming inhabited places at night; the buildings, the streets, the lights all reminding her of some gigantic stage which was there for her to play in and use her imagination on.
They headed for the city's commercial district, some mutual instinct telling them that window shopping was probably the most harmless way that they could spend their time until the Sun came up.
Hannah knew what all this was about by now; the most hateful part of a visit to the doctor or the dentist was hanging about in the waiting room. Methos was here now, the one place on his mind that he dreaded most, and he just wanted to get on with it, get it over and done with. Once he came out the other end of the experience he would be glad that he had made the effort, but for now, he was just scared. Scared of making that journey to the hospital, scared of the overly-sympathetic staff who would understand his motives for coming back but would never see nor understand the larger picture; the immense canvas of his life and all the pain that it already held. He would hate to have to face these people, these strangers who would never know him, knowing that, vicariously, they would share the pain that he wanted to keep hidden from them.
Most of all he was scared of that room, that one, relatively tiny room, which was all the space available to enclose those last days of the woman he loved. Scared of the even more tiny bed where she had lain, helpless in the grip of the vampiric disease which was sucking out her life, knowing that it would not stop until it was satisfied; until she was dead. Seeing in his mind, over and over again, those crystals as they fell, beyond his control to stop them, into the Seine, Alexa's last chance, that one chance of saving her, gone with them.
He had given her the details of that incident on the flight over, willingly taking the first step back into pain in the hope that he would find that he could deal with it. When he found that he couldn't, eventually falling silent as he relived what had happened on the bridge, it only depressed him; realising that this would indeed take longer to get through than he had hoped, was a bitter blow and he was restlessly silent for the rest of the trip.
Walking alongside him now, Hannah could see the one thing that Methos had not acknowledged yet, perhaps not realised, even in his darkest moments; if he had managed to retain the crystals intact, and taken them to Geneva, to Alexa, what would have happened?
Maybe he had never read 'The Monkey's Paw', but Hannah was well acquainted with the story and hearing about the Methuselah Stone had instantly brought it to mind; what if the stone had indeed made her immortal, but had done nothing to heal her? Realistically that would have meant her stay in hospital would have been a lot longer than either Alexa or Methos would have wished. Eventually they would have realised that she was getting no better, and worked out what this meant and why it was happening, and then there would have been the even more bitter decision that it was better to go naturally down into death than to retain the torturous existence which the stone offered.
No, much better that things worked out the way they had; getting him to face that would be yet another hateful facet of all that he had to come to terms with, and at that moment, they were both too tired to have to handle that. Her body and awareness almost walked into numbness now, Hannah was almost dead on her feet when they finally returned to the hotel and she fell, fully clothed, into bed, the welcome respite of sleep claiming her instantly.
Methos, his length flung out carelessly beside her, stared up at the cream-washed anaglypta on the ceiling, his mind - pushed relentlessly past tiredness now - began chasing the tail end of his thoughts haphazardly, even as his eyes endlessly traced the patterns of the wallpaper.
He longed for sleep, but it refused to come, and giving up the fight after only a few minutes, he wearily got up again, and fetching a glass from the bathroom, began methodically depleting the contents of the small drinks cabinet.
"This lot won't last long," he murmured sourly, and picking up the phone, rang for room service.
"Can you send a bottle of Schnapps up to room 212, please, and I'll pay for it now ... yeah, 212 ... Thank you."
When the bottle arrived, Methos handed over the money and then shut the door, cutting off all enquiries as to whether he wanted anything else and was the room alright.
He still employed the glass, pouring out careful measures, downing them in one go, waiting until the liquor had taken hold and then pouring another one. This way he would be good and drunk by the time Hannah awoke in a few hours. He opened the full length window and stepped through onto the balcony and with a certain perverse pleasure idly entertained the idea of stripping off and yelling loudly to the rooftops in the hope that someone would notice and get him arrested for indecent exposure. After all, if he was locked up he didn't have to go back to that bloody hospital, now did he? However the thought drifted away, not acted on, and a small voice whispered to him from the back of his mind that he shouldn't be doing this and that he would regret it and that Hannah would be upset with him -
"Oh, shut up!" he muttered morosely, "I'm not listening to you. And no, she wouldn't get upset, the bitch never gets upset over anything," he continued, feeling a perverse pleasure at this small rebellion. "Always so damn knowing about everything; I'm sick of it, she never bends, never lets me be, never stops damn well watching me!"
Turning his back on the night, he leant against the balcony rail and flung his arms wide to address the room and its sleeping occupant. "I'm the bloody Watcher, woman, not you!" he declared, and then laughed, suddenly seeing the play on words he had just created. "Watcher woman, WASHER woman!" he told her, not caring that she couldn't hear him, "Always scrubbing me so damn CLEAN!!"
Woken up by his raised voice, Hannah listened to Methos ranting away at her, and for a moment, coming up fresh out of the forgetfulness of sleep, was hurt by what he was saying. Then she remembered; what had she privately termed this? Stage Five was it? Sighing away the momentary pain, she smiled in resignation. Dog had to have his day, especially when dog was going through as difficult a time as this. One thing was sure, he would have a hell of a headache come the morning; and he would be grouchy, uncooperative and sullen. Oh well, sufficient unto the day ...
Methos was already sorry for all the things he'd just been getting out of his system, and was starting to come down from the alcohol-induced high. "I haven't felt guilt since the Eleventh Century," he said to the night air, the mantra sounding like an automatic response.
"Like hell," murmured Hannah and turning over onto her side, she started to drift back to sleep.
The next day dawned chilly and grey, and although such weather was normally something of an inducement to depression, Methos was glad that the Sun was noticeably absent; he felt that he couldn't have coped with anything that cheerful right then.
By the time Hannah was awake, he was disappointedly sober and even worse, he knew that there was no way he could really justify putting off the day's planned activities.
'Activities'. That sounded as if he was supposed to have fun, and he knew that the next twenty-four hours would be anything but. Shedding the clothes that he hadn't even bothered to remove from yesterday, he headed for the shower. When he came back Hannah was sitting up in bed, chomping manfully on a couple of croissants. Clearly she didn't have much of an appetite either.
"Bathroom's free," he told her, attempting a breezy air and failing miserably. She nodded, putting the plate down on the bedside table, the croissant left unfinished. Getting out of bed, she went to him and wordlessly embraced him.
"I just want to get it done," he mumbled into her hair.
"I know," she whispered, running her fingers comfortingly across his close-cropped hair. For a moment she had a vision of him as a death camp refugee that was so strong that she wouldn't have been surprised to find a tattoo on his arm. She almost smiled at her slip of memory when she realised that was just what she would find; on both wrists, the Watcher tattoo which identified him as supposedly mortal. There was a certain irony in that fact which was not lost on her; Methos, the oldest Immortal still living, and after all that time, probably the most human of any of their clandestine species.
"You're not going to have anything before we go, are you?" she asked, the question entirely rhetorical, and he shook his head.
"I couldn't," he replied the grim determination returning to almost cover the pain which delineated every line of his face. "Come on," he urged her, nodding towards the bathroom, "I want to get out of here."
"Ring down for a taxi, will you?" she suggested. "Quarter of an hour, no longer," she promised him as she entered the bathroom.
"Okay," he sighed, and sitting on the edge of the bed, feeling a teeth-chattering shiver begin to take hold of him, reached out shaking, reluctant fingers to pick up the phone.
He hadn't anticipated it; although the room had been empty for a fortnight and Hannah said she could detect nothing, Methos was willing to swear that he was being almost overpowered by exactly the same smells that had inhabited the room when Alexa had occupied it and they were making him feel physically sick. He was in there only two minutes before he had to make a run for the bathroom. After heaving uselessly on an empty stomach for ten minutes, he came back feeling, not to mention looking, like death.
He looked in through the window, but couldn't go in. Catching Hannah's eye through the glass he gestured for her to come out to him.
"There's nothing to smell, Methos," she told him as she pushed her way through the door. "It's memory, that's all."
"Memory; really. Well, let's say that if I had had breakfast this morning, it and I would have just parted company."
"I can see that." She slid her hand down his arm and twined her fingers through his. "It's just a 'mind-excuse' to keep from going through with this."
He made to snap out a self-defending, contradictory reply, but the words never made it past his vocal cords. He knew she was right, but how was he going to get past the knee-jerk reaction in order to deal with this?
"I ... I need a minute, that's all. Just a minute; come on, I need some coffee," and squeezing her hand in his, he started off down the hall to a drinks machine, fishing in his coat pockets for spare change as he went.
They occupied a couple of the chairs which lined the hospital corridor, whilst Methos slowly drank two cups of the disgusting brew.
"I bet you lived on this stuff, while you were here," guessed Hannah.
Methos merely nodded, concentrating on trying to still the build up of tension inside him.
"Oh, gods, Methos, it's awful! I've never tasted anything so appalling in my life!"
"You should try the tea," he told her, his albeit morbid sense of humour, returning, if only momentarily. Strangely, the caffeine was making him feel calmer; or maybe it was the indescribable taste of the dark brown liquid with which he was so familiar.
He looked back up the hall at the door to the little room which had become the centre of his world only a few weeks ago. He could almost kid himself that Alexa was just upstairs on level five, undergoing some more tests instead of being over a week dead, free from pain, her bones resting in the earth now.
Draining the dregs from the second cup, he tossed it into the waste bin next to the drinks dispenser and then stood up, finally feeling stable enough to go on with the purpose of his visit here.
"Ready now?" Hannah enquired, her arms wrapped around herself, clearly not looking forward to this either.
"Yep," he replied, and offered her his hand. Taking it, she walked with him back down the corridor and followed him inside the room, shutting the door quietly behind her.
He went over to the bed, sat down on the edge, his gaze fixed on the single pillow above the folded down sheet and blanket. "It was very hard for her with that tube in her throat, not being able to speak," he began, already seeing it in his mind's eye and yet although he could recall it as if it had been only yesterday, he was detached from it in a way that enabled him to continue. "In the beginning she would write things down, but she was too weak towards the end, to even hold a pen."
Methos could feel Hannah's hands on his shoulders and he hunched up into her grip, to let her know that he was grateful for the gesture, and that he was alright. And he was, suddenly; the line that he had already crossed had been so thin that he hadn't even noticed it.
He could still see her face, features pinched thin with pain, eyes battling fear and worse, and losing. Most of her lovely hair had had to be cut off, as she had been running a high fever when she had been checked in, and what was left, had quickly become untidy, and stringy with sweat. The staff had done their best to keep it washed and neat, but any movement caused her almost unbearable pain, and in the end, at her silent behest, Methos had asked the nurses to leave her as she was. What did it matter when she knew virtually nothing else but pain; it seemed pointless to add to it when she was unable to appreciate the results.
"You could see everything in her eyes," murmured Methos, the fingers of his right hand stroking absently over the surface of the blanket. "Her whole system was shutting down, fast, and there was a moment when it finally hit her. She was in so much pain, and it was as if, right at that moment, she could feel exactly what was happening; she was losing everything that had kept her alive, all those processes that go on inside us, day after day, that most of us take for granted." He paused, looking that moment in the face again, before going on. "That was when I had to leave, to go and find the crystal. I just couldn't stand her pain anymore, had to do something to stop it."
"And when you got back?" Hannah asked him softly, trying to fit in with the pitch and rythmn of his words so that the flow of them would not be broken.
"She was already in Intensive Care on full life support," he replied, only partially with her. "She drifted in and out of wakefulness; sometimes she would just barely press my hand, to let me know she was still with me, but mostly she was out of it. She was never really conscious again, except for a few moments at the end."
"To say goodbye," Hannah mused to herself, caught up in the images of the moments he was reliving, almost as if she were watching a film play out in her mind.
"Yes ..." and with this last, his voice breaking on that word, he looked up at her, gratitude and something else indefinable shining through the tears in his eyes. "To say goodbye and ... to thank me for being with her through it all. She said it had been worth it; I think she meant everything she'd seen, everything she'd done." He was silent for a moment, sharing the finality of that moment with Hannah; holding nothing back now.
"Then she said she was tired, and that she was going to get some more sleep. She closed her eyes and ... she was gone."
He looked puzzled, pondering over that second between being there, with him, and being absent, as if that simply weren't possible. Then he just let it go, coming up out of the almost trancelike state he had been in for the past fifteen minutes. He sighed, and shook himself away from the vision he had voluntarily summoned up. "That's all," he told Hannah in an almost easy manner, seeming quite calm now that the ordeal was nearly over. "I wandered around in a bit of a daze after that; can't recall what I did or where I was for most of the rest of the day. I went back to the hotel room and just sat, I remember that; cried a bit, then rang the hospital to make the initial arrangements. Booked a flight back to Paris, did the necessary there. The hardest thing was the funeral four days later. I was more or less numb until then."
"And after?"
"I came looking for you," he told her fondly. "What else?"
Methos stroked the backs of his fingers lightly, lovingly, down the side of her face, and then, acknowledging his own honest vulnerability which he could see countered in her eyes by the safety of her strength and understanding, he reached for her, wanting the simple warmth of her around him again, before they had to leave.
"So you want to meet MacLeod, do you?" he reminded her finally, as they parted, feeling no twinge of conscience at changing the subject now that the worst was over.
"Of course," she replied, getting up off the bed and putting on the gloves she had removed when they had arrived at the hospital. Heading for the door, she glanced back over her shoulder to see him stroke his hand across the bed once, thoughtfully, and then get up to join her. "You said he was in Moscow?"
"With Amanda, yes," he replied, all business now as he followed her through the door and down the corridor to the elevators.
"Is it true, what I've heard about her?" Hannah enquired playfully while they waited.
"I don't know that I can answer that question," he answered, a sly smile coupled with the trench coat, bringing the phrase, 'dirty-old-man', suddenly to her mind.
"Well, you've met her," she pointed out. "Is she the temptress she's made out to be?"
"She's a bit of a flirt, yes," he agreed as the elevator arrived and they got in. No one else was in the car, and so they continued their conversation down to the Ground floor.
"I didn't ask if she was a flirt," Hannah clarified, "I asked if she was a temptress. You know, to-die-for, sensuous, a vamp, that kind of thing."
"You'll have to ask MacLeod that," he told her non-commitally, raising his eyebrows in the 'butter-wouldn't-melt' expression that he knew she loved so much.
Methos also knew she was deliberately lightening the mood by changing the subject, so he continued to play along, even though he wasn't ready yet to follow her all the way in the direction that she was heading. Slipping his arms round her from behind, he gave her a little squeeze and buried his nose in her hair, breathing in the slight herb scent of the shampoo she had used that morning. It had a calming effect and he closed his eyes, revelling in the simple closeness of her. "I love you, Hannah," he whispered, squeezing just a little tighter.
The moment was broken as the elevator doors opened onto half a dozen people waiting to go up to visit patients, and he hurried the two of them out, slightly embarrassed somehow, at being caught in such a private moment. They didn't stop until they were out in the car park and Hannah turned in his arms, to smile fondly up at him. "It's actually been quite a long time since you've said that," she reminded him, and he nodded.
"I know," he confessed, still holding onto her. "We need a taxi," he said automatically, feeling the spattering of rain on his face and hair.
"Over there," she pointed, indicating the taxi rank over to their left. Pulling their coats closer around them, they ran over to the nearest cab and got in. Hannah gave the name of the hotel, and the vehicle pulled away through a side entrance into the mid-afternoon traffic.
Once at the hotel, they spent a little time partially packing up their suitcases, leaving out only what they would immediately need before leaving the next day. Then they went out for dinner, choosing a little out-of-the-way place that they had come across the night before, which looked exclusive enough to provide some privacy for intimate and possibly necessarily secretive, conversation. There was a first floor terrace and since it had stopped raining and was a pleasant enough evening, they sat outside, initially just ordering drinks.
Declining a table initially, and saying that they would order in half an hour or so, they picked out a covered seat which looked out over the city and sat there in silence for awhile. Methos put an arm around Hannah and drew her in close to his side, sighing with relative contentment. The feeling was still shot through with the sadness and the loss of Alexa and for a moment looked down at the alcohol swirling lazily around the glass in his hand.
Brandy Alexander. Alexa was a feminine diminutive of Alexander, and he was struck by a twinge of pain. Choosing to share it now, instead of bottling it up as he had before, he raised the glass in a solemn toast.
"Alexa; brave, beautiful ... beloved."
Hannah felt the pain and the love in those words in her own heart, having absorbed some of the essence of the woman Methos grieved over, almost by osmosis, by virtue of his company and what he had shared with her during this process, never easy, of the beginnings of healing.
"Alexa," she whispered, raising her glass to his and then taking a long swallow of the fiery liquid.
"She said she liked to drink wine," Methos told her after another minute or two's silent contemplation. "She couldn't drink it anymore, not with her medication, but she never minded when I did. Said she enjoyed even just the smell of it. I used to order half a dozen different kinds when we ate out, just so that she could sniff them all," and he shook his head, a fond smile touching his face as he remembered watching intently the intoxicated delight in Alexa's eyes as she raised yet another glass to her nose. "Funny girl," he murmured, beginning to hear the laughter of her voice in his mind once more.
"Do you think you could get through the rest of those photos now?" Hannah asked him, knowing that he was through the worst of it now.
"Yeah," he replied, sounding more positive than he had in days. Reaching inside his coat, he drew the packet out and they began going through the other shots that he had taken of Alexa during their 'whirlwind' tour. He was beginning to come up with happy remembrances now, and she felt the relief deep inside her; there had been moments when a small voice had begun to whisper that it would be beyond even her to help him through this particular loss.
The waiter reappeared to take their order and they set their minds to more immediate needs, deciding on Sole again as the last time it had been ordered it had, of necessity, been allowed to go cold and, as such, had been completely inedible.
They didn't speak much during the meal, Methos being too involved in enjoying good food again after his lengthy abstinence. Once they were down to the coffee however, the conversation resumed, in a lighter, more positive vein.
"What are you going to do when you get back to Paris?" Hannah enquired sensing that he was more or less ready for some concrete course of action.
"What do you think I should do?"
"Well, if I were you I should give yourself some time out from all that research for awhile," was her first suggestion, and he nodded, taking that on board without a fight. So far, so good, she thought. "Give yourself something absorbing to do, though. You don't want too much time on your hands or you could start spiralling down into a depression again."
"Fine," he replied, seeing the sense of what she was saying. "What do you suggest?"
Putting down her coffee, she perused the possibilities for a moment. "When was the last time you actually read your journals instead of just continuing to write them?"
"Ooo, I'd say about eighty ... ninety years ago; why?" This was rather out of left field, coming from Hannah. Normally at a time like this she suggested some sort of physical activity and he wondered where she was going with this.
"Well, I think you need to give yourself a time out from work as such, but you could still do with something absorbing to keep from thinking too much about what's happened. You came closer to losing it than I've ever seen you before," she told him insightfully, "and I think Alexa has impacted on more areas of your life than even you realise. You need to find those areas and remind yourself at the same time of just who you are. I think starting with Book One and working your way through slowly would be the perfect way of accomplishing both goals, don't you think?"
He thought this proposition over slowly, beginning to relish the idea. She could be right; the persona of Adam Pierson had been rather prevalent lately and it would be good to remember that there was a lot more to his life than just Watcher research.
"Okay," he agreed, and draining his cup flagged the waiter for the check. "What say we fly back tomorrow?"
"We-e-ll ... I think you should tackle this on your own for awhile," she murmured, expecting him to react as if she had just dropped a bombshell; but she had perhaps temporarily forgotten how well he knew her.
"I thought you wanted to meet Duncan," he teased her, pushing aside the little wave of hair that had flopped down across the side of her face and looking up into her eyes, his own twinkling with a certain mischief.
"I thought you said he was in Moscow with Amanda," she retorted, doing the same to him.
"Not as of this afternoon," he said smugly. When Hannah looked puzzled he reached into his coat and waggled his mobile phone under her nose. "I managed to get through to him while you were powdering your nose. He got back just after lunchtime."
"Mmm," she murmured, reflectively. "I still think it's time for you to be out on your own now," she concluded firmly. "I can't hold your hand forever. Besides, going it alone from here on has always made you stronger in the past. I know this has been particularly rough for you because she's been more of a part of you than the others, but that's all the more reason for you to spend some time alone with her; you know what I mean. I think it's time for that now, don't you?"
Putting his mobile phone down on the table in front of him, Methos reached our for Hannah's hand; but then he stopped himself. This was a decision he had to make based on his own strength, not his weakness. He reached down inside for the answer; it didn't come easily, but once he had it he was sure of it, and willing to abide by it.
"Alright; I'll fly back tomorrow. What about you? You'll go back to Venice to finish whatever it was you were working on?"
"No, not immediately," she told him, and received a look of puzzlement from him in return. "When you suggested we both fly to Paris, I said what I did because I wasn't intending on staying there. I will fly back with you; there is something there that I have to do, but after that I will return to Venice, yes."
"What is it you have to do?" Methos asked her.
"I'll tell you that when it's time," she replied. "Now I think we should go back to the hotel and make the arrangements. Then we should get some sleep," and picking up her purse, Hannah rose from the table indicating her readiness to leave.
Methos nodded wordlessly and once he had paid the bill, got up and followed Hannah from the restaurant.
"I want to visit her grave."
Methos, from where he was sitting on the cabin roof of MacLeod's barge watching Hannah pace slowly along it, looked back at her in shock. Not because of anything he was feeling about himself or Alexa, but because of Hannah, herself.
Ever since they had met up with MacLeod that morning, Hannah had become more and more restless; trying to hide it and no doubt succeeding where the Highlander was concerned, but Methos had not been fooled for a moment. The reason he had suggested the two of them getting some air had been to find out what was bothering Hannah so much, but now that she had given voice to her thoughts, he was still not sure what was going on with her.
"Why?" he asked her finally, disturbed that, for the first time that he could remember, he couldn't read her at all. "Is this some kind of final test to see if I can -"
"No, no," she hurriedly reassured him, returning to his side and plunking herself down next to him. "No, it's nothing like that, nothing to do with you, really. I ... I need to do this for me."
"Why, Hannah?" he asked her again, sensing that she would appreciate some prompting before she could get it all out, and not liking it; he felt all at sea suddenly, never having known her be this nervous over anything before.
She took a deep breath and held it for a moment, before sighing it out, obviously struggling to find the right words or indeed, any words at all. Methos noticed that she was shaking and he reached out wordlessly and enfolded her in the warm strength of his arms. By now he was more than puzzled over the sudden turnaround in her behaviour; he was genuinely worried. Worried that he hadn't been able to anticipate whatever it was that had her in such a grip and worried that he was totally unable to interpret it.
Still she said nothing, her eyes, usually so eloquent, dark and withdrawn. He wondered desperately what would come next; tears, or maybe anger?
"Hannah, what the hell is it? What have I missed?"
"Not you," she whispered against his hair which suddenly her fingers were unable to leave alone, running softly through the short, dark strands. "It's me; I'm the one who's missed it."
"Missed what?" he asked, pulling away from her a little to look into her eyes, searching, and failing, to find answers. "Hannah, tell me."
"I can't," she told him shortly and disengaging herself from his arms, she got up and resumed her slow pace along the barge roof. "It's not time yet."
"Time for what, for Heaven's sake? Hannah, you're not making any sense. You've never kept anything from me before; why now?"
"Because that's just the way it has to be!" she almost yelled back, drawing stares from a couple of passers-by.
So it was to be anger. In some small part of him he had hoped it might be tears; at least he knew how to deal with those. This anger, not seeming to have come from any logical point that he could fathom, left him feeling confused and a little lost, mostly because he had no idea what to do to defuse it.
"I don't understand, Hannah," he said quietly, turning his glance to look out, without seeing, over the Seine.
With this, Hannah returned once more and, kneeling beside him, held him some little distance from her and keeping her eyes fixed on him.
"Haven't I always been there for you?" she asked him earnestly. "Have I ever once turned you away, or turned from you when you have come to me looking for solace or help, or asked for anything in return?"
He shook his head wordlessly.
"Then honour this one request, please," she begged, searching his eyes for agreement. "I want to go and visit Alexa's grave and then I need to return to Venice; after all, I do have some work to finish."
That wasn't it, but Methos, acknowledging the fact of her own sacrifices on his part, decided that the very least he could do was to grant this request and its conditions.
"Alright;" he told her, getting to his feet and reaching down to help her up. "You want to go now?"
She nodded, her expression becoming withdrawn again as she climbed down to the deck once more and waited for him to pop his head round the cabin door to explain their departure.
"Okay, let's go," he said, reappearing and following her down to the car.
"You're okay with this?" she asked him as he helped her in.
"Yes," he replied shutting the door and, going round to the nearside door, he got in and turned the key in the ignition. "If this is what you want to do, then that's what we do."
Hannah smiled gratefully, if still somewhat distracted, and donned a headscarf against a growing chill, as Methos gunned the engine and drove off along the Quay towards the main road.
"That reminds me," he began, having noticed the headscarf and seeing Hannah reach into her bag for her gloves. "I must find time to get the heater fixed ..."
'Alexa Bond
Beloved'
Just that one word only, besides her name. Not some familiar quote, no poetry, nothing. Just that one word, 'Beloved'.
For some reason it broke the last vestiges of her normally iron-clad balance, and her heart. Those seven letters encompassed everything that he had told her, everything that she had garnered in her observations, everything.
'Beloved'; she had never before known a single word to have so much power over her. The fact that it spoke to her own future made it doubly strong against a suddenly seen weakness of her own. Tears ran unnoticed down her cheeks, as she stared in shock at the simple stone.
Faced by the need to make a decision sooner than she'd expected, Hannah was grateful for the fact that Methos had gone on ahead of her initially, to spend a few moments alone with Alexa. Hannah looked around for him and saw him wandering slowly amongst the other few graves as if acquainting himself with his lost love's present company.
Hastily Hannah wiped away her tears and knelt to leave the small posy of wild flowers that she had carefully gathered for this occasion; Methos was still lost in his own thoughts but he wouldn't remain so for long and she didn't want him to find her so disturbed. She had to make this decision and quickly.
In her heart of hearts it was already made, if she were honest enough with herself to admit it; really it was a question of what to do about it. Going over in her mind everything that had happened since he had found her in Venice, including their recent visit to MacLeod, Hannah realised that she actually had only one option that she could bear to live with. Perhaps though, MacLeod could make that option a little easier if he was willing.
Her mind made up, she stood and looked around for Methos once more. He was coming back to her, a little pale, a little withdrawn, but with none of the desperation that he had exhibited before. She felt that it would be alright to leave him now, with a few last minute stipulations about sharing some of the weight of grief which was still with him, with the Highlander, sensing that this dark-haired, charismatic Scott would be an understanding friend.
"Thanks for letting me do this," she said quietly as Methos approached her. "I just felt that I needed to make some sort of closure for myself; you understand?"
"Yes, I think so," he answered, sparing the simple headstone one last, lingering look before they left. "Alexa was the sort of person who would have that affect, even on people who never met her."
"What with all you've told me and shown me about her, I almost feel that I did know her," finished Hannah, descending the steps which led back down to the forecourt and out into the street.
Once in the relative warmth of the car they just sat for a few moments, sharing a mutual silence. Reaching out for her hand, Methos squeezed it, well aware that their next destination would be the airport; he could tell from her demeanour that Hannah needed to be alone now, to reach back into her life away from him so that she could recharge her batteries and carry on for the next God knew how many years until they met up again. He hated to lose her company, he always did, but he knew that it had to be that way, if only to ensure her safety.
If anyone did finally uncover his identity and live long enough to tell or make a record of it, then eventually, were Hannah to remain with him, she would be marked for what she truly was too; then she would be hunted and eventually killed, and he couldn't bear that thought. Her worth as companion, lover, and saviour was, as the Bible so aptly put it, 'above rubies'; any future without her was something he could not, and did not want, to imagine.
So, he drove her to the airport saying a swift if warm goodbye to her, and then drove back into the city to find a room at a hotel for awhile until he could sort out some more permanent residence. He still felt grief's cold, determined fingers in the region of his heart, but thanks, as ever, to Hannah, the pain had diminished to a dull ache now; liveable with at least.
Meanwhile Hannah, trying and miserably failing to let herself be distracted by the inflight movie, was struggling to face the hardest future she could ever had imagined; more death, more pain for Methos at some time in the years ahead of him. Would he fail her? Would she have to depend on her last resort? At this moment in time she didn't even know whether it would be open to her; she would have to leave returning secretly to Paris to meet with MacLeod to find her answer, for a few weeks at least. There was work to finish, and anyway; she didn't feel that she had the courage to ask the question just yet.
Gathering what remained of her strength to put that moment out of her head at present, she reached wearily into her briefcase for some sketches of frescoes which she had brought with her, and got to work.
PART TWO
Paris, (sometime during the 5th season...)
The barge rested comfortably at the water's edge, and in the dwindling evening light looked as noble a vessel as she had been named. Hannah stopped for a moment at the top of the steps and smiled; at one time she had herself lived on a boat, on a canal in the early eighteen hundreds. It had been a pleasant existence, but eventually the various ancient cultures of the world had called to her investigative eyes and fingers, and she had moved on, not for the first time, not for the last.
Descending the steps she pulled her coat closer around her against the growing Autumn chill and then hastened across the Quay to where NOBILE was docked. Once aboard she wasted no time admiring the craft, but straight away knocked on the door to the large cabin, and then hearing a soft acknowledgement from inside, entered.
It seemed that MacLeod was alone there, and that she had caught him in the midst of some housework. She thought he looked a little odd in the short leather pinafore and with a scarf wrapped, what she called 'gypsy-style' around his head to keep the dust off, but nevertheless, quite sweet, and with a chuckle in her voice, told him so.
"I can see why you get on so well with Methos," he grunted, looking up to see who had come visiting. "Hello Hannah," he said, stopping what he was doing and taking the opportunity to look her over.
"MacLeod," she replied, coming forward to greet him with a smile and a handshake.
"To what do I owe the pleasure?" he asked her, removing the headscarf in a belated attempt to present himself as something more than a housemaid. The smile disappeared from her face and she began fidgeting nervously with her bag, looking around, ostensibly for somewhere to sit. He waved her over to the couch and followed her over, taking her coat and placing it across the arm as she shrugged out of it. He noticed the way she perched on the edge of the seat, and was instantly all business, realising that something was wrong. "Are you okay?" he enquired immediately. "Methos?"
"Yes ... yes, we're both of us ... okay," she began hesitantly, seeming to search for the right words to explain her presence there. "I ... I have to ask you for something; a favour, at best, and in the worst case ... a promise."
"What is it?" he asked, spreading his hands in puzzlement. He could tell that she was reluctant to broach the subject, and he began to worry that whatever she was about to present him with would be something he would be unable to follow through on. Nevertheless, he waited for her to pluck up the courage to reveal what she was obviously struggling with.
Suddenly he felt a calm, but powerful presence hit him and instantly he was on his feet, instinctively searching for its owner. "I'm, er, sorry Hannah, I've just got to go and check on something outside that I forgot to do, I'll be back in a second."
"It's okay, MacLeod," she told him softly, staring down at her bag which was lying where she had left it, on the table before her. "It's me."
He looked back at her, not understanding what she had said, and then slowly it dawned on him. "You're IMMORTAL!?"
She nodded, still unable to look at him, feeling scared and anchorless suddenly, as it struck her for the first time, what she had actually done. "You're the only other person in the world, apart from Methos, who knows," she told him, striving to keep her voice steady, very aware of the headlong course she had undertaken. "He and I have kept the truth of my existence a secret for three thousand years; he would kill me if he knew I was doing this," she continued, laughing nervously at the irony of what she had said.
"But ... but, that's not possible!" MacLeod blurted out, his eyes wide with shock and confusion. "You can't just turn it on and off like that, no Immortal can!"
Finally, Hannah managed to raise her eyes to his, having found some measure of control, triggered, strangely enough, by his outburst.
"Manifestly possible," she pointed out, waiting for him to take on board the reality of what she had done.
The presence was gone again, and Duncan froze in the wake of its sudden absence. Then suddenly it was back again, and he saw the truth of the matter in her eyes as she gazed steadily back at him. Finally, the sense of her Quickening disappeared once more and didn't return.
"This is how I have managed to guard myself all this time," she told him, with no more weight to the statement than she would give to a weather report. "No-one else knows; not the Watchers ... no-one."
Duncan sat down across from her once more, more confused than before now. "Then why tell me?" he asked her worriedly. "And why now?"
Hannah got up from her seat on the couch and went over to one of the portholes which looked across the Seine and fixed her gaze on the Notre Dame Cathedral on the opposite bank. The magnificent sweep of its external architecture calmed her wildly spinning thoughts and emotions and helped her to focus on what she had to say to the Highlander.
"I told you because you need to know; it has to do with what I want to ask you."
"Which is?" Duncan urged her, needing answers.
"There is something that I need Methos to do," she told him, still hedging somewhat around the crux of the matter. "But I don't know if he'll be able to do it. If he does, he's going to need someone to turn to when its over; someone who will be willing to listen, to have patience and who will try to understand. I think that person could be you."
"Hannah, I don't like the sound of this;" muttered MacLeod, feeling deeply disturbed by her words and wondering what on Earth it was that she wanted done that would drive Methos into wanting a confidant. He didn't like to entertain the idea that was already beginning to form in his mind, which was making him think all too forcefully of Methos' lost love, Alexa. "Just what is it that you're going to ask him to do?"
She told him.
Staring at her in shock, his vague suspicions confirmed, Duncan felt even more confused now and for a moment could find nothing to say to her. She saved him the trouble of having to respond to her by speaking first, and for the next ten minutes or so she continued to explain, in detail her needs and motivations.
In the end, loathe though he was to have to consider what she asked of him, he agreed to grant her favour, and, if necessary, to keep her promise.
His mind overflowing now with what felt like a higher knowledge of his ancient friend and the woman who loved him, he could barely respond to her as she said her goodbyes and left the barge. His feelings were in turmoil, not just because of what he had learned about Methos and Hannah, but also because of what he had reluctantly learned about himself. Never before had he been confronted by so clear a mirror of his life and his actions, indeed of his very existence, and he was at once honoured and terrified by the knowledge of the heavy responsibility which he had to accept. Within the space of ten short minutes, he had had his life changed forever.
... For ever. Those three syllables carried enough weight to crush him, if he let it. It would be a whole new task, and one he had never consider before, to keep that from happening. Staring around the barge now, it was almost as if the cabin sides were moving in on him and, abandoning the cleaning until later - much later - he went up on top to get some fresh air, and to think.
On an impulse, he picked up his cell phone on the way out, suddenly needing to talk to Joe. Sitting, legs dangling, on the cabin roof, he began enter the number on the phone. He stopped halfway through, some deep instinct which was already in sympathy with this responsibility, newly thrust upon him, telling him that he couldn't even do this. Hannah had entrusted him with her secret as well as the favour or promise, whichever the future led to, and he could not betray that trust. With an ever deepening sense of frustration and loneliness, he shut the phone off and put it down beside him.
Tears formed in his eyes, for what reason he wasn't sure, as with a heavy heart he struggled to come to terms with the awesome step he had taken in a direction from which there was no returning.
"I want you to celebrate KET on Thera with me; at Akrotiri, where we held the first ceremony."
Methos looked at Hannah, still standing there at the bottom of the cellar steps, and then returning his glance to the book he had been reading when she arrived, closed it, his shattered concentration irretrievable for the moment. He was trying to figure out why she had come to him now with such an usual request; KET was an ancient ceremony, lost to the rest of humanity in the mists of time, and it focused on the reaffirmation of beliefs that they both had shared thousands of years ago. It also drew the spirits of loved ones, alive and dead, to whoever was involved in the ceremony and Methos had a sneaking suspicion that it was this aspect of the ceremony that Hannah was more interested in, though he couldn't put his finger on how he knew that.
"I will, Hannah, you know that," he replied, returning his gaze to her once more. "But why? And why now?"
She shuffled on the spot for a moment, needlessly inspecting the trim Italian leather shoes she was wearing. "Trust me?" she enquired, biting her lip.
He had never known Hannah to be so evasive, except for the time she had wanted to visit Alexa's grave. He wondered if this request was anything to do with that, and then dismissed that idea; somehow he knew that wasn't the deal either. "Of course," he told her, deliberately appearing a little disappointed that she had to ask, hoping that it might sting her into some explanation, but she didn't budge, just looked steadily back at him.
"I'll tell you when we're there," she promised him and came towards him offering her arms. He accepted the embrace, hugging her close to him, for some reason, suddenly loathe to let her go. He felt her head sink onto his shoulder and immediately deciphered the gesture as a need for comfort.
Holding onto her, it hit him, what was wrong with this scenario, and had been wrong since that day on Torcello when he had come back from his impulsive swim. Their relationship was out of kilter for the first time that he could remember, and he knew suddenly that it was as if they had swapped roles. Before this, she was the one who had kept him from dancing too close to the edge, or had pulled him back from it, and now it was Hannah who was walking a tightrope, although he still didn't know why.
So, taking a leaf or two out of her book, he just held her in silence until she broke away, and determined to leave it to her, to explain in her own good time.
"When do you want to leave?" he asked non-commitally, following her with his eyes as she wandered around the cellar, running her fingers over the covers of some of his journals which were scattered around the place.
She looked back over her shoulder. "Tonight?" she offered and there was a querulous hint in her voice which jarred until he realised that although he had worked out what had changed between them, Hannah had not. She had to some extent, lost herself under the blanket of need or worry or whatever it was that was swamping her thoughts and feelings. She almost seemed like a child and he went to her wrapping his arms around her once more and kissing the top of her head.
"Yes, tonight, whatever you want," he reassured her. "This is your time."
Having locked up the bookstore for the night, Methos drove them to the airport and within a few hours they were on a flight to Athens. Once there, they booked into a hotel, planning to take a boat out to Crete and from there to Santorini which was the name the modern world had given the island of Thera.
It was a warm night and the two of them sat until the early hours out on the balcony of their hotel room, drinking Margueritas.
"Why Margueritas?" Methos asked Hannah as he spent his gaze on the stars revealed in the cloudless night sky.
"Because I've never had one before and I wanted to try it," she replied absently, her thoughts clearly elsewhere.
He waited for her to elaborate or to change the subject, feeling a little closer to whatever was bothering her.
"Do you remember the Celts?" she murmured finally, turning to look at him with an intense gaze.
"Which ones?" he enquired. "Which time?"
"Oh, about seventeen hundred years ago," she elaborated. "In, well I suppose it would have been France, just about. That tribe that we travelled with for a few years."
So that was what this was all about. She had borne wisdom for the tribe and a lot of people that she had loved and who had kept a special place for her in their hearts and in their lives, had passed through her hands at that time. Then, more than at any other time she had found a niche which seemed to have been created especially for her; she, along with the other women had conducted the secret ceremonies of Earth and Sky, of gods and the growth of the tribe. They had been a deeply spiritual people, seekers who constantly celebrated the higher forces in their lives; with them she had blossomed more than at any other time. She had had a purpose other than just to keep Methos sane; the sense of family which this people generated and took with them wherever they went had given her a peace and a contentment which she had kept with her ever since.
It had only been recently that these qualities had become lost, and so that went some way towards explaining Hannah's need for KET. It became obvious now that she wished to rejoin and regenerate the essence of community which had been so prevalent all those hundreds of years ago.
"Yes, I remember," he told her quietly, his eyes revealing just how much he understood the motives behind her requesting him to join her in celebrating KET. There was one thing he didn't understand however and he voiced his confusion now.
"So why Akrotiri? Why Thera and not France? We could've tried to find some of those places we passed through, again."
Her gaze passed away from him again, and she shook her head, refusing to answer. Perhaps unable to answer, not right then.
"Okay," he nodded, and getting up, drew near to where she was now leaning on the balcony rail. Putting his arm around her he could feel her shivering and he knew it wasn't from cold. She remained silent, matching her gaze out into the night with his and, stealing her arm around his waist, she hugged him close to her, her fingers digging into his ribs, as if she were afraid of getting lost ... or of losing him. It was only when she turned her face and buried it into his shoulder that she spoke again, almost too softly for him to catch.
"Make love to me, Methos; it's dark, I don't know where I am, and I don't even care anymore."
"What!?" He gasped out the word, almost wrenching away from her to look at her and he didn't like what he saw. Her eyes were dull with pain and loneliness and he was so shocked by what he saw that it was as if she was barely the same woman he had known and loved all those centuries. "Hannah! What is this? This isn't just about the Celts, there's something else. What is it?"
Again she shook her head, refusing him any answer except one. "Just make love to me. I need to see; I can't see," and with this tears started in her eyes which tore at his insides. He couldn't remember the last time he had seen her cry, and he was sure he had never seen her cry like this.
Holding her face in his hands, he kissed the tears away and then moved on to her mouth, caressing her lips with his own, softly, slowly, and for what felt like forever. They had had much time, over the centuries, to find their own way in sexual union until it became a higher form of communication between them. More than anything, they held the kisses between them in the highest regard; without the added inducement of skin on skin, without another caress, they could move through all the layers of love more usually engendered by technique.
A kiss could take them anywhere they wanted to go, as it was now. Nevertheless, Methos backed through the window and sank to the carpet taking Hannah with him. They shed their clothes and then returned to one another and their own unique rythmn of love, the net curtain moving in soft, unpredictable waves over their gently moving bodies, blown by the whispering breeze of the warm Athenian night air.
Serving to hold back the cold light of day which Hannah could not yet face, this night became a moment of timeless, silent conversation punctuated by the touch of hand or eye or mouth, carried on the rise and fall of a breath, and tomorrow was only another day, the other side of a bridge which would only be crossed when there was enough light in her eyes for her to see by.
Even at that latitude the wind cut chill across the hilltop and Methos couldn't keep from shivering a little. It wasn't just the wind that brought on the involuntary reaction though; there were memories here, not so good memories of Alexa, feeling brittle in his arms and of him caught between wanting to hold her tighter but not daring to in case she broke in pieces.
With an effort he pushed past his despondent thoughts and delved deeper into more ancient times. Times before the eruption when this island had been populated by an intelligent, uplifted people, moved by high ideals and expressing them in some of the most beautiful art ever created, even by modern day standards. A learned people who had provided him with many friends and allies in thought and feeling. He had been happy here once.
Hannah had first visited the island with him, nearly three thousand years ago, and they had found the place abandoned, home only to a few peasants and some disparate wildlife. She had done much of her training there, and she revered the place for that and other reasons. It was here that she had first come to realise how she cared for her teacher and friend, not guessing then, just how that friendship would grow and continue to become an almost unique relationship over the centuries. She gazed out over the valley before her now and Methos could see by her eyes that she was reliving some memories of her own.
"Do you remember that first day?" she asked him, her smile a little wild but thankfully more expressive of her old self than of recent days.
"Which one?" he came back, going over to her and rubbing his hands along her arms as if to drive back the cold. "There were so many firsts back then."
"When we got talking to that old woman and she said she could see the power in me?"
"You mean to mask your own vibrations?" he elaborated, vaguely seeing in his mind's eye the brown, weathered features of a woman who had to have been Thera's oldest living inhabitant. He remembered thinking at the time where on Earth the tiny population got enough food from to sustain themselves. He and Hannah would travel from Crete everyday by fishing boat which took them over to the island in the morning and pick them up again at sunset.
Hannah gazed at him over her shoulder and nodded; then shrugging out of his hold, she walked a few steps farther ahead of him, needing a certain amount of space to keep a hold on the good feelings that Thera created in her. "You were astounded," she recalled almost smugly. "And jealous."
"Jealous!? I most certainly was not," he retorted, a little galled that she should remember that he had indeed been jealous of her unique gift.
"Oh, but you were," she said, sitting down cross-legged and relaxed now; seeing him faced off against her at that moment, hawk-faced, eyes glittering with ancient fire, hands on hips and coat-tails flapping off in all directions like birds' wings in the swirling wind. The fire in his eyes sparked a blaze of her own deep in her belly and she was tempted to fly to him and ravish him on the spot.
Eventually he backed down and looked away ruefully, the beginnings of reluctant amusement pulling at the corners of his eyes and mouth. "Yes, alright, I was," he conceded, joining her and kneeling down on bare earth beside her.
Hannah lifted her hand in a silent request for his and he twined his fingers slowly through hers, squeezing just enough to tell her that he was with her and ready for anything whenever she was.
Moments passed in silence as they looked into the misty distance, just breathing, not thinking, preparing themselves for the summoning of the power of KET; a power which came from the presence of all the souls, alive or gone from them, that they had known and who had been held close in their lives.
Night closed in rapidly and the light of the fire, lit and fed half an hour ago when they had first arrived at the spot, drew more and more of their attention, and as they lost themselves in the glow of the dancing flames they began to drift back in their minds, touching memories of all those they wished to draw to them, softly murmuring each name as they came to it, holding out their free hands to touch the presence of each one.
The power grew in them, layer upon layer of it until the circle of people that they envisioned was complete. Apart from the light cast by the fire, the dark was total and it made the power all the more real.
"I call down a blessing on all here," Hannah began, in a language long believed dead and known to only a tiny handful of Immortals still alive in the world. Her words solidified the moment, banished any demons of doubt that there were others here than the two of them. Shivering with the surge of power which flowed through her in response Hannah had to take a breath or two to calm herself; she had forgotten just how overwhelming this ceremony could be.
"What shall the blessing be?" Methos intoned, but it seemed that there were other voices, many of them, who joined with him in the response.
"The blessing shall be of the Wind; the blessing shall be of the Sky. The blessing shall be of the Earth; the blessing shall be of the Waters. The blessing shall be of the cry of the Bird, and the claw of the Beast. The blessing shall be true as a crown on the truthful; The blessing shall be light as wings on the dreamer; The blessing shall bear fruit as the fruitfulness of the woman and it shall sing praises as the praises of the new father.
I call down a blessing on all here."
Methos bowed his head, for the first time in longer than he cared to remember, sharing space and time with family in the only sense of the word that meant a damn to him.
"We receive the blessing and give thanks for the giving and the receiving."
Hannah, her eyes closed in concert with the night and all those with her, and felt herself drawn down into the deep, beloved warmth of his voice, courage coming to her at last to do what had to be done, say what had to be said; courage to do anything, go anywhere, even into death.
She felt the power diminish slowly as, one by one, those whom they had summoned, departed, leaving the two of them alone with the fire and the wind and the night.
And the silence; most of all the silence. It grew loud in their ears until it seemed to be a beast, moving in on them and about to devour them, and with a hurriedly indrawn breath, they opened their eyes, fixing their gaze on the fire whose flames were dwindling now, as if sensing that the need for them was gone now.
Methos turned to the woman beside him only slowly, feeling frozen and energised at the same time by what they had just gone through. Hannah, her face lit in light and shade by the dying light of the fire and seeming more beautiful to him than she ever had before, her hair caught and tossed all ways by the night breeze, looked back at him, the knowledge in her eyes almost too much for him behold. It was a dark knowledge as well as light and he was reminded forcefully of the balance of the old beliefs; of nature, of people, of life itself and, although he could not look away from it, he was suddenly terrified, knowing that this moment, and not the ceremony had lain behind her request and all her past anxieties.
"Take my head, Methos," was all she said, quietly, but he staggered back from her under the sudden drenching weight of her words.
"WHAT!?" He wondered if he had in fact heard her right; maybe she had not said that or maybe this was another of her damn tests. Anger arose at that thought and he moved back and took hold of her roughly, his eyes glittering once more. This time though they glittered with an unaccustomed rage. "Stop this, just stop right now!" he hissed at her, "Enough tests; just what are you trying to do to me? What is it you want!?"
He hadn't felt her hand reaching inside his coat, but suddenly his sword was there, between them; her hand around the hilt was white-knuckled, although she seemed steady enough in herself. Too steady, too serious, her eyes focused and intent; he was shocked into silence and he found that he could hear his own heartbeat, wild and fast.
"I want you to take my head," she repeated.
She meant it. He sank to his knees, the tip of the sword catching the earth and making the hilt sway in front of his eyes, tipping its own balance and taking with it the anger that he had felt.
Energy drained away from him and he could hardly hold himself upright, so that Hannah had to support him as if he had been killed once more by some scared and angry mortal who had discovered his secret; but there were no secrets left now, and it was no mortal who had dealt the death blow.
Tears started to his eyes and he felt all that he had ever loved slipping away. "Why, Hannah?" he was barely able to whisper, struck from all sides by confusion and seeing only bleak pictures of an empty future without her. "How can you ask me to do that?" he continued, his words those of a small child, left alone for too long in darkness.
Hannah laid the sword on the ground and began to explain to him finally, all her concerns and anxieties which had led to this terrible decision.
"For five thousand years you've remained hidden, blending with the shadows or locked away in safety," she told him calmly and hugging him close to her. "Now, by an unfortunate stroke of fate, you're out in the light and becoming more and more visible every day. Horton, Darius, MacLeod, Joe Dawson, Kallas ... all these people, in their own ways, whether directly or indirectly, have winkled you out of that protective shell, and you're vulnerable now."
Methos looked up at her, beginning to see where she was going with this now.
"Yes," she confirmed, sadness creeping into her own voice, "I'm afraid it won't be long now. It's time to put that long-prepared plan of yours into action, and you have to know that I will not be left behind." There was a strongly stubborn streak in Hannah and although she rarely used it, she deliberately brought it into play now, knowing that it might be the only way to convince him. "If you refuse to do this now, I have elicited a promise from MacLeod to come after you; then you'll have to do it. I know you won't allow anyone else to take me. So if you want to put off your Highlander friend's pain of having to kill you, you will take my head, and you'll do it now. What better time?" and having said this a smile touched her face, and it lit up her features so unexpectedly that Methos almost smiled back.
Methos could see and appreciate the logic of what she was saying, but he still found himself grasping at straws in the hope of escaping what felt like an unbearable situation. "MacLeod would never agree to that. He wouldn't do it before when it seemed certain that Kallas would eventually kill me, so why would he be persuaded now, on the strength of a maybe?"
"He has agreed; call him and ask him."
Methos believed her. He had never known her to use subterfuge to get what she wanted; in fact, there had been little that she ever had wanted. He didn't bother to ask her what she would have done if MacLeod had refused her request; he didn't see the point of dissecting her decision endlessly anymore. Looking down at the sword, he reached out and traced the ancient designs on its handle, thinking about his own first teacher who had died under unnervingly similar circumstances.
Methos had thought at the time that the old man had genuinely turned against him, and he had taken his head in that final, all too real duel between them, but he had realised later, and was only now remembering the revelation, that Accasta had deliberately provoked the fight in order to give his best and last student his power and emotional balance which had seen him through untold centuries since his birth at the very beginnings of mankind.
Taking up the sword, Methos got to his feet and walked away to the edge of the hilltop. She was right; if he was going to do it all it had to be now. He was left with just one question.
"What will it be like?" he turned and asked her quietly, his gaze locked on her own. "How will it feel, having you as part of me?"
She shook her head and sighed, smiling sadly. All she could think was how much she loved him, as she had loved no other, as she had never been loved by anyone other than him. "I don't know;" she replied simply. "There's only one way to find out."
Still kneeling on the ground where he had left her, she bowed her head, resigned, even looking forward to the stroke which would make her part of him forever, no matter how long he actually lived before one way another, his essence became eternally combined with that of MacLeod. It was his plan, had been his plan ever since he had learned of the young Scot and his extraordinary qualities of compassion and instinct, which made him the best hope for humanity in its uncertain future. He had done everything possible, bar putting himself in danger to see that the Highlander gained the Prize, until, when he could remain in hiding no longer, he had first revealed, if only vaguely, his intentions for Duncan's future. Having met him, Hannah had to agree that Methos had made the right choice; if five thousand years of power and experience were not to go for naught - not to mention all the journals which he had made sure that MacLeod would inherit - then his plan had to succeed, and Duncan had to be The One.
Methos watched as all these thoughts expressed themselves as shadows, passing behind her eyes, and could only marvel that someone like Hannah had ever existed at all. He thanked every power that he knew as real that he had not only known her, but that she had loved him, that she had seen fit to be there for him whenever he had needed her. Holding the sword loosely at his side he returned to her and, kneeling momentarily close by her side, he tipped her face towards him and kissed her. It was meant as a goodbye kiss, but somehow she turned it into a promise of eternity.
"Don't ask yourself what you're going to do without me," she breathed softly, almost eagerly. "From now on we'll be closer than we've ever been, as close as its possible for us to be. Now," she encouraged him, her eyes more full of life than he had ever seen them, "take my head, take my Quickening and then walk away and don't look back."
"No," he replied, and for a moment Hannah made to argue the point with him, but he put a finger to her lips to silence her. "I'll take your head, and I'll take you ... in here," and he rested a hand over his heart as if to cherish her final resting place, "but you have to grant me one boon."
She cocked her head, willing to listen, but puzzled as to what he was about to ask her.
"I believe Alexa would have liked to be buried here, but as I told MacLeod, I didn't want to be so far away from her."
"You want to bury me ... here?" Hannah asked, surprised but with a smile creeping across her face; she found that she liked the idea, and she nodded in agreement. "I learned what I was, I learned that I loved you and I learned about myself, my purpose in life ... here. With you, from you. From Methos I came, to Methos I return," and spreading her hands out to the wind and the night, she said, "Do it. Do it now ..."
All the love that he had ever felt expanded inside him, filled him with a strange warring mixture of joy and sadness as Methos slowly drew back the blade of the ancient weapon.
A breath shuddered from his lungs as he looked at her. Another and yet another. He swung out and round with a cry, indescribable; the sound of a man growing through change and in pain through all of it.
He let the sword tip drop to the Earth and sobbed silently as he realised that he could not take back what he had done, and for one agonising moment, regretted his action. But that was soon wiped from his mind by the encroaching fingers of power which reached for him, searching out every part of him, bringing pain and an incredible ecstasy unlike any Quickening he had ever experienced.
No; that wasn't quite true. It was the closest thing to the love they had shared that night in Venice after visiting Torcello. If he hadn't had to go through the unwelcome experience of Geneva, he would have mooned around for days after such a high.
Now he had that Hannah that much with him again, he could not hold onto the sadness and regret. That, to a certain extent, would come later, when he needed to feel her in his arms and she was no longer there in a physical sense; but he had buried enough wives and lovers, including Alexa, to know that this wasn't the same. With Hannah, he was lucky. She was still there with him, intimately, and would be for the rest of his life.
He breathed in the night air deeply once he was able to breathe at all. He looked around and was surprised to find that there were faint signs of light in the East. Surely they had not been there the entire night? That time the two of them had sat in silence, just sharing each others' company had only been minutes, hadn't they?
Touching the warmth inside him made him smile and he shook his head; lucky? Hannah called it Fate and balance and just desserts. He felt it, a certainty, a calmness about things which came from the inside, and was no longer a learned facade, even if it had been more than skin deep.
A single light flashed somewhere in the darkness, catching at the corner of his eye; someone was approaching with a flashlight. He waited patiently for the figure to reveal its identity.
MacLeod. Of course, it would be. The stocky Highlander emerged slowly from the darkness, his Celtic features thrown into sharply defined areas of light and dark by the light of the torch. His face bore the expression of a man bearing a heavy responsibility.
"Hi, Methos," he offered, as he stepped into the dim circle provided by the embers of the fire.
"We must stop meeting like this, MacLeod; people will talk."
Gesturing around him, Duncan tried a smile, but it was more lip service to the comment, than because he really felt like smiling. "What people?"
Methos smiled in return, more the genuine article, than MacLeod's, and nodded slowly. "True. Santorini doesn't get a lot of visitors this time of year. She said she told you," he continued, getting down to business.
"Yes; everything. At least, I assume it was everything. I'm sorry."
"Why?" asked Methos. "Not your fault. Nobody's really; except maybe Horton's ..."
"She didn't want to be left behind."
"I know; she told me."
Fishing inside a coat pocket, Methos retrieved a handkerchief and took a moment to lovingly wipe the blade of his sword, before he returned the weapon to the shadowy confines of its hiding place once more. Folding the material once, he held it loosely in his hand and walked over to the Highlander. "How did you get out here?"
"A guy in a fishing boat brought me over; he went straight back. I assumed you'd have a boat here; one way or another I would've gotten back," MacLeod told him, shrugging his broad shoulders as if it wasn't important. "Are you okay?" he asked finally, searching his friend's face for signs of grief or any kind of pain, and was surprised when he didn't find any.
"She's still with me;" Methos replied sensibly, feeling more like his old self than he had in a long time.
"Yeah, I guess so," added MacLeod, although he still couldn't quite understand how Methos could be so calm about having taken the head of someone he loved. "I'm glad I didn't have to force the issue. Too many of my friends have died already."
"You don't have to kill me just yet, MacLeod," grinned Methos, leading the way down the side of shallow cliff to where he had moored the boat that he and Hannah had used to cross to the island the evening before.
"I don't want to kill you at all," he returned fiercely. "Isn't there some other way of -"
"We've been through this before," interrupted Methos, "and there's nothing different now than there was then, not really. Alright, so it's not Kallas trying to take my head, but sooner or later it will be someone else; someone who eventually will come looking for you. I refuse to give them that kind of advantage."
Once they were in the boat, Methos cast off and began rowing for the other shore. It would take a few hours but he knew the passage backwards; it was a journey he had made many times and often at night. "And this isn't about what you want, MacLeod, nor about what I want. If Hannah let you in on my plan, then you can see the bigger picture, or you should do. You can't condemn humanity to an eternity of slavery and horror, and that's just what their future could be if you back away from this and risk someone like Kallas taking your head and the Prize."
"Alright, I know, I can see that now," Duncan shot back, still despondent at the thought of having to kill a friend. "But like you said, there's still time, and maybe we can come up with a different way of doing this in the meantime."
"There is no other way, Duncan," Methos reminded him. "There can be only One."
His ancient friend's logic was inescapable, and Duncan was beginning to feel crushed under the weight of it. Nevertheless, he tried his best to look that particular future in the face; at least there was time, and he felt a new resolve take form inside him, to make the best of that time that was left for his friendship with this extraordinary Immortal. As Methos rowed steadily, each stroke of the oars taking them a few feet closer to civilisation and away from the primal existence of Thera, the Sun rose up on the Eastern horizon, bringing with it the light of a new day.
THE END
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