Archive of Our Own

Prologue: I want him to live

Smoke and the remainder of lightning charges scattered in the mist between them, obscuring MacLeod's view.  Not enough, however, to obscure Cassandra's intent.  She loomed over Methos, Silas' enormous ax in hand, ready to destroy him.  Methos, lost in weeping, made no effort in his defense.  In the lucid maelstrom of post-quickening emotions, MacLeod cried out against the pending scene:  "Cassandra!"

"You want him to live?" she bellowed hoarsely, incredulous.

"Yes.  I want him to live."

He saw her pause, then continue in her motion toward the prone Immortal.  Get up MacLeod thought to himself, why doesn't he get up?

"Cassandra!" he yelled, louder this time, more urgent.  "I want him to live!"

Her parting footfalls echoed the pounding of his heart as he peered through the settling din at the man who had been his friend.

Part 1: Unraveling

A diversion

Methos needed a diversion.

He and MacLeod had resolved things between them somewhat, it was true, at the churchyard.  He had bared his heart as he had to few souls in his long millennia, opening himself to the heartbreak of his regrets for the younger Immortal to see.  As well as he could, he had tried to convey his respect for MacLeod, in revealing to him the long-shuttered pain of his perpetual atonement.  It wasn't enough.  It would never be enough. Methos knew that, accepted it.  Moved on.  Didn't dwell on it -- didn't dwell on guilt.  "Who is the man," said the ancient psalm, "who seeks life?  He turns from evil; he does good; he seeks peace; he pursues it."

Methos had no use for an eternity of brow-beating or penance - things the younger Immortal expected to see.  He had turned from evil.  It was enough.  He sought peace, not like Darius had perhaps, not ideologically, but in his own way.  He knew enough to avoid the temptations of fashion and of power that drew any old Immortal into error.  He did not use his knowledge to control the world.  He left it in peace.  He had peace with himself.  It was enough.

On most days, that is.

Methos sighed as he paused in his packing.  There were times when a dark mood had to be indulged, and this was one of them.  Without entering it, there would be no release from it.  He picked up a copy of Psalms. How long had he owned this particular book?  The binding was fraying, the book coming apart, literally, at the seams.  He laughed, a brief bark, at the irony.  What bound him to the earth, to his life?  Could it so easily come unraveled, like an old book?
 

"I have been many things, MacLeod."
"And who are you now?"

The question, dismissed at the time, wormed its way into his mind and began to haunt him.  It was a question he generally avoided, preferring not to disturb a balance that somehow worked best in the absence of scrutiny.

But he had been so many things, so many people, and the multiplicity of his self swirled around him even more than usual.

"Christ, I sound like MacLeod!"  Methos shook the brooding out of his head and resumed packing underwear, a change of sturdy travel clothes, and toiletries into an overnight bag.  He would not be gone long.  He had researched his destination well, a small, private -- very private -- club in an ethnic German town in the Alsace-Lorraine region.  As well as he could gather, from discreet inquiries and an even more discreet hack into the establishment's computers, this place was just what he was looking for.  An old friend and sometime lover had mentioned it once, and Methos had used his name as a reference.

Twelve hours later he rang the bell in what appeared to be an old, rambling stone farmhouse set apart from the center of town.  Lichen and centuries of weathering marked the walls and the shuttered windows, dusk marking the lateness of the hour.  A camera, almost hidden in the eaves, whirred into position, contrasting with the ancient appearance of the place.  After a moment the door opened and a tall, silent man, dark hair cropped short, clad only in soft grey leather pants and a single, heavy chain of grey metal around his neck, gestured him into a vestibule.  A large, thick silver loop dangled from one of his ears, distending the lobe.

Once inside the building, all traces of age vanished.  The walls were sleek, white, and clean, with floors of polished concrete and details and appointments in various colors of metal -- bronze, steel, copper.  A sophisticated security console dominated the entry.  The greeter gestured Methos to a seat at the console, where he directed him to type key information into a screen - medical history, payment information, and a release of responsibility.  Methos balked briefly, feeling trapped by the demand for a record of any sort.  Naturally he would provide false information, as the managers of the establishment no doubt were aware.  It was a formality.

The greeter then took his bag and gestured him into an office.  From Methos' prior experiences with such places, he anticipated an interview in which the preferences and safe words, terms and conditions which had been established in his conversations with the club representative would be reviewed and confirmed.  He sat down at a burgundy leather chair, drumming his fingers on the armrest. From a door behind the desk a small woman emerged.  She appeared to be in her mid-fifties, pale-skinned, greying blonde hair drawn back in a severe braid.  Her eyes were a watery blue, her features calm and composed.  She was wearing a skin-skimming jumpsuit in the same soft grey leather as the greeter.  She wore no jewelry, except for a large ruby ring on the middle finger of her right hand.

Picking up a file, she glanced through it and then looked up at the Immortal, who cleared his throat.  The silence, first of the greeter, and now hers, following on his discomfort with the computer records, was unnerving him.  She continued to look at him, her eyes boring, it seemed, into his soul.  Abruptly she gestured at two men who had entered the room from behind Methos. Without a word they lifted him by either arm and stood him in front of her desk.  She came out from behind the desk, accepting a jewel-hilted knife from a third man, and began slicing Methos' clothes from his body.

"Hey!" Methos yelled, struggling.  He looked at the goons, who held him securely.  All three wore masks that covered their entire faces in the ubiquitous soft grey leather.

"Stop struggling," she said softly, "or I will cut you."

"What the hell--" he cried, though he stood still as she continued to shred his clothes.  His underwear similarly removed, she took hold of his penis, smiling knowingly at his burgeoning erection.

"Your body knows what it wants, Herr 'Brown'", she said.  Stroking it softly, she reached out her hand and took something he couldn't see from the third man.  "Oh, yes," she said, "you like this," as she put a leather cock binder around his shaft, straps wrapping around to separate and constrain his balls.

"Now wait just one minute!  Aren't we going a little fast here?"  He was beginning to sweat at the precipitous loss of control.  This was not at all the scene he had pictured when he had contacted the club's representative.  Long discussions had been held on his desires and experience in the scene before being allowed to schedule a session, and they had not involved anything this drastic.  Methos was beginning to wonder if coming here had been a mistake.

At a nod from the woman, the two men holding his arms put pressure on his shoulders and simultaneously rammed the backs of his knees with their own, forcing him to the floor, his arms held out wide.  She grabbed his chin as the third man put a wide, leather collar around his neck.

"One more word," she said, "and I will put a gag."

"That wasn't in our discussions!" he spurted.

Almost immediately his head was grabbed by Third Man and a leather dildo gag was forced between his teeth and secured by another wide leather strap.  From behind, a greased plug was inserted into his anus, and his arms were brought behind his back and secured.  He was pushed down further until he sat back on his feet in a kneeling position, his head held up by Third Man grabbing his hair.  His heart was pounding, and he could feel the flush of heat in his face...and elsewhere.

The woman leaned back against her desk, and watched him settle into the new position, closely observing his reactions.  "Now listen to me," she said calmly, reasonably.  "You came here for this, no?  You know what kind of club we are.  Nod to tell me yes.  Yes?"

Methos looked at her, at her calm demeanor, and nodded once.  He could feel the tugging on the roots of his hair where Third Man held onto a fistful.

"Good.  So, now, you have a taste.  You have your chance, now, to back out.  If you nod to me yes, we go on, and that is the end of it.  We do not discuss it further," she said, an ironic twinkle in her eye, as if he was in any position for a 'discussion.'  "If you nod no," she continued, "we stop right now, and you go home. Choose."

She reached behind her on the desk, and, without looking, opened a canister from which she took a lollipop which she then proceeded to unwrap and suck.

Methos watched her tongue the red candy, then closed his eyes.  This was, after all, what he had come for, wasn't it?  To give over control, to let others, for a time, decide for him what his experience was to be?  To hand over the right to make any sort of decision for himself?  With this one choice he would enter the realm of no-choice, here in this protected world.  The re-entry of Kronos into his life had upset his balance -- brought him back to old, hated, familiar ways in which he was so adept: he could scheme, watch, submerge his feelings, always careful, always vigilant.  Always watching for Kronos' next move, learning how to please him, how to avoid his anger, to outmaneuver his desires.  Never letting down for a moment.  Never allowing one spontaneous, unguarded action.  It was the persona of a survivor, of a slave.

Here, in this club, this place of rituals and carefully crafted control, he could enter the mentality of a slave with total abandon.  There was no ambiguity, no painful lie, no illusion of freedom coupled with the servitude of having to be constantly watchful.  By living it, he could fulfil the frightening urge Kronos' presence had evoked to submerge his will in that of one more powerful than himself, and at the same time expunge that urge by playing it out safely in a game of no consequence beyond the theatrical limit of these walls.  In this place, Methos could be a slave, and feel safe.

Methos nodded yes.

Giving him a careful look, she saw the clarity and acceptance in his eyes.  Nodding back, regally, as to an equal, she said, simply, "Good."  She turned back to her desk and brought out a small device which she showed him then put in his right hand.  It was a small, black unit with a single pushbutton.  Her eyes cautioned him not to press it.  The men holding him down eased up on the pressure, but didn't let him up yet.  She bent down and took his face in her hands.  "Do not worry," she said, her voice soft.  "You are in my house now, and we are going to take good care of you."

At her soft attentions, something brittle inside Methos broke, and a single tear rolled down one cheek.  As the woman stepped back, nodding, he bent over and lay his forehead on her feet. She reached down and stroked his head once, then gestured to the attendants to take him away.

A very aesthetic dungeon

By the time Methos arrived at the playroom, escorts by his side, he was understandably dazed.  Nevertheless his spirits perked as he was led firmly but courteously into the room and his hands released from their bonds.  There was a comfort in doing what he was told, without fear or analysis.  An attendant took the push-button device from his hand, placing it in view.  The gag, neck band, penis and ball restraints, and anal plug were not removed, but he was instructed to stand still near a small waterfall decoratively splashing from an opening in the slate wall, and an attendant washed him with a soft cloth and what proved to be warm water.

Water dribbled over his genitals and around the restraints.  The sensation was soothing more than titillating, and Methos relaxed further.  The neck band and gag were temporarily loosened but not removed, allowing a quick wash of his face and neck as well.  The device was returned to him.  At Methos' raised eyebrow, the attendant merely shook his head to indicate that he must wait for an explanation as to its purpose.  Methos was led over to a niche in the wall, lined with a stone facing and studded with metal rings and other attachments.

A new man entered the room, dressed differently than the others.  To Methos' eyes in the low light of the room, he appeared blond, with ear-length wavy hair, sea-green eyes and respectable but not bulky musculature.  Most noticeable was the way he moved, a compact, energetic presence.  He wore no mask, but in addition to the grey leather pants, he wore cuffed boots of burgundy leather, a wide belt with a complex buckle of mixed metals, and a robe, open over his bare chest, made of appliqued and seamed fabrics of different textures and tones of grey silk.  Sewn into the fabric were small beads of burgundy, violet, and ochre colored crystals or stones.

Methos was enthralled by the unexpected aesthetics of the arrangement and waited eagerly for what was to come.  Being bathed had calmed him somewhat, and the artistry of the room appealed to his sense of sophistication.  At the new man's entrance, the attendants faced him and stilled, waiting for orders.  He went to each of the three masked men in turn, extending his hand.  As he approached each one, they knelt on one knee and pressed forehead to his hand, then looked up, waiting for the signal to rise, which was quickly given.  Methos fidgeted, unsure of his place in this drama.

As if aware of his anxiety, the new man turned his attention on Methos at last, giving him a long, calm look.  "Welcome," he said at last, his accent a blending of German and French.  "Relax, Msr. Brown, you are in good hands."  At this he approached Methos and embraced him, running his fingers down his back and down to fondle his buttocks.  Stepping back from the embrace, he bent his head to run his tongue over Methos' nipples, tweaking his balls as he did so.  "But you look a little out of sorts.  We will fix that."

He held his hand out without looking, and something was placed in it by one of the attendants.  Methos found himself encircled with an odd leather belt--the strap made up of four-inch lengths of leather, linked by metal clasps.  Methos saw that the attendant had wheeled in a wooden chest on a rolling cart, filled with lengths of similarly linked straps.  After the belt, came a harness that went around his chest.  A set of straps were then laced up each leg, reaching to his thigh like an overgrown Roman sandal.  Methos' arms were similarly laced, his hands placed into open-fingered gloves, the push-button device again removed and then restored to his hand.  Small straps wrapped his foot around the insoles.  His head was placed in a finer version of the linked straps, an open cage accentuating the feeling of his brow, the bridge of his nose and jaw.

With each additional binding, the room-master checked Methos' eyes and coloring.  Methos was becoming increasingly apprehensive, even as his groin responded to each new restraint with obvious helpless arousal.  Methos was still standing in the niche in the wall, but was not yet bound to any of the metal rings and attachments within it.  As he anticipated further restraint, the anxiety grew.  His search of Watcher records had revealed no evidence of any Immortal having come here, or even anywhere in the area.  Nevertheless he was taking a risk in allowing himself to be so vulnerable to anyone who might wander by for his head.

Again as if alert to the vicissitudes of Methos' anxiety, the room-master paused in his ministrations and put his hand over Methos' which held the mysterious device.  "You came here to find comfort in bindings, my friend," he said, "comfort in giving up control, did you not?  But you do not give up ultimate control.  You see the metal fastenings on the straps?  They are magnetic.  If you push this button, the magnet changes, and the bindings will dissolve.  You will be free."  He watched Methos take an unsteady breath, then let it out, nodding to show he understood.  "But," the room-master continued, "if you free yourself thus, the game is over.  You must depart, and you many never return as a client.  Do you understand?"

Once again Methos nodded to show understanding.  It was a clever arrangement, and it settled his concerns for the moment.  At his nod, the attendants stepped in and fixed his arms outstretched to rings in the wall.  His feet were similarly spread and bound, and a harness around his chest attached to the wall from his back so that he leaned forward slightly, suspended by it.  A chain was attached to the harness on his head and attached similarly to the wall so that his head was tipped slightly backwards, exposing his throat.  Methos was glad for the band at his neck; it lessened his sense of vulnerability.  He closed his eyes and leaned into his restraints, feeling held and protected.

The next thing he was aware of was a mist being sprayed on his skin between the bindings.  A pleasant aroma of spices and herbs reached his nostrils, and the mist was refreshing and cooling.  As the mist dried, he realized that it also had the effect of tightening slightly the leather that now wrapped his body, making him feel even more snugly contained.  He was surrendering further and further into his helplessness, relieved of all decision-making and control.  He did not even know the room-master's name, but laughed to himself as he realized it didn't matter: he couldn't speak it in any event.  A cloth infused with an aromatic substance was put near his face.  As he inhaled, he realized there was a psychoactive substance in it, herbal and mild but having the effect of further enhancing his relaxation.

"Good," he heard the room-master say.  "Enjoy it.  There is nothing you must do here, nothing to accomplish or monitor.  I will watch the room, I will protect what we do here.  You are safe."  The room-master's voice was low and soothing, and sounded closer and closer, until it was in his ear, whispering.  "You wonder about my name: my name is Master Rainer.  My mother named me for the poet Rilke, and today, my poem is you; a nameless poem in the dark.  In this place, you can leave aside your name, your strength, your wiliness, your ways of the world.  Surrender it all to the mist, relax."  As he spoke, he brushed Methos' ear with his tongue, licking and nipping, stroking him on the torso and chest in the spaces between the straps.  He reached around to Methos' behind, and worked the anal plug into and out of his hole.  He bent to tongue Methos' nipples, biting lightly, then kissing them.

As Master Rainer's teasing attentions continued, Methos settled into a more ordinary state of mind.  He was adjusting to the changes and began to be curious about what was next.  Opening his eyes, he met the staring gaze of Master Rainer, who smiled briefly, then nodded to an attendant.  From the door, a man in a blindfold was led into the room, his hands bound behind his back, his balls wrapped in what appeared to be a sort of chain mail sack, and his erect cock bound by a series of metal rings. He was not gagged.  The man was huge, Silas-huge, and moved with a lumbering gait.  Master Rainer did something Methos couldn't see with the leather straps binding his penis, then gestured the attendant to bring the blindfolded man near.

The man was lowered to his knees, his head pressed to the tip of Methos' cock, which Methos now realized was exposed down to the first 2 inches or so of the tip.  The man was held back so that he could reach with his mouth no farther than the tip, which he began to lick and tongue.  A shudder ran through Methos.  If he tipped his eyes down, he could barely catch a glimpse of the man's head.  Every lick and suck was a surprise; the man entered his task eagerly and with great sincerity, moaning as he did so, straining to take more of Methos' cock into his mouth.  Each time he succeeded in reaching a little farther down the shaft, he was pulled backwards by the attendant.

Moaning into his gag, shuddering with titillation and frustration, Methos found himself simultaneously soothed by Rainer's hands holding him steady in a succession of places: his forehead, his chest, the small of his back--a steady, calming touch that grounded him even as the arousing torture continued.  "Breathe into it, ride it," the Master whispered.  "Don't look for the end, just enjoy each sensation."  His hands cupped Methos' balls, then held the inside of his thighs, his belly, the backs of his knees, and the arches of his feet.  Then up again to the back of his neck, where he cradled some of the weight of Methos' head.  The Master crooned his approval as Methos dropped more of his weight into the hands at his neck and throat, finding he could now enjoy each new assault on his cock without straining for something else to occur.  "Excellent," the master whispered, suffusing Methos with an unexpected flush of pride.

At a nod from Master Rainer, the man on his knees was allowed, finally, to briefly take Methos' cock deeply into his mouth, tonguing him all along his length over the leather bindings.  Methos gasped with the sudden sensation, then let out a long, slow breath as it ended and cool air hit the moisture on his exposed skin.  At the bottom of his exhale, attendants released the hooks holding him into the niche and lifted him, face down, onto a wooden rack.  He was fixed, spread-eagled, onto the rack so that his face and cock hung down, all else suspended.  The rack was angled so that the bottom, near his feet, was resting on the floor, and his head was at groin level to a standing man.  He felt the anal plug removed, leaving him with a sudden, bereft sensation, quenched quickly by the feeling of a long cock entering him in a sustained, steady stroke.  Methos felt a finger edge under the band around his neck from the back, adding a small but dramatic tension to the restraint.  Warm breath touched his shoulder like a breeze blowing over a comforting fire.  At the same time, his head was grasped by the hair, forcing him to look up.  The gag was removed from his mouth, a finger on his lips to charge his continued silence.  A man stepped in front of Methos, cock ready and waiting for Methos to take it in.  Methos opened his mouth, his acquiescence complete.  He was in a trance, exactly the sort of trance he had hoped for in coming to this place.  Someone was brushing across the soles of his feet with a leather flogger.  Methos sighed inwardly, all tension draining out of him.  He had given himself completely over to Master Rainer's hands.  He didn't even know who was fucking him, or whose penis he sucked.  It didn't matter.  He was home.

The night continued, on and on in this fashion, one experience following another, expertly orchestrated by the Master and his men.  Methos watched, from a variety of bound positions, as men coupled with each other from every combination of servitude and control.  His body was maneuvered, stretched, positioned, and bound, always bound.  Scented water was dribbled onto him; breezes and breaths tantalized his skin.  He was tickled, soothed, and teased in endless permutations.  Dreamily, he rode it all.

Late in the night, a beautiful blond boy, blindfolded and with hands bound behind him by ragged strips of velvet, was pushed into the room and left, abandoned, in its center.  Methos was back in the niche, his arms suspended out horizontally from his sides.  He was riding the high of his many hours of frustrated arousal, floating on his surrender.  Idly, a part of his brain wondered if the boy was legal.

Stumbling, the boy found his way to Master Rainer, who was standing silent and still.  Upon finding the Master, the boy dropped to his knees, bowing his head over Rainer's feet and licking his boots in long, slow strokes.  Master Rainer stood still, offering neither instruction nor encouragement, as the boy licked his way up the inside of Rainer's thighs through the soft leather of his pants, and patiently made his way up to Rainer's groin.  Licking and mouthing Rainer through the soft pants, he moaned and whimpered.

Finally moving, Rainer grasped the boy by the hair, forcing his head back.  The boy breathed hard and waited.  Slowly, Rainer unlaced his pants with one hand, freeing his cock.  Blood raced to Methos' cock, renewing his long-enduring erection with a vengeance.  It was the first time he had seen Master Rainer exposed.

Master Rainer turned so that he faced Methos, allowing the boy to take him into his mouth.  As the boy buried his face in Rainer's groin, Rainer gazed steadily at Methos.  "You want to please me, don't you?" he said, ostensibly to the boy.  Methos, his mouth once more filled with the penis-shaped gag, too tightly bound to even nod, could only answer with his eyes.  Rainer smiled a knowing smile, even as he encouraged the boy with soft caresses.  When the boy succeeded in bringing Rainer off, he acknowledged it only with a brief closing of his eyes, head tilting slightly back.  The boy sucked and swallowed, licking off any lingering drops.  "Good boy," Rainer said, kissing the top of the boy's head.

"Thank you, Master," the boy whispered as he was led away.

Let my hidden weeping arise

Rainer looked contemplatively at Methos, secured and secure in his niche.  Glancing up, he said, "It is time."

Following the direction of his gaze, Methos noticed for the first time a small window set near the ceiling in a corner of the room.  Instead of a black nothingness, the window revealed the softening grey of pre-dawn light.  Rainer approached Methos, humming to himself.  When he was inches away from Methos' face, he leaned in and nuzzled Methos cheek to cheek.  Kissing Methos eyelids, he spoke softly . "You are so beautiful," he said, "and you have honored me with such trust, such a beautiful surrender.  If only you could see yourself, so completely helpless and bound.  You cannot speak or even nod to tell me anything.  Even in your breathing you feel the leather bonds holding you.  So beautiful.  You are not weak, in this submission.  I can see your strength.  You are not a man who cannot choose.  But you have chosen to give over all choice to me.  That is why I say I am honored by you.  By your beauty and courage."  And with a swift motion, Rainer ripped the gag away and plunged his tongue into Methos' waiting mouth, claiming him.

The teasing and tricks were over.  For the first time, Rainer allowed his own passion to rise and inform his acts.  Unhooking Methos' arms and legs from the fastenings in the niche, Rainer draped Methos over his shoulder and carried him, with the help of one of the assistants, to a soft pallet on the floor.  Methos' arms were stretched above his head and held by one of the assistants.  Rainer bent over him, drawing Methos' knees up and wide.  Removing the restraints on his balls and cock, Rainer took Methos into his mouth, his pace controlled but urgent.

Methos writhed in the unexpected passion.  After the eerie, floating sensation he had attained as a result of the night's activities, he now felt something more primal and raw awaken within him in answer to Rainer's attentions.  Sensing Methos' response, Rainer began to kiss up Methos' torso, licking every available spot of skin exposed between the straps, until he had reached Methos' neck.  The neck band was removed, and Methos' throat claimed by an increasingly feral Rainer.  Finally, Rainer kissed Methos again, one hand resting on Methos' throat, soothing and containing him.

"Fuck me, please," Methos said, unsure if he was allowed to talk but beyond any such considerations of protocol.

"Such language," Rainer teased.  "I plan to, beautiful one.  Oh, I plan to."  Rainer looked up to something Methos could not see, and reached out his hand.  Moments later, Methos felt Rainer's cock, slick with oil, breaching the opening to his ass.  Rainer lifted Methos' head with a hand behind his neck, rocking Methos rhythmically as he entered him.  With his other hand, Rainer stroked along Methos' cock in synch with the rocking.  As much lost in his art as Methos was in the receiving of it, Rainer crooned or hummed an unrecognizable tune.

As Methos felt himself taken up by Rainer's rhythm, his thoughts drifted to the events of the preceding week.  Kronos had appeared, a literal knife in his heart, shredding the hard-won illusion Methos had been nursing that he could live like an ordinary man.  He had let down his guard, appearing on that silly game show, teasing MacLeod as if Immortals could have ordinary friendships.  Methos moaned, the heat rising between Rainer and himself.  He felt split in two--his body anchored in the moment, his thoughts floating into other realities.  For a brief, strange moment, Rainer and Kronos blurred.  When Kronos had appeared, Methos had been ricocheted back to the time when Kronos was the only reality around which he could orbit, suppressing wants, passions, fears, and hope.  He hadn't had one spontaneous moment: everything was monitored and tightly reined.  Now, here, in Rainer's arms, he could relax his own control by giving it all over to the experience of being bound.  The literal, outer bindings freed him from the hold his fear of Kronos had over his heart.

Rainer continued to hold and rock him as he settled into a kind of fatalistic languor.  Kronos was gone--MacLeod had seen to that, bless the man.  Still, his aura lingered.  And in that aura, Methos felt the rightness of being bound, of being contained.  After all his vigilant maneuvering to survive, it felt good to relinquish his right to choice, his right to a voice in his own affairs.  He reveled in his helplessness, his unworthiness to choose.  It was enough, for now.  A part of his mind argued distantly that this was not right--that something was amiss in this formulation, but he let that part drift away and be still.  He let Rainer play him out thoroughly, all thoughts dissolving, finally, in sensation.

The tension of the long night, long banked, built quickly.  Methos strained against the restraining arms holding his arms down, clenching his fists and moaning.  He heard, or thought he heard, the tinkling of bells.  The scent of rosewood and myrrh rose in his nostrils, recalling ancient incense. Rainer's singsong sounded like chanting... and as Methos approached his climax, he began to make sense of the words.  Rainer was reciting, in German, Rilke's Tenth Duino Elegy... a paean to Death.
 

"Someday, emerging at last from the violent insight," he said,

"let me sing out jubilation and praise to assenting angels.

Let not even one of the clearly-struck hammers of my heart

fail to sound because of a slack, a doubtful,

or a broken string. Let my joyfully streaming face

make me more radiant; let my hidden weeping arise

and blossom."

"Let it come," Rainer crooned, breaking off his recital and speaking directly to Methos.  Both men were at their limit; the climax broke over them in a wave, timed perfectly to the first soft rays of sunlight entering the room in the breaking dawn.  Methos felt himself drowning in the poet's words.  The hidden weeping arose:  behind the vigilance, pain and the fear of a loneliness that could never be touched, a gap of experience and years that could never be bridged.  What illusion had prompted him to reach for MacLeod, thinking his isolation at an end?  Methos touched an inner sadness long held at bay.  There was something comforting about doing so.  Just so, the poet spoke of the joy of making place for one's pain, of the ability to enter fully into one's darkness, and kiss it.  As Rainer was kissing him now.  Rainer drew Methos into his lap and held and stroked him while he shuddered, his hands clutching Rainer's robes.  "Do you understand?" Rainer asked, when Methos had quieted somewhat.

In answer, Methos took a deep breath, then quietly spoke the next lines of the poem in English, pausing between each line: 
 

"How dear will you be to me then, you nights

of anguish. Why didn't I kneel to accept you,

inconsolable sisters, and, surrendering, lose myself

in your loosened hair. How we squander our hours of pain."

"Yes," Rainer said, kissing Methos again, then kissing his hands in turn.  "You do understand.  Rest now."

Methos, feeling truly at peace at last, nodded sleepily.  He dozed as the leather bindings were removed and his skin quickly washed down with a cloth scented with lemongrass and pine.  He was then wrapped in sheets and a light blanket, cocooned and once again restrained, then placed on a padded platform and bound to the table with the same joined leather straps over the blanket.  A soft blindfold was placed over his eyes.  As he drifted off into sleep, he smelled the same soporific that had aided his initial relaxation, placed under his nose as he began an inhalation.  Feeling its effects, he smiled dreamily to himself.  Not squandered at all, he thought to himself.

Part 2: The Refuge of the Ordinary

A traveling scribe

Time swirled; ancient shadows stirred.  As Methos felt himself passing well beyond conscious thought, the feel of another Immortal intruded with startling intensity on his awareness, shocking his system into sudden terror.  In the distance he could hear a voice.

"Avraham!"  It called, urgently.  And again, desperately now, or angry:  "Avraham!"

Confused and alarmed, Methos tried to fight his way back to consciousness, but the combination of the long-delayed orgasm and the psychotropic drug made it impossible to stay awake.  Old instincts warred with those that were older still, and lost.  He surrendered to the dark.

And woke, cold, the smell of a dying fire in his nostrils, tattered remnants of dream clouding his mind.  He was lying on the ground.  A noise, off in the bushes.  He quickly pulled himself into a crouch, listening.  Voices.  Several men, traders by their talk--which was Ivrith, by the sound of it.  So they were Ivrim, Hebrews.

Wary and battered, he watched them from behind a rock.  His rich clothes were in shreds, and his ass was sore--even now, with Immortal healing.  When he rubbed his hand over his eyes to clear them of sleep, it came away sooty with the remains of makeup--the mark of a godling.  His rings and other jewels were gone, he noted wryly.

Traders had done this, the day before, but not these Ivrim.  Another tribe, also speaking a Semitic tongue.  Not the Akkadian of the empire, but some version of the language of the Writers--the Phoenicians.  Five men had found him, when he'd already been hungry and exhausted.  He had been running for over a week, escaping the soldiers of the Temple to which he had been bound for over fifty years--the Temple of Dumuzi, the god who dies and rises again.  Him, or so they had believed.  And for most of that fifty years, Methos had obliged them, letting himself be killed each year.  Until the day he woke, from nightmare or from dream, and decided to leave his golden prison.

Escaping impulsively from his worshipers in the mayhem of a festival, he had come, heading south, vaguely of a mind to return to Egypt.  Still somewhat dazed, he had run into the traders, Canaanites, most likely.  Just his luck.  The Canaanites were known to sacrifice their own children to their god.  How much less grace, then, would they offer a stranger--a well-dressed and bejeweled stranger at that.  Weakened by hunger and fatigue, his fighting instincts dulled by a half-century of pampering, Methos was helpless among them.  Each had raped him in his turn.  One had touched his cheek almost lovingly, praising his shadowed and beautiful eyes.

Mindful of his danger, Methos kept a close watch on the Ivrim from his hiding place.  As dusk approached and someone rebuilt the fire, it became apparent that they were intending to settle in for the night.  A traveling tent was rigged and the men, four of them, sat down in front of it, passing around a skin of wine and trading stories.  At the sight of the wine, Methos became cognizant of his parched lips and burning throat.  He debated the wisdom of making himself known--the reputation of the Ivrim was somewhat less brutal than that of the Canaanites, but after the previous day's experience, Methos was in no mood to take chances.  The smell of the wine, on the other hand...  And their talk was mostly of gentle matters--the prices to be gotten for fine textiles; a woman one of the men intended to court.  Resolved to accept whatever fate befell him, Methos crept first farther away from the fire, then approached it, making noise as he came so as not to startle anyone.

"Please, kind sirs," he began, stepping into the circle of light, his eyes downcast.  "I have been set upon by cruel men.  May I ask the hospitality of your fire?"  His Ivrith was a little rusty, and tended to blur into his Akkadian--a rather courtly Akkadian at that--but Methos was fairly sure he could make himself understood.

There was a studied silence as the four men took in the odd appearance of the suddenly appearing stranger.  They were dressed in clean, practical clothing, betraying wealth but not extravagance.  "Robbed, you say?" one finally began, gesturing with his wine-skin and shifting to make a place by the fire.  "Who were they?"

Methos accepted the skin with a solemn look and drank, only after looking around the circle to see the men more closely and thank them each with a nod.  "Canaanites," he said, and they muttered sympathetically in return.  Passing him food--dry, flat bread and a bit of goat cheese, they politely refrained from asking him anything further while he ate and drank.  When he had finished, he knew they expected a story from him.  "I am a traveling scribe," he said.  "I can write in both the Phoenician and the Egyptian style.  But," he added, shaking his head mournfully, "my instruments and supplies were all taken from me.  As you can see, they left me with nothing.  Do you know of anyone who might hire me while I rebuild my stock, so that I can practice my trade again?"

The men looked at each other.  One scratched his head, looking at Methos thoughtfully.  "We are traders, but...we don't really need a scribe.  Yosef here can count--we make marks on a bit of sheepskin, that's enough for us.  For what you do, you need someone rich, someone who is doing a lot more trade than we are."

"What about Avraham?" another piped in, his beard grey with age.  "He's rich.  He might take you in.  He's always hiring, anyway, for the herds.  Can you tend sheep?"

"I've done it," Methos nodded.  "It's been a while.  Just so I could get back on my feet."

"We're headed that way," the first man said, picking food out of his teeth.  "We're going to pick up wool from him, go sell it to the fancy weavers in Damascus.  His stuff is pretty good quality.  You come with us.  It's not far, and there's a stream along the way."

"Ah, yes, thank you, bathing would be nice."  Methos met the man's gaze, taking in the larger meaning.  One did not approach Avraham with the smudged make-up of a Sumerian god.  Or scribe, as his story went.  "So, who is this Avraham, besides being rich?"  Snickers, around the fire.  "What god does he worship?"

"He worships El, like we do."

"The Canaanite god?" Methos asked nervously.  El was the god who ate children.  And Methos had had it with human sacrifice, Immortal or no.

"No, no, 'el' just means, 'god', you know," Yosef replied, speaking for the first time.  The counter, Methos recalled.  "Avraham worships One God.  The One who created everything."  He nodded smugly.

"Created everything," Methos echoed.  Just like the Enumah Elish, he thought to himself.  Sumerians, Akkadians, Egyptians, Canaanites--what difference did it make?  They all had their versions of the stories of power.

"What is his form?"

"His form?"

"When you worship him," Methos persisted.  "Forgive my ignorance of your ways... what is his visage?  On his idol..."

"Ah, you are ignorant.  When Avraham was called by El 50 years ago from out of Ur to come here, it was to worship El without an image."

"No image?"

"No."  The man chewed on a piece of bread, smiling.

"No idol?"

"No idol."

"Just... what?  I don't understand.  How do you pray to him?"

Josef answered, his eyes soft with sincerity.  "We speak our hearts, and our God hears us.  We also make sacrifice."

Methos paused.  He had to know.  "Human sacrifice?" he asked, unable to still the tremor in his voice.

The men, much to Methos' relief, managed to look shocked at the suggestion.  "We are not worshipers of Moloch," the fourth man muttered, to the insistent head-shaking of the rest.

"No offense meant," Methos quickly offered.

"Well, you didn't know," the first man who had spoken replied.

After that they all made to sleep.  Methos didn't fit into the travel tent they had rigged, but they gave him a blanket to lie down on under the stars, which suited him just fine.  He was still feeling leery of close contact with strangers, no matter how indignantly these men rejected any association with the more "barbaric" Canaanites.  Soon he was curled up with it, huddled around the remains of the dying fire.  As he drifted off to sleep, he could hear the men trading gossip about Avraham, his older son by an Egyptian slave, and a younger boy by his wife Sarah, who had been a great beauty in her day.  Something about messengers... angels?... and laughter had them roaring--a visitation so "profound" (more snickers), that a woman well past her childbearing age suddenly found the ability to conceive a child.  Giving up on comprehension, Methos slept.

Several companionable days later Methos found himself in the camp of Avraham.  Prominent on a hillside was a large tent, open on all sides.  The four traders, Methos in tow, approached.  Methos waited under a tree a little way off from the tent while the traders spent several hours coming to terms on prices and goods.  After a time had passed he saw the traders and the man he presumed was Avraham looking over to him and pointing.  Avraham beckoned.  Methos joined them, sitting down cautiously on the flooring of soft sheep skins.

"So," Avraham began, "these worthy men tell me that you joined them a few days ago after an unfortunate encounter with our neighbors to the north."  He poured Methos a cup of warm milk, offering him sections of flat bread and almonds and dates on a copper platter.

"Thank you, my lord," Methos said, acknowledging the food.  "You are most gracious.  My name is Matityahu son of Matu Selah.  I am called Mati.  May it find favor in your eyes, my lord, I am an honest man seeking work."

"What sort of work do you seek?"  Avraham struck Methos as old but vigorous--lit with an inner light of presence and purpose that was not quite comfortable to be around.  He was a big man, with a booming voice, a bit stern in demeanor but with warm brown eyes that softened the effect.

"I can do many kinds of work, my lord, whatever is needed.  I have tended sheep and can train men in archery and other weapons.  I have also worked as a scribe, in times past.  I can write in both the Egyptian and the Phoenician manner."

"Well, well, we don't have much call for a scribe, but... if you are up to working with the herds, I am sure we can find a place for you.  But where are my manners?  I have made you discuss business before you have eaten.  Please forgive me.  Eat, enjoy, refresh yourself.  We will speak of business later."

"You are most gracious, my lord."

Avraham gave Methos an appraising look.  "You have the manners of a courtier.  My wife and I lived in Egypt for a time.  It was many years ago.  Perhaps we knew your father?"

Methos answered cautiously.  "He was a wandering trader, my lord, not an Egyptian by birth.  I merely spent some time there."

"Ah. And your people?"

"I have lived in many places, my lord.  I hardly know any more," Methos replied, perhaps more honestly than he should have.

"He has the eyes of a Hittite," said one of the men he had traveled with, teasing.

"If he does not wish to speak of it, it is none of my concern," Avraham said sternly.

"You are most gracious, my lord.  I have lived among the Sumerians for some years, but I am anxious to find a... gentler... way of life.  I have heard it said..." Methos looked anxiously in Avraham's eyes, then away.

"Yes?" Avraham asked.

"They tell of your god... unusual things."

"No doubt."  Avraham smiled.

"Is it true, then... they say, you have no image.  That you simply speak to your god and he answers."  Methos took another sip of the sweet milk.

Avraham looked at him consideringly.  "God is all around us," he said.  "In which direction would you worship?"

"Is it true, then...?"  Methos hesitated.

"Is what true?"

"It is said he demands no blood sacrifice."

"We sacrifice animals, of course.  We offer our loyalty to God, and He protects us."

"Yes, of course."  The smoke of sacrifice rising to the nostrils of the gods, hiding away in heaven.  Methos could live with that.

"And, there is one other thing.  You should know this, if you wish to join us.  Was the meal to your liking?"

Methos knew Avraham was asking if he was finished eating, and therefore if they could speak of agreements between them.  "Yes, my lord, most appealing.  Thank you for your kindness to a poor wanderer."

"Ah, good.  There is another sacrifice we offer.  If you join with us, you must do the same.  The males among us, we offer our foreskins, as a sign of our bond with our God.

Methos winced, then shrugged.  The practice was not unheard of.  He'd lived with worse.  Much worse.  "I see," he said.  "But no," he continued, "human... sacrifice?

Avraham shuddered visibly.  "No," he said.  "God has not required that of us.  He is a loving God."

"I see," Methos said, nodding.  Sounded good, but did it mean anything? Savagery was often hidden in a noble purpose.  "Forgive me, my lord, for asking... in the Spring, how does your god rise?"

Avraham smiled broadly.  "He does not die."

"My lord?"

"He is a living God!"

Methos had more questions but before he could ask them, a small-boned, elegant woman with a long, grey braid and sharp eyes the color of the sky barged into the tent from behind the tent flap.  "Enough talk," she said, eyeing Methos.  "Can't you see this man needs more food?  Look at him, he's starving.  Come with me," she said, hauling Methos to his feet.  "We're hiring him, right?" she said, looking back over her shoulder at Avraham.

"Yes, my beloved wife Sarah, we are," Avraham said ruefully.

Methos looked back at Avraham, helpless.  "Don't worry," Avraham told Methos, "she won't hurt you.  Much," he added with a grin.

Confused but not overly alarmed, Methos allowed the still beautiful but somewhat daunting old woman to lead him across the camp into another tent, where she sat him down and began to put steaming bowls of mashed vegetables and lentil and lamb stew in front of him.  She seemed to take his thinness as an affront.  It was true he hadn't eaten well in the week before he met the traders, but even at the Temple, with all the riches of the land available to meet his every whim, he had tended toward leanness. Especially in the latter years, when the charm of his golden captivity had worn thin.  Even so, her attentions were a mystery to him.  "My lady?" he asked.

"Eat," she replied.  "Later, we talk."

The food was good, in an appealingly ordinary way.  Methos felt disoriented by all that had happened, but paradoxically relaxed in a way he hadn't felt for years.  He was floating in the strangeness of it all.  No, strangeness wasn't right:  it was the ordinariness of life here that drew him in.  The refuge of the ordinary.  After fifty years as a god, this was good, very good.

After several bowls and a few cups of watered wine, with Sarah watching over him the whole while, Methos could barely move.  Sarah nodded approvingly.  "Good.  So," she said, "tell me about your time in Egypt.  My husband and I lived there a long time ago."

"What would you like to know, my lady?"  Methos fought sleep, the food filling his belly a soporific like no other.  If he had to make up something about fashions or hairstyles to please a woman's curiosity, he wasn't sure he was up to the task.

"Tell me about Pharaoh's court.  Who is weak, who is strong.  How strong is the currency?  Has he been able to control the priests, or are they still dictating his moves behind all his big show?  Did his sister marry that fat magistrate?"

Methos realized he wasn't going to be able to bluff his way out of this one.  She obviously had more recent sources than he did, and would not be satisfied or fooled by pretty stories.  "My lady, I am afraid it has been a long while since I was in Egypt, and I never spent much time at court.  I have been traveling for some time."

"Oh.  Well.  Too bad, then.  But you did say you can write in the Egyptian manner?  On papyrus?  Where are your supplies?"

"As I explained to your husband, my lady, I was robbed on the road by Canaanites.  I am here to work so that I may replenish my stock."

"Well, perhaps you will even stay, wanderer.  My husband is a good man."

"So I saw, my lady.  Generous and kind beyond my hopes.  As are you."

"Well," she said, a bit roughly.  "That's all right.  I was hoping for some news, but that's all right.  Avital!"  She called to the young woman who had been assisting her in serving the meal, who was now outside doing something noisy with the pots.  Avital appeared, a shy young woman of perhaps fourteen.  "Show Mati to the worker's tent.  You will stay with the other herders, Mati.  After you have been here for a while we will find you a tent of your own, or one you may share with one or two others.  Perhaps we will even find you a bride and you will remain with us."

The next day, Methos was taken to a stream by Avraham's steward, Eliezer of Damascus.  Eliezer was a gnarled old man who, they said, had worked faithfully for Avraham for the better part of his life.  Under his watchful eye, the circumcision was performed and worship of "false" gods was renounced.  The pain was sharp but brief.  Methos was careful to hide both the immediacy of his healing and the bitter irony all talk of gods brought to him.  He was left to stay in the tent for the several days he was expected to heal.  Methos wondered grimly how long the foreskin would take to grow back, and how frequently he would need to repeat this bloody ritual.  Still, as sacrifices went, it wasn't too terrible.  After a week had passed and he was deemed ready to work, Eliezer came to take him to see Avraham once again.

The milk rose, steaming, from the cups between them.  After the expectable pleasantries and settling of work duties, Eliezer left, and Methos decided to use the opportunity to ask Avraham more about his unique religion.  Methos was understandably wary about all religion at this point in his endless life, having seen so many cults rise and fall, and having been the punch line of his own god joke for the last half-century.  Still, Avraham was his patron.  And he had been treated well so far, having to cut himself aside.

Methos politely asked how Avraham first came into his present religious path.

Avraham paused, frozen in the act of reaching for a plate of almonds.  His face became transfused in a kind of steadfast wonder.

Methos shuddered.

"I heard a voice from my God," Avraham began, smiling.

Methos tensed, then forced himself to nod.  He had seen that look, heard that rapt tone before.  This time, he reminded himself, he was not the object of adoration.  "What did your god tell you?" he asked, his voice mild and controlled.

"He told me to leave."

"Leave?"

"Yes.  Leave my home, my father's house, my homeland.  Everything.  Everything I knew.  If I was to follow Him, heed His voice, I had to start fresh as a new-born babe.  Stripped clean of everything that came before.  I've pondered this for years," he said, reaching for his cup and pausing to take a drink.  "Why did he want me away from everything I had known, everything familiar?"

Methos nodded, unforced this time.  It was a question he, too, had lived with for longer than he could parse.  "And what did you understand?" he asked, his mouth dry.  Milk lined Avraham's upper lip like a cheery mustache.

Avraham laughed, surprising Methos out of his tense stillness.  "I don't know!" he answered.  "And the crazy thing is, we wandered for years after that, Sarah and me.  Picture this:  God tells me 'leave your land, everything you know, go to a land that I will show you--it's going to be yours--and not only that, but you're going to have children.  Piles and piles of children.  As numerous as the stars!  You won't be able to count them!'  And what happens?  We arrive here--there's a drought, a famine--and the first thing is we have to go to Egypt to get food.  I almost lost Sarah to the Pharaoh's harem.  You won't believe how beautiful she was then.  And as for sons--I got that call from God nearly 50 years ago.  Ishmael is 20 years old."  He looked at Methos significantly, wiping his mouth on the back of his sleeve. His eyes were glittering with amusement.

"You spent 30 years not knowing if the prophecy was true."

"That's right," Avraham nodded enthusiastically.  "Everyone thought I was a crazy man!"

"Alone.  Just you and Sarah, away from the comforts of home."

"Well, we had our people, but yes, essentially."

"Why?"

"'Why?'"  Avraham raised an eyebrow at the question.

"Why did your god..." Methos swallowed.  "If he was blessing you, why did he make you suffer so?"

Avraham put his hand on Methos' knee, his brown eyes warm and compassionate.  "I don't know, my friend, not truly.  God keeps His own counsel.  But I do know this:  I would never have withstood temptation if I was back where I began, if all the familiar gods I grew up with were all around me.  I would have fallen back into false worship.  It would have been easy.  It's not easy to follow One God.  He gives us no image, no idol you can see or touch.  Just a voice, if you're lucky.  A voice in my head.  I think I needed...  He needed me to be uprooted--afraid, even.  To be open enough to the newness of Him.  You can't really learn if you stay in one place.  But you know that, don't you, Mati?"  He sat back, taking another sip of the cooling liquid.

"What do you mean?" Methos asked, alarm returning to his voice.

"Only that you have the look of someone who has been wandering, like myself, for a very long time.  Only, your life is stripped more bare than mine ever was.  You have no family."

Methos reached for his cup.  The milk had cooled, a thin skin shielding the top.  He put his finger in it, lifting the skin to eat, then downed the rest in one gulp.  "No," he said.  "I don't."

Avraham gestured about the tent.  "Well, if you let us," he said, as if including the entire camp in his offer, "we'll do something about that.  Sarah--"

"Sarah," Methos said in the same moment.  The men shared a gaze and a laugh.  "My lady Sarah has been after me to let her make a marriage match," Methos explained.

"I know," Avraham answered.  "She already has someone picked out for you.  You better take her up on it, or you won't hear the end of it," he said, grinning.  "My wife is very wise and very... persistent.  Even God told me I must listen to her words."

The parable of the two sons

"So you're out with the rest of us grunts today, eh, Sumerian?"

Methos looked up from the sheep he was attempting to hold still for shearing.  "I'm not Sumerian," he said mildly.  "You only think so because I have a Sumerian accent.  I merely lived there for a while."  His gaze held that of the other three with brief challenge, quickly rescinded as the dark-haired sheep beneath him began to renew its squirming.

"Oh yeah, well you look black-haired enough," taunted one of the men.  "Isn't that what they call themselves, the 'Black-Heads'?  You're tall for one of them, though, and you've got the eyes of a Hittite.  What are you?"

"Look, just like you, I am part of Avraham's camp.  Just like you, I have agreed to worship his god.  Do we have to discuss this now?"  Methos' annoyance at their teasing was punctuated by the obvious trouble he was having holding his recalcitrant sheep still.

One of the men came forward, a freckle-faced boy, really, with reddish hair.  "Here, let me help you with that one," he said, holding the sheep down so Methos could get at the belly wool with a sharp knife.  "You haven't done this much, have you?" he teased, seeing Methos frown in concentration.

"Not in a while," Methos answered, not taking his eyes off his task.

The two men worked for a time together, setting up an easy rhythm.  The others, losing interest, returned their attention to their own tasks.  Squinting in the hot sun, Methos struggled to recall the boy's name.  "I am Mati," he said, finally, hoping it would prompt the boy to tell his name in return.  He had chosen 'Mati' because it was an Ivrith name sounding close to his own.  Mati, short for Matityahu, gift of God.  Methos winced at the irony.

"I know," said the boy.  "You came in with the wool merchants Father met with.  Everyone heard about the Sumerian who claims he can make writing like the Egyptians."  The boy tilted his head.

With a sinking feeling, Methos realized he had been speaking with the chieftain's son.  What was his name?  "So you are...Ishmael?  Or the younger one?"

"Yitzhak.  Sarah's son."

"Yitzhak... 'laughter'?"

Yitzhak smiled.  He couldn't have been more than fifteen, Methos realized.  "Angels of God came to my parents before I was born and told them they would conceive me.  My mother laughed.  She claims she was laughing in joy but Father says she just couldn't believe it.  She had given up having a child, you see.  Everyone thought she was barren."

Methos nodded.  He had heard versions of the story from the Ivri traders, some bawdier than others, involving Sarah and the angels and what made her laugh.  Just the coarse talk of men on the road, eager to impress each other, he surmised.  Or not.  Yitzhak seemed younger by the moment as Methos looked at him--there was a sweetness to the boy that suited his name.  Laughter.

They continued to work through the afternoon, breaking at the hottest part of the day for a rest under tents of the black wool from the sheep they were shearing.  Toward evening, Methos said goodbye to his young friend and went on alone to the well to wash the grosser evidence of the day's work from his hands.  Sheep-shearing was dirty work; the sheep didn't care where they lay, and their wool was matted with dirt and shit.  Methos liked his hands clean--he always had.  As a scribe, it was essential.

Lost in thought, he didn't notice the gaze of another man, watching as he began his Egyptian-style ablutions.  Methos poured water from a carved ladle three times on each palm and then each finger, cleansing and then massaging each joint.

"What is that?" the other man asked.

Startled, Methos looked up and saw a tall man, hawk-eyed like Avraham, but with an Egyptian's darker coloring and kinky hair.  Not wanting to make the same mistake twice in one day, Methos put two and two together and realized this must be Ishmael, Avraham's older son by his Egyptian concubine.  "I am washing my hands," Methos said, speaking carefully.  The older son bore little resemblance to the boy who had helped him shear sheep all afternoon.

Stepping into his space, Ishmael took Methos' right hand in his, turning it over and examining the long-boned fingers.  Still holding onto his hand, he looked into Methos' eyes.  "Why so elaborate?" he asked, indicating the ritual manner in which Methos was going about the washing.

"Just something I learned from a wise man once," Methos answered, keeping his tone level.  "Keeps the hand limber for... archery.  And other weapons."  Methos hoped the explanation would be enough--he didn't fancy going into a long discourse on Egyptian hand healing techniques.  He realized his error as he saw Ishmael's eyes gleam at the mention of "other weapons."  Trying to pull his hand free, he resigned himself miserably to what was to come.

Ishmael, as if reading his thought, pulled Methos close to him, and, with his other hand, reached through the coarse wool of his garment to grasp Methos' balls and roughly squeeze them.  "Just how... limber... are you?" he leered.  "Healed yet?"

"My lord."  Methos went focused and still.  There might still be a way out of this.  "My lord, I was told such play between men was not the custom of your people."

"My people?"  Ishmael laughed, a mirthless thing.  "And which people is that?  My father Avraham?  Who set me aside with hardly a thought at the first sight of his little Yitzhak?  That sweet-faced little boy.... he can't fight like me, he isn't strong like me, but he's the favorite, isn't he?  Or would that be my mother's people?  My mother, the Egyptian slave?"

Releasing Methos, Ishmael turned away, gathering his cloak about him.  But not before Methos saw the trace of tears in Ishmael's eyes, the bitterness of the scorned son evident in his rough bearing.  "Doesn't bother me," Methos heard Ishmael mutter as he walked away.  "You won't play with me, I'll go find my little brother."

Methos cursed.  The thought of Ishmael "playing" with the mild young man who had helped him all afternoon chilled his blood.  He stood rooted for a while in the fading light, then stalked off for his tent.  Nothing he could do.  When he got there, Avital was waiting for him at the opening.  She was carrying a basket.  "Mati," she called.  "Sarah sends this for you."  Methos groaned. This was no doubt the young woman Sarah had in mind for him to marry, coming with more food or some such.  She was pleasant enough, and pretty, but Methos was in no mood for courtship.  For one thing, he'd had too many wives die on him.  Outliving all your lovers tended to cast a pall on the whole arrangement.  That and fifty years of forced ritual sex.  He was a freak of nature.  He had met a few others of his kind over the long years, but they had no wisdom for him, no answers.  Only death.  As far as he could tell, none of them had been able to father children either, to create families.  He had no business engaging in normal human activities.

He put his hand out to take the basket, forcing a smile on his face and thanking her.  Once inside the tent, he put it aside.  An hour later he was woken from sleep by the sound of someone calling his name.  "What now?" he asked.  Sarah had burst into the tent, followed by Avital.

"Well?" she demanded.  "What did you think?"

"Um, sorry, I was more tired than hungry.  I haven't yet tasted the food."

"What food?  What did you think of the papyrus?!"

Caught by surprise, Methos stared at Sarah, then went over to the basket and opened it eagerly.  Under the woven lid was a supply of papyrus, as promised, and an assortment of writing tools and inks in small clay bottles.  He grinned like a child, fingering each item in turn.  "I can resume my journal," he whispered.  "Thank you," he said, looking up.

Sarah beamed at him.

"Why are you being so good to me?" Methos asked.

"I don't know.  But I have good instincts about people, and I knew when I saw you that you were sent here for a purpose."

"What purpose?  I just want... Lady Sarah, I just want a normal life."

"I know.  So, you like my gift?"

"Very much."

"Good."  She turned to leave.

"My lady..."  Some return was in order for the gift she had given.  Sarah turned, waiting.

"I met your son today, and his brother."

"Yes?"  Her eyes darkened.  She came back further into the tent, and sat down on an offered cushion.  Avital remained standing near the tent opening.

"I know a story.  Would you like to hear it?"  Methos knew what he was about to say must be told delicately.  At her nod, he continued.

"I once knew of a king in Akkad who had two sons, the oldest by a concubine, the second by his wife.  Everyone knew the wife's son would be king after him but the concubine's son, being the first, forgot his place and would torment his younger brother, saying that he, the eldest, should be king.  The eldest was strong and the younger son doted on him.  Being younger, of course, he wasn't able to best his brother at the games -- "

"Who became king?" Sarah asked.  Methos smiled a small smile.  She always came straight to the most important point.

"The younger son became king, as was decreed.  But he never trusted his abilities.  His brother's taunting had destroyed his faith in himself.  He was wavering and weak.  A neighboring king heard of his weakness and defeated him."

"And the older brother?"

"He too, was killed by the invading army.  It was said by some that he died in his bed, strangled in his sleep by a dissatisfied wife, but that was merely a vicious rumor."

"Ha!" she snorted.  "Who would tell such a lie?  You are a strange one, Mati.  You tell such tales."  And she turned away, laughing, but thoughtful, as she left the tent.

"If only you knew, my lady," Methos whispered, too softly for her to hear.  "If only you knew."  Much as he enjoyed and even trusted Sarah, there were things in his past that he could never tell her about.  His life had long since become far too complicated to share with those who were not of his strange kind.  And of those who were, there was no trust to be had, only fighting, and death.  No one would ever hear the full narration of his life, or be able to look in his eyes and recognize a kindred soul.  His very longevity cut him off from the possibility of ever being known.

Angels unawares

A wandering man who travels by his skills,

With papyrus from far Egypt he journeys,

seeking work and shelter he sets out

to the land of nomads he sets out,

a traveler from many lands, born of none,

a skilled scribe who lives by his wits

alone among men, scorned of the earth

he wanders.

Methos wrote on the delicate scroll happily.  Words, wonderful words.  He loved the pure pleasure of language--its cadence and melody and sound.  Words were a great charm and distraction, helping him re-kindle a way of thinking that had been submerged for a long time.  Warming up, he wrote in a court style, the last sort of writing he had done using these kinds of implements.  Clay tablets just weren't as conducive to private thoughts.  So hard to carry around, for one thing.

His time in Avraham's camp developed a routine.  By day he worked with the herds like everyone else, and in the evening he wrote in his journal, letting his mind stretch and roam after the long golden dream-turned-nightmare of his years as a god.  Sarah often visited him, Avital or another serving woman in tow.  She was fascinated by his journal, and sometimes he shared parts of it with her.  Avraham was often off on trading missions, but when he was in the camp, he made time to include Methos in a meal or walk, just as he did with many others under his care.  He was a good leader.

From time to time, every few months as it turned out, Methos took a sharp stone knife and renewed the circumcision.  In a way, the pain was welcome.  It helped Methos focus somehow, remember who he was.  One night, lost in musing, he failed to hear Sarah enter the tent.  Eyes closed, he heard her gasp as the cut he had made removing his re-grown foreskin healed with a tingle.

Methos quickly covered himself.  Perhaps she had only gasped to see him uncovered?

"You are not a man," she said.  "You have the shape of a man, but you are not a man."  Methos' heart fell.  He wondered if he would have time to pack his journal before he must make his escape.  Sarah continued to stare, mouth gaping.  She came closer, pointing at him.  "I knew it.  I knew you were here for a reason.  I know what you are.  You are an angel.  One of the Nefilim."

"What?"  Methos had expected horror, betrayal, hate--not this.

"The angels who fell from heaven, who knew the daughters of men."  She sat down on a cushion.  "That is why you heal.  You have an angelic body.  I will tell my husband.  There is no need for you to suffer needlessly for the covenant.  You have your own relationship with God, different from ours.  You are His servant, even if you fell."

"No.  No!  You are mistaken.  I am no such thing.  What I am, I can't explain.  But I am not what you think."  Methos sat down near her, begging her to understand.  If she thought him an angel, like those who thought him a god, everything he had enjoyed here would be lost to him.  No more refuge of ordinary life.  The worshipers would never allow it.  They would look to him for a miracle, a sign.  He would disappoint them, inevitably.  Or worse--he would fulfil their dreams, an accidental prodigy.

Seeing his forlorn look, Sarah was uncharacteristically silent.  She took his hands in both of hers and looked up into his eyes.  "What happened to you, Mati?" she finally asked.

Methos sighed, a low, soft, moaning thing.  "I am not a god," he began, "or a demi-god, or a hero, or an angel.  What I am is a man who cannot die.  I don't know why.  Only that it is so.  I have heard no god's voice telling me my purpose.  Everyone I have ever loved, ever known, has died.  No one alive speaks my native tongue.  I don't even know what it is, anymore."

Sarah squeezed his hands.  He didn't look up.  "There's more," he said.  "About fifty years ago, someone saw me heal from a wound, just like you.  Unfortunately for me, I happened to be in a temple dedicated to Dumuzi.  I was declared the god.  For fifty years, I was mated to the priestess, and killed."  He met her eyes, explaining:  "It was temporary.  I healed very quickly, but I made it look like I rose on the third day.  Like Dumuzi, the consort of Inanna.  They treated me well, but, once they decided I was their god, they wouldn't let me go.  So you see," he said, holding her gaze, "why this must be a secret."

Sarah took in what Methos said, sitting quietly.  Methos held himself very still.  "I will keep your secret," she said.  "But you must do something for me."

"Anything," he breathed.

"Protect my son."

"My lady?"

"Your story about the king and his two sons--it was most... enlightening.  We are going to send Ishmael and his mother away.  I have already spoken to my husband about it."

Methos felt a pang of guilt.  The fate of the Egyptian slave woman and her son rested on one afternoon's encounter with the boy.

"Oh, don't look so stricken.  I had heard other stories, and she has been a stone in my path ever since she was first with child.  Your story was merely the last of many . No one may treat my son like this.  No one.  It is said you are a man of war, that you offered to train the men in weapons.  You can do this, can you not?  Will you protect him?"

Methos nodded solemnly.  "I swear it," he said, touching his genitals in the local custom.  Another irony--one swore on one's fertility:  yet another reminder of his inability to be a man like other men.  Methos drew his thoughts back to Sarah.  His protection of her son for her secrecy was a fair trade.  He nodded again, sealing the agreement.  Then why was his heart so sick

Who is the one who is free?

Methos was sitting in the shade of a large rock, sipping water from a skin.  The herds were largely tending themselves, scrambling over the rocky terrain for tender shoots and rare blades of grass.  From across a field, the sound of a voice praying was carried on the wind.  The words echoed uncannily closely in the harsh landscape, with no soft earth or vegetation to absorb the sound.

"I didn't love her," the voice said.  "She was not a comely woman, or wise.  Even so...  She was the mother of my child, my son, my first-born.  I trust You, oh my Lord, but please, if it is Your will, enlighten my heart that I may know the fate of Ishmael, my son, and his mother Hagar.  More years ago than I can count, Lord, you asked me to leave everything and follow you.  And that I gladly did, as You well know.  First, you gave me a son from out of this woman's womb, and then, my Lord, I found favor in Your eyes, and my wife Sarah bore me Yitzhak, as the angels promised.  Now, You ask me once again to give up something, and to trust in You.  To listen to the voice of Sarah, my wife.  And I will listen, Lord; I will surely do Your will.  I have already sent the woman and her son away.  But I do it with a heavy heart.  For he was my son--how could I not love him too?"

The sound faded away. Methos sat still, not wanting to betray his unwanted intrusion into Avraham's private communication with his god.  He didn't know what to think. Avraham clearly believed he was doing the right thing, surrendering himself to his god's will even though his heart ached for the woman and the boy.  Methos saw Avraham's purity, his selflessness.  Yes, the man was flawed, and had done things both foolish and selfish in the past.  But a more compassionate man Methos had yet to see.  His own welcome into Avraham's camp was proof of that.  Nor was Methos the only stranger to whom Avraham was generous and kind.  Camp talk also had it Avraham had once argued with his god for hours over the fate of a wicked city on which the god had finally sent a destroying rain of fire.  Avraham had stood in the breach, advocating for the lives of any who were innocent who might be caught in the punishing firestorm.  And here he was now, obedient to the commands of his god, but torn, as well, by the promptings of his heart.

Methos found his journal, the gift of Sarah's papyrus, a refuge in his turmoil.  He had long since replenished the supply with wages from his work.

Avraham was his patron, his leader, but he was also the servant of his god.  Methos was Avraham's servant, as was Hagar, the mother of Ishmael, Avraham' son.  Methos had been a god, but that, too, left him trapped and unable to chose his life.

To be a god or to be a slave was an equal prison.  In neither case was one allowed simply to be.  As was his custom now, Methos comforted himself with the clarity of the written word, writing his thoughts when he returned to his tent that evening: 
 

Who is the one who is free?

Is it a slave? No, for the slave must attend to his master.

Who is the one who is free? Is it a child?

No, for a child must follow his father.

Who is the one who is free? Is it a king?

No, for a king must rule.

Who is the one who is free? Is it a god?

No, for a god must die for his people.

"Don't forget wife," was Sarah's only comment when he read her that passage a few days later.  Right.  Methos had heard the gossip about how Sarah almost came to be in Pharaoh's harem.  Avraham, fearing for his life, told Pharaoh's men she was his sister so they wouldn't kill him to take her for a wife.  Instead, they just took her.  The gossip did not relate how Sarah felt about the arrangement, and Sarah was too dignified to openly criticize her husband.  Women, children, servants, slaves, gods, or kings:  none were free.

Fifty years as a god

He was waking from a nightmare.

"Are you alright, Mati?" a voice called.  The serving boy who slept in the next tent stood in the tent opening, peering in with a worried look.  "I heard you yelling..."

Methos roused, orienting himself to his surroundings with a gasp as if he were waking from a death.  Vaguely, he felt bands of leather binding him to a table, his ass stretched and sore, the scent of lemongrass and pine.  Danger, alarm, the unmistakable susurrating signal of another of his kind.  Breathing hoarsely, he gripped the coarse wool blanket covering him until he could venture speaking.  Looking around, he saw himself in his tent, moonlight giving scant light through the open flap.  "Go back to sleep, Binyamin," he said, recalling the boy's name.  "A dream, nothing more."

"Are you sure, Mati?"  The boy waited, neither in nor out of the tent.  "Perhaps you should tell the dream to Mira the dream-teller.  Have you had it more than once?"

"Please."  Methos lacked the strength to argue his point.  The dream had drained him, as it always did, leaving him trembling and hollow, as if the ground did not truly support him beneath his huddled limbs.  "Go to sleep, Binyamin.  We'll talk about it in the morning."

The boy hesitated, then nodded in acquiescence.  "That's what you always say," he said under his breath as he left.

The lingering images of Methos' dream scattered as he brought himself fully awake.  He would not sleep again this night.  The risk was too great.  For fifty years in Sumeria he had lived, a black-haired man among black-haired men...as Dumuzi the summer god.  Fifty years past, he had, on a dare, made the mistake of playing god to as astonished audience.  Dying on his knife, he spooked the lot of them when the knife was removed and the god awoke.

The power and adulation was immediate and glorious.  The most beautiful of the temple harlots, first blood of the virgin girls. The sweetest fruit, the shiniest jewels, the softest bed.  Fifty years of pampering... and death.  In an annual celebration Dumuzi was torn to shreds, his bloody remains left to rot in the fields.  Methos revived within hours, of course, but contrived to stay "dead" the requisite three days.  It wouldn't do to disillusion the faithful.  Then he would rise, and the cycle of fertility would be ensured, to his utter, cynical disdain.  The irony of the barren god presiding over the harvest fruit amused him for decades.  Until it hadn't.  Methos lit the oil lamp from a banked coal.  Taking out pen and ink and scroll, he set down his impressions from the dream. 
 

Embers of incense burn low

in temple braziers

Smoke and sweetness overcome me

my limbs are weak, they fail me

I am overcome and laid upon

the wedding bower

They bind me to the bed, as always,

as every year at this time.

Leather bonds to tie me to the bed,

my arms stretched above me,

my legs spread wide.

With a soft band of suede

my eyes are covered, I cannot see as she

enters: the jeweled goddess.

She enters, her perfume enchants,

the soft tinkling of bells tells me she is

dancing. Her ladies sing and clap their

hands and play their little

drums.

Methos stopped.  The rest was too painful to relate.  Painful because... for much of his time there, he had liked it.  At first, he simply enjoyed the attention and luxury.  As well as the safety, of course, of holy ground.  His stay in the temple, aside from his annual ritual death, was a much-needed respite from 1000 years of either avoiding other Immortals or fighting them.  And there was one other thing:  the lure of being a god.  Methos didn't really believe he was a god, but he knew he wasn't human, and he was weary of wondering just what kind of freak he was.  Godhood was... seductive.  But eventually, the nature of his relationships with those around him began to grate on him.  It wasn't merely the annual death--it was the adulation as well, the glazed and fevered looks of his worshipers.  Methos began to feel empty and invisible.  He began to yearn for something simple and real, but it was far too late for that in his gilded prison.  When he spoke of change, of finding another form for the worship besides his annual mating and death, his words were unheeded.  They simply tied him to the bed.

"You write like a priest or a courtier!" Sarah said, several days later. "That sounds like the marriage prayers to Ishtar. Don't look so shocked. You think I don't know what goes on in those Akkadian Temples?"

"Sumerian.  It was Sumerian.  Inanna, not Ishtar."

"Inanna, Inunnu, Ishtar, Pishtar, what's the difference?"

"That's how I was trained," he said, giving up on trying to explain the finer points of comparative goddesshood to her.  "How should I write?"

"Be yourself.  Say what you see, what is in your heart."  Sarah took a bite of a fig, juices dripping down her chin.

"Don't know what you mean," he said, reaching for a piece of fruit himself.

"I don't know.  Just... write like you were speaking."

"I speak in a courtly manner.  You've said it yourself."

"Right.  Time to stop that."  Grinning, she got up and left.

Methos scratched his head, looking after her.  She often left him both bemused and unsettled.  Shaking his head and muttering to himself about the ridiculousness of it all, he took papyrus and ink and his favorite writing tool over to a flat stone he had found for that purpose.  Staring at the clean surface, he drew a blank.  The sound of chanting whispered through his head.  Before that, the memory of the hot Egyptian sun, and before that, sea-voyages, strange fruit, marketplaces, temples, nomads, music... the wail of an abandoned child...

Raw, disjointed words began to appear on the page.  Methos stared at his hand, watching the quill dip into the ink as if from a great distance.

Pain.  Darkness.  Lonely.  Blood.  Alone.

Endless journey.  Time. Pain.

It made no sense.  None that Methos could see.  But it felt... right, somehow.  As if saying the words that spoke his unnamable pain freed him, by binding him, mysteriously, to the black scrawls across the page.  He tilted his head, puzzling at what he had written.  The words grounded him into the present, even as they touched on the feelings of the past.  None of it made any sense, but all of it was true.

He continued, letting the words flow without meaning or sense.  As if, after all this time, he could come to know himself, could bind himself into one being, one person.  Drag all the memories and languages and customs and times... and enemies and lovers, and the rare, terrifying encounters with others of his unexplainable kind--all of it, and set it down, here, somehow, on this page.

The human story

"Are you afraid of my husband?"

The question startled him.  "Afraid?  No.  Why do you say that?"  He was polishing a new blade he had purchased with his wages.  Several days had passed since their last conversation.  Pausing, Methos looked up at Sarah, then back at the knife.  It glowed warmly in the light of the oil lamp.

"You seem to be avoiding him lately, and so... deferential when you do see him."  She cocked an eyebrow at him, looking up, then down again to her work.  She and Avital were sitting and cording wool.

Methos paused before answering.  How could he explain that he was respecting, in retrospect, Avraham's privacy and pain over the loss of his elder son?  "Your husband is a man of strong belief... in his god.  I would be a fool to disregard that sort of strength."  He hoped she would make some sense of that answer and be deflected by it.

Sarah nodded, thoughtful.  "God has given us many blessings, many gifts," she said.  "Do you doubt it?"

"I do not know your god, my lady.  He never called to me, as he has to your husband."

Laughing, Sarah leaned over and rapped Methos on the head with her knuckles.  "Now I know for sure you fell from heaven!  You hit your head!  If you can say you forgot God..."

Methos rubbed his head.  "He's spoken to you, too?" he asked.

"He didn't need to.  You don't need speeches to hear His voice, if you know how to listen.  I don't need proof.  I see the way things are."

"And how are things, Lady Sarah?"

"Things are good, Mati, if you let them be.  Look at Avital, how pretty she is, how sweet, what a good worker.  Why don't you marry her?"

Avital, looking down, was blushing furiously.  Methos smiled at Sarah, then reached out and gently touched a lock of Avital's hair.  The young woman was pleasant enough.  He shook his head, dismissing the thought.  "My lady..." he began.

"Just think about it, Mati," she said.

Methos smiled, tilting his head in acquiescence.  Better to give her the occasional victory, he thought, stifling a smirk.  At least let her think so, for the time being.  He knew Avraham considered Sarah to be something of a prophetess, and, all teasing about her "persistence" aside, took her advice very seriously.  Perhaps she had a point?  But... he couldn't really consider marrying the serving girl, could he?  He knew how important children were to these people.  And faithfulness.  He knew he could never convince Avital to bed another man, as he had done with others of his wives, so she could have children.

On the other hand, she did have a pleasant manner about her.  And she was still quite young.  He could marry her, have a little ease for a few years, then "die" when the time came, leaving her to remarry.  He would be sure to leave her a nice inheritance, so she wouldn't be destitute in the meantime and could offer a nice dowry to a second man.  Avital was an orphan--one of the reasons Sarah had taken her under her wing. He would make sure she didn't lose out by the arrangement.

Later, preparing for bed, the idea of a kind and willing bed-mate began to have more and more appeal.  Perhaps he would go speak with Sarah about her tomorrow, after all.  With that pleasant thought, Methos drifted off to sleep.

And was awakened, only hours later, it seemed, by the sound of tumult.  Fully alert in seconds, Methos grabbed his dagger from its place by his bed of soft sheepskins.  Silently, he slipped out of the tent and made his way through the camp in the pre-dawn light.  A wind swirled eddies of dust and sand and billowed in his loose clothing.  As he neared the tent of Avraham and Sarah, he saw Sarah arguing with someone.  Eliezer of Damascus, the old steward, looked as if he was trying to restrain Sarah from getting past him.

"Get out of my way, old man," she snarled, pushing him aside.  Peering into the early gloom, away from the camp and towards the mountains, she turned back to Eliezer.  "Tell me where he's going!" she shouted.  "Where is he taking my son?!"

"My lady, I do not know.  He didn't tell me.  He only told me to wake two of the manservants and prepare packs for them and for himself and Yitzhak his son for three days.  He wanted warm blankets so I think they were going up to the mountains.  Your husband cut wood and laid it on the ass.  Most likely they go to sacrifice."

"Ah, a sacrifice.  What animals did he take?"  She looked somewhat appeased by this information.

"He didn't take any animals with him," Eliezer stuttered.  "Perhaps they mean to find them on the way?"

Sarah's eyes narrowed.  She looked in Methos' direction, zeroing in on him from his place in the shadows.  "Very well, then," she said to Eliezer, not taking her eyes off Methos.  Eliezer stood with his back to where Methos was hiding.  "Go back to bed," she said, only walking over to Methos when the old man had hurried off.

"Please help me," she said to him without preamble, grabbing his wrist and holding it.  She did not seem to notice the naked blade he held in his hand.  "Avraham woke early, and he took Yitzhak and two serving men with him, I don't know where.  It's probably nothing, Mati, but I have a bad feeling about this."

"What would you have me do?" Methos asked quietly, staring down into her eyes.

"Go back to your tent, gather what you need for a trip to the mountains.  Hurry.  While you do that I will prepare you a pack of food.  Go after them.  Find them.  Watch out for my son.  I am frightened and I do not know why.  I have never been separated from my son before without knowing why.  It is probably nothing.  Please, Mati.  Go now."

"It is probably nothing," he repeated, placing his other hand reassuringly over hers where she still gripped him.  He turned to leave to do as she had asked.  Looking down, she noticed that she was still holding him and released him.

"Wait, before you go," she said.

Methos turned back, waiting.

"I want to bless you," she said.  There was a haunted look in her eye.  Did she fear retribution against Yitzhak from the banished elder son?

Methos stood still, knowing the need for haste if he was to track the four men lost in the morning mist, yet sensing the importance of this moment to Sarah.  He nodded, accepting her authority over him, her right to bless him, as he had never quite accepted that of Avraham, his master.  He put his dagger in his belt.

She took both his hands in her own, his long-boned, large, strong hands in her small ones, well-worn by long service and by time.  "You think are alone, because you have no family, no children, Mati, and because you are not a man like other men," she said.  "You think no one understands you, or sees your heart.  But I see you, Mati.  I don't need to know what you are to know who you are.  Your heart is good.  And you are not alone, because I take you for my own, to be part of my family. And because I make you my blood, my 'dahm', I bless you with the name 'Adahm,' 'human being.'"  She released his hands and placed her right hand on his chest, over his heart. "Not alone," she repeated.  "And when I am in the earth, the 'adahma,' she continued, "you will remember me.  Never forget you are part of the human story, Adahm."

Methos looked into her eyes, too stunned to even nod.  His eyes were brimming, but there was no time to savor this mysterious moment.  As if catching his urgency, or recalling her own, she squeezed his hand and released it, backing off.  "Now hurry," she said, "and save the life of Yitzhak, your brother."

Shaking himself, Methos turned again to gather the few belongings, the water and food and blanket and thin cloak, that he would take with him up the treacherous mountain path.

Akeda

It didn't take long to find the path Avraham, his servants, and his son had taken.  The ground was still moist with dew and showed tracks easily.  By hurrying he was able to find the slower-moving group before the sun was at its peak in the sky and was able to keep them in sight.  As they had no reason to look behind them on the trail, he could follow fairly closely, the noise of their own steps and that of the ass on the gravelly path masking his own.  They traveled far into the mountains, higher and higher.  Methos was glad for the warm blanket he had brought with him to sleep under in the cool mountain air.

On the third day, the party separated.  The two servants and the ass were left behind and Avraham and his son went on alone.  The men had caught one of the wiry goats that lived in the higher elevations and were tying it up, no doubt to eat later.  Methos saw Avraham load the bound wood onto Yitzhak's back.  He lost some time waiting for the servants to doze in the shade of a rock in the afternoon heat before he was able to get past them without discovery.  Methos hurried to make up time, but the path Avraham had chosen up the mountain was hard to mistake.  He was heading for the top of the tallest peak.

By the time Methos caught up with the pair at the mountain's top, the sun had passed its height in the sky and was beginning its descent toward the high mountain horizon.  From a safe distance, Methos observed from behind a large rock surrounded by a thicket.  From the looks of it, they had been there for some time.  The remains of a meal were on the ground, and wood had been arranged to make an altar over a large, flat rock.  Methos saw Avraham approach Yitzhak, a coil of rope in his hand.  Yitzhak gestured, looking around in the brush.  Avraham shook his head no, his head hanging, shoulders drooping.  He was explaining something quietly to Yitzhak.  Yitzhak's eyes darted around once again.  He looked like someone on the verge of panic.  Methos could hear the high, agitated tone of his voice but couldn't make out the words.  Yitzhak stepped back.  Avraham took a step toward him, closing the distance and grasping him by one arm.  As Yitzhak collapsed into his arms, Avraham hugged him close, throwing his head back in a wail of grief.

Methos began to tremble.  In slow motion, he watched Avraham take the rope and bind his son hand and foot, laying him gently on the rock amid the wood.  Yitzhak lay quietly, not struggling against his bonds.  His head was turned away; Methos could not see his face.  Covering his son's eyes with one hand, Avraham drew an object from the ground.  Methos was shaking now in violent spasms.  He tasted blood in his mouth, heard in his mind the chanting of the Sumerian priests.  Flashes of agony trapped his limbs with the memory of knives plunging into him over and over:  the sacrifice of the summer god.  Shaken and dazed, his eye was caught by sunlight, low-angled and tinged with fire, glinting off Avraham's great bronze knife.  Time sped, slowed, jumped.  As if wrenched from another man's throat, Methos called to Avraham in a great roar.

Startled, Avraham froze, the knife at the apogee of its arc.  Methos moved closer, still remaining hidden.  Hearing nothing more, Avraham shook himself, lowered the knife, took a great breath, and raised it once again.  "Avraham!" Methos called a second time.  "Do not harm the boy!"

The knife clattered to the rocks, Avraham collapsing to the ground after it.  "My Lord," he said, his voice small.  "I am here!"

It took a few beats of his thundering heart, but with Avraham's words, Methos snapped into crystalline awareness.  Avraham thought his voice an angel's voice of God.  He must have been very distraught not to recognize Methos' voice, but Methos wasn't about to enlighten him.  Perhaps he would be Sarah's angel after all, playing the unseen voice of heaven.  His first cry to Avraham had been without plan or will--a cry from the heart not only for the life of the sweet boy he had briefly come to know but against the horror of the sacrifice of any person by another.  Life itself was reason enough for life, to be cherished above all else.  Methos knew that now, had always known it but had forgotten it in his long submergence into the false dream of a false god's life.  None were free--neither children, nor women, nor slaves, nor kings, nor even gods.  But one could chose life over worship, no matter how pious the cause.  Gathering himself into a warrior's heart, Methos spoke once again, gearing his words to the beliefs of the man he addressed.  "Now I know that you fear your God," he said, "for you have not withheld your son, your beloved son, from me."

"My Lord!" Avraham cried.  It took a little longer for the sobbing man to gather himself and unbind his son from the rock.  A ram bleated in the brush, the sound plaintive and harsh.  Its horns were caught in the thicket.  Without a word, Yitzhak rose, shook himself off, and brought the complaining animal to the altar.  Keeping his eyes focused on the struggling beast, he avoided the gaze of his stricken father.  He appeared to be trembling with rage.

Methos sank down, his back to a rock, listening to the sounds of the sacrifice.  As if from a great distance, he heard Avraham chanting the prayer, thanking God for releasing him from the command to sacrifice his son.  So the old man had heard another voice, another imperative, and had obeyed.  The ram's bleating crescendoed and then stopped.  Yitzhak was silent. Methos sat, hidden.  He felt as cold as ice.

The moment passed, a long breath.  Methos waited, not knowing why.  He blinked, then looked up, surprised to see the deep blue of the dusky sky.  He had no recall of when he had stopped hearing the slide of pebbles that marked the departing footsteps of Avraham and his silent, glowering son.  The slightest breeze startled him.  He was clutching a stone.  He looked at it.  When had he picked it up?  How long had he held it?  It was warm, as warm as he was cold, a deep shivering from within his blood.

The rock loomed--white, smooth--in the clearing.  A man-sized boulder.  Smooth as a bed to lie on.  The fire from the burnt offering had consumed the flesh and blood of the ram. Only a few white ashes remained, blown by the wind.  Methos threw one arm over his eyes.  "No," he said.  How could Avraham, Avraham the generous, the wise, who loved his son--Sarah's son Yitzhak... the thought would not complete itself.  The old man was difficult, arrogant and daunting in his visions of his invisible god but the visions were true, or so it had seemed to Methos.  The visions were true, but the god was cruel.

This did not surprise Methos.  It had been a long, long time since divinity had held for him anything but a wary horror, tempered to cautious reverence when the mood was right.  So Avraham, the straight reed swaying in the wind, had bent.  He was like every other religious fanatic Methos had known.  He might weep, but when the god called...  He shouldn't be shocked but he was.  How had it happened?  The feeling surged over him once again, overwhelming his sense of time.  He found himself on his knees beside the sacrificial rock, bent over and keening, until sleep claimed him and he laid his head, insensate, on the coolness of the stone.

When he woke night had come.  He raised his hands before his face in the thin light of the stars.  His left hand had, bound around it in seven coils from his elbow to his palm, a length of the discarded rope Avraham had cut away from his prostrate son.  Sometime in his sleep Methos had wound it around his own arm.  He stared in fascination and incomprehension, tugging on the frayed end dangling between his fingers, startled by the oddly comforting feel of the binding.

His thoughts drifted, with less pain now, to the events of the day.  So good men do falter, he thought at last, tempted to cruelty by their god.  "So much," he said out loud, "for the human story."  He had tried to find solace in the ordinary, but the attempt had failed.  He lay back upon the rock, wondering what he would do next.  Though his act had been a cry for life, witnessing the scene of the sacrifice had broken a fragile trust in ordinary living that Methos had been carefully nurturing these last few months in the camp.  He had been a fool to think that he, of his strange and fated kind, could live like other men.

Cruel images began to play across his mind.  Perhaps he would hunt out Ishmael and see what they could do together.  The exiled son was rumored to be a warrior, challenging all who came across his path.  It was time Methos took up his fighting skills again.  Maybe he would return to the camp first and take Avital for his wife, after all.  She was meek enough, and would serve his needs in exchange for his protection.  His thoughts swirling in edgy confusion, he sank into a restless sleep.

A Fantasy in Chains

Danger intruded harshly on his dreams. Sharp alarm arose like an acid taste in Methos' mouth.  Awakening, he found himself constrained in every direction, his body cocooned in soft blankets.  Panic, followed by a shift into an intensely focused awareness.  With swift and forceful mental control, he suppressed the urge to roar and struggle like an enraged beast.  Taking deep, steady breaths, Methos scanned the room, registering his location. The club.  His center of awareness dropped deep into his belly.  The beast receded.

Somewhere, nearby, was another Immortal.  Only seconds had passed since his awakening.  The room he was in was calm.  Rainer's apprentice stood beside him, offering water in a bottle with a penis-shaped nozzle.  Noting no immediate danger, Methos nodded, taking the offered nozzle into his mouth and sucking.  The humor of the situation was not lost on Methos, but his reaction could wait. The first order of business was to assess the danger he was in.  Being tied up with a strange Immortal's buzz tugging at his senses was not his idea of fun.  What had gone wrong?  He was certain, as certain as one can be in such things, that his hack into Watcher records, as well as the club's computers--including their "secret" financial files--had been complete.  He had recognized no known Immortals in any of their favorite aliases.  He had taken a chance, certainly, but at the time it had seemed worth it.  I must have been mad, he thought to himself.  That about summed it up.

Rainer entered the room, alerted to Methos' wakened state by some signal of his apprentice.  More seconds passed.  A decision had to be made, quickly.  Bound as he was, Methos was dead meat for any Immortal that found him.  Anyone determined enough to track him to this location would not be daunted by Rainer and his costumed boys.  It was a shame; Methos had enjoyed himself enormously here and would have liked the option of returning in the future.  With a reluctant sigh, he pressed the button in the device still lodged in his right hand.  True to promise, his bindings fell away with a soft snap as the dozens of metal links joining the leather bands demagnetized.  First the leather strips, then the blanket fell to the floor.  Methos got down off the table, quickly finding his balance.

"Now?" Rainer asked, his face arch with surprise.  "You endure the whole night, and now, when we are ready to come and release you, you push the button?"  Rainer took a step closer to Methos but didn't move to touch him.

"It's been wonderful to make your acquaintance, Master Rainer, but I really must leave."

The two men looked in each other's eyes.  Rainer nodded, curtly.  "As you wish," he said.

Methos hesitated.  The buzz of the other Immortal thrummed through him, putting him on an adrenalin-laced edge.  But the absence of any sound or sign of anyone coming for him dampened his alarm marginally.  "It is not as I wish, Master Rainer," Methos said, "but it is as I must.  Thank you for your kind attentions."

Rainer gave a small bow, then gestured to his apprentice, who was returning to the room with a handful of new clothing.  "Sylvain will show you to a dressing chamber," he said.

Methos looked to the apprentice, only to see him pushed aside as the Mistress from the evening before burst into the room.  "You?!" she demanded.  "You activated the release?  Now?!" she asked, echoing Rainer's earlier question.

"Now," he nodded, looking her in the eye.  "And now if you don't mind..."  He gestured to Sylvain to bring near the proffered clothing.

"Wait," she said, placing her hand on Methos' arm.  "Not those."  Turning to Rainer, she inclined her head.

"Mistress," he breathed, his eyes warm.

"He does not free himself out of cowardice," she said.  It was half-way between a statement and a question.

"No," Rainer answered, smiling.  He walked over to the apprentice and whispered something in the boy's ear.  The apprentice left the room, taking the armful of clothing with him.

"Hey, wait a minute," Methos protested.  The apparent absence of immediate Immortal threat was reassuring, but the continued feel of the other Immortal was starting to make him itch.  He didn't have time for their arcane games.  On the other hand, he didn't want to draw too much attention by being too insistent or dramatic about leaving.

Rainer put his hand on Methos' arm, smiling reassuringly.  After a few minutes, Sylvain re-entered the room with two of the masked attendants in tow.  Waiting first for the Mistress' nod, the apprentice brought another set of clothing over to Methos.  Instead of the simple grey sweatclothes offered previously, Methos saw an outfit like that Rainer wore:  soft grey leather pants, low, soft boots, and a long, open, ceremonial robe.  Submitting to their ministrations in stunned amusement, Methos watched as the masked goons brought steaming washcloths, scented with lemongrass, and efficiently wiped him down, smoothing the cloths over the indentations in his skin left by the kiss of the leather straps.  Patting him dry with a soft towel, they helped him step into the leather pants and boots.  The boots, though snug, were soft enough to give, reminding Methos of slippers he had worn once in a Sultan's court.

Rainer took the robe, which was done in tonal variations of midnight blue, and placed it over Methos' shoulders, helping him slide his arms through the generous sleeves.  Silver studs and bits of crystal were worked into the velvet and silk, giving the robe a satisfying weight.

Stepping back, Rainer smiled, then looked over to the Mistress expectantly.  At her nod, Rainer spoke.  "You must chose a name," he said, "by which you will be known among us."

"Look, this is all very nice," Methos said, "but would it be too much of a bother to let me know what the hell is going on here?"

"You knew," the Mistress answered, "that if you released yourself from the bonds, you must leave and never return as a client.  What we did not tell you, what surely you must discern by now, 'Herr Brown,' is that if you release yourself without fear, if you are choosing freedom over bondage, rather than merely panicking--and if we like you," she added with a wink, "you may join us--as a Master."

"And that is why you must chose a name," Rainer continued.  "So that we may welcome you as Master...?"

Methos looked appraisingly at the Mistress.  "Aren't you taking an awfully big leap, assuming you can trust me to take this on?"

"From your very first discussions with our representative... we liked you. Your references checked out.  Your Parisian... friend... spoke very highly of you.  You do know that he is a member, a full member, do you not?"

"Pierre?"  Pierre was an old friend... well, an old slave, actually, with whom Methos had played out many a fantasy over the centuries.  Dear old Pierre.  He would have to find some way to thank him.

The Mistress nodded.  "That is not the name he uses here.  But yes, that is the man.  After speaking with him, we anticipated you might be a candidate for elevation eventually.  We did not expect it to be so soon!  But by releasing yourself, you have forced our hand."

"Your name?" Rainer prompted.

"Adam," Methos said, hesitating only briefly.  He pronounced it in the ancient Hebrew manner: "Ah-dahm," as Sarah had named him. There was a rightness to claiming the name that Methos felt but could not have explained.

"Master Adam," Rainer and the mistress intoned, echoed by Sylvain and the goons.  Each, to varying degrees, approximated Methos' pronunciation of the name.  Methos felt slightly dissociated, momentarily distant from himself as the echo of incantatory madness, the chanting of his name, trickled into his awareness.

"Well, then, that's that," Rainer said cheerfully, breaking the spell.  "Would you care for some breakfast?"

"Why not?" Methos answered.  He was still edgy, but a new thought about the mysterious other Immortal was forming in his head.  Everyone filed out of the room, heading, Methos presumed, for some sort of employee lounge.  "Tell me, Rainer," he asked as he followed the Master into the hall, "do all the, um, staff, come to work in the evening?  No one would have just come this morning, correct?"

"No, you are correct," Rainer answered, looking puzzled.  "This sort of work is, ah, traditionally done at night.  Why do you ask?"

"Oh, nothing.  Just curious."  Passing one of the doors, Methos felt the spike of Immortal presence more strongly than before.  "Rainer," he asked, stopping the other man with a touch on his elbow, "if I am a Master now..."

"You wish to play?" Rainer asked.

"Who is in here?"

"A client, like yourself.  Excuse me, as you were when you entered last evening.  A young man, recommended to us by an old client.  It is his first time here, but for a somewhat different experience than your own.  He was in one of the public rooms all night--it's in another part of the building--and only came to this room this morning, if I am not mistaken.  He is probably very close to the denouement.  Shall I...?"

"Yes, I would like that," Methos answered, looking Rainer in the eye.

Rainer waved Sylvain and the assistants on ahead.  The Mistress had disappeared.  Rainer opened the door, leading Methos into the room.  "That is Master Geoffrey," Rainer whispered, indicating a man in the usual "Master" leather pants and robe.  Geoffrey's robe was a vision in saffron with bits of gold, amber, and agates worked into the fabric.

Methos locked eyes with the blond-haired man, but the man's look in return was mild.  Methos turned his gaze to the client, who began to moan loudly, though no one was touching him.  Could it be?  Though Methos couldn't be certain, the client seemed more confused than tense or afraid.  Though he moaned, he didn't struggle in his bonds or indicate any desire to be free in any way.  And quite interesting bonds they were, Methos noted with appreciation.  It appeared more and more likely to Methos that this was a new Immortal, one who did not know what he was or what the feeling in his head signified.  Methos relaxed.

The client was young in appearance, and most likely, Methos thought ruefully, in actuality.  Where Methos' own night had been themed in bindings of leather, this man's bondage was a fantasy of chains.  He kneeled, knees spread, in the middle of the room.  Metal cuffs on his ankles and thighs led to chains anchored to bolts in the floor, ensuring his position.  A thin chain led from each of two nipple rings, pulled taut and joined to a chain leash which the Master held in his left hand.  A chain-mail collar sat snugly on his throat.  His arms were bound tightly behind him, chains wrapping his fore-arms from elbow to wrist and anchored by a chain to the wall several feet behind him.

The one concession to leather was a hood which covered his head and tied off in a drawstring over the chain-mail collar.  Removable patches blocked off his eyes and ears, and a breathing mask covered his mouth and nose through an opening in the hood for that purpose.  The hose from the mask led to what Methos presumed was an oxygen tank, off by the wall to the left.  The boy's cock was wrapped in tiny chains laced with tinier bells, set off by every movement and pulse of his engorged organ.

The Master held a flogger in his right hand.  Tiny metal loops on the ends of the leather strands clinked together as the flogger swayed in the Master's hand.  Delicate bruises were forming around tiny rivulets of blood on the unknown Immortal's chest.  Methos looked to Rainer and the other Master.  Rainer walked over and whispered something in the other man's ear, who looked to Methos and nodded.  Giving Methos a small, formal bow, the man handed him the leash and flogger.

Methos took them both, bowing in return, and took the place where Master Geoffrey had stood.  By unspoken agreement, nothing was spoken aloud.  The Immortal had quieted somewhat as Methos' Presence presumably settled into the background.  Color stained the young man's chest in blotchy patches.  The bruises were beginning to fade, something Methos hoped the still-trickling blood and low ambient light would camouflage for a while longer.  Keeping the chain leash taut by wrapping it several times around his left hand, Methos approached the kneeling boy, stalking around him.  The boy's back was covered in old scars, as were his upper arms.

Coming in close, Methos leaned in and licked along a fine cut on the boy's shoulder.  The boy whimpered, his cock jumping, setting off the little bells.  Trailing the flogger over the boy's skin, Methos continued to lick, kiss, and bite the boy's chest hard enough to add more streams of blood to cover the fact that the earlier cuts were healing.  From time to time he added snapping flogs to the boy's buttocks and back.  The chain of the nipple-ring leash was wrapped almost entirely around Methos' fist.  The boy's nipples were stretched forward, arching him between the forward tug of the leash and the chains pulling him backward by the arms.

Methos paused to survey the effect of his attentions.  The boy's skin, where it was exposed, was flushed.  His breathing was hard, ragged, and shallow.  Sweat dripped down his sides and from under the hood.  Signaling one of the ubiquitous masked attendants, Methos unwound the leash from his hand and gave it over.  The attendant returned to where the original Master had stood and held the leash with just enough tension to assist the client in maintaining his upright position.  Methos smiled his approval at the attendant.  A good Master, he knew, clearly communicates pleasure and displeasure to those under his guiding hand.  As Methos turned back to the boy, he caught a smile out of the corner of his eye from Rainer, who was standing by the wall with Master Geoffrey.  Methos acknowledged Rainer's smile by lifting the flogger in an ironic salute.

Turning to kneel at the boy's side, Methos put the flogger down, then placed his hands flat on the boy's body, one on his chest over his heart and the other between his shoulder blades.  Focusing inwardly, Methos concentrated on dropping his awareness into his center, feeling anchored in a sense of solidity and peace.  As the boy's breathing quieted, Methos removed first the flaps in the hood that were covering his ears, then the breathing mask from his mouth and nose.  A second attendant walked over to the tank by the wall and turned a lever, silencing the soft hissing coming from the tube.

"Breathe," Methos said, speaking for the first time since entering the room.  His voice was low and soft in the boy's ear.  If the boy was startled by the voice of a new Master, he gave no sign of it.  Methos played over his skin, front and back, trailing his fingers down to the boy's belly, pinching his thighs, fingering his crack, and lightly caressing his balls, which hung free.  Leaning in again to speak softly in the boy's ear, he said more than asked:  "You don't know what you are, do you?"  Before the boy could answer, Methos put a finger lightly on his lips.  The boy strained forward to take it into his mouth.

"Blindfold," Methos commanded, flicking his eyes briefly to the second attendant.  "Keep your eyes closed," Methos commanded the boy as he bent to remove the hood.  Holding a hand out behind him, he took the blindfold that was placed there and fastened it around the boy's closed eyes, first kissing each lid.  Next, Methos unfastened the chain mail collar, fingering, then mouthing the revealed skin, licking and sucking at the indentations left by the collar.  Grasping the back of the boy's neck so that his head tilted back, Methos possessed the exposed throat with a growl.

The boy whimpered.  "Master," he whispered.  His cock strained against its bindings, the bells tinkling softly.

"Not a word," Methos replied, moving to bite the boy's lower lip.  Reaching out to the chain leash held by the first attendant, Methos released the tension in the chain.  At the same time, he put his other hand on the boy's back, supporting his weight.

"Arms," he said to the attendant, indicating with his eyes the bolt in the wall to which the boy's arms were attached.  "Thighs," Methos indicated again, and the thigh restraints were removed, leaving only the ankle bindings.  Noting enough slack in the ankle chains to allow it, Methos lay the boy on his back, arched over his restrained arms, head tilted back.  Pausing to free his own erect cock from the leather pants, Methos straddled the boy's chest, careful to keep enough weight in his knees so as to not put too much strain on his awkward position.  Methos' cock bobbed against the boy's mouth.  The boy licked tentatively at the tip.

"Good boy," Methos said.  "Yes, you may have it."  As the boy licked and sucked hungrily on his cock, Methos caressed his face with the gentlest of touches, wiping the boy's dark, curly hair from his brow, resting his palm against the boy's cheek.  Responding to the boy's obvious enthusiasm, Methos began to thrust firmly into his throat.  The farther in he went, the more the boy strained to take it in, almost weeping in his effort to make perfect his surrender to Methos.

Reaching the peak of his arousal, Methos came with a soft moan, ejaculating hard into the boy's mouth.  Pulling out, Methos got up off the boy's chest, then kneeled beside him and kissed him hard, drinking back a taste of his own seed.  His mouth wet with his own come, Methos bent over the boy's cock and mouthed him over the complex bindings there.  With one hand, he tugged playfully on the chain of the nipple leash.  Where it had lain lax under Methos as he sat on the boy, indents marked the skin.

"Ankles," Methos said.  As the two attendants moved to release the metal cuffs and chains holding the boy's ankles, Methos licked down the boy's legs, kissing and nipping gently, until he reached the reddened and marked skin where the cuffs had bound him to the floor.  Tonguing the skin of his ankles like a cat, Methos held each foot in turn and bathed the instep and arch, sucking consecutively on the toes and stroking from ankles to backs of knees with his hands.  Unclamping the leash from the nipple rings and setting it aside, Methos rolled the boy over onto his stomach, cupping the boy's penis and balls with one hand as a cushion against the harsh surface of the floor.  Continuing his tongue-bath, he worked his way up the back of the boy's legs, across the rounded buttocks--crossed with dozens of fine scars--into the small of his back and towards his crack, brushing the tips of the boy's fingers with his lips.  At the same time, Methos squeezed lightly on the boy's cock and balls in a rhythmic pulse.  As Methos moved up the boy's back and bit him on the back of the neck, they boy began to squirm and buck.

"Soon, little one," Methos whispered.  "Oil," he spoke to the waiting attendant.  The attendant returned, offering a scented lubricant in a colored vial.  With his free hand, Methos began to undo the chains binding the boy's arms, gesturing with his eyes to the nearest attendant to help him complete the job.  Holding the boy's wrists together in his hand as the arms were released from their bonds, Methos licked down the indentations in the skin left by the chains.  Methos claimed him at every step as he both freed the boy from his bindings and substituted the security of his total control for the comfort of the chains.  Holding his palm out, Methos waited as the attendant with the oil dripped drops of the scented fluid into his hand.  Methos smoothed a thin layer onto the boy's skin, lightly massaging his shoulders and arms, then oiled his own returning erection, bringing himself to hardness in a few short, firm strokes.

"Something soft," Methos told the unoccupied attendant, taking the soft bit of fur quickly offered and replacing it under the boy's genitals as he removed his cushioning hand.  Laying the boy's arms above his head, Methos lowered himself full body onto the boy's back, the tip of his cock nudging at the entrance to the boy's ass.  The boy was pinned completely, arms to arms and legs to legs, and began to recite a whispered chant of "Yes, Master, yes," as Methos probed further with every plunge.  Methos smiled, ignoring the infraction of his command.  There were, after all, limits to the control one could expect, although the boy, young as he was, appeared to be quite a practiced submissive.  The boy seemed to be enjoying himself, enjoying his submission and Methos' mastery over him.

Methos smiled again as he began to plot how he might contrive to have MacLeod "run into" him and take him on as a student.  He could picture it now, MacLeod doing his alpha male intimidation stuff and the boy just eating it up.  On second thought, that might not be such a good idea.  From what Methos could see of MacLeod's style with his current student, MacLeod tended to go into domination mode when the student was being foolish or rebellious--which in Richie's case was often enough.  Could MacLeod be comfortable offering the right blend of command and control this boy so obviously craved while still initiating him into the harsh realities of the Game?  What would MacLeod do with such a happy submissive?  And the boy was patently happy as zeta dog--not a trace of the bitterness that...

Methos' thoughts stopped; his heart stuttered in his chest as the memories and dreams from his own descent into sleep in the early morning's light returned to him in a thundering crash.  A shiver went through him as he remembered Yitzhak, the sacrificed boy.  Yes, Methos had stopped the knife in its cruel descent, had called Avraham back from the precipice of divinely sanctioned ruin.  But Yitzhak, the sweet youth he had known, was touched forever by bitterness and fear.

Methos felt the boy tensing beneath him and stopped to soothe him with a kiss on the back of the neck and a tousle of his hair.  This boy was not Yitzhak, and Methos was a long way from the ancient Near East.  "No more waiting," he said, pulling out of the boy's ass.  Levering himself off the boy, he pulled him onto his back, arms positioned above his head and held by Methos' left hand.  With his right, Methos cupped the boy's face and kissed him deeply and softly, then trailed his hand down to caress the boy's chest and rest his hand soothingly over the wildly beating heart.  "Breathe deeply," he coached, "nice and slow."  The boy complied, chest and abdomen rising smoothly with every breath.

"You have asthma, don't you," Methos said.

"Yes, Master."

"But you're not having any trouble breathing now, are you?"

"No, Master."

Methos paused, thoughtful.  "Did something happen recently?" he asked gently.  "Something... got out of hand perhaps, and you thought you were going to die?"

The boy worked his mouth as if he had something to say but was too stunned to say it.  "How did you know?" he managed at last, his voice full of soft awe.

"I'll tell you later," Methos replied.  "For now, just focus on the pleasure."  And with that, Methos commenced the final unbinding of the boy's chains.  Releasing the boy's wrists, he smiled to see the boy tentatively stretching his fingers and exploring his freedom.  The whole night, in all its strange and unexpected twists and turned, seemed to be priming Methos for this task.  He would free the boy, as he had not been able to free Yitzhak, or for that matter, himself, all those countless years ago.  Undoing the complicated network of linked chains with their humiliating little bells that restricted the boy's straining cock, Methos bent down and began to tend to the boy in earnest, licking long and slow around balls and cock, from base to tip and back again.  The boy gasped and squirmed; although clearly enjoying what Methos was doing, he seemed at a bit of a loss to be completely unchained and unrestrained, as if, left to his own devices, he didn't know where to put his limbs.

Methos put one hand on the boy's belly.  "Are you breathing?" he asked.  "Breathe here, now, into my hand."  The command seemed to center him--give him a focus.  Taking the boy's cock fully into his mouth, Methos sucked expertly, bringing the boy off at last.  The boy came with a sighing cry, trembling from head to toe.  Methos gathered him in his arms, rocking and holding him.  "What's your name?" he whispered.

"Jonathan," the boy answered.

"You don't know what you are yet, Jonathan, but soon you will.  Things are going to change for you.  They already have, only you don't know it yet.  Remember one thing, Jonathan."

"What, Master?"

Methos cradled Jonathan's face, kissed him forehead and nose, then leaned in to whisper in his ear:  "Live."

Backstage at the bondage club

"Nice job," said Master Geoffrey a few minutes later in the hall, offering his hand for Methos to shake.  Methos had left Jonathan with the attendants for the wrap-up, a bath and a new set of clothes.  "Your first time?"

"First time here," Methos answered, accepting the offered hand.

Rainer laughed.  Turning to Geoffrey, he explained, "Master Adam came to us last evening to partake of our services.  For the first time."

Raising an eyebrow, Geoffrey looked from Rainer to Methos and back again . "First time here as client and then is elevated to Master?  But this is not your first time as a master, surely," he said, looking at Methos again.

"As I said," Methos said, smiling and looking down, "first time here."

"Well, well.  When Master Rainer asked me to step aside... it was a pleasure to watch you work. I am curious, though. How did you know about the asthma?  And what was all that about his life changing, or were you just being mysterious?"

"Ah yes, the asthma.  Well, the oxygen, for one thing."

"Breath control."

"But you were nowhere near the controls.  Besides, his breathing had that shallow pattern asthmatics get."

"And so, what, a little yoga, a little suggestion, and the problem is gone?"

"Enough interrogation," Master Rainer stepped in, taking Methos by the arm.  "We should feed this man some breakfast.  It has been a long night."

"Of course," Geoffrey said, nodding.  "Go."

"Not joining us?"  Rainer still held on to Methos' arm.

"No, no, I will see to my--our," he said, inclining his head toward Methos, "client's debriefing.  Though I suspect he is high as a kite right now."  And with a short bow, he turned and left.

"Hope I haven't ruffled any feathers," Methos said, smirking.

"Well, you did rather show him up with that breathing business," Rainer said proudly.  He looked at Methos as if he were a star pupil who had performed well on an exam.

Methos smiled, then looked down, his expression serious.  "So," he opened, "I suppose this is it."

Rainer nodded.  "For now."  The night was officially over.  After a moment, he added, "Come with me."  He led Methos down the hallway and through a series of doors until Methos found himself in a modest-sized room with worn, comfortable-looking furniture, a departure from the high-tech ambiance of the rest of the club.  "This is 'Backstage'," Rainer explained, indicating the "masters" and "slaves" lounging casually on the furniture, chatting, eating pastries and drinking coffee or tea.  A few faces looked up at their entrance to regard Methos briefly, exchanging glances with Rainer.  Rainer merely smiled until they looked away.

Gesturing to a seat, Rainer disappeared briefly and returned to the room with a Middle Eastern-style tea service and small glasses of hot, spiced tea.

"How do you know I didn't want coffee?" Methos asked, his mouth verging on a smirk.

"You let me choose for you one last time," Rainer returned, a note of command lacing his voice.

For an infinitesimal moment, Methos startled, then slid easily into languid submission.  "Well, if you put it that way, Sir," he purred.  His eyes twinkled at the stern visage of his erstwhile "Master."

"I'm going to regret your addition to our hallowed ranks, aren't I," Rainer finally said, smiling in return.  "You're going to be trouble."

"Only if you're good," Methos teased.

A rustle in the room caught both men's attention then, and everyone turned to see the club mistress entering the room.  For all that this was "Backstage," she entered with a clear aura of unbreachable authority.  Methos could see, almost as an unconscious movement, heads bowing slightly at her passing.  Coming to where Rainer and Methos sat, she nodded to a blank chair.  Rainer stood and positioned the chair so that she could join them, holding it for her as she sat, then left them.  Methos looked expectantly at her, wondering what he was supposed to say.  She looked breezily around the room, ignoring him.

Rainer returned with a pot and cup and poured coffee for her.  "So, Master Adam," she said finally, turning to Methos, "I take it you approve of our services?"

"Yes, ma'am," Methos answered, ever so slightly unnerved by this woman who had been so daunting just a few short hours before.  He realized he didn't know her name.  He wasn't quite up to asking it, however.  "I'm still, how should I put it...."

"Processing?  Digesting?" she supplied.  At his nod, she continued.  "I am sure you know this but I will tell you anyway--as you may have noticed, I like to tell people what to do," she said with a wave of her hand.  "Don't think too hard about it, just let it settle.  What we do here is very deep, a kind of psychoanalysis, without the analysis."  Her eyes sparkled with amusement.

Methos nodded, catching her gaze.  Looking away, he sipped his tea, which had cooled to the perfect temperature in the interim.  Rainer sat back, watching the exchange, nodding almost imperceptibly as Methos glanced at him.  "Let me ask you one thing," he finally said.  "The opening scene, in your office... are you always that abrupt?"

At this, Rainer and the Mistress exchanged glances and burst out laughing.  "No, Master Adam, we are not," she said.  "But in our initial contacts, our impression--mine, primarily--was that you were so experienced, so... jaded, or numb, perhaps, that we knew you needed a very dramatic induction or you would simply not believe us.  And then you would not allow yourself to give yourself over to the experience.  Our work is theatre, after all.  With you, we needed a very strong opening act.  I trust it was... effective?"

"Quite."  Taking another sip of his tea, he looked the somewhat less daunting club owner in the eye.  "I never did catch your name."

"No, you didn't."  She turned to Rainer, tilting her head slightly.

"Mistress, may I present the newest member of our club, Master Adam.  Master Adam, may I present our Patroness, Mistress Lucia," Rainer intoned.

Taking the cue from Rainer's tone, Methos rose, and, bowing over Mistress Lucia's hand, kissed it.  Returning to his seat, he looked thoughtful.

"What?" Rainer asked.

"Lucia?" Methos asked.

"My mother was Italian," Lucia replied.  "Italian was in fact my first language," she continued, her accent noticeably less German.  "But you Brits, you are so impressed by a German Mistress!  Secretly you are all hoping for an SS commandant, no?  I play it up to play into your stereotypes.  Clever, no?  As I said, theatre."  She smiled at his look of bafflement.

"I'm not English," he said, trying to recover ground.  "You only think I am because..."

Waving his answer aside, she laughed.  "Don't tell me it wasn't a part of your decision to come to this club, here in this country.  And you?  If this is too private a matter, I will of course ask you to forgive the intrusion, but where do you come from?"

Methos gave her a blank look.  "Ancient Sumeria."

Part 3: A Secret Scroll

I want you to live

"Abraham and Sarah?  The Abraham and Sarah?  From the Bible?!!"

"Oh come on Joe, don't go all reverential on me."  Methos took a pull from his beer, wiping his mouth off on his sleeve.

"No, no, let me get this straight, buddy.  Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac... from the Bible?  Those guys are all real?"

"Yes and no, Joe." Methos sighed heavily.  This sort of historical harangue was inevitable.  "They were real, but... well, the stories are only a partial truth, like anything."

Joe paused, just looking at Methos, head cocked to one side.  Methos tensed, sensing what was coming.

"And what about you," Joe asked, confirming Methos' suspicions.  "Are you in the story?"

"I'm the angel," Methos muttered, looking down into his beer as if could crawl inside it and drown there.

Joe looked at Methos, matching his serious demeanor.  He couldn't hold it.  Laughter burst out of him in sputters.  Soon he was crying from laughing so hard.  "The angel!" he guffawed.  "You?"

Methos glowered at him but soon couldn't help cracking a chagrined smile.  "Well, I guess it is kind of ridiculous, when you put it that way," he said, trying but failing to stifle a snort.

"So what's the deal?" Joe asked, when he stopped chuckling.

"It's a long story, Joe.  The point is, I remembered parts of it recently."

Joe paused, then called to one of the waiters, throwing him his towel.  "Cover the bar for me, will you, Frank?"  Pulling out the chair at Methos' table, Joe sat down.  "I don't want to pry," he said, his eyes twinkling.  "But you know I'm curious as hell."

Methos looked down, his hand idly tracing the worn varnish on the wood table.  Looking up, he met Joe's eyes.  "What do you know about the binding of Isaac?" he began.

 

"Does MacLeod know?" Joe asked, some hours later, coming back over to Methos' table.  Methos had been drinking steadily, and for the first time in their acquaintance, Joe thought he actually looked a bit drunk.

The second of two sets by a local jazz group was winding up--young, fresh-faced musicians delivering a heart-breakingly earnest tribute to John Coltrane.  They were closing the night on a long, wailing note-- the anguished transcendence of "A Love Supreme."  Methos wasn't sure if their parents had been alive when Coltrane died.  "I haven't told him this story, no."

"But..."

"Joe, it was a thousand years between that and when I first became a Horseman.  Losing my faith in religion was no excuse."

"It wasn't just religion you lost faith in, Methos.  It was people.  You trusted old Father Abraham, and he spooked the hell out of you.  You know, back in Sunday school they taught us that Abraham's act was an act of great faith.  But I guess seeing it at close range like that would make it seem not so, I don't know, holy."

"It's never holy to sacrifice another person, Joe.  It might be necessary sometimes," he added darkly.  "But it isn't holy."

"But isn't that the point of the story, Methos?  That God sent an angel to stop the sacrifice?"

"You're not listening, Joe.  There was no angel. I stopped the sacrifice."

"My point exactly."  Joe looked as if he was trying to suppress a smile.

"What are you saying?"  Methos' voice dropped into a deadly register.

"Doesn't the word 'angel' just mean 'messenger' in ancient Hebrew?" Joe replied, only slightly daunted by Methos' shift in tone.

"Do not get smart on me, Joe."  Methos got up from the table, heading for the bathroom at the back.

"All I'm saying," Joe said as Methos walked away, "is that maybe you were meant to be there."

Methos stopped, stood still for a moment, then continued on.

When he returned from the john, Joe was cleaning up behind the bar.  Methos stalked over to the bar and leaned up against it, looming into Joe's space.  "So you think I was some kind of messenger of God?  Is that what you think?"

"Take it easy, buddy.  All I'm saying is, Mysterious Ways, you know?"

Methos walked around the bar to where Joe stood, making him back up a step.  Taking a beer, Methos walked back over to his table.  Patrons were clearing out after the ending of the last set.  Joe watched Methos sit down, drink half his beer in one pull, and sigh heavily.  "What's eating you, Methos?" he asked, coming around the bar to join Methos once again at his table.  "What are you so bitter about?  You saved Isaac.  That was a good thing.  The story came down to us as the end of human sacrifice.  You did good, buddy."

Methos looked at Joe, then away, sighing heavily.  "When you put it that way, Joe," he said, turning back and smiling a sad smile.

"Then what?" Joe persisted.

"Only that... for an 'angel'... well, you know."

"Yeah, I know, Methos.  Only human.  Ain't it a pisser, though."

Methos looked up, startled.  Only human.  Joe's take on things brought back to him the wording of Sarah's blessing.  The human story.  Never forget you are part of the human story.  She hadn't charged him, in the end, to be anything other than a human being.

And he had found his way, eventually.  It had taken him centuries to recover his soul after leaving the Horsemen, but he had done it.  His love of learning, which had never left him, was the doorway.  Little by little, he had found things to love again, things to share with mere mortals.  He had found those to love him, and those he loved.  Little by little, without knowing it, Sarah's blessing had found its way into his heart.  And without realizing he was doing it, he had honored that blessing.

"Adam," he said out loud, remembering for the first time in centuries why he had so often taken that name.

"What?  Oh, yeah, sorry, 'Adam,'" Joe responded, "I try to keep that straight, but sometimes, you know...  Have to watch that."

"What, Joe...?  Sorry, I was remembering something else..."

"What, now you're going to tell me you're really the tooth fairy?" Joe grinned.

"No... I'm going to tell you how I got the name 'Adam.'"  Methos grinned back, taking in the Watcher's gaping mouth.

"You shittin' me?" Joe said, grinning again.  "This has gotta be good."

Methos smiled, then went alert and still with the tell-tale reaction of one Immortal sensing another.  Both men looked to the door, and saw MacLeod enter and nod at them.

"MacLeod," Joe said.  "Got some good news for you, case you're interested," he said in a lower voice as MacLeod approached.  "Keane's gone to South America.  The Watchers over there say it looks like he's settling in for a while.  Don't think he'll be bothering you again."

"Thanks, I guess.  Didn't think he would."  MacLeod took in Methos' distracted look, puzzled at what was going on.  Joe didn't usually share Watcher information unsolicited like that.  "Methos?" he asked.

"MacLeod," Methos nodded, saluting with his beer.  "Grab a beer.  You have a lot of catching up to do."

"Sure.  I'll get it, Joe.  Don't get up."

"Nah, that's okay, MacLeod.  Adam and I have been chewing each other's ears off all night.  You two catch up.  I'll be back in a minute.  Don't go away, and don't start that story without me, buddy."

"So, what's up?" MacLeod asked lightly.  His hair was loose on his shoulders, a look that made Methos' heart ache.  MacLeod took a chair and straddled it comfortably, picking up one of Methos' empty bottles and tapping it on the table playfully.

"Oh nothing.  Just reviewing ancient history.  Methos 101."

"Fending off Joe's curiosity or feeding it?"

Methos grinned.  "You're smarter than you look, sometimes, MacLeod."

"So they tell me," MacLeod grumbled.  He took the beer Joe had sent over with Frank with a nod.

"You missed a nice set tonight.  Infants playing Coltrane, but they did a pretty nice job."

"That man should have been an Immortal."

"Yeah, but would he have been as talented?  Or does it take the stink of death to bring the sharp edge of soul's pain into focus to make it art?"

MacLeod reached over and grabbed the beer bottle from Methos' hand, sniffing it.  "What have you been drinking?" he teased, handing it back.

"Not enough," Methos replied evenly.

"So what was that all about when I came in, or don't you want to talk about it?"

"I was about to tell Joe how I got the name 'Adam'."

"Really?" MacLeod answered.  "So why'd he run off?"

"Probably had to go shit himself."

"Methos!"

"Oh, don't look so scandalized, MacLeod.  Here he comes now."

"Joe," MacLeod said.

"I hope you didn't start without me."

"If you wanted to hear this story, why'd you leave?  Maybe I don't want to tell it now," Methos said with false petulance.

"Look, I was just being polite, okay?  Thought I'd give you two a few minutes to catch up."

Methos smiled, then looked down into his beer as his attention wandered.  The drinking was beginning to affect him.  Earlier in the evening, he had drunk to gather the nerve to tell the story of his days in Sumeria and Canaan.  Now, he drank to celebrate a gathering sense of completion and release.  He had never taken in Sarah's blessing.  Still emerging from his crazed life of godhood and death, he had been too shocked by the near-sacrifice of Avraham's son to think clearly about what she'd said.  If he had thought about it, he probably would have rejected her formulation outright.  And yet for untold centuries he had used the name she had given him.

"Methos?" MacLeod and Joe said in unison.  "You in there?" MacLeod asked, waving his fingers in front of Methos' eyes.  "How much has he been drinking?" he snickered, turning to Joe.

"Sorry, guys." Methos smiled.  "Where were we?  Ah yes, my name.  My other name."

"So when did you take it?" Joe asked.

"Didn't take it.  It was given to me.  Hey, Frank!  Another," he said, holding up yet another empty bottle.

Joe shook his head no in the direction of the other bartender.  Methos didn't comment.

"I always thought you took the name 'Adam' as, you know, a joke on the Watchers, like, Adam the first man, Methos the oldest Immortal," MacLeod supplied, trying to keep the story on track.

"Nope.  It was given to me... as a blessing.  Do you know what 'Adam' means?"  He looked to each man, smiling briefly as they both shook their heads no.  "It means 'human being.'  She blessed me to always remember that I was part of the human story.  I thought I was a freak, MacLeod.  She said I wasn't.  She said I was human."

"She?  Who, Methos?"

"A princess."  Methos eyes were glistening.

Joe nodded knowingly, piecing the story together from what Methos had told him earlier.

"You're drunk, Methos," MacLeod said gently.  He wasn't quite sure what to do with a maudlin Methos.  The idea was daunting in more ways than he cared to think about.

Methos was silent for a while, ignoring MacLeod's comment.  Sarah had blessed his life; in the aftermath of Silas' quickening, MacLeod had saved it.  There was something he needed to know.  "Why did you stop Cassandra, MacLeod?"

"What?"  MacLeod looked jarred by the sudden turn in the conversation.

Methos looked up at MacLeod, his eyes unreadable.

"When she was going to kill me.  Why'd you stop her?"

"You would have done the same," MacLeod answered, waving his beer, trying to dismiss the seriousness of the question.

"Would I?"

"Yes, you would.  Isn't that what you did with Stephen Keane, what, um, five days ago?"

"Just trying to get Amanda out of my hair."  Methos tried to keep a straight face but couldn't.  "You know how she is."

"Yeah, I do.  Do you and Amanda have some kind of history, Methos?"

Methos smiled enigmatically.  "Wouldn't you like to know."

"Yeah, as a matter of fact, I would."  Duncan was smiling, but he was getting slightly testy about the edges.

"Don't get your knickers in a twist, MacLeod.  Nothing happened, and besides it was a long time ago."

"Methos!"

Methos smiled, then resumed his earlier tack.  "I'm serious, MacLeod.  Why did you save me from Cassandra's righteous wrath?  Not like you to interfere with a challenge."

"It wasn't a challenge, Methos, it was an execution."

"So is that the reason?  She wasn't playing fair?"

"No. That's not the reason.  Not all of it.  I acted instinctively.  You really want an answer on this?"

Methos nodded, his gaze locked with MacLeod's.  Some of the drunkenness seemed to have dissipated.

MacLeod nodded back, accepting the question with the seriousness of a challenge.  He paused, considering.  "Did you know Darius?" he finally began.

Methos looked up, surprised by the question.  "Everyone knows the story of the general who became a holy man," he replied.  "Basic Watcher training, right Joe?"

Joe nodded.  "Sure, Buddy," he said.  He was mostly staying out of this discussion, hoping to not spook the unusually talkative Methos back into his more typical reticence.

"You're hedging, Methos.  Did you or didn't you?"

Methos eyed MacLeod.  "Yes.  No.  Well, yes, but, it was a long time ago.  Why?"

"Before?"

"Before he took the Good Immortal's head?  Yes.  And after.  A little.  Why?"

"I was just thinking what Darius would say; he'd talk of forgiveness.  Of what is in your heart.  I needed to know what was in yours, Methos.  Can a person really change?"

Methos sighed, passing his hand over his face.  "I am so old, MacLeod," he said, "that the question ceases to make sense... no, hear me out.  It's like... like trying to ask if you have changed from your ancestors who carried spears and painted themselves with woad.  I am, even to myself, not one person but a succession of generations.  I am my own ancestry, MacLeod.  The real me?"  Methos held up his empty beer bottle in a toast, touching it to his forehead and heart, then extending it out in a mock salute.  "All I ever wanted was to survive.  To live a normal, ordinary life.  Stay out of trouble.  And to keep remembering to enjoy life, appreciate it for the gift that it is."

"Darius also said:  'If I deny who I was I deny who I am.'"

"I don't deny who I was, MacLeod.  Believe me, I remember it every day."

"I know."

"But I don't go around... atoning.  I just don't think any of that matters.  Any penance I could do is useless to the people I harmed.  I learned long ago I can neither heal my past nor make up for it.  The only thing I can do is commit myself to not making decisions based on it.  And," he added, gesturing once more with his beer bottle, "to enjoy life."

"That's it?  The wisdom of the ages?  Enjoy your life?"  MacLeod smiled, reaching up to touch Methos' hair, startling Methos with the unexpected intimacy of the gesture.

"Don't knock it till you've tried it," Methos smirked, pulling back.

Joe snickered.

"Yes, oh wise one," MacLeod intoned.

"Brat," Methos retorted, in full swing, gesturing with his empty bottle and reciting:  "'Wear clean clothes, anoint your head with oil'--sign of luxury, you know, desert climate, sort of like hair conditioner--, 'have a full belly, enjoy your loved ones.'  Something like that.  Siduri the Alewife -- that's a barmaid -- to Gilgamesh.  Bless her and all barmaids."  Methos paused, starting to weave a bit in his seat.  "The Preacher lifted it for Ecclesiastes, by the way.  It's textual, MacLeod."  Methos smiled smugly.

"Oh really?"

"Yup," Methos nodded.  "Look it up.  Chapter 9, verse 7.  Guy fancied himself like Gilgamesh.  Believe me, I knew Gilgamesh, and that guy was no Gilgamesh.  Gilgamesh was my friend.  Are you my friend?  Joe's my friend, aren't you, Joe.  MacLeod, are you my friend?"

MacLeod looked over at Joe, who shrugged his shoulders with a wry smile.  Looking back at Methos, he reached over and touched the other man's arm.  "Methos, I think it's finally happened," he said.  "I never thought I'd see the day.  You're drunk."

Methos suddenly looked very tired.  "Am not.  Just old.  Very, very old.  Feeling my bones.  My very, very old bones."

"Maudlin, too."  MacLeod smiled fondly at him, shaking his head.

"No, MacLeod.  Just facing facts.  Let's see, you saved my butt with Cassandra; I tried, but you didn't let me save your butt with Keane...  Does that count?  Are we even now?"

"Yeah, and you saved me from the dark Quickening.  I haven't forgotten that, Methos."  MacLeod's voice was suddenly intimate and soft, surprising Methos again.  "Methos," MacLeod began again.  "I saved you because... not to make us even.  Not to figure out some moral dilemma.  Not because I think you're going to teach me something, God knows, though it's tempting to think of you that way.  I saved you because... because I want you to live."

Methos nodded, solemnly taking in MacLeod's words.  Life itself was often the only reason for life.  And was reason enough.  It was good to remember that.  That, and the blessings of friends.  Rainer and the club had been a wonderful dream, but they had been just that: a dream.  He had needed the unreality of the club, the theatrical extremes of comfort and control, in order to shake off the reappearance of Kronos, or rather, his own reaction to Kronos' presence.  Playing it out had exorcized it somehow, gotten it out of his system.  It was fun, in its own way, but ultimately flat.  Methos looked at MacLeod, at his concern and sincerity.  MacLeod loved him.  He wasn't exactly sure where that was going, but there was a simplicity to it that transcended all the misunderstandings they were so adept at finding with each other.  Breathing deeply, Methos surrendered to the moment, to the reality of ordinary human relationships in all their complicated glory.  He reached out and took MacLeod's hand, not trusting himself to words.

Joe, having listened quietly, smiled at the two men, his eyes bestowing a benevolent grace.  "Now ain't that something," he said softly.

"Come on, Methos," MacLeod said, nodding goodbye to Joe.  He lifted a surprisingly pliant Methos up by the armpits and half hauled him out into the night air, an arm around his waist.  "You're in no shape to be out and about.  I'm taking you home."

Methos looked over at MacLeod, observing his delicious brown eyes at close range.  "Does this mean we're friends?" he asked.

"Shut up, Methos," MacLeod replied.  He kissed Methos chastely on the forehead, lingering just long enough for Methos to wonder what else he might be in for.

"I love you, too, MacLeod," Methos said quietly.  He wasn't quite as drunk as he was letting on.

MacLeod looked at him, but said nothing, merely resuming their walk home.

Methos smiled.  No doubt they would need to talk again when he was "sober."  No doubt it would be messy.  MacLeod would have conflicts; he would bristle.  Reality.  Real human lives.

There wasn't anything he would rather have.  He leaned comfortably against the larger man as they walked down the quiet street and along the Seine towards home. 

Epilogue: chain letter

you bind me
as a sign upon your heart;
a secret scroll
foretells our end:
love, unbound,
comes upon us,
undoes the mystery of
our joining,
releases us to choose,
freely, for the first time.
can we stand
the light, real light
in each other's eyes?
or are we ruined
without our chains?